Original subtitles

Five, four,

three, two, one,

zero!

[ explosion ]

NARRATOR: A cloud hides the sky --

a nuclear shadow falls across the human future.

Midway through the 20th century,

two superpowers prepared for a conflict

which might have ended life on the planet.

Spring flowers...

the warm light of day...

the pleasures of life.

But under this American hotel was a hidden gate.

It led into an underworld.

[door slams, water splashes]

This was the shelter

for members of the United States Congress

in the event of nuclear war.

Down here, the politicians would represent

the dead and the dying in the world overhead.

For a handful of human beings,

there was all they needed

to wait out the nuclear winter.

But nerves might snap,

then order would be kept by force.

The lost world above the shelter

would become only a memory --

a myth.

The living would come to envy the dead.

D ♪

BRANAGH: Berlin 1945.

Soviet troops had stormed the capital of Hitler's Reich.

American, British, and French soldiers

soon joined them in the ruins.

Churchill, Stalin, and Truman were the official victors

of the Second World War.

But a special triumph was Stalin's.

Russian power had pushed forward into the center of Europe.

At Potsdam outside Berlin,

the Big Three met to settle the post-war order.

Winston Churchill represented a Britain

exhausted by war.

While Joseph Stalin,

supreme ruler of the Soviet Union,

faced Harry S Truman,

33rd President of the United States.

It was three months after the death

of President Franklin Roosevelt

that Harry Truman, once a Missouri haberdasher,

set off for Potsdam.

It was his first overseas conference

as Head of State.

MAN: President Truman was unprepared for the Presidency

in the sense of being fully briefed and up to the minute

on all that was going on.

But as a Senator for the past ten years,

as Chairman of one of the most important

Congressional Committees of the war,

he was well aware of the major problems

that a President had to face.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Stalin was late for the conference.

He had a sort of heart attack.

Anyhow, he came one day later.

He visited Churchill and Truman...

and immediately apologized for being late.

BRANAGH: The Soviet Union was devastated by war,

but Stalin remained a formidable figure.

MAN: I went up to him and I said,

"Marshall, this must be a great satisfaction to you

after all the trials that you've been through

and the tragedy that you've been through

to be here in Berlin."

He looked at me and said, "Tsar Alexander got to Paris!"

BRANAGH: Did Stalin want to push on to the Atlantic?

Lenin, his predecessor,

once hoped the Russian revolution would lead on

to Communist world revolution.

It was then, after the first World War,

in a clash of ideologies,

communist and capitalist,

that the Cold War had its origins.

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took ship

to the European Peace Conference

with his gospel for a better world --

safe for small nations, sound for business.

But his peace settlement excluded Bolshevik Russia.

Many nations, including the United States and Britain,

sent troops to fight the Russian Revolution.

Churchill, fresh from victory over Germany, urged,

"Kill the Bolshie! Kiss the Hun!"

The intervention left Lenin and Stalin convinced

that the West would seize any chance,

embrace any ally, in order to destroy Communism.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: I joined the Civil War

as a so-called "son of the regiment."

We were young boys.

We knew we were fighting for the people --

the poor people.

BRANAGH: There was widespread support for the Red Army.

The foreign troops soon withdrew.

The Bolshevik Reds defeated the Whites,

their Russian enemies.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: The White Guards who had left Russia

were encircling us.

There was starvation.

It was a time when sausages

were made from human flesh.

BRANAGH: in Russia, famine followed Civil War.

The victorious Bolsheviks turned away from the outside world

to build up the economy at home.

America also turned inwards.

People wanted the good life,

and more no foreign entanglements.

Then, in 1929, Wall Street crashed.

The Great Depression began.

Suddenly, across the richest nation on earth,

millions faced destitution.

American politics shifted to the Left.

ROOSEVELT: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute

the office of President of the United States,

and will, to the best of my ability,

preserve, protect and defend

the constitution of the United States.

So help me God.

BRANAGH: Roosevelt promised a New Deal for Americans.

He would manage capitalism for the public good.

And in a change of policy,

he recognized the Soviet Union.

One has to remember that we had been,

I think, for 16 years

without any representation in Russia

no no relations between the two governments --

and FDR was the one who decided

to try to break that log-jam.

[whistle blows]

BRANAGH: Stalin's industrial drive soon attracted

American experts.

Some brought their families.

I“ [woman singing in Russian] I“

While Soviet muscles strained

to raise dams and blast furnaces,

American corporations supplied skilled engineers on contract.

Communist ideology didn't worry them.

Unlike the Russians, they were free to go

when the job was over.

Stalin was master of the economic plan --

a tyrant who tolerated no failure

and no criticism.

Privately owned fields became collectivized prairies.

The cost of collectivization

was the murder of millions of peasants

and renewed famine.

The truth was kept secret.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: People didn't really know all about the bad things.

All the achievements were put down to his initiatives.

Those who knew otherwise would shut up.

They knew if they said anything,

they would be imprisoned and shot.

It was a regime of terror.

BRANAGH: This was socialism in one country.

Heavy industry's output doubled in 10 years.

Stalin felt

that in order to get public support

for the things he was doing,

which were very harsh policies,

he had to convince a great many of the people,

the common people and the Party members,

that Russia was confronted with a conspiracy

on the part of the major capitalist powers

to undermine the Soviet government

by espionage.

BRANAGH: Lenin's old comrades confessed to imaginary crimes.

KENNAN: I could see them there,

with their pale faces,

their twitching lips,

their evasive eyes.

These were the faces of men who had been,

if not tortured,

then terrified in many ways

and often by threats

to take it out on their families

if they didn't confess.

BRANAGH: The Moscow trials tore away some foreign illusions.

Stalin's Soviet Union was revealed as a police state,

not a workers' paradise.

But even in America, thousands stayed loyal

to the Communist dream.

In the 1930s, Moscow called for a Popular Front of the Left

against Hitler and Fascism.

NARRATOR: Within the shadow of the giant skyscrapers,

the red cohorts of communism

gather at historic Madison Square.

P [ band plays 1 I“

BRANAGH: Fighting the spread of Fascism

became the great cause

for socialist and communist alike.

Doubts about Stalin were repressed.

In Spain, volunteers from all over the world

rallied to oppose the Fascist rebellion

launched by Franco.

[engine roars]

Franco was armed by Mussolini and Hitler.

I“ [troops singing] I'

In Germany, the Nazis were rearming.

Hitler did not hide his ambitions to dominate Europe,

and then the world.

[thunderous cheers]

BRANAGH: Roosevelt wanted to keep out of any European War.

Despite what happens

in continents overseas,

the United States of America shall and must remain,

as long ago the father of our country

prayed that it might remain,

unentangled and free!

BRANAGH: Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain,

trusted that Hitler would listen to reason.

When I was a little boy, I used to repeat,

"If at first you don't succeed,

try, try, try again."

BRANAGH: In September 1938,

Chamberlain flew to Munich.

War seemed close,

as Germany prepared to invade Czechoslovakia.

But Chamberlain went determined to appease Hitler.

At Munich, Britain, France and Italy licensed Hitler

to seize the Czech Sudetenland,

with its German minority.

Czechoslovakias allies had abandoned her.

In Moscow,

Stalin drew lessons from Munich.

The western democracies, he concluded,

would never stand up to Hitler.

Stalin planned a desperate stroke of diplomacy.

The fascist and Communist arch-enemies

were about to embrace.

Hitler flew his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed

by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov.

The West was appalled.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: After the pact was signed,

I heard this from Stalin's lips --

he was often at our home.

He said, "We need to win time,

at least two years' time.

Only then will the Soviet Union

be able to defend itself against Germany."

BRANAGH: September 1939,

Hitler invaded Poland.

Britain and France declared war on the aggressor --

too late to save Poland.

Defeated, Poland was wiped off the map.

Germany and Russia had conspired against her.

In Eastern Poland, the communist occupiers

were supervised by Nikita Khrushchev.

They were taking over provinces once ruled by the Tears.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact left Stalin free

to grab Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The Baltic States were back under Russian domination.

Stalin had already outraged the world

by invading Finland.

D ♪

ROOSEVELT: The Soviet Union is run by a dictatorship.

A dictatorship as absolute

as any other dictatorship in the world.

It has allied itself with another dictatorship

and it has invaded a neighbor so infinitesimally small

that it could do no conceivable possible harm

to the Soviet Union.

[fire crackling]

BRANAGH: In 1940, Hitler struck West.

By mid-1941, France, Belgium,

Holland, Norway, Denmark,

Yugoslavia and Greece

had been added to his conquests.

Churchill's Britain held out alone.

On June the 22,1941,

Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

It was a day that changed history.

Hitler meant to win a vast colony for Germany.

Instead, his act would bring Russian power

into the heart of Europe, only 4 years later.

[explosions]

The future outlines of the Cold War began to form

as the Nazi tanks surged forward.

The Red Army fell back in retreat.

[speaking Russian ]

KOZINCHENKO: My mother said, "Go with the soldiers."

The soldiers were retreating -- injured, covered in blood.

I only had my overcoat and my shoes -- that's all.

BRANAGH: Soviet citizens rallied.

Abroad, the Soviet Union won unexpected friends.

Churchill, in spite of his past,

anti-Soviet feelings,

at once welcomed Stalin's Russia as an ally.

He did say to his friends, of course,

that he'd have welcomed the devil

if the devil had turned up in order to help him defeat Hitler.

ROOSEVELT: The United States of America

was suddenly and deliberately attacked

by naval and air forces

of the Empire of Japan.

No matter how long it may take us

to overcome this premeditated invasion,

the American people in their righteous might,

will win through to absolute victory.

[cheers and applause]

BRANAGH: America declared war on Japan.

Days later, with the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow,

Hitler rashly declared war on the United States,

making Russians and Americans allies.

The German thrust at Moscow was blocked.

Stalin broadcast to the nation.

[ Applause ]

BRANAGH: Stalin already looked beyond victory.

He told the British that post-war Soviet boundaries

must include the Baltic States and part of Poland.

ROBERTS: When I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden in December 1941,

when the Germans were still

only 19 kilometers away from us as we talked,

the very first thing that Stalin said at that meeting was,

"Mr. Eden, I want to have your assurance

that at the end of the war, you will support my just claim

to all these areas you see."

And Eden was absolutely taken aback.

He said, "But oughtrft we to be thinking

about how we win the war?"

"No, no", said Stalin, "I would like to have this clear

at the very beginning."

So Eden obviously had to say,

but he had no authority to discuss

how the war was to end.

BRANAGH: American aid to Russia

concentrated on guns and trucks,

but Stalin and his people cried out for more --

a second front --

an Allied landing in Western Europe,

to relieve Soviet suffering.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: I saw the atrocities.

I heard the noises of war.

Although it's 50 years ago,

I can still hear the noises of war --

the shells, the bombing,

people screaming, women crying.

[explosions and gunfire]

BRANAGH: For 6 months, battle raged at Stalingrad.

Hitler sent half a million men.

The Germans were trapped and forced to surrender.

The tide of war was turning.

[ Applause ]

Western opinion cheered on the Red Army,

their comrades in arms.

The Russians have thus far lost in the common cause

at least 50% more men --

killed, wounded, and missing --

than all the rest of the European allies put together.

And moreover, they have killed, wounded and captured

at least 20 times as many Germans

as the rest of the Allies.

[ Applause ]

BRANAGH: The Nazis sought ways to split the alliance against them.

At Katyn in Western Russia,

they dug up the corpses

of more than 4000 Polish officers.

Germany announced - truthfully, as it turned out-

that the officers had been murdered

by Soviet security troops in 1940.

Britain and America chose to ignore

this evidence of Stalin's methods.

[aircraft engine]

In 1943, with their alliance still intact,

the Big Three prepared to meet at Tehran, in Persia.

ZARUBINA: I was summoned to Tehran

to help them prepare for the conference.

Mr. Roosevelt is supposed to arrive.

We had a code name for it.

And so I called the airfield,

and sure enough I spoke to Admiral Leahy.

I said, "Are you coming?"

And he said, "No, we're not coming.

We're going to the American Mission."

And when I said that to Molotov,

I thought he'd just fry me alive.

He said, "What?!"

And he'd get -- all the four letter words

I'd never heard in my life were spilled over me.

He said, "Who the hell are you here anyway?

Who How did you get in here?

What do you know?"

What am I going to say to Stalin?

BRANAGH: Stalin persuaded Roosevelt that his safety was best assured

by residence at the Soviet Embassy.

The Embassy had been specially prepared for his visit --

it was bugged.

[ Beria speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Stalin told me that the task he was putting to our group,

and particularly to me,

was ethically very unattractive.

However, the position of the USSR was so serious

that he had to know what our allies were thinking.

Stalin was very skillful

in dealing with Roosevelt and Churchill.

Even Churchill began to quite like him,

you know, and talk about Uncle Joe,

you see, which was quite an affectionate term.

And...

and they both had this idea that if you treated him

the right way, you see

The phrase was "If you treat Uncle Joe

like a member of our club,

perhaps one day he will behave like a member of our club."

[ Beria speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Every day at 8:00 in the morning,

I had to go to Stalin.

I went with all the transcripts,

in Russian and in English.

For about an hour,

Stalin examined in great detail

all of Roosevelt's conversations.

I don't think FDR was capable of conceiving

of a man of such profound iniquity,

coupled with enormous strategic cleverness,

as Stalin.

He had never met such a creature.

Stalin was an excellent actor --

quiet, affable, reasonable.

He sent them all away thinking

this really is a great leader.

BRANAGH: The allies agreed that post-war Eastern Europe

would be a Soviet zone of influence.

Stalin would annex Eastern Poland.

As compensation, the Poles would get

a slice of Eastern Germany.

Poland was offered no choice.

Together, the Big Three mapped out the future.

D-Day -- the 6th of June, 1944.

The biggest sea borne invasion in history

lands in France.

This was the second front Stalin longed for.

On the eastern front,

Russian armies continued to advance.

NARRATOR: The Nazi road back out of Russia.

Every rail line blown up as they flee.

Of course Nazi propaganda now stresses

the masterful retreat.

The Soviet flag unfurled in triumph

over Sam ha, Temopw Odessa'

as the Russian tide of victory

rolls westwards towards Germany.

BRANAGH: As the Red Army approached Warsaw,

the Polish Resistance seized the city

from the Germans.

The Poles hoped to liberate themselves,

and confront Stalin with an independent Poland.

ROBERTS: The Polish Home Army rose,

to take over Warsaw when the Germans left

and before the Russians arrived --

and the Russians had encouraged them to do this.

And then the Russian Army stopped on the Vistula.

BRANAGH: Stalin claimed that his armies needed

to pause outside Warsaw and re-group.

The Germans counter-attacked.

[gunfire]

The Polish Freedom fighters were abandoned by the Russians,

who were sitting with their forces across the river,

and could easily have gone in to help them.

I thought for various reasons that that was the point

at which American policy should have changed.

BRANAGH: The Poles held out alone against the Germans

for 63 days.

When the Rising collapsed in slaughter

and Warsaw was destroyed,

Poland blamed the Soviet Union.

Then with Poland under Soviet occupation,

Churchill and Stalin got down to power broking in Moscow.

One night, Churchill scribbled down a formula

for carving up Europe --

Romania - Soviet influence 90%.

Greece - 90% British and American.

Yugoslavia and Hungary - 50/50.

Bulgaria - 75% Russian.

Stalin ticked his agreement.

Churchill wondered if the note should be destroyed.

Stalin told him, "No, you keep it."

Yalta in the Crimea.

Churchill wanted the next Big Three meeting

to be held in the West,

but Stalin insisted on a Soviet meeting place.

ZARUBINA: Stalin wanted to please them.

And I will tell you, I only saw

how hard people worked

with everything devastated around,

bringing crystal glass, bringing white napkins

and tablecloths and furniture.

Even when Mr. Winston Churchill said once, you know, sort of,

"Oh I wish I had a lemon with my gin and tonic,"

the next day they found a lemon tree.

[ Band plays "The Star Spangled Banner" ]

BRANAGH: The journey was torment for the sick Roosevelt.

His polio and the strains of war leadership dragged him down.

In the former Tsafis palace,

the leaders faced a heavy agenda.

They must decide how to govern a defeated Germany.

And they wanted to get the Polish question settled.

ROBERTS: Eastern Europe, important though it was,

was only one of many other things --

first of all winning the war

and then occupying Germany,

secondly, seeing to the war against Japan,

thirdly the postwar arrangements.

LUNGHI: Stalin knew that the war was won.

After all, the Russians were only 40 miles from Berlin

at that time.

They were on the point of capturing Budapest.

They'd swept through parts of Eastern Europe,

not the whole lot yet.

ZARUBINA: He was a very shrewd negotiator.

He doesn't look you in the eye.

He's just sort of smoking - he was a chain smoker -

and he was sort of smoking, and you think that probably

he's not listening, you know.

Then all of a sudden he would raise his fingers and say, "Ah."

The terrible mistake that Roosevelt made was

that he was trying to ingratiate himself into Stalin's favor

by stressing the divisions

between Churchill and himself.

So he made it quite clear to Stalin

that there were real divisions

as well as imaginary ones.

For us, of course, the major topic was

the future of Eastern Europe and above all, Poland.

And on that Stalin obviously was bound to get what he wanted

because the Red Army was in occupation

of the whole area including Poland -

they had already gone through Poland into Germany

by the time we were in Yalta.

[explosions]

BRANAGH: By now, the Balkans and most of Poland

were in Soviet hands,

so too was much of Czechoslovakia and Hungary...

battlefield facts

that diplomacy could not alter.

We got at Yalta two diplomatic documents

which on paper were perfectly satisfactory.

I mean that there would be a coalition government in Poland

including people from the West,

and there would be free elections in Poland.

And then there was a declaration

covering the whole of Eastern Europe

called the Declaration on Liberated Europe,

which again was to be rebuilt on the basis of democracy

and free elections and all the rest of it --

of course, phrases which the Russian used

but interpreted rather differently.

BRANAGH: Stalin promised that the Polish elections

would be free and fair.

Tired of arguing, the others took him at his word.

Germany would be governed jointly

by the victorious Allies.

And Stalin secretly pledged

to join the war against Japan.

Churchill was confident.

CHURCHILL: We have all bound ourselves to work together,

to make sure that there is

increasing happiness and prosperity

for the broad masses of the people in every land --

no longer subject to the hard strains of war.

There is the prospect which has now opened before us.

NARRATOR: The Funeral Special heads for Washington.

An honor guard of servicemen keeps vigil

beside the flag-draped casket.

At villages, crossroads, way stations,

the people who were so close to his heart stand silently,

expressive of the devotion Franklin Roosevelt inspired.

BRANAGH: As the President was buried,

the last battles in Europe were ending.

American troops were taking over German towns

without resistance.

MAN: They were glad to see the American troops

because they had a terrible fear

of having Russians occupy

or come into their... their area.

BRANAGH: As the Allies advanced,

they discovered the full horror of German crimes.

The Jews had been the Nazis' special target.

But every nation was mourning over mass graves.

Fear of a German revival

would overshadow the first years of peace.

[artillery fire]

Soon Soviet and American troops would meet in Germany.

Our lieutenant came in one day and said he'd got --

he wants to get a patrol together-

we're going to go and see if we can find some Russians.

Well, none of us were too eager

to go on that patrol really,

because we realized the end of the war was imminent

and we didn't know what was out there.

You know, we had gotten this far,

why stick our necks out again?

We kept going and we kept running into no resistance

and everybody was retiring and surrendering

and we just, I guess, were lucky.

We got to the Elbe river

and we saw the Russians on the other side.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: I told my girlfriend,

"You stand there, and I'll stay here."

We waited for them to come ashore.

We could see their faces.

They looked like ordinary people.

We had imagined something different.

Well, they were Americans!

[ laughs ]

I guess we didn't know what to expect from the Russians,

but when you looked at them and examined them,

you couldn't tell whether, you know

If you put an American uniform on them,

they could have been American!

[ Kozinchenko speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: We didn't know who we were kissing.

We were just kissing everyone.

[ laughs ]

[ Man speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: I think that for us the war was over.

We washed our feet in the Elbe river.

We washed our faces and hands.

We thought that now we'd met the Americans,

the war must be over.

BRANAGH: Two days later, the movie cameras were ready.

The moment of history,

the meeting of ordinary soldiers from Russia and America,

was re-run, dramatically,

with a bigger cast.

By allied agreement, the capture of Berlin

was left to the Russians.

[ Rocket fire ]

April, 1945.

The Red Army launches its final offensive towards Berlin.

[aircraft engine]

The war cost the Soviet Union 27 million lives --

nearly 40 times American and British losses put together.

The Red Flag destined to fly over the Reichstag

was a home made affair.

[ Khaldei speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: We used tablecloths.

One night, I helped my friend, a Jewish tailor,

sew them into three flags.

We took them to Berlin.

I found three soldiers and we climbed up.

The first photograph I took

was of the flag I'd brought from Moscow --

the Soviet flag over Berlin.

BRANAGH: As Hitler's Reich fell apart,

hundreds gathered in San Francisco

to found the United Nations Organization.

The Soviet delegation was led by the man

who had signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact- Molotov.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Molotov was very nervous because he felt

that the war is coming to an end,

victory would soon be here,

and here he is in America.

That's why everyday he sent cables to Stalin,

"When may I return?"

BRANAGH: As the San Francisco meeting continued,

news came of Germany's surrender.

General Eisenhower informs me

that the forces of Germany

have surrendered to the United Nations.

The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.

BRANAGH: As the fighting stopped,

the Soviet front line had out Europe in two,

from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

The war in the Pacific dragged on.

American marines had stormed lwo-Jima.

It was a foretaste of how difficult and bloody

the final invasion of Japan might be.

Potsdam, in conquered Germany,

site of the third allied summit.

The attitude in Washington toward the Soviet Union

had begun to change well before Potsdam.

Storm signals were already flying.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Truman declared officially and quite sharply

that the declaration on Europe adopted at Yalta

is not being carried out in some countries.

Governments are being set up

which the United States will not recognize.

I'd call the Potsdam conference

a bad-tempered conference,

because apart from the ceremonial occasions,

it was really very bad-tempered.

BRANAGH: The allies couldn't easily agree about a German Peace Treaty

or on how to carry out agreements reached at Yalta.

Stalin confirmed that his troops were ready

for war with Japan.

But the day before the conference,

America had successfully tested an atomic bomb.

ELSEY: President Truman, after consulting with the British,

and with his own military advisers,

decided that he would tell Stalin

that we had a powerful new weapon,

without identifying it as a nuclear weapon.

[speaking Russian ]

Truman repeated what he was saying about the new weapon.

He thought Stalin didn't hear or didn't understand him.

Stalin said, "Okay, thank you for the information."

There was some question amongst the Americans

as to whether Stalin had really understood

what Truman was saying.

As we now know, they knew all about the Manhattan Project

through espionage and their own agents.

BRANAGH: With the conference still in session,

news arrived from London that Clement Attlee

had been elected British Prime Minister.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: I had a feeling

that the biggest sensation for Molotov and Stalin

was not the bomb explosion

but the fact that Churchill was not re-elected in England.

BRANAGH: Another photo-call.

The world must see that the Allies were still united.

On August the 2nd the conference ended

and the statesmen went home.

Four days later, America dropped an atomic bomb

on the city and people of Hiroshima.

Three days after that,

another was dropped on Nagasaki.

Soon the human race would be able to destroy itself

in a day.

At each Cold War crisis to come,

the nuclear shadow threatened.