All language subtitles for World.War.II.in.Colour.S01E02.Lightning.War.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

During the afternoon
of August 31st, 1939,

German forces made
their final preparations

for the invasion of Poland.

Aircrews studied their targets,

tanks moved to
their assault positions.

Then, in the early hours
of September 1st,

German soldiers dressed
in Polish uniforms

attacked a radio station on
the German side of the border,

leaving behind some bodies.

This was the "aggression"

which Hitler later
used to justify his attack.

At eight that morning,
German troops pushed aside

the Polish frontier barriers
and mobile forces raced forward.

Two days later,
on September 3rd,

Britain and France
declared war,

honoring their promise
to stand by Poland.

But by then, the Poles
were in deep trouble.

They were not only outnumbered,

but facing a new form of warfare

for which they were
ill-prepared - Blitzkrieg.

In 1939, the German army
consisted of 1.5 million men.

Its elite were the Panzers,

tanks, six armored divisions
and four light divisions

intended for reconnaissance,
a total of 2,400 tanks.

These had been designed to break
through an enemy's defenses

and strike deep,

cutting communications
and spreading confusion.

Enemy strong points
would be bypassed,

left to the following
infantry to mop up.

The new German air force,
the Luftwaffe,

was also designed
for Blitzkrieg.

It had 2,500 aircraft
lined up against the Poles.

The most notorious was the
Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber.

It was a form of
flying artillery,

making pinpoint attacks

in support of the
fast-moving ground forces.

The Poles could muster
just 600 planes.

On the ground,
it was just as bad.

Poland's army was just
500,000 strong.

It had only 880 tanks.

It even had 11 brigades
of cavalry,

lances and horses
against armor.

But it wasn't just numbers
that gave the Germans
their advantage.

They used their Panzers
in a radically new way

as separate,
hard-striking units.

The Polish tanks were dispersed
to support their infantry.

The Poles' task had been made
even more difficult

by the German takeover
of Czechoslovakia.

The west of the country
including the capital, Warsaw,

was now surrounded
on three sides

by German-controlled territory.

This geographical advantage
was essential to Germany's
grand plan.

The task of the first
thrust of the tanks

was to create
an initial breakthrough.

But actually winning the war
depended on deep pincer
movements

designed to surround
and crush the enemy.

These would come
from Army Group North,

under General Fedor von Bock.

He would launch two thrusts
from north-east Germany

and East Prussia.

Army Group South, under
General Gerd von Rundstedt,

would launch two more
from Silesia and Slovakia.

The aim would be for the
pincers to meet near Warsaw

and Brest-Litovsk.

From the start it went well
for the Germans.

The Polish air force
was effectively eliminated

within the first two days.

The Panzers cut through
and struck deep.

And the Stukas
and medium bombers

proved devastatingly effective.

The Poles were sliced apart,

pinned into pockets which
yielded vast numbers
of prisoners.

Legend has it that
some Polish cavalry units

gallantly tried to
attack the Panzers,

but it was futile.

They were just brushed aside.

By September 8th,
the inner pincers had met up.

German troops were advancing
on the outskirts of Warsaw.

On September 17th, the outer
pincers met at Brest-Litovsk.

On the same day,
Soviet forces crossed
the eastern Polish frontier,

as part of the agreement reached
between Hitler and Stalin

in the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

The Polish army was now
in full retreat,

its government fleeing abroad.

Warsaw, however, fought on.

Its defenders rejected
a German offer to surrender,

so the full fury of the German
war machine was turned on it.

Watching it all
was Adolf Hitler,

who had followed close
behind his conquering army.

On September 27th,
Warsaw surrendered.

The next day, the victors,
carved Poland up

according to
the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

The Soviet Union annexed
slightly over half
the country to the east.

Germany took the rest.

Both regimes began
rounding up anyone

who might present
a danger in future.

Many were murdered.

And for the first time,
the Germans revealed

how they would behave against
those peoples in Eastern Europe

whom they considered inferior.

They sent in the Einsatzgruppen,

special SS squads,
to round up Jews.

Most were forced into ghettos
in the major cities

where they would be
starved to death.

Others were executed
on the spot.

This was, however,
the end of the Polish army.

More than 50,000 troops escaped
and eventually reached France.

There a provisional government
had been formed

by General Wladyslaw Sikorski.

The Poles would fight on
bravely from abroad.

In Britain, the air raid sirens
had sounded within minutes

of Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain's announcement

that hostilities had begun.

In fact, despite their
politicians' guarantees
of Polish sovereignty,

Britain and France had done
very little to help Poland.

As Hitler had gambled,
they had no idea what to do

once they had actually
declared war.

Both countries had begun
mobilization.

Air raid precautions
were speeded up.

Anti-aircraft guns
were placed in major cities.

Shelters were erected.

Soon children were
being evacuated.

Everyone had to carry gas masks
and a blackout was introduced.

The British Army began to deploy
its 100,000 strong expeditionary
force to northern France.

French troops did advance
a little way inside
the German border.

But they refused to move
beyond the protective
cover of artillery range.

The initiative was still
firmly in Hitler's hands,

and he at least knew precisely
what he was going to do next.

The Blitzkrieg against Poland

had been a stunning success
for Adolf Hitler.

He had subdued an entire country
in less than four weeks,

and he was hungry for more.

So he ordered his generals
to plan to attack the British

and French in November 1939,

less than two months
after the fall of Poland.

His general staff was appalled.

The bulk of the Germany army
was still out east

and had to be moved west.

And there had been some serious
losses in the Polish campaign.

Lessons had to be learned.

Polish anti-tank guns had
destroyed a division's worth

of the lightly armored Panzers.

A quarter of the aircraft
used had been lost.

The Panzers were too light
and unreliable,

and they had frequently outrun
both their supply columns

and the marching infantry.

Reluctantly,
after furious arguments,

Hitler agreed to wait
until the following spring.

Meanwhile, his enemies were
also learning lessons.

Britain had thought that
bombers would be a key weapon

in the coming conflict.

But when on September 4th,
Britain's Royal Air Force

made a daylight raid
on German shipping,

seven of the 30 bombers
were shot down.

It soon became clear that this
wasn't a one-off misfortune.

In some raids, over half
the aircraft were lost.

British bombers just
weren't up to the job.

So the RAF switched to
night raids

and they decided to drop
not bombs but leaflets,

so as not to provoke
retaliation.

So, with the Blitzkrieg stalled
and the air war quiet,

the focus now went to the one
remaining arena, the sea.

Germany's navy was still
in the middle of an ambitious

building program that wasn't due
to finish until 1948.

The commander of its submarine
arm, Admiral Karl Doenitz,

planned to cut Britain's supply
routes across the Atlantic.

For this he wanted
300 ocean-going submarines.

But he had just 38.

Nevertheless, Doenitz ensured

that all available U-boats
were at sea on September 3rd,

the first day of the war
against Britain.

That evening, believing it to
be an armed merchant cruiser,

U-30 sank the liner "Athenia"
without any warning.

112 lives were lost,
including 26 American citizens.

The Royal Navy dwarfed
its German counterpart.

It had 12 battleships.
Germany had none.

It had five aircraft carriers.
Germany again had none.

So after the "Athenia",

Britain declared a total
blockade of German ports.

But, for all its size,

the Royal Navy had
too few escort vessels.

Many merchant ships
had to sail alone,

and by the end of 1939
more than 100 had been sunk.

It quickly became apparent
that the British had

woefully underestimated
the submarine threat.

On September 17th, U-29 sank
the British aircraft carrier
"Courageous".

On October 14th, the battleship
"Royal Oak" was sunk

when U-47 slipped
through the defenses

of the British main fleet base
at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys.

Meanwhile, Germany's
small surface fleet

had also been unleashed
against the sea lanes.

In the North Sea,
the battlecruisers
"Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau"

intercepted a convoy
on November 22nd.

They sank its escort,

the armed merchant cruiser
"Rawalpindi".

But it was the pocket
battleship "Graf Spee"

which caused
the greatest problems.

Designed specifically
for commerce raiding,

its 11-inch guns
could overwhelm any ship

fast enough to overtake it,

and it had the speed to
escape from any battleship.

The "Graf Spee" had slipped
away from Germany before
hostilities began.

Soon it was cutting loose
in the South Atlantic
and Indian Oceans.

Finally, three British cruisers,

"Exeter", "Ajax" and "Achilles",

intercepted it off
the River Plate

on the east coast
of South America.

The British ships damaged
the pocket battleship so badly

that it had to take refuge

in the neutral Uruguayan port
of Montevideo.

The Germans were then
fooled into thinking

that a more powerful
British force had arrived.

When the "Graf Spee"
was commanded to leave port,

her captain scuttled her
rather than risk annihilation.

Back home, the Royal Navy crews
were feted as heroes.

But this was just about
the only obvious success enjoyed

by the British
or French armed forces

during the winter of 1939.

Though, the British did enjoy
one secret victory

in the technological war
which was to prove vital.

As soon as the war began,

Britain began to lose
large numbers of ships
to German mines.

What was so mysterious

was that the ships didn't seem
to have actually struck them.

The mines had simply exploded
as the ships passed nearby.

Then, on the night
of November 22nd, 1939,

a German plane was
spotted dropping a mine

at low tide
in the Thames Estuary.

Disarmed and rescued
from the mud,

the mine was found to be set off
by the magnetic signature

of a ship passing close by.

The solution was to reduce
a ship's magnetic signature

by hanging a copper cable
round the hull

and then passing
an electric current through it,

a process called degaussing.

Once degaussing
was applied to all ships,

the danger from the magnetic
mine was massively reduced.

But otherwise, as 1940 began,
the war was quiet.

The two sides did little during
the winter except to patrol,

train and try to keep warm,

for it was
a particularly cold one.

An American journalist
called it the "Phony War".

For the Germans
it was the Sitzkrieg.

In the spring,
the British Expeditionary Force

took up its position towards
the left of the front

on the Belgian border.

But it was dwarfed
by its French ally.

France had some 100 divisions

along the Belgian and German
frontiers or in reserve nearby.

This imbalance meant that the
British commander, Lord Gort,

had to go along with ideas
of the French General
Maurice Gammelin.

And these were
entirely defensive.

French hopes were pinned
on the massive ramparts
of the Maginot Line.

A series of fortifications, it
ran from Switzerland to Belgium

along the French/German border.

The Maginot Line was considered
to be completely impassable

and would ensure that French
territory would remain safe.

But otherwise,
the Allies had no idea

of how actually
to defeat Germany.

Instead they brought up
their forces

and prepared for a repeat
of World War One.

They would blockade Germany
to sap its strength.

And they would dig in,

ready to grind down the assault
which they knew must come.

None of their commanders
seemed to consider

that the Germans might
have totally different ideas,

or that the next moves might
come in a completely
different arena.

Scandinavia.

On November 30th, 1939,

a new theater of war
was opened up.

The Soviet Union invaded
its tiny neighbor Finland.

Finland had only achieved
independence from the Russians
in 1918, and hated them.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was
convinced that one day the Finns

might allow the Germans in
to attack Leningrad

and the vital
Arctic port of Murmansk.

The Red Army outnumbered
its Finnish opponents

by more than ten to one.

The invasion should
have been a walkover.

But its leadership had been
devastated by Stalin's
terrible purges.

The Finns, were led by
General Gustaf Mannerheim.

He fought back using
hit-and-run tactics

amid the deep snow,
often on skis.

The Soviet troops,
confused and poorly led,

suffered massive losses.

Finland's gallant resistance

caught the imagination
of the British and French.

Soon they were planning to
send help via Norway and Sweden.

The fact that this might suck
two neutral countries into
the war was ignored.

But a renewed Soviet offensive
at the beginning of February

broke the Finnish
defensive line.

In early March, the Finns had
to cede territory to Stalin.

By now, Hitler too had become
interested in Scandinavia.

The Nazi war machine relied
on iron ore from Sweden.

In the winter months, the only
way it could get to Germany

was via the Norwegian
port of Narvik.

If the Allies landed in Norway,

this vital supply
could be cut off.

So he ordered plans to be
prepared for an invasion
of Norway.

Denmark, which was in the way,
would also have to be seized.

The Norway theater heated up
on February 16th, 1940.

The British destroyer "Cossack"
boarded the German
supply ship "Altmark"

in a Norwegian fjord
to release prisoners.

Then on April 9th, German troops
began landing at five ports,

Oslo, Kristiansand,

Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik.

At the same time men of
their newly formed German
parachute division

seized Stavanger
and Oslo airfields.

The Norwegian defenders
were swiftly overwhelmed.

As were the Danes.

German forces occupied
their country within 24 hours.

In Norway,
the Germans moved swiftly

to link up their beachheads
and seize all the major towns.

In the air, the Luftwaffe
had total control.

The Allies now responded.

A landing force was dispatched
to recapture Narvik.

French and Norwegian forces
achieved this on May 28th.

But a substantial German force
was now approaching.

So, six weeks later, the Allies
abandoned Norway to its fate.

Hitler had spent most
of that winter and spring

at his country retreat,
the Berghof in southern Bavaria.

For him, the events in
Scandinavia were a side show.

Instead he was preparing
for his next major Blitzkrieg,

against Britain and France.

The first plan
his generals brought him

had a familiar ring to it.

The Germans
would advance into Belgium,

aiming to swing down
towards Paris.

It was a repeat
of the Schlieffen Plan,

which the Germans had used
at the start of World War One.

The Allies were expecting this,

and their main strategic
discussion was how to
prepare for it.

When the Germans attacked,
the Allies planned

that their forces
west of the Maginot Line

would swing forward into Belgium
to hold them on the shorter

and more defensible line
of the rivers Dyle and Meuse.

Then on January 10th, 1940,

a German liaison aircraft lost
its way and crashed in Belgium.

A copy of the German plan
was found.

This convinced the Allies that
their Dyle plan must be right,

and they deployed
their troops accordingly.

Unfortunately, the same event

made the Germans alter
their ideas entirely.

Chief planner
General Erich von Manstein

had always thought
the original plan unimaginative.

He was worried
that the German forces

would become bogged down
as in World War One,

and that his country would
lose a long, drawn-out war.

So he proposed to Hitler
that the main thrust

should be made at the point
where the Maginot Line ended,

and where the Allies
were most vulnerable

as their western armies
moved forward.

Virtually all Germany's Panzers
would be gathered

opposite the Ardennes
in south-east Belgium.

The Allies considered
this hilly and wooded area

almost impassable for tanks.

It was therefore
lightly defended.

The plan was to drive
deep behind the Allied armies

which would have
advanced into Belgium.

They could then cut them off.

And all the forces
sitting in the Maginot Line

would be bypassed.

It was a high-risk strategy.

The German armor could become
stuck in the forest,

but Hitler loved it.

So the German forces
were redeployed without
the Allies knowing.

The Allies meanwhile prepared
for their long defensive war.

In addition to the formidable
barrier of the Maginot Line,

they had a slight advantage
both in manpower -

some 110 divisions
available against 95 German -

and in armor - about 3,000
vehicles against 2,700.

The French also
had the better tanks.

Their 32-ton Char B
had both 75mm and 47mm guns.

Its disadvantage was that the
main gun was mounted in the hull

and so was difficult to aim.

The other gun was
in a one-man turret

from which the commander
had to control the tank

as well as man the gun.

In contrast,
the newest German design,

the 17-ton Panzer Mark IV,

had a 75mm gun in
a spacious three-man turret,

so its crew
could work as a team,

though only about
100 were available.

The other main French tanks
also had guns

which matched those
of their German counterparts,

but again the French
had the one-man turret.

The one area where the Germans
had a clear advantage
was in the air.

The Luftwaffe had 2,000 bombers.

The Allies just 800.

The Luftwaffe
had 4,000 fighters,

including the ultra-modern
Messerschmitt Bf-109.

They faced just 2,500
mainly older aircraft.

The Royal Air Force did have
about 800 excellent Spitfire

and Hurricane fighters,

but it was keen to keep them
for home defense.

But the main difference
between the two armies
was in philosophy.

Everything the Germans did was
focused on the possibilities
of Blitzkrieg.

All their armor was grouped
in ten independent
Panzer divisions.

But the French were
preparing for a repeat

of the static fighting
of World War One.

They saw tanks
as infantry support

and distributed them piecemeal
instead of concentrating them.

They had noticed the success
of Germany's Panzers in Poland,

so they were assembling
three armored divisions,

but by the start of hostilities,
none was fully operational.

Two totally different ways
of military thinking

were about to go head to head.

Blitzkrieg against
static warfare.

The summer of 1940 would
soon show which was correct.

On May 10th, 1940,

Winston Churchill became
Prime Minister of Britain.

He couldn't have picked
a worse day.

That was the day Hitler chose
to launch his Blitzkrieg

against France and Britain.

At dawn, a whole
German airborne division

parachuted into Holland
to seize bridges and airfields.

Simultaneously the massive
Belgian fortress of Eban Emael
was assaulted.

Paratroop engineers
were dropped on top

by swooping German gliders.

They swiftly silenced its guns.

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe
attacked Dutch and Belgian
air bases.

Then the frontier barriers
were pushed aside...

and Hitler's Army Group B
under General Fedor von Bock

now drove into
Holland and Belgium.

As planned, the French
and British armies along
the Belgian border

moved forward to their
new defensive line

along the Dyle and Meuse rivers.

But none of the Allied
commanders seemed
to have noticed

that German Army Group A,

which had the bulk
of the Panzers,

after brushing aside
the Belgian frontier troops,

had now begun driving
through the hills and woods

of the Ardennes to their south.

Meanwhile, the Germans were
pushing rapidly through Holland.

The obsolete Dutch army
was no match

for the highly-tuned
German war machine.

And it was under continual
heavy air attack

by the Luftwaffe, which
roamed the skies unchallenged.

On May 14th, the Germans
demanded the surrender
of the port of Rotterdam.

A large force of bombers took
off as the Dutch hesitated.

While they were airborne,
the Dutch agreed to
surrender the city

but apparently a recall message
never reached the bombers.

Rotterdam was devastated.

The Dutch capitulated
the next day.

Then came the hammer blow.

The thing that British and
French planners had thought
impossible had happened.

German Panzers
were through the Ardennes

and had reached the Meuse
by the evening of May 12th.

Among the first
to arrive at Sedan,

well north of the Maginot Line,

were the men of
the 19th Panzer Corps

commanded by
General Heinz Guderian,

fresh from the triumphs
in Poland.

Guderian now showed how
Blitzkrieg should be done.

He ignored the troops
in the Maginot Line.

And he didn't wait for his
own infantry to catch up.

He pushed straight on.

The next day, assault troops
crossed the River Meuse.

Engineers began building
bridges for the armor

while under heavy French fire.

On the 14th,
the Panzers began crossing.

That evening, Guderian's
bridgehead was eight miles deep.

The French troops
stuck in the Maginot Line

were too immobile to intervene.

Allied bombers made
despairing attempts

to destroy the German bridges.

But most were shot down.

All the while German artillery
pounded the French defenses

while the Stukas screamed in.

Just three days after
the attack had been launched,

the French defenders
around Sedan broke.

Guderian's Panzers
began racing westwards.

By nightfall, they had
advanced more than 40 miles

behind the northern group
of Allied armies.

These had been holding firm
on the Dyle Line

but now the French supreme
commander, General Gamelin,

realized that they were
about to be encircled.

He ordered them to fall back.

This sudden decision to withdraw
bewildered the Allied troops,

who had no idea what was
going on behind them.

As they fell back,
they were hindered

by a growing flood of refugees
clogging the roads.

That day, the French
Prime Minister Paul Reynaud
phoned Churchill.

He said, "We are beaten,
we have lost the battle."

But for all the brilliance
of the Blitzkrieg,

the Germans were vulnerable.

As the Panzers raced westwards,

they created an ever-longer
corridor just a few miles wide.

The Allies realized that this
was open to counterattack.

The bulk of the German army
was still totally dependent

on horse-power or
its own feet for transport,

so the gap between
rampaging Panzers

and the follow-up infantry
grew with every hour.

On May 17th,
Colonel Charles de Gaulle,

commander of one
of the newly-formed
French armored divisions,

made the first of
two attempts to cut through
the German line near Crecy.

But the cumbersome French
command system meant that units

were sent into battle piecemeal
not in a co-ordinated thrust.

The Germans had little
difficulty warding off
both attacks,

inflicting heavy casualties.

It seemed that nothing
could now stop Guderian.

He plunged on, further
and further into France.

By the 19th, his lead units
were past Peronne.

On the 20th, in an extraordinary
56-mile dash,

Amiens had been taken
by lunchtime.

Abbeville, just 14 miles
from the English Channel,

was seized by nine that evening.

And at midnight, a battalion
of the 2nd Panzer Division

reached the coast at Noyelles.

The Germans had split
the Allied front in two.

Everything now depended
on whether they could defend

this long, thin corridor

or whether the Allies could
successfully counterattack.

So now the British got ready
to break the German lines.

On May 21st,
two armored battalions

prepared to launch
an attack south of Arras.

The British tanks
were even more unsuited

to fast-moving armored
warfare than the French.

Their most-effective machine,
the Matilda II,

had been designed
for infantry support.

Though well-armored,
it was slow and under-gunned.

The Germans had little trouble
in repulsing the attack.

But it did have an effect.

By now the German High Command
were becoming worried

by their extended lines
of communication.

So, for the time being, driving
south into the rest of France

was put on hold until
the infantry had caught up.

The priority was to turn north

and eliminate the British
Expeditionary Force

and the French First Army
fighting beside it.

On May 22nd, Guderian and
the Panzers began their attack

to destroy the Allied armies.

These were now pulling back
to the ports of Boulogne,

Calais and Dunkirk,
but they were trapped.

On May 23rd,
General Alan Brooke,

commander of
British II Corps wrote,

"Nothing but a miracle
can save the British
Expeditionary Force."

Two days later,
the Germans seized Boulogne.

It was beginning to look
as if even a miracle
would be too late.

May 25th, 1940,

the situation of the British
Expeditionary Force

and the French First Army
was desperate.

The port of Boulogne
had been overrun.

German troops
had isolated Calais.

The British were being forced
back to the port of Dunkirk.

Lord Gort,
the British commander,

advised his government
that the only hope

of saving even
a fraction of his troops

was to organize
an evacuation by sea.

But as the dive-bombers
screamed down

and the Panzers were poised
for the final assault,

evacuation
seemed a forlorn hope.

The British
anticipated that Dunkirk

would be overrun within a day.

But unknown to the British,

Hitler and the German High
Command had made a decision

which was to save them
from total annihilation.

The Germans were only too aware
that their Panzer crews
were exhausted

and their machines
needed urgent repairs.

Those attacks by De Gaulle and
the British may have failed,

but they had showed
very clearly how vulnerable

the German lines
of communication were.

This was the great weakness
of Blitzkrieg.

So the High Command
made a fateful decision.

It decided stop
the Panzers' advance

to save them from further damage

and wait for
the infantry to come up.

Only then would the Allied
pocket around Dunkirk be
eliminated.

So the Blitzkrieg was halted
and the Panzers lay idle.

They would not advance
for two days,

just enough to buy
the British in particular

a little time to prepare.

As the tanks waited, the only
major action was in Calais.

There the British and French
garrison refused to surrender.

Instead they had to be overrun

in three days of bloody
hand-to-hand fighting.

When the Panzers got going
again, two days later,

on May 26th,
the weather had changed.

The Germans became bogged down
in the heavy rain,

again giving the Allies
more time.

So it was that
at 07:57pm on May 26th,

Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsey,
Flag Officer Commanding Dover,

received a signal that he was
to put Operation Dynamo
into action.

Operation Dynamo was a plan
to withdraw the British
Expeditionary Force by sea.

He had prepared it more
in hope than expectation

that it could ever be used.

The following day, a makeshift
fleet of destroyers, tugs

and passenger ferries
crossed the English Channel.

But by the end of the day,
less than 8,000

of the over 300,000 troops
at Dunkirk had been rescued.

The port was under such heavy
air attack that it could
not be used.

And the ships could not get in
close enough to the beaches.

So Ramsay now sent out a call
for any boats of shallow draft

that were over 30 feet long.

Hundreds of cabin cruisers,
fishing boats and barges

were gathered from harbors
all over southern England

and sent across the Channel,

often crewed by
their civilian owners.

The little ships worked
on the beaches of Dunkirk,

ferrying troops out
to the larger boats

waiting to take them to safety.

All the time they were under
constant air attack.

The British air force threw
every fighter it possessed

into the battle to drive
the Luftwaffe off.

Even so, seven French and six
British destroyers were sunk

together with
24 smaller warships.

A quarter of the 665
small boats never got home.

But when the evacuation
was halted on June 4th,

over 300,000 men -

41 percent of them French -
had been rescued.

None of this would have been
possible without the heroism
of the French army.

It played a vital role in
slowing down the German advance.

The French rearguard didn't
leave its positions
around Dunkirk

until the last boats had
pulled away from the beaches.

One British officer compared
them to the last stand

of the Spartans at Thermopylae.

Even so, the British army had
lost most of its heavy weapons.

It wouldn't be fit to fight the
Germans again for a long time.

France still had to fight on,

but it had lost more
than half its army.

Against them the
Germans had 92 divisions,

including masses of armor.

At four in the morning
of June 5th,

a short bombardment began
the final destruction of France.

Assault troops crossed
the Somme and the Aisne.

At first, the French
resistance was fierce

and the Germans struggled to
break out of their bridgeheads.

But once again, the Luftwaffe
helped crush the defenses.

Soon the Panzers
were pushing south

and the trickle of
surrendering French troops

turned into a flood.

By the 9th, the Panzers
had reached the River Seine

and the infantry were
only a few hours behind.

Once across the river,

the Germans fanned out into
the interior of the country.

On the 14th, the German army
marched into Paris.

The swastika was raised
on the Eiffel Tower.

Hitler had secured
the prize which had eluded
the Kaiser in 1914.

The Parisians could
only watch in stunned horror.

Throughout the period
of the French collapse,

Winston Churchill paid
five visits to France,

trying to bolster
French resistance.

On June 16th,
he even offered Paul Reynaud

a union with Britain
if France stayed in the fight.

But it was too late.

Reynaud's cabinet
rejected the proposal

and the Prime Minister
resigned that evening.

He was succeeded by
Marshal Philippe Petain,

who immediately asked
the Germans for an armistice.

It was only now that the Germans
finally began to attack

the Maginot Line,
which had been left isolated.

After a heavy
artillery bombardment,

the French defenders offered
only token resistance

before the German troops
occupied the forts.

On June 21st,
Hitler went to Compiegne

where the railway carriage
in which the Germans

had signed the Armistice
in 1918 was kept.

As a French delegation
entered the carriage,

he handed them his terms
and then left.

The French insisted on
consulting their government,

but the next day they were
told that if they didn't
sign immediately

the Panzers would roll again.

They signed and the humiliation
of France was complete.

For Hitler, his control of
Western Europe seemed absolute.

He felt sure that Britain
must now seek peace

and that soon he could turn
to the next stage of
his master plan.

But even though the Blitzkrieg
had achieved so much so fast,

it hadn't won him the war.

The British,
battered and wounded,

had escaped to fight
another day.