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A dynamic military documentary series that explores how tanks, mechanized Blitzkrieg, commando raids, and desert operations replaced the static, trench-based fighting of the First World War. These mobile tactics drastically shifted territorial control and the course of the war.....
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00:03Every battle is both a victory and a defeat.
00:07It depends which flag you fly.
00:13In every theater of the Second World War,
00:17battles won and lost determine possession of territory,
00:22of resources, and of the strength to go on fighting.
00:30For some of the battles,
00:32it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war.
00:37For others, it was the defeat.
00:42This is the story of the battles won and lost,
00:47that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history.
01:02A world war is a patchwork of actions.
01:06Land, sea, air, massive or small scale.
01:12And the stories of these actions are just as varied.
01:17Here are battles decided by amphibious forces, climate, geography, and the problems of supply.
01:38The naval revolution that had been hinted at in the Coral Sea would be fully realized at Midway.
01:45A battle for which Japan gathered massive naval strength.
01:50The Japanese objective of Midway was to destroy the US Navy.
01:54And to do this, they decided to move on Midway Island.
02:00Midway Island was an island on the Hawaii defense perimeter.
02:05And the plan was to entice the US Navy into a trap and destroy it.
02:12The Japanese had a complicated plan.
02:16The second carrier strike force would go north to the Aleutians.
02:23Midway, near enough Midway between Hawaii and Japan, would be approached across a broad front of ocean.
02:29A significant force would break off to possibly support action in the Aleutians.
02:36It was labeled the Aleutians screening force.
02:40The fleet proper would divide.
02:42The invasion force under Admiral Kondo would hold back.
02:46The main body under Yamamoto would also wait.
02:50Allowing Nagumo to press the attack with the first carrier strike force,
02:54built around the four carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu.
03:01To the south of the main force was the close support force under Admiral Kurita.
03:08In the event, Admirals Kurita, Yamamoto and Kondo would play no part in this most decisive battle.
03:16The Americans, by contrast, were sailing to the battle zone in a compact formation.
03:22Rear Admiral Jack Fletcher, Task Force 17, again flying his flag from Yorktown.
03:29And Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, in Task Force 16, with the carriers Enterprise and Hornet,
03:34giving the Americans three carriers to the Japanese four.
03:38But the Americans had another advantage.
03:41They knew exactly what to expect.
03:44Their crypto analysts had cracked the Japanese naval code.
03:48They could read Japanese orders.
03:50They knew Japanese plans.
03:52They knew where the Japanese would be and in what strength.
03:56It was absolutely decisive.
03:59A submarine patrol was on station at Midway.
04:03An aircraft based there could extend surveillance to about 500 kilometers from the island.
04:10The stage was set.
04:15Around 4.30 in the morning of June 4th, Nagumo, steaming about 400 kilometers northwest of the island,
04:22initiated the action by committing about half of his total air arm to an attack on Midway.
04:29The battle continued in bursts over the next two days.
04:33The course of the Battle of Midway was first influenced by Admiral Nagumo's decision,
04:39when his aircraft returned to their ships,
04:42and his pilots reported a failure to completely destroy the installations and aircraft on Midway.
04:50Nagumo ordered them to be re-armed with bombs rather than torpedoes for a second attack on the island.
04:58At 5.45, after a Catalina had sighted the Japanese task force,
05:04the American carriers turned towards the enemy that they would engage but never see.
05:12With carrier warfare, it was quite clear the person who struck first was going to win.
05:19And the Japanese lost that little advantage and the Americans were able to conduct an extraordinary successful strike.
05:27Had the Japanese found the Americans first and focused on conducting a mass strike against the Americans,
05:34it could have gone the other way.
05:36Enterprise and Hornet launched their first attacks on the Japanese ships shortly after 6.
05:43They launched 29 torpedo bombers, of which they lost 24.
05:48These were outdated Devastator aircraft, and after Midway, they were withdrawn from service.
05:54They had failed to record a single hit on a Japanese ship, but they had, most importantly,
06:01disorganized the enemy fleet and forced its air cover down to sea level.
06:06Above them, squadrons from Enterprise and Yorktown went in.
06:11It was mid-morning, and these were the much more effective, dauntless aircraft,
06:16responsible for sinking more Japanese vessels than any other weapon.
06:20The battle would continue, but its outcome was decided in five minutes.
06:29Nagumo gave the order to launch at 10.20, but at 10.25,
06:34Lieutenant Commander Wade McCluskey of the USS Enterprises Air Group
06:38led his 37 dauntless dive bombers in from an altitude of 14,000 feet
06:44in a 70-degree dive at 280 knots.
06:50The carrier Akagi was hit first, then Kaga,
07:00last Soryu, as dive bombers from Yorktown joined the assault.
07:06Aircraft from the remaining Japanese carrier, meanwhile, hit Yorktown.
07:10But the losses in aircraft were great.
07:15These losses meant that Hiryu, though she remained active, was weakly protected,
07:20and in the last carrier action of June 4th, came under attack from the dauntless dive bombers,
07:26so that as the sun set, all four Japanese carriers were sinking.
07:32Yorktown, too, was in a bad state and had to be abandoned.
07:38During the night of the 4th of June, Japan's four carriers were either sunk or scuttled.
07:44The main Japanese force had by now sailed to within range of the midway-based B-17,
07:50and these attacked as, during the 6th, the American fleet searched the seas.
07:57The first day we hit about 30 ships of all types, battleships, stores, and transports.
08:04The second day we hit the carriers.
08:06Any luck with them?
08:07Oh, yes.
08:08Locked them right in there.
08:11The Yorktown was taken in tow, but both the carrier and the destroyer, Haman, that had come to her aid,
08:18were sunk by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine.
08:24News of the engagement was passed to Prime Minister Tojo in Tokyo, in suitably formal, courtly style.
08:32The navy, he was told by General Moritake Tanabe, has made a great mistake.
08:39Midway was a decisive naval battle, whose outcome was decided not by ships, but by almost 500 aircraft.
08:48What happened next most influenced the course of the war.
08:53Between Midway and 1944, Japan built six new fleet carriers.
09:00The United States built 14.
09:04If Midway was a victory at sea, it was made decisive by the shipyards and factories,
09:10that could make good the losses in a way that Japan simply could not match.
09:23Hitler's position after a disastrous winter on the Russian front placed him in a dilemma.
09:27Either he must push on into the Caucasus and dangerously extend his front,
09:31or he must somehow contrive to do without the vital Caucasian oil field.
09:37When, with summer, the German assault on the Soviet Union was renewed,
09:42there were 51 German divisions across Europe, and 167 on the Eastern Front.
09:50They were supported by 30 from various Axis partners and sympathisers.
09:56German battle plans were designated Fall or Case, and identified by colour.
10:04Case Blue, the plan for the summer offensive of 1942,
10:08was detailed as Directive 41, and issued in April.
10:14The major role was to be shouldered by Von Bock's Army Group South.
10:22The prize would be the Caucasus, and while the jewel in that particular crown was the oil fields,
10:29from the perspective of wide strategy, an advance into the Caucasus also meant advancing the front past Moscow.
10:36The Nazis would have a base from which to launch a planking attack on Moscow.
10:42With one master stroke, the Russian armies to the south would be practically cut off from Caucasus oil.
10:50In a preliminary action, Von Manstein's 11th Army attacked in the Crimea on May 8th.
10:57Four days later, completely surprising the Germans, the Russians launched their own offensive.
11:03Timoshenko commanding the Southwest Theater exploiting the salient that had been created south of Kharkov.
11:10Germany had plans to nip out the salient.
11:13The Russians beat them to it by six days.
11:18So Operation Frederickus was brought forward.
11:24In three days, the Russians had penetrated more than 40 kilometres,
11:29but they were over-cautious in committing their armour.
11:32When von Kleist attacked with 15 divisions, and von Paulus brought the 6th Army in on the flank,
11:39Stalin refused to bury the offensive order.
11:45When Army Group Kleist and the 6th Army on the 22nd trapped the Soviet forces in the pocket they had
11:52tried to exploit,
11:53only 22,000 Soviet troops managed to escape the encirclement.
11:58The failed offensive cost the Soviet Union almost a quarter of a million men taken prisoner.
12:05And now, the main German offensive could begin.
12:10The six armies of Army Group B moved at the end of June.
12:14By the 6th of July, they had crossed the Don.
12:20The next day, the Russians evacuated Voronezh.
12:24Von Kleist's first Panzer Army would turn south, crossing the Don close to where it entered the Sea of Azov,
12:33forcing Malinovsky's south front back and reaching the oil fields at Makeup on August 9th.
12:40True, they did capture a few, but this was the scene when they got there.
12:43The Russians, carrying out their scorched earth policy with complete thoroughness, had themselves fired the wells and the storage tanks.
12:52On the following day, August 10th, Von Paulus crossed the Don and reached the outskirts of Stalingrad.
13:01The advance into the Caucasus continued, and on August 23rd, the swastika was hoisted on Europe's highest peak, Mount Elgrus,
13:105,642 meters.
13:16This is the high point of the German advance into Russia, but the deeper they go into Russia, the bigger
13:22the problem becomes.
13:24And at the very same day, the day they raise the flag on Mount Elgrus, they also enter Stalingrad.
13:29So, in a sense, the German success carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.
13:37The battle for the Caucasus and occupation of the vital oil fields had been won.
13:43But the outcome of the battle for Russia, and for the living space in the east that Hitler had promised
13:49to the German people, was very finely balanced.
14:03The British have a tradition of leaders who bring to the art of war a sort of mystery, mysticism, charisma.
14:12Ord Charles Wingate was very much of that lineage.
14:17Wingate's idea, advanced for its time, and causing him to argue long and hard with his superiors, was for a
14:25special force that could operate behind enemy lines.
14:29Deep penetration was the expression, and the very technical term was asymmetric warfare.
14:36That idea took hold, and was decided to give it a try, and the 77th Brigade was created.
14:42It was based on groups of British, Indian, and Gurkha troops, with commandos, signallers, Burmese guides, and interpreters.
14:51They would go behind the Japanese lines, as Wingate intended, and they were called Chindits, because the Chindit was a
14:59mythical Burmese creature that guarded Buddhist temples.
15:03The first intention was to incorporate the deep penetration tactic into a larger campaign.
15:09But when that was cancelled, Wingate persuaded General Wavell in overall command to allow the Chindit operation to go ahead.
15:19That action became known as Operation Longcloth.
15:23It was, first and foremost, an attempt to prove Wingate's concept, and the force numbered just 3,000.
15:32On February 13, 1943, the Chindits crossed the Chin Win River and entered Burma, modern Myanmar.
15:42Two days later, they engaged Japanese troops.
15:53The Japs had been outfought and outmaneuvered just where they thought that they were safely tucked away.
15:59Two columns marched south, but they were a deception.
16:03Five columns, the main campaign, marched east.
16:09Two, making for the main north-south railway with sabotage in mind.
16:15On March 4, one column succeeded in its aims, wrecking the railway in as many as 70 places.
16:22The Japanese quickly repaired the railway.
16:25The raid didn't cause any disruption to their plans or dispositions, and it didn't inflict many casualties.
16:34It also consumed a large slice of the air resources and other resources in the Burma theatre, where resources were
16:43very scarce.
16:48Wingate himself repeatedly changed plans and destinations, but communications were poor.
16:54Not least because the terrain was harsh, and the columns were behind enemy lines.
16:59So column commanders were not always informed of Wingate's new intentions.
17:04The nature of the operation and terrain meant that the men were heavily burdened with supplies.
17:10The kit of a man who will live and fight for months cut off in the jungle is an all
17:14-important factor.
17:15General Wingate knew how vital it is to carry the things you need.
17:19It also meant that frequently the wounded had to be left, where possible, in the care of villagers.
17:27The resupply by air, a single RAF squadron of six aircraft was responsible, was adequate, but lack of a clear
17:36objective was becoming an issue.
17:40Wingate elected to cross the Irrawaddy.
17:43But here, terrain was difficult, and the Japanese were able to manoeuvre in a way that threatened to trap Wingate's
17:50command in an ever-contracting box.
17:54With his forward elements now operating at the extreme limit of the range of air supply, Wingate decided in late
18:01March to withdraw his force.
18:06Here, the decision to cross the Irrawaddy took an awful toll.
18:11The need to cross the river to return to India meant that the Japanese could concentrate their forces along its
18:17banks,
18:18and as soon as an attempted crossing was sighted, numbers could be concentrated to contest the crossing.
18:28The losses were catastrophic.
18:30It was wrong in thinking that the Japanese would be panicked because of some issues in their rear areas.
18:35That was never going to happen.
18:37They were easily able to seal these chindid penetrations off.
18:43This forced the columns to fragment, and small groups of men continued to trickle back to their base until the
18:50end of April.
18:513,000 had set out. 818 did not return.
18:57Killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
19:03Of the 2,187 who did return, about 600, so weakened by sickness or their wounds, would never return to
19:14active service.
19:15Operation Longcloth had then halved the effectiveness of the force that set out on its three-month campaign.
19:23A battle lost, but one from which Wingate drew many lessons.
19:28Wingate is convinced that these long-range penetrations by his chindids are the best way of taking the war to
19:35the Japanese,
19:36the best way of regaining Burma.
19:38In his mind, conventional operations are now subsidiary.
19:42And he was able to get the resources needed to mount a much larger raid in 1944.
19:49But Wingate would not play a significant role.
19:53In March, the plane on which he was travelling crashed.
19:56And he was killed.
19:58He was 41 years old.
20:08As summer warmed the Soviet soil in 1944, the entire Eastern Front moved.
20:15A dozen Soviet army groups, from the Karelian Front in the north to the Third Ukrainian Front on the shores
20:23of the Black Sea,
20:24were in some way involved in a great offensive that Stalin had named for a hero of the Napoleonic Wars,
20:31Operation Bagration.
20:34The offensive was, at its heart, the drive to expel German forces, which still stood in great numbers on Soviet
20:43soil.
20:44It was the drive on the Vistula and its climax coincided with the breakout from Normandy.
20:51The Germans were in big trouble in the West, and they needed to shore up the Western Front.
20:57The problem was that at exactly the same time, the Russians put in a huge offensive.
21:021.7 million men over the entire front.
21:06And they were in a position to do, in 1944, what the Germans had done with Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
21:17In preliminaries, the 21st Army of the Leningrad Front began the attack.
21:26The Karelian Front joining the offensive ten days later.
21:33On both fronts, the Finns, armed by the Germans and supported by one German division,
21:45were driven back.
21:54And then, on June 22nd, the day after the Karelian Front had moved,
22:00and the third anniversary of the German invasion of Russia, Operation Bagration opened.
22:07In the Belarusian operation, yes, we felt that it was prepared.
22:13Since the artillery began to be carried out,
22:17there were not 16 people, there were 28 people.
22:23And the completion of this was in the Middle East.
22:29The Soviets had deployed 300 guns per kilometer on a 560 kilometer front,
22:36from Smolensk through to Minsk in Belarusia.
22:41As always, Russian artillery has been right in the forefront of the picture.
22:46Gunners of the Northern Army smashed German efforts to delay the Soviet advance.
22:51The Soviet fronts began their surge towards four Axis army groups.
22:58Cherniakovsky's third Belarusian moved on the 23rd.
23:03Rokossovsky's first Belarusian the next day.
23:09And they advanced tenaciously for 10 weeks.
23:14And it was that attack that broke through and was so effective in blitzkrieg-type tactics,
23:19which you'd seen developing since Stalingrad,
23:21worked very successfully in the counterattack at Kursk in 1943.
23:25The Russians are pretty good at this by 1944.
23:30The 1st Baltic Front, General Bagramian,
23:33and the 3rd Belarusian Front, Cherniakovsky,
23:37opened the Vitensk-Orsha offensive.
23:42Driving into Lithuania.
23:45While Soviet forces are annihilating Germans in one great town after another,
23:50their comrades have been driving on at the rate of 20 miles a day,
23:53into Latvia, into Lithuania,
23:55closing rapidly on the very birthplace of Germany's incorrigible military cult,
24:00East Prussia.
24:02By the 27th,
24:04Vitebsk had fallen,
24:06and the 3rd Panzer Army was lost.
24:13German tanks and fortifications received very heavy punishment,
24:17and defences, which Hitler thought to be an almost impregnable barrier,
24:20were now overrun.
24:23Grokosovsky's 1st Belarusian Front was swinging up towards Minsk,
24:28Cherniakovsky swinging down to meet him.
24:332nd Belarusian Front, General Zakharov,
24:36crossed the river Dnieper, aiming directly for Minsk.
24:40These Russian newsreels also show the crossing of the Dnieper.
24:46This was carried out by bridge and boat under continuous fire,
24:51but it was carried out as we all know.
24:573rd Belarusian Front reached and crossed the river Berezina the next day.
25:03In two weeks, Operation Bagration had penetrated 160 kilometres on a 400-kilometre front.
25:13Army Group Centre's 37 divisions were pulverised by 166 Soviet divisions supported by 2,700 tanks
25:25and 1,300 assault guns.
25:38Seven of Army Group Centre's generals had been killed in the action.
25:452nd Belarusian Front continued its advance.
25:49This was the Mogalev offensive,
25:52which forced opposing troops back on the Berezina, where they would be trapped.
25:58We successfully supported the plazaar,
26:01allowed others to move to the troops.
26:05And then the next year was the arrival of its arrival.
26:15For this fight, we received the 1st World of Slavia, 3rd St.
26:21Rokossovsky's forces broke through the supposedly impassable Pripet Marshes.
26:26His engineers having crossed them with wooden causeways.
26:30By June 27th, he had encircled two German corps east of Bobriusk,
26:36which was liberated on June 29th.
26:45The Allies had landed at Normandy three weeks previously,
26:49but to contrast the scale of the operations,
26:52for the duration of the summer,
26:54German casualties in the east outstripped those in the west by 4 to 1.
26:59I think the Germans simply didn't have the resources.
27:01They were massively outgunned in every field, even in the air,
27:05in tanks, in mobile artillery, artillery, manpower.
27:09They just were being beaten down by vastly superior forces.
27:14And that had been coming in 41, 42, 43.
27:17By the time they got to 44, you're really dealing with an army in serious trouble.
27:25The Minsk offensive pressed on.
27:295th Panzer Division was rushed forward to plug approaches to the city.
27:34But on July the 3rd, the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the Red Army broke into the city.
27:45By the end of July 4th, the city had fallen.
27:4840,000 of its defenders encircled and army group's centre destroyed.
27:54The advance continued with the successful results which we know.
27:59Not the least of these results have been more prisoners.
28:02Just one instance of the increasing drain on German manpower.
28:07Our army went ahead and started to march forward to the Minsk.
28:14In the direction of Borussia we went,
28:17from the mountains, from the mountains,
28:19from the mountains, from the mountains,
28:22from the mountains, from the mountains, from the mountains.
28:25We did about 70 kilometers a day.
28:35By the end of July 11th, Germany had lost 28 divisions.
28:40More than 30 generals had been killed or captured,
28:44and the Red Army had advanced 650 kilometers.
28:49Rokossovsky's forces reached the river Bug,
28:51the original Polish border.
28:54They reached the eastern banks of the Vistula on the 25th,
28:58and turned to threaten Warsaw.
29:01At the end of this campaign,
29:03the Russians are right next to Warsaw.
29:06They're right next to Ploesti in Romania.
29:08They're about to take the last oil fields away from the Germans.
29:13And there Stalin held,
29:16gathering his strength for the final devastating assault
29:19that would carry the Red Army into Berlin
29:23and see the Soviet flag hoisted on the ruins of the Reichstag.
29:39After the Normandy landings,
29:42the Allies poured more and more men and material ashore.
29:46And as they moved away from their beachhead,
29:49the lines of supply extended,
29:51and the need for supply increased.
29:54Every conceivable kind of material,
29:56requiring thousands of ships and landing craft
29:59to ensure steady progress against a determined enemy.
30:03It's certainly no picnic these days
30:04being in one of the Army's supply organizations.
30:08As the campaign moved into the second half of 1944,
30:12the situation became critical.
30:14The failure to take Dunkirk was a setback.
30:18The Belgian port of Antwerp, potentially vital,
30:22was in Allied hands by early September
30:25and it was virtually undamaged.
30:27But the marine approaches to Antwerp were unique
30:30and they posed a problem.
30:38The port sits at the mouth of the Scheldt.
30:43Ships entering must sail up the estuary
30:45and the estuary was flanked along the channel by German defences
30:50and guarded at its mouth by the island of Valkarin.
30:57General von Zengen, recently sent to take over 15th Army,
31:02energetically built up the defences,
31:04determined to deny use of Antwerp to the Allies.
31:07This battle, of course, was a vital part of the struggle
31:10to free the approaches to Antwerp.
31:12And the importance of Antwerp as a supply port
31:14certainly needs no stressing.
31:17Canadian divisions faced the estuary
31:23and launched their assault in late October.
31:26The force arrived early in the morning
31:28and landed in the face of heavy opposition
31:30on a small beach head which was under continuous fire
31:33from German batteries inland.
31:36The 2nd Division pressed across the peninsula
31:39and into South Bévalon, taking Hoss on October 29th.
31:45They were moving to link up with other units
31:48that had come in from the sea.
31:524th Special Service Brigade, as it was then called,
31:55now 4th Commando, landed on Valkarin on November 1st.
32:01Rather whimsically, their action was called Operation Infatuate.
32:1047th and 48th Commandos landed on the northwest tip of the island
32:15and an infantry brigade with commando elements on the southwest tip.
32:21From the violence of the enemy's defence,
32:24two things are perfectly clear.
32:25First, the value Germany placed on denying Antwerp to us.
32:29Second, the supreme determination, skill and courage of our troops
32:34making this frontal assault on the Valkaran beachheads.
32:37The shells would come down and we all got smacked.
32:40I just remember spinning around and hitting the sand
32:45and shouting something like, take cover, to the lads.
32:50And where did they go?
32:52They ran into the German pillboxes, didn't they?
32:54Not the ones who fired at us,
32:56but the ones who were just about to give up.
33:00The Canadians, having fought their way through Bavelond,
33:04crossed the slow channel on the 3rd.
33:09The island was an unpleasant place to fight.
33:13The RAF had breached local dikes and the ground was flooded.
33:21But by the 8th, Von Zangen's defence had been defeated.
33:28And as soon as a channel had been cleared through the mines,
33:32allied shipping began to use Antwerp.
33:34By the opening of the great port of Antwerp, with its miles of docks and its vast facilities for the
33:39landing of supplies,
33:41our minesweepers have magnificently rounded off the work of the armies in Holland.
33:47Supply, securing material for one's own army, or denying it to the enemy, grew more vital as war became more
33:56mechanised.
33:58The use of the great port of Antwerp was a significant gain for the Allied forces.
34:05As they prepared themselves for the advance across Europe, towards the Rhine and beyond.
34:14Its significance was not lost on German high command.
34:19The attempt to defend the approaches to Antwerp had failed.
34:23But the idea of launching a drive that could retake the port, or at least deny it to the Allies,
34:30was brought into German planning.
34:36Could enough material, enough men, be marshalled to make a surprise counter-thrust?
34:43Almost mirroring the first great blitzkrieg that had dashed to the channel in 1940.
34:50And, if such a counter-offensive could be launched, might it not alter the outcome of the war?
34:58The eyes of the German high command returned to that part of the front where they had so successfully attacked
35:05when the war first crashed into France.
35:09The Ardennes.
35:24The war in the West was, it seemed, moving steadily, predictably to its climax.
35:31On the 8th of November, the day that Patton began his offensive in the Tsar, the French First Army moved
35:39on the Belfort Gap.
35:43By the middle of the month, there were formations in motion all along the line.
35:49The American First and Ninth Armies to the north of Patton.
35:55Elements of the US 7th entering Strasbourg on the 2nd, and the 6th entering the Maginot Line on the day
36:01that the first vessels entered and started to use the port of Antwerp.
36:06Operation Watch on the Line, as this operation was called from the German side, was the last major German offensive
36:13of World War II.
36:14They were being squeezed between the Russians, who were advancing in the East, and the British and American and other
36:22Allied forces who were coming at them from the West.
36:25And so Hitler had to do something. He couldn't just fight a rearguard action. That would always just end in
36:33disaster.
36:34Properly labeled the Ardennes counteroffensive, history remembers it as the Battle of the Bulge.
36:41As we approached the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans were about to attack in a place that they had
36:46attacked in 1870, 1914, 1940, and now they're about to do it in 1944.
36:53And as in every other attack, they will be successful in achieving complete surprise.
37:00Where the Germans surged, the 145 kilometre front was held by four American divisions, with one inexperienced armoured division, the
37:099th, in support.
37:11Two of the four infantry divisions had been sent to the quiet Ardennes to recuperate.
37:17And a third, the 106th, had never been in action.
37:23Onto this force fell two panzer armies, which in hours had created an 80 kilometre salient, the Bulge.
37:31In 24 hours, the initiative changed hands, and the German army, which had put the word Blitzkrieg into all languages,
37:39unleashed its desperate offensive.
37:42A short bombardment had pushed Allied heads down before the armour came forward under cover of heavy fog, which neutralised
37:50Allied air superiority.
37:53It may not be like 1918, but it's certainly not like 1940.
38:00The Hun has won a success. How big remains to be seen.
38:05Progress in the north fell behind schedule, but 1st Panzer Corps made good ground and was dashing for the Mers
38:12bridges.
38:15The 5th Panzer Army brushed aside the 106th, but slowed against the experienced 28th Division.
38:32It was late afternoon before Allied High Command realised that what was happening was an all-out offensive, rather than
38:41a feint.
38:41The Allies were taken completely by surprise. They were overconfident. They were so busy planning how they would take Hitler's
38:48forces apart,
38:49it didn't seem to really occur to anybody that he was making a plan to take their forces apart.
38:55Our command was taken totally by surprise, so they reacted in an extreme.
39:07Everything that could fly flew to bomb their supply train.
39:16And I can remember seeing the sky just filled with airplanes. It was really quite a sight.
39:22Allied confusion was increased, in part due to the discovery of 150 Germans who, dressed as Americans,
39:30had penetrated Allied lines under the command of Otto Skorzeny, the man who, in September 1943, had rescued Mussolini.
39:41As part of Operation Watch on the Rhine, Hitler came up with the idea of creating an infiltration force
39:47that would get through the Allied lines in order to capture the key bridges on the River Meuse.
39:54But really, their real impact ironically came when the first unit was captured,
39:58and it suddenly became known to the Americans that there were these Germans wandering around behind their lines,
40:04dressed as Americans with American equipment, and a panic ensued.
40:09So, suddenly, everybody was suspicious of everybody else.
40:13On the 18th, Eisenhower halted the advance on the Rhine and gave priority to repelling the Ardennes offensive.
40:21The German onslaught slowed. Fuel was becoming a problem.
40:28By the 22nd, the 6th Panzer Army had stopped altogether. Units were losing contact with each other.
40:39Von Manteufel's 5th Panzer Army, which had surrounded Bastogne, was pushing forward.
40:47But that is as far as the Germans got.
40:52The 3rd US Army under Patton now brought pressure from the south.
40:58And with the weather clearing, the overwhelming Allied air supremacy started to tell.
41:06Perhaps no general other than Patton, in the western side anyway, could have been quite as successful at turning his
41:13army to come to the rescue of those at Bastogne.
41:17He drove his forces hard, they got there quickly, and it was a very impressive example of the skill of
41:23generalship.
41:24But I think it's too easy to oversimplify and say that the battle was won because of Patton, that this
41:31was Patton's victory.
41:32There were many facets that, in the end, resulted in the Germans being defeated.
41:38The attack was blunted, the spearhead stopped, the Nazi columns contained and thrown back by men who had flung themselves
41:43into the breach.
41:47The Germans, yes, they were able to concentrate significant forces in that theatre, but they couldn't sustain them.
41:53They couldn't replace the forces that they lost, and they just didn't have the supplies to keep their force going.
41:59Americans could always do that. They had that capability.
42:03The German offensive had been blocked and then reversed.
42:07The losses inflicted equaled those sustained and, with the counter-offensive, Axis forces were falling back all along the front.
42:18The bulge had held up the Allied push across the Rhine for six weeks, but it had only been held
42:25up.
42:27Crossing the Rhine was the last barrier before Eisenhower's armies poured into the fatherland.
42:33We were going to be the thrust into mainland Germany.
42:37And all we knew was Germany was across the river, and we all piddled in the river for good luck.
42:45Patton crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim.
42:47The next night, Montgomery crossed at Emmerich.
42:51The battle was won.
42:54German soil was underfoot, and the war in Europe, that had started 68 months earlier, was almost over.
43:06Well, it's-
43:32Bilox could never stop there with the thundering
43:32So they can talk about Viper.
43:32This even-
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