WWII The Complete History Episode 8 Six Months to Run Wild
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00:30It is Christmas 1941. For the people of Britain, it is the third Christmas of the war. A war
00:44of increasing hardship and deprivation, a war which had crystallized into a struggle
00:49for the survival of civilization. But Britain and the British Empire no longer oppose Nazism
00:56alone. America has been at war for less than three weeks. On December 7th, the Imperial
01:03Navy of Japan launched undeclared war with a massive attack upon the U.S. naval base
01:08at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Thousands die, and the U.S. battle fleet is destroyed. But
01:15America's carrier force escapes destruction, and in the coming year, the Japanese will
01:20regret their aggression. In the snows of midwinter, the Russian army begins its long, slow fight
01:28back with the first of a series of counterattacks that drive the invader back from the communist
01:34capital. All over the world, every worker, every machine strains to the utmost to provide
01:43the materials of war. In the battles of 1942, the struggle that encircles the earth will
01:50become greater and more destructive than ever before.
02:12January 1st, 1942 saw the United Nations Declaration. This was a grand alliance between China, the
02:20United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR. This was the first formal alliance made
02:26by the United States since 1778. All signatories agreed to use all their strength and resources
02:33against the Axis, to cooperate with the others, to fight until the defeat of the Axis, and
02:39not to make a separate peace. The destruction of Pearl Harbor was simply the first element
02:47of a much greater Japanese strategy of invasion and expansion. An unstoppable tsunami of conquest
02:55swept across the eastern Pacific into Southeast Asia, leaping across land and sea, skipping
03:01across the archipelagos from island to island, stepping stones to victory. The U.S. islands
03:10of the Philippines were taken by surprise only a few days following the attack on Pearl
03:15Harbor. Inexplicably, once more, U.S. aircraft were caught unawares on the ground, lined
03:22up in neat rows, making the task of the Japanese easy. With naval superiority, Japanese marines
03:30made easy landings in both the north and south of the islands, catching the U.S. forces in
03:36the grip of a pincer movement. Quickly, 90,000 Japanese troops were in place to attack just
03:4325,000 American defenders, defenders who the United States could do little to reinforce
03:50or aid. The British colony of Malaya was invaded from the north through the territory of Japan's
04:00ally Thailand. The Japanese swiftly captured airfields in northern Malaya and then began
04:06a quick advance down the peninsula. The Japanese had gained air and sea supremacy in the skies
04:12and seas off Malaya. On December 10, two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse,
04:20the only major naval forces Britain could muster, had been caught in daylight off the
04:24eastern Malaya coast by Japanese bombers based in Thailand and Vietnam. Time and time again
04:32in World War II, the battleship was shown to be the capital warship of the past, redundant,
04:38too vulnerable to air attack to survive. The two battleships were destroyed by a swarm
04:55of aircraft in just two hours.
05:38The Japanese wanted Malaya for its rich economic reserves, the tin mines and the vast rubber
06:08plantations which were needed for Japan's war effort. The Japanese wanted to capture
06:15the giant British naval base on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula on the island of
06:20Singapore, denying these facilities to their enemies, adding them as a base for further
06:25Japanese aggression. The Japanese advanced rapidly down the peninsula, capturing province
06:33after province. The British colony of Hong Kong was surrounded and besieged. Once again
06:40the Japanese air force had destroyed the opposition swiftly at the start of the campaign, and
06:45then subjected the 8,000 defenders to constant bombing. 40,000 Japanese troops brought the
06:52British under constant pressure. In the expanse of the Pacific, conflict came to the distant
06:59archipelagos of tiny islands, lying astride the strategic routes of war. On December 10th,
07:06the island of Guam fell to Japanese invasion. It, and other small islands, were intended
07:12to be fortresses in a ring of defenses around Japan's new empire. On the same day, Wake
07:19Island, held by just 400 marines and 1,000 construction workers, was attacked by Japanese
07:26warships and taken 12 days later. Still, the wave of expansion went on. On December
07:3415th, Japanese armies had invaded the British colony of Burma. The Japanese were attempting
07:39to cut supply lines to their nationalist Chinese enemies, and to use Burma as a base for attacks
07:46on British India. In the very wildest of Axis dreams, Japanese armies marching into India
07:54were then met by German armies, which had swept eastwards from southern Russia and North
07:59Africa via Arabia and Iran. The wave of Japanese success revealed inherent tensions within
08:06the Axis alliance. It was an alliance of necessity rather than ideology. Hitler commented, half
08:13in despair, the Japanese are occupying all the islands. They will get Australia. The
08:20white race will disappear from these regions. Japan did seek to drive the white colonial
08:28powers from Asia, appealing over the heads of European imperial masters to the indigenous
08:34populations. The army that attacked Burma, a state which had been independent of British
08:40rule within living memory, contained thousands of Japanese-trained Burmese nationalists fighting
08:46for their country's liberation. The rate of Japanese advance in those early days and
08:53weeks was astounding. Scarcely a day went by without some new attack begun, or a new
08:59victory proclaimed. On December 23rd, 1941, Japanese troops invaded Borneo. The objective
09:09in Borneo, the British-controlled oil fields, again a crucial resource of war. On Christmas
09:16Day, Hong Kong fell. In a medieval move, the Japanese had cut the city's water supply.
09:24The new year brought no respite. On January 11th, the Dutch East Indies, modern-day Indonesia,
09:31was attacked by Japanese paratroopers. Again, the goal was oil reserves. On January 12th,
09:39the capital of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, surrendered. In the Philippines, the British-controlled
09:46U.S. General Douglas MacArthur led a dogged defense of the Bataan Peninsula, into which
09:51the U.S. forces are gradually pinned by the Japanese. The morale amongst the U.S. forces
09:58is high, but MacArthur is told, in secret, that no relief column, no rescue fleet, can
10:04be sent. Bataan has less than a month's starvation rations remaining.
10:12Throughout Australia, panic seized the population, as the possibility of invasion, once seeming
10:20so remote for so distant a country, began to threaten. On January 24th, Japan invaded
10:28Australian-controlled New Guinea. They brought massive strength to bear, and quickly overran
10:33the territory. In Malaya, the fighting drew to a climax. The Japanese forces had cleared
10:39the peninsula, and all British and Empire troops had withdrawn to the fortress of Singapore.
10:46Singapore was the mythology of the British Empire, built into actuality. A trading city,
10:52where Europeans could amass fortunes quickly. A center of maritime trade, a conduit for
10:59wealth, a huge naval base, which harbored the ships of the Navy, that bound the Empire
11:04together with iron. That the British Empire was a maritime empire, one held together by
11:11a Navy, was the downfall of Singapore. The assumption was that the city would be attacked
11:18by the Navy of another European country. Singapore had mighty defenses, powerful guns, all pointed
11:26to the south, to the sea. The Japanese came, from the north, over land.
11:35Winston Churchill saw the defense of Singapore in dramatic terms. He signaled to the British
11:42commanders, battle must be fought to the bitter end. Commander and senior officers should
11:49die with the troops. The honor of the British Empire is at stake.
11:55Despite sitting atop a massive arsenal of ammunition, 130,000 did surrender. The Japanese
12:02had cut water supplies, and subjected the city to constant air bombardment. The lives
12:08of one million civilians were at risk. General Arthur Percival led the greatest surrender
12:14in British military history. 14,000 Australians, 16,000 British, and 32,000 Indian soldiers
12:23were marched into captivity. Japanese General Yamashita achieved the victory, with less
12:30than 2,000 casualties. It was the climax to a brilliant campaign.
12:40The Japanese cloaked their invasion in the language of anti-imperialism. Indeed, this
12:46produced a reaction from the British. Expressly against Churchill's wishes, the British government,
12:53under pressure from America, offered India the same status within the British Empire
12:58as Australia or Canada. The offer was made conditional upon Indian support for the war.
13:05Of the more than 32,000 Indians who surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore, many were to
13:10join the Indian National Army, led by Indian revolutionaries. The INA was to fight alongside
13:17the Japanese Army, against the British Empire. The outbreak of war between America and Japan
13:25brought deep and profound changes for the Japanese-American citizens of the United States.
13:31For those of the second generation, the Nisei, born and raised in the USA, the war was to
13:37be a major test of the degree to which these Americans were truly assimilated.
13:43In March 1942, more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans living on the west coast of America were forced
13:51to move, abandoning businesses and homes. On February 10, 1942, the fear which had spread
14:02through Australian society was shown to have a basis in reality, not rumor. A powerful
14:08aircraft carrier force arrived in the waters off northern Australia and attacked the northern
14:15Australian city and port of Darwin. Once again, surprise was complete and Japanese losses
14:21limited to a single plane. The devastating raid, designed to disrupt any support that
14:27might have been given to resist the invasion of the Dutch East Indies, caused a general
14:32panic as military and civilians fled into the interior of the country.
14:40The East Indies were the richest territories in the Dutch colonial empire, a seventh of
14:46the income of the Netherlands economy coming from this one province. For Japan, the Dutch
14:52colony was a prize of great value. Besides oil and coal, the area produced rubber, nickel
14:59and timber, and was important agriculturally as a major source of rice, sugar and tea.
15:07The Japanese saw the need to seize the islands quickly before any scorched earth policy could
15:13be implemented and used maximum force possible, invading at many places simultaneously. As
15:21elsewhere in Asia, the Japanese invaders were at first welcomed by the native population
15:26as liberators, but soon they came to act as a replacement and harsher colonial regime.
15:36A combined Dutch, British, American and Australian fleet attempted to intercept a Japanese invading
15:42fleet, but was completely destroyed.
15:49Following Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt urged the U.S. command to find some
15:54way to retaliate, to strike back against the enemy. The balance of power in the Pacific
16:00immediately following Pearl Harbor meant that it would be difficult for an aircraft carrier
16:05to safely approach Japan, to come within a range at which carrier aircraft could strike.
16:11A daring and ingenious plan was formulated. Sixteen Army Air Force bombers were placed
16:17on board the aircraft carrier Hornet. Launched more than 700 miles from Tokyo, the bombers
16:24had the range to reach Japan. They could not return to the carrier and had instead to fly
16:31on to airfields in China. Single bombers attacked naval dockyards and a force of 12
16:38bombed Tokyo.
16:40The Doolittle Raid, as it came to be known, named after the Army Air Force colonel who
16:45planned and trained the volunteer crews, had an impact on the Japanese far over and above
16:51the material effect of the attacks. The raid on Tokyo killed just 50 people and damaged
16:57100 houses, but no U.S. planes were lost over Japan. Some crew members who had to bail
17:04out over China were executed as war criminals by Japanese occupying forces.
17:15U.S. morale was raised by the news that something was being done. The raid's greatest effect
17:21was upon the Japanese high command and government. The military government had boasted that Japan
17:27would never be attacked. The shock of bombs falling so close to the emperor caused panicked
17:34overreaction, a surge of aggressive desire to bring the war to an end with victory. The
17:40six months to run wild in the Pacific that had been won by the attack on Pearl Harbor
17:46were nearing their end.
17:52The Strategic Bombing Raid is a persistent element of the iconography of the war. A mass
18:02raid by a multitude of planes filling the sky, not the precision strike, so-called surgical
18:09strike by smart weapons, simply the saturation of a target, a factory, a port, a railway
18:16junction, or perhaps just civilian housing in an act of terrorism. Attacks intended to
18:23intimidate, to cow, to cause panic, to simply render homeless vast numbers of the enemy's
18:29people. An attack aimed to undermine the enemy's government by showing it unable to protect
18:36its own. An assault by thousands of bombs descending in clouds of death.
18:43Before the war, much had been predicted of air power as the means to win wars quickly.
18:49World War II was to show this theory was not so easily put into practice. 1942 saw the
18:57tactics of aerial bombardment develop in technology, in extent, and in ruthlessness.
19:04On March 29th, the RAF made an attack upon the German town of Lübeck, a town where factories
19:15made the engines for U-boats. Lübeck was also one of those small towns which adorned
19:23the continent of Europe, time capsules of architecture and of history, of living culture.
19:30It was destroyed, bombed, and burned flat, its medieval buildings succumbing with terrifying
19:37ease to the RAF. Nazi ideology was a theory of history that valued culture. In fury at
19:45the destruction of the German town, the German leadership ordered revenge.
19:51In an episode of war that was to border on black comedy, the German command used the
20:02Baydecker Guide, a tourist book describing the beautiful and historic sites of Europe
20:07to select their targets. A series of raids were made against targets of nothing more
20:13than cultural value. The raids were not large, not particularly devastating, but the Baydecker
20:20Blitz, as it came to be known, was a further abandonment of the old-fashioned rules of
20:25war, what one side could and could not perpetrate against the other. After the fall of France,
20:32there were very few ways in which Britain could strike back at Germany. The bomber offensive
20:37was one of the few initiatives Britain could take. The lessons of the Battle of Britain
20:43and the Blitz seemed to show daytime raids simply too costly to both crews and aircraft.
20:50High losses meant that the attacks were switched to the night, where darkness gave such protection
20:55to the attacker that losses were minimized. The darkness also meant that attacks on a
21:01target as comparatively small as, say, an individual factory, were impossible. The RAF's
21:08high command realized that the only alternative to abandoning the offensive was to target
21:14cities in mass attacks. Tactical necessity was turned into a strategic virtue. The policy
21:22of city center raids was to become the center of controversy for years to come.
21:29In May 1942, the RAF gathered together every element of its bomber strength, combining
21:36frontline forces with all the reserves and training planes available, to launch 1,000
21:42aircraft against a single target, Cologne, causing massive damage.
22:06The successes of the first 1,000 plane attacks was not repeated, as the concentration on
22:23one target meant that defense could similarly be concentrated. Strategic bombing developed
22:30to the advantage of the Allies and against the Axis.
22:37The planes with which both sides began the war were in general medium-sized and twin-engined.
22:45In the spring of 1942, the first four-engine bombers, much larger and more powerful aircraft,
22:52appeared in the skies over Germany. That Germany never developed a large bomber was a significant
23:00failure. The British Lancaster bomber and the American B-17 and B-24 were capable of
23:07carrying heavy loads that were to devastate enemy cities.
23:30The prisoner of war is a constantly recurring figure in the mythology of World War II.
23:36The POW camp, a fertile ground for the imagination of the professional storyteller, with tales
23:43of endurance and sacrifice, plus incredible, impossible ingenuity.
23:49The 150,000 British Empire troops who surrendered at Singapore were just a fraction of the 10
23:55million soldiers, sailors and airmen who were to fall into the captivity of their enemy
24:00during the war. The treatment of the prisoners of war was governed by the Hague Convention
24:06of 1907, which declared that men who had laid down their arms should be treated decently.
24:12The Geneva Convention of 1929 laid down detailed rules for the treatment of prisoners. Under
24:20the convention, the POW was to be removed from the battlefield as soon as possible,
24:25if wounded, treated, fed and housed to the same standard as the captor country's own
24:32soldiers, allowed to correspond with their families and famously entitled to refuse all
24:39information except name, rank and number. The conditions of POWs were to be inspected
24:47by the International Red Cross. If captured escaping, a POW was to suffer no more than
24:53a month's solitary confinement, the legendary 30 days in the cooler.
24:59The Geneva Convention was not acknowledged by either Japan or the Soviet Union. Stalinist
25:05communism refused to accept that any Soviet soldier would surrender. Historically, the
25:12capture of an officer was a cause of dishonor. But by the time of World War II, the nature
25:17of war, the huge scale of fighting, the advent of air forces had caused a realization that
25:24capture might befall even the most honorable. No one foresaw the scale of the POW problem
25:34that was to arise in World War II. So utter was the collapse of Poland and France that
25:40Germany found itself with more than two million POWs by 1940. All sides in the war lost large
25:47numbers. Five million Soviet soldiers were captured. Italians surrendered to the British
25:53in vast numbers. The fates which befell the prisoners of different armies varied widely.
25:59The Waffen-SS, the armed SS specialist units drawn from fanatical Nazis, rarely gave or
26:06asked for quarter. In some areas of Germany, British and American air crew were lynched
26:13in mob vengeance. Soviet prisoners falling into German hands were treated with what mounted
26:21to savagery. Nearly 80% died in captivity. The Germans claimed not to be bound by the
26:29Geneva Convention as the USSR had not signed. Russian officers were shot. Ordinary soldiers
26:36were left without food or shelter. Nazi racial theory held that Anglo-Saxons, British and
26:43Americans were Aryan and deserving of respect. Slav soldiers were believed subhuman.
26:51In Asia, a different regime prevailed. The Japanese regarded surrender as irredeemable
26:59dishonor. Surrender of uninjured Japanese was almost unknown, and they despised the
27:05soldiers they took prisoner following Singapore's fall, as well as the captured Dutch from the
27:11conquest of the East Indies. No attempt was made to provide humane treatment. A minimum
27:17of food and shelter was supplied, in addition to intensive hard labor.
27:25In the dark hierarchy of race-hate expounded by Nazi ideology, paramount above the hate
27:31of Slavic peoples was the hatred for the Jews. Jews had been persecuted in Germany since
27:37the Nazis had first come to power. In the occupied territories of Eastern Europe in
27:43the wake of the war, the Nazi racial ideology was played out to its logical and horrific
27:49conclusion. Jews in Poland had been forced into ghettos and into special labor camps.
27:55On June 1st, 1942, a Polish underground newspaper published in defiance of the occupation printed
28:03rumors of systematic killings within these camps.
28:13Stalin thought the Germans would once more attack Moscow. Instead, Hitler aimed at the
28:19destruction of Soviet troops and the capture of the southern Russian industrial region,
28:24including the vital strategic resource of the Caucasus oil fields. In a renewed offensive,
28:32German armies swept south. Once again, vast advances were made, huge numbers of prisoners
28:38taken. Whole Russian armies fled en route. German attacks advanced through fleeing Russians,
28:46running in panic. Russian soldiers ordered to attack simply got out of their tanks and
28:52ran. For the first and only time in the war, Stalin ordered a strategic retreat. The key
29:00point for this campaign was the city of Stalingrad. The capture of this city on a major bend of
29:06the River Don would give the Germans a powerful strategic position, thrusting down southwards
29:12to dominate and roll up all of southern Russia or to stab northwards at Moscow. Stalin had
29:20been a political commissar during the Russian Civil War in the 1920s. He had been stationed
29:26at the city that now bore his name and appreciated the importance of the city. As the Nazi armies
29:33drove even closer to Stalingrad, Stalin reinforced his armies there, making the city a decisive
29:40battleground. With the entry of the United States into the war, the Battle of the Atlantic,
29:49the war of supply fought against German U-boats, assumed even greater importance. Yet all the
29:55lessons of dealing with U-boats learned by the British Navy had to be slowly relearned
30:00by the U.S. Navy. The Americans did not introduce convoys in American waters. In what the Kriegsmarine,
30:08the German Navy, came to call the second happy time, German U-boats sank huge numbers of
30:14unescorted merchant ships, many in U.S. coastal waters, many of them tankers carrying oil
30:21from the southern U.S. and the Caribbean. The ships sailing up the coast were silhouetted
30:27by the lights of U.S. towns and cities, not blacked out. They presented easy targets to
30:33hardened and experienced German submariners. The most ferocious and bitter fighting at
30:39sea was in this war of supply, the attack and defense of convoys. The most vicious fighting
30:46in this battle took place in the convoys to the Soviet Union. These sailed from ports
30:52in Britain and Iceland through the icy Arctic waters of the Norwegian and Barents seas.
30:58Close to German occupied territory, and in winter forced even closer to the Norwegian
31:03coast by icebergs, the convoys had to sail under constant attack and suffered the highest
31:09losses of any Allied shipping in the war. The ships carried goods of all sorts. The
31:15supplies of American trucks, of telephones, and even of boots were vital in helping the
31:21Soviet Union repel the German attacks of 1942. At first, the Allied ships sailed unmolested,
31:29a product of German confidence that Operation Barbarossa would be successful. As this confidence
31:36faded, the importance of this supply route grew in German eyes.
31:44Attacks came from U-boats, destroyers, and aircraft based in Norway. Even on occasions,
31:50German battleships broke out with cruiser support, mounting attacks in fleet formation.
31:55In one terrible action, a convoy was ordered to scatter in the face of attack by a German
32:01battleship force. Individual ships were then picked off by submarines and aircraft. In
32:08this one action, 2,500 aircraft, an entire air force, and nearly 500 tanks were sent
32:15to the bottom of the sea. It was not until nearly the end of the Cold War that the Soviet
32:21historians came to acknowledge the sacrifice of British and American seamen and the role
32:26of the supplies they carried.
32:33The British admirals pleaded that the convoys were expensive in manpower and shipping. But
32:39within the anti-Nazi alliance, the Grand Alliance, as Churchill came to name it, the
32:44Arctic convoys were the only answer to Stalin's demands that Britain open another front to
32:50relieve the pressure on Russia. Within the alliance, Churchill was under great pressure
32:56to act. The Americans underestimated the resources and general difficulty of acting against Nazi
33:03Germany. British communists, under orders from Moscow, switched from preaching defeatism
33:09to demanding that Britain act in the West. Churchill always preferred the indirect strategy
33:16and wanted to defeat the Axis in North Africa and then spread the war to Italy, attacking
33:22what he called the soft underbelly of the Axis.
33:33On April 10th, Great Britain gave its highest award for civilian bravery, the George Cross,
33:38to the entire island of Malta. No part of British territory throughout the entire war
33:45endured such regular and heavy attacks as the Mediterranean colony. In the first four
33:51months of 1942, Malta had suffered no less than 1,000 air attacks. The civilian population
33:58became a nation of cave dwellers, digging deep into the island's limestone. The constant
34:04air attacks were just part of a siege which the Axis extended around Malta. The planes
34:10flew from Sicily, a mere 160 kilometers across the sea. They bombarded the island itself
34:17and any shipping that attempted to bring supplies to the beleaguered defenders.
34:28At times, the attacks were so fierce that the only vessels capable of making the voyage
34:58were submarines. The passage of some convoys grew into full naval battles, drawing in the
35:05Italian fleet. The defense of the island was to be the product of constant and repeated
35:10acts of daring. The siege was a battle fought to a medieval script, where starvation and
35:17disease were the weapons of the besieger. A typhoid epidemic swept throughout the population
35:24on as little as 1,500 calories per adult per day. Malta was a prize worth having to both
35:31sides. She sat astride the short sea routes to North Africa and, unless captured and in
35:37Axis hands, could threaten disaster to the Axis armies fighting in the desert. In North
35:48Africa, new supplies had enabled Germany's Afrika Korps to bounce back from a British
35:53offensive of the previous year. Once more with inspired leadership from Rommel, the
35:59front moved back hundreds of miles across Libya. In what was now named the British Eighth
36:05Army, there was a panicked rout with men fleeing for survival. The retaking of airfields by
36:11the Germans in Libya tightened the siege of Malta and aided the supply of the Afrika Korps.
36:18In a renewed offensive, the Afrika Korps attacked and retook the strategically important port
36:26of Tobruk. This latest failure of the British, a defeat despite clear intelligence from code
36:32breakers that German attack was coming, resulted in the dismissal of yet another British general.
36:38Lieutenant General Ritchie, commander of the Eighth Army, was sacked. The commander-in-chief
36:43in the Middle East, Auchinleck, took command of the army himself. Tobruk's fall yielded
36:50the Germans 35,000 British prisoners and brought about a crisis in Britain. Secret opinion
36:57polls showed more than half the British people dissatisfied with Churchill's leadership and
37:03thought the war badly directed. Churchill had to face a vote of confidence in Parliament.
37:09476 members voted in support, but 25 voted against and 30 British MPs abstained.
37:19The Germans pushed into Egypt. Soon they would be within 100 kilometers of the crucial port
37:24of Alexandria, within reach of cutting the Suez Canal, striking at the Middle East oil
37:29fields, of winning the war.
37:33After the enormous tactical victory of Pearl Harbor, sane heads in the Japanese high command
37:41had warned that the forces of the empire had only a little time in which to win victory.
37:47In May 1942, six months following Pearl Harbor, Japan mounted an invasion of Port Moresby
37:54in Papua New Guinea. Their aim was to extend their control so as to isolate Australia from
38:00the rest of her allies, to bring Australia easily within reach of Japanese aircraft.
38:06A Japanese invasion force that comprised of troop transporters, heavy warships and three
38:12aircraft carriers was met by the American Navy with two carriers plus an Anglo-Australian
38:18fleet. Once again, warning of the Japanese attack came through intelligence gathered
38:24by codebreakers.
38:27The battle fought between the two forces was to be known as the Battle of the Coral Sea.
38:33This was the first naval action in history that was fought carrier to carrier, the first
38:40in which two opposing navies never even sighted each other.
38:56In fighting that lasted four days, the two sides fought to a stalemate. One Japanese
39:25aircraft carrier was sunk, one American carrier so badly damaged that she had to be scuttled.
39:32Of the two other Japanese carriers, one lost so many aircraft, her strike power was heavily
39:38depleted, the other carrier so badly damaged as to be out of action for the coming months.
39:44Once again, the battle was a tactical success for Japan, but a strategic failure. New Guinea
39:51was not conquered and the strategic goal to threaten Australia unattained. That such
39:57losses were inflicted on Japan's hard to replace ships, planes and trained pilots would
40:02be crucially significant when the two navies next met.
40:10Battleships were no longer the major weapon of naval warfare, no longer a weapon which
40:15could destroy the enemy's main fleet. Battleships were still a threat. If such a warship fell
40:21among a convoy of merchant ships, or if a battleship were brought to bombard shore targets,
40:27provided there was no threat of air attack, the big gun ship could wreak terrible damage.
40:33Otherwise, the battleship on both sides were little more than prestige propaganda targets,
40:39threats only in that admirals in the opposing navies believed battleships a threat.
40:45In February 1942, three large German ships, the battle cruisers Scharnhorst, Kniesnau
40:53and the cruiser Prinz Eugen, daringly dashed up the English Channel under the noses of
40:58the British. The German action, though daring, was still a run for cover.
41:06In the vast spaces of Russia, the greatest battles of the war continued, as the Soviet
41:12Union defended itself against German invasion. The German-Soviet conflict dominates World
41:19War II. In terms of the vast distances, the huge numbers of forces involved, every other
41:25campaign is dwarfed. In the first six months of Operation Barbarossa, when German troops
41:32had made deep and dramatic thrusts into the USSR, taking millions of prisoners, vast areas
41:38of the Soviet Union came under Nazi control. In many areas, the German troops were welcomed
41:44as liberators from Stalinism. This attack had been halted by desperate counterattacks
41:51in the snows of winter, as the last Russian reserves were thrown into action. Through
41:58the winter months of 1942, Stalin had ordered attacks everywhere. Russian soldiers attacked
42:05a German army then unprepared for winter fighting, and their attacks met with success. The German
42:12army had cautiously avoided major actions and allowed the Soviets to push west, stretching
42:18communication lines and draining large numbers of troops into vulnerable positions. When
42:24the Russian summer returned, the German army went once more on the offensive.
42:38The mathematics of the war were shifting slowly against the Germans. In early summer, the
42:44Red Army had 5.5 million soldiers deployed, the Germans just under 5 million, of which
42:50400,000 were Finns, and just under a million were Axis allies, a mixture of Italians, Hungarians,
42:57Romanians, and even a division of Spanish volunteers. The crucial German advantages
43:03of better equipment, better training, and better leadership were being slowly eroded
43:08by the support of Britain and America. As Russia's quantity of forces became comparable
43:13in quality, the balance was to slowly tip against the Nazis.
43:21Barely a month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, and little more than six months after
43:26Pearl Harbor, a truly decisive battle of the Pacific War would be fought. The Japanese
43:32High Command resolved to end the war, to win a victory that would knock the United States
43:38out of the war. The Japanese plan was based on classic naval strategy, aiming to force
43:45the U.S. Navy into battle on Japanese terms. The plan was to attack the U.S. island of
43:52Midway. Midway was the furthest west U.S. held territory in the Pacific.
44:00The attack would lure the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a battle which would bring about its
44:06destruction. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto planned to make the Americans weaken their defenses
44:12by making a feint towards the American Aleutian Islands, far to the north. Yamamoto believed
44:19that following this victory, the invasion and Japanese occupation of Hawaii would follow.
44:25This, in turn, would enable the Japanese Navy to drive the U.S. fleet from the ocean,
44:31even for Japanese forces to directly threaten the west coast of the continental United States.
44:37America would, as a result, sue for peace.
44:41The Japanese Admiral's plan involved the concentration of a massive fleet, 145 ships
44:49strong. Once again, the work of the codebreaker was to be crucial. The breaking of the Japanese
44:56codes revealed that the Aleutian attack was a sham, and Midway the real target. The American
45:03Navy was therefore able to concentrate its defenses. Nevertheless, the material advantage
45:10lay with the Japanese, four carriers to the U.S. Navy's three, two hundred and twenty-five
45:17enemy, two hundred and sixty-one planes of the highest quality against a mixed bag of
45:22two hundred and thirty U.S. aircraft. The Japanese force also contained five heavily
45:28armed, powerful battleships.
45:31The Japanese made several errors which were to have a disastrous outcome. Photo reconnaissance
45:37of Pearl Harbor, which would have shown the base empty, was cancelled. A screen of submarines
45:44was deployed to the east of Midway Island, too late, after the U.S. fleet had already
45:49passed through. Yamamoto expected his powerful fleet of four carriers to easily take the
45:56island. He expected, then, a weak, divided enemy, diverted by his northern dummy attack.
46:03Instead, he was entering a battle where the initiative, the surprise, actually lay with
46:09the United States Navy. The heart of the Japanese Navy, the aircraft carriers, supported
46:15by a small fleet of both smaller warships and battleships, with invasion forces aboard,
46:21sailed for Midway.
46:24The Japanese plan was complex and intricate, yet lacked in crucial details. Incredibly,
46:31Japan was misled by false intelligence into an American deception that a carrier, the
46:36USS Yorktown, had sunk following the Battle of the Coral Sea. Knowing the Japanese plans,
46:43the United States Navy made a series of false signals that implied what Yamamoto believed
46:48to be the last two remaining U.S. carriers, Enterprise and Hornet, were nowhere near Midway.
46:55In fact, they were there, ready and waiting, preparing a surprise attack of their own with
47:01the third, totally unexpected carrier, the supposed sunk Yorktown.
47:06The American defense was everything, then, that the U.S. Navy could muster, all three
47:11operational aircraft carriers the U.S. Navy could put to sea.
47:16Midway was a perilously close-run battle.
47:20Through a combination of daring, gamble, luck, and inspiration, the U.S. aircraft caught
47:26the Japanese carriers by surprise. The Japanese approached Midway Island and made their first
47:32attacks, unaware that the U.S. Navy had such a powerful force in hand.
47:56Good fortune and daring by the United States admirals, overconfidence by the Japanese commanders,
48:03resulted in the Japanese carriers caught with their planes on deck refueling and rearming.
48:09American bombers made a series of devastating attacks.
48:13Three Japanese carriers were destroyed in minutes. The fourth carrier attacked and severely
48:18damaged a U.S. carrier before herself being destroyed in another American attack.
48:27The U.S. Navy had torn the heart from its opponent.
48:31Never again would Japan be able to fight with a numerical advantage over the Americans.
48:37The war between America and Japan was only six months old.
48:41It still had over three years to run. Yet, already, it could be said to be moving to the endgame.
48:48The Battle of Midway was a decisive day in the Pacific War.
48:52Within the space of hours, the balance of power had shifted against the Japanese.
48:57American industry could easily replace the lost aircraft and the lost ships, but Japan could not.
49:04Its force of skilled pilots and crews were lost to a man.
49:09Japan would never regain the initiative.
49:12The long march to defeat and surrender for Japan had begun.
49:18Next time on World War II, the Complete History, the Afrika Korps broadcast to Egypt.
49:25They tell the ladies of Cairo, be ready for us tonight.
49:29This is a date the Afrika Korps break as the British Army fight the Germans to a standstill at El Alamein.
49:37In yet another change of British commander, a newly appointed general is sent to lead the Eighth Army in the desert.
49:44General Richard Gott takes command and, on his first day, is killed.
49:50A hurried search for a replacement throws up a stand-in who will march into history.
49:56The second choice, General Bernard Montgomery, steps in to lead the British Empire forces
50:02and creates a legend to match that of his opponent, Erwin Rommel.
50:07The day after Montgomery takes command, the German Army comes before Stalingrad
50:12and the decisive battle of the European War begins.
50:16In the West, British and Canadian forces carry the war to the Germans as a powerful raid is mounted on Dieppe.
50:24It is a defeat for the Allies, but vital lessons are learnt.
50:29Montgomery shatters the myth of Rommel at the Second Battle of El Alamein.
50:35It's a stunning victory which Churchill calls the end of the beginning.
50:41America goes on the offensive. Guadalcanal is recaptured from the Japanese.
50:47American forces land in North Africa and meet an army of the Third Reich for the first time.
50:55The skies of Germany begin to fill with the planes of the United States Air Force.
51:02At a meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill, the ultimate war aim is spelt out to Nazism.
51:08It is to be unconditional surrender.