May the 9th, 1940
A little French town
with little French children
A town in the Ardennes
not far from Germany which is at war with France
but thing's been quiet
Until now
so the children continue to line their clogs up neatly
and their school teacher says
"Today we'll learn a nice song to bring peace back to us."
"round, round, round, go the puppets"
This will be the last class.
Apoclypse Second World War
The 10th of May, 1940
at 5:35am
the Germans unleash their offensive
Collapse of France
German paratroopers are dropped into Holand.
They're the vanguard.
The first of three million invaders.
The Wehrmacht marches into Belgium.
This is Hitler's decoy.
The Germans pretend that they're going to attack France
through neutral Belgium as they did in 1914.
The French General Gamelin commandering chief of the allied forces is confident.
He has everything covered.
He fine tunes strategies during the phony war.
Gamelin moves his best motorized divisions
the elite French Army into Belgium
along with the entire British expeditionary force.
These are fighting soldiers with true great.
They will stop the German advance through Belgium.
But Hitler in his headquarters is gloating.
His decoy worked.
He exclaims "I could weep for joy."
He instructs ???? Marshal Galin who commands the airforce
not to bomb the French columns.
to let them proceed deep into Belgium territory
and he attacks them from the rear.
His real offensive will be through the Ardennes
According to French high command
no tank could ever get through those densely forest hills
But nothing stops them,
except their own traffic jams.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands and Belgium
people who own cars are among the first flee.
Everyone is suspected.
A so called fifth column is feared spys working for the Nazis
The Germans continue their diversionary tactics
invading Belgium with specially trained airborne forces
The sappers belt out their song from the campaign Poland
"The girls will have to wait, comrades"
"It's time to go, comrades"
On the 11th of May a daybreak
They are dropped into Belgium.
Their goal is to capture the linchpin of the Belgium defense system.
Fort Eben Emael on the Albert Canal
which is reputed to be impregnable.
An intrepid German soldier heaves himself onto the top of the turret with loaded explosives.
The conquerors stride through the ruins of Fort Eben Emael the key to Belgium.
Images such as these will forge the Wehrmacht's reputation of invincibility.
After the fort falls,
people scramble to catch the last train to Paris.
In the French capital the Red Cross is swarmed.
Belgium refugees are transferred to cattle cars heading south.
As the Germans enter Liege,
panic grows and spreads.
Faced with such a show of force,
there are only two options:
obey or flee.
Many of the refugees are people from the countryside.
As in many times in history, famers have always been the last flee
???? to abandon their crops and their animals.
The great Belgium poet ???? wrote
"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 around here have only endless misfortune"
The Germans unleash their air offensive
destorying strategic crossroad
airfields
refineries
and fuel supplies
Cities in northern and eastern France are bombed.
The French are now facing the reality of modern warfare.
In the Netherlands the port of Rotterdam is blaze.
The result of German terror bombing raid like the one in Warsaw.
But these bombs were dropped after the city has surrendered.
Another of Hitler's war crimes.
In London, the new Prime Minister is Winston Churchill.
His first speech
reveals the determination to keep fighting
whatever the circumstances.
"I will say without a doubt"
"that the fate of Holand and Belgiem"
"like that of Poland ,Czechoslovakia and Austria"
"will be decided by the victory of the British Empire and the French Republic."
But things have suddenly turned very grim in France.
In just three days
The Germans've swept through the Ardennes
and advancing towards the French defensive line on the Meuse River.
They are closing the net with their pincer movement
seeking to entrap the allied troops massed in Belgium.
The German infantry men knock over the French as if they came from a different world.
With their hand grenade
machine guns and with their sleeves rolled up.
They take the town in one day.
Sedan, the key to the Ardennes
which was already terribly marked by the French defeat in 1870.
But the real obstacle for the Germans is the Meuse River
On the night of 13th of May they bring in beams to build bridges
The French fight back.
But the Germans neutralize the French artillery
and next morning their sappers finish the bridge.
Galvanized by their genernal
Guderian
a 52-year-old Prussian
a great armored warfare strategist
using tanks strike with force daring and speed.
The blitzkrieg or lightning war should not give the enemy time to react.
First the tanks followed by infantry
and backed by aircraft
especially the Stukas.
The Stukas dive bombers equiped with sirens
resisting the intense pressure of decent
their highly trained pilots release their bombs of the last minute
with lethal precision.
The French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud
telephones Churchill in alarm:
"We have been defeated. We have lost the battle."
The French genernals are at a loss.
They are unable to react to the situation
with allied forces tied up in Belgium.
How can they stop the Germans from advancing?
In Paris, the French authorities are trying to deal with the increasing number of refugees.
People from Belgium and northern France are pouring in the city.
Schools, hospitals and barracks
are soon overflowing.
Information is sparse. Rumors are abound.
Has Gamelin commited suicide?
No.
The French high command has just realized that the Germans are heading to the coast.
And the allies are falling into a trap.
A counter attack is ordered.
Allowing a certain colonel De Gaulle to distinguish himself ahead from the tank brigade.
The French army possesses more tanks
and they are all better quality than the German panzers.
But without any reinforcement or aerial support,
the French tanks become prey to the Stukas.
The French competents put up a good fight,
but they wonder why the air force isn't protecting them.
Poorly prepared and with fewer planes
the French pilots are heavily outnumbered by the luftwaffe.
But they fight egregiously.
Dozens of German pilots are shot down and taken prisoner.
Some of these pilots will be returned to Germany when their armistice is signed
and will join the battle against Britain.
The German tanks move swiftly through
the towns and villages of northern France.
Valiantly, the French try to slow the German advance.
The Germans crash any pockets of resistance.
The Germans have reached the English channel.
Hitler's strategy of the "Sickle Cut" has worked.
The British expeditionary force, the Belgium army
and French armor force are incircled.
The Belgian King surrenders along with his army.
The British expeditionary force withdraw towards the coast
leading to the final collapse of allied armys.
In Paris, the French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud
dismisses Gamelin
and finds a new savior
Genernal Weygand 72 years old
one of the artisans of the allied victory in 1918.
To boast morale Reynaud
names another World War I hero as vice premier
84-year-old Marshal Petain
he will soon turn back on Reynaud's policys.
Weygand has no choice.
He too is forced to order a full retreat towards Dunkirk.
Hitler lets them go.
A gesture of clements towards Great Britain?
If he still hope a separate peace?
Or has Goring assured to him that his air force is capable of preventing an evacuation?
Four hundred thousand men cram the beach helpless and in disarray.
They have one last chance
to escape over the sea.
Churchill orders any vessel that can float
to go and get them.
On the outskirt of Dunkirk
The French hold back the Germans
suffering heavy losses.
Goring sends out the Luftwaffe Stukas and bombers
Two hundred and eighteen thousand British
and a hundred twenty thousand French troops
are successfully evacuated.
The British army is saved but they ???? tatters.
The French will be sent back to France
in a finally attempt to defend their country.
The British are sent off to reequipment centers.
All of the Great Britain hails Dunkirk as an extraordinary feet.
Churchill however puts it into perspective
with the seditty he says:
"Wars are not won by evacuation."
Even so in those first days of June 1940,
the Dunkirk spirit is born.
The ruthlessness of this war and the destructive power of Nazi enemy
are now apprent to the British.
Light heartness and humor
give way to frantic effort to moblize the nation.
On the 4th of June Churchill who was also battling with defeatness on his own side speaks out.
His tone is unforgettable.
"We shall fight on the beaches,"
"on the landing ground"
"in the fields, in the streets"
"and on the hills."
"We shall never surrender."
On the 4th of June the Germans take Dunkirk.
A fabulous bounty awaits them.
Lavishly filmed by the Wehrmacht's propaganda units.
The British forces have left behind almost all of their equipment.
The soldiers of the Wehrmacht film themselves in high spirits.
They find a French gramophone
with a famous record by Maurice Chevalier.
The offensive continues.
France collapses.
But Reynaud and De Gaulle who was under secretary of state for defense on war
want to continue fighting.
In Rome the Italian dictator Mussolini
has a big news for his people:
Mussolini is hoping but he's share of spoils.
as well as disarmament of Corsica and Tunisia.
The French say:"It's a stab in the back."
Mussolini's offensive is cut short by the French alpine divisions.
Genernal Rommel's troops storm Normandy and enter Lyon.
Paris is declared an open city
in another words it's turned over to enemy without a fight
in order to spare the fate of Warsaw or Rotterdam.
The government has moved to Bordeaux.
The Germans are apporaching the city.
Rumors fly. They kill. They rape
by the Prussians did in 1870.
The Parisian abandoned by their government flee.
All of France take to the road
A cataclysm will come to be known by a biblical name, the Exodus.
Millions of French man and women head towards Loire, the last rampart.
But there is no rampart strong enough against the Stukas.
On the 14th of June 1940 a daybreak
The Germans march into Paris.
Nazi's emblem the Swastika flyes over Paris.
One of the first act of German occupier
is to seize all the records of abandoned ministries
list of spies, of jews, of freemasons
and even their original copy of the treaty of Versailles
that so humiliated Germany in 1919.
It is immediately sent off to Hitler.
The Exodus has come to a hold.
The bridges over Loire are blown.
The only hope now
is the fighting stops.
Petain in Bordeaux also wants to put an end of things
The Germans continue their relentless advance southward.
Though once considered a formidable force
the French army is now a shambled.
and yet this put up a better fight than was thought especially at a time.
In one month one hundred thousand French soldiers die
more than in the same period of time during the World War I
the deadliest of wars until then.
One million eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers are taken prisoner
along with thirty-six thousand officers
and a hundred and seventy-six genernals.
Among the prisoners there are many African soldiers from the French colonial troops.
The Wehrmacht's amateur film makers
film them with a perverse sense of self-satisfaction.
Famished, these soldiers kill a goat.
German propaganda newsreels insist on showing repeated close-ups of their faces.
The offical instructions art portrayed the degenerations of French
who are forced to go to war with their slaves from their colonies.
The original German commentary is revealing:
Three thousand African soldiers and officers from the French army
will be shot and killed after they are captured.
After 7 years of Nazi indoctrination
racism is rampant among the German soldiers.
Three days will be now decisive in determining France fate.
On the 16th of June 1940
Reynaud is out maneuvered by the councilor ministers in Bordeaux and he resigns.
As his successor Philippe Petain is appointed to head the Frence Government.
Plaza Bastille
Those who remained in Paris listen to marshal Petain.
The war hero of Verdun
announces that he is seeking armistice.
The German radio translate this speech
announcing Frances capitulation.
Some French people are able to pick up the BBC.
Genernal De Gaulle has arrived in London.
On the 18th of June he didn't announce this armistice.
A few days later he records a new speech.
Hitler receives a telegram of congratulations from Moscow.
On June 22nd 1940
Hitler arrives in Kang Pien near Paris.
The setup is ordered as design to humiliate the losers.
He's brought the same railway car that was used for the signing of 1918 armistice
that sealed the Germany's defeat.
His revenge is complete.
The French delegation is led by Genernal Huntziger.
An interpreter reads out a diatribe
accusing France of declaring war without any reason.
Hitler does not utter a single word.
He stands up and leaves.
The French delegates have been informed the terms of armistice.
One of its conditions is that France handover all the anti-Nazi Germans who have taken refuge in France.
Huntziger has tried to negotiate.
The Germans refuse.
Huntziger calls the government in Bordeaux.
The German secret services tape his conversation with Weygand.
Afterwars Hitler has the railway car taken to Berlin.
In the final days of Reich
he will have the SS blow it up with Dynamite.
Soon the major symbols of France's victory in World War I will be mocked
like here in Verdun where a half million French soldiers were killed
to come to this 20 years later.
Hitler jeers at his visit his man who's only just taken Maginot Line.
He is more solemn when enters Strasbourg and its Cathedral.
Alsace and Lorraine are German once again
as he promise they would be.
The spoils of French campaign
two thousand tanks
five thousand cannons
three hundred thousand rifles
four million rounds of ammunition.
At an army supply warehouse the Wehrmacht finds a stock of ???? meant for the French army
warm woolen garments
which will be stored the way for future campaign.
The spoils are the factories, the harbours
all the riches of France.
It was the French who declared the war
as the consequence they will pay the equivalent of one hundred million dollars a day in occupation costs.
Genernal Huntziger goes to Germany for the first meeting of the commision
charged with the playing in terms of the armistice.
To spare troops Hitler decides to let France retain partial sovereignty
under a government at his backend core
with a limited army, striped heavy weapons
just maintain order.
The country is splited in two.
An occupied zone in north along the entire Atlantic coast
providing the access to all harbours.
Italia controls the Mediterranean area
and occupies an narrow ribbon along the out.
The rest is called free zone
with a new capital, Vichy.
This spa town has been choosen in part for its many hotels.
In early July Marshal Petain moves into them along with government ministries
The atmosphere everywhere is abase more.
However this Vichy government continues to control a vast colonial empire
and ???? a still powerful navy.
Hitler's only request is that his ships be disarmed
and remain in their ports for his afraid ???? ???? joint forces with Britain.
Churchill's fear is opposite
that it will fall into German hand.
He orders to Royal Navy to neutralize it.
A British Naval Force
sails to one of France's biggest naval bases
Mers-el Kebir in Algeria.
Churchill is taking no risks
and alternate them dispatched
by the joining us
sculpt their own ships
or sail under escort demilitarization in the Caribbean.
The French reject all proposals.
The British open fire.
Two French battleships are heavyly damaged.
And one, Bretagne is sunk.
One thousand two hundred and ninty-seven French sailors are killed.
Seeking to show his people, the world and ???? the United States
how to determine he is
Churchill strikes out to his former ally
whose fleet could help the Germans land on British shore.
Two days after the attack,
the Vichy government breaks off the diplomatic relations with Britain.
All of Germany acclaims Hitler.
His lightning conquest France enthralls his genernals.
He sees himself as the greatest war leader of all time
on a par with Napoleon.
And like the Empror no one dares to contradict him anymore.
The Germans occupied the channel islands
Jersey and Guernsey
stepping stones towards the invasion of Britain
The British get ready for a German invasion
taking measures that might appear trivial
Another urgent measure is to send children away to the countryside for safety
always a painful moment.
Their elder sisters, their mothers and grandmothers join the war effort
Every women must defend her home against the fearsome German paratroopers.
The man join ???? local defense volunteers for the home guard
even veterans of the First World War.
The willing and able are moblized
while the army resuced in Dunkirk reforms.
America supplies rifles, machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons
and everyone perfect their skills
Churchill delivers a most inspire speech to the British people
"The battle of Britain is about to begin"
"so bear heart so"
"this is British Empire and ????"
"last for a thousand years"
"men will still say"
"this ???? their ???? hour"
One of Churchill main weapon is the royal air force
along with its remarkable aircraft
the Spitfire with its Rolls-Royce engine
one of the best fighter planes in the world.
Britain also excels in the field of electronics.
The British at first use the radar for the purpose of defens.
In the ops room radar are used for detecting planes
and guiding pilots towards the enemy.
The pilots from all over the British Empire
and joined by airman who have managed to flee their country on the German occupation
or his government is in exile in London.
Pols, Dutch, Czechs
and the first of the free French forces along with De Gaulle.
Many of the British pilots are Oxford and Cambridge students.
One of them Richard Hilary later wrote
"We were know as long head boys"
"we were dissolution and spoiled"
"the press referred to us as the lost genernation"
"superficially we were selfish and egocentric"
"The war did not need heroic"
"but gives us the opportunity to prove to ourselves and to the world"
"that undiscipline might we be"
"we were a match for Hitler's dogma fed youth"
These German pilots have been trained by the Hitlerjugend
the Hitler Youth with the idea of revenge
They feel that they are invincible
their leader, Goering is a popular figure in the regime
Goering who is a man of luxury often stays in Hotel Ritz in Paris.
and turns Luxembourg Palace into the Luftwaffe Headquarters
He had promised Hitler the Luftwaffe could blitzkrieg the royal air force in days
take control of air
and enable Wehrmacht to invade Great Britain.
The Luftwaffe has it disposal all France's airfields
their installations and equipment.
its pilots were well trained
like Adolf Galland
with his trademark Cigar
who ???? against repulicans in Spain
or Werner Molders
an ace for the battle of France
he was one of the pilots shot down, taken prisoner
and then returned to the Germans.
He is now a part of the aerial offensive against Great Britain.
Taking off from these fields in occupied France
the German will attack convoys in the channel
harbours and airfields in southern England.
They will shoot down five hundred British aircraft
at the cost of a thousand of their own
The British pilots hold out
giving everthing they have.
Chruchill proclaims: "Never in the field of human conflict"
"were so much old by so many to so few."
Hitler decides to postpone his plan to invade Britain
This is his first setback.
His tactics now relies more on nighttime bombings.
He says: "The British will surrender when their cities have been destroyed."
German bombers attack British cities like Coventry and London
This is the blitz daily bombings.
As for the British people they hold up admirablly
They dig shlters in the garden of their cottages
And in London they sleep in the underground stations
and go to work the next day.
They never lose their confidence or sense of humor.
Churchill says to the French
Roll out the barrel
We'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel
We'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel
Hitler is exasperated.
He will later call Churchill a Jew-ridden half American drunkard.
From now on whenever he is ????
He will vent his spite against Jews.
On October the 12th, 1940
On the day of Yom Kippur
The Jews of Warsaw are told a ghetto will be set up.
A wall 3 meters high is erected
enclosing half a millon Jews
man, women, children, the elderly
who will suffer ???? from hunger, cold and poverty.
In his Shelley in Bavarian Alps the backoff
Hitler is filmed by his mistress Eva Brown
as he celebrates new year surrounded by the children of Nazi dignitaries.
He has another plan of his sleeve
another big gamble.
His mission now is to conquer new Lebensunterhalt/living space to the east.
He has allied himself with Stalin
only to better attack him later on.
His failure to take Britain compels him into move quickly
before Churchill is able to draw America in
with that will set the world blaze.