WW2's Turning Point: Stalingrad, Alamein, Midway

In August 1942 the Axis held more of the world than ever — the Caucasus, the gates of Egypt, an empire from the Aleutians to Burma. Eighteen months later it was retreating on every front. How did the Allies turn World War II? This documentary follows the turn of 1942–1943 through three lenses: • Strategy — encirclement at Stalingrad, defence in depth at Kursk, convoys, codebreaking and deception. • Geopolitics — a coalition of rivals: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin; Vichy France; Brazil entering the war. • Geography — the Volga and the oil of the Caucasus, the Qattara Depression, the distances of the Pacific, the mountains of Italy. CHAPTERS 0:00 August 1942: the Axis at its peak 0:28 1 · The High-Water Mark 3:02 2 · Oil and the Volga — Stalingrad 8:07 3 · The Desert Gate — El Alamein 11:31 4 · The Hard School — Dieppe, Torch, Kasserine 16:02 5 · The Pacific Turns — Midway, Guadalcanal 21:01 6 · The War of Science — the Battle of the Atlantic 26:29 7 · Kursk 29:40 8 · The Soft Belly — Sicily and Italy 33:31 9 · The End of the Beginning — Tehran 35:32 Credits Which turning point mattered most — Stalingrad, El Alamein, Midway or the Atlantic? Tell us why in the comments. Educational context: a history documentary about the Second World War from mid-1942 to the end of 1943 — the Allies (the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and their partners) against the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan) — on the Eastern Front, in North Africa, the Pacific, the Atlantic and Italy. Maps are approximate reconstructions for orientation. ▶ Part 2 — The Fall (1944–1945): [LINK TO PART 2] SOURCES (selection) Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (1995/2006) · Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms (1994/2005) · Murray & Millett, A War to Be Won (2000) · Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory (2013) · Mark Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II (1998) · Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction (2006) · Glantz & House, When Titans Clashed (1995/2015) and The Battle of Kursk (1999) · Antony Beevor, Stalingrad (1998) · Valeriy Zamulin, Demolishing the Myth (2011) · Niall Barr, Pendulum of War (2004) · Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (2002) and The Day of Battle (2007) · Parshall & Tully, Shattered Sword (2005) · Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (1990) · Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic (2003) · Stephen Budiansky, Blackett's War (2013) · Frank D. McCann, The Brazilian-American Alliance (1973). ARCHIVAL MEDIA Films (public domain): US War Department (The Battle of Russia; At the Front in North Africa; The Liberation of Rome), US Navy (December 7th; a Battle of Midway training film), US Army Signal Corps (Tunisian Campaign), Office of War Information / United News newsreels (US National Archives), British Army Film & Photographic Unit and RAF Film Unit (Desert Victory, Crown copyright expired). Films are shown without their original soundtrack. Photographs: Library of Congress, US National Archives, Australian War Memorial and Wikimedia Commons (public domain unless noted below). The real date of every image is shown on screen. Attribution (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE) — German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv), via Wikimedia Commons: Bild 101I-031-2417-09 (Poetsch) · Bild 183-B03212 · Bild 101I-785-0294-32A (Tannenberg) · Bild 101I-291-1205-14 (Koll) · Bild 146-1976-127-06A · Bild 101I-139-1112-17 (Ludwig Knobloch) · Bild 101III-Zschaeckel-206-35 (Friedrich Zschäckel) · Bild 146-1977-018-13A (Otto) · Bild 101I-567-1503A-07 (Toni Schneiders) · Bild 183-R93434. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Georgy Zhukov — Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (mil.ru), CC BY 4.0. Roosevelt and Churchill at Hyde Park, 1942 — FDR Presidential Library & Museum, CC BY 2.0. MUSIC (public domain recordings — Musopen Kickstarter Project, Czech National Symphony Orchestra): Beethoven (Egmont, Coriolan, Eroica), Brahms (Tragic Overture, Symphony No. 1), Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 6), Borodin (In the Steppes of Central Asia), Mendelssohn (The Hebrides; Symphonies 3 and 4). MAPS: Natural Earth · historical borders: André Ourednik, historical-basemaps · elevation: Mapzen Terrain Tiles (AWS Open Data). NARRATION: synthetic voice (Kokoro TTS). #WW2 #WorldWarII #MilitaryHistory #Stalingrad