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00:00On the eve of the great assault on Hitler's Europe, the two men who were to direct the
00:13Allied armies in the field met for a last, informal dinner.
00:17The commander of the land forces, General Montgomery, was every inch the Englishman.
00:22The supreme commander, General Eisenhower, an American.
00:28The evening helped to cement the great alliance between the two men and their countries.
00:34Montgomery had accepted a wager.
00:37Eisenhower had bet him five pounds that the war would be over by Christmas, within just
00:41seven months of D-Day.
00:43But the bright hope with which the Allies began their great crusade was to fade beyond
01:00the D-Day beaches.
01:02It was a dreadful experience for young boys, most of them barely 20 years old.
01:11Day by day, living on borrowed time, it was a lottery.
01:15Who was going to be the next casualty?
01:17I turned to my mate and said, I said, I can't take that part of this.
01:27He said, I feel the same way.
01:29He said, but we've got to hold it together.
01:34As Allied soldiers struggled to break the German line, the casualty list lengthened.
01:39Cracks began to appear in the Great Atlantic Alliance.
01:43We thought we were better than they were and that we could do things better than they did.
01:48And we were getting a little impatient waiting for this British breakout.
01:53It wasn't just the alliance between Britain and America that was to be placed under strain.
01:58It was the relationship between Eisenhower and Montgomery.
02:02This is the story of how two very different men in the armies they led struggled to defeat
02:08the Germans in the summer of 1944.
02:23The 6th of June was a special day at Field Marshal Rommel's house in Germany.
02:38It was his wife Lucy's 50th birthday.
02:41Rommel wasn't expected back at his headquarters in France for another two days.
02:47But at half past six that morning, he received a call from his chief of staff.
02:52The Allies were landing on the coast of Normandy.
02:58The commander of the German forces in the field was still in his dressing gown at home, 500 miles away.
03:22We kept going in and in and in.
03:34And all of a sudden we hear these pings on the steelhold landing crew.
03:39And the guy said, the Germans, they're firing at us.
03:42We can see them in the distance up on top of the cliff.
03:45Something landed in the water, a concussion hit, flipped me over.
03:55And I heard somebody yell, keep moving, keep moving.
03:58I reached over and grabbed him by the jacket, pulled him out from up the surface.
04:04And just then, a mortar shell landed behind me, knocked me flat on my face.
04:10And I thought, what the hell, I must be dead.
04:14There were guys lying on the beach, dead.
04:28Shells hitting it, machine gun fire ripping across it.
04:32And LST, off to our right, got a dead hit as they were unloading.
04:39These guys were coming down and just blew that sucker right out of the water.
04:43A hell of a sight. Awful.
04:46In the first wave, most of them fell.
05:02We said, boy, they keep coming, even though they can see how many have already been killed.
05:07There were 37 men in my landing craft.
05:17When I got up on top of the cliff, there were nine men left.
05:26The commander-in-chief of the German armies knew nothing of the battle being fought by his soldiers in France.
05:31He was 600 miles away in the Bavarian Alps.
05:36No one wanted to wake Adolf Hitler.
05:45No one was sure this was the real invasion.
05:48German intelligence suggested it would come soon, but further up the coast, at Calais.
05:55Hitler had split the command of his forces.
05:58He'd given the direction of his armies in the field to Rommel,
06:01but the best of the German divisions in France, the armoured reserves, were under his personal command.
06:07They couldn't advance on the Normandy beaches without a direct order from their Führer.
06:12By the time Hitler was awake, the world knew Allied forces were landing on the coast of Normandy.
06:24Fighting had been fiercest on Omaha Beach, but by midday the Americans were beginning to cut a foothold on the coast.
06:31The second assault wave was already landing on the other four Allied beaches.
06:36I remember talking over with a fellow company commander and reckoning that our chances of getting across the beach alive were going to be pretty small.
06:46But in fact, everything by that time had quietened down.
06:51We weren't under fire any sort.
06:54And it was one of those very rare occasions in war when the plan goes absolutely according to plan.
07:01For the most part, the coastal defences had been manned by the weakest troops in the German army.
07:07The very young, the old and the lame.
07:10Allied casualties were much lower than expected.
07:1310,000 dead and wounded.
07:16The battle for the beaches was over in a matter of hours.
07:20But although many films and books don't venture beyond them, Operation Overlord, the struggle for the liberation of Europe, was just beginning.
07:34The reports that trickled into Eisenhower's headquarters in England suggested most of Rommel's divisions were still camped 170 miles to the north.
07:46The chief architect of the Overlord's plan was General Montgomery, the man who'd beaten Rommel in North Africa the year before.
07:53He'd agreed the priorities for the campaign with General Eisenhower, his supreme commander.
07:59Monty's plan was to unite the two American beaches in the west with the three British and Canadian in the east.
08:13Then to break out into the rest of France.
08:16If all went to plan, Allied forces would reach the river Seine near Paris on D plus 90, three months after D-Day.
08:23Monty had been confident his soldiers would fight their way ashore.
08:30So confident, he'd made the capture of Khan, ten miles away, a key D-Day objective.
08:37But the British advance was held three miles short of Khan.
08:46The failure to take the city on D-Day would cast a shadow over the whole campaign in Normandy.
08:57It was not until half past nine in the evening that Field Marshal Rommel finally reached his headquarters in France.
09:18The Field Marshal was tense. I remember him punching one gloved fist into another.
09:29I said to him that night,
09:30Sir, do you think we'll be able to hold them back?
09:33He replied, Lang, I hope we can. I've always succeeded up to now.
09:41The staff at Army Group B were still expecting a second Allied invasion at Calais.
09:46An entire army would be left to guard the beaches to the north.
09:55Rommel had always hoped he could launch a counterattack in the first hours of the invasion.
09:59But the armoured reserves he needed had only been released by Hitler that afternoon.
10:08Rommel was now determined to throw these panzer divisions into the battle as soon as they arrived in Normandy.
10:13We were optimistic, especially as our division, the Panzer Lair, was very well equipped, and we all believed we would be able to make quite an impact.
10:28The first of the panzer divisions held in reserve began taking up positions around calm in the early hours of June the 7th.
10:43The 12th SS, the Hitler Youth Division, would be joined by five more SS Panzer Divisions.
10:53This fanatical elite would be at the core of Hitler's forces in Normandy.
10:58The SS were very different soldiers from those the Allies had faced on the beaches.
11:05We only took volunteers, and so you could expect much more of our unit.
11:14Our ability to fight, our moral will to fight, was greater.
11:26Rommel began to concentrate his panzer divisions in the British sector.
11:30Beyond the city of Calm, open country, tank country, stretched northward towards the River Seine and Paris.
11:37It was here Rommel expected the Allies to attempt a breakout.
11:49The Allied campaign in Normandy would be directed from a Spartan collection of tents and caravans just behind the front line.
11:56Although Calm was yet to fall, there was every prospect, Monty told his staff, of checkmating Rommel in just a few days.
12:13More than 160,000 Allied soldiers had already come ashore.
12:17The Second Army is cleaning up centres of resistance around here...
12:22Monty had first outlined the plan for Overlord many weeks before.
12:26It was a clever deception.
12:29The British were to keep pressing forward in the east of the bridgehead, to draw Rommel's Panzer Divisions into battle around Calm.
12:36The Americans would then be able to break out through a thin German line in the west.
12:40The plan had met with Eisenhower's wholehearted approval, but in the judgement of his staff, it soon started to go wrong.
12:52OK, can you see this?
12:54It's clear that the Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to Calm.
12:59I've decided not to risk a lot of casualties butting against it.
13:03But Second Army must keep up the pressure there and then make its main effort here, towards Vieux-Boccage.
13:14And from there...
13:16Within a week of D-Day, military intelligence reported a gap in the German line to the west of Calm.
13:24Monty turned to his old Eighth Army Desert units.
13:27On June the 12th, British armour began to push towards the town of Vieux-Boccage.
13:35We were told that it was what we called close country, but we didn't realise how close it was.
13:40And the hedges were as high as the turret tops.
13:43It was this Boccage country, of small fields, surrounded by high banks, on the top of which were thick hedgerows.
13:59Very attractive, except if you're fighting through it, and then there are lots of dead bodies.
14:06On the morning of D-Plus-7, the 7th Armoured Division, Monty's Desert Rats, reached Vieux-Boccage, the western gateway to Calm.
14:18There was no sign of the enemy, and so, a little before nine o'clock, an armoured column began to advance toward the city.
14:29Under cover, just outside the town, was a small unit of German Tiger tanks.
14:34Their commander was Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann, the most celebrated tank ace in the German Army.
14:45Wittmann's tank was equipped with a formidable weapon, the 88mm gun.
14:53You only had to mention to a tank commander, there's an 88 out there somewhere.
14:59And you could put the fear of God into our own people.
15:05I first knocked out two tanks from the right of the column, then one from the left.
15:10I knocked out every tank that came towards me. The enemy was thrown into total confusion.
15:14My troop sergeant was leaning over to the driver, saying, can you see what's happening?
15:21And so it missed his head. I felt the tingling as the shock went between my legs, landed up in the engine.
15:27And then there was a sheet of flame came over the top.
15:30It was an unwholesome way to die. Because if you were injured, you can't get out of a tank turret. It's too narrow.
15:40And if the turret has traversed at all, so that you're firing that way, it stopped the driver's door from opening.
15:47He couldn't get out of the hatch either. So, you know, it was quite frightening.
15:54I drove into the town of V.A. and immediately began firing at and destroying everything around me that I could see.
16:00In a devastating 10-minute attack, Wittmann destroyed 12 tanks and 13 other armoured vehicles and brought the British advance to a grinding halt.
16:14He'd cruelly demonstrated that Allied tanks, the Sherman and the Cromwell, were no match for a German Tiger.
16:21Monty's desert veterans were forced to withdraw, battered and dispirited.
16:34And Monty was concerned about a new sickness that seemed to hold Allied tank crews in its grip. Tiger fever.
16:42I've had to stamp very heavily on reports that began to circulate about the inadequacy of our tanks and equipment as compared with the Germans.
16:51Such reports are likely to cause a lowering of morale and a lack of confidence among the troops.
17:00And on the day the British advance at V.A. Bocage was broken, a report reached Monty from London that would increase the pressure for a rapid breakout from the Allied bridgehead.
17:10London was under attack from the first of Hitler's vengeance weapons, the V-1 flying bomb. The Germans were launching them from the coast of France.
17:23Most of the flying bombs that made it through were falling in the south of the city, close to the quarters of the Supreme Allied Commander.
17:38Night after night, Eisenhower and his staff were being driven into their aerial shelter.
17:48I don't know what's worse.
17:49The V-1 attacks were making everyone jittery and impatient for a rapid breakout into the rest of France.
17:55But Eisenhower had already begun to lose faith in Monty's strategy.
18:02We thought we were a little more aggressive than the Brits at that time.
18:05And we used to think, well, they've been through this for so many, many years now.
18:10So long a time, and they've taken so many beatings on so many places that they're less likely to take chances, less likely to take risks than we are.
18:26At the end of June, British officers began preparing their men for an ambitious new attack on Khan, Operation Epsom.
18:33The plan was to punch through the German line to the south of Khan.
18:45It was a risky operation. The front was strongly held by the SS.
18:50But Monty knew Eisenhower was growing more impatient for success with every day that passed.
18:58Hello, BBC. This is Frank Gillard here. Recording just outside Tilly.
19:01During a barrage which is being laid down to prepare the way for an infantry attack on a small vintage...
19:08British soldiers began to push forward behind the artillery barrage, just as their fathers had done during the First World War.
19:18The Germans had dug in deep, as they too had done 30 years before.
19:24And as the barrage lifted, they prepared to meet the British advance.
19:32It's no good to say we weren't. Anyone who said he wasn't scared was a bloody liar.
19:39It was a firm principle. No rifle was stopped if his next companion was dropped.
19:47You couldn't see where you were going, what you were walking on, and unfortunately you trod on blads that had dropped, either dead or wounded.
19:59When you get a man that's had a leg blown off, and he crawls back in the cold in case the Germans can't attack...
20:14...and his dead body was found a full night afterwards. I mean, what a death that man must have had.
20:31Casualties were desperately high on both sides. The British slogged forward just five miles in three days.
20:38But the German line held.
20:48By the end of June, more than 60,000 Allied soldiers were listed as dead or wounded.
20:53Normandy was becoming a killing ground.
20:55We, of course, the poor, wretched people on the ground, had no idea it was the great Monty plan.
21:08Every day a battalion from each brigade would launch an attack to capture another couple of hedgerows.
21:17They would probably lose something like two to three hundred men in the process.
21:24And it all seemed to us on the ground totally pointless.
21:28Why did we have to spend all these lives capturing the hedgerow in front?
21:35This is Larry Leclerc speaking from the American sector of the Normandy battlefront.
21:38It's warm and humid in Normandy this Sunday morning, and the sun is trying valiantly to break through the low impenetrable clouds.
21:46The war is going slowly here, and recently it much resembles the trench warfare of a quarter century ago.
21:52The Germans just hide on one side of the hedge enclosed field, and the open space in front gives them a field of fire for a hundred yards or more.
21:58The battle was being fought in perfect defensive country that sheltered the Germans from the full weight of the Allied assault.
22:09The hedgerow was deadly in combat.
22:12It's like playing hide-and-go-seek when you're a kid, you know.
22:16They can hide on you, but we can't find them.
22:28Tanks would come along, and there were dead soldiers in the paths between the hedgerows.
22:39And the tanks would just come along and roll over half a body or one part or another of a body.
22:46It was just a terrible sight.
22:47There was this awful stench of battle, quite apart from the human casualties.
23:00Germans, British people killed in the battle, there were these dead horses, dead cattle, all lying around.
23:07And beginning after a day or so, because it was June, hot weather, stinking to high heaven.
23:17I turned to my mate and said, I said, I can't take that part of this.
23:39He said, I feel the same way, but we've got to hold it together.
23:42But that's the way you get, you know, you're scared that the next time it's going to be you.
23:51Because every time they send over a salvo, they get somebody.
23:58War does things for you, makes you so hard, you feel you lose your emotions.
24:03I'd see guys with their legs blown off, chest wounds, head wounds, Ted getting killed, my brother getting killed.
24:14And I've said to myself, why didn't I cry?
24:18But the pattern of the Grimm's struggle in the bocage was not being set by the Allies, but by the enemy.
24:33On the last day of the Epsom Offensive, Field Marshal Rommel visited his Fuhrer to discuss the progress of the battle in Normandy.
24:40Rommel wanted to win Hitler's permission for a new, more flexible front.
24:53Hitler would hear nothing of it.
24:56The German line would stay precisely where it was.
24:58By the end of June, more than a million men were locked in a grim battle of attrition along a front just 50 miles long.
25:07The battle seemed close to stalemate.
25:09If Rommel was having problems with his Supreme Commander, so too was Montgomery.
25:24Eisenhower made a rare visit to Monty's headquarters on July the 2nd.
25:29Although there was the usual outward show of warmth, Eisenhower was far from satisfied.
25:34He thought he'd been promised a British breakout.
25:39Nor did it help that Monty showed little respect for his Supreme Commander's judgment.
25:44A whipping boy.
25:46General Montgomery, a sense of humor, Hanson.
25:49He liked Eisenhower.
25:51No one could fail not to like him.
25:54He was an easy, easy fellow.
25:56But from Monty's point of view, he wasn't a proper soldier.
26:00Eisenhower had not been in action before.
26:04But he hadn't the experience.
26:05They called him Rommel.
26:07He's quite something, isn't he?
26:10The strategy, Monty explained, was the same.
26:13The British were drawing the best of Rommel's soldiers into battle around Cannes,
26:17so the Americans could break out further west.
26:20I suppose you ought to get down to it.
26:21I've asked Major Reynolds to take us over the Tiger.
26:25But Montgomery was becoming a victim of the expectations he'd created.
26:29Right.
26:31Eisenhower wanted the Allies to press forward along the entire front.
26:35Above all, he wanted Monty to break through at Cannes.
26:41Gentlemen, please be seated.
26:42General Montgomery was very precise in everything that he did.
26:48He was a legend.
26:50And, uh, somewhat intimidating.
26:54At the table, he dominated much of the conversation.
26:57Uh, we were a little deferential to Monty at the beginning.
27:03Ah, great.
27:05But, uh, we were getting a little impatient waiting for this British breakout.
27:10And he's even been prepared to put five pounds on it.
27:12British soldiers had tried and failed to take Cannes three times.
27:19Monty believed it would take a blow of overwhelming force to crack German resistance.
27:24But there was one theater of combat in which the Germans could be beaten.
27:34Allied aircraft roamed the skies above the battlefield almost unchallenged.
27:37It was the Jarbors, the Allied fighter-bombers, that German soldiers feared above all.
27:51And it was a good thing.
27:55It was a good thing that we had to go.
27:58Often, you couldn't advance more than one or two hundred meters in an hour.
28:02You were constantly having to take cover.
28:05That was very depressing.
28:09We'd really believed that our fighter planes would arrive, and that would sort them out.
28:14It was Allied aircraft that were proving the greatest strength in the world.
28:17It was Allied aircraft that were proving the greatest threat to German operations.
28:24Rommel was struggling to direct his forces in the field.
28:28My staff and I have repeatedly experienced the total command the enemy has of the air.
28:35The movement of our troops is almost completely paralyzed.
28:40And it is very difficult to get essential supplies and ammunition up to them.
28:44More worrying still for the Germans, the Allies seem to know where to direct their fire.
29:02In the first week of the battle, Allied aircraft had attacked and destroyed the headquarters of the Panzer Group.
29:09Almost the entire staff was wiped out.
29:11Rommel had visited the headquarters just a few hours before the attack.
29:22It was more than a coincidence.
29:25The Allies knew the whereabouts not just of this Panzer Group, but of all the German divisions in France.
29:31Thousands of German signals were being intercepted by a network of listening stations in Britain.
29:44The signals were sent to the government's codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
29:57They offered a remarkable insight into German intentions and a long list of targets for Allied aircraft.
30:03On the night of July the 7th, German forces around Kahn were hit with all the power Monty could muster.
30:17450 heavy bombers were used for the first time to support the Allied advance.
30:30The attack was pressed home without respite.
30:33After two days of fierce fighting, British and Canadian soldiers captured the ruins of a once beautiful city.
30:40It looked like a city that had been murdered, massacred.
30:49You couldn't recognize anything.
30:51The buildings were blown to bits.
30:53Even the French people themselves would never have known it.
30:57The most memory I have was the smell of dust and death.
31:20Eisenhower expected to see Montgomery break out at last.
31:24And a week later, 750 British tanks began to roll out of the new calm bridgehead.
31:33But from the first, there was confusion about just what the attack was supposed to achieve.
31:41Eisenhower had written to Montgomery expressing total confidence in the new advance, Operation Goodwood.
31:47It would, he was sure, be a decisive plunge into the vitals of the enemy.
31:54Monty saw it in an altogether different way.
32:03Monty's plan was to attack the German panzer divisions on the outskirts of the city.
32:07And to keep them fighting long enough for the Americans to break out at Saint-Lô in the west.
32:12But to ensure support for the operation, he'd raise not just the expectations of Eisenhower, but of his own men as well.
32:22We were all very excited when we were told that we were going to go down to the plains of Caen.
32:39Well, because for the first time we'd be out to be, there was awful hedging and that sort of stuff.
32:44And, you know, we thought it might be the end of the campaign.
32:47It was a very beautiful day.
32:49The early morning was exquisite weather, very, very clear.
32:56And, of course, it was exciting, because this was a great adventure.
33:02And certainly we thought, at the time, that this was going to be a big breakout.
33:10I have just authorized the following communique, gentlemen.
33:14Early this morning, British and Canadian troops of the 2nd Army tacked and broke through into the area east of the Orne and southeast of Caen.
33:26Progress on the first morning was good, and the following day the newspapers were full of Monty's victory.
33:33But his optimism was to prove sorely misplaced.
33:44The British were expected.
33:51Rommel had deployed his armor and artillery in carefully camouflaged positions, a defensive zone 10 miles deep.
34:01The leading tanks had caught it pretty badly.
34:07One was very conscious of British tanks bursting into flames,
34:12being brewed up, that's what we called it.
34:20I could see three tanks ahead of me,
34:23and I pulled my troop into a little dip behind these three
34:25and got up onto the back of the tank and tapped the chap on the shoulder,
34:29and he fell into the turret, and he was dead.
34:31And there were three Canadian tanks.
34:33All the crews were dead there.
34:35On one ridge alone, there were well over 40 British tanks knocked out,
34:40and they were just knocking them out as if it was on a shooting range.
34:42The news that as many as 400 tanks had been destroyed in the operation
34:51was greeted with disbelief by the staff at Supreme Allied Headquarters in England.
35:00Montgomery was forced to call off the Goodwood attack after only three days.
35:04Senior members of Eisenhower's staff began to openly discuss who would replace him.
35:15I'm telling you, no.
35:17And doctors were concerned about Eisenhower's blood pressure.
35:21Ike hasn't been feeling so hot these last few days.
35:25The slowness of the battle,
35:26the desire to be more active in it himself,
35:30his inward but generally unspoken criticism of Monty,
35:33all these pump up his system.
35:36It ain't good.
35:42Eisenhower began to grumble to the one man
35:45with the authority to remove Montgomery.
35:50The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,
35:53visited Montgomery in the field
35:54on the day after Operation Goodwood ended.
35:59There were whispers on the staff that Churchill was there to sack him,
36:02that Monty was as confident as ever,
36:04and he convinced Churchill that a breakout was only days away.
36:10And while the two men were together,
36:12news reached them of an extraordinary event in the east
36:15that offered hope of a total German collapse.
36:18On July the 20th,
36:27a bomb had exploded at Hitler's headquarters on the eastern front.
36:32At around four o'clock,
36:36the German high command announced that there had been
36:38an assassination attempt on Hitler's life
36:41at the Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg,
36:43and that Hitler was dead.
36:46I was relieved, truly relieved.
36:53Two hours later, there was another call
36:55telling us that Hitler was alive
36:59and just slightly injured.
37:02If only I could have crawled into a hole somewhere.
37:05It was one of the worst messages I could imagine.
37:16The attempt on Hitler's life
37:18had been made by some of his most senior army officers.
37:23In its wake,
37:24everyone was desperate to prove their loyalty to their fury.
37:27Hitler's purge of the army
37:30was to claim the lives
37:32of some of Germany's most capable soldiers,
37:34among them, Field Marshal Rommel,
37:37who was forced to take his own life.
37:45Rommel was replaced in France
37:47by Field Marshal von Kluge,
37:49a tough veteran of the eastern front.
37:57By the end of July,
38:00von Kluge had begun to share Rommel's view
38:02that resistance for every foot of France
38:05was too costly.
38:07But it was dangerous now
38:09to question Hitler's judgment.
38:12Von Kluge's failure to press the case
38:14for a new defensive line
38:16would have huge consequences
38:18for the German army in France.
38:27Five days after the attempt on Hitler's life,
38:30the Americans launched Operation Cobra.
38:33It was a great push in the west
38:35that Monty had been promising for so long.
38:44Three thousand aircraft
38:46were to lay a carpet of high explosives
38:47in a corridor just five miles wide.
38:57We actually got out of the foxhole
39:08and stood there and looked up
39:11and they just kept coming
39:12over and over and over
39:16on every plane in the United States Air Force.
39:19The full weight of the American blow
39:27fell on a line defended by barely 50 tanks,
39:311,700 men.
39:42The first reports of the bombing
39:43began to arrive at the headquarters
39:45of the Panzer Leer Division
39:46at a little after nine o'clock.
39:49I knew this must be the opening
39:52of the big American attack
39:54and that I must contact
39:55my forward positions.
39:57But by half past nine,
39:58I had no radio contact left
40:00with anybody in the division.
40:02My anti-aircraft batteries
40:03had barely begun to fire
40:04when they were silenced.
40:12The American First Army
40:13pressed forward along the corridor
40:15blasted in the German line.
40:19suddenly, much to my surprise,
40:28I noticed Americans
40:29were walking past us.
40:30They were totally carefree.
40:36They'd broken through
40:38because our Panzer Grenadiers
40:39just weren't there anymore
40:41and our tanks were completely
40:45buried in the mud.
40:47Sumpf?
40:55By the first week of August,
40:57the American Third Army
40:59under General Patton
41:00was galloping unchecked
41:01across France.
41:02American forces
41:11entered Avranche
41:12on July the 30th
41:14and turned west
41:14into Brittany.
41:16Then Patton's Third Army
41:17swung to the east again,
41:19where the British
41:19were pressing toward
41:20the town of Feles.
41:21The Germans were just
41:28hell of a sculler
41:29to the rear.
41:30They were surrendering
41:31right and left.
41:36Everybody never expected
41:38a catastrophe
41:40of that size
41:42happening.
41:43The German soldier
41:47was being ground down
41:49by the full weight
41:49of the Allied war machine.
41:54We made jokes
41:55that we had to fetch
41:56our shells by bicycle
41:57or in a rucksack.
41:59We were able to fire
42:00three shots
42:01and that was it.
42:03We were always
42:05under orders
42:05to save ammunition.
42:06Some days
42:14there was nothing
42:15to eat.
42:16Then they announced
42:17that there would be
42:18a meal
42:18and we might get
42:19a bit of bread
42:20and some soup.
42:22Then the field kitchen
42:23would be hit
42:23and there'd be
42:25nothing again.
42:36by the middle
42:43of July
42:44the German army
42:45in Normandy
42:46had suffered
42:46a hundred thousand
42:47casualties.
42:49Those that survived
42:50faced a stark
42:51new reality.
42:59We felt
43:01that we were
43:01in a fortress.
43:03Fortress Germany.
43:04Greater Germany.
43:06And we thought
43:08as long as the front
43:08in the east holds
43:09we have to hold on
43:11in the west
43:11to protect our families
43:12at home.
43:25If you looked
43:26at the broad picture
43:27it was clearly
43:28impossible to win.
43:30But we couldn't
43:30think like that.
43:32We were there
43:32to defend.
43:34Duty,
43:35honour,
43:36obedience,
43:36comradeship.
43:38And that was it.
43:45There wasn't
43:45a German general
43:46in France
43:47who now believed
43:47the Allied advance
43:48could be held
43:49in Normandy.
43:50But no one dared
43:51to tell Hitler so.
43:54On August the 3rd
43:56Hitler instructed
43:57von Kluge
43:57to launch a counterattack
43:59to split the advancing
44:00Allied armies.
44:01There would be no turning
44:05back.
44:06To the protests
44:07of his generals
44:08von Kluge
44:09could only answer.
44:11It is the Fuhrer's order.
44:13The orders were given
44:22for a German counterattack
44:23on August the 7th.
44:32The same orders
44:34were intercepted
44:34and read
44:35by the cordbreakers
44:36at Bletchley Park.
44:38The Allies
44:38were waiting.
44:39The Germans
44:51had prayed
44:52for bad weather.
44:54Their prayers
44:54went unanswered.
44:58Allied fighter-bombers
44:59began to swarm
45:00above the advancing
45:01panzer divisions.
45:04Hitler's insistence
45:05in a counterattack
45:06had presented Monta
45:07with an extraordinary
45:08opportunity.
45:14The remnants
45:15of two German armies
45:16a hundred thousand men
45:18risked being trapped
45:19at Feles
45:20in the jaws
45:21of the advancing
45:22British and American armies.
45:28Field Marshal
45:29von Kluge
45:30decided to issue
45:30orders for a general
45:31retreat
45:32before it was too late.
45:35Hitler was furious
45:36and von Kluge
45:37was relieved
45:38of his command.
45:39But the retreat
45:40went ahead.
45:52It had become
45:53a race against time.
45:54actually,
46:01Rettler said
46:02it was awesome.
46:04Long toms,
46:058-inch howitzers,
46:07105-millimeter
46:09howitzers,
46:10155-millimeter
46:12howitzers,
46:13all pouring death
46:14and destruction
46:15onto this German
46:177th Army
46:18trying to escape
46:19the noose
46:20that's been drawn
46:21around their necks.
46:22It was such
46:26an indescribable mess.
46:29It's something
46:29that one could
46:31never ever dream of,
46:33let alone witness.
46:41It was the final act
46:42in the unforgiving
46:43battle of attrition
46:44that had swept
46:45through the wheat fields
46:46and hedgerows
46:47of Normandy.
46:47The battle had been won
46:54by the overwhelming weight
46:55of Allied war materials,
46:57artillery and armor,
46:59above all,
47:00Allied aircraft.
47:01The road's absolutely
47:15completely choked
47:16with dead and dying.
47:18The ground you couldn't
47:26walk over
47:27without stepping
47:28on a dead horse
47:30or a dead man
47:31or some piece
47:32of arm or a leg.
47:35It was the most
47:36hideous sight
47:38that one could imagine.
47:39some of the sights
47:48we'd seen
47:48one couldn't help
47:49feeling sorry
47:51for what had to be
47:53inflicted on them.
47:57The German army
47:59was disintegrating.
48:01We were quite clear
48:02that we'd won
48:04the tournament.
48:06It was just going
48:07to be a question of time.
48:13Field Marshal von Kluge
48:15didn't witness
48:16the final destruction
48:17of the armies
48:18he'd commanded.
48:19He'd been summoned
48:20home in disgrace.
48:22But von Kluge
48:23didn't reach Berlin.
48:31By August the 21st,
48:33it was all over.
48:35More than 40 German
48:36divisions had been
48:37destroyed in Normandy.
48:38450,000 men.
48:41Half of them
48:41had been killed
48:42or wounded.
48:48Montgomery was the
48:50architect of the
48:51victory in Normandy.
48:54But Monty's
48:54unflinching confidence
48:55in himself and his
48:56strategy had won him
48:58few friends.
49:00As the final prisoners
49:02were being rounded up
49:03in the fellow's pocket,
49:04Eisenhower announced
49:05that he would be taking
49:06over personal command
49:07of the Allied armies
49:08in France.
49:11Ike said the change
49:11was long planned,
49:13but Monty wrote
49:14bitterly in his diary
49:15that Eisenhower was
49:16stepping in to scoop
49:17the credit for a victory
49:19he'd won.
49:26The long weeks of attrition
49:28had cost the Allies
49:29against 200,000 casualties,
49:31but they were over.
49:36Monty had predicted
49:37before D-Day
49:38that his strategy
49:39for Overlord
49:39would take the Allies
49:40to the River Seine
49:41near Paris
49:42by D plus 90.
49:44The first American troops
49:46reached the river
49:47nine days ahead
49:48of his schedule.
49:54Eisenhower thought
49:55he'd win his bet.
49:58The war would be over
49:58by Christmas.
50:01He couldn't have been
50:02more wrong.
50:03He couldn't have been more wrong.
50:03Alouette, alouette,
50:06jeûte de bloomerie.
50:08Alouette, alouette,
50:10alouette, alouette,
50:12alouette.
50:13The war would be over
50:43for now.
50:45The war would be over
50:47as the objet
50:48as the battle
50:49was closer to the ederim
50:49several of the ways
50:50the head of the sea
50:52could have been more
50:54in the future.
51:00The war would be over
51:03the war would be over
51:04and over and over
51:05and over again
51:05the night of the night
51:05would be over
51:06Night pulled.
51:07Hip claimed
51:08she had done
51:08for years
51:09and over
51:09as the torch
51:10is dead
51:10of the world.
51:11Like,
51:11full of Chocaолько
51:12is a miracle recently
51:12given.
51:13You
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