- 1 week ago
For educational purposes
After the German's defeat in World War I the Allies decreed that the menace of the Luftwaffe would never again be a significant threat. Germans were no longer allowed by international law to possess an airforce.
Secretly through the 20s and 30s, Germany began to rebuild her military capabilities, first in Russia and then in Italy, The Luftwaffe was reborn.
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and the German airforce was at the head of his invasion force.
During the course of the war the Luftwaffe was slowly ground down, but lack of resources and poor leadership contributed to a steady decline of this once proud fighting force.
Featuring rare archive footage, stunning 3-D computer graphics and rare film of the last surviving planes, this is a privileged glimpse into the world of Hitler's airforce.
After the German's defeat in World War I the Allies decreed that the menace of the Luftwaffe would never again be a significant threat. Germans were no longer allowed by international law to possess an airforce.
Secretly through the 20s and 30s, Germany began to rebuild her military capabilities, first in Russia and then in Italy, The Luftwaffe was reborn.
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and the German airforce was at the head of his invasion force.
During the course of the war the Luftwaffe was slowly ground down, but lack of resources and poor leadership contributed to a steady decline of this once proud fighting force.
Featuring rare archive footage, stunning 3-D computer graphics and rare film of the last surviving planes, this is a privileged glimpse into the world of Hitler's airforce.
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LearningTranscript
00:10It was to have been the war to end all wars.
00:14The first technological war.
00:17After five grisly years of conflict and stalemate,
00:20it left the flower of a generation lying on the fields of France.
00:30The Great War was also witnessed as the birth of aerial combat.
00:35Above the 400 miles of trenches that marked the front lines,
00:39the first aerial skirmishes took place.
00:47The war in the air was not strategically significant,
00:51and few could have foreseen the pivotal role that air power would come to play
00:55less than 20 years later in World War II.
01:00Between 1939 and 1945,
01:04entirely new forms of combat would evolve around the new designs of this war.
01:09Deadly machines produced by both sides of the conflict.
01:13Aircraft such as the Hawker Hurricane,
01:16Supermarine Spitfire,
01:18the Stuka,
01:20Messerschmitt BF-109,
01:22Messerschmitt ME-410,
01:24and the Focke-Wulf FW-190.
01:29These revolutionary feats of engineering
01:31would change the face of war forever
01:33as the course of World War II
01:36would be matched by the struggle for air supremacy.
01:39It was Germany who would seize the mission.
02:01It was Germany who would seize the mission.
02:25In September 1918, the German lines crumbled under a concerted onslaught by the Allies.
02:33On the 11th of November, a hastily drafted armistice was signed.
02:37World War I was over.
02:40It was not unconditional surrender, but the Germans were required to hand over their heavy guns, locomotives, the entire Imperial
02:48Navy, and 2,000 warplanes.
02:52In addition, 7 million people and their lands would be ceded to the victors, and Germany would be forbidden to
02:59create offensive weapons.
03:03Germany's humiliation caused intense resentment, and this spread the first seeds of a drive to rearm and regain her pride.
03:22In May 1922, the first prospect of German rearmament was kindled by the lifting of restrictions on German civil aviation,
03:31and former military manufacturers, such as Heinkel, Junkers, and Dornier, re-emerged.
03:37New firms also appeared, one of them founded by the young Willi Messerschmitt.
03:43In just 20 short years, Messerschmitt designs would evolve from cumbersome biplanes to the jet-powered ME262.
04:01Under the thin guise of civilian development, clandestine work on military designs were carried out.
04:09Following a treaty with the Soviet Union, Germany acquired a secret air base inside Russia, Adlipetsk.
04:20Technical collaboration benefited both countries.
04:24Prototype bombers were even used as postal transports, in order to test the new designs.
04:33At home in Germany, there was an explosion in gliding clubs and civilian flying schools, which increased in number, supported
04:40by strong official encouragement.
04:43Indeed, flying appeared to have become a national obsession.
04:46And quickly rose to be one of the most popular of sports.
04:51In reality, the national enthusiasm with flying was a disguise for a new air force,
04:57which was soon to be producing the prototypes of the deadly destroyers, seen here in the museum at RAF Hendon.
05:06In charge of Lufthansa, Germany's leading civil airline, was a man of exceptional ability, Erhard Milch.
05:14He ensured that the Lufthansa airmen received an unusually extensive training for civilian pilots.
05:21Milch was never satisfactorily able to explain why his civilian pilots needed the skills to make a bombing run.
05:37On the 30th of January, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor.
05:43Collaboration with the Communist Soviet Union ended abruptly.
05:47Mussolini's Italy now became Germany's partner for aviation projects.
06:03Hitler needed a man he could trust to run the Luftwaffe, and he found one in Hermann Göring,
06:09who had been a distinguished fighter pilot and a hero of the First War, with 20 kills to his credit.
06:15A disciple of Hitler since 1922, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the fledgling German air force, the Luftwaffe.
06:24But Göring's popularity with Hitler was never to be matched by his ability.
06:32Göring was an indolent man, but was fortunate to be given industrious lieutenants.
06:37Luckily, our old friend Erhard Milch became Deputy Air Minister,
06:42and under Milch's powerful direction, the German aviation industry expanded rapidly.
07:15The secrecy with which the Luftwaffe had so fought for the first time,
07:17had so far been shrouded, could not continue indefinitely,
07:20and in 1934, the official establishment of a squadron of fighter biplanes was quietly announced.
07:27The world held its breath, but the reaction of Britain and France was muted.
07:33Seizing the opportunity, Göring added further squadrons of all types and supported a crash design program.
07:40As a result of Germany's covert developments, fast, superbly engineered aircraft would be available in the early stages of the
07:48war.
07:49This Focke-Wulf 190, now housed in the rafters of the Imperial War Museum, was one such plane.
07:56It was ready for service early in 1941.
08:00The Focke-Wulf 190, when it was released, outclassed the British Spitfire,
08:05and became the mainstay of German air defenses during the dark years of 1943 to 1945.
08:17But in the other classes of military aircraft, she was less than successful.
08:23Attempts to produce a fighter bomber, a class of aircraft, which the Germans dubbed the destroyer, was singularly unsuccessful.
08:31While the British flew this highly successful Mosquito type, the Americans had the lightning,
08:36and the Germans were constantly faced with unsuccessful types which fell from the skies when faced with the Spitfires and
08:43Hurricanes.
08:45The Luftwaffe was deficient, too, in the bomber division.
08:49Although the Heinkel 111 was a reasonably useful medium bomber, Germany always lacked a heavy bomber with long range for
08:56strategic intervention.
08:58She would pay dearly for this, with the inability to attack Russian industry on the scale of the Allied attacks
09:04on Germany.
09:06But in 1935, these problems still lay in the future.
09:12On the 1st of March, in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler proclaimed to a startled world the
09:19creation of a Reich Air Force.
09:21In flagrant disregard for the prospect of peace, the new German force was to be at least as large as
09:28those of Britain and France.
09:31In 1936, Hitler chose another great war hero as chief of the technical office.
09:36But Ernst Oudet's appointment would be a disaster.
09:41The four departments of the technical office were soon divided into 13 unstructured units,
09:47all responsible to one vast, inefficient bureaucratic office of administration.
09:52The Luftwaffe would always be dogged by this inefficiency.
10:08In the summer of 1936, civil war ignited in Spain.
10:15Germany professed neutrality, but Hitler's sympathies were with Franco's fascist forces.
10:22Now the Luftwaffe had a theatre in which they could test their aircraft and the strategy of Blitzkrieg.
10:29The Luftwaffe pilots could obtain the one commodity their training could not supply, actual combat experience.
10:38Over the next two years, the German Condor Legion achieved a standard of efficiency and combat readiness
10:44that would give them enormous advantage in the war ahead.
10:49The Luftwaffe's superlative 88mm anti-aircraft gun was shown to be outstanding both against targets in the air and on
10:57the ground.
11:00But the Condor Legion will be remembered for the first appearance of one particular aircraft, the Junkers 87 dive bomber,
11:09the Stuker.
11:10The Stuker displayed here is housed at RAF Hendon and was later equipped with two cannons, turning it into an
11:18effective tank destroyer.
11:20In the background looms the menacing form of what was to become one of the most successful of the Luftwaffe's
11:26fighters, the deadly ME 109.
11:32One indelible stain will forever remain on the memory of the Condor Legion.
11:36On the 26th of April 1937, the small undefended town of Guernica was destroyed by a sustained attack from the
11:44air.
11:45In 1937, Guernica was a momentous and shocking event.
11:51Immortalized by Picasso's impassioned painting, it was a massacre of 1600 innocent civilians.
11:58Within five years, such slaughter will be commonplace.
12:18The End
12:18Exactly when Hitler and Stalin decided to carve up Poland between them is not clear.
12:23But the decision condemned the world to a sequence of events that would leave countless millions dead.
12:29The invasion on the 1st of September 1939 embroiled Europe once more in turmoil.
12:36Britain declared war, followed shortly after by France.
12:44The Luftwaffe was by far the world's strongest air force.
12:48It was designed for a lightning, blitzkrieg campaign.
12:52The enemy would be overwhelmed by massive force, applied in one place and at one time.
13:08By now the Luftwaffe was 4,000 aircraft strong and all were committed to the campaign.
13:15They identified and destroyed key targets of command, supply and communication
13:20and completely destroyed the outnumbered Polish air force on the ground.
13:29Within three weeks, Warsaw was surrounded.
13:32Hitler was in a hurry to complete the task and ordered the Luftwaffe to attack the Polish capital
13:38with every means at their disposal.
13:51An uneasy winter settled over Europe.
13:54It was not until April 1940 that Hitler made his next move.
13:59Denmark was overrun within a day.
14:03To preempt a British invasion, the conquest of Norway was the second part
14:08of what had become an improvised campaign, fuelled by its own success.
14:15The small Norwegian air force was surprised and quickly eliminated.
14:20Airfields, harbours and other strategic installations were either destroyed
14:24or seized by airborne assault by the new German paratroopers, the Fallschirmjager.
14:31The Ju-52s shuttled between Germany and Norway with wave after wave of reinforcements,
14:37and Norway was captured.
14:48The Luftwaffe had demonstrated that the rapid deployment of forces could win a war.
15:05After Norway, a more demanding task awaited the Luftwaffe.
15:10During the winter, the plans for Operation Yellow, Hitler's invasion of Holland, Belgium and France,
15:15had been completed.
15:17The first essential task was to nullify enemy air power,
15:21so that the Stuka dive bombers and airborne detachments could play their allotted roles.
15:33Early in the morning of the 10th of May,
15:35relays of German planes began attacking the airfields of Holland and Belgium,
15:40destroying numerous aircraft where they stood.
15:43Ahead of the fast advancing ground forces,
15:47Luftwaffe paratroopers seized bridges and communication links.
15:51The handful of enemy aircraft which had succeeded in getting aloft were quickly cut down by missions mid-109s.
16:02The Luftwaffe soon established air superiority.
16:05The Stuka swarmed forward to forge a path for the Panzers.
16:13Negotiations for the surrender of Rotterdam had already begun when the heart of the city was bombed.
16:19Attempts by the RAF to slow the progress by bombing bridges were thwarted by the Luftwaffe's fighters,
16:25and the RAF sustained heavy losses.
16:40The British expeditionary forces, together with many French troops, were trapped in a shrinking pocket around Dunkirk.
16:48Goering believed they could be finished off from the air, but it was to be the Luftwaffe's first major failure.
16:55While the German tanks stood back in frustration, the town and harbor of Dunkirk were destroyed by the Luftwaffe.
17:02But the British sustained far fewer casualties than the claims of the arrogant boasts by the Luftwaffe chief.
17:09The British army was snatched from the beaches of Dunkirk and carried to the safety of England.
17:16Even more worryingly, for the first time, the Luftwaffe had been engaged by enemy aircraft, which could meet it on
17:22equal terms.
17:24Goering consoled himself with the fact that in the final analysis, both sides' air forces suffered significant losses.
17:31But Germany now had total command over Western Europe.
17:40Blitzkrieg had achieved a remarkable string of victories, but the role of the Luftwaffe was instantly transformed.
17:47There was now no need for short-range lightning war.
17:51With no respite, the Luftwaffe was deployed in a long-range war of attrition in the battle over Britain.
18:04By summer 1940, the Luftwaffe had lost over a fifth of its aircraft.
18:11They could have been replaced, but manufacturing capacity was squandered in a wasteful diversity
18:17of airframes and engines as the Germans developed new types of aircraft.
18:21This constant search for the ultimate aircraft was to dog German plans throughout the war.
18:28Too many variants of almost every Luftwaffe aircraft were produced instead of concentrating
18:33on a few, reliable aircraft in good numbers.
18:36The ME-110 was one such example, appearing in a bewildering variety of variants,
18:42as a long-range escort fighter, night fighter, tank destroyer, and reconnaissance model.
18:49The British concentrated on a few, trusted models, and already aircraft production in beleaguered Britain
18:55outstripped that of Nazi Germany.
19:08During the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe pitted its entire strength against the Royal Air Force.
19:16As a prelude to the invasion, Goering had been given the task of destroying the RAF's capability in the south
19:22of England.
19:22It was essential that the Luftwaffe should have total command of the skies for the duration of the planned invasion.
19:31Goering was confident of a glorious victory.
19:34In July, the Luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF by 4 to 1.
19:39It was to be the world's first full-scale strategic air battle.
19:43It would also be the first time that the Luftwaffe had fought against an enemy air force of any strength
19:49and quality.
19:53The battle opened with four days of intensive daylight bombing of British shipping and coastal installations.
20:01The Luftwaffe lost 31 aircraft, 20 of them bombers.
20:05But crucially, the RAF had lost 16 Hurricanes and Spitfire fighters,
20:10whereas the Luftwaffe lost only 11 Bf 109 fighters.
20:22On the 12th of August, the Luftwaffe turned its attention to the initial radar installations.
20:28They lost another 11 fighters to the RAF's 22.
20:33It was a question of simple arithmetic.
20:36If the rate of attrition kept up like this, the RAF would lose.
20:42On the 13th, Goering made the first of what would be a series of blunders
20:47that would ultimately cause the Luftwaffe to lose the battle.
20:51Instead of pressing home the offensive against fighter command,
20:54bombers were dispatched to bomb cities as far apart as Swansea, Aberdeen and Belfast.
21:01Attempting to safeguard the dispersed bomber streams, the Luftwaffe lost 24 fighters to the RAF's 14.
21:08Of more importance was the fact that no damage had been caused to fighter command's airfields.
21:15The effect of the offensive was also blunted by poor intelligence gathering.
21:20The wrong airfields and factories were targeted.
21:23As the battle progressed, the loss of British fighters was heavy,
21:27but the loss to the Luftwaffe was even heavier.
21:31On the 15th, 50 German aircraft were destroyed in one day.
21:36Between the 13th and the 18th of August, 350 German aircraft were lost to the RAF's 170.
21:44In this battle of plane against plane, the Stukas were virtually useless and were rapidly withdrawn from the battle.
21:52The Bf 109 alone had demonstrated the performance to fight the Spitfires and Hurricanes on equal terms,
21:59but there were severe logistical difficulties.
22:03The Achilles heel of the Bf 109 was the rate at which it consumed aviation fuel.
22:09By the time it reached the war zone in England, it normally had only 30 minutes of combat time left.
22:16The RAF had a further, less obvious advantage, in that any pilot who successfully bailed out of England
22:23eventually became a prisoner of war.
22:26RAF pilots who bailed out could be back to their base and flying again in the same day,
22:31and planes were easier to replace than trained pilots.
22:36On the 19th of August, Goering directed that all efforts should be concentrated on the fighter airfields,
22:42but incredibly, not the radar stations, which were giving the British a vital edge in the battle.
22:49Nevertheless, the new Luftwaffe strategy was partially effective,
22:53and as losses grew, the number of operational RAF fighters dwindled.
22:58The British factories were able to keep pace with the losses in aircraft,
23:02but there were now not enough pilots to fly them.
23:06One by one, the fighter stations were being damaged to the point where they could scarcely operate.
23:12By the end of August, the RAF had no more than 350 fighters operational,
23:17and to keep going, the pilots were flying up to four sorties every day.
23:22It would only be a matter of time before the final defeat.
23:29It is often some small event which by chance turns the tide of battle.
23:35On the 24th of August, some Luftwaffe bombers mistakenly overshot their target,
23:40and dropped their bombs on London.
23:43The British retaliated the following day, and on several days following.
23:49Astonished Berliners found their own city under attack.
23:53An outraged Hitler vowed revenge, and Goering was directed to bomb London.
23:59The Luftwaffe, which was on the verge of a decisive victory against the RAF fighters,
24:03had no choice but to let the opportunity slip away.
24:08Air Chief Marshal Dowding's exhausted and depleted force was given the breathing space it needed
24:13to repair its airfields and to build up its fighter strength.
24:18Like a sponge, London could absorb the punishment that the German bombers inflicted,
24:23but the Luftwaffe losses spiralled.
24:26Throughout September, improved tactics and training gave the advantage to the Hurricanes and Spitfires
24:32over the Bf 109.
24:36The hurricane, responsible for most of the RAF kills during the Battle of Britain,
24:41still looks able to perform as the stable gun platform that it was in World War II.
24:49Most famous of all British aircraft, and still spoken of today as the definitive RAF fighter
24:55of the World Wars, the Supermarine Spitfire.
25:02Faced with the tangible supremacy of the RAF,
25:05Hitler had no alternative but to postpone the invasion until the following year.
25:10For Göring, it was total humiliation.
25:13His catalogue of tactical errors had cost the Luftwaffe dear,
25:17but he berated everyone except himself.
25:30In early 1941, Mussolini's adventures in North Africa were in serious difficulties.
25:36The Italians were in full retreat from the British and Commonwealth troops,
25:40and a large part of its fleet had been destroyed.
25:44Hitler was faced with a dilemma.
25:46He was preparing for the invasion of Russia,
25:49and did not want to open another war front in the Mediterranean.
25:52But if Italy was defeated, Britain could threaten Germany from the south.
25:58Hitler elected to send German reinforcements.
26:02Rommel's Africa Corps was dispatched to the Italians' aid,
26:05and 200 Luftwaffe aircraft were committed to the central and eastern Mediterranean to harass shipping and maintain supply lines.
26:14In April, Hitler moved against Yugoslavia.
26:18German aircraft flew in support of the fast-moving ground forces.
26:24German aircraft flew in support of the Soviet Union.
26:25Against an inferior enemy, the well-practiced techniques of blitzkrieg again proved successful.
26:31In three days, 15,000 died, and the Yugoslavs took to the hills.
26:49An equally swift and successful campaign against Greece followed.
26:54The British forces were evacuated to Crete,
26:57which now offered itself as a tempting strategic target to the commander of Germany's 4th Air Fleet.
27:03General Kurt Student proposed a major airborne assault.
27:19The British had negligible air cover, but they did have precise knowledge of the German attack.
27:25The Germans finally secured the island, but the price had been high.
27:41Hitler signed War Directive No. 21 in December 1940.
27:46It was in the face of united opposition from Göring, Milch, and Udette.
27:51In the following summer, Germany was to invade its former ally, the Soviet Union.
28:08The war in the east, he predicted, would be over in six weeks.
28:16It was a gross miscalculation.
28:20Along the 1,000-mile eastern front with Russia, a mighty army of three million men was assembled.
28:27It was supported by about 2,000 aircraft, including 900 medium bombers.
28:33The Luftwaffe conspicuously lacked the long-range bombers that would be needed to destroy Russia's vast and widely dispersed weapons
28:42manufacturing facility.
28:43They still relied on the Heinkel 111 medium bomber, which supplied nearly all of Göring's bombing capability.
28:55Early in the morning of June 22nd, the fully loaded bombers flew eastwards, passing high above the Soviet lines.
29:03Below, along a front running from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, the German artillery pounded the Soviet lines.
29:10The massed tank divisions rolled forward.
29:15The Luftwaffe's crucial first objective was the annihilation of the Soviet air force.
29:21Progress was rapid, and domination of the airspace allowed the Stukas to fulfill their traditional role as tactical support for
29:29the army.
29:31Taken by surprise and badly weakened by Stalin's purges, the Red Army recoiled in total disarray.
29:39The Luftwaffe's mobility was exploited to the full.
29:43Formations were shuttled over long distances to take part in engagements, with the inevitable cost in operational attrition.
29:54By late September, the Soviet Union had sustained disastrous losses, and Hitler ordered a final drive on Moscow.
30:01A final victory seemed near.
30:05And yet, despite the huge losses, the Red Army seemed to conjure more divisions to continue the resistance.
30:12The vast area which the Luftwaffe had to cover made the German ground forces vulnerable to successful hit-and-run
30:19tactics by Soviet aircraft.
30:21And as the war dragged on, Germany itself came under heavier attack from RAF bombing raids.
30:28The neglected defences began to cost Germany's industry dear, and its ability to replace lost aircraft suffered severely.
30:37Weather on the Eastern Front broke.
30:41Heavy rains reduced the roads to a quagmire of clinging mud, and the tanks and transport was brought to a
30:48standstill.
30:50All at once, the Moscow offensive was in desperate trouble.
30:54The Luftwaffe was increasingly drawn into large running air battles, which sapped its strength.
31:03When the cold weather arrived, it was at first welcomed.
31:07The ground became hard enough for vehicles to move.
31:10But the temperature continued to drop, and the notoriously punishing Russian winter began to grip the German forces.
31:19Radios refused to work, planes skidded off runways, and as many aircraft were lost from accidents as from combat.
31:27The Luftwaffe was able to operate only a quarter of its aircraft.
31:33The Germans endured the winter, but Moscow remained out of their grasp.
31:39In January, General Rostov's troops counter-attacked, and two large pockets were cut off by the Soviet forces.
31:46The Luftwaffe was called upon to airlift in supplies.
31:51In desperation, flying instructors and pupils from the air training schools were drafted in as pilots.
31:58The Luftwaffe's overstretched resources were subject to further strain,
32:03as they sought to support Rommel's string of startling victories in North Africa.
32:11At home, Germany had to endure a series of massed bombing raids.
32:16Hitler was still obsessed by a victory in Russia.
32:19The destruction at home was a price that would have to be paid.
32:24Hitler planned a new offensive south of the Caucasus for the spring,
32:28but the Soviets had not been idle during the winter months.
32:32Its air force had been reinforced by 2,000 British and American machines,
32:37and the Soviets were now building their own, modern warplanes in great numbers.
32:55The offensive rolled down towards the great mountains, but it was not properly supported by air power.
33:01By September, the 6th Army drew near to Stalingrad, but it had overreached itself.
33:09In November, the exhausted and exposed 6th Army was in no condition to resist the Soviet counter-attack which encircled
33:17it.
33:18280,000 men were trapped in an area 30 miles square.
33:24It fell to the Luftwaffe to maintain an airlift of supplies throughout the winter.
33:30500 tons of supplies would be needed to sustain the stranded army every day.
33:35Rarely was more than 100 tons a day achieved.
33:39The army was starving.
33:43In defiance of orders from Hitler, General Paulus faced the inevitable and surrendered.
33:49Few of the 260,000 men who marched into captivity would return.
33:56It was a shattering blow to German morale.
34:22It was a shattering blow to German soldiers.
34:28Throughout 1943, every part of the Luftwaffe declined in numbers and effectiveness.
34:34Training was reduced to a minimum,
34:37yet it was a highly skilled all-volunteer force with outstanding esprit de corps.
34:42The aircraft builders still managed to supply replacement planes.
34:47The 20,000 Me 109s were built, but the Luftwaffe was starved of new designs like the Me 262,
34:54which was delayed into 1944.
34:57The clear advantage which the Luftwaffe once had over its enemies had been eroded and reversed.
35:05Showing the ingenuity and determination that carried them so far,
35:08the designers and engineers made do with what was available.
35:12They tried to convert previous, ineffective or flawed designs into more relevant aircraft for their current needs.
35:22The Messerschmitt Me 410 Hornis was one of their successes.
35:28A heavy weapons platform able to take bombs, cannon and rockets.
35:32It became one of the Luftwaffe's foremost destroyers and was a very successful night fighter.
35:38On this example at RAF Cosford, the innovative rear firing guns can easily be seen.
35:45These were aimed by mirrors and a remote control device in the cockpit.
35:50It was still not enough.
35:52In the Mediterranean, the Allies' stranglehold on the North African supply lines tightened.
35:58German air superiority in the Mediterranean was rapidly whittled away,
36:02and with it, the last hopes for Rommel's Africa Corps.
36:12The Allied bombing offensive over Germany reached a new intensity.
36:17The American Air Force bombed by day and the RAF by night.
36:32The mounting damage to German industry made replacement of Luftwaffe aircraft increasingly difficult.
36:41The Luftwaffe planes fought desperately to inflict losses,
36:44but the Allies arrived in ever increasing numbers.
37:11With disastrous reverses on all fronts,
37:14Hitler nevertheless decided upon one massive offensive on the Eastern Front.
37:19Given the conditions in which the army and the Luftwaffe was required to operate,
37:24it is astonishing that the Germans were able to secretly amass 900,000 men and 1,800 aircraft for the
37:32operation.
37:35The Stukas were now flying in a tank buster role fitted with twin cannons.
37:41Here we can see the mount for the cannons on this Stuka.
37:47The Soviet generals had rightly calculated that the Germans would attempt to pinch off the huge Kursk salient
37:54and were thoroughly prepared with fresh troops and in-depth defenses.
38:00In July, a chance encounter between German and Soviet columns led to 1,000 tanks fighting a pitched battle.
38:07It was the largest tank battle of all time.
38:09Dense cloud and swirling smoke and dust meant that the air forces fought an entirely separate battle overhead.
38:16The losses on both sides were heavy, but Soviet reinforcements continued to arrive.
38:22For the Germans, far from home, and with lengthy and tortuous lines of supply,
38:28there was only one course of action open.
38:31Ignominious retreat.
39:03I will come to espera anytime fastest,
39:09in a mobile zone I'm walking to Tisch piernas
39:34Within only a few months,
39:36Luftwaffe losses had reached a full 2,000,
39:39a hemorrhage with which production could not keep pace.
39:43The Luftwaffe was a shadow of the elite fighting force
39:46which had flown to victory in the skies above Poland and France.
39:50The bomber offensive of 1943 and 1944
39:54meant that the cities and factories of the German homeland were all targets,
39:58and round-the-clock bombing of an entire country was the result.
40:02The American Air Force flew sorties during the day,
40:05escorted by long-range fighters.
40:07The RAF Lancasters took control of night bombing raids.
40:11In addition, roving night fighters and squadrons of mosquitoes
40:15occupied the skies over Germany by day and by night.
40:19Despite the resistance,
40:21the effect of this dual bombing on the cities, airfields and factories of Germany was dramatic.
40:27The development of new weapons was almost brought to a standstill.
40:31Manufacturing capacity was decimated.
40:34But in the early part of the bomber offensives, losses were alarmingly high.
40:40The British had given up daytime bombing in 1942,
40:43and in 1943 the Americans were about to do the same.
40:48But an inspired change of tactics was ordered by Lieutenant General Doolittle of the US 8th Air Force.
40:55He allowed his long-range fighters, like this P-51,
40:58to leave the bomber streams to roam free and attack the Luftwaffe fighters.
41:04The tactics were an immediate success, and German fighter losses rose dramatically.
41:10Adolf Galland, in charge of the German fighters, later recalled,
41:14the day the Allies took the fighters off close escort duties
41:18and allowed them to roam free to engage the Luftwaffe fighters in the air and on the ground.
41:23That was the day we lost the air war.
41:26From this point on, German domination of the air was an impossible dream.
41:47In June 1944, the largest and most powerful armada ever formed
41:52set sail across the Channel for the beaches of Normandy.
41:56It was protected by an equally powerful air armament,
41:59enough to give the Allies total superiority over the Luftwaffe in France.
42:04With the establishment of air bases in Normandy,
42:07the bombing campaign against German synthetic oil plants was intensified.
42:12The Luftwaffe now had to contend with an acute shortage of fuel.
42:21Despite all of this, in 1944,
42:24a handful of remarkable new German aircraft made their appearance.
42:28The most advanced was a high-performance jet fighter,
42:31the Messerschmitt Me 262.
42:34Muddle and incompetence had delayed its introduction into service.
42:38As a pure fighter, it was superior to any Allied plane
42:42and was the first of the generation of fighters which are with us today.
42:47But it arrived too late.
42:54In one last desperate offensive on the 19th of December 1944,
42:59Hitler launched a massive air attack to support his troops through the Ardennes,
43:04which led to the Battle of the Bulge.
43:22The Luftwaffe made a superhuman effort,
43:24but without fuel, the tanks and planes ground to a halt.
43:28And soon, the German armies in the west were in full retreat on foot.
43:45After 11 years, Hitler's thousand-year Reich collapsed under the weight of the Allied advances.
43:51The Luftwaffe had become increasingly powerless to defend German airspace,
43:56and the end was inevitable.
43:59A catalogue of errors by Hitler, by his generals, and by the senior Luftwaffe commanders
44:05had contributed to the total destruction visited upon the German nation.
44:10The Third Reich was remarkable only in its ruthless ambition and its evil.
44:15It had betrayed the forces that had fought with professional skill and courage
44:20for a cause which neither achieved nor deserved victory.
44:28The handful of surviving aircraft are a silent reminder
44:32of the once prestigious force that dominated Europe.
44:43On the 20th of April, Hermann Göring visited Hitler in his bunker,
44:47under the Chancellery in Berlin.
44:50It was the Führer's 56th birthday, and Göring presented his birthday wishes.
44:56It was the last time that the two men would meet.
45:00Göring travelled to southern Germany,
45:02while Hitler stayed in Berlin as the Russians closed in.
45:07On the 23rd of April,
45:09Göring sent a message to Hitler.
45:12My FĂĽhrer,
45:14in view of your decision to remain and defend Berlin,
45:17do you agree to my assuming command of the Reich?
45:21If I do not hear from you by 2200 hours,
45:24I shall assume that you have been deprived of your freedom of action,
45:27and I shall act in accordance with my own best judgment.
45:33Goering's immediate arrest by the Gestapo should not have surprised him.
45:38On Hitler's orders, he was relieved of his command,
45:42confined to his home, and expelled from the Nazi Party.
45:46In five and a half years, the Luftwaffe had lost 70,000 aircrew and 100,000 aircraft.
45:54On the 30th of April 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker as the Soviet troops smashed their way into
46:02the Chancellery.
46:03By the 7th of May, the battered remnants of the Luftwaffe, together with the Reich's armies in Germany, Italy and
46:10Norway, had abandoned the hopeless struggle.
46:14The Luftwaffe's phoenix, which in 1935 had risen so menacingly from the ashes of the First War, had been again
46:23consumed in flames.
46:55The Luftwaffe's phoenix, killing the Earth, and the
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