For educational purposes
Poland suffered more than any other country in World War 2, one in six Poles died in the hands of the Nazi occupiers, and the Jewish population was wiped out.
But Poland was only the trigger for a war which in two years was to engulf the world.
The programme examines why Hitler called off the invasion of Britain and turned to the Soviet Union, and why he declared war on the USA in the winter of 1941.
It ties together the separate strands of the series and tells how a local conflict developed into a global war.
Poland suffered more than any other country in World War 2, one in six Poles died in the hands of the Nazi occupiers, and the Jewish population was wiped out.
But Poland was only the trigger for a war which in two years was to engulf the world.
The programme examines why Hitler called off the invasion of Britain and turned to the Soviet Union, and why he declared war on the USA in the winter of 1941.
It ties together the separate strands of the series and tells how a local conflict developed into a global war.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Of all the countries that took part in the Second World War, it was Poland that suffered
00:17most.
00:18Five and a half million Poles lost their lives, almost 20% of the population.
00:25It was in Poland that the war began.
00:27From there, it was to spread across the globe.
00:57Ostensibly, the
01:25Baltic city of Danzig, now Gdansk, was the fuse that led to World War II.
01:31The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 had separated Danzig from Germany to give Poland access
01:36to the sea.
01:38The city and its surroundings were controlled by the League of Nations, and Poland was given
01:42special rights, including free use of the port at the mouth of the Vistula, Poland's
01:47only major river.
01:52With its steeply gabled houses and elaborate statuary, Danzig was, and is still, a typical
01:58Hanseatic town.
02:00According to German folklore, it had been settled by German tribes 2,000 years before.
02:05Its population was overwhelmingly German.
02:08The city of Danzig was already, at the time of the Knights of the Order, a bulwark of Germanity
02:16to the East.
02:17With the flowering period of the Hanseatic period, its importance and prosperity grew.
02:22Houses and gates are witnesses of this proud past.
02:30The Danzig Germans were clamouring to join the Reich, and Hitler used their grievances,
02:46real and imagined, to stoke up a crisis.
02:49But he told his associates that Danzig was unimportant.
02:52It was to serve as a pretext for war.
03:06Danzig was an instrument in two ways.
03:09First, with it Hitler was able to offer something to the Germans, namely a cure for their injured
03:14feelings.
03:15He could tell them, I brought back Danzig, but it was much more important as a tool to
03:20initiate the conflict with Poland.
03:27By 1939, Hitler had freed Germany of most of the restrictions imposed by Versailles.
03:33He now turned to the greater objective he'd set out in his book Mein Kampf, the acquisition
03:38of living space.
03:39The key to that was Poland.
03:42The vast spaces lay in the East.
03:49So if Germany wanted to expand into a greater Reich, then it clearly had to be in the East.
03:55And historically, the first ones to do this were the German knights.
03:59Centuries ago, they built castles and established colonial rule in the East.
04:04And they had a strong missionary outlook.
04:34In the last week of August, as Hitler thundered against alleged Polish provocations, a German
04:48naval training ship, the cruiser Schleswig-Holstein, arrived in Danzig on a courtesy visit.
04:53The German school ship Schleswig-Holstein arrived in the harbour on a courtesy visit to the Free State.
05:01The Danziger received our soldiers from the Navy in a celebratory manner.
05:17Directly opposite the Schleswig-Holstein's moorings, on the other side of the Danzig,
05:47on the east bank of the Vistula, was a small Polish enclave called Westerplatte.
05:53Since 1925, Poland had maintained an ammunition depot there and a garrison of 88 soldiers
05:59and sailors.
06:00Franciszek Bartoszak was one of them.
06:07On the 25th of August, the Schleswig-Holstein entered the port and stopped outside Westerplatte.
06:13The next day, it moved on about 450 metres, and on the 1st of September, at 4.45am, it
06:20began the Second World War.
06:30There was this incredible explosion.
06:34We thought that the Westerplatte would disintegrate.
06:37They were all shouting, war, war.
06:44In spite of shelling at point-blank range from the cruisers' 11-inch guns, the Polish
06:49garrison at Westerplatte held out for a week.
06:54We were sleeping quite normally.
06:59We were a family of four with a shepherd dog, and at 4.47, suddenly shots and heavy artillery
07:05fire broke out, and my mother was first to wake up.
07:12And my mother woke father.
07:13Father!
07:14Father, Kurt, they're shooting!
07:15They're shooting!
07:16Ach, they aren't shooting, silly.
07:17Don't be silly.
07:18It's probably a thunderstorm.
07:19Then we could hear the second and third volley from the Schleswig-Holstein from the Westerplatte,
07:32and they were at least 28-centimetre gun turrets.
07:34You could hardly not hear them.
07:40Simultaneously in the city of Danzig itself, SS units attacked Polish installations, including
07:46the post office and its civilian staff.
07:52I should tell you my parents' flat in the old town was situated in a red line about
07:57400 metres away from the post office.
08:03And there were two armoured vehicles outside, one called Saar and the other one called Sudetenband,
08:09which approached from one side as well as the other side.
08:16Ordinary Polish post office workers were firing back.
08:19Of course, they weren't soldiers, and as far as I know, after the fighting they were taken
08:23off, tried and executed.
08:28Only after German troops had hosed down the building with petrol and set it on fire did
08:33the Polish postmen surrender.
08:36Meanwhile, Hitler hurled against Poland a force of 52 divisions, 15 of them were armoured
08:44or motorised.
08:45The speed and force of the German assault gave Poland no time to mobilise the whole
08:50of her army.
08:51About a quarter of a million men never reached their units.
08:57This was a revolution in warfare, devised to meet special German needs.
09:07Hitler knew that Germany was not in a position to conduct a great and long-lasting war.
09:12There were many reasons.
09:13Enemies on all sides, material, military and other shortcomings.
09:19And he asked himself, how can I manage it?
09:25And with a characteristic and astonishing turn, he said to himself that if a great and
09:29long-lasting war is not possible, we have to single out individual enemies to tackle
09:34them with a quick, concentrated blow, and so create the conditions for the next step.
09:47This and nothing else was fundamentally the whole idea of the Blitzkrieg, the Spitzkriegs.
09:56September was a dry month, and the German tanks sped across the sun-baked Polish plains.
10:02Clear skies allowed the Luftwaffe, especially the Stuka dive bombers, to find and attack
10:07anything that moved.
10:10On the fourth day of the war, the Polish government evacuated Warsaw, which had been heavily bombed.
10:16William Scharer, who was based in Berlin as the correspondent of an American radio
10:24network, followed the Wehrmacht into Poland.
10:28All of us were surprised at how fast it went.
10:31I had been up in Poland a couple of weeks before the war, and had been astounded about
10:38how backward their army was.
10:42They simply weren't prepared to fight a modern army such as the Germans had.
10:47So the Germans sliced through Poland using that new technique of the Stuka dive bombers
10:55and the tanks driving through.
10:59Poland's army was decades out of date.
11:02The futility of forced cavalry charges had been proved in the First World War, but many
11:07Polish generals distrusted the tank as likely to break down or run out of petrol.
11:13Poland had very few anti-tank guns, and not a single armored or motorized division.
11:18Against Germany's highly mechanized forces, Poland's antiquated army never stood a chance.
11:24We were impressed by the courage and the bravery of the Polish soldiers because they fought
11:32against the tanks and a very much superior German army, but they fought to their best,
11:39and we were impressed by them, poor devils.
11:43And unfortunately, if I may say so, for the Poles, the French and the British didn't attack
11:50Germany on the west.
11:51That probably was a mistake.
11:56When Britain and France declared war on Germany on September the 3rd, cheering crowds gathered
12:01outside their embassies in Warsaw, for both countries had undertaken in the event of war
12:06to come to Poland's aid.
12:09It was a huge demonstration outside both embassies, the French and in particular the British.
12:18Huge crowds gathered there and cheered the British ambassador and our foreign minister
12:22Beck, who came out onto the balcony with him.
12:29And it was he who gave this marvelous news, that we were not alone.
12:33In fact, we were alone until the end.
12:43From the first hours of the war, German planes had bombed undefended Polish cities.
12:48Many civilians were killed.
12:53In a formal guarantee, Britain had promised to support Poland immediately and by all means
12:58in her power.
12:59In practice, that meant bombing German targets.
13:02The promise was never kept.
13:06Listening to the British radio was pretty discouraging, because the BBC news bulletins,
13:14to start with, seemed to give more coverage to the British football results than they
13:20did to the progress of the war.
13:24And when we were all hoping for news that the RAF had really bombed Germany in retaliation
13:35against the Luftwaffe's bombing of open cities in Poland, all we got was news of leaflet
13:42raids on the Ruhr.
13:45The whole thing was fairly hard to explain to our Polish friends, who were listening
13:54to the news with us.
13:59The explanation was that the Chamberlain government was gearing up for a long war of
14:05attrition.
14:06Chamberlain had no desire for immediate offensive action.
14:09He ruled out even the bombing of German industry, arguing that Germany might retaliate against
14:14British cities, and on the small British expeditionary force, whose first units were
14:19arriving in France.
14:22Once on the continent, the men of the BEF had little to do but wait.
14:29France too had obligations to Poland.
14:32As French soldiers helped bring in the harvest, their commander-in-chief announced that it
14:57would serve no purpose to break our tools in early battles hastily conducted.
15:03The fact was that the French army's mobilization system was hopelessly cumbersome.
15:08By the time enough reserves had been called up and their heavy weapons brought out of
15:12storage, Poland was on the verge of collapse.
15:21Everyone said that France would strike at any moment.
15:24We were deeply convinced that this would happen in a day or two, or a week, hold out
15:29a little longer, a little longer, and there would be a decisive strike which would completely
15:34change the situation.
15:36I am firmly convinced, I belong to those army men who say that the Germans would have lost
15:42the war in September 1939, had the million-strong French army made a decisive strike in the
15:48west.
15:55This was what Hitler and the German generals always feared.
15:58The proportion of forces was at this time clearly in favor of the Allied forces of the
16:03Western Allies.
16:06Apparently, 110 divisions on the English and French side were facing about 25 divisions
16:14on the German side.
16:17That's a proportion of forces of approximately four to one.
16:22The ratio, as General Jodl stated, was ridiculously to the disadvantage of the Germans.
16:35If England and France had attacked Germany at the time of the Poland campaign, or I believe
16:40three months later, up to the end of 1939, the German defeat would have occurred in 1939.
16:55Neither France nor Great Britain began offensive action in September, but they did enter the
17:02war.
17:03And this meant that the Polish question stopped being merely a Polish-German conflict and
17:08became an element in a far broader conflict, initially European and later worldwide.
17:22The war widened dramatically when the armies of Soviet Russia crossed Poland's eastern
17:26frontier along its entire 1,000-mile length.
17:33It was a blow in the back that sealed Poland's fate.
17:36Caught between the German hammer and the Russian anvil, Poland was now to be partitioned and
17:41crushed.
17:43The victorious armies met at Brest-Litovsk.
17:46The city lay on the demarcation line agreed just before the war by Hitler and Stalin.
17:52It had been captured by the Germans and was to be occupied by the Russians.
18:06The handover followed a march past, with German and Russian generals side by side on the saluting
18:12base.
18:31Polish civilians had been bombed and strafed by enemy planes.
18:35Tens of thousands now took to the roads to try and escape from a double invasion.
18:39Then we moved into the depths of Russia, and I remember, as we walked east, eastwards
18:47to Vilnius, how every so often we would meet groups of people coming in the opposite direction,
18:53escaping from the Bolsheviks.
18:58They asked us, where are you going?
19:00They'll certainly kill you.
19:01Whilst we were asking, what are you going to do in the German area?
19:06The Germans will certainly murder you immediately.
19:11That was the horror story, Poles fleeing like hunted animals from one side to another, trying
19:17to save their lives.
19:27Within 48 hours of the Russian invasion, Polish forces in the east disintegrated and surrendered.
19:34Some 80,000 Polish troops escaped and continued the war from abroad.
19:43On the last day of the war, Colonel Gummins, who was my chief of staff, and I were going
19:50up to the Western Front, and we inquired our way from a Polish major who was standing beside
19:56the road, and he turned out to be an artilleryman.
20:01And since my colonel was also a gunner officer, he asked if he could see his guns.
20:08And we were taken a short way away and shown some admirably dug emplacements.
20:16And when my colonel said, well, as he seemed very well sighted, but where are the guns?
20:22The Poles said rather sadly, alas, the guns are still in England.
20:33For millions of Poles, there was no escape.
20:36The military campaign was over, Hitler's race war against the Polish people now began.
20:43It started with the segregation of Jews who were herded into special areas and put to
20:48work for starvation rations, no more than 200 calories a day.
20:53Later the special areas became death camps.
20:56Majdanek was one of the first, another was Auschwitz.
21:00Even the children were taken away.
21:06In many Polish cities, Jews lived in particular districts, these the Nazis enclosed.
21:12They became hunting grounds for SS troops.
21:32Polish civilians who had fought the invader were arrested and shot.
21:36The least act of resistance against the German occupation carried the death penalty.
21:45In the prisoner of war camps, the Gestapo searched out Poles whom they accused of having
21:49mistreated members of the German minority.
22:02An ethnic German points to a man he accuses of murdering his brother.
22:19He wanted to conquer these areas, but he also wanted, in the terrible language the Nazis
22:25used to use, the immediate clearance of subhuman Slavs from these territories.
22:39This had already begun in Poland and would continue above all in the Soviet Union.
22:45It meant the eradication of the ruling class and their replacement by the German master race.
22:52According to the Germans, there was to be an enormous mass of slaves, poor, uneducated,
22:58and without any national or social identity.
23:01All these people working for German ends.
23:09A Nazi propaganda film gave German cinema goers a glimpse of the scope of Hitler's dream
23:48In Zamosz, in southeast Poland, the
24:18tensions of the Nazis are remembered with anguish to this day.
24:23Hitler had a special hatred for the Poles.
24:25They had defied his threats and fought his army.
24:28Poland, as a nation, would now be destroyed.
24:33He instructed his subordinates to keep the standard of living in Poland down, to eliminate
24:38Poland's Jews and its educated classes and use Poland as a source of labour.
24:45In Zamosz, still clearly marked today, is a transit camp set up by the Gestapo and security
24:50police.
24:52Thousands of Poles passed through this gate and never returned to their homes.
25:02One Jewess, a mother, had a four-year-old child with her.
25:06My grandmother was just passing by and the Jewess begged her, Pavlova, please take my
25:11child.
25:12But just then a German turned around and said, do you want to go along with the Jews as well?
25:18So my grandmother gave up and left and the German turned on the Jewess who had wanted
25:22to protect her child and held her arms and then beat the child with a whip.
25:33And so after the group of Jews had been beaten, they herded them in the direction of the church
25:37where there is a deep ditch.
25:42There was a hole dug there and they were shot and thrown into it, some of them still alive.
25:49And the remains are still there to this day.
25:57At the principal school in the Zamosz region, the Nazis developed a pilot project for racial
26:02segregation.
26:03Fair-haired and fair-skinned Poles were categorised as Aryan and transported to Germany.
26:10Those with dark hair were sent to the camps.
26:16Some of the children survived and recall what they saw 50 years ago.
26:23When we came here to the school, we were examined by a tall doctor.
26:27He took us by the arm and he turned us, so first one way, then the other.
26:32And with his hand, he felt the back of the head.
26:37He looked at our ears, he looked at our hands, just like so.
26:41Dark people were singled out and sent away to camps.
26:45Fair-haired people were sent to Berlin to work.
26:48Even children were separated.
26:49A lot of people perished.
26:55One woman in the camp had a child wrapped in a blanket, a tiny child.
27:00This baby was five, maybe six months old.
27:03It was crying terribly because it was bitterly cold and hungry.
27:08A German grabbed this child from her, completely naked, and he went to a stone and started
27:15to hit it.
27:16The baby cried out, in a dumb voice.
27:19The mother started crying out terribly.
27:21She ran up to the German and began kissing his legs.
27:24He kicked her, but she continued to kiss his legs, so he took out a pistol, kicked her,
27:29fired.
27:30This is the way they settled accounts.
27:36Hitler's vision of a future Eastern Europe included the settlement of millions of Germans
27:41in areas to be cleared of what he lumped together as Poles, Jews, Slavs and Isianics.
27:46I will create, he once said, a vast botanical garden in which German blood can breed.
27:53It was in Zamość that the process began.
27:59Then the Germans brought carts and put us onto them, and they drove us through the whole
28:03length of the village.
28:04You could hear the cows lowing and the pigs squealing as there was nobody in charge any
28:08longer.
28:10And we drove through the local villages by a back route to avoid the German settlers
28:14who were moving into our farms, and we were taken to Zamość, to the barracks.
28:29The first sighting of a farm and a stable.
28:32In October 1939, Hitler told his generals that Poland would be the springboard for the
29:03attack on his new Russian ally.
29:06But before he could launch his war in the East, he needed to eliminate the enemy in
29:09the West.
29:14He wanted war so badly that he was prepared to overturn his whole original concept of
29:19war, namely a conflict with Poland and then with the Soviet Union, and no conflict with
29:25the West.
29:26And so he said, all right, I accept that I have to make war with the West, and I then
29:32shall turn with concentrated greater strength exclusively to the East.
29:40The Western offensive began in April 1940.
29:43Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark.
29:46Then the war spread to Belgium, Holland and France.
29:52Hitler's attack on France was a brilliant success.
29:54In numbers, his forces were inferior to those opposing them.
29:58His tanks were fewer and less powerful.
30:01Only in the air were the Germans superior to the Allies.
30:05What decided the war in the West was the Wehrmacht's use of tanks and dive bombers instead of slow-moving
30:10artillery to cut deeply into Allied lines.
30:13The Blitzkrieg again.
30:21After only six weeks of fighting, France sued for an armistice and German troops ran the
30:26flag up the Eiffel Tower.
30:47We had started very respectfully, especially towards the French, in all that we knew about
30:53World War I and the French fighting and so on and so on.
30:59It was certainly a tremendous victory, and so tremendous that even we were surprised.
31:06Not so much about the victory, we thought we could get it, but about the time in which
31:11this victory was won.
31:13I was a young captain, and as a young captain to be in the middle of such a battle, and
31:19not in the battle, to really experience such a victory, I can hardly describe what I felt,
31:27but what is begeistered in English?
31:32Enthusiastic.
31:34Enthusiastic.
31:35An intervention in the final phase of the battle by Hitler himself allowed the bulk
31:40of the retreating British force to escape.
31:43As his tanks were about to enter Dunkirk, the last French port open to the British,
31:48Hitler held them up for three days.
32:00Altogether more than 300,000 British and Allied troops were brought safely back to England.
32:09Hitler at that particular moment did not want a war in the West at all, and he was still
32:15hoping, and he was hoping until the end of 1940 that Britain would give in.
32:21He had no, let me put it in this way, he had no particular war aims against France and
32:27Britain, they were simply in his way to the East.
32:32Hitler's action before Dunkirk, unexplained to this day, kept Britain in the war.
32:38After weeks of indecision, Hitler ordered preparations for an invasion.
32:42It would be launched after Britain had been softened up by the Luftwaffe, under the direct
32:46command of Reichsmarschall Göring.
33:12It would be launched after Britain had been softened up by the Luftwaffe, under the direct
33:42command of Reichsmarschall Göring.
34:06Göring had told Hitler he would gain air superiority in four days.
34:11But in this respect at least, Britain was well prepared for war.
34:15Britain had radar and effective means of directing its fighter aircraft from the ground.
34:21By contrast, the German pilots flew unguided, if not blind.
34:25Britain's Spitfires and Hurricanes were more manoeuvrable than Germany's Me 109s.
34:33And not least, the morale of British fighter pilots who were acclaimed as national heroes
34:43was high.
34:47That was not the case in Germany, where Göring drove his pilots mercilessly, sending them
34:52on as many as five sorties a day.
34:55Adolf Galland, a leading air ace, quarrelled with Göring.
34:59Göring said, what can I do to improve your fighting force of your wing?
35:04And I was so furious, I said, please, Reichsmarschall, equip my wing with Spitfires, because what
35:11you are asking, I can better perform with Spitfires than with the 109.
35:15And he said, nonsense!
35:17You have the best fighter pilot of the world, best fighter aircraft of the world.
35:22The 109 is the most superior aircraft.
35:26Compelled to abandon his invasion of Britain, Hitler tried starving her out.
35:31The Battle of the Atlantic was an attempt to force Britain to surrender for lack of food.
35:36Germany's U-boats, using new bases in Norway and France, nearly succeeded.
35:43On any one day, 2,500 British merchant vessels were at sea.
35:48In any one month, half a million tons of shipping would be sunk.
35:52In 1941, the rate of losses far exceeded the rate at which ships could be built.
36:04It was the battle at sea that involved America in the war.
36:08The prospect of German domination of the Atlantic was a direct threat to the United States.
36:13And by the summer of 1941, the US Navy was helping to escort British convoys.
36:20America's growing intervention now prompted Hitler to develop his relations with Japan,
36:26whose foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, visited Berlin amid scenes of noisy, if spurious, public acclaim.
36:33Hitler wanted Japan to attack Britain's Far East empire, ideally Singapore.
36:39He thought that would divert America's attention to the Pacific, and so reduce her Atlantic commitment to Britain.
36:47In the event, the visit backfired.
36:50It helped persuade Americans that the Axis countries were becoming a serious threat to their security.
37:02I think that Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany was also a decisive moment for the Americans.
37:08The Americans regarded Hitler and Nazi Germany as an evil power.
37:13Any country that allied itself with that evil power became to them an accomplice in evil.
37:18I think the chances for avoiding war between Japan and America after that alliance was signed were very slim indeed.
37:43On the 22nd of June 1941, Hitler shocked his own people and much of the rest of the world
37:51by sending three million troops into Soviet Russia.
37:54At first, they rolled over the Russian defenses.
38:00In his view, the Soviet Union was ruled by Jews.
38:03Jews were not able to govern a state.
38:07And that was one reason why he believed that the Soviet Union could be defeated easily.
38:14But this view was supported by many military experts.
38:18One must not forget that Stalin had that period of purges of the army.
38:24And when Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941,
38:28Hitler was not the only one to expect a very sudden collapse of Soviet Union.
38:36That was felt by many other observers, not only in Germany, but also abroad in the United States or in Britain.
38:45In the first ten days, the Wehrmacht knocked out 1,200 Russian tanks and much of the Soviet Air Force
38:52and took 150,000 prisoners.
38:56It seemed like another glorious joyride into enemy territory.
39:06We made good progress. The whole sky was full of German planes.
39:11No Russian planes in sight.
39:17I think it took me four or five days until I heard the first Russian tank firing.
39:22And then we had already advanced 100 kilometers into Russia or even more.
39:27It was like that from the moment that we crossed the border and the action began.
39:33Open countryside and all the roads full, full with German troops.
39:38Troops marching, not positioned at the battlefield, but marching on the roads.
39:44One could, from a hill, one could see 10,000 German soldiers at a time.
39:49In marching columns, they marched.
39:51It was fantastic. I mean, it was quite ridiculous.
39:54It was unbelievable.
39:58While Hitler was occupied on his new Eastern Front,
40:01the leaders of Britain and America were preparing for battle.
40:04They were preparing for battle.
40:07While Hitler was occupied on his new Eastern Front,
40:10the leaders of Britain and America held their first face-to-face meeting at sea off Newfoundland.
40:16Churchill had come to power just before the collapse of France.
40:20Under his leadership, Britain had continued the war alone.
40:23He could now hope that Hitler's obsession with Soviet Russia would lead inexorably to his defeat
40:29if Britain, with American help, could support the Russians and keep them in the war.
40:36Now the arrival of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the historic meeting at sea.
40:41Three days of conferences at which President and Prime Minister
40:44agreed on a programme of peace after the war is over.
40:48There was agreement, too, on more immediate concerns.
40:51A more active American role in the sea lanes of the Atlantic,
40:55immediate aid to the Russians,
40:57and the Anglo-American response to the threat from Japan.
41:01During the summit, Roosevelt cut off exports of oil to the Japanese war machine.
41:09American policy toward Japan began to stiffen up all along the line.
41:14The idea being that by containing Japan,
41:18by eliminating Japan's access to oil outside of the empire, of the Japanese empire,
41:25it would be possible to hold Japan in check not only from a southward attack
41:32against, say, Malaya or the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies,
41:36but also to prevent Japan from attacking the Soviet Union from the rear in Siberia
41:43at a moment when Soviet armies needed to be concentrated against the Germans west of Moscow.
41:51On the day of the German invasion of Russia,
41:55Churchill had committed Britain to a full working partnership with Stalin.
41:59British supplies dispatched to Archangel and Murmansk that autumn
42:03included tanks and 200 modern fighter aircraft intended originally for Singapore.
42:12In October, in Moscow, America, still a non-belligerent,
42:16agreed to send the Russians a billion dollars in military aid.
42:22The discussions in the Kremlin have, thanks to the splendid work of Lord Beaverbrook,
42:26Mr. Averell Harriman, and Mrs. Stalin,
42:29brought about an infinitely satisfactory understanding
42:32between the UK, the USA, and the USSR.
42:39By August, the German army is deeply deadlocked in combat with the Soviet Union
42:47and the possibility of a coalition of the Soviet Union, of the United States,
42:52of Great Britain, against all possible enemies, Japan and the Axis,
42:57could be contemplated with some degree of assurance.
43:01One could believe it possible, finally, to defeat Germany.
43:06By autumn, it was clear to the Germans that they had badly underestimated the Russian colossus.
43:12As the German advance ran out of steam, there was a crucial change in the weather.
43:18First of all, the winter came earlier than usual.
43:25Or better to say, earlier than usual came a phenomenon
43:33what even today you have in Russia,
43:38what we call the period of mud or something like that,
43:42with rainfalls, and this started in the beginning of October.
43:46And the main reason that the attack against Moscow became so slow
43:51was this Nazi cause.
43:54The most forward tank of my division was in Kalining,
43:59and the last vehicle of my division was 300 kilometers behind,
44:02only because of mud, not because of enemy.
44:05That was the problem.
44:07And then suddenly it became really cold in hours,
44:13to 36 centigrade minus zero.
44:18We were not prepared for it,
44:21neither in our equipment, nor technologically.
44:28Most of the German generals wanted to break off the offensive and dig in for the winter.
44:33They knew what had happened to Napoleon's army in 1812.
44:37Hitler rejected retreat.
44:40He asked his Japanese allies to attack the Red Army's rear in Siberia.
44:53We could have taken advantage of the Russian-German war,
44:57and that indeed might have changed the whole aspect of the Second World War.
45:06But even if Japan had launched a war with Russia,
45:10the fact was that we did not have enough fuel reserves to sustain such an attack.
45:15There were no vital resources in Siberia.
45:19In the south, on the other hand,
45:21there were fuel reserves which we could rely on if the war dragged on.
45:26That was, I think, the reason why we continued with our southern advance.
45:41On December 7, 1941, Japan successfully attacked Pearl Harbor,
45:46America's principal base in the Pacific.
45:50To wage war against America with its limitless resources was audacious.
45:55What encouraged the Japanese leaders was the state of the war in Europe,
45:59where the Axis dominated a whole continent,
46:02and where Soviet Russia was too preoccupied beating back Hitler
46:06to be able to intervene in the Far East.
46:11What the Japanese did not know was that the war in Europe was at a turning point.
46:17Twenty miles outside Moscow, a tank barrier marks the exact spot
46:21where a Russian counterattack stopped Hitler's forces in their tracks.
46:29In the winter, on the doorstep of Moscow,
46:32the German troops sank into the snow and froze to death.
46:37But at the same time, Hitler knew that this failure came about
46:41because of the failure of the idea of the Blitzkrieg.
46:44If he had conquered Russia before,
46:47he could have faced England and the United States with all his strength.
46:51This he was now no longer able to do.
46:55A war on two fronts, this he saw, which he had always feared,
46:59was now unavoidable.
47:03But if a conflict with the USA was unavoidable,
47:07then he wanted to start it.
47:09And the attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor naturally was a good opportunity.
47:17Germany, Italy and Japan will lead the war,
47:20forced upon them by the United States of America and England,
47:24with all the means available to them,
47:27together until the victorious end.
47:34Article 2.
47:36Germany, Italy and Japan commit themselves,
47:38without full mutual understanding,
47:41neither with the United States of America
47:45nor with England.
47:51Hitler kept his promise never to surrender.
47:54Long before he shot himself in 1945,
47:57what had started in Poland as a local conflict became a global war.
48:03The war took 55 million lives,
48:06six times as many as the First World War.
48:09The aggressor nations, Germany, Japan and Italy,
48:12had tried to impose a new world order.
48:15The result was not the one they had sought.
48:18After 1945, two slumbering giants,
48:21who between the wars had chosen isolation,
48:24America and the Soviet Union,
48:26emerged as superpowers,
48:28new rivals for the domination of the world.
49:09To be continued...