Shadowing Practice: The ENTIRE History of WW2 Explained - Learn English Speaking with Video
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World War II killed roughly 70 million people.
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It was the deadliest conflict in human history.
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But the whole thing happened because the countries
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that won World War I punished Germany so badly
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that a failed Austrian art student was able to talk an entire nation into trying again.
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Yeah, a guy who couldn't get into art school nearly took over the world.
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An entire army built out of rubber
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and plywood fooled the Germans about the biggest invasion in history
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nearly two million people died fighting over a single city
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because two dictators refused to lose a place with the other man's name on it.
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And the most famous scientist alive signed one single letter
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that he spent the rest of his life calling the greatest mistake he ever made.
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So, how did we get from a rejected art student to the deadliest war ever fought?
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To understand the Second World War, you first have to understand the first one.
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The Treaty of Versailles had gutted Germany.
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They lost 13% of their territory.
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They lost all their colonies, their military was capped at 100,000 men, no tanks, no air force, no submarines.
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And they owed 132 billion gold marks in reparations.
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Then, in 1929, the Embers got their heir.
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The Great Depression swept across the world, and Germany, already buried in debt, collapsed.
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Banks failed, millions lost their jobs overnight, people were burning banknotes in their stoves because the paper was worth less than firewood.
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And when people are starving, humiliated, and furious, they start listening to anyone who promises to make them great again.
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Enter Adolf Hitler, a former corporal who blamed Germany's defeat on Jews and communists and promised to restore the country to greatness.
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In January 1933, he was appointed chancellor.
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Within two months, he passed a law that gave him absolute power.
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The vote was 444 to 94.
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German democracy was dead.
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Then Hitler started breaking every rule in the treaty.
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In 1936, he sent troops into the Rheinland right here.
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If France had pushed back, the whole thing might have been over before it started.
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But France and Britain did nothing.
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In March 1938, he annexed Austria over here.
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France and Britain did nothing.
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Then he demanded a chunk of Czechoslovakia right here called the Sudentenland.
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Germany demands a Sudentenland.
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That's a big chunk of Czechoslovakia.
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There are Germans living there.
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They belong to us.
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And if we agree, will you stop?
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This is my last territorial demand in Europe.
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You have my word.
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Then we have a deal.
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Wonderful.
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Should we ask Czechoslovakia what they think?
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Nah.
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The Chamberlain went home and told everyone he had secured peace for our time.
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Six months later, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia anyway.
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His word was worth nothing.
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Winston Churchill called the Munich Agreement a total and unmitigated disaster.
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He was right.
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Meanwhile, over in Asia, Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and landed a full-scale war against China in 1937.
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And down here, Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
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The League of Nations said, that's not okay.
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Then they did absolutely nothing about it.
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Three aggressive countries, three weak responses.
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Now, in August 1939, something happened that nobody saw coming.
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Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a secret deal.
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We both know we're gonna fight each other eventually.
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Obviously!
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But not yet.
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Let's agree to leave each other alone.
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What about Poland?
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We split it.
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You take the east, we take the west.
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And the Baltics?
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Take them.
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Deal!
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Poland looked at a map and realized it had a very big problem.
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On September 1st, 1939, Germany invaded Poland with roughly 1.5 million troops.
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The Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17th.
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Poland fell in about five weeks.
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Get out of Poland! Or what?
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Or we're at war!
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Over Poland?
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You can't be serious.
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We have a treaty!
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A treaty?
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Right.
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Because that worked so well last time.
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Britain and France declared war.
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World War II had officially begun.
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But then, for months, almost nothing happened.
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The French sat behind their Maginot Line right here.
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People called it the Phony War.
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It didn't stay quiet for long.
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In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.
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Denmark fell in six hours.
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Six hours.
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That's not even a full work day.
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Then on May 10th, Germany attacked France, Belgium, and the Netherlands all at once.
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The French expected the attack through Belgium up here, but the real thrust came through the Ardennes forest right here.
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A route the French thought was impossible for tanks.
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German ponsors raced to the English Channel in ten days and cut the Allied armies in half.
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The French had built the most expensive wall in Europe, and the Germans just went around it.
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The British army was trapped at Dunkirk.
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Over nine days, a fleet of warships, fishing boats, and private yachts evacuated 338,000 troops.
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Churchill warned that wars are not won by evacuations.
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France fell in six weeks.
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Hitler made them sign the surrender in the exact same railway car where Germany had surrendered in 1918.
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That was deliberate.
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Now Britain stood alone.
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Hitler sent the Luftwaffe to destroy the Royal Air Force before invading.
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But the British had radar, the Spitfire, and a Prime Minister who was not interested in making deals.
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We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
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We shall never surrender.
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The Luftwaffe lost nearly 1900 aircraft.
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Hitler shelved his invasion plans.
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First time anyone had told Hitler no. Now it's 1941, and Hitler made the decision that would cost him everything.
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On June 22nd, he tore up his pact with Stalin and launched the largest invasion in human history.
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Over 3 million German soldiers poured into the Soviet Union.
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Army Group North headed for Leningrad up here, Army Group Center aimed for Moscow right here, and Army Group South drove into Ukraine down here.
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Sir, Russia is enormous.
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We need to focus on Moscow.
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We will take Moscow, Leningrad, and Ukraine.
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All of them.
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All at once?
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The Soviet Union is a rotten structure.
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Kick in the door and the whole thing will come crashing down.
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The whole thing did not come crashing down.
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The Germans advanced hundreds of miles, but the Soviets kept fielding new armies.
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Then, winter hit.
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German soldiers froze in summer uniforms within 20 miles of Moscow.
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Germany suffered over 750,000 casualties.
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The quick knockout was never coming.
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Up here, Leningrad was surrounded and starved for 872 days.
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Roughly 1.5 million people died.
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Supplies came in across a frozen lake they called the Road to Life.
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
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Japanese planes sank or damaged 19 warships and killed 2,403 Americans.
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The battleship Arizona took 1177 men with her.
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Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.
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America declared war.
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and Italy declared war on America three days later.
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Now, the whole world was fighting.
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With the American fleet crippled, Japan conquered the Philippines, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma in six months.
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Singapore was the largest British surrender in history.
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So what stopped them?
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Now it's 1942.
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American codebreakers cracked Japan's plans to attack Midway Island right here.
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In one afternoon, dive bombers sank four Japanese carriers.
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The core of the fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor was gone.
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Midway was the turning point.
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Japan would never go on the offensive again.
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But winning the Pacific took three more years of brutal island hopping.
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At Iwo Jima, nearly all of 21,000 Japanese defenders died.
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At Okinawa, roughly 12,000 Americans, 90,000 Japanese soldiers and 100,000 civilians were killed.
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That carnage would shape one of the biggest decisions of the entire war.
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But while the Pacific was turning, the decisive turning point in Europe was happening back in Russia, at Stalingrad right here.
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Hitler sent his 6th army partly for strategy, but mostly because the city had Stalin's name on it.
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Soldiers fought room by room, floor by floor.
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Germany took 90% of the city.
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Then, the Soviets launched Operation Uranus, smashed through the flanks, and surrounded the entire army.
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Sir, the 6th Army has to break out now.
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No, I will not leave the Volga.
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But sir, the army will starve.
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Göring, can the Luftwaffe supply them by air?
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Absolutely.
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300 tons a day, no problem.
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See?
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The Luftwaffe will handle it.
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Spoiler, the Luftwaffe delivered an average of 94 tons a day.
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Göring had made a promise with other people's planes and other people's lives.
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On February 2nd, 1943, the survivors surrendered.
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Out of 91,000 captured, only about 5,000 ever made it home.
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Combined casualties approached 2 million.
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Stalingrad broke something in the German war machine that never got fixed.
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And Stalingrad wasn't the only place the Axis was falling apart.
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Down in North Africa, the Allies trapped Rommel's forces between two armies.
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A quarter million Axis soldiers surrendered.
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Then, the Allies invaded Sicily.
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We arrested Mussolini.
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We're switching sides.
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You're switching sides?
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We're allies.
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We were allies.
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Now we're surrendering to the other guys.
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That's not how this works.
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That's exactly how this works.
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Arrivederci.
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Germany rushed troops in.
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The fighting in Italy ground on for almost two more years.
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So how do you invade a continent that knows you're coming?
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Now it's 1944, and the allies were planning the biggest invasion in history.
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But first, they had to make sure the Germans were looking the wrong way.
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So they built an entire fake army.
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Inflatable rubber tanks, plywood aircraft, and fake radio signals, all designed to convince Hitler
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that the real invasion would hit Pas-de-Calais up here instead of Normandy down here.
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They even put General Patton in charge of it to make it believable.
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It worked.
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Even after D-Day began, Hitler held back his reserves because he thought Normandy was a distraction.
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On June 6th, D-Day, roughly 156,000 troops, stormed five beaches in Normandy right here.
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7,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft.
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The fighting at Omaha Beach nearly failed.
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About 2,400 men fell on that one beach alone.
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Eisenhower had written a note taking full blame in case the invasion failed.
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He never had to send it.
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The Allies liberated Paris by late August.
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It felt like the war might be over by Christmas.
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It wasn't.
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In December, Hitler threw 200,000 soldiers into a desperate counterattack through the Ardennes right here,
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the same forest that had won him France four years earlier.
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The Battle of the Bulge was the bloodiest single battle America fought in the war, but Germany burned through everything it had left.
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After the there was nothing between the Allies and Berlin but time.
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Now it's 1945 and Germany was being crushed from both sides.
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The Soviets pushed through Poland over here, the Western Allies crossed the Rhein River over here, and as the armies advanced,
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they discovered the full horror of what had been happening behind the lines.
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Concentration camps, death camps, gas chambers, the Nazis had systematically murdered approximately 6 million Jews and millions of others.
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Soldiers who had fought across Europe for years said nothing had prepared them for what they found.
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The Soviets attacked Berlin with over two and a half million soldiers.
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The city was reduced to rubble.
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On April 30th, Hitler shot himself in his bunker.
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The man who promised an empire that would last a thousand years had lasted twelve.
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On May 8th, Germany surrendered.
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People danced in the streets of London and New York, but Japan was still fighting.
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Back in 1939, Albert Einstein had signed a letter warning President Roosevelt that Germany might be able to build an atomic bomb.
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That single letter launched the Manhattan Project, a secret program that employed over a hundred thousand people and cost two billion dollars.
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After the bloodbath at Okinawa, American planners estimated that invading Japan could cost hundreds of thousands of lives,
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so the United States used the weapon that Einstein's letter had helped create.
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On August 6th, 1945, a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb called Little Boy on Hiroshima.
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It killed an estimated 80,000 people instantly.
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Three days later, a second bomb called Fat Man hit Nagasaki.
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On August 15th, the Emperor told his people the war was over.
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The formal surrender was signed on the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1945.
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World War II was finally over.
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Roughly 70 to 85 million dead.
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More than 50 nations at war.
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The United Nations was created to prevent it from happening again.
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Germany was split in two, and the countries that defeated Hitler were now pointing nuclear weapons at each other.
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The Cold War had begun.
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The whole thing started with a failed art student who convinced an entire nation to try again.
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Six years later, between 70 and 85 million people were dead.
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Einstein lived another 10 years, and he never stopped thinking about the letter that helped bring the atomic bomb into the world.
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He called it the greatest mistake of his life.
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The war ended, the weapon didn't.
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If you'd rather listen than watch, whether you're cooking, driving, working, gaming, or falling asleep, we're on Spotify too.
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Links in the description.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 236 sentences and 2161 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:42. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| surrender verb | /səˈɹɛndə(ɹ)/ | To give up into the power, control, or possession of another. |
| invade verb | /ɪnˈveɪd/ | To move into. |
| ally noun | /ˈæl.aɪ/ | A person who co-operates with or helps another; an associate; a friend. |
| roughly adverb | /ˈɹʌf.li/ | In a rough manner; without kindness, softness, or gentleness. |
| invasion noun | /ɪnˈveɪʒən/ | A military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the… |
| troop noun | /tɹup/ | A collection of people; a number; a multitude (in general). |
| treaty noun | /ˈtɹiti/ | A formal binding agreement concluded by subjects of international law, namely, states and international organizations; a convention, a pact. |
| fleet noun | /ˈfliːt/ | A group of vessels or vehicles. |
| declare verb | /dɪˈklɛɚ/ | To assert or announce formally, officially, explicitly, or emphatically. |
| atomic adjective | /əˈtɑː.mɪk/ | Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic. |
| starve verb | /stɑɹv/ | To die because of lack of food or of not eating. |
| meanwhile adverb | /ˈmiːnwaɪl/ | During the time that something is happening, often specifically in a different place. |
| trap noun | /tɹæp/ | A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body. |
| estimate noun | /ˈɛs.tɪ.mət/ | A rough calculation or assessment of the value, size, or cost of something. |
| ton noun | /tʌn/ | The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| break out verb | To escape, especially forcefully or defiantly. |
| burn through verb | To use up in a hasty or destructive manner. |
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. |
| fall apart verb | To disintegrate, to break into pieces. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| go around verb | To move or spread from person to person. |
| hold back verb | To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power. |
| push back verb | To refute or argue against a position or an accusation; to express one's own view on a situation. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, you're, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thrust /θɹʌst/, bloodbath /ˈblʌdˌbæθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: invasion /ɪnˈveɪʒən/, casualty /ˈkæʒu.əlti/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: casualty /ˈkæʒu.əlti/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/, territorial /ˌtɛɹ.əˈtɔɹ.i.əl/, deliberate /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like surrender, invade, ally.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was capped · was appointed · was trapped |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | guy who couldn · anyone who promises · date which will |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.