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00:07In just two weeks, the German army storms across France and Belgium,
00:12pushing hundreds of thousands of British and French soldiers to the sea at Dunkirk.
00:19They have revolutionized warfare.
00:21They've realized that speed of movement is now the key.
00:25So you create these armored formations that move fast.
00:31They're harnessing new panzer techniques with radio technology and the support of the Luftwaffe.
00:37That's the new thing.
00:40A brutal aerial bombardment.
00:44Fast-moving tanks.
00:47A superhuman infantry.
00:49This is Blitzkrieg. Lightning war.
00:53Blitzkrieg, it means speed.
00:55Maneuver warfare, a campaign which is focused on a very quick, decisive battle.
01:03Blitzkrieg is one of the most extraordinary events of World War II.
01:15Now, rare footage from around the world, expertly restored in full color, tells the story as you've never seen it
01:24before.
01:29After their defeat in World War I, the fiercely proud German people are utterly humiliated.
01:36The punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles rub salt in the wounds.
01:40The global industrial power is limited to an army of only 100,000 men and loses territory.
01:53The Germans feel very put upon by the Treaty of Versailles because it essentially says that the Germans are guilty
02:01of starting the war.
02:05There's no question that most Germans felt outraged by the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
02:11The shrinking of the army to just 100,000 and the loss of territory and these massive reparations,
02:17which everybody knew were going to have serious economic consequences.
02:20And the reason they objected was because it implied that Germany was responsible for the First World War and this
02:27was their punishment.
02:31How could their powerful nation have lost?
02:34And why are they made to cede land to lesser nations?
02:40The territorial losses are quite significant.
02:43They lose territory in the east to the Poles and to the Czechs.
02:47And they're forced to demilitarize the Rhinelands so they can't use it as a launch pad for a renewed invasion
02:52of Belgium and France.
02:54Feeding on the resentment, a populist rabble rouser taps into wounded German pride and promises to take back what has
03:02been lost.
03:03Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party start to build a mass following him.
03:08The German people see him as a savior, a man to restore their once great nation.
03:15There was a feeling in Germany that most Germans felt when the Versailles Treaty was passed that the provisions were
03:24unnecessarily draconian.
03:25Both the loss of territory and also these massive war reparations.
03:30And what the Versailles Treaty did in effect is blame Germany for the First World War.
03:34Whereas many Germans felt that actually they were no more responsible than any of the other countries.
03:39And so this rankled.
03:50Hitler correctly diagnoses that the Germans are suffering a great deal of political and economic insecurity.
03:56What they need most of all is a sense of unity and a sense of economic security.
04:01It's kind of a floor underneath them.
04:02And the Nazis provide this by talking about, you know, state intervention in all sorts of areas to create employment,
04:09building the Autobahns, things like that.
04:12Hitlers Herrschaft is in den ersten Jahren aus der Sicht der meisten Deutschen eine Erfolgsgeschichte.
04:18Hitler gelingt es nach und nach, die Vorschriften des Versailler Vertrages außer Kraft zu setzen.
04:28In violation of the treaty, Hitler builds up his army, testing the tolerance of the Allies, gambling that no one
04:36wants to start another war.
04:39He introduces compulsory military service in 1935 and marches back into the Rhineland the following year with 30,000 troops.
04:51If you think about Hitler's long-term plan, it is to consolidate his position on the European continent, defeat the
04:58Western powers, France and Britain.
05:00And then he's going to turn his attention to the East, which he sees as the natural field for German
05:05expansion, a place where that he can then build out the German population, gather in resources and defeat the monster
05:12of Bolshevism, which he sees as being kind of the blood enemy of fascism.
05:20When the Nazis brazenly march into Austria on the 12th of March, 1938, they are greeted with open arms by
05:28the Austrian people.
05:31The Western Allies do nothing.
05:35The Western Allies pretty much stood by and let it happen.
05:39And one of the reasons they did that is because they felt that the Austrians probably wanted to join with
05:44the Germans,
05:44therefore they weren't actually being forced.
05:50There are always extraordinary breaks of the Versailles agreement, but the Allies don't react.
05:57Many of you think, well, maybe Germany has too much reduced the Versailles agreement.
06:04And that they want to raise the status again, we can understand.
06:09And on the other hand, the Allies don't want to risk a new war.
06:14A war, you know, from the First World War, means thousands, if not even millions of dead people, and that
06:21they want to prevent.
06:24With Austria now in German hands, Hitler makes public his goal to incorporate areas of Czechoslovakia into the growing German
06:33footprint.
06:34It's a country rich in natural resources like iron.
06:38The statements alarm the Allies, but still they want to avoid conflict.
06:48In September 1938, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, flies to Germany three times to attempt to dissuade Hitler from
06:57invading Czechoslovakia.
07:00I used to repeat, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.
07:09That's what I'm doing.
07:12On his third visit, he joins French Prime Minister Edouard Deladier and Benito Mussolini of Italy at what becomes known
07:21as the Munich Conference.
07:23They agree with Hitler that Germany can annex the German-speaking Sudetenland, but not make an attempt to invade the
07:31rest of Czechoslovakia.
07:32The following morning, Chamberlain signs a separate agreement with Hitler, a peace deal between Britain and Germany.
07:42Chamberlain is greeted as a hero.
07:46Chamberlain returns to Heston Airport in London, waves his piece of paper and talks about peace in our time.
07:52And this is a separate deal that he has done privately with Hitler.
08:03This morning, I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler.
08:12And here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.
08:22He's averted war.
08:23There's absolutely no question that Hitler is absolutely chomping at the bit to go in with all guns blazing into
08:29Czechoslovakia.
08:29That has been avoided.
08:31We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our
08:39two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
08:44As Chamberlain delivers his speech, German forces prepare to march into the Sudetenland.
08:51March 1939, Hitler invades the rest of Czechoslovakia.
08:57It is clear that Hitler's plan isn't just to regain territory, but to expand Germany's borders further east.
09:05Hitler's intention ultimately is to create a huge German empire in Central and Eastern Europe.
09:11Are they prepared to go to war?
09:13So he's just got to keep pushing, slowly but surely.
09:16And one after another, these crucial countries, Austria, Czechoslovakia, slowly the dominoes will fall.
09:22And he's going to be able to carve out for himself this huge new empire, this living room for the
09:27German people.
09:29France and Britain become increasingly anxious that Hitler's next move will be Poland.
09:35They draw a line in the sand.
09:37If Hitler invades Poland, they will declare war.
09:41Hitler doesn't believe them.
09:44The German Chancellor is more worried about how his avowed enemies, the Soviets, will react.
09:52August 1939, Hitler declares a non-aggression pact with his ideological enemy, Stalin, in which they agree not to attack
10:02each other.
10:02While the Western Allies struggle to understand this unlikely alliance, on September the 1st, the two countries reveal their hands
10:11when Hitler invades Western Poland.
10:18The Polish army on their horses are no match for the German panzers, but they put up a valiant fight.
10:2616 days later, the Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.
10:34It's a very cynical deal.
10:36What the Russians are going to get out of it is a free hand in a lot of the east,
10:39including the recovery of some of the territories that they've lost at the end of the First World War.
10:42And what the Germans are going to get out of it is a free hand to invade Poland without worry
10:49that the Russians are going to react against that.
10:51In fact, they've done a deal to divide the country up between them.
10:56True to their word, on the 3rd of September 1939, Britain and France declare war on Germany.
11:04It's a move Hitler didn't see coming.
11:08When he actually hears that the United Kingdom's declared war on him, in particular, he's horrified and he says to
11:15one of his advisors, what next?
11:16Because all along, he hadn't believed that they would actually go to war over an issue in Eastern Europe.
11:31The next day, troops from the British Expeditionary Force, the BEF, set sail for France to join forces with the
11:40world's most powerful army.
11:42They move up to the Belgian border, where they prepare for any German attack.
11:49Royal Engineers Private Percy Taylor Beaton, who was called up in London and was soon on a boat, bound for
11:56Cherbourg in France.
11:59Well, people cheered and they made a fuss and that.
12:01There was bags of cheers and things like this of people going away.
12:04The people in the streets, you know, when they saw us and that, they cheered us.
12:07You know, when the coach left Bethnal Green with people there, they turned out in their thousands and they were
12:11cheering us and waving us off.
12:14Everybody didn't think about the war.
12:16I don't think they thought, oh, it's going to pass over.
12:20And then, of course, once we got to France, it was like a holiday at the beginning.
12:24Hard-working holiday it was.
12:31In fact, Hitler is far from ready to fight the combined British and French armies.
12:37It takes his army over 20 days to defeat the Poles.
12:42Polish resistance has given Hitler's armed forces a major battering and they have lost a substantial number of their armored
12:50vehicles.
13:15We have not well-trained soldiers, we have no supply, no ammunition, whatever.
13:20Poland was the proof that we possibly are not able to fight against a proper army.
13:26And France is a proper army.
13:27France is the best trained, best equipped army in Europe.
13:31How can we, as Germans, win?
13:35No way.
13:36We are going to lose.
14:01The French army has a formidable artillery.
14:05And over 3,000 tanks on the northeast front.
14:09800 more than the Germans.
14:13Despite facing a weakened German army and holding an overwhelming military advantage, the Allies choose to dig in, not to
14:21attack.
14:27What you then get after the outbreak of war in 1939 is this long period known as the Phony War,
14:34in which the Germans are deciding what to do next and the Allies are waiting.
14:48One of the reasons the Allies were acting on the defensive is because the French had built this huge defensive
14:53system, the Maginot Line, on the Franco-German border to prevent the sort of bloodshed that had happened in the
15:00First World War.
15:07While the Allies wait, Hitler assesses how to respond.
15:12His sights had been set on the east.
15:14Now he had to deal with an unexpected threat from the west.
15:19Hermann Göring leads the generals in a campaign to convince him not to start a war with France.
15:26So they present him with a plan destined to fail.
15:30All the generals were against it and said, no, don't negotiate, do something, but we can't solve that problem with
15:43military means.
15:46And then they presented a rather boring war plan to Hitler and Hitler said, you know, look, what's that?
15:51I mean, that's the same thing as 1914.
15:54Where are new ideas?
15:56Where are fresh ideas?
15:57This is not going to work.
16:00German military leadership doesn't want to have that war.
16:04Their vision in end of 1939, Hitler is pushing for an attack on France.
16:10And their perception is, we're going to lose.
16:13I mean, look, in the First World War, we fought four years against France with a huge army, a much
16:18better trained army, and we lost.
16:23The original plan drawn up by Hitler's conservative generals follows the playbook from the First World War to invade Holland
16:31and Belgium from the north, as well as northern France.
16:36It is a plan that plays to the strength of the Allies, deliberately designed to end in disaster.
16:47How can you persuade a dictator not to do it?
16:51You can't say, you know, you're an idiot and you have to negotiate.
16:54But if you persuade him from a military side, it's not possible.
17:01We're going to lose.
17:03That was, in the end, somehow the plan.
17:07Don't offer him a plan which might work.
17:11But one ambitious general, the Prussian aristocrat Erich von Manstein, falls out of step.
17:18He suggests a plan with a far greater chance of success.
17:21Once the conservative generals move quickly to shut him down.
17:27Manstein feels very strongly that they will be able to take advantage of the sort of disorienting effects of driving
17:34quickly into the French lines by attacking them much faster than they expect.
17:38They'll be able to push the French back and completely disorganize their command arrangements.
17:44And so, so much confusion that they'll be able to make great progress and the infantry will follow and they'll
17:49literally rip the French army apart from the inside.
17:57With Manstein's plan shown, Hitler makes use of the phony war to secure a supply of iron ore for weapons.
18:04His forces invade Denmark and southern Norway.
18:08The British spot the danger.
18:11Germany, to secure its northern flank and its route out of the Baltic, decided to invade Norway and Denmark on
18:20the 9th of April 1940.
18:28And the British in particular responded by trying to land troops in Norway.
18:38It's going to give a lot of valuable resources, iron ore and other resources in Norway, to the Germans and
18:44they need to forestall this.
18:47Ill-prepared to respond to the attack, the Allies land troops in Norway, but their operation is half-hearted and
18:55incompetent.
18:56The Germans deploy their powerful new force, the Luftwaffe, to great effect.
19:02Its Stuka dive bombers weak havoc with the Allied forces.
19:09It's a kind of terrible humiliation for the Western Allies.
19:12And by the beginning of May 1940, all Allied troops have left Norway, and it's firmly in German hands.
19:29Meanwhile, the persistent General Manstein finds a moment to unveil his plan to Hitler.
19:36He knows he will only get one chance.
19:40Manstein sees an opportunity to change Hitler's mind.
19:42And so he says, look, we need to do something different.
19:44Let's do this.
19:45Let's take full advantage of our panzer divisions and the Luftwaffe.
19:48And let's use the element of surprise.
19:50Do something they will never expect.
19:51And so Hitler endorses this plan.
19:53Seems much bolder.
19:54Seems much more likely to bring a rapid success than the more ponderous plan agreed upon by his general staff.
20:03On the 10th of May, the British Prime Minister, Neddell Chamberlain, is forced to resign over the Norway debacle.
20:12He is replaced by Winston Churchill.
20:17Churchill's a maverick.
20:18He's got a checkered political career.
20:20But he was the one, right the way through the 1930s, who was insisting that we shouldn't appease Hitler.
20:25We needed to stand up against him.
20:27And now, finally, Churchill has given his chance to lead the British in war.
20:33In his first speech to the House of Commons, the new premier announces...
20:38I would say to the House, as I said to those who've joined the government,
20:44I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
21:01On the day Churchill becomes Prime Minister,
21:04Germany launches a devastating attack on Belgium and Holland.
21:10German parachutists capture strategic bridges in Holland.
21:20The Luftwaffe bombs airfields.
21:24Airborne troops drop to overwhelm its tiny neighbors.
21:31It seems clear that Hitler intends to grab the channel ports
21:35and acquire bases from which he could eventually invade Great Britain.
21:42They have to seize those channel ports,
21:44because otherwise the German navy is in a backwater.
21:47They're in the North Sea and the Baltic, and they can't get out.
21:50Whereas if they can get those channel ports,
21:53and then they can get the French Atlantic ports,
21:54they can then have access to the open seas.
21:57The Allies are well prepared for this move and respond quickly,
22:02pushing their best forces into Belgium to meet the attack.
22:06At this point, reconnaissance planes send back confusing news from the south.
22:12They report a huge military traffic jam along the road to the Ardennes,
22:17stretching all the way back across the German border.
22:23The problem is, is the French refuse to believe what they're being reported by reconnaissance pilots.
22:29General Gamalain, commander-in-chief of all French forces,
22:32said that's impossible.
22:33That can't be true.
22:34And so it was ignored.
22:37It was a terrible mistake, as Manstein's master plan unfolds.
22:43The reconnaissance was correct.
22:45The Germans had been amassing in the Ardennes,
22:48and now they plunge through the woods and thunder across the river Meuse on the French border.
22:55The French are going to have just a skeleton force on the Meuse beyond the Ardennes,
22:59because they're never going to expect us to come through here.
23:03The invasions of Holland and Belgium were designed to lure the Allies north.
23:10They want to draw the cream of the Allied armies in northern France into Belgium,
23:15and also into southern Holland,
23:17so that the actual attack to the Ardennes can come through behind them and cut them off.
23:23This is our cunning plan.
23:25We are going to encircle them in Belgium.
23:27We also secretly attack the Ardennes in this difficult area.
23:33We will be crossing the Meuse,
23:34and then dashing through to the channel
23:37and encircling the British expeditionary force and the French army in Belgium.
23:44We have to protect the Allies by surprise.
23:48It's always a major aspect of winning a war,
23:50surprise your enemies.
24:00The operation will also use time, speed, and daring
24:05to make up for the inferiority of the German military.
24:12It uses all of these modern technologies.
24:15It promises a quick victory,
24:18and it suggests that he might not only defeat the French army,
24:22but annihilate the entire British army.
24:25The new British Prime Minister, Churchill,
24:28has been plunged into a nightmare
24:29as German tanks rampage towards the French border city of Sedan.
24:37Had the French taken their own reconnaissance seriously,
24:41they would have had the German army at their mercy.
24:44The military bottleneck had left the German artillery incredibly vulnerable.
24:51It turns into the biggest gridlock in the history of gridlocks.
24:56Now, a French reconnaissance plane flies over and sees this.
24:58Now, at that point,
25:00it would have been perfectly possible
25:01to organise every single French and British bomber available
25:04and go and bomb it.
25:05It would have stopped the German advance in its tracks.
25:08That would have been the end of the war,
25:09and the whole thing would have been avoided.
25:10I mean, it makes me so cross every time I think about it.
25:12I mean, it was just such a missed opportunity.
25:18The Germans push home their advantage
25:20with an astonishing display of speed.
25:23Before the French can react,
25:25they charge towards the French border town, Sedan.
25:29Infantry, tanks and artillery
25:31show incredible levels of stamina,
25:34outrunning the enemy defence forces.
25:36Barely stopping,
25:37they reach Sedan in three days,
25:40Many German soldiers haven't slept
25:42since the start of the campaign.
25:44The French can't quite believe it.
25:48The German tanks rolled into Sedan without opposition.
25:52The French defences are unexpectedly confronted
25:55by 60,000 rampaging Germans
25:58in 22,000 vehicles and 850 tanks.
26:03After three days on the march,
26:05the Germans have no intention of stopping.
26:07They prepare to cross the river Murs in three places.
26:14The plan is a textbook example of the Wehrgunskrieg,
26:19a warfare manoeuvre the Germans are already well known for.
26:26The architect is Heinz Guderian,
26:29a general who knows how to combine new technology
26:32with the traditional German approach to warfare,
26:35attacking the enemy with overwhelming force
26:38and encircling them before they can react.
26:43What Guderian is very good at doing is harnessing new methods,
26:49the Luftwaffe as aerial artillery,
26:52new mobile equipment,
26:54trucks, mobile artillery,
26:56and of course panzers, tanks,
26:58but also radio technology too.
27:01French commander General Maurice Gamler orders that Sedan must be defended at all costs,
27:07but he has prepared his troops for a repeat of the grinding attrition of the First World War.
27:13When they're suddenly confronted by the need to be mobile,
27:16they don't know what to do.
27:17No one expects the nightmare about to unfold.
27:22Wave after wave of dive bombers pummel the French defensive positions.
27:27Hardly a single bunker suffers a direct hit
27:31and only 56 casualties are taken.
27:34But the psychological effect of the screaming bombers
27:37and the whistling bombs is devastating.
27:57I can only conclude that this is a legacy of the First World War.
28:00Those four long, brutal years of fighting
28:03in which enormous quantities of Frenchmen have died.
28:06And there's a feeling among Frenchmen just a generation later
28:09that they don't want to go through it again.
28:12In the confusion, German infantry flood across the Meuse.
28:17It's a dangerous move.
28:19The German forces are isolated and open to counterattack.
28:23By the evening of the 13th of May,
28:25although a certain number of Germans have got across the river,
28:28they are very vulnerable.
28:30No tanks have actually got across at this point.
28:32And this is an opportunity for the French to actually counterattack.
28:38But, shell-shocked, the French tank drivers are slow to react.
28:43By the time they finally sorted themselves out
28:46and the attack is put in on the 14th,
28:48Guderian's got enough armor over the river
28:50on pontoon bridges built by his pioneers
28:53to actually knock out those French tanks.
28:58What they don't have is any kind of tactical knouse whatsoever.
29:02The biggest failure of all for the French
29:03is that they haven't thought about communications at all.
29:09So, Gérard Gamelin,
29:10who is the commander-in-chief of all French forces,
29:12is at the Chateau of Vincennes, just in the edge of Paris.
29:15He doesn't even have a telephone
29:17because he thinks it will be a security risk.
29:19I mean, it's just insane.
29:23The French are dependent on field telephone lines
29:26which get cut by stukas
29:28and on dispatch riders
29:30who take ages to get messages through
29:32because the roads are clogged with refugees.
29:41The French believed it would take the Germans
29:44two weeks to reach Sedan.
29:47Not three days.
29:49In three days and nights,
29:51the fearless, relentless onslaught never stopped.
29:56The soldiers performed like supermen.
29:59It became increasingly clear
30:00that this German army
30:02was unlike anything seen before.
30:07What the French didn't know
30:08is that the German army had a secret weapon.
30:12The weapon was manufactured
30:14by the Berlin drug company called Temmler.
30:18Pervitin is a powerful meth-amphetamine,
30:22known on the streets today as crystal meth.
30:25Already sold as an over-the-counter pick-me-up in Germany.
30:29The drug proves invaluable in the theater of war.
30:38Pervitin would be used by German civilians.
31:00They'd get it in a pharmacy
31:01and it would be used to be alert and stay awake
31:03and get a lot of stuff done.
31:05As the war drags on,
31:06you start seeing Pervitin being issued
31:08to German troops and airmen like candy.
31:12Methamphetamine can dull feelings of empathy
31:15and make you feel superhuman.
31:17The very qualities needed
31:19to create a near-perfect soldier.
31:22There are many reports
31:24that just before the attack started
31:26on May 10th, 1940,
31:28there were a lot of soldiers
31:29who were depressed,
31:30who didn't want to fight,
31:31who remembered the First World War.
31:35So the morale of the Germans was quite low,
31:38but once you take methamphetamine,
31:40your morale actually becomes quite high.
31:44The German tactic of Blitzkrieg
31:46relied on overwhelming air superiority,
31:49super-fast tanks,
31:51up-to-the-minute communications,
31:53and a tireless and fearless militia.
31:56For the first time in military history,
31:59an army did not have to rest at night
32:02but could go on for three days and three nights.
32:04So without Pervitin,
32:06this obviously wouldn't have worked.
32:12It really helps a person
32:14to become a fighting robot.
32:17Imagine this on the scale
32:19of a couple of hundred thousand people,
32:21heavily armed,
32:22storming into enemy territory.
32:23It just becomes a completely crazy situation.
32:31The side effect of Pervitin
32:32is it does make you a little bit reckless.
32:34It gives you what's, you know,
32:36Dutch courage.
32:37On the 13th of May,
32:38when they're crossing River Merse,
32:40because these guys have just got to keep going,
32:42the fighting goes on until dusk and beyond.
32:45How do you keep them going?
32:46Well, you know,
32:47popping a Pervitin tablet
32:49just on that one occasion
32:50is possibly not a bad idea.
32:53I mean, it's better to suffer
32:54the after-effects of Pervitin
32:55than be dead.
33:00To the north,
33:01the decoy assault is gathering pace.
33:04The Germans bombard the port of Rotterdam,
33:06killing around 1,000 people.
33:12So shocked are the Dutch
33:14by the number of casualties
33:16and the gutting of the centre of Rotterdam
33:19that actually encourages them to give up.
33:21So already, in just four days,
33:23the Dutch are knocked out of the fight.
33:29With the French defences smashed at Sedan,
33:33Kuderian is ordered to halt his advance
33:35and wait for the infantry to catch up.
33:37He ignores them.
33:39Flanked by his officers on motorcycles,
33:42he charges out in front of his tanks
33:45through the French countryside.
33:48Kuderian is very dynamic,
33:50he's smart, he's well-read,
33:51he's hugely experienced,
33:52and he's not afraid of trying new things.
33:56And he's not one who's shy of making decisions either.
34:01Do I just ignore my superior officer's orders
34:03and go for it
34:05and potentially win Germany this amazing victory?
34:08Or do I hold fire
34:09and wait for the infantry just to catch up,
34:12thereby potentially losing momentum
34:14and all the rest of it?
34:15And he thinks,
34:16to hell with it,
34:17I'm going to go for it.
34:19The Prime Minister of France,
34:20Paul Reynaud,
34:22is shocked by the speed of the German advance.
34:25He calls Britain's new Prime Minister
34:27with terrible news.
34:29Reynaud, you could tell,
34:31was in a terrible panic.
34:32He contacts Churchill,
34:33he speaks to him on the telephone,
34:34and he basically says the battle is lost.
34:37Already, in just five days,
34:39I think the battle is lost.
34:40The Germans have broken through
34:41in such numbers
34:42that I don't think we can stop them.
34:46The Germans are closing in on the French capital,
34:49and Churchill fears that the French
34:52are unable to respond quickly enough
34:54to mount the rapid counter-attack that is needed.
34:58Churchill saw that everything was collapsing,
35:01and in that very moment,
35:02it was important
35:04that the French are continuing the fight
35:07and reacting and fighting and fighting and fighting
35:09and counter-offensives and again and again
35:12and not being in this totally mental breakdown.
35:17On the 16th of May,
35:19just six days after taking office,
35:21Churchill flies to Paris
35:23to try and stiffen French resolve.
35:27What he's determined to do
35:29is to somehow keep the French in the fight,
35:31because if the French fall out,
35:33it's Britain alone.
35:40On the 20th of May, 1940,
35:43just ten days after setting out from the German border,
35:47Guterian's decision to ignore his superiors
35:49is vindicated as he reaches the Atlantic coast.
35:55Well, that actually takes quite a bit of courage
35:56to make a decision like that,
35:58you know, because if you get it wrong,
36:00and it's not a success and it ends in defeat,
36:02you're in big, big trouble,
36:03particularly in a totalitarian, militaristic state
36:05like Nazi Germany.
36:06But, you know, he has the courage of his convictions,
36:08and he goes for it,
36:09and, of course,
36:10it's absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented in history.
36:13Hitler's great gamble on Manstein's plan has paid off.
36:17The bulk of the Allied forces
36:19are now trapped in a narrow corridor.
36:22It means that those Allied armies further north,
36:25including the whole of the British Expeditionary Force,
36:28have been cut off from their lines of supply.
36:30So those troops in Belgium,
36:32who are surrounded, of course,
36:34on all sides now by Germans,
36:36who are fighting also in Belgium and also in Holland,
36:38are completely surrounded by German forces,
36:41and their only way out is either by cutting through them
36:44or being rescued from the Channel Coast.
36:51It will take Guderian no more than a few days
36:54to block off that last escape route to the coast
36:57and thus encircle a million Allied soldiers.
37:02Having become trapped in this pocket,
37:04the British start to make plans
37:06to evacuate their troops by sea,
37:08and Churchill settles on Calais
37:10as the best place to bring in large ships.
37:15So he sends three elite British regiments to hold it,
37:18and they're all sacrificed.
37:19The Germans annihilate them,
37:20and they lose Calais.
37:22The loss of life is daunting,
37:25but the distraction buys the BEF time to make other plans.
37:29The decision to send the troops to Calais
37:32is actually a key bit of the story,
37:33because without that blocking force,
37:35which was ultimately captured by the Germans,
37:38the rest of the BEF
37:39and the French armies fighting alongside it
37:41are not going to have enough time
37:42to get to the coast at Dunkirk
37:44to construct a defensive perimeter
37:47that will allow them to be rescued.
37:54Just as it seems that hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers
37:58are within hours of being slaughtered or captured,
38:01Hitler makes a highly controversial decision.
38:07As the Germans, the Alliators,
38:09have been forced to get back to the canalhäfen,
38:14and they've been forced to get back to the canalhäfen,
38:15Hitler gives a warning to the halt.
38:20The German tank officers thought,
38:22I mean, are they crazy?
38:24Are they mad?
38:24We are going to win.
38:25Yes, we are exhausted, yes, we are short of supplies, but speed is our lifeline.
38:33Stopping is not an option.
38:34But then they got the clear order.
38:36So yes, they stopped.
38:38And they were asking themselves, what the hell is going on here?
38:43And that's ridiculous.
39:02The man behind the decision is Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring.
39:09He convinces Hitler that the honor of annihilating the Allied soldiers should fall not to the German Army, but to
39:17the Nazi-dominated Air Force.
39:20Hermann Göring was a very influential Nazi.
39:22And he'd been touting the Luftwaffe as the arm, the weapon of the future.
39:26And he was like, look, let me unleash the Luftwaffe.
39:29These are sitting ducks on the beach.
39:31I can destroy them from the air.
39:32And you can use the army.
39:34You can move south and destroy the rest of the French Army, take Paris and pursue them across the Loire,
39:39if that's the direction they take.
39:40And the Luftwaffe can do this, you know, without wasting the field army.
39:50As a time in Versailles, the German people took this wonderful weapon, there was no one knew, that under the
40:00leadership of Adolf Hitlers, this new weapon would be stronger and stronger again.
40:12But Göring's plan soon starts to unravel.
40:20Very conveniently for the British, there is ten tenths cloud cover for most of the evacuation period, which is made
40:26worse by the fact that the Germans have already bombed the old refinery at Dunkirk.
40:29And vast clouds of black smoke are pitching 15,000 feet into the sky.
40:34So basically, they can't actually see anything.
40:38The poor visibility makes it very difficult for the Luftwaffe to dive bomb.
40:43And even when the clouds start to disperse, the Stukas struggle to hit their targets.
40:49From 6,000 feet when you're starting your dive bombing, a destroyer crammed full of men just looks like a
40:55pencil.
40:55And it's kind of sort of wobbling around all over the place.
40:57And it's incredibly difficult to hit something that isn't moving from that distance.
41:06Göring's planes also find themselves facing an unexpected weapon.
41:10Among the squadrons sent to defend the evacuation by the RAF's Fighter Command in the south of England is a
41:17brilliant new fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire.
41:23For the first time, the Fighter Command was able to break the German air superiority.
41:29They're sending Spitfires and Hurricanes from southeast England over to Dunkirk to cover the evacuation.
41:36And actually, they do a pretty good job.
41:37They suffer as well, but they're pretty effective.
41:40And they shoot down dive bombers, German dive bombers, in their droves.
41:46The Luftwaffe bombs a number of Royal Navy ships, but it fails to annihilate the British and French forces on
41:55the Bee Gees, or their rescue boats, as Göring had hoped.
42:02Royal Engineers Private Cecil Ingram recalls the evacuation.
42:08It was a mass of soldiers, and we were being dive-bombed the whole time.
42:14So you were trying to make yourself as safe as possible by sort of burying into the sand as far
42:22as you could go.
42:23You know, you were lying low.
42:25You could hear and see these Stuka bombers coming down, and their horrendous noise as they revved up and dived
42:33down.
42:33And, to be honest, I was quite scared.
42:38You didn't know what was happening.
42:40It was, you know, communications had completely broken down.
42:44I think the word to use it was chaotic.
42:46So I eventually got up, walked into the water with my rifle aloft, very wet.
42:54I managed to get onto a naval ship.
42:57My feet were bleeding.
42:58I spent the journey over to England, lying on the deck of this ship.
43:06Royal Army Service Corps Private Stanley William Priest survived a German air attack over the channel.
43:13We entered Inco during an air raid, and there were several severe air raids.
43:17A direct hit would have killed a hundred.
43:20And we saw some planes approaching, and a machine gun, a boat, killing 60 or so, and wounding many others,
43:27including myself.
43:29I took shelter in a little alcove.
43:32The bullets were passing an inch or two from my feet.
43:35So had I been on deck, I'd have almost certainly been killed.
43:40But I lost a finger, and I got a bullet to my shoulder.
43:43The best Churchill was hoping for was to save 45,000 soldiers from death or capture.
43:51But thanks to the Navy, the little ships, and the RAF, almost 340,000 were rescued.
43:58They got together enormous numbers of seagoing craft run by civilians.
44:05And these people sailed voluntarily across the channel at risk of life and limb to coordinate with the Royal Navy
44:12to rescue a huge proportion of the troops at Dunkirk.
44:19Goering is humiliated.
44:21Having failed to stop the British evacuation from Dunkirk, Hitler now turns the army towards Paris.
44:29In an effort to prevent their beloved capital city being reduced to rubble, the French flee, leaving it to be
44:37captured, undefended.
44:39There's no doubt that the French were aware of the German use of bombing at Rotterdam, and also previously against
44:46the Poles at Warsaw,
44:47and the terrible damage that was done to those cities.
44:49And they did not want the same thing to happen to all the architectural jewels in Paris.
44:54They declare it an open city and move the government further south.
44:59The Germans march in on the 14th of June.
45:05The French government moves first to the city of Tours, and then to Bordeaux.
45:10Prime Minister Reynaud is replaced by 84-year-old First World War hero, Marshal Philippe Pétain.
45:18Pétain is a bit of a defeatist.
45:21He's pretty convinced that the French have lost the battle.
45:23The most important thing to do now is to avoid revolution, avoid the French army from collapsing completely,
45:29and the best way to do that is to negotiate an armistice.
45:33The north of France and the Atlantic seaboard are now occupied by the Germans.
45:38The south is designated as the unoccupied zone, and run as a puppet regime by Marshal Pétain from the spa
45:46town of Vichy.
45:49Pétain's authoritarian regime replaces the French motto,
45:53Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, with a new slogan, work, family, fatherland.
46:00Hundreds of thousands of French workers are deported to Nazi Germany to work as forced labor for the war effort.
46:07They replaced Germans who were being enlisted to fight on the Eastern Front.
46:11The speed of the German victory was astonishing.
46:16Blitzkrieg was a brilliant success.
46:19The German generals always had in mind, I want to have the perfect battle.
46:24So war is an art.
46:28The Germans attacked with an inferior army, inferior in numbers, inferior in quality, but superior in their mentality.
46:37We as generals just want to have the perfect battle.
46:41And so the whole war plan in 1940 aimed for the perfect battle.
46:47And it was possible because the British and the French did every mistake and made every mistake they could make.
46:57The Nazis exploit their triumphant victory over the French to create a huge spectacle for the newsreels,
47:04which finally expunges the humiliating experiences endured in the First World War.
47:11The German victory over France was the biggest victory of German military history.
47:16So it was really an outstanding event for Germany.
47:20And Hitler was quite clever to create a, say, a propaganda coup of how to signing the armistice.
47:29It was not just done somewhere in a hidden place in signing a document, but it was really made up
47:35for the propaganda.
47:38This time it is Hitler's moment to gloat.
47:41In a repeat of the November 1918 armistice, he orders the very same railway carriage back to the same place
47:50at Compiègne,
47:51where the Germans surrendered in the First World War.
47:54This time it would be the French who would be paraded in disgrace in front of the cameras.
48:02He took the railway carriage out of the museum, put it on the very place where it was used in
48:11the First World War.
48:12And at that very place, the French leadership had to sign the armistice.
48:17And the symbol was, with that victory, we, you know, somehow react on the defeat of the First World War.
48:30There were cameras there, it was in all the press.
48:33And only a few days later, interesting enough, he decides to take the railway carriage back to Germany
48:38and to destroy the site of the 1918 armistice, which, of course, had always been a humiliation for Germany.
48:48So now we have won.
48:50The war which had started in 1914, we have won that war.
48:55So it's a combination of the First and the Second World War.
48:58And we have won that.
48:59And by this, we overcome the defeat of the First World War.
49:04Now we have not defeated, we won.
49:05And this awful event of having been defeated in the First World War, it's over, it's passed.
49:11And it's Hitler who's done that.
49:13It's Hitler.
49:14He is, you know, the greatest war leader ever.
49:19He is, you know, the greatest war, it's over, it's over, it's over, it's over.
49:59The first World War
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