All language subtitles for France Falls May to June 1940.Engilsk

Forlorn monsters today,

in May 1940,
these forts of the Maginot line

were France's first-line defence
against the Germans.

Half a million French soldiers
lurked beneath these man-made hills.

These were the most extensive,

the most elaborate forts
ever constructed.

Here the guns would halt the Hun -

provided the Hun came this way.

"Thank God for the French army,"

said Winston Churchill
when Hitler came to power.

But in 1933

the French army was no longer
the superlative weapon it once had been.

French military manuals
devoted page after page

to the tactics of the First War,

although Hitler had said, "The next war
will be very different from the last."

The French had helped introduce
the tank and the aeroplane,

but now did little to extend their use.

They had pioneered motor transport
in warfare,

but went back now
to relying on railways and the horse -

especially the horse.

It was a period
of very deep decay,

probably caused by the excess of effort
during the First World War.

We suffered from an illness
which is not peculiar to the French -

the illness of having been victorious

and believing that we were right
and very clever.

Victory is a very dangerous
opportunity.

France between the wars
was deeply divided.

Factions clashed, alliances altered,
cabinets came and went in the cascade,

some lasting a few hours,
some a few months.

Rarely did one last a whole year.

On the very day Hitler came to power
France was without a government.

It was again without one when he
marched into Austria five years later.

The Left in France
was concerned more

with hounding rogues
in high places at home,

than curbing fascism elsewhere.

The Right so hated the Left

it was prepared to countenance
dictatorship.

As early as 1934
the victor of Verdun, Marshal Pétain,

was proposed as France's saviour
from communism,

although he was then nearly 80.

These deep divisions
were to fetter France

when she faced the need to re-arm.

The whole of the possessing classes,

the Right if you like,

preferred the idea of the Germans

to their own communists.

You didn't have to walk round
these streets

and see "pour qui et pourquoi"
written on them,

or the hammer and sickle, to realise
nobody was going to lift a finger.

France in the '30s
built a series of great forts

along her frontier with Germany,

and because her war minister
then happened to be one Andre Maginot,

these forts came to be known
as the Maginot line.

The Maginot forts
were truly 20th-century wonders.

Electric trains took the troops
from barracks to gun turret,

from arsenal to canteen.

There were cinemas underground,
sun-ray rooms, air conditioning,

the lot.

Theirs was a vast
Jules Verne type of world

hundreds of feet below ground.

They called it The Shield of France.

The Maginot line failed to protect
all of France's eastern flank.

It was only 87 miles long

and it stopped 250 miles
short of the Channel.

Should the alarm
ever have to sound in grim earnest,

French strategists argued that

their troops would need to confront the
Germans on Belgian, if not German, soil.

Besides, to extend the Maginot line
along the Belgian frontier

would not only be expensive,

but would make the Belgians think that
if war came, France would forsake them.

The folly of this thinking
was shown up in 1936

when, without consulting the French,

the Belgian King Leopold
opted for neutrality

and closed his borders,
even to French military observers.

All too late France began extending
the Maginot line to the sea.

But by May 1940
it was far from finished.

France had suffered a terrible
loss of life in the Great War.

Now French military thinking
became wholly defensive,

forgetting Napoleon's favourite maxim:

"The side that stays
within its fortifications is beaten."

Since the French spurned any notion

of taking the offensive,

the Maginot line ironically protected
Germany better than it protected France.

A German colonel, Heinz Guderian,
the year the Maginot line was completed,

published a book with a prophetic title:
Achtung Panzer.

A book never properly studied by
the French or English general staff,

yet these pages expound
a new kind of warfare -

the concentrated use of tanks with
infantry and air force in close support:

Blitzkrieg.

We had had tanks
in the First World War,

we knew all the difficulties
of the game,

while the Germans,
who didn't have them,

had the feeling of those
who are attacked by tanks.

And while we considered
that the tanks were a little awkward

and difficult to use,

the Germans jumped at the new weapons
with the appetite of the new rich.

Paris, July 14, 1939.

The last Bastille Day parade
of the Third Republic.

A few days earlier, Britain's
war minister, visiting Paris, had said,

"France has the greatest army
in the world."

Like the parade itself, such statements
were meant merely to raise morale.

Parisians had hardly got back
from their holidays

before they found themselves
once more at war

with their traditional foe.

But whereas in 1914
the cry had been "On to Berlin",

this time it was
"Let's get it over with."

Ironically, French mobilisation
was too efficient.

The call-up of skilled technicians

brought many vital war industries
almost to a halt.

It was only after weeks of confusion
that these men were released.

Nor was France going to war united.

The bitternesses of French politics
continued.

Ministers looked to their own futures
instead of their country's

and many took their cue
from such leadership.

Paris didn't alter much with
the coming of war, save in appearance.

The most popular song that autumn of
1939 was Paris Will Always Be Paris.

a' Par précaution on a beau mettre

♪ Des croisillons à nos fenêtres

♪ Passer au bleu nos devantures

♪ Et jusqu'aux pneus de nos voitures

♪ Désentoiler tous nos musées

♪ Chambouler les Champs-Elysées

♪ Emmailloter de terre battue

♪ Toutes les beautés de nos statues

♪ Voiler le soir les réverbères

♪ Plonger dans le noir
la Ville Lumière

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

♪ La plus belle ville du monde

♪ Malgré l'obscurité profonde

♪ Son éclat ne peut être assombri

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

♪ Plus on réduit son éclairage

♪ Plus on voit briller son courage,
sa bonne humeur et son esprit

♪ Paris sera toujours Paris

While their Polish allies
were routed in the East,

the French, like the British,
did little in the West.

There was the so-called
Sarre offensive -

the only French offensive,
in fact, of the war.

A few French divisions
advanced five miles,

but they didn't even try
to penetrate the Siegfried line,

at that time still unfinished.

And while Poland fought on,

there were no German tanks at all
on the Western Front.

The newsreel commentators of the day,
though, didn't doubt the French resolve.

We read the communiqués
from the French High Command.

This is the living story
behind those brief, unvarnished reports.

Our cameramen in the advanced
lines on German territory

watch observation posts

at the bridge over the Rhine
between Kehl and Strasbourg.

This was a German railway station,
now in the hands of French troops.

From fortified outposts
the vigilant watch is never relaxed.

The Maginot line, built as
the first line of defence for France,

has become the second line
behind the attack.

The gradual but steady advance
of French troops

has brought their camouflaged artillery
in range of the Siegfried outposts.

There is no haste,
only a grim, relentless pressure

on the Nazi emplacements.

Metre by metre the poilus
are moving forward.

If the French army would have attacked
at the beginning of September

with their very strong superiority

in division, in armoured cars -

we lacked all armoured cars
on the Western Front at that time -

in artillery and air force,

the German forces
on the so-called Western Front

could stand no more
than one or two weeks.

Before Poland surrendered,

the French commander ordered
his men back behind the Maginot line -

a withdrawal the Germans
did nothing to prevent.

One Frenchman wrote at the time,

"After the prologue
of the phoney offensive,

we were ripe for the phoney war."

a' Le vent dans les bois fait hou-hou

♪ La biche aux abois fait mê-ê-ê

♪ La vaisselle cassée fait
fric-fric-frac

♪ Et les pieds mouillés
font flic-flic-flac

♪ Mais... boum!

♪ Quand notre coeur fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum

♪ L'oiseau dit boum, c'est l'orage

♪ Brrrrr!

♪ Boum! L'éclair qui, lui, fait boum

♪ Et le bon Dieu dit boum...

For several minutes each day
the Maginot guns boomed out,

usually to impress visitors
such as the Duke of Windsor.

♪ Et s'il fait boum,
s'il se met en colère

♪ Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles

♪ Boum!

♪ Le monde entier fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum
quand notre coeur fait boum-boum...

Little attempt was made
to harass the enemy.

Even bombing the Ruhr
was forbidden

in case the Luftwaffe retaliated
against French factories.

Journalists were taken up to the lines
to see the inactivity.

I stayed at an observation post
on the Rhine

watching the Germans washing,
playing football,

and I said to the sentry,

"Why don't you shoot them?
Why don't you shoot at them?"

"No," he said,
"They're behaving all right."

"They don't shoot at us,
why should we shoot at them?"

♪ Boum! Le monde entier fait boum

♪ Tout avec lui dit boum

♪ Quand notre coeur
fait boum-boum-boum

♪ Fait boum-boum

♪ Brrrrr! Boum!

Life at the front
was dreary and drab.

Badly paid, leave became an obsession
for the French soldier

and was used mainly
to make a little on the side.

The winter of 1939
was the coldest for half a century.

Even the Channel froze at Boulogne.

The French halted work
on the Maginot extension.

The Germans, however,
forged ahead with their plans.

As winter wore on, French morale sank.

Discipline deteriorated
and drunkenness became rife.

Special rooms were set aside
in railway stations

where men could recover
before rejoining their units.

Few French generals ever bothered to
inspect, let alone meet, their troops,

but then their commander-in-chief,
General Gamelin,

rarely set foot
outside his headquarters.

Already 68 at the beginning of 1940,
his military record was so impeccable

that no one dreamed of asking him
to make way for a younger man.

Gamelin was very clever,
but with no guts at all,

and he was liked by the politicians

because he was an easy
commander-in-chief.

Gamelin chose for his
headquarters this château at Vincennes,

just outside Paris.

That choice reveals
what the man was, you know.

The enemy were not the Germans.
It was the French government.

Vincennes
was where England's Henry V died

and where the spy Mata Hari
was executed.

It was described by one visitor as
"a submarine without a periscope".

Almost unbelievably,
it had no radio communications,

it was not linked by teleprinter with
any other headquarters in the field.

Instead, messages were dispatched
regularly on the hour by motorcycle.

Gamelin seldom bothered his staff
with orders,

preferring simply to suggest guidelines.

His long-term strategy was to wait
until the Allies could match the Germans

in numbers and equipment
before launching any major offensive,

even though that would mean
waiting until 1941.

Meanwhile, he was concerned
to keep the war away from French soil -

hence his interests in any odd stratagem
pushed his way.

We had a plan to go to attack Russia
through Norway - Narvik -

which led to the landing in Narvik.

We had a plan to attack
the oil plants in Baku from Syria.

We had the plans to raise
the Balkans with us

by landing in Salonika
and joining the Yugoslavs, and so on.

But all this was dreams, absolutely
foolish and out of the reality.

But that stemmed from the fact

that we thought that the war
couldn't be decided on the main front

because of the inviolability
of that front.

Gamelin had 100 divisions
on that front in May 1940,

plus another ten of the British
expeditionary force.

40 manned the Maginot line,
while five guarded the Swiss frontier.

Another 40, the best, were to go into
neutral Belgium once Germany attacked.

But when that happened

the pivot of Gamelin's front
would be here, in the Ardennes.

The impenetrable Ardennes.

But was it?

On maps back at headquarters

its thick woods
and narrow, winding roads

probably did make the Ardennes
seem impenetrable -

which is presumably why Gamelin chose
to guard this 100-mile stretch of front

with ten of his weakest,
least-trained, worst-equipped divisions.

The Ardennes came to be chosen
for the main thrust

since it offered an opportunity
to circumvent the Maginot line.

And besides we were conscious
of the fact

that there were only minor French troops

which held the positions
in this section of the French front.

We knew that the French High Command

had dispersed his tanks.

The French had more tanks
and some better tanks, heavier tanks,

than we have had panzers.

But we managed our panzer troops -

what Guderian said in his instructions.

"Strike hard and quickly
and don't disperse your forces."

The spring of 1940
was remarkably sunny.

Nowhere was it more peaceful
than here in the Ardennes,

where the generals had said
the Germans would never attack.

Yet reports had been pouring in

that nearly 50 Wehrmacht divisions
were on the move -

reports which the French
chose to ignore.

They even learned the date
of the attack, but still did nothing.

As Gamelin put it,
they preferred "to await events".

Their waiting was almost over.

5:30am precisely.

May 10, 1940.

The German offensive
began spectacularly enough

with the invasion of neutral Holland
from the air.

Their target: the bridges
over the broad Meuse estuary.

If they could be captured
before the Allied troops reached them,

Holland would be cut in two.

The boldness of the German move
stunned the Dutch.

Their soldiers were soon
surrendering in droves.

Further south in Belgium,

the Germans had another
spectacular success that first day -

the capture of Eben-Emael,

the strongest fort in the world
and the linchpin of Gamelin's line.

That line had been breached
before any Allied troops arrived.

Gamelin persisted in moving his armies
north into Belgium and Holland.

40 of his best divisions,
almost half his strength,

including all of the British
expeditionary force,

and they were moving
straight into the trap

Hitler and his generals
had set for them.

It wasn't long before the troops
were passing

the first pitiful, straggling lines
of refugees.

Lines that were to hamper
the Allied reinforcements,

just as the Germans had planned.

The great idea on the Germans' part
was speed,

and they sent ahead of the army

policemen with truncheons and white
gloves who went on motorbicycles.

They all had their Michelin Guide
for France,

they knew exactly
where the roads were.

The German panzers were pouring over
the border into Luxembourg.

Their column stretched 100 miles,

presenting a prime target
to any would-be bomber,

but Allied air activity
that first day was busy

supporting the British and French
move north into Belgium.

The Luftwaffe were striking
at Allied aeroplanes on the ground.

At one RAF base near Reims,
the planes lined up in neat rows

were destroyed
in the opening minutes of the attack.

50 British and French airfields
were attacked that first day

and the losses were heavy.

But while Allied air chiefs
were counting their losses,

the panzers had just about penetrated
the impenetrable Ardennes

and were set to fall upon the weak
French garrisons

along the Meuse here at Sedan.

The panzers reached Sedan
late on the third day of the offensive,

although Gamelin had calculated

they couldn't possibly be here
before the ninth day.

All the bridges over the Meuse were
blown up by the French on May 12th -

all except one.

This old weir some 40 miles
north of Sedan had been left

for fear of lowering the water level
so much that the river could be forded.

But the French also left it
relatively unguarded,

as one panzer commander,
Erwin Rommel, soon found out.

Next morning the Luftwaffe's resources
were hurled into action above Sedan.

Gamelin still refused to believe
the Germans could cross of the Meuse

before another three or four days.

Hitler was unwilling to wait that long.

He was working
to the timetable of 1940, not 1914.

What's more, the French generals
still had their eyes firmly fixed

on what was happening
in Belgium and Holland.

There were big French guns
on the west bank of the Meuse,

but they limited firing
in case they ran out of ammunition

before the battle proper began.

So the German panzers were able to pick
off the French pillboxes one by one.

Soon thousands of French gunners
had taken to their heels.

As suddenly as it had started,
the German bombardment stopped.

As though still performing
one of their winter war games,

the German infantrymen
prepared to cross the Meuse.

By midnight on May 13,
still only day four of the offensive,

not only were German infantrymen
across the Meuse in force,

but German sappers
were bridging the river

and making ready
for the panzers to cross.

That night of May 13,

the British expeditionary force,
far to the north in Belgium,

had still not seen serious fighting,

yet the battle was now virtually
decided.

The morale of the French
High Command was very quickly broken.

When we happened to know that the front
had been broken through at Sedan,

the feeling was that everything
was lost.

I saw General Georges,
who was commanding the northeast front,

I saw him sobbing and saying,

"There has been some... deficiencies,"

and he fell in a chair and sobbed.

French counterattacks
were poorly organised

and seldom pressed home
with any persistence.

Tank for tank, the French
were a match for the Germans,

but the panzers always fought
en masse

and the French tanks
were prone to mechanical trouble.

Time after time they had to be
left behind on the battlefield.

German infantry divisions
were now catching up with the panzers

at the Meuse crossing point.

Everything on the German side at least
was going according to plan.

For the Allied air forces,

after their almost total inactivity
on May 13, May 14 was hectic.

British and French bombers raided
the pontoon bridges across the Meuse

with reckless abandon.

Too late, the French generals

had recognised this sector's
vital importance.

But despite the courage of the Allied
pilots, the result was disastrous.

Nearly half the Allied planes
did not return.

In the words of the official
RAF history:

"No higher rate of loss has ever been
experienced by the Royal Air Force."

After May 14th
the skies were undeniably German.

On that day too Holland surrendered.

Nothing short of a miracle
could save France now.

With the bridgehead secure,
the panzers were poised to break out.

The battle for Sedan was now
giving way to the battle for France.

The most crucial phase of the whole
German plan was about to begin -

the swing north to the coast that would
trap the Allied armies in Belgium.

As soon as news of the Sedan defeat
reached Paris, panic set in.

Those who could, left.

The French High Command,
not yet privy to the German plan,

assumed Hitler intended
to capture Paris immediately.

To protect the capital,

troops were pulled back
from elsewhere along the Meuse,

which only served
to widen the German bridgeheads.

Gamelin refused to believe
his tactics were at fault

and assumed
he must have been betrayed.

While gendarmes searched for
fifth columnists behind the lines,

Gamelin reacted by sacking
20 or so of his front-line commanders,

almost at random.

The Allied troops
were ordered back from Belgium

and on May 17th Brussels fell.

It was also the end for Gamelin.

He was replaced
as commander-in-chief

by General Weygand,
recalled from virtual retirement.

France had become desperate.

A 73-year-old
was replacing a 68-year-old,

and Weygand had spent the last year
in Syria and was out of touch.

At this time too Marshal Pétain, now 84,
became deputy prime minister.

Before leaving Spain,
where he'd been France's ambassador,

Pétain told General Franco,

"My country has been beaten. This
is the work of 30 years of Marxism."

He was completely
on the side of the defeatists.

He was a very, very old man

and he'd been recalled in the hopes that
his name would bolster French morale.

It did nothing of the sort.

Trying in their own way
to contain the German break-out,

the French generals
drew halt lines on their maps,

only to hear the panzers had passed them
even before the orders had been issued.

In the dash to the coast,

the German commanders were always
one jump ahead of the French.

Hordes of prisoners
fell into German hands.

Many columns,
10,000 or 20,000-strong,

simply threw away their weapons
and marched without being told,

their officers at their head,
toward the German lines.

The French troops did not
prove the same soldierly discipline

as in the First World War.

I think this was caused by the
Maginot spirit and the long phoney war,

so that the French soldiers believed
that they will have no more war.

Not just ordinary troops
fell into German hands,

but generals too.

On May 19th General Giraud,

newly appointed commander
of France's 9th Army, was captured:

by a group of tanks,
according to the French;

by a field kitchen unit,
according to the Germans.

But most tragic of all
was the plight of the refugees.

At one time 12 million people
were on the roads of northern France,

bound for goodness knows where.

All the civilians
would ask us what they were to do,

because the government
had not told them what to do.

We said, "For heaven's sake, stay
where you are. Don't get on the roads."

But they all got in a panic and left.

One old lady had a key
which she gave to us

and we said, "Why?
You mustn't give us your key."

"Oh, well, in the last war
I took away my key

and when I came back
I had the key but no house."

My worst memory was seeing two German
planes coming along at roof level,

machine-gunning,

and one realised then
how awful it was for the refugees.

The Germans had advanced
200 miles in just seven days,

and on May 20th
they reached the Channel.

The Daily Telegraph reported
that telephone lines

between Paris and London
had been cut.

A Post Office spokesman didn't know
when normal service might be resumed.

With the panzers at the coast,

the best of the Allied armies drawn into
Belgium were now cut off from the south.

Belatedly the French
tried to force a way through to them.

Their attack was too puny.

But they argued
the British had let them down.

The recriminations started

with the unilateral withdrawal
of the British army.

The orders were to attack southwards,
near Arras,

and, without warning,

we happened to know that the British
were withdrawing to Dunkirk.

We have not the right
to criticise this too much

because, after all,
we were the bosses

and we lost the battle,

and this gives a good excuse
for the British to be selfish.

But anyway, they were very selfish.

On May 25th Boulogne fell.

On May 26, Calais.

Weygand's appointment had given
the French a flicker of optimism.

It soon faded when
his counterattack failed

and news of Belgium's capitulation
reached Paris on May 28.

Thereafter, the mood became
steadily more and more defeatist.

I think the defeatism
came at the top.

There was a very strong peace move
among certain politicians,

some of them were even pro-German
and wanted jobs with the Germans.

When things went badly, this group got
larger and became more dominant.

Prime Minster Reynaud
fought back

by dismissing from his cabinet
weaker spirits

and bringing in fighting men
like de Gaulle,

now entering the political arena
for the first time.

But the war
was virtually out of their hands.

Perhaps it was that that prompted the
special service of prayer at Notre Dame

on that Sunday before Dunkirk.

The French very soon accepted
the idea of defeat and surrendered.

To them it was rather a conception
of the old days of the royalty

when you just exchanged
a couple of provinces,

paid a certain number of millions,

and then called it a day,
hoping you'd be more lucky next time.

Dunkirk fell on June 4.

Hitler ordered church bells to be rung
for three days throughout Germany

to mark what he described as
"the greatest German victory ever".

With the panzers reorganised
and re-equipped,

the day after Dunkirk fell,

the second major German offensive
in the West began.

Although outnumbered now
by more than two to one,

the French fought stubbornly -

much more aggressively, in fact,

than at any time during
the battle for the Meuse.

But after three days of bloody fighting,
disaster once more overtook the French.

Another breakthrough by Rommel.

In a matter of hours
he had reached the Seine at Rouen.

Elsewhere the panzers
were passing almost effortlessly

through the heartland of France.

All roads pointed to Paris.

On June 10th
the French government left the capital.

On that day Mussolini
brought Italy into the war.

On the day we left Paris

we went to this Vincennes headquarters
of Gamelin

and... we heard on the radio

all the songs and music
of the Italian war, you know.

"Giovinezza" and all that, you know.

And we thought...

And that is where I heard
the first time somebody say,

"It can't go on like that."

"We must have an armistice."

We had the greatest difficulty
getting out of Paris

because everybody,
although Paris was empty,

all the roads outside Paris
were absolutely full of motorcars,

people even going in and out of the
trees at the side to try and get ahead.

But we were able to get off the
main roads into the countryside,

and then it was most extraordinary
because it was beautiful weather,

all the villagers were very welcoming

and brought out their best cognac,
their best wine,

because they said,
"Why leave it for the Germans?"

Arriving in the airspace over Paris

I observed that great columns of German
infantry had already entered the town.

Observing this and remembering
that we had failed to reach this goal

all through the First World War,

I felt such joy and exultation

that I asked the pilot of my
small plane, a so-called Storch,

whether it would be possible to perform
a landing on the Place de la Concorde.

After circling around some time,

he and... we came down
on the Place de la Concorde,

which was entirely free of any traffic

and landed on the outside
of the Champs Elysées.

Two days after Paris fell,
the new prime minister, Marshal Pétain

asked the Germans for an armistice.

Reynaud had been opposed to
a separate peace and resigned.

In most of France the news of
an armistice was received with relief.

Hitler insisted on using
for the negotiations

Marshal Foch's old railway carriage
in the woods of Compiègne,

where the 1918 armistice
had been signed.

It was the supreme humiliation
for France.

One must have lived
the retreat in France,

with this enormous movement of crowds.

It's something which you can't
understand if you haven't seen it.

We thought that really
that had to be stopped.

Once the French had signed,
Hitler ordered the site destroyed.

Germany had had its revenge.

Paris radio,
now under German control,

broadcast the terms of the armistice.

Paris had now to adapt
to a new wave of tourists.

Among the first was Hitler himself,

making the only trip of his life
to the city,

and a fleeting one at that.

For four bleak years France was to
disappear from the forefront of the war.

Some Frenchmen chose a courageous
resistance at home or overseas,

others were to settle into a routine
of apathetic collaboration.

Many connived at Hitler's
new order for Europe -

the Vichy version.

For Paris there remained
one more humiliation.

The German triumphal parade

followed the exact route
of the French victory procession

after the First World War.

It had taken the Wehrmacht just five
weeks to humble their historic foe.

In the words of Winston Churchill:

"The Battle of France was now over."

"The Battle of Britain
was about to begin."