Hitler's Final Battles of World War II: How did Germany Lose the War? WW2 History Documentary

During the Second World War, Hitler made an increasing number of errors and lost many battles. In 1940, when England was in his reach, Hitler allowed the British army to rebuild itself. The decision to bombard the population rather than the strategic, military, industrial objectives is a huge mistake. A mistake that he will pay a high price for during the Allied landings. In 1942, in yet another bad decision regarding the Red Army, Hitler sends his troops into the cruel Russian winter. The German armies are not equipped in the cold. So the poor guys have a hard time. Hitler loses almost a million soldiers in what would be the real turning point of the Second World War. In 1944, he launches an unnecessary attack in the Ardennes. The only one responsible for this massacre, Hitler used up the last of his troops and opens up Germany's doors to the Allied forces. At the beginning of 1942, Nazi Germany had reached breaking point. The Führer had made an increasing number of bad strategic decisions. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States. This decision, which was taken without seeking advice from his military leaders, sows the seeds of the defeat to come. In Russia, Hitler's Operation Barbarossa failed to bring victory for the Reich against the Russian giant. On the contrary, Stalin's counterattack pushed back the German army and forced them to face the terrible Russian winter. For Hitler, it's time to choose between the strategic withdrawal advised by his generals and the headlong rush driven by his insanity. Germany and Romania were no longer enough to feed the Panzer Division. So Hitler began to consider the conquest of the Caucasian oil fields in the south of Russia. To take the Caucasian oil fields, Baku, Maikop and others, was to meet two objectives. First, deprive the Red Army of its ability to wage war. Secondly, provide strategic reserves for Germany to solve the huge problem that the Blocus was weighing on this country. The Anglo-Saxon Blocus, which was almost hermetic. And so Hitler thought he would achieve this double objective with the Blue Plan, Fall Blau, which he launched on June 28, 1942, in the east. On paper, Case Blue seemed very attractive. But in practice, Hitler hadn't taken into account the state of the roads after the thaw and the considerable distances that had to be covered to reach the Caucasus. Baku, the capital, is almost 3,000 kilometers away. Hitler also overlooks his men's attenuation, their equipment and supply difficulties. Still falling prey to his racial prejudices, the Führer continues to underestimate his Russian enemy. The military leaders are bewildered by this improvisation. But nobody has even the slightest influence on Hitler's strategic plans. It's left to an exhausted and badly provisioned Sixth Army to take Stalingrad, the commanded by General Friedrich Paulus. Hitler understood that taking Stalingrad, from a symbolic point of view, would be a disavowal of the Soviet dictator. So, as a result, if Stalingrad falls, the road to Volga is cut off. American supplies no longer go north. On August 23, when the Germans of Paulus' Sixth Army arrive there, the very same evening, a bombing is launched. A bombing will have the consequence of transforming Stalingrad into ruins. The order to destroy everything that is possible to destroy is an order that is ideologically completely coherent. That is to say that these people are inferior, they are too careful to resist us, we will destroy them. What Paulus may not realize is the immense difficulty of urban combat. It is well known that the ruins for defense are formidable. When you are in a destroyed city, the weapons work differently. The effectively useful weapons change. Where a tank was very useful to discover, it is no longer in a city, because in all corners of the street it can be destroyed by someone a little determined, whether with a bazooka or with a Molotov cocktail, etc. So the fight changes in nature. It would have been better to encircle the city of Stalingrad and not to let the German army enter it. German soldiers were not used to urban guerrillas in a demolished city, so they had a lot of difficulty already tactically adapting to this kind of combat. And the Soviets, on their side, put incredible forces in front of them. They suffered huge losses, but they absolutely wanted to hold on. So it was terrible. For almost two months, Paulus keeps on increasing his attacks against an enemy who relentlessly defends every district, every building, every floor and every basement. They will not be able to take the Volga. There is a district that they will never be able to take. So the Soviet troops cross the river, and reinforcements always arrive, hour after hour. There is a Soviet regiment that is demolished, and another regiment that arrives. Constantly. Sometimes it's dramatic because they arrive on the front without a rifle. So they are forced, they are told, take the rifle of the dead who are in front of you, to attack. The Red Army will leave tens of thousands of men there. When the snow arrives in October 1941, the Germans again do not have the equipment they need for winter. With no significant reinforcements, untrained for urban warfare, and with poor supplies, the morale of the Red Army is depleted. Paulus realizes, through aerial reconnaissance in October, that on his north flank and on his south-east flank, there are strong Soviet concentrations. He is worried because on these two places, these flanks are covered by two Romanian armies, which are poorly equipped for war in general, and for winter in particular. He asks for permission to make an effort to be able to retreat, because otherwise he will end up in what the Germans call a Kessel, that is to say, a cauldron. Hitler will say, no! No, no, no, no. We do not retreat. We do not retreat. It is a strategy to retreat to better re-attack. It is a military strategy that is as old as the world. And if we do not retreat, we get eaten. If we retreat, we re-exert our strength and we can re-attack. On October the 14th, 1942, Hitler gives the strict order forbidding Paulus to retreat. His troops must stay in Stalingrad and win the battle at all costs. A month later, the Red Army launches a large-scale attack on two fronts around the city. When, on the 23rd of November, 1942, the Red Army joins both its sides, Paulus's Sixth Army is caught in the trap. Hitler gives the order to Feldmarschall von Manstein, provisionally under his command, to launch an operation to clear Stalingrad from the south. Von Manstein warns Hitler that he will only be able to create a corridor, allowing supplies to reach Paulus and enable him to escape. To do this, von Manstein's troops attack the Russians directly. But, anticipating this move, the Red Army launches a counter-attack. Von Manstein is forced to withdraw before he is surrounded himself. Paulus's army has to survive alone, with limited supplies, fuel and ammunition. Egering responds once again presently. What's the problem, Mannfuhrer? 500 tons? You want 500? It's not 600? No? Okay, 500, very well. I'll take my Junkers 52, they'll go. But over there, it's snowing and it's cold. The Junkers 52, with the bad fuel, the engine doesn't start, it doesn't heat up, and it can take 100 tons. 400 is missing. So after eight days, 3,200 is missing. The result of the races is that the 6th Army, in the true sense of the term, will die of hunger. It will die of hunger because we will have to give a certain priority to ammunition. On the 10th of January, 1943, the Red Army launches a final assault, designed to reduce once and for all the Stalingrad pocket of troops. 15 days later, when the Russians cut the German forces into two, Hitler once again repeats his order to Paulus that his troops must not retreat or surrender. Finally, on the morning of the 2nd of February, 1943, the red flag flies over Stalingrad. It's the first major defeat for the German army and its supreme ruler, Adolf Hitler. He allowed the Soviets to make hundreds of thousands of prisoners. So he might have thought of his troops before he thought of his loyalty to Hitler. During Operation Barbarossa, the Germans lost one million men, either killed, injured, or disappeared. The Red Army lost twice as many, but it had seven times as many prisoners as Hitler. Since 1939-1940, we had a rather conquering army. In the victory, we really had a turning point, a turning point, and this turning point will continue to operate in North Africa from 1943. The President of the United States welcomed the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The gravity of the moment had brought them together. During the spring of 1942, when German domination was at its strongest, the Allies agree on the need to open a second front, as called for by Stalin, to support the USSR. This operation, known as Torch, must allow landings on the coast of North Africa. This would give the British and Americans a platform to land in Europe. To do this, they need to vanquish the elite troops of the Afrika Korps, which occupy Libya. On November 8th, 1942, Operation Torch, involving 100,000 soldiers, sets out from 200 war buildings. Three groups are in charge of establishing nine bridgeheads along a 1,500-kilometre coastline. They are soon battling General Rommel's troops, who are allied with the Italians. GENERAL ROMMEL From that moment on, the Italian and German forces in Libya and Tunisia are fought in the east by the 8th British Army, which advances in Libya, and in the west by the Anglo-Saxons, who are allied with the French. They are increasingly encircled, and in the end, Rommel indicates to Hitler the need to repatriate the troops, and in North Africa, Hitler makes the same mistake he made in Stalingrad. Once again, he persists, and demands that his army hold their positions down to the last man. Thousands of young German soldiers who had just landed would be sacrificed in vain. Little by little, the noose is tightening. The superiority of the Allies' equipment is overwhelming, and their blockades of artillery inflict serious losses on enemy troops. But the Afrika Korps continues with its suicidal counterattacks. The Tunisian mountains will become a graveyard for the majority of the German soldiers. Those who had been ordered to fight in Tunisia fought until the end. When Tunisia surrendered around May 8, 1943, 130,000 Germans were taken prisoner in Tunisia. It was a major mistake, a major mistake that resulted in a terrible defeat. There were a considerable number of prisoners, not only Italian, but also German. I tend to think that the Tunisian disaster, the Lachs disaster in Tunisia, is probably worse strategically and in terms of military power than what is happening in Stalingrad. It is symbolically weaker, it is less known today, but it is a disaster that is probably worse for the Lachs' weapons than what is happening in Stalingrad. They lose so many troops. In May 1943, on the Russian front, the situation is no better. The Germans have been pushed back everywhere. Hitler wants to take the initiative after his failures in Moscow and Stalingrad. In Kursk, the opportunity for a counterattack emerges for the German military. A 150-kilometre pocket was created at the front line during the Russian attack in the spring of 1943. This salient has several important weaknesses in its defence. The Soviet army was in this pocket and had a victory. Hitler's real objective is still to communicate. Because after Stalingrad, all his allies, including the Soviets, said, we have to make peace with Stalin, now we can't hold on anymore. So Hitler's political objective is to regain confidence in his European allies. And so he wants to show the power of the German army, especially with new Panzer equipment, the new Panther tanks, medium, powerful tanks, and above all, the powerful Tiger he has had for a few months, and giant tank fighters, and the Forts. It's true that the Tiger and the Panther were excellent tanks. The Germans have a past of excellent tanks. It doesn't happen as quickly as they think. That's the problem. It's not enough to say, there's only one Faucon. All of this happens very far from the German industrial centres, where these tanks are produced, where these weapons are produced, and it takes time to process them. These are things that everyone forgets, but they have to be put in trains, these trains have to be able to progress, despite the Soviet partisans, who are starting to become very efficient, despite the Soviet aviation, and so all of this takes time. He wants to surprise and destroy the enemy, which he's worn out from the last months of combat. Hitler disagrees. He wants to stall for time until the new, supposedly invincible tanks arrive. The English are aware of all the German attacks. The day the plan was planned by the German General Staff, the English decrypted Enigma and shared part of this information with the Russians. So the Russians know exactly how the Germans are going to attack, where they are going to attack, and with what kind of forces they are going to attack. They had time to prepare the terrain with a deep defence, with mines, with anti-tank systems, with artillery, etc. They reinforced themselves during that time. And so it's true that Hitler launched the offensive on the 5th of July, 1943, too late again. On the 5th of July, 1943, Operation Citadel began. There were sizeable forces involved. Two million Russian soldiers against 900,000 Germans. Even more impressive, 2,700 German tanks would face nearly 5,000 Soviet tanks, mostly composed of T-34 models. The Battle of Kursk will be the biggest tank battle of the Second World War. And it will be the tank cemetery. The Northern Offensive will very quickly face impenetrable Soviet defences. They will break their teeth, they will have to retreat. To the south, the Soviet defences will be sunk. But very quickly, the German troops can't hold on. They don't have enough men, they lose a lot of equipment, and the Soviets are getting stronger day by day. The German armoured units fight almost one on two. And so, very quickly, despite the value of these German armoured units, the Soviets have the upper hand. There won't be so many manoeuvres. We're going to kill each other. It's going to be, in a way, a verdict of tanks. The loss at Kursk is another demonstration of Hitler's inability to lead his armies. In 50 days of fighting, the Wehrmacht has halved in numbers. It's a major event because after Kursk, the Germans won't have any more initiative on the Eastern Front. They lost so many men and equipment at Kursk that they won't be able to carry out a large-scale operation on the Eastern Front. In Stalingrad, he lost 260,000 men and then came back with prestige. The Wehrmacht was still there. While at Kursk, Hitler lost the war in the East. In 1944, the Germans retreat on all fronts. Hitler also believes there will be an imminent Allied landing, so he is on the defensive. There, between Calais and Douvre, where the part of the Manche is the shortest, we have about 30 km, while between Cherbourg and Caen, there is about 120 km. So the Allies won't be crazy. If they leave England, they will leave Douvre. Hitler thinks that the Allied American armies will land in the Pas-de-Calais. To do this, he puts the Panzer Division, very well armed, on the island, in the northern region, in front of Pas-de-Calais. To mislead Hitler, the Allies increased the number of fake operations. Hitler falls into the trap. Convinced that an Allied landing will take place in northern France, he sends a maximum number of troops there. When Operation Overlord begins on the 6th of June, 1944, the first wave of the Allied attack doesn't land in the Pas-de-Calais. Instead, they are 300 km away on the Normandy coast, precisely where the German position is less defended. Given the seriousness of the situation, the German military leaders must urgently redeploy the Panzer Divisions to face the Allied troops. They must call Hitler. Only he can give the order. The hours go by, and the waves of Allied attacks keep coming one after another. When informed of the Allied landings, Hitler refuses to reverse his judgement, and still thinks that the Allies are trying to manipulate him. By midday, Hitler still hasn't taken action. During this time, the Allies seize the beaches one by one. The Allied troops leave. The Grand Chancellery calls back, there is no question. During this time, the Partisans, our FFI, blow up the bridges. When Hitler realises that he has to go, the trains have to go down to Montargis to go back up, because there are no bridges on the Seine. Hitler will retain 7 Panzer Divisions in the north of Pas-de-Calais, and he will only send 3 in Normandy. 70% of his tanks will remain standing, while the battles will take place in Normandy. This will allow the Allies to strengthen this bridgehead every day, and ensure the liberation of France and Europe. If Hitler hadn't slept that morning, and if he had agreed to listen to his generals, his marshals, he would have given the order. In the 48 hours, the Panzer Divisions were in front of Omaha Beach. Maybe the Allies would have left. They would have embarked. It's political fiction. Nevertheless. The military climate continues to deteriorate. Some dignitaries think that the time has come to make Hitler pay for his errors that have been so costly to the German army. That's why on the 20th of July 1944, some of those involved in the putsch launched Operation Valkyrie. In this way, the conspirators have an ideal man who regularly is in close contact with the Führer, Colonel Stauffenberg. He's an impressive character, That day, when he arrives in East Prussia for a meeting with military leaders, his bag is stuffed with explosives. The attack cannot fail. When the meeting begins, around 20 of the Wehrmacht's dignitaries were around Hitler. Stauffenberg is late. Stauffenberg joins the group during a general's report. Because he is deaf, and at his request, he is placed on the Führer's right, the ideal place for him to put the briefcase of explosives. Under the pretext of a phone call, Stauffenberg hurriedly leaves the room. The explosion entirely blew out the building, but the conspirators failed in their assassination attempt. The attack only claimed three victims and miraculously spared Hitler. The dictator escaped with an injury to his right hand and minor burns on his body. The same day, Mussolini arrives in East Prussia. He is welcomed by Hitler, who has his right arm in a sling. Miraculously spared, the Führer wants revenge. His revenge is immense. In total, 5,000 people are killed in a purge which decimates the military. Hitler no longer trusts his army. And that will have dramatic consequences on the state of the front, because more than ever, from the summer of 1944, the motto will be an ideological motto. We must hold on. Hold on for a question of honor, hold on for a question of sacrifice if we never manage to keep the position, and hold on in the hope that, as Hitler promised and as he never ceases to promise, the war will know a turnaround thanks to the famous miraculous weapons that we are waiting for production and service. But the miraculous weapons, like the flying bombs, which Hitler is so desperately clinging to, won't save them. Hitler will develop a pathos that will manifest itself through tears or, on the contrary, through terrible rage. Hitler is physically diminished, but also psychologically diminished. He is a man who is more and more stuck in his head. He is a very tired man, prematurely old. He is a man who is barely 55 years old, but when you look at the pictures, you see a 80-year-old man. Hitler's mental and physical state deteriorates throughout the conflict as he loses. At the very beginning of the war, in 1939, he astonishes Keitel by fighting like a cabriolet on the carcasses of a Polish armored train. At the end of the war, we see him in a film from 1945, his last appearance in front of Hitlerjugend. We see a man, with a marked face, with his left hand in his back because he had a convulsive shock. In fact, Hitler was a man suffering from Parkinson's disease. He was an insomniac. With the ups and downs, the counterpoisons that Dr. Morel administered to him, he was an almost toxic man. He was a man who was incapable, from the middle of the conflict, of having the physical and intellectual resources to wage this war. He was beaten regularly. He was under medication. He was physically and mentally No one dared to contradict him. And around him, there were only generals who were the executors and who no longer dared to contradict anything in front of him. Hitler said to himself, I can try one last game of poker and he launched a counteroffensive, the Ardennes counteroffensive, which started on December 16, 1944. He charged the Marshal von Rundstedt with the offensive. Von Rundstedt did not believe it. He did not believe it to the point that he did not go to the meeting of the General Staff that Hitler convened with all the generals involved in the operation. These generals did not believe that the Allies were running into a catastrophe. They saw the air superiority of the Allies on the western front. But Hitler said to himself that this operation had to be attempted to cut the Allied forces in half. The idea was to attack, to counterattack in the Ardennes, to reach the Meuse, to reach the port of Anvers, which is a very important port for the supply of the Allied forces. Having succeeded in this, Hitler proposed a negotiation with the Anglo-Saxon Allies. He wanted to weaken the British and American armies, to make a peace of compromise with the Anglo-Saxons, in order to then turn against whom? Against the Soviets, against the Communists, against the Bolsheviks. It was a poker move, but it was above all a major strategic mistake. It was an offensive Even if the element of surprise could be guaranteed, the military leaders considered that Hitler's ambitions are disproportionate to the number of troops available. To attack in the Ardennes, Hitler has to thin out the eastern front. The maneuver is suicidal, but once again, nobody contradicts the Führer. On the 16th of December 1944, the weather is favorable to beginning Operation Wacht am Rhein. When the battle of the Ardennes starts, the American high commander is knocked out by the scale of the attack. In the beginning, it was a good success. They managed to shake off the American troops who were on the front. They were at ease because the American generals thought that the Ardennes were impregnable, and that the Germans could not pass through there. It was the same mistake as in 1940. Overwhelmed in many areas, the American GIs surrender in hundreds to the Germans. But the lightning attack by the Wehrmacht quickly fails. The two armies face each other to fight in freezing temperatures, often reaching minus 20 degrees. On the 22nd of December 1944, only six days after the start of the attack, the German army began to run out of ammunition and especially of fuel. From the 23rd of December, the weather starts to improve. The Allied airplanes can finally take off. It's a massacre. The Anglo-American air force is specifically attacking the supply trucks, and they are only flamethrowers. The Germans are forced to abandon their equipment in the face of a counterattack by Patton from the south and a British counterattack also from the north against German troops The Germans are a very motivated elite unit, but above all they are more and more Volkgrenadiers, that is to say inexperienced children, a little terrorized, poorly dressed, and unable to progress like their 40-year-olds. The battle of the Ardennes begins in mid-December 1944 and ends on January 31, 1945. At that time, the Germans are back on their starting line, but they have lost in this madness between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers. They have lost a large number of planes, they have lost tanks, they have lost fuel, and their morale is obviously in a free fall. And so there are so many elements that will cruelly fail to oppose the Soviets, who at that time are attacking in the east. During the battle of the Ardennes, the Russians advance 500 km anyway. The means he could have used he would have preferred to put them in the east. Because for the German people, the danger was mainly in the east. After the German atrocities vis-à-vis those they called the Untermensch, you know, the sub-humans, the burnt villages, the raped women, the killed men and children, etc., etc. It was in the logic of things. The revenge, the hatred of the Russians was terrible. Therefore, if he had reasoned a little bit in favor of his people, he had to defend himself in the east. Instead of surrendering, eaten away by insanity, the Führer takes his people hostage and brings them with him in his final downfall. Attacked on all fronts, the Reich that Hitler imagined is living its final moments. The man who previously dominated Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals now only has imaginary armies to defend himself. During this time, the Anglo-Americans brought the war to the heart of Germany with one ultimate objective, Berlin. At the end of April 1945, the Reich, which should have lasted a thousand years, crumbles. We realize that, at the test of facts, the opposite happened. It's not a 1940 man, it's still a 1914 man. Here, we see concretely that what was said about a Hitler, a genius war leader, is false. I would say that Hitler is a man who tries to play poker. At the beginning, the fact that he neglects the tactical-strategic dimension, the nature of the terrain, the logistical problems, all these negligences do not catch up with Hitler, war leader. And then one day, all these war conditions, all the conditions in which the war phenomenon must develop, catch up with Hitler, war leader, and from there, these bets are systematically lost. Finally, his ultimate strategy is suicide. Suicide of the German people, suicide of his close relatives in this sordid bunker, crushed by Soviet artillery. And so, it's a finished and desperate man who has used all these tricks, who shoots himself in the temple after poisoning his mistress.