(tense music)
NARRATOR: May 24th, 1940.
Hitler goes to the French front, to see his generals and his soldiers.
He congratulates them.
(chanting)
In only two weeks, they have forced the French,
British and Belgian armies to retreat.
In his 13th War Directive,
Hitler orders their total destruction.
(theme music)
NARRATOR: No time off for German tank crews.
Will the outcome of the war be contingent on these last battles?
On May 26th, the Germans have already reached the English Channel,
completing the famous "sickle cut", Hitler's trap.
Dunkirk and the Allied armies are entirely surrounded.
Lucien Richard, a French soldier in the 25th Infantry Division,
has been retreating for two weeks.
In his journal, he recalls the words of his warrant officer,
we're entirely cut off. Dunkirk is the only way out.
For several days now, the Navy has been embarking soldiers, bound for England.
What the Navy discovers on the beaches of Dunkirk is a hellish sight.
No water, no food and German planes
continually attacking ships full of men.
(gunshots)
Author Robert Merle was 30 at the time.
Like the others, he searched for makeshift shelter in the sand dunes.
He wrote, "For me, war is absurd.
Not this or that war. All wars. Without exception.
There is no fair war, no holy war. War is simply absurd."
And the Stukas, the German bombers, resume their dive attacks,
terrorizing the allies with their sirens.
Twenty-year-old soldiers drown.
France's president, Albert Lebrun, pronounces the word, "armistice".
A British naval officer, Philip Roderick Hall,
shot this footage during a leave of absence,
before setting off to take part in the perilous rescue
of the troops in Dunkirk.
He wants to demonstrate the meaning of "grace under pressure",
calm in the face of danger.
He is killed six months later.
In the skies over Dunkirk, the Germans must now confront the RAF,
in one of the greatest, fiercest aerial battles of the entire war.
But this isn't the end of the Luftwaffe's ordeal.
May 27th.
Boarding can finally begin. 8,000 men on this day alone!
Some French soldiers were boarded onto a ship which was torpedoed.
They were saved a second time. They can't take much more.
Lieutenant Arnaud de Vogüé writes to his wife,
The display of flight and dishonor is more than I can bear...
France's desperate Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud,
pays his respects on Memorial Day,
America's holiday honoring those fallen in battle.
Paul Reynaud plays the last card in his hand.
He says to US ambassador William Bullitt,
Without American assistance,
you will see France sink like a drowning man and disappear.
The ambassador replies,
The American people feels as if the suffering
of its brothers were its own.
(speech in foreign language)
NARRATOR: But America doesn't want to send its youth to Europe for another bloodbath.
Within America's small group of constituents of German descent
some even go so far as to join organizations like the Bund,
the Hitler Support Federation.
Its leader, Fritz Kuhn, bursts into Horst Wessel Lied,
the Nazi hymn.
(drum roll)
(joyful music)
NARRATOR: This isn't the kind of music the vast majority of Americans prefer.
They are caught up in the 1940 elections.
President Roosevelt is running for a third term,
a first in the history of the United States.
(whistle blowing)
NARRATOR: Roosevelt is very partial to France and England,
and helps them as best he can. But most Americans are isolationists.
Roosevelt can't do anything unless his country is attacked.
So he reassures the voters.
We will not participate in foreign wars,
and we will not send our army,
naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands
outside of the Americas, except in case of attack.
(sinister music)
NARRATOR: On May 28th, Belgium capitulates
because she can no longer be saved.
Belgian King Leopold III orders a surrender.
He and his soldiers give themselves up.
His allies retreated to Dunkirk without informing him.
The French were trying to contain the German invasion,
hear a very different story from their Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud.
REYNAUD (in French): Without a glance, without a word
for the French and English soldiers,
who, at this call of distress,
had come to rescue his country,
King Leopold III of Belgium
laid own his arms.
This is a historically unprecedented event.
NARRATOR (in English): On June 1st, Hitler goes to Belgium.
Flanders is where the Germans fought in the trenches for four years,
from 1914 to 1918.
Hitler, who had been stationed far from the front back then,
now wants to evoke the soldiers of the Great War for propaganda purposes,
as he stands amongst troops of 1940,
to whom he has promised victory.
Hitler visits the cemetery in Langemark, near Ypres,
where 3,000 German students who volunteered
for the 1914 war are buried.
With this epitaph, Germany must live even if we must die.
Hitler made this the motto of the Hitler Youth,
and the symbolic birthplace of Nazism and its criminal ideology.
Meanwhile, nearing Dunkirk,
the German army meets with unexpected resistance from five French divisions,
who sacrifice themselves to protect the evacuation operation.
(gun firing)
A German General Georg von Küchler,
pays tribute to his opponents. He writes,
Among the French soldiers at Dunkirk,
I find the same ardor as that of the French "poilus"
in Verdun in 1916!
The French command has very skillfully installed its troops and artillery.
Dunkirk brings me proof
that the French soldier is one of the best in the world.
Ten thousand French soldiers perish,
ten thousand Germans as well.
(explosions)
Churchill writes,
The heroic resistance of the French army has saved the British army.
The French Navy also provided over a third of the 850 ships
that ensured the evacuation of 338,000 men,
including 140,000 French.
On June 4th, the last survivors disembark at the ports of southern England.
They all feel infinitely relieved to be alive, but are defeated.
Churchill says,
Wars are not won by evacuations.
In England, the French are grouped together.
What will become of them?
Can they continue the fight here?
The French government orders their repatriation
as quickly as possible, to resume the fight.
Corporal Lucien Richard is among them.
He says, "Charming girls bring us baskets of sandwiches and treats.
The English think better of us than we think of ourselves."
(mournful music)
The British army left all its equipment behind at Dunkirk.
More than 80,000 motor vehicles,
100,000 tons of supplies and ammunition,
and 150,000 tons of fuel.
Writer Jacques Duquesne emerges from his cellar.
He is ten. He recalls what he saw on June 5th, 1940,
Planes are whirling overhead,
through the black smoke of a burning refinery.
Then, silence,
the astonishing silence that war sometimes produces.
Life has ground to a halt.
♪ Onward! Onward! Onward! ♪
♪ Over the Maas The Scheldt and the Rhine ♪
♪ We are entering France victorious! ♪
On June 5th, the Germans invade the beach at Dunkirk.
The bodies of some of the 3,500 slaughtered
British and French are scattered in the sand.
(mournful music)
They discover the wreckage of the Adroit,
one of the French destroyers sunk by the Stukas.
The French Navy will hold a longstanding grudge against the Royal Navy,
whom it accuses of deliberately sacrificing its men.
On the shores of Dunkirk, the Germans round up 35,000 French prisoners.
These last defenders are "the Bravest of the Brave",
as Napoleon would have said.
One of these French soldiers, now held captive,
spits when he sees a German filming him.
Hitler feels he could invade England at this very moment.
He considers the country incapable of defending itself.
But to those around him,
he states what he has already set forth in Mein Kampf,
"Germany must first defeat its old enemy France."
Hitler proclaims...
- (bell ringing) - NARRATOR: "I order the bells
to be rung across Germany for three days!
Let their chimes mingle with the prayers,
because at dawn tomorrow,
the German divisions and our aircraft squadrons
will begin the second phase of the struggle,
for the future of our people!"
The Luftwaffe's squadrons of Heinkel 111 bombers
threaten Paris.
But Hitler says, "We must spare this city of timeless culture."
The Germans thus limit their strikes to the train stations and a few factories.
The bombs cause damage in the suburbs of Paris,
who see the war coming ever closer.
The French aviators muster up their courage
in this desperate situation.
Germany's ace fighter pilot, Werner Mölders, is shot down.
He parachutes out
and is captured.
Mölders asks to meet the man who took him down.
"He's dead", the French pilots tell him.
His name was René Pomier-Layrargues.
He was 24 years old.
He shot down four bombers
and three German fighters before dying in battle.
Mölders will join the 600 other captured German airmen.
Churchill insists that they be transferred to Canada,
but the French stubbornly refuse.
These German aviators are released at the Armistice,
and return to fight against England.
On June 5th, three weeks after the beginning of their invasion,
the Germans turn to inland France.
(harmonizing music)
The French Commander-in-Chief, General Weygand,
tries to block them on the Somme and the Aisne rivers.
Here again, the Germans are surprised
by continued resistance from the French troops.
The Weygand Line now looks like trenches from the previous war.
Officer cadet Leo Calvet of the 1st Zouave Regiment writes,
"We resisted as long as we could, but we have run out of grenades.
We are on our last leg. We haven't seen any tanks,
reinforcements, or supplies."
(birds chirping)
The French surrender.
The Germans break through the Weygand Line,
cross the Somme and sweep across France.
(dramatic music)
The morale of the German infantry
is high in the June sunshine.
One of these soldiers, Werner Mork, writes,
"Our lieutenant says,
'We are on our way to Paris! We couldn't believe it! Paris!'"
Lieutenant Karl Heinz Mende writes,
"Our hearts are pounding.
Our iron will drives us onward.
This war is our war!"
On June 6th, in Paris,
Paul Reynaud brings General de Gaulle into the government.
De Gaulle wants to continue fighting the Germans at all costs.
He is put in charge of coordinating with England.
Within the Council of Ministers, De Gaulle also represents one more vote
against the defeatists, aligned with Vice-Chairman Pétain.
Eighty-four-year-old Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France,
victorious at Verdun and pride of the nation,
has been relentlessly maneuvering behind-the-scenes.
The great historian Marc Bloch writes,
"Pétain wants the cursed regime,
the Republic, to be crushed under the ruins of France."
The previous year, Pétain, appointed Ambassador to General Franco,
attends the parade celebrating the Francoist victory
over the unfortunate Spanish Republic.
Pétain shares Franco's ideas and will officially receive him later.
Pétain wants to establish a new, authoritarian regime for France.
At the height of the fighting at Dunkirk,
Pétain begins negotiating the terms of an armistice,
with the mediation of the Spanish ambassador.
All the deliberations of the French Council of Ministers'
reach Hitler,
Pétain negotiates in secret,
while the Germans face violent French resistance in Rouen.
(gun firing)
(sad music)
Pétain negotiates while the martyred city is reduced to ashes.
Pétain negotiates while the starving inhabitants
ask the Wehrmacht for help.
After the war,
Pétain will be tried for conspiring with the enemy and high treason.
On June 10th, the government leaves Paris in a state of unimaginable chaos.
The long procession of official cars takes refuge in Tours,
then Bordeaux.
The secret archives are lost along the way.
Paul Reynaud and his shadow government settle in Bordeaux,
a customarily quiet city,
whose population quickly increases from 300,000 to one million.
In the port, 400 ships are waiting to evacuate the Poles,
the Czechs and the Americans who are going back to New York,
a very different world.
On this very same day in Rome, Mussolini, the dictator of Fascist Italy,
addresses his people.
MUSSOLINI (in Italian): The declaration of war
has just been transmitted to the Ambassadors...
to the Ambassadors of Great Britain and France!
NARRATOR (in English): The French ambassador says,
"They are kicking a man who's already down!"
When Hitler, his ally, is close to victory,
Mussolini claims his share of the spoils, Nice, Savoy, Corsica and Tunisia.
He cynically remarks to his Chief of Staff,
I only need a few thousand dead!
The Italians attack in the Alps.
In just a few days, 1500 men are dead,
three thousand wounded and two thousand captured.
On the French side, 37 dead and 62 wounded.
The quality of the remaining French road signs
is of great help to the German advance.
(gun firing)
For two days, on the outskirts of Paris,
the Germans are held back by French soldiers who fight to the end.
On June 13th, after a month of fighting,
Paris is declared an open city. One million Parisians flee.
The German army's taking of Paris on June 14th
was carefully planned in advance
by the networks of Nazi Otto Abetz
and the France-Germany Committee,
who had been working actively behind the scenes since 1930.
Abetz is later appointed ambassador.
They have drawn up a list of luxury locations to settle in.
The High Command will move into the Hôtel Majestic on Avenue Kléber,
the Paris governor, into the Crillon,
Intelligence services into the Lutetia,
the Luftwaffe into the Ritz,
and the Gestapo on Rue de la Pompe
in Paris' chic 16th Arrondissement.
(whistle blowing)
(honking)
The remaining Parisians, filmed by the German soldiers,
don't look aggressive.
They are flanked by the powerful German military police, the Feldgendarmes,
wearing their special gorget.
Agnès Humbert, who later becomes an important resistance fighter,
writes at the time, "Paris is occupied! Paris is German!
Our minds must absorb this horrific fact.
We must understand it is real!
I don't care about anything anymore. I'm too tired, too disgusted.
I don't feel anything, no fear or apprehension of any kind.
I just feel numb."
The Germans' first gesture comes as a surprise,
they pay their respects to the Unknown Soldier.
This display is not motivated by military honor,
it is purely propaganda.
(bell ringing)
Hitler, at his new headquarters,
Wolf Canyon, near the French-Belgian border
has just learned that Paris has fallen.
HITLER (in German): The victorious German troops are entering Paris!
NARRATOR (in English): In the village church, transformed into a screening room,
he watches the June 1940 German newsreels.
(triumphant music)
Die Deutsche Wochenschau.
MAN (in German): A parade on Avenue Foch concludes the hour of honors.
The Führer and the troop are bound
by a great spirit of comradeship,
always renewed in battle and victory!
NARRATOR (in English): Hitler receives heartfelt congratulations
from another dictator, Russia's Stalin.
(wind howling)
When Hitler leaves the screening room,
he knows exactly what his next step is.
Hitler knows that Reynaud, the head of the French government,
is about to resign. Which he does!
Hitler knows that Pétain will replace him!
He also knows that the armistice process is under way.
Indeed, on June 17th, the French people,
terrified by the gradually deteriorating military situation,
listen to the radio cars broadcasting a crucial message
from their new head of government,
Marshal Pétain.
PÉTAIN (in Italian): Ladies and gentlemen,
Marshal Petain, Chairman of the Council of Ministers is speaking,
my fellow countrymen,
I give to France the gift of my person.
It is with a heavy heart
that I say to you today that the fighting must stop.
I spoke last night with the enemy
and asked him if he is ready to seek with us,
soldier to soldier, after the honorable fight,
the means to put an end to the hostilities.
NARRATOR (in English): Hitler expresses his satisfaction.
Everything is going according to plan.
(indistinct chatter)
General Keitel, never missing an opportunity for flattery,
declares, 'My Führer, you are the greatest warrior of all times."
June 19th, in Avranches, the Bignons are cloistered,
waiting for the Germans.
(dramatic music)
The police have cleared the streets, no one is allowed outside.
June 20th, 9:00 a.m.,
Fernand Bignon sees the German vanguards
rolling in and risks his life to film them.
Hitler proclaims,
"I hereby order all members of the Wehrmacht
to be discreet in their relations with the local populations,
as befitting of a German soldier."
Georges Adrey, a refugee and metal worker, writes,
"The Germans are pleasant and considerate."
Now reassured like millions of French people,
Fernand Bignon asks the Germans for permission to return home to Normandy.
(mellow music)
The Bignons return to their town,
Gisors, after six weeks of war.
Everything is in ruins.
Their house,
their photo studio,
even their church where their daughter took her first communion.
They are very fortunate to recover all their jewelry,
stashed away in shell casings. This allows them to survive.
(birds chirping)
On June 21st,
Hitler travels to the Compiègne forest,
to the Rethondes clearing
where the Armistice of November 11th, 1918 was signed.
Hitler contemplates the monument which bears the engraving,
"Here succumbed the criminal pride of the German Reich,
vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave."
Hitler will have it destroyed, but will spare the statue of Marshal Foch,
the leader of the Allied armies,
even though he had dictated the 1918 Armistice to the Germans
from this very rail carriage.
(tense music)
Hitler wants to humiliate the French.
Yet when the French delegation arrives,
Hitler stands up,
and salutes those he calls "valiant soldiers".
He has a brief statement read aloud,
"This place was chosen to erase, once and for all,
the memory of the most profound dishonor of all times."
Then, in front of journalists from all over the world,
Hitler leaves the railcar without a word,
before the ceremony even begins.
In 45 days,
Hitler has done what Emperor Wilhelm II failed to do in four years,
from 1914 to 1918.
Then the German anthem rings out.
Deutschland Uber Alles, Germany above all.
At this very moment, Hitler is at his peak.
He has fulfilled his Mein Kampf prophecy.
He has erased France from history.
Two days later, he takes the opportunity to visit Paris.
Hitler feels like he's the master of the universe.
Having studied painting, he gives an ad hoc lesson in architecture,
at the Madeleine, an Opera, to servile Nazis,
hailed by the only Frenchmen allowed out,
the police officers.
Prisoners have been requisitioned over the past few days
to remove the sandbags that protected the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.
After bowing at Napoleon's tomb, Hitler, like all tourists,
visits the Eiffel Tower.
He says,
"Isn't Paris beautiful?
But we'll make Berlin even more beautiful."
Who would dare to contradict him now?
Who would dare to prevent him from committing the most heinous crimes?
Armistice goes into effect on June 25th and fighting ceases, all along the front.
Women, children and the elderly return home.
Their husbands, fathers, and sons are on their way to Germany,
amongst the 1.8 million prisoners.
Alsace Moselle becomes German again.
France is cut in two.
The north is a partially closed, occupied zone.
With the Atlantic coast and its ports reserved for German submarines.
A small strip of the Alps is gifted to Mussolini.
The section of France south of the Loire will not be occupied.
This is the so-called Free Zone, with Vichy as its capital.
It was the Spanish dictator, Franco,
who suggested that Hitler leave the French some sovereignty.
He did this to keep the Germans away from his own border.
But this "free zone" of Vichy also suits Hitler.
He wants to prevent the French from continuing to fight
in their colonial empire in Africa.
He wants a French administration under his command,
Working out of the spa town's many hotels.
(dramatic music)
Pétain immediately seizes this opportunity
to quash the Republic.
Through a vote held at Vichy's Grand Casino Theatre,
deputies and senators frightened by the defeat
bestow full powers upon Pétain,
who establishes the French state.
He replaces the national motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
with "Work, Family, Homeland".
This motto does not apply to the twenty or so camps
opened in 1939 to hold German nationals.
The most well-known ones are Gurs, Rivesaltes or Les Milles.
In 1940, Jews and anti-Nazi Germans
who took refuge in France are rotting in these squalid camps,
waiting to be handed over to the Nazis,
in compliance with the terms of the Armistice.
"We must act very quickly to save them!"
writes American journalist Varian Fry at the time.
He succeeds in quickly raising funds
and creates a rescue committee in Marseille
that issues visas and passage to America.
Over the course of a year, with the help a wealthy young American,
Mary Jayne Gold, they save all kinds of personalities
hunted by the Gestapo, like the great painters Max Ernst
and Marc Chagall. And Writers like Heinrich Mann,
André Breton, Hannah Arendt, and Victor Serge,
as well as several thousand Jews.
But Pétain has journalist Varian Fry extradited.
Vichy's men share Hitler's anti-Semitism,
and admire his fascist organization.
Pétain's first concern is therefore to maintain order in this part of France
despite his reduced military resources,
and in its vast colonial empire.
Over there at least, Pétain has access to an intact wartime Navy,
considered the world's fourth largest. The Nazis covet this formidable weapon.
It is left under French control, according to the terms of the Armistice.
But what kind of guarantee can be provided by a nation that is under control itself?
Ten days after the fall of France and the Armistice,
the British are genuinely concerned.
Churchill doesn't want to risk the French fleet moving into German hands.
He sends a powerful Royal Navy squadron to Mers El-Kebir in Algeria,
where Pétain's main battleships are currently based.
Onboard, they receive a message,
"Join us or go to Martinique".
(siren blaring)
Petain refuses.
On July 3rd,1940 Churchill opens fire.
Churchill later writes, "This was the most hateful decision,
the most unnatural and painful in which I have ever been concerned".
The French had been only yesterday our dear allies,
but the life of the state was at stake.
The battleship Bretagne sinks with 900 men on board.
Three other large ships are put out of commission.
The toll is 2,000 dead and injured,
leading to strong French resentment of the English.
Mers El-Kebir is also a warning to the Germans,
Nothing can make Churchill back down.
(singing)
♪ And think they know the game ♪
♪ But they can't build boys Of the bulldog breed ♪
♪ Who made old England's name ♪
NARRATOR: What the British fear is invasion by the Germans,
who must first master the skies.
To keep them at bay, England relies on its young pilots
Canadians, New Zealanders, anyone who continues to fight in exile.
The Poles, the Belgians, and Free France pilot
François de Labouchère, who will perish.
The Battle of Britain lasts months.
Months of merciless fighting in the sky, of heroism and unspeakable violence.
Hitler, sensing he may be losing the upper hand in this battle,
makes Churchill a final peace offering.
HITLER (in German): The continuation of this struggle can only end
with the complete destruction of one of the two opponents.
Mr. Churchill may believe that it will be Germany that is destroyed.
I know it will be England!
NARRATOR (in English): But Goering knows
that he won't be able to break the Royal Air Force.
And on both sides, the losses are terrible.
Hitler grows tired of Goering's promises.
The plan of a landing in England is abandoned.
Hitler and Goering send bombers each night to destroy London
and other major English cities, punishing them for their resistance.
(missiles launching)
Londoners call these bombings the Blitz,
meaning lightning, like the Blitzkrieg that ravaged France.
The same Blitz that devastates ancestral treasures
like Westminster and Buckingham Palace.
On October 21st, 1940,
Churchill addresses the French on the BBC.
CHURCHILL (in French): Our people are bearing up unflinchingly
Under the fire of the Boche!
We continue to fight hard!
We do not forget
the ties and links
that unite us to France!
May God protect France!
NARRATOR (in English): Days later, Pétain meets Hitler
and shakes his hand.
-(camera clicks) - He then speaks to the French.
PÉTAIN (in French): I chose freely
to accept the Führer's invitation.
I was not subject to any diktat
or pressure from him.
A collaboration has been envisaged
between our two countries.
NARRATOR (in English): The cease-fire is a relief to many French.
Some choose to become collaborators.
Under pressure from the Germans,
Pétain enacts the Jewish Status Laws,
adding his own personal touch to make them even stricter.
He excludes Jews from public life.
Soon, the deportations begin.
Pétain becomes increasingly embroiled in the collaboration.
Will he hand over the rest of his fleet to the Nazis?
Is Hitler still even interested?
He knows his strength is not at sea or in the air.
It is on the ground,
with his millions of soldiers and thousands of tanks.
A force primed for swift, brutal offensives.
Hitler states,
"Britain's hope lies in the Soviet Union and the United States.
If hope in Russia is eliminated, America will also be lost to Britain.
Vital living space in the East is at stake.
Russia must be liquidated.
The sooner we crush them, the better."
Like a train in the night,
Germany, along with all of Europe,
plunges into the Apocalypse.
Captioned by Visual Data Media Services