Director Frank Capra's war-time documentary of the first allied-UK US & Free French-air sea and land assault on Nazi occupied territory being the Vichy French controlled areas of Nortrh Africa.
With the Nazis and their Japanese allies staging a coordinated nut cracker-like military operation in order to split the allies-US UK & USSR-in two and take over the oil rich reserves of the Middle & Near-East it was decided by the allied high command that the only way to stop it from happening is by knocking out the vaunted German Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. The first part of the operation was to stop Rommel from capturing Egypt and the Suez Canal in the ferocious and see-saw battle of El Alamein which took place some two weeks before the allied invasion.
With Rommel's battered Panzer units now in full retreat in Libya the US-UK-Free French plan is to cut him off in neighboring Tunisia and keep Rommel and his troops and armor from escaping by sea from the country's northern ports. Rommel did in fact make it out of the country but the majority of his famed Afrika Korps, some 250,000 German & Italian troops, didn't ending up for the most part POWS; Prisoners of War.
Most of the action in the documentary takes place on the rocky slopes and hill country of Central and Southern Tunisia with the Afrika Korps fighting for its life against overwhelming allied land sea and air power. It was Rommell in not being able to get the much needed fuel that he desperately needed for his Panzers that was one of the major reason for his ultimated defeat. The one chance Rommell had to put the allied forces to flight-the battle of the Kesselrine Pass-came to a screeching halt not because of any allied counter-attacks but the fact he ran out of fuel for his tanks and planes! At the time the Afrika Korps was on the verge of both splitting and annihilating the allied forces whom it badly mauled in the battle but because of fuel shortages was forced to stop short in its tracks before it could finish the job.
With Hitler pouring tens of thousands of troops into Tunisia to reinforce Rommel's Panzer and Mechanized Divisions the Afrika Korps, in a number of skillful and dogged holding actions, was only able to hold out a bit longer but still be able to inflict well over 70,000 casualties on the attacking allied troops. But in the end the fresh and battle hardened German troops were all lost to Hitler in any future combat in Western Europe Sicily and Italy where they well could have turned the tide against the allies. By late April 1943 with the US Army finally capturing bloody Hill 609 and pouring, together with Free French & British troops, into densely populated Northern Tunisia all the avenues of escape, Tunisian port cities, were captured by the Anglo American and French forces. That all made a Dunkirk-like escape by sea virtually impossible by the hard pressed and exhausted Axis troops. This left the Afrika Korps with only two choices: death or surrender. Wisely enough they took the latter and lived to see, not die or fight, another day!
With the Nazis and their Japanese allies staging a coordinated nut cracker-like military operation in order to split the allies-US UK & USSR-in two and take over the oil rich reserves of the Middle & Near-East it was decided by the allied high command that the only way to stop it from happening is by knocking out the vaunted German Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. The first part of the operation was to stop Rommel from capturing Egypt and the Suez Canal in the ferocious and see-saw battle of El Alamein which took place some two weeks before the allied invasion.
With Rommel's battered Panzer units now in full retreat in Libya the US-UK-Free French plan is to cut him off in neighboring Tunisia and keep Rommel and his troops and armor from escaping by sea from the country's northern ports. Rommel did in fact make it out of the country but the majority of his famed Afrika Korps, some 250,000 German & Italian troops, didn't ending up for the most part POWS; Prisoners of War.
Most of the action in the documentary takes place on the rocky slopes and hill country of Central and Southern Tunisia with the Afrika Korps fighting for its life against overwhelming allied land sea and air power. It was Rommell in not being able to get the much needed fuel that he desperately needed for his Panzers that was one of the major reason for his ultimated defeat. The one chance Rommell had to put the allied forces to flight-the battle of the Kesselrine Pass-came to a screeching halt not because of any allied counter-attacks but the fact he ran out of fuel for his tanks and planes! At the time the Afrika Korps was on the verge of both splitting and annihilating the allied forces whom it badly mauled in the battle but because of fuel shortages was forced to stop short in its tracks before it could finish the job.
With Hitler pouring tens of thousands of troops into Tunisia to reinforce Rommel's Panzer and Mechanized Divisions the Afrika Korps, in a number of skillful and dogged holding actions, was only able to hold out a bit longer but still be able to inflict well over 70,000 casualties on the attacking allied troops. But in the end the fresh and battle hardened German troops were all lost to Hitler in any future combat in Western Europe Sicily and Italy where they well could have turned the tide against the allies. By late April 1943 with the US Army finally capturing bloody Hill 609 and pouring, together with Free French & British troops, into densely populated Northern Tunisia all the avenues of escape, Tunisian port cities, were captured by the Anglo American and French forces. That all made a Dunkirk-like escape by sea virtually impossible by the hard pressed and exhausted Axis troops. This left the Afrika Korps with only two choices: death or surrender. Wisely enough they took the latter and lived to see, not die or fight, another day!