All language subtitles for World.War.II.in.Colour.S01E03.Britain.at.Bay.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

On June 22nd, 1940,

Britain stood alone
against the Nazis.

France had surrendered and
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

could only growl defiance.

We'll fight on the beaches.

We'll fight
on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields
and in the streets.

We shall fight in the hills.
We shall never surrender.

Britain still
had all the resources
of its vast empire.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, India,

and a host of other
territories had all been quick

to declare war on Germany.

But they were thousands of miles
away, across the oceans,

and their military power
could not be brought
to bear where it mattered.

Britain's situation
seemed hopeless

and Hitler had no doubt
that Britain would soon try

to negotiate a peace.

But Churchill quickly showed how
determined he was prepared to be

in the war against the Nazis.

A powerful squadron
of two French battleships

and two battlecruisers was lying
in the port of Mers-el-Kebir

in French North Africa.

If the French ships
fell into German hands,

the British navy's
position in the Mediterranean
would become impossible.

So, on July 3rd,
a Royal Navy task force

demanded that the French ships
either join it

or sail to a neutral port
to be interned.

The French refused.

So the British opened fire
on their former allies.

They destroyed or severely
damaged three of the
battleships.

Almost 1,300
French sailors were killed.

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

But Churchill's ruthlessness
didn't seem to impress Hitler.

On July 19th, he returned
in triumph to Berlin

and was greeted by more
than a million people.

That day he made
a speech in the Reichstag,

the German parliament,
offering peace terms to Britain.

His offer seemed generous.
Britain could keep its Empire.

In return Hitler wanted
a free hand in Europe.

His plan was to conquer
the countries of the East

in order to win lebensraum,

"room to live",
for the German people.

But Churchill
would have none of it.

The British would fight on.

This would, as he put it,
be their finest hour.

Churchill's defiance
was immensely popular.

King George VI
wrote in his diary,

"Personally, I feel happier
now that we have no more allies

to be polite to and to pamper."

But it was difficult
to see how Britain

could ever turn the tables
and actually win the war.

The British Army
might have survived Dunkirk,

but it had lost
almost all its tanks,

artillery and transport
in the evacuation.

It had just 25 divisions
armed mainly with rifles

to resist
the vast armored columns

of the world's most
fearsome war machine.

So there was little to be
done except dig in and wait.

Coastal defenses were prepared

and concrete strongpoints built
all across southern England.

Signposts on roads were removed

to make it harder for any
invaders to find their
way around.

Large open areas were
littered with obstacles

to deter airborne troops.

A volunteer defense force,
the Home Guard, was recruited.

It was made up of men
who were otherwise

ineligible to fight,
often because of their age.

By the end of June 1940,

almost one and a half million
volunteers had signed up.

But there were few weapons
with which to arm them.

Hitler, meanwhile, was getting
on with his invasion plans,

code-named Operation Sealion.

Some 20 divisions would
be landed on a broad front

along England's south coast.

Barges were gathered from
all over north-west Europe.

These were hurriedly converted
into makeshift landing craft.

Troops were trained
for beach landings.

But for all Hitler's bravado,

those planning
Sealion were worried.

Hitler might dismiss
the English Channel

as just another
river to be crossed.

But Britain's navy was
still the largest in the world.

It might be stretched thin
by its world-wide commitments,

but the Royal Navy's Home Fleet
far outnumbered the German navy.

The German naval chief,
Admiral Erich Raeder,

had no confidence that he
could seize control of
the English Channel

for long enough to
get the army across.

But the Germans
did have one area

of apparent massive superiority.

The Luftwaffe far outnumbered
Britain's Royal Air Force.

The Luftwaffe's commander
Hermann Goering had little doubt

that he could establish
air control over the Channel

long enough
for Sealion to take place.

On July 10th,

the Luftwaffe began attacking
shipping in the Channel.

In response, the British had
two of the most outstanding

of the new breed
of single-engine,
multi-gun monoplanes.

The Supermarine Spitfire.

And the Hawker Hurricane.

The Spitfire was
slightly faster and more agile

than its German rival,
the Messerschmitt Bf-109,

which escorted
the German bombers.

It would be
used to intercept these.

The Hurricane would prove
a lethal bomber killer.

But in July 1940
Air-Vice Marshal Hugh Dowding,

the head of Fighter Command,
had less than 700 fighters.

Against them were 2,600
German fighters and bombers.

The odds against
the RAF were daunting.

Dowding knew that he could
not take on the Luftwaffe

every time it came over
the Channel.

So when the Germans began
hitting British shipping,

he did nothing.

Instead, he would only use
the RAF to stop the Luftwaffe

from establishing the air
supremacy needed for invasion.

So he would only take on
its big attacks.

To help him, the British
had one crucial innovation.

Radar.

By the 1930s, scientists
in both Britain and Germany

knew that objects
well beyond human sight

could be detected by bouncing
radio pulses off them

and measuring the time it took
for the signals to return.

In Britain, a team of scientists
led by Robert Watson-Watt

began developing radar
as a means of detecting

approaching aircraft
at long range.

Their work was
seized upon by Dowding.

He made radar the core
of the world's first

integrated air defense system.

Known as "Chain Home",

this was a string of 21
300-foot-tall radar masts

sited along the south
and east coasts of Britain.

These could pick up aircraft
at a range of 120 miles

and give their distance,
direction, height and numbers.

The information would be
passed back to RAF Fighter
Command's headquarters

at Bentley Priory,
just outside London.

There it would be assessed
and warning of an impending raid

passed to Fighter Command's
operations room.

Moonshine 1-4 Sky Blue,
take target one,

- Channel G-George.
- Roger.

Controllers would then alert
the nearest RAF airfields

and scramble the necessary
number of fighters.

The question was,
would radar make up

for German's massive
superiority in numbers?

The stage was now set
for what would become known

as the Battle of Britain.

Since June 10th, 1940,

the German Luftwaffe had been
battering British shipping

in the English Channel.

The Luftwaffe's commander,
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering,

was determined to lure the
British air force into combat.

But Britain's Air Chief
Marshal Hugh Dowding
refused to take the bait.

He used his fighters sparingly,
knowing that the real
battle was still to come.

As this first phase of
the Battle of Britain began,

the Luftwaffe had a massive
superiority in numbers.

It had 1,100 single-engine
fighters available

to the Royal Air Force's 700.

Almost all the German fighters

were the excellent
Messerschmitt Bf-109E

with a top speed of
around 350 miles an hour.

About two-thirds of the British
fighters were Hawker Hurricanes,

slower than the 109s,
but more agile.

The remainder were
Supermarine Spitfires,

with a top speed
similar to the 109s.

For their assault, the Germans
had over 1,300 medium bombers,

Dornier Do-17s, Heinkel He-111s
and Junkers Ju-88s,

each carrying
about 4,000 pounds of bombs.

Goering selected August 13th
as "Adlertag", "Eagle Day",

for the start
of his main assault.

His aim was to destroy
RAF fighters in the air,

and the RAF's airfields and
Britain's aircraft factories.

Softening up attacks
were made the day before.

These concentrated
on the airfields

and the radar towers
along the south coast.

One station on the Isle of Wight
was put out of action,

and several were damaged,

but these were working again
within hours.

Goering did not believe that
radar had a significant role

to play in the battle and so
these attacks were not repeated.

It was a big mistake.

Adlertag dawned cloudy,

so the main assault was
postponed until the afternoon.

When it came,
radar gave ample warning.

Tamworth calling. Planes
heard three miles southwest.

None the less, most of
the RAF airfields in the south
were hammered.

But by the end of the day,
none had been put out of action.

The Luftwaffe lost 46 aircraft.

Britain just 13.

The Luftwaffe mounted
its largest attack

of the whole battle
on the August 15th.

Waves of heavily-escorted
German bombers

forced their way through
to the RAF airfields.

The RAF was so overstretched
that some pilots

flew seven sorties that day.

By the time the raids
died away,

some 90 German aircraft
had been shot down

for the loss of
42 British fighters.

The battle continued with equal
ferocity over the next few days.

Both sides became
increasingly exhausted.

Dowding tried to rotate
his pilots to rest them,

but he simply did
not have enough of them.

Many were being sent
into battle with just
10 hours flying experience.

The Luftwaffe was suffering too.

Its pilots were shocked
and increasingly demoralized

by the resilience
of the British.

The RAF fighters always
seemed to be waiting for them.

As the fighting wore on
for 12 solid days,

the British losses began to
creep up to match those
of the Germans.

The Royal Air Force
was close to breaking.

To turn the screw, Goering
began using his bombers

to attack at night as well.

But this decision
had an unexpected outcome.

On the night of August 24th,

a flight of Heinkel
bombers lost its way

and bombed
the City of London.

It was the first attack
on a non-military target.

The next night 81 British
bombers responded by
raiding Berlin.

Hitler was infuriated and
demanded massive retaliation.

This came on the evening
of September 7th.

German bombers attacked
the London docks

and surrounding areas.

More than 450 people died

and thousands of
homes were destroyed.

But in fact, this was Goering's
second crucial mistake.

By switching from
the RAF's airfields

just at the moment when it
seemed about to break,

he gave it
the respite it needed.

Had Goering continued
to attack the airfields,

the RAF could not have
continued to defend the skies.

Instead on September 15th,

British radars picked up another
massive assault on London.

The first wave of 100
bombers and 400 fighters

was intercepted.

Fighting raged all
the way from the coast.

In the afternoon,
another fleet of 150 bombers
renewed the attack.

Winston Churchill was at Fighter
Command headquarters that day.

After he heard controllers
calling in reinforcements

from neighboring groups
he asked,

"What other reserves
have we got?"

The reply was, "There are none."

But it was obvious that
the Luftwaffe had failed

to gain control the air,
and on September 17th,

Hitler postponed
Operation Sealion.

The Battle of Britain did
not really end, it died away.

Hitler now tried a new tactic.

By October 5th,
the daylight raids stopped

and the Germans
concentrated on bombing
Britain's cities by night.

This was the so-called Blitz.

London was attacked every night
but one up to November 12th.

On November 10th,
the center of the city
of Coventry was obliterated.

The Blitz continued into 1941,

with the last major raid
being made on London

on the night of May 10th.

More than 50,000 civilians
were killed in the Blitz,

but there was never any
question of Britain cracking.

Victory in the Battle of Britain

was a moment of
huge national relief.

Pilots had come from all over
the empire to join the RAF,

and from countries
occupied by the Nazis,

like Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Churchill summed
up the nation's gratitude.

Never in
the field of human conflict

was so much owed
by some many to so few."

But, for Hitler, this was no
more than an irritating setback.

Britain, he was convinced,
could never be a serious threat.

So he now turned
to Eastern Europe.

For Britain, there was now
a chance rebuild with a view,

one day, to taking
the fight to the enemy.

But to do that,
Churchill would need help.

Britain may have won
the Battle of Britain,

but it was still
immensely vulnerable.

Night after night,
its cities were hammered
by the Nazis' Blitz.

Its supply lifelines at sea
were under constant assault.

Churchill needed more help.

And there was only one country
that could provide it -

the United States.

By 1940, the US had recovered
from the Great Depression

and the economy
was booming again.

It had immense
reserves of manpower

and unrivalled
industrial strength.

But the people of the United
States were utterly opposed

to becoming involved
yet again in Europe's wars.

In July 1940, a poll showed that
only eight per cent of them

were willing to enter the war.

Undeterred Churchill
lobbied the US President,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt had long
admired Churchill

for his outspokenly
anti-Nazi views

and the two men shared
an interest in naval affairs.

Roosevelt had been
Under Secretary
for the US Navy in 1917.

After he became President,

Roosevelt kept in touch
with Churchill.

The two began a correspondence,

Churchill signing himself
"former Naval person".

For all his avuncular image,
Roosevelt had no illusions

that German aggression would one
day suck America into the war.

So he began
the long job of preparing

American public opinion.

I am a pacifist,

but I believe you and I

will act together to protect

and to defend our science,
our culture,

our American freedom

and our civilization.'

In July 1940, he got approval

for a massive expansion
of the US Navy,

including the building
of six large battleships

and a new class
of aircraft carriers.

The following month,
Congress agreed

that the National Guard
and other reserves

should be called up
for one year's active duty.

And in September,
a large expansion

of the 150,000-strong
US Army was agreed,

with a limited number of
conscripts being chosen
by lottery.

The first number...

drawn by the Secretary of War

is serial number 1-58.

That same month,
Roosevelt announced a deal

under which the US
would supply Britain

with 50 World War One destroyers

in return for 99-year leases
on bases in Newfoundland
and the Caribbean.

The British Navy,
desperate for more escorts

to fight the U-boats, began
taking them over within days

of the deal being signed.

The clearest sign that Roosevelt
was slowly winning the argument

came in the November
1940 presidential election,

when he convincingly defeated
the isolationist Wendell Wilkie

with 27 million votes
to 22 million.

At the end of the year,
Roosevelt spoke to the
American people,

setting out the four
essential freedoms

which he believed
were at stake,

and which Britain
was fighting to uphold.

Freedom of speech and religion,

and freedom from want
and from fear.

To save these
the United States must become

the "arsenal
of the democracies",

in other words,
it must arm Britain.

We shall send you
in ever increasing numbers,

ships, planes, tanks, guns.

That is our purpose
and our pledge.

But some Americans
remained implacably opposed

to helping Britain.

One of the most outspoken was
the American ambassador
in London,

Joseph Kennedy, father of
the future President,
John F Kennedy.

A Boston Irish businessman
who had made his fortune

booze smuggling
during Prohibition,

Kennedy hated the British
and seized every opportunity

to claim that they would
shortly be forced to surrender.

However, Kennedy's virulence
was counterbalanced

by the growing admiration many
Americans felt for the bravery

shown by the British people
during the Blitz.

In particular, the broadcasts
by the CBS London correspondent

Ed Murrow helped to
change public opinion.

This is London.

I remember the evening
of Sunday, December 29th.

It was just like any
other winter evening.

The first bombers were over
London at about half past six.

Soon the fires hissed
from the top-floor windows.

Hitler once boasted,

"I will rub out their cities."

This is what he meant.

Encouraged by his
electoral success,

in January 1941,
Roosevelt introduced
his so-called Lend-Lease bill.

The United States would
supply weapons and war material

to Britain and China, which
was still struggling desperately

against the invading Japanese.

Payment would be delayed.

Roosevelt likened lend-lease

to lending a neighbor
a hose to put out a fire.

You would worry
about the payback later.

Roosevelt was also being canny.

It also meant that,
unlike in 1917,

if America had to enter the war,

it already would have
a substantial weapons industry.

American war preparations
didn't end there.

Roosevelt secretly
authorized US military staff

to discuss a common strategy
with the British

should America enter the war.

By April 1941,
he felt confident enough

to take another step
to help Britain at sea.

He greatly extended
the Pan-American Security Zone,

the area
within which US warships

would protect
US merchant vessels.

In May, US troops
set up bases in Greenland,

and in July US Marines
were sent to replace

the British garrison in Iceland,

which was there to deprive
the Germans of its harbors.

The US Navy also began providing
limited convoy escorts,

particularly for US ships
carrying Lend-Lease materials.

Hitler now gave his submariners
strict instructions

not to sink American ships,

as he didn't want to provoke
the United States into war.

But inevitably
there were clashes.

On September 4th, 1941,

a British aircraft
attacked a German Submarine.

Thinking that the strike
had come from the nearby
US destroyer "Greer",

the U-boat fired
a torpedo at it.

The "Greer" responded
with depth charges

and there was a running battle
which lasted three hours.

Neither vessel was sunk,
but the tension was mounting.

On November 17th,
the destroyer "USS Kearney"

was hit by a torpedo while
on convoy duty off Iceland.

The U-boat commander
claimed it was an accident.

He had been firing
at a British ship

and the "Kearney"
had got in the way.

But 11 US sailors were dead

and the destroyer only just made
it back to port in Reykjavik.

Roosevelt protested and
the US press was outraged.

However,
the American public remained

resolutely opposed
to going to war.

Within weeks,
at the end of 1941,

the situation was
reversed in a single day.

But in the meantime, Britain
would have to fight on alone.

And luckily, it had
an astonishing weapon to hand.

It looks like just another
mansion in the English
countryside,

a bit run down.

But Bletchley Park
once contained a secret

that fundamentally affected
the course of World War Two.

Because it was at Bletchley
that Britain worked out

how to read Germany's
most secret codes.

Since the mid-1930s,
all the German armed forces

and intelligence
departments had adopted

a standard machine for
encoding their messages.

The Cypher Machine E,
better known as Enigma.

It was developed in the
early 1920s as a handy tool

for businessmen to keep
commercial messages secret.

It was powered by a battery,
and its encoded messages

were transmitted in
Morse code to be decoded

on a second Enigma machine
at the receiving end.

The critical element of
the machine was three rotors

which could be set to
scramble the message in a way

which could only be
unscrambled by another machine

with the same settings.

The rotors could be replaced
and set differently.

As a result,
each letter typed could

come up in any one
of 150 million ways.

Given the almost
infinite number of settings,

it was not surprising that
the Germans remained convinced

throughout the war
that Enigma was uncrackable.

It was the Poles
who took the first steps

in solving this baffling puzzle.

They knew of the existence
of the Enigma machine

and assembled a team of top
mathematicians to crack it.

Marian Rejewski,

Jerzy Roszickzi,

and Henry Zigalski.

But the team could not
decipher messages

without knowing the internal
wiring of the rotors.

The solution was supplied
by French intelligence,

which sent its Polish
allies material

gathered by a spy in the
German army's cipher department.

Amongst this
was an Enigma manual.

The Poles were able to
reconstruct an Enigma machine

and begin laboriously
decoding messages.

By July 1939,

Hitler was sounding increasingly
threatening towards Poland.

Britain and France had
promised to come to its aid.

It was clear
that war was coming.

So intelligence officers from
the three allies met in Warsaw.

There the British and French
were astonished at how much

the Poles had done
in decoding Enigma,

and the Poles
agreed to send two

of their reconstructed
machines to London.

Just two weeks after they were
handed over, Poland was invaded.

By the time Poland
fell to the Germans,

the Polish cryptographers
had destroyed all evidence

of their work on Enigma.

Some were captured and tortured,

but none revealed what
they had been up to.

The task was now taken
up by the British

at their Government
Code and Cypher School

at Bletchley Park near London.

Its head was
Commander Alistair Denniston.

Denniston recruited a strange
collection of mathematicians,

chess masters
and crossword puzzle experts

to continue the decoding.

Among these experts was
Alan Turing, a Cambridge don.

In 1936, Turing had
described the idea

of a "universal
computing machine" -

a machine that he believed
would one day be able to solve

all mathematical problems.

He used his ideas
to design decryption machines

known as "Bronze Goddesses".

The raw material for Bletchley
came from the British Y service,

a chain of radio
listening stations

which monitored and recorded
German transmissions.

The messages were fed into
Bletchley's Bronze Goddesses

and permutations run until
at last the key was found.

Once a message had been
decrypted, it was translated,

analyzed and passed on
the appropriate authority.

From the moment
he became Prime Minister

and learned of Bletchley's work,

Winston Churchill understood
its extraordinary importance.

He referred to
Bletchley's output as his
"ultra secret" information,

and Ultra became its codename.

The distribution of Ultra
was tightly controlled.

Senior commanders were
shown only that information

which directly
concerned their operations.

The need to keep the source
of the intelligence secret

was so great that Churchill
insisted that no action

could be taken on
the basis of Ultra material

unless a cover plan
had been developed

to convince the Germans
that the intelligence

must have come
from another source.

The third critical element
of the Bletchley operation

after decoding
and assessing the material,

was keeping control of it.

Often Ultra revealed
vital information

about German plans and actions.

News of forthcoming
attacks and other intelligence

was filed away in
a massive card-index system.

This was constantly mined
for answers to questions
great and small.

By the end of the war,
Bletchley was decoding
much of the German traffic

almost as fast as it
was being sent.

It was jokingly said that
it would have been quicker

for a German commander to ring
Bletchley to get his orders.

It was at sea that the Allies
first became aware

of how vital information
from Ultra could be.

An early example of
its potential came on
June 8th, 1940.

The British aircraft carrier
"Glorious"

was covering the convoys
withdrawing Allied troops

from Norway,
when Bletchley decoded signals

showing the German
battlecruisers "Scharnhorst"

and "Gneisenau" were
approaching its position.

A warning was passed
to Royal Navy headquarters,

but unaware of how accurate the
information was likely to be,

this chose not to pass it on.

The "Glorious" was
intercepted and sunk.

The British navy had
learned the hard way

just how important the new
source of intelligence could be.

It was not a mistake
it would make again.

Bletchley also performed
a critical role

in the build-up
to the Battle of Britain.

It had provided a clear picture

of the Luftwaffe's
order of battle,

and the overall strategy
being adopted by

its leader Hermann Goering.

This information convinced the
head of British Fighter Command,

Air Marshal Hugh Dowding,

that his tactic of committing
his fighters bit by bit

rather than in large numbers
was the correct one.

A tactic that played a crucial
part in preserving the RAF's

narrow winning margin.

As Britain continued
its lonely fight into 1941,

it had at last found
a way of fighting back.

Bletchley Park
was ready for action.

The major breakthroughs
had been made.

The systems for exploiting them
put in place and well tested.

In the coming years Ultra
and the work of Bletchley Park

would prove vital
to the Allied successes.

But as the Battle of Britain
and the Blitz ground on,

these were still a long way off.

Churchill still needed
more immediate results

and by early 1941,

he thought that he had at last
found a way to get them.

Nazi Germany might now control
most of Western Europe,

but Britain's Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,

now decided to take
the war to the Germans.

We shall not flinch
from the supreme trial.

All will come right
out of the depths...

Even before France
had surrendered,

he was looking for ways
of striking back,

and of keeping resistance
alive in the countries

which had been overrun.

Just as the last troops were
being taken off the beaches
of Dunkirk,

Churchill was already
planning ahead.

He wrote to his chiefs of staff
demanding the formation

of raiding forces
which could attack

the coasts of occupied Europe.

Within a few days
a call for volunteers

had been circulated to
create a force of 5,000 men.

They were to
be called Commandos,

after the highly-mobile
Boer units

which had fought the British
for three years in South Africa

at the turn of the century.

Ten Commando units,
each of 500 men, were set up.

They began practicing
attacks from the sea.

One unit was ordered
to specialize in parachuting

and using assault gliders.

This soon became the basis of
the separate Parachute Regiment.

Admiral Sir Roger Keyes
was appointed Director
of Combined Operations.

Churchill instructed him
to prepare to mount
three major raids

as soon as the threat of an
invasion of Britain had passed.

One of Keyes' first
tasks was to develop ships

which could land his new troops.

Three cross-Channel
ferries were converted

so as to carry landing craft.

On March 4th, 1941,

Two Commando units
and a demolition squad

were landed on the Lofoten
Islands off northern Norway.

Their main objective
was to destroy factories

which converted fish oil
into glycerin for explosives.

The Commandos achieved
total surprise

and landed without
a shot being fired.

A German armed trawler
in the harbor was seized.

They quickly destroyed
the factories and the
fish oil tanks.

One officer could not resist
using the local post office

to send a telegram to:
A Hitler, Berlin.

It read:
"Reference your last speech,

I thought you said that
wherever British troops land

on the continent of Europe
German soldiers will face them.

Well, where are they?"

The Commandos then rounded up
60 Norwegian collaborators

and 225 German prisoners, before
returning without any losses.

With them they also took
115 Norwegian volunteers.

These would then join
the Free Norwegian forces
in Britain.

The Lofoten raid was an enormous
public relations success

and a huge boost
for British morale.

But its most important result
was one which could not
be publicized.

The capture of a set of rotors
for an Enigma machine.

Although the machine
had been thrown overboard

from the armed trawler,
its crew forgot the spares.

They were to give invaluable
help to the cryptographers

of Bletchley Park in breaking
the German naval codes.

Then in December 1941,

four Commando units landed
at the Norwegian port of Vaagso,

and were immediately
involved in heavy fighting.

The approach to Vaagso
was covered by the small
island of Maaloy,

on which the Germans
had placed artillery.

This was quickly overrun,

but across the water in Vaagso
the fighting was intense.

It took several hours
for the main German
garrison to be subdued.

The Commandos then blew up
several factories

sank eight ships
before withdrawing.

These raids convinced
Hitler that sooner or later

the British would
attempt to retake Norway.

So for the remaining
four years of the war

he kept some
250,000 troops there,

troops which might have
proved vital on other fronts.

But effective as they were,

Commando raids were
not enough to stop the Nazis.

Churchill needed
other ways to hurt them,

so he focused on
the resistance movements

in the occupied countries.

In July 1940,
a Special Operations Executive,

SOE, was formed,

as Churchill put it,
"to set Europe ablaze".

Its objectives were
to encourage sabotage

of the enemy war effort,

gather intelligence and
prepare clandestine forces

to disrupt German defenses.

The bulk of SOE's
activities centered on France.

Soon agents were recruited
in Britain to build up

and co-ordinate
the French resistance networks.

Radio operators and couriers

were also trained
to support them.

One problem was then how to get
these teams into the country.

Submarines, high-speed launches
and fishing vessels were
all tried out.

But the German coastal defenses
proved difficult to penetrate.

The answer was aircraft

and, in August 1940,
a special RAF unit was set up

with Whitley bombers
and short take-off and
landing Westland Lysanders.

Agents and equipment
were either parachuted in

from the bombers or flown in and
brought out by the Lysanders.

On moonlit nights, a growing
number of reception committees

would be waiting as an
increasingly widespread network

of resistance groups
was built up.

But all the while,
they were hunted

by an increasingly sophisticated
German counter-espionage system.

This used direction
finding equipment to locate

hidden radios and double agents
to infiltrate networks.

The work of SOE agents
was desperately perilous

and their life expectancy short.

The slightest lapse
in concentration

might betray them
to the Gestapo.

Many suffered torture and death.

But Churchill was sure
it was worth it.

Keeping resistance alive
in the occupied countries

gave hope to millions
that liberation would
eventually come.

The British Broadcasting
Corporation, the BBC,

was also enlisted
to raise the hopes

of those living
under German rule.

It broadcast the news
in all the languages

of the occupied countries.

The German penalty for listening
to these bulletins was death,

but people tuned in regardless.

The BBC also played
a crucial role in transmitting

coded messages
to resistance groups.

These always came
after the Nine O'Clock News.

Message très important
pour le chef de Guile.

Attention, il va pleuvoir
brougrement ce soir.

For the peoples
of occupied Europe,

the prospect of liberation
might only be a distant dream,

but in the middle of 1941
it suddenly became more likely.

For by, Britain was no longer
alone in fighting Nazism.

It had gained a massive ally
but it wasn't America,

which Churchill had
assiduously been courting.

It was the Soviet Union.