29

Back in 1941, his primary concern had been the protection of Soviet frontiers. By 1944, he had extended his ambitions to the control of territories deep into the center of Europe, beyond his prewar borders.

Churchill, anxious to maintain the European balance of power in the face of Stalin's increasingly bold ambitions, flew to Moscow in October. He hoped to settle the future of Eastern Europe directly with the Soviet leader. Predictably, his mission accomplished little. Spheres of influence would be defined, not by diplomatic discussions, but by the presence of victorious armies.

And the facts on the ground, both men knew, favored the Soviet Union.

## TITLES: PROGRAM EIGHT- FALSE DAWN

### RESUME DR KISSINGER

DR KISSINGER

By February 1945, when the Big Three met at Yalta, it was probably too late for the West to make demands. Or at least, too late to ensure Stalin met them.

Churchill, anxious as ever to discuss postwar arrangements, was overruled. A tired President Roosevelt, less than three months from death, used the meeting instead to establish agreement on the organization of the United Nations, and to nail down Soviet participation in the war against Japan.

30

American power prevented adjustments to Western Europe beyond Germany. But Stalin kept his gains from his pre-war pact with Hitler: the Soviet Union's borders were restored. There was to be no freedom for Poland. It was, in effect, to be moved westward to accommodate Soviet expansion, and a communist government imposed. The pattern of what we came to see as the satellite states of Eastern Europe was established.

It was here, at Yalta, that the shape of the postwar European world was confirmed.

FADE OUT

31

# PROGRAM NINE: THE FALL OF THE SWASTIKA

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER LEANS BACK AGAINST HIS DESK.

(SUPERIMPOSE: Dr Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State 1973-1977)

## DR KISSINGER

The fall of Berlin, in 1945, was not simply a military event. In war, the fall of a capital city seldom is. If tonight's program seems to present it as a singularly Russian triumph, do not be surprised.

To the Soviets, that indeed is what it seemed to be.

This map shows the military situation in early 1945 (DR KISSINGER WALKS TO THE MAP). By the end of January, Zhukov's forces had broken into Germany reaching the River Oder. From here he was in a position to threaten Berlin with his next major advance. Budapest fell to Soviet forces in February. By the second week of April, Malinovsky's armies were at the gates of Vienna.

Now if we look at the position of the Allied forces in the West, an interesting situation was developing. By the end of January, the Allies had parried Hitler's desperate thrust at the Battle

32

of the Bulge and were making steady advances. By early April, US forces in the center, and British and Canadians in the North had crossed the Rhine in strength.

On April 11th, advanced units of the United States' Ninth Army made contact with the Russians on the River Elbe only 50 miles from Berlin.

## DR KISSINGER RETURNS TO HIS DESK

### DR KISSINGER

It's important to understand that there was no race for Berlin. Whatever Stalin's intentions, General Eisenhower, commander in chief of the Western Allies, was determined to advance on a broad front and primarily in the South to prevent the establishment of a Nazi Redoubt in the Alps. His priorities, he stressed, were military, not political.

Militarily it is almost certain that the Anglo-American forces could have reached Berlin first.

In the West the German Army had been defeated in the field. But Eisenhower made it clear that his orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff excluded Churchill's idea of a quick thrust for Berlin.

By the end of March Eisenhower had taken the extraordinary step of writing to Stalin personally to inform him that he would not seek to take the German capital.

33

A delighted Stalin replied that he considered Berlin of secondary strategic importance. He failed to mention the question of *political* importance. He ordered a speed-up of preparations for the Soviet attack on Berlin.

So the great crusade against Nazism was about to come to a victorious conclusion. The Soviet Army would be the first to raise its flag in Berlin, and perhaps there was a certain rightness to that, given the enormous sacrifices of the Soviet people.

But there was no doubt the West had voluntarily foregone a military-diplomatic opportunity. An opportunity to obtain the sort of leverage it was going to need in the days to come, if Stalin was to be kept to even the barest letter of the agreements he had made.

## TITLES: PROGRAM NINE - THE FALL OF THE SWASTIKA

(RESUME DR KISSINGER)

DR KISSINGER

So ended the extraordinary episode in European and world history which was Nazism and the Hitler State. The devastation it had caused was nowhere greater than in the east. Its death toll is numbered, as we now know, in millions.

34

Not surprisingly Russians, citizens of the former Soviet Union, retain a fervent memory of the
The Great Patriotic War. It is only with difficulty that those who fought in the war can
separate Stalin, their leader against Adolf Hitler - and Stalin, the oppressor of millions of their
own fellow citizens.

It was different for us in the West. Our problem now, having taken part in the defeat of one
dictator, was to face the might of the Soviet Union led by another totalitarian, more rational in
his pursuit of *real* *politik*, but just as determined as Adolf Hitler to impose his ideology and his
economic system.

FADE OUT

35

# PROGRAM TEN: THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER STANDS BESIDE THE DESK (SUPERIMPOSE: *Dr Henry Kissinger,*
*United States Secretary of State 1973-1977)*

DR KISSINGER

With tonight's program, *Russia's War* comes to an end. What we have been seeing is a rare glimpse of the Russian view of these great events.

This last program serves as an epilog.

For two of the Allied Big Three, there were leadership changes as the war ended. Roosevelt's death brought his little-known successor, Harry Truman, to the US presidency. In Britain, Churchill lost the election and was replaced as prime minister by Clement Attlee.

(DR KISSINGER'S HAND RESTS ON A SMALL BUST OF STALIN THAT STANDS ON THE SIDE OF THE DESK).

Only Joseph Stalin who worried much about death but little about elections, remained in power a year after war's end.

The Cold War was already a fact of international life before Churchill gave his famous Iron Curtain speech at Fulton in 1946. It was already a reality when Harry Truman made it clear to Stalin that he was more than the President of the United States - that he was now the leader of the free world.

(DR KISSINGER WALKS TO HIS CHAIR AND SITS)

I once asked President Truman which foreign policy decisions he most wanted to be remembered by. He answered that when America had completely defeated her enemies she 'then helped them to recover, to become democratic, and to rejoin the community of nations. Only America could have done that.'

And it is of course true that only the United States had the economic power and the political will to mount an operation like the Marshall Plan.

Stalin saw a far darker future ahead for the West. In a major speech in 1946, he argued that a new war, brought about by what he saw as the "crises and catastrophes" of world capitalism, was inevitable.

Gone was any prospect that peace would ease the day-to-day lot of the Soviet people. Heavy industry would continue to be emphasized over consumer goods. The state would continue to be organized for war. Internal opposition would be crushed. The terrifying round of menace, arrest, and imprisonment, would again become a part of Soviet life.

38

When Stalin's death was announced the shock and grief of millions of Soviet citizens was
He had ruled for so long + had been so dominant that
painfully real. Even among many who feared him, even hated him, there was a widespread
feeling that the Soviet Union had lost its protector, at a time of uncertainty and change.

The Nazi State died in the bunker with Hitler, but the system that Stalin led survived for more
than three decades after his death. In this very real sense, it was only when the Soviet Union
collapsed, its guiding communist philosophy discredited, that Russia's war against itself was
finally brought to a close

FADE OUT

Donald James for IBP, October, 1996,

Incorporating Paul Taylor's revision for WGBH and Dr Kissinger's notes.

IBP FILMS DISTRIBUTION LTD.

P.O. Box 641, No. 1 Seaton Place, St. Helier
Jersey JE4 8YJ, Channel Islands.

Tel: (01534) 605700 Fax: (01534) 605705

# "RUSSIA'S WAR"

## Blood Upon the Snow

## A 10 Hour Documentary Series

## Introductory Scripts for Dr. Kissinger

### THIRD DRAFT

Producer: Judith De Paul

Writer: Donald James

Script Consultant: Paul Taylor

2 October 1996

Please contact London Office:

IBP FILMS
50 Molyneux Street / London W1H 5HW

Tel: (44-171) 706-7111

Fax: (44-171) 706-7222

PROGRAM ONE: THE DARKNESS DESCENDS

FADE IN:

COME UP ON A BOOK-LINED OFFICE WITH A DESK AND CHAIR CENTRALLY
PLACED. A MAP OF WESTERN EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION IS
PART OF THE WALL DECORATION

DR KISSINGER STANDS AT HIS BOOKCASE, BOOK IN HAND. HE CLOSES THE
BOOK, REPLACES IT ON THE SHELF. AS HE TURNS TO CAMERA, SUPERIMPOSE:

DR KISSINGER

Good evening. My name is Henry Kissinger.

When I was active in diplomacy on behalf of the United States, the collapse of the Soviet
system that had survived Hitler's savage onslaught during World War Two, the dramatic fall
of the colossal empire which Joseph Stalin had built - all this was unimaginable.

(DR KISSINGER WALKS TOWARDS CAMERA - STOPS AND LEANS A HAND ON
THE DESK)

2

It seemed to many that the roots of Stalin's empire reached down too far into Russian history, that the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War had entered too deeply into national myth for the whole structure to be in any serious danger. Yet it toppled, suddenly and decisively.

It was Soviet military victory that brought Eastern Europe into Stalin's orbit and made the Soviet Union a rival superpower to the United States. But, as the extraordinary television series you are about to see makes clear, a closer look at that victory exposes the brutality, not only of the Nazi invaders, but of the Soviet system itself. Hidden within the story of Russia's victory are the bloody origins of the system's ultimate defeat.

*Russia's War* is based on archive and interviews assembled by Russian film makers and historians. Full of material unseen in the West, it tells the story of the war from a very Russian viewpoint, from the heart.

(DR KISSINGER SITS)

This is not dispassionate history, written at a scholarly distance. It is instead an angry, graphic tale of heroes and of two of the most heinous villains of all time, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. In its passionate intensity it provides an unmistakably Russian perspective on their experience of World War Two, on the Great Patriotic War.

*Russia's War*

(MAKES AN EXPLANATORY GESTURE WITH THE HAND)

3

You see, even that title carries with it a rich Russian irony.

The series depicts, as we would expect, the struggle of the Soviet people against Hitler's armies, the bloodiest military conflict in human history. But the title also carries a second, equally important, dimension. It describes a war waged throughout his reign by Joseph Stalin against his own people.

To have survived the worst of two of the most bloodthirsty tyrants of our times, that is an achievement reserved for the people of the former Soviet Union.

So *Russia's War* tells a bitter and dramatic story.

This opening episode brings us to the point where Hitler and Stalin stand face to face, exposed in the nakedness of their ambitions, in their infinite willingness to sacrifice others.

Even after all these years the blood still runs cold.

TITLES: PROGRAM ONE - THE DARKNESS DESCENDS

DR KISSINGER

4

Fifteen years have brought Joseph Stalin to unchallenged power in the Soviet Union. But the Eastern borders are threatened by an expansionist Japan. And in the West, Adolf Hitler makes no secret of where he believes Germany's lebensraum, its living-space, will be found.

In military and economic power Stalin knows that the Soviet Union is not sufficiently developed to stand alone.

The second program, THE HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT, shows Joseph Stalin as he is forced to think the unthinkable.

Can even a supreme and callous realist like Stalin bring himself to forge a link between the Soviet Union and its sworn enemy, Nazi Germany? With the impact on the Communist faithful throughout the world to consider, will he dare?

FADE OUT

5

(4)

# PROGRAM TWO: THE HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT

FADE IN:

WE COME UP ON DR KISSINGER AT THIS DESK. GO IN CLOSE TO SEE HE IS
LOOKING THROUGH PROFESSOR VOLKOGONOV'S BIOGRAPHY OF STALIN.

(SUPERIMPOSE Dr Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State 1973-1977)

DR KISSINGER CLOSES THE BOOK AND LOOKS TOWARDS CAMERA.

## DR. KISSINGER

The second episode of this uniquely Russian series brings us to the late 1930s.

As Hitler ruthlessly bullied his way across Europe, it became increasingly clear that the Soviet Union was in mortal danger. For Joseph Stalin and the Soviet people it was indeed, as the title of this episode suggests, "The Hour Before Midnight".

Yet none of the international crises around him deterred Stalin from repression at home.

Arrest, enslavement and murder, that we now know, was the unvarying practice of his years of rule, his means of maintaining himself in power. The destruction he had wreaked among the military and professional classes of the Soviet Union was allowed to continue.

6

But in diplomatic terms, the Soviet leader faced a stark choice. Between an alliance with the capitalist Western allies, Britain and France - or a cynical and self-serving agreement with Hitler's Germany.

The pivotal factor was Poland, located between Russia and Germany. By August 1939, it was clear to the world that Hitler's troops were about to cross the Polish border.

In Stalin's cold and calculating mind, the decision was clear. If he allied Russia with the West, and a Wehrmacht was possible, he might still see the Wehrmacht on the Soviet border within weeks. Instead, he would make a deal with Hitler to carve up Poland, keeping the German Army, at least for the moment, at arms length.

On film, Professor Volkogonov, a Russian historian with whom I have discussed the period, calls Stalin's decision one of historic immorality.

It was also an act of total and unblinkered realism.

Now, having offered Stalin a partnership in the defeat of Poland, Hitler offered another partnership - this time in the defeat of Britain.

For Stalin it was a nearly insoluble diplomatic quandary. If Stalin helped defeat Britain he would destroy his only hope of an ally if Hitler attacked him. On the other hand if Hitler won

7

without help, Stalin would lose claim to any of the rich pickings from the defeated British
Empire.

While Stalin was pondering his choices, Hitler was rethinking his options. He decided to postpone his plans for the conquest of Britain. Instead, he massed his forces for a full-scale attack on Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

TITLES: PROGRAM TWO - THE HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT

RESUME DR KISSINGER AT HIS DESK.

DR KISSINGER

There is evidence at this time that the two dictators were developing a reluctant admiration for each other. Each believed that he could read the mind of his adversary.

Throughout 1940 and the first half of 1941, Stalin had persuaded himself that Hitler operated from the same basis of political realism that underpinned his own foreign policy.

He saw Hitler very much as he saw himself - as a leader, unaccountable to his own people, but rational in the pursuit of his foreign policy objectives.

Stalin had in fact allowed himself to gamble on Adolf Hitler's rationality. Hitler equally had gambled on the total military collapse of the Soviet Union.

9

# PROGRAM THREE: THE GOTHS RIDE EAST

FADE IN:

(DR KISSINGER STANDS IN FRONT OF THE WALL MAP IN HIS OFFICE)

DR KISSINGER

It is the night of June 21st, 1941.

A German army of three million men, with equipment not possessed by any other army on earth at this date, is assembled to destroy the Soviet Union. Back in Berlin, Hitler expects a lightning victory. "You only have to kick in the door," he tell one of his commanders, "and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

(HE TRACES THE LINES OF THE BORDER.)

The code name for the operation: Barbarossa. Episode three, THE GOTHS RIDE EAST tells, with the passion and commitment of a director who, as a young Russian cameraman, lived through these times, the story of the first cataclysmic days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the vast pincer movements, the millions of dazed Soviet prisoners ...

But first, the diplomatic historian is bound to ask, could Stalin have avoided this war? We have watched his maneuverings in earlier programs, his attempts to put himself in the most favorable position should war come. But could he have avoided it? I think not.

11

(RESUME DR KISSINGER)

DR KISSINGER

December 1941 began as a triumphant month for Stalin's arch-enemy.

In Berlin, Adolf Hitler had every reason to believe that his gamble of a two-front war had succeeded. Great Britain lay at Hitler's feet, unconquered but virtually powerless to strike the war alone. In the east, German troops had inflicted catastrophic losses on the Soviet army. Much of the Western Soviet Union had been overrun. Stalin's government was making frantic plans to abandon Moscow.

Two events in the first week of December were about to change all that. Soviet General Zhukov was preparing in secret, a massive counter-attack against the German forces closing on Moscow. And on the seventh of that month the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Forces were poised to launch their attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War Two.

The quick victory that Hitler had so confidently predicted was slipping from his grasp.

FADE OUT

12

# PROGRAM FOUR: BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER WALKS FROM THE DOOR OF HIS OFFICE TOWARDS THE DESK

DR KISSINGER

This program covers a brief but critical period from the last few weeks of 1941 to the early months of 1942. A period that would determine the success or failure of Hitler's plans for conquest.

During these three months the fate of the Soviet Union hung in the balance. In this episode you can almost feel the Russian film maker hold his breath.

(SUPERIMPOSE: Dr Kissinger United State Secretary of State 1973-1977.)

In this fourth program of *Russia's War*, entitled "Between Life and Death", we watch the desperate efforts of the Soviet defenders to hold back the Nazi onslaught. It focuses first on the siege of Leningrad, an event that would become synonymous with the Soviet people's indomitable will to resist.

Virtually encircled and almost continuously bombarded, the citizens of Leningrad displayed extraordinary courage under conditions of unimaginable privation. Young and old froze to death.

13

death. Those who managed to survive the cold, the air attacks and the shelling of the city, faced the bleak prospect of slow death by starvation. The siege that began in the autumn of 1941 would continue for 900 seemingly endless days

And while Leningrad suffered, Moscow waited.

As the news of the German advance came in, the capital's citizens dug tank traps and underwent basic training. There were critical shortages of every type of weapon, especially of anything capable of stopping the German armour.

But the news was not good for Adolf Hitler either. His lines of communication were at breaking point. His men were exhausted after their long advance. There were the first signs that a serious counter-attack might be launched by the Soviet forces.

And the brutal Russian winter was closing in.

The arrival of *General Winter*, as the Germans began to call it, brought intolerable temperatures. No real preparations had been made for a winter campaign. Supplies of low-temperature oils were not available. Machines and weapons ceased to function. Men stood dead at their posts, their uniforms stuffed with torn newspaper in a vain attempt to repel the cold.

While his generals pleaded for widespread withdrawal, Hitler commanded his armies to stand fast before Moscow.

14

It was at this point, on December 5th, that General Zhukov, with fresh troops from Siberia, mounted the first major Soviet counter-attack of the war.

## TITLES: PROGRAM FOUR - BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

(RESUME DR KISSINGER LEANING BACK AGAINST HIS DESK)

### DR KISSINGER

There was little that Adolf Hitler could do when Zhukov launched his counter-attack on December 5th. The German Army, the seemingly unstoppable Nazi juggernaut, was swept back.

Two days later, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached Berlin.

Reason and caution should have told Hitler to do whatever he could to avoid war with the most powerful industrial country in the world.

But Adolf Hitler was neither reasonable nor cautious.

Imagine the jubilation in Moscow when Hitler, almost nonchalantly and certainly unnecessarily, declared war on the United States of America - thereby committing one of the greatest strategic blunders in history.

FADE OUT

# PROGRAM FIVE: THE FIGHT FROM WITHIN

## FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER IS AT HIS DESK. AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK, SUPERIMPOSE:

DR KISSINGER

In a century with more than its share of horrors, some stand out, grim monuments to man's inhumanity.

Between 1941 and 1944, within the vast and constantly shifting area of the Soviet Union occupied by the invading German forces, Nazism revealed its unfathomable brutality. Behind enemy lines, partisans fought a savage civil war, much of it unrecorded and unknown to the West.

At the heart of Nazi policy in the occupied Soviet Union lay National Socialist theory. Its all-important racial aspect was set out in all its hate-filled absurdity in this book by Alfred Rosenberg

(DR KISSINGER LIFTS A COPY OF THE BOOK)

The Myth of the Twentieth Century.

(HE PUTS IT ASIDE)

16

All the most senior Nazi leaders realized that if ever their theory were to be put into practice it would be in the vasr areas of the east. Only there could they ensure the necessary secrecy for their work.

In this episode we will see the madness of Nazi racial *theory* enacted by white-coated men with calipers, intently measuring skulls and noses.

And we will see the murderousness of Nazi racial *practice* in the hideous efficiency of the Einsatzgruppen, the Special Action SS squads, in the killing pits of Babi Yar, outside Kiev.

The horrors of occupation are graphically depicted in this film. In Belorussia and the Ukraine, Nazis kidnapped children deemed to be of suitable racial stock, sending them to Germany for re-education as new Aryans.

Himmler's propaganda films presented a sanitized version of this barbaric policy to the world; in a rare and terrible piece of archival film, shot in secret, we will see how this process of forced separation really worked.

The second part of the struggle within a struggle was the partisan movement, which fought the German armies behind the lines.

But the story of this part of Russia's War is not a clear one; these partisan forces were not always Soviet units fighting to uphold Moscow's authority. Often the very opposite was true.

17

Partisans might well be nationalists - Baltic, Belorussian, Ukrainian - as opposed to Moscow
as to Berlin. In essence they regarded both Germans and Soviets as occupying powers.

This film shows nothing short of a civil war in progress behind German lines, in confusion and savagery the equal of any ever fought. Nothing is swept under the carpet. We should recognize the courage required (even now) for a Russian director to present these unpalatable facts about the struggle behind enemy lines.

## TITLES: PROGRAM FIVE : THE FIGHT FROM WITHIN

(RESUME DR KISSINGER)

The ancient and bitter rivalries of the partisans, stoked by the fires of nationalism, created a complicated battlefield behind the German lines.

In the Soviet Union these aspects of the struggle were, of course, never mentioned. All official reporting, all newsreel, instead stressed the unity of purpose of the peoples of the Soviet motherland.

And it is true that Stalin's concept of a Great Patriotic War did offer genuine inspiration to millions of Soviet citizens. It bound them with a common determination to resist the invader at all costs, at whatever sacrifice.

PROGRAM SIX: THE CAULDRON BOILS

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER CROSSES THE OFFICE AND STANDS BEFORE THE WALL MAP.

DR KISSINGER

Good evening The events covered by tonight's program deeply engage the emotions of Russians to this day. Nothing can disguise the Russian origin of the film you are about to see.

Stalingrad. The city on the Volga. Christmastime, 1942, The scene of the titanic battle which, most agree, finally broke the back of the German war effort.

The Germans' summer offensive of 1942 had shown that they had made a remarkable recovery from the setbacks of the winter. More surprising to Stalin was that, for the moment, Moscow was no longer the objective. Instead Hitler had decreed an advance in a southerly direction, to split European Russia in two.

(POINTS TO STALINGRAD ON THE MAP)

20

Knowing the outcome as we do, it's easy to overlook what might have happened had the battle gone the other way. The whole of the Caucasus region, with its rich oil fields, would have been cut off, denying oil to Moscow and the Soviet armies in the North.

It's not hard to imagine an entire Soviet army marched into captivity, just as the battered survivors of von Paulus's Sixth German Army shuffled off in defeat.

(DR KISSINGER CROSSES TO THE DESK AND SITS)

But how close was the outcome? I think the film shows that it was very close indeed. We see each side operating at the extremities of its reserves of men and materiel.

But Hitler and Stalin, you see, were in desperate need of a victory. And, apart from vital strategic implications, there was the tremendous symbolism, recognized and exploited by both sides, of the fact that the city carried Stalin's name.

Stalin's allies, Britain and America, watched this struggle, too distant to intervene directly.

The Allies were already massing their air forces for attacks on Germany. American industry was achieving unprecedented new levels of production. Rommel had been decisively defeated by the British Eighth Army at El Alamein. And British and American troops had landed along the North African coastline.

Yet none of this could now change the balance for the Soviet forces fighting hand to hand with the German Sixth Army in the city on the Volga River.

23

PROGRAM SEVEN: THE CITADEL

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER IS AT HIS DESK. AS HE LOOKS UP, SUPERIMPOSE :Dr Henry

DR KISSINGER

1943 was the year the members of the Grand Alliance - the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States - stamped the certainty of their victory on the course of the world war.

Headline writers still referred to the Big Three. But American industrial might and Russian manpower reserves were now altering the balance between the allies. For all of Churchill's exertions on behalf of Britain, it was becoming clear that only two powers would shape the post-war world.

On the field of battle, Stalin was now determined to prove that the Soviet Army could engage and defeat the Germans in a summer campaign. Intelligence was already arriving in Moscow of a German intention to mount an offensive against the Russian salient at Kursk. Stalin, always a political as much as a military commander, saw this as the opportunity he was seeking.

CLOSE ON MAP: KURSK REGION

24

DR KISSINGER (VO)

The great tank battle at Kursk, fought during a furious week in mid-1943, confirmed the harsh lesson of Stalingrad.

(RESUME DR KISSINGER)

DR KISSINGER

From now on, summer and winter, the German Army would be condemned to retreat until it reached the gates of Berlin.

Throughout 1943, the Soviet people quickened the tempo of their struggle - a struggle in which women played a major role. There were women in the hospitals as doctors and nurses. In the field as infantry and bomb disposal officers. In the air, as we'll see in this episode, as bomber pilots in special squadrons. The Germans called them the Night Witches.

It is during this year that the world first hears of an event that would haunt the Soviet Union through my own tenure as Secretary of State and beyond - the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.

1943 was also the year when the Big Three allied leaders met at Teheran. To an extent, reflecting the emerging balance of power between them, Churchill and his post-war preoccupation were sidelong.

At this first meeting of Stalin and Roosevelt, the American president made a determined effort to reassure Stalin of the sincerity of the United States.

But, of course, as even the Russian makers of this episode now accept, it was not the sincerity of the United States which was at issue.

## TITLES: PROGRAM SEVEN - THE CITADEL

### RESUME DR KISSINGER

#### DR KISSINGER

If a postwar settlement was ever to be negotiated, the appropriate time would have been at Teheran. Kiev had only just been liberated, the siege of Leningrad was yet to be raised. Soviet armies were still far from even the 1941 Soviet border.

At the same time, Stalin's need for American equipment to replace losses and to re-equip new armies, was growing. And his demand for an Allied landing in France had not yet been satisfied. At Teheran therefore, the Western allies still possessed considerable leverage.

But Roosevelt was determined not to enter discussion of a full postwar settlement. His belief was that he would be able to use the techniques of American domestic politics (of which he was a consummate master) on the man he called Uncle Joe.

Roosevelt's plan was to make it clear that the United States was not hostile to the legitimate fears and aspirations of his Soviet ally - that the postwar shape of Europe would be drawn up, when the time came, in a manner sympathetic to the Soviet Union's concerns.

But Joseph Stalin had already decided the shape of the postwar European world he wanted to see.

FADE OUT

27

# PROGRAM EIGHT: THE FALSE DAWN

FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER WRITING AT HIS DESK. AS HE LOOKS UP

SUPERIMPOSE : Dr Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State 1973-1977

DR KISSINGER

1944. For the U.S.A and Britain it was a year of great success, a long step down the road to victory over Hitler.

The Russian view, reflected in this film, is understandably more emotional: for the Soviets, 1944 was The Year of Victories, the year when the invader was finally ejected from the homeland.

This year victories seemed unending. From Leningrad and Minsk in the north to Sevastopol in the Crimea. The Germans continued to fight, to fall back and fight again. This was in no sense a rout. But nobody, even among the German military, any longer expected a sudden reversal of fortunes.

In other theatres, it was the same story. In Italy, the Allied Army continued to hold down substantial German forces as they advanced slowly northwards into the heart of Europe. The Allied air forces now had complete command of the air over Western Europe. In June, the

28

Normandy landings opened the promised Second Front that Stalin had demanded for so long.

In August, Allied troops marched into a liberated Paris. (HE CLOSES NOTEBOOK)

Despite a new breed of secret weapon - rockets and pilotless bombs which pounded London -
Germany's defeat was now inevitable.

With the Allies on the threshold of victory, Hitler's most terrible secret was about to be
exposed to the world.

The liberation of the extermination camps revealed the sickening scale of Nazi genocidal
madness. Millions of people had been destroyed. Once innocent place-names now became
obscenities, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz.

The impending end of the struggle with Nazi Germany brought to the fore the tragedy of the
country in which fighting began. From London, base of the free Polish government, came
urgent calls for a discussion of the post-war settlement of the "Polish question".

But as the military situation turned decisively in his favor, Stalin raised his terms. He had
already begun his own preparations for the post-war world: in 1943 he had created his own
puppet Polish government in exile, known as the Lublin Committee. Now, in 1944, he
recognized Lublin as the provisional government of Poland.

It was a clear sign that independence for Poland was not what the Soviet dictator had in mind.

And clear evidence of an important change in Stalin's diplomatic and military priorities.

29

Back in 1941, his primary concern had been the protection of Soviet frontiers. By 1944, he had extended his ambitions to the control of territories beyond his pre-war borders.

Churchill, anxious to maintain the European balance of power in the face of Stalin's increasingly bold ambitions, flew to Moscow in October. He hoped to settle the future of Eastern Europe directly with the Soviet leader. Predictably, his quixotic mission accomplished little. Spheres of influence would be defined, not by diplomatic discussions, but by the presence of victorious armies.

### RESUME DR KISSINGER

DR KISSINGER

American power prevented adjustments to Western Europe beyond Germany. But Stalin kept his gains from his pre-war pact with Hitler: the Soviet Union's borders were restored. There was to be no freedom for Poland. It was, in effect, to be moved westward to accomodate Soviet expansion, and a communist government imposed. The pattern of what we came to see as the satellite states of Eastern Europe was established.

FADE OUT

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FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER

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### DR KISSINGER

It's important to understand that there was no race for Berlin. Whatever Stalin's intentions, General Eisenhower, commander in chief of the Western Allies, was determined to advance on a broad front. His priorities, he stressed, were military, not political.

In the West the German Army had been defeated in the field. But Eisenhower made it clear that his orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff excluded Churchill's idea of a quick thrust for Berlin.

By the end of March Eisenhower had taken the extraordinary step of writing to Stalin personally to inform him that the Allies would not seek to take the German capital.

A delighted Stalin replied that he considered Berlin of secondary strategic importance. He failed to mention the question of political importance. He ordered a speed-up of the Soviet attack on Berlin's preparations for

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### RESUME DR KISSINGER

DR KISSINGER

Not surprisingly Russians, citizens of the former Soviet Union, retain a fervent memory of the Great Patriotic War. It is only with difficulty that those who fought in the war can

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FADE IN:

DR KISSINGER

With tonight's program, Russia's War comes to an end. What we have been seeing is a rare
glimpse of the Russian view of these great events.

For two of the Allied Big Three, there were leadership changes as the war ended. Roosevelt's
death brought his little-known successor, Harry Truman, to the US presidency. In Britain,
Churchill lost an election and was replaced as prime minister.

36

This tenth and final program in the series, *The Cult of Personality*, covers the period that began with the death of Hitler, in 1945, and concludes with the death of Stalin, some eight years later.

It takes its name from Nikita Krushchev's secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Three years after Stalin's terrified bodyguards discovered him lying on the floor of his dacha, Krushchev's speech marked the beginning of the painful process of laying bare the awesome extent of Stalin's crimes.

It is a process that is far from complete.

TITLES: PROGRAM TEN - THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

RESUME DR KISSINGER, A BOOK OPEN ON HIS DESK.

DR KISSINGER

In 1952, a year before his death, Stalin had made a diplomatic overture to the United States to settle the Cold War. The arch-realist had concluded that an arms race against America was unsustainable. He had, at least in part, foreseen the end result of the Cold War.

But his death prevented the West from making a real investigation of his terms.

HE CLOSES THE BOOK ON HIS DESK AND LOOKS UP AT CAMERA.

38

When Stalin's death was announced the shock and grief of millions of Soviet citizens was painfully real. Even among many who feared him, even hated him, there was a widespread feeling that the Soviet Union had lost its protector, at a time of uncertainty and change.

The Nazi State died in the bunker with Hitler, but the system that Stalin led survived for more than three decades after his death. In one very real sense, it was only when the Soviet Union collapsed, its guiding communist philosophy discredited, that Russia's war against itself was finally brought to a close

FADE OUT

Donald James for IBP, September 1996,