World War 2 Paratrooper Training Film | Paratroops | ca. 1943

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This video – originally titled as "Paratroops" – is a World War 2-era military training film produced by the U.S. Office of War Information. It was released in circa 1943. The film depicts the training of U.S. Army Paratroops. It shows details of how the airborne force is prepared for combat operations including a supplemental section on alpine training for ski paratroops. The soldiers learn to jump, fold and pack their parachute, fight, and ski.

…SKI TRAINING??? Where EXACTLY were they thinking of going during that time?
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT

Paratroopers are military parachutists – military personnel trained in parachuting into an operation and usually functioning as part of an airborne force. Military parachutists (troops) and parachutes were first used on a large scale during World War 2 for troop distribution and transportation. Paratroopers developed an elite image on both sides during the war.

As World War 2 approached neither Britain nor America had paratrooper regiments. It was the Germans who seized on the potential that paratroopers gave. Such troops fitted in perfectly with Heinz Guderian’s vision of lightening war – Blitzkrieg. Hermann Göring, as head of the Luftwaffe, formed the first parachute regiments in 1935. A Luftwaffe general, Kurt Student, was given charge of airborne training.

The first opposed German airborne attacks occurred in May1940, during the Norwegian Campaign, when Fallschirmjäger, the elite German paratrooper unit captured the defended air bases at Oslo and Stavanger. In the attack on the Netherlands, German paratroopers played a major role isolating the city of The Hague and in Belgium, they seized vital bridges and took a strategic fort at Eben Emael.

One year later, in May 1941, the Germans used the Fallschirmjäger to invade Crete. This was the first time that paratroopers were given the task of attacking and defeating a complete target. At the time, it was the largest airborne operation in history. Though the island was taken after heavy fighting and Battle of Crete passed into military folklore, the Germans took very heavy casualties (25%) and Adolf Hitler lost faith in this form of attack. On the orders of Hitler, German paratroopers were sent to Russia where they fought as ground troops. However, the British read more into this battle and with the support of Winston Churchill, Britain soon had an airborne division.

In the United States, an airborne brigade was discussed in 1939 by the Chief of Infantry. A parachute test platoon came into being in June 1940 under the control of the Infantry. This platoon was headed by Major William Lee. In the autumn of 1940, a parachute battalion was created in America and a parachute school was founded at Fort Benning in Georgia. The Americans, like the British, experimented with the use of gliders to deliver their men to a drop zone. Both Britain’s and America’s airborne divisions tended to total about 9,000 men. The tendency was to go for lightly armed men to boost their ability to move around a battlefield. This put them at a disadvantage on the ground if they were confronted by tanks and other armored vehicles. The damage down to the Germans in Crete taught a lesson to the British and Americans in that any area that was prepared for an airborne attack, would result in heavy losses for the attackers. Airborne soldiers at D-Day took disproportionately high casualties compared to the beach landings (with the exception of Omaha) while the airborne attack on Arnhem proved to be a failure. The success of the Allies in using parachute regiments to capture airstrips in Burma was only due to the involvement of ground forces as well as airborne troops. In Western Europe, the speed of the Allies advance was such that the time to plan and co-ordinate large scale airborne raid was never available.

Most senior military commanders saw the role of the airborne troops simply as to seize strategic sites such as airfields or bridges, and to hold them until ground troops arrived. On many occasions, paratroopers were used as normal infantrymen. This happened in both the European theatre as well as in the Pacific.
TBFA_0128 (DM_0068)

World War 2 Paratrooper Training Film | Paratroops | ca. 1943
NOTE: THE VIDEO DOCUMENTS HISTORICAL EVENTS. SINCE IT WAS PRODUCED DECADES AGO, IT HAS HISTORICAL VALUES AND CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A VALUABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. THE VIDEO HAS BEEN UPLOADED WITH EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. ITS TOPIC IS REPRESENTED WITHIN HISTORICAL CONTEXT. THE VIDEO DOES NOT CONTAIN SENSITIVE SCENES AT ALL!

Видео World War 2 Paratrooper Training Film | Paratroops | ca. 1943 канала The Best Film Archives