The Battle of Teutoburg Forest: How Germanic Ghost Warriors Defeated The Roman Army

They are the elite special forces of ancient Germany. They're known as the Ghost Warriors, a fanatical corps of experts trained in night fighting. These are men who could move silently through the forest. They've been hunting since they were children. Now though, they're not hunting deer and bear and boar, they're hunting Romans. They appear out of nowhere, sowing fear and panic among their enemies. In the first century AD, ancient Rome sent a huge army against them. The outcome still echoes through history. The Roman soldiers were caught in the perfect trap. The Emperor Augustus was devastated. This was a personal defeat as well as a major political defeat. This is the true story of the Germanic Ghost Warriors. Germany, the first century AD. A wild and inhospitable place. It's a region nestling on the northern frontiers of the Roman Empire, known as Germania. For the Romans, Germania was the final frontier. It was the edge of the world. It was still deep, dark, ancient forest. This is the epitome of a barbaric landscape. As Roman soldiers move into this landscape, their minds fill with nightmare images. This was as far away from the civilization of Italy as it was possible to imagine. It was a dark place, it was full of strange people, it was dangerous. The local Germanic tribes are fierce and independent. They had a proud tradition of independence. German communities were very free, very loosely structured. The individual German tribesman considered himself to be a free man. They are warlike and dangerous. Warriors are trained in a variety of weapons. Germanic tribesmen were famous for fighting with spears. The word Germany comes from an old Germanic word for spear. In many ways, Germania was the land of the spearsman. A spear is a really effective weapon, which is why it's been used from all the way back into the Paleolithic with stone-tipped spears, right the way through to using a bayonet on the end of a rifle. All a spear does is increase the reach of the warrior. This means that they can strike to the face, to the feet, to the shoulders. Anywhere that's exposed by a Roman soldier, they will hit it. They're also taught to use the slingshot, another formidable weapon. John Naylor is an expert in its use. Simple science. All you're doing is doubling the length of your arm, so it makes you twice as powerful as if you throw it by hand. When you add into that rotary motion, it's even more powerful. In practice, it can be frighteningly accurate. A skilled slinger at 100 meters to 200 meters would expect to be able to hit the target the size of a head. 10 to 20 shots in a minute isn't impossible. And if you've got 100 slingers, that could be 2,000 stones flying through the air towards the enemy. The Germanic warriors would often combine this withering fire with another even more deadly missile, the javelin. The javelin has a range of anywhere between 10 and 50 meters. It's not a huge long-range weapon. However, it's perfect for the forest. Finally, there's the most basic weapon of all, the club. The club is a very, very effective weapon. Even through the male armor that the Romans are wearing, it's going to have an impact. You can break bones, break limbs, concuss through a helmet. Dirty strike fighting, there's hardly any weapon to beat it. Spears, slingshots, javelins, and clubs. A powerful arsenal every young Germanic male has been using since childhood. They have muscle memory around these weapons. These weapons become an extension of their own body. But they're at their most deadly in the hands of one particular group of fighters, the ghost warriors. They're an elite group of special forces trained to fight at night. The ghost warriors were a highly mobile, highly motivated, aggressive force. But above all, they were familiar with the terrain. These were a black ops unit of Germanic warriors trained specifically to fight at night. It's said they're one of the first fighting forces to employ full body camouflage. Something very familiar to today's special forces. Some things have remained constant throughout the ages, and camouflage and concealment is an essential element of warcraft and survival in the battlefield. They paint their faces, shields, armour, and weaponry black. All they need to do is take ash from the fires and the soot that collects on the bottom of their cooking pots and rub it over themselves. Instant camouflage. They could create the same sort of mottled patterns as we see in modern camouflage fabrics. They break up their shape, and in breaking up their shape, they're harder for the human eye to recognise at night. They know how to turn dark to their advantage. They were familiar with working in low light levels. They knew the tricks, the simple tricks, like bending your knees when you look at an enemy, so that the enemy is silhouetted against the light. The night sky is always lighter than the ground. They're masters of stealth. Like special forces today, they train in how to silently sneak up and kill. To the Romans, these night fighters are a source of legend, fear, even terror. They would appear out of the trees as if by magic, and suddenly attack. And then they would hide back into the trees. They'd hit you hard, and then escape before you knew what had happened. This must have been absolutely terrifying, that they would vanish before dawn. Nothing has changed. The night is still the friend of the special operative. It's very typical of special forces operations to lay up and all actions will be carried out at night. It's a clear weapon you can use. A psychological weapon. It's camouflage. It's concealment. It's capitalizing on your advantages of local knowledge. The Ghost Warriors are the equivalent of our Black Ops people today. They're an unruly band of fearsome fighters, outside the control of Rome. It's a situation Rome, accustomed to total control, finds hard to accept. In 7 AD, the Roman Emperor Augustus decides it's time to tame the Germanic hordes and bring them into the empire. He thinks he knows just the man for the job. Publius Quintilius Varus is a leading member of the Roman aristocracy. Publius Quintilius Varus was one of the best generals of his age. He had been personal secretary to the Emperor. He knew exactly how the imperial system worked. He was even married into the imperial royal family. He was the right man at the right time for the right job. To Varus, taming Germania sounds an easy mission. He will deploy Rome's tried and tested practice for colonizing foreign lands. As the empire has expanded, the Romans have co-opted local people and put them into Roman uniforms. It would take senior members of tribes, it would bring them into the Roman fold, and it would show them the benefits of Roman civilization. The idea was that these would become, in a sense, ambassadors among their own people for Roman rule. These co-opted warriors, known as auxiliaries, would then be taught to fight, Roman style. These were effectively mercenaries which had been brought into the Roman army. In Germania, Varus is confident he knows just the auxiliary who can help him tame the unruly Germanic hordes. He's the commander of the powerful Cherusci tribe, who live in the northwest of the country, near present-day Hanover. His name is Arminius. He's a member of what we might call the royal family, a very powerful tribe, a very powerful group. If we believe the Roman authors who write that he was more intelligent than any other barbarian they had ever seen, then I think we have to assume that he must have been very charismatic, convincing, probably even good-looking, because these authors even describe his sparkling dark eyes. He's 28 years old and has spent most of his adult life in the Roman army. He now commands a unit of auxiliaries. For his efforts, he's been rewarded with Roman citizenship. Rome has given him a solid grounding in the art of war. This was a very clever man who understood strategy and, above all, understood how the Romans worked. He knew how the Romans organise an army with 10,000, 20,000 men. He's regarded as a friend and ally of Rome. But Arminius is not the loyal subject he appears. He's travelled widely through the Roman Empire and seen close up the violent impact. The experience of a Roman occupying force was very unpleasant. They would come in, they would rape the women, they would take slaves, they would steal money. This was an iron fist in an iron glove. It was deeply unpleasant. Arminius hates the idea that this might happen to his people. Thoughts of resistance start churning in his brain. Suddenly, inside Arminius's head, the light is going on. He's already witnessed Roman bullying in Germania. He thought, I will do anything to stop that happening to my people. From the beginning, when the Romans first met the Germanic tribes, there was a resentment that anybody could come in and tell them what to do. They were used to running their own affairs. Arminius keeps these thoughts to himself. But secretly, he lays plans that will lead Varus into an historic and deadly battle with the ghost warriors. Today, Mindon is a pretty town on the banks of the river Vesa. 2,000 years ago, it's Varus's summer camp. An isolated Roman garrison in the tribal lands of Arminius and the Cherusci. In late summer AD 9, he prepares his legions for their annual march south to their winter quarters. Suddenly, Arminius arrives with important news. There are reports of a tribal uprising several days march to the west. He suggests the Roman legions, instead of marching immediately south, should first loop west to suppress it. Varus, suspecting nothing, readily agrees. For Varus, Arminius must have been a friend. If you imagine that he is living in this rather hostile environment, and then there comes somebody who belongs to these barbaric people, but nonetheless, he is one of us. To Varus, the idea that Arminius might be plotting against him is inconceivable. He didn't understand that people didn't want Rome. It was completely unintelligible to him. It's a serious misjudgment. Trusting Arminius will be Varus's first big mistake. For weeks, Arminius has been laying his plans. Arminius was clearly shrewd, he was also clearly charismatic. He's been trying to rally the local chieftains and warn them of Rome's plans to colonise their lands. It's not an easy task. The Germans in those days were not the Germans of today. They were not regarded as the efficient team players that they are today. These were disorganised, lazy, inefficient, primitive, annoying, pugnacious tribesmen who couldn't do anything without it all falling apart. Arminius's genius lies in pulling this rabble together. He must have convinced them that I am the guy that is going to lead you to victory against this equivalent of the US army. To turn these fractious tribes, even for one task, into a lethally effective army in a very short period of time, I mean, it's Napoleonic in its achievement. But to finally win over the tribesmen, Arminius must answer one last question. How can they combat the might of the Roman Empire? One thing is immediately clear. The Germanic warriors can never defeat the Romans in open battle. The Roman army in conventional warfare was the most powerful military machine in the ancient world. High-tech, immensely disciplined, highly drilled. In pitch battle, in the first century AD, the Romans virtually always won. The key to victory lies in luring the Romans into a situation where all this power is useless. The only way you could beat them was by drawing them into difficult terrain and then waging a hit-and-run guerrilla struggle against them. You have to take them on on your terms and strictly on your terms. That means you have to use every advantage available to you of knowledge of the ground, knowledge of the routes, of your own people and their capabilities. It requires coordination, intelligence, and a very deep knowledge of the terrain you're fighting on. Arminius now reveals to the doubting tribesmen he's identified the perfect spot to maximise their advantages. The Roman legions will have to pass through the vast Teutoburg Forest. Here, at one point, between a wooded hill on one side and a swamp on the other, the track narrows down into a natural pinch point. This meant that the Roman army could not march in its normal formation. Rather than marching ten abreast, the Roman soldiers at most could march six abreast. They would have felt slightly ill at ease. They were out of their normal way of doing things. It's the perfect place for an ambush. Here, the Romans will be trapped. Arminius will be free to attack them by day and night. This is when the ghost warriors will come into their own. It's an inspired plan. But can it really work against 20,000 Roman soldiers? The Roman force sets out from Minden. Germanic spies track their progress. The legions are accompanied by Arminius and his auxiliaries. Up ahead of them, deep in the woods, the Germanic warriors prepare their trap. Arminius has briefed them on exactly what to do. They build a defensive rampart beside the trap. It stretches for 400 meters. It's carefully disguised to blend into the landscape. Mastering the terrain is a basic part of Black Ops warcraft and training. It's absolutely essential to identify good locations for the main kill group and the cut-off teams. Each person might not necessarily need a tree to hide behind, but they might need a bank or a natural lip on the ground. It's a complex, multi-stage operation, and not any fool can do it. With the rampart complete, the warriors spread out through the densely wooded hillside and wait. As Varus's forces approach the ambush, Arminius makes his move. One of the things that the Roman auxiliary soldiers did was they were used as reconnaissance forces. Arminius suggests to Varus he takes his auxiliaries ahead of the main force to scope out the route. It's a perfectly normal practice. Varus, suspecting nothing, agrees. It's his second major mistake. Arminius and his troops make their way to a pre-arranged meeting point. Here they meet up with fellow tribesmen. All their allegiances to Rome now fall away. The combined force moves off towards the ambush. Among the Roman troops, unaccustomed to the forest, there's growing concern. The whole formation had to break up. They had to form a line, and it was like a 20 kilometre long train that was moving through the countryside. The column of soldiers and retainers stretches back for miles. Communication became even more of a problem than it had right at the beginning. There was no way of the back knowing what the front was doing. Roman legionaries never liked marching through forest. They were places of fear. Bad things happen. It's very unnerving. You don't have local knowledge of the area. Normally, knowledge dispels fear, and that's something you totally don't have. Every level of every footstep has a massive sense of uncertainty. It's a sensation former SAS member Ken Jones has experienced personally. In Afghanistan, you know that these guys have grown up with a weapon in their hand since they've been 11 years old. In this extreme hostile environment, it's their backyard. You know they've already got that advantage on you, no matter what your level of training or skill set. This was an incredibly delicate, dangerous situation for the Roman army. But Varus, still suspecting nothing, pushes on. He was suffering from what we now call sunk costs farce, which is that you've put so much effort and invested so much trust, in this case, in Arminius, that you simply can't believe that he's not worth it, and that he's going to turn against you and destroy all your dreams. It's Varus's third mistake. At the ambush, the Germanic javelin throwers ready their positions. Slingshots are prepared. Ammunition gathered. All await Arminius's order. Below them, they can hear the approaching Roman column. They would have heard the sound of trumpets. They would have heard the sound of armour jingling. This was loud. There was no doubt this was the Roman army approaching. That's when the adrenaline surge kicks back in again. Your body's fully charged with adrenaline and a kind of sick sense of excitement. Almost makes you want to vomit. You can feel your stomach turn. You start swallowing. Your mouth becomes extremely dry and you might perspire and sweat a little as well. It's a massive emotion. But Arminius holds his fire. The plan is to attack the Roman column at several points, splitting it into sections, breaking communications between the head and tail, and forcing each section to fight in isolation. The minutes tick by. Time seems to stand still and your consciousness system seems to shrink. It's just focused on that one moment. Suddenly, Arminius gives the order. A rain of javelins and slingshot shower down from the trees. The Germanic tribesmen are in their element. The Romans attempt to form a defensive shield, but they've been caught badly off guard. The Roman soldiers won't have known what to do and rumour will have spread up and down the soldiers' line very, very rapidly. Soon afterwards, the volley is followed by close combat. The warriors sweep down through the trees and out of the forest. There's no room for hesitation, doubt. Everything happens so quickly in such a blur. You're so intensely focused on that one action, time disappears. It's a feeling soldiers never forget. A 15-minute firefight can just seem like a couple of minutes. It's so intense, physically and mentally. Varus is caught completely unprepared. Before even the idea that there might be something wrong in this scenario, he thought he found himself already in this bottleneck. The Roman soldiers were caught in the perfect trap. In front of them were the Germanic warriors and it was sheer weight of numbers from behind meant that there was no way the Roman soldiers could turn round and go back. As the Romans fall, they're stripped of anything of value. For the Roman army, this was terrifying. They understood an army that sat before them and then they could have a formal battle. These worries didn't play by the rules. The battle drags on until nightfall. Finally, Arminius gives the order to withdraw. Night descends on a bewildered Roman army. Anybody who's been in the forest now at night, military exercises or not, will know it's a very, very mysterious place. It's gods and terrors and ghosts and spirits and fairies and malicious things that scream at you in the night and surprise you when you should be asleep. It's a very different place at night than in the day, the forest. Normal Roman tactics would have been to dig in and set up camp. But Varus, worried he'll never escape the forest alive, opts to make a break for it. This is his fourth mistake. Now it's the turn of the ghost warriors. They blacken their faces. The process of camming up is very much psychological as well as a physical action of putting it on. Hands, neck, face, ears, the back of ears. It's adding an extra layer of defence. You do withdraw into yourself and you know when you put the cam on, you know then it's becoming real. They stare into the night, preparing their eyes for the dark. You normally allow yourself 15 to 20 minutes for your sight to get accustomed to the level of darkness. All your senses are heightened. It's so much more intense at night. Finally, they camouflage their weapons to stop them glinting in the moonlight. Then, as the Roman forces appear below, the night fighters move in for the kill. Silently, like ghosts, they creep through the trees. They know every sound and shadow. You get kind of a sixth sense for what's lurking around the next corner. These are men who could move silently through the forest. They'd been hunting since they were children. Now, though, they're not hunting deer and bear and boar. They're hunting Romans. The first thing a Roman legionary would see was the white of a German's eyes and his sword coming down on you. They appear out of the dark as if by magic. The Romans have never faced anything like it. Are they fighting men or spirits? The ghost warriors must have seemed like demons. The Roman army would have been completely psychologically under the gun. This was not the kind of warfare that the Romans were trained to fight. They didn't know what was going on. From the Roman perspective, it was probably entirely chaotic and extremely frightening. They were surrounded by enemy mystery, by the terrible forests. The ghost warriors cut swathes through the Roman legions and then vanish before daybreak. The next day, the Germans attack again. You do what damage you can with overwhelming local superiority. That requires mobility and flexibility, command and control that even today is remarkable. It's followed by another terrifying night. What the German tribesmen are doing is to play to their sense of being at home in nature, being at home in the forest. Our menace strategy was non-stop warfare. It was to grind down the Roman legionaries. It was to make sure they didn't have a chance for a break. By the third morning, the Romans are scattered through the forest. The exhausted legions are broken up and isolated. As Varus contemplates the carnage, defeat stares him in the face. The question now for Varus in his own mind was, what could he do? There was no chance for a legionary commander to go back and say, I'm terribly sorry, I've lost all the legions. He was now at the edge of his life. He now reaches a terrible decision. Varus knew exactly what kind of a reception he could have received from the Germanic tribesmen. He will have been cut up. He will have been nailed to a tree. They did terrible, terrible things to Roman soldiers that they found. That morning, in shame and fear, Varus falls on his sword. The Roman forces collapse. The Germanic fighters move in for the final kill. Three Roman legions have been completely wiped out. It's an historic victory for Arminius' Germanic warriors. Surviving Romans are passed to priestesses for ritual bloodletting. Ears and hands are nailed to trees. After a battle, there was an awful lot of ritual sacrifice. Priestesses would have huge cauldrons and cut the Roman soldiers until their blood ran into these cauldrons. The bloodletting is said to purify the land of Roman influence. The Battle of Teutoburg Forest is the greatest Roman defeat for over 200 years. 900 miles to the south, in Rome, there's blissful ignorance. Then a messenger arrives with a box for the Emperor Augustus. It contains the bloody head of Varus. The Emperor Augustus was devastated. This was a personal defeat as well as a major political defeat. We're told that he goes around the palace tearing out his hair and wailing, Varus, Varus, give me back my legions. In just three days, the Roman Empire has lost 10% of its fighting force. It's difficult to exaggerate the scale of the defeat which the Romans suffer. A huge great gap is blown in the Roman Empire's frontier defences. Such was the shame, such was the scale of the defeat, that the legions 17th, 18th and 19th were struck from the Roman military. They were never used again. No soldier would ever have wanted to serve in those units. Today in Germany, victory at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest is remembered by a monument to Arminius. Elsewhere, excavations of the battle site have unearthed a grisly tangle of smashed up bones and weapons. And Arminius' defensive rampart has been reconstructed. The Germanic ghost warriors have become a legend for a new generation of Germans.