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00:00Eighty years ago, a war of an unprecedented scale shook our planet and changed the face of the world.
00:18Never had war been so widespread, so brutal, or so destructive.
00:25A torrent of fire and steel.
00:27Steeped in courage and cruelty.
00:38From the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
00:42From the deserts of Africa to the Russian steppe.
00:51The war broke up nations and forged empires.
00:58It redefined our borders.
01:02Our ideals.
01:04Our fears.
01:06The Second World War shaped the world as we know it.
01:13This is the story of a war that changed everything.
01:18This is the story of a war that changed everything.
01:19This is the story of a war that changed everything.
01:27This is the story of a war that changed everything.
01:32We've found myself.
01:33This is the story of a war that changed everything, which is being known.
01:35This is the story of a war that changed everything in the world.
01:39Now it's just a man the world's знать of a war.
01:42This has all created everything, and it's all created everything.
01:45That's the story of a war that changed everything that made it.
01:47Transcription by CastingWords
02:17Transcription by CastingWords
02:47Transcription by CastingWords
03:17Transcription by CastingWords
03:20Or the Japan of Hirohiko
03:22The dictatorships refused the new order that resulted from World War I
03:35And promised a different future to their people
03:40A fascist order
03:44In Germany, Adolf Hitler, after six years in power, stood out as the figurehead of totalitarianism
03:55He set out to build an empire by dominating Europe and persecuting the Jews
04:04Whom he cynically blamed for the war he was preparing
04:08I want to be a prophet today
04:15If it should be the international finance judendom in and outside of Europe
04:21If it should be the people to die again in a world war
04:24Then the result will be the end of the world
04:29And that will be the end of the world
04:31Danger was rearing its ugly head
04:37But Europe's democracies favored appeasement over conflict
04:41They too were shaken by an upsurge in extremist movements
04:46In France and Belgium, the far-right leagues paraded in the streets
04:52In the United Kingdom, the British Union of Fascists was attracting thousands of new members
05:09It even appealed to members of the establishment like the Duke of Windsor
05:17In New York, 20,000 American sympathizers yelled, Heil Hitler
05:23And gave the Nazi salute
05:25A salute which would forever be pregnant with meaning
05:32Hitler had already annexed Austria and occupied Czechoslovakia
05:36Before turning his attention to Poland
05:40This was one step too far
05:42France and Great Britain promised to come to Poland's aid if it was attacked
05:46To avoid having to fight on a second front
05:52The Führer forged an unlikely alliance with his ideological enemy
05:58Joseph Stalin
06:03The tyrant had ruled as the absolute master of the Soviet Union for more than ten years
06:08He consolidated his power through fear
06:12Imposing a regime that crushed its opponents in the name of communism
06:17He too dreamed of expansion and wanted part of Poland
06:27In August of 1939, Berlin and Moscow signed a non-aggression pact
06:37The two dictatorships presented their unexpected alliance as a desire to guarantee peace
06:44On the contrary, it would pave the way for total war
06:50Which would elevate violence to a planetary scale
06:53On September the 1st, 1939
07:05Lightning struck Europe
07:07The Polish cavalry charged
07:08But the German army crushed it with its tanks
07:09The German army crushed it with its tanks
07:14Safe in their cockpits, Luftwaffe bombers dropped their loads
07:16The German army crushed the German army crushed it with its tanks
07:22The German army crushed it with its tanks
07:36Safe in their cockpits, Luftwaffe bombers dropped their loads.
07:43Worsau folded under 642 tons of bombs.
08:08Germany had just invented the Blitzkrieg, the Lightning War.
08:13A combination of armoured divisions and aviation to strike fast and heavily, breaking through enemy defences.
08:21It would forever change military strategy.
08:29In eastern Poland, the Red Army moved into the areas which Hitler had conceded to Stalin.
08:38Sandwiched between the Soviets and the Germans, the Polish army surrendered.
08:53World War II had just begun.
09:00World War II had just begun.
09:09France and Britain had promised to come to Poland's aid.
09:15But in fact, it was months before they finally entered the war.
09:24Across the Atlantic, the United States of America remained isolationist.
09:29The country was yet to become the world's police force.
09:33And its president, Franklin Roosevelt, marked by World War I, had promised to never again sacrifice American lives in such a distant conflict.
09:42What's more, Roosevelt's concerns were elsewhere.
09:46His eyes were focused on the Pacific, where the US had military bases and trading interests.
09:52Japan, hungry for conquests and resources, was threatening the stability of the region.
10:04Japan, hungry for conquests and resources, was threatening the stability of the region.
10:11Three years earlier, Japan had invaded China, first striking Shanghai, then Beijing.
10:20For the Chinese, this was a time of historical transformation.
10:25Nationalists and communists, who had been fighting a civil war for decades, joined forces to repel the invasion.
10:31Until then, a minority force, the communists used the conflict to switch the internal balance of power.
10:44Armed, trained and organized during the war, ten years later, they would bring to power the man who changed the fate of China, Mao Zedong.
10:55In the meantime, China had become a quagmire for the Japanese army, which was swallowed up in the country's immensity.
11:18From one side of the globe to the other, the world held its breath.
11:25In Europe, an order believed to be unshakable was about to shift.
11:33France, with the world's largest army at the time, still thought it was protected by the Maginot Line,
11:40and took advantage of the so-called phony war to rearm.
11:46After the invasion of Poland, it mobilized its forces, working hand in hand with Britain.
11:55France, with the British expeditionary force.
11:58200,000 men of the British expeditionary force were sent across the channel to defend Europe.
12:10But before facing each other directly in battle, Germans, French and British first engaged in economic warfare.
12:17With naval blockades, sabotage, and the control of trade routes.
12:25In Argentina, a German battlecruiser, which had been hassling British merchant navy ships for weeks, was forced to scuttle.
12:32Thousands of kilometers away in Norway, the Allies attacked a strategic target.
12:49The Germans' iron ore supply, a crucial material for the manufacture of arms.
12:57Cutting off the enemy's access to essential resources was considered the surest path to victory.
13:04In response, the Germans took the Blitzkrieg upper gear.
13:15They mobilized 100,000 men on land, sea, and in the air.
13:19It was the first joint warfare campaign in history.
13:24Combining infantry, navy, and air force.
13:30A logistical feat.
13:33Norway fell in a matter of days.
13:37Denmark, in a few hours.
13:39Despite this German show of force, the French and British, haunted by World War I, weren't ready to return to the horrors of the trenches.
13:54So France mobilized its colonial regiments, no fewer than 150,000 men, to fight alongside French soldiers in Europe.
14:03But the leaders were struggling to define the objectives of war.
14:07How could they have their men fight without understanding why?
14:23In May 1940, the Wehrmacht invaded Belgium and Holland.
14:27The French were finally forced into action and hurried to the aid of their allies.
14:42With this diversion, German panzers swept around the Maginot Line and sped through the Ardennes.
14:58Despite fierce resistance from its troops, France was on the point of collapse.
15:02France was on the point of collapse.
15:03Like Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland, France was on the point of collapse.
15:07Like Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland, it suffered the shame of a lightning defeat, as ruthless as it was unexpected.
15:13And the French was the first american.
15:21The French and French were still enabling the civil war.
15:26Despite fierce resistance from its troops, France was on the point of collapse.
15:29Like Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland,
15:32it suffered the shame of a lightning defeat,
15:35as ruthless as it was unexpected.
15:42Towns and cities fell one after the other.
15:46Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops fled towards the sea.
15:52The port of Dunkirk became the only escape route
15:56across the Channel to Britain.
15:59In London, Winston Churchill was the newly appointed Prime Minister.
16:25He had seen the Nazi danger approaching
16:27and refused all compromise with Hitler.
16:30Britain entrusted him with its fate.
16:36He knew that the Battle of France was lost.
16:40The 400,000 soldiers stranded on the beaches
16:42across the English Channel had to be saved.
16:46In one of the darkest hours of history,
16:49Churchill kept the light of hope burning.
16:50He was one of the providential men forged by World War II
16:57and continues to influence our political imagination today.
17:01For ten days, hundreds of British ships and boats of all sizes
17:11braved the waves to bring home the soldiers
17:14who had retreated to Dunkirk.
17:18A whole country mobilized to come to their rescue,
17:21pretty much unaware of what awaited them.
17:25The
17:53Amid strafing from German Stukas, the men caught in the hell of Dunkirk desperately struggled to survive.
18:11At sea, Royal Navy Lieutenant Philip Roderick Hall did his best to help.
18:16In the air, German pilot Helmut Malker relentlessly bombed British ships and finally hit a target.
18:31On shore, French Colonel Jean Mariot saw his last hopes of survival sink into the harbour.
18:39He was taken prisoner on June the 2nd, 1940, with 80,000 other soldiers, mostly French.
18:57Among them, a large number were from the French colonies.
19:01These men now knew that France wasn't invincible.
19:09They had seen defeat with their own eyes, and weren't ready to forget it.
19:18The record of coups across Africa...
19:20For now, Europe was panic-stricken. More than 10 million Belgians, Danes, Dutch and French took to the roads.
19:41The migrants fled southwards, hoping to escape the hordes of German soldiers sweeping into Western Europe.
19:48A dramatic exodus.
19:58Those fleeing persecution in Europe tried to reach Brazil, the United States, and even Palestine.
20:09A tragic precedent.
20:12Refugee flows would continue to increase with each war and natural disaster.
20:17The greatest refugees of the Korean war.
20:20The greatest refugees of the Korean war...
20:21in the Korean War.
20:41On June the 14th, 1940, the French Prime Minister resigned
20:45and was replaced by Marshal Petal.
20:49He announced the armistice.
20:52The defeated French helplessly looked on
20:55as the Nazis paraded on their streets.
21:03The defeat would cause a shockwave.
21:06London became the capital of the free world.
21:20Polish airmen, French soldiers, ministers, kings and queens
21:28from the Netherlands, Norway or Poland.
21:33Politicians who refused defeat.
21:36Resolute officers, the stateless accused of being traitors
21:39in their homeland, gathered there in their hundreds.
21:48Like Charles de Gaulle,
21:51the former Under Secretary of State for National Defence and War
21:54was determined to continue the fight.
21:56Exiled in London, on June the 18th, the Frenchman made his appeal for resistance.
22:10We believe that the honor of the French
22:15consists of continuing the war
22:19alongside of their allies.
22:22Although his speech was barely heard in France,
22:25the rebel made history
22:27and forever tied his fate with that of his homeland.
22:30It will allow us to have the victory
22:34and deliver the country.
22:41On the same day as the appeal,
22:47Mussolini met with Hitler in Munich
22:50to discuss how they would share out Europe.
22:54The Führer confided to Il Duce,
22:57our interests are in the north,
23:00yours in the south.
23:05Like his ally, Mussolini had dreams of hegemony.
23:08He wanted to rebuild a Roman Empire
23:12to reign throughout the Mediterranean.
23:15His ambitions were but a mirage.
23:20Italy was ill-prepared for modern warfare
23:23and totally unable to compete with a great industrial power like Germany.
23:30But France was on its knees.
23:32On June the 10th, Mussolini took advantage of its agony
23:37to declare war.
23:47The Third Reich, however, only left him some scraps.
23:51The town of Menton on the French Riviera
23:54and a few Alpine villages.
23:55Hitler claimed the lion's share.
23:58With the armistice between France and Germany signed,
24:01Pétain's government, now installed in Vichy,
24:03would collaborate with the Reich
24:05which occupied the northern half of France.
24:06Yesterday, a world power, France began its decline,
24:07and its colonial empire wavered.
24:09Its colonies in Africa hesitated between supporting the Vichy government
24:11and the French Revolution.
24:12and resisting it.
24:13While Japan took advantage of France's different powers,
24:15while France and Germany signed,
24:17Pétain's government,
24:19now installed in Vichy,
24:21would collaborate with the Reich
24:23which occupied the northern half of France.
24:25Yesterday, a world power,
24:27France began its decline,
24:29and its colonial empire wavered.
24:31Its colonies in Africa hesitated
24:34between supporting the Vichy government
24:36and resisting it.
24:37while Japan took advantage of France's defeat
24:43to invade Indochina.
24:47The defeats in Europe and the threats in Asia
24:50forced Roosevelt out of his isolationism.
24:53He was intent on making the United States
24:56the arsenal of democracies
24:58to help them fight back against the Third Reich
25:01and the Empire of the Rising Sun.
25:03Congress voted for a substantial budget of $1.3 billion for defence.
25:19American manufacturers transformed overnight.
25:23Where they had made automobiles, refrigerators and cameras,
25:27they now produced fighter jets, tanks and guns.
25:30It was the birth of the military-industrial complex.
25:34The world's centre of gravity had shifted.
25:36Great Britain now looked across the pond.
25:38Breaking with the old continent,
25:40it established a special relationship with the United States,
25:42the future superpower.
25:43Britain prepared for a German invasion.
25:44School children had practice runs to air-raid shelters.
25:46The world's centre of gravity had shifted.
25:48Great Britain now looked across the pond.
25:50Breaking with the old continent,
25:52it established a special relationship with the United States,
25:54the future superpower.
25:56Britain prepared for a German invasion.
26:09School children had practice runs to air-raid shelters.
26:12Signposts were taken down to confuse the enemy.
26:17Airmen were on the front line.
26:36British and exiled Belgian, Danish, Polish and French pilots
26:41got ready to sacrifice their lives in the name of freedom.
26:45Facing them, other knights of the sky,
27:03daredevils like them, on board their killing machines.
27:08The Luftwaffe was tasked with preparing the ground for the future invasion,
27:17by wiping out British air defences.
27:24It carried out raids on aircraft factories and Royal Air Force bases.
27:29For two months, a massive aerial battle was fought for the control of British skies.
27:43The dog fights approach London.
27:44The dog fights approached London.
27:45The Dogfights
28:15American reporter Edward Morrow described the events live.
28:22This is Trafalgar Square.
28:26The noise that you hear at the moment is the sound of the air-raid sirens.
28:33A searchlight just burst into action off in the distance,
28:37one single beam sweeping the sky above me now.
28:40It was a first.
28:46Across the Atlantic, the war entered the homes of millions of listeners.
28:53News in real time would forever change the role of the media and population's relation to war.
28:59On September the 7th, the Germans changed their tactics by directly targeting British civilians.
29:11An ominous precedent.
29:23From then on, civilians were increasingly caught on the front lines of warfare.
29:28On September the 7th in the Mediterranean, the British colonial empire also came under attack.
29:45Mussolini ordered his troops to invade Egypt, then a British protectorate,
29:50from neighbouring Libya, then an Italian colony.
30:13The British forced back the Italians miles from their objective, the Suez Canal.
30:18The vital artery which linked Britain to its empire and its resources.
30:26Ignoring this failure, Il Duce opened a third front, without even informing Hitler.
30:34In Greece this time, where his troops came up against fierce national resistance.
30:40Greek infantrymen were able to hold their positions, thanks to large groups of women,
30:50who kept them supplied with ammunition carried on their backs.
30:56Pioneers of the role that women would play in resistance movements all across Europe.
31:00In Germany, a decisive event would turn the ongoing conflict into a world war.
31:17On September the 27th, Tokyo joined Rome and Berlin, forming an axis of dictatorships.
31:35All with the same dreams of hegemony.
31:38For the Japanese, Asia.
31:45For the Italians, the Mediterranean and Africa.
31:52And for the Germans, Europe.
31:54But first, they had to defeat Britain.
32:06The British needed to fold under the weight of the Blitz.
32:12Made possible by technical advances in powerful long-distance weaponry,
32:17terror bombings were carried out to break the enemy's morale,
32:21in a form of psychological warfare.
32:23For 57 nights on the run, London has sheltered in the depths of the Tube.
32:39Above them, a young British woman, Rosie Newman, armed with her camera,
32:55captured her people's incredible resilience.
32:58The British united around their Prime Minister.
33:18The British united around their Prime Minister.
33:18And around the Crown, which protected civilians from the destruction of the Blitz by sheltering them,
33:30helping them to rebuild their homes, feeding them and nursing them,
33:35heralding the welfare state that would be established after the war.
33:39Then, aged 14, Princess Elizabeth addressed the nation's children in a radio broadcast.
33:49We are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war.
34:00We know, every one of us, that in the end, all will be well.
34:05And when peace comes, remember, it will be for us, the children of today,
34:14to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.
34:18It was the first ever public speech by she who would go on to rule the United Kingdom for more than 70 years,
34:30lastingly marked by the experience of war.
34:40Despite 15,000 lives lost, the Blitz failed to break British morale.
34:46Especially as Britain could now count on growing American support.
35:00In September 1940, a British scientific delegation crossed the Atlantic,
35:06carrying precious industrial secrets in an attaché case.
35:11These were key military technologies destined for the United States.
35:16The resources and support provided by Washington paved the way for unprecedented cooperation.
35:25Radar, sonar, light and heavy weaponry,
35:28this strategic sharing resulted in phenomenal progress,
35:32which would change the course of the war.
35:35The United Kingdom wouldn't go down without a fight.
35:38The British even met with several successes in Africa.
35:45In Libya, but also in Ethiopia and Eritrea,
35:49they forced back Mussolini's troops.
35:53They were on the point of expelling the Italians from Africa.
35:56But just as victory seemed imminent,
36:00Churchill decided to transfer 60,000 of his soldiers in Africa to aid the Greek army.
36:10A huge mistake, which deprived him of immediate victory.
36:15Because the humiliated Mussolini begged aid from the Third Reich,
36:23and Hitler dispatched his soldiers.
36:30A German expeditionary force, the Afrika Korps,
36:33commanded by General Rommel,
36:35arrived to support Italy in Libya.
36:37Then the German army invaded Greece,
36:50which succumbed within three weeks.
36:53On their way to Greece,
37:10the Germans had also broken Yugoslavia,
37:13which had dared to side with Britain.
37:18Bulgaria and Romania joined the Rome-Berlin axis.
37:21Save a few countries,
37:24the swastika flew above the whole of Europe.
37:30There was nothing now to prevent the Führer from looking eastwards.
37:42From the USSR,
37:44Stalin looked on helplessly as the Nazi empire was built.
37:51He considered the Balkans to be his turf,
37:58and now the Germans were camped at his door.
38:06It was a pivotal moment.
38:08If Hitler attacked,
38:10he would force the Soviets onto his enemy's side.
38:14Stalin remained convinced that the Führer wouldn't be crazy enough
38:18to break their pact and open a new front in the east,
38:21while he was still fighting Britain.
38:27And when General Zhukov,
38:28the second in command of the Red Army,
38:31demanded that his troops be placed on red alert,
38:34Stalin was against it.
38:36Germany will never attack Russia,
38:38he affirmed.
38:39Hitler proved him wrong.
38:54He dispatched his troops to take the Russian's step.
38:58A gigantic operation.
39:00Five and a half million soldiers,
39:033,710 tanks,
39:064,980 aircraft
39:08were mobilized across a front
39:102,000 kilometers wide.
39:18This was Operation Barbarossa,
39:22the largest military invasion in World War II.
39:25Stalin was distraught,
39:34but tried to get his country ready for war.
39:36Stalin was distraught,
39:37but tried to get his country ready for war.
39:55Hitler had one objective.
40:10A war of extermination.
40:13It was no longer a matter of conquering territories,
40:16but of annihilating entire peoples,
40:19and reducing communist ideology to ashes.
40:22This was the starting point
40:24of an escalation of horror and cruelty
40:26which would haunt humankind.
40:31The Soviet cities fell.
40:34Smolensk, Minsk, and then Kiev.
40:40Hundreds of thousands of soldiers surrendered.
40:43The German troops starved,
40:52extenuated,
40:53tortured,
40:54or executed Soviet prisoners.
41:02While to the rear,
41:04the Einsatzgruppen,
41:06or execution squads,
41:08massacred Jews.
41:09The German troops
41:13at Babi Yar near Kiev,
41:19more than 33,000 men,
41:21women,
41:21and children,
41:23guilty only of being born,
41:25were slaughtered in a vast ravine.
41:34This massacre would become known as
41:36the Holocaust of Bullets.
41:38It set the precedent
41:40of a process
41:41that nobody was yet able to imagine.
41:46The systematic genocide
41:48of Europe's Jews.
41:56In 200 days,
41:58more than 5 million Soviets
42:00were killed.
42:01Hitler predicted that the war
42:04would be over by December.
42:11The USSR was on the brink of defeat.
42:18A lesson that its leaders
42:19never forgot.
42:21Never again would they leave
42:23their territory open to invasion.
42:24and all conquests
42:27close to its borders
42:28would become a shield.
42:30Even today,
42:32Russia has maintained
42:33this paranoid fixation
42:34to protect itself
42:36behind a defensive glacier.
42:37For now,
42:51panic overcame
42:52the Russian capital.
42:57Especially after Stalin
42:58ordered the evacuation
42:59of the embassies
43:00and main government offices.
43:12But the master of the Kremlin
43:14instilled calm
43:15once he announced
43:16he would be staying in the city.
43:20Moscow would be defended.
43:21But at what price?
43:31What price?
43:51The��
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