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May the 10th, 1941. We're at an airfield in Bavaria, southern Germany. In the evening light, a lone man walks across the runway. He does his best to appear confident, natural, unremarkable. But he's a bag of nerves. He's about to embark on one of the most extraordinary adventures of World War II. One that will break all the rules. He boards a Messerschmitt 110. With twin engines, this fighter has a longer range than most.
Just to be sure, extra fuel tanks have been fitted. A special radar set has been adapted to aid navigation. Leather flying suits are in short supply these days. This pilot, pulling Nazi rank, has managed to procure one. It's a two-seater aircraft, but this man will be flying solo. His thousand-mile mission is top secret. So secret that no one else knows about it. No one. At 5.45 p.m.,
The Messerschmitt takes off. The pilot checks his flight plan against the weather station in Hamburg. All is good. Within a couple of hours, he's eased his plane over the Frisian Islands, heading out over the North Sea. Later, with night falling and a mist swirling, he crosses Bamburgh Head in northeast England. German fighters are rare this far north. Three Spitfires are scrambled. He avoids them skillfully, swooping down low.
jacked up on dexedrine to keep him alert. From here he hedgehops, never more than 50 feet from the ground, skimming the fir trees of the Scottish borders at 250 miles an hour. In the dark, this is quite some feat. Around 10.30pm, he sees moonlight glint on water. It's a recognisable reservoir. There's a country house beneath him, Dungavel Castle, running on empty now.
The pilot climbs to 6,000 feet and flips the plane over. He yanks back the canopy and unbuckles the straps. Failing out is the one thing he's not been able to rehearse. Centrifugal forces play havoc. He breaks his ankle while yanking himself clear. As his plane smashes into a Lanarkshire hillside, the pilot pulls the ripcord and then blacks out. He comes round in a ploughed field.
A farmer with a pitchfork is standing over him. Alerted by the explosion, the local Home Guard appear. They bundle him off to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow, twenty miles to the north. Until now the pilot has said nothing, but before a military interrogator, he informs them of his name. He is Hauptmann, Captain Alfred Horn, and it's with the greatest urgency that he must speak with the Duke of Hamilton.
Laird of Dancavo. Only this pilot isn't Alfred Horn. He's not even in the Luftwaffe. He is Rudolf Hess, deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich. From Neuser: This is the Hitler story. And this is Real Dictators. By the close of 1940, the list of Hitler's accomplishments makes for staggering reading. The Fuhrer bestrides the continent. Professor Nicholas of Shaughnessy,
He's master of the world. What has happened here is beyond his wildest dreams. You have the newsreels, which every day are showing new victories, fresh victories. The mind is, as we would say today, gobsmacked. You know, it can't take it all in. It seems that invincibility of an army which never existed before in history is now certain that you've perfected a war machine, a technology and troops who are so perfect.
that everything goes before them like a knife through butter, is a kind of almost bibulous thing where they're just heady with joy. They are on such a high, it's like some kind of narcotic. There is a slight niggle. Through grit and geography, Great Britain has seen off a Nazi invasion. But it's not an immediate threat. For the moment, the British Empire has been sidelined.
The United States, too, are isolationist for now. Meanwhile, the Reich's true ideological enemy, the Soviet Union, has been conned into an alliance. Unbelievably, Stalin remains oblivious to Hitler's true intentions. The acquisition of Soviet land, the Man of Steel, will shortly receive the mother of all reality checks. Though vast in area, Hitler remains confident about an invasion of the USSR,
Russian armed forces aren't impressive, as setbacks in Poland and Finland have shown. Stalin had killed many of his own officers during the Great Purge of 1937. Then he got desperate, and that's why he signed up with Hitler. In return for German industrial know-how, trains laden with grain and raw materials have been trundling west, fueling the Nazi war machine, the very machinery that's about to be turned against Stalin.
Invading the Soviet Union will go beyond anything Hitler has attempted so far. Advancing on a 2,000 mile front will make his adventures in the West seem like strolling onto a patio, but he's got it all mapped out. While a northern army pushes on the Baltic states and Leningrad, a central thrust will head towards Moscow. A southern Wehrmacht force meanwhile will march through Ukraine towards the oil-rich Caucasus.
This great Russian landmass will be his. Hitler is already calling this a "War of Extermination". As a code name, he settles on the moniker of a medieval Holy Roman Emperor, one who butchered his way through Slavic lands. A man known as Redbeard Barbarossa. Champing at the bit, Hitler is eager to move in late 1940.
But, after persuasion, even he can concede that marching on Russia in wintertime is a no-no. Operation Barbarossa is set for the earliest opportunity: May 1941. In Germany, the Christmas of 1940 is not like that of 1939. Back then, the cosy glow of Yuletide was enhanced by Hitler's glories. His folk were feeling very festive.
But now, ordinary Germans are feeling the pinch. Before the full benefits of plundered resources and slave labour can be brought on stream, the citizens of Nazi Germany must brace for hard times. On January 30th, Hitler reassures his citizens that their sacrifices will be worth it. He declares: "I am convinced that 1941 will be the historical year of a great new order in Europe." But then, as ever,
comes Mussolini. If you remember, Hitler's Axis ally had made a hash of his invasion of Albania. He'd followed it with a disaster in Libya, defeat to the British forces advancing from Egypt. Hitler has had to send back up a new desert fighting group, the Afrika Korps, is dispatched in March 1941. Its panzers under the command of General Erwin Rommel. Il Duccio has also got himself into a pickle in Greece.
Once more, Hitler must counter Mussolini's aid. Professor Thomas Weber: "The alliance with Mussolini is turning more and more into a nightmare for Adolf Hitler, particularly once Mussolini decides to invade Greece
Mussolini thinks he can just basically walk into Greece and would just be triumphant, but that is actually not happening at all. In fact, Greek forces drive Italian forces back into Albania. They face imminent defeat, and it is at that moment that Germany moves in and starts to bail out the Italians. Dr. John Curatola.
and they become a liability. But they're an ally, and I need allies if you're Hitler, so I can't let them fail. And so you see Mussolini and the Italian army being more of a drain, politically, socially, and economically. I have to mention the fact that they're providing the Italians with a lot of hardware too. To ensure the Wehrmacht's safe passage through the Balkans and into Greece, other countries must be brought on side.
By the spring of 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have signed up to the Axis. But the Kingdom of Yugoslavia is a holdout. Hitler invites Prince Paul, its regent, to the Berghof. He agrees to join the Nazi Jamboree, although he still cannot permit German troops movement across his territory. As ever, Hitler's extraordinary luck comes into play. On March 27th, Serbian Air Force officers stage a coup.
overthrowing the regent and his pro-Nazi government. Good enough reason for the affronted Hitler to march in, restore order and save his new body. He tells his top generals: "Now we are going to smash Yugoslavia once and for all." That night he sits down and signs Directive Number 25, a simultaneous attack on both Yugoslavia and Greece.
As a result of Mussolini's move into Greece, Hitler also has got to move into Yugoslavia, which in a way is really kind of an accidental campaign. He has no huge ideological problems of moving against Yugoslavia. He's quite happy to move particularly against the Serbs, but ultimately this is still a huge distraction. It sure is. The invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, is going to have to be put back by five weeks.
It's given a new launch date: June 22nd. The failed invasion of Greece by Italy is one of the forgotten turning points of the war. It's really not that difficult to imagine that had Germany been able to move against the Soviet Union somewhat earlier in the year, that the German armed forces could have moved before winter set in. So in that sense, Mussolini really messed it up for Hitler.
On April 6, Wehrmacht troops cross the Yugoslavian border from Bulgaria. The Luftwaffe begins pounding Belgrade. It will be razed to the ground. Hitler has dispensed with any poetry for the title of this operation. It's called simply "Punishment". Attacking from all sides, Axis forces pour in too, via Austria, Italy, Albania, Hungary, Romania. Within a week, they're marching into the Yugoslav capital.
17,000 civilians die. On April 17th, the Yugoslavian army surrenders. Ten days later, German panzers are rumbling into Athens. The swastika flies over the Acropolis. Meanwhile, in North Africa, the Afrika Korps are besieging Allied troops at the port of Tobruk. If Stalin thinks he's safe from the Hitler steamroller, he's being spectacularly dim.
American diplomats, British intelligence, his own Soviet agents have been warning Big Joe of an imminent attack. Britain's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Stafford Cripps, even furnishes him with the date.
This had really been the world's worst cat secret. It had generally become common knowledge, at least in intelligence circles, that the Germans had amassed troops just to the west of the Soviet Union and that they were about to strike. Weirdly, Stalin just didn't believe that Hitler was going to do it. I mean, obviously he believed that these troops were there, but he thought this was just camouflage for something else.
A German reconnaissance plane crashes inside Russian territory, laden with maps and photos. This is only one of 800 recent airspace incursions. Stalin shrugs his shoulders. No way could nice Mr. Hitler comprehend such a thing, and certainly not till he's defeated Britain. But over in Berlin, the Nazi high command remain confident.
The Russian mission should be done and dusted inside four months. No need to pack any winter clothing. Despite his official enthusiasm, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop has private concerns about Barbarossa, and there are others of the same mindset. Admiral Ryder, who also opposed Operation Sea Lion, does not think it's a good idea, not while Britain is at large. And there is another significant objector, Rudolf Hess.
We've not heard much from Hess of late. During the rise of the Nazis, he was the Fuhrer's right-hand man. These days, Hess is more of a squad player, warming the bench of Team Hitler. He's been replaced by a new brown-nosing dog's buddy, Martin Bormann. Hermann Göring has assumed the mantle of the official successor, but Hess was, and still is, technically, Hitler's deputy. Back in the day, when Adolf and Rudi were jailbirds,
Typing up Mein Kampf into the early hours, it had been quite the bromance. They'd shared their love for a Nazi academic, Hess's old university tutor, Professor Karl Haushofer. It was Haushofer who'd come up with the concept of Lebensraum. Now Hess and Haushofer wonder whether they shouldn't demonstrate a little initiative to the Führer, open a new back channel with the British, spare the peril of a war on two fronts.
Hess grew up in British-controlled Egypt. He speaks fluent English. He doesn't regard them as a natural enemy. When Hess looks at the British royal family, he doesn't see an implacable foe. Indeed, the current king, George VI, has taken over from a brother who had known links to the Nazis. Professor Helen Roche.
There are indeed indications that George VI was kind of deep down more pro-German than perhaps the Royal Archives would ever want us to know.
I mean, I think it was probably a real blow for the regime when the abdication took place. And I know for sure that had a puppet government been set up in the UK, Hitler's plan was to bring Edward VIII back over and install him as a puppet sovereign. If, maybe, Hess could meet a British representative in a neutral city, possibly Lisbon,
Float the idea of peace? I mean, what's to lose? Thinking it a dead-end project, Hitler gives him free reign. But where to start? Haushofer remembers a positive meeting he had before the war with a Scottish nobleman named Douglas Douglas Hamilton. A duke, no less. Hess, too, had shaken hands with him at the Berlin Olympics. Yes, the Duke of Hamilton will be their man. Just the sort of fellow to facilitate a meeting with King George.
and just the man to front up an opposition at Westminster and overthrow that drunk old warmonger Winston Churchill. The Nazis had a completely bizarre view of how British society worked. They still thought the peerage were on top. They were talking to all kinds of people, the wrong people who are giving them unfortunate encouragement. They thought the power still lay with Dukes, which is extraordinary. This misinformation
"This utter deluded belief, for example, that the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham were run by Jews, that the Boy Scout movement was a serious spy network, it was all part of this delusional view of Britain." Haushofer's son, Albrecht, works at the German Foreign Office. In September 1940, he instigates contact.
In cloak and dagger fashion, a letter is delivered to a Mrs. Violet Roberts, a go-between, who lives in the Portuguese capital. It all goes quiet, largely because MI6 have intercepted the note. After months of silence, Hess decides to take matters into his own hands. And how. The British are good sports, he understands. What better sporting gesture could there be than for him to speak to Hamilton personally?
Hess began flying at the tail end of the Great War. He's now an expert pilot, as is Hamilton. Something to bond over. A jaunt across the North Sea will be a piece of cake. Hess gets training with his personal customized plane. That Saturday morning, May the 10th, at their Munich home, Hess kisses his wife, Ilse, goodbye. He stares wistfully into the room where his four-year-old son lies fast asleep. He tells Ilse he'll be away for a few days.
She assumes he's going somewhere as part of Hitler's delegation. The weather is good, as Hess heads to the airfield at Augsburg. That evening, he takes off into the sunset. Noon, Sunday, May 11th. It's a beautiful day at the Berghof. The mountain air is clear, the sky blue. The Fuhrer sits listening to the daily reports. The meeting is interrupted by Martin Bormann's brother, Albert. He has something urgent for his Fuhrer.
Hitler dismisses him. Can't he see he's busy? But Albert Bormann is insistent. He hands his boss a letter. Hitler puts on his glasses. It's from Rudolf Hess. And it begins, My Fuhrer, when you receive this letter, I shall be in England. To the onlookers, Hitler grows visibly pale, shaking. And if, my Fuhrer, this project, which I admit has very little chance of success, ends in failure, and the fates decide against me,
"This can have no detrimental effect either for you or for Germany. It will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility. Simply say, 'I'm crazy.' A stunned Hitler drops the letter and issues an animal scream. He demands that Goering and Ribbentrop be brought to him urgently. He orders the immediate arrest of Hess's staff. On such a long solo journey, it seems most likely that Hess will have crashed. I hope he falls into the sea, rages Hitler."
But what if he did get through? Has he revealed the plans for Barbarossa? The Nazi spin machine goes into action. A broadcast is put out informing the citizens of the Reich that, sadly, Rudolf Hess has died in an air accident. A letter he left behind confirms their recent concerns for his mental well-being. A thousand miles away in Scotland, the Duke of Hamilton is brought up to Glasgow to inspect the prisoner. Now tucked up in a hospital bed,
At first, the Duke, now an RAF Air Commodore, does not recognize this rogue German airman who claims to have met him. But British intelligence soon twig that the man that they are holding captive is the one and only Rudolf Hess. The Duke is dispatched south post haste. At Ditchley House, Oxfordshire, the Prime Minister is spending the weekend. That Sunday afternoon he's on his way to see a Marx Brothers film and won't be disturbed. But...
When Hamilton sits Churchill down afterwards and explains all, he can scarcely believe it either. Just as Goebbels' propaganda engine is going into overdrive, the British do their big reveal. "Actually chaps, he's over here." Hitler is apoplectic. Albrecht Haushofer is hauled off by the Gestapo. The Hess family are publicly humiliated. Martin Bormann even changes the names of his children, whom he called in Hess's honour Rudolf and Ilse.
The Deputy Fuhrer meanwhile fails spectacularly in his mission. All it does is convince the British that the high up Nazis have little grip on reality. Hess is diagnosed by British doctors as a paranoid schizophrenic. He is transported to the Tower of London and becomes the war's most famous prisoner. Under interrogation, Hess claims that he was driven by his haunting vision of an endless line of children's coffins with weeping mothers behind them.
a view he sticks to for the rest of his life. "I could not prevent the madness of war," he says, "but it makes me happy that I tried to do it." The Hess flight to this day remains shrouded in mystery.
I think one of the things that we actually need to go back to here is the Nazis' views on race, because part of the reason why such a mission might have been seen as bound to succeed in some way was because Hitler saw the British as traitors.
racially related, like kin, like blood brothers. And I get the feeling that with both Hitler and Hess, there was this kind of idea that the British are making a terrible mistake, like they must realize this. They can't actually fight us. Of course, the background of that flight to Scotland remains murky. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories around it.
Haas was consistently far more involved in bringing about accommodation with Britain than is generally known, that he kept lines of communications open, particularly at times at which others, including Ribbentrop, had given up. Rudolf Haas had his own kind of secret service with people on the ground in Britain. I think there are good reasons to believe that the
The contacts that he has with the British establishment went far beyond what is generally known. And against that context, his flight to Scotland in 1941 is actually not quite as weird as it seems. Mussolini is left scratching his head. The whole thing makes Hitler look rather foolish. The Russians also suspect. The Fuhrer might be more duplicitous than they've been led to believe. But Hitler can brush it off.
Rudolf Hess set up his mission quite cleverly, making the whole mission deniable if it failed. But even though the whole episode remains unresolved, I think it's extremely unlikely that Hitler was not implicated in the whole episode. After the war, Hess will be condemned at the Nuremberg trials to life imprisonment. The Soviets will maintain a hard line against him.
persistently objecting to his later release from Spandau prison in Berlin. Old and infirm, Rudolf Hess will spend the last 20 years of his life as Spandau's only prisoner. He will hang himself there in 1987, aged 93. The day after the Hess fiasco, Hitler accelerates his plans for Barbarossa. In Berlin, civil servants, bean counters, casually tot up the anticipated death tolls.
To Hitler there is no economic benefit in sustaining the civilian population in places like Leningrad. As he is instructed, matter of factly, many millions of persons will be starved to death. He has warned his generals too that they will not be waging war in a gentlemanly or knightly fashion. He underscores his ruthlessness with two new decrees: 1. Any Russian civilian taking up arms against the Wehrmacht will be shot without trial.
2. The SS may act independently in carrying out unspecified special tasks. These operations will be conducted through Himmler's newly formed Einsatzgruppen or special action groups. Some senior officers object: "The German tactic thus far has been to pose as liberators, but Hitler is adamant Himmler will cleanse the occupation zones of Jews and other troublemakers."
General Brauchitsch is informed that the German army must liquidate all Soviet officers, whether captured during battle or while offering resistance. They must be shot at once.
They are not to bring them back to the rare area, they're not to interrogate, they are to kill, murder, end of story. There's no question about it. It's legalized murder is what it is. And almost all German divisions accept that as a legal order. Hitler is totally focused on Russia now. Everything else falls outside his tunnel vision. When German paratroopers take the Greek island of Crete, a major strategic gain,
It gets scant attention. Admiral Ryder pleads with the Fuhrer that they throw their weight behind Rommel in North Africa as he drives towards the Suez Canal. It falls on deaf ears. On June 2nd, Hitler meets Mussolini at the Brenner Pass and clues him on the full extent of Barbarossa. On June 8th, German infantry divisions begin landing in Finland.
Hitler hosts a lunch for high command officers and toasts the inevitable and swift collapse of the Soviet armed forces. Barbarossa will commence on the 22nd at 3 am. In Moscow, finally, Stalin puts two and two together. Molotov summons the German ambassador. His denial is unconvincing. On that summer solstice, sun setting late, the last Soviet supply train trundles west to Germany, laden with grain.
It's the early hours of Sunday, June 22nd, 1941, Rastenburg in East Prussia. Here, 450 miles from Berlin, lies a forest. Deep amidst the trees is a place they call the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's campaign headquarters. Inside the reinforced bunker, the Führer can't sleep. He paces the floor. He pens a note to Mussolini. His whole life has been about this moment, he says.
I am happy to be relieved of my mental agonies. I feel I'm pushing open the door to a dark room never seen before without knowing what lies behind it. Mussolini will contribute troops in due course to complement the divisions of Finns, Hungarians, Slovakians and Romanians, and all will be rewarded with Russian spoils." Hitler's words have been read out to his troops by their commanders.
I can at last speak openly to you, my soldiers." He tells them that they are part of the greatest military force in history. 3.8 million men. The destiny of Europe, the future of the German Reich, the existence of our nation now lies in your hands alone. An hour before dawn, a year to the day after the French surrender was signed at Compiègne, the Germans crossed the Russian frontier.
It was also on this date, in 1812, that Napoleon's troops did the very same thing. Hitler should have taken note. In Berlin, around six, while foreign correspondents are being roused, loudspeakers blast the news to the public. Britain and the Soviets have been conspiring to attack the Reich, Hitler tells them. There is confusion. The Russians were the sworn enemy. Then they were our best friends. Now they are the foe again? What's going on?
Barbarossa, in its opening phase, surpasses anything Hitler has undertaken to date. So devastating is the German advance that completing the job in four months seems conservative. Hitler revises down his estimate: they can wrap it up in eight weeks, maybe even six. In those first few hours, the Soviet Union loses a barely believable 2,000 aircraft to the Luftwaffe's 35.
They will sacrifice 6,000 tanks in just two engagements. So one-sided is the battle. There are already rumors that Stalin has thrown in the towel and asked the Japanese to come in and mediate. He has also placed a frantic call to Anthony Eden, who has been reinstated as Foreign Secretary in London, pleading for British assistance. The Americans question the ethics of supporting one murderous dictator against another, but Churchill plays the lesser of two evils defense.
Hitler must be stopped at all costs. "If Hitler invaded hell," he says, "I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
The invasion of the Soviet Union is really changing everything on the international scene. And that, of course, changed the strategic games for particularly the British and the Americans, but also the Japanese overnight. And that really led to a very frantic attempt on the part of the British and the Americans to see what kind of relationship they could have with Stalin. Ultimately, they all realized that they could only win the war if they all teamed up.
But any assistance may already be too late. Soon tanks are bursting through the Soviet lines, advancing 100 miles a day. In two weeks, there are half a million Soviet dead and a million more surrendered. The Germans are halfway to Moscow and occupying an area twice the size of the Reich. The swift advance enables the SS to get to work. Under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, the killing units of the Einsatzgruppen move in.
They are tasked with rounding up Bolshevik leaders, Jews, Gypsies, Asiatic inferiors and the disabled. The Russians are seen as particularly subhuman, you know, Bolshevik beasts, and hence the brutality that's meted out, the starvation of Soviet POWs and the treatment of local populations as well is particularly brutal. Dr Chris Dillon.
The big plan is to move Central Europeans eastward, to move Slavic populations still further eastward, and for Jews to disappear entirely from the fabric of East European civilization. The big kind of racial repopulation plan, the General Plan East, the General Plan Ost, in this the murder of the Jews is merely just a first step in something all
altogether far more nightmarish and Promethean. Whereas in the West, it's exploitation and mobilization. In the East, it's about population transfers and genocide. Oppressed in their own country? Some Russian Jews are unaware of events in recent months. Some even greet the Germans as liberators. As one SS officer puts it, never before has a people gone as unsuspectingly to its disaster.
Genocide starts well before the establishment of death camps in the East, but they certainly gather further momentum with the invasion of the Soviet Union. They carry out a genocide through bullets. They round up local Jewish populations and just wipe them out. On a visit to the front, SS Chief Himmler requests that a demonstration of a mass execution be done for him, but it turns even his stomach.
The one-time chicken farmer gives a pep talk. It's a dirty old job, but someone's got to do it. As servants of the Reich, they must just roll up their sleeves. With the ease of the German advance, Hitler is emboldened. In a briefing with his staff officers, he points to a map on the wall, specifically at Moscow. "I will raze that damn city," he snarls. "The name of Moscow will disappear forever." "He's going to replace it," he says, "with an artificial lake."
So far, Hitler has not been driven by the conquest of cities. His modus operandi is to defeat armies and gain territory. This has brought him into conflict with some of his generals, who would rather he take the Russian capital and knock out the Soviet Union that way. It's only in the autumn, after seizing Kiev and the wheat fields of Ukraine, that Hitler finally announces Operation Typhoon, an assault on Moscow.
A pincer movement will surround the remnants of the Red Army. The Fuhrer goes back to Berlin and makes a speech on October 2nd, giving it the big build-up: "The greatest battle in the history of the world has begun." In terms of numbers, he's not far wrong. There have been 18,000 Soviet tanks destroyed, 14,500 planes downed. The Wehrmacht has advanced nearly 1,000 miles into Russian territory.
There have also been 2.5 million Soviet prisoners taken. Forced to be starved or worked to death, only three out of every hundred will survive. A next big spurt of concentration camp construction follows the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
And two huge concentration camp networks are set up to contain Soviet prisoners of war as forced laborers at Majdanek and then a new wing of the Auschwitz complex at Birkenau. And in late 1941, a third new camp, Stutthof, is established in the north of Nazi-occupied Poland.
Himmler was expecting hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs to become a new army of slave labourers for the SS. But the dreadful treatment of captured Soviet soldiers means that very, very, very few survive more than a few weeks or months. General von Bock, with reduced forces, opens the offensive against Moscow. As patriotic songs boom across Germany, Hitler has already declared victory, but he's not thought it through.
The Germans, what they're going to do is they're going to build an army in the 1930s that can go to France and can go to Warsaw. The problem is they don't build an army that can go all the way to Moscow. To do that requires significant infrastructure, significant logistics, the ability to man, train, equip armed forces far from your natural borders. And this is something the Germans haven't planned for.
And when you think about vast distances between Moscow and Berlin, as an American, it's about the same distance from Kansas City to Washington, D.C. And that frontage is basically from Maine to Florida. And one thing people don't realize is that the German army will use more horses in the Second World War than they used in the First World War. So we have this idea that the German army is this mechanized machine.
but it's a mailed fist on a wooden shaft. There's not much behind it. And so while the army can roll over, say, the Maginot Line, it can roll over Polish defenses, the troops are walking. And so you have a problem in terms of coordination of follow-on forces and logistics. The Germans, they get a big F strategically. Tactically, I'll give them the A, but the fact is they don't think about what happens next.
While the bulk of his government has relocated east, Joseph Stalin is going nowhere. His refusal to budge gives his people hope. With the enemy at the gates, Muscovites embark on a mass civil defence programme. Every able-bodied man, woman and child is enlisted. Tank traps are dug, barricades are erected, hatches battened down for the inevitable.
The Wehrmacht is within 40 miles of Moscow when the first rains lash down, turning Russia's unpaved roads into mud baths. The heavy German tanks, the Panzermark IVs, get stuck, unlike the Soviet T-34s, which can zip around with impunity. Poor visibility grounds the Luftwaffe. Hitler's plan relies on sustained momentum, not to mention the benevolence of Mother Nature. His blitzkrieg suddenly grinds to a halt.
Rain is followed by sleet and snow. Hitler is about to face the perennial foe, the same one that defeated Napoleon the Russian winter. In November the temperature plummets to minus 30. Weapons fail. Vehicles seize up. Fires have to be lit under engines. Watched by the ghosts of Bonaparte's Grande Armée, thousands of German soldiers die of exposure. Each night,
Men are frozen on the spot as grotesque ice statues. The Wehrmacht field hospitals are losing more men to frostbite than Russian bullets. While his soldiers are perishing, Hitler is back in Munich for the annual commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch. Such is the circus around the Führer. No one dare break him the news. On November 12th, he's told what he wants to hear: that in three days the Soviet Union will have capitulated. But ordinary Germans are noticing something.
Goebbels has put out an appeal for donations of furs and woolen clothing. Hitler's generals plead for common sense, hold a defensive line and renew the offensive in the spring, but back at the Wolf's Lair. This is deemed unacceptable by Hitler. A Japanese military liaison has flown in to observe the Russian defeat, and Hitler wants to put on a show. General Guderian, head of the 2nd Panzer Army, is told that the attack must continue.
with a massive ice storm now hitting. "It's impossible," the general replies. "What's more, the Soviet resistance is growing." Further south, on the edge of the Caucasus, another illustrious general, von Rundstedt, evacuates his troops from the city of Rostov. He's duly dismissed by Hitler. In early December, through a blizzard, Wehrmacht troops sight the golden domes of the Kremlin. Those in the forward positions are a mere 15 miles away.
but this is the closest they will ever get. Stalin appeals to the heart. This is no longer about ideology, communism versus Nazism. This is a great patriotic war about saving Mother Russia and he has a trick up his sleeve. General Georgi Zhukov, defender of Leningrad. Stalin has brought him in to shore up Moscow's defenses. Zhukov has a fresh army at his disposal.
40 divisions of snow troops redeployed from Siberia
Of course, as we know, the Russians have time and space, allowing the Germans to come in, expending all that combat power. Russia spans 11 time zones. And the Russians also, early on in the invasion, start moving their factories to the east. And they reestablish a lot of these places in the middle of nowhere to still produce shells and tanks and those kinds of things. They're able to turn the tide because, again, they have the economic and production capacities and the manpower
to do that. And Germany's running out of people. They're running out of men. On December the 5th, General Guderian radios back that his troops cannot take it anymore. They don't even have overcoats. Zhukov prepares to strike. That night, as the temperature plunges to minus 40, he launches his massive counteroffensive. A million men of the Red Army are unleashed. This time, it's the Germans who crumble. On the 6th, General Jodl breaks the news to Hitler.
Victory can no longer be achieved. Sunday, December 7th, 1941, at the Wolf's Lair, in the nighttime darkness, SS officer Otto Dietrich races through the snow. He is Hitler's press chief. He has something in his hand, a report that will change everything. With the daily pileup of bad news, Hitler is in a foul mood, but he's about to have his mind blown.
In Hawaii, Hitler was informed, where it's still morning, the forces of Imperial Japan have launched an attack on the United States Navy at anchor in Pearl Harbor. As devastating as it's audacious, a Japanese naval carrier group has sunk four battleships and damaged numerous other vessels. In one single moment of military brilliance, it has knocked out the American Pacific Fleet, or so Tokyo believes.
To say that Hitler is overjoyed is an understatement. This little setback in Russia? Really, it's nothing. For some weeks now, Hitler has been encouraging the Japanese to attack the Anglo-Saxons in the Far East. Hitler has been careful to avoid open conflict with the neutral US, even if he has been trash-talking Roosevelt. But things are changing. America has released $40 million in frozen Soviet assets. 400 warplanes have just been delivered at Murmansk.
Washington is set to provide $50 billion of food, oil, and armaments to Britain and the Soviet Union, a staggering $700 billion in today's money. And Churchill and Roosevelt have recently met off Newfoundland. They've signed the Atlantic Charter, setting out what Hitler sees as their plan for a rival world order.
The Americans and the British, and to an extent the Russians, we hold a whole host of conferences during the war. Casablanca, Arcadia, you know, Tehran, where we're talking strategy. But you don't see that with the Axis. In terms of grand strategy, you don't see that. You don't see Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini getting together. Okay, here's where our next moves are. There's none of that. The U.S. and German navies are already exchanging fire in the Atlantic.
as the Americans escort Allied convoys. This is neutrality in name only. Newly emboldened, Hitler gives an interview to his fawning press. "I am the Fuhrer of a Reich that will last for a thousand years," he barks, slapping his glove into his hand. "With his new friends, the Japanese, we cannot lose the war. Now we have a partner who has not been defeated in three thousand years. In the next twenty-four hours,
Hitler will be forced to officially call off the German offensive in Russia, but he has a new morsel to throw to his public. Four days later, on December 11th, Hitler is back in Berlin addressing a rabid Reichstag, whipping them up into anti-American frenzy. "We will always strike first," he says. "Germany is at war with the United States as from today." A dumbfounded General Jodl phones his colleagues at the front. Have they heard the latest?
What the hell does the Fuhrer expect them to do now? Deploy troops to the Pacific? What if the Americans get involved in Europe or North Africa? By the end of '41, you have literally a world aflame because it is a world war, a global conflagration, and who knows how it might turn out.
Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States seems extraordinary in retrospect. Many Americans assume that it's the other way around, that Roosevelt declared war on Hitler, but that's very much not the case.
I guess it reflects the apocalyptic character of Hitler's ideology, the operatic aspects as well. As far as the Nazi Party is concerned, de facto, the Americans have been on the Allied side since the Lend-Lease Agreement. There was a feeling that America was like the Soviet Union, another country that was not as strong as it appeared due to the prevalence of Jewish influence. And
and a belief that you know now at last we can have a crystallizing moment of good versus evil hitler he's a european thinker i don't think he understands what's going on in asia i've read this i say this to you with great caution supposedly when he hears about pearl harbor he's at the wolf's lair and he asks where's pearl harbor and nobody has an answer so if that's true you kind of go here's a guy bent on world domination but as you know where the american fleet is in the pacific are you kidding me
Meanwhile, the latest developments in Russia are catastrophic. Stalin's government is back in Moscow. Leningrad has not been captured. Neither have the oil fields of the Caucasus. Russia is a wasteland of abandoned equipment and frozen Wehrmacht corpses, one million of them by the campaign's end. The Soviets, meanwhile, uncovering the German atrocities as they go, are repaying it with interest.
General Brauchitsch has suggested they withdraw even further, but Hitler has him sacked and summons Keitel instead. Add von Bock, Guderian and others, and heads are really starting to roll. General von Sponek is handed a death sentence. "I know of no general who could do it as I want it done," rages Hitler. "For that reason, I have taken over command of the army myself, no longer a ceremonial advisory chief,
Hitler is now the actual hands-on military decision maker. The moment things start to go badly, a blame game starts. Hitler, of course, then very openly moves against his generals. He's starting to argue that they're all incompetent. He's starting to argue that he
as someone who had seen real action during the First World War, would really know what the face of war really looks like. He thinks that all these generals don't really know war first hand, they have just been to some fancy military colleges and that therefore actually he's essentially appointing himself Supreme Military Commander and is starting to take really maverick decisions.
From that point onwards, Hitler really is fighting without a strategy. These rushes of blood to the head will soon spell the end for Nazism, for the Third Reich and for Adolf Hitler. This marks the end of this block of the Adolf Hitler story. The final installment of Hitler episodes will be coming later this year when we'll witness the Fuhrer's extraordinary downfall. And before that, after a season break,
Real Dictators will return in the coming weeks with further stories of tyrants the world over. Stay tuned.
