Gradually, the Germans retook control of the city and crushed the insurgents.

The hospital was torched, the wounded executed.

The resistance movement could have tipped the balance if it had had support.

But the Red Army stood on the sidelines.

While the German forces destroyed the city, the Soviet troops camped on the banks of the Vistula.

Stalin was unmoved.

He would not intervene.

For a while, he even refused permission for the Americans and British to use his aer drromes to supply the insurgents, leaving them to face slaughter.

He had a dual motive.

He had to allow his troops to recuperate their strength after operation begration.

The supply core had to bring up fresh fuel, weapons, munitions, and spare parts to this new front line on the Vistula.

Meanwhile, Stalin left the non-communist Polish resistance to be wiped out so he could put Polish Communists in power at a later date.

The Anglo-Americans protested, but not so strongly as to threaten their relationship with Moscow.

That was the price of the Soviet alliance against Hitler.

[music] [music] The uprising in Warsaw ended in a bloodbath.

Some 220,000 civilians and resistance fighters died.

[music] After 2 months of fierce combat, the guns fell silent.

The Polish General Borarovski [music] signed the surrender.

On the 2nd of October, the resistance army surrendered.

85% of Warsaw was in ruins.

The Polish, who had hoped for support from the Soviets, now feared falling into their hands.

[music] As one poet put it, “We await you, red plague, to deliver us from the brown [music] plague.

[music] While the Red Army camped on the Vistula to the west, the Allied armies had at last been able to open the port of Antwerp through which supplies were now flowing.

The Americans had reached the Rine.

The Reich was finally [music] caught in a pinser.

But despite this attack on two fronts, the Nazi regime showed no sign of crumbling.

On the contrary, the army blindly obeyed its supreme leader.

In October, Himmler created the Vulto, the people’s storm.

This militia recruited men who were not already serving in a home defense force.

Adolf Hitler at a stroke.

The provincial solicitor, the teenager in the countryside, or the village baker found themselves armed with a rocket launcher to defend the Reich.

[singing] The German people were still solidly behind their furer.

They couldn’t imagine any alternative to the Nazi regime.

This was because during the 12 years he had been in power, Hitler and his regime had indoctrinated the Germans.

In 1944, the Nazi party still had 8 million members.

There wasn’t a family in the country which didn’t count at least one party member.

For those in any doubt, the propaganda of Dr.

Gerbles endlessly hailed the superiority of the German soldier and declared that Allied coalition would end up unraveling.

His fables persuaded the Germans that they would triumph.

[applause] In December 1944, Germany had been holding out on two fronts for nearly [music] 5 months.

The Reich was wounded.

It was bleeding.

But on the economic level, the country redoubled efforts in factories producing tanks, planes, submarines, and munitions.

While they couldn’t win the battle in terms of quantity, German engineers invented new weapons like remotec controlled miniature tank buster vehicles.

and one-man torpedo submarines.

But above all, Hitler put great store in what he called miracle weapons, the V1 flying bombs, which had been raining down on London since June and had killed thousands of civilians.

The V2 was the first ballistic missile in history.

For several years, they had been secretly developed in the Reich’s factories.

In the fall of 44, they were finally ready.

These rockets could carry one ton of high explosives.

Although these retaliatory weapons had a limited impact, they galvanized the Germans.

One young man wrote, “All we talk about is the V2.

Perhaps we can launch them against America.

I’m sure that victory is ours.

” This industrial prowess was due to one man, Albert Spear.

The Furer’s architect supervised this reorganization, which he portrayed as a miracle.

Because despite the Allied bombardments, weapons production [music] had actually increased up to July 1944.

But this unholy miracle bore a name, [music] slavery.

The Reich exploited millions of workers, deportes, Jews, communists, resistance fighters.

There were also labor conscripts rounded up from across Europe.

Prisoners of war were turned into workers.

Almost 9 million men and women worked in atrocious conditions on behalf of the Reich.

German industry could thus keep up with the war effort.

The Reich was even able to go from being on the defensive to the offensive.

On the western front, the division of Allied forces into two blocks had left the sector of the Ardens dangerously illdefended.

That was where Hitler decided to strike.

On the 16th of December, to the astonishment of the Allies, 1,900 cannons opened fire.

What was that? In the first few hours, the element of surprise gave the German high command an unexpected success.

The Allies thought they were dealing with a routed army.

Instead, they found themselves facing a fierce counterattack.

For Hitler, it was a big gamble.

He hoped this offensive might stabilize the Western Front, convincing the Anglo-Americans that they could never win.

and who knows, maybe even prompt them to side with him against the Bolevik demon.

The Furer was convinced the East West Coalition was against nature and was destined to break up.

Marxists allied with capitalists, it was simply heresy.

This alliance would crumble.

It just needed to be dealt the cudigrass.

The Germans made progress, helped by the bad weather which prevented Allied aviation from intervening.

The advance was spectacular.

One left tenant wrote to his wife, “You cannot imagine the days of glory that we’re experiencing at the moment.

It is as if the Americans cannot withstand the might of our thrust.

” The fifth Panza division captured almost 9,000 gis, many of whom were black.

This gave the Nazi propaganda machine the opportunity to claim the US army was made up of subhumans.

The news spread in Belgium and Alsace, both of which had only just been delivered from the brown plague.

The Germans are returning.

Civilians who had only just returned to their homes took to the road again.

As they prepared to celebrate Christmas, German families also celebrated this new offensive.

What a wonderful Christmas present one could hear in the streets.

Gerbal’s pollsters noted, “People are profoundly happy that we have seized back the initiative, especially since no one expected [music] it.

This operation reinvigorated the German population.

One soldier wrote to his wife, “The snow must be stained red with the blood of Americans.

We’re going to cast them into the ocean.

The arrogant, loudmouth apes from the new world.

They will not set foot on our Germany.

” But the determination of the German soldiers sometimes escalated into bloodthirsty fervor as they committed numerous war crimes.

On the 17th of December, 69 American prisoners of war were shot dead by the SS.

A few days later, in the little town of Malmmedi, the bodies of 86 GIs executed by the same SS unit were discovered.

Belgian civilians, men, women, and children were also massacred.

They spared no one.

Meanwhile, chaos reigned on the American lines.

To add to the confusion, German commandos disguised as Americans had infiltrated Allied territory, switching roadsides and carrying out sabotage.

The GIS were suspicious of everyone and everything.

They intercepted vehicles and carefully checked identity papers.

They were told to ask questions that only an American could answer.

In one of the most critical periods of winter 1944, the military police would ask at every checkpoint, “Who is Donald Duck’s girlfriend? What is Roosevelt’s dog’s name? Sometimes spies were captured.

The German troops pushed on with their breakthrough.

They besieged the small Belgian town of Bastonia, a crucial strategic point for the success of their operation.

18,000 GIS were defending the town.

In their ranks, the rumor spread that the Germans didn’t take prisoners.

The American soldiers doubled their efforts, but the town was quickly surrounded by panzas.

The US troops were caught in a trap.

While he was preparing an offensive further south, [music] General Patton was called to the rescue.

In mid-inter, he swung his army round 90° and headed straight north, pushing hard for Bastonia.

He had promised Eisenhower that this maneuver would take him no more than 3 days.

His tanks drove day and night through appalling conditions.

They had not planned for icy roads but managed to keep moving forward.

Meanwhile, in Bastonia, the gis were up against the Germans and the weather.

Many died frozen in their foxholes.

On the 26th of December, the Germans looked up at the sky in horror.

The snow had stopped.

The snowflakes had been replaced by the heavy bombers [music] of the US Air Force, which pounded the German positions.

[music] Soon after, as he had promised, Patton’s third army came to relieve the [music] siege of Bastonia.

Just in time, Hitler’s gamble had backfired.

The human cost was [music] high.

On the Allied side, 80,000 men killed or injured.

The Germans counted [music] 120,000.

Overall, the battle merely pushed back the hour of reckoning for the Reich.

But it came as a wakeup call for the Allies.

They had realized one thing.

Germany was still dangerous.

[music] At the Furer’s headquarters, the mood was one of concern.

Guring suggested to Hitler that he should seek an armistice.

“The war is lost,” he explained.

Hitler replied, “I forbid you to take any such decision on this point.

If you disobey my orders, I’ll have you shot.

” Hitler was wrapped up in his delusions.

He insisted, [music] “We will never surrender.

We may go down, but we will take a world with us.

[music] Despite the withdrawal of Hitler’s armies on all fronts, five months of war and chaos still lay ahead before the fall of Berlin and the defeat of the Third Reich.

The beast was weakened, but not yet dead, and the Germans seemed ready to follow the Furer to the very end.

Heat.

Heat.

[music]

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