Original subtitles

[THEME MUSIC]

ROD FOUST: Europe was in chaos after the First World War.

Germany signed the armistice ending World War I

on 11 November, 1918.

After the armistice was signed, the Imperial German armed forces

withdrew from their various fronts

and began returning to a defeated fatherland en masse.

Nowhere in Europe did word of the armistice

prove more shattering than at a military hospital

in the small German town of Pasewalk.

Among the soldiers who learned the news from a sobbing pastor

was an obscure corporal, Adolf Hitler,

still half-blinded as a result of a British gas attack

the month before.

The war's end left Germany exhausted, broke, and hungry.

The war had consumed almost everything

that could be eaten, worn, or melted down to munitions.

The Allied blockade, which was maintained until March 1919

to ensure Germany's submission, made food

still scarcer and helped to kill some 800,000 underfed civilians.

One weak government after the other

chipped away at Germany's massive problems.

Afraid to raise taxes or curtail credit,

the government paid its bills by printing more and more marks.

With the end of the war also came a sweeping wave

of revolution and counter-revolution across most

all of Western and Eastern Europe.

Germany was not immune to the fervor of revolution

and experienced numerous uprisings, coup attempts,

counter-revolutionary assaults, street battles,

and territorial land grabs.

The front soldiers that largely disbanded and dissolved

upon returning home to Germany fought

on both sides of these revolutionary struggles.

A great number of these former soldiers

went on to form or join ad hoc volunteer units collectively

known as Freikorps.

Freikorps units consisted of small groups

of less than 100 men loosely thrown

together along quasi-military lines to defend local areas.

Others were divisional-sized formations consisting

of infantry, artillery, machine gun

and motorized units, logistical support,

engineers, and air power.

Germany plunged into social and economic instability

as socialist and communist units fought the right wing Freikorps

in nightly, bloody battles in the streets of cities

all across the divided country.

The Freikorps also sold service as frontline troops

in the Baltic region and fought the Poles

along the eastern frontier, defending against

various territorial incursions.

Since most vestiges of the Imperial German Army

had all but disappeared shortly after the end of the war,

it was soon realized that a formal military force was needed

by the new Weimar Republic, aside

from the largely independent and unregulated Freikorps.

On 28 June, 1919, Germany signed the formal peace treaty

sealing the previous armistice of November 11.

According to the treaty, the German general staff

was to be disbanded and the army limited

to a small defense force.

This new and highly regulated force

was to be known simply as the Reichswehr, which was officially

formed on 1 January, 1921.

It consisted of the newly named Reichsmarine and Reichsheer.

Although forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles to exceed 100,000

soldiers and denied modern equipment and planes,

thousands of men existed in thinly

veiled paramilitary organizations

funded by the army.

The German general staff, disbanded by the treaty,

simply disguised itself among its troops.

In fact, this all but armless army

was being carefully trained as the nucleus

of a future war machine.

Its leader was General Hans von Seeckt, a commander

who was anything but a rigid stereotype

of the Prussian general he appeared to be.

Von Seeckt was a canny innovator,

who slipped around the treaty sanctions with ingenuity

to build an expert force of bright, physically

rugged young men, who were paid well

and who enlisted for 12 years.

To give his men experience in the tactics of tank warfare,

Von Seeckt simulated tanks by draping automobiles with canvas,

cardboard, or tin armor.

Anti-tank guns and other forbidden artillery

were mocked up in wood.

The army was also secretly engaged

in developing new technologies in Russian factories

and was involved in training exercises

with the Russian army in the Ukraine.

A few well-informed people, such as Winston Churchill,

were aware of what was going on in Germany,

but they tended to ignore or disparage the toy army.

After all, Germany was effectively

hemmed in by French might in the west and the Polish Army

with its splendid cavalry on the east.

But then came Hitler, and all too soon the Reichswehr

disappeared, and in its place stood

the world's most up-to-date army, whose leaders were

none other than the iron men who had

played at war with wooden guns.

By 1925, Paul von Hindenburg, the head of the Kaiser's army,

had become president of the Weimar Republic.

The German Army unanimously backed him.

He was also backed by conservative

and middle-of-the-road political parties to help bring stability

to the republic and to thwart any attempt by radical parties

to capture the presidency.

As things got better economically,

there was a sense of relaxation among the German people.

Amid all this, Adolf Hitler knew it

was going to be slow-going for his party, which

had counted so many unhappy, disgruntled men

among its early members.

But Hitler also had a sense that the good times would not last.

The German Republic was living on borrowed

money and borrowed time.

On 29 October, the Wall Street stock market

crashed with disastrous worldwide effects.

First, in America, then the rest of the world,

companies went bankrupt, banks failed,

and people instantly lost their life savings.

Unemployment soon soared, and poverty

and starvation became real possibilities for everyone.

Fear ruled.

Governments stood on the brink.

The Great Depression had begun.

Adolf Hitler knew his time had come.

By mid-1930, amid the economic pressures of the Great

Depression, the German democratic government

was beginning to unravel.

The crisis of the Great Depression

brought disunity to the political parties

in the Reichstag.

Instead of forging an alliance to enact desperately needed

legislation, they broke up into squabbling,

uncompromising groups.

In the midst of all this turmoil,

elections were set for 14 September.

Hitler and the Nazis sprang into action.

Their time for campaigning had arrived.

The Nazis waged a modern whirlwind

campaign in 1930s unlike anything ever seen in Germany.

Hitler traveled the country, delivering dozens

of major speeches, attending meetings, shaking hands,

signing autographs, posing for pictures,

and even kissing babies.

On election day, 14 September, 1930,

the Nazis received 6,371,000 votes, over 18% of the total,

and were thus entitled to 107 seats in the German Reichstag.

It was a stunning victory for Hitler.

Overnight, the Nazi party went from the smallest

to the second largest party in Germany.

Now, for the floundering German democracy,

the clock was ticking, and time was on Hitler's side.

Money was flowing in from German industrialists,

who saw the Nazis as the wave of the future.

They invested in Hitler in the hope of getting

favors when he came to power.

The German general staff was also investing support

in Hitler, hoping he meant what he said about tearing up

the Treaty of Versailles, which limited

their army to 100,000 men and also prevented modernization.

Berlin was now a swirling mass of fear,

intrigue, rumors, and disorder.

Hitler knew he could not succeed as führer of Germany

without the support of existing institutions,

such as the German Army and the powerful German industrialists.

A group of the country's most influential industrialists,

bankers, and business leaders went

to Hindenburg, asking him to appoint Hitler as chancellor.

They believed Hitler would be good for business.

The military also placed its bet on Hitler,

believing his repeated promises to tear up

the Treaty of Versailles and expand the army

and bring back its former glory.

They all had one thing in common.

They underestimated Hitler.

Around noon on 30 January, 1933, a new chapter in German history

began as a teary-eyed Adolf Hitler emerged

from the presidential palace as chancellor of the German nation.

Surrounded by admirers, he got into his car

and was driven down the street, lined with cheering citizens.

"We've done it.

We've done it," a jubilant Adolf Hitler exclaimed.

On the evening of 30 January, just about every member

of the SA and SS turned out in uniform

to celebrate the new Führer chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

Carrying torches and singing the Horst Wessel song,

they were cheered by thousands as they marched

through the Brandenburg Gate and along the Wilhelmstrasse

to the presidential palace.

Dismissive of the Bohemian corporal, as he called Hitler,

Hindenburg hoped making Hitler chancellor in January 1933

would appease and quiet him.

The Nazis had always used violence

to intimidate their opponents, and once Hitler took office,

this did not change.

The greatest challenge to Hitler's survival

during the early years of the Third Reich

came from his own brownshirted stormtroopers, the SA, led

by Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm.

The battle-scarred Rohm was a decorated World War I combat

officer and a post-war street brawler,

who had been with Hitler from the start.

Röhm's jackbooted stormtroopers were largely responsible

for putting Hitler in power.

On the frontlines of the Nazi political revolution,

they had risked their necks battling communists

for control of the streets and squashed anyone

who stood in Hitler's way.

The SA was powerful enough to displace Hitler,

if they so desired, and thus became a threat.

Also, Hitler could never gain control of the army

until he eliminated the SA as a threat

to the thoroughly Prussian officer corps.

On June 30, 1934, during the Night of Long knives,

Rohm and several other SA leaders

were summoned to a villa outside Berlin,

where they were arrested.

Hermann Goring and Heinrich Himmler,

envious of Rohm's intimacy with Hitler,

accused him of being a homosexual.

He was taken to prison, where he was beaten and told to confess.

When he would not, he was offered a pistol.

When he did not commit suicide, the door was thrown open,

and he died in a hail of gunfire.

By crushing the SA, Hitler gained

the support of the army, which signed a pledge of allegiance

to him.

The German Army generals, by condoning the purge,

locked themselves in step with Hitler

and began the long journey that would take them over the next 11

years to the brink of world conquest

and finally to the hanging docks at Nuremberg.

After the Night of the Long Knives,

nothing stood between Hitler and absolute power in Germany,

except 87-year-old German president, Paul von Hindenburg,

who now lay close to death at his

country estate in East Prussia.

For Hitler, Hindenburg's demise couldn't

have come at a better time.

He had just broken the back of the rowdy Brownshirts

and cemented the support of the army's general staff.

Now he just needed to resolve the issue of who would succeed

Hindenburg as president.

About 9:00 AM on August 2, 1934, the much

anticipated death of President Hindenburg finally occurred.

Within hours, the Nazi Reichstag announced

that the Office of Reich President

would be combined with that of Reich Chancellor.

The existing authority of the Reich President

would consequently be transferred

to the Führer and Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

Immediately following the announcement of the new Führer

law, the German officer corps and every individual soldier

in the German Army was made to swear

a brand new oath of allegiance.

[CHANTING IN GERMAN]

"I swear by god, this sacred oath,

I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler,

the Führer of the German Reich and people,

supreme commander of the armed forces,

and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life

at any time for this oath."

[CHANTING IN GERMAN]

MAN: Adolf Hitler!

SOLDIERS: Adolf Hitler!

MAN: Adolf Hitler!

SOLDIERS: Adolf Hitler!

MAN: Adolf Hitler!

ROD FOUST: The unprecedented oath was to Hitler personally,

not the German state or constitution,

as were previous army oaths.

All men in uniform would now regard obedience to Hitler

as a sacred duty.

In accordance with their military code of honor,

this would make the German Army the personal instrument

of the Führer.

Hitler consolidated his control over the army on Friday, 15

March, 1935, when he convened his cabinet and members

of the army's general staff.

He announced a major decision he had just come to.

Germany would openly defy the military limitations

set by the Treaty of Versailles and rearm.

This was a flagrant violation of part 5 of the Treaty

of Versailles, signed by Germany back in 1919

after its defeat in World War I. Breaking the treaty

was an affront to Germany's former World War I

enemies, France and England.

Everyone waited to see how they would respond to the news.

Some of Hitler's more cautious army generals

thought there might even be an immediate military attack

by France.

But absolutely nothing happened, except

for a few diplomatic protests.

Hitler's next big move in the game of international diplomacy

didn't occur until a year later, and it

would be one of the biggest risks of his entire career.

Beginning at dawn on Saturday, 7 March, 1936, three battalions

of the German Army crossed the bridges over the Rhine

and entered into the industrial heartland of Germany,

known as the Rhineland.

This demilitarized area included all territory west of the Rhine

River and extended to the French border, as well as a portion

east of the river, including the cities of Cologne,

Dusseldorf, and Bonn.

This was another gross violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Once again, the whole world waited

to see how the French and British would react.

German troops entering the Rhineland

even had orders to scoot back across the Rhine bridges

if the French army attacked.

But in France, the politicians were simply unable to convince

their generals to act and were also

unable to get any British support for a military response.

So they did nothing.

The French army, with its 100 divisions,

never budged against the 30,000 lightly armed German soldiers

occupying Rhineland, even though France and Britain were both

obligated to preserve the demilitarized zone

by the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno

pact of mutual assistance.

It had been a tremendous gamble for Hitler, one that might have

cost him everything, if his troops had been humiliated

by their old enemies.

Later, Hitler would privately admit,

"The 48 hours after the March into the Rhineland

were the most nerve-wracking in my life.

If the French had marched into the Rhineland,

we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs

for the military, resources at our disposal

would have been wholly inadequate for even

a moderate resistance."

41 months would elapse from the day Hitler grabbed

control of the German Army until the actual start of World War

II.

During those months, Hitler engaged in a kind of gangster

diplomacy in which he bluffed, bullied, threatened, and lied

to various European leaders in order to expand

the borders of his Reich.

His very first victim was Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, chancellor

of Austria, a country being torn apart

from within by Nazi agitators and also feeling

threatened from the outside by Germany's

newfound military strength.

Von Schuschnigg met Hitler at Berchtesgaden

on 12 February, 1938.

Hitler demanded Anschluss, or union.

Von Schuschnigg decided on a national vote

to let Austrians decide if they wanted to reunify with Germany.

Hitler challenged the vote, demanded and got the resignation

of the Austrian government.

Even before he got it, German troops entered Vienna.

Again, the Western powers did nothing,

fearing an open confrontation with Germany would lead to war.

Now Adolf Hitler began looking toward lands not traditionally

part of greater Germany.

The Sudetenland, a narrow strip of mountainous land

in Czechoslovakia, held a predominantly

ethnic German population on the border with Germany.

The Sudetenland was important to the Czechs for two reasons.

The mountains were a natural defense

against German aggression, and most

of their made fortifications were located there.

If the Sudetenland were to fall, the whole of Czechoslovakia

would be open to German occupation.

After street battles like those during Hitler's rise to power

and the Austrian Anschluss, Hitler

demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia

and President Edvard Benes.

Benes turned to Britain for help,

especially to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain was a man who did not comprehend the circumstances

in which he lived.

The world was changing far more rapidly than he could handle.

He sought to appease Hitler and flew

to Munich on 29 September, 1938 to discuss

the Czechoslovakian crisis.

Also joining the discussion was Italian duce,

Benito Mussolini, and French premier, Édouard Daladier.

Benes was not present, nor any Czech representative.

Once again, Hitler had gotten everything he wanted

without firing a single shot.

Incredibly, this time, he would have welcomed a fight.

Somewhat exasperated, he said, "I did not think it possible

that Czechoslovakia would be virtually served up to me

on a plate by her friends."

Hitler had promised British Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain and the German people

that the Sudetenland would be his last territorial demand

in Europe.

In reality, it was only the beginning.

And Hitler now wanted to grab the remainder of Czechoslovakia

due to its strategic importance.

At 5:55 AM Wednesday, 15th March,

amid a late winter snowstorm, the German Army rolled

into the first non-Germanic territory

to be taken by the Nazis.

"Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist,"

Hitler announced to the German people later that day just

before departing for Prague.

But now, in an ominous development for Hitler,

Britain and France found their backbone.

On 31 March, Prime Minister Chamberlain

issued a solid declaration with the backing of France,

guaranteeing Hitler's next likely victim, Poland,

protection from Nazi aggression.

The era of Hitler's bloodless conquest had ended.

The next time German troops rolled into foreign territory,

there would be an actual shooting war.

The decision to invade Poland was a gamble.

The Wehrmacht, or German Army, was not yet at full strength,

and the German economy was still locked

into peacetime production.

As such, the plan for invasion alarmed Hitler's generals

and raised opposition to his command.

Hitler's generals urged caution.

They asked for more time to complete the defenses

of the Westwall in order to stem any British and French

counteroffensive in the west while the bulk of the Wehrmacht

was engaged in the east.

The Führer dismissed their concerns, however,

demanding their total loyalty.

Hitler was confident that the invasion of Poland

would result in a short, victorious war

for two important reasons.

First, he was convinced that the deployment of the world's

first armored corps would swiftly

defeat the Polish Armed Forces in a blitzkrieg offensive.

Second, he judged the British and French prime ministers,

Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, respectively,

to be weak, indecisive leaders, who would opt for a peace

settlement rather than war.

The latter judgment was a product of Hitler's success

from 1935 to 1938 in winning substantial revisions

of the 1919 treaty of Versailles and bloodless

victories in the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

But this time, Hitler overplayed his hand.

Warsaw refused his overtures in order

to retain its independence.

Their courage was fortified by a 30 March guarantee

from Britain and France to come to its aid in case of war

with Germany.

Now, with war inevitable, Hitler's only real concern

was that a sudden German invasion of Poland

might alarm Stalin and trigger a war with the Soviet Union.

Stalin feared a German invasion and had been seeking

an anti-Nazi collective Security Alliance with the Western powers

for many years.

But by July 1939, Britain and France

had still not agreed to terms.

Poland had also rejected an alliance with the Soviet Union

and refused permission for the Red Army

to cross its territory to engage the Wehrmacht in a future war.

Hitler saw an opportunity to neutralize the massive Red Army

and authorized his foreign minister, Joachim von

Ribbentrop, to enter into secret negotiations

with the Soviet Union.

The result was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact

on 23 August, 1939.

To the surprise of the world, both Hitler and Stalin

set aside their mutual antipathy for national gain,

and in particular, the restoration

of their pre-1919 borders.

Germany could now prepare for the conflict

without having to plan a two-front war.

Hitler called the Wehrmacht senior commanders

to a meeting at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden

to brief them on the situation.

He concluded his remarks with, "My only

fear is that some schweinehund will

make a proposal for mediation."

On 29 August, Germany issued Poland a final ultimatum,

now demanding the Polish corridor in its entirety.

When Poland refused to hand over the territory,

German foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop,

declared negotiations with Poland to be at an end.

On the night of 31 August, Hitler

ordered hostilities against Poland to start

at 4:45 the next morning.

At 0440 hours, the Luftwaffe swooped out of the pre-dawn sky

to attack the Polish town of Wielun,

destroying 75% of the city and killing close to 1,200 people.

Five minutes later, at 0445 hours,

the old German battleship, Schleswig-Holstein,

in the harbor on a goodwill visit,

opened fire on the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Military

Transit Depot at Westerplatte.

Air supremacy was achieved on the first day

after most of Poland's Air Force was caught on the ground.

Panzer spearheads smashed holes in the Polish lines

and permitted the slower-moving German infantry to pour

through into the Polish rear.

At 0800 hours, German troops, still without a formally

issued declaration of war, attacked

near the Polish town of Mokra.

The invading force was composed of five armies

and reserves, all under command of General

Walther von Brauchitsch.

In total, German forces included some 1,850,000 soldiers,

over 3,100 tanks, and 10,000 artillery pieces,

along with 2,085 airplanes grouped in two air fleets,

or Luftflotte.

The attacking force also held advantage

by being able to attack Poland from three directions at once.

All three assaults were to race across Poland

to converge on the capital of Warsaw.

Polish forces included some one million soldiers.

However, due to incomplete mobilization,

which started on August 31, the Polish Army was not

able to increase its size to its intended strength of 1,350,000.

Some 900 tanks and 4,300 artillery pieces,

along with some 435 airplanes were also part

of the Polish Armed Forces.

Only a small percentage of all Polish equipment was modern.

The Polish army lacked motorized transport

and relied on foot infantry and horse-drawn transports.

While the Germans opened fronts along Poland's

western, southern, and northern borders,

Luftwaffe aircraft began raids on dozens of Polish cities.

In advance of the line of attack,

the Luftwaffe heavily bombed all road and rail junctions

and concentrations of Polish troops.

Flying directly ahead of the advancing Panzers, The Junkers

Ju 87 dive bomber, or Stuka, fulfilled the role of artillery

and destroyed any strong points in the German path.

The surprise German strategy of blitzkrieg

was based upon continuous advance and the prevention

of a static frontline that would permit

Polish forces time to regroup.

At 8:00 AM on 1 September, Poland

requested immediate military assistance

from France and Britain.

But it was not until noon on 3 September that Britain

declared war on Germany, followed by France's declaration

at 5:00 PM.

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN: This morning, the British ambassador

in Berlin handed the German government a final note,

stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock

that they were prepared at once to withdraw

their troops from Poland, a state of war

would exist between us.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been

received, and that consequently, this country

is at war with Germany.

ROD FOUST: The delay reflected British hopes

that Hitler would respond to demands and end the invasion.

The guarantee of support from the West

proved meaningless for the hapless Poles.

Western military commanders were rooted in the strategies

of World War I and entirely unprepared for

the rapid invasion of Poland.

They expected the Germans to probe

and bombard the Polish line with heavy artillery

for several weeks before launching a full invasion.

There was no offensive strategy, because France expected to fight

a war of defense and had invested

heavily in the static defenses of the Maginot Line.

The RAF, instead of bombing factories or rail centers,

spent its time dropping leaflets,

urging a peace settlement.

Despite some Polish successes in minor border battles,

German technical, operational, and numerical superiority

forced the Polish armies to withdraw from the borders

toward Warsaw and Lvov.

By 3 September, Von Kluge in the north

had reached the Vistula River, which was some 10 kilometers

from the German border.

Kluge was approaching the Narew River,

and Reichenau's armor was already beyond the Warta River.

By 6 September, the two Wehrmacht Army groups

had linked up at Lodz in the center of Poland

and cleaved the country in two, trapping

the bulk of the Polish Army against the German border.

Two days later, the Panzers had corralled Polish forces

into five isolated pockets centered on Pomerania, Poznan,

Lodz, Krakow, and Carpathia.

12 of Poland's divisions were cavalry armed

with lances and sabers.

They were no match for the German tanks.

Each pocket was relentlessly bombarded and bombed.

Once food and ammunition had run out,

they had little choice but to surrender.

By 8 September, the leading Panzers

were on the outskirts of Warsaw, having covered

140 miles in only eight days.

The fourth Panzer tried to take the capital by surprise,

but was thrown back after heavy losses.

At the same time, Guderian led his Third Army tanks

across the Narew, attacking the line of the Bug River,

tearing the Polish Army to shreds and encircling Warsaw.

The Polish armies were splitting up into uncoordinated fragments,

some of which were retreating, while others

were delivering disjointed attacks

on the nearest German columns.

The Polish plan for border defense

was proven a dismal failure.

The German advance as a whole was not slowed down,

and the Germans moved quickly, overwhelming

secondary positions.

Two days later, all Polish forces

were ordered to fall back and regroup in Eastern

Poland for a last stand.

All hope was pinned upon a major French and British

offensive in the west to relieve the pressure.

Meanwhile, Warsaw, under heavy aerial bombardment

since the first hours of the war, was attacked on 9 September

and was put under siege on 13 September.

The largest battle during this campaign, the Battle of Bzura,

took place near the Bzura River, west of Warsaw,

and lasted from 9 September to 18 September.

While Stukas attacked the Bzura bridgeheads,

the motorized and Panzer divisions

of the 10th Army wheeled north and caught

the Polish forces in the flank.

There was a vicious fight around Lowicz

before the Poles pulled back.

The battle ended with the total destruction

of Polish forces involved.

Although it delayed the capitulation of Warsaw,

170,000 Polish soldiers were forced to surrender.

On 19 September, the largest tank versus tank engagement

of the campaign took place near Tomaszów Lubelski, where

some 80 Polish tankettes and tanks met

in combat with German tanks.

Polish armies, Poznan and Pomorze,

retreating from the border area of the Polish Corridor,

attacked the flank of the advancing German Eighth Army.

The counterattack failed after initial success.

After the defeat, Poland lost its ability

to take the initiative and counterattack on a large scale.

From the beginning of the Polish campaign,

the German government repeatedly asked

Stalin to act upon the August agreement

and attack Poland from the east.

Worried by the unexpectedly rapid German advance

and eager to grab their allotted share of the country,

Soviet forces entered Poland on 17 September.

The Soviets claimed that they were protecting

Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities

of Eastern Poland in view of an imminent Polish collapse.

The Soviet invasion was one of the decisive factors that

convinced the Polish government that the war in Poland was lost.

On 24 September, 1,150 German aircraft bombed Warsaw.

The bombing set the city's flour mills ablaze,

while the filtration and pumping stations for water supply

were nearly all destroyed.

The Modlin Fortress north of Warsaw

capitulated on 29 September after an intense 16-day battle.

The last operational unit of the Polish Army,

General Franciszek Kleeberg's Samodzielna Operational Group

Polesia, capitulated after the four-day Battle of Kock

near Lublin on 6 October.

This marked the end of the September campaign.

The campaign lasted less than two months

and ended in the destruction of the Polish Army

and the partition of Poland.

When Hitler broadcast to the German people on 30 September,

he announced the number of Polish

prisoners taken as 694,000.

This was compared with German losses of 10,572 killed, 3,400

missing, and 30,322 wounded.

German losses were surprisingly heavy, considering

the brevity of the campaign.

What Hitler did not mention was that fully one quarter

of the tanks the Germans committed to battle

were lost to Polish anti-tank guns.

The Luftwaffe was forced to write off some 550 aircraft.

It was not a cheap victory by any means,

but it did confirm to the generals of the Wehrmacht

that the military machine that they had built

was indeed the best in the world and worthy of their confidence.

REPORTER: A number of officers and politicians

attempt to remove Hitler.

On July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg

hides a bomb under Hitler's table

in the headquarters in East Prussia.

As Hitler's usual concrete bunker is under repair,

the meeting is held in a wooden barrack,

and this saves his life.

The bomb blows out the roof and thin walls.

Hitler suffers minor burns, and his right arm is paralyzed.

Hitler takes a fearful revenge.

4,980 people are executed during the following

months and thousands sent to the concentration camp.

A so-called People's Court, under

the presidency of Freisler, pronounces

death sentences en masse.

At the first trial, Field Marshal von Witzleben

was forced to appear without braces or belt.

REPORTER: The Nazi veteran and chief

of police in Berlin, Count Helldorf,

is one of the conspirators.

REPORTER: Count Schwerin von Schwanenfeld states that he has

thought of the many murders.

[THEME MUSIC]