Documentary about Normandy 44: The Battle Beyond D Day

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this is a day and this is the are the sky is lightning lightning over the coast of Europe as we go in the sea is a glittering mass of silver with all these craft of every time moving across it like naval forces supported by strong Cal forces began landing at ice armies this morning on the northern coastal front many hundreds of thousands of fighting men going in now to do the biggest job they've ever had to do I can't record anymore now because the time has come for me to get my kid on my back and get ready the staples on that Shore and it's a great day it's the d-day stories one I've always found irresistible growing up I was captivated by tales of daring airborne drops and Beach assaults against a mighty foe but as I've learned more I've realized that much of our accepted view of the Normandy campaign needs questioning what's more I think we owe it to those who fought here to get their story right you I believe the story is more nuanced that the Americans were not so dominant the Germans not so skillful nor the British so hapless and I think is worth reconsidering the events that occurred in Normandy during the summer of 44 this is the d-day image that everyone knows one of only eleven surviving frames taken by Robert Capa on Omaha Beach that morning it has provided a visual cue a reference point that has informed the story for 70 years it's a story that's been told from a predominantly American perspective the British effort often relegated to little more than an amateurish sideshow this landing is but the opening phase of the campaign in Western Europe great battles lie ahead I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us now keep your faith staunch our arms are resolute together we shall achieve victory after nearly five years of war the invasion took place here Normandy on the northern coast of France an armada carrying a hundred and thirty three thousand men were joined twenty-two thousand paratroopers in a massive assault that caught the Germans completely by surprise all too often this is where the story ends on d-day itself with the Allies taking the beaches the events that followed are often overlooked wars are fought on three levels the strategic the overall aims of the war leaders that goals and objectives the big picture the tactical the fighting we've best come to understand this through the testimonies of those who are there the third level operational is the nuts and bolts the logistical link between the big plans at the strategic level and the fighting at the tactical it's this aspect that's usually ignored but which is of critical importance and this map shows it brilliantly here you've got the sea laser highway of supply and it's not just d-day the Normandy campaign is every single day it's that resupplying of trucks and tanks and fuel and rations and medical supplies it's that ability to be able to bring that across and reinforce the battlefront that's key to unlocking the Normandy campaign d-day itself it's the center of the campaign is not the start of the campaign for Allied airmen and for Allied sailors that campaign had been going on for years beforehand so in 1943 breaking the u-boats in order to bring the US Army safely across the Atlantic Ocean as a precondition for d-day command and control of the enormous shipping effort was under the direction of the Royal Navy from its headquarters near Portsmouth Stephen Prince is the Navy's official historian you are importing enormous amounts of power and people from all over the world and that requires sea control that stretches across the earth you're bringing in nearly 2 million people from North America 1 and a half million Americans but often forgotten the half million Canadians who are so important to the British war effort the Germans were also preparing for invasion since 1942 they have been reinforcing positions all along the coast of France the Atlantic Wall it was strongest in the North around the pas-de-calais in Normandy it had never been finished and the troops defending the coast there varied in quality the fifteenth army moved from Russia was a mixture of veterans and new recruits the Seventh Army had been in France since 1940 seeing little if any combat we had no good infantry divisions they had been in France for two to three years and were completely spoiled France is a dangerous country with its wine women and it's pleasant climate troops were there for any length of time become bad soldiers general lightnin Fritz Bay aline had been transferred from the Eastern Front only a month before d-day he led the elite Panzer Lehr division these men would be in the heart of the fighting at dawn on the 6th of June Baer lines division was at lamorne a hundred and twenty four miles from the beaches the task for the German commanders in the West was to defend a huge line that stretched all the way from southern France to the Low Countries precisely where to put the Panzer divisions to best meet this threat was a subject of a major disagreement that had still not been properly resolved mobility and maximum flexibility were crucial because the High Command did not know where the allied hammer would fall the German army in the West on the 6th of June 1944 is 58 divisions six of them are armored or mechanised mechanized infantry are called Panzer grenadiers the rest the other 52 are infantry who rely purely on horses for their mobility it was these static divisions that were confront the Allies as they came ashore these units would have to be swiftly overwhelmed and a bridgehead secured before the Panzer divisions could counter-attack the landings began with the American assaults at oh six thirty it was on Omaha that US troops initially struggled and it's the fighting here that has so defined d-day ever since and down on the beach it's easy to think that the defenders hold all the Aces but from this point of view I'm not so sure imagine looking out to a seed dark with warships all hurtling shells towards you and thousands of Americans coming towards you as well this is one of the strongest positions and all the Omaha defenses and yet it was manned by just 41 people there were 15 of these strong points along the bluffs they were strongest where they covered the four drawers running off the beach for those in the initial waves opposite the two biggest exits this was a killing zone the position of these bunkers and trenches also seriously hampered the defenders as soon as the battle began they were trapped where they fought the German defenders do a really good job for the first few hours of the invasion but they can't reinforce the bunkers on the forward slope they can't bring spare ammunition down they can't take their casualties back and they can't take any reinforcements down to replace the casualties so those guys are isolated on the forward slope sooner or later they're going to run out of ammunition and the moment they do with no ability to bring down more then they're finished they're toast and that's exactly what happens that morning on Omaha Beach all those bunkers are falling silent and around about midday as the soldiers hit the beach they came in range of powerful German machine guns so identified with the deadly defense of Omaha the Americans were quick to examine the most recent model the latest German machine gun and the one which is gradually replacing the mg34 is the dual purpose caliber 7.92 millimeter mg42 the main thing about it is the noise it's firing at such a cyclic rate it's got a distinctive noise and everyone talks about Hitler's zip the noise the rate of fire to change the barrel a barrel change lever hinged on the right side of the barrel therein lies the rub in the heat of battle this was easier said than done the very thing that made the mg42 so terrifying was also its greatest weakness incredibly high rate of fire used so much ammunition the barrel began to melt and this frequently changed okay gun coil considering the bow is hot I will not manhandle it without a glove on okay however this isn't sufficiently hot the birbee so if we elevate slightly barrel comes out okay okay this is where you will need a protective armor clothing a rag sandbag or a glove because that will fuse the skin onto the barrel it is that hot interestingly the same Diaries by the time we're breaching the Rhine a few months later there's just as many guns if not more but there's no comment about it people had got accustomed to that noise the counterpart to the mg42 was the steady ever dependable British brand gun originally designed in the mid 30s in Czechoslovakia although firing at a lower rate the Bren had strengths the mg42 lacked the two weapons perfectly demonstrate a massive doctrinal difference to the manufacture of one of these machine guns the mg34 took 150 in man-hours to manufacture early even at the height of the war yeah that's unaccredited ikkyu Lusa Bren gun was 50 hours so you can do three Bren guns in the time that you made one gun and what about the mg42 that was reduced because it's pressed steel on the outside but it only went down to about 75 they're still tanks so it still takes longer than the Bren gun and remember their expense items you use a lot of them nearly half a million mg 42s were built but over-engineering wasn't the problem for these weapons at Omaha lethal in the opening stages as the defenders used up the ammunition and barrels began to melt they became less effective this is one reason why subsequent waves had an easier time crossing the beach after the initial slaughter the Americans overcame the Germans strong points before the dawn beach assaults airborne troops have been landed the British using gliders had successfully captured bridges intact an operation that would anchor the eastern edge of the invasion area the western end was to be secured by American paratroopers these were some of the finest fighting men in the US Army but despite numerous practice drops as seen here they were delivered into the battle by mostly inexperienced pilots the result was just one in six troopers landing on target nonetheless paratroopers from the 82nd and hundred and first Airborne Division's did what they did best and created havoc behind Utah Beach and across the Cherbourg Peninsula during the first 48 hours of the invasion Panzer divisions rush to reinforce the coast they were attacked continually from the air it took two days and one night to reach the core front and on 7th June 44 I lost 85 or 86 armored vehicles 123 trucks 5 tanks and 23 half-tracks all through bombing they are like han Solo competing German commanders had argued where these Panzer divisions should be held in preparation for the invasion Hitler had brokered a fudge the left many units with a long trip to the front despite some spectacular personality clashes leadership for the Allies was more efficiently structured under the supreme command of General Dwight D Eisenhower the Chiefs of the air and naval forces were both British as was the army chief General Bernard Montgomery Monti arrived in France and set up in the grounds of a chateau near croy he had an extraordinary capacity to rub people up the wrong way which has often overshadowed his abilities and skewed assessments of his performance Operation Overlord was largely Monty's plan in his pre invasion strategy Monti aimed to secure a continual bridgehead as quickly as possible and then to swiftly capture Cherbourg and the high ground to the south and southeast of calm during the build-up he also repeatedly stressed the need for the British to anchor the eastern flank and draw in the bulk of the German Panzers so allowing the Americans the freedom to maneuver south into Brittany it's over caught that a question mark remains about Monty's plan the city was a vital confluence of road rail and river with high ground to the south and southeast having taken the city Montgomery aimed to be at the banks of the River Seine and the gates of Paris within 90 days his orders called for the British from sword Beach to capture Corps on d-day itself despite being 10 miles inland Montgomery when he takes over is shown the original invasion plans takes them apart says these are inadequate too few troops wrong places draws up a new invasion plan and it's really his plan one of the major changes Montgomery made was the swift capture of the Cotentin Peninsula but that left him with just one division landing here on Sword Beach despite intelligence showing that German forces had increased during May the plan for sword remained in place if anyone had been worried that one division was too much to take Corps on d-day they never spoke up who before d-day is going to dare to turn around to general Montgomery and say excuse me general I don't think your plan is quite right but I think we need more forces in the British sector attacking Cong Montgomery is really known for being quite vindictive and finicky and if anyone dare criticizes his plan then there is a chance that they might not be in on d-day itself the planning process has been based on a certain level of German resistance and strength in Normandy in the weeks leading up to d-day that strength increases significantly to dangerous levels as far as that the planners are concerned but it's too late to do anything about it one in large division of some 25,000 men might have been enough had a sizable proportion landed right away but because of the availability of landing craft just two battalions or 1,600 men came ashore in the first wave and that was not enough for all that was being asked of them Montee may have been wrong about the scale of the attackers sword but he was certainly right about the need to build up the number of troops and equipment as quickly as possible but along the invasion front there was no sizable port during one of the early planning meetings Commodore John Hughes Hallett said if we don't have a port we must take one with us one of the principal solutions was an effort so vast that 70 years on its footprints are still here in the water monuments to industrial warfare dozens scores hundreds of craft lying close inshore pontoons and jetty is being lined up to make a new Harbor where six days ago there was an empty stretch of shore at their height the mulberry harbors landed nearly 7,000 tons of supplies every day but on d-day everything had to come ashore by landing craft this meant the troops heading ten miles to take corn were only lightly equipped when they came up against their first obstacle a bunker complex Vida stands nests 17 which the Allies had codenamed Hillman we're just about a flyover Hillman which caused so much problems for for the British as they were revising your car on d-day it was built on a small rise that covered the corn road and could not be bypassed defended by a regiment of the 716th Infantry Division not elite or highly motivated soldiers by any means they had sat on this hill looking at the coast for two years and were well supplied and dug in they held off the British until the following morning there's no question that Helmand scuppered British chances of taking corn d-day but there's a problem with a bunker complex like this it's made of concrete and concrete rootsy to the spot while the British from sword were being held up at Hillman the Canadians were off Juno Beach and the British from gold were already moving inland by evening they were overlooking by Oh at first light a young officer led three tanks into town we were the first troops in Baia and were most relieved to find it except for isolated strong points and the odds diaper no Germans were to be found Christopherson Sherwood Rangers yeoman REE Kristofferson found the Germans the very next day as his unit moves south they came up against the lead elements of the Panzer Lehr despite suffering repeated attacks by Allied air forces the division was now in position southwest of corn with 232 tanks including the infamous Tiger of all the German machinery that the Allies had to contend with the most feared was the tiger tank you can't fully appreciate the size of the threat until you're up close to it I've gotta say that tiger tank is absolutely awesome its enormous and you can see why if you were coming up against it it would put the fear of God into you but while tactically it may be fantastic operationally it's got all sorts of problems just take the transmission for example it had a hydraulically controlled semi-automatic pre-selected gearbox it was invented by ferdinand porsche and while it might have been great for the Nurburgring this was going to only cause a whole host of problems when it came to the Battlefront when we come to armor we tend to think of her thinking of German tanks of the tiger tank and it certainly made its presence felt in Normandy at most Allied soldiers talked in terms of seeing Tiger tanks and with the greatest of respect to all the veterans I've ever met they cannot all have seen a tiger tank the Germans only made 1500 of them nearly all of them went to Eastern Front but the important thing about a targeting because it looks powerful um it's frightening it's got very thick armor so if you're firing shells at it bang they're all going to bounce off it seems invulnerable it's almost like a mobile pillbox it may have been no consolation to anyone that came directing it spark or found it in their living room but the tiger tank did have some significant disadvantages to travel 1 kilometer an allied Sherman tank uses 2 litres of fuel to travel the same kilometer a tiger tank uses 5 litres and as the Germans are the ones sure to fuel the Allies aren't then that limits your scope of maneuver for a tiger tank one of the problems is the Germans are producing some of these in fairly small numbers they're perhaps not so easy to maintain or fuel or some of the Allied tanks so the tiger tank is a very dominant web weapon in one sense tactically but the problem is once you break out the main loss of Tiger tanks they simply they run out of fuel they can't keep up with the Allied pace of warfare it may have been rare complex and thirsty but the tiger did have a really big gun the 88 millimeter probably the best-known artillery piece of the war key to its success was the fearsome velocity with which it fired its shells what's often forgotten is that there was another gun the 17 pounder which packed an even greater punch and it was British I'm gonna have to forego this please just hold on to the seat here that's right down yep they were smaller than me they were I said what it's easy to move from left to right isn't it I mean this is not not difficult at all I can see very easily everything on here it's engineered it's it's tough it's designed to last and to do the job yeah and that's what they do and the fact that these guns were still being used in Korea 10 years later when you when you're shooting at tanks with armor-piercing rounds you want a round that is going as fast as possible when it hits the target and this is putting around out at about nine nineteen hundred and sixty-five miles an hour that's a sink very far sighs really really quick and ready to fire fire fire health and safety and common good manners meant we were unable to fire live rounds on to a small Buckinghamshire town so these are just blanks when doing it for real the anti-tank gun is dragged into position to engage a moving target and fired at a flat trajectory the 17-pounder could also be mounted onto a Sherman Firefly making this usually under gun tank a serious threat to the tiger but if the tiger broke through the damage could be considerable seven days after d-day elements of the 22nd armored Brigade reached the town of Villa bocaj where they were ambushed a 30-year old tank commander named Michael vit Minh set about an impulsive attack unsupported by infantry and in just 15 minutes destroyed fourteen British tanks fifteen personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns Wittman of often SS officer was one of the highest-scoring Panzer aces of the war he'd been awarded the Knight's Cross with oak leaves for his actions at the battle of kursk on the Eastern Front you get people like Whitman on the German side Whitman talked about knocking out a hundred and thirty five allied tanks we didn't do that I was always lead tank and so I would get my whole troop to fire so consequently if we knocked out a tank it wasn't leftenant Renta's tank or sergeant Jackson's tank or any of that it was five troop we never claimed a sort of individual tank we're being killed the losses at the Germans suffer battling envelop McCarthy is often overlooked a number of the tiger tanks are actually wasted in urban fighting in the the town of Villa bocaj and the afternoon and 32 June because I sent it without infantry support clever commanders not send an open country tent like the tiger into the center of a town without proper infantry support Pitman's actions at Villa bocaj were of little strategic consequence but became a propaganda coup and he was promoted to help stern Fuhrer an SS captain he received the swords to his Knight's Cross from Hitler on the 1st of August only a week later Whitman's luck finally ran out he was killed by a 17 pounder fired from a Sherman Firefly Whitman is buried with the crew of Tigers 0:07 ATLA calmed cemetery outside beer the real significance of Villa Bocage is it signaled the stiffening of German resistance to the British advance what followed was a long attritional battle around corn things were not going much better for the Americans as they moved into terrain very different from the open land of the British sector it's amazing just how much the countryside's changed gone as the big wide open fields and sunny lots of little tight squares lined with thick hedgerows and up ahead you can see the big ridges around some low and this is where the Americans are heading the further US forces pushed south from their beaches the deeper they were drawn into the Norman hedgerows through every hedge was a new field a new battleground and inevitably a new ambush they were becoming bogged down in the Bocage infantry tanks needed to operate together the trouble was these hedgerows was so thick not even a Sherman could get through them and the infantry were getting decimated an urgent solution was needed and this came at the hands of classic American ingenuity the commander of the u.s. fifth Corps demanded his men solve the hedgerow problem in one of his units was Kurdish coolin a National Guardsman who in civilian life had worked in a garage he came up with a novel solution we're going to try make a hedge cutter and whatwhat's this bit here we're cutting at the leading edge okay so if we look at this that the point would go down it's the bottom of the hedge and then as the roots as a CEM contact the roots would share the roofs off and then push through the hedge kill any pose to riding up and exposing the soft underbelly of the tank and how easy a job is it's I mean obviously you've got all the kids lady Bellamy is it quite straightforward you know we've seen pictures and photographs of what what was made back in the war and so his basic copy of that right cool ins idea was as economical as it was effective he sought the raw material for the cutters from the German obstacles covering the invasion beaches within two days he had his first prototype how many hours you think it's going to take all in all whole thing from stop for him from thinking about it getting it on the front of a Sherman probably the first one would take a little bit longer I will see cuz you got to think the design but once they made have made one or two of them other thought half a day's or day's work to do to do it obviously if they got play man cut in different pieces I shot coolant design had to be simple enough that welders without great skill could mass-produce the cutters in the field where they were needed okay yeah not smoothest cut but it took all of us three days to build a cutter and attach it to the Sherman it took sergeant Curtis G coolin jr. a week before his prototype was ready to be demonstrated in front of General Omar Bradley commander of the whole u.s. first Army we're using the same technique as coolin attach a cutter to the front of a tank drive it at a hedge and see if it works and it was seeing a demonstration like that that convinced Bradley this was the way forward within two weeks 60% of all u.s. Sherman's in Normandy had been adapted with Cooley's head cutter coolin was awarded the Legion of Merit for his invention he survived Normandy only to lose a leg in the battle of the hookin forest that winter sitting here now it may seem trivial to be celebrating the head cutter after all at the tactical level all coolin had done was find a pragmatic solution to an immediate problem but scale it up to the operational level and it's impossible to calculate the number of lives and resources saved by this simple cutting tool the combination of ingenuity on the ground and fast-moving flexibility within the American command structure ensured its troops could move forward at a far lower human cost core the capital of Normandy and the birthplace of William the Conqueror it was around this medieval city that the crux of the battle was played out Montgomery's plan to take the city on d-day may have failed but as the British advanced the area became a magnet for tanks on no other front had so much German armor being concentrated into such a small area as it was around cool fighting less than ten miles from the beaches and their main point of supply gave the British a massive operational advantage over the Germans that would prove decisive the higher commanders were happy that the German divisions had held up for so long not realizing that what was happening was good strategy for the Allies unfortunately in terms of the movement until to the map it doesn't look as though much is being achieved and for many of the troops who are still stuck in positions after a number of weeks in Normandy in a round car it's not looking too good the reality is was it's working really well the Germans are suffering really badly and the German strategy consigns into a long-term defeat which they cannot recover from allied war leaders in London and Washington were following lines on a map that appear to be barely moving to them this didn't look much like success it's amazing when you're in the plane like this you can look out there's a seein their sword Beach down there and con just over here and it's so close and you can imagine how the Allied planners when you're looking on the map and when you're flying over it for those reconnaissance photographs it must have felt like such a short distance it must have seen so such an achievable goal I supposed to get there in one day but the British hadn't got there in a day so a new plan was needed the Panzers have been drawn in around core and that determined where the Allies would fight them over now mattered was annihilating the cream of the German army in the West it's often been betrayed that the Allies were beating their heads against a brick wall of German Panzer divisions when actually it was the other way around by 1944 the Allies had worked out how to defeat the enemy forces in the field for all the Germans much vaunted tactical flair they could always be relied upon to counter-attack and in so doing exposed themselves to the overwhelming Allied firepower what the Allies had to do was probe forward defeating as much of the enemy as possible then sit back and wait for the inevitable response typical of the fighting that followed was that near Tilly to the west of Cole the road eater Tilly is a road of devastation it's lined at intervals with soldiers grade each grave with a rough wooden cross at his head sometimes a class just hastily made from two sticks cut from a hedge and nail together the farm houses the cottages almost every building along the road there either gutted out or smashed out by shell pass every yard of this road was shouting at you that it has been fought for bit of it the Sherwood Rangers yeoman Airy again found themselves fighting the Panzer Lehr the CIO's tank had received a direct hit from a heavy shell which had instantly killed major Leacock who'd been acting Colonel since Anderson had been wounded on d-day the colonel had just been killed we don't forget we lost three Colonels in five days sherbet Rangers so the next one down was Stanley Christopherson and then my father you know assumed command of the regiment and and this was probably after four days of you know really very stiff fighting three senior officers killed and one officer and one sergeant wounded by the same shell this was indeed a shattering blow Christopherson son has returned to the small norman hilltop his father held with the Sherwood Rangers for most of that June I can really imagine what it must have been I James and it in a funny way brings a slight lump to my throat you can just imagine how exposed you are when you're sitting on a hill in your tank 0.103 I think was possibly one of the you know the most bit of unpleasant experiences in certainly I from dad's record recollection of it that that they went through and almost all the war in we felt rather naked and lonely on this high ground without infantry protection being the senior squadron leader I took control of the regiment feeling utterly dejected and shocked Kristofferson Sherwood Rangers yelling I came to Normandy with dad I have vivid recollections of you know our time here and I also then do remember going to visit the cemetery you know my father it was always always rather good fun suddenly became you know rather sort of reserved and very silent my father really didn't like so many would talk about you know his experiences I think which was very typical of that generation and it was only in really later life where you're having read his Diaries that I really understand what had gone on John Hanson Lawson be squadron commander tried to stalk a German tank which appeared to be dead however a mark for shooting from the flank brewed him up John and Sergeant crooks were both wounded sergeant crooks was in a bad condition but when I spoke to him he smiled and told me that he suffered no pain he died very shortly afterwards Christopherson Sherwood Rangers yeoman Rhee this is where they all were you I know seventy years ago almost to the day almost I mean is almost of the day isn't it there's a lot of talk about heroes today and I know that I suppose in some people's eyes they are you but I mean we didn't have any heroes in the show would Rangers I might tell you that if you said to stand the Christopherson or any of those people to no one I think I did for all the Doyle today I Mina we got a tank and we took 30 prisoners I mean that was jolly good wasn't it you know you wouldn't have come in for a ticking off the Sherwood Rangers could have never maintained action at this furious pace without the Allies massive operational support each day they were replacing killed and wounded men as well as damaged tanks and a manner that was impossible for the Germans there were three regiments in the brigade and each regiment had 50 tanks so there are a hundred and fifty tanks were to keep a hundred and fifty tanks going they had to supplies through the thousands of 73 new ones a thousand and seventy three to keep a hundred and fifty going I mean I came out of three I didn't lose the last one but I came out of three tangs that was nothing don't forget Stan Lee Kristofferson in the desert came out of five tanks in one day another veteran of the desert was general bay line half of my division was still at till it's worser and had had four weeks severe fighting with the British I explained the condition of my division and that so far as strength was concerned it was not in a position to make a counter-attack at talicia so we had been attacked every second day and had been continually subjected to artillery fire they aligned Panchala three weeks after d-day Montgomery had finally built up enough strength to launch a major set-piece assault on the German line at Cohn the result though hardly conclusive had far-reaching consequences operation Epsom might not have achieved a decisive breakthrough but when the Germans desperately flung their Panzer divisions into the battle so went their last chance of a mass counter-attack against the Allies on their own terms my men went to war weeks ago with fresh bloomin faces today muddy steel helmets shade emaciated faces whose eyes have all too often looked into another world they present a picture of deep human misery the divisions front is stretched to breaking reserves are no longer available I cannot stand this anymore d fish 1st ss-panzer Corps the British opposite them were also suffering having lived through the slaughter of 1418 allied leaders were determined to fight a modern technologically driven war but exposing the infantry and armor was unavoidable and for these mostly conscripted troops the odds were appalling maintaining morale was essential the Allies thought long-term about how we're going to win the war rather than how we're going to win this particular battle but if you maintain your arm and keep it functioning over the entirety of a campaign you're much more effective than if you throw everything at the first few weeks and then just hope something turns up for later on on July the 12th the millionth allied soldier arrived in Normandy it was not simply about increasing numerical advantage of the fighting force with each new arrival so grew the demands of supply so the British Americans Canadians invest heavily in medical support for example invest heavily in logistical support making shots and supplies they rotate the units out of the line they maintain links with home with newspapers and letters but great emphasis on that and maintaining morale Montgomery was acutely aware that his forces were often inexperienced they weren't battle-hardened the way the Germans were battle-hardened or not this vast mass of men required 3 million meals a day and that's before the Allies started shipping ammunition weapons tanks trucks fuel everything that was running so desperately short for the German army the story of the Normandy campaign is the Allied system builds up and functions better and better over time and sustains ever-growing numbers of people whereas the German system starts off relatively strong and the Germans are very very good at their tactical fighting and their tactical firepower but increasingly they solve crises in Normandy by borrowing from support troops by patching up solutions which is very effective for the first stage of the campaign and holds us close to the beaches for much longer than we expect it but all the time their system is weakening well as it's growing stronger and then at the end of July our system bursts through theirs and theirs has no ability to react fast enough for Allied troops who are well supplied and are traveling in motor vehicles the Germans were struggling to supply their front mainly because Allied aircraft rule disguised attacking anything that moved and Monte's assaults continued operation Goodwood was launched on the 18th of July with armored divisions advancing after a huge air naval and artillery bombardment it was designed as the first part of a two-fisted punch to draw in the Germans before the Americans attacked around some low but after seven miles the advance ran out of steam Montgomery has sold good wood as a massive killer blow largely as a ploy to get the air forces to supply the Bombers he felt he needed when the attack petered out Eisenhower's aide Harry C butcher witnessed Pike's frustration ayuk said yesterday that 7,000 tons of bombs dropped in the most elaborate bombing of enemy frontline positions ever accomplished only 7 miles were gained can we afford a thousand tons of bombs per mile the air people are completely disgusted with the lack of progress disgusted was an understatement Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder who loved Monti tried to get him sacked last evening about nine tedder phoned Ike and said that the British Chiefs of Staff would support any recommendation that Ike might care to make with respect to Monti for not succeeding with his big three armored division push butcher shave Monti was very good at talking to his soldiers or the press but terrible at communicating with his peers and superiors especially eyes on her whom he often left in the dark one of the enduring legacies of the Normandy campaign is the underwhelming performance of the British to a large extent Monti himself is to blame for this perception if he'd bothered to explain his real intentions for good would where 400 tanks have been knocked out there wouldn't have been such a storm this has always been seen as British ineptitude but ignores the fact that three-quarters of them were fixed and back in action within days because montgomery is a difficult customer it's kind of got in the way of any kind of real assessment of what the british army achieved in in northwest europe in 44 45 it's not to say that Montgomery's personality does not generate problems and difficulties and friction at times it does overall there are far more positives and there are negative Monty was focused purely on the battle in Normandy he didn't see the mounting problems facing Eisenhower as his concern with London under attack by v1s there was great pressure on Ike to capture the rocket launch sites still out of reach in northern France there was further pressure to match the great strides being made by the Red Army in the East there Hitler could trade space for time in Normandy a far greater strategic importance he had no such luxury the Germans determination to keep fighting close to the coast has been seen as evidence of their tactical skill but the two don't always go hand in hand one of the things as opposed to be so good about the Germans is their tactical flexibility the sort of the camp grouper and all this kind of stuff black you know the British are doing battle groups just as easily as the Germans I don't know if it's quite as easily but they certainly are learning during the campaign and the example of things like perhaps the guards armored division who are first in action on a large scale operation Goodwood and they fight for various doctrinal and training reason very largely as a tank brigade and as a mobile infantry brigade fairly separately but after that battle they are regrouping themselves so you put an armoured regiment next to a motorized infantry regiment and they work together an intimate support on D plus 49 the Americans had launched Operation Cobra the second part of the Allies two-fisted assaulting more than 3000 aircraft pummeled German positions around Sun low once again the Panzer Lehr were moved to face the attack 100% casualties in the front line on 24th 25th July I lost about 2,000 men either dead or missing from the bombing I collected the fuel reserves we had north of La Chapelle on ug and try to reestablish the old line I received more infantry and put about 800 to 1,000 men in the line the next day they too were destroyed I don't believe hell could be as bad as what we experienced already overstretched defending their positions south of Kong the Germans were simply unable to hold off the massive American attack as well by the end of July German resistance was finally crumbling I observed the whole bombardment artillery positions were blasted the frontline was wiped out all communications were completely destroyed and there was no possibility of moving along the roads I have been at all the hotly contested points on various fronts but these three days at xango were the worst I have ever experienced they align Panzer Lehr by now the German line was collapsing everywhere the Countess of obvious mo need to appreciate that like really I don't and as I do Li shuo Billie Jean Johannes burner a new paratrooper recruit with the 3rd fallschirmjaeger division had arrived as San lo just after d-day on D + 62 along with all the remaining German reserves in Normandy he was thrown into yet another disastrous counter-attack the survivors of which were forced back onto ground near the town of fillets the end was inevitable the beautifulest on la posta Felicia the formalities the food LaMotta to do to a to doto they saw I see the plan shocked his own base of poverty - Tirra Tirra less of young is a la sala proposition yummy the for the DECA tava the Redeemer the kotappa almost to see la città syrian i we do some really a salut don't let his friend because of my day that company song van somewhere it on push the police to some salty enough signal well their acidity even yojanas burner was captured amidst the wreckage of the Falaise pocket as a Pio W we worked on a farm near Bayer he married a French woman and for most of the 70 years since d-day Berna has lived quietly in the little town just behind sword beach the Normandy campaign was over two German armies had hemorrhaged man and machinery until they could simply resist no longer traditionally this has been a tale of heroic allied struggle against seemingly impossible odds in the early hours of the invasion but Normandy had in fact been won by tactical ingenuity at a vast operational machine supplying an army now able to adapt his strategic aims to a rapidly changing battlefield there are 77 days in the Normandy campaign and the British Army and the American army that land on d-day the 6th of June are very different to those who leave on the 20th 21st of August in the first world war the armies have to adapt and it takes them four and a half years from 1914 to 1918 in Normandy they're going through the same transition but that's squashed into two and a half months montgomery reckoned the campaign would last for 90 days they'd beaten his target by nearly two weeks add then advance with spectacular speed it's true the fighting at the tactical level have played out very differently from what had been expected but in terms of the broader strategy the campaign had more than fulfilled its aims by D plus 90 Paris had been liberated and Allied forces were as far as Brussels the price had been terrible on every day of the Normandy campaign casualties averaged six and a half thousand men men whose stories are not told by Hollywood or in history books faces staring at us from faded photographs names on long forgotten lists as the generation who fought here slipped quietly away it's left to us to try and tell a more complete story so we might understand what they went through in Normandy during the summer of 44 you

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Channel: Romesanta1

Views: 781,997

Rating: 4.5556808 out of 5

Keywords: Normandy Landings (Military Conflict), Invasion Of Normandy (Military Conflict), History, Documentary

Id: Utlg3Zjyyuc

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 59min 5sec (3545 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 16 2014

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