This is the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Fresh details of a Europe in turmoil.
This is the BBC Home Service.
Upon this battle depends the survival of civilization.
Peace or war is now in the lap of the gods.
We believe that the Nazis and the fascists have asked for it
and they're going to get it.
This is the story of World War II.
What it was really like.
We'll put you on an aircraft carrier when the kamikazes strike.
Take you inside a tank with the Nazis' Panzer Division.
You'll ride with the American GIs for the liberation of Paris.
And with the Soviet Red Army for the final assault on Berlin.
This is the true story of the biggest conflict in human history.
This is World War II from the frontlines.
Flame thrower, break off.
LEISURE ACTIVITIES
1939.
Germany is ruled by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
He believes his people are a superior race,
destined to conquer Europe.
His armies have already walked into Austria and Czechoslovakia.
But the Second World War begins when he invades Poland.
A task that falls first to the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe.
I was proud to be squadron leader at 23.
We thought Germany was doing something great.
The world would sit up and take notice!
There was a terrible noise and the trees started bending.
And right over the treetops came out
huge black airplanes with crosses.
They seemed like hundreds of them.
They were flying to bomb Warsaw.
There was just complete chaos.
People running away.
We just laid down. I was really terrified.
Please stand by for a very important announcement.
Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed many towns.
Already, endless columns of Polish troops have been captured.
Poland asked for this fight.
Now Poland is getting a fight.
After three weeks,
the Polish capital, Warsaw, falls to the German army.
Hello, hello. Can you hear us?
This is our last radio announcement.
German troops have entered Warsaw.
I remember seeing the dead horses and the ruined buildings.
Our house didn't have any windows left.
It was the same house, but it wasn't.
My mother bursts crying and she threw up
when she saw everything that was happening.
It was just such a shock.
We were simply overwhelmed by the German military might.
The sort of feeling developed that we were helpless.
It was a feeling of being in a trap. There was no way out.
I think people simply didn't want to accept it.
And then very gradually but relentlessly, it started to happen.
There's something dark happening in occupied Poland.
The Germans started the terror immediately.
They brought in the Orthodox rabbi
and tied him up to the roof of the wooden synagogue
and started a fire
and made the elders run in to try to save him.
And they all died right in front of my eyes.
The Germans made it very clear
that it was a question of time that they were going to kill us all.
So we had to defend ourselves. We had to defend our families.
And that was when I decided to join the Polish resistance.
Julian Kulski is still only a schoolboy.
But soon he will learn what it means to kill a man.
But from Germany, the war looks very different.
For many of us, being a decent German
meant being a member
of the Nazi party.
We were the good guys.
Hitler was there for us.
Here we stand.
We are ready
to carry Germany into a new era.
One people,
one Reich!
Hitler's plan is to create a German empire by invading countries to the east.
But Great Britain and France have a pact with Poland.
So they now declare war on Germany.
Just to bring you up to date on the news of Europe,
if you are just turning on your radios:
Great Britain is now at war with Germany.
Every minute spent on production now
is vital to the defense of the country and your homes.
In Paris and London, they're sending children to the safety of the countryside.
We are determined not to submit to threats of violence.
France and Britain are calling up their colonial armies for support
from Asia and Africa.
In a world of masters and slaves,
we must save liberty and dignity.
Allied troops spread out along the Maginot Line,
a network of bunkers and fortresses along the German border.
For eight months, the two sides eyeball each other across the line.
The first phase of this great fight is over.
And what we did in Poland will be fulfilled in England and France!
Spring 1940.
The Germans launch a surprise attack.
They go around the Maginot Line, through the Ardennes Forest.
My friends had fought in Poland, and I wanted to see action.
I was thrilled.
The Panzers pour into Belgium,
the Netherlands, and France.
We were surprised there was hardly any resistance.
The day they arrived, I remember, I was afraid.
My mother said, "Things are going to get very bad, very bad."
They were arresting young people on the street.
And you never saw them again.
It was terrible.
Then the British came in their little armored vehicles.
They were so outdated.
With one shot they were in a ditch.
The British fall back to the beaches of Dunkirk,
cornered by the Germans.
They're trapped and defenseless.
We'd got to Dunkirk.
Then suddenly out of the sky would come these airplanes.
They're screaming, and they would dive on these men and machine-gun them.
You could do nothing about it.
What terror!
With their backs to the wall, the British mount a last-ditch evacuation.
Near Dunkirk this evening, Allied troops have been deliberately machine-gunned
and slaughtered by low-flying aircraft.
Allied hospital ships have been attacked.
You're up to your neck. Dead bodies.
The slaughter.
Then somebody pulled me up.
I looked out, and there in front of you
was the whole of Dunkirk.
Massive flames, smoke, explosions.
And you think, that's hell.
has brought back nearly 350,000 men.
The British Army scrambles home
and lives to fight another day.
We arrived back home at Margate.
I felt rather ashamed.
Because I knew that there was hordes of Germans
on the other side of the channel.
DUNKIRK
In the space of a few weeks,
the German army has killed or captured more than two million Allied troops.
It takes the Nazis 21 days to take the rest of France and roll into Paris.
France has surrendered.
Britain alone will continue the struggle.
In Berlin, Hitler gets a hero's welcome.
The Nazis now control much of Europe.
Only Great Britain stands in their way.
But Prime Minister Winston Churchill is defiant.
We are in one of the greatest battles in history.
You ask, what is our policy?
It is to wage war by sea, land and air
with all the strength that God can give us.
Victory at all costs.
Without victory, there is no survival.
Hitler is preparing the final knockout blow,
a full-scale invasion of Great Britain.
But first, he must take down the British Royal Air Force.
lithe-looking creature called a Spitfire
and said, "There's a Spitfire, go and fly it."
The ground crew were waiting for me and told me how to start the thing.
The next thing I knew, it had leapt into the air.
and off we went into the wild blue yonder.
Geoffrey Wellum is a Spitfire pilot just out of training.
He's one of just over a thousand young men
who now carry the fate of the war on their shoulders.
I remember thinking, "Oh, my goodness me."
And you offered up a little prayer.
"It's going to be a very busy day, O Lord."
"If I forget you, don't you forget me."
"Just give me this day."
"Please give me this day."
Across the English Channel,
the German pilots gather for a final briefing.
The campaigns in Poland and France
gave us a lot of experience
so we were ready.
The English knew we were better pilots.
One got a little bit angry.
What were they doing over here?
They've decimated Europe, flattened Poland.
And here they are over this country.
You know, what right have they got to do this sort of thing?
We shall fight on the seas and oceans.
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
We shall never surrender.
We had always seen the English as brothers,
but as soon as the shooting started,
it was us or them.
We went up through a little bit of cloud.
And I looked ahead.
There they were.
I've never seen so many airplanes in the sky at one time.
We were heading towards them at 300 miles an hour.
They were coming towards us at 300 miles an hour.
That's 600 miles an hour.
The next thing I knew, we went straight into them.
It was just flying for your life.
You see aircraft on fire.
Aircraft breaking up.
People bailing out and their parachutes don't open.
It was total war.
For 12 weeks, the RAF and the Luftwaffe battle it out.
By the end of September,
1,600 German aircraft have been brought down.
The losses were so huge.
The whole mission had to be aborted.
And the Battle of Britain came to an end.
For now, Britain is safe from invasion.
The important thing was that we stopped them
and denied them their aim.
For the first time,
the Germans realized they had suffered a setback.
And they didn't like it.
Hail the Duce!
We are going to battle against the democracies of the West.
your courage
and your valor!
Hitler isn't the only dictator casting a shadow over Europe.
Italy has its own strongman, Benito Mussolini.
He's plotting a deal with Hitler
and planning military adventures of his own.
Italy is standing strong, proud and united as never before.
With the Brits fighting Germany,
Mussolini takes his chance
and invades British-controlled Egypt.
It took five days for the Axis troops from Agedabia to Derna.
Meanwhile, back in Europe,
thousands of Allied soldiers are now prisoners of war.
One of them is Pham Van Kiem,
a Vietnamese soldier serving with the French army.
in the barracks, there were many prisoners of all races.
Senegalese, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, from all over.
The Nazis begin to separate colonial soldiers
from other prisoners of war.
After shaving our heads,
we were all given numbers.
I didn't understand why.
The Nazis are conducting so-called medical research
to advance their racist beliefs.
And this is just the beginning.
Back in occupied Poland,
they are segregating the Jewish population
inside areas of cities and towns known as ghettos.
LIVING SPACE FOR JEWS DO NOT ENTER
To fight back, 13-year-old Julian Kulski has decided to join the Polish resistance.
At first I was just the runner,
carrying messages through a secret underground passage.
Later on, my captain taught me how to fight,
how to kill a person with a knife or with your hands.
Julian's unit prepare for resistance against the occupiers.
But their operation is uncovered by the Nazis.
Somehow the Germans learned about my commander.
And the Germans arrested him
and shot him point-blank.
He was everything.
I loved that man.
And I just swore that I would revenge him.
I and another boy spent the whole day looking for Germans.
We found downtown a German soldier.
He started pulling out his gun.
And we both fired.
He fell on his face.
My initial reaction was, you were able to kill them.
They were human.
Next day, they killed 20 women and children on that spot.
'Cause for every German,
there were 20 civilians shot on the same place.
It was medieval.
I feel responsible for the death of these poor people.
In the ghettos, they'll soon begin to round up Polish Jews
and deport them to camps.
As for the rest of Poland,
the Nazis have plans for them too.
One day, a troop of SS guards came.
Our mothers were told
there was no food in Poland,
so they wanted to care for us at a children's camp.
I remember being torn from her arms
and put onto a train.
On the side, it said: "Polish children for nourishment of the Reich."
Alojzy Twardecki is one of 20,000 Polish children abducted by the SS.
They called me "little angel."
I had curly hair then, very, very blond.
And light blue eyes.
And then, Germanization began.
I felt like a German boy.
My German youth, we want to be one people.
And you, my youth,
because you are the flesh of our flesh and the blood of our blood.
And in your young heads burns the same spirit that rules us.
Before us Germany lies, in us Germany burns,
and behind us Germany follows!
The scale of Hitler's ambition is now clear.
He dreams of creating a 1,000-year Reich,
homeland to a single master race.
Now German bombs are falling again on British cities
in a new terror campaign.
German aircraft carried out a number of attacks on Great Britain.
The raid was scattered over many parts of the country.
Meanwhile, Fascist Italy has invaded neighboring Greece.
Troops are moving forward
after breaking through the weak Greek resistance.
And beyond Europe, war is spreading.
Japan is on a mission to build a so-called new order in Asia.
They're already at war with China.
Our Empire has entered the next stage of cooperation in a New World Order!
Now Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan
agree to join forces in a formidable new alliance.
They're known as the Axis powers.
Their plan is to conquer the entire globe.
But there's one more player to be reckoned with.
The Soviet Union has the world's largest army.
And in Joseph Stalin,
they have a dictator with the ambition to match Hitler's.
Our forces are numberless.
The enemy will soon learn this to their cost.
Forward to victory!
1940 has seen the fires of war ignited in Europe.
In 1941, the flames will spread to engulf every corner of the globe.
have attacked the Pearl Harbor from the air.
I'll repeat that.
President Roosevelt says that the Japanese
have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air.