Blitzkrieg: The Devastating Numbers That Made It Possible | WWII In Numbers | War Stories

at half past midnight on saturday the 26th of august 1939 a small band of men sneak across the polish german border near the town of mosty in the carpathian mountains these men were a secret battalion called construction training company 800 for special duties in fact they were combat saboteurs their mission was to seize the vital railway tunnel at the jablanca pass was the shortest route to warsaw this was one of the first moves of plan white the nazi invasion of poland only problem is shortly after the unit crosses the border hitler postpones plan white and polish guards then confronted them in the tunnel at the jablanca pass then there was a gun battle the germans suffered two wounded and then had to retreat this was very embarrassing for the nazis the german authorities explained away the whole incident as simply a unit having gone rogue and the poles chose to believe it five days later on the first of september germany invades poland the poles demolish the jablunka tunnel just 75 minutes after the first german tanks roll across the border it does them little good [Applause] when the attack actually did come in poland the poles didn't seem to be prepared for it the speed with which they came what we had now was lightning [Music] september 1939 on germany's frontier with poland that gathered 1.5 million german troops 200 000 military vehicles and more than 2 000 tanks it's the largest show of military force seen in europe since world war one but nobody not even the fuhrer is prepared for world war ii hitler increasingly convinces himself that britain and france washed up his great powers at this point none of the democracies want to fight the only people preparing for war preparing for a fight are the fascists british governments have always had a shocking weakness for what i've christened gesture strategy that's to say realize where we may have to fight a war but they don't do anything about it the allies lose no time demonstrating the actual strength of their commitment to the defense of poland hours after britain declares war 10 raf whitley bombers take off bound for germany's industrial heartland when they reach their targets over the roar these 10 mighty bombers open their bombay doors and unleash 5.4 million propaganda leaflets what was known as the the confetti war that is how the royal air force began the war on the leaflets is written your rulers have condemned you to the massacres miseries and privations of a war they cannot ever hope to win quite what the allies were expecting to achieve as anybody's guess a lot of germans were perfectly happy with their fuhrer five days later the french make their contribution to the defense of poland ten french divisions advance across a 15 mile front pushing into the southwestern german state of tsar land but the advance lacks purpose they go five miles they sit there for five days and then they turn back it was a crazy sentimental gesture with no real strategic basis at all what if the french had pressed home that attack so early on in the war how far could they have got could they have knocked germany out of the war before the war had even begun well we'll never know the answer to that the allies don't feel they have the numbers to confront hitler they need time to get their troops in place while hitler was busy roasting and eating poland the french army could get ready to fight the real war general gamelan actually said we have every interest in the conflict beginning in the east and generalizing little by little that way we have time to prepare the polls were betrayed by the british and french governments and it's all very well for everybody to say today oh well very honorable the british and french went to war for poland but we didn't make the smallest attempt to fulfill our earlier promises to pope the allies expect the polls to keep the germans occupied on paper at least poland does possess the numbers at the start of the war the polish army was the fourth largest army in europe against approximately 1.5 million invading germans the poles can muster 1.3 million troops on the face of it the german and polish armed forces are reasonably evenly matched but the germans have two significant advantages they have much better tanks and much better aircraft the polish air force is pretty hapless out of 900 planes only 36 are brand new germany's 2000 aircraft quickly take control of the skies [Music] this leaves the way open for germany to play the ace hiding up its sleeve a military strategy designed to take ground quickly and avoid the punishing trench conflict that cost the germans hundreds of thousands of lives in world war one the german armed forces have been thinking about if there's another major war how are we going to be able to achieve what we couldn't achieve in the first world war we really do need decisive battles we don't want to mess around for four years we want to be able to defeat the enemy and to defeat the enemy quickly when the germans unleash their new attack strategy it will soon strike terror around the globe [Music] the 1st of september 1939 in poland nazi germany introduces to an unsuspecting world a whole new way of waging war they call it blitzkrieg blitzkrieg means lightning war that's the translation and that's exactly what this was tanks and motorized infantry moving through an enormous speed breaking through an unsuspecting enemy line you punch a hole straight through the enemy's front you then send your tanks through this hole and you then envelop the enemy's rear and therefore cut off his supply lines this entirely new type of warfare requires an entirely new type of unit the panzer division [Applause] tanks have been around since the first world war but the germans are using them in a very novel way as shock weapons they are concentrated at a particular spot they breach the line so the enemy doesn't really know what's hit them [Music] germany only began building new tanks in 1933 now it has nine panzer divisions each boasting 328 tanks almost 3 000 in total this is the panzer mark iii the mainstay of panzer forces at the time of the invasion of poland in 1939. it was developed specifications drawn up by heinz kuduri himself and it was intended to act as a mobile anti-tank gun in support of the light of mark twos and the infantry armed with a 50 millimeter gun there and traveling at 25 miles an hour on the road it was very very capable of dealing with any polish opposition but in 1939 the germans don't possess motorized armor in sufficient numbers for a full-scale blitzkrieg their armies rely heavily on the oldest form of military transport the horse we tend to think about blitzkrieg being about motorized vehicles but in fact in 1939 in the invasion of poland the nazi forces had only 16 fully mechanized divisions out of 157 everything else depended upon horses 400 000 german soldiers rode into poland on saddles like this ultimately they use more horses in world war ii than they did in the first world war for every 93 german soldiers there was one motor vehicle but for every three or four german soldiers there was one horse which means that the horse is the mainstay of blitzkrieg despite isolated pockets of spirited resistance the poles inevitably cave in and fall back to rally around warsaw ready for the promised allied push on september the 17th but it never comes instead the poles receive a stab in the back three weeks earlier the nazis signed a surprise non-aggression pact with hitler's political nemesis bolshevik russia the associated credit and trade deals mean that for as long as they are allies the soviet union will effectively fuel and feed the german war effort the scum of the earth i believe the bloody assassins of the workers i presume on the 17th of september 1939 soviet leader joseph stalin claims his part of the bargain eastern poland almost half a million soviet troops invade their neighbor within days the soviets annexed 200 000 square kilometers of poland [Music] on the 28th of september 1939 warsaw finally surrenders german general blaskowitz receives the surrender of warsaw from the polish emissary representing the garrison the stern face commander of the besieging army lays down the turns [Music] polish resistance lasts barely three weeks blitzkrieg has struck like lightning of 1.5 million men germany loses just over 8 000 dead and 27 278 wounded the western powers have failed to protect their ally the allies have sat on their hands and they let the whole situation play out that will prove to be a huge mistake as early as november 1937 hitler outlines his master plan for poland in his notorious horseback memorandum the plan was very very simple capture as much territory of eastern europe as you can kick out all the unto mention the subhumans and replace them with your own uber mention or aryans superior human beings to us this sounds an incredible concept the idea that germany had a right to expand that germany had a right to fulfill its greatness of destiny it is quite extraordinary that even german generals should cheerfully go along with it but go along with it they do and as poland falls mobile ss killing units named einsatzgruppen spearhead a nazi policy given the simple code name shrekly kite or frightfulness their job is horrifically simple it's to murder as many unto mention as possible hitler made it quite clear that the war in poland was going to be a war of utmost brutality beyond normal warfare and in september 1939 when the germans went in they were accompanied by the first batch of einsatzgruppen and they went in along with the army and did horrific things they'd been supplied with a list of key individuals and groups that they were to target mainly the polish intelligentsia polish political elites catholic priests academics people in leading roles but also leaders of jewish organizations jews in prominent positions by the end of october the ss together with the active collusion of the german army raised 531 towns to the ground and execute more than sixteen thousand civilians [Music] by the end of the war seventeen percent of the polish population has been killed but the poles refuse to be cowed up to 150 000 escape and join the free polish forces in britain and france they want to take the war to the germans but their allies remain less keen between september 39 and april 1940 you get this six month period called the phony war everybody was nominally ready to go to war but nobody really wanted to start it france in particular is terrified of becoming the battleground in a second great wall the french still totally traumatized by the memory of the first world war and all those guards they candled in about four million men had been wounded they were living testament to the horrors of war to avoid another such debacle the french have built the maginot line a continuous chain of underground fortifications made up of 55 000 tons of steel and 1.5 million cubic meters of concrete the line stretches 450 kilometers from the swiss frontier all the way north to luxembourg the idea was that the germans would not be able to get past illne passagrampa they will not pass but history suggests the maginot line adversely affects french war preparations there was no sense that the french were actually actively seeking to fight the germans instead they were passively resisting the germans just expecting this board this wall to keep the germans out to the north the french remain vulnerable to german attack their original plan had been to take the maginot line all the way up to the channel coast but that meant going along the belgian frontier and the belgian said that would violate their neutrality so they forbid it the french you've got to prevent the germans from invading through belgium as they did in the first world war so you need a mobile army as well as your fixed army at the national line your mobile army is going to move towards the belgian frontier to block the germans from coming in general gamelan's french forces mass on the belgian frontier [Music] but what concerns hitler moore is what's happening in the english channel the royal navy's 1400 ships including 330 warships make it the largest in the world and it's blockading germany's sea trade routes making the right's raw materials harder to come by [Music] in response to the british blockade of its shipping lanes german high command draws up plan yellow [Music] hitler wants to send his men up towards the channel coast so he can then have his u-boat bases there unfortunately or perhaps actually rather fortunately for the germans plan yellow is abandoned the simple reason that a plane carrying the plans crashes in belgium territory and the allies are able to read hitler's plans he's absolutely furious but as we'll see there's actually lining in this very dark cloud hitler finds an alternative place to base his atlantic submarines norway the norwegian coastline is the perfect place to build submarine pens it's absolutely fastened with all these fjords which should just make great hiding places on the 9th of april 1940 the germans launched a combined offensive against denmark and norway almost 8 000 paratroopers are dropped onto key strategic locations backed up by more than 800 warplanes the subsequent british attempt to retake the norwegian strong points only serves to highlight how unprepared for war they are british operations both at sea and on land after the germans invaded norway were absolutely symbolic the british can only scrape together a single carrier fleet and 12 territorial battalions to help them take norway their kit is out of date some of it's from the first world war it's seriously old in addition the british only have a hundred planes to back them up british troops are sent to norway with no clear military plan a staff officer was sent back to london to try and find out from the powers that be what exactly the forces in norway were supposed to do and he came back and told the british senior officers you can do what you like because they have the slightest idea in london what they want you to do it would have been kinder to everybody to save the norwegians sorry we can't do a thing than to learn this token force and fight these token battles and then stage this pathetic pretty humiliating retreat the defense of norway is such a failure that on the 10th of may 1940 british prime minister neville chamberlain resigns chamberlain is not cut out to be a wartime leader what you need is a man who can unite people behind him has a very strong will doggie determination a lot of energy and that man is clearly winston churchill churchill light war chamberlain hated war and if you're going to have to buy the war you darn well better be led by somebody who relishes every second of the struggle churchill saw with a blinding clarity or stubbornness that hitler represented something so evil that he had to be fought absolutely to the last ditch every trace of hitler's footsteps every stain of his infected and corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and it need be blasted from the surface of the earth they're not apparent at the time the loss of norway will provide another benefit to the allies the blonde blue-eyed magnificent norwegians represent aryan perfection norway was hitler's zone of destiny this was the nation that he wanted to create this is why the germans tie up so many men in defending norway for the rest of the war norway would be garrisoned by 12 divisions with up to 350 000 men that's one german soldier for every 10 norwegians [Music] this is one of those occasions where you see the nazis tying up their soldiers for reasons of ideology rather than strategy but norway and the atlantic war are not the only reason why hitler hesitates to commit his forces against france hitler's prerogative early on was very much to see where he stood with the soviet union it turns out that stalin's not interested in pushing further westward he wants to consolidate the gains he's just made and to do that he has to protect leningrad leningrad formerly st petersburg is the old capital of tsarist russia it sits less than 50 kilometers from the border with finland if finland falls to a german invasion that's going to make leningrad very vulnerable and the last thing stalin wants is to lose a leningrad so what does he do he decides to invade finland in order to create a buffer zone on the 30th of november 1939 more than one million russian troops supported by 1 500 tanks and 3 000 aircraft cross the finnish border ranged against them is a tiny finnish army of little more than 340 000 men with just 32 tanks and 114 planes but as one finnish commander says this is a war of numbers against brains and the people with all the brains the fits one reason for that could be that stalin's most competent commanders are either dead or locked up in gulags stalin is particularly scared of some kind of napoleon type figure emerging the officer corps is the obvious place to look for any other such opposition and so that's basically why he purges the officer court it's fear of a coup by 1939 three marshals 13 generals 57 corps commanders and over 50 percent of senior russian army officers are either imprisoned or executed many of his senior officers had gone and it was poorly led poorly equipped a pretty shambolic force at that stage by contrast the fins are extremely inventive what do you do if you've got a tiny guerrilla army and 90 tank weapons well the answer is you improvise and this is it the molotov cocktail during the winter war the russians claimed that they were dropping food aid on finland the finns responded well if molotov russian foreign minister is sending his bread baskets we'll send him back cocktails and this thing is very simple it's a glass bottle full of fuel a fuse in this case made out of a bit of fabric soaked in the same fuel you light it you throw it and when it hits the vehicle tank whatever it shatters setting the vehicle on fire it was so effective that during that winter war the fins produced 450 000 of these and it worked it stopped the russian army in its tracks the finns use all kinds of innovative ways to ambush and kill the russians and they have no shortage of targets there are more russians than we have bullets said one finn in fact there are so many to kill we have no idea where we're gonna bury them all up to a quarter of a million russians die for only a tenth that number of fins by march 1940 stalin has had enough he signs a truce with finland the fact that this mighty huge red army suffered humiliations on the battlefield in these forests and snows explains why hitler was convinced that he could just sweep across russia in 1941 what hitler does not realize is that the red army has learned a lot from the finns not least how to fight a winter war [Music] finns had been much better prepared for winter not only in terms of their clothing but they had special ski battalions they used white camouflage the soviets thought very carefully about how they could conduct a counter-offensive in those conditions but hitler's not yet preparing to attack russia he's looking west may the 10th 1940 almost 400 000 soldiers of the british expeditionary force are in france and belgium awaiting a german invasion it will begin today [Music] 29 german divisions supported by more than 2500 aircraft are storming into belgium and the low countries trying to punch through to the north sea ports just what the allies have been waiting for french commander general gamalan immediately orders the british and french troops to advance from their positions on the belgian frontier and to implement plan d general gamalan's long-anticipated strategy to blunt the german assault 94 french divisions accompanied by nine british divisions advanced to link up with belgium's 22 along a line between breda and the dial river in all they number more than a million men allied tanks outnumber germany's by a thousand but despite the events in poland the allies are not prepared for a german blitzkrieg the british and french simply dissipated area resources the germans concentrated them all in one place the place they wanted to win south of this line the river mers in the ardennes forest is guarded by just six french divisions with another six in reserve they are weaker and less well-prepared than their northern counterparts the murslide didn't need to be offended by anything stronger because this was the impenetrable ardent forest they're so thickly forested a lot of streams and rivers to cross and the french believed that the ardennes were virtually impossible to an invading army so can you imagine the allies surprise when the germans sent their panzer tanks through the ardennes there was a traffic jam all the way back along the roads leading into the ardennes the french aircraft observed this but they were not quite sure what to make of it and when they began to report back the reports were dismissed of course nobody is going to invade the arden don't be silly seven panzer divisions supported by 35 infantry and three motorized divisions are painstakingly snaking through the ardennes on paper their task is simple break through the mers line and charge for the coast cutting off the entire northern allied army from its supply lines in france not as easy as it sounds you've got to imagine trying to get 134 000 men and 40 000 vehicles through this kind of labyrinthine mess of roads through the ardennes they dressed some of their scouts up as tourists who were actually able to prepare the ground in advance for the units coming through they're there to seize vital junctions and police the four main highways that germans will need to use these vehicles are shepherded through the argonne forest this is basically brilliant traffic control although the plan is conceived by eric von manstein one of his generals hitler claims the ardennes strategy as his own hitler had a very high opinion on himself to begin with but after his success with the arden attack he started to consider himself infallible it takes general irving rommel's panzers just two days to reach the river mers further south at sedan general heinz gadarian the inventor of blitzkrieg is stuck the french would dug in on the mafei heights above sedan now guderian has absolutely nothing to winkle them out with why because its artillery is still stuck at the back of that traffic jam it looks as though gadarian is just going to smash himself against the french line but the french haven't reckoned with the blitzkrieg a thousand planes are diverted from their missions over belgium to come along and rain down hell on the mafe heights [Music] the luftwaffe launches but at that point in time is the heaviest and most sustained aerial bombardment ever seen it lasts eight hours and numbers almost four thousand bombing sorties among the attackers are 200 junkers 87 stuka dive bombers which unleashed their bombs and auto cannons on the dug in defenders atop the mafei heights [Music] the stuka is a seriously scary piece of kit it can go into a vertical dive down towards the enemy and drop a 550 pound bomb right on top of his head the stuka's dive not only delivers a deadly payload it is accompanied by a terrifying sound effect [Music] it has what's known as a trumpet of jericho which is a siren attached to the undercarriage and as it comes down that siren screams the whole effect would have been absolutely blood curdling the remorseless stuka attack is enough to break french morale the defenders flee the way is clear for rommel and gadarian to race for the coast and take on the 400 000 strong british expeditionary force 14th of may 1940 holland surrenders to the german blitzkrieg in france the fortresses of the defensive maginot line have been bypassed and northern coastal ports are now dangerously exposed rommel and gadarian are the two major proponents of blitzkrieg this very fast tank-based warfare they go in hard and they don't stop within 10 days they've advanced 150 miles all the way to the channel [Music] the advance is so fast that rommel's panzer force finds its supply lines massively overextended when the allies do finally manage to fight back [Music] if the allies are able to mount a counter-attack they could actually cut off the panzers and the panzers would be the ones who needed rescuing vicar gault commander in chief of the british expeditionary force in the besieged town of arras decides on a counter-attack code named frank force the attack force is supposed to number fifteen thousand men in the confusion just two thousand to carry it out supported by 74 tanks the battle will expose both the weaknesses and the strength of the german blitzkrieg [Music] due to shortages of raw materials the german army's ordnance departments downgraded the weapon on this tank from the 50 millimeter that we see here to a 37 millimeter this is not what godurian wanted and this was to prove to be very short-sighted operation frankforce will test the panzer 3's lackluster firepower just how short-sighted it was to downgrade the gun on the mark 3 tank becomes apparent when rommel faces a british counter-attack at arras the british are equipped with this tank this is the matilda ii armed with the two pounder this tank can penetrate any german armor on the battlefield but the german pop guns the 37 millimeter their rounds just bounce off this thick armor at harass the matildas run a mock the british tanks move forward and were able to attack and destroy much of what was in front of them and they very very nearly overcame rommel's force faced with this onslaught rommel's panzers are thrown back in disarray but rommel is not hailed as a military genius for nothing so what did rommel do rommel basically lured the tanks in to what was effectively a killing and then opened up with 88 millimeter anti-aircraft these weren't intended to be used against tanks they were intended to be used against planes but rommel was always thinking outside of the box he was always trying something new and it worked not only did it work it saved the day it meant that his position wasn't lost rommel's reaction shows just how versatile the combined arms of his panzer divisions can be but his recklessness spooks an already jumpy high command hitler has been screaming for days at the panzer groups are hopelessly overexposed he wants them to stop and to regroup and to protect themselves and it's at this point when the german high command starts to reassert its control over 300 000 soldiers of the bef is gathering in the coastal port of dunkirk [Music] but two days after harass both rommel and gadarian are told to halt their advance [Applause] there are a number of very good reasons why the germans issue a very famous halt order the panzer tanks are not ideally suited for one thing for going into dunkirk a town situation not ideal for tanks secondly very marshy area around people know from the first world war it's not ideal why commit them to a fight they're not actually suited for but beyond even that herman goring gets in touch with adolf hitler by telephone and he says we love a national socialist organization let us finish off the british because we can do it and that way you will get the glory but the luftwaffe fails its fuhrer hitler's halt order buys the british navy just enough time to mount the most famous rescue operation of the war over nine long days often under fire from the air and at the cost of over 170 vessels a makeshift fleet of at least 800 british boats traverse the english channel and transport over 330 000 british and french soldiers from dunkirk to britain in the houses of parliament winston churchill described it as the miracle of deliverance if the germans had captured that army it would have been impossible for churchill to convince anybody that we could rationally go on with the wall because there wouldn't have been anybody to fight the british celebrate dunkirk as if it was in some sense a victory but of course it was a defeat a conservative estimate the british leave behind 75 000 tons of ammunition 64 000 vehicles and almost two and a half thousand guns the british army wasn't properly re-equipped until 1943-44 not for three or four years but the fact those men got back just enabled winston churchill to convince his colleagues in government against the judgment of an awful lot of other people that we could carry on with the war the french fare just as badly they lose 38 out of 103 divisions to the blitzkrieg the rest now face the daunting task of holding back the german onslaught on their own there was a strong sense in 1940 in france that they'd been let down by the british that britain had been the wrong ally for the french that britain was more interested in saving itself now than saving france but the battle for france is not yet over as the french attempt to rally their forces for the defense of paris they are hampered by a civilian tragedy unfolding all around them german bombers were absolutely ruthless in who they targeted they didn't just aim at soldiers they also aimed at civilians and in holland you see the german luftwaffe carpet bombing rotterdam a thousand people were killed but over 80 000 are forced to flee their homes news of the terrifying bombing raids quickly reaches france this has a huge effect on the french civilians who think they're going to be bombed in submission their families are going to be killed and vaporized by the luftwaffe so 10 million of them take to the roads these are internal refugees and what happens is that they clog up the road system which means that the french army can't get to where it's most needed even so some french still fight on it's a little-known fact that the germans lost twice as many men in the two weeks after the retreat from dunkirk than the two weeks before it but on the 10th of june the french government abandons paris and retreats six days later it resigns in favor of an interim government based in vichy led by the first world war hero marshall pattan [Music] pattaya's government which agrees to collaborate with the nazi invaders orders all french troops to lay down their arms the french didn't just roll over and play dead but let's face it they were hopelessly outgunned and outplayed on the 22nd of june 1940 adolf hitler and hermann goering accept the unconditional surrender of the french people in the very same carriage of the orient express where marshall fox had witnessed the german surrender in world war one if you want to get a sense of how much this victory over the french meant to hitler look at where he signed the treaty it was in the same train carriage brought out of a museum placed back at compien and there the french surrendered i mean just to call it symbolic isn't even to scratch the surface [Music] it seems as if hitler's revenge is all but complete in the space of less than two months the british and french have lost more than 103 000 dead germany just 27 000 the german blitzkrieg through france was absolutely phenomenal what the germans achieved in just seven weeks is what they couldn't achieve in four years during the first world war the nazi war machine looked unstoppable [Music] the battle for france is over the battle for britain is about to begin [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: War Stories

Views: 352,159

Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, world war 2, adolf hitler blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg in numbers, lightning war ww2, panzer ww2 german, tanks of blitzkrieg, german tanks ww2, panzer division, dunkirk ww2, dunkirk ww2 summary, invasion of poland 1939, maginot line, france ww2, churchill vs hitler, horses in ww2, molotov cocktail ww2, stalin vs hitler, norway ww2, finland ww2, documentary movies - topic

Id: PPGzq6SwFrQ

Length: 45min 7sec (2707 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021