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00:02Next on Secrets of War.
00:04Hitler's lightning strike in Poland soon gave way to a strange eight-month waiting game.
00:10Blitzkrieg became Sitzkrieg, an assassination plot, secret peace talks, and captured invasion plans
00:16could have drastically shortened the war and saved millions of lives.
00:20But heroes were in short supply.
00:23Sitzkrieg, the Phony War, is next on Secrets of War.
00:59Secrets of War
01:28Secrets of War
01:37On the 1st of September, 1939, the German army poured over its eastern border into Poland.
01:56The reason for their attack, a raid by a handful of Polish soldiers on a radio station in the German
02:03border town of Glegetz.
02:04But Poland had not drawn first blood.
02:09The raid was a sham.
02:11Members of the Nazi Party Intelligence Service had secretly dressed a few prisoners in civilian clothes and shot them at
02:18the station.
02:20Then dressed other prisoners in Polish army uniforms and shot them in the nearby forest to suggest that the attack
02:27had been repulsed.
02:30It would appear that the Poles had committed a minor atrocity by shooting some German border people, etc.
02:41A cruel trick, to say the least, and one that I don't think impressed anybody in the world.
02:47The Blitzkrieg's motorized divisions quickly defeated the hopelessly outdated Polish cavalry units on horseback.
02:57The French and British governments declared war on Germany, but their ground forces failed to move.
03:05Allied aircraft outnumbered Germany's Luftwaffe, but there were no raids over Germany.
03:10As Adolf Hitler's troops continued their rapid advance from the west, Joseph Stalin's Soviet army sealed Poland's fate in just
03:19three weeks by advancing from the east and claiming their half of the spoils.
03:26From these events emerged a curious period known as the Sitzkrieg, or Phony War, an eight-month span of time
03:35from the end of September 1939 to the beginning of May 1940, without battles.
03:42A time filled with both great hope and profound frustration.
03:48The Sitzkrieg was a strange time of waiting.
03:52It was a time of relative indecisiveness.
03:56A time where war plans kept getting postponed, where primary politics still could have gotten the upper hand at any
04:02time.
04:06There were lots and lots of missed opportunities during that time, both for the Allies to knock out the Germans,
04:13and also for the Germans to take control of Europe.
04:19British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Doulardier had failed to negotiate a peace settlement.
04:27With memories of bloody World War I battlefields and millions of casualties still fresh in their minds, they wanted to
04:35avoid war at all costs.
04:39Hitler had broken agreement after agreement by occupying Austria, Czechoslovakia, then Poland.
04:47Despite France and Britain's declarations of war and their promise to support the Poles, they still seemed reluctant to engage
04:55the enemy.
04:58They were very afraid that if they sent troops and sent bombers over against Germany, that their countries would also
05:08be bombed, and they were not ready for it.
05:10However, the real problem was the speed at which the Germans advanced into Poland, and once the Russians came in,
05:19it was clear to the Allies that they would not even be able to help Poland, even symbolically.
05:26So therefore, they did almost nothing.
05:3067-year-old General Maurice Gamilan, a divisional commander in World War I from a traditional military family, was the
05:38overall commander of the joint British and French forces in France.
05:46Drawing from his experiences in the Great War, he was content to sit behind his country's state-of-the-art
05:52series of fortifications, known as the Maginot Line.
05:58Construction began in 1930 and was completed seven years later at a cost, in today's money, of more than $2
06:05billion.
06:07The series of anti-tank defenses and heavily armed forts stretched for 87 miles along the French-German border.
06:15The larger structures could house 1,200 men for three months without being resupplied.
06:23The generals of the time, even the soldiers of the time, were still carrying the mental and the physical scars
06:30of these horrendous, bloody, slogging matches of the Western Front.
06:36Because of this defensive mentality, one of the greatest missed opportunities of the war occurred even before the Phony War
06:44began.
06:45During the Polish campaign, all of Hitler's best soldiers were involved in this invasion far to the east.
06:53The defenses on the border with France were sparsely manned with poorly equipped second-rate troops.
06:59The Fuhrer had insisted on attacking Poland before the German military was completely ready.
07:06General Gamilan ordered just a few divisions of French forces on Germany's western border to advance into Germany, avoiding casualties
07:15whenever possible, even if it slowed progress.
07:20They met a little bit of resistance, but not much.
07:24And then almost inexplicably, he drew them back.
07:28And to this day, there had not really been a good explanation for why he did that, except timidity.
07:33Except a refusal to believe that this was a real war, even though war had been declared, even though Poland
07:39was being destroyed.
07:41And had they taken the offensive and moved into Germany, the war would have been completely different.
07:48Since France and Britain refused to launch a full-scale attack and were indeed unprepared to advance, even if they'd
07:55wanted to,
07:56the next great mystery of the Sitzkrieg became where and when the Germans would attack the western powers.
08:11After an overwhelming victory in Poland, Hitler turned to his generals for advice on how to invade France and the
08:18Low Countries.
08:20The code name for the invasion was Case Yellow.
08:24But the Nazi war machine needed time to rearm and redeploy to Germany's western border.
08:32Certain high-ranking officers also thought this invasion would eventually destroy Germany.
08:38They tried to delay the offensive as much as possible.
08:42They devised an intentionally uninspired plan to ensure defeat.
08:49German Army Intelligence Chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Army Commander-in-Chief General Heinrich von Brauch,
08:57and Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder were all part of this subtle resistance movement.
09:06The initial plan that Germany had for the invasion of the West was based on the old Schlieffen plan,
09:12which had worked in World War I, and it involved a huge mass of troops on the northern border of
09:20Germany
09:20coming down through the Low Countries and into France, sort of like a hinge.
09:27This was exactly the type of attack for which France and Britain were prepared.
09:34They knew the Germans wouldn't attack directly from the east because the vaunted Maginot Line presented too strong a barrier.
09:42Just north of this lay the Ardennes Forest, which the Allies felt was too thick to provide passage for a
09:48major invasion force.
09:52For General Gamelin, the only logical opening and the only invasion route he prepared for was further north,
09:59through the relatively flat, open terrain of northern Belgium and Holland.
10:07Gamelin had determined to bring his forces up to the north, what he called La Grande Maneuver de la North.
10:15And he was waiting to do this. He would say at dinner parties, what am I going to be able
10:18to do this grand manoeuvre?
10:22Gamelin enjoyed gourmet meals in his headquarters as he confidently waited for his chance to counter the German attack.
10:31For the French troops who'd been called up to the front, this inactivity was demoralizing.
10:38Thirty-four-year-old Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the great philosophers and writers of the 20th century,
10:44had been assigned to a meteorological section assisting an artillery unit near the German border.
10:51The growing psychological toll of the phony war was obvious to him.
10:57Sartre wrote in his diary,
10:59My work here consists of sending up balloons and then watching them through a pair of field glasses.
11:06Afterwards, I phone the battery artillery officers and tell them the wind direction.
11:11What they do with this information is their affair.
11:15The young ones make some use of the intelligence reports.
11:19The old school just shoves them in the wastebasket.
11:22Since there isn't any shooting, either course is equally effective.
11:28The French troops may have been sentenced to boredom by their leaders,
11:32but there was plenty of activity on other fronts during the Sitzkrieg.
11:38Peace negotiations took place between the Allies, particularly the British government,
11:44and the anti-Hitler, anti-war German officers throughout the phony war.
11:50Pope Pius XII's Vatican City was the site of much of the dialogue between the two parties.
11:58The proposition they put to Pope Pius XII was,
12:03You've seen Poland.
12:04You've seen what happened to a Catholic country.
12:08Now, is it going to happen again?
12:10Or will you work for peace?
12:12Will you help us, the German resistance?
12:17The principle figures in these negotiations were British ambassador Sir Darcy Osborne
12:23and Catholic German resistance member Dr. Joseph Mueller.
12:28Mueller was friends with many top Vatican officials, including the Pope.
12:34He knew he risked execution for his involvement in the negotiations,
12:38but Mueller was committed to ridding Germany of the Nazi party.
12:47The German military opposition's desires were brought to Pope Pius XII.
12:51The Pope then, in turn, spoke with the British ambassador Osborne,
12:56and Osborne carried the German conspirators' ideas further to London,
13:00to the British government.
13:07Some progress was made, but all of the proposals required the removal of Hitler from power.
13:14The German resistance had been planning a coup against the Führer.
13:18However, it was becoming difficult to muster support,
13:22as Hitler enjoyed one military victory after another.
13:28Britain waited for the conspirators to oust the Nazi leader,
13:32while the resistance members waited for the Allies to offer assurances
13:36that they would not take advantage of Germany
13:38during this vulnerable time of inner turmoil.
13:43Regrettably, and this is often the case through all these negotiations that one sees,
13:49nobody was really prepared to put their neck on the line.
13:58These tentative talks caught the attention of the Nazi party's intelligence branch,
14:03known as the SD,
14:04when someone mentioned them to a monk who also happened to be an SD agent.
14:11Without strong support from the Allies,
14:13and because of the very real threat of being exposed and executed,
14:18momentum for the coup faded.
14:22As a high-ranking officer,
14:24Chief of Staff Halter was allowed to carry a pistol into meetings with Hitler.
14:30Many times he'd thought about shooting the Nazi leader,
14:33but had been unable to pull the trigger.
14:37It seems that German military tradition did not inspire radical revolutionary thinking.
14:45They really did not have what it takes to conduct assassinations and coups.
14:52One of the officers said,
14:53I regret to inform you that nothing in my background has prepared me to assassinate someone.
14:59The German opposition didn't keep their promise that they would overthrow Hitler.
15:05And the British government held back in encouraging the German opposition.
15:10So we had this phenomenon that neither side understood the other very well.
15:15And, because of this, perhaps an opportunity was missed.
15:23Besides the members of the German resistance,
15:26the commander of the German air forces, or Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring,
15:30tried to negotiate a peace several times.
15:34Through friends from neutral countries,
15:37he seemed quite comfortable discussing Hitler's dismissal
15:40and his rise to ruler of Germany.
15:43But the Allies never felt that they could trust Göring.
15:46He may have simply been trying to obtain information from the Allies for the coming battle.
15:53He also seemed more interested in preserving his luxurious lifestyle
15:57than truly achieving a lasting peace for his country.
16:04During the peace talks in the fall of 1939,
16:07the German army had come perilously close to invading.
16:11As prearranged, start dates had been postponed for a variety of reasons.
16:16Just as General Gomelan's forces had missed an opportunity to act boldly
16:22by invading Germany during the Polish campaign,
16:25both sides in these various peace talks had behaved tentatively
16:30and failed to avert the approaching battle.
16:33Another event was about to make any further peace negotiations even more difficult.
16:45Major S. Payne Best and Captain R. Henry Stevens
16:49were two of the most senior British intelligence field agents in Europe.
16:54In Amsterdam on the 30th of October 1939,
16:58Best and Stevens met with two Germans
17:00who introduced themselves as Captain Schemmel and Captain Hausmann.
17:06Dutch police had intentionally stopped the men at the border.
17:10They and the British were satisfied that their papers seemed to validate their identities.
17:17The British were not well informed because they were so desperate for information
17:20and because they were ideologically prepared to believe anti-Nazi speech.
17:27Several more cautious meetings took place in various Dutch cities
17:32during which peace proposals were discussed.
17:35The two Germans were even given a wireless radio set
17:39so they could communicate with the British.
17:42But then an event which took place hundreds of miles away in Munich
17:47drastically changed these talks.
17:50On the 8th of November, a bomb intended to kill Hitler
17:54exploded shortly after he'd left a building
17:56where he'd made a Nazi Party speech.
18:01The Fuhrer suspected that British intelligence,
18:04also known as MI6,
18:06was behind this attempt on his life.
18:12On the 9th of November,
18:14Stevens and Best were heading by car to the Café Bacchus
18:17in the Dutch border town of Venlo
18:19to meet the two German captains.
18:22However, one of the supposed resistance members
18:26was actually Walter Schellenberg,
18:28an important member of the SD.
18:31He'd been ordered to put an end to this cat-and-mouse game
18:34to see what MI6 knew about the Munich bombing.
18:41Suddenly, two cars filled with SS agents
18:43crashed over the border,
18:45trapped the British agent's car,
18:47pulled the agents into their own cars,
18:49and sped back across the border into Germany.
18:53A Dutch agent working with Best and Stevens
18:55was killed in a gun battle in a nearby forest
18:58during the operation.
19:02They interrogated them quite thoroughly
19:05with all the trappings that the Gestapo can bring to bear
19:08and managed to get from them a pretty good rundown
19:12of the whole British intelligence network.
19:16An evil shooting war.
19:18This was no time to lose their eyes and ears,
19:21but the British did.
19:24They didn't find any evidence
19:26that MI6 had been involved in the assassination attempt.
19:31That didn't matter.
19:33Stevens and Best were still linked to the crime
19:36by Joseph Goebbels, the head Nazi propagandist.
19:41Besides being an embarrassment for British intelligence,
19:45the Venlo incident caused the Allies to be less trusting
19:48and more wary of genuine peace offers
19:51from German resistance members.
19:54Once again, strange twists of fate
19:57seem to be leading Europe closer to a long and bloody war.
20:11Just a few days before the Venlo incident occurred,
20:15a mysterious package was discovered
20:17on a stone ledge outside of the British Embassy
20:19in Oslo, Norway.
20:23It was addressed to the British Naval Attaché.
20:26When he opened it, later that morning,
20:29he discovered technical drawings
20:31about some type of weaponry
20:33in a card signed by a well-wishing German scientist.
20:39No explanation was included.
20:43The package was quickly forwarded to London
20:46where R.V. Jones of MI6 was assigned to examine it.
20:52The fact that he'd just completed a report
20:55in the current state of the German weapons program
20:57made him the perfect man to inspect these papers,
21:00which came to be known as the Oslo Report.
21:06It seemed to provide details
21:08on advanced rocket, jet engine,
21:10torpedo and radar programs.
21:15The Oslo Report was so stunning
21:17that initially it was looked upon as disinformation.
21:21None of this could be true
21:22because if it were,
21:24the Germans would be so far advanced
21:25that we would not be able to wage war against them.
21:30For many people in the Allied camp,
21:32the Oslo Report was a wake-up call.
21:36Jones' judgment
21:37that these advanced military programs were real
21:40was eventually confirmed
21:41when some of these weapons
21:43were captured later in the war.
21:46The identity of the well-wishing German scientist
21:50remains a mystery to this day.
21:53Very few people would have had access
21:55to so many different secret weapons programs.
22:00Anwehr chief Wilhelm Canaris
22:02and an engineer working
22:04at the Siemens factory in Germany
22:06are two of the primary suspects,
22:08but the debate still continues.
22:15Bad weather and stalling tactics
22:17by the officers of the German resistance
22:19had continually postponed
22:21the invasion of the West.
22:24Then, on the 10th of January, 1940,
22:27with the next planned invasion date
22:29just one week away,
22:31the Allies had another stroke of good luck,
22:33or at least it appeared that way at first.
22:41A major Helmut Reinberger
22:43was flying to an important meeting in Cologne
22:46to discuss the final details for the invasion.
22:50He should have taken a train the night before,
22:52but he was having too much fun
22:54at the base officer's club in Munster.
22:57Another major offered to fly him the next day
23:00so he could enjoy the party.
23:04They started off for Cologne with sunny skies,
23:07but fog soon set in.
23:10The two officers became lost,
23:12and Reinberger began to panic.
23:14He was carrying secret plans for the invasion,
23:18which were never supposed to be brought in a plane
23:20precisely because aircraft can stray off course.
23:26They finally spotted a river
23:28and assumed it was the Rhine,
23:30which runs through Cologne.
23:32But while trying to locate the city,
23:34they ran out of fuel and crashed in a field.
23:38Local police quickly arrived at the scene.
23:42It was almost like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz
23:46saying, uh-oh, Toto,
23:48I don't think we're in Kansas anymore
23:49because they landed
23:51and people were not speaking German
23:52and they knew they were in trouble.
23:56The river they'd seen was the Meuse,
23:59or Maas, not the Rhine.
24:02The Germans had landed near the town of Mishelon
24:05on the Belgian-Dutch border.
24:08The officers and the invasion plans
24:10were taken to the nearby jail.
24:14Hitler was furious when he heard
24:16that the plans for Case Yellow had been captured,
24:19but the Allies did little with the information.
24:23General Gamilan took the news as confirmation
24:26that his grand maneuver in the north
24:28would be a success
24:29and that his defensive positions were well chosen.
24:34The Allies could have used these plans,
24:36revealing the locations and strengths
24:38of most of the German divisions near the front
24:40to launch a preemptive attack of their own.
24:45But only defensive measures received consideration.
24:53Everything that accommodated the government's policy
24:56in France, as in England,
24:59was a defensive, a neutral,
25:02a cowardly, vile policy.
25:07Everything that went in that direction was welcomed
25:10and everything against that was always denied.
25:18On the surface, the Allies seemed to have an advantage.
25:21In reality, capturing the plans for Case Yellow
25:25actually worked against France and Britain.
25:29Hitler had not been pleased
25:31with his general's unimaginative and cautious plan.
25:35Now he had a reason to change it.
25:40Lieutenant General Erich von Manstein
25:42had been advocating a different strategy,
25:45but his memos to the general staff
25:47had been filed away by resistance members.
25:51Finally, he came face to face with Hitler
25:54and told the Fuhrer his idea.
25:59Manstein, being a man of a slightly different generation,
26:03certainly innovative in terms of his idea
26:07of what mechanized warfare could do,
26:10had a much more precise
26:12and a much more potent thought
26:14about the strategy to be applied in the West.
26:20The German army group in the north
26:22was to wave the Red Matadors' cape at the Allies
26:25and provoke them into storming forward
26:27like an angry bull into the trap.
26:29Then the panzer divisions concentrated in the Ardennes
26:33would stab at the Allied flanks
26:35like the matador wielding his sword.
26:43A May invasion date was set,
26:45but a smaller operation was scheduled to begin even earlier.
26:53Besides the Russian invasion of Finland,
26:56the Battle of Norway was the only major military action
26:59during the Sitzkrieg.
27:01Like all other aspects of the Phony War,
27:04this battle was riddled with lethargy
27:06and missed opportunities.
27:09For months, the British had been contemplating
27:12an invasion of neutral Norway
27:14in order to cut off Germany's supply of iron ore,
27:18the basic metal used to manufacture
27:20many different weapons.
27:25Germany had also considered an operation there
27:28in order to protect their supply.
27:32Norway really is something that shouldn't have taken
27:36the Western Allies by surprise, but certainly did.
27:41Even as reports of German ships massing in northern ports
27:45filtered back,
27:46there was no immediate reaction by the Allies
27:49as to speed up their own plans.
27:52On the 7th of April, 1940,
27:55British bombers spotted German ships
27:57heading toward Norway.
27:59They released their bombs,
28:02missed every ship,
28:03and headed home without calling for more raids.
28:08On the 9th of April,
28:10German air and sea forces converged on Norway.
28:17The British Navy managed to sink several German vessels
28:20in the northern port of Narvik,
28:22the most crucial location for the iron ore trade.
28:27But poor planning,
28:29a lack of coordination,
28:30and an unwillingness to commit enough troops
28:32eventually cost the Allies
28:34the Norwegian campaign.
28:39Nothing really worked.
28:41Symbolized for me by the British sending troops over,
28:44and the troops went on one ship,
28:46and their supplies went on another.
28:47I mean, it was just impossible to wage war
28:50if you've got troops storming ashore
28:53without any rifles in their hands.
28:56Britain decided to evacuate its forces to France
29:00to prepare for the larger battle soon to come.
29:04Norway was not lost.
29:09It was given away.
29:18Following the failed peace negotiations at the Vatican,
29:21Abwehr Chief of Staff Colonel Hans Oster
29:24still tried to assist the Allies
29:26and undermine Hitler.
29:29Oster had passed repeated, detailed warnings
29:32of the invasion of France in the Low Countries
29:34to the Allies through his friend
29:36Jace Bertus Saas,
29:38the Dutch military attaché in Berlin.
29:45Saas and Oster had known each other
29:47since the early 1930s in Berlin.
29:50They shared the same disapproval
29:52for National Socialist policies.
29:55Colonel Oster found Saas to be a like-minded individual,
29:58and he supplied him time and again
30:00with internal information on German military strategies.
30:07It was a case of the boy who cried wolf.
30:10They were telling them that
30:12the invasion is coming,
30:13the invasion is coming,
30:14and then it didn't come.
30:15But there had been so many postponements
30:17that by the time the invasion was actually to begin,
30:21people had begun to disbelieve the information.
30:26Oster and Saas warned the Allies
30:28about the invasion of Denmark,
30:30which took place in the same day
30:32as the Norwegian campaign.
30:35No one listened.
30:37Danish troops were so surprised
30:39when the Germans crossed the border
30:41that the government surrendered
30:42within hours of the invasion.
30:47Ironically, there was so much valuable information
30:50leaking out of Germany
30:52from various resistance sources
30:53that the Allies failed to appreciate its significance.
31:00There's a general rule, I think, in espionage
31:02that when information is easy to come by,
31:04it's not worth very much.
31:06Only if it's accompanied by blood, sweat, toil,
31:10and then it's likely to be real.
31:12When it just comes pouring at you,
31:14as it did from anti-Nazi sources in Germany
31:16to the Allies,
31:18they tend to disbelieve it.
31:19It's not good enough.
31:22Besides Oster's warning,
31:24the Allies had several other clues
31:26as to the time and location
31:28of the impending attack.
31:30In March of 1940,
31:32French intelligence received important documents
31:35from German double agents
31:37who were working for the Allies.
31:44The German agents are given a questionnaire
31:46where it is said,
31:47check out the roads between Sedan and Abbeville.
31:54And the lines of communication,
31:56the rivers to be crossed,
31:58the carrying load of the bridges,
32:00the petrol depots on the way,
32:03and so on.
32:09This new information didn't fit
32:11into the French military's neatly prepared plans.
32:19We went to see the army's superior headquarters
32:22to tell them that the attack
32:24would shortly come through the Ardennes.
32:27They made their headquarters study this possibility.
32:30Then their third bureau said,
32:32it is not possible that an armored force
32:34such as the Wehrmacht
32:35could cross the Ardennes without difficulties.
32:39It cannot be done.
32:42So they eliminated this possibility.
32:52This brings up, I think,
32:53one of the greatest problems
32:55that any intelligence agency has,
32:57whether it's going back to the days of the Romans
33:00or its present day.
33:01How can you dissuade the policy makers
33:06of a government
33:07to abandon their mindsets,
33:12their policies that they themselves have crafted,
33:15even when they're faced with intelligence,
33:18which says the answer is different
33:20or should be different.
33:23The French themselves had proven
33:25an attack through the Ardennes could work.
33:29During a 1938 war game near Cédans,
33:32a French officer attacked through the forest
33:35with a group of tanks
33:36and routed the opposition.
33:40The government had already spent
33:42so much money in the Maginot Line superfortress
33:45that the results of this armored attack
33:47were never published.
33:51It was a question of people hiding their heads in the sand.
33:55It's ludicrous military tactics
33:57not to cover every possible base
34:00in terms of how somebody's going to come at you.
34:03They put all of their eggs in one basket.
34:06They decided the only possible invasion plan
34:09had to be based on the old Schlieffen plan,
34:11and therefore they were going to defend against that.
34:13But that left them unable to defend against anything else.
34:18The invasions of Poland and Norway
34:20had given the Allies a clear look
34:22at the new age of mobile warfare.
34:26Modern forces moved quickly
34:28and coordinated their strikes using field radios.
34:32In fact, radio traffic in the Ardennes region
34:35was up sharply in the first days of May 1940.
34:40The location of the Luftwaffe's fighters and bombers
34:43offered yet another clue.
34:47All of the bombers were in the north,
34:50and all of the fighter planes were in the south.
34:53Fighter planes have one mission,
34:55and that is to protect the advance of the tanks
35:00and the troops along with the tanks.
35:04Warnings from German resistance members,
35:06intelligence reports,
35:07and the location of enemy units
35:09all pointed to an attack through the Ardennes.
35:16However, Gamalain and the other Allied generals
35:19were still confident that the Maginot line was the answer.
35:35On the 10th of May,
35:37silent German gliders landed atop
35:39the state-of-the-art fortress of Ebene-Mal in Belgium,
35:43along the protective Albert Canal.
35:49Using flamethrowers and special directional explosives,
35:52these elite German forces managed to neutralize
35:55most of the powerful turrets within one hour.
36:03The January plane crash at Meshallon
36:06had included plans of an airborne attack
36:08against this very fort.
36:12No special defensive measures had been taken.
36:18German ground forces used more trickery
36:21to capture several heavily guarded bridgeheads
36:23across the Meuse River in the north.
36:27They rode trains across the bridges dressed as civilians
36:30or as soldiers from other countries.
36:34Other groups at different crossings pretended to surrender.
36:40The Germans tried rusers, and a dozen of them.
36:43And 10 of the rusers didn't work,
36:44but a couple did work.
36:45That's all they needed.
36:49Panzers poured across the openings.
36:56Dorothy Huart was a 19-year-old girl
36:59living with her family near the city of Brussels.
37:03She remembers the abrupt end of the Vony War.
37:09Most people, including us,
37:11didn't expect anything on the 9th in the evening.
37:17We slept quite fine until the first hours in the morning.
37:23Everything was normal.
37:26Then we started hearing frightening bombings.
37:30The shock was very violent.
37:33The first military event we saw
37:35was the arrival of the French army
37:37going towards Brussels to take its position.
37:45Gamalin's grand maneuver had begun.
37:49In order to counter the advancing German ground troops,
37:52the very best Allied troops moved into northern Belgium.
37:57But the defensive positions they began to occupy
38:00were hardly worthy of an heroic stand.
38:05You get the worst of both worlds.
38:07You still think you're being defensive,
38:09but you leave your defenses
38:10to move into uncharted territory
38:13and set up another defensive line.
38:16As the French and British in the north
38:19readied themselves for what they thought
38:21was the main German attack,
38:23Pompster divisions raced through the Ardennes forest
38:25to the south.
38:37When the invasion of the West began,
38:40Hitler was secreted in a bunker
38:42near the western frontier of Germany.
38:46And when he learned from his intelligence reports
38:49that the Allies were going up
38:51into the northern part of the Low Country,
38:54he jumped up and down for joy
38:56because he said, basically, they've bought our route.
39:03Luftwaffe fighters destroyed many Allied planes
39:06in the ground.
39:07Due to this overwhelming air superiority,
39:10the Panzer units were able to cross
39:12defended southern bridgeheads on the Meuse.
39:16As planned, the main thrust came through
39:18the French town of Sedan
39:20at the edge of the Ardennes forest.
39:31The Allies still had an opportunity to react.
39:34The Germans were advancing,
39:36but not as quickly as they'd hoped.
39:40Gemmela had time to send reinforcements
39:42to other defensive positions in the south,
39:45except he was still convinced
39:47that the main attack was in the north.
39:51I think it was just a question
39:52of being so convinced of a military theory
39:58that you could not change your views on it,
40:01even when the evidence started piling up.
40:08The French and British actually had more troops
40:11and tanks than the Germans.
40:13But the Allies chose to scatter their tanks
40:16randomly along the front for infantry support.
40:20They didn't have a concentrated armored column
40:23in order to launch a counterattack.
40:28The Germans pushed on,
40:30and the terrain beyond the Ardennes
40:32became more flat and open.
40:34The speed of the advance increased.
40:39French intelligence had tried to warn Gemmela
40:42of the enemy's interest in the roads
40:44between Sedan and Abed-Isle near the coast.
40:49Now the panzers were streaking across this very route.
40:52But the West was in danger of collapsing.
41:06As the Battle of France began,
41:08Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain
41:11as prime minister.
41:13Chamberlain had tried to reason and negotiate
41:16with Hitler, and had failed.
41:19Now a military-minded leader was taking over.
41:24It's a fairly obvious statement to say,
41:26but I think I should still say
41:28that Chamberlain and Churchill
41:29were radically different people.
41:32Chamberlain was forced into war,
41:34and as a result of that,
41:36he had a major problem about the prosecution of the war
41:39because it was such an abhorrent thought for him.
41:42When Churchill takes over,
41:44you're seeing discernibly
41:47a more robust, pugnacious demeanour.
41:51What kind of a people do they think we are?
41:55Is it possible they do not realise
41:57that we shall never cease to persevere against them
42:02until they have been taught a lesson
42:04which they and the world will never forget?
42:10There was still very little
42:11that the new prime minister could do
42:13in the current battle.
42:16The speed of the German advance
42:18and Gamelin's inability to shift his forces to the south
42:22had left hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers trapped
42:25between the enemy and the English Channel.
42:33German soldiers had simply manoeuvred around
42:36the vaunted Maginot Line.
42:39Most of its guns were not built to fire towards France,
42:43so it was decimated from behind.
42:45A vulnerable dinosaur from another era of warfare.
43:08The panzer commanders were ready to make the final push
43:11to annihilate the enemy.
43:14But suddenly, the Germans stopped.
43:18One of the great mysteries of the Second World War
43:21that still really exists to this day
43:23is why Hitler ordered the troops to halt
43:27in front of Dunkirk.
43:29It had never been satisfactorily explained.
43:32The Allies had been working for years
43:35to crack the German cipher machine known as Enigma.
43:40The code was finally broken during the invasion
43:43and British intelligence intercepted and decrypted
43:46the order from Hitler demanding that his generals stop.
43:54Hitler wanted to prove definitively
43:56who was actually wearing the pants in the family.
43:59And that was the reason that he stopped the tanks
44:01and relegated the commander-in-chief to a bit player.
44:06In other words, Hitler won his power struggle.
44:10But he strategically lost the campaign.
44:18Whatever the reason,
44:20this gave the Allies time to rescue the troops trapped at Dunkirk.
44:25Operation Dynamo began
44:27as boats of all shapes and sizes left England.
44:32The British had hoped that 50,000 soldiers
44:36could escape the beaches alive.
44:39Even this seemed unlikely
44:41as the Luftwaffe appeared in force.
44:49But the ships kept coming.
44:52Undaunted by the damaging airstrikes,
44:55over 300,000 British and French troops
44:58were brought back to England.
45:01Hitler's chance to force a peace settlement had passed.
45:08In spite of the Allies' superior numbers,
45:11France had fallen in a matter of weeks.
45:15On the 19th of May, 1940,
45:18General Gamala was relieved of his command.
45:21On the 5th of June,
45:22one day after the evacuation of Dunkirk,
45:25Daladier was ousted as premier.
45:30Charles de Gaulle,
45:31a longtime advocate of mobile armored warfare,
45:34became undersecretary of defense.
45:38The old leaders were gone
45:40and new ideas had emerged,
45:42but it was too late.
45:43France was lost.
45:50The May 1940 German attack
45:52and the defeat,
45:54all that is sinister
45:55for us, French people,
45:58for me as an officer,
45:59for my colleagues.
46:01That's the greatest tragedy of our lives
46:04to have seen that defeat.
46:06A whole country's disaster,
46:07millions of people with their horses,
46:09their bikes, their animals,
46:11their mattresses,
46:12all of them going to southern France.
46:15It is the most terrible thing.
46:21It's been said that hindsight is 20-20
46:24and it's easy to second-guess decisions made many years ago.
46:31Yet the Sitzkrieg period was filled with so many missed opportunities
46:35that it's hard to believe.
46:41What would have happened if France and Britain had provided Poland with immediate military assistance?
46:50It doubtless would have been a victory not only for the Allies,
46:54but for all of humanity if the war could have been shortened to the winter of 1939 to 1940.
47:02What if the French troops on Germany's western border had continued to advance during the Polish campaign?
47:10The combined French-British forces missed opportunities of invading on the ground.
47:17They missed opportunities of countering in Norway.
47:19There were just so many times when better thought put into the process of really winning a war against Germany
47:28might have actually won that war.
47:31Instead, they sort of waited in a defensive way for Germany to actually make a further invasion
47:37and thereby lost a lot of time and a lot of opportunities.
47:44What if the German resistance had assassinated Hitler and negotiated a separate peace?
47:51The greatest opportunity that the Allies could have hoped for
47:55would have been the fall of the Hitler regime.
48:00What if the Allies had kept faith in Hans Oster
48:03and prepared for the exact day of the invasion?
48:10If one is to draw some type of conclusion
48:13from the so-called Sitzkrieg or phony war,
48:15particularly on the French side,
48:18there is nothing more dangerous for an army than inactivity.
48:26What if the Allied leaders had paid attention to the many clues
48:30and strongly opposed the German advance through the Ardennes?
48:37There are many lessons to be learned.
48:40Amongst them are
48:43don't be obsessed with the last war
48:45that you fought.
48:48What if the Allies had learned the lessons of Blitzkrieg
48:51in counterattacks with numerically superior
48:53concentrated tank divisions?
49:03The Allies were the obvious loser.
49:07But even Germany failed to fully capitalize on its opportunities
49:11during the Sitzkrieg.
49:13In keeping with the bizarre nature of the phony war,
49:18the party that benefited most was not even directly involved.
49:23I would say the real big winner during the phony war period
49:26was Stalin
49:27because he had made this pact with Hitler
49:30that not only allowed them to divide Poland,
49:33but which also allowed the USSR
49:36to take possession of the Balkan state
49:39and to amass an enormous amount of territory
49:43under their control
49:44almost without firing a shot.
49:48Perhaps the only positive result
49:50of the inactivity of the phony war
49:52was that it gave Jean-Paul Sartre
49:54time to write being and nothingness.
50:00He also wrote The Age of Reason
50:02while being held captive after the fall of France.
50:08The information and opportunities
50:10were there for the taking,
50:12but they were either not recognized
50:14or they were ignored.
50:17And that is the real tragedy,
50:20the sorrow of the Sitzkrieg.
50:50For the Sitzkrieg Radio
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