[narrator] I'm Christopher Clark, Cambridge historian. I was born in Australia. For Europeans, that's practically the other end of the world.
But the European continent and its incredible diversity always fascinated me. Even in the far-off country where I grew up, I was always aware that so much of our world has its roots in Europe. And modern Europe is one of the greatest achievements in human history.
I want to share the grand saga of this continent and in the process, I hope to rediscover its wonders for myself. Today's leg of my journey begins in Paris with a meeting that might surprise you. Does this lady here look familiar to you?
Well, it's no wonder, she is the little Paris sister of Lady Liberty in New York. The French gave the Statue of Liberty to the Americans as a gift, in gratitude, it could be said, for America's role in inspiring the most important turning point in Europe's history. America had broken away from England.
The American Declaration of Independence, which the Statue of Liberty holds in her arm, includes the lines, "All men are created equal" and "They are endowed by their Creator "with certain inalienable Rights, "including Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. " In the fledgling United States it seemed freedom, equality, and progress reigned. Two years before the French Revolution, self-determination and the liberty of humankind were written into the American Constitution.
It was as if the Utopias of enlightened political theory had sprung to life. [Clark] Pennsylvania, 1777. French nobleman Lafayette is fighting on the side of the American colonists for democracy and human rights, and against the English colonial rulers whom the settlers see as their oppressors.
The old order begins to falter, in Europe and the rest of the world. The Americans man the barricades in what will become known as the Revolutionary War. In the previous year, the United States of America, as the colonists now call themselves, had declared its independence from England.
[cheering] The Statue of Liberty in New York is still a symbol of freedom and democracy today. It was a gift from the French to the country that helped to spark a revolution in their own country. [soaring music] "L'État c'est moi" - "I am the State," that's how the kings of France think.
The Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris, is a manifestation of absolutism and of the existing European order. Many European monarchs model themselves on French royalty. The monarch holds all executive power.
There is no formal separation of powers into executive, judiciary and legislature, all chains of command converge on one person, in one place: Versailles. This is a society of 'orders' with different rights and responsibilities: the clergy, the nobility, and, of course, the third estate encompassing the rest of society. Those at the top of the pyramid wallow in luxury, while the poor often go hungry.
[invigorating music] The days of Absolutism were numbered. "Have the courage to make use of your own reason": with these words the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up the meaning of Enlightenment. And today in what's sometimes called "a post-factual era" his words are more important than ever.
Profound discoveries in the field of the natural sciences had already paved the way. With their thinking and their precise reckoning Galilei, Kepler and Newton had already transformed human understanding of the world and the universe. When the French philosopher René Descartes declared, "I think therefore I am," he made the reflecting, questioning consciousness of an individual human being the fulcrum of our knowable existence.
[Clark] In the European salons, often run by high-society ladies, the old order is increasingly called into question. Especially in France. Thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu and Voltaire extol the principles of human equality, tolerance and the division of powers.
By his nature, man is free, and all his actions must be based on reason. I tell everybody: think for yourself. We ourselves are responsible for what we do but also for what we don't do.
[man] That's true, my dear Voltaire. But it's also important to set the limit on power. Experience teaches us that any man with power tends to abuse it.
That is why the three powers of a state should be separated; the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Freedom can only exist when the powers of the state are separated. .
. Reason would mandate that as well, don't you think? [Clark] During the Enlightenment, knowledge is diligently collected and published in the form of encyclopedias.
But these are not mere storehouses of knowledge; they are critical and argumentative. Ah. .
. Monsieur Diderot, I'm glad you could make it today. .
. Come with me! Here, I bring you the author of the Encyclopédie that you hold in your hands.
Oh, this here is a declaration of war against the king! And why is that? When man starts listening to the voice of reason, he will strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest!
Hm. [jaunty music] [Clark] The writing is on the wall. Peasants and commoners are financing the extravagant lifestyle of the royal court; the nobility and clergy are largely exempt from taxation.
The argument that this is a natural and God-given state of affairs comes to seem less persuasive. [Clark] This is a menu from the Court at Versailles. Twenty courses were served, from jellied lobster and scallops in oyster sauce to morel soufflé and leg of hare.
And while the nobles of Versailles reveled and feasted, the people in many parts of the country starved. The world of the Court and the world of everybody else drifted apart. This was just one of the reasons why the French monarchy failed to make it through to the end of the 18th century.
The fundamental problem was government debt. [Clark] France has become the most populous country in Europe. Twenty-five million people live here.
Food is scarce, and prices have spiked. [all] We want bread! Down with the king!
We want bread! Down with the king! We want bread!
[Clark] In 1788, bad harvests and catastrophic weather events only make the situation worse. Bread, the main food of the poor, is suddenly much more expensive. The French decide to take things into their own hands.
Food riots break out across the country, particularly in Paris. [lady] Take what you can! -[man] Hey, what's going on?
-[lady] Take as much as you can carry! -[man] Keep your hands off! -[lady] Leave nothing.
. [lady] Take what you can. -[lady] Take as much as you can carry.
-[man] No! -[lady one] Do not leave anything. -[lady two] Take all the bread.
[Clark] And the king's soldiers simply stand back and watch. When order breaks down in the capital, they refuse to intervene against the revolutionaries. On the contrary: many side with the rebels because there is unrest in the army, as well.
[tense music] By the late 1780s there wasn't even enough money to cover monthly payments to the troops. A fully functional and strongly motivated army could easily have put down the small hunger riot of the Bastille. But France no longer possessed an army loyal enough to do that.
[yelling] [Clark] On the morning of July 14, 1789, an angry Parisian crowd storms the notorious state prison in the Bastille fortress. Their anger is directed at this symbol of the tyranny inflicted on them by the king and nobility. [rousing music] The revolutionaries demand freedom, equality, and brotherhood.
But are these ideals really compatible with one another? Contention over this question will shape the course of the revolution. [ominous music] In June 1789, the third estate breaks away from the other two orders and convenes an Assembly.
Its members see themselves as representatives of the entire nation. Open disagreement, debate, now becomes a central motor of political life. Drwing on the legacy of the American Revolution, General Lafayette and Honoré Mirabeau draft a bill of human rights.
Article one: Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good. Article two: The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.
These rights are liberty, property, safety, and resistance against oppression. [Clark] Fearing that the revolution underway in France will threaten their security, the rulers of Prussia and Austria declare their military support for the French king. The armies marching to Paris in 1792 are stopped by French revolutionary forces in a battle at Valmy.
Historical events begin to unfold at a breathtaking pace. [rousing music] France becomes a republic. The king has been deposed and is a prisoner of the people.
He is put on trial. Both Louis XVI and his queen are beheaded by guillotine. France enters an era of profound political polarization and radicalization; the body count goes up.
[crowd jeering] Increasingly the French revolutionaries became armed missionaries, using violence to propagate their ideals. And that, too, is a European invention: the totalized application of a single political theory whatever the human cost. Just across the river in the Conciergerie prison, 2,780 people were swiftly processed by revolutionary tribunals and sentenced to death and throughout the country, executions during this period numbered in the tens of thousands.
The revolutionaries wanted to liberate all of humanity, that was one of the things that made them so radical. And the French National Assembly was the first organization in Europe, in the world, to pose the question of whether - and how - one state could use military force to enforce the observation of human rights in another state. The age of the humanitarian intervention was born.
[Clark] The French National Assembly hopes to offer strong resistance to Europe's monarchs and mobilizes the population with revolutionary slogans. Now, let us show Europe that ten million French citizens, when challenged, will be fueled by the fire of freedom! And armed with swords and reason will single-handedly change the world and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones!
[Clark] The future of the revolution is at stake. Ultimately, the advocates of war prevail. Now, let us vote: peace or war?
Who votes for peace? And war? [cheering] [Clark] Napoleon Bonaparte starts out as a general of the revolution, but once in power, he brings the domestic tumult to an end and focuses on projecting French power outwards onto Europe.
His battles are legendary, and his conquests numerous. Napoleon plunges the continent into a state of constant war, and he leads his army from victory to victory. And then, Napoleon, a national hero at this point, names himself emperor.
He is crowned in 1804. Napoleon casts himself as the successor to the Roman emperors, and especially to Charlemagne. Like his hero, he wants to create a European empire.
In 1806, Prussian troops encounter the Grande Armée at Jena and Auerstedt in Thuringia. The Prussians suffer a harrowing defeat. Further annexations follow.
Napoleon now dominates almost the whole of Europe, and he orchestrates his triumph accordingly. In Berlin, as in many other places, the response is ambivalent: Napoleon may be a tyrant to some, but to others, he's the herald of a new era. [exhilarating music] Napoleon and Europe: Some territories are simply annexed to France.
Outside the borders of an enlarged France, Napoleon creates satellite states and confederations. Even great powers like Prussia and Austria, defeated by Napoleon, now pay tribute to him and accept his dominance. Napoleonic rule is a strange mix of military aggression, fiscal extraction and progressive institutions.
He hopes to bring progress wherever he rules. His Napoleonic Code promises civil rights, equal protection under the law, and freedom for peasants. But the mood darkens as Bonaparte wages war after war.
There's no exit strategy, no limit to his ambition. Resistance grows. In 1813, the Battle of the Nations rages in Leipzig.
A European alliance, including Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden, mobilizes more than 300,000 troops against Napoleon. More than 200,000 soldiers, including Frenchmen, Italians, Poles and Germans, fight on the side of France. Bonaparte is defeated; his dream of dominating the continent goes up in smoke.
He may only have been one meter sixty-eight tall, but when it came to his sarcophagus, there was no such thing as "too big. " Here lie the mortal remains of Napoleon, in five coffins. Each nesting inside the other like a Russian doll.
As though the French wanted to preserve their most important national myth for all eternity. Napoleon was one of the sculptors of modern Europe, his tools of preference were armies, legal codes and administrative innovation. He was willing to use any means necessary to bring the nations of the old continent together as a family, united around and serving the motherland of human rights: France.
[Clark] He believed in open borders for people and goods, and standardized weights and measures, such as meters and kilos. And of course, the original standard meter on which all the others are based resides here in Paris. France as the measure of all things.
The laws of France must extend to all the united countries, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Kamchatka peninsula, Napoleon is reported to have said. [poignant music] [Clark] With Napoleon defeated and banished, new negotiations begin in Vienna. After 20 years of war Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England are the victors.
The objective is both to contain France and to block hegemonic projects by the other powers. France is invited to participate in the system that will come to be known as the Concert of Europe. The settlement hammered out in Vienna, amidst a flurry of extravagant social events, will define the future of Europe.
[Waltz music] Of course, the nations, the peoples as such, aren't involved in this process, they are objects to be acted upon, items on the negotiating agenda. The dynastic rulers view themselves as the guarantors of order in Europe. And the result is a security architecture that spans the continent.
[Clark] This is the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, and here you can see the seals and the signatures of the statesmen who took part in the negotiations in Vienna. Here Prince Metternich for Austria, here Talleyrand, French representative, and on this side further significant figures: Hardenberg, Humboldt and many others. The ultimate result of the Congress of Vienna laid out in this Final Act was, in a sense, the rebirth of Europe.
Napoleon had a vision of a united Europe, of course, but it was a Europe united under his control and under French hegemony. The new Europe allocated more power to the peripheral empires of West and East: great powers Britain and Russia were granted a stronger voice in determining the fate of the continent. A state of affairs that anticipated in some ways the later stand off between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the future, problems will be solved not by uncoordinated individual initiatives but harmoniously through the so-called "concert of powers. " This in some ways very impressive and intelligent solution fell victim, like so many peace treaties, to the egoism of the most powerful states. [Clark] One of Napoleon's unintended legacies was a surge in national feeling: nothing galvanizes patriotic emotion like the experience of invasion and foreign domination.
In May 1832, more than 20,000 people from Germany, France, Poland, and other countries gather at a palace in the Pfalz region of western Germany. They call for a united Germany and a confederated republic of Europe, as well as for freedom of the press, speech, and assembly, and equal rights for women. Hambach is considered one of the cradles of modern democracy in Germany and some see it as the birthplace of European unity.
But the European vision was still formless and incoherent, and the old powers still dominated the continent. The kings and princes simply ignored the increasingly passionate demand for liberal reform. [poignant music] In 1848, another revolution breaks out.
Once again, the French take to the streets, invoking the symbols and slogans of the French Revolution of 1789. But unlike the French Revolution, the Revolution of 1848 spreads like wildfire across Europe, at a breathtaking pace. [man] From all over the country, deep from every heart, a strong united German fatherland; The revolution, the revolution has won in Paris!
[Clark] With the exception of England and Russia, nearly all the major European states are affected. In the simultaneity of its tumult across the continent this revolution is unique. The people want social reform and liberal constitutions and they're willing to use violence, if necessary, to get what they want.
Full-blown revolutions rage in many cities, and revolutionary hot spots flare up across the continent. The people rise up against the dynasties of Europe, under the banner of freedom and self-determination. A wave of revolutions rolled across Europe.
From Palermo to Paris, to Rome, Milan, Vienna, Budapest and Berlin. Hope, frustration and anger formed a combustible mix. The apparent unanimity of the revolutionary protest concealed a plurality of conflicting aims.
Political liberty, social justice, the unity of nations. In Central Europe national identity, the desire to be united in a common state, was at the center of the revolutionary movement. [Clark] In Germany, for example: The first freely elected German parliament convenes at St.
Paul's Church in Frankfurt. The focus is on uniting the nation. The parliament is modeled on France's National Assembly.
Parliaments during this era are still the domain of the elites. But how is a revolution expected to succeed without the support of an army? In most European nations, the army remains loyal to the rulers.
There's little that militias or a network of revolutionaries can do against an armed military force. And yet, the shockwaves of this revolution would yield several important victories. New constitutions and parliaments are created, and censorship is scaled back.
Many of the European states absorb and channel the energy of the revolution, selectively implementing its demands. [poignant music] And these political upheavals take place against the background of an even more profound transformation: the Industrial Revolution. Enormous factories spring up, first in England and then nearly everywhere in Europe.
With the invention of the steam engine, manual labor is increasingly replaced by machines. The process will take over a century. Why did all this begin in England, of all places?
For centuries, using the experimental method to probe the secrets of nature had been part of the culture here. So, there was a long run-up. And then there was the pleasure that English scientists and inventors took in the practical application of their knowledge.
They fuelled the Industrial Revolution, and among them was James Watt, inventor of the steam engine. The water in this boiler is heated with steam, and the resulting pressure can be used to drive other engines. A loom for example or a locomotive.
During the middle decades of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution spread in fits and starts across Europe. It was a peaceful conquest, but for many the consequences were grave. [Clark] Finally, people can free themselves of the constraints of agricultural production.
Crop failures and famines that impact entire populations are a thing of the past in industrialized societies. But industrial work is poorly paid, dangerous, and exploitative. Until the late in the 18th century the only effective way of increasing the production of goods was to increase the number of humans employed to make them.
Then the machines arrived. They didn't just replace muscle power, they also multiplied it. In factories like this one huge machines performed the labor of hundreds of human beings.
It was the most fundamental transformation in human social existence since the beginning of organized agriculture. In other words: it was a true revolution, an industrial revolution. The inventor of the term was none other than Karl Marx's close friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels who coined it in the 1830s, in an analogy with the French Revolution of the 1790s.
If the idea of Communism had a birthplace, it would surely be Manchester. The unrestrained form of production that developed here came to be known as Manchester capitalism. In the mid-19th century, Friedrich Engels, whose father owned a factory like this one, could study, as if in a laboratory, the social and economic consequences of an unchecked capitalism.
And in his writings Karl Marx, Engels' friend, explored the implications. Workers of the world, unite! Yes, that sounds good.
But we need a strong message at the start. [Clark] The aim was to raise the workers against a system that kept them poor and weak. That's good, that's good.
Yeah. Not bad: "A specter is haunting Europe. " -The specter of communism.
-Yeah. What do you think? [Clark] Marx lives in exile in London.
In 1848, he and Friedrich Engels publish their Communist Manifesto, which will one day become the bible of the global workers' movement. Marx and Engels call for a world without exploitative social relations, in which the means of production are owned not by capitalists, but by society itself, understood as a collective enterprise. Both of them reflect at length on the idea of revolution, but it's not until the early 20th century that the explosive potential of their ideas is fully realized.
Meanwhile the gap between rich and poor continues to expand. A workers' movement soon begins to take shape, and with it come political parties championing the rights of waged labor. And thus Karl Marx, who incidentally claimed never to have been a Marxist, influenced European history in several ways at the same time.
The idea of the working class as a structural feature of all modern capitalist systems united people across borders into a sort of community of fate. The slogan "Workers of the world, unite" offered a counterweight to national egotism. In the last decades of the 19th century left-wing parties gained power and pushed through social reforms in dozens of European parliaments.
Only under the immense social and political stresses of the First World War did the socialist left fracture. A communism emerged, in whose hands the teachings of Marx hardened into an unbending doctrine. As the instrument of Soviet State power, communism became a force of global significance.
And in Europe, the tension between communist and capitalist social orders split the continent down the middle. [Clark] It's the high noon of the national idea in every European country. In the course of the 19th century, the concept of nation becomes the pole star in the firmament of European values.
But in Europe, where so many cultures and languages live in close proximity, one nation's dream can become another's nightmare. [pensive music] The leading monarchs of Europe are nearly all connected in the same gigantic clan network and in 1913, many of them come together at the wedding of the German emperor's daughter, Victoria Louise, in Berlin. No one realizes just how close Europe is to the brink.
This is the calm before the storm. An assassination in the multinational Habsburg state: the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne, captures the headlines. But does this automatically mean war?
The great powers recognize the risk of escalation, but none of them does anything to prevent it. In 1914, the decision-makers are like sleepwalkers, they maneuver for advantage, but in placing their own goals above the preservation of peace, they risk catastrophe. When war breaks out, each country sees itself as the victim, and its opponent as the aggressor.
[somber music] Modern military technology means that this World War brings unparalleled carnage. Nearly 17 million people lose their lives on the battlefields and on the home front. And the First World War is a breaking point.
The old European order collapses, but no new order emerges to take its place. The desire for compromise is there, but the differences between the fronts are overpowering. This is the dawn of an age of extremes, shaped by Fascism and Bolshevism.
After the October Revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks seize power. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the man of the hour. He keeps an iron grip on power and hopes that this red revolution will spread to the rest of Europe.
Versailles, 1919. How can peace endure if Europe's two strongest powers play no role in the peace making process? Russia doesn't even send a representative to the European conference at Versailles.
And the German delegation is barred from participating in the negotiations. [twinkling music] With its reparations, disarmament clauses and territorial penalties, and above all with its insistence on German sole guilt for the outbreak of war, the Treaty of Versailles places a lasting burden on the new Weimar democracy. The multinational Habsburg Empire collapses.
New independent nations arise in its place: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia. The Baltic countries also gain their independence. But the losers refuse to accept the new post-war order.
Voices of protest grow louder, particularly from the right wing. Germany is being oppressed and robbed, they claim. [crowd yelling] [suspenseful music] There are signs of rapprochement between Germany and France at an international conference in Locarno in 1925.
It's a time of hope. German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann speaks of a Europe of cooperation, not confrontation, and his French colleague Briand makes an impassioned speech: "Away with the cannons," he says. "Make way for reconciliation!
" Both statesmen are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. But this vision of a peaceful Europe would soon evaporate. The National Socialists promise to liberate Germany, to restore the country to its former strength and independence.
Hitler isn't interested in the balance of power; he wants unconditional domination of the continent. Attempts to appease the new German leadership fail. The Nazis intend to secure their objectives by force.
Rearmament begins in earnest as soon as they take power. [cheering] September 1939. The war begins with the invasion of Poland.
The Nazis couple the technology of invasion and conquest with the subjugation and extermination of the peoples under their control. The systematic slaughter of civilians sets this war apart from past conflicts right from the very beginning. The Holocaust begins behind the front lines, it will claim the lives of six million Jews.
May 1940. The German Wehrmacht attacks its neighbor to the west. Hitler always adheres to the same binary principle: all or nothing.
Germany will be a great power, or it will cease to exist, he declares in his book Mein Kampf, published years before he comes to power. With his victory secure, Hitler visits Paris. Among the sightseeing stops is Napoleon's tomb at the Dôme des Invalides.
He plans to surpass even the French emperor's prowess as a military leader. But his memory of Napoleon's achievements is selective: he seems to have forgotten the fact that Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved the disaster that undid his empire. The Nazi ideology leads further into ruin.
[Clark] The "Siegessäule", or Victory Column, of Berlin was supposed to serve as an important element on the great East-West axis of the capital city of the Third Reich: Germania. In Hitler's grotesque vision, the megapolis Germania bulging with oversized monuments was to be the focal point of a pan-Germanic world empire. The Nazis liked the mural at the base of the Victory Column.
We see an aroused German people raising their swords against Napoleon, who's dressed like a Roman emperor in a red toga. An historical event, the early 19th century wars of liberation against Napoleonic France is elevated to the status of a world historical principle. For the Nazis, the state was an obsolete concept.
They thought in ethnic-racial rather than political categories. When Hitler imagined Europe, it was not the Europe of states, but a continental platform, a Petri dish inhabited by biological cultures; one in which the Germans would simply expand like a bacterial colony. "Lebensraum," the German word for habitat, has nothing to do with politics.
It's a concept from biology. In Europe, only the fittest were supposed to survive. "Every being strives for expansion," Hitler wrote, "and every nation strives for world dominion.
Only those who keep this goal in mind will find the right path. " The war Hitler launched on central and Eastern Europe was a war of annihilation and enslavement. A war against the diversity of Europe's peoples and cultures.
It was a war against Europe's history: the consequence was an unfathomable break with culture and civilization. And today's Europe is still deeply marked by this conflict. [Clark] In June 1941 came the invasion of the Soviet Union; a campaign of unexampled extermination to expand Germany's territory to the east.
The dictator wants to create a German Europe, from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains. The Second World War would cost 60 to 70 million human lives, the majority civilians. The Holocaust, millions of slaughtered Slavs, bombing campaigns, prisoner-of-war camps, refugees and displaced persons; the war left a traumatized generation in its wake.
[haunting music] [fire crackles] I'm in Kiev, where an enormous statue commemorates "the Great Patriotic War," as the struggle against Hitler's Germany is known in Russia. The fighting here was particularly violent. In a place like this, you can still feel the horror, the iron hand of war.
These are the bloodlands; areas where two totalitarian powers fought over the same space in a life-and-death struggle for supremacy. Millions died, millions more were murdered. And even before the Second World War, millions had perished in a man-made famine engineered by Josef Stalin to break the national will of the Ukraine.
Hitler's war of annihilation claimed further millions of lives; hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in battles of encirclement or in POW camps. The country was plundered, people starved in a new wave of famines. There have been phases in the history of Europe where the violence was so devastating that the thread of memory was severed.
The intimacy with the past was disrupted, only trauma remained. These are the killing fields of Europe. In 1945 it seemed unimaginable that Europe would ever re-emerge from the abyss it had created for itself.
[Clark] Everyone suffered in this terrible war. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians lost their lives; German invaders and Russians alike. There is a story, a grieving family, behind every headstone.
The military cemeteries in Ukraine bear witness to the countless dead on both sides. [somber music] But the most terrible, the cruelest fate was suffered by the Jews. There was a campaign of extermination against the entire Jewish population of Kiev.
And on this precise spot, the bloodiest mass shooting of Jews took place. If the name Auschwitz stands for industrial mass murder by the Nazis in gas chambers, Babi Yar near Kiev stands for the murder by shooting of tens of thousands of defenseless men, women and children. Holocaust by bullet.
On the 29th and 30th of September, 1941, in this ravine near Kiev, 33,000 Jewish men, woman and children were shot. The Jewish population, whose roots here extended back for centuries, was annihilated by Hitler's henchmen. Babi Yar and Auschwitz, the nadir of the history of Europe, which had had set such a high view of its own civilization.
[Clark] June the sixth, 1944: D-Day. The tides of war begin to turn. With the Allied attack on Normandy, the assault on Hitler's "Fortress Europe" begins.
The victorious powers want to put an end to the Nazi dictatorship once and for all. Never again should war originate from German soil, nor should one European power subjugate the others. [soaring music] Above all, the humanitarian catastrophe of the war should never be repeated.
I'm standing in the old Jewish cemetery in Vienna. This is one of those places that reminds you of what was lost to Europe through the Holocaust. The industrialized killing centers of the Nazi genocide were unique in history, but so were their victims.
Since the Middle Ages, Jewish culture, know-how and scholarship had left a deep imprint on Europe. Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein. You could add countless further names.
The Holocaust put a brutal end to this remarkable history of cultural symbiosis. Europe has never quite recovered from this act of self-mutilation. [Clark] Zero hour.
The war is over. The Nazis' attempt to dominate the continent ends in catastrophe. Huge swaths of Europe lie in ruins.
Buildings will be rebuilt, but the trauma will remain. At a conference in Potsdam, near Berlin, the victorious Allies negotiate the post-war order: the future of Europe. The heads of state of the three Allied powers come together here: US President Truman, Soviet dictator Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
When Churchill arrived on a hot July day, the first thing he did was to order a whisky and a cigar. He spent a long time looking out over the peaceful Griebnitz Lake, a Soviet sentry could be seen patrolling along the opposite shore. And perhaps Churchill reflected on how Europe would in future be divided, into East and West.
[rousing music] [Clark] The Allies have won the war together, and together, they want to work toward peace and to shape the future of Europe. But Alliances rarely survive the wars they are created to fight. And now that their mutual enemy is defeated, the victorious Allies begin to discover their differences, as they sit talking at this table.
[Clark] After this war, the preeminent position of the old European continent was a thing of the past. Moscow and Washington now called the shots in Europe, and would do so in the decades to come. Europe, like the world, would be divided, embedded in two opposing blocs.
And this, too, was Hitler's work. The aim of defeating Nazi Germany had united the world's two greatest powers in a struggle that brought them together in the heart of the continent. But when it came to shaping the peace, the tensions between two radically opposed systems proved impossible to contain.
The so-called "Iron Curtain" separated the Capitalist from the Communist world, and did so in the very center of Europe. [Clark] The western powers' zones of occupation become the Federal Republic of Germany. In the east, the Soviet Union creates a bloc of socialist satellite states which includes East Germany.
The continent splits into a mainly capitalist and liberal-democratic region, and a communist region. And the two alliance blocs keep each other in check. The term "balance of terror" is often used in this era of nuclear arms build-up.
Meanwhile, in The Hague, European leaders take up an idea that failed to acquire traction between the two World Wars: the vision of a Europe united in peace and freedom. We cannot aim at anything less than the union of Europe as a whole. .
. [Clark] Winston Churchill even floats the idea of a "United States of Europe. " This goes too far for many Europeans, but the heads of state manage to agree on the creation of the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg.
It's the precursor to the future European Community and to the EU. In May 1949, ten founding fathers sign this institution into existence. A western European forum for freedom, peace, and social justice is born.
The hope is that a spirit of solidarity will blossom from the conflict of the past. Shared values and symbols are at the heart of this project. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, sees an opportunity in this bond with Europe: by collaborating with the western Allies, he hopes to lead Germany back into the family of free peoples.
Or at least West Germany. Even if doing so intensifies the division between the eastern and western halves of his country. The West German government's goal is to peacefully overcome the division of Germany and Europe.
But what's the first step? Building bridges with France. France's Foreign Minister Schuman already has a plan.
If we want to prevent war in the future, he argues, the coal and steel industries in various European countries, vital to any war effort, ought to be consolidated under one roof. In 1952, the European Coal and Steel Union is born. [in German] Now, iron and steel shall forge the peoples of Europe together in a community of actions and ideals.
[Clark] Just seven years after the war, national sovereignty over a crucial military resource is handed over to an international body. A world historical step. As the economy recovers, Europeans grow more mobile.
Their horizons broaden, they drive their own cars or motorbikes or hitchhike to new destinations. Travelling through a Europe that was opening up to the world, today we take it for granted. [epic music] As early as the 1950s, some young Europeans are already calling for open borders.
That's still a long way off at this point, particularly since a few early attempts at expanding the community fail. But the campaigners refuse to be deterred. And, once again, all roads lead to Rome.
The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, and the EU would later become the world's largest trading power. In 1957, representatives of West Germany, France, Italy, and the Benelux countries come together in Rome to establish the European Economic Community. The EEC also results in closer political ties between the countries; it's open to new members and plans to expand its powers step by step, building the foundation for a shared future.
[jaunty music] Ancient Rome eventually fell, of course, thanks to financial crises, political conflict and barbarian invasions. And Europe has its own share of tensions today: the divide between North and South, the Euro crisis, immigration policies. These are all challenges that the continent will continue to face.
But the European political order is robust. It's underpinned by long-standing common values, civil and political freedom, equality before the law, democracy, human dignity and a rational view of the world. This order is now in danger.
If Europeans really want to inhabit a common house, they will have to make it so strong that it can withstand storms and earthquakes, even those that come from within. This can be learned. And wasn't Europe always a continent that learned?
