Original subtitles

(narrator) May 26, 1940.

Along roads lined with their smashed and abandoned equipment,

British and French armies retreat to the only Channel port still open to them:

Dunkirk.

Ten miles away, along the Channel coast,

German armour awaits Hitler's orders to attack.

On the Dunkirk beaches,

nearly half a million men - British and French -

face surrender, or the slim chance of rescue by ships from England.

(man) There were masses of troops

and they came down in a sort of a V-shape

to a crocodile, semi-single file, as they got near the water's edge.

Of course, many of these soldiers were going out up to their necks in water

and climbing into, say, minesweepers

that could get in nearly as close as that.

Others on the beach were embarking in the small boats.

But there didn't seem to be any panic or worry at all.

One came across lots of these small boats,

many of them with perhaps a dozen or so soldiers on board,

heading back for England resolutely.

One quite often offered to take their crews of soldiers off them

so they could go back for more, and they said:

"No fear. We've got our 12 pongos, and we're going back to England with them."

"You go and get your own."

(man) The beach was... There were thousands of men,

like Margate beach on a bank holiday.

The troops was in a pretty bad state. They were in a bad way.

There was one man especially, I shall always remember.

He came on board - he'd had his teeth blown out -

and he was holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet.

We had to take the arms off everyone,

but we couldn't shift the gun out of his hands.

His hands gripped it, and they was... fixture.

A chap was on the beach, and then he gets aboard a ship and thinks he's safe.

But they really did think this. They said:

"England, home and beauty - let us get there, boyo."

(McBeath) We were most impressed. They were tired.

Most of them went to sleep.

Our job was to stop enemy aircraft getting at those troops

because, believe me, if enemy aircraft had superiority of the air at Dunkirk,

they would have massacred those fellows on the beach.

They had no guns, they had no anti-aircraft.

And German bombers and German dive bombers - the Stukas -

would have just murdered them. And we couldn't have got those troops off.

Another thing the Germans tried to do was to sink the ships.

They knew that the fellows couldn't swim to England,

so they had to try and get on the ships.

And if they could sink these ships, the British army would have been trapped.

(narrator) The RAF tried to keep the German air force away from the beaches,

but six destroyers and over 200 craft were sunk.

Fighter Command lost nearly half its strength in the French campaign -

100 planes in the Dunkirk operations alone.

(engine spluttering)

Dunkirk was a major defeat,

but the inspired efforts of the Royal Navy and the little ships

saved 330,000 British and French troops.

For a week, the weather was fine,

and the German army was held off.

(Good) I don't think they thought they would get them off. That's my opinion.

But it was an act of God that they did.

The weather was good, the sea was like a millpond,

and this was a great help to everybody.

If it had been rough water, you'd have never got them off of Dunkirk,

because when those rollers go up that beach, they go.

(McBeath) Any moment, a breakthrough by the German army

could have stopped the whole operation.

I don't think, despite the valiant endeavours

of the British and French troops who were keeping the Germans back,

that they could have stopped the might of the German armour getting through

if Hitler had so wanted to do it.

(narrator) What was left of Dunkirk surrendered on June 4.

Thousands of troops could not be rescued.

A fortnight later, France stopped fighting,

and the British prime minister, Churchill, broadcast to the world:

(Churchill) What General Weygand had called the Battle of France is over.

The Battle of Britain is about to begin.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island, or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free,

and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail,

then the whole world will sink into the abyss of a new dark age.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty...

and so bear ourselves

that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth

last for a thousand years,

men will still say:

"This was their finest hour."

(whistle / cheering)

(narrator) Britain prepared to face immediate invasion.

A new evacuation of children began from the south and east-coast areas

where a German landing might be expected.

Some parents sent their children overseas to safety.

But this was stopped when a U-boat sank a British liner

with 90 children on board.

To guard against invasion, over a million men not required by the forces

volunteered to form the Home Guard.

They drilled with broomsticks as there were no rifles to spare,

and rehearsed bloodthirsty defences against a German attack.

The regular army's training seems to have impressed the newsreels.

(newsreel) They have turned kick-starter pushers.

Shanks's pony has given way to a spanking motorbike.

The left-right, left-right blokes have both feet off the ground.

They're part of Britain's mighty mobile mounties,

all keen to welcome Adolf when he drops in for a cup of tea and a cream bun.

A battalion of infantry on wheels is on exercise -

a swift-moving striking force that will do the enemy a bit of no good.

They learn under conditions they might meet with on active service.

Up and down they go, but unlike the Hun they're always on the level.

(narrator) The army had brought back their rifles from Dunkirk,

but almost everything else had been abandoned in France.

In June, the only fully-equipped division in Britain was Canadian.

I remember in June going down to the Southeast corner of Britain,

where General Thorne was in command -

Kent, Surrey, Sussex, that sort of area,

a possible landing area for the Germans, if they were going to attempt it -

and I remember sending a memorandum to Winston which must be in his papers.

If I remember right, I said something like this:

the troops were in very good heart and very well trained,

but there was no antitank weapon of any kind,

no antitank guns, and no tanks.

That was in the area where, if the Germans landed, they might be expected.

The cupboard was bare.

(narrator) The king rejoiced that Britain stood alone,

with no more allies to pamper.

The head of Fighter Command, Sir Hugh Dowding, agreed.

He had lost too many planes helping the French.

Station names and signposts were removed to baffle invading Germans.

The effect was to baffle British travellers.

Antitank barriers deprived the Germans or an easy advance along the railways.

In the invasion areas, the countryside disappeared under coils of barbed wire.

The beaches, too, were wired to below low-water mark.

JB Priestley remembers a visit to the seaside.

I went down one hot summer day - late summer -

to one of the seaside resorts on the Kent coast.

The last time I visited, it was packed out -

the beaches absolutely crammed, and all the fun of the fair going on.

Then to see it on this strange, bright, empty day,

the beaches deserted, a lot of barbed wire all over the place,

I felt then that, in a way, this was a kind of symbol of what people felt,

and that they were ready to abandon this for the time being

in order to get on with the war.

(narrator) Churchill was everywhere, no longer a suspect politician,

but the living embodiment of the British will to resist.

It was a situation he seemed to revel in,

describing a vivid picture of himself

leading a last-man defence of a devastated Whitehall.

lmmediately Churchill became prime minister, the pace in Whitehall changed.

People started not merely to think fast, but to act fast.

Distinguished civil servants could be seen running down the passages.

Churchill himself was physically very energetic.

He would suddenly make the most extraordinary and energetic sorties.

He would inspect troops, marching at great speed down the ranks,

and outpacing all the younger men following him.

I remember one evening he said he was going to inspect some new works,

and although he was 65 years old, he vaulted over a brick wall

and landed feet first in a pool of liquid cement.

And with an impertinence which in retrospect I'm surprised at,

I said, "You've met your Waterloo," as he was stuck in the cement.

He turned to me and said, "How dare you? Anyhow, my Blenheim."

(narrator) In the arms factories they worked long hours

to fill the gaps in British defences.

Production reached a peak in June, then fell as workers tired.

But the spurt lasted through the critical time.

Production of fighter planes doubled.

A hundred new Spitfires and Hurricanes a week replenished Dowding's forces.

The minister of aircraft production, Lord Beaverbrook,

took care to make ordinary people feel part of the production battle.

My father was a master of propaganda.

There were the pots and pans,

where everyone was asked to give up pots and pans and railings.

Stanley Baldwin didn't give up his gates,

but most people gave up all they could in the way of metal.

The pilots and we all knew you couldn't make aircraft out of pots and pans,

but it brought the people to realise that it was a desperate situation.

The response was tremendous. They had piles and piles of pots and pans -

not knowing what to do with them. But he was a great propagandist.

(narrator) But where was the German invasion?

(♪ fanfare)

In June 1940, Hitler had not begun to think about invading Britain.

He was celebrating his French victory, and expected Britain to make peace.

Berlin gave him a hero's welcome when he returned there on July 6

with Admiral Raeder and his other commanders in chief.

Only the German navy seemed to have plans for an invasion.

By the time Hitler began to take an interest,

the army had its own plans and was critical of the navy's.

Both looked to Göring, the Luftwaffe chief, to win control of the air -

vital for an invasion.

And Göring believed the Luftwaffe on its own could knock out Britain.

Arguments between the services went on for months.

The army at first wanted to land 40 divisions

on a wide front between Ramsgate and Lyme Bay,

and press on to a line from Maldon in Essex to the Severn Estuary,

sealing off London.

This was later scaled down to a landing by nine divisions

between Folkestone and Brighton, supported by two airborne divisions -

about 200,000 men in all.

By September, Britain had overcome her earlier weakness

and had 16 divisions available in the Southeast.

An invasion fleet from all parts of Germany assembled in northern ports.

Landing craft were built, and boats converted

to carry troops and amphibious tanks.

The army thought the fleet too small.

The navy thought even that size fleet difficult to protect.

Both agreed that air supremacy was vital.

The invasion, codenamed Operation Sea Lion, was set for mid-September.

The plans did not impress the Luftwaffe, on whom everything depended.

(man) In my opinion, the plan was not serious.

Especially the navy didn't want to have the responsibility,

and the navy has asked the air force first of all

to establish the absolute... the absolute air superiority

over the invasion area.

The preparation the navy did was not very convincing.

Also, our preparation... My wing was designated to be

one of the two wings to be transferred to England,

and our preparations were... ridiculous.

The air force was not trained and prepared

to conduct an independent air war over England.

(narrator) The Luftwaffe's first targets

were merchant convoys and harbours,

particularly in the narrow seas of the Channel.

Dover became known as Hellfire Corner.

There was always something for the newsreel camera or the news reporter -

for instance, Charles Gardner of the BBC:

(newsreel) Now the Germans are dive-bombing a convoy out at sea.

There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

There's one going down on its target now.

Boom. No, he hasn't hit a single ship.

There are about ten ships in the convoy, but he hasn't hit a single one.

They come in a steep dive. You can see the bombs leave the machines.

You can hear our own guns going like anything now.

There's a fight going on. You can hear the machine-gun bullets.

That was a bomb, as you may imagine.

There's another bomb dropping.

It's dropped... It missed the convoy.

They haven't hit the convoy in all this.

We've just hit a Messerschmitt! That was beautiful.

He's coming right down now. I think definitely that was that first contest.

Absolute steep dive. I'll just move round so I can watch him a bit more.

Here he comes. He's going slap into the sea.

And there he goes - bam!

Oh, boy! I've never seen anything so good as this.

The RAF fighters have really got these boys taped.

(narrator) The convoy system was disrupted, and harbours like Dover hit.

But while the town suffered casualties,

Dowding had not yet been forced to commit his full fighter strength.

The unique thing about Fighter Command

was that when war broke out in September 1939...

we had there a system covering the entire country for air defence.

And that system was based on radar, or, as we called it in those days, RDF.

We had this chain of radar stations around the coast,

and they were looking out up to 100 miles.

And they were feeding, on land lines,

all the information to the headquarters of Fighter Command.

(Aitken) Radar really won the Battle of Britain,

because without it we would have been doing standing patrols -

and with the limited number of aircraft and pilots, you couldn't have done it.

As it was, we could wait on the ground,

and then radar would watch.

And through the various controls, we would be told to take off

at a time when the Germans were massing over Calais or over Abbeville.

And so, therefore, we wasted no petrol, no time, no energy -

in fact, we could sleep in between patrols.

And then we'd take off, and we would be directed towards the German formation,

given height, distance and their numbers - which was very important.

(narrator) On August 13, Göring changed his tactics.

He ordered an attack on radar stations and fighter airfields,

which Fighter Command was bound to defend.

While German bombers blitzed airfields that defended London and the Southeast,

escorting fighters dealt with British fighters

that came up to attack the bombers.

Fighting over England put the Luftwaffe at a disadvantage.

It was expected, but not equipped, to win a decisive battle alone.

The German bombers were not designed to carry a heavy enough bomb load.

German fighters had only enough fuel to stay over England for half an hour,

whereas the British fighters, close to their bases,

could land and refuel quickly enough to rejoin the battle.

(Galland) Our range was very limited,

and we could only cover a small part of the British islands,

including London.

But over London, as an example, we could only stay for ten minutes,

to come back to our bases.

So this limited range of our fighters and the escort

has been perhaps the... main point...

which avoided an effective air offensive against Britain.

(narrator) The Luftwaffe misled its pilots

about the damage done to British airfields.

They claimed eight had been virtually destroyed.

In fact, none had been knocked out,

and those damaged were quickly patched up again.

The German pilots, faced by resistance they hadn't expected,

became pessimistic about winning.

We fighting crews were convinced that we couldn't win the battle

and we couldn't force England to surrender by attacking

without any operation from the part of the army or the navy.

Therefore, we were asking that the High Command

should order the invasion - the Sea Lion.

(narrator) A mere 1,400 British fighter pilots and their ground crews

stood between Britain and invasion.

Their responsibility was great - too great, perhaps, to bear thinking about.

The face they showed the world was dashing and carefree.

(man) I think they took the situation not the least bit seriously,

from the point of view of their lives generally.

Some fellows would just kick a ball around or lie around,

some would sleep, read paperbacks, listen to the radio -

and that was our life.

I wanted to shoot an plane down, but I didn't want to shoot a German down.

I really did not.

We did hear stories of Germans shooting our fellows in parachutes,

and we used to think that was pretty horrible,

but we weren't sure whether it was true or not.

I know I had an experience of a German aircrew getting draped over my own wing.

He'd baled out of a bomber and got caught on my wing with his parachute.

I was jolly careful to get him off as easily and as quickly as I could,

by yawing the aeroplane and shaking him off.

There was no chivalry between the German air force and the British.

Absolutely none. Not as far as I was concerned. I hated them.

They were trying to do something to us - trying to enslave us.

(narrator) The climax of the battle

came at the end of August, start of September.

Upon the result depended Hitler's decision to launch his invasion.

But the battle was between a comparative handful of individuals on either side.

(Aitken) The fights were rather extraordinary,

because although there were a lot of aircraft about,

suddenly, when you were fighting a particular man, the sky became empty.

(Holmes) No one ever considered that he would be killed.

Death was something which was just put at the back of your mind.

If it was not, you'd have just got the jitters about it and been very worried.

If a fellow did go missing, it was just, "Poor old so-and-so, he's had it,"

and that was that.

lnwardly, of course, you'd feel it tremendously if you lost a pal.

But you didn't... you didn't dwell on the subject of death at all.

Sometimes you could tell if a fellow was going to get killed. He sort of lost it.

My greatest friend was killed. He was shooting at a Messerschmitt,

and another Messerschmitt hit him from behind.

I was shouting at him, and you couldn't do anything - and you saw him go in.

That affected you, but you had to get on with it.

Your friends affected you deeply. Terrible. But you couldn't help it.

(narrator) In the last week of August and the first week of September,

103 of Fighter Command's pilots died.

128 were seriously wounded.

Six key airfields in the Southeast were put out of action for days at a time.

Against German fighters and bombers,

Britain was now losing fighters even faster than Germany -

nearly 500 in two weeks.

The last week in August, the first week in September -

those two weeks were the worst for us,

because by that last week in August,

the Germans had been pounding the airfields mercilessly,

and 31 August was probably our worst day.

Fighter Command was very nearly on its knees.

Dowding was very conscious of that.

What was worrying him was the constant pounding of the airfields,

and he was wondering how much longer he could hold out -

when I say "he", I mean Fighter Command.

Because he was still facing that big problem

of denying the Germans air superiority,

and yet they were knocking airfields to pieces,

with the threat of knocking out Fighter Command.

On 6 September, the king and queen visited Fighter Command,

and there were quite a few people

who commented on how tired Dowding appeared to be.

The day after, 7 September,

an invasion alert was issued - "invasion imminent" -

and all that day things were remarkably quiet.

All of us were beginning to wonder what the devil was going to happen next.

And then, late afternoon, the Germans launched

what many of the pilots in the air having to face this onslaught

found to be just about the heaviest attack they'd ever known.

And then came what Dowding later described as "the miracle" -

the attack didn't go to the airfields, it went to London,

and the airfields were spared.

Five minutes to five,

the sirens went.

Walking out onto my veranda, looking down the river,

the sky was full of planes.

Within a couple of minutes, the bombs started dropping in the Millwall Dock,

and I could watch 'em.

And it went on for some considerable time.

On that first Saturday, they practically obliterated

from the Silvertown Way to Silvertown.

As a matter of fact, the whole of the Tidal Basin, Custom House,

right up to Silvertown was obliterated - make no mistake about it.

If it had continued, that type of bombing,

in the daylight...

It was hitting everything of consequence -

shipyards, gasworks,

oil firms, everything of consequence.

Nearly all the bombs were dropping in the proper target area.

(narrator) That night, 250 bombers returned -

the burning docks and warehouses an unmistakable marker.

But Göring's change of tactics relieved the pressure.

Fighter Command regrouped. London burned.

After the raid on September 7, many rescue workers and firemen

worked 40 hours nonstop.

"Most of us had the wind up to start with," one of them said,

"but you looked around and saw the rest doing their job."

On September 15, the Luftwaffe mounted another major daylight attack,

expecting no opposition.

But this time the Spitfires and Hurricanes were waiting for them.

On that day, September 15, 56 German planes were shot down.

Britain had retained command of the air by day.

The Royal Air Force had won the Battle of Britain.

September 1940.

Now there were no more daylight raids,

and there could be no invasion before the spring.

But Britain's cities became targets for the night bombers.

For 76 nights in succession, London was bombed.

Queuing for shelter at dusk became an orderly ritual,

the evening alerts, the dawn all-clear, part of Londoners' lives.

(air-raid siren)

(hum of aeroplane engines)

I used to hear the planes come over,

and they was, in my opinion, trying to break the backs of the houses.

l'd listen and shudder. "The next one's mine."

They'd have, say, six bombs. "One, two, three, four... This is mine."

"No." Over the next one, they'd go, and miss my house.

That went on all night.

About ten to eight, I said to my wife and my in-laws, "l'll be off now."

I walked out of the door - lovely big three-floor houses they were.

I walked up Approach Road, 20 yards from the church, which was our post,

and suddenly there was a... (whoosh)

Nothing, I heard nothing.

I talked about this to people afterwards -

the bomb that hit them, they never heard.

Now, I wonder if the people sitting here now had that same experience.

The bomb that hit you, you never heard.

And I fell flat on my face.

I picked myself up, I turned round.

All I could see was a grey curtain hanging in the middle of a wide road -

about twice as wide as this pub.

There was just a brownish-grey curtain hanging there.

♪ Come, come

♪ Come and make eyes at me

♪ Down at the Old Bull and Bush

♪ La-la-la, la-la

♪ Come, come

♪ Drink some port wine with me

♪ Down at the Old Bull and Bush

♪ La-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la-la-la

♪ Just let me hold your hand, dear

♪ Do, do

♪ Come and have a drink or two

♪ Down at the Old Bull and Bush, Bush, Bush !

(man) No matter what shelter you went in,

there was always someone there who would provide the entertainment

to sort of take away the strain.

(narrator) Underground stations, it was decided, must not be used as shelters.

But people simply took them over and the authorities had to accept it.

(woman) We was all singing,

we was all happy - just like there was no war at all.

There was a canteen.

I used to sing as well and cheer people up when the bombs was going.

Until one night, it was very bad, and I was praying for the big guns to start.

I was talking to a gunnery sergeant who had been stationed in Hyde Park,

and he told us without any hesitation - and he cried when he told us:

"When we was sent into London,

we simply elevated our guns to its maximum and fired."

"We knew that every shell we pumped up had no chance of hitting a plane,

but don't tell me it didn't give you courage."

And there's not a person sitting round this table, I think, can say it didn't -

once they heard those guns firing, they thought, "Good, we've got 'em now."

But they only knew that it was the morale - and that's all it did to 'em.

But the bombs just had to come down. There was nothing to stop them.

(narrator) For 76 mornings,

rescue squads dug through rubble, searching for survivors.

(man) A bomb dropped on a block of flats, about four storeys,

and it took the whole front out.

And they said, "There's an old chap up there. He won't go in a shelter."

So we go up, and when we got up there, the old chap was snoring his head off,

about 20 empty bottles round his bed, and the bed's nearly out in the street!

And he never woke up then !

We saw an old lady staggering around, and we said, "You'll have to come out."

She came out and all she had on

was half of what should've been a nightdress.

I said, "You'll have to put something on, make yourself a bit decent."

She was about 80-odd, and she was completely in a daze.

She said, "l'll go and get something," and she came out with her hat on !

(narrator) People somehow got to work through a nightmare of upended buses,

cratered roads, bombed railways.

(man on radio) London calling...

(narrator) Radio reporters told America and the world that London could take it.

The spirit of Londoners won sympathy and help.

But the United States remained neutral.

While Britain stood alone, from September 1940 to May 1941,

40,000 people were killed in raids - half of them Londoners.

Hundreds of thousands of people were homeless,

eating, living, sleeping in rest centres.

Clothing and everything else had vanished with their home.

But not morale.

To be clean, you couldn't very well say, "l'm going to have a bath today,"

cos you was afraid the warning would go halfway through it.

So you'd have a bowl of water, have a wash and perhaps get your neck done,

and run and take all your things in the shelter -

finish your bath perhaps the next day.

Never actually have a bath properly. Step in and step out.

You get used to it. You can get used to anything.

It was not an uncommon sight to see: "No windows but plenty of spirit."

Or, "Sorry we've got no front door. Don't trouble to knock, just come in."

And you'd see these funny little notices put up outside a door.

This was the sort of thing that made you think there was something in it.

The more you saw it, the more you felt encouraged to be able to go out.

Once you'd gone out to go on to a job and your family were left behind,

you always felt that somehow:

"The Joneses or the Smiths up the road,

if anything happens at home, they'll look after 'em."

(narrator) Factories went on working, by night as well as by day.

But night workers were constantly interrupted by raids.

There was no real defence against German bombing at night.

Fighter Command's helplessness worried its chief, Dowding.

I once went to Redhill with him when the bombers were coming over London.

There was a squadron commanded by a fellow called Jimmy Little.

He said to me in the car going down, "Max, I hold my head in my hands

at the thought of people being bombed and I cannot do anything about it."

(narrator) To the relief of the authorities,

Buckingham Palace was bombed as well as East London.

Now it could be seen that king, queen and people were all in it together.

King George and Queen Elizabeth won respect by touring the blitzed areas.

They had come to the throne in the wake of the Duke of Windsor's abdication.

Now, for the first time, they emerged as popular figures in their own right.

(cheering)

Churchill too, with exuberance, persuaded most political opponents

to forget his past.

(man) The average East Londoner didn't care twopence for Churchill,

as a man or a politician,

but the man who filled up Chamberlain's place,

he was a leader.

And every time he opened his mouth, he inspired confidence into the people -

whether they accepted him as a Conservative...

But he was there, he was for 'em, and he was against the common enemy.

(narrator) But sometimes he got a mixed reception.

(man) I remember, just off Green Street,

an avenue where Churchill came down.

There was a devil of a great crater as big as this pub.

There were crowds of women trying to get things out of the shattered houses.

Churchill, after having a look round, he said, "We can take it."

And the women told him what they could take, in no unmistakable manner.

They said, "We're the ones that are taking it - you're out of the way."

(narrator) December 29, 1940.

German planes scattering incendiary bombs set the City of London ablaze.

There were 1,500 fires in and around the city.

St Paul's Cathedral was surrounded by fire.

(man) You could see the fire of London.

60 miles away, you could see the fire.

(woman) That night I was in a shelter, and it was burning above me.

We all had to get out, and we wasn't panicking a bit.

And we had to run to the top of Commercial Road,

to a factory that had a shelter down below in the basement.

And as we were running along, there was fires all burning around.

I could feel the heat on the floor - the puddles were hot.

And in the shelter, we stood all night, sleeping on each other's shoulders.

I stood all night sleeping on somebody else's shoulder.

(man) Eventually, we used so much water, we ran out of it.

And there we stood, letting the fires burn -

and we couldn't do nothing about it.

(narrator) The heart of the City of London was destroyed,

but St Paul's survived.

Manchester, Coventry, Birmingham, Swansea, Liverpool and many more

shared London's ordeal - all were within reach of the German air force,

with bases in France and the Low Countries.

It was more difficult for British bombers to reach German cities.

The government looked for some other way of carrying the war to the enemy.

We decided the only place where we could fight the enemy

was the North African desert, the Middle East theatre generally.

There was nowhere else. We couldn't hope to make a landing in France

in any foreseeable future, and therefore couldn't injure the Germans that way.

So the two alternatives... They weren't alternatives.

The two possibles were bombing, and fighting in the Middle East.

And that is why from those very early days

we began to push, agitate, ask for more armour in the Middle East.

We had to take the armour out of the line, out of the defence of Britain.

There was no other way of doing it.

(narrator) On December 10, 1940,

two Commonwealth divisions under General Wavell

attacked the big ltalian army in North Africa.

Slightly to their own surprise, they advanced with great speed.

Fortress after fortress was taken.

100,000 prisoners were captured.

Now there seemed to be a chance to get at the main enemy, Germany -

through Yugoslavia and Greece.

We did think that if it were possible

to bring certain Balkan countries into conflict with Hitler,

the consequences of that might be really unforeseeable -

couldn't predict the result.

The view of the War Cabinet and the Defence Committee

was that, if the Greeks were going to defend themselves against the Germans,

we should bring them what help we could.

And Dill and I were sent out,

after Wavell's victory, to Cairo to look into this business.

When we got there, Wavell said, "I hope you won't mind what I'm going to say."

"I didn't think I ought to waste time -

l've begun the movement of troops and the concentration

to enable us to go to Greece."

(narrator) The landing in Greece was meant to forestall a German attack.

To many Greeks, it seemed likely to hasten it.

They had held their own against ltaly,

but when the Germans attacked on April 6, 1941,

Greece was overwhelmed in three weeks.

So was Yugoslavia, which had joined the Allies.

50,000 Commonwealth troops were evacuated.

One has to admit that...

we didn't obtain the objectives we'd hoped for.

We weren't able to conduct, with the help of the Yugoslavs,

any effective campaign in the Balkans.

Turkey, it is true, remained a defensive pad,

but we lost Greece and lost many men - brave men -

and more were captured.

So in that sense, the balance sheet was much against us.

And it was a depressing time, no question of that.

(narrator) By May 1941, Germany and her allies

controlled most of Continental Europe.

And in North Africa, a small German force under Rommel

had recaptured nearly all the British gains.

The British tried to hold Crete as a naval base.

With complete command of the air,

the Germans attacked Crete with 16,000 parachutists -

the first large-scale airborne assault in the history of warfare.

In spite of heavy losses, they gained a foothold on a vital airfield, Maleme,

which meant that more troops could be flown in.

Helped by intensive bombing,

the Germans were able to advance against a bigger Commonwealth force.

Once again, air power won the battle.

Commonwealth losses: 13,000 killed, wounded or captured.

And another evacuation to add to the list of Norway, France, Greece.

The British people wondered how much more they would have to take.

(Colville) Churchill thought Crete should be held at all costs.

If we lost Crete, we lost our base in the Eastern Mediterranean -

our naval base and our air base.

And he kept on telegraphing to Wavell, saying:

"Surely you can spare just a dozen tanks for the defence of Maleme airfield",

the chief airfield in Crete, "against German paratroops."

And Wavell replied that he had no tanks -

they were all having their tracks mended or their engines greased or something -

and that he couldn't spare even a dozen.

Well, Crete was lost. It was a great disaster -

upset everybody in the House of Commons, upset the country.

It was a low point for us in the war, in the spring of 1941.

I used to be up until 2:30 in the morning,

broadcasting to America and the Dominions and so on.

And I'd snatch some pretty dicey sort of sleep

in the basement of Broadcasting House.

l'd come out in the morning, and then I'd walk around, and I'd think:

"I don't think there can be much more of this, because everything's going."

On those mornings, you thought, "Another two weeks of this

and there'll be nothing around here but rubble."

(narrator) On May 10, 1941,

London suffered its most destructive night raid of the war.

Over 3,000 people were killed or injured.

Hundreds of fires had to be left to burn themselves out.

There seemed no end in sight to the slaughter and destruction.

But although Londoners didn't know, it was the turning point.

In April, '41,

Hitler assembled all the commanders in France.

And... during two hours,

he talked to us about the part two of the Battle of Britain.

And... he told us later -

two of us, namely my friend Mölders and myself -

that it has only been in order to camouflage the offensive against Russia.

This has been in April, '41.

And the raid on 10 May

can only be considered as a camouflage of the...

beginning of the Russian campaign.

(narrator) Among the victims of the raid on May 10

was the House of Commons.

For exactly a year, a year of disappointment and defeat,

the Commons had sustained Churchill in office.

But the important battle had been won.

Britain had survived.

Now it was Russia's turn.