"Auschwitz." "The crimes Hitler and the Nazis committed here are infamous." "Less well known are the crimes the Communists committed at the same time." "This memorial, only recently erected in the remote steppes, commemorates just one of Stalin's terror reprisals" " the forced deportation of an entire ethnic population." "As the war between Hitler and Stalin came to a close, the innocent were to suffer as never before." "As the Germans retreated, they destroyed." "Adolf Hitler oversaw this brutal retreat from his headquarters here in the forest of Rastenburg in the eastern part of Germany." "Hitler had ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and expected the war to be over in a matter of weeks." "Now, three years later, everyone around him knew the German army was losing the war." "ln June 1944, the military situation, already bad, grew even worse for Hitler." "Not only had the allies invaded France on D-Day, but in the East the Red Army was preparing one of the biggest offensives of the war." "On June 23rd, over these fields in Belorussia, more than two million Red Army soldiers attacked the Germans in Operation Bagration." "The Soviets faced about twice as many Germans as their allies did in the wake of D-Day in France." "The German army, so skilled in the art of lightning armoured attack, proved less successful in defence." "Hitler was obsessed with the idea that individual strength of will almost alone could hold back a Red Army which was better equipped and superior in numbers." "He called for the formation of fortified places." "The theory was that German units would allow themselves to become encircled and then mount successful counter attacks behind the Soviet line." "But that's not how the plan worked out." "A combination of Hitler's refusal to let his troops withdraw and the surprise and scale of the Red Army attack made Operation Bagrati on the biggest Soviet victory of the war." "Four hundred thousand German soldiers were captured, seriously wounded or killed." "The Red Army had evolved from the badly equipped and badly trained force of 1941 into one of the world's most powerful fighting machines." "At the point of the Germans' farthest advance in November 1942, they had reached more than a thousand miles into Soviet territory." "But by August 1944 the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw." "Stalin re-imposed his will quickly and ruthlessly on the newly liberated population of the Soviet Union" " particularly on the ethnic minorities." "The Kalmyks were some of the first to suffer." "The bleak Kalmyk steppe was the furthest point east the German army had reached." "It was home to a people with a Buddhist tradition whose culture and religion were brutally suppressed by the Communists during the 1930s." "Stalin was particularly suspicious of ethnic groups like these Kalmyks, fearing that one day they might want to be free of the Soviet Union" " a suspicion fuelled by the fact that during the German occupation a minority of Kalmyks had collaborated with the Nazis." "Now Stalin decided that the innocent should suffer along with the guilty." "Stalin wanted to deport all Kalmyks to Siberia." "So after the Red Army had recaptured Kalmykia he send in the secret police, the NKVD." "ln the early hours, the NKVD acted." "While the small minority of Russians who lived in Kalmykia were left alone, the secret police entered the homes of every one of the tens of thousands of ethnic Kalmyks." "But there were thousands of Kalmyks who weren't at home when the secret police called." "They were on the front line, fighting in the Red Army against the Germans." "Aleksey Badmaev had won awards for bravery and for the defence of Stalingrad." "But these medals were no protection." "Stalin ordered that even Kalmyk fighters on the front line be arrested and deported." "Stalin presided over the deportation not just of the Kalmyks but other ethnic groups like the Tartars, the Balkars and the Chechens." "ln total, more than a million people were taken from their homeland and sent on trains to Siberia and other remote areas of the Soviet Union." "One in four of them died in the freezing conditions of their transport." "While the Kalmyks and other ethnic minorities were shipped East, the German army was being forced ever Westwards." "Hitler too was searching for someone to blame for the disastrous way the war was going." "ln spring 1944, German troops had even occupied their own allied Hungary." "Hitler was angry with the Hungarian leadership, believing that they lacked commitment to the war effort." "He particularly blamed Hungarian Jews, accusing them of corrupting the rest of the Hungarian people." "I could see the fear on my parents' faces, and I could see the whole atmosphere has changed." "That it's something - it's the beginning of something horrible." "Though we were - we were hoping this is just something, a military - military manoeuvre and the Jewish population will not be affected." "Hitler was furious that the Hungarians had not cooperated with the Nazis Final Solution - the extermination of the Jews." "All that was to change as during the spring and summer of 1944 the Nazis organized the most ruthlessly efficient Jewish deportation yet seen in occupied Europe." "They knocked on the door and said, 'you've got - you've got half an hour to pack your belongings." "Everybody can take only as much as they - as they can carry." "And the - we'll wait for you outside in half an hour.'" "At the same time as Stalin's secret police were deporting Soviet ethnic groups to Siberia," "Hitler's SS were committing murder here." "440,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz during 1944, and only those the Nazis thought could be used as slaves were spared immediate death." "The majority of women and children were murdered within hours of arrival." "I realised with a - within three to four weeks after arrival at" "Auschwitz that there are gas - gas chambers here." "I felt numbness." "Numbness." "Numbness." "As there is nothing that I can do about them, what I have to ensure, that I should survive, at least I should - l should be able to tell the story what - what happened here." "The Nazis may have managed to deport Hungarian Jews to the death camps, but their attempt to shore up the defence of Hungary was short lived." "By the autumn of 1944," "Red Army troops had entered both Hungary and another former Nazi ally, Romania." "Many Soviet soldiers decided that these former allies of the Nazis owed them a personal debt." "Fyodor Khropatiy watched as some of his comrades did more than just steal." "East Prussia, with its forests and lakes, was the first part of pre-war German territory the Red Army entered." "By the beginning of 1945, almost the whole of the East Prussian population was on the move." "Some were trying to escape to the West;" "others had been driven out of their homes by the Red Army." "Anna Seddig and her one year old son Siegfried were just two of the thousands of East Prussian refugees tramping through the cold." "One night, seeking shelter for herself and her baby," "Anna Seddig encountered a group of Red Army soldiers." "It is estimated that as many as two million German women were raped by Red Army soldiers." "Only a handful of Soviet soldiers were ever court-martialled for the offence." "But there were those who had been glad to see the Red Army." "First the population of the occupied parts of the Soviet Union, and now the Soviet prisoners of war." "Tatiana Nanieva, who had served in the Red Army as a nurse, was one of more than a million Soviet prisoners of war who had been transported to camps within the Greater German Reich to act as forced labour." "She was overjoyed when the Red Army arrived" " a feeling that was not reciprocated." "Nearly two million Soviet prisoners of war were liberated by the Red Army." "All were to suffer at the hands of Stalin." "For many like Tatiana Nanieva, their suffering began here in a filtration camp run by the secret police." "Their problem was that Stalin maintained that the Soviet Union had no prisoners of war, only traitors." "For the crime of being captured by the Germans, volunteer nurse Tatiana Nanieva was sentenced to six years in the Gulag, and lifetime exile in Siberia." "ln Moscow, renewing the suffering of the Soviet prisoners of war was just one of the tasks Stalin had set himself." "But what obsessed him now, as it became clear that the Soviet Union would win the war, was his own reputation." "The fact that his military incompetence earlier in the conflict had nearly lost them the war had to be erased." "This picture, which still hangs in the Russian High Command headquarters, was commissioned by Stalin after the victory and shows the Soviet dictator as he wanted to be seen:" "the decisive Generalissimo who determined the fate of the war." "The truth was that the great victories had come only after he had allowed his Generals, particularly Marshal Zhukov, a freer hand." "But Stalin wanted that fact too eliminated." "The same month that Zhukov was moved out of the headquarters in Moscow and sent to command a whole army group at the front line," "Stalin was filmed receiving the Order of Victory, the highest military order of the Soviet Union, a decoration which up to that point had only ever been given to high ranking professional soldiers." "By now, Stalin expected to receive all the plaudits." "This film shows his reception before making a speech in the autumn of 1944." "No one wanted to be the first to stop clapping, so a mechanical device gave them all permission to stop." "ln Germany, as news from the front line grew still worse, these were the sort of images the Nazis' Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels preferred the public to see." "Unlike Stalin, who was seen more and more in Soviet newsreels as the war went on," "Hitler now scarcely appeared in public at all." "ln January 1945, he made a rare radio broadcast to the German people." "By spring 1945, the situation had become all but hopeless for the Germans." "The Red Army had reached the river Oder, the last great natural obstacle before Berlin." "At Juterbog airfield near the Oder, a special group of Luftwaffe pilots had been assembled." "They wanted to do whatever the could to stop the Red Army crossing the river." "Among this group of determined volunteers was Rudolf Escherich." "Rudolf Escherich and twelve of his comrades signed this letter proclaiming their willingness to take part in a suicide mission." "They wrote: 'we sacrifice ourselves voluntarily for our Fuhrer, our homeland and for Germany.'" "The plan, code named Special Mission Freedom, was to crash their planes into the bridges over the river Oder." "But the operation was a failure." "Many of the planes, loaded down with 500-kilogram bombs, were destroyed before they reached their target, and others couldn't find the bridges in thick smoke." "Shortly afterwards, with the Red Army already across the Oder, further suicide missions were abandoned." "The Red Army reached the outskirts of Berlin on 21st April 1945." "Stalin had encouraged competition between the two Soviet Marshals charged with taking Berlin, Zhukov and Koniev." "But this competition did not make the operation smoother for the Red Army - quite the reverse." "At the boundary between the two Soviet armies there were cases of Red Army soldiers firing at each other in the confusion." "A week after the assault had begun, most of Berlin was in Soviet hands." "This Soviet film shows how one Berlin family reacted to the arrival of the Red Army." "The husband appears to have shot his wife and children before hanging himself." "ln the German capital that spring such stories of suicide were commonplace." "German resistance in Berlin finally crumbled on May 2nd, after Zhukov's troops had stormed the Reichstag." "The British and Americans, having accepted that the Soviets should take Berlin, were still more than fifty miles away to the West." "Hitler had committed suicide in his bunker rear the Reich Chancellery on April 30th." "One of his last remarks had been that if the German people lost the war they would have proved themselves unworthy of him." "The Red Army now had complete control of Berlin, Warsaw," "Budapest and Bucharest - nearly all the capitals of Eastern Europe." "Soviet vengeance did not stop with final victory." "A few days after the German surrender," "Vladlen Anchishkin was fired at by retreating SS soldiers." "Having captured them, he and his comrades embarked on a personal crusade of revenge." "The Soviets held a victory parade in Red Square on 24th June 1945." "Four years and two days had passed since Hitler had launched his invasion of the Soviet Union." "Stalin allowed Zhukov to inspect the parade." "There was a rumour that Stalin had wanted to reserve this honour for himself, but he was worried that he might fall of his horse." "Within a year of the victory parade," "Zhukov was accused of the crime of trying to take too much credit for his part in winning the war." "This order, signed by Stalin as Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, accuses Zhukov of being pretentious and ambitious." "Stalin had him removed to command the Odessa military district, 700 miles from Moscow." "Zhukov did not suffer alone." "The head of the Navy was arrested and demoted, and the head of the Air Force was arrested and tortured." "By the war's end" "Stalin had extended his rule into the heart of Europe." "Part of the continent had exchanged one tyrant for another." "But this was not the only legacy of the conflict." "Hitler had said that the war in the East would be a different kind of war" " a war of annihilation." "And in that he was right, the war he began brought a scale of atrocity never previously known." "This war would for all time be a reminder of just what human beings had been capable of in the 20th century."