How & Why Hitler & His Cohorts Made Strategic Mistakes

hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it is very difficult for those who live in a democracy to understand a specific conditions of a totalitarian system being manipulative being educated in a specific way in the circus as a young boy in my high school i did believe in all what our propaganda said i did believe in the rightness of hitler's policy and even all the successes of hitler convinced myself i was then a young boy this is the right way and he does everything for the german for the greatness and for the honor of the germans and if you were marching in the rally or let's say in the hitler use your head just absolutely feeling undefeatable there is nobody else who can be compared with us [Music] he was somebody i must say this right and then he could uh he could uh fulfill the jews yeah it was processed for fjord said you said yours he was he could really send you the people and he had some sort of influence i cannot describe he was a phenomenon when he started speaking he mesmerized especially large audiences he was a mass communicator and he did it by sort of easing in into his speech with a deep sonorous voice that was almost seductive [Applause] [Music] and on a crescendo kept on going intensifying until in the end he was practically screaming not only practically he was even today i must say if one see the documentary film on the rally in nuremberg marching thousands of people and then one cry higher mind furor does something give you the strength a strong absolutely unbelievable fascinating feeling well what kind of of german you know what what what the greatness of germany what kind of discipline the germans have general johannes steinhoff is a leading luftwaffe ace who later becomes head of nato's military committee his face shows the scars of combat please bear in mind hitler came to power the very moment radio was invented and hitler was using radio in a very clever way after one year after hitler became chancellor of germany we had the so-called people's receiver this was a small radio each family was having this in their kitchen so the fuhrer could talk on a daily basis to his people he was using for the first time the media in a very clever way using grady two in an extensive way so the medium radio thank god he didn't have television was a tremendous tool in his hands with the country behind him hitler vows to reclaim the territories lost to germany in world war one in 1936 he sends german troops into the rhineland an area barred to german forces by the versailles treaty hitler's generals are afraid that the french with a much bigger and better equipped army will fight hitler said we're going to march into the rhineland and we marched into the rhineland and france did not move even if germany at that time had so few troops that what they did that at night they quietly marched back over the same ryan bridges in order to march in with music and bands the next day in the morning and they kept repeating that and pretending that they had enormous numbers of troops there it worked they had the strength to to to stop hitler before he he had started a major european war if the allies had done something at that time it probably would have been the end of hitler next hitler marches into austria and then into czechoslovakia britain and france protest but again do nothing hitler has pulled off a series of brilliant bluffs against larger and stronger powers who lack the will to confront him general j a graf and kielman's egg later to become commander of nato's land forces in central europe was a young german officer at the time the holy german people he was a great man please don't forget about hitler one thing he had given back to germany more or less all what germany had lost in the treaty of that without any should without any war in peace he had done away in two years seven million unemployed people 1939 another coup hitler negotiates a treaty of alliance with the soviet union hitler and stalin agreed to invade and divide poland russia will be allowed to swallow the baltic states estonia latvia lithuania now that hitler's back is secure he takes a giant step on the first of september ignoring warnings from an aroused britain and france he attacks poland with masses of tanks led by screaming stuka dive bombers it is a new form of warfare blitzkrieg [Music] the polish horse cavalry valiantly and briefly charge the tanks with their lances the spectacle is too much for britain and france they declare war on germany hitler is stunned his foreign minister van ridentrop had assured him they would once more stand beside he didn't intend to start world war ii he didn't even intend to start a world a european war he proposed to have a nice little private war with poland and that's where he made his mistake it is hitler's first major miscalculation general adaf galland remembers it well galan became head of the luftwaffe's fighter arm at the age of 30. the german forces were only five six years from their birth and the air force was not ready for a battle at all and his belief was that france and great britain would never attack germany having the russian as allied he was confirmed in this opinion by our foreign minister von ribentro he has a great great responsibility for the outbreak of this world war ii and i know early in 44 after the invasion i told going the boys absolutely lost completely he said to me here is my car drive over to the ribbon truck and tell me the same and i did and of course did find some ex jews that he didn't make the decision to attack poland going was against this attack absolutely he saw the risk ignoring the risk hitler orders his generals to plan an attack against france anyone who thinks of the germans as unfailingly efficient should study what happened here at first his generals decide on the same strategy they used in world war one an army group in the north will slice across the netherlands in belgium and into france other army groups in the center and south will exert pressure one maverick general eric from munstein objects he says it's exactly what the allies expect it will bog down in trench warfare munstein wants to put the main thrust in the center mass the tanks there and drive through the supposedly impenetrable alden forest to outflank the allies munstein is overruled and sent away but by sheer chance hitler invites a group of officers to lunch and munstein is among them he manages to present his plan directly to hitler hitler accepts it now it is spring the attack order has been postponed 29 times it is time to find out if the radical new battle plan will work as we will see it does more than that it writes a whole new chapter in the history of warfare [Music] [Music] it finally happens on may 10 1940 german armored divisions smash across the border tanks are no longer used to support the infantry they are instead messed to strike swiftly on their own as they did in poland stuka dive bombers blast a path for the tanks the british and french do exactly what munstein had predicted they blindly march up into belgium expecting the big attack to come that way instead the attack slices rapidly beneath and past them young kill monseg is with the first panzer division led by the legendary heinz guderian the french chief of general staff general gamilan did not believe that it was possible to cross out then with so many tanks with so many divisions because if you have seen the events you you would say he was not he was right were you surprised at how fast it went surprised about what the quickness we not no this we knew before if he could go through then the quickness would be there the french were surprised [Music] but hitler worries about possible flank attacks on the extended german columns general hulder head of the general staff says the fuhrer raves and bellows that things are moving too fast munstein says later that hitler is bold in planning but timid in execution meanwhile the german armor races all the way across france in an incredible 10 days the two main battle groups close in on the town of dunkirk from north and south more than 300 000 allied soldiers the entire british expeditionary force are penned up with their backs to the beach an enormous victory is in sight if the entire british army is captured britain will be defenseless and then something incredible happens hitler orders his tanks to halt not only to halt but to pull back general godarian the panzer leader says we were speechless we were angry is not the real expression much more much more than angry and were disappointed then we saw the success we saw that the the possibility to catch the british army it was a very serious mistake a serious mistake that changed the course of the war why did hitler make it several reasons general van roenstedt commander of the central army group is worried about a possible counter-attack but field marshal hermann goering says that the tanks won't be needed he'll destroy the british army with his national socialist luftwaffe the stuka dive bombers take to the air to do it and the luftwaffe's fighters rise to cover them the fighters of the british royal air force swarmed to the scene to protect the soldiers on the beach a ragtag fleet of big and little boats sets out from the english coast to rescue the stranded soldiers the german messerschmitts are unable to protect the slow diving stukas from the fast british spitfires and hurricanes the stupas take terrible losses and for the first time the luftwaffe fails so this task to prohibit the escape was a task which could not be fulfilled at all and granted overestimate his possibilities with this look of it as a result the british army and many french troops escape leaving their weapons behind some called the evacuation a great victory british wing commander jeffrey page now retired disagrees it wasn't in fact it was a victorious retirement but we were beaten and there was no question hermann goering surveys the littered beach with his deputy general erhard milk milk says there is no time to waste an invasion of great britain must begin without delay his plan is daring but simple make a quick airborne attack on britain paratroops and gliders will drop on the southeastern coast of england and seize key airfields where the german fighters can land and refuel shuttles of junker transports will bring in five divisions of soldiers they will fan out into the countryside and head for london to seize the government gurg and milk take the plan to hitler but hitler rejects it some say out of respect for the british i would not see a respect one of his main ideas was in this time to divide the world between great britain and germany and so so he would have shown he would not do too much harm to the british i had the occasion to talk to him without any other company and i told him we will have the opportunity to attack london when london is covered by fall and we can fly with everything we have available in which even with zhang 52 like we did in vaso and he said stop it stop it i don't want to hear this the whole attack on england is against my opinion against my willing i would like i could stop it the english population is of such high class and they are so similar to the germans that i hate to fight england whatever the reason hitler drags his heels at fighting england and loses his golden chance could germany really have taken england the german aces are reluctant to speculate sir christopher foxley norris retired air chief marshal of the raf is not i'm fairly certain it would have worked mark you once giving the opinion of a very young and ignorant man at the time but one became older and wiser and all the indications are that it would have worked it would have been a pretty puny and unsupported sort of attack but nothing like as puny and unsupported as we were we had nothing at all i've had friends who were given the job of defending two miles of coastline with one world war one artillery piece we had nothing but if they'd just gone roaring straight ahead your el flynn tactic i think it would work hitler addresses the reichstag and makes what he calls a peace offer to the british he sees no reason why the war should go on he says he is grieved at the sacrifices it will claim but prime minister winston churchill answers that britain will fight on until the already conquered european countries are free privately churchill tells roosevelt that if britain goes down hitler has a very good chance of conquering the world dismayed by churchill's response hitler reluctantly orders a massive cross-channel invasion of england the operation is called sea lion the general staff says that it can take place only if the british air force the raf is first destroyed by the luftwaffe only then can the invasion barges be protected against the british navy armies and navies will sit and wait while the air forces fight it out it is called the battle of britain well now german are guys bombing a convoy there are one two three four five six seven there's one going down on his target now [Music] no mr ships he hasn't hit a single ship there are about 10 ships in the convoy cause here they come they come in deep dive you can see that you can hear the little raffles of machine gun bullets that was a bomb as you may imagine [Music] he's coming right down now i think definitely that's the first contest he's going slapping to the sea and there he goes oh boy i've never seen anything so good as this the raf fighters have really got these after two months of the battle both sides are near exhaustion and i participate in the battle of threaten as a commando for squadron flying to london back and forth a total of 68 times i was shot down only once to his battle of wind but looking back the battle of britain was the toughest part of the war for me it was a sportive fight between young people of two nations being of the same making same education they look to like the british and me supportive very fair very fair but extremely tough sometimes they had to fly three dimes per day london back and you always lost one or two of your units during each mission some of the pilots couldn't stand it anymore some became sick they went behind their the tail of the aircraft before takeoff and vomiters were flying came back wanted again and became sick they were desperately tired people went to sleep when you were talking to them there was one man who actually landed and um his aircraft came to a stop and the he didn't get out and the ground crew assumed that he'd been shot up so they ran across to him and he was asleep he just gone to sleep and even if they weren't steve they were incredibly nervy very jumpy and the sound of a telephone particularly which was what sent you off i was and remains in my case to this day a frightening noise when the telephone ran rang which was a direct line from the operational headquarters we could be from sound sleep we could be airborne in under two and a half minutes running out to our aircraft starting the engine and getting off quite often you'd be half asleep and you found yourself up in the air and then as you climbed up you could see these massive dots in the distance one day a mass of bombers shoots him down over the channel he spends two years in the hospital and then volunteers for more combat why i think to be 20 years of age to be given a fast airplane and a smart uniform and get paid 20 a week to do it i mean what more do you want if i'd been the son of a rich man i think i would have paid been allowed to do it [Music] by now the luftwaffe is nearing its goal of destroying the royal air force the necessary prelude to the massive cross-channel invasion of england and then hitler issues another halt order the luftwaffe will abandon its task of destroying the raf and start hitting cities the raf is given a providential chance to recover another major mistake why did hitler make it during that period the british ran a few raids on berlin and a couple of other cities but mainly berlin which so infuriated hitler that he ordered retaliatory attacks on british cities london in particular and with that he dissipated the concentrated effort on the of the luftwaffe and brought on increasingly heavy losses which in the end resulted in the defeat of the luftwaffe and if they had persisted in a sensible strategy i think they would almost certainly have won the odds were stacked very heavily on them from many points of view and i it's not an exaggeration i think to say we didn't win the battle of britain they lost it

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 2,653,842

Rating: 4.6951532 out of 5

Keywords: Hitler, Adolf Hitler (Military Commander), world war 2, Battle of Britain, galland, European Theatre Of World War II (Military Conflict), Europe (Continent), Nazis, German history, military history, world war 11, world war two, aviation history, Luftwaffe, David Hoffman, Hitler documentary, PBS Hitler documentary, PBS documentary, Naziism, Fuhrer, German people, Germany, right wing, political parties, maga, trump, 2020, wwII, dave rubin, rubin report

Id: uCu7IT81gh8

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017