Why Did Nazi Germany Abandon Their Plan To Invade Britain? | World War II In Colour | War Stories

[Music] on June the 22nd 1940 Britain stood alone against the Nazis France had surrendered and prime minister Winston Churchill could only growl Defiance we will fight on the beaches we will fight on the landing grounds we will fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the Hills we shall Never [Music] Surrender Britain still had all the resources of its vast Empire Canada Australia New Zealand South Africa India and a host of other territories had all been quick to declare war on Germany but they were thousands of miles away across the oceans

and their military power could not be brought to bear where it mattered Britain's situation seemed hopeless and Hitler had no doubt that Britain would soon try to negotiate a [Music] peace but but Churchill quickly showed how determined he was prepared to be in the war against the Nazis a powerful Squadron of two French battleships and two battle Cruisers was lying in the port of mercel Kabir in French North Africa if the French ships fell into German hands the British Navy's position in the Mediterranean would become impossible so on July the 3r a royal Navy task

force demanded that the French ships either join it or sail to a neutral port to be intered the French refused so the British opened fire on their former [Music] allies they destroyed or severely damaged three of the battleships almost 1300 French Sailors were killed the Churchill's ruthlessness didn't seem to impress Hitler on July the 19th he returned in Triumph to Berlin and was greeted by more than a million people that day he made a speech in the richar the German Parliament offering peace terms to Britain his offer seemed generous Britain could keep its Empire in

return Hitler wanted a free hand in Europe his plan was to conquer the countries of the east in order to win leanr room to live for the German people but Churchill would have none of it the British would fight on this would as he put it be their finest hour Churchill's Defiance was immensely popular King George V 6 wrote in his diary personally I feel happier now that we have no more allies to be polite to and to pamper but it was difficult to see how Britain could ever turn the tables and actually win the

War the British Army might have survived Don Kirk that it had lost almost all its tanks artillery and transport in the evacuation it had just 25 divisions armed mainly with rifles to resist the vast armored Columns of the world's most fearsome war machine so there was little to be done except dig in and wait Coastal defenses were prepared and concrete points built all across Southern England signposts on roads were removed to make it harder for any Invaders to find their way around large open areas were littered with obstacles to deter airborne troops a volunteer Defense

Force the Home Guard was recruited it was made up of men who were otherwise ineligible to fight often because of their age by the end of June 1940 almost 1 and a half million volunteers had signed up but there were few weapons with which to arm them Hitler meanwhile was getting on with his invasion plans code named Operation Sea [Music] Lion some 20 divisions would be landed on a broad front along England South Coast barges were gathered from all over Northwest Europe these were hurridly converted into makeshift landing craft troops were trained for Beach Landings

but for all Hitler's bravado those planning sea lion were worried Hitler might dismiss the English Channel as just another River to be crossed but Britain's Navy was still the largest in the world it might be stretched thin by its worldwide commitments but the Royal Navy's home Fleet far outnumbered the German the German Naval Chief Admiral Eric Raider had no confidence that he could seize control of the English Channel for long enough to get the Army [Music] across but the Germans did have one area of apparent massive superiority the Luft vafer far outnumbered Britain's royal Air

Force the LT Raffa's Commander Herman guring had little doubt that he could establish air control over the channel long enough for sea line to take place on July the 10th the bft buffer began attacking shipping in the channel [Music] in response the British had two of the most outstanding of the new breed of single engine multi-gun monoplanes the supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker hurricane the Spitfire was slightly faster and more agile than its German rival the Mesa Schmid bf19 which escorted the German bombers it would be used to intercept this the Huracan would prove a

lethal bomber kill but in July 1940 air Vice Marshal Hugh daing the head of fighter command had less than 700 [Music] Fighters against them were 2,600 German Fighters and bombers the odds against the RAF were daunting doubting knew that he could not take on the Luft buffer every time it came over the channel so when the Germans began hitting British shipping he did [Music] nothing instead he would only use the ARF to stop the Luft waffer from establishing the Air Supremacy needed for Invasion so he would only take on its big attacks to help him

the British had one crucial Innovation radar by the 1930s scientists in both Britain and Germany knew that objects well beyond human sight could be detected by bouncing radio pulses off them and measuring the time it took for the signals to return in Britain a team of scientists led by Robert Watson watt began developing radar as a means of detecting approaching aircraft at long range their work was seized upon by doubting he made radar the core of the world's first integrated air defense [Music] system known as chain home this was a string of 21 300t tall

radar masts cited along the south and east coasts of Britain these could pick up aircraft at a range of 120 Mi and give their distance Direction height and numbers the information would be passed back to ARA fighter command's headquarters at Bentley prior just outside London there it would be assessed and warning of an impending raid passed to fighter command's operations rle mine 14 sky blue take Target one channel G George controllers would then alert the nearest RF airfields and scramble the necessary number of Fighters the question was would radar make up for Germany's massive superiority

in numbers the stage was now set for what would become known as the Battle of [Music] Britain since June the 10th 1940 the German glft buffer had been battering British shipping in the English Channel the Luft va's Commander Reich Marshall Herman ging was determined to lure the British Air Force into combat but Britain's air Chief Marshall Hugh daing refused to take the bait he used his fighter sparingly knowing that the real battle was still to come as this first phase of the Battle of Britain began the LT baffer had a massive super superiority in numbers

he's had 1100 single engine Fighters available to the Royal Air Force is 700 almost all the German Fighters were the excellent Messa Schmidt BF 109e with a top speed of around 350 M hour about 2/3 of the British Fighters were Hawker hurricans slower than the 109's but more agile the remainder were supermarine Spitfires with a top speed similar to the 109s for their assault the Germans had over 1300 medium bombers dnia do 17s hle H1s and yuna's ju 88s each carrying about 4,000 lb of bombs ging selected August the 13th as adak Eagle day for

the start of his main [Music] assault his aim was to destroy AR of fighters in the air and the arf's airfields and Britain's aircraft [Music] factories softening up attacks were made the day before these concentrated on the airfields and the raid dark Towers along the South Coast one station on the aisle of white was put out of action and several were damaged but these were working again within hours Garing did not believe that radar had a significant role to play in the battle and so these attacks were not repeated it was a big mistake [Music]

ADL tag dawned cloudy so the main assault was postponed until the afternoon when it came radar gave ample warning St M calling planes heard 3 mil [Music] Southwest nonetheless most of the ARA airfields in the South were hammered [Music] but by the end of the day none had been put out of [Music] action the Luft vafer lost 46 air discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians all on History hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to

watch everything from the gripping story of the Band of Brothers to operation Barbarosa and D-Day immerse yourself in the dramatic stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description Britain just [Music] 30 the LT Baer mounted its largest attack of the whole battle on August the 15th [Music] waves of heavily escorted German bombers forced their way through to the ARF [Music] Aires the RAF was so overstretched that some Pilots flew seven sorties that day by the time the raids died away some 90 German aircraft had been shut down for the

loss of 42 British Fighters the battle continued with equal ferocity over the next few days both sides became increasingly exhausted daing tried to rotate his Pilots to rest them but he simply did not have enough of them many were being sent into battle with just 10 hours flying experience the L faer was suffering too its Pilots were shocked and increasingly demoralized by the resilience of the British the AR of Fighters always seem to be waiting for [Music] them as the fighting war on for 12 solid days the British losses began to creep up to match

those of the Germans the Royal Air Force was close to Breaking to turn the screw ging began using his bombers to attack at night as well but this decision had an unexpected outcome on the night of August the 24th a flight of hanle bombers lost its way and bombed the city of [Music] London [Music] it was the first attack on a non-military Target the next night 811 British bombers responded by raiding [Music] Berlin Hitler was infuriated and demanded massive retaliation this came on the evening of September the 7th German bombers attacked the London docks and

surrounding areas more than 450 people died and thousands of homes were destroyed but in fact this was ging's second crucial mistake by switching from the arf's airfields just at the moment when it seemed about to break he gave it the rest fite it needed had Garing continued to attack the airfields the ARF could not have continued to defend the skies instead on September the 15th British Radars picked up another massive assault on London the first wave of 100 bombers and 400 Fighters was intercepted fighting raged all the way from the coast in the afternoon another

Fleet of 150 bombers renewed the attack Winston churcher was at fighter command headquarters that day after he heard controllers calling in reinforcements from neighboring groups he asked what other reserves have we got the reply was there are [Music] none but it was obvious that the Luft buffer had failed to gain control of the air and on September the 17th Hitler postponed operation Seine the Battle of Britain did not really end it died away Hitler now tried a new tactic by October the 5th the daylight raids stopped and the Germans concentrated on bombing Britain cities by

[Music] night this was a so-called Blitz London was attacked every night but one up to November the 12th on November the 10th the center of the city of cantry was obliterated the blitz continued into 1941 with the last major raid being made on London on the night of May the [Music] 10th more than 50,000 civilians were killed in the blitz but there was never any question of Britain cracking victory in the Battle of Britain was a moment of huge National relief Pilots had come from all over the Empire to join the ARF and from countries

occupied by the Nazis like Poland and Czechoslovakia Churchill summed up the nation's gratitude never in the field of human conflict when so much owed by so many to so few but for Hitler this was no more than an irritating setback Britain he was convinced could never be a serious threat so he now turned to Eastern Europe for Britain there was now a chance to rebuild with a view one day to taking the fight to the enemy but to do that Churchill would need [Applause] [Music] help Britain may have won the Battle of Britain but it

was still immensely vulnerable [Music] night after night its cities were hammered by the Nazis [Music] Blitz its Supply lifelines at Sea were under constant assault Churchill needed more help and there was only one country that could provide it the United States by 1940 the US had recovered from the Great Depression and the economy was booming again it had immense reserves of Manpower and unrivaled industrial strength but the people of the United States were utterly opposed to becoming involved yet again in Europe's Wars in July 1940 a poll showed that only 8% of them were willing

to enter the [Music] war undeterred Churchill lobbied the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt had long admired Churchill for his outspokenly anti-nazi views and the two men shared an interest in Naval Affairs revelt had been under secretary for the US Navy in 1917 after he became president Roosevelt kept in touch with Churchill the two began a correspondence Churchill signing himself former Naval person for all his avuncular image Roosevelt had no illusions that German aggression would one day suck America into the war so he began the long job of preparing American public opinion I am a

pacifist but I believe you and I will act together to protect and to defend our science our culture our American freedom and our civilization in July 1940 he got approval for a massive expansion of the US Navy including the building of six large battleships and a new class of aircraft carriers the following month Congress agreed that the National Guard and other reserves should be called up for one years's active duty and in September the large expansion of the 150,000 strong US Army was agreed with a limited number of conscripts being chosen by Lottery the first

number drawn by the Secretary of War is serial number 158 that same month Roosevelt announced a deal under which the US would Supply Britain with 50 World War I destroyers in return for 99e leases on bases in Newland and the Caribbean the British Navy desperate for more escorts to fight the uots began taking them over within days of the deal being signed the clar sign that Roosevelt was slowly winning the argument came in the November 1940 presidential election when he convincingly defeated the isolationist Wendell Wilkey with 27 million votes to 22 [Applause] [Music] million at

the end of the year Roosevelt spoke to the American people setting out the four essential freedoms which he believed were at stake and which Britain was fighting to uphold freedom of speech and religion and Freedom from Want and from Fear to save these the United States must become the Arsenal of the democracies in other words it must arm Britain we shall send you in ever increasing numbers ships planes tanks guns that is our purpose and our [Music] pledge but some Americans remained implacably opposed to helping [Music] Britain one of the most outspoken was the American

ambassador in London Joseph Kennedy father of the future President John F Kennedy a Boston Irish businessman who had made his fortune boo smuggling during prohibition Kennedy hated the British and seized every opportunity to claim that they would shortly be forced to surrender however Kennedy's virulence was counterbalanced by the growing admiration many Americans felt for The Bravery shown by the British people during the [Music] Blitz in particular the broadcasts by the CBS London correspondent Ed marrow helped to change public [Music] opinion this is London I remember remember the evening of Sunday December 29th it was just

like any other winter evening the first bombers were over London at about half [Music] 6 soon the fires hissed from the top story [Music] Windows Hitler once boasted I will rub out their cities this is what he meant encouraged by his electoral success in January 1941 Roosevelt introduced his so-called lend leas Bill the United States would Supply weapons and War material to Britain and China which was still struggling desperately against the invading Japanese payment would be [Music] delayed Roosevelt likened lendley to lending a neighbor a hose to put out a fire he would worry about

the payback later Roosevelt was also being canny it also meant that unlike in 1917 if America had to enter the war it already would have a substantial weapons industry American war preparations didn't end there revelt secretly authorized US military staffs to discuss a common strategy with the British should America enter the [Music] war by April 1941 he felt confident enough to take another step to help Britain at se he greatly extended the Pan-American security Zone the area within which US warships would protect us Merchant vessels in May US troops set up B in Greenland and

in July US Marines were sent to replace the British Garrison in Iceland which was there to deprive the Germans of its hubs the US Navy also began providing limited Convoy Escorts particularly for us ships carrying lendle [Music] materials Hitler now gave his submariners strict instructions not to sink American ships as he didn't want to provoke the United States into war but inevitably there were clashes on September the 4th 1941 a British aircraft attacked a German submarine thinking that a strike had come from the nearby US Destroyer Greer the ubot fired a torpedo at [Music] it

the career responded with depth charges and there was a running battle which lasted 3 hours neither vessel was sunk but the tension was mounting on November the 17th the Destroyer USS KY was hit by a torpedo while on Convoy Duty off [Music] icent the ubot commander claimed it was an accident he'd been firing at a British ship and AI had got in the way but 11 US Sailors were dead and the Destroyer only just made it back to port in reu Roosevelt protested and the US press was outraged however the American public remained resolutely opposed

to going to war within weeks at the end of 1941 the situation was reversed in a single day but in the meantime Britain would have to fight on alone and luckily it had an astonishing weapon to [Music] hand it looks like just another mansion in the English country Countryside a bit run down but Bletchley Park once contained a secret that fundamentally affected the course of World War II because it was at bedley that Britain worked out how to read Germany's most secret codes since the mid 1930s all the German armed forces and intelligence departments had

adopted a standard machine for encoding their messages the cipher machine e better known as Enigma it was developed in the early 1920s as a handy tool for businessmen to keep commercial messages secret it was powered by a battery and its encoded messages were transmitted in mors code to be decoded on a second Enigma machine that the rece [Music] it the critical element of the machine was three rotors which could be set to scramble the message in a way which could only be unscrambled by another machine with the same settings the rotors could be replaced and

set differently as a result each letter typed could come up in any one of 150 million ways given the almost infinite number of settings it was not surprising that the Germans remained convinced throughout the war that Enigma was uncrackable it was the poles who took the first steps in solving this baffling puzzle they knew of the existence of the Enigma machine and assembled a team of top mathematicians to crack it Marian rvi Jersy ritky and Henry zagalsky but the team could not decipher messages without knowing the internal wiring of the [Music] rotors the solution was

supplied by French intelligence which sent its polish allies material gathered by a spy in the German Army Cipher Department amongst this was an enigma manual the poles were able to reconstruct an Enigma machine and began laboriously decoding messages by July 1939 Hitler was sounding increasingly threatening towards Poland Britain and France had promised to come to its Aid it was clear that war was coming so Intelligence Officers from the three allies met in wara there the British and French were astonished at how much the polls had done in decoding Enigma and the poles agreed to send

two of their reconstructed machines to London just 2 weeks after they were handed over Poland was [Music] invaded by the time Poland fell to the Germans the Polish cryp photographers had destroyed all evidence of their work on enig some were captured and tortured but none revealed what they'd been up to the task was now taken up by the British at their government code and Cipher school at Bletchley Park near London its head was commander alist Denniston Dennis recruited a strange collection of mathematicians Chess Masters and crossword puzzle experts to continue the [Music] decoding among these

experts was Alan Turing at Cambridge Dawn in 1936 churing had described the idea of a universal Computing machine a machine that he believed would one day be able to solve all mathematical problems he used his ideas to design decryption machines known as bronze goddesses the raw material for Bley came from the British y service a chain of radio listening stations which monitored and recorded German [Music] Transmissions the messages were fed into Bletchley bronze goddesses and permutations run until at last the key was found once a message had been decrypted it was translated analyzed and passed

on to the appropriate Authority from the moment he became prime minister and learned of bletch ley's work Winston Churchill understood its extraordinary importance he referred to blechy's Output as his Ultra secret information and Ultra became its code name the distribution of ultra was tightly controlled senior commanders were shown only that information which directly concerned their operations the need to keep the source of the intelligence secret was so great that churchan insisted that no action could be taken on the basis of ultra material unless a cover plan had been developed to convince the Germans that the

intelligence must have come from another source the third critical element of The Bletchley operation after decoding and assessing the material was keeping control of it often Ultra revealed Vital Information about German plans and actions news of forthcoming attacks and other intelligence was filed away in a massive card index system this was constantly mined for answers to questions Great and Small by the end of the war Bletchley was decoding much of the German traffic almost as fast as it was being sent it was jokingly said that it would have been quicker for a German Commander to

ring Bletchley to get his orders it was at Sea that the Allies first became aware of how vital information from Ultra could be an early example of its potential came on June the 8th 1940 the British aircraft carrier glorious was covering the convoys withdrawing Allied troops from Norway when bletchly decoded signals showing the German battle Cruisers Shan H and naau were approaching its position a warning was passed to Royal Navy headquarters but unaware of how accurate the information was likely to be this chose not to pass it on the Glorious was intercepted and suck the

British Navy had learned the hard way just how important the new source of intelligence could be it was not a mistake it would make again [Music] Bletchley also performed a critical role in the buildup to the Battle of [Music] Britain it had provided a clear picture of the Luft Buffer's order of battle and the overall strategy being adopted by its leader Herman G this information convinced the head of British fighter command air viice marshall Hugh daing that his tactic of committing his Fighters bit by bit rather than in large numbers was the correct one a

tactic that played a crucial part in preserving the arf's narrow winning margin as Britain continued its lonely fight into 1941 it had at last found a way of fighting [Music] back Bletchley Park was ready for action the major breakthroughs had been made the systems for exploiting them put in place and well tested in the coming years Ultra and the work of Bletchley Park would prove vital to the Allied successes but as the Battle of Britain and the blitz ground on these were still a long way [Music] off Churchill still needed more immediate results and by

early 1941 he thought that he had at last found a way to [Music] get Nazi Germany might now control most of Western Europe but Britain's prime minister Winston Churchill now decided to take the war to the Germans we shall not flinch from the Supreme trial all will come right out of the even before France had surrendered he was looking for ways of striking back and of keeping resistance alive in the countries which had been overrun just as the last troops were being taken off the beaches of Dunkirk Churchill was already planning ahead he wrote to

his Chiefs of Staff demanding the formation of raiding forces which could attack the coasts of occupied Europe within a few days a call for volunteers had been circulated to create a force of 5,000 men they were to be called commanders after the highly mobile B units which had fought the British for 3 years in South Africa at the turn of the century 10 Commando units each of 500 men were set up they began practicing attacks from the [Music] sea one unit was ordered to specialize in parachuting and using assault gliders this soon became the basis

of the separate parachute regiment Admiral Sir Roger Keys was appointed to dor of combined operations Churchill instructed him to prepare to mount three major raids as soon as a threat of an invasion of Britain had passed one of Key's first tasks was to develop ships which could land his new troops Three cross Channel faeries were converted so as to carry landing craft on March the 4th 1941 two Commando units and a demolition Squad were landed on the leoen islands off Northern [Music] norw their main objective was to destroy factories which converted fish oil into Glycerine

for [Music] explosives the commanders achieved total surprise and landed without a shot being fired the German armed troller in the harbor was seized they quickly destroyed the factories and the fish oil [Music] tanks one officer could not resist using the local post office to send a telegram to a Hitler Berlin it read reference your last speech I thought you said that wherever British troops land on the continent of Europe German soldiers will face them well where where are they the commanders then rounded up 60 Norwegian collaborators and 225 German prisoners before returning without any losses

with them they also took 115 Norwegian volunteers these would then join the free Norwegian forces in [Applause] Britain The loten Raid was an enormous public relations success and a huge boost for British Mora but its most important result was one which could not be publicized the capture of a set of rers for an Enigma machine although the machine had been thrown overboard from the armed troller its crew forgot the spares they were to give invaluable help to the cryptographers of Bletchley Park in Breaking the German Naval codes [Music] then in December 1941 four Commando units

landed at the Norwegian Port of Vago and were immediately involved in heavy fighting the approach to varo was covered by the small island of Marlo from which the Germans had placed artillery this was quickly run but across the water in vxo the fighting was [Music] intense it took several hours for the main German Garrison to be subdued the commanders then blew up several factories and sank eight ships before withdrawing these raids convinced Hitler that sooner or later the British would attempt to retake Norway so for the remaining four years of the war he kept some

250,000 troops there troops which might have proved vital on other fronts but effective as they were Commander raids were not enough to stop the Nazis Churchill needed other ways to hurt them so he focused on the resistance movements in the occupied countries in July 1940 a special operations executive s soe was formed as Churchill put it to set Europe [Music] Ablaze its objectives were to to encourage sabotage of the enemy war effort gather intelligence and prepare clandestine forces to disrupt German [Music] defenses the bulk of s soe's activities centered on France soon agents were recruited

in Britain to build up and coordinate the French Resistance networks radio operators and Couriers were also trained to support one problem was how to get these teams into the country submarines highspeed launches and fishing vessels were all tried out but the German Coastal defenses proved difficult to penetr the answer was aircraft and in August 1940 a special RAF unit was set up with whitly bombers and short takeoff and Landing Westland liand agents and Equipment were either parachuted in from the bombers or flown in and brought out by the L Sanders on moonlit nights a growing

number of reception committees would be waiting as an increasingly widespread network of resistance groups was built [Music] up but all the while they were hunted by an increasingly sophisticated German counter Espionage system this used Direction finding equipment to locate hidden radios and double agents to infiltrate networks the work of s soe agents was desperately perilous and there their life expectancy short the slightest laps in concentration might betray them to the Gestapo many suffered torture and death but Churchill was sure it was worth it keeping resistance alive in the occupied countries gave hope to millions that

Liberation would eventually come the British Broadcasting Corporation the BBC was also enlisted to raise the hopes of those living under German rule they broadcast the news in all the languages of the occupied countries the German penalty for listening to these bulletins was death but people tuned in regardless the BBC also played a crucial role in transmitting coded messages to resistance groups these always came after the 9:00 news for the peoples have occupied Europe the prospect of Liberation might only be a distant dream but in the middle of 1941 it suddenly became more likely for by

then Britain was no longer alone own in fighting Nazism it had gained a massive Ally but it wasn't America which Churchill had assiduously been cting it was the Soviet [Music] Union sh e