Bringing History to Life

In 1933, Adolf Hitler seizes power in Germany, where he has seduced the population with golden promises of a restoration of the Great German Empire. He allies himself with Mussolini's fascist Italy, Stalin's communist Soviet Union and the military dictatorship in Japan, which has the same dreams of grandeur as Germany. In this series, you get a thorough review of World War II - from the birth of fascism through the war's many dramas to the aftermath, where the victors deal with the war's worst criminals.

WELCOME

HITLER TURNED EAST • First, they were mortal enemies. Then they became partners, allies, rivals, then mortal enemies again. The relationship between Hitler and Stalin confused all those tasked with following the two men’s will, and the protagonists themselves barely understood the situation. Operation Barbarossa would simplify things.

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE AT DAWN • In the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were, on paper, allies. But Germany was determined to crush the Soviet Bear and had secretly sent millions of troops to the Soviet border. Now, with another blitzkrieg, it planned to ensure Germany’s total domination of the European continent.

THE SOVIET LINE COLLAPSED • German tanks stormed through the Soviet Union, leaving the Red Army in total disarray. Desperate Soviet generals tried to slow the German advance with hopeless counter-attacks, resulting in casualties in the hundreds of thousands. By July 1941, Hitler was alarmingly close to secu ring Nazi dominance in Europe.

How German logistics worked

THE BATTLE FOR TWO CITIES • The Red Army hastily attempted to establish defences at the strategically crucial cities of Kiev and Smolensk. The army knew it wasn’t strong enough to prevent the cities from falling. But fighting there might just buy enough time to build defences at Moscow as well as move vital Soviet heavy industry further east.

“At Leningrad there were only 437 of us left” • Aged just 17, Semen Chtipelman enlisted in the Red Army in 1940. The following year he stood at Leningrad and endured hunger, frost and death to help stop the German onslaught on the city. He was one of only a few from his unit to survive the fighting and see the war through to its bitter end.

HOLOCAUST IN THE EAST • Specially trained SS units – the Einsatzgruppen – followed on the heels of Hitler’s invasion forces. Ostensibly, their job was to keep order in the captured territories. The reality, however, was different. They were death squads, set up for the sole purpose of getting rid of the region’s Jews.

LENINGRAD REFUSED TO SURRENDER • As the Germans stormed Leningrad, General Georgy Zhukov ordered everything to be put into defending the city. Thousands of civilians were sent to dig defences, citizen militias exercised in the city squares and soldiers formed a ring around the city. The Germans had to be stopped here.

Myths about Operation Barbarossa • On 22nd June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union in a large-scale operation involving more than 3.8 million soldiers. Operation Barbarossa and the battles that followed resulted in several enduring myths that continue to circulate 80 years later.

BATTLE OF MOSCOW • German generals believed that Operation Barbarossa had delivered a series of crushing victories, and that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. They were so sure that the capture of Moscow would send the enemy into the abyss that they drove their exhausted troops forward in one final push to crush the Red Army.

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Bringing History to Life