- 5 days ago
Key territories in World War Two were decided by brutal battles. Winning these fights allowed countries to grab or keep important land, while losing cost them control and resources. Battles were fought in cities, on islands, in deep jungles, and at sea...
二战中“关键领土”的得失并非单一战役的简单结果，而是由多条战线、多个战场长期拉锯形成的战略格局。不同战区的核心领土争夺焦点各异，以下按主要战场梳理最具战略意义的领土得失....
二战中“关键领土”的得失并非单一战役的简单结果，而是由多条战线、多个战场长期拉锯形成的战略格局。不同战区的核心领土争夺焦点各异，以下按主要战场梳理最具战略意义的领土得失....
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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.
01:03A war that reached every continent and touched every sort of terrain,
01:08demanded every sort of strategy.
01:11In this episode, we examine battles fought at sea and in the jungle,
01:18in city streets, in invasions from the air, and retreats from the land.
01:37Spring in Paris, over the Eiffel Tower, over the cities and towns of Europe,
01:42hangs a pall of fear and death.
01:45The German invasion of France could hardly have gone better.
01:50For the Germans.
01:52The German Blitzkrieg against Western Europe opens on the 10th of May 1940,
01:57and within a fortnight, the British and French and Belgian armies are defeated.
02:01They withdraw into the Channel Coast.
02:05It looks as if the Second World War in the West will be over literally within weeks.
02:10On the 4th of June, German troops entered the port of Dunkirk.
02:15But they did not defeat and imprison the hundreds of thousands of troops that they had penned there.
02:22And though there are solid reasons why they did not,
02:25what happened between May 23rd and June 4th must, albeit with hindsight,
02:33be classed as a German mistake, with quite significant consequences.
02:39By the 23rd of May, the Belgian army had been isolated,
02:44and the British and First French forced against the sea.
02:49From Rundstedt, commanding Army Group A, issued what has famously become known as the Stop Order.
02:58The Germans have been fighting for three weeks invading Western Europe.
03:02Their forces are exhausted.
03:06So the German generals, and not as many people think,
03:09Hitler ordered them to stop on the perimeter of the Dunkirk beaches.
03:14So in effect, the Germans hand Western allies a few days grace.
03:20So why did von Rundstedt and Hitler halt their smashing offensive?
03:25The Panzer divisions had been reduced by 30% in the Blitzkrieg
03:29that had brought them to the Channel.
03:32And the bulk of the French military machine lay undefeated,
03:37as indeed did the greater part of France.
03:41The Germans were concerned about the potential for an Allied counterattack.
03:45And they're fighting an army which basically won the First World War.
03:49So the Germans are concerned that their enemy is giving in too easily.
03:53So yeah, there was a very sensible prudence on the part of the German commanders,
03:57who also knew that their own troops were disorganized by success.
04:01When Hitler visited von Rundstedt, his acceptance of the Stop Order was made easier
04:07by the assurances of Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring,
04:11who agitated for and guaranteed the success of leaving it to his Luftwaffe
04:17to finish off the trapped Allied troops.
04:20The country around Dunkirk is not suitable for armoured warfare.
04:24It's flat, but it's cut up by canals and drainage ditches.
04:28In fact, it's very similar to the fighting in the First World War in Flanders,
04:31which the senior commanders on both sides, including Hitler,
04:35remembered from 20 years before.
04:38On the day that Hitler and Göring made their plans,
04:42the British commander, Lord Gort, took a unilateral decision.
04:48He would not risk losing his entire command
04:51by participating in General Wagen's proposed and wildly optimistic offensive,
04:57which imagined a breakout to link up with forces further south.
05:03Gort decided instead to withdraw the British expeditionary force on Dunkirk,
05:09from which they could be evacuated, to fight another day.
05:13That evacuation, Operation Dynamo, would begin on May 26th.
05:20Gort's was not the only unilateral decision of the unravelling alliance.
05:25On May 27th, without consulting his allies,
05:29King Leopold of Belgium offered his surrender to the Germans.
05:34Admiral Bertram Ramsey, who had been alerted as early as May 20th
05:39of the possible need for an evacuation,
05:42had brought together a large and decidedly motley collection of vessels,
05:48with which to carry off the troops assembling at Dunkirk.
05:52British ships, cruisers, destroyers, yachts, paddle boats,
05:58anything that could float,
05:59for the British were determined to save their men.
06:05The shortest route had to be abandoned when Calais fell,
06:09and ships would have been within range of the Calais shore batteries.
06:15The second, Route X, was vulnerable to unswept mines.
06:20And so, the longest passage, north to the Quinte Boy,
06:26west to the Goodwin Sands lightship, and south to Dover,
06:31a journey of 160 kilometers, was chosen of necessity.
06:38As it became clear what was happening,
06:42the Luftwaffe's action against the evacuation intensified,
06:53which spread the panic to the civilian population.
06:58The pullback on Dunkirk was not a route.
07:02Beginning on the 26th, the forces conducted an orderly, phased withdrawal
07:07to a 25 kilometer perimeter, defining a pocket 10 to 12 kilometers deep.
07:16The BEF disabled its equipment, spiked and abandoned its guns, and fell back.
07:24Had it not been for this discipline, had there been panic,
07:28what happened at Dunkirk would not have been possible.
07:34There, the efficient evacuation was underway.
07:3825,000 men had been taken off by the end of the second day of the operation.
07:46By May 31st, the day of the largest total taken off.
07:50The figure had risen to 68,014.
07:56The effectiveness of the Luftwaffe was restricted.
08:01The bombers could not operate at night.
08:04Visibility was limited by frequent mists,
08:08although calm seas favored the evacuation fleet,
08:12and the Royal Air Force could sufficiently harass German aircraft to restrict their effect.
08:23By the end of Operation Dynamo, the RAF had lost 177 aircraft, the Germans, 240.
08:34Had the Germans not halted on the 23rd,
08:37it is unlikely that such an evacuation could have been conducted.
08:42The evacuation of Dunkirk means several things.
08:44I mean, in sheer practical terms,
08:46it means that the British have literally hundreds of thousands of men to continue the fight.
08:51Secondly, they've got not just British troops, but French troops especially.
08:55So there's a free French army created in Britain because of the evacuation of Dunkirk.
09:01Though the British troops had lost their equipment,
09:04they had boosted morale and the will to resist.
09:08Anyway, the BEF has come back,
09:10and whatever the disasters that have led to their return,
09:13we at home are mighty glad to have them here.
09:15And when, on their return, Churchill made his defiant,
09:20we shall fight on the beaches, we shall never surrender speech.
09:24He spoke for the nation.
09:36In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China.
09:42It did not go to plan.
09:46Progress was slow, resistance more stubborn than had been anticipated.
09:51In 1939, Japanese colonial ambitions suffered a further check on the Mongolian border,
09:58where Soviet troops inflicted a decisive defeat.
10:02It all strengthened the hand of that faction in the military,
10:06which argued that Japan's expansion should be south.
10:10To Japan, it was the southern resources area.
10:13And dressed up as the greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere,
10:18it would give Japan all of the living space and raw material that she needed.
10:23What we need to remember here is that this is an age largely before synthetic products.
10:29That Japan had been fighting a very costly war in China.
10:35The way that it saw finishing that war was it needed more resources.
10:38The Japanese leadership saw that they had no choice but to seize the resources in the Netherlands East Indies.
10:45Not only are the Dutch East Indies of great strategic value,
10:48but also they contain great material wealth. Oil, for instance.
10:53Their aims were to do it quickly,
10:55so they could release the troops needed to send them back to fight the war in China,
10:59so that they could grab those resources in the Netherlands East Indies
11:03and start shipping them back to Japan
11:04before the United States started to gear up for war.
11:09December 7th, 1941.
11:12As Japanese aircraft were approaching Pearl Harbour,
11:17Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita
11:20were already going ashore on the Malay Peninsula at Kotobaru.
11:26Some of their early successes were all about simultaneous operations
11:30across a broad swathe of Asia and the Pacific.
11:35So the British and American forces in the Asia-Pacific,
11:39they were spread out trying to react to the Japanese.
11:43A lot of these places were very weakly garrisoned as well,
11:46so the Japanese were very quickly seizing them and then moving on,
11:50because part of their battle plans were that troops required for one operation
11:54would then move relatively quickly onto the next.
11:57So they didn't have time to do that.
12:00At the end of 1941,
12:02hardly more than three weeks after the code words
12:05Tora Tora Tora had sent in the raid on Pearl Harbour,
12:10the Japanese were now poised for a full-scale invasion of Burma,
12:14the conquest of the Philippines,
12:18the assault on Singapore and the defeat of the Dutch
12:23in the resource-rich Dutch East Indies.
12:27As Churchill said of the fall of France,
12:30how could it have happened so quickly?
12:34The reasons for victory can be seen in the campaign in Malaya.
12:40They were repeated through the co-prosperity sphere
12:44and were fundamental to Japan's early success.
12:53When Japanese transports, more than 20 of them,
12:57brought Yamashita's Army Group ashore at seven sites on December 8th,
13:02they were virtually unopposed.
13:05British forces were in their habitual deployment,
13:08particularly in strength around the Butterworth base
13:11and had not been moved despite the growing threat of Japanese militarism
13:15and the presence of the Japanese force across the Gulf of Siam.
13:20The 5th Infantry Division quickly secured the air bases at Patani and Singora.
13:28Taking Singora where the peninsula narrows
13:31made possible the movement of Japanese forces across to the west coast.
13:37And that meant that Yamashita could advance on two fronts, dividing the defenders.
13:43The Japanese maintained flexibility in action.
13:47The east coast, thinly defended, was little more than a march southwards.
13:52The west coast required different tactics, and they got them.
13:57Hook actions either left strong defensive positions impotent
14:01in the wake of troops that had bypassed them,
14:03or, more usually, encircled and smashed them.
14:09In places, these hooks meant moving through jungle
14:12that the British had deemed impassable,
14:15an echo of the French mistake that was exposed by the advance through the Ardennes.
14:19The terrain is exploited by the Japanese in a way that it's not by the British.
14:24They never quite managed to work out how to prevent the Japanese outflanking,
14:31both using the forested areas, but also what the Japanese do in Malaya as well,
14:35is make use of small craft to outflank British positions on the land
14:39by outflanking movements using the sea.
14:43There's a lot of racial prejudice underlies the Allies' initial reading
14:48of what the Japanese military is capable of.
14:51And so it underestimates its ability to manoeuvre.
14:55It underestimates its ability to fight.
14:59It underestimates its willingness to utilise the terrain to its advantages.
15:03It underestimates the capabilities of its aircraft,
15:07and thus the Japanese are able to wrest control of the skies
15:10in areas that they're fighting very quickly.
15:12If there was a true blitzkrieg in the Second World War, it was this one.
15:19In a matter of weeks, Japan had gained for itself one-sixth of the surface of the planet.
15:26But after six months, the seeming invincibility of Japan was stopped
15:31in a great naval battle in a place called Midway.
15:47The United Kingdom's position as a great power, which she possessed at the start of the Second World War,
15:54was not a consequence of the wealth or weather or natural resources of the British Isles.
16:00It rested on her empire, a vast maritime empire, the greatest the world had known.
16:09And the integrity of that empire rested not on a large standing army.
16:15It depended on the Royal Navy.
16:17The Royal Navy facing only Germany before the fall of France was a dominant force
16:24and continued to have the strategic advantage of effectively sitting astride of Germany's exits to the globe.
16:33It had eight major groups located in the Atlantic.
16:37At the time, the Germans could barely deploy two battlecruisers and a number of submarines.
16:45Before the war began, the German pocket battleship, Admiral Graf Spee, sailed for the South Atlantic.
16:53And there she waited.
16:56Chief interest, of course, attaches to the famous pocket battleships,
16:59which are only 10,000 tons, but mount six 11-inch guns and have a speed of 26 knots.
17:05Once war had started, the Graf Spee began her operations.
17:11Between the end of September and the end of October, she sank six vessels in an area that straddled a
17:18major sea lane for ships,
17:21travelling around the Cape of Good Hope.
17:23The Graf Spee was in the South Atlantic as part of a deliberate campaign to interrupt, to destroy the global
17:32shipping movements,
17:34to slow and interrupt the movement of resources to and from the United Kingdom.
17:40By November, the Royal Navy had formed six task forces to find and sink the battleship.
17:49In early December, Graf Spee claimed two more victims.
17:54But they did not go down without sending radio signals that influenced Commodore Harwood, commanding Force G,
18:02to concentrate his forces on the Falkland Islands.
18:13Captain Langsdorf, commanding Graf Spee, made two blunders.
18:17The first was that, spotting the smoke of four of Harwood's cruisers and mistaking them for destroyers on escort duty,
18:27he closed to the attack.
18:30What followed, history knows, as the Battle of the River Plate.
18:35Captain Langsdorf at the Graf Spee, it was his duty not to engage British warships.
18:41It was his duty to preserve that ship undamaged.
18:43As soon as he detected British ships, he should have tried to go in the opposite direction.
18:49Langsdorf engaged Exeter and Ajax, Royal Navy,
18:53and Achilles, Royal Navy, New Zealand Division.
18:57As soon as he realised his mistake,
19:00he sped towards the enemy to prevent them from outpacing him.
19:04Graf Spee had diesel engines.
19:07The British vessels steam, which could not accelerate rapidly.
19:12Graf Spee engaged Exeter at 17,000 metres at 0618.
19:18She had turned north-west against the Germans' approach.
19:22Harwood actually split the cruisers.
19:25So they came out Langsdorf from two directions, which unnerved him a bit.
19:30Ajax and Achilles, turning together north-east, forced Langsdorf to spread his fire.
19:38After two minutes, Exeter was returning fire.
19:42But Graf Spee had far superior weaponry.
19:45In fact, it inflicted quite significant damage on the three British cruisers,
19:49which were undergunned compared to the 11-inch guns that he had.
19:53They had 8- and 6-inch guns.
19:57By 0630, Ajax and Achilles had close to 12,000 metres, forcing the German gunners to divide their main armament.
20:05After nearly an hour, Admiral Graf Spee was finished.
20:09Far from out of the fight, still sailing and seaworthy, but done for.
20:15Because a shell from Exeter, herself badly damaged and soon to retire from the battle,
20:21had damaged the battleship's fuel plant.
20:24Graf Spee now had fuel for only 16 hours sailing, which meant she could not get home.
20:32Neither could the damage be repaired at sea.
20:37Langsdorf consulted the charts.
20:40He would head for the nearest neutral port.
20:43And that was Montevideo at the mouth of the river plate.
20:50There she is, the Admiral Graf Spee, in Montevideo Harbour, where she took refuge after the hammering she received from
20:57her small adversary.
20:58In Montevideo, Langsdorf released the 61 British merchant seamen he had taken on board as survivors of vessels he had
21:07sunk.
21:09And sought permission to remain in port long enough to make repairs.
21:14The British had only one further vessel close enough to blockade Graf Spee.
21:20But that's not what they broadcast.
21:24False intelligence painted a picture of Force H, a large British force including the aircraft carrier Arc Royal,
21:33assembling to finish the German the moment she sailed from port.
21:37Langsdorf committed his second blunder.
21:40However, he believed the false intelligence.
21:43Facing limited choices, he sailed his ship into the estuary and ordered it scuttled.
21:51Tremendous explosions aft have wrecked the vessel, and there she lies abandoned to the flames by captain and crew.
21:57Two days later, Hans Langsdorf shot himself.
22:15Even as an army marches to certain victory, a wrong step can lead to a setback, a defeat.
22:21The Allies had been grinding on from their Normandy beachhead, moving north and east, pushing the Germans back and approaching
22:31slowly against resistance towards the Rhine and the moment when they would set foot on German soil.
22:39Market Garden is a bizarre battle because it arises from Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's desire to bolt into Germany.
22:48Field Marshal Montgomery, the British commander, and Dwight Eisenhower, the American supreme commander, had a very uneasy relationship.
22:55They had fundamentally different ways of commanding and projecting themselves.
23:00And they disagreed about the strategy for the Allied advance into Germany, which they had to do in order to
23:06defeat the Third Reich.
23:08Eisenhower, I think sensibly, wanted to advance on a broad front.
23:12Montgomery had a bizarre idea to punch a hole in the German defences to break into the North German plain.
23:18Montgomery hoped his plan might also answer those critics of his conduct following D-Day.
23:25Market Garden is basically two operations.
23:28Market is the airborne operation where they drop airborne troops beyond the bridges.
23:33Garden is the land advance to join up with those airborne forces.
23:36And it sounds like a sensible idea, except, as the phrase goes, it was a bridge too far.
23:41For Montgomery's plan to work, it was essential that every phase of the operation was a success.
23:48Every bridge secured.
23:52Douglas C-47 aircraft, Dakotas to the British, were the workhorses of the operation.
24:00They carried the first Allied airborne army, and they towed the gliders.
24:07About 2,000 aircraft of various types were involved.
24:12Troops dropped in by glider or chute were to grasp and secure the bridges.
24:17Following them would be the British 30th Corps under General Brian Horrocks.
24:23If Horrocks could bring his men up in time, if the airborne divisions could take and hold the bridges until
24:3030th Corps got through,
24:32the German flank would be turned on the Rhine.
24:36If.
24:42On September 17th, the operation was launched.
24:51101st Airborne quickly secured the canal bridges.
24:5682nd took Grava, but was forced back from Nijmegen by a strong counter-attack.
25:06But on the 18th, 30th Corps linked with the 101st, and the next day, supporting the 82nd, renewed pressure on
25:16the bridge at Nijmegen.
25:19The bridge fell to them, and Operation Market had succeeded.
25:25The British 1st Airborne had achieved its initial objective on the first day, the 17th.
25:32Both paratroop and glider units were well grouped, and after a hard fight, the bridge over the Rhine was secured.
25:40Three battalions made north, centre and southerly advances, but only 2nd battalion in the south had reached its final objective
25:49on the northern approaches of the bridge.
25:51And there, it stuck. The bridge was a long way ahead of 30th Corps. A bridge too far, in fact,
26:00unless German resistance was moderate. It wasn't.
26:04By this stage of the war, the Western Allies have got almost total command of the German secret intelligence.
26:10They're reading German messages virtually as soon as they're sent.
26:15What they did know, but what wasn't passed on to the troops who were responsible for actually carrying out this
26:20operation,
26:21was that in exactly the place where the paratroops were to be dropped, there was a German panzer division resting
26:28and re-equipping.
26:28So they literally dropped the 1st Allied Airborne Army onto the top of a German SS panzer division.
26:38And that's where things started to unravel, for they were strong units.
26:44They were the 9th and 10th SS panzer divisions, and they pressed on the British bridgehead with superior numbers and
26:52weaponry.
26:54On the 21st, the Polish brigade was dropped south of the Rhine.
26:59They had been delayed in joining the battle by bad weather.
27:02And poor intelligence dropped them into strong German positions where, instead of being able to force a way through to
27:10reinforce 1st Airborne, they were cut to pieces.
27:14Airborne troops are comparatively speaking only lightly armed.
27:18And landing behind the enemy's lines, they faced the prospect of engaging fully equipped, heavily armed forces, thus all the
27:24hazards of an isolated operation.
27:25Further compounding 1st Airborne's situation was the loss of their drop zones.
27:33Malfunctioning radios made it almost impossible to advise the RAF of this.
27:43And consequently, vital resupply fell into the wrong hands.
27:48Of 390 tons of supplies dropped, only 31 tons were received by the British Division.
27:55General Urquhart, commanding 1st Airborne, made the decision to pull his men to a defensible position to await relief by
28:03the overdue 30th Corps.
28:05This meant abandoning 2nd Battalion, which had reached the northern end of the bridge.
28:11German troops, meanwhile, cut across the British line of advance south of Uden, further slowing the relieving column.
28:19On the 26th, nine days after the drop, 30th finally linked up with 1st Airborne, but it was too late
28:27to effect a battle that had been lost.
28:30Of 10,000 who had landed at Arnhem, 2,000 marched out with 30th Corps.
28:37Most of the rest saw out the remainder of the war as prisoners of the Germans.
28:42Market Garden certainly doesn't do Montgomery's reputation any good.
28:46Eisenhower already knows that he's a hard man to work with, and Market Garden puts the cap on it.
28:51It has another effect, of course, and that is that the Allies are not going to get to the mass,
28:56and certainly not going to cross the Rhine in 1944.
28:58And, of course, it means that Eisenhower's actually right, that you can't simply drive your column into North Germany and
29:05expect to win.
29:05You've got to advance on a broad front, and that's exactly what the Allies do in 1945, and that's what
29:11gets the Germans defeated in the West.
29:24The overwhelming size of significant actions, like the landings at Normandy or Japan's epic sweep through the Asia-Pacific region,
29:33dominate our view of war,
29:36distracting us from campaigns unfairly referred to as sideshows.
29:43But some sideshows have real strategic significance, and all of them involve real fighting.
29:52In the wash-up from the First World War, Britain and France, then the possessors of the world's two great
29:58maritime empires, had divided the Middle East between them.
30:03With the fall of France, the collaborationist government was allowed to retain control of French colonies.
30:10So it was that opposing forces faced each other across the desert frontier.
30:16French standards, symbolic of the nation's honour, sailed for safekeeping in French African territory.
30:24France had carved out Lebanon and Syria, both guarding the Eastern Mediterranean and Syrian astride routes into Iran, then Persia,
30:33a major source of vital oil.
30:37And neighbouring the British sphere of influence in Iraq, where rebellion against the British had only been curbed in May.
30:47On June 8th, a joint British Commonwealth and Free French force moved into Lebanon and Syria, with the expectation that
30:54the 45,000-strong Vichy French garrison would surrender and march over to the Allied cause.
31:00But it did not, and six weeks of fierce fighting ensued, before the Vichy French lost the battle.
31:09And 6,000 were counted as casualties.
31:14The Vichy French resisted skillfully along all three of the Allied routes of advance.
31:20On the coastal sector, fierce fighting occurred at the Litani River on the 9th of June, and on the 12th
31:27of June, it was decided to transfer the bulk of the forces to the coastal advance, where good progress was
31:34being made by the 10th Indian Division and Free French forces.
31:39Much of the Vichy force comprised French colonial troops.
31:44The Vichy troops dug themselves in well at all points, often holding fire to point-blank range.
31:49But this only made our fellows all the more determined to finish off the job.
31:53When Australian James Heather Gordon charged a machine gun emplacement during the Battle of Jazim, an action for which he
32:01was awarded the Victoria Cross, he found that he had been fighting not Frenchmen, but Senegalese.
32:10The Allied advance stalled on Jebel Abu Atris, where a flanking move by Free French tanks was stopped by heavy
32:18shelling from Vichy artillery.
32:20And troops holding Canetra on the other main road to Damascus reported the approach of a strong Vichy force from
32:28the north.
32:30Two companies of Free French troops were sent to reinforce defensive positions across the road.
32:38By 0900, on the 15th of June, Indian troops were pushing forward into the hills, and within an hour had
32:47captured Tel Kisue.
32:50By 1130, Free French Marines had secured the village of Montkelbe.
32:56In the second phase of the attack, Free French were fighting Vichy French.
33:02The very tragedy that General de Gaulle had wanted to avoid at Dakar.
33:09What a comment on the so-called honour of the Vichy leaders, that they should have ordered their men to
33:13fight not only their former British allies, but even the Free French, their own countrymen.
33:20During the night of the 15th of June, Indian troops took Artus on the Canetra to Damascus Road, cutting the
33:27communications of the Vichy force advancing on Canetra.
33:31But their approach was too slow.
33:35On the afternoon of the 16th of June, the Allies at Canetra outnumbered 3 to 1, and facing tanks against
33:43which they had no effective counter, surrendered.
33:46But by the 18th of June, the situation had been restored.
33:52Allied focus switched to Damascus, which fell on the 21st of June.
33:57On that day, a mixed force of British troops, including those of the Arab Legion, entered Syria from Iraq and
34:03advanced on Palmyra, which was attacked on the 25th of June.
34:07The Vichy forces held out for nine days before surrendering.
34:16Finally, the entry into Damascus.
34:18You could hardly say the population looked gloomy about our arrival, could you?
34:22After the capture of Damascus, the drive on Beirut, chiefly the Australian 7th Division, became the main Allied focus.
34:32On the 10th of July, the Australians were within 10 kilometres of Beirut.
34:38The British 4th Cavalry Brigade was closing on Homs, and the 10th Indian Division was advancing into northern Syria.
34:48Of course, the importance of our occupation of Syria hardly needs stressing.
34:52Success in Syria justifies us in choking one more mark against Hitler.
34:58The Vichy French commander, General Henry Dents, sought an armistice.
35:04He had lost the battle, and his command of 38,000 surviving troops was given the option to be returned
35:11to Vichy France or to join the Free French Forces.
35:14Less than 6,000 elected to join the Free French.
35:19That mattered less than the control that Britain now had in the Middle East.
35:24The Eastern Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Arab oil fields were all more defensible because of the sideshow in
35:34Syria.
35:44On the 25th of April, 1945, American and Soviet troops made contact.
35:52The link-up between the Americans and the Russians of the River Elba near Togau marked the climax of the
35:58two great advances into the heart of Germany from west and east.
36:02It was colossal news.
36:06On the same day, the Red Army completed its encirclement of Berlin.
36:12Berlin, at the same time, became a fortress city.
36:17That was the special concept, meaning that the city was to be defended at all costs, to the last cartridge,
36:24to the last bullet, to the last man.
36:28Defensive preparations were made in depth, but resources were far from elite.
36:35The numbers in Berlin, well, there are no concrete numbers.
36:40Mostly, it was a mishmash of units.
36:42So, police units, Hitler Youth units, and Volkssturm units, just people's militia, made of those who were not able to
36:49serve in the regular army
36:51because they were either too young or too old or had some sicknesses, health issues.
36:56Pretty much everything they could get.
37:04The 12th Army, west of the city, comprised 12 divisions that were a grab bag of raw recruits.
37:12Von Manteufel's 3rd Panzer Army, north of the city, comprised 9 divisions, none of which was Panzer.
37:20The total deployed in defence of the capital was some 50 in different divisions.
37:28Coming towards them were almost 200 divisions of the Red Army.
37:36And as they came, they scorched the earth.
37:40The Soviet offensive was designed to ensure the fall of Berlin no later than May Day, May the 1st.
37:48Soviet forces began to move on April the 12th.
37:52Air raids continued to pummel the city.
37:56The Berliners, they built tram barricades, piles of rubble to block the streets, but how could that help really?
38:03Because seven Soviet armies were advancing exactly on Berlin, and the Berlin garrison had less than 100,000 men.
38:11This is less than a core against seven Soviet full, able-bodied armies.
38:18So, their situation was dire, to say the least.
38:26Zhukov's first Belarusian front in the centre, Konev's first Ukrainian front to his south.
38:34Rokossovsky's second Belarusian, to his north, would race each other for the prize.
38:42On April 16th, Zhukov's offensive began when three red flares shot skywards and 140 searchlights were turned on in the
38:51eyes of the enemy.
38:52Then, three green flares signalled the start of a ground-shattering bombardment.
38:59Literally so shocking that entire villages collapsed and whole forests exploded as 8,983 Soviet guns opened up.
39:08The bombardment lasted for 35 minutes. Then, abruptly, neatly, it stopped.
39:20And the Red Army moved forward. More than six million men and women with one thing in mind.
39:28Zhukov, advancing from his bridgehead on the Oda, was aiming for the heart of the city.
39:35Retribution is incidental in the course of military operations, but certainly here in Berlin there was all the evidence of
39:41it.
39:42Retribution for the havoc caused by Hitler's hunts in Leningrad and Warsaw, London, Coventry, Rotterdam and all the devastated cities
39:50of the Allies.
39:54On the 26th, the city centre was ringed and Soviet forces, advancing house to house, room to room, moved in.
40:02Their objective was the Reichstag.
40:06I arrived to Berlin.
40:09Well, it was difficult to fight in Berlin.
40:13We went through the Reichstag.
40:17We helped the troops move forward.
40:20We killed them everywhere.
40:23We were too many of our cars.
40:27I was left without anything.
40:30Berlin was hell, pretty much.
40:32This was hell.
40:33A number of those who fought, they remember that it was hard to tell if it was night or day,
40:39because thick black smoke was covering the sunlight.
40:43The smoke that was lit by the fires of knocked out tanks and buildings, screams in the air, screams of
40:52those wounded, because Berlin was full of civilians that, of course, were dying during the course of the battle.
40:58And dust from the destroyed buildings was always in the air.
41:03It was hard to breathe all the time, cracked on the teeth of those who fought.
41:10On April 30th, after first successfully testing the poison on his beloved dog Blondie, Hitler and his new bride bit
41:19down on cyanide capsules, at which point Hitler, to be certain, shot himself in the temple.
41:26The Red Army was 200 metres away.
41:33The next day, the Reichstag fell, and the red flag was famously hoisted on its roof.
41:42General Helmut Weidling, commanding the military garrison, surrendered the city.
41:48Berlin as a capital, as a city even, was dead.
41:52This was what remained of the Reichstag, the building which gained worldwide notoriety when the Nazis seized power.
41:57Then there was a picture of Berlin.
42:00Berlin was changed.
42:02It was covered with a white color.
42:05From the walls, the walls, the walls, where only can be white.
42:12Just white. Just white. Just white.
42:16The Berlin people did not confirm it.
42:20It itself capitulated.
42:22It told them about their disengagement.
42:26The battle for the capital had cost more than 300,000 Soviet casualties, perhaps a similar number of German casualties,
42:34and in addition, 480,000 German prisoners, who had failed in their attempt to break out west,
42:41to surrender to the American, British and French forces, from whom they expected kinder treatment.
42:46The capital has fallen, but the resistance still was going in the north.
42:54Some troops were still fighting for the third empire that did not exist, that lasted for only 12 years.
43:02The last of the last, they just decided to give themselves in late May 1945.
43:09This was the end of the race.
43:33This was the end of the race.
43:42ここでたしは自分典士の最음�の during記をたしたいです。うまく、はま風出いにありますね
43:56!ほらららららららららららららららららららららららららららららららーだとかね。
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