The Allies have landed in Italy which is occupied by the Germans.
In their advance towards the North where Mussolini is still in control
the American, British, Canadian and French armies
are held up by the solid German defense belt
along the Gustav line, in the area of Monte Cassino.
Perched at the top of the mountain, is historical St. Benedict's monastery.
The Allies think that the German have turned this 1,400 years old monument
into a look-out post.
More than 200 Allied bombers
will drop over 500 tons of bombs on the monastery.
In World War 2, nothing is sacred. It turns everything into an inferno.
RETREAT AND SURRENDER
The Allies launch their attack but the German paratroopers push them back.
The German shocked troops are now firmly in trench in the ruined monastery.
Nothing was achieved by the bombing.
These scenes were filmed by the American director, John Huston,
who was sent to this front in Italy.
He would later say, "It is a massacre in the freezing cold."
And yet, Churchill had called Italy the soft under-belly of Europe.
By moving in from the south of Italy, Churchill's aim is to take Berlin
before the Russians could.
The Red Army continues to advance steadily from the east. Kiev is liberated.
The German Wehrmacht armies are pulled out of the Ukraine
obeying Hitler's order to systematically destroy everything.
In Italy several months later,
the Wehrmacht is still holding the Gustav line and Monte Cassino.
The French general, Juin, proposes to surprise the Germans
who have left those slopes, thought to be too steep, undefended.
The rugged soldiers of North Africa and Polish regiments, however,
managed to climb up the mountain and put the Allies on the road to Rome.
As the Wehrmacht retreats,
it once again leaves a path of destruction behind it.
But together with Mussolini, and his remaining fascists,
the Germans will retain control of Northern Italy and its industries.
They are the target of attacks by the Italian partisans
and they retaliate with indiscriminate violence.
At the same time, in Southern England,
the Allied war machine assembled for the Normandy landing, is gearing up.
On the evening of June 5, the paratroopers get ready to leave.
Deck out in their Indian style war paint and haircut to make themselves feel brave.
The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, general Eisenhower, comes to tell them,
"You are about to embark upon the great crusade."
The plan is to land on 5 beaches
along on 100 km stretch of the Normandy coast.
From the Seine to the Cotentin Peninsula,
where the German Atlantic war defenses are the weakest.
At midnight, on June 5, British Gliders and Dakotas,
full of British, American and Canadian paratroopers,
slip silently inland over the Normandy region.
The paratroopers are the first to set foot on occupied France.
Their mission, to secure the flanks of the landing zone.
The Allied fleet is on its way. It is the biggest armada ever assembled.
Nearly 5,000 landing ships and assault craft.
Yet it is not detected by the Germans
who are prevented from carrying out reconnaissance flight by the stormy weather.
Bombardment and shelling from the battleships, pound the coast
but completely miss their targets on the beach code named Omaha.
The German bunkers remain intact.
The first of shortwave of American troops
is getting ready to tackle the German defenses on Omaha beach.
Among them, is American writer, Ernest Hemingway
who is a war correspondent.
He writes: As we moved in towards land in the grey early light,
the coffin-shaped steal boats took solid green sheets of water,
that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops, packed shoulder to shoulder.
In the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, lonely companionship of men going to a battle.
Another war reporter, the photographer Robert Capa
is also caught up in this inferno.
He said, "It was the ugliest beach in the whole world.
Exhausted from the water and the fear, we lay flat on a small strip of wet sand."
Over 2,000 American soldiers will lose their lives here.
As the tide rose in, the soldiers are trapped
between the sea and gun fire from German blockhouses.
Eisenhower had prepared a communique in case the landing failed.
In a hand-written letter he said,
"My decision to attack at this place was based on the best information available.
If there is any blame or fault attached to the attempt, it is mine alone."
But a small group succeeded in climbing up under enemy fire
and neutralized the German cannons
with the help of Royal Air Force's fighter bombers.
In the meantime, the Canadian troops have landed on Juno Beach.
There is indeed very little resistances, only a few shots
that do not deter the British on the next beach along.
The few German defenders, who survived the bombardments, finally surrender.
British and French commandos land on the fifth beach.
The Allies plan to land 326,000 men.
In just one week, a daily average of 10,000 men,
3,200 vehicles and 15,000 tons of supplies are ferried across.
In order to accomplish this, a harbor is needed.
But the Ally has decided to stay away from the big ports
which were too well-defended, and to land on the beaches of Normandy.
Instead, they brought their harbors with them.
Gigantic construction kits called "Mulberries".
146 concrete caissons, 61 m long and weighing 6,000 ton
were assembled to create breakwaters and piers
by the Liberty ships, as they were called, could unload their cargo.
American shipyards have turned out one of these ships everyday.
In less than 3 years, the war industry has turned United States into a super power.
The country has mobilized more than 11,000,000 men.
It armies are now in France, Italy, North Africa, and Asia.
The power of the United States is as such,
that just few days after the Normandy landing in Europe,
it is able to assemble a second fleet on the other side of the world, in the Pacific.
In order to attack the Mariana Islands, which are under Japanese control.
Having taken the island of Tarawa a year before,
the Americans now want to use the island of Saipan
as a base for bombers taking off for Japan.
Some 127,500 troops, two-third of them marines, prepare for combat.
15 aircraft carriers and 900,000 planes will crush the Japanese Air Force
in an air battle will come to be known as "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".
A fatal blow is also dealt to the Japanese Imperial Navy.
After which, Japan's defenses in Saipan are battered.
But when the marine land in this tiny island, which is only 9 km wide,
one of the bloodiest battles of the war begins.
Over 15,000 Americans and at least 27,000 Japanese will be killed or wounded.
A month and a half after D-Day, the fighting is still fierce.
The Ally is advancing, but Eisenhower is worried.
Hitler is determine to contain the Allies in Normandy
in order to protect the launch ramps for his weapon of terror, the V-1
which he fires at London from the Northern France.
It is the first cruise missile ever to be used.
The V-1 is a flying bomb, with a pulse jet engine and a 1 ton explosive warhead.
This small, swift, pilotless aircraft is difficult to intercept and shoot down.
The British calls them "Buzz bombs" because they made motorcycle noise
that alert Londoners to their arrival.
By the time the V-1 reached the capital city, their fuel is used up and their engines die out.
Londoners never know where they would fall.
Nearly 20,000 of these missiles will launch against England and continental Europe.
Killing 11,000 people.
But even under these conditions,
the British retain their pluck and their composure.
If the V-1 fails to demoralized the British,
their purposes are also to boost the moral of the Germans.
For years, they have had to live in underground shelters.
American bombers by day and British bombers by night
demolish Germany's cities, under a carpet of bombs.
American planes drop 1,400,000 of bombs.
Allied bombing led to around 600,000 casualties. 7,000,000 homeless.
Such is the outcome of the strategic bombing campaign
whose purpose is to destroy the industrial and human potential
behind Germany's war time effort.
In the Fuhrer's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair,
beneath the obligatory smile, many of Hitler's officers are deeply troubled.
Especially those from the old Prussian military aristocracy.
In the past year, many of them have joined a plot to get rid of Hitler.
One of these officers, colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg,
places a bomb under Hitler's desk during a conference in the Wolf's Lair.
It is this heavy table, that saves Hitler.
It deflects the blast, that would eventually killed 4 men and wound 20 others.
Of the failed assassination attempt, Hitler says,
"Having now escape death, I am more than ever convinced
that the great cause that I served will be brought through its present perils
and that everything can be brought to a good end.
Hitler is only slightly injured, bruised arms, his eardrums punched, his hair singe.
But the incident deeply traumatizes him, affecting his mental state.
Intensify his cruelty and his paranoia.
He unleashes his revenge.
The main conspirators are tried. 5,000 suspects were arrested.
200 of them are executed and their families deported.
He has no second thought about executing his marshals.
Because he agreed to replace Hitler as the head of the army,
Rommel is forced to commit suicide.
Hitler hypocritically gives him a state funeral.
Henceforth, power is in the hand of the SS. Nothing can save Germany now.
The Russian continues to advance in the East.
"The Great Patriotic War", as they call it, has taken a new turn for them.
The Red Army is suddenly able to strike with a force that amazes all side.
An endless supply of men.
Even after the extremely costly battle in Moscow and Stalingrad.
The offensive in Belarus in the summer of 1944
is one of the biggest battles in the World War 2.
The Eastern front is 1,000 km wide.
But the Russian is able to push forward 100 km within 2 months
destroying 17 German army divisions.
The Wehrmacht retreats toward East Prussia, leaving behind many thousands of casualties.
Some 50,000 captured German will be paraded through Moscow.
In the West, the Allies are gaining the upper hand.
For the Wehrmacht, the situation is deteriorating.
50,000 German soldiers are taken prisoner in the Falaise pockets,
or as the Germans call it, "Stalingrad in Normandy".
It is a much needed victory for the Allies.
The Allies tighten their noose with a new landing in Provence.
The reassembled French Army place a major part in this landing.
Africans, Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, French colonials
and young Frenchmen, who apart of the Free French Forces
aid the liberation in Provence.
It takes them just 2 weeks to liberate the entire coast, up to Marseille.
The resistance movement comes out from the shadows
and participates in the liberation, as it will do in Paris.
Paris rises up. Barricades are erected across the city.
Most of the German army has retreated to the East,
but 25,000 men remain behind, under the command of general von Choltitz
who is received order from Hitler to destroy the city.
Violent fighting breaks out.
On the fourth day of the insurrection, a French unit,
general Lecrec's 2nd Armored Division, arrives from Normandy.
And the capital is finally liberated the next morning.
The Germans surrendered and General von Choltitz is taken
to Leclerc's headquarters in Montparnasse train station.
Hitler had just called and asked his famous question,
"Brennt Paris?" "Is Paris burning?"
Choltitz prefer to turn himself in.
This highly disciplined officer from the airborne regiment,
disobeyed Hitler's order to fight to the last man.
Then de Gaulle arrived with eloquent words for history.
Paris has been offended, Paris has been shattered,
Paris has been tortured,
but Paris has been liberated!
While France and Belgium are progressively liberated,
and the Red Army waits outside Warsaw,
on the other side of the globe, the American general MacArthur,
is returning to the Philippines.
After escaping from the Japanese siege 3 years earlier, MacArthur said, "I shall return."
His return is sumptuously staged by his public relation staff,
completed with his legendary Popeye corn cob pipe.
He proclaims, "People of the Philippines, I have returned.
The hour of your redemption is here."
But it will take 4 months to liberate the Philippines.
Manila, the capital, will be the most devastated city of the war, after Warsaw.
The savagery and the cruelty of these combats can be explained
by the American troops discovery of the mass execution of hostages.
And the camps of the surviving US prisoners from 1941.
Everywhere in the Pacific, the war is marked by this type of savagery.
Everywhere the same confusion of marines trapped on the beaches of this inferno island.
The same suicidal obstinacy of the Japanese.
For them, surrendering is the ultimate disgrace.
The Americans are no longer taking any risk.
They follow instinct to shoot first, and ask no questions.
Along with imperialism, another underlying course of the World War 2 is racism.
Racism gave birth to Auschwitz, the killing factory.
Liberated by the Russian offensive of January 1945.
Hatred of the Jews, exterminating them, was, as Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf".
His mission.
He sends 1,000,000 Jews to their death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
6,000,000 died of starvation, brutal treatment,
was shot and burnt in the crematoriums in Majdanek, in Sobibor, in Treblinka.
The Russian find the few hundreds survivors, tattooed for life.
They also intercept the train full of deportees.
The Nazi continues to give priority to these death trains
even over the munitions convoys.
They make their trips to the approximately 100 concentration camps
that are still operating at the beginning of 1945.
Millions of Jews, political activists, opponents,
Christians, homosexuals, Gypsies have been deported to these camps.
And 5,000,000 of them have died of hunger, abuse and exhaustion.
Like the slaves in the Dora tunnel, the underground factory
where the Nazi are assembling another secret weapon, the V-2.
The first ballistic missile with a 1 ton explosive warhead
that has a range of 300 km.
From the German coast, 1,500 of them are launched against London.
And 2,000 against Belgium, adding to the devastation and civilian casualties.
The Allies greatest fear is that it might one day, carry a nuclear charge.
The eminent scientist Einstein himself had warned Roosevelt
about the urgency of getting ahead of the Germans.
Huge funds were provided and a team of scientists
secretly went to work on the first atomic bomb.
A bomb that used a metal, uranium that makes it possible to split the atom.
It is expected to have the power of 20,000 tons of TNT.
More than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date.
In addition to lethal radioactive fall out.
The designated target was Berlin.
But this first atomic bomb will not be finished in time for Germany.
In Germany, are there any factories that still standing
that will be capable producing such a weapon?
Even synthetic fuel has becoming scarce.
The carpet bombing, carried day and night by the Allies,
continues to devastate German cities.
The Allied bombers will destroy Dresden.
An important center of communications for the German armies in the Eastern Front.
And one of the biggest industrial cities in the Reich.
Until now, it remains untouched.
Dresden, known as the "Florence of the Elba" was one of Europe finest medieval cities.
Phosphorus bombs create a fire typhoon
in which an estimated 25,000 people are burned to death.
The city continues to blaze for 7 days.
Churchill had said, "We will make the German people taste
and gulp a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind.
Their cities are dying and now Goebbels and the Nazi
want to send all Germans from 16 to 60 years old
to their death as part of the "Volkssturm", the People's Militia.
They shout, "I vow to fight courageously for my homeland.
Swear to die for Adolf Hitler."
Hitler said, "There must be not be any weakening of Germany."
His generals, those who survived the massive purge
following the July 20 assassination attempt, no longer dare to oppose the Fuhrer.
They obeyed his order which seemed absurd,
to launch an attack in the West, in the Ardennes during winter.
They would have preferred to devote all their efforts to fighting the Russians.
Hitler was hoping to recapture the Port of Antwerp,
in order to stop the Allies from unloading their equipment,
which will enable them to move into Germany.
But the German offensive in the Ardennes failed,
due to the extraordinary defense, put up by the American paratroopers in Bastoigne
to the intervention of general Patton's tanks
and to the overwhelming power of the Allied Air Forces.
As for the Russians in the east, they are crossing the German border.
Millions of Germans flee in panic from the approaching Soviet troops.
Especially the German women,
who fear the mass rapes that are being perpetrated.
There is no dissension between the Western Allies and the Russians.
Moreover, in Churchill's mind, the problem with Germany is practically over.
He is now thinking about how to divide up the occupation zones.
He and Roosevelt met in the Crimea for an important conference with Stalin.
Concern about the increasing losses being suffered in the Pacific
Roosevelt has come to press Stalin to join the war effort against Japan.
Stalin, has made Roosevelt come all the way out to Crimea
which take a toll on the ailing president's health.
He is drawn and emaciated.
He barely has the strength to hold out his arm.
Roosevelt smokes cigarette after cigarette. He is very frail.
He will pass away a few weeks later.
His main priority is Japan.
At the same time he did not have the strength to oppose Stalin
who liberates but also occupies, the Baltic States,
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Silesia and Prussia.
And there is no way to make him leave.
The only one tries to negotiate is Churchill.
Finally, he gets Stalin to promise to hold free elections in Poland.
A promise that would never be kept.
And to give up Greece which will led to civil war.
The Greek communist partisans will rise up and Stalin will let them be massacred.
One of the goals of this conference
is the finding of the organization of the United Nations
which would soon be convened in San Francisco.
The UN mission will be to seek peaceful settlement for all disputes
and to protect human rights.
This picture heralds the beginning of the Cold War.
The war in the Pacific continues.
The marines raise the American flag on top of mount Suribachi.
The volcano that dominates the island of Iwo Jima.
The battle took the life of 7,000 Americans and 20,000 Japanese.
It is now possible to the Boeing B29 Super Fortress Bombers
taking off from Iwo Jima and other islands on the Pacific to reach Japan.
Humans have invented something even more vicious
than the phosphorus used in Dresden, Napalm.
Gasoline mixed with incendiary jelly.
1,700 tons dropped on little houses, made of wood and paper.
The Japanese are victim of their fanatical military leaders,
who plunged them to this inferno and who wanted to pursue the war
in spite of the 80,000 victims and 1,000,000 homeless from this air raid over Tokyo.
7 years earlier, Hitler was at his chalet in Bavarian Alps,
along with his dog Blondi, of whom he seems to be fond of more than any human being.
He predicted, "The next war would not end like the First World War.
There will be no November 11. It would be either victory or annihilation.
Perhaps this fatigueness feeling of "All or nothing"
is what kept him from marrying his mistress, Eva Braun.
He said, "I'm already married to Germany."
His Germany is on the verge of collapse.
The Soviet forces have surrounded Berlin.
But Hitler refuses to admit defeat.
He said, "It would be the opposite of Stalingrad."
But his remaining soldiers overwhelmed by the Russian rocket launchers
surrender, one after the other.
Beneath the ruin of the Chancellery, in his underground bunker,
Hitler runs and raves and maneuvers his imaginary armies.
The last of his faithful followers take advantage of a lull,
to come out and celebrate his birthday on April 20.
Hitler is 56 years old.
He consoles these Hitler youth who have been chosen because their parents
have just been killed in the bombing of Dresden.
As the Americans advance westward, they captured thousands of this Hitler Jugend.
Sent to the front to replace the soldiers who've been killed.
The Americans can hardly believe their own eyes.
These boy soldiers are afraid of nothing.
They've undergone years of brainwashing.
Hatred and racism have been indoctrinated into them.
The old men in the Volkstrum who are also captured,
have no words of comfort for them.
The Americans met up with the Russians on the Elbe, near the Torgau bridge.
East meets West, the final act of the alliance.
The atmosphere is friendly, for the cameras.
Stalin portrait is superbly displayed.
But Roosevelt's is draped in black mourning crepe. He died on April 12.
One of America's most renown generals, George S. Patton is furious.
He thinks the Americans should have entered Berlin before the Russians.
Patton, the man with a pistol in his belt
who drove his tanks through Africa through Normandy, through the Ardennes.
He says to Eisenhower, "The 9th Army is 60 miles from Berlin.
Not to go all the way there is a historic error whose consequences will be very grave."
Eisenhower says nothing.
The only thing that matters to him is to eliminate Hitler and the Nazis.
A few days earlier, Patton had called him out urgently,
wanting him to witness the horrors of the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
Eisenhower had the inhabitants of the nearby city of Weimar
taken there in trucks, so that they could no longer say that they did not know.
In order to show them that such things did exist.
So that they will be able to testify in Germany.
To say that they had seen the tattoos collected from the corpses of the deported.
The lamp shades, made of human skin.
The shrunken-head paper weights.
Then, in accordance to the Yalta Agreements,
Eisenhower withdrew his troops from Buchenwald
which was located in the Soviet zone.
Stalin immediately put the camp back to work.
It will become part of his prison system
where people suspected for hostility towards his regime, will be imprisoned.
In Berlin, the Russians are 300 m away from the Fuhrer's bunker.
Hitler kills his pet dog Blondi, after marrying Eva Braun.
She swallows a cyanide pill. Hitler shoots himself in the head.
Goebbels and his wife also committed suicide.
Before that, Magda Goebbels had poisoned her 6 children.
In her last letter she wrote:
That we can end our lives together with the Fuhrer
is a blessing for which we never dared to hope.
The Soviet would raise their Red Flag over the Reichstag.
The main Nazi leaders will be captured.
Like Goering, one of Hitler's most diabolical accomplices.
In Italy, Mussolini is executed by partisans and his body is lynched by the crowd.
Everywhere in Europe, a wave of revenge is unleashed
against those who in one way or another, collaborated with the devils.
In Berlin, Anna Pavlovna directs traffic at the Brandenburg gate.
To defeat Nazi Germany, Russia paid a very high price.
20,000,000 civilians and soldiers were killed.
Nearly 15 percents of the population of the Soviet Union.
Soviet general Georgy Zhukov
has himself filmed in the ruin of Grand Chancellery of the Reich.
The very symbol of Hitler's delusion of grandeur.
And finally, in Hitler's office,
where the famous globe that Charlie Chaplin parodied in his movie, "The Great Dictator".
Hitler had ordered the SS to burn his body.
The Soviet will get rid of the bone in order to prevent any kind of hero worship.
Wehrmacht commander, Marshall Keitel,
signs the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany
in front of general Zhukov, his mortal enemy
and the Allied officers, the British Air Marshall, Tedder,
the American general, Spaatz and the French general, de Lattre de Tassigny.
Keitel will later be tried at the International Nuremberg Trials.
He will be hanged, like many other war criminals.
To stop the Nazis, Germany had to be annihilated.
Will it also be necessary to annihilate Japan?
In the Pacific, the suicide pilots, that the Japanese call "Kamikaze",
nose dive their planes into the American fleet.
Touching on to their power, the military chiefs in Tokyo
sacrifice what remains of their country's youth and their aircraft,
in order to prevent the Americans from landing in Japan.
In the end, the United States decide against an invasion in Japan
which it thinks will cost the country a million lives.
Instead, it detonates the atomic inferno.
The first 2 nuclear bombs ever exploded kill in 1 second, over 100,000 people.
And finally enable the emperor, Hirohito to seek peace without losing face.
The atom bomb had to be dropped before these Japanese soldiers
and officers would finally consent to perform this act.
Which is entirely contrary to the "Bushido", their code of honor.
A few Japanese soldiers take to the jungle.
Some never even learned their country's defeat.
The last of these will come out from hiding and turned themselves in, in 1975.
In Tokyo Bay onboard the USS Missouri, the representatives of the Allied Nations
from China, Great Britain, Russia and France are filled with emotions.
They have the privileges of attending the signing of the Japanese surrender
that marks the end of World War 2.
General MacArthur represents the victors.
The Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a top hat,
walks with a limp, having lost a leg in a bomb attack in China,
was signing on behalf of the Emperor, with whom he had met the day before.
He had told him, "We must make off this day of mourning,
the first day of the birth of the new Japan.
In that way, we can go to the ceremony with our heads held high."
MacArthur concludes with these historic words:
It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind
that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge after the blood
and carnage of the past.
This war took the lives of some 50,000,000 people.
Most of them innocent civilians in an outbreak of pure violence.
Thousands of victims suffered from many years afterwards
from the appalling after effects of nuclear radiation.
Or from the terrible lost of parents or children
exterminated in the Nazi's camps.
This series is dedicated to the victims of all forms of totalitarianism.
Let us be grateful for the cameramen.
The unarmed heroes who recorded these combats for posterity.
And to all, who filmed the war in all of its atrocity and its familiarity.
They introduce us to Rose, who on the last day of the apocalypse,
wrote "The End" on a bomb.