World War II History

PBS Special – WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West.

The six-hour series airs Wednesdays, May 6-20, 2009, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET, on PBS (check local listings).

This is an excellently portrayed and dramatized series which covers the Allied leadership in its intricacies throughout World War II. The PBS website has some great resources and interactive media covering the production and the history surrounding it which can be viewed at http://pbs.org/behindcloseddoors.

In confidential meetings held throughout the duration of World War II, Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sparred and negotiated for the political and economic interests of their nations — making deals that sometimes had less to do with right or wrong than the expediency of their individual wartime goals. Rare wartime documents made briefly available only after the fall of the Soviet Union help reveal the real story of confidential meetings held during the war between Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and Winston Churchill. Award-winning historian and filmmaker Laurence Rees (Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, Nazis ­ A Warning from History) tells the hidden story of Stalin’s backroom dealings ­ first with the Nazis and then with Roosevelt and Churchill. By juxtaposing conventional documentary elements with dramatic recreations, WWII Behind Closed Doors breaks through the myths of the Allied powers, illuminating the hidden motivations of “The Big Three” and creating a dynamic reappraisal of one of the seminal events in world history.

Episode 1: Unlikely Friends (Summer 1939 to Autumn 1941)

The first episode in the series lays bare a history of secret allegiances with the Nazis that Stalin wanted to hide. Before he was allied with Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin offered help to Hitler and the Nazis – much more help than the rest of the world knew.

In 1939, less than two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, the foreign minister of Nazi Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop, visited the Soviet Union to negotiate an agreement with Stalin. The signing of a non-aggression pact between them surprised many – Soviet Communists and German Fascists alike. Though the two nations were careful to convey that they had merely signed a pact, they were allies in all but name.

Episode 2: Cracks in the Alliance (Autumn 1941 to December 1943)

On August 12th, 1942, Stalin finally came face-to-face with Churchill in Moscow. Despite the upbeat newsreels of the time, however, it was hardly a meeting of minds. As one of Churchill’s generals later remarked: “We were going into the lion’s den and we weren’t going to feed him.”
The Western leaders knew Stalin was a tyrant who had ordered the death of hundreds of his own citizens. The problem was, just how were they to work with one tyrant to defeat another?

Episode 3: Dividing the World (January 1944 to August 1945)

On the verge of an Allied victory in Europe, a new fight was just beginning over who would control which parts of Europe. Using rare archive material only available since the fall of Communism, this episode reveals the hidden forces that were tearing the Alliance apart just as victory was in reach.
As French troops marched down the Champs Elysees, on the Eastern Front, Stalin’s Red Army was also making progress against the Nazis in Poland, Hungary and Budapest. The key question was: were they liberators or occupiers?

WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West | Clip #1 | PBS

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