World War II with Tom Hanks (2026) s01e15 Episode Script
Home Front
1
Sub extracted from file & improved by
By the start of 1943,
Germany and Japan have been
at war for several years.
Although the people of both nations
have endured battlefield
casualties from the beginning,
two critical events are
about to bring the war home.
The leaders of Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan
respond in very different ways.
[dramatic music]
All wars changed the world,
but none of them changed the world
like the second World War did.
Japan's on the march,
Germany's on the march.
No one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash,
the most destructive
war in human history.
Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down
and all hell is let loose.
The west is stunned by
the speed of the advance.
[dramatic music]
You get the Allies
led by the big three,
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin,
men who were dealing with
immensely complicated questions.
It's the biggest military
operation of human history.
The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily
but industrial scale.
It's a global perspective.
They have to fight in
every climate from the Arctic
to the jungles of the Pacific,
to the deserts of Africa,
and the depths of the ocean.
[dramatic music]
But there was no certainty of victory.
It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.
We see humans at their absolute worst,
how they treat other human beings.
And we see them at their absolute best,
willing to give their lives
that others might live.
World War II was a struggle
in which there could be one victor
and one vanquished.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[siren blaring]
[pensive music]
[spectators cheering]
[announcer speaking German]
[spectators cheering]
[announcer speaking German]
[Tom] By early 1943,
the Nazi Third Reich
has absorbed much of Europe.
[pensive music]
Great cities have been bombed.
Whole nations have been occupied.
But in Germany, success
on the battlefield
allows life to go on as before.
Hitler wants to maintain
the semblance of normalcy
even in wartime.
So theaters remain open,
stadiums remain open,
sporting events go on as scheduled.
Germans are encouraged to go
about their daily business.
[pensive music]
The Germans, from the
beginning of the war,
have really been sheltered
and shielded by Hitler
because there is a
belief that Hitler has
that one of the main reasons
that Germany collapsed in 1918
was because the population
didn't have enough to eat,
their morale failed,
and all of a sudden they
turned against the government.
[dramatic music]
[Robert] Hitler constantly
tells the German people
they're a master race.
But, you know, deep down inside,
he doesn't trust them at all.
He was seared by the events
of the First World War.
Nothing could have looked stronger
than the Kaiser's government in 1918,
and it was overthrown in a
revolution lasting a single day.
[Alexandra] And so Hitler
believes that the German people
are, in a sense, fickle.
If they aren't given what they want,
if they don't have enough to eat,
if they don't have the material,
that they're going to
somehow turn on him.
And so he is very, very determined
to make sure that the German people
don't feel the pinch of the war.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But in early February,
Germans across the Reich are
told in a short radio broadcast
that the 6th Army has been
destroyed at Stalingrad.
[radio announcer speaking German]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Germany suffered
enormous casualties at Stalingrad,
90,000 captured
and over 200,000 dead.
[Robert] Hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of Germans
had a family member, or a friend,
or knew someone who
fought at Stalingrad.
[pensive music]
This is the greatest
catastrophe in German history.
[pensive music]
Nobody's been prepared for this.
For the families of people
who are serving on
the Stalingrad front,
it unleashes a wave of panic.
[Tom] It is the first
admission of a Wehrmacht defeat.
But Hitler and his military leaders
are busy planning a counter-attack.
[Alexandra] Hitler is now up in
the Wolf's Lair, the Wolfsschanze,
his massive headquarters
up in East Prussia,
in almost complete isolation.
He rarely appears in public.
And so the task of rebuilding
morale amongst the people
is left to others.
[Tom] Joseph Goebbels,
Hitler's Reich minister
of enlightenment and propaganda,
has been at the center
of the Nazi party
since it was formed in the 1920s.
[Robert] Joseph Goebbels is one of
the most unusual Nazi officials.
And he looks like anything
but the image of the Nazi superman.
He has no military background,
but he's brilliant about
the use of propaganda.
[dramatic music]
Goebbels decides that the time
has come to deliver a speech
exposing the German people to the
realities of what 1943 is gonna give them.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[Robert] For the first time, a
Nazi party official stands up
and says the war isn't going well.
Only the German people are
capable of lifting Germany up
from the defeat at
Stalingrad to ultimate victory.
It's time to fight total war.
[Martin] Total war is the
commitment to a complete
and full national mobilization,
meaning that all businesses
and then all people,
all men, all women,
absolutely everyone,
become dedicated toward
securing victory.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[attendees cheering]
[attendees applauding]
[dramatic music]
[Nicholas] The "Total War" speech
is both an attempt
to rally public opinion
and an attempt to persuade
Hitler to go to total war.
[Martin] Think of this as like
a closing argument at a trial.
Goebbels is making a
case to Adolf Hitler
that if this war is going to prevail,
you're gonna have to accept
the commitment to total war.
[Goebbels speaking German]
Do you want the Total War?
[attendees roaring]
[dramatic music]
And so this hand-selected crowd
of followers and sycophants,
they're saying "Ja!"
to every word that he says.
[attendees cheering]
[attendees applauding]
And Adolf Hitler is saying "Nein".
[pensive music]
[Tom] Hitler is reluctant.
He promised triumph, not sacrifice.
People say Goebbels giving that speech,
that's the switch when Germany
really goes to total war,
but it isn't.
[pensive music]
[Robert] That would, for example,
have meant
mobilizing women into industrial jobs,
as it had happened
in the United States.
The conservative Nazi regime
wants women to stay in the home
so they can raise children,
care for the family.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But with so many men
serving in the Wehrmacht,
primarily on the Eastern Front,
Germany desperately needs workers.
Albert Speer, Reich minister
of armament and war production,
must find a solution.
[Alexandra] Albert Speer is
a complex figure.
He begins his career as an architect,
and he is the architect
for the Nuremberg rallies.
And these become a huge
propaganda success.
[attendees chanting German]
[Alexandra] In 1942, Hitler
appoints Speer
as his new armaments minister.
Speer has absolutely no background
in armaments production at all.
But nevertheless, he's a good organizer
and he does quite an amazing job.
[Col. Douds] But if you're
gonna increase production,
but you're not gonna tap
into the German people
because we're trying to keep
everything normal back home,
well, you gotta find
that manpower somewhere.
[pensive music]
[Robert] Albert Speer has
another strategy at hand,
and that's to use slave laborers
recruited from the
various occupation zones.
[pensive music]
[Alexandra] Massive numbers of people
were brought into the Reich
to work as slave laborers,
people from Western
Europe, from France,
from the Netherlands, but also
from Poland, from Ukraine.
[Col. Douds] In 1943, 12 to
15 million people
were brought in from 20 other countries
to effectively make up for the manpower
that Germany has lost.
However, it is also at a
high human and moral cost.
[Robert] They're barely fed.
They're practically
chained to the machine.
Whenever we look at
the dramatic increase
in German arms productions in 1943,
we should always look
behind the gleaming weapons,
and tanks, and aircraft
to realize that these were
produced by human skeletons
banging out parts for German
weapons until they died.
[Col. Douds] Production will rise
56% in the first six months.
It is an armaments miracle.
It also gives Germany a
propaganda story to tell.
[Alexandra] Look at what we've done.
We've turned armaments around.
Look how many planes we're producing.
Look how many tanks we're producing.
Things are difficult, but
it's going to be okay.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] But the RAF and the
American Eighth Air Force
are expanding their
relentless bombing campaign
aimed at destroying Germany's
industrial infrastructure
and German morale.
[Robert] The Germans may not
yet be fighting total war,
but the war is coming
home to Germany in 1943,
and it's the Anglo-American
round the clock bombing campaign.
[pensive music]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] American B-17s
flying from England
bomb the Reich's war factories by day.
At night, the RAF hits German cities.
[dramatic music]
Germany is forced to divert
more and more men and material
to defend the skies over their cities.
[Robert] In facing the Allied
bombing campaign,
the Nazi regime does take steps.
It builds these monumental flak towers,
which they're almost
impossible to demolish.
[Martin] These massive flak towers
are also air raid shelters.
They have infirmaries,
they have schools.
The German government
is saying to its people,
"These air raid shelters
are there to protect you."
[siren blaring] [pensive music]
[Robert] But there's never
enough for the population.
And when the bombers come,
most Germans wind up going
into a neighborhood cellar.
They're cramped, they're hot,
you're there all night long,
and the children are
getting sick from fear.
[bombers roaring]
[Alexandra] It was a
terrifying experience
and also exhausting.
This happened night
after night after night.
[Col. Douds] You stay down
there for hours.
Maybe you're down there
until the next morning.
[apprehensive music]
[dramatic music]
And then finally,
somebody cracks the door,
and you walk outside, and you
see your neighborhood is gone.
[dramatic music]
[Robert] This is the first time
that war has really come home
to the German people.
[dramatic music]
And many of them are asking,
"Where is our government?"
[pensive music]
[Tom] While German cities are being
bombed by the Western Allies,
the skies over Japan remain clear.
Germany is much more
vulnerable than Japan
because it is within flying range
of the British and
the American bombers.
Bombing Japan is not possible
for the Allies in 1943
because Japan enjoyed an
enormous defense perimeter.
[Tom] The Japanese
have conquered an empire
that spans much of Asia.
Distance and the capture of
several remote Pacific islands
have created a defensive perimeter
of over 3 million square miles
that protects this empire.
[dramatic music]
But American victories
at Midway and Guadalcanal
have breached this defensive ring.
Japan's home front still
has not faced daily air raids,
but military leaders know
the tide is shifting against them.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In June, 1943,
Tokyo citizens gather to pay
tribute to a fallen war hero.
[pensive music]
It's a solemn event.
[announcer speaking Japanese]
Admiral Yamamoto was
this huge figure in Japan,
the mastermind of Pearl Harbor,
the hero of the early
months of the war,
and now he's gone.
[propeller whirring]
[Tom] Acting on
intercepted radio messages,
the American Air Force shot
down Admiral Yamamoto's plane
over the Solomon Islands.
[pensive music]
His body was found and
sent back to Japan.
Japan tightly censors
all news of the war.
But the death of the
Navy's supreme commander
cannot be hidden from
the Japanese people.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] You've got up to
a million people lining the streets
as this funeral cortege goes
past, a hugely somber occasion.
There's a sense of a really
significant figure passing.
[dramatic music]
Imagine what losing
MacArthur would've done.
These figures are
seen as irreplaceable.
And so when this pierces
the news blackout
for the public on what's
really going on in the war,
it's huge.
This is a real concern in
the Japanese government.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Prime Minister Hideki Tojo
was an early advocate for war
against the United States.
Tojo at this point has
been in power in Japan
since shortly before Pearl Harbor.
As the war situation is
going increasingly badly,
he needs a victory
to be able to continue
in power in Japan.
Tojo is driven by honor.
He's driven by loyalty to the emperor.
And more than anything
else, he wants to make sure
that Japan escapes the war
with its empire intact.
[bombers rumbling]
[Tom] The Japanese intended
the attack on Pearl Harbor
to be a knockout blow
against the Americans.
[explosion booming]
They understood they
couldn't win a protracted war
against the economic might
of the United States.
[Yuki] Even when Japan was winning
in the initial phase of the war,
Japan's wartime production capacity
is roughly only 1/10
of the United States.
So by 1943, the government
really needs to use
whatever it can gets their hands on
to keep the wartime production going.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Oil from the East Indies,
rubber from Malaya,
iron ore from Manchuria
are all vital to
Japanese war industries.
[dramatic music]
[Dan] The problem is,
is that you look at a map,
you can see that that has to
be transported over water.
[Sheldon] They have a huge
merchant marine,
the third largest in the world,
to move resources from Southeast Asia.
[Tom] Now, all of it is threatened
by the tightening stranglehold
of the American Navy.
[dramatic music]
The United States' submarine operations
have been quite successful
in cutting Japanese supply routes.
[apprehensive music]
Japanese natural resources
are increasingly lying at
the bottom of the ocean.
And so we begin to see
critical material shortages
on the Japanese home front.
[Tom] To maintain the
nation's war effort,
Prime Minister Tojo and his government
impose severe austerity
on the Japanese people.
[Sheldon] Unlike Nazi Germany,
in Japan there never
was this phenomenon
of trying to keep the Japanese
people totally comfortable.
In general, Tojo believed that if Japan
were to be successful against
the Americans and others
in lieu of natural resources,
it would take the active mobilization
of its human resources, its people.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] The message to people is
is if they will make
these sacrifices at home,
then soldiers abroad
will keep them safe.
[dramatic music]
They will keep the Allies at bay.
They will do their
bit if people at home
do what they're supposed to do.
They must sacrifice everything.
[pensive music]
[Tom] The American naval blockade
is choking the Japanese.
Food is scarce.
The everyday necessities
of modern life disappear.
[dramatic music]
But Prime Minister Tojo
demands even greater sacrifice.
[dramatic music]
[Bradley] We certainly have
rationing going on in the United States.
This is on a national scale
that is unmatched, really,
in a lot of the Allied nations.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] Electricity is
being rationed.
They're relying on
sort of primitive ways
of even just cooking food
and having to burn
their libraries for fuel
to try and keep warm.
No one has enough to eat.
You've even got people going
into the countryside to forage.
[Bradley] The Japanese
are producing cars
that run on coal rather than oil
because oil is being
taken for the war effort
on such a large scale.
[Christopher] You've got
temple bells, railings,
pots, and pans being melted down
so that they can make
bullets and armor.
[Bradley] In many ways,
Japan is reverting
to almost a pre-industrial
society as the war goes on.
[dramatic music]
[Sheldon] However, Japanese
people are not automatons.
They don't necessarily
willingly part with their food.
The police realize there
are widespread black markets
all over Japan.
So this is a real problem.
And so Japanese leaders mobilize
these neighborhood associations,
in Japanese, called Tonarigumi.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The Tonarigumi has been
woven into Japanese culture
for over a century.
But in wartime, it becomes
a tool for the neighbors
to keep an eye on each other.
[Jeremy] The Tonarigumi are
groups of 5 to 10 households
that work as a means of
mobilizing the people
behind Japan's war.
[Sheldon] They ration the food.
They carry out civil defense drills.
They do many of the
things that we would think
that government officials
would do elsewhere,
but it's done by the people themselves.
[Christopher] But really, the
key is mutual surveillance.
The idea that Japan's
leaders have is that
the cheapest and the surest way
to keep an eye on people
is to get people essentially to
keep an eye on each other.
[dramatic music]
Someone is always watching you.
By the end of 1943,
this whole network of
neighborhood associations
looks like a very well-oiled
machine and operates like that,
collecting resources
for the home front.
But Tojo and his government,
they have an enormous problem,
labor shortages.
[people chanting in Japanese]
[Tom] As in Germany,
because of massive
military conscription,
Japan suffers from the
serious labor shortfall.
Women have been working
in Japanese war
industries for some time.
Now, they employ their
children as well.
[pensive music]
[Sheldon] They're increasingly using
very young labor, teenagers,
boys and girls who
are not very skilled,
quite hungry themselves.
[Yuki] If you're older than
12, study days were cut short.
There is extremely
limited time in class
because most of their day
is spent in factories.
Everybody is mobilized.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Despite the American blockade,
Japanese manufacturing continues.
[Yuki] Keeping the wartime
production going to some extent
is truly remarkable.
There is one motto that
Japanese people live by
during the war.
Don't ask or want
anything until we win.
So essentially, let's sacrifice
everything until we win.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But now, in its
seventh year of war,
the Japanese military needs
to replenish its ranks.
[Christopher] So up until this point,
students are being kept
out of the war effort.
The Japanese education is
extraordinarily important.
So you can get an
exemption from conscription
if you're studying at university.
But by October, 1943,
things have become so serious in Japan
you can no longer have that exemption.
[boots thudding]
[pensive music]
October 21st, 1943,
25,000 university students
arrive in Tokyo Stadium.
[dramatic music]
These students are being inducted
into the Japanese armed services.
[Hideki speaking in Japanese]
[Bradley] This is something
that we see in other nations.
For instance, in the United States,
they are progressively conscripting
more and more university
students as well,
but not so much at this scale.
[dramatic music]
[Dan] I mean, this is Japan's future,
these ambitious young people,
where so much investment
has been made over their entire lives,
education, raising, the whole thing.
[dramatic music]
[Sheldon] It's the mark of a
pretty desperate war effort.
You can't think about the future
when the near future is very dire.
[dramatic music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[attendees cheering]
[Hideki speaking in Japanese]
[soldiers cheering]
[Bradley] So this event is really a
giant piece of propaganda by Tojo.
These young people are being asked
to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Who's going to be next?
The inevitable message is
everyone.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[Tom] As 1943 draws to a close,
every Japanese citizen
feels the war's impact.
[pensive music]
But in Berlin, stores and
cinemas are still full.
Goebbels and the Nazis continue
to deceive the German people
with propaganda from the front.
[majestic music]
[narrator speaking German]
[artillery firing]
[Tom] A rout on the eastern front
is called a strategic retreat.
[siren blaring]
Allied bombers are
consistently shot down
and do little damage.
[Martin] The German people in
Berlin are being fed
a pretty steady diet
of positive propaganda
about the progress of the war.
They had every reason
to remain optimistic.
And then at the end of
1943, everything changes.
[Robert] The RAF has been
concentrating its bombing
on the Ruhr, the industrial
heartland of Germany.
But in November of 1943,
they shift their focus
to an even juicier morale target
Berlin.
[dramatic music]
[bomber rumbling]
[bomber rumbling]
It's an incendiary raid,
that is, bombs that are meant
to start fires throughout the city.
[dramatic music] [bombers rumbling]
The bombers believe that if
you break the morale of Berlin,
you've broken the Third Reich.
[Alexandra] It's always important to
have somebody taking care of
the population at a
time of great trauma,
very much like Churchill
in London during the Blitz.
But Hitler's gone off
to the Wolf's Lair.
He won't have anything to do
with the population of Germany anymore.
He seems to have abandoned them almost.
And once again,
the person who takes up that
gauntlet is Joseph Goebbels.
[Martin] Goebbels is meeting
the survivors.
So he'll bring a crew
with him, they'll film.
And what he's doing is
reassuring the German people.
If bombers show up over your city,
we're going to be there to help you.
[Robert] First aid stations are set up,
free food and drink handed
out to the population.
[Alexandra] And a big huge
show is put up into
showing how we're gonna
protect the population.
Propaganda can come back up and say,
"Look at these terrible
things they're doing.
Look what would happen
if they win the war."
And in some ways,
the bombing raids
actually increased morale
and increased the
determination to fight on.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Japan remains out of
range of American bombers,
but Prime Minister Tojo
and other Japanese leaders
understand that it may
be only a matter of time
before the Americans secure air bases
within flying distance
of the home islands.
[Louise] Once the military leaders
saw that fire bombs had
been used against Germany,
they realize that this
may be in Japan's future.
[pensive music]
[Dan] The cities that are
being bombed in Europe
have big stone buildings
in a lot of places,
and it's still a nightmare.
The Japanese use a lot of wood.
These are wooden cities.
They are particularly vulnerable
to these kinds of attacks.
And you don't have to be
a genius to figure out
that that's gonna be an issue
if all of a sudden you
have round the clock raids.
[pensive music]
[Sheldon] There's a big
difference in civil defense
between Nazi Germany and Japan.
The Japanese make the decision
not to construct huge concrete
bunkers and air raid shelters
that could hold thousands of people,
thinking that it would be better off
devoting their scarce
resources to the military
and not spending much money on defense.
[Louise] The Japanese
government basically said,
"Look, you have to prepare yourselves.
You want a shelter?
Dig it yourself."
[siren blaring]
If there was a fire,
there would be basically a
sand and water bucket brigade
that would try to put
out the fires this way.
And then they came up with the
strategy to tear down houses,
to isolate areas so that
the fire wouldn't spread.
[house crashing]
[Christopher] So ordinary people are
given hand tools, they're given ropes,
and in some cases they're literally
pulling down their own homes
and carting away the pieces.
[Sheldon] In places like
Tokyo and Osaka,
tens of thousands of
houses were torn down.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] These really
cold messages
go out from the government that
essentially say,
"Ask your family if
you can stay with them.
Maybe someone will house you."
Yet, again, there's a
sense that the government
just consider ordinary
civilians to be expendable.
[dramatic music]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] In the summer of 1944,
Japan suffers a major
defeat in the Pacific.
A key piece of Tojo's inner
defensive ring has fallen.
[tank firing]
After a month and a
half of heavy combat,
Japan has lost Saipan
and the entire Mariana Island chain.
[dramatic music]
This puts the Americans and
their B-29 Superfortress
in range of Japan's major
cities, including Tokyo.
[Jonathan] For the Japanese,
the loss of the Marianas
is absolutely catastrophic.
Because they understand
that there is this new bomber
out there called the B-29,
and they know that bomber
will now be within range
of almost all of Japan.
[pensive music]
[Christopher] The fall of Saipan
is a huge psychological blow
back at home in Japan.
Because there's been this pact
that if you do your bit at home,
if you sacrifice, if
you put up with rations,
if you work hard in the
factories, we will protect you.
The Allies will come nowhere
near the home islands.
[Bradley] So the government has failed
at its most fundamental promise
to the Japanese people.
And there's only one person
to take the fall for this,
Tojo.
[pensive music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[Tom] The loss of Saipan
and the Mariana Island chain
is a serious blow to the Japanese.
[Bradley] Now, Japan itself is at risk.
Now, civilian populations are
potentially on the frontline
in a way they've never been before.
Now, Japan needs to reflect
on its own leadership.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] There is an
undercurrent in Japan
that people are feeling
very hostile towards Tojo.
There are stories of people
phoning up Tojo's wife, saying,
"Why has your husband
not killed himself yet?"
[Robert] Now it's the government
who has to make a sacrifice.
And they choose a scapegoat.
[pensive music]
[Noriko] Emperor Hirohito has
lost confidence in Tojo,
and he steps down.
[dramatic music]
[propeller rumbling]
[bombers rumbling]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Launching from the Marianas,
hundreds of B-29s begin
bombing Japan's cities.
[dramatic music]
Osaka,
Kobe,
Nagoya,
Tokyo.
Hundreds of thousands
of civilians are killed.
[Sheldon] When the serious
bombing of Japan starts,
it will be unrelenting.
The enemy is there.
They're right above you.
[bell ringing] [dramatic music]
The cities will become killing grounds.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Tom] Two days after Tojo's fall,
there is an attempt on
Adolf Hitler's life.
[Robert] A real turning point
in the German home front story
is July of 1944,
the assassination attempt
on Hitler's life.
[Alexandra] A small group of officers
realized that the war
was probably lost.
They believed that if
they killed Hitler,
that they would be able to
make peace and start a new
German government.
And the person that was chosen
to go and try and kill him
was Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg,
who went on the 20th of July,
1944 to the Wolf's Lair.
He had a meeting with Hitler.
He planted a bomb under
the conference table
where Hitler was speaking
and then took off.
[Martin] That bomb,
it's positioned underneath this
heavy oak table
that absorbs a great deal
of the blast of the weapon.
[Alexandra] Stauffenberg
comes back to Berlin
thinking that he'd killed Hitler.
He saw the explosion.
He believed Hitler had been killed.
But unfortunately for him,
the Führer was not dead.
[dramatic music]
[Col. Douds] At one o'clock in
the morning of the 21st,
Adolf Hitler comes on the radio.
He says there's been a
attack against his life
done by traitors.
[Adolf speaking in German]
[Adolf speaking in German]
[Adolf speaking in German]
[dramatic music]
[Nicholas] One of the first responses
when Hitler speaks on the radio
is an outpouring of relief.
And there's spontaneous
demonstrations across Germany
by the civilian population.
[Col. Douds] Things are not
going well in 1944.
The Soviets are on
the move in the East.
The Allies in the West
have landed in Normandy.
But German society has hitched
its horse to Adolf Hitler.
It's good to know his
hand's still on the wheel
and that there's a degree of stability.
[Alexandra] On the radio,
Hitler vows that he's going to
take revenge
on the traitors who've
tried to kill him.
[Adolf speaking in German]]
[Tom] Stauffenberg and
a few other conspirators
are quickly arrested and executed.
[pensive music]
But their deaths are
only the beginning.
[Dan] Hitler had survived
assassination attempts before,
but this was something
on another level.
And the people that
were trying to kill him,
these are some of his most
important military figures.
[Robert] Hitler believes
he's been betrayed
and he no longer trusts anyone,
not the army, not those
in his intimate circle,
not even the German people.
[Tom] Hitler orders the
investigation and arrest
of anybody associated
with the July 20th plot.
[Col. Douds] Anybody who had
anything to do with this plot,
anybody who's related to those people,
anybody who might be a
problem in the future,
he will hunt them down.
[gun thudding]
Adolf Hitler takes this the
opportunity to clean house.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Berlin, 1944,
hundreds of Germans arrested
after the attempt on Hitler's
life are put on trial.
It's referred to as
the People's Court.
[pensive music]
[court official speaking German]
[Alexandra] The defendants are brought
in front of Roland Freisler,
who's the head of the People's Court,
who's absolutely a fanatical Nazi.
Very often, to humiliate them,
their belts have been taken away
so they have to hold their trousers.
[Tom] The verdict is never in doubt.
Every defendant is guilty
and every punishment severe.
[Alexandra] They're put in a
place called Plötzensee Prison,
and they're tortured, they're beaten.
[Nicholas] These people are executed.
And Hitler insists that they
will be hanged from meat hooks
and that it will be filmed.
[Alexandra] Hitler's vengeance
knows no bounds.
He wants to make it clear
to anybody else out there in the Reich
that if you try and kill me,
this is the kind of
vengeance you can expect.
[pensive music]
Not just for you, but for your family
and anybody who knows you.
So you're never going to be safe.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Nazi control of
Germany is now complete.
But Hitler's Thousand-Year
Reich is crumbling.
By the fall of 1944, the
Allies are on the verge
of crossing into the German Fatherland.
[pensive music]
[dramatic music]
[tanks rumbling]
[Robert] Up until this point,
Hitler had resisted
the call for total war.
It wasn't necessary to
enlist the entire population.
But now, if he ever cared
about the German people,
he certainly no longer does.
And so why not enlist
every last one of them
and let them get
ground up at the front?
As far as Hitler is concerned,
the entire population is
nothing but cannon fodder.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Goebbels speaking German]
[Crowd speaking German]
[Tom] November, 1944,
tens of thousands of Germans
gather before Joseph
Goebbels' headquarters.
After swearing a blood oath to Hitler,
they enter the ranks of the Volkssturm.
[Alexandra] The Volkssturm
literally translated
means the people's storm
or the people's militia.
[Robert] These are young
boys and old men
put together into pseudo-military units
and sent off to do or die
against the Allied armies.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The Volkssturm units
are given very little training
and are supplied with the
most basic German weapons.
[dramatic music]
[anti-tank launcher booming booming]
[explosion booming] [pensive music]
[Robert] An anti-tank missile known as
the Panzerfaust, the armored fist,
it hits the side of a tank,
and with enormous force,
- blasts a hole through the armor.
- [explosion booming]
Now, the most important thing
we need to know about it
is that it was a single shot,
and that to use it, you had
to come very, very close
to the tank you were firing at.
So we're talking about
a 65-year-old man
or a 14-year-old boy
given a single-shot weapon
and sent out as a tank destroyer.
[explosion booming]
You may destroy the tank,
but you are almost certainly
going to destroy the person
wielding the Panzerfaust.
[Nicholas] In both the Eastern
and the Western Fronts,
the Volkssturm fight and die
in the tens of thousands.
It's the Volkssturm which often
goes on fighting until the bitter end.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] For five years,
the Nazis have tried
to shield Germans from
the consequences of war.
[tank firing]
But with the Wehrmacht in retreat,
their cities in ruin,
and hundreds of thousands
of their sons dead
or grievously wounded,
that is no longer possible.
[dramatic music]
[Col. Douds] That whole bubble
of normalcy is now shattered.
All the other things that were
being done in society to shield them,
sporting events, cinemas, all that,
they all get closed down.
And the real war that they are in
is now readily apparent
to all of German society.
This now is the total war vision
that Goebbels and Speer had in '43.
They finally arrive here in 1944.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[dramatic music]
By the close of 1944,
the people of Germany and Japan are
paying for their country's aggression.
The price steepens as the
war heads to its conclusion.
In Nazi occupied Europe,
where violence and terror
have become routine,
increasing numbers of
people begin to resist.
Sub extracted from file & improved by
By the start of 1943,
Germany and Japan have been
at war for several years.
Although the people of both nations
have endured battlefield
casualties from the beginning,
two critical events are
about to bring the war home.
The leaders of Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan
respond in very different ways.
[dramatic music]
All wars changed the world,
but none of them changed the world
like the second World War did.
Japan's on the march,
Germany's on the march.
No one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash,
the most destructive
war in human history.
Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down
and all hell is let loose.
The west is stunned by
the speed of the advance.
[dramatic music]
You get the Allies
led by the big three,
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin,
men who were dealing with
immensely complicated questions.
It's the biggest military
operation of human history.
The Allies have to come together,
not just militarily
but industrial scale.
It's a global perspective.
They have to fight in
every climate from the Arctic
to the jungles of the Pacific,
to the deserts of Africa,
and the depths of the ocean.
[dramatic music]
But there was no certainty of victory.
It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.
We see humans at their absolute worst,
how they treat other human beings.
And we see them at their absolute best,
willing to give their lives
that others might live.
World War II was a struggle
in which there could be one victor
and one vanquished.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[siren blaring]
[pensive music]
[spectators cheering]
[announcer speaking German]
[spectators cheering]
[announcer speaking German]
[Tom] By early 1943,
the Nazi Third Reich
has absorbed much of Europe.
[pensive music]
Great cities have been bombed.
Whole nations have been occupied.
But in Germany, success
on the battlefield
allows life to go on as before.
Hitler wants to maintain
the semblance of normalcy
even in wartime.
So theaters remain open,
stadiums remain open,
sporting events go on as scheduled.
Germans are encouraged to go
about their daily business.
[pensive music]
The Germans, from the
beginning of the war,
have really been sheltered
and shielded by Hitler
because there is a
belief that Hitler has
that one of the main reasons
that Germany collapsed in 1918
was because the population
didn't have enough to eat,
their morale failed,
and all of a sudden they
turned against the government.
[dramatic music]
[Robert] Hitler constantly
tells the German people
they're a master race.
But, you know, deep down inside,
he doesn't trust them at all.
He was seared by the events
of the First World War.
Nothing could have looked stronger
than the Kaiser's government in 1918,
and it was overthrown in a
revolution lasting a single day.
[Alexandra] And so Hitler
believes that the German people
are, in a sense, fickle.
If they aren't given what they want,
if they don't have enough to eat,
if they don't have the material,
that they're going to
somehow turn on him.
And so he is very, very determined
to make sure that the German people
don't feel the pinch of the war.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But in early February,
Germans across the Reich are
told in a short radio broadcast
that the 6th Army has been
destroyed at Stalingrad.
[radio announcer speaking German]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Germany suffered
enormous casualties at Stalingrad,
90,000 captured
and over 200,000 dead.
[Robert] Hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of Germans
had a family member, or a friend,
or knew someone who
fought at Stalingrad.
[pensive music]
This is the greatest
catastrophe in German history.
[pensive music]
Nobody's been prepared for this.
For the families of people
who are serving on
the Stalingrad front,
it unleashes a wave of panic.
[Tom] It is the first
admission of a Wehrmacht defeat.
But Hitler and his military leaders
are busy planning a counter-attack.
[Alexandra] Hitler is now up in
the Wolf's Lair, the Wolfsschanze,
his massive headquarters
up in East Prussia,
in almost complete isolation.
He rarely appears in public.
And so the task of rebuilding
morale amongst the people
is left to others.
[Tom] Joseph Goebbels,
Hitler's Reich minister
of enlightenment and propaganda,
has been at the center
of the Nazi party
since it was formed in the 1920s.
[Robert] Joseph Goebbels is one of
the most unusual Nazi officials.
And he looks like anything
but the image of the Nazi superman.
He has no military background,
but he's brilliant about
the use of propaganda.
[dramatic music]
Goebbels decides that the time
has come to deliver a speech
exposing the German people to the
realities of what 1943 is gonna give them.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[Robert] For the first time, a
Nazi party official stands up
and says the war isn't going well.
Only the German people are
capable of lifting Germany up
from the defeat at
Stalingrad to ultimate victory.
It's time to fight total war.
[Martin] Total war is the
commitment to a complete
and full national mobilization,
meaning that all businesses
and then all people,
all men, all women,
absolutely everyone,
become dedicated toward
securing victory.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[attendees cheering]
[attendees applauding]
[dramatic music]
[Nicholas] The "Total War" speech
is both an attempt
to rally public opinion
and an attempt to persuade
Hitler to go to total war.
[Martin] Think of this as like
a closing argument at a trial.
Goebbels is making a
case to Adolf Hitler
that if this war is going to prevail,
you're gonna have to accept
the commitment to total war.
[Goebbels speaking German]
Do you want the Total War?
[attendees roaring]
[dramatic music]
And so this hand-selected crowd
of followers and sycophants,
they're saying "Ja!"
to every word that he says.
[attendees cheering]
[attendees applauding]
And Adolf Hitler is saying "Nein".
[pensive music]
[Tom] Hitler is reluctant.
He promised triumph, not sacrifice.
People say Goebbels giving that speech,
that's the switch when Germany
really goes to total war,
but it isn't.
[pensive music]
[Robert] That would, for example,
have meant
mobilizing women into industrial jobs,
as it had happened
in the United States.
The conservative Nazi regime
wants women to stay in the home
so they can raise children,
care for the family.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But with so many men
serving in the Wehrmacht,
primarily on the Eastern Front,
Germany desperately needs workers.
Albert Speer, Reich minister
of armament and war production,
must find a solution.
[Alexandra] Albert Speer is
a complex figure.
He begins his career as an architect,
and he is the architect
for the Nuremberg rallies.
And these become a huge
propaganda success.
[attendees chanting German]
[Alexandra] In 1942, Hitler
appoints Speer
as his new armaments minister.
Speer has absolutely no background
in armaments production at all.
But nevertheless, he's a good organizer
and he does quite an amazing job.
[Col. Douds] But if you're
gonna increase production,
but you're not gonna tap
into the German people
because we're trying to keep
everything normal back home,
well, you gotta find
that manpower somewhere.
[pensive music]
[Robert] Albert Speer has
another strategy at hand,
and that's to use slave laborers
recruited from the
various occupation zones.
[pensive music]
[Alexandra] Massive numbers of people
were brought into the Reich
to work as slave laborers,
people from Western
Europe, from France,
from the Netherlands, but also
from Poland, from Ukraine.
[Col. Douds] In 1943, 12 to
15 million people
were brought in from 20 other countries
to effectively make up for the manpower
that Germany has lost.
However, it is also at a
high human and moral cost.
[Robert] They're barely fed.
They're practically
chained to the machine.
Whenever we look at
the dramatic increase
in German arms productions in 1943,
we should always look
behind the gleaming weapons,
and tanks, and aircraft
to realize that these were
produced by human skeletons
banging out parts for German
weapons until they died.
[Col. Douds] Production will rise
56% in the first six months.
It is an armaments miracle.
It also gives Germany a
propaganda story to tell.
[Alexandra] Look at what we've done.
We've turned armaments around.
Look how many planes we're producing.
Look how many tanks we're producing.
Things are difficult, but
it's going to be okay.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] But the RAF and the
American Eighth Air Force
are expanding their
relentless bombing campaign
aimed at destroying Germany's
industrial infrastructure
and German morale.
[Robert] The Germans may not
yet be fighting total war,
but the war is coming
home to Germany in 1943,
and it's the Anglo-American
round the clock bombing campaign.
[pensive music]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] American B-17s
flying from England
bomb the Reich's war factories by day.
At night, the RAF hits German cities.
[dramatic music]
Germany is forced to divert
more and more men and material
to defend the skies over their cities.
[Robert] In facing the Allied
bombing campaign,
the Nazi regime does take steps.
It builds these monumental flak towers,
which they're almost
impossible to demolish.
[Martin] These massive flak towers
are also air raid shelters.
They have infirmaries,
they have schools.
The German government
is saying to its people,
"These air raid shelters
are there to protect you."
[siren blaring] [pensive music]
[Robert] But there's never
enough for the population.
And when the bombers come,
most Germans wind up going
into a neighborhood cellar.
They're cramped, they're hot,
you're there all night long,
and the children are
getting sick from fear.
[bombers roaring]
[Alexandra] It was a
terrifying experience
and also exhausting.
This happened night
after night after night.
[Col. Douds] You stay down
there for hours.
Maybe you're down there
until the next morning.
[apprehensive music]
[dramatic music]
And then finally,
somebody cracks the door,
and you walk outside, and you
see your neighborhood is gone.
[dramatic music]
[Robert] This is the first time
that war has really come home
to the German people.
[dramatic music]
And many of them are asking,
"Where is our government?"
[pensive music]
[Tom] While German cities are being
bombed by the Western Allies,
the skies over Japan remain clear.
Germany is much more
vulnerable than Japan
because it is within flying range
of the British and
the American bombers.
Bombing Japan is not possible
for the Allies in 1943
because Japan enjoyed an
enormous defense perimeter.
[Tom] The Japanese
have conquered an empire
that spans much of Asia.
Distance and the capture of
several remote Pacific islands
have created a defensive perimeter
of over 3 million square miles
that protects this empire.
[dramatic music]
But American victories
at Midway and Guadalcanal
have breached this defensive ring.
Japan's home front still
has not faced daily air raids,
but military leaders know
the tide is shifting against them.
[pensive music]
[Tom] In June, 1943,
Tokyo citizens gather to pay
tribute to a fallen war hero.
[pensive music]
It's a solemn event.
[announcer speaking Japanese]
Admiral Yamamoto was
this huge figure in Japan,
the mastermind of Pearl Harbor,
the hero of the early
months of the war,
and now he's gone.
[propeller whirring]
[Tom] Acting on
intercepted radio messages,
the American Air Force shot
down Admiral Yamamoto's plane
over the Solomon Islands.
[pensive music]
His body was found and
sent back to Japan.
Japan tightly censors
all news of the war.
But the death of the
Navy's supreme commander
cannot be hidden from
the Japanese people.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] You've got up to
a million people lining the streets
as this funeral cortege goes
past, a hugely somber occasion.
There's a sense of a really
significant figure passing.
[dramatic music]
Imagine what losing
MacArthur would've done.
These figures are
seen as irreplaceable.
And so when this pierces
the news blackout
for the public on what's
really going on in the war,
it's huge.
This is a real concern in
the Japanese government.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Prime Minister Hideki Tojo
was an early advocate for war
against the United States.
Tojo at this point has
been in power in Japan
since shortly before Pearl Harbor.
As the war situation is
going increasingly badly,
he needs a victory
to be able to continue
in power in Japan.
Tojo is driven by honor.
He's driven by loyalty to the emperor.
And more than anything
else, he wants to make sure
that Japan escapes the war
with its empire intact.
[bombers rumbling]
[Tom] The Japanese intended
the attack on Pearl Harbor
to be a knockout blow
against the Americans.
[explosion booming]
They understood they
couldn't win a protracted war
against the economic might
of the United States.
[Yuki] Even when Japan was winning
in the initial phase of the war,
Japan's wartime production capacity
is roughly only 1/10
of the United States.
So by 1943, the government
really needs to use
whatever it can gets their hands on
to keep the wartime production going.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Oil from the East Indies,
rubber from Malaya,
iron ore from Manchuria
are all vital to
Japanese war industries.
[dramatic music]
[Dan] The problem is,
is that you look at a map,
you can see that that has to
be transported over water.
[Sheldon] They have a huge
merchant marine,
the third largest in the world,
to move resources from Southeast Asia.
[Tom] Now, all of it is threatened
by the tightening stranglehold
of the American Navy.
[dramatic music]
The United States' submarine operations
have been quite successful
in cutting Japanese supply routes.
[apprehensive music]
Japanese natural resources
are increasingly lying at
the bottom of the ocean.
And so we begin to see
critical material shortages
on the Japanese home front.
[Tom] To maintain the
nation's war effort,
Prime Minister Tojo and his government
impose severe austerity
on the Japanese people.
[Sheldon] Unlike Nazi Germany,
in Japan there never
was this phenomenon
of trying to keep the Japanese
people totally comfortable.
In general, Tojo believed that if Japan
were to be successful against
the Americans and others
in lieu of natural resources,
it would take the active mobilization
of its human resources, its people.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] The message to people is
is if they will make
these sacrifices at home,
then soldiers abroad
will keep them safe.
[dramatic music]
They will keep the Allies at bay.
They will do their
bit if people at home
do what they're supposed to do.
They must sacrifice everything.
[pensive music]
[Tom] The American naval blockade
is choking the Japanese.
Food is scarce.
The everyday necessities
of modern life disappear.
[dramatic music]
But Prime Minister Tojo
demands even greater sacrifice.
[dramatic music]
[Bradley] We certainly have
rationing going on in the United States.
This is on a national scale
that is unmatched, really,
in a lot of the Allied nations.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] Electricity is
being rationed.
They're relying on
sort of primitive ways
of even just cooking food
and having to burn
their libraries for fuel
to try and keep warm.
No one has enough to eat.
You've even got people going
into the countryside to forage.
[Bradley] The Japanese
are producing cars
that run on coal rather than oil
because oil is being
taken for the war effort
on such a large scale.
[Christopher] You've got
temple bells, railings,
pots, and pans being melted down
so that they can make
bullets and armor.
[Bradley] In many ways,
Japan is reverting
to almost a pre-industrial
society as the war goes on.
[dramatic music]
[Sheldon] However, Japanese
people are not automatons.
They don't necessarily
willingly part with their food.
The police realize there
are widespread black markets
all over Japan.
So this is a real problem.
And so Japanese leaders mobilize
these neighborhood associations,
in Japanese, called Tonarigumi.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The Tonarigumi has been
woven into Japanese culture
for over a century.
But in wartime, it becomes
a tool for the neighbors
to keep an eye on each other.
[Jeremy] The Tonarigumi are
groups of 5 to 10 households
that work as a means of
mobilizing the people
behind Japan's war.
[Sheldon] They ration the food.
They carry out civil defense drills.
They do many of the
things that we would think
that government officials
would do elsewhere,
but it's done by the people themselves.
[Christopher] But really, the
key is mutual surveillance.
The idea that Japan's
leaders have is that
the cheapest and the surest way
to keep an eye on people
is to get people essentially to
keep an eye on each other.
[dramatic music]
Someone is always watching you.
By the end of 1943,
this whole network of
neighborhood associations
looks like a very well-oiled
machine and operates like that,
collecting resources
for the home front.
But Tojo and his government,
they have an enormous problem,
labor shortages.
[people chanting in Japanese]
[Tom] As in Germany,
because of massive
military conscription,
Japan suffers from the
serious labor shortfall.
Women have been working
in Japanese war
industries for some time.
Now, they employ their
children as well.
[pensive music]
[Sheldon] They're increasingly using
very young labor, teenagers,
boys and girls who
are not very skilled,
quite hungry themselves.
[Yuki] If you're older than
12, study days were cut short.
There is extremely
limited time in class
because most of their day
is spent in factories.
Everybody is mobilized.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Despite the American blockade,
Japanese manufacturing continues.
[Yuki] Keeping the wartime
production going to some extent
is truly remarkable.
There is one motto that
Japanese people live by
during the war.
Don't ask or want
anything until we win.
So essentially, let's sacrifice
everything until we win.
[pensive music]
[Tom] But now, in its
seventh year of war,
the Japanese military needs
to replenish its ranks.
[Christopher] So up until this point,
students are being kept
out of the war effort.
The Japanese education is
extraordinarily important.
So you can get an
exemption from conscription
if you're studying at university.
But by October, 1943,
things have become so serious in Japan
you can no longer have that exemption.
[boots thudding]
[pensive music]
October 21st, 1943,
25,000 university students
arrive in Tokyo Stadium.
[dramatic music]
These students are being inducted
into the Japanese armed services.
[Hideki speaking in Japanese]
[Bradley] This is something
that we see in other nations.
For instance, in the United States,
they are progressively conscripting
more and more university
students as well,
but not so much at this scale.
[dramatic music]
[Dan] I mean, this is Japan's future,
these ambitious young people,
where so much investment
has been made over their entire lives,
education, raising, the whole thing.
[dramatic music]
[Sheldon] It's the mark of a
pretty desperate war effort.
You can't think about the future
when the near future is very dire.
[dramatic music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[attendees cheering]
[Hideki speaking in Japanese]
[soldiers cheering]
[Bradley] So this event is really a
giant piece of propaganda by Tojo.
These young people are being asked
to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Who's going to be next?
The inevitable message is
everyone.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[Tom] As 1943 draws to a close,
every Japanese citizen
feels the war's impact.
[pensive music]
But in Berlin, stores and
cinemas are still full.
Goebbels and the Nazis continue
to deceive the German people
with propaganda from the front.
[majestic music]
[narrator speaking German]
[artillery firing]
[Tom] A rout on the eastern front
is called a strategic retreat.
[siren blaring]
Allied bombers are
consistently shot down
and do little damage.
[Martin] The German people in
Berlin are being fed
a pretty steady diet
of positive propaganda
about the progress of the war.
They had every reason
to remain optimistic.
And then at the end of
1943, everything changes.
[Robert] The RAF has been
concentrating its bombing
on the Ruhr, the industrial
heartland of Germany.
But in November of 1943,
they shift their focus
to an even juicier morale target
Berlin.
[dramatic music]
[bomber rumbling]
[bomber rumbling]
It's an incendiary raid,
that is, bombs that are meant
to start fires throughout the city.
[dramatic music] [bombers rumbling]
The bombers believe that if
you break the morale of Berlin,
you've broken the Third Reich.
[Alexandra] It's always important to
have somebody taking care of
the population at a
time of great trauma,
very much like Churchill
in London during the Blitz.
But Hitler's gone off
to the Wolf's Lair.
He won't have anything to do
with the population of Germany anymore.
He seems to have abandoned them almost.
And once again,
the person who takes up that
gauntlet is Joseph Goebbels.
[Martin] Goebbels is meeting
the survivors.
So he'll bring a crew
with him, they'll film.
And what he's doing is
reassuring the German people.
If bombers show up over your city,
we're going to be there to help you.
[Robert] First aid stations are set up,
free food and drink handed
out to the population.
[Alexandra] And a big huge
show is put up into
showing how we're gonna
protect the population.
Propaganda can come back up and say,
"Look at these terrible
things they're doing.
Look what would happen
if they win the war."
And in some ways,
the bombing raids
actually increased morale
and increased the
determination to fight on.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Japan remains out of
range of American bombers,
but Prime Minister Tojo
and other Japanese leaders
understand that it may
be only a matter of time
before the Americans secure air bases
within flying distance
of the home islands.
[Louise] Once the military leaders
saw that fire bombs had
been used against Germany,
they realize that this
may be in Japan's future.
[pensive music]
[Dan] The cities that are
being bombed in Europe
have big stone buildings
in a lot of places,
and it's still a nightmare.
The Japanese use a lot of wood.
These are wooden cities.
They are particularly vulnerable
to these kinds of attacks.
And you don't have to be
a genius to figure out
that that's gonna be an issue
if all of a sudden you
have round the clock raids.
[pensive music]
[Sheldon] There's a big
difference in civil defense
between Nazi Germany and Japan.
The Japanese make the decision
not to construct huge concrete
bunkers and air raid shelters
that could hold thousands of people,
thinking that it would be better off
devoting their scarce
resources to the military
and not spending much money on defense.
[Louise] The Japanese
government basically said,
"Look, you have to prepare yourselves.
You want a shelter?
Dig it yourself."
[siren blaring]
If there was a fire,
there would be basically a
sand and water bucket brigade
that would try to put
out the fires this way.
And then they came up with the
strategy to tear down houses,
to isolate areas so that
the fire wouldn't spread.
[house crashing]
[Christopher] So ordinary people are
given hand tools, they're given ropes,
and in some cases they're literally
pulling down their own homes
and carting away the pieces.
[Sheldon] In places like
Tokyo and Osaka,
tens of thousands of
houses were torn down.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] These really
cold messages
go out from the government that
essentially say,
"Ask your family if
you can stay with them.
Maybe someone will house you."
Yet, again, there's a
sense that the government
just consider ordinary
civilians to be expendable.
[dramatic music]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] In the summer of 1944,
Japan suffers a major
defeat in the Pacific.
A key piece of Tojo's inner
defensive ring has fallen.
[tank firing]
After a month and a
half of heavy combat,
Japan has lost Saipan
and the entire Mariana Island chain.
[dramatic music]
This puts the Americans and
their B-29 Superfortress
in range of Japan's major
cities, including Tokyo.
[Jonathan] For the Japanese,
the loss of the Marianas
is absolutely catastrophic.
Because they understand
that there is this new bomber
out there called the B-29,
and they know that bomber
will now be within range
of almost all of Japan.
[pensive music]
[Christopher] The fall of Saipan
is a huge psychological blow
back at home in Japan.
Because there's been this pact
that if you do your bit at home,
if you sacrifice, if
you put up with rations,
if you work hard in the
factories, we will protect you.
The Allies will come nowhere
near the home islands.
[Bradley] So the government has failed
at its most fundamental promise
to the Japanese people.
And there's only one person
to take the fall for this,
Tojo.
[pensive music]
[Officer speaking Japanese]
[Tom] The loss of Saipan
and the Mariana Island chain
is a serious blow to the Japanese.
[Bradley] Now, Japan itself is at risk.
Now, civilian populations are
potentially on the frontline
in a way they've never been before.
Now, Japan needs to reflect
on its own leadership.
[dramatic music]
[Christopher] There is an
undercurrent in Japan
that people are feeling
very hostile towards Tojo.
There are stories of people
phoning up Tojo's wife, saying,
"Why has your husband
not killed himself yet?"
[Robert] Now it's the government
who has to make a sacrifice.
And they choose a scapegoat.
[pensive music]
[Noriko] Emperor Hirohito has
lost confidence in Tojo,
and he steps down.
[dramatic music]
[propeller rumbling]
[bombers rumbling]
[dramatic music]
[Tom] Launching from the Marianas,
hundreds of B-29s begin
bombing Japan's cities.
[dramatic music]
Osaka,
Kobe,
Nagoya,
Tokyo.
Hundreds of thousands
of civilians are killed.
[Sheldon] When the serious
bombing of Japan starts,
it will be unrelenting.
The enemy is there.
They're right above you.
[bell ringing] [dramatic music]
The cities will become killing grounds.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Tom] Two days after Tojo's fall,
there is an attempt on
Adolf Hitler's life.
[Robert] A real turning point
in the German home front story
is July of 1944,
the assassination attempt
on Hitler's life.
[Alexandra] A small group of officers
realized that the war
was probably lost.
They believed that if
they killed Hitler,
that they would be able to
make peace and start a new
German government.
And the person that was chosen
to go and try and kill him
was Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg,
who went on the 20th of July,
1944 to the Wolf's Lair.
He had a meeting with Hitler.
He planted a bomb under
the conference table
where Hitler was speaking
and then took off.
[Martin] That bomb,
it's positioned underneath this
heavy oak table
that absorbs a great deal
of the blast of the weapon.
[Alexandra] Stauffenberg
comes back to Berlin
thinking that he'd killed Hitler.
He saw the explosion.
He believed Hitler had been killed.
But unfortunately for him,
the Führer was not dead.
[dramatic music]
[Col. Douds] At one o'clock in
the morning of the 21st,
Adolf Hitler comes on the radio.
He says there's been a
attack against his life
done by traitors.
[Adolf speaking in German]
[Adolf speaking in German]
[Adolf speaking in German]
[dramatic music]
[Nicholas] One of the first responses
when Hitler speaks on the radio
is an outpouring of relief.
And there's spontaneous
demonstrations across Germany
by the civilian population.
[Col. Douds] Things are not
going well in 1944.
The Soviets are on
the move in the East.
The Allies in the West
have landed in Normandy.
But German society has hitched
its horse to Adolf Hitler.
It's good to know his
hand's still on the wheel
and that there's a degree of stability.
[Alexandra] On the radio,
Hitler vows that he's going to
take revenge
on the traitors who've
tried to kill him.
[Adolf speaking in German]]
[Tom] Stauffenberg and
a few other conspirators
are quickly arrested and executed.
[pensive music]
But their deaths are
only the beginning.
[Dan] Hitler had survived
assassination attempts before,
but this was something
on another level.
And the people that
were trying to kill him,
these are some of his most
important military figures.
[Robert] Hitler believes
he's been betrayed
and he no longer trusts anyone,
not the army, not those
in his intimate circle,
not even the German people.
[Tom] Hitler orders the
investigation and arrest
of anybody associated
with the July 20th plot.
[Col. Douds] Anybody who had
anything to do with this plot,
anybody who's related to those people,
anybody who might be a
problem in the future,
he will hunt them down.
[gun thudding]
Adolf Hitler takes this the
opportunity to clean house.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Berlin, 1944,
hundreds of Germans arrested
after the attempt on Hitler's
life are put on trial.
It's referred to as
the People's Court.
[pensive music]
[court official speaking German]
[Alexandra] The defendants are brought
in front of Roland Freisler,
who's the head of the People's Court,
who's absolutely a fanatical Nazi.
Very often, to humiliate them,
their belts have been taken away
so they have to hold their trousers.
[Tom] The verdict is never in doubt.
Every defendant is guilty
and every punishment severe.
[Alexandra] They're put in a
place called Plötzensee Prison,
and they're tortured, they're beaten.
[Nicholas] These people are executed.
And Hitler insists that they
will be hanged from meat hooks
and that it will be filmed.
[Alexandra] Hitler's vengeance
knows no bounds.
He wants to make it clear
to anybody else out there in the Reich
that if you try and kill me,
this is the kind of
vengeance you can expect.
[pensive music]
Not just for you, but for your family
and anybody who knows you.
So you're never going to be safe.
[pensive music]
[Tom] Nazi control of
Germany is now complete.
But Hitler's Thousand-Year
Reich is crumbling.
By the fall of 1944, the
Allies are on the verge
of crossing into the German Fatherland.
[pensive music]
[dramatic music]
[tanks rumbling]
[Robert] Up until this point,
Hitler had resisted
the call for total war.
It wasn't necessary to
enlist the entire population.
But now, if he ever cared
about the German people,
he certainly no longer does.
And so why not enlist
every last one of them
and let them get
ground up at the front?
As far as Hitler is concerned,
the entire population is
nothing but cannon fodder.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
[Goebbels speaking German]
[Crowd speaking German]
[Tom] November, 1944,
tens of thousands of Germans
gather before Joseph
Goebbels' headquarters.
After swearing a blood oath to Hitler,
they enter the ranks of the Volkssturm.
[Alexandra] The Volkssturm
literally translated
means the people's storm
or the people's militia.
[Robert] These are young
boys and old men
put together into pseudo-military units
and sent off to do or die
against the Allied armies.
[dramatic music]
[Tom] The Volkssturm units
are given very little training
and are supplied with the
most basic German weapons.
[dramatic music]
[anti-tank launcher booming booming]
[explosion booming] [pensive music]
[Robert] An anti-tank missile known as
the Panzerfaust, the armored fist,
it hits the side of a tank,
and with enormous force,
- blasts a hole through the armor.
- [explosion booming]
Now, the most important thing
we need to know about it
is that it was a single shot,
and that to use it, you had
to come very, very close
to the tank you were firing at.
So we're talking about
a 65-year-old man
or a 14-year-old boy
given a single-shot weapon
and sent out as a tank destroyer.
[explosion booming]
You may destroy the tank,
but you are almost certainly
going to destroy the person
wielding the Panzerfaust.
[Nicholas] In both the Eastern
and the Western Fronts,
the Volkssturm fight and die
in the tens of thousands.
It's the Volkssturm which often
goes on fighting until the bitter end.
[dramatic music]
[explosion booming]
[Tom] For five years,
the Nazis have tried
to shield Germans from
the consequences of war.
[tank firing]
But with the Wehrmacht in retreat,
their cities in ruin,
and hundreds of thousands
of their sons dead
or grievously wounded,
that is no longer possible.
[dramatic music]
[Col. Douds] That whole bubble
of normalcy is now shattered.
All the other things that were
being done in society to shield them,
sporting events, cinemas, all that,
they all get closed down.
And the real war that they are in
is now readily apparent
to all of German society.
This now is the total war vision
that Goebbels and Speer had in '43.
They finally arrive here in 1944.
[Goebbels speaking German]
[dramatic music]
By the close of 1944,
the people of Germany and Japan are
paying for their country's aggression.
The price steepens as the
war heads to its conclusion.
In Nazi occupied Europe,
where violence and terror
have become routine,
increasing numbers of
people begin to resist.