Operation Torch

Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, was launched in November under the command of the unknown U.S. Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Allies tried to ensure French co-operation, and in the event resistance was patchy in quality and quantity. Fortuitously, Admiral Darlan, Marshal Petain's deputy, was visiting his sick son in Algiers, and was persuaded to order a ceasefire. The Germans swiftly sent troops to Tunisia, and the Allied advance bogged down with the rains of early winter.

Although the Vichy government repudiated Darlan's ceasefire, Hitler was furious and invaded the Unoccupied Zone of France. A German force had orders to seize the French fleet at Toulon, but the French activated a well-prepared plan and the fleet was scuttled by its crews in the nick of time. Here damaged and sunk cruisers and destroyers can be seen (above) through the smoke of burning heavy cruisers.

American troops, part of the Central Task Force, on their way ashore by landing craft at Oran. It was thought that the French would be less likely to engage the Americans than the British, still mistrusted because of the attack on Mers-el-Kebir and the fighting in the Levant.

With Allied convoys at sea, sailors could be told their destination. Here Rear Admiral Sir Harold Burrough explains forthcoming operations to officers and men aboard his flagship.

The Eastern Front — 1942

In Russia the Germans survived the crisis of the Russian winter counteroffensive, and in April 1942 Hitler issued orders for Operation Blue, a major offensive in the south aimed at the oilfields of the Caucasus. In June the attack began well, with scenes reminiscent of victories the previous year, and the Germans pushed deep into the Caucasus. But by mid-September the offensive had stalled, and German 6th Army was making heavy weather of its attack on Stalingrad, on the Volga. On November 19, the Russians launched carefully husbanded reserves to began the attack which led to the encirclement of the 6th Army in one of the war's most terrible battles. Above, a Russian heavy machine-gun in the snow, winter 1941-42.

The Russian winter not only caught the Germans without proper clothing but caused serious difficulties for vehicles not designed with this climate in mind. Here a tank drags an assault gun from a snowdrift.

Although the Germans occupied the Crimea in 1941, the naval base of Sevastopol held out. It was eventually taken in July 1942 after heavy bombardments which reduced the city to rubble.

In early August 6th Army destroyed most of a Russian army in the bend of the Don north of Kalach. This is the apocalyptic scene on the river bank in the first week of August.

Operation Edelweiss, initiated when Hitler cancelled Operation Blue in July, sent Army Group A deep into the Caucasus. Here a German anti-tank unit is silhouetted by smoke from burning oilfields at Maikop, fired by their defenders, in the last week of August.

Operation Heron saw Army Group B drive for the Volga with the aim of taking Stalingrad and extending down the river as far as Astrakhan. Here German infantry move up as Stalingrad burns on the horizon.

The bitter fighting at Stalingrad placed overwhelming emphasis on the courage and determination of small groups of men fighting in what soon became a blighted landscape. Here a German machine-gun detachment — the empty ammunition boxes to its rear are evidence of heavy fighting — defends the ruins of suburban cottages.

A German infantry officer, whose decorations include the Iron Cross 1st Class and the infantry assault badge, issues orders. The soldier on the left has equipped himself with a captured Russian sub-machine gun.

After the encirclement of Stalingrad Hitler gave Manstein command of the newly created Army Group Don and ordered him to break into the pocket. Here a German tank hits a Russian mine during an abortive counterattack, December 20.

Friedrich Paulus, commander of 6th Army, was promoted to field-marshal on 30 January in Hitler's expectation that he would commit suicide rather than capitulate. However, he surrendered the following day. These Russian officers — the term was reintroduced by Stalin in 1942 — are still wearing collar rank badges, soon to be replaced by tsarist-style shoulder boards, all part of an attempt to restore the army's morale and efficiency.

The Germans lost some 200,000 men at Stalingrad: most of their prisoners of war did not survive captivity. Here a column of prisoners winds its way across the frozen steppe. Those in white fur hats are Romanians: defeat at Stalingrad struck a chill into Germany's allies.

The Russian Winter — 1941

The Russian counterattack of December 1941 used troops trained and equipped to operate in the sub-zero conditions. German commanders were badly shaken, and Hitler assumed personal command of the army, ordering his men to hold on regardless of cost.

A nation at war: members of the Moscow Young Communists digging an anti-tank ditch outside the Russian capital.

German prisoners captured during the Russian winter offensive. It is unlikely that any of the soldiers depicted here survived the war.

The Eastern Front

Despite his 1939 rapprochement with Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler never abandoned plans for an attack on Russia, which he planned to reduce to “a German India.” In December 1940 he issued a directive for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. His army was not ready for a long war: many units had French or Czech equipment and were below strength, and operations in the Balkans delayed the attack. Stalin had some warning of invasion, and the disposition of Russian forces, concentrated on the frontier, induces some historians to suggest that he planned an offensive of his own. The attack, on June 22, proved brilliantly successful, but ran out of steam in December, when the Russians launched serious counteroffensives. German tanks (above) form up for the attack on the open terrain that characterized much of the Eastern Front, July 1941.

The cameraman's location and lack of uniformity amongst the gun detachment suggests that this shot of a German anti-tank gun taking on Soviet armour in July is authentic.

The German army remained two-tier, with its panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions representing the tip of a spear whose shaft comprised units which would not have looked out of place a generation earlier. German cavalry crosses a bridge in Russia, summer 1941.

Hess Attempts Peace

Rudolf Hess (above) drifted into politics after the First World War and quickly fell under the spell of Hitler, who he regarded as “the incarnation of pure reason.” He became Hitler's deputy in 1933, but thereafter slipped out of the inner circle. On May 10, 1941, he flew to Scotland in an effort, he claimed, to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany, “two related northern states.” Hitler, who almost certainly had no knowledge of the attempt, at once disclaimed him. At Nuremberg he received a life sentence for crimes against peace, and was incarcerated in Berlin's Spandau prison, where he committed suicide in 1987. This image (below) shows RAF personnel posing with the wreckage of Hess's crashed Messerschmitt Bf 110.

The “Desert Fox”

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel — the “Desert Fox” — was perhaps the most famous German Field Marshal of World War II. He was a highly decorated officer in World War I, being awarded the Pour le Mérite for his exploits on the Italian front. In World War II, he further distinguished himself as the commander of the "Ghost Division" during the 1940 invasion of France. However, it was his masterful leadership of the Deutsches Afrikakorps in the North African campaign that established the legend of the Desert Fox. He is thought by many to have been the most skilled commander of desert warfare in the war. He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion at Normandy.

Rommel is considered to be a chivalrous and humane military officer, in contrast with many other figures of Nazi Germany. His famous Afrikakorps was not accused of any war crimes. Indeed, soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been largely treated humanely. Furthermore, orders to kill captured Jewish soldiers and civilians out of hand in all theatres of his command were defiantly ignored.

He was suspected of involvement in the failed July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill Adolf Hitler. Because of his great prestige, he was allowed to commit suicide.

Preparations for Invasion

The German invasion of Britain could not succeed without air superiority, and on July 10, 1940, the Luftwaffe began to attack shipping in the English Channel. A week later Hitler issued orders for “Operation Sealion,” and in August, bombers struck airfields of the R.A.F.’s (Royal Air Force) Fighter Command. Both sides consistently over-estimated the number of enemy aircraft destroyed, but the R.A.F. was never as badly weakened as the Germans supposed — and while German pilots who parachuted were captured, their British counterparts could fight on. In early September, German efforts were fatally handicapped by Luftwaffe head Herman Goering’s diversion of resources to bombing cities, and “Sealion” was postponed on September 17th.

A Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) operator in England plots targets (above). Primitive radar was heavily dependent on skilled users.

German preparations for “Operation Sealion” included experiments with amphibious tanks (below).

Government Trouble in France

On the night of June 16-17, 1940, the French government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain requested an armistice. But not all Frenchmen were prepared to accept it. Charles de Gaulle, a recently-promoted brigadier general who had fought with some success in the campaign, left for England, and on June 18, he broadcast on the BBC, urging his countrymen to continue the fight on, and ten days later the British recognized him as the leader of all free Frenchmen. The relationship between Churchill and de Gaulle was never comfortable, but thanks to de Gaulle the flame of France's national honour was kept alight.

Marshal Petain, head of the French state established at the spa town of Vichy, shaking hands with Hitler (above).

Charles de Gaulle accompanies King George VI (below) in an inspection of Free French troops, summer 1940.

The Führer Conquers Paris

German leader Adolf Hitler triumphant on his only visit to Paris, June 23, 1940.

Eyes Turn to Norway

Neutral Norway attracted both Allies and Germans. The northern port of Narvik was the only all-weather outlet for Swedish iron ore, important to Germany, and deep-water channels along the coast, known as the Leads, formed a valuable link between Germany and the North Atlantic. The Allies contemplated seizing Narvik, pushing on to the ore-fields and then aiding the Finns, but resolved to mine the Leads instead. No sooner had they begun, on April 8, than it became clear that a major German invasion was under way: neither fierce Norwegian resistance nor a series of botched Allied countermoves could prevent German occupation, completed by early June.

On February 16, 1940, Graf Spee's homeward-bound supply ship Altmark was boarded by men from HMS Cossack in Jössing Fjord, in Norwegian territorial waters. Almost 300 prisoners were freed, but the incident strained Anglo-Norwegian relations and drew Hitler's attention to the area.

The Führer at the Front

Adolf Hitler made several trips to the Polish front in September 1939. Here he receives the salute of General der Panzertruppen Heinz Guderian, one of the authors of the blitzkrieg that made German victory possible.

A Friendly Mountaintop Lunch — 1939

This informal photograph by Nicolaus von Below, Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, shows Hitler, Goring, Keitel and foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop lunching on August 22, 1939 at the Berghof, Hitler's retreat above Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. They have been finalizing the strategy for the invasion of Poland, which was just over a week away.

German Navy Marches into Memel

Sailors of the German Navy are seen marching into into Memel, Lithuania on March 23, 1939. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of Nazi Germany delivered an ultimatum to the Lithuanian Foreign Minister on March 20, 1939, demanding the surrender of the Memel region to German control. The British Consul in Danzig, Mr.Shepherd, reported to Viscount Halifax that "it was generally anticipated that on 25th March the Memel Landtag would vote for the immediate return of Memelland to Germany." Ribbentrop is also claimed to have stated that Memel “will be taken by other means if necessary." Lithuania, however, submitted to the ultimatum and, in exchange for the right to use the new harbour facilities as a Free Port, ceded the disputed region to Germany in the late evening of March 22, 1939. Adolf Hitler had awaited this result on a battleship, sailed into the harbour in the morning hours and made a speech from a theatre balcony. This was Hitler's last territorial acquisition prior to World War II.

Memel is now known as Klaipėda, a city in Lithuania situated at the mouth of the Curonian Lagoon where it flows into the Baltic Sea. As Lithuania's only seaport, it has ferry terminal connections to Sweden and Germany.

“Peace In Our Time”

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is shown arriving at Heston airport after the Munich Conference in September 1938. He was to declare infamously that the agreement promised “Peace in Our Time.” When Hitler invaded and seized the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Chamberlain felt betrayed by the breaking of the Munich Agreement and decided to take a much harder line against the Nazis, declaring war against Germany upon their invasion of Poland.

Hitler and Mussolini — 1937

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini attended the German Wehrmacht's 1937 manoeuvres. The substantial figure of Hermann Goring is half-hidden between him and Adolf Hitler and Hans Frank, later Governor-General of Poland, is on Mussolini's immediate right. On Frank's right Colonel General von Fritsch, chief of the general staff (who was dismissed the following year after a false accusation of impropriety) is chatting to Lt General Wilhelm Keitel, who was later to run the Armed Forces High Command, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Rally in Nuremburg — 1935

Nazi Party rallies, such as this one in Nuremberg, Germany in 1935, were emotive displays of group solidarity that also indicated to the world the full strength of Hitler's power.

The Reichstag Burns

Fireman work on the burning shell of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, February 27, 1933. It was after the burning of the Reichstag, which Adolf Hitler blamed on Bolsheviks and other anti-social elements — and elections on March 5, which the Nazi Party and its nationalist allies won — that Hitler strengthened his grip. On the “Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934, Hitler purged the party and when President Paul Von Hindenburg died, he combined the offices of President and Chancellor in himself as Führer. Germany became a centralized state ruled by one party.

Hitler Reviews the Troops — 1938

German Führer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler receives the salute of the Columns in Adolf Hitler Platz during the Reichs Party Congress in Nuremburg, Germany — September 1938.

In the Early Years of the Third Reich

“One People! One Government! One Leader!” This well-known Nazi rallying cry, popularized by Joseph Goebbels’s propaganda machine, is emblazoned on an army truck engaged in a recruiting drive in Straubing, Bavaria.

The Russian Campaign Bogs Down

On January 4, 1942, the German Sixth Army meteorologist recorded a temperature of 42 degrees below zero. Severe frost and deep snowdrifts badly hampered the supply lines. Hitler’s vaunted “Blitzkrieg” invasion of the Soviet Union had ground to a halt. Not even the most up-to-date technology could cope with the unusual weather conditions. As a result, horses came into their own once again, and had to be requisitioned throughout the Third Reich. They were not enough, however, to effect any improvement in the terrible transport conditions.