-Hitler decides to make a private sightseeing trip to Paris on the 23rd of June, 1940, when Paris is occupied and controlled by the German forces.

♪♪ They tour the Arc de Triomphe, they walk around the artists' quarter in Montmartre... ♪♪ Hitler says he thought of razing Paris to the ground, but now he realizes that he can build a much bigger and better city in Berlin.

And they go to Napoleon's tomb, where Hitler pays his respects to the previous conqueror of Europe.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Hitler stands for a long while in front of Napoleon's sarcophagus.

It's reported he tells his entourage, "That was the greatest and finest moment of my life."

-He's paying his respects to Napoleon, but also, I think, declaring privately to himself that he's gonna surpass his achievements.

-Napoleon Bonaparte had once tried to conquer the world, but his armies got stuck in the harsh Russian winter.

♪♪ This is the story of the Eastern Front of the Second World War, which many see as its defining conflict.

It was a campaign that saw some of the most brutal and inhumane warfare in all of history.

Our interest is the psychology of that war... -What is the enemy up to?

Can you deceive him?

-...the minds of dictators, and the morality of those around them.

-For him, no building is high enough and no hall is long enough.

And this is exactly what Hitler wanted.

-To tell this story, we've asked some of the world's most eminent historians and experts, with different kinds of insight, to each take us inside the mind of one of the key protagonists.

-He wants to be the architect of Germany's reality, in some ways, the only truth teller.

♪♪ -Nazi rule relies on quiet complicity.

♪♪ [ Gunshot ] -Ultimately, it's a study of why dictatorships are flawed and how those who rule through fear and terror can never trust even the people closest to them.

-He'll then lose everything and bring Germany down with him.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -For years, Hitler's mind has been full of the poison of anti-Semitism.

Falsely believing in German racial supremacy, he wants to eliminate all Jews and other races he considers inferior.

And he dreams of world domination.

So far, he's taken a number of huge gambles, and they've all paid off.

He marched into Austria... unchallenged.

He thought he could annex Czechoslovakia and get away with it -- and he was right.

Then he made a deal with Stalin to invade Poland, and his tanks reached Warsaw within a week.

And then he invaded France.

[ Cheers and applause ] Now it's July 1940.

He rules most of Europe, and the German people love him.

[ Cheering continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -In the summer of 1940, Hitler thinks, "I'm the supreme general, I'm the supreme leader, I'm invincible."

This is the high point of Hitler's national popularity.

People had had doubts before, there'd been some opposition, some misgivings, but all this was swept away in the summer of 1940.

And so he comes to believe ever more strongly in his own invincibility.

-Now Hitler is about to make a decision that will determine the outcome of the war -- what to do about the Soviet Union and its dictator, Joseph Stalin.

-Hitler, in some ways, admires Stalin.

He says he's a kind of a monster, but of course, he admires him as a strong leader.

So it's a kind of love/hate relationship.

-Meanwhile in Moscow, Stalin is trying to work out what he makes of Hitler.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Stalin, ruthless dictator, didn't hesitate to eliminate opposition, didn't hesitate to send millions of people to die.

It's recorded that Stalin had a very high opinion about the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler's ruthlessness.

And of course, in 1940, Stalin admires Hitler because he succeeded in destroying France and almost bringing England on their knees.

It's a very special love story.

This is not liking or not liking.

If Hitler is standing in the way of Stalin's dream of global dominance, so he should find the most effective way of eliminating Hitler.

-And so you have two dictators, both dreaming of world domination.

So far, they have collaborated, working together to carve up Poland.

And it's at this point Hitler offers Stalin a deal to split the world between them.

♪♪ -Stalin was very opportunistic, not limited by any even ideological barriers.

Allying with Hitler -- if it works, perfect.

-But Stalin has to work out if Hitler can be trusted, so he sends his foreign minister to Berlin to find out.

♪♪ -Molotov is a party official.

He was loyal, and that meant that he behaved very brutally, indeed.

♪♪ For somebody who seemed to have such authority and such power, he looked, you know, very sort of modest and low-key.

The German people that he met talked about him as a mathematics professor.

That was probably quite complimentary, really.

Lenin, of course, had called him the best filing clerk in Russia.

He arrives at the Reich's Chancellery.

The whole point about the Reich's Chancellery is to project the power of Hitler, the power of the Reich, walking down the long, grand corridors, then coming up to the Fuehrer's study and then, you walk in -- you, the small man in the ordinary suit, you walk in, and then the Fuehrer's desk is right at the other end.

Molotov has a long history of regarding the fascists as the enemy.

♪♪ -Hitler makes these very grand, general statements about friendship and alliance and so on.

He's flattering, he's charming.

That works a lot of the time.

-This is a game that Hitler has played before, toying with other world leaders before deceiving them.

He even signed a peace deal with the British prime minister, and now they're at war.

Hitler starts by outlining his deal, offering Molotov large swaths of the British Empire, the Middle East, and India.

♪♪ -He's polite, calm, and insists on answers to his questions -- how are Soviet security interests in Europe, which is what really matters to them, how are they going to be protected?

-A lot of what Hitler was thinking about was fantasy, increasingly so.

It's grand geopolitical visions of distributing bits of the world here and there.

This is the kind of behavior that you get with these dictators.

-Molotov repeats the questions and persists with the questions.

What does that actually mean for the Soviet Union?

-Hitler gets very irritated by Molotov.

The state of mind he was in in the summer of 1940 -- supreme, as he thinks, in Europe -- and then here's this little man in this dingy suit, arguing the toss with him.

He doesn't like this at all.

-Hitler becomes increasingly furious with Molotov and abruptly ends the meeting.

♪♪ That evening, a banquet has been arranged.

Still smarting, Hitler is nowhere to be seen.

So Molotov rubs shoulders with the Nazi foreign minister, Ribbentrop, until their dinner is interrupted by an air raid siren.

[ Siren blares ] Molotov and Ribbentrop continue their negotiations in an air raid shelter.

♪♪ -There is a discussion, and of course the basic point is, well, is the British Empire available now to be carved up?

There's big talk from Ribbentrop, and he says, "Well, Britain is defeated."

And of course that famously brings forward the comment, "Well, if Britain is defeated, why are we in this air raid shelter and why are these bombs going off?"

♪♪ -Molotov concludes after his time in Berlin that the Germans have got their hands full dealing with the British and do not pose an immediate threat.

Hitler comes to a very different conclusion -- that it's time to invade.

-It was always Hitler's long-term aim to invade the Soviet Union.

The failure of the negotiations with Molotov did confirm him in his belief that this was the right thing to do and to start making preparations for it.

♪♪ -Hitler is planning to launch Operation Barbarossa, sending 3 million soldiers into battle -- one army to invade the north, one to the south, and one tasked with going all the way to Moscow.

-The invasion of the Soviet Union is really the first major move that Hitler has made to fulfill the ambitions he laid down in "Mein Kampf" and that he'd been harboring since he went into politics -- the creation of what he called living space in Eastern Europe.

And from that point of view, the invasion of Poland or Czechoslovakia, these were just little kind of preparatory essays.

This is the really big one.

-The man Hitler needs to launch this invasion is the head of the German army, Field Marshal Von Brauchitsch.

♪♪ -Walther von Brauchitsch, the absolutely quintessential Prussian officer.

[ Clacks ] ♪♪ Von Brauchitsch, he's got very grave doubts about opening up a war on two fronts.

A great deal of consternation, a great deal of doubt -- what if this goes wrong?

Brauchitsch epitomizes the great, vast tug-of-war going on in the minds of all of those generals there as to the wisdom of taking on the Soviets.

♪♪ -Hitler's spelling out the most ambitious, the biggest, the most dramatic invasion plan in history.

It's on an enormous scale.

So he's offering them, in a way, to participate in a leading position in what is inevitably going to be an extremely famous invasion.

So, he's appealing to their vanity, in a sense.

♪♪ -Brauchitsch is in this terrible dilemma because although he dislikes this, although he would want to push back, he doesn't dare.

This would be career suicide, if not worse.

-Hitler had a number of ways of securing the loyalty of the leading generals, and in particular, he would dole out titles, like field marshal for example, and also by, you might say, outright bribery and corruption.

Bribery going upwards through the system and corruption coming down plays an ever-bigger role, and that's true in any dictatorship.

-When Brauchitsch wanted to leave his wife to marry a younger woman, Hitler personally lent him 80,000 Reichsmarks to pay for the divorce.

-In the Faustian bargain, it was Faust gave away his soul.

And Brauchitsch, in a way, makes that Faustian bargain with Hitler.

-So, although the man in charge of the biggest invasion force in history has doubts, Hitler believes that the army is at his heel and fast-tracks his plans for Barbarossa.

[ "Kann Denn Liebe Suende Sein" playing ] ♪♪ -In Berlin, life continues as normal.

The only people that know about the planned invasion are those inside the Nazi regime, like this man, Harro Schulze-Boysen, who works inside the air ministry, where he begins to see Hitler's attack plans.

-Harro Schulze-Boysen is born into a very prominent German naval family.

He's very tall, very lean, has these chiseled, Nordic features, which the Nazis considered kind of the ideal physical framework.

-Harro's wife Libertas is also part of the Nazi machine, working for Goebbels' propaganda ministry.

But Harro and Libertas are not what they seem.

-Harro and Libertas are both working for Nazi agencies, but they both intentionally took these positions in order to gather intelligence from the inside and share it with people who could work against the Nazis.

-While most Germans either endorse the regime or stay silent, Harro and Libertas have joined one of the few resistance networks in Germany.

As a student, Harro's Jewish friend was murdered at the hands of Nazi storm troopers.

-What he says at that point is that he's not going to respond at the moment.

He basically says revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and that's the beginning of his plans to infiltrate the Nazi military hierarchy.

Some of the things he sees are reports on air reconnaissance.

Some of the things he sees are planning documents.

He is able to find out what the order of battle is.

He is able to find out a lot about the forces designated for the invasion.

-So he makes contact with the Soviets.

-Harro was aware that Stalin was an abusive dictator.

It was never a matter of Harro serving Stalin or promoting Stalin's interests in Germany.

It was a matter of rescuing Germany from Hitler.

Harro can see clearly in military terms how Hitler can be quickly defeated and potentially millions of lives can be saved.

-Harro meets with a Soviet spy and offers to become their man on the inside, giving them the details of Hitler's attack plans.

He's assigned a code name, the Russian word for "sergeant" -- Starshina.

But Stalin has a vast espionage network.

He has eyes and ears everywhere, at the heart of governments across the world.

From the Japanese cabinet to the pillars of the British establishment, and now... inside the German air ministry.

So Harro's voice... is just one of many.

Meanwhile, Hitler is preparing for Operation Barbarossa.

He needs to move a vast army of 3 million men to the Soviet border.

And he has to do this right under the noses of the watching Soviet generals.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Clacks ] -Georgy Zhukov, he was one of the leading Soviet generals.

He would probably himself say, "What do you mean, 'one of'?

I am the leading Soviet general."

He was not without some vanity.

Zhukov clearly is very concerned of German capability, of German deployments, and there was this huge buildup of German military power along the border.

-Hitler has been busy working on a way to deceive Stalin.

-Hitler had a very good eye for the weaknesses of his opponents.

Stalin was a very suspicious kind of man.

He was prone to conspiracy theories.

And that of course means that you can supply Stalin with some many kinds of information and misinformation that he will believe.

-Hitler orders his spies to pump out conspiracy theories that other nations are plotting against Russia, and spreads rumors that Germany is going to attack Britain and a smoke screen that troops on the Soviet border are really just carrying out exercises preparing for the invasion of Britain.

-The run-up to Barbarossa is almost a kaleidoscope of information which keeps changing.

Clever intelligence.

The Germans were quite good at deception.

Stalin relies on what, to me, is a fairly transparent lie from Berlin that these assembly of forces is just retraining.

They're on exercise.

Um, well... they're on exercise in preparation for the real thing.

-Zhukov now does something that few others dare.

He tells Stalin something he doesn't want to hear.

-I'm sure going through his head would have been, "If I get this wrong, it's Siberia at best."

♪♪ Zhukov is saying, "I have this intelligence, it's hard intelligence that the Germans are going to attack."

♪♪ And Stalin says, "I have my own intelligence," discounting a warning which any -- any leader would have surely taken utterly serious because the stakes were unbelievably high.

Now, whether that was because he really, really thought this would not happen, or Stalin found the prospect of a German invasion so awful he closed his mind down to it.

-So, Stalin makes no serious preparations for a German attack.

-The whole story's very mysterious because it's this -- that's what I learned in my school, in the Soviet Union.

That's what we learn from Soviet textbooks and from the movies, that there was so much intelligence and Stalin ignored it.

Stalin ignored it, and because he was -- he trusted Hitler.

No, Stalin didn't trust Hitler.

Stalin didn't trust anybody.

There's only one rational explanation; Stalin didn't care because he was also preparing to attack.

♪♪ -What Hitler is planning is not a normal invasion.

This is something far darker even than normal warfare.

At a meeting with his generals, he outlines his vision for Barbarossa.

-Hitler tells them this is a war like no other.

This is not a conventional war.

This is a war between the races for racial supremacy.

It's a clash in which there must be no consideration at all for the conventional rules of warfare.

The man on the other side is not your comrade.

He is someone who has got to be exterminated.

There must be no mercy.

It must be absolutely ruthless.

♪♪ He believes this is going to be a war of conquest above all of Eastern Europe and of course, a war -- and this is the most important core belief of Hitler -- against the Jews.

♪♪ -To be told you're going to be involved in a war of annihilation, there's absolutely no pretense about the fact that this is going to be a war about the mass murder of innocent civilians and human beings who have absolutely nothing to do with this ideological fight between Hitler and Stalin.

♪♪ This becomes a tremendous burden for Brauchitsch.

All of a sudden it becomes clear just what road they've started to go down.

-Around the room, there is silence.

No one utters any objections to Hitler's plans.

-Brauchitsch's reaction is to, in a way, put his head in the sand, the way a lot of them do.

He wants to think in terms of military.

He wants to think in terms of, "Okay, where are my divisions going to be going?

What about, you know, supplies and provisions?

What about weapons, ammunition, fuel?"

These are the nice sort of, rather, if you will, safe questions that the military can busy themselves with.

It's a way of creating your own sort of moral bubble.

-As if to ease his conscience, Brauchitsch makes insignificant tweaks to Hitler's orders, but ultimately signs off on commands giving carte blanche to kill anyone, including civilians.

He coordinates with Himmler's SS death squads, who follow behind the German army, murdering Jews in the name of security.

-Brauchitsch is not the man pulling the trigger, but the crimes that are going to be committed are so horrific that just by being such an important cog in the wheel of Hitler's machine makes him complicit.

♪♪ -Over 3 million troops are now stationed along 1,100 miles of Soviet border.

♪♪ In just under a week, they will attack.

With so many lives at stake, much is resting on Harro Schulze-Boysen's covert intelligence.

-I think about the story of Cassandra in ancient Greece and the way she saw disaster on the horizon and she desperately tried to tell everyone what was coming, and if she could only warn them, maybe she could avoid the disaster.

That's Harro.

Harro sees the disaster on the horizon.

He sees how it's going to unfold and the tragedy that it's going to -- it's going to entail.

On June 17th, a report was sent quoting Starshina.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ This lands on Stalin's desk.

He takes his pencil and he scrawls, "This is not information, this is disinformation.

You can send your so-called source back to his whore of a mother."

A lot of authoritarian figures, they disregard intelligence, they disregard expertise, they disregard the educated people around them, and they go by their instincts and they go, to some extent, by their cronies who know how to tell them what they want to hear.

♪♪ ♪♪ -On the eve of the attack, Hitler is in the Reich Chancellery racked with anxiety.

-Hitler always gets nervous just before a big event.

He's nervous before the Night of the Long Knives.

He's nervous before the Anschluss.

He always gets kind of last-minute jitters.

And of course, in this case, there are specters hovering over Barbarossa.

There's the specter of Napoleon and his defeat in Moscow, the catastrophe of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

♪♪ He was a gambler, somebody who went for broke all the time because he felt that the cards would fall in his favor.

Hitler believed that he was a kind of favored child of providence.

Fate had ordained that he would be victorious.

♪♪ -The invasion of the Soviet Union is announced on all German radio stations to the sound of Franz Liszt.

[ Liszt's "Les Préludes" plays ] ♪♪ Across the entire Soviet border, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the German army sweeps in, killing indiscriminately.

♪♪ ♪♪ In Moscow, the German ambassador arrives at the Kremlin to tell Molotov that Germany have declared war.

-He would be thinking, "I didn't judge this correctly.

I've gotta go and tell more to the boss, which is gonna be difficult."

He probably, somewhere in his mind was thinking, "Yeah, I'm gonna be under stress now.

This is the beginning of something really massive."

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -Stalin has been caught off guard, and the Red Army are in disarray.

-It becomes clear in Moscow that this is not just an incursion over the border, but this is a strategic maneuver to invade the Soviet Union.

And you can imagine that hearts would be in boots in the Kremlin.

Stalin was stunned by the reality of the German invasion.

-Within days, German forces have advanced 200 miles into Soviet territory.

By the time they reach the city of Minsk, they've captured or killed over 300,000 Red Army troops.

With the Germans only 400 miles from the capital, the gravity of the situation comes crashing down on Stalin.

-The fall of Minsk happened on the 28th of June, six days after the invasion.

Didn't take long.

And the scale of the defeat, the destruction involved, the killings involved of soldiers -- you know, it was a massive military failure.

-I think Stalin was not knowing what to do.

I mean, he was shocked, panicked, frightened.

First time in many years, maybe first time in his life, he didn't have a game plan.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Stalin retreats to his dacha like a cornered animal.

When his country needs him the most, suddenly Stalin is nowhere to be seen.

♪♪ Hitler now bases himself at his frontline headquarters, the Wolf's Lair, a top secret, high-security complex of camouflaged bunkers hidden in a dense Prussian forest.

It's a strange world penetrated by neither light nor reality.

Hitler is on course to control even more territory than Napoleon.

-He feels that he's conquered the Soviet Union, it's gonna collapse any minute.

The atmosphere is one of continuing optimism and euphoria, as news rolls in of stunning military victories over the Red Army.

-The success of the invasion leads to a jubilant mood, and this allows Brauchitsch to push any doubts he might have had to one side.

-The relationship between officers and Hitler is very much one like a magic show.

They had their doubts about the Soviet Union, and now, once again, he seems to be, like the great magician, pulling the vast rabbit out of a hat.

They're all gonna be coming home by Christmas.

-In the streets of Berlin, confidence of a quick victory is sky-high.

But at the ministry of propaganda, Harro's wife, Libertas, comes face-to-face with the reality of Hitler's war.

-She is receiving these photographs and films from soldiers coming back from the Eastern Front.

♪♪ ♪♪ When you look at these photos, you see terrified women, you see terrified children looking into the eyes of their attackers.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -At Babi Yar in the Ukraine, over two days, 34,000 men, women, and children are massacred.

♪♪ ♪♪ By the end of 1941, half a million Jewish people are murdered.

It is known as the Holocaust by Bullets.

-Uncounted numbers of Russians, many but not all of them Jewish, are being massacred by not just SS divisions, but by Wehrmacht, German army divisions.

She feels a responsibility to archive this material and to make it available in any way that she can.

And what she says is that in the future there will be accountability.

There will be a war crimes tribunal, and she is assembling the evidence.

She is archiving it, it will be presented in order to prosecute soldiers who have committed these -- these terrible atrocities and the officers who have commanded them.

And she organizes it.

This is her contribution to the resistance activities.

-Meanwhile, her husband, Harro, and his resistance network are desperately trying to get the next phase of the German invasion plans to the Soviets.

But the Soviet High Command is in disarray.

No one has seen or heard from Stalin in days.

He refuses to sign documents or to speak to anyone.

The Soviet government is paralyzed.

-There's debate as to what extent he was actually breaking down, or to what extent he was sort of playing a game, in a true Stalin type way, to test the people around him, to see who was going to try and come forward and take his place.

Molotov knew that he had to deal with this situation.

He was clearly the number-two man.

-It's an animal world, you know?

Dictators, you know, they -- they don't elected.

They stay in power as long as they are trusted by their cronies.

It's like a Mafia boss.

So, you lo-- you lost, you're out.

And -- and Stalin failed.

Stalin was desperate.

He was sitting alone waiting for the worst because he was afraid that his own Politburo members could actually arrest him for the failure because it was his fault and everybody knew it was his fault.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Molotov had to step in to try and control the situation, but not in a way that made him out to be some kind of rival.

-Molotov proposes the creation of a shiny new body -- the State Defense Commissariat, with Stalin as supreme leader at its helm -- a new super dictatorship.

-At the end of the day, they proved to be weak.

And I think the fact is that they proved to be weak, made Stalin stronger because that's, that's -- somehow it's a fluctuation of this energy and spirit within the group.

So, this nothing -- nothing disappears.

Energy doesn't disappear, so if they're getting weaker, Stalin's getting stronger.

And -- and smelling their -- their fear and weakness, Stalin gained back his confidence.

So he's in charge again, so it's "don't cry over spilled milk."

It's behind me.

Yes, we failed.

Now let's see what we can do.

♪♪ -This man Molotov, this boring apparatchik, the best filing clerk in Russia, he kept his head.

And he was the one who knew Stalin best and then to let him come forward and show his strengths as a wartime leader.

♪♪ -Stalin reappears and tells the Soviet people to resist the German invaders.

-Stalin recognizes it's time to change the tone.

He is no longer talking like a father of the nation.

His statement starts with, "Brothers and sisters," and that was the beginning of reorganizing Soviet propaganda towards Russian nationalism, towards the great patriotic war.

I can tell you something about Soviet propaganda.

Look at this picture.

Look at this picture.

And now look at this picture.

This picture taken by anybody prior to the war -- Suicidal.

You'd disappear.

Because that's wrong.

This -- that -- it's... That's the way -- triumphant dear leader.

This picture, this is "brothers and sisters."

This is a new image of Stalin who is suffering, who is thinking, who is no longer all-powerful.

He doesn't know everything, but he's with his people.

♪♪ -As they get closer to Moscow, the German attack is slowing.

And Brauchitsch becomes concerned that this is going to take longer than expected.

He asks Hitler to focus the attack on Moscow, and he'll need tank reinforcements, and the troops may need winter clothes.

-Hitler increasingly thought of himself as a military commander, and when Brauchitsch tries to sway him in favor of sending tanks to Moscow, Hitler simply went berserk.

Hitler hates what he thinks of as defeatism.

For him, all you need is willpower, the power of the will to overcome any practical problems, whether it's getting bogged down in the mud in the autumn rains in Russia or getting frozen to death in the snows, minus-30 degrees.

All of this, he just brushes aside.

These are nonproblems.

So, he didn't really bother with getting the troops adequate winter clothing.

It'll all be over by winter.

One push and the whole rotten edifice of the Soviet Union would collapse.

-At this point, Hitler makes a controversial decision.

He decides that the attack on Moscow can wait, instead ordering his armies north to Leningrad and South to Kiev to capture even more territory and resources.

-Hitler was becoming increasingly detached from reality.

Hitler's limitless self-belief made him think that he could do anything.

Those generals who pointed out the obstacles in a sense of realism and military professionalism were simply brushed aside.

-By this point, the only reality that matters is Hitler's reality.

Brauchitsch made a Faustian pact with Hitler when he decided that he would effectively bow to Hitler's wishes, whatever his own personal views might be.

And in a way, this decision comes to bite him because Hitler was only always using him as a kind of mask for what Hitler himself was trying to do.

-Hitler sidelines Brauchitsch, who is forced to watch what happens next.

Hitler wastes time capturing Kiev and laying siege to Leningrad.

It's October by the time he finally gives the order for Army Group Centre, a force of 2 million men, to attack Moscow.

-You had the German army advancing on Moscow as the Russian winter was setting in.

Harro knew that the German military were not prepared for the Russian winter.

And as Napoleon found out to his distress, the Russian winter can be a greater enemy than the Russian armed forces.

♪♪ -Harro and Libertas meet with a Soviet spy, handing over vital intelligence showing that Germany is headed for military disaster.

They assure him that Hitler can be beaten.

-Harro is supercharged with his adrenaline.

He's taking more and more risks.

When you're living with that addiction to adrenaline... [ Indistinct radio chatter ] ♪♪ -The agent radios vital intelligence back to Moscow.

-The basic rule of thumb for these radio transmissions is to keep them short, but he's got so much information from Harro that he stays transmitting for five hours.

And it also leaves him susceptible to all kinds of detection from the German military and others who are monitoring these transmissions.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The German army are converging on Moscow and the Luftwaffe are bombing the city.

There is panic in the capital.

With no air raid shelters in the Kremlin, Stalin has taken refuge in the subterranean halls of the metro.

He is deciding whether to abandon the city.

-Stalin was urged to leave Moscow when the Wehrmacht were supposedly in sight of the onion domes of the Kremlin, when he must have known that if Moscow fell, his life was likely to be short.

-But Stalin has one last card left to play.

Having ignored the advice of the men around him, he's finally ready to hear the truth.

♪♪ ♪♪ An armored train waits on the platform to take Stalin to safety.

The answer to one question will determine the outcome for Moscow.

-He asks Zhukov whether he, Zhukov, can keep Moscow out of German hands, to which Zhukov says, "I can do that."

-Stalin wanted to hear the truth, but again, he's a dictator.

He wants Zhukov to say that so anything going wrong, Zhukov would be responsible.

-The fate of the Soviet Union is in Zhukov's hands.

-He's tough, very strong-willed, something of a street fighter.

He was so single-minded to achieve success that once committed, he was absolutely adamant that he would succeed.

♪♪ -Zhukov rallies thousands of civilians to defend Moscow... ...and sends battle-hardened Siberian troops to the front, driving the Germans back 150 miles.

-Moscow was saved by at least two generals -- General Zhukov and General Winter.

Zhukov telegraphs Stalin saying, "Victory," and then falls asleep I think for three days or more.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Over 100 years earlier, Napoleon's army had taken Moscow only to be driven back.

Hitler's army reaches the gates of Moscow, but no further.

So far, over 3 million Jews and Soviets have died as part of Hitler's horrific racial genocide.

But this is only the beginning.

♪♪ ♪♪ -If you don't have people who find a way to stand up and say, "No, this is not correct, this is not who we are," then you've lost the whole framework of civil society.

And Germany shows us better than anywhere else where that can lead.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -One has to look at these Nazis that particularly try to hide behind these elevated positions of power and of glory, and they could separate themselves from the violence, they could separate themselves from the crimes and then carry on with their lives as if they really weren't involved.

At the Nuremberg trials, this is very much the position that Brauchitsch took with his own career path and his own life -- "I didn't do anything wrong, I was separate from these terrible crimes, and anyway I was dismissed in 1941, so I really had nothing to do with it."

But this is a cop-out.

It shows again his lack of moral fiber, the inability of him to look squarely in the face of the Third Reich, of Hitler, of the Nazis, and of his own role in that, even if it was cut shorter than some of his other colleagues.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪