Falaise pocket

It wasn't DSO, but it was equivalent, you know.

Um, and if you'd asked them, you know, or indeed if you, or if Margaret Thatcher, when she was considering the Falklands, surrounded by, uh, Peter Carrington, Willie Whitelaw, Pim, all, all these people who had fought in the Falaise Gap.

They'd seen young men blown to bits, die in agony, you know, 18-year-olds.

They said to her, "Be careful before you take this on, the Falklands War.

At when this point, we're a little further into Normandy.

And for those of you who are World War II history knowledgeable, you may recognize the city of Falaise because in World War II, this was the Falaise Pocket.

This was where a German army was surrounded towards the end of the Battle of Normandy just before the breakout there.

And probably 100,000 soldiers could have been captured at that point, but 60,000 German soldiers were either captured or killed in the Falaise Pocket.

It was a fairly important part of the close of the Normandy campaign and the beginning of the breakout into the rest of France.

But before that, long before that, this is the town where William the Conqueror was born.

It became operational at noon, August 1st, 1944, under Bradley's 12th United States Army Group.

The Third Army simultaneously attacked west into Brittany, south, east toward the Seine, and north, assisting in trapping several hundred thousand German soldiers in the Falaise Pocket between Falaise and Argentan.

So he gets this Third Army Group, immediately goes, gets on the western side, and attacks in all directions.

Gets himself several hundred thousand, you know what I'm saying? Patton's strategy with his army favored speed and aggressive offensive action, though his forces saw less opposition than the other three Allied field armies in the initial weeks of their advance.

They, they land the end of July, beginning of August 1944.

They're part of the closing of the Falaise Gap.

But once it becomes clear that the resistance within Paris, which is the FTP, primarily communist resistance, are uprising, getting the Second Armored Division to Paris is not only a point of French pride for French troops liberating Paris, it's also a important part of de Gaulle's political messaging, which is to get troops loyal to him into Paris.

There is a real fear, even in 1944 and then into 1945, of, of a potential civil war in France, and, uh, incredibly, incredibly divided.

Patton has done his big end run.

The Germans have been trapped in the Falaise Pocket.

A lot of their forces, as we sa- as we saw earlier, have retreated into Holland to, to kind of refit and replenish, and then the Americans and British and Canadians had to make a decision.

Are they gonna follow Patton's track? Are they gonna try to cross the Rhine, uh, th- sweeping across France, or are they gonna allow Mon- Montgomery to do this Operation Martin Gar- Market Garden to take the bridges and go into the Ruhr area of industrial Germany? And, uh, as, uh, as I mentioned earlier in titles, uh, Eisenhower decided to go with Montgomery, and by doing so, I think he prolonged the war by three or four months.