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00:00I'll see you next time.
00:30I'll see you next time.
01:00You run into a bunker, and they're shooting with the flamethrowers and so on, and you have a battle right there, but it's always at a short distance.
01:07So we had them to take this by hand-to-hand combat in order to advance to get their positions.
01:13There was a certain tactic which we tried to take advantage of.
01:24We would try to fly about 1,000 meters below the British planes.
01:30Then we would wait until they were very close to us, about 200 meters, and suddenly fly
01:34up at a steep angle to get above them while firing our machine guns.
01:41It was very effective.
01:48The fascination that people, particularly in the West, have with the German army in World
01:54War II stems from their very real combat achievements, the perceived superiority of the German soldier
02:02in World War II, which is backed up by individual combat records, and by the ghost of the German
02:10propaganda machine itself, which built the German Wehrmacht into the mightiest war machine
02:15in the world.
02:17To some extent, the army could never live up entirely to its propaganda image.
02:23But man for man, they inflicted far more casualties on their enemies than their enemies did on
02:28them.
02:29This is the basic reason why so many people are fascinated by the period.
02:34The Versailles Treaty, which the Germans signed after their defeat in World War I, greatly
02:39restricted Germany's economy and wounded her national pride.
02:44Many German citizens felt it was unfair and harsh.
02:53Hitler seized this opportunity to build his war machine.
02:57There was a certain enthusiasm in the population for this coming man who promised a lot of things,
03:05and who did a lot of things, really, for the Germans.
03:08And in 1934 or 1935, there was a great movement in favor of enter the Hitlerjugend, you know.
03:18And that's, I follow with that, because Hitlerjugend was like scouts in England or in America.
03:23It was a news movement, which was very attractive for us.
03:27As Hitler rose to power, the incredible propaganda machine which he created made military service
03:56seemed very attractive.
04:01I was brought up under the rule of the Third Reich, and as a boy I just wanted to be a soldier.
04:11I had a job at a bank, and people would ask me why I wasn't a soldier yet.
04:17I volunteered for the paratroopers, but they sent a letter back to me saying that they couldn't accept me until December of 1940.
04:25But I didn't want to wait that long.
04:27But I didn't want to wait that long.
04:28I volunteered, as all my classmates did, 15 of them, at the beginning of 1940, because we thought our country was in danger.
04:50We have to do something for the country.
04:59Throughout the 1930s, the German military expanded in secret against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.
05:05The basic model of the armed forces still owed much to the army of World War I.
05:09When Hans von Zecht basically reformed and reorganized the German army after World War I, he decided to create an entire army that was an elite army.
05:24The training standards would be superior.
05:27The officers and the NCO standards were to be very high.
05:32World War II begins something like a quarter or a third of the German army, if you count the armored divisions, the motorized divisions, the mountain division, the paratroop division.
05:48These can be called elite forces.
05:51The brunt of the fighting is done by these forces in 1939, 1940.
05:57The German model for training and equipping an army had worked.
06:04It wasn't just propaganda.
06:06The German army overpowered all of its early foes and quickly expanded to many parts of the world, even as far as North Africa.
06:24Here, a unit known as the Africa Corps proved it deserved to be considered elite.
06:29The Africa Corps is undoubtedly the most famous of all of the German formations.
06:42Although many people consider it an elite unit, and indeed its fighting record bears that out,
06:48initially, it was simply a collection of spare German divisions thrown together very hastily in an attempt to prop up the Italian occupation of Libya.
07:09The Africa Corps was unique because we had to handle all of our problems on our own in the desert.
07:14There were no immediate reinforcements.
07:20Because of this, we had a great camaraderie.
07:22We would share the last bit of bread with a friend.
07:25This is how we became an elite group.
07:33Besides the tremendous fighting spirit of the men, the Africa Corps enjoyed excellent leadership.
07:38Erwin Rommel earned his Desert Fox nickname in North Africa because of his ability to outmaneuver and defeat larger enemy forces.
07:55The Africa Corps became an elite unit because of the caliber of its leadership.
07:59Although not looked upon as one of the great strategists of the war,
08:05Rommel was unsurpassed as a tactician.
08:08He pioneered the use of the 88-millimeter gun as an offensive and defensive weapon in desert warfare.
08:16Indeed, he had to do this because he had insufficient numbers of troops, tanks, and support equipment.
08:22Rommel led the men of the Africa Corps to many early victories over the British despite the harsh desert environment.
08:30In the desert, we had to clean our weapons all the time because there was so much dust.
08:47The heat was terrible.
08:50But the biggest problem was that we never had enough water.
08:53Each of us had only one liter of water per day, and half of that went to the kitchen.
09:01So it was very difficult.
09:06The Africa Corps had an influence on the battlefield far out of proportion to the numbers of tanks and men that it could field.
09:16The actual Africa Corps itself lasted only a few months.
09:19Very quickly, Italian units were absorbed into a combined German-Italian unit, which became Panzer Army Africa.
09:32This larger combined force eventually became trapped in the desert after the Americans landed to the west and the British closed in from the east.
09:39Members of the original Africa Corps were among the many hundreds of thousands of German POWs taken at the end of the Africa campaign.
09:54But the pride and camaraderie of this elite unit lives on even today, as evidenced by a gathering of former Africa Corps members.
10:01The Panzer units of the German army were the real backbone of Hitler's war machine.
10:25The armored units were the fists of steel in the Blitzkrieg, and they quickly overpowered all of their early opponents.
10:37Ironically, one of the finest Panzer divisions was actually under the control of the Luftwaffe.
10:43This unit was known as the Hermann Göring Panzer Division.
10:46The Hermann Göring Panzer Division was one of the more unusual units of the war.
10:54There was actually no real reason for the Luftwaffe to have a Panzer Division in the first place.
10:59This was a personal project of Reichsmarshal Göring.
11:02It had an admirable fighting record.
11:06It was extremely well equipped.
11:09It was one of the units to which German soldiers were more or less promoted.
11:17The Hermann Göring Division fought on both fronts during World War II and was highly regarded for its record in the Italian campaign.
11:23Because of the high political position of Göring, his division was always well equipped.
11:38It was one of the units that had a more or less favored status in the German supply organization.
11:45Part of this was no doubt due to the political influence of Reichsmarshal Göring.
11:49But the fact that the unit was so effective in combat meant that it was important to keep it well supplied and well equipped so that it could do the job that it was assigned to do.
12:00They had their own organic unit of Tiger tanks, which alone would identify them as an elite unit because very few divisions had their own Tiger tanks.
12:12The Tiger and Panther tanks were Germany's most advanced tanks.
12:19The 60-ton Tigers could overpower any of the Allied armor.
12:27The only handicap for the Hermann Göring Division was a complicated chain of command since they were under both Luftwaffe and army control on the battlefield.
12:35But despite this, the unit still performed very well.
12:42Patton himself is alleged to have said that the Hermann Göring Panzer Division was the finest division in any army.
12:48Which, coming from blood and guts, was certainly extremely high praise.
12:52Another unique and elite Panzer unit was the Grossdeutschland Division.
12:59The Grossdeutschland Division was a division specifically recruited from all over Germany.
13:13Most German formations were actually local or regional in nature.
13:19A 3rd Panzer Division, for example, was raised primarily in Berlin.
13:23The 1st Cavalry Division came from Vienna in Austria.
13:27Grossdeutschland, Greater Germany, was intended to provide one unit from which troops could be drawn from all over Germany.
13:37Germany.
13:40Grossdeutschland fought primarily on the Eastern Front and was involved in the Kursk Offensive in July of 1943,
13:47one of the largest tank battles in all of World War II.
13:49We felt we had received better training than the Russians.
14:02We weren't scared even when they outnumbered us.
14:06In fact, in one battle our tank knocked out 22 Russian tanks.
14:12We were always fighting in the most extreme situations.
14:26We were constantly facing the best of the Russian troops and huge numbers of Russian troops.
14:32That is why I think Grossdeutschland is an elite division.
14:38Probably the most talent laden of all the elite Panzer Division was the Panzer Lehr Division.
14:47It was not formed until 1943, but was quickly regarded as one of the best units in the entire army.
14:54When it was formed in late 1943, its cadre of officers, NCOs and men came from all of the German armor training schools throughout Germany.
15:06As a result, the division, even when formed, had a very high number of combat veterans who were also extremely skilled in all aspects of armored warfare as they would have to be in order to be instructors.
15:23The other distinguishing feature of Panzer Lehr was its lavish equipment.
15:28The schools had always the newest arms, the newest tanks, the newest weapons and so on.
15:35And that's why the Panzer Lehr was perhaps the best equipped German Panzer Division at the end of the war.
15:43We had the newest tanks, we had the Panther tanks and the Tiger tanks.
15:47Everything was very modern and very, very useful.
15:50Since it was formed late in the war, Panzer Lehr was sent to the Western Front before the Normandy landings as the allies were massing their forces in England.
15:59The strongest unit that the Germans had behind the Normandy beaches was the Panzer Lehr division.
16:10This was not an SS but a Wehrmacht unit and it was without doubt the most powerful division that the Germans had available on the Western Front in June of 1944.
16:22Despite their vast experience and lavish equipment, Panzer Lehr fell victim to the allies' devastating aerial firepower in Normandy.
16:41Half of the division has been swept out by only one bombing.
16:46120 enemy bombers flying fortresses who swept out the whole, the half of the division.
17:01The idea of forming a Panzer Division from instructors at first sounded like a good idea in that you would of course have this tremendous pool of talent and combat skill.
17:16In the long run, of course, it was a disaster because by taking so many instructors out of the schools you cut the quality of instruction which in turn affected all of the Panzer divisions, not just Panzer Lehr.
17:31The Luftwaffe, or German Air Force, quickly became regarded as one of the finest air forces in the world.
17:37Probably the most famous of the elite Luftwaffe unit was known as JG-26.
17:46In the Luftwaffe, JG-26, Schlegeter, was probably the finest fighter wing in the entire German Air Force.
17:57It was formed before the war.
18:00It fought in the Battle of Britain, in the Battle of France.
18:03It served almost entirely in the West until the defense of Germany itself.
18:10In the campaign in the spring of 1940, when France is overrun, JG-26 will fly in support of the Luftwaffe bombers in France.
18:24They have a pretty average record as far as fighter groups.
18:30They really hit their stride during the Battle of Britain, where they're one of the top performing German fighter wings against the RAF in Britain.
18:38It seemed to us that things were going very well during the Battle of Britain.
18:49We had to fly only at very short distances so we could accompany our bombers into London.
18:56We also felt very confident because the ME-109 had better guns than the British planes.
19:05The pilots of JG-26 quickly built up a very impressive combat record, although the pilots still felt there was a certain amount of chivalry left in the air war.
19:21We thought more in terms of planes than in people.
19:36And when a pilot managed to bail out, we would say, well, he's made it, that's okay.
19:42But we also counted how many planes we shot down because we were very proud of our fighting record.
19:48As the war progressed, the German pilots, who had enjoyed superior numbers early on, now found themselves on the defensive.
20:00However, they did have the advantage of fighting over their own territory.
20:03The Germans will be able to operate at close range, whereas the RAF, which is flying in now across the channel, is operating at the furthest extent of its range against the Germans.
20:27And a good many of the Brits are going to be lost because they run out of fuel over enemy territory.
20:35Or the Brits will have to break off battle because of fuel problems.
20:39The Germans, of course, are flying almost on top of their own airfields.
20:42So the Germans are able to watch the British come in across the channel.
20:49They're able to sit back, bring their forces together, and attack at the proper moment because they have this good intelligence on the British.
20:58All of these things taken together, and the fact that JG-26 had first-rate aircraft, account for a very good record that JG-26 had.
21:11Some of JG-26's success has to be owed to the very high number of sorties they flew, although something also has to be said for the bravery and skill of the pilots.
21:28I think we were the toughest fighter unit, and we were always facing the most skilled adversaries.
21:43I know if we had fought under more fair conditions, we would have done even better.
21:49But at the end, there were just so many more allied planes that it was very difficult for us.
22:07I guess we were proud of the number of planes we shot down.
22:11But we weren't as concerned with our personal numbers compared to how we performed as a unit.
22:16Also, I would imagine that what we felt was very different than killing someone on the ground, because we could only see the plane, not the person.
22:27However, I do remember that I managed to shoot down 45 enemy planes.
22:37One of the most unique fighter groups of the Luftwaffe was known as JV-44.
22:41This unit emerged towards the end of the war and was a collection of some of the best pilots from all over the Luftwaffe, flying the new ME-262 jet aircraft.
22:51JV-44 sees only about three, four months of combat in World War II.
23:01The unit is formed in January 1945 from really a collection of star pilots from the Luftwaffe.
23:09JV-44 was formed by Adolf Galland, who had formerly been a member of JG-26 and was head of the German fighter force.
23:21Because of Galland's excellent reputation, he was able to lure many of the Luftwaffe's best pilots to JV-44.
23:29Most of the pilots in JV-44 were experienced senior line commanders, and many of them had more than 100 victories.
23:44A couple had more than 200.
23:46They were extremely effective, although Galland himself admits that they never entirely figured out tactics that were ideally suited to the ME-262.
23:58This unit did see considerable action in the first three months of 1945.
24:06There were some days in which they caused some considerable Allied casualties.
24:10However, there was very heavy losses in attrition among JV-44, the stage of the war.
24:16They might be able to outfly the Allies in a dogfight, and the ME-262 was a tremendous plane for speed.
24:25But they could catch the 262s on landing.
24:30Another problem was that the new jet engines were mechanically unreliable.
24:35Pilots were often forced to disengage from combat and glide to the ground.
24:39However, when the ME-262 did work properly, the skill of the pilots and the performance of the aircraft were extremely effective.
24:56The few times that this unit was able to attack massed Allied bomber forces, it caused tremendous losses.
25:02And one can only imagine what would have happened to the Eighth Air Force had Germany been able to develop its engine technology a year earlier,
25:12and ME-262s had been available in wing strength by the summer of 1944.
25:18It would have been a horrendous thing indeed.
25:23The German mountain troops, the Gebergsjäger, were considered elite units because of their extensive training in mountain climbing, rock climbing, alpine skiing,
25:31their special skills in living in the harsh climate of alpine regions.
25:37They were extremely skilled in rough terrain fighting.
25:41They were well equipped for their tasks.
25:43They had snowshoes, skis.
25:46They used a variety of lightweight weapons.
25:49I was very sporty.
25:51I was 18 years old.
25:53And I was a state champion in ski racing and downhill and slalom.
25:57So I didn't have difficulties getting in there.
26:01Then they gave us an hour training in the Gros Glockner mountain, an ice training.
26:07And you had to climb for this 11 hours with heavy gear, up to 120 pounds, climb a 14, 15,000 foot mountain and in 11 hours back again.
26:18And then you got a warm soup.
26:19That was all.
26:21The Gebergsjäger troops were chosen for their intelligence, their self-reliance, the ability to adapt to a wide variety of combat conditions.
26:33And it was not unusual for an entire unit to be considered potential leaders.
26:40Each company could completely function as a battalion by itself.
26:47So we, not just an infantry company and the other one was just a mortar company or so on.
26:54Or just artillery.
26:56We had this all in one company because in the high mountains you are completely on your own.
27:01You have no support, you have no supplies coming up.
27:03You cannot call for help.
27:06I need firepower.
27:07If you don't give it yourself, it's your own fault.
27:16In a battle in the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia, Wolfgang Seip's unit displayed the type of extreme bravery required to earn elite status.
27:25We were completely cut off and decimated down to about 15 men and we had no ammunition anymore.
27:39And I got the order to go toward the Russian line and pick up a machine gun 32, the only one which still was available and which still had ammunition in, but the machine gunner was killed.
27:56So I called over and saw it standing and I was getting up and bending down to grab it with my right hand and I saw six feet away a Soviet soldier standing up with his rifle and shooting at me.
28:16And he shot me right toward the heart.
28:20I have a scar here and I knew I have to play dead because they never shoot at a dead person.
28:27So I was screaming, falling back, laying on my back and compressing my radial artery that I don't bleed to death.
28:34And through my eyelashes I could see that he was turning around and running away.
28:39At this moment I took my belt, put it around and grabbed the machine gun and called back.
28:50We lost 64 men in an afternoon in our company and that was the end of our existence.
28:59We were only then 15 left and I am one of six survivors.
29:04The whole company of 380 men was wiped out within eight weeks.
29:13Like many elite units, the mountain troops took heavy casualties because they were given the most difficult missions.
29:22Another common problem for specialized units was being used as regular line infantry as the number of available German soldiers began to shrink as the war progressed.
29:34I'm not sure if they felt resentment being used as ordinary infantry, although I'm sure they probably questioned the wisdom of breaking up specialized elite units with particular skills to fight as ordinary line infantry, although this was a problem across the Wehrmacht from the SS to the Army and even the Luftwaffe.
30:00The highly skilled paratroopers in the German armed forces fell under the control of the Luftwaffe.
30:07They were often used in a regular infantry capacity, although they also had many spectacular successes as airborne troops in different theaters of the war.
30:18Paratroopers were particularly considered elite because of their jump qualification. The fact that they were paratroopers. Like the mountain troops, they were also chosen for their fitness, their intelligence and their adaptability in common with many other elite units.
30:41They were trained as infantry first and then received specialized jump training.
30:48Paratroopers were involved in one of the earliest actions of World War II when the Belgian fortress of Ibn Emal was attacked by a combined force of airborne and ground engineers.
30:59This heavily defended port had to be taken in order for the German army to move into France.
31:06This was a glider assault force comprised largely of parachute engineers whose objective was to capture the fort and destroy fortifications that they could not silence by other means.
31:27It was extremely effective. The Belgians never thought that the Germans could capture the fort because it was considered impregnable.
31:33The largest German airborne operation of World War II was the invasion of Crete in 1941.
31:47The Allies had been forced out of Greece and Crete was their last stronghold in the Mediterranean.
31:53On May 20, hundreds of JU-52 transport planes appeared over the horizon carrying thousands of paratroopers.
32:09Airborne troops began landing all over the island, taking some heavy casualties from the British as they descended.
32:20Eventually, the German troops captured the main airfield on the island and gradually forced the Allies off the island.
32:27The mission was a great success, but also a very costly one.
32:33The paratroops suffered very high losses, not only in men and equipment, but also in aircraft.
32:41And although General Student praised his men for the successful capture of their objectives on the island of Crete,
32:50the Germans never again mounted a full airborne assault.
32:54It simply had proved to be too costly for highly skilled and expensively trained troops to try again.
33:04German paratroopers still performed admirably throughout the rest of the war.
33:08However, now they were confined to fighting as regular infantry, mainly in defensive positions instead of their more specialized role.
33:16They were some of the toughest combatants for the Allies during the Normandy fighting, but their most famous defensive stand occurred at Monte Cassino in Italy.
33:36This town was dominated by a 6th century hilltop abbey.
33:40The Allies were unable to advance to Rome as long as the Germans held the high ground around the village.
33:45Finally, a decision was made to reduce the monastery to rubble.
33:50However, the tenacious German paratroopers simply used the remaining rubble as a fortress
33:56and prevented any Allied advance for months against overwhelmingly superior numbers.
34:01The British General Alexander at Monte Cassino said that the 1st Parachute Panzer Division was the best division in any army on any front.
34:11And that is high praise indeed.
34:17Probably the most controversial of all the German military units was the SS, or Schutzstaffer.
34:23The SS began as an elite bodyguard and police unit for the Nazi party in 1925.
34:33However, when World War II started, the SS had been divided into two different branches.
34:38The Algemeinen SS, which still functioned as an internal police unit,
34:42and the Waffen SS, frontline combat units.
34:45The Waffen SS, particularly as the war progressed,
34:52attended to identify more and more closely with the regular German Wehrmacht.
35:02And to consider itself an arm, albeit a very elite arm, of the regular German armed forces.
35:10As much as Himmler wanted to turn the armed SS into the ideological vanguard of National Socialism.
35:19In that effort, he was largely unsuccessful.
35:22Young people won't understand this today, but I was proud of joining the Waffen SS.
35:31At the time, it had a very good reputation.
35:35But today, when you hear SS, it is associated with many terrible things.
35:41I think it was a great mistake by Himmler not to separate more clearly the Waffen SS on the front from the concentration camp SS.
35:56Unfortunately, the Waffen SS was somewhat linked to the terrible atrocities taking place at the concentration camps.
36:03They would often provide perimeter security while convalescing from frontline injuries.
36:09But for the most part, the frontline SS combat troops resent being confused with the police units attached to the concentration camps.
36:18I would think that the majority of SS veterans do feel resentful that the German high command,
36:26especially the high command of the Waffen SS and the Allgemeine SS under Himmler,
36:33arranged things so that there were these hard, almost inextricable links between the concentration camp system and the Waffen SS field units.
36:43The average SS veteran feels that he was a soldier fighting for his country rather than a war criminal.
36:52And I'm sure that most of them feel that way to the present day.
36:57At the beginning of the war, there were only a handful of Waffen SS divisions,
37:01all of which prided themselves on their purity of German descent.
37:05However, as the number of German soldiers began to decline towards the end of the war,
37:10the SS was rapidly expanded.
37:13The quality of the men began to decline.
37:16Foreigners were allowed in, and the number of SS divisions swelled to 38.
37:21When we look at the Waffen SS as an elite organization, an elite fighting force,
37:33what we're really looking at are the so-called classic SS divisions.
37:38The Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, which was the first SS division,
37:43the second SS Das Reich, the third SS Totenkopf for death head unit, and the fifth SS Viking.
37:50Those four classic SS divisions I named won 55% of all night's crosses awarded to Waffen SS and police units during the war.
38:04The Das Reich SS Panzer Division fought on both the Eastern and Western fronts during the war.
38:11And like the Panzerlehr Division, Das Reich felt the full force of the Allies' air superiority while in Normandy.
38:19There were two philosophies when these enormous air attacks started,
38:32either to jump out of the car and crawl under it, or to keep in there.
38:39Definitely most of the crews jumped out.
38:42I was sticking to the other theory.
38:48We said the safest place is right in here.
38:54One of the more unique SS divisions also fought in Normandy, the 12th SS, or Hitler Youth Division.
39:01As a more experienced officer, Peter Preen was loaned to the 12th SS during the Normandy fighting.
39:13I have no hesitation to say that within the fight, they were equal to none.
39:26And where, to us, they seemed to be fair.
39:31Every wonder was about 18, 19, 20 years old.
39:36So, awful.
39:38They were full of courage.
39:41They were a fantastic fighting unit.
39:48There is no doubt that some of the frontline SS divisions were involved in war crimes against civilians and Allied soldiers,
39:55particularly on the Eastern Front, where both sides fought a very brutal war.
40:03Because of these crimes and the despicable goals of the Nazi regime,
40:07many German veterans who fought within the rules of war continue to suffer today.
40:16They live in a country that is still trying to come to terms with its experiences in World War II.
40:21Today, the English and American veterans are portrayed as cowboys or heroes.
40:31And in Germany, we are portrayed as being stupid, which is not fair,
40:35because we were sacrificing and dying for our country too.
40:38In the end, Hitler's war machine simply ran out of men and materiel.
40:50But the fighting spirit of the elite German forces continued through the final days.
40:55Time and again, it would, until almost the end of the war, it would demonstrate its recuperative powers.
41:05When the fighting in Normandy ended, the German army in the west did not have more than 100 tanks, September 1944.
41:12Yet, in December of 1944, they were able to launch, during the Battle of the Bulge, a tremendous offensive,
41:21which took the Allies totally off guard and was something that the Allies had felt
41:27that the Germans couldn't have ever mounted in that strength at that time, given the losses that they had suffered.
41:34It was an army that was more worn down in a battle of attrition than it was an army that was defeated by force of arms.
41:46It was never supplied as well as most of the Allies, especially after 1943.
41:53And also, one has to admit that German propaganda built the Wehrmacht into the mightiest military machine in the world.
42:05And to some extent, the ghost of that influence still hangs over the record of the German army in World War II.
42:18I don't know if they felt that they could still win the war, but the bond between the soldiers in the German Wehrmacht,
42:31and particularly in the SS, was so strong, the Germans had a term for it, a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, a community of fate.
42:40They had been brought together by fate to fight.
42:44And if they no longer believed in National Socialism, if they no longer believed in ultimate victory,
42:51they believed in themselves and in the duty and the responsibility that they had to one another.
42:58Or a degree for the enemy to fight.
43:16But if they were Electronic Arts, they'd be the king of the war, and they'd be the king of the army.