Cold War (1998) s01e01 Episode Script
Comrades
Cinco, Cuatro, Tres, Dos, Uno, is on.
A cloud hides the sky, a nuclear shadow falls across the human future.
Midway through the 20th century, two superpowers prepared for a conflict which might have ended life on the planet.
Spring flowers the warm light of day the pleasures of life.
But under this American hotel was a hidden gate.
It led into an underworld.
This was the shelter for members of the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war.
Down here, the politicians would represent the dead and the dying in the world overhead.
For a handful of human beings, there was all they needed to wait out the nuclear winter.
But nerves might snap, then order would be kept by force.
The lost world above the shelter would become only a memory - a myth.
The living would come to envy the dead.
Episode 1 Comrades Berlin 1945.
Soviet troops had stormed the capital of Hitler's Reich.
American, British and French soldiers soon joined them in the ruins.
Churchill, Stalin and Truman were the official victors of the Second World War.
But a special triumph was Stalin's.
Russian power had pushed forward into the centre of Europe.
At Potsdam outside Berlin, the Big Three met to settle the post-war order.
Winston Churchill represented a Britain exhausted by war.
While Joseph Stalin, supreme ruler of the Soviet Union faced Harry S Truman, 33rd President of the United States.
It was 3 months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt that Harry Truman, once a Missouri haberdasher, set off for Potsdam.
It was his first overseas conference as Head of State.
GEORGE ELSEY Aide to Truman: "President Truman was unprepared for the Presidency in the sense of being fully briefed and up to the minute on all that was going on.
But as a Senator for the past ten years, as Chairman of one of the most important Congressional Committees of the war he was well aware of the major problems that a President had to face.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Foreign Ministry "Stalin was late for the conference.
He had a sort of heart attack.
Anyhow, he came one day later.
He visited Churchill and Truman, and immediately apologised for being late.
" The Soviet Union was devastated by war.
But Stalin remained a formidable figure.
Averell Harriman U.
S.
Ambassador to USSR: "I went up to him and I said, Marshall, this must be a great satisfaction to you after all the trials that you've been through and the tragedy that you've been through - to be here in Berlin.
' He looked at me and said, 'Tsar Alexander got to Paris!' Did Stalin want to push on to the Atlantic? Lenin, his predecessor, once hoped the Russian revolution would lead on to Communist world revolution.
It was then, after the first World War, in a clash of ideologies, communist and capitalist, that the Cold War had its origins.
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took ship to the European Peace Conference with his gospel for a better world - safe for small nations, sound for business.
But his peace settlement excluded Bolshevik Russia.
Many nations, including the United States and Britain, sent troops to fight the Russian Revolution.
Churchill, fresh from victory over Germany, urged: "Kill the Bolshie! Kiss the Hun! " The Intervention left Lenin and Stalin convinced that the West would seize any chance, embrace any ally, in order to destroy Communism.
DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer "I joined the Civil War as a so-called 'son of the regiment'.
We were young boys.
We knew we were fighting for the people - the poor people.
" There was widespread support for the Red Army.
The foreign troops soon withdrew.
The Bolshevik Reds defeated the Whites, their Russian enemies.
IVAN LEGCHILIN - Briansk Resident "The White Guards who had left Russia were encircling us.
There was starvation.
It was a time when sausages were made from human flesh.
" In Russia, famine followed Civil War.
The victorious Bolsheviks turned away from the outside world to build up the economy at home.
America also turned inwards.
People wanted the good life, and no more foreign entanglements.
Then, in 1929, Wall Street crashed.
The Great Depression began.
Suddenly, across the richest nation on earth, millions faced destitution.
American politics shifted to the Left.
1933 - Franklin Roosevelt swearing-in ceremony: "I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.
So help me God.
" Roosevelt promised a New Deal for Americans.
He would manage capitalism for the public good.
And in a change of policy, he recognised the Soviet Union.
GEORGE KENNAN - US State Department "One has to remember that we had been, I think, for sixteen years without any representation in Russia - no no relations between the two governments - and FDR was the one who decided to try to break that log-jam.
" Stalin's industrial drive soon attracted American experts.
Some brought their families.
While Soviet muscles strained to raise dams and blast furnaces, American corporations supplied skilled engineers on contract.
Communist ideology didn't worry them.
Unlike the Russians, they were free to go when the job was over.
Stalin was master of the economic plan - a tyrant who tolerated no failure and no criticism.
Privately owned fields became collectivised prairies.
The cost of collectivisation was the murder of millions of peasants and renewed famine.
The truth was kept secret.
DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer "People didn't really know all about the bad things.
All the achievements were put down to his initiatives.
Those who knew otherwise would shut up.
They knew if they said anything, they would be imprisoned and shot.
It was a regime of terror.
" This was socialism in one country.
Heavy industry's output doubled in ten years.
GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "Stalin felt that in order to get public support for the things he was doing, which were very harsh policies, he had to convince a great many of the people, the common people and the Party members, that Russia was confronted with a conspiracy on the part of the major capitalist powers to undermine the Soviet government by espionage.
" Lenin's old comrades confessed to imaginary crimes.
Andrei Vyshinski at Moscow show trials: "The mask of betrayal has been ripped off their faces.
Let your verdict sound like the refreshing and purifying thunder of Soviet punishment.
" GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "I could see them there, with their pale faces, their twitching lips, their evasive eyes.
These were the faces of men who had been, if not tortured, then terrified in many ways and often by threats to take it out on their families if they didn't confess.
" The Moscow trials tore away some foreign illusions.
Stalin's Soviet Union was revealed as a police state, not a workers' paradise.
But even in America, thousands stayed loyal to the Communist dream.
In the 1930s, Moscow called for a Popular Front of the Left against Hitler and Fascism.
Fighting the spread of Fascism became the great cause for socialist and communist alike.
Doubts about Stalin were repressed.
In Spain, volunteers from all over the world rallied to oppose the Fascist rebellion launched by Franco.
Franco was armed by Mussolini and Hitler.
In Germany, the Nazis were rearming.
Hitler did not hide his ambitions to dominate Europe, and then the world.
Under these glorious banners we will move to victory! Roosevelt wanted to keep out of any European War.
FDR: "Despite what happens in continents overseas, the United States of America shall and must remain, as long ago the father of our country prayed that it would remain, unentangled and free!" Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, trusted that Hitler would listen to reason.
In September 1938, Chamberlain flew to Munich.
War seemed close, as Germany prepared to invade Czechoslovakia.
But Chamberlain went determined to appease Hitler.
At Munich, Britain, France and Italy licensed Hitler to seize the Czech Sudetenland, with its German minority.
Czechoslovakia's allies had abandoned her.
In Moscow, Stalin drew lessons from Munich.
The western democracies, he concluded, would never stand up to Hitler.
Stalin planned a desperate stroke of diplomacy.
The fascist and Communist arch-enemies were about to embrace.
Hitler flew his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov.
The West was appalled.
SERGO BERIA - Son of Secret Police Chief "After the pact was signed, I heard this from Stalin's lips - he was often at our home.
He said, 'We need to win time - at least two years' time.
Only then will the Soviet Union be able to defend itself against Germany.
'" September 1939.
Hitler invaded Poland.
Britain and France declared war on the aggressor - too late to save Poland.
Defeated, Poland was wiped off the map.
Germany and Russia had conspired against her.
In Eastern Poland, the communist occupiers were supervised by Nikita Khrushchev.
They were taking over provinces once ruled by the Tsars.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact left Stalin free to grab Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The Baltic States were back under Russian domination.
Stalin had already outraged the world by invading Finland.
FDR Speech, 1940 "The Soviet Union is run by a dictatorship.
A dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.
It has allied itself with another dictatorship and it has invaded a neighbour so infinitesimally small that it could do no conceivable possible harm to the Soviet Union.
" In 1940, Hitler struck West.
By mid-1941, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia and Greece had been added to his conquests.
Churchill's Britain held out alone.
On June the 22nd 1941, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
It was a day that changed history.
Hitler meant to win a vast colony for Germany.
Instead, his act would bring Russian power into the heart of Europe, only 4 years later.
The future outlines of the Cold War began to form as the Nazi tanks surged forward.
The Red Army fell back in retreat.
LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army Volunteer My mother said, 'Go with the soldiers'.
The soldiers were retreating - injured, covered in blood.
I only had my overcoat and my shoes - that's all.
Soviet citizens rallied.
Abroad the Soviet Union won unexpected friends.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "Churchill, in spite of his past, anti-Soviet feelings, at once welcomed Stalin's Russia as an ally.
He did say to his friends, of course, that he'd have welcomed the devil if the devil had turned up in order to help him defeat Hitler.
" FDR speech to Congress, 1941 "The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
" America declared war on Japan.
Days later, with the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow, Hitler rashly declared war on the United States, making Russians and Americans allies.
The German thrust at Moscow was blocked.
Stalin broadcast to the nation.
Stalin speech "People with the morals of animals have the impudence to call for the annihilation of the Russian nation.
The Germans want to win a war of annihilation.
Well if the Germans want a war of annihilation, that's what they'll get.
" Stalin already looked beyond victory.
He told the British that post-war Soviet boundaries must include the Baltic States and part of Poland.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "When I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden in December 1941, when the Germans were still only 19 kilometres away from us as we talked, the very first thing that Stalin said at that meeting was, "Mr Eden, I want to have your assurance that at the end of the war, you will support my just claim to all these areas you see".
And Eden was absolutely taken aback.
He said, "But oughtn't we to be thinking about how we win the war?" "No, no", said Stalin, "I would like to have this clear at the very beginning".
So Eden obviously had to say, well he had no authority to discuss how the war was to end.
" American aid to Russia concentrated on guns and trucks.
But Stalin and his people cried out for more - a second front - an Allied landing in Western Europe, to relieve Soviet suffering.
YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer "I saw the atrocities.
I heard the noises of war.
Although it's 50 years ago, I can still hear the noises of war - the shells, the bombing, people screaming, women crying.
" For 6 months, battle raged at Stalingrad.
Hitler sent half a million men.
The Germans were trapped and forced to surrender.
The tide of war was turning.
Western opinion cheered on the Red Army, their comrades in arms.
Henry Wallace US Vice President: "The Russians have thus far lost in the common cause at least fifty per cent more men - killed wounded and missing - than all the rest of the European allies put together.
And moreover, they have killed, wounded and captured at least twenty times as many Germans as the rest of the Allies.
" The Nazis sought ways to split the alliance against them.
At Katyn in Western Russia, they dug up the corpses of more than 4000 Polish officers.
Germany announced - truthfully, as it turned out - that the officers had been murdered by Soviet security troops in 1940.
Britain and America chose to ignore this evidence of Stalin's methods.
In 1943, with their alliance still intact, the Big Three prepared to meet at Tehran, in Persia.
ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence "I was summoned to Tehran to help them prepare for the conference.
Mr Roosevelt is supposed to arrive.
We had a code name for it.
And so I called the airfield, and sure enough I spoke to Admiral Leahy.
I said, 'Are you coming?' And he said, 'No, we're not coming.
We're going to the American Mission.
' And when I said that to Molotov, I thought he'd just fry me alive.
He said, 'What!' and he'd get all the four letter words I'd never heard in my life were spilled over me.
He said, 'Who the hell are you here anyway? Who? How did you get in here? What do you know? What am I going to say to Stalin?'" Stalin persuaded Roosevelt that his safety was best assured by residence at the Soviet Embassy.
The Embassy had been specially prepared for his visit - it was bugged.
SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence "Stalin told me that the task he was putting to our group, and particularly to me, was ethically very unattractive.
However, the position of the USSR was so serious that he had to know what our allies were thinking.
" Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office "Stalin was very skillful in dealing with Roosevelt and Churchill.
Even Churchill began to quite like him, you know, and talk about Uncle Joe, you see, which was quite an affectionate term.
And they both had this idea that if you treated him the right way The phrase was 'if you treat Uncle Joe like a member of our club, perhaps one day he will behave like a member of our club.
'" SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence "Every day at eight in the morning, I had to go to Stalin.
I went with all the transcripts, in Russian and in English.
For about an hour Stalin examined in great detail all of Roosevelt's conversations.
" GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "I don't think FDR was capable of conceiving of a man of such profound iniquity, coupled with enormous strategic cleverness, as Stalin.
He had never met such a creature.
And Stalin was an excellent actor - quiet, affable, reasonable.
He sent them all away thinking - this really is a great leader.
" The allies agreed that post-war Eastern Europe would be a Soviet zone of influence.
Stalin would annex Eastern Poland.
As compensation, the Poles would get a slice of Eastern Germany.
Poland was offered no choice.
Together, the Big Three mapped out the future.
D-Day the 6th of June 1944.
The biggest sea-borne invasion in history lands in France.
This was the second front Stalin longed for.
On the Eastern front, Russian armies continued to advance.
The Nazi road back out of Russia.
Every rail line blown up as they flee.
Of course Nazi propaganda now stresses the masterful retreat.
The Soviet flag unfurled in triumph over Sarni, Tarnapol, Odessa, as the Russian tide of victory rolls westwards towards Germany.
As the Red Army approached Warsaw, the Polish Resistance seized the city from the Germans.
The Poles hoped to liberate themselves, and confront Stalin with an independent Poland.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "The Polish Home Army rose, to take over Warsaw when the Germans left and before the Russians arrived and the Russians had encouraged them to do this.
And then the Russian Army stopped on the Vistula.
" Stalin claimed that his armies needed to pause outside Warsaw and re-group.
The Germans counter-attacked.
GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "The Polish Freedom fighters were abandoned by the Russians, who were sitting with their forces across the river, and could easily have gone in to help them.
I thought for various reasons that that was the point at which American policy should have changed.
" The Poles held out alone against the Germans for 63 days.
When the Rising collapsed in slaughter and Warsaw was destroyed, Poland blamed the Soviet Union.
Then with Poland under Soviet occupation, Churchill and Stalin got down to power-broking in Moscow.
One night, Churchill scribbled down a formula for carving up Europe: - Romania - Soviet influence 90%.
- Greece - 90% British and American.
- Yugoslavia and Hungary - 50/50.
- Bulgaria - 75% Russian.
Stalin ticked his agreement.
Churchill wondered if the note should be destroyed.
Stalin told him: 'No, you keep it!' Yalta in the Crimea.
Churchill wanted the next Big Three meeting to be held in the West, but Stalin insisted on a Soviet meeting place.
ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence "Stalin wanted to please them.
And I will tell you, I only saw how hard people worked with everything devastated around, bringing crystal glass, bringing white napkins and tablecloths and furniture.
Even when Mr Winston Churchill said once, you know, sort of, 'Oh I wish I had a lemon with my gin and tonic' - the next day they found a lemon tree.
" The journey was torment for the sick Roosevelt.
His polio and the strains of war leadership dragged him down.
In the former Tsar's palace, the leaders faced a heavy agenda.
They must decide how to govern a defeated Germany.
And they wanted to get the Polish question settled.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta "Eastern Europe, important though it was, was only one of many other things - first of all winning the war and then occupying Germany, secondly seeing to the war against Japan, thirdly the post war arrangements.
" HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Yalta "Stalin knew that the war was won.
After all, the Russians were only 40 miles from Berlin at that time.
They were on the point of capturing Budapest.
They'd swept through parts of Eastern Europe, not the whole lot yet.
" ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence He was a very shrewd negotiator.
He doesn't look you in the eye; he's just sort of smoking - he was a chain smoker - and he was sort of smoking, and you think that probably he's not listening, you know.
Then all of a sudden he would raise his fingers and say 'Ah'.
HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Yalta "The terrible mistake that Roosevelt made was that he was trying to ingratiate himself into Stalin's favour by stressing the divisions between Churchill and himself, so he made it quite clear to Stalin that there were real divisions as well as imaginary ones.
" Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office "For us, of course, the major topic was the future of Eastern Europe and above all, Poland.
And on that Stalin obviously was bound to get what he wanted because the Red Army was in occupation of the whole area including Poland, they had already gone through Poland into Germany by the time we were in Yalta.
" By now, the Balkans and most of Poland were in Soviet hands; so too was much of Czechoslovakia and Hungary battlefield facts that diplomacy could not alter.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta "We got at Yalta two diplomatic documents which on paper were perfectly satisfactory.
I mean that there would be a coalition government in Poland including people from the West, and there would be free elections in Poland.
And then there was a declaration covering the whole of Eastern Europe called the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which again was to be rebuilt on the basis of democracy and free elections and all the rest of it of course, phrases which the Russian used but interpreted rather differently.
" Stalin promised that the Polish elections would be free and fair.
Tired of arguing, the others took him at his word.
Germany would be governed jointly by the victorious Allies.
And Stalin secretly pledged to join the war against Japan.
Churchill was confident.
Winston Churchill farewell address at Yalta: "We have all bound ourselves to work together, to make sure that there is increasing happiness and prosperity for the broad masses of the people in every land no longer subject to the hard strains of war.
There is the prospect which has now opened before us.
" FDR funeral, April 1945 "The Funeral Specia heads for Washington.
An honour guard of servicemen keeps vigil beside the flag-draped casket.
At villages, crossroads, way stations, the people who were so close to his heart stand silently, expressive of the devotion Franklin Roosevelt inspired.
" As the President was buried, the last battles in Europe were ending.
American troops were taking over German towns without resistance.
AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division "They were glad to see the American troops because they had a terrible fear of having Russians occupy or come into their area.
" As the Allies advanced they discovered the full horror of German crimes.
The Jews had been the Nazis' special target.
But every nation was mourning over mass graves.
Fear of a German revival, would overshadow the first years of peace.
Soon Soviet and American troops would meet in Germany.
AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division "Our lieutenant came in one day and said he'd got he wants to get a patrol together - we're going to go and see if we can find some Russians.
Well, none of us were too eager to go on that patrol really, because we realised the end of the war was imminent and we didn't know what was out there.
You know, we had gotten this far, why stick our necks out again?" JIM KANE - US 69th Infantry Division "We kept going and we kept running into no resistance and everybody was retiring and surrendering and we just, I guess, were lucky.
We got to the Elbe river and we saw the Russians on the other side.
" LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division "I told my girlfriend, "You stand there and I'll stay here".
We waited for them to come ashore.
We could see their faces.
They looked like ordinary people.
We had imagined something different.
Well, they were Americans!" AL ARONSON "I guess we didn't know what to expect from the Russians, but when you looked at them and examined them, you couldn't tell whether, you know ? If you put an American uniform on them, they could have been American!" LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division "We didn't know who we were kissing.
We were just kissing everyone.
" ALEXANDER GORDEYEV - Red Army 58th Guards Division "I think that for us the war was over.
We washed our feet in the Elbe river.
We washed our faces and hands.
We thought that now we'd met the Americans, the war must be over.
" Two days later, the movie cameras were ready.
The moment of history, the meeting of ordinary soldiers from Russia and America, was re-run, dramatically, with a bigger cast.
By allied agreement, the capture of Berlin was left to the Russians.
April 1945.
The Red Army launches its final offensive towards Berlin.
The war cost the Soviet Union 27 million lives nearly 40 times American and British losses put together.
The Red Flag destined to fly over the Reichstag was a home made affair.
YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer "We used tablecloths.
One night, I helped my friend, a Jewish tailor, sew them into three flags.
We took them to Berlin.
I found three soldiers and we climbed up.
The first photograph I took was of the flag I'd brought from Moscow the Soviet flag over Berlin.
" As Hitler's Reich fell apart, hundreds gathered in San Francisco to found the United Nations Organisation.
The Soviet delegation was led by the man who had signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact - Molotov.
VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, San Francisco "Molotov was very nervous because he felt that the war is coming to an end, victory would soon be here, and here he is in America.
That's why everyday he sent cables to Stalin, 'When may I return?'" As the San Francisco meeting continued, news came of Germany's surrender.
US President Harry Truman, May 1945 "General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations.
The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.
" As the fighting stopped, the Soviet front line had cut Europe in two, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
The war in the Pacific dragged on.
American marines had stormed Iwo-Jima.
It was a foretaste of how difficult and bloody the final invasion of Japan might be.
Potsdam, in conquered Germany - site of the third allied summit.
GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "The attitude in Washington toward the Soviet Union had begun to change well before Potsdam.
Storm signals were already flying.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "Truman declared officially and quite sharply that the declaration on Europe adopted at Yalta is not being carried out in some countries.
Governments are being set up which the United States will not recognise.
" HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Potsdam "I'd call the Potsdam conference a bad-tempered conference, because apart from the ceremonial occasions, it was really very bad-tempered.
" The allies couldn't easily agree about a German Peace Treaty or on how to carry out agreements reached at Yalta.
Stalin confirmed that his troops were ready for war with Japan.
But the day before the conference, America had successfully tested an atomic bomb.
GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "President Truman, after consulting with the British, and with his own military advisers, decided that he would tell Stalin that we had a powerful new weapon, without identifying it as a nuclear weapon.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "Truman repeated what he was saying about the new weapon.
He thought Stalin didn't hear or didn't understand him.
Stalin said, 'Okay, thank you for the information'.
" GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "There was some question amongst the Americans as to whether Stalin had really understood what Truman was saying.
As we now know, they knew all about the Manhattan Project through espionage and their own agents.
" With the conference still in session, news arrived from London that Clement Attlee had been elected British Prime Minister.
VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "I had a feeling that the biggest sensation for Molotov and Stalin was not the bomb explosion, but the fact that Churchill was not re-elected in England.
" Another photo-call.
The world must see that the Allies were still united.
On August the 2nd the conference ended and the statesmen went home.
Four days later, America dropped an atomic bomb on the city and people of Hiroshima.
Three days after that, another was dropped on Nagasaki.
Soon the human race would be able to destroy itself in a day.
At each Cold War crisis to come, the nuclear shadow threatened.
A cloud hides the sky, a nuclear shadow falls across the human future.
Midway through the 20th century, two superpowers prepared for a conflict which might have ended life on the planet.
Spring flowers the warm light of day the pleasures of life.
But under this American hotel was a hidden gate.
It led into an underworld.
This was the shelter for members of the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war.
Down here, the politicians would represent the dead and the dying in the world overhead.
For a handful of human beings, there was all they needed to wait out the nuclear winter.
But nerves might snap, then order would be kept by force.
The lost world above the shelter would become only a memory - a myth.
The living would come to envy the dead.
Episode 1 Comrades Berlin 1945.
Soviet troops had stormed the capital of Hitler's Reich.
American, British and French soldiers soon joined them in the ruins.
Churchill, Stalin and Truman were the official victors of the Second World War.
But a special triumph was Stalin's.
Russian power had pushed forward into the centre of Europe.
At Potsdam outside Berlin, the Big Three met to settle the post-war order.
Winston Churchill represented a Britain exhausted by war.
While Joseph Stalin, supreme ruler of the Soviet Union faced Harry S Truman, 33rd President of the United States.
It was 3 months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt that Harry Truman, once a Missouri haberdasher, set off for Potsdam.
It was his first overseas conference as Head of State.
GEORGE ELSEY Aide to Truman: "President Truman was unprepared for the Presidency in the sense of being fully briefed and up to the minute on all that was going on.
But as a Senator for the past ten years, as Chairman of one of the most important Congressional Committees of the war he was well aware of the major problems that a President had to face.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Foreign Ministry "Stalin was late for the conference.
He had a sort of heart attack.
Anyhow, he came one day later.
He visited Churchill and Truman, and immediately apologised for being late.
" The Soviet Union was devastated by war.
But Stalin remained a formidable figure.
Averell Harriman U.
S.
Ambassador to USSR: "I went up to him and I said, Marshall, this must be a great satisfaction to you after all the trials that you've been through and the tragedy that you've been through - to be here in Berlin.
' He looked at me and said, 'Tsar Alexander got to Paris!' Did Stalin want to push on to the Atlantic? Lenin, his predecessor, once hoped the Russian revolution would lead on to Communist world revolution.
It was then, after the first World War, in a clash of ideologies, communist and capitalist, that the Cold War had its origins.
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took ship to the European Peace Conference with his gospel for a better world - safe for small nations, sound for business.
But his peace settlement excluded Bolshevik Russia.
Many nations, including the United States and Britain, sent troops to fight the Russian Revolution.
Churchill, fresh from victory over Germany, urged: "Kill the Bolshie! Kiss the Hun! " The Intervention left Lenin and Stalin convinced that the West would seize any chance, embrace any ally, in order to destroy Communism.
DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer "I joined the Civil War as a so-called 'son of the regiment'.
We were young boys.
We knew we were fighting for the people - the poor people.
" There was widespread support for the Red Army.
The foreign troops soon withdrew.
The Bolshevik Reds defeated the Whites, their Russian enemies.
IVAN LEGCHILIN - Briansk Resident "The White Guards who had left Russia were encircling us.
There was starvation.
It was a time when sausages were made from human flesh.
" In Russia, famine followed Civil War.
The victorious Bolsheviks turned away from the outside world to build up the economy at home.
America also turned inwards.
People wanted the good life, and no more foreign entanglements.
Then, in 1929, Wall Street crashed.
The Great Depression began.
Suddenly, across the richest nation on earth, millions faced destitution.
American politics shifted to the Left.
1933 - Franklin Roosevelt swearing-in ceremony: "I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.
So help me God.
" Roosevelt promised a New Deal for Americans.
He would manage capitalism for the public good.
And in a change of policy, he recognised the Soviet Union.
GEORGE KENNAN - US State Department "One has to remember that we had been, I think, for sixteen years without any representation in Russia - no no relations between the two governments - and FDR was the one who decided to try to break that log-jam.
" Stalin's industrial drive soon attracted American experts.
Some brought their families.
While Soviet muscles strained to raise dams and blast furnaces, American corporations supplied skilled engineers on contract.
Communist ideology didn't worry them.
Unlike the Russians, they were free to go when the job was over.
Stalin was master of the economic plan - a tyrant who tolerated no failure and no criticism.
Privately owned fields became collectivised prairies.
The cost of collectivisation was the murder of millions of peasants and renewed famine.
The truth was kept secret.
DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer "People didn't really know all about the bad things.
All the achievements were put down to his initiatives.
Those who knew otherwise would shut up.
They knew if they said anything, they would be imprisoned and shot.
It was a regime of terror.
" This was socialism in one country.
Heavy industry's output doubled in ten years.
GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "Stalin felt that in order to get public support for the things he was doing, which were very harsh policies, he had to convince a great many of the people, the common people and the Party members, that Russia was confronted with a conspiracy on the part of the major capitalist powers to undermine the Soviet government by espionage.
" Lenin's old comrades confessed to imaginary crimes.
Andrei Vyshinski at Moscow show trials: "The mask of betrayal has been ripped off their faces.
Let your verdict sound like the refreshing and purifying thunder of Soviet punishment.
" GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "I could see them there, with their pale faces, their twitching lips, their evasive eyes.
These were the faces of men who had been, if not tortured, then terrified in many ways and often by threats to take it out on their families if they didn't confess.
" The Moscow trials tore away some foreign illusions.
Stalin's Soviet Union was revealed as a police state, not a workers' paradise.
But even in America, thousands stayed loyal to the Communist dream.
In the 1930s, Moscow called for a Popular Front of the Left against Hitler and Fascism.
Fighting the spread of Fascism became the great cause for socialist and communist alike.
Doubts about Stalin were repressed.
In Spain, volunteers from all over the world rallied to oppose the Fascist rebellion launched by Franco.
Franco was armed by Mussolini and Hitler.
In Germany, the Nazis were rearming.
Hitler did not hide his ambitions to dominate Europe, and then the world.
Under these glorious banners we will move to victory! Roosevelt wanted to keep out of any European War.
FDR: "Despite what happens in continents overseas, the United States of America shall and must remain, as long ago the father of our country prayed that it would remain, unentangled and free!" Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, trusted that Hitler would listen to reason.
In September 1938, Chamberlain flew to Munich.
War seemed close, as Germany prepared to invade Czechoslovakia.
But Chamberlain went determined to appease Hitler.
At Munich, Britain, France and Italy licensed Hitler to seize the Czech Sudetenland, with its German minority.
Czechoslovakia's allies had abandoned her.
In Moscow, Stalin drew lessons from Munich.
The western democracies, he concluded, would never stand up to Hitler.
Stalin planned a desperate stroke of diplomacy.
The fascist and Communist arch-enemies were about to embrace.
Hitler flew his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov.
The West was appalled.
SERGO BERIA - Son of Secret Police Chief "After the pact was signed, I heard this from Stalin's lips - he was often at our home.
He said, 'We need to win time - at least two years' time.
Only then will the Soviet Union be able to defend itself against Germany.
'" September 1939.
Hitler invaded Poland.
Britain and France declared war on the aggressor - too late to save Poland.
Defeated, Poland was wiped off the map.
Germany and Russia had conspired against her.
In Eastern Poland, the communist occupiers were supervised by Nikita Khrushchev.
They were taking over provinces once ruled by the Tsars.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact left Stalin free to grab Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The Baltic States were back under Russian domination.
Stalin had already outraged the world by invading Finland.
FDR Speech, 1940 "The Soviet Union is run by a dictatorship.
A dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.
It has allied itself with another dictatorship and it has invaded a neighbour so infinitesimally small that it could do no conceivable possible harm to the Soviet Union.
" In 1940, Hitler struck West.
By mid-1941, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia and Greece had been added to his conquests.
Churchill's Britain held out alone.
On June the 22nd 1941, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
It was a day that changed history.
Hitler meant to win a vast colony for Germany.
Instead, his act would bring Russian power into the heart of Europe, only 4 years later.
The future outlines of the Cold War began to form as the Nazi tanks surged forward.
The Red Army fell back in retreat.
LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army Volunteer My mother said, 'Go with the soldiers'.
The soldiers were retreating - injured, covered in blood.
I only had my overcoat and my shoes - that's all.
Soviet citizens rallied.
Abroad the Soviet Union won unexpected friends.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "Churchill, in spite of his past, anti-Soviet feelings, at once welcomed Stalin's Russia as an ally.
He did say to his friends, of course, that he'd have welcomed the devil if the devil had turned up in order to help him defeat Hitler.
" FDR speech to Congress, 1941 "The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
" America declared war on Japan.
Days later, with the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow, Hitler rashly declared war on the United States, making Russians and Americans allies.
The German thrust at Moscow was blocked.
Stalin broadcast to the nation.
Stalin speech "People with the morals of animals have the impudence to call for the annihilation of the Russian nation.
The Germans want to win a war of annihilation.
Well if the Germans want a war of annihilation, that's what they'll get.
" Stalin already looked beyond victory.
He told the British that post-war Soviet boundaries must include the Baltic States and part of Poland.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "When I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden in December 1941, when the Germans were still only 19 kilometres away from us as we talked, the very first thing that Stalin said at that meeting was, "Mr Eden, I want to have your assurance that at the end of the war, you will support my just claim to all these areas you see".
And Eden was absolutely taken aback.
He said, "But oughtn't we to be thinking about how we win the war?" "No, no", said Stalin, "I would like to have this clear at the very beginning".
So Eden obviously had to say, well he had no authority to discuss how the war was to end.
" American aid to Russia concentrated on guns and trucks.
But Stalin and his people cried out for more - a second front - an Allied landing in Western Europe, to relieve Soviet suffering.
YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer "I saw the atrocities.
I heard the noises of war.
Although it's 50 years ago, I can still hear the noises of war - the shells, the bombing, people screaming, women crying.
" For 6 months, battle raged at Stalingrad.
Hitler sent half a million men.
The Germans were trapped and forced to surrender.
The tide of war was turning.
Western opinion cheered on the Red Army, their comrades in arms.
Henry Wallace US Vice President: "The Russians have thus far lost in the common cause at least fifty per cent more men - killed wounded and missing - than all the rest of the European allies put together.
And moreover, they have killed, wounded and captured at least twenty times as many Germans as the rest of the Allies.
" The Nazis sought ways to split the alliance against them.
At Katyn in Western Russia, they dug up the corpses of more than 4000 Polish officers.
Germany announced - truthfully, as it turned out - that the officers had been murdered by Soviet security troops in 1940.
Britain and America chose to ignore this evidence of Stalin's methods.
In 1943, with their alliance still intact, the Big Three prepared to meet at Tehran, in Persia.
ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence "I was summoned to Tehran to help them prepare for the conference.
Mr Roosevelt is supposed to arrive.
We had a code name for it.
And so I called the airfield, and sure enough I spoke to Admiral Leahy.
I said, 'Are you coming?' And he said, 'No, we're not coming.
We're going to the American Mission.
' And when I said that to Molotov, I thought he'd just fry me alive.
He said, 'What!' and he'd get all the four letter words I'd never heard in my life were spilled over me.
He said, 'Who the hell are you here anyway? Who? How did you get in here? What do you know? What am I going to say to Stalin?'" Stalin persuaded Roosevelt that his safety was best assured by residence at the Soviet Embassy.
The Embassy had been specially prepared for his visit - it was bugged.
SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence "Stalin told me that the task he was putting to our group, and particularly to me, was ethically very unattractive.
However, the position of the USSR was so serious that he had to know what our allies were thinking.
" Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office "Stalin was very skillful in dealing with Roosevelt and Churchill.
Even Churchill began to quite like him, you know, and talk about Uncle Joe, you see, which was quite an affectionate term.
And they both had this idea that if you treated him the right way The phrase was 'if you treat Uncle Joe like a member of our club, perhaps one day he will behave like a member of our club.
'" SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence "Every day at eight in the morning, I had to go to Stalin.
I went with all the transcripts, in Russian and in English.
For about an hour Stalin examined in great detail all of Roosevelt's conversations.
" GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "I don't think FDR was capable of conceiving of a man of such profound iniquity, coupled with enormous strategic cleverness, as Stalin.
He had never met such a creature.
And Stalin was an excellent actor - quiet, affable, reasonable.
He sent them all away thinking - this really is a great leader.
" The allies agreed that post-war Eastern Europe would be a Soviet zone of influence.
Stalin would annex Eastern Poland.
As compensation, the Poles would get a slice of Eastern Germany.
Poland was offered no choice.
Together, the Big Three mapped out the future.
D-Day the 6th of June 1944.
The biggest sea-borne invasion in history lands in France.
This was the second front Stalin longed for.
On the Eastern front, Russian armies continued to advance.
The Nazi road back out of Russia.
Every rail line blown up as they flee.
Of course Nazi propaganda now stresses the masterful retreat.
The Soviet flag unfurled in triumph over Sarni, Tarnapol, Odessa, as the Russian tide of victory rolls westwards towards Germany.
As the Red Army approached Warsaw, the Polish Resistance seized the city from the Germans.
The Poles hoped to liberate themselves, and confront Stalin with an independent Poland.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS British Foreign Office: "The Polish Home Army rose, to take over Warsaw when the Germans left and before the Russians arrived and the Russians had encouraged them to do this.
And then the Russian Army stopped on the Vistula.
" Stalin claimed that his armies needed to pause outside Warsaw and re-group.
The Germans counter-attacked.
GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow "The Polish Freedom fighters were abandoned by the Russians, who were sitting with their forces across the river, and could easily have gone in to help them.
I thought for various reasons that that was the point at which American policy should have changed.
" The Poles held out alone against the Germans for 63 days.
When the Rising collapsed in slaughter and Warsaw was destroyed, Poland blamed the Soviet Union.
Then with Poland under Soviet occupation, Churchill and Stalin got down to power-broking in Moscow.
One night, Churchill scribbled down a formula for carving up Europe: - Romania - Soviet influence 90%.
- Greece - 90% British and American.
- Yugoslavia and Hungary - 50/50.
- Bulgaria - 75% Russian.
Stalin ticked his agreement.
Churchill wondered if the note should be destroyed.
Stalin told him: 'No, you keep it!' Yalta in the Crimea.
Churchill wanted the next Big Three meeting to be held in the West, but Stalin insisted on a Soviet meeting place.
ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence "Stalin wanted to please them.
And I will tell you, I only saw how hard people worked with everything devastated around, bringing crystal glass, bringing white napkins and tablecloths and furniture.
Even when Mr Winston Churchill said once, you know, sort of, 'Oh I wish I had a lemon with my gin and tonic' - the next day they found a lemon tree.
" The journey was torment for the sick Roosevelt.
His polio and the strains of war leadership dragged him down.
In the former Tsar's palace, the leaders faced a heavy agenda.
They must decide how to govern a defeated Germany.
And they wanted to get the Polish question settled.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta "Eastern Europe, important though it was, was only one of many other things - first of all winning the war and then occupying Germany, secondly seeing to the war against Japan, thirdly the post war arrangements.
" HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Yalta "Stalin knew that the war was won.
After all, the Russians were only 40 miles from Berlin at that time.
They were on the point of capturing Budapest.
They'd swept through parts of Eastern Europe, not the whole lot yet.
" ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence He was a very shrewd negotiator.
He doesn't look you in the eye; he's just sort of smoking - he was a chain smoker - and he was sort of smoking, and you think that probably he's not listening, you know.
Then all of a sudden he would raise his fingers and say 'Ah'.
HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Yalta "The terrible mistake that Roosevelt made was that he was trying to ingratiate himself into Stalin's favour by stressing the divisions between Churchill and himself, so he made it quite clear to Stalin that there were real divisions as well as imaginary ones.
" Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office "For us, of course, the major topic was the future of Eastern Europe and above all, Poland.
And on that Stalin obviously was bound to get what he wanted because the Red Army was in occupation of the whole area including Poland, they had already gone through Poland into Germany by the time we were in Yalta.
" By now, the Balkans and most of Poland were in Soviet hands; so too was much of Czechoslovakia and Hungary battlefield facts that diplomacy could not alter.
Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta "We got at Yalta two diplomatic documents which on paper were perfectly satisfactory.
I mean that there would be a coalition government in Poland including people from the West, and there would be free elections in Poland.
And then there was a declaration covering the whole of Eastern Europe called the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which again was to be rebuilt on the basis of democracy and free elections and all the rest of it of course, phrases which the Russian used but interpreted rather differently.
" Stalin promised that the Polish elections would be free and fair.
Tired of arguing, the others took him at his word.
Germany would be governed jointly by the victorious Allies.
And Stalin secretly pledged to join the war against Japan.
Churchill was confident.
Winston Churchill farewell address at Yalta: "We have all bound ourselves to work together, to make sure that there is increasing happiness and prosperity for the broad masses of the people in every land no longer subject to the hard strains of war.
There is the prospect which has now opened before us.
" FDR funeral, April 1945 "The Funeral Specia heads for Washington.
An honour guard of servicemen keeps vigil beside the flag-draped casket.
At villages, crossroads, way stations, the people who were so close to his heart stand silently, expressive of the devotion Franklin Roosevelt inspired.
" As the President was buried, the last battles in Europe were ending.
American troops were taking over German towns without resistance.
AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division "They were glad to see the American troops because they had a terrible fear of having Russians occupy or come into their area.
" As the Allies advanced they discovered the full horror of German crimes.
The Jews had been the Nazis' special target.
But every nation was mourning over mass graves.
Fear of a German revival, would overshadow the first years of peace.
Soon Soviet and American troops would meet in Germany.
AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division "Our lieutenant came in one day and said he'd got he wants to get a patrol together - we're going to go and see if we can find some Russians.
Well, none of us were too eager to go on that patrol really, because we realised the end of the war was imminent and we didn't know what was out there.
You know, we had gotten this far, why stick our necks out again?" JIM KANE - US 69th Infantry Division "We kept going and we kept running into no resistance and everybody was retiring and surrendering and we just, I guess, were lucky.
We got to the Elbe river and we saw the Russians on the other side.
" LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division "I told my girlfriend, "You stand there and I'll stay here".
We waited for them to come ashore.
We could see their faces.
They looked like ordinary people.
We had imagined something different.
Well, they were Americans!" AL ARONSON "I guess we didn't know what to expect from the Russians, but when you looked at them and examined them, you couldn't tell whether, you know ? If you put an American uniform on them, they could have been American!" LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division "We didn't know who we were kissing.
We were just kissing everyone.
" ALEXANDER GORDEYEV - Red Army 58th Guards Division "I think that for us the war was over.
We washed our feet in the Elbe river.
We washed our faces and hands.
We thought that now we'd met the Americans, the war must be over.
" Two days later, the movie cameras were ready.
The moment of history, the meeting of ordinary soldiers from Russia and America, was re-run, dramatically, with a bigger cast.
By allied agreement, the capture of Berlin was left to the Russians.
April 1945.
The Red Army launches its final offensive towards Berlin.
The war cost the Soviet Union 27 million lives nearly 40 times American and British losses put together.
The Red Flag destined to fly over the Reichstag was a home made affair.
YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer "We used tablecloths.
One night, I helped my friend, a Jewish tailor, sew them into three flags.
We took them to Berlin.
I found three soldiers and we climbed up.
The first photograph I took was of the flag I'd brought from Moscow the Soviet flag over Berlin.
" As Hitler's Reich fell apart, hundreds gathered in San Francisco to found the United Nations Organisation.
The Soviet delegation was led by the man who had signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact - Molotov.
VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, San Francisco "Molotov was very nervous because he felt that the war is coming to an end, victory would soon be here, and here he is in America.
That's why everyday he sent cables to Stalin, 'When may I return?'" As the San Francisco meeting continued, news came of Germany's surrender.
US President Harry Truman, May 1945 "General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations.
The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.
" As the fighting stopped, the Soviet front line had cut Europe in two, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
The war in the Pacific dragged on.
American marines had stormed Iwo-Jima.
It was a foretaste of how difficult and bloody the final invasion of Japan might be.
Potsdam, in conquered Germany - site of the third allied summit.
GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "The attitude in Washington toward the Soviet Union had begun to change well before Potsdam.
Storm signals were already flying.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "Truman declared officially and quite sharply that the declaration on Europe adopted at Yalta is not being carried out in some countries.
Governments are being set up which the United States will not recognise.
" HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Potsdam "I'd call the Potsdam conference a bad-tempered conference, because apart from the ceremonial occasions, it was really very bad-tempered.
" The allies couldn't easily agree about a German Peace Treaty or on how to carry out agreements reached at Yalta.
Stalin confirmed that his troops were ready for war with Japan.
But the day before the conference, America had successfully tested an atomic bomb.
GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "President Truman, after consulting with the British, and with his own military advisers, decided that he would tell Stalin that we had a powerful new weapon, without identifying it as a nuclear weapon.
" VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "Truman repeated what he was saying about the new weapon.
He thought Stalin didn't hear or didn't understand him.
Stalin said, 'Okay, thank you for the information'.
" GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman "There was some question amongst the Americans as to whether Stalin had really understood what Truman was saying.
As we now know, they knew all about the Manhattan Project through espionage and their own agents.
" With the conference still in session, news arrived from London that Clement Attlee had been elected British Prime Minister.
VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam "I had a feeling that the biggest sensation for Molotov and Stalin was not the bomb explosion, but the fact that Churchill was not re-elected in England.
" Another photo-call.
The world must see that the Allies were still united.
On August the 2nd the conference ended and the statesmen went home.
Four days later, America dropped an atomic bomb on the city and people of Hiroshima.
Three days after that, another was dropped on Nagasaki.
Soon the human race would be able to destroy itself in a day.
At each Cold War crisis to come, the nuclear shadow threatened.