(dramatic music) (narrator) May 1940, darkness had descended upon the world.

♪ Germany and her allies controlled large swaths of Europe ♪ Japan had invaded China, and was looking to expand her empire further.

Britain and Empire were under threat.

But, if anybody likes to play rough, we can play rough, too.

(narrator) In this fractured world, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

He did so with a clear goal: Victory.

Now we are at war, and we are going to make war until the other side have had enough of it.

♪ (narrator) This is the story of the man who led Britain and her Empire through one of the darkest moments in its history.

This is Winston Churchill's War.

♪ (blasting) (ominous music) December 1941.

The Second World War had become global.

♪ Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the United States had drawn the US into the fight.

♪ Britain had so far thwarted Germany's invasion plans.

♪ But, the Empire in Asia in the Pacific was under attack.

♪ (blasting) The Battle of the Atlantic still imperiled those on the sea, and the vital supplies to the UK.

♪ General Erwin Rommel and his Axis troops threatened the Allies in North Africa.

♪ And the Soviet Union was in a desperate struggle for survival.

♪ Critical decisions had to be made about the directions of the Allied war effort, and these decisions were no longer the British Empire's, and Churchill's alone.

♪ (solemn music) ♪ Within a week of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Churchill was on his way to Washington.

♪ The United States had finally joined the war, and Churchill was determined to cement his relationship with President Roosevelt, and to align their strategic goals.

♪ On the 26th of December, Churchill deployed his ever persuasive rhetorical gifts in US Congress.

♪ (Churchill) The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States, and that here I am, an Englishman, welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long, and has not been entirely uneventful.

(chuckling) (narrator) Now two years into the Allied fight for survival, Churchill acted as a guide for the Americans, previewing the trials and tribulations which together they would face.

They will stop at nothing.

They have a vast accumulation of war weapons of all kinds.

They have highly trained and disciplined armies, navies, and air services.

They have plans and designs which have long been contrived and matured.

They will stop at nothing that violence or treachery can suggest.

(applauding) (narrator) Churchill did not shy away from the harsh realities of war.

(intense music) The United States had been hard hit in the Pacific.

♪ Japanese bombers had struck the Philippines, as well as Pearl Harbor, and had taken out more than 50 percent of US aircraft in the Far East.

♪ (solemn music) But, true to form, his overarching tone was rousing, and his outlook was firm, determined, and optimistic.

♪ (Churchill) Now we are the masters of our fate, that the task which has been set us is not above our strength, that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance.

Now that our two considerable nations, each in perfect unity, have joined all their life's energies in a common resolve, a new scene opens, upon which a steady light will glow and brighten.

(applauding) ♪ (narrator) This was one of Churchill's shining moments.

He held the audience in the palm of his hand, and he had made a case for common resolve.

♪ Churchill's speeches had long been filled with inspiring rhetoric.

♪ But now, the weight of his words would resonate around the world to both friend and foe alike.

♪ (ominous music) ♪ In the Far East, the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

♪ By 1941, Hong Kong had been a key British colony for over 100 years.

♪ But, the Far East was a distant part of the Empire, and as Britain struggled to fight the war in Europe, protecting its Far East colonies was low on the list of priorities.

♪ The British military had underestimated the threat posed by Japanese forces, and the plan for the defense of Hong Kong was to hope Japan did not attack, and if it did, have the British garrison hold out until the Royal Navy arrived.

♪ The plan was fatally flawed.

♪ On the 8th of December, 1941, Japan invaded Hong Kong.

Three weeks later, the Commonwealth troops, badly outnumbered, were forced to surrender.

♪ As Hong Kong faced its fate, the Japanese were advancing rapidly south down the Malayan Peninsula towards Singapore.

♪ The British naval base in Singapore lay at the heart of their defense in Asia and the Pacific, and there were over 100,000 Commonwealth troops stationed on the island.

♪ (Dr. Stanley) Singapore had been created by the British as a strategic base in order to defend its imperial possessions in Asia.

For 20 years the British have been building a naval base, and everything that goes with it, in order to provide a bastion to protect against the Japanese threat.

♪ (narrator) Churchill believed Singapore an impregnable fortress, protected by the naval base to the south, and to the north by 100 kilometers of dense jungle across the Malaya Peninsula.

♪ In reality, it was left completely exposed to a merciless and highly motivated enemy.

♪ The much vaunted naval base was no use without an armed fleet to defend it.

♪ (Dr. Stanley) In late 1941, the Japanese enter the war, Singapore is at peril, and the British strategy proves to be completely worthless, because the Singapore strategy depends not just on the existence of a naval base, but upon the existence of a fleet based in that naval base.

They don't have the fleet, because they're fighting the Germans in the North Sea and the Atlantic.

♪ (sinister music) ♪ (narrator) On the ground in Malaya, the Japanese forces' strategic advances through the jungle were overwhelming the Allied defenders.

♪ (Max) The Japanese soldier was better motivated, better trained, better prepared than his British and Australian counterpart.

The British were still seeing everything in terms of roads, and so they were defending roads.

The Japanese brilliantly exploited outflanking movements again and again.

They found the British had established a blocking position on a road, and they just went round the back through the jungle.

(narrator) As the resistance failed against the Japanese advance, the Allied forces retreated southwards towards Singapore.

With a smaller force, one must always remember that, there were more British and Australian troops in Malaya, and later Singapore, than there were Japanese.

But, the Japanese simply outfought them at every turn, and of course, Japanese commanders out-commanded them.

♪ (narrator) By February 1942, 55 days after the start of the invasion, the Japanese had conquered the entire Malaya Peninsula, and were poised to attack Singapore.

(grim music) (Dr. Stanley) So, by the time the Japanese attack Singapore Island, the British, both commanders and troops, have had two months of defeats.

Their confidence is eroded.

The British commander in Singapore, Arthur Percival, is not a charismatic commander.

He's cautious.

He tries to defend the entire perimeter of the island, even though the Japanese won't land on the inside perimeter.

They only land in one place.

He won't move sufficient troops to meet that landing because he fears they'll land somewhere else, a reasonable fear, but not, as it turns out, true.

(narrator) Perhaps one of the greatest flaws in the British Malayan Campaign, and in Churchill's assessment of the threat of Japan, was an underestimation of the enemy.

(dramatic music) (Dr. Pratten) A lot of racial prejudice underlies the Allies' initial reading of what the Japanese military is capable of, and so it underestimates its ability to maneuver, it underestimates simply its ability to fight.

(whirring) (gloomy music) (narrator) On the 15th of February, 1942, with the city under siege, with critically low water supplies, and its million citizens trapped, British Commander Arthur Percival surrendered.

♪ The fall of Singapore was a costly lesson in morale and in manpower.

♪ 130,000 Allied troops were taken prisoner.

It was a defeat Churchill felt deeply.

♪ (dismal music) ♪ (Dr. Brendon) Churchill said that the conquest by the Japanese of Singapore was the greatest disaster in British military history, and it was a shameful thing because the Japanese had fewer men than the defending British, and he saw it as a terrible failure of morale, of military strength, and really a disastrous thing.

He had thought that Singapore was a fortress.

(Churchill) I speak to you all under the shadow of a heavy and far-reaching military defeat.

It is a British and imperial defeat.

Singapore has fallen.

All the Malay Peninsula has been overrun.

Other dangers gather about us out there, and none of the dangers which we have hitherto successfully withstood at home and in the East are in any way diminished.

(whirring) (ominous music) (Dr. Brendon) The sound of the causeway being taken by the Japanese was said by a future prime minister of Singapore, who heard it then as a schoolboy, to be the sound of the collapse of the British Empire, and in a sense that's right.

It was a symbol maybe of the fact that the British Empire in the Far East was rotten, it had no substance to it, and it could be taken.

♪ (narrator) By May 1942, the US were also suffering heavy losses in the Pacific Theater.

♪ Japanese troops had taken control of the Philippines.

♪ Japan now occupied most of Southeast Asia, and was moving to attack New Guinea, aiming to isolate Australia from her US allies.

(whirring) The Battle of the Coral Sea managed to halt the Japanese invasion force headed for Port Moresby in New Guinea, but it severely impacted the US carrier fleet.

♪ And on land, the fight to stop the Japanese reaching Moresby was borne largely by the Commonwealth troops.

♪ Though a costly fight for the Allied forces, the failed attack on New Guinea was the first major setback in Japan's plan for regional domination.

(pensive music) ♪ As the Allies battled with their new enemy in Asia, Churchill's offensive strategy in Europe was to launch additional bombing campaigns over Germany.

♪ The Soviet Union was still pushing for a second front in Europe to divert German attention and resources from the Eastern Front.

Churchill was not ready to contemplate invading Nazi-occupied Europe, and hoped that these bombing campaigns would appease Stalin.

♪ (Professor Napier) Aerial bombing allowed a new weapon, a new form of warfare to be opened, economic warfare, by destroying production facilities, its armament factories, it reduced the German ability to actually fight.

So, this was a new form of warfare which Churchill heartily embraced.

♪ (narrator) In early 1942, Bomber Command implemented the area bombing campaign.

Area bombing targeted whole industrial cities, and aimed to destroy morale and the will of the people, as well as the means of production.

(Dr. Spencer) There were a variety of targets that Britain wanted to engage through area bombing, some were military, such as the U-boat pens, airfields, but these were difficult to target, and so what the British tended to zero in on were industrial areas, such as the Ruhr Valley in particular.

An industrial area isn't just a set of factories.

You also have to have transportation network, you need civilians nearby who can work there, places for them to live.

And the British took the view that if you annihilated not merely the factory, but also all the infrastructure around it, then you'd ensure that factory could not be easily repaired.

(narrator) The devastating impact of area bombing was well demonstrated in raids, such as the first thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in May, 1942.

(dramatic music) There was more to area bombing than just catching strategic targets.

Simply bombing cities to terrorize the population also became a feature.

Targets which had limited military value, but were sought out for area bombing to carry out that duty of terrorizing the population.

(narrator) In June, Churchill traveled back to Washington to try to align Anglo-American'' strategic priorities.

(tense music) He had clear goals: To keep the Americans focused on a German-first policy, rather than getting bogged down in the Pacific.

To discuss the burgeoning and highly secret atomic bomb experiments taking place in the US.

And most importantly, to argue against the Second Front in Europe in 1942, which Churchill and his chiefs of staff thought unfeasible.

(Professor Napier) The Americans were for an operation, Operation Sledgehammer, to take the pressure off of the Russians.

This plan was, rather unwisely by General Marshall, called a "sacrificial raid," which of course was seized upon by the British as being entirely unjustified.

And don't forget, Britain had just been through two, if not three, evacuations and withdrawals.

Churchill was beginning to doubt the quality of the British troops.

The Germans air superiority.

Any raid on the continent in 1942 would almost certainly have met with failure.

♪ (wistful music) (narrator) Instead, the British pitch was for a combined Anglo-American operation against the Germans and Italians in North Africa.

♪ While President Roosevelt was swayed by the idea, there was strong disagreement from within the US Cabinet.

♪ Churchill persisted, and he secured the agreement he wanted.

An American offensive in North Africa would be launched, code-named Operation Torch.

♪ Even as the strategic decision was being made to commit American troops to Churchill's peripheral theater, the Allies had a significant victory in the Pacific with the Battle of Midway.

♪ The Japanese Navy had hoped to lure US aircraft carriers into a trap.

But, US forces defeated the attacking Japanese, inflicting devastating damage.

(blasting) A loss at Midway could have destroyed the US fleet, and potentially forced the Americans to withdraw support for the European theater.

Churchill said the victory was of cardinal importance.

♪ (dramatic music) From the beginning of 1942, the war in North Africa, the Desert Campaign, had been going poorly for the Allies.

♪ Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the German Army's greatest tank commander, led the Panzer Army Africa in an advance across the desert, which threatened Cairo and the Suez Canal.

An Allied garrison had remained at Tobruk in Libya, defending the port city.

♪ On the 21st of June, it fell into Axis hands, along with 33,000 troops, and a great deal of equipment and supplies.

♪ After the fall of Singapore, the surrender of Tobruk was the second largest capitulation of Commonwealth troops during the war.

♪ Churchill called the loss of Tobruk one of the heaviest blows he had felt during the war.

(Churchill) One morning in July, the President handed me a script of paper which bore the unexpected news of the fall of Tobruk and the surrender of a garrison of 25,000 men.

That indeed was a dark and bitter hour for me.

♪ (tense music) (narrator) In August, while on his way back to Moscow, Churchill visited the troops in Egypt just six weeks after the defeat at Tobruk.

(announcer) And with a huge fly whisk, he had at once got down to the inspection of as much of the 8th Army and as many of its RTF commrades as time allowed.

General (inaudible) accompanied the Premier, and knowing his character, we can easily guess what a turning it was for the old campaigner to exchange Whitehall for the battlefield.

(blasting) (narrator) Churchill spent five days in the region, bolstering morale among the Commonwealth troops, and traveling to meet Allied commanders.

(dismal music) ♪ In Moscow, Stalin continued to lobby in favor of a second front in France, and against Allied action in North Africa.

The Eastern Front was still the main battlefield in Europe, and the losses for the Soviet Union were enormous.

(blasting) On the 12th of August, 1942, Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Stalin for the first time.

For a man who had spent a good part of his youth decrying Bolshevism and Stalin, it was a significant moment.

It was a mission to create a connection and good will with his now ally.

But, this trip to Moscow would not go as smoothly as his American visits.

He came with news the Soviet leader would not welcome.

♪ (Dr. Brendon) Churchill went to Moscow first in 1942 to meet Stalin and tell him that there would be no second front that year.

Said it was like taking a block of ice to the North Pole.

Somebody described him as getting out of his plane and looking like a bull in the bull ring with the picadors prodding him.

(narrator) Shortly after arrival, Churchill spoke to the press.

His message was as it had been in the United States.

He was offering steadfast alliance in a united front against the Nazi Regime.

(Churchill) And we are determined that we will continue hand in hand, whatever our suffering, until every vestige of the Nazi Regime has been beaten into the ground, until the memory only of it remains as an example and a warning for future time.

♪ (solemn music) ♪ (narrator) But, things were tricky in Moscow.

Unity was not an easy thing to achieve.

They did not share a vision for the war, and Stalin was a difficult man.

(Dr. Brendon) Their relationship was typical Stalin tactic, you know, it was friendly to start with.

The second day, Stalin was absolutely vile to him.

Churchill got in a terrible temper and said he was going to leave.

Stalin, of course, was bugging his room, and knew exactly what he was saying, and then made overtures to him.

Their final night they both drank huge buckets of champagne, and they had a sort of rapport.

♪ (narrator) Stalin held meetings late into the night and into the early hours of the morning, challenging even Churchill's nocturnal tendencies.

Throughout the trying visit, Churchill stuck to his purpose to persuade Stalin against the idea of a second front in Europe.

(Dr. Brendon) Churchill wanted to postpone putting his own troops up against the very, very hardened divisions of Nazi Germany, and particularly with the defeat of Singapore, and the failure of British arms almost everywhere, I think he was uneasy about taking the Germans on in a full frontal attack.

(narrator) Churchill explained his strategy to attack the soft underbelly of the enemy.

a plan to launch an assault on Axis forces through Italy.

(Dr. Brendon) He tried to persuade Stalin, and it proved, of course, to be extremely hard.

He drew a crocodile for Stalin and said, "You don't bash him on the hard snout.

You slit open his underbelly."

And Stalin quite liked that analogy, but it didn't really make any difference.

(narrator) This suggested prompted robust disagreement from Stalin.

In his view, war involved risks and substantial losses, and he thought Churchill should accept them just as the Soviet Union had.

He thought an attempt should be made to invade France, regardless of the risk of losses, and accused Churchill of being afraid of the Germans.

(pensive music) But, as persistent as Stalin was in his demands, Churchill refused to budge.

Churchill had good reason to be suspicious of amphibious landings and another Western Front.

(Dr. Brendon) Churchill was a creature of the First World War.

He'd seen troops in Flanders standing up against this terrible German steamroller.

(gunshots firing) And afterwards, you always thought in terms of flank attacks.

Find a vulnerable flank and you move in on that.

As a cavalry man, that was perfectly obvious.

(narrator) But, Churchill did at least bring Stalin a consolation prize: Operation Jubilee.

Since April that year, an amphibious raid on the French port of Dieppe had been in secret planning, and by August 1942, it was ready to go.

♪ (Dr. Baker) Churchill reasoned that a major raid could be a kind of compromise.

If they could take a significant German-held port, and hold it for at least two tides, that would show the Germans that they were vulnerable in that area.

That would then force Hitler to redistribute some of his forces down to protect that part of Europe, which would in turn take some of the pressure off the Red Army, and importantly, show Stalin that Churchill was doing his part, that he was a willing partner, and not just sitting back.

♪ (narrator) During the planning stages, Churchill was nervous, seeking assurances from military advisors that success would be guaranteed.

(Dr. Baker) It was an enormously risky plan.

The port itself was heavily defended.

Even on the way there it was risky.

The task force faced the danger of U-boats, and they were also at risk from the air, from the Luftwaffe, so surprise was absolutely essential.

(narrator) But, when a German convoy spotted the ships on the way to port, the element of surprise was lost, and the landing force faced far stronger German defenses than expected.

(wistful music) The raid was a total failure.

(Professor Napier) The Dieppe Raid was an exercise in international diplomacy rather than the many military benefits.

Churchill wanted to demonstrate to the world the futility of mounting a large raid, or a small invasion of occupied France at the time.

It was what he called "a butcher-and-bolt operation."

But, of course, it was the Canadians who got butchered.

♪ (somber music) (narrator) The parallels between the failure of Dieppe and his humiliation Gallipoli must have occurred to Churchill.

♪ But, he argued that, unlike Gallipoli, the losses at Dieppe were not in vain.

But, Dieppe had at least achieved the goal of causing the Germans to remain conscious of a potential attack from the west, and therefore hold troops in reserve, preventing troop movement to the Eastern Front.

(Dr. Baker) There were certainly important things that were learned, the most important of which was, "Don't attack a port city head on."

And that lesson was learned, and D-Day was probably a success because of that.

However, those who raised this issue in the aftermath, particularly Churchill himself, were saying, "Well, lives were saved at D-Day."

Well, that's true, but that was never really the intention, and I think it's a bit of post-hoc justification.

♪ (narrator) Some have argued Dieppe was futile, that the lessons learned would've been self-evident without the raid.

The sacrifice of so many Canadian soldiers in the raid remains a dark chapter in Canada's history.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ In the Desert Campaign in North Africa, some positive news was immanent.

♪ By November 1942, the combined Allied campaign of Operation Torch had been launched, and Anglo-American troops had landed in Morocco and Algeria.

♪ In Egypt's Western Desert near El Alamein, Allied forces, under the leadership of General Bernard Law Montgomery, had initiated a new attack on Rommel's Panzer Army Africa.

(Dr. Pratten) Montgomery had a very significant influence on the shape of the British and Commonwealth forces in North Africa.

Some of what he proposed, some of what he was doing was simply following through trends which had been established previously.

(blasting) But, Montgomery had a supreme self-confidence, and he came in and he put his stamp on the command.

(narrator) Montgomery drew on his First World War experience to implement a set-piece battle, and he used deception effectively to confuse the Germans.

And for the first time, the military force he had at his disposal rivaled that of the Germans.

(intense music) (Dr. Pratten) The equipment that the British have at this point in time, it really equaled to, or in some cases superior to, what the Germans have to offer.

American tanks are starting to come into theater, things like the Grant and the Sherman.

They've got larger numbers of aircraft now than the Germans.

The balance of material, and troops, and logistics in the Middle East had tipped.

♪ (solemn music) (narrator) After several years of military defeats, the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 was finally a victory for the Allies.

Montgomery and the 8th Army had pushed Axis troops out of Egypt, and relieved the threat to the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern oil fields.

♪ For Churchill, the victory at El Alamein was a long-awaited validation of the campaign in North Africa.

It was also a much needed morale boost after a difficult year.

The soft underbelly had finally been pierced.

(triumphant music) (Dr. Brendon) At last we had scored a victory, with superior forces and with Sherman tanks supplied by the Americans admittedly, but it was a British victory.

It was as nothing, of course, compared to what was going on on the Eastern Front.

But nevertheless, Churchill ordered the bells to be rung in the churches in England to signal a British victory at last after all this time.

(bells ringing) (Churchill) Now this is not the end.

No, it is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

(applauding) ♪ (wistful music) (Dr. Pratten) There's a lot to be said for Churchill's characterization that this is the end of the beginning.

It's the end of the point in the war where the Allies are on the defensive.

But, we also have to remember that there's another very, very big war which is going on on the Eastern Front, that North Africa, even at this point, it's a sideshow, it's important, but it's a sideshow.

(narrator) A victory in North Africa was invaluable, but it was peripheral compared to the war raging in Europe.

The Russians were facing as many as 190 Axis divisions on the Eastern Front.

Hitler had to be confronted in the main theater.

(Dr. Pratten) After El Alamein, the Western Allies are on the offensive.

They're fighting through North Africa, they're landing in Sicily, they're landing in Italy.

Ultimately, they're landing in France.

(narrator) Finally, after years of war, the tide was beginning to turn towards an attack on Europe.

(solemn music) ♪ In the wake of the Allied victory at El Alamein, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin recalled the Australian 9th Division back home to prepare to join the fight against the Japanese.

♪ Churchill had been reluctant to release the division, but he conceded the point in December 1942.

♪ Australia, Curtin had made clear in a speech, now looked to America for defense in the Pacific.

♪ This was not an explicit turn away from Britain and Empire, but it was an acknowledgement that Australia could not rely solely on the mother country for defense.

1942 had made that very clear.

The war and the decisions Churchill made as leader were changing the Empire as he had known it.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ In January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt, with their military chiefs, met in Casablanca to discuss strategy.

♪ Stalin did not attend the conference, indicating that the pressing situation on the Eastern Front prevented him from doing so, but in his correspondence to Churchill he made his strategic views known.

He still wanted a second front in Western Europe in the spring of 1943.

♪ But, at Casablanca, Churchill and Roosevelt came to a different conclusion.

(Dr. Brendon) The Casablanca Conference shifted the strategy of the war in Churchill's favor for the time being.

It promised that there would be a cross-channel attack, but not yet, and it meant that Eisenhower would assault Sicily, and then climb up the Italian layer.

♪ (narrator) Churchill was pleased by the outcomes of the Casablanca Conference.

In addition to agreement on the Mediterranean Strategy, he secured a promise of US support for the recapture of Burma, and aid to Russia was agreed upon.

♪ (pensive music) One moment which did surprise him was Roosevelt's announcement in a press conference.

Our terms to Germany and Japan: Unconditional surrender.

We shall not settle for less than total victory.

♪ (narrator) Churchill had discussed the policy with the war cabinet, but Roosevelt's public announcement came as a shock.

(ominous music) Churchill and Roosevelt also agreed that around-the-clock bombing would be carried out against Germany.

♪ (Churchill) Three years ago Hitler boasted that he would rub out the cities of Britain, and more than 40,000 of our people were killed, and more than 120,000 were wounded.

But now, those who sowed the wind are reaping the whirlwind.

♪ (narrator) Churchill had a moment in which he wavered on the morality of bombing civilians in Germany.

(blasting) After watching a film of the raids of the Ruhr Valley in June 1943, he asked rhetorically, "Are we beasts?

Are we taking this too far?"

(grim music) (Dr. Jones) It's a strange dichotomy that Britain had endured the Blitz, and the Blitz was seen as actually drawing the British people together and uniting them in defiance, and yet two years later it was assumed that an even heavier bombing campaign on Germany would break their morale.

The evidence for this was quite simply nonexistent.

(announcer) Air Marshal Harris has this to say: There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.

Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see.

(Dr. Jones) It was based on pre-war theories, which took a rather dim view of the civilian populations of nations, and thought they would be terrorized.

But, that just made them all the more determined to fight and to win.

(whirring) ♪ (narrator) Civilian deaths were high.

On the night of the 3rd of July, 600 bombers hit Cologne, killing more than 4,000 people.

♪ In further raids five nights later, 350,000 people lost their homes.

♪ (intense music) The Allied fight against Axis forces in North Africa had continued into 1943.

Operation Torch had allowed Allied forces to encircle Axis troops, and in May, they surrendered.

♪ The Allies then used North Africa as a base for a campaign in Sicily and mainland Italy.

♪ The Anglo-American invasion of Sicily began on the 10th of July, 1943, code-named Operation Husky.

♪ It took just 38 days for the Allies to secure Sicily.

♪ (pensive music) ♪ By this point in the war, Mussolini was losing his grip on power, and the Italian Fascist Government was deposed on the 24th of July.

(announcer) This captured enemy newsreel film shows the escape of the Duce, the ex-Duce to be more correct, and very ex he looks.

(whirring) (narrator) With victory in Sicily secured, Churchill was keen to pursue the Germans into mainland Italy, and wanted Allied forces to strike as far north as possible.

American General George Marshall was less sure of an easy advance, and he was proven correct.

(blasting) (gunshots firing) In September 1943, eight weeks after the invasion was launched, Italy secured an armistice with the Allies.

(announcer) With King Victor's proclamation of the end of fascism, and Italy's unconditional surrender to the Allies, came the most amazing scenes of jubilation, and the tearing down of all signs of Mussolini's regime.

(clamoring) (narrator) But, the fight in Italy continued against the Germans, who now occupied Rome.

The Allies took Naples in October, but the fight for Rome and beyond continued into 1944.

(grim music) (blasting) (dramatic music) In the Pacific by the end of 1943, the Allied campaign led by the United States was on the offensive.

♪ A two-pronged strategy of attack was implemented.

General MacArthur led an island-hopping campaign in the South Pacific, targeting less defended islands.

(announcer) Pictures of Unite States Marines landing on Bougainville, coming ashore through the surf at Empress Augusta Bay, serve also to illustrate the landings on New Britain of the Arabian Peninsula.

♪ (narrator) Meanwhile in November 1943, Admiral Nimitz launched a Central Pacific campaign in the Gilbert Islands.

♪ (sloshing) (intense music) There was another Allied nation who had been enduring the brunt of the Japanese attack before the European war began: China.

The Japanese Army had taken control of Manchuria in 1931.

By 1937, full-scale war between Japan and China had begun.

♪ In December that year, the Nationalist capital, Nanjing, fell, and the ensuing massacre resulted in the death of at least 300,000 surrendered troops and civilians.

♪ Under the leadership of Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek, China resisted complete surrender to Japan, even as Japanese victories mounted against them.

(gunshot firing) Chinese Communist Guerrillas also mounted successful attacks from bases in rural areas.

They were holding out against Japan, but the situation was dire, and life for Chinese civilians was desperately bleak.

♪ (wistful music) In November 1943 at the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to meet the Chinese National leader Chiang Kai-shek.

♪ Stalin was again absent.

This time because of the non-aggression pact the Soviet Union had with Japan.

The Cairo Conference was just one of wartime summits.

That's how it would be seen in the rest of the world.

But, it was the only wartime summit for China.

It's the first time ever that China could sit as an equal with the most powerful leaders of the democratic countries.

The United States and the United Kingdom.

Chiang Kai-shek went to Cairo with a clear misunderstanding of what the meeting was.

(narrator) Chiang Kai-shek had hoped to discuss the broader war strategy at the conference, and the post-war balance of power.

But, it quickly became clear that was not what Churchill and Roosevelt had in mind.

(Professor Tsang) So, the agenda for Chiang changed.

At first it was talking about the overall arrangements for end of war, and what China would get out of it, and then it was about the campaign in Burma.

(narrator) Churchill did not endear himself to Chiang Kai-shek in the conference.

(Professor Tsang) Burma was a British colony, but the priority for Churchill was the war in Europe.

(narrator) Roosevelt understood the value of China as an ally much better than Churchill.

(Professor Tsang) Churchill didn't even want to be in Cairo.

Churchill went to Cairo in order to keep it sweet with Roosevelt, and Roosevelt wanted China to stay in the war so that China will continue to die down about a million Japanese troops.

♪ (narrator) The Cairo Conference ended with agreement on the Cairo Declaration, which, to Chiang's delight, paved the way for the Chinese to secure the return of Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores from Japan once they were defeated, as well as sovereignty over Taiwan and the independence of Korea.

But, the real winner was Roosevelt, who had ensured that China would keep the Japanese fully occupied, enabling his commanders to plan for the invasion of Europe the following year.

(solemn music) ♪ With the Cairo Conference complete, Churchill and Roosevelt traveled to Tehran for a meeting with Stalin.

♪ Roosevelt had intended to meet Stalin alone, but Churchill insisted on an invitation.

Churchill basically inserts himself into that conversation, and insists that he has to be there, too.

Of course, Churchill was not opposed to meeting Stalin on his own, he did in August 1942 and he would again in October of 1944, but he was very nervous about Roosevelt and Stalin meeting together because he understood that you had these two enormous powers merging, and Britain was very much becoming the kind of secondary power.

♪ (narrator) There were moments of tension in Tehran, and Stalin continued to intentionally unsettle Churchill, as he had done when they first met.

(Dr. Brendon) There was a famous episode where Stalin suggested that 50,000 of the top German officers should be shot after the war.

Churchill expostulated about this, and Roosevelt said, "We'll compromise, we'll just shoot 49 of them."

And Churchill got up and he was furious about this, and he went out and he stormed into the other room, and Stalin had to come and bring him back and say it was all a joke.

Well, of course, it wasn't a joke, 'cause Churchill knew full well that Stalin had organized the massacre of about 14,000 Polish officers in the Katyn woods, so he didn't think this was a joke at all, and there was a sort of humane quality about Churchill.

He didn't believe in that kind of reprisal at all.

(narrator) Stalin may have enjoyed rattling Churchill's composure, but he had serious goals he needed to achieve at the Tehran Conference.

♪ (ominous music) Tehran's significant for Stalin for two principle reasons.

First of all, he's concerned with the Second Front.

Where will it take place, and when will it take place?

He's been asking for this since 1941, so this is a fundamental concern for Stalin.

He's also aware that the Red Army is still doing the vast bulk of the fighting against the German Army.

The other concern is post-war Europe.

He is particularly concerned with dismemberment of Germany.

♪ (narrator) In his continuing pressure for a second front, Stalin found again an ally in Roosevelt.

(Dr. Stahel) He meets Roosevelt, and they strike an immediately rapport, and ultimately in the course of the conference, it will tend to be Stalin and Roosevelt together against Churchill.

Churchill sees the soft underbelly of Europe.

He believes that already having supply networks through North Africa, and Sicily, and into Southern Italy, that this is the best way to strike at Nazi Germany, and he sees that there's a great deal of risk a cross-channel invasion.

But, Roosevelt is convinced this is where they need to attack, and he's supported by Stalin here, and ultimately, Churchill will have to agree that this is the best place to attack Germany, and that Allied resources will be directed toward planning for Operation Overlord.

♪ (dramatic music) (narrator) By the end of 1943, the Allies were on the offensive.

♪ Mussolini had been deposed.

(clamoring) The campaign in North Africa won.

♪ Victories like Midway had begun to turn the war in the Pacific.

It was time to take the fight to Germany.

Planning would soon begin for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

And as the possibilities for victory and for peace inched ever closer, concerns about the post-war world and the plans of the Soviet Union began to occupy Churchill's mind.

♪ (intense music) ♪