194 - The End of the War in Africa - WW2 - May 14, 1943
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
- With the end of the Tunisian Campaign, the Allies have won the war for the African Continent. What next? They meet at the Trident Conference in Washington DC to try and figure that out. Meanwhile, the fight in the field continues - in Burma, the Aleutians, China, and the Kuban.
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This is the end of an entire theatre of war. It shows just how massive this war, and the project to cover it, really is. But there are stills campaigns raging all over the globe. A big shout out to all of you who have been with us since the start of the North African Theatre.
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Hey, the playlist YEAR 4 - WW2 - 1942/43 has a notable gap in the videos, multiple recent videos of both WW2 Real Time and War Against Humanity are missing.
Would've dropped this on the most recent video, but since the pinned message on that one is a memorial, it seemed inappropriate.
The fight between Channaut and General Stillwell will come to a head in 1944, sorry if this is a spoiler Channault thinks that the airfieds that are being built further and further to the West to accomidate the B-29' which wil be coming can be defended by airpower alone. Still well believes that he has to train Chinese soldiers on the ground and only ground troops can defend the airfields. And wants to train a number of Chinese divisions his way to portect the long range bomber airfields Channault wins with the big mucky mucks and in vain he tries to guard the airfields with his aircraft. It fails as the Japanese launch a major offensive against thev airfirlds and one by on they take them. This shows that Stillwell was correct, but Channaut started witth the Flying Tigers and I believe that Mada Chiang interviened on Channault's behalf, and they go that way and fail misrably. Thus Stilwell was right and he ends up taking the Chinese divisions who are first rate units that Stilwell had the American Army train them in India, to Burma to open up the overland suppy line. Stilwwell was correct, you need boots on the ground. Stiwell was sent to China and given an nimpossibe task. I'll go into the impossibe task at a later date.
"This defeat is another Stalingrad level disaster..."
The big difference is when Mussolini promotes Messe to Field Marshall he authorized him to surrender his sword, not fall on it.
Yeah, I was going to comment that this was surprisingly decent and rational and in stark contrast to hitler.
why promote him to field marshal at all ?
@@nicbahtin4774 Seems like a way to say "you tried, well done" instead of throwing him to the wolves for something that wasn't ultimately his fault.
@@nicbahtin4774 2 things i can think of, 1 it allows him to overrule any german generals telling italians under their command to keep fighting, and 2 it could also just be Mussolini acknowledging his service before the fight was over for him to keep good graces with other generals in his inner circle so that they wouldnt think they would be treated the same as the eastern front germans
Yep. Paulus basically told Hitler to fuck himself lol
Giovanni Messe’s career in the army is really fascinating to me.
He was NOT a member of the Italian ruling class, so he had to start from scratch and all of his promotions were given thanks to his actual skills, not thanks to his family ties or political connections.
He was just a sergeant at the time of the boxer rebellion.
He became a lieutenant in the Italo-Turkish war.
During WW1 he became a captain in the Arditi and in the Second Battle of the Piave he managed to defeat an entire Austrian division with only three battalions.
In the years of the interwar period he was nominated Aide-de-camp for the King himself, and then he was slowly promoted to the rank of Brigadier general just in time for the war against Ethiopia.
He was strongly against Italy’s entrance in Ww2 and tried to oppose almost every single decision made by Mussolini, but he was almost always ignored by his superiors:
- messe was against the invasion of Greece (and we all know how it went)
- messe was against sending an army to Russia, and he got sent there as a result. At least, when he was in charge, the CSIR (Italian expeditionary corps in Russia) performed well.
All of his successes made almost all of his fellow generals jealous of him (also because he was becoming more and more popular with Mussolini) and so, in order to keep their jobs, they tried every possible way to make messe fall from grace.
And so Messe was fired from his position in Russia with an excuse and was sent to Tunisia, a theater that everyone (except Mussolini apparently) knew it was doomed to be a disaster.
But nevertheless, he still managed to slow down the Allies advance with even less resources than Rommel - and, ironically, Montgomery actually thought that he was fighting against rommel this entire time, and he was very surprised when he discovered that he had been fighting Messe and not Rommel for those last weeks.
Fun fact, after the surrender of all Axis forces in africa, Messe went to meet montgomery in person; the first thing monty said as soon as he saw for the first time this short italian general in front of him was "WHO'S THIS?!".
It's good to learn more about this man. Thank you !
He does sound like an interesting person, thanks for the info
Great info!
Imagine how demoralizing it'd be to have the enemy general that beat you just go "Who are you?"
@@ThatRatBastard yeah that must have really sucked
An interesting event this week on May 9 1943 is that a German Ju 88 night fighter fitted with the new Lichtenstein radar set is secretly flown from Norway to Scotland by a crew of defected personnel and possibly led by a British intelligence agent. The analysis of this new advanced equipment and other data about the tactics of German night fighters would eventually be of vital importance to the Allies.
That plane is now at The RAF museum.
@@karstreitsma7316 That's right! It is one of only two complete surviving Ju 88 aircraft in the world, the other surviving Ju 88 aircraft being currently displayed at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
I can't wait to see those. Bucket list!
That sounds like a great Spy Thriller waiting to happen.
@@soupordave Brad Pitt or Tom Hardy?
My grandfather was on the USS Pennsylvania. He said that it was the coldest he's ever been and that they had to disassemble their 20mm and 40mm AA guns and sleep with the critical parts to keep them from freezing up.
(N)ice story, thanks for sharing!
The u.s.s pennsylvania was attached with the pacific fleet. Not the atlantic fleet. So why you talking about wilis
@@ansonarnold1584 It's mentioned this episode that the USS Pennsylvania was in the Bering Strait to assist in retaking the Aleutian Islands
@@ansonarnold1584 Try looking at a map. A clue, the further you go from the equator, the colder it gets.
@@ansonarnold1584 you know the Aleutians are in the pacific right?
It's fascinating to recall that just six months ago in the timeline, Allied forces in North Africa were often on the receiving end of Luftwaffe bombing and strafing attacks. By now the Anglo-American Allies have thousands of aircraft in theater, and German air operations have become largely untenable.
the Kittyhawk was the aircraft that was the most successful ...they got the Kittyhawk immediately after they stopped flying the Hurricanes...the Kittyhawk and Tomahawk were virtually the sole air force of the cell three squadron type aircraft for three years right through the North African campaign and right through the Eastern Mediterranean and Yugoslavian areas the Kittyhawk carried that by itself, and it was a brilliant aircraft...2,000 pounds of bombs
At 14.18 3 Squadron RAAF You tube
It's only going to get worse for the Axis. We have not yet seen the start of massive Allied air campaigns in the Mediterranean in preparation for the invasion of Sicily. When it does happen it sets the Luftwaffe reeling from the shock and losses. Adolf Galland would be dispatched to Italy to salvage the situation. He said that morale had collapsed and that the air operations against them were immense. So large that he had seen nothing like it before.
That will be the start of the irresistible Allied air forces against the Luftwaffe. For most of the North African Campaign there was parity between the Allied & Axis air forces. But once the air ops begin to prepare for Sicily, it was really game over for the Luftwaffe.
It was also an Allied aerial victory that in large measure doomed the Axis forces in Africa, when Luftwaffe transports & their escorts were savaged by British & American fighter aircraft. It was similar to Stalingrad in that regard, with any final hope for the defending army evaporating when air resupply failed.
Slow and steady wins the race
@Daniel Mocsny You raise an interesting point. So often the so called "experts" drone on about how Germany had the best weapons, troops & tactics etc etc. The justification is how victorious they were in the beginning. But really, Germany was only dominant on the battlefield for about the first year, after that, excepting a handful of all out offensives, they were gradually worn down, with first Britain & then the rest of the Allies catching them up & with increasing speed surpassing them to an enormous extent.
Germany wasn't "The Best" they were simply first off the line while others weren't as yet prepared. As for the latter, my grandparents told me "No one believed he'd actually go to war....he'd fought in the trenches of The Great War....we thought that nobody who'd gone through that was crazy enough to repeat it."
Best part of your channel is the detailed coverage of the Japanese activities during WWII. Growing up, most history concentrated on the European campaign. Japan was actually at war for much longer than Germany and were an incredibly savage and cruel military force. Thanks for the high quality presentation.- Rich
I agree.
Japan's WWII experience was 8-15 years long (depending on whether you date the start from the invasion of Manchuria or from the Marco Polo Bridge incident that began their war with China in earnest.
Thanks for watching!
@@diarradunlap9337 It is this long war period for Japan in China and their lack of victory which puzzles me. Why would they in 1941 attack US? If you have not obtained victory in China after so long why would you then begin another war with a stronger power. There is an element here in their thinking that is not logical but fanatic. Maybe it is the Bushido code. Alien to Western thinking!
The "official" start date for the Second World War was always a bit flawed for being absurdly eurocentric. The start date for the conflict should really be July of 1937 when Japan invaded China, two years before the invasion of Poland.
Another interesting footnote this week on May 12 1943 is that the *Mark 24 FIDO acoustic torpedo* will have its first confirmed kill when an RAF B-24 Liberator dropped one such torpedo on surfaced German submarine U-456 and caused major damage to it when the torpedo guided itself to the submarine even though it had submerged by then. U-456 would sink the next day when the damage proved too extensive and sank with all hands. For deceptive purposes, the Mark 24 was described as a “mine” instead of its actual torpedo function.
Black May for ya
Glorious German engineering meets the country that made analog standoff self guiding bombs and fucking nukes, haha
The Mark 24 mine was highly classified during the war. My father would never speak about the functioning mechanisms of the weapon only recounting that US sailors in the Atlantic Fleet commonly referred to it as the Mickey Finn. The nickname was apparently due to the weapon’s success at knocking out German submarines.
When my father was drafted in 1944, there were Afrika Korps POWs working at the facility where they issued out uniforms to the new inductees. The Germans were in superb physical condition, well fed and exercised, and quite content to be out of the war. My father remembered looking at one particularly beefy gentleman and thinking "We've gotta fight those guys?"
Actually the not so well fed ones in Europe and the Pacific.
Fortunately the US & Canada had the resources and the wisdom to feed and treat their POWs well and the wit to anticipate the post-war benefits. Britain wasn't quite as lavishly supplied but POWs there weren't treated or fed worse than anyone else so they also reaped the post-war benefits. It helps that the Western Allies didn't have a supremacist ideology that would mandate the mistreatment of prisoners. The Soviets also didn't have a supremacist ideology but they also lacked the resources to feed their own people, let alone prisoners, and their utilitarian ideology considered all people fungible in the name of the cause..
@@danielstickney2400 I suspect that the Soviets had a lot of revenge on their minds.
@@greggweber9967 It was during 1941 and parts of 1942, but the Soviet leaders quickly realized that it was better to capture Germans alive then murder them, because dead soldiers can't be interrogated for information. They had to sternly force their own troops to not kill any German prisoners though, as they tended to see a lot of the war crimes that the Germans had committed. And by 1944 the Soviets started to capture so many Germans that they came to be seen as useful for forced labor. Conditions were just harsh for the Germans because the Soviets had barely enough food for their own troops and citizens.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 I don't know the exact number but it was at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of German soldiers who starved to death (or died of disease) in Soviet POW camps. But like you said, it wasn't really intentional starvation because the Soviets just plain did not have the resources to feed them.
I remember reading a story from the end of the North African campaign where a German unit was refusing to surrender to the Americans because they wanted to instead surrender to the New Zealanders who they had mostly fought with during their time in the desert. The American commander had told them, “to stop this foolishness and come down and surrender already.”
Italy is the ultimate proof that its soldiers can be brave, but if their logistics are bad, if your technology lags behind your enemies, if your leaders do not know how to recognize your limitations in the war effort: your nation will be an eternal joke in military historiography.
Given how badly Italy suffered in World War One it's not surprising the average Italian conscript had little appetite for this war. Especially after Germany declared war on the US with it's large and close-knit Italian immigrant community. One could argue that Italian ties to the US were much closer than Italian ties to Germany, at least at the community level.
Italian soldati did its duty as well as any military serviceman could do under the circumstances he found himself in any front it fought , Greece , North Africa , East Africa , Eatern Front , Balkans etc...The strategic blunder of Mussolini's decision to enter the war and remaining in Axis and following Hitler's lead into catastrophe had little to do with combat endurance or bravery of Italians who had some great artillery and specialist units in their army but let down on a number of vital factors from economy andf industry to leadership to lack of modern weapons in critical areas to logistics and supply and lack of critical leadership
I think also there was a feeling in the Italian military that they were fighting on the wrong side !
I have to admit, Mussolini clearly had more honor then Hitler in regards to his men. Promoting a general to field marshal and explicitly allowing him to surrender with so many troops is something Hitler would never do. At least once Mussolini did the right thing.
Im honestly suprised Hitler didnt order von Arnim to die fighting and refuse Messes command to surrender.
They should’ve evacuated them to provide a defense for Sicily.
Hardly..
@@tigertank06 That wasn't logistically possible.
@@tigertank06 One of the reasons the Axis lost in the first place was that it had become impossible to supply North Africa given Allied air operations and naval supremacy, how could they have evacuated without losing tons of ships, equipment, and men ?
@@tongtong4077 Also they couldn't even ferry supplies to those men in Tunisia without half the ships sent getting sunk. Evacuating them? A bit of a TALL ORDER.
Flowing back from Cap Bon towards Tunis and Bizerte and out of the mountains around Enfidaville, thousands upon thousands of troops made their way into captivity, German officers driving themselves in blunt-nosed open Volkswagen staff cars and a few Mercedes-Benz, Italians in Toppolino Fiats and Lancias, carrying great mounds of personal kit, very few of them accompanied by guards. Two trains passed each other, German prisoners riding in one lot of trucks and British Tommies in the other: ‘British Army no good,’ called out a German soldier. A Tommy shouted back, ‘Then who put you in the f……g cattle truck?’
Bloody Road to Tunis - David Rolf
I wonder had the Axis taken Malta, would things have been different.
@@tigertank06 Yes, very. The UK would have had a much harder time supplying its own forces in Africa as well as interdicting Axis shipping in the Mediterranean. Might have turned the tide of the whole war.
@@Raskolnikov70 Malta earned their George cross
I find the contrast between Mussolini promoting his commander to field marshal with the explicit permission honorably to surrender, and Hitler promoting Paulus to field marshal with the implicit direction to commit suicide as his command is liquidated interesting.
2 of my Grand uncles are captured during this week fighting for Italy in North Africa. While on my Mom's side, my other Grandfather is fighting for the US 1st Infantry Division. My Dad's dad is stationed in Sicily as a 18 year old cook/solider fighting for Italy and will be captured when the Allies invade.
My family on my Italian side all agreed they were treated better in American POW camps and later American/Allied rule of Sicily in WW2 after being captured then they were by the Italian Army and Italian government. This is why they all tried to move to the US after the war. Though only my Grandfather would be fortunate enough to get in. His 2 brothers would move to Canada and the Netherlands since they couldn't get into the US. Their sisters kept living in Sicily.
That's quite amazing, Vinny. I'm glad they made it through as POWs, and very glad that you're my fellow countryman as a result of your Grandfather's getting in.
@@WorldWarTwo Thanks. Yeah it would have been more crazy if both my Grandfathers actually fought against each other during the Allied invasion of Sicily. But my Grandfathers talked about it after my parents got married and they were not in the same location in Sicily when the fighting was happening. My Grandfather who fought for Italy in Sicily said that his unit was only given 10 bullets each (2 clips) for their bolt action guns to face off against the US and British troops invading them. My Grandfather said he fired his 10 bullets like the rest of his unit and then they surrendered since they were not getting any refill on ammo. My Grandfather on my Mom's side fighting for the US in the Big Red One said he would fire all 8 of the rounds in his M1 Garand every time they got into combat and would then reload. He said he had plenty of ammo during his whole time in the war (he was sent back to the US after North Africa and Sicily to train new recruits so he didn't fight on D-Day, France or Germany).
@@PhillyPhanVinny Something the Allies did, but the Axis never quite seemed to grasp, rotate your combat experienced personnel back to pass on their hard won experience to the new recruits. It pays dividends.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 That was partly out of necessity. The Allies had a deeper manpower pool and were better positioned to rotate experienced personnel away from the front and into training roles than the Axis powers.
Of course the manpower problem was the fault of the mad Axis leadership that blundered their way into a global conflict against three great powers simultaneously.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 The Axis doctrine of "use them until they win the war or die" really screwed over their pilot reserves. Germany and Japan started the war with a good number of ace pilots racking up absurd numbers of kills in comparison to allied aces (who were consistently rotated out), but by mid-war these countries had almost completely run out of experienced pilots, leaving no one to train the new-comers. This is one of the factors that led to the adoption of Kamikaze tactics by the Japanese.
Those German who became POW's in Tunisia were lucky. After this defeat things are going to go downhill faster than Mussolini's approval rating
Living in a POW camp in North America was the safest place for a German citizen in 1944 and 45.
@@editorcj No kidding. A fair number of German POWs even gained weight while they were held in the US or Canada. For late war German soldiers, North American POW camps were closer to luxury resorts.
North Africans: Hooray, we are finally free of European imperialism.
France: Yes, but actually no. Wait until 1962.
Still an improvement from Italian colonial imperialism
More like, under new management
The allied powers won over the axes powers in Africa. But if we talk about the colonies in Africa and the rest of the word, WW2 was the beginning of the end for the colony system. WW2 end the european rule over Africa and other european colonies in the world. WW1 and WW2 was a tragedy and the beginning of the end for Europe, but not for the the rest of the world.
When was the french/US invasion of Lybia? Seems like yesterday... Imperialism is not over yet.
@@Casa-de-hongos NATO never invaded Libya. They enforced a UN Security Council resolution to put a no fly zone on the place, taking out the SAM sites when they were used against the NATO jets and any aircraft taking off by either the rebels or Gaddafi´s forces, with minimal casualties for NATO soldiers and minimal civilian losses even by Human Rights Watch.
It was not perfect but that was one of the odd cases where things were done by the book.
A not so fun fact is the US Army 7th Inf Division were trained and equipped in the southern California desert for the North African Campaign. Unneeded they were sent right off to the Aleutians Operation.Totally ill equipped and trained. The suffering was terrible
Poor von Arnim. Not only defeated but forced to have dinner with Montgomery.
That was General Ritter Von Thoma captured at the end of Second Battle of Alamein in 4th November 1942 who dined with Montgomery. General Hans Jurgen Von Arnim was captured by 4th Indian Division (they also captured entire Heersgruppe Afrika HQ on 12th May 1943) and met with 18th Army Group commander General Harold Alexander who was his equalivent. Eisenhower who had been previously badly burned with Darlan Deal and other contacts with Vichy French authorities at the eyes of press and public in November 1942 at Algiers , refused to meet with Von Arnim and Montgomery was about to leave to Algiers busy with planning Operation Husky invasion of Sicily at this time.
@@merdiolu details, details
Imagine dining with Montgomery and then being hospitalized with nervous trauma as a result, only to be slapped by Patton when he visits and discovers you don't have any "actual" (i.e. physical) wounds.
I'm pretty sure dinner with Montgomery reaches the level of a war crime.
@@robertkras5162 That's what Churchill said something like "Poor Von Thoma - I too have dined with montgomery"
Y'know, the thing that's always impressive to me that tends to go without remark when it's done properly: caring for prisoners after these mass surrenders. 250 000 Italian and German troops in Italy surrendering mean 250 000 more people that the British and American forces suddenly need to provide food, water, and medical care for. Of course there are many examples where Prisoners of War do not get that proper care from their captors, and the food quality and quantity can probably fall significantly from an active duty soldier's rations before it reaches a true starvation ration, but it's still quite the logistical challenge, and one that is difficult to plan for since you don't know when or if the enemy will surrender, nor how many there will be when they do.
Once they've had a week or so to get everyone processed and distributed out to POW camps and so on, its less dramatic a problem - supplying POW camps is a part of overall logistics, and their requirements are predictable. But in that first week, when your front line forces suddenly have to make sure there's food and water for an extra quarter million people...that's gotta be a challenge.
(Worth noting that while a surrendering force does bring their own supplies with them, there's still the issue of bringing those supplies into the logistical system of the captors, and the force that surrendered is often one that has suffered from a lack of resupply immediately prior to their capture. Also, in this case, the water demand is of supreme importance because all of the fighting in Africa has been in very dry conditions (some literally in the Sahara, some coastal stuff that gets Mediterranean weather but is still very hot and dry), and everyone's been on pretty short water rationing this whole time.)
rashkavar Thanks, great thoughts about the logistical challenges of POW's.
A huge number of the Italian POWs were sent to POW camps near Bedford in England and Glasgow in Scotland. Many thousands stayed after the war and settled in those areas.
At 13:35 there's a curious quote from Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn": 'They came as a bedraggled mob of *Mangiatori'.* Initially it didn't make much sense to me, as the word 'mangiatori' only means 'eaters' in Italian. I did a little research and found out the meaning here was *"useless mouths."*
Great context, thank you.
One of the most splendid shows on TH-cam. For much of my life - I have watched, studied and learned about history, and this war. And your work is right up there. Top notch.
AdmV0rl0n Thanks for the very kind words. We're all history enthusiasts as well, and it's incredible to have the support of wonderful people like you who also take it seriously. Please do stay tuned every week as we grind through the rest of the war
My dad was a secretary in Ike's N.Africa office. (He was one of few men who could type.) Victory in NA was not kind to him. He was transfered back to the 5th Army, and given an M1 Garand and an entrenching tool. Soon he was living in the Anzio Beach mud.
That's amazing, thank you for sharing his experiences here. He must have seen some incredible things at Anzio
@@WorldWarTwo He deftly avoided the topic of Anzio. I wrote a response here earlier, but somehow fumbled it during a glitch. Remind me to write more later.
Please update your "Source Literature List" in the description. It only includes sources for 1939, 1940, and 1941. It seems very much incomplete.
I just want to say a big thank you to all of you working to bring us this coverage. The amount of nuance and detail you bring is truly essential to understanding this part of our history
Doodledibob Thank you for your very kind words of appreciation. The whole team works hard every week to bring you this history, and it helps us immensely having a keen & engaged audience like you.
One of the fascinating things about WWII is that it had these interim “ends” where it was clear the war was over in a particular area. Another example are the islands in the Pacific taken back from the Japanese,the taking of Sicily,etc.....for the people living in these areas it must have felt like the day the war ended.
Proud Time Ghost Army member for a few months now. Keep up the exceptional work!
That's great to hear! Thank you so much!
I hadn't seen much coverage of the campaign in Alaska.
Those Axis troops surrendering in North Africa are a lot better off than their friends continuing the fight.
Mussolini would have achieved greater glory had he limited his North African adventures to oil exploration.
Imagine he had found the lybian oil we know of today and massively exploited it, he could have fuel half the german army with that...
@@noobster4779 that’s like sayin what if they knew of all the oil in Germany. Problem with that is TECHNOLOGY. Wasn’t even close to being able to get it out of ground let alone refine it
@@noobster4779 lol how would he get it cross the sea when the Royal Navy Attack the supply line?
Could have been retreated to Sicily.
@@misterbaker9728 Even if they weren't able to fully use oil reserves in Libya due to lack of infrastructure, knowing about them would have changed German and Italian strategy when it came to the African theater. It's likely they would have put a lot more effort into building up that area (in both military and technology) as well as their naval defenses in order to ensure access to it. Instead they treated Africa as a backwater and only half-heartedly supported operations there while throwing everything they had at the USSR.
I've grown so accustomed to hearing about the Afrikakorps and the general action in Africa that it's jarring and almost seems unreal when these big events happen.
Rommel is still around, will be active in Italy again soon, and some of the DAK divisions will return in a new form. 15th Panzer division would return as the 15th Panzergrenadier division, a renamed division, in Sicily, Italy and the battle of the Bulge. And 21st Panzer would return as a reformed division in France, fighting in Normandy, the Bulge, Alsace and meeting its end on the Eastern Front in the battle of Berlin.
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The 'Word from our sponsor' bit was hilarious 😂😂
Great job guys, as always.
Wonderful necktie, very old-fashioned but in a good way. 4/5
Thanks Gianni
You called it the Normandy landings. Have they already decided on Normandy or are they still considering the Pas-de-Calais?
We refer to them as the Normandy landings, but the Caen sector wasn't confirmed until (slight spoiler) August 1943.
Nobody would invade France by Normandy - Calais is so much closer to Britain. I would fully expect an invasion there.
@@robertkras5162 I don't see how it could be anywhere else. Other locations are too difficult for such a massive undertaking.
@@robertkras5162 There might be a diversionary landing in Normandy, but der fuhrer won't be fooled by such a transparent scheme!
1 Million Subscribers. Well done. Congratulations 🎉
The beginning of this video gave me a good chuckle.
Bizerta
Outside the town the prisoners’ cages were filling up. Not since Wavell’s days had I seen such swarms of men. The compound on the Massicault road overflowed beyond its barbed wire and cactus hedges, and the Germans and Italians simply hung around the outskirts waiting to be taken in. A German band, complete with its instruments, had arrived. The bandsmen stood in a square and played soothing Viennese lieder. There must have been five thousand prisoners in that camp and more were coming in at the rate of five hundred an hour. The prisoners were being issued with tins of bully beef, packets of biscuits and tins of fruit. There seemed to be plenty. Since neither I myself nor anyone in the army had been able to get his hands on more than a spoonful of tinned fruit for the past few weeks, I found myself unreasonably annoyed with one German who was pouring away the juice in order to get at the pears in his tin more easily.
At that moment I had not yet begun to know the full story of the prisoners or I would not have been so excited.
While all this peaceful sorting-out was going on in Tunis tremendous events were happening outside the town. The Americans had broken clean through the mountains to the west and north of Medjerda Valley, and were mopping up prisoners in uncounted thousands. The Seventh Armoured Division wheeled northward from Tunis and pursued its old enemy, the 15th Panzer Division, up the coast road as far as Porto Farina, outside Bizerta. The Germans made one abortive attempt to escape by sea-bodies were being washed ashore for days afterwards-and then surrendered. Those two divisions had been fighting one another across the desert for years.
The Fighting French had come through Pont du Fahs in one epic rush and were counting their prisoners by the truckload. On the coast the skeleton Eighth Army was again locked in a most bloody battle around Enfidaville.
But all this did not account for the main bulk of von Arnim’s forces. They were in a state of disorder, but they were still intact. In a vast disorganised mob the majority of them had made for the Cape Bon Peninsula, where arrangements for evacuation ought to have been made. Cape Bon was defensible. A stiff double line of hills ran across its base, and von Arnim’s last coherent plan was to get as many of his men and weapons as possible behind those hills before the British arrived. There were only two feasible passes through the hills-one at Hamman Lif, where the Bey had his palace, on the northern coast outside Tunis, the other at the lovely tourist town of Hammamet on the south coast at the base of Cape Bon. Von Arnim himself had retreated to the Zaghouan area and was fighting a hot rearguard action back toward Hammamet. His northern armies meanwhile were slipping through the Hamman Lif gap in the north.
This was the moment when Alexander turned his decisive thrust on Tunis into a coup de grâce. It is fascinating to me now to look back and see a guiding hand in all these vast movements. At the time, everything to me was pretty confused; indeed, travelling as I was with the onward sweep of the troops and being without general information from hour to hour, it was impossible to know what plan, if any, was being carried out. All I knew was that a major breakthrough had occurred and, willy-nilly, one followed the general advance wherever it went.
It was not until a few days later, when General Anderson explained to us personally what had happened, that I realised what a masterpiece of design the breakthrough had been, and what enormous risks had been taken. In our headlong thrust to Tunis we had left huge numbers of the enemy in pockets on either side of us. It was an extremely narrow thrust, and the major risk was that the enemy might close in behind us and entirely surround the head of the British army. Fifty things might have gone wrong. As it turned out, the sheer depth and swiftness of the thrust entirely disorganised von Arnim’s command. Von Arnim himself was put to flight. So were his corps and divisional headquarters. The result was that the big pockets of fresh fighting troops on either side of the British breakthrough were without orders. They saw a great column of enemy vehicles and tanks rushing past them, and they simply deduced that the game was up. They headed at full steam for Cape Bon.
Now, having taken this first major risk and got away with it, Alexander and Anderson decided to go one further. They decided to split the German army in two halves by occupying the Hamman Lif-Hammamet line across the base of Cape Bon Peninsula before von Arnim could. In that way one-half of the Germans would be bottled up in the peninsula, the other half would be isolated outside, and neither would even get a chance of getting to the boats. There was, of course, not an instant to lose, and already, before Tunis fell, the orders went out to the Sixth Armoured Division: ‘You will break through the enemy position at Hamman Lif and then, wheeling south between the hills, proceed to Hammamet.’ Even on paper it seemed to be a fantastic thing to ask of any division. For one thing, it meant their tackling an enemy at least ten times numerically stronger. But Alexander had the Germans on the run and he meant to keep them running even if it cost him an entire division or more. Some of our finest infantry-the Guards-without waiting for daylight, set off into the unknown. The subsequent march of the Sixth Division must place it and its general in the very highest place in the military history of the war.
They arrived outside Hamman Lif at nightfall, the evening after Tunis fell. The village straggles along the main road and the seashore, and it is dominated by the Bey’s white palace on the road and a tall apartment house standing near the sea. There are half a dozen blocks of smaller buildings and the streets run at right angles. The Germans had set up about twenty 88-millimetre guns in a field beyond the town. They had also established snipers in every one of the six storeys of the apartment house, and there were fighting troops in the village as well. It was an extremely strong defensive position since it had to be attacked frontally, after the surrounding heights were taken.
The general waited until the moon had risen. Then he placed tanks at the mouths of each of the village streets. The Guards infantry clambered up on the outside of the tanks. Then the tanks charged. At each intersection infantry dropped off and went down the side streets mopping up with the grenade, the bayonet and the tommy-gun. Others continued to the apartment house and dealt with it in the same way. The tanks engaged the 88s at short range and knocked them out. In that one epic moonlight charge the town was taken. Someone went into the Bey’s palace and apologised to the hysterical officials for the damage that was done, and the rest of the division swept on.
They broke clean through to Hammamet inside the next ten hours. They roared past German airfields, workshops, petrol and ammunition dumps and gun positions. They did not stop to take prisoners-things had gone far beyond that. If a comet had rushed down that road, it could hardly have made a greater impression. The Germans now were entirely dazed. Wherever they looked, British tanks seemed to be hurtling past. Von Arnim’s guns would be firing south only to find that the enemy had also appeared behind them-and over on the left -and on the right. The German generals gave up giving orders since they were completely out of touch and the people to whom they could give orders were diminishing every hour. In what direction, anyway, were they to fight. Back toward Zaghouan? Toward Tunis? Under the German military training you had to have a plan. But there was no plan. Only the boats remained-the evacuation boats which had been promised them. The boats that were to take them back to Italy. In a contagion of doubt and fear the German army turned tail and made up the Cape Bon roads looking for the boats. When on the beaches it became apparent to them at last that there were no boats-nor any aircraft either-the army became a rabble. The Italian navy had not dared to put to sea to save its men. The Luftwaffe had been blown out of the sky. In other words, the Axis had cut its losses and the Afirika Korps was abandoned to its fate.
On May 10th I set off up the peninsula through Hamman Lif to see one of the most grotesque and awesome spectacles that can have occurred in this war-an entire German army laying down its arms
The Desert War - Alan Moorehead
Why did he consider it "grotesque?"
@@nbhoser Seeing an army collapse, even an enemy army, is probably a surreal experience
@@nbhoser I assume he means grotesque from the point of view of the defeated. An entire army forced into a situation where it must lay down it's arms, is an epic disaster.
For the soldiers who marched off to captivity however it was likely a blessing in disguise. Most of the German combat troops who were elsewhere in 1943, and still fighting, would be among the dead in 1945.
@@nbhoser While "grotesque" to modern American speakers has only the meaning of malformed or disgusting, Moorehead is using another, perhaps more educated artistic or literary meaning. Consider these dictionary definitions:
"Incongruous or inappropriate to a shocking degree"
"A very ugly or comically distorted figure, creature, or image."
The blue shirt, purple vest and *that* tie. Approved.👍
Solid content.
Thank you ricardo! Love reading the outfit appraisals every week
Hope you guys will read this: in Italian language when you find words with i.e. "chi" or "che" you should read the "ch" with like a strong k. "Pachino" it's not pronounced like the actor Al Pacino, but more like Pakino (like how you would pronounce the "Paki" in "Pakistan").
Excelsior!
The contrast between Alexander's and Bradley's telegrams awes me
Can't believe you guys got Churchill back for that intro, marvellous stuff...
love this channel so much
We love you too
Can't believe it's only a year until D-Day.
Its weird that Churchill sponsors TimeGhost but understandable.
"Who would have thought the final plans for the invasion of Sicily would take place in a lavatory?" General Montgomery, _Patton_
I am REALLY happy you guys cover the Aleutian campaign. You never hear about this (outside of the Japanese invasion being a side operation of Midway), and I hadn't heard about it until I visited Alaska, and it's so fascinating to me.
We cover it in this episode
For my Geology of National Parks I actually chose to do my final on report on Attu a very popular spot for birds interestingly enough
Awesome, have you been to Attu. I never came further than Dutch Harbor, Unalaska (so far ;))
Thank you, as always, for the great history lesson!
Thank you for watching, Joe! Stay tuned for more history lessons every single week
5:50 What Brook said is always overlooked by so called "Experts" who drone on & on about how the Mediteranean campaign was "Churchill's folly" & how it detracted from the European invasion.
Keeping the USSR in the war was vital & the Strategic Bomber campaign & the Mediteranean were used as justification to Stalin that The Allies were fighting & not just leaving it up to the USSR.
Indeed and a quarter of a million prisoners, between 100,000 and 150,000 of them German (allied commanders disagreed on the exact German-Italian ratio of the prisoners) with another 50,000 taken earlier in the campaign. At this same time a German-Romanian force of 200,000 on the Kuban peninsula has forced a Russian army of 450,000 to give up offensive operations. The Germans will withdraw in September to try and shorten the front and the Soviets will move in behind to reoccupy but it will be a full year before the Soviets in this region go on the offensive again.
Thank you.
I wish this war had never happened! I had relatives who fought and died on both sides.
My father, uncle, my uncle's brother and many other American relatives fought against the Axis Powers. Also, many relatives from the British Isles and Continental Europe also did so.
On the other hand, German, Austrian and Italian and distant Japanese relatives fought on the Axis side.
It seems we do not get to pick our relatives and vice versa.
Thank you again for your work. My grandchildren do not even know of WW2.
Thank you Glen
Excellent quality as always!
These are great vids
I was waiting for that end quote
Outstanding coverage and commentary Indy. Thanks for your time consuming work.
Flooding? in the Ruhr? In May? It's not even raining...
Have wondered for many years, what was the impact of the North African campaign on the local people?
There were the population centres, the biggest being Cairo, I do not think it was ever under attack, but Egypt was turned into an armed camp. Then Libya with it Italian colonists, and Algeria with its French. What happened to the local arab people, including the Bedouins? Do we know what their casualties were? Did they take sides?
This is now a weekly part of my routine. I wonder how many more years I will watching reports on this war?
Thank you for making us part of your week, Tams. We appreciate your support
You didn't mention preparations being made for the Dambusters; and of an American B-17 bomber named Memphis Belle that was nearing 25 combat missions to retire at.
My great uncle was in 4 Squadron SAAF - from Egypt to Italy
That's amazing, Jonathan. Do you have any of his correspondence or diaries from the time?
@@WorldWarTwo Sadly I don't, though I will ask my aunt (who is still in S.A) if she has anything. The family has moved a few times over a few continents since the war, and much has been lost.
Excellent stuff bro
Thanks Clarence
Thanks for the video.
Thank you for watching, Sands
Wow... all commenters are as interesting as your videos. You've attracted many historians.... proof that you are doing an amazing job. Keep it up!
Indeed, we are really having the best audience! Thanks for watching!
@@WorldWarTwo I've followed WWII stuff all my life. Haven't delved deeply, but want as much info on the subject as possible. Great job everyone! I appreciate all your work, research, clips, editing, organization.
I'm a performer. I also appreciate your sets, costuming. But I won't join an army... love ya... ✌️
I'm happy you changed the intro music. Now please turn it down a notch.
Love your videos! Never stop making them pls
Thank you!
Not mentioned in the video is that Vicktor Lutze, head of the Sturmabteilung since Rohm's ousting in 1934, died this week from injuries caused by a car crash alongside his daughter. At his funeral Hitler would give a speech to representatives of other party functionaries about the dangers of speeding which was apparently a rampant problem amongst party functionaries.
Thank you for the lesson.
How did Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt travelled to the conferences during the war? It must've been dangerous and may had to travel close to Axis occupied territories( if they did so) and risks of assassination and such.
There's news about USS William D. Porter in six months or so, accidentally firing a torpedo at USS Iowa. President Roosevelt was on the Iowa.
Churchill and FDR usually went by air. Stalin only attended one, and that was in Crimea which was part of the USSR at the time, in Feb 45.
See: Travels with Churchill Air & Space Magazine
@@nickdanger3802 Well I know Stalin was at the conference at Teheran in 1943.
Roosevelt probably traveled via USN cruiser or battleship, Churchill I think often traveled by air, which means on his flight to Gibraltar or North Africa he had to pass the Bay of Biscay where the German navy and long range aviation was active. So he was probably most at risk, but he was a risk taker. His generals constantly had to talk him out of visiting the frontlines. He wanted to personally witness the D-Day landings and go ashore on French soil that day. Mark Felton has a vid of Churchill even ending up under German fire when he visited the Rhine when it was being crossed by Allied forces in 1945. Ironically enough it was a front sector that his generals had deemed safe for him to visit. Personal courage was never a failing of Churchill. Stalin rarely traveled to any of these conferences save the Tehran conference, which was partly under Soviet occupation, so he was rarely in any danger. He had probably more to fear of his own underlings then the Germans, although there seems to have been a German plan to assassinate the Allied leaders at Tehran.
Stalin didn't trust aircraft (understandable seeing how many crashed with important officers aboard) so he insisted on travelling by train. This limited his meetings with the other leaders so they often came to him. Churchill often moved about by aircraft, such as crossing to neutral Portugal in order to travel to north Africa or across the Atlantic. He did this often enough that special masks were made to allow him to smoke cigars while in flight. Molotov visited London in 1942 by plane as well, and did so by taking a route across the baltic, using a fast bomber at extremely high altitudes, too high to intercept in a timely manner. Lord Beaverbrook, when he visited Moscow to arrange lend lease supplies, went via the Arctic shipping route, dangerous and slow as it was.
Much of the time leaders sent representatives on their behalf, but if necessary a high flying plane and a sturdy ship were enough to get them where they needed to be. For the axis to stop them they'd need to know they were there first, and be able to find them and intercept them quickly enough, which they could not
Your ad at the beginning reminded me of TV programs in the 50s when program hosts plugged the products of their sponsors. : ). Your remark about the Japanese slaughtering civilians gave me pause to consider that, when I was growing up, the only foe I was 'told' committed atrocities against civilians was the Nazis, nothing about the Japanese. Your description of the DAK surrender reminded me of a story my Dad (1st Eng Combat II, 1st Inf XX) told me when i was young. He said a captured German general had requested to see up close one of our hand-held 75mm guns (bazooka). Great job as always. I look forward to seeing Indy each week.
Thank you for watching!
Looking forward to next week’s episode, with the allies victorious in North Africa, and now with more than 200,000 + POW’s on their hands raises so many questions. Like what to do with them? How to feed them? Provide shelter. Medical care. Guard them , and what about sanitary conditions. This must have been a huge drain on already stretched allied resources. All will be revealed in the coming episodes.
I can’t wait to see what the TimeGhost team have in stall for us.
Senior officers were mostly sent to Britain, most of the others were sent to Australia, Canada and the United States. Those countries had plenty of food and material to build prision camps with and they could use the labor of less miltitant prisoners on farms and even light industry.
The most interesting thing I discovered about German POW's that had been sent to the US, that there were several escapes, and that one of them evaded capture throughout the war and only surrendered himself in the 80's, having gone fully undercover and native.
Honestly, kudos to Mussolini for being realistic about the situation, promoting Messe for more authority and letting him surrender/telling him to surrender. Especially given the other guys "No fieldmarshall of Germany ever surrendered!" just a bit earlier...
I always wonder what a non-Pact of Steel Italy would have turned out to be.
Superb. Absolutely amazing.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks!
One of the rare sources of information anywhere that keeps modern day politics out of their episodes. No “updating history for the current generation” goin on here. That in itself is admirable. The fact that every episode is better than the last is almost a bonus. Thanks to everyone involved for your hard work.
Thanks for watching, Ryan
Interesting... I have *never* seen any examples of this "updating history for the current generation". I suspect you are allowing your own bias to color your perception.
Will this collection of videos be made available on DVDs? I think WWII buffs in particular and history buffs would buy it. It would be a great resource if they teach the history of WWII.
We do appreciate your suggestion, and it's one we've discussed at length. All our videos are available on our channel page, and you can watch them all in order there! Given the immense size of this project physical media presents unique challenges, and crosses into the realm of 'creating more problems than it solves.'
We want our show spread as widely as possibly, so generations of people may benefit from the study of history. Right now TH-cam is a worldwide phenomenon that allows (nearly) unfettered access to this content for the price of ad breaks. It's not a perfect system, but it suits our goals of spreading knowledge of history to as many as possible.
This Week in French events :
The 9th, Michel Clémenceau, the son of George Clemenceau « Le Tigre », is arrested by Laval after having received a letter from him denouncing the political utilization of his father’s image for Vichy France. He is first incarcerated in Fresnes, then in Romainville, Compiègne and Royallieu.
The 11th, Paul Reynaud is transferred to Itter. By this time the French tennis man Jean Borotra is transferred too in Itter. He was a minister under Petain in 1940 for Physical Education and Sports until April 1942. He was against the professionalization of sports and forbid two federation (tennis and wrestling) let four year for football, cycling, boxing and Basque pelota to dismantle. He did too as his last action forbid the FSPT, UFOLEP and USEP, federation multi-sports in schools, that had the tendencies to be ideologically near the communists and the socialists. Marechalist but not Petainist and clearly not collaborationist, he retarded actions against the Jews in sports. He does try to escape to North Africa in November 1942, but he is arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Sachsenhausen. Now the Swedish King Gustave V, particularly fond of tennis, ask to Germany his transfer to Itter, which happens. [Spoiler: he will continue to “protect” the memory of Petain until his death, being the president of the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain from 1976 to 1980, claiming that he did what he had to do to save France. And wanted the revision of his condemnation.]
The 12th, Édouard Herriot (prime minister between 1924-1925 and in 1932, president of the Chamber of Deputies between 1925-1926 and 1936-1940, member of the Parti Radical and president of this Party between 1919-1926, 1931-1936, supporter of Petain in 1940 but supported the deputies who wanted to go to North Africa, then in 1942 begin a muted opposition before being interned by the German) bring is official support to
Spoiler next week it’s going to be extra long 😊
An awesome episode of a landmark week in the war!
Great video as always. I was expecting a mention on the battles between Australians and Japanese that took place in New Guinea during this week, as I understand by the interesting articles on this chanell's daily community posts. But those were also enlightening enough about those events.
Great work as always. Congratulations. Keep on the good work Indy and Team.
Thank you for your kind words and for watching!
@@WorldWarTwo
I thank you for teaching me about historical events and for replying.
When it's reported to montgomery that the commender of the axis troops in tunisia is captured he thinks it's still Rommel and when he sees an italian general he is very disappointed
Another great episode👍👍
Thank you for watching, David
Alexander’s fresh ‘final plan’ emerged, indirectly, from the block in the Enfidaville bottleneck. On April 21st, when the failureof the three-division attack there had become painfully plain, Montgomery was driven to suspend it because of the mounting losses - a suspension that had helped Arnim to shift all his remaining armour northward to stop the main British attack from breaking through east of Medjez el Bab, as already related. Montgomery planned to resume his effort on the 29th, concentrating it in the narrow coastal strip, without trying to secure the high ground inland. This directive, though accepted by Horrocks, met with strong objection from the two foremost divisional commanders, Tuker and Freyberg. Their warning arguments were supported by the early check suffered when the fresh attack was delivered. Next day, April 30th, Alexander arrived on the scene to discuss the situation with Montgomery, and then gave orders that the two best available divisions of the Eighth Army should be switched to the First Army for a fresh and reinforced thrust in the Medjez el Bab sector. That alternative course had been urged by Tuker before the abortive Enfidaville attack. It might well have been adopted earlier, for the Enfidaville attack had not even fulfilled the limited object of pinning down the Axis forces there and preventing the reinforcement of the central sector.
The switch, once decided, was quickly put into effect. The two picked divisions, the 4th Indian and 7th British Armoured, started on their long north-westward move before dark that same day. For the 7th Armoured, which was lying back in reserve, it entailed a circuitous journey of nearly 300 miles along rough roads, but this was completed in a couple of days - the tanks being carried on transporters. The two divisions were transferred to the 9th Corps, which was entrusted with the decisive stroke, and itself sidestepped northward to concentrate for the purpose behind the sector held by the 5th Corps. Horrocks himself was also included in the transfer, to take over command of the 9th Corps, as Crocker had just been disabled by an accidental injury incurred in demonstrating a new mortar - a personal stroke of ill luck at a moment of great opportunity.
Meanwhile Bradley’s US 2nd Corps had resumed its attack inthe northern sector on the night of April 26th. In four days of stiff fighting its efforts to advance through this hilly region were baffled by the enemy’s obstinate resistance. But persistent pressure strained the enemy’s resources so heavily, and produced such an acute shortage of ammunition on his side, that he was compelled to withdraw to a fresh and less easily defensible line east of Mateur. The withdrawal was skilfully carried out during the nights of May 1st and 2nd without interference, but the new line was only fifteen miles from the base-port of Bizerta, so that the defence had now become perilously lacking in depth - as it was, already, in the Medjez el Bab sector facing Tunis.
Such lack of depth for defence made fatal the defenders’ extreme shortage of supplies, and this went far to assure the decisiveness of the fresh offensive that was now being mounted by the Allies for launching on May 6th. For once the crust was pierced there would be no possibility of prolonging resistance by elastic defence and manoeuvre in retreat. Although the Axis forces had managed to frustrate the previous attacks they had succeeded at the price of almost exhausting their scanty stocks, being left with only enough ammunition for a brief reply to the attackers’ overwhelming fire and only enough fuel for the shortest of counter-moves. Moreover they were devoid of air cover as the airfields in Tunisia had become untenable and almost all the remaining aircraft had been withdrawn to Sicily.The impending blow came as no surprise to the Axis commanders, as they had intercepted Allied radio messages which revealed the switch of large forces from the Eighth Army to the First. But awareness of the blow was of little help in meeting it when they lacked the means.
In Alexander’s new plan, ‘Vulcan’, the breakthrough was to be made by a hammer-blow with the 9th Corps, passing through the 5th, and striking on a very narrow front - less than two miles wide - in the valley south of the Medjerda River. The assault was to be delivered by a massive phalanx composed of the 4th British and 4th Indian Divisions with four supporting battalions of ‘infantry’tanks, closely followed by the 6th and 7th Armoured Divisions. The armoured strength comprised more than 470 tanks. After the two infantry divisions had penetrated the defence to a depth of some three miles, the two armoured divisions were to drive through and in their first bound reach the area of St Cyprien, twelve miles from the starting line and halfway to Tunis. Alexander emphasized in his instructions that ‘the primary object is to capture Tunis’, so as to forestall any rally, and that there must be no pause for ‘mopping up localities which the enemy continues to hold’.
Second World War - Lidell Hart
As a preliminary to the 9th Corps assault, the 5th Corps was ordered to capture the flanking height of the Djebel Bou Aoukaz on the evening of May 5th - a mission which was achieved after some stiff fighting. After that the chief task of the 5th Corps was ‘to keep open the funnel’ through which the 9th Corps was thrusting. In the event it proved to be no problem, as the enemy no longer had the means of developing an effective counterattack.
Opening the funnel might have been more difficult if the 9th Corps assault had been launched in daylight as originally intended - in view of the First Army’s lack of experience in night attacks. But on Tuker’s insistence the plan was altered and zero hour was fixed for 3 AM, so as to gain full benefit from the cloak of obscurity provided by a moonless night. At his urging, too, the customary barrage was replaced by successive concentrations of fire, centrally controlled, on all known enemy strongpoints, and the provision of artillery ammunition was doubled, raising it to a thousand rounds per gun. These concentrated shoots put down a shell on every two yards of front, so that the defences were plastered five times more thickly than by the barrage at Alamein the previous autumn. The paralysing effect of these concentrated shoots, by the 400 guns immediately supporting the assault, was increased and extended by the terrific air attack starting at dawn, which comprised over 200 sorties.
By 9.30 AM the 4th Indian Division had punched a deep hole, at a cost of little more than a hundred casualties, and reportedthat there was no sign of any serious opposition ahead - telling Corps Headquarters that the armour could now ‘go as fast and as far as it liked’. Before 10 AM the leading troops of the 7th British Armoured Division had begun to pour through the line gained by the infantry. On the right wing, the British 4th Division was late in starting and slower in advancing, but was helped by the thrust of its left wing neighbour, and reached its objective before noon. The armoured divisions were then at last permitted to drive on. In mid-afternoon, however, they were halted for the night near Massicault - which was barely six miles beyond the start-line of the assault and three miles beyond the line gained by the infantry, while only a quarter of the way to Tunis. This extreme caution is explained in the divisional history of the 7th by the statement that the commander ‘considered that it would be wiser to keep each Brigade in the firm positions they both held rather than to loosen the hold of both and complicate the long task of replenishment’ - an explanation which shows all too clearly a failure to grasp the elementary principles of exploitation, and to fulfil its spirit. As at Wadi Akarit, Horrocks and the commanders of the armoured divisions were slow to respond to the call of opportunity, and continued to operate at a tempo more characteristic of infantry action than fitted to fulfil the potentialities of mechanized mobility.
There was no need for such caution. The eight-mile sector south of the Medjerda River where the blow was struck, on a two-mile frontage, had been held by two weak infantry battalions and an anti-tank battalion of the 15th Panzer Division, supported by a composite force of less than sixty tanks - almost all that remained of the Axis armour. This very thin shield had been stunned and pulverized by the tremendous concentration of shells and bombs supporting the assault. Moreover lack of fuel had prevented Arnim from bringing northward the unarmoured remainder of the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions, as had been planned. That fatal lack of fuel had proved more effective in pinning them down than the elaborate deception plan which the British had designed to make it appear that they were again going to strike in the Kourzia sector.The 6th and 7th British Armoured Divisions resumed their advance at dawn, on May 7th, but again showed excessive caution, and were held up until the afternoon by a handful of Germans, with ten tanks and a few German anti tank guns, at St Cyprien before all of these were destroyed or crushed by British tanks and infantry. It was 3.15 PM before the order was given to drive into Tunis. The armoured-cars of the 11th Hussars entered the city half an hour later, and thus fittingly crowned the leading role this regiment had played since the start of the North African campaign nearly three years earlier.
The Derbyshire Yeomanry, the armoured-car regiment of the 6th British Armoured Division, entered almost simultaneously. They were followed up by tanks and motor-borne infantry to extend and complete the occupation of the city. In the process, the troops suffered more embarrassment and obstruction from the hysterical enthusiasm of the population, pelting them with flowers and kisses, than from the sporadic resistance put up by small pockets of confused and disorganized Germans. A considerable number were taken prisoner that evening, and many more were rounded up next morning, while a much larger proportion sought to escape by fleeing northward or southward from the city. What remained of the fighting formations on the perimeter also retreated in these divergent directions once they were split asunder by the thrust into Tunis.
Meanwhile the US 2nd Corps had resumed its attack in the northern sector to coincide with the British thrust. Progress on May 6th had been slow, and resistance seemed still stiff, but on the next afternoon reconnaissance elements of the 9th Infantry Division found the road open and drove into Bizerta at 4.15 PM, the enemy having evacuated the city and withdrawn south-eastward. Formal entry into the city was reserved for the French Corps Franc d’Afrique, which arrived on the 8th. The 1st US Armored Division, advancing from Mateur, had suffered checks on the first two days. So had the 1st and 34th US Infantry Divisions farther south. But on the 8th the 1st Armored found the defence collapsing and progress easy, as the enemy’s ammunition and fuel became exhausted and the British 7th Armoured Division were swinging north from Tunis along the coast in his rear.
Trapped between the British and American spearheads, and without means of resistance or retreat, mass surrenders began. The leading squadron of the 11th Hussars had some 10,000 prisoners on its hands before evening. Early next morning, the 9th, part of another squadron drove on to Porto Farina, near the cape of that name twenty miles east of Bizerta, where it received the surrender of 9,000 more who were crowded on the beach, some of them pathetically trying to build rafts - and were relieved to be able to hand this crowd of prisoners over to the American armoured force which arrived soon afterwards. At 9.30 AM General von Vaerst, commanding the 5th Panzer Army and the northern area, signalled to Arnim: ‘Our armour and artillery have been destroyed. Without ammunition and fuel. We shall fight to the last.’ The final sentence was a gallant bit of absurdity, for troops cannot fight without ammunition. Vaerst soon learnt that his troops, realizing how nonsensical were such heroic orders, were giving themselves up. So by midday, he agreed to a formal surrender of his remaining troops, which raised the total bag in this area to nearly 40,000.
Second World War - Lidell Hart
A much larger part of the Axis forces, when the split was produced, lay in the area south of Tunis. This area was also more defensible by nature, and the Allied commanders expected that the enemy would make a more prolonged stand there. But there, too, the exhaustion of the enemy’s ammunition and fuel produced a quick collapse after a short resistance. The collapse was accelerated by a general feeling of hopelessness, since even where some supplies remained the Axis troops were aware that no replenishments were possible - for the same reason that no escape was possible.
Alexander’s aim now was to prevent Messe’s army, the southerly part of the Axis forces, retreating into the large Cap Bon peninsula and establishing a firm ‘last ditch’ position there. So the 6th Armoured Division, as soon as Tunis had been captured, was ordered to turn south-east and drive for Hamman Lif, the near corner of the peninsula’s baseline, while the 1st Armored Division converged in the same direction. At Hamman Lif the hills came soclose to the sea that the flat coastal strip was only 300 yards wide. This narrow defile was held by a German detachment, supported by 88-mm guns withdrawn from airfield defence, and for two days it blocked all efforts to force a passage. But the obstacle was eventually overcome by a well-combined effort. The infantry of the 6th British Armoured Division captured the heights overlooking the town, the artillery swept the streets methodically block by block, and a column of tanks was then sent along the beach at the edge of the surf, where they were better shielded from the fire of the one German gun that remained in action. By nightfall on the 10th the drive was extended across the baseline of the peninsula to Hammamet, thus cutting off the enemy’s surviving forces. Paralysed by lack of fuel, they had been unable to withdraw to the peninsula. Next day the 6th Armoured Division drove on southward into the rear of the Axis troops who were keeping the British Eighth Army in check near Enfidaville. Although these still had some ammunition in hand, the definite proof that they were trapped and without hope of escape produced their speedy surrender.
By the 13th all the remaining Axis commanders and their troops had submitted. Only a few hundred had escaped by sea or air to Sicily - beyond the 9,000 wounded and sick who had been evacuated since the beginning of April. As to the size of the final bag, there is a lack of certainty. On May 12th Alexander’s headquarters reported to Eisenhower that the number of prisoners since May 5th had risen to 100,000 and it was reckoned as likely to reach 130,000 when the count was complete. A later report ‘gave the total bag at about 150,000’. But in his postwar Despatch Alexander said that the total was ‘a quarter of a million men’. Churchill in his Memoirs gives the same round figure, but qualifies it with the word ‘nearly’. Eisenhower gives it as ‘240,000, of which approximately 125,000 were Germans’.
Second World War - Lidell Hart
Amazing work as always!
Thank you!
I can't be the only one who thinks Hans Jurgen Von Arnhim looks like a comic book artist's concept drawing of a Wehrmacht general.
Banger
Honestly knowing what we know, I would rather be taken as a POW in North Africa then “escape” back to the Axis to be sent to another hellish front to fight on.
As always a great episode 😀
Thanks Jason
The end of the North African campaign has come. The Allies have gain the experience needed to go on in the war. The Tunisian campaign was brutal for all sides. Kasserine Pass, Bizerte, Mareth Line, and much more. The Allies and Axis fought bravely for these lands but the Allies have prevail. Now the questions remain: Can the Axis achieve a victory despite suffering major defeats? Only time can tell. Godspeed to those who died in the war.
Thank you Daniel
3:45 Indy's desk is looking kind of rickety.
wow 3 years of this African campaign I can't believe it's over image the feelings of the men from both sides and how they thought about it.
as always great work indy
Thanks for watching, Bob
Dziękujemy.
Thank you all involved in this awesome series
Thank you Ewok!
That sounded less like Winston Churchill and more like Emperor Palpatine.
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.
I'm glad Indy told just how much a disaster the Tunisian Campaign was for the Axis. In some ways it was even bigger than Stalingrad.
0:45: I couldn't tell whether that was Indy, Churchill or Emperor Palpatine
I think the North African campaign lasted just under three years ( June 1940 - May 1943).
Where have I heard this before
Combat on five continents : Europe; Asia; Africa; Oceania; and North America.
North Africa can be considered it's own separate war and it's end should be celebrated more.
Will you cover any of the danish resistance groups? Hvidstengruppen etc. Love the show!
Resistance is rising all over Europe, and we'll cover it as it happens.
A promotion and an order to surrender at the same time? Italian HQ has some weird incentive structures for sure.
Oh wow, the Aleutian Islands Campaign gets a mention. That's caught my attention. :)
Aise from the battle of Hong Kong I believe the Aleutian Islands campaign was the only time Canadian ground forces participated in the Pacific theater.
They took their time over it. The way things are going I could see this dragging on for another two years.