Fall Out

World War II with Tom Hanks

World War II ends in 1945, leaving the U.S. and USSR as rival superpowers. Despite shared victory, ideological divides spark the Cold War's early tensions. The Nuremberg Trials, Berlin Airlift, and emerging alliances lik

Key takeaways

• Allies' unity fractured post-war

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The History Channel, original podcast. September 1945, Germany, Japan have surrendered unconditionally. The destruction and death of the Second World War is over. There is jubilation around the world. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as the globe's two dominant superpowers. They fought side by side when they shared a common enemy. But now that that enemy has been defeated, an American-Soviet rivalry appears unavoidable. This is World War II with Tom Hanks. Episode 20, Fallout. It's official. It's all over. It's total victory. The day of days for America and her allies. Peace, it's wonderful. The war is over. The entire world begins to breathe and live again. The Allies won this war in the cause of freedom and the ideals of anti-fascism, the ideals of democracy. One of the great legacies of the Second World War is that a disputatious, complicated, Often wrong nation, like the United States, can in extremists marshal significant force to do the right thing. It took us a long time. As Churchill is alleged to have said, you can always count on the Americans do the right thing once we've exhausted every other possibility. We spent blood and treasure to defeat fascism. The United States had fulfilled Roosevelt, its ambitions to be the Arsenal democracy, to orders of magnitude no one could have predicted. In New York, hundreds of thousands lined the docks to greet America's ships and welcome home their sons and daughters. President Harry Truman is honored with a ticker tape parade through the city's Canyon of Heroes. Speaking in Central Park, the president addresses the nation. The world cannot afford to let the cooperative spirit of the allies in this war disintegrate. The world simply cannot allow this to happen. In Red Square, thousands celebrate and honor Generalissimo Joseph Stalin. He's dressed in a white marshal summer uniform with shoulderboards, like a Russian Romanov emperor. Stalin emerges from the Second World War with astonishing, almost religious prestige in the Soviet Union. Stalin and the United States had made an alliance that ultimately brings Hitler and then Japan to its knees. The spirit of cooperation is so high that Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Command in Europe, probably one of the future staunchest anti-communists in American history, stands right next to Stalin. The bloodshed and horror of the Second World War is unprecedented in human history. Nearly 70 million people are killed. The majority civilians. An estimated 27 million Soviets. 20 million Chinese. 10 million Germans and Japanese. One million British and Americans. and six million Jews. Europe is destroyed. The Brits are bankrupt. The Americans and the Soviets, they're demobilizing. What's really clear coming out of World War II is that the United States has an incredibly important role to play in the world. She hasn't been physically touched by the war other than Pearl Harbor. America is the superpower. There's every expectation that some kind of peaceful coexistence will emerge. When the Americans talk about the way they want the international system to be, they talk about the United Nations. The United Nations, in many ways, is Franklin Roosevelt's dream come true. During the war, it's Roosevelt who says we must have this international. national body. It's a very hopeful group, lots of ideals, the UN Charter, all of this comes into being in 1945. Here, leaders of the United Nations, representing all but a fraction of the Earth's population, are laying the foundations of international security in the post-war world. Out of the fires of war, they wanted for there to be an organization where we don't have 1939 again. The United Nations combines two ideas. The first is. the General Assembly, where equal states can meet and confer and make resolutions. There is also the wartime military alliance between the Soviets, the British, France, and the United States, as well as China, and that's the Security Council. That will be the cornerstone to ensuring peace. Because it's not just winning the battle of the day, it's trying to prevent the next one. One of the first challenges is to determine the and how Germany will fit into the post-war world. We can't today perhaps understand just how threatening and powerful Germany seemed to ally leadership in 1945. They had just fought two world wars, the greatest enemy of which of theirs was Germany. Ultimately, they realized the control of Germany is going to play a huge role in determining the future of Europe. The American view is just like the Soviet one at the beginning in the sense that we've got to divide Germany. We've got to make sure that it can never rise up again. That's the first urgent thing. The Allies split Germany into four occupation zones. The British, Americans, and French will govern Western Germany. The Soviets will govern the East. Berlin, deep within the Soviet zone, is divided between all. all four nations. The wartime allies have very different plans for the new Germany. What Stalin is doing is taking as much of the wealth, as much of the factories, as much of the productive capacity and stockpiles from occupied Germany back to the Soviet Union. Stalin would say he was only taking what the Germans owed him for the horrible suffering during the war. Conversely, the Western allies want Germany rehabilitated. The Western idea is not to devastate Germany economically through reparations, but bring them into global markets, connect Germany to the world, and through that, you'll get German people who are incentivized to do things that are constructive instead of destructive. So it's going to need industrialists, middle managers, local governance, that many of these people would have been members of the Nazi Party. The crimes of the Nazi Third Reich are so horrific that the wartime allies determine there must be an attempt to achieve justice. Nuremberg is highly symbolic as the spiritual heart of Nazi Germany and as the place where hopefully the demons of Nazism can be purged. Everyone in court stands up as the tribunal enters. Four judges and alternate members, French, American, British, and Russian. The defendants are to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against. against him. Rudolf Hess. No. Not guilty. 22 Nazi leaders are put on trial. The next defendant called was Ribbentrop. The not sured. Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Tribunals, announces that history will judge the fairness of the trial, not by the convictions and the executions it obtains, but by the acquittals. But the Soviets are expecting these to be good old-fashioned show trials. I plead not guilty. I plead not guilty. Stalin had seen how effective show trials could be in his own consolidation of power in the 1930s. Not guilty. And was happy to give the Germans a trial. Hermann Wilhelm Wering, Not guilty. And then hang them. Twelve of the defendants received the death sentence. Hermann Guring avoids the gallows by committing suicide. Seven are given lengthy prison terms. Although the Soviets object, three are acquitted. From 45 onwards, you just have this constant growing tension between the United States and Britain on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. And Stalin has to play quite a careful game. He wants to keep what he has, but he doesn't want to directly antagonize the United States because the United States is still much more powerful economically. It has complete air and sea control, and it has the atom bomb. World War II devastated the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin must rebuild his country, ensure its security, and consolidate his power. But some of Stalin's ambitions will conflict. with the post-war plans of his Western allies. Stalin saw the wartime alliance as a way to defeat Nazi Germany, but never something