All language subtitles for How.the.Nazis.Lost.the.War.S01E02

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] For Hitler,
more often than not,

it was a case of style
over substance.

Hitler's fantasies lead him
into the realm of the gigantic.

[narrator] But when it comes
to arming yourself

in major world conflict,

that might not be the way to go.

Suddenly, there was
a sparkle in his eyes

that seen its potential.

It was also quite useless.

[narrator] So when it comes
to weapons of war,

it pays to choose wisely.

What the Germans needed
was more of what they had

rather than a few
shiny new toys.

[woman] If you can be
the aircraft manufacturer

that wins the war
for the Fuhrer, you know, you're immortal.

[eerie music playing]

[narrator]
Everyone makes mistakes,

but when you're running
the biggest war in history

against the formidable
and resolute enemy,

you better not make too many.

But that's exactly
what Nazi Germany did,

one mistake after the other,

some small, some monumental.

But they all added up in the end

to abject defeat
at the hands of the Allies.

In the First World War,
in which Hitler fought,

Germany made
catastrophic mistakes,

sacrificing thousands of men

and ceding territory

due to inadequate machinery
and supply lines.

So why didn't Hitler
take hard learned lessons

from Germany's decimation
in World War I

and apply them to the new war?

[Clark] Hitler recognized
that Germany was a small state

with limited resources,
so he needed short sharp war,

he needed what was
to become known as blitzkrieg,

he needed new weapons,

particularly fast-moving tanks,

aircraft, airborne forces.

These are weapons
that could be packaged together

to create a psychological shock
to an enemy

and hopefully win a campaign

far more quickly
than had ever been seen before.

[narrator] Hitler
had been fatally seduced

by the brilliance
of the technology he witnessed

being developed by the
Allies during the Great War,

including the ever
larger artillery guns

and the advent of tank warfare.

He wrongly assumed
that it was this heavy armor

above all else that had produced
victory for the western forces.

To Hitler, size mattered.

Giant tanks, huge battleships,

and massive guns were his thing.

In his mind, imposing and indestructible,

these mind-blowing machines
with their devastating capabilities

and firepower
were destined to carry Germany

to a world-crushing victory,

a natural product
of Aryan ingenuity

unmatched in history.

[Clark]
We see Hitler trying to take shortcut

rather than growing the economy,

an industrial economy
that could feed the war,

expanding his army with,

um, more tanks, more aircraft

that were easy to manufacture,

we see him putting a great deal
of emphasis upon wonder weapons.

Heavier tanks with new technology

that took up huge war resources

and industrial processes
that were very complicated,

the V-weapons,
great deal of intellectual,

uh, firepower went into developing them,

as well as the jet engine for example.

But all of these weapons

were no match
for the mass and the simplicity

of the military machine
of the United Kingdom,

the United States of America,
and the Soviet Union.

[Dr. Stahel] The one thing
we have to remember here

is technology doesn't make war simpler,

it makes it exponentially
more complicated,

and therefore the technology
are just objects.

The only way to marshal this
into something

that's really going
to constitute a war-winning advantage

is to be able to integrate that
with doctrine,

with training and with application.

That requires real skills
at the human level,

everything from the people
who operate those machines

to the people who are commanding
all of this together.

And that is extremely complicated.

[man] And as the armor divisions
thunder by, the world...

[narrator] Forget reality,

for the Nazis,
it was all about appearances,

and so the idea of the Wunderwaffe

or Wonder Weapon was born.

Colorfully named
by the Joseph Goebbels Nazi

propaganda ministry,

these wonder weapons
were trumpeted as shocked

and awe super weapons

that would turn the tide
of the war and save the Reich.

[man] But Goebbels' promises
new Vengeance Weapons to his people,

huge new rocket bombs to follow V-2.

[narrator] Their propaganda
was so effective,

they even managed to convince themselves

of their capacity to win Germany
ultimate victory.

Continuing faith that these super weapons

were actual magic bullets

was a sign of the deluded Nazi leadership

especially Hitler himself.

And I think this is very important

partly because they don't see
another option.

So this becomes
very much a clutching at straws

but there is a degree of belief in this,

it is also extremely effective
at the propaganda level.

I mean, if there's one thing
that Germans have seen time and again

in the Third Reich

is seemingly
brilliant victories being won,

especially in the early periods,

when people
didn't believe this was possible,

and this is what--uh,
this is what Goebbels is gonna rely on

in trying to sustain
public support for the war effort.

[narrator] Some weapons
were rushed into service

before they were ready
with lukewarm results,

but most were so advanced or absurd

that they never made it past
the drawing board

or prototype phase.

[Dr. Stahel] But the question
we always have to remember

when we're talking about
new weaponry and new technology

is not how good is the end product

but rather how much does the R&D cost,

how much is the unit production cost

of any one of these weapons, platforms,

and what is the ultimate utility

on the battlefield
that they're going to have to find.

[Clark]
There was an increasing draw

on these wonder weapons
to provide a solution

that couldn't be found in

if you like more conventional

and traditional weapons,

and that was a drain on Germany.

It was a misdirection.

Certainly the commanders at the front

would just have liked more
of the traditional tanks,

more of the traditional aircraft,
more ammunition.

They weren't perfect by any stretch

but then nor were the Shermans
or the T-34s,

but what the Germans needed
was more of what they had

rather than a few shiny new toys

that were unreliable and took up

a huge amount of industrial war resources

and manpower to develop and build.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Before hubris,

incompetence
and overreach eventually kicked in.

The Germans enjoyed
a flying start to the war

and it was largely thanks
to the brilliant armored strategist,

Heinz Guderian,

who had studied tank tactics

and laid down strong blitzkrieg principle

long before 1939.

The idea was that highly mobile tanks

would rush in with the infantry

while combined with sufficient air cover

overwhelming the enemy with speed,

force, and advance communications,

and it worked.

Light tanks such
as the Panzer I and Panzer II

helped to make short work
of Poland and France

as they forged ahead,

supported by infantry
as well as Stuka dive bombers

and Bf 109 fighters overhead.

Hitler and his gang were elated

as these early successes
and superior tactics

surprised everyone

and saw them overcome
most of Central and Western Europe

in a devastatingly short time.

It seemed European domination
for the Reich

was just over
the next battle-scarred rise.

But soon, Britain awoke from its slumber

and the Allies dug in and fought back.

As pressure increased,

it wasn't long
before Hitler and his generals

began drifting
from Guderian's core teachings.

Bogged down on two fronts,

they were relying
more and more on the promise

of their beloved Wunderwaffe.

Their obsession with flashy, complicated,

and unreliable tanks
would eventually lead them

to being outnumbered and outmaneuvered.

The first of these tanks
was the famous Tiger.

And she came fully optioned,

but she was quickly followed
by the King Tiger,

and then the Panther,

and then the Elefant.

And once you have an Elefant,

naturally you need a Maus.

[Colin] The ultimate example
of the failed Wunderwaffe

in terms of tanks for the Nazi military

was a project called The Maus,

which was a gigantic tank

that was supposed to be the largest
and most impressive

armored weapon ever seen.

Unfortunately, it was also quite useless.

[narrator] As the father of blitzkrieg,

Heinz Guderian wrote in his memoirs,

"Hitler's fantasy led him
into the realm of the gigantic."

It was so big and heavy
that it could not fit on any rail car,

it could not cross any bridge in Europe,

and was extremely vulnerable to air attack

where its thinner armor would allow bombs

to easily penetrate its massive hull.

It was so heavy
that in order to cross rivers,

it had to have a snorkel attached to it

and it would drive across
the bottom of the river

and emerge on the other side.

[narrator] As with most weaponry spat out

by an increasingly desperate
Nazi war machine,

it was all way too rushed.

[Dr. Stahel] One would think
that in a rational state,

you would streamline
the production of vehicles

and you would have one way
of producing them,

but actually the truth
is there were multiple different series

within any one of these named tanks

and the series
are constantly being changed.

They're only producing a few hundred
at a time before they say,

"Hey, we could graft on new changes,

halt the production lines, retool,

now we'll produce the new series,

and it's still called a Panther,
it's still called a Mark IV,

but it's a different slightly tank."

[narrator] And if you thought
the Germans had a problem with tanks,

what about trucks?

[Dr. Stahel] To give you an example
of how absurd that becomes,

the German army is fighting with something

like a hundred and fifty
different models of truck.

Now trucks seems the most people are like,

"Well, that's the most
important piece of technology,"

but it absolutely is given
how fundamental movement is.

And every time
you have a truck that breaks down,

which spare part do you have?

The German army has to have a list

of something like a million spare parts
just for its trucks

because there are
so many different varieties.

Now, part of that is the different number
of German development programs

that they have over the years,

part of that is the fact
that they are accessing

all of European truck resources,

so they got Swiss trucks,
they got French trucks,

but the problem remains,

Germany is dealing with a system

that is in no way rationalized
and thereby so inefficient.

[narrator] On the other side,

the Allies had turned mid-war development

into getting serious numbers
of tested weapons

through their munitions factories

and interservice as a result
of tough and bloody battle lessons.

The German trouble with tanks

was never more exposed

than at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.

It was the last great blitzkrieg offensive

and the biggest tank battle
of World War II.

Hitler even postponed the attack

until he had all his new
and improved Panther tanks available.

[Clark]
The trouble is that although the Panther

was a very good medium-cum-heavy tank,

it was not worth Hitler postponing

his offensive for

because when it eventually
got to the fighting front,

it was there in few numbers,

it was unreliable,

the troops weren't trained

in its use in a way that it really,

um, required those troops to be trained,

and they couldn't get the Panthers

where they needed in time
for the beginning of the offensive.

And in a sense therefore,

he was putting the cart before the horse,

he was putting the technology

to the front of his campaign

thinking when in fact
there were many other priorities

that should've driven him
to an earlier attack phase.

[narrator] The smaller Russian T-34s

literally ran rings
around the German behemoths.

Engaged in mass tank assaults
and using their superior mobility,

the T-34s swarmed
all over the cumbersome Panthers,

Elefants, and Ferdinands

knocking them off easily at close range,

wrote one German officer,

"About 150 to 200 meters in front of me

appeared 15, then 30, then 40 tanks.

Finally, there were too many to count."

The amount of emphasis that Germany

put on the development and construction

of the Tiger I, the Tiger II, the Panther

was out of all proportion

to what Germany really needed

its tank production to be processing.

It needed more tanks,

perhaps of the lighter grade

that could actually do damage

and take on the mass of the T-34s,

but Germany's economy
just couldn't produce

the number of tanks that were required,

went up against the industrial might
of the Soviet Union.

[narrator] Defeat at the Battle of Kursk

meant the end
of Hitler's dream to control Russia

while providing stark proof

that bigger was not necessarily better.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Above all in World War II,

there was one indisputable fact

when it came to the critical conflict,

air cover was everything.

And because the Allies maintained
their superiority throughout,

no Wunderwaffe jet, tank, gun, or ship,

no matter how ultrahigh tech

was every free
from relentless air assault

as well as constant observation
of their every move,

and it was driving Hitler crazy.

To try and appease
the Fuhrer, the Luftwaffe

was developing
and introducing a vast array

of different groundbreaking flying weapon

but this was the problem.

[Dr. David]
You need to have a rationalization

not just in terms of
how you organize spare parts

but you need to have a rationalization

in what production lines you pursue.

I mean, ultimately
if you're interested in efficiency,

you choose a select number
of, uh, models that you wanna produce

and then invest everything
in producing as many of these as possible.

And that's not necessarily
the way Germany works.

They are in competition

so they were competing models
and competing planes

which means that even pilot schools
are not necessarily transferable,

you learn on one plane, uh,
and that means you only fly those planes.

And how many other planes can you fly

or have you got expertise in?

[narrator] And the battle
between the aircraft manufacturers

to secure defense contracts

was almost as intense and bloody

as what was happening
in the skies above Europe.

Just like the various branches,
the military subscribed

to the Wunderwaffe idea

in order to gain political favor
and industrial allocation,

so did the various manufacturers
of these weapons

such as the aircraft manufacturers
Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf

were constantly fighting with each other

in order to get allocation
for their weapons.

And undoubtedly, this competition

between the different
aircraft manufacturers

for the Nazi Germany
in order to secure the Fuhrer's favor

and his funding,

um, surely paved the way
towards Wunderwaffe as well

because they were needing to come up
with these more unique designs,

with these radical designs,

and if you can be
the aircraft manufacturer

that wins the war for the Fuhrer,

you know, you're immortal.

[narrator]
This talented industrial hothouse

worked feverishly to impress the Fuhrer

and head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goring

They emerged with incredible
cutting-edge concept such as

rocket propulsion
and even gigantic high-tech gliders.

A sensible leadership
would have concentrated

on economical but conventional designs

that could be mass-produced
with the resources at hand.

In fact, due to a lack of fuel,

many of these shiny new flying marvels

never made it into the air.

They were destroyed
while sitting at airfields

waiting for fuel that never came.

In 1944, too late to make much difference

an incredible little machine
bursts out of the clouds,

the Messerschmitt 163 Komet.

It was designed
as a rocket-powered interceptor

aimed at disrupting
and destroying enemy bombing raids.

In reality,
it was a rocket with a pilot seat.

The idea was for the Komet
to sit on the tarmac

like a spider in its web

waiting for the drone
of an Allied bomber formation above.

It had this amazing capacity for speed.

It was relatively agile

but it came with an awful lot of bugs
and a lot of danger.

So it had the issue with the fact
that it needed to land

in its early prototype days on a skid,

which of course was incredibly precarious.

The fact that its fuel were so corrosive

that it could burn through human flesh

was of course a catastrophe.

And ultimately it sort of had potential

that really couldn't be realized

because of the pressures
that were mounting

on the National Socialist regime.

[Colin] It was so fast and so powerful
that Nazi pilots only had

about one or two seconds of firing time

as they approached the Allied bombers.

The tremendous speed of the Komet
also came at a cost of fuel.

It could only stay in the air
for about seven minutes.

Afterwards, it had to glide back to base

and perform a belly landing,

as the Komet did not have
any undercarriage.

It lost its wheels as soon as
it took off in the air.

[narrator] Brilliant it may have been,

but despite all the engineering
and technical breakthroughs,

the Komet finished up shooting down

a mere 16 Allied bombers,

a massive failure
for such a pioneering aircraft.

If it had come earlier,

another fantastic jet fighter

that had the potential to change
the course of the air war

was the Messerschmitt
262 Swallow jet fighter.

How could such a cutting-edge aircraft,

possibly the best fighter
to ever enter the war

and one that ultimately shot down

over 500 enemy aircraft

still end up on the long list
of Wunderwaffe blunders?

Contrary to popular belief,

the jet engine was actually available

before the outbreak of World War II.

The Germans had a working prototype

in 1938 and 1939.

However, these engines
are tremendously unreliable

and at times provided not enough thrust

to even get the airframe off the ground.

The initial BMW engines
could only last about five to six hours

before they had to be torn down.

Despite these weaknesses,
this was a propulsion system

that was deemed the future
for fighter aircraft

and hence the Germans developed
the Me 262 Swallow.

The Me 262 was a little bit held back
by the fact that

Hitler didn't fully commit
to its development until 1942,

when he'd seen it
in its second demonstration

and its second test flight,

and suddenly there was a sparkle
in his eyes that seen its potential.

But the problem is, is that Hitler
saw it differently to the Luftwaffe.

[Colin] He deemed that
the Me 262 should be a bomber

as there was a need currently
for a fast tactical bomber

to support the Wehrmacht forces in Europe

Unfortunately, the design of the 262

up to that point
was for a high performance,

high altitude fighter,

and it thus had
to be completely redesigned

in order to be a bomber aircraft
or a strike aircraft.

[narrator] Added to that,
it was also vulnerable on landing,

as it had to slow right down
on a very long approach.

If the Allied Mosquito
and Typhoon fighters

didn't pick it off then,

they attacked it on the ground
where most Swallows were destroyed.

So the Me 262 could have changed
the tide of the Second World War

but it was simply held back far
too often by, you know,

delays in its production,
in delivering engines,

in making all the necessary modifications

in order to make it operational,

and it simply appeared
far too late in the war

in order to make the sizeable impact

that it could have been capable of making.

[narrator] Once again,

even though it was flawed,

so many things were right
about this wonder weapon,

but there was never enough time
to properly test them to find it,

and the Swallow
ultimately proved next to useless.

New technology needs time to develop,

to trial, to bed in,

and then to have a doctrine
built around it for its use.

It needs to be bought
into by the military.

The Germans rushed
through their technology.

A lot of their weapons
that they eventually used

were still developmental pieces.

Had they started this process

of developing their technology earlier,

then the scenario could have changed.

[narrator] In 1943,

a rather desperate Hermann Goring

presented to the German aviation industry

a novel challenge.

[Victoria] Goring envisioned this sort of
three times a thousand goal

so that his bombers would be able to

carry a payload of a thousand kilograms

that they would be able to travel
a thousand kilometers

and that they would be able to
fly at a thousand kilometers per hour.

[Colin] This was, to traditional
prop aircraft, impossible.

And the only airframe
that was able to do it was jet-propelled.

This leads to the development,
the lengthy development

of the Horten 229,

which was to be
a high altitude strike aircraft

that was able to fulfill this requirement
of the three by 1000.

The Horten 229 was revolutionary

in the fact that
it was a flying wing design,

it did not have any rudders,

was very, very fast,
extremely maneuverable

but it took forever to develop.

[narrator] Development was cut short
when during flight,

one of the engines caught fire.

The test pilot was killed
as the plane burst into flames

and spiraled into the ground,

as ultimately did the entire project.

But the Wunderwaffe that struck most fear

into the British people

were the infamous V-1 and V-2 rockets.

These were quintessential terror weapons

or revenge weapons
as German propaganda liked to call them.

[Prof. Lloyd]
I wanna say German fighting methods

were always about having
a psychological impact on the enemy.

So if one looks at blitzkrieg,

the speed of the tanks
was very, very important.

The same is true of the V weapons,

not so much in their precision
but in their randomness.

The doodlebug could fall
pretty much anywhere.

The V-2 rocket was quite unreliable.

They were great psychological weapons

but probably at the wrong time.

By the time the doodlebug
and the V-2 were being used,

we're seeing that the British people

had made such a sacrifice

that they weren't going to be cowered

and demoralized fundamentally

by these wonder weapons flying over

Southern England.

They would see the war through.

And so in a sense,
these wonder weapons came too late

to have the psychological impact

that Hitler desired them to have.

[narrator] The V-1 was in essence

an early cruise missile.

Hitler turned to these flying bombs

as retaliation
for the massive German loses,

inflicted by Allied bombing raids
in cities such Hamburg.

The V-1, however, was very unreliable

and remained wildly inaccurate

throughout its deployment.

[man] It was powered by a ramjet engine

burning ordinary low grade petrol.

Across the engine air intake
was an array of small flaps.

Air was forced these flaps
by the forward speed of the machine.

A fuel was injected and the mixture
ignited by a simple sparkplug.

It sounded nearly like a car engine

with a fractured silencer.

[narrator] Without adequate
launch capabilities,

the V-1 rockets had to be launched

by catapults and ramps
from the French Coast

towards targets in England and Belgium.

The rocket featured
a rudimentary guidance system onboard

to carry its warhead to the target.

Though these flying bombs were fast,

many of the Allied fighters
like the Mustangs,

updated Spitfires and Tempests

could just about keep up with them.

[explosion]

[narrator] Providing opportunities
for it to be shot down

or for it to be wing tipped off course.

[explosion]

[narrator] But despite
so many missing the target,

the weapon caused fear
and mayhem in Britain

with children evacuated
from the cities to the countryside.

But there was no defense against
the more advanced version, the V-2.

An early ballistic missile,

it smashed into cities
with a ton of explosives onboard.

It was the most powerful weapon
ever deployed until the atomic bomb.

[Dr. Stahel] There's absolutely no
question that the V-2 rocket probably bes

among all of them
is a remarkable scientific achievement.

But the real question is,
what does it cost to develop a V-2 rocket?

And what is its real military utility?

[man] The V-2 uses over 12,000 pounds
of liquid oxygen and alcohol.

Though it has no explosive head,
the fuel renders it highly lethal.

[Colin] These incredibly advanced weapons

that took immense resources and manpower

and scientific knowhow to create

were in a sense ineffectual
in any way in affecting the war.

They were perhaps the best example
of the failed Wunderwaffe

and how they did not save
Germany from defeat.

[narrator] The stark truth
is that more force laborers died

building and testing
Germany's secret weapon

than were killed from its deployment
and impacts in Britain.

[Dr. Stahel]
Postwar, the United States Air Force

does a study of these V weapons

to try and work out well
how much was invested in them,

and the conclusion it comes to

is that if the Germans
hadn't pursued the V weapons

and instead invested all of that financin

and industrial resource
into just producing fighters,

they calculated Germany would have been
able to produce another 25,000 fighters.

And the disparity there is huge

and it reflects the choices
that are being made

in the Third Reich

and that grasping at straws
that wonder weapons

might in fact actually turn the war,

when in fact that wasn't gonna happen.

[narrator]
Apart from the famous V rockets,

the Nazis wasted their time
on a number of other futile

wonder weapon missiles and projectiles,

even air-to-air missiles,
none of which ever reached combat.

Ultimately, Goring's Luftwaffe
failed to own the skies over Europe.

And without winning in the air,

the Nazis were always
staring the barrel of defeat.

A lack of decent frontline fighters,
bombers,

and attack aircraft to replace
obsolete machines proved telling.

As historian Gerhard Weinberg put it,

the Germans would have been
better off in World War II

if they had not built a navy at all

and devoted those resources to the army
and Luftwaffe.

From the beginning, the Kriegsmarine

was no match for the British
and United States navies,

both in strength and numbers,

at least as far as the surface fleet went

On February the 14th, 1939,

the 823-foot Bismarck
was launched at Hamburg.

For Hitler,
the state of the art battleship

heralded the rebirth
of the German surface fleet.

In 1941, she was ordered
to break out into the Atlantic

where she began a brief raiding spree.

But her movement in being detected

and almost the entire British fleet
was hot on her tail.

She was intercepted near Iceland

by two British battleships
where after an intense battle,

the British HMS Hood,

one of the most advanced
of the Royal Navy's battlecruisers

exploded and sank
with over 2,000 crew lost.

It was a serious
and bitter blow for the Royal Navy.

Two days later,
the Bismarck was sighted and attacked

by British aircraft again and again

until she was reduced to a smoking wreck.

The pride of the German fleet
sank with almost all-hands.

After the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941,

Hitler was afraid to use
the rest of his surface fleet.

He had powerful surface vessels
such as the Bismarck sister ship,

the Tirpitz or battlecruisers

such as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

But he did not readily
commit them to frontline battle.

The sinking of the Bismarck
was a serious blow to his pride

and he did not wanna suffer that again.

So therefore,
the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau

spent most of the war in berth,
in port, in dock,

or in secondary conflicts.

The Tirpitz itself constantly
was in dock, being shuffled around.

Despite the fact that he didn't
commit them to frontline battle,

Hitler lost all three of those vessels.

The Scharnhorst was sunk by the HMS Howe

and other cruisers
off the coast to Russia.

The Gneisenau was constantly
a target for Allied vessels,

so much so that Hitler got fed up
and sank it as a block vessel

and took its cannons off to form
a defensive armament at the Atlantic Wall.

And the Tirpitz was constantly
bombed and being refitted

until the end of the war.

[narrator] As the war years went on,

Hitler became increasingly disillusioned
with his surface fleet.

There's no question
that the German Navy should have been

configured entirely differently
than it was under Adolf Hitler.

Uh... But, you know,
like his predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm II,

Adolf Hitler was a very weak

and insecure and vainglorious figure

who saw his status reflected
in the size of warships.

So he wanted big battleships, you know,

big showy battleships, like the Tirpitz,

like the Bismarck to show, you know,
Nazi progress

and Nazi might and Nazi power.

But these things were useless against,

you know, better armed
and better equipped navies and air forces

like the Royal Navy
and the Royal Air Force,

which could strike these things
from the air or from--

by submarines or surface fleets
and destroy them.

He would have been far better off
investing his money in submarines.

[narrator] From 1943,
the focus of the Kriegsmarine

was directed beneath the waves,

into the feared wolf packs

patrolling the Atlantic
and the seas around Britain.

The fact that Hitler viewed
his attack submarines as shining lights

on his marine forces
was made crystal clear

when the head of the U-boat fleet
Karl Donitz

replaced Admiral Raeder
as commander of the Kriegsmarine.

Donitz had previously said

if he had 300 U-boats or Unterseeboot,

he could strangle Britain and win the war

No wonder these were the weapons

that could have proved decisive
against the Allies.

[Colin] The Kriegsmarine
were constantly trying to perfect

the designs of the U-boats.

The first Type VII was more
of a coastal going U-boat,

it had limited armament, limited range.

The Type IX was a much larger
ocean going U-boat

that could actually reach
the North American shores.

And these designs were constantly
being revised throughout the war.

[narrator]
U-boats were fitted with special tiles

to mask the sub's acoustic signature.

Snorkels were developed to allow
the U-boats to recharge

their batteries underwater

without revealing
their position on the surface.

But even though Hitler
was a fan of the U-boats,

the sneaky subs
weren't exactly the type of weapon

that reflected the glamorous
showy image of the Nazi machine.

The more exotic and high visibility
aircraft Goring was pushing,

though far less affective,

were a much glamorous
propaganda proposition.

So that's where the funding went,

money that Donitz so desperately needed

to keep his U-boats competitive.

Another example of how
the three arms of the German forces

fought and undermined each other,

critically hollowing out
the entire war effort.

They all produced more fanciful
and exciting weapons

to show Hitler
in order to gain that favor.

New jets, new aircraft, new tanks,

all these very exciting

and technologically advanced weapons
were produced

mainly to gain his favor
and gain military allocation.

[narrator] But if you can't have
massive and showy, how about tiny?

The Germans even managed
to waste time in mini-subs,

not one but several varieties,

Neger, Seehund, Biber.

Some were inhuman deathtraps
where the submariners

needed to be administered drugs
to even get them to go onboard.

[Norman] These mini submarines
were manned by one or two sailors,

they would go down in those mini-subs.

And the plan which was executed worse

that they would spend five days

to a week in those mini-subs,

travel all the way to the Thames Estuary,

even to travel to United States
and torpedo American ships

or launch bombs
against Manhattan for example.

Problem was that if you are alone

in one of these mini submarines
for a week,

you basically die
as soon as you fall asleep

because you cannot operate
your vehicle anymore.

So they had to stay awake
for extremely long periods of time,

longer than even methamphetamine allows.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] In 1937,

Hitler met
with industrialist Gustav Krupp.

He liked what he heard.

He was spooking the design
of the 80-centimeter railway gun

known as the Schwerer Gustav

or Heavy Gustav,
named after Gustav Krupp himself.

It was to be the world's biggest gun.

It's not known how Gustav
felt about the moniker

but he shouldn't have worried

because construction workers nicknamed
the monster gun Dora and it stuck.

Predictably, the construction deadline
of 1940 was missed.

[Colin] The Gustav or Dora
as it was affectionately

called by the troops that used it

was a gigantic 80-centimeter railway gun.

This was an antiquated idea
for a modern problem

to deliver high ordinance
on an enemy target.

It was used a few times
on the Eastern Front

until it warped its barrel,

it was rebuilt and never deployed again.

[narrator] Accounts vary as to whether
there were actually two guns built,

the Gustav and the Dora

or was it just the one gun with two names

As far as the Wehrmacht was concerned,
one was probably enough.

[Dr. Stahel] More and more Goebbels talks
about these illusive wonder weapons,

more and more he frames them
in the terms of Endsieg,

the idea of final victory.

And more people don't really know
what they are,

he can show small snippets of rockets
being launched and people think,

"Wow. Okay. So these are a real thing,
we are going to get the wonder weapons,"

and in spite of everything that
they're seeing, the reality of the war,

the closing in of the borders,
there's always this reservoir of hope.

At some point, we're gonna get these

magical weapons
that are gonna turn the tide.

And have we seen this before in the war?
We have.

[narrator] In the end, the Wunderwaffe

did achieve a critical and lasting legacy

But not the glorious version Hitler
had been counting on.

Instead, they became
a byword for false hope,

unrealistic expectation, and wasted money

They were ridiculed by western satirists
and became a feature

of the whispered gallows humor
among the defeated German populist.

So how did it all go so wrong
for the Germans

from a position of superior technology,

a subservient population,

a highly motivated warrior ethos,

and early tactical brilliance,

a blind belief in technology
as the ultimate savior of the Reich

became a critical drag
on the Nazi war effort.

The Wunderwaffe was by and large

a massive marketing or propaganda ploy,

they were the weapons
that were gonna win the war for Germany

when other weapons
were seemed to be failing.

Unfortunately,
this really was not the case.

What Germany needed was sufficient number
of good enough weapons,

not the best but good enough

in order to produce in sufficient numbers

and have them be effective
and reliable on a large scale,

so they can fight
their multiple opponents that they had.

[narrator]
This premise may seem obvious enough

but the logic somehow eluded the Nazis,

at least it eluded Hitler.

They've made a fetish
out of military technology,

that's why the Wochenschau--

When we see these propaganda films
that Goebbels has been showing,

in the early part of the war,
it always emphasized technology.

The idea of the resurgent Luftwaffe
coming in and winning campaigns,

he has the idea to fit cameras
onto the front of the plane

so you get this magnificent footage

of them conducting these bombings
and these Stuka raids and so on.

Well, they're doing the same thing again.

And when people are questioning
at the most basic level,

where are we going with the war?

The two answers you get are,

"Well, we still have Adolf Hitler

and there is the potential
for these wonder weapons."

Who knows what they are?

[narrator] The truth was
that the Nazi war room

was a spiraling echo chamber
of illusion and vanity,

a place where Hitler
and his crazed visions

were fed by sycophants and yes men.

The engineers and industrialists
often found themselves

in an impossible situation,

forced to pander
with positive reports and predictions

just to keep a contract, keep favor,

and even just to stay alive.

From a brilliant start to the war,
within a few years,

through courageous resistance
at home and aboard,

the Allies had ground the Germans down.

By 1943, all Germany had left
in their arsenal was the stoked fears

about the coming wonder weapons
with wild claims of mass destruction,

vengeance,
and ultimate victory for Germany.

When what they needed were designs
that were simple and cost-effective

and advanced enough to be reliably

deployed in combat
in large enough numbers.

If they had done this,
things might have turned out differently.

Fortunately for us,
the Nazis failed to do any of it.

[explosions]

[closing theme music playing]