Original subtitles

(peal of bells)

(narrator) Forlorn monsters today,

in May 1940, these forts of the Maginot line

were France's first-line defence against the Germans.

Half a million French soldiers lurked beneath these man-made hills.

These were the most extensive,

the most elaborate forts ever constructed.

Here the guns would halt the Hun -

provided the Hun came this way.

"Thank God for the French army,"

said Winston Churchill when Hitler came to power.

But in 1933

the French army was no longer the superlative weapon it once had been.

French military manuals devoted page after page

to the tactics of the First War,

although Hitler had said, "The next war will be very different from the last."

The French had helped introduce the tank and the aeroplane,

but now did little to extend their use.

They had pioneered motor transport in warfare,

but went back now to relying on railways and the horse -

especially the horse.

(man) It was a period of very deep decay,

probably caused by the excess of effort during the First World War.

We suffered from an illness which is not peculiar to the French -

the illness of having been victorious

and believing that we were right and very clever.

Victory is a very dangerous opportunity.

(chanting in French)

(narrator) France between the wars was deeply divided.

Factions clashed, alliances altered, cabinets came and went in the cascade,

some lasting a few hours, some a few months.

Rarely did one last a whole year.

On the very day Hitler came to power France was without a government.

It was again without one when he marched into Austria five years later.

The Left in France was concerned more

with hounding rogues in high places at home,

than curbing fascism elsewhere.

The Right so hated the Left

it was prepared to countenance dictatorship.

As early as 1934 the victor of Verdun, Marshal Pétain,

was proposed as France's saviour from communism,

although he was then nearly 80.

These deep divisions were to fetter France

when she faced the need to re-arm.

The whole of the possessing classes,

the Right if you like,

preferred the idea of the Germans

to their own communists.

You didn't have to walk round these streets

and see "pour qui et pourquoi" written on them,

or the hammer and sickle, to realise nobody was going to lift a finger.

(narrator) France in the '30s built a series of great forts

along her frontier with Germany,

and because her war minister then happened to be one André Maginot,

these forts came to be known as the Maginot line.

The Maginot forts were truly 20th-century wonders.

Electric trains took the troops from barracks to gun turret,

from arsenal to canteen.

There were cinemas underground, sun-ray rooms, air conditioning,

the lot.

Theirs was a vast Jules Verne type of world

hundreds of feet below ground.

They called it The Shield of France.

The Maginot line failed to protect all of France's eastern flank.

It was only 87 miles long

and it stopped 250 miles short of the Channel.

Should the alarm ever have to sound in grim earnest,

French strategists argued that

their troops would need to confront the Germans on Belgian, if not German, soil.

Besides, to extend the Maginot line along the Belgian frontier

would not only be expensive,

but would make the Belgians think that if war came, France would forsake them.

The folly of this thinking was shown up in 1936

when, without consulting the French,

the Belgian King Leopold opted for neutrality

and closed his borders, even to French military observers.

All too late France began extending the Maginot line to the sea.

But by May 1940 it was far from finished.

(shouting in French)

France had suffered a terrible loss of life in the Great War.

Now French military thinking became wholly defensive,

forgetting Napoleon's favourite maxim :

"The side that stays within its fortifications is beaten."

Since the French spurned any notion

of taking the offensive,

the Maginot line ironically protected Germany better than it protected France.

A German colonel, Heinz Guderian, the year the Maginot line was completed,

published a book with a prophetic title: Achtung Panzer.

A book never properly studied by the French or English general staff,

yet these pages expound a new kind of warfare -

the concentrated use of tanks with infantry and air force in close support:

Blitzkrieg.

We had had tanks in the First World War,

we knew all the difficulties of the game,

while the Germans, who didn't have them,

had the feeling of those who are attacked by tanks.

And while we considered that the tanks were a little awkward

and difficult to use,

the Germans jumped at the new weapons with the appetite of the new rich.

(narrator) Paris, July 14, 1939.

The last Bastille Day parade of the Third Republic.

A few days earlier, Britain's war minister, visiting Paris, had said,

"France has the greatest army in the world."

Like the parade itself, such statements were meant merely to raise morale.

Parisians had hardly got back from their holidays

before they found themselves once more at war

with their traditional foe.

But whereas in 1914 the cry had been "On to Berlin",

this time it was "Let's get it over with."

lronically, French mobilisation was too efficient.

The call-up of skilled technicians

brought many vital war industries almost to a halt.

It was only after weeks of confusion that these men were released.

Nor was France going to war united.

The bitternesses of French politics continued.

Ministers looked to their own futures instead of their country's

and many took their cue from such leadership.

Paris didn't alter much with the coming of war, save in appearance.

The most popular song that autumn of 1939 was Paris Will Always Be Paris.

(Maurice Chevalier) ♪ Par précaution on a beau mettre

♪ Des croisillons à nos fenêtres

♪ Passer au bleu nos devantures

♪ Et jusqu'aux pneus de nos voitures

♪ Désentoiler tous nos musées

♪ Chambouler les Champs-Elysées

♪ Emmailloter de terre battue

♪ Toutes les beautés de nos statues

♪ Voiler le soir les réverbères

♪ Plonger dans le noir la Ville Lumière

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

♪ La plus belle ville du monde

♪ Malgré l'obscurité profonde

♪ Son éclat ne peut être assombri

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

♪ Plus on réduit son éclairage

♪ Plus on voit briller son courage, sa bonne humeur et son esprit

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

(narrator) While their Polish allies were routed in the East,

the French, like the British, did little in the West.

There was the so-called Sarre offensive -

the only French offensive, in fact, of the war.

A few French divisions advanced five miles,

but they didn't even try to penetrate the Siegfried line,

at that time still unfinished.

And while Poland fought on,

there were no German tanks at all on the Western Front.

The newsreel commentators of the day, though, didn't doubt the French resolve.

(newsreel) We read the communiqués from the French High Command.

This is the living story behind those brief, unvarnished reports.

Our cameramen in the advanced lines on German territory

watch observation posts

at the bridge over the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg.

This was a German railway station, now in the hands of French troops.

From fortified outposts the vigilant watch is never relaxed.

The Maginot line, built as the first line of defence for France,

has become the second line behind the attack.

The gradual but steady advance of French troops

has brought their camouflaged artillery in range of the Siegfried outposts.

There is no haste, only a grim, relentless pressure

on the Nazi emplacements.

Metre by metre the poilus are moving forward.

lf the French army would have attacked at the beginning of September

with their very strong superiority

in division, in armoured cars -

we lacked all armoured cars on the Western Front at that time -

in artillery and air force,

the German forces on the so-called Western Front

could stand no more than one or two weeks.

(narrator) Before Poland surrendered,

the French commander ordered his men back behind the Maginot line -

a withdrawal the Germans did nothing to prevent.

One Frenchman wrote at the time,

"After the prologue of the phoney offensive,

we were ripe for the phoney war."

(Charles Trenet) ♪ Le vent dans les bois fait hou-hou

♪ La biche aux abois fait mê-ê-ê

♪ La vaisselle cassée fait fric-fric-frac

♪ Et les pieds mouillés font flic-flic-flac

♪ Mais... boum!

♪ Quand notre coeur fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum

♪ L'oiseau dit boum, c'est l'orage

♪ Brrrrr!

♪ Boum! L'éclair qui, lui, fait boum

♪ Et le bon Dieu dit boum...

(narrator) For several minutes each day the Maginot guns boomed out,

usually to impress visitors such as the Duke of Windsor.

♪ Et s'il fait boum, s'il se met en colère

♪ Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles

♪ Boum!

♪ Le monde entier fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum quand notre coeur fait boum-boum...

(narrator) Little attempt was made to harass the enemy.

Even bombing the Ruhr was forbidden

in case the Luftwaffe retaliated against French factories.

Journalists were taken up to the lines to see the inactivity.

l stayed at an observation post on the Rhine

watching the Germans washing, playing football,

and I said to the sentry,

"Why don't you shoot them? Why don't you shoot at them?"

"No," he said, "They're behaving all right."

"They don't shoot at us, why should we shoot at them?"

♪ Boum! Le monde entier fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum

♪ Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum-boum

♪ Fait boum-boum

♪ Brrrrr! Boum!

(narrator) Life at the front was dreary and drab.

Badly paid, leave became an obsession for the French soldier

and was used mainly to make a little on the side.

The winter of 1939 was the coldest for half a century.

Even the Channel froze at Boulogne.

The French halted work on the Maginot extension.

The Germans, however, forged ahead with their plans.

As winter wore on, French morale sank.

Discipline deteriorated and drunkenness became rife.

Special rooms were set aside in railway stations

where men could recover before rejoining their units.

Few French generals ever bothered to inspect, let alone meet, their troops,

but then their commander-in-chief, General Gamelin,

rarely set foot outside his headquarters.

Already 68 at the beginning of 1940, his military record was so impeccable

that no one dreamed of asking him to make way for a younger man.

(Beaufre) Gamelin was very clever, but with no guts at all,

and he was liked by the politicians

because he was an easy commander-in-chief.

(narrator) Gamelin chose for his headquarters this château at Vincennes,

just outside Paris.

(Beaufre) That choice reveals what the man was, you know.

The enemy were not the Germans. It was the French government.

(narrator) Vincennes was where England's Henry V died

and where the spy Mata Hari was executed.

It was described by one visitor as "a submarine without a periscope".

Almost unbelievably, it had no radio communications,

it was not linked by teleprinter with any other headquarters in the field.

Instead, messages were dispatched regularly on the hour by motorcycle.

Gamelin seldom bothered his staff with orders,

preferring simply to suggest guidelines.

His long-term strategy was to wait until the Allies could match the Germans

in numbers and equipment before launching any major offensive,

even though that would mean waiting until 1941.

Meanwhile, he was concerned to keep the war away from French soil -

hence his interests in any odd stratagem pushed his way.

We had a plan to go to attack Russia through Norway - Narvik -

which led to the landing in Narvik.

We had a plan to attack the oil plants in Baku from Syria.

We had the plans to raise the Balkans with us

by landing in Salonika and joining the Yugoslavs, and so on.

But all this was dreams, absolutely foolish and out of the reality.

But that stemmed from the fact

that we thought that the war couldn't be decided on the main front

because of the inviolability of that front.

(narrator) Gamelin had 100 divisions on that front in May 1940,

plus another ten of the British expeditionary force.

40 manned the Maginot line, while five guarded the Swiss frontier.

Another 40, the best, were to go into neutral Belgium once Germany attacked.

But when that happened

the pivot of Gamelin's front would be here, in the Ardennes.

The impenetrable Ardennes.

But was it?

On maps back at headquarters

its thick woods and narrow, winding roads

probably did make the Ardennes seem impenetrable -

which is presumably why Gamelin chose to guard this 100-mile stretch of front

with ten of his weakest, least-trained, worst-equipped divisions.

(man) The Ardennes came to be chosen for the main thrust

since it offered an opportunity to circumvent the Maginot line.

And besides we were conscious of the fact

that there were only minor French troops

which held the positions in this section of the French front.

We knew that the French High Command

had dispersed his tanks.

The French had more tanks and some better tanks, heavier tanks,

than we have had panzers.

But we managed our panzer troops -

what Guderian said in his instructions.

(man) "Strike hard and quickly and don't disperse your forces."

(narrator) The spring of 1940 was remarkably sunny.

Nowhere was it more peaceful than here in the Ardennes,

where the generals had said the Germans would never attack.

Yet reports had been pouring in

that nearly 50 Wehrmacht divisions were on the move -

reports which the French chose to ignore.

They even learned the date of the attack, but still did nothing.

As Gamelin put it, they preferred "to await events".

Their waiting was almost over.

5:30am precisely.

May 10, 1940.

The German offensive began spectacularly enough

with the invasion of neutral Holland from the air.

Their target: the bridges over the broad Meuse estuary.

lf they could be captured before the Allied troops reached them,

Holland would be cut in two.

The boldness of the German move stunned the Dutch.

Their soldiers were soon surrendering in droves.

Further south in Belgium,

the Germans had another spectacular success that first day -

the capture of Eben-Emael,

the strongest fort in the world and the linchpin of Gamelin's line.

That line had been breached before any Allied troops arrived.

(whistle blows)

Gamelin persisted in moving his armies north into Belgium and Holland.

40 of his best divisions, almost half his strength,

including all of the British expeditionary force,

and they were moving straight into the trap

Hitler and his generals had set for them.

It wasn't long before the troops were passing

the first pitiful, straggling lines of refugees.

Lines that were to hamper the Allied reinforcements,

just as the Germans had planned.

The great idea on the Germans' part was speed,

and they sent ahead of the army

policemen with truncheons and white gloves who went on motorbicycles.

They all had their Michelin Guide for France,

they knew exactly where the roads were.

The German panzers were pouring over the border into Luxembourg.

Their column stretched 100 miles,

presenting a prime target to any would-be bomber,

but Allied air activity that first day was busy

supporting the British and French move north into Belgium.

The Luftwaffe were striking at Allied aeroplanes on the ground.

At one RAF base near Reims, the planes lined up in neat rows

were destroyed in the opening minutes of the attack.

50 British and French airfields were attacked that first day

and the losses were heavy.

But while Allied air chiefs were counting their losses,

the panzers had just about penetrated the impenetrable Ardennes

and were set to fall upon the weak French garrisons

along the Meuse here at Sedan.

The panzers reached Sedan late on the third day of the offensive,

although Gamelin had calculated

they couldn't possibly be here before the ninth day.

All the bridges over the Meuse were blown up by the French on May 12th -

all except one.

This old weir some 40 miles north of Sedan had been left

for fear of lowering the water level so much that the river could be forded.

But the French also left it relatively unguarded,

as one panzer commander, Erwin Rommel, soon found out.

Next morning the Luftwaffe's resources were hurled into action above Sedan.

Gamelin still refused to believe the Germans could cross of the Meuse

before another three or four days.

Hitler was unwilling to wait that long.

He was working to the timetable of 1940, not 1914.

What's more, the French generals still had their eyes firmly fixed

on what was happening in Belgium and Holland.

There were big French guns on the west bank of the Meuse,

but they limited firing in case they ran out of ammunition

before the battle proper began.

So the German panzers were able to pick off the French pillboxes one by one.

Soon thousands of French gunners had taken to their heels.

As suddenly as it had started, the German bombardment stopped.

As though still performing one of their winter war games,

the German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meuse.

By midnight on May 13, still only day four of the offensive,

not only were German infantrymen across the Meuse in force,

but German sappers were bridging the river

and making ready for the panzers to cross.

That night of May 13,

the British expeditionary force, far to the north in Belgium,

had still not seen serious fighting,

yet the battle was now virtually decided.

(Beaufre) The morale of the French High Command was very quickly broken.

When we happened to know that the front had been broken through at Sedan,

the feeling was that everything was lost.

l saw General Georges, who was commanding the northeast front,

l saw him sobbing and saying,

"There has been some... deficiencies,"

and he fell in a chair and sobbed.

(narrator) French counterattacks were poorly organised

and seldom pressed home with any persistence.

Tank for tank, the French were a match for the Germans,

but the panzers always fought en masse

and the French tanks were prone to mechanical trouble.

Time after time they had to be left behind on the battlefield.

German infantry divisions were now catching up with the panzers

at the Meuse crossing point.

Everything on the German side at least was going according to plan.

For the Allied air forces,

after their almost total inactivity on May 13, May 14 was hectic.

British and French bombers raided the pontoon bridges across the Meuse

with reckless abandon.

Too late, the French generals

had recognised this sector's vital importance.

But despite the courage of the Allied pilots, the result was disastrous.

Nearly half the Allied planes did not return.

In the words of the official RAF history:

"No higher rate of loss has ever been experienced by the Royal Air Force."

After May 14th the skies were undeniably German.

On that day too Holland surrendered.

Nothing short of a miracle could save France now.

With the bridgehead secure, the panzers were poised to break out.

The battle for Sedan was now giving way to the battle for France.

The most crucial phase of the whole German plan was about to begin -

the swing north to the coast that would trap the Allied armies in Belgium.

As soon as news of the Sedan defeat reached Paris, panic set in.

Those who could, left.

The French High Command, not yet privy to the German plan,

assumed Hitler intended to capture Paris immediately.

To protect the capital,

troops were pulled back from elsewhere along the Meuse,

which only served to widen the German bridgeheads.

Gamelin refused to believe his tactics were at fault

and assumed he must have been betrayed.

While gendarmes searched for fifth columnists behind the lines,

Gamelin reacted by sacking 20 or so of his front-line commanders,

almost at random.

The Allied troops were ordered back from Belgium

and on May 17th Brussels fell.

It was also the end for Gamelin.

He was replaced as commander-in-chief

by General Weygand, recalled from virtual retirement.

France had become desperate.

A 73-year-old was replacing a 68-year-old,

and Weygand had spent the last year in Syria and was out of touch.

At this time too Marshal Pétain, now 84, became deputy prime minister.

Before leaving Spain, where he'd been France's ambassador,

Pétain told General Franco,

"My country has been beaten. This is the work of 30 years of Marxism."

(Spears) He was completely on the side of the defeatists.

He was a very, very old man

and he'd been recalled in the hopes that his name would bolster French morale.

It did nothing of the sort.

(narrator) Trying in their own way to contain the German break-out,

the French generals drew halt lines on their maps,

only to hear the panzers had passed them even before the orders had been issued.

(gunfire)

In the dash to the coast,

the German commanders were always one jump ahead of the French.

Hordes of prisoners fell into German hands.

Many columns, 10,000 or 20,000-strong,

simply threw away their weapons and marched without being told,

their officers at their head, toward the German lines.

(Warlimont) The French troops did not prove the same soldierly discipline

as in the First World War.

l think this was caused by the Maginot spirit and the long phoney war,

so that the French soldiers believed that they will have no more war.

(narrator) Not just ordinary troops fell into German hands,

but generals too.

On May 19th General Giraud,

newly appointed commander of France's 9th Army, was captured :

by a group of tanks, according to the French ;

by a field kitchen unit, according to the Germans.

But most tragic of all was the plight of the refugees.

At one time 12 million people were on the roads of northern France,

bound for goodness knows where.

(Waterfield) All the civilians would ask us what they were to do,

because the government had not told them what to do.

We said, "For heaven's sake, stay where you are. Don't get on the roads."

But they all got in a panic and left.

One old lady had a key which she gave to us

and we said, "Why? You mustn't give us your key."

"Oh, well, in the last war l took away my key

and when I came back l had the key but no house."

My worst memory was seeing two German planes coming along at roof level,

machine-gunning,

and one realised then how awful it was for the refugees.

(planes approaching)

(gunfire)

(narrator) The Germans had advanced 200 miles in just seven days,

and on May 20th they reached the Channel.

The Daily Telegraph reported that telephone lines

between Paris and London had been cut.

A Post Office spokesman didn't know when normal service might be resumed.

With the panzers at the coast,

the best of the Allied armies drawn into Belgium were now cut off from the south.

Belatedly the French tried to force a way through to them.

Their attack was too puny.

But they argued the British had let them down.

(Beaufre) The recriminations started

with the unilateral withdrawal of the British army.

The orders were to attack southwards, near Arras,

and, without warning,

we happened to know that the British were withdrawing to Dunkirk.

We have not the right to criticise this too much

because, after all, we were the bosses

and we lost the battle,

and this gives a good excuse for the British to be selfish.

But anyway, they were very selfish.

(narrator) On May 25th Boulogne fell.

On May 26, Calais.

Weygand's appointment had given the French a flicker of optimism.

It soon faded when his counterattack failed

and news of Belgium's capitulation reached Paris on May 28.

Thereafter, the mood became steadily more and more defeatist.

(Waterfield) I think the defeatism came at the top.

There was a very strong peace move among certain politicians,

some of them were even pro-German and wanted jobs with the Germans.

When things went badly, this group got larger and became more dominant.

(narrator) Prime Minster Reynaud fought back

by dismissing from his cabinet weaker spirits

and bringing in fighting men like de Gaulle,

now entering the political arena for the first time.

But the war was virtually out of their hands.

Perhaps it was that that prompted the special service of prayer at Notre Dame

on that Sunday before Dunkirk.

(organ plays)

(Spears) The French very soon accepted the idea of defeat and surrendered.

To them it was rather a conception of the old days of the royalty

when you just exchanged a couple of provinces,

paid a certain number of millions,

and then called it a day, hoping you'd be more lucky next time.

(narrator) Dunkirk fell on June 4.

Hitler ordered church bells to be rung for three days throughout Germany

to mark what he described as "the greatest German victory ever".

With the panzers reorganised and re-equipped,

the day after Dunkirk fell,

the second major German offensive in the West began.

Although outnumbered now by more than two to one,

the French fought stubbornly -

much more aggressively, in fact,

than at any time during the battle for the Meuse.

But after three days of bloody fighting, disaster once more overtook the French.

Another breakthrough by Rommel.

In a matter of hours he had reached the Seine at Rouen.

Elsewhere the panzers were passing almost effortlessly

through the heartland of France.

All roads pointed to Paris.

On June 10th the French government left the capital.

On that day Mussolini brought ltaly into the war.

On the day we left Paris

we went to this Vincennes headquarters of Gamelin

and... we heard on the radio

all the songs and music of the Italian war, you know.

"Giovinezza " and all that, you know.

And we thought...

And that is where I heard the first time somebody say,

«It can't go on like that."

"We must have an armistice."

We had the greatest difficulty getting out of Paris

because everybody, although Paris was empty,

all the roads outside Paris were absolutely full of motorcars,

people even going in and out of the trees at the side to try and get ahead.

But we were able to get off the main roads into the countryside,

and then it was most extraordinary because it was beautiful weather,

all the villagers were very welcoming

and brought out their best cognac, their best wine,

because they said, "Why leave it for the Germans?"

Arriving in the airspace over Paris

l observed that great columns of German infantry had already entered the town.

Observing this and remembering that we had failed to reach this goal

all through the First World War,

l felt such joy and exultation

that I asked the pilot of my small plane, a so-called Storch,

whether it would be possible to perform a landing on the Place de la Concorde.

After circling around some time,

he and... we came down on the Place de la Concorde,

which was entirely free of any traffic

and landed on the outside of the Champs Elysées.

(narrator) Two days after Paris fell, the new prime minister, Marshal Pétain

asked the Germans for an armistice.

Reynaud had been opposed to a separate peace and resigned.

In most of France the news of an armistice was received with relief.

Hitler insisted on using for the negotiations

Marshal Foch's old railway carriage in the woods of Compiègne,

where the 1918 armistice had been signed.

It was the supreme humiliation for France.

(Beaufre) One must have lived the retreat in France,

with this enormous movement of crowds.

lt's something which you can't understand if you haven't seen it.

We thought that really that had to be stopped.

(narrator) Once the French had signed, Hitler ordered the site destroyed.

Germany had had its revenge.

(announcement in French)

(narrator) Paris radio, now under German control,

broadcast the terms of the armistice.

Paris had now to adapt to a new wave of tourists.

Among the first was Hitler himself,

making the only trip of his life to the city,

and a fleeting one at that.

For four bleak years France was to disappear from the forefront of the war.

Some Frenchmen chose a courageous resistance at home or overseas,

others were to settle into a routine of apathetic collaboration.

Many connived at Hitler's new order for Europe -

the Vichy version.

For Paris there remained one more humiliation.

The German triumphal parade

followed the exact route of the French victory procession

after the First World War.

It had taken the Wehrmacht just five weeks to humble their historic foe.

In the words of Winston Churchill:

"The Battle of France was now over."

"The Battle of Britain was about to begin."