49:09
6 years and one day after Hitler invaded Poland, Japan signed the instrument of surrender. No one will ever know the name of the first or the last victim. But they are the story of the Second World War. Not the tanks that could not move or the planes that could not fly or the ships that could not sail without them. War is about people in uniform or not. People in cities, villages, jungles, strangers as allies, neighbors as enemies, hundreds of millions of people for whom for six years and one day there was hell on earth.
There was no peace after the war. After the bloodshed of 1914 to 1918, After the peacemakers had all gone home, fighting did not stop. Civil war in Russia, then in China, then in Spain. Invasion in Ethiopia, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, the Chico War. street battles in Germany, in America, the pain of going hungry, of having no work, the rise and rise of dictators. Then one more invasion. But this time, the whole thing fell apart. The first argument about the war which goes by different names in different places is when did it start?
Second world war began in Asia at a bridge called Lugiao known in the west as the Marco Polo Bridge. Chiang Kaishek, leader of the Chinese nationalist government said that he would seek a peaceful settlement, but he added, "Perhaps now is the time to make public the declaration to demonstrate our determination to fight." He ordered a general state of alert. He ordered his troops to prepare for resistance. He did represent the nation more than anybody else. I think of course quite largely thanks to his wife Ming.
She portrayed her husband as very much, you know, the guardian of China, the man who is standing up to the Japanese oppressor. The Japanese used the Marco Polo Bridge incident as an excuse for launching a full-scale invasion and the Second World War had begun. The war between Japan and China, anticipated for some time passed from the period of small local actions to more concentrated warfare.
Beijing fell apart after 2 days and Tanzhin 2 days after that. When the help he expected from Britain or America failed to materialize, Chiang Kai-shek as commanderin-chief said, "Since all hope for peace has been lost, all we can do now is resist to the bitter end. A Chinese officer recorded in his diary, intense Japanese artillery fire as if it would level the mountains and wipe out the sea. Nanjing fell to the invader on December the 13th. And the cruel violence that would claim more civilian than combatant victims in the Second World War began to count its dead.
Battle, massacre, pestilence, and starvation have claimed more than 5 million Chinese lives. And millions more their homes and villages destroyed are today hungry, frightened refugees. The exact death toll of the Nanjing violence can never be known. not less than 50,000, perhaps six times that number. The dead were thrown into pits. The living were buried alive. The tortured and murdered were hurled into the river. Japan's head of military security in Shanghai expressed the racist attitude that made violence possible. He said, "We can do anything to such creatures."
A Japanese soldier wrote in his diary, "I trod on the corpses of Chinese soldiers without care, for my heart had become wild. Mutilated bodies were burned. Women were raped and disfigured." A long time ago, we thought that events like the rape of Nanging were outofcontrol madness. But now, as with most other mass atrocities against civilians, it's becoming increasingly clear that they were much more controlled than that uh that characterization would suggest. This nightmare of cruelty was all the more horrible because it was deliberately planned by the Japanese high command to tear the heart out of
the Chinese people once and forever. A Japanese officer wrote, "In times of peace, these acts would be totally unthinkable and inhuman, but in the strange environment of the battlefield, they are easy. He would be proven right on every battlefield on every continent. Europe turned away from China's tragedy. Distracted by the anus, Adolf Hitler, appointed German Chancellor in 1933 and named Fura in 1934, had marched into the demilitarized Rhineland without a shot being fired. In the Anelus, he sent his troops into and annexed Austria. He then began to demand the ethnic German part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudasian land.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain led an attempt at consiliation known as appeasement. Neville Chamberlain has had a very bad press. He's been blamed for the failure of appeasement. My own sense is that what he was doing was an honorable and justifiable thing. He's been completely influenced in his thinking by the letters he's received. Who are these letters from? And these are post bags and post bags full of letters. And these letters are mainly from women, mothers and wives. Out of this mental danger, we pluck this flower safety.
He was not the naive, wideeyed idiot that some people portray him as. He didn't trust Hitler. He was trying to get the best deal. Appeasement reached its climax with the deal made at Munich. Finally, the most popular arrival of all to a world balancing on the brink of chaos. Mr. Chamberlain stands as the savior of peace. Munich is about buying time to a large extent. It's about not being ready to fight. And it's about exploring options, although they're ever decreasing options.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire never to go to war with one another again. The Sudatan land was surrendered to Germany in exchange for the promise of no more territorial ambition. But of course, Hitler rips up the treaty within months. The future became the present. On March 14th, 1939, Adolf Hitler threatened Prague with complete destruction by the Luwaffa unless the nation surrendered itself unconditionally to Germany's protection.
He sends in the tanks into taking over the rest of Czechoslovakia in early 1939. The hopes for continued world peace had placed the free world into the untenable position of compromising with a power mad dictator. That's where you know that this man's shopping list just continues and you're on it. The sacrifice of Czechoslovakia was to prove given an inch Hitler would now reach for a mile. Next on the shopping list was Poland. France Halder, chief of staff of the army high command, explained the plan. The intention of the Fura and Guring to destroy and exterminate the Polish people.
Propaganda ruthlessly shaped German opinion. It is a narrative that there are acts of aggression by the Polish army against Germany's territorial integrity. Germany is provoked by Poland. Poland is rearming. Poland has got the guarantee of the British and the French. And Poland is mistreating the German minority. At 4:45 a.m. on the 1st of September 1939, the German cruiser Schles Holstein opened fire on the Polish fort of Westerlat. At that moment, without warning or declaration, German soldiers with air and naval support invaded Poland from three sides. Communications blown up as the defenders in beat the invasion every way they can.
Moyer Fishman, a young man who would survive Awitz, remembered. Suddenly, German bombers appeared. There was no war declared. We had to be the fire brigade. We were not equipped to deal with the incendurary bombs. All we had were buckets of water. Place after place is captured as the mechanized columns speed on. From the north, they're driving toward Warsaw. 1 and a half million German soldiers in 67 divisions invaded.
6,000 aircraft were opposed by a Polish air force of 400 machines. This was the day Germany had been building for and waiting for. And with larseny in their hearts, they gloried in the destruction they were letting loose upon the world. Hans Leman was one of the soldiers. When we marched into Poland, there were corpses all around. They lay around and no one bothered about them. I have to tell you now, this country is at war with Germany. The reaction of the allies to the invasion of Poland was to declare war on Germany. But the actual practical effect of what they would do next was problematic because of course there was
no easy way they could get troops and material in to assist Poland. Herman Guring, supreme commander of the German air force, the Luftwaffer, was disturbed by Britain's declaration of war. If we lose this war, God help us. By September 6th, Warsaw's air defense was limited to 96 anti-aircraft guns. Warsaw is the first big city that is being bombarded from the air. So they are suffering and the city is getting well to 20% or so is getting destroyed and you have dead lying on the street. Stefan Stashinski, the Lord Mayor of Warsaw reported in the early hours of the morning. Seven of our hospitals were bombed.
Wounded civilian victims of earlier air raids in the city had occupied these beds when this raid came. It was like a grim avenger, relentlessly determined that they should not escape, that they should find no peace. Yadigga Senovska was a nurse, a girl of 16. Both legs a massive bleeding pulp. I bent over to kiss her brow. She died quietly on the 13th. dive bombers caused widespread fires. Finally, on the 25th, Warsaw endured the largest air raid the world had seen to that point. There was a very strong belief that targeting large urban areas was the way that you would win a war on this scale. And to some degree, really the war
itself was only about that policy gradually coming to fruition. Adam Goldberg was an eyewitness. The German stucers flew overhead and machine gun people and retreating soldiers also. There were many dead. Many of the middle-aged were sullen and angry. Youngsters were half resentful, half resigned, while their elders turned to prayer. These are the faces of a nation besieged. When the fighting war began, so did the war against civilians. The German policy was called Shrekishkite, frightfulness. Hitler said, "My death's head formations to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. On the day that Britain and France declared war, 55 peasants were rounded
up and shot at the village of Truscolasi. There had been murderers, been people were killed, uh people were displaced, but never on the scale of the Third Reich. Uh and so who would have thought that this was going to happen? 120,000 Japanese in six divisions advanced on the Chinese city of Chiang Sha. There are people who say Japan's mission is to expand in Asia, not least because of this assumption that a weak China and a weak Korea in the face of the onslaught of Western imperialism make Japan itself vulnerable. Kurisi was barely into his teens when he volunteered to fight.
We listen to stories about others who had died for our country. Basically, education was all about teaching us to die for our country. Chang Sha, defended by outgunned forces, turned back the assault under the leadership of a Cantonese general, Schue Yoy, who wrote, "We have destroyed China, removed every stone, burned down every farm, torn up every railway track, and we have done this so successfully that the Japanese have repented of their invasion. But because of the imperialist sweat and also because of the um Japanese invasion which was also imperialist sweat right to make Chinese to realize and now we
need to fight together against the enemy from the outside that which is stronger than stone walls had at last been born in China. The will to resist the people who wouldn't surrender. The people determined to fight for their freedom, their good earth, the people who can't be beaten. Japanese policy was committed to expansion for territory and resources. One faction favored going north, another striking south. The balance was tilted by a battle between Japanese and Soviet troops on the Mongolian border. In remote Bongolia, Japan and Soviet Russia are fighting with planes shut down and sky fighters swooping back like this to land at their base.
The Japanese defeated in Mongolia consolidates this idea that to save ourselves, we need to go south rather than going north. The Soviet Japanese peace agreement following the battle of Kkin Gaul guaranteed Stalin's Asian frontiers against Japanese aggression. Thus reassured and as secretly agreed with Hitler, Stalin sent the Red Army into Poland. The annihilation of Poland would mean one fewer bourgeois fascist state to contend with.
It was really a very big surprise for the Polish army because they have no idea for what Soviet army came on this territory. Will they help to the Polish army to fight against Nazis or will they just take this territory of western Bellaris? Subjected to almost continuous bombardment by the Luftvafer, the Polish capital with its 1 million inhabitants fought on against overwhelming strength for 3 weeks. Completely cut off with supplies of food and water almost finished. With totally inadequate defensive equipment, a helpless target for Hitler's bombs and shells, Warsaw fought on till the 27th of September. A German soldier observed.
Polish heavy guns are being carted off by our soldiers. Lorries are already moving to the woods to take the prisoners away. On September 28th, Radio Warsaw played Shopan's funeral march. And on the 29th, the Nazis and the Soviets divided the country. 65,000 Polish troops were killed in the fighting. 420,000 others became prisoners of the Germans. 240,000 prisoners of the Soviets. Ziggmund Klucowski was one of those affected. The Germans posted several new regulations. All men of Jewish religion between the ages of 15 and 60 must report at city hall with brooms, shovels, and buckets.
They will be cleaning city streets. As a result of the invasion, the number of Jews living under Nazi rule jumped from 300,000 to 3 million. Hinrich Himmler, Reich's furer of the SS and one of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime, was clear about what was intended. The time has come to drive this rabble into ghettos and then epidemics will erupt and they'll all croak. A new subject introduced to the curriculum was racial science. So obviously this was very much connected to Nazi racial ideology meant that history was conceived of in racial terms. The first genocidal massacres took place 6,500 on the parade ground at grouper more than 10,000 in the gravel pits at Manishuk.
The tone had been set. All of the other things that follow can only really be understood once you appreciate the identity that was being crafted and people were embracing and internalizing of what it meant to be German. The writer George Orwell spoke for many. Millions of others like me have got a feeling that the world's gone wrong. Britain dropped 12 million leaflets in retaliation for the invasion of Poland. They called it the Confetti War. Hitler's minister for propaganda, Joseph Gerbles, noted in his diary, "The Furer is of the opinion that England must be given a KO blow." Quite right, too. On October 9th, Hitler issued Furer
directive number six, calling for an offensive in the West, calling for an attack across the First World War battlefields of Belgium and Northern France. The generals convinced their furer to delay the offensive until the spring. That delay was called initially by an American senator the Phony War. But for countless people, the war and the violence were far from phony. No capital city has suffered more terribly than Warsaw. Since the day of surrender, a blackout of total misery has enveloped the city, apart from flashes of news of appalling atrocities to illuminate its plight.
Killing squads accounted for 45% of Poland's doctors, 57% of her lawyers, 40% of professors, virtually all journalists, and more than 2,600 priests. Most of Nazi racial theory really was pseudocience. There is effectively no real biological basis for much of what they say. Joseph Gerbles noted in his diary, the furer's verdict on the polls is devastating. Hitler said the standard of living in the country is to remain low. It is of use to us only as a reservoir of labor.
Actually, the Soviet occupation is even more violent than the German occupation. More Poles die in those first one and a half years through the Soviets than die through German hands. The Soviet Union shipped 291,513 Polish citizens to the Gulag and in April 1940 took 21,892 Poles to the Catin Forest and other sites where they were shot by Soviet killers. My father was caught by Russians and he said, "We are going to be taken to the United States, but that was a lie. They were all taken to Katin and shot." On October 4th, Hitler took the salute of his triumphant forces in the Polish
capital. In Britain, they waited. In France, they put their faith in the Magino line, complex and formidable fortifications that guarded the Franco German border. The French armies, you know, marched a few miles into German territory along the Rine, but then they come back again. In November, Joseph Stalin, confident after success in Poland, sent the Red Army into Finland, a land grab that hoped to restore territory once ruled by the Zars. Red planes over the Finnish capital. The terrors of total war loosed upon the unoffending population of Helsinki.
The weather was arctic. Uh there was a meter of snow across the ground. The Russians, you'd think would be used to the those conditions, in fact, weren't. They were colossally underprepared. And the Fins exploited this. The Winter War was a major embarrassment, and Marshall Verelov told Stalin why the Red Army was having difficulty securing victory. You have yourself to blame for all this. You had our best generals killed. The Red Army stumbled led the Nazis to make a dangerous assessment.
Gerbal said the Russians are making absolutely no progress in Finland. The Red Army really does seem to be of little military worth. You can imagine how small Finland and how big Third Reich. That's why Hitler understood that um he's ready and we can go against Soviets and destroy them. Lebanon swung for Hitler meant seizing land in the east, but first he would ensure against a war on two fronts. His plans for 1940 were clear enough. He told Gerbles, "I want to beat England, whatever it costs." So there's really two objectives from
the German, the Nazi point of view. Clearly, they want to knock France out of the war, but for Hitler and for the Germans, the real war is always going to be in the east. Rationing had begun in Japan and Germany before the war. At the start of 1940, it was introduced into Britain. It's not well thought through and carefully planned. It's just the rations are designed according to what they've got to give people. Eyewitnesses who were children at the time remember We had three color ration books. A bath color for adults, a blue one for teenagers, and a green one for infants. And each page had little squares with letters on them. You took your ration
card to the shop, and he had a pencil, and they'd cross off the square, which meant you'd had it that week. The subject of this great wartime experiment in food are not white mice or guinea pigs. but human beings fighting for their lives. The troubles faced by countless others, the targets of German racial policy were of a different dimension. Joseph Gerbles wrote in his diary, "Himmler is presently shifting populations, not always successfully." Himmler was shifting populations onto trains and into camps and ghettos. By early 1940, a mobile gas chamber was in use in Poland. But the fighting war seemed to have stalled.
The view of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was. Whatever reason Hitler has had for making no endeavor to overwhelm us, one thing is certain. He has missed the bus. That was April 4th. Operation Visa Ubong, the assault on Denmark and Norway, launched at dawn on April 9th. Ships, transports, tanks, men, planes, all flung themselves simultaneously upon a defenseless country. By the end of the first day, the Germans had achieved every objective. By the afternoon of April 9th, the Germans were in complete control of all seven ports where they had landed in the morning.
Allied action to confront the Germans in Norway was a disastrous catalog of fumbling, bungling, and bickering. The expeditionary force sent to Tronheim outnumbered the Germans 6 to1 and was routed. The Royal Navy had to evacuate 11,300 troops. 4,396 were lost. The invasion of Norway cost Germany almost half of its destroyer force, meaning a cross channel invasion would be impossible without air superiority. The British benefited by taking possession of the Norwegian Merchant Marine. Ilduche Benonito Mussolini the first dictator having taken control of Italy in 1922 saw the scale of Germany's success and tragically for his people felt left out.
His decision to enter the second world war was very ruinous uh for Italy. It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. To make a people great, it is necessary to send them to battle, even if you have to kick them in the pants. But the greatest impact of the disaster in Norway was felt in the British House of Commons. Neville Chamberlain, having lost the support of his party, stood down. The candidates his party favored to replace him were not supported by the opposition and a compromised candidate was appointed to head a national government.
It was Winston Churchill. Churchill's been portrayed as a sort of mind-blowing Tory thug. And that's just what we needed where Hitler was concerned. Behind Mr. Churchill, the country rallies solidly and resolutely to the task of defeating the most sinister madman that ever aspired to world conquest. Winston Churchill was 65 years old. And this was his time and the timing was uncanny. The year is 1940. The German soldier stands before all mankind, confident of his own power to destroy and conquer. Where next will Hitler's legion strike?
The answer comes quickly enough. 150 Nazi divisions receive the call to hurl their might on Western Europe. May 10th, the day of Churchill's appointment, was the day Hitler unleashed his invasion of Belgium and France. History calls the Blitzkrieg. Germany's airarm blazes the trail for the opening attacks on Holland, Belgium, and tiny undefended Luxembourg, ready to re untold horror upon all that spread out below their wings. Blitzkrieg, of course, is a fantasy to a certain degree. It was a word which even Hitler despised. Blitzkrieg is a really interesting tactic because it doesn't just work tactically. It doesn't just work on the ground. It worked psychologically.
The Nazi machine broke the back of Dutch resistance in four. Towns and villages were in flames as the invaders rolled on at a breathless pace, encircling the defenders and slashing their armies, destroying in the name of the new order the homes and shops of those who had dared to resist. Joseph Gerbles recorded the campaign's ultimate objective. The Furer has set his mind on a great war against England. England must be chased out of Europe and France destroyed as a great power. Then Germany will have hedgemony and Europe will have peace. As the offensive stormed forward, Mussolini declared war on France and Britain. His army was smaller and less
well equipped than it had been in the First World War. Count, his foreign minister, who was also his son-in-law, wrote in his diary, "I am sad, very sad. May God help Italy." 2 days after Churchill took office on May 12th, the leading German units crossed into France, securing the north bank of the MS. Staff Sergeant Rubath was with the leading unit. With my section, I reached the bank of the MS in a rush. Enemy machine guns fire from the right flank. During the crossing, constant firing from our machine guns batters the enemy, and thus
not one casualty occurs. And of course at that point the Magino line fails to operate because the Germans decide to attack through the low countries and they also extend through the Arden where the Magino line did not extend to. The same day the Dutch army was ordered to fall back for a last stand on the line Amsterdam Rotterdam Utre. Jod Han was a young Dutch Jew who would spend the entire war in hiding. In the Netherlands, occupation forces behaved themselves impeccably. But of course, the lull didn't last all that long. On the day that the Netherlands surrendered, French Prime Minister Paul Reo remarked, "We have been defeated. We are beaten.
We have lost the battle. The front is broken. They are pouring through in great numbers. On the 17th, the fighting at Sedan ended. One of the places they went through was a place called Sedan, which the French should have known about because that's where they were defeated in 19 in 1870. Nevertheless, the German armies sweep through the Arden. It would have been entirely possible once the Germans break through the Ma River around Sedan and through the Arden forest. The bridge head that they make is relatively small and relatively
weakly defended. If the French had counterattacked relatively quickly, they probably would have destroyed it. But they don't. A British army officer kept a diary. It appears that as the Sedan sector was considered so strong, the most inferior of the French divisions were posted there. When the dive bombers came down, they stood the noise for 2 hours and then bolted out like a lot of frightened old ladies. A French staff officer admitted the infantry cowered in their trenches. Their only concern was to keep their heads well down. In 7 days, the Germans had advanced 320 km, crossed the MS, and broken into the
undefended Allied rear. There was also no proper plan to deal with the armored breakthrough that happened in the Arden. Jock Watt was with the British Army with the Royal Tank Regiment. The road from Bologin was just full of moving bodies. That's all I could call them because they didn't look like people. There were men, women, and children with bags dragging little trucks. The children weren't talking or playing. All with vacant expressions just looking straight ahead, going nowhere.
8 million French abandoned their homes in a month. A flaming wave of wholesale death and destruction sweep southward through France ahead of the raging battlefront, striking down all in its path. Eyewitnesses saw scenes of horror and despair. The whole country seems suddenly to have given itself up. Everything has collapsed, imploded. The 7th Panza division under General Owen Raml reached Cambre on May 21st. On May 24th, German army group Van Klest, comprising three Panza divisions, stopped less than 25 km from Dunkirk. In one of the war's regular and endlessly debated turning points,
the German offensive was ordered to halt. One of the fatal decisions made by Hitler and his commanders during the Second World War was to stop the Panza's advance on Dunkerk. The Germans have been fighting for 3 weeks. Their forces are exhausted. So the German generals and not as many people think Hitler order them to stop on the perimeter of the Dunkerk beaches. The tank forces in particular were absolutely exhausted from an incredibly rapid advance across France and they just couldn't go any farther.
Von Runstead, commanding Army Group A, gave the order. Hitler supported the order and Herman Guring rejoiced. The kill would be left to his lofer which he confidently said could finish off the armies trapped at Dunkirk. It could not. The smoke from the fires of Dunkirk almost obscured the south. But in this inferno, while the BEF and their French comrades held off the Nazis in an epic rear guard action, it was here that the yachts, motorboats, and saucy janes performed magnificent feats of rescue. On May 26th, the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk began. 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. There were 222 Royal Navy and approximately 860 civilian vessels at Dunkerk. The small craft fing the troops to the navy vessels waiting offshore. The soldiers were coming off the beach, clinging to bits of wood and wreckage and anything that would float. A number of Royal Navy ships were lost. Six destroyers were sunk, but the British very much felt that was a price worth paying.
Instead of the 45,000 hoped for. The fleet took off 338,000 Allied troops. The story of that epic withdrawal will live in history both as a glorious example of discipline and as a monument to Sepha. But the army had been effectively disarmed, leaving 64,000 vehicles, 76,000 tons of ammunition, and 2,500 guns behind. On June 11th, Paris was declared an open city. And on the 14th, General Boguslav von Stududnitz led the 87th Infantry Division through the heart of the city. On the 15th, 400,000 Frenchmen of the surrounded 3rd, fifth, and eighth armies surrendered. The French surrender was signed on June 22nd. On June 24th, Hitler took a 3-hour sightseeing tour of Paris. asked about a victory parade. He said,
"I am not in the mood for a victory parade. We aren't at the end yet." The fall of France subtracted a major industrial economy from the Allied cause and put French ports in German hands. Hving the distance Ubot had to travel to reach the Atlantic shipping lanes. France has fallen. No allies. Britain is standing alone. The mood in England was grim. Arthur Crutchley and Peter Matthews were young men destined to serve in the armed forces. After Dunkirk, they called for volunteers because they thought naturally we'd be invaded.
You started off with an armband. Then, as they got weapons and stuff, finally you got your rifle. Invasion paranoia spawned a litany of mindbending nonsense. General Ironside, Commanderin-Chief, home forces, angrily reported, "Suspicious men moving all night all over the country. There is signaling going on all over the place." Shald broadcast his appeal from London. This war has not been settled by the Battle of France. This is a world war. On the day of De Gaulle's broadcast, Winston Churchill told the Commons, "The Battle of France is over.
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.
