Australia Duels With The Japanese Empire | Battles Won and Lost (WW2 Documentary) | Timeline

every battle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you find in every theater of the Second World War battles won and lost determine position of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the for others it was the defect this is the story of the battles won and lost that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history through history armies marched to face each other on favored ground and clashed to decide a campaign a war an empire with the 20th century that changed the battles won and lost of the second world war happened everywhere and anywhere in freezing temperatures arid deserts and mercilessly humid jungles these were battles in which more than the enemy soldier had to be overcome the day after the fall of Singapore John Curtin the Australian Prime Minister said that the battle for Australia has begun and it did seem probable that Japan would continue to drive South they had so far been unstoppable on land in July 1942 you're looking at probably the most critical time of the Pacific War yeah coming on from months and months of just constant Japanese victories they've swept everything that stood before them in the Southeast Asia and then swept down through Dutch East Indies taking a whole raft of Pacific Islands the extraordinary speed with which Japan had swept over the lands they now labeled the Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere owed much to surprise - planning - determination so that when they were checked on one of the most hellish battlefields it is possible to imagine It was as though a myth had been exposed this was the action to cross the Owens Stanley range and fall on the New Guinea capital of Port Moresby the Japanese won it so that they can cement their southern defensive arc and also use that position to then harass the northern Australian cities and try and sever the link between Australia in the u.s. they're also really concerned that Australia may be used as a launching pad for a counter-offensive so that's why their designs are there on Port Moresby in July 1942 a small force comprising in Australian and a New Guinea battalion was sent from Moresby to Trek overland to buna there was a small airfield at Pune and General Douglas MacArthur commanding the western Pacific Theater decided that he would need it for future operations it's going to be from his recently conquered Empire of islands the force that set off was named Maroubra force in mutual ignorant another force would be trekking towards them initially the Japanese wanted to take Port Moresby by sea you know impressive amphibious landing however the Japanese defeat at Coral Sea and then later on at Midway man the Japanese weren't able to do this by sea and instead they decided to land a small force on some northeast tip of popular on the northern beaches around Boone and Gunnar and Santander with a view of attempting to move inland across the impressive and stanley range so wards Port Moresby along a foot track which we now know as the Kokoda trail all the keycode attract a force of 2,000 under Colonel yasuke Yokoyama had landed at gona on July 21st six days after Maroubra force had reached Kokoda two days later first contact was made between the Japanese and the heavily outnumbered Australians [Music] the war diary for the Australian 39th battalion says this for July 27th Lieutenant Colonel Owen after the destruction of all possible stores material and buildings at Kokoda withdrew with all troops it was the beginning of a fighting withdrawal down the track towards Mosby which stopped a mere fifty kilometers from the capital whose lights the Japanese could see finding withdrawals distinct from a retreat in a retreat you basically tried to break contact with the enemy get as far away from them as you can so you can take stock and then really try and counter-attack fighting we've draw you're deliberately maintaining contact with the enemy because you want to slow down their advance as long as you can and Australians did that really successfully in the early part of September the Aussies rightly claim to be some of the toughest troops in the world but fighting in New Guinea would SAP the strength of the toughest it's not hard to understand the temporary exhaustion of these men having just been relieved they've come out of the jungle frontline for a rest in the first phase the small force that had advanced fell back on ISA rava where it linked with regular Australian troops still heavily outnumbered the Australians after several days fell back again to stand on a foggy part of the Australian force was cut off here by a Japanese flanking move and was isolated for two weeks by September 10th that withdrawal had reached a or E by WA where it was strengthened by further Australian troops advancing out of Moresby this force held the Japanese for a week then withdrew to a strong defensive position on emitter Ridge 50 kilometers from Mosby this placed the Australians at the end of a manageable supply line and extended the Japanese lines of communication in a place where distance was not the issue porters and mules brought up supplies the Japanese would their typical shortage of support elements were soon suffering terribly lacking food and feeble and wracked by disease I've heard New Guinea described as the Fowler's terrain that was encountered by troops in the Second World War essentially you have ten days worth of travel over two series of mountains sends and descends 5,000 meters which when you look at it is more than that you would actually climb from the Everest base camp did ever a summit and then you consider that they're doing that in hate while they're being afflicted by leeches mosquitoes they're Ravin with dysentery that's a lot to contend with let alone thinking about the fact that you're also fighting a war and being shut up for every man wounded on the Kokoda Track seven were incapacitated by sickness there is bringing supplies to the frontline a Trek of eight days necessarily consumed half the supplies on the journey and please remember that the temperatures run about 90 in the shade a wet steamy heated that you need to remember these guys turn their flight teams spilly to me 20s they've been in the military for months they're probably at the peak of their fitness and soldiers themselves talk about how exhausting the terrain was we know that soldiers particularly during the second part of campaign as I move forward they started jettisoned their equipment basically stripped down to all I really had was a shirt in their shorts everything was done to strip down to minimize your way because he just want to say what energy you have to go forward as the Australians began there moved back along the track the Japanese facing them could not expect relief the attempted landing at Milne Bay had been repulsed and the commitment to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands denied the force in the Owen Stanley's any hope of reinforcement towards the end of September now coming under pressure from relatively fresh Australian troops the Japanese began their own fighting withdraw rear guards were skillfully deployed along the track and it took bitter fighting firing sometimes its shadows in the jungle locking sometimes in hand-to-hand combat at Templeton's crossing and then a or a creek before Kokoda was retaken it's very hard to appreciate how claustrophobic jungle warfare is when he can't see the enemy Boykin hears noises and you think was that a Japanese soldier procedure Wolpe is one of our mates he's got lost I can't see him can he see me so terrain is key that sense of atmosphere in place [Music] the toll was horrific more than 150,000 Japanese troops served in New Guinea barely 6 percent of them survived what was left of the Japanese force made a last stand at OE v east of Kokoda before retiring to the coast the fighting moved towards the sea and on January 2nd 1943 almost six months after Maroubra force had first set off to cross the Kokoda Track its objective buna fell to the Allies [Music] the success of Kokoda as any success will boosted morale and hardened the troops for the battles ahead every victory has been the result of tremendous efforts great endurance and supreme individual courage a real beginning has been made in driving the Japs back from the fringe of their Pacific conquests a solid foundation for the shape of things to come woods and water in the land of the Midnight Sun and the thousand lakes but at the end of a year very little Sun temperatures to minus 40 and more than a meter of snow this was the landscape into which the Red Army thrust not as part of the world war but as a cynical land round taking the opportunity of the universal preoccupation with the main battlefield to redefine its border with Finland Finland had been part of the Russian Empire and Stalin's Soviet Union thought that it had dibs and in the winter of 1939 40 invaded Finland hoping to snatch some easy territory didn't turn out that way though Soviet forces invaded Finland on November 30th 1939 the assault by the 13th army over the Karelian isthmus faltered against the mannerheim line but the Reds were approached now said to have left over 8,000 dead on the frozen battlefield near summer in massage in the course of an eight day attempt to break the mannerheim line further north five divisions of the soviet ninth army were met by small units that ultimately formed into a single finnish division the ninth at a place called soooo Masami these troops were not strong enough to prevent russian occupation of sewer Masami village though the withdrawing finns had burned it as they had destroyed bridges to slow the russian advance all hudson farm buildings are destroyed by fire so if the unfortunate Soviet troops can find no shelter from the terrible arctic weather and death by freezing has caused quite a big proportion of them up [Music] with sewer Masami in Russian hands the first stage of the battle ended the Finnish troops were assembled on the southern bank of the Chianti Lake and were brought under fire on December 9th by an assault supported by artillery and grenade launchers the Russian tanks could not support the attack the ice was thick enough for men but it was too early in the winter for the tanks to safely cross this was the first evidence that the Red Army had not properly anticipated the conditions on the battlefield the weather was Arctic there was a meter of snow across the ground the Russians he'd think would be used to the those conditions in fact weren't they were colossal II underprepared the 27th Infantry Regiment attacked from the east its target the southern part of the village Finnish units pressed forward until after two weeks of fighting Soviet forces left sewer Masami and withdrew across the ice of Lake Chianti with sOooo Masami back in Finnish hands colonel hyul misil Oswald commanding put everything he had into dislodging the Russians from the vital rutter Road area his plan was to cut the supply route that reached over the border and kept the Red Army in the field Salah Zuo ordered a road cleared across the frozen lakes parallel to the Rotter road in early January he unleashed his assembled force the Finns were equipped white suited in the snow units of them ski troops all of them winter proved the Finns continued to defend their country against the Russian aggressor with the greatest valour and tenacity the Russian did cannot yet be counted but seems like this said to be found over many miles of the front the Red Army Command had made the mistake that the Germans would make in Russia thinking that a quick victory would come before the bitter cold took its toll the fighting quality of the Red Army was also compromised by the brutality of Stalin's paranoid purges which had stripped the military of 36,000 of its best officers and that cast a pall it grossly undermined the the morale of Russian commanders and that that malaise penetrated through their units the 163rd division was destroyed and the router Road was cut meaning resupply and reinforcements was not possible the climax would be the battle to evict the Soviet force from rato forcing them back towards and over the border facing the Finns was the elite motorized 44th division the Russian forces were immensely superior to the Finnish forces which were very lightly equipped the Russians advanced in in long mechanized columns through the Finnish forests covered in snow ice-covered lakes and that was their weakness because the Finns who were very lightly equipped and moved on skis descended on the Russian columns cut them off and cut them to pieces a tactic that the fin is called mati which means piling up wood in the forests which is what they did to the Russians between the 5th and 7th of January the 44th was destroyed and the Battle of sewer Masami was over when in March a peace treaty ended the russa Finnish war the situation in sewer Masami was unchanged with the Finns continuing to occupy the village and the road their victory a victory for morale motivation tactics and terrain had cost the Soviet Union twenty-seven and a half thousand killed or frozen to death fifty tanks destroyed and vast quantities of equipment lost and broken sewer muscle me although it was a tactical victory didn't help the outcome of the war because when Germany invaded the Soviet Union it brought Finland in as its ally Finns were eager to regain their territory and to exact revenge on the Soviets but it got caught up in this terrible Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on November 8 1942 an American force sailing from the USA started to disembark troops in Morocco the many beaches selected for the landings ranged from the western corner of Morocco to places hundreds of miles east beyond the Straits of Gibraltar beyond our gia it was part of the complex operation to land on the western edge of North Africa and move east to effect a link-up with the Eighth Army moving west after its success at El Alamein the campaign was known as Operation Torch and early in its unfolding American and German troops met in battle for the first time when two axis army groups one under general von Arnim the other Irvin Rommel moved forward to meet them On February 14th von Arnim launched operations spring wind attacking and taking sidi bouzid after a day-long fight during the action american operations were hampered by weak command decisions and poor use of armor on the 15th Rommel launched his offensive operation morning wind destroying 40 American tanks during the first day of operations he pushed on to speedla general Fred endo a controversial commander who never visited the front pulled his force back to the Kasserine pass linking with 10th Panzer Division from Fon anims command Rommel assaulted the new position on the 19th smashing into the Allied lines and compelling u.s. troops to withdraw [Music] rommel personally led the tenth Panzer Division into the Kasserine and ordered 21st Panzer Division to press through the spy began this move was effectively blocked by an allied force centered on the British 6th armoured US 1st and 34th infantry divisions fighting around Kasserine revealed serious deficiencies in Allied armor the superiority of German Panzers quickly defeating us m3 Lee and m3 Stuart tanks exiting the pass Rommel divided 10th Panzer to press north toward starla and west towards to Besser which he never reached by the night of February 21st Rommels stood outside thala and believed that the Allied supply base of to better on the railway line was within reach [Music] but the allied lines at thala had been reinforced by british infantry backed by US artillery and the position occupied on the 22nd was the limit of the German advance the enemy's resistance the resolute was eventually broken here and there was plenty of evidence by the wayside designer advanced continuum Rommel unable to break through elected to end the battle in order to reinforce the Mareth line the position that could prevent Montgomery advancing West from breaking through and linking up with the forces that had landed as part of Operation Torch finally the withdrawal of the enemy tank for just one isolated incident in the combined allied effort to drive Rommel and Coe into the sea Allied forces reoccupied Kasserine pass On February 25th the first major clash between American and German forces the battle showed an enemy superiority not just in some material but predictably inexperienced it also exposed flaws in the American command structure and doctrine the American response to what was more a debacle than a battle lost was to initiate several changes including the immediate removal of the incompetent Fredendall command of second Corps famously passed to Lieutenant General George s pattern pattern was controversial his disciplinary methods got him into trouble and his pistol-packing ways had their critics but he was a fighting general and with the Allies on the attack an aggressive fighting disposition was required Patton drove his troops from Africa into Sicily and out of the Normandy beachhead rallied them at the Battle of the Bulge and earned and loved the nickname old blood and guts in terrain as difficult as any fought over and conditions as harsh as any that soldiers had to endure the Burma Campaign went on month after long month of thrust and counter thrust the first half of 1944 is dominated by the Japanese attempt to invade India they halted just over the border and there the Japanese suffered the biggest defeats in their military history they leave 50,000 dead on the battlefield that's their high-water mark then they pull back at last towards the end of 1944 with Allied troops beginning to be strengthened but the tide turned in Europe and with Japanese resources threadbare the operation to expel Japanese troops from Burma gained momentum two operations were designed to expel the Japanese from Burma capital in which Slim's 14th army would advance from Assam across the Chindwin to re-establish contact with the nationalist Chinese and Dracula a combined airborne land and amphibious assault on Rangoon the 14th army in the Burma theater or at the bottom of British priorities the Mediterranean Europe and the homefront took priority so it had very few resources it fought on scales of transport and other administrative elements that would have been unacceptable in other theatres the next thing that Slim did and which is critical in this campaign is raised the morale and confidence in 14th army to fever-pitch general slim commander of the 14th army has some heartening news of the war against Japan nothing can stop us winning but a great deal can be done to speed up and render less costly the final victory the 14th army called itself the Forgotten re & slims seized on that and made the Forgotten army something to be proud of in early November the Chinese 6th army began to move operation capital was launched on December 3rd with the 11th East African and 19th and 20th Indian divisions crossing the Chindwin a few days later the Chinese 1st army was coming south towards the British line of advance and took bomber general Kimura commanding Japan's Burma Area Army was in a desperate situation he had little prospect of resupply and was obliged to marshal what he had with great care so he fell back before the initial advance offering token resistance the lack of defense encouraged slim to change the plan operation extended capital was more ambitious his generalship was superb he convinced the Japanese that he was going to throw everything at Mandalay naturally they deployed the bulk of their forces to protect Mandalay it being a very important communications hub for them but then through an elaborate deception plan slim deployed an entire Corps about a hundred kilometres south where they cross the Irrawaddy and then headed another 80 kilometers to take Mike Tila through which all the Japanese communications to Mandalay and further north passed the Japanese were repositioning their defenses for the battle for Mandalay so West African and Indian advances in the oricon and 15th Corps hook along the coast to Romney were largely unopposed a water patrol activity in which the Bren carrier Scouts along the coast on January 7th the Japanese fifteenth army withdrew across the Irrawaddy by mid January the 19th Indian division had established a bridgehead across the Irrawaddy at the end of the month the burma and lado roads were joined at mangu with the chinese first army striking south along the Burma Road and the sixth striking southeast from borrow these Chinese units have been attacking Japanese positions guarding the Burma Road and they've been making progress fourth Corps press South initiating the battle for make tila which fell to the 17th Indian division their supply route was then cut by a Japanese counter-attack and the veterans 17th continuously in the field for longer than any other unit in the British Army had to rely on air-dropped supplies while repelling repeated attempts by the Japanese 33rd army to take mcteer's airfields the 33rd commander general masky Hinda was forced to order a withdrawal on March 28th 19th Indian division had reached the outskirts of Mandalay on the 9th with most of the city cleared by the 11th a second British division advanced from the West the focus now turned to Rangoon which would be assaulted by a combined operation codenamed Dracula 17th Indian was advancing south along the line of the seaton reaching Pegu on April 29th by then the first promise of the monsoon the so called mango rains were falling the monsoon made campaigning in Burma impossible for six months of the year and life was miserable at that time the Japanese with their long lines of communication primitive transport not having control of the air couldn't keep their troops supplied at least slim could many of the Japanese in Burma simply starved despite the weather it was decided to go ahead with the combined Allied assault on the capital on May 1st a Gurkha parachute battalion dropped on elephant Point at the mouth of the Irrawaddy and the next day the 26th Indian division carried the amphibious assault they're linked with the 17th advancing from Pegu on the 6th but the Japanese had withdrawn towards the Thai border by the beginning of August the last Japanese had left Burma but they were not pursued the victory in Burma did restore some measure of British respect but it was too late because the earlier defeats in Burma and especially in Malaya and Singapore had been a stimulus to nascent nationalist movements they bore fruit in the independence granted to both India and Burma after the war the greatest defense against the u-boat has been the unfailing courage of a men who bring supplies across the sea in the face of every risk of war and weapon through the summer months the Arctic ports of Murmansk and Archangel in the white sea were vital entry points for Allied supplies being sent to the Soviet Union under the lend-lease arrangement when the Soviet Union entered the war the Western Allies immediately agreed to send as much support as they could to the Soviet Union and that meant going either the southern way through Persia which is the long way around or the cold way through the Arctic sea around the top of Norway and now this sounds like a really disastrous way to go about supplying the Soviet Union but in fact it worked 103 ships went through 1941-42 and only one of those ships was sunk so Arctic Convoys actually worked but in July 1942 the Arctic Convoys system fell to pieces 39 convoys traveled to the north Russian ports and of 533 escorted merchant vessels only 69 were lost to enemy action and most of those losses were taken by PQ 17 the designation of the convoy that suffered more than any other anywhere in the war PQ 17 the initials were merely those of the man who charted the original convoy route sailed from Val fiora in Iceland on June 27th it was a very big convoy escorted by many warships and of course every man aboard every ship knew pretty well what lay ahead attacked by u-boat by bomber and torpedo bomber it was the first anglo-american convoy to sail under British command it comprised 35 merchantman carrying 297 aircraft 594 tanks 4246 trucks and gun carriers and a further 156 thousand tons of cargo sufficient to equip an army of 50,000 men in the values of the day the cargo was worth an estimated 700 million dollars the escort comprised four cruisers three destroyers and two submarines as well as a pair of tankers to refuel the vessels as required shortly after sailing one ship ran aground and had to return to Iceland on June 29th the convoy encountered heavy ice damaging four ships one of which was given permission to turn back 33 ships sailed on on July 1st they were located by German forces the British Admiralty was also monitoring PQ 17 and on learning that German ships including the battleship Tirpitz were moving to intercept ordered the escort to break off to hunt the German Raiders and in view of the removal of the covering force the convoy was ordered to scatter in an admiralty order sent by Admiral Dudley pound at 2123 on July 4th followed at 21:36 by a simple unambiguous order convoy is to scatter the turning point for PQ 17 comes on the evening of the 4th of July when the British from the Admiralty this isn't a local decision it's an admiralty decision for the convoy to scatter literally deserting those merchant ships and making them find their own way to Soviet ports they're only halfway through the voyage at this point and it leaves them at the mercy of the Germans when the order came the convoy had covered a little over half of its journey spread across the ocean it would be far more difficult for a battleship to target but the Tirpitz played no part no surface Raider did but you boats and the Luftwaffe fell on the scattered and undefended vessels through the long daylight hours of the northern summer the messages from the isolated ships have been preserved and being bombed on fire six u-boats approaching on the surface abandoning ship on July 15th six merchantman was sent to the bottom by the Luftwaffe and six more by u-boats two more on the sixth five the next day and two more the final two on the 10th Churchill called it a melancholy naval episode it was rather more than that of the 33 ships that had sailed on without escort 23 had been sunk and more than 150 lives lost [Music] 180,000 tons of war material had been loaded in Iceland 64,000 tons were delivered supply via the Arctic route was temporarily suspended not resuming until September when much stronger escort arrangements were in place the convoy system was actually a work of genius I mean the British tried in the Napoleonic Wars and realized 100 years before that it was a success if he went in a convoy you could get through in the first world war they proved it again as in the last war so in this the convoy system has proved its efficiency so convoys should be a way of getting supplies to where you need them in a safe way and indeed that's exactly what they proved in just about every other theater of the war the submarine crippled by depth charges is forced to surface PQ 17 is different PQ 17 because of this is panic you can only describe it as a mark of panic on the part of Dudley pound where he abandons the convoy it proves that convoys work because PQ 17 doesn't but why does he abandon them and it's a mark just how how fearsome the German pocket battleships were now these commerce raiders which they sunk most i've joined the war but the Tirpitz remained and but Dudley pound didn't want was for American cruisers to be sent by the Tirpitz and that's the reason I think ypq 17 was abandoned to its fate the offensive launched against Russia in June 1941 Operation Barbarossa was without parallel in the history of war along a massive front an armed mass of more than a million men machines tanks aircraft of 650,000 horses swept into and through the Soviet heartland but Barbarossa did not drive for the capital after Smolensk fell in August German troops turned north and south he is a strategic dispute between Hitler and the generals in July and August 1941 in which the generals are unambiguously geared toward seizing Moscow Hitler does not want to do this he opted for the Battle of Kiev but two weeks into the Battle of Kiev so early September Hitler issues a war directive stating that after he has taken the eastern parts of the Ukraine there will be a major new offensive directed toward Moscow when it came it was designated Operation typhoon the Germans planned a giant pincer movement closing north and south to grip the capital 3rd and 4th Panzer armies would move against the Kalinin front and cut the Moscow Leningrad railway 2nd Panzer army would move in the south and 4th army would move from the West directly on Moscow it was like the same pattern as Barbarossa so we're making these enormous encirclements and cutting them into two or three salience and then destroying them separately and then the pathway to Moscow must be open the numbers finally involved were staggering towards 2 million axis with over a thousand tanks and 500 aircraft in the end more than 2 million Soviet troops 3,000 tanks and more than a thousand aircrafts but before the Soviet command could bring up reserves and reach those figures the Germans enjoyed superiority and at the start of Operation typhoon success in their Drive 4th Panzer and 2nd Panzer quickly isolated pockets at the Asthma and Bryansk respectively that trapped Red Army formations when the pre ance pocket surrendered on October 14th 50,000 prisoners were taken many Soviet troops managed to escape five days later the V asthma pocket was eliminated and here six hundred and seventy thousand prisoners marched into cruel captivity that would cost many their lives in many ways one of the fascinating things about the Eastern Front is just the enormity the frightening enormity of the losses on both sides but especially on the Soviet side in 1941 so these catastrophic losses are sustained at that point Germany is a real reflection of its hubris he's pronouncing the war is won but the soldiers are reading the newspapers on the front line and they're shocked because that's not what they see yes the Red Army they've lost a lot of people but there are still sending in new troops there are still sending in people so they have more resources and it's so obvious that the Germans cannot hold on yes they can push on but at what cost in early October the first rains fell [Music] before long liquid mud was slowing the advance but by the 13th of October German troops reached the fortifications thrown up to protect Moscow's Western Approaches the magista one Zhukov had by now been placed in command of the defense and he pulled troops back and concentrated them at key strong points [Music] this weekend the mosaic line which fell on October 18th no line existed to hold up the advance in the south but bad weather and bad roads did Tula was not reached until October 26 the German invasion was moving it was moving slowly but it was moving inexorably it was winning and would soon be at the gates of Moscow but by late October 2/3 of the German motor pool was out of action fuel supply problems were chronic and casualties were mounting to rectify the deficiencies from the end of October until November 15th the High Command ordered a pause what's interesting and what is also reflective of national socialist military thinking is the Germans themselves know that this two-week pause benefits the enemy more than it benefits themselves so even though they know they need this time to bring up more supplies more offensive capacity they're also aware the Soviets are benefiting even more and that doesn't stop them from attempting typhoon 2 in the middle of November when the weather is even colder this is going to be a frontal advance really sending their men into the teeth of Soviet defenses if this strikes you was a bad idea you're right it is a bad idea on November 15th German tank armies moved restoring the pincer squeezing in on Moscow clean fell on November 24th by the 28th Panzers had a bridgehead over the Moscow Volga canal but the first shock army drove them back with a counter-attack German units now stood less than 30 kilometers from their objective and German officers surveyed the onion turrets of Moscow through their field glasses and then the most ferocious Russian of all entered the field general winter that we were warned not to rely upon his aid too much is already proving a powerful era the Red Army makes full use of the Alliance on November 30th general Phan Bach reported to Berlin that the temperature was minus 45 degrees Celsius and that tanks would not start lubricants were frozen soldiers in summer uniforms were dying and frostbite was being seen [Music] on December 2nd a ver mark reconnaissance battalion reached Kim key less than 20 kilometers from the Kremlin and that was as far as typhoon got German forces are overextended they're exhausted they're at the end of very tenuous supply lines and they have absolutely no idea of what's coming the offensive from the Soviets will begin on the evening of the fifth and the Germans will then begin a massive withdrawal both in the north of Moscow and towards the south around Tula this retreat will be catastrophic for the Germans it's only a few weeks ago that the German advance on the Eastern Front had reached the very outskirts of Moscow itself only a few weeks ago Hitler's intuition told him Moscow would fall certainly things did look pretty black for Russia and for us the battle for Moscow was over and for the Germans the battle to hold ground and survive had begun there is no path to German success economically they are falling behind militarily they haven't got their operational edge and they can't get it back so while the German army still exists in being while it still occupies the Eastern Front and while it still has got men in artillery and tanks and sometimes impressive numbers it's not able to ever end the war and unless Hitler's looking for a political solution which is not possible for him he sees this war ending only in victory or utter total defeat and that's what's going to happen

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 362,321

Rating: 4.7376332 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, australia vs japan, australia ww2, japanese em, japanese empire, ww2 pacific stories, ww2 pacific theatre, pearl harbor, world war 2, battle of midway

Id: ca5945ainQI

Length: 49min 9sec (2949 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020