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00:00Britain and
00:28her empire is at the darkest hour and at the lowest point of the war.
00:34The forces of Nazism stand at the edge of victory.
00:39In the summer of 1940, in a tumultuous few months, the Phoney War had burst into a dramatic
00:45and terrifying real war.
00:49After a disastrous campaign in Norway, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the architect
00:55of 1930's appeasement, the man who had sacrificed Czechoslovakia at Munich, had lost the faith
01:01of British people in Parliament and had dramatically fallen from power.
01:05He was replaced by Winston Churchill.
01:11Churchill famously came to power offering the British people nothing but blood, sweat
01:16and tears.
01:18The spring and early summer of 1940 had brought the British people nothing but bad news.
01:23The British armed forces and their allies nothing but defeat after crushing defeat.
01:29The continent of Europe had fallen rapidly before the blitzkrieg of the panzer armies.
01:34Holland, Belgium and France had all surrendered in the space of weeks.
01:40The French were nationally humiliated as the Wehrmacht marched down the Champs-Élysées.
01:47With the entire British army in France nearly encircled, their backs to the sea, a mysterious
01:53moment of indecision by Hitler had saved one-third of a million British and French
01:57soldiers evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk by an armada of small boats and ships.
02:04In Britain, the country and the people awaited invasion by the Nazi armies.
02:09The south coast of England was turned into a fortified camp.
02:13The Home Guard of old men and boys was hastily recruited and stood waiting with desperately
02:18improvised weapons.
02:21The very structure and fabric of the country was broken up to fuel the war effort, to build
02:25planes, tanks and ships.
02:28The population awaited the ringing of church bells, which would be the signal that the
02:32invasion had begun.
02:34Fear, rumor and paranoia infested the British people as spies and infiltration were seen
02:40everywhere.
02:44Elsewhere the world seemed to be turning its back on Britain and her empire.
02:48The Soviet Union had extinguished the independence of the Baltic states, content that Hitler
02:53had given the Soviet system a free reign in the east.
02:57Fascist Italy had joined the war.
02:59The Rome-Berlin axis was now a military as well as a political alliance.
03:06The United States remained steadfast and resolute in its neutrality.
03:12Churchill promised Britain's enemies that they would be fought on the beaches, that
03:16Britain would never surrender.
03:26In the high summer of 1940, the battle for the survival of Britain and of freedom in
03:31Europe was not being fought on the beaches, but in the clear blue skies of southern England.
03:37The story of the Battle of Britain is a story of weapons, a technological story as much
03:44as it is a story of collective national heroism and the individual courage of young men.
03:50In this, it is a retelling of an old tale.
03:55Since the very earliest days of warfare, of human conflict, the need to survive, the need
04:01to defend yourself against your enemy has spurred the invention, innovation and the
04:06creation of ever more destructive and more terrible weapons.
04:10And the weapon that hits harder, faster or further has always been countered by either
04:16an even more powerful weapon or by a better defense, better armor, a better shield, better
04:22ways to hide.
04:26To understand the Battle of Britain, we must look back before the war, when military thinkers
04:31all over the world were imagining, were theorizing about future conflicts.
04:37At the turn of the century, it can be hard to realize that the invention of powered flight
04:42is an event that exists just, still within living memory.
04:47That flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright was only in 1903.
04:53In the interwar years, aircraft were just one of a series of breathtaking inventions,
04:58miracles of science that had amazed the world.
05:02Their role in warfare during the conflict of World War I had grown.
05:07In 1914, the flying machines were consigned to reconnaissance, to acting as spotters and spies.
05:13By 1918, the war had pushed the technology forward and specialized aircraft, war machines,
05:19bombers and fighters had developed.
05:22The Great War had seen the first strategic bombings of civilian and industrial targets.
05:28Ordinary people far from the front, where armies struggled, experienced the terror of
05:33aerial attack.
05:35By that war's end, the technology had advanced such that in 1919, a British strategic bomber
05:41was able to make the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
05:46Military theorists seized at the airplane as a decisive weapon that could change the
05:50nature of warfare forever, as a way out of the horrors of trench warfare.
05:57Politicians saw the airplane as an awesome machine that could win wars cleanly, without
06:01casualties in a matter of days.
06:04It was believed by politicians and soldiers in all countries that the bomber would always
06:09get through.
06:13Between the wars, it was widely believed that the next war would be fought with a short
06:18air battle, where one side's air force would be defeated, conceding air supremacy.
06:23Then, under threat of absolute destruction from bombers, victory would be conceded without
06:29any actual bombing of cities taking place.
06:33Air force warnings would be dropped into the centers of industry, and populations would
06:36be evacuated in panic, and then denied to the enemy by the use of poison gas.
06:43Because the theory held, no sane government would risk devastation in this way.
06:50Wars in the future would be clean, short, with minimal deaths and destruction.
06:57Experience between the wars had seemed to prove that the bomber would always get through,
07:02and that air power would result in the predicted victory.
07:08Nazi bombers in support of Franco in the Spanish Civil War had wrought apocalyptic devastation
07:13upon Spanish Republican cities.
07:16The fate of the Basque city of Guernica was held up as a warning to the world of aerial
07:21power.
07:23The British Royal Air Force had ruthlessly used bombing to economically and painlessly,
07:28without British casualties, policed the wilder parts of the British Empire, bombing the villages
07:34of rebellious tribes in Arabia and Afghanistan, sparing the cost and the risk of British ground
07:40troops.
07:43During the 1930s, the Italian Air Force had used aircraft and poison gas to subdue the
07:47forces of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia.
07:52Of course, these easy successes were an illusion.
07:56The Spanish Republican government had no air force, no air defense system that could
08:01deal with what were state-of-the-art German aircraft.
08:04Guernica was a soft, undefended target.
08:08The tribespeople that the Royal Air Force intimidated had no air defense, no shelters
08:12and no fighters.
08:14The RAF even had the luxury of marking gigantic figures and directions on the surface to aid
08:20navigation.
08:21The Ethiopian society that Italy attacked was medieval in its structure and technology.
08:34Even so, the Second World War, up to the onset of the Battle of Britain, had seemed to prove
08:39that air power was irresistible.
08:44Soldiers from Poland to France, across the entire continent, had cowered, fled in panic
08:49and died under remorseless attack by German aircraft in close support of advancing German
08:55armies.
08:57Again, this success was not a proof of the air power theories.
09:03The use of aircraft as close support to land forces is a long way removed from strategic
09:08air power used by one industrialized, advanced country to defeat another.
09:15The Blitzkrieg that had swept across Europe was a new way of making war, but it was a
09:21theory that combined tanks, planes and infantry to defeat the enemy's army.
09:30In the Battle of Britain, for the first time, air power was on its own in an individual
09:35struggle, air force versus air force, unaffected by the needs of soldiers and sailors.
10:06History likes to assign dates to the start and end of events.
10:23Rarely are events seen at the time so clearly.
10:26The Battle of Britain began at the instant that the Battle of France ended.
10:32All through July of 1940, there were skirmishes between fighters, minor raids as the two air
10:37forces fenced, feeling for their enemy's weaknesses.
10:43Hitler named August 13th as Eagle Day, when the main assault was to begin.
10:49Hitler's Führer, Directive 17, ordered the Luftwaffe to
10:55overpower the English air force with all the forces at its command in the shortest possible
10:59time to attack the flying units, ground installations and supply organizations and the aircraft
11:05industry.
11:07The objective of the German air force on Eagle Day was simple, to destroy the British Royal
11:12Air Force completely.
11:15Then the Luftwaffe would be able to attack at will, striking anywhere, anytime.
11:20It would have air supremacy.
11:24With air supremacy, the British Navy would be powerless to prevent the German Army's
11:29supposed river crossing of the English Channel.
11:32Operation Sea Lion, the invasion and conquest of the British Isles, would begin.
11:38All over northern France and the Low Countries, the Luftwaffe gathered all its strength.
11:43The ancient Chinese philosopher of war, Sun Tzu, held that every battle is won or lost
11:51before it is fought.
11:53That every factor determining the outcome of a conflict is already in place.
11:58In the men, in the weapons, in the geography, in the minds and the plans of the commanders.
12:05In that summer of 1940, as the two air forces prepared to fight, each had their strengths
12:10and weaknesses.
12:12The RAF was small, numbering little more than 600 fighters.
12:17The British bomber force was to be irrelevant in the battle.
12:23But the fighter planes were the twin legends of the war, the Spitfire and the Hurricane.
12:31The Hurricane was a devastating attacker of the German bombers.
12:35Its armament and its design caused heavy losses to the Luftwaffe forces.
12:40Once the pilot had the enemy in his sights, the Hurricane made kills easily and quickly.
12:46The Hurricane was a dependable, strong aircraft that made its pilots feel safe.
12:51Its body was sturdy and the plane could resist punishment and damage and get the man home.
13:00The Spitfire was undoubtedly the most beautiful aircraft.
13:04The smooth lines came from the natural needs of aerodynamics and were made possible by
13:09advanced revolutionary technology.
13:11The Spitfire by far the faster and most agile.
13:16Its flying qualities meant Spitfires were the planes of choice to engage the opposing
13:20German fighters.
13:23A myth of the war was that the Spitfire won the Battle of Britain for the RAF.
13:28The truth was that Hurricanes were far more numerous and shot down many more German aircraft.
13:38Hurricanes were far easier and cheaper to build and the better destroyers of bombers.
13:44The two aircraft together were to be the twin nemesis of the Luftwaffe.
14:03The Luftwaffe, however, possessed numerical superiority.
14:07A huge force of bombers, more than 1,000 aircraft strong, built to three designs.
14:14The Heinkel 111, the Dornier 17 and the Ju 88.
14:21The Heinkel and the Dornier both suffered from light bomb loads and poor defensive armament.
14:27The Heinkel's peculiar nose design made its crews feel intensely vulnerable.
14:33The Junkers 88 was the best German bomber.
14:37Only slightly slower than the British Hurricane, and although a small aircraft, could deliver
14:42its bombs very accurately, as its airframe could take the stresses of dive bombing.
14:50All were medium bombers, not capable of carrying the devastating bomb loads seen later in the
14:56war.
14:57It was to be a major failing of Germany that its aviation industry never produced a working
15:02heavy four-engine bomber, the type that was to prove so destructive later in the war.
15:11As so often, the vanity and pride of the Nazi dictatorship was its downfall.
15:16The small medium bomber enabled a huge air force to be cheaply and quickly built.
15:22Masses of the medium-sized planes were more impressive as they flew over the Nuremberg
15:26rallies.
15:30In addition to the three medium bombers, there were 300 Stuka dive bombers.
15:35Their distinctive wing shape the result of a design capable of near vertical dives that
15:40enabled a light bomb load to be delivered with deadly accuracy.
15:44They were slow and clumsy planes in normal flight, and while these aircraft had terrified
15:50soldiers on the ground, they were yet to be tested in an air force to air force battle.
16:16The other arm of the Luftwaffe's strength was its fighters.
16:20At the start of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe was equipped with two machines.
16:24The Messerschmitt 110 was a twin-engined and heavily armed fighter, and its crews were
16:29regarded by the Nazi leadership as the elite of the Luftwaffe.
16:35In fact, the most dangerous adversary of the RAF in 1940 was the Messerschmitt 109, a single-seat,
16:42single-engine fighter the equal of the Spitfire and faster than the Hurricane.
16:52The angular lines of the 109 made it less naturally agile than the Spitfire, but the
16:57heart of the aircraft, its engine, gave the German plane its own advantages in air combat.
17:05Evenly matched in speed and armament, for as long as the war is remembered, the argument
17:10will be which was the best, whether Spitfire or Me 109 was the superior fighter.
17:28The total strength of the Luftwaffe was over 1,000 bombers and more than 800 fighters,
17:34against which the Royal Air Force could muster 600 Spitfires and Hurricanes.
17:40There was far more to the technology of the Battle of Britain than simple statistics of
17:44bomb load and rate of climb, of top speed, turning circle, and weight and rate of fire.
17:50The battle could be won and lost in the aircraft factories.
17:56The Battle of Britain was a battle of attrition.
17:59The side that lost most planes, that lost the more pilots, would be defeated.
18:06With equal losses on either side, the side that could build and replace lost planes the
18:11quicker would, in the end, be the victor.
18:17A fact of history is that in the summer of 1940, the British factories could easily outproduce
18:23the Germans.
18:25500 Spitfires and Hurricanes could leave the production line every month.
18:30The German figure was less than half that.
18:36Attrition of machines and attrition of pilots.
18:40The most advanced aircraft in the world is a sort of cardboard if no pilot can be found
18:45to fly and fight with the aircraft.
18:50Leaders like the 109 and the Spitfire were demanding planes to fly, needing skilled pilots.
18:56The Spitfire's speed, agility, and responsiveness to control would terrify the beginner.
19:02In this, the Germans had the edge.
19:05Huge numbers of conscripted young men passed through the Luftwaffe in the 1930s, and Germany
19:10could call on 10,000 qualified pilots.
19:14In comparison, Britain had just over 2,000 young men, scraped together from amateurs,
19:19university flying clubs, and the remnants of the Polish and the Czech air forces.
19:24The RAF could train only 50 new pilots a week.
19:29Yet, the technology of the battle had another dimension.
19:35Radar.
19:37The story of radar is a classic example of how human inventiveness makes connections.
19:43In between the wars, a serious question was asked of British aircraft research.
19:49Could radio waves be used as death rays, stalling the engines of enemy aircraft, or boiling
19:56the blood of pilots, both of which were thought theoretically possible?
20:01The scientific reply was that radio waves could not be made strong enough to do such
20:06things they would just bounce off, but a connection was made.
20:12Attacking aircraft were causing problem interference with transmitters of the BBC, and the idea
20:18of radar was born.
20:21Between the wars, finding and tracking incoming attacking aircraft was thought an impossibility,
20:27and was central to the belief that the bomber would always get through.
20:32The use of radar was to give the RAF the crucial advantage in the Battle of Britain.
20:39It would be wrong to suppose that Britain alone had radar.
20:42In 1940, all major countries had radar programs, but British work was the most advanced.
20:49Most importantly, Britain understood what the new technology meant, had worked out how
20:54to use radar, how to process the information, and use the intelligence gathered to control
20:59and direct fighters towards incoming bombers.
21:04Britain was the only country which, at the outbreak of war, had built a complete network
21:08of radar stations.
21:13Germany did not realize the value and importance of the technology.
21:18Their own experiments in radar were leading in different ways that blinded them to the
21:22value of the British system.
21:25Still yet more factors determined the way the battle would be fought, and the ability
21:29of each side to win victory.
21:34The battle was fought in British skies.
21:37German aircraft had less time over their targets before needing to return, rearm, and refuel.
21:44Downed German pilots and damaged aircraft were lost forever.
21:48British men and machines could be returned to action.
21:52In so many ways, the two air forces were evenly matched, strengths and weaknesses evened out
21:58in determining the chances of defeat or victory for both sides.
22:01A weakness of the German side was their battle plan.
22:06Even though they knew their clear goal was the destruction of the RAF, Germany's leaders
22:12had no clear idea as to how to achieve that aim.
22:16The course of events in the skies of Britain in the weeks of the campaign against the RAF
22:21were marked by abandonment and changes of plan, improvisation and bad intelligence,
22:26bad guesswork that, seen with the standpoint of history, brought ultimate German failure.
22:33Overall, the Germans believed that if they could bring the RAF fighter force to a decisive battle,
22:39they would destroy the fighters and the invasion could begin.
22:43Luftwaffe leader Göring called it the knockout punch.
22:48Hitler even hoped that, once the RAF was destroyed, Britain would see sense,
22:53capitulate without the need for invasion.
22:59The Battle of Britain divides into a number of phases.
23:02In the first phase, on Eagle Day, the Luftwaffe attacked a wide variety of targets,
23:07some airfields, the naval dockyards at Portsmouth, shipping in the English Channel,
23:12some radar stations, aircraft factories and so on.
23:16The aim?
23:17To rain blows everywhere, to provoke the RAF into a fight.
23:23The RAF held its own in this first phase and, crucially, the radar stations were not systematically
23:28attacked again after that first day.
23:33German intelligence did not realize how effective the British system was.
23:37The result was that the attacking forces were always met by British fighters.
23:44The skies of southern Britain were full of aircraft.
23:47A newsreel showed proud Home Guards standing over downed aircraft in the fields.
24:17In the first phase, the RAF attacked a wide variety of targets, some airfields,
24:22the naval dockyards at Portsmouth, shipping in the English Channel,
24:27some radar stations, aircraft factories and so on.
24:30The aim?
24:31To rain blows everywhere, to provoke the RAF into a fight.
24:35The aim?
24:36To rain blows everywhere, to provoke the RAF into a fight.
24:39The aim?
24:40To rain blows everywhere, to provoke the RAF into a fight.
24:43The aim?
24:44To rain blows everywhere, to provoke the RAF into a fight.
25:14On August 20th, in the British Parliament,
25:17Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid his legendary tribute to the young pilots of the RAF.
25:23Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
25:30The few.
25:31And that was the point.
25:33The pilots of the RAF were few in number.
25:36Although Britain was managing to replace the losses of aircraft,
25:39the pilots were growing ever smaller in number.
25:44After two weeks, the courage of the pilots and the technology of the planes and radar
25:48meant that the expected result was not happening.
25:51The RAF was still in the air.
25:56From August 24th, a new tactic emerged.
25:59Impatient for success, the Luftwaffe focused solely on attacking the RAF's airfields.
26:05The Nazi thinking was that the RAF surely would have to rise in its entire strength
26:10to defend itself and its own capability to fight.
26:14The attacks were made by small groups of bombers accompanied by large formations of fighters.
26:21With this strategy, the Luftwaffe began to slowly gain the upper hand.
26:26At some bases, the ground crew, without which the RAF could not fly,
26:31were in mutiny, refusing to come out of shelters.
26:34For the first time, the rate of destruction of RAF planes
26:37was overtaking the rate at which new fighters could be built.
26:41In early September, the situation was at breaking point for Britain.
26:47On September 7th, this strategy, which was winning, was dropped.
26:52The Germans suddenly mounted mass daylight raids on London.
26:57Impatience that victory was slow in coming caused the change.
27:01Again, the idea was to provoke the RAF into a mass defense of the capital
27:05and bring about decisive defeat.
27:08The Germans abandoned all subtlety of tactics, of feints and diversionary raids
27:14and simply threw all their strength in mass attacks
27:17in increasingly desperate attempts to provoke a big final battle.
27:21In fact, they presented the RAF with ever larger and easier targets of bombers.
27:28If you look for a reason, it is in intelligence.
27:31Both sides had inaccurate estimates of the other's strength.
27:35The Germans had underestimated the RAF's strength at the start of the battle
27:39and they never had an idea of the true level of the RAF's strength.
27:44They were unaware of how bad things were for the British.
27:47They were seeing their own strength destroyed with no effect.
27:52Had the Germans known the true position,
27:54they would surely have persevered with attacks on the RAF's bases
27:58with who knows what effect on the course of the history of the world.
28:03The change of targeting by the Germans initially caught Britain's air defense system off balance
28:09and wrought sorrowful destruction.
28:11On September 7th, only 92 anti-aircraft guns defended the capital.
28:16Even though their number was rapidly increased, those barrages were mostly useless,
28:21only driving attackers to higher altitudes from where the same weight of bombs fell.
28:27R.A.F. Reorganized
28:49But as the raids continued, the RAF reorganized and found that in the new mass daylight raids,
28:55the Luftwaffe was offering easy targets and the balance of losses swung back heavily toward the British,
29:02gradually eroding the Luftwaffe's strength and confidence.
29:08The logical thing for Hitler to do, the sensible thing, if you like,
29:12was to stick with their plan to continue the strategy that was slowly degrading the RAF's capability,
29:19destroying British bases, destroying British planes.
29:24The Battle of Britain was a war of numbers.
29:27Each day the Luftwaffe and the RAF claimed to have won the day.
29:31Each exaggerated their own victories and minimized their losses.
29:36The ability of each side to tell fact from fiction, to know what was really happening,
29:42was a crucial factor in determining the outcome of the battle.
29:47The failure of nerve, the decision to end attacks directly against the opposing air force,
29:53was a turning point of the war.
30:11The Battle of Britain exists in myth as well as in history,
30:15but it's no myth that the future of freedom from the whole dark science of Nazi tyranny
30:20lay in the hands of little more than two and a half thousand young men.
30:25History likes to assign clear dates to the start and end of events.
30:46In fact, the real happenings tend to be far more blurred.
30:50Throughout early September, the mass daylight attacks on London continued with heavy German losses.
30:57Hitler realized the RAF could not be defeated.
31:00The invasion of Britain could not happen.
31:03The raids on London gradually turned from daylight to night.
31:07The object no longer the destruction of the RAF, but of London.
31:12The big plan, the strategy for defeating Britain, different.
31:20While the big picture was that Germany had suffered a major defeat, had failed to take victory on offer,
31:26this might not seem the case for the citizens of London.
31:30The Blitz was yet another test of the theory that air power alone could win a war.
31:36It could win by breaking the will to resist of a population, by inflicting terror and exhaustion.
31:46Once again, the most carefully argued of peacetime theories as to how the next war would be won
31:51was put to the test of actual war, and the course of events was to confound the best thought-out plans.
31:59In the first phase of the Blitz, bombers came every night.
32:04Indiscriminate, vaguely aimed attacks were made on the docks on the East End.
32:11After the heavy losses of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz was a happy time for the Luftwaffe,
32:16with German losses of only 1% of sorties flown.
32:20The British defenses, for all the roar of anti-aircraft artillery and the ranks of barrage balloons,
32:27were impotent.
32:29The guns were told to fire indiscriminately for the benefit of civilian morale.
32:37Indeed, it is legendary how the British people showed that bombing does not break the will to resist,
32:43and in many cases, stiffened resolve.
32:47The British civilians climbed over the rubble to carry on their lives in defiance of Hitler.
32:54Looking back from a world where war and airstrikes are reported as breaking news,
32:59where the perception of a war is as important as the actual strikes,
33:04it is perhaps hard for us to see the Blitz as a media event, as news information,
33:09the same way as we see wars fought over 50 years later.
33:13Thanks to the Anderson Shelter, we're quite safe.
33:16I think he dropped a couple of bombs on us and it shook the Anderson Shelter like very ill.
33:22But when I had the four boys talk to me, I was quite contented.
33:29The Blitz was the German attempt to make the British people reject the belligerent defiance of Churchill,
33:35to weary them of war, and prepared to accept peace on any terms.
33:40The Blitz was presented by the British in ways that outraged.
33:45Images of business as usual, of prime minister, of king and queen,
33:50with the victims of this terrorism were used,
33:53to present the leadership as all in this together with the people.
34:03The pictures of ordinary innocent civilians made homeless,
34:07turned into refugees in their own country,
34:10was used in a drip feed of propaganda to turn US public opinion against the Nazis.
34:16The truth of the Blitz, as with all truth, is more complex than the fiction.
34:22In some places, civilians did flee the cities of Britain in panic.
34:26Some people did loot from bomb wreckage.
34:28Churchill was not always greeted with cheers.
34:31The British Communist Party tried to stir agitation.
34:35That workers were being allowed to die through lack of air raid shelters.
34:42We live in a world where politicians are too often led by public opinion polls.
34:48Polls are not new.
34:50It's a simple fact that in secret Gallup polls taken by the British government throughout the Blitz,
34:5580% of the population believed in ultimate British victory.
35:00With the Battle of Britain a failure,
35:02and his main enemy still defiant, though bloodied,
35:05what now was Hitler's plan?
35:07What now could be his strategy for victory?
35:11On October 12th, Hitler cancelled Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain,
35:16and a new German strategy was unfolded.
35:19Rather than deliver a knockout blow,
35:22Hitler now chose to pound around at the edges to wear Britain out.
35:27Pressure on Britain would be increased by attacks on ever more fronts,
35:31stretching both Britain's resources and the will to continue.
35:35The incessant pressure of the Blitz would stretch the nerves.
35:39Diplomacy would be used to add to Britain's enemies,
35:43inducing more and more countries by either threat
35:46or the offer of the spoils of victory to come over to the Axis.
35:52In late October of 1940, Hitler met with two men he thought could be an aid to this plan.
35:58In Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, he sought an ally who would assist his strategy
36:03by seizing the British base at Gibraltar,
36:06and so closing the Mediterranean to British use,
36:09increasing the pressure on North Africa and Egypt.
36:12In return, Spain was offered the reward of France's North African colonies.
36:19Many historians call Franco a fascist.
36:22That he refused to be involved with the war and kept Spain neutral
36:26reveals a fascinating dimension to his character.
36:30Showing him not a revolutionary politician with a set of beliefs like Hitler,
36:34but rather a simple conservative, shrewd and ruthlessly realistic,
36:39who thought only of his and his country's interests.
36:43Hitler was to say of his meeting with Franco,
36:45I would rather have three or four teeth extracted than go through that again.
36:51Hitler met Vichy French leader Pétain and again offered the bribe of colonies.
36:56The French territory promised to Spain would be replaced with former British territories.
37:01In return, Vichy France had to enter the war on the German side.
37:06Pétain showed some of his old stubbornness and refused to become further involved.
37:13Already in mid-September, as part of this new strategy of encirclement,
37:17and a widening of the war, Italy had attacked Britain in Egypt.
37:22Italian forces based in Libya, which was then an Italian colony,
37:26had invaded Egypt, which was a British protectorate,
37:29ruled as part of the British Empire.
37:32An ancient country, significant in world history millennia before,
37:36was once more a player on the center stage of world events.
37:42This was not part of Vichy France's plan.
37:45This was not part of Mussolini's usual posturing,
37:49a vain glorious move to make his fascist state look like a new Roman Empire.
37:54There was a clear, focused, strategic goal for this attack.
37:59The purpose was to cut off British supplies of oil from the Middle Eastern Arabian states,
38:04from Iraq and Iran, then all under British domination, if not direct rule.
38:11Without these supplies of oil, Britain would simply lose the war.
38:16The invasion of Egypt would cut the Suez Canal,
38:19an actual and symbolic link to Britain's worldwide empire.
38:29Over the next two years, the Western Desert was to become
38:32one of the most spectacular and dramatic theaters of war the world has ever seen.
38:37A place in which legendary leaders would emerge,
38:40and where the names of individual units would mark their place in military history.
38:45It would be a war of dramatic movement over stupendous distances.
38:50The Western Desert was not to be some grim push, a grinding down of the enemy.
38:57It would be a conflict with astounding reversals of fortune,
39:00with both sides riding astride a seesaw of victory and defeat.
39:06The huge, open, featureless space of the desert and the absence of towns and civilians
39:11made for a war of easy movement, suited to the new mobile armored tank armies.
39:18It was to be a war fought with what would be seen as old-fashioned chivalry
39:22and respect for the opponent.
39:28Later, when Germany became drawn into the conflict,
39:31the absence of SS troops removed the worst excesses of brutality and reprisal
39:36that were to be found elsewhere.
39:39With hindsight, the Western Desert campaign would be of major significance
39:43in the eventual outcome of the war,
39:45but the numbers involved were tiny compared to forces engaged elsewhere in the world.
39:52Italy's North African campaign of 1940 was the first time
39:56that Mussolini's forces had been pitched into a campaign of their own
40:00against another industrialized, modern state,
40:03as opposed to terrorizing armies barely out of the 15th century, as in Ethiopia.
40:11The invasion of Egypt was the first where Italian generals had had to plan a campaign,
40:16rather than ride to victory on the backs of others,
40:19as they had when Italy belatedly joined the invasion.
40:23Mussolini's fascist state had proudly boasted
40:26that it had created a new, powerful, modern armed force,
40:30a military might that would rival and surpass that of ancient Rome.
40:36The history of World War II shows that these armies were not successors of the legions,
40:42and Mussolini was no Caesar Augustus.
40:46The truth was that a large part of Italy's army
40:51The truth was that although vastly expanded in number with splendid uniforms
40:56and no more or less brave than most soldiers of the time,
41:00Italy's troops were poorly equipped.
41:03What good modern weapons the country possessed were spread so thinly as to be useless.
41:10The body of men 230,000 strong that attacked Egypt
41:14was more of a 19th century force than a modern mobile armored army.
41:20The Italians slowly attacked, moved inside the Egyptian border,
41:25and after three days, halted, waiting for more supplies to catch up.
41:32If the aim of Italy's Egyptian attack was in part to deny Britain oil,
41:36the Axis made moves of its own to ensure security of supply.
41:42In October, German forces moved into Romania,
41:45a move made to guarantee the Axis the only source of oil in the European mainland.
41:51This was not an invasion.
41:53Romania was a dictatorship and already sympathetic to the Nazis.
41:59In Europe, the war continued to spread to more and more European nations.
42:09As so often in the history of the European continent,
42:12the Balkans, that crazy patchwork of small countries
42:15with a multitude of confused minorities and minute ethnic differences,
42:20torn by ancient vendettas, hatreds, enmities, and grievances, was to play a part.
42:28A small Balkan conflict began,
42:30which was to be part of a far greater significance in the big picture of the history of the war.
42:36On October 28th, Italy invaded Greece,
42:39basing its attack from the neighboring territory of Albania,
42:43which Italy had occupied since April 1939.
42:47This was a war with little purpose other than the pride, vanity, and ego of Mussolini.
42:53To create a new Roman Empire,
42:55to avenge the loss of the tiny Ionian island of Corfu to Greece in 1923,
43:01and to show Hitler that Italy was not to be the junior party to the Axis.
43:11The invasion of Greece made little sense in terms of the bigger strategic picture.
43:16The invasion was to widen the war in a way that hindered Axis plans.
43:22Hitler looked toward a historical destiny of an eventual titanic struggle
43:27with Stalin's Soviet Communist Russia,
43:29a war he saw central to the future of civilization.
43:50Mussolini's sideshow would drag his German ally
43:53Mussolini's sideshow would drag his German ally
43:56into a mire of troubles that would, in the end, help decide the outcome of the war.
44:05In the North Atlantic, the pressure from U-boat attacks was mounting to ever greater levels.
44:11There was a tremendous shortage of convoy escorts,
44:14of the small warships that could shepherd the groups of merchantmen across the ocean.
44:20The United States had a vast store of near-obsolete World War I destroyers,
44:25known as the Four Stackers, for their distinctive design.
44:29American President Roosevelt struck a ruthless deal with Churchill
44:33to receive the use of these spare ships as an instant enlargement to the Royal Navy.
44:38The British had to sign away control of their bases in the West Indies and Canada,
44:43giving them to the U.S.
44:46Roosevelt did not wish to appear to be violating U.S. neutrality,
44:50and his hard-headed assessment was that Britain was likely to fall.
44:55The American President feared that a future Britain, now in the Nazi camp,
44:59would allow German warships and German U-boats to be based in the Caribbean.
45:06It was a deal of which the U.S. obtained the best part.
45:10By the end of 1940, only nine of the promised destroyers had arrived.
45:18Looking back on the events of 1940,
45:20we think of the year as part of the unfolding drama of World War II.
45:26Of course, to the people of 1940, it was not yet a World War.
45:30It was rather a European war.
45:33The transition to global conflict was yet to be made.
45:37With hindsight, again, the growth of the war to envelop the world was inevitable.
45:42But again, this did not seem the case in 1940.
45:47In September, while the Battle of Britain was reaching its height on the other side of the world,
45:52the Empire of Japan was marching on its path to war.
45:56Crucially, Japan took the decision to attach its destiny to that of Hitler,
46:01joining the Axis Alliance.
46:03Why should Japan do this?
46:05What had Japan in common with Nazism,
46:08an ideology of racial superiority of white European peoples?
46:14Japan had felt threatened by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet alliance,
46:19a move which had taken Japan totally by surprise.
46:23The Soviet Union was a strategic threat to Japan's ambitions on mainland.
46:28The driving forces of Japanese policy were the army and navy.
46:33By allying with the Nazis, Japan saw the northern Soviet threat nullified.
46:41Japan saw an oncoming war with the United States as inevitable.
46:46And after the fall of France and Holland,
46:49the Soviet Union was no longer a threat to Japan.
46:53Across an ocean from the struggles of Europe,
46:56in the United States, a realization of the direction which history was flowing,
47:01led America to introduce conscription in peacetime for the first time.
47:06We have come to a conclusion that peace is not a matter of the people.
47:11It is a matter of the people.
47:13It is a matter of the people.
47:15It is a matter of the people.
47:17led America to introduce conscription in peacetime for the first time.
47:22We have come to realize that the greatest attack
47:26that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual
47:31is nearer the Americas than ever before.
47:35The Selective Service Act registered American men,
47:38and some were chosen for military service.
47:42The service of the draftees was restricted
47:44to the Western Hemisphere and U.S. territories.
47:48But the act was an important step
47:50to preparing the United States for inevitable conflict.
47:55The growing, expanding nature of the European war
47:58was the dominant issue of the 1940 presidential election in America.
48:04In a broadcast days before the election,
48:07Franklin Roosevelt promised the American people,
48:11your boys will not die in foreign wars.
48:16This promise helped Roosevelt win a record third term in office.
48:22FDR's place in American history
48:24as one of the greatest of peacetime presidents was already assured.
48:29His even greater place as a war leader
48:32was something that still awaited both him and America.
48:40Next time on World War II, The Complete History.
48:45The continuing disasters unfold around the Italian war effort
48:50as the invasion of Greece turns to catastrophe for the Italians
48:54with defeat and rout into the hills of Albania.
48:59In North Africa, there are mass surrenders of Italian armies
49:03as the British Army of the Nile
49:05drives the Italians deeper and deeper to retreat.
49:09We shall see how the Italian failure
49:12draws the forces of Germany ever deeper to the south
49:15with the invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece.
49:21In North Africa, Italian defeat turns into German triumph
49:26as two legends emerge and the names of Erwin Rommel
49:30and the Afrika Korps are linked together in history
49:33and the tide of war sweeps the British to near defeat
49:37only to rebound with dramatic counterattacks.
49:44Faced with German onslaught,
49:46British and Commonwealth forces face a second Dunkirk
49:50as they first invade and are then forced to flee from Greece
49:54in face of a ferocious German attack.
49:59Churchill demands that America give Britain the tools for victory.
50:06The ancient Mediterranean Sea, the site of so many a war,
50:10is once more the stage for epic naval action
50:13as the British Navy seeks to emulate its greatest victories
50:17adding the battles of Toronto and Mattapan to its role of honor.
50:22In that wine-dark sea, the island of Crete
50:25is the scene for bloody and costly German victory
50:28as the pride of the German armed might,
50:31the airborne and paratroop forces
50:33are squandered in capturing the island.
50:38Germany's losses in one battle
50:40more dead than the entire war to that point.
50:45In the Atlantic, the desperate struggle of the U-Boat War continues
50:50reaching a new peak.
50:52The British battleship Hood meets its nemesis in Bismarck.
50:56Bismarck itself was soon to sink.
51:02London still writhes under German aerial attack
51:05with bombs falling on Parliament itself.
51:09Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy and trusted aide
51:13makes his mysterious flight to Britain
51:15bringing a personal offer of peace.
51:19All these events are played out against the impending storm
51:23that is to break in the East
51:25as Germany unleashes Operation Barbarossa,
51:29a war of annihilation against Soviet Communism.
51:33Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
51:42Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
51:47Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
51:52Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
51:57Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
52:02Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.
52:06Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia.