World War II with Tom Hanks

When I was a kid,

every adult I knew shared one thing in common--

a gap in their lives when everything appeared uncertain

and time itself seemed to stand still.

When they talked about it,

they simply called it "the war."

For six dark years, the world was on fire.

Cities were demolished

and whole populations threatened.

When would the war end? No one knew.

How would it end? No one knew.

Life was in stasis.

The war is now a part of our culture,

portrayed in movies and on television

and novels and history books.

The Allies usually defeat the enemy

and save the world.

But the grim reality of the war

is almost impossible to comprehend.

Over 65 million people are killed--

the majority civilians.

Everyone fought some version of the war,

beginning with the mothers and fathers

who sent their children overseas

not knowing when or if they would ever see them again.

And, of course, the soldiers, sailors,

airmen, and marines-- often just a bunch of kids--

who served with honor and bravery

to liberate enslaved peoples and preserve human dignity.

In doing so, they saved that which is most precious

and valued by us all--

freedom.

The Second World War

is the largest event in human history.

No part of the globe is unaffected.

World War II changed everything for all of us.

All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march, Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine

the nightmare they're about to unleash--

the most destructive war in human history.

- Suddenly the world is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

- The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies, led by the big three--

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin--

men who are dealing

with immensely complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military operation of human history.

- The Allies have to come together,

not just militarily,

but industrial scale

it's a global perspective.

- They have to fight in every climate,

from the Arctic to the jungles of the Pacific

to the deserts of Africa and the depths of the ocean.

- But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings.

And we see them at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives that others might live.

- World War II was a struggle in which there could be

one victor and one vanquished.

[explosions, air raid sirens wailing]

- Sometimes the most monumental events

begin without fanfare...

before the world wakes.

And so it is

on the 1st of September, 1939,

as dawn breaks over a sleeping city on the Baltic Sea,

that the bloodiest conflict in all history begins.

- This is the national program from London.

Germany has invaded Poland.

Heavy outbreaks of fighting

along the German-Polish frontier.

- In just a matter of hours, a million and a half men...

1,300 planes...

and 2,750 tanks

crossed the Polish border at lightning speed.

September 1, 1939--

a storm breaks over Poland.

- The Germans are racing through with tanks

and with artillery, following up with the infantry

and accompanied by the Luftwaffe.

And all of a sudden, people were waking up

to the sound of tanks rumbling through the town

not really knowing what was happening.

- You're going to see waves of trucks

and mechanized and motorized vehicles.

It looks a bit like a science-fiction novel,

like all those novels written in the '20s and '30s

about what the war of the future would look like.

And, suddenly, in 1939, the future is now.

At 11:00 a.m.,

Hitler arrives at a Berlin opera house

where he's gathered the Reichstag.

- This is the moment Hitler's been waiting for all his life.

He's been the leader of the Nazi party since 1921.

He comes to power in '33. He rearms the country in '35.

And since then, it's been prepare, prepare, prepare.

But Hitler wants a war.

- The invasion follows months of diplomatic tension

over a strip of land known as the Polish Corridor--

land that had once been part of Germany...

but was ceded to Poland to give her access to the sea

after the First World War.

20 years earlier, global leaders gathered

in the French city of Versailles

to sign the historic treaty ending that war.

After four years of brutal fighting,

an alliance led by Britain and France

and supported by the United States

emerged victorious.

Germany, its military exhausted

and its people near starvation, had lost.

And now they would pay the price of defeat.

The Treaty of Versailles

takes territories away from Germany.

It strips Germany of populations and raw materials.

It turns the entire German merchant marine

over to the Allies.

It imposes reparations on the Germans.

- The Allies were attempting to limit

the future power of Germany.

The effects of the First World War were so grave,

they were so catastrophic

that no one wanted to see a repeat of that.

- One young Austrian corporal fighting for the German army

is Adolf Hitler.

Like many, he is shocked by the way the war ends.

- Your average German was surprised by the news

of the armistice because it happened so suddenly.

The army was still in the field,

and there was the sense that we haven't been invaded

and thoroughly beaten.

- It was personally a tragedy for Hitler.

He heard the news of the armistice

when he was still ill from injuries sustained in battle.

He did not process the end of the war well.

He did not accept the defeat of Germany.

- Surviving soldiers come home angry

and confused.

- Frankly, the response of many of them

is disillusionment.

Four years at the front,

I managed to dodge all those bullets,

and now I came home and this is what I fought for?

- When Hitler comes back from the war,

he learns to talk to former soldiers

who are now disgruntled and begins to feel the fact

that he's actually quite a good speaker.

- He attends a meeting of a small group

which will become

the National Socialist German Workers,

or Nazi Party.

He finds something attractive.

This is a party of grievance

talking about how Germany could be transformed

and Germany could be made powerful again.

In 1921, Hitler's talent for public speaking

makes him the leader of this tiny party.

- Hitler's first move is an attempted coup

against the Bavarian state government in Munich.

But it fails, and he's arrested for treason.

At his trial, the judge allows Hitler

to publicly share his movement's grievances

against war guilt, reparations, and communism.

In jail, he publishes his memoir,

"Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle."

With Hitler's notoriety, Nazi Party membership grows

as Germany's Weimar Republic

moves through the unstable '20s.

The economy is burdened by heavy war reparations.

In 1923, the cost of one loaf of bread