- 2 days ago
Rare footage from World War II. Witness history unfold.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:22It may be the only...
00:24We shall defend our honor, whatever the cost may be.
00:27We shall fight on the beaters.
00:30We shall fight on the beaters.
00:34We shall fight on the beaters.
00:36We shall fight in the army.
00:39If you are still holding the lead, this island, or a large part of it, will subjugate the stars.
00:46We shall stand for one part of a sea, and we shall see the earth beyond the sea.
00:53God does not believe me.
00:58We shall never surrender.
01:01This country is at war with Germany.
01:13At 7.50 a.m. on the morning of August 9th, 1945, air raid sirens began to ring out in
01:21the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
01:23However, a short while later, the sirens rang out again, indicating that there was no danger and people began to
01:30climb out of their shelters to carry on about their daily business.
01:35Japanese spotters had only sighted two U.S. AAF B-29 bombers, not enough for an air raid on a
01:43major city, and presumed they were merely on a reconnaissance mission.
01:47At 1101 hours, a single bomb was dropped into the city's industrial area.
01:53The bomb detonated with the equivalent force of 22,000 sticks of TNT, which resulted in a blast so bright
02:00that it was seen by observers over 100 miles away.
02:04The fireball generated temperatures in excess of 3,900 degrees centigrade, and generated winds of up to 600 miles per
02:13hour that added to the destruction.
02:15Exact figures are unclear, but at least 129,000 people were either killed on the day, or would die in
02:23the weeks and even years that followed.
02:26Six days after this attack, Japan surrendered to the Allies, bringing to a close the most destructive conflict ever recorded
02:33that ended with the first two, and so far only, nuclear attacks in history.
02:39It was the Second World War.
02:49It's impossible to dissect the causes of the Second World War without discussing the rise of the Nazi Party in
02:55Germany and its leader, Adolf Hitler.
02:58Hitler was himself of Austrian birth, but he fought in the German army during the First World War.
03:04When the war ended with Germany's humiliation, Hitler felt especially bitter about it, and like many in Europe, he feared
03:12communism spreading beyond the borders of post-revolutionary Russia.
03:16In 1919, a year after the end of the war, he joined a new and little known political group called
03:24the German Workers' Party,
03:25and used his great ability as a speaker to stir up crowds and gain support.
03:30A year later, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, more commonly known by its English abbreviation,
03:39Nazi.
03:41In 1921, Hitler rose to become leader of the party, and again using his magnetic personality, he continued to garner
03:49more and more support.
03:50Until 1923, the Nazis were confident enough to attempt a coup in Munich and seize power.
03:57Known as the Beer Hall Putsch, the effort failed and Hitler was arrested before being put on trial, but this
04:04only furthered the Nazi cause.
04:06Hitler used the trial to gain even more supporters, and despite him spending a year in prison, in which he
04:12wrote his autobiography Mein Kampf,
04:13the Nazis continued to establish themselves in German politics.
04:20Mein Kampf not only outlined his own story, but it also set about establishing his vision for the future of
04:26the German people,
04:26and how he believed subversive groups were holding them back from achieving their destiny through measures such as the Treaty
04:33of Versailles,
04:34which outlined Germany's surrender terms.
04:38He specifically identified Jews and Communists as being the leaders of this great international conspiracy to keep the German people
04:45down after the war.
04:47Highlighting the harsh conditions imposed on the country by the victorious allies,
04:51such as the dissolution of Germany's empire and armed forces,
04:56the loss of territory to newly created countries in the east and France in the west,
05:01and having to pray crippling war reparations.
05:04The book effectively became the Nazi Bible.
05:07By 1933, the Nazi Party had secured enough political support that Hitler legally became Chancellor of Germany.
05:16He quickly began passing legislation that would transform Germany into Nazi Germany,
05:21and the swastika would symbolize this reinvigorated country.
05:25The prosecution of Jews, gypsies, and political opponents soon became government policy,
05:31as Hitler began preparing Nazi Germany to attain what he saw as its destiny cantered around the concept of the
05:37Aryan race,
05:39with himself as the undisputed leader, the Fuhrer.
05:48History records that the Second World War began in 1939.
05:52However, some historians now argue that it began in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in China.
06:01The Japanese deliberately detonated a bomb on a Chinese railway line used by Japanese citizens
06:07in order to blame it on Chinese dissidents.
06:11This was then used as a pretext to invade the country,
06:14and Japan would occupy the land there until liberated by the Allies in 1945.
06:20Japanese occupation of Chinese territory was extraordinarily harsh.
06:25Rape and murder were widespread and often encouraged by the Japanese leadership.
06:30While at Ping Fang in northeast China, a military research unit was set up with a special mission.
06:37Designated Unit 731, thousands of Chinese civilians were used in nightmarish medical experiments
06:43to develop biological and chemical weapons, as well as carry out experimental surgeries,
06:49often without anesthesia, for fear of corrupting the data.
06:53In 1922, Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party rose to power in Italy.
07:00Very soon, he began reshaping the democratic political landscape of the country
07:05into a dictatorship cantered around himself.
07:09Mussolini, like Hitler in Germany, believed his country had a destiny and wanted to build a new Roman Empire,
07:16beginning with a massive build-up of his armed forces.
07:20He was not afraid to use them and proved this when he sent his forces into Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia,
07:26in 1935, to start the construction of his new empire in Africa.
07:32If Manchuria can be considered the first battlefront of World War II, then Abyssinia was the second.
07:45As the 1930s grew on, Hitler's Nazi Party became firmly embedded, not just in German politics,
07:52but into German society on a whole.
07:54The German people had much to thank the Nazi Party for,
07:58since they had pulled the country out of the despair of defeat and reinvigorated it,
08:02promising that Germany would soon be attaining its destiny of becoming a great power again.
08:08Hitler's appeal and influence was not lost on foreign observers,
08:11many of whom admired him and even began to sympathize with the Treaty of Germany after the war.
08:17Proof of this was given when Hitler became Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
08:22This played perfectly into Hitler's hands as he began making notions of regaining lost territory in the east and west
08:29of the country.
08:30The first test of how the Allied powers of Britain and France would respond to his new Germany
08:35came in 1935 when Hitler introduced military conscription
08:39which saw the German armed forces swell many times beyond the number permitted by the Treaty of Versailles.
08:46But the Allies did nothing.
08:49Encouraged by this, he then ordered his troops into the Rhineland in 1936.
08:53The Rhineland had been demilitarized in 1925 in order to create a safety zone for France,
09:01who along with Belgium had occupied it for a time due to Germany's inability to pay war reparations.
09:07Hitler had given secret orders to his men that should they encounter French military resistance,
09:13they were to retreat because Germany was still in no condition to fight a war.
09:18Despite protests by France at the Legion of Nations, the precursor to modern day UN, again they did nothing.
09:26In 1937, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stood down and was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain.
09:33Meanwhile, Germany continued to rearm and now set their sights on reclaiming the German sedating land,
09:39which had been absorbed into Czechoslovakia after the war.
09:44At the same time, Hitler looked to his own birth country of Austria to become a part of his new
09:49Germany,
09:49although this was again forbidden by the Versailles Treaty.
09:54Austria and Germany had long had an almost symbiotic relationship,
09:58and both country's people viewed the other as cousins.
10:02Austria even had its own Nazi party, and in January 1938,
10:06they attempted their own putsch, much like Hitler had tried in 1923.
10:11The putsch failed, and many leading Austrian Nazis were imprisoned.
10:16Hitler's propaganda machine went to work creating a false impression
10:19that Austrians were rising up in support of their imprisoned Nazis.
10:24And so, on March the 12th, 1938,
10:27German troops entered Austrian territory on the pretense of restoring order.
10:32Within weeks, the Austrian government was gone,
10:34and the country was absorbed into Germany as the province of Ostmark.
10:39A vote on joining Germany claims that 99% of the population supported the move,
10:45which was known as Anschluss.
10:48Having secured his home nation under a greater Germany,
10:51Hitler declared himself as the advocate of all ethnic Germans in Europe,
10:55and primarily of those in Sedatenland,
10:58making clear his intention to absorb the region into Germany.
11:02A diplomatic crisis was sparked when, just like in Austria,
11:06a Sedatenland Nazi party rose up and began demanding autonomy from Czechoslovakia.
11:12The Czech government tried to negotiate with the Sedaten Germans
11:16while a series of meetings were held between Germany, Britain and France
11:20to reach an agreement on the crisis, culminating in the Munich Agreement,
11:24which effectively gave a free hand to Germany's ambitions.
11:28No Czech representative was present.
11:32First, Hitler took the Sedatenland and then in January 1939,
11:36he invaded and captured the rest of Czechoslovakia,
11:39in his first act of truly open aggression towards a neighbour.
11:44The conquest of Czechoslovakia raised concerns with the mighty Soviet Union,
11:49which was in the grip of the paranoid Joseph Stalin.
11:53Hitler had written in Mein Kampf that having to fight a war on two fronts
11:56was one of the reasons the Kaiser's Germany was defeated.
11:59And so, having already antagonized London and Paris,
12:03he was far more careful with Moscow and began a diplomatic effort with the Soviet Union
12:07to keep them out of events in the West.
12:11In August 1939, German Forest Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop
12:17met with his German counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, in Moscow,
12:21where the two of them effectively divided up Eastern Europe into two,
12:26on the promise that neither would interfere with the other in those areas.
12:30The Soviet Union had its own interests in Poland and Finland,
12:34and so was happy to abide by this agreement,
12:37even though Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were ideological enemies.
12:42Despite this period of cooperation, many felt that it wouldn't last,
12:46but with Russia at bay, Hitler ordered his troops into Poland on September the 1st, 1939.
12:57The invasion of Poland was the final straw for Britain and France.
13:01There was no justification for the invasion,
13:03other than to simply capture territory from a foreign land.
13:06And so, Britain and France delivered an ultimatum to Hitler.
13:10Withdraw his troops, or there would be war.
13:14The demand was refused, and on September the 3rd,
13:17Neville Chamberlain told the British people they were at war with Germany.
13:21Unless we heard from them, by eleven o'clock,
13:26that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,
13:31a state of war would exist between us.
13:36I have to tell you now,
13:38that no such undertaking has been received,
13:42and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
13:49Some of Germany's more cautious generals had warned Hitler
13:52that the country was not yet ready for a second massive European confrontation.
13:57Germany's rearmament plans predicted war with Britain and France breaking out in 1945,
14:03by which time they would have their own aircraft carrier,
14:07large U-boat fleets, and powerful tank forces.
14:10The generals therefore concocted their Blitzkrieg style of war.
14:15Blitzkrieg meant lightning war,
14:17and called for the widespread use of tanks and aircraft
14:20to break through enemy formations to capture key strategic areas,
14:25and divide enemy forces up to make them easier to destroy.
14:30Above all, it was intended to achieve a quick victory,
14:33rather than a drawn out war of attrition, which Germany could not afford.
14:38It was first used in Poland, and the Polish army proved totally inadequate for this new form of warfare.
14:46In less than a month, the Polish army was annihilated,
14:49and the German army, the Wehrmacht, began consolidating their positions in Western Poland,
14:54as the Soviet Union invaded the east of the country on September the 17th,
14:59as von Ribbentrop had agreed to,
15:01and was something that was all but ignored by Britain and France,
15:05who concentrated on Germany.
15:07Poland ceased to exist as a free country on October the 6th, 1939,
15:12and Nazi Germany now shared a land border with the communist Soviet Union.
15:18Britain and France's declaration of war on Germany sent shockwaves across Europe
15:22that were felt politically, but appeared to do very little else.
15:26Belgium, Holland, and Norway joined a chorus of European voices,
15:30declaring themselves neutral in the fighting.
15:33But in fact, there seemed to be very little fighting at all.
15:37In terms of helping defend Poland, Britain and France could do very little,
15:41and instead they prepared for when Hitler would charge west.
15:45This was the start of the Phoney War,
15:48a period where both sides seemed to be doing everything they would normally do in a war,
15:52except all-out warfare.
15:54The French mobilized their armed forces and sent them to the border,
15:58while Britain created the British Expeditionary Force, or BEF,
16:03to be sent to France to support them,
16:06mirroring how the country went to war in 1914.
16:10At sea, German U-boats and surface raiders did sink unprotected merchant ships,
16:15while in the air, British aircraft made attacks on German shipping,
16:19or conducted leaflet drops over the Ruair region.
16:22During one such leaflet-dropping mission, on September the 9th,
16:26a formation of RAF Whitley bombers strayed into Belgian airspace,
16:31and were attacked by Belgian fighters.
16:34This forced one of them to land, and they lost two aircrafts to British defensive fire.
16:39However, in the South Atlantic, a drama was about to unfold that would become a naval legend.
16:44The German pocket battleship, Graf Spee, was attacking British merchant ships,
16:50capturing their crews and then sinking them.
16:52The crews were then put on the Graf Spee support ship,
16:56the Altmark, for returning to Germany.
16:58Three British cruisers met the German ship in the battle,
17:02and managed to inflict enough damage to force the German battleship
17:05to put into neutral Montevideo, modern-day Uruguay, for repairs.
17:11While there, the British began flooding local media sources,
17:14that a huge British armada was assembling to destroy the pocket battleship when it left port.
17:20The German captain learned of this, and believing the situation was hopeless,
17:24he scuttled his mighty warship.
17:27In reality, there was no armada,
17:30but the deception meant potentially thousands of sailors' lives were saved.
17:34A few weeks later, British special forces raided the Altmark,
17:38and rescued a number of captured merchant crews.
17:48Everyone knew the phony war couldn't last forever,
17:51and it would only be a matter of time before Hitler struck west of France.
17:56In the meantime, Britain and France decided to embark on a campaign in Norway,
18:01then a neutral country,
18:02but one that, along with Sweden, helped supply Germany with vital iron ore.
18:07The Allies mined Norwegian harbours from where German ships operated,
18:12which provoked Hitler to send his forces in on April the 9th to secure them.
18:16The battle for Norway would last until June the 10th,
18:20by which time France and Britain had long retreated, leaving the country to its fate.
18:26The disaster in Norway forced Chamberlain to stand down as Prime Minister on May the 10th,
18:32and after Lord Halifax refused the post, it was offered to Winston Churchill,
18:37who, as a First Lord of the Admiralty, was still basking in the success of the Graftsbury operation.
18:43Churchill was something of a surprise, having more friends than enemies in the establishment,
18:48but was a popular figure amongst the people.
18:51He would eventually form a new government, made up of members of the main political parties,
18:56but in doing so, effectively suspended British democracy for the foreseeable future.
19:01He told the British people, rather bluntly, that he had nothing to offer them,
19:06but blood toil, tears and sweat.
19:09Across the channel, the French had been preparing for another war against Germany for over a decade,
19:13by constructing the Maginot Line, a series of turf fortifications along the border with Germany.
19:20It was designed and constructed in the belief that the war would be reminiscent of the static nature of World
19:26War I,
19:27but it was fundamentally flawed.
19:30It only went as far as north of the Belgium border,
19:33and despite popular belief at the time, it was not a continuous fortification,
19:37having several gaps where it was believed that nature obstacles such as forests and hills
19:43would provide protection.
19:44It consumed huge amounts of men and resources,
19:47leaving some to worry the French were putting all their eggs into one basket,
19:51as far as defence was concerned.
19:54Hitler looked at the situation and immediately saw what had to be done.
19:59He was simply going to bypass it by going through Belgium and Holland.
20:02Like the Kaiser before him in 1914,
20:06he paid little interest to Belgium's or anyone else's declaration of neutrality,
20:10if it served his purpose.
20:13On May the 10th, 1940, Germany struck west,
20:16quickly overrunning Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands,
20:20and turning inwards to the heart of France.
20:23All the Maginot Line had achieved was to swell the fighting into neighbouring countries,
20:28and effectively hand even more of Europe to Hitler.
20:31The Germans flooded France, making good use of their tanks and air forces,
20:36despite being outnumbered on paper.
20:38Indeed, Germans' tank forces were in many ways technologically inferior to the Allies in 1940,
20:44but the Germans had far superior tactics.
20:47In the air, the British and French found themselves heavily outclassed by the vaunted German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter,
20:54and sustained heavy losses.
20:57But it would be another German plane that would gain notoriety during the Battle for France.
21:02The Ju-87 Stuka was a famed dive bomber that could attack tanks and bridges with extraordinary accuracy and potency,
21:10striking terror into ground units.
21:14Later, the aircraft would be fitted with a siren in its wings that would create a terrifying howl when it
21:19entered a dive,
21:20making it as much as a psychological weapon as a bomber.
21:36To compound problems for the Allies, the quick German succession and the failure of the Maginot Line,
21:42to keep Hitler's forces at bay, saw French morale in particular suffer terribly.
21:47Despite spirited resistance by the French army and the British expeditionary force,
21:52a sense of defeatism quickly overwhelmed them.
22:00It soon became apparent that France would fall,
22:03and so in Britain plans began to be drawn up to evacuate the BEF back to the British mainland,
22:09so they could defend Britain from what now seemed like an inevitable invasion.
22:14Dubbed Operation Dynamo, a huge armada of fishing boats, pleasure crafts and even rowboats were assembled on the south east
22:21coast of England,
22:22to make the trip across the channel to Dunkirk,
22:25where the remnants of the BEF and elements of the surviving French and Belgian armies were assembling.
22:32In this small pocket of French coastline, the British and French troops at Dunkirk were surrounded by German troops,
22:38and waited for either rescue, capture or death.
22:42Hitler wanted to send his troops to wipe them out, once and for all.
22:45But the head of the German Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, convinced him that the Air Force,
22:50which had so far proved almost unstoppable, could smash them on the beaches with fewer losses to German forces.
22:57Goering hoped that by doing this, he would gain favour with Hitler, over some of his rivals within the Nazi
23:02High Command.
23:04The evacuation began on May 27th 1940, with a fleet of little boats bearing down on the beaches to take
23:11men out, awaiting British warships.
23:14The German Luftwaffe launched a fierce aerial bombardment, and inflicted painful losses on the British.
23:19However, for the first time in war, the superiority of the Luftwaffe was finally challenged,
23:26since Dunkirk was in range of fighters flying from Britain itself.
23:31The sea and sky thus became a brutal killing field, until the evacuation ended nearly a week later on June
23:37the 4th,
23:38by which time a staggering 338,000 men had been rescued.
23:45The evacuation was seen as a victory for Britain, but those in the offices of power knew the truth.
23:51The defeat in France had not only cost the relatively small British army 68,000 men,
23:56but it had lost huge amounts of equipment, such as artillery, tanks and other assorted vehicles,
24:02that would be vital in repelling a German invasion.
24:05Churchill warned against the optimistic mood after Dunkirk, noting that wars were not won by evacuations.
24:14In the wake of the success of the evacuation, a tragedy would occur that has been largely glossed over by
24:20history,
24:21when the British ocean liner, the RMS Lancastria, attempted to escape the French port of Saint-Nazaire.
24:28The liner was taking part in Operation Aerial, which aimed to evacuate British nationals from France,
24:35when at 10 minutes to 4 on June the 17th, it was bombed by German aircraft.
24:40Exact numbers of how many men, women and children were on board is unknown,
24:45because in the chaos of the evacuation, people were crammed into every available space.
24:50But it's estimated that between 3 and 6,000 people were killed,
24:54making it the worst maritime disaster in British history.
24:59To put this into perspective, the most conservative estimates put the death toll as being twice that of the Titanic.
25:06The disaster was quickly covered up for fear of damaging national morale.
25:11On June the 10th, 1940, Mussolini waded in on the side of Nazi Germany, declaring war on Britain and France.
25:19Although Italian forces would play only a token part in the fight for France.
25:24On June the 25th, 1940, after just 46 days of fighting,
25:29Hitler's troops achieved what the Kaiser had failed to do in four years,
25:32by defeating and occupying France.
25:36France was not wholly occupied by Germany, but instead the country was split in two,
25:40with Germany occupying the northern half and the south being ruled by the Vichy French government,
25:45who were essentially German puppets.
25:48The French surrender also gave Churchill concerns that France's fleet would be absorbed into German's navy,
25:55and used to try and blockade Britain.
25:57In one of the most controversial acts during the war,
26:00on July the 3rd, he ordered the Royal Navy to demand the French warships at Maelkabur in French Algeria,
26:06to surrender to them.
26:07And when they refused, the Royal Navy bombarded them with shell fire,
26:11killing 1297 French soldiers, and sinking or damaging eight ships.
26:17With France dully suppressed, Hitler was now concerned with what to do with Britain.
26:22It wasn't in his favour to destroy them, as he believed that would only hand her empire to the Americans,
26:28who were becoming increasingly hostile to him after Poland.
26:32Believing Britain was spent after the fall of France, he sued for peace, but Churchill refused,
26:37even though he knew Britain's chances of repelling a full German invasion was slim at best.
26:43Hitler, therefore, ordered his generals to draw up plans for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain.
26:50At the same time, Germany, along with Mussolini's Italy, met with representatives of Japan,
26:55to begin negotiations for an alliance that was meant to counter the United States.
27:01This ultimately culminated in the Tripart Pact, signed on September the 27th, 1940,
27:08and saw the birth of what history now remembers as the Axis forces.
27:14Unlike Germany's previous military endeavours, the invasion of Britain had a serious obstacle in the way,
27:19namely the English Channel.
27:21Hitler's military leadership agreed that it would only be possible to cross the Channel in the summer,
27:26since the weather during the autumn and winter months would be too poor to cross safely.
27:31First, however, he would have to destroy Britain's air force,
27:34otherwise his troops would be sitting ducks to British aircraft as they sat in their invasion barges during the crossings.
27:41As Germany made their invasion preparations, Churchill readied the country to do what had to be done to defend themselves.
27:48Declassified documents show just how far he was prepared to go to repel Hitler's forces, should they land in Britain.
27:55He ordered that British forces were to use chemical and even biological weapons at any German landing zone in Britain,
28:02frequently saying that it's our country and we can do what we want to defend it.
28:07On July the 10th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe began their offensive to destroy the RAF.
28:13It was the start of the Battle of Britain and German confidence was still high after their swift defeat of
28:19Poland and Western Europe.
28:21However, unlike much of the fighting in Europe, the Luftwaffe now had to be content with a well-organised and
28:27highly integrated air defence network,
28:29centred around the RAF's fighting command, led by Sir Hugh Dowding.
28:34They were equipped with two of the best fighter aircraft in the world at the time,
28:39namely the Hawker Hurricane and the more advanced Supermarine Spitfire.
28:44Fighter Command's ranks also swelled with an influx of British Commonwealth, French, Dutch, Polish and even American pilots volunteering to
28:52fight with them.
28:54Many of whom already had combat experience during the battles for their own countries.
29:00Over the coming weeks, the RAF would rise to face the overwhelming German aircraft,
29:04but they were suffering for it as the Luftwaffe blasted their airfields in an effort to destroy their support infrastructure.
29:12On August the 13th, 1940, so many German aircraft attacked Britain that Churchill was warned that the invasion was finally
29:20underway.
29:21But despite a great deal of damage being done, the RAF was still holding out against the Germans,
29:26who were joined by the contingents of Italian aircraft.
29:30By September, Fighter Command was at its weakest point in terms of men and machines,
29:35but then British fighter production ramped up to the point where it outstripped losses and newly trained pilots began to
29:42join the fight.
29:44However, the damage to the airfields was proving more problematic.
29:48Hitler, on the other hand, was unaware that the RAF was once again growing in strength
29:53and was told by Goering that it was barely able to put any aircraft into the air.
29:58After British bombers hit targets in Berlin in response to an accidental bombing by German aircraft of London,
30:05Hitler decided to order his bombers to turn their attention away from the airfields in order to devastate London and
30:11other British cities.
30:12His belief was that British morale would be so shaken by these terror attacks that the country would collapse,
30:19forcing Churchill to surrender, thus making an armed invasion unnecessary.
30:23It was a colossal mistake.
30:25Fighter Command effectively rebuilt and reorganized itself,
30:29and by the time Hitler realized his mistake, the summer was coming to an end.
30:33The weather was worsening, RAF Fighter Command was still a potent threat,
30:38and the country's defenses had been built up to where it was no longer practical to invade.
30:43While the Germans had successfully captured the British Channel Islands, Britain herself was spared.
30:54Just as it had been in the First World War, the outbreak of war in Europe again saw the fighting
30:59spill over into the territories
31:01that European imperial powers held control of elsewhere around the world.
31:06Britain and France held territory across Africa, which Italy's Mussolini eyed jealously.
31:11And when Italy declared war on Britain and France in support of Germany,
31:16it gave him the opportunity to invade those territories from Italian possessions,
31:21such as Ethiopia, Somaliland, and most significantly Libya, which bordered British Egypt.
31:29Egypt was vital to British interests because of the Suez Canal,
31:33which linked Britain to its Far East possessions, such as Hong Kong and India,
31:38as well as the oil-rich Middle East, which both sides desperately needed access to.
31:44On September the 13th, 1940, Italian forces launched an invasion in Egypt.
31:51With Britain herself still preparing for an invasion,
31:54it was left to the small contingent of British and Commonwealth troops stationed there
31:58to defend the large border against the numerically superior Italians.
32:03At first, the Italians made good progress,
32:06eventually capturing the important airfield at Sidi Barani.
32:10However, when Hitler forced to cancel the invasion of Britain,
32:13fresh troops and equipment began to be mobilized for North Africa
32:17under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Richard O'Connor.
32:21Firstly, however, they would have to make the perilous sea voyage
32:24down the North Atlantic and into the Mediterranean,
32:27where the Italian fleet was still the dominant air force after France's surrender.
32:33Heavily outnumbered, the British concocted a daring plan to attack the Italian fleet
32:37while it was still moored in Port Taranto,
32:40using obsolete, fairy swordfish biplane bombers.
32:44On the night of November the 11th, 1940,
32:48the force of swordfish bombers took off from HMS Illustrius
32:51and caught the Italians completely by surprise.
32:55The attack inflicted severe damage on a large number of the Italians' capital ships,
32:59taking them out of the war for several months in order to be repaired,
33:03and thus severely hampering Italy's efforts to disrupt supplies to North Africa.
33:09Unfortunately, the British still had to contend with air and submarine attacks.
33:15The task of expeling Italian forces from Egypt seemed immense in the late 1940,
33:20and yet the newly arrived British forces managed to achieve just that.
33:24The British retook Sidi Barani, and by January the 3rd, 1941,
33:30were already pushing forward into Libya.
33:32In two months, a British force comprising of just two whole divisions,
33:37had advanced 500 miles, destroyed ten Italian divisions,
33:41and taken 130,000 prisoners,
33:44as well as capturing over a thousand tanks and artillery pieces.
33:49Operating from Italy, the German Luftwaffe began supporting the Italian operations from the air,
33:55but things on the ground continued to go badly for the Italians,
33:59with British forces capturing the strategic port of Toubrook on January the 22nd.
34:05Confident of Italian defeat, Churchill began his plans for helping to defend Greece and the Balkans
34:10from a joint German and Italian invasion.
34:13However, Germany decided to send two of its own divisions to help shore up Italian forces in North Africa,
34:20which would form the nucleus of its Africa Corps under the command of Erwin Rommel.
34:25Rommel was a gifted leader and tactician who understood tank warfare better than most generals in 1941.
34:32The plans of North Africa were ideal for tank combat,
34:35and Rommel's influence was almost immediately felt.
34:38He attacked El Agila on March the 24th,
34:42and then pushed east across Libya back towards Egypt.
34:46However, he failed to retake Toubrook,
34:48and instead laid siege to British garrison there,
34:51which held out for a staggering 240 days,
34:54providing a severe thorn in the side of the Axis forces and tying up resources.
35:00On April the 14th, British and Commonwealth forces had been pushed back to the border
35:05and had even captured General O'Connor and his replacement, General Neame.
35:10But Rommel's forces were struggling with the logistic problems,
35:13which Hitler feared the British could take advantage of.
35:17Fuel was such a concern for the Germans that they began efforts to steal it from the British,
35:22which resulted in British troops referring to their fuel cans as jerry cans.
35:28By May, Rommel was forced to halt his advance at Hellfire Pass in Egypt while he resupplied his forces.
35:35Under General Wavell, the British did indeed counter-attack in June,
35:40hoping to cut off Rommel's supplies and force him to surrender.
35:43But Rommel outmaneuvered him and the attack failed.
35:47As the year went on, the British became obsessed with killing Rommel,
35:51who had earned the nickname Desert Fox,
35:54and even sent a commando raid to assassinate him, which ultimately failed.
35:58For the next few months, the battle lines fluctuated,
36:02but Rommel's logistical problems continued to halt him back
36:05and worsened when Hitler began to focus more on other fronts.
36:13With Hitler being forced to call off Operation Sea Lion in 1940,
36:18the Germans recognized that their window to invade Britain had closed,
36:22and it would now be impractical to attempt another invasion.
36:26Britain was becoming Fortress Britain,
36:28and so Hitler turned to a medieval method of warfare, the siege.
36:33Hitler knew that Britain relied extremely heavily on war supplies,
36:37material, and even food coming from her empire and North America.
36:42Therefore, he turned to his navy, the Kriegsmariner,
36:45and tasked them to cut off this vital supply.
36:48The Royal Navy was still the most powerful surface fleet in the world in 1940,
36:53and while Germany had advanced warships like the Tirpitz and Bismarck,
36:58they couldn't hope to meet the Royal Navy in a pitched battle like the Kaiser's fleet.
37:02It had in World War I, without being overwhelmed by British numbers.
37:07Therefore, the German navy used their U-boats to besiege Britain.
37:12The Kaiser's U-boats had proved how vulnerable Britain was to such a weapon,
37:16but it seems Britain had learned very little from this during the inter-war years.
37:22Tactics to combat the U-boats had changed very little,
37:25and new technologies such as ASDIC, an early form of sonar,
37:29had yet to take prevalence in the fleet,
37:32meaning the main method to detect a U-boat was to spot it on the surface recharging its batteries,
37:37or when using its periscope.
37:40Aircraft was seen as ideal platforms for this,
37:43but RAF's Coastal Command had aircraft inadequate for the job at the start of the war,
37:48lacking range and weaponry,
37:49but also having to rely solely on the aircrew's eyes for detection.
37:54Meanwhile, the Royal Navy began organising merchant ships into convoys
37:59in order to provide them protection,
38:00and also began taking on trawlers from Britain's fishing fleets,
38:04and arming them to hunt U-boats.
38:07Nevertheless, the U-boats began to inflict painful losses on Britain,
38:11while efforts to destroy them at sea met with mixed success,
38:15as did RAF Bomber Command's efforts to bomb the U-boats yards in France and Norway.
38:21Churchill would later admit that the U-boats were the only thing that truly scared him during the war.
38:27However, the U-boats needed help in locating the convoys,
38:31and so the Luftwaffe used long-range Condor patrol aircraft to organise the U-boat attacks.
38:36Realising this, Britain began looking at ways of destroying these aircraft.
38:41There weren't enough aircraft carriers in the Royal Navy during the early years to protect every convoy,
38:46and so they came up with a novel solution.
38:49Catapult Merchantmen, or cam ships.
38:51These were merchant ships equipped with a catapult to launch a single Hawker Hurricane,
38:56or Fairy Fulmer fighter, to attack the Condors when they were sighted.
39:00It was a one-way mission, there being no way to recover the aircraft,
39:04which had to ditch alongside the convoy,
39:06with the pilot hoping to be picked up by a passing ship,
39:10which made it one of the most dangerous jobs of the war.
39:13The urgency to combat the U-boats saw the rapid development of technology,
39:17particularly in the field of radar.
39:19The U-boats had to ride on the surface to charge their batteries that powered them,
39:23and this was often carried out under the safety of night.
39:27However, radar had been used to combat night bomber raids,
39:31and was now being trialled against U-boats.
39:34On December the 22nd, 1941,
39:37a U-boat was sunk by a Royal Navy plane on the surface under the cover of darkness.
39:42From that point on, U-boats could be attacked anytime, anywhere.
39:47The situation was made worse for the U-boats by the addition of new, longer-ranged aircraft equipment with radar,
39:54which left fewer and fewer places for them to hide.
40:03At the same time, Mussolini's Italy opened the North African campaign.
40:08His troops also opened up another front, this time against Greece.
40:13Mussolini felt he was playing second fiddle to Hitler in Europe,
40:16and wanted to establish himself as an equal.
40:19He viewed Greece as an easy target,
40:22and began putting pressure on the country's own facet-like dictator,
40:26Ionis Metaxas.
40:27On August the 15th, 1940,
40:30an Italian submarine sank the Greek warship, Eli.
40:34Italian troops finally attacked on October the 28th, 1940,
40:38but like in North Africa, they were beaten back,
40:41despite the odds seemingly being in their favor.
40:44The Italian attack pushed Greece closer to Britain,
40:48who were desperate for allies after the fall of Western Europe.
40:50This, in turn, made Hitler take an interest in Greece,
40:54and he had his general staff start drawing up plans for his own troops
40:58to once again come to the aid of the Italians.
41:01The problem was that Germany had no land border with Greece,
41:05it being blocked by Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.
41:08Hitler demanded cooperation from both nations to allow his forces to pass through.
41:13Bulgaria agreed, and so too did Yugoslavia,
41:16both of whom joined the Axis forces.
41:19But public opinion in the latter was strongly anti-German,
41:23leading to a coup against the government and the rejection of any alliance.
41:28Outraged, Hitler ordered that when his troops invaded Greece from Bulgaria on April the 6th, 1941,
41:35that they were to concurrently invade Yugoslavia.
41:38Despite stiff resistance, Yugoslavia was overrun in just over a week and a half.
41:44Two weeks later, the Greeks surrendered,
41:46having been overwhelmed by the combined might of the German and Italians.
41:51British assistants could do little to repel the invaders,
41:54and along with the Greek forces, they retreated to the island of Crete.
41:58Consolidating his position on the Greek mainland,
42:01Hitler ordered the invasion of Crete to begin on May the 20th,
42:05and was opened with a massive attack by German paratroopers.
42:08After nearly two weeks of fierce fighting, the island fell,
42:11but while British and observers in Washington were impressed with the effectiveness of a paratroop invasion launched against them,
42:19Hitler was appalled at the cost of his forces, and never again ordered a large-scale airborne invasion.
42:28Nazi Germany's army seemed unstoppable by mid-1941,
42:32and no one became more convinced of this than Hitler himself,
42:36who, after defeating the British on mainland Europe in France and Greece,
42:40and while Rommel continued pushing them back in North Africa,
42:43decided that it was time to achieve his ultimate goal,
42:46the destruction of the Soviet Union.
42:49Hitler viewed the Soviet Union as a way of not only eradicating communism,
42:53but of feeding his thousand-year Reich by providing vast areas of agricultural land
42:58and vital resources such as oil and metals.
43:02However, Germany's generals warned the Fuhrer against invading the Soviet Union,
43:06unless Moscow attacked first.
43:09Britain herself remained unconquered,
43:11and worse still, was now sending fleets of her bombers into Europe to attack German industry.
43:16Also, the job of defending British and British Commonwealth forces in Africa,
43:21required the resources Hitler wanted to commit to fighting the Soviet Union.
43:25They believed it was better to send those forces to destroy British resistance in Africa,
43:30and then seize British possessions in the Middle East,
43:33which would afford them oil, which would starve Britain of her supplies,
43:36and eventually help force London to surrender.
43:39But Hitler was impatient.
43:41He argued that the German people would not be as supportive for a war on Russia after a few more
43:45years of fighting.
43:47Also, he believed the Soviet army was incompetent after its poor showing against Finland in the Winter War of 1939.
43:55If he waited, then the Soviet leadership might learn from their mistakes and become a more credible threat.
44:02Hitler would say we only have to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come
44:08tumbling down.
44:09He defied his generals and gave the order to attack the Soviet Union.
44:14Dubbed Operation Barbarossa, Germany committed a huge force of troops that included Romanian, Finnish and Hungarian units,
44:21who were by now signed up members of the Axis forces.
44:25The attack was launched from Occupy Polish territory at 0.300 hours on Sunday the 22nd of June 1941,
44:33and involved a staggering 3.8 million personnel launched across a 2,900 kilometer front.
44:40The German forces were arranged in three key army groups, North, Centre and South.
44:46The Soviet army had warnings that the Germans were amassing for an invasion, but Stalin refused to believe it.
44:53In the days after the invasion, Stalin retreated into his own mind.
44:57He being unable to comprehend just what was happening,
45:00which left his government, that was terrified to act against him, following his brutal purges, unsure what to do.
45:07The Soviet army sustained incredible losses in the early years of the war,
45:11while the Soviet air force was largely smashed on the ground.
45:14The aircraft that did get airborne were often obsolete types or their pilots poorly trained,
45:21making them easy targets for skilled and experienced German fighter pilots.
45:26The Soviets also had to contend with anti-communist forces conducting sabotage
45:31and intelligence gathering operations from the Germans.
45:35The fighting in the east was particularly brutal.
45:38Hitler had told his forces that a war against the Soviet Union could not be fought along civilized lines.
45:45And as such, he promised no German would ever be held accountable for his conduct against the enemy.
45:51In a sense, they were given a free hand to rape, plunder and murder.
45:55When Soviet units were overwhelmed, many of them surrendered as their command structure collapsed,
46:01and these soldiers were led into captivity, where there was an actual plan in place to starve them to death.
46:07Behind the German troops' advance, German death squads began murdering so-called undesirables, such as Jews.
46:14The speed of the German advance took everyone by surprise, including the Germans themselves.
46:20The vast areas of land Germany's forces took proved a logistical nightmare,
46:25and on several occasions, they lost the initiative as they waited for supplies of food, fuel, and rearmament to catch
46:31up with them.
46:32The Germans advanced across eastern Poland, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and into Russia itself,
46:41proving almost unstoppable.
46:42But everyone knew that the biggest obstacle the Germans would have to face was rapidly approaching.
46:48The Russian winter.
46:50By December 1941, the snow was setting in, but German troops were on the verge of taking Moscow itself.
46:57However, they failed to take the embattled city, and their advance ground to a halt.
47:02The Soviet Union's leadership, meanwhile, had relocated their major weapons production facilities further east,
47:08out of the range of German bombers, which allowed them to build tanks and aircraft unmolested.
47:13They were also getting supplies from Britain, thanks to the efforts of the men on the perilous Arctic convoys.
47:20The German army leadership knew the truth, even if Hitler remained convinced of Germany's superiority.
47:26They had lost their window of opportunity to destroy the Soviet Union quickly.
47:31Now the Soviets were engaged, committed, and far more prepared for the coming war of attrition than Germany was.
47:37In Mein Kampf, Hitler had outlined that Germany could not fight a prolonged war on two fronts.
47:43Yet at the end of 1941, he was effectively committed to three fronts.
47:47Britain in the west, British Commonwealth forces in North Africa, and now the Soviet Union in the east.
47:54And while the snow fell on German soldiers in Russia, ill-equipped for winter warfare,
48:00a world away in the tropical climate of Hawaii, a fleet of Japanese ships were closing in on the American
48:06naval base at Pearl Harbor.
48:08This war of rain in the east is dead in the north, in the east.
48:09E.E.C. Super Bowl and the mountains were 15-40.
Comments