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00:00Previously on the last days of World War II, the city of Manila in the Philippines was
00:06secured by the Allies in a bloody battle that left over 100,000 civilians dead.
00:12In the Pacific, after suffering devastating losses on the beaches of Iwo Jima, US Marines
00:17triumphantly raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
00:24This week, the Allies are closing in on the Third Reich.
00:28Allied air raids continue, day and night, reducing Berlin to battered ruins.
00:33On the Eastern Front, the Red Army exacts brutal revenge on German villages as they advance
00:38into East Prussia.
00:41And in the Far East, the Japanese face defeat in Burma and the Philippines, as their torture
00:46of thousands of Allied POWs in Borneo is exposed.
00:58The 25th of February 1945, General Slim leads the 14th Army against the Japanese in Burma.
01:17His troops, mostly regiments from the Indian Army, are fighting the longest campaign of
01:22the war involving British forces.
01:26Slim has mounted a surprise offensive through the Burmese jungle and across the Irrawaddy
01:31River.
01:32The 17th Indian Division and the 255th Indian Tank Brigade, commanded by Major General Punch
01:39Shkowen, attacked towards Maktila, Japan's vital communication centre in Burma.
01:45Most of the enemy have been drawn north to defend Mandalay, leaving Maktila exposed.
01:51It is a strategic masterpiece.
01:53British and Indian troops take Maktila by the end of the week.
01:57They know Japanese General Kimura will have no choice but to attempt to recapture this vital
02:02hub.
02:03Slim has made Maktila the anvil on which the Japanese army will be broken.
02:11The 25th of February, nearly 2,000 miles away over Central Europe, the Allies take turns pounding
02:18the German heartland.
02:19Americans during the day, the British at night.
02:23The plan is to bring the German war economy to its knees.
02:28The Ruhr Valley in Western Germany is the industrial heartland of the country.
02:33It was absolutely essential to German war production.
02:36Iron, steel, coal production were all centered there.
02:40So the Ruhr was a major target.
02:43It had been a target for bombing.
02:44It was a major target for the Allies moving toward Germany.
02:47The idea, if one took the Ruhr, if one could isolate the Ruhr, then the German war machine
02:53would simply chug to a halt.
02:55They built tanks.
02:56They had trains that would carry troops.
02:58We would try to destroy the rail heading so the troops couldn't get through.
03:03You couldn't find a stone on a stone.
03:05It was flattened.
03:08Countless explosions reverberate through Berlin's crowded air raid shelters.
03:12Above ground, the most prized possession is a car with petrol.
03:17With it comes the possibility of escape.
03:19This week, an estimated 8.5 million people are on the move in Germany.
03:24The backbone of the Luftwaffe, Germany's once mighty air force, is broken.
03:29What the Germans discovered, however, was that you could make airplanes, but it was very
03:33difficult to make pilots.
03:35The Luftwaffe, the German air force, found itself forced to send young men up in fighter
03:40planes to deal with these American and British aircraft, guys with very little training.
03:47The Allies now dominate the skies.
03:50By the spring of 1945, the Luftwaffe was without pilots, without planes, without fuel to operate
03:56those few planes that were remaining.
03:58Many Luftwaffe units were in fact serving as ground troops.
04:02Hitler, too, appears a broken man, his health visibly deteriorating.
04:09Hitler at this point was palsied, his arms shook very badly.
04:14We think a result of maybe cerebral palsy setting in.
04:20Despite his poor health, Hitler, in his last official proclamation on the 24th of February,
04:26had once again evoked the unshakable will of the German people to survive.
04:31He insists on total command of every strategic decision, but his refusal to accept certain
04:36realities only undermines German resistance.
04:40The 27th of February, the US 8th Air Force launches its heaviest attack to date against
04:45Berlin.
04:46As firebombs rain down, the city is devastated.
04:50Over 60,000 tons of high explosives have been dropped on the German capital.
04:55The Allies are determined to create chaos at Hitler's doorstep.
05:01The same day, Winston Churchill addresses Parliament on his recent and momentous trip
05:05to Yalta in the Russian Crimea, where he'd met with Roosevelt and Stalin two weeks earlier.
05:11Germany, they agreed, would be conquered by summer.
05:21In February, at Yalta, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, among other agreements they made,
05:27had also agreed on the zones of occupation for Germany.
05:31Berlin was going to be deep inside the Soviet zone.
05:34The Americans and the British would have their zones.
05:36The French would ultimately have one as well.
05:39Post-war Germany was already, the political design had already been established.
05:43At Yalta, Roosevelt had appeared tired and haggard.
05:46Not only as a result of the war, he too was ill.
05:50Many questioned his capacity to negotiate effectively.
05:53Churchill was shocked at Roosevelt's appearance at Yalta.
05:57Emaciated, ill, didn't seem to have that same snappy, urbane humor and manner about him
06:05that Churchill had come to know so well.
06:08And I think Churchill had begun to believe that Roosevelt really did have grave illusions
06:14about what to expect from Stalin.
06:15At Yalta, the fate of Europe had been agreed.
06:19Britain and the US gave Stalin effective control over Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia,
06:24and much of the Balkans.
06:26The Allies also agreed on the structure and membership of the United Nations.
06:30Yalta would be the last time this Allied triumvirate would meet in person.
06:36But the war is not yet won.
06:42Many more lives will be lost and cities destroyed before Hitler will fall.
06:49The 25th of February.
06:51As the Western Allies try to secure Germany from the west,
06:54the Red Army keeps rolling in from the east.
06:56They have crossed the pre-war border of Germany
06:59and Soviet forces are now within 40 miles of Berlin, on the banks of the River Oder.
07:04But the advance has created a massive salient,
07:07which needs to be secured by destroying pockets of German troops in Pomerania.
07:11The Red Army had massed over six million men from the Baltic to the Adriatic
07:16and launched a mighty winter offensive on German forces.
07:27Warsaw was soon encircled and captured.
07:30The forces led by Marshal's Gorgizukov and Ivan Konev reached the River Oder.
07:35Able and hardened by combat, the two Russians see Berlin as the ultimate prize.
07:43Marshal Gorgizukov was a short and stocky man,
07:46the son of a poor shoemaker who had risen swiftly in the Tsar's army.
07:50When the Communist Revolution swept the countryside after 1917, he joined the Red Army.
07:55He would establish a reputation as one of the masters of modern warfare.
08:00Stalin respected him like no other general.
08:04In 1941, Zhukov halted the Germans at the gates of Moscow and then defeated them at Stalingrad.
08:10Zhukov is now Deputy Supreme Commander of all Soviet forces.
08:14Marshal Ivan Konev was described as having wicked eyes,
08:17a shaven head that looked like a pumpkin and an expression full of self-conceit.
08:22His forces were in some of the most brutal fighting of the Eastern Front.
08:26Much of his career was in Zhukov's shadow.
08:29But in 1944, Stalin had promoted him to Marshal, the same rank as Zhukov.
08:34The two men were fiercely competitive, a rivalry carefully nurtured by Stalin himself.
08:39One suspects that this rivalry that he fostered between Zhukov and Konev may have been part of some sort of strategy that he had to, both to get to Berlin quicker, but also to play some sort of political game between the two.
08:54Now, as Soviet forces advance from the East, strong pockets of German resistance remain, the largest around the cities of Danzig and Breslau.
09:04Most German units are short of replacements.
09:07In desperation, Hitler calls upon the young and old to fill the ranks of his thinning army.
09:12German manpower needs were so extreme by late 1944. In the fall of 1944, Hitler had introduced the Folksturm, a sort of home guard.
09:25It was seen initially as being, well, this is sort of for local defense, if the enemy should get to our little village or our town.
09:31But, in fact, it was then used to reinforce troops as the front came to Germany.
09:39The Folksturm was made up of kids, 11, 12, 13-year-old boys, old men.
09:47The elderly, many with health problems, are grouped into special battalions, like the Oren, those hard of hearing.
09:54They are exhorted to fight to the death in defense of the fatherland.
09:58Teenage boys will go to battle with anti-tank grenades tied to their bicycles.
10:04And they are trained in desperate ways of stopping tanks with makeshift weapons.
10:09Now, Germans of all ages must fight to the death.
10:13As one soldier later wrote,
10:15We fought from simple fear, so that we wouldn't die in holes filled with mud and snow.
10:20We fought like rats.
10:22The Nazis consider the struggle with the Soviet Union a struggle against a Bolshevik inferior race.
10:28Surrender is not an option.
10:34They didn't want to surrender to the Russians.
10:36They were deathly afraid, deathly afraid.
10:39And everyone, wherever we'd encounter,
10:41Where are the Russians?
10:42Where are the Russians?
10:43The Russkies!
10:44The Russkies!
10:45Germans understood one thing.
10:46They knew terrible things had been done in Russia to the Russians.
10:49And that when the Russians got into Germany, there would be a terrible price to pay.
10:54So, an almost panicky flood of German refugees were on the road heading west.
11:01As the German army retreated from Russia in 1943, Hitler had ordered a scorched earth policy
11:07to deny the Russian people any shelter, food or resources.
11:11The brutality inflicted on the Soviets was devastating.
11:14Now, as the Russians advanced towards the heart of the Nazi Empire, Hitler turns this policy on Germany itself.
11:21Hitler had become even more nihilistic than he ever had been in the past
11:26and saw in the impending defeat of Germany, Germany's just deserts for having failed in what he saw as its racial mission.
11:33And that its defeat, particularly at the hands of the Soviets, indicated the failure of Germans to live up to their potential.
11:41So, Hitler, in fact, gave direct orders that as much of Germany be destroyed as possible.
11:48The 28th of February, Soviet troops have occupied East Prussia and are closing in on Danzig.
11:56German civilians attempt to flee the Red Terror as Soviet troops fight their way through German-occupied Pomerania
12:03to encircle the city.
12:05The Second Belarusian Front aims to reach the Baltic, then swing east and bottle up the Germans in Danzig.
12:12The offensive might of the Red Army is overwhelming.
12:19T-34 tanks lead the way.
12:21They tear through the countryside, spreading panic and death.
12:29Developed in secret, the Russian-built T-34 was first unleashed en masse on the German army
12:34during the winter counter-attack which saved Moscow in 1941.
12:38Produced in massive numbers, the T-34 became central to the success of the Soviet counter-attack in the east.
12:44From 1941 to 1945, more than 50,000 were built.
12:49One of the great things about the T-34 was it could maneuver and run in areas where a lot of armor-fighting vehicles would get bogged down in.
13:05The reason for that was, one, the suspension system, but two, it had a big, wide track on it.
13:10So it would spread the weight of the vehicle out.
13:13And, because it had a diesel engine, it didn't burn if it got hit like a gasoline engine.
13:20The T-34 quickly becomes feared by German troops.
13:24Anti-tank guns are virtually unable to pierce its armor, which is sloped and nearly two inches thick.
13:30Its 76mm gun can penetrate the armor of a German tank from roughly one mile away.
13:36In contrast, most German tanks would need to be as close as a quarter of a mile to destroy the Soviet tank.
13:43Faced with this prospect, by early 1943, the German army had developed its new Tiger and Panther tanks to match the T-34.
13:52Hitler took a close personal interest in the progress of his new supertanks.
13:57It surprised the Germans.
14:01Remember, the Germans have an attitude on the Russians as being sub-humans.
14:08And here, these sub-humans have a better tank than they have.
14:14And it shocked them.
14:16In 1943, the Russians upgrade the T-34 with thicker armor and an 85mm gun.
14:23But the tank's main advantage was its simple design, which allowed for mass production and easy maintenance.
14:34March the 1st, 1945.
14:36Zhukov's armies join in the attack on Pomerania.
14:39In just four days, his troops link up with Marshal Rokossovsky's at the Baltic Sea.
14:44The port of Danzig and the entire German Second Army are cut off.
14:48Bottles of salt water are sent back to Zhukov as a message that the Soviet army has reached the Baltic.
14:59The citizens of Danzig will pay a high price.
15:01Often ruthlessly drunk, Russian soldiers loot stores and burn down homes,
15:06leaving in their wake a bloody trail of revenge on soldiers and civilians alike.
15:11Stories emerge of men harnessed to ploughs, dragging them until they collapse,
15:16then finished off with gunfire.
15:18Refugees swell the population of Danzig to over a million and a half.
15:23Food is in short supply.
15:25It was chaos.
15:27Hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of German refugees
15:31in a tidal wave moving west away from the advancing Red Army.
15:35Desperate attempts are made by the German Navy in the Baltic to evacuate civilians.
15:40These come under constant attack by the Red Air Force and Soviet submarines.
15:45German women are brutalised.
15:47Calling them too proud and ugly, Russian soldiers rape them, often repeatedly.
15:51Young women try to disguise their age, rubbing their face with ash and hobbling along the roadside.
15:57But they are no safer. Elderly women are raped as well.
16:00Some learn the Russian word for typhus and dot their face with red.
16:04There are estimates of tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of rapes occurring at the hands of Russian soldiers.
16:11Certainly many murders associated with those rapes and with the advancing Russian army.
16:16Terror consumes the women. Many commit suicide.
16:21Anna Zedig describes the horrific conditions she and her infant son had to endure.
16:30Nothing to eat. Siegfried was thirsty. And although I was pregnant again, I still breastfed him.
16:37I also let the snow melt in my mouth so that he could drink it. We had the snow after all.
16:43The Russians came and shone their torches on me. And one said,
16:47Now woman, you will get a place to stay.
16:54And the place to stay was an air-raid shelter.
16:57There was a table in it. And that night, one Russian after another raped me there on the table.
17:04It's like being dead. I can't tell how many men there were. 10, 15. It just went on and on.
17:15There were so many, one after the other.
17:21One of them then said, How many comrades have already been here? Put your clothes on.
17:32Nobody took any notice. On the contrary, the soldiers told each other everything.
17:38It was almost considered to be heroic or courageous, to sleep with a woman or several.
17:44Even if someone was murdered, well, it was war.
17:47So it was no big deal if a soldier slept with a woman or a girl.
17:54As the Soviets pushed the Germans out of their country,
17:57the Red Army had seen the appalling atrocities committed by retreating German soldiers.
18:02No hesitation is shown in burning hundreds of villages and towns
18:06and murdering thousands of innocent civilians.
18:09There was a wave of violence and rape,
18:12which I think you can only understand if you bear in mind that the Nazis murdered 20 million Russians.
18:18And two and a half million prisoners of war were allowed to starve to death.
18:22The rotting carcasses of horses and cows scattered along the roadsides are hacked for their meat.
18:29As the Russian army ravages the countryside, a desperate German army begins seizing stragglers.
18:35Suspected deserters are hanged from trees.
18:38The Nazis understood and the population understood the war was lost.
18:42There was no way the war could be won militarily.
18:45And so the regime ratcheted up the system of terror.
18:50Any sign of defeatism, anything that would sound like you might be a traitor,
18:54people were hanged from lampposts.
18:56The Allies push through German defences in the west as they battle to seize the Rhineland
19:02and the heart of the German war machine, the Ruhr Valley.
19:07The 28th of February.
19:09The Allies on the Western Front have penetrated Germany
19:12and are pushing through the Siegfried Line.
19:14Hundreds of pillboxes, trenches and anti-tank obstacles like the concrete dragon's teeth.
19:21It ought to have been a formidable obstacle.
19:25But much of the garrison and armament have been sent east to face the Russians.
19:29The Allies quickly break the line in several places and head for the Rhine.
19:37The Rhine River had tremendous strategic importance,
19:40but it also had larger cultural significance for Germans.
19:43It is the German river. It's the Nile. It's the Amazon. It's the Mississippi for Germans.
19:48For centuries, the Rhine has captured the imagination of Germans,
19:52renowned in their history and literature.
19:54A natural defensive barrier, no enemy had crossed its waters since Napoleon.
20:02So the German military, of course, in planning for a defence of Germany,
20:06had seen the Rhine as, in effect, the last big barrier.
20:10If you get across the Rhine, then there really isn't a good place to defend.
20:15East of the Rhine was Germany's great industrial region, the Ruhr.
20:22Its capture would deal a mortal blow to the Nazi war machine.
20:26Isolate the Ruhr until you can actually seize it.
20:29If one could actually seize it, then that was the end.
20:32As soon as the Ruhr was gone, Germany could not survive.
20:34Everybody understood this.
20:36Leading Allied forces in North-West Europe is General Dwight David Eisenhower.
20:42His strategy, break the defences of the Rhineland,
20:45push Nazi forces back across the Rhine, and then prepare for an assault crossing.
20:51Eisenhower grew up on a farm in Abilene, Kansas,
20:54the third of his evangelical parents' seven sons.
20:57But the military would be his life.
21:00He was educated at West Point in New York,
21:02the Command and General Staff School in Leavenworth, Kansas,
21:05and the Army War College in Washington, D.C.
21:08He secured jobs working directly under Generals Pershing, MacArthur and Marshall.
21:13But Eisenhower was an administrator, not a strategist or a field commander.
21:18His talent was for management and logistics,
21:21and his tact enabled him to work with allies.
21:24These qualities led to rapid promotion from colonel
21:27to four-star general in less than two years.
21:31Here he has been given command of Allied forces in Tunisia
21:34and meets with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
21:37His skills as leader of a multinational force led to his appointment
21:41as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force,
21:44which invaded France on D-Day.
21:46On a front of 150 miles, Allied troops advance into the Rhineland.
21:55Under Eisenhower's command in the north
21:57is Field Marshal Montgomery's British 21st Army Group.
22:01In the south is General Deaver's 6th Army Group.
22:04And pushing through the middle is General Bradley's 12th Army Group.
22:08In order to reach the Rhine,
22:10they will face some of the fiercest resistance to date.
22:13Hitler's commander-in-chief in the west is General Felt Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
22:28Hitler had dismissed and reinstated him numerous times,
22:31but Rundstedt was a skilled general
22:34and had commanded Germany's blitzkrieg victory against France in 1940.
22:38His force, however, has now dwindled to 60 understrength divisions
22:43with inadequate reserves and supplies.
22:45Rundstedt knows the war is lost,
22:48but Hitler will not tolerate talk of negotiation or surrender.
22:52The Rhineland will be held at all costs.
22:55Unauthorised retreats carry the death penalty.
22:58The roads were jammed with their tanks and everything.
23:01And Hitler told them,
23:02we don't want you back, you just stay there and fight and go forward.
23:05And anybody who gives ground like that,
23:07I'll come down and shoot them myself.
23:09You know, he really put the word out.
23:12So they were between the rock and the hard place.
23:15They had to do what Hitler told them to do.
23:19The Allies must also combat severe weather conditions,
23:22which slow the advance.
23:24The winter was one of the coldest of the century.
23:29Exhausted men froze to death in their foxholes.
23:35It was the worst winter that they had in Europe in about 20 years.
23:39And the frost heaves took over
23:42and there were vehicles that got stuck.
23:45We weren't really prepared for the weather.
23:47The weather was very cold.
23:49I can remember one time that I put my cheek on my rifle
23:53and my cheek stuck to the rifle.
23:56And I had someone come and blow on it so I could pull it off.
24:00I think both of my feet were just about frostbitten.
24:03People would be running around talking about their feet cold,
24:06but mine was just like a piece of ice.
24:09But the spring thaw has begun.
24:12Now the infantry have thick mud to add to their list of woes.
24:16The troops out in the field,
24:18German, Russian, American, British, French,
24:22it was pretty miserable conditions.
24:24What had been a problem with snow became one of mud.
24:28Rivers swollen,
24:30streams that ordinarily should have been fordable
24:34or river crossings that should have been relatively easy,
24:37became much more difficult because of current.
24:40The Allies still managed to move forward,
24:42despite the fact that every curve in the road is defended.
24:45The use of mines and booby traps on the roads
24:48further slows Allied progress.
24:51One weapon which posed a constant threat was the S-mine.
24:55US forces dubbed it the Bouncing Betty.
24:58The trigger could be set off by the pressure of a foot or vehicle,
25:02also by trip wire or electric contact.
25:05The weapon would bound into the air and explode,
25:09and surrounding the explosive were a bunch of ball bearings
25:13that would fly out.
25:14So the casually producing radius for this mine is 25 metres.
25:1950% of everyone within 25 metres is going to become a casualty.
25:23Army engineers proved vital in dealing with anti-personnel S-mines.
25:28Allied troops quickly learn how they might survive the S-mine.
25:32If they heard the click of the fuse under their foot,
25:34they must throw themselves flat on the ground
25:36and hope that the deadly steel balls would fly over them.
25:40This was a very, very effective mine,
25:44used in defensive minefields,
25:46so that you deny the area to the enemy.
25:50Now, minefields are only good if you cover them with fire.
25:54So what you would normally do is you'd lay barbed wire down
25:59and try to channel the enemy into the minefield,
26:03and then cover the minefield with machine gun fire.
26:06So it is a defensive weapon par excellence.
26:09The 28th of February,
26:11troops of the US 9th Army prepare to strike north towards the Ruhr Valley.
26:16Major General Charles Gerhardt of the US 29th Division,
26:20the blue and the grey,
26:21has secured the village of Julich.
26:23Then they move on.
26:36In Julich, they leave a notice apologising for the state they've left the town in.
26:41There wasn't a pane of glass left in any building.
26:45Plus the American forces had reduced it to rubble.
26:48As they move forward,
26:50the German army continues to mount a skilled and determined defence.
26:55The Germans were great fighters.
26:57They could put a mortar shell in your back pocket.
26:59I remember one time I looked at the left side of my eye,
27:02you know, you see movement from this side of the eye.
27:05And I did it like a flip flopping shot.
27:08And guess what happened?
27:11I got to jump right through his head.
27:13He fell right in the road.
27:14I had to kill him, you know.
27:15The German soldiers were very stubborn soldiers as far as giving up.
27:20I've noticed times it would be raining.
27:22Rain would hit the trees and whatnot and make the little pitter-patter noise and whatnot.
27:27Then you'd be listening to see if a German soldier would be walking around
27:31or breaking a twig or something like that.
27:34You'd become real like an animal.
27:38The Germans have flooded parts of the countryside to slow down the Allies' advance.
27:47The 1st of March. Operation Lumberjack.
27:50In the central Rhineland, General Omar Bradley and his 12th Army Group
27:54launch a full-out assault.
27:56He aims to reach the Rhine between Cologne and Koblenz.
27:59General Patton's 3rd Army will attack northeast through Eiffel
28:02to meet up with Hodge's 1st Army.
28:09Just three days later, Hodge's men reach the Rhine near Cologne
28:12and Patton's 3rd Army is outside Koblenz.
28:17The 3rd of March.
28:18In the northern Rhineland, Montgomery's 21st Army Group
28:22is engaged in two simultaneous operations to reach the Rhine.
28:25Veritable and Grenade.
28:27On the 8th of February, the Canadian 1st Army launched Operation Veritable,
28:32an attack from the northwest down the narrow passage between the Maas and Rhine River.
28:37The shortest and most heavily defended route to the Ruhr,
28:40Germany's industrial heartland.
28:47General William Simpson's US 9th Army, fighting under Monty's command,
28:51had crossed the Ruhr River further south on the 23rd of February.
28:55They continued striking north to link up with the Canadians,
28:59north of Geldern, clearing the area west of the Rhine.
29:10After a gruelling battle, Monty's 21st Army Group
29:13has reached Germany's last great defensive barrier.
29:16Allied land forces now threaten the centre of Hitler's armament factories,
29:20the Ruhr River Valley.
29:22The Germans take several measures in an attempt to keep their plants operating.
29:27It may have moved underground,
29:29factories, production facilities may have dispersed to a certain extent
29:32to avoid Allied bombing,
29:35but it was still a very productive force.
29:38It was still supplying tanks and ammunition to the German armies.
29:42So it was an important target for the Allies
29:44to eliminate that source of supply.
29:47By the end of the week, Allied forces have reached the west bank of the Rhine
29:51along most of its length between the Dutch border and Cologne,
29:54except for a German bridgehead holding out opposite Wiesel.
29:58One by one, the bridges over the Rhine are blown up by the retreating Germans.
30:03Hopes of finding one intact seem implausible.
30:07The bridges were just blown out, different structures sticking in the water,
30:11the roadways in the water and stuff like that.
30:14So our engineers did a good job.
30:17And some, a lot of them under fire,
30:20because they didn't want us to come to their fatherland.
30:23As the Allies push forward to the heart of the Third Reich,
30:27more than 5,000 miles away, fierce fighting continues in the Pacific.
30:32The 26th of February, Iwo Jima.
30:38U.S. Marines sees a second airstrip, Motoyama No. 2,
30:42and Hill 382, a strategic high point.
30:45The U.S. needs the airfields to provide fighter escort for B-29 raids on Japan.
30:51Until now, aircraft have been flying from airstrips on the central Pacific islands of Saipan and Tinian.
30:59On Iwo Jima, behind strong defences at Motoyama, lies a third airstrip, still under construction.
31:06Major General Holland Smith, the commander of the Pacific Fleet Marine Force,
31:10confidently predicts the island will be secured within days.
31:14There are signs that the enemy is short of water, and the high U.S. casualty rate is starting to fall.
31:20Still, Smith warns his men not to underestimate their task.
31:32The 28th of February, the Philippines.
31:35Following the retaking of Manila and Corregidor over the past 48 hours,
31:39U.S. forces land on Palawan to the west.
31:44The 41st Division troops riding ashore in armed amphibious trucks meet no resistance.
31:54They successfully take Puerta, Princesa and two abandoned airstrips.
32:00But U.S. forces hope for one more personal victory,
32:03to free 150 U.S. POWs thought to be on Palawan.
32:08As soon as they land, however, those hopes are quickly dashed.
32:12According to prisoners who managed to escape, the Japanese had burned the other captives alive back in December.
32:19And on December the 14th, we went out to the field early, went to work, and came back in at noon.
32:27And they had two air raids that day, of which some planes bombed the field.
32:33But the second air raid, they wouldn't let us go back up to the compound.
32:39And our bomb shelters were circled by two barbed wire fences.
32:44We were sitting down by the bomb shelters at the end of the second raid.
32:50And for no reason at all, they gave a third alarm.
32:53When the third alarm sounded, the Japs insisted that we get down in the bomb shelters.
32:57And then they started shooting.
32:59I didn't know what the shooting was, so I stuck my head out to sea.
33:03And I was immediately shot at, but while I was up, I saw them pouring gasoline into the other holes.
33:09I dropped back down, and then they started shooting into the entrance of our dugout.
33:15There were so many men in there that they just couldn't miss.
33:18And they threw gasoline on us, lighted it with burning paper.
33:24And when the gasoline set afire, Pacheco and I went through these double barbed wire fences,
33:31dropped down over a cliff along the bay, and crept along the bay and found a cave,
33:37which we hid in until that night.
33:40After dark fell, we decided that the best thing to do would be to swim across the bay,
33:44which is a distance of about four and a half miles.
33:48So we swam across the bay that night, getting there about three o'clock in the morning,
33:53where we were, where we made ourselves known to the Filipinos.
33:57And they immediately took care of us.
33:59There were eleven marines who were able to get out alive,
34:05but they were so brutal to them.
34:07And then to try and make sure all of them died in such a hideous way
34:12was really monumentally symbolic.
34:16There was a dual purpose for that.
34:19No witnesses, no war crimes trials.
34:22But also just the order that nobody should be allowed to fall into enemy hands
34:29and live to fight another day against the Japanese.
34:33The rescuing of POWs from the cruelty of the Japanese becomes a priority for the Allies.
34:40That mission continues in Borneo, where more appalling brutality is taking place.
34:4636,000 Americans were considered military prisoners by the Japanese.
34:5240% of them died in captivity.
34:56The 3rd of March, 1945.
34:59The US submarine Tuna surfaces off the beaches of northern Borneo.
35:04Aboard is a seven-man team, AGAS-1, part of an Australian special unit, Z-Force.
35:11They load supplies into fall boats, specially designed canoes, and paddle ashore.
35:16Their mission? Gather intelligence on local Japanese forces and mobilise the locals into a guerrilla force.
35:24What AGAS-1 discovers is horrifying.
35:27Inhumane atrocities against 2,500 Australian and British POWs
35:33were occurring at the Allied Prisoner of War camp in Sandakan.
35:38The enemy is morally inferior, and that would lead Japanese troops to be quite merciless
35:44in dealing with their enemies, including people who would surrender
35:48and would expect to be treated as prisoners of war.
35:51In early 1943, the Japanese had forced the POWs to build two military airstrips in Sandakan
35:58to protect the oil fields that they had captured on Borneo.
36:01During that time, the Japanese uncovered a secret intelligence network among the prisoners
36:07and began torturing them.
36:09The camp conditions were absolutely horrendous, as they were really everywhere for Allied prisoners.
36:16But in Borneo, there were stories about the Japanese doing these systematic beatings
36:26where they would blow a whistle and have the guards beat the prisoners,
36:31and then they would blow a whistle and have them stop.
36:34And here were these prisoners crawling around, lying on the ground,
36:38and then they would blow the whistle and start the beatings again.
36:41For the past two years, the men have also been burned, starved and exposed to the elements.
36:47Most have died.
36:49Survivors are riddled with beriberi, malaria and dysentery.
36:53As it became more apparent that Japan was losing the war, the brutality intensified.
36:59One of the most brutal tortures they used, and used quite consistently,
37:04was the water torture where they forced water down a man's throat
37:10and then jumped on his stomach until he sometimes would burst.
37:16But that was one of their most common inflictings of tortures,
37:21and then hanging men up by their wrists or tying them to a tree in the jungle
37:27so the insects could eat them alive.
37:29In late January, under the sadistic watch of the Japanese guards,
37:33470 men had been marched over 150 miles through dangerous jungles,
37:38the first of three Sandakan death marches.
37:41The way the commander for the Sandakan camp chose to get rid of these 2,000 Australian prisoners of war
37:52was to march them from the beach up to the mountains
37:57with a sack of 200-pound bag of rice on their back.
38:01Even though a lot of them were very rugged, tall, well-built Australians,
38:07they were living skeletons by that time.
38:10And when they didn't all die, they were marched back down from the mountains to the beach.
38:15Those two sick to march were shot. Others dropped dead on the spot.
38:20There was one occasion on which somebody intervened when he was an officer,
38:28when one of their men was being beaten up by some Japanese guards,
38:32and he was horribly beaten up by quite a number of them.
38:37By the time Agaswan lands in northern Borneo on the 3rd of March,
38:41only about 1,000 prisoners are still alive, and they are dying at a rate of 10 a day.
38:47One of the guards, Taiwanese-born Toyoshiga Karashima, later described the scene.
38:56Well, maybe 1 in 10 were sort of healthy, but the food situation was terribly bad,
39:01and a lot of them were sick.
39:03They had malaria and things like that, so they were weak.
39:06A couple of days later, we were told that if they fell over, if they fell over, we should leave them.
39:17We had to get rid of them.
39:23A rescue mission is devised, using an Australian parachute battalion in training.
39:28Its code name is Operation Kingfisher.
39:31In the planning stages for months, why it was never launched remains controversial.
39:36The Australian commander, Sir Thomas Blamey, would later accuse MacArthur
39:40of not releasing the aircraft needed to mount the operation.
39:45In the ensuing months, two more death marches would occur.
39:49Only six POWs would survive the Sandakan death marches,
39:53escaping into the jungle where they were cared for by the natives.
39:57Japan, which had signed but never ratified the Geneva Convention
40:01on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,
40:03will be responsible for the death of about 50,000 of them.
40:0736,000 Americans were considered military prisoners by the Japanese.
40:1940% of them died in captivity.
40:22And in some prison camps, the death rate was 90%.
40:27This deliberate allowing of prisoners to die is one of the most egregious things
40:33the Japanese did to our prisoners in the Pacific War.
40:39Next, on the last days of World War II,
40:42following an unexpected opportunity,
40:44the Allies make a daring charge across the Rhine.
40:48Their sights are set on Berlin, the heart of Hitler's Third Reich.
40:53In the Pacific, highly controversial new bombing tactics
40:56are brought to bear on Japan.
40:58US bombers unleash firestorms on the enemy's capital,
41:02creating one of the deadliest knights in the history of warfare.
41:06Russia's Third Reich coups on theאת.
41:07Russia's Third Reich coups on the
41:29kal Street platser.
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