1 00:00:18,500 --> 00:00:20,340 June 3rd, 1940. 2 00:00:21,420 --> 00:00:25,500 Ship's captain William Tennant sends a coded message. 3 00:00:25,500 --> 00:00:28,700 "Operation completed. Returning to Dover." 4 00:00:30,580 --> 00:00:34,820 The so-called small ships flotilla of over a thousand vessels 5 00:00:34,820 --> 00:00:38,340 has rescued more than 300,000 soldiers of the British 6 00:00:38,340 --> 00:00:41,580 Expeditionary Force from the French port of Dunkirk. 7 00:00:44,660 --> 00:00:49,100 A 3:40pm the next day, as the last of the French rearguard clamber 8 00:00:49,100 --> 00:00:51,300 aboard British rescue ships, 9 00:00:51,300 --> 00:00:54,420 Prime Minister Winston Churchill stands before Parliament. 10 00:00:56,140 --> 00:00:58,380 At this point, that German Army 11 00:00:58,380 --> 00:01:01,620 and Air Force was looking across the Channel 12 00:01:01,620 --> 00:01:05,820 so Churchill actually has to rouse the British people and warn them 13 00:01:05,820 --> 00:01:08,020 that the Germans are on their way. 14 00:01:08,020 --> 00:01:12,300 To do this, he makes one of the most memorable speeches in history. 15 00:01:13,580 --> 00:01:16,020 We shall fight on beaches, 16 00:01:16,020 --> 00:01:18,540 landing grounds, 17 00:01:18,540 --> 00:01:20,740 in fields, in streets, 18 00:01:20,740 --> 00:01:24,540 and on the hills; we shall never surrender. 19 00:01:25,900 --> 00:01:30,540 This will become one of the most quoted speeches of all time, 20 00:01:30,540 --> 00:01:35,140 but behind its defiant bravado hides an unspoken truth. 21 00:01:35,140 --> 00:01:39,180 Churchill sat down. He's supposed to have said to a colleague next 22 00:01:39,180 --> 00:01:41,580 to him, "We'll fight them with the shattered ends 23 00:01:41,580 --> 00:01:45,940 "of beer bottles because that's all we've damn well got." 24 00:01:47,220 --> 00:01:49,380 About three in five of the British 25 00:01:49,380 --> 00:01:51,340 army's tanks and artillery are left 26 00:01:51,340 --> 00:01:55,180 behind in the chaotic retreat from Belgium. 27 00:01:55,180 --> 00:02:00,500 If Hitler had chosen to invade at that point, it is difficult to see 28 00:02:00,500 --> 00:02:02,980 how the country could have defended itself 29 00:02:02,980 --> 00:02:05,180 because they didn't have weapons. 30 00:02:05,180 --> 00:02:08,460 Hitler intends to knock Britain out of the war and quickly 31 00:02:08,460 --> 00:02:11,700 turn his attention to his real target - Russia. 32 00:02:12,740 --> 00:02:16,260 But he has reckoned without the Royal Air Force. 33 00:02:16,260 --> 00:02:19,300 The scene is set for an epic confrontation. 34 00:02:20,900 --> 00:02:23,740 But what will become known as the Battle of Britain 35 00:02:23,740 --> 00:02:26,260 will not only come down to numbers. 36 00:02:26,260 --> 00:02:29,060 It will also come down to time. 37 00:02:42,820 --> 00:02:46,700 Between June and October, 1940, 38 00:02:46,700 --> 00:02:51,660 the nature of warfare changes forever. The Second World War 39 00:02:51,660 --> 00:02:55,260 really marks a step change in the way that wars are fought. 40 00:02:56,940 --> 00:02:59,300 Because, before the war, you had to control the land 41 00:02:59,300 --> 00:03:01,780 and sometimes the sea. 42 00:03:01,780 --> 00:03:04,380 Now, you also have to control the air. 43 00:03:06,940 --> 00:03:10,300 The essential prerequisite for any successful invasion 44 00:03:10,300 --> 00:03:14,540 had to be German command of the skies over the Channel, and, 45 00:03:14,540 --> 00:03:16,780 for that, the Royal Air Force had to be defeated. 46 00:03:17,900 --> 00:03:20,900 There was no doubt that you had to achieve air supremacy. 47 00:03:23,100 --> 00:03:26,940 Reich's Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, is well aware of this. 48 00:03:26,940 --> 00:03:31,460 Operation Sea Lion, the codename for the German invasion of Britain, 49 00:03:31,460 --> 00:03:35,060 requires 13 divisions to be transported across the Channel 50 00:03:35,060 --> 00:03:39,100 to a series of landing points along a 190-mile front 51 00:03:39,100 --> 00:03:41,820 stretching from Ramsgate to Lyme Regis. 52 00:03:43,820 --> 00:03:46,620 For that to work, three things had to happen. 53 00:03:46,620 --> 00:03:51,060 First, the Royal Navy had to be defeated for the Channel. 54 00:03:51,060 --> 00:03:53,980 Secondly, the defences at the beachheads 55 00:03:53,980 --> 00:03:56,500 had to be pounded into submission. 56 00:03:56,500 --> 00:04:00,100 Third, in the event of a successful invasion, the supply lines 57 00:04:00,100 --> 00:04:03,260 had to be protected so the British couldn't cut them off. 58 00:04:03,260 --> 00:04:05,940 Now, to do all that, you need the Luftwaffe. 59 00:04:12,260 --> 00:04:15,900 Nazi Air Marshal Hermann Goring is confident that his Luftwaffe 60 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:19,900 can swat the British out of the sky with ease. 61 00:04:19,900 --> 00:04:22,140 "I'll do it in four days," Goring said. 62 00:04:23,220 --> 00:04:28,460 He was a boastful man, but he did have genuine reasons for believing 63 00:04:28,460 --> 00:04:33,860 that the Luftwaffe could gain the upper hand over the Royal Air Force. 64 00:04:33,860 --> 00:04:37,300 The fact was that the Luftwaffe pilots were more experienced 65 00:04:37,300 --> 00:04:39,500 than Royal Air Force pilots. 66 00:04:39,500 --> 00:04:42,540 They'd already learned their craft in Spain before the war, 67 00:04:42,540 --> 00:04:43,980 then in Poland. 68 00:04:45,900 --> 00:04:50,140 In June 1940, Goring also has more aircraft at his disposal. 69 00:04:51,620 --> 00:04:54,700 To spearhead what will become known as the Battle of Britain, 70 00:04:54,700 --> 00:04:58,940 the Luftwaffe has over 900 fighter aircraft. 71 00:04:58,940 --> 00:05:03,500 British Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding can muster 768 fighter 72 00:05:03,500 --> 00:05:07,660 planes, of which only 520 are serviceable. 73 00:05:08,740 --> 00:05:10,020 There's no doubt about it. 74 00:05:10,020 --> 00:05:12,660 Fighter Command of the Royal Air Force had been badly hit 75 00:05:12,660 --> 00:05:15,940 by the Battle of France and Dunkirk. 76 00:05:15,940 --> 00:05:19,460 Something like a third of British planes had been put out of action. 77 00:05:19,460 --> 00:05:23,100 Worse still, at the start of the war, German factories are producing 78 00:05:23,100 --> 00:05:26,140 almost 550 planes a month. 79 00:05:26,140 --> 00:05:31,060 By contrast, British production of aircraft was comparatively pitiful. 80 00:05:32,620 --> 00:05:36,580 Confident he can replace all the combat losses he might incur, 81 00:05:36,580 --> 00:05:41,060 Goring believes he has the numbers and that the Luftwaffe outclasses 82 00:05:41,060 --> 00:05:44,940 the RAF in virtually every important respect. 83 00:05:44,940 --> 00:05:49,260 He's particularly bullish about his fighter pilots and their aircraft. 84 00:05:56,340 --> 00:05:59,220 This is the Messerschmitt Bf 109, 85 00:05:59,220 --> 00:06:04,260 the principal Luftwaffe fighter aircraft of the Battle of Britain. 86 00:06:04,260 --> 00:06:08,220 In fact, this one actually served in that combat in 1940. 87 00:06:10,020 --> 00:06:13,100 This aircraft is a remarkable machine in many ways. 88 00:06:13,100 --> 00:06:16,460 Got a maximum speed of 350mph. 89 00:06:16,460 --> 00:06:20,460 It can fly up to 35,000 feet. 90 00:06:20,460 --> 00:06:23,900 Got cockpit armour, which is very, very good for the pilot, 91 00:06:23,900 --> 00:06:29,540 and very, very well armed - up to three cannon and two machine guns. 92 00:06:29,540 --> 00:06:32,580 Crucially, these pilots, some of them had served in the 93 00:06:32,580 --> 00:06:36,780 Condor Legion in Spain, where they'd escorted bombing missions. 94 00:06:36,780 --> 00:06:38,980 They knew what they were doing. 95 00:06:42,620 --> 00:06:45,700 Ranged against the Messerschmitt is this aircraft. 96 00:06:45,700 --> 00:06:47,420 This is the Hurricane. 97 00:06:47,420 --> 00:06:51,740 Not nearly so well known as the flashy and iconic Spitfire 98 00:06:51,740 --> 00:06:55,780 over there, but this is the real workhorse of the RAF. 99 00:06:55,780 --> 00:07:00,380 It's an aircraft which is robust, easy to repair, 100 00:07:00,380 --> 00:07:02,700 but it has some problems. 101 00:07:02,700 --> 00:07:07,100 It's only got a maximum ceiling of 16,200 feet 102 00:07:07,100 --> 00:07:11,340 and can only fly at 324mph. 103 00:07:11,340 --> 00:07:13,740 Very importantly, it lacks cannon. 104 00:07:13,740 --> 00:07:17,540 This aircraft does not have the firepower of the Messerschmitt. 105 00:07:17,540 --> 00:07:21,900 With only eight machineguns, it does not have the punch of its opponents. 106 00:07:21,900 --> 00:07:23,780 Other problem is this... 107 00:07:23,780 --> 00:07:26,780 it's got three fuel tanks - one each wing, 108 00:07:26,780 --> 00:07:29,820 one directly in front of the pilot. 109 00:07:29,820 --> 00:07:31,860 If that fuel tank is pierced, 110 00:07:31,860 --> 00:07:34,780 then fuel will flood back over the pilots 111 00:07:34,780 --> 00:07:38,580 and the problem is that the canopy is difficult to open. 112 00:07:38,580 --> 00:07:40,900 Some pilots find it difficult to bail out; 113 00:07:40,900 --> 00:07:43,220 others, I'm afraid, never make it. 114 00:07:44,380 --> 00:07:47,340 However, the great advantage of this aircraft 115 00:07:47,340 --> 00:07:48,860 is the turning circle. 116 00:07:48,860 --> 00:07:52,820 The result is that you turn inside your opponent in a dogfight 117 00:07:52,820 --> 00:07:55,300 and that's the difference between life and death. 118 00:07:57,940 --> 00:08:01,100 The decisive battle for supremacy of Britain's skies 119 00:08:01,100 --> 00:08:04,340 does not happen for several weeks. 120 00:08:04,340 --> 00:08:07,860 When it does, the numbers will surprise both sides. 121 00:08:12,410 --> 00:08:14,930 As well as winning air supremacy, 122 00:08:14,930 --> 00:08:17,970 victory in the Battle of Britain requires the Luftwaffe to clear 123 00:08:17,970 --> 00:08:20,930 the British Navy from the English Channel. 124 00:08:20,930 --> 00:08:25,410 Air Marshal Dowding identified July 10th as the first major day 125 00:08:25,410 --> 00:08:28,370 in which the Luftwaffe were bombing, but actually the Luftwaffe 126 00:08:28,370 --> 00:08:30,770 had mounted plenty of sporadic attacks before then. 127 00:08:32,210 --> 00:08:35,330 Despite this, the Royal Navy are still sending convoys 128 00:08:35,330 --> 00:08:39,090 through the Channel until, one day, a convoy of 20 ships 129 00:08:39,090 --> 00:08:41,490 loses all but four of its number. 130 00:08:45,730 --> 00:08:48,250 The battle for the skies does not truly take off 131 00:08:48,250 --> 00:08:52,890 for several more weeks, and the reason for that is Hitler. 132 00:08:52,890 --> 00:08:56,610 What Hitler wants Britain to do is to come to terms. 133 00:08:56,610 --> 00:08:58,330 He wants to make peace with them 134 00:08:58,330 --> 00:09:00,770 because he can't understand why Britain won't make peace. 135 00:09:00,770 --> 00:09:04,370 Britain is a busted flush, as far as he's concerned. 136 00:09:04,370 --> 00:09:08,010 Convinced that Churchill will surrender, Hitler waits until 137 00:09:08,010 --> 00:09:12,850 August before ordering an all-out assault on Britain's airbases. 138 00:09:12,850 --> 00:09:15,770 It's just the kind of breathing space that Air Marshal Dowding 139 00:09:15,770 --> 00:09:17,370 is praying for. 140 00:09:18,570 --> 00:09:23,370 Dowding did need time to bring more planes into action, to fix, 141 00:09:23,370 --> 00:09:27,130 to repair some of the planes that he already had, to train up pilots. 142 00:09:30,690 --> 00:09:32,610 August 13th, 1940. 143 00:09:33,810 --> 00:09:35,930 The Germans unleash a massive air raid. 144 00:09:37,690 --> 00:09:42,490 On Adlertag or Eagle Day, 1,485 145 00:09:42,490 --> 00:09:46,810 German aircraft bomb Britain's airfields and plane factories. 146 00:09:51,450 --> 00:09:54,010 But Eagle Day is only the beginning. 147 00:09:55,530 --> 00:09:58,730 The merciless bombing raids continue for the rest of a month 148 00:09:58,730 --> 00:10:02,410 in which Britain's skies swarm with German aircraft. 149 00:10:03,810 --> 00:10:08,130 At the height of the Eagle campaign, more than 1,700 bombers 150 00:10:08,130 --> 00:10:10,450 are accompanied by fighter escorts. 151 00:10:10,450 --> 00:10:12,170 BELL RINGS 152 00:10:12,170 --> 00:10:16,090 But Dowding's RAF is ready for the Luftwaffe. 153 00:10:16,090 --> 00:10:19,930 By the time of Eagle Day, Fighter Command has over a thousand 154 00:10:19,930 --> 00:10:23,570 fighter aircraft and they are eager to have a scrap. 155 00:10:25,450 --> 00:10:29,850 British Fighter Command also has a technological advantage. 156 00:10:29,850 --> 00:10:34,530 They're backed up by an early warning system of 21 radar stations 157 00:10:34,530 --> 00:10:38,090 and 30,000 spotters that can detect enemy aircraft 158 00:10:38,090 --> 00:10:39,890 from up to 80 miles away. 159 00:10:41,050 --> 00:10:45,890 One aspect of war for which Britain was brilliantly prepared in 1940 160 00:10:45,890 --> 00:10:48,250 was home defence against air attack. 161 00:10:50,450 --> 00:10:55,090 And this marriage, not only of the radar system, not only 162 00:10:55,090 --> 00:10:57,010 of the Spitfires and the Hurricanes, 163 00:10:57,010 --> 00:10:59,690 but also of the rhetoric of Winston Churchill, 164 00:10:59,690 --> 00:11:03,250 these things came together to create something absolutely astounding 165 00:11:03,250 --> 00:11:04,690 in the eyes of the world. 166 00:11:14,930 --> 00:11:17,090 The Luftwaffe is astonished. 167 00:11:19,210 --> 00:11:22,170 At least three quarters of its raids are being intercepted. 168 00:11:23,730 --> 00:11:28,410 On Eagle Day itself, the RAF shoots down 46 German planes 169 00:11:28,410 --> 00:11:30,530 for just 13 of their own. 170 00:11:32,050 --> 00:11:37,810 On August 18th, the so-called Hardest Day, 69 German aircraft 171 00:11:37,810 --> 00:11:42,090 are shot out of the sky for only 31 British. 172 00:11:42,090 --> 00:11:47,410 Right from the start, the RAF are winning the Battle of Britain. 173 00:11:47,410 --> 00:11:50,010 But it doesn't feel like it. 174 00:11:50,010 --> 00:11:52,010 At the height of the Eagle campaign, 175 00:11:52,010 --> 00:11:54,770 four airfields are temporarily put out of action. 176 00:11:56,010 --> 00:11:58,930 And the number of air crew getting killed is phenomenal, 177 00:11:58,930 --> 00:12:03,170 which means you've got these young pilots with just ten hours' training 178 00:12:03,170 --> 00:12:05,450 coming into full combat service. 179 00:12:07,010 --> 00:12:09,810 But numbers can be deceptive... 180 00:12:09,810 --> 00:12:11,970 especially when you're getting them wrong. 181 00:12:11,970 --> 00:12:13,730 For most of the Battle of Britain, 182 00:12:13,730 --> 00:12:17,370 the intelligence on both sides was actually faulty. 183 00:12:18,690 --> 00:12:20,890 The popular image of the Battle of Britain, of course, 184 00:12:20,890 --> 00:12:24,490 is David and Goliath. British Fighter Command is David 185 00:12:24,490 --> 00:12:26,490 and there's this huge German Goliath, you know, 186 00:12:26,490 --> 00:12:29,570 who's got absolutely masses of aircraft. 187 00:12:29,570 --> 00:12:32,650 Well, it's an attractive story but there were more fighters 188 00:12:32,650 --> 00:12:35,370 available to the British than were available to the Germans. 189 00:12:37,450 --> 00:12:40,810 At the height of the Eagle campaign, the Germans are convinced 190 00:12:40,810 --> 00:12:43,730 that the RAF has lost 770 planes 191 00:12:43,730 --> 00:12:47,210 out of an available force of 1,200. 192 00:12:47,210 --> 00:12:51,410 In fact, they've only lost 318 193 00:12:51,410 --> 00:12:53,530 and still have 1,400 available. 194 00:12:55,970 --> 00:12:59,930 And new plane production is now so fast that there are over three 195 00:12:59,930 --> 00:13:02,810 times more in service than the Luftwaffe estimates. 196 00:13:05,090 --> 00:13:10,050 Since June, British aircraft factory output has soared to 1,900 197 00:13:10,050 --> 00:13:12,450 new fighters in just three months. 198 00:13:14,170 --> 00:13:17,890 Germany doesn't know it, but in British factories an ambitious 199 00:13:17,890 --> 00:13:21,610 programme of aircraft production named Harrogate 200 00:13:21,610 --> 00:13:24,170 has been operational for months. 201 00:13:24,170 --> 00:13:26,850 They plan to produce round about 3,000 aircraft. 202 00:13:26,850 --> 00:13:29,730 In the end, they end up producing more than 4,000. 203 00:13:29,730 --> 00:13:31,610 There's a general sense of urgency. 204 00:13:31,610 --> 00:13:33,650 Workers are willing to turn up and work all night. 205 00:13:33,650 --> 00:13:35,810 If we can't get the aircraft out fast enough, 206 00:13:35,810 --> 00:13:37,450 then the worst is going to happen. 207 00:13:39,330 --> 00:13:44,210 Even so, the combined toll of more than 1,300 German aircraft 208 00:13:44,210 --> 00:13:47,650 pounding British airfields every clear day 209 00:13:47,650 --> 00:13:50,490 is pushing the RAF to breaking point. 210 00:13:50,490 --> 00:13:53,050 The leaders of Fighter Command started worrying 211 00:13:53,050 --> 00:13:55,650 that they couldn't actually maintain the fight; 212 00:13:55,650 --> 00:13:58,570 they were going to have to move the airfields back. 213 00:14:00,250 --> 00:14:03,250 The RAF feels like it's on the verge of collapse 214 00:14:03,250 --> 00:14:07,570 when, on September 7th, the Germans launched the heaviest single raid 215 00:14:07,570 --> 00:14:09,330 of the campaign. 216 00:14:09,330 --> 00:14:12,290 Goring thinks that the RAF is finished 217 00:14:12,290 --> 00:14:14,930 so they go onto the next stage of supreme invasion plan. 218 00:14:16,730 --> 00:14:21,370 348 bombers accompanied by 617 fighters 219 00:14:21,370 --> 00:14:23,490 start flying across the Channel. 220 00:14:25,050 --> 00:14:28,570 But today their targets are not airfields. 221 00:14:28,570 --> 00:14:31,330 They have one target and that's London. 222 00:14:35,050 --> 00:14:39,210 At 5pm, German bomb doors opened above London's docks. 223 00:14:40,450 --> 00:14:44,330 They dropped more than 350 tonnes of high explosive 224 00:14:44,330 --> 00:14:46,490 and over 400 incendiary bombs. 225 00:15:00,610 --> 00:15:03,210 The inferno was so big, 226 00:15:03,210 --> 00:15:05,810 it caused more damage than the Great Fire of London. 227 00:15:07,730 --> 00:15:11,890 Ten days earlier, 95 British aircraft had bombed Berlin. 228 00:15:13,530 --> 00:15:15,490 The bombing of London's dockyards 229 00:15:15,490 --> 00:15:18,010 marks a decisive change in Nazi strategy. 230 00:15:19,410 --> 00:15:21,890 The bombing of London is often 231 00:15:21,890 --> 00:15:25,250 seen simply as a reaction by Hitler to the bombing of Berlin. 232 00:15:25,250 --> 00:15:27,050 Let's teach the British a lesson. 233 00:15:27,050 --> 00:15:30,170 In fact, the bombing of London had long been part of the plan. The idea 234 00:15:30,170 --> 00:15:32,970 was that there would be serious and heavy attacks on London 235 00:15:32,970 --> 00:15:37,610 to disrupt the capital, just a week before German troops began to land 236 00:15:37,610 --> 00:15:39,530 on the Sussex and Kent coast. 237 00:15:40,930 --> 00:15:44,570 But in fact, the Blitz of Britain lasts eight months. 238 00:15:46,250 --> 00:15:51,290 More than 30,000 tonnes of bombs are dropped on London and other cities; 239 00:15:51,290 --> 00:15:52,890 over 40,000 perish. 240 00:15:54,090 --> 00:15:58,690 250,000 people are rendered homeless within the first month 241 00:15:58,690 --> 00:16:01,850 and over two million homes are all destroyed. 242 00:16:08,250 --> 00:16:12,010 But British morale remains unbowed. 243 00:16:12,010 --> 00:16:16,570 It's often said the Blitz spirit was a myth. 244 00:16:16,570 --> 00:16:18,010 It's not true. 245 00:16:18,010 --> 00:16:20,210 Blitz spirit was not a myth. 246 00:16:20,210 --> 00:16:21,810 Blitz spirit was real. 247 00:16:23,330 --> 00:16:26,450 The Blitz never really came close 248 00:16:26,450 --> 00:16:30,650 to shattering the morale of the British people. 249 00:16:33,050 --> 00:16:35,730 The Luftwaffe suddenly threw sufficient numbers 250 00:16:35,730 --> 00:16:37,850 at breaking Britain's spirit. 251 00:16:39,490 --> 00:16:44,570 Just after midnight on September 15th, 1940, Goring sends in wave 252 00:16:44,570 --> 00:16:49,170 after wave of bombers, forcing the RAF to face his fighter escorts 253 00:16:49,170 --> 00:16:50,730 in dogfights over London. 254 00:16:53,250 --> 00:16:57,610 September 15th is still commemorated as Battle of Britain day. 255 00:17:01,370 --> 00:17:04,530 The raid lasts 19 hours. 256 00:17:04,530 --> 00:17:08,170 Our best guess is that something like 1,500 aircraft took part. 257 00:17:09,570 --> 00:17:14,130 And the British estimated that they shot down 185 German 258 00:17:14,130 --> 00:17:17,690 aircraft for the loss of 29 aircraft of their own. 259 00:17:19,250 --> 00:17:22,490 In fact, only 74 German aircraft are destroyed. 260 00:17:23,890 --> 00:17:26,370 But it's enough to convince Goring that daylight bombing 261 00:17:26,370 --> 00:17:29,330 raids are too costly to continue. 262 00:17:29,330 --> 00:17:34,250 From that day, the German blitz is only conducted at night. 263 00:17:34,250 --> 00:17:38,050 The Battle of Britain is effectively over. 264 00:17:38,050 --> 00:17:40,290 In the end, for the Germans the Battle of Britain 265 00:17:40,290 --> 00:17:42,010 was an unwinnable battle. 266 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:45,490 The level of attrition that the German air force had to take 267 00:17:45,490 --> 00:17:47,410 during this period was enormous. 268 00:17:47,410 --> 00:17:50,530 The loss rates were catastrophic loss rates. 269 00:17:52,370 --> 00:17:56,050 It's the day when Hitler effectively threw in the towel, 270 00:17:56,050 --> 00:17:59,690 gave up on the invasion of Britain, and turned his attention elsewhere. 271 00:18:03,410 --> 00:18:06,930 Hitler has other things to focus on rather than some tinpot island 272 00:18:06,930 --> 00:18:08,970 on the edge of the Atlantic. 273 00:18:08,970 --> 00:18:11,610 No, he's planning something else. 274 00:18:11,610 --> 00:18:13,490 He's planning to conquer Russia. 275 00:18:18,570 --> 00:18:20,770 The conquest of Russia has always 276 00:18:20,770 --> 00:18:23,610 lurked at the centre of Adolf Hitler's plans. 277 00:18:23,610 --> 00:18:26,450 As early as 1923, 278 00:18:26,450 --> 00:18:29,410 he identifies Russia and the Ukraine 279 00:18:29,410 --> 00:18:32,770 as places which are ideal for the Lebensraum, 280 00:18:32,770 --> 00:18:35,730 the living space that he needs for the German people. 281 00:18:39,050 --> 00:18:42,810 The idea was to create colonies that could be sort of farms 282 00:18:42,810 --> 00:18:45,930 for Germany but also give them lots of mineral resources - 283 00:18:45,930 --> 00:18:47,810 coal, oil and so forth. 284 00:18:49,290 --> 00:18:53,050 The plan, basically, was for the native population, 285 00:18:53,050 --> 00:18:55,970 who were considered Untermensch - "under beings" - 286 00:18:55,970 --> 00:18:58,250 to be cleared out of these areas. 287 00:18:58,250 --> 00:19:01,370 This was a murderous plan in its basic inception. 288 00:19:01,370 --> 00:19:03,690 A certain portion of them were going to be starved. 289 00:19:03,690 --> 00:19:06,970 A certain number of them were going to be killed, worked to death. 290 00:19:08,170 --> 00:19:10,850 Even though Britain is inconveniently holding out 291 00:19:10,850 --> 00:19:14,450 on the Western Front, Hitler decides it no longer matters. 292 00:19:14,450 --> 00:19:19,290 When Hitler is controlling that vast swathe of European Russia, 293 00:19:19,290 --> 00:19:22,290 Britain will no longer have any allies left in Europe, and so 294 00:19:22,290 --> 00:19:24,210 she'll just have to sue for peace. 295 00:19:25,570 --> 00:19:30,570 By June 1941, Hitler and his yes men in the German High Command 296 00:19:30,570 --> 00:19:33,330 convinced themselves that a blitzkrieg through Russia 297 00:19:33,330 --> 00:19:36,130 can take Moscow in three months. 298 00:19:37,250 --> 00:19:40,010 If the French army could be defeated in six weeks, 299 00:19:40,010 --> 00:19:43,130 the premiere army in Europe as far as they were concerned, 300 00:19:43,130 --> 00:19:46,290 then the Red Army is no... it's a paper tiger. 301 00:19:46,290 --> 00:19:50,330 To use the word "hubris" to describe the German mood 302 00:19:50,330 --> 00:19:54,490 after their huge successes in France in 1940 isn't enough. 303 00:19:55,970 --> 00:19:58,810 Hitler's faith in the German army was overwhelming. 304 00:20:01,690 --> 00:20:04,970 The Reich's Fuhrer also takes encouragement from the Red Army's 305 00:20:04,970 --> 00:20:09,330 wretched performance in its November 1939 invasion of Finland. 306 00:20:12,690 --> 00:20:17,050 The so-called Winter War sees over a million Soviet soldiers fought 307 00:20:17,050 --> 00:20:19,970 to a standstill by a mere 300,000 Finns. 308 00:20:22,450 --> 00:20:27,210 Russia's casualty rate is also seven times that of Finland's. 309 00:20:27,210 --> 00:20:29,450 The idea that the Red Army were going to be able to 310 00:20:29,450 --> 00:20:32,610 resist the Germans seemed absolutely incredible. 311 00:20:32,610 --> 00:20:34,890 But Hitler failed to notice two things. 312 00:20:34,890 --> 00:20:38,730 The first was that the Russian army was very good at adapting. 313 00:20:38,730 --> 00:20:41,930 They learned from their mistakes. And the second thing that Hitler 314 00:20:41,930 --> 00:20:46,570 failed to appreciate was that Red Army tactics simply rely on wave 315 00:20:46,570 --> 00:20:50,250 after wave of humanity overwhelming enemy positions. 316 00:20:53,810 --> 00:20:57,850 This was the preferred tactic of General Georgy Zhukov, 317 00:20:57,850 --> 00:21:01,330 whose recent success against the Japanese in Manchuria 318 00:21:01,330 --> 00:21:05,690 has promoted him to the top of Stalin's purged officer corps. 319 00:21:05,690 --> 00:21:10,210 Just in time to come face-to-face with blitzkrieg. 320 00:21:10,210 --> 00:21:13,490 Stalin has huge numbers of intelligence warnings - 321 00:21:13,490 --> 00:21:15,770 84 in number - saying the Germans are going to attack us, 322 00:21:15,770 --> 00:21:17,770 there's no doubt the Germans are going to attack - 323 00:21:17,770 --> 00:21:19,970 and Stalin disregards them all. 324 00:21:22,090 --> 00:21:25,410 Under the Soviets' non-aggression pact with the Nazis, 325 00:21:25,410 --> 00:21:28,530 in the first year of the war the Russians are giving the Germans 326 00:21:28,530 --> 00:21:31,010 900,000 tonnes of oil, 327 00:21:31,010 --> 00:21:33,690 one million tonnes of cereals 328 00:21:33,690 --> 00:21:36,530 and half a million tonnes of weapons grade phosphates. 329 00:21:37,890 --> 00:21:41,610 Stalin is convinced such essential commodity trade 330 00:21:41,610 --> 00:21:43,250 will keep his borders intact. 331 00:21:44,610 --> 00:21:47,930 But the evidence suggests otherwise. 332 00:21:47,930 --> 00:21:53,050 Three spies even gave him the exact date on which Hitler 333 00:21:53,050 --> 00:21:56,250 was going to invade, but again Stalin ignored it. 334 00:22:04,690 --> 00:22:07,930 On June the 22nd, 1941, 335 00:22:07,930 --> 00:22:12,690 Hitler sends the largest invasion force ever assembled into Russia. 336 00:22:14,170 --> 00:22:17,050 More than 3.6 million men, 337 00:22:17,050 --> 00:22:19,690 7,000 artillery pieces, 338 00:22:19,690 --> 00:22:24,330 3,500 tanks and 2,500 aircraft 339 00:22:24,330 --> 00:22:27,690 supported by over 600,000 horses 340 00:22:27,690 --> 00:22:30,010 are heading Stalin's way. 341 00:22:31,650 --> 00:22:35,850 Despite repeated warnings, the Soviets are totally unprepared 342 00:22:35,850 --> 00:22:38,370 for Germany's Operation Barbarossa. 343 00:22:40,850 --> 00:22:44,610 Barbarossa was the single most important act of the Second World 344 00:22:44,610 --> 00:22:47,690 War, which completely transformed its character 345 00:22:47,690 --> 00:22:52,690 and it represented the fulfilment of Hitler's foremost dream 346 00:22:52,690 --> 00:22:55,850 of Lebensraum, of a triumph 347 00:22:55,850 --> 00:22:58,210 over the Jews and the Bolsheviks. 348 00:22:59,650 --> 00:23:03,130 And also providing the German people with this empire in the east 349 00:23:03,130 --> 00:23:05,970 with a vital source of food and oil. 350 00:23:05,970 --> 00:23:09,130 Southern Russia, Ukraine and Caucasus 351 00:23:09,130 --> 00:23:12,530 in particular are incredibly rich in mineral resources. 352 00:23:12,530 --> 00:23:14,050 We're talking about oil. 353 00:23:14,050 --> 00:23:18,290 We're talking about coal - enormous coal reserves there, too. 354 00:23:18,290 --> 00:23:20,650 There's food and there's enormous amounts 355 00:23:20,650 --> 00:23:24,170 of wheat fields in southern Russia and in Ukraine. 356 00:23:26,610 --> 00:23:30,850 On paper, the Red Army has formidable forces at its disposal. 357 00:23:32,050 --> 00:23:34,050 At least five million men, 358 00:23:34,050 --> 00:23:37,610 10,000 tanks and more than 6,000 planes available. 359 00:23:40,410 --> 00:23:45,650 But 70% of its force is spread out, occupying Poland the country 360 00:23:45,650 --> 00:23:49,810 that Stalin and Hitler partitioned as allies, just a few months ago. 361 00:23:51,090 --> 00:23:55,810 Despite all 84 intelligence-led warnings of an invasion, Stalin 362 00:23:55,810 --> 00:23:59,890 finds the German assault so shocking that he has a minor breakdown. 363 00:23:59,890 --> 00:24:03,010 This is a man who still can't believe this is happening. 364 00:24:03,010 --> 00:24:07,250 He goes to his dacha, his country house, and he spends three days 365 00:24:07,250 --> 00:24:09,610 there in isolation, refusing to see anybody. 366 00:24:10,970 --> 00:24:13,490 By the time Stalin takes control, 367 00:24:13,490 --> 00:24:16,610 the Germans are 400 miles into Russian territory. 368 00:24:18,810 --> 00:24:21,890 And the Red Army has lost almost 5,000 tanks 369 00:24:21,890 --> 00:24:23,890 and close to 2,000 planes. 370 00:24:26,370 --> 00:24:28,610 The initial blitzkrieg into the Soviet Union 371 00:24:28,610 --> 00:24:30,250 actually went very well indeed. 372 00:24:31,290 --> 00:24:34,570 The Russian Air Force, for example, lost more planes than the British 373 00:24:34,570 --> 00:24:37,410 lost during the entirety of the Battle of Britain. 374 00:24:39,130 --> 00:24:40,490 Goring is ecstatic. 375 00:24:43,850 --> 00:24:47,930 Blitzkrieg is proving so effective that entire Russian armies 376 00:24:47,930 --> 00:24:50,170 are cut off and forced to surrender. 377 00:24:53,370 --> 00:24:57,330 By the middle of July, less than a month after the start 378 00:24:57,330 --> 00:25:02,330 of the campaign, 300,000 Russians had been taken prisoner. 379 00:25:02,330 --> 00:25:05,970 And, in fact, Franz Halder, the Army chief of staff, 380 00:25:05,970 --> 00:25:09,610 declared that the whole war had been won in just 14 days. 381 00:25:14,650 --> 00:25:18,210 But there is a lot of fighting yet to come. 382 00:25:18,210 --> 00:25:21,890 The German invasion plan involves a three-pronged attack. 383 00:25:21,890 --> 00:25:25,410 Army Group South will strike the rich Russian heartlands 384 00:25:25,410 --> 00:25:28,210 of the Ukraine and Crimea. 385 00:25:28,210 --> 00:25:32,410 Meanwhile, Army Group North and Army Group Centre will push north 386 00:25:32,410 --> 00:25:34,370 of the impassable Pripet Marshes, 387 00:25:34,370 --> 00:25:36,050 then divide at Smolensk. 388 00:25:37,410 --> 00:25:40,450 Army Group North will swing up to Leningrad, 389 00:25:40,450 --> 00:25:44,170 while Army Group Centre will smash through to Moscow. 390 00:25:45,610 --> 00:25:49,650 For Hitler's generals, Moscow is the absolute key. 391 00:25:49,650 --> 00:25:53,570 If Moscow falls, they say, then Russia will fall with it. 392 00:25:55,570 --> 00:25:59,810 The Nazis wanted to take Moscow for good military strategic reasons, 393 00:25:59,810 --> 00:26:02,050 in part. If you visit Russia, you'll see that 394 00:26:02,050 --> 00:26:04,330 all the train lines converge in Moscow. 395 00:26:04,330 --> 00:26:08,730 All the transport networks, the canals, the road network, 396 00:26:08,730 --> 00:26:10,210 they all go through Moscow 397 00:26:10,210 --> 00:26:13,170 so capturing Moscow would have been an important blow 398 00:26:13,170 --> 00:26:15,730 against the Soviet Union. 399 00:26:15,730 --> 00:26:18,650 But Hitler disagrees with his generals. 400 00:26:18,650 --> 00:26:22,890 For him, taking the resource-rich bread basket of the Ukraine 401 00:26:22,890 --> 00:26:26,490 and the oil fields of the Caucasus is just as important 402 00:26:26,490 --> 00:26:29,490 as the symbolism of taking Moscow. 403 00:26:29,490 --> 00:26:33,530 Russian oil and Russian corn was absolutely vital to Germany 404 00:26:33,530 --> 00:26:34,930 to continue with the war. 405 00:26:37,810 --> 00:26:44,090 Once Barbarossa had been launched, there are train loads of corn, oil, 406 00:26:44,090 --> 00:26:47,330 every sort of commodity flowing from Stalin's Russia 407 00:26:47,330 --> 00:26:49,050 to Hitler's Germany. 408 00:26:49,050 --> 00:26:53,250 So much Soviet food in the bellies of German troops 409 00:26:53,250 --> 00:26:55,610 inevitably leads to famine. 410 00:26:55,610 --> 00:26:57,570 The German Army are being fed by those fields - 411 00:26:57,570 --> 00:26:59,570 that raises the obvious point... 412 00:26:59,570 --> 00:27:01,770 What's going to happen to the 30 million Russians 413 00:27:01,770 --> 00:27:03,970 who are normally fed by those fields? 414 00:27:03,970 --> 00:27:06,770 Well, the solution is very simple. 415 00:27:06,770 --> 00:27:09,130 They all have to starve to death. 416 00:27:10,530 --> 00:27:13,490 Genocide is at the heart of Lebensraum. 417 00:27:14,810 --> 00:27:17,450 But, in Russia, the Nazis miss a trick. 418 00:27:18,890 --> 00:27:22,650 The population they are starving might even have supported them. 419 00:27:22,650 --> 00:27:27,570 The Soviet Union was a very brutal place and it had alienated 420 00:27:27,570 --> 00:27:29,490 large parts of its own population. 421 00:27:29,490 --> 00:27:31,930 Collectivization was not popular with peasants, 422 00:27:31,930 --> 00:27:36,170 to say the very least, so the rural peasantry are an obvious 423 00:27:36,170 --> 00:27:39,410 constituency the Nazis could have courted. 424 00:27:39,410 --> 00:27:42,410 But the Nazis' own brutality towards these people, whereby 425 00:27:42,410 --> 00:27:46,370 they treated them as inferior human beings, meant that whatever 426 00:27:46,370 --> 00:27:50,370 tentative practical steps they might have to reach out to that population 427 00:27:50,370 --> 00:27:53,810 were undermined by their own brutality, their own racism, their 428 00:27:53,810 --> 00:27:57,450 own violent, thuggish, colonial attitude to these people. 429 00:27:59,810 --> 00:28:03,610 And for Russian soldiers, the destructive logic of Lebensraum 430 00:28:03,610 --> 00:28:05,970 makes even surrender fatal. 431 00:28:08,290 --> 00:28:09,690 By the end of September, 432 00:28:09,690 --> 00:28:12,130 2 million Soviet troops have been captured 433 00:28:12,130 --> 00:28:14,890 and, by the end of the war, that's risen to 5.7 million. 434 00:28:17,210 --> 00:28:22,050 And the Germans only had space to hold 790,000 prisoners of war. 435 00:28:25,010 --> 00:28:27,290 So the obvious question is, what happens to them? 436 00:28:27,290 --> 00:28:33,370 And at least 3.3 million Russian POWs are either shot or starved 437 00:28:33,370 --> 00:28:35,410 to death in German captivity. 438 00:28:35,410 --> 00:28:36,930 That's murder. 439 00:28:38,090 --> 00:28:41,130 The civilian population fares no better. 440 00:28:41,130 --> 00:28:43,530 Hard on the heels of Panzer divisions 441 00:28:43,530 --> 00:28:46,890 come German Einsatzgruppen. Death squads. 442 00:28:46,890 --> 00:28:49,290 We tend to think of the Holocaust happening just in places 443 00:28:49,290 --> 00:28:52,930 like Auschwitz and in gas chambers, but actually millions of people 444 00:28:52,930 --> 00:28:56,130 were simply shot to death by these SS units 445 00:28:56,130 --> 00:28:58,490 called the Einsatzgruppen. 446 00:28:58,490 --> 00:29:02,890 This didn't just include political figures like Soviet commissars, 447 00:29:02,890 --> 00:29:05,930 but Jewish, men, women and children too. 448 00:29:05,930 --> 00:29:09,730 The most infamous mass shooting of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen 449 00:29:09,730 --> 00:29:12,450 in the former Soviet Union occurred 450 00:29:12,450 --> 00:29:17,370 at Babi Yar, a ravine outside of Kiev, in September 1941. 451 00:29:19,130 --> 00:29:23,890 The local Jews were taken out to this big ravine near Kiev 452 00:29:23,890 --> 00:29:26,250 and they were forced to undress, 453 00:29:26,250 --> 00:29:28,970 stand at the edge, and be shot into it. 454 00:29:28,970 --> 00:29:34,570 And something in the region of 33,000 Jews were shot. 455 00:29:34,570 --> 00:29:38,810 It was one of the largest massacres of that sort during the war. 456 00:29:41,410 --> 00:29:46,250 There are hundreds of such places throughout the former Soviet Union. 457 00:29:46,250 --> 00:29:49,530 Ultimately, we think that something like 1.5 million 458 00:29:49,530 --> 00:29:51,650 Soviet Jews were murdered by the Nazis. 459 00:29:53,370 --> 00:29:59,250 Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill - anyone deemed 460 00:29:59,250 --> 00:30:03,730 a threat to Aryan superiority becomes a target. 461 00:30:03,730 --> 00:30:08,330 They were people like the famous Dynamo Kiev football team 462 00:30:08,330 --> 00:30:11,850 that defeated a Nazi team in an infamous football match. 463 00:30:11,850 --> 00:30:13,850 They were anybody of that kind. 464 00:30:13,850 --> 00:30:16,290 Those they don't kill, they enslave. 465 00:30:16,290 --> 00:30:18,850 Some seven million Eastern Europeans 466 00:30:18,850 --> 00:30:22,290 are sent into labour battalions, and they're brutal places. 467 00:30:25,090 --> 00:30:28,010 On the battlefield, the number of Russian casualties 468 00:30:28,010 --> 00:30:30,650 is equally unimaginable. 469 00:30:30,650 --> 00:30:34,370 44,000 soldiers fall every single day. 470 00:30:34,370 --> 00:30:38,130 The Nazis are pouring hellfire down upon the Great Bear, 471 00:30:38,130 --> 00:30:40,810 but Hitler has not won yet. 472 00:30:45,050 --> 00:30:48,250 There are two military aphorisms that every soldier knows 473 00:30:48,250 --> 00:30:50,170 and that Hitler ignored at his peril. 474 00:30:54,050 --> 00:30:57,730 The first is that no plan survives contact with the enemy. 475 00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:04,130 The second, never fight a land war in Asia unless you're heading west. 476 00:31:04,130 --> 00:31:08,570 Hitler ignores both of them, and that will prove to be a big mistake. 477 00:31:10,650 --> 00:31:14,930 The Barbarossa invasion plan assumes the Red Army is so weak 478 00:31:14,930 --> 00:31:19,450 that a German blitzkrieg will take Moscow in three months. 479 00:31:19,450 --> 00:31:23,050 But the plan seriously underestimates both its opponent 480 00:31:23,050 --> 00:31:25,490 and the Soviet Union's sheer size. 481 00:31:27,210 --> 00:31:29,890 He can't even conceive of the challenges of space, 482 00:31:29,890 --> 00:31:32,450 the challenges of scale that he's confronting 483 00:31:32,450 --> 00:31:33,970 in the former Soviet Union. 484 00:31:36,530 --> 00:31:40,250 It is the biggest country in the world and that's really key here. 485 00:31:44,610 --> 00:31:50,170 The Soviet Union is not only land-rich; its 170-million-strong 486 00:31:50,170 --> 00:31:54,050 population provides Stalin and his chief of staff Marshal Zhukov 487 00:31:54,050 --> 00:31:57,650 an almost limitless resource of fighting men 488 00:31:57,650 --> 00:32:00,370 and almost a million women conscripts. 489 00:32:01,930 --> 00:32:03,610 The Soviet Union put women into arms 490 00:32:03,610 --> 00:32:06,570 like no other belligerent state in World War II. 491 00:32:06,570 --> 00:32:10,130 They were often in highly technical roles - snipers, 492 00:32:10,130 --> 00:32:13,290 they were in tanks, they were radio operators. 493 00:32:14,530 --> 00:32:18,530 The bravery and valour of Stalin's female fighters 494 00:32:18,530 --> 00:32:20,890 soon provide him propaganda gold. 495 00:32:22,330 --> 00:32:24,890 A whole number of women became heroes of the Soviet Union. 496 00:32:24,890 --> 00:32:26,810 People like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, 497 00:32:26,810 --> 00:32:30,050 the famous partisan tortured and hanged by the Nazis, 498 00:32:30,050 --> 00:32:32,850 and they took photographs of this whole process 499 00:32:32,850 --> 00:32:35,530 that were published then in the Soviet press. 500 00:32:35,530 --> 00:32:38,010 They sort of mobilised their own population 501 00:32:38,010 --> 00:32:40,210 to avenge this awful and heinous crime. 502 00:32:42,890 --> 00:32:45,850 But when the crunch comes, what will define the battle 503 00:32:45,850 --> 00:32:49,090 between the world's two most hated dictators 504 00:32:49,090 --> 00:32:52,090 will not be Russia's thirst for vengeance. 505 00:32:52,090 --> 00:32:55,930 It will be the weather and, most crucially, the numbers. 506 00:33:01,410 --> 00:33:06,530 By December 1941, Soviet commander Marshal Zhukov has 200 507 00:33:06,530 --> 00:33:08,930 new divisions ready to throw into the fight 508 00:33:08,930 --> 00:33:11,730 against the German invaders. 509 00:33:11,730 --> 00:33:15,410 Russia possesses the numbers to repel the Nazis, 510 00:33:15,410 --> 00:33:17,530 but her troops lack equipment. 511 00:33:18,610 --> 00:33:21,850 The Soviet Union was really good at churning out stuff 512 00:33:21,850 --> 00:33:25,450 that those in power thought that people needed, and it actually 513 00:33:25,450 --> 00:33:29,010 was really poor at producing the stuff that they actually needed. 514 00:33:30,690 --> 00:33:35,130 One glaring example of this is this one Garrison division in Leningrad 515 00:33:35,130 --> 00:33:40,090 that's got just 21 machine guns, about 100 pistols and 300 rifles, 516 00:33:40,090 --> 00:33:43,130 all to share between 7,000 men. 517 00:33:44,930 --> 00:33:49,250 Armed or not, the ruthless Zhukov sends his troops into battle, 518 00:33:49,250 --> 00:33:52,850 often with just Dutch courage to protect them. 519 00:33:52,850 --> 00:33:56,450 Russian soldiers are equipped with 100g of vodka a day 520 00:33:56,450 --> 00:33:59,530 to get them drunk enough to give them the courage to charge 521 00:33:59,530 --> 00:34:01,010 across no-man's-land. 522 00:34:03,810 --> 00:34:07,570 The communist disregard for human life is shocking. 523 00:34:07,570 --> 00:34:11,650 For every one soldier killed or wounded on the German side, 524 00:34:11,650 --> 00:34:14,730 on the Russian there are no fewer than 20. 525 00:34:14,730 --> 00:34:19,250 Zhukov simply doesn't care how many he must sacrifice. 526 00:34:19,250 --> 00:34:22,210 In essence, Zhukov's principal strategy is very simple. 527 00:34:22,210 --> 00:34:25,690 It involves sending more human beings at the enemy 528 00:34:25,690 --> 00:34:28,530 than the enemy has bullets to fire at them. 529 00:34:29,970 --> 00:34:33,370 And around 300,000 who refused to fight 530 00:34:33,370 --> 00:34:36,290 are simply executed by the NKVD. 531 00:34:36,290 --> 00:34:39,490 German manpower resources are stretched to their limit. 532 00:34:39,490 --> 00:34:43,890 It starts to dawn on some German minds that maybe, just maybe, 533 00:34:43,890 --> 00:34:46,370 Hitler has bitten off more than he can chew. 534 00:34:46,370 --> 00:34:50,210 By the end of July, Barbarossa's three army groups sustain 535 00:34:50,210 --> 00:34:55,250 a combined total of 213,301 losses. 536 00:34:57,930 --> 00:35:02,170 But German High Command can only supply 47,000 replacements. 537 00:35:04,130 --> 00:35:07,730 Franz Halder - now, this is the man who would prematurely declare 538 00:35:07,730 --> 00:35:11,210 victory within 14 days - was now writing in his diary, 539 00:35:11,210 --> 00:35:16,450 "We reckoned on about 200 divisions but we've already counted 360, 540 00:35:16,450 --> 00:35:20,610 "so, if we smash a dozen, they'll simply put up another dozen." 541 00:35:23,010 --> 00:35:27,250 If the numbers aren't bad enough, the sheer logistics of getting men 542 00:35:27,250 --> 00:35:31,490 and materiel to the front line is also proving a challenge. 543 00:35:31,490 --> 00:35:35,690 Simply supplying Army Group Centre requires running some 544 00:35:35,690 --> 00:35:38,450 25 goods trains every single day, 545 00:35:38,450 --> 00:35:41,970 and the problems with the Russian network means that, at most, 546 00:35:41,970 --> 00:35:47,410 the Germans are getting eight through, because around 350,000 547 00:35:47,410 --> 00:35:50,530 partisans are operating behind German lines. 548 00:35:55,890 --> 00:36:00,690 In the eyes of Hitler's generals, though, the gravest error of all 549 00:36:00,690 --> 00:36:05,370 comes in August when the Fuhrer orders Guderian 2nd Panzer Group 550 00:36:05,370 --> 00:36:08,770 away from Army Group Centre's advance on Moscow 551 00:36:08,770 --> 00:36:10,890 and sends them south instead. 552 00:36:11,970 --> 00:36:14,970 Guderian was absolutely incensed with this, but actually Hitler 553 00:36:14,970 --> 00:36:16,770 did it for a pretty good reason, 554 00:36:16,770 --> 00:36:20,450 because Army Group South was getting bogged down around Kiev 555 00:36:20,450 --> 00:36:22,090 and desperately needed to be helped. 556 00:36:23,610 --> 00:36:26,090 Not only did the Germans take Kiev, 557 00:36:26,090 --> 00:36:30,690 the Russians lose a massive 616,000 troops in the process. 558 00:36:33,090 --> 00:36:37,010 But just as his generals predict, Hitler's victory at Kiev 559 00:36:37,010 --> 00:36:40,010 takes its toll on German efforts to seize Moscow. 560 00:36:43,210 --> 00:36:46,530 Without Guderian Panzers, Army Group Centre can't push 561 00:36:46,530 --> 00:36:52,130 on towards Moscow and its advance just turns into a crawl really. 562 00:36:52,130 --> 00:36:55,930 The advance on Moscow does not regain momentum until early October. 563 00:36:57,490 --> 00:36:59,610 By then, it is too late. 564 00:37:03,170 --> 00:37:05,810 Russians have a name for their autumn rains. 565 00:37:07,650 --> 00:37:09,130 Rasputitsa. 566 00:37:09,130 --> 00:37:11,330 The dissolving of the roads. 567 00:37:13,690 --> 00:37:17,530 Most roads in Russia, particularly at this time, were mud roads, 568 00:37:17,530 --> 00:37:19,530 meaning that when it starts to rain 569 00:37:19,530 --> 00:37:21,370 torrentially, for days on end, 570 00:37:21,370 --> 00:37:24,290 they will turn to mud and be almost impassable. 571 00:37:24,290 --> 00:37:28,050 So launching their assaulting against Moscow in October 1941, 572 00:37:28,050 --> 00:37:32,330 this was a problematic time because the mud meant they couldn't move 573 00:37:32,330 --> 00:37:34,970 at the lightning pace that they'd previously been able to 574 00:37:34,970 --> 00:37:38,210 when defeating France, Holland, and so forth. 575 00:37:39,730 --> 00:37:42,850 Guderian returns to Moscow from Kiev, 576 00:37:42,850 --> 00:37:45,530 but his tanks grind to a muddy halt. 577 00:37:46,810 --> 00:37:50,010 They're just nine miles from the capital. 578 00:37:50,010 --> 00:37:55,290 One has to remember how narrowly the Russians held on in October. 579 00:37:55,290 --> 00:37:59,250 If those forces which had gone south had been up there in the north, 580 00:37:59,250 --> 00:38:02,450 it's very doubtful that Moscow could have held. 581 00:38:02,450 --> 00:38:05,530 Whether Stalin could have survived, whether the Soviet Union 582 00:38:05,530 --> 00:38:08,010 could have carried on with the war. 583 00:38:09,090 --> 00:38:12,850 Hitler, who does not trust his own army's high command, 584 00:38:12,850 --> 00:38:16,610 takes control of German forces. 585 00:38:16,610 --> 00:38:19,210 His tactic is simply stand and fight. 586 00:38:19,210 --> 00:38:21,490 Much to his generals' chagrin. 587 00:38:24,370 --> 00:38:27,530 And as a result millions of Germans will die. 588 00:38:29,530 --> 00:38:33,570 By December, the Germans lose more than 800,000 men 589 00:38:33,570 --> 00:38:36,650 and haemorrhage 2,000 casualties every day. 590 00:38:38,450 --> 00:38:40,850 And that's before winter sets in. 591 00:38:54,010 --> 00:38:56,530 Winter is the Russians' secret weapon. 592 00:38:56,530 --> 00:38:58,210 It gets so cold. 593 00:39:01,210 --> 00:39:04,370 The temperatures in that winter fell at times 594 00:39:04,370 --> 00:39:06,490 to minus 40 degrees Celsius. 595 00:39:07,650 --> 00:39:10,210 The Germans had no clue how to conduct a war 596 00:39:10,210 --> 00:39:13,170 in those circumstances, and they were very bad at it. 597 00:39:13,170 --> 00:39:17,570 Even their weapons cannot cope with the extreme cold. 598 00:39:17,570 --> 00:39:21,210 This is a German Mauser Carbine. 599 00:39:21,210 --> 00:39:23,850 Typical weapon of any soldier. 600 00:39:23,850 --> 00:39:27,170 To make it work what you have to do is bring back the working parts, 601 00:39:27,170 --> 00:39:29,250 put in five bullets. 602 00:39:29,250 --> 00:39:32,930 Push it forward and then pull the trigger, eject, and so on. 603 00:39:32,930 --> 00:39:35,490 All of that requires lubrication. 604 00:39:35,490 --> 00:39:39,330 If this thing isn't lubricated it will not function. 605 00:39:39,330 --> 00:39:41,850 And that's fine in normal temperatures. 606 00:39:41,850 --> 00:39:44,170 The problem is, that in the Russian winter, 607 00:39:44,170 --> 00:39:47,450 the gun oil actually freezes solid. 608 00:39:47,450 --> 00:39:50,730 It stops being a liquid and becomes like this. 609 00:39:50,730 --> 00:39:55,330 Under those circumstances it stops being a rifle, it becomes a club. 610 00:39:55,330 --> 00:39:59,890 And the fact is the Russians have lubricants that work 611 00:39:59,890 --> 00:40:02,450 at low temperatures. The Nazis don't. 612 00:40:04,890 --> 00:40:08,090 Many German troops don't even have overcoats to protect them 613 00:40:08,090 --> 00:40:09,850 from the cold. 614 00:40:09,850 --> 00:40:11,890 This great mighty German army, 615 00:40:11,890 --> 00:40:14,890 their soldiers are reduced to putting layers of newspaper 616 00:40:14,890 --> 00:40:18,250 under their tunics to keep out the icy cold. 617 00:40:18,250 --> 00:40:22,770 Things get so bad, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels 618 00:40:22,770 --> 00:40:24,450 launches an appeal. 619 00:40:26,050 --> 00:40:30,290 The German public sends 67 million items of winter clothing. 620 00:40:32,850 --> 00:40:36,570 But charity woollens can't prevent vast numbers of soldiers 621 00:40:36,570 --> 00:40:38,570 from freezing to death. 622 00:40:42,570 --> 00:40:46,810 In January 1941, a fierce counterattack is launched 623 00:40:46,810 --> 00:40:49,130 and starts to push the enemy back. 624 00:40:52,010 --> 00:40:55,050 The German blitzkrieg is over. 625 00:40:55,050 --> 00:41:00,130 Operation Barbarossa is staggeringly costly to the German war effort. 626 00:41:00,130 --> 00:41:04,370 Germany begins the invasion with around 163 operational divisions, 627 00:41:04,370 --> 00:41:07,970 and just a year later, they're down to 58. 628 00:41:09,490 --> 00:41:12,250 But this was absolutely catastrophic. 629 00:41:12,250 --> 00:41:15,170 And ultimately the defeat that Moscow was the beginning 630 00:41:15,170 --> 00:41:19,050 of the end. That really was a turning point in the war. 631 00:41:20,370 --> 00:41:24,130 Barbarossa failed to achieve any of its objectives. 632 00:41:27,090 --> 00:41:30,770 Blitzkrieg fails for the first time. 633 00:41:30,770 --> 00:41:34,410 And Hitler has only himself to blame. 634 00:41:34,410 --> 00:41:38,810 In classic dictatorial fashion, when faced with impossible odds, 635 00:41:38,810 --> 00:41:41,490 Hitler doubles down. 636 00:41:41,490 --> 00:41:44,250 On December 7th, 1941, 637 00:41:44,250 --> 00:41:48,090 Japan bombs the Americans at Pearl Harbor. 638 00:41:48,090 --> 00:41:51,050 And within a few days Hitler has declared war 639 00:41:51,050 --> 00:41:52,610 on the United States. 640 00:41:53,970 --> 00:41:56,010 This is absolutely insane. 641 00:41:56,010 --> 00:41:59,370 He's not just now waging a war with the biggest nation on Earth, 642 00:41:59,370 --> 00:42:02,970 he's now waging a war with the richest nation on Earth. 643 00:42:02,970 --> 00:42:05,690 But Hitler is operating on a different plane 644 00:42:05,690 --> 00:42:07,890 to the rest of the world. 645 00:42:07,890 --> 00:42:10,410 One of the factors that clearly plays a part in Hitler's decision 646 00:42:10,410 --> 00:42:13,610 to declare war on the United States is his warped view 647 00:42:13,610 --> 00:42:15,930 of the Jewish conspiracy. 648 00:42:15,930 --> 00:42:18,290 There were Jews all around Roosevelt, so he says. 649 00:42:18,290 --> 00:42:21,210 And therefore, the declaration of war 650 00:42:21,210 --> 00:42:23,970 on the United States is a declaration against world Jewry 651 00:42:23,970 --> 00:42:26,690 as well as against the United States. 652 00:42:26,690 --> 00:42:29,370 The Japanese have handed Hitler the perfect excuse 653 00:42:29,370 --> 00:42:33,530 to turn this into a worldwide war against the Jews. 654 00:42:36,010 --> 00:42:39,010 Why the Japanese would risk the wrath of the greatest nation 655 00:42:39,010 --> 00:42:41,890 on Earth is another story altogether. 656 00:42:43,170 --> 00:42:45,170 One rooted in numbers. 657 00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:50,200 October 1940. 658 00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,760 In a tight presidential election Franklin D Roosevelt is running 659 00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:56,240 for an unprecedented third term. 660 00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:02,800 As war rages across Europe he sends a message to the American public. 661 00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:05,560 I have said this before. 662 00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:09,160 But I shall say it again and again. 663 00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:17,080 Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war. 664 00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:19,400 CROWD CHEERS 665 00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,320 The American public are almost universally opposed 666 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,400 to the idea of going into war. 667 00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:27,840 So if Roosevelt gets branded as a warmonger he's going 668 00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:29,640 to lose that election. 669 00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:33,000 Even after the fall of France in 1940, 670 00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:38,360 over 85% of Americans oppose sending US troops into an overseas conflict. 671 00:43:40,240 --> 00:43:45,040 Less than 16% of the American public support even sending aid 672 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,320 to the beleaguered allies in Europe. 673 00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:52,720 He could see the signs and he knew the United States would eventually 674 00:43:52,720 --> 00:43:54,920 have to enter this war on some level. 675 00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,040 But he has a voting base that he has to answer to. 676 00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:05,200 FDR wins the election, but he cannot keep his promise. 677 00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:07,400 BY the end of Roosevelt's time in office, 678 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:12,080 nearly 15 million Americans will have fought in this world war. 679 00:44:17,240 --> 00:44:19,600 Summer 1940. 680 00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,480 Even as President Roosevelt's promises to keep America 681 00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,720 out of the war, on the other side of the Atlantic a beleaguered 682 00:44:26,720 --> 00:44:29,760 Winston Churchill is looking for a fight. 683 00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,360 Britain is in pretty dire straits. 684 00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,200 The Battle of Britain is being waged overhead. 685 00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:39,000 The British Expeditionary Force has been thrown out of Europe. 686 00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:42,240 So what is needed is some kind of arena, 687 00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:45,600 some kind of theatre of war where Britain can fight 688 00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,280 and where Britain can succeed. 689 00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,720 Churchill finds it in the Mediterranean. 690 00:44:51,720 --> 00:44:54,440 The Mediterranean theatre wasn't just important 691 00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,880 as a means of allowing the British to fight. 692 00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,640 It was actually strategically very, very important. 693 00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:03,480 We actually got our oil from the Persian Gulf 694 00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,720 That had to come through the Suez Canal through the Mediterranean. 695 00:45:07,720 --> 00:45:10,640 If Britain was to be thrown out of Egypt it would lose 696 00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:12,320 that access to its oil. 697 00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:19,560 The Middle East can provide Britain with over 126 million barrels 698 00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:21,840 of oil a year. 699 00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,280 It's a vital resource transported from the Persian Gulf 700 00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:27,400 through the Suez Canal. 701 00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:34,200 In June 1940, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, 702 00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:38,640 who already controls neighbouring Libya, decides to take Egypt 703 00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:41,120 and its precious waterway. 704 00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,120 Mussolini had real delusions of grandeur, 705 00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:46,600 a sense of his own importance. 706 00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:50,600 He sees Adolf Hitler in Germany grabbing for territory to create 707 00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:52,600 a new German empire. 708 00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:56,800 And what Mussolini wants to create is a new Roman Empire 709 00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,080 in the Mediterranean basin. 710 00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:02,440 The plan basically was to seize control of the entire North African 711 00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,960 coast, to take it away from Britain. 712 00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,600 It's the fight that Churchill is looking for, 713 00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:12,160 but the numbers weigh heavily against him. 714 00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:19,320 250,000 Italian troops land in Libya and march on Egypt 715 00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:21,840 against a mere 36,000 Brits. 716 00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:28,120 On paper it looks like it's going to be an easy campaign. 717 00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,480 But the battle wasn't carried out on paper. 718 00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:34,200 A sudden attack by the British forced the Italians back. 719 00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:41,160 By February 1941, the British have advanced 500 miles. 720 00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,880 Captured 130,000 Italians, 721 00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:50,720 380 tanks and 1,290 artillery guns. 722 00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:55,760 Britain loses less than 2,000 killed and wounded. 723 00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:02,320 A furious Hitler diverts to the desert two divisions earmarked 724 00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,240 for the invasion of Russia. 725 00:47:05,240 --> 00:47:10,640 Named the Africa Corps, the new force is commanded by General Erwin Rommel. 726 00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:15,320 Rommel's leadership was what turned the Africa Corps into one 727 00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:18,600 of the most iconic units of the entire war. 728 00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:22,800 Because British tanks outnumber Germany's by more than three to one, 729 00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:25,440 Rommel is advised not to attack. 730 00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,920 But Rommel simply ignored what he was told. 731 00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:34,080 He saw his opportunity and he launched a sudden attack. 732 00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:41,720 It might seem suicidal, but Rommel has an ace up his sleeve. 733 00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,760 The 88 millimetre flak cannon. 734 00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:50,360 Designed as an anti-aircraft gun, 735 00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:54,120 Rommel knows that it's also an effective tank killer. 736 00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:56,760 Just like he did in France, 737 00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:00,280 Rommel drew out the British forces 738 00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:04,880 into an area, ambushed them then with the 88 millimetre guns. 739 00:48:07,240 --> 00:48:10,200 It took the British completely by surprise. 740 00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:12,680 What the British had just done to the Italians, 741 00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:15,720 Rommel did to the British. 742 00:48:15,720 --> 00:48:18,480 By April 1941, 743 00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:23,360 Churchill's initial desert victory is in tatters. 744 00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:27,240 Rommel has the British under siege at Tobruk and they have more 745 00:48:27,240 --> 00:48:29,920 to worry about than just North Africa. 746 00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:35,680 Because Mussolini has taken the fight to the Mediterranean. 747 00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:38,280 After a botched invasion of Egypt, 748 00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:42,840 the Italians preside over a botched invasion of Greece. 749 00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:47,400 In response Churchill diverts 62,000 troops from the desert 750 00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:49,600 to defend Greece. 751 00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,040 Churchill sees this as a great opportunity to score yet another 752 00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:55,360 quick victory over the Italians. 753 00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:58,480 But the problem is, Hitler then looks at what happens 754 00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:00,720 and decides he has to clear up the mess, 755 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:03,600 just as he did in North Africa. What does that mean? 756 00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:07,880 The British are now fighting a far more capable German force. 757 00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:12,920 In less than three weeks Hitler's Panzers overrun both 758 00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,440 Greece and Yugoslavia, 759 00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:19,440 forcing the British to evacuate 43,000 troops 760 00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:21,080 to the island of Crete. 761 00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:27,080 Hitler responds by launching an airborne invasion of Crete 762 00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:32,680 with up to 30,000 paratroopers backed by 480 bombers. 763 00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,080 British forces are effectively trapped. 764 00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:40,120 Winston Churchill orders General Wavell to stay there and fight to the last man. 765 00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:43,480 Wavell realises that it's not a good idea and defies the order 766 00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:45,600 and evacuates 16,500 men. 767 00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:49,960 Wavell is dismissed for disobedience. 768 00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:53,320 But his decision saves British lives. 769 00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,840 16,500 men live to fight another day. 770 00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:59,640 If that had been Hitler those 16,500 men 771 00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:01,880 would have been needlessly squandered. 772 00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:06,440 These events profoundly affect the war, even 773 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:09,840 outside the Mediterranean, because the time it takes Hitler 774 00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:12,960 to chase the British out of Crete 775 00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,120 has a domino effect on Germany's invasion of Russia. 776 00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:20,000 By delaying Operation Barbarossa even by one month, that pushes 777 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,800 the Germans one month closer to the onset of Russian winter, 778 00:50:23,800 --> 00:50:26,960 and Russian winter will grind them to a halt. 779 00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:29,480 The situation in the Mediterranean is absolutely crucial 780 00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:31,400 for the outcome of the war. 781 00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:36,480 The British troops evacuated from Crete are sent back 782 00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:38,240 into the desert against Rommel. 783 00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:43,640 But the conflict will soon find itself mired in the vast expanses 784 00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:45,160 of the desert itself. 785 00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:49,240 First, the British had the upper hand... 786 00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,360 ..then the Germans took the upper hand, 787 00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:54,760 then the British took it back, 788 00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,200 and the reason for that was because of supply lines. 789 00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,760 Germany's supply line starts in Tripoli, 790 00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:03,600 Britain's in Alexandria - 791 00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:08,600 a distance of almost 1,200 miles of desert that makes sustained 792 00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:13,800 advance by either side too difficult to refuel and rearm. 793 00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:16,680 The result is inevitable - 794 00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:18,440 deadlock. 795 00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:20,920 There was no obvious end to this. 796 00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:24,400 What was actually going to change, make a sudden difference 797 00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:26,000 and end this conflict? 798 00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:31,560 The surprising answer will take place on a tiny island 799 00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:32,920 on the other side of the world. 800 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:40,280 June 1941. 801 00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:44,680 Over four million soldiers are locked in a devastating campaign 802 00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:47,400 across a 2,000 mile-long front. 803 00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:51,880 In what is already one of the bloodiest conflicts in human 804 00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,880 history, the invading army grinds forward 805 00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:57,000 into a seemingly endless country... 806 00:51:58,840 --> 00:51:59,840 ..China. 807 00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:06,560 The campaign in China is a major all-out continental conflict 808 00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:07,840 for the Japanese 809 00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:08,920 that is costly. 810 00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,960 Japan has already lost over 1.8 million soldiers... 811 00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:20,280 ..and committed more than 70% of its economy to war. 812 00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,560 The Japanese had got themselves into a situation where they felt 813 00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:26,160 that expanding the war was the only way that they could bring 814 00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:27,520 about a conclusion. 815 00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:33,480 A Japanese occupation of key airfields in Indochina greatly 816 00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:35,680 worries the American president. 817 00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,320 Roosevelt is in a really tricky position. 818 00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,320 He really wants to stop this Japanese expansion throughout 819 00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:46,160 Asia, but he can't do anything about it militarily, 820 00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:47,280 so what does he do? 821 00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:50,760 He's got to use America's economic muscle. 822 00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:55,400 Roosevelt takes the decisive move of freezing Japanese assets 823 00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:59,400 in the United States, which freezes millions and millions of yen. 824 00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:04,160 That then turns into this outright all-encompassing oil embargo. 825 00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:08,560 Japan imports 90% of its oil from the US. 826 00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:12,320 And for the Japanese, that feels like castration. 827 00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:14,880 To further demonstrate America's resolve, 828 00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,160 USA to China is doubled. 829 00:53:18,520 --> 00:53:21,760 The powerful Pacific Fleet sails out of California 830 00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:23,640 to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 831 00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:30,800 35 B-17 bombers are based in the Philippines, within striking 832 00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:32,760 range of Japan. 833 00:53:32,760 --> 00:53:36,280 Roosevelt's hoping that if he flexes his military muscle then Japan 834 00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:38,320 will back down. 835 00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:43,080 But he's reckoned without Japan's desperate need for oil. 836 00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,840 The Japanese were backed into a corner, and they basically 837 00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:47,200 had two options. 838 00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:51,560 Option A was that they could discontinue the war in China, 839 00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:54,760 which was certainly the American objective, or option B 840 00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:59,240 was that they could double down and expand war in Asia, 841 00:53:59,240 --> 00:54:01,240 and the Japanese chose Option B. 842 00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:05,000 The Japanese army is under the control 843 00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,960 of General Hideki Tojo, aka the Razor. 844 00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:15,160 In October 1941, Tojo becomes Prime Minister, and draws up plans 845 00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:18,600 to create a new Japanese Southern Resources Area. 846 00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:23,880 The Japanese military began to think, 847 00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:27,000 "Well, where can we get additional resources?" and the obvious place 848 00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:28,080 is South East Asia. 849 00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:30,440 Resources from the British were there, from Burma, 850 00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:31,920 from Dutch East Indies and so on. 851 00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:36,200 It's a plan to take over all of Southeast Asia. 852 00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:38,320 Its codename is Operation Z. 853 00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:47,320 Operation Z allows 50 days for the conquest of the Philippines, 854 00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:52,600 100 days for Malaya and 150 days for the Dutch East Indies 855 00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:56,520 before pushing on into Burma and even India. 856 00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:01,280 Tojo's plan amounts to conquering roughly a sixth of the world's 857 00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:03,480 surface in just six months. 858 00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,840 Doing so will make armed confrontation with the industrial 859 00:55:08,840 --> 00:55:10,960 might of America unavoidable. 860 00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:15,480 At first glance, this seems insane. 861 00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:17,480 This is crazy. 862 00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:22,080 Japan has got to land a knockout blow in the very first round 863 00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,720 if she wants any chance of succeeding. 864 00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:32,760 The USA is the largest economy in the world, producing more steel, 865 00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:36,720 aluminium and oil than every other major state combined. 866 00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:41,400 It produces goods worth over $1 trillion a year. 867 00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:49,840 Japan's economy produces only $196 billion - more than five times 868 00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:51,000 less than the USA. 869 00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:57,480 But these numbers count for nothing to Tojo, because Japan has one thing 870 00:55:57,480 --> 00:55:59,600 the Americans can never match... 871 00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:01,840 ..warrior spirit. 872 00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:08,240 If you join the Japanese army at that point, the training 873 00:56:08,240 --> 00:56:12,600 was very focused, inspired by tradition of what was known 874 00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:14,760 as Bushido - The Way Of The Warrior. 875 00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:16,960 There was a strong psychological 876 00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:21,240 element that enabled the Japanese to feel that there was something 877 00:56:21,240 --> 00:56:25,480 superior and resilient about the Japanese military training. 878 00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:32,520 By contrast, they think that the Americans are kind of soft, 879 00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:35,600 and a bit lily-livered - just a nation fit for making movies 880 00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,560 and motor cars with no stomach for war. 881 00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,800 Many of the Japanese leaders thought that if they could hit the Americans 882 00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:45,560 hard enough they would make terms immediately. 883 00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:48,040 They certainly didn't think of them as real warriors, 884 00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:52,520 people who could resist Japanese soldiers for five minutes. 885 00:56:55,560 --> 00:56:59,840 Tojo has also run the numbers, and he believes the Americans aren't 886 00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:01,880 ready to fight. 887 00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,320 You might expect that the world's most powerful economy 888 00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,240 is going to have a military to match it, 889 00:57:06,240 --> 00:57:09,480 but, in 1941, the American economy is not geared for war. 890 00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,080 It's geared for commerce. 891 00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:13,560 In 1941, 892 00:57:13,560 --> 00:57:18,480 American military spending accounts for just 2% of its national output, 893 00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:21,080 compared to Japan's 70%. 894 00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:26,440 The United States actually had a relatively small army. 895 00:57:26,440 --> 00:57:29,320 It was the 18th largest army in the world. 896 00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:32,280 The United States of America was unprepared for war, 897 00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:35,640 but the United States had an excellent navy, 898 00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:38,360 and the United States - in the interwar period - had developed 899 00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:43,000 naval aviation to a level that it was among the leaders of the world. 900 00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:47,680 All of America's strength lies in its navy. 901 00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:52,800 In almost every class of ship, its power in the Pacific is almost 902 00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:54,000 equal to Japan's. 903 00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:57,080 But without its warships, 904 00:57:57,080 --> 00:58:01,800 America cannot hope to repel a Japanese onslaught. 905 00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:04,000 The Japanese thought that once you neutralise 906 00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:06,720 the American Pacific fleet, they would be reasonably secure. 907 00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:08,440 The Americans would huff and puff, 908 00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:11,240 but not actually engage in serious war. 909 00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:14,720 Tojo needs to take out the US Navy, 910 00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:18,720 and his intelligence network provides him with the opportunity. 911 00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:24,600 He finds out this vital piece of intelligence that the entire 912 00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:28,880 US Pacific Fleet is going to be at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 913 00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:32,200 Too tempting a target to pass up. 914 00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:38,480 Located 2,500 miles west of Los Angeles, 915 00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,000 on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, 916 00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:43,560 the port of Pearl Harbor is the largest 917 00:58:43,560 --> 00:58:46,760 American base in the Pacific, 918 00:58:46,760 --> 00:58:49,080 and on paper it's formidable. 919 00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:53,800 Oahu, by 1941, had been turned into the Death Star. 920 00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,960 Oahu had coast artillery positions and batteries, 921 00:58:56,960 --> 00:59:00,800 effectively all approaches were extremely well covered. 922 00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:06,520 They appear strong. In fact, the island's defences are limited. 923 00:59:06,520 --> 00:59:10,800 What Oahu was well prepared for was a direct amphibious 924 00:59:10,800 --> 00:59:13,760 assault that was supported by battleships. 925 00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:18,800 What Oahu was less prepared for was this new thing... 926 00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:20,400 called the air raid. 927 00:59:25,020 --> 00:59:30,580 On 7th December 1941, the first wave of the most powerful naval 928 00:59:30,580 --> 00:59:34,580 air force ever assembled flies low towards Hawaii. 929 00:59:36,300 --> 00:59:38,860 A grand armada of 49 bombers, 930 00:59:38,860 --> 00:59:40,740 40 torpedo bombers, 931 00:59:40,740 --> 00:59:42,900 51 dive-bombers, 932 00:59:42,900 --> 00:59:44,740 and 43 fighters 933 00:59:44,740 --> 00:59:46,380 is heading for Pearl Harbor. 934 00:59:48,300 --> 00:59:51,100 These are very, very experienced aircrew. 935 00:59:51,100 --> 00:59:53,300 They've been fighting in China for four years. 936 00:59:53,300 --> 00:59:54,980 Each man has on average 937 00:59:54,980 --> 00:59:58,900 800 hours of combat experience. 938 01:00:00,660 --> 01:00:03,460 As 183 planes close in, 939 01:00:03,460 --> 01:00:07,460 130 ships of the US Pacific Fleet 940 01:00:07,460 --> 01:00:09,380 sit at anchor in the bay. 941 01:00:10,900 --> 01:00:14,980 And nearly 400 aircraft are parked on the ground. 942 01:00:14,980 --> 01:00:17,180 The position is impossibly vulnerable. 943 01:00:17,180 --> 01:00:20,260 Only a quarter of the machineguns guarding the harbour are actually 944 01:00:20,260 --> 01:00:24,500 manned and the anti-aircraft guns don't even have any ammunition. 945 01:00:24,500 --> 01:00:28,260 And worst still it's the weekend so most of the high command 946 01:00:28,260 --> 01:00:32,100 are taking some time off and leaving just junior cadets in charge. 947 01:00:32,100 --> 01:00:33,340 It's hopeless. 948 01:00:35,020 --> 01:00:37,900 Before a single bomb has been dropped, 949 01:00:37,900 --> 01:00:41,020 commander of the Japanese air fleet Mitsuo Fuchida 950 01:00:41,020 --> 01:00:42,780 gives the victory signal. 951 01:00:42,780 --> 01:00:45,340 Tora. Tora. Tora. 952 01:00:47,580 --> 01:00:49,940 The fighters and the dive-bombers now peel off 953 01:00:49,940 --> 01:00:51,660 and they attack the airbases. 954 01:00:56,660 --> 01:01:00,900 The Japanese were carrying out a well-coordinated attack against 955 01:01:00,900 --> 01:01:03,260 every installation on the island. 956 01:01:05,540 --> 01:01:09,460 The Japanese torpedo bombers, along with five mini submarines, 957 01:01:09,460 --> 01:01:11,900 then go for the battleships. 958 01:01:14,980 --> 01:01:16,980 The Arizona takes a direct hit 959 01:01:16,980 --> 01:01:20,620 and that goes down with its crew of 1,500 men. 960 01:01:20,620 --> 01:01:25,220 Within minutes, Arizona's exploded, Oklahoma is capsizing, 961 01:01:25,220 --> 01:01:26,940 Utah is capsizing. 962 01:01:29,780 --> 01:01:35,460 At 9am, a second wave of 167 aircraft hits the base 963 01:01:35,460 --> 01:01:37,300 to finish off the fleet. 964 01:01:38,940 --> 01:01:41,820 They leave behind a landscape of destruction. 965 01:01:44,420 --> 01:01:46,980 The Japanese destroy 188 aircraft, 966 01:01:46,980 --> 01:01:50,700 damage and sink 21 warships, 967 01:01:50,700 --> 01:01:55,860 and they kill just under 2,500 Americans, both military personnel 968 01:01:55,860 --> 01:01:58,060 and civilians. 969 01:01:58,060 --> 01:02:01,860 But something is missing from the kill list. 970 01:02:01,860 --> 01:02:06,820 Admiral Yamamoto has been told that all US aircraft carriers are absent. 971 01:02:08,100 --> 01:02:11,220 Actually, all the aircraft carriers have been sent to Midway where 972 01:02:11,220 --> 01:02:13,780 they are acting as a kind of forward defence shield, 973 01:02:13,780 --> 01:02:17,220 but Yamamoto suspects they are being held back as a trap. 974 01:02:18,620 --> 01:02:21,980 It's enough to persuade him not to risk one third attack wave 975 01:02:21,980 --> 01:02:25,780 aimed at Pearl Harbor's undamaged refuelling stations. 976 01:02:27,300 --> 01:02:30,860 The third wave could have knocked out Pearl Harbor completely 977 01:02:30,860 --> 01:02:33,860 but Yamamoto simply can't afford to take that risk. 978 01:02:34,940 --> 01:02:37,700 At that point, the fleet had turned and was sailing away. 979 01:02:42,060 --> 01:02:45,820 The day after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt makes 980 01:02:45,820 --> 01:02:50,460 a speech to the US Congress, calling for a declaration of war. 981 01:02:50,460 --> 01:02:54,660 December 7th, 1941, 982 01:02:54,660 --> 01:02:58,940 a date which will live in infamy. 983 01:02:58,940 --> 01:03:06,020 United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked 984 01:03:06,020 --> 01:03:10,660 by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. 985 01:03:13,940 --> 01:03:17,700 But Japanese high command has utterly misjudged the American 986 01:03:17,700 --> 01:03:20,340 response to their attack. 987 01:03:20,340 --> 01:03:23,660 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was extremely effective. 988 01:03:23,660 --> 01:03:25,460 It inspired a hatred of Japan, 989 01:03:25,460 --> 01:03:27,220 a rage and anger 990 01:03:27,220 --> 01:03:30,100 which unified the country as nothing else could have done. 991 01:03:30,100 --> 01:03:32,300 They completely misread that mood. 992 01:03:32,300 --> 01:03:37,700 In Congress, the motion to declare war passes almost unanimously. 993 01:03:39,580 --> 01:03:43,780 Pearl Harbor has united America against the Axis powers... 994 01:03:44,940 --> 01:03:47,740 ..and the whole world is now officially at war. 995 01:03:55,500 --> 01:03:59,340 Even as the first bombs drop on Pearl Harbor... 996 01:04:01,620 --> 01:04:05,060 ..Japanese forces are already en route to their Southeast Asian 997 01:04:05,060 --> 01:04:06,620 resource zone. 998 01:04:08,660 --> 01:04:14,020 Their biggest target is British Malaya, and its capital Singapore. 999 01:04:14,020 --> 01:04:16,900 It's been said that if India was the jewel in the crown 1000 01:04:16,900 --> 01:04:20,780 of the British Empire, then Malaya was the industrial diamond. 1001 01:04:23,260 --> 01:04:28,620 In today's prices, Malaya is worth over £10 billion a year, 1002 01:04:28,620 --> 01:04:33,420 and 23% of its trade also passes through Malayan ports. 1003 01:04:35,940 --> 01:04:41,260 Administering and profiting from this industry are 31,000 Europeans 1004 01:04:41,260 --> 01:04:44,220 living a life of Imperial luxury 1005 01:04:44,220 --> 01:04:47,340 among five million Malays and Chinese. 1006 01:04:48,900 --> 01:04:52,500 Life in the colonies is not really changed since the 19th century. 1007 01:04:52,500 --> 01:04:55,540 You've got this endless round of garden parties, 1008 01:04:55,540 --> 01:04:57,460 cricket matches, social events. 1009 01:04:59,260 --> 01:05:02,980 Physical separation between the white and Asian populations 1010 01:05:02,980 --> 01:05:07,340 is enforced in workplaces, restaurants, and neighbourhoods. 1011 01:05:11,460 --> 01:05:15,780 The Japanese cite European imperialism in Asia as a key 1012 01:05:15,780 --> 01:05:20,020 driver of their expansion into the so-called Southern Resource Zone. 1013 01:05:21,380 --> 01:05:24,460 The Japanese used a very strong argument that it was 1014 01:05:24,460 --> 01:05:28,100 they who were actually liberating other parts of Asia through 1015 01:05:28,100 --> 01:05:30,820 the imposition of their own empire 1016 01:05:30,820 --> 01:05:33,660 from the control of the British and the French. 1017 01:05:33,660 --> 01:05:36,780 Now, in fact, this was a deeply deceptive idea. 1018 01:05:36,780 --> 01:05:40,620 Japanese Empire was often just as brutal or even more so. 1019 01:05:46,020 --> 01:05:48,580 When the Japanese invade Malaya, 1020 01:05:48,580 --> 01:05:51,900 its defenders are underequipped and undermanned. 1021 01:05:53,540 --> 01:05:56,980 There are only ten British battalion stationed in the province, 1022 01:05:56,980 --> 01:06:01,540 accompanied by 145 ageing Buffalo fighter 1023 01:06:01,540 --> 01:06:03,100 and Blenheim bomber aircraft. 1024 01:06:06,460 --> 01:06:08,940 These are not very good planes. 1025 01:06:08,940 --> 01:06:11,300 They're slow, they're not very manoeuvrable, 1026 01:06:11,300 --> 01:06:14,820 and the Japanese Zero can absolutely outfight them. 1027 01:06:18,020 --> 01:06:23,100 On day one, nearly 100 British planes are shot down, 1028 01:06:23,100 --> 01:06:27,260 leaving just 50 against nearly 600 Japanese. 1029 01:06:31,860 --> 01:06:35,180 But Britain still has its most powerful weapon in hand. 1030 01:06:36,700 --> 01:06:40,180 Months before the invasion, Winston Churchill sends to 1031 01:06:40,180 --> 01:06:44,340 the Philippines an elite Royal Navy fleet known as Force Z. 1032 01:06:46,380 --> 01:06:51,100 Led by the HMS Prince of Wales, Britain's most sophisticated modern 1033 01:06:51,100 --> 01:06:55,740 battleship, and the HMS Repulse, it's most decorated cruiser. 1034 01:06:57,060 --> 01:06:59,700 Within a day, they are suddenly attacked by the 1035 01:06:59,700 --> 01:07:05,220 Japanese Air Force, and the British fleet has got no air cover at all. 1036 01:07:08,340 --> 01:07:11,700 Both flagships are sent to the bottom of the ocean, 1037 01:07:11,700 --> 01:07:15,140 taking with them the invincibility of the Royal Navy. 1038 01:07:17,500 --> 01:07:21,500 These sinkings produce a shock wave that resounds around the world 1039 01:07:21,500 --> 01:07:24,980 because these ships have been brought down quickly with 1040 01:07:24,980 --> 01:07:26,740 small lightly-armed aircraft. 1041 01:07:30,340 --> 01:07:36,020 Having sunk the Royal Navy, Japan sends in 60,000 ground troops. 1042 01:07:36,020 --> 01:07:39,780 The ferocity and guile of the Japanese invasion takes 1043 01:07:39,780 --> 01:07:42,020 the British by surprise. 1044 01:07:42,020 --> 01:07:45,340 Japan's plans depends upon the kind of blitzkrieg tactics that 1045 01:07:45,340 --> 01:07:50,220 the Germans used against the French and the Low Countries back in 1940. 1046 01:07:50,220 --> 01:07:53,420 But actually Malaya is a very different type of terrain 1047 01:07:53,420 --> 01:07:54,700 than Europe. 1048 01:07:54,700 --> 01:07:57,660 It's crisscrossed by lots of rivers, it's jungle, and 1049 01:07:57,660 --> 01:07:59,580 so motorised transport 1050 01:07:59,580 --> 01:08:03,180 doesn't really work as effectively in those sort of conditions. 1051 01:08:03,180 --> 01:08:06,860 So, Japan comes up with this ingenious solution - 1052 01:08:06,860 --> 01:08:08,660 it's called the bicycle. 1053 01:08:12,260 --> 01:08:15,380 This is a 1930s bicycle, not a million miles away from the 1054 01:08:15,380 --> 01:08:20,980 bicycle used by the Japanese army in the invasion of Malaya in 1941. 1055 01:08:20,980 --> 01:08:25,660 Every Japanese division had 6,000 of these things. 1056 01:08:25,660 --> 01:08:29,300 The Japanese soldier could carry himself, his equipment, 1057 01:08:29,300 --> 01:08:32,460 and his ammunition, but more importantly you can go 1058 01:08:32,460 --> 01:08:37,220 through the jungle with it, you can go virtually anywhere. 1059 01:08:37,220 --> 01:08:40,340 Even if a tyre shredded completely, you could run on the rims, 1060 01:08:40,340 --> 01:08:43,980 and there are stories about British units panicking, hearing these 1061 01:08:43,980 --> 01:08:48,580 metal rims clattering down roads and assuming that they were tanks. 1062 01:08:48,580 --> 01:08:53,580 But the key feature of the bicycle is it doesn't require fuel. 1063 01:08:53,580 --> 01:08:58,620 The advance can go ahead in almost any conditions without 1064 01:08:58,620 --> 01:09:01,940 need for any motor transport. 1065 01:09:05,300 --> 01:09:07,660 The British chose to defend the roads 1066 01:09:07,660 --> 01:09:12,180 and to position their troops around the roads, and the Japanese 1067 01:09:12,180 --> 01:09:15,860 with large forces of bicycles, which they exploited brilliantly, 1068 01:09:15,860 --> 01:09:18,980 simply whenever they met them, the British, they went round them. 1069 01:09:18,980 --> 01:09:24,460 To reach Singapore, Japan's bicycle army advances on average 1070 01:09:24,460 --> 01:09:27,940 12 miles a day for 55 days. 1071 01:09:27,940 --> 01:09:32,220 660 miles, 95 fighting engagements, 1072 01:09:32,220 --> 01:09:35,460 and 250 bridge repairs later, 1073 01:09:35,460 --> 01:09:37,300 they reach their target. 1074 01:09:40,060 --> 01:09:44,260 The British simply don't expect any attack to come from the north. Why? 1075 01:09:44,260 --> 01:09:46,380 Because it's jungle. 1076 01:09:49,540 --> 01:09:54,260 But out of the jungle spring 30,000 Japanese. 1077 01:09:54,260 --> 01:09:59,500 The 70,000 defenders are completely unprepared for the Japanese attack. 1078 01:09:59,500 --> 01:10:04,380 The numbers favour British colonial forces by more than two to one 1079 01:10:04,380 --> 01:10:06,340 but many lack the will to fight. 1080 01:10:07,860 --> 01:10:12,260 After years of social exclusion, many of the colonial native 1081 01:10:12,260 --> 01:10:15,580 troops are absolutely unwilling to die with their British masters. 1082 01:10:15,580 --> 01:10:17,220 Why would they want to? 1083 01:10:17,220 --> 01:10:20,700 In fact, some even actually welcome the Japanese troops. 1084 01:10:22,500 --> 01:10:28,580 On 15th February 1942, Singapore surrenders. 1085 01:10:28,580 --> 01:10:32,060 The British suffer in Malaya, not just a defeat, 1086 01:10:32,060 --> 01:10:35,660 but a humiliation, because these despised Orientals, 1087 01:10:35,660 --> 01:10:38,500 who were supposed to be near savages, 1088 01:10:38,500 --> 01:10:40,900 yes, in the minds of many British people, 1089 01:10:40,900 --> 01:10:44,740 they wiped the floor with the British and Australian troops. 1090 01:10:44,740 --> 01:10:47,980 The Germans had estimated that it would take 16 divisions and that 1091 01:10:47,980 --> 01:10:52,980 it would take months to reduce Singapore and produce its surrender. 1092 01:10:52,980 --> 01:10:56,780 And the Japanese did it in a couple of weeks with two divisions. 1093 01:10:58,820 --> 01:11:03,620 A bell rings out across Singapore, signalling the surrender. 1094 01:11:03,620 --> 01:11:05,660 And there's this classroom of schoolchildren, 1095 01:11:05,660 --> 01:11:07,620 they ask their teacher, "What's that bell for?" 1096 01:11:07,620 --> 01:11:10,340 And he replies, "The end of the British Empire." 1097 01:11:17,660 --> 01:11:18,900 In the Philippines, 1098 01:11:18,900 --> 01:11:23,220 and determined to avoid such humiliation, are the Americans. 1099 01:11:24,660 --> 01:11:28,140 The Philippines are America's largest foothold in the Pacific 1100 01:11:28,140 --> 01:11:31,660 and as a result, Japan desperately needs to conquer them. 1101 01:11:33,020 --> 01:11:36,700 The Philippines are commanded by US general Douglas MacArthur. 1102 01:11:37,860 --> 01:11:40,860 Within ten hours of the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, 1103 01:11:40,860 --> 01:11:44,260 he finds himself facing a devastating attack. 1104 01:11:45,900 --> 01:11:48,900 The Japanese attack initially comes in the form of air raids... 1105 01:11:52,420 --> 01:11:57,580 ..followed by Japanese amphibious landings on the island of Luzon, 1106 01:11:57,580 --> 01:12:00,420 and General Douglas MacArthur commanding American 1107 01:12:00,420 --> 01:12:03,820 and also Philippine forces makes a tactical decision that the way 1108 01:12:03,820 --> 01:12:06,380 he will fight will be to back down this peninsular 1109 01:12:06,380 --> 01:12:10,060 that's on the western side of Manila Bay, and it's called Bataan. 1110 01:12:14,980 --> 01:12:18,700 Besieged by almost 200,000 Japanese troops, 1111 01:12:18,700 --> 01:12:22,180 MacArthur is out numbered four to one. 1112 01:12:22,180 --> 01:12:25,980 And he has 25,000 civilians under his protection. 1113 01:12:28,160 --> 01:12:30,920 Pummelled by relentless Japanese bombardment 1114 01:12:30,920 --> 01:12:35,320 and racked with rampant malaria, MacArthur's force resists 1115 01:12:35,320 --> 01:12:38,640 until February, but the situation is hopeless. 1116 01:12:39,800 --> 01:12:43,360 MacArthur realises that he simply can't hold out any longer 1117 01:12:43,360 --> 01:12:46,000 so he's ordered to abandon the Philippines 1118 01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:49,920 and he gets on board a torpedo boat and he turns and waves to people 1119 01:12:49,920 --> 01:12:53,680 he's leaving behind, and he says, "I shall return." 1120 01:12:53,680 --> 01:12:57,760 He was ordered to leave the Philippine Islands so that we 1121 01:12:57,760 --> 01:13:01,360 would not have to face something as the British faced at Singapore, 1122 01:13:01,360 --> 01:13:04,080 where you see this well-known general come out 1123 01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:06,600 and surrender to the Japanese. 1124 01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:11,680 The 11,500 American and 64,000 Filipino soldiers left behind 1125 01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:13,160 are rounded up. 1126 01:13:14,920 --> 01:13:18,040 Forces that surrender on the Bataan Peninsula then have to be 1127 01:13:18,040 --> 01:13:20,200 moved to a prisoner of war holding area at a place 1128 01:13:20,200 --> 01:13:21,480 called Camp O'Donnell. 1129 01:13:21,480 --> 01:13:25,880 68 miles, and they're forced to cover that distance on foot. 1130 01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:33,000 So many prisoners die on the infamous 68 mile walk to 1131 01:13:33,000 --> 01:13:36,680 Camp O'Donnell that it becomes known as the Bataan Death March. 1132 01:13:38,080 --> 01:13:41,240 The Japanese force thousands to March through these 1133 01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:43,920 absolutely appalling conditions and along the way, 1134 01:13:43,920 --> 01:13:48,920 they chop off the heads of American officers with samurai swords, 1135 01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:53,160 they run bayonets through Filipinos, it's basically murder. 1136 01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:54,600 The way is now clear 1137 01:13:54,600 --> 01:13:57,880 for the Japanese to assault their key targets. 1138 01:13:59,560 --> 01:14:01,600 Once they control Malaya and the Philippines, 1139 01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:06,160 the Japanese are now ready to take the Dutch East Indies and Burma. 1140 01:14:08,360 --> 01:14:10,560 Now, these are vital for the Japanese 1141 01:14:10,560 --> 01:14:14,840 because they are going to get 70% of the world tin, 1142 01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:19,240 almost all the world's rubber, and massive oil reserves. 1143 01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:25,680 It also opens the way towards Australia, with unexpected results. 1144 01:14:26,880 --> 01:14:29,720 That forces Australia to then recall troops that were 1145 01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:32,320 committed in the North African desert. 1146 01:14:32,320 --> 01:14:36,560 And so the Australians, who are opposing Italians, are pulled 1147 01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:41,480 back toward Australia, leaving a vacuum there that emboldens 1148 01:14:41,480 --> 01:14:44,520 Axis forces in North Africa. 1149 01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:47,600 It's a completely unforeseen consequence of something that 1150 01:14:47,600 --> 01:14:49,760 has become a truly global war. 1151 01:14:54,440 --> 01:14:57,000 And this is a global war in more ways than one. 1152 01:14:59,440 --> 01:15:01,800 As the Americans retreat to lick their wounds, 1153 01:15:01,800 --> 01:15:04,880 they've more than just Japan to worry about. 1154 01:15:06,840 --> 01:15:10,320 You've got Hitler knocking on the gates of Stalingrad, and you've got 1155 01:15:10,320 --> 01:15:13,280 the British massively on the back foot in North Africa, 1156 01:15:13,280 --> 01:15:16,240 and what's worse still, for the Allies, is that Hitler's 1157 01:15:16,240 --> 01:15:19,520 U-boats are wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic. 1158 01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:27,960 Unable to conquer Britain, Hitler decides to starve 1159 01:15:27,960 --> 01:15:30,560 her into submission instead. 1160 01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:34,840 As an island nation, Britain is 50 million mouths to feed and two 1161 01:15:34,840 --> 01:15:38,840 thirds of the food that it uses to feed those mouths comes from abroad. 1162 01:15:38,840 --> 01:15:43,760 Britain require at least 23 million tonnes of supplies a year 1163 01:15:43,760 --> 01:15:45,080 just to keep alive. 1164 01:15:46,920 --> 01:15:48,560 And to continue fighting, 1165 01:15:48,560 --> 01:15:51,760 Britain also relies on imported raw materials. 1166 01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:57,760 90% of its copper, 90% of her weapons grade bauxite, 1167 01:15:57,760 --> 01:16:03,960 and 95% of its vital oil and rubber come mostly from the United States. 1168 01:16:06,920 --> 01:16:10,360 But Britain is on the verge of financial collapse. 1169 01:16:10,360 --> 01:16:13,120 So in March 1941, 1170 01:16:13,120 --> 01:16:15,960 President Roosevelt forces through the Lend-Lease Act... 1171 01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:20,840 ..a credit lifeline that allows Britain to buy whatever it 1172 01:16:20,840 --> 01:16:24,160 needs from the US and pay for it later. 1173 01:16:25,960 --> 01:16:29,880 America didn't want Britain to fall to the Nazis 1174 01:16:29,880 --> 01:16:34,360 because we were the last bastions of the free world in Europe. 1175 01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:36,560 Without American support, 1176 01:16:36,560 --> 01:16:39,000 then Britain wouldn't really be able to stay going. 1177 01:16:40,160 --> 01:16:44,360 To survive, convoys of Britain's 3,000-strong merchant fleet 1178 01:16:44,360 --> 01:16:46,480 constantly traversed the Atlantic. 1179 01:16:48,600 --> 01:16:51,400 Protecting them is the British Royal Navy. 1180 01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:56,880 But lurking beneath the service is a fleet of dead-eyed 1181 01:16:56,880 --> 01:16:59,480 hunters on a mission to destroy them all... 1182 01:17:03,480 --> 01:17:04,840 ..their submarines... 1183 01:17:06,200 --> 01:17:07,600 ..Germany's U-boats. 1184 01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:14,480 The U-boat itself is capable of intercepting the aid that is 1185 01:17:14,480 --> 01:17:16,000 being shipped across the Atlantic, 1186 01:17:16,000 --> 01:17:21,000 and potentially even stopping the flow of goods reaching Britain. 1187 01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:23,880 If not stopping it entirely, at least slowing it to 1188 01:17:23,880 --> 01:17:27,160 a trickle to the point that Britain can be brought to its knees. 1189 01:17:32,640 --> 01:17:37,560 Submarine fleet Admiral Karl Donitz calculates that goal requires 1190 01:17:37,560 --> 01:17:42,080 600,000 tonnes of Allied shipping to be sunk every month. 1191 01:17:43,920 --> 01:17:50,440 He asks Hitler for a fleet of 300 U-boats but gets just 43. 1192 01:17:50,440 --> 01:17:53,320 Adolf Hitler underestimates what the U-boat is capable of. 1193 01:17:53,320 --> 01:17:55,800 It's his one and only true strategic 1194 01:17:55,800 --> 01:17:59,440 weapon during the Second World War and he undercuts it. 1195 01:17:59,440 --> 01:18:02,960 He doesn't think they are capable of delivering war winning results, 1196 01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:05,520 which they easily could have produced. 1197 01:18:05,520 --> 01:18:09,400 But even in small numbers, U-boats are devastating... 1198 01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:15,400 ..accounting for 70% of ships sunk the German Navy. 1199 01:18:16,600 --> 01:18:19,800 There is a sense, I think, in which the U-boat army, which is 1200 01:18:19,800 --> 01:18:22,840 very small in 1940, sometimes only a dozen boats at sea, 1201 01:18:22,840 --> 01:18:27,080 outperforms its limitations and extracts a huge 1202 01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:31,240 toll from British and later on American and Canadian shipping. 1203 01:18:36,360 --> 01:18:41,480 U-boats prowl the 600-mile wide mid-Atlantic gap known to 1204 01:18:41,480 --> 01:18:45,760 sailors as the black pit because it is out of range of Allied air cover. 1205 01:18:48,000 --> 01:18:51,600 Donitz maximises his small fleet's kills by sending them 1206 01:18:51,600 --> 01:18:53,360 to hunt in wolf packs. 1207 01:18:54,840 --> 01:18:58,480 A wolf pack would operate in coordination with one another. 1208 01:18:58,480 --> 01:19:03,040 A group of, say, five U-boats drove a wedge into a convoy. 1209 01:19:04,440 --> 01:19:07,200 They separated the faster ships from the slower ships, 1210 01:19:07,200 --> 01:19:10,080 and if they could separate the convoy, it was easy hunting. 1211 01:19:11,200 --> 01:19:13,080 Wolf packs are devastating... 1212 01:19:14,280 --> 01:19:16,200 ..sinking a full quarter of British 1213 01:19:16,200 --> 01:19:18,840 shipping in the first year of the war. 1214 01:19:20,600 --> 01:19:24,560 Then in early 1941, they reached Admiral Donitz' target 1215 01:19:24,560 --> 01:19:29,560 of 600,000 tonnes a month and push Britain to breaking point. 1216 01:19:30,840 --> 01:19:34,120 They were in a target rich environment and they were, 1217 01:19:34,120 --> 01:19:35,440 they were the hunters. 1218 01:19:39,680 --> 01:19:44,280 When up to 57 men live for six months in a cramped metal tube 1219 01:19:44,280 --> 01:19:48,160 in which they are liable to drown or be blown to smithereens, 1220 01:19:48,160 --> 01:19:52,960 unshakeable commitment to their cause is vital. 1221 01:19:54,360 --> 01:19:57,960 The average age of the U-boat crewman was 21 years old. 1222 01:20:00,480 --> 01:20:04,000 These are young people who had grown-up under Nazi 1223 01:20:04,000 --> 01:20:07,640 indoctrination, and so they were raised to do exactly what they were 1224 01:20:07,640 --> 01:20:11,720 told and they were raised to put up with quite horrifying conditions. 1225 01:20:11,720 --> 01:20:14,200 It was really a floating metal coffin. 1226 01:20:15,320 --> 01:20:18,400 75% of U-boat men perished - 1227 01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:22,640 among the highest mortality rate of any of the war's armed services. 1228 01:20:25,920 --> 01:20:29,960 It's a terrible sacrifice, but for German high command, 1229 01:20:29,960 --> 01:20:34,480 it's worth it because the wolf packs are delivering. 1230 01:20:34,480 --> 01:20:37,440 For the German sub-mariners, this period was known as the happy 1231 01:20:37,440 --> 01:20:40,960 time, it wasn't a happy time for Churchill, he later wrote 1232 01:20:40,960 --> 01:20:45,240 about it being the only time in the war where he was genuinely scared. 1233 01:20:48,000 --> 01:20:50,600 April 1941. 1234 01:20:50,600 --> 01:20:54,040 In the Atlantic Ocean, the British Navy hunts for German U-boats. 1235 01:20:54,040 --> 01:20:58,280 But they cannot find them because they don't know where they are. 1236 01:20:59,360 --> 01:21:02,160 The German U-boats are guided by messages 1237 01:21:02,160 --> 01:21:05,240 which are encrypted in undecipherable codes. 1238 01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:10,400 The encrypted codes are produced by Enigma, a machine that can 1239 01:21:10,400 --> 01:21:16,600 produce a mind boggling 1,253 trillion code combinations. 1240 01:21:18,920 --> 01:21:25,160 Until Enigma is deciphered, Britain risks defeat and even starvation. 1241 01:21:25,160 --> 01:21:27,480 To crack the Enigma machine, 1242 01:21:27,480 --> 01:21:30,880 all the greatest minds are assembled at Bletchley Park 1243 01:21:30,880 --> 01:21:35,960 in Buckinghamshire, including the famous mathematician Alan Turing. 1244 01:21:39,600 --> 01:21:42,560 Based in Hut 8 at Bletchley's Government Code 1245 01:21:42,560 --> 01:21:46,640 and Cypher School, 29-year-old Turing has his work cut out 1246 01:21:46,640 --> 01:21:49,600 because the Germans reset Enigma daily. 1247 01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:54,240 These encrypted messages were believed, 1248 01:21:54,240 --> 01:21:57,640 by the German regime, to be unbreakable. 1249 01:21:57,640 --> 01:22:01,560 The human mind is not capable of running through the potential 1250 01:22:01,560 --> 01:22:05,880 settings quickly enough because there are only 24 hours in a day 1251 01:22:05,880 --> 01:22:07,680 and the codes change every 24 hours. 1252 01:22:09,360 --> 01:22:12,880 So Turing doesn't try to break the code himself. 1253 01:22:12,880 --> 01:22:17,280 He envisions something far more powerful than the human brain. 1254 01:22:17,280 --> 01:22:22,000 Turing creates a special machine, and this enables him 1255 01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:26,240 to analyse thousands of transmissions at a time. 1256 01:22:26,240 --> 01:22:29,800 It's really the world's first computer and it's called the Bombe. 1257 01:22:29,800 --> 01:22:32,000 What Alan Turing has created is something 1258 01:22:32,000 --> 01:22:36,000 so technologically far ahead of its time, and I think that is why 1259 01:22:36,000 --> 01:22:39,400 we marvel at its creation, it is just extraordinary. 1260 01:22:40,480 --> 01:22:45,160 On April 1st 1941, Bletchley Park first breaks the Enigma code. 1261 01:22:45,160 --> 01:22:48,640 Thanks to Turing, more than a million enemy transmissions 1262 01:22:48,640 --> 01:22:53,920 are intercepted, laying bare the position of Germany's wolf packs, 1263 01:22:53,920 --> 01:22:58,760 around which over 1.2 million tonnes of shipping are re-routed. 1264 01:22:59,920 --> 01:23:02,960 Britain's transatlantic lifeline is open. 1265 01:23:06,360 --> 01:23:08,680 But it doesn't last long. 1266 01:23:08,680 --> 01:23:11,680 Germany's Enigma code gets an upgrade. 1267 01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:15,560 The Germans noticed that they haven't intercepted 1268 01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:19,920 a convoy for six months or so, so to be on the safe side, 1269 01:23:19,920 --> 01:23:22,440 they add an additional rotor to the Enigma. 1270 01:23:22,440 --> 01:23:26,640 Enigma code combinations increased 26 times, 1271 01:23:26,640 --> 01:23:30,080 to over 32,500 trillion, 1272 01:23:30,080 --> 01:23:34,600 a number that even Alan Turing's proto-computer cannot cope with. 1273 01:23:36,920 --> 01:23:40,720 For the wolf packs, hunting season is back on. 1274 01:23:41,840 --> 01:23:45,600 This Enigma blackout could not have come at a worse time 1275 01:23:45,600 --> 01:23:48,440 because the US is about to send lots of people 1276 01:23:48,440 --> 01:23:51,080 and lots of equipment across the Atlantic through 1277 01:23:51,080 --> 01:23:54,080 the potentially dangerous waters where U-boats are hunting. 1278 01:23:56,840 --> 01:23:59,800 In the last six months of 1941, 1279 01:23:59,800 --> 01:24:04,360 U-boats sink just over 720,000 tonnes of Allied shipping. 1280 01:24:05,760 --> 01:24:08,280 In the first quarter of 1942 alone, 1281 01:24:08,280 --> 01:24:13,360 sinkings rise to 2.6 million tonnes, and by year's end, 1282 01:24:13,360 --> 01:24:20,120 that figure rises to almost eight million tonnes, and 1,662 ships. 1283 01:24:21,520 --> 01:24:22,960 To make matters worse, 1284 01:24:22,960 --> 01:24:26,560 the Royal Navy's oil reserves are down to just two months. 1285 01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:31,720 The Allies need another breakthrough. 1286 01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:33,880 It comes in spectacular fashion... 1287 01:24:35,080 --> 01:24:38,800 ..in Mediterranean waters off the Egyptian coast. 1288 01:24:38,800 --> 01:24:43,040 In October 1942, U-boat 559 1289 01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:46,320 is actually hit by HMS Petard 1290 01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:47,960 and sunk below the water line. 1291 01:24:49,200 --> 01:24:53,400 While it was sinking, three Royal Navy sailors dove overboard, 1292 01:24:53,400 --> 01:24:56,440 swam to the U-boat, went aboard it, 1293 01:24:56,440 --> 01:24:59,560 rummaged through it as it's sinking, 1294 01:24:59,560 --> 01:25:04,040 the U-boat suddenly rolls over, and two of the sailors go down with it, 1295 01:25:04,040 --> 01:25:06,040 sacrificing their lives. 1296 01:25:06,040 --> 01:25:09,880 But it was vital because the survivor actually pulled 1297 01:25:09,880 --> 01:25:13,040 a code book from the U-boat. 1298 01:25:14,240 --> 01:25:17,880 And when Turing poured over it back at Bletchley Park, 1299 01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:22,920 they were able to break the upgraded Enigma codes. 1300 01:25:22,920 --> 01:25:26,920 That sacrifice was so worthwhile because soon thereafter, 1301 01:25:26,920 --> 01:25:29,320 Bletchley Park is reading the U-boat mail again. 1302 01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:34,400 Over the next year, the Germans sink only 812 ships. 1303 01:25:35,600 --> 01:25:39,560 For the loss of 242 submarines. 1304 01:25:39,560 --> 01:25:43,840 At the same time, new weapons like the Hedgehog anti-submarine 1305 01:25:43,840 --> 01:25:46,760 system and the B24 bomber come online. 1306 01:25:48,000 --> 01:25:51,120 The pendulum swings and the hunters become the hunted. 1307 01:25:52,720 --> 01:25:56,440 Facing total annihilation, Donitz orders all his U-boats to 1308 01:25:56,440 --> 01:26:00,720 withdraw from the North Atlantic on 24th May 1943. 1309 01:26:02,320 --> 01:26:05,720 The following month is the first in the whole war in which not 1310 01:26:05,720 --> 01:26:07,840 a single convoy is attacked. 1311 01:26:09,400 --> 01:26:14,000 That is what turns the tide on the U-boat and from May 1943 1312 01:26:14,000 --> 01:26:15,560 until the end of the conflict, 1313 01:26:15,560 --> 01:26:18,480 the U-boat is no longer the scourge of the seven seas. 1314 01:26:21,120 --> 01:26:22,880 Yet all this will be for naught 1315 01:26:22,880 --> 01:26:26,280 if the Soviets cannot win the battle for Russia. 1316 01:26:27,600 --> 01:26:29,640 On the banks of the River Volga, 1317 01:26:29,640 --> 01:26:32,200 a desperate struggle for survival is being fought out 1318 01:26:32,200 --> 01:26:36,760 in a nondescript city whose name will echo through history... 1319 01:26:39,120 --> 01:26:40,800 ..Stalingrad.