Why Did Operation Market Garden Fail? | Battles Won & Lost | War Stories

every battle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you fly in every theater of the second world war battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles won and lost that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history a war that reached every continent and touched every sort of terrain demanded every sort of strategy in this episode we examine battles fought at sea and in the jungle in city streets in invasions from the air and retreats from the land spring in paris over the eiffel tower over the cities and towns of europe hangs a pall of fear and death the german invasion of france could hardly have gone better for the germans the german blitzkrieg against western europe opens on the 10th of may 1940 and within a fortnight the british and french and belgian armies are defeated they withdrawing to the channel coast it looks as if the second world war in the west will be over literally within weeks the vermont advance was remorseless army group a in the center of the offensive wheeled towards the coast pushing the french first army and the british expeditionary force towards the sea with the finesse of a sheepdog pressing from the north fondbox army group b further pinned the allied force and soon three german armies front kluge's fourth von kucler's 18th and von reikenau's sixth were moving in for what must have been the coup de grace on the 4th of june german troops entered the port of dunkirk but they did not defeat and imprison the hundreds of thousands of troops that they had painted and though there are solid reasons why they did not what happened between may 23rd and june 4th must albeit with hindsight be classed as a german mistake with quite significant consequences by the 23rd of may the belgian army had been isolated and the british and first french forced against the sea von rundstedt commanding army group a issued what has famously become known as the stop order the germans have been fighting for three weeks invading western europe their forces are exhausted [Music] so the german generals and not as many people think hitler ordered them to stop on the the perimeter of the dunkirk beaches so in effect the germans hand western allies a few days grace so why did fon roonstead and hitler halt their smashing offensive the panzer divisions had been reduced by 30 in the blitzkrieg that had brought them to the channel and the bulk of the french military machine lay undefeated as indeed did the greater part of france the germans were concerned about the the potential for an allied counter attack and they're fighting an army which basically won the first world war so the germans are concerned that their enemy is giving in too easily so yeah there was a very very sensible prudence on the part of the german commanders who also knew that their own troops were disorganized by success when hitler visited von rundstedt his acceptance of the stop order was made easier by the assurances of reich's marshal hermann goering who agitated for and guaranteed the success of leaving it to his luftwaffe to finish off the trapped allied troops the country around dunkirk is not suitable for armored warfare it's it's flat but it's cut up by canals and drainage ditches in fact it's a it's very similar to the fighting in the first world war in flanders which the senior commanders on both sides including hitler remembered from 20 years before on the day that hitler and guring made their plans the british commander lord gort took a unilateral decision he would not risk losing his entire command by participating in general wagons proposed and wildly optimistic offensive which imagined a breakout to link up with forces further south gort decided instead to withdraw the british expeditionary force on dunkirk from which they could be evacuated to fight another day that evacuation operation dynamo would begin on may 26th gortz was not the only unilateral decision of the unraveling alliance on may 27th without consulting his allies king leopold of belgium offered his surrender to the germans admiral bertram ramsey who had been alerted as early as may 20th of the possible need for an evacuation had brought together a large and decidedly motley collection of vessels with which to carry off the troops assembling at dunkirk british ships cruisers destroyers yachts paddle boats anything that could float for the british were determined to save their men the shortest route had to be abandoned when calais fell and ships would have been within range of the calais shore batteries the second route x was vulnerable to unswept mines and so the longest passage north to the quinte boy west to the goodwin sands light ship and south to dover a journey of 160 kilometers was chosen of necessity as it became clear what was happening the luftwaffe's action against the evacuation intensified which spread the panic to the civilian population the man woman and children with bags dragging little trucks the children weren't talking or playing all with vacant vacant expressions just looking straight ahead the pullback on dunkirk was not a route beginning on the 26th the forces conducted an orderly phased withdrawal to a 25 kilometer perimeter defining a pocket 10 to 12 kilometers deep the bef disabled its equipment spiked and abandoned its guns and fell back had it not been for this discipline had there been panic what happened at dunkirk would not have been possible there the efficient evacuation was underway 25 000 men had been taken off by the end of the second day of the operation by may 31st the day of the largest total taken off the figure had risen to 68 014 the harbor's full of sunken ships and at the key side i could see somebody's running in front of me i see him running and he was running and i thought oh that ship's got smoke coming out the funnel so i ran like mad as well and was just pulling away from the keysight and i managed to get the board i just jumped aboard thank god the effectiveness of the luftwaffe was restricted the bombers could not operate at night visibility was limited by frequent mists although calm seas favored the evacuation fleet and the royal air force could sufficiently harass german aircraft to restrict their effect by the end of operation dynamo the raf had lost 177 aircraft the germans 240. had the germans not halted on the 23rd it is unlikely that such an evacuation could have been conducted the evacuation of dunkirk means several things i mean in sheer practical terms it means that the british have literally hundreds of thousands of men to continue the fight secondly they've got not just british troops but french troops especially so there's a free french army created in britain because of of the evacuation of dunkirk though the british troops had lost their equipment they had boosted morale and the will to resist anyway the bef has come back and whatever the disasters that have led to their return we at home are mighty glad to have them here and when on their return churchill made his defiant we shall fight on the beaches we shall never surrender speech he spoke for the nation it's an enormous psychological boost and we still talk about the dunkirk spirit because although it was a massive defeat it was a psychological victory which the british drew on for the rest of the war in 1937 japan launched a full-scale invasion of china it did not go to plan progress was slow resistance more stubborn than had been anticipated in 1939 japanese colonial ambitions suffered a further check on the mongolian border where soviet troops inflicted a decisive defeat it all strengthened the hand of that faction in the military which argued that japan's expansion should be south to japan it was the southern resources area and dressed up as the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere it would give japan all of the living space and raw material that she needed what we need to remember here is that this is an age largely before synthetic products that japan had been fighting a very costly war in china the way that it saw finishing that war was it needed more resources the japanese leadership saw that they had no choice but to seize the resources of the netherlands east indies not only are the dutch east indies of great strategic value but also they contain great material wealth oil for instance their aims were to do it quickly so they could release the troops needed to send them back to fight the war in china so that they could grab those resources in the netherlands east indies and start shipping them back to japan before the united states started to gear up for war december 7th 1941 as japanese aircraft were approaching pearl harbor japanese forces under general tamayuki yamashita were already going ashore on the malay peninsula at kotabaru some of their early successes were all about simultaneous operations across broad swathe of asia in the pacific so the british and american forces in the asia pacific they were spread out trying to react to the japanese a lot of these places were very weakly garrisoned as well so the japanese were very quickly seizing them and then moving on because part of their battle plans were the troops required for one operation were then moved relatively quickly on to the next so they didn't have time to do that at the end of 1941 hardly more than three weeks after the code words torah torah torah had sent in the raid on pearl harbor the japanese were now poised for a full-scale invasion of burma the conquest of the philippines the assault on singapore and the defeat of the dutch in the resource-rich dutch east indies as churchill said of the fall of france how could it have happened so quickly the reasons for victory can be seen in the campaign in malaya they were repeated through the co-prosperity sphere and were fundamental to japan's early success [Music] when japanese transports more than 20 of them brought yamashita's army group ashore at seven sites on december 8th they were virtually unopposed british forces were in their habitual deployment particularly in strength around the butterworth base and had not been moved despite the growing threat of japanese militarism and the presence of the japanese force across the gulf of siam the fifth infantry division quickly secured the air bases at pattani and singura where the peninsula narrows made possible the movement of japanese forces across to the west coast and that meant that yamashita could advance on two fronts dividing the defenders the japanese maintained flexibility in action the east coast thinly defended was little more than a march southwest the west coast required different tactics and they got them hook actions either left strong defensive positions impotent in the wake of troops that had bypassed them or more usually encircled and smashed them in places these hooks meant moving through jungle that the british had deemed impossible an echo of the french mistake that was exposed by the advanced through the ardennes the terrain is exploited by the japanese in a way that is not by the british they never quite managed to work out how to prevent the japanese outflanking both using the forested areas but also what the japanese do in malaya as well as make use of small craft to flank british positions on the land by outflanking movements using the sea all the early reports from malaya spoke of heavy and confused fighting with the japanese gaining grass this is typical malayan country almost the only place in which troops can deploy being the plantation the japanese had been specifically trained in jungle warfare the british and commonwealth forces had not their strategy had suffered from traditional textbook planning planning which had in a way suffered from imperial hubris there's a lot of racial prejudice underlies the allies initial reading of what the japanese military is capable of and so it underestimates its ability to maneuver it underestimates its ability to fight it underestimates its willingness to utilize the terrain to its advantages it underestimates the capabilities of its aircraft and thus the japanese are able to rest control the skies in areas that they're fighting very quickly speed was fundamental to japanese military thinking so it was engineered into every aspect of the operation troops not only in the malay campaign but everywhere and throughout the war traveled with very little in the way of support when by the 21st of december british formations received the order to concentrate on a line behind the perak river it was too late japan would continue to record victories pushing and pushing faster than their opponents could recover so that singapore the philippines and the east indies would all fall if there was a true blitzkrieg in the second world war it was this one in a matter of weeks japan had gained for itself one-sixth of the surface of the planet it seems for a while that you have this superhuman enemy this this soldier who can keep going and going who fights like the devil who doesn't fight the way that western forces expect to fight it also means that there's a vast amount of territory that if the allies are going to win the war that they have to recapture from the japanese but after six months the seeming invincibility of japan was stopped in a great naval battle in a place called midway the united kingdom's position as a great power which she possessed at the start of the second world war was not a consequence of the wealth or weather or natural resources of the british isles it rested on her empire a vast maritime empire the greatest the world had known and the integrity of that empire rested not on a large standing army it depended on the royal navy the royal navy facing only germany before the fall of france was a dominant force and continued to have the strategic advantage of effectively sitting astride at germany's exits to the globe it had eight major groups located in the atlantic at the time that the germans could barely deploy two battle cruisers and a number of submarines before the war began the german pocket battleship admiral graf spay sailed for the south atlantic and there she waited chief interest of course attaches to the famous pocket battleships which are only 10 000 tons but mount six 11 inch guns and have a speed of 26 knots once war had started the graf spey began her operations between the end of september and the end of october she sank six vessels in an area that straddled a major sea lane for ships traveling around the cape of good hope the grass bay was in the south atlantic as part of a deliberate campaign to interrupt to destroy the global shipping movements to slow and interrupt the movement of resources to and from the united kingdom by november the royal navy had formed six task forces to find and sink the battleship in early december graffspay claimed two more victims but they did not go down without sending radio signals that influenced commodore harwood commanding force g to concentrate its forces on the falkland islands [Music] captain langsdorff commanding graf spey made two blunders the first was that spotting the smoke of four of harwood's cruisers and mistaking them for destroyers on escort duty he closed to the attack what followed history knows as the battle of the river plate captain langsdorff at graf's bay it was his duty not to engage british warships it was his duty to preserve that ship undamaged as soon as he detected british ships he should have tried to go in the opposite direction langsdorff engaged exeter and ajax royal navy and achilles royal navy new zealand division as soon as he realized his mistake he sped towards the enemy to prevent them from outpacing him rafshpei had diesel engines the british vessels steam which could not accelerate rapidly graf spay engaged exeter at seventeen thousand meters at oh six eighteen she had turned north west against the germans approach carl would actually split the cruises so they came out lang's door from two directions which unnerved him a bit ajax and achilles turning together northeast forced langsdorf to spread his fire after two minutes exeter was returning fire but graf spay had far superior weaponry in fact it inflicted quite significant damage on the three british cruisers which were undergone compared to the 11 inch guns that he had i had eight and six inch guns by 0.630 ajax and achilles had close to 12 000 meters forcing the german gunners to divide their main armament after nearly an hour admiral graf spay was finished far from out of the fight still sailing and seaworthy but done for because a shell from exeter herself badly damaged and soon to retire from the battle had damaged the battleship's fuel plant graf spay now had fuel for only 16 hours sailing which meant she could not get home neither could the damage be repaired at sea langsdorff consulted the charts he would head for the nearest neutral port and that was montevideo at the mouth of the river plate there she is the admiral graf spey in montevideo harbour where she took refuge after the hammering she received from her small adversary in montevideo langsdorff released the 61 british merchant seamen he had taken on board as survivors of vessels he had sunk and sought permission to remain in port long enough to make repairs the british had only one further vessel close enough to blockade graf spay but that's not what they broadcast false intelligence painted a picture of force h a large british force including the aircraft carrier arc royal assembling to finish the german the moment she sailed from port langsdorf committed his second blunder he believed the false intelligence he did have an idea that there were stronger forces waiting for him then were in fact the case but it is true given the damage he'd already had in the first action that the grass bay immediately leaving montevideo would have been forced into another action and would have received further damage which would have left her in my view absolutely open to being hunted down and destroyed by the much more powerful forces that were concentrating on the river plate at that time on december 17th facing limited choices he sailed his ship into the estuary and ordered it scuttled tremendous explosions aft have wrecked the vessel and there she lies abandoned to the flames by captain and crew not to be sunk in open fight by the enemy not to go down with her colors flying like the but to be blown up abandoned scuttled in an act of defeatism which has rightly earned the contempt of all decent people two days later hans langsdorff shot himself even as an army marches to certain victory a wrong step can lead to a setback a defeat the allies had been grinding on from their normandy beachhead moving north and east pushing the germans back and approaching slowly against resistance towards the rhine and the moment when they would set foot on german soil market garden is a bizarre battle because it arises from field marshall byrne and montgomery's desire to bolt into germany phil marshall montgomery the british commander and dwight eisenhower the american supreme commander had a very uneasy relationship they had fundamentally different ways of commanding of projecting themselves and they disagreed about the strategy for the allied advance into germany which they had to do in order to defeat the third reich eisenhower i think sensibly wanted to advance on a broad front montgomery had a bizarre idea to punch a hole in the german defenses to break into the north german plane montgomery hoped his plan might also answer those critics of his conduct following d-day when some had thought him overly cautious operation market garden was not a cautious plan and following eisenhower's approval he received the troops and resources that he needed the new move was shaping up and everybody knew it would be another of those combined operations and it was going to be that knockout punch we'd all been sweating out market gardens basically two operations market is the airborne operation but they drop airborne troops beyond the bridges garden is the land advance to join up with those airborne forces and it sounds like a sensible idea except as the phrase goes it was a bridge too far for montgomery's plan to work it was essential that every phase of the operation was a success every bridge secured douglas c-47 aircraft dakotas to the british were the workhorses of the operation they carried the first allied airborne army and they towed the gliders about 2 000 aircraft of various types were involved troops dropped in by glider or chute were to grasp and secure the bridges following them would be the british 30th corps under general brian horrix if horrocks could bring his men up in time if the airborne divisions could take and hold the bridges until 30th corps got through the german flank would be turned on the rhine if on september 17th the operation was launched then we were over the dz and it was read on stand up hook up green on go and now we went feet together head down shoulders around feet together watch the ground bump that was it 101st airborne quickly secured the canal bridges 82nd took graver but was forced back from nijmegen by a strong counter-attack [Music] but on the 18th thirtieth corps linked with the hundred and first and the next day supporting the 82nd renewed pressure on the bridge at nijmegen the bridge fell to them and operation market had succeeded the british first airborne had achieved its initial objective on the first day the 17th both paratroop and glider units were well grouped and after a hard fight the bridge over the rhine was secured three battalions made north centre and southerly advances but only second battalion in the south had reached its final objective on the northern approaches of the bridge and there it stuck the bridge was a long way ahead of 30th corps a bridge too far in fact unless german resistance was moderate it wasn't by this stage of the war the western allies have got almost total command of the german secret intelligence they're reading german messages virtually as soon as they're sent what they did know but what wasn't passed on to the troops who were responsible for actually carrying out this operation was that in exactly the place where the paratroops were to be dropped there was a german panzer division resting and re-equipping so they literally dropped the first allied airborne army onto the top of a german ss panzer division and that's where things started to unravel for they were strong units they were the 9th and 10th ss panzer divisions and they pressed on the british bridgehead with superior numbers and weaponry on the 21st the polish brigade was dropped south of the rhine they had been delayed in joining battle by bad weather and poor intelligence dropped them into strong german positions where instead of being able to force a way through to reinforce first airborne they were cut to pieces airborne troops are comparatively speaking only lightly are and landing behind the enemy's lines they face the prospect of engaging fully equipped heavily armed forces thus all the hazards of an isolated operation further compounding first airborne situation was the loss of their drop zones malfunctioning radios made it almost impossible to advise the raf of this and consequently vital resupply fell into the wrong hands of 390 tons of supplies dropped only 31 tons were received by the british division we went in there on sunday and fought from there until wednesday afternoon and there weren't many of us left then and ammunition was pretty well non-existent general ercart commanding first airborne made the decision to pull his men to a defensible position to await relief by the overdue 30th call this meant abandoning second battalion which had reached the northern end of the bridge german troops meanwhile cut across the british line of advance south of uden further slowing the relieving column on the 26th nine days after the drop thirtieth finally linked up with first airborne but it was too late to affect a battle that had been lost market garden is an absurd allied defeat at the very moment where the allies are gloriously advancing through france and belgium liberating the country as they go it should never have happened the allies are massively well equipped they've got more weapons more equipment more intelligence than the germans but they fail to use it of ten thousand who had landed at ireland two thousand marched out with thirtieth corps most of the rest saw out the remainder of the war as prisoners of the germans market garden certainly doesn't do montgomery's reputation any good eisenhower already knows that he's a hard man to work with and market garden puts the cap on it it has another effect of course and that is is that the allies are not going to get to the mars and certainly not get across the rhine in 1944 and of course it means that eisenhower is actually right that you can't simply drive your column into north germany expect to win you've got to advance on a broad front and that's exactly what the allies do in 1945 and that's what gets the germans defeated in the west the overwhelming size of significant actions like the landings of normandy or japan's epic sweep through the asia-pacific region dominate our view of war distracting us from campaigns unfairly referred to as sideshows but some sideshows have real strategic significance and all of them involve real fighting real destruction real death in the wash up from the first world war britain and france then the possessors of the world's two great maritime empires had divided the middle east between them with the fall of france the collaborationist government was allowed to retain control of french colonies so it was that opposing forces faced each other across the desert frontier french standards symbolic of the nation's honor sailed for safe keeping in french african territory [Music] france had carved out lebanon and syria both guarding the eastern mediterranean and syrian astride routes into iran then persia a major source of vital oil and neighbouring the british sphere of influence in iraq where rebellion against the british had only been curbed in may on june 8 a joint british commonwealth and free french force moved into lebanon and syria with the expectation that the 45 000 strong vichy french garrison would surrender and march over to the allied cause but it did not and six weeks of fierce fighting ensued before the vichy french lost the battle and 6 000 were counted as casualties the vichy french resisted skillfully along all three of the allied routes of advance on the coastal sector fierce fighting occurred at the littani river on the 9th of june and on the 12th of june it was decided to transfer the bulk of the forces to the coastal advance where good progress was being made by the 10th indian division and free french forces much of the vichy force comprised french colonial troops the dc troops dug themselves in well at all points often holding fire to point blank range but this only made our fellows all the more determined to finish off the job when australian james heather gordon charged a machine gun and placement during the battle of jazeem an action for which he was awarded the victoria cross he found that he had been fighting not frenchmen but senegalese the allied advance stalled on jebel abua trees where a flanking move by free french tanks was stopped by heavy shelling from vichy artillery and troops holding kanetra on the other main road to damascus reported the approach of a strong vichy force from the north two companies of three french troops were sent to reinforce defensive positions across the road by 0.900 on the 15th of june indian troops were pushing forward into the hills and within an hour had captured by 11 30 three french marines had secured the village of moncall bay in the second phase of the attack three french were fighting vichy french the very tragedy that general de gaulle had wanted to avoid at dhaka what a comment on the so-called honor of the vc leaders that they should have ordered their men to fight not only their former british allies but even the free french their own countrymen during the night of the 15th of june indian troops took our twos on the canetra to damascus road cutting the communications of the vichy force advancing on canetra but their approach was too slow on the afternoon of the 16th of june the allies at canetra outnumbered three to one and facing tanks against which they had no effective counter surrender but by the 18th of june the situation had been restored allied focus switched to damascus which fell on the 21st of june on that day a mixed force of british troops including those of the arab legion entered syria from iraq and advanced on palmyra which was attacked on the 25th of june the vichy forces held out for nine days before surrendering [Applause] finally the entry into damascus you could hardly say the population looked gloomy about our arrival could you after the capture of damascus the drive on beirut chiefly the australian 7th division became the main allied focus on the 10th of july the australians were within 10 kilometers of beirut the british fourth cavalry brigade was closing on homs and the 10th indian division was advancing into northern syria of course the importance of our occupation of syria hardly needs stressing success in syria justifies us in choking one more mark against hitler the vichy french commander general henry dents sought an armistice he had lost the battle and his command of 38 000 surviving troops was given the option to be returned to vichy france or to join the free french forces less than 6 000 elected to join the free french that mattered less than the control that britain now had in the middle east the eastern mediterranean the suez canal and the arab oil fields were all more defensible because of the sideshow in syria [Music] on the 25th of april 1945 american and soviet troops made contact the link up between the americans and the russians of the river elba near tokai marked the climax of the two great advances into the heart of germany from west and east it was colossal news [Music] on the same day the red army completed its encirclement of berlin berlin at the same time became a fortress city that was the special concept meaning that the city was to be defended at all costs to the last cartridge to the last bullet the last man defensive preparations were made in depth but resources were far from elite the numbers in berlin well there are no uh concrete numbers it mostly it was a mishmash of units so police units hitler youth units and folk storm units just people's militia made of those who were not able to serve in the regular army because they were either too young or too old or had some sicknesses health issues pretty much everything they could get the 12th army west of the city comprised 12 divisions that were a grab bag of raw recruits fonman toefl's third panzer army north of the city comprised nine divisions none of which was panzer the total deployed in defense of the capital was some 50 in different divisions coming towards them were almost 200 divisions of the red army [Music] and as they came they scorched the earth soviet offensive was designed to ensure the fall of berlin no later than may day may the first soviet forces began to move on april the 12th air raids continue to pump the city the berliners they built tram barricades piles of rubble to block the streets but how could that help really because seven soviet armies were advancing exactly on berlin and and the berlin garrison had less than a hundred thousand men this is less than a core against seven soviet full able-bodied armies so their situation was dire to say the least [Music] zhukov's first belarusian front in the centre conf's first ukrainian front to his south [Music] rocosovsky's second belarusian to his north would race each other for the prize on april 16th zhukov's offensive began when three red flares shot skywards and 140 searchlights were turned on in the eyes of the enemy then three green flares signaled the start of a ground-shattering bombardment literally so shocking that entire villages collapsed and whole forests exploded as 8983 soviet guns opened up the bombardment lasted for 35 minutes then abruptly neatly it stopped and the red army moved forward more than six million men and women with one thing in mind zhukov advancing from his bridgehead on the oda was aiming for the heart of the city [Music] the germans mostly the uss units they were tough in battle but nothing could save them this is obvious so because the soviet soldiers they were so close to the victory that they were waiting for fighting for hoping for for four years now there is a moment of revenge especially for those who lost their loved ones or who went through the occupied territories in the soviet union sold horrible massacres and all the outcomes of the genocidal policy that the german state was executing in the occupied eastern territories so now they were fighting with even more rage more anger retribution is incidental in the course of military operations but certainly here in berlin there was all the evidence of it retribution for the havoc caused by hitler's hands in leningrad and warsaw london coventry rotterdam and all the devastated cities of the island on the 26th the city center was ringed and soviet forces advancing house to house room to room moved in [Music] [Music] berlin was hell pretty much this was hell a number of those who fought they remember that it was hard to tell if it was night or day because thick black smoke was covering the sunlight the smoke that was lit by the fires of knocked out tanks and buildings screams in the air screams of those wounded because berlin was full of civilians that of course were dying during the course of the battle and dust from the destroyed buildings was always in the air it was hard to breathe all the time cracked on the teeth of those who fought [Music] on april 30 after first successfully testing the poison on his beloved dog blondie hitler and his new bride bit down on cyanide capsules at which point hitler to be certain shot himself in the temple the red army was 200 meters away [Music] the next day the reichstag fell and the red flag was famously hoisted on its roof general helmut weidling commanding the military garrison surrendered the city berlin as a capital as a city even was dead this was what remained of the reichstag the building which gained worldwide notoriety when the nazis seized power [Music] berlin [Music] [Music] [Music] the battle for the capital had cost more than 300 000 soviet casualties perhaps a similar number of german casualties and in addition 480 000 german prisoners who had failed in their attempt to break out west to surrender to the american british and french forces from whom they expected kinder treatment the capital has fallen but the uh resistance still was going in the north some troops were still fighting for the third empire that did not exist that lasted for only 12 years the last of the last they just decided to give themselves in late may 1945 this was the end of the ride [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, operation market garden documentary, dunkirk ww2 facts, dunkirk ww2 movie, dunkirk ww2 summary, dunkirk ww2 significance, dunkirk ww2 importance, dunkirk ww2 timeline, battle of berlin, wwII, world war 2, ww2, hitler, stalin, churchill ww2, eisenhower ww2, eisenhower wwii, montgomery ww2 general, william montgomery ww2, gen montgomery ww2

Id: ksxuy4G6Nk8

Length: 49min 42sec (2982 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021