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00:30In the high summer of 1941, following a desperate plea for help by Mussolini, the disastrous
00:42Italian war effort is rescued as German forces move south, shoring up their fascist ally
00:49and securing the southern flank of the Axis.
00:53In effecting the rescue of the Italians, the forces of Nazism march to ever greater victories,
00:59bringing ever larger territories under their dominion.
01:03In just weeks, the lightning successes of the Blitzkrieg of 1940 are matched as German
01:09forces sweep southwards, bringing an avalanche of war to the Balkans.
01:15Yugoslavia and Greece collapse within days.
01:19In Yugoslavia, the German attack reopens ancient enmities and wounds.
01:24Yugoslav starts to attack Yugoslav.
01:28The Greek defense, aided by British troops, is valiant, but nevertheless ends in a Mediterranean
01:34Dunkirk as 50,000 troops are evacuated from the Greek mainland.
01:40Many escape to the Greek island of Crete, but the island proves no refuge as the Germans
01:46pursue their enemy and fill the skies above the wine-dark sea with parachutes as German
01:52airborne assault brings savage fighting, ending in further defeat and evacuation.
02:00America slowly realizes that it cannot stand aloof from a war that is rapidly and clearly
02:06becoming not just a war like any other, but a struggle for freedom, for values central
02:12to the American way of life.
02:15The American Congress brings Lend-Lease into law.
02:19The United States will now supply Britain with whatever is needed to ensure the survival
02:24of freedom in Europe.
02:28In North Africa, Erwin Rommel has begun to earn a place in history.
02:33His inspired generalship results in the reversal of British advances.
02:37Rommel even captures his opposite number as a prisoner of war.
02:41The German high command think Rommel has gone mad.
02:47Germany has its attention elsewhere as the greatest military operation in world history
02:51rolls forward.
02:53This is Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
02:59In the Nazis' fictional mythology and theory of history, an insane worldview of past, present,
03:05and future combined, the destruction of the Soviet system is Armageddon, the final battle,
03:12the struggle of good and evil, a fight that will effectively end history.
03:19The Soviet forces, though large, were poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly led.
03:25Armies can only reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the society from which they're
03:30drawn.
03:31The Soviet command had been savagely targeted by Stalin's purges.
03:35A climate of fear pervaded the Russian army, fear to show initiative, fear to show independence
03:41of thought.
03:44The initial successes of Barbarossa had led Hitler to already plan triumphal victory celebrations
03:50with armies marching through the streets of Moscow in a commemoration of the ultimate
03:54victory of Nazism.
03:57In that late summer of 1941, the future of world civilization stood poised in the balance.
04:04The fighting that was in the coming months to take place in Russia, in the desert, and
04:09on the oceans, that would take place on as yet unimagined battlefields, would begin the
04:15long march to defeat for the forces of darkness.
04:35The summer countryside of Russia was ideal for armored warfare, a war of vast spaces,
04:41limitless horizons, with no natural obstacle to aid a defender.
04:48Operation Barbarossa had consisted of three great thrusts, massive armored attacks into
04:53the expanse of the Russian heartland.
05:07In the first month of Barbarossa, hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war were taken
05:11by the Nazis as the three-pronged attack began.
05:17In the north of Russia, the main thrust of advance came around the city of Leningrad,
05:22modern-day St. Petersburg.
05:24The capital of Tsarist Russia, Leningrad was a city of two and a half million and was ordered
05:30by Stalin to resist to the end, to never surrender.
05:36The Germans surrounded Leningrad with a tight, strangling ligature of siege.
05:50The necessity of war can make desperate alliances possible.
05:55In 1939, the Soviet Union had cynically used its size to bully and invade its neighbor
06:00Finland.
06:02When Germany had attacked the USSR, the Finns knew that in alliance with Germany lay their
06:07only chance to avenge that defeat and regain their lost lands.
06:27In the very far north, Finnish armies added a fourth dimension to Barbarossa, attacking
06:31towards Leningrad and completing the Axis grip encircling the city.
06:41The Soviet Union realized that Barbarossa was not a war that would be resolved with
06:45some minor reduction of borders, not a war that could be negotiated or compromised into
06:51peace.
06:52For both communism and Nazism, Barbarossa was a fight of mutual destruction.
06:58In the end, only one system would or indeed could remain.
07:18Stalin called on the Soviet people to fight what he called a great patriotic war.
07:23Stalin ruthlessly ordered a policy of scorched earth.
07:27For the advancing Germans, the retreating Russians were to demolish the very fabric
07:32of the country, destroying buildings, burning crops, cities and towns, destroying or taking
07:41away anything that would be of the remotest value to the invader.
07:47Whole factories and industries which were necessary to the Russian war effort were dismantled
07:51piece by piece and moved across the immense distance of the Soviet Union to the east of
07:57Moscow, from Europe into Asia, beyond the Ural Mountains to the depths of Siberia.
08:17In the vast swirling maelstrom that was Barbarossa, where lines of advance vaulted across the
08:22maps of generals, where units lay at the end of tenuous and distant lines of supply, there
08:28were spaces around and behind the Germans.
08:32Into these spaces, the partisan armies of Russia formed.
08:36Usually led by fanatical communists, these forces conducted a campaign of sabotage, ambush
08:41and assassination, what later would be called guerrilla war.
08:49Stalin was prepared to dismantle the mental landscape of the communist state and the Bolshevik
08:54Revolution.
08:56The atheism of communism was abandoned and the church encouraged to present the war as
09:02a holy war, a fight for the God of the Russians.
09:07Once the damaging influence of communism upon the Soviet war machine was abandoned, old
09:12czarist military traditions were revived, traditions that built martial spirit and esprit
09:18de corps.
09:28In the south of Russia, the German advance pushed on, deep into the black soil region
09:32of the Ukraine.
09:34This was an attack upon both the agricultural wealth and the southern industrial cities
09:39of the Soviet Union, towards cities such as Stalingrad.
09:44After just one month of fighting in the east, the Germans were already planning a triumphal
09:49victory procession through the streets of Moscow to take place in late August.
09:56Hitler had stated that Germany's aim in the east should be firstly to rule, secondly to
10:02administer, thirdly to exploit.
10:09Hitler believed his enemies beneath contempt as both communists and as Slavic peoples.
10:16Hitler abandoned the rules and conventions of war for Barbarossa.
10:20The German army was given orders to shoot dead anyone in the east who opposed them.
10:26Moscow and Leningrad were to be systematically razed, wiped from the map, the inhabitants
10:31annihilated or driven out by starvation.
10:35The Germans were to institute a giant program of what would in later years come to be called
10:40ethnic cleansing.
10:42The Nazi general plan east envisaged vast movements of population with German peoples
10:48moving into territories freed by the removal of the existing inhabitants.
10:54In the wake of the advancing German armies came the first of the Einstatsgruppen, special
10:59squads of the SS dedicated to the calculated methodical elimination of Jews.
11:29As it became clear that Barbarossa was a total war, a war in which German victory would
11:53bring total destruction of not just communism but the Russian people, the Red Army stiffened
11:59its resolve and will to resist, reorganized and became more competent in resisting German
12:06attacks.
12:09The industrial base that the Soviet Union had managed to move to the east enabled the
12:14material losses of the first few months to be replaced.
12:20The German attacks may have been on a scale never before seen but in fact the cold hard
12:25light of hindsight shows that the Germans had not in fact prepared enough.
12:31Their reserves of supplies and fresh troops were not enough to exploit the massive successes
12:36and advances.
12:38Massive spaces created behind the armies still left room for Soviet partisans to sabotage
12:45and disrupt the German supply lines.
12:50As the year progressed, as September passed to October, rains which turned roads to mud
12:55further hampered and slowed the Nazi advance.
13:02In spite of this increasing resistance, Hitler still chose to gamble with the thin and shallow
13:08reserves of German strength.
13:10He ordered that the war should be brought to an end in 1941.
13:15In October, he ordered that the final attack should be made upon the Soviet capital, Moscow,
13:20a thrust straight to the heart of Soviet power.
13:33In the western desert of North Africa, battles were fought between the Afrika Korps and the
13:38British army.
13:43The Germans under Rommel had pushed the British back and laid siege to the port of Tobruk.
13:50The battle for Tobruk was an essential one for Rommel to win.
13:54The German plan was to push forward, to attack and take Egypt and the Suez Canal.
14:00From that base to threaten British Middle Eastern oil and perhaps even to push into
14:05British India.
14:06Tobruk was literally a thorn in Rommel's side, enabling the British to strike at the
14:11rear of any Afrika Korps advance.
14:18Churchill thought the western desert a crucial theater of war.
14:23At that time, it was the only battlefield in which the British army could directly engage
14:28the German army.
14:30For a Britain which was having just to take it, absorb all the bombs that the Luftwaffe
14:35could drop and endure the toll of shipping attacks in the North Atlantic with all the
14:40attendant sacrifice and hardship, the war in the desert was the only campaign where
14:45the British did not have to wait and see what the enemy would do.
14:57Churchill bombarded the commanders of his force in the Middle East with instructions
15:02and suggestions.
15:04Commanders were given only a short time in which to prove themselves.
15:08In the spring of 1941, General Wavell had been dismissed for failure in the offensive
15:14which had been defeated by Rommel's genius for improvisation.
15:19Churchill was persuaded by Wavell's successor, Auchinleck, to throw precious resources at
15:24the army in Egypt, now named the Eighth Army.
15:29In an offensive codenamed Crusader, the Eighth Army carefully planned an attack on the Germans
15:35in November 1941.
15:38Rommel anticipated and preempted the move, mounting a renewed assault of his own upon
15:43the port of Tobruk.
15:47Rommel was an innovating, inspired general who could react quickly.
15:52He turned his attack around and smashed back the Eighth Army.
15:56Time and time again, in the desert war, both sides would be limited from exploiting their
16:01successes by problems of supply.
16:26Rommel could not pursue the British, and once more the two armies fell back to regather
16:36their strength.
16:38The Germans returned to the siege of Tobruk.
16:41The British, under yet another new general, considered their plan of action.
16:47With German involvement in the Mediterranean, the German supply lines were becoming stronger.
16:53Soon, Rommel would be capable of a push that would place Britain's future in the war in jeopardy.
17:17Across the Atlantic, the United States was slowly but surely being drawn onto the center
17:21stage of the action.
17:23British Prime Minister Churchill knew that the defeat of Nazi Germany would not come
17:28without the direct involvement of the United States.
17:32We shall give every possible assistance to Britain and to all who with Britain are resisting
17:38Hitlerism or its equivalent.
17:42All British diplomacy was directed in a campaign of persuasion and propaganda at the American
17:48government and public.
17:50Throughout the war, in a series of agreements, America was drawn closer to the war.
17:57In August 1941, at the Placentia Bay Conference in Canada, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed
18:03and signed what came to be known as the Atlantic Charter.
18:08The Charter was an agreement, a statement of shared beliefs that was a list of war aims
18:13and a blueprint for the post-war peace.
18:17Neither Britain nor America sought conquest of territory.
18:21No border was to change.
18:23No territory altered without consent of the population.
18:27All peoples have the right of self-government restored.
18:31After the war, all states would have the right to economic resources for prosperity.
18:37All countries were to collaborate for international prosperity.
18:41After the destruction of Nazi tyranny would be the establishment of a lasting peace.
18:46There was to be freedom of the sea.
18:49All nations were to abandon force.
18:53Despite the shared aspirations of the Atlantic Charter, America was still legally a neutral
18:57country, with many of its citizens wanting their country to stay firmly out of any foreign
19:02war.
19:04Yet the legally neutral U.S. was already fighting an unofficial war against the German Navy,
19:10the Kriegsmarine, and its force of U-boats in the Atlantic.
19:16The Battle of the Atlantic was not a naval battle in the conventional sense, some climactic
19:21struggle, an engagement where all forces met together and a war could be won in a day or
19:28in an hour.
19:29Rather, the Battle of the Atlantic has been famously described as trench warfare at sea.
19:35Each side sought to destroy the other, a fight of numbers, a fight only to kill.
19:45It was a war that was simple to understand.
19:48Sink British ships faster than British shipyards could build replacements.
19:55Build replacement U-boats faster than the British Navy could destroy their attackers.
20:01The war would be won.
20:03A simple economic equation would give a target that would be expressed in mathematics in
20:08numbers and tons of ships that must be sent to the bottom.
20:13The autumn of 1941 was called the happy time for the German Navy.
20:17It was a time when victory seemed easy.
20:21Once France had fallen and the whole Atlantic coast of Europe stood free for Axis use, when
20:27the isolationist sentiment of the United States was strong, the simple target was to sink
20:32between 600 and 750,000 tons of British-bound shipping per month.
20:38This would bring Nazi victory in a year.
20:43The early part of the war was a time of missed opportunities.
20:47But by the autumn of 1941, the number of boats had risen and tactics devised which were to
20:52seriously threaten Atlantic trade.
20:56In 1941, for all submarines, for all ships, to find an enemy at sea in the vast expanse
21:03of the ocean was a difficult task.
21:09Tactics were primitive, not yet perfected for use at sea.
21:13Sonar was a short-range weapon, only useful for a surface ship attacking a close underwater
21:20target.
21:24A U-boat finding a target was dependent on visual sightings, limited to the distance
21:29of the horizon.
21:31From the low angle of a submarine tower, the U-boat officer was worse off than the lookout
21:36of a sailing ship atop a tall mast.
21:45The convoy system that grouped merchant vessels together under the protection of warships
21:51was an old tactic that dated from the days of sailing navies.
21:55It had defeated the U-boat in World War I.
21:59It not only meant that the attacker would have to fight warships, the convoy system
22:04meant that targets were harder to find.
22:08A convoy of 30 ships closely grouped together was harder to find than 30 individual ships
22:14strung out across the shipping lanes of the ocean.
22:18The United States Navy escorted convoys halfway, effectively doubling the number of ships available
22:25to deter the enemy.
22:37The Kriegsmarine of World War II had new tactics, the doctrine of the wolfpack.
22:46The bold U-boat commander was not intimidated by the convoy and when attacking in a wolfpack
22:52could still inflict heavy losses.
22:55With large numbers of U-boats, the submarines could be spread in a line across the possible
23:00course of a convoy of merchantmen.
23:04When a sighting was made, high frequency radio messages would transmit the convoy's position
23:09to a shore base.
23:11That would in turn broadcast a guidance signal that would lead all submarines to attack the
23:16target.
23:18It was as if a giant driftnet was laid across the ocean.
23:28A U-boat making first contact would silently, discreetly shadow the merchant ships, sending
23:33the signals to gather the other members of the wolfpack.
23:37The attack would be made at night.
23:39The commanders of U-boats needed courage to stealthily approach the convoy in the darkness,
23:45trying to pass through the screen of escorts, closing to perhaps within 600 meters before firing.
24:00For the merchant seamen, the Battle of the Atlantic was a slow and tense torture.
24:05The days spent scanning the sea for the periscope trail that might reveal an unseen enemy.
24:11At night, waiting for almost inevitable explosions, each ship dying a particular death.
24:18Oil tankers would explode in white pillars of flame.
24:22Cargoes of heavy iron machinery would drag ship and crew to the depths in minutes.
24:28In the morning, a convoy would trail awake of the debris, burning oil, bodies, stranded
24:34sailors awaiting rescue, destroyed ships.
24:41With the submarine on the surface at night, there was little that an escort of warships
24:45could do.
24:47On the surface, most U-boats were fast enough to get away from a pursuer.
24:52Sonar, the underwater radar, in its infancy could not find a surfaced U-boat.
24:59The U-boat commander needed courage and luck.
25:03But fortune favored the bold, who could make rich pickings.
25:11The balance of tactical strength lay with the Germans.
25:15Even though convoyed ships were more secure than lone sailings, the convoys were not enough
25:20defense.
25:22The ideas in weaponry not sufficiently evolved to present any real threat.
25:28In 1941, 3.6 million tons of shipping was sunk, an average of 250,000 tons per month.
25:41The North Atlantic was a hard, unforgiving environment, with savage weather and bitter
25:46storms, water in which men survived for minutes, tempests which battered and exhausted men
25:53on both sides, men in a state of constant alert.
25:59The submarine hull, designed for underwater, made a rolling, unstable platform on the surface.
26:06U-boat officers did not look out across the sea, rather they looked up from the surface.
26:12Long hours were spent drenched by freezing, smashing waves.
26:21The danger lay when escorts found a U-boat on the surface or locked on with sonar.
26:28In a surface duel of gunfire, the U-boat would lose.
26:33Submerged and targeted by sonar, the U-boat crew had to endure the terror of death charging,
26:39when crews would stand in complete silence, listening to the sonar beam pinging their
26:44hull, hearing the swish of propellers.
26:50The very skin of sailors and the hull of the boat as one, the slightest knock to either
26:56causing a paroxysm of fear.
27:06The explosions would convulse the boats, causing instruments to shatter, electrics to fail
27:11and seals explode with leaks of air and seawater.
27:17Attacks could last for a day.
27:24In the mythology of World War II, the submarine, the U-boat, the Untersee-boat, is associated
27:30with the Nazis. Yet, in fact, they were slow to realize the value of this arm of their
27:36navy. The submarine was not popular with sailors in any navy. Admirals brought up on surface
27:43action were reluctant to appreciate the strength of underwater forces.
27:49Fiction and drama, the mythology of World War II have given us a false impression, a
27:54fabled account of how submarine operations were fought.
28:00The submarine of World War II is better described as a torpedo boat with the ability to hide
28:06underwater.
28:10The submarine, as a capital warship, able to operate independently, submerged for many
28:17months, with as high a speed as surface ships, with as high a speed above as below the surface,
28:23able to operate at extreme depths with weapons capable of striking from extreme ranges, was
28:29in 1941 a weapon of the future.
28:35Although the U-boats were enjoying successes, they had their great weaknesses which were
28:40to be exploited.
28:43The World War II U-boat came to the surface to attack, was slow when underwater, could
28:48only travel submerged for a short time, and was forced to regularly surface to recharge
28:54batteries. When surfaced, its light armament made it an easy target.
29:01When a wolfpack was summoned to gather around a convoy, their voyages into position had
29:06to be made at high speed on the surface, otherwise a convoy could not be caught.
29:14A major weakness of the U-boat, which would be exploited, was its vulnerability to air
29:19attack. The British and the Americans realized the value of air protection for convoys.
29:27In 1941, the British occupied Iceland to extend the range of air patrols to the mid-Atlantic.
29:38Special radars were developed, which could be mounted on aircraft, which, coupled to
29:43powerful searchlights, meant that the submarine was not safe on the surface at night.
29:50The use of air power made the coordination of wolfpack attacks far more difficult.
29:55The U-boat's frequent periods on the surface became a hell of tension, times of constant
30:01restless alerts, with sudden attack, panics, and emergency dives.
30:13A key weapon in the Battle of the Atlantic was the breaking of German codes. Time and
30:18time again in the history of war, this most secret part of Britain's armory would play
30:23a crucial role. It was in the Battle of the Atlantic that the first breakthrough in the
30:28codebreaker's war was made. British sailors had courageously boarded sinking U-boats,
30:34fought with the crews, and captured signals equipment and codebooks, materials that had
30:40given the first clues in the secret war.
30:46By reading the messages sent to the U-boat packs, convoys could be rerouted and aircraft
30:51dispatched to attack.
30:57Many brave men were to lose their lives in the Atlantic in 1941. Merchant seamen left
31:03adrift as the convoy could not stop to rescue survivors. The crews of U-boats had the highest
31:12rate of loss of any serving in the war.
31:22The greatest defense that the British had against the U-boat assault was simply to reverse
31:27the weakness, to reverse the vulnerability. Factored into the grim mathematics of the
31:33campaign was Britain's pre-war need to import more than 50 million tons of goods each year,
31:39from the rare and exotic materials of war to the everyday staple foods of life. By 1941,
31:46the British people had cut this figure by more than half, to only 23 million tons. For
31:52ordinary people, this meant a strict and severe regime of food rationing, with many favorite
31:57foods disappearing altogether.
32:00The British people became a nation of small peasant farmers. Livestock were to be found
32:05in the backyards of cities and towns. Every tiny scrap of land was turned into a vegetable
32:11patch. The agricultural industry began to exploit and wring every gram of produce from
32:17the most marginal areas of land. New areas came under the plow. The powers of the state
32:24to conscript and direct labor created a land army, where workers were directed to work
32:30on the farms. The image of grim cues of shortage and the persistent folk memory of the hardships
32:37of rationing disguise a historic scientific fact that the population of Britain was in
32:43fact never so properly fed with the correct dietary balance.
32:52The rationing extended to almost every area of life. Private motoring practically disappeared,
32:58as it became impossible to fuel a car. Some automobiles were converted to gas, with a
33:04ballooning comedy gas bag swaying atop the roof. Fashions changed to reflect wartime
33:13shortages of fabric.
33:17If Britain was turned into a nation of small farmers, it was also turned into a nation
33:21of petty criminals. The strictness of state control led inevitably to a black market.
33:28When state regulation seemed so absolute and far-reaching, the pressure amongst even the
33:32most law-abiding to obtain the smallest luxuries by whatever means possible with no questions
33:37asked was irresistible.
33:43The British people were told time and time again what to do and how to do it, in a barrage
33:49of propaganda and public information that permeated every aspect of daily life. In a
33:55war for freedom, British subjects became controlled, less free than ever before.
34:03Another factor in the algebra of the submarine war was the rate at which ships could replace
34:10those sunk. Once again, war provided the stimulus for innovation, and the shipbuilding industry
34:17responded by changing design and construction to build more ships more quickly.
34:22The product of this innovation came to be known as the Liberty Ship. These were mass-produced
34:28ships built by methods more akin to the auto-assembly line. The design was British, but modified
34:34into practicality by American builders. More than two and a half thousand were built, sometimes
34:40in phenomenally short periods, on one occasion as short a period as four days and fifteen
34:45hours from laying of keel to launch.
34:51The cost and time-saving methods of construction and the use of workers unused to shipbuilding
34:56meant that the quality of the ships was sometimes doubtful. Some could just fall apart. But
35:01in their vast numbers, they piled the odds against the axis.
35:10In November 1941, the German army was ordered to win the war, to finish off the Russians
35:16by capturing the Russian capital, Moscow. This was a gamble. The original planners of
35:22Barbarossa had not expected such success to come so soon. The capture of Moscow needed
35:28the last desperate effort by German soldiers, who had already expended so much. What Hitler
35:35was to call the final effort of willpower was a push by troops at the very end of their
35:40energy.
35:42By the end of November, amidst the snows and mud of the Russian winter, the German armies
35:48were within 30 kilometers of Moscow. The city had been evacuated and the Kremlin prepared
35:54for demolition, as a preferred fate for the historical heart of Russia.
36:01Early in December, the Germans had to end the attack. Exhausted, they hoped for a pause
36:06before renewed fighting in the spring. Instead, on December 5th, the Soviet army launched
36:13a ferocious counterattack. The German army, unequipped to fight in winter, suffered terrible
36:18losses in the deepest cold.
36:22The weakness, rather than the strength, of a dictatorship was revealed. The weakness
36:28of a leadership where war was directed by a single will and a single ego.
36:35Hitler refused to give ground, refused to order retreat that could save his forward
36:40units from encirclement and defeat.
36:45In the end, the Germans suffered heavy casualties and were pushed back 300 kilometers from Moscow.
36:53Barbarossa ended in the snow before Moscow. There was still much fighting and dying to
36:59be done. But the greatest and most telling death in Barbarossa was the myth of German
37:05invincibility. An army used to carrying all before it had been defeated. 980,000 men killed,
37:14wounded or captured. Nearly a third of those who started the invasion had been lost.
37:21The Russian soldiers who so stunned the Germans with surprise attacks were fresh from Russia's
37:37Far East, a reflection of the truth that the war was a global war.
37:44Russia had been able to move these troops across Asia because there was no longer a
37:48threat from the Empire of Japan, whose gaze looked another way. It was decisions made
37:55on the other side of the globe that enabled the Soviet leadership to deploy the Siberian
37:59forces against the Nazi armies. Decisions made in Tokyo, capital of the Empire of Japan.
38:09Japan was allied to the fascists of Germany and Italy, but it would be a mistake to say
38:14that the three major members of the axis shared a dominant ideology. Japan shared a theory
38:20of racial superiority, shared a militarism which saw armed force as a virtue. However,
38:28the prime Japanese policy aim was to supplant the European powers as the dominant political
38:34and economic forces in Asia. Had Germany been the dominant power in the Pacific rather than
38:41Britain and America, the relationships of alliance would have been reversed.
38:47Japan had long harbored ambitions against Soviet territory in the Far East. Japan looked
38:53everywhere in the Far East with envious eyes upon the resources of neighboring states,
38:59looking to expand to the North through its puppet state of Manchuria, and to the South
39:04and East into the Pacific.
39:08By late 1941, Japan's envy and ambition was directed only to the South. Japan, in 1941,
39:16had been at war for longer than any other of the major powers, fighting a war of conquest
39:21in China. Japan's motivation in this expansion was resources. In a circular logic, it fought
39:29wars to provide the materials to power its armed forces to fight more wars. Oil, aluminum,
39:37tin, rubber, were all materials which Japan could not produce. Japan was dependent on
39:43imports of food to feed its population. The richest areas of Southeast Asia, the vast
39:49rubber plantations of British Malaya, the oil of Indonesia, the vast rice fields of
39:55French Vietnam, were all controlled by Europeans. Japan was a militaristic state, dominated
40:03by the needs of the armed forces. The Emperor Hirohito, believed a god by the Japanese people
40:08reigned, but did not actually rule. Power lay with a government dominated by generals.
40:16When in July, Japan took advantage of the fall of France to seize the French colony
40:21of Indochina, the United States broke all relations with the empire. Japan invited Indochina
40:28to be a member of the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, an organization whose words spoke
40:33of independence for the indigenous peoples of Asia, but in action was just a mechanism
40:39for draining the resources of the member states, redirecting them with ever greater ruthlessness
40:44towards Japan. The United States demanded that before trade could be restored, Japan
40:52must both withdraw from Indochina and from the long war against China herself. America
41:01was preparing for war, recalling early in the year the preeminent soldier Douglas MacArthur
41:06to command in the Pacific. Characteristically, MacArthur had taken a positive stance with
41:13a plan to defend the Philippines with strong and modern forces. To the Japanese, this American
41:22policy only reinforced a paranoid sense of persecution, reinforcing those who argued
41:27war was essential. When, in October 1941, Haidekai Tojo, an aggressive general, became
41:35Prime Minister, the path for Japan was set to war and secret preparations were begun.
41:44The Japanese knew that to fight a war of expansion in the Pacific, they had to neutralize the
41:49American Navy in the Pacific. The American Navy was then the largest in the world. While
41:57negotiating peace, the base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was targeted for surprise assault.
42:05The Japanese fleet approached in complete secrecy, hiding behind a weather front as
42:11it crossed the ocean. The fleet of aircraft carriers came by a distant, indirect route
42:17circling far around the north of Hawaii from this least likely direction of attack.
42:26On December 11, 1941, at 6 a.m., the Japanese planes appeared in the skies of Hawaii. It
42:34was a Sunday morning. Surprise was complete. At Pearl Harbor that day, 70 warships lay
42:42at anchor, including eight battleships. Torpedo and dive bombers attacked the lines of ships
42:49and the airfields. Then, high-level bombers made further assaults. In an attack that lasted
42:55a bare two hours, six battleships were sunk and two damaged. Numerous smaller ships also
43:02sunk and damaged. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed. The Japanese were forced to retreat
43:122,403 servicemen and civilians were killed and 1,178 wounded. The Japanese losses were
43:21a mere 29 aircraft. In a moment of caution, the Japanese, fearing a counterattack, failed
43:30to complete the action with a series of attacks upon the harbor's dockyard, the repair and
43:35refueling facilities. Mundane, unglamorous targets, which have as great a significance
43:42as any capital warship. Significantly, as dramatic as the burning battleships appeared,
43:48the battleship was the naval weapon of the past. Japan had used aircraft carriers to
43:55attack its enemy, but had failed to find and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers that had been
44:01at sea that day on exercise. To say that the attack found the Americans completely
44:07unprepared and totally and completely ignorant of a Japanese threat is wrong. America was
44:14expecting Japanese attacks, but it was thought this first strike would be against the American
44:19forces in the Philippines, rather than at Pearl Harbor. If the attack were made on Hawaii,
44:27it would be directed from the nearest Japanese territory to the southwest of the islands.
44:32Pearl Harbor was on full alert to protect against sabotage. U.S. planes were grouped
44:39together to guard against attack by saboteur, a move which made it easy for Japanese planes
44:45to make their attacks. Hawaii was protected by radar. The attacking waves of Japanese
44:52aircraft were detected. The surprise lay in that America was not looking for the attack.
45:03As tactics, as a demonstration of the use of stealth and concealment, using the tools
45:08of war, Pearl Harbor is a textbook example of stunning victory. As strategy, though,
45:15the Japanese action was a catastrophic move, a move which caused the ruin of every scheme,
45:21device, and stratagem of their country. The attack on that Sunday morning condemned the
45:26Japanese forces to eventual destruction. The Japanese were attempting a victory to match
45:33that of Trafalgar, a defeat that meant the American Navy would be swept from the sea
45:39to allow the Japanese to strike where they wished at will. Once stirred, the strengths
45:47of America, the ability for organization, for efficiency, the positive optimism and
45:54self-belief, the sheer volume of wealth and industry made America a terrible foe. Pearl
46:04Harbor was an event that, at a stroke, galvanized the American nation, resolving all difference,
46:12quelling all isolationist sentiment. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
46:26The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air
46:34forces of the Empire of Japan. The Japanese planned to take advantage of the defeat by
46:41initiating a massive plan of invasion and conquest across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
46:48Their strength would be increased as a result and deter the USA from attacking the empire.
46:54The reasoning, the wishful thinking of the Japanese planners, was that the U.S. would
46:59accept the new state of affairs, accept Japan as the new dominant power, and compromise
47:06a peace. The harder-headed within the Japanese armed forces knew in their hearts and minds
47:13that Pearl Harbor was not a war-winning victory, simply a triumph that had bought time in which
47:19to gamble, that through a desperate effort, the U.S. could be defeated. Privately, though,
47:27secretly, Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, predicted, I can run wild
47:33for the first six months or a year. I have utterly no confidence for the second and third
47:38years. Anyone who has seen the oil fields of Texas and the factories of Detroit knows
47:44this. Six months, by the end of which, victory must be won, or defeat was inevitable. Victory
47:52would be impossible in a long war. That very lack of the raw materials and industrial strength
47:59that motivated their ambitions would be their downfall in a contest with the titanic power
48:05of America. On December 7th, Germany and Italy declared war on America. Winston Churchill
48:13said he slept easily for the first time in the war. With the attack upon the U.S. fleet,
48:20battles encircled the globe. To the people of America, this was the beginning of the
48:25war. For the forces of fascism, the beginning of the end.
48:33Next time, on World War II, the Complete History. The Japanese war effort rolls out across the
48:43Pacific. In the precious months bought by the attack on Pearl Harbor, country after
48:49country are swamped by a tidal wave of Japanese might. Thousands of troops are deployed to
48:57surrender as Singapore falls in the greatest defeat the British Empire has ever known.
49:04The defeat, a catastrophe, a textbook example of military disaster.
49:11Douglas MacArthur promises to return as U.S. forces are driven from the Philippines with
49:18the capture of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
49:24In the seas off Malaya, air forces once again prove the deadly enemy of the mighty battleship
49:31as two British warships are sunk. In Russia, the German forces endure the severest of winters
49:40and thousands of poorly equipped soldiers die of cold.
49:47In the spring, the German offensive is renewed with attacks into the south towards the industrial
49:54heart of southern Russia towards Stalingrad. In the north, Leningrad endures its siege.
50:04Russian strength grows and convoys of supplies fight their way through Arctic seas, bringing
50:11materials of war from the U.K. and the U.S.A.
50:17In Europe, the fighting in the Mediterranean and North Africa reaches new levels with the
50:22intensification of the siege of Malta and the Afrika Korps under Rommel mounting ever
50:28more threatening operations in the desert.
50:33In the skies of Britain and Germany, the war becomes an open conflict of civilizations
50:39as each side targets air raids at centers of culture and history.
50:46The enemies of the axis come together to issue the United Nations Declaration.
50:54After a few months of conquest and triumph, the worst predictions of saner Japanese minds
51:00begin to come true. American bombers appear in the skies above Tokyo.
51:07In two titanic naval battles in the Pacific, the tide begins to turn against Japan.
51:14At the Battle of the Coral Sea, a stalemate, at the Battle of Midway, American carrier
51:21aircraft tear the heart from the Japanese Imperial Navy.
51:25And the long, slow endgame of Japan's defeat is already begun.
52:07For more UN videos visit www.un.org