1 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:36,000 like no other army in the world. Military and academic instruction were intensive, but i... 2 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:42,319 the physical training that was most rigorous. They practiced sports with excellence. Eac... 3 00:01:42,319 --> 00:01:47,280 could have performed with distinction at the Olympic Games. The extraordinary physical... 4 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:52,640 of the SS on the Russian front, which so amazed the world, was due to their intensi... 5 00:01:53,359 --> 00:01:58,480 The most striking feature of the Waffen-SS was that it was composed of volunteers fro... 6 00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:04,079 30 different countries. What cause gathered them, and why did they volunteer their lives? 7 00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:12,560 Was it a German phenomenon? At the beginning, yes. In addition to Germans from Germany, 8 00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:18,319 Northwestern Europeans, descendants of Germans from all across Europe enlisted. T... 9 00:02:18,319 --> 00:02:25,120 during the great clash with the Soviet Union, rose the European Waffen-SS. It was on the... 10 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:30,159 lines that the results of the SS physical training could really be noticed. An SS... 11 00:02:30,159 --> 00:02:34,800 same rigorous training as the soldiers. The relationship of equality and mutual respect 12 00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:40,480 between soldiers and officers was always present. Half of all division commanders w... 13 00:02:40,480 --> 00:02:46,800 action. Half! There is not an army in the world where this happened. The SS officer... 14 00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:53,280 his troops into battle. To them, Hitler was the most exceptional man ever seen. Hitler... 15 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:59,759 them and had the remarkable idea to open the doors to the SS. The response to Hitler's... 16 00:02:59,759 --> 00:03:06,479 was overwhelming. Legions from Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Flanders were formed... 17 00:03:06,479 --> 00:03:13,360 them home. German racialism has been deliberately distorted. It was concerned w... 18 00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:18,479 race strong and healthy in every way. Hitler was not interested in having millions of... 19 00:03:19,359 --> 00:03:24,479 Today, one finds rampant alcohol and drug addiction everywhere. Hitler cared that... 20 00:03:24,479 --> 00:03:29,039 families be healthy, cared that they raise healthy children for the renewal of a heal... 21 00:03:29,759 --> 00:03:33,679 German racialism meant rediscovering the creative values of their own race, 22 00:03:33,679 --> 00:03:40,000 rediscovering their culture. It was a search for excellence, a noble idea. National... 23 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,439 racialism was not against the other races. It aimed at defending and improving its race ... 24 00:03:45,439 --> 00:03:50,719 that all other races did the same for themselves. That was demonstrated when the... 25 00:03:50,719 --> 00:03:57,919 enlarged its rank to include 60,000 Islamic SS. The Waffen-SS respected their way of... 26 00:03:57,919 --> 00:04:04,639 their customs, and their religious beliefs. Each Islamic SS battalion had an imam. Eac... 27 00:04:04,639 --> 00:04:10,079 a mullah. It was our common wish that their qualities found their highest expression.... 28 00:04:10,080 --> 00:04:15,360 our racialism. I was present when each of my Islamic comrades received a personal gift... 29 00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:21,120 Hitler during the new year. It was a pendant with a small Quran. Hitler was honoring th... 30 00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:26,639 small symbolic gift. He was honoring them with what was the most important aspect of... 31 00:04:26,639 --> 00:04:32,000 and their history. National socialist racialism was loyal to the German race and... 32 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:38,400 all other races. The young European volunteers had observed two things. First,... 33 00:04:38,399 --> 00:04:43,759 the only leader who was capable of building Europe, and secondly, that Hitler and Hitl... 34 00:04:43,759 --> 00:04:48,639 could defeat the world threat of communism. The communists never aimed at serving the... 35 00:04:48,639 --> 00:04:54,799 of Russia. Communism does not limit itself to acquire chunks of territories, but aims at... 36 00:04:54,799 --> 00:05:01,359 world domination. Alone among all the leaders of the world, Hitler saw this concept as a... 37 00:05:01,359 --> 00:05:07,359 threat to all nations. Right through the war, the Waffen-SS never retreated. They would... 38 00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:16,720 than retreat. One cannot forget the figures. During the 1941 winter, the Waffen-SS lost... 39 00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:24,560 in front of Moscow. The regiment de Fuhrer fought almost literally to the last man. O... 40 00:05:24,560 --> 00:05:30,639 survived out of the entire regiment. The de Fuhrer men stood fast and no Soviet troops... 41 00:05:30,639 --> 00:05:36,160 and that is what Hitler admired most of all, guts. For him, it was not enough to have... 42 00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:41,600 clever associates. These people can often fall to pieces, as we will see during the... 43 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:46,560 winter at the Battle of Stalingrad with General Paulus. The defeat there was decid... 44 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:52,960 without courage. He was not capable to face danger with determination, to say, I will ... 45 00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:58,720 I will stand fast until I win, but he was morally and physically gutless, and he lost. 46 00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:04,240 Without their heroism, Germany would have been annihilated by December 1941. The 47 00:06:04,240 --> 00:06:08,480 Roosevelt's and the Churchill's sold out Europe and Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. 48 00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:14,720 Not since the great religious orders of the Middle Ages had there been such selfless... 49 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:20,720 and heroism. In this century of materialism, the SS stand out as a shining light of... 50 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:30,319 Greatness in adversity is the distinction of the SS. 51 00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:38,319 So 52 00:06:54,639 --> 00:06:59,759 with the return of the Soviet forces in 1944, the mountain peoples in Gushi, 53 00:06:59,759 --> 00:07:04,719 Balkas and above all Chechens are rounded up in dawn raids of new horror. 54 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:08,319 Mobile NKVD units are sent into the hills. 55 00:07:14,719 --> 00:07:23,839 Whole peoples, uncomprehending of their guilt, are marked down for punitive... 56 00:07:29,759 --> 00:07:38,399 It is the tragedy of a small nation in the hands of a vast and ruthless state. 57 00:07:39,199 --> 00:07:45,360 They're dragged from their homes, their lifestyle destroyed, leaving whole areas... 58 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:55,599 inhabitants. And when German troops are driven from the Crimea in May, Stalin is... 59 00:07:55,600 --> 00:07:58,960 the Tatar people have been guilty of collaboration with the enemy. 60 00:08:00,879 --> 00:08:05,360 He immediately dissolves the Muslim Autonomous Republic of the Crimean Tatars 61 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,800 and punitively deports 400,000 people, men, women and children. 62 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:21,520 And beyond the misery of shocked and frightened people, the disregard for milit... 63 00:08:21,519 --> 00:08:34,159 a time when the Soviet forces need all the transport they can get. 64 00:08:41,360 --> 00:08:48,159 East Prussia, with its forests and lakes, was the first part of pre-war German territory... 65 00:08:51,519 --> 00:08:55,759 It is estimated that as many as two million German women were raped by Red Army soldiers. 66 00:08:58,480 --> 00:09:07,120 From 1944 to 47, what occurred to Germany in the last year of the war and the immediate... 67 00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:13,039 a crime so terrible. The world has never experienced such a crime like this. 68 00:09:14,079 --> 00:09:18,559 And the fact that it remains a secret doesn't mean it's any less of a crime, but 69 00:09:19,359 --> 00:09:27,679 it probably was the largest, the darkest and the bloodiest secret in world history. 70 00:09:27,679 --> 00:09:35,119 The massacres, the rapes, the starvation, the deliberate attempt to destroy a nation... 71 00:09:35,759 --> 00:09:40,879 Entirely. Now I'm not talking about leaving something left, basically. That was the, 72 00:09:42,159 --> 00:09:47,759 that's what the Allies were traveling under in the last year of the war and the immedi... 73 00:09:47,759 --> 00:09:55,120 years. This nightmarish attempt to destroy Germany. A terror bombing toward the late... 74 00:09:55,120 --> 00:10:02,159 war. A terror bombing. There's no other phrase that says it quite as well as terro... 75 00:10:02,159 --> 00:10:08,159 Long after all military objects have been blown to splinters, the American and Briti... 76 00:10:08,159 --> 00:10:14,639 continued to blast German cities, blasting the rubble to even more rubble. A lot of... 77 00:10:14,639 --> 00:10:19,439 still, to this very day, their bones are still buried underneath the rubble in Germ... 78 00:10:19,439 --> 00:10:29,279 built over, of course, after the war. What it was like for a woman, let's say a 45-year-... 79 00:10:29,919 --> 00:10:36,240 a German who was in a village when the Russians finally came, when they finally... 80 00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:42,080 and the fighting had passed. And then comes the second echelon of Russian troops, for ... 81 00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:50,400 part, Asiatics and Mongolians from the Russian Eastern Republics. And the rapes... 82 00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:56,800 does a woman do? How do you deal with rape? And I'm not talking about just one soldier... 83 00:10:56,800 --> 00:11:02,480 dragging you into a room and raping you. I'm talking about five and ten at a time, for... 84 00:11:02,480 --> 00:11:09,040 for weeks. This goes on. Some women, I mean, again, we're talking in the words of the... 85 00:11:09,039 --> 00:11:15,120 themselves talking to them. They did all sorts of things to avoid rapes. They becam... 86 00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:20,240 indifferent to it, indifferent to it after a while. Almost. Some of them lost their min... 87 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:26,719 women who were actually good-looking prior to the rapes actually started trying to make... 88 00:11:26,719 --> 00:11:33,679 look uglier. They would gain illnesses and act like they were cripples. And it still... 89 00:11:33,919 --> 00:11:42,799 The madness among the Russian soldiers for rape was incredible. And sometimes women w... 90 00:11:42,799 --> 00:11:48,799 20 times a night, 100 times a week. Sometimes they were raped to death. And then they were 91 00:11:48,799 --> 00:11:56,239 raped some more. And of course, mothers with children were frantic to try to protect their 92 00:11:56,239 --> 00:12:00,719 little ones. They'd do anything they could. Of course, they would give their bodies... 93 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,720 if they could protect their children. Mostly it didn't work though. There was an old... 94 00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:13,519 from 8 to 88. That was the age frame for rapes, if you can believe that. Even... 95 00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:19,440 were taken and raped repeatedly. Even people that were sick and the women who were on... 96 00:12:19,440 --> 00:12:25,279 periods. Nothing was sacred and just very nearly extinguished the German people... 97 00:12:30,720 --> 00:12:47,680 If you found out that someone was raped... 98 00:12:47,680 --> 00:12:54,800 No one paid attention to it. On the contrary, the soldiers told each other. And so to say, 99 00:12:54,879 --> 00:13:07,919 it was a kind of impulse of heroism or valor. He slept with a woman, one or two, three. 100 00:13:11,039 --> 00:13:14,799 Even if someone was killed, it was still a war. 101 00:13:15,679 --> 00:13:19,679 But there were those who had been glad to see the Red Army. First, the Russian army, 102 00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:23,679 then the Russian army, then the Russian army. And then the Red Army. 103 00:13:23,679 --> 00:13:27,679 And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. 104 00:13:27,679 --> 00:13:31,679 And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. 105 00:13:31,679 --> 00:13:35,679 And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. 106 00:13:35,679 --> 00:13:39,679 And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. And then the Red Army. 107 00:13:40,639 --> 00:13:46,079 But there were those who had been glad to see the Red Army. First, the population of the... 108 00:13:46,079 --> 00:13:53,519 parts of the Soviet Union. And now the Soviet prisoners of war. Tatyana Neneva, who had... 109 00:13:53,519 --> 00:13:58,319 in the Red Army as a nurse, was one of more than a million Soviet prisoners of war who... 110 00:13:58,319 --> 00:14:05,039 transported to camps within the greater German Reich. She was overjoyed when the R... 111 00:14:05,679 --> 00:14:07,519 A feeling that was not reciprocated. 112 00:14:12,559 --> 00:14:16,079 Nearly two million Soviet prisoners of war were liberated by the Red Army. 113 00:14:16,959 --> 00:14:23,279 All were to suffer at the hands of Stalin. For many like Tatyana Neneva, their suffer... 114 00:14:23,279 --> 00:14:29,039 here in a filtration camp run by the secret police. Their problem was that Stalin... 115 00:14:29,039 --> 00:14:36,240 that the Soviet Union had no prisoners of war. Only traitors. For the crime of being... 116 00:14:36,240 --> 00:14:42,399 by the Germans, volunteer nurse Tatyana Neneva was sentenced to six years in the... 117 00:14:42,399 --> 00:14:50,399 lifetime exile in Siberia.