9th May, 1940.
In France and Britain, things had been quiet in the war up to now.
Life had gone on almost as in peacetime.
In this small French town, not far from the German border,
the children continued to go to school as normal.
But this would be their last class.
EXPLOSION
On the next day, the German soldiers invaded France.
Life would never be quite the same again.
This series is the epic story of World War Two.
As it raged across countries and continents.
As millions of soldiers fought from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Banzai!
It is the moving story of the millions of civilians
whose homes were destroyed and lives disrupted...
..as they were caught up in the cataclysm of war.
To tell this story, the best footage of the war has been
painstakingly transformed, using digital techniques, into colour.
Along with original colour home movies,
it gives a completely new perspective
to one of the greatest events of the last century.
This is the powerful story of the apocalypse and of the people
who fought the Second World War.
10th May, 1940.
At dawn, the Germans unleashed their offensive in the West.
German paratroopers were dropped into Holland.
They were the vanguard, the first of three million invaders.
The Wehrmacht marched into Belgium, all part of Hitler's deception plan.
The Germans pretended they were going to attack France through neutral Belgium as they did in 1914.
The commander in chief of the Allied forces, French General Gamelin,
ordered the British and French armies
to enter neighbouring Belgium.
Gamelin moved his motorised divisions,
the elite of the French army, into Belgium,
along with the entire British Expeditionary Force.
These were the best soldiers he had.
Their task was to stop the German advance through Belgium.
Hitler, in his headquarters, was delighted.
His deception plan had worked!
He exclaimed, "I could weep for joy."
He instructed Field Marshal Goering, in command of the air force,
not to bomb the French and British columns,
and to let them proceed deep into Belgian territory.
Then he attacked them from the rear.
His real offensive was through the Ardennes forest.
According to the French high command,
"No tank could ever get through those densely-forested hills."
But nothing stopped the German panzers except their own traffic jams.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg,
people who were lucky enough to own cars were the first to flee.
The Germans continued their diversionary tactics,
invading Belgium with specially-trained airborne forces.
SINGING IN GERMAN
The sappers belted out the song they had sung in Poland,
"The girls will have to wait, comrades!
"It's time to go, comrades!"
On 11th May, at daybreak,
German paratroopers were dropped into Belgium.
Their goal was to capture the linchpin
of the Belgian defence system,
Fort Eben-Emael on the Albert Canal, reputed to be impregnable.
An intrepid German soldier was filmed on the top of a turret,
setting off explosives.
The fort was captured in less than 24 hours.
Film of the triumphant conquerors
would create a reputation of German invincibility.
After the fort fell, people scrambled
to catch the last trains to Paris.
In the French capital, the Red Cross was swamped.
Belgian refugees were transferred to cattle trucks heading south.
As the Germans entered Liege, the panic spread.
Faced with such a show of force, the only thing to do was obey or flee.
EXPLOSIONS
For hundreds of years, wars had been fought here.
And throughout history, farmers had always been the last to flee,
to abandon their animals.
The Flemish poet Emile Verhaeren had written,
"The people around here
"have nothing at all,
"Nothing before them
"but the endlessness
"of the open road.
"The people who work the fields,
"the people round here,
"have only endless misfortune."
The Germans unleashed an aerial offensive,
destroying crossroads...
..airfields...
..refineries and fuel supplies.
Cities in northern and eastern France were bombed.
The French were now facing the reality of modern warfare.
In the Netherlands, the port of Rotterdam was ablaze.
The result of a German terror-bombing raid,
like the one on Warsaw.
But these bombs were dropped afterthe city had surrendered,
another of Hitler's war crimes.
In London, there was a new prime minister, Winston Churchill.
His first speech revealed his determination to keep fighting.
"I will say, without a doubt,
"that the fate of Holland and Belgium, like that of Poland,
"Czechoslovakia and Austria,
"will be decided by the victory of the British Empire
"and the French Republic."
But things had taken a sudden turn for the worse in France.
In just three days, the Germans had swept through the Ardennes
and were advancing towards the French defensive line
on the Meuse River.
MACHINE-GUN FIRE
Closing the net with their pincer movement,
the Germans tried to entrap the Allied troops massed in Belgium.
The German advance rapidly overwhelmed the French defences.
With hand grenades, machine guns...
..they took the town of Sedan in one day.
Success at Sedan proved to be the key to victory.
BOMBS WHINE
EXPLOSION
The next obstacle for the Germans was the Meuse river.
On the night of 13th May,
they brought in girders to bridge the river.
The French fought back.
But the Germans neutralised the French artillery,
and the next morning their sappers finished the bridge,
galvanised by their general, Heinz Guderian, a 42-year-old Prussian.
A great armoured warfare strategist,
he deployed tanks to strike with force, daring and speed.
The blitzkrieg, or "lightning war",
was intended to give the enemy no time to react.
First in were the tanks, then the infantry, all supported by aircraft,
especially the Stuka.
The Stukas were dive-bombers equipped with sirens.
Their highly-trained pilots released their bombs
at the last minute with lethal precision.
The French premier, Paul Reynaud, telephoned Churchill in alarm.
"They've broken through the front, the road to Paris is open."
The French generals were at a loss, unable to react to the crisis.
With the Allied forces tied up in Belgium, how could they stop
the German advance?
Paris, in late May, 1940.
The French authorities were struggling to deal with the increasing number of refugees.
All of Belgium and northern France seemed to be pouring into the city.
Schools, hospitals and barracks were soon overflowing.
For these people, their exile had begun.
Information was sparse, rumours abounded.
Had Gamelin, the French general, committed suicide?
No. But the French high command now realised
that the Germans were heading for the coast
and the Allies had fallen into a trap.
A counterattack was ordered, and a young colonel
named Charles de Gaulle distinguished himself at the head of a tank brigade.
The French army possessed more tanks and many were of better quality
The French soldiers kept asking themselves,
"Why isn't our air force protecting us?"
Badly led and poorly organised,
the French pilots were outnumbered three to one,
but they fought on regardless.
1,000 German pilots were shot down and taken prisoner.
The British government repeatedly asked its French ally
to hand over these pilots
in order to transfer them to Canada...
in vain.
This proved to be a terrible blunder.
When the armistice was signed, these pilots returned to Germany
and were then able to join the battle against Britain.
The German panzers moved swiftly through the towns and villages of northern France.
Valiantly, French and British soldiers
tried to slow the German advance.
MACHINE-GUN FIRE
But the Germans crushed any pockets of resistance.
The French commanders no longer knew where the enemy were.
A staff officer, Captain Beaufre.
"We kept receiving more and more bad news.
"The atmosphere was unbelievable.
"After eight days in a row of disastrous news,
"we were being worn down psychologically.
"That was also the first time I ever saw a man cry."
The Germans finally fought their way through to the English Channel.
Their deception plan worked brilliantly.
Lured into Belgium, the British Expeditionary Force
and the French armed forces were now encircled.
On 28th May, the Belgian king surrendered, along with his army.
The British Expeditionary Force withdrew towards the coast.
The Allied armies were on the brink of disaster.
In Paris, the French premier, Paul Reynaud, dismissed Gamelin
and appointed a new commander, General Weygand, 72 years old,
one of the architects of the Allied victory in 1918. To bolster morale,
Reynaud named another World War I hero as vice-premier,
84-year-old Marshal Petain,
who would soon turn his back on Reynaud's policies.
But Weygand had no choice, he too was forced to order
a full retreat towards Dunkirk.
Hitler let them go.
Maybe this was a gesture of mercy towards Great Britain
and he was hoping for a separate peace.
Or had Goering assured him that his air force was capable of preventing an evacuation?
400,000 men flooded onto the beach, helpless and in disarray.
They had one last chance, to escape across the Channel.
Churchill ordered any vessel that could float to go and get them.
Destroyers, minesweepers, trawlers, tugboats, barges, luxury yachts,
and even the Thames fireboat.
The flotilla of "little ships" sailed across the Channel
to rescue the besieged troops.
On the outskirts of Dunkirk, British and French troops
held back the Germans, with heavy losses.
Goering sent in the Luftwaffe's Stukas and bombers.
AEROPLANE ENGINE SCREAMS
224,000 British and 114,000 French troops were successfully evacuated,
rescued from death or capture.
CHEERING
The British army was saved.
But it was in tatters.
The French were sent back to Brittany in a final attempt
to defend their country.
The British were sent off to be re-equipped.
All of Great Britain hailed Dunkirk as an extraordinary feat.
Churchill, however, put it into perspective.
He told the House of Commons, "Wars are not won by evacuations."
Even so, it was then,
in those first days of June 1940, that the "Dunkirk spirit" was born.
The British people now had to face up to fighting on alone.
Some thought it was time to make peace with Hitler.
On 4th June, Churchill, who was also battling the defeatists
within government, spoke out.
His words made history.
"We shall fight on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields,
"in the streets and on the hills.
"We shall never surrender."
Finally, on that same day, the Germans took Dunkirk.
Abandoned equipment was everywhere,
lavishly filmed by the Wehrmacht's propaganda units.
The British forces had left behind almost everything.
And the beach was littered with wreckage.
Hitler proclaimed the Battle of Dunkirk as "the greatest battle in history"
and said the 4th of June would now be a national holiday in Germany.
In spite of their success, the Germans also suffered huge losses.
Guderian allowed his soldiers to take a break.
They were proud of their general and marked their equipment with his initial, G.
THEY LAUGH AND SPEAK GERMAN
Most of them were drunk with fatigue.
After fighting non-stop, night and day,
they had hardly slept in four weeks.
ENGINE ROARS
The offensive continued.
France looked like it was about to collapse.
But Reynaud and De Gaulle,
now General and Undersecretary of State for War,
were determined to continue the fight.
On the 10th of June, 1940, in Rome,
the Italian dictator Mussolini,
"Il Duce", had a big announcement to make.
Mussolini was already dreaming of his share of the spoils.
Corsica, Nice, Savoy,
Tunisia, Malta.
The Allies called his declaration of war 'a stab in the back'.
General Rommel's troops stormed into Normandy and entered Rouen.
Paris was declared an open city.
It was turned over to the enemy without a fight in order to be
spared the fate of Warsaw and Rotterdam.
The French government had already evacuated to Bordeaux
as the Germans approached Paris.
Abandoned by their government, many Parisians fled.
All of France seemed to take to the road, an event that would come to be
known by a biblical name -
the Exodus.
Six million French men and women set off towards the river Loire,
the last line of defence.
But there was no defence against the Stukas.
At daybreak,
on the 14th of June 1940,
the Germans entered Paris.
The Nazi Swastika flew triumphantly over the French capital.
The first act of the German occupiers was to seize records from
the abandoned ministries -
lists of spies, of Jews, of Freemasons.
Even the original copy of the Treaty of Versailles
that so humiliated Germany in 1919
was sent off to Hitler.
The Exodus had come to a halt.
The bridges over the Loire had been blown.
There was nowhere left to flee to.
Petain, in Bordeaux, wanted to put an end to the suffering.
The Germans continued their relentless advance south
with such speed that the French army began to disintegrate.
It's losses were huge.
In one month, 100,000 French soldiers had died,
more than in the first month of the First World War.
One million, eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
were taken prisoner, along with 36,000 officers and 176 generals.
Among the prisoners, were many African soldiers
from the French colonial troops.
3,000 African soldiers and officers from the French army
were shot and killed after they were captured.
Racism was rampant among the German soldiers
after seven years of Nazi indoctrination.
Marshal Petain was appointed to head the French government.
On the 17th of June,
those who had remained in Paris listened to Petain.
The First World War hero now
announced that he was seeking an Armistice.
RADIO CRACKLES
German radio translated this speech announcing France's capitulation.
Some people in France were able to receive the BBC.
General de Gaulle had arrived in London.
On the 18th of June, he denounced the Armistice.
A few days later, he recorded a new speech.
As he toured Paris, Hitler received a telegram of
congratulations from Stalin.
On the 22nd of June 1940, Hitler arrived in Compiegne, near Paris,
to accept the French surrender.
Everything was designed to humiliate the losers.
Hitler had brought in the same railway car that was used for
the signing of the 1918 Armistice that had sealed Germany's defeat.
His revenge was complete.
The French delegation was led by General Huntziger.
An interpreter read out a diatribe accusing France of
declaring war without any reason.
Hitler did not utter a single world.
Then he stood up and left.
The French delegates had been informed
of the terms of the Armistice.
One of them they objected to, handing over all the anti-Nazi
Germans who had taken refuge in France.
Huntziger tried to negotiate.
The Germans refused.
The Armistice was signed as it was.
It was a humiliation for France
and a catastrophe for Britain who had lost its major ally.
Hitler visited the men who had delivered the stunning victory.
He was more solemn when he entered Strasbourg and its cathedral.
Alsace and Lorraine were German once again,
as he promised they would be in Mein Kampf.
The spoils of the French campaign, 2,000 tanks,
5,000 cannons, 300,000 rifles,
four million rounds of ammunition.
The other spoils were the factories,
the harbours, all the riches of France.
It was the French who had declared war.
As a consequence, they would have to pay the equivalent of 100 million
dollars a day in compensation.
General Huntziger visited Germany for the first meeting
of the commission charged with applying the terms of the Armistice.
To spare troops, Hitler decided to let
France retain partial sovereignty
under a government at his beck and call, and with a limited army,
stripped of heavy weapons, just to maintain order.
France was divided in two - an occupied zone in the north
and along the entire Atlantic coast giving the Germans all the ports.
Italy controlled the Mediterranean area and occupied a narrow ribbon
along the Alps.
The rest was called a "free zone" with a new capital, Vichy.
This spa town had been chosen because of its many hotels.
In early July, Marshal Petain moved in,
along with all the government ministries.
However, the Vichy government continued
to control a vast colonial empire
and above all, a still-powerful navy.
Hitler demanded that its ships be disarmed and remain in their
ports for he was afraid the navy might join forces with Britain.
Churchill feared the opposite - that it would fall into German hands.
He ordered the Royal Navy to neutralize it.
A British naval force sailed to one of France's biggest naval bases,
Mers el Kebir in Algeria.
Churchill was taking no risks.
An ultimatum was dispatched.
"Either join us, scuttle your own ships,
"or leave for the West Indies."
The Vichy government ignored the demands.
The Royal Navy opened fire.
Two French battleships,
two cruisers and a destroyer were sunk.
Twelve hundred French sailors were killed.
Seeking to show his people, the world and, above all,
the United States how determined he was,
Churchill had struck out at his former ally,
whose fleet could have helped the Germans land on British shores.
The ministers in Vichy wanted to declare war on Britain.
Petain disagreed, saying one defeat is enough.
CHEERING
All of Germany cheered Hitler
for his stunning lightning conquest of Europe.
He now saw himself
as the greatest war leader of all time,on a par with Napoleon.
And, like the Emperor Napoleon,
no-one dared to contradict him any more.
The Germans occupied the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey -
the first step towards an invasion of Britain.
But Hitler held off.
The British were, after all, Anglo-Saxons, distant cousins.
An alliance with Britain was still a possibility.
All Europe would be German, and the ocean British.
But Churchill refused to negotiate.
The British prepared for a German invasion and removed
all signs and nameplates.
It was rumoured that the Germans had won the Battle of France because they had good maps.
Another urgent measure was
to evacuate the children to the countryside for safety -
a painful process.
The young women of Britain enlisted,
along with their mothers and grandmothers.
Every woman had to help to defend her home
against the fearsome German paratroopers.
♪ LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY
The men joined up as local defence volunteers in the Home Guard,
even veterans of the First World War.
Even Chelsea Pensioners joined up.
While civilians were mobilised, the Army, rescued at Dunkirk, reformed.
America supplied the rifles,
machine guns and anti-aircraft guns and soldiers prepared for battle.
Churchill delivered another of his great speeches to inspire
the British people.
(WINSTON CHURCHILL) The Battle of Britain is about to begin.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties
and so bear ourselves
that if the British Empire
and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years,
men will still say,
"This was their finest hour."
One of Churchill's principal weapons
was the Royal Air Force along with its superb aircraft,
like the Spitfire with its Rolls-Royce Merlin engine-
the best fighter plane in the world.
Britain also excelled in the field of electronics.
A Briton had invented radar.
In the RAF Ops rooms, radar was used for detecting enemy aircraft
and guiding pilots towards them.
Pilots from all over the British Empire were joined
by airmen who had managed to flee their countries under German occupation.
Poles, Dutch, Belgians, Czechs
and quite a few Americans.
Their country might be neutral, but they weren't.
And there were Free French Forces, along with de Gaulle.
Some of the RAF pilots were Oxford and Cambridge students.
One of them, Richard Hillary, wrote before going into combat...
"We were known as the long-haired boys.
"We were disillusioned and spoiled.
"The press referred to us as the Lost Generation.
"Superficially, we were selfish and egocentric.
"The war gave us an opportunity to prove to ourselves and to the world
"that, undisciplined though we might be,
"we were a match for Hitler's dogma-fed youth."
These German pilots had been trained in the Hitlerjugend,
the Hitler Youth, with the sole idea of revenge.
They felt they were the elite.
Their leader, Goering, was one of the regime's most popular figures.
Goering, who loved a life of luxury, had turned the Hotel Ritz in Paris
into the Luftwaffe's French headquarters.
He had promised Hitler that, in five days,
he could destroy the Royal Air Force, take control of the air
and enable the Wehrmacht to invade Britain.
And the Luftwaffe now had a big advantage - it could use
all of France's airfields, their installations and equipment.
Its pilots had plenty of experience, like Adolf Galland,
with his trademark cigar, who had fought against the Republicans in Spain.
Or Werner Molders, an ace from the Battle of France.
He was one of those pilots shot down, taken prisoner
and then returned to the Germans.
He was now leading the aerial offensive against Britain.
Taking off from these fields in occupied France, the Germans began
to attack convoys in the Channel,
then coastal ports and then the airfields in southern England
in the engagement that would be called the Battle of Britain.
The Luftwaffe shot down 400 British aircraft
at the cost of 1,000 of their own.
But the RAF pilots held out.
GUNFIRE
Churchill proclaimed that,
"Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few."
Hitler was forced to postpone his plans to invade Britain.
This was his first setback.
He decided to change tactics.
He said, "The British will surrender when
"their cities have been destroyed."
German bombers attacked British cities like London and Coventry.
This was the Blitz, with its daily bombings.
But this change in targets was a fatal mistake on Hitler's part,
because if he had continued bombing the airfields,
he could have broken the Royal Air Force.
Bombing the cities relieved the pressure on the RAF.
But the British people were now in the firing line.
Those who had gardens dug shelters in them.
Some slept in the Underground
and still went to work the next day.
People rarely lost their confidence or sense of humour.
London was bombed, with only a single respite,
for 76 consecutive nights.
40,000 civilians were killed.
200,000 homes were damaged.
The determined spirit of the people of Britain became legendary.
♪ We'll have a barrel of fun... ♪
♪ BAND PLAYS "ROLL OUT THE BARREL"
♪ We'll have a barrel of fun
♪ Roll out the barrel... ♪
Hitler was exasperated.
He called Churchill, "A Jew-ridden, half-American drunkard."
From then on, whenever he was thwarted,
he would vent his fury against the Jews.
On the 12th of October 1940, on the day of Yom Kippur,
a ten-foot-high wall was erected around the Warsaw ghetto,
enclosing 500,000 Jews - men, women, children, old people -
who would all suffer horribly from hunger, cold and poverty.
In his retreat in the Bavarian Alps, the Berghof, Hitler was filmed
by his mistress, Eva Braun, as he celebrated Christmas 1940,
surrounded by the children of Nazi dignitaries.
He was planning another big gamble, to conquer new living space
in the East by launching a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
But having failed to take Britain, he had to move quickly
before Churchill was able to draw America into the war.
Hitler's next offensive would set the world ablaze.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd