All language subtitles for World War II Secrets From Above - Season 2 - EP-03 - Breakout From Normandy

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.