Clash of Wings – Episode 1: The Bluff Is Called explores the opening phase of modern air warfare and the strategic decisions that shaped conflicts in the age of flight.
This episode examines how airpower emerged as a decisive factor in warfare, focusing on early doctrines, technological limitations, and the calculated risks taken by military planners. Through archival footage, expert commentary, and detailed analysis, the documentary reveals how commanders relied on perception, deception, and bold strategy to gain control of the skies.
Rather than concentrating solely on aircraft and pilots, The Bluff Is Called highlights the psychological and strategic dimensions of air combat, showing how early choices set the tone for future aerial conflicts.
This documentary is presented for historical and educational purposes only.
#AirWarfare,#MilitaryAviation,#AviationHistory,#WarDocumentary,#AirPower,#ModernWarfare,#HistoricalDocumentary,#ArchiveFootage,#20thCenturyHistory,#MilitaryStrategy,#AerialCombat,#HistoryFilm,#Education,#LongFormDocumentary,#StudioX
#Documentary #RareDocumentary #WarDocumentary #TheCivilWar #VintageDocumentary #ClassicDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #TrueCrimeDocumentary #ScienceDocumentary #RetroFilm #OldDocumentary #ForgottenFilms #ArchiveFootage #CultDocumentary #HistoricalFootage #DocVault
This episode examines how airpower emerged as a decisive factor in warfare, focusing on early doctrines, technological limitations, and the calculated risks taken by military planners. Through archival footage, expert commentary, and detailed analysis, the documentary reveals how commanders relied on perception, deception, and bold strategy to gain control of the skies.
Rather than concentrating solely on aircraft and pilots, The Bluff Is Called highlights the psychological and strategic dimensions of air combat, showing how early choices set the tone for future aerial conflicts.
This documentary is presented for historical and educational purposes only.
#AirWarfare,#MilitaryAviation,#AviationHistory,#WarDocumentary,#AirPower,#ModernWarfare,#HistoricalDocumentary,#ArchiveFootage,#20thCenturyHistory,#MilitaryStrategy,#AerialCombat,#HistoryFilm,#Education,#LongFormDocumentary,#StudioX
#Documentary #RareDocumentary #WarDocumentary #TheCivilWar #VintageDocumentary #ClassicDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #TrueCrimeDocumentary #ScienceDocumentary #RetroFilm #OldDocumentary #ForgottenFilms #ArchiveFootage #CultDocumentary #HistoricalFootage #DocVault
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LearningTranscript
00:00This video is brought to you by
00:30World War II began in the air at exactly 0434 hours on the morning of September 1st, 1939.
00:40Three German Stuka dive bombers burst through the murky weather
00:43to attack two railroad bridges near the Polish city of Dershow.
00:48Their task was to destroy the detonating wires leading to the explosive charge mining the bridges
00:53and thus prevent the Polish engineers from blowing them up.
01:00World War II was effectively ended in the air almost six years later
01:13at 10.58 in the morning on August 9th, 1945.
01:18A single Boeing B-29 broke out of murky weather to drop a nuclear weapon on the city of Nagasaki.
01:30The difference in capability between the slow, angular Stuka and the beautiful Silver B-29 is a perfect example of the expansion of air power that took place in six years of war.
01:57In 1939, the Stukas dropped relatively small, 250-kilogram bombs that were a legacy of the past.
02:08In 1945, the B-29's Fat Man nuclear weapon yielded an explosion equivalent to 23,000 tons of TNT.
02:17Its effect on Nagasaki cast a terrible shadow for the future.
02:20The history of the major air campaigns of World War II chronicles the changing concepts of air power.
02:37It ranges from the almost wistful projections of Billy Mitchell about the potential for long-range bombing
02:42to the horrifying reality of nuclear devastation.
02:45When the war began, every country had a concept of air power that was simple and erroneous.
03:02There was no genuine understanding of the degree of effort that the achievement and application of true aerial supremacy required.
03:08It would take almost six years of desperate battle and an immense expenditure of lives and materiel
03:20before true air power would be defined in the skies over Japan.
03:24In the 1930s, the interval between the two world wars, the threat of air power was overriding in the minds of leading British politicians.
03:38In 1932, Britain's Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin declared that the bomber will always get through.
03:46He warned that unless bombers were banned, European civilization would be destroyed.
03:54The public developed an image of an avalanche of bombers leveling cities and killing the populace with poison gas.
04:07This overestimation of the ability of bombers is difficult to understand.
04:11No military staff bothered to quantify the potential of air power to inflict damage.
04:16In 1936, Britain and France trembled at the thought of an air war with Germany.
04:26Rather than offend Hitler, they violated the treaties of Versailles and Locarno
04:30by permitting German remilitarization of the Rhineland.
04:34Who's got it, who's got it, who's got it, who's got it.
04:59The German bomber force that caused England and France to tremble was made up of Junkers
05:11Ju-52 bombers.
05:13They were converted passenger transports that could only just reach England from German
05:18airfields, but not while carrying bombs.
05:22Also, Germany had almost no aerial bombs in its arsenal.
05:36Military authorities estimated that each ton of bombs would cause 72 deaths.
05:42It seemed that the population of London and Paris would be decimated by a German attack.
05:51This figure was highly inflated, but combined with the public horror of the effects of poison
05:56gas, it caused the fear of German airpower to grow.
06:05The military did not counter these claims.
06:08English and French military preparedness was poor.
06:11The military was prepared to accept any public support, no matter how hysterical.
06:18British defence spending was dictated by the ten-year rule.
06:22It was based on the assumption that there would be no war in the next ten years.
06:27It was not intended to stifle new defence ideas, but to avoid the cost of large-scale production
06:32that could become obsolete.
06:42For politicians, it was an attractive way of avoiding major defence spending.
06:47But it was devastating in terms of engineering and industrial planning.
06:52Lack of spending destroyed the defence industry's base.
06:55It would weaken Britain's capacity to negotiate with rival countries.
07:00Even in the 1930s, it took four years to develop an aircraft from concept to construction.
07:07It took seven years to develop an engine.
07:14So in 1938, Britain's defence rested on old-fashioned biplanes with fixed landing gear that would not
07:30have looked out of place on the Western Front in World War I.
07:35New, modern fighters, hurricanes and spitfires were available only in small numbers.
07:50But ironically, if war had come in 1938, Britain's tiny air force would have been strong enough
07:56to resist the German Luftwaffe.
07:59Germany's aerial strength was a fiction.
08:02The German bluff was accepted by British Prime Minister Chamberlain, who knew how weak the British forces were.
08:09Germany should have been the least threatening of all the major European powers.
08:19It had been weakened by World War I.
08:21It was denied new weapons by the Treaty of Versailles.
08:24It was wrecked by political dissension.
08:27Its currency suffered immense inflation.
08:30But new factories had been built.
08:35Industry was subsidised and staffed by the best and brightest of German engineering talent.
08:50Germany pioneered strategic bombing with success in World War I.
08:54But in the 30s, it ignored bombing and cast air power as the handmaiden of the army.
09:07But Britain, having been on the receiving end of Germany's bombs, was determined to have a strategic bombing capability of its own.
09:14Also, unlike Germany, England's Royal Air Force almost completely ignored the concept of cooperation with the army.
09:24France and the United States spent a great deal of their small Air Force budgets on observation planes to be used in direct cooperation with their armies.
09:37The French wasted millions of francs on multipurpose aircraft that were useless either as fighters or bombers.
09:43Their large crews called them collective coffins.
09:46Almost all commanders in World War II recognized that air superiority was necessary to permit successful ground operations.
09:56What they did not recognize was the amount of money, time, training, and personnel necessary to achieve air superiority.
10:04All the great powers of the world, except the Soviet Union, planned on air forces with the total strength of only about 5,000 aircraft.
10:13They might have about 800 bombers and 600 fighters ready for combat.
10:17This view of the scale of air combat missed by a thousand percent what ultimately would be required.
10:24It underlayed the misuse of air power that occurred throughout the war.
10:34By 1938, Hitler had convinced the world that Germany possessed the greatest air force in history.
10:41Unfortunately for the fatherland and its performance in the war that was about to erupt, he had also convinced himself.
10:49Nach einem Jahr kann ich euch hier wieder begrüßen.
10:54Ihr seid heute hier in dieser Muschel nur ein Ausschnitt dessen, was außer ihr über ganz Deutschland steht.
11:07Nach einem Jahr Kfarze
11:24Nach einem Jahr
11:25Nach einem Jahr
11:31At the same time, England was frantically scrambling to rescue the Royal Air Force from years of neglect.
11:44It bought new fighters. It established the designs for new heavy bombers.
11:53The United States was in a position to capitalize on the European emergency.
11:57It was able to design new aircraft and sell them to the Allies.
12:06The Soviet Union was secretly building a larger Air Force than anyone believed possible.
12:11But they would not be ready for the plunge into war with Germany.
12:18Japan was in even greater secrecy than the Soviet Union, creating small but proficient Army and Navy Air Forces.
12:25They would be at their peak precisely as Japan entered the war.
12:37In the autumn of 1938, tension in Europe was higher than at any time since the beginning of World War I.
12:43Adolf Hitler proclaimed that he would no longer suffer the mistreatment of people of German descent in the Czech Sudetenland.
12:54Three and a half million Sudeten Germans were demanding unity with the fatherland.
12:59Hitler saw the occupation of Czechoslovakia as a first step to dealing with Poland and then with Russia.
13:10Czechoslovakia was a difficult challenge. The Czechs had 35 military divisions.
13:16The Czech army was well trained and superbly armed by the Skoda works.
13:22Skoda produced arms, artillery and tanks.
13:29In the mountains on the German frontier, Czech engineers had built a system of defences,
13:35considered by many to be superior to France's famous Maginot Line.
13:38At some points, the fortification belt ran back as far as the city of Prague.
13:44The Czechs expected to be able to withstand a German invasion for months.
13:49The German military command knew that they could not survive a war against the combined powers of Czechoslovakia, England, France and Russia,
13:58all of whom would be supported by the United States.
14:03But Hitler maintained that the leaders of these countries did not have the stomach for war and would back down in a crisis.
14:11Appeasement of Germany was the policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
14:16France was terrified at the thought of war with Germany without England at its side.
14:20France went along with appeasement. It reneged on its treaty to defend Czechoslovakia.
14:27But the fact is that France's 68 regular divisions could easily have brushed aside the German forces that opposed it.
14:34The Soviet Union withdrew from its agreement to defend Czechoslovakia on the grounds that France had reneged.
14:42Czechoslovakia had been deserted by its major allies. It chose to give up.
14:52Hitler's ally and Italy's Duce Benito Mussolini proposed a meeting of nations in Munich on September 29, 1938.
15:01France and England were invited to attend. Czechoslovakia was excluded.
15:07France and England agreed to allow Germany to strip the Sudetenland away from Czechoslovakia.
15:18The Sudetenland happened to be the location of Czechoslovakia's major defences.
15:22Neville Chamberlain agreed to every German request with eagerness.
15:35He was happy to see his policy of appeasement working so well, anxious to fly home to England with a piece of paper that he believed would mean peace in our time.
15:43For the coming, I have another job with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler.
15:52And the other is the paper, which bears, Kuznäri Matanik, as well as mine.
15:59We regard the agreement signed last night, then the anger German liberal agreement.
16:09The symbolic of the desire about two peoples never to go to war with one another day.
16:16In early 1939, the German economic situation worsened.
16:20Hitler's rearmament policy brought the German state beyond full employment to a labor shortage.
16:25German foreign exchange was exhausted.
16:29Hitler decided to remedy these problems by occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
16:34This move would add to the Reich a strong economy, an expert workforce, 1500 aircraft and the equipment of 27 military divisions.
16:44On March 15, 1939, Germany was invited by Czechoslovakia to become its protector.
16:52The victory superheated Hitler's ego.
16:55An attempt were made to change the situation by force in such a way as to threaten Polish independence.
17:05By then, that would inevitably start a general conflagration in which this country would be involved.
17:16By the mid-1930s, re-equipping an Air Force had become a lengthy process.
17:21It took four years from design to production, and another two years to re-equip and train operational units.
17:27While training and re-equipment were happening, the strength of the force usually declined as obsolete aircraft were surveyed,
17:38and the new aircraft experienced the usual break-in problems.
17:41So the timing of the decision to embark on a new generation of aircraft was critical.
17:45France made a disastrous mistake in building up its Air Force strength with early 1930s designs.
17:53When it finally committed to re-equipment in the mid-1930s, it was too late to have an effective Air Force ready for the outbreak of war in 1939.
18:05Germany had caught the wave at exactly the right time for World War II.
18:09Its units were equipped with new aircraft and fully trained by the fall of 1939.
18:13England was about a year behind Germany in the re-equipment process.
18:24This was a disadvantage when the war broke out, but it would become an advantage by the time of the critical period in the fall of 1940.
18:31By the time World War II began, Poland's Air Force was small in number and equipped with obsolete aircraft.
18:41But that was not Poland's greatest problem. Bad leadership in the clique of colonels at the top was.
18:56Poland dismissed the German threat as an idle bluff. The militant colonels made wages on how long it would take to march to Berlin if war did come.
19:10While the colonels boosted, Poland's air force slipped into chaos.
19:17Goering's Luftwaffe had a great problem, which was not obvious at the time the war broke out.
19:22It suffered from a deep-seated organizational disarray caused by infighting among its leaders.
19:29Goering relied heavily on his deputy, General Erhard Milch.
19:32At the same time, he was jealous of Milch's abilities and feared his rising popularity.
19:40Milch was dismayed at the way his head of the technical office, General Oberst Udet, was mishandling his duties.
19:47Udet knew that he was not performing well. He was aware of his incapacity and yet Goering would not relieve him.
19:54General Oberst Hans Jeschonnek, chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, didn't get along with anyone.
20:01He was immature and a faithful worshipper of Hitler.
20:08In overall number of aircraft, the Luftwaffe outnumbered the Polish air force by two to one.
20:15In terms of operational aircraft, Germany had three times Poland's numbers.
20:20The difference was even greater in terms of equipment and training.
20:24The Luftwaffe was divided into four major commands.
20:31Luftflotte 1 was headquartered in Berlin and served northern and eastern Germany.
20:36Luftflotte 2 was headquartered in Braunschweig and served northwestern Germany.
20:44Luftflotte 3 was based in Munich and covered south and southwestern Germany.
20:54Luftflotte 1 and Luftflotte 4 were assigned the task of supporting the Polish invasion.
21:06Between them, they had nearly 1600 aircraft.
21:09The two leaders could not have been better chosen.
21:14Smiling Albert Kesselring had been chief of the Luftwaffe general staff, but he tired of bickering with his superior, General Erhard Milch.
21:22He resigned to take a field command.
21:25He was amiable and even charming, but he was also a tough leader who made the most of his resources.
21:31General Alexander Lohr had commanded the Austrian Air Force.
21:36He was a handsome man with a neatly trimmed moustache.
21:40The two men had at their disposal the best trained and best equipped air force in the world.
21:45It was staffed by loyal patriots eager to go to war.
21:50The Luftwaffe had officially been in existence for only four and a half years.
21:55But it could put almost 900 bombers and over 200 fighters into the field.
22:01Ninety percent of the German aircraft were less than three years old.
22:05The principal fighter was the Messerschmitt Bf 109.
22:10It was one of the classic aircraft of all time.
22:14In total, more than 33,000 would be built.
22:23The Bf 109 was a development of the very successful Bf 108 Typhoon sports plane of 1934.
22:31In response to a request from the Air Ministry,
22:35the Messerschmitt design team created the smallest possible airframe
22:39into which the largest available engine could be fitted.
22:54At the time of its first flight at the end of May 1935,
22:57the Bf 109 was unquestionably the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world.
23:04The Messerschmitt engineers placed the landing gear attachment points on the fuselage.
23:10This saved weight and made production and repair easier.
23:14But it made ground handling tricky.
23:17Takeoff and landing accidents were common.
23:20About 10% of all Bf 109s would be lost in accidents caused by the placement of the landing gear.
23:28By the time Hitler invaded Poland, the Bf 109 had gone through several stages of development.
23:34Most by that time were E-models with 1050 horsepower Daimler-Benz engines.
23:39The Polish PZL fighter was 100 miles an hour slower than the Messerschmitt.
23:49The German pilots would be able to enter and leave combat at their discretion.
23:52The 109's teammate was the Messerschmitt Bf 110.
23:53The 109's teammate was the Messerschmitt Bf 110.
24:02Goering had asked for a heavily armed Zerstörer or destroyer, capable of clearing the way for German bombers by destroying enemy interceptors over their own territory.
24:14Professor Willi Messerschmitt did not believe in the destroyer concept.
24:27He thought that the large twin engine fighter necessary for such a task would be a compromise, unable to do any job well.
24:35But he tried to please Goering and by May 1936 the Bf 110 was ready for its first test flight.
24:44It was heavily armed.
24:46It had four 7.9mm and two 20mm cannon firing forward.
24:51In the rear there were two 7.9mm machine guns on a flexible mount.
25:02All of the multi-engine German bombers employed in the Polish campaign first appeared to the public as civil passenger transports.
25:10Of the four, the Heinkel He 111 was by far the most important in the Polish campaign.
25:16It was an elegant, streamlined aircraft with elliptical wings and superb handling characteristics.
25:23The original bomber version had a top speed of 217 miles an hour, faster than the Luftwaffe's biplane fighters.
25:32It could carry 2200 pounds of bombs.
25:36By September the 1st, 1939, the Luftwaffe had 808 He 111 bombers.
25:42Most were the P model with 1100 horsepower engines.
25:47Their top speed had increased to 247 miles an hour.
25:52But the He 111 had a glaring fault in defensive armament.
25:57Its five hand-held machine guns were totally inadequate.
26:01The defect would have tragic consequences for the crews of the He 111 in the Battle of Britain and for the rest of the war.
26:07The Junkers Ju 86 flew for the first time on November 4th, 1934.
26:27Production Ju 86s were initially powered by diesel engines.
26:31They proved to be unsuitable.
26:34Diesels can run indefinitely at a standard power setting, but the frequent changes of power required in combat made them unreliable.
26:42The most elegant of the German bombers was the Flying Pencil, the Dornier D017.
26:48It was also the fastest, with a top speed of 255 miles an hour.
26:54It was never seriously intended to be a commercial transport, although the Dornier factory said it could carry six passengers and express mail.
27:10Lufthansa, the German airline, played out their role in the hoax by testing and refusing it for commercial use.
27:21They said the seating was too cramped.
27:24Long before Lufthansa's rejection, the Reich Air Ministry had begun tests of it as a bomber fitted with standard Luftwaffe equipment.
27:32When the war began, 319 were available for combat.
27:47Its slender fuselage gave it a delicate appearance, but the D017 was very robust.
27:53It could make diving attacks at 370 miles an hour, reducing its vulnerability to ground or air attack.
28:06The fourth German multi-engine bomber, the Junkers Ju 52 tri-motor, was a development of a design that originated in 1919.
28:15As early as the Spanish Civil War, it had been recognized as obsolete as a bomber.
28:23But for the attack on Poland, it would be pressed into service by Hitler to drop incendiaries on Warsaw.
28:29It would serve out the war as a transport.
28:49The evil angular lines of the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka would become notorious in the early months of the war.
28:55It was beloved by its crews for its ruggedness and by the ground forces for its pinpoint accuracy.
29:05It could deliver its bombs with precision on targets as small as tanks and pillboxes.
29:13In a sense, it was a smart weapon, with the guidance system being the brain of the pilot behind the controls.
29:19The Stuka performed extremely well in the Polish campaign.
29:26But this success would cause great harm to the Luftwaffe.
29:30Reliance on the Stuka would delay the development of the much needed German long-range bombers.
29:37Hitler's contempt for the leaders of England and France made him confident that they would not go to war when he invaded Poland.
29:57He was intent on a limited war to prepare his troops for further conflict.
30:04Having been right so often in the past, he believed that he would get exactly what he wanted.
30:09A swift war against Poland alone victoriously concluded well within the limited capacity of the German economy.
30:15Hitler pressed on, launching the attack on Poland on September the 1st 1939, trusting to blind luck that England would not honour its commitment to Poland any better than it had honoured its commitment to Czechoslovakia.
30:29But on September the 3rd, he was told that England had declared war.
30:38The British government will submit the dictation from a foreign fighter as to its foreign policy.
30:44Hermann Göring, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, was heard to say,
30:54If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us.
31:02The Poles expected France to be their salvation.
31:05They expected the French to spring into action on the Western Front, crushing the few German divisions left there.
31:15Early in the morning of September the 1st 1939, fog and low clouds obscured Warsaw.
31:23But in the air, the action was sharp and deadly.
31:32The first German formation of about 100 aircraft was made up of Heinkel and Dornia bombers, escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 110.
31:39At 800 hours, they were intercepted by Polish fighters.
31:45The German bombers were forced to jettison their bomb loads.
31:49In the afternoon, there was another raid by a formation of greater strength.
31:54But they too were forced back.
31:57The results of the first day's battles were to be typical for the whole war.
32:01There were inflated claims by both sides.
32:05There were charges of parachuting pilots being machine gunned by the enemy.
32:14From the German Luftwaffe point of view, there were three priorities.
32:19The first was the destruction of the Polish air force and its support structure.
32:23The second was the support of German ground forces.
32:32The third was attacks against military installations and armament industries in Warsaw.
32:37The theory of Blitzkrieg, lightning war, involved the elimination of all obstacles one by one.
32:45Then, the German Panzers could sweep forward.
32:49As long as the enemy was alone and unprepared for this new style of warfare, the concept worked beautifully for Germany.
32:57General Wolfram von Richthofen was a master of the theory and practice of close air support.
33:02He led his forces by flying into the heart of the battle zone in a Fiesler-Storch liaison plane, picking out targets and calling in strikes.
33:21The Polish PCL fighters were nimble.
33:24They could outmaneuver the Messerschmitts in dogfights.
33:26But the Germans soon refused to play their game.
33:30They either attacked with hit-and-run tactics or simply outspread the Polish defenders to attack other targets.
33:41On the ground, the rapid advance of the German tanks overran many of the Polish satellite airfields.
33:47In the heat of battle, the Poles began shuttling their aircraft to new airfields farther east.
33:52This led to confusion with spare parts, fuel and supplies.
33:57They were frequently in the wrong place.
34:00The result was a severe drop in the availability of aircraft.
34:05On September the 9th, the Polish army counter-attacked, threatening to break through the German lines and cut off the 10th army.
34:12But an avalanche of von Richthofen's Stukas blunted the Polish effort.
34:19The Luftwaffe used only 219 Stukas in the Polish campaign, but their effect on targets and morale was astonishing.
34:26They attacked bridges, airfields, roads, artillery and troop concentrations.
34:33They were fitted with wind-driven sirens called the Trumpets of Jericho.
34:37The sound of these sirens had a shattering effect on the already demoralized Polish soldiers.
34:42The Stukas were complemented by 40 Henschel HS-123s.
34:59At certain power settings, the engine of the HS-123s sounded like a battery of machine guns.
35:05The noise terrified soldiers on the ground and threw horse transport into confusion.
35:25Most of the Polish forces had never been under attack from the air before.
35:30Between the noise and the casualties, there was general panic.
35:33By September the 14th, Warsaw was surrounded.
35:57The Soviet Union now announced that the Polish government no longer existed.
36:10Soviet forces streamed across the Polish borders.
36:13They were aiming for lines of demarcation previously agreed on by Stalin and Hitler.
36:17The Poles reeled under the attack, but Warsaw continued to resist.
36:23The city had been turned into a fortress and its commandant would not even receive the German ultimatum for its surrender.
36:29Von Richthofen assembled his forces.
36:35On September 25th, he began the first terror bombing attacks of the European war.
36:40The German bombers were unopposed by the Polish air force.
36:45They only had minor anti-aircraft fire to contend with.
36:49Methodically, they cruised over the helpless city.
36:53They dropped almost 600 tons of explosives.
36:55About 15% were incendiaries.
36:57At the same time, the German artillery ringing the city poured in an avalanche of shells.
37:14The next day, an infantry assault began.
37:3224 hours later, Warsaw surrendered.
37:35The Polish air force had fought bravely, but it had lost 83% of its aircraft, 30% of its flying personnel, and 22% of its ground staff in a little more than two weeks of fighting.
37:55The Germans had used 60% of their available bomb supply and most of their fuel reserves.
38:05But they had offset this expenditure to some degree with captured Polish material.
38:10Hitler had taken a calculated risk when he began the Polish campaign.
38:15He had stripped his western front strength down to 30 divisions.
38:18Only 12 of those 30 were first-rate.
38:20They faced 110 French divisions and 400,000 troops of the British Expeditionary Force.
38:35As the war in Poland unfolded well for Germany, some army divisions and air force bombers were sent back to the west.
38:41But they were not needed.
38:48The phony war had begun.
38:50France and England settled down to watch the war go by, avoiding anything which would bring on a major action.
38:57Hitler was intoxicated with his victory in Poland and pleased with his armed forces.
39:02On September the 27th, he informed his generals of his decision to begin the war against France at the end of November.
39:11Hitler offered Great Britain peace, but on terms that anyone but he and his ill-informed advisors would have known to be unacceptable.
39:19With his offer ignored, he began to assert himself more and more.
39:22When his generals told him that the weather in November would be unsuitable, Hitler assured them that fighting would be possible until February or March.
39:31At that time, he was not contemplating a total victory in the west.
39:35He intended only to seize the low countries in northern France as a base of operations against England.
39:40The Polish campaign burnished the national socialist spirit of the Luftwaffe.
39:51Losses had been high.
39:53285 out of 1600 aircraft had been lost.
39:57In a country where duelling scars, medals and wound stripes were so highly prized, this blooding was seen as confirmation of the Luftwaffe's fighting qualities.
40:06The Luftwaffe's successes had indeed been spectacular.
40:11The rapid progress in Poland had outstripped the Luftwaffe's logistic capacity.
40:16Spare parts were limited.
40:18But fortunately for Germany, the Blackbirds, the Luftwaffe's mechanics, worked miracles to keep aircraft in commission.
40:26There are some hazards in the German success in Poland.
40:29The most dangerous of these was the assumption that the German aircraft in service were fully adequate in terms of performance and number.
40:38It was dangerous because the next enemies, England and France, were many times more powerful than Poland.
40:45Hitler had long ago anticipated the need for vastly greater numbers of aircraft.
40:53As early as October 1938, he had called for a 500% increase in aircraft production.
40:59But his order had been ignored by both industry and air ministry officials.
41:05The experts simply stated that Hitler's goals could not be reached.
41:10They claimed that, even if accomplished, such a program would wreck the German economy.
41:15They proved that the fuel requirements for such an air force were impossible to fulfil.
41:20So, in the winter of 1939, the German factories continued on a virtual peacetime basis.
41:28They produced at a rate of less than 700 aircraft a month.
41:32Content with its performance in Poland, certain that it could handle the West,
41:37the Luftwaffe High Command was blissfully unaware that English aircraft production had already exceeded Germany's
41:42and was growing from day to day.
41:54Hitler now began to insert himself more into military planning.
41:59He displayed a combination of talents that intimidated his generals.
42:03Adverse weather kept the Luftwaffe grounded.
42:07It prevented Hitler from opening his attacks in the West during the winter of 1939.
42:12During the enforced delay, Hitler rejected his army's long-established plan to attack France.
42:18He supported an alternative plan that called for a thrust through the apparently impassable Ardennes forest,
42:25followed by a race across France to the Channel Coast.
42:29But before this major test of arms, Hitler had to face a quick campaign in Denmark and Norway.
42:35The war in Scandinavia was characterized by long distances, bad weather, and terrible logistics problems.
42:48On September the 30th, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland.
42:58Great Britain's first sea lord, Winston Churchill, saw this invasion as justification to seize Norway.
43:04He wanted to control Norwegian waters to cut off supplies of steel to Germany.
43:11The Finns resisted the Soviet invaders.
43:14They cut off the ill-trained, ill-equipped Soviet forces in the dense forests and slaughtered them.
43:20England, France, and Germany all considered Soviet performance in Finland as ineffective.
43:29Hitler's opinion of the Soviet Union was that he would only have to kick in the door and have the whole rotten house come crashing down.
43:36In France and England, public anger mounted over the brutal Soviet invasion.
43:44Pressure built to intervene.
43:47Churchill even advocated breaking off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and bombing Russian oil fields.
43:56The Allies asked permission of Norway and Sweden to send troops through their country to aid Finland.
44:00Both nations refused.
44:03They were enjoying tremendous prosperity from their business dealings with Germany.
44:09But a renewed Soviet offensive overwhelmed Finland.
44:18In Germany, Hitler ordered preparations to begin for the invasion of Norway.
44:23At the same time, the Allies were also preparing an invasion of Norway to save it from the Germans.
44:28Hitler's attack on Norway, Operation Weser, began on April the 9th, 1940.
44:35Timing was critical for the Seaborn forces.
44:38Their destinations were hundreds of miles apart, but they all had to reach them at the same time.
44:44The ships landed troops over a wide front.
44:47A serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
44:48A serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
44:49This had never been done before.
44:50A serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
44:51This had never been done before.
44:52A serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
44:56This had never been done before.
44:57A serious airborne airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
44:59A serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed.
45:13a serious airborne reinforcement and supply campaign followed this had never been done before
45:27hitler's willingness to chance the norwegian weather
45:30the british navy and the norwegian defenders showed a courage and foresight that surpassed his
45:35commanders his plan was for the parachute troops to seize the main airfields
45:56then the junkers transports would come in to offload troops
46:06as soon as the airfield perimeters were secured flights of german bombers and
46:10fighters would arrive to begin operations they were to be serviced by maintenance crews
46:16that would arrive on the second wave of transports
46:35it all worked exactly as hitler had planned
46:52the norwegian resistance increased during the day
46:54at oslo gloucester gladiators attacked the incoming german aircraft at terrible odds
47:07flights of two engaged as many as 70 aircraft at a time
47:15britain and france reacted quickly to support the norwegian resistance
47:19the royal air force sent bombers and reconnaissance aircraft from scotland
47:22the british committed their aircraft carriers to the battle
47:31gladiators and a newer british fighter the hawker hurricane fought validly against the strong german
47:36forces
47:37but it was too little and too late the allies abandoned norway on may 10th 1940. hitler had won the
47:50battle but it may have been the biggest mistake of his life if he had given enough aid to keep finland
47:55fighting the soviet union it's entirely possible that britain and france would have gone to war against
48:00the soviets in the spring of 1940. such an event would have turned world politics upside down but it was not to be
48:08instead the battle of france erupted
48:20like a
48:30well
48:31so
48:33but it was
48:35Transcription by CastingWords
49:05CastingWords
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