The Campaign To Take Africa From Hitler, Hitlers Soft Underbelly, Timeline
Part two of two. David Reynolds explores the reasoning behind the Second World War battles that took place in North Africa and Italy an area labelled Hitler s soft underbelly by Winston Churchill. In this film we ask why Britain spent so much of the conflict battling through North Africa and Italy Historian David Reynolds reassesses Winston Churchills conviction that the Mediterranean was the soft underbelly of Hitlers Europe. Travelling to Egypt and Italian battlefields like Cassino, the scene of some of the worst carnage in Western Europe, he shows how in reality the soft underbelly became a dark and dangerous obsession for Churchill. Reynolds reveals a prime minister very different from the jawjutting bulldog of Britain s finest hour in 1940 a leader who was politically vulnerable at home, desperate to shore up a crumbling British empire abroad, losing faith in his army and even ready to deceive his American allies if it might delay fighting head to head
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