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- 1 year ago
Dan Snow explains the most destructive war in history. From its origins through the dark days of 1940 through to the defeat of Germany and the dropping of the atomic bomb. World War Two changed the world.
00:00 Introduction
01:10 When Did WW2 Start?
02:39 1939
05:49 1940
12:11 1941
15:56 1942
17:41 1943
20:31 1944
23:26 1945
26:55 Post-WW2
00:00 Introduction
01:10 When Did WW2 Start?
02:39 1939
05:49 1940
12:11 1941
15:56 1942
17:41 1943
20:31 1944
23:26 1945
26:55 Post-WW2
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00The Second World War was the biggest, most destructive, bloodiest war in history.
00:06Every continent was touched by the war.
00:09Yes, even the Antarctic.
00:11There was military activity in China, France, Hawaii, Iceland, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Arctic, and far beyond.
00:20It was fought in trenches, on horseback, in the air, under the seas.
00:25It was fought for the first time ever in space and with nuclear weapons.
00:31World War II changed the world.
00:33The European empires of Britain, France, Holland, and others never recovered.
00:37The rest of the 20th century had been dominated by the superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union.
00:44In Asia, the war led eventually to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:49It also caused the partition of Korea into two zones and the birth of India as an independent country.
00:57So, when was it, what happened, and who fought where?
01:01This is all you need to know.
01:03When did World War II start?
01:11Well, that depends on your point of view.
01:14World War II was caused by the desire for empire, for territory, for power, for wealth and resources.
01:21Three dictatorships, Germany, Italy, and Japan, known as the Axis Powers, had spent the 1930s expanding their empires.
01:31Germany in Europe, Japan in northern China, Italy in Africa.
01:38Japan and China had been locked in a huge struggle since 1937, at least.
01:43Some people think this should count as the start of the war.
01:46The Americans were actually dragged into this Pacific region war in December 1941,
01:52when Japan attacked the American Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
01:56So, it started for the USA in 1941.
02:01Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Indians, and anyone else in the European empires,
02:06which at that time was nearly everyone, count the start of the war from September 1939.
02:13At the start of that month, Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, invaded Poland.
02:20At that point, lots of countries declared war on Germany, and the Second World War in Europe was underway.
02:27When the war ended, that's a little clearer.
02:30Germany and Japan were catastrophically defeated and occupied in 1945.
02:37So, why does September 1939 matter?
02:40In Europe, Adolf Hitler's Nazi party had seized power in Germany.
02:46He'd done away with democracy.
02:47He was a dictator.
02:49He has started the persecution of political opponents, of Jews, of other minorities.
02:55He is building concentration camps.
02:57His aim?
02:59Expanding Germany.
03:01He wanted to seize back all the territory that Germany had lost
03:04after it had been defeated in the First World War in 1918.
03:08So, in 1938, he sees Austria, then parts of Czechoslovakia.
03:14But he wanted more.
03:16He wanted an empire in the east.
03:18The rich farmlands of Ukraine.
03:20The oil of the Caucasus.
03:22He dreamed of a vast German empire.
03:26So, he's grabbing bits of Europe that he claims have always really been part of Germany.
03:32He's returning Germany to greatness.
03:34And his next target is Poland.
03:37Western Poland used to be part of Germany until defeat in the First World War.
03:43Hitler thinks it should be part of Germany again.
03:46So, he does a deal with the communist dictator, Joseph Stalin, in Russia.
03:52Or the USSR, as it was properly known at the time.
03:55And they decide they're going to invade Poland and split it between them.
04:001st of September, 1939.
04:02Boom.
04:02We're off.
04:03German troops invade.
04:05Hitler thought Britain and France would let him do it.
04:09They'd reluctantly agreed to allow him to snap up Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia
04:14over the previous couple of years.
04:15But this was a step too far.
04:19They declared war on Germany.
04:22Hitler has got himself into another world war.
04:25What now?
04:26He asked his foreign minister.
04:28With Britain and France come some mighty empires.
04:32Canada, India, Nigeria, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and lots beside.
04:37All now in the fight.
04:39So, what happens?
04:41Buckle up.
04:41Pretty quickly, Germany and the Soviets divide up Poland.
04:45The British and French aren't much help.
04:47The French do launch a little invasion of Western Germany, but only advance a couple of miles.
04:52Their heart wasn't in it.
04:53They withdraw once German troops flooded back, flush from their victory in Poland.
05:00The Soviets have less success with the invasion of Finland, which ends in an embarrassing defeat.
05:06Although, the following year they try again and do take a bit of territory.
05:10On the oceans.
05:11German submarines and ships try to destroy Britain's trade and cut off supplies.
05:17A German U-boat or submarine sinks a passenger ship, the Athenia, within hours of the war starting.
05:24This is known as the Battle of the Atlantic and it will rumble on until the last days of the Second World War.
05:31Further afield, any German naval ship on the high seas is hunted down and destroyed.
05:38A British force sank the German cruiser, Admiral Graf Spee, in the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of South America.
05:46Back in Europe, though, there was a standoff, both sides eyeballing each other across the French-German border.
05:54In Britain at this time, more people were killed in road traffic accidents because street lights were blacked out than members of the armed forces were killed in combat.
06:02But that would change.
06:04In April 1940, both the Allies and the Germans decided to invade Norway to secure its precious resources.
06:13The iron ore, which was exported to Germany through the Norwegian port of Narvik, was essential for German steel production.
06:21The Germans moved north through Denmark, conquering it in the space of hours.
06:25They also sent a fleet to invade Norway, which managed to avoid the British navy, partly due to bad weather.
06:32The Allies attempted to move troops into Norway to bolster Norwegians, but the Germans were too strong.
06:38By the end of May, the final Allied troops were evacuated, along with the Norwegian royal family.
06:44This was very embarrassing for the British and French allies.
06:47And after huge criticism in Parliament of the way the war was being run, the British government collapsed.
06:53In came a new Prime Minister. You might have heard of him. Winston Churchill.
06:57He didn't have long to ease himself into the job.
07:00The very day he went to see the King and move into Downing Street, the Germans launched the invasion of Western Europe.
07:08A massive German force crossed into Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium and France.
07:13What followed was one of the most dramatic upsets in the history of war.
07:18The Germans used tanks, aircraft and vehicles to surge through enemy territory, surrounding and surprising.
07:26While the Allies moved to counter the German troops marching through Belgium, as they had in the First World War,
07:32the Germans completely surprised them with another thrust through the woody, hilly Ardennes region, which most planners had thought was impassable.
07:41This thrust caught everyone off balance, and within just ten days the Germans were at the English Channel.
07:49All the Allied troops that had marched north into Belgium to stop the Germans were now cut off from the rest of their forces in France.
07:56The British and French had been sliced in half.
08:00The surrounded forces in Belgium had no choice. They had to head to the coast and hope the Royal Navy would rescue them.
08:07The Allies retreated to a defensive perimeter around the town of Dunkirk.
08:12The Navy frantically organised ships to go to their rescue, including, eventually, little boats, river craft, barges and yachts,
08:20which could pick soldiers up directly from the beach rather than rely on limited port facilities, many of which had been ruined by German bombing.
08:29The British hoped to evacuate 45,000 men in the two days before the Germans captured Dunkirk.
08:36But Hitler called his forces to a halt. He was concerned that his tanks and men were stretched and needed to consolidate.
08:44The Germans were worried also that ground around Dunkirk was too boggy for heavy tanks.
08:49This gave the British a precious window. Over a week, an astonishing 340,000 Allied soldiers were rescued.
08:57Some called it a miracle. Britain had rescued its army even if they'd left nearly all their heavy weapons behind.
09:06Hitler's Axis partner Italy thought the writing was on the wall and chose this moment to jump into the war.
09:15Italian troops launched an invasion of southern France.
09:18After Dunkirk, German forces were free to turn south and concentrate on the rest of the French army.
09:26Within weeks, France fell. Hitler visited Paris for some gloating shots for social media.
09:34Germany now dominated Western and Central Europe.
09:38Inspired by Winston Churchill, the British and their empire beyond the seas made the firm decision not to give in.
09:47Hitler had a British problem. He needed to make peace with Britain or defeat Britain totally,
09:54or they'd make a nuisance to themselves when Hitler turned east to fulfil his real dream,
10:00that huge empire stretching off into the Russian steaks.
10:04So Hitler told his army to draw up plans to invade while he used his air force to try and force Britain to the negotiating table.
10:12What followed was the Battle of Britain, the first battle fought in history predominantly in the skies.
10:20German bombers flew over Britain, striking military targets.
10:24They focused at first on the Royal Air Force, trying to knock them out so Germans could control the skies and force the British government to yield through bombing.
10:33But the RAF proved tenacious.
10:35German raids were pounced on by RAF Hurricane and Spitfire fighters.
10:40German bombers were shot down in unsustainable numbers.
10:43The RAF had invented an ingenious system to identify and attack German raids.
10:49Pioneering radar was used to spot German aircraft.
10:52The information was then passed to groups of fighter aircraft who could dash up into the sky and shoot them down.
10:59As the summer went on, the RAF seemed unbreakable.
11:03The Germans switched tactics and started pounding London, hoping to force the British to change their minds and sue for peace.
11:10It was the start of what Brits call the Blitz.
11:14The systematic bombing of civilians in cities by the Germans.
11:19By the middle of September, it was clear that the Germans had been defeated in the air.
11:24The RAF was still a formidable presence and the bombing of London was taking far too high a toll on German aircraft and crew.
11:31Hitler admitted he would not be able to knock Britain out of the war.
11:36He certainly couldn't launch an invasion with the RAF undefeated and the Royal Navy ready to pounce on any German invasion fleet.
11:45Germany switched to bombing British cities at night, but the invasion plans were shelved.
11:51While Britain had been fighting for survival, it had also had to fight the Italians in the Mediterranean,
11:57where their empires rubbed up alongside each other in North and East Africa.
12:02The British seized Italian Ethiopia, but the fighting in Libya and Egypt would prove much tougher.
12:091941 would be a big year.
12:14As fighting between the Axis and the British seesawed in North Africa,
12:18the Italian invasion of Greece, which they'd launched right at the end of 1940, was going badly wrong.
12:25The Italians were forced into humiliating retreats.
12:29They turned to Hitler to bail them out.
12:31Well, he couldn't stand by and let his allies embarrass him.
12:35So, he invaded Southeast Europe, overrunning Yugoslavia and Greece pretty quickly.
12:41But that wasted valuable time and resources for the Axis because that summer they had a big plan.
12:49The invasion of the Soviet Union.
12:52One of history's most terrible struggles was about to begin.
12:58In June, Hitler shocked his former ally Stalin by launching the most massive invasion in history.
13:06Nearly 4 million men, 3,500 tanks, over 8,000 other vehicles and thousands of aircraft.
13:15Plus, over half a million horses.
13:18The Soviets were completely outclassed.
13:20Millions of men were killed or captured and sent to camps where most of them starved to death.
13:27Even Stalin's son was among the prisoners who would perish.
13:31By December, German spearheads were at the outskirts of Moscow.
13:36But ferocious Soviet resistance and shocking cold weather stopped them in their tracks.
13:41And the Soviets launched a counterattack that was even able to push them back.
13:46Hitler had believed, as he put it, that by kicking in the front door the whole rotten structure would come crashing down.
13:52Instead, the Soviets had retreated but they hadn't collapsed.
13:56They were still in the fight.
13:58The stage was set for a long, terrible struggle.
14:03While the Germans were falling just short of taking Stalin's capital, thousands of miles away, another surprise attack was about to take place.
14:13Japan was struggling to win its war in China.
14:17They needed raw materials, rubber and oil.
14:21These could be found in Southeast Asia, places like Malaysia.
14:26The Japanese thought the United States would stop them from invading these territories.
14:30So they decided to strike first.
14:33Knock out the American Navy in the Pacific.
14:36Then they could seize all the territory they liked.
14:39So, in early December 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers headed for Hawaii.
14:48On the 7th of December 1941, the Japanese struck.
14:53Bombs and torpedoes rained down on the US Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor on Oahu.
15:00Eight battleships were sunk or damaged.
15:03Two and a half thousand Americans were killed.
15:07President Roosevelt called it a day of infamy and declared war on Japan.
15:14Then, remarkably, Adolf Hitler declared war on America.
15:19The USA was in the war with both Japan and Germany.
15:24The war in Europe and the war in Asia was now a global one.
15:30The Japanese didn't just attack the Americans.
15:33They also put into plan their attempt to secure the resources of Southeast Asia.
15:38At the same time those bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor,
15:41the Japanese invaded British-controlled Malaya, then Indonesia and the Philippines.
15:47Within months, all of them would fall to Japan.
15:511942 would be the decisive year.
16:001942 started with Axis advances, but ended in terrible defeats.
16:08The Japanese continued to expand across Asia and the Pacific.
16:11They captured Burma.
16:12They arrived at the gates of India.
16:14They bombed Australia and Sri Lanka.
16:17The Germans and their Axis allies charged through Ukraine into southern Russia.
16:23By late summer, they'd reached the city of Stalingrad.
16:26But their momentum stopped as they struggled to secure the city in the face of house-to-house fighting.
16:33That summer, too, the Japanese suffered a catastrophic defeat.
16:38The Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes, which allowed them to ambush the Japanese fleet off Midway Island.
16:45US naval dive bombers destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers, ripping the heart out of the Japanese Navy.
16:52The tide had turned.
16:54The tide also turned in Africa as well.
16:57An impressive Axis advance had taken their forces deep into Egypt,
17:02threatening the entire British position in the Middle East.
17:05But the British attacked at El Alamein in October and forced the Axis back.
17:11It was the start of a long retreat.
17:15Days later, the Americans arrived in the Western Theatre for the first time in the war.
17:22They and the British landed in Morocco and Algeria, threatening to crush the Axis between them and the British Army advancing forward.
17:32In November 1942, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack on the German troops at Stalingrad.
17:41Within days, they were surrounded.
17:44The Germans held out, desperately.
17:47But by February 1943, the final remnant surrendered.
17:51It was a devastating defeat.
17:54In 1943, the Allies really turned the screws.
18:01In the skies of Europe, fleets of bombers smashed German cities and factories night after night.
18:07A daring raid in May saw British bombers strike at German dams to disrupt hydroelectric and water supplies in the industrial region of the Ruhr.
18:17In the Soviet Union, the Germans attempted one last big offensive.
18:23They attacked the Soviets around the city of Kursk.
18:26But the British had broken German codes and gave Stalin detailed intelligence.
18:31The Soviets built massive defences which took a terrible toll on the Germans and then struck back at them, sending them really back.
18:40The Germans would know only retreats from this point forward.
18:46In the Atlantic, British, American, Canadian and other Allied ships and planes developed techniques to overcome the threat of German submarines.
18:55In a series of battles, Allied ships sunk German submarines in such large numbers, the German admiral suspended all operations.
19:04They would never again enjoy the upper hand.
19:07In the spring of 1943, Axis troops surrendered in North Africa.
19:14And in July, the invasion of Italy began with landings in Sicily, the first Allied boots on the home turf of an Axis power.
19:25Later that month, the fascist leader Mussolini was ousted from power and arrested.
19:31The Allies then invaded the Italian mainland in early September.
19:35Italy agreed to surrender, but German forces in Italy seized control and ensured that the Allies would have to fight their way right up the Italian peninsula.
19:45In the Pacific, the Americans were on the offensive.
19:49They hopped from island to island in two main thrusts.
19:53There was a southern drive in which New Guinea and its surrounding islands would be captured.
19:58Then there was a thrust up through the central Pacific with attacks on the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.
20:04The Axis were on the retreat.
20:07They now had no chance of winning the war.
20:11As the situation worsened for the Germans, their genocidal campaign against Europe's Jews and other groups accelerated.
20:18Millions of Jews were killed in industrial murder camps across Germany's shrinking empire.
20:25The walls really closed in on the Axis powers in 1944.
20:33The Soviets launched offensive after offensive.
20:37Millions of men surging forward, driving the Axis forces before them.
20:42Vast numbers of people were now locked into bloody, destructive, awful fighting.
20:49By the end of the year, the Soviets were on German soil.
20:53In the Pacific, the USA inflicted defeat after defeat on the Japanese.
20:59Most of their navy was wiped out in massive battles like the Philippine Sea and the Leyte Gulf.
21:05They captured island after island.
21:07Saipan, Tinian, Guam all fell.
21:10From these islands, American bombers could now reach the Japanese home islands and unleash terrible destruction.
21:16The Japanese attempted a pathetic attempt to strike at America.
21:21They released balloons with explosives tied onto them.
21:24One of them killed six civilians in Oregon.
21:27The only Americans killed in the continental US by Axis powers during the Second World War.
21:33The Japanese also tried to invade India, but were held at battles at Kohima and Imphal before falling back.
21:40The Americans, British, Canadians and their allies launched their invasion of Western Europe on the 6th of June 1944.
21:50D-Day.
21:51In just 24 hours, around 150,000 men were landed in Normandy.
21:57Some dropped from aircraft, but the majority coming across the Channel in 7,000 ships and boats and storming up the beaches.
22:06Hours of savage fighting were needed to get off some of the beaches as the German defenders unleashed a storm of machine gun fire from concrete bunkers.
22:15But by the end of the day, the Allies had penetrated this defensive wall and cleared the beaches.
22:21And huge numbers of men and vehicles would land in the coming days.
22:25German reinforcements rushed to Normandy and a brutal attritional battle followed.
22:31It wasn't until early August that the Allies defeated the German forces comprehensively and they raced across northern France, liberating Paris at the end of the month.
22:42It seemed like the end of the war might be near.
22:44The Allies launched an ambitious attempt to seize the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem.
22:49But the Germans were not defeated yet.
22:51They fought back and frustrated the plan.
22:54The war would drag on through another terrible winter.
22:58And at midwinter, Hitler would launch his last offensive.
23:03With snow thick on the ground, the Germans struck at Allied troops in Luxembourg and Belgium.
23:09They bent back the Allied line into a bulge but could not break through.
23:14Massive reinforcements were rushed to the region and this Battle of the Bulge ended as another German defeat.
23:20They'd lost men, tanks and fuel they could not afford.
23:27It was all over in 1945, but the Axis fought hard to the end, causing huge unnecessary hardship, trauma and loss of life.
23:38As the snows melted in the spring of 1945, the Allies swept through northern Italy, finally completing the liberation.
23:46On their western front, the Germans blew up one of their biggest dams, causing flooding to slow the Allied advance.
23:53But in March, the Western Allies gained footholds on the east side of the mighty river Rhine and advanced across Germany.
24:01By April, they were just 50 miles from Berlin.
24:05In the east, the Soviets rampaged across Poland and East Germany.
24:10Nearly two and a half million men proved far too much for the German defenders.
24:15Stalin was desperate to get to Berlin, the enemy's capital first, and he pushed his generals to beat the Western Allies to it.
24:22They succeeded. Berlin was surrounded by Soviet troops by late April.
24:28On the 30th of April, Hitler married his longtime partner, Eva Braun, then killed her and committed suicide.
24:37The Third Reich's short-lived second Führer, Admiral Dönitz, surrendered unconditionally a week later on the 7th of May.
24:47The war in the West was over.
24:5043 million had died.
24:52Two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population had been murdered.
24:56Cities had been erased, treasures destroyed.
24:59A continent lay in ruins.
25:02Japan remained in the fight for the moment.
25:05Its cities were incinerated, its empire humbled.
25:09American forces moved ever closer to the home islands.
25:14They captured islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa after horrific fighting which saw suicidal yet hopeless Japanese defence.
25:23Plans were made to invade Japan itself.
25:26But then, the USA stunned the world.
25:31A single plane dropped the most powerful weapon in history.
25:34A miracle weapon.
25:36The atomic bomb.
25:38A top secret, massive industrial and scientific effort had been underway in America
25:43to harness the power of the atom and create a bomb of hitherto unimaginable strength.
25:49In July 1945, there had been a successful test which had turned a patch of New Mexico desert into glass.
25:59In August, the new American president, Truman, who had succeeded after the death of Roosevelt in April,
26:06took the decision to drop the bomb on Japan to force their unconditional surrender.
26:11On the 6th of August, a single bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, followed by a second bomb, three days later, on Nagasaki.
26:19Hundreds of thousands of people were killed or suffered horrific injuries in the two strikes.
26:25At the same time, the Soviet Union finally entered the war in the Pacific.
26:30The day after Hiroshima, Stalin launched a massive offensive against Japanese forces in northern China.
26:37Bowing to the inevitable, the Japanese government surrendered.
26:42The official ceremony took place on the 2nd of September 1945 on an American battleship in Tokyo Bay.
26:50The Second World War was over.
26:53The world was transformed.
26:55In Europe, the eastern part of the continent was now under Soviet communist occupation.
27:00Germany was divided in two.
27:02The East occupied by the Soviets, the West by the Western democracies.
27:06Nuclear-armed America was now a global superpower, totally replacing the British and the French empires,
27:13which were weakened by the exertions and the expense of war.
27:17In Asia, Japan was occupied and rebuilt by the Americans.
27:22Korea was divided, like Germany, between the democracies who controlled the South
27:27and Soviet forces who installed a communist regime in the North.
27:31Vietnam had thrown off the French imperial yoke during the war and began its independence struggle as the French arrived back to take control.
27:42China was devastated by the war and the communist forces there redoubled their efforts to seize power.
27:49By 1949, mainland China was in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party.
27:55In so many ways, we are still living in a world forged by World War II.
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