The Desert: North Africa - 1940-1943
- Episode aired Dec 19, 1973
- 52m
IMDb RATING
8.5/10
419
YOUR RATING
The desert war, starting with Italy's invasion of Egypt and the attacks and counterattacks between Germany and Italy and the Commonwealth forces, the Axis defeat at El Alamein.The desert war, starting with Italy's invasion of Egypt and the attacks and counterattacks between Germany and Italy and the Commonwealth forces, the Axis defeat at El Alamein.The desert war, starting with Italy's invasion of Egypt and the attacks and counterattacks between Germany and Italy and the Commonwealth forces, the Axis defeat at El Alamein.
Photos
Paola Colacicchi
- Self - Italian Army
- (as Paolo Colacicchi)
David Belchem
- Self - Western Desert Force
- (as Gen. David Belchem)
Richard O'Connor
- Self - Commander - Western Desert Force
- (as Gen. Sir Richard O'Connor)
Francis de Guingand
- Self - Military Intelligence - Cairo
- (as Gen. Sir Francis De Guingard)
- …
Siegfried Westphal
- Self - Afika Korps - Rommel's Chief of Staff
- (as Gen. Siegfried Westphal)
Allan Francis Harding
- Self - Commander - 7th Armoured Division
- (as Field Marshal Lord Harding)
Claude Auchinleck
- Self - C-in-C Middle East Command 1941-42
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Winston Churchill
- Self - P.M. of the U.K.
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Alan Cunningham
- Self - Commander 8th Army 1941
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Bernard L. Montgomery
- Self - Commander 8th Army
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Benito Mussolini
- Self - Prime Minister of Italy
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Neil Ritchie
- Self - Commander 8th Army 1941-42
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Erwin Rommel
- Self - Commander, Afrika Korps
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Haile Selassie
- Self - Emperor of Ethiopia
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Archibald Wavell
- Self - C-in-C Middle East Command 1940-41
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Featured review
An Eloquent, Sobering Portrait of Desert Warfare
Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini opens "The Desert: North Africa (1940-1943)" with his June 1940 declaration of war on Britain and France and his ambitions to expand the Italian empire in North Africa; however, Italy soon fades from this eighth episode of "The World at War," the outstanding British documentary series overseen by producer Jeremy Isaacs in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, as the Desert War soon becomes the primary combat arena between Britain and Nazi Germany, Italy's Axis partner.
Mussolini might have seized power first, in 1922, but Italy was always the weak sister compared to Germany and Japan, the other two major Axis Powers, despite Italy's prewar land grabs in Albania and Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) while solidifying its control over Libya. Envious of Adolf Hitler's early successes, vain, buffoonish Mussolini admitted," I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought."
Seeking to drive east across British-controlled Egypt to seize the Suez Canal, Italy, with 236,000 troops, attacked a British force of just 36,000 troops under the overall command of General Archibald Wavell in September 1940 and advanced sixty miles into Egypt, only to be counterattacked in December 1940 by Western Desert Force commander General Richard O'Connor, who pushed the Italians well back into Libya in a rout that saw the surrender of 138,000 Italian and Libyan troops.
However, as interviewees O'Connor and military intelligence officer Francis de Guingand both aver, Britain could have pushed onto Tripoli, Libya's capital, had British Prime Minister Winston Churchill not ordered key military units to be sent to defend Greece from an eventual German invasion. This strategic gaffe coincided with the February 1941 arrival of the German "Afrika Korps," commanded by the legendary General Erwin Rommel, sent by Hitler to buttress Mussolini's forces as interviewee Siegfried Westphal, Rommel's chief of staff, insists there was no other grand design such as seizing the Suez Canal.
Thus writer-producer Peter Batty sets the stage for the heart of his absorbing, incisive narrative that chronicles seesaw campaigns with British and German forces shifting the front line east and west dramatically--the Libyan port city of Benghazi changed hands five times--as "The Desert," largely shorn of geopolitical and sociological impacts, is the first "World at War" episode dedicated primarily to military history.
Moreover, augmented by the trove of stark, vivid archival footage adroitly assembled by editor Beryl Wilkins, "The Desert" vividly illustrates the plight of both British and German troops who experienced the same "peculiar" geographical conditions; as narrator Laurence Olivier intones, "For many, the desert war was a private war, the last to retain any pretense of chivalry." Both sides endured hazards beyond combat: incessant flies, prevalent dysentery, intense sandstorms that could engulf men simply visiting the latrine, and, above all, the unrelenting heat.
Using craft and subterfuge, Rommel quickly gains the upper hand, pushing the British back into Egypt again although they retain the Libyan port town of Tobruk that resisted the Germans' siege and remained a bugbear for Rommel, desperate for a shorter supply line. Indeed, in the barren, inhospitable desert, every resource was crucial.
However, the British enjoyed two great advantages. One was rest and replenishment available in nearby Cairo while their own supply convoys traversing the Mediterranean Sea were relatively unharmed; moreover, because Malta was a British colony, its strategic location enabled the British to wreak havoc on German and Italian convoys, with just one of every four Axis ships actually reaching North Africa. Belatedly, the Axis tried to bomb Malta into submission but the Maltese persevered against the heaviest bombing of the war. (Not mentioned is that Malta was awarded the George Cross for valor.)
The second great British advantage was its eventual air superiority over the Western Desert; however, on the ground the Germans held the upper hand. A brilliant and daring armored-warfare tactician, as British armored division commander Allan Harding acknowledges, Rommel adapted his experience in France to the expansive desert while enjoying superior weaponry including the deadly Krupp-manufactured 88-millimeter artillery gun. Saddled with inferior weaponry, the British also weathered leadership difficulties. With Wavell relieved and O'Connor captured, Churchill made a number of appointments before General Bernard Montgomery proved his mettle.
Although the British again drove Axis forces westward into Libya, Churchill again deprived the newly-rechristened Eighth Army of crucial units, this time deployed to a quixotic defense of Singapore in the Far East, with de Guingand labeling this another strategic debacle as Rommel again pushed eastward, this time taking Tobruk, and forcing the British to retreat to the railway stop of El Alamein on the edge of the Nile Delta.
The Second Battle of El Alamein, fought in October-November 1942, became the first great turning point of the European-North African theater of World War Two, with the strategic blunder this time on Germany as Hitler, fixated on his falling fortunes against the Soviet Union, never considered the North African campaign to be more than secondary despite his admiration for Rommel.
As stark, unforgiving, and moving as the Western Desert it depicts in sometimes unforgettable archival footage, "The Desert" remains an eloquent yet bracing portrait of the fighting men on both sides of the North African battle lines, with the closing footage of tombstones in an expansive desert cemetery a sobering reminder of the war's seemingly endless sacrifices.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
Mussolini might have seized power first, in 1922, but Italy was always the weak sister compared to Germany and Japan, the other two major Axis Powers, despite Italy's prewar land grabs in Albania and Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) while solidifying its control over Libya. Envious of Adolf Hitler's early successes, vain, buffoonish Mussolini admitted," I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought."
Seeking to drive east across British-controlled Egypt to seize the Suez Canal, Italy, with 236,000 troops, attacked a British force of just 36,000 troops under the overall command of General Archibald Wavell in September 1940 and advanced sixty miles into Egypt, only to be counterattacked in December 1940 by Western Desert Force commander General Richard O'Connor, who pushed the Italians well back into Libya in a rout that saw the surrender of 138,000 Italian and Libyan troops.
However, as interviewees O'Connor and military intelligence officer Francis de Guingand both aver, Britain could have pushed onto Tripoli, Libya's capital, had British Prime Minister Winston Churchill not ordered key military units to be sent to defend Greece from an eventual German invasion. This strategic gaffe coincided with the February 1941 arrival of the German "Afrika Korps," commanded by the legendary General Erwin Rommel, sent by Hitler to buttress Mussolini's forces as interviewee Siegfried Westphal, Rommel's chief of staff, insists there was no other grand design such as seizing the Suez Canal.
Thus writer-producer Peter Batty sets the stage for the heart of his absorbing, incisive narrative that chronicles seesaw campaigns with British and German forces shifting the front line east and west dramatically--the Libyan port city of Benghazi changed hands five times--as "The Desert," largely shorn of geopolitical and sociological impacts, is the first "World at War" episode dedicated primarily to military history.
Moreover, augmented by the trove of stark, vivid archival footage adroitly assembled by editor Beryl Wilkins, "The Desert" vividly illustrates the plight of both British and German troops who experienced the same "peculiar" geographical conditions; as narrator Laurence Olivier intones, "For many, the desert war was a private war, the last to retain any pretense of chivalry." Both sides endured hazards beyond combat: incessant flies, prevalent dysentery, intense sandstorms that could engulf men simply visiting the latrine, and, above all, the unrelenting heat.
Using craft and subterfuge, Rommel quickly gains the upper hand, pushing the British back into Egypt again although they retain the Libyan port town of Tobruk that resisted the Germans' siege and remained a bugbear for Rommel, desperate for a shorter supply line. Indeed, in the barren, inhospitable desert, every resource was crucial.
However, the British enjoyed two great advantages. One was rest and replenishment available in nearby Cairo while their own supply convoys traversing the Mediterranean Sea were relatively unharmed; moreover, because Malta was a British colony, its strategic location enabled the British to wreak havoc on German and Italian convoys, with just one of every four Axis ships actually reaching North Africa. Belatedly, the Axis tried to bomb Malta into submission but the Maltese persevered against the heaviest bombing of the war. (Not mentioned is that Malta was awarded the George Cross for valor.)
The second great British advantage was its eventual air superiority over the Western Desert; however, on the ground the Germans held the upper hand. A brilliant and daring armored-warfare tactician, as British armored division commander Allan Harding acknowledges, Rommel adapted his experience in France to the expansive desert while enjoying superior weaponry including the deadly Krupp-manufactured 88-millimeter artillery gun. Saddled with inferior weaponry, the British also weathered leadership difficulties. With Wavell relieved and O'Connor captured, Churchill made a number of appointments before General Bernard Montgomery proved his mettle.
Although the British again drove Axis forces westward into Libya, Churchill again deprived the newly-rechristened Eighth Army of crucial units, this time deployed to a quixotic defense of Singapore in the Far East, with de Guingand labeling this another strategic debacle as Rommel again pushed eastward, this time taking Tobruk, and forcing the British to retreat to the railway stop of El Alamein on the edge of the Nile Delta.
The Second Battle of El Alamein, fought in October-November 1942, became the first great turning point of the European-North African theater of World War Two, with the strategic blunder this time on Germany as Hitler, fixated on his falling fortunes against the Soviet Union, never considered the North African campaign to be more than secondary despite his admiration for Rommel.
As stark, unforgiving, and moving as the Western Desert it depicts in sometimes unforgettable archival footage, "The Desert" remains an eloquent yet bracing portrait of the fighting men on both sides of the North African battle lines, with the closing footage of tombstones in an expansive desert cemetery a sobering reminder of the war's seemingly endless sacrifices.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
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- darryl-tahirali
- Sep 5, 2023
Details
- Runtime52 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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