- 18/07/2025
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Short filmTranscript
00:00forlorn monsters today in may 1940 these
00:27forts of the maginot line were france's first-line defense against the germans
00:38half a million french soldiers lurked beneath these man-made hills
00:46these were the most expensive the most elaborate forts ever constructed
00:50here the guns would halt the hun provided the hun came this way
01:09the
01:15the
01:17the
03:37France between the wars was deeply divided.
03:41Factions clashed, alliances altered, cabinets came and went in the cascade, some lasting
03:47a few hours, some a few months, rarely did one last a whole year.
03:59On the very day Hitler came to power, France was without a government.
04:03It was again without one when he marched into Austria five years later.
04:15The left in France was concerned more with hounding rogues in high places at home than curbing
04:21fascism elsewhere.
04:23The right so hated the left, it was prepared to countenance dictatorship.
04:31As early as 1934, the victor of Verdun, Marshal Pétain, was proposed as France's saviour
04:37from communism, although he was then nearly 80.
04:41These deep divisions were to fetter France when she faced the need to rearm.
04:47The whole of the possessing classes, the right if you like, preferred the idea of the Germans
04:57to their own communists.
04:59You didn't have to walk around these streets and see
05:02pour qui et pourquoi written on them or the hammer and sickle
05:06to realize that nobody was going to lift a finger.
05:17France in the 30s built a series of great forts along her friendship with Germany.
05:27And because her war minister then happened to be one, Andre Maginot,
05:32these forts came to be known as the Maginot Life.
05:38The Maginot forts were truly 20th century wonders.
05:42Electric trains took the troops from barracks to gun turrets,
05:46from arsenal to canteen.
05:48There were cinemas underground, sunray rooms, air conditioning, the lot.
05:55Theirs was a vast Jules Verne type of world, hundreds of feet below ground.
06:01They called it the shield of France.
06:04The Maginot Line failed to protect all of France's eastern fleet.
06:08It was only 87 miles long, and it stopped 250 miles short of the channel.
06:16The Maginot Line
06:18Should the alarm ever have to sound in grim earnest,
06:33French strategists argued that their troops would need to confront the Germans on Belgium, if not German soil.
06:39Besides, to extend the Maginot Line along the Belgian frontier would not only be expensive,
06:45but would make the Belgians think that if war came, France would forsake them.
06:49The folly of this thinking was shown up in 1936, when without consulting the French,
06:58the Belgian King Leopold opted for neutrality and closed his borders, even to French military observers.
07:06All too late, France began extending the Maginot Line to the sea.
07:15But by May 1940, it was far from finished.
07:19France had suffered a terrible loss of life in the Great War.
07:34Now French military thinking became wholly defensive, forgetting Napoleon's favourite maxim,
07:52the side that stays within its fortifications is beaten.
08:09Since the French spurned any notion of taking the offensive,
08:13the Maginot Line ironically protected Germany better than it protected France.
08:18A German colonel, Heinz Guderian, the year the Maginot Line was completed, published a book with a prophetic title,
08:24Achtung Panzer, a book that was never properly studied by the French or the English general staff.
08:31Yet these pages expound a new kind of warfare, the concentrated use of tanks with infantry and air force in close support.
08:39Blitzkrieg.
08:47We had had tanks in the First World War. We knew all the difficulties of the game.
08:52While the Germans, who didn't have them, had the feeling of those who were attacked by tanks.
08:59And while we considered that the tanks were a little awkward and difficult to use,
09:05the Germans jumped to the new weapons with the appetite of a new rich.
09:18Paris, July the 14th, 1939.
09:23The last Bastille Day parade of the Third Republic.
09:29A few days earlier, Britain's war minister visiting Paris had said,
09:33France has the greatest army in the world.
09:36Like the parade itself, such statements were meant merely to raise morale.
09:42Parisians had hardly got back from their holidays before they found themselves once more at war with their traditional foe.
09:53But whereas in 1914 the cry had been on to Berlin, this time it was, let's get it over with.
10:11Ironically, French mobilization was too efficient.
10:22The call up of skilled technicians brought many vital war industries almost to a halt.
10:28It was only after weeks of confusion that these men were released.
10:35Nor was France going to war united.
10:53The bitternesses of French politics continued.
10:56Ministers looked to their own futures instead of their countries.
11:00And many took their cue from such leadership.
11:05Ministers were likely to go for at each other's limit.
11:10What sort liquid were tossed to others as usual?
11:12In theplanet.
11:14No, I'm probably not going for the first place anymore.
11:15In theplanet.
11:16The first place was pulled down on the back story.
11:17Let's see.
11:18The last place was put on the left side was on the right wing of the soldiers.
11:20And the first place was pulled down on the right wingłyt.
11:22The latter part wasقي s critical, the lance inside of the flight.
12:57The newsreel commentators of the day, though, didn't doubt the French resolve.
13:02We have read those communiques from the French High Command.
13:06This is the living story behind those brief, unvarnished reports.
13:10Our cameramen in the advanced lines on German territory watched the observation posts at the bridge over the Rhine between Kale and Strasbourg.
13:17This was a German railway station, now in the hands of French troops.
13:27From fortified outposts of vigilant watch is never relaxed.
13:34The Maginot line, which was built as the first line of defense for France, has become the second line behind the attack.
13:52The gradual but steady advance of the French troops has brought their camouflaged artillery within range of the Siegfried outpost.
13:59There is no haste, only a grim, relentless pressure on the Nazi emplacement.
14:04Meter by meter, the values are moving forward.
14:06If the French army would have attacked in the beginning of September with their very strong superiority in division, in armored cars,
14:23who lacked all armored cars on the Western Front at that time, in artillery, in air force,
14:32the German forces in the so-called Western Front could stand no more than one or two weeks.
14:46But even before Poland had surrendered, the French commander ordered his men back behind the Maginot line.
14:52The withdrawal the Germans did nothing to prevent.
14:56One Frenchman wrote at the time, after the prologue of the phony offensive,
15:22the French commander dropped at the port English was this year's top 5 of the million diversified
15:24had located in his upper left of the mountain, which was such a strong restaurant.
15:26Bo
15:41Bo
15:45Even bombing the Ruhr was forbidden in case the Luftwaffe retaliated against French factories.
15:59Journalists were taken up to the lines to see the inactivity.
16:03I stayed at an observation post on the Rhine, watching the Germans washing and playing football,
16:12and I said to the sentry, why don't you shoot them?
16:17Why don't you shoot at them?
16:19No, he said, they are behaving perfectly all right, they don't shoot at us, why should we shoot at them?
16:42Life at the front was dreary and drab.
16:59Badly paid, leave became an obsession for the French soldiers and was used mainly to make a little on the side.
17:11The winter of 1939 was the coldest for half a century.
17:16Even the channel froze at Boulogne.
17:20The French halted work on the margin of extension.
17:24The Germans, however, forged ahead with their plans.
17:29As winter wore on, French morale sank.
17:34Discipline deteriorated and drunkenness became rife.
17:39Special rooms were set aside in railway stations where men could recover before rejoining their units.
17:46Few French generals ever bothered to inspect, let alone meet their troops.
17:56But then their commander-in-chief, General Gamelin, rarely set foot outside his own headquarters.
18:02Already 68 at the beginning of 1940, his military record was so impeccable that no one dreamed of asking him to make way for a younger man.
18:11Gamelin was very clever, but with no guts at all.
18:17And he was liked by the politicians because he was an easy commander-in-chief.
18:23Gamelin chose for his headquarters this chateau at Vincennes, just outside Paris.
18:29That choice reveals what the man was, you know.
18:34The enemy were not a German, it was the French government.
18:38Vincennes was where England's Henry V died, and where the spy Mata Hari was executed.
18:46It was described by one visitor as a submarine without a periscope.
18:55Almost unbelievably, it had no radio communications.
18:58It was not linked by teleprompter with any other headquarters in the field.
19:02Instead, messages were dispatched regularly on the hour by motorcycle.
19:07Gamelin seldom bothered his staff with orders, preferring simply to suggest guidelines.
19:20His long-term strategy was to wait until the Allies could match the Germans in numbers and equipment before launching any major offensive, even though that would mean waiting until 1941.
19:31Meanwhile, he was concerned to keep the war away from French soil.
19:36Hence, his interests in any odd stratagem pushed his way.
19:41We had the plan to go to attack Russia through Norway, Narvik, which led to the landing in Narvik.
19:51We had a plan to attack the oil plants in Baku from Syria.
19:58We had plans to raise the Balkans with us by landing in Salonika and join the Yugoslavs and so on, you know.
20:09But all this was dreams absolutely foolish and out of the reality.
20:16But that stemmed from the fact that we thought that the war couldn't be decided on the main front because of the inviolability of that front.
20:26Gamelin had 100 divisions on that front in May 1940, plus another 10 of the British Expeditionary Force.
20:3340 manned the Maginan Line, while five guarded the Swiss frontier.
20:39Another 40, the best, were to go into neutral Belgium once Germany attacked.
20:45But when that happened, the pivot of Gamelin's front would be here, in the Ardennes.
20:52The impenetrable Ardennes.
20:58What was it?
21:12On maps back at headquarters, its thick woods and narrow winding roads probably did make the Ardennes seem impenetrable.
21:19Which is presumably why Gamelin chose to guard this 100-mile stretch of front with 10 of his weakest, least trained, worst equipped divisions.
21:30The Ardennes came to be chosen for the main thrust since they offered an opportunity to circumvent the Maginan Line.
21:39And besides, we were conscious of the fact that there were only minor French troops which held the positions in this section of the French front.
21:52We knew that the French High Command had dispersed his tanks.
22:02The French had more tanks and some better tanks, heavier tanks, than we have had panzers.
22:11But we managed our panzer troops.
22:16What Gudejan said in his instructions.
22:21Strike hard and quickly.
22:24And don't disperse your forces.
22:34The spring of 1940 was remarkably sunny.
22:37Nowhere was it more peaceful than here in the Ardennes, where the generals had said the Germans would never attack.
22:44Yet reports had been pouring in that nearly 50 Wehrmacht divisions were on the move.
22:49Reports which the French chose to ignore.
22:52They even learned the date of the attack.
22:55But still did nothing.
22:57As Gamelin put it, they preferred to await events.
23:00Their waiting was almost over.
23:075.30am precisely.
23:14May the 10th, 1940.
23:16The German offensive began spectacularly enough with the invasion of neutral Holland from the air.
23:34Their target, the bridges over the broad Merz-Estury.
23:38If they could be captured before the Allied troops reached them, then Holland would be cut in two.
23:46The boldness of the German move stunned the Dutch.
23:49Their soldiers were soon surrendering in droves.
24:02Further south in Belgium, the Germans had another spectacular success that first day.
24:08The capture of Eben Emil, the strongest fort in the world, and the linchpin of Gamelin's line.
24:15That line had been breached before any Allied troops arrived.
24:21Gamelin persisted in moving his armies north into Belgium and Holland.
24:37Forty of his best divisions, almost half his total strength, including the whole of the British Expeditionary Force.
24:42And they were moving straight into the trap Hitler and his generals had set for them.
24:54It wasn't long before the troops were passing the first pitiful straggling lines of refugees.
24:58Lines that were to hamper the Allied reinforcements just as the Germans had planned.
25:05The great idea of the Germans part was speed.
25:09And they sent ahead of the army policemen with truncheons and white gloves who went on motor bicycles.
25:19They all had their Michelin guide for France. They knew exactly where the roads were.
25:31The German panzers were pouring over the border into Luxembourg.
25:35Their columns stretched a hundred miles, presenting a prime target to any would-be bomber.
25:40But Allied air activity that first day was busy supporting the British and French move north into Belgium.
25:49The Luftwaffe were striking at Allied airplanes on the ground.
26:01At one RAF base near Reims, the planes lined up in neat rows were destroyed in the opening minutes of the attack.
26:08Fifty British and French airfields were attacked that first day. The losses were heavy.
26:18But while Allied air chiefs were counting their losses, the panzers had just about penetrated the impenetrable Ardennes and were set to fall upon the weak French garrisons along the Meurs here at Sedan.
26:36The panzers reached Sedan late on the third day of the offensive, although Gamla had calculated they couldn't possibly be here before the ninth day.
26:43All the bridges over the Meurs were blown up by the French on May the 12th. All except one.
26:50This old weir, some forty miles north of Sedan, had been left for fear of lowering the water level so much that the river could be forded.
26:57But the French also left it relatively unguarded, as one panzer commander, Erwin Rommel, soon found out.
27:04This old weir, Erwin Rommel, soon found out.
27:11Next morning, the Luftwaffe's resources were hurled into action above Sedan.
27:18Gamla still refused to believe the Germans could mount a full-scale crossing of the Meurs, but it was the first time.
27:25before another three or four days.
27:26Hitler was undeniable.
27:27Hitler was undeniable.
27:28Hitler was undeniable.
27:29Hitler was undeniable.
27:30He was undeniable.
27:31The Germans were undeniable.
27:32The Germans were undeniable.
27:33In the next morning, the Luftwaffe's resources were hurled into action above Sedan.
27:38Gamla still refused to believe the Germans could mount a full-scale crossing of the Meurs before another three or four days.
27:50Hitler was unwilling to wait that long.
27:56He was working to the timetable of 1940, not 1914.
28:01What's more, the French generals still had their eyes firmly fixed on what was happening in Belgium and Holland.
28:07There were big French guns on the west bank of the Meurs, but they limited their firing for fear of running out of ammunition before the battle proper began.
28:23So the German panzers were able to pick off the French pillboxes one by one.
28:28Soon, thousands of French gunners were taking to their heels.
28:34The German bombardment stopped.
28:35The German bombardment stopped.
28:36As though still performing one of their winter war games, the German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
28:41The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
28:42The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
28:48The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
28:55The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
28:56The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
29:02The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
29:04The German infantrymen prepared to cross the Meurs.
29:25By midnight on May the 13th, still only day four of the offensive, not only were German
29:33infantrymen across the Merzen force, but German sappers were bridging the river and making ready
29:39for the panzers to cross. That night of May the 13th, the British Expeditionary Force,
29:50far to the north in Belgium, had still not seen serious fighting. Yet the battle was now
29:56virtually decided.
30:04The morale of the French high command was very quickly broken. When we happened to know that
30:12the front had been broken through at Sedan, the feeling was that everything was lost.
30:19I saw General Georges, who was commanding the northeast front. I saw him sobbing and saying,
30:29there has been some deficiencies. And he fell in a chair and sobbed.
30:49French counterattacks, when they happened, were poorly organized and seldom pressed home
30:59with any persistence.
31:15Tank for tank, the French were a match for the Germans. But the panzers always fought
31:20en masse, and what's more, the French tanks were prone to mechanical trouble. Time after
31:25time they had to be left behind on the battlefield.
31:27The massed German infantry divisions were now catching up with the panzers at the Merz crossing point. Everything
31:34on the German side, at least, was going according to plan.
31:41The massed German infantry divisions were now catching up with the panzers at the Merz crossing point. Everything
31:51on the German side, at least, was going according to plan.
31:58The Allied air forces, after their almost total inactivity on May the 13th, May the 14th was hectic.
32:17British and French bombers raided the pontoon bridges across the Merz with reckless abandon.
32:22Too late, the French generals had recognized this sector's vital importance.
32:31Despite the courage of the Allied pilots, the result was disastrous.
32:43Nearly half of the Allied planes did not return. In the words of the official RAF history,
32:49no higher rate of loss has ever been experienced by the Royal Air Force.
32:56After May the 14th, the skies were undeniably German.
33:04On that day, too, Holland surrendered.
33:08Nothing short of a miracle could save France now.
33:12With the bridgehead secure, the panzers were poised to break out.
33:24The battle for Sedan was now giving way to the battle for France.
33:29The most crucial phase of the whole German plan was about to begin.
33:33The swing north to the coast that would trap the Allied armies in Belgium.
33:39Soon as news of the Sedan defeat reached Paris, panic set in.
33:44Those who could left.
33:53The French high command, not yet privy to the German plan, assumed Hitler intended to capture Paris immediately.
34:07To protect the capital, troops were pulled back from elsewhere along the Meuse,
34:14which only served to widen the German bridgeheads.
34:16Gamla refused to believe his tactics were at fault and assumed he must have been betrayed.
34:32While gendarmes searched for fifth columnists behind the lines,
34:36Gamla reacted by sacking twenty or so of his frontline commanders, almost at random.
34:48The Allied troops were ordered back from Belgium.
34:51And on May the 17th, Brussels fell.
35:01It was also the end for Gamla.
35:04He was replaced as commander-in-chief by General Végon, recalled from virtual retirement.
35:09France had become desperate.
35:11A 73-year-old was replacing a 68-year-old.
35:15And Végon had spent the last year in Syria and was out of touch.
35:19At this time, too, Marshal Pétain, now 84, became Deputy Prime Minister.
35:25Before leaving Spain, where he'd been France's ambassador,
35:28Pétain told General Franco,
35:30For my country has been beaten.
35:32This is the work of thirty years of Marxism.
35:35He was completely on the side of the defeatists.
35:39He was a very, very old man.
35:42And he'd been recalled in the hopes that his name would bolster French morale.
35:49It did nothing of the sort.
35:52Trying in their own way to contain the German breakout,
35:56the French generals drew halt lines on their maps,
35:59only to hear the panzers had passed them even before the orders had been issued.
36:04In the dash to the coast, the German commanders were always one jump ahead of the French.
36:17Hordes of prisoners fell into German hands.
36:34Many columns, ten and sometimes twenty thousand strong,
36:38simply threw away their weapons and marched without being told,
36:42their officers at their head toward the German lines.
36:47The French troops did not prove the same soldierly discipline as in the First World War.
36:57I think this is caused by the marginal spirit and the long phony war,
37:19so that the French soldiers believed that they will have no more war.
37:25It wasn't just ordinary troops that were falling into German hands, but generals too.
37:31On May the 19th, General Giraud,
37:33newly appointed commander of the French 9th Army,
37:35was captured by a group of tanks, according to the French,
37:39by a field kitchen unit, according to the Germans.
37:46But most tragic of all was the plight of the refugees.
37:55At one time, twelve million people were on the road of Northern France, bound for goodness knows where.
38:04All the civilians used to come up to us, and to ask us what they were to do,
38:14because the government had not told them what to do.
38:17And we all said, for heaven's sake, stay where you are, don't get on the roads.
38:22But they all got in a panic and left.
38:24One old lady had a key which she gave to us, and we said, why, you can't, you mustn't give us your key.
38:32Oh, well, last, in the last war, I took away my key, and when I came back, I had the key but no house.
38:50My worst memory was seeing two German planes coming along at roof level, machine gunning,
39:11and one realised then how awful it was for the refugees.
39:41The Germans had advanced 200 miles in just seven days, and on May the 20th, they reached the Channel.
40:06The Daily Telegraph reported that telephone lines between Paris and London had been cut.
40:12A post office spokesman said he didn't know when normal service might be resumed.
40:22With the panzers at the coast, the best of the Allied armies drawn into Belgium were now cut off from the south.
40:31The later that the French tried to force a way through to them.
40:35That attack was too puny.
40:38They argued the British had let them down.
40:42The recrimination started with the unilateral withdrawal of the British Army.
40:50The orders were to attack south, southwards, near Arras.
40:57And without warning, we happened to know that the British were withdrawing to Dunkirk.
41:04We have not the right to criticise this too much because, after all, we were the bosses and we lost the battle.
41:17And this gives a good excuse for the British to be selfish.
41:21But anyway, they were very selfish.
41:23On May the 25th, Boulogne fell.
41:41On May the 26th, Calais.
41:46Weigand's appointment had given the French a flicker of optimism.
41:55It soon faded when his counter-attack failed and news of Belgium's capitulation reached Paris on May the 28th.
42:03Thereafter, the mood became steadily more and more defeatist.
42:09I think the defeatism came at the top.
42:16There was a very strong peace move among certain politicians.
42:21Some of them were even pro-German and wanted jobs with the Germans.
42:25When things went badly, this group got larger and became more dominant.
42:32Prime Minister Reynaud fought back by dismissing from his cabinet some of the weaker spirits
42:37and bringing in fighting men like de Gaulle, now entering the political arena for the first time.
42:43But the war was virtually out of their hands.
42:46Perhaps it was that that prompted the special service of prayer at Notre Dame on that Sunday before Dunkirk.
42:52The French very soon accepted the idea of defeat and surrender.
43:10To them it was rather a conception of the old days of the royalty when you just exchanged a couple of provinces, paid a certain number of millions and then called it the day hoping you'd be more lucky next time.
43:29Dunkirk fell on June the 4th.
43:41Hitler ordered church bells to be rung for three days throughout Germany to mark what he described as the greatest German victory ever.
43:49With the panzers reorganized and re-equipped, the day after Dunkirk fell, the second major German offensive in the West began.
44:05The rounds began.
44:06BUM T, up!
44:08I P
44:28Although outnumbered now by more than two to one, the French fought stubbornly, much
44:43more aggressively, in fact, than at any time during the battle for the Mirs.
44:58But after three days of bloody fighting, disaster once more overtook the French.
45:16Another breakthrough by Rommel. In a matter of hours, he had reached the Seine at Rouen.
45:28Elsewhere, the panzers were passing almost effortlessly through the heartland of France.
45:45All roads pointed to Paris. On June the 10th, the French government left the capital.
46:04On that day, Mussolini brought Italy into the war.
46:09The day we left Paris, we went to this Vincennes headquarters of Gamelin. And we had on the radio
46:28all the songs and music of the Italian war, you know, Giovinanza and all that, you know.
46:37And we thought, and that is where I heard the first time somebody say, it can't go on like that.
46:45We must have an armistice.
46:47We had the greatest difficulty getting out of Paris because everybody, although Paris was empty,
46:54all the roads outside Paris were absolutely full of motorcars.
46:59People even going in and out of the trees at the side to try and get ahead.
47:03But we were able to get off the main roads into the countryside. And then it was most extraordinary
47:12because it was beautiful weather. All the villagers were very welcoming and brought out their best cognac,
47:19their best wine, because they said, what's the good of leaving it for the Germans?
47:23When arriving in the airspace over Paris, I observed that great columns of German infantry had already entered the town.
47:36Observing this and remembering that we had failed to reach this goal all through the First World War,
47:46I felt such joy and exultation that I asked the pilot of my small plane, a so-called Stork,
47:57whether it would be possible to perform a landing on the Place de la Concorde.
48:03After circling around some time, he and we came down on the Place de la Concorde,
48:13which was entirely free of any traffic, and landed on the outset of the Champs-Élysées.
48:30Two days after Paris fell, the new Prime Minister, Marshal Pétain, asked the Germans for an armistice.
48:36Reynaud had been opposed to a separate peace and resigned.
48:40In most of France, the news of an armistice was received with relief.
48:47Hitler insisted on using for the negotiations, Marshal Foch's old railway carriage in the woods of Compiègne,
48:56where the 1918 armistice had been signed.
48:59It was the supreme humiliation of France.
49:02It was the supreme humiliation of France.
49:06One must have lived the retreat in France with this enormous movement of crowds.
49:21It's something which you can't understand if you haven't seen it.
49:39We thought that really that had to be stopped.
49:42Once the French had signed, Hitler ordered the site destroyed.
49:57Germany had had its revenge.
50:01The German government declared solely to the French government
50:06that it has no intention to use for its own rights of war.
50:11The French units will be in the ports of control.
50:16Paris Radio, now under German control, broadcasts the terms of the armistice.
50:20The German government is declared solely and expressly
50:27that it will not have any revantication of the French government
50:32during the construction of the French.
50:35Paris had now to adapt to a new wave of tourists.
51:00Among the first was Hitler himself,
51:03making the only trip of his life to the city,
51:06and a fleeting one at that.
51:22For four bleak years,
51:24France was to disappear from the forefront of the war.
51:28Some Frenchmen chose a courageous resistance at home,
51:32or overseas.
51:33Others were to settle into a routine of apathetic collaboration.
51:37Many connived at Hitler's new order for Europe,
51:41the Vichy version.
51:43The Vichy version.
51:44The Vichy version.
52:09For Paris, there remained one more humiliation.
52:11The German triumphal parade followed the exact route of the French Victor de procession
52:27a procession after the First World War.
52:46It had taken the Wehrmacht just five weeks to humble their historic foe.
52:57In the words of Winston Churchill, the Battle of France was now over.
53:13The Battle of Britain was about to begin.
53:27The Battle of Britain was about to begin.
53:43THE END
54:13THE END
54:43THE END
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