Original subtitles

[narrator] August 6th, 1945.

Almost three months after victory

over Nazi Germany was declared.

American forces remain locked in deadly combat with the Japanese.

[explosions]

In the Pacific, the war is far from over.

[explosions]

Newly sworn in President, Harry S. Truman,

is desperate for an end to the bloody conflict

that has seen tens of thousands of Americans killed.

Keen to avoid an all‐out American invasion

of the Japanese islands, he will make a decision

that will force a Japanese surrender

and change the course of history.

Truman gives authorisation for an American B‐29 bomber,

the Enola Gay, to drop America's

latest development in deadly warfare...

[loud explosion]

...the atomic bomb.

The first bomb flattens five square miles

of the city of Hiroshima,

killing some 80,000 civilians immediately.

‐[explosion] ‐ Just three days later,

another bomb is dropped on Nagasaki,

instantly killing 50,000 people.

It brings about an end to the Second World War

and ushers in a devastating new chapter in world history.

‐[loud explosion] ‐[music intensifies]

So, who were the real winners of the race to victory?

[theme music]

[slides clicking]

[explosions]

[bombs hiss]

As the war entered its sixth year,

the Allies could sense imminent victory.

By the beginning of 1945,

both the Soviet and the Western Allied armies

were on the verge of crossing

into the weakening Nazi heartlands.

To Churchill, however, the political situation

that was shaping up behind the scenes

was of far greater concern,

as he watched the Red Army's irresistible march

through Eastern Europe.

Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia

lay in the Soviet shadow,

and Poland, though liberated from the Germans,

had merely exchanged

one despotic conqueror for another.

Churchill had been pressing both Roosevelt and Stalin

for another Big Three conference,

not only to agree on the conduct

of the final push to defeat Hitler,

but also to work out what to do with the Axis powers

and indeed, the whole of Europe, once victory was secured.

In doing so, they would lay the foundations

for a conflict that would shape the rest

of the 20th century: the Cold War.

[rocket roars]

[Warren] The relationship between the big three

by 1945 had changed dramatically.

Joseph Stalin increasingly believed

that the West were sort of very slow

in building the second front intentionally,

to let the Soviets pay the price

for winning Europe, in terms of men.

And this frustrated him significantly.

Roosevelt still suspected Churchill

of increasingly imperial ambitions,

and Churchill became increasingly paranoid

that he was being left out by Stalin and Roosevelt.

What had been a good working relationship

between all three, and quite a close friendship

between Roosevelt and Churchill,

was really starting to come unbound.

[Martin] I don't think one should underestimate

the equality of the power

that the Big Three bring to the Yalta Conference.

The American Armed Forces

are now fighting a massive naval war

against the Japanese in the Pacific,

which they're on the verge of winning, of course.

They have a massive strategic bomber force

based in Britain and in Italy,

which is pounding the Third Reich,

and American forces are heavily engaged

on the ground in Europe

and performing now very effectively.

The Soviet Union and its forces

have moved into the neighbouring countries

and driven the Germans out of Romania,

out of Bulgaria...

They've now occupied most of Poland,

so both the Soviet Union and the United States

are doing very, very well.

As far as Britain is concerned,

Britain is fully engaged in the war.

It cannot devote any more power to the war.

[narrator] The seaside resort of Yalta

on the Crimean Peninsula, was chosen by Stalin

as the place to meet Roosevelt and Churchill.

In February 1945, the Big Three travelled

to the city on the Black Sea coast,

thousands of miles from both the UK and the U. S.,

but a mere train ride from Moscow.

Churchill famously said:

"We could not have found a worse place for a meeting

if we had spent ten years looking for it,"

nicknaming it "the Riviera of Hades."

Ironically, having demanded the conference be held in Yalta

as his doctor had banned him from travelling long distances,

Stalin was the only one of the Big Three

not plagued by illness.

Churchill had developed a fever while travelling to Yalta

and was confined to bed aboard his plane,

while Roosevelt was endangering his own ailing health

by travelling thousands of miles

by boat and plane to the conference.

[Andrew] Roosevelt's health

had obviously affected him for a long time.

He'd had polio since he was a young man,

and he was in a wheelchair.

In terms of the way that he conducted the war,

it only really started to affect him

towards the end of the war,

towards the final year of his life

when he was clearly sick.

You can see the photos,

especially of the Big Three at Yalta

at the end of the war,

when Roosevelt is clearly not at the top of his game.

[Martin] His doctors had told him

that he has congestive heart disease.

He's being treated with Digitalis,

which is why he looked so grey and ill,

because it has that effect,

so it's his medication that's making him look so ill.

There's much controversy

about Roosevelt's behaviour at Yalta,

but it's very difficult when one looks at the records

to see any difference.

On issues that matter to him, he is sharp.

On issues that don't matter to him,

he can't be bothered.

But that was always Roosevelt's way.

[narrator] Perhaps sensing he had not much time left,

Roosevelt was determined to secure his vision

for the post‐war world.

Stalin came to Yalta with clear aims

to maintain the deep security zone

conquered by the Red Army in Eastern Europe,

to assert his country's position as a great power,

and to ensure that Germany

would never be able to attack Russia.

Stalin now had the upper hand.

Having been at the mercy of the Nazis

for most of the war,

his military fortunes had turned.

His forces had driven back the Germans

in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania

and were now within 50 miles of Berlin.

[explosions]

[bomb explodes]

[Peter] Stalin wanted to keep tight control

over the eastern European countries,

over the now satellite states of the Soviet Union,

because he'd learnt the lesson of Operation Barbarossa,

and that is that he needed to have buffer states

to stop any future invasion

reaching anywhere near Leningrad or Moscow again.

He was also keenly aware

that the environment had now changed.

This was the start of the Cold War.

He was increasingly distrustful of the Allies in 1945,

so he wants to cement his gains in Eastern Europe.

Millions and millions of people

have died in the struggle against Germany,

and for Stalin, he felt he needed a reward.

And that was the countries of Eastern Europe.

[narrator] Roosevelt's main priority,

on the other hand, was to gain a firm commitment

that the Soviet Union would now enter the war in Asia

to exert further pressure on the Japanese,

as the conflict there was showing no signs of abating.

[Andrew] Roosevelt and his military commanders

are very worried about the loss of life

in attacking the Japanese mainland.

And the reason for that is because they know

that the Japanese fighters

are willing to go to extreme measures

in order to defend their territory.

Of course, the reason that they know this

is that they've been conducting

a long‐term struggle against Japan,

the island hopping.

The U. S. takes enormous losses in this campaign,

and they're worried that if they attack

the Japanese mainland, that they will simply dig in,

be stuck in a very long struggle,

which will lead to enormous loss of life.

[narrator] Stalin agreed that Soviet forces

would join America in the war against Japan

within two or three months after Germany's surrender.

But in return, the Soviet Union demanded control

of the Japanese territory it had lost

in the Russo‐Japanese war of 1905.

[tense music]

Roosevelt's other priority

was his newly envisaged United Nations.

And he was hoping France and China

would join the Big Three at the helm.

In particular he wanted to tie Stalin and the Soviet Union

to the idea of an international body

committed to maintaining peace and prosperity

in the post‐war world.

For Churchill,

the most important business of Yalta

was the future of Poland and whether he could snatch

at least a shred of democratic freedom

for its people.

In doing this, he might just be able

to save them from Stalin's grasp.

But Stalin took a hard line,

pointing out that Germany had twice used Poland

as a corridor through which to invade Russia.

He announced that the Soviet Union

would not return Polish territory

that it had annexed in 1939,

and would not bow to the demands

of the Polish government in exile

based in London.

[Martin] It had become clear by the middle of the war anyway,

that Stalin was determined to do two things with Poland.

One was to regain control of the eastern part of Poland

that had been Russian territory

and he regarded as part of Ukraine and Belarus,

and shift Poland westwards by giving it German territory.

But also, he was determined that Poland should have

what he called a friendly government.

And the only likely Polish government

to be friendly to the Soviet Union

was a Communist government.

[narrator] The only one of Churchill's objectives

at Yalta to which Stalin agreed

was to allow representatives

from other Polish political parties

into the communist‐dominated

provisional government in Poland,

and to sanction free elections.

[Martin] Because the Polish government in London

would not shift on the frontier,

Stalin decided that, essentially,

they were anti‐Soviet.

He was probably right about that.

So he begins building up his own Polish government

of Polish communists.

And that, I think, becomes the prime concern.

Particularly for the British

who had close connections, of course, to the Poles in London.

There were Poles fighting in the British Armed Forces.

Poland had been one of Britain's most solid allies

through the Second World War

and Britain afterward had gone to war to protect

the integrity of Poland at the beginning,

so was deeply concerned about that.

[narrator] Stalin was now playing hardball.

Throughout the negotiations, Roosevelt seemed to be trying

to distance himself from Churchill

whenever he could

as a way of reaching out to Stalin.

The dogged Churchill, on the other hand,

did not share Roosevelt's optimistic view of Stalin,

and was increasingly frustrated

by the ailing American president's desire

to pacify the soviet leader.

t

that trying to maintain good relations

with a Communist was like "wooing a crocodile.

When it opens its mouth, you cannot tell

whether it is trying to smile, or preparing to eat you up."

He knew that if Hitler was to be finally beaten,

the Soviet Union and its tyrannical leader

had to be indulged.

But he also knew that the new post‐war world order

would sweep away the final remnant

of the British empire he held so dear.

1945 effectively signalled

the end of the Churchillian view of history,

the Churchillian view of the world,

which held Britain and its empire

as fixed and symbiotic to the other.

You could just tell that Britain's hold

over its empire had greatly diminished.

And this really affected the ability of Britain

to sway political discussions.

And it affected Churchill specifically

as well between the Big Three.

[narrator] Wider power struggles aside,

the division of post‐war Germany was the main problem

discussed at the conference.

The Big Three agreed that it would be divided

into four post‐war occupation zones,

controlled by American, British, French and Soviet forces.

Stalin agreed to include France

in the post‐war governing of Germany,

but only if France's zone of occupation

was taken from the American and British areas of control.

Berlin, although deep within the Soviet zone,

would be divided into the same quartet

of occupation zones.

A Roosevelt‐inspired Declaration of Liberated Europe

was drawn up which pledged to help countries

freed from the Nazis resolve their post‐war political

and economic problems by democratic means.

The Soviets promised to allow free elections

in all territories in Eastern Europe

that had been liberated from the Nazis.

The Initial reaction to the Yalta agreements

was celebratory, giving hope that the spirit

of the U. S.‐Soviet wartime cooperation

would continue long into the post‐war period.

It did not take long, however,

for intelligence to filter back to the British and Americans

that Stalin was not keeping his promises.

The Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland,

also known as the Lublin Committee,

had been seized by Soviet‐sympathetic communists,

with all other democratic forces in the country stamped out.

I don't think there was really strong indications

that Stalin would keep his promises.

It was a mistake for Roosevelt

to put as much trust in Stalin as he did.

It was quite clear from May, 1945,

that Soviet troops were going to suppress

any type of democratic movement in Poland,

and that they were intent

on installing their communist regime.

[Iwan] What Roosevelt fundamentally decided

was that it had to be accepted

that the Soviets would dominate Eastern Europe,

at least in the short term.

But Roosevelt's ultimate hope was that he would be able

to win Stalin over to a more cooperative arrangement

as time passed.

[narrator] Before the Big Three met in Yalta

they were already engaged in a bitter dash

to seize German territory.

Hitler's forces were crumbling,

and the Allies were moving towards Germany

in a race to claim

the biggest prize of all: Berlin.

[explosions]

The conquest would involve a multi‐pronged approach.

British and American forces would make separate advances

through Germany from the west,

while Soviet troops approached Berlin from the east.

The pivotal part of their advance

was crossing and conquering the mighty Rhine.

Over 700 miles long, the river represented

the last natural defensive barrier

to the German heartland.

In anticipation of Allied forces getting that far,

Hitler had ordered the bridges across the river

to be destroyed.

[Sir Mike] The Americans first crossed it somewhere,

Remagen, I think. Almost by good luck,

found a railway bridge unblown.

[narrator] The U. S. capture

of one of the last bridges still standing,

Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, on the 7th of March, 1945,

thwarted Hitler's plans

and proved to be a turning point

in the advance into Germany.

Before the bridge finally collapsed ten days later,

the Americans had managed to get 25,000 troops

accompanied by tanks, artillery pieces,

and trucks, across the river into the German heartland.

U. S. General George S. Patton had been instructed

to wait until the following day for the main Allied assault,

but had defied orders by crossing

on the night of 22nd March, 1945.

This was the first crossing of the Rhine by boat

by an invading army

since Napoleon Bonaparte's crossing in 1805.

Patton's troops quietly slipped across the river,

surprising the German defenders in complete darkness.

By the 25th March,

Patton's troops were rapidly approaching Frankfurt,

German resistance now dissolving in their path.

e

to beat the British to the other side of the Rhine.

His commanding officer, General Omar Bradley,

claimed at the time that Patton said,

"I want the world to know that the Third Army made it

before Monty starts across."

The British had been planning

their own crossing further North.

Codenamed Operation Plunder,

Montgomery's crossing of the Rhine

was the largest river assault in the history of warfare.

[Sir Mike] A very big set piece airborne

and river crossing operation,

where 30‐40 miles northwest of Dusseldorf...

did a very big operation.

There was no real doubt about the end at this point.

[narrator] The attack started with an aerial bombardment

of the town of Wesel.

On the night of the 23rd of March,

troops began to cross the river

in landing craft and amphibious vehicles,

and did not stop until the next day.

[Jonathan] Amphibious vehicles, DUKWs,

and all other sorts of cars that could float, landing craft.

They had to drop paratroopers

on the far bank of the Rhine as well.

Huge firepower deployed to suppress

the German defenders.

Really it was more like a sea crossing

than a river crossing, and very effective.

[narrator] On the 24th of March, an airborne assault

was launched codenamed Operation Varsity,

dropping the British 6th

and American 17th Airborne Divisions

further east of the Rhine.

The next day Britain's Prime Minister

crossed the Rhine in a landing craft,

stepping onto the eastern bank of the river.

The bulldog leader had now set foot for the first time

in the heartland of Hitler's Germany.

By the end of March, the Allies had conquered

the mighty river.

Now the path to Berlin was wide open.

[Sir Mike] Once the Rhine was crossed,

that last bastion,

natural bastion of German territory,

north Germany is quite flat open.

Certainly then, there wasn't a lot

to... physically to stop the Allies.

[narrator] There was, however, a tragic event

that brought a sudden end to The Big Three,

as the world had known them.

[sombre music]

[narrator] On the 12th of April, after many years of ill health,

63‐year‐old Franklin Delano Roosevelt

suffered a brain haemorrhage.

The longest serving President in American history,

the man who had lifted his country

from the turmoil of the Great Depression

to become the world's preeminent industrial and military power,

was dead.

[Iwan] Roosevelt had been wheelchair‐bound

since contracting polio in 1921, so he had spent

all his presidency living with that disability.

But during the war, the advancement of his age,

the greater pressures of the job,

the fact that he was a very heavy smoker,

and a regular, if moderate, imbiber of cocktails,

meant his health deteriorated

from about late 1943 onwards.

The deterioration was probably precipitated

by the difficulties of travel

to the Tehran Conference to meet Churchill.

He suffers cardiac problems, his blood pressure is huge,

and he requires long periods of rest.

And the final challenge he faced

was going to Yalta in early 1945,

and that left him exhausted

and he would die shortly afterwards.

[narrator] Churchill could not attend Roosevelt's funeral,

but penned a note to his wife Eleanor.

"I feel so deeply for you all.

As for myself, I have lost a dear and cherished friendship

which was forged in the fire of war."

Stalin, who suspected that Roosevelt had been poisoned,

also wrote a heartfelt letter speaking of a genuine friendship

that had helped propel the Soviet Union

to imminent victory.

For a generation of Americans,

for whom Roosevelt had been a guiding light

and voice of hope for over a decade,

his death was a devastating blow.

[Liesl] He was smart, he knew what he was doing.

He kept going, and to be a President

for that amount of time that he was,

and it has never happened again.

He was there during a very hard time

and he was having a very hard time

with his physical self, so you got to love him.

I think a lot of people were very sad when he died.

[solemn music]

[narrator] The relatively low‐key Vice President,

Harry S. Truman, a one‐time haberdasher,

was quickly sworn in as President

on the very same day Roosevelt died,

to direct America's war effort.

As the world mourned the death of Roosevelt,

the race to Berlin continued unabated.

The Western Allies were seemingly unstoppable,

but on the other side of Germany,

Soviet troops were also making steady progress

across the country,

brutally quashing any German resistance.

The Russians and the Americans eventually met up

at the town of Torgau on the River Elbe

on the 25th of April, just 85 miles from Berlin.

As Allied troops shook hands on the riverbank,

their respective armies had effectively cut Germany in two.

The moment, which came to be known

as the Meeting on the Elbe,

portended the end of the war in Europe.

A jubilant Churchill declared:

"We meet in true and victorious comradeship

and with inflexible resolve

to fulfil our purpose and our duty.

Let all march forward upon the foe."

Truman, who had been sworn in as president

less than two weeks before, welcomed the news:

"This is not the hour of final victory in Europe,

but the hour draws near,

the hour for which all the American people,

all the British people and all the Soviet people

have toiled and prayed so long."

Stalin's approach was a little more cautious:

"Our task and our duty

are to complete the destruction of the enemy.

The Red Army will fulfil to the end this task

and this duty to our people

and to all freedom‐loving peoples."

The race was now well and truly on

to get to Berlin first.

To speed up his campaign, he split the command

of the Berlin operation between Marshall Zhukov in the centre

and Marshall Konev in the south.

Stalin, the master manipulator

and a sly practitioner of "divide and rule,"

had effectively triggered a race

between his two most senior commanders.

Stalin encouraged the race to Berlin

between Konev and Zhukov because he saw it

as imperative to capture the city

before the Allied powers did.

He knew that the German army was about to be defeated,

and he knew that the struggle was going to change

and develop into what we know as the Cold War.

And capturing Berlin

was kind of the first victory in that.

[narrator] Not only would capturing Berlin

have symbolic significance,

it was also rumoured to house the German nuclear programme.

The Germans definitely had a nuclear programme going on

in the Second World War. We absolutely knew that,

and there are files now declassified which confirm that.

And at the very end of the war Hitler's top scientists,

his top nuclear scientists,

were brought initially to Britain

before they then went to America.

to get his handste

on the German nuclear research centre,

the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, before the Americans got there.

And after Germany's surrender, the Soviet Union did indeed

requisition equipment, materials and personnel.

Stalin knew about the German military programme

through his intelligence operatives.

The Soviets had their own nuclear programme

called Operation Borodino,

but this was lagging behind the Americans.

So another reason why Stalin

was so intent on capturing Berlin

was to take as much information

about the German nuclear programme as possible.

They targeted the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

in particular.

Importantly, they managed to seize

three tonnes of uranium oxide, and this was critical

to kind of kickstarting of their own atomic programme.

[narrator] The uranium oxide allowed them to start working

on their first nuclear weapon,

triggering the start of the nuclear arms race

that would define the Cold War.

[explosion]

By mid‐April 1945, the Red Army was on the outskirts of Berlin.

The final attack of nearly six years of war in Europe

commenced on the 16th April when the Soviet forces

began a mighty artillery barrage.

More than a million shells were fired

against German positions west of the river Oder.

Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south,

while a third overran German forces

positioned north of Berlin.

Around two and a half million Soviet troops

descended on the city.

The Battle of Berlin had well and truly begun.

On the 20th of April, 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday,

Zhukov's forces advanced from the east,

while Konev's forces

advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.

The Soviet bombardment was so immense

that in Berlin's eastern suburbs

houses shook and pictures fell from walls.

Even now, the Germans defended desperately.

There was confusion all around.

According to one Russian veteran,

Soviet artillery was fired without proper guidance,

killing scores of Red Army soldiers.

Over the next 12 days,

the Red Army gradually took the entire city,

over‐running and destroying

the historic seat of German power,

the Reichstag.

[explosions]

[Sir Mike] This is the capital, the heartland of the darkness

that was Nazi Germany.

This said they have been defeated unarguably:

"We are in Berlin."

"We", of course, being the Red Army.

So, it was hugely symbolic

but equally, well, strategic significance.

That said: "This ghastly regime is over. It's dead."

[narrator] On 28th of April 1945, in Italy,

Mussolini and his mistress were shot

and their bodies strung up for all to see.

Two days later, determined not to suffer the same fate,

Hitler committed suicide in his bunker,

having ordered that his body be burned

so as not to be to be claimed by the Allies.

Even then, it took another two days

for the Germans to finally surrender.

More than 80,000 Soviet soldiers

had died trying to capture the city.

Stalin's hunger to get to Berlin ahead of the Western Allies

undoubtedly led to poor decision making

and an excessive loss of Soviet lives.

The battle for Berlin had brought to an end

one of the bloodiest wars in European history.

[Peter] There were lots

of German troops within the city,

many civilians, and the Russian troops,

the Red Army, had been sent by Stalin

at an accelerated pace with orders to capture the city

as quickly as possible.

So, this did lead to lots of brutal fighting

and it was a bloody end to the Second World War.

And the darker side of that conflict

is the atrocities of war crimes which were carried out

by Red Army soldiers,

particularly the mass rape

of perhaps up to two million women.

Something which the Russian government,

and the Soviet government, in later decades

denied had happened at all.

[narrator] The Russians had won the race to Berlin.

The red flag of the Soviet Union waved

above the battered and beleaguered Reichstag,

but for all the Allied forces, it was mission accomplished.

On the 7th of May, at his headquarters in Reims,

north‐eastern France,

Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower accepted

the unconditional surrender of all German forces.

Stalin, however, wanted his own ceremony,

and demanded another one in Berlin.

So the next day, on the 8th of May,

the ceremony was repeated,

and a further document was signed.

An exhausted but euphoric Europe

finally celebrated VE Day

‐on the 8th of May. ‐[cheers]

[Rudi in Dutch] It was wonderful.

We went to England

to kick the Germans out of Europe

with the Allied troops.

And it had worked, and that felt fantastic.

And then when you come back home

after you have kicked the Germans out,

and you see all those Dutch people

out in the street celebrating, it feels wonderful.

[narrator] But in deference to his U. S. ally,

Winston Churchill was quick to remind them

the world war wasn't over yet.

We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,

but let us not forget for a moment

the toils and efforts that lie ahead.

Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued.

The injuries she has inflicted on Great Britain,

the United States, and other countries,

and her detestable cruelties,

call for justice and retribution.

We must now devote all our strength and resources

to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad.

[narrator] The war in the Pacific

was very much alive.

To bring about the final conclusion

of one of the bloodiest wars in human history,

the leaders of the Grand Alliance

would have to meet one last time.

The Potsdam Conference

began in July 1945,

principally to determine the borders

and reconstruction of post‐war Europe.

But it proved impossible to reach a consensus.

The U. S. saw Potsdam as an opportunity

to try and secure Soviet commitment

in the war against Japan.

While Stalin's main objective

was to obtain enormous economic reparations from Germany

as compensation for the destruction wrought

by the Nazis in the Soviet Union.

It was also a very different negotiating team

to the one that sat around the table

at their last meeting in Yalta.

The wily, patrician Roosevelt had been replaced

by the altogether more blunt and parochial Harry S. Truman.

And halfway through the two‐week conference,

Churchill's Conservative Party lost the general election

and, to Stalin's astonishment,

he was almost immediately replaced

at the negotiating table

by Labour leader Clement Attlee.

The only member of the Big Three that remained

was Stalin himself,

giving him considerable advantage.

[Warren] It's inconceivable to Joseph Stalin

that in this moment Winston Churchill

could be kicked out of office.

There's a famous cartoon of him going to Yalta

and Clement Attlee carrying his bags,

and then, going back to Yalta,

and he's having to carry Clement Attlee's bags.

It does affect Britain's status, I think.

And it certainly affects Churchill's.

It's one of the most unexpected things,

at least by our political commentators at the time,

at least, that Churchill lost the July 1945 election

and did not just lose, the Conservatives were trounced.

The electorate was seen as being very grateful

to Mr. Churchill, the war leader,

but they did not want Mr. Churchill,

the peacetime leader,

and instead wanted to have Labour,

which was seen as more geared to a peacetime existence

than the Conservatives under Winston Churchill.

[narrator] But the world was about to get a massive jolt.

On the 16th of July, 1945, in a remote desert location

near Alamogordo, New Mexico,

the Americans detonated the first atomic bomb.

[explosion]

The Trinity Test was the culmination

of four years' work by the Manhattan Project

to weaponize nuclear power.

They had succeeded,

and in doing so, ushered in the Atomic Age.

Roosevelt keeps the existence or the development

of the atomic bomb a secret

from his vice president, Harry Truman.

So, Truman actually only finds out

about the atomic bomb

when he becomes president in April of 1945.

It tells you something about Roosevelt's attitudes

to those who are even immediately around him.

His vice president did not know

one of the most important military secrets of the war.

[Jonathan] Pretty much as soon as they finished the atom bomb

and were sure that it would work,

they sent it off to drop it on Japan.

They were in a hurry to finish the war

as quick as possible.

Would they have dropped it on Germany

if Germany had still been fighting in August 1945?

I suspect so, but we'll never know.

[narrator] Truman now felt he held the winning hand

and lost no time in informing Stalin

that the United States possessed

"a new weapon of special destructive force,"

with which to bring Japan's resistance

to a juddering halt.

He did not at this stage

specify that it was the atomic bomb.

Stalin already knew about the project

from his spies in the West.

But he gave little away when he was told.

What the bomb would mean for the outcome of the war

would soon become apparent when Britain and the U. S.

threatened the Japanese

with "prompt and utter destruction"

if they did not immediately surrender unconditionally.

The Pacific war raged on, and casualties from the battles

at Iwo Jima and Okinawa

were some of the highest of the war.

[explosions]

American military planners

feared the prospect of invading Japan.

The Japanese army had millions of troops

and was ready to use many more millions of civilian conscripts

in the defence of their home islands.

The experience from Okinawa,

where civilians committed suicide instead of surrendering,

meant the loss of life amongst the Japanese population

would be horrific.

The Japanese had shown themselves,

in defence particularly,

where they've been for some while,

to be fanatical.

They simply would not surrender.

You had to kill each and every one.

And I think the concern

was that Japan will only be defeated

when occupied by the Allies

and here, obviously, the United States.

But to do that is going to cost the lives of so many GIs

because of this fanaticism, refusal to surrender

by Japanese troops.

And so it would have weighed very heavily

on presidential minds.

They were trying to equip schoolchildren

with bamboo spears to go and fight the Americans

when they landed. I mean, it's just asking

for mass murder. It was crazy.

t Harry S. Truman

was informed that the atomic bomb test

had been successful in New Mexico,

he calculated that this monstrous weapon

might be used to defeat Japan

in a way less costly to U. S. lives

than a conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland.

[Sir Mike] Well, you can see

what went through Roosevelt and then Truman's mind.

The potential cost to the United States

in casualties, if nothing else, which would have been involved

with an invasion and occupation of Japan.

Is this something that equates? Is there an advantage?

I mean, these are dreadful decisions.

[narrator] On the 6th of August, 1945,

an American B‐29 bomber,

the Enola Gay, dropped the world's first atomic bomb

over the city of Hiroshima.

Instantly the city was levelled,

and some 80,000 people were killed.

That figure doubled within the year

from burns and radiation effects from the bomb.

On the 9th of August a second bomb was dropped

over the Japanese city of Nagasaki,

with a similar death toll.

The impact was cataclysmic and unlike anything experienced

in the history of warfare.

A day before the Nagasaki bombing

on the 8th of August,

the Soviet Union had finally declared war against Japan.

On the 10th of August, the Japanese government

issued a statement agreeing to accept

the surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration

on the understanding that the emperor's position

as a sovereign ruler would not be prejudiced.

The Allies granted Japan's request,

and on the 15th of August

the Emperor Hirohito urged his people

to accept the decision to surrender.

[sombre music]

The fighting was over.

‐[vibrant music] ‐[cheers]

After nearly six years of war,

the Allies had finally achieved their goal

with a full and comprehensive defeat

of their enemy on all fronts.

But it had come at a huge cost,

and the world would never be the same again.

As mushroom clouds rose above Japan,

the world stood witness to the creation

of a new, terrifying Atomic Age.

[Jonathan] The atom bomb, and particularly the possession

by both the Americans and the Soviets

of nuclear weapons,

created a whole new way

of doing business in international politics

for the next 50 years.

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.

To cow them into being a bit more pliant.

If that's the case, it didn't work.

It has to be said. The Russians, as we know,

were already working on their own bomb

and, indeed, stealing the plans for the American one,

and therefore were able to catch up pretty quickly.

[narrator] A new Europe would have to be forged

in the long shadow of a Nuclear Arms Race

and the threat of "mutually assured destruction."

[theme music]

[narrator] So who had won the race to victory?

Certainly not Great Britain.

Britain had gone into war in 1939

as a great world power, but it left 1945

as a very diminished one and faced great privations,

great destruction, a great loss of men

and women, and people, as well as resources.

And it almost permanently handicapped Britain's ability

to assert itself on the world stage.

[narrator] Many say the Americans

were the outright winners of the race,

bearing in mind they had asserted themselves

as a global superpower for the first time.

[Warren] I think the victory

was probably the greatest for the Americans.

America made quite a lot of profit out of it

in terms of becoming the global power

to take up what had been the role of Britain

as a sort of guarantor for,

kind of, Western ideas and liberal ideas.

And so I think there's a real victor

in the Second World War in the United States.

[narrator] But in terms of territory gained,

Stalin was the clear winner.

At the end of the Second World War,

Communist parties seized the governments of Bulgaria,

Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia

and Eastern Germany, buffer states

for the Soviet Union

that lay beyond what Churchill called "The Iron Curtain."

Stalin and the Soviet Union emerge as a superpower.

And this was a remarkable turnaround

from the 1920s, when this had been

a predominately peasant country with a backwards industry.

He'd defeated one of the most advanced

capitalist countries in the world, Nazi Germany,

and they rivalled the United States,

so this was a huge turnaround for the Soviet Union.

Really, this was the height of Soviet influence.

[narrator] Despite the massive losses

and destruction of Soviet cities,

the war had enabled Stalin to sit side‐by‐side

with his democratically‐elected, ideological enemies,

and to be seen and recognized by all as a world statesman.

Stalin entered the war as the world's ogre,

despised by the West and deeply feared and mistrusted

by all except his nearest cronies,

who depended on him for their lives and positions.

He left the stage of World War II

as an undisputed world statesman,

respected by his international colleagues

and loved and revered by his people.

[cheers]

If any one leader can be said to have won the race to victory,

it was Joseph Stalin.

[theme music]