War Factories | Season 3, Episode 3: Skoda - The Factory That Fought Back | FD History

foreign [Music] always going to Triumph This is a war between the factory the real story of how the world wars were fought and won it may sound strange but modern Wars they're not won by battles they're won by factories and the other side with a tide of mass production and those factories would shape the modern world and Brands like Porsche skoda Rolls-Royce they all honed their Craft on the research and development that was needed to win Wars thank you [Music] May 1945 Albert Gering director of the skoda arms Factory is arrested and placed under investigation at Nuremberg for collaborating with his Nazi brother on paper this is an open and shut case a family member of one of the world's most infamous Nazis who made money who profiteered from the sale of armaments he even used slave labor he had been to to raisins that concentration camp and picked up a supply of prisoners who went into his Factory to work and were never seen again [Music] despite the damning list against him Albert Gering seemed unnaturally calm [Music] it's down in front of his interrogators in 1945 and just slides this pathetic little dog-eared bit of paper across the table with 34 names on it now these names include the composer of The Merry Widow Franz liha they also include Dr Kurt schusnig the former Chancellor of Austria and even Archduke Joseph Ferdinand last of the Habsburg Dynasty this list is Bonkers and they look at this list of celebrities and they're like and what is this an Albert very calmly tells them that this is a list of 34 prominent figures and families that he had rescued from the Nazi regime he basically claims to be another Oscar Schindler he claims that he was playing his brother the whole time pretending to collaborate by managing this arms Factory while secretly spiriting Jews out of the country and away from the Nazi regime we have here a man who spent the war and before the war incidentally developing a side shuffle in freeing persecuted people's Jews helping liberate targeted individuals at threat from the Nazi regime and of course he's perfectly placed to do that why well he's got the cover of his big brother No One's Gonna suspect a man called Goring who works in the skoda factory are they [Music] this is the extraordinary true story of how the skoda arms Factory worked to sabotage the German war machine with the aid of the Nazi's brother [Music] 6. an enterprising young technician called Emil skoda was appointed chief engineer of The volenstein Foundry Works in Pilsen Bohemia ml skoda was a brilliant engineer but more he was brilliant at seeing gaps in the market and pushing his Engineers for it kind of like a 1900s version of Elon Musk his biggest problem actually was his boss count Valenstein vartenberg who was a mark ER model cautious individual than he was and he didn't really see the need to take the risk that Emil wanted to take in the end his boss gets totally fed up with this he's not cut from the same cloth so what does he do no he doesn't fire skoda he sells his company to him now free to pursue his instincts skoda spent the next 20 years retooling the plant into a state-of-the-art steel works by 1890 the skoda plant was turning out high quality steel castings for all kinds of marine ships and also turning out boilers and steam engines and all manner of mining equipment the stuff which is really really important to get right if you consider the amount of ships and steam trains which blew up because of 40 Oilers you were making your name doing high quality engineering the equivalent today would be people manufacturing high-end Electronics but skoda thinks Hang on we're missing something here there's a gap in the market what skoda begins to realize is that the big money lies in weapons armaments and he was already supplying the Navy with turrets for his battleships so he thought why am I making the turrets for battleships when actually I could be making the guns as well it's a no-brainer in 1896 he added an arms manufacturer to his already burgeoning Empire but it wasn't all plain sailing few men ever lost money in providing weapons to kill people with but Emil skoda was one of them problem was investment produce modern Weaponry you need a lot of specialist tools it had to be high spec killing machines needed to be very efficient effect to sell on a very competitive market especially if you're producing rifle barrels or barrels for large caliber guns you will need a lot of very precise equipment he needed Precision tooling and machinery and you needed know-how and none of that comes cheap skoda did not turn a profit until 1906. and unfortunately by that time he was dead Emil skoda died in 1900. he didn't live long enough to see his plans come to fruition but the corporation he left behind would eventually start repaying its investors faith in his vision handsome what saves skoda's company if saves the right word was the over ambition of the austro-hungarian empire in the run-up to World War One Europe was dominated by warmongering Imperial Powers prepared to spend a fortune on omelettes the habsburgs of Austria were one of them in 1902 skoda gained a monopoly supplying weapons to the austro-hungarian Navy just at a point where Naval investment was going through the roof the naval arms race during the early 20th century was absolutely insane it was a global Naval race there are lots of Nations building ships everyone wants to have control the sea it's all about building your Navy up to compete with the likes of the royal Navy and the French navy which were miles ahead of the German and Austrian Rivals between 1889 and 1914 when war finally breaks out in Europe the size of the austro-hungarian Navy alone has increased six-fold it was great for skoda because the ships are a means to very very large guns around so they need a lot of guns to equip them especially when we're talking about Dreadnought battleships with their big guns and the company that's exclusively supplying their guns and turrets is skoda at the start of the Great War skoda's Weaponry was in great demand thanks to their experience with Naval Munitions go to very quickly under reputation for heavy artillery and everyone wanted their guns from 1914 to 1918. skoda produced 13 000 artillery pieces for austro-hungary but they also supplied them to the Ottoman Empire and to other nations as well who were fighting as their allies pretty much every Army that was on the side of the Central Powers in the first world war relied on skoda's 100 millimeter cannon in fact the guns were so good that when the Allies captured them they would often try and make use of them because they were reliable good quality machines by the end of the first world war skoda's Workforce much like every other ornaments company had just exploded they'd gone from 10 000 employees to 35 000 but then all of this comes to a massive grinding Hall in 1918 because there is no more war and nobody needs weapons anymore the Great War staggered to a close skoda was forced to look for new markets with the collapse of the austro-hungarian Empire which of course disintegrates at the end of the first World War skoda loses its main client the basket case that was Austra habsburgs has just imploded so what does skoda do well all is not lost because they are in the bran shiny new country otherwise known as Czechoslovakia cooked up at the Paris peace conference that's okay they need to arm themselves so that's business for skoda but it's not enough business luckily as a foreign policy decision it works for other powers to have skoda in existence and for them to carry on supplying arms to all of the countries that surround Germany all sorts of countries Poland Greece Yugoslavia Bulgaria Switzerland even Italy were buying what skoda was producing skoda was the arms manufacturer for Central and Eastern Europe there was no Russian competition thanks to the Communist takeover there was no German competition thanks to the crack Works having me shut down and the British composition Armstrong Whitworth had just spent the previous war supplying most of the weapons which had blown up large chunks of their countries so people didn't really want to buy them skoda money skoda is now one of the biggest players in that market [Music] but a new power is rising in the Reich and it casts Covetous eyes upon the innovating arms Factory in the upstart state of Czechoslovakia Adolf Hitler hated Czechoslovakia and with good reason Czechoslovakia was an entirely new country she was created in this post-war settlement the Treaty of S.I but she was an artificial state in many ways you've got checks in the West slovakians in the East and smeared around that western border controversially about three million Germans in a region known as the sedaten land now the sedation land had a strong Austrian population and a strong German population this meant that there were large numbers who were not really keen on being where they were the thinking was of course at the time of Versailles you can't have a resurgent Germany so let's trim it a bit cut-offs and Germans ideally though is located in industrial heartlands give it to Czechoslovakia and therefore for weakened Germany's capacity to realm but like much of the Versailles settlement the idea backfired spectacularly the partitioning of the sedatan land was our Runnings or in the Weimar Republic in Germany post World War one it was seems arbitrary very unfair basically the removal of millions of Germans almost every German hates the fact that these native Germans and austrians being forced to live in this new upstart state of Czechoslovakia that same population which lived in that area was ripe for exploitation any slight any feeling that the central government had ignored them that could be taken advantage of by a Wily politician in Germany or Austria so when you have the Nazi party under Hitler turning this into a core selebra it becomes a really obvious rallying cry use it to justify the expansion and the rebuild of a new German Reich so you have Angelus pushing into Austria and you have the grab for the sedata land in Czechoslovakia foreign but Hitler and the Nazis had much more Sinister reasons for Union with Czechoslovakia than the fate of three million German Nationals Hitler didn't give a flying Hoot about the sedation land it didn't matter to him the people didn't really bother him What mattered to him was the skoda works that's what he wanted skoda for a very particular reason when Hitler's realming in the 1930s he's pretty aware that he may well have to fight a war on two fronts you've got to knock out your opponents in the West Britain and France and actually to maintain resources to fulfill your levitron dream you have to head east into Russia if you're gonna fight a two-fronted war you need to box clever so his generals developed this really revolutionary idea actually first tested by the British as a way of conducting this really Lightning Fast campaign that can knock out the enemies on one front quickly swiftly redeployed to face the second front line it's going to be famously known as the lightning War Blitzkrieg the key component of which is the tank tanks were fairly new to the battlefield in the 1930s they first made their entrance in the battle of the film in 1916. they had come a long way in the first world war and they were part of the all arms Victory the Allies but by 1930s we're already a world away from the tanks that you see at the end of the first world war these new attacks were lighter and much faster capable of speeds of up to 40 kilometers an hour of 24 miles per hour they also packed a bigger punch they had a small cannon in the turret and were backed up by machine guns if you combine these things with a fast-moving motorized Brigade these panzers as they're called tanks they're gonna really punch their way through enemy positions and in circle opponents and sever their supply lines Chief Architect of the Panzer tank Blitzkrieg was a German general called Heinz gadari and he reckoned that with just nine or ten Panzer divisions he could take out any European country in a few weeks but the Germans didn't have nine Panzer divisions a Hitler being forced to rearm in secret before 1935 and what he had to do was to disguise his brand new tanks as agricultural Machinery by the start of 1938 he was lagging way behind his vision of where the Army should be okay he had 600 000 men but he only had three Panzer divisions and the tanks in those divisions were not the monsters most people think of when they picture German panzers this is the Panzer III the standard medium German tank of the Blitzkrieg it's got 50 millimeters of armor most amount of 37 millimeter gun and it could hold its own against the British Crusader in the western desert it struggled in 1940 against the French jar B and was no match at all for the t-34 we're still there weren't very many of them for the invasion of Poland just 98 of them Hitler needed something else to bulk up his Panzer forces and he knew where to go to get them but he's thinking about what he wants is a tank Factory he needs a good efficient one and especially he wants the one which is supplying tanks to Poland to all his potential enemies because that's what the skoda works are doing they are providing artillery they're providing tanks and good quality tanks to all his potential enemies in front of his liebus room in 1935 skoda developed a new generation of light tank primarily for the Czechoslovakian Army the lt-35 produced in 1935 is armed with a 37 millimeter gun which is bigger than most other tanks this time or it can take a smaller rapid firing Cannon it's got a machine gun to deal with troops it is reliable it is effective and it is cost effective so you can buy them in large numbers it's basically what you want a tank to be it's not as fast as some of its German counterparts but to be fair as they break down more than it it probably gets there about the same time an improvement on their lt-34 light tank the Czechoslovakian Army had 298 lt35s scheduled for service by 1939. and Hitler wanted them along with the rest of skoda's weaponry if he can get that factory that's negative to his enemies he can get it under his own control then that gives him that production which gives him those tanks which is a big win and it takes it from the enemy so it's a double win what happens next is one of the most hotly debated moments in the history of Hitler's rise because in September 38 Hitler begins amassing this re-armed German Army on the checkers low back border and he is absolutely itching for a fight a little war something which will give him a quick Victory and show his power to the world I mean it doesn't take a genius to read his cards he's pushed into the Rhine he's stuffed his way into Austria what's next he makes a play for Czechoslovakia and he's banking on Britain and France being too spineless to come to czechoslovakia's Aid and remember France in particular is meant to be the big backer of Czechoslovakia Hitler is gambling foreign [Music] [Music] by October 1938 Adolf Hitler and the Western allies are playing a high-stakes game of poker with the fate of Czechoslovakia and Hitler holds all the aces both Britain and France at this time are absolutely terrified of getting dragged into a war they're not ready to fight so come 1938 when Hitler's pushing their backs against the wall neither of them wants to commit they don't feel ready and then you've got Allied intelligence estimates that Germany can mobilize up to 90 military divisions that's more than a million men in fact Allied intelligence is wrong in 1938 Germany can barely muster 38 divisions for The Invasion only three of them armored ranged against them the checks can raise up to 57 divisions With Better Tax the Germans only have six weeks of supplies with which to conduct their blitzkrieg and the checks have the skoda works this skoda works are key they're a symbol of what the checks were capable of the czechoslovakians had put a new prime minister into place to deal with the crisis Jan sivroy he'd been a general who'd served with distinction in World War one and his plan was to really dig in and wait for the Allies to come the Czechoslovakian Army and even bought a set of fortress gun emplacements from skoda similar to the magino line so the Czechs are prepared to fight a waiting game but this is the wrong strategy to be remembered Germany has pairing to fight a very different kind of War to the one that everybody else is preparing for the Germans were not built around a long-term wall they were built around a six-week War that's how long they had supplies for you got to remember that the Germans conquered France in six weeks blitzkrie was called lightning War for a reason on paper the Czechoslovakian Army looks pretty good but when you take out Fortress battalions the 17 divisions of untrained reserves and the fact that it only has 17 battle-ready divisions to face Germany's 38 battle ready divisions frankly there's every possibility that if the checks had resisted in 1938 things would have gone just as badly for them as they did for Poland in 1939. but the checks are never given the chance to prove their metal everyone had bought into Hitler's overconfident propaganda including Hitler himself frankly Hitler's Aura of confidence pays off Hitler's playing a bit of a game of core my bluff yeah he's seeing how far he can push what he knows are reluctant allies these guys have not wanted War they've not re-armed and that is precisely what happens because the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain notoriously flies out to Munich signs that Infamous piece of paper that brings supposedly peace in our time he even gets to stand on the balcony with the King celebrating this great piece he's bought in 1938 and by the way nobody thought to invite to this Infamous meeting the leader of the checks you know Czechoslovakia is sold down the river floated down the river why because Hitler gets the sedated land [Music] it looks like Hitler's got everything he wants without firing a shot [Applause] but for Hitler it wasn't enough hitter is furious because without his little war he can't occupy pills and the skoda factory that sits there that's what he really wants he has repatriated at 3 million Germans in the sudeten land and for them he's a hero but for Hitler that's just an excuse he really wants the bigger prize six months later Hitler's knockout punch into Czech Slovakia rolling into Prague in 1939 is evidence that hey this boy ain't gonna stop her nothing this isn't about the reunification of the German Valk the German race no this is a warmonger doing a smash and grab and what's the significant about knocking out the rest of Czech Slovakia well what sits in that remaining rump part of Czechoslovakia the skoda works Hitler now controlled all of czechoslovakia's banks industry and armors it's been estimated that the Nazis acquired 28.3 million dollars worth of gold when he took over Czechoslovakia in March 1939. they also acquired thousands of Tanks guns ammunition and most importantly The skoda Works itself the ability to produce more tanks more guns more ammunition people who need is something to bulk up is pounds of forces and when they took over the skoda factory in Czechoslovakia they got these this is the lt-35 the Germans simply reclassify it as the p35t for Czechoslovakia although the checks classifier as a light tank it's actually got 10 millimeters more armor than the front of a Mark III a superior 37 millimeter gun it looks like a panzer3 it fights like a Panzer 3. it's all intents and purposes it is a Panzer 3. and the key point is they've actually got an additional 298 tanks ready for a much bigger blitzkrieg something like one in nine or ten the tanks involved in the invasions of Poland and France were Panzer 35 T's and over 135 teas rolled into Russia and Germany invaded in June 1941. the Nazis now controlled one of the largest arms factories in Europe but to make it work for them they needed to install their own people at the top by the time you get to the war skoda already employ a key family member of one of the top Nazis yes Harman Goring brother Albert Goring was directly head hunted by skoda pre-war when the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia skoda offered him a job as director of exports because they hoped that if they had him in place then it would sort of stop the Nazis from interfering in their business Albert went to his brother Colonel and asked him for permission to take the job with skoda and Hermann was ecstatic to agree he gives Albert his Blessing in fact he does better than that he promotes Albert within skoda to the general director of the company so you have the brother of a leading Nazi who's now running one of the biggest Armament producers in Europe you would say that is Queensland that is absolute perfect play by the Third Reich let's be honest for Hermann Goering who's always seeking power attention glory having his brother be in control of such a major arminence Works was a huge feather in the cap it would mean that works would be part of the Goring family the Goring support system for the Nazi infrastructure that would give him power and Status obviously if you're home and going it makes perfect sense to have your brother running the biggest arms Factory in Europe it would turn out to be one of the worst decisions Hermann Goering ever made questions [Music] it isn't until the end of the war that the scale of Hermann gering's mistake becomes apparent when Albert Reveals His secret to the Nuremberg investigators he basically claims that he was playing his brother or time managing this arms Factory while secretly spiriting Jews out of the country and away from the Nazi regime now the story felt literally incredible unbelievable and to Albert's obvious surprise the interrogators they frankly they just laughed in his face they are absolutely not buying this at all I think one of them even says that he's about as subtle as his brother is obese no they're not buying it it's utter nonsense um and no just no Albert it looks as if guring's Gambit is going to fail until a new interrogator joins the inquiry then we have major Victor Parker Rock up he has an aunt called Sophie who was married to Franz lehong who is the guy that composed the famous Merry Widow and his testimony is instrumental Jewish aunts for fear had converted to Catholicism and she married Franz Leah and she gave Parker all these stories of Goring the good guy Goring who saved individuals including her family from a fate including death at concentration camps at the same time you've got other people coming forward and they too are now testifying to Albert's character and actually one of them is Albert's personal position a man called Laszlo Kovach and he tells this story about how Albert had him open up a Swiss bank account and that they'd been using this money to create effectively like an underground railroad to get Jews out of the area and to Lisbon as Albert guring's story unfolds it becomes clear that he had even been working with the check resistance Albert had contacts in the check resistant to confirm that Albert had actually tipped them off about a secret U-Boat base and Nazi plans to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. this of course was information that Albert had gleaned from his Brotherhood but perhaps most importantly Albert turned a blind eye to all the passive resistance that went on inside his Factory [Music] say that the Germans are efficient and the might and the efficiency of the German war machine yeah scrub that not under Albert Goring it wasn't Albert while running the factory was the most ineffective manager known to mankind allowing his employees to get away with a go slow which was of monumental standards work on the production lines always took longer mysteriously than it should have tasks forgot to get done crucial manuals well you know they were mistranslated in key places an important documents are getting lost you name it it happened at skoda to the point that there was actually an inquiry into why they weren't getting sufficient tanks out the other end of this supposedly amazing armaments production line it got to the point that even Hermann Goering in his drug-filled booze-filled days actually realized something was going wrong in the skoda works and he demanded a family meeting with Albert to find out what was going on and he says look I need to know if you're using the whole capacity of skoda properly Albert produced a tale of Woe based around the lack of raw materials coming through the difficulty of getting supplies difficulty of getting labor the issues which he was having competing with other works and other factories so this is great whatever Albert said to him he managed to mollify him but yeah the Nazi leadership had begun to realize that perhaps things were not all well at skoda this may not sound like much but one of the key themes of the Nazi war machine throughout the war was a chronic lack of production if you are running an epically sized Factory like skoda then you are responsible for making sure that the Nazi war machine has tanks guns whatever that you're supposed to be supplying and if you're not doing this to the optimum level it's one of the major reasons that the Nazis lose the second world war one of the most crucial pieces of Weaponry to come out of the skoda works was the yagpants of tank Hunter also known as the hetzer skoda built 2800 of these during the war now that sounds really impressive until you discover that skoda's production Target for tank Busters was 500 a month and by mid-44 that's Fallen to 145. similar War factories in Britain or in America would be quite happily churning out six to seven hundred tanks on the same size facility a month this is how bad it is all of this is at a point where Hitler's generals are desperate for anything anything that can stop these waves of Shermans sweeping across normally after D-Day and then you've got hordes of t-34s pouring out of the Soviet Union what do you need you need tag Hunters what don't you have tank hunters and at the heart of this is the brother of one of the lead Nazis you couldn't make it up it's a disaster it doesn't matter how good your tanks are if you're not getting them out of the factory onto the front line they're useless but as the war Drew to a close the Gestapo grew ever more suspicious of the man in charge of the underperforming skoda works [Music] DARPA issued a warrant for his arrest not once but four times and each time Hermann would have to get Albert out of jail it's really interesting isn't it because I think historically we always want baddies and goodies and when you drill into that relationship between Alba and his brother Herman there's a bit of harm and you're like he was a good brother he was a pig a Nazi Pig who killed millions of people responsible for their deaths anyway but actually he cut his brother Slack blood is thicker than water what's interesting is AB Goring people sniffed him out things got so bad that in late 1944 the Gestapo actually issued a death warrant shoot Albert Gering on site it looked like time had finally run out for the good Nazi [Music] sometime in 1944 Albert guring got wind of Nazi atrocities being perpetrated in the concentration camps there's quite a lot of apocryphal stories around Albert Goring that I've come out in recent years but there's one told by a friend that's really memorable and also credible it wasn't unusual for concentration camps to supply free slave labor for Munitions factories in Germany what I love about the resulting story is that Albert doesn't even have to try that hard to undermine the Nazis and their despicable actions towards Jews he takes the Convoy of trucks to theresin stat and just gets to the door and goes I am Albert Gering I am the manager of skoda give me Jews now for the war effort now that's not that unusual for concentration camps so he soon becomes a massive surprise if the commandant sees fit to hand over slave laborers without too much question and you're going to hand them over to Albert Goering you are what happened and however was probably the biggest surprise in the lives of the poor unfortunates who believed they were being driven to their deaths they drive into the middle of the woods and the drivers go for a break they get out they have a very casually and deliberately make sure the prisoners in the back of the Convoy have a chance to escape and then they come back and go oh no all of the prisoners appear to have run away thank you very much Albert gorang quite look at the Nazis made of this is anybody's guess now it's entirely possible that no one question it because no one ever expected to see the prisoners alive again you can get away with things like that maybe once a couple of times but in the end patterns emerge so no surprise by the end of the war there's a death warrant on Albert goring's head Albert went on the run and he ends up hiding in Prague and Big Brother Herman did what big brother always did for Albert he risked everything to save him there's a sort of key irony there yeah we can call this guy a savior but actually who's got his back but one of the worst guys in the whole Nazi regime but by the end of the war even her goring's position has been fakely weakened he has to turn to heinle Himmler to get him to help Harman save his own brother Alba and he makes it clear this is the last time I can save your skin in a strange twist of fate Herman would ultimately ask Albert to step in on behalf of his family at the end of the war it is the stuff of Hollywood movies really the story in many respects because of this very complex sibling relationship one tied to the Nazis one tied to the defectors they meet in Poetic fashion I think it's in a Transit camp on the way to the Nuremberg trials and they hark big man heart and I believe Herman batesom waffling apology about all the hurt that was going to rain down on Albert because he was his brother he asked Albert please could you look after my wife and my child when I'm gone Gary knows he's gonna die Albert's not on a fit state to do so that's what's so pitiful unfortunately for Albert he never got the chance to do much of anything afterwards he did spend two years in jail just basically for being Hermann goering's brother it's released in 1947 he's a broken man and he struggles to get a job he's called Goring for goodness sake this is imposed toward Germany you know and he gets divorced he has an affair he resorts to alcoholism he never sees his wife or daughter again and he dies a pulpa in 1966. the factory he had run did not fare much better at the end of the war [Music] on the 25th of April 1945 the U.S Eighth Air Force launches its very last heavy bomber mission of the war in Europe and what it does is to drop bombs on the skoda works and that destroys over 70 percent of it in just one raid but despite the damage very few of its 40 000 strong Workforce Was Heard almost headed over the channel General eisenham broadcast on the BBC warning all the skoda workers to stay away from the facility that afternoon it was the first and only time such a warning was given and it's almost as if the Allies wanted to thank the workers for the role that they had played in the skoda factory I don't buy that I think the reason why the American Air Force gave the skoda workers the heads up is we're at the end of the war it's April the Allies know they're going to win the world but what they've got to do is win the hearts and the minds of the countries surrounding what was the Nazi regime it terrifies the Germans because it's basically announcing to all the populations of Europe that the Allies can bomb where they like when they like and the Germans aren't going to be able to stop them it was a final death blow to the Nazi war economy but not to skoda after the war skoda has an interesting history to start with the Soviets are quite happy to let the czechoslovakians produce their own tanks so they carry on doing that however eventually Czechoslovakia doesn't prove to be [Music] good enough Communists for the Soviet Union so they decide they can no longer produce their own tanks in the west skoda is more famous for its cars skoda Auto was hived off from its parent company in 48 and became ubiquitous for cheap and chunky cars servicing the Communist block they became a kind of joke in the west they were very utilitarian they were kind of very socialist their diesel trains on the other hand were so famously reliable that they're still being used in Eastern Europe and today skoda in the East is actually better known for its trams and Railway vehicles after the Iron Curtain fell skoda formed a partnership with Volkswagen in 1991. the idea is to produce cheap reliable cars for Eastern Europe to help get its economies on the move as they recover from the abuse of the Soviet dictatorships but slowly they have improved and to and today they've got this fantastic reputation for really reliable cars skoda is back to where it was it's a leading manufacturer from guns and tanks to trams and cars skoda has transformed with the times the wonderful thing about skoda is it's a Survivor yeah it's like the chameleon it's just gonna morph and change and adapt and keep on going no matter what you throw at it who knows what I'll be producing in the future but don't discounts go to spaceships just yet [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary - History

Views: 217,719

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, Military Production, War Factories Complete Series, War Factories Season 3, War Factories Full Episodes, History Documentary, Skoda, Skoda Works, Occupation of Czechoslovakia

Id: z7AZR2T9P1M

Length: 43min 58sec (2638 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023