1945: The Year That Changed The World-The End of the Dictators-March and April

The true horror of the Nazi regime is exposed as the Allies fight the Germans in their homeland and liberate survivors of the concentration camps. The retreating Nazi’s force millions of people onto Death Marches across Europe – the cost to human live is massive. But the Allies also force million on the march as they set out the future ethnic shape of Europe. The pre-war “mixing” up of ethnicities in Europe is reversed as the big 3 seek to segregate Europe into different ethnic groups. The Allies had agreed Germany’s fate – the division into different zones of occupation. But there was no such agreement about the rest of Europe. The Red Army fought relentlessly in the knowledge that the countries it liberated would be under their control – determining these countries fate for fifty years. The Allied Generals had ignored the agreed zones of occupation in order to beat Germany. But now that the Nazis were on their last legs, political manoeuvring between the big three started in earnest. The Americans sided with the Russians because they wanted the Red Army to join them in the war against the Japanese. They went as far as brokering a secret deal to allow American bombers to use a Siberian air base. The British were excluded from this negotiation. The American firebombing of Tokyo killed more people that the two atom bombs.