The World at War

(opening lines) Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, a community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead. This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle. They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war.

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0

Forlorn monsters today. In May 1940, these forts of the Maginot line were France's first-line defence against the Germans. Half a million French soldiers lurked beneath these man-made hills. These were the most extensive, the most elaborate forts ever constructed. Here the guns would halt the Hun - provided the Hun came this way.

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0

If you couldn't get the kraut in his factory, it was just as easy to knock him off in his bed, and [if] granny Schicklgruber in the seat next door got the chop, that's hard luck.

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fighter Command had shown how difficult it was for bombers to destroy a country which could defend its own airspace – a lesson the Air Staff apparently neglected to teach itself.

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0

We felt that the British officer – was a very good fighter, although the ones we captured, they always said to me, “We will win the war.” Now this I could not understand, because here is a man who has surrendered and he still says, “We will win the war.”

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0

Then they came to me and they said, “Do you want Kleve taking out?” By taking out they meant the whole of the heavy bombers putting on to Kleve. Now, I knew that Kleve was a very fine old historical German town. Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII’s wives came from there. I knew that there were a lot of civilians in Kleve, men, women and children. If I said no, they would live. If I said yes, they would die. A terrible decision you’ve got to take. But everything depended on getting a high piece of ground at Materborn. The German reserves would have to come through Kleve, and we would have to breach the Siegfried Line and get there. And your own lives, your own troops, must come first, so I said yes, I did want it taking out. But when all those bombers went over, the night just before zero hour, to take out Kleve, I felt a murderer. And after the war I had an awful lot of nightmares. It was always Kleve.

The World at War, CC BY-SA 4.0