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01:04The German invasion of Poland at dawn on the 1st of September 1939
01:08finally dashed hopes that the conflict of 1914-18 had been the war to end all war.
01:27¶¶
01:29Attempts to maintain peace through disarmament had failed.
01:32The League of Nations had shown itself powerless to act against aggression in Abyssinia and China.
01:38The policy of appeasing Hitler had been in vain.
01:40Poland was indeed the funeral pyre of all efforts to prevent war.
01:47Within two days of the German attack,
01:49France and Britain had honoured their pledge to Poland by declaring war against Germany.
01:54But this did not halt the German invasion.
02:15There was none of the euphoria, even in Berlin, that had greeted war in August 1914.
02:21Not just because of memories of the carnage of the Great War,
02:24but also on account of the widely held belief that war would now be mainly characterised by vast air fleets
02:30attacking cities.
02:34Hitler saw war as the only way to overcome Polish intransigence.
02:39Britain and France as a last resort to Kirby's ambitions.
02:48Hitler's ally Mussolini was not ready for war, and for the time being was content to remain a spectator.
02:59Stalin, having signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler on the eve of war,
03:03and in the face of Anglo-French attempts to form an alliance with Russia like that of 1914,
03:09prepared to grab eastern Poland, but only once the Germans had largely destroyed the Polish armed forces.
03:18America, as she had done in 1914, maintained her policy of isolationism,
03:23with Roosevelt declaring her neutrality.
03:28Germany's greatest fear had always been simultaneous war on two fronts, East and West.
03:34Unlike in 1914, Hitler did not face the threat of a Russian invasion.
03:38Nevertheless, Poland must be overrun quickly if he was to be able to counter any Anglo-French attack from the
03:44West.
03:53To do this, the German armed forces had developed during the 1930s a new concept of war.
04:00Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.
04:22Blitzkrieg's two essential ingredients were the panzer divisions of fast-moving tanks closely combined with air power,
04:28especially the Junkers' Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber.
04:42The Stukas were used as aerial artillery that would help the tanks to break through swiftly and surround large pockets
04:48of enemy forces.
04:52These pockets would be reduced by the infantry following up behind.
04:56But these were still largely reliant on their feet, as they had been in 1914,
05:00and there was always the danger that the panzers would get too far ahead of them.
05:07Poland had a major problem in that she had long borders to defend.
05:13There was the German border in the west, but also those with East Prussia in the north.
05:18Finally, there was a new threat since March 1939 from German forces in Slovakia.
05:28While the Poles could match the Germans in manpower and did not lack courage,
05:33their armed forces were relatively backward in equipment.
05:43What few modern weapons they had were largely obsolescent.
05:49In the opening minutes of the German attack, the battleship Schleswig-Holstein began to shell the Polish fortress of Westerplatte
05:57in Danzig Harbor.
06:04Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe attacked airfields to destroy as many Polish aircraft as possible on the ground.
06:14In an effort to turn back the swarms of German aircraft, the Polish air force tried to fight them in
06:19the air, but the cost was high.
06:37Luftwaffe bombers attacked communications, bridges and troop concentrations.
06:46The Polish people quickly discovered the horrific character of modern war.
06:59The German panzers rapidly broke through the Polish defences, trapping large numbers of Polish troops.
07:13The follow-up infantry reduced these pockets while the panzers pressed on.
07:21The pockets yielded thousands of dazed Polish prisoners.
07:34Yet the Poles continued to fight, mounting counter-attacks when and where they could.
07:45In desperation they sent the flower of their army, the cavalry, in suicidal charges against the German tanks.
08:03The Poles could not stop the Germans reaching the River Vistula and the outskirts of Warsaw, their capital, on the
08:09fifteenth day of the war.
08:25Polish hopes now rested on an Anglo-French blow against Germany from the west.
08:29True, the French did make a small advance into the Saarland.
08:39They were not, however, prepared to advance beyond the range of the guns in the Maginot Line.
08:46The first German attempts to break into Warsaw failed, for the Poles were determined to defend their capital and refused
08:53to surrender it.
09:04Consequently, the Germans decided to send in the Luftwaffe.
09:12So the citizens of Warsaw now went through the same experience as those of Madrid and Genica in Spain and
09:19Shanghai and Nanking in China.
09:30But still, Warsaw held out.
09:40By the 17th of September, the Germans had cleared the Polish corridor.
09:48Thrusts south from East Prussia and eastwards from Germany had totally cut off Warsaw, while a further attack from Slovakia
09:56was overrunning southern Poland.
10:03But on this same day, the 17th, the Russians suddenly invaded from the east on a broad front.
10:09Poland's last hopes of salvation had vanished.
10:15With the Poles so tied down by the German onslaught, the Russian advance was deceptively swift, bearing in mind that
10:23Stalin had purged the cream of the senior officer corps.
10:33The German forces continued to advance eastwards.
10:40Two days later, they met the advancing Russians at Brest-Litovsk, scene of the March 1918 peace treaty between the
10:47two countries.
10:55The Germans and Russians now set about clearing the remaining pockets of Polish resistance.
11:11But still, the Poles fought on.
11:32Warsaw remained besieged, in spite of surrender leaflets dropped from the air.
11:42The Luftwaffe's pounding continued.
11:46Eventually, all of the city's public utilities were destroyed, and the river Vistula was the only source of water.
11:59To prevent further civilian suffering, the garrison surrendered on the 27th of September, and German troops entered in triumph.
12:16Some Polish soldiers managed to escape, and eventually made their way to France to form a new army.
12:26General Vladislav Sikorsky also formed a government in exile in Paris.
12:34In Poland itself, the last resistance ceased on the 5th of October, 1939.
12:51Poland's 20 years of independence were at an end.
12:58She was now partitioned.
13:03The Germans took the western part of the country, the Russians east.
13:11In western Poland, the Nazi jackboot soon made itself felt.
13:20The fate of many of the Poles captured by the Russians only began to be revealed in 1943,
13:25when the Germans discovered the mass grave of 4,000 Polish officers at Katyn in western Russia.
13:32Not until more than 45 years later would the Russians own up to this crime.
13:45With Poland destroyed, Hitler now turned westwards, redeploying the bulk of his armies,
13:51and ordering them to prepare an attack on Holland, Belgium, and northern France for mid-November.
14:07Britain and France had done little to help Poland.
14:10Indeed, the French withdrew their troops from the Saarland back into the Maginot Line as soon as Poland had fallen.
14:20The truth was that the vast amount of money that the French had invested in the Maginot Line had committed
14:25them to a policy of defence,
14:27and had dampened all offensive spirit.
14:40Likewise, the British were wary of committing a large army to the continent of Europe,
14:44as they had found themselves doing 25 years earlier, and lacked the equipment to be able to do so.
14:50Nonetheless, as in 1914, they did send four divisions across the English Channel.
15:02The Allies were confident that the Maginot Line would deter the Germans from attacking across their border with France.
15:08Their reaction to a German attack through the Low Countries would be an advance to the river Dial in Belgium,
15:13since northern France lacked suitable obstacles on which to base a defence.
15:22In the meantime, the Allies began to extend the Maginot Line northwards from Luxembourg.
15:27This was all they could do, since Belgian neutrality prevented them from inspecting the Dial Line,
15:32let alone preparing defences on it.
15:35It was therefore merely a time of waiting for a German attack,
15:38which appeared increasingly remote as winter gripped the Western Front.
15:42Soon, this period became known as the Sitzkrieg, or Phony War.
15:58In London and Paris, they waited for the massed air onslaught that had engulfed Warsaw.
16:07In Britain, children were evacuated from the cities to the safer rural areas.
16:21All civilians had to carry gas masks, through fears that the Luftwaffe might use this weapon on a massive scale.
16:30But the air forces on both sides were very conscious that attacks on civilian targets might well bring retaliation in
16:36kind.
16:43Thus, the Royal Air Force's early operations were merely daylight attacks on German warships.
16:48They met with little success, and a significant proportion of aircraft were shot down.
16:56The RAF therefore switched to dropping leaflets on Germany by night.
17:02The winter of 1939-40 was severe and put a further break on air operations.
17:13It was only at sea that there was significant activity.
17:17From the outset, it became clear that, unlike in 1914, submarine warfare would be unrestricted.
17:23On the opening day of the war in the West, the 3rd of September, a German U-boat sank the
17:29liner Athenia in the North Atlantic,
17:31with the loss of 112 lives, including 26 American citizens.
17:40The British immediately instituted convoying and declared a total blockade of Germany.
17:46Convoying took time to organise, however, and the Royal Navy had a grave shortage of escort vessels.
17:56Consequently, before the year was out, the U-boats, 57 of which were operational at the outbreak of war,
18:02had sunk over 100 ships, but mainly vessels sailing on their own.
18:35Also among their victims was the British aircraft carrier Courageous.
18:40Most audacious of all was the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak
18:43at the home fleet's wartime anchorage at Scarpa Flow in the Orkneys.
18:48Gunther Preen, the U-boat skipper, became an overnight hero in Germany.
18:53With his relatively small U-boat force, Hitler was resolved to use his modern surface fleet to attack British trade.
19:00This had been given construction priority over U-boats.
19:05One ship, the Graf Spee, had sailed from Germany before the outbreak of war,
19:10and now began to harry British shipping in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans,
19:14leaving a trail of sunk vessels in her wake.
19:17The British formed a number of task forces to hunt her down.
19:21She was eventually located by three cruisers operating from the Falkland Islands.
19:28On the 13th of December, they fought her off the Argentine coast near the mouth of the river Plate.
19:34Although outgunned, the British ships forced her to seek refuge in neutral Montevideo harbour.
19:40Captain Hans Langsdorff, believing that a larger force had now arrived and was waiting for him at the mouth of
19:46the plate,
19:46scuttled his ship rather than allow her to be sunk by his enemies.
19:50A few days later, he committed suicide.
20:05This was just about the only positive success that French and British arms enjoyed in 1939,
20:10and the crews of two of the British ships, Exeter and Ajax, were fated as heroes on their return to
20:16Britain.
20:21Anglo-French attention was also turned to Scandinavia before the year was out.
20:26Stalin feared that his small northern neighbour, Finland,
20:29which had thrown off the yoke of Russian rule in 1919, would allow German forces in.
20:37This posed a threat to Leningrad, as Petrograd was now called,
20:42and also jeopardised the vital Arctic port of Mamansk.
20:50He therefore demanded of the Finns an exchange of territory,
20:54offering them a desolate region in return for areas which would secure Mamansk and Leningrad.
20:59The Finns refused, and on the 30th of November 1939, Stalin's forces attacked them.
21:06Given Finland's massive numerical inferiority in manpower and her lack of modern weapons,
21:11it should have been an easy Russian victory.
21:26Yet the Finns held out, inflicting very heavy casualties.
21:31Stalin's purges had so ravaged the senior ranks of the Soviet armed forces,
21:35that they were now commanded by inexperienced officers.
21:45Semyon Timoshenko, one of the few senior officers to survive the purges,
21:50now took charge and attacked again in February 1940.
21:55His offensive and Russian air attacks soon began to tell.
22:23In early March, the Finns sued for peace.
22:28And were forced to surrender the territory marked in blue,
22:32that the Russians had originally demanded.
22:36The result was a mass exodus of Finns from the ceded regions.
22:45The Western Allies had wanted to help the Finns by passing troops through Narvik in neutral Norway.
22:51Swedish iron ore bound for Germany also passed through this port.
22:58The German navy was also attracted by Norway's fjords as bases for its operations against Britain.
23:05Hitler therefore ordered invasion plans to be drawn up.
23:09On the 16th of February 1940, the British destroyer Cossack entered a Norwegian fjord
23:15and rescued seamen captured by the Graf Spee from the prison ship Altmark, which had taken refuge there.
23:23This accelerated German planning.
23:25And on the 6th of April, their invasion fleet set sail to pre-empt any Allied occupation of Norway.
23:39It was spotted by an RAF aircraft next day, and the British home fleet left port.
23:45But a gale prevented interception.
23:51On the 8th of April, German troops began to land at points on the Norwegian coast, including Narvik.
24:00Other forces landed in the Oslo fjord, and paratroops were used to secure Stavanger airfield.
24:15The ill-prepared and weak Norwegian forces could do little in the face of all these simultaneous attacks.
24:26At the same time, Denmark, totally taken by surprise, was invaded and quickly forced to surrender.
24:35On the 10th and 12th, British destroyers entered Narvik fjord to attack German warships.
24:42They sank a total of nine German destroyers at a cost of two of their own.
24:47Air attacks were also mounted.
24:57These attacks virtually isolated the German ground force at Narvik.
25:05Hastily cobbled together Allied land forces now also landed on the Norwegian coast.
25:15In the meantime, the Germans had entered Oslo, and began to advance northwards to link up their landings.
25:26The Germans enjoyed air superiority, and this enabled them to isolate the Allied landings,
25:31and force them to evacuate their beachheads one by one.
25:44The only eventual Allied success was to recapture Narvik.
25:48But at the beginning of June 1940, they were forced to evacuate even this.
25:59Once more, German arms had been triumphant.
26:02But by June 1940, even more spectacular events had been taking place hundreds of miles to the south.
26:16To Hitler, Norway was a mere distraction from his main aim of overrunning the Low Countries and Northern France,
26:23so as to provide air and sea bases from which to threaten Britain.
26:35The Allies believed, as the winter of 1939-40 wore on,
26:40that possibly the Germans were having second thoughts about invading the West.
26:44Certainly the severe weather had forced delays,
26:47as had a likely compromise of the plan when a German aircraft forced landed in Belgium in January 1940.
26:56Now that spring had arrived, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even went so far as to state that Hitler had
27:02missed the bus.
27:05In truth, there had been a major debate in the German camp over how the attack should be executed.
27:18The German army in the West was organised into three army groups.
27:22The original plan called for Fedor von Bock's Army Group B in the north, with the bulk of the tanks,
27:29to make the main effort into Holland and Belgium, and then sweep down the coast.
27:37With Geert von Rundstedt's Army Group A supporting him on the southern flank.
27:43Wilhelm von Lieb's smaller Army Group C would remain on the defensive in front of the Maginot Line.
27:54Geert von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, and more especially his chief of staff, Erich von Manstein, objected to
28:02this plan.
28:02It was too obvious, and would leave a large French army intact at the end of the operation.
28:08Rather, the main thrust should be made by their army group in the centre,
28:12with the aim of cutting off the northern allied armies.
28:24Army Group B would overrun Holland, and hold the allied attention in the north,
28:29while Army Group C retained its defensive role in front of the Maginot Line.
28:34Hitler eventually agreed to this plan in mid-March, but Norway delayed its execution.
28:44The allied decision to rest their defence in the north, on an advance to the river Dial in neutral Belgium
28:50the moment the Germans attacked, played into the hands of the von Manstein plan.
28:55The allies also discounted, as impassable to tanks, the hilly and wooded Ardennes region of southern Belgium
29:02through which the main German thrust would come.
29:12The allies also laboured under other disadvantages.
29:25They might practise what they would do when the Germans did attack,
29:29but Belgian refusal to allow British and French troops across the frontier,
29:33meant that they could not do this on the ground on which they intended to fight.
29:41The allies, especially the British, had reinforced their armies during the winter,
29:46but many British divisions were ill-equipped.
29:49Communications at the higher level were poor,
29:51and allied commander Maurice Gamelin was an academic rather than fighting general.
29:59While the allies actually had more tanks than the Germans,
30:02some 3,300 as against almost 2,600,
30:06many, like these British Matildas, were dedicated to supporting infantry
30:10and were relatively slow moving.
30:14The massive French Shah B suffered from having a one-man turret,
30:19which meant that the occupant had to both command the tank
30:21and operate its gun at the same time.
30:25The most serious allied weakness was that Maginot-mindedness
30:29had generated a rigidity of thought,
30:31ill-suited to coping with the highly fluid German blitzkrieg.
30:40The German attack was finally mounted before dawn on the 10th of May.
30:44German aircraft attacked Dutch, Belgian and French air bases
30:48in order to destroy as much as possible of the allied air forces on the ground.
31:00Shortly afterwards, the German ground forces crossed the frontiers of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
31:25In the north, paratroops were used to secure vital bridges needed for the advance of von Box tanks.
31:39A complete division was landed on Dutch airfields and roads in order to seize other vital points.
31:45The Dutch, noting what had happened in Norway, put obstacles on runways and this caused heavy casualties.
32:04Nevertheless, the Dutch army, with its obsolete weapons, was no match for the highly tuned German war machine,
32:11and much of the country had been overrun in just five days.
32:16On the 14th of May, the Germans demanded the surrender of the large port of Rotterdam.
32:24The Dutch hesitated, and immediately a large force of bombers took off to attack the city.
32:39While they were airborne, the Dutch surrendered Rotterdam.
32:48Unfortunately, the German bombers could not be stopped, and much of Rotterdam was destroyed.
32:53Once again, the air warfare profits seem to have been vindicated.
33:04Next day, the Dutch government capitulated.
33:14As with Holland, the Germans had to face the problem in north-east Belgium of initially tackling waterways covered by
33:21guns.
33:30The key to these defences was the fort of Eben-Emal, which was attacked by glider-borne paratroop engineers.
33:45Using hollow charge explosives and flamethrowers, they forced its surrender, much to the surprise of the Belgian High Command,
33:52who believed Eben-Emal to be impregnable.
34:13The main advance into Belgium could now get properly underway, and the Germans were soon thrusting westwards.
34:39The Belgian forces, their exhaustion growing, withdrew back towards the river dial.
34:53Meanwhile, the best of the French armies and the British had crossed into Belgium on the 10th of May,
34:59in order to take up their positions on the river dial.
35:18They met swarms of refugees coming the other way.
35:26The main German thrust through the Ardennes was spearheaded by seven panzer divisions,
35:31which had little difficulty in brushing aside the light allied screening forces.
35:44By the evening of the 12th, they had reached the river Meuse,
35:47and began to battle with the French defences on the west back.
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36:17In a very meanwhile today, the States of French defences came circles
36:21Next day, the Germans began to cross at several points,
36:24initially using rubber dinghies to help them to establish toeholds on the far back.
36:40French fire was initially heavy.
36:56Nevertheless, the German assault team soon established bridgeheads on the far bank
37:01and began to build bridges to enable the armour to cross.
37:22Throughout, the German artillery pounded the French defences.
37:30Overhead, the Stukas made repeated attacks,
37:32and eventually the French broke, enabling the panzers to thrust westwards.
37:43Allied air attacks on the bridges failed,
37:46with 35 out of these British fairy battle light bombers being shot down in five days.
37:54The French now tried to use their four armoured divisions,
37:57one only just formed and commanded by Colonel Charles de Gaulle.
38:08These attempted to strike at the ever more exposed flanks of the panzer thrust,
38:13but their cumbersome command and control system and poor planning
38:16meant that they were sent into battle piecemeal,
38:19and the Germans had little problem in warding them off, inflicting heavy casualties.
38:32By the 15th of May, the situation was that northern allied armies were holding firm
38:37against pressure from von Bock's army group in the north.
38:44But General Gamelin now became aware of the growing threat
38:48from von Rundstedt's panzers to the south.
38:52He therefore ordered his forces to begin to withdraw from the dial line.
39:12This sudden order to withdraw was disillusioning for the allied troops,
39:16who felt that they had been giving a good account of themselves,
39:19it was also bewildering for the local population.
39:28The growing flood of refugees clogged roads,
39:31and made the withdrawal that much more difficult.
39:37Von Rundstedt's panzer divisions continued to sweep westwards,
39:41creating ever more confusion the deeper they penetrated.
39:45Gamelin himself was now incapable of making any decisions,
39:48and on the 19th of May was replaced by Maxime Weygand.
39:55At the same time, Marshal Henri Pétain, hero of Verdun in 1916,
40:00was made Deputy Prime Minister.
40:05Weygand tried to coordinate British and French tank attacks
40:09into the flanks of the panzer thrust.
40:11Although the British temporarily halted some German tanks,
40:15the attacks were repulsed once more.
40:24The German drive continued,
40:26but the allied tank attacks had made the High Command nervous.
40:35This was especially since the main body of infantry
40:38was falling ever further behind.
40:52The exhaustion of the tank crews was increasing,
40:55and a temporary halt was ordered.
41:05But General Heinz Guderian,
41:06one of the prime architects of Blitzkrieg,
41:09was determined to allow the allies no respite,
41:12and pressed on once more.
41:26On the 20th of May,
41:28his tanks reached the Channel Coast,
41:30at the mouth of the Somme.
41:34The northern allied armies,
41:36fighting their way back,
41:37were now cut off.
41:44Guderian advanced north,
41:46and seized the port of Boulogne,
41:47before going on to attack Calais.
41:52Here, a hastily organized British Brigade
41:55had just arrived from England,
41:56to reinforce the French defenders.
42:14The reinforced garrison,
42:15put up stiff resistance,
42:17and there was fierce fighting for two days.
42:31Eventually, German superior strength told,
42:33and the defenders were forced to surrender.
42:38This left the northern allied armies,
42:40with the German noose even tighter around their necks.
42:44They were totally cut off,
42:46from the French armies in the Maginot Line,
42:48and south of the river Somme.
42:55The Belgians,
42:56their country almost totally overrun,
42:58now sought an armistice,
43:00considering that further resistance was useless.
43:10On the 27th of May,
43:12they surrendered.
43:16The vacuum created by the surrender,
43:18forced the British and French,
43:20into an even smaller perimeter.
43:31Meanwhile, Lord Gort, the British commander,
43:34had decided that the evacuation of his force to England,
43:37was the only option, other than surrender.
43:40Especially since German pressure was intense,
43:43on the allied pocket,
43:44which was based on Dunkirk.
43:46The British troops therefore,
43:48began to assemble on the beaches here,
43:49for what was to become known,
43:51as the miracle of Dunkirk.
44:01Back in England,
44:02a large fleet of vessels,
44:03ranging from destroyers,
44:04through cross-channel ferries,
44:06down to small pleasure craft,
44:08had been hastily assembled.
44:14They began to make their way across the channel,
44:16in order to take off the troops from the beaches.
44:27The evacuation began,
44:28on the 27th of May.
44:35One German decision,
44:37brought vital additional time,
44:39for the evacuation.
44:40Hitler halted the German tanks,
44:42because Hermann Goering,
44:43had persuaded him,
44:44to allow the Luftwaffe,
44:45to finish off the allied forces.
44:56Several vessels were sunk.
45:02RAF fighters,
45:04based in southern England,
45:05enabled the evacuation to continue.
45:10eventually though,
45:11with the beaches themselves,
45:12now under artillery fire,
45:15and ship sinkings increasing,
45:16the evacuation had to be halted,
45:18on the 3rd of June.
45:22No less than 220,000 British,
45:25and 120,000 French,
45:27and Belgians,
45:28had been rescued,
45:28to enable them,
45:29to fight another day.
45:31But they had to leave,
45:32all their vehicles,
45:33and heavy weapons behind,
45:35as well as many men,
45:36who now faced a long period,
45:37as prisoners of war.
45:58It had been a devastating defeat.
46:06But the Battle of France,
46:07was not yet over,
46:08and there was more work,
46:09to be done,
46:10before the German troops,
46:11could enjoy the fruits,
46:12of victory.
46:27On the 5th of June,
46:29while Army Group C,
46:30continued to tie down,
46:31the Maginot defences,
46:33the Germans struck south,
46:34across the rivers,
46:35as Somme,
46:36and Aine.
46:41As usual,
46:42the Luftwaffe,
46:43prepared the ground.
46:57Initially, French resistance,
46:59was fierce,
46:59and the Germans,
47:00had to fight hard,
47:01to break out,
47:02of their bridge heads.
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47:21In the 5th of June,
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47:22began to make progress,
47:25The bean marquee,
47:35A trickle of surrendering French soon turned into a flood.
47:45The panzer columns raced ever onwards, with Paris now under threat.
47:49The French government declared it an open city on the 11th of June in order to avoid
47:54the devastation that had befallen Warsaw and Rotterdam.
47:59Four days later, the Germans secured the prize that had so eluded them in 1914.
48:13Parisians could only watch stunned.
48:20On the 16th of June, the French sought an armistice.
48:32By this time, the Germans had finally begun to attack the Maginot Line, which had been
48:37enveloped by the offensive from the north.
48:39The French defenders could do no more than offer token resistance.
48:58The Germans soon reduced the forts.
49:08They then occupied the Maginot Line.
49:14France's impregnable bastion had fallen.
49:21The French situation had been aggravated on the 10th of June when Mussolini, who had stayed
49:26out of the conflict in spite of pressure from Hitler, declared war on Britain and France.
49:32Ten days later, expecting little or no opposition, his troops invaded southern France, but were
49:38surprised at the firm resistance they met and made little headway.
49:59Even though the British had had to evacuate their forces from France, they did try to send out
50:03another expeditionary force, this time to Cherbourg.
50:08But by the time this was organised, it included a Canadian division and began to arrive at Cherbourg,
50:14it was too late and it had to return to England.
50:18Even if it had been landed, the force was most unlikely to have made any difference to the outcome.
50:23It was too small and poorly equipped to have withheld the battle-hardened Germans for long.
50:41Winston Churchill, who had taken over as Prime Minister on the 10th of May, the day of the
50:46German invasion of the West, now realised that Britain would be Hitler's next target and began
50:52to prepare accordingly.
50:57Across the English Channel on the 22nd of June, 1940, the French were brought to the
51:02armistice table, which was in the very same railway carriage where the Germans had been
51:06made to sign the November 1918 armistice.
51:09It was the final indignity for the French, but a moment of supreme triumph for Hitler.
51:15Gu Combinedifi
51:17.
51:17.
51:28when British
51:37wow,
51:38he
51:39Our
51:39people
51:39see You
51:40which
51:40.
51:40Good
51:41me
51:42N
51:43R
51:45wake�리
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