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During World War Two, victory or defeat in extreme environments—from the scorching, supply-starved North African deserts to the freezing, mud-soaked forests of Western Europe—depended as much on managing climate, geography, and supply lines as it did on military strategy
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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, it 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.
01:03Through history, armies marched to face each other on favored ground,
01:08and clashed to decide a campaign, a war, an empire.
01:14With the 20th century, that changed.
01:19The battles won and lost of the Second World War happened everywhere and anywhere.
01:26In freezing temperatures, arid deserts, and mercilessly humid jungles.
01:33These were battles in which more than the enemy soldier had to be overcome.
01:48The day after the fall of Singapore,
01:51John Curtin, the Australian Prime Minister, said that the battle for Australia has begun.
01:58And it did seem probable that Japan would continue to drive south.
02:04The extraordinary speed with which Japan had swept over the lands they now labeled
02:09the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, owed much to surprise, to planning, to determination.
02:18So that when they were checked on one of the most hellish battlefields it is possible to imagine,
02:24it was as though a myth had been exposed.
02:30This was the action to cross the Owen Stanley Range and fall on the New Guinea capital of Port Moresby.
02:37The Japanese won it so that they can cement their southern defensive arc
02:41and also use that position to then harass the northern Australian cities
02:46and try and sever the link between Australia and the US.
02:50They're also really concerned that Australia may be used as a launching pad for a counter-offensive.
02:55So that's why their designs are there on Port Moresby.
02:59In July 1942, a small force comprising an Australian and a New Guinea battalion
03:06was sent from Moresby to trek overland to Boona.
03:10There was a small airfield at Boona and General Douglas MacArthur,
03:15commanding the Western Pacific Theatre, decided that he would need it for future operations.
03:21The force that set off was named Marubra Force.
03:25In mutual ignorance, another force would be trekking towards them.
03:32Initially the Japanese wanted to take Port Moresby by sea in an impressive amphibious landing.
03:37However, the Japanese defeat at Coral Sea and then later on at Midway,
03:41meant the Japanese weren't able to do this by sea.
03:43Instead they decided to land a small force on the north-east tip of Papua,
03:48on the northern beaches around Boona, Gona and San Ananda,
03:51with a view of attempting to move inland across the impressive Owen Stanley Range towards Port Moresby,
03:57along a foot track which we now know as the Kokoda Trail or the Kokoda Track.
04:01A force of 2,000 under Colonel Yosuke Yokoyama had landed at Gona on July 21st,
04:10six days after Marubra Force had reached Kokoda.
04:14Two days later, first contact was made between the Japanese and the heavily outnumbered Australians.
04:34The war diary for the Australian 39th Battalion says this for July 27th.
04:44Lieutenant Colonel Owen, after the destruction of all possible stores, material and buildings at Kokoda,
04:51withdrew with all troops.
04:53It was the beginning of a fighting withdrawal down the track towards Moresby,
04:58which stopped a mere 50 kilometres from the capital, whose lights the Japanese could see.
05:03Fighting withdrawal is distinct from a retreat.
05:06In a retreat you're basically trying to break contact with the enemy,
05:08get as far away from them as you can so you can take stock and then really try and counter
05:12-attack.
05:13Fighting withdrawal, you're deliberately maintaining contact with the enemy
05:17because you want to slow down their advance as long as you can.
05:21And the Australians did that really successfully in the early part of September.
05:25In the first phase, the small force that had advanced fell back on Isurava,
05:31where it linked with regular Australian troops.
05:34Still heavily outnumbered, the Australians, after several days, fell back again to stand on Ephogi.
05:42Part of the Australian force was cut off here by a Japanese flanking move and was isolated for two weeks.
05:50By September 10th, the withdrawal had reached Iori Baiwa,
05:54where it was strengthened by further Australian troops advancing out of Moresby.
06:01This force held the Japanese for a week, then withdrew to a strong defensive position on Emita Ridge, 50 kilometres
06:08from Moresby.
06:12This placed the Australians at the end of a manageable supply line
06:16and extended the Japanese lines of communication in a place where distance was not the issue.
06:23Porters and mules brought up supplies.
06:27The Japanese, with their typical shortage of support elements, were soon suffering terribly,
06:33lacking food, enfeebled and wracked by disease.
06:39As the Australians began their move back along the track,
06:43the Japanese facing them could not expect relief.
06:46The attempted landing at Milne Bay had been repulsed
06:50and the commitment to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands
06:53denied the force in the Owen Stanleys any hope of reinforcement.
06:58Towards the end of September, now coming under pressure from relatively fresh Australian troops,
07:04the Japanese began their own fighting withdrawal.
07:08Rearguards were skilfully deployed along the track,
07:11and it took bitter fighting, firing sometimes at shadows in the jungle,
07:16locking sometimes in hand-to-hand combat, at Templeton's Crossing,
07:21and then Eora Creek, before Kokoda was retaken.
07:26It's very hard to appreciate how claustrophobic jungle warfare is.
07:30When you can't see the enemy, all you can hear is noises.
07:33And you think, was that a Japanese soldier, or was it a wild pig?
07:37The toll was horrific.
07:40More than 150,000 Japanese troops served in New Guinea.
07:48Barely 6% of them survived.
07:51What was left of the Japanese force made a last stand at Oivi,
07:57east of Kokoda, before retiring to the coast.
08:01The fighting moved towards the sea, and on January 2, 1943,
08:06almost six months after Marubra Force had first set off to cross the Kokoda Track,
08:11its objective, Buna, fell to the Allies.
08:17The success at Kokoda, as any success will, boosted morale
08:22and hardened the troops for the battles ahead.
08:32Woods and water, in the land of the midnight sun, and the thousand lakes.
08:39But at the end of a year, very little sun, temperatures to minus 40,
08:45and more than a metre of snow.
08:49This was the landscape into which the Red Army thrust.
08:53Not as part of the World War, but as a cynical land grab.
08:58Taking the opportunity of the universal preoccupation with the main battlefield
09:03to redefine its border with Finland.
09:07Soviet forces invaded Finland on November 30, 1939.
09:12The assault by the 13th Army over the Karelian Isthmus faltered against the Mannerheim Line.
09:19The Reds were a post.
09:21They are said to have left over 8,000 dead on the frozen battlefield near Summa in the south,
09:25in the course of an eight-day attempt to break the Mannerheim Line.
09:28Further north, five divisions of the Soviet 9th Army were met by small units
09:34that ultimately formed into a single Finnish division, the 9th, at a place called Suomosami.
09:42These troops were not strong enough to prevent Russian occupation of Suomosami village,
09:48though the withdrawing Finns had burned it as they had destroyed bridges to slow the Russian advance.
10:00With Suomosami in Russian hands, the first stage of the battle ended.
10:07The Finnish troops were assembled on the southern bank of the Chianta Lake
10:12and were brought under fire on December 9th by an assault supported by artillery and grenade launchers.
10:20The Russian tanks could not support the attack.
10:23The ice was thick enough for men, but it was too early in the winter for the tanks to safely
10:29cross.
10:32This was the first evidence that the Red Army had not properly anticipated the conditions on the battlefield.
10:39The 27th Infantry Regiment attacked from the east.
10:43Its target, the southern part of the village.
10:47Finnish units pressed forward until after two weeks of fighting,
10:52Soviet forces left Suomosami and withdrew across the ice of Lake Chianta.
11:01With Suomosami back in Finnish hands, Colonel Hjalmar Silasvold, commanding,
11:08put everything he had into dislodging the Russians from the vital Rata Road area.
11:14His plan was to cut the supply route that reached over the border and kept the Red Army in the
11:20field.
11:23Silasvold ordered a road cleared across the frozen lakes parallel to the Rata Road.
11:29In early January, he unleashed his assembled force.
11:34The Finns were equipped, white-suited in the snow.
11:39Units of them ski troops.
11:41All of them winter-proofed.
11:43The Red Army command had made the mistake that the Germans would make in Russia,
11:50thinking that a quick victory would come before the bitter cold took its toll.
11:56The fighting quality of the Red Army was also compromised by the brutality of Stalin's paranoid purges,
12:03which had stripped the military of 36,000 of its best officers.
12:08The 163rd Division was destroyed and the Rata Road was cut,
12:14meaning resupply and reinforcement was not possible.
12:17The climax would be the battle to evict the Soviet force from Rata,
12:24forcing them back towards and over the border.
12:31Facing the Finns was the elite motorized 44th Division.
12:36The Russian forces were immensely superior to the Finnish forces,
12:40which were very lightly equipped.
12:41The Russians advanced in long mechanized columns through the Finnish forests,
12:47covered in snow, ice-covered lakes.
12:50And that was their weakness,
12:51because the Finns, who were very lightly equipped and moved on skis,
12:55descended on the Russian columns, cut them off and cut them to pieces,
12:59a tactic that the Finns called muti,
13:01which means piling up wood in the forests,
13:03which is what they did to the Russians.
13:07Between the 5th and 7th of January, the 44th was destroyed
13:12and the battle of Suomussalmi was over.
13:17When in March a peace treaty ended the Russo-Finnish War,
13:22the situation in Suomussalmi was unchanged,
13:26with the Finns continuing to occupy the village and the road.
13:30Their victory, a victory for morale, motivation, tactics and terrain,
13:38had cost the Soviet Union 27,500 killed or frozen to death,
13:4550 tanks destroyed and vast quantities of equipment lost and broken.
13:52Suomussalmi, although it was a tactical victory,
13:54didn't help the outcome of the war,
13:56because when Germany invaded the Soviet Union,
13:58it brought Finland in as its ally.
14:01Finns were eager to regain their territory
14:03and to exact revenge on the Soviets,
14:05but it got caught up in this terrible Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
14:09the Soviet Union.
14:25On November 8th, 1942,
14:28an American force, sailing from the USA,
14:31started to disembark troops in Morocco.
14:34The many beaches selected for the landings
14:37ranged from the western corner of Morocco
14:39to places hundreds of miles east,
14:41beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, beyond Algiers.
14:44It was part of the complex operation
14:46to land on the western edge of North Africa and move east,
14:50to effect a link-up with the 8th Army moving west
14:53after its success at El Alamein.
14:56Many landings were actually or almost entirely unopposed.
15:00The campaign was known as Operation Torch,
15:03and early in its unfolding,
15:05American and German troops met in battle for the first time,
15:09when two Axis army groups,
15:11one under General von Arnhem,
15:13the other, Erwin Rommel,
15:14moved forward to meet them.
15:18On February 14th,
15:20von Arnhem launched Operation Springwind,
15:23attacking and taking Sidi Bouzid after a day-long fight.
15:27During the action,
15:29American operations were hampered by weak command decisions
15:32and poor use of armour.
15:39On the 15th,
15:41Rommel launched his offensive,
15:43Operation Morning Wind,
15:45destroying 40 American tanks
15:47during the first day of operations.
15:48He pushed on to Sbietla.
15:57General Fredendal,
15:58a controversial commander who never visited the front,
16:02pulled his force back to the Khazarin Pass.
16:12Linking with 10th Panzer Division from von Arnhem's command,
16:16Rommel assaulted the new position on the 19th,
16:19smashing into the Allied lines and compelling US troops to withdraw.
16:30Rommel personally led the 10th Panzer Division into the Khazarin
16:34and ordered 21st Panzer Division to press through the Sbietla Gap.
16:39This move was effectively blocked by an allied force
16:43centred on the British 6th Armoured,
16:45US 1st and 34th Infantry Divisions.
16:56Fighting around Khazarin
16:58revealed serious deficiencies in Allied armour.
17:02The superiority of German Panzers
17:04quickly defeating US M3 Lee and M3 Stuart tanks.
17:09Exiting the pass,
17:11Rommel divided 10th Panzer
17:13to press north towards Thala
17:14and west towards Tibessa,
17:16which he never reached.
17:20By the night of February 21st,
17:23Rommel stood outside Thala
17:25and believed that the Allied supply base at Tibessa
17:28on the railway line was within reach.
17:33But the Allied lines at Thala had been reinforced
17:36by British infantry backed by US artillery
17:39and the position occupied on the 22nd
17:42was the limit of the German advance.
17:51The enemy's resistance, though resolute, was eventually broken here
17:55and there was plenty of evidence by the wayside
17:57as our advance continued.
18:00Rommel, unable to break through,
18:02elected to end the battle in order to reinforce the Marath Line,
18:06the position that could prevent Montgomery advancing west
18:09from breaking through and linking up with the forces that had landed
18:13as part of Operation Torch.
18:15Finally, the withdrawal of the enemy tank force.
18:18Just one isolated incident in the combined Allied effort
18:22to drive Rommel and co. into the sea.
18:25Allied forces reoccupied Kasserine Pass on February 25th.
18:31The first major clash between American and German forces,
18:35the battle showed an enemy superiority,
18:37not just in some materiel, but predictably inexperience.
18:42It also exposed flaws in the American command structure and doctrine.
18:47The American response to what was more a debacle than a battle lost
18:51was to initiate several changes,
18:53including the immediate removal of the incompetent Fredendoll.
18:57Command of Second Corps famously passed
19:00to Lieutenant General George S. Patton.
19:04Patton was controversial.
19:07His disciplinary methods got him into trouble
19:09and his pistol-packing ways had their critics.
19:13But he was a fighting general,
19:15and with the Allies on the attack,
19:18an aggressive fighting disposition was required.
19:23Patton drove his troops from Africa,
19:26into Sicily and out of the Normandy beachhead,
19:30rallied them at the Battle of the Bulge
19:32and earned and loved the nickname Old Blood and Guts.
19:52In terrain as difficult as any fought over,
19:55and conditions as harsh as any that soldiers had to endure,
19:59the Burma campaign went on month after long month of thrust
20:07and counter-thrust.
20:10The first half of 1944 is dominated by the Japanese attempt to invade India.
20:19They're halted just over the border,
20:22and there the Japanese suffer the biggest defeats in their military history.
20:27They leave 50,000 dead on the battlefield.
20:30That's their high-water mark.
20:32Then they pull back.
20:36At last, towards the end of 1944,
20:40with Allied troops beginning to be strengthened,
20:42with the tide turned in Europe,
20:44and with Japanese resources threadbare,
20:47the operation to expel Japanese troops from Burma gained momentum.
20:58Two operations were designed to expel the Japanese from Burma.
21:04Capital, in which Slim's 14th Army would advance from Assam across the Chinwen
21:09to re-establish contact with the nationalist Chinese,
21:13and Dracula, a combined airborne, land,
21:18and amphibious assault on Rangoon.
21:22The 14th Army and the Burma theatre were at the bottom of British priorities.
21:28The Mediterranean, Europe and the home front took priority.
21:32So it had very few resources.
21:35It fought on scales of transport and other administrative elements
21:40that would have been unacceptable in other theatres.
21:44The next thing that Slim did,
21:47and which is critical in this campaign,
21:49is raise the morale and confidence in 14th Army to fever pitch.
21:55General Slim, commander of the 14th Army,
21:57has some heartening news of the war against Japan.
22:00Nothing can stop us winning,
22:02but a great deal can be done to speed up and render less costly the final victory.
22:08The 14th Army called itself the Forgotten Army,
22:11and Slim seized on that
22:13and made the Forgotten Army something to be proud of.
22:16In early November, the Chinese 6th Army began to move.
22:22Operation Capital was launched on December 3rd,
22:25with the 11th East African and 19th and 20th Indian Divisions crossing the Chinwen.
22:37A few days later, the Chinese 1st Army was coming south towards the British Line of Advance and took Bamo.
22:48General Kimura, commanding Japan's Burma Area Army, was in a desperate situation.
22:54He had little prospect of resupply and was obliged to marshal what he had with great care.
23:02So he fell back before the initial advance, offering token resistance.
23:09The lack of defence encouraged Slim to change the plan.
23:14Operation Extended Capital was more ambitious.
23:17His generalship was superb.
23:20He convinced the Japanese that he was going to throw everything at Mandalay.
23:25Naturally, they deployed the bulk of their forces to protect Mandalay,
23:29it being a very important communications hub for them.
23:31But then through an elaborate deception plan, Slim deployed an entire corps about 100 kilometres south,
23:39where they crossed the Irrawaddy and then headed another 80 kilometres to take Mike Teela,
23:44through which all the Japanese communications to Mandalay and further north passed.
23:50The Japanese were repositioning their defences for the battle for Mandalay.
23:55So West African and Indian advances in the Arakan and 15th Corps hook along the coast to Ramri were largely
24:05unopposed.
24:07A war of patrol activity in which the Bren carrier scouts along the coast.
24:12On January 7th, the Japanese 15th Army withdrew across the Irrawaddy.
24:22By mid-January, the 19th Indian Division had established a bridgehead across the Irrawaddy.
24:29At the end of the month, the Burma and Ledo roads were joined at Mongyu,
24:34with the Chinese 1st Army striking south along the Burma road
24:38and the 6th striking south east from Bamo.
24:42These Chinese units have been attacking Japanese positions guarding the Burma road.
24:47And they've been making progress.
24:554th Corps pressed south, initiating the battle for Make Teela, which fell to the 17th Indian Division.
25:06Their supply route was then cut by a Japanese counterattack.
25:14And the veteran 17th, continuously in the field for longer than any other unit in the British Army,
25:20had to rely on airdropped supplies while repelling repeated attempts by the Japanese 33rd Army to take Make Teela's airfields.
25:31The 33rd's commander, General Maskey Hinder, was forced to order a withdrawal on March 28th.
25:4019th Indian Division had reached the outskirts of Mandalay on the 9th,
25:44with most of the city cleared by the 11th, as 2nd British Division advanced from the west.
25:51The focus now turned to Rangoon, which would be assaulted by a combined operation codenamed Dracula.
26:0117th Indian was advancing south along the line of the Sitang, reaching Pegu on April 29th.
26:10By then, the first promise of the monsoon, the so-called Mango Rains, were falling.
26:18Despite the weather, it was decided to go ahead with the combined allied assault on the capital.
26:26On May 1st, a Gurkha parachute battalion dropped on Elephant Point at the mouth of the Irrawaddy.
26:35And the next day, the 26th Indian Division carried the amphibious assault.
26:42They linked with the 17th advancing from Pegu on the 6th.
26:51But the Japanese had withdrawn towards the Thai border.
26:56By the beginning of August, the last Japanese had left Burma, but they were not pursued.
27:05The victory in Burma did restore some measure of British respect.
27:10But it was too late, because the earlier defeats in Burma, and especially in Malaya and Singapore,
27:17had been a stimulus to nascent nationalist movements.
27:20And they bore fruit in the independence granted to both India and Burma after the war.
27:39The greatest defence against the U-boat has been the unfailing courage of the men,
27:43who bring supplies across the sea in the face of every risk of war and weather.
27:50Through the summer months, the Arctic ports of Mamansk and Archangel in the White Sea
27:56were vital entry points for Allied supplies,
27:59being sent to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease arrangement.
28:04When the Soviet Union entered the war, the Western Allies immediately agreed
28:09to send as much support as they could to the Soviet Union.
28:12And that meant going either the southern way through Persia,
28:15which is the long way around, or the cold way through the Arctic Sea,
28:20around the top of Norway.
28:22And now this sounds like a really disastrous way to go about supplying the Soviet Union,
28:28but in fact it worked.
28:29103 ships went through 1941-42, and only one of those ships was sunk.
28:35So Arctic convoys actually worked.
28:38But in July 1942, the Arctic convoy system fell to pieces.
28:4439 convoys travelled to the North Russian ports,
28:48and of 533 escorted merchant vessels, only 69 were lost to enemy action.
28:57And most of those losses were taken by PQ-17,
29:01the designation of the convoy that suffered more than any other anywhere in the war.
29:09PQ-17, the initials were merely those of the man who chartered the original convoy route,
29:16sailed from Valfjorda in Iceland on June 27th.
29:21It was a very big convoy, escorted by many warships,
29:24and of course every man aboard every ship knew pretty well what lay ahead.
29:28Attack by U-boat, by bomber and torpedo bomber.
29:33It was the first Anglo-American convoy to sail under British command.
29:41It comprised 35 merchantmen carrying 297 aircraft, 594 tanks, 4,246 trucks and gun carriers,
29:52and a further 156,000 tons of cargo sufficient to equip an army of 50,000 men.
30:00In the values of the day, the cargo was worth an estimated $700 million.
30:06The escort comprised four cruisers, three destroyers and two submarines,
30:12as well as a pair of tankers to refuel the vessels as required.
30:18Shortly after sailing, one ship ran aground and had to return to Iceland.
30:25On June 29th, the convoy encountered heavy ice, damaging four ships,
30:30one of which was given permission to turn back.
30:34Thirty-three ships sailed on.
30:37On July 1st, they were located by German forces.
30:44The British Admiralty was also monitoring PQ-17,
30:48and on learning that German ships, including the battleship Tirpitz,
30:53were moving to intercept, ordered the escort to break off to hunt the German raiders.
30:59And in view of the removal of the covering force, the convoy was ordered to scatter
31:04in an admiralty order sent by Admiral Dudley Pound at 2123 on July 4th.
31:12Followed at 2136 by a simple, unambiguous order, convoy is to scatter.
31:19The turning point for PQ-17 comes on the evening of the 4th of July,
31:24when the British, from the Admiralty, this isn't a local decision,
31:27it's an admiralty decision for the convoy to scatter,
31:31literally deserting those merchant ships and making them find their own way to Soviet ports.
31:35They're only halfway through the voyage at this point,
31:38and it leaves them at the mercy of the Germans.
31:42When the order came, the convoy had covered a little over half of its journey.
31:47Spread across the ocean, it would be far more difficult for a battleship to target.
31:54But the Tirpitz played no part. No surface raider did.
32:01But U-boats and the Luftwaffe fell on the scattered and undefended vessels
32:06through the long daylight hours of the northern summer.
32:11The messages from the isolated ships have been preserved and being bombed.
32:17On fire.
32:22Six U-boats approaching on the surface, abandoning ship.
32:30On July 15th, six merchantmen were sent to the bottom by the Luftwaffe.
32:40And six more by U-boats.
32:43Two more on the 6th, five the next day.
32:46And two more, the final two.
32:50On the 10th.
32:53Churchill called it a melancholy naval episode.
32:57It was rather more than that.
33:00Of the 33 ships that had sailed on without escort,
33:0423 had been sunk and more than 150 lives lost.
33:09180,000 tons of war material had been loaded in Iceland.
33:1464,000 tons were delivered.
33:18Supply via the Arctic route was temporarily suspended,
33:22not resuming until September,
33:24when much stronger escort arrangements were in place.
33:28As in the last war, so in this,
33:30the convoy system has proved its efficiency.
33:34So convoys should be a way of getting supplies
33:37to where you need them in a safe way.
33:39And indeed, that's exactly what they proved
33:41in just about every other theatre of the war.
33:43We attack with depth charges.
33:46Now for the explosion.
33:52The submarine, crippled by depth charges, is forced to surface.
33:57PQ-17's different.
33:58PQ-17, because of this panic,
34:01you can only describe it as a mark of panic
34:04on the part of Dudley Pound,
34:06where he abandons the convoy,
34:07it proves that convoys work, because PQ-17 doesn't.
34:11But why does he abandon them?
34:13And it's a mark of just how fearsome
34:16the German pocket battleships were.
34:18You know, these commerce raiders,
34:19which they'd sunk most of during the war,
34:21but the Tirpitz remained.
34:23And what Dudley Pound didn't want
34:25was for American cruisers to be sunk by the Tirpitz.
34:28And that's the reason, I think,
34:31why PQ-17 was abandoned to its fate.
34:45The offensive launched against Russia in June 1941,
34:50Operation Barbarossa,
34:52was without parallel in the history of war.
34:56along a massive front,
34:58an armed mass of more than a million men,
35:01machines, tanks, aircraft,
35:04of 650,000 horses,
35:07swept into and through the Soviet heartland.
35:14But Barbarossa did not drive for the capital.
35:19After Smolensk fell in August,
35:22German troops turned north and south.
35:26There's a strategic dispute between Hitler and the generals
35:30in July and August 1941,
35:32in which the generals are unambiguously geared toward seizing Moscow.
35:38Hitler does not want to do this.
35:39He opts for the Battle of Kiev.
35:42But two weeks into the Battle of Kiev,
35:43so early September,
35:45Hitler issues a war directive stating that
35:46after he has taken the eastern parts of the Ukraine,
35:49there will be a major new offensive directed toward Moscow.
35:54When it came,
35:56it was designated Operation Typhoon.
36:01The Germans planned a giant pincer movement,
36:04closing north and south to grip the capital.
36:12Third and fourth panzer armies would move against the Kalinan Front
36:16and cut the Moscow-Leningrad Railway.
36:22Second panzer army would move in the south,
36:25and fourth army would move from the west,
36:29directly on Moscow.
36:32The numbers finally involved were staggering.
36:36Towards two million Axis,
36:38with over a thousand tanks and five hundred aircraft.
36:42In the end,
36:44more than two million Soviet troops,
36:47three thousand tanks and more than a thousand aircraft.
36:52But before the Soviet command could bring up reserves
36:55and reach those figures,
36:57the Germans enjoyed superiority.
37:00And at the start of Operation Typhoon,
37:05success.
37:08In their drive,
37:094th Panzer and 2nd Panzer quickly isolated pockets
37:13at Vyazma and Bryansk respectively,
37:16that trapped Red Army formations.
37:21When the Bryansk pocket surrendered on October 14th,
37:2550,000 prisoners were taken.
37:28Many Soviet troops managed to escape.
37:32Five days later,
37:34the Vyazma pocket was eliminated,
37:36and here,
37:37670,000 prisoners marched into cruel captivity
37:42that would cost many their lives.
37:45At that point,
37:46Germany,
37:47this is a real reflection of its hubris,
37:50is pronouncing the war as one.
37:53The soldiers are reading the newspapers on the front line
37:56and they're shocked
37:56because that's not what they see.
37:58Yes,
37:59the Red Army,
38:00they've lost a lot of people,
38:02but they're still sending in new troops.
38:05They're still sending in people,
38:06so they have more resources,
38:08and it's so obvious
38:09that the Germans cannot hold on.
38:12Yes,
38:12they can push on,
38:13but at what cost?
38:16In early October,
38:18the first rains fell.
38:21Before long,
38:23liquid mud was slowing the advance.
38:26But by the 13th of October,
38:28German troops reached the fortifications
38:31to protect Moscow's western approaches,
38:35the Mozaisk Line.
38:39Zhukov had by now been placed in command of the defense,
38:43and he pulled troops back and concentrated them at key strong points.
38:52This weakened the Mozaisk Line,
38:55which fell on October 18th.
38:58No line existed to hold up the advance in the south,
39:02but bad weather and bad roads did.
39:06Tula was not reached until October 26th.
39:11The German invasion was moving.
39:13It was moving slowly,
39:15but it was moving inexorably.
39:18It was winning,
39:19and would soon be at the gates of Moscow.
39:23But by late October,
39:25two thirds of the German motor pool was out of action.
39:29Fuel supply problems were chronic,
39:31and casualties were mounting.
39:34To rectify the deficiencies,
39:36from the end of October until November 15th,
39:39the High Command ordered a pause.
39:41The city of Tula,
39:43about a hundred miles due south of the capital,
39:45was almost surrounded.
39:46But this important factory town held out,
39:49and the workers of Tula carried on with their munition-making
39:52to the very last minute possible.
39:54What's interesting,
39:55and what is also reflective of National Socialist military thinking,
39:58is the Germans themselves know that this two-week pause
40:02benefits the enemy more than it benefits themselves.
40:05So even though they know they need this time
40:07to bring up more supplies, more offensive capacity,
40:10they're also aware the Soviets are benefiting even more,
40:13and that doesn't stop them from attempting Typhoon 2
40:16in the middle of November when the weather is even colder.
40:19This is going to be a frontal advance,
40:22really sending their men into the teeth of Soviet defences.
40:25If this strikes you as a bad idea, you're right,
40:29it is a bad idea.
40:30On November 15th,
40:33German tank armies moved,
40:34restoring the pincer, squeezing in on Moscow.
40:39Klin fell on November 24th.
40:42By the 28th,
40:44panzers had a bridgehead over the Moscow-Volga canal.
40:48But the first shock army drove them back with a counterattack.
40:55German units now stood less than 30 kilometers from their objective,
40:59and German officers surveyed the onion turrets of Moscow through their field glasses.
41:07And then the most ferocious Russian of all entered the field.
41:13General Winter, though we were warned not to rely upon his aid too much,
41:17is already proving a powerful ally.
41:19The Red Army makes full use of the alliance.
41:23On November 30th,
41:26General von Bock reported to Berlin
41:28that the temperature was minus 45 degrees Celsius,
41:32and the tanks would not start.
41:35Lubricants were frozen,
41:37soldiers in summer uniforms were dying,
41:40and frostbite was being seen.
41:45On December 2nd,
41:47a Wehrmacht reconnaissance battalion reached Kimke,
41:51less than 20 kilometers from the Kremlin.
41:55And that was as far as Typhoon got.
42:01German forces are overextended,
42:04they are exhausted,
42:05they are at the end of very tenuous supply lines,
42:07and they have absolutely no idea of what's coming.
42:11The offensive from the Soviets will begin on the evening of the 5th,
42:15and the Germans will then begin a massive withdrawal,
42:18both in the north of Moscow and towards the south around Tula.
42:22This retreat will be catastrophic for the Germans.
42:26It's only a few weeks ago
42:27that the German advance on the Eastern Front
42:29had reached the very outskirts of Moscow itself.
42:32Only a few weeks ago,
42:34Hitler's intuition told him Moscow would fall.
42:38Certainly things did look pretty black for Russia and for us.
42:43The battle for Moscow was over.
42:46And for the Germans,
42:49the battle to hold ground and survive had begun.
42:54There is no path to German success.
42:57Economically, they are falling behind.
42:58Militarily, they haven't got their operational edge,
43:01and they can't get it back.
43:02So while the German army still exists in being,
43:04while it still occupies the Eastern Front,
43:06and while it still has got men and artillery and tanks,
43:08and sometimes impressive numbers,
43:11it's not able to ever end the war,
43:14and unless Hitler's looking for a political solution,
43:17which is not possible for him,
43:18he sees this war ending only in victory
43:20or utter total defeat.
43:22And that's what's going to happen.
43:23The End
43:25The end
43:29The End
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