01x16 - Resistance

[bunniefuu]

[foreboding music]

By the summer of 1944,

the terror and tyranny
of the n*zi Third Reich

shrouds most of Europe.

Occupied countries resist as they can.

But with the advance of
Soviet forces in the east

and the success of the
Normandy invasion in the west,

two of the world's great cities

organize in force and fight back.

Even in the place of greatest horror,

there is resistance.

All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World w*r 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
w*r 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.

You get the Allies
led by the big three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are 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 w*r II was a struggle

in which there could be one victor

and one vanquished.

[dramatic music]

[sirens wail]

[dramatic music]

[broadcaster speaks French]

[Tom] Since the fall of France,

the BBC has broadcast

daily radio programming
to occupied Europe.

Embedded within the
broadcasts are coded messages.

[broadcaster speaks French]

[Tom] The night before D-Day,

the Allied invasion of Western Europe,

the broadcast to occupied France

includes a line from a
poem by Paul Verlaine.

[broadcaster speaks French]

The French resistance is waiting,

and when the BBC announces:

"Wound my heart with
a monotonous languor,"

this is the word that they
have been waiting to hear.

The invasion is on.

The Allies want that
resistance movement to rise up,

to blow up German railroads,

to ambush German patrols,

and to disrupt the Germans
in any way they can.

[Col. Douds] All of their planning,

all of their networking
now goes into action

to slow the German response

so that the Allies can win the race

to build up and break out.

[Tom] So many men and
women throughout France

have risked so much
to get to this night

and the beginning of their
country's liberation.

[Robert] After the fall
of France in 1940,

there are two Frances.

There's the France that is directly
occupied by the Germans,

including Paris,

and there is a puppet regime
with its capital at Vichy.

So resistance groups form in each one.

[Tom] From the start,

the inspiration for French
resistance to Germany

was embodied by one man.

A veteran of the Great w*r,

General Charles De Gaulle.

[Col. Douds] Charles De Gaulle
fought all the way through

the German invasion of France in 1940.

Rather than surrender to the Germans,

rather than go along with
the French government,

he arrives in Britain by
himself and just says,

"By the way, I'm now the
leader of the Free French."

He's self-appointed.

Churchill goes, "Eh,
he might be useful."

He gives him an office,
gives him a radio,

lets him do some broadcasts.

[Charles speaks French]

[Col. Douds] He's gonna announce:

"The Vichy government is illegitimate."

"Anybody who's in France
should come over to England,

and we're gonna start
to put together an army

that's gonna liberate ourselves.

If you can't get here, you should
start resisting while you're there."

[Robert] This is an extremely
important event

in galvanizing the French people.

Up to that point, they'd been
in a state of despondency

at the rapid defeat at
the hands of the Germans.

Now, here was a voice, one of
their own, offering them hope.

He says, "The flame
of French resistance

"Must not be extinguished

and will not be extinguished."

These are words

that French men and women
were longing to hear.

It's not only the beginning
of the resistance,

it's the beginning of the
rise of Charles De Gaulle

to political power in France.

Resistance pops up
all over the country.

But these groups aren't connected,

and they all stand
for different things.

[Dan S.] There are
aristocratic Catholics,

Communists, or Republicans.

There are all different groups

jockeying for position
between themselves

and fighting against
the Germans as well.

[Tom] A cross-section
of French citizens,

teachers, lawyers,
farmers, factory workers,

take part in the resistance.

Women play a substantial role.

[Robert] One of the most
important activities of the resistance

was a network of agents and
secret codes and safe houses

that helped smuggle
downed Allied flyers

out of France and back
to safety in Britain.

This underground railroad

helped about 5,000 Allied
flyers make it to freedom

in the course of the w*r.

[Col. Douds] It's the
potential of the Allied invasion

eventually reaching France

that cause volunteers to
flock to the resistance.

They're gathering
equipment, supplies, weapons

because they think:
"Eventually, we will be freed.

How do we help accelerate that?"

[broadcaster speaks French]

[Tom] The night before D-Day,

dozens of Allied agents are
dropped behind German lines

to coordinate with groups
of the French resistance,

so-called Jedburgh teams.

[Robert] Three-man teams

who parachute into occupied France:

an American, a British,
and a French agent.

[Rebecca] They bring weapons with them.

They'd bring a radio set
so they could communicate.

[Robert] They coordinate activities,

and they inform the groups
what the Allies are up to.

The Jedburghs have an ultimate goal,

and that is to ease

the invasion plan for June, 1944.

[dramatic music]

Once the Allies land in June 6th,

the resistance becomes emboldened.

[Tom] But many pay a grievous
price for their courage.

Germans, with the help
of French collaborators,

hunt down anyone assisting the Allies.

[Col. Douds] The costs of
being in the resistance

or around the resistance
are incredibly high.

They could be arrested and put in jail,

they could be sent to a labor camp,

hung oftentimes without
trial and in public

as a deterrence to everyone else.

[Robert] The Gestapo
carryout reprisals.

"For every one of our soldiers k*lled,

we will k*ll 50 resistance fighters."

[Tom] Four days after the invasion,

near the village of Oradour-sur-Glane,

the local resistance kills
an SS battalion commander.

n*zi retribution is
swift and merciless.

[Col. Douds] They take all the men

and they shove them into a
bunch of barns, sh**t them,

and set the barns on fire.

They take all the women and children

and put them in a church

and then burn the church to the ground,

sh**ting anyone who tries to climb out.

Collective vengeance for
the act of resistance.

[Tom] On July 25th,

the Americans launch a
massive air and ground attack:

Operation Cobra.

After a month and a half of combat

among the hedge rows of Normandy,

the Allies now break through
the German defensive perimeter.

[Dan S.] Paris is the center
of the German occupying force.

But the Allies were not
super interested in Paris.

Cities are an enormous
military problem.

Do you go into Paris
knowing that you could end up

fighting an urban battle
that you don't want to fight?

The streets narrow your
ability to maneuver.

So fighting inside a city

is nobody's idea of
what you want to do.

Of course, if you're French,
the situation is completely different.

The French people are
thinking that the Allies are

just a few hundred kilometers
from the city of Paris,

and they believe that
Paris will be next

in the great capitals of
Europe to be liberated

from n*zi fascism.

[Michael] To the French, Paris
is not just the capital of France.

It is the most important,
most symbolic city

that you're going to liberate.

And the man who thinks
he's going to take control

of all of this is Charles De Gaulle.

[Dan S.] Throughout the w*r,
he builds up Free French forces

in London and in Africa.

French soldiers flock to his colors.

And, by D-Day,

he has something of a
Free French armed force.

And De Gaulle is astonished
and appalled to hear

that the Allies are
not focusing on Paris

as a key objective.

Paris is like the
beating heart of the French republic.

There is no France without Paris.

And De Gaulle said, "If
you're not going, I'm going."

[engines whirl]

[Tom] Allied forces
advance across France

to force the Wehrmacht's
retreat to the Rhine and beyond.

Liberating Paris from German occupation

is not their main strategic concern.

But Parisians have other ideas.

[Michael] The problem for
Paris is that,

when the Normandy invasion happens,

it cuts the city off from
its principal food supply.

And the Germans are trying to take

everything that they
can out of the city.

So it's a very, very
unstable, very insecure place.

And so there is the beginnings

of popular uprising in Paris.

A lot of that is being driven
by the communist resistance.

De Gaulle is quite keen to get to Paris
because what he doesn't want

is Paris to become liberated

by the communist resistance.

He does not want to liberate France

only for it to fall into
the hands of communism.

[Tom] To ensure that
French troops liberate Paris,

General De Gaulle requires the support

of the Supreme Allied Commander:
General Dwight Eisenhower.

[Michael] De Gaulle didn't
have that many cards

to play in 1944,

but he played them as
skillfully as anybody.

There is a French unit, the
Second Armored Division,

controlled by General Philippe Leclerc,

that has been disobeying
American orders

to get closer and closer
and closer to the city

so that it could go
into Paris if it had to.

And so De Gaulle became
very aggressive about

steering the Second Armored
Division toward the city.

He gave General Leclerc
specific instructions

to, "No matter what
these Americans tell you,

I need you to get to Paris."

[Col. Douds] As Winston
Churchill would say,

he tends to love to bite
the hand that feeds him.

You have to give him credit, though,
for he has his eye on one thing,

and that's a free France.

[dramatic music]

[a*tillery fires]

[Tom] Shortly after D-Day,

in coordination with
their Western allies,

the Soviets throw the
massed might of the Red Army

against the Germans.

Operation Bagration is the
gigantic Soviet offensive

in summer of 1944.

Roughly timed to coincide

with the Allies landing in Normandy.

[Dan S.] It is just a
monstrous offensive.

About two and a half million
Soviets are thrown into battle.

Half a million Germans are
k*lled, wounded, or captured.

[Robert] It erased an entire
German army group from the map,

the entire central portion of
the German front in the east.

Now the Soviet army
is moving into Poland,

and you've gotta
remember that, of course,

Poland was the reason the w*r started.

[Tom] In the fall of 1939,

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin
agreed to divide Poland.

[Simon] When Hitler took Poland,

he treated it like the laboratory

for his racial ideas,

his plans to annihilate
the Jewish people

and to treat the Eastern Slavic people

as essentially a sl*ve
race to work to death.

Poland has been stained
in blood and k*lling,

crushed beneath the German jackboot,

its soil watered with the blood

of vast numbers of
its Jewish community.

[Dan S.] The Poles have been

living through hell for five years.

If you're a resident of Warsaw,

you are one of the most unlucky
people ever to have lived.

Throughout this horror show

that has been inflicted upon the Poles,

they have maintained
a shadow government,

a kind of national cohesion.

They have a
government-in-exile in London,

and that is sending orders

to a home army, a sort of secret army

of underground resistance
fighters in Poland.

The Polish Home Army was formed

really immediately after
the Germans invaded.

There was a real sense in
amongst the Polish community

and especially the young
people: "We're gonna fight."

It was always set up as a
formal military organization.

It wasn't just an
ad hoc bunch of partisans.

They undertook intelligence
gatherings of troop movements.

They gathered information

about the camps, about
Auschwitz, and others.

[Tom] The Home Army is led
by a former cavalry officer

who has been fighting
the Germans since 1939.

General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski.

[tanks rattle]

On July 29th, 1944,

as the Allies are
slicing through France,

the Soviets reach the
outskirts of Warsaw.

[g*ns fire]

[Simon] The Polish Home Army
is waiting for the moment

when the Germans are about to retreat

and just before the Soviets arrive.

Because that is the opportunity

to reassert Polish
independence, the Polish state.

[Alexandra] They wanted to prove
to the world that they

stood on their own feet and that they
fought to liberate their own country.

They don't want to give
up the n*zi dictatorship

and just have it replaced
with a Soviet dictatorship.

[Tom] The Polish Home Army
and General Bór-Komorowski

have long planned for this moment.

[Dan S.] There are weapons
caches, command structures.

There are instructions coming
from senior officers based in London.

There is a plan.

[Alexandra] Tens of thousands
of Home Army troops

will go all over the city

and go for the most important things:

the airports, the bridges,
the main focal points of n*zi power.

[Simon] It was a moment where
timing was everything.

If they did it too soon, the
Germans would crush them.

If they did it too late, the
Soviets would conquer them.

[g*ns fire]

[Alexandra] The Red Army was coming.

It looked as if there
was just this juggernaut

that was gonna force the
Germans out of the city.

[Tom] Outside Warsaw,

the Germans regroup on the
banks of the Vistula River.

[Alexandra] The Poles hear the
sounds of fighting,

think the Red Army's gonna win,

and they're about to come into Warsaw.

[Tom] General
Bór-Komorowski gives the order

to begin the uprising.

[Tom] The Poles have
been resisting the Germans

for almost five years.

Now, with the Soviets on the
other side of the Vistula,

the Polish Home Army
seizes its opportunity.

Because of the Red
Army coming so quickly

up to the gates of Warsaw,

General Bór-Komorowski gives the order

to start the uprising.

[Simon] The Polish Home Army
think this is the right moment.

The Russians are approaching,

the Germans are clearly
preparing to evacuate,

and the Poles appear out of the sewers,

out of the backstreets,
out of the cellars,

and they raise the flag of rebellion.

[Alexandra] Civilians are
thrilled, they're jubilant.

For the first time since 1939,

they can sing the national anthem.

They push trams over,
they build barricades,

and they make it very, very difficult

for the Germans to fight there.

[Simon] It's a heroic
moment, an exciting moment.

Poland is rising like a
phoenix out of the ashes.

[Dan S.] But the attack does
not go as well as it was hoped.

They do manage to
seize the post office,

they manage to seize an
important German arsenal,

but they don't manage
to secure the airport.

So it's up for grabs
by the end of that day.

You get this sort of twisted patchwork

of Polish and German control,

which ensures that there is gonna be

the mother of all street fights.

[g*ns fire]

[Tom] The Polish Home Army

expected the Germans controlling Warsaw

to be in retreat.

[g*n fires]

Instead, the Wehrmacht attacks
the Red Army at the Vistula

and retains their grip on Warsaw.

Adolf Hitler meets
with Heinrich Himmler,

head of the n*zi SS.

[Alexandra] On the night of
the 1st of August, 1944,

Himmler goes up to the
Wolfsschanze, he sees Hitler,

and Hitler's raging around.

And Himmler goes, "You
know, Mein Fuhrer,

let's use this as a moment

to erase Warsaw from the map.

Because this wretched
city has stood in our way

of German expansion to the
East for hundreds of years.

So let's just do it."

So that evening,

they give what's called
the Order for Warsaw.

The Germans have a plan

to wipe Poland literally
from the face of the Earth.

One, you wanna send a
message to everybody else

that this is the cost of defying me.

But the other reason is
you want to destroy Poland

as a national identity.

[Alexandra] Every combatant
is to be k*lled.

All men and women and children,
civilians are to be k*lled.

And then the city is to be looted,

and then, glattrasiert, that
means razed to the ground.

[missiles fire]

[Simon] The Germans poured
in ruthless shock troops

with the express purpose
of destroying them.

The Home Army used up their
caches of weapons very fast.

[a*tillery fires]

[Anand] The Poles think
the Red Army is coming.

The whole thing depended upon the idea

that Germans were either leaving

or could not reinforce their
existing troops within Warsaw.

Neither of those two things
turned out to be true.

The Germans weren't leaving
and the Soviets weren't coming.

[Simon] Stalin says, to
everyone's surprise:

"Halt the army."

They can see across the
river Warsaw is burning.

[Robert] Although the Soviets
are right across the river,

they make no effort to support

the resistance in its uprising
against the Germans.

Rather, they sit across the river

and watch the Germans
crush the uprising.

[Dan S.] Stalin doesn't
just do nothing.

He actively interferes
with the Allies' attempt

to help the Home Army,
the Polish uprising.

[Tom] From their air bases in Italy,

the British and Americans try
to drop supplies to the Poles.

[Dan S.] Churchill asks permission:

"Can Allied planes carrying supplies

use Soviet bases to refuel
and carry out repairs?"

Stalin says no.

[Simon] Stalin has always hated

the Polish government in London,

which he regards as bourgeois,
imperialist, capitalist.

He has a small Polish communist group.

He is always planning

to parachute them into
Poland as his government.

[Alexandra] And so Stalin is
content to watch the Germans

utterly destroy the Polish Home Army,

destroy the population of Warsaw,

and destroy the city itself.

[Simon] Stalin wants to conquer Poland,

but he wants to make sure

that it's then turned into a
communist vassal client state.

He wants to wait

until the Nazis have destroyed
the Polish underground

before he enters Warsaw.

Let them do his work for him.

Hitler sends in his
most psychopathic crews

of murderous, grotesque sadists.

[Alexandra] Some of them are
the most brutal murderers

of the entire n*zi regime.

Like Oskar Dirlewanger.

Even the SS doesn't
wanna work with him.

They go through
building after building,

then they round these
people up by the thousands

and then mow those people down.

When 5,000, 6,000
bodies are lying there,

then they bring in the
Verbrennungskommando,

these burning commandos,
to burn the bodies,

specialists from places like Treblinka

who've now become specialists
at burning human flesh.

They loot the entire city
and then they destroy it.

Building by building,
libraries, museums,

everything is destroyed.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] The Polish Home Army surrenders.

General Bór-Komorowski is
imprisoned by the Nazis.

[Alexandra] By the end of the
Warsaw Uprising,

about 200,000 civilians
have been k*lled.

Then the remaining population

are sent to camps like Auschwitz.

Some are sent as sl*ve
laborers into the Reich.

So the destruction of Warsaw

is unique in the destruction of cities

in the Second World w*r in Europe.

[Dan S.] In Warsaw, tragically,

the Germans chose to meet

that desire for Polish independence

with overwhelming force.

To k*ll and smash

and eradicate Polish culture.

To say, "No, you will
not liberate yourselves.

In fact, you have
condemned yourselves."

[soft plaintive music]

[dramatic music]

[Tom] August, 1944.

The Germans are in full
retreat across France.

They begin to evacuate Paris.

Parisians sense a chance
to recapture their city.

But they need a spark.

[Marco] On the 15th of August,

the Parisian police,
which was 20,000 strong

and had been collaborating
with the Germans

up to that moment,

actually switches sides
and raises the flag

on their building,

giving the sign to the rest of the city

and of course to the partisans

that this was the moment the
uprising needed to start.

[g*ns fire]

And so the streets of
Paris become a b*ttlefield.

[g*ns fire]

The French resistance has
been preparing for this moment

for a very long time.

[dramatic music]

And they act against the
Germans quite rapidly

and quite successfully.

[Col. Douds] As this happened,
Charles De Gaulle shows up

to Supreme Allied Commander
Eisenhower's headquarters

and go, "We have to march on Paris."

[Michael] The Allies don't
particularly like De Gaulle

but see De Gaulle as a
bulwark against communism.

[Dan S.] Eisenhower is
smart enough to know

that it would look really, really good

if the first troops to enter
Paris were the Free French.

[Marco] Eisenhower decides
to allow the Free French forces

to send one division into the city

and to help the insurgents
to free the city.

[Tom] Supported by the
American Fourth Division,

General De Gaulle orders

the French Second Armored
Division into Paris.

[Martin] Toward the bitter end,

Adolf Hitler issues instructions
to General von Choltitz,

who was in control of
Paris, to destroy the city.

Hitler, during a phone
call with von Choltitz,

asks: "Is Paris burning?"

And von Choltitz tells him:

"Yes, my Fuhrer, we burned the city."

[dramatic music]

[Tom] Instead, he
negotiates a surrender.

[triumphant music]

[Dan S.] It is the officers and men

of that Second French Armored Division

who first enter Paris.

[triumphant music]

So De Gaulle can claim

that the French have
liberated their own capital.

And not just any old French,

not the communist
French, not the resis...

His French army.

[triumphant music]

[Marco] He is the one
leading the parade

through the streets of Paris,
presenting himself

as the legitimate leader
of the French government.

[triumphant music]

[Martin] Everyone in the
city has come out

now because they feel that their
moment of liberation is on them.

[g*ns fire] [citizens scream]

[Tom] But there are still
German soldiers in Paris.

[g*ns fire] [foreboding music]

[Broadcaster] General De
Gaulle walked straight ahead

into what appeared to
me to be a hail of fire.

But he went straight
ahead without hesitation,

his shoulders flung back.

[g*ns fire]

[Tom] Most Germans
have surrendered or fled.

The last are tracked down,

along with French collaborators.

[crowd cheers]

[Charles speaks French]

[Charles speaks French]

[Marco] He presents the
liberation of Paris

as a story of self-liberation,

a Paris that was able to free itself

from the yoke of the German occupation

without the help of the Allies.

[Charles speaks French]

[Marco] However, let's say the
Allied presence in the region

also played a major role

in convincing the Germans
that it was time to go.

[Michael] France will enter
this post-w*r period

with pride and with confidence.

It's difficult to imagine
how that would've happened

if not for the efforts of
all of the resistance groups

that fought against n*zi aggression.

[crowd applauds]

[Tom] But, in Warsaw,
the outcome is different.

The city is razed by the Nazis.

And what remains is captured
and controlled by the Soviets.

[dramatic music]

Paris, the city of light, is saved.

Warsaw and the hope of the
Polish people is destroyed.

[soft plaintive music]

[Alexandra] Resistance is important

for the people of a nation

who do not want to be subjugated.

While the French and the Poles
rise up against the Germans

within the extermination
camps at Auschwitz and others,

there is also this
spirit of resistance.

[soft plaintive music]

[Tom] The deliberate
k*lling of Jews by the Nazis

began with b*ll*ts.

Shortly after the Germans

invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941,

they started to sh**t Jewish
children, women, and men,

and bury them in ravines and forests.

But eventually the Nazis required

a more systematic method of m*rder.

There were tens of thousands of
the camps by the end of the w*r.

It's a huge infrastructure.

But there were a very small

number of death camps
within this enormous system.

Six death camps.

Chelmno, which is the
original death camp,

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka,

and then Auschwitz-Birkenau
and Majdanek.

[Tom] As the Red Army
pushes into Poland,

the Nazis attempt to
hide their great crime

by dismantling the k*lling centers.

[James] They destroyed documents.

They destroyed the major death camps

at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

They get rid of the vast
majority of the buildings.

They cover them over.

They create farmhouses on the site

to conceal everything
that they've done.

And then as the camps
come into the path

of invading Allied armies,
they evacuate them.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] At Auschwitz-Birkenau,
there are prisoners

determined to document
the n*zi murders.

[Alexandra] The extermination
camp system

includes the sorting of people.

Some of them are left
alive because they looked

as if they were young or
fit or healthy enough.

Those people work in something
called a Sonderkommando.

They are supposed to sort the clothing,

sort the hair that's
been cut off people,

to move the corpses,

all these terrible, terrible
jobs that they're given.

[James] In 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau,

members of the resistance movement

managed to smuggle a
camera into the camp.

The Sonderkommando,
who were witnessing all of these things

on a day-to-day basis,
secure this camera,

and their ambition is to
use this camera to record

images of what's
happening within the camp

in order for those pictures
to stir the world to respond.

[Tom] One prisoner manages
to photograph the horror.

[clock ticks]

[foreboding music]

Four images of hell.

[James] The really
extraordinary thing about them

is that the images
themselves are framed

from within the doorway of the
gas chamber building itself.

So the images testify to the bravery

of what this man was doing

and the appalling depravity
of the process at that stage.

And what we see within these images

are the burning of bodies
outside the crematoria.

And we see people being undressed,

waiting to be brought
into the gas chamber.

[foreboding music]

[Alexandra] The film is put
into a tube of toothpaste

and then smuggled out
to the Polish Home Army.

This is perhaps the single most

valuable photographic evidence

to emerge from Auschwitz.

[foreboding music]

The Jews fought back from


There are escapes.

There are individual killings
of guards by prisoners.

The Jews are fighting
back this entire time.

Resistance is what gives us

testimony of what happened
in those places.

[dramatic music]

[Tom] In the fall of 1944,

n*zi Germany is retreating
on all fronts except one:

their w*r against the Jews.

Auschwitz-Birkenau
is now the frontline.

[Rebecca] k*lling Jews is not
a secondary byproduct

of their military goals.

It is their military goal.

[James] From Hitler's perspective,

it's worth apportioning resources to it

despite what's happening elsewhere.

In fact, they accelerate
the process of mass m*rder.

[Alexandra] In 1944, the Nazis
decide to exterminate

the Hungarian Jewish population.

So a special train line is
built into Auschwitz-Birkenau,

and hundreds of thousands of
Hungarian Jews are rounded up,

and many of them are m*rder*d

within a few hours of
their arriving at the camp.

[James] 1944 is when Auschwitz hits its

terrible, appalling peak

in terms of the number
of people k*lled.

[foreboding music]

[Rebecca] Requests start to
come to the U.S. government

to b*mb either the rail lines,

the gas chambers at
Auschwitz, the crematoria,

the bridges leading to these camps.

[Michael] The idea of
bombing death camps

is difficult operationally
and it's difficult morally.

You're going to k*ll the very people
that you're trying to rescue.

[James] Churchill and
Roosevelt's perspective:

humanitarian concerns

were always secondary
to winning the w*r.

They would say:

"The best thing that we can do

to help these people

is to bring the w*r to an
end as quickly as possible."

[Tom] Prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau

cannot afford to wait
for the w*r to end.

They want to survive,
they want to escape,

and they want to stop the k*lling.

[foreboding music]

[Tom] From the beginning,

there has been an
underground of resistance

at Auschwitz-Birkenau

made up of various groups of prisoners,

including the Sonderkommando.

The Sonderkommando starts to realize

that there are fewer and fewer

of these transports
coming from Hungary.

"The extermination process is
finishing, our time is coming,

and if we don't act quickly,
we're going to be k*lled."

[James] So they started to
look at ways they could resist.

They might die trying,

there's a very good chance
that they'll die trying,

but at least they can
give themselves a chance.

Because they're determined
to do whatever they can

to meet the moment on their own terms.

[Rebecca] Auschwitz is a death camp,

and it's also a forced labor facility.

And so there were women

who were working in
the armaments factories

nearby Auschwitz

who had access to gunpowder.

[Tom] One member of the underground

is part of a sl*ve labor unit

that sorts the clothing
of the dead: Roza Robota.

She makes contact with
the Sonderkommando.

They form a plan to
destroy the crematoria,

provoke a wider uprising,
and attempt to escape.

Robota enlists Jewish women
working in the munitions factory

to smuggle gunpowder:

Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn,
and Esther Wajcblum.

[James] So they secured these
expl*sives at enormous risk,

and they're smuggling them through
various kind of ingenious means.

They create little packets of
fabric that they hide them in,

and they get them through.

[Rebecca] The women are
collecting the gunpowder

to hand them off to their friend Roza.

She is going to get the gunpowder

into the hands of the Sonderkommando,

who are going to use
it to try to blow up

the crematoria where they're working.

[James] At a certain moment,

an individual takes
an improvised weapon

and launches at a member of the SS,

and that kickstarts the whole thing.

[g*ns fire]

There's smoke, there's
noise, there's shouting,

and there's g*nf*re.

[b*mb explodes]

[Alexandra] The resistors
end up blowing up, in part,

one of the crematoria, Crematoria IV.

[James] It's put
permanently out of commission.

So the Sonderkommando would've
considered that to be a a success.

And in another crematory building,

the Sonderkommando
force some the guards

into one of the ovens alive.

[Tom] Some prisoners escape

but are quickly caught and ex*cuted.

[Alexandra] The three women
who have been

stealing the gunpowder

plus Roza Robota are to be hanged.

And just as the noose
is put around her neck,

she yells out to the group
of prisoners assembled:

"Vengeance," or, "Sisters, avenge."

It is a passionate message

of resilience, resistance,
and continue the fight.

[Tom] In December,

the Red Army advances
on Auschwitz-Birkenau.

[foreboding music]

The SS forced prisoners
on marches into Germany.

Thousands die.

[foreboding music]

On January 27th, 1945,

Soviet soldiers arrive at the
gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

[James] Auschwitz really became

the center of the mass m*rder of
Europe's Jews quite late in the w*r.

The important thing to know is that


of the Jews m*rder*d in the Holocaust

were not m*rder*d at Auschwitz,

but elsewhere in places

that are either forgotten
or largely overlooked.

[foreboding music]

[Tom] The Nazis and their collaborators

m*rder six million Jews during the w*r.

Millions of others die at their hands.

But in the face of
unimaginable conditions

and inconceivable cruelty,

some find a way to resist.

[Rebecca] Resistance takes
so many forms.

There's armed resistance and uprising,

and that happens throughout Europe.

There is spiritual resistance.

Just the idea that you
are not going to die

just because the Nazis want you to,

you are going to try to survive.

You are going to document what
is happening, write letters,

write diaries, bury them in the ground

so that someday we will be able

to talk about what you went through.

[Robert] The nature of tyranny

becomes evident in World w*r II.

The Nazis and the Japanese imperialists

are invading their neighbors,

kidnapping, sl*ve laborers,

murdering those who disagree with them.

It was a natural reaction

on the part of the occupied peoples

to organize some form of resistance.

And it happens all over
the world in World w*r II.

After surviving
Auschwitz and Buchenwald,

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said:

"We must always take sides.

Neutrality helps the
oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.

Sometimes we must interfere."

In the Pacific, President
Franklin Roosevelt,

General Douglas MacArthur,
and Admiral Chester Nimitz

meet in Pearl Harbor to draw a plan

for the final defeat of Imperial Japan.