Forcing Japan's Surrender: The Key Battles Of The Pacific War | Battles Won & Lost | War Stories

every battle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you fly in every theater of the second World War battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles won and lost that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history some words transcend their Origins as humble place names even as the names given to battles won and lost they are carved into history as turning points which influenced the course of the war the fate of Nations the makeup of our world these words are indestructible Okinawa Pearl Harbor well Pearl Harbor was put together quite late the Japanese had to acquire raw materials from Southeast Asia following an American embargo on July 1941. the objective was to seize quickly key points in Southeast Asia but in order to do it they had to bypass the Philippines Pearl Harbor was the key knockout the fleet the battleships and they assume carriers located at Pearl Harbor so that they would then be free at the same time to invite Malaya to see Southeast Asia it was done in the understanding that in the long term the Americans had the capacity to build up sufficient military power to create a terrible threat to Japan but it was done in the hope that Japan could achieve sufficient success that the Americans would feel it wasn't worthwhile going on from carriers 370 kilometers out in the Pacific the Japanese had launched pre-dawn the first waves fell on Pearl Harbor at 7 40 AM in that first attack 40 torpedo bombers 49 high-level bombers 41 dive bombers and 43 Fighters swept around the west of the island of Oahu to hook up into the great Naval Base the natural Harbor in the south of the island the first attack lasted for 30 minutes we were thinking about the Army Air Force they used to have Maneuvers on Sunday mornings [Music] we said that they're kind of early this morning then pretty soon we saw a bomb drop out of a castle treacherous Japanese attack on Hawaii the whole world knows now how Japan assaulted the American Naval base without warning without a declaration of war and while her envoys were actually negotiating in Washington in addition to anchorages the first attack had targeted air bases Wheeler Field Hickam field Kaneohe and Ewa grounding any possible opposition to the second raid there were 354 American aircraft on the island of which 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged seven escaped unscathed at 8 50 am the second wave hooked in from the opposite side of the island and pounded its targets for more than an hour the force comprised 54 high-level bombers and 78 dive bombers with fighter support history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans by subscribing to history hit you can access hundreds of hours of military history documentaries On Demand follow in the footsteps of the Essex dogs with Dan Jones will discover the history of archery with Ramirez we've built up an extensive library of history programs hundreds of hours of documentaries exclusive original films interviews and ad-free podcasts made for proper history fans sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 of their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout [Music] The Defenders had organized their anti-aircraft Fire by this time and we went up to our Battle Stations and fired and planes coming over and it went on for couple hours of the 29 Japanese aircraft lost in the raid 20 were in the second wave there's no question that it would have been worthwhile for the Japanese to attend another attack and they should have been going for the oil tanks and for the dockyard facilities in order to reduce the capacity of Pearl Harbor to be the base in the Pacific from which the Americans could then Mount their further attacks they did not have enough screening vessels and had they not so much launched a third strike had they stayed in the area they probably would have netted the Enterprise which was nearby so they had the forces there but they were very worried about being so far out liking screening vessels that they pull away a bit too early 94 warships were in the harbor 18 was sunk or suffered serious damage but of the five battleships that were sunk three were to return to service one that did not and remains today as a memorial to the date that will live in infamy was the Arizona four out of every five men aboard the Arizona were killed Eleven Hundred out of the two thousand four hundred and three American fatalities on that day one of the guys were caught in fires and jumped over the side saw him drowned some of them burnt to death somewhere but uh oh I was one of the lucky ones in that case though as a mathematical statement Pearl Harbor was a battle lost for the Americans but the port's infrastructure was largely intact and there were no carriers in Pearl Harbor when the attack came in the operation was a partial tactical success with the caveat that the wrong targets were attacked it was a strategic failure of the worst order and yamamoto's comment that he feared the sleeping giant had been awakened I think was a correct one the nature of that attack was the thing most calculated to create in the United States a collective will to respond in a way that I don't think anything else would have December 7th 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by Naval and Air Forces of the Empire of Japan [Music] [Music] on the 12th of August 1943 Hitler ordered construction of a new defensive line on the Eastern Front the East wall but he forbade any thought of withdrawal to the position so as Autumn began to be felt axis forces stood as much as 300 kilometers ahead of the wall which was itself well inside Russian territory on August 26 the Red Army began its Autumn offensive [Music] by Christmas when winter closed down fighting the German front had been pushed back all along its length and in the center as much as 150 kilometers behind the East wall the central front rokusovsky moved beyond the battlefield of Kursk at the same time Army group South for manstein was coming under pressure from the third and fourth Ukrainian fronts [Music] when Hitler visited Von manstein's headquarters on the 27th he was called on to decide whether to reinforce Army group South with formations from the center or permit a withdrawal behind the line of the danipa he couldn't decide when he went on to visit voncluga at group Center HQ he was persuaded not to reinforce Von manstein fourth Ukrainian front tolbukan liberated tug and rock two days later and momentum was all with the advancing Russian forces on September 2nd Central front reached the briant's connotop railway completing their break-in to the German line a week into September and the Caucasus front moved on the Tarman Peninsula on the 10th they took myopol by amphibious assault [Music] and on the 14th Central front with voranesh front General vatutan in support began driving for Kiev [Music] towns were now being reclaimed on an almost daily basis bryansk on the 10th and when chernigov fell on the 21st it signaled that rokusovsky had reached the Juniper at the moment the best news comes from the Russian front where the Red Army has been scoring one Triumph after another beating back the Invaders smashing their defenses [Music] on the 22nd the tutons front began to cross the NEPA General batutin commanding the first Ukrainian Army drives on beyond the Nipper on a white front malinowsky's command Crossing further south on the 26th by which time Smolensk and roslavi had fallen at the beginning of October the Baltic fronts of yaramenco and Popoff joined the offensive by now manstein was back behind the East wall but his forces were much reduced and he would have trouble holding the position the momentum did not relent and at the beginning of November the Red Army launched a major assault out of its Bridgehead over the NEPA at leotesh on November 6th Kiev fell to the Red Army and when six days later jitumia fell two fronts were able to combine in establishing a Bridgehead of 160 by 240 kilometers completely negating the utility indeed the very idea of the East wall the scale of the Soviet comeback is without parallel in military history the Allies rised for attack in the west the Red Army blasts and batters the German Barbarians in the east [Music] as campaigning stalled with winter the German armies were still intact and they were still wholly on Russian soil but the Soviet forces had Advanced to a much stronger position from which to launch first the spring and then the Epic summer offensive operation bagration [Music] when General Montgomery was appointed to command the eighth Army he made one thing clear he would not go onto the offensive until he had total material superiority and he withstood Churchill's impatience until he was satisfied that the odds were right and then he orchestrated the Second Battle of El Alamein second element is very much a set-piece battle Montgomery emphasized that the troops shall be trained in the tasks that they are meant to do so you had some Battalion Brigade commanders building replicas of the positions that they're going to attack and training and rehearsing their role for weeks and weeks and weeks beforehand General Montgomery realizing that a citizen Army fights best when it knows exactly what's going on and what it is going to do Observatory that the plan of battle was known to everybody from General to private soda the battle had in a sense begun as another battle the one initiated by Rommel on the night of the 30th of August on the eighth Army's position at alarm Halford targeting the weak southern end of the British line that ran about 65 kilometers from the sea to the Katara depression there was some desperation in rommel's plan of the six Supply ships on which he had been depending four had been sunk his success now depending in part on the successful capture of British fuel dumps during his Advance or his armor would be stranded within three days blocked by well-prepared defensive positions Rommel was forced back on his start line by second element the balance of material and troops and Logistics in the Middle East had tipped this is the first major battle where the British forces exceed those of the Germans in all regards in terms of air power in terms of men in terms of any tank guns in terms of medium tanks Montgomery has assembled his forces and he's masked them ready for this attack to break through the light on the night of the 23rd of October 900 guns opened their throats and the Battle of El Alamein was underway before Jarvis gutters he opened up with over a thousand pieces of opportunity north to south from the coast to the Katara Montgomery deployed a truly Commonwealth Force ninth Australian division at the coast Road the 51st Highland Division 2nd New Zealand and First South African then fourth Indian and further south 50th and 44th divisions and free French with three armored divisions in support second New Zealand was the first advancing Force to claim its first objective it secured Materia Ridge but 10th armored in support did not exploit the chance to break out north of them ninth Australia was slowed passing through a Minefield with first armored hanging behind them all this while Rommel was away he had gone to Germany on sick leave on the 25th he returned to his command and to find that along the line from the British 13th Corps in the South to the intended main break-in in the north the attackers had been checked and progressed slowed the resistance along the Alabama line was very strong the British and Commonwealth forces were not able to break through Montgomery's battle plan was delayed and essentially it had to be reset Rommel launched armor to recover ground lost at Materia and kidney ridges but was beaten back [Music] Montgomery concluded from the progress of the battle but the main German concentration was in the north facing the troops that he had charged with making the Breakthrough he responded by realigning the major thrust this would now come south of the coastal sector in a new plan supercharge where its principal opposition would be the Italian formations ninth Australian was to continue pressure on the coast road but the main line of attack would now be Inland and westwards supercharge and the Breakthrough began in the middle of the night of the 1st of November second New Zealand led the attack supported by first Armored Division which took a heavy toll of 15th Panzer which engaged it success was Consolidated on November 3rd when fourth Indian and the 51st were sent in against kidney Hill their breakthrough opened the road for 7th and 10th armored which raced through into Open Country I remember of one tank sitting out in front burning one of ours and a voice in my ear seeing help help me they operate on that tank had been on the wireless when his tank was hit and somebody was trapped in that tank the wireless was still on God's sake help me and one of our times put a shot through the side of it and the voice stopped when first armored and the New Zealand division joined the offensive the Italian ariete division was almost completely destroyed Rommel was on the back foot all along the line South 13th Corps under General Horrocks overran the Italian formations facing it and the entire axis line was now falling back as Rommel began his withdrawal along the coast [Music] by escaping even if only to be pursued all along the North African literal Rommel had avoided the total defeat for which Montgomery hoped if there's a criticism to be laid at this point in time it's of the timidity of the Allied follow-up but we also have to remember that a lot of Montgomery's units had fought themselves to a near standstill breaking throughout our main that his armored forces were starting to fill the toll of battle that particularly the Australian division had been hammered in its fight to the north so the capacity of the Montgomery sources to chase was quite limited as well but by any assessment Rommel had suffered a decisive loss and the Allies for the first time in the war could celebrate a decisive victory after element the Germans essentially are on their way out of North Africa dealing with North Africa starts the Allies thinking about their re-entry into Western Europe and in many ways it's the turning point in the war for the Western forces which they have so often meted out to others ah this is not the end it is not even the beginning of the end but it is perhaps the end of the beginning [Music] foreign [Music] by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the longest Battle of the second world war was already over two years old it was known as the battle of the Atlantic and it started as the war in Europe began with the Atlantic remaining a battlefield until the very last days of the war it was the vital logistic Battle of the war whether it failed or succeeded on either side really determined the course of the war and how well it was going profoundly influenced what each side could be doing in other campaigns there were periods in the first years of the war the German U-Boat commanders dubbed them the happy times when it seemed as though the battle of the Atlantic could decide the war and decided in favor of the Axis powers but the tide of battle turned in the first half of 1943 after which it was clear that the Allies had control the basis of Britain's Imperial power had always been importing raw materials from and exporting manufactured goods to her colonies and dominions this had made the United Kingdom more than usually dependent on Imports for survival and those Imports must ultimately Join one of the Atlantic Sea Lanes [Music] after the fall of France German aircraft surface ships and submarines were based along the French Atlantic Coast from the airfields and ports of the French Coast their efforts to disrupt and Destroy Britain's vital Maritime Lifeline became the battle of the Atlantic Germany's glamorous surface vessels such as the Bismarck grafe scharnhorst and terpits took a toll but each was picked off in turn by the Royal Navy aircraft sank ships but not in numbers that would have forced the British Isles to its knees the real threat was the submarine the advantage the submarine has as a Commerce Raider I think was Paramount submarines could attack unseen were very difficult to detect once detected or good at evading and could come and re-attack the Germans also set up a pretty sophisticated system for working out where the targets were and for concentrating the U-boats to do Mass attacks Lessons Learned in the first world war meant that from the outset merchant ships traveled in convoys Admiral Donuts commanding the submarine Fleet evolved the tactic to counter the convoy system tactic which came to be called the wolf pack it worked [Music] at the U-boats hunting in packs extra vigilance by the convoys is essential to their safety Donuts never had as many submarines as he wanted but then the Allies did not initially have as many escorts as they wanted and for the first years of the war there was a gap in the air cover where convoys sailed beyond the range of aircraft as the battle wore on tactics changed new weapons were developed which were much more effective at destroying the U-boats it was a constant Battle of offense versus defense and developing technology on both sides fundamentally all these things together with perhaps the most important which was the provision of long-range aircraft and air support to the convoys which created as a totality a system which was able to reduce the U-Boat threat the decisive month was May 1943 to the Germans this was black May German submarine losses had risen sharply in proportion to the number of Allied ships being sunk in April 39 ships had been lost but at a cost to the Germans of 15 new boats an unsupportable rate [Music] and then Convoy ons-5 designated a slow Convoy sailed 43 Merchant ships were escorted by 16 warships and in the Atlantic the Convoy came under attack from a pack of U-boats variously assessed at between 30 and 40 strong their attack went in on the night of May 4th a Canadian Air Force Catalina sank one new boat an escort ship another and 12 of the merchantment were sent to the bottom on the fifth the escort group was reinforced on the night of the sixth the pack attacked again and four U-boats were sunk no merchantment were lost it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the turning point at which a drawn-out battle was decided but here was one Convoy sc-130 a week later met similar success 37 merchantment with an eight-chip escort sailed Into the Danger Zone where they were picked up by U-boats on May 19th that same day the Convoy was joined on station by escort group 1. three days later the Convoy entered British Waters and escort Group 1 detached in that Mid-Atlantic passage the U-Boat pack had come under constant aircraft and surface vessel attack four submarines were sunk without loss to the Convoy in the first three weeks of May 31 new boats were sunk the total would reach 41 by the end of the month and dernitz was forced to temporarily suspend operations in the North Atlantic the losses were prodigious 36 000 merchant seamen the same number of Allied soldiers not less than 30 000 German submariners [Music] thousands of vessels hundreds of aircraft but no battle had a more vital bearing on the war in Europe the Allies prevailing the Atlantic allowed the remainder of the war to be fought so by enabling the logistics enabling the North American industrial machine to provide all the resources that were needed to fight what was an industrial War the back of the Atlantic was Central yeah with the Soviet Union coming under immense renewed pressure in the early summer of 1942 as well over a hundred axis divisions renewed their assault Stalin demanded more of his allies Stalin wanted Churchill to open up a second front but he just wasn't in a position to do that at the time so Churchill reasoned that a major raid could be a kind of compromise if they could take a significant Port that would show the Germans that they were vulnerable in that area that would then Force Hitler to redistribute some of his forces down to protect that part of of Europe which would in turn take some of the pressure off the Red Army and importantly show Stalin that Churchill was doing his part that he was a willing partner and not just sitting back while Russian lives were being taken on Mass the Allied Forces came up with the idea of a cross-channel raid arrayed by definition means Hit and Run this was not to be an attempt to gain a Toe Hold let alone launch an invasion they would it was said gain useful intelligence about German Coastal defenses Preparatory to launching a full-scale Invasion at a later date there were also secondary objectives and the Raf in particular were eager to see this as an opportunity to draw out the luftwaffe to have a ding dong battle and hopefully give them a hard time at this time the the new Spitfire Mark 9 had just come out and so they were confident that they'd be able to give the luftwaffe a run for their money producers of the British craft have already proved that they turn out the best planes in the world each new Spitfire Bears witness to the great contribution of British design and workmanship objective selected was diepp it was in its planning known as operation Rutter in its execution it was called operation Jubilee [Music] British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery's Southeastern command provided the troops for the operation and planned a frontal assault without heavy preliminary air bombardment under pressure from the Canadian government to ensure that Canadian troops saw action the Canadian's second division was selected for the main Force they would assault the town while British parachute units attacked German batteries on the Headlands as a diversion that never happened bad weather caused delays Montgomery was sent to North Africa to find the eighth Army and fame the code name was changed to Jubilee and Lord Louis mountbatten took over planning the air bombardment on Dieppe was reduced for fear of French casualties destroyers were allocated to bombard the shore it was judged that battleships were too vulnerable that close to the coast the parachute operation on the flanks was canceled an Intelligence on which planning was based was patchy and in some cases laughable German gun positions dug into the sides of the Headland Cliffs were not spotted by air reconnaissance and planners assessed the beach gradient and its suitability for tanks by scanning holiday snapshots the Royal Marine Commando was to land in fast gunboats after the main Force had gone in they were to destroy the Dieppe dock installations and capture documents in a safe in the port office the break-in was to be the special responsibility of a marine who had been a burglar in civilian life it has recently been suggested as documents have been Declassified that their real objective was a new Enigma machine which was defying British Crypt analysts the naval intelligence officer planning that part of the raid was Ian Fleming later to find Fame as the author of the James Bond novels now is this true well we certainly know that Ian Fleming was there at deep it was his only battle experience from World War II so that's certainly true we certainly know that it was a goal of the day parade to gather intelligence so that certainly fits so it's very possible the Germans alerted by French double agents that the British were targeting the app were on high alert it began with the Navy taking the Army across a Khan channel in that dim Light Just Before Dawn Navy Army and RAF combining in a bigger raid than any attempted so far the raid began at 0450 on the 19th of August with the faint remaining hope of surprise having been lost the landing craft of the Eastern sector had unexpectedly encountered a small German Convoy the resultant violent sea fight alerted the German Coastal defenses at bonaval and tweet as the assault Force approached the coast of France the Germans were at action stations two Commando units made flanking Landings number three on yellow beach at the Eastern end of The Landing Zone and number four on Orange Beach at the Western end the main Force hit three beaches out and about the town and Port of Dieppe blue to the east green to the West and the main Force coming in on red and white beaches [Music] number four Commando successfully stormed the varanja Via battery and was the only unit to capture all of its objectives only 18 men from number three Commando got ashore in the right place they managed to distract the bernaval battery to good effect but were eventually forced to withdraw as Superior enemy forces responded to their Landing the concentrated Naval bombardment preceded the main Landing but fire from destroyers was too light to seriously affect the defenses concentrated RAF attack was equally Limited in effect and a smoke screen laid across the Headland had dubious value indeed it was a factor contributing to sending in reserves with fatal consequences when the outcome of the original assault was misinterpreted on the east of the main landing at puite just 60 men out of 543 from the Royal Regiment of Canada were taken off the regiment had been pinned to the beach and destroyed by coastal defense batteries and a well-cited machine gun only a handful of the men of the South Saskatchewan regiment reached their objectives with others from this regiment Landing in the wrong place the Queen's own Cameron Highlanders of Canada despite being landed late managed to push further Inland than any other troops but were forced back when German reinforcements rushed up half an hour after the flank Landings the main assault started the Canadian Essex Scottish regiment and Royal Hamilton light infantry supported by 27 Churchill tanks of the 14th Canadian army tank regiment most of the tanks lost their tracks as they were driven onto the shingle Beach and became crippled targets for German anti-tank guns tanks that did cross the shingle were stopped by concrete roadblocks without tanks in support the Infantry was simply slaughtered by Crossfire from machine guns hidden in the cliffs Le fazilia Monroe launched straight at the center of the Town were pinned down under the cliffs a royal Marine Commando was ordered to land to support them a new task which caused chaos when finally the mess was sorted and the Commando moved many of the craft were hit on the running those that reached the shore were killed or captured and their commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Tigger Phillips seeing that the mission was futile stood up and signaled to those following to turn back he was killed a few moments later at 10 20 a little over five hours after the battle had begun five hours in which everything possible went wrong the withdrawal began five hours after that the last Allied troops had either been taken off killed or taken prisoner [Music] sixty percent of the invading force was killed wounded or captured and they had lost weapons dingo armored cars and Churchill tanks which did not impress the Germans easy to fight they said with a poor and obsolete gun the Royal Air Force lost over a hundred aircraft the luftwaffe less than 50 and the Royal Navy lost 33 landing craft and a destroyer [Music] casualties from The Raid included 3367 Canadians killed wounded or taken prisoner and 275 British Commandos German Army casualties were 591. the argument began at once and has not relented was the diep raid of any value the principles of Special Operations are that it's got to be fast it's got to be be stealthy and you've got to achieve surprise and this operation was simply too big to achieve that it was too complex it couldn't be a special operation in that sense they've certainly been through it but they were already talking about next time even before they got into Hospital it is of course easy to make the case that lessons were learned and that those lessons made a significant difference to planning for the invasion of Europe on D-Day in 1944. [Music] it is rather more difficult to make the case that the lessons could not as easily have been learned by better use of intelligence [Music] in both of the meanings of that word it depends which flag you fly in every theater of the second World War battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles one and lost a cited the outcome of the greatest conflict in history right every war sees new tactics some inspired some desperate that try to influence the course of battles in the Second World War campaigns were waged against non-military targets and an attempt to destroy morale suicide missions were launched when traditional weapons failed and forces withdrew rather than fire on their fellow countrymen these are the battles that rewrote the Rules of Engagement [Applause] an archipelago of almost a Thousand Islands Solomon Islands is critically positioned off the northeastern Cape of Australia the Japanese called the main island the Americans called it Cactus its name is Guadalcanal Japanese troops landed there in April 1942 as part of their sweep through the Western Pacific the Allies were shifting from a defensive mode into an offensive mode they hadn't yet done it they were still short on resources there was a great argument going on in the halls of power about Europe being the dominant theater of war and the Pacific being the secondary theater of war so there was always a fight over who got what resources but the mentality was changing the attack on guado Canal was the first of these offensive moves the capture marks the beginning of the second phase in the Pacific following the naval victory at Midway the American Chiefs of Staff devised a three-phase campaign to rest control back from the Japanese Admiral Nimitz would lead the offensive to recapture to lagi and guadal Canal General mccarthur's objective would be lay before moving on to the rest of the Solomon Islands and finally MacArthur would move on Rubble the Japanese base in the Southwest Pacific operations would begin on August 1st but on July 5th intelligence was received that changed the plan and promoted one of those place names in the story of the war particularly in the history of the U.S Marine Corps the Japanese were observed to be building an air base on Guadalcanal and from that Airfield they based aircraft which could range over all of the Solomon Islands and further south occupation of guidel canal provided the Japanese air cover for that whole region which meant that then any plans they had for that region could be covered by those aircraft this became the first priority of the counter-offensive and on August 7th American forces landed on Guadalcanal it was the first landing by American forces in the Pacific eight months after Pearl Harbor America hit back hard with a smashing blow at Japanese Park the Marines who landed on red Beach were first Marine Division under Major General Vandergrift their primary target was the airstrip that the Japanese had been constructing their task was codenamed Operation Watchtower but there was so little time for planning and so few resources from which to construct The Invasion force that it was nicknamed operation shoe stream thank you the carriers of task force 61 would provide the only air cover the first Marine Division would go in with only half its vehicles and 10-day supply of ammunition and the landing would be preceded by a single rehearsal The Invasion Force evaded Japanese patrols but Japanese ignorance was matched by that of the Americans who had no real idea of the size of the defensive Force awaiting them just after Dawn on the 7th of August the Marines went ashore intent on striking out for the Airfield and canceling the threat of any land-based aircraft that were there as they were to discover the Japanese force established on Guadalcanal numbered 2200 they were mainly construction workers and they were taken completely by surprise [Music] the Americans captured Henderson Airfield very quickly they occupied that on the 8th of August and from that moment on Henderson became a thorn in the sight of the Japanese this is the airfield on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons in American hands it's become a vitally important base from which to burn Japanese warships and convoys the night after the initial Landing a Japanese Naval task force of seven Cruisers and a destroyer caught an Allied Force steaming through the 15 kilometer wide Channel between Guadalcanal and Savo Island sinking the American and Australian Cruisers with the loss of 1270 Allied seamen and 34 Japanese dead following the Battle of Servo Island the U.S Navy withdrew leaving the Marines on Guadalcanal without support but the Japanese allowed their opportunity to pass not bringing up reinforcements until August the 18th the first Japanese counter-attack went in on August the 21st hundred men commanded by Colonel ichiki attacked at the Battle of tanaru river the Americans lost 35 men the Japanese were wiped out Colonel ichiki committed ritual suicide and it is said that crocodiles feasted on the Japanese corpses later in August continuing Naval action in the waters around the Solomons further swung the advantage in favor of the Americans whose Fighters were by now operating from Henderson field and with heavy earthy blows in The Great Battle of the Pacific The Tide is certainly turning against Japan Supply to Imperial Japanese Army troops on Guadalcanal was limited the Japanese eventually started calling guidel Canal starvation Island their men were short of food and of course ammunition [Music] because of the inability to bring ships across during daylight they resorted to what was called the Tokyo Express which was destroyers running at high speed bringing troops and supplies across the next significant attempt to displace the Marines was led by General kawaguchi the Battle of bloody Ridge in mid-september was fiercely contested the Japanese were driven back with 600 dead a main mistake the Japanese made in that regard was to launch repeated frontal assaults against the American defensive positions which suffered very heavy losses but they did it consistently and repeatedly there didn't seem to be any variation in those tactics by late September Marine strength under General Van Der grift had risen to 23 000 and the Japanese recognizing the struggle that they faced had sent Lieutenant General iyakutake from rubble and built their Force to about twenty thousand the battle for Guadalcanal raged from mid-october until the final Japanese evacuation at the beginning of February 1943. in November the fighting was offshore where two nights became known as the first and second battles of Guadalcanal on the night of the 12th both sides suffered heavy losses in a naval encounter in which American forces came off worse but did seriously disrupt an attempt to reinforce the Garrison the following night the Americans again third worse in terms of losses but in this attritional war it was the Japanese who could not afford to make good their losses at Sea the Japanese succeeded quite often against the U.S Navy the Japanese were exceptionally good at night fighting they defeated the US Navy on several occasions and they never pressed their advantage at Sea they never pushed and it's been an interesting aspect of the naval battle that if the Japanese had been more aggressive and pushed harder the U.S Navy May well not have been able to hold its ground in that area checked at Sea despite causing more damage than it suffered the Japanese Navy was unable to reinforce or resupply Guadalcanal where troops were now starving and short of everything needed to carry on the battle in the first two weeks of December the first U.S Marine Division severely debilitated by six weeks of fighting and the depredations of tropical disease was relieved by three Marine divisions of 14th Corps General Alexander patch patch began offensive operations almost at once and by early January Japan realized that its position on Guadalcanal was not supportable losses to hunger and disease were far outstripping losses to enemy action evacuation was ordered the troops to be taken to New Guinea on January 23rd the vital High Point Mount Austin fell to the Americans and on the night of February the first the Japanese began to evacuate the island a total of 11 000 troops were taken off by the Tokyo Express and on the ninth General patch signaled that the Tokyo Express no longer has a Terminus on Guadalcanal not only is that bad at island in our hands but also American soldiers Sailors and Marines have shouted forever the myth of Japanese invincibility by the time Guadalcanal was secured 1 600 Americans had been killed and as many as 32 000 Japanese lost to military action or disease the Japanese lost a great number of very highly experienced troops during the Solomon's campaign from that time on the Pacific War became a war for Japan of defense and for the allies of offense and so guadal canal and the Solomon campaign has been I think quite rightly described as the turning point of the Pacific War thank you foreign [Music] 1932 the British prime minister Stanley Baldwin declared that the bomber will always get through the belief grew between the world wars that bombing would be a decisive weapon [Music] that it would destroy civilian morale and therefore the will to go on fighting bombs were dropped on civilian targets in Italy's invasion of abyssinia Japan's invasion of China and in the Spanish Civil War they had not brought populations to their knees despite which every combatant nation in the second world war continued to believe that attacking the population would disrupt the war effort and speed a collapse that belief was a mistake because nowhere did the bombing of Civilian targets area bombing significantly impede the ability or will to continue fighting the Strategic bombing campaign of Rises originally as a strategy of desperation almost France has fallen the low countries have fallen Britain essentially stands alone with the support of the Commonwealth all of its European allies have gone and it needs a way of striking back against Germany partly for the morale of time population partly for political diplomatic purposes that obviously the United Kingdom wants the support of the United States in the war he wants to draw them in the war it needs to demonstrate that it is still a viable Ally that is still fighting so it needs to take the war to the Germans Germany has felt the growing strength will be added to us they had not arranged for people who had done their 30 operations to come back and say to us now fellas this is the sort of thing that you'd want to protect yourself right maintain your height and about 7 000 feet or ten thousand feet that'll be about the best protections you can get but they didn't do that all we had to deal was we just purely and simply raw recruits doing bombing rides on Germany the targeting of those raids through the summer of 1942 was the implementation of the man who had on February 23rd been appointed chief of bomber command Air Marshal Arthur Harris who popular history would always remember as bomber Harris there are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war well my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet a turning point for Harris's strategy was the 17th of April when 12 heavy Lancaster bombers raided the German city of Augsburg seven were lost and Harris concluded that daylight raids were too costly it's quite ironic really because Britain who has managed to defeat a German bombing campaign through a very well integrated air defense network it then wanders off quite naively to try and attack German industry underestimating how costly that will be within the week the bombing campaign against Germany had switched to night raids switching to night bombing reduces accuracy so thus in order to maintain the bombing campaign and seek to have an effect on German industry and to make up for the fact that they can't accurately hit pinpoint targets there's a switch to area bombing the idea being that if you're bombing areas you will strike at the population that works in the factories on May 17th Arthur Harris received Churchill's approval for a raid which would stretch his resources to the Limit [Music] the first raid by 1 000 bombers codename millennium now is not the time in any way to ease up but to put on what indeed may prove sooner perhaps and some others think the final spread the target was the city of Hamburg the objective was to destroy the city Paris managed to assemble more than a thousand aircraft but bad weather ruled Hamburg out [Music] cologne the alternative Target felt the force of an attack that lasted for 75 minutes [Music] a day later just under a thousand aircraft hit Essen and three weeks later a thousand aircraft raided Bremen the camaraderie was was excellent the acceptance of losing a buddy was excellent it was never never a question that we shouldn't be here we shouldn't be doing this never by anywhere [Music] the losses in aircraft and air crew were mounting and the evidence that such massive raids were having a meaningful effect was slight there would be no further thousand plane raids for two years foreign ER Harris was rewarded for his questionable strategy on June 14 1942 he was knighted [Music] the strategy was continued throughout the war and at Great cost [Music] not just an enormous loss of civilian life but in the figures that point to an attrition rate amongst bomber Crews that was certainly in the British military higher than any other part of the Armed Forces the campaign particularly the British nighttime area bombing campaign and the Commandment offensive overalls one of the more controversial and debated parts of the second World War the bomber might always get through but it did not seem capable of influencing events the British didn't completely undermine German morale and Germany kept fighting thank you the division of France following her capitulation was complex territorially a line wound its way through France separating the german-controlled area of occupation from the area under the control of the collaborationist government centered on the spa town of vishi Premier Reno was eased out of his position so that martial petta and general Vega might make terms with Hitler only General de girl and a remnant of gallon Frenchman elected to carry on the struggle beside Britain Charles de Gaulle is the leader of the free French he is the personification of the liberty of France but he's only got the French troops evacuated from Dunkirk so what de Gaulle desperately needs is to bring some of France's Colonial Empire and its military resources into the fight against Germany second most powerful in Europe the French navy was indeed a glittering prize for the Nazi the British were determined that such a significant weapon should not fall into German hands and famously at merazel Kabir on July 3 joined battle against the Vichy Fleet in the harbor which had resisted calls to either surrender or sail to a neutral pool return off at honorable terms with several Alternatives including a safe conduct to Martinique terms were refused then our Grim Duty was carried up more than a thousand French Sailors were killed attention turned to the French colonies and particularly to the port of Dakar in French West Africa there's a lot hinging on this for the goal he has to persuade the the French Sailors the French Admirals in West Africa to declare for the allies and not for visi France a large Royal Navy task force to which was joined an Australian Heavy Cruiser and 8 000 troops including free French under de Gaulle sailed south from Gibraltar some of the vessels that had escaped from mersal Kabir and found safety in Toulon had themselves departed for French West Africa days before Admiral Somerville LED his Force H into the Atlantic he had under command the aircraft carrier Arc Royal two battleships five Cruisers ten destroyers and transports it was quite a show waiting for them was a Garrison Shaw batteries two Cruisers and three destroyers the vessels that had escaped from too long and an incomplete battleship the first action was carried out by aircraft from the carrier Hermes the first ship anywhere to have been designed as an aircraft carrier her swordfish attacked Richard lure at her Moorings on July 8th the damage the battleship took immobilized her but she remained a significant gun platform Force H sailed South passing Hermes now joined by hmas Australia and anchored in Freetown Sierra Leone the goal was confident that the Vichy Garrison under the High Commissioner Pierre Francois would come over to the cause of the free French the goal was an immensely charismatic figure he's tall and he's persuasive and he thinks he can persuade the the French Admirals to come to his side he turns up with a British Fleet and he uses his rhetorical Magic on them and it fails on September 23rd aircraft of the Fleet air arm flew over Dakar dropping propaganda leaflets and the next day aircraft operating off the arc Royal landed at Dakar airport in the expectation of a welcome and the commencement of discussions they were immediately taken prisoner a boat carrying de gaulle's personal Representatives entered Dakar Harbor where it was fired on and forced to withdraw it was evident that de Gaulle had miscalculated the sentiments ashore they would have to fight for the keys to the city later on the 23rd the first attempt to land troops south of the city was repelled due to fog and heavy fire from well-prepared positions rather abruptly rather unexpectedly the mission to bring Dakar into the free French fold had turned into a battle Force H was powerful but it was not equipped to force a contested Landing the Admirals and indeed the sailors had a deep resistance to firing on the French in the French were allies these men were not Germans my feeling is that the British sailor's heart is not in this operation the Resolute defense did not waver and with de Gaulle saying he would not be responsible for Frenchmen killing Frenchmen Force H was forced to withdraw it returned to Freetown so Dakar is a big humiliation for all concern for the Royal Navy for Cunningham for de Gaulle and for Churchill who who instigated it so Dakar is one of those British operations which is not much spoken of because it was in fact total failure here it is Leningrad a city of Heroes defiant of death ready to die on their feet because they don't want to live on their knees [Music] the former imperial capital of Saint Petersburg had been in a state of Siege since the 8th of September 1941. in January 1943 Operation iskra was launched the Leningrad and volkov fronts succeeding in opening a land Corridor that increased supply to the city during the long heartbreaking months of leningrad's ordeal the people often ran out of the barest necessities of life red coal clothing but the city's supply of Courage was never low but the siege continued until January 1944 when the Soviet Leningrad northgarod strategic offensive of the Leningrad and volkov France with the first and second Baltic fronts went in the late hours of January 13 1944 long-range bombers from the Baltic Fleet attacked the main German command points on the defensive line Soviet aircraft leading the counter-offensive continue to give the hunter belly full of his own medicine the following day the offensive began when the second shock Army which had clung to the Iranian bomb Bridgehead for the whole of the siege attacked time after time they rolled themselves Against The Invader Brian back from the city's outskirts the next day following an artillery barrage all along the front the 42nd Army launched from the south although fog slowed progress for the first few days the 42nd had linked with the second shock Army by the 19th at the same time the volkov front south of the city had begun to move on the German 18th Army crossing a frozen lake and threatening the 18th's southern flank on the 19th the second shock Army captured rapture and the 63rd guards rifle division part of the 42nd Army drove the Germans out of krasnoy cello on the 22nd Von koikler commanding Army Group North asked Hitler for permission to withdraw the 18th which was in danger of being encircled Hitler refused promising reinforcements but when the first and second Ukrainian fronts launched their assault on the German Salient Beyond Kiev no troops could be spared second shock Ed about 21 000 casualties captured 85 artillery pieces and pushed the Germans back by between 60 to 100 kilometers the day after the Ukrainian fronts moved January 26 govarov's Leningrad front in a general Advance cleared the Leningrad Moscow Railway line of enemy troops on the 27th of January 1944 872 days after it had begun The Siege was lifted [Music] across the lake and into Leningrad this train has brought the first of many half a million axis soldiers were casualties almost three and a half million Soviet troops and a million Leningrad civilians had died at the rate of more than a thousand every day with what grief they mourned their debt victims of German torture and Massacre the death toll at Leningrad alone was greater than the total combined British and American losses for the whole War Stalin declared the city to have been relieved and Leningrad celebrated with a red white and blue salute from 324 katusha rocket launchers [Music] latey golf the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea was a decisive defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy it was their last defeat in set-piece action Japanese Navy on paper was quite formidable I still had a number of Fleet carriers a number of battleships what they didn't have was a naval air arm like a dearly muster 100 aircraft on the carrier strike group they've been totally out for it not only at Midway but in a whole series of actions to compensate a desperation Weapon made its first appearance in the engagement it was called divine wind kamikaze because the Japanese had lost most of their Naval Air power they resorted to Kamikaze tactics in which Pilots deliberately crashed their bomb-laden aircraft on enemy shifts this combined the Japanese military ethic with pragmatism because it was the best way of utilizing Japan's declining resources in aircraft and aviation fuel and the poor quality of its Pilots given the sophisticated and dense defensive measures protecting the American fleets it required minimal pilot training all the pilot had to do was take off fly straight in the level and dive straight into his Target [Music] Kamikaze was an innovation but it was needed because of the Imperial Japanese Navy's failure to prepare for the new age of Naval Warfare the Admirals of the Japanese Navy were schooled on the extraordinary success that their predecessors had enjoyed in smashing the Imperial Russian Navy 40 years before that had been a victory for battleships and it encouraged a belief in the value of the capital ship in a sea Battle so Admiral Toyota commanding the combined Fleet devised a plan that would exploit the might of his battleships and turn the U.S Navy and its Invasion Fleet back from the Philippines the problem here was the complexity of the Japanese plan in this case the carriers who they assumed the Americans would be looking for and indeed they were they would be a decoy using as bait his remaining carriers Toyota would lure the American third and seventh fleets into a trap that he set between two Battleship groups drawn from the first striking Force but on the 23rd of October the attack group was engaged by American submarines before they reached the approaches to Leyte the Jets lost the important element of Supply our submarine searching deep in enemy Waters serviced right in the middle of the Japanese Fleet two Cruisers were sunk and this rather than the bait attracted the attention of third Fleet Admiral Halsey [Music] he turned South he was under attack from land-based aircraft operating out of Luzon they sank the carrier Princeton but he sailed on to the first engagement Admiral kirita was going to bring in the big battleships including the two biggest in the world the massacre in the Yamato for the 18 inch guns this was going to be the main Force halsey's aircraft sank the battleship Musashi in an action known as the battle of the sibuyan sea [Music] Admiral carita split his force and second striking Force now sailed South to swing towards lady kurita passed through the narrow San Bernardino Strait before turning north towards the mobile Fleet the bait that hadn't been taken Admiral shima's second force was sailing into the jaws of Admiral Kincaid's seventh fleet which simply destroyed two battleships went down Fuso and Yamashiro now Halsey who had turned towards the mobile Fleet learned that the American Invasion fleet was coming under pressure from kurita Admiral Halsey had to make a difficult decision should he go to the rescue and ignore the surprise from the north should he hold his position and leave our small Force off Samar to fight overwhelming odds Halsey let his carriers Sail On [Music] they sank all four of the bait carriers in the mobile Fleet foreign [Music] the Japanese Admiral doubled back on his course making again for the San Bernardino straight this allowed The Landings to go ahead once those troops got a short later there were only twenty thousand Japanese troops at leitai to counter the 200 000 troops that had landed the late I golf was the first time that all of the major commands in the Pacific joined up so you had MacArthur coming up from Southwest Pacific area Admiral Halsey had been fighting his way up through the Solomons and the Central Pacific area limits coming across from Pearl Harbor are all linked up in the Philippines the Battle of laity golf Ed the Japanese three battleships and it left the Imperial Navy with no aircraft carriers the first encounter with Kamikaze had unsettled nerves and sunk and damaged ships but neither in lady Gulf nor in any subsequent engagement could they turn the tide of battle the Imperial Japanese Navy was now finished as an effective fighting force the American Navy's dominance of the Pacific was complete it was a bit of blow for the Japanese but they were still determined to fight to the end [Music] [Applause] on the 27th of April 1941 German troops entered Athens the Greek resistance against the initial Italian invasion had crumbled before the German onslaught [Music] British troops sent from North Africa to support the Greeks Force W had been pushed back until it was agreed that in a dunkirk-like operation they should be evacuated and as with Dunkirk most of the equipment was lost it was of course thanks to the Royal Navy that evacuation was possible they'd been through hard times during the battle so the issue of special rations was doubly welcome the evacuation Aboard Cruises destroyers and transports ferried Force W to Crete where they were formed up as Cree Force Under Major General Freiburg defense of the island would last for one week [Music] on April 25th before taking Athens Hitler had issued directive number 28 operation Mercury it ordered the capture of Crete creates an island in the Mediterranean its strategic significance essentially is the ability to use it as a base to project Naval Air power across the Mediterranean if you control the Mediterranean you control access to the Suez Canal you're then forcing shipping to go the long way around you're also then able to bring that to bear on the British position in North Africa in the Middle East but capturing the island was not an easy task the plan deployed ten thousand paratroops to drop onto the island a further 750 to land in gliders five thousand to be brought in by transports and a further 7 000 to land by sea the assault would begin on May 20th opposing them Freiburg would have a mixed force of 30 000 British Australian and New Zealand troops he himself was a New Zealander with ten thousand Greek troops but as men were poorly equipped having left most of their heavy weapons and armor on the mainland but he had one advantage thanks to Ultra German plans had been intercepted and decoded so Freiburg knew what to expect and when into the beautiful countryside of Greece the dictators brought all the ugliness of War their greatest superiority was in the air and although Britain went to her Aid it was impossible to repel the enemy's overwhelming concentration of machines on May 15 the luftwaffe 650 aircraft for operation Mercury began preliminary raids on Crete Freiburg recognized that his own air defense was hugely outnumbered so he ordered his aircraft off the island to Egypt [Music] foreign to compensate for the complete absence of air cover he committed to making all of the Island's airfields unusable [Music] the day after the aircraft had been released on May 20th the attack began German paratroops landing at four airfields the attack was a disaster German airborne assault for all its psychological impact in most places in Crete struggled for start the Germans didn't have enough planes to do it all in one one hit so they had to attack the west of the island before they attacked the east of the island which of course gave early warning then to the forces deployed in the east of what was coming German paratroopers dropped from a very low height they were subject to a great deal of small arms fire and suffered very heavily on The Descent all of the glider-borne troops and four of the parachute battalions were smashed to pieces before they could join the fight of the 600 men of the Third Battalion of the first air Landing assault regiment 400 were killed on that first day by the end of May 20th the German Invaders had failed to secure any of their objectives and Hitler ruled out any further Airborne operations ever on the 20th and 21st convoys sailing in support of the landing were repulsed by the Royal Navy [Music] in action in the waters around Crete the Navy lost several ships and others including Ajax which had figured in the battle of the River Plate took damage but in repulsing the Convoy Force D destroyed half the troop carrying vessels and the only damage the Navy suffered was from what is now called Friendly Fire the German command decided to gather and concentrate all of its forces on a single objective the Airfield at malemi their job was made easy because in a confusion of orders and breakdowns in communication the troops defending malemi had withdrawn by grabbing hold of malemi they then had the capacity to reinforce and reinforce rapidly before moving West to then bring Aid to the German troops fighting at retimo and heraclion Freiburg ordered a counter-attack to retake the Airfield but it failed because the Germans had Undisputed air superiority Freiburg was criticized then and has been criticized since for an inadequate defense of the Airfield at Millennia which now became a German staging post because of the intelligence that he had it perhaps forced him to be a little blinded to the situation that he didn't actually form a mobile reserve for contingencies that he didn't see and particularly once Molina Airfield was lost he had no real ability to respond to the German foothold there [Music] on the 22nd of May a night attack which would neutralize axis air support was ordered but an unexplained delay in giving the order turned the operation into a day attack which failed under the howling of Stuka dive bombers further attempts to land reinforcements by sea were frustrated by the Royal Navy which forced a planned Invasion Fleet to turn away on May 23rd further Naval reinforcements were sent from Malta to join the battle but as three destroyers Kelly Kashmir and Kipling were rounding the western side of the island they were attacked by 24 stickers [Music] foreign Kipling survived 83 bonds Kelly commanded by Captain Lord Louis man Batten was hit and sank in two minutes the Germans by now were Landing reinforcements at malemi Freiburg had not after all rendered all of the airfields unusable by May 27th he decided that the battle for Crete was lost his Commander General wavel endorsed that view and London authorized an evacuation by now the Germans had superiority in every arm air artillery Manpower and they pushed the Allies South with motorcycle and specialized mountain troops hard at them [Music] despite Gallant rear guard actions by Commando units and companies of the Maori Battalion only 18 600 of the 32 000 Allied troops on the island were taken off many of those failed to reach safety as their transport came under aerial attack Germans now had creeped they now had its airfields they could now project Naval and air power out from that Island across the Mediterranean longer term it also just made the position in the Mediterranean a lot more tenuous for the Allied Forces but the greatest victims of the loss of Crete were the people of the island throughout the years of occupation well-documented atrocities including the massacres of whole Villages extracted a heavy price from The Ordinary People of Crete for their resistance to the German invasion rebattle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you find in every theater of the second World War battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles won and lost that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history a world war is a patchwork of actions land sea air massive or small scale and the stories of these actions are just as varied here are battles decided by amphibious forces climate geography and the problems of supply the naval Revolution that had been hinted at in the Coral Sea would be fully realized at Midway a battle for which Japan gathered massive Naval strength the Japanese objective of Midway was to destroy the U.S Navy and to do this they decided to move on Midway Island Midway Island was an island on the Hawaii defense perimeter and the plan was to entice the U.S Navy into a trap and destroy it which would of course if that had occurred it would have given the Japanese free Reign Over the west coast of the USA and they would have also had the opportunity to attack Hawaii 's warships and pooped transport several hundred mile sea heading for this island at Midway he decided that this was the place to make a stand and committed all available ships to a bold attack the Japanese Navy was as had been proven early in the 20th century when she destroyed the Imperial Russian Fleet a match for anyone but repeatedly in the story of battles won and lost in the second world war we find the difference between Victory and defeat rests with the difference between concentration and dispersal the problem with the Japanese was that they had scattered their Fleet over a very wide area it was organized into component parts none of which could support each other so in effect as a total number the Japanese outnumbered the Americans but when it came to a face-to-face battle they didn't the American Fleet went into the battle with another Advantage because the Coral Sea encounter ruled both zui Kaku and shokaku out of the Midway engagement Yorktown on the other hand which was estimated to require three months for repair was swarmed over by 1400 workers and they had the job done in two days she was in the line of battle the Japanese had a complicated plan the second carrier strike force would go North to the illusions Midway near enough midway between Hawaii and Japan would be approached across a broad front of ocean a significant force would break off to possibly support action in the illusions it was labeled the Illusions screening Force the fleet proper would divide The Invasion Force Under Admiral condo would hold back the main body under Yamamoto would also wait allowing nagumo to press the attack with the first carrier Strike Force built around the four carriers akagi kaga to the south of the main force was the close support Force Under Admiral kurita in the event Admirals kurita Yamamoto and condo would play no part in this most decisive battle the Americans by contrast were sailing to the Battle Zone in a compact formation rear Admiral Jack Fletcher task force 17 Again flying his flag from Yorktown and rear Admiral Raymond spruance in task force 16 with the carriers Enterprise and Hornet giving the Americans three carriers to the Japanese four but the Americans had another advantage they knew exactly what to expect their crypto analysts had cracked the Japanese Naval code they could read Japanese orders they knew Japanese plans they knew where the Japanese would be and in what strength it was absolutely decisive a submarine Patrol was on station at Midway an aircraft based there could extend surveillance to about 500 kilometers from the island stage was set around 4 30 in the morning of June 4th nagumo steaming about 400 kilometers Northwest of the island initiated the action by committing about half of his total air arm to an attack on Midway the battle continued in bursts over the next two days the course of the Battle of Midway was first influenced by Admiral nagumo's decision when his aircraft returned to their ships and as Pilots reported a failure to completely destroy the installations and aircraft on Midway nagumo ordered them to be re-armed with bombs rather than Torpedoes for a second attack on the island at 5 45 after a Catalina had cited the Japanese task force the American carriers turned towards the enemy that they would engage but never see with carrier Warfare it was quite clear the person who struck first was going to win and Japanese lost that little advantage and the Americans were able to conduct an extraordinary successful strike at the Japanese found the Americans first and focused on conducting a mass strike against the Americans it could have gone the other way Enterprise and Hornet launched their first attacks on the Japanese ships shortly after six they launched 29 torpedo bombers of which they lost 24. these were outdated Devastator aircraft and after Midway they were withdrawn from service they had failed to record a single hit on a Japanese ship but they had most importantly disorganized the enemy Fleet and forced its air cover down to sea level above them squadrons from Enterprise and Yorktown went in it was mid-morning and these were the much more effective Dolphus aircraft responsible for sinking more Japanese vessels than any other weapon the battle would continue but its outcome was decided in five minutes nagumo gave the order to launch at 10 20 that had 10 25 Lieutenant Commander Wade McCluskey of the USS Enterprise's Air Group LED his 37 dauntless dive bombers in from an altitude of 14 000 feet in a 70 degree dive at 280 knots carrier akagi was hit first then kaga last sorio as dive bombers from Yorktown joined the assault aircraft from the remaining Japanese carrier meanwhile hit Yorktown but the losses in aircraft were great [Music] done by the score One Flew slap into this thank you these losses meant that hiru though she remained active was weakly protected and in the last carrier action of June 4th came under attack from The Dauntless dive bombers so that as the sun set all four Japanese carriers were sinking Yorktown 2 was in a bad State and had to be abandoned during the night of the 4th of June Japan's four carriers were either sunk or scuttled the main Japanese force had by now sailed to within range of the midway-based B-17 and these attacked as during the sixth the American Fleet searched the Seas and passports secondary we hit the carriers any luck with them [ __ ] right in there the Yorktown was taken in tow but both the carrier and the Destroyer Hammer that had come to her age was sunk by Torpedoes from a Japanese submarine news of the engagement was passed to prime minister Tojo in Tokyo in suitably formal courtly Style the Navy he was told by General muritaki tanabi has made a great mistake Midway was a decisive naval battle whose outcome was decided not by ships but by almost 500 aircraft Midway has always been a candidate for turning point was the outcome of the war in the Pacific decided in those two days of Naval action what happened placed the American and Japanese fleets on an approximately equal footing what happened next most influenced the course of the war between midway and 1944 Japan built six new Fleet carriers the United States built 14. America is building Freighters by day and night red hot rivets and red hot rivet catches are on the job now turning out the ships and the ships are delivering the goods the production capacity was Central to what happened in the rest of the war of the city the American industrial machine was gearing up in 1942 and its products really started to come out in Mass numbers in 1943. if Midway was a Victory at Sea it was made decisive by the shipyards and factories that could make good the losses in a way that Japan simply could not match the Japanese on the other hand had no similar mass building program nor the ability to mobilize such large numbers of educated people and I think that's a very important point it's not just the extraordinary American industrial output that gave you so many aircraft carriers so many aircrafts so many battleships and so many other ships it was this extraordinary ability to take an educated population and train them for people who'd never seen the sea to go out and be effective Sailors officers at all levels Hitler's position after a disastrous winter on the Russian front placed him in a dilemma either he was push on into the Caucasus and dangerously extend his front or he must somehow can drive to do without the vital Caucasian oil field [Music] when with Summer the German assault on the Soviet Union was renewed there were 51 German divisions across Europe and 167 on the Eastern Front [Music] they were supported by 30 from various access Partners and sympathizers in a sense Germans are offensive of 1942 was like Barbarossa remastered yet again the Germans were facing this enormous Fields a lot of resistance they were taken a lot of prisoners of War so the idea behind it was that now the Soviet Union will collapse and now the Russian resistance will die down which happened and not happen at the same time German battle plans were designated full or case and identified by color case blue the plan for the summer offensive of 1942 was detailed as directive 41 and issued in April the major role was to be shouldered by fonbox Army group South [Music] the prize would be the Caucasus and while the jewel in that particular Crown was the oil fields from the perspective of wide strategy and Advance into the Caucasus also meant advancing the front past Moscow the Nazis would have a face from which to launch a flanking attack on Moscow with one master stroke the Russian armist of South would be practically cut off from Caucasus oil in a preliminary action Von manstein's 11th Army attacked in the Crimea on May 8th four days later completely surprising the Germans the Russians launched their own offensive timoshenko commanding the Southwest theater exploiting the Salient that had been created south of Kharkov Germany had plans to nip out the salient the Russians beat them to it by six days so operation fredericus was brought forward [Music] in three days the Russians had penetrated more than 40 kilometers but they were over cautious in committing their armor when Von kleist attacked with 15 divisions and Von Palace brought the sixth Army in on the flank Stalin refused to bury the offensive order when Army group Christ and the sixth Army on the 22nd trapped the Soviet forces in the pocket they had tried to exploit only 22 000 Soviet troops managed to escape the encirclement failed offensive cost the Soviet Union almost a quarter of a million men taken prisoner and now the main German offensive could begin the six armies of army Group B moved at the end of June by the 6th of July they had crossed the dawn the next day the Russians evacuated varanesh Von kleist's first Panzer Army would turn south crossing the dawn close to where it entered the Sea of azov forcing malinowsky's South front back and reaching the oil fields at makeup on August 9th true they did capture a few but this was the scene when they got there the Russians carrying out their scorched Earth policy with complete tunnels had themselves fired the Wells on the storage tanks foreign on the following day August 10th Von Powers crossed the Dawn and reached the outskirts of Stalingrad the advanced into the Caucasus continue and on August 23rd the swastika was hoisted on Europe's highest peak Mount Elders 5642 meters [Applause] this is the high point of the German Advance into Russia but the deeper they go into Russia the bigger the problem becomes and the very same day that day they raised the flag on Mount Elbrus they also enter Stalingrad so in a sense the German success carries within it the seeds of its own destruction the battle for the Caucasus and occupation of the vital oil fields had been won but the outcome of the battle for Russia and for the living space in the East that Hitler had promised to the German people was very finely balanced [Applause] thank you the British have a tradition of leaders who bring to the Art of War a sort of mystery mysticism charisma old Charles Wingate was very much of that lineage he had a background in guerrilla warfare in Fort gorilla campaign in Palestine before the war he is a man who propounded his beliefs advocated his beliefs with Messianic zeal he was argumentative and wouldn't take no for an answer he was a very difficult subordinate wingate's idea Advanced for its time and causing him to argue long and hard with his superiors was for a special force that could operate Behind Enemy Lines deep penetration was the expression and the very technical term was asymmetric Warfare Japanese would then have to divert troops from the front line deal with these issues in their rear he prosaically called it having your hand in the enemy's bowels that idea took hold it was decided to give it a try and the 77th Brigade was created is based on groups of British Indian and Gurkha troops with Commandos signalers Burmese guides and interpreters they would go behind the Japanese lines as Wingate intended and they were called chindits because the chin did was a mythical Burmese creature that guarded Buddhist temples here they are for the first time in newsreels the Nets a name from Legend that's become Flesh and Blood living guardians of Burma's safety [Music] the first intention was to incorporate the deep penetration tactic into a larger campaign but when that was canceled Wingate persuaded General wavel in overall command to allow the chindit operation to go ahead that action became known as operation longcloth it was first and foremost an attempt to prove wingate's concept and the force numbered just three thousand on February 13 1943 the chindits crossed the chinwin river and entered Burma modern Myanmar two days later they engaged Japanese troops [Music] had been out fought and outmaneuvered just where they thought that they were safely tucked away two columns marched South but they were a deception five columns the main campaign marched East two making for the main north-south Railway with sabotage in mind on March 4th one column succeeded in its aims wrecking the railway in as many as 70 places the Japanese quickly repaired the railway The Raid didn't cause any disruption to their plans or dispositions and it didn't inflict many casualties it also consumed a large slice of the air resources and other resources in the Burma theater where resources were very scarce [Music] Wingate himself repeatedly changed plans and destinations but Communications were poor not least because the terrain was harsh and the columns were Behind Enemy Lines so column commanders were not always informed of wingate's new intentions the nature of the operation and terrain meant that the men were heavily burdened with supplies the fight for months cut off in the jungle is an all-important pocket knew how vital it is to carry the things you need it also meant that frequently the wounded had to be left where possible in the care of villages the resupply by air a single RAF Squadron of six aircraft was responsible was adequate but lack of a clear objective was becoming an issue Wingate elected to cross the erawadi but here terrain was difficult and the Japanese were able to maneuver in a way that threatened to trap wingate's command in an Ever Contracting box with his forward elements now operating at the extreme limit of the range of Air Supply Wingate decided in late March to withdraw his Force here the decision to cross the irawadi took an awful toll the need to cross the river to return to India meant that the Japanese could concentrate their forces along its banks and as soon as an attempted Crossing was cited numbers could be concentrated to contest The Crossing thank you the losses were catastrophic Wingate was wrong in thinking that the Japanese would be panicked because of some issues in their rear areas that was never going to happen they were easily able to seal these chinted penetrations off this forced The Columns to fragment and small groups of men continued to trickle back to their base until the end of April three thousand had set up 818 did not return killed wounded or taken prison of the 2187 who did return about 600 so weakened by sickness or their wounds would never return to active service operation longcloth had then halved the effectiveness of the force that set out on its three-month campaign a battle lost but one from which Wingate Drew many lessons Wingate is convinced that these long-range penetrations by his chindits are the best way of taking the war to the Japanese the best way of regaining Burma in his mind conventional operations were now subsidiary and he was able to get the resources needed to mount a much larger raid in 1944. but Wingate would not play a significant role in March the plane on which he was traveling crashed and he was killed he was 41 years old women has lost but we know that his teaching will bear fruit and due costs these are the men of the long-range penetration group they are fighting behind the Enemy Lines in Burma has made them a name throughout the world that is the Epitaph for Charles oddwingen [Music] thank you as summer warmed the Soviet soil in 1944 the entire Eastern Front moved a dozen Soviet Army groups from the corellian front in the North to the third Ukrainian front on the shores of the Black Sea were in some way involved in a great offensive that Stalin had named for a hero of the Napoleonic Wars Operation bagration at its heart the drive to expel German forces which still stood in great numbers on Soviet soil it was the drive on the Vistula and its climax coincided with the breakout from normal the Germans were in big trouble in the western Maine needed to shore up the Western Front the problem was that exactly the same time the Russians put in a huge offensive 1.7 million men over the entire front and they were in a position to do in 1944 what the Germans had done with Operation Barbarossa in 1941 [Music] in preliminaries the 21st Army of the Leningrad front began the attack the carillion front joining the offensive 10 days later on both fronts the things armed by the Germans and supported by one German division [Music] were driven back [Music] and then on June 22nd the day after the corellian front had moved and the third anniversary of the German invasion of Russia operation bagration opened um foreign the Soviets had deployed 300 guns per kilometer on a 560 kilometer front from Smolensk through to Minsk in belarusa as always Russian Artillery has been the Soviet advance the Soviet France began their surge towards four axis Army groups Junior koski's third Belarusian moved on the 23rd rokusovsky's first Belarusian the next day and they Advanced tenaciously for 10 weeks and it was that attack that broke through and was so effective in Blitzkrieg type tactics which you'd seen developing since style and grad worked very successfully in the Counterattack at Kursk in 1943 the Russians are pretty good at this by 1944. the first Baltic front General burgramian and the third Belarusian front churniakovsky opened the vitensk Porsche offensive driving into Lithuania while Soviet forces are annihilating Germans in for another hundreds have been driving on at the rate of 21 Latvia into Lithuania closing rapidly on the very birthplace of Germany's incorrigible military cult East Prussian foreign [Music] if they're actually available again on the huge Eastern Front tanks go forward in pursuit of other retreating Germans by the 27th the tips had fallen and the third Panzer Army was lost [Music] fortification very heavy punishment and defenses which Hitler thought to be an almost impregnable barrier were now overrun grokosovski's first Belarusian front was swinging up towards Minsk chern yakovsky swinging down to meet him second Belarusian front General zakarov crossed the river Nipa aiming directly for Minsk these Russian newsreels also show the crossing of the deeper together this was carried out by bridge and vote under continuous fire but it was carried out as we all know third Belarusian front reached and crossed the river barazina the next day in two weeks operation bagration had penetrated 160 kilometers on a 400 kilometer front Army group centers 37 divisions were pulverized by 166 Soviet divisions supported by 2700 tanks and 1 300 assault guns seven of army group centers generals had been killed in the action second Belarusian front continued its Advance this was the mogalev offensive which forced opposing troops back on the berazine where they would be trapped Dharma foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] his Engineers having crossed them with wooden causeways by June 27th he had encircled two German Corps east of Bob Routh which was liberated on June 29th the Allies had landed at Normandy three weeks previously but to contrast the scale of the operations for the duration of the summer German casualties in the East outstripped those in the west by four to one ninety percent of all Germans killed in combat died on the Eastern Front more between July 1944 and May 45. than in the preceding five years I think the Germans simply didn't have the resources they were massively outgunned in every field even in the air in tanks in Mobile artillery artillery Manpower they just were being beaten down by vastly Superior forces are not that have been coming in 41 42 43 by the time they got to 44 you're really dealing with an Army in in serious trouble the Minsk offensive pressed on fifth Panzer Division was rushed forward to plug approaches to the city but on July the 3rd the second guard's tank Corps of the Red Army broke into the city by the end of July 4th the city had fallen forty thousand of its Defenders encircled and army group Center destroyed the advance continued with the successful results which we know not the least of these results have been more prisoners just one instance of the increasing drain on German Manpower [Music] means foreign [Music] by July the 11th Germany had lost 28 divisions more than 30 generals had been killed or captured and the Red Army had Advanced 650 kilometers rokusovski's forces reached the river bug the original Polish border they reached the Eastern banks of the Vistula on the 25th and turned to threaten Warsaw at the end of this campaign the Russians are right next to Warsaw they're right next to plowesti in Romania they're about to take the last oil fields away from the Germans [Music] Stalin held Gathering his strength for the final devastating assault that would carry the Red Army into Berlin and see the Soviet flag hoisted on the ruins of the reichstag foreign [Music] y Landings the Allies poured more and more men and material ashore and as they moved away from their beachhead the lines of Supply extended and the need for Supply increased every conceivable kind of material requiring thousands of ships and landing craft to ensure steady progress against a determined enemy suddenly no picnic these days being in one of the army supply organizations as the campaign moved into the second half of 1944 the situation became critical the failure to take Dunkirk was a setback the Belgian Port of Antwerp potentially vital was in Allied Hands by early September and it was virtually undamaged but the Marine approaches to Antwerp were unique and they posed a problem the port sits at the mouth of the shout ships entering must sail up the Estuary and the Estuary was flanked along the channel by German defenses and guarded at its mouth by the island of valkyrin General fonzingen recently sent to take over 15th Army energetically built up the defenses determined to deny use of Antwerp to the allies this battle of course was a vital part of the struggle to free the approaches to Antwerp and the importance of Antwerp as a Supply Port certainly needs no stressing Canadian divisions faced the Estuary and launched their assault in late October the force arrived early in the morning and landed in the face of heavy opposition on a small beachhead which was under continuous fire from German batteries in land the second division pressed across the peninsula and into South Babylon taking horse on October 29th they were moving to link up with other units that had come in from the scene fourth special service Brigade as it was then called now fourth Commando landed on valkyrin on November 1st rather whimsically their action was called operation infatuated 47th and 48th Commandos landed on the northwest tip of the island and an infantry Brigade with Commando elements on the southwest tip and from the violence of the enemy's defense two things are perfectly clear first the value of Germany placed on denying Antwerp to us second the Supreme determination skill and courage of our troops making this frontal assault on the valkyr and beachhead spinning around and it's in the Sun and shouting something like take cover to the lads and where did they go the balance is a German pillbox or something not the ones who fired at us but the ones who were just about to give up the Canadians having fought their way through bavaland crossed the slow channel on the third the island was an unpleasant place to fight the RAF had breached local dikes and the ground was flooded but by the eighth fonzangan's defense had been defeated and as soon as a channel had been cleared through the mines Allied Shipping began to use Antwerp by the opening of the great Port of Antwerp with its miles of docks and its vast facilities for the landing of supplies our minesweepers have magnificently rounded off the work of the armies in Holland Supply securing material for one's own army or denying it to the enemy grew more vital as War became more mechanized the use of the great Port of Antwerp was a significant game for the Allied Forces as they prepared themselves for the advance across Europe towards the Rhine and Beyond its significance was not lost on German High command attempt to defend the approaches to Antwerp had failed but the idea of launching a drive that could retake the port or at least deny it to the Allies was brought into German planning [Music] could enough material enough men be marshaled to make a surprise counter thrust almost mirroring the first great Blitzkrieg that had dashed to the channel in 1940. and if such a counter-offensive could be launched might it not alter the outcome of the war the eyes of the German High command returned to that part of the front where they had so successfully attacked when the war first crashed into France the odd ends [Applause] the war in the West Was it seemed moving steadily predictably to its climax on the 8th of November the day that pattern began his offensive in the Tsar the French first Army moved on the Balfour Gap by the middle of the month there were formations in motion all along the line the American first and Ninth armies to the north of Patton elements of the U.S seventh entering Strasbourg on the second and the sixth entering the Maginot Line on the day that the first vessels entered and started to use the port of Antwerp operation watch on the line as as this operation was called from the German site was the last major German offensive of World War II they were being squeezed between the the Russians who were advancing in the East and the British and American and other Allied Forces who were coming at them from the west and so Hitler had to do something he couldn't just fight a a rare God action that would always just end in disaster properly labeled the Arden's counter-offensive history remember Ed as the Battle of the Bulge as we approached the Battle of the Bulge the Germans were about to attack in a place that they had attacked in 1870 in 1914 1940 and now they're about to do it at 1944 and as in every other attack they will be successful in achieving complete surprise where the Germans surged the 145 kilometer front was held by four American divisions with one inexperienced Armored Division for ninth in support two of the four infantry divisions had been sent to the quiet art dens to recuperate and a third the 106th had never been in action on to this Force fell two Panzer armies which in ours had created an 80 kilometer Salient the Bulge in 24 hours the initiative changed hands the German Army which had put the word Blitzkrieg into all languages Unleashed its desperate offensive [Music] bombardment had pushed Allied heads down before the armor came forward on the under cover of heavy fog which neutralized Allied air superiority it may not be like 1918 but it's certainly not like 1940. has won a success how big remains to be seen progress in the north fell behind schedule but first Panzer Corp made good ground and was dashing for the murders Bridges fifth Panzer Army brushed aside the 106th slowed against the Xperia it was late afternoon before Allied High command realized that what was happening was an all-out offensive rather than a faint the Allies were taken completely by surprise they were overconfident they were so busy planning how they would take Hitler's forces apart it didn't seem to really occur to anybody that he was making a plan to take their forces apart our Command was taken totally by surprise so they reacted in an extreme everything that could fly flew to bomb their supply train [Music] remember seeing the sky just filled with airplanes it was really quite a sight Allied confusion was increased in part due to the discovery of 150 Germans who dressed as Americans had penetrated Allied lines under the command of Otto scorsony the man who in September 1943 had rescued Mussolini as part of operation watch on the Rhine Hitler came up with the idea of creating an infiltration force that would get through the Allied lines in order to capture the key bridges on the River Muse but really they real impact ironically came when the first unit was captured and it suddenly became known to the Americans that there were these Germans wandering around behind their lines dressed as Americans in with American equipment and panic and shoot so suddenly everybody was suspicious of everybody else on the 18th Eisenhower haltered the Advance on the Rhine and gave priority to repelling the Ardennes offensive the German Onslaught slowed fuel was becoming a problem by the 22nd the sixth Panzer Army had stopped altogether units were losing contact with each other fifth Panzer Army which had surrounded by Stone was pushing forward but that is as far as the Germans got the third U.S army under pattern now brought pressure from the south and with the weather clearing the overwhelming Allied Air Supremacy started to tell [Music] perhaps no General other than Patton in the western side anyway could have been quite as successful at turning his army to come to the rescue of those at the stone he drove his forces hard they got there quickly and it was a very impressive example of the skill of generalship but I think it's too easy to oversimplify and say that the battle was won because of patent that this was Patton's Victory there were many facets that in the end resulted in the Germans being defeated the attack was blunted the spearhead stopped the Nazi columns contained and thrown back by men who had flung themselves into the breach [Music] the Ardennes offensive cost each side about 80 000 casualties losses from which the Allies could recover but not the axis the Germans yes they were able to concentrate significant forces in that theater but they couldn't sustain them they couldn't replace the forces that they lost and they just didn't have the supplies to keep their Force going Americans could always do that they had that capability the German offensive had been blocked and then reversed the losses inflicted equal those sustained and with the counter-offensive axis forces were falling back all along the front the Bulge had held up the Allied push across the Rhine for six weeks but it had only been held up crossing the Rhine was the last barrier before Eisenhower's armies poured into the Fatherland we'd want to be the thrust into Mainland Germany and all we knew was Germany was across the river and we all piddled in the river for good luck Patton crossed the Rhine at oppenheim the next night Montgomery crossed at emmerich the battle was won German soil was underfoot and the war in Europe that had started 68 months earlier was almost over water in the Pacific has moved so fast that there may be a danger of underrating the enemy let no one imagine that recent victories in the Pacific indicate a walk over the Japanese continue to fight back with the fanaticism quite unknown in the West by early 1945 Japan is plainly beaten on any objective measure the Japanese empire cannot win the war but the Japanese culture military culture especially will not allow the Japanese to acknowledge that so Japan has to be battered into submission to do that the Allies the Americans especially need to build air bases to build air bases they need islands and to need if they need Islands they need Okinawa for the invasion of Okinawa 430 assault transports had been loaded at 11 ports from Seattle to Leyte on April 1st 1 300 ships were masked offshore and the first waves of the 155 000 men of General Simon Bolivar Buckner's 10th Army three Marine and four Army divisions began going ashore [Music] they met very little opposition but before the island fell American forces involved would have numbered three hundred thousand [Music] General ushijima commanding the Japanese 32nd Army had pulled his forces back deciding not to contest The Landing but to meet The Invasion south of the shuri line by the end of the first day Buckner had 60 000 men ashore General ushijima's strategy to defend Okinawa is to sell it at the highest human price so he doesn't waste lives meeting The Americans on the beaches for example Japanese withdraw into the interior and they basically say come get us and that means the Americans have to expend lives in order to kill Japanese in order to gain Victory and that the Japanese strategy is about the most simple and brutal you can imagine the ships riding at anchor tell a different story The Invasion fleet was battered by the Japanese weapon of Last Resort the suicide bomb just minutes after four o'clock it hit the superstructure everything went black we know we were ahead because we were effed on the machine we have to show you forward was still good over the next few days the Japanese launched Kamikaze assaults on The Invasion Fleet which did not wholly relent in all the weeks of fighting that lay ahead [Music] is coming out with a direct hit on the out of the Essex class he's caused casualties and damage on board an enemy ship and it's for just that purpose that his own life was written off from the first day of his training by the end of the Okinawa campaign the suicides of 1465 kamikaze pilots had accounted for 29 ships sunk 120 damaged and 3048 Sailors killed it was a common cause he took us off we found his body with a parachute couldn't understand why he had a power shot because he might have been shut down and he could bail out what's the answer today I will tell you this and this is hard for me to tell you he did his job when he did it well on the 9th of April the American Invasion Force opened its main offensive third amphibious Corps General Geiger swung North as it happens the northern thrust would meet the least resistance and the north of the island would fall first 24th Corps General Hodge landed alongside Geiger's core and swung South and here the fighting was hard against an enemy that had sworn to defend every inch to the death advancing in parallel along opposite coasts Geiger's core reached Cape hedo at the northern tip of Okinawa in less than two weeks though the motobu peninsula was not secured for another week but this time the the Americans have been fighting the Japanese for three years and they've been through some appalling battles they know what the Japanese are capable of but on Okinawa it gets even worse and it's probably the worst battle at the Americans fight in the Pacific and I mean it was the worst ordeal you could imagine worse for the Japanese because they kill themselves if they weren't killed by the Americans but both sides are suffering huge losses heroic dead of a combined Army and Marine Force marked the Grim battlefield of Okinawa where one of the bloodiest engagements of the war is being fought thousands of Yanks have been wounded and other thousands have sacrificed their lives to drive a fanatical foe from this vital base the doorstep to Japan itself [Music] in the South it was a different story The Americans came up against the well-planned fortifications of the shuri line and did not breach it and take the Island's capital naha until May 27th [Applause] shuri Castle key to the defensive line fell on May 29th with Japanese Defenders now falling back for a last stand on the southern tip of the island the fight to the last minute of the Japanese soldier was nowhere more apparent than in the fighting for Okinawa and it's estimated that out of 108 000 Japs on the island 101 000 had to be wiped out before victory was achieved most of them were blasted out one by one on June the 17th Japanese morale collapsed the Japanese started to surrender in numbers [Music] to the surprise of the Americans who had not known it elsewhere in the Pacific on June 22nd General ushijima committed suicide and you can see that they've finally decided that this was no use it takes most of the battle before that occurs and that's a sign of just how tough it's going to be to defeat the Japanese casualty lists were catastrophic Japanese casualties exceeded 110 000. America's 40 000 in battle a nearly ten thousand more to kamikaze Okinawa is not with the Pacific War finishes because the Americans and the British and that the entire Western allies know that they've got to defeat the Japanese home Islands so one of the most important consequences of Okinawa is that it feeds into the American planning for what is proposed to be the invasion of Japan and it tells the Americans that they'll not only kill lots and lots of Japanese troops and civilians but they'll lose perhaps a million troops of Their Own that figure weighed heavily in the debate that would resolve the next phase of the war the use of a new Weber so in a sense Okinawa shapes through a conflict in the second half of the 20th century

Channel: War Stories

Views: 151,166

Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, Full Documentary, Pearl Harbor, Soviet Offensive, Battle of the Atlantic, Dieppe Raid, Guadalcanal Campaign, Allied Bombing Campaign, Battle of Dakar, Leningrad, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Battle of Crete, Battle of Midway, Case Blue, Operation Longcloth, Operation Bagration, Battle of the Scheldt, Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Okinawa, WW2, Pacific Theater, Japan, Imperial Japan, WWII

Id: LrQOOW-ltuw

Length: 148min 9sec (8889 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023