So you knew Rommel was going to attack during
the full the full moon cause you knew he needed the light? Smart. Yeah, I'm with ya! Are you guys gonna attack him? Huh? Yeah you are... But not untill the full moon cause you
need the light? I see. Okay. Yeah. See ya. September 11, 1942 You are not a career military man. Sure, you served as a young man during wartime,
but that was years ago. Since you came to power, though, you've had
to work closely with your armed forces for many years, and since your country went to
war that work has grown closer and constant, but one day that's not enough. You are unsatisfied. So you take personal control of your armies,
pushing aside the Field Marshall himself. You can obviously do it better. You are Adolf Hitler. I'm Indy Neidell; this is World War Two. Last week the Axis forces reached the suburbs
of Stalingrad, but the Soviet defense was tenacious and they even began counterattacks
to cut off the advancing enemy. In the Caucasus, Axis forces tried- and failed-
to break out of the Mozdok Bridgehead or take Novorossiysk on the coast. They also failed in North Africa, as Erwin
Rommel's forces were unable to take Alam Halfa Ridge. Far to the east, the Japanese have realized
the importance of retaking Guadalcanal and subordinate their other operations to that
primary goal. That doesn't mean they're abandoning those
operations, though. The Battle of Mission Ridge is fought this
week in the jungle on the Kokoda Track, which the Japanese are attempting to cross to take
Port Moresby. Brigadier Arnold Potts had decided to make
a stand as I said last week, but the battle is a decisive Japanese victory and the Australians
are pushed back the rest of the week. But help will soon be on its way. See, the Japanese are evacuating Milne Bay,
though only 600 or so men will escape that debacle of a battle that cost them 2,000. But then since he doesn't have to focus on
them anymore, Allied Theater Commander Douglas MacArthur can focus on the Kokoda Track campaign,
which might be good because the Japanese break through the Gap on the track this week on
the 5th and are now heading downhill toward Port Moresby. Mac will now send in a force of the Australian
17th division to try and stem the tide. Here's the thing, though, the Japanese are
sending reinforcements to Guadalcanal now in nightly runs. General Kiotake Kawaguchi has some 6,200 men
there by now. The only reinforcements Alexander Vandegrift
and the US Marines there have gotten is a construction battalion, Seabees, that came
last week and they're not combatants. They do have a huge part to play there, though,
mainly fixing and filling the shell holes and bomb craters that the Japanese put in Henderson
Field every day so that the 60+ aircraft now operating from there are able to actually
fly, but the US Joint Chiefs of Staff are not willing to divert a single plane or ship
to the Pacific from Operation Torch, the Allies autumn plan to invade Vichy French NW Africa. Keeping that airstrip open is the key to survival
since those planes give the Allies daytime control of the approaches so supplies can
be brought in. At night, control of the waters belongs more
to the Japanese, who emphasize that again this week by sinking two destroyer transports
the 5th. On the 8th, the Marines do launch a raid just
before dawn against Kawaguchi's base, but it's too late. Yep, his force has already left Taivu Point
for their attack positions along the same path that Kiyonao Ichiki followed three weeks
ago- well, followed on his way to being slaughtered. Kawaguchi believes that with several times
Ichiki's force, he can take the American positions. His plan is to split his force east of the
Tenaru, with the main force hitting the Marines, a secondary force cutting across and hitting
the airfield while Imperial Marines land and also hit the field from the other side. It's actually more complicated than that and
he further splits his forces so he will have five battalions attacking on three lines of
advance. The attack will go off tomorrow. But one Axis attack is limping to its end
this week, the Battle of Alam El Halfa in North Africa, which we saw last week. The battle is not very costly relatively in
terms of men, 2,910 casualties for Erwin Rommel's Axis forces and 1,710 for Bernard Montgomery's
British 8th Army, but the 49 tanks Rommel has lost are way way harder to make up than
the 67 that 8th army has. "The Battle of Alam el Halfa was
chiefly important because a major German thrust had been effectively halted, and the 8th army
and the Desert Air Force had jointly won an easily recognizable victory which had the
immensely valuable results of restoring the army's faith in itself and the RAF, and of
giving it real confidence in its new commander, who had predicted exactly the course the battle
would follow. At last it seems that the 8th army had found
an answer to Rommel and morale rose to an unprecedented height." Let's also remember that it has been a real
combined services battle since the Royal Navy did a big job as well in the Mediterranean
in sabotaging Rommel's supply lines. "He accepted Kesselring's assurance that he could fly in 90,000 gallons of gasoline a day, and relied
on a large tanker due in Tobruk at the end of August. Kesselring did in fact fulfill his promise
but most of the gasoline was consumed on the long journey to the front, while the sinking
of the precious tanker by a submarine off Tobruk harbor on 31 August put an end to any
hope of a victorious battle." There are those who would give credit to former
Theater Commander Claude Auchinlek as much as to Montgomery for the battle, but this
is not fair to Monty. Sure, Auchinlek had wanted to fight at Alam
Halfa, but, you know, that's where Rommel attacked, and very very importantly, Auchinlek's
plans were for a mobile defensive battle in the whole region there, and not defending
the ridge and using the armor in fixed positions, which is a big difference and something 8th
army had never done. Montgomery also managed to fight the battle
by divisions and not by brigades and we've not seen that before. And you might think that, well, maybe they
should've gone after Rommel after fighting him off like some lower-level commanders wanted
to do, but remember, Operation Torch is coming fairly soon, and the last thing the Allies
want is Rommel in established positions with a strong supply line someplace like El Agheila. They want him in Egypt with a long and crappy
supply system. However, Monty's and current Theater Commander
Harold Alexander's plans for their own offensive have been delayed. See, they need a period of full moon moonlight,
since they plan to break through enemy minefields with a night time infantry assault. How else are you going to do it? That's when Rommel just attacked, and Churchill
wants the 8th army attack to come at the full moon at the end of September, but they manage
to convince him that this won't work, so it will be scheduled for October 23rd, 14 days
before the Torch landings are supposed to happen. This also means that if Rommel does not withdraw
or break through before then, then however the battle goes for 8th army, Rommel will
be stuck between two enemy forces, and he'll be too far away from the one in the west to
do much good, even if he can break out. Other Axis forces are trying to break out
this week, over in the Caucasus. They continue trying to break out of the Mozdok
Bridgehead as the week begins, with Ewald von Kleist committing more German armor even
as the Soviets reinforce the 9th and 44th armies. By the 6th, two full tank battalions have
crossed, but that night 20 year old Soviet pilot Marina Chechneva of the 599th Night
Bomber Aviation Regiment, the Night Witches, scores a direct hit and blows the Germans'
pontoon bridge. They do fix it soon enough, but they are not
making headway. NKVD- that's the Soviet state security forces
and secret police- boss Lavrentiy Beria has suggested to Josef Stalin that Ivan Maslennikov
should command down here, a suggestion he heeds. On the 8th, he comes in to take over the northern
group on the Terek River. "Maslennikov was not a bad choice for a defensive operation since he could enforce discipline and motivate
subordinates with threats of sending them to the Gulag, but his ability to coordinate
four armies was negligible." He is not the only change in command this
week. Wilhelm List, commander of German Army Group
A, running the entire offensive in the region, loses his command. On the 9th Adolf Hitler decides to relieve
him and the next day Wilhelm Keitel flies down to tell him. The ongoing stalemate at Mozdok Bridge is
what finally convinces Hitler that the Caucasus adventure is not going so well and he blames
List, accusing him of not properly deploying his troops, which is true to a certain extent. He's used the infantry and the panzers in
the wrong types of terrain; he's focused on the mountains instead of Kleist's drive on
Grozny, but you know, it is Hitler who has not given List the resources to make the campaign
work in the first place. Hitler also surprises everyone by announcing
that he will take personal command of Army Group A, but Kleist is in reality going to
act as army group commander there in the field. In the fighting to the west on the coast,
on the 7th, German infantry fights its way in to Novorossiysk, and after another few
days of fighting, it is fully occupied, but it has been a long and costly battle- two
weeks of fighting. Wilhelm Wetzel tries to advance down the coast
toward Tuapse, but he is stopped at the end of the week at the cement factory south of
the Novorossiysk, and there the front line will remain. Another city proving to be a costly battle
to take, or to even reach, is Stalingrad. On the 5th, the Soviets renew their counter
attacks against the Axis corridor from the Don to the Volga, now with 4 armies. The fighting that day, well, that day and
all the rest of the week, is bloody and brutal, and extremely costly for the Soviets in men,
but "…the bitter truth was that Zhukov's entire offensive had stalled- and done so
irrevocably… nevertheless, driven on by Stalin's entreaties and threats, Zhukov insisted
the four armies continue their assaults, if only to slow Paulus' advance into Stalingrad. The armies did so woodenly through September
13th, even though Zhukov had already decided two days before that any action would be futile." But though they cannot take the corridor they
are doing a fair job of diverting German 6th army forces from attacks on the city. Already on the 5th, Paulus halts the 51st
Army Corps drive on the city and sends its air support to the north, and the 14th panzer
Corps as well must block partial Soviet penetrations in the corridor all week long. On the 6th, its commander Gustav von Wietersheim
tells Paulus- Friedrich Paulus, 6th Army commander- he needs more air support and more infantry
even if that means indefinitely delaying the attack on the city since that could wait until
they've secured their northern front. Paulus says it's the opposite- taking the
city is the first step to securing the northern front. Well, 14th panzer corps is kept so busy that
they don't capture the city's northern factory district, they do not get the chance to attack
it in force. Orlovka and Rynok remain in Soviet control. Despite the diversion of the attacks on the
corridor, though, the Axis make some gains on the 6th from Orlovka around to Gumrak,
but not much more by then. Paulus hopes on the 7th, though, that 51st
army Corps can resume its drive and grind its way into the city and take the west bank
of the Volga. They gain ground, but because of the attacks
on the corridor and because Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army's attacks from the south are
stopped for a few days by the flanking threat of the dug in 64th army, Paulus orders the
51st to turn to the northeast on the 9th, help Wietersheim, and take the Soviets' Orlovka
Salient. The upshot of all of this, once Hoth gets
going again, is "From the perspective of Weichs, Army Group B's commander, the heavy fighting
along the western approaches to Stalingrad from 5 to 9 September has the beneficial effect
of halving the distance between the advancing 51st army and 48th panzer corps and the Volga
River. The fighting had also significantly reduced
the danger that Stalingrad Front's 4 armies posed to 14th Panzer Corps… in the fragile
corridor to the Volga River north of Stalingrad." And on the 10th, the 29th motorized division
finally breaks through to the Volga on the southern side of the city at Kuporosnoe, and
that day the Soviet 62nd army is hit along its line from north to south with its units
in the center defending just 2 km from the heart of the city. The suburbs are slowly falling, a wedge has
been driven between the 62nd and 64th armies, the Orlovka salient is shrinking, Paulus and
Hoth are making final adjustments for their final assault on the city of Stalingrad, and
the week comes to an end. I know, it's getting pretty exciting, but
that is it for the week. A week that sees the suburbs of Stalingrad
slowly falling, parts of the Caucasus slowly falling, the Kokoda Track slowly falling,
but Guadalcanal and El Alamein gaining in strategic importance for both sides and neither
looking like it's about to fall. And Hitler has personally taken over an entire
Army Group. And he is not a general. He has, as we've seen, however, had some good
hunches and orders during the war- notably last December in the USSR, but his conflicting
orders day after day in mid-July sabotaged the entire offensive in the East. The Caucasus campaign has taken a decent amount
of territory, but territory is not its goal, and the Army Group is now spread out from
Novorossiysk to Mozdok and the arrival of the snows means crossing the mountain passes
before spring is out of the question. The supply lines are precarious and fuel is
in short supply, and Grozny must fall, and Stalingrad must fall, and Leningrad must fall,
and Suez must fall… he has his work cut out for him. The Night Witches, or die Nachthexen, as the
German soldiers who feared them called them, are just plain legendary. If you want to learn more about these amazing
women, we did an episode- well, we did two actually- on them over on the Sabaton History
Channel, and you can check out the first of those right here. Our TimeGhost Army member of the week is James
Harman. The Army is what finances our productions,
so to get ever more join the army at Timeghost.tv or patreon.com. Do not forget to subscribe and I will see
you next time.
