228. Turning points: 1943

This is an episode for turning points.

The year’s 1943.

The Battle of Stalingrad, where the unstoppable German offensive into Russia was finally stopped and turned around, with Soviet forces essentially fighting forwards to the two remaining, and grim years, of their war with the Nazis.

The Battle of the Atlantic reached a peak where Britain looked as though it might actually lose not just that battle but the whole war, when a number of vital technical developments and the release, at last, of some more resources for convoy protection, at last gave them the edge over the U-boats.

The man who replaced Auchinleck at the head of the British Eighth Army in North Africa, Bernard Montgomery, though always so cautious that he consistently failed to take advantage of any victory, nonetheless took credit for defeating Rommel because he was in charge at the Second Battle of El Alamein when that success was secured. With hindsight, it’s clear that credit should in large part go to Auchinleck for the First Battle which laid the ground for the Second.

With Operation Torch landing US and British troops in Morocco and Algeria, the Axis forces were caught in a pincer between them advancing eastward and the Eighth army pushing them westward. They finally surrendered on 13 May 1943.

In the meantime, there’d been an ugly quarrel among the French about who should lead the newly liberated territories. Eventually, it would be won by de Gaulle, deservedly, but that was by no means obvious from the start.

Finally, the episode gives a little insight into the character of a remarkable Free French general, Philippe de Leclerc, and one unit that came under his command, the Ninth Company of his Second Armoured Division, made up of exiled Republican veterans of Spain’s Civil War. We’ll be hearing about it, and about him.

Illustration: Philippe Leclerc, the Free French general who never compromised with the collaborationist Vichy regime.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License