Original subtitles

The 6th of June, 1944, D-Day.

A vast invasion fleet crosses the English Channel.

Their aim? To liberate Nazi-occupied Europe.

After over 12 hours of relentless battle,

the Allies secure a crucial toehold in German territory.

But now they face an even greater challenge.

The Allies must head inland and fight through

Normandy to recapture the rest of France.

The Germans know that this will be the decisive battle of World War II

and are determined to hold every inch of ground

and deny the Allies their breakout from Normandy.

In this series, we investigate the most extraordinary events of World War II

from a brand-new perspective, matching rarely-seen archive film,

photography from the front line, and declassified aerial

reconnaissance images to their original locations.

We reconstruct the crucial battles,

daring bombing raids and deadly terror weapons, which change the course of history.

Soaring over the battlefields, we reveal the secrets of World War II from above.

9.30am on the morning of D-Day.

After three hours of brutal fighting across the Nazi-controlled beaches of Normandy,

Allied troops have secured the shoreline and begin to push inland.

Aerial reconnaissance aircraft track the progress.

This photo shows Sword Beach, the easternmost landing area of the invasion.

The smoke from the massive aerial and naval bombardment starts to clear.

A column of vehicles leaves the beach.

Several Sherman tanks lead the way into enemy country.

In June 1944, Nazi Germany still occupies most of continental Europe.

After the D-Day landings,

Allied forces now face a trek of over 1,000km across enemy territory

to recapture German-occupied terrain and attempt to seize control of Berlin.

Tens of thousands of men and machines

need a constant supply of food, fuel and ammunition

for the formidable journey ahead.

This will be a massive logistical challenge.

To shuttle the critical supplies into France,

the Allies require access to one of the major

ports on the coast, or the invasion will fail.

But there's a problem.

Nazi forces control all the French ports, which they have heavily fortified.

Two years before D-Day,

the Allies launch a daring attempt to seize the port of Dieppe,

but over half their men are slaughtered or taken prisoner in just ten hours.

The mission fails.

Capturing a well-defended port from the sea is a near-impossible task.

So, without seizing a port, how will the Allies keep the invading troops supplied?

The solution?

One of the biggest military engineering projects in history.

They plan to construct their own makeshift landing spots here.

These abandoned concrete structures

are the remnants of the massive mobile port built by the British.

The idea was the brainchild of Winston Churchill himself.

He called them "mulberry harbours".

Structural engineer Zeyneb Adegun investigates how they built these megastructures.

It's a very solid-looking structure,

and it's been constructed in sort of panellised sections,

which you can see with these rectangular sections here.

And also, what you notice are these pins that stick out,

which would have been used to pull the structure along the sea.

Although the structure looks solid on the outside, it is very much hollow.

And once they put it in a position,

they would allow the water to come in by opening the valves,

and then it essentially fills up,

allowing the structure to sink into place exactly where they wanted it to be.

Super, super clever.

To assemble the mobile ports,

first, troops sink a line of ships.

The sunken vessels provide shelter on the water.

They then lower more than 100 concrete blocks,

called caissons, to extend the harbour.

This creates a robust 8km-long breakwater that has three entrances.

Further out, they install a line of 24 floating steel structures that form a

1.6 km outer breakwater.

These suppress larger waves and protect the harbour.

With the mobile harbour built,

now the Allies need to devise a way to unload the

ships that arrive with supplies 24 hours a day.

The beaches of Normandy have some of the highest and lowest tides in the world

that make unloading vessels a huge challenge.

Behind me is a row of pontoons, and what would have happened is the flexible

steel roadway would have sat on them

and it would have allowed the structure to move up and down in the sea.

The pontoons can float and move with the tides.

They support roadways that stretch 1.2km out to the deeper water.

Huge platforms at the end of the pontoons create a stable unloading spot for ships.

Just eight days after the invasion,

the men that arrive disembark directly onto the first completed pier.

In just 12 days, a vast makeshift port is operational.

Despite choppy seas, the water within the newly built harbour is calm.

It allows the Allies to land 7,000 tonnes of vehicles and supplies every single day.

The sheer audacity of the programme,

of them being able to bring a port basically off-site,

bringing it into position, is absolutely amazing.

The operation here is really an engineering triumph.

The Allies build two mulberry harbours off the landing beaches,

enabling them to offload a non-stop conveyor of men and materials

to fuel the fight inland through Normandy.

Amongst the equipment being shipped in was the key weapon in the Allies' arsenal.

The Sherman tank.

Former tank commander Matthew Winters examines this iconic World War II machine.

The armour's much thicker on the turret compared to the hull

because what you're aiming to achieve as a tank commander

is to be in what's known as a hull-down position,

and this is where only your gun and your turret are exposed to the enemy.

So you see, you have your hull behind a hedge or a bigger bit of cover

that keeps you safe.

And then along the side, the armour got less and less.

Underneath and on top, again, very thin,

where you're least likely to get attacked, has the least armour.

The Sherman tank is the best tank that the Allies have.

It can fire an almost 7kg shell

and has 5cm of steel at the front.

But the Germans have a tank with armour twice

as thick, a barrel that can fire 10kg shells

at nearly three times the speed of sound

and destroy an enemy tank from a kilometre away.

It's called the King Tiger.

But superior technology isn't a top priority for Allied commanders

when it comes to building their war-winning tank.

One of the big differences between the Sherman

and the Tiger is the ease of maintenance.

The space in between all of this gear is really important,

allowing the crew to clear out any debris, muck, carry out maintenance

and repair the tanks quicker and with less burden.

And what that means is you can get back into the fight sooner

and take it to the enemy.

But the Germans' technologically superior King Tiger doesn't come cheap.

For every King Tiger that the Nazis construct,

the Allies can build four Sherman tanks for the same cost.

And they take full advantage.

During World War II, Allied engineers construct more than

50,000 Sherman tanks and equip each one with a big gun.

The Sherman was armed with a 75mm main armament, which is this thing here.

And whilst it looks big, it actually struggled

to penetrate German tanks from the front.

For a tank commander to watch his rounds bounce off an enemy tank

is incredibly demoralising and also puts the crew at increased risk

and the Germans have the chance of getting off a shot and destroying the Sherman tank.

Just in time, the Allies adapt some Sherman

tanks so that they can take on the German Tiger.

To give their Shermans more firepower, the

British Army mounts some with an anti-tank gun.

They call the upgraded machine the Sherman Firefly.

Finally, a tank that can punch through the armour of a King Tiger.

British trooper Joe Eakins was one of the first to

use a newly modified Sherman Firefly in Normandy.

"Whoosh! And a whacking great flyer would come out

the back and took my eyebrows off with it as it went.

You know, so it was really something.

Only 2,000 Shermans were converted into Fireflies,

but their value was immediately recognised.

One was issued to each troop of tanks to help them fight across Normandy.

Their deployment in the days and months after D-Day

helps Allied units push through the Western Front.

But brutal orders from Hitler are about to make their progress almost impossible.

Hitler meets news of the Normandy invasion with relief.

For months, Allied forces had been massing in

England, where the Nazis could not strike them.

Now they are in reach.

Hitler issues a strict order not to give up an inch of territory in Normandy.

As troops from the British 7th Armoured Division

advance inland, they reach the town of Villers-Bocage.

It's on the route to the important communications hub of Caen.

Historian Guy Walters investigates the advance.

"We've got Villers-Bocage, a small little

town, and we are just about 20km west of Caen.

Caen is an absolutely vital place for the British to take, because if they can take Caen,

then this entire front collapses and the Germans are in serious trouble.

" Little do the British know, they are rolling towards catastrophe.

Ahead are the German forces.

They are made up of young, well-trained and highly motivated

troops, determined to fight for every inch of ground.

Amongst them is master Nazi tank commander Michael Wittmann.

If you ask most people who is the most successful, brilliant tank commander of

the whole of the Second World War, they're probably going to say Michael Wittmann.

Why? Because he is absolutely legendary.

Wittmann grows up during the Depression, and the first

thing he does is to volunteer for military service.

And he really distinguishes himself. He even earns himself a

marksmanship badge first class, so we know that he's a great shot.

We are standing in a hedgerow, exactly where Michael

Wittmann was that morning with his Tiger tank.

And at 8 o'clock, one of his men runs down that hill in an enormous panic and says,

"Sir, sir, there is an entire armoured British

column of tanks sitting on that road right up there.

He knows that those British are on the move, and they're on the move right now.

He's got a very, very big decision to make.

Wittmann has no time to marshal other tanks to attack.

He could remain in cover, report his sighting by radio, and request reinforcements.

Or he could attack alone, one Tiger tank against an entire armoured brigade.

Yes, I must say that the decision was a very, very difficult one.

But I knew that it had to be done, and decided to strike out into the enemy.

Wittmann moves fast to engage two British tanks at close range, and destroys them.

And he doesn't stop there.

Wittmann races half a kilometre down the straight road,

turning his formidable guns on a battalion of Allied

armoured troop carriers in the middle of the regiment.

Wittmann blazes away at the parked column of vehicles,

scoring a direct hit with every shot from his Tiger.

Wittmann's lone effort destroys 16 vehicles in minutes.

But he doesn't stop there.

He keeps going, heading right into more danger, into

the town centre, right down there at Villers-Bocage.

As he barrels towards the centre of Villers-Bocage,

he destroys 10 more armoured vehicles.

When he finally reaches the far end of town, a lone British

Sherman Firefly opens fire and damages Wittmann's Tiger.

His luck is running out.

He crosses the fields behind the main street,

when a British anti-tank gun finally disables his Tiger tank.

Wittmann escapes on foot to a German stronghold.

In a matter of hours, Wittmann's unit have decimated a squadron of British tanks.

The Allies' attempt to liberate Villers-Bocage

is slow, and the cost is catastrophic.

And as they advance, Hitler is determined to throw more obstacles in their path.

As the Allies gain a toehold in Normandy,

the Germans are determined to hold every inch of ground.

In a bid to snuff out the invasion, Hitler orders reinforcements from the south.

Almost 17,000 Nazi soldiers, including a German tank, are sent to the front.

Including elite SS infantry units and four motorised battalions,

mobilised to repel the attack.

And the bad news for the Allies is that a railway line runs directly to the front,

allowing the Nazis to reach them in just eight hours.

Reconnaissance photos reveal a weak spot in the railway

- a 1,000-metre-long tunnel near the town of Sermur.

Taking out the tunnel will stop all rail

traffic and Nazi troops from travelling north.

But what weapon can destroy a tunnel dug deep into the ground?

Barnes-Wallace, aviation genius and brains behind

the famous bouncing bomb, devises a solution.

He invents the Tallboy, a gigantic 5.5-tonne bomb designed to

penetrate deep underground and create an earthquake when it explodes.

The Tallboy can take out the tunnel, but only if

British bombers can accurately target and hit it.

Bomber command's missions at this time are famously inaccurate.

Just over 1% of bombs hit their target.

Pilot and former Royal Marine Commando Arthur Williams investigates

the revolutionary aircraft that turn these odds around.

The de Havilland Mosquito. Hands down my favourite

aircraft of all time for a multitude of different reasons.

But principally because, well, look at it. It's absolutely breathtaking.

It's a twin-engine, medium bomber/fighter.

It was designed to go super fast, speeds in excess of 400 miles an hour.

So it didn't need defensive armament to stave

off fighters, it could just simply outrun them.

But what it has got is bucket loads of offensive armament.

It was designed to take the fight to the Germans, not to have to defend itself.

The secret to the Mosquito's success is the materials that it is constructed from.

Now this is the engine nacelle. You can hear that and you can see the rivets.

This is metal, this is aluminium, which was in short supply during the war.

The Mosquito's different.

And it's different because if we come up to here, the fuselage, listen.

Completely different sound. And you'll notice as well,

a very clean design. No rivets.

That's because this is made of a composite material. It's wood.

And that is what gave the Mosquito one of its greatest strengths. It gave it its speed.

The Mosquito can outrun a Spitfire and most other World War II aircraft.

Well, from a pilot's point of view, this is a really, really nice place to be.

There's just one pilot flying the aeroplane.

And then just behind me here, slightly behind my right-hand shoulder,

is the navigator, observer, bomb-aimer, everything else.

And I think they would have formed a really close crew, actually.

And it's interesting that he sat just slightly behind me.

He sat slightly behind so they could narrow the fuselage even more.

Don't forget the most crucial thing about the Mosquito.

Its main defence is its speed.

Pilot Leonard Cheshire believes he can use the Mosquito to accurately

bomb the Sommeux Tunnel with Barnes-Wallace's Tallboy bombs.

What he did was use the very best pilots to fly

the very best aircraft to have on a Mosquito.

The idea being is that they would fly in ahead of the main bomber

formation at low level and drop red and green flares directly on the target

so that all of the bombers following would be able to drop their bombs at night.

Leonard Cheshire recounts his approach to these daring bombing missions.

We all got a different technique, but I prefer to

get into trouble quickly and not think about it

and worry about getting out of it once you're in.

And once you're in trouble, you're going to get out somehow.

On the night of the 8th of June, 19 Lancaster bombers

loaded with Tallboy bombs head for the Sommeux Tunnel.

Leonard Cheshire, in his Mosquito, leads the charge.

As they approach the target, the Mosquitoes dive to 300

metres and drop red flares onto the tunnel entrance,

which the bombers use as targets.

One impact causes the roof of the tunnel to collapse onto the

line below and stops the German reinforcements in their tracks.

With aircraft like the Mosquito in their fleet,

The Allies have air superiority and can pick their targets.

As they set out to sever every German supply line,

Hitler's orders to hold all territory start to unravel.

With no way to strengthen the numbers of soldiers

at the front, the German front line weakens.

Finally, hope is in sight for the Allies.

German generals desperately petition Hitler

to change his risky policy of not giving up an inch of land.

But Hitler won't change his strategy.

The reason lies far away from Normandy.

In the summer of 1944, it isn't just Allied troops

that the German forces have to contend with.

In the east, the Soviets are taking control of the Baltic states and parts of Poland.

Hitler is convinced that this is the real threat,

telling his generals that the invasion in Normandy is just a diversion.

His frustrated leaders find themselves helpless.

As Hitler moves to his headquarters just 80km from the Soviet border

Hitler is now issuing orders to the front in France

from his command centre hidden deep in what is now Poland.

It is the largest and most complex of all his military installations.

Adolf means 'noble wolf' in Old German, so Hitler names this site the 'Wolfslehr'.

Nestling among the area's natural defences

are some of the strongest bunkers ever built for the Führer.

Military historian Alexandra Ritchie examines this vast site.

When we think of Hitler in the war,

people generally think of Hitler at the Eagle's Nest,

Ever Brown's home movies, or they think of him perhaps in the bunker in Berlin.

But in reality he spent over 800 days at the Wolfslehr.

It was by far the most used of all his headquarters.

This is his actual bunker.

And it really looks like kind of an Aztec pyramid

or some Egyptian structure from ancient times.

It's just so monumentally huge, gigantic.

At the heart of Hitler's bunker is a tiny bedroom where the Führer sleeps.

Around it is a warren of offices and walkways.

A concrete roof, more than 7 metres thick, encases the building.

A layer of gravel protects the bunker from bomb blasts,

while thick steel doors seal it from chemical attacks.

Built like an Egyptian tomb, Hitler's bunker is nearly indestructible.

No windows. The ventilation and the oxygen

had to be brought in by a whole ventilation system.

The thickness of the walls, the dankness of it,

made it just such a grim and miserable place to be.

It really is reflective of Hitler's mentality, of his paranoia.

Being impenetrable is not enough for a paranoid Hitler.

He wants the site to be invisible.

So workers fill the roof with tonnes of soil and plant it with shrubs and trees.

They drape the concrete shell in camouflage netting to disguise the walkways around it.

The site blends seamlessly into the forest.

Far away from the supply line crisis and unwilling to change his orders,

Hitler refuses to listen to his increasingly frustrated generals in Normandy.

Hitler believes in his own propaganda.

He believes that he's the greatest leader of all time.

And so he thinks that his generals are not really up to snuff.

He begins to take over everything. He micromanages.

But he made huge mistakes and military blunders.

Without reinforcements, the German troops in Normandy are now relying

on defences they put in place years ago to repel the invaders.

The Nazis have been preparing for the Allied invasion of France for years.

Every major roadway is lined with artillery fire and mines.

But aerial reconnaissance reveals that country fields

and hedgerows show no signs of bunkers or artillery.

So the Allies plan to attack from multiple directions across the countryside.

They quickly discover that this terrain is tougher than they thought.

It's known to locals as Bokaj.

Military historian Lynette Nussbacher examines

how the Bokaj thwarts the progress of soldiers.

Bokaj is an entire region of Normandy where the field boundaries

and the road boundaries for centuries have been dense hedgerows.

But these hedgerows are not a garden hedge.

This is a natural defensive position.

You do not have to dig trenches to fight trench warfare here.

The obstacles come ready-made.

The dense hedgerows force Allied tanks to follow the boundaries of the fields.

But if a tank tries to push its way over one, it exposes its weak underside armour.

If you can imagine someone is trying to drive a Sherman

tank out of the field behind me and through this hedgerow,

that tank is going to rear up over my head and it's going to

expose its comparatively thin belly armour to people defending.

And people down here at the bottom of this hedgerow are

going to be able to fire right into the belly of that tank.

They are going to be able to gut that tank

like a fish and leave it as a burning wreck.

It's not just the natural defences of the landscape that

thwart the Allies' attempt to break out of Normandy.

When reconnaissance planes survey the area, they see only empty fields.

But among the hedgerows, the Germans have dug pits for

riflemen and hidden machine guns and anti-tank guns.

They position them to form interlocking arcs

of fire that create an impenetrable barrage.

As the Allies approach, the peaceful pastures turn into killing fields.

The hedges in Normandy are dense, they're difficult

to cut through, they're difficult to fight through.

And once you get through the hedge, you're in a field, you're in a kill zone.

The enemy can see you, the enemy can kill you, and you've

got to cross the field before you get to the next hedge.

And then you've got another hedge to cut through.

Hedge after hedge, field after field.

Despite the horrific cost, the Allies continue to battle

for every hedge, and the front line pushes slowly forward.

And in the east, at Hitler's headquarters, the tide is beginning to turn against him.

For six weeks, Hitler's disastrous military strategy

of fighting until the last man is decimating German units.

He refuses to listen to his horrified generals.

The Nazis are losing the war.

More and more officers believe that the only chance

to avoid a catastrophic defeat is to remove Hitler.

One of them is 36-year-old army officer Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg.

He and a group of sympathisers decide to stake

everything on a terrifying last roll of the dice.

Kill Adolf Hitler.

Military historian Alexandra Ritschi has

studied the assassination attempt in detail.

Klaus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg was a member of one of

the oldest aristocratic families from southern Germany.

He was actually quite positive toward Hitler at the beginning.

And he was moved to North Africa to fight.

And it was there that he was injured very badly.

He was blinded in one eye, he lost his right

hand, and he lost two fingers off his left hand.

This photo, taken just five days before the assassination attempt,

shows a military officer shaking hands with Hitler.

Standing on the left is Klaus von Stauffenberg.

Stauffenberg, like many informed officers, was increasingly

aware of the desperate situation that was facing Germany.

And this was particularly true after the Normandy landings.

It began to grow in his mind that Hitler

was far from being a great national saviour.

And he was very, very worried and concerned and

determined that action had to be taken quickly.

Stauffenberg resolves to blow up Hitler.

But everything about the Wolf's Lair is designed

for maximum security to protect the Führer.

So how can he do it?

He decides to use the bunker's strength as a force against Hitler.

If Stauffenberg can trigger an explosion within the bunker itself,

the windowless rooms should trap the energy and kill anyone inside.

Now he just needs the opportunity.

Stauffenberg is very liked by Hitler. He's admired by Hitler.

He's come to his notice and he is promoted

to be the Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army.

And this brings him closer to Hitler himself.

He very soon is invited to attend Hitler's daily conference.

This is Stauffenberg's chance.

He plans to smuggle a kilo of explosives in each

bomb through security checks in his briefcase.

He will then arm the ten-minute fuses and place

the briefcase as close to Hitler as he can.

When Stauffenberg arrives at the Wolf's Lair, to his horror,

Keitel tells him that the meeting being held in Hitler's

bunker, which is a huge, heavy concrete structure,

is instead going to be held in a situation room or a conference room

because it's so hot and so humid that Hitler has

decided he doesn't want to be in this stuffy bunker.

He wants to be in a room that's got windows, that's more airy.

It is in this situation room that Stauffenberg must now strike.

In the centre sits a massive oak table

where Hitler discusses the campaigns with his generals.

It is very eerie walking on this surface, in this space,

because this is the edge of the situation room where Hitler held the briefing.

There would have been a hallway here, two

other rooms and into the situation room itself.

But Stauffenberg soon receives more bad news.

The meeting, which was scheduled for 1pm, is brought forward.

He makes an excuse and he says he needs to change his shirt before meeting with Hitler

because he's wounded and the wounds are seeping.

But there's constant interruption, somebody's knocking at the door saying,

"Hitler is waiting, Keitel is waiting, get on with it.

And so he only has time to arm one of the bombs.

Stauffenberg clutches his briefcase and marches to the conference room.

In ten minutes he will change Germany's destiny.

With one bomb armed, Stauffenberg is ready to assassinate Hitler.

When he enters the conference room, 23 people, including

generals and other high-ranking officers, are present.

Hitler is at the centre of the map table.

Stauffenberg places the briefcase with the bomb

under the table, less than two metres away,

and then finds an excuse to leave the room.

At 12.42, just as Hitler stretches across the map table, the bomb detonates.

Stauffenberg is certain that Hitler is dead.

Four people in the room die, but Hitler somehow survives.

The theory is that the thick oak table deflects the bomb blast,

and as Hitler is leaning right over the table, it also protects his vital organs.

Just hours after the explosion, in a show of invincibility,

Hitler has photos taken of himself,

showing the wrecked room to the deposed Italian dictator Mussolini.

Hitler has been injured by the bomb blast, but nothing that's actually serious.

Hitler is furious, and by one o'clock in the morning,

Stauffenberg and three colleagues were executed by the SS.

And then Hitler went on a wider witch hunt.

About 4,000 people were actually murdered because of the plot.

Over 1,500 kilometres away, in Normandy, the Allies finally push through the Bokaj.

No more orchards, no more hedgerows, just flat, open countryside.

This is classic tank country.

Ordered to resist at all costs, the Germans occupy every available niche.

The only option for the Allies is to use their huge numerical advantage.

They plan Operation Goodwood, a mission to drive

the last remaining German battalions out of Normandy

and to seize the favourable countryside beyond, back from Nazi control.

Operation Goodwood lasts for three days.

1,200 tanks and more than 100,000 troops take part in

the biggest tank battle the British Army has ever fought.

The Germans fight ferociously hard during Operation Goodwood.

Now, you might think that's a great thing, you know,

fighting hard, that's what a soldier's meant to do, right?

But actually, it's a result of Hitler's kind of infantile military

management that says, "You've got to hold every scrap of ground.

In the face of stubborn resistance, the British

gain only 11 kilometres of ground towards Paris.

But thanks to Hitler's orders, the battle draws in the

bulk of the German armoured divisions in the region.

It leaves the Nazis vulnerable, with the rest of the front line poorly defended.

Five days later, the might of the US First Army wheels around the stunned Nazis.

The breakout of Normandy begins.

Alongside the American advance, the British push forward.

Among them is tank gunner Joe Eakins.

On 8th August 1944, his crew spots a group of Tiger tanks ahead,

including celebrated Nazi commander Michael Wittmann.

They knock out the first Nazi tank.

The second one, Travis round, and I'll never forget seeing his gun coming round.

It looked massive. And he fired at us.

Fired at the second one, one shot, and knocked him out.

In the fighting, Wittmann's tank is hit. The resulting fire blows off the turret.

It is believed Eakins fires the fatal shot, taking out the tank ace and his crew.

Just two weeks later, and over 11 weeks after the

first soldier landed on the beaches of Normandy,

the Allies finally roll into Paris to liberate the city.

Cheering crowds greet the soldiers.

Who march, one step closer.

To Berlin.

And to victory.