The Six Locks of D-Day: Could It REALLY Have Failed?

Just before dawn on June 6, 1944, an 18-year-old German machine-gunner named Franz Gockel looked out from his bunker above Omaha Beach. Twelve miles out to sea, a 24-year-old from Bedford, Virginia named Raymond Hoback was climbing down into a landing craft. One of them would grow old and return to that beach almost every year. The other left behind only a small Bible on the sand. A day earlier, General Eisenhower had already written a note taking the blame for a failed invasion — and dated it July by mistake. In this animated documentary we picture Hitler's Fortress Europe as one door with six locks. The Allies had to open all six on the same morning. Germany needed only one to hold. We try every lock from both sides of the Channel: the disaster at Dieppe that taught the Allies to bring their own harbor, Rommel's Atlantic Wall and the panzer argument that split the German generals, a ghost army with inflatable tanks, a double agent with 27 imaginary spies, a crossword puzzle that spelled out the invasion's codewords, the tragedy of Exercise Tiger, a Scottish weatherman who found a gap in a storm, German generals driving to a war game on the very morning of the real invasion, paratroopers clicking toy crickets in the dark, the agony of Omaha Beach and the town of Bedford — and the evening a handful of German tanks reached the sea between Juno and Sword. One door. Six locks. One morning — and a door that came closer to staying shut than most people think. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Two Men, One Beach 1:56 One Door, Six Locks 3:51 The Rehearsal Nobody Wanted: Dieppe 5:51 Lock One: The Wall 9:34 Lock Two: The Secret 14:08 Lock Three: The Weather 18:12 Lock Four: The Night 21:18 Lock Five: The Beach 28:21 Lock Six: The Panzers 31:54 The Race 33:41 The Price 34:25 Which Lock Almost Held? 37:20 Two Pieces of Paper Which lock almost held — the weather, Omaha, or the panzers? And if D-Day had failed, where would the Red Army have stopped? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe for more animated history where every decision had another way out. Sources include Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy), Max Hastings (Overlord), Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day), Rick Atkinson (The Guns at Last Light), Stephen Ambrose (D-Day June 6, 1944), Joseph Balkoski (Omaha Beach; Utah Beach), Alex Kershaw (The Bedford Boys), Franz Gockel's letter of June 10, 1944 and later testimony,James Stagg (Forecast for Overlord), Ben Macintyre (Double Cross), Omar Bradley (A Soldier's Story), The Rommel Papers, the National D-Day Memorial, and the Eisenhower Presidential Library (the "In Case of Failure" note). Casualty figures are historians' estimates and vary between sources. Some quotations come from memoirs and later recollections and are presented as such; character lines are dramatized paraphrases. Disputed points — Mountbatten's claims about Dieppe, Hitler's morning on June 6, and how close the 21st Panzer counterattack came — are presented as debated. This video is made for educational purposes, in memory of everyone who died in Normandy. It does not glorify war, violence or any regime. #history #ww2 #dday