Hitler's Last Stand (2018) s01e01 Episode Script

Normandy, France.
One month after D-Day.
A Canadian regiment confronts
a notorious SS Panzer unit
accused of horrific war crimes.
The Canadians
and the 12th SS Hitler Youth had clashed,
uh, since the 7th of June.
So, the Canadians and the 12th SS
have a very vicious personal war.
For the Germans,
this leaves no room for compromise.
It's only victory or death.
On June 6th, 1944,
allied forces finally
land troops in Normandy
to open the western front.
But Nazi fanatics and diehards
continue to fight ruthlessly for survival.
D-Day was a battle.
The allies still need to win the war.
July 8th, 1944.
Outskirts of Caen, France.
The Canadian Regina Rifles
prepare to do their part
to liberate the French city.
They scout the approach to their
objective in the northwest sector.
And what they saw they didn't like.
It was extremely flat.
There was very little cover.
Lieutenant Colonel
Foster Matheson
has brought along his company commanders--
Acting Major Gordon Brown,
Major Eric Syme, and Major Stuart Tubb,
to find the best way forward.
And they're driving around in universal
carriers and at one point they get lost.
The driver takes a wrong turn
and they find themselves
in the midst of fighting.
The Regina Rifles
quickly come under attack.
One of the drivers is shot and killed
the passengers dive for cover.
As the battle rages around them,
the vehicles try to reverse course.
In the confusion,
the carriers start to pull away
leaving the officers behind.
It proves to be yet another setback
in the quest to take Caen.
Only 12 miles from the coast
allied forces had planned to take
the city on D-Day.
But more than a month later,
the goal has proved stubbornly elusive.
Both sides understood
that the capture of Caen was crucial to
going through the rest of the country,
that if you could capture Caen,
you could enter the rest of France.
860,000 allied troops
are bottled up at the Normandy beachhead.
The allies need their forces
to break out into France,
then east for Paris.
Caen is a critical road and rail hub.
The Germans understood,
if you can defend Caen,
you can block the Allies' advance.
These are armored divisions
that had hundreds of tanks.
They needed good roads
and so they were going to be
passing through Caen
to strike at the Allies
who were on the beaches
and who of course were very vulnerable.
The Regina Rifles
have landed in a battle
between the German 12th SS Panzer division
and other Canadian forces.
This is not the first time
the rifles have encountered the 12th SS.
A month earlier, on D-Day plus one,
the Reginas had seized
the town of Bretteville, not far away.
The Reginas withstood four counterattacks
from the 12th SS Panzer division,
inflicting 152 German casualties
and destroying six tanks to hold the town,
and earned battle honors for their unit.
At a distinct disadvantage here,
the trucks make a desperate escape.
The officers of the Regina Rifles
are in danger of being left behind.
Go, Go! Go!
They haul themselves
onto the back of a vehicle
loaded to their surprise,
with crates of explosives.
They duck for cover as enemy fire
riddles the vehicle,
and can only hope,
that a bullet doesn't
ignite a fatal explosion.
After finally clearing the battle scene
the officers take up their
reconnaissance position
in the nearby village of Authie.
Earlier that day,
General Bernard Montgomery
launched Operation Charnwood,
the British Second Army's
latest attempt to seize Caen.
To support the operation,
the Regina Rifles must take
the Abbaye D'ardenne,
which guards the northwest approach.
A high stone wall surrounds
the 12th century church
and its adjoining buildings.
It was a stone fortress.
It had a large tower.
And from the heights of that tower
they could see the entire countryside.
And so, it's a really critical position.
A strong point that the Germans will use
both to observe the Allies
coming off the beaches
and from where they will launch
their counterattacks.
Flat grain fields
surround the Abbaye on all sides,
providing clear lines of sight
for German snipers.
The Germans occupy the only cover--
a dirt mound, that once held
anti-aircraft guns,
partway across the field.
Matheson plans for
Major Syme's B Company
to advance 400 yards from the village of
Authie and take the mounds.
Brown's D Company on the left along with
Tubb's C Company on the right
are to pass the mounds and advance
the remaining 700 yards to the Abbaye.
At 1700 hours allied artillery
begins to shell the Abbaye D'ardenne,
in preparation for the assault.
The barrage is meant to soften up
German defenses
and keep German heads down
as the Canadians approach.
The artillery will last for 30 minutes,
after which the Regina Rifles
will launch their attack.
The Abbaye D'ardenne is the headquarters
of the 12th Panzer division
they had encountered earlier.
Their commanding officer
is Standartenfuhrer Kurt Meyer.
The 33-year old colonel is one of
Germany's youngest divisional commanders.
Kurt Meyer is an extremely
courageous and brave officer.
But at the same times,
he's also extremely ruthless.
He's very much determined to
the cause of Nazism and is also
determined to instill this
ideology into his men.
Meyer's Panzer division
is made up of former Hitlerjugend.
The infamous "Hitler Youth" movement
Raised a generation of German children
to believe in their Aryan superiority.
For the SS leadership,
12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth
is a kind of symbol for
the next generation of Nazism.
Meyer withstands the barrage
inside the Abbaye complex.
The main building, as such,
would be too much exposed to
allied artillery fire
or allied air bombardment.
So, he situates his headquarters
in a secondary building, in the cellar,
so that he's protected.
As the allied shelling
of the Abbaye continues,
Brown, and the rest of the Regina Rifles
try to move into the field
from which they are to attack.
But it proves difficult.
Well the Regina Rifles
are pinned down
because the village of Authie
is not cleared.
This means that the Germans
are also able to
bring fire to bear down on the Rifles.
German counter
battery fire also opens up.
Several allied tanks
position themselves nearby.
But as their jump-off time approaches
a hidden German 88
begins to launch shells.
The 88 millimeter gun
is the most effective artillery piece
in the Nazi arsenal,
and feared by allied tankers everywhere.
In ground combat,
it has a maximum range
of over 16,000 yards.
And a well-trained crew can fire a round
every three seconds.
The 88 quickly destroys
three Sherman tanks.
As their crews escape,
they draw German machine gun fire
from the nearby mound.
Unwilling to stay exposed
to the German artillery,
the remaining tanks retreat.
The fighting in Normandy
is often envisioned
as a slashing tank assaults,
um, and almost blitzkrieg
like attacks on the enemy.
But, this was combined arms warfare
and if the tanks got too far
in front of the infantry,
they were easily knocked out
by anti-tank guns
that are very effective
at this point in the war.
With their tank support gone,
all three Regina Rifle companies
are trapped in the open.
The German barrage continues.
The Canadians risk being wiped out
before they can even leave their lines.
July 8th, 1944.
German artillery targets
the Regina Rifles' position
as they prepare to attack
the Abbaye D'ardenne,
which blocks access
to the French city of Caen.
The Regina Rifles are dubbed
"farmer johns" by other Canadian units
because they come
from a rural part of Canada.
Obviously the Farmer John's
is meant as, a, a bit of a put down.
But ah, the John's they seem
to have shortened it,
they got rid of the farmer part
and they proudly, they embraced it.
Pinned down due to enemy fire,
the Johns miss the jump-off time
for their attack against the Abbaye.
In the chaos and the confusion,
units are late arriving to the front
and in fact most of
the, the three attacking,
um, Regina companies get there,
um, after the barrage has gone off.
And so, with communications broken down
there's really a dire situation here.
The Reginas are looking at
attacking this fortress
with almost no artillery support.
The Reginas can only take cover
and wait for the German barrage to ease.
When it finally does,
acting Major Gordon Brown
and his fellow officers
hurry to organize their men.
At 1800 hours, 30 minutes
after their jump off time,
the Reginas commence their assault,
with Major Eric Syme's
B Company in the lead.
The Germans have put the time to good use.
During this pause,
the German defenders are able to regroup
and sight their machine guns,
sight their anti-tank guns.
And this is the worst-case
scenario for any army.
As the three Regina companies
start out Baker Company
is to advance 400 yards from the village
and take the mound,
the only cover, in the field.
German forces open fire on them
from all directions.
Caen is considered so critical,
General Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
has assigned elite units to defend it.
Overseeing the defense of Normandy,
Rommel had invested heavily
in the Atlantic wall.
It is a series of bunkers,
block houses,
casements, fortified positions
along the French, Belgian,
Dutch, Danish and Norwegian coast.
It is supposed to ward
off an Allied invasion.
Based on Rommel's experience
with the allies in North Africa
he knew German tanks were vulnerable to
allied air superiority.
Rommel believed the allies had
to be defeated on the beaches
in the earliest hours of the invasion.
The German failure to do so on D-Day,
makes the fighting more desperate.
Germans are still
determined to fight,
because they think
if the Allies win the war,
this would mean the annihilation
of the German people.
This was especially true
of German military leadership,
like Kurt Meyer,
who commands the 12th SS Panzer division,
which holds the Abbaye.
How they understand war
is that it must be fought
in the most ruthless way
because it is a struggle for survival.
Meyer has encountered
Canadian units before.
The Canadians and the 12th
SS Hitler Youth had clashed,
uh, since the 7th of June.
So, really the second day of the fighting.
Um, and there had been fierce
battles all over the front.
On June 7th and 8th,
Meyer's unit executed
18 Canadian prisoners of war
at the Abbaye D'ardenne,
in flagrant violation of
the Geneva Convention.
For people like Meyer
or for SS officers,
it's all or nothing.
And there is no way of
compromising with the enemy
so it's only victory or death.
Now, the 12th SS Hitlerjugend
believed that if they are captured
or surrender to the Canadians,
they will be executed in retaliation.
And so, the Canadians and the 12th SS
have a very vicious, personal war.
Regina rifles B Company,
still leads the advance
towards the German occupied mound
partway across the field.
Faced with heavy gunfire,
B Company must run, or crawl,
in short bursts to avoid being hit.
The Germans open up with mortar fire,
machine gun fire, sniper fire.
And the Regina Rifles are
being picked off one by one.
As they inch their way forward,
the company suffers heavy casualties.
There's no easy way
to take out machine guns.
Machine guns firing 500 bullets a minute,
firing on an arc.
You have to sacrifice soldiers
to take that out.
They have no choice
but to keep moving.
Three companies
of the Regina Rifles commence
an assault against the Abbaye D'ardenne.
Across more than 1100 yards of open field,
without tank support,
and one half hour after
their artillery barrage lifts.
B Company leads the way.
Baker Company advances slowly
and using whatever cover is available.
But there's not a lot of cover.
So, this means you gotta stay low.
You gotta stay in the grass.
You gotta try to stay out of sight
of any sort of German sniper,
German artillery, or German machine gun.
So, it is a very slow process
and it causes significant casualties
because every time
they pop up, they get shot.
As the casualties mount
weeks of strain also take their toll.
The Regina Rifles
were very weak at this point.
They had lost a lot of soldiers
in the fighting
in the first month of Normandy.
As frontline
troops at the sharp end,
they get very little sleep
and endure unimaginable stress.
There's no question that
the lack of sleep
and the continual engagement
with the enemy that just
combined will wear anyone down.
It has been four
weeks of constant combat.
So as these soldiers are
engaged with the German enemy,
as they're approaching the Abbey,
there are soldiers that are breaking down.
There are soldiers that are crying.
There are soldiers that are
catatonic and can't even move.
This now includes
baker company's commander, Major Syme,
who succumbs to what is called,
battle exhaustion.
Major! Major!
I need a medic!
Though the Canadian division
had undertaken psychiatric screening
prior to deployment
conditions like battle exhaustion
or battle fatigue
prove unpredictable
and claim many soldiers.
By late July 1944,
battle fatigue makes up 25%
of all non-fatal casualties to the allies.
After D-Day the British
and Canadian army group
established front-line centers
to treat battle exhaustion.
Therapy is simple-- sedation and sleep.
You want to treat them quickly.
You want to treat them effectively
and then you want them back
in the front line.
As Major Syme
is carried from the field
the remainder of B Company
continues to press to the mound.
As they are making those hard yards,
Riflemen would lay down fire,
Bren machine gunners
would lay down heavier fire.
The way they knocked out
those machine guns
was to use grenades for the most part.
And those grenades explode
and they send shrapnel of course,
and that's how,
ultimately, they knock out the mound.
The Germansare forced
to retreat back towards the Abbaye.
To achieve the objective,
Baker Company is gutted.
Sixty-one out of 100 men
become casualties.
With the mound finally in Canadian hands,
C Company and D Company
now continue the advance
and pass through the remains of B Company.
From that position,
Baker Company can then provide
covering fire for the other two companies.
You have Dog Company on the left,
Charlie Company on the right.
And Baker Company will provide
very important covering fire,
which will allow the other
troops to move up slowly.
So, the idea simply here is what we call
fire and movement.
Someone's shooting. Someone's moving.
To prevent his men
from meeting B Company's fate,
Major Stu Tubb,
the commander of C Company,
orders high explosive mortars
against the Abbaye complex.
He hopes the distraction
will provide his men much needed coverage.
But Tubb receives word
that the Reginas have no high
explosive mortars available,
and he is offered smoke instead.
This works for a while,
until the wind comes up.
They're now wide open
and exposed completely to German fire.
All hell breaks loose.
Facing heavy enemy fire
C and D Companies
of the Canadian Regina Rifles
must attack the Abbaye D'ardenne
across 700 yards of open field.
They have just learned
that they've run out of
high explosive mortars
to subdue the German counter fire.
Such shortages have
proved a problem across the allied front.
Just three weeks before
a Major storm struck the Normandy coast.
800 ships and vessels were stranded,
damaged or destroyed on June 19th.
To further cripple allied supply lines,
already hindered,
by a lack of a deep-water port.
All units were having to make do.
Advancing in the open would be suicidal.
So, the Reginas fire
smoke to cover their advance.
Once more, acting Major Gordon Brown
and D Company
press forward on the left flank.
But with the men still 500 yards
short of the Abbaye,
wind clears the smoke.
With the companies now exposed.
The Germans have clear shots.
In the chaos C company's
13th platoon stumbles into a minefield.
You don't know where to step,
and they are set up
for a number of reasons.
One is to cause casualties of course.
But secondly to slow an advance.
The minefield creates
a shooting gallery.
Riflemen and snipers
and machine gunners
will turn upon those isolated soldiers
who are stuck in the middle,
unsure of where is safe.
As their losses mount,
Major Stu Tubb enters the minefield
to help extract his men.
Tubb falls to German machine gun fire.
His second-in-command
moves forward to help,
and is killed.
C company's third in command
is wounded moments later.
Wiping out the enemy's leadership
is a time honored military strategy.
And that is a technique
that the Allies and the Germans use,
that snipers would aim for those NCOs
or those lieutenants or those captains
to try to in, in effect
decapitate the unit.
Without leadership,
C Company retreats to the mound.
They have lost 85 out of 106 men.
General Bernard Montgomery's
stated goal at Caen
was to draw in German troops to kill,
wound or capture as many as possible.
A war of attrition.
But the campaign to capture Caen
proves costly to everyone involved.
Allied aerial bombing to
support Operation Charnwood
began the night before, on July 7th.
More than 460 aircraft dropped
6000 bombs on the city.
While the bombing improved
the morale of allied soldiers,
the strategic impact
on German troops was minimal.
The rubble created
hinders the allied advance
and retreat by German forces.
It also has got an impact on French
civilian population.
Because, French civilians perished
and this had a negative influence
on the attitude of the French
population towards the Allies.
Now, to the northwest
of the city,
the remaining 15 able-bodied
members of C Company
retreat to Authie to bring back
stretchers for their wounded.
Almost three hours after
commencing their attack
on the Abbaye D'ardenne,
Gordon Brown's D Company
remain the only Regina Rifles
left in the fight.
Still hundreds of yards
from their objective,
the covering smoke has also
just cleared on their position.
And leaves them dangerously
exposed to enemy fire.
The 12th SS quickly pin down
Brown and his men again.
Several of the Reginas are hit.
To limit the company's casualties,
Brown and his men push forward
in short bursts,
often gaining just a few feet at a time.
German troops at the Abbaye
have the ideal weapon
to prevent Brown from
achieving his objective.
The MG-42 is arguably the best
machine gun of World War II.
At 1200 rounds per minute,
its rate of fire outpaces
comparable allied machine guns.
Light, reliable and easy to deploy,
the MG-42 has a range of
nearly 1,100 yards.
To avoid the German machine guns
D company's number 16 platoon
makes a flanking move
to the left of the Abbaye.
The remaining Regina Rifles
continue their frontal assault.
But at 2100 hours,
his runner reports to
acting Major Gordon Brown,
that number 16 platoon has vanished.
July 8th, 1944.
As darkness falls,
the Regina Rifles continue their assault
on the Abbaye D'ardenne.
A fortified position that controls access
to the French city of Caen.
With reports that some of his men
are missing
and knowing he needs them all
to seize the Abbaye,
acting Major Gordon Brown
goes in search of his 16th platoon.
Searching the battlefield,
he makes a disturbing discovery.
And he Stumbles into
a small ditch area,
which is a scene of a, a nightmare.
There are wounded soldiers bleeding,
um, dying, crying out
and he thinks that's his lost platoon.
It's not.
It's a group of the Can Scots,
who have stumbled into the battle somehow,
and there are many wounded there.
Brown tries to help.
He bandages some of the more
seriously wounded.
And he's not sure what to do,
of course human instinct
is to care for them,
but that's not the role
of a company commander.
And so, he rightly gives them his water.
He must have been parched.
Unable to do any more for them,
Brown turns back
to rejoin the rest of his company.
He did the right thing.
He did what he had to do.
He did what a soldier had to do,
was to keep pushing
on to the final objective.
When he returns,
Brown finds D Company
in the thick of battle.
D Company is spread
out over the battlefield.
They're facing a
fortress a stone fortress,
the Germans are firing at them non-stop.
I'm amazed at how they could
have pushed their way forward.
They make a daring
charge for the Abbaye walls.
They do call in some smoke,
and the smoke is quite effective.
It obscures the front,
uh, for precious minutes.
The men shoot
and throw grenades on the run.
Their bold initiative pays off.
At 2200 hours, D Company
reaches the Abbaye walls.
With the Regina Rifles closing in,
Colonel Kurt Meyer had made plans
to protect his fighting strength
and asks for permission to retreat.
He gets the answer, no.
There is no way to retreat.
The, reason for that is in the mindset
of the German leadership is
where does our retreat end?
But Meyer withdraws anyway.
He would later claim that he
knew Caen could not be held.
Hitler's order to hold
the city to the last bullet,
would mean the needless
and futile sacrifice of his men.
Thus, the desperate fighting on July 8th,
was to bide time for the evacuation
of Meyer's wounded soldiers
under the cover of darkness.
They devise a plan to delay
the capture of the Abbaye,
and make it as costly as
possible for the Canadians.
The Regina Rifles encounter
the German soldiers left
to cover the withdrawal.
They launch one final assault
and they find a way through
and around those walls
and drive the Germans out.
Some of the Canadians
begin to push into the Abbaye courtyard.
Captain Brown
calls the soldiers back
and he tells them to dig
in outside of the walls.
Having fought
the Germans for a month now
Brown knows they are not safe yet.
The Germans will have
pre-ranged their guns.
One of the nice things about
occupying a position
when you're on the defense is
you have it perfectly placed
on your map,
which means your artillery
knows exactly where to hit it.
Learning that allied
troops have reached the walls,
Meyer orders an artillery
barrage against the Abbaye.
Brown's shrewd orders
prevent further casualties
amongst his men.
But they have yet to completely
achieve their objective
to occupy the Abbaye itself.
Heavy German shelling
prevents acting Major Gordon Brown
and the rest of
the Regina Rifles' D Company
from fully capturing the Abbaye D'ardenne.
As the men endure the barrage,
their lost platoon finally reappears.
During their absence,
16th platoon has been busy.
16th Platoon is able to achieve
something pretty remarkable.
They've knocked out
a battery of German 88 guns.
This means that any Sherman tanks
coming up behind them
are now free to move
in the open countryside.
The platoon's reappearance
brings the company's strength
to 70 soldiers
but Brown knows he needs more men,
if he's going to take and hold the Abbaye.
They've fought for
five and a half hours.
They've lost about 200
soldiers killed and wounded.
Many of them left strewn
over the battlefield.
And now in the dark crying out for help.
Um, but there's no communication
from front to rear.
Um, though, there's no wireless.
There's no telephones.
Brown, and a lieutenant
return to the village of Authie on foot
to request reinforcements
and inform headquarters of their progress.
But on their way,
the two men are caught
in a sustained mortar attack.
They endure the 80-round bombardment.
The shelling is another phase
of Colonel Kurt Meyer's plan
to cover the German retreat of
the 12th SS from Caen.
Meyer's withdrawal proves sensible,
to protect the unit's fighting strength.
By the second week of July,
German battle casualties in western Europe
totaled more than 100,000 men.
Yet German command had managed to replace
only 9% of their manpower losses.
Late into the night,
Brown returns to the Abbaye walls
with reinforcements
the Regina Rifles A-Company,
which had been held in reserve.
In the early morning hours of July 9th,
the German shelling stops.
It's an eerie calm.
I couldn't imagine what
it'd be like to look around
and not hear bullets
whizzing by your face.
And not hear artillery
rounds exploding around you.
And suddenly realize
that for a brief period there's some calm.
You've done it.
At first light,
the Regina Rifles A and D Companies
advance cautiously into the courtyard.
So, when Meyer retreats,
he tries to delay the enemy's advance
by leaving snipers.
This gives his own troops
time to withdraw in good order.
With snipers and booby traps,
the enemy doesn't feel secure.
He doesn't know where the enemy is,
where he's coming from,
so he must be very
cautious when he advances.
It takes them until
mid-afternoon
to clear the Abbaye of German snipers.
Inside the Abbaye they discover
the headquarters in the cellar.
Captain Brown who himself
is beyond exhaustion.
He--he later talks about
almost being delirious, uh, hallucinating.
An exhausted Gordon Brown
pours a drink,
climbs into the bed,
and falls asleep.
The western half of Caen to the Orne River
would fall to the allies
by the end of July 9th.
During Operation Charnwood,
the Regina Rifles suffer 216 casualties,
including 36 men killed.
In terms of
the casualties on that day,
something like 50% of the combat soldiers
were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
The casualties were so severe for
Charlie Company and Baker Company
that after this combat
on the 8th and 9th of July,
they were non-operational.
French civilians
are also deeply affected.
Up to 75% of Caen lay in ruins
and hundreds were killed.
After the war,
Colonel Kurt Meyer faces trial
for war crimes
for his part in the execution of
Canadian prisoners of war
at the Abbaye D'ardenne.
Meyer would be sentenced to death
later commuted to life imprisonment.
He serves nine years
before being released.
The two Canadian company commanders,
Majors Stuart Tubb and Eric Symes,
recover and survive the war.
Major Tubb is later awarded
the Distinguished Service Order
for his leadership and coolness
in the face of enemy fire.
Gordon Brown continues to
serve throughout the war,
and would earn
the Distinguished Service Order
for personal valor and devotion to duty.
While ultimately successful,
the capture of Caen, confirms that
allied gains could be slow and sometimes
measured only in yards.
It is clear to the Allies
the road to Berlin
is not a simple walkover.
It will be a costly and bloody campaign.
And the war in Europe
would continue for another 10 months.
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