BBC World War II A Timewatch Guide
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The Second World War has gone down in history as the greatest show of military power the
00:09world has ever known.
00:18Since it ended, over 70 years ago, historians have pored over every detail of the battle.
00:25To understand what set it in motion, what kept it going, and the full truth of its legacy.
00:34The events may not change, but how we see them does.
00:38In this film I'll be looking at the way we've reinterpreted the war since it ended, and
00:42in particular I'll be investigating the role documentary television has played in unravelling
00:47the story of World War II.
00:51The role documentary has played a key role.
00:56Whether breaking new discoveries, or re-examining famous events, television has helped create
01:02a more definitive picture of the war.
01:06Leading the way has been the history series Timewatch.
01:13Over the course of 30 years, BBC's Timewatch has examined just about every aspect of World
01:17War II, bringing the most important and controversial events and analysis into our homes and minds.
01:27I'll be using Timewatch and 50 years of BBC Archive to show how our understanding of the
01:34darkest hours and greatest victories change over time.
01:42This is a complicated history, a story about morality and ethics in the most devastating
01:49war the world has ever seen.
02:01On September the 3rd, 1939, Britain declared war on Nazi Germany and set in motion some
02:07of the most difficult and turbulent years in our island's history.
02:11But they also created the iconic moments that have come to define our nation, and the spirit
02:16of our people.
02:21No other story looms larger than the Battle of Britain, when the seemingly undermanned
02:27RAF tackles the mighty German Luftwaffe, and wins.
02:34The victory stops a Nazi invasion of our shores.
02:39The Battle of Britain has become part of our folklore, one of our greatest stories.
02:44It not only showed the heroism of the RAF, but the determination of the British people
02:48as a whole.
02:49Which is exactly what Timewatch discovered when it re-examined the story in 1998.
02:57In the summer of 1940, German fighters flew into the skies above southern England, meeting
03:03the RAF head on.
03:07This was air-to-air combat.
03:09But it would not stay that way for long.
03:13Hitler had his eye on additional targets.
03:16Targets that included London.
03:18I frankly, I thought I would never come out alive.
03:23I don't know what other people felt, I felt that there's no way that I can survive this
03:28continual battering, night and day after day, night after night.
03:37During the first raid on London, more than 300,000 kilos of explosives were dropped on
03:42the East End and the docks.
03:45More than 2,000 people died or were seriously injured.
03:49The attack was the prelude to 70 consecutive night raids on the British capital.
03:55The Nazis hoped that the raids would break Britain's will to continue the war.
04:01Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary,
04:04The reports from London are horrific, an inferno beyond belief.
04:08Will England surrender?
04:10I believe so.
04:11More mass attacks are imminent.
04:16In popular myth, the German air offensive is seen as the precursor to an invasion, codenamed
04:21Unternehmen Seelewe, Operation Sea Lion.
04:29It's an enormously strong instinct, it's the protection of your patch, and you did
04:38feel that they were intruders in our patch, but you were absolutely convinced that your
04:47home islands were under threat from whatever, bombing or invasion or anything else, and
04:53well, it was up to you to do something about it.
04:59By mid-September, the RAF had forced Germany to scale back its air campaign.
05:04The Allies had won the Battle of Britain.
05:08On the face of it, Operation Sea Lion had been stopped.
05:14But the programme also revealed an unknown part of the story, and one that would change
05:18our view of German intentions during the battle.
05:23No one disputes that the Battle of Britain was crucial to the British war effort.
05:28But the Battle of Britain did not stop Hitler from invading, for the evidence suggests that
05:34his intentions were already elsewhere.
05:41Special research into the records of the German army conducted for Time Watch shows that between
05:46July and the middle of September 1940, the earliest possible date for an invasion of
05:50England, the Germans had removed or reallocated more than half of their divisions in the west
05:56to Germany and the east of the Reich, to become part of the preparations for an attack on
06:01the Soviet Union in the following year.
06:05On the 31st of July 1940, Hitler ordered the commanders of the army and the navy to a conference
06:11at the Berghof.
06:12Hitler told the leaders of the army that he was extremely sceptical about the practicalities
06:16of an invasion, given the strength of the British navy.
06:21Hitler then outlined an astonishing alternative strategy.
06:25Britain was to be beaten in the east.
06:28He told his generals,
06:30England mainly puts her hopes in Russia.
06:33If Russia is crushed, England's last hopes will have gone.
06:37Then Germany will be the master of Europe and the Balkans.
06:42The sooner that Russia is crushed, the better.
06:50While some believe Hitler's turn to the east was the deciding factor that stopped Operation
06:55Sea Lion, others are not so convinced.
07:02I think we need to be clear that the Battle of Britain was not simply a draw.
07:05They were unable, the Germans were unable to achieve air superiority over southern England
07:09and any prospect of mounting a quick, cheap invasion in the autumn of 1940 was impossible.
07:16Hitler was an opportunist and he was a gambler.
07:21As late as the middle of September 1940, there is evidence to suggest that Hitler, in the
07:26right circumstances, might have given the green light to Operation Sea Lion.
07:30Of course, it might have been a disaster.
07:33The Royal Navy might have come steaming down the North Sea in the English Channel and sunk
07:37the lot.
07:38In fact, that's not a guaranteed outcome.
07:41Victory in the Battle of Britain gave the British confidence that they would win the
07:45war.
07:47Up to that point, everything Germany had done had led to military success.
07:52This was a German military failure.
07:55It was a British military victory.
07:57And because it took place in the skies over England, it was a victory in which everybody
08:03could feel associated.
08:09Examining the details of war can redefine history.
08:14But it can also throw up complex questions.
08:18Hitler's decision to bomb London, a target with a massive civilian population, caused
08:23an outcry.
08:26Surely this broke the rules of war.
08:29But as the balance swung in the Allies' favour, the same accusation would be made against
08:33Britain.
08:37Between 1944 and 1945, the Allies bombed Germany's industrial heartland, annihilating
08:43cities like Essen, Hamburg and Dresden.
08:49These attacks have remained contentious in Germany, where many see them as war crimes.
08:55But they're also controversial here in Britain.
09:00In 1992, a memorial was erected to Sir Arthur Harris, the head of the RAF's bomber command.
09:06He was the man responsible for bombing German cities, targeting the infrastructure that
09:10underpinned the German war machine.
09:14Shortly after its unveiling, that memorial was vandalised and ever since has become a
09:18symbol of controversy.
09:25Spring 1943.
09:27Bomber command in action over the Ruhr, the industrial hub of Nazi Germany.
09:34Timewatch took on the debate in 1993, inviting members of bomber command to defend their
09:40actions to the men and women who bore the brunt of the raids.
09:45Erika Dienold, you were in Dresden, you experienced the consequences of that firestorm.
09:52What is your most powerful sense of strategic bombing?
09:56I detest it for anybody.
09:59It doesn't matter which nationality or which country.
10:01I think it's the lowest form how soldiers can kill women and children, especially in
10:07Dresden where the war was over.
10:09It was more or less finished in a couple of weeks.
10:12To get medals for this sort of thing, I can see no reason whatsoever.
10:15I really despise people like that who still have today the idea about bombing of civilian
10:22people and that's no honour to any country.
10:26Bob Nelson, you were in bomber command, you were bombing during the war.
10:32You've heard that powerful statement.
10:34Where are you?
10:35Well, I was a wireless operator in a Lancaster bomber during a tour of operations and Dresden
10:43was just another raid as far as we were concerned.
10:47It took 10 hours, 20 minutes, a round trip.
10:51We don't think at the time that we are going to bomb civilians, although of course we know
10:56that if they don't get out of the way, they're going to get into trouble.
11:00But on the other hand, we are taking our time to look around and make sure that we don't
11:06get shot down.
11:07Is there any sense in which it could legitimately be said there was something, effectively a
11:12war crime, committed in the process of the strategic bombing campaign?
11:17Let me start, if I may, on this with the Secretary of the Bomber Command Association.
11:22Does the notion of war crime ring any bells at all for you?
11:26Not at all.
11:27I feel that on a bombing mission, the aircraft I flew in was made by our civilians.
11:36The bombs we carried were made by our civilians.
11:39The bombs that we dropped on the German civilians made the 88mm guns, the Fw 190s.
11:48So the civilian suddenly has a different condemnation.
11:52I don't see it as I was dropping bombs on actual civilians.
11:56They are people who are making the arms to fight back.
12:01Paul Binding, you were brought up as a child in Essen, in Germany, just after the war.
12:07You're now a novelist and a journalist.
12:10What does the notion of war crime in this context mean to you?
12:14Does it have any validity?
12:15It has validity.
12:16I mean, so validity is one that is imposed on memories that will never die.
12:22Words cannot quite convey the devastation of Essen, the lifelessness, the smell of Essen,
12:28the widespread suffering, which is what I grew up as a small child, was utterly bewildered
12:33by.
12:34The word war crime, after all, is a word I wouldn't have used in my experience of it.
12:38I was only a small child trying to make sense of it.
12:41It's a word I use now reluctantly because it suggests naming the guilty.
12:49But what was done was a crime.
12:51That is not to say that people who did it were criminals.
12:53Those are two different issues.
12:55But the bombing of a city, the destruction of life on that scale, yes, that's a crime.
13:00What else can be a crime than that?
13:02Professor Marshall, on this, the bombing of civilians, of homes, of women, of children,
13:09schools, hospitals, inevitable in the process of area bombing, is it far away from a crime?
13:14Of course it is.
13:15Let me just take one point here.
13:17Is it a...
13:18Was it a crime for the Luftwaffe to carry out its fire blitz of London?
13:22Yes.
13:23Yes, of course.
13:24It did hang in Nuremberg.
13:25Yes, of course.
13:26And you made monuments.
13:27No, no, no.
13:28No, no, no.
13:29Hang on, let's have...
13:31We are also for war crimes in Nuremberg.
13:33Let's have it...
13:34Let the Air Vice Marshal continue.
13:36Hold on a second.
13:37I want to bring you back in.
13:39Why do you so confidently say, no, not a crime?
13:42Because we...
13:43A crime, to be convicted of a crime, you must have had the intent to commit it.
13:48There was no intent on the part of anyone from the top leadership...
13:53May I speak?
13:54From the top leadership down to the poor chaps who actually drove the aircraft.
13:57Let me just take a vivid example.
13:59When the bombing of Brüffeltal took place, people were...
14:02Liquid phosphorus was dropped.
14:04Children, women ran into the River Wuppe like torches to be put out by the waters.
14:10How can that possibly not be seen as a crime?
14:13Obviously, the infliction of a weapon like that, that it's a deliberate policy and deliberate
14:17and appalling suffering took place, I cannot find any word that is adequate but crime for
14:22that.
14:23You're looking dressed...
14:24The debate over bomber command will forever rage.
14:27But even in the days immediately following the war, the campaign was contentious.
14:33From the Second World War itself, there were critical voices saying that this is immoral,
14:38we shouldn't be doing this, it's unchristian and so on.
14:41And that was the view I think that many people had after the immediate end of the war, the
14:46evidence about Dresden and so on.
14:50But over the course of the last 70 years, that's become quite a complicated argument.
14:54I think there are many people who say that morality in war is relative.
14:58This was a total war, it's what the Germans call a Weltanschauungen, a clash of philosophies
15:04of life.
15:05And when such profoundly important things are perceived to be at stake, virtually any
15:11action is perceived as legitimate.
15:15What makes a soldier in a battle not a murderer is the concept of military necessity, that
15:22he is acting under orders.
15:24And the Nuremberg judgments qualified that by saying there are some things for which
15:29you cannot use that defence.
15:31You have to be in a position of saying, I take responsibility for this, simply because
15:36they are such appalling acts.
15:43The most appalling of these acts is, without doubt, the Holocaust, Hitler's attempt to
15:49exterminate the Jews.
15:55Hitler's programme of extermination is, perhaps, the most heinous act in history, and is, without
16:00question, a war crime.
16:02It sets, moreover, a benchmark by which the morality of the Nazis, indeed all the competence
16:07of the war, is judged.
16:12Hitler's final solution would claim the lives of an estimated six million Jews.
16:19Displacing millions more.
16:27In 1995, Time Watch examined the legacy of the Holocaust, reflected in the families of
16:36those who survived.
16:41When they got to Auschwitz, the men and the women were separated immediately, and my father
16:47was the one who was closest to his little sister.
16:49She was 14 at the time, and he was, I suppose, 19 or 20, and she was taken from him.
17:01And somebody believes that they saw her being taken to the gas chambers.
17:10Much of my information comes from my mother, and she had said, even before my father died,
17:15when they were lining you up to take you to the war camp, she sort of watched in the
17:20midst of this chaos and noticed that they were separating the spouses.
17:28So she took off her wedding ring and told my father to do the same, and said, we don't
17:32know each other.
17:35It was actually towards the end of the afternoon, and it was time for his barrack to be exterminated.
17:43When they arrived at the gas chamber, the end of the day whistle blew.
17:47So there ensued an argument between the guard who had marched them to the gas chamber and
17:51the guard who was running the gas chamber.
17:53Ultimately, the gas chamber guard won the argument.
17:57The barrack guard marched everybody back, expecting them to be killed in the morning
18:01instead.
18:02But that morning, early that morning, someone arrived from a factory, or from this Gerlitz
18:08work camp, to Auschwitz to requisition workers, which was a common procedure.
18:13And his barrack being next in line, was sent off to Gerlitz, where he remained until that
18:20camp was liberated.
18:23It was the Russians who liberated them.
18:25Afterwards, my father was looking through the women's quarters in the camp where they
18:33were, hoping to still be able to find his little sister.
18:37And he didn't find her, but he met my mother, and he liked her.
18:42So he came back the next day, and they started to date, and that was that.
18:49When we arrived in the United States, we had a railroad flat.
18:52And when I say railroad flat, it was literally over the railroad.
18:56It was, the subway was, I would say, ran about ten feet below my bedroom window.
19:05This was a very small place.
19:06For the first couple of years, neither parent spoke English, and my father had no means
19:11to support.
19:12It wasn't long before I noticed that my mother was particularly different.
19:16She had difficulty handling stress.
19:18Certainly, I, as a six-year-old, could handle stress better than she could.
19:22One of the major manifestations of her stress disorder is that she hears voices, usually
19:28Nazi voices.
19:29For instance, we might be in the car driving along, and she might hear, or thinks she hears,
19:34Nazis in the next car, and asked me to figure it out, because she didn't want to distract
19:38herself from driving.
19:39My parents were very intent on creating as normal a life for us as they possibly could.
19:49Since we were living in Germany, I was born in Germany, they insisted on speaking to us
19:53in German, not teaching us Polish or Yiddish, because they were concerned that if we were
19:59to go into the supermarket, for example, and we'd start speaking in Polish, that people
20:03would start looking at us.
20:04They wanted us to blend in and be as normal as other German kids.
20:12Part of that being normal meant not telling us about what happened to them.
20:18As a result, I didn't really find out what happened to them, really mean consciously,
20:24until I was in my late teens, even later than that.
20:29And yet, I can't think of a time when I didn't know.
20:34The way we perceive the Holocaust has quite clearly changed almost generation by generation,
20:49I think, since the Second World War.
20:52I think the first post-war generation, people didn't really want to talk about it or think
20:57about it.
20:58Europe wanted to forget the war, progress, move on.
21:02Even in the state of Israel itself, the first real attention to Holocaust survivors didn't
21:08start to be paid until the early 1960s, with the Eichmann trial in particular.
21:14Prior to that, people were reluctant to talk about what had been an unspeakably traumatic
21:20event.
21:21There was a break point, I think, very much in the late 60s, early 70s, associated in
21:27some cases with television programmes about the Holocaust, which really alerted people
21:32really, for the first time, to the dimension of the crime.
21:37And that also encouraged, I think, historians to reach out and begin to explore the Holocaust
21:44in a more sophisticated, analytical way.
21:48This analysis has often centred on the Nazi regime and, more specifically, its leader.
21:56Since the war, countless documentaries and films have tried to work out what made Adolf
22:00Hitler tick, what triggered him to commit such appalling atrocities, and why the German
22:06people followed him, regardless of his deeply misguided agenda.
22:15In 2005, Timewatch examined the psychological motives of Hitler.
22:21The film based its investigation on a psychological profile produced at the height of the war
22:26by Harvard psychoanalyst Walter Langer.
22:31Over 60 years after it was written, it was still clear that the state of Hitler's mind
22:36held clues to his actions.
22:41This was the public face of Adolf Hitler.
22:44He'd risen to power in the 1920s, when the country was on the verge of economic and social
22:49collapse.
22:59He pledged to revitalise and rebuild Germany, and this was a message that the German people
23:05were desperate to hear.
23:10It's really very important to understand Hitler, the messiah, Hitler, the saviour, indeed,
23:18he relished, when people say, Heil Hitler, the saviour of the German people, and he identified,
23:24in fact, with Christ.
23:27If you take this notion of the empty self, which has built up this compensatory, grandiose
23:35messianic façade, what happens when that façade is shattered?
23:49In the final months of the conflict, Hitler made it known that total destruction was the
23:54Allies' only option if he was to be defeated.
23:59In the last weeks of the war, Hitler issues his famous scorched earth directive, where
24:06the party and the military have to destroy everything, the Allies mustn't get anything.
24:10He doesn't mind now about the German people, the German people will starve, I mean, they've
24:13let him down.
24:15In this sense, you know, Langer is right, that here is somebody who only really thinks
24:18in black and white, life and death, and Langer is spot on in this case, you know, this is
24:24a suicidal personality, he's not somebody who's going to simply give up, lay down his
24:31arms and say, OK, let's have an armistice.
24:34If his dream of total glory, of total power were to fail, and that façade of grandiosity
24:47was to shatter underneath this, that empty self would emerge, and that was intolerable
24:55for Hitler, and he had to kill himself rather than be confronted by this total shame and
25:02total humiliation.
25:07The big question, and the very frightening question, was how had this happened?
25:12With the rise in the 1930s of Hitler, and indeed the rise of Mussolini and the cult
25:18of Stalin, we seem to have this strange idea of a man appearing who certainly behaves as
25:25if he's mad, but has this incredible influence.
25:29It's really bound up with a strong sense of resentment of what happened at the end
25:33of the First World War, fears about national identity and survival, and by the time of
25:39the economic Great Depression, a strong sense that Germany's going to go under, and Hitler
25:44suddenly seemed then to be a kind of messiah figure, and that fear of the future of Germany
25:51is what drove people to support Hitler.
25:55Hitler's single-minded ambition would lead him to power, and to a bitter war with his
26:01enemies.
26:03But the battlefield can reveal a different story.
26:06When enemies meet, the outcome is sometimes surprising.
26:12The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest military campaign of the Second World War.
26:17It's a story of hunter and hunted, of German U-boats stalking Allied convoys in the cold
26:22and treacherous waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
26:25And for both sides, the consequences of defeat were nearly always fatal.
26:31In 1973, the BBC revealed the story of when Otto Kretschmer, one of the most successful
26:37U-boat commanders of all time, met the renowned Royal Navy commander, Donald McIntyre, face-to-face
26:44in the middle of the Atlantic.
26:48I had some time to collect all my men on the conning tower and tell them that this
26:57was the end of our war career, and that there was some possibility of us to get into captivity.
27:07My second lieutenant took the moth lamp, and I spelled out the signal in English to him.
27:17It was, I am thinking, please pick up my men.
27:23And the last to come over the side was obviously the captain in his brass-bound hat.
27:29He was greeted by one of my lieutenants, Peter Sturdy, whose eye immediately were caught
27:34by his Zeiss binoculars hanging around his neck.
27:40In fact, he told me that the U-boat captain tried to get them off and throw them away
27:47because he didn't want them to get into possession of the enemy.
27:52However, Peter Sturdy grabbed these and brought them up to me on the bridge, where I promptly
27:57grabbed them from him and made them my spoils of war.
28:04And up there, they took the life jacket from me and the pistol, a pistol point, I must
28:13say.
28:15And then the binoculars, which I had no time to throw overboard, which I would have liked.
28:22And then I was taken down to the captain's cabin, when for the first time I saw his horseshoe
28:29sign on the other thing.
28:31The U-boat captain noticed that our crest, the ship's crest, was a horseshoe.
28:37And he said, that was the crest of my U-boat also, isn't that strange?
28:41But of course, ours was the other way up, with the points downwards.
28:44I said, my chief, no wonder you've been captured.
28:48That's the way the luck runs out, we always say.
28:51And there, I got warm clothes and some rum to drink and everything, which they could
28:58do for me, really.
29:00And immediately afterwards, I went in some dry clothes and I went to sleep in Donald
29:06McIntyre's wonderful armchair he had in his cabin.
29:13When I woke up again, I saw him sitting on his desk and looking at me with his legs dangling
29:22in the rubber boots, I remember.
29:26And I congratulated him on his success, but also telling him that it was good luck for
29:32him because I had no torpedo left, otherwise things would have been a bit different.
29:37And he said some polite things, too, to me, and so immediately it seemed to be that we
29:43could be good friends.
29:45As soon as the U-boat crews were safely on board, the two destroyers headed back to rejoin
29:50the convoy, which we did about dawn.
29:52I was allowed to sleep in the captain's bunk, which was much better, of course.
29:58But until we went to sleep, there was still some time, and I don't know who it was, got
30:06the idea to play cards.
30:09And they looked for the fourth man, and that was myself.
30:12So I played cards, I played bridge with the captains of the sunk ships and officers of
30:20the destroyers.
30:25While this 1973 film shows how enemies could become friends, a film just four years later
30:32would reveal the greatest secret of the battle, and possibly the entire war.
30:42What was the most secret place in Britain during the Second World War?
30:47Perhaps the underground cabinet room in Whitehall?
30:50Or the naval chiefs of staff map room?
30:53Or what about the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough?
30:56No, none of those.
30:57It was this unassuming brick country house in Buckinghamshire.
31:05In 1977, this film would be one of the first to tell the story of how Britain intercepted
31:12and broke Germany's secret codes at Bletchley Park.
31:19This hut sheltered what came to be known as the Ultra Secret, or Ultra for short.
31:25As soon as the Enigma messages were picked up, they were sent by motorbike dispatch rider
31:28to Bletchley Park, the nerve centre of Ultra.
31:35The end result of all that activity, these decoded messages by the thousand every day.
31:41The thoughts and deeds of the operational command system of the entire German armed
31:45forces.
31:46Now, these messages were passed to the intelligence huts, and Hut 3 included, among its personnel,
31:53Peter Calver-Caressy, head of the Air Force section.
31:56Now, we got, what we got was hundreds of pieces of paper like this, and each one of these
32:04is a separate message, and it's got letters in groups of five, and it's in German.
32:11You come into a run of letters, which are really all mostly there, and in fact, here
32:17you have a complete German word, meldet.
32:20And that'll be, meldet sich, is to report.
32:23That's an S, meldet sich.
32:25S-O-F-O-R-L is obviously a mistake for S-O-F-O-R-T, sofort, immediately, everything always happens
32:32immediately in messages like this.
32:33And this is the important bit at the end, so-and-so, lieutenant so-and-so, is to report
32:38where?
32:39F-O-blank-blank-I-O, it's not really terribly difficult, it's Foggio, he's to go to Foggio.
32:49Our story has been confined to events that happened more than 30 years ago, and although
32:54cipher machines have gone a long way since then, much of this subject is still secret.
32:59And so, the contribution made by ULTRA can only really be judged by people who themselves
33:05had to use the information at the time.
33:11The release at the end of the 1970s of the British intelligence files, the so-called
33:17ULTRA secret, was tremendously important, and it was done deliberately.
33:25Before then, historians had always half-knew, half-assumed that both sides were breaking
33:31each other's codes, this is not exactly news, but it was never known how it was done.
33:36What was equally surprising is that the secret lasted so long.
33:40For three decades, virtually nothing was written or said about this work, and yet thousands
33:46of people participated in the work done at Bletchley Park, or knew about it for some
33:50other reason.
33:54Today, the men and women who worked at Bletchley Park are revered for their wartime contribution.
34:02There are countless heroes in times of conflict, but out of the millions that fought in the
34:06Second World War, only a select few are remembered for their courage.
34:11Many stories have slipped from memory, and often for political reasons.
34:19The Indian Army fought gallantly as part of the British Empire in the Second World War,
34:24making major contributions in Burma, North Africa and Italy.
34:30But as Timewatch discovered, history would forget their bravery, both in Britain and
34:37India.
34:39The Victoria Cross is the highest award for valour in the British Army.
34:45No less than 28 were won by the Indian Army during the Second World War.
34:53Without the Indian Army, the Japanese would have overrun India, they would have linked
34:57up with the Germans in Iran, and the whole world would have come under the domination
35:05of the Axis Alliance.
35:09You can't really believe that we could have won the war without the Indian Army.
35:15Two and a half million troops from India, Pakistan and the rest of the subcontinent
35:20formed the biggest volunteer army in the history of the world.
35:26It is an army that some Britons choose to ignore.
35:33But the stained glass at Sandhurst tells a different story.
35:38During World War II, Indian troops fought across three continents under the Union Jack.
35:46They were at Dunkirk, they fought at Monte Cassino.
35:50They fought to save British democracy, even though under British rule, they were denied
35:55it themselves.
35:57It breaks my heart, like they say, Pak-ki.
36:04At that time, I remember that we did so much, we sacrificed our lives, we gave the best
36:16part of our lives to them.
36:21And this is how they treat us now.
36:29It wasn't just the British who forgot them.
36:32The fact that so many Indians volunteered to fight for the British Empire became an
36:37embarrassment after independence.
36:40The whole subject is still sensitive.
36:42The Indian government refused Time Watch permission to film interviews in their country.
36:48In India, it is the INA of Chandra Bose whose veterans are feted as independence heroes
36:55and receive a freedom fighter's pension.
36:58Those who fought for the British do not.
37:01I think it's like this.
37:16It's not right.
37:18Theirs too.
37:20They ignored us and gave them pensions.
37:33But they say they were freedom fighters.
37:42This is their politics.
37:49We feel that we are also forgotten, what we did during the World War II.
37:59The British have forgotten us, the Indian Army also forgotten us.
38:09The British have forgotten us, the Indian Army also forgotten us.
38:15The children have become orphans.
38:18When they were in the hands of others, they got a new thing.
38:23It's like an old coat in a trash can.
38:27A new fashion comes in.
38:29Throw away the old one and adopt a new fashion.
38:32That's what's going on.
38:35While this film highlights the story of Indian volunteers,
38:39there are many more soldiers that have been overlooked.
38:44It's a very curious fact, I think, that from 1945 onwards,
38:48the British public always thought of themselves as alone in the war.
38:53It's the one word you always hear about 1940, 1941, you know, Britain alone.
38:59Britain is not alone, wasn't alone.
39:01It was supported by a huge empire, the world's largest empire.
39:05The Commonwealth nations mobilised something like 5 million men and women.
39:11The Indian Army of the Second World War is the largest all-volunteer army
39:15there's ever been in human history, 2.5 million service personnel.
39:20Other countries, of course, including, for example,
39:22the East African and the West African colonies, South Africa too,
39:26also made an immense contribution to the Commonwealth effort in the Second World War.
39:30And about 170,000 of these people died,
39:33and that's a bill of sacrifice that should not be forgotten.
39:36There's an aphorism of a famous 19th century historian
39:40that history is on each occasion what one generation finds interesting about another.
39:47And in 21st century multicultural Britain,
39:51there is going to be greater interest in soldiers from the Indian subcontinent
39:56in the Second World War, or soldiers from the West Indies and Caribbean,
40:01or soldiers from the Irish Republic,
40:05or the contribution of women in Britain to the Second World War.
40:12To be lauded by history, your story must become widely known.
40:17But for some, keeping quiet was an essential part of their job.
40:23An estimated 13,000 people worked in Britain's Special Operations Executive during the war,
40:31in jobs that demanded complete secrecy.
40:35Spies are often the unsung heroes of history.
40:39Whether carrying out sabotage missions or relaying secret information,
40:43their actions have often made the difference between failure and victory.
40:47As more information about the role of spies during the Second World War
40:50has been released to the public,
40:52their stories have captured the world's imagination.
40:58Timewatch tracked down some of the intelligence operatives that had worked in France,
41:04taking them back to their old haunts to lift the lid on their secret stories.
41:11Tony Brooks was stationed in Lyon.
41:15When you came in, you shook hands with half of the customers.
41:19Very much a solid working class place.
41:24And any talking shop would be very sort of covert, I might say.
41:31And we're hoping that about five friends, because we used to call them les amis,
41:35will turn up at the end of next week,
41:37which meant we're going to have five parachute drops next week or something like that,
41:42which would enter into the ordinary conversation.
41:45The proprietor used the cash register to raise the alarm.
41:53He didn't use it as a till.
41:55It meant that somebody had just come in the front door he didn't like the look of.
42:00Like a lot of these houses, old houses in Lyon,
42:03there are lots of exits and you come out about three blocks further down the street.
42:08Unbeknownst to Tony, also in Lyon was his colleague in training,
42:12the radio operator Brian Stonehouse.
42:18He had found a chateau outside Lyon from which to transmit.
42:22Over half a century later, he returns.
42:31The owner's wife, Elsa Jourdain, had been a fashion model.
42:35We had met, according to his cover story, in Paris before the war, in the fashion world.
42:41I was drawing for Vogue magazine in Paris.
42:44Of course, none of it is true. This was just a cover story.
42:51His courier, Christian, brought him more and more messages to encode and transmit.
42:56The workload was getting dangerously heavy.
43:00In Lyon, what happened was that some of the radio operators had been arrested before me
43:06and all their stuff came to me, you see, to send to London through me,
43:11and I did it, and that's when I was on the air for hours.
43:15I radioed London and told them that being on the air this long, I was committing suicide.
43:23Inevitably, the radio detection vans pinned him down.
43:29This is the room where I was transmitting,
43:35and I think a piece of the antenna was up there.
43:39I tried to pull it down and didn't take all of it,
43:42and I buried... I hid the set in the bottom of the lift shaft,
43:48and I buried... I hid the set in the bottom of the lift shaft,
43:53but I forgot a piece of antenna with the insulator at the end, and that was found,
43:58so I couldn't deny any more that I'd had a set here, a transmitter.
44:03That's how it happened.
44:09News of Brian's arrest came in to Special Operations Executive in London,
44:14and a grim addition was made to his file.
44:18I thought I'd be shot as a spy,
44:21and I wanted my family to be able to trace me after the war.
44:27That was the main reason for declaring myself British.
44:32Brian's parents didn't learn he was missing until over a year after his arrest.
44:37By then, he was on his way to the first of five Nazi concentration camps.
44:43On the day Dachau was liberated,
44:45he was photographed among the mass of prisoners,
44:48along with another agent, Bob Shepard.
44:51A week later, both were back in England.
44:55Bob and I were in full uniform,
44:58and sort of somewhere near the Albert Hall, I don't know why,
45:02and a funeral went past,
45:04and we started laughing because we thought,
45:07you know, all that fuss for one corpse,
45:10and...
45:12I think one used to laugh because that was one's only defence,
45:17you know, if you started crying.
45:19You know, it's...
45:23Sometimes I feel now, you know, if I start crying, I won't stop.
45:30Spies were crucial to Allied victory.
45:33Their work underpinned every major operation,
45:38including our most famous, D-Day.
45:43Certain stories capture the public imagination.
45:46They are narratives we've become obsessed with.
45:49There have been, for example,
45:51literally hundreds of films made by the BBC about D-Day,
45:54and doubtless there'll be hundreds more.
45:58The D-Day landings were an unprecedented success,
46:02the largest sea-to-land invasion ever mounted.
46:07But not everything went to plan.
46:10The American landings on Omaha Beach were a disaster.
46:15And, as Timewatch discovered in 2008,
46:18historians are still trying to figure out what went wrong.
46:23Their examination started with an assault on a gun battery,
46:27before the main landing on Omaha had even begun.
46:32The Allied high command believed that the mission here at the Planter Hub
46:36was really critical to the success of D-Day.
46:38If the guns at the Planter Hub were still functioning,
46:41with their range, which was 23,000 metres from this position,
46:44there was a real danger that they might be able to shoot at,
46:47damage sink, Allied shipping out in the Bay of the Seine.
46:50So from the American point of view,
46:52First Army success at Omaha Beach
46:54was integrally tied to the assault at the Planter Hub.
47:02We were fired on while coming in.
47:07This was not a surprise.
47:09The enemy had had about 30 minutes
47:11to get up out of his underground bunkers.
47:13He was up there throwing hand grenades down by the bushel basketball
47:17and firing right down on us.
47:19And there was rapid fire situations on either flank
47:23that were firing into us.
47:25So we had that to come into.
47:27The ropes were fired up.
47:29There were grapple hooks.
47:31Some of them pulled out.
47:33The enemy, damn it, cut some of the ropes, you see.
47:36That was not kosher, you know.
47:39And there were two guys on a rope right in front of me going up.
47:44So I started in behind them, about 50 feet below them.
47:48And the enemy was leaning over up there throwing down grenades,
47:52and I yelled up to these fellows.
47:54I said,
47:55Boys, put your faces in and your butts out.
47:58They're throwing grenades.
48:01The main force had to go in on Omaha Beach.
48:04And they were supposed to fight their way up to us by noon.
48:09And they got up there at noon on the third day.
48:21As they land, they're in a natural killing ground.
48:23They're on beaches that are completely exposed to enemy fire.
48:26There is no cover.
48:27There's no trees.
48:28There's no trenches.
48:29There's no nothing.
48:30The troops are out there in the open.
48:38Imagine the shock.
48:40In other words, you're told that you're going to see the greatest firepower show on Earth.
48:46And then you hit the beach there, and everybody's alive.
48:49All the enemy forces are alert.
48:54It's going to be a bloody day.
48:55It's going to be a bloody day.
48:56It was a bloody day.
48:59The Americans had been given pre-landing support by air and sea.
49:03But it hadn't been successful,
49:06leaving the men defenceless.
49:10As Time Watch revealed,
49:12the scale of the slaughter took years to comprehend.
49:18The casualty count on Omaha Beach, in retrospect,
49:21was much, much higher than historians had previously thought.
49:27Realistically, only in the last couple of years
49:31have historians been able to figure out that the count was probably twice as high
49:35as first thought.
49:37In the range of 4,500 to 5,000 men became casualties on Omaha
49:42in an 18-hour period.
49:46It was not in any way foreseen
49:48that the casualties would come with the intensity
49:52that they did in the first couple of hours of the invasion
49:55from 6.30 in the morning to 9.30 in the morning on D-Day.
49:59American soldiers were being felled on the beach
50:03like stalks of wheat by a sickle.
50:08Despite the carnage,
50:10the success of D-Day has raised the event to a near mythic status.
50:16But it's partly due to how the story's been told
50:20and how it's changed.
50:23There was a time, especially in the immediate aftermath of the war,
50:26when D-Day was seen primarily as a function
50:29of the decisions of great commanders,
50:31Montgomery, Eisenhower, Rommel and people like this.
50:34And I think what's happened in the last few decades
50:37is a sense of understanding the broader experience
50:41of D-Day and the Normandy campaign,
50:43as seen through the eyes of thousands of ordinary servicemen and women
50:48who either participated in or supported that great endeavour.
50:51I've had on a number of occasions, and it is very humbling,
50:55old veterans come up to me and say,
50:57I was 18 years old, can you tell me where I was and what I was doing?
51:01And taking them there, very often it will trigger a memory
51:06and they will then start talking about the experience they've had
51:10and, for historians, this is invaluable.
51:13It humanises the experience.
51:16D-Day will forever be etched into our minds.
51:20It's a pivotal moment in the Second World War.
51:24But some stories are told for precisely the opposite reason,
51:28because they did not become important.
51:31In the 1980s, Timewatch investigated recently declassified documents
51:36that showed how close we came to using chemical weapons
51:39during the Second World War.
51:41Nerve, mustard and chlorine gas were all readily available
51:44to both the Allies and the Axis powers.
51:47But they were never used,
51:49turning the story into one of the big what-if questions of the conflict.
51:55In Timewatch this month, the terrible weapon of the Second World War
51:58that was never used, gas.
52:02You can pick up gas masks today in junk shops and second-hand stores
52:06from one end of the country to the other.
52:08They're probably the most prevalent of the surviving flotsam of the last war,
52:12which isn't surprising, as the year before war broke out,
52:15millions were distributed, one for every man, woman, child and baby.
52:19Gas attacks were expected daily.
52:22The Ministry of Home Security posters on every street corner
52:25gave instructions on what exactly to do
52:28when the gas rattle sounded and an attack began.
52:31Hold your breath.
52:33Put on mask, wherever you are.
52:35Close window.
52:37If out of doors, take off hat.
52:39Put on your mask.
52:41Turn up collar.
52:43Put on gloves or keep hands in pockets.
52:46Take cover in nearest building.
52:49In the 1930s, poison gas occupied a place
52:53rather like the atom bomb occupies nowadays.
52:56This was science at its most advanced,
53:01waiting to be applied to the protection of the national security,
53:05the destruction of the human race, whichever way you look at it.
53:09This factory has never been filmed before.
53:13It lies in the Welsh village of Rhydymowen
53:16and during the last war it was codenamed Valley.
53:19Valley was one of Britain's three wartime mustard gas factories.
53:23The others were at St Helens and Runcorn.
53:26Valley was run by ICI
53:29and at its peak was producing over 100 tonnes of mustard gas a week.
53:33The gas was stored in an underground arsenal
53:37tunnelled into a nearby hill capable of holding 5,000 tonnes of chemicals.
53:42Valley began production in 1941.
53:45By the spring of 1942,
53:47Britain was employing 6,000 munitions workers and scientists
53:51who had produced over 20,000 tonnes of chemical weapons.
53:55It was here in the British War Cabinet offices beneath Whitehall
54:00in the summer of 1940 that the first serious consideration
54:04was given to the question of using chemical warfare.
54:07Here, for more than two weeks that summer,
54:10a fierce debate raged among Britain's military commanders
54:13about the wisdom of using gas to defeat a German invasion.
54:17The argument between gas's advocates and opponents
54:20was finally settled by the Prime Minister on 30 June 1940.
54:25One of the striking features of the papers which have been released
54:30is the light they shed on the extraordinary personal interest
54:33taken in chemical warfare by the Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
54:37These, for instance, are the monthly gas production figures
54:40of Britain's munition factories
54:42and these had to be submitted regularly to the Prime Minister
54:45for his personal comment.
54:47We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany
54:51in such a way that most of the population
54:53would be requiring constant medical attention.
54:57It may be several weeks or even months
54:59before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas
55:03and if we do it, let us do it 100%.
55:08Germany, perhaps more than any other power,
55:10was impressed by the threat of retaliation
55:13because it had persuaded itself that it was weak in this area itself.
55:17One has to remember that the Treaty of Versailles
55:20had placed strict limits on German chemical warfare preparedness
55:27so that it could see itself 10, 15 years behind its enemies.
55:31So there's an irony here, you're saying,
55:33that the one belligerent power upon which deterrence had an effect
55:36was actually Nazi Germany.
55:38Because it believed itself to be so inferior,
55:41it, as it were, persuaded itself into a situation of sensitivity
55:45towards this threat.
55:47The Germans' overestimation of Allied superiority
55:51was probably the decisive factor in their decision not to use gas.
55:58In the 1980s, documents revealed the hidden strategy
56:02as Churchill prepared for chemical war.
56:0870 years after the war ended,
56:11it's tempting to think that we now know exactly what happened.
56:16Given the vast documentary record of the Second World War
56:20and the amount of effort that's been expended on trying to understand it
56:23and turn it into books and television documentaries,
56:26it seems difficult to imagine that we don't know all that there is to know
56:29about the Second World War.
56:31But, in fact, I think this is very far from being the case.
56:34People often say to me when I say,
56:36I'm going to write something else on the Second World War,
56:39not the Second World War again, what else can there be to say?
56:42And as a historian, of course, I always say, you know,
56:45there will always be new things to say.
56:47You will always put things into a different relation.
56:49You will always find different perspectives.
56:51You will also find new material. It's being uncovered all the time.
56:54The final history of the war can never be written
56:57and never will be written.
56:59It's a constant process of re-examination
57:02as the present moves forward.
57:05The past is dead. It doesn't exist.
57:08What we have is evidence that exists in the present
57:11and we call that evidence history.
57:27Less than a century ago, a global war gripped our nation.
57:31For over five years, both at home and abroad,
57:34Britain gave her all in the fight against Nazi Germany.
57:38Since it ended, World War II has been examined and re-examined.
57:44Stories have been discovered and debates have raged.
57:49And still the narrative evolves
57:52as new theories and fresh research reshape the events we thought we knew.
58:00And it's all been captured on our screens,
58:02making us part of the debate, making us part of history.
58:06In the years ahead, there will be many more disagreements
58:09as we grapple with our past.
58:11But there will also be incredible discoveries of stories still untold,
58:15new facts coming to light
58:17and long-forgotten heroes revealed to us for the first time.
58:21The Second World War may have ended over 70 years ago,
58:24but its history is still alive and constantly changing.
58:36Should America police the world?
58:38And what does American power look like from the inside out?
58:42Decisions that impacted millions made by an influential few
58:47in Corridors of Power.
58:49Watch on BBC iPlayer.