War Factories | Episode 6: Occupied Territories | Free Documentary History

the untold story of war production all wars are about competition and production the side that can produce more is always going to triumph over the other side hitler knows he needs industry if he wants to build a war machine this is a war between the factory the real story of how the second world war was fought and won the united states is about to launch the single greatest program of armament production in human history they swamped the other side with a tide of mass production the secret war of the factories that would decide the fate of the whole world gotta get back to work [Music] world war ii is a wall of factories it is a battle to produce the most planes and tanks and bombs and everything else that goes into winning a war after the nazis occupy much of europe they take over some of the world's biggest factories at the height of their power they control one-fifth of the world's population and almost a third of its wealth the nazis should win the war easily this is the story of what goes wrong before the war germany is an industrial giant with the size of its economy approaching half that of the us it is alongside american britain one of the world's three great industrial powers and when hitler's troops take over much of europe in terms of industrial resources at its disposal it far outstrips the allies [Music] war was about getting factories industries agriculture and being able to feed and clothe and house the german people using the things that they'd stolen from these occupied territories they were going to create an economy that would be a truly global economic power [Music] if you look at some of the large firms and production facilities that germany got control of they are some of the largest in the world [Music] germany already has industrial giants like crook siemens ig farming and daimler-benz but conquest will bring the nazis control of many more [Music] when they take over austria he takes over here steel works in lintz this gives him the idea this is actually really working very well you know i can take over lots of things the conquest of czechoslovakia gives hitler control of skoda one of the world's biggest arms manufacturers skoda produces all sorts of things i mean weapon system tanks and trucks the german way of taking over skoda follows a pattern they walk in they take over the factories they put germans in control they say this is what's going to be produced now this is what's going to happen you either behave yourselves and and join in and cooperate or else you're not going to have a job and you're finished the invasion of poland gives hitler control of coal mines and steel plants and oil refineries they've taken over the low countries belgium which that time is a major coal steel textile producer they control romania with some of the world's largest oil reserves they have access to an extraordinary amount of resources all this gives hitler the economic might he needs to win the war and build the world dominating right he dreams of the nazis absorb much of the industry they conquer into one giant industrial conglomerate called the reichsberger [Music] it absorbs over half of all czech heavy industry a pattern that is repeated across poland and the low countries [Applause] by the early 1940s the company has half a million workers and it's possibly the largest industrial conglomerate anywhere in the world with the resources of europe at his disposal hitler believes he can beat the allies even when america enters the war the us is the world's biggest industrial power and excels at the art of mass production at a time when most germans can only dream of owning a car ordinary americans are driving around in models from ford and general motors if germany is going to win the war it has to learn how to mass produce if the nazis are going to take on continental-sized powers like the soviet union and the united states that requires a whole massive productive industry you need military vehicles you need boots shoes uniforms that the troops require in action you need to supply the troops in the front [Music] the only country in continental europe that has cracked the mass production of vehicles is france and with france now under nazi control hitler has access to giant manufacturers like peugeot renault citroen and michele he believes french industry will deliver victory for the nazis what france has is more trains more aircraft and more vehicles than any other european country and its car industry is one of the most advanced in the world so france is as close to mass production as europe has come france has actually been somewhat of a pioneer companies like peugeot citroen were very much in the business of mass manufacture and we're trying to follow the example set by henry ford on the other side of the atlantic uh which the germans had not quite managed to do by the time the war broke out at the time peugeot is one of france's biggest companies it has a vast industrial complex in social close to the border with germany that employs no fewer than 60 000 workers ever since the early 20th century peugeot has been keen to adopt the latest technologies particularly [Music] in the 1930s america leads the world in mass production but in europe only britain and france are producing large numbers of affordable motor vehicles [Music] peugeot's production lines are turned to making military equipment aircraft engines armored cars and all-terrain trucks between september 1939 and june 1940 peugeot produces 24 000 military vehicles [Music] if hitler had any sense and let's face it he really does peugeot would continue to make military equipment for the germans but that's not what happens the national socialists dislike capitalism which they see as jewish they do not understand it and see industry as something to be brought under state control the german military see industry in conquered territory as a prize of war the german intention was to exploit occupied europe through various channels and everywhere they occupied there was a very large emphasis on plunder and looting [Music] germany was looting everything germans preferred to loot germans prefer to plunder rather than to exploit friends rationally soldiers were looting everything to send them to germany that means clothes perfumes wines and so on so in fact the plundering was made on a very huge scale by everybody the germans steal from shops and homes and mines and from the factories they steal the machines this is a really bad idea for one thing machine tools quite literally will not work typically as well when they're moved to a different kind of production facility but also what this does is to destroy capital essentially why should anybody voluntarily put money into replacing those machine tools that have been robbed and plundered by the use of force by an occupying power the scale of nazi looting is breathtaking [Music] from france holland and belgium they take over 4 000 locomotives and 140 000 railway wagons as well as over 300 thousand rifles five thousand artillery pieces nearly four million shells and over two thousand tanks the nazis also seize hundreds of thousands of vehicles along with the fuel needed to keep them on the road if you want to stop a country producing anything this is exactly how to do it i think the problem really is that the military bureaucratic state does not understand productive processes it somehow thinks that finnish products like tanks factories machines come from nowhere and doesn't understand that they're the product of a large complicated set of peaceful voluntary relations they think rather that they have conquered people and therefore essentially you're in a relationship where you can suck the life out of them the trouble with being a parasite like that is that ultimately you will kill your host the stupidity of the nazis plundering soon becomes apparent hitler is about to suffer his first military setback in the first battle in history to be fought in the skies the battle of britain [Music] phase one knock out the royal air force and its bases get control of the air in the sea lanes across the channel that's all there was to it [Music] intent on wiping out britain's air defenses the luftwaffe launches a large-scale attack the raf came facing odds of six eight ten to one it's a battle of numbers which the germans seem sure to win [Music] between august 24th and september 5th 35 major attacks were launched they cost the germans 506 planes while the british lost only 219 planes and saved 132 pilots not only does germany lose many more planes [Music] it is also producing fewer [Music] from a slow start britain is making new combat aircraft at an astonishing rate the battle of the war factories has begun the germans thought that this was going to be a short war hitler always went in thinking knock out poland knock out france low countries britain kick in the barn door and the whole structure is going to fall in but that doesn't happen german plane charred and crumpled and scattered across the good earth of england for proof of their victory hitler will need the industrial might of europe to win this war and to massively increase output in the factories he's been plundering [Music] all across the occupied territories men and women are forced to work for the germans [Music] at skoda they're making tanks the vermont after it puts in an order for 325 jag panther 38 tees now this is a tank that skoda originally designed but the germans have adopted it for themselves off they used it so successfully during the blitzkrieg there were new lines that were developed and tested and produced in the skoda plants during the war the germans oversaw the development and use of skoda in the german war effort other armaments producers followed the same pattern the germans would come in take over and they would allow the technicians and the engineers and the production workers to carry on in place or if they refused the germans would bring their own people in the nazis are no longer plundering the factories in the territories they are occupying they're placing orders with them having lost almost 2 000 warplanes in the battle of britain hitler turns to france france has one of the most advanced aircraft industries in the world after all france is one of the first to mass-produce planes and their factories have been lying empty since the occupation and they've lost more than 80 per cent of their workforce the reich orders two and a half thousand planes and french factories flicker back to life german orders kept that industry going the germans are rationing everything and it was the only way of getting hold of the raw materials they needed like oil and aluminium and it also meant that they could start building up their workforce again almost all of whom were now unemployed nazi state-controlled firms like junckers forcibly acquire stakeholdings in french firms which have to supply them with engines and other parts junkers wanted complete control over how these engines were built and demanding shares of course is a great way of guaranteeing this because any kind of commercial transaction always favored the germans they paid below the market rates and they often even didn't pay what they owed so if you refused to work for them they'd threaten to shut down the entire factory every single aspect of life was controlled by the germans including whether or not you ate and so quite quickly people realized that if they didn't try and keep their jobs in the factories they were going to be unemployed and have nothing to eat french companies are now under orders from the third reich as for french workers they work or they starve and are shot the owners of factory were not happy to work for germany but it was the only solution to preserve both their factories and also employment germany was very often the sole customer possible so they had in fact no choice however french factories are failing to produce products to the same standard or the same quantities as they did before the wall [Music] adapter led despite the presence of guards peugeot workers are 86 less productive than they were before german occupation six out of every 10 trucks have faulty clutches the workers were working slow they were accidentally putting too few ball bearings into key pieces of machinery it was much easier to attack these soft targets and you could cause immense damage to the german army in november 1941 peugeot is ordered to produce one hundred thousand cylinder heads almost three years later the company has delivered a measly one thousand one hundredth of the order [Music] the german occupation was not popular for most of the french it was unbearable [Music] the main resistance was to a certain extent a passive resistance go slow go slow that was the motto in french war factories sabotage takes many forms at citroen you get workers purposefully notching the dipsticks of the oil tanks in the wrong place so the reservoir looks full but it isn't so what happens is that you get these engine seizures not at the factory but out on the road [Music] [Applause] [Music] national socialism demands that economic life should be controlled by the state the prices of goods are set not by the market but by nazi officials they set the prices low in the short run your population will be delighted that food costs less for example or maybe companies will be delighted their raw materials cost less the problem is if you do it the people who are producing that good have no incentive to produce enough of it what you will do is reduce production in that area and the result is you'll ultimately end up with shortages you simply won't be able to get enough of the product that you're artificially under pricing fixing prices beneath market rates leads to shortages everywhere and soon they are running out of food [Music] france is a substantial grain producer but it needs fertilizer that's based on nitrogen and that can only be supplied at the expense of making explosives so what happens the price goes up nazi economic planners attempt to address production problems but every intervention only serves to make matters worse you've got high intensity dairy farms relying on imported animal feed which is unable to get through because of the british naval blockade so what danish farmers are forced to do is to cull their herds one of the quite bizarre aspects of the nazi occupation of europe is the way in which the command and controlled economy led to spectacular misallocation of resources resources were being directed not to economic ends but to political ends in other words to suit the interests of the people with power nazi planners requisition horses from farms they also confiscate fuel from farmers and remove farm laborers this sets off a disastrous chain reaction because there are now no horses to plow the fields there's also no fuel for the tractors and so what you see are significant falls in food production all over europe grain imports from yugoslavia and hungary two of the reich's main suppliers fall by almost three million tons in france the grain harvest is less than half of what it was two years earlier germany once again turns to simple plunder from france germany takes a million tons of wheat and oats over a million tons of hay and straw and 160 000 tons of meat the consequences are devastating france like the rest of nazi occupied europe is starved of its own the food shortage is france's most pressing problem france face to face with starvation shops were empty and so uh the french were not able to buy what they used to buy before the war it was very very very difficult for the french to survive throughout the war the average daily intake is just over 1100 calories only half of what an adult needs to survive [Music] according to national socialism state economic planning would prove superior to the anarchy of free market capitalism but instead across occupied europe it is leading to chaos the great advantage of having at least a half functioning market economy as the cases of the united states canada britain show is that productive industry will be quite simply more nimble they will be better able to solve problems they will be more able to work out practical solutions rapidly and quickly to major supply side bottlenecks for example now by contrast in a command economy what you'll find is that actually it does not pay to point out that there's a better way of doing it far from getting you promoted this will actually get you into serious trouble in free market britain in america companies are earning profits and workers are earning wages in occupied europe industry is operating under duress french workers were not introduced to work a lot because they had not enough food because the wages were always late and this can explain to a certain extent the decrease of productivity disaffection in the workforce costs the germans dearly especially in key sectors like coal mining when the germans took over what they did was to abolish breaks and extended the working day and there was no increase in wages so as a result of longer hours and insufficient rations the miners went on strike those miners were really underfed and moral conditions were terrible because the germans put soldiers with weapons on the mines and so it was also a very very bad atmosphere to produce which explain the lack of enthusiasm of coal miners production quickly slumps by twenty percent soon the coal available to nazi controlled french industry falls to half its pre-war level and less coal means less steel if you've got laborers working down in coal mine and the coal is supposed to feed your steel industry and your locomotives and everything else but they're starving their production goes way down so you can't get the coal and then it has a knock-on effect on everything else less coal and less steel means less of everything you need to win a war the aircraft industry is especially affected every month it needs thousand tons of coal just to make the alloys for the planes the germans ordered but germany is only able to supply four thousand tons which slows production right down now when you couple that with a demoralized workforce the french struggle to fulfill those orders by the end of 1941 france and the netherlands produced just 78 aircraft substantially less than the germans who by now are making almost 12 000 planes a year however the british are soaring ahead producing an astonishing 20 000 aircraft it's actually quite hard to believe that the western european countries now dominated by germany had been such a formidable economic force with a combined gdp greater than that of britain but by the beginning of 1942 they are barely functioning raw materials are running out everywhere a crippling shortage of oil brings france to a standstill thousands of litres of milk are discarded every day because there's no way of transporting it to keep food flowing from france germany is forced to export fuel at a time when it is also running out the economic mismanagement in the second world war in central europe is enormous the whole question of production and distribution becomes a huge problem for the germans as the war progresses in fact rations are so tight that opel is forced to shut down production at germany's largest truck factory because there's not enough petrol to check the fuel pumps of vehicles coming off the assembly lines it is a stark lesson for germany having stripped the occupied territories of their capital and resources they are no longer productive the empire it craves is crumbling to dust the one resource the occupied territories can provide is manpower to replace the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are being slaughtered on the eastern front young germans were leaving fields and factories so they had to be replaced and germany relied on forced labour french prisoners are thrown back to their families in exchange for able-bodied countrymen condemned to servitude in their stand at first germany tried to attract french workers on a voluntary basis but the conditions of work were so harsh that it was a very bad propaganda when workers came back from germany so germany decided to enforce forced labor it's another stupid nazi move thousands of french workers now flee to join the maquis hiding in the mountains this guerrilla resistance force will cause havoc for the germans as for all the forced laborers in german factories they now do everything they can to disrupt production the leading nazis the idea was that there was this population out there in eastern europe the jews we kill the slavs can become our servants and the only motivation they need is the threat of the whip or the hammer by the autumn of 1944 one in three workers in vermont armaments production is from a nazi-occupied territory of that third most are from the soviet union poland and france they're under compulsion starving and angry driven by fear alone many of the slave laborers are kept in concentration camps like nats violence only is also one of the most murderous camps in the nazi system out of its fifty two thousand detainees almost half die here mistreatment malnutrition and torture are the main causes of death in total the nazis abduct approximately 12 million people from almost 20 european countries over the course of the war this is belsen where people from all parts of europe were hurting here the living walked among the dead typhus and starvation killed over sixty thousand slave labor freed up german labor but it was profoundly mistaken policy as well as being inhumane and ethically wrong that's because slave labor is never as productive as freelay why should you be productive work hard make an extra effort much less be innovative when all of the benefits of that extra effort and innovation are going to go to your owner or master whom you almost certainly hate and despise you tend to be having a whole group of people who do not want to be where they are and are usually motivated to work against the regime that's forcing them into this horrible situation and so slave labor typically will be malingering foot dragging and will find all kinds of ways to uh interfere with production and be less productive than it might be simply being slip shot and not very efficient in producing parts can have disastrous results we must have the world's most powerful clubs forget ours forget working conditions no freedom here no labor unions no overtime the pure tells you where to work when to work how long the work how much your work is worth so there were many many examples of sabotage for example pouring concrete that looked as if it was well mixed but it was actually too weak in a few weeks the walls would crumble and fall in on their nazi heads changing the calibration of instruments in such a way that the shells wouldn't work [Music] there are many many examples of trains that broke down about a month after they left the factory tanks the same guns the same for the nazis it's a spectacular own goal [Music] by 1943 allied war factories are massively out producing the axis powers [Music] the allies produce over 70 000 tanks seven times more than the axis they make five times as many guns and three times as many combat aircraft [Music] nazi war production is being disrupted on every level day and night allied bombers are dropping huge numbers of bombs destroying german war factories the nazis desperately need to increase arms production so peugeot is put under the command of ferdinand porsche an honorary member of the ss its workers are now told to make specialist aircraft parts what they don't know is that they're actually building fuselage parts for v1 rockets [Music] the v1 is the first of hitlers of their gal tungsten these are vengeance weapons and they're designed to terrorize london into submission so when british intelligence discovers peugeot's involvement it rapidly becomes number three on their list of targets to be destroyed on the night of the 15th of july 1943 the residents of sosho awoken by the ominous rumble of halifax bombers the germans being german draw much of their industrial strength from factories in the occupied country obviously those factories must be put out of action just as if they were in germany itself over 700 large bombs fall on the peugeot factory [Music] britain knows that workers at france's wall factories are doing everything in their power to subvert the nazis so it desperately seeks some other way to close down production [Music] and it was realized in london that there was a more effective way to destroy the factory get in a saboteur and start blowing this factory to pieces and they recruit harry ray from the special operations executive to help them out i want you to go to occupied france what do we do when we get there organize resistance act as liaison officers with london all right i'm on the british smuggled a harry ray with one instruction blow up key pieces of machinery key bits of machinery that are very very hard to replace ray is part jewish and hates the nazis with a passion britain's special operations executive air drops the explosives needed [Music] they had to get the owner of the factory mr mr peugeot himself on board he um was approached on the quiet by london said can you help us blow up your factory he sort of spluttered into his wine said what me blow up my own factory but that's exactly what they required of him he was anti-nazi he agreed to do it rudolf peugeot himself provides detailed plans of his factory and which machines are key to production [Music] he really put the factory out of action for many many weeks that's the time it took for the germans to replace this key piece of machinery as soon as they got the thing in situ and the factory was back and up and running again what did they do they sabotaged the same piece of machinery and put the factory out of action again and it showed that sabotage was highly effective it was a brilliant way of bringing hitler's mechanized army to its knees all over the occupied territories resistance against the nazis is becoming bolder [Music] people of denmark striking back at the germans wrecked this large armament factory in copenhagen the local factory produced cellulose before the war then the enemy turned it over to explosive manufacture and the partisans burnt it down as you can see they made a good job of the factory and the railway you were supposed to impede sabotage slow down and make it difficult for the germans in any way you possibly could short of for example killing germans because that always brought reprisals of 50 or 100 to be killed if a german was shot with every brutal reprisal the nazis become more deeply despised resistance began to wage open warfare [Music] when the germans took a resistor with a weapon he was shot down on the spot french civilians women and men murdered by the nazis the kind of horror that roused the bitterest hatred despite the threat of execution saboteurs are running extremely effective campaigns against the germans all over europe when the gestapo is not around to check up on shipments our fish package flavored the dried cod fish with a dash of nice tasty kerosene severely disrupting their ability to wage war the nazis are having a great deal of trouble to keep the railroad lines open the tracks cannot be guarded everywhere so in the country boys have learned how to handle wrenches and crowbars it is dangerous but it's worth taking a chance anything is better than living like slaves under nazis and quislings if your trained transportation system is constantly being sabotaged you can't distribute food or or all the production of the coal or anything else you need not to mention troops and weapons and so on so everything starts to have a knock-on effect and this becomes worse and worse as the situation deteriorates and it becomes an enormous problem for the nazis trying to keep this whole machine running day and night many targets are being hit in the occupied countries in the nazi right itself the goodrich tyre factory on the outskirts of paris responsible for one quarter of the whole french tyre manufacturing output before the raid after in the last full year of occupation the combined deliveries to germany of military equipment from france belgium the netherlands poland denmark norway and serbia amount to just nine percent of germany's already diminished armament production [Music] despite the threat of terror germany's empire is simply refusing to cooperate in france due to shortages the production collapsed france is really destroyed the germans are still fighting a losing battle because they're really relatively speaking quite a small country with very limited resources they start running out of raw materials they start running out of coal they start running out of fuel and even though they may still have arbuments production capability the whole war effort starts to grind slowly and surely to a halt the regime is crumbling from within and after d-day and the successful allied invasion it isn't long before the germans are finally defeated one of the quite clear policy decisions that the allied military make after they enter europe is that they are not going to simply take stuff they will actually pay a fair and reasonable price for anything that they they need from the civilian population what this also does of course is to create a much more friendly relationship between occupying troops and the population of the territory they've occupied if you are confronted with occupying troops even if you feel you don't like them you're going to respect them and you're going to have much more benign view of them [Music] world war ii is a war of factories it is determined in the end by the vastly greater industrial output of the western powers [Music] mass production standardization have been the key elements for success for example planes for example tanks germany has been unable to produce on a wide scale the national socialists do not like capitalism nazi germany drove its economy by terror and the results were catastrophic although the nazis certainly do exploit the occupied territories they aren't capable of harnessing their full industrial potential what the nazis do is they take away every incentive to produce and they leave behind this demoralized disgruntled labor force who are working against and not for them in theory the nazis might have won the war germany was one of the world's most dynamic industrial powers the number of factories and mines within the territory it controlled was awesome but the national socialists never understood that free people will always be vastly more hardworking and imaginative than a population of slaves driven by fear [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, War Factories, Secret History of World War 2, World War II, WWII, WW 2, Second World War, War Production, War Industry, History of World War 2, Great War, Occupied France, Peugeot, Citroen, Renualt, Skoda, Skoda Factory, Nazi Occupied Europe, German War Production, German Tanks, German Tanks WW2, WW2 Tanks

Id: O1pMKy_9jVc

Length: 43min 57sec (2637 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021