THE EASTERN FRONT

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] This is Stalinrad. Almost before the last German was killed or captured, the young people of Stalingrad were at work rebuilding their heroic city. This is where 300,000 of Hitler's cracked troops were encircled and destroyed. Where the Red Army wrote finish to defense and depth and changed the course of the entire war. Here, 1500 miles from Berlin, was the last stop on Hitler's march of death and destruction. Here's where the goostep went into reverse. The Nazis had seized territory twice the size of Texas. Then, in January 1943, even before the victory at Stalingrad was completed, the Red Army struck. That winter, 185,000 square miles were torn from the Nazi grass. They're just the beginning. That summer, the Red Army launched the greatest strategic offensive in history. Orel and Belgra. August 23rd, Ar Novosis and Kaman, Brians, Smolinski, the Nepa River, and the spring of 1944 found the Red Army more than halfway from Stalingrad to Berlin, driving the last Nazis from the soil of Russia, smashing forward again and again on the battle line of,200 miles. [Music] Generals of the Red Army today are young men, aggressive men. Commander-in-chief of this sector is General Papot. Young, aggressive, coordination and timing on a tremendous scale. That's Red Army strategy [Music] and tanks which are more than tanks. They're running artillery. Infantry and tanks attack together. An offensive unit of men and steel. [Music] A lot of these automatic rifles are lend equipment from us. [Applause] [Music] That's a camera with a telescopic lens. And here's what the camera sees a half mile away. Watch. [Music] Next, help from the rear of the enemy lines. Organized guerillas attacked behind the German positions. This is the objective. The city of Brians. The city itself becomes a battlefield, a place for hand-to-hand encounter. Not by the infantry, street by street, house by house, floor by the course. Brians is retaken. Not all the Germans were killed. A lot of them were captured. [Music] Wherever the Nazis have gone, they have looted, pillaged, murdered. Brians, like hundreds of other cities and villages, is completely destroyed. They were here for 2 years, the Germans, she says. Look what they did to our town. And look over there. [Music] Restricted zone. No trespassing. What were the Germans trying to hide? [Music] The men and women of Russia and decent people everywhere in the world will never forget these things nor forgive them. The persons responsible for these crimes face a terrible justice. [Music] This is a time for rejoicing. There is laughter and there is shouting. Yes, there are many who cannot join this celebration. They are gone. They lie in the dark lime pits and the hidden graves. But these are the living and this is a new day. Their town has been torn from the bloody hands of the murderers and given back to them. Freedom from fear. Freedom to worship. Riansk is ours. One little crossroads in the long path to victory and a lasting peace. In Moscow, the Russians salute another battle one. A battle one for them and for us. [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. Here in the village of western Russia behind the German lines of 6 months ago, the Russian people were burning their own farms. These fires met the Germans when they began their retreat, trapping the enemy between the gun sights of the Red Army and the scorched turret. It is not only the Red Army that crushed the Germans on the Eastern front. It's the courage of the Russian people. A courage born of suffering and sacrifice. And the memory of their 10 million dead. Every Russian became a soldier. Those behind the German lines organized into guerilla bands led by a few Red Army men. The words of a note were their articles of war. I, a citizen of the Soviet Union, the faithful son of the Russian people, swear that I shall not lay down my arms until the very last fascist on our land is destroyed. For the burned villages and cities, for the death of our children, for tortures and violence, for mockery over my people, I swear to take vengeance on the enemy without mercy and without rest. Blood for blood, death for death. I swear that I would rather die fighting the enemy than surrender myself, my family, or my people into slavery. The oath is obeyed. Mission number 21, cut Nazi communication lines and intercept the German engineers when they come to investigate the break. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] three German engineers. [Music] [Music] Mission number 36. Destroy a railroad bridge. Keep your eye on that German sentry just to the left of the bridge. One down. Two down. More than 7,000 bridges were destroyed by these fighters in the years when the Germans occupied Russian territory. [Music] Mission number 43, attack the town of Blay Cerov and destroy the Germans entrenched there. one of hundreds of towns and cities that fell to these fighters behind the German lines. [Music] [Music] The uncertainty and danger these attacks brought to the enemy cannot be calculated. But before the fascists were finally driven off Russian soil, half a million dead Germans had been accounted for. 15,000 German prisoners were chased out of boxholes and ruins and hay stacks. [Music] These gerillas were armed, many of them, with captured German rifles that had been turned on them a month ago. They were awarded by the smiles and the thanks of their friends and by their government. Some of them in earlier wars were the people who would have remained at home, the farmers and school kids. In America, they would have been the people who live on the remote farms and small villages of the Middle West. And when the news of the German headlong retreat out of Russia and across Poland reached these guerrillas, they knew that the burned homes and black fields and gaping bridges and dead communication lines had helped to break the German armies. The fighting spirit of the Russian people is known all over the world. It is a fighting spirit that springs from a deep love of peace. A music teacher returns to her town. Written in the ashes of her home, in the bodies of her mother and her younger brother is the reason why she must carry a gun. The fascists made the only road to peace a bloody one. The date was August 25th. These are guys you might have taken basic with at Fort Benning or Davis or Devons or Dicks. They were in Paris on August 25th. Paris, France with a big underline for the word France. Because this old fellow, her and him had been walking around the streets for 4 years in Paris, Germany, sleepwalking in a kind of German nightmare. Now it belonged to them again. GI Joe and his big tank and his little Jeep and his dirty pants was lucky enough to be there to get some dividends from the way they felt about it. Like that. It wasn't new to the Yanks. They'd been in France a couple of months already. But just the same, it was very pleasant to be around when liberation came to Paris. Yeah. Now the kisses, the yelling, the waving, the sheepish GI grins of what it looks like this business of liberation on your feet. It's your wonderful American. But you can't just look at scenes like this and say that's what liberation is. You can't look at the simple wonderful joy in Paris in August 1944 and forget what came before or what must come after. Freedom can write its name into walls and floors in the lap of a young Parisian, but it's a lot more serious than it looks because freedom is history. Strangely enough, a lot of the history of freedom comes from Paris. Let's go back a ways. This is Paris before anyone but Germany was thinking about war. Eiffel Tower, champagne, a buck a bottle, holy bger, and you know what? That's what people said about her. Sidewalk cafes in the artist sections where you sip wine for five pranks a bottle and look twice at the French girls in the boulevards. Nightclubs where you saw things you'll never see again or tell about. Harry Wow. Where a man can have the best time in the world.