WWII The Complete History Episode 11 Overlord
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00:30In the spring of 1944, the world awaits the attack of the Allied forces in northern Europe,
00:38the opening of the much-awaited second front.
00:42In Italy, an earlier attempt at a second front has halted against fierce German resistance.
00:49In Russia, the Germans have fought their last offensive, an attack that crashes to failure
00:55at the Battle of Kursk.
00:58The end of the Blitzkrieg as a menace is mirrored by the end of the German U-boat threat as
01:03the German Navy is defeated in the Battle of the Atlantic.
01:08As the endgame begins, the Axis leadership can now only act to postpone its inevitable
01:15doom.
01:25The previous autumn, the Italian advance of the Allies had stopped before the town and
01:31hill of Monte Cassino.
01:33In the spring of 1944, four battles were to be fought in an attempt to take the town that
01:39dominated the front and prevented any move north.
01:43First, U.S. forces were repelled at high cost by the Germans.
01:48Then Indian and New Zealand troops, assisted by heavy strategic bombers, made two attempts
01:54to take Cassino, both times defeated with heavy losses.
01:59By the April of 1944, the Italian campaign had reached crisis.
02:04The success of the Germans was giving Hitler hope.
02:08The battles seemed to prove that German arms could deny both the greater numbers and material
02:14strength of the Allies.
02:16Both American and British generals admitted themselves bereft of ideas.
02:22The position was finally prized open by fresh minds.
02:27Free French troops drawn from Moroccan hill tribes found ways through mountains thought
02:32impassable and encircled Cassino.
02:36Free Polish troops made a near suicidal attack from the south.
02:41Cassino fell and the Italian front opened for movement.
02:48In the release from the frustration that the fight for Cassino had generated, clear
02:53military judgment became clouded by ambition and lust for glory.
02:58As the Germans retreated from Cassino, American armies could have overtaken and encircled
03:04their enemy, perhaps ending the war in Italy.
03:08Instead, U.S. General Mark Clark, an officer who felt the failure at Cassino personally
03:14and suspected the British of attempting to steal the glory of victory, ordered an advance
03:20on Rome and the Germans fled northwards in safety.
03:27On June 4th, American forces entered Rome in triumph.
03:32Meanwhile, German engineers were preparing a new complex line of fortifications against
03:37which the battle would have to be fought all over again.
03:44Soon the glory of the capture of the Italian capital would be overshadowed by greater events.
03:53As Cassino fell, in the Pacific, U.S. forces for the first time occupied Japanese territory.
04:00The Marshall Islands were a remote group of 36 Micronesian atolls forming part of the
04:07outer perimeter of Japanese defenses.
04:10In a brilliantly planned and executed attack which used intelligence derived from broken
04:15coded signals, which enabled the U.S. forces to find the weakest points in the Japanese
04:20fortifications, the islands were taken over by 80,000 troops.
04:29In the spring of 1944, fighting continued in the struggle along the borders of Burma,
04:35India and China.
04:37British Empire forces were on the defensive against renewed Japanese attacks.
04:43Based on the adage that attack is the best form of defense, the Japanese had mounted
04:48an offensive to preempt a British and U.S. invasion.
04:5385,000 Japanese troops attempted to take the remote towns of Impal and Kohima, towns that
05:00were effective gateways into India.
05:04The British Empire troops were ordered to resist, with no retreat or surrender, and
05:09Impal and Kohima were besieged.
05:14The British supplied their troops by air, the Japanese not at all, and their troops
05:20began to suffer from starvation and disease.
05:23The British troops defied Japanese attack after Japanese attack for 80 days, with increasing
05:30desperation on both sides.
05:35In late June, the Japanese were forced to withdraw.
05:39Only a quarter of their troops had survived.
05:42The British began preparations to pursue their enemy.
05:49For nearly four years, Western Europe had suffered German occupation.
05:53However, it was clear to the world that this era of history was ending.
05:59All over southern England, the signs were that the invasion was coming.
06:03A massive assembly of men and material was gathering.
06:07The Allies aimed to bring an overwhelming strength to bear against the Germans.
06:16The invasion was given a secret codename, Operation Overlord.
06:25The coast of Britain, to a depth of 16 kilometers, became a secret forbidden military zone.
06:32Villages evacuated of civilians, countryside and coast requisitioned by the military, as
06:38armed forces practiced and practiced again the skills of amphibious warfare.
06:53Britain itself was sealed, all foreign travel forbidden.
06:58The invasion was the product of lessons learned in many previous operations, where the armies,
07:04air forces and navies of different nations cooperated in detailed coordinated action.
07:20At the top of the organization was United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
07:27Eisenhower's abilities were political as much as military, making the alliance work in everyday
07:34reality.
07:36If it is true that every battle is won or lost before it's fought, then the leadership
07:42and the staff that Eisenhower assembled is the embodiment of that idea.
07:47There was meticulous attention to detail and a refusal to act without the correct preparation
07:54and resources for victory.
07:56The actual military plans were in the hands of Bernard Montgomery, the master of the set
08:02peace battle, with a fanatical obsession for detail.
08:08Eisenhower's diplomacy was crucial in his winning command of both British and American
08:14strategic bomber air forces.
08:16The air force commanders believed their attacks on German industry and cities could win the
08:21war on their own and resisted their planes being used in the support of ground forces.
08:29Events would show Eisenhower right.
08:34It's hard for us to realize that armies fighting on beaches, fighting their way ashore with
08:40specialist equipment was a new thing.
08:43Historically, amphibious landings were made by ordinary ships, ordinary boats, by small
08:49armies.
08:50The size of armies, the lack of radar, of aircraft, of the telephone, meant amphibious
08:56landings were made unopposed.
08:59The lessons of previous invasions in North Africa and Italy brought forth new technologies
09:05of war.
09:07Floating tanks were designed to fight with the very first wave of attacks.
09:12Provided with flotation tanks and propellers, the tanks were launched at sea and swam ashore
09:19to suppress fire from defending infantry.
09:23Specialist fighting vehicles cleared mines, laid roads, and bridged obstacles.
09:28It was an eccentric area in which the British excelled.
09:38The Allies' preparations and rehearsals, though, could not be hidden.
09:43It was not hard for the Germans to guess which beaches could be targeted for landing.
09:48It was obvious that the invasion would be mounted within the range of fighter cover
09:52from planes flying from England.
09:55It was not difficult to determine when time, tide, and weather would be right.
10:02Two broad strategic options lay open to the Allies.
10:06First, to attack across the English Channel at its narrowest, to land near Calais.
10:13This would be an obvious move.
10:16Once established, Allied forces would have a short thrust into southern Germany.
10:21The alternative would be to attack in Normandy, further to the west.
10:28The Allied forces mounted a complex campaign of deception aimed at fooling the Germans
10:34into thinking that an invasion was to fall on Calais, when in fact the attack was to
10:39be made in Normandy.
10:41A phony military formation was created, the 1st U.S. Army Group.
10:48This imaginary unit was based opposite Calais.
10:51The Germans were able to listen in to signals passed between fictional units.
10:57Vast arsenals of weaponry could be spied by German reconnaissance, inflatable tanks, and
11:03dummy aircraft.
11:06All Germany's spies in Britain had been caught and turned, and were feeding fake intelligence
11:12to their spy masters.
11:17Air power was central to the success of Overlord.
11:21In the Italian campaign at Salerno and Anzio, well-organized German troops had quickly brought
11:26up reserves against Allied amphibious landings.
11:30The first days and weeks of the invasion would be a race between the two armies to bring
11:35reinforcements into action.
11:39Air power was crucial to the Allies winning that race, attacking the roads, the railways,
11:45and the bridges the German army would use.
11:49In April and May 1944, more than 11,000 aircraft of all types flew 200,000 sorties against
11:58targets in France, communications, airfields, military bases, coastal guns, and radar stations.
12:07The railway system of northern France was almost entirely destroyed.
12:14The air forces were important in the deception, too.
12:18Three times as many bombs were dropped in the east aimed at the Calais region as were
12:23dropped near to the true Normandy target.
12:27The Luftwaffe was entirely overwhelmed.
12:30It had a mere 300 aircraft to match 11,000 of the Allies.
12:38The disruption wrought by the Allied air forces was complemented by the actions of the French
12:43resistance.
12:44The armed resistance, the Maquis, was not strong enough to take on the German army,
12:49but through acts of sabotage and diversionary attacks, they disrupted German communications,
12:56preventing the rapid reaction that could have halted the invasion on the beaches.
13:21The number of ships involved on June 6th is stupefying to the imagination.
13:266,483 vessels were to cross the channel, so large a fleet that had Calais been chosen,
13:35there was not enough sea room for such a fleet where the channel was at its narrowest.
13:40The fleet included 4,000 landing craft and hundreds of specially adapted transport ships
13:46and stretched from horizon to horizon in every direction.
13:51Seven battleships, 23 cruisers, and more than 100 destroyers accompanied the troop transports.
14:00On D-Day, these ships engaged the German coastal guns.
14:06Germany had but four destroyers and 39 motor torpedo boats.
14:12Germany's plans to resist invasion were no less detailed.
14:17Allied troops were to be met on the beaches by a formidable line of bunkers and coastal
14:22guns, the Atlantic Wall.
14:25The defenses were organized by Erwin Rommel.
14:29He intended any invader to be pinned down on the landing beaches by what were called
14:35the static divisions, manning the forts, and then hit by a mobile reserve of panzer forces
14:41held inland.
14:44The Germans stripped the French Maginot Line to build the Atlantic Wall.
14:48They laid millions of mines and devised cunning traps and obstacles for landing craft and
14:54tanks.
14:59The destruction of the coastal defenses by the warships needed daylight, the landing
15:05craft needed low water early in the morning, and the airborne attacks to be made at night
15:11needed the full moon.
15:13This narrowed the date for D-Day to the 5th, 6th, or 7th of June.
15:19Bad weather on the 5th caused the attack to be put back 24 hours.
15:27The first forces to land in France did not storm ashore from landing craft.
15:31Rather, they arrived in the early hours of the morning of the 6th.
15:37Landings were made by over 23,000 parachute and glider troops.
15:42The airborne landings were made on the flanks of the invasion zone to protect the beaches
15:47from counterattack whilst the seaborne forces established a bridgehead.
15:52The ground forces were delivered to five landing beaches.
15:58In the east, two areas, codenamed Utah and Omaha, were the responsibility of the American
16:04forces.
16:05The experience of fighting on the two beaches was very different.
16:10On Utah Beach in the far west, the American forces met perhaps the weakest of German troops.
16:17Three battalions of infantry defending the beaches surrendered without firing barely
16:21a shot.
16:23The Utah casualties of 197 were the lowest of any on the day of the invasion, in comparison
16:30to the 23,000 who came safely ashore.
16:34In contrast, the U.S. forces landing on Omaha underwent the very worst of ordeals endured
16:40by any troops on June 6th.
16:43The U.S. 1st Division came ashore to be met by perhaps the very best troops that the Germans
16:49had stationed on the coast.
16:51The American soldiers landed on beaches overlooked by cliffs, beaches onto which the Germans
16:57were able to direct murderous artillery fire.
17:01At Omaha, the swimming tanks were launched too soon, and many foundered in heavy seas.
17:12Without the support of these tanks, the infantry on the beach was vulnerable to German infantry
17:16in fortified positions.
17:20Omaha Beach has been called a disaster and portrayed in fiction as hell.
17:26Yet despite 2,000 deaths on the first day, 34,000 came ashore.
17:37British forces attacked to the east on beaches codenamed Gold and Sword.
17:43On Juno Beach, the invaders were Canadian.
17:46On all three landing zones, the German defenders were not the best and were thinly spread.
17:53On Sword and Juno, the landings were made easily against little opposition.
17:58Before midday on June 6th, the troops were able to join up with the airborne forces dropped
18:04in the rear of the Germans.
18:07Overlord was a complex operation dependent upon every element playing its part.
18:13On Gold Beach, a failure of the naval bombardment to suppress all German fortifications and
18:19the swimming tanks becoming separated from the infantry meant that the British took heavy casualties.
18:26Nevertheless, the story of other beaches was repeated, and despite losses, the invaders
18:32were able to land and penetrate into the countryside.
18:38An important lesson of the fighting in Italy was the need to maintain a safe and plentiful
18:43line of supply.
18:45The Allies needed to bring supplies and reinforcements ashore faster than the Germans could move
18:50the same over land by road and rail.
18:54The Overlord plan involved capturing the French port of Cherbourg, but two technologies were
19:00developed that enabled the Allies to have a secure supply.
19:05Allied civil engineering became as inventive as any work in radar or electronics.
19:11A floating harbor system was built out of concrete, codenamed Mulberry, and weighing
19:17a million and a half tons.
19:20The harbors were floated across the channel in parts and then sunk into place to provide
19:25an instant port.
19:31Later in the campaign, a flexible oil supply pipe was laid under the sea to deliver a constant
19:36flow of fuel.
19:39In the three weeks following the invasion, the Allies moved more than 800,000 troops
19:45across the channel.
19:46They joined all the beachheads together and captured the port of Cherbourg.
19:51Yet the invasion fell behind schedule.
19:54The territory held by the Allies was too small to hold the troops that had been transported.
20:00Not enough airfields had been captured.
20:02Germans, skilled in anti-tank and defensive warfare, were defending stoutly in the countryside
20:08that the French called bocage.
20:13Bocage was a medieval field system.
20:16Over hundreds of years, thick hedgerows had grown to create deep, sunken lanes that provided
20:22the Germans with row after row of ready-made deep trench lines, ready-made defenses that
20:28could stop tanks.
20:31The same roads forced attackers into vulnerable single file, traps with no room for maneuver.
20:39The Norman town of Caen was a D-Day objective.
20:43Three weeks after D-Day, it was still German-held.
20:47As long as the Nazis held the town, they denied access into the countryside to the south,
20:52where the bocage ended and tanks could maneuver with freedom.
20:56It was countryside where airfields could be built.
21:00Repeatedly, British and Canadian soldiers threw themselves against Caen, only to be
21:06repulsed.
21:08British General Montgomery took the ruthless decision to call in the heavy bombers of the
21:13Strategic Air Forces.
21:15Caen was to be liberated by being bombed into ruins.
21:21On July 7th, the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force systematically demolished
21:27Caen.
21:49In the next week, the British and American armies fought a series of fierce battles as
21:54they pushed the perimeter of the beachhead ever south.
22:19Repeatedly, the strategic bombers carpet bombed German positions.
22:26By mid-July, the British had lost more than one-third of their total tank force.
22:35The American army in the west, following extensive carpet bombing, finally broke through.
22:41Their push to the south opened the war and broke the stalemate.
22:45The attack that developed turned around the German flank and began to surround their Normandy
22:51armies.
22:52Hitler had ordered a counterattack in early August that threatened to cut off and surround
22:57the Americans.
22:59Again, the great secret of the broken German codes came into play.
23:04The Allies were ready and waiting, and the Germans were defeated with heavy losses.
23:11The tank came of age in World War II.
23:15The decisive and devastating attacks of the 1940 German Blitzkrieg had demonstrated the
23:20potency of armored warfare.
23:23Yet, to every invention, there is a reaction.
23:27And during the war, powerful techniques and weapons of anti-tank warfare had been devised.
23:33The armies fighting in 1944 were far different from those of 1940.
23:40No longer did infantry simply flee before advancing tanks, as they had in 1940.
23:46Tanks were still an essential ingredient for victory, but needed the support of specialized
23:51infantry and mobile artillery to counter the anti-tank regiments of their enemy.
24:01The Allies rolled the Germans into an ever-tighter pocket around the French town of Falaise.
24:08By the middle of August, nearly half a million Germans were in an ever more tightly closing
24:14trap, attackers on all sides, to their rear, the obstacle of the River Seine.
24:20In what came to be called the Battle of the Falaise Gap, determined action by the SS Hitler
24:26Youth Division, a formation of fanatics recruited entirely from the Nazi youth organization,
24:32held back the Allies, while 300,000 Germans streamed across the River Seine in a mass escape.
24:40All German heavy equipment was lost, 1,300 tanks destroyed, and 200,000 taken prisoner.
24:52The original Overlord Plan intended the Allies to halt at the Seine, to regroup and reorganize.
24:59Instead, Eisenhower decided to capitalize on the victory won, and ordered pursuit of
25:05the Germans across the open country of France.
25:09Hitler had not allowed the preparation of any fallback defensive positions.
25:14There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to stand and fight.
25:17The Germans had to run all the way to Belgium and the Netherlands, even to the borders of
25:23Germany itself.
25:26Hitler's strategic common sense had not entirely deserted him.
25:30Realizing that long lines of supply would weaken the Allies, he commanded all channel
25:36ports, garrisoned by stay-behind forces, to be turned into fortresses and defended to
25:41the last.
25:44As the Allies neared the borders of the Low Countries in early September, few thought
25:49the war would last into 1945.
25:54In mid-August 1944, as the Normandy battles were reaching their height, the Allies mounted
26:00a second invasion of France, on the Riviera.
26:04Originally planned to be simultaneous with the Normandy attack, a shortage of landing
26:09craft caused the southern invasion to be delayed.
26:12Again, there was a massive naval bombardment, and once again the Allies enjoyed massive
26:18air superiority, with 2,000 planes against 200 German.
26:24Once initial resistance had been broken, the task of the American and Free French armies
26:29was of pursuit and entrapment of the constantly retreating Germans.
26:36The Riviera landings threatened to confound Hitler's plan that Paris should be turned
26:41into a fortress and battleground.
26:44Hitler talked of the French capital as a Stalingrad that would entrap the Allied armies
26:50and lead to their annihilation, enduring the same fate as befell the German army at the
26:55Russian city a year before.
26:59The Riviera landings threatened to surround Paris and instead make the city a trap for
27:05the Germans.
27:08On August 18th, when it became apparent that the Allied armies were threatening to overwhelm
27:13the occupiers, the population of Paris rose in revolt and fighting broke out on the streets.
27:22Eisenhower and Montgomery refused to attack for the sake of attacking.
27:27They too saw the lesson of Stalingrad.
27:30They ruthlessly believed that liberation could wait and only military necessity justified
27:36attack.
27:38As it became clear that the city was fighting to free itself, the Allies were forced to
27:44act.
27:45Leader of the Free French, Charles de Gaulle, feared that French communists were attempting
27:49a takeover and using the fighting to eliminate their rivals for power in post-war France.
27:56The Allies agreed that Free French forces could be released and on August 23rd, their
28:02tanks entered Paris.
28:05The German command surrendered.
28:10De Gaulle led Allied forces in a march of triumph down the Champs Elysees.
28:23In the complicated timeline of World War II, it's possible that the smallest of human
28:29actions might have ended the war and saved many hundreds of thousands of lives.
28:35On July 20th, there was an assassination attempt upon Hitler.
28:40An officer on Hitler's staff, Klaus von Stauffenberg, a German patriot and war hero,
28:46planted a bomb in a meeting attended by the dictator.
28:50Fortune was at Hitler's side that day.
28:53The meeting changed location to a building that minimized the effect of the blast.
28:59Another officer, just wanting to get a closer look at a map, moved the bomb behind a heavy
29:04table.
29:06Hitler had moved from his usual place in the room.
29:09Though three died, Hitler survived unhurt and came to believe that his survival was
29:15the portent of a greater historical destiny.
29:20The group of soldiers and civil servants that had hatched the plot were arrested and sadistically
29:25executed.
29:27The plotters included Erwin Rommel, who was told to commit suicide or his family would
29:32be sent to concentration camps.
29:37So the war continued, and Hitler came to believe in miracles.
29:49The Allies enjoyed the results of many new technologies, new weapons and new scientific
29:54ways of waging war.
29:57This war of invention was not one-sided.
30:00Germany was one of the world's leading scientific nations, and the German armed forces enjoyed
30:06the use of futuristic weaponry.
30:09As the Allied armies fought to establish their grip upon northern France, one of the most
30:14famous products of German ingenuity made its debut.
30:18On June 13, the first V-1 flying bomb was launched against London.
30:24The V-1 was the prototype cruise missile, a pilotless jet aircraft with automatic guidance
30:30that was both ground and air-launched.
30:33In the next two weeks, nearly 2,500 of these missiles were fired.
30:39The flying bombs brought the return of terror to London, worse than the conventional air
30:45raid, as attacks were constant.
30:48There was no warning, no all-clear, no release of tension.
30:57As in 1939, children and the vulnerable were evacuated.
31:02Some of the missiles were destroyed by anti-aircraft artillery.
31:06The fastest of fighters could catch and shoot down the V-1, but this needed courage from
31:12the pilot, as the missile, exploding, frequently destroyed the attacking fighter.
31:18Some Spitfire pilots developed a daring technique of flying alongside the V-1, wing to wing,
31:25and then placing a wing beneath that of the V-1, tipping the missile into a tumbling dive.
31:32In September 1944, mysterious and massive explosions began to occur all over the British
31:39capital.
31:40A thunderclap of destruction would be followed by a roaring noise that shocked and dazed
31:46survivors, likened to that of a speeding train.
31:51The explosions were attacks by a new German secret weapon, the V-2.
31:57The V-2 was the first ballistic missile.
32:01The roar that followed the explosion was the sound of the supersonic missile arriving after
32:07the detonation.
32:09The government hid the truth.
32:11Official news talked of gas explosions.
32:14It was two months after the first V-2 attack that the government admitted the new weapon
32:20existed.
32:21There was no defense against the V-2.
32:24The missile took less than three minutes to fly to Britain.
32:33In the Pacific, the gradual process of erosion, of driving back the Japanese island by island,
32:40continued.
32:41In June 1944, yet more amphibious assaults began, this time in the Marianas Islands.
32:48The islands were important to both attacker and defender.
32:52The first target, Saipan, was an important Japanese base and within strategic bomber
32:57range of the Japanese home islands.
33:01The second U.S. objective, Guam, held important supplies of fresh water and was the best natural
33:07harbor in the western Pacific.
33:09Guam would also be a base for bomber attacks on Japan and a starting point for attacks
33:15to recover the Philippine Islands.
33:19As so often in these invasions of Pacific islands, the battle on land was preceded by
33:25a naval battle.
33:27The Battle of the Philippine Sea turned into the largest carrier battle of the war.
33:32The Japanese were outnumbered in nearly every aspect.
33:35The Americans had more than twice the aircraft, had seven major carriers to Japan's five,
33:42and eight light carriers to Japan's four.
33:46Disparity in quantity was matched by difference in quality.
33:50After earlier battles, Japanese crews and pilots never regained the level of training
33:55and prowess they had enjoyed earlier in the war and came to be surpassed in skill by the
34:00Americans.
34:01The quality of American radar and intelligence was also superior.
34:07A great air battle was fought in which the Americans enjoyed such superiority that the
34:12fighting came to be called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.
34:17The Japanese lost nearly two-thirds of their planes.
34:23Two Japanese carriers were lost, one to air attack, one to a U.S. submarine.
34:32With the naval threat destroyed, U.S. Marines had to fight a stern battle to take Saipan.
34:38Four thousand marine casualties were sustained in the first two days.
34:43An invasion planned to last three days stretched to three weeks.
34:49The terrain of Saipan meant that the U.S. soldiers were forced to make repeated frontal
34:54assaults against dug-in Japanese.
34:57The defenders fought with fanatical determination.
35:01In July, a mass suicide attack by the Japanese saw more than 4,000 Japanese troops killed
35:08in one day.
35:10Rather than surrender, many Japanese chose to die by their own hand.
35:19The delays caused in the taking of Saipan allowed both defenders and attackers of Guam
35:25to make full preparations.
35:27The Americans opened the assault with the heaviest air and naval bombardments of the
35:31Pacific War.
35:33More than half the 20,000 Japanese defenders were killed before a single U.S. Marine landed.
35:40Although Guam was secured easily, the remnants of the Japanese forces fought on.
35:46The last surrendered in 1972.
36:01As soon as the Marianas were secure, the U.S. Army Air Force began to turn the islands into
36:06bases to attack the Japanese.
36:09The raids were to be born on the wings of a new aircraft, the B-29 Super Fortress.
36:16The B-29 was a huge aircraft that could carry a heavier bomb load at greater range than
36:22any other aircraft.
36:24At first, the planes had flown a tortuous route from bases in China, from where southern
36:29Japan was just in range.
36:32From November 1944, the Marianas had been turned into air bases.
36:38The first raids had been precision high-level attacks upon the Japanese aircraft industry.
36:44The raids were inconclusive.
36:47In the coming years, these tactics were to be abandoned in favor of mass area attacks
36:52against Japan's wooden cities.
37:00When ordered to retreat from the Philippine islands in 1942, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur
37:06had famously promised to return.
37:09In late 1944, he gathered the forces to fulfill his vow.
37:14The Japanese occupation forces in the Philippines were ill-prepared to resist a U.S. invasion.
37:27Japan had entered the war in 1941 fully mobilized, with as many men as possible in uniform and
37:34industry at near capacity.
37:36The United States Navy had imposed a tight blockade around the Japanese islands that
37:42severely restricted Japan's capacity to wage war.
37:46In contrast, the U.S. Navy enjoyed an embarrassment of riches, able to draw from a well of near
37:53bottomless resources.
37:55New battleships, new cruisers, new destroyers streamed from U.S. shipyards.
38:01Of the most important ships in the war, the aircraft carriers, no less than 21 new major
38:07carriers had been launched since Pearl Harbor, five times the equivalent number of Japanese
38:13ships.
38:15The total number of aircraft the Americans could embark was 3,000, three times the Japanese
38:21strength.
38:26In September 1944, U.S. carrier aircraft destroyed Japanese air forces on the Philippines.
38:33In October, MacArthur assembled a fleet of over 700 ships, and following a huge bombardment
38:40by battleships, U.S. troops landed on the Philippine island of Lait.
38:45Japan responded with the dispatch of a massive naval force.
38:49The Battle of Lait Gulf, as the battle was to be called, remains the largest naval battle
38:54in world history.
38:57The Japanese plan was for their aircraft carriers to lure away the American carriers from the
39:02landings.
39:03Meanwhile, a separate force of Japanese battleships would attack the troop transports and the
39:08landed forces.
39:11The Battle of Lait Gulf has been described as the last throw of the Imperial Japanese
39:16Navy.
39:17Effectively, every major warship that remained to Japan was thrown into the gamble.
39:23The last reserves of ships, men, and aircraft were deployed to effect a decisive battle.
39:33The battle was, at the same time, a carrier battle, where the air forces of the two carrier
39:38fleets engaged each other and the enemy carriers, and it was traditional battle fleet engagement
39:45where big gun battleships fought each other in duels of naval artillery.
39:50The battle was complex as the two fleets divided their forces and searched for their enemy
39:56amongst the scattered Philippine islands.
39:59Admirals on both sides lost their nerve, then found renewed determination.
40:07Massive Japanese battleships, the largest in the world, surprised light U.S. carriers,
40:13which fought courageous actions against opponents many times their weight.
40:18Japanese attacked each other or mounted audacious attacks on much heavier ships.
40:26Ships were lost by both sides at late, but the fortune of war smiled on America and the
40:32result was a naval triumph which ranks as a victory alongside Trafalgar as the U.S.
40:39Navy destroyed the Japanese.
40:44All four Japanese carriers and two of the battleships were sunk.
40:49Japanese Admiral Nashimura went down with his ship.
40:53With the naval battle resolved, the fighting on land began.
40:58MacArthur spectacularly waded ashore before the newsreel cameras.
41:03Further inland, 70,000 Japanese and 15,000 Americans died in the battle to establish
41:08a bridgehead.
41:10The Japanese failed to throw back the invaders and a long battle for liberation began.
41:17It was at late that a new word passed into the languages of the world, kamikaze.
41:24A kamikaze attack was a suicide attack by a pilot crashing his plane loaded with explosive
41:30onto an enemy warship.
41:33Throughout the war, in rage or fanatical desperation, Japanese aviators had crashed onto their enemies.
41:40It was at late that the kamikaze attack became an official tactic.
41:45The kamikaze drew on Japanese mythology.
41:48The word kamikaze meant divine wind and referred to a miraculous tempest that suddenly arose
41:56to destroy a Chinese invasion fleet approaching the defenseless shores of medieval Japan.
42:04Kamikaze attacks were not always by aircraft.
42:07One was to deploy midget submarines, human piloted torpedoes, and even small manned
42:12rockets in suicide attacks.
42:16It was the converted fighter aircraft that were to be the most effective.
42:20At late, a US carrier and an Australian cruiser were to be the first victims of the divine wind.
42:28Hitler had seen the western invasion as the greatest threat endangering the very heart
42:34of the Third Reich.
42:36On the eastern front, he was prepared to concede territory and transferred troops to the west.
42:43On June 22nd, 1944, as the fighting in the west was at its height, the Soviet Union launched
42:49a massive offensive that threatened a general invasion of the Third Reich.
42:54The Soviet Union launched a massive offensive that threatened a general collapse of the
42:58German armies in the east.
43:02Operation Bagration, named after a hero of the wars against Napoleon, was a huge attack.
43:08The numbers told heavily against the Germans.
43:101.2 million Red Army soldiers against 400,000 Nazis, 5,200 tanks against 900 German machines,
43:226,000 Soviet aircraft against 1,300 Luftwaffe planes.
43:28Hitler was to sacrifice the lives of many thousands of his soldiers by designating Soviet
43:32cities as fortresses to be held to the last man.
43:43In just five weeks, the Russian armies advanced nearly 750 kilometers.
43:48By the end of July, the Red Army was 20 kilometers from Poland's capital Warsaw.
43:54As happened at Paris, the population of the Polish capital, with the sound of Russian
43:59guns echoing over their city, rose in revolt.
44:05The Russians did nothing.
44:07They drove attacks to the south, into the Balkans, fighting in Bulgaria, Romania, and
44:13Hungary, and north into the Baltic states.
44:17Meanwhile, the Germans systematically destroyed Warsaw, and killed more than 200,000 Poles.
44:27The Russians were already looking forward to the post-war order.
44:31The attacks to the north and south, rather than towards Berlin via Warsaw, were aimed
44:36at placing those states within the communist orbit.
44:40The Germans were allowed to destroy the Poles, to create a space that the Soviets would fill.
44:47The war aim of the Allies seems at first simple, the destruction of Nazism, the rolling back
44:54of Axis conquests, the liberation of enslaved peoples.
45:00Already in late 1944, the signs were there to see that the post-war world would not be
45:06a place of simple, straightforward certainty.
45:13In October 1944, a British army re-entered Greece.
45:17The occupation of Greece had crumbled since the capitulation of the Italians in late 1943.
45:24Control had passed to the Germans.
45:27Italian weapons had fallen into the hands of Greek resistance fighters, including the
45:32Greek communist partisans, the Ellis.
45:35The Germans had resorted to ever more harsh reprisals to maintain their rule.
45:43In October, the Germans took the decision to abandon Greece, and the Greek government
45:47returned with the help of British troops.
45:51The British stepped into a minefield of passionate and violent politics.
45:56In December, a demonstration in Athens by Greek communists turned into fighting, as
46:01they were opposed by supporters of the returned government.
46:05Within days, the British army was fighting Ellis in the streets.
46:17In the autumn of 1944, the optimism among the Allies at the end of the Normandy campaign,
46:22that the war would soon be over, was to prove misplaced.
46:27The advance across northern France had been so rapid that by early September, the Belgian
46:32capital of Brussels had been liberated and the port of Antwerp captured.
46:38Supply was crucial to the continuation of the war on into Germany.
46:42The capture of a major port facility was a major prize for the Allied armies, but was
46:47a prize that was to be squandered.
46:51Hitler ordered all channel ports to be held to the last man.
46:55Dunkirk was to hold out to the very end of the war.
47:00The capture of Antwerp left a large German force to the west, controlling the approaches
47:05to the port, rendering it unusable.
47:09The Allies failed to clear those troops, who mined and dominated the river with artillery.
47:14The Allies failed to prevent the Germans from gathering their scattered forces and reorganizing.
47:20The Allies ignored intelligence that revealed their plan to fight a major battle against
47:25the Allied supply lines.
47:28No action was taken because of the wave of feverish optimism that the war could be ended
47:33quickly.
47:34The will of the Allied commanders was focused elsewhere.
47:39The distraction was the operation planned by British General Bernard Montgomery to seize
47:44a crossing of the River Rhine by airborne attack, drive forward to the captured crossings
47:50with armored forces, then invade Germany and end the war before Christmas.
47:56This was the famous Arnhem attack, the bridge too far.
48:01In mid-September, American airborne forces seized bridges at Nijmegen and Eindhoven,
48:07attacks that went smoothly and with success.
48:11The British 1st Airborne Division descended upon Arnhem, deep in the Netherlands.
48:16The British forces, though, were dropped not near enough to their targets.
48:21They landed upon two SS Panzer divisions that were re-equipping, and the British plans for
48:26the operation were captured.
48:29British forces found themselves pinned down and, under increasing pressure, failed to
48:34capture the bridge.
48:37The action by ground forces to link up and relieve the paratroopers and glider troops
48:41was met by heavy German resistance and ground to a halt.
48:46After a week, the British were forced to admit defeat.
48:50Troops could be saved were, but 6,000 were taken prisoner and more than 1,000 killed.
49:06Arnhem was not a decisive defeat in itself, but the operation took Allied attention away
49:11from the situation at Antwerp.
49:14The failure to mount a simple mopping-up operation and make Antwerp Port operational
49:20was to lengthen the war.
49:23After the chaos at Arnhem, the Allies had to fight a series of difficult actions against
49:27the German forces that had taken the opportunity to reinforce and prepare.
49:32The battles were fought across the flooded and waterlogged Low Countries.
49:37Attacks had to be made by commandos with amphibious vehicles.
49:41Canadian armies had to make repeated charges across open ground against prepared German
49:47artillery surrounded by dense infantry defenses.
49:52Pillboxes and strongpoints had to be taken one by one in close infantry action.
49:58The towns of the region had to be cleared in fierce street fighting.
50:03In the midst of all this, engineers and naval minesweepers had to clear the mines and booby
50:08traps with which the Germans had filled the waterways.
50:12It was not until late November, more than 80 days after its capture, that Antwerp was
50:18brought into action.
50:20A desire for victory, of an end to the fighting, only condemned Europe to enter another year
50:27of war.
50:32Next time on World War II, The Complete History, in a desperate attempt to save Germany, Hitler
50:38attempts to repeat the triumph of 1940 with attacks through Belgium in what history comes
50:44to call the Battle of the Bulge.
50:49The Germans collapse in the east and Russian armies enter Germany.
50:54They encounter Auschwitz and the full evil of Nazism becomes known to the world.
51:09The last act of a dying Franklin Roosevelt is to attend a conference of the great powers
51:14at Yalta.
51:15The leaders sit together, not only to plan the war, but to draw the map of post-war Europe.