All language subtitles for World War II Secrets From Above - Season 2 - EP-06 - Battle For Poland

Poland, the 1st of September, 1939.

In the port city of Danzig,
a German battleship opens

fire with her main battery
on Polish military positions.

Waves of Nazi bombers head for the capital,
Warsaw, turning the city into rubble

in a bombing campaign
like nothing seen before.

Hitler wants to see
Poland wiped off the map.

This all-out assault marks the beginning
of World War II and the battle for Poland.

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 changed the course of history.

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

At Glewitt's radio station in Nazi Germany,

a small group of men
wearing Polish military uniforms

storms the
site and seizes control.

They broadcast a short
anti-German message in Polish.

One of the men, Franciszek Honiok,
a 43-year-old farmer who is known

for being a Polish nationalist,
is found dead at the scene.

But what looks like an
attack by Polish operatives

is in fact the work of German
SS soldiers in disguise.

The whole operation was staged and
the Nazis plant Honiok's body at the scene.

It is part of a series of
Nazi-planned false flag missions

along the Polish-German
border intended to give the

impression of Polish
aggression against Germany.

Hitler needs a reason to justify
a military invasion of Poland.

After World War I, the
Allies impose punitive

territorial measures
on a defeated Germany.

They reduce the size of the country
by almost 70,000 square kilometers.

Germany loses Danzig, a prestigious
deepwater port on the Baltic Sea.

The Allies declare it a free city,
partly administered by Poland.

Hitler desperately wants to
seize back control of the city.

The Allies allow a small garrison of
Polish soldiers to fortify this peninsula

to protect the country's
fleet and shipping operations.

On the 25th of August, 1939, German
battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein

arrives in Danzig Harbor
for a seemingly routine visit.

It is greeted by jubilant crowds,
unaware of its actual intentions.

Six days later, the
German battleship opens fire

in a surprise attack and
pummels the Polish garrison.

This marks the first
shots fired in World War II.

Historian Guy Walters
examines the peninsula in what is today Gdansk

to investigate
this world-changing battle.

I am standing at the
beginning of the Second World War,

mankind's most deadly conflict.

Right at this spot is where some of the
first shells of the Second World War landed.

That pummeling by the Schleswig-Holstein
was really, really punitive.

It was creating devastation all around.

Eight minutes after
the initial bombardment,

hidden Marines race out
of the ship and advance.

They expect a quick and easy victory.

What happens next is completely the
opposite to what the Germans expect,

because they are met by the most
ferocious resistance from the Poles.

German aerial reconnaissance
photos reveal that the Polish forces

have been secretly
reinforcing their position.

In addition to the barracks, they
have built a further five guardhouses.

The guardhouses have
overlapping fields of fire

that transform this port
into an impenetrable fortress.

This intelligence fails to reach the
German captain of the Schleswig-Holstein,

and the assault teams
are completely unprepared.

In response to the bloodbath, the captain
decides to delay further ground attacks

until they have weakened
the Polish defenses.

The captain of the
Schleswig-Holstein realizes,

well, the first bombardment didn't work,

that Marine assault didn't
work, what am I gonna do?

The captain orders a second bombardment.

Shells once again rain down on the Polish
positions, but with greater ferocity.

You've got massive
heavy shells raining upon

you, massive explosions,
trees just splintering

like matchsticks, huge chunks being
torn out of guardhouses and fortifications.

It must've been absolutely terrifying.

The defenders hold out
against overwhelming odds,

but after seven days,
they run out of ammunition.

The commanding officer now
has a difficult decision to make.

The Polish commander knew that there
was no way that they could be resupplied.

The situation was ultimately hopeless,
and so actually he does the sensible thing.

He puts up the white flag.

Hitler's ambitions in Poland
run deeper than capturing Danzig.

His goals are much more sinister.

Hitler's regard of Poland
couldn't be much lower.

He thinks it's a country
that's vastly inferior.

He wants to wipe Poland off the map.

So this is a struggle
for the future of a nation.

German forces attack
Poland with over 400 fighter aircraft,

900 bombers,
and 2,000 armored vehicles.

They launch massive concentrated
strikes from East Prussia

and Germany in the north
and Slovakia in the south.

The Nazi tanks smash through
the Polish defenses with ease

and cover almost 100
kilometers in the first few days.

The key to Germany's intensive
wave of attacks is the Panzer tank.

The Panzer I weighs 5.8 tons

and has two
front-mounted machine guns.

But this tank has an Achilles heel.

It lacks a radio transmitter and has no
way to communicate with other tanks.

To solve the problem, Nazi
engineers upgrade the Panzer

to allow the commander to coordinate
the vast formations of tanks in the field.

They remove the main
guns and raise up the turret.

This creates space to pack in radio
transmitters and a radio operator.

Military vehicle expert
Krzysztof Jankowiak investigates

a replica of a Panzer
commander tank in action.

Communication between
vehicles on the battlefield

was the most important
thing to achieve the goal.

Blitzkrieg was the new style of
providing attack in this period.

It was designed to attack
very fast in cooperation

with all units, airplanes,
tanks, infantry, artillery.

The Germans understood that the commander

has to be in the battle to
react on things happening.

The two-way communication
between the tanks and their commander

allows the Nazis to launch huge coordinated
attacks from both the ground and air.

Massive formations of Panzer tanks
now strike into the heart of Poland.

One of the Polish officers
on the ground, Witold Pilecki,

is mobilized as a
cavalry platoon commander.

He is stationed near the city of
Piotrków-Trybunowskie to guard

one of the main roads that
leads to Warsaw from Nazi attack.

What Pilecki doesn't
know is that he is positioned

in front of the German 1st and 4th Panzer
Divisions who are attacking from the west.

The heavily armed tanks
smash through their defenses

and almost completely
wipe out Pilecki's platoon.

The road to Warsaw now
opens up as the 1st and 4th Panzer Divisions

roll in towards the capital.

Pilecki survives the clash
and heads for Warsaw.

He knows that all will be lost if
his troops cannot defend the city.

The 17th of September, 1939.

Poland is under attack and the
Germans are closing in on its capital.

Hitler wants to see
Poland wiped off the map.

He wants to expand Germany to the
east and seize the Poles as inferior.

For over three weeks, the
Luftwaffe attacks Warsaw from the air.

Wave after wave of bombers
unload their deadly cargo.

In just one raid, over 400 bombers dropped
486 tons of explosives down onto the city.

In this terror bombing
campaign, the Germans not only

target military installations,
but also civilians.

Hitler wants to crush the morale of the
population to reach an early surrender.

The bombers strike the Royal Castle,
the seat of the Polish head of state.

Incendiary bombs trigger fires that
sweep through the historic building.

The raids reduce the city to
ruins and kill 10,000 civilians.

On the ground, Poland doesn't have
an answer for Germany's blitzkrieg

and German ground troops
advance quickly towards the capital.

The fastest way for them to capture the
city is by moving troops in from the north.

But the great fortress of Modlin
protects this zone from attack.

To take Warsaw, the Germans must
first neutralize this Polish stronghold.

Modlin Fortress was built in 1806.

It's one of the largest
fortresses in the world.

The barracks measure
2,250 metres long, the longest

building in Europe and
second longest in the world.

Former Royal Marine, Arthur
Williams, investigates what it

would have been like to be a
soldier stationed here in 1939.

There's clear evidence of pretty bitter
fighting that's taken place right here.

These bricks were
riddled with bullet holes.

In some places, artillery and
even shrapnel damage too.

But the most obvious thing
about Modlin Fort is its size.

It's massive and it seemingly
just goes on forever.

More than 15,000 Polish soldiers
are stationed at this fortress.

They pose a real threat to any army
that wants to surround and occupy Warsaw.

The Germans can't have an
unoccupied space behind their lines

and you just can't have
15,000 men that can jump

out at any point and
attack your supply chain.

So the Germans had to take Modlin.

On the 22nd of September,
after days of bitter fighting,

the Germans cut Modlin off from the
Warsaw pocket and surround the fortress.

Modlin is now under siege.

But the fortress is heavily armed.

The defensive network of
Modlin was pretty diverse.

It had around 90 artillery pieces.

It had provisions to last them for a while.

They even had, quite
uniquely, an armored train.

The defense of Modlin relies on
an armored train, śmierć, or death.

The train shuttles in heavy
artillery support to the fortress.

This 70-meter long train has a full
complement of artillery and an 80-man crew.

Smierć is a mobile
platform of heavy firepower.

But even this mighty armament cannot
hold off the advancing German army.

As the German net tightened
around the fortifications here,

its usefulness became less and less
and actually proved that armored trains

are pretty vulnerable to air
attack, the tracks are vulnerable,

and really, in the end, it
wasn't able to do too much.

The Poles fiercely defend the
fortress from German ground assaults.

But the Germans are
about to try something else.

Defensive position
like this is designed, by

its nature, to be
incredibly hard to attack.

And if you do so, you'll get
the target quickly, but you're

gonna lose hundreds, maybe
thousands of men in the process.

So in order to try to crack Modilin, the
Germans use some of their best assets.

The Junkers 87, or Stuka,
is the pride of the Luftwaffe.

A dive bomber equipped with
three guns and 500 kilograms of

high-explosive bombs, it can
hit targets with extreme accuracy.

Fitted with the Jericho
trumpet, an air-powered siren,

the Stuka is designed
to instill fear and loathing.

The Germans deploy a
squadron of Stukas to the fortress.

Despite heavy anti-aircraft fire,

they deliver crushing blows
to the Polish defenders,

hitting their targets
with 30-meter accuracy.

The Polish defenders refuse to surrender,

even in the face of this
intensive aerial attack.

So the Germans try one more tactic.

SS Sergeant Rokus Misch
is part of a four-man group.

They approach the Polish lines
to try to negotiate their surrender.

The talks fail, and the
German party walks away.

As the Germans leave,
the Poles fire at them,

sending a clear message that
they are not ready to surrender.

But elsewhere, the battle for Poland

is about to suffer a major blow.

By mid-September, the Nazis
capture almost half of Poland,

but then they stop.

The reason for this is that
Hitler and Stalin have secretly

signed a pact to divide
Eastern Europe between them.

Since the 17th of September,

the Soviet Union has been
attacking Poland from the east.

With the Nazis closing in on the capital,

the Poles are overstretched and demoralized,
fighting a losing battle on two fronts.

The siege of Warsaw lasts three
weeks until the 28th of September,

when the Polish
garrison finally surrenders.

The Germans are
left with Modlin Fortress,

where we are today, and
it's the toughest nut to crack.

So what they do is they find
a Polish runner from Warsaw,

they allow them to pass
through the German lines

into the fortress and
convince the garrison here

that the only thing that
they can do is surrender.

After 15 days of fighting,

troops at Modlin Fortress
are finally defeated.

With the fall of Warsaw, Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union

divide Poland according
to their secret protocol.

Germany takes over 188,000 square kilometers,
along with 22 million inhabitants.

The Soviet Union take
200,000 square kilometers,

along with a
population of 13 million.

Warsaw has fallen,

but this is only the beginning of the
German terror attack on Poland's capital.

The brutal air and land campaign

enables Nazi forces to capture
Poland in just five weeks.

Hitler's aim is to crush all resistance.

He protects soldiers from
being punished for atrocities,

claiming that he cannot wage
war with Salvation Army methods.

A campaign of terror
against the Poles begins.

In October, 1940, the Germans announced
the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw.

All Jewish residents must
move into a designated area.

Hitler compares the Jews to germs.

He says that diseases cannot be
controlled unless you destroy their cause.

The Nazi district governor
orders the construction

of a ghetto wall to keep the Jewish
population separate from the so-called Aryans.

The Nazis force 460,000 Jews from the city

and surrounding area
into a space

of just 3.3 square kilometers.

This is a staggering 30% of Warsaw's
population packed into just 2.6% of the city.

An 18-kilometer-long wall
surrounds the entire district.

Today, much of the wall has
been torn down, but a small section

still survives, hidden between
two residential buildings.

Historian Alexandra Ritchie investigates

how this ordinary-looking wall
divides the Polish population.

This wall was really like the creation

of a gigantic prison within the very
confines of a once-thriving capital city,

the thriving center of
Jewish life in Europe.

The wall cuts the Jewish population off

from any communication with the outside
world, and there is little hope of escape.

Any person who was caught near the ghetto
wall was simply shot, they were killed.

And so it was a place of
great fear, of great violence,

and the wall really does
represent this imprisonment

of the Jewish population
in the city of Warsaw.

Grodno Street, an
important east-west road

through Warsaw, is excluded from the
ghetto, but divides it into two sections.

The area to the south is
known as the small ghetto,

and the area to the
north, the large ghetto.

German authorities halt traffic
once enough people are waiting

to allow them to move
between the two zones.

Nazi engineers build a bridge to
connect the large and small ghettos.

This allows the so-called Aryan population

to move freely and
prevents disrupting traffic.

Further down the road, Alexandra examines

some of the only remaining
Warsaw ghetto buildings.

Here, inside these rooms,
the Jewish population

experienced the worst
living conditions imaginable.

It's unbelievable to think
sometimes there were eight,

nine, ten, even twelve, sometimes
even fifteen people per room.

And they were very often forced to
live in the most squalid of conditions.

With the Jews confined
to a single area of

Warsaw, Hitler is able
to enact his hatred.

The Germans very deliberately
wanted to starve the Jewish population.

The Jews trapped inside the ghetto

were officially given less
than 200 calories a day.

This is only the beginning
of the Nazi terror campaign.

In the summer of 1940, a
secretive new camp opens.

Hundreds of Poles who've been identified

as enemies of the Nazi
regime are sent there.

Rumors of heinous conditions
at the camp slowly surface.

In a suburb of Warsaw, after his defeat
at Piotrków Trybunalski, Witold Pilecki

is staying at this very house,
which belongs to his sister-in-law.

But he is not here for a family gathering.

He has joined the Polish Resistance, an
underground movement to resist German rule.

And he has information that a Nazi street
roundup is soon to happen right here.

Witold volunteers to be arrested

to investigate where missing
Warsaw residents are being sent.

On the 19th of September,
the German SS arrive

and move from building to building,
demanding that all men come out.

Witold is arrested, and his
audacious plan is underway.

The country is now
under Hitler's iron grip,

but the Fuhrer is not content
with just controlling Poland.

His ambitions go much further.

Summer, 1941, Poland is
defeated, and Germany and the

Soviet Union have divided
the country between them.

But Hitler is about to betray Stalin.

After a successful campaign in Western
Europe, Hitler turns his attention east.

He wants to expand German territory
to create Lebensraum, or living space,

a Germanic empire in
Eastern Europe that would grant

the Nazis access to the
vast resources of the Soviet Union.

300 kilometres south of
Warsaw, tucked away on

a sleepy road, is this
mysterious entranceway.

It leads into the side of a
hill and stands as a relic

to Hitler's ambitions to
control Eastern Europe.

To support the planned
invasion of the Soviet Union,

Hitler builds two enormous train
bunkers here, close to the Eastern Front.

The first is a 480-metre-long
bunker above ground.

It's topped with a
two-metre-thick concrete shell,

shaped like a dome,
to deflect bomb impacts.

The second bunker is
underground, cut into the hillside.

It's 400 metres long and is
hidden away from enemy bombers.

Historian Alina Nowobilska investigates what
Hitler was doing at this secretive site.

Hitler wanted to have control
over what was happening.

He was the one giving
the generals the orders

of what he wanted and what he
thought was the most important.

France was successful
at the end of the day,

so because he believed France
was successful because of him,

he believed that he could
also conquer the Soviet Union.

Hitler scrutinises every
security detail of the site.

I mean, wow, just look
at the size of these doors.

They're about four
metres high, one foot thick.

It's incredible.

I mean, this clearly
reinforces Hitler's paranoia

'cause they were
hermetically closed and sealed

in case of a biological
attack or a chemical attack.

Soon after their construction,

the bunkers received their first visitor.

27th of August, 1941.

A mysterious train arrives
at the underground bunker.

It belongs to Hitler himself.

Just two months earlier,
on the 22nd of June, 1941,

Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa,
the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Now he is here to personally inspect
the Eastern Front with his generals.

This complex in itself was specifically
built because it's close to the airport.

Generals and staff could
move quite freely from the

front line to the airport to
here, back into Germany.

The site is kept in a
constant state of readiness

to receive the highest
command in the Nazi regime.

It would serve as a bunker and a
base just in case something was to happen

that they could retreat back to
and have a mobile command unit.

At first, Hitler's
armies make astonishing

ground in the invasion
of the Soviet Union.

Panzer tanks cover 40 kilometers per day,
a resumption of the fast strike attacks

used to immense success
in Poland and France.

And the Luftwaffe rule the sky.

But just 30 kilometers from
their objective in Moscow,

Stalin orders a massive counter-offensive
to catch the Germans on the back foot.

Whilst Hitler is bogged
down on the Eastern Front,

plans to overthrow the Nazis'
largest death machine are underway.

To deal with the sheer
number of mass arrests in

Nazi-occupied Poland, Germany
opens a number of prison camps.

The most notorious is Auschwitz.

The site starts life as
a Polish army barracks.

It quickly expands to become World
War II's largest concentration camp.

By April 1943, Witold
Pilecki has been held

captive in Auschwitz
for two and a half years.

Inside the camp, he organizes
an underground resistance group.

His aim is to improve the morale of
inmates, set up intelligence networks,

and investigate the camp to
record the horrors he observes.

To manage the growing number of
inmates, the Nazis open a second camp,

Auschwitz II, Bierkanau.

Pilecki and his underground organization

investigate the inner
workings of both camps.

Pilecki reports on one
gas chamber at Auschwitz I

and four in Bierkanau,
only 3.5 kilometers away.

Each chamber is capable of killing hundreds
at a time and is built with crematoriums

to burn up to 8,000 dead
bodies per day into ash.

He also describes mass graves
to bury enemy prisoners of war.

Outside of the camp
in Warsaw, the Polish

organize a resistance
called the Polish Home Army.

They forward the information from Pilecki

to the Polish government
in exile in London.

These reports are the Allies' main
source of intelligence on Auschwitz.

Auschwitz educator Paweł
Sawicki has been working

to document events
that took place at this site.

I think he hoped that the information
that he would send out from Auschwitz

would maybe trigger some reactions
that either the resistance around

or maybe the Allies to which this
information can come could trigger something,

but we need to understand
what was the reality at that time.

Despite the gruesome details
in his reports, no help arrives.

Witold conceives a way to
personally appeal to the Allies.

In spring of 1943, he started
searching for an opportunity to escape,

also to pass information as the
eyewitness, to become a messenger himself.

And of course, the possibility of escape

from the inside of the
camp was basically zero.

With escape almost impossible from
inside the camp, Witold devises a plan.

He works with his network at Auschwitz
and two other prisoners to bribe their way

onto a bakery work unit,
almost two kilometers

outside the main camp,
where security is more lax.

From here, they plan to make their escape.

On the evening of the 26th of April, 1943,

the bakery shift is called to
work and the breakout is on.

At first, they had to do some work

and then early in the
morning, around 2, 3 a.m.,

when the SS were busy with
something else, they tried their luck.

And first of all, they opened the lock
and then they had to open the door.

They unbolted it, but
they couldn't open it.

They tried it once, second, three
times, and finally the escape began.

After an incredible 947
days inside Auschwitz,

Witold Pilecki is free.

But the world Witold left when he first
entered the camp is now very different.

Germany's invasion of the
Soviet Union ends in failure.

They are now on the back foot
and the Soviets are counterattacking.

All of a sudden, the Soviets started
to come up toward the Polish border.

Now, the Poles had been very worried
about this because on the one hand,

they were very keen to
be liberated from the Nazis,

but they also realized that Stalin
wasn't necessarily a friend of Poland,

that they might find
themselves being not liberated

so much as having one dictatorship
replaced by another dictatorship.

On the 1st of August, 1944, the Polish
Home Army initiates the Warsaw Uprising.

The plan is conceived to free the city

from German occupation
and reclaim Polish

independence before the
Soviets assert their control.

The odds are stacked against the Polish,

yet the Home Army quickly established
control of most of central Warsaw

before the Germans can
strengthen their garrison.

Bloody urban street-to-street fighting
ensues for the next eight weeks.

The Nazis were very shocked by the number
of people who were fighting against them

and this caused Hitler just
incredible anger and fury

that the Poles would dare to rise
up against the German master race.

And so he gave the order to
absolutely destroy the city of Warsaw.

In the air, the Luftwaffe sent
wave after wave of bombers.

The Home Army has no answer.

They have no anti-aircraft
guns and Stalin refuses

to send his own planes
in to assist the Poles.

Nazi commanders order in heavy artillery
to crush the uprising on the ground.

The consignment of deadly
weaponry includes the Karl Gerät.

This is a 126-ton
self-propelled siege mortar.

Each of its shells weigh
up to an incredible 2.5 tons

and are capable of
obliterating anything in its path.

The Germans score a direct
hit on the Prudential skyscraper.

This is the tallest building
in Warsaw at the time

and was seized by the Polish Home
Army just four weeks before the assault.

The siege mortar's two-ton shell
shakes the building to its foundations.

The attacks reduce the city
to rubble and kill thousands.

They leave many survivors homeless.

When the Soviets arrive
on the outskirts of the city,

the Germans have withdrawn from
their positions on the east of the river.

They blow up the bridges
behind them to stall the advance.

Without backup, the
uprising stands no chance.

And after 63 days of bitter fighting,

on the 2nd of October,
the Home Army surrenders.

Nazi forces have crushed
the uprising and gear up to

inflict unthinkable revenge
on the city of Warsaw.

October, 1944.
After the failed uprising in Warsaw,

Nazi forces expel the remaining
Polish population from the city.

They send them to labor
and concentration camps.

Hitler orders the complete
destruction of the city.

Hitler gave this assignment to Himmler.

Himmler was incredibly brutal.

He sent in some of his most capable, if you
will, in quotation marks, mass murderers.

They were let loose on the
city of Warsaw simply to destroy

human life, first of all, and
then to destroy Warsaw itself.

German engineers
use flamethrowers and

dynamite to level the
city, building by building.

Nothing is spared.

Warsaw is being wiped
off the face of the planet.

Waiting for the opportune moment,
on the 12th of January, 1945,

the Soviet Union launched
their offensive on Warsaw.

They seize control of the city
from Germany in just five days.

When the Soviet army enters the city, they
are met with scenes of total devastation.

90% of the buildings in
Warsaw have been leveled.

A once beautiful city of over 1,000
years old has been wiped off the map.

Nazi forces have flattened
the historic city center,

deliberately destroyed in
retaliation for the Warsaw uprising.

When the Red Army arrives,
only 174,000 people remain in the city,

less than 6% of the pre-war population.

Almost six years after
Hitler's invasion of Poland,

the Allied victory in Europe
appears to be in sight.

France has been liberated, and the Allies
have landed in Italy and have reached Rome.

The Soviets continue their march
through Poland, and Germany retreats west.

The war in Poland is nearing
an end, but for some, it is too late.

When the Red Army arrives in
Auschwitz on the 27th of January, 1945,

the battle-hardened soldiers are
shocked by the scenes they are met with.

They find 7,000 prisoners
who are seriously ill

from the effects of
malnourishment and mistreatment.

Between 1940 and 1945, over a
million people are killed at the camp.

After five years of operation, Auschwitz,

the most notorious Nazi death camp,
is finally liberated.

Witold Pilecki goes on to work as
an intelligence officer based in Italy.

As relations between
the Polish government

in exile and the
Soviet-backed regime worsen,

Pilecki travels to Warsaw
to gather intelligence.

He is arrested by the Soviet-installed
government on the 8th of May, 1947,

and charged with espionage,

and after a show trial,
is executed on the 25th of May, 1948.

Witold Pilecki was undoubtedly a hero.

In his life and struggle and
fight, you can see that he escaped

that so many times and got
out from horrible situations.

But ultimately, he lost the fight.

His report, his words,
his lessons are still alive.

And I think, to a certain degree,
this is the success of his mission.

The battle for Poland has
seen over 5.6 million deaths,

with 90% of the Jewish
population being murdered.

Its capital city has been destroyed
and generations have been lost.

The war will go on for another
seven months in the Pacific.

As the conflict comes to an end in
Poland, the country enters another chapter

under the communist regime
installed by the Soviets.