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WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West Season 1 Episodes

Season 1 Episode Guide

Season 1

3 Episodes 2009 - 2009

Episode 1

Unlikely Friends (Summer 1939 to Autumn 1941)

Wed, May 6, 2009 117 mins

A three-episode look at the WWII dealings of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin opens with the USSR-Nazi Germany relationship, which went beyond the infamous 1939 nonaggression pact between the powers. Also detailed is the secret decree Stalin signed in March 1940 that instructed the Soviet NKVD to kill some 22,000 Poles in what came to be known as the Katyn Forest Massacre; and Germany's June 1941 invasion of Russia, which found the Red Army ill-prepared for war.

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Episode 2

Cracks in the Alliance (Autumn 1941 to December 1943)

Wed, May 13, 2009 117 mins

The tenuous alliance of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin is examined. Included: the first meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt, on Aug. 12, 1942, which found each side sizing up the other, and Churchill promising to launch an offensive in North Africa. Also: Roosevelt's attempt to meet secretly with Stalin, which he scuttled after Churchill learned of the plan; the 1943 Tehran summit of all three leaders in which Churchill and Stalin used matchsticks to mark Poland's post-war boundaries.

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Episode 3

Dividing the World (January 1944 to August 1945)

Wed, May 20, 2009 117 mins

The series concludes with the war's endgame, when tensions mounted over who would rule various parts of Europe. Included: an October 1944 Moscow meeting between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in which the two leaders decided Eastern Europe's fate; the February 1945 Yalta conference, during which Franklin D. Roosevelt sought Stalin's aid in the fight against Japan; and the July 1945 Potsdam meeting, in which Harry Truman revealed that the U.S. had developed an atomic bomb.

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