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00:00Forlorn monsters today.
00:25In May 1940, these forts of the Maginot Line were France's first-line defence against the Germans.
00:38Half a million French soldiers lurked beneath these man-made hills.
00:45These were the most expensive, the most elaborate forts ever constructed.
00:51Here the guns would halt the Hun, provided the Hun came this way.
01:51Thank God for the French Army, said Winston Churchill when Hitler came to power.
02:05But in 1933, the French Army was no longer the superlative weapon it once had been.
02:12French military manuals devoted page after page to the tactics of the First War.
02:18Although Hitler had said, the next war will be very different from the last.
02:28The French had helped introduce the tank and the aeroplane, but now did little to extend their use.
02:35They had pioneered motor transport in warfare, but went back now to relying on railways and the horse.
02:43It was a period of very deep decay, probably caused by the excessive effort during the First World War.
03:03We suffered from an illness which is not peculiar to the French, the illness of having been victorious.
03:12And believing that we were right and very clever.
03:17A victory is a very dangerous opportunity.
03:29France between the wars was deeply divided.
03:33Factions clashed, alliances altered, cabinets came and went in a cascade,
03:38some lasting a few hours, some a few months.
03:41Rarely did one last a whole year.
03:49On the very day Hitler came to power, France was without a government.
03:54It was again without one when he marched into Austria five years later.
03:59The Left in France was concerned more with hounding rogues in high places at home than curbing fascism elsewhere.
04:13The Right so hated the Left, it was prepared to countenance dictatorship.
04:20As early as 1934, the Victor of Verdun, Marshal PĂ©tain, was proposed as France's saviour from Communism,
04:28although he was then nearly 80.
04:31These deep divisions were to fetter France when she faced the need to rearm.
04:36The whole of the possessing classes, the Right if you like, preferred the idea of the Germans to their own Communists.
04:48You didn't have to walk round these streets and see Pour Qui et Pourquoi written on them
04:53or The Hammer and Sickle to realise that nobody was going to lift a finger.
04:59The Hammer and Sickle
05:10France in the 30s built a series of great forts along her frontier with Germany.
05:15And because her war minister then happened to be one André Maginot,
05:19these forts came to be known as the Maginot Line.
05:24The Maginot Forts were truly 20th century wonders.
05:29Electric trains took the troops from barracks to gun turret, from arsenal to canteen.
05:34There were cinemas underground, sun ray rooms, air conditioning, the lot.
05:40Theirs was a vast Jules Verne type of world, hundreds of feet below ground.
05:46They called it the shield of France.
05:50The Maginot Line failed to protect all of France's eastern flank.
05:54It was only 87 miles long and it stopped 250 miles short of the Channel.
06:03The Maginot Line
06:15Should the alarm ever have to sound in grim earnest,
06:18French strategists argued that their troops would need to confront the Germans on Belgian, if not German, soil.
06:25Besides, to extend the Maginot Line along the Belgian frontier would not only be expensive,
06:30but would make the Belgians think that if war came, France would forsake them.
06:37The folly of this thinking was shown up in 1936,
06:40when, without consulting the French, the Belgian King Leopold opted for neutrality
06:46and closed his borders, even to French military observers.
06:53All too late, France began extending the Maginot Line to the sea.
06:59But by May 1940, it was far from finished.
07:030-10-8-1-95
07:25France had suffered a terrible loss of life in the Great War.
07:29Now French military thinking became wholly defensive,
07:32forgetting Napoleon's favourite maxim,
07:34the side that stays within its fortifications is beaten.
07:50Since the French spurned any notion of taking the offensive,
07:54the Maginot Line ironically protected Germany better than it protected France.
07:59A German colonel, Heinz Guderian, the year the Maginot Line was completed,
08:03published a book with a prophetic title,
08:05Achtung, Panzer!
08:07A book that was never properly studied by the French or the English general staff.
08:11Yet these pages expound a new kind of warfare,
08:14the concentrated use of tanks with infantry and air force in close support.
08:19Blitzkrieg.
08:21Blitzkrieg.
08:27We had had tanks in the First World War.
08:29We knew all the difficulties of the game.
08:32While the Germans who didn't have them
08:35had the feeling of those who were attacked by tanks,
08:39and while we considered that the tanks were a little awkward and difficult to use,
08:44the Germans jumped to the new weapons with the appetite of a new rich.
08:52Paris, July 14, 1939.
08:57The last Bastille Day parade of the Third Republic.
09:05A few days earlier, Britain's war minister visiting Paris had said,
09:09France has the greatest army in the world.
09:13Like the parade itself, such statements were meant merely to raise morale.
09:19Parisians had hardly got back from their holidays
09:22before they found themselves once more at war with their traditional foe.
09:37But whereas in 1914 the cry had been, On to Berlin,
09:41this time it was, Let's get it over with.
09:46Ironically, French mobilization was too efficient.
09:50The call-up of skilled technicians brought many vital war industries almost to a halt.
09:55It was only after weeks of confusion that these men were released.
10:00Nor was France going to war united.
10:03The bitternesses of French politics continued.
10:06Every day, the French were no longer able to afford
10:10to pay for the military services they had made.
10:14The cost of the military was so great that it was almost impossible
10:19to get out of it in time.
10:23It was the only way to get out of it in time.
10:27But the bitternesses of French politics continued.
10:31Ministers looked to their own futures instead of their countries.
10:35And many took their cue from such leadership.
10:43Paris didn't alter much for the coming of war, save in appearance.
10:47The most popular song that autumn of 1939 was,
10:50Paris will always be Paris.
11:20Paris will always be Paris.
11:22The most beautiful city in the world,
11:25Despite the deep darkness,
11:29Its sparkle cannot be dimmed.
11:33Paris will always be Paris.
11:36The more we reduce its lighting,
11:40The more we see its courage shine,
11:42Its good mood and its spirit.
11:44Paris will always be Paris.
11:51While their Polish allies were being routed in the East,
11:54the French, like the British, did little in the West.
11:58There was the so-called Tsar Offensive,
12:00the only French offensive, in fact, of the war.
12:14A few French divisions advanced five miles,
12:17but they didn't even try to penetrate the Siegfried Line,
12:20at that time still unfinished.
12:22And while Poland fought on,
12:24there were no German tanks at all on the Western Front.
12:27The newsreel commentators of the day, though,
12:29didn't doubt the French resolve.
12:32We have read those communiqués from the French High Command.
12:35This is the living story behind those brief, unvarnished reports.
12:39Our cameramen in the advance lines on German territory
12:42watched the observation posts at the bridge over the Rhine
12:44between Kiel and Strasbourg.
12:52This was a German railway station,
12:54now in the hands of French troops.
12:59From fortified outposts, the vigilant watch is never relaxed.
13:13The Maginot Line, which was built as the first line of defense for France,
13:17has become the second line behind the attack.
13:19A gradual but steady advance of the French troops
13:22has brought their camouflaged artillery within range of the Siegfried outpost.
13:25There is no haste,
13:27only a grim, relentless pressure on the Nazi emplacement.
13:30Meter by meter, the Pallues are moving forward.
13:33If the French Army would have attacked
13:38in beginning of September,
13:41with their very strong superiority
13:46in division, in armored cars,
13:49we lacked all armored cars on the Western Front at that time,
13:53in artillery, in air force,
13:57the German forces
14:00in the so-called Western Front
14:04could stand no more than one or two weeks.
14:11But even before Poland had surrendered,
14:14the French commander ordered his men back behind the Maginot Line.
14:17Withdrawal of the Germans did nothing to prevent.
14:20One Frenchman wrote at the time,
14:22after the prologue of the phony offensive,
14:24we were ripe for the phony war.
14:35BOOM
14:52For several minutes each day,
14:53the Maginot guns boomed out,
14:56usually to impress visitors such as the Duke of Windsor.
15:04Little attempt was made to harass the enemy.
15:17Even bombing the Ruhr was forbidden in case the Luftwaffe retaliated against French factories.
15:22Journalists were taken up to the lines to see the inactivity.
15:25I stayed at an observation post on the Rhine watching the Germans washing and playing
15:33football and I said to the sentry, why don't you shoot them?
15:38Why don't you shoot at them?
15:41No, he said, they are behaving perfectly alright, they don't shoot at us, why should we shoot
15:45at them?
15:46Life at the front was dreary and drab.
16:17Badly paid, leave became an obsession for the French soldiers and was used mainly to
16:25make a little on the side.
16:31The winter of 1939 was the coldest for half a century.
16:36Even the channel froze at Boulogne.
16:39The French halted work on the Maginot extension.
16:43The Germans, however, forged ahead with their plans.
16:48As winter wore on, French morale sank, discipline deteriorated and drunkenness became rife.
16:57Special rooms were set aside in railway stations where men could recover before rejoining their
17:02units.
17:09Few French generals ever bothered to inspect, let alone meet, their troops.
17:14But then their commander-in-chief, General Gamelin, rarely set foot outside his own headquarters.
17:20Already 68 at the beginning of 1940, his military record was so impeccable that no one dreamed
17:25of asking him to make way for a younger man.
17:28Gamelin was very clever, but with no guts at all, and he was liked by the politicians
17:37because he was an easy commander-in-chief.
17:40Gamelin chose for his headquarters this chateau at Vincennes, just outside Paris.
17:46That choice reveals what the man was, you know.
17:50The enemy were not the Germans, it was the French government.
17:54Vincennes was where England's Henry V died, and where the spy Matahari was executed.
18:05It was described by one visitor as a submarine without a periscope.
18:10Almost unbelievably, it had no radio communications, it was not linked by teleprompter with any
18:15other headquarters in the field.
18:17Instead, messages were dispatched regularly on the hour by motorcycle.
18:23Gamelin seldom bothered his staff with orders, preferring simply to suggest guidelines.
18:35His long-term strategy was to wait until the Allies could match the Germans in numbers
18:39and equipment before launching any major offensive, even though that would mean waiting until
18:431941.
18:44Meanwhile, he was concerned to keep the war away from French soil.
18:49Hence, his interests in any odd strategy pushed his way.
18:54We had the plan to go to attack Russia through Norway and Narvik, which led to the landing
19:03in Narvik.
19:05We had a plan to attack the oil plants in Baku from Syria.
19:11We had plans to raise the Balkans with us by landing in Salonika and join the Yugoslavs
19:20and so on, you know.
19:21But all this was dreams, absolutely foolish and out of the reality.
19:28But that stemmed from the fact that we thought that the war couldn't be decided on the main
19:33front because of the inviolability of that front.
19:38Gamelin had 100 divisions on that front in May 1940, plus another 10 of the British Expeditionary
19:43Force.
19:4540 manned the Maginot Line, while five guarded the Swiss frontier.
19:51Another 40, the best, were to go into neutral Belgium once Germany attacked.
19:57But when that happened, the pivot of Gamelin's front would be here, in the Ardennes.
20:07The impenetrable Ardennes, that was it.
20:21On maps back at headquarters, its thick woods and narrow winding roads probably did make
20:26the Ardennes seem impenetrable, which is presumably why Gamelin chose to guard this 100 mile stretch
20:32of front with 10 of his weakest, least trained, worst equipped divisions.
20:39The Ardennes came to be chosen for the main thrust since they offered an opportunity to
20:45circumvent the Maginot Line.
20:47And besides, we were conscious of the fact that there were only minor French troops which
20:54held the positions in this section of the French front.
21:00We knew that the French high command had dispersed his tanks.
21:10The French had more tanks, and some better tanks, heavier tanks, than we had had, panzers.
21:18But we managed our panzer troops, what Gouderian said in his instructions, strike hard and
21:29quickly and don't disperse your forces.
21:40The spring of 1940 was remarkably sunny.
21:44Nowhere was it more peaceful than here in the Ardennes, where the generals had said
21:47the Germans would never attack.
21:50Yet reports had been pouring in that nearly 50 Wehrmacht divisions were on the move, reports
21:55which the French chose to ignore.
21:57They even learned the date of the attack, but still did nothing.
22:02As Gamelin put it, they preferred to await events.
22:06Their waiting was almost over.
22:16Five-thirty a.m., precisely.
22:19May the 10th, 1940.
22:33The German offensive began spectacularly enough with the invasion of neutral Holland from
22:37the air.
22:39Their target?
22:40The bridges over the broad Meuse-Estuary.
22:41If they could be captured before the Allied troops reached them, then Holland would be
22:51cut in two.
22:58The boldness of the German move stunned the Dutch.
23:02Their soldiers were soon surrendering in droves.
23:07Further south, in Belgium, the Germans had another spectacular success that first day.
23:12The capture of Eben-Emel, the strongest fort in the world, and the lynchpin of Gamelin's
23:17line.
23:20That line had been breached before any Allied troops arrived.
23:34Gamelin persisted in moving his armies north into Belgium and Holland, 40 of his best divisions,
23:40almost half his total strength, including the whole of the British Expeditionary Force,
23:43and they were moving straight into the trap Hitler and his generals had set for them.
23:52It wasn't long before the troops were passing the first pitiful, straggling lines of refugees.
24:00Plans that were to hamper the Allied reinforcements, just as the Germans had planned.
24:05The great idea on the Germans' part was speed.
24:09And they sent ahead of the army policemen with truncheons and white gloves who went
24:17on motorbicycles.
24:18They all had their Michelin guide for France, they knew exactly where the roads were.
24:30The German panzers were pouring over the border into Luxembourg, their columns stretched a
24:34hundred miles, presenting a prime target to any would-be bomber.
24:38But Allied air activity that first day was busy supporting the British and French move
24:42north into Belgium.
24:50The Luftwaffe were striking at Allied airplanes on the ground.
24:56At one RAF base near Reims, the planes, lined up in neat rows, were destroyed in the opening
25:03minutes of the attack.
25:10Fifty British and French airfields were attacked that first day.
25:14The losses were heavy.
25:22But while Allied air chiefs were counting their losses, the panzers had just about penetrated
25:28the impenetrable Ardennes and were set to fall upon the weak French garrisons along
25:32the Meuse here at Sedan.
25:36The panzers reached Sedan late on the third day of the offensive, although Gammler had
25:40calculated they couldn't possibly be here before the ninth day.
25:53All the bridges over the Meuse were blown up by the French on May the 12th, all except
25:58one.
26:00This old weir, some forty miles north of Sedan, had been left for fear of lowering the water
26:04level so much that the river could be forded.
26:08But the French also left it relatively unguarded, as one panzer commander, Erwin Rommel, soon
26:15found out.
26:28Next morning, the Luftwaffe's resources were hurled into action above Sedan.
26:37Gammler still refused to believe the Germans could mount a full-scale crossing of the Meuse
26:41before another three or four days.
26:47Hitler was unwilling to wait that long.
26:50He was working to the timetable of 1940, not 1914.
26:54What's more, the French generals still had their eyes firmly fixed on what was happening
26:58in Belgium and Holland.
27:07There were big French guns on the west bank of the Meuse, but they limited their firing
27:12for fear of running out of ammunition before the battle proper began.
27:17So the German panzers were able to pick off the French pillboxes one by one.
27:21Soon, thousands of French gunners were taking to their heels.
27:37As suddenly as it had started, the German bombardment stopped.
27:43As those still performing one of their winter war games, the German infantrymen prepared
27:48to cross the Meuse.
28:16By midnight on May 13th, still only day four of the offensive, not only were German infantrymen
28:22across the Meuse in force, but German sappers were bridging the river and making ready for
28:27the panzers to cross.
28:34That night of May 13th, the British expeditionary force, far to the north in Belgium, had still
28:40not seen serious fighting.
28:43The battle was now virtually decided.
28:51The morale of the French high command was very quickly broken.
28:57When we happened to know that the front had been broken through at Sedan, the feeling
29:03was that everything was lost.
29:06I saw General Georges, who was commanding the northeast front, I saw him subbing and
29:15saying there has been some deficiencies.
29:23And he fell in a chair and sobbed.
29:37French counterattacks, when they happened, were poorly organised, and seldom pressed
29:44home with any persistence.
29:59Tank for tank, the French were a match for the Germans, but the panzers always fought
30:04en masse, and what's more, the French tanks were prone to mechanical trouble.
30:09Time after time, they had to be left behind on the battlefield.
30:28The massed German infantry divisions were now catching up with the panzers at the Meuse
30:32crossing point.
30:34Everything on the German side, at least, was going according to plan.
30:53For the Allied air forces, after their almost total inactivity on May 13, May 14 was hectic.
31:00Tradition French bombers raided the pontoon bridges across the Meuse with reckless abandon.
31:05Too late, the French generals had recognised this sector's vital importance, but despite
31:13the courage of the Allied pilots, the result was disastrous.
31:25Nearly half the Allied planes did not return.
31:28In the words of the official RAF history, no higher rate of loss has ever been experienced
31:33by the Royal Air Force.
31:37After May 14, the skies were undeniably German.
31:44On that day too, Holland surrendered.
31:49Nothing short of a miracle could save France now.
31:59With the bridgehead secure, the panzers were poised to break out.
32:03The Battle for Sedan was now giving way to the Battle for France.
32:08The most crucial phase of the whole German plan was about to begin, the swing north to
32:13the coast that would trap the Allied armies in Belgium.
32:18When the ominous news of the Sedan defeat reached Paris, panic set in.
32:31Those who could left.
32:40The French high command, not yet privy to the German plan, assumed Hitler intended to
32:44capture Paris immediately.
32:46To protect the capital, troops were pulled back from elsewhere along the Meuse, which
32:51only served to widen the German bridgeheads.
33:04Gamelin refused to believe his tactics were at fault and assumed he must have been betrayed.
33:09While gendarmes searched for fifth columnists behind the lines, Gamelin reacted by sacking
33:15twenty or so of his front-line commanders, almost at random.
33:24The Allied troops were ordered back from Belgium, and on May the 17th, Brussels fell.
33:37It was also the end for Gamelin.
33:40He was replaced as commander-in-chief by General Weygand, recalled from virtual retirement.
33:45France had become desperate.
33:46A 73-year-old was replacing a 68-year-old, and Weygand had spent the last year in Syria
33:53and was out of touch.
33:55At this time, too, Marshal PĂ©tain, now 84, became deputy prime minister.
34:00Before leaving Spain, where he'd been France's ambassador, PĂ©tain told General Franco,
34:04My country has been beaten.
34:07This is the work of thirty years of Marxism.
34:10He was completely on the side of the defeatists.
34:14He was a very, very old man, and he'd been recalled in the hopes that his name would
34:21bolster French morale.
34:23It did nothing of the sort.
34:26Trying in their own way to contain the German breakout, the French generals drew halt lines
34:32on their maps, only to hear the panzers had passed them, even before the orders had been issued.
34:45In the dash to the coast, the German commanders were always one jump ahead of the French.
35:03Hordes of prisoners fell into German hands.
35:07Many columns, 10 and sometimes 20,000 strong, simply threw away their weapons and marched,
35:12without being told, their officers at their head, toward the German lines.
35:19The French troops did not prove the same soldierly discipline as in the First World War.
35:32I think it was caused by the machinist spirit and the long phony war, so that the French
35:50soldiers believed that they will have no more war.
35:56It wasn't just ordinary troops that were falling into German hands, but generals too.
36:01On May the 19th, General Giraud, newly appointed commander of the French Ninth Army, was captured
36:06by a group of tanks, according to the French, by a field kitchen unit, according to the
36:10Germans.
36:13But most tragic of all was the plight of the refugees.
36:26At one time, 12 million people were on the roads of northern France, bound for goodness
36:32knows where.
36:51All the civilians used to come up to us and to ask us what they were to do, because the
36:56government had not told them what to do.
36:58And we all said, for heaven's sake, stay where you are, don't get on the roads.
37:01But they all got in a panic and left.
37:05One old lady had a key which she gave to us, and we said, why, you can't, mustn't give
37:10us your key.
37:11Oh, well, last, in the last war, I took away my key, and when I came back, I had the key
37:15but no house.
37:30My worst memory was seeing two German planes coming along at roof level, machine gunning,
37:37and one realized then how awful it was for the refugees.
38:07The Germans had advanced 200 miles in just seven days.
38:26And on May the 20th, they'd reached the Channel.
38:31The Daily Telegraph reported that telephone lines between Paris and London had been cut.
38:36A post office spokesman said he didn't know when normal service might be resumed.
38:45The panzers at the coast, the best of the Allied armies drawn into Belgium, were now
38:51cut off from the south.
38:54Belated that the French tried to force a way through to them, that attack was too puny.
39:00They argued the British had let them down.
39:03The recrimination started with the unilateral withdrawal of the British army.
39:12The orders were to attack south, southwards, near Arras.
39:19And without warning, we happened to know that the British were withdrawn to Dunkirk.
39:30We have not the right to criticize this too much because, after all, we were the bosses
39:36and we lost the battle.
39:38And this gives a good excuse for the British to be selfish, but anyway they were very selfish.
39:58On May the 25th, Boulogne fell.
40:04On May the 26th, Calais.
40:10Weygand's appointment had given the French a flicker of optimism.
40:14It soon faded when his counter-attack failed and news of Belgium's capitulation reached
40:19Paris on May the 28th.
40:22Thereafter, the mood became steadily more and more defeatist.
40:30I think the defeatism came at the top.
40:33There was a very strong peace move among certain politicians.
40:38Some of them were even pro-German and wanted jobs for the Germans.
40:42When things went badly, this group got larger and became more dominant.
40:50Prime Minister Reynaud fought back by dismissing from his cabinet some of the weaker spirits
40:54and bringing in fighting men like de Gaulle.
40:57Now entering the political arena for the first time, the war was virtually out of their hands.
41:03Perhaps it was that that prompted the special service of prayer at Notre Dame on that Sunday
41:07before Dunkirk.
41:22The French very soon accepted the idea of defeat and surrender.
41:28To them it was rather a conception of the old days of the royalty when you just exchanged
41:35a couple of provinces, paid a certain number of millions, and then called it a day, hoping
41:42you'd be more lucky next time.
41:52Dunkirk fell on June the 4th.
41:56Hitler ordered church bells to be rung for three days throughout Germany to mark what
42:00he described as the greatest German victory ever.
42:10With the panzers reorganized and re-equipped, the day after Dunkirk fell, the second major
42:16German offensive in the West began.
42:37Although outnumbered now by more than two to one, the French fought stubbornly, much
42:54more aggressively, in fact, than at any time during the battle for the Meuse.
43:12But after three days of bloody fighting, disaster once more overtook the French.
43:26Another breakthrough by Rommel.
43:29In a matter of hours he had reached the Seine at Rouen.
43:49Elsewhere the panzers were passing almost effortlessly through the heartland of France.
44:04All roads pointed to Paris.
44:08On June the 10th the French government left the capital.
44:13That day Mussolini brought Italy into the war.
44:20The day we left Paris, we went to this Vincennes headquarters of Gamelin, and we had on the
44:34radio all the songs and music of the Italian war, you know, Giovinenza, and all that, you
44:43know.
44:44And we thought, and that is where I heard the first time somebody say, it can't go on
44:51like that.
44:52We must have an armistice.
44:54We had the greatest difficulty getting out of Paris because everybody, although Paris
44:59was empty, all the roads outside Paris were absolutely full of motorcars.
45:05People even going in and out of the trees at the side to try and get ahead.
45:10But we were able to get off the main roads into the countryside, and then it was most
45:16extraordinary because it was beautiful weather, all the villagers were very welcoming and
45:22brought out their best cognac, their best wine, because they said what's the good of
45:26leaving it for the Germans.
45:28While flying in the airspace over Paris, I observed that great columns of German infantry
45:35had already entered the town.
45:40Observing this and remembering that we had failed to reach this goal all through the
45:47First World War, I felt such joy and exultation that I asked the pilot of my small plane,
45:58in a so-called stalk, whether it would be possible to perform a landing on the Place
46:04de la Concorde.
46:06After circling around some time, he and we came down on the Place de la Concorde, which
46:16was entirely free of any traffic, and landed on the outset of the Champs-Élysées.
46:28Two days after Paris fell, the new Prime Minister, Marshal PĂ©tain, asked the Germans
46:37for an armistice.
46:39Reno had been opposed to a separate peace and resigned.
46:42In most of France, the news of an armistice was received with relief.
46:51Hitler insisted on using for the negotiations Marshal Foch's old railway carriage in the
46:56woods of Compiègne, where the 1918 armistice had been signed.
47:01It was the supreme humiliation of France.
47:25One must have lived the retreat in France, with this enormous movement of crowds.
47:34It's something which you can't understand if you haven't seen it.
47:38We thought that really that had to be stopped.
47:51Once the French had signed, Hitler ordered the site destroyed.
47:57Germany had had its revenge.
48:13This radio, now under German control, broadcasts the terms of the armistice.
48:43Paris had now to adapt to a new wave of tourists.
48:57Among the first was Hitler himself, making the only trip of his life to the city, and
49:02a fleeting one at that.
49:17For four bleak years, France was to disappear from the forefront of the war.
49:23Some Frenchmen chose a courageous resistance at home or overseas.
49:29Others were to settle into a routine of apathetic collaboration.
49:34Many connived at Hitler's new order for Europe, the Vichy version.
50:02For Paris, there remained one more humiliation.
50:16The German triumphal parade followed the exact route of the French victory procession after
50:20the First World War.
50:38It had taken the Wehrmacht just five weeks to humble their historic foe.
50:58In the words of Winston Churchill, the Battle of France was now over.
51:04The Battle of Britain was about to begin.