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(ominous orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In the autumn of 1916,
during the First World War,
Germany began the construction of a major defense line,
the Siegfriedstellung, literally meaning
the Siegfried Position.
This line of defense was known to the British
as the Hindenberg Line.
At the same time, however,
the British and the French
were both developing a new weapon,
one which could easily breach Germany's line of defense,
the tank.
(machine guns firing)
By 1938, the same name was applied
to a new extensive defense,
officially the West Wall,
which was under construction
along Germany's western frontiers.
The line of the wall ran approximately
from east of Basel to Karlsruhe,
west to Luxembourg, and northeast along the borders
of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Originally intended to defend the re-annexed Saar region
in 1936, it was expanded to become the German counterpart
to the Allies' Maginot Line.
Germany's line of defense became known to the Allies
as the Siegfried Line.
The original idea of constructing the wall
began as early as 1936 when Germany troops
first entered the Rhineland.
There was a double line running almost the entire length
of the western borders of Germany.
On the northern section of this line,
there were also the added barriers
of the great Rur and Maas Rivers,
and to the south, the Rhine.
It was envisaged that these rivers
would not stop an advancing army,
but they would delay them long enough
to allow time for the Germans
to bring up mobile reserve forces.
Along the frontier was some of Germany's
most ancient towns and cities.
Each of these was also fortified.
The roads through these towns
would prove to be the weak links in the defenses.
Around each town, there were heavy concentrations
of dragon's teeth, minefields,
and concrete pillboxes.
The greatest defense of all, however,
was not in concrete and metal barriers,
but in the propaganda myth that surrounded them.
According to the Nazis, the West Wall was invincible,
even to the tanks which had breached the wall
in the First World War.
Further inland was a second line of defense,
one which incorporated the cities
along the widest part of the Rhine Valley.
Cologne, Koblenz, and Karlsruhe.
These were also heavily fortified
with minefields, tank traps, and pillboxes.
In May 1938, the great undertaking had commenced.
Hitler had ordered that the whole length
of Germany's frontier with France,
Luxembourg, and Belgium should be fortified
within 18 months.
The man who was given the overall task
of supervising construction
and the army defense engineers was Dr. Todt,
an engineer from an upper class southern Germany family.
Todt had little contact with politics
and the National Socialists,
but was well liked by Hitler.
Todt and his team set to work immediately,
drawing up the plans and schedules
for the mammoth task ahead.
The job was to be completed within 18 months,
and Todt was given the authority
to call upon all of the resources
that Germany had to offer.
The mighty steelworks of the Ruhr Valley,
already running at full capacity
to feed Hitler's new war machine,
enlisted more men and reopened old plants,
which had been closed during the Depression.
They were going to need to produce
over one million tons of steel and iron.
(triumphant music)
(militaristic orchestral march)
Forests were cleared to produce enough timber
required to build the wall.
(dynamite exploding)
Rocks were blasted to produce the three million tons
of ballast needed.
(lively orchestral music)
5,000 kilometers of heavy steel cable was produced.
This was to be used to reinforce
the three meter thick concrete structures
making them impregnable.
(lively orchestral music)
The German state railways were operating
at least 100 freight trains every day,
carrying the materials necessary
to feed the inexhaustible construction sites.
(lively orchestral music)
Distribution centers were established
along the railway network
where the loads were transferred to trucks
to continue the rest of the journey by road.
During the period of construction,
over 1/3 of Germany's total production of cement
went on building the West Wall.
In all, they would need
a staggering eight million tons of cement.
Tens of thousands of private trucks
were commandeered from all over Germany.
At the height of construction,
over 8,000 truckloads of materials
were transported to the sites every single day.
These trucks were all privately owned,
and the owners were paid a pittance for their use.
Many operators soon went out of business
only to find that their trucks
had subsequently been confiscated.
(lively orchestral music)
In all, over one million tons of timber
would be required to build the wall.
This amounted to 780,000 cubic meters of wood.
(lively orchestral music)
Three million rolls of barbed wire were used.
If laid out end to end,
this amount of wire would run for 30,000 kilometers.
(lively orchestral music)
Hundreds of thousands of steel girders were produced.
These would be used to support the structures
and also to reinforce the concrete fortifications.
(lively orchestral music)
Despite the massive propaganda advantage,
Hitler's wall was regarded by many
as the Fuhrer's white elephant.
For, they asked themselves,
what useful purpose could it serve?
Despite this, construction stormed ahead
at tremendous expense
and with a massive recruitment of labor
from all over the Third Reich.
From cities all over Germany
came a force of skilled labor,
carpenters, bricklayers, and engineers
who were only too glad to have a job again.
Or that is how the propaganda went.
Todt also had at his disposal
huge resources of cheap or even free labor
still available in Germany,
which was only just barely recovering from the Depression.
Todt had amassed a workforce of 100,000 military engineers,
350,000 men from his own outfit,
known as Organization Todt,
and many tens of thousands more
from the Nazi Labor Force.
The workforce lived in camps,
which had been established all along
the remote border areas.
Unlike Germany's industrial areas and cities,
the frontiers of Germany were scattered
with small rural villages,
where time had stood still for centuries.
By the October of 1938,
532,000 men, women, and children
were working on the fortification.
However, they were not all volunteers.
On one day alone in August of 1938,
12,000 men had been transported from Berlin.
To defy the order would have meant,
at the best, imprisonment.
One contractor in Berlin lost 400 of his finest workers.
All of them had been taken to the line in closed lorries,
and all of them had been sworn to secrecy
or suffer the consequences.
(workers chattering)
Many of the workforce were natives
of this remote and depressed borderland of Germany.
The young, the old, women, and men,
all came to work on the line.
They were more than happy to supplement
their pitiful incomes received
from their small holdings and farms,
which were still operated in the traditional strip system
of the Middle Ages.
(lively orchestral music)
The West Wall was in fact the greatest construction program
ever undertaken in Germany's history.
Although propaganda constantly reported to the German people
how everybody was working together
for the ideals of the new Nazi Germany,
the truth of the matter was in fact
most of the workforce was conscripted,
or forced labor.
(triumphant singing in foreign language)
(triumphant orchestral music)
(ominous music)
Over half of the structure was underground,
the thousands of pillboxes being linked
by a series of subterranean passageways and tunnels.
Work on these was particularly hazardous.
And many workers were killed
during the four years of construction
through cave ins.
(discordant orchestral music)
The pointed concrete pyramids,
or so-called dragon's teeth,
varied in heights from between one meter and three meters
and were primarily to stop tanks.
They were laid throughout the line in rows of five.
Towards the end of the construction period in 1939,
there was an air of dissatisfaction
amongst the laborers.
They felt they were being treated like convicts
working 15 hours a day with very poor cramped
living conditions and poor food.
Guards were drafted in to control the workforce
and prevent strikes from breaking out.
But as the dissatisfaction grew stronger,
desperate measures were introduced
to improve working conditions
and keep the construction on schedule.
Anyone who had worked continuously for more than 12 months
was allowed leave.
Wives were allowed to visit the camps
and given cheap railway passes to travel.
The wages were increased.
And to those who worked in the more difficult
or dangerous conditions,
medals were awarded.
These measures, introduced on Hitler's orders
to complete the line at all costs,
mollified the irate workforce.
(lively orchestral music)
There were many young workers from the Arbeitsdienst,
which was the Nazi Labor Force.
Every able German boy or girl
had to join this for six months
as soon as they reached the age of 17.
Although, many volunteered at a much younger age.
Their free muscle provided much of the labor
for digging the foundations
and the anti-tank traps and also for laying
the barbed wire fencing.
By the August of 1939,
the task was complete.
The West Wall was finished.
They had completed in just over a year
a mammoth construction of concrete, steel, and timber,
which stretched across the western frontiers of Germany
like a gray snake.
It was over 640 kilometers long.
It reached into Germany along its length,
some four kilometers in depth.
14,000 pillboxes and bunkers had been constructed,
linked by a network of concrete roads.
The cost had been a staggering 3.5 billion German marks.
Whatever others may have thought
about the feasibility or purpose of this new line
of fortification, Hitler had his own opinion,
and it was all part of his grand plan.
He knew that it would give him
the complete freedom of action in the east
that he needed for his intended actions
in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
For the first time in history,
due to the protection the wall offered in the west,
Germany did not have to fear a war on two fronts.
The reason for her military downfall
so often in the past.
Hitler had once remarked to one of his generals,
"Believe me general, I am the greatest builder
of fortifications of all time.
I built the West Wall."
In Britain and America,
this new gray concrete wall
that had suddenly appeared so startlingly
across the center of Europe was thought so amusing
that it was dubbed the Siegfried Line.
It became the subject of a song
and was one of the musical hits of 1939.
♫ We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line
♫ Have you any dirty washing, mother dear
♫ We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line
♫ 'Cause the washing day is here
♫ We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line
For a long time afterwards,
first the British and then the American soldiers
going off to war would sing the lines of the song
about how they would be hanging out their washing
on the Siegfried Line
if the Siegfried Line's still there.
However, it was, and in fact still is.
Ironically, tragically, over 100,000
of those young soldiers, British, French,
Canadian, and American marching gaily to war
with that song on their lips
were fated to die before its steel and concrete bunkers.
A similar number of young German soldiers
would suffer the same fate defending it.
Each bunker was about seven meters wide
and six meters high with the walls and roof
up to three meters thick.
Each bunker would house a garrison of 14 men.
The fortifications were typically Germanic,
hard, lean, and spartan.
The wall was ready like a snake ready to catch its prey,
and when it did, its bite would be deadly.
Following his attack on Poland
and his failed peace attempt with the West,
the wall gave Hitler time to plan his assault westward.
By 1940, however, he no longer had a need for the wall.
He was now master of western Europe.
The wall was abandoned.
Its bunkers locked.
By the beginning of 1944, the Germans knew
that an invasion was inevitable,
and they looked to the defenses of the West Wall
to prevent the Allies from entering Germany.
By the summer of 1944,
the south of Britain was crammed with men and equipment.
America had dispatched almost 950,000 troops
as well as vast amounts of trucks,
armored cars, tanks, and supplies.
The roads of Kent were full of trucks end to end,
an endless convoy of men and machinery.
This was to be start of the greatest amphibious operation
ever undertaken in the history of warfare.
5,000 ships, together with thousands of smaller craft
backed by 1,100 aircraft were about to hurl
almost 200,000 men against Hitler's Atlantic wall,
beyond which Field Marshall von Rundstedt's 60 divisions
were lying in wait.
Once the beaches of Normandy had been breached,
Operation Overlord called for an army
of almost two million British, American,
and Commonwealth troops to advance inland across Europe.
The objective, nothing less than the liberation of Europe
and the defeat of Nazi Germany.
(ominous music)
The assault was finally launched
on the Sixth of June, 1944,
a day that would forever be known to the Allies as D-Day.
(machine guns firing and bombs exploding)
The days following the invasion
became a fierce battle between the Allies
trying to secure their beach head
and the Germans preventing them from doing so.
More troops were being ferried across the Channel,
and the advance continued inland through Normandy.
The US Third Army was unleashed into Brittany
and then south towards the River Loire.
At the same time, the US First Army
was advancing towards the town of Vier
with the British Second Army
launching an assault on Villers-Bocage.
(machine guns firing)
The German resistance was fierce,
and they launched counterattack after counterattack.
Hitler was adamant that there should be no withdrawals
from Normandy and ordered his generals
to keep the Allies contained.
(rifles firing)
By the end of July, the Allies' assault
was gathering momentum.
Nearly two million men had been landed,
and town after town was falling from Nazi hands.
Piece by piece, France was being liberated
by the Allies and Hitler's armies
were being forced into withdrawal.
As the Allies' advance gathered strength,
the Germans had little choice
other than to retreat or risk being encircled
and the traps being set for them.
Throughout France, there was a joyous cry.
After almost five long years of the horrors
of Nazi occupation, the Allies were finally coming.
(machine guns firing)
By the 25th of August,
two and a half months after the launch
of the assault on Fortress Europe,
the Allies were entering Paris.
Although most of the German garrison had withdrawn,
there were still pockets of resistance.
Snipers holed up in buildings
were forced to surrender or face the consequences.
As the columns of US troops
made their triumphant entry,
the city was saturated with joyous
and emotional Parisians.
For the first time in almost five years,
they were free once again.
(Parisians cheering)
On the Third of September,
it was the turn of Brussels to be liberated.
This time, it was by courtesy
of the British Guards Armored Division.
The Germans were now retreating back
into their own homeland,
and the gap was closing up on the German border.
If Germany was to remain in Nazi hands,
the Siegfried Line would be the final frontier.
However, the Allies did have a problem.
Supplies were not reaching the front line troops.
The supply columns could not keep pace
with the advance, and they were rapidly running out
of food, fuel, and ammunition.
By mid-September, the Allies were approaching
Western Wall defenses between Aachen and Gailenkirchen.
The Siegfried Line was holding.
The heavily fortified pillboxes,
spaced every distance of about 150 meters apart,
seemed impregnable.
(ominous music)
The next phase of the operation was hatched.
If the Allies could not breach the Siegfried Line,
then the plan was to go around it in the north.
Three Airborne divisions would seize the bridges
at Eindhoven, Grave, Nijmegen,
and across the Rhine at Arnhem.
A further division of ground troops
would link up with the Airborne forces
to support them once the bridges had been taken.
The first two assaults
at Grave and Eindhoven were successful.
The third managed to secure one side
of the bridge at Arnhem,
but there was a fierce resistance.
(machine guns firing)
The British airborne division with over 10,000 men
clung on desperately to the northern approach,
but they were unable to dislodge the Germans
from the southern end.
The road bridge remained intact,
but the Germans had destroyed the rail bridge.
Two Panzer divisions made it impossible
for the Allied reinforcements to reach the British,
and they were soon pinned down.
(machines guns firing)
(grenade exploding)
Hampered by poor wireless communications
and bad weather that delayed
the dropping of supplies by air,
the airborne division was beginning to succumb
to the German counterattacks.
On the 25th of September,
short of ammunition and knowing that, by now,
reinforcements were too far away to help,
the British were ordered to break out
and try to reach Allied lines.
Of more than 10,300 men engaged at Arnhem,
only 2,827 managed to reach safety.
By the beginning of October 1944,
the Allies were closing in on Aachen.
Aachen was defended by three volksgrenadier
and infantry divisions under the command
of General der Infantrie Friedrich Kochling.
Though these troops had not as yet engaged
in any major action, they had been decisively weakened
in the desperate efforts
to stem the Allies breaking through the Siegfried Line.
On October the Seventh, the Allies were attacking
six miles north of the city
attempting to encircle Aachen and attack it from the rear.
To the defenders, attempting to preserve Aachen
as a citadel of Nazi ideology seemed bleak.
Even so, the Germans did try to counterattack
attempting to hold the Allies' advance
long enough for von Rundstedt's Panzer divisions
to be brought in from reserves.
(guns firing)
This, however, would never happen.
The German High Command had already conceded
that Aachen would inevitably be lost
and would therefore not risk losing
their valuable Panzer divisions.
(guns firing)
The Allies pressed southwards towards Wurselen
some five kilometers from Aachen.
The Western Wall was beginning to show
signs of crumbling.
(ominous music)
(tanks firing)
(bombs exploding and rifles firing)
By the 10th of October,
the Allies were concentrating
on the hills overlooking Aachen.
The Germans were by now being pressed on two fronts,
and the Allies' net was tightening around the city.
An ultimatum was sent to the commander
of the German garrison.
If he failed to capitulate unconditionally
within 24 hours, the ultimatum warned,
the Americans would pulverize the city with artillery
and bombs and then seize the remaining rubble
by ground assault.
The 24 hours came and went.
And the final assault was launched on the city.
The industrial suburb of Haaren
on the outskirts of that city
was first to crumble.
To the north of the city, the US 30th Division
was also closing in.
(machine guns firing)
(bombs exploding)
(tanks rumbling)
(guns firing and bombs exploding)
The fighting around the outskirts of the city
went on seemingly endlessly
as the Germans fought ferociously
for every meter the Allies gained.
(bombs exploding and guns firing)
Meanwhile, the British 21st Armored Group
under Field Marshall Montgomery
were advancing on Antwerp further north.
Open farmland, easily crossed by tanks,
gave way to impenetrable forests
and high commanding hills.
German defenses were strong,
and the German soldier, fighting for his fatherland,
was a disciplined and formidable opponent.
Allied casualties were mounting heavily.
(bombs exploding and guns firing)
(tanks rumbling)
(rifles firing and bombs exploding)
After a long five week siege of Aachen,
the US troops finally moved in on the 13th of October,
sweeping towards the center through a maze
of rubble and damaged buildings.
The city had been the victim
not only of the Allied assault,
but also months of aerial bombing campaigns
by the Royal Air Force.
Of the 165,000 pre-war inhabitants,
a meager 20,000 remained.
German snipers holed up sewers or cellars
were flushed out.
On the other half of the attack across the city,
the American troops were blocked initially
by heavily defended blocks of flats.
The soldiers measured their gains in buildings,
floors, and even rooms.
Some said that the fight was from attic to attic
and sewer to sewer.
Germans sheltered and hid in all manner of buildings,
offices, and private dwellings
from which they launched attacks
on the rear of the US soldiers as they passed by.
The city had to be searched
comprehensively and thoroughly.
No building was left untouched.
On October the 19th, Oberst Wilck,
commanding what was left of the remaining German troops
issued his orders.
The defenders of Aachen will prepare
for their last battle.
Constricted to the smallest possible space,
we shall fight on to the last man,
the last shell, and the last bullet
in accordance with the Fuhrer's orders.
In the face of the contemptible, despicable treason
committed by certain individuals,
I expect each and every defender
of the venerable imperial city of Aachen
to do his duty to the end.
In fulfillment to our oaths to the flag,
I expect courage and determination to hold out.
Long live the Fuhrer and our beloved Fatherland.
The defenders of Aachen had been abandoned
and left to their fate.
They finally surrendered on the 21st of October.
Further north, the British fought hard
and began to attack east of the Maas River.
The next phase was the push towards the Rhine.
Germany was by now defending her borders on all fronts.
(guns firing and bombs exploding)
The mighty Siegfried Line, or Western Wall,
Germany's last defense had broken.
All that remained were piles of rubble
and the shattered remains of the pillboxes.
The Allies were now on German soil,
and Nazi Germany's final days were numbered.
All along the Siegfried Line,
Allied troops were hoisting flags
and clearing a path for the final assault
on Fortress Germany.
(ominous music)
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
flew to the line to see it for himself.
He had known that the risks and responsibility
of launching so many men in one assault were enormous.
Much could have gone wrong between those months
of June to October.
And no one knew better than he.
For 29 years earlier in the First World War,
thousands of British and Empire soldiers
had perished under machine gun fire
as they sought to land on the beaches of Gallipoli.
As First Lord of the Admiralty at that time,
he had borne the responsibility of the losses
and much of the blame.
General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander
of the Allied Expeditionary Force
for the invasion of Normandy,
also viewed the breached wall
in the winter of 1944.
Driven by his ruthless leadership,
the Allies had raced across France
to reach the German border.
The speed of its advance kept the Germans
always off-balance.
He had been the advocate of attacking Germany
on a broad front, a tactic which had paid off.
By December the 13th, the city of Metz had fallen.
Eisenhower then ordered his troops
in a bold diversion to strike at the German southern flank
and advance on the Rhine.
On March the 22nd, 1945, after a long and murderous winter,
the Allies finally crossed the Rhine,
a gigantic vice was now closing on the Third Reich.
This river was the last major natural obstacle
between the Allies and Germany's heartland.
Once across, the armies would fan swiftly
over Hitler's crumbling Reich
and encircle its industrial heart, the Ruhr Valley.
(ominous music)
Hitler had promised the German people invincibility.
He had promised that the Third Reich
would last for 1,000 years.
It lasted barely 12.
Hitler's Reich left hardly anything tangible in its wake
apart from the geographic and political consequences
of the most terrible war in history
with one exception, a lasting monument
in concrete and steel which still stands today.
The West Wall had held the Allied armies
and prolonged the war for seven months.
It was finally breached under the sheer weight of numbers.
The cost in Allied dead to breach the wall
was higher than that suffered
in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.
Where Hitler and his generals once walked
to a mighty rapture from the people of Germany,
there were now only the victorious footsteps
of an army which had brought down the final curtain
on an earth shaking drama.
(explosion)
(ominous orchestral music)
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