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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.
00:24A 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.
01:32The Second World War
01:37The Second World War
01:40Transcription by CastingWords
02:10CastingWords
02:40In the USSR, after the German invasion five months earlier,
02:48millions of Russians were living in fear of the inexorable advance of the Nazis.
02:53The Germans were only 30 kilometers from the capital, but on November the 7th, 1941, Stalin announced in a radio address that the Red Army would proudly parade in front of the Kremlin.
03:09As soon as the event was over, the soldiers left Red Square to head back to the front of the gates of the city.
03:28World War II was having an ever-greater effect on people's lives.
03:41Their futures depended on the outcome of the conflict.
03:44In the war, competing forces faced one another.
03:48Imperialist, fascist, democratic and communist.
03:51The fate of millions of lives depended on one or other of them being victorious.
03:57The fate of millions of thousands of kilometers from Moscow in the Pacific Ocean, Japan was preparing a daring attack.
04:21If it succeeded, it would change the course of history and propel America into the war.
04:29On November the 26th, 1941, a Japanese armada was heading towards the Bay of Pearl Harbor.
04:42Situated some 6,000 kilometers from the coast of Japan, in the Hawaiian archipelago.
04:49Its aim, to neutralize the American fleet, which was threatening Emperor Hirohito's desire for hegemony.
04:55He had allied himself with Hitler and Mussolini to divide up the world between them, and his aim was to colonize Asia.
05:09The United States was worried, and responded with economic sanctions and an oil embargo, hoping to slow down the Japanese war machine.
05:25In response to the rise of dictatorships, an alternative vision was taking shape.
05:37In mid-summer of 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appeared together for the first time.
05:47They signed the Atlantic Charter, the text outlined the principles of a new world order, the right of nations to choose their government, the end of forced annexations, and the promotion of free trade.
06:05A model that was destined to spread.
06:09It was also the founding document of the United Nations, which, after the war, would bring the promise of peace and international security.
06:21The United Nations said it was a convoy to avert a human catastrophe.
06:25America was living proof of this.
06:31Although not actually at war, it was supporting all the countries actively fighting the dictators of the Axis, China, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
06:41They delivered a massive $50,000 of aid, as well as tanks, aircraft, and weapons, but also blankets, food, and fuel.
06:59Its worldview relied on the triumph of capitalism.
07:03In the world to come, the United States would become the nerve center of the world economy.
07:11In contrast, in the USSR, the communist model placed all the weight of the war on the shoulders of the masses.
07:28At the gates of Moscow, reinforcements were constantly being sent to the Red Army to fight the Wehrmacht.
07:50One and a half million soldiers.
07:53A quarter of them came from Siberia and were accustomed to the Arctic cold.
07:58And half of them had been freed from the Gulag labor camps and sent to the front.
08:09Each citizen was a vital cog in the Soviet war machine.
08:17The USSR relocated 15,000 factories to the east, far from the territory invaded by the Germans.
08:24The Wehrmacht came up against another formidable adversary, the immensity of Soviet territories.
08:37Hitler's armies triumphed in Poland, then in France, but Russia was 40 times bigger than France, and 57 times bigger than Poland.
08:47The Germans underestimated the logistical difficulties.
08:50The Germans underestimated the logistical difficulties.
08:55Their supply lines stretched over 2,000 kilometers.
08:59The roads turned into bogs and became unusable.
09:02In December, the winter became the USSR's ally.
09:17The Arctic temperatures immobilized men and machines alike.
09:23More than ever, the war was becoming a psychological test, as much as a physical one.
09:36Troop morale was essential for victory.
09:38On December the 6th, 1941, the Red Army launched a counter-offensive and forced the Wehrmacht to abandon Moscow.
10:00This abrupt turnaround marked the beginning of a change in fortunes, which put the USSR on the side of the victors.
10:19The next day, on December the 7th, at 6 a.m., Japan launched its raid on Pearl Harbor.
10:43A first wave of 183 Japanese aircraft took off.
10:49Radio silence.
11:08The pilots communicated by gestures to avoid their exchanges being picked up.
11:12The surprise had to be complete.
11:19In clear skies, Japanese pilot Mitsuo Fushida had his target in his sights.
11:32Eight American battleships lined up in the bay of Pearl Harbor.
11:37He sent the signal, Tora, Tora, Tora.
11:40On the ground, Captain Eric Hackinson filmed the apocalyptic scenes.
12:10These images would change the destiny of the United States.
12:20The Americans who believed themselves invincible were attacked on their own soil.
12:25Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
12:42The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
12:53I ask that the Congress declare a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
13:12It was one of the most important speeches in American history, and it marked a turning point.
13:19The United States military was now involved in the conflict.
13:28And to protect themselves from any further aggression, from then on, they became, for a very long time, the world's police force.
13:36On December 8th, 1941, the U.S. Congress ratified America's entry into the war.
13:55Within a few days, the course of history had changed.
13:58December 6th, the U.S.S.S.R. was already fighting at Great Britain's side.
14:15America now joined them.
14:16The two future superpowers of the 20th century were now committed to fighting the Axis.
14:26A paranoid Hitler saw proof of a global conspiracy in the alliance between the American and Soviet regimes.
14:50Before an audience of faithful supporters, he accused the Jews of controlling the Allied governments.
15:03His response was to extend the Holocaust to the whole of Europe.
15:07The methods to be used were discussed at Vanse in January 1942.
15:27Thirty-three countries were affected.
15:30A total of 11 million Jews.
15:32The war rendered the unthinkable possible genocide on an industrial scale.
15:42The Nazis would call it the final solution.
15:46America, like the rest of the world, knew nothing yet of the Nazis' genocidal project.
16:08After Pearl Harbor, the Americans united around anti-Japanese sentiment.
16:13Racist propaganda allowed them to justify the severe repression of Japanese Americans, seen as the enemies within.
16:43A hundred and twenty thousand of them, suspected of being enemy spies, were interned in camps.
17:03America was becoming increasingly involved in the war.
17:06Convoys filled with equipment, destined for the British, the Chinese, and Soviets, sailed the seas.
17:14At the heart of this total war, one resource became more highly prized than any other.
17:21Oil.
17:24Essential for ships, tanks, aircraft, and factories, black gold kept the war machine well-oiled.
17:31The Allies controlled 98% of oil fields.
17:44Dependency on this resource dictated military strategy.
17:47On the Eastern Front, the Italians and Germans fought with the British for control of the strategic route of the Suez Canal.
17:57In North Africa, the Wehrmacht looked towards the Caucasus Mountains and the oil in Baku, one of the most important oil fields.
18:09The Germans had motorized their armies to an unprecedented extent, but had greatly underestimated their need for fuel.
18:17In the race for weapons and resources, America was in the lead.
18:28The Germans knew this, and so to weaken their better supplied enemy and to seize its resources,
18:34they threw themselves headlong into the Battle of the Atlantic.
18:37Their submarines, the U-boats, track them as far as the American coast.
19:00They sent several hundred ships and six million tons of goods to the bottom of the ocean.
19:18To combat this threat, the British and Americans focused on intelligence gathering.
19:22Some months earlier, the British pulled off a significant coup.
19:30On May the 9th, 1941, two English battleships attacked U-boat 110.
19:36Its commander, Julius Fritz Lem, gave the order to abandon ship and attempted to scuttle the submarine.
19:42But the explosive charges didn't go off.
19:48Second Lieutenant David Baum went on board and took possession of an Enigma machine in perfect condition.
19:56With its codes and vital coding documents.
19:59This discovery, among others, transformed the intelligence war between the countries.
20:13Encryption, undercover agents, detection.
20:17Secrecy was a key weapon.
20:21Techniques were developing at the same time as battles were being waged,
20:25and they would change the result of the war.
20:27Intelligence gathering played a vital role in warfare.
20:33President Roosevelt understood this.
20:36After Pearl Harbor, he created the OSS,
20:39a centralized intelligence gathering organization.
20:42A forerunner of the CIA.
20:45Because America was never going to be caught by surprise again.
20:57In the Pacific, early in 1942, Japan was making the most of the shock of Pearl Harbor
21:07to accelerate the pace of its conquests.
21:12Like the Germans in Europe, the Japanese wanted to establish their empire
21:16across all the territories previously dominated by the West.
21:22In January 1942, Japanese troops struck the British colonies of Malaysia and Hong Kong.
21:32Japan also took control of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, which was rich in oil.
21:38Then Burma, another colony of the British crown.
21:42In March, the Philippines, a protectorate of the United States, collapsed.
21:46Japan claimed to be the good guys, freeing Asian people from the yoke of white colonialism.
22:06In reality, the Burmese, Indonesians, and Malaysians were forced from the domination of one regime to another.
22:19For months, and in some cases years, 250,000 workers were forced to build the Railway of Death,
22:26a line linking Bangkok and Burma.
22:2890,000 civilians and 16,000 prisoners of war died there,
22:39victims of tropical diseases and inhuman treatment.
22:42According to a racist ideology, the Japanese believed they had the right to rule over other Asian people.
22:57They judged inferior.
23:03Over the course of the previous century, racial theory had become part of the natural sciences,
23:08classifying humans into categories like plants and animals.
23:18In World War II, it was used to legitimize the dehumanization of the enemy, as well as mass violence.
23:25Hitler pursued his plans for domination.
23:39The old continent wasn't yet completely under Nazi rule,
23:43but his dream of an Aryan Europe seemed to be coming true.
23:47The so-called superior race ignored borders.
23:51Scandinavians, Dutch, Luxemburgers, Flemish, could all call themselves German one day,
23:58like the Czechs, Austrians, and Alsatians, who already did.
24:11Annexed, occupied, and allied people lived as best they could under the Nazi regime,
24:17where the same rules were imposed.
24:18The destruction of the Jews and widespread looting.
24:23Behind the front, lands emptied by deportations and murder
24:26were promised to four million German colonizers.
24:41The Nazis also engaged in human trafficking.
24:45The von Ohlhaefens were unable to have children.
24:54The administration gave them what they had dreamed of for years.
24:58A little Slovenian girl, Erika Matko, aged nine months,
25:03spotted by the Nazis because of her blonde hair and blue eyes,
25:07was snatched from her parents to be given to a German family.
25:10From then on, she was called Ingrid.
25:18She wouldn't discover her true identity until a long time after the war.
25:22Like her, thousands of children with supposedly Aryan characteristics
25:33would be taken from their families and raised in Germany.
25:36The Leibansborns, they were the embodiment of the Promethean project
25:50of a rejuvenated Germanic empire.
25:53Nearly 15,000 Ukrainians were brought into the Reich to be forcibly married.
26:10Even though the Reich had been guilty of widespread plundering,
26:29it still had much lower industrial capacity than the Allies.
26:33Every day in France, 400 million francs swelled the coffers of the occupying forces,
26:44which, along with the exploitation of the French economy,
26:48kept the war effort going.
26:54French workers were also sent to Germany.
26:56And France wasn't an isolated case.
27:02Under Nazi rule,
27:04more than 13 million Europeans,
27:06prisoners, deportees, and requisitioned civilians
27:09were reduced to forced labor
27:12in the service of the Reich's economy.
27:15In Germany, factories, farms, and infrastructure
27:17were kept running by workers from all over Europe.
27:23Poles, Ukrainians, French,
27:25Belgians, and Dutch
27:27underwent deprivation and rationing.
27:34These years of sacrifice
27:36would leave an indelible mark on people's memories.
27:39And the countries that were exploited in this way
27:41would take years to recover.
27:43An irresistible force was driving everything in Europe
27:56to the brink of destruction.
27:58From one end of the continent to the other,
28:01the Holocaust,
28:02the extermination of the Jews,
28:03which had been limited to the east,
28:05now spread towards the west.
28:07Local officials collaborated in raids.
28:15They identified Jewish people by distinctive markers.
28:22An armband in Poland,
28:24Croatia, and Slovakia.
28:28A yellow star in Belgium,
28:30the Netherlands,
28:31and in occupied France.
28:34Families sewed them onto their clothes,
28:37unaware of the fate that was awaiting them.
28:39In the Netherlands,
28:44Roed Rodenberg, a Dutch dentist,
28:46filmed the arrest of his neighbours,
28:48Israel de Jong,
28:48and his three daughters,
28:49and his three daughters,
28:50and his three daughters,
28:51and his three daughters.
28:52Roed Rodenberg,
29:05and his three daughters,
29:06and his three daughters,
29:07and his three daughters,
29:08from his window.
29:12He then filmed trucks arriving,
29:14loading up furniture,
29:16and loading up furniture.
29:18He then filmed trucks arriving,
29:20loading up furniture,
29:22and heading back to Germany.
29:33Seven days later,
29:34following along an arduous journey by train,
29:37the family was murdered in a camp.
29:52The camp's gas chambers were already in operation.
29:56When groups of old people, children, and women arrived,
30:00if they were unfit to work,
30:02they were murdered immediately.
30:04The others suffered forced labour.
30:06The others suffered forced labour.
30:09By the end of 1942,
30:12a million and a half human beings,
30:14had perished in the death camps in Poland,
30:17the most murderous year of the Holocaust.
30:20Meanwhile, the people of the Reich,
30:22were living a life of plenty.
30:24in 1942,
30:34a German consumed 4,000 calories on average per day,
30:38compared to 1,200 calories for a French person,
30:44and less than 300 calories for a Jewish deportee.
30:48And less than 300 calories for a Jewish deportee.
30:52Thousands of Germans lived beside these camps,
30:55pretending not to know their deadly function.
31:02Many profited shamelessly from looted Jewish possessions.
31:06Furniture, jewellery, works of art, apartments.
31:21And later, clothes, shoes, and hair.
31:35One day, the artefacts stolen from victims
31:38would bear silent witness to the horror.
31:41Places of remembrance would display them
31:44to remind future generations of the massive scale of a crime
31:48that shocked the whole world.
31:50in the wake of World War II,
32:06a collective wake-up call arose.
32:09Never again.
32:12the war would not be over soon.
32:18The war would not be over soon.
32:22The war would not be over soon.
32:27With the might of the American military-industrial complex now in play,
32:31the war would not be over soon.
32:37On April the 18th, 1942, in Hawaii,
32:41the Americans were planning a lightning strike
32:43in revenge for Pearl Harbor.
32:46The bombing of Tokyo,
32:48a distance of 6,000 kilometers from their shores.
32:54This would be accomplished using aircraft carriers,
32:57which had replaced battleships in modern warfare.
33:01American technical prowess enabled their bombers
33:03to take off from the middle of the ocean.
33:27The American air raid rocked Japan to its core.
33:31The Japanese had previously believed
33:33that they were safe from harm.
33:36Humiliation combined with anger.
33:43But they still hoped they could turn the tide of the war
33:46by striking Midway,
33:47the most remote American base in the Central Pacific.
33:52The architect of the plan was the same as for Pearl Harbor,
33:56Admiral Yamamoto.
33:59He had a huge amount of military equipment at his disposal,
34:02200 warships and 248 aircraft.
34:06This time, America was ready for them.
34:24The work of the intelligence agencies meant
34:27that they were fully informed of the attack.
34:30Their pilots destroyed the four aircraft carriers involved
34:33the Japanese aircraft and all of the Japanese aircraft.
34:38In the future, espionage would play a role in every battle.
34:42The war of attrition in the desert sands
34:46continued.
34:58Thousands of kilometers away,
35:00the war of attrition in the desert sands continued.
35:06The day after the Battle of Midway,
35:09Mussolini's troops and General Rommel's Africa Corps
35:11headed towards the Suez Canal.
35:16There, they would face the British,
35:27who, like them, were suffering from thirst,
35:29the heat, and a lack of supplies.
35:39These two armies had been engaging in offensives
35:41and counter-offensives for months.
35:44Each town that was won was immediately won back
35:47by the enemy.
35:59At Biracame in June 1942,
36:02French Corlist forces,
36:03two-thirds of which came from French colonies,
36:06confronted the enemy for the first time
36:08since the debacle had begun.
36:11They were outnumbered 12 to one
36:12by the German-Italian forces.
36:18They were forced to flee across enemy lines.
36:29At the front of the column,
36:30Susan Travers, the only woman in the Foreign Legion,
36:34was driving the car of the commander of the French forces.
36:40Determined to survive,
36:41she drove at high speed in the midst of the chaos,
36:44dodging mines and artillery fire.
36:51Such heroism was a sign of a new spirit of resistance
36:55on the Allied side,
36:56even if the road ahead was still long.
37:01After Biracame,
37:02the Libyan port of Tobruk fell into German hands.
37:06Panic set in among the British,
37:08fearing the worst for their Egyptian colony.
37:21Mussolini was rubbing his hands in glee.
37:23He wanted to take back the ancient Roman province of Egypt.
37:28He set off for Cairo,
37:30where he hoped to make a triumphal entrance.
37:34But it was to be a mirage in the desert.
37:45In reality,
37:46his empire was already crumbling.
37:48Eritrea and Ethiopia
37:51had been taken by the British.
37:55Libya was the last Italian colony in Africa.
38:00And without Hitler,
38:02he would already have lost it.
38:06The Führer was making considerable efforts,
38:09both militarily and politically.
38:11For months,
38:14he'd been trying to stir up Arab nationalists
38:16in the English colonies of Iraq and Palestine
38:19to weaken the British Empire from the inside.
38:32He directed his support to the great Mufti of Jerusalem,
38:36the main religious leader in Palestine.
38:38the United States
38:44was extending a warm welcome
38:45to David Ben-Gurion,
38:47the founding father of the future state of Israel.
38:51The state which would see the light of day
38:53after World War II,
38:55at the same time
38:56as the endless conflict
38:58which is still tearing apart the Middle East today.
39:00for the time being,
39:04war was continuing in the North African desert,
39:08but a turning point was just around the corner.
39:10The British had managed to block the German advance in Egypt
39:17at the last moment.
39:17The British had managed to block the German advance in Egypt
39:19at the last moment.
39:21In October,
39:22they inflicted a decisive defeat on the Germans
39:23at El Alamein.
39:24but a turning point was just around the corner.
39:29The British had managed to block the German advance in Egypt at the last moment.
39:34In October, they inflicted a decisive defeat on the Germans at El Alamein,
39:40due in large part to their tanks, which outnumbered the enemies by two to one.
39:4530,000 Germans were taken prisoner.
39:48The rest of Rommel's troops retreated towards Tunisia.
39:54This was not just a military victory, but the beginning of the Allied fight back.
40:16The Americans and British were planning a large-scale operation.
40:21For months, Stalin had been demanding the opening of a new front
40:27to relieve the heavy burden on the Red Army in Russia.
40:33The Americans were going to engage their troops for the first time outside of Asia.
40:38Along with the British, they were planning a massive operation in North Africa.
40:43The landing of 100,000 men would force the Afrika Korps to retreat
40:50and thus pave the way for winning back Europe.
40:53On November the 8th, 1942, two armadas set off from Morocco and Algeria,
41:20which were both French colonies.
41:21It was the first joint Allied operation.
41:36Algiers was taken in a single day, without bloodshed,
41:40due to the 400 French resistance fighters,
41:43who were for the most part Jews stripped of their French nationality by the Vichy regime.
41:47Assaulted on all sides, the Vichy authorities surrendered.
41:55And the entire French African army, some 80,000 men,
42:00were finally able to join the Allies.
42:04A turning point which strengthened the French resistance.
42:07In retaliation, Hitler invaded the south of France.
42:19Thousands of kilometres away, his armies faced a massive task,
42:24which was to change the course of the war.
42:26Having failed to take Moscow, the Germans turned to the Caucasus mountains and its oil fields.
42:35On their way lay Stalingrad.
42:38The city that bore the name of the Soviet leader.
42:49Stalin intended to defend it at all costs.
42:52He gave the order, not one step back.
42:55Inside the city, the fighting went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood,
43:05street by street, house by house.
43:10Hitler declared the victory was at hand.
43:14As for Stalin, he wasn't crazy enough to fight over ruins.
43:18The more the Germans dug in, the more it helped the Red Army's plan.
43:24The decisive counterattack was ready,
43:27and could well signal the end of Nazi military domination.
43:33If the USSR won at Stalingrad,
43:36it would establish itself as the power that liberated Europe from the Nazis.
43:41For the Allies, the race towards the end game was beginning.
43:48It would pave the way to the world after war.
43:52the war, the weight loss of the war.
43:53The random war, the Soviet president,
44:01the war, the fight to the Nazis.
44:01The xi is the whole town,
44:02and we had the right,
44:03went to the Nazi military nation.
44:04oeb!
44:06The US, the US, the US, the US, the US.
44:11It would be our part of the war.
44:13It would have been a hard attack.
44:14To be a lot of war.
44:16The US, the US, the US, the US.
44:17The US, the US, the US.
44:20The US, the US, the US, the US.
44:20The US, the US, the US.
44:21The US, the US.