by Vern, Steven
In the Soviet Union and in Poland in 1942, millions of Jews were killed, but not by gas. By bullets. The Nazis sent “special action squads” (“Einsatzgruppen”) into the Baltic States and the western Soviet Union to eliminate the Jews there. In the Baltic States and in the Ukraine, many locals helped. Others stood by and watched. At times, such as at Babi Yar in the Ukraine and Rumbula Forest in Latvia, more than 25,000 people were shot in 2 or 3 days. Even today, previously unknown mass graves are still being found in the Ukraine (for more on this, read Holocaust By Bullets, by Father Patrick Desbois).
The killing in the camps went on almost to the last moment before the Allies overran them. Many of those left behind in the camps died shortly after liberation; malnutrition and disease killed tens of thousands.
Survivors at the Ebensee camp, 1945
CHAPTER 8:
THE END IN EUROPE
From the summer of 1943 onward, the Germans were fighting a defensive battle. While the Battle of Kursk was at its height, the Western Allies invaded the Italian island of Sicily, and the Germans sent troops from east to west to counter them, which left them even weaker in Russia than they were.
It was only a matter of time before Germany was defeated, but to do so would require tremendous effort and loss. Even with their back to the wall, the Germans fought on, and at times, it seemed, at least on the surface, that they might have a chance of prolonging the war for years, or perhaps forcing a negotiated peace. Only the most hardcore believed that Germany could still win the war. But they tried.
After the Battle of Sicily, the Allies crossed over and invaded the Italian mainland. The government of Mussolini, exceedingly unpopular by this time, fell and was replaced by that of an army general, but only temporarily – the Germans moved in and took control of the nation. Then they made a fortress of it. In 1945, Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and shot.
When the Germans evacuated Sicily to Italy, the Allies missed a chance to destroy their troops as they crossed the narrow Straits of Messina. Now they would have to fight these same Germans again.
The central part of Italy is nothing but rugged mountains, which the Allies knew were virtually impassable, especially considering the rain, mud, and poor roads of Italy. Therefore, they drove up the coasts and at times, attempted to outflank the Germans (such as at Salerno and Anzio). Sounds good – on paper.
The Germans constructed a series of defensive lines across the Italian peninsula. The Winter Line, Gustav Line, Hitler Line, etc., each bristling with mines, machine guns, cannons, strong-points and pillboxes, and some of the best troops in the German army. The Italian campaign, which Churchill (in error) believed would be a quick thrust into the “soft underbelly” of Europe, turned out to be an incredibly hard fought and difficult campaign.
The German commander in Italy, “Smiling” Albert Kesselring (1885-1960), was one of the most skilled defensive commanders of the war and made the Allies pay for every inch of ground taken. It took the Allies nearly a year after landing Sicily to take the Italian capital of Rome – on June 4th, 1944. When the war ended in the spring of 1945, the Germans still controlled a significant portion of northern Italy.
As the Allies clawed their way up Italy, plans were made for a cross-Channel invasion of France. This had been called for by Stalin for years, in the hope that an Anglo-American invasion would take some of the pressure off the Red Army in the east, but each time he had asked (from 1942 onward), he had been told that the Allies were not yet ready.
The Allies did not see it that way. They had been fighting in the desert, Sicily, and Italy. Their bombers had been wreaking havoc on German cities for 2 years, sustaining and inflicting terrible casualties, but in his paranoia, the Soviet dictator believed that Britain and American might actually be hoping that Germany and Russia would bleed themselves white so that they could move in, but as the fighting in Sicily and Italy showed, the Americans and British were not ready for a French invasion before 1944. America, and to a lesser degree, Britain, were fighting in both Europe and the Pacific, and though supplies, equipment, and more men were coming in all the time, the Allies were stretched thin until spring 1944. On top of that, though many American units had experienced combat, many were new and very green, and the Germans were not a pushover whatsoever.
As the Americans and British fought in Italy and prepared for the invasion of France, and the Soviets moved ever westward, a costly and atrocious war was taking place in Yugoslavia. In that nation, which had been created after WWI out of ethnic groups that hated each other with a terrible passion, differing groups were for and against the Germans and each other. By the time the war was over, the resistance in Yugoslavia had tied down at least 200,000 German troops, but at a terrible price. Nearly a million Yugoslavs on all sides died in a war that produced incredible atrocity, and which were to happen again when the nation fell apart in the 1990s.
In France and other occupied nations, resistance movements from various political parties attempted to take the fight to the Germans and gather intelligence for the Allies. Commando raids by the British before the invasion also helped the Allies get ready for D-Day.
When it came on June 6th, 1944, the invasion of Normandy was the largest sea-borne invasion in the history of the world. Though it seemed a close run thing early in the day, the invasion was a success, but in the days afterward, the Allies got stuck in the rough hedgerow country of Northern France.
Overall Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), and his deputies, including Omar Bradley (1893-1981), George Patton (1885-1945), British Field Marshal Montgomery (1887-1976), and others, needed to break out from the invasion area and drive across France to Paris. This did not occur until July, but from mid-July to the end of August, the Allies raced across France and Belgium to the Dutch and near the German border, and there they stopped; fuel, re-organization, and other concerns halted them in September.
Hopes for an early end of the war after an assassination attempt on Hitler in July amounted to nothing came to a halt as well.
In the East, the Soviets launched a massive attack to coincide with the Normandy Invasion. “Operation Bagration”, named after a 19th century Russian military hero, included nearly 2 million men, 5,000 tanks, 30,000 guns, and almost 8,000 aircraft against a vastly outnumbered German force. This offensive, one of the largest in the history of war, pushed the Germans back completely out of Russia and into eastern Poland, to the gates of Warsaw.
Warsaw had seen a heroic rebellion of Jews in the ghetto in 1943. In August 1944, the rest of the city was to rise up. The Soviets, on the eastern side of the Vistula River, watched as the Germans retaliated with ferocity, killing most of the rebellious Poles and then destroying over 90% of the city. Now the Soviets would not have to deal with the same rebellious Poles (who were not fond of either Germans or Soviets) when they moved in.
In the West, Eisenhower allowed Montgomery to move forward with a plan the British commander believed might end the war, and from September 17th-25th, Allied airborne and armored forces attempted to find a northern route inside Germany via Holland. For a variety of reasons, mostly poor intelligence and planning, the attack failed.
In the fall of 1944, the fighting took place on a relatively static front. That doesn't mean it stopped. The Americans and Germans engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of U.S. Army history in the Hurtgen Forest, an unnecessary battle that cost over 10,000 American lives.
During this time, the Germans began to launch their secret weapons, the V-1 and V-2 missiles, at London and other Allied targets. Though the V weapons would take a heavy toll on English and Belgian civilians, they were never a threat to end the war.
More deadly was the last major German offensive in the West. In the late summer, Hitler had begun toying with the idea of a German offensive that would take the Allies by surprise, but through the fall, the movement and positioning of the Allies made this difficult. But in December, the British, Canadians, and Americans sat on the
German border, gathering supplies for a spring offensive. Most of these supplies came through the Belgian port of Antwerp. Hitler now believed he had his chance. He would hoard troops and tanks behind his lines and then launch them in bad weather (to prevent Allied air attack) through the Ardennes Forest (the same point from which he trapped the French in 1940), split the Allied armies in two, seize Antwerp, force the Allies to make a separate peace, then shift all of his troops to the East to finally defeat the Soviets.
Hitler and his most hardcore followers were the only ones who believed this could happen, and even they realized that everything had to go perfectly right for it to occur. Nothing in war ever goes perfectly right.
So when the Germans launched the Ardennes Offensive of 1944, better known as the “Battle of the Bulge”, they inflicted heavy casualties on the untrained American troops resting there. However, despite an initial panic, the Americans regrouped and pushed the Germans back to their starting positions, and then got ready for spring, when the Allies planned on finishing Hitler for good.
The last phase of the war, which began in March 1945, saw the British and Americans mount a huge offensive to cross the Rhine River (the last major natural barrier to the rest of Germany), and capture the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr. From the air, Allied bombers literally destroyed most every major German city. Very little was left standing anywhere.
Ruins of Hamburg. Every major city and many minor ones in Germany looked like this by 1945
In the East, the Russian spring offensive drove from Poland into Germany, where Soviet troops took a terrible vengeance for the losses and horrors visited upon them in the Soviet Union. Countless villagers and towns were destroyed, civilians killed, and women and girls by the thousands raped.
This was to be even worse when the Red Army reached Berlin, and the Allies had agreed that the Soviets would be the ones to liberate the city. From mid-April through the first week of May, German and Soviet troops fought in the rubble of the city. By this time, Hitler and his cronies were living in an underground bomb-proof bunker, ranting and raving about Jews and the unfairness of the world while giving commands to armies that only existed on paper. Day by day, the Soviets moved closer.
Finally, a few days after his 56th birthday, Adolf Hitler killed himself. Days later, his designated successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891-1980), accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany. World War II in Europe was over.
CHAPTER 9:
THE PACIFIC
Today, there are great tensions between the nations of Japan and China. Most of this tension is caused by questions over the possession of a few deserted islands halfway between the two nations, but that is but the latest source of friction between the two powers of the Pacific.
70 years after the end of WWII, China and the nations of Asia remain angry at Japan for the damage and loss inflicted by that country upon them. Second only to the Soviet Union in losses, the number of Chinese killed during the war with Japan approached 15 million. Many of these were killed in battle, but many (millions) were killed in the slaughter of civilians such as what happened in Nanjing in December 1937-January 1938. The Chinese were also the subject of biological and chemical warfare carried out by a secret Japanese unit known as “Unit 731”.
For all of this, the Chinese and others in Asia believe that Japan has never properly apologized or made reparations. Some Japanese leaders have issued statements that they may have intended as apologies, but for most people in Asia, they have not gone far enough. World War II lives on.
As you have read, the Japanese invaded Manchuria (1931) and China (1936) long before most people consider WWII to have “officially” begun.
In 1940, after France fell to Japan's ally, Germany, the Japanese moved into the French colony of Indo-China (today's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). By the time WWII “began”, Japan was in control of a considerable portion of Asia.
All of this did not go unnoticed, either by the British, who had considerable interests in Asia (from India to Australia and New Zealand, to Hong Kong and Singapore) or the United States, which had a colony in the Philippines, and control of many small islands in the Pacific such as Guam and Wake, and a future state, Hawaii.
Britain kept a sizable fleet in the Pacific, but it was much smaller than its Japanese counterpart. It was hoped that if Hong Kong could not hold out in the event of Japanese attack, at least well-fortified Singapore would. With Britain itself at risk in Europe and so many British and Imperial troops fighting in North Africa to keep Britain's shipping lanes free, Winston Churchill did not have enough troops to defend Britain's Pacific interests if Japan attacked them.
In the event of Japanese attack, the British (and the Dutch in exile (who controlled Indonesia), the Australians, New Zealanders) hoped that the United States would come to her aid. By late 1941, Great Britain had been hoping for that in Europe for 2 long lonely years.
What was the United States doing? Since 1939 (and before), President Franklin Roosevelt had been trying to wake Americans up to the threat of Hitler and Japan, but from powerful politicians in Washington to the man on the street, most Americans wanted to stay far out of the war. This sentiment, called “isolationism”, sprang from the view that the losses sustained by the United States in WWI went for nothing – Europeans were still fighting each other. Early in American history, President George Washington had warned his countrymen to stay out of European politics. America had not listened in 1917, but would not repeat the mistake twice.
Unfortunately for America in 1939-41, the world did not operate according to their wishes and dreams. Hitler took most of Europe. Japan took China and much else. In the fall of 1941, no one seemed able to stop them.
Roosevelt had successfully argued that the United States did need to help Great Britain in its fight against Germany, and from late 1939 onward, had slowly implemented agreements with that country – exchanging British ports in the Western Hemisphere for ships to be used by the British in its war with German submarines (which threatened to starve Great Britain into submission), and sending supplies, which slowly began to include weapons. This supply began to increase significantly as Americans saw the brave stand of the British in the Battle of Britain. By war's end, the supply was a torrent.
In 1941, although most Americans still wanted the nation to stay out of the war, many were beginning to see Hitler for exactly what he was: an aggressive tyrant who likely had the United States in his sights, too. Both Churchill and Roosevelt realized that the German attack on the U.S.S.R. was a grave development, and both nations sent supplies to the Russians to keep them from going under.
When the Japanese took over Indochina, the United States became increasingly alarmed. Already having protested against the Japanese invasion of China, Roosevelt began to not just protest but to also threaten a trade embargo on Japan. Much of Japan's oil was bought from the United States, and much of its steel and iron was American as well (where there is war, there's profit). Japan depended on American resources to keep its navy moving, and being a resource poor island, having a navy was key to Japan.
Aware Americans like Roosevelt knew that with the Japanese in control of almost the entire Asian Pacific coast, the islands of the Philippines were at risk, as were the resource rich islands of Indonesia, and perhaps even Australia.
The Japanese had a perplexing problem. The more territory they took to acquire resources, the more resources they needed. The Pacific is vast: to control it requires a large navy (steel) with the ability to travel long distances (oil).
In the end, the Japanese (who, like the Americans, had been planning for years to go to war) decided that it was more likely to get what it wanted through war than through negotiations (which were not bearing any fruit). When Roosevelt declared that because Japan was bent on keeping control of the territories it had won by aggressive war, he was placing a complete trade embargo on Japan by all U.S. business, and Japan knew it had a short window of opportunity to get what it wanted
.
No one in Japan except the most hardcore and deluded believed that it could conquer the United States itself. That was never the intent. The Japanese plan was to inflict such a blow on the United States’ navy that it would retreat back to its home waters and the U.S. government would sue for peace, leaving the Japanese in control of the Pacific. This was still a tall order, but it was theoretically possible, at least the military part. Without the complete defeat of the U.S., Japan would be hard pressed to keep what it gained. But they would try – hard.
On December 7th, 1941, Japanese admiral and admirer of America, Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943), launched his attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the home base for most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. On the surface, the surprise attack was a complete success. Numerous battleships and other vessels were sunk or catastrophically damaged. Many U.S. planes were destroyed and over 2,000 sailors and Marines had been killed.
Below the surface, however, the Pearl Harbor attack was a failure, though very few realized it at the time. In many ways, Japanese naval doctrine was ahead of the Americans'. The Japanese realized years before most in the U.S. that the naval warfare of the future was going to depend to a large extent on the aircraft carrier. It was hoped that the attack on Pearl Harbor would destroy the 3 fleet carriers that the United States had in the Pacific, but on December 7th, the carriers were elsewhere.
These carriers would form the nucleus of the U.S. Pacific Fleet that would, by war’s end, vastly outnumber not only the Japanese fleet, but also the combined fleets of all the other navies in the world.
Still, the victory at Pearl Harbor did stun the United States, and allow the Japanese to fortify their positions in the western Pacific. The Japanese did not just attack Hawaii, they staged an offensive in December and January that nearly encompassed half the globe. Hong Kong fell. The Philippines fell with great loss of life and atrocities on a mass scale against both Americans and Filipinos. Indonesia fell. Singapore fell in February. Guam and Wake were taken. Thailand was attacked and Australia bombed. All over the world in late 1941, the Axis Powers of Germany and Japan were victorious.
