By the end of October 1942
the city on Volga still has not fallen.
The F��hrer anounces to the German people
We have taken Stalingrad
A few pockets resistances still remain
We will take them one by one
It is just the question of time
For Hitler
Stalingrad has come to represent his victory over Russia.
After two years of fighting in Russia
the Germans have threatened to vanquish the eastern giant
In the north Leningrad is surrounded by the Germans
It's been a year since the Germans entered this northern city
In the center Moscow, the target city
remains just in the reach for the Germans
In the south the drive towards the Baku oil fields
has come to a hold in the Caucasus Mountains
In Stalingrad the Soviets are holding their ground
Contrary to Hitler's declarations
Soviet boats continue to cross the Volga
bring in over reinforcements
Everyday thousands of young Russian men
sometimes without any weapons or military training are disembarked on river banks
Those who back away from the German shells are ruthlessly excuted by the political commissar
On the 7th November the anniversary of the revolution
the beleagued soldiers holding Stalingrad
and the Soviet troops all along the front
listen to their Commander Chief Stalin
make this astonishing declaration
"Tomorrow there will be celebrations in our streets"
And indeed Genernal Joukov, the man who saved Moscow
has a plan to keep those pockets resistances fighting to the very end
in order to retain the German troops of Genernal Paulus insides Stalingrad
On the other side of Volga Joukov is secretly put into together an entire army
The country has been ravaged
One fouth of its territory lost
but entire Soviet Union is toiling away
to provide this new army with huge amounts of equipment
Factories were moved out and rebuilt behind the Ural Mountains
are operating 24 hours a day
In this endeavor lives will be sacrificed
It is the winter of 1942
The women working in these unheated sometimes ruthless workshops are cold and hungry
many will die of exhaustion
but the country industrial production will increase ten fold
The United States is now providing massive amount of aid to the Soviet Union
The Allies are able to reduce the thereat posed by German submarines in the north Atlantic
by performing protective convoy to Soviet ports such as Murmansk
Anti-communism is put on hold
For the Americans Joseph Stalin is now "Uncle Joe"
and for the British "Good Old Joe"
The Russians receive huge shipment of jeeps, tanks, planes and trucks
and cans of corned beef
When they open the tins of meat the Russian soldiers joke
"We are opening the second front."
along with Stalin
everyone expect the Allies to do more to alleviate their plight
In Egypt however
the Britishs are being threatened by the Germans
Rommel
from Hitler has just promoted to the Field Marshal after his victory in the desert
and his tank army the Africa Corps
are getting dangerously close to the Suez Canal
They've reached El Alamein
The British Empire is in peril
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill comes into
his army in the desert
The situation is grim but he retains his sense of humor
and shares cheer of moments with his men
He meets with the newly appointed Genernal Montgomery
Montgomery wasn't Churchill's first choice
and all these soldiers in the desert are little worried, the Britishs, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the South Africans
and free French
As soon as arrival of Montgomery the son of clergyman
ordered the new program of strict rules and discipline to be imposed
He is cautions
He waits until his army superior in terms of both men and equipment
The new American sherman Tanks for example built for speed and power
Montgomery launches his offensive
with preliminary artillery barrage
followed by a massive tank assault
But the German 88 flight guns cause tremendous losses
Rommel's soldiers counter attack relentlessly
The battle turns into a bayonet charge
just like in the battle of Somme 1916
with heavy causlties on both sides
In this deadly game it is the side with most men that wins
In the letter to his wife Rommel writes:
"We are simply being crashed by the emeny's weight"
Hei receives message from Hitler
"They can be no other thought but stand fast"
"yield not a yard of ground"
Rommel writes back to his wife
"I rack my brains for a way out of this plight for my poor troops"
"We are facing perhaps the most difficult days that the man can undergo"
and he adds
"The dead are lucky"
"It's all over for them"
Rommel retreats
In London Churchill announces to his fellow citizens
what is really the first good news of the war
"This is not the end"
"It is not even the beginning of the end"
"but it's perhaps the end of the beginning"
Churchill's words ring out around the world
The old British lion has stood up to Hitler
Back in his headquarters the "Wolf's Lair", Hitler's scornful
He says "It is just a set back"
"The war will go on"
and indeed it does.
The Allies open up a new front in north Africa
a first step towards controlling the Mediterranean
As in 1917 American troops sail across the Atlantic
The French writer Saint-Exupery who has exiled in New York
will return from the US with one of its military convoyes
The author of "The Little Prince" writes
" Friends of American I'd like to do you complete justice"
"Fifty thousnad soldiers were going to war not for the United States"
"but for humanity"
"For human respect, for human freedom and for human greatness"
Off the coast of Casablanca and Oran
British and American
are greeted with cannon gunfire from the Vichy French
They conter attack
North Africa were still controled by the Vichy regime which colaborates with Germans
The fighting is violent
The Vichy forces suffers extensive damage
The Free France leader Genernal De Gaulle makes his specch over the radio in London
After two days fighting against "Liberators"
the guns are silenced
The Allies secure their landing.
In Algiers
the pragmatic US Commandering Chief
General Eisenhower
negotiate with Vichy regime military commander
Admiral Darlan
Darlan is one of the France's most diehard collaborators
who'd even met Hitler
He decides to switch sides
and French forces in Algeria and Morocco join the Allies
A few weeks later Darlan will be assassinated by a French resistance fighter
Many of the French in north Africa greet the Americans warmly
The ???? and French Army of Africa are also relieved
They never realy want to shoot the Americans
In fact they will soon be fighting side by side with them
like almost all of the other French colonials
As well "Indigenous soldiers" as they're called at the time
who will form the ???? and Algeria ???? units.
The Axis powers have anticipated the Allies by moving into Tunisia
a territory still controled by the Vichy regime
which allows the Germans to stay
Rommel is retreating towards Tunisia
Two days later in order to secure the Mediterranean coast
Hitler invades southern France
the ???? to unoccupied free zone
Hitler's orders are the take of the port of Toulon
where most of the Vichy Navy's based
with their shaky autonomy now are risk
the Vichy Admirals decide to ???? their fleet
They proceed sink their own ships
in order to keep them from falling into the hand of the Germans
or the Allies
That is a tragic result of politics of Vichy regime
but it's not good news for Hitler
With the arrival of Germans
those Jews hiding in the remaining pockets of French tolerance
have little chance of survival
Amidst increasingly sinister atmosphere of roundups and denouncation all over Europe
children are saved by courageous families
like ???? ???? family
He is a Belgium banker
He films his four children
while he and his wife Denise hide two Jewish children
???? the 12-year-old daughter of engineer
who is hiding somewhere himself
and 6-year-old ????
????'s mother was arrested
and deported to a work camp in eastern Europe
she will never return from Auschwitz
By now many people suspect when
the occupiers use the words like "work camp"
It's true meaning is death
???? and Denis ???? are everyday heroes
who will one day be awarded the title of "Rightous Among The Nations"
along with more than twenty thousand other men and women for all over the occupied Europe
Three thousand kilometers away
out of Stalingrad
the Germans have been enjoy a brief restbite behind the lines
before returning to fight the Russians in order to eliminate their remaining pockets of resistance
The German Army's flanks are defended by units of Reich's satilites countries
Romanians, Hungarians and Italians
who are totally unaware of the danger looming just around the corner
A few kilometers away the Soviet troops are preparing to attack
They are ready to fight
and they are over a million of them
They are going to storm the enemy's weakest unit
in order to surround the German Army of occupying Stalingrad
At 7am the Soviets obliterate
the enemy's lines
ponding them with rocket launchers they call Stalin's Organs
Joukov's massive army launches the offensive
The Hungarians don't have enough ammunition
The Romanians don't have any anti-tank weapons
They as well as the Italians lost a massive number of men
The two Soviet Armies from the north and the south meet up
Soviet filmmaker use their skills to glorify the moment
The Germans see the Soviet tanks close the circle around them
Genernal Paulus's sixth Army is trapped inside Stalingrad
Hitler is in the back off
his retreat Berchtesgaden in the Bavaria Alps
where he's informed the Soviet offensive
His immediately reaction is to hide this news from the German people
He rushes off to his headquaters in east Prussia declaring
"If the sixth Army withdraw from Stalingrad"
" the Wehrmacht will never be able to return"
Paulus could still break out of the circlement but he would have to obey orders
For when Hitler arrives the Wolf's Lair he sends in this message
"Stand firm"
"An army will come to rescue you"
But no army is able to reach them
and the airplane of the Luftwaffe fail to deliver sufficent supplies
inspite of the promises made by the head of the Air Force Hermann Goering
A Christmas ration'd reduced to 50 grams of bread
and 12 grams of fat
Mussolini who has just lost an army in Stalingrad
is looking for a way to shift German attention back to north Africa
He writes to Hitler
"In my opinion Russian can never be annihilated"
"she is defended by her resite"
"A territory so vast that can never be coquered or held"
"The Russian chapter is over"
"We should make peace with Stalin"
What would Hitler do?
To negotiate would be to admit that the compaign in Russia was a huge failure
Future advance however will not give Hitler the choice
Roosevelt the president of the United States has arrived in Casablanca in Morocco
to attend one of the most important meetings
in modern history
He and Churchill want to settle the prickly question of French political power
Roosevelt wants to exclude De Gaulle
who since 1940 has been declaiming he is legitimacy
as the leader of French Resistance Movement
Roosevelt says
"Genernal De Gaulle is a soldier certainly a patriot and devoted his country"
"but on the other hand he is also a politian and sectarian"
"and I believe in him he has all the attributes of dictator"
Roosevelt prefer to invite another France's leader to Casablanca
Genernal Giraud
taken prisoner in 1940
he has just escaped from Germany
and arrived in north Africa
He comes dashing figure
Churchill continues to support De Gaulle
and invites him in order to try to reconcile the two rival Genernals
which isn't an easy task
Roosevelt and Churchill are agreed future cooperation between the two adversaries is necessary
in order to save France
It is obvious that Roosevelt has a warm feeling for Giraud than for De Gaulle
then at the closing conference
Roosevelt and Churchill make a declaration of the utmost importance
with great vehemence they pronounce the words that will hence for become the Ally's credo
unconditional surrender
by Germany, Japan and Italy
There will be no more negotiating
The Allies will keep fighting the Axis Powers until the very end
The price in lives will be high
And many believes that this radical position
whose purpose is to reassure the Soviet
will only serve to increase the German's devotion to their Fuhrer
Stalin is satisfied
He feared that Hitler would conclude the separate peace with the Allies
in order to pit all of his forces against the Russia
He launches his offensive to annihilate the beast still lurking in the ruins of Stalingrad
Beyond the red flag is the univer-megastore
where the commander of the Sixth Army Genernal Friedrich Paulus is intrenched
His men surrender
The day before
Hitler had promoted him to Field Marshal
thinking it would compel him to commit suicide in order to save his honor
Paulus however on the verge of collapse
weaken by dysentery and revolted by the absurdity of Hitler's orders
allows himself to be captured
Field Marshal Paulus is an extraordinary prize for the Soviet
He is the man master minded "Operation Barbarossa" the plan to invade the Soviet Union
The Soviet leaders can hardly believe it
Paulus will collaborate to the Soviet
and testify the Nuremberg trials against his former commanders
such as Keitel
When he is released in 1953 he will settle in east Germany
His reaction is mainly of rejection of Hitler's outrageous policies
Many of his men feel the same way
"Hitler can go to the devil"
The German prisoners dare to mutter in the few words of Russian they know
"We want to go home."
We can only image how the people in the occupied countries master felt
After the German defeated the Stalingrad
hope is revived
The German news broadcasts do not of couse show any of these images
and Hitler says
"We must not use the words 'surrender' "
"We must explain that our men were unable to receive supplies that is why they were beaten"
"We have to use the word 'sacrifice'"
The Nazis want to turn this national disaster
into an opputinity for galvanising the German people
The Minister of propaganda Goebbels
are seeing the task of moblizing all the nation's energy and resources
towards this end
In the audience seemingly ecstatic is Albert Speer
He will furnish Hitler
with the means of implement total war
Hitler calls him "his only friend"
The 38-year-old architect built of the Fuhrur's megalomania ????
has been appointed Minister of Armament
Speer gives new empetus to the German war industry
He is masterful organizer
But above all he is an adamant Nazi
Under his orders
millions of foreign or Jewish civilians will be rounded up
and worked to exhaustion or to death
After Russia and Poland
occupied France is the country that provides the Nazis with the great number of workers
The Vichy regime insistutes a compulsory labor service
and drafts six hundred thousand French workers for Germany
Those who want to evade this service take to the forests
and join the Resistance Movement
The song of these groups is "The Partizan Song"
Under ground resistance groups
have been created in all of the occupied countries
Behind the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto
the Germans are confronted by a Jewish uprising
Before the war this area of Warsaw was a lively open district
Filmed in color here by an American tourist
In 1940 the Nazi's turned this pleasant area of Warsaw
into an overpopulated prison
This woman shrieks in grief as she carried her dead child through the streets
The Warsaw Ghetto in 1941
The Ghetto in 1942
The Ghetto in 1943
The Nazi's deliberately starved the people
in order to kill weaken and prevent any kind of revolt
But the Jewish manage to acquire weapons
and they die fighting
The survivors are deported to the ???? extermination camp
and they are executed
The Ghetto is raised to the ground
At the same time the Allies win another victory
They enter Tunis
Behind these gates the Germans had already initiated policies to persecute
the Jewish in Tunisia during their short occupation
The Jewish immediately take the opportunity to remove their yellow stars
Italian prisoners recieve insult gesture from the crowd
Rommel who is still in Tunisia is filmed by a German officer
before aboarding when the last plane's leaving for Germany
In March 1943 he wrote
"I have recieved an instruction to take sick leave and get myself back into shape"
"or might I have to save my men and get them back to the continent having been fruitless"
"Orders have been issued by the Fuhrer Headquaters"
"to maintain the utmost secrecy concerning my recall to the Germany"
"My military reputation is still to serve as the tyrant"
The Africa Corps has been captured
and now is marching in long lines towards American fleet ships
to be taken away to the other side of Atlantic
During the war three hundred eighty thousand Germans will be sent over to Canada and the United States
from where escape is impossible
These prisoners are about to embark on a strange ????
It begins on these military transport ships
Many feel like they are having dreams
but then war is over and they are safe
However for these German soldiers the dream will soon turn into a nightmare
because even here the Nazi is remaining in control
These men coming off boat in Canada insist on making a salute
even those who've just one arm
Some prisoners are sent to camp in Virginia and Texas
They work on cotton or tobacco plantations
In these barracks the Nazi law continues to terrorize the prisoners
Within a short time Nazi's officers have taken control of prisons
using intimidation, torture and even murder
to maintain Fascist ideology among their fella prisoners
And this message must reach
the German soldiers fighting and suffering on all German fronts
"They have to understand they have nothing to gain from turning themself in to the Allies"
On the east front even since the fall of Stalingrad
the Wehrmacht is never the same
The soldiers exchange rumors about Fuhrer
"Apparently he's lost his head"
"He's been secretly held in Berchtesgaden"
"It is his double we've seen"
But no it is Hitler himself
filmed in Berchtesgaden by his mistress Eva Brown
Since his army's defeat at Stalingrad and El Alamein
he's changed
his famous mustache has greyed
One of his genernals Von Senger is struck by his appearance
He says
"His skin was flaccid"
"The looking in his blue eyes which had mesmerized the crowds was reddened by insomnia"
In fact his physician doctor Morell
has concocted cocaine eye drops for him
Morell is filmed here on the 20th of April 1943
with the secretary and close friends who have come to wish the Fuhrer a happy birthday
He is only 54
Morell is able to make him presentable for ceremonies
Hitler however is careful to keep his left arm under control
It tends to tremble
He is already showing signs of Parkinson diseases
As a result the head of SS Himmler becomes even more important
The SS whose recruits one now coming from Hitler youth
starts it out as the Schutzstaffel, the protection squad for Nazi officals
Later he will provide guards for the concentration camps
The SS has now created a veritable army of its own
the Waffen-SS
In the future these elite troops under Himmler's orders
are expected to replace the Wehrmacht which is no longer considered complete loyal
Increasingly Himmler recurits from the occupied countries
fanatic such as these Bosnia SS
In the occupied area of Russia
the SS also has no problem with recruiting two divisions of Cossacks
who during the time of Tsars will already known for their bloody Anti-Semitic pogroms
They will form the fearsome fifteenth SS Cavalry Corps
As for the Wehrmacht it will enlist as many as one millions Soviet prisoners who have no other choice
They can otherwise die of hunger
or fight along side the Germans
Some like former Soviet genernal Vlasov are also agsinst Stalin
after the German siege Leningrad Vlasov was taken prisoner
and changes sides
He will come on the Russian Liberation Army under the flag of Wehrmacht
The Germans outfit this veritable foreign liege of there with best equipment
such as the Tiger Tank designed by the brilliant engineer Ferdinand Porsche
with its 88 milimeter gun
the Tiger was the most dreaded of the German tanks
As a result back in the Wolf's Lair Hitler starts to feel hopful again
He can now renew his obsession of destorying Red Army
He wants to attack at Kursk
The Russians have put forward into the front lines
and Germany will launch a massive summer offensive
"Operation Citadel"
The biggest tank battle in history
2700 German tanks
are preparing to combat 3600 Soviet tanks
But the technical superiority of the German Tiger appears to be overwhelming
Hitler knows the importance of this battle
To lead his force of nine hundred thousand soldiers
he is choosing the man who help him to win the battle of France Field Marshal Von Manstein
The offensive lead by the Tiger tanks break through the Soviet line
but encounter the brutle anti-armor defense setup of the Soviet
and dense concentration of tanks
The Wehrmacht troops are pushed back
Even the formidable Tiger tanks are falling victims to the Soviets
and the Soviets have a secret weapon
The British have succeeded in capturing an decoding German encryption machine called Enigma
and they are now able to read all of the most secret German orders
The powerful Soviets secret service in Britain
have managed to pass on the decoded operation plans to Moscow
This war is also a espionage war
In Kursk the outcoming is devastating for Germans
who have already lost fifty thousand men in this battle
Von Manstein wants reinforcement in order to continue his offensive
He is waiting for Hitler
He immeadiately tells him
We have suffered losses
but the Russians have too even worse
Hitler seems very hesitant
He mutters a few inanities
Von Manstein will write
"He seems to me to be quite feeble"
This impression is comfirmed when Von Manstein shows Hitler the figures of losses in ???? of Kursk
Since the beginning of the war two million German soldiers
have already been killed, wounded or gone missing in action
Hitler will never be able to fill that void
Things are now far cry from the victory of the lightning war compaigns
the blitzkrieg of battle of France
Kursk is the real turning point of the war
because Hitler moves over to the defensive
Overcome by paranoid he insists on having stenographer present
Von Manstein does not believe that thing is lost
but Hitler disagrees
Von Manstein implores him to continue their offensive
Hitler refuses
The battle of Kursk is over
For Hitler the priority now
is to send reinforcement over to Sicily while the Allies have just landed
The lasso is tighting
Things are moving fast
All Hitler can do is try to hold back the advancing Allies
But he is unable to prevent the fall of Mussolini
which leads Italy to surrender
and to change sides
The new Italian goverment has Mussolini imprisoned up in Mountains
Hitler sends an airborne command unit to rescue him
Hitler wants Mussolini back in power
He sends him back to Italy
to reestablish his fascist regime with the help of German army
The Germans invade Italy
and have no qualm about slaughtering their former allies who attempt to resist
The Germans immediately start going after the Jewishes in Rome, Milan
Genoa, Florence and Trieste
Hitler's greatest concern is to prevent any further allied landings in Italy
and above all in France
This is the idea behind "Fortress Europe" whose emblem is the Atlantic Wall
a staggering system of fortifications streching from Norway down to the Spanish border
Rommel is put in charge of defending Fortress Europe
He says
"It is absolutely necessary that we push the British Americans back from the beaches"
"Afterwards it will be too late"
"The first 24 hours of invasion will be decisive"
"It will be the longest day"
For Rommel and Nazis
it is beginning of the twilight of the Gods
the final months of Nazi German
and yet these German newsreel
images of Rommel who's been invited to tea
by Magda Goebbels the wife of the Propaganda Minister
are revealing off the mood of the Nazis at this point of war
Nazi ideology puts faith in victory
and vanquishes doubt
Magda Goebbels worships Hitler like a God
Even though he is driving Germany into a frenzy of bloodshed and death
Magda Goebbels has given all of her six children first name that begin with letter H
just like Hitler
???? ???? ????
She will kill them all
one by one on the last day of Reich