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00:00♪♪♪
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00:55And now, Mare Nostrum.
00:59♪♪♪
01:09♪♪♪
01:19♪♪♪
01:29The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.
01:38♪♪♪
01:46Mussolini, founder of fascism, self-appointed high priest of war,
01:51draws the saber he has long been rattling on the sidelines.
01:55With France defeated and England tottering,
01:57he commits the Italian Empire to support his personal pact of steel with Hitler.
02:02♪♪♪
02:18It is October 28th, 1940.
02:21Covetous of personal glory, jealous of his military prestige,
02:25Mussolini launches his legions into Greece on a campaign of conquest whose outcome seems certain.
02:31But the Italian armies ordered to Athens are ill-equipped, poorly trained.
02:35These men go into battle unaware their own commanders believe that for them, war is suicide.
02:42♪♪♪
03:01The Greek Abzon troops, outnumbered but not unprepared,
03:05meet the Italians with high-hearted resistance and smash the reluctant invaders back across the border.
03:11The legend of fascist military might, the myth of Mussolini's vaunted eight million bayonets,
03:17breaks to pieces against the rugged, hostile hills of Albania.
03:42♪♪♪
03:46England has guaranteed Greek independence.
03:49King George VI and Churchill assure the Greeks,
03:52your cause is our cause.
03:54We will fight a common foe and we will share a united victory.
03:59And then across the Mediterranean,
04:01the hard-pressed British rush troops and supplies to the embattled Greeks,
04:05sailing fearlessly under the base of Axis bombers.
04:08♪♪♪
04:23♪♪♪
04:51Into the harbors of Greece, under Admiral Cunningham,
04:54commander-in-chief Mediterranean,
04:56the overtaxed Royal Navy brings in 50,000 British and New Zealand troops,
05:00hastily diverted from North Africa,
05:02where the Axis has already lighted the fires of war.
05:06But the long-standing alliance between Greece and England is being honored,
05:10no matter what the risk.
05:12Here democracy was born.
05:14Here blossomed the first flowers of Western civilization.
05:18And here, once more, man must fight for his freedom.
05:49But British intervention swiftly brings retaliation.
05:53Down from the north surge German hordes in overpowering strength.
05:57Down they come to the rescue of their bungling Italian allies.
06:01Down through the Balkan valleys,
06:03the German Wehrmacht storms into Greece in blitz tempo,
06:07crushing everything which stands in its way.
06:10♪♪♪♪
06:30And once again, the ragged parade of the defeated,
06:34the ordeal of the helpless.
06:37The segregation of prisoners reveals to the Germans
06:39the scope of the Allied disaster.
06:42More than 11,000 casualties.
06:45And once again, the struggle of survivors to escape by sea.
06:50Greece becomes another Dunkirk.
06:56But in defeat, there is no despair.
06:59The grand alliance is in the making.
07:01If the east looks dark,
07:03in the west, Roosevelt and the Americans extend to the English
07:07sympathy, understanding, help, and hope.
07:13And not by eastern windows only, when daylight comes,
07:17comes in the light.
07:19In front, the sun climbs slow.
07:23How slowly.
07:25But westward, look.
07:27The land is bright.
07:33♪♪♪♪♪
07:36But for a time yet, the Germans will continue to plot
07:39and push and plunder.
07:42With Greece secure, the Axis seeks full control of the Mediterranean,
07:46North Africa, and the all-important Suez Canal.
07:52Through unnumbered centuries, Carthage, destroyed by Rome,
07:56has silently observed other legions,
07:58other men's struggle for domination of North Africa.
08:01Now, once again, the course of western society is being determined
08:06by what transpires on these dreary wastes,
08:09these trackless sands.
08:12♪♪♪♪♪
08:40For the Italians, North Africa has meant defeat, disaster.
08:45They have vainly challenged the outnumbered British.
08:48So the Germans send in their troops to salvage this vital campaign.
08:52They mount a major offensive to drive into Egypt,
08:55to drive to Suez.
08:57Temperature, over 100.
09:00Miles to go, more than 1,250,
09:03mostly across the Libyan desert.
09:06But the Germans are trained and equipped,
09:08hardened and armored for the long, hazardous haul to the east.
09:38♪♪♪♪♪♪
09:48For 18 months, the tide of battle flows back and forth
09:51across the rim of North Africa.
09:54Now, under Field Marshal Rommel,
09:56Axis armies surge forward, surge east.
09:59♪♪♪♪♪♪
10:05For the Germans, Rommel is their hero in the sun,
10:09their desert fox.
10:11For the Allies, Rommel is the most cunning adversary,
10:14most formidable tactician.
10:16On desert sands, Rommel and his troops reenact the victories
10:20already won in Poland, in France.
10:23♪♪♪♪♪♪
10:37Summer, 1942.
10:39Blitzkrieg in the desert.
10:41The Invincible Africa Corps plunges into Egypt
10:44in victorious pursuit of the retreating British.
10:47In one 17-day spurt, Rommel's jabbing, stabbing armor
10:51comes 350 miles closer to Alexandria, closer to Suez.
10:56And while the Panzers advance,
10:58other Allied fronts are also cracking.
11:01The Russians fall back,
11:03and with the United States now in the war,
11:06Axis submarines are pillaging Anglo-American lifelines
11:09in the Atlantic.
11:11♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
11:18The advance of the Africa Corps is strewn with monuments
11:21to Allied defeat.
11:23Even Tobruk, most stubborn of desert bastions,
11:26falls before the Axis.
11:29Tobruk, gone with all its equipment,
11:32all its precious supplies,
11:34and with it go 30,000 Allied prisoners of war.
11:38♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
11:50At El Alamein, only 60 miles from the port of Alexandria,
11:54Rommel pauses to reorganize, entrench,
11:56and await supplies for his final push.
11:59Today we hold the gateway to Suez, he tells the world.
12:03We have every intention of getting there.
12:05We have not come this far with any idea of being flung back.
12:09♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
12:13Meanwhile, Hitler's other armies,
12:15having overrun all Europe, swamp Russia,
12:18and bend south through the Caucasus toward the Middle East,
12:21toward Suez.
12:24German conquest of Suez in the Middle East
12:26would mean loss of oil,
12:27and might well mean loss of World War II for the Allies.
12:31The Germans consider subjugation of the eastern Mediterranean
12:34more deadly to the British Commonwealth of Nations
12:36than the capture of London itself.
12:39Suez is on the spot.
12:42♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
12:54The Italian general, Garibaldi,
12:56is in nominal command of North Africa.
12:59But it is the German general, Rommel,
13:02who has won the victories.
13:05And it is the German Hitler who dominates
13:07Axis strategy in the Mediterranean,
13:09which Italians call Mare Nostrum, our sea.
13:14On control of this sea depends whether the supplies get through
13:17to enable Rommel to reach Suez,
13:19whether the English can cut the Axis off and save Suez.
13:24The Italian fleet has been reluctant to challenge the Royal Navy.
13:28Hitler now demands that Mussolini's Navy
13:30liquidate His Majesty's Navy
13:32and clean up the Mediterranean once and for all.
13:35♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
13:46The Italian fleet is a question mark.
13:49Its morale, low.
13:52Its leadership, uncertain.
13:55It has no aircraft carriers, no radar.
13:58Protection has been sacrificed for speed,
14:00and the sailors themselves call it the cardboard fleet.
14:04But the Italian Navy is swift and skilled in maneuver,
14:07excellent in gunnery, communications, and torpedo tactics.
14:11♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
14:40♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
15:10For the British Navy,
15:15the strain of its mission in the Mediterranean
15:17intensifies with every passing week.
15:20The 1,800-mile waterway it guards from Gibraltar to Suez
15:23is sewn with hardship, death, and impending disaster.
15:28Not only must the Harris warships support the Allied forces in North Africa,
15:32but they must also stop the flow of supplies
15:34to Rommel's encroaching Panzer divisions.
15:37The ordeal is great.
15:39The stakes are high.
15:42♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
15:56The Royal Navy lights up all boilers
15:58to meet the challenge of the Italian fleet.
16:01♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
16:18Off Calabria, off Cape Sparta Vento,
16:21off Sardinia and Pantelleria,
16:23at the Battle of Matapan,
16:25the British clash with the Italians
16:27in battles on whose outcome rests the fate of the Mediterranean.
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22:07The Royal Navy has done its job, cutting access communications to North Africa, while 99 percent
22:20of Allied supplies which leave England reach the Middle East safely.
22:24The free world pours its military might into ancient Alexandria, turning the balance in
22:28favor of the desert army.
23:28Masses of materiel and men, delivered by British and American merchant ships, guarded by British
23:44and American warships, accumulate to fight the Allied cause, while Rommel's supplies
23:49are reduced to a trickle.
23:52Rommel admits these circumstances forced the Panzer Army to suspend the offensive.
23:58The army will therefore fall back slowly under enemy pressure, and the Allies lose
24:03no time in applying the pressure.
24:08Twenty-third of October, 1942, the British Eighth Army under General Montgomery unleashes
24:14its all-or-nothing offensive at El Alamein.
24:17In ten days of furious fighting, the British break the German front, and Rommel's Afrika
24:22Korps turns in headlong retreat back across the desert.
25:22And the Suez, the intercontinental canal, the jugular vein through which Allied lifeblood
25:43flows.
25:44The Suez stands untouched and unmolested.
25:48The British and American ships come through, the ships that save the Mediterranean.