Original subtitles

When you're the Aryan master race,

friends don't come naturally.

People outside the room can hear, you know,

the fists pounding on the table and voices raised.

There's a great degree of mistrust there.

However, when a world war looms, allies become essential.

We won't attack you if you get involved in a war,

we won't attack you if you get involved in a war.

Hitler hadn't thought through the relationship particularly well.

With only dictators and despots to choose from,

the risks are high.

I suppose this phrase, beggars can't be choosers...

And the end results.

This is just enormous disasters, unprecedented disasters.

Dysfunction at almost every level.

November 1918,

Germany had just lost the war.

She was about to sign a deeply humiliating

and financially crippling treaty,

and she had no friends.

But this was just how she liked it,

or at least the right wing opportunists did

by placing the burden of guilt entirely on an embarrassed Germany.

And by imposing impossibly harsh reparation payments,

the West unwittingly created the ideal conditions

for populist politics and demagoguery to prosper.

Unrest, resentment, and anger

simmered in a desperate and disillusioned public.

And Hitler played them like a violin,

ruthlessly capitalizing on the massive national sulk

Germany had been experiencing since defeat.

He fermented a xenophobic hatred of outsiders

while encouraging the classic victim hero complex on a grand scale.

And guess who was putting his hand out for the hero role?

With the rise of National Socialism

and Hitler's coming to power in the early 30s,

all the elements were in place for another massive global conflict.

Hitler was a politician driven by ideology

and that ideology was ultimately confrontational

and demanded a great deal from other countries

in terms of having to sacrifice economic power or maybe even territory.

And Hitler wasn't afraid of confrontation, even if the other countries were.

As a result of that, his ideology was based upon military power

and ultimately military confrontation, if required.

And so, in a sense, what Hitler was asking for

was not going to be given without a fight.

As World War II loomed, the closest friendships

Germany could claim were nothing more than uncomfortable, uneasy alliances,

yet they needed allies

or at least short term sham friendships,

their choices were limited.

On the available list

was an international pariah to the east in Russia,

but a communist state was hardly a natural fit with fascist Germany.

There was a like-minded predator in fascist Italy

and a hyper-militaristic Japan.

With friends like those, who needed enemies?

On September the 27th, 1940,

Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano,

Il Duce's son-in-law, arrived in Berlin from Rome.

At00 pm,

in the Reich Chancellery it was announced that Japan, Germany,

and Italy had signed a military alliance directed against the United States.

The axis powers aligned in a pact with the devil,

but all these relationships were doomed from the start,

tenuous and disinterested at best, toxic and sabotaging at worst.

Germany's choice of strange bedfellows would come back to haunt them

and they would ultimately pay a high price for those decisions.

Dawn, June 22nd, 1941.

German bombers are attacking Russian cities from Leningrad to Sevastopol.

It marked the start of the largest military operation

in the history of the world, Operation Barbarossa.

It was also to become the bloodiest.

But Russia and Germany were supposedly bound

by a non-aggression pact.

So how did it come to this?

Welcome to a world of deceit and double dealing between wartime friends.

Germany and Russia had been building a secret tryst since the early '20s,

since they first began making eyes at each other,

they were always going to make strange bedfellows.

Since any military development had been prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles,

Germany needed a place to begin re-arming

out of the prying eyes of the West.

Soviet Russia was the perfect spot.

In the early 1930s there is actual military cooperation

between the Soviets and the Germans.

We have German officers going secretly to the Soviet Union

and there they're subverting the... their constraints of the Treaty of Versailles

and they are testing weaponry, aircraft,

and tanks that Germany's not allowed to have.

The benefit for the Soviets is,

they're getting the virtue of this learning curve,

they're getting the insight into how German staff work.

And they are also taking photos of some of the pieces of equipment

that the Germans are developing in those spaces.

Impeccable ideological enemies,

neither side was ever comfortable with the relationship,

but it was the Germans who did best out of the deal.

It accounts for the fact that when Hitler re-arms

after taking power in 1933,

he already has the basis for the reconfiguration of the Wehrmacht,

the German Armed Forces into, you know... you know,

into tank divisions, infantry divisions,

he already has the basis for a big air force, the Luftwaffe.

He's got the shape of the... Of the Kriegsmarine,

the Nazi Navy, worked out.

It's also good for the Russians,

the Russians are poised to become what they are in 1949,

the biggest mechanized military in the world,

thanks in large part to the training and technology transfers

given to them by the Germans in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Soviets might have secured a bigger advantage

from their relationship, had Stalin not set out

on a murderous purge of the Red Army leadership in 1937.

With the world lurching towards war, it was a policy of utter madness.

Stalin basically kills off almost every marshal in the Soviet army.

Kills off almost every army commander, corps commander, divisional commander,

kills eight of nine admirals.

Because he fears that they'd become tainted by this collaboration

with the Germans.

What he was left with was nothing but incompetence

at the top of his military.

It is shooting himself in the foot,

but such is the mammoth weight of the Soviet Union

in terms of manpower and industrial resources,

and its ability to replace these people with often less capable commanders

but good enough that they survive.

Stalin was under no apprehension as to Hitler's intentions.

After all, he was a man after his own heart.

He'd already walked into Austria

and those areas of Czechoslovakia, known as the Sudetenland,

inhabited predominantly by German speakers.

Having been unable to reach an agreement with Britain and France

against Nazi Germany, with whom he'd been playing footsy behind Hitler's back,

Stalin was left dangerously exposed.

The problem for the Soviets is they see what happens

to Czechoslovakia. And they start to realize

those Western powers have walked away from their Eastern ally,

they have left them in the lurch,

and therefore, if we're interested in security,

we cannot rely on those Western powers.

And this starts to change the idea for Stalin,

who's looking always to buy time.

By early 1939, he faced the daunting prospect

of having to resist German expansion into the East all alone.

For his part, Hitler needed a pact with Russia,

so he could invade Poland unopposed.

After which he could deal with Britain and France to the West,

importantly he wouldn't have to worry about fighting the Russians

at the same time, in the East,

but Hitler was always going to betray Russia and Stalin knew it.

On May the 3rd, 1939,

foreign ministers, Molotov and Ribbentrop with Stalin

gravely looking on, signed a non-aggression pact

between Russia and Germany.

How they all kept a straight face remains one of the great achievements

of totalitarian international diplomacy.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is gonna buy the Soviet Army more time

to build weaponry and it's also going to give the Soviet Union the opportunity

to watch Germany fight against other capitalist powers

and hopefully wear each other down over years.

For Hitler, the idea is very simple, this is a tactical maneuver,

this is going to allow him to have a free hand to fight in Poland.

Germany promptly put Poland to the sword,

and unfortunately for Stalin,

then conquered much of Western Europe easily.

The inevitable eventually rolled around.

Nazi Germany attacked Russia without warning in Operation Barbarossa.

By June 1941, the agreement between Germany and Soviet Russia

was dead and buried.

Did Hitler betray Stalin?

It's hard to summon any sympathy for either of these two brutes, you know?

I think they both knew what they were getting into

by signing this pact with each other.

So they were both playing a very cynical game,

it's just that Hitler broke the agreement first.

Hitler had stabbed his partner in the back.

Who in their right mind would ever trust the Nazis again?

As the self-proclaimed master race,

there was no room for Germany to foster any genuine

or lasting international friendships.

However, expedience ruled,

and the most natural match for the Nazis

was their fellow fascist European power, Italy.

The partnership between the two powers was to prove an unmitigated disaster

as reflected through the prism of the personal relations

between Hitler and Mussolini.

You can make a case that both of them were supreme narcissists.

Now what happens if you put the two of them together,

do you have atomic fission or a nuclear explosion, in psychological terms?

What you really have is the stronger narcissist will win out in the end.

And if you look at Mussolini,

he was a far more complex figure than Hitler and prone to obvious depression.

Since 1925, the Italian people had been laboring under a fascist regime,

ruled over by Benito Mussolini or Il Duce.

Italian fascism was regarded as the original and the best,

and very much the elder brother of Nazism.

In 1922, when Mussolini led thousands of fascists and supporters

into the Italian capital in his defining March on Rome,

Hitler was hooked.

Well, Hitler is a... an early and ardent admirer of Mussolini.

Mussolini is first on the scene,

he launches his fascist party before Hitler's Nazi party.

He ex... executes the March on Rome in 1922

and insinuates himself into the Italian Government,

appointed Prime Minister by the Italian King,

he immediately embarks on the fascistization of Italy

with big public buildings, parades, fascist monuments,

Hitler is in awe of this,

Hitler at the time, sort of in love with Mussolini and he emulates Mussolini.

Over the coming years, the two despots continue

to cozy up with Mussolini, even providing some financial support

to the rising Nazi Party.

It's no surprise that in private,

Mussolini thought very little of Hitler,

in fact, he considered him a socially awkward, galloping bore.

And of course, as Mussolini had more than a touch of egomania about him,

he maintained that Hitler's rise to the top

was far less glorious than his own.

He was the father of fascism,

Hitler's merely a progeny to his genius.

And when Hitler came to power in 1933,

Mussolini was quick to bask in reflected glory,

claiming victory for himself and his own fascist ideology.

This fascist thing was really starting to catch on.

The first actual meeting between them in Venice in 1934

went very poorly.

Hitler is completely upstaged by Mussolini

who arrives in fascist uniform and looks,

you know, very marshal and severe,

and Hitler shows up in sort of a baggy overcoat and a fedora hat,

he hasn't adapted the Nazi uniform yet.

And they're particularly exercised over the issue of Austria,

Mussolini says, "Look, you know, hands off Austria,

it must remain independent,"

and Hitler and Mussolini get into this, like, raging argument,

people outside the room can hear,

you know, the fists pounding on the table, and voices raised.

They pretend to be good friends

but they're beginning to drift apart strategically.

The meeting served as confirmation for both

that neither man cared at all for the other.

Hitler and Mussolini were not natural friends or colleagues,

but Germany required the Italian military machine

to do its bidding, if you like,

by proxy in North Africa for example,

and of course, Italy was only too willing to do that.

Italy also recognized that for Mussolini

to develop his own foreign policy aims,

he needed the backing of a big military machine,

a nation that was more progressed, more aggressive,

and more feared than his own.

By 1936, Mussolini was talking it up,

declaring that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy

shared a common destiny, and that the relationship between the two

was the axis around which Europe would evolve.

On March the 3rd, 1938, the weirdness continued

when Hitler arrived in Rome with enough pomp and ceremony

to please any dictator.

It was a wildly over-the-top welcome, including a whole new train station

constructed just for the Nazis' arrival,

and a new road for Hitler to be driven along, via Adolf Hitler.

However, the King and the Vatican were decidedly cool towards him

and despite all the pageantry,

Mussolini refused Hitler's offer of military alliance.

The Italians were hedging their bets.

Finally, the two reluctant friends came together

and signed the Pact of Steel in 1939,

formalizing the alliance with military provisions.

Joined together by mutual self-interest,

the two strong men of fascism view the results of their long struggle

for dominance in Europe with unconcealed satisfaction.

But Mussolini had already comprehensively failed Hitler

with his never-ending vacillation and maddening uncertainty.

His army was completely unprepared for war,

underfunded, poorly equipped,

with poor leadership and training to match.

It didn't help that on the eve of war, Mussolini fired his chief of staff

with the dictator arrogantly taking on the role

of micromanaging the military himself.

On top of this, Italy was on the brink of bankruptcy.

By any measure, a failing partnership,

and the war had not even begun.

Italy was a relatively weak country in terms of its economy,

its society and its military state as well.

Uh, Mussolini was desperately trying to raise

the standard of living in Italy,

was doing that very slowly.

But like many nations and many leaders in history,

they looked outside their own borders for a sense of power and gain

that would perhaps unite the country around the leader

and so provide great internal benefit.

And that's where, of course, Hitler and Germany's aims came into play.

When war finally arrived in September 1939,

Italy did not support its ally from the start.

Instead, Mussolini made the heroic decision

to remain on the sidelines.

Mussolini very much wanted to see the way

in which the wind was blowing, he was an opportunist like Hitler,

and didn't want to attach himself to a nation that could possibly,

due to its grandiose aims, and the variety of nations against him,

eventually be defeated.

And he didn't want to go down with that particular sinking ship.

And then when it becomes very clear in the French campaign

that Germany is going to succeed, Germany is going to conquer France.

Remarkable as that may seem, Mussolini is an opportunist,

like so many of these guys and seized the opportunity

to be at that peace table, and to get us a sliver of France,

a part of France that he's always wanted.

As soon as Hitler becomes increasingly successful,

he decides it's, it's an opportunity to show his colors.

Finally, Mussolini declares war on the Allies.

And straightaway, made a mess of things.

So Mussolini has announced that he is going to join the war.

But he hasn't considered that 40% of his merchant navy

is on the high seas or in foreign ports,

and will immediately be impounded, that will all be lost to the Italians.

It was not a great start for the Italians and it didn't stop there.

One of the problems that the Italians have

is that they're not made aware

that the declaration of war on the Allies is coming.

So Mussolini is not just fighting on the Italian-French border,

there is now a new border between Italian-occupied Libya

and the British possessions in Egypt.

And one of the first maneuvers that takes place sees British forces

instituting a short raid into Italian positions.

So a large number of Italian prisoners take place

in the initial days of this war,

partly because those men don't know they're at war.

To add to this, Hitler was keeping all his war plans

secret from his allies, under the guise that it would spoil the surprise.

Mussolini was not at all happy about his obvious relegation

to junior partner in the affair,

childishly contrived away to pay Hitler back,

as he openly put it.

Mussolini had wanted Romania, but Hitler had already moved in.

But if he couldn't have Romania, in a typically bratty fit of jealousy,

he ordered his troops to strike out through Albania to try for Greece instead,

without informing the Germans, of course, that would show him.

You know, the Italians who are vaunted... as this, as a great power,

send, you know, 200,000 troops into Greece to fight 60,000 Greeks,

and they're roundly defeated.

They're not only like destroyed on the battlefield,

but they're chased back into Albania, which they've conquered in 1939.

And the Greeks helped themselves to a third of Albania.

What it showed Hitler was a debacle.

The man in Rome shouts encouragement to his troops,

proclaims his early victories to the world.

And then Greece turns his armies upside down

and throws them back at him.

Rube Goldberg in the New York Sun...

Germany was forced to rush to Italy's rescue,

sending in troops to drive out the British and Greek forces.

Hitler decided to dispatch one of his most respected gun commanders,

Albert Kesselring, to take control in the Mediterranean.

There's a great degree of mistrust there.

There is not a common sense of commitment to this war.

When Mussolini takes the decision to invade Greece, he doesn't tell Hitler.

When Hitler takes the decision to invade the Soviet Union,

he doesn't tell Mussolini.

Now if you had any kind of common cause,

if you're in any kind of common alliance,

you'd be setting similar objectives

and you'd be working toward those objectives.

So when we talk about to what extent is their cooperation,

at the most basic level that cooperation is failing.

Meanwhile, things are going south

in North Africa for the Italians.

In North Africa, they invade Egypt,

hoping to take the Suez Canal and destroy British power

in the Mediterranean with over 200,000 troops

facing about 40,000 British troops

and they're roundly beaten by the British.

And it was this the occasion for Anthony Eden's famous quip that,

"Never in the history of warfare

has so much been surrendered by so many to so few."

So they're really a liability.

Hitler then decided General Rommel

was to be dispatched in an effort

to bring some order to the North African theater.

The whole thing proved a massive distraction,

as well as a drain on German resources.

The Nazis were wondering

what on earth they'd gotten themselves into with the Italians.

The fact that Italy couldn't do that job on its own

and eventually required increasing German resources was,

of course, a great disadvantage to Adolf Hitler and Germany,

because just at the time he was invading the Soviet Union

and that campaign was developing,

he was having to devote more resources.

Unfortunately, the Italians didn't have enough strength,

enough power, enough capability

to win those battles themselves.

And, so the Germans find themselves drawn into theaters of war

that were secondary to them, in order to prop up their weak ally.

Support for the war effort continued to crumble

as officials realized that they were staring

at the catastrophic failure of the fascist regime.

Overall, we can see it as a failed relationship.

But when defeat looked as though

it was on the cards for the alliance, certainly in Sicily,

that's when the Italian people really realized

that Mussolini had led the nation astray.

The Allies quickly took Sicily.

Now, they were ready to move into Europe proper.

That invasion therefore, made the Italian people think

if it's Sicily now, it's going to be the Italian mainland next,

pushing into what Churchill called the "soft underbelly" of Europe.

President Roosevelt warns Italy, "Quit the war now."

And urges Italy to revolt against Il Duce.

Mussolini came to the reluctant conclusion that the jig was up.

The fall of Sicily was the final straw.

Mussolini was arrested and imprisoned.

With Mussolini banished to the sidelines

and the fascist government deposed,

his former Chief of Staff, General Pietro Badoglio

quickly negotiated a surrender to the Allies

allowing the Americans to land in Southern Italy.

Turns out the US was the friend they needed all along.

Hitler meanwhile, sprang into action, launching the occupation of Italy.

He ordered a daring rescue of Mussolini from his isolated mountain eyrie.

Benito Mussolini, fallen star of fascism

is liberated by Hitler's parachutist,

shown in these captured German films.

But despite the dramatic rescue,

Mussolini was doomed.

He had now been reduced to leading a puppet German state

in the north of Italy.

On October the 14th, 1943,

Italy's new leader, General Pietro Badoglio

declares war on Germany,

throwing in his lot with the Allies

and plunging the country into civil war.

Italian troops finally cooperated with the Allies

to drive the Germans out of Rome.

Italy was at last feeling the winds of change,

from tyranny to freedom.

American forces receive the surrender of German troops in Milan,

the city controlled by Italian partisans,

the Nazis held out in a hotel in...

In April 1945,

with the Allies on his doorstep

and partisans on the warpath,

Mussolini fled disguised in a German uniform,

trying for the Swiss border.

But all that publicity he had craved backfired,

his trademark bald head and deeply set jaw

giving him away.

He was recognized by partisans

just a few miles from the border.

He was so close to making it to freedom.

Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci

were shot to death before a firing squad near Lake Como.

Together with other executed fascists,

his body was hung out in the town square

to be publicly humiliated and degraded.

When word of this reached Hitler in his Berlin bunker

and with the Russians bearing down on him,

he is said to have made a vow,

"This will never happen to me."

Days later, he was dead by his own hand.

Hitler's old frenemy

had succeeded in one final and fatal influence.

Fascist Italy had failed spectacularly,

socially, militarily,

and ideologically

and helped drag their German allies down with them.

Through the 1930s,

Japanese militaristic goals became more extreme

as the drumbeat of fanatic nationalism grew louder.

The grand plan for Japan to establish a major Asian empire

was driving them further from the West and into the orbit

of like-minded Nazi Germany

and fascist Italy.

Although self-serving

and completely independent of Nazi thinking,

Hitler could hear the call.

He now saw Japan as a power he could do business with.

Well, the Anti-Comintern Pact

was a pact signed by Nazi Germany

and Imperial Japan in 1936,

reflecting the fact that Hitler wanted a...

An ideological document, not a mere military alliance,

but an ideological document

committing Germany and Japan

against the threat of Bolshevism, against Soviet communism.

And the Japanese were willing to sign up for this

because at the time, they were involved in the seven or eight-year border war

with the Soviet Union over who would control

the disputed regions of Manchuria and Mongolia.

Germany and Japan had, if you like, mutual interests

when it comes to the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was a huge nation

with great potential capability.

And there is no way that the Germans

could ever foresee themselves

advancing across tens of thousands of miles.

If Japan could attack in the east,

put pressure on the Soviet Union

in areas that Germany couldn't get to physically,

there was a greater opportunity

for Germany to bring the Soviet Union to its knees.

But events were about to dictate that once again,

Hitler could not rely on his friends,

and they could not rely on him.

And the ramifications

were to decide the fate of nations.

Japanese expansion into northeast China

bordering Soviet territory had led to growing tensions.

In fact, there have been border clashes,

serious border clashes with thousands of casualties

in 1938 and 1939.

This is undeclared war

between Japan and the Soviet Union.

And those contests are won hands down by the Soviet Union.

This also then convinces enough people

in the Japanese military

that a northern strategy is not a good idea

and that in an ongoing war against China,

this is the principal war that Japan is fighting.

The Japanese had discovered the hard way

that the Soviets were superior in numbers

as well as in armaments, especially tanks.

Meanwhile, an impatient Hitler, tired of waiting for Japan

to commit to anything to do with the Soviet Union,

signed the very temporary Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Russia

as his insurance policy without telling Japan or Italy.

Japan was utterly outraged.

They saw this as a complete abandonment of the...

Of the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936

when they had resolved to fight together

against the menace of Bolshevism.

And now you have Hitler saying that he will take...

He will take no position in a Soviet war elsewhere,

that he will not aggress against the Soviet Union,

thus, basically setting the Japanese up for failure

if the Soviets decide to sort of push this campaign

in Mongolia and Manchuria.

This is a classic example of Hitler's failure

to grasp foreign affairs and he lost out badly.

In April 1941, Japan followed the Germans' lead

and signed their own non-aggression pact with the Soviets.

Now, it was Hitler's turn to be angry,

he knew he had a big problem.

Hitler often felt betrayed

when foreign affairs didn't develop

in the way that he had anticipated.

He felt that many nations had let him down,

not thinking that, of course, they have their own

pressures and influences.

And they weren't always thinking about what is best for Germany.

But there's little doubt that with Japan

and the Soviet Union coming together

to agree that they wouldn't fight each other,

that massively undermined his ability

to do what was an absolutely central part

of his ideological philosophy,

which was to crush the Soviet Union.

With the Japanese refusal to play,

this gave the Russians some breathing room.

They could now be confident

the Japanese would not come at them from the east.

This allowed them to divert massive numbers of troops

to the main game,

the Battle of Moscow in September 1941.

This was enough to prevent the advance of Germany

and it saved Russia from utter defeat.

From here on, Japan and Germany

would essentially be allied on paper only.

The two powers would be in reality,

fighting two separate wars.

In Tokyo, Premier Tojo made it official.

The Imperial Rescript declaring war

has just been promulgated.

Hitler had provided himself with so much to do

in Europe and in North Africa

that he couldn't think outside the realms of Europe.

As far as he was concerned,

the Japanese were in their theater of operations,

he was in his,

and eventually the two might be able to cooperate

more significantly together.

But that wouldn't happen until the Soviet Union

was brought to its knees.

Like all Hitler's dealings,

it was a relationship characterized by mistrust,

resentment, and petty jealousies on either side

rather than any sense of shared values or objectives.

German alliances are characterized by dysfunction.

We see that in the way in which Hitler engages with allies,

he never gets together.

There's no Supreme Command to bring together ideas.

There's no free flow of information.

He deals with the fellow dictators one on one,

and he can often play them off against each other.

That's very much how he constructs his alliances

such as they are.

And Hitler did this beautifully

with these other European allies.

Apart from her so-called "Best friends,"

Germany kept strategic company with a number of smaller powers,

mainly in East Central Europe,

whom Hitler hoped would help him construct

a strategic corridor to the east.

One of the big points in the Eastern Front

is the participation of the Romanians

which are one of the most important powers and the Hungarians,

but the Romanians and the Hungarians have a tremendous degree

of antipathy between them.

And Hitler is always able to talk about the post-war settlement.

And he's always able to talk about whoever serves best

in their contribution to the common war effort

might just be the one who gets what they want

in their own rivalries.

In the end, Slovakia, Romania,

Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia,

and Yugoslavia, all join the Axis Powers,

either willingly or very reluctantly.

They sign for many different reasons,

economic dependence on Germany,

protection from the Soviets or just outright fear of the Nazis.

But it was a trade-off.

Germany was the major power in the area,

the smaller states provided their natural resources

in exchange for Nazi military protection.

This proved a drain on Hitler's troops and supplies

which could have been better employed elsewhere.

The failings of these smaller partnerships became evident

during the crucial Battle of Stalingrad in 1942.

By August 23, the Germans were in the suburbs

fighting the Russians amongst the rubble.

It was then Stalin issued his infamous order,

not one step back.

He was never going to give up the city that bore his name.

To make his point, there were squads stationed

just behind his troops to shoot deserters.

Meanwhile, Hitler desperately countered by ordering

more and more men into the battle,

way more than they could afford.

As the fighting reached fever pitch,

the Russians came up with their masterstroke.

They proposed a massive double encirclement

of the entire German Sixth Army.

Another disastrous failure of Hitler's alliances

was about to play out.

Germany always had to look

at how it used troops from other countries

because they never quite matched

the professionalism and the capability

of their own homegrown troops.

And as a result of that, they were often used as,

what we'd call lines of communication troops,

those that weren't necessarily doing the fighting,

but were doing the supporting of the fighting,

or they were used to hold the flanks.

And of course, the Soviets knew that.

They recognized that there were certain weaknesses

within this broader German alliance

that they were fighting and that they could exploit them.

On the snowy, foggy morning on November the 19th,

the Soviets struck, 1.2 million Soviet soldiers

drove into the weakly guarded flanks.

A two-pronged pincer attack led by Soviet tanks

smashed right into the hapless Hungarians,

Romanians, and Italians.

They folded quickly

and the entire German Army was surrounded.

It was now a freezing, living hell for the German soldiers.

But Hitler demanded they fight to the last,

condemning them to almost certain death.

With supplies cut off, it was hopeless.

January the 31st, 1943,

Field Marshal Paulus disobeyed Hitler

and surrendered together with the remaining 91,000 skeletal troops.

Only six percent of these would survive.

The total Axis losses,

Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians

are estimated to have been eight hundred thousand.

It was the psychological turning point of the war.

As German prisoners shuffled out of Stalingrad,

an old Russian colonel was heard to yell,

"This is how Berlin is going to look."

It became clear in most people's minds,

Stalingrad signified that Germany was going to lose the war.

The Nazis had suffered not only its first major defeat,

but one that essentially paved the way for the collapse of the Third Reich.

It was a failure of leadership, a failure of planning,

and a failure of partnership and alliance.

At the heart of the Nazi credo

was an utterly misguided belief

in their own superiority,

which meant them incapable of mutual trust,

and the forging alliances that could be anything

other than self-serving.

But Germany, Italy, and Japan,

all failed each other and their people.

And so, they failed to win the war.