Made for the home market in Germany during WWII, this newsreel shows the campaign in North Africa. The soundtrack is in French. The film begins with images of a formal lunch being served in Spain to a group of Moroccan officers, an annual ritual.
At :51 Italian Marines are seen parading in Rome. The troops are reviewed by Mussolini. At 1:14 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy presents decorations near the Vittoriano (or Altare della Patria). Some of these include medals given posthumously to the parents of fallen soldiers (1:19). Huge crowds gather for the festivities. At 1:46 a wreath if placed at a memorial to fallen soldiers in Berlin. At 2:27 a lengthy segment takes place in what might be the Republic of Bulgaria (judging from the three stripe flags) but we haven’t identified this with certainty.
At 3:40 German Messerschmidts Me-109s and Stukas are shown bombing Sevastopol as part of the siege of that city. At 4:51 General Ernst Abraham Albrecht von Manstein surveys the city’s defenses. At 5;22 German troops advance slowly to the heart of the city, ever cautious as they search for land mines. At 6:00 the shattered port of Sevastopol is shown, now in German hands. At 6:50 Russian prisoners march towards an uncertain fate.
At 7:00 the film switches its attention to North Africa and the activities of Fieldmarshal Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps. At 7:38 German troops are shown on the advance towards Egypt from Libya. At 8:22 German forces marshall near the Halfaya Pass on the border between Libya and Egypt. The pass had great strategic importance. The only ways westwards into Libya were to assault the pass or to out-flank it to the south. After the defeat of the Italian 10th Army on 7 February 1941 during Operation Compass, the Italians were reinforced by German units (Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel) and the British forces were forced out of Libya, leaving a besieged garrison at Tobruk. On 14 April 1941, Rommel’s main force reached Sollum on the Egyptian border and occupied the Halfaya Pass. There were several allied attempts to recapture the Halfaya Pass and relieve Tobruk.
At 9:17 a British plane burns on the ground while at 9:33 a British tank the “Rosemary” is shown disabled. The narrator notes that on June 29, roughly 6000 British troops became prisoners as a result of a failed enemy assault.
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