- One of the great privileges
of working at History Hit and making films together
with our team at Timeline is the access we get to
extraordinary historical locations. Like this one, Stonehenge. I'm right in the middle
of the stone circle now. It is an absolutely
extraordinary place to visit. If you want to watch the documentary, like the one we're producing
here, go to HistoryHit.tv. It's like Netflix for history. And if you use the code
TIMELINE when you check out you'll get a special introductory offer. See you there. (bright music) - [Narrator] Some of the
turning points of history just happen. Volcanoes erupt. Earthquakes, floods, and
fires destroy cities. But most of the turning points of history do not just happen. - [Churchill] This was their finest hour. - [Narrator] They are the result
of actions taken by people. - [Roosevelt] The only thing
we have to fear is fear itself. - [Narrator] They are the
work of those who use power, ambition, belief, to shape events. People are the authors of history. - It's the curious thing about history that we all understand
the great currents matter, the institutions matter, geography matters, economics matters, what natural resources you have matters. But I do think there
are moments in history when it really matters who's in power. - [Narrator] This is the
story of the people who, holding or reaching for power, shaped our world: "The Titans of the 20th Century." (tense music) In 1934, Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and Roosevelt are in power. The global depression is easing. The future beckons. What will they make of it? - One of the big questions
about the 1930s is: if the Western powers had
been prepared to move earlier, could they have stopped Hitler and could they have stopped
the Japanese militarists? If the powers had been prepared to really move against Japan in Manchuria and when Hitler remilitarized
the Rhineland, who knows? One person gets away with something, or one country gets away with something, that encourages others. - [Narrator] What did
happen in just four years in China, the Rhineland,
Ethiopia, and Spain was the rise of militarism
and the spread of violence. In Spain, in 1934, there was violence and a titan advanced. - In 1934 there were two big uprisings, one of the miners of Asturias and the declaration of
an independent Catalonia. These two things happened together. It's a time of national
emergency like this, so you declare martial law, which in Spain is called a
state of war, estado de guerra. The powers of the
Minister of the Interior, so that's over the police
and the civil guard, are transferred to the minister of war. He decided to put Franco in charge of the repression of
both of these incidents. - [Narrator] The Spanish air
force bombed its own territory and troops of the Spanish
Foreign Legion and Army of Africa moved violently through villages, like a conquering army on foreign soil. - So during the three weeks of this tremendous
repression that goes on, Franco has what I would
call on-the-job training of being a dictator. - [Narrator] In 1934, 1.5 million pesatas, 20,000 rifles, 20,000 hand
grenades, and 200 machine guns arrived in Spain for monarchist militias. It had all come from Italy. (pensive music) - For a good decade or more, Mussolini was the fascist in power and Hitler worshiped Mussolini. He tried to meet him. He wrote him letters.
He asked for autographs. And Mussolini said, "Who is this Austrian, this strange man who's
trying to get to power?" - [Narrator] The first and
keenly anticipated meeting between Duce and Fuhrer took place in June in Venice. - And Mussolini made sure that Hitler had to come onto Italian soil and he wore a military uniform. And this put Hitler at disadvantage. He wished that he had
worn uniform as well. Their meeting didn't go very well in that Mussolini wasn't
very impressed by Hitler. - [Narrator] Hitler
looked, Mussolini said, "Like a plumber in a Mackintosh." He complained to his
representative at the Vatican that Hitler had sounded
like a broken record. - Hitler tended to go on monologues, even when he was with people,
about German superiority, so he found him tactless, strange, and he thought that he
didn't have much future. - [Narrator] Mussolini, of course, believed in himself as a leader. In 1934 he abolished divorce, told women to stay home and have children, and introduced a special tax on bachelors. - Mussolini didn't so much
rule Italy as edit it. He was an old-fashioned
newspaperman, you know? It was a headliner day. - [Narrator] At the heart of his publicity was the Bonifica Integrale, the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, a project that Italy had been promising itself for many years and that annually made the Agro Pontino the scene of the most
famous photo opportunity. - You know, you've seen
the pictures of Mussolini stripped to the waist,
getting in the wheat. You know, Mussolini the strongman, Mussolini the father of the nation. - [Narrator] Two weeks
after his return from Italy, Hitler had launched the
purge of factional opponents known as The Night of the Long Knives. - The Night of the Long Knives is traditionally seen as the moment at which Hitler strikes
out against his own people. The more radical Nazis
think Hitler's takeover hasn't gone far enough. - [Narrator] The army
leadership, the Reichswehr, was increasingly alarmed
by the stormtroopers', the Sturmabteilungs', posture
as an alternative army. The president was head
of the armed forces, and when Hindenburg died, would the generals perhaps prefer a head of state less identified with and beholden to the SA, then Adolf Hitler? - Deutschland uber alles! - Uber alles!
- Uber alles! - Uber alles!
- Uber alles! - Of course, we shouldn't
forget that Hitler himself, within his own party, was only one of several
possible candidates. And it wasn't at all
clear that Hitler himself wasn't going to be
challenged by various groups. - [Narrator] The failing
health of the president made resolution of the SA problem urgent. In June, the SA leadership, headed by Ernst Rohm, was purged. - Rohm was very useful as a bully boy, a tough guy on the street, but his belief was you
wanted violent revolution, you seize power, you repeat the coup. And for Hitler, this was dated, this was out of fashion, it wouldn't work. - 30th of June 1944 he
moved against the SA and basically executed
many of their leaders, or had Rohm murdered, so often that the SA was totally tamed. (Hitler speaking German) (crowd shouts) (Hitler speaking German) - [Narrator] The Night of the Long Knives was presented as the overthrow
of a threat to the state, that the stormtroopers
had become too powerful, that they were plotting against Hitler. And it was actually irrelevant. It had nothing to do with that. - So there's a sort of typical Hitler sleight of hand going on here that he seems to be striking
towards the stormtroopers. But the more important target was the conservative resistance that was coming from within his regime. - [Narrator] "I gave the order to shoot," Hitler boasted in a speech to
the Reichstag on July 13th. - [Reporter] The patriot is
dead at the hands of a murderer. - [Narrator] Less than two weeks later, Engelbert Dollfuss, the
Austrian chancellor, was murdered by a couple of Nazis, aggravating Mussolini's
fear of an Anschluss, an Austrian union with Germany. His response was to move four divisions up to Italy's frontier with Austria. (brooding music) In addition to Dollfuss,
Mussolini was a patron of Gyula Gombos' far-right
regime in Hungary, and as we have noted, of
the far-right in Spain. Towards the end of 1934, an Italian-trained Croatian fascist assassinated King Alexander of Yugoslavia. - Across in Central and Eastern Europe, in Poland, in the Baltic States, in Hungary, in the Balkans, there has been a collapse of
liberal democratic regimes from the mid-1920s onwards. Perhaps not a move towards fascism, but certainly towards
right-wing authoritarianism. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] On August 2nd,
President Hindenburg died. - I think a major irony in
the fact that in August 1934 Hindenburg goes to his grave
very happy about the fact that he thinks he has saved for all time his historical image, his aura, of the kind of leadership
he wanted to project. And of course, ironically
from out standpoint, nothing is so destructive
of Hindenburg's image as the fact that he named
Hitler as chancellor. - [Narrator] A plebiscite would abolish the office of president and transfer its powers to the fuhrer. In September, to their
unconditional acclaim, it was as absolute ruler that
Hitler climbed onto the stage before the thousands gathered
at the Nuremberg rally. The film of the rally,
"Triumph of the Will," is justly famous though it
was a box office failure and the American columnist Walter Winchell declared that its
director, Leni Riefenstahl, was, "As pretty as a swastika." - It's a moment that Hitler becomes a god. He is now no longer a mere mortal and it's about the superheroism of Hitler. (speaking German) - Sieg heil!
- Heil Hitler! - Sieg heil!
- Heil Hitler! - Sieg heil!
- Heil Hitler! (pensive music) - [Narrator] In Paris,
15 people were killed and as many as 2,000 wounded in a long night of violence
that would have repercussions. - The most spectacular moment of violence was on the 6th of February 1934 when a combination of
right-wing organizations and veterans organizations tried to storm the parliament building. (singing in French) And a few days later, on
the 12th of February 1934, you have a huge rally of trade unionists and left-wing partisan movements in defense of the republic. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Charles de Gaulle, who at the time of the
February events wrote, "Today, the ground under is giving way. Where will it lead?" He ventured, "In my humble
opinion, to a reinforcing, or even better, restoration of order, but not without many more upheavals." (pensive music) Upheavals were also causing bloodshed on the streets of America. In January, the federal
government was providing jobs for four million American workers. But having a job did not
mean having a living wage, and there was widespread unrest. Labor unrest built through the year. The Toledo Auto-Lite strike in May was a foretaste of how things
boiled over in the summer. The Minneapolis general strike produced the tragedy of Bloody Friday when police opened fire, leaving two dead and 67 injured. The West Coast longshore
strike earlier in the month had also left two dead
after Bloody Thursday. And the largest strike in
American labor history, the textile strike, saw
10 killed in September. The New Deal had raised expectations, and Roosevelt had between April and June signed into law a Debt Default Act, Homeowners Loan Act,
Securities Exchange Act, Trade Agreements Act, Farm
Bankruptcy Act, and on and on, and yet expectations were not being met. President Roosevelt needed to take action. - And so he begins to
develop with his advisors a second New Deal, and this is the New Deal for
which he is most remembered. This is the New Deal that is
going to bring Social Security to the American people. - That reasonable profit can be earned while at the same time
protection can be assured. - [Narrator] Roosevelt
will announce the framework for the Second New Deal when he addresses
Congress in January 1935. In India, what might've
been a decisive step was taken in 1934. - The system sanctioned by the Government of India Act of 1934 allowed, effectively,
almost 15% or so of Indians to exercise the vote. Now, that was a big extension of political representation to India. - [Narrator] But one titan
kept up his fierce opposition to Indian self-rule. - And Churchill spends a
lot of time in the 1930s trying to get his
anti-Indian self-rule voice heard over the BBC, and the BBC doesn't want to allow what they call his
die-hard position on India to have a voice. And he is hopping mad about it. - This is no time to mince measures and fool around with weak governments. - [Narrator] It was a
battle that Churchill lost, but it taught him a useful lesson. - He wrote to his wife, saying I've just discovered
that all this technique which I've been using
for the last 35 years is not really necessary. What you need to do is stand
up and make some remarks in a very sort of plain
and conversational style. - [Narrator] In China, the politician, the titan who had the upper hand, was Chiang Kai-shek, whose Nationalist forces had driven the Communist
Party into a desperate retreat and who had shown himself
to be a ruthless opponent. - Chiang Kai-shek has gone
through a fairly volatile life, let us say, involved in Shanghai, very much in the
revolutionary movements there after the fall of the Qing empire in 1912. And these revolutionary movements were often a mixture of idealists trying to bring about a new China linked with, it must
be said, the underworld and some pretty nefarious practices. - [Narrator] The Communist
retreat to a remote stronghold is a foundation myth of
the People's Republic, where it is celebrated as The Long March. - This was the defeat
of the Communist Party. It gets re-narrated as the
birth, the born-again moment. - [Narrator] It was, Mao
said, "Our worst period, blocked in front and pursued from behind." But it was also the
period in which Mao Zedong would rise to the position he
would hold until his death. - Mao, because he's the one who leads them out of the jaws of defeat
into this sort of new moment, gains in stature and becomes more or less the unquestioned leader of the
communist movement in China. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The calendar flips. Adolf Hitler is Fuhrer, Mussolini Il Duce, and Stalin is everywhere. By 1933 there were more than twice as many images of Stalin adorning
Moscow as of Lenin. When Stalin made a rare public appearance at the 1935 Moscow Congress, the applause lasted for 15 minutes. Then a woman shouted, "Glory to Stalin!" and they all started clapping again. In September 1935, along with the Nuremberg Laws restricting the rights of German Jews, an order was made installing the swastika as the official flag of the Reich, and on the 18th of October
Hitler told his officers, "Rearm and get ready.
Europe is on the move again. If we are clever we will be the winners." (poignant music) 13 days earlier, Italy
had invaded Ethiopia. - When Mussolini came to power, their only colonies were
Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. And Mussolini had longed
to correct an injustice that had happened under the
weak liberal government. In 1896 the Italians had
tried to invade Ethiopia and they'd been defeated. - So you get these squares and piazzas filled up with people, the triumphant leader
announcing the war in Abyssinia. - [Narrator] The invasion
of Ethiopia, then Abyssinia, began on October 3rd, 1935, when the first bombs fell on Adwa. Italy's opponent could
boast eight slow aircraft and 371 bombs. - People who were very prominent
in the League of Nations and in antislavery societies
in Britain and in France initially welcomed Mussolini's
invasion because he says, "Well, I'm going in there
to get rid of slavery," and they go, "Oh, that's
marvelous, well done!" And then, of course, the tanks roll in and they have to kind of say, "Oh, no, this isn't quite
what we had in mind." - [Narrator] In the wake of the
brutal invasion of Abyssinia the League of Nations imposed limited sanctions against Italy. Former British Prime
Minister David Lloyd George described the League's sanctions as, "Elaborate arrangements to deprive Italy of those things she could do without." Forbidden were donkeys and mules. Omitted were cars and trucks. (pensive music) - The Royal Navy dominated
the Mediterranean and could've stopped, without a thought, this entire enterprise
simply by denying him access to the Ethiopian coast
by blocking the Suez Canal. Such was the fear of creating another war, they thought, "Well, we
mustn't precipitate this." - [Narrator] The military
historian Basil Liddell Hart thought Britain's failure to
stare down Mussolini in 1935, "The most fateful turning point in the period between the wars." Two days after the Italian invasion, Roosevelt proclaimed American neutrality. And, "To hell with Europe and
the rest of those nations," exclaimed Minnesota Senator Thomas Schall. As 1936 opened, Spanish Prime Minister Manuel Azana wrote that, "The left
feared a military coup... The right feared that the
Soviet was on the horizon. I've never," Azana said, "seen
such a stupid situation." - There's intense
dialogue among the people who shared their own ideas, but there's no dialogue between people who have different ideas, and that's the problem. And eventually we'll have a new civil war. - [Narrator] Elections
for a new government held on February 16th were the last free elections
held in Spain for 40 years. The result, announced on February 20th, gave the Popular Front a
slender margin of less than 2%. - After the elections of the
Popular Front in February 1936, it was decided there were a whole series of generals who weren't to be trusted, so they were sent them to different places to get them away from Madrid. While all the others were
distributed all over the place, Franco was sent to be military commander of the Canary Islands. - [Narrator] The starter's
gun fired by General Mola called on the Army of Africa
to rise at 5 a.m. on July 18th and the garrisons in mainland Spain to follow 24 hours later. Ibarruri, la Pasionaria, gave
a radio speech on that day which went straight into legend. "The fascist shall not pass,"
she said. "No pasaran." (ominous music) In July and August, Hitler and Mussolini provided the first practical assistance, and it was decisive. The supplied the air transports that pitched Franco's crack
Army of Africa into the battle. - Germany provided the airlift
for the Army of Africa, without which the Nationalist
war effort would've been lost. Both boats, but also bombers that transported the troops
across the Strait of Gibraltar. - [Narrator] The American
ambassador in Madrid, Claude Bowers, called
the Spanish Civil War, "A foreign of the fascist powers against the government of Spain." Churchill described nonintervention as, "An elaborate system of official humbug." - The democracies were feeble. There were, of course, strong voices agitating to stand down, but even Churchill was pretty feeble. He started by being pro-Franco. - [Narrator] On October 1st, Franco was invested with his new powers: head of the Spanish State, in the throne room of the
captain-generalcy in Burgos. But the war had many long
and murderous months to run. - Franco was committed above all to what he saw as the eradication of Spain's internal enemies. And it's a long list of
internal enemies for Franco. (sinister music) - [Narrator] On Saturday, March 7th, Hitler had addressed the Reichstag. "The German government has from today restored the full and unrestricted
sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized
zone of the Rhineland," Hitler declared. And 600 deputies, in the words of American
Correspondent William Shirer, who was an eyewitness, "Leaped to their fee like automatons, their right arms upstretched
in the Nazi salute, and screamed, 'Heil!'" - [Crowd] Heil! - Sieg!
- Heil! - The Rhine and the territory
alongside it is really key, and of course it's also there as a border. - [Narrator] The Rhineland
was a 50-kilometer wide strip of territory on the
eastern bank of the River Rhine which, kept demilitarized, constituted an important part
of France's defendability. - The German military were terrified. They said the the French can
just walk in and wipe us out. They hadn't got anything
there, really, at all. (dramatic music) And if the French had
responded vigorously, I think Hitler might've
been stopped in his tracks. - [Narrator] Of the
remilitarization of the Rhineland, Lord Lothian comfortingly
remarked that the Germans were, "Only going into their own back garden." - The remilitarization of the Rhineland gives the National
Socialist state and Hitler a set of resources that make them a much more formidable foe. And it's the only time
Hitler says to his troops, "If you meet opposition, come back." They never get that instruction again. - [Narrator] In explaining
to the Parliament why Britain did nothing,
Anthony Eden said, "It the appeasement of Europe as a whole that we have constantly before us," and there he let loose a word that would be vilified
for generations to come. Hitler had the Rhineland. He had the Berlin Olympics. He had increased the
Wehrmacht frontline divisions from 7 to 51 in just three years. And in Mussolini he had an ally who was throwing his weight around. - Ethiopia was a great
imperialist triumph, it was a correction of
a historic injustice, and it was a way for Mussolini
to shore up his popularity. - [Narrator] On November 1st, in a speech in Milan's Cathedral Square, Mussolini said the the
Rome-Berlin agreement was, "An axis around which all the European states who
want peace can revolve." Marshal Badoglio had led his
troops into Addis Ababa in May. There had been just over
1,000 Italian casualties. Assaulted by bombing,
poison gas, and massacre, Ethiopian casualties are uncounted. - Mussolini was the great prototype and also a working model of how a fascist society
could actually work. (ominous music) - [Narrator] Between 1928 and 1936, as the Five-Year Plans rolled out, the Soviet Union explored how a communist society could actually work. - Stalin had in his hands the levers of great power
in the Soviet Union, and he used them. - One of the things that lays behind the economic modernization of society is that the threat of an
international conflict seems to be getting bigger
and bigger through the 1930s. - [Narrator] In 1936, when the Third Reich had no modern tanks, the Soviet Union had 18,877. On June 27th, 1936, President Roosevelt accepted
the nomination of his party. - I accept the commission
you have tended me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war. - [Narrator] "To some generations
much is given," he said. "Of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Americans," he said, "has a rendezvous with destiny." His words carried a far greater
truth than even he imagined. The 1936 election did more
than return Roosevelt. As one of his aides remarked,
"It all but crowned him." - Roosevelt's own critics then accuse him of being the dictator. And then when he tries to get rid of some of the conservative
Democrats from his own party, that's called a purge. So these notions that
are out there in Europe are what his own rivals
are accusing Roosevelt of. - [Narrator] FDR's opponent
carried only two states. In the 1934 midterms, similar
support for the New Deal had sent 12 new Democratic
senators to Washington, obliging many to find
seats with the Republicans. The newcomers included Harry
S. Truman from Missouri. - When Roosevelt wins his
landslide reelection in 1936, which no one had necessarily foreseen, his first and real only major domestic measure of his second term is to try and reform the Supreme Court. - If we would make Democracy succeed, I say we must act now! - Roosevelt was very
frustrated and worried about the Supreme Court and he put together this plan
to add additional justices for every justice that
would refuse to retire after the age of 70. (foreboding music) - [Narrator] History would overwhelm Roosevelt's domestic concerns. In Japan, the tide was
ebbing away from democracy. Anticipating all-out war following the army's provocation
of the Manchurian Incident, the army and navy resisted toeing the line drawn by party politicians. Amid the heightening discord, an unsuccessful but
destabilizing coup attempt of February 26th, 1936 destroyed any hope of a return to a normal course of
constitutional government. (Toshiya speaking Japanese) (Takahisa speaking Japanese) (Akira speaking Japanese) - [Narrator] Japanese
expansion through Manchuria led some genuinely
patriotic leaders in China to force a showdown, insisting that Chiang Kai-shek focus his strength not on
eliminating the communists but on the foreign invader. The affair is known as the Xi'an Incident. - Chiang was kidnapped by the
former ruler of Manchuria, who'd been expelled by
the Japanese takeover. I think Chiang realized after that that he had to pull
together with the communists in a united front. - [Narrator] It was the Xi'an Incident that first revealed the skill
influence of Soong Mei-ling, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. - She came in and she acted as a broker. She smoothed things over
between all of the key players. She persuaded the young general that he needed to release Chiang Kai-shek and that he would be protected. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] In 1937, violence
was rampaging through Spain; to the east, new records in terror were being set in the Soviet Union; and in China, an invader attacked. And the history books say
that the war started in 1939. - World War II broke out
on the 7th of July, 1937. This is not a date that
European historians generally attribute to this event, but I think there is a very strong case that actually the Second
World War began in Asia, and particular with shooting between locally garrisoned
Chinese and Japanese troops at a bridge called Lugou Qiao. - [Narrator] In 1937, the Japanese Ministry of
Education issued a text titled "Cardinal Principles of
the National Polity." This was an official
statement for use in schools. It defined the Japanese state as: "Aggressively nationalist, Imperialist, authoritarian, non-individualistic." - Then, with the full-scale
Japanese invasion in 1937, you have a real military
power that's coming in and is sweeping through your land in a way that looks to be
incredibly unstoppable. - [Narrator] From mid-July, Japanese troops were surging into China. By December, Chiang Kai-shek, already defeated in Beijing and Shanghai, had been forced to abandon Nanjing. - Mao, actually from
this point on until 1947, he was not actually affected
much by the Japanese attack during those 12 years. So they started to bill
him as a ideologist, a military strategist, and also the unquestionable leader of the Chinese Communist Party. - [Narrator] Mussolini sent one of his most rabid supporters, Roberto Farinacci, to report on the war in Spain in which he had invested heavily. - He sent a lot of technical experts. And he ended up sending many more troops than his generals wanted him too. - Duce!
- Duce! - Duce!
- Duce! - Viva Italia!
- Viva! - [Narrator] Farinacci reported
that the war had become, "A contest between
massacres, almost a sport." By February 1937, Italian air and land forces
in Spain exceeded 50,000. (pensive music) - They suffer a severe
military defeat in March 1937 at a place called Guadalajara. That further adds to the
general sense in Europe, "Oh, Italians, typical. They can't fight. They couldn't even beat
the Ethiopians in 1896 and now they're hopeless in Spain." And that further militarizes
the regime at home. - [Narrator] On April 26th, Germany's air force
unit, the Condor Legion, arrived above Guernica, the
holy city of the Basque. The raid killed one in eight
of the town's population. Of it, Hermann Goering said,
"Germany could not do otherwise as we had nowhere else
to try out our machines." - As far as Hitler was concerned, his participation in the Spanish Civil War had been immensely beneficial. They'd managed to trial a
number of military tactics which would be used in the Blitzkrieg, in Poland first and then in France. So for Hitler, the
consequences were positive. For Mussolini, much less so. - [Narrator] Mussolini made
his first official visit to Germany in September 1937. This time Hitler was in uniform. "It would be dangerous
folly for the British people to underrate the amazing
qualities of courage, comprehension, self-control
and perseverance which he exemplifies,"
Churchill wrote on October 10th. He was describing Mussolini. It was said that in the crowd
welcoming Mussolini to Berlin were many who had been
given cheering lessons in their workplaces. When Hitler made his return
visit to Italy in May 1938, the cheering in Florence struck
an even less sincere note. It was a recording played
through loudspeakers. In May 1937, Neville Chamberlain
entered Downing Street without an election. He was 68. Lord Halifax, who would become foreign
minister in February 1938 and was the favorite of
many, including the king, to succeed Chamberlain as
prime minister in 1940, met Hitler on November 19th, 1937 and wrote in his diary that
he found him, "Very sincere." Chamberlain described Halifax's
visit to the fuhrer as, "A great success." In November, the British
publisher Victor Gollancz chose Stalin as his Man
of the Year because: "He was safely guiding Russia
on the road to a society in which there will be no exploitation." - In 1937 the Soviet
Union had had a census and the census brought
quite surprising results. The number of people was
far lower than expected, which led to the decision by Stalin to arrest those who had
organized the census, execute a considerable number
of them, and hide the census. - [Narrator] In April 1937, the Central Committee
of the Communist Party officially launched the Great Terror, which would result in the
judicial murder of 690,000 people. Molotov said of the terror, "We were driven in 1937
by the consideration that in time of war we would
not have a fifth column." To deal with the threat, they established three-person
commissions, troikas. - What happens in 1937 is an extraordinary decision to reestablish troikas in all regions. It works on the basis that there's a great upsurge
of criminal activity, which is largely
attributed to former kulaks and to people who've
returned from the camps. - These trials developed
not from communism, not from socialism, but from Stalinism. - [Narrator] The notorious show trials and the work of the troikas were described by author, barrister, and jurist Geoffrey Robertson as, "The public tip of Joseph
Stalin's iceberg of terror." - It does strike me that
Stalin wasn't alone with this. Maybe Khrushchev and the others were terrified in '52, '53 after Stalin really was going grumpy and off his rocker and saying things, but earlier on, they appear
to have been equally involved. - [Narrator] The terror reached
maximum pitch in July 1937. Perhaps the most extraordinary purge was of the leading ranks of the Red Army. - I think it's difficult to talk about the purge of the Red Army and say that there's some
sort of goal in mind. I think that the beginning of the purge is very much instigated by Stalin, and of course end up consuming tens of thousands of Soviet officers. - [Narrator] In Stalin's purges, 75 members of the 80-member Supreme Military Soviet were killed, while 13 out of 15 army commanders, 50 out of 57 corp commanders, 154 out of 186 divisional commanders, and 36,000 others were purged. (pensive music) In Chicago, on September 12th, the president delivered a speech calling on countries to
quarantine the nations that were causing what FDR described as, "International anarchy and instability." The first lady did not share
his commitment to neutrality. Eleanor Roosevelt made speeches in support of the Spanish Republic and openly contributed to
the Spanish Children's Fund and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, one of the international brigades fighting on the Republican side. And she had a voice. - She had a syndicated column from about 1936 to the end of her life and she wrote for Look and Life and Time and Newsweek and Redbook
and all the great magazines and really had a very public life. She writes to a friend,
"I have very good news. I have earned through my columns, through my newspaper
and magazine articles, more than Franklin earned as president." - [Narrator] In India, the first elections under
the new constitutional basis were held in 1937. - And it brought congress
governments into power in the majority of the provinces. 'Cause it also prepared the subsequent path of Indian nationalism towards a constitutional transfer of power rather than a revolutionary
overthrow of the empire. - [Narrator] This startled
the All-India Muslim League into action, and Jinnah returned from
London to lead the league. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who deserves a place on the fringe of the gallery of titans. - Jinnah is really one
of the great enigmas of 20th century India. Trained as a lawyer in
London, a complete anglophile, he was not a believer. He drank whiskey, he ate pork,
ham sandwiches, et cetera, and yet he emerges as the
leader of Indian Muslims. And this is the real paradox. Was it something that he willed? Was it purely his own personal ambition? Or was he fighting for a greater cause? - [Narrator] And for what
did Eamon de Valera fight? He took his place on the fringe when he gained power in Ireland in 1932. What he fought for was defined in 1937. - One of Eamon de Valera's
defining achievements was the 1937 constitution. He worked closely with
the Catholic hierarchy when he drafted it. The constitution says a lot of things, but it states that women's
place is in the home, it places the Irish language
as the first official language, and perhaps most importantly, it lays claim to the six
counties of Northern Ireland. - [Narrator] And Hitler will
lay claim to the Sudetenland; and Japan will push further into China; and a man with an umbrella
will take on the titans but never become one. The world has changed. It is no longer after the First World War. It is now before the second.
