Victory at Sea - S1E08: Mare Nostrum
Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 [Music]
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00:49 [Music]
00:55 And now, Mare Nostrum.
00:59 [Music]
01:05 [Music]
01:29 ...hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.
01:37 [Music]
01:45 Mussolini, founder of fascism, self-appointed high priest of war,
01:50 draws the saber he has long been rattling on the sidelines.
01:54 With France defeated and England tottering,
01:56 he commits the Italian Empire to support his personal pact of steel with Hitler.
02:01 [Music]
02:17 It is October 28, 1940.
02:20 Covetous of personal glory, jealous of his military prestige,
02:24 Mussolini launches his legions into Greece on a campaign of conquest whose outcome seems certain.
02:30 But the Italian armies ordered to Athens are ill-equipped, poorly trained.
02:35 These men go into battle unaware their own commanders believe that for them, war is suicide.
02:41 [Music]
03:01 The Greek Abzon troops, outnumbered but not unprepared,
03:05 meet the Italians with high-hearted resistance and smash the reluctant invaders back across the border.
03:11 The legend of fascist military might, the myth of Mussolini's vaunted eight million bayonets,
03:16 breaks to pieces against the rugged, hostile hills of Albania.
03:21 [Music]
03:46 England has guaranteed Greek independence.
03:49 King George VI and Churchill assure the Greeks, "Your cause is our cause.
03:54 We will fight a common foe and we will share a united victory."
03:59 And then across the Mediterranean, the hard-pressed British rush troops and supplies to the embattled Greeks,
04:04 sailing fearlessly under the base of Axis bombers.
04:08 [Music]
04:37 [Music]
04:50 Into the harbors of Greece, under Admiral Cunningham, commander-in-chief Mediterranean,
04:55 the overtaxed Royal Navy brings in 50,000 British and New Zealand troops,
05:00 hastily diverted from North Africa, where the Axis has already lighted the fires of war.
05:06 But the long-standing alliance between Greece and England is being honored, no matter what the risk.
05:12 Here democracy was born. Here blossomed the first flowers of Western civilization.
05:18 And here, once more, man must fight for his freedom.
05:22 [Music]
05:50 But British intervention swiftly brings retaliation.
05:53 Down from the north surge German hordes in overpowering strength.
05:57 Down they come to the rescue of their bungling Italian allies.
06:01 Down through the Balkan valleys, the German Wehrmacht storms into Greece in blitz tempo,
06:06 crushing everything which stands in its way.
06:09 [Music]
06:29 And once again, the ragged parade of the defeated, the ordeal of the helpless.
06:36 Interrogation of prisoners reveals to the Germans the scope of the Allied disaster.
06:41 More than 11,000 casualties.
06:45 And once again, the struggle of survivors to escape by sea.
06:50 Greece becomes another Dunkirk.
06:55 But in defeat, there is no despair. The grand alliance is in the making.
07:01 If the east looks dark, in the west, Roosevelt and the Americans extend to the English sympathy,
07:08 understanding, help, and hope.
07:13 And not by eastern windows only, when daylight comes, comes in the light.
07:19 In front, the sun climbs slow. How slowly.
07:25 But westward, look, the land is bright.
07:33 [Music]
07:36 But for a time yet, the Germans will continue to plot and push and plunder.
07:42 With Greece secure, the Axis seeks full control of the Mediterranean, North Africa,
07:47 and the all-important Suez Canal.
07:52 Through unnumbered centuries, Carthage, destroyed by Rome, has silently observed other legions,
07:58 other men's struggle for domination of North Africa.
08:02 Now, once again, the course of western society is being determined by what transpires on these dreary wastes,
08:09 these trackless sands.
08:13 [Music]
08:40 For the Italians, North Africa has meant defeat, disaster.
08:44 They have vainly challenged the outnumbered British.
08:48 So the Germans send in their troops to salvage this vital campaign.
08:52 They mount a major offensive to drive into Egypt, to drive to Suez.
08:57 Temperature, over 100. Miles to go, more than 1,250, mostly across the Libyan desert.
09:06 The Germans are trained and equipped, hardened and armored for the long, hazardous haul to the east.
09:12 [Music]
09:41 [Music]
09:48 For 18 months, the tide of battle flows back and forth across the rim of North Africa.
09:54 Now, under Field Marshal Rommel, Axis armies surge forward, surge east.
10:00 [Music]
10:05 For the Germans, Rommel is their hero in the sun, their desert fox.
10:11 For the Allies, Rommel is the most cunning adversary, most formidable tactician.
10:16 On desert sands, Rommel and his troops reenact the victories already won in Poland, in France.
10:23 [Music]
10:37 Summer, 1942. Blitzkrieg in the desert.
10:41 The invincible Afrika Korps plunges into Egypt in victorious pursuit of the retreating British.
10:47 In one 17-day spurt, Rommel's jabbing, stabbing armor comes 350 miles closer to Alexandria, closer to Suez.
10:56 And while the Panzers advance, other Allied fronts are also cracking.
11:01 The Russians fall back, and with the United States now in the war,
11:06 Axis submarines are pillaging Anglo-American lifelines in the Atlantic.
11:10 [Music]
11:18 The advance of the Afrika Korps is strewn with monuments to Allied defeat.
11:23 Even Tobruk, most stubborn of desert bastions, falls before the Axis.
11:28 Tobruk, gone with all its equipment, all its precious supplies.
11:34 And with it go 30,000 Allied prisoners of war.
11:38 [Music]
11:50 At El Alamein, only 60 miles from the port of Alexandria, Rommel pauses to reorganize, entrench, and await supplies for his final push.
11:59 "Today we hold the gateway to Suez," he tells the world.
12:03 "We have every intention of getting there.
12:05 We have not come this far with any idea of being flung back."
12:09 [Music]
12:13 Meanwhile, Hitler's other armies, having overrun all Europe, swamp Russia,
12:18 and bend south through the Caucasus toward the Middle East, toward Suez.
12:24 German conquest of Suez in the Middle East would mean loss of oil,
12:27 and might well mean loss of World War II for the Allies.
12:31 The Germans consider subjugation of the Eastern Mediterranean more deadly to the British Commonwealth of Nations than the capture of London itself.
12:39 Suez is on the spot.
12:42 [Music]
12:54 The Italian general, Garibaldi, is in nominal command of North Africa.
12:59 But it is the German general, Rommel, who has won the victories.
13:05 And it is the German Hitler who dominates Axis strategy in the Mediterranean, which Italians call Mare Nostrum, our sea.
13:14 On control of this sea depends whether the supplies get through to enable Rommel to reach Suez,
13:19 whether the English can cut the Axis off and save Suez.
13:24 The Italian fleet has been reluctant to challenge the Royal Navy.
13:28 Hitler now demands that Mussolini's navy liquidate His Majesty's Navy and clean up the Mediterranean once and for all.
13:35 [Music]
13:46 The Italian fleet is a question mark.
13:49 Its morale, low.
13:52 Its leadership, uncertain.
13:55 No aircraft carriers, no radar.
13:58 Protection has been sacrificed for speed, and the sailors themselves call it the cardboard fleet.
14:04 But the Italian Navy is swift and skilled in maneuver, excellent in gunnery, communications, and torpedo tactics.
14:11 [Music]
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15:00 [Music]
15:13 For the British Navy, the strain of its mission in the Mediterranean intensifies with every passing week.
15:19 The 1800-mile waterway it guards from Gibraltar to Suez is songed with hardship, death, and impending disaster.
15:27 Not only must the Harris warships support the Allied forces in North Africa,
15:31 but they must also stop the flow of supplies to Rummel's encroaching panzer divisions.
15:36 The ordeal is great.
15:38 The stakes are high.
15:40 [Music]
15:56 The Royal Navy lights up all boilers to meet the challenge of the Italian fleet.
16:01 [Music]
16:18 Off Calabria, off Cape Sparta-Vento, off Sardinia and Pantelleria, at the Battle of Matapac,
16:24 the British clash with the Italians in battles on whose outcome rests the fate of the Mediterranean.
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22:13 The Royal Navy has done its job, cutting access communications to North Africa,
22:18 while 99% of Allied supplies which leave England reach the Middle East safely.
22:23 The free world pours its military might into ancient Alexandria,
22:27 turning the balance in favor of the desert army.
22:30 [Music]
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23:39 Masses of materiel and men, delivered by British and American merchant ships,
23:43 guarded by British and American warships, accumulate to fight the Allied cause,
23:48 while Rommel's supplies are reduced to a trickle.
23:51 Rommel admits, these circumstances force the Panzer Army to suspend the offensive.
23:57 The Army will therefore fall back slowly under enemy pressure,
24:01 and the Allies lose no time in applying the pressure.
24:05 [Music]
24:08 23rd of October, 1942.
24:11 The British Eighth Army under General Montgomery unleashes its all or nothing offensive at El Alamein.
24:17 In ten days of furious fighting, the British break the German front,
24:21 and Rommel's Afrika Korps turns in headlong retreat back across the desert.
24:27 [Music]
24:56 [Music]
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25:18 [Music]
25:37 And the Suez, the intercontinental canal, the jugular vein through which Allied lifeblood flows.
25:44 Suez stands untouched and unmolested.
25:48 The British and American ships come through.
25:51 The ships that save the Mediterranean.
25:54 [Music]