It’s not like the baby.

Even today, Irwin Raml remains one of the most recognizable commanders of World War II.

Still famously referred to as the desert fox for his daring initiative on the battlefields of North Africa.

Raml’s legacy and ultimate destiny lay in his willingness to do something very few other generals would even consider.

Speaking the brutal truth about the progress of the war to Adolf Hitler.

Irwin Raml’s young son, Manfred, witnessed his father’s unpredictable relationship with Hitler.

Raml’s honesty would one day cost him dearly.

[Music] We have interrupted this program to bring you another special [Music] My father had the at first no problems with Hitler.

Irwin Raml was many things.

He was a brilliant tactical and operational leader u who at the same time was blind to certain strategic realities about the regime that he was serving.

He could be kind and generous and overbearing and tyrannical.

He was also a highly decorated lieutenant and German hero of World War I.

After the demilitarization of the German armed forces following the Great War, Irwin Raml chose to remain in the army.

First as an instructor, then later in the mid 1930s as Adolf Hitler’s military escort at the annual Nermberg Rally.

Over the years came promotions to captain, major, and colonel.

Raml and Hitler’s paths would cross several more times ahead of Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, launching World War II.

Irwin Raml’s genius lay in armored warfare.

In 1940, Hitler gave Raml command of the German 7th Panzer or tank division.

He led his panzers to quick victory in France and all the way to the English Channel.

In February of 1941, Raml was promoted to Lieutenant General.

It was Irwin Raml’s next assignment that made him a legend, earning him one of the most famous nicknames in military history.

Confidence was something that Raml never lacked for.

Uh, you know, the man had quite the ego.

Uh, of course, as the saying goes, um, it’s not bragging if it’s fact.

[Music] Irwin and Lucy Raml had one child, Manford, born in 1928.

Manford Raml, like most young people in Nazi Germany, was eventually swept up into World War II as well as into the shadow of his famous father.

He was a good father, a good husband.

He was admirable.

Adolf Hitler’s rise to chancellor, then president of Germany, beginning in 1933, changed Raml’s life in many ways.

What this small German family could not foresee was that their new fur had set his sights on world conquest and also racial purity.

30,000 stormtroop weapons and Hitler speaks [Music] and his veterans cheer.

[Music] Hitler came to power by telling Germans that he would lead them back from economic and military ruin.

The nation’s despair a result of the harsh penalties laid out against the country in the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I.

The general feeling was that um we had been unjustly treated and uh so he used that resant.

I am the one who will bring your proud back and I’ll be the one who takes the injustice um away from you.

Germany had no place in the world.

Had no standing in the world.

Germany wasn’t even a laughingstock.

Germany was completely irrelevant.

But something more sinister was also in play in Germany.

It would begin to reveal itself to Irwin Raml and the majority of the German population after World War II was well underway.

Mmgard Schmid was a school girl in Germany.

I had information coming from all sides.

There were the the soldiers coming in and uh and saying Germany is the greatest, the best, the finest and our beloved fur alitera high fur, you know, stuff like that.

In America, people would fall off their chairs screaming with laughter.

If we had to call any of our leaders hotly beloved, our loved leader, [Music] my father says Hitler every morning.

We have to say Hal Hitler seven times a day.

And if you think I don’t know my German songs, here they are, you know.

And I threw my hand out and belted out the German on this London Morgan de you know today it’s Germany tomorrow the whole world [Music] in 1939.

Nobody wanted a war except Adolf Hitler.

In early 1941, following the conquest of the majority of Western Europe, Adolf Hitler ordered his newest lieutenant general, Irwin Raml, to go to North Africa.

Raml would be given command of two Panzer divisions.

Irwin Raml’s newly named Africa Corps would be fighting the British in the desert.

Before leaving for Africa, Raml and Hitler met.

There were no cracks in their relationship in 1941 as Raml took over command of the Africa Corps.

That would change.

Raml’s relationship with Hitler before uh Raml was sent to North Africa with the Africa Corps uh was very much uh that of a uh superior subordinate in that there was no questioning on the part of Raml of Hitler’s authority.

Raml became a favorite of Hitler’s since the very beginning.

Hitler and Raml’s connection had been built on mutual experiences.

Raml was a combat soldier just as Hitler had been in the First World War.

Manford Raml, not yet a teenager, wondered if he would ever see his father again.

The relationship between Evan Raml and his son Manfred Raml is in many ways very much a classic father-son relationship in that the son the the father wants the son to be one thing to grow into this type of man this type of individual and the son has the ideas.

Arvin Raml had no no qualms about talking with Manfred, expressing some misgivings about the direction the war was taking and trying to pass on whatever fatherly advice that he that he could.

[Music] Irwin Raml always wanted to lead.

North Africa gave him yet another opportunity.

He wanted a combat command.

He had been a combat officer in the First World War.

He’d been very good at it.

He thrived on it.

He wanted to get back into the action.

He was also personally very brave.

He believed in leading from the front.

[Music] By 1941, English code breakers had already cracked Germany’s secret code known as Enigma.

The British were reading German military plans as they were being sent out from Berlin.

My father never believed it, that such a difficult code could be broken.

The Germans believed that the Enigma system would require years for a single message.

The mistake is that in wartime any assumption or presumption that you make about enemy capabilities can turn out to be wrong.

[Music] In North Africa, as was the case in France, Irwin Raml led his German and Italian tanks and soldiers from the front lines.

Seeing their commander in the thick of the fight earned Raml great respect from his troops.

And he began attack which brought back Libya in two over almost two weeks to the German Italian forces.

Success came quickly in North Africa.

Almost immediately, Raml began driving the British army out of key desert strongholds throughout 1941.

The early victories by an aggressive and audacious Raml in North Africa’s western desert earned him more points with Adolf Hitler.

Germany’s furer felt the people back home needed to better know one of his most successful field commanders.

Hitler promoted Raml to field marshal.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Gerbles was told to make Irwin Raml into a hero back in the fatherland.

The German propaganda minister began to mount a uh propaganda campaign to put and then keep Raml’s image in front of the German people.

Raml was a handsome man.

It didn’t hurt that he was photogenic.

Uh it didn’t hurt that he was well spoken.

Raml became the poster boy for the Vermach.

The German army’s new face of victory provided a muchneeded boost of morale on the home front as the war headed into 1942.

The relations of my father to Hitler remained rather good.

My father didn’t come so often to Germany and then Hitler did not interfere in his tactics because the African war was a very fastgoing war.

[Music] Raml’s run of success in North Africa had given him freedoms not enjoyed in other parts of the world by German generals especially those commanding in Russia where Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

The desert fox as Raml had been respectfully branded by the British for his genius and daring had latitude due to his early victories.

When orders came in from the Nazi general staff and Raml didn’t like them, he ripped them up and did it his way.

These actions baffled the British who were still reading the Germans coded messages telling them where the next battle would be fought.

The British were expecting that he was going to follow the orders that they were reading courtesy of Altra and which as almost as soon as Raml got those orders, he tossed them out the window and did it his own way.

In late 1942, the fight in North Africa began to turn back in favor of the Allies.

[Music] It was the breakthrough.

Within two hours, our light tanks were 40 mi behind Ruml’s lines, destroying his transport.

Raml’s early successes were undone mostly due to the British receiving tons more supplies and also because the United States was now in the war and fighting alongside England in North Africa beginning in early November 1942.

Our artillery begins to find the range.

A direct hit on an enemy 88 mm gun position.

Field marshal Irwin Raml begged German leadership for more of everything to regain his lost momentum, but was met with silence.

Made a long list asking Hitler to do this.

In the meantime, they sent the new tanks to Africa, but it was nothing done.

Hitler was taking a very hands-off approach.

It was almost as if he didn’t care.

Uh North Africa was to him a sideshow.

Hitler fully expected the war to be over by the end of 1942.

The superiority of the British was so overwhelming and the strategy was made so carefully and exactly that the Germans had no chance.

Raml’s Africa Corps attacked.

Despite shortages of material and men, Irwin Raml heroically led the fight to recapture North Africa.

The odds were just too overwhelming, even for the legendary desert fox.

For the enemy, the situation worsened.

Frequent bouts of depression, insomnia, low blood pressure, headaches, and jaundice began to affect Raml.

Despite sickness and defeat, the reputation of Irwin Raml continued to grow.

It really was a case of of Raml running rings around his opposition.

They never really quite got the measure of him.

And it wasn’t until he was so badly outnumbered in men and material that he could not stop an Allied advance that he was finally compelled to retreat out of North Africa entirely.

With North Africa now lost, Irwin Raml returned to Germany.

My father went to see Hitler and Rustenberg on his own in initiative and he said I we have to give up Africa.

It’s not more possible to do anything good under such circumstances.

Then Hitler be became unfriendly to them and said, “How many rifles do you have in your army?” My father said, “I didn’t count them.

” And I said, “That’s a wonderful general who doesn’t even know what how many rifle he has.

” And my father said, “The best thing is you come to Africa and show us how to fight Montgomery with a carbine 98.

” And then Hitler said, “Leave the room.

” And my father went out and he run after him.

They come back and we all have shattered nerves.

But the relationship was starting to sour.

By the spring of 1943, Raml began to feel that his troops in North Africa had been sacrificed needlessly.

A sense of betrayal first began to manifest itself at this point whenever Raml was in Hitler’s presence.

The tremendous charisma that Hitler possessed um would serve to at least temporarily overcome the doubts that Raml was beginning to have.

[Music] In May of 1943, 130,000 Germans and Italians surrendered to North Africa, signaling the end of the access fight there.

It was around this time that many historians believe Irwin Raml began to first hear stories of the executions and the mass murder of Russian prisoners of war and civilians.

It wasn’t until late in 1943 when Raml began to learn of the excesses committed by not just the SS but by the Vermacht on the Eastern front started hearing the rumors about uh the concentration camps, the death camps uh the final solution.

uh that his whole attitude towards Hitler began to uh to turn not just sour but arguably hostile.

This was the Adolf Hitler Irwin Raml didn’t know but was beginning to perceive.

uniformed men came to our school and put up posters uh inscribed posters saying Duden St.

Una meaning the Jews are downfall.

The entire huge organization to exterminate the Jews was concealed well enough so the majority of the people did not know about it.

And then my father discovered not only a lot of crimes which had been made but also that this will be a tremendous dilemma and it will be not possible to come to an reasonable peace arrangement.

[Music] Denied another command in Italy, Raml would eventually be put in charge of the defense of Western Europe.

Uh the stage was set for the final confrontation that would come between Hitler and Raml.

Before that happened though, in February of 1943, the Germans were engaged on the Eastern Front in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Russian soldier Boris Elon saw the vicious combat firsthand.

RBA.

[Music] Many historians believe this brutal winter fight was the turning point of World War II.

The Germans and access powers suffered over 800,000 casualties.

Following Stalenrad, the Russians began pushing the Germans out of the Soviet Union.

Irwin Raml and Adolf Hitler watched the results from Russia.

Both knew it was only a matter of time before the Allies opened their much anticipated second front in Western Europe.

Because of his familiarity with the British and Americans from North Africa, Field Marshall Irwin Raml was given command of Western Europe’s defense.

There, Adolf Hitler championed his so-called Atlantic Wall, fixed fortifications along the coast that supposedly stretched over 1,600 miles from Norway to the border of Spain.

Hitler believed the defensive imp placements would stop any American British invasion of Western Europe.

What Irwin Raml found on inspection was that Hitler’s Atlantic Wall existed only in the Furer’s dreams.

My father had a rather realistic idea of the Allied tactics and way of fighting.

Raml recognized that if the Germans were to stop an invasion in the west, they had to do it at the waterline in the first 24 hours of battle.

They could not let the Allied army get ashore in Western Europe.

Others disagreed with Raml’s strategy of stopping the allies in the water.

My father was not very convincing.

Obviously, Vietnamstead still believed on the big mobile battle.

By the time he was given command in France in late 1943, Irwin Raml had made up his mind about how things would ultimately end for Germany in World War II.

My father was absolutely certain that Germany cannot win any war anymore.

Raml expected an Allied invasion to come somewhere along the coast of France because of its suitable landing beaches.

Fortifications were strengthened and new ones built.

Hundreds of thousands of mines were laid and thousands of obstacles constructed on the French coast.

Bunkers and machine gun nests were put up to destroy landing craft before they hit the shoreline.

Other insidious barriers would attempt to slow down soldiers at the W’s edge and wreak havoc with paratroopers and gliders behind the eventual landing beaches.

At least the Atlantic Wall was no longer pure fiction.

Raml moved his headquarters from Paris 40 mi closer to what he believed would be the eventual front lines on the coast of France.

He would lead the defense of the west from here at Lar Ro Gillion, a 12th century chateau overlooking the north bank of the river sain.

That was his plan anyway.

In the spring of 1944, logic had it that any Allied assault would come at Paralle, the closest point between France and England, just 19 miles across the English Channel.

That’s what Allied leaders wanted Raml and Hitler to think.

They even thought up an ingenious plan to make it seem that way.

[Music] One of the great stories of World War II that is poorly known to this day is Operation Fortitude.

An allied army of soldiers, tanks, trucks, and radio traffic in England was set up.

All of it fake, wholly designed to point towards an Allied invasion coming at Kala, 150 mi northeast of the coast of Normandy.

And the Germans had no mean to find out if this is true or not true.

It was in its own way every bit as complex and detailed and required as great a degree of pre precision um as the overlord landings on Normandy.

The activities of the French resistance were carefully coordinated with fortitude to again create the impression that the landings were going to happen in the pad kle.

[Music] Hitler was duped.

If he had stayed with his original conviction of Normandy, the Normandy beaches might have been more heavily reinforced than they were.

Raml was duped just like almost every other senior German officer.

Adolf Hitler believed that Irwin Raml and the Atlantic Wall would stop the Allies wherever the invasion took place.

Hitler, however, never once visited any of the fortifications on the French coast to see for himself.

Raml was like a jolt of electricity when he took over command.

In reality, this was now Raml’s Atlantic Wall.

And if he was going to be given command of the Atlantic Wall, he was going to turn it into an Atlantic Wall.

He was going to do his damnedest to stop the allies at the wat’s edge and not allow them to gain a foothold on occupied Europe.

First step, fortification of the coast with the positions for infantry in the minefield using the experiences from Africa and then the armored division distributed on the different parts of the coast so that they can interfere on the same day or night.

So he saw a certain chance to compensate the not existence of the German Navy and the rather poor existence of the air force.

And my father was also convinced that no mobile battle in the size of 19440 was any more possible because the allied British and Americans were so superior in the air that they were would have nailed down the German armor and it would have been hopeless for them.

The Atlantic wall was being reinforced.

Thinking the Allies intended to strike directly across the channel at its narrowest point, the enemy kept strong forces in the area and heavily fortified the Padacle coastline.

He had hoped to have 6 million mines laid by the time the uh the wall was finished and the allies in invaded.

As it was, he got 2 million of those 6 million laid.

But he trained the troops.

He had constant exercises.

When they weren’t digging trenches and building bunkers and laying mines, they were training.

Raml being Raml was able to uh not only get his manpower mobilized of turning the Atlantic Wall from uh a joke into uh what was literally one of the most formidable defensive systems ever imp placed in Modern Warfare.

[Music] Uh he came up with uh several different designs for beach obstacles uh for mines for detonation of mines and mine fields uh for sighting bunkers and designs of bunkers.

He’d sketch out what his concept was and then hand it to his staff and tell them to make it a reality.

[Music] He did a lot of fortifications himself, a lot of initiative and also imagination.

He was more a manager.

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