All language subtitles for After Hitler Part 2 ENG

NARRATOR: It's May 1945.

At last, the Nazi shadow is lifting.

War has devastated the continent.

Now, everyone just wants to get back
to living again.

But though the guns are now quiet,
the Second World War isn't over yet.

The Third Reich may have surrendered,

but the violence
just won't seem to end.

For a long time yet,
Europe will remain soaked in blood.

No sooner have the arms been
laid down than another war looms.

An iron curtain has descended
across the continent.

And it won't be long before
the rising tide of Nazism

has given way to another,
equally redoubtable tyranny.

(BRASS BAND PLAYS, CROWD CHEERS)

After all the joy of the 8th of May,
1945,

Europe is still
in the grip of violence.

Purges are costing the lives of
thousands of victims.

The Allies are faced with
enormous challenges.

More than 40 million people have been
displaced during the conflict,

and now they all want to go home.

Germany is now occupied
and divided into four zones,

and people are still hungry.

How can a whole devastated
continent be rebuilt?

In the cities, the clean-up operation
will go on for months.

In 1946, though,
it all picks up speed.

The torturing buildings,
the old bunkers are all destroyed.

Sometimes, with a bit of help
from the zoo.

And, winding through the ruins,

little railways haul off
the tonnes and tonnes of rubble.

It's a surreal wonderland,
a land of childhood regained.

And in Warsaw,
the trams are running again.

(APPLAUSE)

It draws an applauding crowd,
and many of them are moved to tears.

A Polish journalist says
of his country,

"Wherever you look,
you can see the work's begun.

"A gigantic task has already
been accomplished.

"There are whole stretches
cleared of rubble now.

"The atmosphere is one of noise, dust
and work, but also one of hope.

The cities are emerging from chaos.

Stalingrad, too,
is coming back to life.

After all, so far, the wounds of war
are being patched up.

There are schools opening
amidst the ruins.

In Berlin, the women are the ones
going back to school.

Since manpower is scarce,
they're learning the art of masonry.

There's stuff to build,
but nothing to build it with.

So, they recycle.

They just clean up all the old bricks
and use them again.

There are no colanders,
so they use German helmets.

And the Panzerfausts,
the Nazis' anti-tank launchers,

make pretty good saucepans.

They get more mileage
out of those old tyres

in the form of brand-new soles
for their shoes.

Even the public gardens
of the Reichstag

are being transformed
into allotments.

And the metro's up and running again,
lit by improvised skylights.

As the months roll by, people are
getting used to the postwar world.

Berlin's learning to live
with its ruins.

(STARTING GUN FIRES)

As one Berlin woman puts it,
"Just knowing we've survived

"is what gives us the strength
to start again from scratch."

It'll take more than 20 years
to rebuild everything.

But even in the news bulletins,
you can feel the optimism.

All this optimism
hides a lot of problems, though.

There are still hundreds of thousands
of lost orphans.

In Berlin, Rome, Naples and Milan,

there are at least 200,000
homeless children,

and almost a million in Poland.

In Germany's Soviet zone,

news campaigns are launched to try
and find their families.

The campaign will be broadcast
right up until the 1950s,

and help around 300,000 children
find their families again.

(GEORGES GOSSET SINGS
'EH! HOP...ON EN SORTIRA')

# Nous avons passe
par de durs moments

# Nous avons encore des embetements

# Et dans le pays bien des gens vous
dirons

# Ca ne tourne pas rond...

With the continent inching slowly
out of the shadows,

people are keen to build a new world
to get the most out of life.

A young French girl writes,

"Everything that represented
a postwar first caused a scramble -

"bananas, lottery tickets, fireworks.

"People were rushing off
to the fun fair, to the circus.

"Any excuse to get out
and get together."

# Eh! hop...on en sortira

# Tout remarchera a breve echeance

# Il y aura du bonheur et
l'printemps reviendra

# Eh! hop...on en sortira! #

It's a time of reforms.

Italy abolishes its monarchy, which
will soon be replaced by a republic.

France ushers in a new regime,
the Fourth Republic.

At the same time, in France and
Belgium, women at last get the vote.

And in both France and Great Britain,

the banks, public transport
and energy suppliers

are all nationalised.

The aim is to transform the economy,

to make sure it's working
in the interests of everyone -

of the nation
and of general prosperity.

In France, the social security system
is put in place,

while in Britain, the National Health
Service is founded

to provide free healthcare for all.

VOICEOVER: This will include X-ray,
if it's found necessary.

Such was the destruction,

that architects now
want to rethink whole cities.

In Britain, to ease the strain
on the big cities,

a 1946 law decrees that new towns
are to be built

based on radical new concepts
of town planning.

France follows suit.

Near Marseilles, Le Corbusier erects
his Radiant City.

Meanwhile, Le Havre, obliterated by
the war, is coming back to life.

Things won't be back to normal
for a while yet,

but the reconstruction has begun.

Another hopeful sign for the future
is the steep rise in births.

The days ahead now look
more promising, less bleak.

(MARTIAL MUSIC)

In the east, too,
people are dreaming of a new life.

But there, it's Moscow
that will be calling the tune.

The Eastern European states
were liberated by the Red Army.

So as far as Stalin's concerned,
they're under his control.

To establish his power there
without making waves,

his strategy is to get communists
into positions of power.

In Poland, in Czechoslovakia,
in Bulgaria, in Hungary,

the communist parties
are deploying their pawns.

Quietly, they're taking
all the key positions -

justice, the military, home affairs -

in an ever more repressive
machinery of state.

In public, at least, the only one
who seems alarmed by all this

is former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill.

In March 1946, invited to speak
in Fulton, Missouri,

Churchill loudly and clearly condemns

the rapidly encroaching
Soviet menace.

From Stettin in the Baltic
to Trieste in the Adriatic,

an Iron Curtain
has descended across the continent.

(APPLAUSE)

Nobody's listening, though.

Eastern Europe's governments
are blind to the red peril.

They're still haunted by
the barbarity of the Nazis.

In their eyes,
Germany is still the real enemy.

In Hungary, Yugoslavia,
Czechoslovakia,

Romania and Poland,

these postwar years are the occasion
for a vast settling of old scores.

And the targets of all this are their
German immigrant populations.

They may have just arrived,
or have been there for decades,

but from now on,
they're persona non grata.

In Czechoslovakia,
in a liberated Prague,

the entire German-speaking population

is ordered to wear distinctive
swastikas or white armbands.

They're forbidden to go to the
theatre, to eat in restaurants,

or even walk in the park,
and they're put under curfew too.

And the Czech authorities
soon go even further.

Stripped of their nationality, huge
numbers of Germans are now deported.

There are so many refugees

that whole families
are rounded up into transit camps.

The Allies make no comment.

Indeed, British Prime Minister
Clement Attlee

declares that any means are valid
that will make the Germans understand

"the total and irrevocable nature
of their defeat."

But the exodus is not always
as peaceful

as these images might suggest.

The Czech authorities accuse the
Germans of all kinds of wickedness.

When, at Usti in the Sudetenland,
a munitions dump explodes,

all fingers immediately point
to the Germans.

A manhunt is quickly launched.

More than 100 people
lose their lives.

The lynching of Germans
is becoming a common event.

Not far from Prague,
an amateur filmmaker

is shooting with his 8mm camera.

He sees civilians being forced over
to the side of the road.

Thousands of Germans
are executed like this.

One Czech student admits,

"We kept our mouths shut,
just like the whole of Germany did."

(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)

More than two million Czechs of
German origin have been thrown out -

to the delight of the news media.

The Poles, too, are getting back
at their former oppressors.

Their German minorities are
all run out of the country.

Former camps like Majdanek,

not so long ago dedicated
to wiping out the Jewish race,

are now used to coop them up in.

Thousands of them will die there.

This expulsion of Germans
is also the work of the Soviets.

They're very greedy in victory,

and they help themselves
to a slice of Poland.

So to redress this,
Poland takes part of Germany

and expands a good 200km to the west.

The map of Europe is being redrawn.

From 1945 to 1947,
German-speaking populations

are driven out of Eastern Europe.

It's one of the biggest floods of
refugees in the history of Europe.

At least 12 million of them
all converge on Germany.

By a cruel twist of fate,
the banished Germans

are all marching along the same route

taken by the Jewish victims
of the Nazis,

who themselves continue to flee
the pogroms.

As one British colonel says,

"We tend to regard occupied Germany
as a wastepaper basket

"with a limitless capacity for
the unwanted waste of the world."

(GUNFIRE)

But German minorities
aren't the only targets

of the violence that
still scars the continent.

Ethnic cleansing, the settling
of old scores - they're everywhere.

As if the war had obliterated
all the moral codes.

In Poland, the nationalist militia

are decimating
the Ukrainian minorities.

Ukrainian militants respond

by either massacring or expelling
their Polish minorities.

In Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito
assassinates the Croatian Ustases

who'd collaborated with Hitler
in a reign of terror.

His regime wipes out 70,000 of them.

In Greece, a civil war sets
communists against royalists -

a fratricide that results in
more than 50,000 deaths.

Postwar Europe as a whole
would seem incapable

of taking a single united step
towards a brighter future,

and Eastern Europe is still
bathing in blood.

By 1947, the displaced persons
have at last made it home.

The German prisoners of war, though,
continue to be exploited

in the victorious countries.

And although in the West

some will finally gain acceptance
by the locals,

in the East, they're still being
detained in appalling conditions.

The Russians, it seems, never forget.

Extreme weather and food shortages
conspire to finish off

any of them who've survived
the cruelty of their jailers.

One third of them,
about a million souls,

disappear in the desolate wastes
of the gulags.

The Jews who've survived are starting
a new life in the West.

Many of them gather together
for the voyage to Palestine,

currently under British control.

When they leave,
it's on clandestine boats.

In 1947, an old tub -
re-baptised the Exodus -

is transporting more than
4,500 refugees.

She's boarded by the Royal Navy,

who refuse to let the Jews
into their Promised Land.

Instead, they're all transferred
to prison ships.

What's worse, the British
then take them back to Germany,

where they find themselves
back in internment camps.

There's a worldwide outcry.

Once the scandal has died down,

the UN General Assembly
votes for partition

and for the creation of two states -
one Jewish, the other Arab.

(SHIP'S HORN BLOWS)

At last, the Holocaust survivors
have a destination.

Europe, though,
washes its hands of them.

The problem of the Jewish refugees
is a closed case.

For the United States, along with
their British and French allies,

Germany has represented
the greatest danger.

But with the rampant Stalinisation of
Eastern Europe, things have changed.

In March 1947, one year after
Churchill's Iron Curtain speech,

Harry Truman gives a speech
to Congress

that will change the face
of postwar Europe.

Soviet military expansion
must be contained

by aiding those who are
resisting its grasp.

I believe that it must be the policy
of the United States

to support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation

by armed minorities
or by outside pressures.

The very existence of the Greek
state is today threatened

by the terrorist activities of
several thousand armed men

led by communists.

We must take immediate
and resolute action.

(APPLAUSE)

To prevent the civil war in Greece

from driving the country
into the hands of the communists,

Washington grants military aid
to Athens

along with an injection of
several million dollars.

But Truman has another point -

the principal danger, he warns,
lies not in a Soviet military threat,

since the Russians
don't have the bomb.

No, the real threat
comes from poverty.

And in 1947, people are exhausted.

The economy is still not
back on its feet.

In Italy, in France,
millions are still poorly housed

and bread is still being rationed.

So, both to prop up Europe
and to hold back communism,

Washington comes up with
a huge project -

the Marshall Plan.

Its objective is to grant
massive credits to Europe

to help it out of the slump.

Raw materials and machine tools

are dispatched to the rescue
of the old continent.

Stalin is well aware
that this Marshall Plan

could weaken his hold
on Eastern Europe.

He forbids all the countries
in his clutches

to accept Washington's offer.

To hinder the Marhsall Plan and curb
American influence in Europe,

Stalin lays his cards on the table.

He orders the Western
communist parties to take action.

The masses are worn out and don't
need much convincing to down tools.

And with Stalin's words in their
ears, they now step up the pace.

In both France and Italy,
the communists throw themselves

behind the rapidly
proliferating strikes.

It's starting to look like civil war.

The French government fears a coup,
and not without reason.

All the chaos and disruption
is starting to heat up.

In his attempt to contain it all,

the socialist Minister of the
Interior, Jules Moch,

gets heavy-handed.

He calls up 80,000 reservists
and gives them permission to shoot.

In a matter of weeks, order is
restored at the cost of a few lives.

But the communists haven't managed
to foil the Marshall Plan.

All those millions from Uncle Sam
reboot the old continent's economies.

Farmers see their harvests
back at prewar levels,

and soon even overtaking them.

The Americans are betting on
restoring the German economy.

A strong Germany will be
less costly to maintain

and will be a rampart
against communism.

Prosperity has returned.

The Marshall Plan is a godsend, and
it saves the continent from disaster.

At the same time, though,

it leaves it wide open
to American big business.

Stalin has his own plans for
stopping capitalism in its tracks.

The name of the game is merger
and acquisition, made in Moscow.

The ruler of the Kremlin

encouraged the communists
to get into government,

but now he wants them to eradicate
the other parties

they've been associated to.

It's the birth of the
single-party state.

In Romania,
the conservatives are thrown out.

The administration is purged.

A thousand magistrates are removed
and the elections are rigged.

The communists are now in power.

The young King Michael
is forced to abdicate.

In Hungary,
Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy

stands up to the communists.

In June 1947, his son is kidnapped.

He resigns, pays the ransom,
and retires to the United States.

Three months later, in Bulgaria,

the hardcore Stalinist Communist
Party leader Georgi Dimitrov

comes to power.

His rival, Nikola Petkov,

is immediately arrested
and condemned to death.

He's hanged in September 1947.

Meanwhile, in Poland,

Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, head of
the Polish Peoples Party,

speaks out against
the Communist Party.

By October, he's in fear for his life

and he and his wife
seek refuge in England.

I didn't want to be only a sheep
who will be killed,

especially because my party
couldn't work more.

It's taken Stalin a few months
to have his way.

Now, he has nearly all
of Eastern Europe under his flag.

Churchill's prophecy has come true.

The Iron Curtain has descended
across Eastern Europe.

(SINGING IN RUSSIAN, APPLAUSE)

One country hasn't given in, though -
Czechoslovakia.

President Edvard Benes
has always tried

to maintain cordial relations
with the Soviet Union.

Faced with Stalin's opposition
to the Marshall Plan,

a Czech delegation heads to the
Kremlin to try and change his mind...

..but in vain.

On his return, Foreign Minister
Jan Masaryk says,

"I left for Moscow as a minister
of a sovereign state.

"I am returning as Stalin's stooge."

Democrat ministers show their
opposition to Stalin's stranglehold

by resigning in February 1948.

The communists aren't slow to react.

They stir up the population
and arm the workers' militias.

200,000 people take to the streets.
A general strike is called.

To avoid civil war,
President Benes has no choice

but to accept the forming of
a majority communist government

led by Klement Gottwald,

Secretary-General of
the Czech Communist Party.

It's a coup d'etat.

(APPLAUSE)

The repression soon follows.

In March 1949, Jan Masaryk -

one of the very few democrats
to have stayed in power -

is found dead beneath the windows
of his ministry.

Was it suicide in protest
at the communist coup?

Or was it murder?

Democracy itself
has been assassinated.

The communists are now
running everything.

President Benes
dies a few months later.

Gottwald is elected
President of the Republic.

Czechoslovakia, too, disappears
behind the Iron Curtain.

All over the world,
these violent seizures of power

have got people worried.

It's a worry that the French
Communist Party

and its leader, Maurice Thorez,
do not share at all.

(APPLAUSE)

The Prague coup, though,
is not without consequences.

With the Soviets so greedy,
one thing is now clear -

it's no longer possible to co-manage
Germany with the USSR.

Having combined together
its zones of occupation,

the West envisages the creation of
an independent West Germany

under the protection of Washington.

In June 1948,
it scraps the old currency

and installs the Deutsche Mark.

The Soviets refuse to recognise
the new currency

and immediately hit back.

On the 23rd of June, 1948,

they start cutting off
all supply routes to West Berlin.

No trains, no cars can get through.

Stalin wants the whole city
for himself.

With no electricity,
the factories are all shut down.

The city's now blockaded off
from the rest of the world.

More than two million Berliners
are in need of supplies

or else they may well starve.

There's only one way to get supplies
through to West Berlin

and avoid them falling into
the Soviets' hands.

The United States and their allies
organise a gigantic airlift.

Hundreds of aircraft drop food,
equipment and raw materials -

wheat, coal, petrol, medicines.

Thousands of tonnes a day
get through,

right under the noses of the Soviets.

For the first time, the West is
openly confronting the East.

Many observers see this crisis as
the prelude to a third world war.

The planes skim so low
over the buildings

that there are some terrible crashes.

The West abandoned Prague.

It's not going to let go of Berlin.

This act of solidarity is quickly
seized on by the US media.

(JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS)

The whole of Hollywood
heads straight for Berlin.

Bob Hope does some clowning.

The famous composer Irving Berlin
comes to lend his support

to the pilots of the free world.

# Operation Vittles

# We'll soon be on our way

# With coal and wheat and hay

# And everything's OK

# Operation Vittles

# As in the sky we go

# We won't forget to blow

# A kiss to Uncle Joe

# No-one here belittles... #

Just three years ago,
Allied bombers were pounding Berlin.

Today, they're feeding it.

People line the runways and call out
to the pilots, "Don't abandon us.

"If we lose our freedom,
we'll never get it back."

The crews drop tiny parachutes
loaded with chocolate bars,

thus earning the nickname
the Candy Bombers.

The young Berliners are
beside themselves with happiness.

The American pilots are supplying
the city not just with food,

but with hope too.

The blockade drags on
for 11 long months.

During that time,
278,000 Allied flights

provide the city with all it needs
to survive.

Even little Beetles
are making happy landings.

In the skies, the battle is on.

But things are hotting up on land
as well.

On the 6th of September, 1948,

the communists attempt to take over
all official buildings.

Three days later, a mass protest -
300,000 strong -

gathers in front of the Reichstag.

City mayor Ernst Reuter speaks aloud

what all Berliners are
thinking in their hearts.

(APPLAUSE)

Protesters take down the red flag

that's flying over
the Brandenburg Gate.

Violent confrontations break out
with the East German police.

But the West Berliners stand firm.

Their city becomes
a bastion of liberty

on the right side of the Curtain.

Germans are no longer thought of
as former Nazis,

but as the potential victims of
Stalinist totalitarianism.

The "Don't fraternize" order of 1945
is long gone now.

Germany has become one of the Allies.

The occupiers of yesteryear
are today's liberators.

(APPLAUSE)

The airlift has sealed the friendship
between victors and the vanquished.

Stalin made a big mistake.

Far from getting rid of
the Americans,

he has driven the western zone
right into the arms of Uncle Sam.

(PEOPLE CHEER)

The blockade leads the West to enter
into a defensive alliance.

This time, it's not against Germany,
but against the USSR.

On the 4th of April, 1949,

12 countries become member states
of NATO.

A part of Western Europe
thus places itself

under the protection
of the US nuclear umbrella.

Stalin lifts the blockade
on the 12th of May, 1949.

Both people and goods now have free
passage in and out of the city.

In the streets, they're all cheering.

"We're still alive," they cry.

It's a victory for the Western bloc

and a great relief
for the people of Berlin.

A few days later,
a democratic West Germany is born

on the territory
of the three Western zones -

the Federal Republic of Germany.

But the ogre in the Kremlin
is not done yet.

In September 1949, the first
Soviet nuclear test takes place.

The USSR now has its own atomic bomb.

One month later, in October,

the GDR - the German
Democratic Republic - is born.

A communist Germany on
the Soviet side of the Curtain

with its own institutions
and its own political police

that revives unpleasant memories.

The Brownshirts have given way
to the red peril.

In 1945, a continent
emerged from the war

bloody, but unbowed and full of hope.

Four years later,
a new era is beginning,

one in which peace and prosperity

must live alongside the fear
of a nuclear apocalypse.

It's 1949,

the year the world is divided in two.

And the truce of the postwar years

will have lasted
not very long at all.

Captions by Ericsson Access Services
(c) SBS Australia 2016