WW2 World in Conflict_2of2_1944-1945
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00:00With the coming of spring 1944, the winter stalemate in Italy was broken.
00:19Our forces slowly resumed fighting their way up the west coast of the Italian boot
00:26toward Rome against bitter German opposition.
00:32The British advanced up the east coast in the face of equal and bitter opposition.
00:56The Pacific troops of the 1st Cavalry Division landed on both Monos and Los Negros islands
01:18in the Admiralty Group to wipe out all Japanese resistance and complete occupation of the
01:23entire group of islands.
01:44They landed large forces at Hollandia and Ikapa off the north coast of New Guinea.
01:54General Stilwell and his troops were fighting the Japanese in Burma.
02:14This was global warfare on a scale never known before.
02:37Less than three years before, Hitler had addressed the Reichstag.
02:41Germany, Italy, and Japan will wage common war upon the United States to a victorious conclusion.
02:51In Rome, his fascist partner had declared.
02:54Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on
03:02the side of heroic Japan against the United States.
03:05A Japanese militarist joined the derisive chorus.
03:12Americans have radios, automobiles, big beefsteaks.
03:18When a people has those things, they don't want to fight.
03:22Americans won't sleep in hammocks or lie in trenches.
03:27They are like a tiger whose stomach is full.
03:30They are sleepy.
03:32The American is no soldier.
03:36Yet there he was, carrying the fight to the boastful aggressors.
03:57A self-proclaimed Superman was learning to his bitter surprise and sorrow the fighting qualities of the American soldier.
04:13It seemed the aggressors had made a slight miscalculation.
04:27In Italy, our forces pushed on through rain and mud, over mountains, across rivers, toward Rome.
04:57Our power drive up the Italian boot forced the enemy to divert 30 of his divisions from France and the Low Countries, weakening his defenses along the English Channel coast, where our invasion of France was soon to come.
05:22We now had an army numbering millions of soldiers.
05:38We now had 150,000 armored vehicles as compared to the 29 tanks the army had in 1940.
05:46400,000 artillery pieces were now engaged in the war effort compared to the 235 available in 1940.
06:00From a 1940 production capacity of 117 aircraft a month, we were now producing 9,000 planes of all types a month, a plane every five minutes, 12 an hour.
06:12Here now was an air arm of 150,000 planes supporting the coordinated allied effort to wipe out enemy industry, supply routes, and communication facilities.
06:23The American Tiger, grown sleepy on a full stomach, or so the Japanese had thought, was now fully awake, lean, and fighting in the jungles.
06:53On the 4th of June, 1944, our 5th Army captured Rome.
07:11It was a military victory, yes, but its psychological effect carried the greater impact throughout the world, for it was the first Axis capital to fall into our hands, bringing consternation and foreboding to the enemy, and fresh heart and rejoicing to the free world and its fighting forces.
07:42In England, after months of planning and preparation, it was D-Day minus two. General Eisenhower was about to unleash the most massive amphibious invasion in history.
08:00During the big buildup, England had become a vast staging area for troops and the material of war.
08:12Thousands of vehicles and ready-to-be-assembled combat-type aircraft, 20,000 railroad cars and 1,000 locomotives, 20 million square feet of covered storage and shop space,
08:2644 million square feet of open storage space to hold the growing volume of supplies, wire, tires, bombs, shells, and other explosive devices.
08:43Awaiting invasion port embarkation were thousands of trucks and support vehicles, row upon row of tanks.
08:54Wide range of artillery weapons.
09:00170 miles of new railroad had been constructed to haul more than 2 million tons of supplies and combat hardware to the invasion ports.
09:12The United States Army had constructed 163 airfields in England for the Allied planes that were systematically bombing Germany day and night.
09:42We really thought all hell was breaking loose.
10:05Our part of the city was in flames. People were running out of cellars and out of houses. Some were buried in the rubble. Others were caught by the falling masonry.
10:15Many people actually caught fire and were running around like living torches.
10:23The invasion directive issued by the combined chiefs of staff was concise. General Eisenhower had his orders.
10:31You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.
10:46Another American general was to have a central role in complying with that monumental order. General Omar N. Bradley, field commander of American forces.
11:01D-Day minus one. Invasion forces began embarking in England. Destination, Normandy.
11:11Involved in this massive amphibious invasion were some 3 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
11:184,000 ships and boats.
11:2420,000 vehicles of all types. And an endless list of combat support weapons.
11:31Operation Overlord, the code name for the invasion, was close at hand. Now as D-Day and H-Hour approached, the final logistical operation was underway.
12:01In the darkness before dawn on June 6, 1944, the great invasion began to unfold.
12:2017,000 men of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, with over 2 million pounds of combat equipment and supplies, were airlifted to carefully selected drop zones behind the invasion beaches, where they were dropped to secure key road junctions and other strategic terrain objectives.
12:42The invasion armada, the largest ever assembled, was now in position off the coast of France.
12:55While our assault forces prepared for H-Hour, Allied naval power began their concentrated shore bombardment.
13:26Explosions and gunfire.
13:52This was amphibious warfare on a scale that staggered the imagination. Nothing like it had ever been seen.
14:23At Omaha Beach, in the first assault, 30,000 American troops stormed ashore.
14:38British and Canadian forces struck at three different beach sectors.
14:44At Utah Beach, 20,000 American troops were landed.
14:51By the end of the first day, our invasion force ashore totaled 120,000 men.
15:00With every passing hour, with each passing day, reinforcements streamed ashore to enlarge the beachhead with tanks, trucks, ammunition, and supplies.
15:12Music
15:43Explosions
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16:11Hundreds of our attack bombers and fighters were now over Europe carrying payloads of destruction aimed at the vital centers of Hitler's fortress Europe.
16:21Music
16:39Flying fortresses and heavy formations cascaded 3,500 tons of explosives, a ton every second, upon Nazi-held positions.
16:49Explosions
16:58Our mass bomber formations were now given a canopy of protective air support by P-38 Lightnings.
17:04Together, they fought off enemy air attacks.
17:07Explosions
17:32B-17 out of control at 3 o'clock.
17:36Explosions
17:41Come on, you guys, get out of that plane. Bail out.
17:44There's one. He come out of the bomb bay.
17:46Yeah, I see him. There's a tail gunner coming out. Watch out for fighters.
17:50Keep your eye on him, Bill. See any parachutes coming?
17:55Parachutes are blocking 9 o'clock.
17:56They passed on that B-17. Come on, the rest of you guys, get out of there.
18:01So far, there's three more chutes. Flak, 11 o'clock.
18:05Explosions
18:25Explosions
18:34As the roar of engines and concussion of the bombs were still ringing in the ears of a dazed and battered enemy, our ground artillery opened up.
18:43Explosions
18:49Our tanks and infantry rolled forward, driving west to isolate Brest and other ports on the peninsula.
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19:01Other elements pushed south
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19:06and east toward Paris.
19:08Explosions
19:15Explosions
19:18In the Pacific, the islands of Saipan and Tinian were taken by the Marines in the second-hand fitness assaults.
19:25The Imperial Javanese fleet, sorted to the defense of these vital islands, was dealt another shattering blow in the swirling air battle that became known as the Marianas Turkey Chute.
19:36Explosions
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20:04As soon as these islands were secure, massive air bases sprang up as American B-29 bombers prepared for an all-out aerial assault on the Javanese homeland.
20:15In early August of 1944, Guam was recaptured in a fierce assault.
20:20Explosions
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21:11What was left of ten German divisions was mopped up by the very men their Fuhrer had told them were not soldiers and would not fight.
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21:23Again, the aggressor had made a slight miscalculation.
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21:33Explosions
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21:38As the Germans were meeting disaster in northwestern France, the United States 7th Army, combat-hardened veterans of the fighting in Italy, hit the beaches in southern France on the morning of August 15th.
21:51Explosions
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21:59Explosions
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22:07During that day, 50,000 men and their equipment were landed.
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22:17Explosions
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22:25The American 6th Army Corps pushed north along the Rhone River Valley.
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22:33And other troops moved eastward toward the Italian border.
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22:41The drive into the heart of France was deeper now.
22:45Patton's 3rd Army angled toward points just east and south of Paris.
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22:53The 1st Army flanking the 3rd.
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23:01The 7th now was moving up swiftly from the south.
23:05Explosions
23:09Ten days after the landings in southern France, Paris was liberated after four years of Nazi occupation.
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23:19Explosions
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23:43The liberation of Paris, like the liberation of Rome less than three months before, was a cause for rejoicing, and its psychological effect was reflected throughout the free world.
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24:00Among our troops who paraded so proudly down the Champs-Elysees were some whose fathers had followed the same flag down that famous avenue a quarter of a century before,
24:09celebrating another victory, which they too had won in the best traditions of the American fighting man, and who had come there not for conquest, but to liberate.
24:21But the men of our fighting forces knew it was only one more important milestone along the rugged road to victory.
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24:32Allied armies held bridgeheads all along the line of the Seine.
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24:40In the south of France they captured Toulon.
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24:46And Marseille.
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24:50The British and Canadians took Brussels and the great port of Antwerp.
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25:00In a bold move designed to make a lightning thrust into the heart of Germany, three Allied airborne divisions parachuted along a narrow corridor in Holland to seize vital bridges for British armored forces.
25:14Jumping in broad daylight, the paratroops soon seized many of their objectives.
25:19However, at the Rhine River Bridge, the British parachutists landed almost on top of German armored formations that were refitting.
25:27The tenacious German defenders slowed the British armored columns and overcame the Bagot paratroops and destroyed the last and most essential bridge.
25:36Market Garden, an operation that was to have ended the war, ultimately ended in failure.
25:41The first American army pushed across the border into Belgium and drove on to Liège.
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25:50The third took Verdun.
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26:00The third, having crossed the Meuse River, reached the Moselle.
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26:07Now the Allied front ran on a line all the way from the Swiss border to the North Sea.
26:13Music
26:22Seventh Army patrols coming up from the south met patrols from the Third Army.
26:29The two armies were now linked up for the coordinated offensive to come.
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26:50Retreat for Nazi forces caught on the wrong side of the line was cut off.
26:57We rounded up our share of prisoners.
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27:03The desperate plight of Hitler's armies became more apparent as the bewildered legions of a once mighty destructive force
27:10found themselves defeated by an army they had been repeatedly told would never last on the soil of the Third Reich longer than nine hours.
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27:43In the 97 days since the Fifth Corps had led the assault on Omaha Beach, it had come nearly 500 miles
27:50and now drove across the German border and stood on the soil of Hitler's Germany.
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28:03Who was it that once said the American was no soldier?
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28:22The immensity of global war as it occurred at the height of World War II staggers the imagination.
28:29On the ground, jungles and swamps, in mountains, in forests and on the plains, millions of men scattered around the world walked in combat.
28:40In the air, thousands of others with their bombing and fighting aircraft.
28:45And on the seas and beneath, other thousands with surface ships and submarines.
28:50Incredibly long supply lines with mountains of material to transport.
28:55Vast communication networks stretching around the earth.
29:00It was the greatest concerted organization of military might in the history of the world.
29:05In Burma, General Joseph Stilwell's command of American, British and Chinese jingle fighters were driving back the Japanese.
29:20Opening the way for the Lido Road, which our army engineers were building as the ground supply route to the embattled Chinese by way of India.
29:29In Russia, German armies were in retreat before massive Soviet counterattacks.
29:35Everywhere, the Allies were clobbering the enemy, but it was no grand march, no sudden sweep to victory.
29:42For as the aggressors were driven back, their resistance increased along with mounting desperation.
29:48We paid a price for every mile we took.
29:51The final battle for Germany was on.
29:55Explosions
30:05Explosions
30:20Our armies were battering at the gates of the Nazi homeland.
30:24General Hodge's First Army drove through the vaunted Siegfried Line.
30:29Mile upon mile of concrete fortification and anti-tank emplacements through the city of Aachen.
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30:47Two years and seven months after General MacArthur had left the Philippines, he kept his promise to return.
30:54Explosions
31:05On the 20th of October, 1944, his forces invaded the island of Leyte.
31:11Explosions
31:28This, too, was to be no easy parade to victory.
31:33Our soldiers were to face an enemy who would fight as their leaders ordered them to fight to the death.
31:39They wanted it that way. They were to get what they asked for.
31:43Explosions
31:48Seven days after MacArthur landed on Leyte, the United States 3rd and 7th Fleets dealt the Japanese Navy its death blow in the battle for the Leyte Gulf.
31:58Music
32:11Explosions
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32:42The curtain was rising on the last fast-moving act of the drama of World War II.
32:47General Patton's Third Army took Metz.
32:51Ahead was the nearby Saar Basin, Germany's second most important industrial district.
32:57Music
33:06On the other side of the world, Army B-29 bombers from new bases on Saipan showered bombs on Tokyo.
33:14A fiery rain from the heavens to avenge Pearl Harbor.
33:22The campaign on Leyte was going well as our forces moved on, capturing the Japanese base at Ormak along the west coast.
33:33Other forces landed on Mindolo Island with no losses.
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33:41While General MacArthur's forces were driving forward in the Philippines, Patton's Third Army penetrated the Saar and drove on across the Saar River.
33:55A record-breaking fleet of 1,600 United States heavy bombers blasted Frankfurt and other German cities.
34:03Explosions
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34:33The Nazis were reaping a bitter and devastating harvest from the seeds they had once sown from the air.
34:41Now the very perpetrators of aerial blitzkrieg saw their own cities reduced to rubble.
34:47To the millions of Nazi war victims, fear at last was a measure of retribution against their merciless executioners.
34:56Music
35:03Explosions
35:07But on the ground, some of the bitterest fighting of the war took place on the Cologne plain.
35:14Our push towards the industrial war was resisted every step of the way.
35:23Then, on the 16th of December 1944, the German counteroffensive struck.
35:29Music
35:34German Field Marshal von Rundstedt suddenly sent a dozen elite divisions smashing into the Ardennes sector.
35:44Explosions
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36:06Von Rundstedt had cast the dice for high stakes, crossing the Meuse River, driving toward Liege, and trying to cut the Allied communication lines from Antwerp to the front lines.
36:18If our lines of communication could be cut, the fate of our armies might be in the balance.
36:24This was the Battle of the Bulge.
36:28Explosions
36:37Combat and non-combat troops were suddenly and necessarily fighting side by side in worsening winter weather.
36:45Grabbing their weapons, they dug in and responded to the old military axiom of hanging on to buy time until reinforcements would come.
36:53Music
36:58General Eisenhower took immediate action to meet the crisis.
37:03He put the 1st and 9th Armies north of the Bulge under command of Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group with orders to attack from the north.
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37:22Patton's 3rd Army was to attack from the south.
37:27Explosions
37:31Two airborne divisions were rushed in. The 101st was ordered to hold the vital communication center at Bastogne.
37:40Explosions
37:43During this action in besieged Bastogne, that General McAuliffe, who was then commanding the 101st, made his famous reply to the German demand that he surrender.
37:54That reply was reportedly one word long, nuts.
37:59If the enemy did not immediately understand the meaning of McAuliffe's typical American reply, the action which followed undoubtedly convinced him that it meant that the Americans had no intention of surrendering.
38:12Music
38:22Just six days after von Rundstedt had launched his counteroffensive, elements of Patton's 3rd Army, racing up from the south, struck the German on his southern flank.
38:32The pressure was off the 101st Airborne.
38:36Explosions
38:42The 1st American Army attacked from the north.
38:46Explosions
38:55After the British struck the bulge on the west, the 3rd Army smashed on north to link up with the 1st Army.
39:03Explosions
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39:11Then the weather cleared, and our planes took to the air, blasting von Rundstedt's forces.
39:18Explosions
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39:57The battle of the bulge was soon over.
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40:05The Germans had thrown their last big Sunday punch of the war.
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40:26While the battle of the bulge was going on in Europe, the 8th Army, commanded by General Robert L. Eichelberger, was battling stiff Japanese resistance on Leyte in the vicinity.
40:37Explosions
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40:49The fight for Leyte would continue for months, until nearly 50,000 fanatical Japanese would be annihilated.
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41:02Our forces were spreading out in the Philippines. 6th Army troops landed on Luzon in the Lingayen Gulf and swept southward to capture Tarlac, only 65 miles from Manila.
41:14Explosions
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41:21Fifteen days later, men of the 1st Cavalry Division fought their way into Manila.
41:28Explosions
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41:44The capture of Manila included the Santo Tomas prison camp.
41:48Along with the Filipino people, these prisoners had waited in long and quiet agony for this moment of liberation.
41:56Music
42:00Of all the liberated peoples in the world, none showed more gratitude than did the Filipinos.
42:04They well knew we had come not for conquest, but to keep a solemn promise to return and destroy the aggressors who had taken over their homeland in a war of conquest.
42:15Less than two years later, the Philippines would be given complete independence as a sovereign nation by the United States.
42:22Music
42:26Explosions
42:30Thirteen days after the fall of Manila, our airborne troops landed on Corregidor, two years and nine months after the Japanese had hauled down our flag.
42:42It had been a long and bloody road, but we had returned.
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42:59Who and where were those who once had said the American was no soldier, that he would not fight?
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43:15All around the world, climactic events were swiftly gaining momentum.
43:20Our Ninth Army, under General Simpson, crossed the Rhine on the 2nd of March.
43:25Music
43:29Four days later, General Hodge's First Army occupied Cologne.
43:33Music
43:37Four days after that, 300 of our superfortresses blasted Tokyo.
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43:51U.S. Marines storm ashore on the volcanic island of Iwo Jima, seizing the blasted volcanic island in a hard and bloody fight.
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44:38Even before the island was completely secure, our fighters were using its airfield and wounded B-29s were making emergency landings.
44:48By the 17th of the same month, General Patton's Third Army had taken Koblenz.
44:54Music
44:57The next day, and half a world away, our troops invaded Panay Island in the central Philippines.
45:03Music
45:06Three days after that, Patton's Third Army crossed the Rhine.
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45:14Four days later, General Eichelberger's Eighth Army was landing on Cebu in the Philippines.
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45:24Explosions
45:27Less than a week after that, on the 1st of April, 1945, the United States Tenth Army, under General Simon Buckner, invaded Okinawa.
45:38Music
45:42On the 11th of the same month, the Second Armored Division of the Ninth Army reached the Elbe, only 63 miles from Berlin.
45:50Music
45:52The Third captured Coburg.
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46:10On the 12th of April, death took the Commander-in-Chief, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
46:16He had lived to see the triumphant advances of American arms, but fate had denied him the satisfaction that final victory would bring.
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46:30Less than a month after President Roosevelt's death, Germany surrendered.
46:35Hitler was dead by his own hand.
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46:43Only a few days before, Mussolini had been killed by Italian partisans.
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46:55To his home shores, General Eisenhower returned in triumph.
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47:10Explosions
47:12But, in the Pacific, a war was still going on.
47:16A big and bitterly fought war, with the end not yet in sight.
47:20Okinawa was a bloody battleground, as our Tenth Army was finding out.
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47:54It took us 82 days of continuous fighting to take Okinawa.
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48:13Japan's young suicide pilots, the Kamikazes, swarmed to the defense of Okinawa.
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48:26Many flew their fatal missions in obsolete aircraft, even trains.
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48:49So many things were happening, and so quickly, that it was a little bit like a big boxer in a ring when he's being hit to the chin, and to the side of the face, and bodies, and everywhere else, because we were catching it from so many different angles.
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49:10In a regular attack, it's a sporting chance you've got, you know, I mean, with regular bombs and regular bullets, you think you've got a very good chance, but war is not so much of a sport when you're fighting human bombs.
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49:30All the military might of the United States would now be concentrated on the Japanese homeland.
49:36A tough job lay ahead, a job that would take men and equipment.
49:41Our entire military strength was now aimed at the one remaining Axis partner.
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49:54Our military planners estimated that in an all-out assault upon Japan itself, our invasion forces would probably suffer a million and a half casualties.
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50:08On August the 6th, two days before the Russians said they would attack the Japanese, the Enola Gay took off on its 1,500 mile journey.
50:20At 8.15 that morning, a single bomb was released from the Enola Gay, flying at 32,000 feet over Hiroshima.
50:30As soon as the weight had left the airplane, I immediately went into this steep turn as did Sweeney and Marquardt behind me.
50:38And we tried then to place distance between ourselves and the point of impact.
50:43Explosions
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50:51But a new and terrifying force had come into the world, which was to prevent those million and a half casualties, the atomic bomb.
51:00Two of these awesome weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought Japan to her knees.
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51:09Explosions
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51:13It was two days before the Japanese government realized what the atomic bomb was and what it had done.
51:2070,000 had died in Hiroshima. Another 70,000 were injured.
51:2697% of the city's buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.
51:31President Truman, on hearing the news, called it the greatest thing in history.
51:36The peace group in the Japanese cabinet hoped that the bomb might persuade the war faction to accept surrender.
51:43Music
51:45As the cabinet met on the morning of August 9th, it received further shattering news.
51:52Explosions
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51:58That same morning, the Americans had dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.
52:03It killed 60,000 people.
52:07But even now, the Japanese militants held out for surrender without an occupation.
52:13The peace party wanted only to preserve the emperor's position.
52:17Music
52:18At noon on August the 15th, the Japanese people heard their emperor's voice for the first time.
52:26Japanese speech
52:31The war, he told them, had developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage.
52:38Moreover, the enemy has begun to use a new and most cruel bomb.
52:45Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation,
52:55but also the total destruction of human civilization.
53:00We must endure the unendurable.
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53:09The war had ended, but not the dying.
53:12Radiation sickness, which the Americans had not foreseen, would kill thousands more in years to come.
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53:28The morning of September the 2nd, 1945, the United States battleship Missouri is anchored in Tokyo Bay.
53:36The new Japanese foreign minister limps on board to sign the surrender document.
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53:56The Allied Commander, General MacArthur.
54:00I now invite the representatives of the Emperor of Japan,
54:07and the Japanese government, and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters,
54:13to sign the instrument of surrender at the places indicated.
54:19Everywhere on this huge vessel, and just in front of us,
54:25were delegates of the victorious power in military uniforms glittering with gold.
54:32And looking at them, I wondered how Japan ever thought she could defeat all those nations.
54:42Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world,
54:49and that God will preserve it always.
54:55These proceedings are closed.
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