The Crucial Battles That Ended WW2 | Battles Won and Lost | Timeline

[Music] 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 determine 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 appeal 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 the battles of the First World War were battles of attrition opposing armies hardly moving between lines of trenches the battles of the Second World War were different in this episode we studied tank battles blitzkrieg commando raids amphibious landings and mobile warfare in the desert in August 1914 Germany attacked through Belgium the attack failed and the conflict turned into a war of attrition which Germany was never going to win in May 1940 Hitler gambled the war in the West would end quickly or he would follow the Kaiser into oblivion Hitler is very interested in fighting very rapidly it is generals and the vermont army that is very reluctant to invade france quickly because of course they're thinking of the first world war and this is likely to take four to five years so there's a lot of emotional attachment to the idea that this is the first world war but this time Germany will win plan yellow had designed a German thrust along the lines of the opening offensive of the First World War but plan yellow had fallen into the hands of the Allies which created the opportunity for general Erich von Manstein yes France was ready to be plucked the whole force of the maps in life was turned toward the West how would they strike this time through our master Lorraine is in 1870 countries's in 1914 what was the 1940 model conquest man Stein's plan proposed an alternative route out flanking the French defensive Maginot Line not by marching through Belgium but by crashing through the forests of the our den the French are expecting Germany to come in much the same direction as they did in the first world war and this means that they're in a quandary relatively quickly because they haven't actually planned or prepared for an attack through the idea in forest first Army Group under general beot and including the British Expeditionary Force faced the Belgian border second Army Group general patella stood on the mers behind the Maginot Line and centered on the old battlefield of Verdun between them in a rear position was the Sixth Army General to shore the defensive alignment of the Allies clearly revealed the gap that the German assault would exploit the French military philosophy that they're taking into this war is really concentrating on holding a defensive line creating a stalemate on the northeastern front and not turning to a fence which is really what they retrospectively probably should have done facing them was Army Group A General von Rundstedt the two sides were evenly matched the Allies had three thousand tanks to Germany's 2,500 but the Germans had an advantage in aircraft and troops on the ground were very similar in number but the German victory turned that apparent parity upside down it was crushing the battle began on May 10th when German parachute troops secured Dutch bridge heads and glider-borne commandos took the Belgian fortress at Evan ma the 12th and 16th armies built around armor crashed through the forests of the our den and the French ninth shifting south to meet the threat disintegrated on May 12th the leading German unit crossed the mers and stood on French soil within a day the Dutch army was being ordered to fall back on the line Amsterdam Rotterdam who Trek the Netherlands was soon out of the war and the German 12th and 16th armies having crossed the mers were threatening the Allied rear and for the second time in 25 years the Allies rushed to Belgium's a movie turn cameraman shot these vivid impressions on the eve of what may well be the greatest battle in history within four days the Allies were falling back from Belgium on the 17th the French were defeated at Saddam and their Prime Minister telephoned his British counterpart to say we are beaten it can't have happened so soon Churchill said but it had the Germans were into open country sweeping up behind the Allies the main criticism you can really make of the French army is that they're slow at reacting to a new situation and this is one area where it seems the German army is faster some of the tank groups which moved to the channel go well beyond what they're supposed to do they're getting orders to halt they're getting orders to stop to let the rest of the troops come catch up but they don't do it a young commander named Irvin Rommel pretended to have lost radio contact so that he did not have to check the forward search of his 7th Panzer Division on May 18th he reached cambrai before being ordered to halt when the attack resumed three commanders Rommel in the north Reinhardt in the center Guderian in the south smashed through to the coast the Allied Force had been divided and with the 6th and 18th German armies moving forward the Allies were being pressed on two fronts once the generals do break through the French don't really counter-attack mainly because they're in a defensive mentality whereby their idea is that the best thing to do is to plug the holes in whatever line they have fall back and act defensively and this also creates further problems and after creating a defensive line they tend to spread out their tanks whereas if you're going to have offensive counter-attack you bunch them together and once you've spread them out it's actually difficult to get them back together in time to to counter-attack on May 25th Boulanger fell Calais two days later the day after the British had begun to evacuate the forces trapped at Dunkirk and the day that King Leopold offered the Belgian surrender at the beginning of June the Germans turned south smashing through allied resistance on the song the following day June 10th Italy entered the war as an ally of Germany three days later German troops entered Paris this had been the dream of the Kaiser in the last war Hitler achieved on June the 16th less than six weeks after the offensive had been launched France sought an armistice the French government has capitulated 22 years ago a great marshal of France received the surrender of the German army now his former colleague another marshal signs abject terms of surrender for front we left off enjoy 1940 went far scoffs well I want to hang on well then other daddy go wash carry on the war we had the British we decided to run the goal though Hitler himself rejected the description as a silly woman the world of warfare had learned a new term it's crude hitler meant large contingents path with superior training and equipment a country about the size of Maryland affords a new test tube for the accelerated natholi warfare blitzkrieg is a really interesting tactic because it doesn't just work tactically it works psychologically so for example everyone has this impression of the Germans that invaded France in in Panzers in powerful tanks in fact most of the German tanks were little better than bulldozers they weren't nearly as powerful as the French tanks that opposed them but those tanks weren't just fueled by by benzene they were fueled by by some sort of weird psychic projection and it said we will defeat you the tactics that facilitated rapid advance were not ad hoc they were systematic and carefully calculated artillery and aircraft went in first to prepare the ground for the assault and aircraft worked in close support of the advancing columns spotter aircraft the Vizsla store the Junkers 88 dive bomber and morale busting Stuka Stukas dive bombed the French positions the screaming sound they made didn't just destroy the French soldiers bodies destroyed their minds and said with with targeting you unleash to crush drive invader hogwash screaming noise and we dashed amongst the sand dunes and clawed at the earth trying to get underground you just fear is just overpowering and I knew then that was war the commanders of the anglo-french force made mistakes and they worked with inherited mistakes that had failed to anticipate mobile mechanized warfare in front the French army immense the Maginot Line and waited impatient by Nature the Frenchman persuaded himself that Hitler never meant to attack did Hitler the French army rotted on its feet the fall of France has to be seen above all as a victory it was a victory for a bold strategic plan Rand in concept efficient in detail and effective in deployment for initiative at all levels of command and for effective weapons designed for their coordinated roles in such an offensive the invasion of France may have been the most decisive victory ever to fail to win a war after the fall of France with most of Western Europe under Nazi control Hitler turned East invading the Soviet Union by 1943 he faced a dilemma the invasion of Italy was imminent the second front would follow but the greatest part of his force was still deep inside Soviet territory Hitler looked for a decisive action that could allow him to withdraw troops to face the threat in the West the Battle of course basically arises out of the last stages of the Battle of Stalingrad when the Soviet winter offensive began in 1941 1942 Stalin is really over extending his reach he's attempting to do too much and that's exactly what happens in Stalingrad yes the Sixth Army has been destroyed yes the Soviet forces have driven into the Caucasus and into the eastern part of the Ukraine but as they keep trying to attack lunchtime the commander of army group south is falling back on his centers of supply and resources he is able to build an operational reserve and he is actually able to strike back against overextended Soviet forces if the Red Army could be dealt a hammer blow then and only then could Hitler consider transferring divisions from the Eastern Front to meet the threat in the West [Music] the urban flow of the fighting had created a bulge in the Russian line assailant the Kursk salient is essentially named because the city of course is in the middle of this bulge and to understand it it's a very large bulge it's 250 kilometers north to south and it's about a hundred and sixty kilometers in depth and the basic idea that munch line has is after this success is a counter-offensive against the Soviets he sees an operational opportunity if we could pinch off that salient there would be an operational success there but the window of opportunity is quite short and so operations Citadel took shape it clear too that Hitler has masked his tanks and planes and men and thrown into the Sun onslaught just about the heaviest weight of material and manpower of any battle on the Eastern Front for Manstein's Army Group south would carry the battle for mine Stein planned for Walter modles 9th army with a thousand tanks to attack from the north and Herman Hoff's 4th Panzer army 1,200 tanks to swing from the south they would meet at Kursk but pinching out the Kursk salient was an obvious option has been taken by surprise for weeks to judge by their air raids in the neighborhood of RL and elsewhere they've been expecting a German push on the car still in anticipation of the attack Stalin placed central and varnish fronts under two able commanders Battuta NAND rokossovsky at the mouth of the salient Hitler delayed the Kursk offensive scheduled for May the 4th he had an increasingly passionate possibly desperate belief that the war would be won by the Wonder weapons and wanted more of the new heavy tanks sent to join the battle his commanders knew that as they waited the Soviets too were increasing their strength Stalin's decision had been to stand on the defensive some 300,000 Soviet civilians are being mobilized to build these defenses they will dig some 9,000 kilometers of trenches they will have anti-tank ditches and anti-tank traps they will have underground bunkers they will have thousands of mines per square kilometre and they're building them on the shoulders in the north and in the South anticipating that the Germans will attack into this the great battle opened on July the 4th a huge coming together of armor 900,000 German troops with two and a half thousand tanks faced 1 million three hundred thousand Russians with three thousand tanks 20,000 pieces of artillery six thousand anti-tank guns and a thousand katusha rocket launchers sonic varricchio pledged $1 commando matata cogsa billah al aliy area this is Janet ecology ecology that you're vulnerable died for succumb finality a bombardment by air and artillery again the German offensive Engineers moved forward at night to clear minefields Stroessner bomba system a new initiative is Nadia a cockroach a scenario in an ATO a new synonym that now yahoo automatically notice a chilly after smashing through the Soviet lines the two great German armies would power on join up and trap a huge Russian force in the nipped off salient but that didn't happen after 48 hours the Germans had penetrated a little over 10 kilometers in three sections of the Soviet front Hoff's formations made a strong push forcing the Russians to send reinforcements to hold the advance but progress slowed by the ninth pothe had advanced at best little over 30 kilometers with significant losses on the 10th he was obliged to bring up his reserves in the north modal was less successful than Hoth his farthest advance being barely 20 kilometers and on the 11th Zhukov and vasil levski counter-attacked Russia's replied to the opening of the attack was powerful and pumped on the 12th the Soviets brought their armoured reserve the 5th and 6th guards tank armies to prokhorovka what followed was a massive clash of mechanized forces Prokhorov sky babushki the russians call it the slaughter at prokhorovka it is really a material battle and a successful one again but the Soviets are going to lose 330 totally destroyed in prokhorovka and another 200 made non-operational these are phenomenal losses and the Germans suffer a tiny fraction of that and why is that partly it is the story of the tiger tank and the Panther tank these new tanks have much thicker armor they have much more powerful main armors and for example the tiger can engage the t-34 the standard soviet tank and far greater Rangers therefore it can destroy them before they're even in range it's in some ways a battle in some ways it's a massacre for Soviet Armour tomar una vida de bunda is nearly equal Eastern kami commando new solutions yes commander kudos private unbeliever together useless to me the granny tomato collecting loyalty Bravo did another 75 percent of the Red Army's armor and 40% of its manpower was committed to the battle as the tanks had crashed into prokhorovka the Soviet Western Bryansk runs north of that battlefield had also moved threatening the rear of models on the next day facing a growing crisis with Allied landings in Sicily demanding reinforcements Hitler called off Citadel Germans were wiped out in tens of thousands tanks in hundreds yet the figures in the Soviet communique is till Monday it's very costly to the Germans even more costly to the Soviets so in that sense it's a tactical victory you could say for the Germans but these things don't equal the one thing the Germans need which is extremely high operational successes to balance out the superior Soviet production and access to manpower by now only one side could rebound from such a contest rather than free divisions for transfer to the west hitler's gamble had sacrificed men and armor that he could not easily replace Panzer General Heinz Guderian said that for Germany Kursk was a decisive defeat Kursk is important and Kursk is the end of the German initiative on the Eastern Front but in some ways it's the end of the German initiative on the Eastern Front because the Soviets themselves realize it's in their interests to let the Germans exhaust themselves on fixed defenses before they begin a much larger counter-offensive that will carry through the rest of the summer right into the autumn seas enormous tracts of German territory and destroy a lot of German equipment by July the 15th the central front began to move two days later the southwest front advanced and by mid-august the battle was over the Russians were at the outskirts of Kharkov and the last German offensive of the Eastern Front had come to nothing from now on Germany would be on the defensive all the way to Berlin [Applause] the rapidity with which the Third Reich swept over and imposed the rule of occupation on such a vast part of Europe encouraged a form of warfare that had been little practiced operations behind the lines but the Second World War gave a real impetus to the formal organization of Special Operations units formed and trained specifically for such actions [Music] Churchill as a young man had been a war correspondent and a soldier in the anglo-boer war in South Africa he'd been very impressed with the highly mobile forces of the Boer opposition he wanted something along those lines small raiding forces that couldn't strike at the Germans but without requiring mattered forces and so he ordered that these units be created he gave them the name of the boy units in the Boer War any called them commandos it was such units commando units that carried out the raid on San Nazir it was called Operation chariot concern for the safety of merchant shipping was behind the raid Britain so long in receipt of the bounty of its vast maritime Empire was despite vigorous wartime efforts dependent on imports for much of its essentials there were two main threats to the Atlantic convoys one were the you votes that was the biggest threat anti-submarine devices have improved and increased but so have submarines and the allies can never have too many escort ships to hunt them and destroyed but behind them was the German surface fleet and particularly their four major battleships they operated out of bases on the French coast and importantly from one base with one very significant feature on the night of the 27th of March an obsolete naval destroyer HMS Campbeltown and especially created commando force attacked the naval base at Sana's Air their objective the drydock the Normandy dock which could accommodate even the largest of German battleships if they could decommission the facility any axis vessel in need of repair would be forced to make the much longer journey north the location was problematic not on an open stretch of coast but tucked into the estuary of the Loire with narrow channels confined by shoals making the approach to the dock easily defensible but British intelligence learned that the most powerful German capital ship Tirpitz was about to join the creeks marine [Music] the plan was to ram campbelltown into the dock gates and detonate the time-delayed explosives hidden on board to render the dock unusable it was an enormous ly risky plan the port itself was heavily defended the attackers were outnumbered something like eight to one the defenders had heavy coastal artillery even on the way there it was risky the task force faced danger of u-boats and in fact at one point the escorts had to pull away from the Campbeltown in order to chase away u-boat they were also at risk from the air from the Luftwaffe so it was highly risky and surprise was absolutely essential [Music] but the strong and clearly alert German defenses rendered useless all of the small boats that had been the commandos intended means of escape they were forced to fight and they did they managed to blow up the dock but it came at an incredible cost almost 2/3 of the force that carried out the raid were either killed or captured so it is a it was an enormous ly costly operation it did however have the intended effect Tirpitz never did relocate from her base in Norway and so the Atlantic convoys were protected from that potential threat almost one in four of the Raiders received some form of gallantry award and the highest such award in the British Army the Victoria Cross was awarded apart from achieving the immediate goals the raid had other important effects on the war one of which was simply to massively boost British morale it came at a particularly dark time when Singapore just fallen and so it was really important from that aspect as well but also it up raged Hitler he was enraged by the audacity of this attack and he ordered the construction of 15,000 heavily armed and heavily fortified bunkers along the Atlantic coast to prevent raids of this kind in the future which of course had the effect of drawing resources away from the Eastern Front which was very important at that time the success of San Nazaire added to confidence gained from amphibious actions of Norway particularly the Vargo raid and the British were encouraged they planned more ambitious raids an amphibious assault on Dieppe was approved and codenamed Jubilee yesterday morning at 2:41 a.m. general Jodl the representative of the German High Command and a band admiral turnit signed the act of unconditional surrender to the Allied expeditionary 14 and simultaneously to the Soviet I command the war in Europe was over everyone realized perfectly well that although the German war was over the Japanese war was not there was only one possible outcome in the East but the fighting continued on the Asian mainland a great Japanese offensive in China had been checked and Japanese troops had evacuated Burma in the Pacific the steady island by Island approach to Japan itself was continuing it have been decided by the allies of that they're very a sustained bombing campaign of Japan before an invasion for obvious reasons this is essentially the an extension of the strategy in Europe to do that Okinawa and Iwo Jima had to be taken they were forged staging bases b-29s all they had been in a position to fly over Japan before but they could now be concentrated and most importantly p-51s long-range fighters could escort the Bombers so by getting that close to Japan that would not multiply the effect of the Allied air offensive the Japs had spent years fortifying Iwo Jima or as distance goes in the Pacific it lies right under Pam's doston more than 1,200 kilometers south of Tokyo one of the volcano group of islands EVO Jima has an area of just over 20 square kilometers in early 1944 major-general terumichi Kuribayashi and the man of the hundred and ninth division had been sent to turn evil Jima into an impregnable fortress and to defend it Kuribayashi was seen off by the emperor in person he was not expected to return to Japan on the morning of February 19th the first wave of the men of the 3rd 4th and 5th Marine divisions landed on Iwo Jima if their losses were too great the Pacific strategy may have been thrown into doubt the Japanese had a way of making underwater swimmers strap a bomb on her head swing on the water and bounce their head into the ship and we had to stand over the rail what rifles to shoot them as they were coming towards the ship Marines of the 4th and 5th divisions went in towards the beaches under covering fire from their own ships but also under heavy fire from Japanese batteries in welcome rocki positions on the volcanic island curry by ah she's plan was to hold fire until the beach was congested with Marines and all their equipment Korea bah she decided that he would dig in he would not contest the landings so in that sense it was a different sort of battle he only had 22,000 troops and most of those were to die but it was highly effective the Marines were ready for suicide bands eye attacks but these did not come curry by ah she who believed them to be wasteful had forbidden them Iwo Jima was a tough battle because a Mount Suribachi they were bombarding it but they weren't making any progress because of the tunnels that were dug there as the battle ground on the Japanese grew short of food water and ammunition on February 23rd Marines reached the top of Mount Suribachi and six of them hoisted the flag and Joe Rosenthal took one of the wars most famous photographs hiking Mount Suribachi of course is now the symbol of an American flag right so close to Japan that such great loss so it plays well in the American narrative the flag rising over here with German is really the American flag rising over the Asia Pacific the taking of Suribachi was not the end of the fight Japanese positions held out in the north of lladhina and it went on for a month on 22,000 on a pinpoint island so a three marine divisions virtually the entire Marine Corps and then they had to grind their way to the other end of the island so that was a fight from to go to loan in the end the Japanese did resort to the Banzai charge finally closing the battle for Iwo Jima on March 25th through the slit of attack one of the cameramen recorded this picture of the attack on motoyama airfield there goes a [ __ ] crawling to cover for the last time on the 27th general Kuribayashi committed suicide taking the island had cost the Americans 6,800 dead more than a third of the Marine Corps dead for the whole war 216 Japanese had been captured from a garrison of 22,000 the others were killed in battle committed suicide or hid in the caves from which they were painstakingly prized in the years ahead the last surrendering in 1949 when they were finally persuaded that the war was over got to place directly opted to book let's go play what would you buy there was nothing Adam where Bush dock park what is in the part of it is it possibly nothing they just write the follow Tobruk mattered it was the best port for miles in either direction and it was a key to the supply of the armies in North Africa so we're thinking about that vast coastline and Mediterranean so Brooke is important because there has a deep water Harbor by possessing Tobruk it meant that a military force freed itself up from having transported supplies and ammunition as fuel all the way from dribbling going back the other way it meant that if you were advancing westward from the direction of Egypt that you could bring troops supplies ammunition forward so it really lessened the reliance upon the roads as a means of conveying logistics the first phase of the war in North Africa had gone badly for the Italians but things changed after they were reinforced by their allies the Germans landed the Africa Corps under the command of Irvin Rommel Tobruk was held by the 9th Australian division general Leslie Morshead meanwhile a new flag was hoisted by the others making it perfectly clear as to whom the place novel of Morshead was ordered to hold the port for eight weeks he held on for five months at the end of March Rommel began to move the Afrika core engaged and drove back the British 2nd armored at Mercer Brega the Italian breccia division advanced on the left flank through Benghazi the german 54th supported on the right by the italian Arrietty moved south of the Jebel Akhdar forum Akili where on april 6th the chaotic nature of the British withdrawal was highlighted by the capture of two generals NIEM and O'Connor on April 11th Rommel began to attack Tobruk which had been reinforced by C with the dispatch of an Australian infantry brigade and a few tanks Churchill's decision to support the defense of Greece had weakened the Allied position in North Africa force W 4 divisions strong had been dispatched from Alexandria in March but Morshead had organized his command effectively and Rommels first assaults on Tobruk were repelled if Morshead and his garrison could hold out that would be a victory whoring Tobruk was key to the outcome of war in the desert in 1941 it's split Rommels force had to fall in two fronts besieging the garrison as well as pushing towards egyptian frontier so long as the royal navy controlled the Mediterranean Tobruk could be resupplied and defended forces rotated the Australian ninth was relieved while the city was still besieged Rommel was inclined to ignore to Brook and drive on to the canal but because the port could be resupplied and reinforced leaving it in his rear was hardly an option but his attack failed at great cost we came to the successful defense of Tobruk was really down in many ways to the aggressive attitude of his defenders particularly Major General Mosley more said in addition to having a very strong outer line he also pursued a policy of defense in depth and what that really means the soldiers went out every day Dean trenches laying minefields placing barbed wire so you could build up the internal defenses although Tobruk has had a pretty good bashing it still holds up more than that it's a real thorn in the enemy's side Major General Pallas who would find unwanted fame as the defeated general at Stalingrad arrived to review Ronald's actions and initially allowed further attempts to break through although Morshead proved adept at swinging his limited forces to meet threats the axis had by early May overrun his first line perimeter defense to a depth of almost 5 kilometers despite the success Pallas refused requests for the attack on Tobruk to be renewed the defenders didn't know it at the time but they had had a victory the German decision to step back from Tobruk and create a defensive position at Gazala was one of those orders intercepted by ultra and decoded at Bletchley Park it encouraged Churchill to order Wavell commanding the Allied Force onto the offensive but his forces were not yet strong enough thrust to solemn and her fire meant counter thrust and the British were pushed back over the Egyptian border [Music] Tobruk remained besieged under air and ground for 241 days Tobruk held out the Allies knew that axis troops would halt at Gazzara so they began planning for the relief of the port [Music] the first Tobruk relief operation codenamed brevity was launched in mid-may it failed [Music] the second operation battle-ax followed in june it also failed which led to a change in North African command the new British commanders began planning for a new campaign operation Crusader one of the outcomes of the experience of brevity of battle-ax is that very start to look at the way that their forces are structured they start to learn particularly from their enemies from the Germans the way that they combine armor and artillery you see the concept of the brigade group becoming the standard mid level Organization for the British and Commonwealth forces in in North Africa and that Brigade group is formed around three battalions of infantry we've attached armor with its own artillery support so that you have a much more balanced combined arms force by November 41 the Allied Force reorganized as the Eighth Army outnumbered the axis with more men more tanks and a three-to-one superiority in airpower viii moved from its defensive position into core xxx which had most of the armor and would draw the Africa Corps into battle and 13th which would move to and along the coast the garrison in Tobruk was ordered to effect a breakout to coordinate and link up with the advancing troops whilst these British plans were being formulated Rommel was planning a new assault on Tobruk by chance the British moved first launching crusader at Oh 600 on November 18th the Tobruk breakout was to follow on the 21st leading the 30th core the 7th Armoured Brigade advanced Northwest for Tobruk 22nd armored brigade covering their left flank followed by the first South Africans 2nd New Zealand division of the 13th Corps made its advance with the Indian 5th covering the right advancing to barrio Rommel believed that Barrio would be enveloped and initially sent Africa Corps to meet the challenge but he soon realized where the threat lay and turned them to the relief of Sudhir is a where the airfield had already fallen [Music] British armor now started to suffer badly from the Panzers and particularly from one of the most effective weapons of the war the Germans in particular were well served by the 88 millimeter anti-aircraft gun it wasn't originally designed for use against tanks but it was a high-velocity gun which was found to be very effective once dug in at destroying the British tanks now remember they would lose in tanks like mad to the ATH in fact to try watch the German 88 it fired six shots and burned up five tanks the toll on the Allied Force was tremendous by late on the 20th 4th armored that had advanced in support of 13th Corps was below 2/3 of its original strength but Rommel was also faltering he was starting to run short of fuel and ammunition the next day 70th division inside besieged Tobruk made the breakout when our big push in Libya began the Tobruk has broke out too now they set out to join up with our comrades of the 8th Donny to raise the siege to cut off Rommel and his Panthers near the Germans of the 7th Armoured scheduled to move up in support of the breakout had reports from patrols of enemy armor and was obliged to meet this threat by the end of the day the 7th had lost 130 of its 160 tanks Rommel now switched his attack this maneuver became the famous dash to the wire the wire being the Libya Egypt border what we need to remember at this point in time that Rommel is a very long way from his main source of supplies so he's drive to the wire really taxed his his forces it didn't manage to achieve what he wanted to do but then given that he was now short on fuel he was now short on ammunition he was starting to lose tank streams through maintenance issues he then had to start falling back by now the 70th out of Tobruk had linked up with the New Zealand division advancing parallel with the coast at el Duda failing to deal with this Rommel was obliged to fall back on the defensive line he had established at Ghazala Tobruk had been relieved and though it was ultimately an inconclusive victory it was one that the British were happy to trumpet their first land victory against the axis since the war had begun it shows British and Commonwealth forces are still fighting against the Germans we're not giving up and this is important to show the Americans at hey don't write us off we still in this war against Hitler and Mussolini don't forget us we're not a spent force diss yet Rommel continued his withdrawal and the operation ended when Bardia fell to the 8th Army On January 17th while all this was happening the war was changing in far more significant ways Japanese aircraft had attacked Pearl Harbor the war had become global and Britain now had a new and very powerful ally [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, crucial battle, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, world war 2, world war ii, pearl harbor, history shows, history channel, history channel shows, united states, battle of midway, world war, world war two, crucial battles in history, crutial battle

Id: S3ConGVLV5A

Length: 49min 13sec (2953 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020