Last Days of the Reich

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party have dominated the hearts and minds of the German people for over a decade,

“but by the summer of 1944 the Soviet Red Army and the forces of the western allies”

are tightening their vice-grip on Hitler's third Reich. The Nazis complete control is about to crack.

This is World War II, with Tom Hanks, episode 18, last days of the Reich. The biggest story in western Europe today is the attempted assassination of Hitler. For the second time since this war began and assassin has almost succeeded in killing the future and perhaps changing the course of history. July 20, 1944. A bomb hidden in a brief case explodes at the Wolfs Lair. Adolf Hitler's military headquarters. It was the opening move

in an elaborate plan to kill the Nazi leader and overthrow his government. Hitler is wounded,

but survives, and the plot fails. The bomb exploded two meters to my right. I myself am completely

“unheard. I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed on me by providence to continue on the”

road of my life as I have done here. Surviving the July 20th Army convinces Hitler beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has been chosen by heaven or by providence to lead the German people. He's all sorts of medications. He's under more pressure than most human beings can imagine. He becomes even more paranoid than he already has been. He is micromanaging even more. Nazis take out almost production. Hitler in the Nazis mobilized even more men and tightened their

grip on Germany and its people. There is no difference anymore between the fate of the public and the German people and the fate of the Nazi state. The German public is not too happy about how the war goes on. They are where the Germany may lose the war, but they think the only person who can bring this to a close is Hitler himself. As some returns to fall Germany's strategic situation deteriorates and every German is aware that the Allies demand unconditional surrender. Hitler knows that

that's in possibility. Surrender means humiliation being betrayed ultimately executed.

Hitler also knows something about warfare, a pass of defense never works.

“You have to show your adversaries that you're still dangerous.”

Hitler quotes Frederick the Great. "Who was in a similar war in the 18th century?" Frederick famously said, "We're going to fight this war until one of our goddam enemies gets tired." Hitler wants to come up with some hail Mary. He wants to come up with some plan that will bring advantage back to a heavily disadvantaged situation in September. Hitler summons his general roles to the Wolfs Lair. He outlines a plan that will return his troops to the scene of his greatest

triumph. The Arden. The Arden offensive of 1944 is going to involve multiple German armies across a hundred miles of front. They're going to crash through what they have identified as a weekly held portion of the American line. They're going to drive through the Arden Forest, seen of the Great Victory of 1940, and if all goes well, cross the Muse River and from there make it to Antwerp. Antwerp is the major supply port for the entire allied force in Europe.

If the Germans take Antwerp, it will be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Hitler sees this as a way to divide the coalition, demoralize the coalition, and force the coalition to make separate pieces with him. But Hitler will have to strip hold divisions from this eastern front to execute his gambit in the west. Not all of Hitler's generals are on board. They just don't believe that given their current

force levels, that they can blast across the west European continent and take the major city of Antwerp Field Marshal Gareth von Roenstein says, "Antwerp, my God, if we even get to the Muse River, that's less than halfway, we should get down on our knees and thank God." But Hitler, by this stage of the war, he doesn't really trust very many of his generals. And he does have this belief in luck. He's gotten lucky at various points throughout this war,

Hitler will even eventually say that if this doesn't end well, I see no other path toward reaching

“a favorable conclusion. The fate of Germany really hangs in the balance.”

December 16th, it's a snowy morning in the Arden for the Allies. This overcast, this freezing cold. The weather was awful for everybody, but it gave the Germans advantage because the Allied aircraft are mostly grounded, and that's the perfect environment for the Germans to launch this bold, offensive. Suddenly at 530, it seems that hell is opened up. Every artillery piece, the Germans own, every artillery, light artillery,

rocket artillery, the famous Screamy Mimi's mortar. The American position in the Arden's simply gets shredded. Trees off thrown through the air with this just shell off the shell. Allied forces, their caught off guard, they are overwhelmed. They certainly didn't expect

“the Germans capable of launching something as big as the Arden's offensive.”

Suddenly there's a couple of 100,000 German infantry with 600 German panzers along a hundred mile front. One of the four divisions holding the Allied line in the Arden is the newly arrived American 166th, the 106th division who had just in the wrong place the wrong time who have columns of German armour coming out of them from all directions are just overwhelmed by this. Within a matter of hours, 7,000 men are captured. It's the biggest mass American surrender since

baton. At this point of time the German troops are in a state of euphoria.

For weeks or months or even years they had only known retreat and now for the first and for a long

time they out on the offence again. German troops are partly motivated because they're being told, take no prisoners. This is your chance. Now you get revenge against the Allies. The result is that there is literally a trail of massacres that will lead eventually to the most notorious of about a dozen massacres and that's the one that takes place. In the afternoon of December 17th, just outside the city of Malmadi.

The first SS Panzer division, they've worked their way forward under their Battle of Group Commander, Yolkhun Piper. Piper's built for speed. He's been told to get ahead as fast as you possibly can towards the Muse Cross the River, get to Antwerp. And he's just over on a couple of rare echelon U.S. detachments, supply depots and administrative troops. There's a brief firefight, the Americans then surrender about 120 of them.

They move them off the road into a field. And the result is that 84 Americans, they are murdered after having surrendered their weapons. This is one of the largest war crimes against U.S. soldiers during WW2, and it shows the ruthlessness which this war has achieved at this point.

Some German units advance as much as 20 miles on the first day.

The initial success of the Arden offensive confirms Hitler's sense of divine destiny. In Hitler's mind, he thinks, again, I was right. I took the decision to launch this offensive against the advice of my generals, against the advice of my experts, but I was right. So in the first couple of days of the Arden offensive, it seems for the Germans that they have regained the initiative. The Bermocks attack stretches from Belgium to Luxembourg,

but the initial reports from the front are sketchy. How to respond to the German assault is the responsibility of one man, general Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander. So Eisenhower is determined whether or not this is a faint, right, Arden Germans trying to

“essentially pull his resources in the wrong direction, or is this a proper offensive?”

Does he actually have to respond? Eisenhower immediately defines the threat. He says, this is more than a German faint. This is a major effort. And he thinks, let's not see this disaster as anything but an opportunity. The Germans want to fight out in the open. Let's take it to them. Yeah, the Germans are advancing. The other Germans have driven a deep bulge into my lines,

but that offers me this big German salient that I can attack from the shoulders. That's why we refer to this as the Battle of the Bulge.

at the Belgian town of Bastone. Both sides know that Bastone is the key.

If the Germans seize it, they can control the road network and motor all the way to the west, perhaps even reach Antwerp. But if the Americans hold it, the Germans are stuck in their tracks. So it's a race. It's a race for the Germans to take it. It's a race for the Americans

“to try and re-suppy it before it's lost. So all of a sudden Bastone becomes this key road intersection,”

not unlike Gettysburg or Waterloo or Thermopoli, it is everything. As the Germans attempt to surround Bastone, Eisenhower calls on the 101st Airborne Division, the screaming Eagles. There are big contributions so far when they get dropped behind enemy lines

before a D-Day. They've basically been in the games since June 5th of '44.

To say that the 101st is unprepared for this fight is to understate the matter considerably, they would usually jump into war zones carrying what they can carry, which inherently means they don't have a lot of armor. They don't have any artillery. They don't have the winner gear that equipment that would allow you to fight a tough battle in the middle of December. It's a come as you are war. It tells you the degree to which

this is a crisis that in the midst of this crisis, Eisenhower turns around and looks and says, "I'll take them." Because the one thing they are is they are a hardened group of elites and they will go in there and do the job despite all the limitations they face. December 8th The 101st is trucked into Bastone to relieve the battered 28th division.

“The defense of this Belgian town is the key to the Allied effort against”

Badeoff Hitler on the western front and the key to the defense of this town is in the hands of the men of the 101st Airborne. For the Germans, this whole thing has to happen fast. Every day their stand in front of Bastone is time they don't have, time where the weather could clear up, time where the rest of the Allied armies are starting to get reinforcements in there. And so the Germans have determined

to throw everything at Bastone that they possibly have. There is an artillery bombardment they are attacking from all sides they are trying to push the Americans out. But 101st Airborne, the fighting around Bastone is as tough as any in the war. It's out in the open, it's bitterly cold, there's snow on the ground. They're short on food and yet all with almost just small arms, bazookas and machine guns

they're able to put up enough bluster and defense that they're able to hold the line. To reinforce the 101st in Bastone, Eisenhower turns to his most aggressive commander. General George Patton and the third army. Patton promises him three divisions in two days for Bastone, which is something only George has Patton would promise. Promising three divisions and yeah that's 40,000 plus men, waiting at 48 hours.

Patton had already planned for precisely this contingency and was ready to take the lead once he was given the operation. But until the third army arrives, the screaming eagles are virtually on their own. The Germans encircle the city and that encirclement will be headline news back in the United States.

There was this critical thought that we might lose the entire 101st Airborne division to the enemy.

It looks if the Germans are really in control and they send a message to the 100th Airborne. They say you've got to surrender. They're going to give it to the acting division commander, Brigadier General Anthony McCalleth. McCalleth will read the thing and he'll send back a one word reply and it says nuts. And I got to imagine some savvy airborne officer gets to go give this to the German delegation.

Of course they read nuts and they're like we don't understand the cloclios. And so he gets to the stand there and he says it's the same as go to hell.

“And in a sense the whole unit kind of reaches out and they hit the collective I believe button.”

Which is not so much that they can hold out forever. But patents come in. They're all coming. All we have to do is hold out a little longer.

But what shouldn't suck is a learning about history.

“I do that through storytelling. History that doesn't suck is a chart-topping history telling podcast,”

chronocling the epic story of America decade by decade from the 18th century to the 20th, original music and immersive sound design accompanying us on our storytelling journey. Listen to and follow history that doesn't suck. An Odyssey podcast available now on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

In Bastone the men of the hundred and first division had been under siege for almost a week.

But on December 26th, patents third army reaches the outskirts. Famously it was the fourth armored division that has given the task of fighting up a narrow road corridor toward Bastone and on the date after Christmas on December 26th, elements of sea company of the 37th tape Italian pull up to the Bastone perimeter.

“The Allies break the German lines and now supplies will be able to flow in.”

And so for the Germans, the Arden offensive breaks over Bastone. Even though Bastone is relieved, fighting continues across the front for weeks. The United States Army suffers more casualties in the battle of the bulge.

That in any other battle in its history, but ultimately Hitler's arden offensive is a failure.

For Hitler, the catastrophe of the Arden is that it was the last round in the chamber. The Germans really poured their entire armored reserve into it. They could have used those troops perhaps to defend more robustly in the east and west simultaneously, but they threw them all away on a gamble and a gamble that failed. As the Allies stop Hitler in the west, the Soviets launch a massive offensive in the east.

“The Red Army is a force of millions, which has begun its advance everywhere,”

from Finland and the Baltics and the North all the way down to the Black Sea and the South.

The Soviet forces had evolved in credible speed, incredible hard fighting,

and Stalin had stopped them between October and December for a very clear strategic purpose. To prepare a massive massive buildup of armor. So by January 45, they are ready to go on the offensive. Within weeks, Soviet forces crossed into Germany. The Red Army has breached the border of the Fatherland.

Having Soviet boots on German ground is a major blow for the German psyche. Because they consider the Soviets as their mortal enemies, and this is a disaster for them. The war is finally being brought home to Germans. In theory, the Nazi authorities would have had the time for months to evacuate the civilians. But that's something they didn't do because if you stay there, you'll show that you've got more confidence

and that you're up defending your home territory. But basically the Russians come with such overwhelming force that the Germans can't stop them of the border. And so this causes mass panic as the German civilians take to the roads to try to escape this Russian onslaught knowing full well what a waste and if they stay. The Germans have fought a horrific war of annihilation in the Soviet Union.

Now the Soviets are finally able to take revenge against the Germans. They looted and they pillaged and they raped and they burned and they destroyed. And they took pleasure in doing these things as they advanced. There's 100,000 or more deaths on the German side and something like I'd be a fifth of the female population is raped. This is the beginning of what the Germans can expect

to receive when the Red Army break into Berlin. Joseph Stalin engineers the Soviet Union's final moves. As the Red Army continues, it's March West towards Berlin. Berlin is really the be all end all of the war. This is where we have the right chance slurry or we have the right stop building or Hitler has his

bunker. Once the Red Army reaches Berlin, the world will be over and it will be a great victory

For someone who lives in Berlin, it's not lost on them what happens in East Prussia.

The Soviets are getting retribution and it's coming in the form of German bodies, German blood, rapes, killings and that's coming your way. Almost the image of an incoming tide that you cannot stop. And the spring of 1945, Germany is under assault from multiple directions. In the East, the Red Army rapidly advances towards Berlin. In the West, the Allies continue on a broad front as the approach the Rhine River.

“The Rhine is the German's last key strategic position to try and delay the inevitable”

of the Allies getting into Germany and defeating the Third Rhine.

It's a big broad river, fast flowing deep and the Germans know this so they're planning to kind of defend every inch of it. Their defense strategy in the West is to blow up all the bridges across the river of Rhine to use this huge natural barrier. British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery designs an operation that will take Allied forces across the Rhine and further into Germany. But unexpectedly, the American 9th Armored Division discovers another way into the German

Reich. We in the out of nowhere, an advanced unit of Americans ends up at the Remagen Bridge, the key bridge across the Rhine. And the Germans, they failed to destroy the bridge properly. It's not because the Germans were dumb, the Germans tried to blow the bridge. It's just that they didn't have enough explosives to do the job. It was very stoutly built. The bridge just kind of jumps on these really heavy stone pears and then settles back into place.

The Allies couldn't believe their luck, so they raced forward and then took the bridge and they get across the Rhine three weeks earlier than anticipated. Once you're over the Rhine,

“you're into Germany proper. It's a crucial moment for the war in the West.”

For the Germans, this is a huge blow because now the Allies can bring in reinforcements much quicker and Hitler's absolute theories about this. Hitler is prone to rage at this time and he demands that everyone responsible will be immediately court martial, not brought to Berlin to explain but a drumhead court martial in the field and shy. Hitler retreats to Berlin. He orders the destruction of bridges, roads, railways, factories,

anything that can aid the Allied advance. This narrow order named in honor of the Roman Emperor who famously allowed the city of Rome to burn would authorize German forces to destroy absolutely everything as they retreated. Blow up the bridges, blow up the sanitation, blow up the power plants even if it doesn't do any good in the war effort. There's no reason to worry about a post war or Germany. He stopped caring about the individual people because they're no

longer worthy of surviving the war. Hitler commands his loyal and capable minister of armaments, Albert Speer to carry out his order. Speer refuses. Because he sees that Hitler's gone mad essentially and Speer actually comes to Berlin and said, you know, right before the end in he sees he says I haven't done it. This shows that the bond between Hitler and his leadership is being broken

to a certain degree. It's almost to the very last days the crumbling third Reich that this link

finally starts to collapse. It less now lost control of the entire situation. He's now focused only on the Battle of Berlin. In the garden outside the right chancellor, the fear or reviews of formation of Hitler youth, who have been awarded the Knights Cross for bravery in battle. Now, many will be ordered to defend Berlin. The Hitler youth, 14 and 15 and 16-year-old boys. By any analysis, this is insane. It comes up out of the bunker and he pins metals

on these sort of beardless little boys. Any rational outlook or can see that Hitler is lost all attachment to reason. It may be he's thinking of the last lost war.

“But I think 1918 is enough of a obsession with Hitler that he is determined that Germany will”

not give in this time. There will be no surrender. There will be total war to the end. If Germany is going to go down, it's going to go down in a blaze of glory.

The British and Americans had agreed that Soviet forces should capture Berlin. But Stalin grows suspicious of Allied success.

“You have to remember that Stalin is naturally and not unreasonably deeply mistrustful.”

So when the Western Allies start pouring into Western Germany, far faster than anyone expects, Stalin fears that there may be something that he doesn't see.

Stalin is always paranoid that the Western powers are going to make a deal

with the Germans at the last minute against the Soviet Union against the communists. In Moscow, Stalin summons Marshall Georgie Zhukov, the hero of Stalin-Grad and Kursk. And Marshall Ivan Konya, who has led the first Ukrainian front of famed Red Army group throughout the war. He sits there with the map and he says, "Who's going to take Berlin?" So Stalin effectively sets up a kind of race between them to see who will take Berlin first.

“So this is a way of motivating his generals, because Stalin, of course, wanted to ensure”

that the Red Army would be the first to reach Berlin. And in an amazing scene, both Marshall's salute and leave the room and run to their cause to start the race to Berlin. By mid-April the Red Army is closing in on Berlin. Zhukov's forces approach from the east. Konya's troops will attack from the south. The final assault on Berlin begins with a ferocious artillery barrage.

Something like 9,000 guns rained down 1.2 million shells.

To put that in context, the British fired 1 million rounds of artillery onto the German trenches on the sum over like two weeks in World War I.

“And now the one day, more shells into the streets of Berlin.”

Zhukov's forces meet particularly fierce resistance in the sea low heights. And area the Germans consider the gates of Berlin. The Germans are dug in. They have no desire to surrender because they know they would be viewed as traitors. Berlin is meant to be a fortress city-fest St. Berlin. This means it has to be defended all costs. Hitler's order was up to keep fighting until there's nothing left.

The inaugural mid-April war has been lost. Hitler is now facing total defeat, and he wants to drag the entire German people into this total defeat. The population has been pressed into service. They've been building tank traps and digging ditches. But I don't think you can fool a bunch of people who are living in cities that are rubble. You hear the artillery in the distance that the Soviets are shooting at your city.

I mean, we're past the time of illusions. Your people at the end of the rope. The German troops that are left is this bizarre assembly of overage people that normally wouldn't be drafted or underage. You have a large number of very young members of the folk storm. They were divided into these tank hunting units where they were 12 and 13-year-old boys that were equipped with this very effective German anti-tank weapon called the Panzer Faust.

These basically one shot German bazookas and they're going to be in these little fighting holes

waiting for the Soviet tanks to come and take their one shot and then be crushed into pulp under the treads. The ideology of the Reich is going out the window. You don't know what you're fighting for anymore. You're now protecting your street and your friends and your family from the Marauders that are coming. If you're still in Berlin by April 1945, you're not going to get out. So you're fighting for your life.

On April 19th, Zhukov's troops break through the German lines at silo heights. Konjav enters the Nazi capital from the south. Battle of Berlin is brutal. It's an urban battlefield, which is the hardest sort of fighting and the most costly. It's impossible not to take every building you can't leave buildings behind you. You're under fire all the time from buildings on both sides. Large rounds of civilians are killed and

it's incredibly slow and dangerous. This moon scape of Berlin that's already been just

the city from all points. I mean literally all points. But in the end, this extraordinary battle

“the Soviet troops begin to converge on the chance to arrive. Beneath the Reich Chancellor,”

Hitler is sequestered in a bunker with his companion, Eva Braun, and surrounded by aids, secretaries, and Nazi party officials. He believes that the military and the German people have let him down. Hitler wants to keep the resistance going for as long as possible to inflict as much damage on the invading armies. However, he does not want to outlast outlive the war. He does not want to become a prisoner of war. He does not want to become some type of curiosity

exhibited by his enemies. And so he has to stay alive as long as possible, as close to the

bitter and as possible, so that there will never really be an idea of Nazi Germany in people's minds

“that does not include out of Hitler. He's going to go down in the Wagnerian fashion and take a world”

with him. On April 29th, Hitler is informed that his long-time ally, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, has been executed. His body put on display by Italian partisans. Mussolini has just been hung upside down in a gas station in northern Italy, along with his mistress Clara Patacci, where he's like moft and spat upon and vilified, the Hitler fears the same fate for himself. The Soviets are right outside the fewer bunker

he's listening to the shelling happening above him. And so, Hitler on April 30th, 1945, commits suicide in the fewer bunker, along with Eva Braun, and a city that has been reduced to rubble.

“When Hitler commits suicide, Stalin is woken in the night by Mussolini,”

off in Mussolini's Rukov system, Mussolini's Hitler's dad, and he's committed suicide in the road into the long-science. And then Stalin says something like, "That's the end of the past. That's the phone down." And goes back to sleep. On May 2nd, the Soviets raise their flag above the ruins of the Reichstag. On May 7th, German General Alfred Joodle surrenders to the western allies at Riem's friends.

A day later, the Germans officially surrendered to the Soviets. With the stroke of the pen Nazi Germany ceases to exist on May 8th, 1945. This is a solemn that a glorious hour. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany has surrendered to the United Nations. Here we are at the end of a brutal war against a brutal adversary in Europe.

And there was such great cost with so much exhaustion. It's almost impossible to imagine what that must have been like. Our adjusting is sober and seduced by a supreme consciousness as a terrible price we have paid to read the world of Hitler and his evil hands. The Hitler was the ultimate reckless gambler, risking everything, even Germany, even Europe.

Let us not forget the sorrow and the heartache, which today abide in the homes of so many of our neighbors.

The Second World War unlike the first is one in which the majority of the casualties actually

happened among the civilian population. A lot of it was simply because of the vast atrocities committed. The war left terrible scars on the landscape of Europe and the memories of the populations. In the popular mind, World War II tends to wrap up with the glory of being dead. It did not happen that way for the people who were fighting it. In the Pacific, there's no end in sight.

On the last Japanese division, as surrendered, unsunditionally, then only will our fighting job be done. Until that day, let no man abandon his post or slacking his effort. After VE Day, Europeans facing chaos and uncertainty begin the long work of putting their

As the United States fights its way to the Japanese homilons, a new weapon is tested in the deserts

“of New Mexico, a noiseless flash with a potential to change the world.”

World War II with Tom Hanks is produced by A&E Factsual Studios,

utopia limited, play-tone productions and back pocket studios in association with motion

“entertainment for the history channel. This episode was narrated by Tom Hanks and mixed by John Lloyd,”

additional voicing provided by me, Jeremy Reagan. From the history channel,

our executive producers are Eli Lera and Live Fidler. For play-tone, executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Getsman. For back pocket studios, our executive producer is Ben Dixing.