All language subtitles for World War II Race To Victory Series 1 5of6 D Day and Beyond 1080p

D‐Day.

156,000 British, American
and Canadian soldiers

are transported
across the English Channel

in the largest seaborn invasion
ever attempted.

[Sir Mike] It's an almost
unimaginable scale now

to put a huge army
across the Channel

against a defended shore.

[narrator] After years
of pressure

from Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin,

British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill

has finally agreed

to open a second front
in Europe,

and send Allied troops
to liberate occupied France.

From there,
they will fight their way

across to Germany,

and with the Red Army
advancing from the east,

finally bring down
Hitler's fascist empire.

The success of D‐Day will allow

a total
of two million Allied troops

and nine million tonnes
of armaments and supplies

to be landed on the beaches
at Normandy.

[Sir Mike] It finally brought

Allied ground forces
within reach of Germany itself.

[narrator] And yet,
just three months later,

the Big Three's optimism
will turn to despair,

as the Allies attempt
to bulldoze their way

as quickly as possible
across Europe,

comes to a grinding halt.

[Iwan] Operation Market Garden,

an attempt to end the war
by Christmas,

turned into one
of the great military disasters

of World War II,

with the
so‐called "bridge too far."

[narrator]
Operation Market Garden

will lead
to 17,000 Allied casualties,

as well as thousands more dead
and wounded Dutch civilians.

[in Dutch] When you look back
at what happened

we know we did our very best,

and we are proud
of what we've done.

[theme music]

[explosions]

[slides clicking]

[explosions]

[bombs hiss]

[explosions]

[narrator] During 1943,
debate over the timing

of a western invasion
of mainland Europe

had come close to breaking
the Grand Alliance.

With his forces sustaining
colossal losses in the east,

Stalin was impatient
for a second front

to be opened in
Western Europe without delay.

Churchill, however,
preferred an attack

through the Mediterranean
via Sicily and Italy,

Europe's soft underbelly.

Roosevelt was caught
in the middle,

but ultimately backed Stalin,

in return
for the Soviet leader's

declaration of war
against Japan.

Churchill has
this Imperial holdover

of really seeing

the Eastern Mediterranean
as the key to Europe.

You could make the argument
that he experienced

the failure
of an amphibious landing

in the First World War,

and he didn't want
to relive it again in France

in the Second World War.

So he has
a sort of natural aversion,

in addition
to believing actually

that you could form
a pincer move

and divide the Germans
on two fronts,

which is what he's trying
to do by going up

through the Balkans
and up through Italy.

[Peter] Stalin argued

for the opening
of the second front

in northern France,

not only because he thought

this would support
the Soviet war effort,

it was vital to victory
over Hitler,

but he wanted equality

and prestige of his own
within The Big Three.

He wanted to be treated
as a partner within this trio,

and he thought
he was not receiving

the credit that he was due.

It comes down
to personal relationships,

again, in this sense.

[narrator] In February 1943,

Churchill had begun to yield
to Stalin's pressure

and had promised
a cross‐Channel operation

in August or September
of that year.

When this was postponed
for more than eight months,

Stalin was incandescent

and recalled his ambassadors

from London and Washington
in protest.

Operation Overlord had
an inauspicious beginning.

Stalin was insistent
on Operation Overlord

because he knew how much pain

his people were coming under
on the Eastern Front,

how many people were dying
in the millions,

and that they couldn't sustain
this forever.

[narrator] Then in January 1944,
Churchill assured Stalin

that he was now going
full blast for Overlord

and the opening
of a second front.

But the invasion's commander
would not be British.

In a distinct shift
in the balance of power

of the Big Three,

D‐Day would be led
by an American:

General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Stalin and Roosevelt
both supported the idea

of a new world order,

and considered Churchill
and his British imperialism

as a relic of a bygone age.

Despite people like Churchill

hoping, indeed,
that the empire would carry on

and Britain could carry on
as before,

the realities

and the ideologies
were different,

which meant
it could not be carried on.

[narrator] In early 1944,

Churchill was
on a charm offensive,

hailing the tremendous
victories
of the Russian armies,

and described
"the new confidence

which has grown in our hearts
towards Stalin."

But with the Red Army
now close to the Polish border,

tensions within the Big Three
were growing.

Britain had guaranteed
Polish independence in 1939,

and the country's
government in exile

was based in London.

Churchill made intense efforts

to broker
a Polish‐Soviet agreement,

but would his new confidence
in Stalin prove to be
misplaced?

By now, Soviet advances
against the Nazis

were unstoppable.

On the 27th of January, 1944,

the Red Army
finally liberated Leningrad,

ending a siege that had lasted
almost two and a half years.

Stalin believed that
even if Roosevelt and Churchill

broke their promise
to invade France,

the Soviets would have
enough power to finish off

Hitler's Germany alone.

Stalin was thriving,
but his allies were not.

The Nazis had renewed
their bombing of London,

and in February, Churchill
cabled Roosevelt to say,

"We have just had
a stick of bombs

around 10 Downing Street
and there are no more windows."

Britain was war weary,
and so was Churchill.

He looked old,
tired and very depressed.

Roosevelt was equally
exhausted,
and now also gravely ill

with heart disease,
cardiac failure,

and acute bronchitis,

and his standing in the polls
was sinking.

If Overlord had been
a catastrophe

then it would've been very bad

for both of them as leaders,
I think.

Roosevelt, he wants
to carry on being president.

He wants to run
for a final term.

And he needs to show momentum.
He needs to show success.

And those sorts of things matter
in a democracy.

So for both of them, I think,

the repercussions
could have been very serious

if it'd been
a complete disaster.

Of course, it was very tough,

and it was not
a foregone conclusion.

[narrator]
As Roosevelt's popularity

continued to weaken,

Joseph Kennedy told
Churchill's emissary,

Beaverbrook,

that he was certain
Roosevelt faced defeat.

Overlord had to be a triumph,
or the Alliance would crumble.

[theme music]

[explosions]

[narrator] To ensure
Operation Overlord's success,

the Allies instigated
an intricate campaign

of fake operations

and disinformation
called Bodyguard,

approved on Christmas Day,
1943.

The aim was to mislead the
Nazis
about the location and timing

of key
Allied military offensives.

The most significant
was Operation Fortitude.

Fortitude North aimed
to convince the Germans

that the Allied invasion in
1944

would come
through Norway and Sweden.

Fortitude South sought
to persuade them

that the Pas de Calais would be

the main invasion site
in France,

and that any action directed

at Normandy
was merely a diversion.

The campaign successfully
persuaded the Nazis

to deploy forces and reserves
to irrelevant locations

and limited Hitler's options.

This was not a matter

of fake intelligence
being leaked.

The Allies placed an entire
fictitious fighting force,

the First U. S. Army Group,
in Kent,

directly opposite
the French port of Calais.

Roads, bridges, airfields

and embarkation points
were built,

and fake planes
and landing craft

were put in place.

False radio messages
were transmitted

to give an added sense
of fevered activity.

This ingenious plan
would culminate

on the evening before D‐Day,

when the Allies launched
a mock invasion from Dover,

diverting Nazi forces away

from the real invasion
in Normandy.

I don't think we should
underestimate exactly

what was at risk here.

It wasn't just about the boots
on the ground, so to speak,

but we needed deception plans,

we needed to use
every single tool.

Of course, Churchill loved
all of that unorthodox stuff.

He was interested
in the Commandos

and supported SOE.

We dropped agents
behind enemy lines.

He loved secret gadgets,
exploding rats,

whatever it was, he was for it.

[narrator] To command
this ghost army,

the Allies selected one of
their
most cunning and able generals,

George S. Patton.

Allied intelligence had
already identified Patton

as the General most respected
by the Nazis,

so his appointment was leaked

to the Germans to bolster
the deception.

[Jonathan]
They set Patton up in Kent

with a whole supposed
army group.

They had him driving around
inspecting troops,

pretending to be
the First U. S. Army Group,

which was going to bounce
across the Channel

and attack Calais and Boulogne.

They had inflatable tanks,

and all this sort of stuff
parked in fields,

so that any German airplanes
could spot them

and report back
of this immense concentration.

They spent a lot of time
convincing the Germans

that the main attack was going
to be at the narrowest point

of the Channel
across the Pas de Calais.

[narrator] For Patton himself,
a man of action,

being the leader
of a fake army was tortuous.

But Operation Fortitude
would have a lasting effect

on German operations.

And that was so successful

that even after D‐Day,

the Germans still thought that
the main attack hadn't come yet

and kept forces
in the Pas de Calais.

They also had
another completely fictitious

army group in Scotland

which was supposed to go over
and invade Norway

to distract the Germans

and force them
to keep forces in Norway.

They had all sorts of fun,
and all kinds of schemes,

greatly helped by the fact
that they could read

enough Enigma traffic
by this stage

to know
which of these deceptions

were working
and which ones weren't.

n

was successful,

the full‐scale D‐Day rehearsals
in April 1944 were anything
but.

Operation Tiger
on Slapton Sands in Devon

turned into a catastrophe

as Allied forces
came under heavy attack

from German E‐boats

and were embroiled
in friendly fire incidents.

In all, nearly a thousand men
were killed or wounded.

Nothing, however,

would be allowed
to stop this invasion,

and on the 6th of June 1944,
an armada set off

from the south coast of
England.

The flotilla was supported
by more than 18,000 men

from the U. S. 82nd
and 101st airborne,

as well as the British
6th Airborne Division.

They were dropped
into enemy territory

in the early hours
of the morning

to seize bridges
and secure the beachheads

ahead of the landings.

3,000 landing craft,
as well as 2,500 ships,

and 500 naval vessels
were transporting

more than 156,000 American,
British and Canadian soldiers

across the English Channel.

[suspenseful music]

They would disembark
on five beaches

along the 50‐mile
Normandy coastline.

The British
and American divisions

had been training since 1942,

but nothing could prepare them

for the reality
of what lay ahead.

[Sir Mike] We'll never know,
without a doubt,

the preparation on the scale...

It's an almost
unimaginable scale now,

to put a huge army
across the Channel

against a defended shore.

Every day that went by

gave you
another day's preparation,

so I think every day earlier

would have made that little
less chance of success.

[narrator]
When the seaborne units

began to land at 6:30 a. m.,

the British and Canadians
on Gold, Juno, and Sword
beaches

overcame light opposition
from the Germans,

as did the Americans at Utah.

However, at Omaha Beach,
the U. S. 1st Division

was met by the best
of the German coastal defences,

the 352nd,
and continuously fired on

by machine gunners
as they came on shore.

Omaha threatened to fail,
and only dedicated leadership

got the troops inland,
but not without cost.

More than 2,000
American casualties

were sustained
on this one beach.

Hitler, notoriously nocturnal,

did not wake up
until midday on June 6th,

long after
the landings had begun.

As soon as he heard the news,

he sent the 21st Panzer
Division
into the gap

between the British
and Canadian beaches.

Had the Germans reached the
sea,

the landings
might not have succeeded.

But fierce resistance
by British anti‐tank gunners

turned the tide.

It was also a victory
for British intelligence

and their subsequent
surveillance

of captured German commanders.

[Helen] We rarely think
about all those top commanders

that were captured
on the battlefields

of Normandy, in France,

and all the way down
to the invasion of Germany.

What happened to them?

Well, they were brought back,

generals,
couple of field marshals,

over 50 German generals ended up
in British captivity.

We needed the intelligence
from them,

and British intelligence bugged
their conversations

and got intelligence
which now is being recognised

as having turned
the course of the war.

[narrator] The D‐day victory
was reported extensively

in the newspapers and cinemas

in both the UK and the U. S.

But the victory was
bittersweet.

[military music]

Some of the guys
that had come back,

they're in the States,

they're in the hospital
wanting to know,

they want to see
what is going on

but they can't,
because they don't have TVs.

A lot of people were wondering

what was happening
to their loved one,

and that was
a little bit harder,

unless it was in the newspaper
probably about five days later,

six days later,
they'd get the newspaper

to find out
if one of their loved ones

was killed or not.

[narrator] Allied troops

who had not yet
been shipped over

to join their colleagues

also watched the landings
on the news.

[narrator] In five days,
the beaches were fully secured

in the hands
of the Americans and British,

and more than 326,000 men,

100,000 tons of equipment,
and 50,000 vehicles had
arrived.

Mulberry B,
a temporary harbour, was built,

and over the next ten months

it was used to bring in
2.5 million troops,

500,000 vehicles,

and 4 million tonnes
of supplies.

Major General Rudi Hemmes had
made his way

from the Netherlands to England

to train as a soldier.

Now he was
on his way back to fight.

bore the brunt
of German resistance,

enabling American forces
to break out

and make the initial running
into France.

The small fields, thick hedges,
and narrow, sunken lanes

favoured the defending Germans,

and infantry casualties
were heavy.

But Hitler's intolerance
of tactical withdrawals

meant that his forces
were eventually trapped,

and 60,000 German soldiers
were killed or captured.

Nearly all their guns, tanks,
and vehicles were abandoned.

Stalin had got what he wanted,
a second front had been opened,

and the Allied troops began
to advance through France.

[Peter] The invasion
of northern France

was a huge landing,
a huge operation,

and it did make
a huge contribution

to the defeat of Hitler.

The Soviet Union
would not have been able

to maintain their momentum

without an assault
from the other side,

from Western Europe.

It also created
the nightmare scenario

for the Germans,

because for them,
they've remembered back

to the First World War

where they had faced a war
on two fronts,

and this was a central reason
why they were defeated in 1918.

[Sir Mike] It finally brought
Allied ground forces

within reach of Germany itself.

Up until now, Germany controlled
vast swathes of Europe,

east and west, and south,

given Italy being
a member of The Axis.

So it was never their fight
on their land,

and this now,
for the first time,

and from the east,
and from the west,

Germany itself
becomes threatened

by Allied attack.

[narrator]
On 25th of August 1944,

Paris was liberated.

[triumphant music]

[crowd applauds]

[narrator] With the Germans now
in full retreat,

the Allies advanced rapidly

on a broad front through
north‐eastern France and
Belgium

towards the borders
of the Third Reich.

It would be here, however,

that the German Wehrmacht
would make its final stand

against the Western Allies.

After the success of D‐Day,

the Allies believed
victory was in sight

and could be achieved
by Christmas, 1944.

Advancing a staggering
342 miles in six days,

British tanks swept through
northern France and into
Belgium

with little resistance.

The British Second Army,
led by the Welsh Guards,

advanced to the south,
entering Brussels

to an ecstatic welcome
on the 3rd of September.

The next day, Antwerp fell
to the 11th Armoured Division.

U. S. General Marshall
told his commanders

that cessations of hostilities
in the war against Germany

may occur at any time.

The Allies planned to drop
paratroopers into Berlin,

in the event
of a sudden German collapse,

to try to secure the city
before the Red Army got there.

They did not consider

that the largely abandoned
Siegfried Line

would still prove
a major obstacle,

or that fuel for their tanks
would soon be in short supply.

By mid‐September 1944,

Allied confidence was beginning
to look severely misplaced.

When the Germans
finally crumbled

at the end
of the battle of Normandy,

the Falaise Pocket
closed all of that.

Their withdrawal
was then precipitate.

Paris fell within days,
Brussels early September.

There was a real sense

that Allies
had broken the Wehrmacht,

but I think they underestimated
the extraordinary ability,

which they had demonstrated
so clearly on the Russian Front,

to regroup, to reorganise,

and very rapidly turn it around.

[narrator]
Operation Market Garden,

devised by Field Marshal
Bernard Law Montgomery,

was to be
the largest airborne operation

in the history of warfare.

Its aim was
to secure the key bridges

over three Dutch rivers

in order to outflank
the heavy Nazi defences

of the Siegfried Line
and enter the German heartland.

It involved around
35,000 British, American

and Polish airborne
and glider troops,

who'd meet up with
the British Armoured Divisions

on the ground.

[Helen] The aim
of Operation Market Garden

was to take strategically
important bridges and routes

around Eindhoven and Nijmegen,

and ultimately, of course,
we had to cross the Rhine.

So it's preparations ready
for the invasion of Germany.

[Sir Mike] A strategic thrust,
that was the great idea.

The strategic aim was to cross
a number of water obstacles,

rivers, canals,

in order to give
a breakout position

into not only Germany,
but into the Ruhr,

into Germany's
industrial heartland,

and then to Berlin.

allied paratroopers were
dropped
over the Netherlands.

These included
the British 1st Airborne,

The Red Devils,

who were dropped into Arnhem
and the surrounding area.

A handful of them
managed to secure

the northern end
of the Arnhem Bridge.

But German counterattacks
cut them off

from the landing zones

and forced more than 2,000 men
into a pocket

near the village of Oosterbeek
several miles away.

The British airmen had
few anti‐tank weapons,

limited food and supplies,

and their ammunition
was running low.

By the night
of the 25th of September,

the main body of troops
had been forced to withdraw

from the Oosterbeek perimeter.

From this point,
all British and American troops

began to withdraw,

leaving behind more than
15,000 Allied casualties

as well as thousands
of dead Dutch civilians.

[Iwan]
It was the scheme promoted

by the British General
Bernard Montgomery,

who felt he should have been
in command of Allied forces,

rather than Eisenhower.

The Americans accepted a plan
drawn up largely by the British

which turned into one
of the great military disasters

of World War II,

where the so‐called
"bridge too far."

[narrator]
Monty's bold bid for glory

proved a humiliation.

The whole operation had been
hampered by dense fog,

thick clouds,
and radio communication
failure.

The British ground landing
zones
were too far from Arnhem,

a lack of aircraft meant
the drop took three days,

vastly reducing
any element of surprise,

and Allied commanders ignored
British intelligence

that two SS Panzer divisions
were in the area.

Of course, German troops
were being mapped all the time,

in map rooms across Britain,

and we didn't know where
9 and 10 Panzer Division were.

They were hiding somewhere.

And their location
was picked up just three days

before Operation Market Garden.

But the intelligence
was not acted upon,

and it does raise questions
as to why,

whether Market Garden could even
that late have been stopped.

[narrator] Though Montgomery
called the operation

90% successful,

in reality,
it was a valiant failure.

The Allies had failed
to establish

a bridgehead over the Rhine,

and they would now
have to fight their way

into the Reich on a broad
front.

[Jonathan] Yes, the Allies
did underestimate

German strength.

If they had been able
to launch it

two weeks previously,

then the Germans might have been
weak enough for it to work.

But by the time
it was eventually launched,

the Germans had
a couple of weeks

to catch their breath,

start to reorganise themselves
and rebuild the defences a bit.

But even if it had all worked,

even if it had all worked
two weeks previously,

they would still have been
holding a very exposed salient,

because although they might have
captured the bridge at Arnhem,

there was always
going to be another river.

[narrator] After the debacle
of Operation Market Garden,

morale was low,
and tensions again

became evident
between the Allies.

The majority of the forces

in Northern Europe
were American,

and they wanted the main say
in how the war was run.

They considered Montgomery to
be
a whining, arrogant,

opinionated
and self‐serving Brit,

desperate for the glory and
credit for the final victories.

Montgomery,
some would accuse him

of seeking personal glory here.

He would deny that,

absolutely vehemently,

and say
"no, strategically, this is

the best way to finish the war.

It's the quickest way."

[narrator] Despite this,
relations between Roosevelt

and Churchill seemed to be
at their best.

Just before
Operation Market Garden,

Churchill had heaped praise
on Roosevelt

at the Quebec Conference,

and subsequent meetings saw
them
discuss ways to deindustrialize

and divide Germany after the
war
through the Morgenthau Plan.

The mood was equally cordial

at the Moscow Conference
at the Kremlin

in October 1944
attended by Churchill,

the foreign ministers
of all three countries

and hosted, of course,
by Stalin.

British military leaders,
however,

were growing increasingly
anxious about the Soviets

as the Red Army
began to encroach further

into Eastern and Southern
Europe
during the autumn of 1944.

In response,
Churchill devised a plan

to maintain British influence
in Greece and the
Mediterranean,

protecting
its imperial interests.

So, his bottom line is
to persuade the Soviets,

to persuade
the Greek communists,

to cooperate and not to attempt

to oppose the King of Greece,

who Churchill's very keen
on putting back on his throne.

What happens
is this broadens out into

a proposed arrangement
of percentage of influence

over the countries
of south‐eastern Europe,

so Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria and Hungary.

And Churchill suggests
that they divide it

in terms of percentages.

[narrator] The Americans
opposed the idea.

whatever the British said,
they feared it could turn

into a post‐war dispute
over Allied occupied Europe

between Britain
and the Soviet Union.

During a state dinner,
Churchill slipped Stalin a list

dividing up the Balkans
into spheres of influence

by percentages.

Stalin is said to have looked
at the list,

and ticked it
indicating his approval.

They also discussed the idea
that the Soviet Union needed

a ring of independent,
pro‐Soviet buffer states:

Poland, Czechoslovakia,

and Hungary
to protect its border.

Now, for Stalin,

this was not
a controversial thing,

because he did not really care
about the status of countries.

He was interested
in expanding Soviet power.

Where the Percentages Agreement
is controversial

is for Churchill and Roosevelt,
and why they agreed to this.

Democratic powers agreeing

to carve up Europe
in this backroom deal

in a way that kind of fitted
Stalin's methods

much more than it fitted theirs.

[narrator]
The fates of many millions

were decided over dinner,

while the Allied forces
were struggling

to bring a swift end to the
war.

eptember, 1944,

U. S. forces were approaching

the Hurtgen Forest
on the Siegfried Line,

the fortified wall
of concrete and steel

extending along
Germany's western borders

from the Netherlands
to Switzerland.

This densely wooded area
was said by U. S. intelligence

to be relatively undefended,

giving troops a clear route
across the Siegfried Line,

the Rhine and on to Berlin.

‐They were wrong.
‐[machine gun fire]

Hurtgen was one

of the most
heavily fortified areas

of the Siegfried Line.

200 square miles
of dense woods and ravines,

packed with minefields

and gunners
in concealed pillboxes.

From behind
these formidable defences,

a very few Germans
could pin down

a great many Allied soldiers.

Fierce fighting raged here

from September 1944
to February 1945.

It was a long, drawn‐out
slogging match

for a wooded area

which didn't have that much,
in my view,

tactical significance.

They got bogged down.

Perhaps it was a question
of who blinked first,

and neither was prepared to.

[narrator]
Soldiers called the forest

"The Death Factory,"

as it claimed
33,000 American casualties.

It was one
of the greatest defeats

the U. S. Army has ever
suffered.

For three months,
the Nazis held at bay

the vastly better supplied
and better equipped U. S.
troops,

while just a few miles south,

three German field armies
assembled in secrecy

for the Ardennes Offensive.

The so‐called
Battle of the Bulge,

designed to push the Allies
out of Northern Europe,

once and for all.

[machine gun fire]

[explosion]

[theme music]

[narrator]
On the 16th of December, 1944,

more than 200,000 German troops

and nearly 1,000 tanks launched
Operation Watch on the Rhine,

Hitler's last major offensive
on the Western Front.

Seeking to drive to the coast
and split the Allied armies,

the Germans struck
in the Ardennes Forest,

a 75‐mile stretch held
by four U. S. divisions.

The Nazis broke through,

surrounding
U. S. Army infantry divisions,

seizing key crossroads,
and advancing nearly 50 miles

towards the strategically vital
Meuse River.

This created the bulge
in the Western Front

that gave the battle its name.

The Battle of the Bulge was,
of course,

Hitler's last roll of the dice,

where he commits
a massive force of panzers

and his crack troops to try

to break through
the Allied line.

Eisenhower,
much to Montgomery's disgust,

had pursued a strategy
of broad advancement.

And broad advancement meant
that the line of advancement

was thinly defended.

Coming through the Ardennes,

the German forces virtually
achieved a breakthrough,

but the Americans held them off.

It was largely the Americans'
doing at very heavy costs.

The Americans lost more
in the Battle of the Bulge

than in any other battle
in Europe in the war,

and it was a triumph of America.

[narrator]
It shattered Allied
complacency.

Churchill asked Stalin
to mount a new offensive.

Eisenhower sent an emissary
to Moscow to share strategy

and request support.

But ultimately,
American forces would be left

to fight what Churchill
described afterwards

as the greatest American battle
of the war.

[explosions]

In six bloody weeks,

19,000 Allied soldiers
were confirmed dead.

Overall, 81,000 U. S. servicemen
were killed, injured,

or assumed missing in action.

German casualties
were even higher,

with around 100,000 men
killed or injured,

a third of the attacking force.

In addition, more than 800
tanks
and 1,000 planes were
destroyed.

The Battle of the Bulge
was a shock.

I don't know whether
it was the biggest shock.

It was a significant setback

when things had seemed
to be going so well.

[narrator]
The Battle of the Bulge

delayed the Allies'
final offensive,

and left the Americans'
supplies

of fuel and ammunition
almost exhausted.

Nevertheless,
it broke the German backbone.

[Sir Mike] It didn't destroy it,
it wore it down terribly,

because they put
several armoured divisions

into the bulge, which they lost.

And you can't
keep losing equipment,

because by this time, of course,

German industry
was under severe bombing

from both the Royal Air Force

and the United States
Army Airforce.

[narrator] The Siegfried Line
was fatally compromised,

and the way was now clear

for the Allies to advance
on Germany.

Meanwhile,
the diversion of German troops

from the Eastern Front

to fight
in the Battle of the Bulge

left the way clear
for the Red Army

to move into Poland.

And on the 12th
of January, 1945,

Stalin's troops launched
the Vistula Offensive.

The Red Army
took just over two weeks

to sweep across Poland,

take almost all of East
Prussia,
and drive deep into Silesia.

By the 2nd of February,

they were less
than 50 miles from Berlin.

The launch
of the Vistula‐Oder Offensive

was scheduled
for the 20th of January,

however, Stalin brought it
forward to the 12th.

Now, sometimes this is explained

because he listened
to Churchill's appeals.

Churchill wanted
this offensive started

because the Germans had launched

the Battle of the Bulge
in the Ardennes,

and this would put more pressure
on the German army.

However,
the real reason for this,

or the more important reason
as far as Stalin was concerned,

was that there was going to be

a thaw in the weather
in late January,

and the tanks simply
would not be able to traverse

the ground if it wasn't frozen.

And so, it really comes down
to the weather,

that's why this operation
was launched when it was.

It wasn't necessarily

about Stalin listening
to Churchill's appeals,

however much he claimed
that was the case

later at the Yalta Conference.

as the Soviets continued
their march into Poland,

the Russian soldiers
encountered

shocking scenes
as they entered Auschwitz

and liberated around
7,000 remaining prisoners.

Most were Jews.

All were
extremely sick and weak.

Many were near death.

These men, women and children
had been left behind

after the SS forced the rest
of the inmates on death
marches.

At least 1.3 million people
were deported to Auschwitz

between 1940 and 1945.

And of these,
at least 1.1 million

were murdered.

Reports of the death camps
and gas chambers,

some from escapees,

had reached the Big Three
earlier in the war.

All of The Big Three
knew about Auschwitz.

They knew about
German concentration camps.

Stalin certainly knew
about the camp

and what the Germans were doing

to the Jews of Europe
and the Holocaust.

However,
Stalin does not disseminate

that information.
He doesn't tell his military.

So they came across camps
like Auschwitz

and they hadn't known
what they were.

We have to ask,
why did Stalin do this?

Why did he not inform
his generals

about they should be liberating
these camps?

And sometimes,
Stalin's antisemitism

is pointed to as an explanation.

But it seems to be
that during the war years

he was just indifferent
to the fate of the Jews.

For him this was not
a strategic priority.

The liberation of Auschwitz

was not going to help him
conquer Poland,

and so it came down
to what his priorities were,

and the Jews did not fit
into that picture.

[Iwan] Stalin had overseen

the murder
of two million people,

at least, and the starvation

of probably six million others
in the 1930s.

It didn't mean anything to him.

To Churchill, however,

I think Churchill felt
great personal sorrow,

but asked himself the question
of: What can we do?

[narrator] In July 1945,
Churchill wrote:

"This is probably the greatest
and most horrible crime

ever committed

in the whole history
of the world,

and it has been done
by scientific machinery,

by nominally civilized men
in the name of a great state."

Roosevelt and Churchill
did consider appeals

to bomb the camps,
but they were told

that no military gain
would be achieved.

Instead, all resources
were devoted

to achieving ultimate victory
over the Nazis.

[Iwan] The Americans had
advanced knowledge

of what was going on.

The question was,
what could be done about it?

There were several strategies.

Could you have bombed
the railway lines

into the death camps?

Could you have bombed
the death camps?

Could you have issued
some warning

that anybody involved
in the extermination of Jews

would be hanged
as a war criminal after the war?

None of these things were done.

Why wasn't
military action taken?

Because
the military planners said,

"look, we're not committing
military resources

on a speculated venture
when we have to use them

to shorten the war

in realistic
military engagements

that we know we can win,

rather than engagements
whose outcome is uncertain."

[Helen]
During the wartime itself,

we now know
from declassified files,

these are intelligence files,

that information
about the Holocaust,

about concentration camps,
about serious mass murders,

were taking place,
of course of Jews,

of Poles, and Russians,

and this was happening in 1941.

Bletchley Park
was picking up messages

from the roving police units,

the bugged conversations
of some secret sites in Britain,

Trent Park being one of them,
near Cockfosters.

These sites
were regularly picking up

very, very detailed accounts.

[narrator]
Auschwitz would not be

the last concentration camp

discovered by the Allies
as they progressed into
Germany.

By the end of January 1945,
victory was in sight.

But it would come
tragically late

for many millions.

[dramatic music]

[theme music]

[narrator]
Next time on Race to Victory.

The Allies march
across the borders

into Nazi Germany,

but who will go on to claim

the biggest prize
of all: Berlin?

This is the capital,
the heartland of the darkness

that was Nazi Germany.

This said,
"They have been defeated.

We are in Berlin."

[narrator] As the Allies prepare
for their final battles,

a new competition develops,

one that threatens
to split the Big Three apart.

A race to build nuclear
weapons.

There was a theory
that one of the reasons

the Americans dropped
the bomb on Japan

was precisely to show
the Soviets

that they had this thing.

[narrator]
With victory so close,

can the Big Three maintain
their relationship

and bring peace
to the war‐torn world?

Or will this new race take over

and ultimately tear
the Alliance apart?

[explosions]

[theme music]