[wind whistling]
- [machine guns firing] - [soldiers shouting]
[soldier breathing erratically]
[projectile whistles by]
[explodes]
- [indistinct shouting] - [machine gun firing]
[man in German] Us Germans...
[soldier in German] Fire!
...we saw ourselves as the best army in the world.
Then there was Stalingrad.
[gunfire continues]
[explosions in distance]
From that moment, we started to fear the worst.
[soldier running, panting]
[narrator] 1942.
As the war enters its third year, the conflict now engulfs the entire world.
[announcer] The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor from the air.
Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging America into the war.
[Franklin Roosevelt] I ask that the Congress declare
a state of war.
[announcer] Japan has announced a formal declaration of war.
[announcer 2] This morning's news of Japan attacks on Thailand and Hong Kong.
In the West, most of Europe is under Axis control.
[commentator] The French Resistance has collapsed.
Hitler has now launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
[newscaster] The German successes against Russia
can be compared to the biggest victories in the course of this war.
And now the Germans are on the march in Africa,
where they have the British on the run.
So, now the stakes had never been higher.
With the Axis powers sweeping all before them,
can the combined forces of the US,
the Soviet Union
and Britain finally stop Hitler?
Or will the Germans and the Axis powers conquer the world?
[Hitler in German] Our great heroes have history on our side.
We must crush our enemies until the final victory!
[newscaster] Good morning, everyone. The start of another week of war.
[newscaster 2] Down in the desert sands of Libya,
everyone realizes that these are mighty serious days.
[Ellis] You must remember that you are in a desert,
and a desert is a vast expanse of nothing.
We had a much more colorful way of describing it:
"miles and miles and miles of sweet F-A."
Englishman Ray Ellis has been fighting the Germans in North Africa
for more than a year.
Ray joined up at the start of the war, eager to do his duty.
Now, he's starting to wonder if he'll ever see home again.
[Ellis] I was tired of deserts and killing,
and sick of the whole thing.
[detectors buzzing]
The excrement and bodies dying, being shot, and rotting.
Obviously, flies were there by the million.
Big, black, horrible, juicy flies.
And then there was the Germans.
The Germans were invincible.
Let's face it, nothing had stopped them.
[newscaster] Rommel's men are on the march again.
Rommel is a daring, skillful opponent.
[narrator] The German General, Erwin Rommel,
is closing in on the vital British-held port of Tobruk.
If Rommel takes Tobruk, he could take the Suez Canal.
If he takes Suez, he takes Africa.
[Ellis] Two officers came and said,
"We've had an order, Sergeant."
"We've got to fight to the last man and the last round."
He said, "Don't think many of us are going to see the sun set today, Sergeant."
We're all in it together.
[narrator] Ray's orders: hold off Rommel's tanks.
No retreat. No surrender.
[Ellis] And I can remember sitting by my gun
and just waiting for this battle to start.
Somebody discovered a barrel of Chianti.
Everybody was laughing and happy. It relieved all the tension.
Back slapping.
And then gradually it changed.
And it was mothers, sweethearts, and wives.
We was frightened.
[loud explosions, gunfire]
[noises fade]
- [noises resume] - [soldiers shouting]
[noises fade]
[Ellis] All I knew was, I was spinning in the air.
I came round.
My gun was upside down.
My friends were wiped out.
[flies buzzing]
I was absolutely surrounded by Germans.
[machine-gun fire in distance]
I got out of my hole and then I ran.
There were two of us left.
And this man who was helping me, he was blotted.
And that was it.
I was a prisoner.
[narrator] Ray is the only survivor of his section.
And he's about to be transported a thousand miles across North Africa
as a prisoner of war.
[Ellis] And so began the most dangerous journey
I've ever made in my life.
[narrator] The fall of Tobruk puts all of North Africa within Hitler's reach.
[newscaster] Rommel inflicted considerable damage.
[narrator] Meanwhile, in the Pacific,
the Japanese have scored one victory after another.
[newscaster] The Japanese attacked defense facilities in the Philippines.
[narrator] They've conquered the Philippines, Malaya and Burma.
[newscaster] The Japanese are closing in on Singapore from the north and west.
[narrator] They're even on American soil in a remote outpost of Alaska.
[newscaster] The Japs have set foot in the North American continent
for the first time.
[man in Japanese] We will wipe out the cruel oppression
of the United States and Great Britain.
[narrator] Now they're planning a surprise attack on the US fleet
at the Pacific island of Midway.
Sink her aircraft carriers,
and they'll knock the US out of the war for good.
There's just one problem.
The Americans have cracked their radio codes
and know the Japanese are coming.
[indistinct chatter]
[Cheek] They called all the pilots for a briefing,
and somehow the codebreakers knew right to the minute
what the Japanese were going to do.
[voices muted]
[Best] The morning briefing said
these carriers have been picked up to the northwest,
steaming in towards Midway.
We knew what the Japanese could do. We're under no delusions about that.
But we know what we can do.
We know they're coming. They don't know we're there.
[dispatcher] Pilots, man your planes. Pilots, man your planes.
[Cheek] It would be the most dangerous flying I ever did in my life.
[Cheek] We were just coming up on a large bank of clouds.
And I had no idea exactly what we were coming up on.
I guess the best way to put it was,
you're stepping into the main ring right now.
[dive bomber revving]
[narrator] Japanese fighter pilots scramble to get airborne.
[Iyozo in Japanese] A large enemy formation in the south
came across on the radio.
When I looked around, I saw 20 enemy dive bombers.
The gunfire was terrifying!
[machine guns firing]
[Cheek] I look straight ahead of me and here comes a Zero diving in.
I squeeze the trigger.
My tracer went right into him.
[metal clanging]
[Iyozo] The tank was hit and the plane started burning.
So I bailed out.
And I hit the water.
[narrator] US pilots shoot down a dozen Japanese fighters.
[Cheek] I looked over to the left,
and there's the biggest damn cruiser I've ever laid eyes on.
[narrator] Japan's aircraft carriers are now defenseless.
The US dive bombers close in.
[Best] The first I could make out anything,
I could see the bigger black blob.
I pulled up, so the first hit...
Second hit.
The third hit. There must have been an inferno.
I can see it in my mind right now.
[narrator] Four Japanese aircraft carriers,
almost half their navy,
are sent to the bottom of the Pacific.
For the first time in the war,
the US has inflicted a major defeat on the Japanese.
[Best] You're walking on air.
The Japanese fleet was blunted.
It was an ambush.
An "ambush" is a dirty term anyway, but we did to the Japanese
just what they'd done to us, we ambushed them.
It was wonderful.
[voices muted]
[men cheering]
[narrator] Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front,
the Germans have failed to land a decisive victory
over Stalin's forces at Moscow.
[newscaster] Repeated German attacks are failing to hit Moscow's defenses.
Hitler now makes a decision that will change the course of the entire war.
Desperate for a quick win, he diverts his best army south
to attack the city named after the Soviet leader...
Stalingrad.
[Hitler] The seizure of Stalingrad will only deepen this gigantic victory,
not because this place has Stalin's name, which is unimportant,
but because it is a strategically vital location.
And you can be sure, nobody will drive us from this place!
[crowd cheering]
[Schönbeck in German] We were really fired up.
Our tanks were as fast as lightning!
Our morale was sky high and we had amazing firepower.
[indistinct shouting]
[voices muted]
[newscaster] The Germans have advanced in the last 24 hours
and German reserves are continually arriving by air.
But the defenders of Stalingrad keep pouring in reinforcements.
[officer shouting commands]
[narrator] The Soviets are outmaneuvered by the German army's speed and tactics.
But their leader, Joseph Stalin,
has other cards to play.
[Stalin in Russian] Women of the resistance!
The whole world is looking at you
as the force to destroy the German invaders.
[narrator] The Red Army has recruited almost a million women.
[officer shouts]
One of them is Alexandra Bocharova.
[Bocharova in Russian] I was told, "Girl, you're in the army now!"
"You will be a machine gunner."
"Understood?"
I liked the heavy machine gun best.
[narrator] August 23rd.
Luftwaffe bombers launch the first wave of attacks on Stalingrad.
[bombs whistling, exploding]
Down below, the Panzer regiments have arrived.
[Schönbeck] We came to the Volga and saw this mighty river.
We were so cocky, it was, "Great, let's shell the boats!"
[Bocharova] I was on a boat.
A shell landed next to us.
A nurse was thrown into the water.
And she was gone to the bottom of the Volga.
[bombs exploding, gunfire]
Somehow we made it across.
[narrator] The Germans prepare for a full-scale ground assault of the city.
[Dengler in German] We saw Stalingrad burning.
We assumed, when we take Stalingrad,
the war would be over.
[in German] Fire!
[Dengler] We started the advance on Stalingrad.
[newscaster] More news of the fighting along the Russian front...
[newscaster 2] The German threat of Stalingrad continues to grow daily.
[Dengler] We'd take a house or ditch...
- [heavy gunfire] - [soldiers shouting]
...and they would take it back a few days later.
We suddenly realized we had a serious opponent.
[Bocharova] Every house was a battlefield.
Shells were raining down like thunder.
We lost so many troops.
[narrator] For three months,
the Nazis and the Soviets fight each other to a standstill.
But the Soviets have a plan to break the deadlock.
[Dengler] It was a mixture of astonishment and horror.
It was like something from a movie.
The Red Army was coming,
from everywhere, north and south.
[narrator] Stalin has called up reinforcements,
catching the Germans off-guard.
[Bechler in German] Our guns were superior.
But there were so many of them.
It was one wave after another.
They weren't getting weaker, they were getting stronger!
[Bocharova] We didn't care about our own lives.
All that mattered was the Motherland!
[Bechler] Suddenly, I saw it with my binoculars.
"My God! Stalingrad is surrounded."
[narrator] While the German army is trapped at Stalingrad,
in the Pacific, the Americans and the Japanese
continue the battle for supremacy.
[newscaster] Here are the highlights in the news of the day.
The whole nation has its fingers crossed for the Navy
fighting what may be one of the most crucial battles of World War II,
in the Solomons area.
[gunfire echoing]
- [heavy gunfire] - [men shouting]
[newscaster] As we must, we are suffering losses.
But we are also inflicting losses on the enemy.
[narrator] Meanwhile, in North Africa, the war turns again.
[announcer] This is the BBC Home and Forces program.
Here's some excellent news, which has come during the past hour.
The Axis forces in the western desert
are now in full retreat.
Winston Churchill has appointed a new commander in Africa:
General Montgomery.
And he's begun to halt the advance of Rommel's Afrika Korps.
[Montgomery] Our mandate from the Prime Minister
is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa.
We are going to finish with Rommel once and for all.
It can be done, and it will be done.
But tens of thousands of British soldiers are still prisoners of the Axis forces.
Since being captured near Tobruk,
Ray Ellis has been packed on a truck in the North African desert.
[Ellis] I can't remember how many days it went on.
It was a living hell.
You couldn't sit.
You couldn't move. In fact, you couldn't turn round.
Dirty, sweaty, stinking men
who were emptying their bowels and their bladders as they stood.
And you were doing the same.
Many died standing up.
Until we stopped at night, when the corpses could be carried out.
[narrator] Ray arrives in Italy, as a prisoner of war.
[Ellis] We'd been starved.
Broken-down group of men.
The street was lined with people spitting and jeering.
"This is the British army. Look at them!"
And then somewhere, out of the crowd,
a young girl came and pressed into my hand a big peach.
And then ran back again and hid herself.
And I can remember eating it and holding my cupped hands round my mouth.
Don't think anything ever tasted better than that peach.
I just burst into tears.
It made me realize that when you think the whole world is against you
and things are going wrong,
I always think there's a girl with a peach somewhere.
It was a wonderful feeling, that...
And it gave me the hope that things can change.
[announcer] This is London calling in the North American service for the BBC.
[newscaster] Yesterday afternoon at about 4:30,
the Axis armies were cut clean in half.
[narrator] November has arrived, and there's momentous news from Egypt.
The British 8th Army has defeated General Rommel's forces
at the Battle of El Alamein.
Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
[narrator] And now the Americans have landed
to help finish off the Axis powers in North Africa.
[newscaster] American paratroops and airborne infantry flown from Britain,
1,500 miles away,
have landed to capture airfields,
while other American troops have poured ashore on the beaches.
This is the end of the Axis African adventure.
[narrator] Meanwhile, Hitler's forces on the Eastern Front
are facing the possibility of a catastrophic defeat.
The German 6th Army is surrounded.
And the Russian winter is closing in.
[wind whistling]
Hitler's generals tell him the only hope is to break out and retreat.
But Hitler orders his army to stand and fight.
[Hitler] These last few months have been so tremendous.
Let's pay tribute to the soldiers that delivered this victory.
Defeat is out of the question.
National Socialist Germany will emerge from this war
with a glorious victory!
[crowd cheering]
[Schönbeck] At first we thought, we're going to get out of this.
But then things got really bad.
We ran out of gas.
Then we ran out of ammunition.
Then we ran out of food,
so we ate the horses.
We got orders to demolish houses for firewood.
We'd say, "Get out, we need your house!"
In one house,
there was an old couple.
An old man from Stalingrad
with his wife.
They had made some soup.
Something warm.
He said, "Come, eat with us."
I couldn't believe it!
[narrator] Christmas Day, 1942.
Hans and his men are 1,800 miles from home
and starving to death.
[Schönbeck] We had a little pine tree in my bunker.
I tried to put on a brave face for my men.
I said, "Guys, we'll get out of here somehow."
Though I didn't believe it myself.
And nobody else believed me either.
[Dengler] During the course of Stalingrad,
my whole world collapsed.
I saw this corpse.
Some soldiers threw themselves onto him.
They cut out his heart and lungs and ate them.
I thought, my God, how low have we sunk?
[man in German] The High Command of the Wehrmacht announces...
[man 2 in German] The 6th Army
has succumbed to the superiority of the enemy.
The battle for Stalingrad is over.
[narrator] On February 2nd, the German army surrenders.
Eight hundred thousand Axis troops have been killed or captured.
[Bechler] A Red Army soldier shoves his gun into my chest.
And that's it, we are prisoners.
[narrator] It's a disaster for Hitler and his biggest defeat of the war so far.
[Bechler] Then I started thinking of home.
How can we win the war now?
Sooner or later all of Germany will be surrounded like we are at Stalingrad.
That means the fall of Germany.
That cannot be.
[Bocharova] We hugged, we kissed, and shouted, "I'm alive!"
I learned I was to receive the Order of the Red Star.
I was walking proudly!
It felt like the world was watching me.
[narrator] Stalin's Red Army has stopped the Nazi tide.
But as the conflict enters its fourth year,
an even harder battle is beginning.
To win the war, the Allies must take the fight to enemy territory
and venture into the most dangerous place on Earth:
Nazi Germany.
[Bomber Harris] The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion
that they were going to bomb everybody else
and nobody was going to bomb them.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
[explosion]
[dive bombers buzzing]
- [pilot 1] Fighters at ten o'clock. - [pilot 2] Watch 'em, Scotty.
[Scotty] I got my sights on 'em.
[pilot 1] B-17 out of control at three o'clock.
[pilot 2] Come on, you guys, get out of that plane.
[subdued theme song playing]