During the Second World War, Hitler made an increasing number of errors
and lost many battles. I'd say that Hitler
was a man trying to gamble. In 1940,
when England was within his reach, Hitler allowed the British Army
to rebuild itself. The decision to bomb civilians
rather than strategic military and industrial targets was a huge mistake. A mistake he will pay a high price for
during the Allied landings. In 1942, in yet another bad decision
regarding the Red Army, Hitler sends his troops
into the cruel Russian winter. The German armies aren't equipped
to deal with the cold weather, and the poor men are freezing. Hitler loses almost a million soldiers in what would be the real turning point
of the Second World War. Hitler lost the war in the East. In 1944, he launches
an unnecessary attack in the Ardennes. His generals don't believe
in this counter-attack. It was an attack
that could only work on paper. The only one responsible
for this massacre, Hitler used up the last of his troops and opened up Germany's doors
to the Allied forces. At the beginning of 1942,
Nazi Germany had reached a breaking point. The Führer had made an increasing number
of bad strategic decisions. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hitler declared war on the United States. This decision, which was taken
without seeking advice from his military leaders,
sows the seeds of the defeat to come. In Russia, Hitler's Operation Barbarossa failed to bring victory for the Reich
against the Russian giant. On the contrary, Stalin's counter-attack
pushed back the German Army and forced them to face
the terrible Russian winter. For Hitler, it's time to choose between the strategic withdrawal
advised by his generals and the headlong rush
driven by his insanity. The oil supplied by Germany or Romania was no longer enough
to fuel the Panzer division, so Hitler started to envisage
conquering the Caucasus oil fields, notably in the south of Russia. Taking oil from the Caucasus, Baku, Maikop
and other places served two purposes. It would prevent the Red Army
from being able to fight a war, and secondly,
it would give Germany strategic supplies that would help ease the huge problem
that the blockade was causing the country. The Anglo-Saxon blockade was solid, and so Hitler thought
he could achieve both of these objectives with Fall Blau or Case Blue, which was launched
on 28th June 1942 in the East. On paper,
Case Blue seemed very attractive, but in practice,
Hitler hadn't taken into account the state of the roads after the thaw
and the considerable distances that had to be covered
to reach the Caucasus. Bakou, the capital,
is almost 3,000 kilometers away. Hitler also overlooks
his men's attenuation, their equipment and supply difficulties. Still falling prey
to his racial prejudices, the Führer continues
to underestimate his Russian enemy. The first weeks go in his favor, and he conquers
the territories fairly easily, but on 23rd July 1942,
Hilter gives a mind-boggling order. He decides to divide his armies into two. One army will go towards the Caucasus, and Von Paulus' 6th Army is charged
with taking Stalingrad. Hitler sends his troops
on two diverging axes, which results in the very harmful
principle of dividing forces. The military leaders
are bewildered by this improvisation, but nobody has even the slightest
influence on Hitler's strategic decisions. It's left to an exhausted
and badly provisioned 6th Army to take Stalingrad, commanded by General Friedrich Paulus. Taking Stalingrad
is very important for Hitler. One reason is fairly obvious. Taking the city that is named
after Stalin is a political move. Stalingrad is a symbol for Hitler
and for Stalin, of course. It's a large industrial city
named after the Soviet dictator, and Hitler understands
that conquering Stalingrad would represent
a symbolic humiliation for Stalin. Taking Stalingrad means
cutting communication on the Volga, and that's important because it's 1942, and American help
is really starting to arrive. It's coming through Iran, the Caspian Seas
and going up the Volga, so if Stalingrad falls
and the Volga is blocked, the American supplies
won't be able to get any further north. On the 23rd of August,
when the German 6th Army under General Paulus arrives
bombing starts that very evening. A bombing... that would turn Stalingrad into ruins. The order to destroy everything possible was a completely
ideologically coherent one. They thought: these people are inferior
and impertinent enough to resist us, so we're going to destroy them completely. That was a great idea. What Paulus perhaps
didn't take into account, were the difficulties of urban combat. It's well known
that ruins are great for defense. When you're in a city in ruins, weapons are used differently. While a tank was very useful
in the open air, it's not the same in the city. It can be blown up
at every turn of the street, whether it's with a bazooka,
a Molotov cocktail, et cetera. The battle changes. It would have been better
to surround the city of Stalingrad and keep the German Army out of it. The German soldiers weren't used
to guerilla warfare in a demolished city, so they had a lot of tactical difficulties
adapting to this form of combat, and so the Soviets faced them
with incredible force. They had many losses, but they desperately wanted to hold on, so it was dreadful. For almost two months,
Paulus keeps on increasing his attacks against an enemy
who relentlessly defends every district, every building,
every floor and every basement. They won't reach the Volga. There's an area
they'll never manage to take, so the Soviet troops go over the river and there are reinforcements
arriving constantly. When a Soviet regiment is crushed,
another one is sent to replace it. Sometimes it's terrible because
they arrive at the front without guns, so they are told to take the guns
from the dead in front of them to fight. The Red Army will leave
tens of thousands of men behind. The commissioners of the NKVD,
the forerunners of the KGB, are ruthless. Any soldier or any company
who wants to retreat is slaughtered. Thirteen thousand soldiers were killed
by the NKVD commissioners, a considerable amount. When the snow arrives in October 1941, the Germans, again don't have
the equipment they need for winter. With no significant reinforcements, untrained for urban warfare
and with poor supplies, the morale
of the Wehrmacht troops plummets. Starting October, Paulus learns
from aerial reconnaissance that there are strong concentrations
of Soviets on the northern and south eastern fronts. He is worried for both,
because they are covered by the Romanian army,
which is badly equipped for the war in general,
and especially for the winter. He asks for permission to draw back,
because if he doesn't, he'll end up in what the Germans call
a Kessel, meaning a cauldron. Hitler says no. We will not retreat. The strategy was to retreat
to better attack again. It's a military strategy
as old as the hills, and if you retreat, you get destroyed. If you retreat, you can gather up
your forces and attack again. That's something you teach to corporals. On October 14th, 1942, Hitler gives the strict order
forbidding Paulus to retreat. His troops must stay in Stalingrad
and win the battle at all costs. A month later, the Red Army
launches a large-scale attack on two fronts around the city. Stalin launches his counter-attack. He doesn't attack Stalingrad itself,
where all the German forces are based. He instead analyzes the Germans' plan
and sees that there are Italian and Romanian troops
at the north and south of Stalingrad. The Russians swoop
on these more vulnerable Italian and Romanian troops, who yield faster, and this will allow
them to surround Stalingrad. When, on 23rd November 1942,
the Red Army joins both its sides, Paulus's 6th Army is caught in the trap. A German Army
had never been surrounded before, so Hitler gave the order
to Field Marshall Von Manstein to launch an operation
to clear Stalingrad from the south. Von Manstein warns Hitler
that he will only be able to create a corridor
allowing supplies to reach Paulus and enable him to escape. To do this, Von Manstein's troops
attack the Russians directly, but anticipating this move,
the Red Army launches a counter-attack. Von Manstein is forced to withdraw
before he is surrounded himself. Paulus's army has to survive alone with limited supplies,
fuel and ammunition. To feed the 6th Army, which is made up
of 250,000 to 260,000 men, they need a minimum of 500 tons per day. Goering is there again, replying:
Kein problem, Mein Führer. 500 tons, not 600? Okay, 500. No problem, my Junker, 52 will go, but with the snow and the cold,
the fuel won't work. The motors won't start,
they won't heat up. They manage to take 100 tons,
so they are 400 short. After eight days, they are short of 3,200. The result of this is that the 6th Army will literally die of hunger since they have to give
some priority to ammunition. On the 10th of January 1943,
the Red Army launches a final assault designed to reduce once and for all
the Stalingrad pocket of troops. Fifteen days later, when the Russians cut
the German forces into two, Hitler once again repeats
his order to Paulus that his troops
must not retreat or surrender. At the last minute, at the end of January,
Hitler promotes Paulus to field marshal, thinking that
he was going to kill himself. Not surrender because a German
Field Marshall doesn't surrender, but Von Paulus will surrender. Paulus surrenders,
but he doesn't give the official order to his men to surrender,
so it goes on for another 48 hours, but it's over. Finally, on the morning
of 2nd February 1943, the red flag flies over Stalingrad. It's the first major defeat
for the German Army and its supreme ruler, Adolf Hitler. The problem with Von Paulus
is that he is too obedient to Hitler, which is why he kept his post, but on the other hand,
by following Hitler's orders, he allowed the Soviets to take hundreds
of thousands of prisoners. Perhaps he should have thought
of his troops over his loyalty to Hitler. I think that a distinctive feature
of this war in Russia is all war is barbaric,
but this one was particularly so. The Germans were atrocious
and the Russians equally so, which means
that of 91,000 prisoners from Stalingrad, less than 5,000 made it home. They were either simply killed or died of hunger
in the prisoner-of-war camps. During Operation Barbarossa,
the Germans lost one million men, either killed, injured, or disappeared. The Red Army lost twice as many, but it had seven times
as many men in reserve than the Wehrmacht. Since '39, '40, this was an army
that had, in general, only known victory. It was an important turning point. This change of fortune
continued in North Africa after 1943. While Hitler suffered his first loss
on the Russian front, in response to his declaration of war,
the Americans entered the conflict. Allied with the British, they had been making advances
in North Africa. The President of the United States welcomed the Prime Minister
of Great Britain. The gravity of the moment
had brought them together. During the spring of 1942, when German domination
was at its strongest, the Allies agree on the need
to open a second front, as called for by Stalin,
to support the USSR. This operation, known as Torch, must allow landings
on the coast of North Africa. This would give the British and Americans
a platform to land in Europe. To do this, they need to vanquish
the elite troops of the Afrika Korps, which occupy Libya. The Afrika Korps is an elite army. It's not at all negligible. It's under the command of Rommel, a very popular general
in the German public eye. Field Marshall Rommel's Afrika Korps
now has a new enemy to deal with in addition to the British. They were in the process of retreating and now have the force of the Allies
preparing a landing, Operation Torch in November 1942
on the North African coast. On November 8th, 1942, Operation Torch, involving 100,000 soldiers,
sets out from 200 war buildings. Three groups are in charge
of establishing nine bridgeheads along a 1500 kilometer coastline. They are soon battling
General Rommel's troops who are allied with the Italians. Rommel was defeated. It was a battle that the British
couldn't lose for two reasons. The first was that they were at least two,
even three against one. Secondly, they were close to their bases, whereas Rommel's were far away in Tripoli, Benghazi, or even further in Tunisia, so he lost. From then on, the Italian and German Axis,
who are still in Libya and Tunisia fight on the east against the British Army
which moves forward through Libya, and in the west against the British,
the Americans and the French. They were increasingly surrounded,
and at the end, Rommel informs Hitler of the need to bring
the troops back one way or another, or in any case, to stop the battle. In North Africa, Hitler makes the same mistake
he made in Stalingrad. Once again, he persists and demands
that his army holds their positions down to the last man. It would have been better to leave
North Africa and withdraw to Italy rather than try to resist at all
or even send reinforcement like Hitler did in Tunisia. Thousands of young German soldiers
who had just landed would be sacrificed in vain. The only thing is that Rommel
is called back by Hitler because Rommel
is a very popular figure in Germany, one of the best German generals, so it would have been catastrophic
if he had been taken prisoner. Little by little, the noose is tightening. The superiority
of the Allies' equipment is overwhelming, and their blockades of artillery
inflict serious losses on enemy troops, but the Afrika Korps continues
with its suicidal counter-attacks. The Tunisian mountains
will become a graveyard for the majority of the German soldiers. Those who received the order to fight,
fought until the end. When Tunisia surrendered
around 8th May 1943, there had been 130,000 Germans
taken prisoner in Tunisia. It was a major error
that led to a terrible defeat, and a huge number of prisoners,
both Italian and German. I tend to think that the Tunisian disaster
is probably worse in terms of strategy and military force
than what happened in Stalingrad. It's symbolically less important
and less known today, but it was probably a disaster
that was worse for the Axis forces than Stalingrad. They lost as many troops, if not more,
in Tunisia than they did in Stalingrad. In May 1943, on the Russian front,
the situation is no better. The Germans
have been pushed back everywhere. Hitler wants to take the initiative after his failures
in Moscow and Stalingrad. In Koursk, the opportunity for a counter-attack
emerges for the German military. A 150-kilometer pocket
was created at the frontline during the Russian attack
in the spring of 1943. The Russians formed
what is called a salient point, a large bulge in the German defense. The salient has several
important weaknesses in its defense. Hitler's idea is to penetrate
this with a major attack and to surround the Russian troops,
leading to victory. Hitler's real objective
was to make a statement because, after Stalingrad,
all his allies, including Mussolini, are saying that:
we need to make peace with Stalin now, we can't hold on any longer. Hitler's political objective
is to give confidence to his European allies. He wants to show the power
of the German Army, particularly with the new panzers
and Panther tanks, medium tanks, and above all, the all-powerful Tiger
that they had for a few months and the Elefant, the heavy tank destroyer. The Tiger and the Panther
were admittedly excellent tanks, but getting these great tanks
doesn't happen overnight. That's the problem. It's not enough to say that
you have them if they are not there. The German industrial centers
where these tanks and weapons are produced are very far away,
and it takes time to bring them there. People forget this. They need to go on trains. These trains need to get there
despite the Russian resistance. That is beginning to be very efficient
despite the Soviet planes, so it takes time. General von Manstein
is in favor of a quick attack. He wants to surprise
and destroy the enemy, which is worn out
from the last months of combat. Hitler disagrees. He wants to stall for time until the new
supposedly invincible tanks arrive. He stalls, saying they are on the way, but losing a month or two when you are in the middle of the tundra
turns out to be deadly. They lost several weeks by waiting. The Soviet generals who were there
knew that the German side was preparing an attack. Informed by the British, they are aware
of all the German's plans to attack as soon as they're planned
by the German military leaders. The English have decrypted Enigma and are sending this information
to the Russians so the Russians know exactly
how the Germans are going to attack, where they are going to attack,
and with what forces. They had time to prepare an in-depth defense with mines, anti-tank systems, artillery, et cetera. They had time
to strengthen their position, and when Hitler launched his attack
on the 5th of July 1943, it was once again too late. On the 5th of July 1943,
Operation Citadel began. There were sizable forces involved. Two million Russian soldiers
against 900,000 Germans. Even more impressive, 2,700 German tanks
would face nearly 5,000 Soviet tanks, mostly composed of T-34 models. These were tanks
that were considered basic and not at all sophisticated,
but they were very resistant and very well used
by the Soviet tank operators. They had lots of T-34s,
thousands, and they just kept coming. The poor big Panthers
and Tigers that arrive, well, they are dead
before they even get there. The battle of Kursk was the biggest
tank battle of World War II, and it'll end up a cemetery of tanks. The northern attack quickly fails
against the impenetrable Soviet defenses. They hit a brick wall
and are forced to retreat. In the south,
the Soviet defenses are broken down, but very soon the German troops
won't be able to go on. They don't have enough men,
they've lost a lot of equipment, and the Soviets
are getting reinforcements every day. The German tanks are fighting
almost one against two so despite the standard
of the German tanks, the battle very quickly
goes in the Soviet's favor. There's not much room for maneuvering,
the killing is at point-blank range. It's all in one direction,
like Verdun but with tanks. The loss at Kursk is another demonstration
of Hitler's inability to lead his armies. In 50 days of fighting,
the Wehrmacht has halved in numbers. Whether or not the German Army
had taken this salient, it wouldn't have changed the war. From the German side,
it would have been better to retreat and set up a defensive line
along the former Soviet border and do something focused instead of carrying out these battles
in a constant retreat, losing thousands of trucks and tanks
which could no longer move. They had terrible losses
in equipment and men. It's a major event because after Kursk, the Germans don't have any possibilities
on the Eastern front. They've lost so many men
and so much equipment at Kursk that they're no longer able
to lead a large-scale operation on the Eastern front. In Stalingrad,
he lost 260,000 men and lost status, but the Wehrmacht was still there, whereas at Kursk,
Hitler lost the war in the East. In 1944,
the Germans retreat on all fronts. Hitler also believes
there will be an imminent Allied landing, so he is on the defensive. Hitler thinks that the landings
will be around a port in France, so he has selected a possible landing zone
in the north of France. The Channel is the shortest
between Calais and Dover, at around 30 kilometers, whereas at Cherbourg or Caen,
it's around 120 kilometers. The Allies aren't crazy, so if they leave from England,
it will have to be from Dover. Hitler thinks the Allied armies
will land in Pas-de-Calais, so he puts very well-armed
Panzer divisions in Lille and in the North,
opposite the Pas-de-Calais. This blind certainty in the place
is an important strategic error because for a long time, that lets them
get the best out of their planes. To mislead Hitler, the Allies increase
the number of fake operations. There were sizeable bombings
in the North of France just before the Normandy landings
to keep up this pretense. There were double agents in England
sending messages to the German commanders saying that the landing
would be in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais or on the Belgian coast
with some real and some false information. Hitler falls into the trap, convinced that an Allied landing
would take place in northern France, he sends a maximum number of troops there. When Operation Overlord
begins on the 6th of June 1944, the first wave of the Allied attack
doesn't land in the Pas-de-Calais. Instead, they are 300 kilometers away
on the Normandy coast, precisely where the German position
is less defended. Given the seriousness of the situation, the German military leaders must urgently
redeploy the Panzer divisions to face the Allied troops. They must call Hitler,
only he can give the order. On the 6th of June 1944,
incredibly, Hitler went to bed at 4:00 AM and was not to be woken. The morning of 6th June,
he can't be woken. Von Rundstedt, the commander,
insists but is told no, not for any reason. But yes, we need to move the divisions! No, no, no. The hours go by, and the waves of Allied attacks
keep coming one after another. He only wakes up at 10:00 AM,
and the operations are well underway. Decisions need to be made,
nothing can go ahead and Hitler is the only one
who can move the Panzer divisions. There are ten Panzer divisions in France, they could make all the difference
facing the Allies during the landings. The ten Panzer divisions
are what the Allies fear most. If there were to be on the Normandy front, the landings would become
much more complicated and uncertain. When informed of the Allied landings,
Hitler refuses to reverse his judgment and still thinks that the Allies
are trying to manipulate him. He said: It's not true,
it's not true, it's propaganda, so I'm keeping my Panzer divisions. He thought it was a diversion, that the landing would soon take place
in the North and not in Normandy, that it was a secondary operation. By midday,
Hitler still hasn't taken action. During this time,
the Allies seize the beaches one by one. Rundstedt gives the order to begin:
they leave. The chancellery calls them back, saying,
“Turn around, out of the question.” During this time,
the resistance is blowing up bridges. When Hitler finally realizes
that they need to go, the trains have to go to Montargis
to come back because there are no more bridges
over the Seine. Hitler will keep seven Panzer divisions
in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and they only send three to Normandy. 70% of his tanks were ready and waiting while the combat
was taking place in Normandy. This allowed the Allies
to reinforce the bridgeheads every day and to ensure the liberation
of France and Europe. If Hitler hadn't been asleep that morning and if he'd listened to his generals
and his marshals, who knew their jobs, then he would have given
the order within 48 hours. The Panzer divisions
would have been at Omaha beach and maybe the Allies would have left,
or re-embarked. This is political fiction but still... The military climate
continues to deteriorate. Some dignitaries think
that the time has come to make Hitler pay for his errors that have been so costly
to the German Army. In Nazi Germany, there was a resistance, including in the army. People who in '39,
and '40 believed in Hitler. That's why on 20th July 1944,
some of those involved in the putsch launched Operation Valkyrie. Those who take part in the attack
of the 20th of July 1944 are senior officers
and general officers of the Wehrmacht who have a very clear vision
of what happened in the East, who know that in the short term
the war is lost, and they have to stop
the decision to continue the war by killing the head of the armies
as it happens, the head of state. For this,
the conspirators have an ideal man who regularly is in close contact
with the Führer, Colonel Stauffenberg. He's an impressive character who has serious injuries
from the campaign in North Africa. That day, when he arrives in East Prussia
for a meeting with military leaders, his bag is stuffed with explosives. The attack cannot fail. The attack in the Wolf's Lair in July 1944
was very close to being successful. When the meeting begins, around 20 of the Wehrmacht's dignitaries
were around Hitler. Stauffenberg is late. It's just bad luck
that Von Stauffenberg's bomb was placed in the wrong spot. Stauffenberg joins the group
during a general's report, because he is deaf, and at his request,
he is placed on the Führer's right. The ideal place for him
to put the briefcase of explosives. The attack failed purely because the briefcase
was badly positioned under the table. Under the pretext of a phone call,
Stauffenberg hurriedly leaves the room. The briefcase was bothering
one of the officers, and he moved it. He put it next to a wooden pillar
of one of the tables where the meeting was being held. The explosion
entirely blew out the building, but the conspirators
failed in their assassination attempt. The attack only claimed three victims
and miraculously spared Hitler. The dictator escaped
with an injury to his right hand and minor burns on his body. Someone said it was the hand of the devil
protecting Hitler, and it's true,
he should have died that day. The same day Mussolini
arrives in East Prussia. He is welcomed by Hitler,
who has his right arm in a sling. Miraculously spared,
the Führer wants revenge. Straight away, it was followed
by a considerable purge, and most of the German Army,
commanders of the German Army who are implicated closely
or even distantly, and even sometimes very distantly
in this attack are shot, eliminated. Rommel will be forced to kill himself. Von Kluck, another great leader
in the German Army at the time, killed himself. Some of the conspirators
will be hung up from meat hooks, and films of it distributed by Hitler
to his military staff as a warning. His revenge is immense. In total, 5,000 people are killed
in a purge which decimates the military. Hitler no longer trusts his army. This is the time when the SS
becomes more powerful. Himmler is now number two,
next to the tsar because Hitler effectively entrusts the SS
with getting things back in order. This will have dramatic consequences
on the state of the front. Now, more than ever,
from the summer of 1944, orders become ideological. We must hold on. Holding on is a question of honor,
a question of sacrifice. If we don't manage to hold our position
and holding on in the hope that, as Hitler keeps promising,
the war will turn in our favor. Thanks to the miraculous weapons that we are waiting for
being manufactured and brought in. The miraculous weapons
like the flying bombs, which Hitler is so desperately
clinging to won't save them. From then on, Hitler develops a pathos in private
that can be seen either in crying fits or on the contrary, fits of terrible rage. Hitler is physically
but also psychologically weakened. In his head,
he is becoming more and more under siege. He is very tired,
and has aged prematurely. He's barely 55 years old, but in images
he looks more like an 80-year-old. Hitler's mental and physical state
deteriorates throughout the conflict as his defeats mount. At the start of the war,
he shocks Keitel by bounding about through the carcasses
of an armored Polish train. At the end of the war,
we see him in a film from 1945, his last appearance
in front of the Hitlerjugend. A man who is stooped with a lined face with his left hand behind his back because he had a convulsive tremor. In fact, Hitler was afflicted
with Parkison's disease. He was an insomniac. With all those tonics, antidotes,
and other things that Dr. Morel gave him, he was practically a drug addict. He was incapable of having the necessary
physical and intellectual resources to lead this war
in the middle of the conflict. He receives regular injections. He's medicated,
physically and mentally exhausted, nobody dares to contradict him, and around him are only generals
who carry out his orders. Nobody dares to contradict
anything he says. On the Western front in December 1944,
the Allied forces are in Holland, Luxembourg, Saarbrucken,
Brussels, Antwerp, and Strasbourg. All officers have their eyes
fixed on the Rhine, and the most optimistic ones
believe the war will be over by Christmas. They are forgetting the rage
that drives Hitler, who is more and more cut off from reality. Hitler says, I can make one more gamble and launches a counter-attack, the Ardennes counter-attack,
which he launches on 16th December 1944. He puts Field Marshall Von Rundstedt
in charge of the attack, even though Von Rundstedt
doesn't believe in it to the extent that he doesn't attend
the meeting with the military leaders called by Hitler for the operation. His generals don't believe
in this counter-attack. They are convinced
it's only leading to catastrophe. They can see the superiority of the Allies
in the skies over the western front, but Hitler says they
have to try this operation to cut the Allied forces in two. The idea of a counter-attack
in the Ardennes is to reach the Meuse to reach the port of Anvers which is very important
for the supplies of the Allied forces. Having succeeded
to negotiate with the Allies. He wanted to weaken
the British and American armies and make a compromise peace
with the Allies to be able to then go up
against the Soviets, the communists and the Bolsheviks. It was a gamble, it was, above all,
a major strategic error. It was an attack
that could only work on paper. Even if the element of surprise
could be guaranteed, the military leaders consider
that Hitler's ambitions are disproportionate
to the number of troops available. In 1944, he still has
the same number of divisions. The Panzer division had 120 or 150 tanks
and now had 12% and 10% of their men, but according to him
they still put the markers on the map. That division, that division,
that regiment, that regiment. To attack in the Ardenne,
Hitler has to thin out the Eastern front. The maneuver is suicidal, but once again,
nobody contradicts the Führer. The only way the German attack
would have a chance of succeeding and the German tanks breaking through is if the Allied troops
were rooted to the spot, and for that to happen,
they need bad weather. On the 16th of December 1944,
the weather is favorable to beginning Operation Wacht am Rhein. When the Battle of the Ardennes starts,
the American high commander is knocked out by the scale of the attack. At the beginning, it was quite successful. They succeeded in knocking back
the American armies, notably those on this front. They're at rest
because the American generals thought that the Ardennes were impregnable
that tanks couldn't pass through there. The same error made in 1940. Overwhelmed in many areas, the American GIs surrender
in hundreds to the Germans. However, the lightning attack
by the Wehrmacht quickly fades. Their aims were overreached. In no way was the German Army
in the west capable of penetrating the front as far as Anvers. Choosing to attack
in such terrible weather and being so dependent
on the weather is madness. When we think about how bad
the weather must have been for the Allies, it was the same for the Germans
who had to fight in terrible conditions. The two armies face each other
to fight in freezing temperatures, often reaching -20 degrees. The ground was either snowy or muddy. The remaining tanks,
like the 70-ton tanks were too heavy, so the offensive was held up
by blockades as the savoir-faire that the German Army showed in 1940,
who knew how to handle these blockages, no longer existed. On 22nd December 1944, only six days
after the start of the attack, the German Army began to run out
of ammunition and especially of fuel. The Wehrmacht leadership underestimated
by five the amount of fuel needed. There won't be enough fuel. The fuel is already lacking,
meaning when the attack is launched they only have half of the fuel needed to achieve the objective
given to the German forces. The other half
will have to be taken from the Allies, which is an incredible gamble. From the 23rd of December,
the weather starts to improve. The Allied airplanes can finally take off. From the very first rays of sunlight, all the Allied airplanes take off
and pin down all the German tanks. As soon as the sun comes back, the P47s, the Mustangs swoop down
on the Wehrmacht, and it's all over. It's a massacre. The Anglo-American planes, specifically target the trucks
bringing supplies, and there are just plumes of smoke
from trucks in flames. The Germans are forced
to abandon their equipment faced both with Patton's counter-attack
from the south, and a British counter-attack
from the north against German troops. The troops were either units
of elite-motivated soldiers, but more often Volksgrenadier,
who were inexperienced youth, terrified, badly equipped and not knowing how to advance like their elders in 1940. The Battle of the Ardennes
begins in mid-December 1944 and finishes on 31st January 1945. At that time, the Germans had gone back
to where they had begun, but in this madness, they had lost
between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers. They had lost
a significant number of planes, they'd lost tanks, fuel, and their morale
was obviously in freefall. These things are all lacking when
they need to fight against the Soviets, who at the moment,
were attacking from the East. During the Battle of the Ardennes,
the Russians advanced 500 kilometers. They would have been better
using the forces they had in the East because for the German people
the real danger was in the East because after the German atrocities
regarding the people, they called the Untermensch,
the sub-humans. The villages were burned,
women raped, men and children, et cetera. It was logical. The Russian's hate was terrible, so, in consequence, if he'd reasoned a bit
in support of his people, above all he needed to defend the East. Instead of surrendering,
eaten away by insanity, the Fuhrer takes his people hostage and brings them with him
in his final downfall. Attacked on all fronts,
the Reich that Hitler imagined is living its final moments. The man who previously dominated Europe
from the Atlantic to the Urals now only has imaginary armies
to defend himself. During this time, the Anglo-Americans
brought the war to the heart of Germany with one ultimate objective, Berlin. The Soviets are racing them to it. Stalin wants to arrive in Berlin
before the Americans and the English, and he manages to do so. Berlin is effectively taken
by the Soviets alone. At the end of April 1945, The Reich, which should have lasted
a thousand years, crumbles. In military terms,
as for all the history of the 3rd Reich, today we depend on what the Nazis
say about themselves and what they say about Hitler. In military terms,
he passed as a great military leader, someone who had invented
modern maneuver warfare, who had invented mechanization, et cetera. We realize that in reality,
the exact opposite happened. This wasn't a man of 1940,
he remains a man of 1914. We can clearly see that what was said
about a great war leader was false. I'd say that Hitler
was a man trying to gamble, and that at the start, the fact that he neglects
the whole dimension of strategic tactics, the type of ground, logistical problems, all of these oversights don't catch up
with Hitler, the war leader. Then one day,
all of these conditions for war which should allow a war leader to grow
catch up with him. From then on,
all his bets systematically fail. In the end, his final strategy is suicide. The suicide of the German people, the suicide of those close to him
in a squalid bunker, crushed by the Russians. Therefore,
he's a finished and desperate man who has used up all his tricks, who shoots himself in the temple
after having poisoned his mistress.
