The Battle of Normandy: 85 Days in Hell - History Documentary

[Music] [Music] it was the turning point of World War II 3 million soldiers hundreds of thousands of ships planes and tanks a logistical complexity unprecedented in a military operation this was the Battle of Normandy [Music] more than 75 years since the end of the war certain details of this tremendous battle have gone Untold very few people could tell you what happens in June and July and August and how the battle for Normandy actually ended now unpublished archives 20 years of research experts from the United States the UK and Canada bring to life the boots on the ground reality of normandy's 85 days of Hell Liberation has come to Normandy but so has War 3 months of savage combat if we can destroy the German Army in Normandy then the rest of France will be saved during which the allies and the Germans will fight mercilessly it's a battlefield where they live and they die and when they fight where they killed from the average solders point of view this just seems to be a hopeless [Music] situation it was a very dirty battle the Schmutz Bush k a dirty Bush War everyone paid a heck of a price for this D-Day was just the beginning June 6th 1944 early morning thousands of boats embarked from England headed to the French coast of Normandy 2 years in the making it's an Allied operation to take back France from the [Music] Germans they call it Overlord rarely in history will you find a time where these major powers are all mobilized almost to the full extent of their strength to have this confrontation over what is to happen with the Normandy invasion Allied soldiers will face a territory that the Germans have occupied for 4 years G sherbo Salu all the great cities of Normandy are under Nazi control The Landing Zone chosen is 80 km long placed under the command of US general Eisenhower the troops will land on five sectors to the West the Utah and Omaha beaches will be taken by the Americans to the east the gold Juno and sword beaches by the British and Canadians around 6:30 a.m. the first waves of Allied soldiers land on French soil the Allies suffer heavy losses from the entrenched German defenses during the first hours of the landing but soldiers and armored vehicles continue to land putting pressure on the enemy the vital part of any Seaborn Invasion like Operation Overlord was to get ground rapidly because only then could you start to push back the enemy so that they could not keep firing at the beaches after just one day thousands of Allied soldiers have already been killed but the wide scope of the landing has been fatal to the Germans the first phase of Operation Overlord is completed scattered throughout the landing zones the Allies must now regroup the different units on the ground you got to link up those five Beach heads as quickly as you can if they're not linked up then the Germans can fill the gaps and can begin attacking the Allies from any Direction they want from what military people call the flanks Eisenhower and his generals needed to create a buffer zone to protect against the German Counterattack that would come and in fact they prepared for that the day before D-Day more than 12,000 paratroopers embarked from England aboard 432 aircraft on the night of June 5th and 6th these thousands of Canadian British and American soldiers were dropped near The Landing Zone at the same time hundreds of gliders transporting troops have also crossed the channel in great secrecy this joint operation has already created confusion within the enemy [Music] forces in the early morning when the first soldiers arrived from the sea the next phase could then start a large air operation to prevent German reinforcements reaching the five beaches the plan for sealing off Normandy was called transportation and this meant bombing all of the bridges over the river s to the uh East and over the river lir to the South so that the whole of the Norman area was completely cut off but also it meant smashing houses and towns and Villages at crucial Crossroads and places to prevent the Germans bringing up reinforcements and supplies the American phrase which had been invented in Italy was called putting the city in the street which basically meant simply blocking the roads uh so that traffic could not get through even before the fighting starts inland Normandy is partially destroyed no water no electricity no phone lines and now after taking the five Landing beaches the Allies must Advance whatever the cost to push the Germans back little by little and occupy enemy [Music] territory on the East flank of the beach head the first objective of General Montgomery commander of the British and Canadian Forces is to seize the city of K located nearly 20 km from sword and Juno beaches on day two Montgomery is convinced that he will succeed in rapidly capturing K but facing him is General wiwin roml known for his Feats in Africa and nicknamed the desert at Fox roml mobilizes his most powerful armored divisions to meet the British Canadian Forces advancing towards Kong and block Montgomery's Allied offensive when the British and the Canadians begin to fight around K they are doing massive tank assaults they're trying to steamroll over the Germans they have more tanks they have more troops they have air power but the Germans were fighting on the defensive and if Normandy had shown anything as it's fighting on the defensive in dug in positions with anti-tank guns with mortars and mines and a single 88 gun that tears apart 15 Sherman tanks will stop a column of [Music] troops [Music] the first days of fighting north of G are devastating the perfectly organized German defenses invariably repel all English and Canadian attempts facing the German markv Mark 5 and tiger tanks the American Sherman tanks used by the Allies are just not up to the Mark we have to remember is every American Sherman tank has to be shipped to the battlefield so it means you have to produce something that's reasonably light enough to be able to ship and small enough that you can get it on the ship it's a reasonably good tank but you don't want to be in a toe-to-toe battle with a German tank head [Music] on 33 tons for the Sherman over 43 tons for the German tanks more robust with armor superior to the Americans and delivering devastating Cannon power the muzzle velocity of those tanks meant that if it hit you that shell was going to penetrate your armor probably you know especially along the sides and either go straight through or Worse rattle around inside and explode while the British and the Canadians are defeated on the East flank the Americans start advancing on the other side General Bradley commands the troops their first objective is 17 km from the coast the small town of Canton and its network of roads and Railways caran is really the key to seal off the c0 peninsula and then capture sharor which is you know the greatest Harbor in Normandy but also in tandem with that you're going to start moving Southward towards the Thomas sand low the 101st American Airborne Division surround kanton on June 9th 1944 the fighting ruthless and Savage would last 4 days and four nights on June 12th kenon falls into American hands with heavy losses on both sides but the Allies have achieved their goal 6 days after The Landings all the Coalition forces are finally linked up the troops occupy a beach head 80 km long reaching at certain points 10 to 30 km deep while on the West Side the Americans Advanced towards sherbo and Salo on the east side the British and Canadians still clash with the Germans who maintained their positions around K these repeated defeats put Montgomery in a difficult position with the US command he's desperate to win the first irrefutable Victory on the battlefield on June 12th he attempts an encirclement maneuver by skirting KH from the West to trap the German divisions the seventh British Armored Division is sent to the small town of V bage but the Germans anticipate the move and Ambush the British with a tiger tank Battalion commanded by Mikel vitman the most impressive tank commander of World War [Music] II one by one the British tanks are [Music] [Applause] [Music] destroyed the failure to capture Villa bage by the seventh arm division and 30 core did impact badly on moral they just realized that it was going to be a far tougher job than they had thought about uh or imagined when they set [Music] sell the operation designed by the Allies for 2 years is not going as planned even worse a terrible storm falls on Normandy for 3 Days the two artificial Harbors installed to unload troops and Equipment are badly affected the one on Omaha Beach is totally destroyed the supply of soldiers is considerably slowed [Music] down in these conditions taking the port of shour becomes an absolute priority for the Allies after capturing kanton the Americans take 10 days to travel 50 km and reach shul the fourth 9th and 79th us divisions finally reached the city on June 21st they launched the attack the following day three us divisions are all just advancing North toward cherborg and trying to get into the town as quickly as they can the city is defended by 30,000 troops trapped by the Allies they're doomed because the Allied Navy from the seaword side can pound them and then the American Army coming from the landward side can kind of just catch them in a vice so the whole thing kind of just devolves into this sort of block by block fight it will take a few days before the American soldiers drive out all pockets of resistance in the [Music] city on June 26th the Germans surrender thousands of soldiers are taken prisoner after four long years of occupation shour finally tastes Freedom once [Music] [Applause] [Music] again cherborg is certainly the biggest city at that point that is liberated there is this larger German surrender and the Allies then have it as an average soldier that still wasn't necessarily your typical day so those who were there say sherbo tended to remember [Music] that despite this first victory in Shu the total casualties after 3 weeks of fighting is immense thousands of soldiers have already been killed or wounded on the battlefield the Medical Teams try to intervene as quickly as possible transporting blood field hospitals a complex organization is set up to follow the troops as they advance but in spite of the losses the Allies keep moving forward day after day after day after the Americans take shour they head south the next Allied Target is less than 90 km away the city of Salo but the American soldiers face one of the most dangerous regions for infantry and tanks the Normandy bage [Music] the bage cultivated Fields separated by ditches and embankments canopi by hedge R several meters [Music] high it's basically a maze of these hedro most of which are about 8T to 133 ft high that thick Norman soil clay likee soil packed around fences and stones that certainly individual soldiers can't get through so the hedro opening becomes a Kill Zone the Germans had four years to prepare their defense heavy machine guns were positioned in the corners of each field mortars Target every spot the Allies might cross and mines hide in their Pathways with a visibility no more than a couple of meters the Americans Advance blindly you had no idea when you were suddenly going to get brewed up by a German soldier with a Panzer uh shoulder fir rocket propelled grenade or an 88 mm gun maybe a whole mile away [Music] up against the Germans several dozen Allied soldiers die taking back a mere Meadow or a single [Music] hedge the US Army finds itself in Normandy in the middle of a blood bath absolute bloodbath day by day hedro by hedro choke point town by choke point town every one of them where you fight they're going to suffer casualties from the average solders point of view this just seems to be a hopeless situation you just know that this seems to be kind of the road to nowhere in [Music] Normandy as the Americans try to navigate the Normandy hedg RS the British and Canadians are still attempting to break the German stronghold around the city of K the British General Montgomery decides to change his offensive he launches operation [Music] Charwood on July 7th 467 Allied planes dropped more than 2500 tons of bombs on enemy occupied areas around [Music] K after having already been heavily bombed on June 6th the city of K is decimated on July 9th the British and Canadian soldiers finally enter the city from the [Music] north as the Canadians and British fought into K through the rubble they saw French civilians who had survived the bombing but whose family members had been killed they talked about hearing the screams of the French civilians who were trapped the scene was a real nightmare scene of Devastation many of the ancient buildings had been smashed to Pieces there was complete clouds of dust in all directions it was impossible even to find your way through the city because obviously there were no street signs or anything left in fact it was hard to tell where the streets were the destruction have been so great under these conditions even after 4 years of occupation it's difficult for residents to appreciate the long awaited liberation of their [Music] City I think some of those French civilians understood the cost of battle they understood the nature of the fighting but at the same time they were watching their friends their family members being killed in this liberation but for the Allied command the annihilation of Kong and the thousands of civilians killed under the American and British bombs was a necessary evil the price to pay and winning the battle it's always hard talking about ends and means and what justifies what in Warfare a moral decision would be that the killing of civilians is by almost by definition a war crime but you're not going to be able to avoid it in reality the priority was we've got to defeat the Germans because in a way we accept that Normandy is going to be really the sacrificial lamb for the whole of France if we can destroy the German Army in Normandy then the rest of France will be saved while the British and Canadian troops gradually Liberate the city of K the Americans continue to struggle against a strong German resistance on their way to S low thousands of soldiers are trapped in the Normandy bage the incessant rain and mud slow their prog progress even more to escape this fatal Labyrinth the Allies try an ingenious strategy we've got to create a new opening through the hedr because the main one the Germans have covered and they're going to kill everybody who moves through there so they begin to weld ironically enough the remnants of German Beach obstacles the metal onto the front of tanks with prongs and begin to use the the tanks then to punch a new opening through the [Music] hedro with these so-called Rhino tanks the Allies take the Germans by surprise but for every hedge crossed they remain at the mercy of the enemy soldiers as the Germans have in the ditches beyond the hedro a lot of Panzer fous Gunners it's a onetime one shot kind of anti-tank weapon that could blow up your tank so the Infantry men have to move very close to the tank and basically what the the military you calls clean out the Germans and the ditches that basically means kill them and very close face to face quite often and then the tankers will lay down what's called white phosphorus fire white Foster is a terrible weapon it's basically uh a chemical that will just burn through you as long as it has oxygen it was a very dirty battle I mean the Germans themselves described it as a Schmutz Bush Creek a dirty Bush war and general Collins who'd been fighting in the Far East said this was worse in the jungle the town of La dupi liberated on July 9th will remain the symbol of this battle of unimaginable violence within the area the fighting will cost the lives of 10,000 American soldiers while advancing the front only 12 km on July 18th after 3 weeks of Relentless fighting since the capturing of Shor the Allied soldiers finally enter the city of Sano but upon arrival not much Remains the soldiers have to ad Advance extremely slowly as the Germans mined the entire city a few civilians emerged from their shelters to search the rubble for objects that might have survived the onslaught of Allied [Music] bombs after Shor Sano is the Second Great victory for the Allied command but the state of the city which is later nicknamed capital of the ruins exemplifies the high price of liberating Normandy after a month and a half of fighting the troops morale is at an all-time low every foot gained against the Germans comes at the cost of intense and merciless combat there's the stress of not knowing when the next German shell is going to come in and whether it's going to hit near you or not they see a very limited Battlefield it's a battlefield where they live and they die and when they fight and where they [Music] [Music] kill by mid July tens of thousands of Americans Brits and Canadians have already died in combat soldiers still fighting on the ground no longer have Illusions about what awaits [Music] them eventually the day comes when there aren't that many people you know in your unit anymore and you're a fugitive from the law of averages and over time the mindset changes to if I'm here long enough this is going to happen to [Music] me [Music] between combat life is monotonous soldiers constantly check and clean their weapons to keep them from [Music] jamming meals are usually cold hygiene is bad and the wait for orders seems endless [Music] very soon they were crawling with lace they were always short of water they developed various forms of uh stomach bugs in effect fact everyone had diarrhea and all of this strain is is happening in an environment of death and [Music] destruction for the soldiers the warm welcome of the locals reminds them why they came here to risk their [Music] lives [Music] a little alcohol cigarettes simple gifts that lift the men's Spirits before the next advance an ment the next mortifier the next dead over time many of them realized that the only way out was to be killed or wounded even as reinforcements came behind [Music] them their world became very small battle stress became a tremendous problem in in the fighting in Normandy and in July and in August as the strain continued between about 20 and 30% of the casualties were combat stress they had gone weeks and weeks without proper sleep terrible food all of these conditions The Strain had been too much and it broke them to compensate for love es reinforcements land daily on the Normandy beaches and are immediately sent to the front line after a month and a half of intense fighting the main cities of Normandy had been taken from the hands of the Germans but the battle is far from [Music] over to pierce the German defenses and accelerate the troops movement the Allied command launches operation Cobra Cobra is conceived around the idea of gosh we have all these great bombers all this air power we've been using to Pummel German cities what if we carpet bombed a part of the German lions in these hedge RS to punch a hole and have an opening now for our armor and all of our other troops to get who through here very quickly it makes a great deal of sense on paper it's in the implementation that it creates some serious problems why because the bombers are not that accurate you're asking them to do something they're not really capable of doing which is the bomb close within about a th000 to 2,000 M of their own ground troops they're lucky to hit a Target within 3 miles or [Music] so [Music] for 2 days thousands of bombs hit the front line west of [Music] Salo [Music] [Applause] [Music] over the course of two days July 24th and 25th 1944 the heavy bombers come over from England and they bomb in front of the US assault division they bomb short and they kill several hundred Americans This is I believe the greatest friendly fire in incident in the history of the United States but also the good news is it does tremendous damage of course to the Panzer Lair division the Germans who are on the wrong side of this and so Cobra does what it's designed for the panel division of the German divisions were so badly thrown by the heavy bombing that they were in a completely dazed state when the Americans got to them within 2 days the real breakthrough had been achieved in just a few days thousands of Germans are taken prisoner the Reich forces have suffered one of their heaviest defeats since the beginning of the war despite the collateral damage the military success of operation Cobra brings the Battle of Normandy into a new new [Music] phase on July 28th the town of couton is captured by the Allies the same day a new Commander arrives General Patton famous for his Feats in North Africa and Sicily Patton has just taken the lead of the third US Army his mission make a breakthrough to the south of Normandy the Germans feared Patton more than any other Allied General Patton's new job which he was extremely excited about was the prospect of taking over having his own Army once the breakout came from Normandy [Music] in Just 4 days Patton's troops will retake the cities between couton and avange and Advance more than 50 km to the south at a pace not yet seen in this battle as they progress thousands of German soldiers are taken captive this really took the Americans all the way through down past a and out of Normandy even into Northern Britany it was a spectacular smashing of the German armies in Normandy this was definitely the start of taking the fight right the way through into France [Music] on July 31st Patton and his troops reclaimed the Pondo bridge that crosses the saloon River they gained direct access to the west of France and to Britany the following day the Americans arrived but M Sam Michelle completely abandoned by the enemy Patton's breakthrough is a serious setback for the German Army the Germans are in an existential situation in Normandy and the logical thing to do would be to Simply Retreat Eastward and get out of there and fight somewhere else we're not talking about logic and we're talking about someone like Adolf Hitler instead of ordering his troops to retreat Hitler decides to Counterattack his plan send his tanks to the town of Moran close to where several American units have joined up the goal is to create a reach in the Allied configuration meant to reach avaran by cutting the American Army in two and regaining control of the area reluctantly the German generals on the ground prepare the counter offensive they had these firm orders from Hitler even though most of the commanders of the German paner units were dubious about this particular operation but they had no option but they had to go ahead and attack on August 7th 1944 the Germans launch a Counterattack in MTA code name operation ly Columns of panzas attacked the 30th us infantry division with full force the gis resist the powerful German tanks and managed to slow down the Nazi troops progress giving time for reinforcements to arrive within a few days the massive influx of Allied Forces pushes back the German counter offensive Hitler operation luti is a total failure the Germans suffer at least 50% casualties particularly along the roads that kind of envelop on either side of mortan it's really a disaster for the Germans by mid August the German forces are defeated on August 15th 1944 Hitler throws in the towel and orders his troops to flee nor Nory the German operation lutic was a desperate Gamble and it looked like that this German force was ripe to be annihilated arriving from the West the Americans Advanced at full speed towards arenton to join forces with the British and Canadians Village after Village one by one they occupy enemy [Music] positions they annihilate the areas of German [Music] resistance the small village of ran tirelessly held by the verar and an SS unit is reduced to Rubble dozens of civilians are killed but now is the time to expel every last standing German soldier in [Music] Normandy Bradley and Montgomery coordinate the Allied troops movement in the west the Americans Advance towards the sen in the north the British and Canadians increased their pressure on fet in the South the French Armored Division of General laclair along with the Americans head back up to arenton between the cities of Fes and shamua a pocket starts to form trapping nearly 100,000 German soldiers if the Allies managed to close the gap on the east side they will cut off any chance for escape Bradley boasted to visitors to headquarters never does a general get an opportunity like we have now to close this Gap and basically to seal them off the Battle of Normandy had been fought over hundreds of square miles but it seemed to funnel at the FZ Gap and this enormous battlefield of hundreds of miles gets focused down to a very small deadly place to weaken the enemy's defenses the Allied Air Forces Hammer the German positions on the ground the fighting is unprecedented the Canadians take FES on August 17th TR the 18th little by little the vice Titans on the Germans who have a corridor of no more than 7 km wide to flee to the east it becomes known as death row the massacre inside the pocket at FZ was horrific the fighter bombers kept on coming in all of the German transport horses dragging field hospitals or guns or whatever were just simply machine gunned in their traces the smell the stench of corpses for weeks afterwards it was simply a ping it was a turkey shoot as the Americans would have called [Music] it on August 21st the fet pocket is closed once and for all in shanga tens of thousands of Germans are taken prisoner and thousands lay dead the battle will later be known as the Stalingrad of Normandy you have thousands of dead bodies animals and humans that are in that area Eisenhower will later walk it famously and say it was possible to walk from one side of a field to another without ever stepping on anything but dead flesh I think that is something to try to imagine today that FZ Gap filled with corpses and wounded screaming men and that was the price of [Music] victory in the city of enton liberate the day before by the 8th us Infantry Division cameras immortalized the meeting between the soldiers and the city's mayor in the middle of the rubble some civilians finally dare to emerge from their [Music] shelters the FES shamba battle will be the last one in these three months of fighting in Normandy on the Allied side 220,000 soldiers were killed or wounded and 20,000 civilians killed on the German side the Reich Army lost more than 200,000 men and 200,000 were taken prisoner on average a battalion and a half were being ground down or destroyed roughly every single week in many cases a division would last no no longer than say 2 weeks well this gives one an idea of how much Normandy contributed I think to the overall Allied Victory just purely in the case of the destruction of German formations by the end of August hordes of soldiers and vehicles land at shour and head east to eradicate the rest of the Nazi army [Music] while the final great battles of World War II will take place in Belgium the Netherlands and Germany Normandy must start to rebuild Normandy really becomes the first place in Western Europe in which a lot of the future policies the new Allied governments the dagal government will eventually come to fruit ition what about reconstruction who's going to pay for it and how are we going to do it Normandy kind of sets the tone for so many other places not just in France but in Western Europe that the armies are going to have to rebuild everybody knows about the landings on the 6th of June very few people could tell you what happens in June and July and August and how the battle for Normandy actually ended and I think to this day we are still dealing with those battles that war trying to come to grips with it trying to make sense of it trying to understand the ruins of Normandy 75 years [Music] ago as few as 50 cameramen tirelessly shot each day of this historic battle they left behind hundreds of hours of footage some of which only surfaced decades [Music] later for future Generations these images will remain the final Witnesses of normandies 85 days of hell [Music] [Music]

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 222,380

Keywords: Allied Forces, Archival Footage, Combat Footage, European Theater, Historical Documentary, Liberation of France, Military History, Normandy Bocage, Normandy Invasion, Operation Cobra, Operation Overlord, Rare Images, Tank Battles, The Battle of Normandy, The Battle of Normandy 85 Days in Hell, War Strategies, World War II, banijay, banijay history, d day, documentary, history, history Documentary

Id: ftG8WxiQj5E

Length: 52min 6sec (3126 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024