The Big Three: Inside The Tense WW2 Alliance | Titans Of The 20th Century | Timeline

hi everybody and welcome to this documentary on timeline my name is dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video 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 this was their final talent they are the result of actions taken by people the only thing we have to fear is fear itself fear itself 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 this is the story of the people who holding or reaching for power shaped our world the titans of the 20th century [Music] at the end of 1943 the greatest war the world has ever known had traveled more than halfway towards its climax millions were yet to die but the tide turned at midway at el alamein and at stalingrad was running at the flood and three leaders tasting victory met at tehran three titans pose for photographs outside the soviet embassy yoshif viseryanovich juggers veli known as stalin franklin delano roosevelt and winston spencer churchill [Music] that particular dynamic between roosevelt stalin and churchill was i think very very unusual here and at the yalta conference in 1945 the big three will decide the fate of the world and its shape for decades to come churchill did not like the use of the term the big three starling roosevelt and churchill because he knew actually that it was the big two and a half three or two and a half they were center stage but other colossal figures in china in india were waiting in the wings while more main players in the unfolding drama were aligned in opposition adolf hitler benito mussolini the emperor showa known as hirohito they and gandhi and mao zedong and franco and ho chi minh and many others were born in the age of empires and they created a new map of the world as our story starts a world that endured for centuries had been smashed on the battlefields of the first world war this was a world in which all the leading players had been born in the 19th century winston churchill in 1874 stalin in 1878 roosevelt in 82 and hitler in 89. neville chamberlain's birth year 1869 was also the year in which mohandas k gandhi was born what they knew as children was a gas-lit horsepowered world what they knew as adults was a war in which 65 million fought eight and a half million were killed and from which most in britain and her empire almost 90 percent came home but not to a world that was gaslit and horse-drawn [Applause] in 1919 churchill roosevelt stalin were already significant national figures others who will play a part in our story were completely unknown in 1919 no one saw benito mussolini an obscure journalist as a future dictator mussolini had fought in the war he was lightly wounded in 1917 and so his war was shortened he was a young man from the provinces not by any means totally poor in his background the regime's propaganda would exaggerate his family's poverty italy though on the victorious side had come away from the war with grievances sidelined perhaps bullied is a better word by her allies britain and france at the peace settlement she had she claimed been served a mutilated victory and there was discontent and rising communism the italians call the first two years after the first world war the two red years against this background we see the gradual rise of a right-wing movement the fascist party led by benito mussolini he busied himself making a new newspaper because he had been kicked out of the socialist party the paper called popolo italia which was financed by rich landowners and by the french and the british secret services in november 1919 mussolini made his first tilted political office he polled 4796 votes the catholic populari received 70 000 and the socialists 170 hundred and fifteen in his home village of pradapio mussolini did not receive a single vote a little under three years later he would be sworn in as italy's prime minister a rise to power that makes the ascent of adolf hitler seem positively lethargic mussolini's future axis partner had fallen victim to a gas attack in 1918. in 1919 he remained in the army biographers of failure always say that the army was really the only home he had ever had at least since his childhood it was the only place he was going to feel at home the army sent hitler to conduct a political education course at a camp near augsburg he gave lectures on peace conditions and reconstruction and discovered that he was rather good at it he hadn't realized before just what school he had as a public speaker so that plus his passionate belief that germany had been betrayed they come together following his success in the lecture room hitler was sent to report on a meeting of the german workers party where hitler disagreed so violently with one of the speakers that he forgot his covert role barking at the offended party who left in a huff but hitler made an impression we could use him said party chairman anton drexler a locksmith he was originally their pr man and what he did essentially was emphasize posters the meeting of hoster the thread running rampant through all the propaganda was that germany had not lost the war on the battlefield but had been betrayed at home a lot of what the nazism he did comes across as a kind of protracted bratish wine they were actually planting this idea of grievance and betrayal in the german people and they did it very effectively the italians and germans were not alone in resenting the versailles agreement at the signing ceremony one delegation had stayed away the chinese the government that was negotiating for china at the versailles treaty was a weak and ineffectual government when word of that weakness reached the chinese people you had mass demonstrations that are now known as the may 4th demonstration the death of his father had called one future titan home away from the revolutionary action mall actually was in his home province in pune in changsha in the capital city he was teaching history at a primary school so he misses the major event of his moment which is the may fourth movement which is the protest that happens after the publication of the articles of the versailles treaty that most damagingly hand german-owned colonial territories over to japan rather than handing them back to china in the post-war turmoil every country every titan faced the same choice to go to the right or to the left now of course would go left russia already had and joseph stalin was a rising star in soviet communist party ranks in may 1980 when arguably the country was at its most difficult time with starvation stalin is given the very important job of being chief food commissar in the south a man who would profoundly influence his country for much of the 20th century not least by crushing communism by going far right was also gaining a reputation 1919 franco was beginning to be referred to in the spanish press as de la legion the ace of the legion history seems to regard francisco franco as an almost comical entrant in the gallery of dictators as we will learn he was anything but few women during this period had the opportunity to make a mark entirely on their own but some remarkable women by any definition titans exercise power alongside their powerful husbands 1919 is such a crucial year for eleanor roosevelt it's the beginning of a new phase of her relationship with fdr it was a new phase because in 1919 it seemed as though her marriage might be over she unpacks his bags and she finds his love letters to lucy mercer and she says the bottom has fallen out of her life there's an appeal to start over again and they do in 1920 adolf hitler was out of the army he'd found his gift for public speaking and saw himself as paving the way perhaps for someone like ludendorff effectively the german army commander at the end of the world war he thought initially you see that he would simply be a as he put it a drummer for ludendorff hitler was looking for a leader himself he wanted to be subordinate to someone grander hitler only gradually came to see himself as the messiah nietzsche whose philosophy hitler commandeered and corrupted said whoever can command will find those who must obey and hitler learned to effectively command he found the short sentence worked very well with an audience didn't want deep intellectual arguments they wanted slogans overseas foreign italy too was beginning to feel the swagger of its man of destiny [Applause] [Music] suffrage had been broadened in 1918 as a reward to the soldiers the result was not a stable liberal government it was an unstable shambles which created an opportunity that was seized by the faschi mussolini found the fasci of defense and then the fasci of combat and that's the first time that the word fascia which comes of course from latin and it's a military term it's about a protective move of soldiers becomes associated with a with a movement a street movement mussolini formed his first band of squadristi to attack striking workers at milan's alfa romeo factory in 1920 and power took to the streets in an editorial in popolo d'italia in 1920 mussolini wrote the italian proletariat needs a bloodbath for its force to be renewed violence and instability continued in soviet russia the civil war would not end until 1922. at the 10th communist party congress in 1921 there had been an indication of how backroom maneuvers were developing in the election to the central committee leon trotsky founder of the red army hero of the october revolution polled tenth well below joseph stalin stalin did all the balling tasks in the party well everyone else was strutting on the stage and suddenly they found he was in control much their horror because he controlled poignancy control to recruitment and so forth there were 14 unsuccessful candidates in the 1921 election between 1933 and 1942 two of them would die of natural causes one would be assassinated and 12 would be victims of the terror trotsky labelled stalin the party's outstanding mediocrity lenin had an extremely high opinion of him which is why in 1922 he would make him general secretary it was a decision that lennon came to regret lenin actually changes his mind about stalin at one point he'd go on and criticize him after a round saying he was too rude that he was he was you know just too much of a thug really to be a leader of the bolshevik party but stalin now had his fingers securely wrapped around the mechanism of the party machine in 1921 having left politics following electoral defeat in 1920 franklin d roosevelt faced his greatest challenge [Music] he cultivated an image of a playboy who liked to party liked women other than his wife eleanor was often seen in their company and then personal catastrophe strikes in the form of polio he went for a swim off the coast of canada came back was feeling very faint and then was ill and lost the ability to move his legs i think people don't understand the extent of his paralysis and how much it hobbled him and how immobile he was and how much pain he had to endure [Music] the disability transformed his relationship with eleanor and her role in the world she supported him and what he needed to do and he supported her ability to speak out and organize by january of 1922 gandhi already universally recognized as mahatma great soul and was leading his followers along the path of sati graha non-cooperation [Music] and more than 30 000 of them had been arrested this was really the the creation of a new kind of political mobilization and i think it was the message of gandhi himself you know traveling across india the message of his where his lieutenants like nehru and bose and others who went back to their regions spoke politics in their own regional languages gujarati tamil punjabi bengali and took the message of gandhi took the message of indian freedom out into the countryside beyond the cities non-cooperation runs from 1920 to 1922 and he suspends it very early in 1922 because of a small incident to him it's not small in a small village called chaurichora a group of demonstrators who were chanting gandhi's name have a brief encounter with the police the encounter turns violent and the police are killed gandhi believes that he is personally responsible for unleashing this kind of sentiment and he worries that that kind of thing will lead india to a dark place in march gandhi was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison on a charge of sedition which is to say of protesting against british rule by may 1922 membership of the fascist movement in italy had swollen beyond three hundred thousand in 1919 it had been less than one thousand power was no longer with the parliament it was with the gangs of paramilitary thugs whose violence bullied peasants and towns people into submission [Music] mussolini's propaganda bills itself as the solution for the the red threat mussolini confessed our programme is simple we want to govern italy then it's not all that wildly clear as to how the duchess great and wonderful thoughts turn into fascist policy in 1922 his ambition was to be satisfied the king and the liberals thought that if they brought him into government as prime minister of a coalition he would calm down famous last words it was the hollow threat of a violent coup that frightened the king he was a very timid personality the king his father had been assassinated been an anarchist in 1900 and this had affected him a great deal his mother queen margherita was so popular that they named a pizza after her a writer of the time giuseppe borgese said when he appeared in a uniform it always looked too large on him the coup never quite happened but it's written up in history as the march on rome the so-called march on rome in october 1922. they don't really get there but they march towards it it rains heavily and the maps are poor it's not quite clear whether the army is going to resist them and in the end the king summons mussolini to become prime minister then he took a train to rome and he had black shirts stationed outside the city and then they flooded in making the appearance of an armed insurrection but in reality this was a kind of add-on spectacle we had to make it appear that it was a great populist outpouring of rage which just took control of the state in a good attack that's not the truth of course and why do i insist on proclaiming that that october was historically a revolution asked mussolini because words have their own tremendous magic power he answered on november the 3rd less than a week after the fanciful march on rome the journalist hermannessa told a pact munich meeting germany's mussolini is called adolf hitler hitler had taken over leadership of the workers party by now the national socialist german workers party and set his course it makes no difference whether they laugh at us or revile us hitler said the main thing is that they mention us and hitler said people will believe what you tell them if you tell them in a strong enough way he introduces the idea of the big lie accusing germany of failing to meet reparations payments and as allowed under the peace settlement french troops marched into the rua on january the 11th 1923 [Music] two weeks after the french move on january the 25th 1923 at the first nazi party day hitler said that the betrayers of the german fatherland must be done away with he shouted down with the perpetrators of the november crime [Music] he was talking about those he dubbed the november criminals the men who had sued for peace in 1918. in september the world felt the first jolt of fascist aggression when the italian prime minister sent his fleet to bombard and occupy the ionian island of corfu mussolini called the invasion peaceful and provisional of him the british embassy in rome noted that he was a mad dog who may do infinite harm before he's dispatched [Music] a prominent englishman disagreed winston churchill of course made that famous comment in the 1920s that had he been an italian a very important qualification he would have been with mussolini from beginning to end in his struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of leninism winston's wife concurred when they met il ducey in 1927 clementine declared him one of the most wonderful men of our times he was a mesmeric character mussolini and churchill too became rather addicted to mussolini when he when he met him hitler by 1923 was making up to six speeches a day to a country desperate for an answer joseph addison councillor at the british embassy in berlin wrote that it was as if germany was marching with giant strides towards something very unpleasant hitler was very influenced by mussolini's playbook and in fact in 1923 he had his beer hall push was supposed to be his march on power and it failed on november the 9th hitler ludendorff and 3000 supporters marched through munich [Music] their way was blocked by police shots were fired 21 people were killed and adolf hitler's revolution ended as quickly as it had begun he underestimated the legalism of the german people germany had a very strong civic state ethos tiny crew is something you do in south america not germany he was arrested imprisoned treated more like a guest than a prisoner and took the opportunity to write my struggle minecamp idler's working with this prison library in landsberg and copying large passages from other writers so he's citing homer and cicero he's citing the bible extensively as well as nietzsche and wagner all the great and good hitler you see was a serial plagiarist in everything he did so the whole symbolic forms of the rituals the dress the signs were simply lifted mind camp was published in over 1 000 separate editions during lifespan of the third life 12 and a half million copies were printed up to 1945 and that's in germany alone he's self-conceived as a mountaintop visionary who doesn't give explicit orders he gives of visions and you struggle to interpret that vision time magazine was launched in 1923 and first anointed someone its man of the year in 1927 when the crown fell on charles lindbergh in the years that concern us the magazine anointed most of the titans in 1930 it was gandhi roosevelt in 32 and 34. haile selassie emperor of abyssinia in 35 and the first woman in 1936 mrs wallace simpson the person without whom the king of england could not live in 1937 continuing to be unorthodox time crowned the married couple of the year chiang kai-shek and sun mei ling in 1938 it was hitler stalin in 39 and churchill in 1940 in 1941 roosevelt for the third time and the following year stalin for the second time in 1944 eisenhower he would appear again in 1959 harry truman in 1948 and in 1949 a second cover for winston churchill [Music] in march 1924 winston churchill offered himself to the voters as an independent anti-socialist candidate he was defeated in october he tried again now as a constitutionalist and this time he was elected churchill was avid for power he hated being out of office he saw keeping hold of the british empire as absolutely crucial otherwise britain would be relegated to a position of being like sweden or belgium or one of these sort of inferior continental countries in november went to everyone's surprise not least his own he was appointed chancellor of the exchequer winston had a chauffeur-driven rolls royce 24 servants champagne with every meal and pink silk underwear churchill's father had been chanter of the exchequer and he made a great fuss about the decimal points that's what she called those damn dots churchill didn't have much more of a clue about those damn dots than his father had lady churchill admitted of her husband that he knows nothing of the life of ordinary people he's never been in a bus she said [Music] events in the soviet union linked as they were to the health of vladimir lenin were moving towards a sort of climax if you look to the linen's so-called testament as an indication of who lenin wanted to succeed him you very quickly come to the conclusion that lenny didn't want anyone to succeed in 1924 trotsky wrote he is needed by all of them all the sneaks that are crawling out of the upturned soil of the revolution stalin will become the dictator of the ussr [Music] when lennon died on january the 21st 1924 an immortalization commission was set up which in contravention of his widow's wishes decided to mummify the leader he remains on display almost a century later if you look at photographs of hitler and stalin at party rallies in the 1920s stalin you will see cross-legged on the floor sitting with the delegates around them with his pipe out chuckling and talking to people hitler is on a podium with everybody looking up at him i think they probably wanted to see each other that way and to some extent it does reflect something that was actually in their psyche on the 20th of december hitler was released from prison he still had 333 days of his sentence to serve he comes out not a changed man in terms of his ideas and his hopes and his policies but in terms of the technique he gives up on that of a violent takeover and instead he tells his party we do it the constitutional way goebbels along with many others said is this the furore we have been looking for is this the fuhrer who is born to lead in spain the title they would fashion for their dictator was cuadillo and the man who would don that cloak was very much on the move he rose to colonel very very quickly and in fact um by the mid-20s he was a brigadier general but that was the great myth franco's youngest general since napoleon in china too a military man was displaying rare ambition which is how many titans are made when sununu zhen died zhang kaishek was the senior military leader within the gomendang hierarchy had founded the nationalist kuomintang party in 1911 and been the young republic's first provisional president his death left a power vacuum and a widow named sung ching ling at some point in the 1920s chiang kai-shek could see the legacy of sunyat sen his own position as the military leader and the wealth and political contacts of the sung family as being a wonderful triangle there were three sisters in the powerful sung family sanyet sen's widow was the eldest and meling the youngest she will enter our story when she becomes madame chiang kai-shek [Music] the chiang kai-shek would then use his control over the military to cease leadership of the woman down within a year or two in the italian election of april 1924 mussolini's block by now dominated by the fascists won 375 of the 535 seats they garnered more than 50 of the vote in the north of italy 70 in the center and 81 in the south the fondness for dictatorship in europe starts with benito muslin when he becomes first prime minister in october 1922 and then actually fully fledged dictator in january 1925. we think that strongmen leaders are evil geniuses who have everything worked out ahead of time in reality especially with mussolini who was the first one there was no template for this there was no template for destroying democracy in a speech in the chamber on january the 3rd 1925 mussolini dissolved the parliament and effectively declared himself dictator of italy [Music] churchill as chancellor could not understand the briefings he received from his own bureaucrats if they were soldiers or generals i would understand what they were talking about he said as it is they all talk persian on april 28 1925 he delivered the budget speech and according to his own assessment made the greatest mistake of his life he took the wrong advice returning britain to the gold standard largely as an expression of political virility you know he wanted the pound to be strong and he didn't get that right in 1925 hitler commissioned his photographer heinrich hoffman to take a series of posed portraits of him gesticulating perhaps to illustrate his virility he trained himself in the secrets of his room sometimes ingestions hand gestures head movement but more specifically of course in terms of how he expressed himself verbally he jumps to his feet there he is shakes my hand like an old friend and those big blue eyes like stars he is glad to see me i am in heaven so wrote joseph goebbels in his diary it was november 1925 and he had just met adolf hitler in 1923 there had been only 71 nazi groups outside of bavaria in 1925 there were 262 following the man who declared in mein kampf that germany would either be a world power or cease to be [Music] on july 4th 1926 chiang kai-shek announced the northern expedition aimed at unifying china then fragmented with numerous warlords under a central government his government amongst the warlords who joined the revolutions and provided the main military forces for the northern expedition chiang kai-shek was one who was able to unite the rest more effectively than anybody else [Music] and by combining political training much of which actually came from the soviets along with building up his own constituency in the emergent nationalist military he found himself a combination of political and military strength that enabled him to reunite large parts of china under his rule and this is one of those very little written about uh campaigns but it's quite extraordinary because there was this army which was not given much of a chance against the big warlords made its way as far as the anchor seat took nanjing the southern capital of the empire as it had been and then shanghai which was the treasure chest of china [Music] at the end of 1926 at the 15th party congress stalin attacked what he identified as the united opposition and zinoviev and kamenev and trotsky must have heard the clock ticking within a year they would be expelled from the party trotsky would be exiled and stalin's grip would have grown more vice-like in america an army officer graduated in a class of 245 from the command and general staff school in 1926. he came first [Music] [Applause] his name was dwight d eisenhower 1927 was a year of activity across our landscape with franco the colonial infantry the so-called africanistas are absolutely brutal and the most famous of the africanistas is francisco franco he was commander-in-chief of what was the most important and powerful military force on the nationalist side which was the army of africa in the soviet union one of the things that helped stalin's rise to power in 1927 is a major war scare where the top bolsheviks are convinced that a war with britain is coming and in china by 1927 when meiling marries chiang kai-shek the song family were hitching their fortunes to a military strongman [Music] the youngest of the three song sisters was destined to make headlines and enter the history books as madam chang we in china want a better world and we must have it [Music] was very clear early on that he would not allow his communist allies to become rivals and therefore when he had come to power in 1927 he brutally turned on his communist allies first in the city of shanghai and then in canton on april the 12th and behind the declaration that the chinese revolution must free itself of russian influence chang launched his anti-communist purge chiang kai-shek calls for an absolute massacre and so everybody comes out on the streets and and they are mowed down the chinese communist party was forced into a few strongholds soviets in rural areas and that's where mao zedong talked debated and frankly fought with fellow communists to try and work out what will be the next path forward mao starts to articulate the philosophy that will become the gospel of his revolution and be promoted to this day as mao zedong thought his very famous 1927 report on the hunan peasant movement that he writes look at the peasants the peasants are the key to an actual revolution [Music] in moscow the party congress ratified stalin's grip on power and launched the first five-year plan which would devastate the peasants we are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries stalin said we must make good this lag or they will crush us [Music] in 1928 a man destined to stand as tall as any titan was about to re-enter public life franklin roosevelt found relief from his condition in warm springs georgia and by 1928 was ready to re-enter public life and actually it was eleanor roosevelt who had a big influence on convincing him to go ahead and run in 1928 they become a powerful team and she becomes his help meet in a way she had never been before and that is about getting back into politics and that means much greater involvement in politics for her [Music] fdr nominated for governor of new york so he traveled from county to county incredibly extensive and grueling campaign and he would be in the backseat of a car he had an iron bar attached to the front seat he would pull himself up lock his braces into place people would gather around and he'd say do i look like a man that's not healthy enough to be governor of the state of new york the voters clearly thought he looked fit enough on november the 6th roosevelt was elected governor japanese troops in occupation of enclaves in china under treaty terms made a move in 1928 which their government failed to support m the emperor's showa had not long been on the throne in 1921 as crown prince hirohito he had sailed from his homeland to see the world he became the first of his rank to travel abroad [Music] after six months visiting britain the netherlands france the three most significant colonial powers in asia [Music] hirohito returned home to become regent due to his father's illness in 1926 he became emperor my in 1931 japan's army in china again moved to invade manchuria how would the young titan on the chrysanthemum throne react perhaps the titan in the kremlin or the titan with the swastika would make the first move or perhaps in the year to come 1929 the move would be made for them on wall street

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 966,920

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, benito mussolini, adolf hitler, ww2, fascism in europe, ghandhi, ww1, fascism, history of fascism

Id: HurvvBWjAQo

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Talulah-Schmooly]

A combination of human nature and the circumstances it created that fed into itself. Less abstract, I'd say the defeat of the Central Powers, the Versailles Treaty and the political and economic chaos it created in its aftermath.