For educational purposes
Newsreel and eyewitness accounts of Hitler's military strategy, revealing that the self-appointed commander-in-chief was so anxious to retain centralised power he created a war council best described as inept.
More significantly, he also had an indecisive nature which led to a series of tactical blunders - notably the failure to stop the Allied retreat at Dunkirk, and the invasion of Russia, which left Germany hopelessly overstretched fighting on two fronts.
Newsreel and eyewitness accounts of Hitler's military strategy, revealing that the self-appointed commander-in-chief was so anxious to retain centralised power he created a war council best described as inept.
More significantly, he also had an indecisive nature which led to a series of tactical blunders - notably the failure to stop the Allied retreat at Dunkirk, and the invasion of Russia, which left Germany hopelessly overstretched fighting on two fronts.
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17:22After the victory, Hitler grew hesitant.
17:27The British did not want to dance to his tune.
17:30With Churchill, there was no more appeasement.
17:39The war in the air over England was designed to bring the stubborn British to heel.
17:43Instead, it increased their resistance.
18:00The British Isles could not be conquered with bombs.
18:07While the Battle of Britain was raging, Hitler had plans drawn up for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
18:12He was afraid of war on two fronts, yet he unleashed it.
18:17Russia is the factor on which England chiefly depends.
18:21But if Russia is crushed, England's last hope is removed.
18:26The ruler of Europe and the Balkans then becomes Germany.
18:30Decision. In the course of this conflict, Russia must be finished off.
18:38But this plan meant more than that.
18:40Operation Barbarossa was to fulfil an old dream of Hitler's.
18:45This war was to be his war, free from any thought of morality.
18:49A war of annihilation in the East to win Lebensraum.
18:54How his troops should conduct themselves was conveyed by the supreme commander through the leaders of the Wehrmacht.
19:00Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the National Socialist German people.
19:06Germany must fight this corrupt world view.
19:11This struggle demands ruthless and energetic action against Bolshevik rabble-rousers, irregular saboteurs, Jews,
19:19and the complete removal of all active and passive resistance.
19:27Whoever broke the law in this pursuit would not be prosecuted, the commander promised.
19:34For actions undertaken by members of the Wehrmacht and its auxiliaries against enemy civilians,
19:41there is no requirement to prosecute.
19:44Not even when the deeds are military crimes or offences.
19:51Hit hard, single them out, finish them off.
19:54Quotations from the dictionary of the monster.
19:56This was more than a matter of winning territory, it was utter annihilation.
20:02The originators of barbaric Asiatic methods of fighting are the political commissars.
20:08Thus, action must be taken against them at once and with the utmost ferocity.
20:13Therefore, if they are captured in battle or in resistance, they are on principle to be shot immediately.
20:24Before the attack, the retreat into the forests of East Prussia.
20:29Hitler had always administered himself to the Germans like a drug.
20:33Now he dug into his wolf's lair, the Wolfschanze, ready for the assault.
20:48Barbarossa was a deadly gamble, a race against time.
20:52The battle had to be decided before winter set in or the war was lost.
21:04At first, the plan worked.
21:06After 20 days, the flag of the SS was hanging in white Russian Minsk.
21:14Whole divisions of the Soviet army were taken prisoner.
21:23The Germans were forced to retreat.
21:27Leningrad was in their sights.
21:29The commander wanted to starve out the Jerusalem of communism,
21:33to annihilate it and raze it to the ground.
21:43In September, German tanks were already outside Kiev.
21:48Entire Soviet armies were destroyed in mammoth battles of encirclement.
21:58Hitler's army was forced to retreat.
22:01The Germans were forced to retreat.
22:04The Germans were forced to retreat.
22:07The Germans were forced to retreat.
22:10The Germans were forced to retreat.
22:13Hitler's soldiers still believed in their own invincibility.
22:43I wrote to my mother in September,
22:48that the war would be over in a few weeks.
23:13It was impossible to take place outside Moscow.
23:16My generals understand nothing of a war economy,
23:19raged Hitler and insisted on his plan.
23:26When the offensive against Moscow finally got underway in October,
23:29it was too late.
23:31Stalin had put the time to use.
23:44The end of the war
23:49Blinded by the brilliance of his victories,
23:52the commander believed he could get anything he wanted on the spot,
23:55which was far from the hard reality.
24:00Then, in October, winter came.
24:04Suddenly, within a few days, the temperatures dropped to minus 25 degrees.
24:10The troops were not prepared for this.
24:13I wrote to my mother,
24:16that it would take some time.
24:29Against fresh troops from Siberia, the Germans were in a hopeless position.
24:34But Hitler ordered the line to be held at all costs,
24:37without regard for casualties.
24:57In December, when it came to holding the front,
25:04I wrote to my mother,
25:07that the war would not be over before three years.
25:10You have to imagine,
25:13what it means for a young officer,
25:16from September, with the feeling,
25:19that it will take a few more weeks,
25:22to December of the same year,
25:25who says, it will take three more years.
25:29In the unreal world of the Wolfschanze,
25:32Hitler drew his own conclusions from the debacle.
25:35He escaped into the idea of attack.
25:41Just as his whole concept of war threatened to collapse,
25:44he needlessly declared war on the whole world.
25:47The war on the whole world.
25:50The war on the whole world.
25:53The war on the whole world.
25:56Just as his whole concept of war threatened to collapse,
25:59he needlessly declared war on the United States.
26:27And the Germans were to fight with even more determination.
26:31For him, and with him, without hope of peace.
26:35Nobody wanted to make peace with him,
26:38so his people had to carry on fighting.
26:41If necessary, to the bitter end.
26:57Hitler made a clean sweep through his generals.
27:00Anyone who didn't toe the line was dismissed.
27:03In place of the unnerved Field Marshal von Brauchitsch,
27:06Hitler himself assumed command of the army.
27:09An affront, yet the army remained loyal to their new commander-in-chief.
27:13The war on the whole world
27:20One must not forget that I myself,
27:23including Rommel,
27:26have experienced outstanding Field Marshals and personalities
27:32who say goodbye to Hitler on the way,
27:36and say, I'm going there now and tell the man the truth,
27:39and so on,
27:42and who come back after two days
27:45and say, it's an incredibly impressive man,
27:49and he has now described the whole concept to me,
27:53and so on, and there is still hope, and so on.
27:57That was then, after 24 hours, gone again.
28:01But whether you take that as a kind of hypnosis,
28:05or otherwise an impression
28:08that he exerted on many people,
28:12you can't deny that.
28:18First of all, the high commanders on the front,
28:23also the commanders of the army groups,
28:26were not sufficiently informed.
28:29There was the famous Führer's Order No. 1,
28:35which said that everyone was only allowed to know
28:40what he had to know in order to fulfill his mission,
28:45and that he was not allowed to know that earlier than it was necessary.
28:50Secondly, Manstein spoke to Hitler,
28:54Leib spoke to Hitler, Kluge spoke to Hitler,
28:58and here it becomes somewhat clear,
29:01what I experienced at the end of the war,
29:04that this man had an indescribable,
29:09demonic, personal effect,
29:15which only very few people were able to escape,
29:21and which you can't understand
29:24if you haven't experienced it yourself.
29:30With this power of suggestion, he waged war,
29:33for war's sake.
29:34He had long since buried the illusion of a quick victory.
29:43In public, he appeared confident.
29:47He only showed doubt in private.
29:50In a secretly recorded conversation with Finland's Marshal Mannerheim,
29:54he admitted he had underestimated the Soviets.
29:57If someone had told me that a state could attack with 35,000 tanks,
30:03I would have said they were crazy.
30:0635,000 tanks.
30:09We have destroyed over 34,000 tanks so far.
30:14I hadn't foreseen it beforehand,
30:16if I had foreseen it, it would have been hard enough for me,
30:20but I would have taken the decision right,
30:23because there was no other option.
30:27This obstinacy made the commander take one further wrong decision.
30:31In spite of the long supply lines,
30:33he sent one part of the army to the Caucasus,
30:36and another to Stalingrad.
30:38In the summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht had to hold a European front
30:4230,000 kilometres long.
30:45A hopeless task.
30:48Hitler was not put off by the reality of war.
30:51Instead of the Russian capital,
30:53he wanted to capture the city which bore the name of his adversary.
30:57Instead of a victory, a symbolic triumph.
31:05The Battle of Stalingrad.
31:09Stalingrad
31:15In October, soldiers of the 6th Army occupied nearly all of the city.
31:21But the Soviets were still doggedly defending 300 metres of the Volga.
31:26They were getting supplies, and the Germans were not.
31:30Stalingrad
31:48So, he ignored the reality of the second winter of war.
32:00His operative goals and decisions became more and more unreal.
32:09They became less realistic.
32:14The reality in Stalingrad.
32:17The defenders attacked, the attackers defended themselves.
32:21Hitler personally intervened in the battle of the houses.
32:27They had a map of 1 to 10,000.
32:32And exactly how the company should proceed,
32:37and which factory should be taken, and so on,
32:40was decided by Hitler from the Führer's headquarters 1,000 kilometres away.
32:48Decisions with dire consequences.
32:51When the Soviets encircled Stalingrad in November,
32:54300,000 Germans were trapped.
32:56Their generals wanted to break out, but Hitler dug in his heels.
33:02To the 6th Army, decree from the Führer.
33:05Present Volga front and present North front to be held under all circumstances.
33:11Air supply by deployment of further 100 Junkers being set up.
33:17He had an unyielding will.
33:21And if he had an opinion for himself,
33:26even an operative opinion,
33:28he had a lot of preconceived opinions,
33:31and he had formed an opinion,
33:33then it was impossible to get rid of him if he didn't want to.
33:46And so it happened.
34:00Abandoned in the ruins of Stalingrad,
34:02the German soldiers didn't stand a chance.
34:16When he left, not only I doubted that the Führer would kick us out,
34:23and that he still knew what he was doing.
34:26The whole atmosphere was in doubt.
34:31Or let's say, one was in doubt whether this was right.
34:35Such doubts were justified.
34:37Human life meant nothing to a commander who had only his own goals in mind.
34:42The whole of Germany once laid down its arms at three quarters past twelve.
34:48I basically only stopped five minutes after twelve.
34:56There was nothing to laugh about for the men betrayed at Stalingrad.
35:01Hitler was a man of his word.
35:10For me, any respect for Hitler as a commander,
35:16but also as a human being, or as a Führer, is broken.
35:20Hitler was for us, one could say, at that time, the grave-digger for us.
35:37Stalingrad, the definitive turning point.
35:43For the commander, it was the beginning of the end.
35:46For the commander, it was the beginning of the end.
35:49He escaped into a convoluted fantasy world, cutting himself off totally from reality,
35:56from which there was no escape for his people.
36:09For Hitler, in the imaginary world of his military maps,
36:12all that mattered was putting off the end, with the familiar remedy, a new battle.
36:21The greatest tank deployment of all time.
36:23Seventeen panzer divisions, half a million men.
36:27A pointless display of power.
36:31The tank battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 lasted only eight days.
36:35It ended indecisively.
36:37Hitler had played his last card.
36:42The delusion of Lebensraum in the east was shattered.
36:45He applied himself all the more doggedly to a second insane idea.
36:53The Jews had no divisions.
37:05By the summer of 1943, mass murder had been perfected.
37:10Cattle trucks to Auschwitz.
37:12In the official jargon of the executioners, the final solution of the Jewish question.
37:20He had a sinister vision for his own people, too.
37:40Fate came to Germany from the skies.
37:43Like the vengeance of God.
37:46The Allied firestorm fell on everyone indiscriminately.
37:50Supporters and opponents.
38:00That Germany's cities were perishing was of no interest to the commander.
38:04He never visited the bomb sites.
38:06He could sense that his previously enthusiastic people were beginning to have doubts.
38:36The painful recognition of just whom they got involved with came too late.
38:41This man had aroused the opposition of the world,
38:44which was now united in one goal.
38:47His elimination.
39:07On June the 6th, 1944, Allied troops landed on the European mainland.
39:12The war on two fronts had arrived.
39:20This desperate situation forced the German resistance into action.
39:24Brave conspirators from the officer corps wanted to kill the dictator
39:28to save their fatherland.
39:30They carried out what many only dared think of.
39:37In some evening hours, we sat together in the barracks
39:43with a glass of beer in our little officer's house
39:48and discussed what we could do.
39:51Could we depose Hitler?
39:53Could we make a man the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front?
39:57Should we put Hitler before a court?
40:00The search for a way out drove many officers
40:03into conflict between military obedience and moral responsibility.
40:34The attempt on his life came to nothing.
40:37The commander survived.
40:45He construed blind chance as a gift of providence.
40:49Nothing was meant to happen to him, he told his Axis partner euphorically.
40:56His real condition gave the lie to his self-delusions.
41:01I had never seen Hitler up close.
41:04When I saw him for the first time on July 23, 1944,
41:08I was horrified.
41:11I saw a wreck in front of me.
41:14A bent man,
41:18who was already dragging one leg,
41:21had a trembling hand.
41:24He could only move it in a trembling manner.
41:28The right hand was useless because of the bruise.
41:36I didn't see any shining eyes that could fascinate me.
41:40They were faint.
41:43And a naked figure was standing opposite me.
41:47I couldn't believe that he was the vital leader
41:51that we had all imagined.
41:54The battalions of the Volkssturm are ready for action.
41:58Most of the people from the First World War
42:01will tell you what you need to know about the warrior's craft.
42:05The last reserves.
42:08Old men who had to stick their necks out once again.
42:12And half-grown lads who now had to play the hero.
42:16One was the desire to become such a hero.
42:20And the second was to contribute to saving Germany,
42:24as I felt it at that time.
42:27To save it from what was coming at it from the outside.
42:31From the east, the Soviets were advancing on Germany.
42:35As they marched into East Prussia,
42:38the hour had come for retaliation.
42:44The heavy artillery was firing.
42:48The hate Hitler had sown was now revisited on his own people.
42:57The war he had unleashed, he now waged against the Germans as well.
43:02He wanted to rob them of any hope that in the west, at least,
43:06the end would be swift.
43:08So he drew up a crazy plan.
43:11THE FUHRER
43:16His delusion that reality should submit to the Führer remained intact.
43:21For one last gamble in the west,
43:23without scruple, he left the endangered eastern front exposed.
43:28THE FUHRER
43:34I myself experienced this, in my opinion,
43:39not only idiotic but also criminal Ardennes offensive.
43:46Where Hitler, in the west, instead of packing these fabulous,
43:50even more fabulous tank divisions into the east,
43:54into the Eifel, into the Ardennes, with tank divisions,
43:58to believe that one could break through there,
44:01all the way to the sea, Antwerp, was madness.
44:07The madness had a quick end.
44:09Superior Allied strength gained the upper hand.
44:12Reality defeated delusion.
44:19While the exhausted soldiers surrendered,
44:21the commander kept repeating the old slogans.
44:42To which the Soviets replied with a decisive blow in the east.
44:52Fear of the Red Army drove millions of people to flight.
45:02Flight on frozen roads.
45:11Across the frozen lagoons of the Baltic.
45:15To the ports offering rescue by sea.
45:34The commander fled too.
45:36He now commanded from Berlin.
45:38In an hour, he could be at the front.
45:45From his people, he demanded still more sacrifice.
46:02Every sacrifice was pointless.
46:07With their superior strength,
46:09the Red Army blasted their way into Hitler's capital.
46:15At the end, he waged the war on his own doorstep.
46:19The commander was finished.
46:21What remained was blind destruction.
46:24All military transport, communications,
46:27industrial and supply facilities within the Reich
46:31that may be useful to the enemy are to be destroyed.
46:39The order came too late.
46:42The order came too late.
46:44As did the directive to turn all civilians at the front out of their homes
46:48and have them try their luck in the open.
47:00On these streets in Berlin, the people once acclaimed him.
47:04He had betrayed them.
47:07But he could not annihilate them.
47:17A last roll call in his own backyard.
47:20Medals for boy soldiers.
47:25They are Hitler's last victims.
47:36Brought up to believe in him, they are now to die for him.
48:06He laid his hands on his trousers.
48:11Made himself a tool.
48:20That is what I blame Hitler for the most.
48:23That he seduced the youth.
48:26And that he betrayed them for their youth.
48:29And that he took many lives.
48:32It was a very painful experience.
48:35It came about through many conversations.
48:38And also because one began to think,
48:41what kind of madness is this, this whole war?
48:56In the end, you got so tired of war
49:00and were glad that you had survived it so far.
49:03That you now wished that the war should be over.
49:06And it can only be over
49:09if the one who called him out, Hitler, is gone.
49:14Without their obedience, Hitler could not have waged his war.
49:30The generals failed lamentably.
49:33The ordinary soldiers were deceived twice over.
50:00My knowledge, which only referred to the last weeks of the war,
50:07was that Hitler was mentally ill.
50:13That he lived in a hypertrophic self-identification with the German people.
50:22He was subjectively convinced
50:25that with his death,
50:28at the end of his ideology,
50:31the German people would no longer be able to survive.
50:58We rushed into thin air like a ghost,
51:01a nightmare which haunts us still.
51:13The final account, an ocean of blood and tears.
51:19From Stalingrad to Brest,
51:22from Dachau to Auschwitz,
51:2540 million dead.
51:55To be continued...