All language subtitles for World War Two 1942 and Hitlers Soft Underbelly BBC 720p HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

'In 1940 the British Army was kicked
off the beaches of northern France.

'Instead of trying to get back
there,

'it spent the next four years
fighting around the Mediterranean.

'The British only returned
to France,

'with their American allies in 1944,
while the Soviet Union

'bore the brunt of a life or death
struggle with Hitler's Third Reich.'

Why did the British
and Americans spend

so much of the war paddling
around the Mediterranean,

around North Africa and Italy,

thousands of miles from
the enemy's heartland?

Why was Britain's
most celebrated victory

of the Second World War named after
a nondescript little railway station

on the coast of Egypt?

The American Army was sure from the
start that the quickest way

to beat Hitler was straight back
across the English Channel,

21 miles wide, into German-occupied
France and on to Berlin.

But in 1942, President Roosevelt
and the Americans

were still newcomers to the war.

Churchill would persuade them
to target not France,

but supposedly easier territory
in North Africa and later Italy,

what he called "the soft
underbelly" of Hitler's Europe.

In reality, the soft underbelly
would see some of the worst carnage

in Western Europe.

Fighting akin to the
Great War of 1914-18.

Britain and America
became bogged down,

while the Soviet war machine
ground on remorselessly

towards the real target, Berlin.

The fascinating question,
I think, is why did Churchill

and the British persist
in their Mediterranean strategy?

The story takes us into some
of the less familiar aspects

of Britain's Second World War.

A story of a faltering empire
and a demoralised people.

An army fearful of going
head-to-head against the Germans

on the battlefields of France.

A government increasingly
dependent on the Americans.

A military machine
whose secret weapon,

the code-breakers of Bletchley Park,
had dangerous flaws.

The campaigns in North Africa
and Italy also show us

an unfamiliar side of Churchill.

Very different from
the jaw-jutting bulldog

of Britain's "finest hour" in 1940.

A war leader who was
acutely vulnerable.

Losing faith in his army,
politically threatened at home.

Even ready, at times, to deceive
his cherished American allies.

The war in the Mediterranean

would expose Winston's own
soft underbelly.

'In June 1942, Winston Churchill
was conferring with

'Franklin Roosevelt
in the White House.'

'During their meeting,
a telegram was brought in.'

'The President handed it without
comment to the Prime Minister.'

"Tobruk has surrendered, with
25,000 men taken prisoners."

Churchill never forgot that moment.

One of the heaviest blows,
he recalled, of the whole war.

Tobruk was a major port
on the Libyan coast,

close to the border with Egypt
and considered vital

to Britain's position
in North Africa.

But the Germans had launched
a daring surprise attack,

and cut the British fortress
off from reinforcement.

Tobruk's defences had been neglected
and British morale collapsed.

The commander sent a pitiful
last message.

"Situation - shambles.
Am doing the worst."

His garrison, actually 33,000 men,

surrendered to an enemy force that
turned out to be half its size.

Churchill did not conceal from
the President his bitter anguish.

As he said, "Defeat is one thing.
Disgrace is another."

The capitulation at Tobruk opened up
the prospect of Germany

rampaging through Egypt
to the Suez Canal.

And it came just a few months
after the fall of Singapore,

an equally humiliating
British surrender,

this time to the Japanese.

It was less than two years
since Churchill's "finest hour",

when his defiance of Hitler had
inspired the Battle of Britain.

How had it come to this?

To understand why
the surrender of Tobruk

was so shattering for Churchill,

we have to examine the massive
challenges Britain faced

in the early years of the war and go
back to the hidden story of 1940.

CHURCHILL: 'The Battle of Britain
is about to begin.'

'Hitler knows that he will have
to break us in this island

'or lose the war.'

Churchill's rhetoric in 1940 was
all about defending Great Britain

and celebrating its island story.

But this was for
public morale at home.

In reality, Churchill believed
Britain's fate would be decided

by events thousands of miles away.

We can see this in one of
the boldest decisions of 1940,

now almost totally obscured by the
hype about the Battle of Britain.

Churchill and his War Cabinet
decided to ship half Britain's tanks

to another continent - to Egypt.

Egypt?

To us in the 21st century,
that decision seems utterly crazy,

because we think of Britain
as an offshore European island.

But, back in 1940,
the mindset was very different.

Britain was still
seen as a global power,

and its leaders knew it was the
Empire that enabled the British

to punch way above their weight
in the world arena.

Without the Empire, Great Britain
would be Little England.

The supreme imperialist
was Churchill himself.

As a young soldier, he had defended
the frontiers of empire

in India, the Sudan
and South Africa.

Even when Britain was
faced with invasion,

Churchill thought globally,
not locally.

In 1940, it wasn't just the
British Isles that were in jeopardy,

but the whole British Empire,

through the Middle East
and out to India,

because the Empire's main artery,
the Mediterranean,

was in danger of being severed.

As France collapsed in June 1940,
Italy, Britain's upstart rival

in the Mediterranean, entered
the war on Germany's side.

For the Italian dictator,
Benito Mussolini,

this was an electric moment.

Fascist Italy posed a genuine threat
to the British Empire

in the Middle East.

Jutting right out into
the Mediterranean,

it had a powerful navy
and significant colonies

in Libya and Abyssinia.

Mussolini, strutting amid the
monuments of past imperial grandeur,

hoped to piggy-back to
glory on the shoulders

of Hitler's victory over France.

Mussolini reckoned that Britain's
crisis would allow his army

to march unopposed from Libya
eastward all the way to Cairo,

devouring Egypt, heartland of the
once-great empire of the Pharaohs

and now a vital part
of the British empire.

"The loss of Egypt will be the coup
de grace for Great Britain",

Mussolini boasted.

For the British, the critical threat
was to the Suez Canal,

which linked Britain to the
oilfields of the Persian Gulf

and on to India and Australia.

Supplies and men from the empire

were essential for Britain's
war effort.

All Britain's oil and over half
its food had to be imported.

Loss of the Mediterranean
would add several weeks

onto voyages from the Far East,

exposing scarce merchant ships to
attacks from the German U-boats.

That's why Churchill risked
reinforcing Egypt,

even while Britain itself was
facing imminent invasion.

What looked like a dangerous British
gamble proved a spectacular success.

Mussolini jumped into war,
only to fall flat on his face.

Italy's army was totally
unprepared for a serious war.

The British counter-attacked,

winning cheap and resounding
victories, advancing from Egypt

and driving deep into the
Italian colony of Libya.

But then Hitler came
to Mussolini's aid.

In February 1941, he sent an ace
general, Erwin Rommel,

to North Africa, along with good
tanks and elite troops.

Rommel was a leader
who loved to attack

and was ready to take huge risks,

sometimes even against his
official orders from Berlin.

Under Rommel, Germany's Afrika Korps
turned the tide

and started to drive the British
back along the road towards Cairo.

By the beginning of 1942,

the British position in North Africa
was once again in jeopardy.

Britain could not afford
to lose Egypt.

But holding it against a formidable
military machine

was a massive problem, because the
British Army was the weakest link

in the country's war effort.

The question was, could
the soldiers deliver?

'To really grasp Britain's
predicament in North Africa in 1942,

'even before the disaster at Tobruk,

'we have to understand Churchill's
great underlying fear.

'That he had an army
that could not win.'

Britain was haunted by history.

Such was the public fear of a repeat
of the carnage of the Great War -

the Somme and Passchendaele -
that the 1914 acronym BEF,

British Expeditionary Force,

was banned from official documents
all through the 1930s.

British leaders put resources
into the air force and navy,

not the army, because they were sure
the public would not accept

another land war
on the continent of Europe.

They expected French soldiers would
do most of the fighting

in any future war against Germany.

The fall of France in 1940
shredded those illusions.

Now Churchill had to create a mass
conscript army almost from scratch.

That meant training green troops

to fight battle-hardened
German veterans,

providing them with decent
equipment, especially tanks,

and finding generals who could match
German commanders like Rommel.

Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill's Chief
of the Imperial General Staff and

supremo of the army, mused gloomily
about the magnitude of the task.

"Half our Corps and Divisional
Commanders are totally unfit

"for their appointments,

"and yet if I were to sack them
I could find no better!"

"The reason for this state of
affairs is to be found in the losses

"we sustained in the last war
of all our best officers,

"who should now be our
senior commanders."

Between 1940 and 1942,
poorly commanded, ill-equipped

and under-trained,

the British army had suffered
a series of catastrophic defeats.

Norway, Dunkirk, Greece,
Crete, Singapore,

became bywords for evacuation
and humiliation.

Now people joked BEF
stood for Back Every Friday.

Churchill was impatient.

As an ex-soldier, he knew that
the only real way

to train men how to fight
was by fighting,

and as a political leader,
he understood that you couldn't

sustain public morale indefinitely
by big words about future success.

The only place where the British
were really fighting the Germans

was in colonial North Africa.

Britain's whole war effort had
become hostage to a desert victory,

and so had the fate
of Britain's war leader.

In 1942, Rommel was at the gates,
the Empire was crumbling,

and the army was floundering.

Worse still, Churchill's leadership
was now being questioned.

Discontent was brewing about
his "dictatorial" ways

and his "midnight follies" when
he tried to impose his ideas

on exhausted aides.

Increasingly, even his chief
adviser, Brooke, complained

at having to manage what he called
Churchill's "impetuous nature".

Twice in six months, Churchill, had
to fend off votes of no confidence

in the House of Commons.

Winston, MPs muttered,
was yesterday's man.

A titan in crisis of 1940,
but now running out of steam

and lacking a vision
to shape the peace.

The up and coming men,
it was whispered around Westminster,

were the progressive Tory,
Anthony Eden,

and especially the radical
left-winger, Stafford Cripps.

'Sir Stafford Cripps signs for
His Majesty's Government.'

Stafford Cripps was everything
Churchill couldn't stand -

socialist, religious and, perhaps
most horrific of all, vegetarian.

But Cripps offered a radically
different vision

of how to win the war,

which caught the public
mood in those tired,

fractious months of 1942.

'Now over to London, where one of the
biggest ever crowds assembles

'in Trafalgar Square for an
"All Aid to Russia" demonstration.'

Cripps demanded massive aid
for the Russians,

whose Red Army was really
taking on the Germans,

unlike, it seemed, the British army.

Above all, Cripps did not share
Churchill's passionate,

romantic imperialism.

In fact, he was demanding
a firm timetable

for giving independence to India.

I feel quite certain that the scheme
I'm taking with me to India

is one which may successfully
settle for all time the future

of India as a great, free partner in
the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Cripps posed a fundamental challenge
to Churchill's view of Empire.

Cripps understood that if Britain
claimed to be fighting for freedom,

she could not hold
400 million people

on the other side of the world
in imperial bondage.

For Churchill, the sun would never
set on the British Empire.

For Cripps, the twilight
was already closing in.

In early 1942, the idea of empire
was being battered

not just by politicians like Cripps,

but by the subject peoples
themselves,

and nowhere more so than in Egypt.

As in India, nationalist protests

were challenging
British imperial rule.

But here, Rommel's desert army
had emboldened Egypt's king

and his supporters, and they were
backed by crowds who thronged

the streets chanting, "Down with the
English!" and, "Long live Rommel!"

The British Ambassador
was Sir Miles Lampson.

Six foot five and 18 stone -
a bluff, burly figure,

quite ready to throw
his weight around.

Lampson wanted to shore up
the situation

with a firmly pro-British
government,

but Egypt's young playboy king,
Farouk, tried to defy him.

So Lampson decided
to show the "boy",

as he privately called King Farouk,
just who was boss.

'Lampson drove down
to the Royal Palace

'at the head of an armoured convoy.'

'As British tanks and troops
ringed the building,

'he marched in, barging aside
the King's Chamberlain,

'and gave Farouk an ultimatum -
play ball or abdicate.'

'A new pro-British government
was quickly installed.'

This tough-guy act worked,
but only for the moment.

Ultimately, the British Empire
was a con trick,

depending on prestige
rather than power.

There simply weren't enough soldiers
and administrators

to keep order
if the colonial millions

decided to challenge British rule.

Rommel's triumphant army
gave the Egyptians their cue.

Only a decisive desert victory
could save the British empire.

But instead of victory,

what came next was
that worst of all defeats.

The humiliation at Tobruk.

In June 1942, the pink telegram,

thrust into Churchill's
hand in the White House,

summed up in a few words his
anguish, and that of Britain.

The fragility of the empire,
the failure of the army,

and his own inability as a leader

to deliver the victory
he had promised back in 1940.

On that grim morning,
the only saving grace for Churchill

was the generosity
of his American allies.

There were no recriminations.

President Roosevelt simply asked,
"What can we do to help?"

In the bleak crisis of mid-1942,
relations between Britain

and America provided Churchill's
only bright spot.

Churchill was trying to build what
he called a "special relationship".

The two governments were forging
a uniquely close alliance.

The two leaders were exchanging
dozens of personal messages

every week, and meeting
every few months.

'On one occasion, when Churchill
was staying in the White House,

'Roosevelt entered his room
unannounced,

'only to find his British guest
emerging wet and glowing

'from the bathroom, draped only
with a scanty towel.'

'FDR started to withdraw,
but Churchill beckoned him in.'

"The Prime Minister of Great Britain
has nothing to conceal

"from the President of
the United States."

But however cosy the special
relationship seemed in 1942,

it was impossible to hide
the nakedness of British power.

Surging on from Tobruk,
by August 1942,

Rommel's army was only
100 miles from Cairo.

Churchill blamed the retreat
in North Africa

on the British commander,
Claude Auchinleck.

In desperation, he flew out
to Egypt and sacked Auchinleck

and his senior staff.

To head the new team,
he appointed Brooke's protege,

General Bernard Montgomery.

Yet Monty was not entirely
Churchill's cup of tea.

On one occasion, Churchill visited
Monty and watched some manoeuvres.

Afterwards, the two men had lunch in
Monty's field caravan.

Monty was a lean, austere man
and the food was pretty Spartan,

washed down only with water.

Churchill made
clear his displeasure,

and Monty replied defensively,

"Prime Minister, I neither smoke
nor drink and am 100% fit."

Churchill glowered back...

.."I smoke and drink
and am 200% fit."

But Monty had the charismatic manner
and leadership skills

that his predecessors lacked.

He worked on basic training
and made clear

that there would be
no more retreats.

'I have ordered that all plans
and instructions

'dealing with further withdrawal
are to be burnt and at once!

'We will stand and fight here.

'If we can't stay here alive,
then let us stay here dead.

'I want to impress on everyone
that the bad times are over.

'They are finished.'

'This breezy confidence
was infectious,

'and Monty's informality endeared
him to the troops.'

According to anecdote,

as Monty's jeep was passing
one British unit,

a soldier, wearing a top hat
but otherwise completely naked,

doffed the hat to his commander.

This was too much, even for Monty.
and he issued a blunt order.

"Top hats will not be
worn in the Eighth Army."

But Monty was no superman.

In fact, he reaped the benefits of
the hard work put in by Auchinleck,

who had built up a force
that halted Rommel's advance

at the desert outpost of Alamein.

Slowly and painfully, the British
army was learning how to fight.

By October, Monty was ready
to attack in strength.

He now had real superiority
over Rommel,

with double the troops,
tanks and guns,

while his enemy was starved
of supplies, especially petrol.

'The great point to remember
is that we're going to finish

'with this chap Rommel
once and for all.'

'There was one other
reason for Monty's confidence.

'He had a new secret weapon,
thanks to work being done here

'at Bletchley Park, a quiet country
house 50 miles north of London,

'that had become the nerve centre
of British code-breaking.'

'The Germans used Enigma machines
like this one

'to encode their messages.

'At first glance, it looked like
a small typewriter in a wooden box,

'but it employed teethed wheels
and telephone-style plug-boards

'to encode messages
in almost endless variety.

'158 million million million
possibilities.

'Penetrating the Enigma
was a monumental task.

'It took painstaking labour,
huge strokes of luck

'and enormous ingenuity by
the academics at Bletchley.'

The information generated by the
code-breakers was known as Ultra.

What mattered was not only
decrypting and translating

the signals quickly,
but getting the information out

to field commanders in time
for it to be used in battle.

In the autumn of 1942, GHQ in Cairo
set up Special Liaison Units

charged with putting Ultra
to good use.

So Monty was the first
Desert General

who was able to exploit Ultra.

He knew the state of Rommel's
dispositions.

Ultra also helped the RAF
to target German convoys

across the Mediterranean, and German
air bases in North Africa,

strangling Rommel's supply lines.

Yet, even with all
the advantages of Ultra,

the battle of Alamein still had to
be won by hard, bloody fighting.

The battle opened on 23rd October

with a spectacular artillery
barrage,

which Monty likened to
"a Great War 1914/18 attack".

But the Afrika Korps had laid nearly
half a million mines, so clearing

paths through the minefields
took time,

and what Monty had envisaged
as a quick tank battle

turned into an infantry
slogging match

by British and Commonwealth forces,

which for over a week
seemed in the balance.

'Here's some excellent news which
has come during the past hour.'

'The Axis forces in the Western
desert, after 12 days and nights

'of ceaseless attacks by our land and
air forces, are now in full retreat.

'It's known that the enemy's
losses in killed and wounded

'have been exceptionally high.'

CHURCH BELLS RING

Church bells rang out across Britain
in celebration of this first

victory by the British army
over the Germans.

For Churchill,
Alamein was redemption

for the purgatory of Tobruk.

Suez and the artery of empire
were now secure.

At last, the British army
had learned how to win,

at last, the British people
had something to celebrate.

And, what's more, Churchill's own
political position was now confirmed

for the rest of the war.

For weeks beforehand,

Stafford Cripps had been threatening
to resign from the Cabinet

over Churchill's mismanagement
of the war.

Once Churchill gained his victory,
Cripps no longer posed a threat.

He did resign, but it was now
a damp squib rather than a big bang.

For the British public
and the wider world,

Churchill played up Alamein

as a decisive turning point
of the whole war.

And that's how we tend
to remember it today.

But in reality, this was another
piece of British spin.

Talk of "exceptionally high" Axis
casualties was an exaggeration.

2,100 Germans and Italians
were killed.

The British death toll was 2,300.

And although more than 30,000 of the
enemy were taken prisoner,

Monty's caution in the pursuit
allowed Rommel

and much of his Afrika Korps to get
away, and fight another day.

Contrast this with the great turning
point on the Eastern Front,

Stalingrad, where the battle
was also decided in November 1942,

when the Russian pincers
closed around the Germans.

Around half a million soldiers
had been killed on both sides.

The Russians netted
over 100,000 prisoners...

..among them 22 generals,

including the supreme German
commander, Friedrich Paulus.

BELLS RING

No wonder the bells also rang
out from the Kremlin.

Stalingrad marked the turn
of the Nazi tide in the East,

the beginning of a long
and bloody retreat to Berlin.

It also signalled the rise
of a new imperial threat

to the British Empire,

much more significant than
Mussolini's tinpot Roman empire.

As Russia bludgeoned its way west,

America was beginning to
mobilise its vast resources.

Both now had the power to challenge
Churchill's focus

on the Mediterranean.

"The only thing worse
than fighting with allies

"is fighting without them."

That was Churchill's lament
all through the war

when dealing with the Russians
and even the Americans.

But the hard truth was that
the British Empire needed

the support of allies
to win the war.

The problem was that this support
would undermine the very empire

that Churchill was fighting
to protect.

'The freedom we fought for in 1776,

'Britain has since been
freely given to Canada...

'..Australia...

'New Zealand...'

For most Americans, "empire"
was a dirty word.

They had fought a bloody
war of independence to escape

from the British Empire,
and prided themselves

on not being a colonial power,
unlike the nations of Europe.

'Of course, no-one ever talks
about the British Empire today

'without mentioning India,

'and men of goodwill in Britain
as well as other countries

'have been outspoken in their demands
for Indian freedom,

'for no man who believes in democracy

'can support foreign rule
of any people.'

To Roosevelt and the Americans,

Churchill embodied
an archaic world order.

British domination of places like
Egypt and India

were seen as Victorian relics
that had to be swept away.

US leaders were sure
that they were fighting a war

for high principle, to spread
American democratic values

across the globe.

The tension over empire was revealed
dramatically in April 1942,

when the nationalist campaign
in India was reaching a crescendo.

Roosevelt leaned hard
on the Prime Minister

to come out for Indian independence.

Churchill was furious and,
in effect, threatened to resign,

unless the President stopped
interfering

in what he saw as a British issue.

"I could not be responsible
for a policy which would throw

"the whole sub-continent of India
into utter confusion

"while the Japanese invader
is at its gates.

"I should personally make no
objection at all

"to retiring into private life."

The transatlantic wrangling
over empire

was not only disturbing relations
between the two leaders.

It was also poisoning discussions
between the generals

over how to beat the Germans.

For many American commanders,

the Mediterranean campaign
looked like a selfish diversion

by the imperialist Brits to bolster
their own power in Egypt.

It also seemed a completely
stupid strategy.

The American Army Chief
of Staff, George Marshall,

operated on the basis of simple
geometry, insisting that,

since the shortest distance between
two points was a straight line,

the best route from London to Berlin

was through France,
via Dover to Calais.

'We have our men all through
the Pacific.

'They are landing in Ireland
and England.

'They are landing in Ireland
and England.

'And they will land in France.'

George Marshall was already
a legend in Washington.

A career army officer
renowned for honesty,

candour and organisational skill.

Unlike many American generals,
he had no political ambitions

and didn't even vote in elections
for fear of colouring his judgment.

Marshall was also a match
for his own President.

Franklin Roosevelt was a consummate
politician, charming all around him

with seductive words while
keeping his own counsel.

FDR once remarked in a rare
moment of candour,

"I'm a juggler. I never let my right
hand know what my left hand does,

"and furthermore, I am perfectly
willing to mislead

"and tell untruths if it
will help win the war."

Yet Marshall was never drawn
into Roosevelt's political web.

He deliberately kept FDR
at a distance,

refusing to let the President
call him "George", and insisting,

"I want the right
to say what I think

"and it will often be unpleasing."

Marshall was quite clear about
the need for an early

Second Front in France,
and he told Roosevelt so repeatedly.

In April 1942, Marshall arrived
in London to present his plans

for crossing the Channel,

certainly in 1943,
and ideally later in 1942.

British commanders, mindful of the
Great War, thought this was crazy.

Brooke spoke scathingly
about Marshall building

"castles in the air".

But anxious not to blatantly
oppose their new ally,

Churchill and Brooke
played a masterful game.

The Prime Minister praised
Marshall's "momentous proposal"

and said he "cordially agreed".

He spoke expansively about "complete
unanimity on the framework".

The two nations, he said,

"would march ahead together
in a noble brotherhood of arms".

But Churchill mentioned "one broad
reservation". It was, he said,

"essential to carry on the defence
of India and the Middle East".

In other words, Churchill was
determined to keep on fighting

in the Mediterranean.

For the moment, Churchill was senior
partner in the alliance.

Such was America's
unreadiness for war

and the demands of the Pacific

that the US Army could only
offer a couple of divisions

for any cross-Channel
attack in 1942.

The bulk of the troops would have
to be British and Canadian.

This gave Churchill a veto power
over what appeared in London

to be a suicide mission.

As a way of appeasing the Americans
and the Russians,

the British mounted a small-scale,

lightning raid on the Channel
port of Dieppe in August 1942.

But it turned into
a complete disaster,

with the Canadian 2nd Division
losing 70% of its men.

With this tragic vindication,
Churchill managed to ward off

any idea of a full-scale
cross-Channel attack in 1942.

But he still needed to satisfy
the pressure from Washington

and Moscow for some kind
of second front that year.

If not France, then where?

During the Great War, Churchill had
revolted against the stalemate

on the Western Front by proposing
a campaign in the Mediterranean

to knock out Germany's junior ally,
the Ottoman Turks.

The half-baked landings at Gallipoli

almost destroyed
his political career,

but Churchill never lost his
conviction that the Mediterranean

was the theatre where a decisive
breakthrough could be made.

But in 1942, he had
to persuade his new allies.

In August, Churchill became
the first Allied leader

to fly to Moscow to meet Stalin
face to face.

Churchill saw himself as the broker
between East and West.

In the Kremlin, he condensed
his strategy into a simple image.

Sketching the outline
of a crocodile,

he told Stalin that France was
Hitler's hard snout

but the Mediterranean was
the "soft underbelly" of the Axis.

That was where the Allies
should make their first stab.

The "soft underbelly" was
a brilliantly seductive idea.

Churchill presented it
as common sense, sound strategy.

But in reality, it masked his fears

about the weakness
of the British army,

and it also suited Britain's
interests very well,

because it would eliminate
the British Empire's rivals

in the Mediterranean.

But would the Americans buy it?

Marshall was not taken
in by the soft underbelly.

But he wasn't America's
Commander-in-Chief,

and he wasn't a politician.

President Roosevelt was determined
to mount some kind of offensive

against Germany in 1942, above all
to head off political opponents

who wanted to focus on the war
against Japan in the Pacific.

For FDR, the opinion polls were
alarming, indicating that 20%

of Americans were inclined to sign
a peace with Hitler so they

could concentrate on getting revenge
on the Japanese for Pearl Harbor.

To put it bluntly, Roosevelt needed
American blood to be shed

by the Germans so his people would
feel committed to the European war.

And, as a politician, he really
wanted the action to start

before the midterm elections
of November 1942.

So the President simply
overruled Marshall.

He gave the go-ahead for Operation
Torch - an invasion of Morocco

and Algeria by American
and British troops,

to attack Rommel from the rear
as he retreated from Alamein.

For his own political reasons,

Roosevelt had bought in
to Churchill's grand idea.

In 1942, the soft underbelly became
the Allies' compromise strategy.

For better and for worse, there
would be real military benefits,

but also lasting consequences
for the post-war world.

To keep the American military sweet,
Churchill let Roosevelt and Marshall

propose a commander of the combined
American and British forces

for the Torch landings.

The choice was between two
up-and-coming generals,

Dwight Eisenhower and Mark Clark.

Clark was shrewd and meticulous,

but also relentlessly ambitious
and deeply insecure.

"The higher you climb the flagpole,"
he once said,

"the more of your ass is exposed."

He was also congenitally
suspicious of the Brits.

"Ike" was junior to Clark and,
as Brooke caustically remarked,

he'd never even commanded
a battalion in action.

But he had priceless assets
for the role

of commanding an alliance
of nations.

A ready smile, a gregarious
manner and, above all,

total commitment to making the
Anglo-American alliance really work.

Eisenhower dealt ruthlessly
with all

who took a narrowly
nationalist view.

One American officer was sent home
for insulting a British officer.

The Brit tried to intercede:
"Sir, he only called me an SOB."

Ike was unmoved.

"I understand he called you
a British SOB."

"That is quite different.
My ruling stands."

It was Ike who got command of Torch,
and he would never look back.

The Torch landings were the greatest
amphibious assault

in history to date,
dwarfing Gallipoli in 1915.

And they went far better
than that disaster,

which had blackened Churchill's
name in the Great War.

For now, Churchill's soft underbelly
strategy appeared to be working.

The Americans were onside,
the Germans seemed to be on the run.

Hopes were high that,
by Christmas 1942,

the Allies would reach Tunis and
squeeze Rommel out of North Africa.

These hopes were not mere illusion.

Drawing on what he called
his "golden eggs",

the daily decrypts from Ultra,

Churchill believed that the Germans
were about to cut their losses

in North Africa and pull out.

The question was, could Ultra
always be taken at face value?

The code-breakers,
for all their brilliance,

were limited by the military
messages on which they worked.

Bletchley Park could shed
little light

into the manic mind of Adolf Hitler.

Determined not to be humiliated,
in November 1942,

the Fuhrer performed
a dramatic U-turn...

..and decided to make
a stand in Tunisia...

..rushing in fresh troops
and supplies.

Hitler's last-ditch reinforcements
enabled the Germans to hang on

in Tunisia, until the rains came
and the sandy tracks turned to mud.

The months of desert war
that followed

at least gave American soldiers
valuable battle experience.

Roosevelt and Marshall had been
faced with the task of creating

an army even more quickly
than Churchill and Brooke.

'Boy, do I remember breaking in
them first GI shoes.

'We learnt quick it was
a fighting outfit

'from that rugged training
we got here and overseas.'

Troops had to be trained and
supplied, and, equally important,

taught how to fight with Allies.

Many GIs got a bad name
among the British

for their high pay
and brash confidence.

There were punch-ups in British
pubs after GIs used lines like,

"Gimme a beer as quick as you guys
got out of Dunkirk."

The real war therefore
came as a rude shock.

In February 1943, American forces
at the Kasserine Pass

in the Tunisian mountains
were routed by Rommel

in a surprise attack.

The green GIs, badly led, were
forced back 85 miles in seven days,

one of the worst American
defeats of the war.

Eisenhower reported to Marshall,

"Our people,
from the very highest to the lowest,

"have learned that this
is not a child's game."

The story was played down
in America,

but there was considerable malicious
satisfaction in Britain.

The Great War song
The Yanks Are Coming

was heard again with new words -
The Yanks Are Running.

# Over there, over there

# Send the word, send the word

# Over there

# That the Yanks are coming

# The Yanks are coming

# The drums rum-tumming everywhere. #

4,000 Allied prisoners
were taken at Kasserine,

and to add to America's humiliation,

some of the GIs were shipped
to Italy

and marched as a spectacle
through Rome.

# And we won't come back

# Till it's over over there. #

With the North African campaign
dragging on,

British and American leaders
met in Casablanca

to discuss what they could salvage
from this setback.

Churchill and Brooke
were quite clear.

Finish the job in North Africa,

and then continue to stab
at the soft underbelly

by targeting Hitler's weaker
partner, Italy.

Marshall could see the way
things were going.

He grumbled that the Mediterranean
was turning into a "suction pump".

But, bogged down in Tunisia, the
Americans were in a weak position

to argue and British military
planners ran rings around them.

One US general commented, "We came,
we saw, and we were conquered."

After months of muddy stalemate,
the Allies re-grouped,

and in May 1943,
they finally captured Tunis.

The haul was immense.

Some 250,000 prisoners, including
a dozen German generals.

North Africa had finally
been cleared of enemy troops

and the Mediterranean was now open
to Allied shipping.

'But although the Americans talked
up the victory as "Tunisgrad",

'it came six months too late.

'That half year since
Alamein and Stalingrad

'was of decisive importance.'

'The Red Army was now surging west,
while total victory in North Africa

'came too late to change
Anglo-American strategy for 1943.'

Marshall was still pushing

for a cross-Channel invasion
to be given priority.

But was he right?

It's clear from the Dieppe disaster
that the Allies could not

have established a firm
foothold in France in 1942.

They might have in 1943,
but only if they had done nothing

in North Africa in order to build up
troops and resources

here in Britain.

Even then, it would have
been very iffy,

because the Allies had not yet
gained clear supremacy in the air

against the Luftwaffe,

or control of the Atlantic supply
lines against the U-boats.

What's certain is that the failure
to clear North Africa,

as hoped, by the end of 1942
made it virtually impossible

to cross the Channel
in strength in 1943.

So Churchill and Brooke's
Mediterranean strategy

continued to triumph, by default.

With no option of attacking France,
the Americans were persuaded

to beach-hop from Africa
to Sicily in July 1943.

'We have a good plan.

'There can only be one end
to this next battle

'and that is another success.

'Forward to victory.
Let us knock Italy out of the war.'

This was more Monty bravado.

The Sicily landings were a mess,
and three German divisions

gave two far-superior Allied armies

a hard, month-long battle,
inflicting 20,000 casualties.

More disturbing still,
co-operation between

the British and American commanders
was breaking down.

Monty and the British, still
sceptical about the quality

of the GIs after Kasserine,
tried to sideline the US forces.

But while Monty's Eighth Army worked
its way slowly through Sicily

in brutal battles, an American rival
surged across the island

in a series of dashing
tank offensives.

"Goddamn, all the British!"
fumed General George Patton.

"I'd rather be commanded
by an A-rab!"

Patton treated
the campaign in Sicily

as what he called a "horse race"
with Monty,

insisting that "the US must win,
not as an ally, but as a conqueror".

Despite the Allies' bickering,

Churchill's strategy still
appeared to be paying off.

With Sicily invaded, Mussolini was
toppled in a political coup.

The Italians surrendered
and tried to side with the Allies.

But the Germans now moved in
to occupy Italy.

Churchill was convinced
it was vital to get into Italy

before Hitler consolidated his hold.

This was a decisive moment.

Up till now, Churchill's soft
underbelly strategy had paid off.

The Mediterranean, the artery
of empire, was secure,

and British armies had learned
how to fight

without getting into a bloodbath
like the Somme.

But now a bright idea would
become a dark obsession.

Increasingly for Churchill, the
Mediterranean would become

not a means to an end,
but the end in itself.

He expected Italian-controlled
islands in the Aegean

to fall quickly into British hands.

With such rich pickings on offer,

Churchill was ready to put
Operation Overlord,

the invasion of France, on hold.

This is clear from a top secret
meeting in October 1943,

which reveals just how far Churchill
was willing to go

in deceiving his American allies.

Churchill told the British Chiefs of
Staff his priorities would now be,

"One. To reinforce the Italian
theatre to the full.

"Two. To enter the Balkans.

"Three. To hold our position
in the Aegean Islands.

"Four. To build-up our air forces

"and intensify our air
attacks on Germany.

"Five. To encourage the steady
assembly in this country

"of United States troops,
with a view to taking advantage

"of the softening
in the enemy's resistance

"due to our operations
in other theatres,

"though this might not occur
until after the spring of 1944."

Plodding bureaucratic words,
you might think,

but actually diplomatic dynamite.

Churchill was saying that
the British, given a free hand,

would put crossing the Channel

at the bottom of their list
of priorities.

His sweet talk about Overlord

was simply to jolly along
the Americans.

And there's that telling phrase
about building up US troops

in Britain to take advantage

"of a softening in enemy
resistance elsewhere".

Here again, Churchill was following
British imperial tradition.

The empire had always preferred
to wage a war of attrition

rather than fight direct.

It had taken 20 years
to beat Napoleon,

and for much of that time
the British army had been

deployed in Spain while the Russians
slogged it out with the French.

Churchill shunned going head-to-head
with a full-strength German army.

Better to wear the enemy down
by squeezing the Mediterranean

and ratcheting up the bombing
until Hitler's Reich began to crack.

Crossing the Channel would simply
be finishing the job.

Churchill's obsession with
penetrating the soft underbelly

was not completely mad-cap.

He found support for his strategy
in intelligence reports

from Bletchley that suggested
that the Germans were ready

to throw in the towel in Italy.

Ultra indicated that, once the
Allies got established

on the toe of Italy,

the Germans would pull back north
towards the Alps.

That would give the Allies some
excellent Italian airfields

from which to bomb the industrial
cities of southern Germany.

But, once again, Ultra couldn't get
into the crevices of Hitler's brain.

In October 1943, faced with
the humiliation of losing Rome,

the Fuhrer performed another
about-turn

and instructed his generals to
fight for the Imperial City.

And so Italy, like Tunisia, became
a protracted, grinding struggle.

This time, the mountainous terrain
was ideal for the German defenders.

Italy's Apennine range
is over 800 miles long,

some 80 miles wide,
and it rises to 4,000 feet,

so the soft underbelly
turned out to have a rocky spine.

After the war, one German general
offered a friendly piece of advice.

"Next time you're invading Italy,
don't start at the bottom."

The British and Americans battled
their way north, but autumn rains

and winter snow then made movement
almost impossible for months on end.

Churchill had predicted that
Italy would be a springboard

for the Allies.

Instead, as he grimly admitted,
it turned out to be a "sofa"

on which they got
well and truly stuck.

The Americans were blunter.

General Mark Clark said that
the soft underbelly turned out

to be "a tough old gut".

Churchill blustered that the Allies

were diverting German troops
from France.

In fact, it was the other way round.

The Germans were diverting the
Allies from the real Second Front.

With bloody fighting at Salerno,
Ortona and the Rapido River,

Italy was turning
into a costly sideshow.

The situation was even
worse in the Aegean,

which Churchill had
expected to mop up.

In fact, the Germans moved in first.

On the island of Leros,
a small but determined German unit

overcame a larger British force
without much of a fight.

It seemed like Tobruk
all over again.

Churchill kept clamouring
for American help to hit back

and invade Rhodes,
the German stronghold in the Aegean.

But now even Brooke snapped.

He considered Churchill's plan
"sheer madness".

"The Americans are already
desperately suspicious of him,

"and this will make matters
far worse."

Brooke wanted all the Allied
resources devoted to Italy,

rather than being dissipated
around the Mediterranean.

The Prime Minister was isolated from
even his closest military adviser.

As for Marshall, he had
no interest in Italy and he was

enraged by Churchill's bombast about
Rhodes, telling the PM to his face,

"Not one American soldier is going
to die on that goddamn beach."

Marshall and Roosevelt were
determined to push through

Operation Overlord, the invasion
of France through Normandy,

in the spring of 1944.

They were now thoroughly fed
up with Churchill's obsession

about the Mediterranean.

Overlord wasn't merely a strategy,

it had become a metaphor for who was
on top in the special relationship.

Armed with evidence of Churchill's
intrigues against the plans

for invading France, Marshall sent
a blistering memo to Roosevelt,

insisting that "further indecision,
evasion, and the undermining

"of agreements cannot be borne.

"The Prime Minister must be
told that he must now give his

"unqualified support to Overlord,
or else propose an acceptable

"alternate course of action to
guarantee victory over Germany."

At the end of November 1943,

Churchill and Roosevelt
met once again at Tehran.

But now they were joined for
the first time by Stalin,

whose armies were rolling
the Germans back

and had recently liberated
the whole of the Ukraine.

Stalin was in a strong position
and he knew it.

The Soviet leader had tolerated
the Mediterranean strategy in 1942,

but he was furious that Churchill
had kept it going during 1943.

He shared the American desire
to pin Churchill down

on launching a second front
in France in the spring of 1944.

In the opening session, Roosevelt
made clear his view that the

"cross-Channel attack should not be
delayed by any secondary operation."

Stalin was even blunter.

He said that Hitler was trying
to keep as many Allied divisions

as possible in Italy, where no
decision could be reached.

Better to strike at
the heart of Germany

through an invasion of
northern France.

It was two to one for Overlord.

Churchill was outvoted.

The press and newsreels captured
pictures of the Big Three,

smiling and chatting as equals,

but privately Churchill muttered
that the little British donkey

was caught between the Russian bear
and the American elephant.

It was an apt image.

The two big beasts favoured
the direct attack into Germany

because they had
the strength to do so.

Stalin had masses of men,
and didn't care how many he lost.

Roosevelt, as a leader of
a democracy, had to be more careful,

but the Americans could bring
to bear massive firepower.

Unlike Churchill, neither of them
intended to wait

until the Third Reich
had been softened up.

Next day, the shift of power
got personal.

Stalin kept needling Churchill
about whether the British

were serious about Overlord.

And Roosevelt took his side, in
the hope of showing the Russians

that they weren't facing
an Anglo-American bloc.

At dinner, Stalin remarked that
to stop a third European war,

"at least 50,000 and perhaps 100,000
of the German High Command

"should be physically liquidated."

Churchill lost his cool.

"The British parliament and people

"will not tolerate
mass executions."

FDR offered what he drily
called a compromise.

How about shooting only 49,000?

At this point Churchill stomped
out of the room in disgust.

"You are pro-German!"
Stalin taunted.

Churchill, tired out, had
over-reacted to the gallows humour,

but, at a deeper level, I think,
he was venting his frustration

at Britain becoming the junior
partner in the alliance,

now that the vast power of America
and Russia had been fully mobilised.

The exertions of Tehran
and the frustrations of Italy,

challenges to his basic world view,

brought Churchill to one of
his lowest points of the war.

In mid-December, stopping off
in Tunis en route back to Britain,

he contracted pneumonia and suffered
two minor heart attacks.

For a day or two,
there were fears for his life

and his wife flew out
to be with him.

Churchill had driven
himself too far,

but his collapse was
not merely physical.

This was a leader who could begin
to see the limits of his power

and that of the empire
he'd vowed to preserve.

Yet Churchill remained a fighter.

As he recovered, his energy was
still directed towards completing

the campaign in Italy and justifying
his Mediterranean gamble.

In January 1944, Churchill persuaded
the Americans

to retain landing craft earmarked
for Normandy in the Mediterranean,

so he could mount a landing
behind enemy lines at Anzio,

only 40 miles from Rome.

This was a last bold throw
of the dice

to win a quick victory in Italy.

The landings were
a complete success.

But the troops failed to move
swiftly off the beachhead,

and were then hemmed in
by German counter-attacks.

'Hello, BBC.

'Wilfred Vaughan Thomas speaking
with Herbert Walden recording.

'That's the sound, the first
sounds, of our own ack ack.

'The first bomb's going down.
It's away to the left of us,

'but even back here the ground around
is shaking viciously

'and Walden's recording truck
is now rocking on its springs.'

The attack became bogged down
as soldiers dug into ditches

and gullies that, in places, ran
only 50 yards from the enemy lines.

Churchill blamed the sluggish
American commander,

General John Lucas,
for not racing towards Rome.

The Americans claimed that
Churchill's plan

was flawed from the start.

Lucas wrote in his diary...

"The whole affair has a strong
odour of Gallipoli,

"and apparently the same amateur
is still on the coach's bench."

With no decisive breakthrough, the
slugging match in Italy dragged on.

One of the most epic
and tragic battles

took place at the German-held
monastery of Monte Cassino,

which towered some 1,700 feet
above the valley below.

Besieging this
spectacular natural fortress

was the absurd culmination of
the soft underbelly strategy.

A succession of "British" units -
many of them actually Poles,

Indians, Canadians, New Zealanders -
took terrible casualties

in courageous assaults
on German positions.

The monastery itself was
flattened by Allied bombers.

Later, the Allies bombed
the town below.

But the rubble proved even
better for its defenders.

The struggle for Cassino
dragged on for five months

in rain and sleet, snow and mud.

Surveying the blasted landscape,

the German commander was reminded
of the Great War, when he said,

"I experienced the same loneliness

"crossing the battlefield
of the Somme."

Ironically, Churchill
had created in Italy

what he wanted to avoid in France.

'Fighting has been
severe in the extreme.

'Men fought till they dropped.

'Dropped exhausted,
or dropped killed or wounded.

'They had to get through appalling
mountain tracks with the Germans

'commanding them and pouring streams
of fire upon them at every move.'

'You could, by day, remain alive
only in a hole in the ground.

'To show yourself and move
in daylight

'in these forward positions
was death.'

'Eventually, a co-ordinated
attack by Allied units

'did force the Germans to withdraw.

'The Poles, the most recklessly
brave of Allied soldiers,

'had the honour of taking
the remains of the monastery,

'for which over a thousand
of their comrades had died.

'In late May 1944, American troops,
now heavily reinforced,

'finally broke out of
the Anzio beachhead.'

The Americans were ordered
to drive east

in order to cut off the Germans,
at last in retreat from Cassino.

But the commander of
the breakout was Mark Clark.

Fuming at playing second fiddle to
Eisenhower, and at being relegated

to a theatre of operations dominated
by the Brits, Clark unilaterally

diverted troops of his US Fifth Army
north-west to take Rome.

He wrote later, "We not only wanted
the honour of capturing Rome,

"but we felt that we
more than deserved it.

"We intended to see that the people
back home knew that it was

"the Fifth Army that did the job

"and knew the price that
had been paid for it."

Most of the Germans retreating from
Cassino escaped to the north,

but Clark had won his prize.

Early on 5th June, he held
a carefully-staged conference

with his senior staff on
the Capitoline Hill,

surrounded by press and cameramen.

"Well, gentlemen," Clark declared
with studied nonchalance,

"I didn't really expect to have
a press conference here.

"I just called a meeting
with my commanders

"to discuss the situation.

"However, I'll be glad to
answer your questions.

"This is a great day
for the Fifth Army."

No mention here of the troops of
the British Empire or France

who'd helped make possible
Clark's Roman triumph.

Even patriotic American pressmen
were embarrassed.

One commented, "On this historic
day, I feel like vomiting."

The soft underbelly had been
Churchill's grand idea,

but the Americans had stolen the
glory by taking the imperial city.

But having tried to deceive
his American allies on strategy,

Churchill was in no position
to complain

when they gave him the run-around
on tactics.

In any case, Mark Clark's moment
in the spotlight was short-lived.

Next day, the long-awaited
Second Front,

led by his rival Dwight Eisenhower,
opened for real in Normandy.

To his aides, the weary Prime
Minister was still complaining

that Overlord had been "forced upon
us by the Russians

"and the United States
military authorities".

Yet, in public, Churchill put
the best face on things,

and threw himself
into preparations for D-Day.

But in private, fear about attacking
the hard snout of the Axis

still gnawed at Churchill's belly.

In October 1943, he foresaw
Overlord turning into

"a disaster greater than Dunkirk".

And on the night before D-Day,

Churchill dined alone
pensively with his wife.

Just before going to bed,
he turned to her.

"Do you realise that by the time
you wake up tomorrow morning

"20,000 men may have been killed?"

'This is the BBC Home Service

'and here is a special bulletin
read by John Snagge.

'D-Day has come.

'Early this morning,
the Allies began the assault

'on the north-western face
of Hitler's European fortress.'

Churchill's gloom was misplaced.

Total Allied casualties on D-Day -
killed, wounded and missing -

were 10,000, not 20,000.

The generals had learned their trade

in the back waters of
the Mediterranean.

'In the euphoria about the landings,

'the news from Rome was
wiped off the front pages.

'Churchill's soft underbelly
had become a mere appendix.

'The real drama was now being played
out on beaches closer to home.'

Churchill the bulldog kept
fighting Britain's corner.

But the Americans
were now determined

to dictate strategy in the West.

In the battle across
France and Germany,

they were the dominant partners.

Monty, hero of Britain's
desert victory,

was now firmly under Eisenhower.

As Churchill sensed at Tehran,

the Big Three was becoming
a thing of the past.

In a future increasingly defined
by America and Russia,

British diplomats started talking
sardonically about

"the Big Two and a Half".

Britain would soon be stripped
of its imperial assets.

By 1945, the British position
in India had become untenable,

and within two years, a Labour
government, in which Stafford Cripps

was a leading member, would concede
full Indian independence.

Mussolini, the last "Roman" emperor,
ended his days strung upside down

by Italian partisans in
a petrol station in Milan.

But he wasn't the only
imperial visionary

whose dreams were shattered
by the war.

In 1940, Churchill had been
the voice of freedom,

echoing around the world.

But the war for freedom
hastened the end of empire.

The decline and fall of Mussolini's
Roman empire came quickly.

The British Empire
had deeper foundations,

but these, too, were undermined
by the Second World War.

The Battle of Alamein was
a great victory, yes,

but what it really exposed were
the limits of the British Empire

when faced with total, global war.

The Mediterranean strategy of
gradually squeezing Germany,

rather than going for the jugular,

was an expression of weakness,
not strength.

Eventual victory over the Axis
depended on strong allies

like America and Russia,

with their own distinctive
visions of the future.

In the entrails of
the soft underbelly,

we can discern the death
pangs of the British Empire.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd