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00:26During the dark days of August 1942,
00:48there was still every chance that Hitler might yet win World War II.
00:56Although America had been dragged into the conflict by Hitler's rash declaration of war,
01:02it would take years to assemble a real fighting force in continental Europe.
01:07In the meantime, British Empire forces still effectively stood alone against the might
01:13of Hitler's forces in the West.
01:20On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army was under immense pressure from the Great German
01:24Offensive, which had taken the Sixth Army to the gates of Stalingrad, and Stalin was increasingly
01:31vocal in his demands for a Second Front.
01:35In order to demonstrate that Britain was not entirely impotent, and to prepare for the day
01:40when British forces would be required to stage a full-scale invasion of the continent, a large-scale
01:46raid in force was planned against the German-held town of Dieppe.
01:50The Russians, don't forget, had been trying to insist that the British mount a Second Front
01:57for some years.
01:59As early as 1942, there was no way the Allies could have mounted an invasion across Channel,
02:06until they were absolutely prepared.
02:11One of the features of the Dieppe raid was the first deployment of a new British tank known
02:17as the Churchill.
02:23These early tanks had specially adapted exhaust outlets to allow them to operate in water up
02:28to six feet in depth.
02:31Despite the deployment of 29 of these, the very latest machines to reach the Army, the attack
02:37on Dieppe was nothing short of a disaster.
02:44It always strikes me as odd that we should have taken what was then effectively our most
02:47top-secret weapon and plonked it on a beach in France, which we, almost certainly some of
02:53them were going to get captured.
02:56So it was the first time it had been used.
02:57It, at that time, had a dreadful reputation for unreliability, which didn't help.
03:02And it was only its great ability to absorb punishment, which seems to have been the reason
03:06that it was used there at all.
03:10Confronted by a series of concrete anti-tank barricades and an extensive system of anti-tank
03:15ditches, the new tanks failed to clear their way off the beach and into the town.
03:22Casualties were high, and the entry of the Churchill was not an auspicious success.
03:27The Canadians used Churchill tanks in that raid, and they came horribly unstuck, partly because
03:32the tanks did not behave very well on the beach, they tended to pick up the stones that broke
03:36their tracks, but those that did get ashore, that got well off the seawall onto the promenade,
03:42then found they couldn't get any further, because the Germans had blocked the streets
03:45with enormous concrete blocks, and they completely prevented anyone from working their way into
03:49the town.
03:50At the time, there was nothing they could do.
03:52The Canadian Royal Engineers would simply operate on their feet, carrying packs of explosives
03:59with them.
04:00And these men were cut down before they got anywhere near the targets half the time.
04:06Nonetheless, the Canadians fought hard, and despite the fact that the tanks could not
04:15get off the beach, they actually managed to establish a foothold in the town.
04:25But as the superior German forces gained the upper hand, large numbers of exhausted prisoners
04:31were gathered together to parade for the cameras.
04:34And the German newsreels had an unexpected field day.
04:40The 28 modern tanks which landed were all destroyed.
04:58These images of the knocked-out Churchill tanks proved to be a great propaganda coup for
05:03the Germans, who were presented with brand new examples of the latest British technology
05:08for study, evaluation, and as trophies of war.
05:12The Germans captured, obviously, every single one that landed, none of them got back.
05:18Their view of the Churchill was so dismissive that beyond testing a few, they never even bothered
05:23using them.
05:24I think they came to the conclusion that we meant to throw them away because they were
05:28useless.
05:29Interesting that in the end, of course, the Churchill comes back to haunt them right to
05:32the end of the war.
05:36Despite the unhappy scenes of defeat, the Dieppe raid did provide a great deal of valuable experience
05:42for the Allies, which would be put to use in the D-Day landings two years later.
05:48Against all expectations, the Churchills would be back, and they would play a crucial role in
05:53the events of June 1944.
06:15Despite the adverse experience at Dieppe, the sturdy hull of the Churchill tank was chosen
06:21as the basis for a highly versatile range of specialist machines, known by the initials
06:26AVRE, which stood for Assault Vehicle Royal Engineers.
06:31They were formed into a special command of the 79th Armoured Division under Major PCS Hobart.
06:38He trained what was known as the 1st Tank Brigade in Britain in the 30s.
06:43He was then sent out to the Middle East to train what became the famous 7th Armoured Division,
06:47the Desert Rats.
06:48He did it extremely well, and the men adored him.
06:51He pulled out and was given command.
06:52He first of all trained the 11th Armoured Division, which was a conventional armoured division,
06:56always training them to an absolutely incredibly high standard.
07:01He then took over 79th, which originally was just going to be another regular armoured division,
07:05and was commanding it when the order came through to change to the development of specialised
07:10armour.
07:11Now, it would be wrong to credit Hobart with the invention of any of this stuff.
07:14He was not a technical man. He was a tactician and a training expert. A lot of the ideas
07:20that he pulled in came from other sources.
07:23As a direct result of the experience gained in the Dieppe Raid, an ingenious variety of
07:29AVREs were designed to assist in the real attack on Hitler's Atlantic War.
07:33The most important of these was a special adaptation of the Churchill, which had its main gun replaced
07:52by a massive 290mm mortar known as a petard. This device could hurl a huge explosive charge,
08:01which was intended to blow apart concrete defences of the type which had proved so effective
08:06against the tanks at Dieppe.
08:08It's basically a Churchill tank, but it's been modified. It's a combined demolition vehicle
08:17and sort of multi-purpose field engineering tank. It has no anti-tank gun or anything like
08:23that. Instead, it has this enormous thing known as a petard mortar, which fires an equally
08:29enormous thing called a flying dustbin of a very short distance, which will then demolish
08:33pretty well anything it gets anywhere near.
08:38In a throwback to the days of World War One, the hull of the AVRE was also found to be capable
08:44of carrying a bundle of wood eight feet in diameter, known as a fascine.
08:55This unlikely cargo could be dropped into an anti-tank ditch to create a simple bridge to
09:00allow tanks to cross.
09:04For crossing larger obstacles such as sea walls, the AVRE could also be adapted to carry a box
09:10girder bridge with a span of 30 feet, which was capable of carrying vehicles up to 40 tons
09:16in weight.
09:24In the event that the soft sand of the beaches would prove too difficult for tanks to cross,
09:29yet another variation on the AVRE was developed. This one carrying what was known as a bobbin,
09:36a huge reel of canvas which was unrolled in front of the tank to allow the vehicle to cross
09:41areas of soft sand.
09:44In order to prevent exploding mines making huge craters in the soft sand of the beach, there
09:49was also a variant of the AVRE which carried a huge plough on the front of the tank, which
09:54was designed to bring mines to the surface so that they could be detonated later on.
10:03Finally, in the list of specialist machines, which had become affectionately known to the
10:08troops as Hobart's Funnies, was a demolition version of the AVRE.
10:14Most of these things consisted of a frame which was hinged onto the front of the tank from
10:19these various brackets along here, and this frame carried with it a whole load of plastic
10:26explosive charges, different quantities for different obstacles. Some of them you just
10:30drove the tank up, you stopped at the wall, you laid the charge against the wall and backed
10:35away. Some were actually hooked, so you hooked them over the wall. You then went off to a respectable
10:40distance trailing electric wires and blew up the wall.
10:46While the specialist machines were at work on their particular tasks, they still needed
10:51the support of conventional armour to protect them against anti-tank guns or enemy tanks.
10:59For that purpose, the Allies relied on two main variants of the trusty Sherman tank.
11:11The first of these was the duplex drive or DD swimming tank, which used a collapsible canvas
11:17screen and a propeller mounted on the back of the tank to allow the vehicle to swim ashore
11:22and reach the shallow water where they could neutralise enemy anti-tank positions, while the
11:27specialist tanks went about their work of breaching the enemy defences.
11:34It seemed almost chaos when we landed, because there was shouting everywhere, come this way,
11:40go that way, but it wasn't. It was orderly chaos.
11:44The Allied plan for the Battle of Normandy was exceptionally sound and exceptionally safe.
11:52But it had to be. This battle absolutely had to succeed. If the Allies had been defeated
11:59on D-Day, if they had been defeated in the Battle of Normandy, it is almost impossible to
12:04say what the future consequences would have been for the Second World War.
12:21It was not just the Allies who had learned the lessons of D-Day. The German High Command also realised
12:27that their defences could be improved. In particular, their sea defences needed to be much more effective
12:33against the Allied tanks, which the Germans now knew were capable of swimming their way ashore from ships
12:39moored a considerable distance out to sea.
12:44A careful study of the results of the battle at Dieppe proved the value of both concrete obstacles
12:50and anti-tank ditches. In addition, thousands of anti-tank obstacles were placed beneath the high watermark,
12:57which were designed to make it very difficult for armour to reach the shore.
13:03To complete the task of preparing the Atlantic Wall, Hitler chose Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
13:09He was appointed in January 1944.
13:14The Atlantic Wall opposite D-Day was commanded by General Rommel, my father's old adversary from the desert.
13:25And, of course, he thought he understood indeed very well what Rommel was about.
13:31Rommel believed that the only chance for defeating the Allied invasion was to do so on the D-Day beaches
13:38and drive it into the sea. This famous phrase of his chief of staffs, which he picked up and used,
13:43that this would be the longest day. What he meant by that was if the Allies were allowed at the end of D-Day
13:50still to be ashore, then Allied strength would mean that victory in the Battle of Normandy for them
13:55would be inevitable and there was nothing the Germans could do.
13:59One of the main elements of Rommel's defensive strategy lay in a massive belt of anti-tank mines
14:05along the entire length of the coast, which in places stretched to a depth of half a mile from the shoreline.
14:12This first line was intended to be backed up by an additional belt of mines up to five miles deep,
14:19sited further inland. It has been calculated that this grandiose scheme would have required 200 million mines to complete.
14:28Despite the more limited resources available to him, Rommel still boasted that the beaches would become what he described as a zone of death.
14:43Although the Atlantic Wall was still far from complete in mid-1944, the defences were fairly well advanced in the Normandy area,
14:51and a considerable effort on the Allied side went into the development of vehicles which could be used to clear a path through the minefields.
15:01One such vehicle was the second main variant of the Sherman tank, known as the Crab.
15:07The Crab is really an amalgamation of the American Sherman tank and a British mine-sweeping flail device.
15:18The flail is a drum here with these huge chains hanging from it.
15:22It's driven from the tank's own engine through a gearbox, and the whole thing rotates relatively slowly.
15:29The chains fly around pretty vigorously, thrashing the ground as they go along and exploding anti-tank mines in the path of the tank.
15:37Sometimes when the blow goes off, the bang is so strong, the blast is so strong, it actually lifts the whole jib up at the front.
15:43It goes up in the air, goes thumping back down again, but it's still going round, it's still thrashing the ground.
15:47And if the odd one flies off, the odds are still in your favour.
15:51So at the end of the day, of course, the tank needs a lot of work done on it for its next flailing job.
16:03There are instances where the Germans latterly came up with a very unseemly trick of laying a conventional mine linked to an aircraft bomb.
16:10The tank would drive over the aircraft bomb flailing and not upset it.
16:14The flails would strike the mine, the mine would detonate the aircraft bomb, which by then was under the tank,
16:19and that was the end of the crab completely.
16:23With this mind-boggling collection of specialist vehicles at his disposal,
16:28Hobart's 79th Division resembled a contractor's yard, with a specialist machine for almost every conceivable application.
16:35This is actually what's known as the crocodile version of the Churchill, and this is a flamethrower.
16:45This would spout highly combustible jelly, which would then be ignited to burn enemy strong points and on occasion enemy men.
16:57So it's a very inhuman and nasty weapon.
17:01It had a little trailer which was attached to the back, which housed the fuel.
17:05And in action, this would provide enough bursts of fire for about three minutes in action.
17:12Thereafter, this weapon would be redundant, and the crew would rely on the normal six-pounder up in the turret here.
17:19It was usually employed against really stubborn defences,
17:25and the classic example is the French fortress at Brest, which the Germans were holding.
17:30And it became such an obstinate target that they borrowed some crocodile tanks and their crews
17:36from the British 79th Armoured Division and brought them up for a demonstration.
17:40And once the Germans had witnessed what these things could do, they quickly changed their minds and surrendered.
17:47We were glad of the Churchills because the snipers were in foxholes,
17:54and the only way to get them out was the flamethrower.
17:58It must have been a horrible death, but I actually think it must have been pretty well instantaneous.
18:17The British and Canadian forces operating on D-Day, possibly with the experience of Dieppe still in mind,
18:28took full advantage of Hobart and his funnies, as the vehicles were affectionately known.
18:33The American General Bradley, however, is alleged to have declined all offers of assistance,
18:38and this was to have disastrous consequences for the American forces fighting on Omaha Beach.
18:47The old argument that we didn't invent it, therefore it can't be any good, is the one that's put forward.
18:52I think if we look at it, the 79th Armoured Division simply wasn't big enough to serve three armies.
19:01It was already serving the British and Canadian armies.
19:03I think if we'd have extended it ourselves to support the Americans, except in very special cases,
19:09we would have been spread too thin.
19:11As to why the Americans didn't adopt specialised armour themselves,
19:15the Churchill would have been an anachronism to them anyway.
19:19It was so different from anything they produced that they would never have got used to it.
19:23It's a dreadful tank by American standards, so for that reason they wouldn't have.
19:28And they did take flails later on, and the US engineers developed their own range of vehicles,
19:32which just never came into action in time. They were a bit behind us on that.
19:36On D-Day itself, the experience of the DD swimming tanks varied massively from beach to beach.
19:47Probably the most spectacular failure of the swimming tanks, the DD tanks,
19:51in the early part of the operation.
19:53In the sectors where they were successful, they did very well indeed.
19:57The tanks swam ashore, or drove ashore if they felt it was too rough to swim,
20:02and did what they were supposed to do in the main.
20:05On certain sectors, and I would cite particularly of some of the American beaches,
20:10they launched too far out, they launched into very bad seas and a crosswind,
20:15whereas the British and Canadians were heading straight into it.
20:17And they certainly lost a lot of tanks and a lot of men,
20:21but probably a bit more liberal interpretation of what they were for would have solved that problem.
20:26At Omaha Beach, 28 out of 30 DD tanks sank to the ocean floor, many taking their crews with them.
20:37Deprived of armour support, casualties among the American inventory on Omaha were the highest on D-Day.
20:45On the Canadian Juno Beach, the situation was more positive,
20:54and 21 out of 34 DD tanks made it to the shore.
20:58Overall, the British had better luck than either the Canadians or the Americans,
21:02and 31 out of 34 DD tanks launched at Sword Beach made it to the shore.
21:08On Juno Beach, the DD tanks were particularly effective in assisting the Canadian infantry,
21:18who had been pinned down by some well-prepared German defences.
21:22The arrival of the swimming tanks soon neutralised the German anti-tank guns
21:27and allowed the advance to continue inland.
21:30Also on Juno Beach, the AVRE machines proved that they could be highly effective.
21:39Not only did they successfully clear the beach of mines,
21:43but using their petards they were able to breach the sea wall
21:46and drop fascines into the anti-tank ditch,
21:49which allowed the supporting infantry to attack German strongpoints in the houses behind the beach.
21:55Here, too, they played a vital role,
22:00and they were able to offer assistance to the infantry by demolishing German strongpoints.
22:09The AVRE was a port.
22:11It was impossible to get at from the sea.
22:14It was so well defended, so it had to be attacked from behind,
22:16but it was well fortified in both directions.
22:19And this was a classic example of all the specialised armour,
22:23the flamethrowers, the flails, the AVREs,
22:26with all their various trimmings and fittings,
22:28all working as a team.
22:30And what they did, they selected a number of lanes,
22:33and then each section of 79th Armoured Div would go in,
22:37it would do its appointed job, and then it would clear off.
22:40And then the real armour, the fighting armour and the infantry,
22:42go in and took the port, and it was done brilliantly,
22:45very smoothly and very quickly.
22:47Of 50 crabs and 128 AVREs deployed on D-Day,
22:5512 crabs were knocked out,
22:57and 22 of the AVREs,
22:59a mercifully small sacrifice for so much progress.
23:03As commander of Allied 21st Army Group,
23:22Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had the enormous responsibility
23:25of leading the forces on the ground during the Normandy campaign of 1944.
23:30When my father was asked to command Operation Overlord,
23:35his first move was to talk to Eisenhower in North Africa,
23:40and then go to Churchill to explain that the original plan
23:43to have a three-division front would not work,
23:46and it needed to be expanded to a five-division plan.
23:49And indeed, this was the plan that he launched
23:51when he got back to England at the beginning of January 1944.
23:55He set a very precise strategy for the campaign,
24:01which was outlined at a meeting of senior commanders
24:04in St. Paul's School, London, on May 15th, 1944.
24:07It was intended that the four Allied corps,
24:13which landed on the five beaches on D-Day,
24:16would penetrate to a depth of about ten kilometres inland
24:19and capture the towns of Bayeux and Caen.
24:24By D-Day plus ten, the Allies would have secured the line of high ground
24:28running from Saint-Lau to Villers-Boccages.
24:32While the British engaged the German forces in a battle
24:35which was intended to be fought south of Caen,
24:37it was planned that Patton's Third Army would expand southwards,
24:41in a grand encircling movement designed to trap the German forces,
24:45and by D-Day plus 90,
24:47the Allies would be encamped along the River Seine,
24:50and Paris would be in their hands.
24:56By committing his forces around Caen,
24:58it was the British who would face the bulk of the German armour.
25:01Although new types of tank were beginning to reach the German forces,
25:05they still had to rely on older designs
25:08to fill the bulk of the Panzer divisions.
25:11The majority of German tanks in Normandy
25:14were not Tigers and Panthers,
25:16rather they were a rather obsolescent model,
25:19the Panzer IV,
25:20which had in fact been around since the late 1930s
25:23in one model or another.
25:28This is the Panzer Mark IV.
25:32Now, it's not as glamorous a machine
25:35as the Panther and the Tiger,
25:37which always seem to take the spotlight
25:40in any discussion of German armour,
25:42but this was the real workhorse.
25:45It really was an incredible machine,
25:48because it was in service from the outbreak of the war
25:52and continued to be manufactured
25:54through all the changes right into 1945.
25:58One of the reasons for that
26:00is it proved itself to be supremely capable
26:03of being up-armoured and upgraded
26:06as the situation demanded,
26:08and this tank is a particularly good example of that.
26:11We can see on the front here
26:13it's had all of this additional armour
26:15bolted on to the front of the tank,
26:18which brings a lot of weight,
26:19but the vehicle can still cope with it.
26:21More importantly,
26:23up in the turret there
26:25we've got this new high-velocity 75mm anti-tank gun.
26:31And there are very few tanks
26:32where you could go from
26:33what was a short-barrelled small gun
26:36in that turret
26:37to a massive gun like that
26:39and still be able to use the same vehicle.
26:42But that's what's happened with the Panzer IV.
26:44The Allies were much more likely to encounter a Panzer IV
26:49than they were a Panther or a Tiger.
26:52Nonetheless, all of the Allied forces
26:55began to refer to any German tank as a Tiger,
26:59and for that reason, frequently this is the machine
27:02that they would have seen
27:03when they would have reported that they saw a Tiger.
27:06There can be few campaigns in the history of warfare
27:12which were as meticulously planned
27:14and so heavily ensured against failure
27:16as the D-Day landings of 1944.
27:19The Anglo-American forces
27:21which stormed ashore on Hitler's fortress Europe
27:24enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in men,
27:27ammunition, ships, tanks, planes
27:29and all the rest of the panoply of war.
27:32By the time the war developed to the Normandy campaign,
27:38the Allied tank strength
27:41was far numerically superior to the German.
27:45That is down to the American productivity.
27:50America being away from the war zone,
27:52it wasn't being bombed,
27:54where certainly in Britain
27:56our tank production was limited
27:59by the size of our war effort.
28:02In Germany's case,
28:03they were being bombed night and day.
28:05Their tank supplies
28:08were limited to their raw materials as well.
28:12They were producing probably about 20,000 tanks a year,
28:17but 23,000 tanks were being destroyed by 1945.
28:22So their numbers were actually decreasing.
28:25The 6th of June 1944 would see
28:30two considerable armed forces
28:33pitted against one another in the Normandy area.
28:36Something like 160,000 Allied troops
28:40in three airborne and five and a bit
28:43amphibiously landed infantry divisions
28:47were deployed in Normandy on the 6th of June
28:50against German defenders of varying quality,
28:54it should be said,
28:55but quite considerable numbers.
28:57During the landings,
28:59and for up to 20 miles inland,
29:01the Allied forces could rely
29:03on the massive guns of the Allied battleships
29:05which were capable of firing devastating barrages
29:08of heavy artillery fire
29:10against the German forces.
29:12Even for those Germans who had fought in Russia,
29:24naval gunfire proved to be a devastating experience
29:27which was shocking in its intensity.
29:30The power of the heavy shells
29:33from the 16-inch guns of the battleships
29:36produced a barrage which was so intense
29:39that Tiger tanks which weighed 56 tons
29:42were flipped onto their sides like children's toys.
29:45In the opening days of the Normandy campaign,
29:56the Allies could rely upon the support of nine battleships,
29:5923 cruisers and 73 destroyers.
30:08On land, the situation of the Germans was,
30:11as if anything worse.
30:13Four years of savage warfare in Russia
30:15had drained the strength of the German army.
30:18For the duration of the Normandy campaign,
30:20only 20% of the available German forces
30:23could be committed to the war in the West.
30:27From 1941 through to 1944,
30:30about two-thirds of all the German warfighting resources
30:34were being tied up in the war against the Soviet Union.
30:38What makes the Battle of Normandy important
30:40is that German resources by June 1944
30:44are so tremendously overstretched.
30:47They have no real strategic reserves.
30:50So by opening up the famous Second Front
30:53and by forcing the Germans to commit their troops to Normandy,
30:57this is the overstretch which breaks the back
31:00of the German armed forces.
31:02One of the great successes of the Normandy campaign
31:08was the secrecy with which the whole operation was shrouded.
31:12The Germans were completely deceived
31:14as to the place and date of the landings,
31:17right up to the moment the first troops came ashore.
31:21In the air, the Allies had an even greater advantage.
31:30On D-Day itself, 5,000 Allied fighters filled the sky
31:34and swept away the 119 German fighters which opposed them.
31:40With their superiority of 50 to 1,
31:42rocket-firing typhoons of the Allied Air Force
31:45had a field day combing the terrain behind the Normandy beaches
31:49for any sign of movement on the ground.
31:53We went a little further down the road
31:55and four Panther tanks had been knocked out by typhoons.
32:00And they were on the railway line.
32:02They'd been travelling up the railway line.
32:04And they were really wicked, those typhoon rockets.
32:07We used to sort of give up a cheer every time the typhoons came
32:11when they went into the attack.
32:14Because we often saw them at Capri-K Aerodrome.
32:17We were entrenched on the edge of Capri-K Aerodrome.
32:23And the Canadians were trying to capture it.
32:26And they were assisted by these typhoons with their rockets.
32:33It was fantastic.
32:37This complete virtually air supremacy possessed by the Allies
32:42was put to extremely good use during the Battle for Normandy.
32:46Allied bombers could reduce German beach defences.
32:49Allied bombers could cut German lines of communication
32:52thus paralysing the build-up of German forces
32:55opposite the amphibiously and airborne landed British and American forces.
32:59And of course tactical air support could create absolute havoc
33:03for any German unit in Normandy foolish enough to try to move in strength by day.
33:10Newsreels of the period show German vehicles covered in branches
33:14in an attempt to disguise any vehicle movements from the air.
33:18On the German side, the Allied air superiority was just one of a number of serious disadvantages
33:31which had to be overcome if they were to conduct a successful campaign in Normandy.
33:36Chief among these was the confusion and disorganisation which prevailed in the chain of command.
33:43As Supreme Commander, Adolf Hitler constantly dabbled in every aspect of the forces at his command.
33:49Commanding all the forces in the West responsible for France, Belgium and Holland is Oberkommando West,
34:01OB West based in Paris under the 69-year-old Field Marshal Gert von Rundstedt.
34:07And he is simultaneously in command of Army Group B which is responsible for the defence of Normandy
34:14and this is commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and at the same time Rommel is also his superior
34:21because Rommel has a watching brief from Hitler for the defence of the whole of Western Europe.
34:29Also Rommel who is one of Hitler's favourites has direct access to Hitler which von Rundstedt does not.
34:36He has to go through the German hierarchy.
34:38There is this quite deliberate confusion of two Field Marshal's competing with each other to be in charge of the German organisation.
34:48By 1944, the flaws which affected the high command were also reflected in the declining quality of the men in the ranks.
34:57The steady war of attrition in Russia meant that the Wehrmacht had to accept lower and lower standards of physical fitness for new recruits.
35:06Men who would previously have been refused for the armed services had to be called into action.
35:17The German army also had to allow the deployment of the 12th SS Panzer Division, better known as the Hitler Youth Division.
35:24This division was led by experienced officers drawn from the famous SS Leibstandarte Division and the ranks were filled almost entirely by teenagers.
35:34The Germans have a handful of good units and then units which are under strength, which are poorly equipped, which have poor transport.
35:45And for the idea of the German fighting Superman, about one in ten in Rommel's Army Group B were not actually German.
35:55And in the front lines on D-Day manning the pillbox positions, that may have been as high as one in four.
36:02Among the Nazi satellites are Russian Mongols, probably forced into service by the Nazis.
36:13Back on the beach, prisoners continue to pour in.
36:16Many who surrendered were stunned by the fury of the Allied onslaught and laid down their arms voluntarily.
36:22The overwhelming demands of a war on three fronts posed hosts of additional problems for the German logistics and supply system.
36:32Allied fighters and fighter bombers had not restricted their attacks just to the troops on the ground.
36:39They also carried out a massive air and interdiction campaign against the German supply lines.
36:44Roads and railway lines were mercilessly targeted, which meant that supplies of essential fuel and ammunition stocks could not reach the hard pressed front line.
36:57I remember once we went out on a recce and we went down a road to this little village.
37:04And there were dead horses that were still harnessed to the German guns.
37:12And I was so surprised to see that the Germans were still using horses to draw their artillery up to battle.
37:21As the Allied breakout began to materialise at the end of July and into August 1944,
37:26the inability of the Germans to provide large quantities of petrol for their tanks and other vehicles did badly damage their ability to launch any significant counter-stroke against the Allies as they broke through.
37:42To offset the many disadvantages which faced the German troops fighting on the ground in Normandy,
37:48they did enjoy some real advantages over the Allies.
37:50Many of the panzer divisions which would be used to face the Allies had a strong core of battle-hardened troops,
37:58which had already seen four years of brutal warfare.
38:07Although the German tank crews were vastly outnumbered by their Allied counterparts,
38:11they had the advantage of experience which very few of the Allied tank crews had apart from those in the 7th Armoured Division
38:18who had fought in Italy and in North Africa.
38:21The German forces had had a great deal of battle experience.
38:24I mean, they had fought very professionally on both fronts for a very long time.
38:29So, indeed, had the British.
38:31The interesting, I think, aspect of this is that the American forces,
38:37who played such a vital part, of course, had much less battle experience,
38:40which I always feel is probably one of the reasons why my father assigned them the breakout role rather than the holding role in the initial stages of the operation.
38:53The German forces also enjoyed a very real superiority in the quality of their tank forces.
39:02Not only were the crews hugely experienced and battle-hardened by years on the Russian front,
39:08the tanks themselves were far better than those used by the Allies.
39:12The main tanks used by the Panzer Divisions in Normandy in 1944 were the Panther, the Tiger and the Panzer IV, along with the Stug III.
39:23Compared to the Allied tanks, they had always had superior armaments, they had superior sighting equipment,
39:31they had superior armour.
39:33The armour plating was always sloped, and if we see behind us, the perfect example is the Cromwell.
39:41We can see that the armour plate is actually at 90 degrees, which means if that armour is only four inches thick,
39:47the projectile has only got to go through four inches of armour plate.
39:51Had that steel been angled at 45 degrees, it would have increased the distance the projectile would have to go through the armour by 50%.
39:58So for a given weight of steel, you could actually get 50% more protection.
40:04The Allied tanks did not have this protection, the German tanks did.
40:09Now the Cromwell first saw action in Normandy, but again, this tank was actually a 1942 design.
40:17It was originally designed and started to be built in 1942, but Normandy was the first battle it actually saw any service with.
40:24It was an improvement on earlier wartime British designs, but it was still lightly armoured and lightly armed compared with the Panther and the Tiger.
40:39Time and time again, Allied tank soldiers described the disheartening experience of seeing their own shells bounce off the armour of the German tanks.
40:49The Tiger tank then proceeded to turn round and came on my side of the hedge, and so therefore it was my perfect target.
41:00And I fired five projectiles at the Tiger tank.
41:04And on the fifth one, I think he got fed up with me, hitting him with my little piet, and he decided to let go with his big gun.
41:15And as I fired the last one, he fired, and it landed on my left.
41:20And you have seen how close it was to my eyes by the hole in the centre of the spectacles that you have here.
41:29I feel throughout the entire war that we were generally always fighting with inferior equipment and armaments.
41:42And I think this is one of the demonstrations of the skill of both the Allied command and the qualities of the British soldier,
41:50that despite the fact that we had inferior equipment in many cases, that we were able to succeed.
42:20Following the D-Day landings, most of the Allied objectives were achieved on that crucial first day, with one major exception.
42:31The capture of Caen.
42:33The city, which should have been in Allied hands by the end of D-Day plus one, was to remain in German hands until July the 18th, six weeks after the beginning of the battle.
42:47The reasons for the successful defence at Caen lay in the extremely difficult nature of the Boccage country in which the campaign was fought.
42:56Of course, the Boccage country is that part of Normandy inland from the sea.
43:08It's a land of small farms, tiny fields, and over the years these fields have been ploughed out and rebuilt,
43:15and they've ended up with very high earth banks all round the edges of them.
43:20Into the earth bank the farmer would plant hedgerows and trees.
43:23So you ended up with tiny, sunken, narrow lanes, and a criss-cross sort of pattern of these little fields all over the place.
43:33In the Boccage, the tank crews couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of them.
43:38Anti-tank guns could be hidden in the fields, they could be hidden in the hedges,
43:42and the tanks had no choice but to drive along the lanes, the sunken lanes, where they were sitting ducks as far as the German anti-tank crews and the German tank crews were concerned.
43:53They had no choice but to get a bit of the mulling down, they could be a tiny bit of a species on the namesake,
43:58and they could get a little bit of its own test in the field.
44:00Then when they were on to the boat to the mountain, they would actually take the mountains
44:03and take a little bit of the sea to the ocean.
44:05To actually get off the roads into the fields, you normally have to break through the thick
44:25hedgerows, which normally meant you exposed the weaker part of your tank to the enemy
44:32fire.
44:33Americans came up with one or two novel ways of actually doing that.
44:37They put a device on the front of some of their tanks, which was a very crude form of hedge
44:43cutter.
44:44And all it was, was a kind of jagged tooth-like thing fitted to the front of the tank.
44:48And the theory behind it, at least, was that the tank with this device would charge at the
44:53bank, and instead of rising up over it, would slice off the top and make a little cutting
44:58for itself and whizz through, and everybody else then followed through the gap this fellow
45:01had made.
45:02It's only limited success, because obviously the tank's going to start rising first before
45:07the hedgerow cutter sort of cuts in.
45:10And secondly, it's going to slow the tank down almost to a halt.
45:13So sometimes they may have had to have more than one go.
45:15Both the Canadians and the British used it, of course, as well as the United States Army.
45:20In this difficult environment, the advantage was with the defender, and the Bocage soon became known to
45:34the Allies as the Green Hell.
45:38Faced with their inability to take the remaining objective, the British High Command had no alternative
45:45but to fight in the Bocage.
45:49As casualties steadily mounted, the airfield at Capiquet, on the outskirts of Caen, became a vital target.
45:56It was tenaciously defended by the youngsters of the Hitler Youth Division against a series of assaults by superior British forces.
46:04In an attempt to outflank these stubborn defenders at Capiquet, Montgomery dispatched his highly experienced 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats, to make a broad sweep south of Caen, which was scheduled to begin on June 12th.
46:22The attack was aimed at the small town of Villers-Boccage, and it was here that one of the most famous tank actions of the war would be fought.
46:31The Allied spearhead was halted, and almost single-handedly destroyed in a fierce battle through the streets and fields surrounding Villers-Boccage, by German Tiger tanks of the 101st Heavy Battalion, led by the famous tank commander, Michael Wittmann.
46:52Wittmann, literally one tank destroyed such a large collection of British armour vehicles, including Cromwell's, that it showed that our armour design was still some way behind the Germans, and it needed to be improved, which it was later in the war.
47:12In a single day, the British forces lost over 60 tanks, and a huge number of accompanying vehicles. By nightfall on July 13th, Villers-Boccage was back in German hands.
47:28The defeat of the 7th Armoured Division at Villers-Boccage represented really the loss of the last real opportunity to make the battle for Normandy the mobile battle which the Allied planners hoped and indeed expected that it would be.
47:46Montgomery decided to try one last offensive. Designed to capture the territory south of Caen, it was codenamed Operation Goodwood, and scheduled for the 17th of July.
48:01Goodwood began with an overwhelming air, naval and artillery bombardment, designed to blast a path for 750 tanks to advance towards the high ground, south of Caen.
48:14Once again, their opponents were to be men of the 1st SS Panzer Corps, many of whom had been in action since June 8th.
48:25In the steady war of attrition, the SS Corps had been reduced to a strength of just 100 tanks, but they could still command deep defensive positions of the Boccage, and they were backed up with the deadly 88mm anti-tank guns.
48:39The opening Allied barrage was so intensive, it was described by some German veterans as the biggest and most intense artillery bombardment they had ever witnessed, even in Russia.
48:58Despite massive preparations which were made, Goodwood was an even greater failure than the previous offensives.
49:05Although the southern sector of Caen was cleared of the enemy, the Allies lost 200 tanks in a single day as they tried to cross the oar.
49:15Fighting for Caen continued until July 20th, but once again the operation had to be postponed, with part of the city still in German hands.
49:23Operation Goodwood is perhaps the most controversial of all of Montgomery's battles during the Normandy campaign.
49:34Measuring its success or failure really depends on what you believe Operation Goodwood was intended to achieve.
49:41If, for example, you believe what some people believe, that the attack was supposed to be a breakthrough attack, then quite clearly it failed to do that.
49:50Montgomery, with hindsight, would claim that the deliberate intention of this attack was to tie down the last of the German armoured reserves against British Second Army,
50:03so enabling US First Army to break out on the 25th in Operation Cobra.
50:09Despite all the British had done, Operation Cobra still faced some tough fighting before the American forces were finally able to break out of the bocage and sweep southwards into open country.
50:28As the American offensive began to gather pace, the British forces took advantage of the confusion in the German ranks to form the northern pincer in this huge encircling movement,
50:41which was designed to trap the German forces in Normandy in a huge pocket centred on the town of Falaise.
50:48In the face of continued resistance, the British forces kept up the drive southwards, and by August the 20th they had linked up with the American forces to close a ring around Falaise.
51:13It was now that the Allied Air Force swept in for the kill.
51:1810,000 Germans died in the incessant air attacks.
51:2350,000 more were taken prisoner.
51:28These men represented the remains of 40 German divisions, which had been destroyed in the battle for Normandy.
51:35Four fifths of the German army, who had been committed to the campaign in Normandy, had been destroyed.
51:41Montgomery had won his battle, and exactly as planned,
51:46the Allies were on the River Seine by D-Day plus 90.
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51:55and across the river did not find suicide there since then.
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