After the Germans defeated France, their soldiers were sent to Paris
for rest and recreation.
One of the soldiers on leave is 19 year old, leftenant August von Kageneck.
His unit did not take part in the French campaign.
He is visiting the city for the first time.
He writes: We are given very strict instructions.
We must be impeccably dressed and avoid all contact with the population.
We're inventing mass tourism.
The French refuse to look at them.
Some, have started to fight back.
These two men who sabotage telephone lines will be the first to be executed by the German.
Sentenced to death by shooting
The new French state, under the authoritarian rule of Marechal Petain,
chooses to collaborate with Germany.
Petain promulgates a set of anti Jewish statutes
that excludes Jews from public life.
He and Hitler have shaken hands.
Everyday, the Wehrmacht parades.
The Germans occupy the capital cities of Europe.
After Prague and Warsaw, Brussels, Luxembourg, The Hague,
Copenhagen, and Oslo, but not London.
February 1941, in the suburbs of London.
Rose, who is only 3, has already lived through 2 years of war.
ORIGINS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Rose is brave, and bravery is called for in Britain.
Great Britain's cities have been devastated by German bombs.
But the country stands firm around Churchill and with the providential aid of Roosevelt.
Roosevelt has just been re-elected for a third term as President of the United States.
Though American opinion remains opposed to war, he declares,
"We must be the great arsenal of democracy."
Only part of the equipment he sends to Great Britain gets through.
Every British ship at sea is in great danger.
The Atlantic ocean is crawling by the German submarines.
Their periscopes seek out British vessels.
Churchill is worried. Soon, nothing will get through.
And the outcome of the war seems uncertain.
Great Britain is an island. This is an advantage as well as a disadvantage.
But it is the best hope for the countries under occupation.
The German submarines or U-boats, now have the French harbors at their disposal.
Grouped into packs, using torpedoes and cannons
These "Wolves of the Atlantic" succeed in sinking
4,000,000 tons of British shipping in 1941 alone.
Here, German submariners toss loaves of bread to a shipwrecked crew
who have almost no chance of surviving.
They will die of thirst, of hunger, of cold or by choking on oil.
Hitler is delighted with the success of his submarines
but America's massive re-armament program worries him.
He tells his secretary, Bormann,
"In one year, the United States will be ready to go to war.
If we are to face them, we need more raw materials.
Those materials are in the East. We need to conquer that living Space.
Then, Britain will lose all hope and make peace
and it will be too late for the Americans. Let us attack Russia as soon as possible."
Hitler codenamed the plan "Operation Barbarossa"
after the medieval emperor, Frederick Barbarossa.
The Wehrmacht starts to concentrate its troop in the East.
Leftenant von Kageneck leaves for Poland.
Polish prisoners and Jews have been put to work on various construction projects.
Hitler wants to build a motorway across Poland
in order to move his army over to the new border of with Russia.
This is where the 9th Panzer Division is installed
along with von Kageneck's regiment.
He writes: Next to us is an SS unit.
The commander asks, "Do you want to see a Jew?"
He makes a sign and a soldier brings over a little man.
"How many people have you stolen from today?"
The man doesn't reply.
Beat him 10 times with a stick.
We were appalled. So this is our occupation of Poland?
We had heard vague stories of cruelty,
but it was impossible to know what was really going on.
This country had become the country of silence.
We didn't know that this was the beginning of the genocide
to which we would lend our hands and our courage.
Hitler defers his plans for an offensive in the East.
He has to help out his ally, Mussolini who wants to fight his own separate war.
Il Duce has just been routed by the British in Africa.
The Italian army is in disarray in the desert.
To rescue Mussolini from disaster
Hitler dispatches one of his best generals over to Libya.
General Rommel, along with his armored division, the Afrika korp.
In Germany, Rommel is a big hero.
He is the man who took Cambrai, Arras, Rouen
and Cherbourg in May and June of 1940.
And he is a true Nazi.
A devotee who has served Hitler with great zeal
and efficiency from the very beginning.
Rommel believes in tanks and in the "Lightning war".
He quickly orders the Afrika korps to set off for the British positions.
Rommel is already making a name for himself.
The British circulate his picture with the description: "This man is dangerous."
Hitler attacks Greece, a country that Mussolini has already tried to take.
After his blitzkrieg in the Balkans and his occupation of Yugoslavia
he drops his paratroopers over Crete.
Hitler has secured his southern flank for the invasion of Russia
but he has lost precious time.
Operation Barbarossa has been delayed by several weeks.
A grand military parade is traditionally held in Moscow's Red Square
to celebrate International Workers Day.
Special preparations have gone into this one, however,
Stalin wants to make a big impression on the Germans.
He's been receiving information from his spies
warning of the imminence of an attack.
But he finds it hard to believe that Hitler would dare to break
the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, so soon.
The Germans are attending the parade. And Marshall Timoshenko,
the People's Commissar and Stalin's Defense Minister
seems to salute them with great respect.
Hitler is ready to attack but he wants to avoid fighting on 2 fronts.
He would like to make peace with Great Britain first.
In the suburbs of London, in a house that has been spared by German bombs
Rose is helping her parents who are listening to the radio.
Suddenly, an astonishing announcement comes over the BBC.
In Scotland, near Glasgow, the remains of a German plane,
a Messerschmitt 110 have been found.
Its pilot bailed out by parachute.
He turns out to be a top-ranked Nazi. Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
He says, "I have come on a mission of peace."
Hess was one of Hitler first supporters and he is one of the most fanatical.
The Party is Hitler
Hitler is Germany Germany is Hitler!
Hess feels that the role he has played
has not been as glorious as that of other Nazi leaders.
He wants to prove to his Führer, that he, Rudolf Hess,
is the only person capable of finding the way out of the conflict with Great Britain.
But he is immediately locked up.
Churchill rejects his overtures, and Hitler disowns him.
Hess will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, intelligence reports indicate that Hitler is planning to invade the Soviet Union.
But Stalin ignores the reports.
Just as he ignores the last message sent by Richard Sorge,
a Soviet spy based in Tokyo.
The document dated May 30, 1941, warns of a German attack.
In fact, Stalin continues to send raw materials to the Reich.
Since the signing of the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact,
he has exported thousands of tons of oil, chrome, and nickel to Germany.
All of which, helped Hitler to conquer France.
The last train load is sent off on the night of the 21st of June, 1941.
Carrying tons of wheat, this train crosses over the border at midnight.
And on June the 22nd, at 3 AM, without officially declaring war,
the first Wehrmacht sappers steal over onto Russian territory.
They are followed by 153 German divisions,
as well as by Finnish, Romanian, Slovakian, and Hungarian troops.
There is even a division of Spanish fascists.
3,000,000 men, along with 600,000 trucks.
Many of which are made by French manufacturers,
such as Berliet and Renault.
More than 3,000 tanks, 7,000 cannons,
3,000 aeroplanes.
Within 24 hours, 1,500 Soviet aircraft are wiped out on the ground.
300 more Russian planes are shot down by the Germans.
Taken by surprise, over-powered,
the Soviet Air Force have suffered a devastating blow.
The German offensive is unleashed across 3,000 km and in 3 different directions.
In the north, the ideological target, Leningrad.
Lenin's city, the cradle of the Russian revolution. Modern day's St. Petersburg.
In the center, the political target, Moscow, Stalin's capital.
In the south, the economic target, Kiev, and the Ukraine.
Our armies are thrusting to the east
Into Russian land
Comrades, take your guns!
Victory will be ours
From Finland to the Black Sea
Forward, forward!
Forward to the east, storming army
Freedom is our goal
Victory is our banner
Führer, order us!
We will follow you!
In the northern Baltic states, the German are sometimes hailed as liberators.
After Stalin's reign of terror, anything is better than the NKVD.
The ruthless Soviet Secret Police, responsible for political repression.
Forced to pull out, they execute Baltic anti-communists in the prisons.
Local anti-Semites accuse the Jews of being in collision with the communists.
Jews are forced to carry the corpses.
Across the Baltic states, people start organizing pogroms against Jews.
Which the German encourages with special instructions like:
Do not leave any traces.
Burning the bodies is one way eliminating them.
On the central front, General Guderian,
the tank strategist and proponent of the blitzkrieg is held up by the Stalin line.
A series of fortifications that the panzer grenadiers have to take by a sword.
Guderian continues to advance.
But an unforeseen factor soon slows down his fine motorized unit,
as described by von Kageneck,
"We advance in our armored cars and the dust envelopes us.
We're in Russia, where roads and asphalt don't exist.
It's awful. The sticky yellow or red dust gets into everything.
Into your eyes, your nose, your mouth."
Under such condition, these men move 50 km a day.
They haveve marched all the way to Warsaw, to Oslo, to Bayonne.
They are beginning to realize just how vast Russia is.
Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers go by, without a single village in sight.
It is becoming harder and harder for the supply,
fuel and ammunition trucks to get through.
But there is another situation that the German soldiers must deal with.
The Russian are putting up a good defense.
A new type of Russian tank appears on the scene and this is a big surprise.
The T-34, a 30 ton monster equipped with a formidable cannon
and wide tracks that can go anywhere.
It is superior to the German tanks in gun power and armor thickness.
But has only rudimentary radios, and clunky gearboxes.
The only weapon powerful enough to neutralize it is the German 88 cannon.
Still, the Germans are better armed and their army is stronger.
But these "Ivans", as they call the Russians, will fight tooth and nail, until the very end.
The Russians have already suffered heavy losses,
but the German casualties are also rising.
The Germans continue to make progress towards their 3 goals.
Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev, by capturing entire armies.
Hitler's orders are to immediately execute all political commissars,
members of the Communist Party whose job is to oversee the officers
and keep an eye on the soldiers in each military unit.
Guderian is opposed to this criminal order.
However, according to the Commander of the 4th Panzer Army Group, General Hoepner,
"This war must be led with unprecedented brutality.
There is to be no mercy for the Bolsheviks."
The Bolsheviks, the Russians, fight desperately
with fewer and fewer weapons, often with only one rifle for 4 men.
They are forced to retreat along the entire front.
For Stalin, things are looking very bad.
With his heavy, Georgian accent, he pronounces words he's never used before.
He calls the Russians, "My brothers" and "my sisters".
He tells them the truth,
"We are under attack by Hitler's Germany. The enemy is cruel and implacable.
A grave danger hangs over our country."
In the darkest hour, he dares to predict:
Is it true that German fascist troops are invincible?
Napoleon's army was considered invincible, but it was beaten.
He orders the factories along with their machines and their workers
to relocate to the East, to the Ural mountains.
And he gives farmers and peasants an absolute order:
Leave, leave your izba, your house. Destroy everything.
Leave behind nothing that can be of any use to the fascist-Hitlerite aggressor.
This is Stalin's Scorched Earth Policy.
The German officers have not forgotten about Napoleon.
In 1812, the Russians defeated Napoleon's Grand Army
by burning their towns and fields.
And then massacre dthe French in the Battle of Berezina.
In early July 1941, the Germans also reach the Berezina river
on the central front and they keep going.
Resistance by the Soviets is growing stronger.
On the other side of the river, an unpleasant surprise awaits the Germans.
The Russians has set up a new kind of artillery.
A rocket launcher called "Stalin's Organ" or "Katyusha"
because it sounds like a nest of organ pipes.
A most terrifying weapon.
But nothing can stop the German advance.
By mid-July, they have reached Smolensk, the last big city before Moscow.
The battle for Smolensk lasts 3 weeks.
The Russians fight until the very end
despite the calls for surrender coming over the German loud speakers.
Surrender!
You will be treated well.
Very few are taken prisoner.
Some of the survivors go into hiding in the deep forest and become insurgents.
They are joined by many peasants and farmers, whom they train to fight.
They hunt down traitors and disrupt the enemy's communication lines.
Reprisals are brutal.
The Führer orders, "Immediately liquidate all people suspected
of harboring even the smallest amount of hostility."
Hitler consults with the Wehrmacht's commander-in-chief,
Field Marshall Keitel.
Operation Barbarossa is slowing down.
Some of the generals believe that Hitler's strategy of using a 3-pronged attack
is to blame.
Instead, Marshall von Bock, commander of the army group center
wants all of his forces focused on Moscow.
Hitler does not like generals who dare to contradict him.
General Guderian is there, he insists, "We're only 350 km away from Moscow now."
"You understand nothing." Says the Führer. "You know nothing of war time economics.
First, we need the wheat from the Ukraine,
so that they don't starve as they did in the previous war.
Moscow is nothing but a symbol. We'll take care of it later."
He orders Guderian to swing south towards Kiev
in order to close the pincer around the Russian armies still operating
in pockets to the rear of the Wehrmacht.
It will be the biggest encirclement of all time.
The Germans capture 600,000 Russian soldiers in one fell swoop.
Himmler comes through on a visit.
No provisions have been made to feed the prisoners.
With supreme indifference, Himmler contemplates those he calls:
the "Untermensch" or "Sub-humans".
He will coldly let them starve to death.
Leftenant von Kageneck writes: We live quite well in the Ukraine.
We had everything we needed. Eggs, butter, fruit, milk, wine,
an excellent red wine from the area around the Black Sea.
He goes on, "The Ukrainians will come up to us, smiling, filled with joy.
The women will bring us bread and honey. They saw us as their liberators."
The Ukrainians have many reasons to hate the Russians, and especially Stalin,
who in the early 30s, orchestrated a massive starvation policy
that killed as many as 7,000,000 people.
Many Ukrainians, some anti-Semitic, also incriminate the Jews and carry out pogroms.
Such as here, in Zolochiv, while the Germans look on.
In fact, many Ukrainians side with the Nazis.
But Germany will spoil this opportunity to gain an ally.
Marshall Göring, the second highest ranking figure in the Reich, comes to the Ukraine.
He says, "No useless mouths to feed.
Those who can work, will work for the Reich. The rest, will die.
Those who work will give everything they have until they themselves die."
Göring is here to implement this policy of enslaving the Ukraine
and to carry out the methodical annihilation of the Jews.
He's accompanied by Alfred Rosenberg, a central theoretician of Nazi racism.
Himmler and Heydrich set up execution commandos, called "Einsatzgruppen"
that are composed of SS members, policemen
and Wehrmacht soldiers, who round up the Jews.
The SS take the Jews into the woods and give them shovels
so that they can dig their own graves.
But they decide that this process is too slow.
So they order long, common graves to be dug
and make their victims lie down on top of the last group of dead bodies.
But even this procedure takes too long.
The SS prepare a ravine known as "Babi Yar", near Kiev.
33,771 Jews will be executed in 2 days.
Men, women and children.
In this living hell, as in hundreds of others throughout the front,
the executioners take picture of their victims.
This premeditated, cold-blooded massacre of a million Jews
will come to be known as "The Holocaust by bullets".
But Himmler is not pleased.
He has attended one of the Einsatzgruppen so called "Actionz".
Noticing the psychological burden that these mass killings have for one soldiers,
he begins searching for alternative methods.
This would lead to the use of the gas vans
with exhaust pipes hooked up to their rear compartments.
And a year later, the gas chambers.
In the north, the long siege of Leningrad begins.
The Germans have their plan: Instead of fighting in the streets,
we'll let our artillery and starvation do the job.
City buildings are destroyed.
A zoo elephant is the victim of an air raid.
Food rations soon fall below the minimum necessary.
But the worst is to come with the arrival of winter.
In the south, Guderian finally receives the order from Hitler
to rejoin the other armies up north, and proceed towards Moscow.
Along this enormous front, from Leningrad to Odessa,
the thrust towards Moscow seems unstoppable.
The Germans take another 700,000 prisoners.
General Jodl, chief of staff of the Wehrmacht says,
"We have won the war."
von Kageneck writes:
We suddenly have to deal with a most frightful adversary.
the autumn rain and mud, which the Russians call "Rasputiza".
Endless mud so gluey and sticky that it sucks and holds onto everything.
It won't let go of anything.
Whether it be a tank, a truck, a horse, or a man.
It makes any movement impossible. We do 5 to 8 km a day, instead of 30.
Putting one foot in front of the other requires superhuman effort.
The panzers, the pride of the Wehrmacht, are brought to a standstill.
Hitler writes to his troops: Soldiers on the eastern front.
Comrades, today begins the last, great decisive battle.
And all at once, the German army starts moving again towards Moscow
because the frost has come and hardened the ground.
The world is holding its breath. Will Hitler defeat Stalin?
This is when right wing extremists in the occupied countries
start signing up to serve in the German Army.
Belgians, Danes, Dutchmen,
and the young men in the LVF, the Legion of French Volunteers,
decide to don the German uniform and fight on the Eastern Front.
They will suffer.
An early cold front sweeps through beginning in November 1941.
Temperatures will plummet to almost minus 40 degrees Celsius.
The Wehrmacht was designed to conduct a blitzkrieg, a lightning war.
It was supposed to bring Russia to its knees in 4 months.
It is not equipped for winter.
Guderian writes in his memoirs:
It was a sight to see those half starved, insufficiently clothed men
fight over a poor shelter.
They fight to control even the tiniest village.
Losing a village, losing even a single izba, means death.
The men die of cold or dysentery.
Diarrhea makes them run off 30 times a day.
Doctor Haape, the Wehrmacht physician warns them,
"You have to choose, if you pull down your trousers,
you'll freeze to death. You must take apart the seam in the back,
so you won't have to pull them down."
In sharp contrast, the men in Afrika korps, in the desert
are able to fry egg on the top of the sizzling surfaces of their tanks,
while listening to the war song, "Lili Marlene".
The war in the desert is also getting bogged down, in the sand.
Petrol and food supplies are lacking. Rommel has to order a halt.
However, he is planning a new offensive.
And new sacrifices for his men in the Afrika korps.
Meanwhile, on the road to Moscow,
the Germans are no longer able to wash or change their clothes.
Like their enemies, they are driven crazy by lice and parasites
that bring scabies and typhus.
Napoleon's Grand Army lost over 100,000 men to typhus.
In spite of it all, the Wehrmacht pushes on.
The German vanguard reaches the outskirts of Moscow.
And even the end of the bus line that goes straight to Red Square.
While the Soviet army holds back the advancing German troops,
Stalin orders the parade commemorating the anniversary of the revolution
to be held as usual.
To galvanize his troops, Stalin makes a speech that invokes forbidden images from the past,
the great soldiers from the time of the Tsars.
"Be worthy of your glorious ancestors.
Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov."
Stalin has organized Moscow's defense
in conjunction with one of his most brilliant generals.
A tank specialist considered to be the Russian equivalent of Guderian,
45 year old, General Zhukov.
Luck is on Zhukov's side.
Sorge, the Soviet spy, has discovered that Japan, though it is Hitler's ally
has not decided to attack Russia, because its primary enemy is the United States.
This enable Zhukov to reduce the number of troops in the Far East.
He brings over several of the Siberian divisions, they are well equipped.
Siberians are not afraid of the cold.
They are rugged outdoorsmen, who used to using their wits.
They have brought their skis and their reindeer with them.
And now they are going hunting, for Germans.
Zhukov wants to trap the Wehrmacht on a pincer movement.
Some 30,000 Germans are killed or missing.
Thousands are sent off to Siberia.
Their struggle with the cold is far from over.
Less than 1 in 3 will return home, almost 15 years later.
August von Kageneck is severely wounded and evacuated back to Germany.
He writes: Faith disappears, doubt becomes obsessive.
Death becomes your best friend, man's only friend,
because it will deliver you from your suffering.
The suffering of the Russians is not over either. Their country has been ravaged.
Moscow has been saved, but millions of people have been killed or taken prisoner.
And the danger is still there.
The Wehrmacht has been pushed back 200 km.
Hitler orders his army to defend that new line at all costs.
He dismisses 35 generals, including Guderian and takes personal charge of the Wehrmacht.
He will succeed in re-establishing his army's position.
Re-equipping his troops and plotting his revenge.
The Wehrmacht remains firmly planted in Russia.
Hitler returns to his dogs back in his chalet in Bavaria.
In his opinion the defeat before Moscow was the fault of his generals and his diplomats.
Weren't they the one's who had claimed
that France and Britain wouldn't go to war for Poland?
And of the Abwehr, the German Intelligence Service,
that misinformed him about the state of the Russian army.
Hitler adds, "The Bolshevik army is made up of peasants
who fight with barbarian unconsciousness,
and workers, trained by the fanatical mysticism of communism."
But Hitler believes in his lucky star. He will prevail.
He can enjoy himself in the company of his sycophants.
Here, Bormann's mistress introduces him to a German movie star,
the actress, Magda Schneider.
Not far away, her daughter, Romy Schneider, plays with Bormann's children.
Life in Germany is still carefree. The massive bombings have not yet begun.
And those who sacrificed their lives in Moscow are so far away, deep in the snow.
Two days after Hitler's first major defeat, his ally, Japan, launches a surprise attack
on the United States' big naval base in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor.
And with this wave of Japanese planes, the war becomes a world war.
In London, Rose dances. She is already dreaming of Christmas.
She hears her parents say,
"Now the Americans will fight on our side, the Russians are on our side.
We, British are no longer alone in this, anymore."