War and Remembrance (1988) s01e11 Episode Script

Part XI - 10.28.1944 - 3.18.1945

l--l have terrible cramps, but l can't.
There is no privacy.
Let me go with you.
Come.
Please.
Excuse me.
It'll be all right.
Here.
Perhaps we can hang blankets.
God, yes, if you can find some.
Well? Gorlitz.
East.
Direction, east.
Hutberg.
Empty and fill the latrines.
Ja wohl.
The drinking water is all gone.
Please, may we have more? Gone? Have you all been taking baths? No water until the next stop.
Supper.
Miller! Holen sie den juden Bruckner her.
Ja, hochsturmfuhrer.
Der stinken elder Bruckner! Ja.
Kommen.
Bitte kommen! So you're Kurt Bruckner, the pianist? The renowned Viennese pianist? A pianist, yes, mein herr.
So Then play.
Kommen! Ambe kreatur.
Danke.
What is your pleasure, mein herr? Etwas frollches.
[Plays ach, du lieber Augustine.]
She's burning up with fever.
Ach, du lieber augustine augustine, augustine ach, du lieber augustine augustine, augustine augustine, augustine Well, professor Jastrow, now you know why we get to ride with the SS.
Who else can they find to clean out their Latrines? Well, we shall survive anyway, we prominents.
No doubt, Rabbi.
No doubt, but I'm thinking how l can protect my family once we get there.
That is the most important thing.
I'm not so optimistic.
You are never optimistic.
A Jew must never lose hope.
Bruckner, as long as there's a concertina around, you are safe.
l know you all detest me, but you owe me your lives.
Theresienstadt will be liquidated.
it's because of me that you are here.
in Auschwitz, they're setting up another model camp, and we'll be the eiders.
We'll be the ones they'll expect to cover up for them.
That's the straight story.
We'll see.
You will.
2 more days to Auschwitz.
Liegnitz, near the Polish border.
My god, it's cold.
it will get worse.
We're going into the mountains.
Still towards Auschwitz.
Like an arrow.
l can't breathe.
The smell.
l can't breathe.
Let me help you to the window.
Latrines! Drinking water! Hutberg! Emily.
Oh, god.
Hutberg, kommen! Mein herr, there are 6 dead in the car.
So? They are the lucky ones.
Natalie.
No.
it's all right, Emily.
l don't need it.
I've been watching you.
You've had only one cup of water in 2 days.
They need it more.
Mama, water.
Oh, mama, mama.
Oh, mama.
Oh, mama.
Oh, mama.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'll make it through.
I'll make it through.
I'll see my son again.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'm American.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
I'm an American.
Empty latrine bucket! Fresh water! Hutberg! Oppeln.
1 50 miles west of Auschwitz.
But at least we are out of the snow country.
Apples! Give me one.
Give here! Fresh apples for everyone.
Please, not yet.
You must.
No.
You must.
Please.
Not yet, please.
Please.
Please.
Please.
No, no, no.
Please, not yet.
Almost time to go to work.
Aufmachen.
Gentlemen, will you kindly step down, please? Wait here.
Mein kind! Mein kind! Mein kind! mein kind.
Mein kind.
Mei Mei Mein kind.
Mein kind! The selection.
This is where it is decided who will live and who will die.
To the selection officer's right, the camp and possible survival.
To his left, the gas.
Those over there crossing the tracks, to the model camp.
These, to the gas.
No talking.
See how nicely they are looking after our luggage? We'll be fine.
Achtung.
You will go along with those now for disinfection.
Schnell! March! Follow them now! Los! H-herr Untersturmfuhrer, your honor, aren't you making a very serious mistake? We are all prominents! Take him out.
Come on.
Oh, what is it, my little darling? Have you lost your mummy? We must find her together, mustn't we? Come along.
We'll find her.
Come, child.
Come.
it will be all right, you'll see.
You! l will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the lord, who's made heaven and earth.
Schnell! Schnell! Weiter, weiter, weiter! Nicht einschlafen hier! Weitergehen! Weitergehen! Weiter zum ende! Schnell, schnell, schnell! The Lord is my shepherd.
l shall not want.
He maketh me lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He Leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though l walk through the valley of the shadow of death, l shall fear no evil for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou annointest my head with oil.
My cup runneth over.
The Lord, he is god.
The Lord, he is god.
Blessed be the name of his glorious kingdom forever and ever.
The Lord our god, he is one god! So the dissolved atoms of Aaron Jastrow float past the river banks of Medici where he played as a boy.
Float all the way northward through the countryside of his native Poland, through farmlands and forests, past cities and villages, past the great capital of Warsaw.
And all the way.
To the Baltic Sea.
How we doing, EX.
O.
? Advancing through approach position as ordered, sir.
Should be there at 0500 if they don't change course.
You can just see them hold down off the port bow.
1 tanker and 1 escort.
Okso far so good.
Kyushu is just over the horizon.
Hey, Tom.
Sir? You ever get interested in Japanese art? Too exotic for my taste, Captain.
Still you wonder.
We figure them for barbarians.
Maybe they see us the same way.
Yeah, the way l see it.
Once they're dead, it doesn't matter how they see us.
Yeah.
Think I'll grab some sacktime.
Call me at 0430.
Sir? Yeah? it's just that it's your first attack, sir.
How are you going to be able to sleep before your first attack? You got this boat up to the mark in all departments.
Barracuda's ready to go.
You're a credit to the academy.
Don't worry, I'll sleep like a baby.
Aye, aye, sir.
And, Tom, You look like you could use more sleep yourself.
Yeah? Captain, it's 0430.
Thanks, Jonesy.
Mr.
Fabre reports we're all stationed, sir, at 1 4,000 yards.
Very well.
Radar shows us dead ahead of the tanker now.
What's its bearing, Tom? 1 80 true as before, angle on the bow, 0, zigzagging about 1 0-1 5 degrees off his base course.
Range? 11,000, sir.
Pass the word submerge attack.
Yes, sir.
Go ahead, pull the plug.
Clear the bridge! Let's go! Move it, move it! Dive! Dive! Secure.
Green board.
Lead air.
Secure air.
Green board.
Pressure in the boat.
Very well.
Take it up 62 feet.
Sound alarm.
Battle stations submerged.
Now, all hands, battle stations submerged.
Battle stations submerged! Load negative to the mark.
Secure air.
Shut negative flood.
Left negative.
Leveling off at 62 feet.
Request ahead 1 /3, skipper.
Very well.
Up scope.
Generated bearing on the tanker, 3-1-5.
Range 7-5-0-0.
Ok, I've got the escort.
Range mark? 1 ,000 yards.
I'm going to let him go by.
Down scope.
Left 1 0 degrees rudder.
Steady course, 2-7-0.
Rudder's left 1 0 degrees.
The escort vessel has cleared.
Estimated range of tanker, 4,000 yards.
The next zig back, we'll be off her beam.
I'll shoot her with our fish angling in from her quarter.
Flood tubes 1 , 2, 3, and 4.
Flood tubes 1 , 2, 3, and 4.
Stand by for observation.
Up scope.
Generated bearing, 3-4-6.
Bearing mark? Open outer doors.
Range mark? 1 ,1 00 down scope.
Tanker estimated speed, 7 knots.
Angle on the bow generating 6-5 starboard.
Generated range, 900 yards, Captain.
l like short ranges.
We have solution lights, skipper.
Up scope.
Finial bearing and shoot.
Bearing Mark? Set.
Fire 1 .
Number 1 fired electrically, sir.
Fire 2.
Number 2 fired electrically, sir.
Fire 3.
Number 3 fired electrically, sir.
Fire 4.
Number 4 fired electrically, sir.
There's no way we can miss.
How many seconds for the first fish? She's got about 1 5 seconds to go, sir.
1 0987 Up scope.
All fish running hot, straight, and normal, Captain.
Got her! here comes the escort.
Emergency! 300 feet.
Down scope.
All hands, break for depth charge! Ready for depth charge.
Very well.
Estimated range of those depth charges, Captain 2,000 yards.
He's guessing.
Right 1 5 degrees rudder.
Rudder is right 1 5 degrees.
No luck, sir.
He's closing on the port quarter.
Right full rudder.
Rudder is right full, sir.
Seal those valves! Getting it! We're passing 350! Level off! We're trying, sir! The stern blades are jammed on hard dive! Bow blades are jammed, too! We're going 1 00 feet a minute, captain! We're passing 380! All stop! I'm coming down! Somebody work on those lights.
We're working on it.
She's not responding, sir.
Blow bow buoyancy, blow safety.
No good, sir.
Passing 400.
Maximum test depth, Captain.
Blow forward, group.
All back emergency! That's an all back emergency! Quickly! Move, quick! it's not working, Captain.
She can't pull it.
Blow all main ballasts! That's going to lapse reserves, Captain! l need my up angle! Passing 500, sir! Aah! Oh, no! Oh, no! Captain, the after engine room reports major flooding! She's holding, sir.
We're coming up! Yeah! Yeah! All ahead 2/3! All ahead full when the diesels come on-line.
Stand by to pass the word.
Battle stations surface.
Prepare for a gunfight.
Aye, aye, Captain.
Tom, check the boat for damage.
Aye, sir.
5-inch fire when ready! What do you think, Chief? Getting at it, sir.
Not much time.
Yes, sir.
Come on, boys! Let's get going! Let's go! Getting the flooding under control, Captain.
You'll get 1 8 knots.
Maneuvering, all ahead full.
Can we submerge? The hull won't take it.
Helm, Left full rudder.
Are you nuts? I'll rake him broadside.
Continuous firing from all guns, and 5-inch, aim for the bridge.
Aye, sir.
20-mllllmeter continuous fire on the pass! 5-incher, aim for the bridge! 40-mllllmeter and 50-callber, continuous fire on the pass! Shipper is 1 60, Skipper.
Helm, steady course 1 60.
Sir? Commence firing.
Commence firing! Yeah! Yeah! Skipper, he's gone dead in the water.
Maybe you killed the Captain.
We're getting out of here, Tom.
Excellent idea.
Maneuvering, give me everything you've got.
Set the regular watch.
Get me a damage control report and a course for Guam.
Captain.
Yeah? Now you're a cinch for a Navy Cross.
How does that make you feel, Skipper? Killing japs always gave Carter Aster a big charge.
it leaves me cold.
That's how we'll win the war.
The war is won, Tom.
I'm not a professional naval officer.
l never was.
Good work, EX.
O.
Good job.
Now hear this.
Secure for battle stations.
Set the normal steaming watch.
Section 1 .
Well, l guess l can command a sub.
Whatever that proves.
With Hitler's armies driven back to the German borders, the onset of winter finally slows the crushing Allied advances, and Adolf Hitler summons his generals to his western command headquarters.
As far back as August, the Nazi warlord and his military planners were preparing a last desperate throw of the dice a surprise all-out offensive in the west.
The vague strategy spilt the British from the American armies, isolate and destroy large enemy forces, and perhaps gain a negotiated peace in the west.
The Germans, hoping to repeat their 1940 triumph, will call this offensive the last battle of the Ardennes, but in the annals of American military history, it will come to be known as "The Battle Of The Bulge.
" Wars end.
When one side realizes the other side will never quit.
Never! Since the Americans took Paris, they have fallen apart as a fighting force.
They think the war is over.
The troops expect to go home for Christmas.
They have no stomach for more casualties.
The time to hit them is now! This ruthless offensive must convince our western enemy to give up all hope of our surrendering.
Gentlemen.
We face the shakiest coalition of all time ultra-capitalist states and ultra-Marxist states.
A dying empire, England, and a greedy colony, America, grasping at its inheritance, and Russia, grabbing for the Balkans, the Persian gulf oil, then all Europe, then all the world! Now.
lf.
We deal this unholy alliance of opposites a couple of heavy blows, it will collapse! Tighten your willpower to the last tug of this rope.
Smash our dozing western enemy.
We are Germans.
Victor.
And an honorable peace can still be ours, so attack, attack, attack all the way to Antwerp.
Then.
l pledge.
We will take good care of the Russians! December 1 5, 1944 300,000 German troops and 1,000 tanks smash into Belgium on an 80-mlle front.
it is a brilliantly successful surprise.
Both sides take heavy losses, with the bloodiest battles being fought between Christmas and New Year's.
As the new year begins, the skies clear, and the vastly superior Allied air power once again comes into play with devastating effect.
As the Allies counterattack north and south, the battle of the bulge turns into a vast trap for the German army.
And on January 1 5th, it is over.
The German losses are staggering 100,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, irreplaceable losses in guns, tanks, and material but even more significantly, by draining his forces on the eastern front for this offensive, Adolf Hitler's has opened up the back door to Berlin to Stalin's hordes, and on January 12th, a refreshed red army nearly 2 million strong breaks through the German lines from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains.
Warsaw falls.
And as the Russians continue to smash across Poland, Heinrich Himmler, who has been carrying out Adolf Hitler's' monstrous massacre called "The Final Solution," now takes fright and orders all traces of the death camp crimes eliminated.
All records and files will be destroyed.
All political prisoners in block 1 1 to be executed.
All extermination facilities destroyed.
All traces of the barbaric medical experiments eliminated.
And then, as Russian bombs begin to rain down on the death camp, the SS cover-up turns into a frantic, all-out effort to take back to Germany the mountains of loot plundered from the murdered victims.
Canada, as the prisoners refer to it the warehouse complex where all the valuables looted from the newly arrived Jews are stored.
And finally, as the Red Army draws near, all able-bodied prisoners removed from the camp.
Those that are still strong enough will be relocated at other camps within the Reich.
The others eliminated.
Of those who are marched away, thousands will perish on the journey.
For those that survive, the horror will continue, unending.
February 4, 1945 the allied leaders meet for the last time to discuss the partitioning of the dying third Reich.
Winston Churchill will later write of the visibly ailing president Roosevelt, his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and a faraway look in his eyes.
They agree that Germany will be divided east and west and they decide on a basic structure for a postwar United Nations.
Violent divisions and disagreements are burled for the moment.
The coalition will hold form for the final crushing of Adolf Hitler.
Meanwhile, around the globe, the tide of Allied victories mounts.
in one of the Pacific war's bloodiest operations, the U.
S.
Marines take Iwo Jima Island less than 700 nautical miles from Tokyo.
On the eastern front, the Russians reach the Oder river, at one point, only 80 miles from Berlin.
And in the west, Eisenhower's armies fully recovered from the bloody victory of the bulge, finally pierced the impregnable Rhine barrier in a swooping capture of the bridge of Remagen.
5 divisions swarm across into Germany.
General George S.
Patton, Commander, U.
S.
Third army.
George, you wanted to see me? Yes.
Now that we've got the Remagen bridge, give me the go-ahead and the gasoline.
I'll beat the ruskies into Berlin.
Berlin's in the Russian occupation zone.
That was settled Long ago.
l know it.
l still don't like it.
Berlin's going to cost heavy casualties.
The Russians want revenge for what Germany did to their country.
Let them have it.
l can get there first.
Ike, come on.
Let those bastards come to us hat in hand and ask us for Berlin, and ask nicely.
Get on with the war.
Your objective is the Saar Basin.
All right.
I'll take the Saar for you.
l may throw my own bridge across the Rhine and just maybe all the way to Berlin.
By mistake.
Why were you told to be here? l have no idea.
Haupt Bormann.
He just said the Fuhrer wishes you to be there when he talks to Speer.
Albert Speer in the early years of the Reich, Hitler's' personal architect, now the minister of armaments and war production.
Since his return to Berlin in January, Adolf Hitler's has been forced to run his supreme military command from this concrete catacomb 55 feet below the new chancellery garden.
From this underground lair, where night and day no longer exist, Hitler's only emerges between lulls in the devastating air raids to occasionally wander alone in the bomb-ravaged halls of his once great chancellery.
You'll have to wait.
Muller is with him.
Martin Bormann, Nazi party number 50508, former National Party organizer.
Bormann, a fanatic Nazi, is Hitler's' private secretary.
Nobody in the bunker is closer to the Fuhrer or more formidable.
Speer, Roehm, have a Look at this.
Der Fuhrer is rejuvenated.
Luckily for you, Albert.
He's the old Fuhrer, full of optimism and fight thanks to this.
Horoscopes, Joseph? Buried treasure in my safe since January 1 933.
They were cast the day Fuhrer became Chancellor.
I'd forgotten all about them.
God made me clean out that safe today.
incredible.
They predict everything all our triumphs in the west in 1 940, the hard times in Russia, and a great deliverance in the middle of April 1 945, which will lead to our winning the war! l have der Fuhrer's authority to broadcast this to the German people.
Fuhrer order of the day to the troops.
A great turnabout to victory this month written in the stars.
in a few moments, mein Fuhrer, you will feel much better.
How is he, Muller? Make sure he gets one of these every 3 hours.
He will see you now.
Speer, how dare you address a memorandum to me commencing, the war is Lost.
l threw it in the drawer! l did not read it beyond the first sentence.
This is high treason! Our supply of chrome is exhausted, so l can make no more weapons.
Our oil supply is cut off.
Our fuel reserves won't Last 30 days.
This war can turn around any day! Any day the Anglo-Saxon idiots can still awake to the Bolsheviks menace, despite all, and join us to save civilization from great barbarism! Yes, mein Fuhrer.
A Last minute miracle can indeed happen, as it did with Frederick the great.
Yes.
Yes, it will.
Hmm.
it is my destiny.
All the more reason not to make a scorched earth of our fatherland, Fuhrer.
And soon we may become triumphant after all.
l do not permit you to question my orders, Speer.
Fuhrer.
l stand by my letter.
in Berlin alone, 62º/% of the housing has been destroyed.
in the heart of the city, the destruction's closer to 85º/%.
We've no right at this stage to carry out demolitions which would further affect our people's lives.
We must do everything to maintain, even if only in the most primitive manner, the basis for the existence of the nation.
lf the war is Lost, the German people are Lost! With every inch Eisenhower advances beyond the Rhine, his troops will find desert, a wasteland! See that it's carried out, Speer.
Yes, mein Fuhrer.
Roehm.
Ensure that my orders for total destruction are carried out to the Letter! By the army.
To be fair, mein Fuhrer.
You will both report to me regularly.
lf either of you depart from the truth the slightest, l will know, and you'll pay! With your heads.
Will you do it or lie? l will lie.
l will not make Germany uninhabitable for 1 00 years.
We must keep in closest touch.
Keep our stories, as they say.
Straight.
l will do some demolition, enough for pictures and reports to satisfy him.
1 0º/% at very most.
l must talk to the generals, persuade them to cooperate.
They know, of course, that the war is Lost, but they are still risking their necks.
As the Red Army continues its relentless advance, the SS scramble westward in an attempt to surrender to the Americans.
As they go, they take with them a large bag of resistance fighters and civilian hostages.
They also loot and burn the farms and villages along the way.
Louis.
Louis.
Fire!
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