- [Announcer] This channel is part of the History Hit Network. Stick around to find out more. (musical sting) (weapon exploding) - [Narrator] War, ravaging
the east since 1937, in Japan's invasion of
China, reached Europe on the 1st of September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland. It became global on the
7th of December 1941 when Japanese aircraft attacked
the American Naval base at Pearl Harbor. (dark music) It touched every continent, (weapons blasting) and lasted for six years. (dark music) It ended with a new weapon for a new page. This is the history of the
greatest of all manmade events. These men are part of that history. They are eyewitnesses to
the triumphs and tragedies of the war wherever it was formed. (dramatic music) Their testimony is part of the story of how our world was made by those who could pay, (dramatic music) and those who could no longer
meet the price of empire. In episode three of The Price of Empire, the armed forces of Hitler's Germany swept without check across Europe. In September 1939, with their Soviet ally, they had destroyed Poland
as an independent state. In 1940, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium were conquered, and France capitulated. Six months after the fall of
France, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister,
visited Berlin to discuss how the world was to be
divided following victory, "because the war is all but over," Molotov was told, "and Britain is beaten." "You say that England is defeated," Molotov said to his opposite
member, von Ribbentrop. "Then why are we sitting here
in this air raid shelter?" (dark music) The answer to Molotov's question is that Britain was not beaten, (dark music)
(truck motor humming) but she was alone. (dark music) With the end of the Spanish
Civil War, both of the countries of the Iberian peninsula were controlled by fascist dictators. Italy had been ruled by such a dictator, Benito Mussolini, for more than 15 years, and now the rest of Western Europe, most of Scandinavia, and much of Central and Eastern Europe was
flying the swastika. East, the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin, carefully observed the terms of its treaty with Hitler, to whom it shipped supplies
of food and other materials. (train whistle blowing) But the greatest empire in the world was undefeated and defiant. "The Battle of Britain," their prime minister had told
them, "is about to begin." Defiance, however, does not come cheap. Banker to the world at the
beginning of the 20th century, 50 years later, Britain would
be the most indebted nation to the tune of $40 billion. (car engine humming)
(crowd cheering) Food rationing had been
progressively introduced since January 1940. Rationing had been introduced
in Germany in August 1939, the month before the invasion of Poland. (dark music) As the war went on, the
vast majority of Britons, including more than half
of the manual workers had their own piece of land, their
garden, or their allotment. The British reliance on
imported food was almost halved. (farm equipment clicking) But not everything in
the British Isles was as spirited or goodhearted. The poet TS Eliot wrote to a friend, "We are involved in an
enormous catastrophe, which includes a war." - [Announcer] If you love history, then you'll love History Hit. We have tons of exclusive documentaries about the most important people in history that you will not find anywhere else. From uncovering ancient neolithic cultures to the dawn of the space
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off their first three months. Just be sure to use the
code timeline at checkout. - [Narrator] He may have been thinking of the deliberate policy
of misinformation designed to confuse spies and traitors which spread fear through the population, spawning a whole catalog
of invasion alarms in which parachutists, variously
dressed as nuns, priests, and policemen featured,
not to mention those in sky blue uniforms with
transparent parachutes, who floated invisibly to Earth. (dark music) As early as May the 12th, the tabloids' Sunday pictorial was asking if the government had
considered training golfers in rifle shooting to
eliminate stray parachutists. - [Reporter] These scenes
multiplied 100 times showing how our men are being prepared
for the defense of Britain. - [Narrator] A German Swiss
resident of the London borough of Kensington was arrested
for puffing on his cigar and pointing the lighted
end at the night sky. He was clearly signaling
to enemy aircraft. Many stray dogs, less fortunate, were shot on suspicion of carrying messages. On the 23rd of May, Sir Oswald Mosley, who had led the British
fascists during the 1930s with some huffing and puffing, but little electoral
success, was interned. On the 31st, General Ironside, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, reported, "suspicious men moving at
night all over the country," and on July the second, he reported, "There is signaling going
on all over the place," but he lamented that no
evidence had been found of fifth column activities, or
weapons of mass destruction. (compelling music) In fact, though many
stories from death rays to parachuting nuns circulate to this day, the evidence to support
them is as threadbare as evidence for the Tooth Fairy. (compelling music) Under pressure to form
some sort of home defense, the Secretary for War, Anthony
Eden, went on the radio on May the 14th to announce the formation of the Local Defense Volunteers, or LDV, said by some to stand for
look, duck, and vanish. - [Reporter] This questionnaire
is addressed to civilians who are not in armament factories
or in government service. Have you joined the
Local Defense Volunteers? (gun firing) - [Narrator] The LDV
formed groups associated with social and sporting
clubs and factories. By July, one and a quarter
million men had joined, but they were not well
supplied with weapons. - When they started to
form the Home Guard, which was the LDV, I joined them. I was 15 when I joined them. We got a bit of this, and a bit of that, and then finally, you got your rifle. The ones we were given was a Ross rifle, was a Canadian rifle that
only held five rounds. - [Narrator] Churchill insisted that the LDV be renamed the Home Guard. Eden was annoyed. He had had 1 million LDV armbands printed. - Well, I was at school at Dunis College, and not working very hard, because I was spending
most of the evenings in the Home Guard as a dispatch rider, and learning how to smoke, and drink, and all the rest of the things. - [Narrator] Jack White
was keen to play his part in the Home Guard, but his
application was rejected because born the son of Russian Jews, he was classed as an alien. In the First World War,
Jack White had been awarded the highest decoration for
valor, the Victoria Cross. He was not classed as an
enemy alien, or interned. 2000 aliens living near
the coast were rounded up, and others followed. Churchill said that, "It was
necessary to collar the lot." (weapons exploding) In contradiction of its
popular post-war image, the Home Guard was a serious reserve. (weapons firing) It fired shots in anger with
several kills to its credit in anti-aircraft duties, its patrols freed regular army units for
other work, and it housed, or rather, disguised lethal groups of trained commando style personnel tasked with murder and mayhem in
the event of an invasion. (fire crackling)
(weapons exploding) Guard units also provided the
enemy in training situations. More than one new recruit
reported on being captured by First World War veterans more adept at soldiering than they were. - We did all sorts of clandestine things for about a month, and fighting
against the Home Guard. And people took, people
thought Home Guard was a joke, but they weren't. I was captured by them twice, and I thought I was a clever soldier. They were on the ball. (motorcycles revving) - [Narrator] The plan
for Britain's defense, agreed to on June the
12th, drew a line south from Edinburgh to the Midway, another west from below
London to south of Bristol, an area further defined
by a number of stop lines. Within these defined areas,
anti-tank ditches were dug, and concrete pillboxes
built, and everyone waited. (dramatic music) Winston Churchill waited
with unquenchable optimism. His mother was American, his
belief in the onward march of the English-speaking
peoples was well-documented, and his optimism was
sustained not by confidence in British arms, but by the
conviction that America, inextinguishable and
inexhaustible, would come in. The greatest boost to
Churchill's belief in salvation across the Atlantic came in August in one of the key moments of the war. The American Congress
would not allow neutrality to be breached by the
supply of war material to either side without payment. (compelling music) Opinion polls registered
American support for involvement in the war at a mere 8%. Roosevelt found a way. It was called lend-lease,
payment in kind Britain made over naval bases in her
West Indian possessions to the United States, or payment later, and Britain was obliged to pay. It took 50 years. Churchill called lend-lease a long step towards America coming in on our side. Two days after the signing
of the lend-lease agreement, the 15th of August was
Adlertag, Eagle Day, which the head of the Luftwaffe, Vice Marshall Goring,
nominated as the start of the critical phase of
the Battle of Britain, the German air offensive that
sought to achieve control of the skies over Southern England, preparatory to an invasion. In one respect, the
advantage had already moved from Germany to great Britain. In early 1940, Britain had been producing 256 fighter planes a month. Winston Churchill, recognizing the urgency of improving
production, appointed the Anglo-Canadian newspaper proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook, Minister
for Aircraft Production. - And so I beg all of you
everywhere to speed the take, speed the defenses of Britain. - [Narrator] Under
Beaverbrook's management, production for the month
of July climbed to 496. An article in Time Magazine
in 1940 drew attention to his record, and presciently noted that, "This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line." (plane engine humming) Importantly, the British assembly
line was not just turning out lots of aircraft, but good ones. These were the Hurricanes and
Spitfires that would write their names into the history books. (plane engines humming) Britain deployed other
tools that would be vital in the battle ahead. Cryptologists, famously
installed at Bletchley Park, a country estate outside of London, decoded Luftwaffe
signals that gave warning of planned sorties. (compelling music) The work of a British
meteorologist between the wars was critical in developing the
screen of radar stations that was vital to British air defense. His name was Robert Watson-Watt, and it was under his
leadership that the design and installation of aircraft detection and tracking stations, called
Chain Home made possible the early warning of incoming squadrons. (compelling music) It was not, of course, all high-tech. The defense of Britain also
relied on the keen eyes of 30,000 watchers
peering through binoculars at 1,000 posts throughout the country. Like Britain, Germany
had first-rate aircraft, but they were not first-rate
for the task ahead. (weapons firing) (plane engines humming)
(compelling music) They had been developed to
support battlefield operations. Luftwaffe had no heavy bombers,
and the feared Stuka was, as we shall see, to prove almost useless. (plane exploding)
(compelling music) The Luftwaffe's commander,
Herman Goring, had been a Nazi Party faithful from the start. A decorated fighter ace
in the First World War, he had been injured in
Hitler's abortive attempt to seize power, the
so-called Beer Hall Putsch. The medicine Goring took during recovery from those injuries made him
a lifelong morphine addict. His influence with Hitler
and on Luftwaffe strategy and spending was substantial. Between the first air
raid on July the 10th and the middle of August,
the German strategy, essentially Goring's
strategy, was to try and draw British fighters into combat
by attacking convoys at sea. On August the eighth,
over the English channel, the RAF lost 16 aircraft,
but shot down 31. Over the next three days,
German losses continued to be greater than those of the RAF, (plane engines humming) and on August the 12th, the
focus of the battle shifted. (plane exploding) Elsewhere in its empire,
Britain was about to fight another action that would conclude with another forced
evacuation of her troops. In the early hours of
the 3rd of August 1940, the Italian army crossed the border between Italian East Africa
and British Somaliland. The Italians numbered about 24,000. Opposing them was a British
force of about 4,000 troops, mostly soldiers from India and Africa. The Somaliland Camel Corps, battalions from the King's African Rifles, the Third 15th Punjab Regiment,
joined during the campaign by a second Indian regiment
and a Scottish battalion from the Black Watch. The British had no tanks, armored cars, or anti-tank weapons. The smaller force fought
a rear guard action against the advancing Italians
until it was taken off by the Royal Navy in the early
hours of the 18th of August. (crowd noise) The following day, the
Italians moved down the coast to complete their conquest
of British Somaliland. They would not stay there long. (compelling music)
(weapons exploding) Of more lasting significance
in the history books, the month of August was also the central and most famous month of
the Battle of Britain. Luftwaffe attacked the
Royal Air Force directly, targeting airfields and
support installations. (weapons exploding) Many of the airfields were
in the Southeast of England, and the skies over that part of the country came to be
known as Hellfire Corner. In that small vapor
trail-laced piece of sky, more fighter pilots died than in the whole of the rest of Britain. (water splashing) Below them on downs and
headland, crowds assembled to cheer each British kill. (plane engine humming)
(weapon firing) On the first day of the attack on the RAF, three airfields were damaged, and one radar station put out of action. The next day, August the
13th, the Luftwaffe launched its greatest attack of the war to date. It flew 1,485 sorties, damaged airfields, though
it mistakenly targeted many that were not fighter bases, and lost more than twice as
many aircraft as the RAF. (plane engine humming) Losses to the fleet of
Yonkers 87s, the Stukas that so terrorized ground
forces were particularly heavy. (weapons exploding) The Stuka was a lethal dive bomber, but a cumbersome machine in level flight, both outsped and outmaneuvered
by British fighters. After further losses,
the Stuka was withdrawn from the battle of Britain. (plane exploding) And so to Adlertag, the
day that Goring said was the first day of the
decisive phase of the battle, the Luftwaffe flew 1,786 sorties
against British airfields. It lost 76 of its aircraft. The RAF lost 35. The raw figures are misleading. British losses could, to an
extent, be made up by the repair of damaged aircraft
returning to their bases. Damaged German aircraft forced
to land in Britain were lost. Even more tellingly, British
pilots who bailed out landed in their own fields and fought again. German pilots went into captivity. More than 900 Luftwaffe
pilots who bailed out over Britain were taken prisoner. German aircraft were further disadvantaged by the limited amount
of time they could spend over their targets. The best of their fighters,
the Messerschmitt 109 had an operational range
of only 850 kilometers, much of which was expended flying to and from the combat zone. Even so, it was, as the Duke
of Wellington said of Waterloo, the nearest run thing you ever saw. On August the 18th, British losses, though still smaller than those suffered by the Luftwaffe, were substantial. More than 100 RAF pilots
had been killed in a week, a resource that could
not be speedily replaced. In one of those strange quirks of fate that seemed to be scattered
through the narratives of war, the near advantage gained by the Germans on the 18th was not pressed. Both weather and the stresses on the German side
forced a four day pause. It was during this
pause on August the 20th that Winston Churchill gave one of his best-remembered speeches. - [Churchill] Never in the field of human count was so much
owed by so many to so few. (plane engines humming) - [Narrator] That those who fought and won the Battle of Britain were
indeed few in number compared to the many who were in
their debt cannot be doubted, but they were not few compared to the number of opponents they faced. In most respects, the fight
in the skies above England was an even contest, and it
was one in which a few of the few dominated the battle. Air aces account for a disproportionate
amount of the success. Three and a half percent
of the RAF's pilots were responsible for 30% of the claimed kills. The first phase of the battle
had been attacks on shipping, (weapon exploding)
(water splashing) the second attacks on the RAF itself. (weapons exploding) After the pause on August the 24th, the third and decisive phase began. On that night, an off-course
Heinkel bomber dropped its bombs in error on
an unintended target. These were the first
bombs to fall on London. The bombs had been meant
for military targets in London's suburbs, but
they fell in the center of the city, and did some damage. The extent to which this mistake, and the British reaction to it determined the future course of
the war can be debated. Perhaps what happened would have happened in any case, perhaps not. What is sure is that Winston Churchill, convinced that it had
been a deliberate attack, ordered Berlin to be
bombed the next evening. (plane engines humming) On August the 25th, British
bombers reached Berlin, and inflicted minimal property damage, but the Germans were shocked. Herman Goring had assured them that such a thing could
never happen, but it did. And it happened again on the
night of August the 28th, with buildings damaged
and civilians killed. Two nights later, a third attack occurred. In Fuhrer Directive 17
of the 1st of August in which he laid out his
plans for the conduct of air and sea warfare against England, Hitler had specified his targets. They did not include civilian
targets, but at clause five, he did say, "I reserved to
myself the right to decide on terror attacks as
measures of reprisal." (weapon exploding) He now exercised that right. On September the fourth, he promised, "When the British air
force drops two, or three, or 4,000 kilograms of bombs,
then we will in one night drop 150, 200, and 300, or 400,000 kilograms. When they declare that they
will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground. We will stop the handiwork
of those night pirates, so help me God." The next night, London was attacked, and three days later on
September the seventh, 1940, and for 57 consecutive nights
thereafter, London was bombed. This was the final phase
of the Battle of Britain. They called it the Blitz. - Thanks to the Anderson
shoulder, we're quite safe. I think he dropped a
couple of bombs almost, and it shook the shoulder like very hell, but when I heard the four boys talk to me, I was quite contented. So far, I was thankful. - [Narrator] Young women in boiler suits, wearing tin hats, patrolled the streets of the capital, blowing
whistles and shouting, "Turn that bloody light off!" London has took to the shelters and slept in their thousands on the platforms of underground railway stations. - There was a lot of looting, which you wouldn't have
thought when people went down to shelters that houses
would get broke into. They wouldn't bother about the raid. - [Narrator] Searchlights
lit up the night skies, and anti-aircraft batteries
kept up the tune of ack-ack against the fleets of bombers overhead, but it was all largely show. The searchlights, some suggested, mainly helped the bombers
find their targets, and the anti-aircraft
batteries are calculated to have downed one enemy aircraft for every 30,000 shells fired. September the seventh, the night of the first major bombing
raid on London was a high tide in the English channel. It may have been this, so
suitable for invading ships and possibly other intelligence
received, that caused the alarm to be sounded. Troops standing on the defensive throughout Southern England
received the code word warning that the invasion of England
was expected within 24 hours. Perhaps surprisingly at the
time of the greatest threat to the realm, and king, and country, the code word was the name
of a Regicide, Cromwell, but the Cromwell alert
lapsed, and no invasion came. The bombing offensive continued. (compelling music) (weapons exploding) About 15,000 Londoners were
killed during the Blitz, and more than a quarter of
a million made homeless. Buildings that were
damaged included churches, the Houses of Parliament,
and Buckingham Palace, London home of the King and Queen. (compelling music) On September the 30th, the Luftwaffe flew its last daylight raid, continuing thereafter to attack by night. (dramatic music) The British government
commissioned polls to test the mood of the population, and found
that 80% remained confident of a British victory. The raids grew small. The British officially
marked the end October as the conclusion of
the battle of Britain, although London continued
to suffer heavily. On November the 14th, the
attack on Coventry marked a new phase in the German offensive. Birmingham, Bristol,
Southampton, Sheffield, and Liverpool were all
targeted in November, and British civilian deaths
for that month exceeded four and a half thousand. By now, Britain's bomber
command was raining equal, if not greater destruction
on German cities, as we shall see in a later episode. (plane engines humming) The last night of the Blitz
on British cities would not be until the middle of May
1941, when Hitler needed all of his strength elsewhere
for the invasion of Russia. A world war will always draw
our attention across the map as things of greater or
lesser significance occur, all of which are bricks
in the same edifice. The autumn of 1940 is, in most histories, the story of the Battle of Britain, but history needs peripheral vision. On September the sixth, 1940, the day before the first
major bombing raid on London, King Carol of Romania, a great grandchild of Queen Victoria, abdicated,
leaving the country in the control of another
fascist leader, Ion Antonescu. On September the 11th, Hitler sent army and air force reinforcements
uncontested into Romania to protect the Ploest oil fields, the only significant oil wells in Europe. This also placed the
Wehrmacht in a forward base for operations against the Soviet Union. But why was Hitler turning his back on the invasion of Great Britain? (crowd cheering) Fuhrer Directive number
16 of July the 16th, 1940, setting in motion
preparations for a landing in Britain, had stated, "As England, in spite of her hopeless
military situation, still shows no signs of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare,
and if necessary, to carry out a landing operation against her." If necessary? How could it not be necessary? Only three days later
in a speech delivered to the Reichstag, and
broadcast around the world, Hitler said, "From
London, I now hear a cry. It's not the cry of the mass of people, but rather of politicians
that the war must now all the more be continued." Hitler said, "In this hour,
I feel compelled to direct yet another appeal to reason in England." (soldiers marching)
(compelling music) Hitler would've preferred
peace terms and the chance to turn to his real objective,
expansion eastwards. British defiance denied him. (crowd cheering)
(compelling music) Hitler well understood
the risks of an invasion of the British Isles. Failure would instantly
demolish what had been built up through his extraordinary
successes since September 1939. (compelling music) The heads of his air force
and navy were not confident, there was division among his generals, and Hitler himself was
far from sure of success. "On land, I am a hero," he told the commander of the Kriegsmarine. (compelling music)
(crowds cheering) "At sea, I am a coward." There is evidence that
the plan for the invasion, Operation Sea Lion, was more a political than a military strategy,
a device for strengthening the Peace Party in Britain, and forcing the enemy to
the negotiating table, in a sense, for Hitler at least, a bluff. (water splashing)
(compelling music) On the last day of July
1940, Hitler held a meeting at the Bergoff, his
home, near Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. He was told of the difficulty
of obtaining suitable vessels to carry invasion troops
across the channel, and about the problems
amassing troops and equipment. The German navy argued for a
postponement of the invasion until May 1941. (compelling music) Hitler postponed the start date, but only until September the 16th, allowing the Luftwaffe
time to clear the channel of British warships, and the
skies over Southeast England of British aircraft,
repeating what had been the first condition of
Fuhrer Directive 16, "That the RAF be so reduced
morally and physically that it is unable to deliver
any significant attack against the German crossing." (plane engines humming) As we have seen in the story
of the Battle of Britain, that had not happened. (weapons shooting) Further, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe had made 21 attacks on Royal Navy torpedo boats
operating in the channel. It had managed to sink none of them. (weapon exploding) (compelling music) Germany had virtually no
landing craft, and given barely two months to assemble
a seagoing invasion fleet, was obliged to convert more
than 2000 river barges. (compelling music) Only about 800 of these were powered. The rest would have to be towed by tanks. (plane engine humming) When the barges began to be
assembled in channel ports, the RAF's bomber command
was ordered to target them, and about 10% were
destroyed at their moorings. (weapons exploding) When Hitler told his commanders that Operation Sea Lion
was indefinitely postponed, he cited the Luftwaffe's failure
to obtain air superiority, and a general lack of coordination between the branches
of the German military. But it is difficult to feel
that he ever really believed in the invasion, or
its chances of success. (compelling music) With the cancellation
of Operation Sea Lion, Great Britain was left an
unsinkable aircraft carrier off the shores of Western Europe. On November the 11th, no
sirens sounded in London for the first time since July. The RAF had lost 915 aircraft,
the Luftwaffe, 1,733. Turning his back on the British Isles, Hitler must have hoped or
imagined that if not defeated, Britain had at least
withdrawn behind her ramparts to bluster on, but not to
interfere in his future plans. The danger that he overlooked
was that, above all else, the Battle of Britain ensured the survival of opposition to the Third Reich, and that opposition was
not a small island nation off the coast of the European mainland. It was an empire. (compelling music) Events in Europe that had changed the continent's political
complexion through 1940 now had an unexpected and strategically
significant effect on the opposite side of the globe in Asia. When France fell, its
collaborationist regime, the Vichy government, headed
by Marshall Petain was, as we have learned, allowed
to retain its colonies under the terms of the peace settlement, and one of the jewels in that
particular imperial crown was French Indochina, the
modern states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. For expansionist Japan,
occupying these territories was tempting, and in the case of Vietnam, simply a matter of
walking across the border from occupied China, which, in September of 1940 is
exactly what she did. Japan's rationale for invasion, which, given there was a war on
was reasonably legitimate, was that the nationalist
Chinese were being supplied through the port of Haiphong via the Sino-Vietnamese Railway. (weapons exploding) When the Imperial Japanese Army developed an invasion threat, the Vichy
French administration yielded, and on September 22nd, signed
an accord which permitted the Japanese to station
several thousand troops on Vietnamese territory. - [Reporter] At the conference, the Japanese demanded bases
in Indochina, and got them. Meanwhile, the air raids
over China continue, Chongqing, the capital,
being bombed again and again. - [Narrator] Within a few hours
of the treaty being signed, columns from the Imperial
Japanese Army moved over the border in three places, and advanced on the
railhead near (indistinct). The next day on the 23rd of September, Vichy France protested the
breach of the agreement to the Japanese government. On the morning of the 24th,
Japanese aircraft attacked French positions on the coast. On the 26th, Japanese forces came ashore south of Haiphong, and moved on the port. (compelling music)
(weapons exploding) By the evening of the 26th,
fighting had died down. (compelling music)
(fires crackling) Japan was allowed,
among other concessions, three airfields. When little more than a year later, Japan launched the
offensive design to create the Co-Prosperity Sphere, these and other air bases would
prove critical to providing air support for the Japanese invasions of the British colonies
of Malaya and Singapore, and of the Dutch East Indies. (compelling music) As well as Asia, the world
war in these months reached and flared as fierce fighting
in another continent, Africa. On the 23rd of September, a joint British, Free French
adventure was launched against a Vichy garrison in West Africa. By the 25th, the adventure had turned into an embarrassing flop,
and the forces were withdrawn. A Royal Navy force with
General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French on board, ready to appeal to his
countrymen, approached Dakar, the capital of modern Senegal. Leaflets were dropped, Free
French aircraft landed, but instead of being welcomed, its crews were taken prisoner. Shore and naval batteries exchanged fire, and de Gaulle declared
that he did not want to be responsible for Frenchmen
killing Frenchmen. The task force withdrew. The affair had been called, inappropriately, Operation Menace. September of 1940 also saw
the start of operations in what was to become the best known and most significant theater of operations on the African continent, the North African (indistinct). (compelling music) Italo Balbo, Marshal of
the Italian air force was one of the architects of Italian fascism, and the only leading fascist to oppose both anti-Jewish racial laws, and Mussolini's alliance with Germany. He was responsible for
planning the invasion of Egypt. On the 28th of June 1940,
coming into land at Tobruk, Balbo and his crew were
mistakenly shot down by Italian gunners, and killed. Friendly fire was a poor beginning to Italy's North African campaign. On September the 13th,
when it had become clear that Hitler was not
going to invade Britain, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Egypt. (compelling music) By the 16th, the Italians had advanced the best part of 100 kilometers
beyond the Libyan border. Their casualties were
three and a half thousand, but the British, falling back
into the desert, had taken only 150 casualties. The British Commander General, later Field Marshal Archibald
Wavell, had an advantage over his opponents in armor, so he determined to counterattack, and drive the Italians back
beyond the Libyan boarder, placing the crucial port
of Tobruk in Allied hands. (weapons exploding) Wavell's force of 50,000 pushed
the Italians out of Egypt. 138,000 prisoners, and
more than 200 guns fell to the Western desert force. "How many prisoners have you taken?" one British officer asked another. "Oh, several acres, I would
think," was the reply. The story of Italy's war
lives in the popular mind as a story of defeat,
retreat, and surrender. It is an unfair picture. What it fails to recognize
is the inferiority of Italy as a fighting machine. One statistic tells the tale. In 1938, Italy's military
expenditure was $746 million. Germany's was 7 billion, 415 million. Wavell's force typified the
strength of the British Empire. British troops fought
side by side with soldiers from far away New
Zealand and South Africa, and divisions from India. Every Indian who fought under the British flag was a volunteer. Their motives for volunteering
were generally practical. Soldiering was a job that fed,
and clothed, and housed them. The soldiers from the dominions like New Zealand were
resolutely patriotic. They were fighting for
their King George VI and the Mother Country. The war would challenge
the imperial sentiments of the white dominions,
and transform the loyalties of the Indian troops. Mussolini, frustrated in North Africa by Wavell's motley army, had meanwhile, and in a typically feckless way, turned his attention elsewhere. Renewing the Balkan ambitions
that had seen him invade Albania, and using that small
country as the springboard, Mussolini launched an invasion of Greece on October the 28th. Il Duce had only informed
Hitler of his intentions the day before the attack. He met the Fuhrer on the day
that Italian troops moved. This was war by vanity. Greece was neutral, Greece was irrelevant
to Hitler's war aims, but Greece and the Balkan could also, Mussolini hoped, boost Italian prestige to match Germany's
achievements in the war. Hitler, angered by his ally's rashness, nonetheless offered troops to
support the Italian invasion, but Mussolini declined. This was to be an Italian triumph. Greek Prime Minister,
General Ioannis Metaxas, himself a right wing
dictator, similarly declined Britain's offer of support. Instead, and unaided, he
mounted a counterattack against the invading Italians
on November the fourth. Within days, the Italians
had been driven back all the way into Albania. The reversal owed much to
the conditions, winter, and the terrain of the
Northern Mountains of Icarus. (horse hooves clopping) The outcome had been foreseen
by the Italian Chief of Staff, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who resigned when his council was ignored by Il Duce. On November the 11th, London's first day without an air raid warning,
the Italians suffered another setback of a very different kind. Venerable British Swordfish
torpedo bombers, operating off of the carrier HMS
Illustrious, attacked the Italian fleet at its
mooring in Taranto Harbor. The British cheered the
first thing in over a year that had even smelled like a victory. The Italians counted the cost of three badly damaged battle ships, one never to put to sea again. And the Japanese naval
attache in Berlin hurried to the scene to take detailed notes of what a carrier-borne attack
on at fleet anchor could do. (plane engines humming)
(water splashing) On December the fourth, five weeks after the invasion of Greece, the Italian Undersecretary
of State for War, General Baldo Sodu was
recommending an armistice. Winter had already
frozen military activity with the armies facing each other on what had formally
been Italian territory. In January, Hitler would
announce military support for his Axis partner,
marching to Italy's aid, firstly in Greece, and
then in North Africa. (dark music)
(weapons exploding) Also in January, the British
would launch their offensive against the Italians
in the Horn of Africa, in Somaliland and in
Abyssinia, whose emperor, Haile Selassie, the Italians
had chased from his throne. (dark music) But much greater events were
to occur in the year ahead. As 1941 dawned, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt broadcast to the American people. "My friends," he said, "this
is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security." He told the international
audience, for many were listening around the world on shortwave radios, "We must be the great
arsenal of democracy." And he concluded, "We have
no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for
hope, hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense
of our civilization, and for the building of a better civilization in the future." In the next episode of
The Price of Empire, it is the year 1941, the
year that was to transform the war and the world in a way that few single years can
be said to have affected the narrative of history. Germany would invade the Soviet Union, and Japan would force the
United States into the war at a place called Pearl Harbor. (weapons exploding)
(dramatic music)
