Transcript of Last Days of the Reich

The History Channel original podcast.

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, an assassin has almost succeeded in killing the Führer and perhaps changing the course of history. July 20th, 1944. A bomb hidden in a briefcase explodes at the Wolf's 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 2 meters to my right. I myself am completely unhurt. 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 hitherto.

Surviving the July 20th bombing 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 on 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 over armaments production.

Hitler and the Nazis mobilize even more men and tighten 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 thing is, the German public is not too happy about how the war goes on. They are aware that Germany may lose the war, but they think the only person who can bring this to a close is Hitler himself.

As summer turns to fall, Germany's strategic situation deteriorates, and every German is aware that the Allies demand unconditional surrender.

Hitler knows that that's an impossibility. Surrender means humiliation, being betrayed, ultimately executed.

Hitler also knows something about warfare. A passive 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 gonna fight this war till one of our goddamn 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 generals to the Wolf's Lair. He outlines a plan that will return his troops to the scene of his greatest triumph. The Ardennes.

The Ardennes Offensive of 1944 is going to involve multiple German armies across 100 miles of front. They're going to crash through what they have identified as a weakly held portion of the American line. They're going to drive through the Ardennes Forest, scene of the great victory of 1940, and if all goes well, cross the Meuse River and from there make it to Antwerp. Athorp is the major supply port for the entire Allied force in Europe. If the Germans take Athorp, it will be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

Hitler sees this as a way to divide the coalition, demoralize the coalition, and, and force the coalition to make separate pieces with him.

But Hitler will have to strip whole divisions from his 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 Gerd von Rundstedt says, "Antwerp? My God, if we even get to the Meuse 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, and he might be lucky again this time. So he decides to roll the dice.

Hitler will even eventually say that if this doesn't end well, "Ich seh' 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 Ardennes 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 5:30, it seems that hell has opened up. Every artillery piece the Germans own, heavy artillery, light artillery, rocket artillery, the famous Screaming Mimi's mortars. The American position in the Ardennes simply gets shredded.

Trees are thrown through the air with this, just shell after shell.

Allied forces, they're caught off guard. They are overwhelmed. They certainly didn't expect the Germans capable of launching something as big as the Ardennes Offensive.

Suddenly there's a couple of hundred thousand German infantry with 600 German panzers along a 100-mile front.

One of the 4 divisions holding the Allied line in the Ardennes is the newly arrived American 106th.

The 106th Division, who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, who have columns of German armor coming at them from all directions, are just overwhelmed by this and Within a matter of hours, 7,000 men are captured.

It's the biggest mass American surrender since Bataan.

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 time for a long time, they are on the offense 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 Malmedy.

The 1st SS Panzer Division, they've worked their way forward under their Battle Group Commander Jochen Peiper. Peiper's built for speed. He's been told to get ahead as fast as you possibly can towards the Meuse, cross the river, get to Antwerp. And he's just overrun a couple of rear echelon US detachments, supply depots, 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 US soldiers during World War II, 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 Ardennes 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 Ardennes Offensive, it seems for the Germans that they have regained the initiative.

The Wehrmacht's 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 has to determine whether or not this is a feint, right? Are the 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 divines the threat. He says, "This is more than a German feint.

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.

Yeah, the 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.

The Germans advance across a 60-mile front but are held up by the US 28th Infantry Division at the Belgian town of Bastogne.

Both sides know that Bastogne 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 resupply it before it's lost. So all of a sudden, Bastogne becomes this key road intersection, not unlike Gettysburg or Waterloo or Thermopylae. It is everything.

As the Germans attempt to surround Bastogne, Castone. Eisenhower calls on the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles.

Their big contribution so far is when they get dropped behind enemy lines before D-Day. They've basically been in the game 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 winter gear, the 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 18th. The 101st is trucked into Bastogne to relieve the battered 28th Division. The defense of this Belgian town is the key to the Allied effort against Adolf 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 they're standing in front of Bastogne 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 are determined to throw everything at Bastogne that they possibly have. There's an artillery bombardment. They are attacking from all sides. They're trying to push the Americans out.

For the 101st Airborne, the fighting around Bastogne 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, with almost just small arms— bazookas, 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 Bastogne, Eisenhower turns to his most aggressive commander, General George Patton and the Third Army.

Patton, you know, promises him 3 divisions in 2 days for Bastogne, which is something only George S. Patton would promise.

Promising 3 divisions, and that, you know, that's, that's 40,000+ men ready in 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 as if the Germans are really in control, and they send a message to the 101st Airborne. They say, You've got to surrender.

They're gonna give it to the acting division commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe. McAuliffe will read the thing, and he'll send back a one-word reply, and it says, "Nuts." Now, you gotta imagine, you know, some savvy airborne officer gets to go give this to the German delegation. Of course, they read "nuts," and they're like, "Uh, we don't understand the colloquialism." And so he gets to 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 Patton's coming. They're all coming. All we have to do is hold out a little longer. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade from the 18th century to the 20th. Original music and immersive sound design accompany 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 Bastogne, the men of the 101st Division have been under siege for almost a week. But on December 26th, Patton's Third Army reaches the outskirts.

Famously, it was the 4th Armored Division that is given the task of fighting up a narrow road corridor toward Bastogne. And on the day after Christmas, on December 26th, elements of C Company of the 37th Tank Battalion pull up to the Bastogne perimeter.

The Allies break the German lines, and now supplies will be able to flow flow in. And so for the Germans, the Ardennes Offensive breaks over Bastogne.

Even though Bastogne is relieved, fighting continues across the front for weeks. The United States Army suffers more casualties in the Battle of the Bulge than in any other battle in its history. But ultimately, Hitler's Ardennes Offensive is a failure.

For Hitler, the catastrophe of the Ardennes 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 in the north, all the way down to the Black Sea in the south.

The Soviet forces had advanced at incredible speed, incredible hard fighting, and Stalin had stopped them between October and, 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 cross into Germany. The Red Army has reached 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 the 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 show that you've got more confidence and that you are defending your home territory.

But basically the Russians come with such overwhelming force that the Germans can't stop them at 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 awaits them 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 maybe a fifth of the female population is raped.

This is the beginning of what 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 its march west towards Berlin.

Berlin is really the be-all end-all of the war. This is where we have the Reich Chancellery, where we have the Reichstag building, where Hitler has his bunker. Once the Red Army reaches Berlin, the war will be over and it will be a great victory and a great triumph.

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.

In 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 they approach the Rhine River.

The Rhine The German's last key strategic position to try and delay the inevitable of the Allies getting into Germany and defeating the Third Reich.

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 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.

Really out of nowhere, an advanced unit of Americans ends up at the Remagen Bridge. The key bridge across the Rhine. And the Germans, they fail 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 piers and then settles back into place. The Allies couldn't believe their luck, so they raced forward and they took the bridge. And they get across the Rhine 3 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 is absolutely furious about this.

Hitler is prone to rage at this time, and he demands that everyone responsible be immediately court-martialed. Not brought to Berlin to explain, but a drumhead court-martial in the field and shot.

Hitler retreats to Berlin. He orders the destruction of bridges, roads, railways, factories, anything that can aid the Allied advance.

This Nero 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 postwar 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, you know, gone mad essentially. And Speer actually comes to Berlin and said, you know, right before the end, and he says, I, I, I haven't done it.

This shows that the bond between Hitler and his leadership is has been broken to a certain degree. It's almost to the very last days, the crumbling Third Reich, that this link finally starts to collapse. Hitler has now lost control of the entire situation. He's now focused only on the Battle of Berlin.

In the garden outside the Reich Chancellery, the Führer reviews a formation of Hitler Youth who have been awarded the Knight's 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.

He comes up out of the bunker and he pins medals on these sort of beardless little boys. Any rational onlooker can see that Hitler has lost all, all, all all attachment to reason.

It may be he's thinking of the last lost war. But I think 1918 is enough of an 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.

Allied forces rapidly advance through the Ruhr Valley and into the heart of Germany. 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 Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the hero of Stalingrad and Kursk. And Marshal Ivan Konev, who has led the 1st Ukrainian Front, a famed Red Army group, throughout the war.

He sits there with the map and he says, "Who's gonna 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 marshals salute and leave the room and run to their cars to start the race to Berlin.

By mid-April, the Red Army is closing in on Berlin. Zhukov's forces approach from the east. Konev'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 Somme over like 2 weeks in World War I. And now, in one day, more shells into the streets of Berlin.

Zhukov's forces meet particularly fierce resistance in the Seelow Heights, an 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 the heart of the Third Reich. Be a fortress city, Festung Berlin. This means it has to be defended at all costs.

Hitler's order was to keep fighting until there's nothing left. They're not going to admit the war's 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, you know, 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, it's 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 Volkssturm, 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 Panzerfaust.

These basically one-shot German bazookas, and they're gonna be in these little fighting holes waiting for the Soviet tanks to come and take their one shot and then be, you know, crushed into pulp under the treads.

That the ideology of the Reich has gone 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. Konev enters the Nazi capital from the south.

Battle 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 amounts of civilians are killed, and it's incredibly slow and dangerous.

This moonscape of Berlin that's already been just shattered to rubble is now just being pounded by companies of Soviet infantry filtering into the city from all points. I mean, literally all points.

But in the end, this extraordinary battle, the Soviet troops begin to converge on, on the Chancellery.

Beneath the Reich Chancellery, Hitler is sequestered in a bunker with his companion Eva Braun and surrounded by aides, secretaries, militaries 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, to outlive the war. He does not want to become a prisoner of war. He does not want to become sometimes type of curiosity exhibited by his enemies.

And so he has to stay alive as long as possible, as close to the bitter end as possible, so that there will never really be an idea of Nazi Germany in people's minds that does not include Adolf Hitler. He's going to go down in Wagnerian fashion and take a world with him.

On April 29th, Hitler is informed that his longtime ally, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, has been executed, his body put on display by Italian partisans.

Mussolini has just been hung upside down at a gas station in northern Italy along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, where he's like mocked and spat upon and vilified. Hitler fears the same fate for himself.

The Soviets are right outside the Führerbunker. He's listening to the shelling happening above him.

And so Adolf Hitler, on April 30th, 1945, commits suicide in the Führerbunker along with Eva Braun in a city that has been reduced to rubble.

When Hitler commits suicide, Stalin is woken in the at night by Marshal Zhukov. And Marshal Zhukov says to him, "Marshal Stalin, I've got news. Hitler is dead and he's committed suicide in the ruins." And there's a long silence. And then Stalin says something like, "So that's the end of the bastard," puts 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 Jodl surrenders to the Western Allies at Reims, France. A day later, the Germans officially surrender to the Soviets.

With the stroke of the pen, Nazi Germany ceases to exist on May 8th, 1945.

This is a solemn but a glorious hour. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have 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 rejoicing is sober and subdued. By a supreme consciousness of the terrible price we have paid to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band.

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.

We must work to bind up the wounds of a suffering world. The West is free, but the East is still in bondage.

In the popular mind, World War II tends to wrap up with the glory of VE Day. It did not happen that way for the people who were fighting it.

In the Pacific, there's no end in sight.

When the last Japanese division Germany has surrendered unconditionally. Then only will our fighting job be done. Until that day, let no man abandon his post or slacken his efforts.

After VE Day, Europeans facing chaos and uncertainty begin the long work of putting their shattered world back together. In the Pacific, the war is reaching a crescendo. As the United States fights its way to the Japanese home islands, a new weapon is tested in the deserts of New Mexico. A noiseless flash with the potential to change the world.

World War II with Tom Hanks is produced by A&E Factual Studios Utopia Limited, Playtone 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 Lehrer and Liv Fidler. For Playtone, executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Getzman. For Back Pocket Studio. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.