Nazi Megastructures "season - 1" (1/6) : The Atlantic Wall
For educational purposes
Discover the story behind the defensive wall, stretching thousands of kilometres, built by the Third Reich to protect themselves from the Allies.
Discover the story behind the defensive wall, stretching thousands of kilometres, built by the Third Reich to protect themselves from the Allies.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Along the coastline of Western Europe lie the remains of one of the largest construction
00:08projects of the 20th century.
00:10Hitler says, I want to build an Atlantic wall.
00:13I want to fence this all the way up the coast.
00:16Forty million tons of concrete designed to stop the D-Day invasion of Nazi Europe.
00:2215,000 bunkers along the coastline stretching 3,000 miles.
00:29Built in just four years, a vast network of indestructible bunkers, deadly minefields
00:36and impenetrable artillery positions.
00:39It's all separate pieces working together to make this going like a monster really.
00:47It is the most gigantic fortifications that were ever built in history.
00:52This is the story of Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
01:02The biggest construction projects of World War II, ordered by Hitler to secure world
01:08domination.
01:09Now they survive as dark reminders of the Führer's fanatical military ambition.
01:15These are the secrets of the Nazi megastructures.
01:27Sixth of June, 1944, the D-Day invasion has begun.
01:36In Normandy, 1,500 Germans face an allied force over 150,000 strong.
01:46Soldiers such as teenager Franz Gokul are relying on their bunkers to keep them alive.
01:56Bunkers that form an extraordinary 5,000-kilometre fortification known as the Atlantic Wall.
02:14The Nazis built this megastructure along Europe's west coast to protect Hitler's empire from
02:19an allied invasion.
02:23Dr. Peter Lieb, former German army officer and war studies expert, has studied the wall's
02:29construction.
02:32There were bunkers all over France along the coastline, in Belgium, in the Netherlands.
02:39It is the most gigantic fortifications that were ever built in history.
02:57The origins of the wall can be traced back to 1942.
03:06Hitler's invasion of Russia has stalled, and over a million of his best soldiers are
03:11heavily engaged with Soviet forces.
03:17And then, in December, Hitler's worst fear becomes a reality.
03:23America joins the war.
03:26Hitler knew this was coming, and he knows it's very bad news.
03:30Not only is he heavily engaged in Russia to the east, he now knows that Britain has got
03:35a very strong ally to the west, in the form of the USA.
03:41With the addition of hundreds of thousands of US troops and guns to help them, the British
03:46now pose a serious threat to Hitler's conquests in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway.
03:59To protect his Atlantic coastline, Hitler must take defensive measures.
04:05So he puts out his famous Directive 40, which is basically rattling the cage and saying,
04:12enough, we need to get our act together.
04:15And in a series of bullet points, he states, in no uncertain terms, what is expected of
04:21his fighting forces and of his engineering organisations.
04:27Hitler demands the construction of a 5,000 kilometre defensive barrier, nearly twice
04:33the length of America's east coast.
04:38Giant gun batteries and bunkers capable of smashing any Allied invasion by sea.
04:51The job of building them falls to one man.
04:57Heil Hitler!
05:00Attention!
05:02These are the Führer's latest orders.
05:04The coast must be armed with as many heavy guns as possible.
05:09Franz Xaver Dorsch is a chief engineer of the Tote Organisation, Germany's biggest engineering company.
05:16These guns are to be enclosed in concrete.
05:20Dorsch and his colleagues are experts in large-scale construction.
05:25They pioneered Nazi Germany's famous autobahns,
05:28thousands of kilometres of roads that still exist today.
05:32I will personally direct the work.
05:35Is that all clear?
05:40Dorsch has already built 20 heavy gun emplacements at Calais,
05:45the closest French port to Britain,
05:48and the most likely site for any Allied invasion.
05:53The giant bunkers, each requiring over 40,000 tonnes of concrete,
05:58will provide the template for Hitler's planned wall.
06:02Incredibly, many still survive today.
06:06Visiting these bunkers, it's like a step back into time.
06:11Arthur van Beveren is an expert in the Atlantic Wall
06:14and has been exploring its ruins since he was a boy.
06:18These walls are 3.5 metres thick,
06:20and if you look at this corner, you can still see the shape of the wood in the concrete.
06:25It left its marks in the concrete while it was being poured.
06:31The huge dome-like building is the actual gun emplacement,
06:35which the 38-centimetre gun was beneath.
06:40On this side, we have the crew rooms, kitchens, first aid and ammunition.
06:50MUSIC
07:00A very atmospheric place back then.
07:06And I think it still is.
07:13The shells are 1.6 metres long and weigh over 800 kilograms.
07:18They're so big that they have to be moved inside on a system of overhead rails.
07:25So you can see the rail from the outside going through this gap up here,
07:29but you can still see a part left in this gap.
07:34And it was used to transport the ammunition.
07:41This is now just an empty gap, but 70 years ago, there should be a door up here,
07:47and there was a table up here.
07:50The ammunition was prepared, laying on a table,
07:55and on this side, there was a little train driving along the gun,
08:01and the ammunition was put on the little train and transported to the gun.
08:08The giant guns of the Calais Battery
08:10are capable of sinking the largest Allied ships in an invasion fleet,
08:15even before they've left port.
08:18From here, on a clear day, you can see Britain on the other side of the Channel.
08:23Britain is only 36 kilometres away,
08:26and these guns could reach 30 kilometres inside Britain.
08:34Now, Dorsch and his team of engineers
08:36set about building a series of similar emplacements and fortifications
08:40around strategic Atlantic ports.
08:46Newsreels in Berlin proudly boast of their awesome firepower.
08:54And no-one is following progress more avidly than 16-year-old Franz Gockel.
09:02I'd seen so much reported about the wall in the newsreel
09:05that I was sure we'd be invincible.
09:15Soon, Gockel will see the Atlantic Wall first-hand, on D-Day itself.
09:23Throughout 1942, construction of the Atlantic Wall is stepped up,
09:27even as far north as Norway.
09:30Massive amounts of men and resources are sent to defend the coast,
09:34all the way to the Arctic.
09:36Norway was very important, initially, because of its location.
09:41There's a lot of iron ore coming out of Sweden,
09:44and it's taken aboard ship in Norwegian ports.
09:50Iron ore is vital to the German war effort,
09:53providing the steel in Hitler's bombs, tanks and bunkers.
10:00The Norwegian supply line must be defended.
10:03One extreme solution?
10:05Move a 900-tonne naval gun turret to Ã…land,
10:09to protect the port of Trondheim.
10:15Astonishingly, it still survives to this day.
10:24Essentially, this is a ship built on land, built inside this mountain.
10:30A deep shaft, five levels deep, was cut into the mountain
10:34and was filled up with concrete,
10:36and the turret was placed inside that shaft.
10:40The occupying German forces in Norway use prisoners of war
10:44to dig an 11-metre deep hole through the solid rock.
10:48It has to be lined with concrete
10:50before the turret can be rebuilt inside.
10:55The guns were put in parts.
10:5780 trainloads of parts went to Trondheim,
11:00and from Trondheim, onto boats, up to the island.
11:04The three guns are the only thing you can see on the outside,
11:08but the actual bunker is inside this mountain.
11:29When you look around it, it's like solid engineering everywhere.
11:35It's all separate pieces working together to make this machine going,
11:40like a monster, really.
11:43The black floor we see here is the actual tower from the ship.
11:47This part is really the bunker, the shaft into the mountain.
11:52This part will stand still.
11:54So this is concrete, and this is a five-floor-deep shaft from a naval ship.
12:00Just as when it was on a ship, the massive gun needs to rotate.
12:05The whole turret is resting on these ball bearings all around us.
12:10Really very heavy, really very heavy.
12:13I guess about 40, 50 kilos.
12:17And they're all around, resting in the rail around the shaft.
12:24138 steel balls carry the weight of the 900-tonne gun,
12:29and allow it to turn smoothly.
12:34The shell and propellant are stored five levels below the gun.
12:39We've got three different kinds of ammunition here.
12:42We've got high-explosive shells, armoured-piercing shells,
12:46and even shells with tonne fuse.
12:51To manoeuvre these 300-kilogram shells,
12:54the Nazi engineers devised an ingenious hydraulic lift system.
13:03The shells would come right out of the walls.
13:07The ammunition rooms would slide over here,
13:10roll on to this table, roll on further on this one.
13:14And when it finally reached up here, you could traverse the shell.
13:24Up to the lift, of course.
13:27Normally it would be hydraulically operated.
13:32The ammunition is lifted five storeys up to barrel level,
13:36ready to be fired.
13:44The effective range of these guns was about 37 kilometres,
13:49and that's as far as the eye can see,
13:52and from the top of Norway all the way down to the south of France,
13:56you can find the same kind of bunkers.
13:58So it's not just concrete blocks, it's massive ships on land.
14:04Alongside the heavily defended batteries at the ports of Mowick,
14:08Cherbourg, Brest and the island of Jersey,
14:11a formidable display of defence is taking shape.
14:14But Hitler realises this is still not enough.
14:19Between the ports, vast stretches of coast remain undefended.
14:24Hitler puts out another order that 15,000 bunkers
14:28are to be built along a coastline stretching 3,000 miles,
14:32and they are to be manned by 300,000 troops.
14:39Hitler wants every metre of the 5,000-kilometre Atlantic coast
14:43defended by a continuous line of fortifications.
14:47And he wants it finished by May 1943, in just seven months' time.
14:54Speer describes Hitler spending his evenings designing concrete bunkers,
15:00and he had locked in his desk a series of maps of the western seaboard
15:05at which he would plot where fortifications would be.
15:09The wall now becomes his obsession.
15:13These designs ideally meet all the requirements of a front-line soldier.
15:18During this winter, with fanatical zeal, a fortress must be built,
15:22which will hold in all circumstances.
15:36The task of making Hitler's wall a reality
15:39falls to his chief engineer, Dorsch.
15:43That is the absolute maximum volume of construction we can handle.
15:47We cannot handle any more.
15:51Dorsch might have concerns, but nobody refuses the Führer.
16:00Construction teams try and meet Hitler's demands,
16:03focusing their efforts on areas where they think the invasion might come,
16:08such as the beaches of Wissand, closest to the British mainland.
16:18We're now standing on top of an anti-tank gun bunker.
16:24It was built here in March 1943, and it's the Type 631.
16:30And the Germans designed about 500 different types of bunkers.
16:36The Atlantic Wall was not one line of bunkers,
16:40but it was made out of several strong points with open spaces in between.
16:46With the British Air Force in control of the skies,
16:49the 475 soldiers here live in constant fear of attacks.
16:57When an invasion comes, large tanks will roll up this beach,
17:03and this bunker houses the gun that can stop them.
17:23We're now in the most important room of this bunker,
17:26because this is the room where the gun used to be.
17:29The anti-tank gun, 4.7 centimetres from Czech origin.
17:37The men stationed here spent months preparing for an invasion.
17:41The firing range for every potential target was carefully practised.
17:46This is a really cool feature in this bunker.
17:49It actually still has these numbers on the plate next to the gun,
17:53and they tell the crew certain points in the landscape,
17:56how far they are away from the bunker.
17:58We have a church or a house near the beach,
18:02so they can measure from these points how to aim the gun.
18:08The bunker was designed to be indestructible,
18:11but there's still the risk of being buried alive by the debris of a battle.
18:16We have another exit here. It's the escape shaft.
18:20You have to get through the brick wall.
18:23You have to dig through four metres of pebbles,
18:26and then you can get out via this shaft on the side of the bunker.
18:36Walking through one of these structures today,
18:39I might as well be walking through Stonehenge,
18:42because these are very enigmatic structures.
18:46But if you were to see them operating,
18:49with all the hardware, all of the guns and the men inside them,
18:52I think you'd be fairly impressed at what these things have developed into.
18:57Very, very frightening fighting machines.
19:03Only 30% of the required bunkers are finished by Hitler's deadline of May 1943.
19:10As chief engineer, Zaber-Dorsch knows Hitler will blame him.
19:15We have handed over 9,671 ready-to-occupy bunkers,
19:20and the concrete work has been done for another 1,500.
19:25But Dorsch lacks the resources that he needs to increase production.
19:30The war has now dragged on for four years,
19:33and the Germans are running out of material, money and men.
19:38Hitler gets very irritated when resources keep bleeding away
19:42from the western seaboard, from his Atlantic wall, to the war in the east.
19:47He puts out an edict and says,
19:49''Nobody moves anything or anyone from the Atlantic wall
19:53''without my prior and direct permission.''
19:58October 1943. Colville, Normandy.
20:06New conscript Private Franz Gockel, just 17,
20:10arrives at his section of the wall.
20:14The propaganda films that he's watched back in Germany
20:18spoke of giant fortresses and gun positions.
20:22But he's in for a shock.
20:27Imagine my surprise arriving at the beach in Normandy.
20:30There weren't any protective bunkers.
20:36Hitler believes the Allied invasion will land at Calais,
20:40the closest French port to Great Britain.
20:45That's where his Atlantic wall is at its strongest.
20:52Few eyes are on the beaches of Normandy.
21:00Franz Gockel's diary records happy days spent swimming and playing
21:04near the beach at Colville,
21:06a stretch of sand that will come to be known as Omaha Beach.
21:13''France is a beautiful country and I see the sea every day.
21:18''I don't really have that much to do.''
21:21It was definitely a cushy life compared to the horrors of the Eastern Front.
21:25The men here felt very happy that they were here in France.
21:37November 1943.
21:40Events in Russia are going from bad to worse.
21:45The Germans have been forced into retreat by a powerful Soviet army.
21:50The Germans lost on average 2,000 men killed in action each day,
21:55and that since June 1941.
22:01Hitler and his generals now face a crisis.
22:04They have to fight on two fronts.
22:07Millions of their soldiers tied up in the east
22:10and 5,000 kilometres of coastline to defend in the west.
22:16The Nazis have posted 300,000 soldiers to the bunkers of the Atlantic wall,
22:21but they are inexperienced troops.
22:24The crew here of the bunkers were mainly young soldiers,
22:2717 or 18 years old, or older family fathers in their late 30s.
22:33The guys in their early 20s, mid-20s,
22:36the best soldier material, as you would call it in military terms,
22:40were mainly on the Eastern Front.
22:43The Nazi high command are counting on millions of tonnes of concrete and steel
22:48to make the difference and keep the Allies at bay.
22:52You can't say that the bunkers made the soldiers better fighters.
22:56You could be a bit overweight, you could be a bit over-aged,
23:00but you could still pull the trigger on a machine gun.
23:08Bunkers might compensate for the problem of inexperienced troops,
23:13but on average there are still only 100 German soldiers
23:17to defend each kilometre of coast.
23:21And only 50% of Hitler's impregnable wall has been completed.
23:31This is hopeless.
23:33I am the greatest builder of fortifications of all time,
23:37and this is all I get.
23:43By November 1943, Hitler runs out of patience
23:47with the slow progress of wall construction.
23:51He appoints a new commander to take charge,
23:55a man whose legendary toughness in battle
23:58does not make up for the weaknesses of the wall.
24:02Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
24:19Rommel immediately sets about inspecting the entire length of the Atlantic wall.
24:29He's been fighting the Allies in North Africa for two years.
24:34Rommel is a master of attack and defence.
24:39What he sees in Normandy shocks him.
24:43Rommel came to this place here in January 1944,
24:46and when he looked at the conditions and how the defence preparations had gone,
24:50he was very upset.
24:52He was saying, you've been here for three years,
24:55and what have you done? Nothing.
24:59German planners believe that the Allies are unlikely to choose it as an invasion site
25:03because it lacks a port.
25:05So few bunkers have been built here.
25:08But Rommel sees something they can't.
25:12This beach looks similar to the Bay of Salerno in Italy that the Allies invaded.
25:17It must be instantly secured against Allied landings.
25:22If the British once get a foothold on dry land, they can't be thrown out again.
25:29Rommel knows this beach needs to be defended.
25:32If the Allies land here, the Nazis could lose the war.
25:42He's right to be concerned.
25:45Across the Channel, 150,000 Allied troops are massing in secret.
25:52The Atlantic Wall is about to face the ultimate test.
25:56And at Omaha Beach, Franz Gockel will face the full onslaught of the invasion.
26:07By January 1944, Rommel is preparing for the invasion.
26:13By January 1944, Soviet Russia is still pushing the Nazis back in the east.
26:25And in the west, Hitler's Atlantic Wall is far from complete.
26:35Field Marshal Rommel faces an enormous challenge to improve the quality of the defences.
26:41As he records in his diary.
26:44These fortifications are the work of an engineer who is neither strategically proficient nor has any knowledge of war.
26:56Rommel's experience fighting the Allies has taught him that holding off an invasion will require meticulous planning.
27:03And he has a very clear strategy.
27:06Rommel believes that an enemy invasion has to be smashed, if not at sea, on the beach.
27:13If the enemy get off the beach, he thinks the game is over.
27:20To defend every beach, Rommel wants thousands more small bunkers for individual soldiers, armed with heavy machine guns.
27:28They will be quicker to build, but there's still the problem of manpower.
27:32As the war develops, they don't have the spare manpower within Germany.
27:37And they basically draft in the people of these countries, the Poles, the Czechs, you name it, the French.
27:44People from concentration camps, Allied prisoners of war.
27:49All of which is massively inhumane.
27:54Thousands and thousands of them die in these construction projects, through bad diet and bad treatment.
28:00And it just becomes slave labour.
28:0832,000 civilians are forced into construction.
28:12A brutal but effective plan.
28:16Bunkers are being constructed along almost 5,000 kilometres of Nazi coast.
28:21Clustered in groups, known as WNs.
28:26A WN is a Widerstandsnest, which translates into English into resistance nest.
28:31You can say it is more or less a strong point, but a series of strong points, interconnected.
28:38In Normandy, Gockel and 30 of his comrades live in a strong point that still exists today.
28:44We can see here, the small room was probably for the NCOs.
28:50Here is the accommodation block for the other ranks.
28:56Amongst them was also this 18-year-old woman.
29:00Here is the accommodation block for the other ranks.
29:04Amongst them was also this 18-year-old Franz Gockel.
29:08But of course the soldiers did not stay here all the time.
29:11They were on guard, they had to build up the constructions.
29:14There was general military training.
29:19Gockel's strong point is at the east end of a Normandy shoreline that will become infamous.
29:25Omaha Beach.
29:27To defend it, they have 13 gun positions, including two anti-tank guns and three mortars.
29:33The guns work in pairs, targeting the beach with deadly arcs of crossfire.
29:38This tactic creates an area of maximum firepower, known as a killing zone.
29:47The killing zone is basically the area where the enemy is going to bring the maximum effect from all their weapon systems
29:52in the most condensed space to inflict the maximum amount of casualties on the enemy, in this case the Allies.
29:57What you've got over here is two positions.
29:59They've got machine guns, mortars, and over here another position.
30:02Machine guns, mortars, some larger caliber rounds as well.
30:05And the reason this box is here is because the Allies are trying to get up that draw and off the beach.
30:13Defending this stretch of Omaha Beach is vital for the Germans to throw back an Allied invasion.
30:20Gockel's job is to man a machine gun, and his position covers this kill zone.
30:28This is Gockel's position.
30:30Today it's only a hole in the ground.
30:33Back in 1944, it had a machine gun, it was a covered position, and also had two switches for a flamethrower.
30:42Gockel's bunker is finished by May 1944,
30:46along with thousands more that protect the coast from Norway to the Spanish border.
30:52But Rommel still isn't satisfied.
30:54The bunkers alone are not enough.
30:56He also wants other types of defensive structure to help repel an Allied invasion.
31:02What Rommel does, he uses the experiences he's gained in North Africa to bring about dramatic changes.
31:09One of those involves the laying of massive minefields.
31:13He orders the laying of 50 million mines along the French coast, at sea and on the beach.
31:19And in addition, he wants the beaches filled with obstacles.
31:23Row after row littering the beach.
31:26In addition, he wants the beaches filled with obstacles.
31:29Row after row littering the beach.
31:32To create impenetrable layers of defence.
31:35The first line by the low tide mark are steel barriers known as Belgian Gates.
31:42You've got Belgian Gates put along here.
31:45The idea behind these Belgian Gates is to block the landing craft infantry and tanks,
31:49and basically hold them as far back down the beach as they can.
31:53Belgian Gates create a barrier to slow down infantry and tanks,
31:57giving the Germans more time to kill them.
32:01In case the Allies arrive at high tide and sail over the Belgian Gates,
32:05Rommel devises another surprise.
32:08Right here is where they have the ram logs.
32:11Think about telegraph poles, cut, raised above my head, 30 degree angle,
32:15couple of other ones supporting it down here.
32:17At the end of these you're going to have basically like saw blades,
32:20which are there to rip the bottom out of the landing craft if the Allies come in at high tide.
32:25But even that's not enough.
32:27The Germans use absolutely anything that might disrupt and delay the landing force.
32:33Here you have the third belt, and this is what they call Czech Hedgehogs.
32:36They are basically steel structures set at angles like this,
32:40and basically to disrupt anyone that's coming up the beaches.
32:45And if the landing craft finally make it onto the beach,
32:48these are the last line of defence to stop Allied tanks in their tracks.
32:54So this is a steel-encrusted concrete tetrahedra,
32:57and this is one of the last obstacles under the obstacle plan for defending the beaches.
33:02You can imagine if there'd be a whole load of these all across the beach,
33:06interlinked at every five metres and five metres.
33:09Tanks are going to struggle against this, you know.
33:11It's so sturdy, it's going to turn the tank.
33:14Which way is the tracks going to go?
33:16Actually thin track tanks slip off the side, you know.
33:21By June 1944, Rommel is still trying to complete German defences along the Atlantic coast.
33:30Meanwhile, across the Channel, the Allied troops are ready.
33:37Hitler's Atlantic wall has cost billions of Reichmarks,
33:41and consumed millions of tonnes of concrete.
33:44But it's still riddled with holes.
33:47Rommel promised Hitler that he would have finished everything by May 1944,
33:52but it was still incomplete.
33:54So many of the bunkers on the Atlantic wall were lacking guns,
33:59or were lacking men, or were lacking barbed wire or minefields.
34:06The 5th of June.
34:08Gockel spends the day patrolling the cliffs above Omaha Beach.
34:12Unknown to him, just over the horizon,
34:15thousands of British, Canadian and American troops have put out to sea to start an invasion.
34:21At 2 o'clock in the morning on the 6th of June,
34:24the 7th Army gave the alert level 2.
34:27This was the highest alert level in the German Army.
34:30And immediately the men from the artillery regiment,
34:35and in this case from the 1st Company,
34:37moved into their positions here at WN62.
34:42Wake up! Get up! Get up! This is for real!
34:51The Americans are parachuting in, just 30 kilometres away!
34:55There was an alarm call, but none of us believed it.
34:58We'd had so many in the past weeks that we no longer took it seriously.
35:02You too, Gockel! Get out!
35:09We ran to our positions.
35:11Machine guns, heavy guns and mortars were prepared.
35:15Gockel and his comrades believed the invasion would come at a major port, like Calais.
35:21Never did they imagine that it would happen here, at their beach.
35:25Has Gockel got ammunition?
35:28Well, go! Check!
35:32Hitler and a lot of others were fairly convinced that it would have to be a major port,
35:38because they would have to get their material ashore.
35:41Little did they know that the Allies had countered that.
35:44They'd come up with the Mulberry Harbours.
35:46The Allies invent an ingenious way of avoiding the heavily fortified ports.
35:51They build the world's first floating harbour, known as the Mulberry Harbour,
35:56and tow it to Normandy.
36:04Gockel, do you need ammunition?
36:06Yes.
36:08Good luck.
36:15I tried to concentrate on my weapon, to take my mind off what was happening.
36:30Normally a German machine gun should be manned by two soldiers.
36:34Here we had only one man per machine gun.
36:48Allied battleships begin a full-scale bombardment of the German positions.
36:53Gockel's survival now rests on whether the reinforced concrete of his bunker is tough enough.
36:59Heavy calibre shells continue to slam into the earth, howling and hissing through the air.
37:05They hit against the concrete and ground with a thud.
37:08Gockel's bunker withstands the onslaught.
37:11But this is just the beginning.
37:19When the Allied forces land, they're met with a hail of machine gun fire.
37:24Just 500 Germans have to defend a 6km beach against 35,000 Americans.
37:31The ultimate test of the Atlantic War has begun.
37:36The Germans are firing with each weapon they've got available here.
37:40With their flamethrowers, with their machine guns, with their field guns,
37:44with their artilleries from further inland.
37:46This was when German firepower was the biggest.
37:54Get off the beach! Come on!
38:01Omaha is just one of five invasion beaches.
38:05150,000 American, Canadian and British troops are landing along the Normandy coast.
38:11And the enormous Atlantic War is beginning to crack.
38:15160km away, the German armoured reserve of tanks are waiting.
38:20If they're called up to plug the gaps, there's still a chance that the Allies can be thrown back.
38:28But there's a problem.
38:31Hitler was asleep and no one dared to wake him up.
38:35And this was crucial because Hitler was the person who could release the armoured reserves.
38:40And when he woke up, he still didn't believe it was a full invasion.
38:44The tanks remain far inland.
38:47And the only other man who can make a difference is even further away, in Germany,
38:52celebrating his wife's birthday.
38:56Rommel said the first 24 hours are crucial to defeat the Allied invasion.
39:02And on the 6th of June, he was not here.
39:04And it was only in the late afternoon that Rommel rushed back from Germany
39:09and arrived in France to coordinate the defence measures.
39:13But by that time, the Allies had already a firm grip on the beaches here.
39:22At 9am, seven hours after the first shots are fired,
39:26the bunker next to Gockel's position is destroyed.
39:29His machine gun is the last one still firing from his group of bunkers.
39:35Sand caused the belt of my machine gun to jam.
39:39I had to continue using my rifle, firing single shots.
39:57Amazingly, the Germans are holding back the Americans.
40:03But despite the months of preparation, they're running low on ammunition.
40:10The Germans were supposed to have ammunition for 48 hours on the Atlantic wall.
40:16In reality, they had only in this section, only ammunition for three and a half hours.
40:22So at 10 o'clock, the Germans were starting to run out of ammunition.
40:32As their supply of bullets is depleted, the Germans begin to struggle.
40:36And the Americans gain ground.
40:39Gockel and his comrades are forced to fall back.
41:07I was making my way up a slope.
41:09I crawled to the top to reach my comrades.
41:29I saw three fingers on my left hand dangling by the threads.
41:34Now wounded, Gockel retreats with the few survivors of his company.
41:44Omaha is the last of the five invasion beaches to fall.
41:53The vast Atlantic wall has taken three years to build, but is breached in a matter of hours.
42:03The Germans lose the battle and will soon lose the war.
42:07Despite all the costs, millions of Reichsmark and millions of cubic meters of concrete built into these structures,
42:17the Atlantic wall could not hold the Allied invasion force.
42:26The Atlantic wall doesn't work for a number of reasons.
42:29It's stretched too far. There are too many gaps in it.
42:34The basic policy behind it is flawed.
42:37The Germans never come up with a grand plan of how to fight this machine they've built,
42:45how they're going to take it into war.
42:47Despite the wall's failure, Zaber-Dorsch remained head of the Tote organization until Germany's surrender.
42:59After the war, he had a successful engineering career until his death, aged 86.
43:07Rommel was forced to commit suicide by Hitler just four months after D-Day.
43:18Franz Gockel survived the war, returning to Germany where he married and lived until the age of 80.
43:24He came back to Normandy several times to remember the men who died for and against the wall.
43:31I think D-Day is probably the most important event in Europe to have occurred perhaps over the last 500 years,
43:38to kick Nazi Germany back into touch and to take back control for civilization.
43:45I think it's an absolutely astounding event.
43:48And it works because the Allies got their act together and the Germans never did.
43:55It's as simple as that.
43:57The Allies got their act together and the Germans never did.
44:00It's as simple as that.