The Century: America's Time - 1941-1945: Civilians At War

[Music] [Applause] has been shot [Music] that all men are created [Applause] Mr Gorbachev teared down this wall [Applause] thank you [Music] London September 1940. [Music] hello America this is Edward Morrow speaking from London there were more German planes over the coast of Britain today than at any time since the War Began [Music] Adolf Hitler was determined to crush the last stronghold in Europe against Nazi Germany strategy bomb England cities and people during the Autumn of 1940 German bombers attacked London night after night for 76 consecutive nights it came to be known as The Blitz [Music] 20 acres of London it's quite a thought a lot of people are killed a lot of films were killed because the Germans were determined to bring us to our knees at all costs by the night of September the 14th when my daughter was born the docks for a light London was Ablaze and in fact the Midwife opened the curtains because we got more bright light from London burning than we got from the electric light in the middle of the room [Music] throughout England 43 000 people died but the British never gave him in the second world war of this Century 50 million people would die nearly half of them civilians [Music] they would die not because they lived near Military targets but because they were the target [Music] in the first world war in violation of a long established principle of civilized combat Allied blockades of German ports and sporadic German bombing of Paris and London had extended the Battlefront to the home front but civilian casualties were limited in the second world war the distinction between soldiers and civilians would collapse now anyone who contributed to the enemy's War making capacity would be vulnerable and entire populations would be deliberately targeted because of their race and their religion this was Total War made more lethal by the advance of technological power and pursued ultimately by forces on both sides Pablo Picasso's Guernica is considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century art it portrays the horror that consumed a Spanish Town on April 26 1937. [Music] German bombers and Fighters sent by Adolf Hitler to help the fascists in the Spanish Civil War slaughtered 1600 innocent civilians there were no military targets of significance in Guernica an outraged World condemned the attack as the immoral act of a re-armed Germany eager to test its new power but Guernica was only the prologue to Nazi Germany's campaign in Europe Poland September the 1st 1939. I was 10 years old I was playing with my friend in the woods were picking mushrooms and we heard this tremendous noise the trees started bending and we saw these huge planes with the black markers [Music] I knew that the war had started [Music] in 25 days German armies overran Poland in nine months virtually all of Western Europe Adolf Hitler's objective was leban's realm living space vast enough for a new German Empire the Third Reich [Music] we saw the first grade something which no one had really experienced before to go to an occupied country as a soldier he was a master of that country you believe Hitler's goal was to enslave the Slavic people of Eastern Europe a people he regarded as racially inferior [Music] in Poland his commanders ordered executions of the nobility government officials priests and teachers nobody expected that the war would be against civilians I saw my family and my friends and on a daily basis being murdered on the streets and and shot [Music] they made it very clear that they were slaves and we were below a human being as they call us winter mage [Music] at the very bottom of Hitler's racial scale were Poland's three million Jews [Music] they used to stop elderly men who were had beards and young the Beards by The Roots they made them lick their boots and also immediately all businesses were taken away we had to wear the yellow star of David on the front and back of our clothing so that we would be easily recognizable [Music] Poland's Jews were torn from their homes and banished to ghettos the largest was in Warsaw nearly half a million people were crammed into an area where fifty thousand had once lived and the ghetto was sealed [Music] people were starving and dying of hunger [Music] you also began to see a lot of Orphans with dragon children [Music] [Applause] typhus was rampant tuberculosis was rampant [Music] [Music] when people died they were put out on the street and all the identification was taken away from them because then the family could get the aeration and maybe exist a day longer it was a horrible situation [Music] you would be surprised to what you can get used to our human life has nothing for them it was Unworthy of living I remember German soldiers photographing themselves to show look at this they are the the strong beautiful officers thank you [Music] this is the Jews [Music] in June 1941 Hitler launched his ultimate battle for the vast Laban SRAM of the Soviet Union foreign [Music] Union is is a war for territory but it is also an ideological crusade to destroy communism it is also a racial crusade to destroy the largest demographic concentration of Jews in the world so this war has too many Temptations for Hitler the Soviet Army was caught unprepared in only two months German forces penetrated 500 miles when they encircle the old capital Leningrad Hitler ordered his commanders to wipe the city and its three million people off the face of the Earth no surrender would be accepted even if offered bombed and shelled daily civilians helped defend the City by digging trenches and building shelters but they faced another enemy The Coldest Winter in 30 years there was no light no heat no fuel no food we received 125 grams of bread bread made of I don't know what but not flour it was so delicious for us so we divided that small piece into three parts zaina generalova was trying to keep her three-month-old baby alive once a woman told me what are you doing your child will die so give all the food to your husband and safe husband that winter the people of Leningrad found a slender Lifeline nearby lake ladiga froze enabling convoys of food and supplies to come in across the ice on makeshift Rail lines the same route allowed people to escape zaina genelova tried to leave with her family he was already so blue so blue so thin so you cannot imagine that the baby did not cry did not cry and in the force day she died in the carriage he died at the hospital so I did not save my family and was alone half of leningrad's population perished during The Siege but the city never surrendered the Russians held out for three Winters 900 days people said oh you see such terrible things are forgotten with time no they cannot difficult never s had been instructed by Hitler to wage the Soviet campaign with as he put it unmerciful unrelenting harshness German Army became the instrument of ideological and racial Warfare every street shop and home became a battlefield even though in some places German forces were at first welcomed by civilians as liberators from Stalin's oppression and I was billeted in a house since I was a girl called Anna and I was young 19 years old and I fell in love with Anna but the thought was there second grade human beings unto mentioned but to me Anna was not only beautiful she was a valuable human being there was confusion utter confusion in my mind what was going on but you know I want to destroy everything we want to be their masters it was unconsciously as a beginning of realization that I was involved in something horrible [Music] advancing armies were followed by specially trained killing squads the einsatzgruppen as they swept into the conquered territories their mission was extermination of communist officials and all Jews [Music] they are given a series of speeches that you were to move in be ruthless be tough we are the master race this is a preemptive strike that you were to kill those who have a potential to be a danger to the German occupation the first thing they did was to give an order that all men all Jewish man between 16 and 60 should report to the center of town [Applause] and then later on I heard shots 400 they shot that day their job was to come in and do what they did and go to the next town and and do the same thing in less than six months the einsatz Groupon systematically hunted down and murdered more than a million Soviet Jews but shooting Jews one at a time was inefficient and psychologically taxing for the killers in August 1941 Heinrich Himmler senior commander of the killing squads went to the Soviet Union and saw firsthand how seriously the executions had demoralized his men he urged them to find a better method January 1942 15 Nazi officials assembled at a villa in an affluent Berlin suburb their purpose to organize what they delicately called the final solution to the Jewish Problem their plan to eliminate all European Jews 11 million they estimated [Applause] the final solution an expansion of what the einsatz group and had already begun in the Soviet Union would now be carried out by Heinrich himmler's SS the SS was ruthlessly efficient [Music] all over occupied Europe the roundup of Jews began in July the SS turned its attention to the Warsaw Ghetto [Music] they told us that they are taking us to the to the east where we will be working every person which came to the train got a big loaf of bread and marmalade and some people couldn't stand their hunger anymore and went for that piece of bread then we got suspicious because a large number of people were disappearing and nothing was heard from them and the trains kept coming back so quickly the rumors were saying that they were going to be locked into camps and and sometimes killed that summer three hundred thousand Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto foreign [Music] in April 1943 those left in the ghetto fought back stolen guns and Molotov cocktails they held off the Germans [Music] at that time I belonged to the underground it was very difficult very hard we knew that death waited for us on every corner [Music] I doubt that there was any place on this Earth an act of heroism like we witnessed in the ghetto bedraggled people after four years almost of occupation start people locked within a very very narrow parameter and yet they went against a German Army which at that time was still very Victorious and very strong we fought not because we knew that we're going to to win but we also would like to make a statement the uprising lasted a month and then the German troops burned the ghetto block by block survivors were killed on the spots or sent to concentration camps [Music] Nazi Germany's killing machine was a highly organized and efficient system set up with the cooperation of both government and private institutions Jewish birth records were collected post offices deliver the deportation notices the finance ministry confiscated Jewish property private companies took over Jewish businesses the foreign Ministry negotiated for the deportation of Jews outside the Reich the sixth largest of 30 death camps were all in Poland situated along Rail lines for easy access on Hitler's personal orders German Railways gave priority to transporting Jews to the camps even holding up military supplies badly needed on the Eastern Front from Oslo Paris Rome Amsterdam trains a hundred cars long converged on the Polish Heartland sealed into box cars were victims by the tens of thousands known to their captors simply as Freight [Music] made to believe that we would be working put into work camps so we walked to the train station and instead of being Passenger cars we realized it was cattle cars [Music] but all delusions passed when the doors were shut they were locked everybody was scared because we didn't know what's going to happen where did they take us there was no water to wash there was no toilet facilities [Music] we spent five days and five nights in these chemicals printable people died right in the cattle car couldn't take it put them in a corner tank was unbelievable excrement urine death hunger the fear the uncertainty if they treat us like this where are we going to be gone and then we arrived at that place somebody thought the slit was Vietnam Auschwitz everybody house out and they're screaming and the yelling mothers looking for their children little children boys or girls separated a mother trying to hold on to her baby and the assessment with the rips and guns I would have never believed anything like this can happen to human beings there was a peculiar smell in the air couldn't figure out what it was sweet smell you smelled it all over I never smelled anything like it this was not a labor camp emblazoned on the gates of Auschwitz where the words arbite machfry work makes you free Auschwitz was Nazi Germany's largest killing Center built on land confiscated from Jews the huge complex consisted of 45 satellite camps that clustered around the central core the building's low and non-descript house the thousands that arrive daily when they arrived those two weak too young or too old to be put to work went immediately to be killed sometimes to the accompaniment of Opera [Music] the rafts were deloused disinfected and branded with serial numbers if you didn't have a name he only had the number you were called by a number you marched out by you were counted by a number they shaped our heads and my master was standing next to me and when I looked at her I didn't recognize her she she looked like an animal and she looked at me and I could see in her eyes you know the pain seeing me and then that's when we lost everything really our pride just everything and we became practically animals fighting for our life the able-bodied were used as slave labor by the SS which made money by leasing them to German companies [Music] work began at 6 a.m they received a bowl of turnip soup at noon a slice of bread in the evening [Music] foreign said here you come in by the door and you leave by the chimney and when you were too slow after an order they said but don't forget that the gas is waiting for you life was so hard that you practically forgot your family I mean things seemed so far away even those who fought to live didn't all survive but those who gave up died we had to carry pipes and facts of cement and we were beaten by the SS I was down to 90 95 pounds 85 I don't know the normal food rations in Auschwitz where such that you had half a year approximately until your body gave out half a year they figured it very scientifically the physical deterioration of slave laborers was monitored by the camp medical staff in a pseudo-scientific study of malnutrition other prisoners were subjected to Medical experiments this involved sterilization castration freezing all inmates were examined regularly by SS doctors to decide when they were no longer useful the camp commanded their sites who should live and who should die so you pass negative in front of those people and they sit there with polished boots riding up in their hand your heart sort of stops because to the light you take your number and you know you're gonna die and if you go to the left you live for another day [Music] six weeks after she got off the train at Auschwitz Alice Sylvester was selected one day they ordered us for showers they matched Us in the room where we got Andreas completely naked then they took us in that room with the horse in the city so they told us to sit on the floor there was no window there was no air so we started to first off and then choke and then I don't know how long everybody minutes or hours I don't know but then they started yelling out everybody out now what happened I say it's a miracle because that day they had mechanical trouble they could not let the guests through the gas chambers of Auschwitz rarely failed through vents in the ceiling the SS dropped in pellets of an insecticide called zyclon B the lethal gas released from the pellets caused death in 15 minutes after the poisonous air was pumped out other prisoners were made to untangle the Corpses as many as 6 000 people could be killed in a single day death to us was like breathing I must have carried in my hands more bodies that I can even count by the thousands and while every body that we took care of as a human being after a while it became number body totally numb the bodies were fed into huge ovens but not before the gold was extracted from their teeth and their hair cut off to be used as mattress stuffing their ashes were used as fertilizer I cannot tell you why I was among those who lived in others by the thousands that I can't explain it to you [Music] but I told myself some of us have to hang on in order to tell the story of what happened [Music] the Nazi's Final Solution destroyed two-thirds of Europe's Jews six million men women and children in Asia the Second World War began in 1937 when Japan launched a full-scale attack on China like Germany Japan was driven by the need for living space and by a racial ideology that had the Japanese believing they were Superior to their neighbors Japan's military leaders exploited the devotion of their people to help them wage a Savage War throughout Asia the war would cost more than 10 million lives and ultimately take Japan's own people to the brink of Destruction Japan 1942 in Wartime Japan every boy was prepared to be a soldier the Japanese textbooks glorified war and and taught children that their Emperor was a deity [Music] [Applause] and therefore Invincible in this or any War in the 1930s Japan's military leaders go back and they ransack the past and they pull out all these images of Purity and sincerity and they pumped them up into an ideology focusing on the emperor we are a superior race because of our unique pure qualities and that's the equivalent of the Nazis pumping up Master race theories in the 30s [Music] we believed in what the emperor called The Holy War we believed that we had a mission to achieve this so-called Haku ichu meaning the eight corners of the World Under One Roof a world that would be ruled by our emperor for Japan China would be the first step towards a Japanese empire in Asia [Music] in December 1937 after capturing the provisional Chinese Capital Nanjing the Japanese soldiers went on a rampage against both defeated Chinese troops and civilians [Music] hiromichi nagatumi a Japanese student was in Nanjing he was invited by the Army to join in the officer said watch carefully he took out his sword poured water over it called one of the prisoners to step forward and ordered him to stick his neck out and the officer chopped his head off the head fell and blood crushed from the Earth I borrowed a rifle and shot one of them that was the first murder I committed in China [Music] the Reverend John McGee an American missionary wrote to his wife about what he saw the horror of the last week is beyond anything I've experienced I never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were such Savages they've not only killed every prisoner they could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world Shiro Azuma kept a set of Diaries during his two word of Duty in Nanjing deeply repentant for what he had done he was the first former Japanese soldier to come forward to tell what happened [Music] whenever we found a girl almost hundred percent of the time we raped her Augusta not just one of us but five of us would rape her and we always kill them afterwards we simply set them on fire we felt no guilt whatsoever when we raped we thought of them as humans but afterwards when we kill them we thought of them as pigs in what came to be known as the rape of Nanjing the Japanese Army killed nearly two hundred thousand civilians and raped an estimated twenty thousand women [Music] thank you Japanese barbarism would spread all over China I came across some mothers holding their children I captured them and put them all in a house logs inside the house foreign [Music] the fact that I killed so many Chinese didn't even occur to me as a crime I regarded myself as a hero I have been loyal to the emperor dutiful to my parents [Music] from China Japan's Warriors went on to conquer most of Southeast Asia every country they brutalized exploited and Enslaved the people under the banner of Liberation and cooperation but slowly the tide began to turn in mid-1942 the United States having entered the war six months earlier began to push the Japanese back the military control the press and they didn't tell us the uh the the truths and we are told that we are winning but somehow it sensed we are not winning easy as the Allied Forces ground away that the Japanese military Fuel and food dwindled on the Japanese home front younger and younger children were sent to work in factories United by slogans such as a hundred million hearts beating as one the Japanese people were called upon to make ever greater sacrifices to support a war against what they believed to be a decadent and Savage and unforgiving enemy we were led to believe that Americans were too individualistic and that kind of individualism should be destroyed we're not saying that Yankee devils and British beasts or something like this and you know being they've risen the beasts and the Americans and the British must have horns and Tails and it must be very brutal is it that's our notion of the of our enemy for two years Japan lost battle after battle [Music] 1944 American forces invaded Saipan only 1500 miles from Tokyo obeying orders to fight to the last man the Japanese troops were annihilated [Music] Japanese civilians also refused to surrender and some were ordered by the Japanese Army to commit suicide the civilians on the island they had been told that we were vicious terrible people that we would rape their women and murder them and so on they were so convinced this was true that they finally got up to the cliffs in the North End of the island and we saw them by the hundreds jumping into the ocean to the Rocks down below carrying their children with them sometimes Japanese government reports praised the civilians on Saipan for cooperating with the army [Music] Japanese newspapers glorified their deaths as Sublime self-sacrifice [Music] but by the summer of 1944 the Japanese military leadership had concluded that Japan could not win the war then the Japanese government said yes indeed and all the people 100 million must be ready to fight to The Bitter End and the Japanese phrase at the time was something called gyokusai meaning a shattering of a jewel It's A Beautiful Death not crazy people crazy militarists said indeed this is our honor if we are all extinguished so be it for the average citizen what choice did you have a command given by a military Superior was to be regarded as a command given by the emperor the emperor was to be regarded as a living God [Music] we were supposed to die for him we were not supposed to question his authority in any way at all exploiting the mythology of sacrifice for the emperor and the nation the Japanese military now turned suicide into a strategy in October 1944 the Imperial Navy formed the first Kamikaze unit young Japanese Pilots would now fly one-way missions to death Ralph Sakamoto trained as a kamikaze pilot several of my classmates actually did go on a one-way mission the members of the Squadron who are not flying would line up alongside the Airfield to wave off the aircraft which was taking off [Music] I had cried I guess [Music] I prayed for them [Music] by April 1945 the war had finally arrived on Japan's doorstep and Okinawa only 340 miles from the Japanese mainland 1900 Kamikaze missions were Unleashed [Music] [Music] foreign to defend the island 15 year old students were used as human landmines what we did was to carry a small mine on our back bigger small hole in a field high and when the noise was close enough we were supposed to jump out and go under one of the caterpillars the battle of Okinawa lasted for nearly three months many of the civilians hid in caves [Music] tomiko Higa was six years old she was separated from her family and wandering alone in one cave an old couple made her a white flag and urged the child to surrender I beg them grandpa and grandma please don't chase me away I want to die here she had been told that American soldiers would cut women and children into pieces [Music] when I came out I saw American soldiers and one of them was standing there with a black box [Music] I thought right away that they were going to kill me with that thing my father once said to me even if you're about to be killed by an enemy soldier don't die crying like a baby smile for the enemy when you die so thinking that that was it I waved at them [Music] Soldier looked so kind when he's about to kill someone the Japanese suffered a disastrous defeat at Okinawa the Japanese High command then issued orders for an all-out mobilization at home a final desperate push to save the nation it's true that 100 million people are being vulgarized and ready for Paris related to perish history back in what a terrible you know idea asking the whole population to perish for any cause you see [Music] the Japanese High command had planned that the Japanese Army would be joined by virtually the entire civilian population to defend against The Americans on the beaches in the event of an invasion [Music] [Applause] not anticipated an attack by air [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in the course of the second world war all the main belligerents including the United States bombed civilians deliberately during the blitz of 1940 and 41 even as Britain denounced German barbarism British leaders bomb Germany [Music] at first Royal Air Force planes bombed German military and Industrial targets during daylight [Music] but when they switched to night attack so as to avoid losses they found that the smallest visible Target was often an entire town [Music] in early 1942 the British Air Ministry instructed RAF bomber command to Target quote the morale of the enemy civil population unquote this meant Germany's cities and Germany civilians that spring and summer the Royal Air Force launched what it called thousand plane raids against cologne Essen Bremen now the object of tonight's operation is to blot out the town of Bremen to introduce The Man Behind the Thousand plane rails air marshall Harris CNC bomber commandment Harris was quite confident that he was going to be able to win the war by using the kinds of methods uh that some people perhaps felt uh were not wholly moral because they involved such enormous casualties to civilians care Marshall Harrows continued to have the support of his government in July 1943 Royal Air Force planes loaded with high explosive and incendiary bombs took off for Hamburg active destruction has had been attacks before but this surpassed everything you could feel the impact of the bombs kilometers away roaring in the air was Indescribable and the streets where we lived was lined with tall Linda trees and they all bent towards the South [Music] they set a fire which became what is called a firestorm and huge winds were created of hurricane Force so that giant trees were torn by their roots and people were thrown into the fire huge convection currents are created by the heat which intensifies the fire itself so the temperatures reached a thousand degrees Centigrade hot enough to melt pots and pans and things like that in four nights of bombing the Royal Air Force destroyed three quarters of the city killed an estimated 45 thousand civilians and left nearly a million people homeless the United States Air Force had helped the Raf in Hamburg but had bombed only during daylight and targeted only military installations [Music] but on February the 3rd 1945 American commanders abandoned their long-held policy of not targeting civilians nearly a thousand American planes attacked Berlin [Music] 25 000 Germans were killed the school team against civilians in order to us it was said and there was quickly as possible that really was indescribably cruel we didn't direct our anger at national socialism put us in the situation but rather our anger was directed at the British and at the Americans for bringing civilians into the war like this 11 days later on February the 14th the Allies joined forces to bomb Dresden the cultural center of Germany in two days and one night they destroyed the Heart of the City and left 50 000 people dead [Music] it was a great embarrassment to the people who were responsible uh Winston Churchill altered the minutes that he was putting in the record to make it appear uh that he was less responsible the Americans began to what we call cook the books so as to make it appear that the kinds of things that happened there had not been done with a kind of intention that indeed they had been done with having dealt a death blow to Nazi Germany the United States now prepared its final assault on Japan [Music] the bombing of factories and military installations in March 1945 Tokyo itself was selected as a Target we received an astounding briefing that just took everybody by surprise I remember distinctly that there is a loud audible gas that went up from the crew as they realized we're going into over Tokyo at 7 000 feet not 27 000 feet the most heavily defended city of Japan we were carefully briefed with the full knowledge that the area to which we were assigned was in the densest part of Tokyo the planes were stripped of their guns so that they could carry the maximum bomb load of 10 tons on the evening of March the 9th 325 super fortresses arrived over the Japanese capital all of a sudden the blast from airplanes came over like a roar do you it shook the windows and made a sound [Music] we all ran from the West came a huge blanket of black smoke [Music] when we penetrated that cloud we ran into these very strong odors that seemed like it had to be associated with uh a terrible tragedy and I I just describe it as the smell of death I saw my mother trip her hair stood on end and she screamed then she fell off the bridge into the black smoke with my baby brother strapped onto her back I think she was trying to save my father but he went down with her into the smoke after we dropped our bombs I could look right down upon the city burning below us it looked like a part of Tokyo had dropped down into hell that night in one night American fire bombs killed 80 000 civilians Tokyo was only the beginning 65 more Japanese cities would be bombed in this fashion Japan was being pulverized [Music] there was only a few years earlier that Americans had this is barbaric coming to the position that we must systematically bomb civilian populations to end the war and that this is proper and appropriate and even moral is an extraordinary moral and psychological journey and in my view a journey toward hell on August the 6th 1945 one plane and one bombed over Hiroshima [Music] the entire town of Hiroshima was burning and you can see the famous mushroom clouds I've seen 500 600 people burn hurt some of them did a lot of people floating in the river some of them swimming some of them did our main street was turned into a Showcase of human cruelty if the blast hits you directly your eyes popped out and people are walking around holding their eyeballs like this young children it could be maybe first grade or kindergarten student calling Mommy Mommy then the teacher said be patient now Mommy come after you the next day morning [Music] all the dead clear picture such innocent little children I walk through the hell [Music] actually took a step through the hell return August the 9th a second plane a second bomb [Music] Nagasaki [Music] in the two atomic bomb attacks nearly 200 000 Japanese were killed [Music] on August the 15th 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally the second world war was finally over [Music] in the last days of the war Victorious Allied soldiers arrived on a Terrain that few could imagine or even had words to successfully describe the enormity of Nazi atrocities demanded an accounting once the scene of triumphant German pageantry war crimes trials now made it clear to the world what Hitler had tried to accomplish [Music] and punish have been so calculated so malignant and so devastating That civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored Ernest Michelle who survived the death camp at Auschwitz covered the trials for a German newspaper every day when I went into this trial I looked at them sitting maybe 20 30 feet away away from me and sometimes I had to stop myself not jumping at them and yelling what did you do to me to my family to my friends the forest defragon for the first time in history national leaders were held responsible for their aggression for the first time the murder and enslavement of civilians for their political beliefs their race or religion was recognized as crimes against humanity you must plead guilty or not guilty [Music] yesurier was called to testify in January 1946. I tried to look at each of them and I thought look at me because with my eyes and with my mouth hundreds thousands of your victims are accusing you guys Nuremberg was the first of more than a dozen trials in which einsatz group of members SS doctors and others were made to answer for their crimes in September 1946 12 high-ranking Nazi officials were sentenced to death to death by hand [Music] a similar proceeding in Tokyo tried 28 of Japan's highest ranking leaders the ruthless killing of prisoners by shooting decapitation grounding and other methods the Reverend John McGee was a witness The Killing began immediately to 30 soldiers together going about each one seeming to have the power of life or death and you tell Joe in this case seven of those on trial were sentenced to death sentences more than 5 700 Japanese officers and soldiers stood trial throughout Asia more than 900 of them were executed thank you in a Chinese Court hiromichi nagatomi the student who joined in the Nanjing Massacre was confronted by one of his victims she said you killed my only son you burned my only daughter to death when her father came home and saw what happened to them he lost his mind and died I've suffered a sickness too [Music] I got on my knees to apologize but there was no way I could make up for what I did nothing there would be no apology or restitution to the estimated one million German and Japanese civilians who perished in Allied bombing [Music] their deaths had become acceptable to those whose Duty it was to end the war [Music] [Music] it is hard to remember more than 50 years later but when World War II began victory for America and its allies was by no means assured we'll discover that on the next episode of the century America's time I'm Peter Jennings thank you for joining us [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: McDonnell Technology Services

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Id: 5Swq831CUow

Length: 67min 51sec (4071 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023