Original subtitles

When the United States enters the war,

it's understood that a second front is needed to defeat Nazi Germany.

The Red Army and Soviet people

have taken the brunt of the Nazi onslaught

for nearly a year, and now Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

demands that the Western Allies do their part.

The Allies disagree where to attack.

American military leaders want to invade France,

the most direct route to Berlin.

But Churchill and his generals,

still haunted by the horrible cost of World War I,

are reluctant to invade Europe before they're ready.

And so the decision is made to attack the Germans

in North Africa, in an invasion codenamed Operation Torch.

The Americans, inexperienced and untested,

are about to battle the Wehrmacht for the very first time.

All wars changed the world,

but none of them changed the world like the Second World War did.

Japan's on the march. Germany is on the march.

No-one can imagine the nightmare they're about to unleash:

the most destructive war in human history.

Suddenly the world is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.

You get the Allies, led by the Big Three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin:

men who were dealing with immensely complicated questions.

It's the biggest military operation of human history.

The Allies have to come together, not just militarily,

but industrial scale. it's a global perspective.

They have to fight in every climate,

from the Arctic to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa, and the depths of the ocean.

But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings.

And we see them at their best, willing to give their lives,

that others might live. - World War II was a struggle

in which there could be one victor and one vanquished.

The British base of Gibraltar

has long guarded the opening to the Mediterranean.

Steady as a rock, for nearly 240 years,

Gibraltar has stood sentinel above the harbor,

watching over the Mediterranean fleet.

The strongest fortress in the world.

On November 5, 1942,

Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower

lands at the military airstrip.

He's arrived to take command

of a joint U.S.-British ground operation

in North Africa, codenamed Torch.

This campaign will eventually open a second front

against German and Italian forces already fighting in Africa.

Operation Torch is an extremely complex landing.

In all, we're gonna be depositing a force

of around 100,000 troops.

And in order to deliver that force,

we've got to use 300 merchantmen

guarded by roughly 300 warships.

Three Allied task forces are involved

in the complex manoeuvre.

The East and Centrer Forces will land in Algiers and Oran.

The West Task Force, sailing from America,

will land on the beaches of Casablanca.

They have to rendezvous at sea, hundreds of miles away,

then carry out simultaneous landings

across nearly 1,000 miles of North African Coast.

Nothing remotely like it had ever been carried out before.

Eisenhower is hand-picked by President Roosevelt

to lead the alliance,

to the surprise of many American and British military commanders.

He's been a high-level staff officer for years,

but this will be his first wartime operation.

Dwight Eisenhower, a year ago, had been a colonel.

And now, he's been advanced to lieutenant general.

Eisenhower has never held a combat command.

He was not actively involved in World War I.

Never seen the Somme.

Never seen Passchendaele.

Never seen a man die

in their arms in combat.

Who is this man, Eisenhower?

Eisenhower is wickedly competitive and really intelligent.

And the other thing is, he's not an ego.

He's pretty humble. He gets along with people,

which is utterly important

when you think about the centre of gravity

for the Allies is the alliance.

From day one, in Eisenhower's new role.

as Supreme Commander, he has a pile of problems on his plate.

He has to run this gigantic operation.

Nothing on this scale has ever been done before.

He has to keep it secret.

Eisenhower will need to co-ordinate

the American and British commands

and synchronise all elements of Torch.

Ultimately, every aspect of the operation,

including preparing unproven American soldiers for combat,

is on his shoulders.

One of the reasons they've chosen North Africa

as a theatre for American troops

is because it will give them an opportunity of blooding them,

they're inexperienced, most of them hadn't even seen combat,

against an incredibly formidable foe.

The German troops were battle-hardened.

They'd been in the field now for two full years.

They'd conquered various kinds of climes,

various kinds of terrain, various kinds of enemies.

They'd beaten them all.

By the summer of 1942, the Nazi empire is huge.

It goes all the way from the western coast of France

to well inside the borders of the Soviet Union.

All continental Europe, effectively, is controlled by the Nazis.

The Germans control most of Europe,

but that's not the sum total of Hitler's ambitions.

Germany has to be a global empire,

he says many times.

So now, the focus turns outside of Europe to North Africa.

German and Italian forces are already fighting the British

in North Africa, threatening the Suez Canal,

the vital supply line between Britain and India.

British imperial strategists

have always been obsessed with the Suez Canal,

the great artery of the British Empire.

It joins Britain and its empire in the East,

particularly India, jewel of the British Empire.

The danger is that the Axis forces move

from there to control of the oil fields of the Middle East.

And if all of that happens, they're gonna sever the supply lines

to the rest of the Empire. Winston Churchill

also wants to get the Americans in the fight against the Axis

as soon as possible.

Roosevelt believed that American troops.

need to be in the field against the Axis powers

in 1942.

The people needed to feel that we were striking back.

We need to figure out how to fight a modern battle.

and this is where the army is gonna use

as its proving ground.

There are valuable lessons to be learned.

North Africa might be a place to do it.

But there's an immediate challenge.

The future landing spots on North Africa's coast

are on Vichy French territory.

The French empire is the second largest in the world,

behind only that of Great Britain,

with immense manpower and resources at its disposal.

The French still control Morocco,

Algeria, and Tunisia.

After France surrenders to Germany in 1940,

the country is split in two.

The southern half of France is ruled by the Vichy government,

which collaborates with Nazi Germany.

It's led by World War I hero Marshal Philippe Petain.

Eisenhower is anxious.

Will the French in North Africa resist the American landing?

No-one's clear exactly how many soldiers

and what military assets the French have in North Africa.

What they do know is that the French have

a lot of very modern warships there.

They also have about 120,000 soldiers,

although no-one knows exactly how well trained,

or, most crucially, their morale, what they're inclined to do.

American diplomats in North Africa believe

the French are unlikely to resist the invasion,

but cannot guarantee it.

Eisenhower has been sending messages

to various Vichy governors in North Africa,

hoping for co-operation.

On November 7, over 600 ships gather

at their meeting points out at sea.

The warning order is flashed to the waiting ships.

H-Hour is confirmed: November 8.

The Allies are ready to land.

On November 7th, more than 100,000 Allied troops

are waiting off the coast of North Africa.

There's risk. Amphibious operations require

detailed, advance preparation.

What are the tides? What's the footing gonna be?

How close can landing craft get? Are there mines?

Are there underwater obstacles?

The first wave of landing craft

from East and Center Task forces

set off for the beaches at Algiers and Oran.

Shortly after, fighter support takes off from Gibraltar.

Ike Eisenhower must have been incredibly nervous,

and was nervous, we know, from his naval aide,

who writes that Ike is like a "cat on bricks."

Even though the weather was kind of bad the night before,

when they actually started unloading their landing craft

and moving those craft up to the beaches,

the surf is low enough that they're able

to get initial landing forces onto the beaches successfully.

The first reports Eisenhower receives

from the landing craft on the beaches are encouraging,

but when large Allied warships enter the ports of Algiers and Oran,

the French open fire.

The Allies keep moving. and overcome the French

a day later.

On the Atlantic landing point at Casablanca,

it's a different story.

Eisenhower entrusts this force to his old friend,

Major General George S. Patton Jr.

George Patton is a commander

who believes in aggressive leadership.

He is a fast-talking disciplinarian,

a character easily recognisable to the average soldier.

As the Western Task Force nears shore,

Patton delivers a speech to his troops

over each ship's public address system.

Soldiers and sailors,

it is not known whether the French African Army

will contest our landing, but all resistance,

by whomever offered, must be destroyed.

In the early morning,

Allied warships enter the harbour at Casablanca.

The French do as they've been instructed to do. They resist.

This was an invading force,

and the French open fire on the ships.

It's the last thing in the world that an amphibious operation needs.

Just a couple of heavy shells can destroy a landing.

Despite French resistance, Americans continue their attack,

from the air as well as by sea.

The result is actually the largest naval battle

in the Atlantic during the war.

Despite Eisenhower's diplomatic efforts,

the troop landings face heavy French opposition.

Nobody on the American or British side,

least of all Eisenhower, wants American forces

fighting French forces, and does not want that to go on

for any extended period of time.

Eisenhower writes what he calls

the 'Worries of a Commander.'

"No Frenchman immediately available,

no matter how friendly toward us, seems able to stop the fighting."

Then, with Operation Torch in danger of failing,

the Allies contact a senior French military officer

with the power to provide a solution.

It just so happens that the commander in chief

of French forces, Admiral Francois Darlan,

is in North Africa at this time,

visiting his son, who has polio.

Although Darlan is a key Vichy collaborator,

he is the only man with the authority

to stop the French counter-attack.

Darlan had been a deep collaborator

with the Germans and the Nazi presence in Vichy, France.

And as distasteful as a figure he is,

he holds the key to stopping Vichy French resistance

in North Africa. Eisenhower authorises

negotiations with Darlan.

The Allies will put him in charge of French North Africa

if he agrees to an armistice.

It's a dirty deal. It's an unpleasant one.

It's a nasty one.

American journalists were appalled by it.

That evening, Darlan orders a general ceasefire

and tells all French forces to join the Allies.

And so on November 11th, in the port city of Casablanca,

French guns fall silent.

Algeria and French Morocco

have joined hands with the Allies against Germany and Italy.

This has immensely eased our difficulties in French North Africa.

Eisenhower thought it would save lives on both sides,

and it would allow them to get on to the military mission at hand.

The Allies have landed in North Africa

and have convinced the French to fight alongside them.

Now, as they push east,

they will face tough, battle-hardened Axis forces.

After the Allied landings,

Eisenhower moves his combined force across the North African desert.

The Allied plan is not simply to approach from the west:

their strategy is more ambitious.

The ultimate goal, if Torch works,

is the United States and the British that land.

in the western part of Africa will drive to the east.

The British that are in the east, in Egypt, will drive to the west,

and they will capture a German-Italian army

in between those two pincers.

The British fighting in the east,

The Eighth Army, has been battling the Afrika Korps...

...led by the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel.

He had a mystique about him. He had a World War I reputation.

He was a feared leader.

He had the fingertip feel of a battle.

For months, Rommel has pursued the British

through Libya into Egypt, capturing vital supplies

and threatening the Suez Canal.

The Afrika Korps' success has left Prime Minister Winston Churchill

depressed and politically vulnerable.

Churchill looks like he's lost his touch.

He faces two no confidence motions in Parliament,

both of which he wins. But as one Labour MP says, "Well,

you win the debates, but lose the battles."

Winston Churchill is in need of victories.

For Churchill and for Operation Torch,

one battle in North Africa will be critical.

Just weeks before the Allied landings,

the British Eighth Army, led by General Bernard Montgomery,

prepares his troops at a little-known railway junction

called El Alamein.

From here, Montgomery plans to launch a massive counter-offensive

against the Afrika Korps.

El Alamein shouldn't be viewed in isolation.

It's part of a broader Allied plan:

Montgomery's Eighth Army attacking Rommel from the east,

and meanwhile a vast amphibious landing

in the western half of North Africa, Operation Torch,

converging on Rommel from two directions

and eventually giving him an insoluble operational dilemma,

trying to maintain himself

against not just one. but two superior enemies.

Montgomery is reinforced

with American Sherman and Grant tanks,

plus troops from India, New Zealand, South Africa,

and the rest of the British Commonwealth.

At last, Montgomery, who has been fighting the Wehrmacht

since the invasion of France,

has the opportunity to go on the offensive against Rommel.

On the night of October 23, 1942,

Montgomery opens the battle with a massive barrage.

Montgomery knows he's got to proceed step by step,

1,000 yards by 1,000 yards,

get the infantry in,

clear the minefield. open the way for the tanks,

hold the ground.

Rommel fights back, but he's hampered by lack of fuel.

After days of fighting, the Eighth Army prevails.

By the 11th day of the fighting,

Montgomery's superior numbers and material

finally begin to take effect.

The British infantry and the New Zealand infantry

break their way through the German lines

and open things up for the armour.

Tens of thousands of men, thousands of tanks,

hundreds of heavy artillery,. heavy losses on both sides.

Inevitably, the better supplied and armed force win out,

and that's Montgomery's Eighth Army.

Winston Churchill is absolutely thrilled.

This is years of planning and preparation. At lunch

with the King and Queen, he says, "I bring you victory."

They think he's gone mad. They haven't had victories in years.

In London, at the Lord Mayor's Luncheon,

Winston Churchill frames the victory at El Alamein

and puts it into context.

This is not the end.

No, it is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

Montgomery's win here

is one of the most significant British victories of the entire war.

Montgomery has beaten Rommel at El Alamein,

and Rommel is retreating as fast as he can.

The critical pincer plan, the ultimate goal of Torch,

is underway.

Montgomery certainly undertakes an epic pursuit

from El Alamein over the wire, the Egyptian-Libyan border,

and now heading towards Tripoli.

In the west,

Eisenhower's troops have moved hundreds of miles.

Three weeks after landing, they're only 12 miles outside Tunis,

the capital of Tunisia.

When he learns this,

Adolf Hitler is determined to stop the Allies.

The war is not going the way he thought it was going to go,

and now all of a sudden, you've got these Allies

messing around in North Africa. This isn't supposed to happen.

Hitler sends reinforcements, including an entire Panzer division,

to the ports and air bases around Tunis.

Combined with Rommel's Afrika Korps,

there are now 100,000 German and Italian troops

on the continent.

No-one in either camp had ever envisioned

a gigantic continental battle being fought for Tunisia.

But that's where the fortunes of war

have brought the two adversaries.

Thanksgiving, 1942.

Near Tunis, American tanks clash with German Panzers

for the first time.

The tank is the modern manifestation of land warfare.

The idea that tanks, American tanks

are fighting German tanks,

this is what FDR said would happen. We're now pushing back

against Germany. - This is the actual battlefield,

Germans on the left, Americans on the right.

P-38s move ahead of the advancing forces.

These scenes were photographed

from a hill overlooking the battlefield.

All logic would tell you this is gonna go badly for the Americans,

with no experience of warfare.

The Germans are hardened combat veterans.

A lot of them have fought in Western Europe,

in all those victorious battles. - These are German Mark IV tanks.

These are Panzer IVs with 75-millimetre guns,

very effective. And up against them

you've got relatively light American tanks.

They've only got 37-millimetre guns, and the skin of the armour

isn't very effective.

The skirmish begins badly for the Americans,

who are supported by British troops.

A British ammunition lorry is hit.

At the start of it, they get knocked back.

A whole troop of tanks gets wiped out.

But the Allies have a second company of tanks

in reserve.

They can fire into the position of. the Germa armour

that is very weak, which is really around the belt,

and also at the back of the tank. And they knock out,

in the space of a few minutes, eight German Panzers.

Watch the tank in the centre of the picture.

A blast on the left of the screen has struck the centre tank.

It spins around, disabled.

There it goes.

The Panzers now withdraw.

In this very first tank-to-tank skirmish,

the Americans beat back the Germans.

Black smoke indicates the end.

But the offensive stalls.

Reinforcements sent by Hitler pummel them from land and air,

while the winter rains impede movement.

Just before Christmas,

General Eisenhower visits the front

to consult with his troops and commanders.

He concludes that there's no chance of reaching Tunis

in the current conditions, and calls off the advance.

A U.S. Army report from this era says,

"At present, the Germans are making war better than we are."

In the new year,

President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill

meet in Casablanca.

President Roosevelt flies in,

the very first President to fly while in office.

The codename of Roosevelt's secret meeting with Churchill

in Casablanca is Don Quixote. This is the first time

that an American President has left the U.S. during wartime.

Moving a President of the United States

and his entourage is always hard. In this case, they can't send him

by ship across the Atlantic Ocean because of German U-boats,.

so they send him on this insane trip by rail

from Washington to Miami,

then by a Clipper flying boat from Miami to Trinidad,

Trinidad to Brazil, Brazil to Gambia,

Gambia to Casablanca.

It's an incredibly arduous journey Roosevelt believed he had to make.

Roosevelt and Churchill will meet numerous times

throughout the war, and derive great benefit

from face-to-face meetings.

Churchill can now play the part. of the great imperial warlord

that, so far, he's been only through his speeches.

Now he can do it on the ground.

And he does what he does best, which is,

roll out maps and talk grand strategy

with the U.S. President.

Over ten days, the two leaders and their staffs

discuss the progress of Operation Torch,

and plan the Allies' next steps.

It's really the high water mark

of the Roosevelt-Churchill relationship. They're statesmen,

moving chess pieces around on a board.

Just before they leave, they talk to reporters

from around the world.

The North African conference is the fourth time

the two great men have met since the war began.

To the surprise of many, including Churchill,

Roosevelt announces a new war aim.

A new phrase was born:

"unconditional surrender" for the Axis.

'Unconditional surrender' meant that Nazi Germany

would have to fall.

That did not mean that Germany had to be destroyed,

but Nazi power had to be smashed.

We would now call this 'regime change.'

There will be no armistice. There will be no soft surrender.

There will be no repetition of World War I.

This is unconditional surrender.

It's quite something. We're in early 1943,

and it is not at all clear that the Allies

are even winning the war.

They're having trouble taking Tunis, which is

a very long way from Berlin.

Yet Roosevelt and Churchill know that they can produce

more than their adversaries.

And if production goes as they think it will,

they will be able to swamp the armies

that the Axis puts in the field against them.

As the conference ends,

Allied intelligence reveals Rommel's army,

pursued by Montgomery,

has joined with Hitler's reinforcements.

But the Americans and the British

now have them surrounded.

By the end of January, 1943,

the Allies are finally gaining ground

against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

In the Pacific, the Americans have secured Guadalcanal.

The Allies successfully landed in the west,

and Montgomery's Eighth Army has pressed Rommel's Afrika Korps

across a wide front.

The Allies now surround the Axis army deep inside Tunisia.

But before they can get far,

Rommel plots a counter-offensive.

He's identified a weak point in the Allied line,

at Kasserine Pass.

Kasserine is this very narrow pass

only about two miles wide,

and it leads into the Dorsale Mountains,

the mountain range in the centre of Tunisia.

You've got heights on either side of it.

If Rommel can drive deep enough through Kasserine

and into the rear areas of the Allied army,

he can possibly turn things round.

From there, he'll have all sorts of choices

about what to do next: overrun Allied supply dumps,

perhaps drive straight north to the sea

and cut off the entire Allied force in Tunisia.

There are 30,000 Allied troops in the region,

but the narrow pass itself is guarded by just 2,000 men,

spread thinly across the terrain.

The Allied troops in the Kasserine Pass

are the U.S. Second Corps: infantry, engineers, artillery,

men who, by and large, are completely inexperienced.

The Allied forces are distributed and dispersed,

lacking mutual support.

Air support is not dominant at this point.

On February 19th, Rommel launches his attack.

Until now, the Americans have had skirmishes

with the Germans, but haven't faced a full-scale Panzer assault.

This attack comes in with heavy artillery,

rapid movement of German armour,

and effective use of motorised infantry to clear positions.

The American forces are caught off-guard.

Not only is this their first major fight,

but their commander is far behind the lines

and doesn't communicate with the front.

The results are devastating.

These troops, slowly but surely,

are being outgunned, outmanoeuvered, outfought.

What starts out as a defeat becomes a bit of a rout.

The Axis now begins streaming up this pass.

It's just a steamroller.

By the evening of the second day,

U.S. defences in the pass have collapsed.

Around 2,500 soldiers are wounded, another 2,500 taken prisoner.

Others abandon their vehicles and flee over the hills.

Rommel's plan is working, but then he pushes too far.

He sends his troops forward, seeking a way through the mountains

and allowing his supply lines to get dangerously long.

Rommel might have thought he had the U.S. Army on the run,

but the momentum that he had established

from that opening is now beginning to wear down.

His losses are mounting, his supplies are running out,

especially tank ammunition and fuel.

As Rommel weakens,

the U.S. Army steadies itself and regroups,

blocking Rommel's breakout with a wall of U.S. artillery

and air support...

...which ultimately forces Rommel to retreat.

The Americans lose casualties and POWs taken.

This is a real black eye for them.

It is the punch in the face

that the American doctrine isn't where it should be.

We aren't fighting the way we should. We need better training.

We need better leadership.

Kasserine Pass condemns those weaknesses.

The result of this is gonna be that Americans become

much more serious about making sure

their forces remain concentrated, particularly armoured forces,

that we're not going to allow them to be doled out in bits and pieces.

General Eisenhower takes responsibility

for the initial breakdown at Kasserine Pass, and makes changes

to address logistical and operational issues.

He also reorganises the Allied force in North Africa.

His first move is to give General George Patton

command of the U.S. Second Corps.

Patton's a swashbuckler,

and he's been waiting in the wings,

and now it's his moment.

He's a man who is a strong leader,

and troops respond to strong leaders.

His subordinate commanders all know

that he will be on the battlefield, looking over their shoulders,

and if they are not performing. up to expectations, they're gone.

He tells his troops, famously,

"You're not all going to be killed, only about 4% of you."

He reassures them, you'll probably survive,

but death is going to be your companion going forward,

and I'm not going to spare you.

We're gonna hit the Germans face to face and toe to toe.

Eisenhower's troops are now prepared and in position

to deal a final blow to the Axis powers in North Africa.

After five months of combat, the combined Allied troops

have become an effective fighting force.

General Eisenhower now marshals these troops

for what he hopes will be a final confrontation

with Rommel and the Axis. - The Allied plan

is to bleed Rommel's strength off.

Anytime he faces the British, theoretically

he can have the Americans advancing into his rear.

Every time he turns against the Americans,

he can have Montgomery advancing into his rear.

On March 20th, the Allies are ready to attack

in a place called El Guettar.

Patton tells his men, "We must be eager to kill.

If we fight viciously enough, we will live to return to our family

as conquering heroes."

The Germans become aware of that position

and say to themselves, we think we can eject the Americans

fairly easily. We did it before at Kasserine, right?

As German Panzers burst onto the plains at El Guettar

with Stukas plunging down,

Patton deploys U.S. field artillery and tank destroyers.

Patton is very aware of how to use armour, infantry,

and artillery all together. And when the Germans put in that attack,

the Americans greet them with a true example of combined arms.

They absolutely shellack them.

Having come right after Kasserine Pass,

it has gone from failure to success.

Over the next month, the Allies squeeze the Axis armies,

and by early April, Eisenhower's forces

and Montgomery's Eighth Army finally join.

Eisenhower rejoices.

"We are at last operating on a single battle line."

Now the Allies set their sights on Tunis.

German resistance is ferocious...

Every hill and pass is a struggle.

But gradually, with concentrated firepower

from two sides,

the Allies continue to move forward.

Almost inch by inch,

the Axis position in Tunisia shrinks...

...till it's little more than an arc around the city of Tunis itself.

On May 7, Allied troops entered Tunis

and the Axis forces surrender.

After the capture of Tunis,

North Africa is finally free of the Nazis

and their fascist Italian allies.

The North African campaign is over.

By tens, by hundreds, by thousands,

they came. And at the end, 15 full divisions,

266,000 of their best men, laid down their arms.

Over a quarter of a million Germans and Italians are captured.

Prisoners as far as the eye can see.

This is a great moment for the Allied cause.

There had been one disastrous encounter with the Germans

after the other since this war began,

and now I think everyone on the Allied side,

especially Roosevelt, would say, the home folks can see

that something was going right in this war.

Many high-ranking Axis commanders are captured,

but not Rommel, who has been recalled to Germany by Adolf Hitler.

The success of Operation Torch,

combined with British victory at El Alamein,

push the Nazis out of North Africa.

It is the first step

toward Allied victory over the Third Reich.

To give you a sense of the scale of the victory in Tunisia,

Churchill orders the church bells to be rung.

They haven't been rung during the course of the whole war.

It's an unbelievable victory for the Allies.

The tide of the war is turning,

but it's unclear what's next.

This great victory is a monument

to the perfection of co-operation

among the fighting services of several nations. I know

you would be proud of the way our own boys, your husbands,

brothers, sons, and sweethearts have delivered here for you.

Winston Churchill said,

"The only thing worse than fighting with allies

is fighting without them."

Operation Torch demonstrates that General Eisenhower

could command the multi-national coalition of military forces

necessary to topple the Third Reich.

There are many fronts in modern war.

Because of its very nature,

the role of gathering intelligence is often obscure and misunderstood.

But when it's successful, it can be decisive.

That's why a small English hamlet,

purposefully located between Cambridge and Oxford,

becomes a crucial front in World War II.