Original subtitles

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

As Hitler marched triumphantly across

Western Europe in the early summer of 1940,

his fellow dictator in Italy, Benito Mussolini,

dreamt of a similar campaign further south.

His dream was to build a new Roman Empire

that would see Italy expand not only along the northern Mediterranean coast

but south through North Africa.

He would turn the Mediterranean into "Mare Nostrum" - Our Sea.

But it was a dream that would turn into a disaster.

It would lead in due course to Mussolini's death

and fatally over-extend his German ally.

At the start of the war,

Italy already controlled Libya and Abyssinia -

Ethiopia today.

Mussolini calculated that if he could take

British-controlled Egypt and Sudan

he would be able to create a huge swathe

of Italian-controlled territory.

It looked like an easy campaign.

Italy had ten times more troops in the region than Britain.

In September, 1940, Mussolini invaded Egypt

and captured the small coastal town of Sidi Barrani.

There the Italians stopped and dug in.

Britain gathered all available forces for a counterattack.

On December 6, 1940, they moved in across the desert.

Just four days later, they over-ran the Italian defenses.

Nearly 40,000 Italians were taken prisoner.

It was the first sign that the Italian army

was in poor fighting shape.

The remainder of the defeated Italians

retreated back across the Libyan border.

The British followed in hot pursuit.

In barely a month, the Western Desert Force,

as it was called, had advanced almost 600 miles across Libya.

It now paused and dug in

at the Libyan coastal town of El Agheila.

Almost half of Italy's Libyan empire

had been seized and over 100,000 Italian troops taken prisoner.

Meanwhile to the south,

British forces invaded Italian-controlled Abyssinia.

The fighting lasted for nearly 12 months.

The rugged terrain made communications

and transport difficult.

But in the end, the Italians were forced to surrender.

But even as Abyssinia was being secured

Mussolini's empire building was causing problems

in another part of the Mediterranean.

Nearly two years earlier, in April 1939,

as part of his plan for a new Roman Empire,

Mussolini had occupied Albania.

The following year, he demanded Greece become an Italian colony.

When the Greeks refused, he invaded.

The Greeks were outnumbered more than two to one,

but they swiftly turned back the Italian advance.

By the beginning of March 1941,

the Italians had not only been pushed out of Greece,

but out of much of neighboring Albania too.

Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,

promised help so the Greeks could finish the job.

But Britain's forces were already heavily committed elsewhere.

So it was that the British units in North Africa

were told to abandon their Libyan adventure

and ship much of the force across the Mediterranean to Albania.

As the Italian troops were now pushed back,

Mussolini's Balkan ambitions fell apart.

The Italians were in deep trouble.

It left Hitler with a problem.

Should he divert troops from elsewhere in Europe

to support his most important European ally

or should he abandon Mussolini to his fate?

He decided to help.

In April 1941, over half a million German troops

swept down into Yugoslavia and Greece.

For Germany it would prove to be the beginning of

a fateful entanglement with Mussolini's political dreams.

But at first, all went well.

The Greeks, despite British help,

were unable to hold the Germans back

and in late April the Axis forces

captured the Greek capital of Athens.

Some 30,000 men were evacuated

to the British-controlled island of Crete.

Hitler decided to flush them out.

He had at his command some 22,000 parachute

and glider-borne troops backed up by 150 Stuka dive-bombers.

The landings began at first light on May 20th.

To begin with they focused on the main airfields.

The Allied forces were overstretched.

There were incessant German air attacks.

The German's soon captured the airfields

and began to fly in reinforcements.

The Allies were pushed back across the island.

Two weeks later, it was all over.

15,000 Allied troops had to be evacuated.

A further 18,000 were taken prisoner.

The Axis powers now controlled much of the Mediterranean

and the critical supply routes to North Africa.

It looked as though Hitler's decision to support Mussolini had paid off.

He was poised to drive Britain out of the entire region.

In February 1941,

a junior German general arrived at the Libyan port of Tripoli.

Erwin Rommel, was one of the rising stars

of the German army and had been chosen by Hitler

as the man to rescue his Italian ally

and retake North Africa for the Axis powers.

The first units of his Afrika Korps were soon landing.

Some 16,000 men and over a hundred tanks

had been diverted from the European front.

The Axis forces rapidly outnumbered the British troops,

depleted by the war in Greece and Crete.

Rommel advanced towards the British positions

at El Agheila and attacked.

As the British fell back, Rommel pursued them.

In a matter of weeks, the Allied soldiers had been

pushed all the way back to the Egyptian border.

But in the retreat a division of Australian troops

had been cut off by the Germans in the Libyan port of Tobruk.

The British commander, Sir Archibald Wavell,

now launched two successive attempts to relieve them.

Both were fought off by Rommel's now well encamped troops.

The Germans massively outgunned the British.

Their 88mm anti-aircraft guns, when used against tanks,

far outranged the British.

Moreover, Rommel took advantage of the wide open landscape

to drive his tanks around the British forces,

outflanking them time and time again.

It would become his trademark tactic.

The British press, half-grudgingly,

half-admiringly, nicknamed Rommel "the Desert Fox".

For Wavell it was too much.

Now exhausted, he was replaced by General Claude Auchinleck.

Auchinleck came under immediate pressure

to try again to relieve the Allied troops in Tobruk.

But he refused until his forces had been reinforced.

Then, on November 18th, 1941, he launched a major assault.

Operation Crusader, as it was called,

started with a lengthy armored dogfight.

Again the British tanks suffered heavy casualties.

But the infantry slowly moved forward.

Finally, after a month of confused fighting,

Rommel retreated. Tobruk had been relieved.

The Axis units fell back along the coast,

all the way to their starting point at El Agheila.

Auchinleck's military command now assumed

Rommel was a spent force, at least for the time being.

Its units were dispersed to bases along the coast

for a badly needed refit.

It was a mistake.

Two months later, in January 1942,

Rommel's Afrika Korps was back on the attack.

It quickly brushed aside the forward units

of a now unprepared British army.

The chase along the coast of Africa began all over again.

The Allies fell back towards a new defensive line

just west of Tobruk.

Here a series of defensive positions,

known as the Gazala Line, were constructed.

Rommel attacked it at the end of May 1942.

Once again, he swung his armor around the British forces

in a great outflanking movement

and came in behind the British positions.

But this time the British were prepared for it

and tried, in turn, to outflank Rommel.

The fighting lasted for three weeks

as each side tried to outmaneuver the other.

Eventually, the British were forced to retreat.

Three days later, the German's overran the Allied positions.

Rommel pressed home his advantage.

The British withdrawal threatened to become a rout.

Finally, Auchinleck turned to face his enemy

at the Egyptian village of El Alamein.

His southern flank rested on the Qattara Depression,

an area impassable to tanks.

On July 1st, 1942, Rommel attacked again.

But this time, the British defenses held.

Rommel, with his supply lines stretched

and now seriously short of fuel, was forced to give up.

Now Auchinleck attempted a counterattack.

For the rest of July the two sides pushed at each other

like exhausted boxers.

Churchill was furious at the lack of British progress

and now visited Egypt.

It was time for yet another change of leadership.

Auchinleck was replaced by not one but two generals -

General Harold Alexander as Commander-in-Chief, Near East,

and General Bernard Montgomery as commander of 8th Army.

The British and Axis forces

had fought each other to a standstill.

There was no clear winner

and the fate of North Africa still hung in the balance.

Everything would now depend on whether the British

could throttle the Axis supply routes across the Mediterranean.

For the first months of World War Two,

the Allies had enjoyed unchallenged control

of the Mediterranean Sea.

Britain's oil supplies from the Middle East

passed through it undisturbed,

and communications with the empire in India

and the Far East were secure.

Italy's entry into the war changed all that.

Its naval fleet was modern and well-equipped.

The Italians now concentrated their fire

on the strategically crucial

British-controlled island of Malta.

The island was an important refueling base

for British submarines and aircraft

in the Eastern Mediterranean.

It had become the center for Royal Navy attacks

on Italian and German supply convoys to North Africa.

In summer 1940, Italy bombed it.

It was the beginning of a two year assault

which would inflict terrible suffering on the island's population.

Yet for all Malta's strategic significance,

Britain was caught on the hop.

There were no fighter aircraft on the island

to beat off the attacks.

Then, almost by accident,

four Gladiator fighter biplanes

were found in crates on the island.

They were hastily assembled.

The aircraft put up a fierce resistance.

For three weeks, the fate of Malta remained uncertain.

Then finally British fighter reinforcements arrived

and the Italian bombers were temporarily beaten off.

But it was now obvious to the British

that they had to do something

if they were to keep a toehold in the region.

That winter Britain launched what it hoped

would be a knockout blow against the Italian navy.

On the evening of November 11th,

21 Swordfish torpedo bombers lifted off an aircraft carrier.

They swept in on the Italian fleet

anchored in its base at Taranto.

The Italians hadn't expected it.

Three of Italy's six battleships were crippled.

Four months later, Britain struck again.

The Italian fleet was again caught off guard

off the coast of Greece.

A fourth Italian battleship was damaged.

Mussolini's challenge to the British navy was finished.

It was a turning point for Hitler too.

It was now clear that Italy could no longer be depended on

to maintain control of the Mediterranean.

It meant his supply lines to North Africa

were at risk of being cut off.

Germany decided to take a direct hand.

In early 1941, the Luftwaffe bombed Malta.

The island took another severe battering.

The attacks continued month after month.

Yet the British garrison hung on.

During an interlude in the German bombardment

in autumn 1941, it even managed to step up

its attacks on the Axis supply convoys to North Africa.

Then the Luftwaffe resumed the assault.

But despite the battering, the people of Malta held on.

The following spring, in April 1942,

they received a unique honor for the heroism

they had shown under four months of devastating Axis bombardment.

The island was awarded the George Cross,

Britain's highest award for civilian courage.

But by the summer of 1942,

Malta was running short of supplies and ammunition.

In mid-June, the British navy sent convoys from Gibraltar

and Egypt to relieve it.

But the Germans were waiting.

Just two of the 17 ships got through.

The situation on the island was getting desperate.

It was time for some decisive action.

In August, Britain launched Operation Pedestal,

the biggest convoy ever sent to Malta.

Fourteen merchant ships entered the Mediterranean

through the Straits of Gibraltar.

They were accompanied by a large naval escort.

Almost immediately, they ran into German opposition.

For three days there was a ferocious sea battle

as Axis submarines and aircraft

attempted to stop and sink the convoy.

Finally, on the fourth day,

five of the British merchant ships made it into port.

They brought with them just enough supplies

to keep the island going.

Malta had been rescued.

It meant the Allies could continue to harass

the Axis supply lines to North Africa.

It was a strategic advantage

that would prove crucial to future events in the region.

In North Africa, Churchill's orders to his new team,

Generals Alexander and Montgomery were simple.

Destroy the army commanded by Field-Marshal Rommel.

Almost immediately, they were informed by the team

that had broken Germany's Enigma Code

that Rommel was preparing to attack them.

Montgomery assumed the Desert Fox would try

another of his outflanking moves,

and fortified the ridge of Alam Halfa,

just to the south-east of El Alamein.

It was, he hoped,

the rock on which the Axis forces would be broken.

When it came, the fighting lasted for three days.

This time, Allied ground forces were helped by air power.

The RAF played havoc with the advancing German tanks.

Rommel was forced to give up

and short of fuel again, he pulled back.

It was now Rommel's turn to dig in.

He chose a line between the impassable sand sea

of the Qattara Depression and the Mediterranean coast.

Great belts of minefields were covered by artillery.

Rommel's Panzer divisions were held back as a mobile reserve,

to destroy any Allied breakthroughs.

Montgomery was well aware it was a formidable barrier.

He also knew it was impossible to outflank it.

His only option was to punch his way directly

through the middle of the Axis defenses.

He was helped by a flood of new equipment

from the United States,

which included the new American Lee and Sherman tanks

with 75mm guns.

At last, the Allies had a weapon which could match the Germans.

Finally on the evening of October 23rd, 1942,

the British opened up an artillery bombardment

on Rommel's positions.

The Battle of El Alamein had begun.

Under cover of the bombardment,

Allied engineers moved forward to clear paths

through the Axis minefields.

British, Australian, New Zealand and South African divisions

fought to drive a hole through Rommel's defenses.

Rommel's artillery took a terrible toll.

Casualties mounted on both sides.

The Axis forces were harried by Allied air power.

Finally, after ten days of fighting,

the Allied forces broke through.

The following day, Rommel retreated.

It was Germany's first major defeat

at the hands of the Western Allies.

Churchill was triumphant.

No, this is not the end.

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

For two and a half months, Montgomery chased Rommel west

along the North African coast towards Tunisia.

Meanwhile, an Anglo/American force

had landed 1,000 miles to his rear

in French North Africa - Morocco and Algeria today.

It was codenamed Operation Torch.

The Allied 1st Army was soon moving eastwards

towards Tunisia.

Rommel was in danger of being attacked from behind.

Over the next few days, the Germans flew in

tens of thousands of troops from Europe to save Rommel

and shore up the German position in North Africa.

Finally, in late February 1943, Rommel, reinforced,

set up a new defensive line 100 miles inside Tunisia

and turned to attack Montgomery's advancing forces.

But Montgomery had been forewarned

by the Enigma code-breakers

and his troops were waiting as the German tanks rolled forward.

British artillery broke up the assault

and the Panzers were quickly halted.

It was Rommel's last battle in North Africa.

He now returned to Germany to beg Hitler

to abandon the North African campaign.

But Hitler refused.

It was a misjudgment.

As Montgomery's 8th Army now pushed up from the south,

the Anglo/American 1st Army squeezed in from the west.

On May 7th, US forces took the port of Bizerta.

The British 7th Armored Division -

the famous Desert Rats - drove into Tunis.

The Allies' pincer closed and the Axis troops were trapped.

Five days later, a quarter of a million German

and Italian soldiers surrendered.

It was more than twice the number

that had surrendered at Stalingrad four months earlier.

For Germany, it was another momentous disaster.

The following day, the British regional Commander-in-Chief,

General Harold Alexander, signaled Winston Churchill:

"Sir, it is my duty to report

that all enemy resistance has ceased.

We are the masters of the North African shores."

Mussolini's gamble in North Africa

had taken a terrible toll on German resources.

It was about to have even more serious consequences

for both him and Germany.

In January 1943,

at a conference in the Moroccan city of Casablanca,

Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to open a new front

on German-dominated Europe.

The obvious target was Italy,

seriously weakened by its North African failures.

The only question was where should the invasion begin?

Should the route go via Sardinia or Sicily?

The Allied High Command chose the Sicilian route,

but to throw the Germans off the scent,

they organized a deception plan.

Operation Mincemeat was launched.

A corpse was dropped off the shores of Spain

carrying false papers.

When it was washed ashore in May 1943

and the papers passed to the Germans,

they revealed that the Allies would pretend to attack Sicily

but that their real target was Sardinia.

Enigma code-breakers soon confirmed

the Germans had fallen for it.

Six weeks later the British 8th Army,

under Montgomery, landed in the south-east corner of Sicily.

The Italian coastal troops presented few problems.

Further west, the US 7th Army landed in the Gulf of Gela.

The Italian resistance was again overwhelmed.

For the Italian people the invasion of Sicily

was the final humiliation.

Mussolini was overthrown in a popular uprising.

The new government now opened secret talks with the Allies

for an armistice.

For Hitler it was another nightmare.

He was now forced to pour in yet more scarce resources

to protect his southern flank.

He told his commanders that even if Italy surrendered,

they should fight on.

Within five weeks, the Germans had been pushed out of Sicily.

The Allies now crossed to the mainland

and pushed up through the country.

US troops moved up the west side.

British forces moved up the east.

The Germans fought back savagely all the way.

Even so, Naples fell to the Allies on October 1st, 1943.

But then their progress was slowed by autumn rains

and skillful German rearguard attacks.

It was not until the end of November that Allied forces

finally reached the Gustav Line,

the first of a series of German defensive positions

cutting across Italy.

British troops managed to break through at the eastern end of the line,

but winter was setting in and bad weather forced them to halt.

Nevertheless, in the west, US forces attempted to outflank

the German defenses by taking to the sea.

They landed on January 22nd, 1944,

60 miles to the north at the point of Anzio.

But here, amidst fierce fighting,

they were pinned down and nearly driven back into the sea.

The Americans remained trapped at Anzio

for the rest of the winter and into the spring.

Meanwhile, in the center of Italy,

the key to breaking the Gustav line

was the towering Monte Cassino mountain complex.

As spring came, there was a series of attempts to capture it.

Each assault failed.

In desperation, the Allies bombed

the historic monastery on the summit.

But the Germans hung on.

Finally, in late spring 1944, as the weather improved,

the Allied forces broke through the German lines.

Simultaneously the Americans broke out of Anzio.

The Allied forces now moved swiftly north to Rome.

The Italian capital was liberated on June 4th, 1944.

For Hitler it was another blow.

He was now hanging onto Italy by his fingernails.

The Allies continued to push north.

The German defenders finally fell back

to the formidable Gothic Line, just north of Florence.

Here bad weather again brought the Allied advance to a halt.

It wouldn't be until the spring of 1945

that the campaign could resume and Italy was finally won.

By then, the Italians had had enough of Mussolini.

He was captured by Italian partisan forces and shot.

His corpse was hung by its heels in Milan.

Mussolini's war had been a catastrophe,

for himself and his country.

It had also left the German southern flank

dangerously exposed.

The Germany army was now over-committed,

short of troops and retreating on all fronts.