National Geographic - Surrender! the Fall of the Reich (2015) Part 1 The Nazis' Last Stand

An event programme for the 70th Anniversary of V-E Day, recounting the final episodes of World War II and the first steps into a new world emerging, from Christmas 1944 to summer 1945. “Surrender” captures the saga that unfolded during the final episodes of World War II and the first steps into a new world from the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944 to VE Day on May 8, 1945, ending the war in Europe. Between chaotic times and new hopes, stories will be told by civilians and soldiers, caught up in these defining moments. On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany capitulated. After more than five years of war that left more than 42 million dead, the world celebrated the victory of the Allied forces over the Third Reich. Millions of refugees who had been displaced, exiled, and deported by the conflict were thrown onto devastated country roads. Never had the end of a war been so violent and uncertain. Six months earlier, nothing hasn not yet been decided. In December 1944, Adolf Hitler launched his last major offensive in the Ardennes, inflicting heavy losses on Anglo-American troops. On the Eastern Front, faced with the advance of the Red Army, the Nazi general staff put up fierce resistance and led the German people into its destructive madness. SURRENDER retraces the final months of the conflict using previously unseen and re-colorized archive footage. To bear witness to the fury of the final battles, the horror at the scale of Nazi atrocities, and the euphoria of the final victory, this film gives voice to men and women who witnessed these events. They tell us their stories STO workers lost in Berlin under the bombs, Russian stretcher-bearers questioning the absurdity of war, American soldiers discovering the horror of the extermination camps, a young German girl witnessing the fall of the Reich, and prisoners of war returning to France. It is from all these testimonies in a Europe in ruins that Deliverance builds a human-scale story about these few months that changed the world. Using colorized and sound designed archives remastered in HD, SURRENDER will transport viewers into those crucial months when the fate of entire populations was disrupted.

Part 2 The Fall of Nazi Germany

While the allied troops were confronted to the death camp horrors, the Russian soldiers were engaged in a merciless fight at the gates of Berlin. Just in this battle, the Russians lost up to 15,000 men per day! The Nazi commanders, enraged, kept throwing crowds of armed civilians on the streets - including many adolescents and old men - and continued to proclaim that victory was close! While the Russians successfully took over the Reichstag on April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. On May 7 and 8, 1945, Germany's surrender was signed both in Reims, France and in Berlin.

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