Original subtitles

In the 1920s Adolf Hitler promoted the idea

of Lebensraum - living space.

The German population was, he said,

"too great, in every sense, to be confined within its present borders."

And he knew that Germany

could spread in only one direction.

We national socialists are ceasing the endless German movement to the south and west,

and levelling our gaze at the land in the east.

That war to seize the land in the east

was a war of unfathomable cost.

It was Adolf Hitler's War.

British Intelligence and a complete battle plan taken from a downed German aircraft

warned the Soviet leadership

that Hitler had backed Plan Blue - the attack on the Caucasus.

Joseph Stalin dismissed the information

and waited for the assault on Moscow to be resumed.

One more mistake.

To coincide with the launch of Plan Blue

Heinrich Himmler ordered "total cleansing of the Jewish population of the General Government."

From December 31st 1942,

no persons of Jewish origin

may remain within the General Government.

These measures are required with a view

to the necessary ethnic division

of races and peoples for the New Order in Europe.

Within two months,

more than a quarter of a million Jews had been slaughtered in Treblinka's gas chambers.

The man in charge, a physician named Irmfried Eberl,

was sacked for inefficiency.

His failure to quickly dispose of the corpses

caused panic on the arriving trains.

Treblinka's new commander, Franz Stangl,

introduced reforms

that included construction of a mock station -

a stage set, so that the victims alighting

were not at once alarmed.

With a sign saying 'Treblinka'.

Looking exactly like a German railroad station.

A replica, with sign boards.

The station clock was painted on.

For a period of time, certainly disciplines like psychology

were thinking about explaining what went on during World War II and the Holocaust

as to do with psycho-pathology.

To do with extremism.

To do with political force. And all of that, to some degree, has a role to play.

But, increasingly, I think, people are facing this idea

that there were mindsets within Germany

that were broadly supportive of the activities during World War II.

But as the power of the SS and the brutality of the regime rose,

voices were heard

warning against what Hans Frank called,

"Police state ideals."

Frank was stripped of his party honours

and on July 22nd

Hitler addressed the concerns of his former lawyer.

Let me issue a word of warning to our legal gentlemen.

They should refrain from attempting to impose their mania for regulations

on our administration of our Eastern Territories.

And yes, it was a dictatorship. But there were certain ways to protest on popular policies.

These protests were directed, not against Adolf Hitler,

but against lower ranking Nazi officials.

And there almost became a saying in Germany, at the time,

"Surely the Fuhrer doesn't know about this, otherwise he wouldn't allow it to happen."

The vanguard for the first part of Plan Blue -

the advance in to the Caucuses -

was the 23rd Panzer Division, recently transferred from France.

Soviet Aircraft dropped leaflets, which read...

"Welcome to the Soviet Union. The gay Parisian life is now over."

Blue One, the attack on Voronezh,

was to initiate a cascade of conquest.

Blue Two would strike towards Rostov.

By July 7th, Voronezh had fallen

and the Offzier was ordered to turn South.

The Red Army in the south collapsed.

Axis formations flooded the area.

The confidence this generated

encouraged Hitler to divide his forces.

I mean, ultimately, it's also this hubris

that as this campaign is developing

and Soviet Army's are falling back,

the plan changes.

You see a German army now being split -

army group south is being split in to A and B.

They're going to try and achieve these objectives simultaneously.

From his new HQ - Werwolf in Vinnytsia -

an ill chosen site with heat, humidity and swarming mosquitoes

adding to the severe influenza

from which Hitler was reportedly suffering,

the Fuhrer issued Directive Number 45,

which committed the newly divided force to an advance on divergent Axis.

South, to the oilfields of the Caucasus

and East to Stalingrad.

Not even three weeks in to this operation, the 4th Panzer Army

is down to 30% of its establishment strength.

That is catastrophic for a long campaign.

Because it's not just about achieving these objectives,

you've got to hold them, theoretically.

Franz Halder, Chief of the Army High Command,

wrote in his diary that...

The chronic tendency to underrate enemy capabilities

is gradually assuming grotesque proportions.

The fault lay with what Halder called, "this so-called leadership."

And its...

Total lack of any understanding.

As for the ridiculous 100 million Slavs,

we will mould the best of them as we see fit.

And we will isolate the rest of them in their own pigsties.

On August 19th, Group B began the assault on Stalingrad where

Timoshenko, in overall command, asked for re-enforcements.

If they sold Divisions in the market, I'd buy you one or two.

But unfortunately they don't.

On the 21st, elements moved to within 65km of the Volga.

All that the USSR had was the People's Commissariat of Defence Order.

Not a step back.

Helped by those detachments,

rooting out defeatism and shooting deserters,

the order worked.

Other initiatives also strengthened the Russian people.

A large order from the USSR had been received in Great Britain.

It was for gold braid which was, according to Stalin...

Not just decoration,

but also about order and discipline.

For the first time since the revolution,

officers were to be addressed by rank.

They were to wear the insignia of rank.

The gallantry awards of pre-revolutionary Russia

were re-introduced.

Western people, they will tell you, because it was totalitarian system

because everybody was afraid,

because everybody had the someone, the soldier with the gun.

And if you don't fight the Germans, they will fight you.

But, you know, that in reality, it's impossible.

Of course, Soviet Union, it was the country with a lot of contradiction

and, of course, the Soviet project has failed.

As you see, the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.

But, I think, some basic ideas of Soviet Union

worked very good and during this war

we see the result.

On August 23rd, the Germans reached Stalingrad's northernmost suburb.

On August 27th, Stalin - the Supreme Commander -

appointed General Georgy Zhukov, the 42-year-old son of a shoemaker,

Deputy Supreme Commander,

and sent him to Stalingrad.

Stalin liked Zhukov, because Zhukov was very obedient

and very straightforward.

And he was also cruel.

The extent to which any one commander can sit there

and through some stroke of genius go left or go right

and somehow solve the problem and win the battle -

people invest a lot in this, as though the Commander is somehow

a great man standing on the field, looking and saying,

"Where do we employ the last division to finally win the battle?"

But, if in a battle of material, and that is largely what the Eastern Front is,

it's a battle of attrition.

As the war continues beyond 1941,

you don't, any longer, have this great operational predominance of the Wehrmacht.

More and more Soviet commanders are doing two things,

they are learning and they are surviving.

On August 31st, following a conference at Hitler's headquarters,

General Halder noted that...

The Fuhrer has ordered that upon penetration into the city,

the entire male population be eliminated,

since Stalingrad, with its one million uniformly Communist inhabitants, is extremely dangerous.

The women, Halder continued, "must be shipped off."

He did not say to where.

But the Birkenau extension to Auschwitz concentration camp

was operational by summer 1942.

When an article in the August issue of the SS Magazine, Das Schwarze Korps,

explained, "Our duty is to ensure that only people of pure German blood inhabit the East."

Through Hitler's propaganda,

he was actually able to construct an image of "us".

Of us Germans, of us Aryans.

Rallies and the propaganda movies with straight lines and everybody in uniform

and this is WHO WE ARE.

It gave us meaning.

And this is very powerful.

In August, Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS,

strolled around the city of Zamosc,

at first to be re-named Himmlerstadt.

But that was changed.

It would be called Pflugstadt - Plough Town -

since it would be the centre of Himmler's fantastical vision of rustic renewal.

More than 110,000 Poles were expelled from 300 villages

to make room for Wir Bauern - armed farmers.

There's mass resettlement.

Like many people who lose their homes

just because the Germans say, "Well, get out of it. We have German settlers. Let one move in."

The Nazis were anti-modernist

They wanted to kill 30 million people in the Soviet Union

and turn it back into an agricultural society.

Reverse 30 years of industrialisation and urbanisation there.

Himmler told the town's German administrator to knock Zamosc down

and replace it with a German town.

Corn is today, settlement area tomorrow,

German territory the day after tomorrow.

Nazis, they wanted to left here mostly people with Aryan appearances,

so it was like the policy of ethnic engineering maybe, if you want.

Fortunately for history,

Zamosc's shocked administrator asked,

"But what does a German town look like?"

Himmler's architects were still working on the answer to that question

when the German's pulled out in July 1944.

Zamosc is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt called it...

A dirty Jewish hole.

On September 1st, Chaim Rumkowski,

controversial Head of the Jewish Council in the Lodz Ghetto,

a man who had his face printed on the ghetto postage stamps,

was told that 25,000 ghetto residents were to be deported.

And there was no doubting what that meant.

The end goal must be to completely

cauterise out this pestilential place.

We end in the whole of Eastern Europe with more than 1,100 ghettos.

So they set up these ghettos to control the Jews

and in General Government alone, it's some 350.

On September 5th, Chaim Rumkowski spoke from a platform in Firefighters Square.

A grievous blow has befallen the ghetto.

They are asking for the best that it possesses -

the children and the old people.

In my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg.

Brothers and sisters,

give them over to me.

Fathers and mothers,

give me your children.

It's clear that everybody had a line in a different place.

We don't know where Rumkowski's was really.

But he also, I believe, must've had it somewhere.

On September 11th, Von Paulus, commanding the 6th Army,

was at the Werwolf in Vinnytsia to brief Hitler on his plan to take Stalingrad.

He held an advantage of three to one in man power,

six to one in armour,

and the Luftwaffe controlled the skies over the city.

The attack went in at 06:30 on September 14th.

By noon Axis troops had reached the city centre.

On October 14, Von Paulus flung three infantry divisions and 300 tanks

towards the factory district.

On October 21st, Field Marshall Keitel said...

The Fuhrer is convinced the Russians are collapsing.

On November 8th, commemorating his failed Beer Hall coup,

and speaking of Stalingrad, Hitler said...

That is what I wanted to capture and, do you know, we got it!

There are only a few more tiny pockets left.

On the 11th, the German offensive reached the banks of the Volga

on a 500m front.

Ice was drifting in the river

and the Soviet Reserve,

of which the German's were unaware,

was over one million men,

with 979 tanks,

14,000 guns

and 1,350 aircraft.

On the morning of November 19th,

ever after known in Russia as Artillery Day,

it is reported that the earth shook

almost 50km from the bombardment

as 13,541 Soviet guns

and Russian Marshall music played by a 90-strong divisional band

opened Operation Uranus,

in thick fog and driving snow.

Within 24 hours, 65,000 of the targeted Romanian troops were prisoners.

Three days later,

Vatutin's South-West Army Group

and the left flank of Yeremenko's Stalingrad army group

joined near Kalach.

The 6th Army, the largest formation in the Wehrmacht,

was trapped in the Stalingrad Kessel - 55km by 30.

Of Paulus's 275,000 men,

91,000 would survive into captivity.

Less than 10,000 would return to Germany after the war.

Van Paulus sought permission to break out.

But Hitler, having returned to the Wolfsschanze at Rastenburg, refused.

We must not give it up now under any circumstances.

We won't win it back again.

Arthur Schmidt, Chief of Staff of the 6th Army,

offered a feeble assurance to his beleaguered troops...

Just hold out.

The Fuhrer will get us out.

On the 12th, Operation Winter Storm,

the German attempt to relieve the 6th

by breaking into the Kessel,

was launched at Kotelnikovo,

southwest of Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, northwest of the city,

the whole of the Italian 8th Army,

along with most of the Romanian 3rd,

had been wiped out.

Romanians were fighting for their territories

but the Italians, they were fighting for nothing.

They were brought here in order to help Germans conquer this country.

From their paradise in Italy they were brought to the snows of Siberia.

It was a kind of tragedy for them.

We have to understand Soviet success at Stalingrad in context.

Parallel to Operation Uranus you have something called Operation Mars.

So, this is Army Group Centre.

They are being attacked by a huge Soviet force

directed by Zhukov.

And ultimately this fighting around Rzhev,

between a 15-month battle that begins in the winter of '41, '42,

that goes right through into 1943,

when ultimately the Germans themselves choose to withdraw from Rzhev,

but the total Soviet losses in the fighting around Rzhev come to 1.3 million.

It costs more Soviet soldiers at Rzhev

than the whole six month campaign at Stalingrad.

In December,

the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,

rose in the House of Commons,

and told of mass executions of Jews by Nazis.

From all the occupied countries,

Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe.

None of those taken away

are ever heard of again.

The British Parliament observed a moment's silence.

Joseph Goebbels thought their action extraordinary.

"It was," he thought...

Astonishing how much the English people,

above all, the upper classes,

have become Jewified.

At the end of the year,

Hitler received a report from Himmler.

Between the 1st September and 1st December,

387,370 gang members had been killed in Ukraine.

A total that included 363,211 Jews.

Soviet prisoners of war were not being killed.

They were simply being left to die.

Fenced into open fields

with no shelter,

no food, medicine or clothing,

they were allowed to starve.

Which, in their scores of thousands, they did.

At the start of the new year, 1943,

the Germans were driven from Mozdok in the Caucasus.

Melnik followed a day later

and what had been a rapid advance

was threatening to turn in to a pell-mell retreat.

On January 8th, General Rokossovsky, commanding the Don Front,

sent Von Paulus, trapped in Stalingrad, an ultimatum.

Ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man and the last bullet,

Von Paulus rejected the ultimatum.

Request immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops.

It surprised Zhukov when Stalin chose Rokossovsky rather than Yeryomenko

to command the final assault - Operation Ring.

And he frowned. Stalin asked him...

Why don't you say anything?

Yeryomenko would be very hurt.

It is no time for feeling hurt. We're not schoolgirls, we're Bolsheviks.

Rokkosovsky was intelligent and well educated.

And I think his methods of war...were more effective.

Rokkosovsky gave the order for the assault.

And at dawn on 10th January 1943,

Operation Ring was launched

to overwhelm Stalingrad.

Beginning with a bombardment by 7,000 guns.

Then 280,000 troops and 250 tanks made a final push.

Supplies all gone.

What orders should I give to troops that have no more ammunition?

On January 30th, Goebbels, in a broadcast, said...

A thousand years hence, every German will speak with awe of Stalingrad.

And remember that it was there that Germany put the seal on her victory.

Lavrentiy Beria viewed the affair less charitably.

A confrontation between two rams.

It was a vanity battle.

Stalingrad, while a great victory for the Red Army,

still has the German armies deep inside the Soviet Union.

And the idea that the Red Army is one day going to push them all the way back to Berlin

still seems like a long, distant prospect.

Hitler promoted Von Paulus to Field Marshall,

because no German field marshall had ever surrendered his command.

The baton was dropped to him by air.

The next day the Field Marshall surrendered his command.

Hitler called it...

An about face on the threshold of immortality.

Von Paulus took a different view...

I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal.

I think when Stalingrad becomes a turning point is,

a lot of the things we know from deconstructing German war economy,

the German army, how they understand and how they operate.

To what extent did anyone know that at the time?

I think there was a reason why German general staff officers,

who were in command of a lot of information, should have know that.

After Stalingrad, the Axis still controlled more than 2,200,000 square kilometres of the USSR

and ruled over the 65 million people who lived there.

It would take a further 18 months before the invaders were expelled,

which not everyone hoped for.

After Stalingrad,

Archbishop Polikarp of the revived Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine,

urged Ukrainians to go and work in Germany

and so help to defeat the Communist Muscovite Jewish State.

Soviet figures show the effect on partisan numbers of victory at Stalingrad.

In Belarus in February in 1943,

there were 65,000 partisans.

By June - 100,000.

And by the end of the year - 360,000.

Similar increases were recorded in the Baltic States and Ukraine.

Operation Winterzauber took place in 1943 in February.

The pretext was to fight against the bandits, as it was called in German documents.

Against partisans.

The aim was to create a 30-40 kilometres of clear surface

without any trees, without anything and without villages.

If you look at some of the German maps,

they even have whole areas which are shaded in as partisan.

There's no real German occupation presence,

and they're fully aware that these areas

are essentially enemy controlled.

Perhaps in the hope that sight-seers would become soldier-farmers

the firm of Baedeker was asked to produce a tourist guide to the General Government.

The guide claimed anything positive as German influenced.

Noting, for example, the...

..typically German square in Zolkiew.

Construction of Zolkiew - today's Zhovkva -

began in 1597.

The first Rabbi was appointed in 1626.

In 1635 the Jews received the right to build a brick synagogue.

Its construction was completed in 1690.

There were still people, older generation,

who resided in small towns in shtetls.

They were more or less religious,

they spoke, at least in the family, Yiddish.

And their culture was completely exterminated.

There are still local cemeteries but of course, they're in very poor condition.

And some magnificent synagogues...

..magnificent, but partly destroyed.

Destroyed, but still standing.

A rebuke to those who would deny.

Crumbling architecture that asks, "Where are the Jews?"

On January 12th 1943, the Red Army launched Operation Iskra -

Spark - in the Leningrad sector.

With the combined efforts of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts

defeat the enemy in the area of Lipka, Gaitolovo,

Dubrovka, Shlisselburg and thus penetrate the Leningrad blockade.

It speaks to something of the Soviet proficiency

now to muster all of this remarkable industrial capacity,

into very large Soviet fronts.

But they now have the operational ability

to attack defended positions with major German resources,

and crush them.

On the 13th the Voronezh-Kharkov offensive got under way.

And Hitler issued his Total War decree.

Fuhrer decreed to bring another 500,000 men in to the German Armed Forces

by replacing male factory workers with women.

Accordingly, all women between 17 and 45 years old are required

to register for employment.

It was the month when Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca

and President Roosevelt,

quite possibly off the cuff,

announced that the war could be ended only by "unconditional German surrender."

On February 7th Hitler explained Stalingrad to the Gauleiters.

What you are witnessing is a catastrophe of unheard of magnitude.

The Russians broke through.

The Romanians gave up.

The Hungarians didn't even put up a fight.

If the German people fails

then it does not deserve that we fight for its future.

The next day the Germans were driven from Kursk.

The war, which was wagered by the Germans against the Czar was a war of a completely new type.

It was a deadly war.

During this time, the Soviet people, they understood what they were facing.

And they understood what kind of war they were waging.

On February 15th the Demyansk Offensive launched.

Kharkov was recaptured.

Vlostov, which had twice changed hands,

would not change hands again.

But Kharkov did, when von Manstein,

surprising the Soviet commanders, counter-attacked,

pushing the Soviets back to the line of the Donetsk.

Hitler was at von Manstein's headquarters at Zaporozh'ye,

within sound of Soviet artillery.

He told his troops...

A thousand kilometres from the Reich's frontiers

Germany's present and future is in the balance.

It was the day that Joseph Goebbels,

having been driven to the Berlin Sportpalast in his bulletproof Mercedes,

a Christmas present from Hitler,

delivered his often quoted Total War speech

to a hand-picked audience of thousands.

Broadcast worldwide.

Goebbels was talking about much more than material production, than industry.

He was talking about the mindset of the German people as a whole.

It was a relatively advanced stage of the war, let's keep in mind.

He was talking about the ideal of "We're all in this together."

"Our fates lie together. Whatever happens now, we're in this together and we have to see it through."

"Whatever that means."

"Whether it means defeat, or victory, we have to see it through."

So it was the Russians fault for keeping military secrets,

so typically Bolshevik.

But they were not the worst.

Jewry is a contagious infection.

Enemy nations may raise hypocritical protests against our measures against Jewry

and cry crocodile tears,

but that will not stop us from doing that which is necessary.

And this idea of the Volksgemeinschaft, the national or ethnic community,

came in to play here.

I think that's what the Volksgemeinschaft had become by this point in the war.

A community of fate - that we're all in this together,

we all have done things we shouldn't have done.

If we don't win this war,

Lord help us.

Their only answer was to ratchet up the violence.

To radicalise things.

"OK." They were convinced, "We're not actually being radical enough."

"If we're now losing the war...the only explanation for that is that we're not being ruthless enough."

"That we're not being tough enough."

To keep Hitler's promise,

deportations from the Biaystok Ghetto started.

And the last Jews in Berlin were shipped out.

Greek Jews began arriving in Auschwitz in March.

The ghetto in Krakow was liquidated

and Jews were transported from Luxembourg,

from Vienna and from Prague.

When German police entered the Warsaw ghetto

to begin its liquidation,

shots were fired and they withdrew.

At two in the morning of April 19th,

troops began to encircle the ghetto.

At six, 2,000 SS troops entered to be met by meagrely armed groups

bent on resistance.

It's really an uprising of young people and of single people.

And we often say that the uprising could only happen

because those people were not responsible for anyone anymore.

The bulk of the ghetto population sheltered in the concealed world they had created.

In cellars, sewers, ceilings,

and crawl spaces.

We want to live to see light triumph over darkness.

But will we make it?

Is it not too late?

And they're fully aware of how hard this is, but

this is really the last try.

The last effort to choose a way of dying, as well.

Of what is considered to be a...

..a different type of death.

In no way better, and that's really important,

because there is no better death.

And they don't consider it like that.

By five in the afternoon,

with 200 killed or wounded,

the Germans had withdrawn.

An ultimatum on the 20th was greeted by further resistance.

And on the 21st, tanks and artillery joined the assault.

Mordecai Anielewicz, leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization, wrote to a friend...

Perhaps we shall meet again.

The main thing is, the dream of my life is come true.

I have lived to see a Jewish defence in the ghetto,

in all its greatness and glory.

Days go by. It is now the tenth day of the action.

The ghetto is burned down.

One way or another,

lies death.

The uprising was systematically extinguished

by troops under a committed Nazi - SS Gruppenfuhrer Jurgen Stroop -

who reported that...

By blowing up the Warsaw synagogue

the Warsaw Ghetto is no longer in existence.

He was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.

From the ruins of the ghetto

the Germans recovered 30 million bricks

and 6,000 tonnes of scrap metal.

They murdered by Nazis, but they were also denounced by Poles.

They're trying to survive

and, um...the number of them, we can't really say how many because this is so unclear.

We can't even estimate closely to how many people actually survive in Poland.

What is very important to say is that those who survive, survive with the help of Poles.

They are denounced by the Poles, but they're also helped by others.

When Jews hoisted both the Polish and Zionist flags during the ghetto uprising

they were mocked in the local press.

The newspaper, Young River, editorialised...

Of course, we do not condone mass murders.

But we consider the "chosen people" have linked their sympathies with the Red Flag

from the Volga, rather than with the Polish white eagle.

We know about the uncountable losses

that the Polish nation has suffered because of the Jews.

It is for this reason that their fate,

terrible as it is,

from a purely humane point of view,

appears to be just.

In similar vein,

General Marjan Kukiel, Minister of Security of the Polish Government in Exile, asked...

Whether there is any truth in the claim

that the opposition of the Jews was led by Soviet officers

parachuted from the air,

and whether arms were supplied in the same way.

The clearest answer is in Gruppenfuhrer Stroop's report.

As for the spoils of the uprising,

these consisted of seven Polish rifles,

one Russian rifle,

one German rifle,

59 revolvers of various calibres,

a few hundred hand grenades,

which included home-made grenades,

a few hundred Molotov cocktails

and a quantity of explosives.

In 1952 at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison,

Jurgen Stroop was hanged for war crimes.

As the ghetto was being destroyed,

Joseph Goebbels was writing of his most recent conversation with Hitler.

Given the state of the war, what he wrote seems remarkable.

The Fuhrer expresses his unshakable conviction that the Reich will one day rule all of Europe.

We will have to survive a great many conflicts,

but they will doubtless lead to the most glorious triumphs.

And, from then on, the road to world domination

is practically spread out before us.

That was in May.

In July, Radio Orange - the Dutch Resistance radio station

broadcasting out of London -

asked the question which has been attached like a shadow to the Holocaust ever since.

Just how does it help the German war effort

to herd together thousands of defenceless Jewish Poles

and do away with them in gas chambers?

It was no coincidence that they selected the Jews as their main foe.

As their main enemy

because who had benefited most from modernity, from the enlightenment,

from political development

and social development in the mid-late 19th century,

and early 20th century?

The Jews.

In June, the ghetto in Lviv was liquidated.

A camp orchestra had been established

which the guards assembled for a final concert -

shooting the musicians as they played.

Also in June, Franz Burat, Regional Commissioner in Brest, wrote...

The presence of the Gypsies sent to me last year form Bialystok

has a devastating effect.

I consider it urgently necessary that these idlers be treated as the Jews are.

In the month that followed,

the ghettos in Minsk, Lida and Vilna were destroyed.

Before the end of the year,

the ghetto in Riga had been eliminated,

and Jews from Italy and southern France

had reached the death camps,

though transport priorities were creating difficulties.

Our master plan for Jewish resettlement

is severely jeopardised.

In 1943 the fate of thousands of Polish officers was revealed.

The mass grave at Katyn was found in February.

But the conduct of the Nazi regime

made it easy for Stalin to deflect the blame for Katyn.

And it was 1990 before Russia admitted responsibility.

And 20 more years

before confirming that the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers

had been ordered by Josef Stalin.

When the Germans regained Kharkov

they had established an untidy front line,

at the centre of which bulged a salient,

250km north-south and 160 deep,

centred on the city of Kursk.

Hitler ordered it eliminated.

The code name for the action, to pinch out the salient, was Citadel,

and the action at Kursk

would be by any measure

the greatest land battle ever fought.

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