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00:00♪♪♪
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00:55And now, the magnetic north.
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01:28A few hours ago, and a few hours hence,
01:31over the vast, empty territory of Alaska,
01:34Americans fly tedious, repeated patrols.
01:38War has come to the wilderness,
01:41waste, void of the ultimate north.
01:45♪♪♪
01:55For the first time in history,
01:57the vacuum that is the top of the world
01:59is filled by major powers who meet there and clash.
02:02As the earth shrinks in circumference,
02:04so do the routes that link allies together.
02:07So do the avenues along which enemies attack.
02:10The links must be kept clear.
02:13The avenues defended.
02:16♪♪♪
02:21After Dunkirk, while Englishmen stand at bay,
02:25marshalling their strength, they strike to the north.
02:29Under Lord Mountbatten, crack commando troops
02:31hit key enemy coastal positions with swift, ravaging raids
02:35in the ancient tradition of the Royal Navy,
02:37the tradition of Drake and Essex.
02:40In March of 1941, a commando force works its way
02:44through torturous Arctic waters
02:46to stab at the Lofoten Islands off German-occupied Norway.
02:50Fish oil tanks, factories, and installations
02:53crucial to the enemy war machine are marked for destruction.
02:57The creed of the commandos,
02:59plan thoroughly, strike boldly, retire swiftly.
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03:39Back to England with the commandos goes a mixed bag.
03:42Local quizlings and captured German officers.
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03:53And 350 Norwegian patriots dedicated to democracy's cause,
03:59the liberation of their country.
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04:05Target, Spitsbergen.
04:07Ocean, the Arctic.
04:10Date, August 1941.
04:14Spitsbergen's rich coal deposits and key weather stations
04:16are important to the Germans.
04:19They must be destroyed.
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04:50The magnetic north draws raids of increasing scope and violence.
04:54A powerful commando force strikes at Norway's Vogsel Island
04:57in December 1941 to weaken the enemy hold
05:00and reduce his power over the sea lanes of the Arctic,
05:03which connect England and the United States with Soviet Russia.
05:07Now an ally.
05:09But Vogsel is heavily fortified
05:11and stubborn German defenders fight back.
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06:00The raid is over.
06:02150 Germans are dead.
06:04More military installations wrecked.
06:06More patriots liberated.
06:08More Quislings captured.
06:11And the commandos head for home
06:13as their countrymen, together with the Americans,
06:15determined to get supplies to desperate Russia,
06:18no matter what the cost.
06:23An ally is in peril
06:25and a lifeline is flung across the top of the world.
06:29This is the most expeditious way of feeding embattled Russia
06:32from democracy's arsenal.
06:34The shortest route.
06:36But for the pregnant ships,
06:38the grimmest,
06:40the harshest,
06:42the cruelest.
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07:37At German air bases in Norway and Finland,
07:39detailed reports on convoy movements
07:41come in from long-range reconnaissance planes.
07:44The Nazis have a magnificently effective plan
07:47to change the color of the Arctic from white to red.
07:51How?
07:53Slaughter.
07:55Slaughter.
07:57Slaughter.
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09:03Smoke screen.
09:05A device to hide the convoy and confuse the attack.
09:08And all means of defense must be taken
09:10against the terror about to strike.
09:12High-level bombers and low-level bombers.
09:14Torpedo planes and strafing planes.
09:17Submarines.
09:19The entire holocaust of Nazi fury.
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10:31The attack goes on, relentless, unbroken.
10:35But while the convoy reels under the slugging,
10:38more death is on the way.
10:40The German surface fleet lurks in hidden Norwegian fjords,
10:44waiting to smother any surviving Allied ships.
10:47The mightiest warships in the German Navy.
10:50Von Tirpitz.
10:52Scharnhorst.
10:53Scheer.
10:54Prinz Eugen.
10:56Lutzow.
10:57Are poised to thwart the Allied lifelines.
11:00Too wary to be brought to open battle,
11:02the ships sortie only for sudden strikes.
11:05But when they do, the Royal Air Force catches them
11:09and smashes the Germans as the Germans smash the convoys.
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11:51Now the Germans reel in the seesaw struggle for the Arctic,
11:55but the Murmansk convoys come close to full disaster.
11:59The German attacks continue around the clock,
12:02continue for days on end.
12:05If the Germans can choke off the flow of supplies to Russia,
12:10oil, food, machinery, guns, planes, tanks, trucks,
12:19the bleeding Red Army may collapse.
12:21The entire Allied cause may face defeat.
12:25The battle is in balance,
12:27and Göring's Luftwaffe spares nothing to tip the scales.
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14:01In some convoys, only one half of the ships survive.
14:06On no other sea route are losses so high,
14:09casualties so terrific.
14:11Even for those who survived the German onslaught,
14:14the end is not yet.
14:16Another ordeal, as fierce as enemy action,
14:19scourges the ships and men of the Murmansk run.
14:23The name of the ordeal, weather.
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14:51Murmansk, the goal.
14:54Journey's end.
14:56Through its ice-free harbor pour many thousand tons
14:59of Allied supplies that sustain a friend
15:02whose call for help we are pledged to answer.
15:06Here American, British, and Canadian seamen
15:09make their proudest boast.
15:11Despite Nazi hell and Arctic high water,
15:14we deliver the goods.
15:17The goods that bolster Russia in her darkest hour
15:20and help stem the German hordes at Stalingrad.
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16:07In miserable Murmansk, the suspicious Russians
16:10restrict the movements even of their own allies.
16:14But sometimes surviving Allied sailors
16:16meet Russian seamen as friends.
16:18As comrades in arms.
16:20♪♪♪
16:36Directly across the North Pole,
16:38the United States faces the Soviet Union
16:40on the Bering Sea,
16:42where the Aleutians stretch a thousand miles toward Asia.
16:46Here, too, contact is made with the Russians.
16:49The United States Navy transfers ships of war
16:52to the Red Navy.
16:54And with the ships goes the knowledge of how to use them.
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17:40Speeches, ceremonies, full dress formality
17:44attend the transfer of the warships
17:46from one flag to the other.
17:48The stars and stripes give way to the hammer and sickle.
17:52But the rising sun also flies in these waters,
17:55and the Japanese prepare to plant it here permanently.
17:59♪♪♪
18:10The top of the world is a Japanese target,
18:13and she pinpoints Attu and Kiska for invasion
18:16as part of her overall strategy in the Pacific.
18:19The Aleutian Islands are to be the northern anchor
18:21of Japan's oceanic defense line.
18:24While the Imperial Japanese Navy hits tropical midway,
18:27a mobile force splits off from the main body of the fleet
18:30and plunges into the Arctic.
18:32Alaska and Canada are threatened by invasion
18:35as enemy troops approach American soil.
18:38The Aleutians.
18:40Prophets of war have warned.
18:42One day Japan will seek to invade America
18:45through the Aleutians.
18:47The Japanese have come.
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19:41June 1942.
19:44Attu occupied without opposition.
19:48Kiska occupied without opposition.
19:53Ten forlorn Americans are captured
19:55at the Kiska weather station.
19:58At scattered, dreary, undermanned bases,
20:02like Dutch Harbor in the eastern Aleutians,
20:05American pilots brave the world's worst flying weather
20:08to harass and wreck an order of the Japanese.
20:11Their mission is to neutralize the enemy on Attu and Kiska,
20:14cut off his supplies and make the islands worthless
20:17until men and ships can be gathered to recapture them.
20:21Attu and Kiska in Japanese hands menace the United States,
20:25but in American hands they will threaten Japan.
20:28Both sides fear attack by way of the Aleutians.
20:31Each side seeks to block the other.
20:34♪♪♪
20:43May 1943.
20:46The stubborn stalemate breaks.
20:48From Cold Harbor in Alaska,
20:50an assault force of 29 warships and transports
20:53sets sail for Attu.
20:55It is America's third amphibious strike of the war.
20:59North Africa succeeded.
21:01The Guadalcanal landing was a success.
21:04But now the ships grope their way through navigational hazards
21:07unmatched in all the seven seas.
21:10Treacherous currents, uncharted rocks,
21:13continual fog, raging storms.
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22:57The plan calls for a landing on the island's south coast.
23:01The place, Massacre Bay.
23:04The orders, advance into Massacre Valley,
23:08where the enemy waits.
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24:07Soldiers of the 7th Division, trained for desert fighting,
24:11find themselves at war in a freezing hell,
24:14where an invisible enemy defends himself with suicidal courage.
24:18The Japanese, dug deep in ridges, hidden in ravines,
24:23contest every yard, every foot.
24:26The fight is slow and costly.
24:29Massacre Valley lives up to its name.
24:322,300 Japanese die.
24:35600 Americans die.
24:38But that who is American again,
24:40and the Japanese evacuate Kiska,
24:43they will never return.
24:46Victory over the northern enemy is a desolate victory.
24:50The Arctic becomes a theater of military frustration.
24:55Nothing more happens to affect the outcome of World War II.
24:59Up where the Williwa whips, with bone-piercing chill,
25:04and the skies are eternally gray.
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