Original subtitles

[soft dramatic music]

- Since the death of Lenin in 1924,

Joseph Stalin has maintained an iron grip

on all aspects of life in the Soviet Union.

As a Soviet Premier,

Stalin agrees to the 1939 non-aggression pact

with the Nazis, extending his western border

and precluding any chance of going to war

with Hitler's Germany.

Stalin could not have been more mistaken.

[dramatic music]

- All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march. Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine

the nightmare they're about to unleash.

The most destructive war in human history.

- Suddenly the world is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

♪

- The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies, led by the big three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with

immensely complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military operation of human history.

-The Allies have to come together

not just militarily,

but industrial scale

it's a global perspective.

- They have to fight in every climate

- They have to fight in every climate

to the deserts of Africa and the depths of the ocean.

to the deserts of Africa and the depths of the ocean.

♪

♪

- But there was no certainty of victory.

- But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans at their absolute worst,

- We see humans at their absolute worst,

And we see them at their absolute best,

And we see them at their absolute best,

- World War II was a struggle in which there could be

- World War II was a struggle in which there could be

one victor and one vanquished.

one victor and one vanquished.

♪

♪

[air raid sirens wailing]

[suspenseful music]

♪

[horn honks]

♪

- As war between Great Britain and Germany continues,

from his offices deep within the Kremlin,

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

is confident the non-aggression pact

he made with the Germans will hold

and that he will soon have

even more influence around the world.

- Stalin's ideal plan was that the British and French

would fight off the Germans,

and that those two sides could fight it out

as much as they liked while Stalin watched

from the sidelines as they exhausted themselves.

[soft dramatic music]

- Since he was a young revolutionary,

Stalin hoped that conflict in the West

would ultimately provide an opportunity

for communism to spread throughout Europe.

♪

- Vissarionovich Jughashvili,

the man that we know as Stalin,

is Georgian by birth and origin.

He comes from a particular milieu

marked by, among other things, feuding and banditry

and a certain code of honor,

a code of vengeance and vendetta.

- In the 1920s, Stalin became the leader

of the Soviet Union...

and quickly suppressed any opposition to his rule.

[tense music]

[indistinct chatter]

In 1936, he launched a purge

that became known as the Great Terror,

targeting political opponents,

then expanding it to high-level army officers.

- Stalin supervised, through the NKVD secret police,

the killing of millions of people,

the destroying of families.

♪

Millions were deported

and sent to concentration camps known as the gulags.

He turned the country into a totalitarian police state.

♪

- A few years later in 1939,

Stalin makes a deal with Adolf Hitler.

♪

Even though Germany and the Soviet Union are hostile,

Stalin signs an agreement

known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact

with the Nazis.

♪

As a result of the pact,

Hitler and Stalin not only carve up Eastern Europe

and together invade Poland,

Stalin also commits to supplying vast quantities

of raw materials to the German Reich.

- The Soviet Union is providing Adolf Hitler

massive amounts of natural resources,

which is funding the economic engine

to build the military machine

that Adolf Hitler is using around the rest of the world.

- By 1940, it looks as if the pact has paid off,

certainly for Stalin.

He's got this agreement with the Nazis

that he doesn't have to worry about a war

on their western front.

♪

[horn honks]

♪

- Then in late September,

Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a military alliance

called the Tripartite Pact.

[applause]

- In Berlin, Hitler welcomed Japan to his gang,

the three-power treaty, Germany, Italy, Japan.

dictator nations falling in step for world domination.

[dramatic music]

- It was not clear what the role of the Soviet Union

might be in this new pact.

Would it become a quadruple pact

instead of simply a Tripartite Pact?

Would the Soviet Union become a full partner?

These were all still open questions in the fall of 1940.

[train whistle blowing]

[suspenseful music]

- In November,

Stalin sends one of the few people he trusts to Berlin,

his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov.

♪

Molotov means "hammer" in Russian.

- His nickname was Iron Ass

because he could sit for so long doing work.

He was intelligent, he was ruthless,

and Stalin trusted him.

♪

Hitler receives Molotov in the chancellery.

There's an amazing scene as he enters,

huge, blond, giant SS men in their gleaming black,

death head's uniform salute.

♪

In walks this little Russian diplomat,

and Hitler greets him warmly.

And they have two big sessions of chats.

[tense music]

- Hitler is at an impasse in this war,

has conquered everything within reach.

He's trying to talk to the Soviets

about some tighter level of cooperation.

Hitler wants to get the Soviets on board

for some kind of global war against the British Empire.

- The Germans propose that the Soviets join

the Tripartite Pact and offer India as a prize

for when the British are defeated.

♪

Molotov doesn't take this seriously.

- Iron Ass is not impressed with Hitler.

And the conversations become increasingly awkward.

♪

- German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop

is hosting a reception for Molotov

when the Royal Air Force begins a raid on Berlin.

- In the middle of the banquet...

[air raid sirens wailing]

The air raid sirens start to sound

and they have to go down into Ribbentrop's air raid shelter.

[air raid sirens wailing]

[distant explosions]

And during the air raid,

Ribbentrop starts to boast that Britain is defeated

and it's only a matter of time

before Britain surrenders and the war is won.

- Ribbentrop, trying to make the best

of an obviously embarrassing situation,

jokes that the British are complaining

that they have not been invited to the party.

Molotov, however, is not charmed

by the Germans' attempt at humor.

And he says, well, if the war is over,

then why are we in this bomb shelter

and whose bombs are falling on us?

[train whistle blows]

- The next morning, Foreign Minister Molotov

returns to Moscow...

Unaware that Hitler and his military leaders

are planning a secret operation.

♪

- Hitler is capable of, you know, shaking your hand

and looking you in the eye and saying everything is OK

while planning to stab you in the back.

And that is clearly what's going on

between Molotov and Hitler.

♪

- One month after Molotov's Berlin visit,

on December 18th,

Hitler signs off on Fuehrer Directive Number 21...

A plan for a massive invasion of the Soviet Union

the following year.

♪

The invasion is given a code name

after a red-bearded medieval German emperor.

♪

The stage is now set for the biggest

military invasion in history,

Operation Barbarossa.

[crowd cheering]

[tense music]

♪

- In the last weeks of 1940,

Adolf Hitler tours German weapons factories

as preparations progress for Operation Barbarossa.

♪

His plan is to attack and conquer the Soviet Union,

to establish more lebensraum, living space,

for the new German empire in the East.

- [speaking German]

- The operation is top-secret.

But within days, sources have

fed the information to the Soviet intelligence services.

- Stalin is receiving information

from nearly every quarter

right from the belly of the beast in Berlin,

from the American military attaché,

from the British, and from his spy in Tokyo.

- But Stalin doesn't believe what he's hearing.

- Stalin is paranoid

that what is happening here is a very high-level game

on the part of the Western powers.

They're trying to maneuver him into a one-on-one war

with the previously undefeated Wehrmacht,

that he does not believe he's ready for at the moment,

and he is bound and determined to avoid being maneuvered.

You can get all the intelligence in the world,

but if you are predisposed not to believe it,

it doesn't really make that much difference.

- And when he receives a report from his master agent

in the German air force that Hitler is planning

an imminent invasion of Russia...

[tense music]

He says Hitler would not be so stupid

because he doesn't even realize

what he's dealing with, the scale of the Soviet Union.

♪

- Both Stalin and Hitler have read deeply into history.

♪

- Stalin has studied

the great German Prussian statesman Bismarck.

Bismarck thought that

a war on two fronts was an extremely bad idea.

♪

- Germany remains at war with Great Britain,

and Stalin doesn't believe

Hitler would open a second front.

- Stalin thinks it very unlikely

that Hitler will invade

because he thinks Hitler is a sort of rational,

Bismarckian player.

And in that sense, he misread Hitler.

♪

- But Hitler believes

that he is destined to lead Germany to greatness.

- Hitler is nothing if not arrogant.

He believes he's better than Bismarck,

better than just about anybody else

who's ever lived before him.

♪

- Hitler finalizes the details of Operation Barbarossa,

proposed date of invasion, May 1941.

The plan is to overwhelm the Red Army

and topple the regime within two months,

well before the Russian winter sets in.

- A lightning blow against the Russians

that will prove once and for all

that he, Hitler, and Germany, are unconquerable.

- The offensive is divided into three giant army groups,

each with a specific objective.

- Going from north to south,

the first army group is Army Group North,

which moves along the Baltic,

and its final operational goal is Leningrad.

The center of the invasion

is Army Group Center.

It's the largest force by far

and it is going toward Moscow.

Army Group South is moving through

what we would now call Ukraine

to secure resources and eventually,

the historic Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

- But in the spring of 1941,

the Nazis face a challenge in the Balkans

in Southeastern Europe.

♪

Hitler is forced to send an army into Yugoslavia

to crush an anti-Nazi coup.

♪

His infantry then marches into neighboring Greece

to help his Italian ally, Benito Mussolini.

- Hitler has been cleaning up this mess in the Balkans.

And so it's now a five-week delay

in the start of Operation Barbarossa.

♪

- The Kremlin receives more intelligence

that the Germans are preparing an invasion.

♪

Stalin dismisses it all.

And he doesn't stop sending Soviet grain,

oil, and steel into Germany.

♪

[birds singing]

♪

June 22nd, 1941.

As dawn breaks, over 3 million German soldiers

poured across the border into Soviet territory.

[flare hissing]

Operation Barbarossa is launched.

[gunfire]

[explosions]

♪

- It's the biggest invasion force

in the history of human warfare.

It's just so vast,

it's difficult to get one's mind around it.

♪

- If you just take the Eastern Front,

it's like trying to invade the United States

from San Diego to Seattle.

It is by itself the largest war that's ever happened.

That's crazy.

♪

- It's 3,000 tanks,

2,700 aircraft,

another 7,000 artillery pieces,

600,000 vehicles.

♪

It is massive on a scale no one else has ever seen before.

♪

This is the largest army that's ever been organized

in modern European terms.

This is 3 million men

spread across a couple thousand miles of front.

300 divisions, including 19 Panzer divisions.

This is a big force.

♪

This is German manpower moving east.

This is the culmination of all of the dreams,

the hopes that Hitler has put into his leadership.

This is going to be the future of Germany in the East.

♪

- Hitler thinks that the Soviet system is so rotten

that he just has to kick in the barn door

and the whole structure is going to collapse.

♪

- The Wehrmacht moves fast.

In just a few hours,

miles of Soviet territory is overrun.

♪

The invasion seems to be going according to plan.

[dramatic music]

♪

- On the morning of the invasion,

Stalin is awoken by his chief of staff.

- The phone rings in Stalin's bedroom

and Stalin answers it.

And he just says, the war has started.

And then silence

and he can just hear Stalin breathing

as he kind of wakes up and absorbs this information.

♪

[explosions]

♪

- The German advance is fast, it's furious,

it's efficient, it's brutal.

♪

- Adolf Hitler today launched his fast,

mobile Panzer divisions against what may be

the largest mass army of the world,

the Red Army of communist Russia.

♪

- The Red Army and the Soviet Air Force

are caught unprepared.

♪

[gunfire]

On the very first day...

the German Luftwaffe report that

they've destroyed nearly the 2,000 Soviet aircraft

both in the air and on the ground.

- Russian airfields were bombed.

Russian cities were bombed.

All hell was let loose.

[gunfire]

♪

The Soviets do resist bravely.

But they are constantly outmaneuvered,

captured almost immediately.

The vast Soviet army is already in freefall.

♪

- The opening days of Barbarossa are Hitler's dream.

It goes incredibly well.

The forces are racing through former Poland,

they go across Byelorussia,

they get through the Baltic states.

It's just amazing.

It's like a hot knife cutting through butter.

[gunfire]

- In just the first week, the Wehrmacht pushed 300 miles

into Soviet territory, capturing over 400,000 troops.

♪

- The Russians are simply being stampeded

by a much more savvy German force.

♪

- During the Great Terror,

Stalin dismantled the leadership of the army,

executing thousands of experienced military officers.

[gunfire]

♪

- It is on a colossal scale.

3 of 5 field marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders,

50 of 57 corps commanders, 45% of all brigadier generals,

50% of all colonels have been executed.

The leadership of the Soviet armed forces is not in place.

♪

- Stalin had decapitated his own army.

He put younger men in their place,

but they weren't experienced and sometimes, they

were little more than Stalin loyalists or party hacks.

They're rookies.

This is an army that has suddenly been

reduced to kind of the teething level.

♪

[crowd cheering]

- Some Soviets initially welcome the Germans.

♪

They even tear down Communist statues

raised in Stalin's honor.

♪

[gunfire]

♪

On June 28th,

Hitler's Army Group Center reaches Minsk,

the capital of Belorussia,

just over 400 miles from Moscow.

♪

- The Germans keep coming.

Those 3 million Nazi troops keep advancing ruthlessly.

And Stalin is ordering counterattacks

that never happen.

It's just chaos out there.

- There was now a very palpable sense

of paranoia and fear that the Germans

now might be able to advance as far as Moscow.

[phone ringing]

- At the Kremlin, the news reaches Stalin.

[phone ringing]

- Stalin suddenly realizes

that he's lost control of the Soviet Union.

He's lost control of the invasion.

He turns to Molotov and he just says,

everything's lost.

So many lands have been lost.

♪

- He's not simply talking about the army.

He's talking about the revolution.

He's talking about the first proletarian dictatorship,

the birthplace of communism.

All this, he says, has been flushed down the toilet.

[speaks Russian], he says.

♪

- Stalin retreats to his dacha,

his country home outside Moscow,

and shuts himself off completely.

At this crucial moment, the Soviet Union has no leader.

[tense music]

- As the Wehrmacht tears through Soviet territory,

- As the Wehrmacht tears through Soviet territory,

Stalin has not left his country house.

Some of his closest aides

fear he's suffering a nervous breakdown.

- Back in the Kremlin, there's total panic.

So finally, Molotov says,

we've all got to go out to see Stalin

and to tell him to come back.

So they drive out, and Stalin is sitting in a chair,

pale, thinner, exhausted.

He says, what have you come for?

They say, come back. Lead us.

We can't do this without you.

♪

- Molotov persuades Stalin to return to the Kremlin,

where he speaks directly to the Soviet people.

♪

But instead of talking about communism,

he evokes their sense of history, honor,

and national pride.

- [speaking Russian]

- Stalin appeals to Mother Russia.

He appeals to the sorts of attitudes

and spirit of the people.

He could have been the tsar

in the way that the tsar might have appealed to the people.

- This is a really smart, canny move.

This is a wonderful way to unite the society

in a way that brings people together.

We have the same enemy

and Mother Russia is at stake here,

so rally to the cause.

[dramatic music]

- Tens of millions of Soviet peoples

are moved by Stalin's words.

- He appoints himself supreme commander-in-chief,

and he takes complete control of the war effort.

[tense music]

- The Soviets also begin to receive unexpected support

from the West.

- The Soviet Union is now acquiring sympathy

from Winston Churchill in London,

from President Roosevelt in Washington.

These countries will offer Stalin aid.

♪

- Roosevelt sends to Moscow his closest advisor,

Harry Hopkins, to find out

how America can support the Soviet Union.

- At the airport, our camera filmed the arrival

of Mr. Harry Hopkins, who conferred with Stalin

on Russia's immediate need.

- But it will be some time

before Western aid will arrive.

♪

- [speaking Russian]

- By mid-July, the Red Army has lost nearly 4,000 tanks

and over 6,000 aircraft.

♪

2 million soldiers have been captured or killed.

♪

Troops taken prisoner are sent to German work camps

or left to starve.

♪

- It becomes the most pitiless campaign ever launched,

I think, in modern history.

♪

They were rounded up in their thousands

and hardly given any food.

In fact, they would just throw loaves over the barbed wire

and laugh when the prisoners fought amongst themselves

because they were starving.

[prisoners shouting]

[somber music]

- The Nazis also target civilians.

Both the army and the SS are ordered to eradicate

all resistance.

Hitler's guidelines for the conduct of his troops

issued ahead of Barbarossa demand ruthless

and energetic measures against political agitators,

saboteurs, and Jews.

- They give the army carte blanche

to do exactly what they want to the populations

as they swarm over the borderlands.

♪

- This is where we start to talk about

the idea of total war.

We are now gonna literally target civilians on purpose.

♪

- But the Soviets begin to fight back.

Partisans raid German outposts

and Stalin demands a scorched earth policy.

People are told to burn everything as they flee,

depriving the Nazis of food and shelter

as the German army marches

into the immensity of the Soviet Union.

- The terrain in this part of Russia

is like the Great Plains of the United States.

I mean, it's like being in Nebraska or Iowa,

flat seas of grass.

♪

When you start with a front a thousand miles long,

and as they advance, it gets to 2,000 miles,

they don't know how to deal with an area

where the armies are operating like ships at sea.

There is no running out of territory

when you're fighting the Soviets.

There's always more territory to retreat to.

♪

- By the end of July,

the German army has progressed over 400 miles.

But their advance is slowing

and supply lines are being stretched.

- Every army has to understand that if it advances rapidly,

it can outrun its supplies.

They always say, you know, amateurs talk tactics,

professionals talk logistics.

Tank repair, replenishment of ammunition, food, uniforms,

it just consumed the German armed forces.

Eventually, every force will reach what's called

a culminating point

where you've simply exhausted the men,

outrun the supplies,

hit something you can't overcome.

Your combat power has been expended.

♪

- As German commanders and their men

confront the magnitude of their task,

Hitler faces perhaps

the greatest test of his leadership.

[tense music]

♪

- It's been six weeks since German troops

stormed into Soviet territory.

Hitler visits his men on the front.

♪

He meets with his commanders to discuss strategy.

The army groups are no longer moving at the same pace.

Army Group Center has pushed too far ahead.

It is only about 200 miles outside Moscow.

But its supply lines are perilously thin.

- That's a real problem if you're a operational planner.

You have one thrust that's hanging out there on a limb.

- The German high command is divided about what to do next.

Some of Hitler's generals want to continue pushing

towards Moscow and capture the capital before winter sets in.

- Hitler believes if he and the German armies

can overrun Ukraine, it'll undercut the economic basis

of Stalin's dictatorship and undercut the economic basis

of the Soviets continuing the war.

♪

And so the decision is made

to hold the tanks from their thrust against Moscow,

then send a vast force into the Ukraine.

♪

- On September 18th,

the city of Kiev is encircled by the Nazis.

- Kiev is enormously important

because Kiev in and of itself is the control of Ukraine.

And what's Ukraine?

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.

♪

So there's a huge encirclement battle at Kiev,

one of the biggest battles thus far in the war.

- Feuer.

♪

[gunfire]

♪

- With the Panzer groups coming from the north,

from the central axis,

and also in the south.

They capture 600,000 troops. It's staggering.

One's never imagined a battle like that in the past.

Hitler keeps on saying they can't go on providing

more troops for us to surround in this particular way.

They're gonna collapse at any moment.

♪

- With over half his forces resupplied...

[gunfire and explosions]

♪

Hitler turns to Moscow.

♪

- The Wehrmacht forces progress very, very rapidly.

They get so close to the city of Moscow,

you can actually see the towers of the city center.

- People were, obviously, scared at the prospect

of what was likely to happen.

But at the same time, by now,

there was a determination to fight back.

[tense music]

- They are preparing the defenses of the city.

Men and women are out digging ditches.

Everything is ready for a last-ditch defense of Moscow.

That is, Moscow will be defended

to the last drop of blood.

- Stalin considers evacuating the Soviet government

to a city on the River Volga, over 500 miles away,

- Stalin's staff begin to prepare his own library,

his own houses, to be evacuated and to abandon Moscow.

But Stalin is very aware of appearance.

He's always thinking about history.

He knows if Stalin leaves Moscow, Moscow will fall.

♪

- Many people think that the regime is about to collapse.

For the first time, it looks like the Communist Party

is actually about to be toppled.

♪

At the last moment, Stalin decides to stay.

♪

- The German army is poised to capture Moscow.

But Stalin has an ally.

♪

General Winter.

♪

[tense music]

♪

- Four months into the invasion of the Soviet Union,

the German army faces a new enemy.

- It was always said that Russia's greatest general

was General Winter.

So the Russians were much better prepared

for winter than the Germans.

♪

- So what happens in the Soviet Union,

if you're on the path toward Moscow,

as invaders have found over the centuries,

the weather turns bad, it rains,

and a very inadequate road network

now gets turned into mud.

The Russians call it rasputitsa, the roadless time.

♪

- This is not like normal mud.

You can't move and you can't bring supplies forward.

General Mud slows the German advance

at a time when they're trying to beat the clock here.

Then when it gets really cold,

you see an entirely different situation.

The soldiers start freezing.

- By November, temperatures are plummeting

to as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit,

devastating the Wehrmacht's men and supply lines.

- These German soldiers were fighting

with frozen steel with their bare hands,

unable to service their weapons,

so the weapons jam,

the lubricants freeze on the tanks,

they have to build fires under the tanks at night

to keep the oil loose enough.

Everything degrades their combat performance.

- Hitler told them they were going to be the all-conquering

master race of Europe.

They're cold, and they're tired,

and they probably haven't had a square meal in two weeks.

♪

- An invading army has been here before.

Napoleon Bonaparte had tried to seize Russia in 1812.

- Napoleon invades Russia, takes Moscow,

but as winter comes, is defeated

by the unconquerable vastness of Russia and the cold.

And in the end, the retreat from Moscow

really destroys Napoleon's empire.

♪

- But Hitler ignores the lessons of history.

He orders his troops forward to take Moscow.

♪

- Stalin still has a fear that there'll

be some breakthroughs into the heart of Moscow itself.

But, you know, something happens in this period.

A piece of intelligence comes across his desk

that for once, he's willing to listen to.

And it comes from his agent in Japan.

♪

- The intelligence from Stalin's agent in Tokyo

suggests that Japan will not attack

the Soviets' eastern border.

Instead, Japan is planning to move south against British,

French, and Dutch colonies in Asia, and perhaps against

the United States in the Philippines.

So Stalin transfers 400,000 troops

that were stationed in the Soviet Far East to Moscow.

♪

- A whole new army.

Fresh, untouched, fully manned, tanks, howitzers, planes.

♪

- This is the Siberian reserve.

These are troops dressed in heavy white parkas, ski troops.

They're used to operating in the cold.

♪

- In November,

with some German units just 21 miles from Moscow...

♪

Stalin celebrates the anniversary

of the Russian Revolution in Red Square.

- Marching in the parade are Stalin's Siberian divisions.

♪

- They were not raw recruits being sent to the front.

They were trained and experienced hard-line soldiers.

♪

- The defense of Moscow is largely in their hands.

[cheers and applause]

♪

- On December 5th, Stalin launches his counteroffensive.

♪

[wind howling]

♪

It catches the Germans at their worst possible moment.

They're tired, they're hungry, they're sick,

they're freezing to death, they're out of supplies.

♪

And the Soviet offensive sweeps all before it.

[gunfire and explosions]

♪

- The Germans are completely stunned

and they are thrown back over 100 miles.

It's an astonishingly successful counteroffensive

and Moscow is safe.

♪

- Over the next weeks,

Soviet troops halt the Wehrmacht

and begin to push the Germans back.

♪

Stalin has stemmed the tide.

♪

- The defeat of the German drive on Moscow

and the near-destruction of the Germans

is a sea change for both Hitler and Stalin.

Hitler now has to look at a scene of desperation

and trying to rebuild his army in the Soviet Union.

Stalin now not only knows that he's going to survive,

he also knows that he's going to be able to launch

one hammer blow after the other against the Germans.

♪

- Designed to be another victorious blitzkrieg,

Operation Barbarossa descends into a deadly stalemate

for the Germans.

In the free West, President Roosevelt

and Prime Minister Churchill

provide support to the Red Army to wear down the Nazi invaders.

Across the Pacific,

a new power has been building its own empire,

one that will attempt to destroy American forces

in a single day of infamy.