Transcription
I'm James Holland, and one of the things that's always really fascinated me about the Second World War is the interplay between man and machine. In this series, I'm going to go inside the Nazi war machine. Traveling across Europe, I'll explore the extraordinary machines they produced, and uncover rare archives to understand who built them, how they evolved, and why their technically brilliant designs were militarily flawed.
The magnificent fighter planes no rookie could fly. You know, the first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take that leap of faith. The power of the Panzers. If I had come up against this, I would have been terrified. But I'm about to learn one of the biggest cons of them all. The weapons that couldn't cope with mud or sound. Wow, it's got so little kick on it. And you hit the target. I'm proud about you. The U-boats that were floating bombs. That was a suicide command. Absolute horror. A journey through the heart of the Nazi war machine.
In this episode, I'll uncover the truth behind Hitler's fearsome Panzer arm. This actually did not really represent reality. And reveal the Nazis' passion for over-engineering. How many gears have we got here? You've got over 60 gears in that in that case. That's insane. Whilst in the middle of a world war.
To begin my investigation into Nazi land warfare, it seems only right that I should start with the Panzer division. This wasn't just tanks, but a massive formation of motorized infantry, artillery, and reconnaissance vehicles. For Adolf Hitler, the Panzer division was his key to victory.
I'm starting my journey at the tank museum at Bovington in Dorset to explore the origins of this terrifying fighting force, and I'm meeting up with historian David Willey. It's amazing, David, isn't it? How when people talk about the Blitzkrieg years, the first part of the war, they always talk about the Nazi war machine, don't they? And yet, in terms of Panzers, this is one of the most prevalent. Yeah, the Panzer II is the most numerous tank the Germans have in 1940 when they invade France, Belgium, and Holland. And as a tank, when we look at it, you know, it's not that impressive.
Standing at just over 6 ft tall, it really did look pretty inoffensive. It was armed with only a 20 mm cannon and a single machine gun, had armor of 35 mm at its thickest, and weighed less than 9 tons. Panzer I and Panzer IIs, in essence, were training tanks for the German military. They wanted to go to war with the Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs. They're starting to build those, but there's not many of them. Um, and Hitler, in essence, jumps the gun for the German military.
War caught Germany's manufacturers on the hop. Even by the launch of the Blitzkrieg in May 1940, they only had 627 Panzer IIIs and IVs, but three times as many Panzer Is and IIs. This was a very different reality from the mighty Panzer army propagated by Hitler's spin doctor, Joseph Goebbels.
During the last two weeks in August, the German armies moved toward the Polish border where they assembled 70 divisions, many of them armored. From a military standpoint, the Poles were hopelessly outclassed by their predatory neighbor, the Nazis, 5,000 modern tanks. Poland, 600 nondescript tanks. The key thing is that the Germans emphasize their success with that Panzer arm in 1940. That's what we see in all the propaganda movies. That then ends up emphasizing the importance that the Germans have about the tank. And it sort of slightly hides as well that background of it's only a small part of the German army and it's only also a small part of their military effort.
At this early stage of the war, the German army was relying not just on the Panzer II, but also on the tanks they had captured in the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Very soon, the Panzer II became completely obsolescent. But there were other tanks that also became outmoded, not least the T-38, which was Czech-built but captured when Nazi Germany absorbed Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich. And although these T-38s and Panzer IIs were used in the Blitzkrieg years, soon there was another role that could be used for them because all sides were realizing as the war progressed that actually you could use tracked vehicles for other purposes. You could use them as mobile artillery. So with the T-38s, which had a perfectly good track and wheel system, had a perfectly good engine, you whip off the turret, put an anti-tank gun on instead, and suddenly you've got something completely different. And that's the Marder.
Don't be fooled by its origins. The Marder is an artillery piece, but because it's mobile and tracked, it was to become a key ingredient of the Panzer division. Nearly double the size of the Panzer II, it had a four-man crew and an open rear firing compartment. Well, John, I got to say this looks, this looks very promising. It's a good vehicle. Would you like to see her in the flesh? Yes, please. I've unearthed a restored Marder III in a farmhouse in Kent. Look at that. The big reveal. Oh, goodness me. That's seen some action, hasn't it? The man behind this mammoth restoration project is John Phillips. She's come together very well, hasn't he? Very pleased with that. They're an amazing concept, aren't they? Because, you know, if you look at this as a, as a, a tank chassis, which it what it originally was. Yes. That's pretty small, isn't it? But obviously what the Germans are doing are going, "Okay, well, T-35, T-38 Czech-built tanks." I mean, these are the T-35s and the T-38s. That's what RML was using in 1940 in the Blitzkrieg on France. That's right. In his seventh Panzer division. Yes. But obviously as the war progresses they become obsolete. You don't want those anymore. They're just not big enough. They're not powerful enough. But hang on a minute. We've got all these chassis. Let's use them. That's the principle behind it, isn't it? Yeah. Evolution. So basically, this is a mobile anti-tank gun. Yes. The crew would have dug a scrape up to here, hidden it, and then just left the gun above ground. Yep. Fired a couple of rounds off and then scraped.
Look at that. First go. What's the technology like? I mean, how, how easy, how complicated? This is a pretty basic chassis, uh, using springs rather than torsion bars. But because this is such a simple design, um, the wheels could be taken off. You see them, you know, with one wheel missing and still quite happily traveling along and easy to maintain then, I guess. Very easy. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few grease points here. You take these out and the grease nipples in there. So, yeah, very easy to maintain. Lovely design. Very clever. And this is a Pak 40, isn't it? Which to the uninitiated is a 75 mm gun. And obviously the 75 mm that refers to the diameter of the shell that's fired. Correct. The whole point about an anti-tank gun is you want it to have high velocity. You want it to pass through the air incredibly quickly. And that's what you get with this with this Pak 40.
The Marders were the first step in expanding the strength and distance of the high-powered anti-tank gun. Removing the tank turret and replacing it with the fixed Pak 40 made them much more maneuverable on the battlefield. Can we have a look at the back here? Yes. This just comes down, does it? Yeah. So, I suppose the, the brilliant thing about this is that rather than having to have a separate truck and tow, tow a vehicle, unlock it, take, you know, unhitch it, get it out, put out the forks, all the rest of it, it's just here. You know, you go forward, you fire. Yeah. You move back, go to a different place. It's just, it's, it's such a, it's such a sort of logical development, isn't it? For the anti-tank gun, it's very good. And also, these rounds, they would have had racks along here and that side. The only reason they're not there is, uh, for ease of access, but they would have carried as many as they could get in the machine. So, they were self-sufficient. The only problem is they're a bit vulnerable. At the top here, there's a few original bullet holes here where it's amazing. It's amazing how much we, we discount the anti-tank gun. You know, we really do. It's just, it's just not on our radar. And tank destroyers, self-propelled guns, assault guns, all those sort of things. We just, we're just so obsessed with Tigers and Panthers and Panzer IVs that we kind of forget there's this whole other range of weaponry which the Germans are developing in the war. The Marder gives you an insight into how the German army could adapt and come up with some ingenious solutions. But it's one thing to sit in the back of this Marder, but another to drive it. And so I've got to give it a go. Okay, James. Yes. To drive is very simple. Yeah. Basically, you've got the throttle and clutch. Throttle on your right foot, clutch on your second foot. Yeah. Clutch here. Then you've got two levers and basically the levers just pull a brake. So if I pull the right hand thing that'll start swiveling that way. That's right. You, you'll turn to the right and left. Very simple. You've already sussed it out. You'll be fine. Yeah. Okay. Right. Right. So start her up. Push the button and you're ready to rock. Okay. I'm pressing that. It's not happening. Oh, hang on. It might be the, hang on. Let me just have it. Oh, I've turned the outside. Yeah, just be gentle. Under pressure, the Germans did adapt to the changing patterns of war by using all the materials they had available. Okay, the throttle. That's it. Lovely. Perfect. But one of the reasons I found it so easy to drive was because it was designed by the Czechs, not the Germans.
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Panzer II and the Marder, one of Hitler's most effective weapons remained his propaganda machine. His camera crews were careful to film only Nazi machines and relentless firepower. Through Poland, through Holland, through Belgium fed the German war machine. It's every operation timed. It's every movement rehearsed a thousand times before. Only steel could challenge steel. And of steel, there could not be enough. But the next generation of Panzers would be altogether much bigger and more powerful, and most definitely designed and built in Germany.
In 1941, Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union, and the German army found itself in a front that was far larger and with far harsher conditions than anything they'd faced before. Gambling on taking Moscow by early fall, the Germans had timed their attack to take full advantage of the summer weather. But they had not counted on savage Russian resistance. And by September came fall rain, slowing the Nazi advance. Their new enemy also came with new weapons, but not least this, the T-34, which with its sloping armor and its big 85 mm main gun, far outclassed anything the Germans had in their Panzer arm.
So, the Germans know that the Russians have tanks, but they're just shocked by the size and scale of it, aren't they? Yeah. Hitler later actually says there's a line he comes out with, or purportedly comes out with, which is saying, "If I knew how many tanks the Russians had, I wouldn't have invaded." What I don't think they picked up on is number one, the quality, the underlying strength of the T-34 tank, and the other side of it as well, is just the sheer numbers. And so that causes a real shock to the German military. Guderian sets up a special Panzer commission, and off they go to the Eastern Front to seriously look, how are we going to answer this problem? One of the potential answers is, let's copy the tank directly. They seriously think of drawing up plans. Reverse-engineering a T-34. Exactly that, to put into production. Being the Germans, they have to go one better. We can do something better than this. And that tank becomes the Panther.
Standing at just under 10 ft, it was the largest German tank created to date. The Panther incorporated many of the Soviet tank's unique features like the sloped armor, but with a thickness of 100 mm. It housed a 75 mm gun with two MG34 machine guns to support it. It weighed a staggering 45 tons. If we compare that to the 26 tons of the T-34, this was a terrifying opponent. But this is substantially bigger than the T-34. Yeah, you're looking at a, you're talking about one-upmanship, aren't you? You are. The actual requirement sounds quite sensible when they start. The problem so often with the German military is Hitler intervenes and always insists on either bigger guns, thicker armor as part of the process. Um, and inevitably, because of the situation that's going on certainly on the Eastern Front and in other campaigns as well, this need to suddenly leap further ahead. He's pushing the German military who at times are thinking, "Hang on, this is, do we really need this?" GV? Um, actually, if it's an order from Hitler, you are going to go about doing that. So with the Panther, what happens is they try to use some common sense. They put a long-barreled 7.5 cm high-velocity gun on. And because this is a new gun now, we're looking at, this gun has greater penetration with an armor-piercing round than the traditional 88 mm that we think of. And this tank is all about that gun. Of course, the greater the size, the greater the complications. Come and have a look at this because this is a prime example of where you see not only the complexity that goes into a late-war German tank, but also one of the problems the Germans got. You have to be well-trained to be able to change gears effectively. And famously, the first to second gear on the Panther is one of those ones where if you get it wrong, you can mess up some of that gearing. And the problem is, you look at the size of this, that means basically the whole of the top of the front of the tank has to be taken out. So this is then taken out by crane, lifted out to repair. And if you go back to again, if we want to think of comparisons, look at the American Sherman, you unbolt that front section to gain access. So it's easy to be able to remove that gear. Yes. But the other thing about a Sherman is it's, it's a, it's a manual gearbox of four gears forward, one reverse. And it couldn't be more simpler. And you put your foot on the clutch and you remove the gear stick. I mean, what have we got? How many gears have we got here? You've got over 60 gears in that in that gearing. 60 different actual pieces of machine metal in terms of actually those gears. That's insane, isn't it, for a combat vehicle? And yet, in essence, what you're really trying to say is they both do the same function, right? So why have the German military decided to go down this route as opposed to perhaps going for the simplicity to make numbers? If you've got 60 different moving parts, bits of machine metal in there, I mean, and you're a new recruit and you're, you're driving. I mean, your story about sort of changing from first to second can actually just crash the whole gearbox. The analogy I often use is you can drive your family car around the block here at Bovington faster than you can drive a Formula 1 car because the level of training you need to be able to use that paddle gear shift and all that other technology in a Formula 1 car, unless you've had training, training, training to get to that right standard, you are not going to be able to go as fast in that car as you would in your own car that you get familiar with.
In contrast to the Nazis, the Americans, recognizing that the majority of their troops were civilian conscripts, tried to make the driving experience as close to that of a domestic automobile as possible. Now, in the Second World War, you're looking at a generation that they were very, only a few families would have had a motor car. Cool. So everything you're learning about here, particularly in Germany where the motor industry is not as big, this might propaganda. It seems to me that as the war progresses, so the tanks are getting, the Panzers are getting bigger and more sophisticated. And at the same time, the qualitative standard of those who were expected to drive them is actually getting lower. So how well equipped were these new recruits to drive the Panther?
While I'm at the tank museum, I'm heading to their research rooms to uncover some very revealing documents from German prisoners of war. So, all sides in the Second World War were constantly analyzing their equipment, trying to upgrade it, trying to improve it, and really going into it in some detail. What I've got here is a document between the 21st Army Group, which is the British and Canadian forces in northwest Europe. And there's lots about their own equipment and trying to get that better. But there's also a bit at the back on statements by German Panzer crews, prisoners of war. And what's really interesting, this was, this was taken on the 26th of July. So this is back in the summer during the height of the Normandy campaign. And it says here on the Panther, especially, a large proportion of crews went into action after a comparatively short period of training. A large number of drivers had had only 10 days training on the Panther and and some as little as 10 hours. I mean, as we know, the Panther is an incredibly complex piece of equipment. It's very difficult to drive. It's very difficult to operate. That is just not enough. This is a big problem for the Germans because they've designed a very complex tank, but haven't adequately trained the crews.
But this didn't stop them producing equally complex variants of the Panther. Oh my goodness, look at that. That's not something you see in the back of most barns. I'm now at the Wield Foundation in Kent where they house a unique collection of German armored vehicles all in working order. The one I really want to see is the German army's mighty Jagdpanther. They had a Panther tank and that had a big enough chassis to house a much bigger casement on top rather than a turret. And with a bigger casement, you could have a much bigger gun. In fact, you could have the really highly powerful, high-velocity 88 mm Pak 43 anti-tank gun. The other advantage about having a casement on a tank rather than a rotational turret is you don't have to have all the mechanization and hydraulics that are needed for a rotating turret. And also, you don't need key supplies like ball bearings, which by this stage of the war were in really short supply. When you did that, you got the Jagdpanther.
Weighing 45 tons, it could reach speeds of 45 km/h. The 100 mm armor protected its five-man crew. But what really gave it its impact in the field was its massive 88 mm high-velocity gun. I'm going to take a look inside. The man responsible for getting this beast back up and running, Mike Gibb. Well, mate, I've got to say this is absolutely incredible. This is what I would have seen if I was a crew member coming into the first time. This is what I'd be looking at. Correct. It's all kitted out exactly as it was. You've got the Scherenfernrohr, as it's called, the bunny binoculars over there, right? Which is where you would be standing as the commander. You would be the, the eyes of the crew because if you look at it, there's not that many places that you can look out here. You've got the right in the front where the driver sits is looking through a letterbox, but he's looking through the letterbox from inside the house with the actual cage with all the mail sitting inside it because it's, you're not your face isn't right against it. No. And you're looking up and out with a periscope. So, as a driver, you can see literally nothing. Yes. With him, he's reliant on you as a commander telling him where to go. So, you've got that machine telegraph. The commander's here. I'm sticking my head out or I'm keeping ducking down. Yes. And, and this, this is basically go forward, go left, turn right. Correct. Stop. Just as simple as that. As simple as that. And every time you move that, he's got an equivalent. He's got the equivalent, which is a sliding scale mechanism on the, on his dashboard, right? Which, uh, mirrors exactly what you're saying. You've also got settings, uh, for adjusting the steering mechanism, which are actually behind the instrument panel in front of the driver, right? And you've got to go in there. You can't see what you're tightening up. You've got to do it all by, by finger touch, by feel. Yeah, correct. And what would happen more often than not is unless you've actually been in the thing on a regular basis, unless you've actually checked your, uh, hydraulic pressure and everything else, you have, and you haven't got your settings right, you just can't steer. It really is tough. But I mean, look at this gun. I mean, it's, you know, the 88 is an enormous gun and one of the most powerful anti-tank guns of the war. But I mean, you know, what about the recoil here? The recoil here is terrifying. You've got your recoil guard here on the side. Now, if the guy is not in good communication with his, um, his gunner, he can't hear him. Okay, the guy fires. The time that you are taking your arm out, you can lose your arm. Don't you find it just absolutely incredible that they go to so much attention and detail on little things and yet that's such a big important one. I suppose though, if you, I mean, look after the crew, surely. No, that's true, but then if you look at where these, uh, the development of vehicles like this starting off, you know, the Panzer I with your two machine guns and moving to something like that in the question of what, four or five years. So the development was enormous, but they simply did not, they weren't really thinking about things like this. They should never have gone down the road of producing something like this just because of problems with the engine, problems with the steering, the cost. I would say at the end of it all, bit of a waste of time. Magnificent waste of time.
It's clear after examining the monstrous Panther and Jagdpanther tank destroyer, the bigger is not always better, and came at a grave cost. The Third Reich spent the entire war consumed by perfecting its appearances. Nowhere is this more evident than in their magnificent staff cars for the Nazi top brass.
I think most people assume that a Panzer division is just stuff full of tanks, but actually it's a unit of a broad range of vehicles. What's clear to me though is that no matter what the vehicle, nearly all of them were massively over-engineered and involved the mismanagement of materials. The Nazis never knowingly stinted on luxury. Their staff cars, built at a time of ever-shortening resources, simply defied common sense, but you can't deny they were magnificent feats of engineering. Okay. So, you're looking at an off-road luxury car. So, these are like the Bentleys of their day. This was, this was the equivalent. These were generally issued to your field marshals or your divisional commanders who'd achieved something pretty spectacular. This is a limited edition version of the Horch Vagen 21 command car, built in Dresden. These particular cars were custom-built with a specially designed chassis and heavy armor, making them expensive, complicated, and difficult to drive. Only 36 were built. So, at a time where they just cannot afford that kind of reckless squandering of resources, and they're doing it. Uh, and this was then put, this was put together. Look at that. You, you're talking about a, a vehicle. This particular one didn't serve in North Africa as we thought it did originally, but a vehicle just like this, the one that was actually Rommel's, served in Africa.
On the 21st of June 1942, General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, achieved his greatest victory, crushing the British Eighth Army and capturing Tobruk in northeast Libya. The British were forced to flee back into Egypt. For his efforts, Hitler rewarded him with a Field Marshal's baton and a luxury staff car. Think of this type of luxury in the middle of a desert or combat situation is just ridiculous. I mean, this is just smooth as glass. Shut the door in the old way. Just bang it shut. This is a very, very sturdily built luxury off-road car. All the seats are made of leather. The detail is absolutely incredible. The seat work, the leather was all done by a specialist, as what you've just been holding here on the door was all done. Now, for a, for what should have been a very rudimentary off-road vehicle just to ferry a field marshal or a general around, and it's just ridiculous, isn't it? Just, and a V8 3.8 liter engine to take one guy. So, you've got a driver and then you have the, the commander. And most of these guys loved standing in the back and holding on to that bar and, uh, taking the salute. It's just that lack of prioritizing that the Germans go in for, isn't it? You know, you know, you, what you do see with the Allies is that by and large, they're using their resources that they do have in the best possible way. I mean, there's obviously certain things you could query. But with the Germans, you just see them repeatedly making the same mistakes over and over and over again, which is too much attention to detail. There's no thought process, no thought process, and, and bonkers things like this. It's just a pointless, reckless engine. By the way, the engine is the same engine as you have in the armored car series, right? So, why not build another armored car with a V8 3.8 liter engine and build one of these?
Needless to say, Hitler himself had access to an impressive array of luxury vehicles. Even for mundane trips to inspect the railways, the Führer had to arrive in style. One such car was the magnificent six-wheeled Mercedes-Benz G4. It's a perfect example of the supreme engineering and design detail for which the Germans were rightly famous, but it came at a price.
I have a big day ahead with an opportunity to get the lift of a lifetime in one of three surviving examples of this spectacular car. It lives in the Sinsheim Technology Museum, just an hour south of Frankfurt. Well, look at that. That is absolutely stunning, isn't it? And what a beast. God, it's enormous. Wow! God, look at the condition of it. And there you are, the big six wheels. Oh my god, I've been so excited about this. It's absolutely incredible. Well, when you think of these cars and parades, it's always with the roof down. So, uh, yeah, now this is looking more like it, isn't it? Also ought to see your money. It feels really kind of off-road luxury, I suppose, which is exactly what it was. But incredible to think this was built in 1938. Oh, see, look at that.
Oh, York is taking me for a spin in this very special machine. Now worth an estimated €10 million. There's no better man for the task as he spent his career as a mechanic painstakingly conserving these rare vehicles. In many old cars, they make the front for the driver and coach very small. They make it small because the driver is not important. No. So, they have more space at the rear seats.
It's an odd and quite uncomfortable experience for me to sit where Hitler once sat, but I'm not going to lie, I reckon I could get used to it. Perfect. Brilliant. Thank you. You're welcome. Well, York, this is quite something. It's a beautiful machine, isn't it? Very big and very heavy, the whole car. And I was really struck when we were driving about how smooth it was. I mean, you, you felt high up. You felt you're in a big car, but it felt very, very smooth. Yes. So, is it a four-wheel drive? Yes. Mhm. Only in the rear axles. And, uh, the rear axle has something special. When you are offside in the mud. Yes. And the wheels are turning. Yes. It locks by itself. You have just automatically. Yes. And so you can go better through the mud and grass and things like that. I mean, that's incredible technology for the 1930s. Yes. It's, it's a really special for that car. And in terms of luxury, high, high quality engineering, this is as good as it gets, isn't it? It's for that time. You have a lot of features here inside the engine. It has, uh, 5.4 liter, 110 horsepower. Wow. It's a big boy. So, it's got hooks in here. God, this is a little awkward to get to, isn't it? You can open. Whoa. A, that is bring it here inside. This, this part you bring it here inside. Oh, yes. Look at that. So it's very heavy. You can feel it. How many steel is on the car? Isn't that beautiful? Very special for. Look at this, you know, leather down here. Yes. And why is there this gap here? What's this about? I think because the car is so big. Yes. And you have a, a space between the body. Yes. And the photo front part of the body. And you have in, in the offside a little bit turning from the car. It's incredible. Here is the seat. Yes. And you bring, you can bring the seat up. Oh, really? You just lift, pull it back. Yes. Ah, so you're standing. Bit of a security risk perhaps, but Yes. But there are a lot of, people can see you. Yep.
The G4 was originally designed in 1934, but Mercedes improved it for the Nazis in 1938. The upgrade included rear-facing spotlights to be used to temporarily blind unauthorized drivers who followed too closely. It also featured an ingenious early door locking system. You talked about the security for the people at the back. They have, uh, backs for the pistol. Wow. I mean, you know, gosh, this, I, I can't, I can't begin to tell you how comfortable this is. I mean, I could, you could drive me to Hamburg, no problem in this. Even if I'm only going 60 km an hour, I'd be very happy. I mean, really, it's, um, lot of lever, a lot of luxury. Yes. It's a statement, isn't it? It's, it's saying I'm powerful. I'm in command. The Mercedes-Benz G4 really is a stunning example of German engineering with its exceptional craftsmanship, housing technology far in advance of its time. But on the other hand, it was never designed to win a war.
The size and complexity of Germany's armored fighting vehicles have dazzled the popular imagination in books, films, and even comics. Panzers have played a starring role, but I'm about to learn one of the biggest cons of them all. That Nazi Germany wasn't really all that mechanical at all. For Hitler, imagery and spectacle were the key ingredients of projecting the power of the Nazi war machine. But to truly convince the world of their strength, the Nazis needed a machine to make them legendary.
With the German army checked on the Eastern Front, by 1942, a new monster tank was vital. We're back at the tank museum in Bovington to look at what became the most infamous German tank of them all. With this machine, they hoped to turn their fortunes around. I'm talking about the Tiger tank, one of the Goliaths of the German army. It stood at 10 ft tall and weighed 51 tons with thick 120 mm armor. For armament, it had two machine guns, but also housed the largest gun of any German tank at that time with a high-velocity 88 mm.
Well, I've got to admit, if I'd been an Allied soldier and I'd come up against this, I would have been absolutely terrified. I mean, look at it. It's got a massive gun. It's enormous. It's full of armor. That is just a death-bringing machine, isn't it? And of course, it's amazing how much this has come to symbolize the kind of the Nazi Panzer might. I mean, when we're thinking of Panzers in the Second World War, tanks in the Second World War, the Tiger is almost certainly what we're thinking about. And yet, you know, we have to stand back from that and we have to look at it afresh and look at it a bit more objectively. And you know, you can just start with the tracks. They're so wide, they don't actually fit on the continental loading gauge of the railways that the Germans were using. And because the Germans have so little fuel, the railways are really important. They're the glue that keeps the whole thing together. So what they have to do is they have to transport their Tigers by rail, but they actually have to change the tracks. So they have to lift this little side bit up, take this bit off, take off the tracks, put on travel tracks, and then when they get close to where they want to be to the front line, they've got to do it all again in reverse. And then you just think about the transmission on this thing. You know, this is a six-speed semi-hydraulic pre-selector gearbox designed by Ferdinand Porsche. It sounds complicated. It was complicated. And you imagine putting a raw recruit into that. It's like putting, it's like putting someone who's just passed his driving test into a Lamborghini contest, you know, grinding the gears and of course the whole thing breaks down. So, yes, it is big. Yes, it is scary. It certainly has the fear factor, the psychological factor, but only 1,347 of these beasts ever built, but 49,000 Shermans. So once again, Hitler had the technology, he had the fear factor, but he didn't have the resources, and he didn't have the numbers.
Though his tanks ultimately failed him, his propaganda machine was still working overtime. The Third Reich was hiding a secret. Back at the Wield Foundation with Mike Gibb, I'm discovering that the vast majority of German soldiers were dependent on very different means of transport throughout the entire war. So, from one extreme to the other, Mike. Yes. This is, uh, coming back to the reality of German transportation during the war. It looks like something that would have come out of the, the 19th century. Yeah. I mean, if you told me this was at Waterloo, I'd have believed you, you know. Yes. This is the Second World War. It's called a Pa Vagen. This was the prime method of German transportation in World War II. In fact, 85% of their transportation was actually delivered in this way. These horse-drawn carts came with their own complications, not least how to feed all the horses pulling them. Remember there was one railway line. Yeah. At that time, right? One railway line into Russia. And each horse had to be fed 20 kgs of fodder every single day. So the majority of supplies that were going through in those days was for the horses. But it is amazing. I mean, you know, you think German army used one and a half million horses in the First World War, but they used 2 and a half million in the Second. I mean, 2 and a half million, that's just correct. And remember we were totally mechanized by the by the outbreak of the Second World War in comparison to the Germans.
While the German war machine was still largely horse-drawn, in Britain the mechanized industries were booming. By 1939, there were 14 people to every motorized vehicle in the UK. In Germany, by contrast, that figure was 47 people per vehicle. So despite having Mercedes, Porsche, obviously BMW, and all those makes that we still so familiar with today, you know, they were super luxury items. And of course, the problem you have is that if you don't have a very automotive society, that means you don't have lots of factories building them. It means you don't have lots of workshops repairing them. You don't have lots of people who know how to drive them. You've got no mechanics. You don't have mechanics. But you can't just click your fingers and go, "Right, I want lots of, I want lots of." And then you invade Russia with 2,000 different types of vehicles, most of which are stolen inland and most of which have come from Poland or have come from the, the British army after you're now having to translate all those or having to get them translated because you can't read French, you can't read Polish, you can't read British or English rather, and every single one has a different distributor cap and rotor, so you've got a parts problem, and that's exactly what these guys were contending with. The Germans used 135 divisions for the invasion of France and the Low Countries, but incredibly only 16 of those were mechanized. And that's where it comes back to that conventional wisdom. Yes, that's right. Drawn from those comics, the Commando comic, the Battle Picture Library, the War Picture Library, the Victor manual of us just imagining tanks. We never saw horses in those. I can't remember seeing ever seeing a horse in those. No, it's, it's absolutely true. And one of the main reasons that is because early part of the war they had a lot of, um, propaganda was obviously they were very successful at that. The Nazis, they, that's something they could do incredibly well. The Nazis alone assembled a striking force of 30 Panzer divisions, 70 motorized divisions, 140 infantry divisions. All their victorious armies, they were sent in with vast numbers of film crews and cameras, stills, cameras, and all the rest of it. And, and it was verboten to take pictures of people, of horses. And that's why we have a problem when we try to explain this to people, they simply don't believe you because that public narrative, it's, it's, it's so entrenched, isn't it? It's so entrenched. Then even worse than that, if you move on to the machine next door here. Yeah. This is called the infantry car. This is not this person pulling this doesn't take 20 kgs of fodder. It's you and I. Right. And you pull something like this which either carries machine guns, carries, um, mortars, carries. So your machine gun sits in slots in here. Yes. The barrel stock. Yep. I can see that. And you think now this would be pulled all the way from Germany, Germany to the outskirts of Moscow. It's crazy. But that's what they did. But again, it's, it defies that, uh, that narrative that we were brought up with. Absolutely. Nazi Germany might have had the most feared army at the start of the war, but it was utterly reliant on horsepower and handcarts to get them through Europe.
The Germans spent the war furiously trying to develop weapons that would give them the edge. Ultimately though, they were too complex, too inefficient, and too few in number to be at all decisive. By May 1945, the Third Reich had been crushed. And it was here on this rather lovely hill southeast of Hamburg that German commanders surrendered to the British. On the 4th of May 1945, after 273 days of war, after the longest European war in 130 years, the Northern German army surrendered unconditionally to Field Marshal Montgomery on Lüneburg Heath. Field Marshal Montgomery, he signs not only for himself, for his armies, for England and her allies. He signs also for all those who ever marched with him and fell at 100 barricades, who died for all of us, that with peace we may build a wiser world. For all the technical brilliance of the Germans, giant tanks and powerful guns had not been enough in a war that had become increasingly industrialized. Nazi Germany has simply been unable to keep pace.