World War II in Colour (2009–…): Season 1, Episode 9 - Overlord - full transcript
[theme music plays]
[background music over dialogues]
[cheering]
[bombs exploding]
[cannons firing]
[woman crying]
[explosion]
[narrator] 1944, and on the Eastern Front
Hitler's forces were being pushed
back towards the German border.
[explosions and gunfire]
But Germany was about
to face a new threat.
In the west, Allied forces
had been preparing for months
to open a new front
in north-west France.
[marching footsteps]
Training for it was well underway.
But it was an attack
Hitler had long been expecting.
His problem was knowing when
and above all where it would come.
The stage was set for one
of the greatest battles of World War II:
D-Day,
the Allied landings
along the Normandy coast of France.
Since the early years of the war
Britain's Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,
had always been certain
that at some point
an Allied invasion of northern Europe
would be necessary.
The only questions were
when, where, and how?
To test the waters
British forces had already mounted
a number of practice operations.
[explosions]
In December of 1941
British commandos raided
the Vaagso islands
off the coast of Nazi-occupied Norway.
[explosion]
[gun firing]
It was an attempt
to probe German defences
and tie down Hitler's troops in the north.
A fish-oil factory and coastal defences
were blown up
before the commandos withdrew.
Eight months later
Canadian and British troops
were sent in
to mount a more ambitious raid
on the French port of Dieppe.
It too was designed
to test the defences
and to provide combat experience
for the Canadians.
But this time it was a catastrophe.
[explosions]
As landing craft
approached the main beach
they were met by withering fire.
[explosions and gunfire]
Those troops that made it ashore
were immediately pinned down.
Behind them the supporting tanks
became bogged down in the shingle.
Few managed to scale the sea wall.
Over 3,000 Allied soldiers
were killed or taken prisoner.
Britain had learnt an important lesson:
never attempt a direct assault
on a German-occupied port.
Equally importantly,
the Dieppe disaster reinforced
the British view
that an invasion of Europe
could not be rushed.
Churchill understood
it would require careful planning.
Eventually in April 1943
at an Allied conference in Washington
Churchill and the US President,
Franklin Roosevelt,
agreed upon a date.
[background music over dialogues]
D-Day,
or Operation Overlord
as the seaborne invasion of France
was formerly called,
would take place in
the summer of 1944.
But by now the Germans
were preparing for it in earnest.
Since the winter of 1941
they had been building
an Atlantic Wall.
It was a massive series of fortifications
running along the European coast
from Denmark to the Spanish border.
Gun emplacements were constructed
at likely landing sites.
Beaches had been mined
and covered in barbed wire.
Obstacles had been placed
in strategic places
to block landing craft.
Hitler had boasted,
"I am the greatest builder
of fortifications of all time."
In the summer of 1942
in the wake of the Dieppe attack
work on the Atlantic Wall
had been stepped up.
Hitler had also ordered an increase
in troop numbers in the region.
[marching footsteps]
The German overall commander
in the West,
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt,
had been given 15 further divisions.
But the Western European coast
stretched for some 2,000 miles.
He didn't have the numbers
to man the entire length.
Von Rundstedt faced
a difficult decision.
Where should he position
his over-stretched forces
to maximize their effect?
The question lead to bitter arguments
inside the German leadership.
Von Rundstedt proposed holding
a large force of Panzers in reserve
north-west of Paris.
He could then send it in
against an invasion
once he knew
where it was happening.
But the hugely respected
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
commander of the troops
covering the sector from Holland
along the French coast to the Loire
had a different view.
Rommel's concern
was Allied air power.
He'd seen it first hand when he fought
the British in North Africa
and it had left a profound impression.
[explosion]
He feared that any counterattack
would be broken up by Allied aircraft
long before it could go into action.
Rommel had also inspected
Hitler's Atlantic Wall
and found much of it wanting.
It had forced him to the conclusion
that the best place
to position the Panzers
was as close as possible
to the most likely landing sites.
That way an invasion could be
immediately pushed back
before it got a foothold.
Hitler compromised.
Rundstedt was given a small force
he could hold in reserve,
though Hitler himself
would have the final say
as to when it could be used.
The rest of the troops were scattered
along the entire Atlantic Seaboard,
in accordance with Rommel's wishes.
[seagulls cawing]
It would turn out to be
the worst of all the solutions.
There were neither enough reserves
nor enough tanks
near the coast.
But in the autumn of 1943
none of this was clear.
In Britain the Allied planners
were also grappling
with the problem of location.
Where was the best place to land?
Their chief planner,
General Frederick Morgan,
realised there were two options:
the Pas de Calais and Normandy.
The Pas de Calais
was clearly the favourite.
It offered the shortest sea crossing
and it offered the shortest
and most direct way to Germany.
But it was also the most obvious route
and Morgan was sure
the Germans were expecting it.
So he decided to wrong-foot them
Morgan would land in Normandy.
It was the beginning of a huge gamble
on which the fate of hundreds
of thousands of men would depend.
In the autumn of 1943
Allied photo reconnaissance
aircraft swept
over the beaches of northern France.
It was part of a huge planning operation
for the seaborne invasion of Europe.
The fortifications of the Atlantic Wall
were monitored
by the French Resistance.
Men crept ashore
to collect sand samples
to test whether armoured vehicles
could be landed.
Northern France became
the most reconnoitred coastline
in the history of warfare.
It soon became clear any landing
would need some kind of port facilities.
But the disaster at Dieppe had shown
that it was too dangerous to attempt
a direct assault
on a German-occupied port.
Britain's planners had come up
with an ingenious alternative.
Giant, hollow, concrete boxes
were constructed in Britain
that could later be towed
to the French coast.
There they would be sunk
to form an artificial harbour.
They were known
by their codename: Mulberries.
[seagulls cawing]
The Mulberries
would be supplied with fuel
by a pipeline
unwound from giant reels
and dropped on the seabed.
It would run for 100 miles.
The pumping station
on the Isle of Wight
was disguised
as an ice-cream parlour.
[shouting]
But the raid on Dieppe
had also revealed a second problem:
how to get the first wave of troops
off the beaches
and through the German fortifications.
The man told to solve that question
was General Percy Hobart,
one of the pioneers
of armoured warfare.
Hobart came up with a series
of ingenious devices.
The troops called them
"the Funnies".
They included
such extraordinary machines
as flame throwers
and floating tanks,
[explosion]
flail tanks for clearing mines,
the bobbin for laying firm paths
across sand or shingle,
an armoured ramp
for climbing seawalls,
the fascine carrier
for tackling ditches
and the bridging tank
for wider obstacles.
That left just one problem:
how to stop the Germans rushing in
overwhelming reinforcements
before the Allies
had established a foothold.
The answer was to keep them guessing
until the very last moment
as to where the invasion
would take place.
Operation Bodyguard was a massive
and complex deception campaign.
German double agents in Britain
now began sending back to Germany
huge amounts of carefully coordinated
false information
emphasising that the main landings
would be in the Pas de Calais
although a faint attack
might be launched in Normandy.
To muddy the waters still further
the Allied military created
a fictitious army unit,
the so-called First US Army Group
or FUSAG.
It was stationed very obviously in Kent
bang opposite the Pas de Calais.
The man in charge of it
was the pistol-toting US General
George Patton
who had been removed
from action in Sicily
after slapping shell-shocked soldiers.
Patton was rated by the Germans
as the Allies' best attacking General,
just the man they expected
to command the invasion
of Western Europe.
[man] Basher 5-2,
this is Basher 1-1 on Alpha.
[narrator] Radio transmissions mimic
the wireless traffic of an army.
For the benefit of any Luftwaffe
reconnaissance aircraft
flying over Britain
the fields of Kent were filled
with inflatable tanks
and carefully faked track marks.
There were dummy aircraft
made of wood and canvas.
Harbours along the Kent coast
were filled with dummy landing craft.
There were even troops,
though these were in reality
backup units.
[background music over dialogues]
In late 1943 the Allies appointed
US General Dwight Eisenhower
as Supreme Allied Commander
for the invasion of Europe.
British General
Bernard Montgomery
would be in overall command
of the initial assault troops.
D-Day was fixed for 5 June 1944.
Two months before the landing,
Eisenhower launched
an elaborate air offensive
to disrupt German links to the coast.
[missiles whistling]
[explosions]
Once again it was carefully planned
to give the impression
the Allies' target was
the Pas de Calais region.
As the date of the invasion approached
Allied troop numbers in England
reached over two million.
They were supported
by more than 3,000 tanks,
and 12,000 aircraft.
The Germans were well aware
an invasion was imminent
but they had been completely taken in
by the Allies' phony preparations
in Kent
and were convinced the most likely
landing spot was the Pas de Calais.
Everything seemed
to be going the Allies' way.
The troops were briefed.
Then the weather turned against them.
Rain lashed down,
visibility was poor
and the Channel was stormy.
Nevertheless on 4 June 1944
the assault troops boarded
their landing ships
and the armada of more
than 5,000 vessels set sail.
But the rain continued to lash down.
Later that day the invasion
had to be postponed.
The ships returned to port
and the assault troops faced
a nerve-shredding wait.
Early the next morning
the military leadership met again.
The naval commanders
were keen to go ahead
but the air chiefs were doubtful.
They worried the visibility
would still be too poor
to provide effective air support.
After a long silence
Eisenhower looked up.
[background music over dialogues]
"Let's go," he said.
Operation Overlord,
the greatest seaborne invasion ever,
was underway.
D-Day had begun.
At 1:15 in the morning
of 6 June 1944
British aircraft towing gliders
arrived over the coast
of northern France.
Then the gliders were released
and plunged down
to capture vital bridges
over the Caen Canal
in eastern Normandy.
The Allies had launched
their great gamble
to invade Hitler's empire
in Western Europe.
50 miles to the west
US paratroops came down
around the village
of Sainte-Mère-Église.
[gunfire]
There was a fierce firefight.
But three hours later
the village was in US hands.
One of the most crucial battles
of World War II was underway.
An hour later
horrified German sentries
along the Normandy coast
saw a vast armada appear
out of the mist.
They had had no warning.
[bell ringing]
The Allied fleet had sailed
under cover of darkness.
Moreover, Allied counter measures
had confused the German radar
into believing
the main weight of the attack
was approaching the French coast
further east at the Pas de Calais.
Allied warships
off the Normandy coast
now began pounding
the German defensive positions.
[explosions]
Wave after wave of aircraft
swept overhead.
[explosions]
Under cover of the bombardment
assault troops headed for the shore.
[shout]
But as they closed in
German artillery and machine guns
opened fire.
A number of the landing craft were hit.
Others fell foul
of underwater obstructions.
But at 6:30 in the morning
the first waves of troops
hit the beaches.
[gunfire]
At the far western end
the US 4th Infantry Division
came ashore
near what they called Utah Beach.
Within two hours it was linking up
with the US paratroopers
who'd landed at Sainte-Mère-Église.
Next door at Omaha Beach
it was more difficult.
The beach was a defenders' dream
with high cliffs and few ways inland.
As the US 1st Infantry Division
waded ashore
they were mowed down
by German machine guns.
[gunfire]
To make matters worse
the American's amphibious tanks
were swamped.
The troops were
trapped on the beach.
Disaster was looming.
But finally a few of the soldiers
managed to scale the cliffs.
[explosions and firing]
Against all the odds
the Americans hung on
to the beachhead.
Further east
in the centre of the landing area
Britain's 50th Infantry Division
came ashore at Gold Beach.
They too met savage fire.
[gunfire]
But now the British
deployed their Funnies.
The troops were soon moving inland.
At the adjoining landing spot,
Juno Beach,
the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division
faced a similar situation.
Here too Britain's Funnies were vital
in helping the troops off the beach.
Finally, on the far left flank
at Sword Beach,
the British 3rd Infantry Division
met only patchy resistance.
Within hours its commandos
had linked up
with the glider-borne troops
at the Caen Canal.
[gun firing]
By early afternoon the Allies
had successfully established
all of the beachheads.
The timing of the invasion had caught
the Germans completely by surprise.
They'd expected the Allies to wait
until the weather had cleared.
Rommel, the operational
German commander
for the whole
of the north-west French coast,
had taken the opportunity
of bad weather
to visit his family in Germany.
His immediate subordinate
in Normandy and Brittany,
General Friedrich Dollmann,
was over 100 miles away
taking part in a war game exercise.
Only the overall German commander
for the whole of Western Europe,
Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt,
was at his HQ.
But he needed Hitler's permission
to move his Panzer reserves
to the battlefield.
However, Hitler was asleep
and his aides wouldn't wake him.
It wasn't until midday that the Führer
finally learned about the invasion
but he didn't take it seriously.
He was still convinced the main attack
would come in the Pas de Calais.
Normandy, he believed,
was just a fake.
Finally, in the late afternoon,
when the scale of the invasion
was becoming all too clear,
Hitler unleashed his reserves.
But they were too far away
to provide immediate support.
Despite stubborn German resistance
the beachheads around Utah, Gold
and Juno and Sword were secure.
[gun firing]
Only at Omaha
was the situation more precarious.
[explosions]
Here German resistance
had prevented the US troops
moving more than a mile inland.
[gunfire]
By nightfall on 6 June
over 100,000 Allied troops
had been landed in Normandy.
It had been an extraordinary feat
of planning, ingenuity, and courage.
The first day of the Allies'
great gamble had paid off.
But it was just the beginning.
Now they had to build up, break out
and push on into Europe.
As the second day dawned
on the greatest seaborne invasion
ever attempted
thousands of Allied troops
had broken out of their beachheads
and were moving inland.
But they found the Normandy
countryside hard going.
The patchwork of woodland
and small fields
provided ideal terrain
for German tanks and machine guns.
[explosions]
The Allies suffered heavy casualties.
Allied air power
provided crucial support.
When von Rundstedt's
Panzer reinforcements arrived
they'd been so depleted
by the air attacks
that they were unable to mount
a major counterattack.
German reinforcements
were also hampered
by French Resistance fighters
operating behind German lines.
[gunfire]
They ambushed troop convoys
and blew up bridges.
As a result the Das Reich
SS-Panzer Division
took over two weeks
to make a journey
which should have lasted
a mere three days.
It's troops took out their fury
on the French civilian population.
The village of Oradour-sur-Glane
and it's 642 inhabitants
were wiped out.
After four days of fighting
all the Allied beachheads
were finally able to link up.
But they had still only managed
to penetrate ten miles inland.
Eventually, six days
after the landing,
British commander
General Montgomery
launched a major assault
on the strategically
important town of Caen.
The British 7th Armoured Division,
the Desert Rats, advanced.
But its spearhead ran
into four German Tiger tanks.
The Allied Sherman tanks
were completely outclassed.
Their guns were outranged
and their shells unable
to penetrate the German armour.
They were particularly vulnerable
because many ran on petrol fuel
and were liable
to burst into flames when hit.
The Germans nicknamed
the Sherman "the Ronson"
after the cigarette lighter
or, more macabrely,
"the Tommy Cooker".
In less than five minutes more than
ten British tanks were destroyed.
[gun firing]
The attack on Caen stalled.
[gun firing]
Outmatched by the German tanks,
the Allies relied
on air power and artillery.
But it wasn't enough.
The Desert Rats retreated.
Caen remained in German hands.
Meanwhile, further west,
US forces advanced
on the equally important
port of Cherbourg.
It would take them nearly ten days
to get close to them.
They weren't helped by the weather.
During the first week of the invasion
it had been relatively calm
and supplies and reinforcements
had poured in
through the Mulberry
artificial harbours.
But now the weather turned.
Gales swept the English Channel.
[shout]
The US Mulberry harbour
at Omaha was destroyed.
The other Mulberry in the British sector
was badly damaged
and put out of action for several days.
The flow of reinforcements slowed.
It meant the port of Cherbourg
was an even more vital objective.
As the US forces now approached it
the German garrison resisted.
[gunfire]
There was fierce
house-to-house fighting.
It would take the Allies a week
to secure the city.
But the port had been trashed
by the fleeing Germans.
It would take a further month
before it could be brought
back into service.
Meanwhile, Montgomery launched
another assault on Caen.
But the storms had turned the fields
into a sea of mud.
Low cloud meant air support
was impossible.
To make matters worse,
the newly arrived elite
German II SS Panzer Corps
was thrown into the defence of the city.
After four days the British
were again forced to halt.
Then, as the clouds cleared,
nearly 500 Allied bombers
devastated Caen.
British troops fought their way
into the north suburbs.
[gun firing]
But the ruins made ideal
defensive positions for the Germans.
Allied casualties mounted.
And after 48 hours the attack
was, yet again, called off.
Three weeks later
Montgomery tried for a fourth time.
The plan was to capture
the remaining German strongholds
and then push on south,
deeper into France.
[gun firing]
After two more days of fighting
the city was finally won.
The way now seemed open
for the British tanks to move south,
deeper into France.
But the Germans were waiting
with their large force of Panzers.
[gunfire]
The British advance stopped again.
The Americans in the west, however,
were having an easier time.
The fighting around Caen
had sucked in the majority
of the German defenders.
As the American forces prepared
to thrust further into France
they faced only scattered opposition.
The scene was set for the Allied forces
to breakout at last.
At 9:30 in the morning of 25 July 1944
over 1,800 Allied aircraft
carpet-bombed a four-mile stretch
of the German frontline
south of Cherbourg.
It was the beginning
of Operation Cobra,
the US breakout into France.
The German defenders were stunned
by the size of the assault.
So too were some of the US soldiers.
The plan had been for the bombers
to fly in from the east,
parallel to the US frontline,
to minimize the risk
of bombing American troops.
But most of the aircraft came in
over the top of the US lines.
Bombs fell short.
Over 100 US troops were hit and killed.
Yet, despite the ferocity
of the bombardment,
when the US forces
later picked themselves up
and moved forward,
they found to their astonishment
substantial numbers
of German troops had survived.
The survivors mounted
a stubborn resistance.
As fighting raged
it looked as if the Americans would fail
to break through the German lines.
[explosions]
But then German defences crumbled.
The next morning
US tanks broke through
and moved forward
into open country.
There was now
almost no German resistance left
and the Americans
quickly pushed deeper into France.
The hill town of Coutances fell.
Then the crossroads town
of Avranches.
As the Allies pressed forward
they were helped
by change and confusion
in the German high command.
[background music over dialogues]
At the beginning of July,
three weeks after the D-Day landings,
Hitler dismissed
the German Commander-in-Chief,
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt,
for defeatism.
Von Rundstedt had made
little attempt to hide his belief
that Germany faced
an unwinnable struggle.
[background music over dialogues]
He was replaced
by Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge,
fresh from the Eastern Front
but with little knowledge
of north-western France.
[background music over dialogues]
Two weeks later,
Rommel, the second most senior
German officer on the Front
was severely injured
when his staff car
was strafed by a British fighter.
Then, with the Nazi command
already in confusion,
there was an assassination
attempt on Hitler's life.
On 20 July 1944
a disillusioned aristocratic war hero,
Colonel Claus Schenk
Graf von Stauffenberg,
planted a bomb in the planning hut
at Hitler's HQ in East Prussia.
[explosion]
Four officers were killed
but Hitler was sheltered
by a heavy, solid oak conference table
and escaped with only minor injuries.
The plot was swiftly
and brutally put down.
[speaking in foreign language]
Von Stauffenberg was shot
and his principal collaborators
put on trial.
They would later be hanged.
Hitler put a brave face on it
and visited some of the wounded
in hospital.
But it hardened still further
his distrust of his senior officers.
He would, despite his many
earlier misjudgements,
demand even greater control
over events on the battlefield.
[shout
Back in France,
General George Patton,
back in charge of a real fighting force,
ordered his troops to fan out.
They took Rennes,
Mayenne,
and headed for Le Mans.
They were now moving round
behind the German forces
still battling it out with the British
and Canadians near Caen.
[explosions and gunfire]
With the Americans to their south
and the British to their north
it seemed the German forces
in Normandy would be surrounded.
Hitler issued his usual order
that there should be no retreat
but as the Allies
squeezed in on them
the Germans began to flee.
They were remorselessly harried
by Allied aircraft and artillery.
[explosions]
The casualties were appalling.
[shout]
Finally, on 20 August 1944,
the Allied forces moving in
from both the north and south met up.
The so-called Falaise gap,
named after the nearby French village,
had been closed.
Large numbers of Germans
were trapped.
Over 10,000 more Germans
caught in the Allied pincer died.
A further 50,000 were taken prisoner.
The German Army in Western Europe
was in chaos.
[cars honking]
Meanwhile, far to the south
on the French
Mediterranean coast near Cannes
there was a second
Allied seaborne invasion.
US troops came ashore
virtually unopposed.
They were helped by paratroopers
from the Free French army,
men who had escaped
from German-occupied French territory
in Europe and North Africa.
The landing had always been
opposed by the British
who regarded it as a diversion.
But the United States
had long regarded it
as an essential part of clearing
the Germans out of France.
[crowd cheering]
The troops were greeted
by an ecstatic civilian population.
It was soon advancing rapidly
up the Rhone valley.
Lyons was liberated
on 3 September 1944.
Ten days later they reached Dijon
and made contact with Patton's forces
advancing from western France.
[shout]
German units stationed
across the region fled.
In barely three weeks
of headlong advance
the Allied invasion of Europe
had liberated most of France.
That left Paris
where French Resistance fighters
now rose up
against the German occupation.
There seemed little
to prevent the Allied onrush
from continuing to the German border.
[background music over dialogues]
[cheering]
[bombs exploding]
[cannons firing]
[woman crying]
[explosion]
[narrator] 1944, and on the Eastern Front
Hitler's forces were being pushed
back towards the German border.
[explosions and gunfire]
But Germany was about
to face a new threat.
In the west, Allied forces
had been preparing for months
to open a new front
in north-west France.
[marching footsteps]
Training for it was well underway.
But it was an attack
Hitler had long been expecting.
His problem was knowing when
and above all where it would come.
The stage was set for one
of the greatest battles of World War II:
D-Day,
the Allied landings
along the Normandy coast of France.
Since the early years of the war
Britain's Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,
had always been certain
that at some point
an Allied invasion of northern Europe
would be necessary.
The only questions were
when, where, and how?
To test the waters
British forces had already mounted
a number of practice operations.
[explosions]
In December of 1941
British commandos raided
the Vaagso islands
off the coast of Nazi-occupied Norway.
[explosion]
[gun firing]
It was an attempt
to probe German defences
and tie down Hitler's troops in the north.
A fish-oil factory and coastal defences
were blown up
before the commandos withdrew.
Eight months later
Canadian and British troops
were sent in
to mount a more ambitious raid
on the French port of Dieppe.
It too was designed
to test the defences
and to provide combat experience
for the Canadians.
But this time it was a catastrophe.
[explosions]
As landing craft
approached the main beach
they were met by withering fire.
[explosions and gunfire]
Those troops that made it ashore
were immediately pinned down.
Behind them the supporting tanks
became bogged down in the shingle.
Few managed to scale the sea wall.
Over 3,000 Allied soldiers
were killed or taken prisoner.
Britain had learnt an important lesson:
never attempt a direct assault
on a German-occupied port.
Equally importantly,
the Dieppe disaster reinforced
the British view
that an invasion of Europe
could not be rushed.
Churchill understood
it would require careful planning.
Eventually in April 1943
at an Allied conference in Washington
Churchill and the US President,
Franklin Roosevelt,
agreed upon a date.
[background music over dialogues]
D-Day,
or Operation Overlord
as the seaborne invasion of France
was formerly called,
would take place in
the summer of 1944.
But by now the Germans
were preparing for it in earnest.
Since the winter of 1941
they had been building
an Atlantic Wall.
It was a massive series of fortifications
running along the European coast
from Denmark to the Spanish border.
Gun emplacements were constructed
at likely landing sites.
Beaches had been mined
and covered in barbed wire.
Obstacles had been placed
in strategic places
to block landing craft.
Hitler had boasted,
"I am the greatest builder
of fortifications of all time."
In the summer of 1942
in the wake of the Dieppe attack
work on the Atlantic Wall
had been stepped up.
Hitler had also ordered an increase
in troop numbers in the region.
[marching footsteps]
The German overall commander
in the West,
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt,
had been given 15 further divisions.
But the Western European coast
stretched for some 2,000 miles.
He didn't have the numbers
to man the entire length.
Von Rundstedt faced
a difficult decision.
Where should he position
his over-stretched forces
to maximize their effect?
The question lead to bitter arguments
inside the German leadership.
Von Rundstedt proposed holding
a large force of Panzers in reserve
north-west of Paris.
He could then send it in
against an invasion
once he knew
where it was happening.
But the hugely respected
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
commander of the troops
covering the sector from Holland
along the French coast to the Loire
had a different view.
Rommel's concern
was Allied air power.
He'd seen it first hand when he fought
the British in North Africa
and it had left a profound impression.
[explosion]
He feared that any counterattack
would be broken up by Allied aircraft
long before it could go into action.
Rommel had also inspected
Hitler's Atlantic Wall
and found much of it wanting.
It had forced him to the conclusion
that the best place
to position the Panzers
was as close as possible
to the most likely landing sites.
That way an invasion could be
immediately pushed back
before it got a foothold.
Hitler compromised.
Rundstedt was given a small force
he could hold in reserve,
though Hitler himself
would have the final say
as to when it could be used.
The rest of the troops were scattered
along the entire Atlantic Seaboard,
in accordance with Rommel's wishes.
[seagulls cawing]
It would turn out to be
the worst of all the solutions.
There were neither enough reserves
nor enough tanks
near the coast.
But in the autumn of 1943
none of this was clear.
In Britain the Allied planners
were also grappling
with the problem of location.
Where was the best place to land?
Their chief planner,
General Frederick Morgan,
realised there were two options:
the Pas de Calais and Normandy.
The Pas de Calais
was clearly the favourite.
It offered the shortest sea crossing
and it offered the shortest
and most direct way to Germany.
But it was also the most obvious route
and Morgan was sure
the Germans were expecting it.
So he decided to wrong-foot them
Morgan would land in Normandy.
It was the beginning of a huge gamble
on which the fate of hundreds
of thousands of men would depend.
In the autumn of 1943
Allied photo reconnaissance
aircraft swept
over the beaches of northern France.
It was part of a huge planning operation
for the seaborne invasion of Europe.
The fortifications of the Atlantic Wall
were monitored
by the French Resistance.
Men crept ashore
to collect sand samples
to test whether armoured vehicles
could be landed.
Northern France became
the most reconnoitred coastline
in the history of warfare.
It soon became clear any landing
would need some kind of port facilities.
But the disaster at Dieppe had shown
that it was too dangerous to attempt
a direct assault
on a German-occupied port.
Britain's planners had come up
with an ingenious alternative.
Giant, hollow, concrete boxes
were constructed in Britain
that could later be towed
to the French coast.
There they would be sunk
to form an artificial harbour.
They were known
by their codename: Mulberries.
[seagulls cawing]
The Mulberries
would be supplied with fuel
by a pipeline
unwound from giant reels
and dropped on the seabed.
It would run for 100 miles.
The pumping station
on the Isle of Wight
was disguised
as an ice-cream parlour.
[shouting]
But the raid on Dieppe
had also revealed a second problem:
how to get the first wave of troops
off the beaches
and through the German fortifications.
The man told to solve that question
was General Percy Hobart,
one of the pioneers
of armoured warfare.
Hobart came up with a series
of ingenious devices.
The troops called them
"the Funnies".
They included
such extraordinary machines
as flame throwers
and floating tanks,
[explosion]
flail tanks for clearing mines,
the bobbin for laying firm paths
across sand or shingle,
an armoured ramp
for climbing seawalls,
the fascine carrier
for tackling ditches
and the bridging tank
for wider obstacles.
That left just one problem:
how to stop the Germans rushing in
overwhelming reinforcements
before the Allies
had established a foothold.
The answer was to keep them guessing
until the very last moment
as to where the invasion
would take place.
Operation Bodyguard was a massive
and complex deception campaign.
German double agents in Britain
now began sending back to Germany
huge amounts of carefully coordinated
false information
emphasising that the main landings
would be in the Pas de Calais
although a faint attack
might be launched in Normandy.
To muddy the waters still further
the Allied military created
a fictitious army unit,
the so-called First US Army Group
or FUSAG.
It was stationed very obviously in Kent
bang opposite the Pas de Calais.
The man in charge of it
was the pistol-toting US General
George Patton
who had been removed
from action in Sicily
after slapping shell-shocked soldiers.
Patton was rated by the Germans
as the Allies' best attacking General,
just the man they expected
to command the invasion
of Western Europe.
[man] Basher 5-2,
this is Basher 1-1 on Alpha.
[narrator] Radio transmissions mimic
the wireless traffic of an army.
For the benefit of any Luftwaffe
reconnaissance aircraft
flying over Britain
the fields of Kent were filled
with inflatable tanks
and carefully faked track marks.
There were dummy aircraft
made of wood and canvas.
Harbours along the Kent coast
were filled with dummy landing craft.
There were even troops,
though these were in reality
backup units.
[background music over dialogues]
In late 1943 the Allies appointed
US General Dwight Eisenhower
as Supreme Allied Commander
for the invasion of Europe.
British General
Bernard Montgomery
would be in overall command
of the initial assault troops.
D-Day was fixed for 5 June 1944.
Two months before the landing,
Eisenhower launched
an elaborate air offensive
to disrupt German links to the coast.
[missiles whistling]
[explosions]
Once again it was carefully planned
to give the impression
the Allies' target was
the Pas de Calais region.
As the date of the invasion approached
Allied troop numbers in England
reached over two million.
They were supported
by more than 3,000 tanks,
and 12,000 aircraft.
The Germans were well aware
an invasion was imminent
but they had been completely taken in
by the Allies' phony preparations
in Kent
and were convinced the most likely
landing spot was the Pas de Calais.
Everything seemed
to be going the Allies' way.
The troops were briefed.
Then the weather turned against them.
Rain lashed down,
visibility was poor
and the Channel was stormy.
Nevertheless on 4 June 1944
the assault troops boarded
their landing ships
and the armada of more
than 5,000 vessels set sail.
But the rain continued to lash down.
Later that day the invasion
had to be postponed.
The ships returned to port
and the assault troops faced
a nerve-shredding wait.
Early the next morning
the military leadership met again.
The naval commanders
were keen to go ahead
but the air chiefs were doubtful.
They worried the visibility
would still be too poor
to provide effective air support.
After a long silence
Eisenhower looked up.
[background music over dialogues]
"Let's go," he said.
Operation Overlord,
the greatest seaborne invasion ever,
was underway.
D-Day had begun.
At 1:15 in the morning
of 6 June 1944
British aircraft towing gliders
arrived over the coast
of northern France.
Then the gliders were released
and plunged down
to capture vital bridges
over the Caen Canal
in eastern Normandy.
The Allies had launched
their great gamble
to invade Hitler's empire
in Western Europe.
50 miles to the west
US paratroops came down
around the village
of Sainte-Mère-Église.
[gunfire]
There was a fierce firefight.
But three hours later
the village was in US hands.
One of the most crucial battles
of World War II was underway.
An hour later
horrified German sentries
along the Normandy coast
saw a vast armada appear
out of the mist.
They had had no warning.
[bell ringing]
The Allied fleet had sailed
under cover of darkness.
Moreover, Allied counter measures
had confused the German radar
into believing
the main weight of the attack
was approaching the French coast
further east at the Pas de Calais.
Allied warships
off the Normandy coast
now began pounding
the German defensive positions.
[explosions]
Wave after wave of aircraft
swept overhead.
[explosions]
Under cover of the bombardment
assault troops headed for the shore.
[shout]
But as they closed in
German artillery and machine guns
opened fire.
A number of the landing craft were hit.
Others fell foul
of underwater obstructions.
But at 6:30 in the morning
the first waves of troops
hit the beaches.
[gunfire]
At the far western end
the US 4th Infantry Division
came ashore
near what they called Utah Beach.
Within two hours it was linking up
with the US paratroopers
who'd landed at Sainte-Mère-Église.
Next door at Omaha Beach
it was more difficult.
The beach was a defenders' dream
with high cliffs and few ways inland.
As the US 1st Infantry Division
waded ashore
they were mowed down
by German machine guns.
[gunfire]
To make matters worse
the American's amphibious tanks
were swamped.
The troops were
trapped on the beach.
Disaster was looming.
But finally a few of the soldiers
managed to scale the cliffs.
[explosions and firing]
Against all the odds
the Americans hung on
to the beachhead.
Further east
in the centre of the landing area
Britain's 50th Infantry Division
came ashore at Gold Beach.
They too met savage fire.
[gunfire]
But now the British
deployed their Funnies.
The troops were soon moving inland.
At the adjoining landing spot,
Juno Beach,
the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division
faced a similar situation.
Here too Britain's Funnies were vital
in helping the troops off the beach.
Finally, on the far left flank
at Sword Beach,
the British 3rd Infantry Division
met only patchy resistance.
Within hours its commandos
had linked up
with the glider-borne troops
at the Caen Canal.
[gun firing]
By early afternoon the Allies
had successfully established
all of the beachheads.
The timing of the invasion had caught
the Germans completely by surprise.
They'd expected the Allies to wait
until the weather had cleared.
Rommel, the operational
German commander
for the whole
of the north-west French coast,
had taken the opportunity
of bad weather
to visit his family in Germany.
His immediate subordinate
in Normandy and Brittany,
General Friedrich Dollmann,
was over 100 miles away
taking part in a war game exercise.
Only the overall German commander
for the whole of Western Europe,
Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt,
was at his HQ.
But he needed Hitler's permission
to move his Panzer reserves
to the battlefield.
However, Hitler was asleep
and his aides wouldn't wake him.
It wasn't until midday that the Führer
finally learned about the invasion
but he didn't take it seriously.
He was still convinced the main attack
would come in the Pas de Calais.
Normandy, he believed,
was just a fake.
Finally, in the late afternoon,
when the scale of the invasion
was becoming all too clear,
Hitler unleashed his reserves.
But they were too far away
to provide immediate support.
Despite stubborn German resistance
the beachheads around Utah, Gold
and Juno and Sword were secure.
[gun firing]
Only at Omaha
was the situation more precarious.
[explosions]
Here German resistance
had prevented the US troops
moving more than a mile inland.
[gunfire]
By nightfall on 6 June
over 100,000 Allied troops
had been landed in Normandy.
It had been an extraordinary feat
of planning, ingenuity, and courage.
The first day of the Allies'
great gamble had paid off.
But it was just the beginning.
Now they had to build up, break out
and push on into Europe.
As the second day dawned
on the greatest seaborne invasion
ever attempted
thousands of Allied troops
had broken out of their beachheads
and were moving inland.
But they found the Normandy
countryside hard going.
The patchwork of woodland
and small fields
provided ideal terrain
for German tanks and machine guns.
[explosions]
The Allies suffered heavy casualties.
Allied air power
provided crucial support.
When von Rundstedt's
Panzer reinforcements arrived
they'd been so depleted
by the air attacks
that they were unable to mount
a major counterattack.
German reinforcements
were also hampered
by French Resistance fighters
operating behind German lines.
[gunfire]
They ambushed troop convoys
and blew up bridges.
As a result the Das Reich
SS-Panzer Division
took over two weeks
to make a journey
which should have lasted
a mere three days.
It's troops took out their fury
on the French civilian population.
The village of Oradour-sur-Glane
and it's 642 inhabitants
were wiped out.
After four days of fighting
all the Allied beachheads
were finally able to link up.
But they had still only managed
to penetrate ten miles inland.
Eventually, six days
after the landing,
British commander
General Montgomery
launched a major assault
on the strategically
important town of Caen.
The British 7th Armoured Division,
the Desert Rats, advanced.
But its spearhead ran
into four German Tiger tanks.
The Allied Sherman tanks
were completely outclassed.
Their guns were outranged
and their shells unable
to penetrate the German armour.
They were particularly vulnerable
because many ran on petrol fuel
and were liable
to burst into flames when hit.
The Germans nicknamed
the Sherman "the Ronson"
after the cigarette lighter
or, more macabrely,
"the Tommy Cooker".
In less than five minutes more than
ten British tanks were destroyed.
[gun firing]
The attack on Caen stalled.
[gun firing]
Outmatched by the German tanks,
the Allies relied
on air power and artillery.
But it wasn't enough.
The Desert Rats retreated.
Caen remained in German hands.
Meanwhile, further west,
US forces advanced
on the equally important
port of Cherbourg.
It would take them nearly ten days
to get close to them.
They weren't helped by the weather.
During the first week of the invasion
it had been relatively calm
and supplies and reinforcements
had poured in
through the Mulberry
artificial harbours.
But now the weather turned.
Gales swept the English Channel.
[shout]
The US Mulberry harbour
at Omaha was destroyed.
The other Mulberry in the British sector
was badly damaged
and put out of action for several days.
The flow of reinforcements slowed.
It meant the port of Cherbourg
was an even more vital objective.
As the US forces now approached it
the German garrison resisted.
[gunfire]
There was fierce
house-to-house fighting.
It would take the Allies a week
to secure the city.
But the port had been trashed
by the fleeing Germans.
It would take a further month
before it could be brought
back into service.
Meanwhile, Montgomery launched
another assault on Caen.
But the storms had turned the fields
into a sea of mud.
Low cloud meant air support
was impossible.
To make matters worse,
the newly arrived elite
German II SS Panzer Corps
was thrown into the defence of the city.
After four days the British
were again forced to halt.
Then, as the clouds cleared,
nearly 500 Allied bombers
devastated Caen.
British troops fought their way
into the north suburbs.
[gun firing]
But the ruins made ideal
defensive positions for the Germans.
Allied casualties mounted.
And after 48 hours the attack
was, yet again, called off.
Three weeks later
Montgomery tried for a fourth time.
The plan was to capture
the remaining German strongholds
and then push on south,
deeper into France.
[gun firing]
After two more days of fighting
the city was finally won.
The way now seemed open
for the British tanks to move south,
deeper into France.
But the Germans were waiting
with their large force of Panzers.
[gunfire]
The British advance stopped again.
The Americans in the west, however,
were having an easier time.
The fighting around Caen
had sucked in the majority
of the German defenders.
As the American forces prepared
to thrust further into France
they faced only scattered opposition.
The scene was set for the Allied forces
to breakout at last.
At 9:30 in the morning of 25 July 1944
over 1,800 Allied aircraft
carpet-bombed a four-mile stretch
of the German frontline
south of Cherbourg.
It was the beginning
of Operation Cobra,
the US breakout into France.
The German defenders were stunned
by the size of the assault.
So too were some of the US soldiers.
The plan had been for the bombers
to fly in from the east,
parallel to the US frontline,
to minimize the risk
of bombing American troops.
But most of the aircraft came in
over the top of the US lines.
Bombs fell short.
Over 100 US troops were hit and killed.
Yet, despite the ferocity
of the bombardment,
when the US forces
later picked themselves up
and moved forward,
they found to their astonishment
substantial numbers
of German troops had survived.
The survivors mounted
a stubborn resistance.
As fighting raged
it looked as if the Americans would fail
to break through the German lines.
[explosions]
But then German defences crumbled.
The next morning
US tanks broke through
and moved forward
into open country.
There was now
almost no German resistance left
and the Americans
quickly pushed deeper into France.
The hill town of Coutances fell.
Then the crossroads town
of Avranches.
As the Allies pressed forward
they were helped
by change and confusion
in the German high command.
[background music over dialogues]
At the beginning of July,
three weeks after the D-Day landings,
Hitler dismissed
the German Commander-in-Chief,
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt,
for defeatism.
Von Rundstedt had made
little attempt to hide his belief
that Germany faced
an unwinnable struggle.
[background music over dialogues]
He was replaced
by Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge,
fresh from the Eastern Front
but with little knowledge
of north-western France.
[background music over dialogues]
Two weeks later,
Rommel, the second most senior
German officer on the Front
was severely injured
when his staff car
was strafed by a British fighter.
Then, with the Nazi command
already in confusion,
there was an assassination
attempt on Hitler's life.
On 20 July 1944
a disillusioned aristocratic war hero,
Colonel Claus Schenk
Graf von Stauffenberg,
planted a bomb in the planning hut
at Hitler's HQ in East Prussia.
[explosion]
Four officers were killed
but Hitler was sheltered
by a heavy, solid oak conference table
and escaped with only minor injuries.
The plot was swiftly
and brutally put down.
[speaking in foreign language]
Von Stauffenberg was shot
and his principal collaborators
put on trial.
They would later be hanged.
Hitler put a brave face on it
and visited some of the wounded
in hospital.
But it hardened still further
his distrust of his senior officers.
He would, despite his many
earlier misjudgements,
demand even greater control
over events on the battlefield.
[shout
Back in France,
General George Patton,
back in charge of a real fighting force,
ordered his troops to fan out.
They took Rennes,
Mayenne,
and headed for Le Mans.
They were now moving round
behind the German forces
still battling it out with the British
and Canadians near Caen.
[explosions and gunfire]
With the Americans to their south
and the British to their north
it seemed the German forces
in Normandy would be surrounded.
Hitler issued his usual order
that there should be no retreat
but as the Allies
squeezed in on them
the Germans began to flee.
They were remorselessly harried
by Allied aircraft and artillery.
[explosions]
The casualties were appalling.
[shout]
Finally, on 20 August 1944,
the Allied forces moving in
from both the north and south met up.
The so-called Falaise gap,
named after the nearby French village,
had been closed.
Large numbers of Germans
were trapped.
Over 10,000 more Germans
caught in the Allied pincer died.
A further 50,000 were taken prisoner.
The German Army in Western Europe
was in chaos.
[cars honking]
Meanwhile, far to the south
on the French
Mediterranean coast near Cannes
there was a second
Allied seaborne invasion.
US troops came ashore
virtually unopposed.
They were helped by paratroopers
from the Free French army,
men who had escaped
from German-occupied French territory
in Europe and North Africa.
The landing had always been
opposed by the British
who regarded it as a diversion.
But the United States
had long regarded it
as an essential part of clearing
the Germans out of France.
[crowd cheering]
The troops were greeted
by an ecstatic civilian population.
It was soon advancing rapidly
up the Rhone valley.
Lyons was liberated
on 3 September 1944.
Ten days later they reached Dijon
and made contact with Patton's forces
advancing from western France.
[shout]
German units stationed
across the region fled.
In barely three weeks
of headlong advance
the Allied invasion of Europe
had liberated most of France.
That left Paris
where French Resistance fighters
now rose up
against the German occupation.
There seemed little
to prevent the Allied onrush
from continuing to the German border.