World War II with Tom Hanks (2026) s01e08 Episode Script
Operation Torch
1
Sub extracted from file & improved by
[somber music]
♪
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.
[dramatic music]
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 a 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 absolute 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.
♪
[air-raid siren blaring]
♪
[tense music]
♪
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.
[airplane rumbling]
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.
♪
[seagull chirping]
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 maneuver.
♪
The east and center 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,
and 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 center of gravity
for the Allies in World War II,
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 coordinate
the American and British commands
and synchronize 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 theater 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 up to this point
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 climbs,
various kinds of terrain,
various kinds of enemies,
and 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.
So that's the whole
of 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.
And 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.
It is the great artery
of the British Empire.
It joins Britain
and its empire in the East,
particularly India, the jewel
of the British Empire.
[horn blares]
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.
Prime Minister 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.
[cheers and applause]
It's led by World War I hero
Marshal Philippe Pétain.
♪
Eisenhower is anxious.
♪
Will the French in North Africa
resist the American landing?
[airplane whooshes]
No one's clear exactly
how many soldiers
and how much military asset 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 they are
or, most crucially,
what their morale is,
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 cooperation.
♪
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 their 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.
[booming]
♪
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
an aggressive commander
who believes aggressive leadership.
He is a fast-talking disciplinarian,
a character easily recognizable
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 harbor at Casablanca.
[booming]
The French do as they've
been instructed to do.
They resist.
[booming]
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.
[guns rattling]
[shouting]
Despite Eisenhower's
diplomatic efforts,
the troop landings face
heavy French opposition.
[booming]
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 at all.
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's stricken with polio.
Although Darlan is
a key Vichy collaborator,
he is the only man with the authority
to stop the French counterattack.
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 authorizes
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.
It's one that American journalists
were absolutely appalled by.
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,
and this fact has immensely
eased the difficulties
that face our united nations'
commanders
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 had 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,
General 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
[airplane rumbles]
[booming]
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 keep winning the debates,
but you 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 counteroffensive
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 presenting him
with 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.
♪
[booming]
On the night of October 23, 1942,
Montgomery opens the battle
with a massive barrage.
[booming]
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.
[airplane rumbles]
♪
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
finally break their way
through the German lines
and open things up for the armor.
[booming]
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.
He bounces in for lunch
with the king and queen,
and he says, "I bring you victory."
And they think he's gone mad.
They haven't heard
of any victories for 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.
[applause]
♪
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.
[rumbling]
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.
♪
[airplane rumbling]
♪
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 was gonna 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.
They have no experience
of warfare at this stage.
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-millimeter guns, very effective.
And up against them,
you've got relatively light
American tanks.
They've only got 37-millimeter guns,
and the skin of the armor
isn't very effective.
♪
The skirmish begins badly
for the Americans,
who are supported by British troops.
A British ammunition lorry is hit.
[guns booming]
At the start of it,
they get knocked back.
A whole troop of tanks gets wiped out.
[booming]
But the Allies have a second
company of tanks in reserve.
They're able to fire into the position
of the German armor 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 center of the picture.
[booming]
A blast on the left of the screen
has struck the center tank.
It spins around, disabled.
[booming]
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.
The U.S. Army report
from this era, which 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 code name of Roosevelt's
secret meeting with Churchill
in Casablanca is Don Quixote.
♪
This is the first time
that an American president
has left the United States
during wartime.
♪
Moving a president of the United States
and his entourage
is always a difficult thing.
In this case, they can't send him
by ship across the Atlantic Ocean
because of the presence
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 that 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,
he rolls out the maps
and talks about grand strategy
with the U.S. president.
♪
Over 10 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 occasion
on which the two great men have met
since the beginning of the war.
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.
[dramatic music]
[airplanes rumble]
By the end of January 1943,
the Allies are finally gaining
ground against the Axis powers
of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
[booming]
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 counteroffensive.
♪
He's identified a weak point
in the Allied line,
at Kasserine Pass.
Kasserine is this very narrow pass.
It's only about 2 miles wide,
and it leads into the Dorsale Mountains
they call them,
the mountain range
in the center 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
the whole thing 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. II 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.
♪
[booming]
This attack comes in
with heavy artillery,
rapid movement of German armor,
and effective use of motorized
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.
[booming]
These troops,
slowly but surely, are being outgunned,
outmaneuvered, outfought.
What starts out as a defeat
becomes a bit of a route.
♪
And the Axis now begins
streaming up this pass.
It's just a steamroller.
By the evening of the second day,
U.S. defenses 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
[airplanes roaring]
♪
[booming]
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
all of those weaknesses.
The result of this is gonna be that
Americans become much more serious
about making sure
their forces remain concentrated,
particularly armored forces,
that we're not going to
allow them to be doled out
in little 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 reorganizes the
Allied force in North Africa.
His first move is to give
General George Patton
command of the U.S. II 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 up there
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're
probably gonna survive this,
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.
[dramatic music]
♪
[tank rumbling]
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.
And 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
armor, infantry,
and artillery all together.
And when the Germans
put in that attack,
the Americans greet them with a
true example of combined arms.
♪
And they absolutely shellac them.
[booming]
♪
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 joined.
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.
[booming]
♪
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 cooperation 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 multinational
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.
Sub extracted from file & improved by
[somber music]
♪
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.
[dramatic music]
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 a 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 absolute 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.
♪
[air-raid siren blaring]
♪
[tense music]
♪
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.
[airplane rumbling]
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.
♪
[seagull chirping]
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 maneuver.
♪
The east and center 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,
and 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 center of gravity
for the Allies in World War II,
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 coordinate
the American and British commands
and synchronize 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 theater 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 up to this point
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 climbs,
various kinds of terrain,
various kinds of enemies,
and 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.
So that's the whole
of 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.
And 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.
It is the great artery
of the British Empire.
It joins Britain
and its empire in the East,
particularly India, the jewel
of the British Empire.
[horn blares]
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.
Prime Minister 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.
[cheers and applause]
It's led by World War I hero
Marshal Philippe Pétain.
♪
Eisenhower is anxious.
♪
Will the French in North Africa
resist the American landing?
[airplane whooshes]
No one's clear exactly
how many soldiers
and how much military asset 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 they are
or, most crucially,
what their morale is,
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 cooperation.
♪
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 their 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.
[booming]
♪
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
an aggressive commander
who believes aggressive leadership.
He is a fast-talking disciplinarian,
a character easily recognizable
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 harbor at Casablanca.
[booming]
The French do as they've
been instructed to do.
They resist.
[booming]
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.
[guns rattling]
[shouting]
Despite Eisenhower's
diplomatic efforts,
the troop landings face
heavy French opposition.
[booming]
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 at all.
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's stricken with polio.
Although Darlan is
a key Vichy collaborator,
he is the only man with the authority
to stop the French counterattack.
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 authorizes
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.
It's one that American journalists
were absolutely appalled by.
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,
and this fact has immensely
eased the difficulties
that face our united nations'
commanders
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 had 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,
General 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
[airplane rumbles]
[booming]
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 keep winning the debates,
but you 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 counteroffensive
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 presenting him
with 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.
♪
[booming]
On the night of October 23, 1942,
Montgomery opens the battle
with a massive barrage.
[booming]
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.
[airplane rumbles]
♪
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
finally break their way
through the German lines
and open things up for the armor.
[booming]
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.
He bounces in for lunch
with the king and queen,
and he says, "I bring you victory."
And they think he's gone mad.
They haven't heard
of any victories for 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.
[applause]
♪
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.
[rumbling]
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.
♪
[airplane rumbling]
♪
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 was gonna 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.
They have no experience
of warfare at this stage.
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-millimeter guns, very effective.
And up against them,
you've got relatively light
American tanks.
They've only got 37-millimeter guns,
and the skin of the armor
isn't very effective.
♪
The skirmish begins badly
for the Americans,
who are supported by British troops.
A British ammunition lorry is hit.
[guns booming]
At the start of it,
they get knocked back.
A whole troop of tanks gets wiped out.
[booming]
But the Allies have a second
company of tanks in reserve.
They're able to fire into the position
of the German armor 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 center of the picture.
[booming]
A blast on the left of the screen
has struck the center tank.
It spins around, disabled.
[booming]
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.
The U.S. Army report
from this era, which 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 code name of Roosevelt's
secret meeting with Churchill
in Casablanca is Don Quixote.
♪
This is the first time
that an American president
has left the United States
during wartime.
♪
Moving a president of the United States
and his entourage
is always a difficult thing.
In this case, they can't send him
by ship across the Atlantic Ocean
because of the presence
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 that 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,
he rolls out the maps
and talks about grand strategy
with the U.S. president.
♪
Over 10 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 occasion
on which the two great men have met
since the beginning of the war.
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.
[dramatic music]
[airplanes rumble]
By the end of January 1943,
the Allies are finally gaining
ground against the Axis powers
of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
[booming]
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 counteroffensive.
♪
He's identified a weak point
in the Allied line,
at Kasserine Pass.
Kasserine is this very narrow pass.
It's only about 2 miles wide,
and it leads into the Dorsale Mountains
they call them,
the mountain range
in the center 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
the whole thing 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. II 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.
♪
[booming]
This attack comes in
with heavy artillery,
rapid movement of German armor,
and effective use of motorized
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.
[booming]
These troops,
slowly but surely, are being outgunned,
outmaneuvered, outfought.
What starts out as a defeat
becomes a bit of a route.
♪
And the Axis now begins
streaming up this pass.
It's just a steamroller.
By the evening of the second day,
U.S. defenses 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
[airplanes roaring]
♪
[booming]
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
all of those weaknesses.
The result of this is gonna be that
Americans become much more serious
about making sure
their forces remain concentrated,
particularly armored forces,
that we're not going to
allow them to be doled out
in little 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 reorganizes the
Allied force in North Africa.
His first move is to give
General George Patton
command of the U.S. II 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 up there
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're
probably gonna survive this,
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.
[dramatic music]
♪
[tank rumbling]
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.
And 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
armor, infantry,
and artillery all together.
And when the Germans
put in that attack,
the Americans greet them with a
true example of combined arms.
♪
And they absolutely shellac them.
[booming]
♪
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 joined.
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.
[booming]
♪
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 cooperation 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 multinational
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.