World War Two: Behind Closed Doors

Season 1 - World War Two: Behind Closed Doors

• Season 1 Episode 6: EPISODE: 6 Laurence Rees analyses how the end of the war saw the USSR swiftly move from being a vital ally to the enemy, as the people of Europe swapped one tyranny for another. Using archive materials only available since the fall of Communism, he explains how the Soviet Union began using a notorious Nazi concentration camp for its own prisoners, and the alarm felt by the Western powers. Last in the series
• Season 1 Episode 5: EPISODE: 5 Laurence Rees learns how and why the alliance between Britain, the US and the USSR began to collapse as World War Two entered its final stages and the fighting became more political. With preparations for the peacetime redrawing of Europe's borders, new evidence shows how Churchill began to lose patience with the Poles and pushed them into agreeing terms with the Soviets coming from the east
• Season 1 Episode 4: EPISODE: 4 Laurence Rees examines the clash of values between Stalin and Churchill and how they were played out over the future of Poland in 1944. Records of secret meetings reveal the British prime minister thought he could persuade the Soviets to allow an independent government in the country the UK had gone into the war to protect, but the attempts to play politics threatened the integrity of the alliance
• Season 1 Episode 3: EPISODE: 3 Laurence Rees investigates the personal animosity between Churchill and Stalin, its basis in more than just political differences, and the threat it posed to their first meeting in August 1942. Having already been betrayed by Hitler, the Soviet leader had a deep mistrust of his new allies, but still went to extraordinary lengths to hide war crimes from them - as new evidence and testimony shows
• Season 1 Episode 2: EPISODE: 2 Laurence Rees investigates the events of 1941 when, having been betrayed by Hitler, Stalin switched his allegiances to Britain and America. It was an alliance based on military pragmatism which never altered the mutual antipathy between Churchill, who despised only Nazism above Communism, and the Soviet leader who knew the Red Army was ill-equipped to cope with the Nazi onslaught alone
• Season 1 Episode 1: EPISODE: 1 New series beginning with an examination of the USSR's alliances during World War Two. Laurence Rees hears evidence of Stalin's secret allegiances in the late 1930s which demonstrate the importance of the Soviets' switch to the side of Britain and the US after their betrayal by the Nazis at the height of war in 1941. He discovers secrets hidden by Russia for more than 50 years and hears from previously silent KGB officers