The Axis and Allies' North African campaigns are the focus of The Desert
Written: Jan 24 '06
Product Rating:
Action Factor:
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Suspense:
Pros: Mix of personal recollections, maps, narration, and battle footage
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: The North African/Mediterranean fronts are sometimes overshadowed by the Pacific, Russian, and Northwest Europe campaigns; this episodes sheds some light on the desert war.
alexdg1's Full Review: World at War - Volume 8: Desert - The War in North...
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot.
Back and forth across 600 miles of desert between Egypt and Libya, Bernard Montgomery’s “Desert Rats” finally defeat Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein, preparing the way to an Allied victory in Italy.
Plot Summary Blurb, The Desert: North Africa 1940-1943, The World at War
In June of 1940, as Adolf Hitler’s victorious armies were concluding their campaign in France, Italy’s Duce Benito Mussolini entered the war on Germany’s side. It was a craven and opportunistic move on the Fascist dictator’s side, prompted by his Axis partner’s swift gains in Poland in 1939 and in Western Europe in the spring of 1940. Eager to carve a second Roman Empire in the Mediterranean, Mussolini sent his Libyan-based army into British-controlled Egypt.
But as writer-producer Peter Batty’s The Desert: North Africa 1940-1943 -- the eighth episode in Sir Jeremy Isaacs’ landmark documentary about World War II – points out, Mussolini’s quest for an empire of his own ran into trouble when he ran into fierce British resistance from the Western Desert Force, which stopped the Italian army even though the Fascists outnumbered General O’Connor’s small contingent considerably. To make matters worse, in December of 1940 the British counterattacked and pushed the Italians back into Libya.
Hitler, who was planning the invasion of the Soviet Union, couldn’t stand idly by while the British were trouncing his Axis partner, so he sent Gen. Erwin Rommel and a small but powerful contingent to North Africa. Designated the Afrika Korps, this highly mobile force attacked the Western Desert Force and pushed the British and Commonwealth forces all the way back to Egypt. For the next year and a half, the desert war raged back and forth along the Mediterranean coast, with men, tanks, and planes locked in mortal combat over such places as El Agheila, Tobruk, and El Alamein, where a formerly obscure British general named Bernard Montgomery defeated the Afrika Korps shortly before an Anglo-American force landed in Morocco and Algeria to trap Rommel’s forces in a pincers maneuver that would eventually push the Axis out of North Africa and pave the way for an Allied assault on Italy itself.
The Desert: North Africa 1940-1943 covers:
Italy’s belated entry into the war and its disastrous grab for an empire in North Africa
Rommel’s arrival in the desert and his blitzkrieg in Libya and Egypt
The back-and-forth “tug of war” between the Axis and Allies
The strategic importance of supply lines, particularly for the inferior Axis navies, and the effects of British control of Malta on Rommel’s logistic support
Montgomery’s appointment as commander of the British Eighth Army, El Alamein, and the great pincers movement from east and west
As in all of The World at War episodes, the documentary doesn't limit itself to showing just footage of the actual battles, although World War II buffs will get their fair share of that. Along with the usual snippets of combat in the North African desert, there are nifty animated maps and very compelling eyewitness accounts from British, German, and Italian participants (military and civilians), which to me is very important; I already know the history, so what I look for is what Isaacs aimed to provide: the human story of World War II.
Finally, Sir Laurence Olivier's narration (2,000 words or so, which is surprisingly sparse, considering the complexity of the subject) is highly effective. Olivier's voice and delivery is, as can be expected of the Oscar-winning actor, authoritative without being dry, boring, or smacking heavily of British-only jingoism.
Main Credits:
Series Producer: Jeremy Isaacs
Writer and Producer of The Desert: North Africa 1940-1943: Peter Batty
Narrator: Laurence Olivier
Music: Carl Davis
Although this episode is available on a single VHS tape, it's also the first of four original programs that comprise Volume 3 of A&E Television's The World at War: 30th Anniversary Edition DVD collection.
Other The World at War episodes you might want to watch are:
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