Corregidor finally fell in May, and concerned about saving lives, the American commander, General Jonathan Wainwright, extended the terms of his capitulation to all American forces in the Philippines. Many Americans and Filipinos repudiated the surrender and took to the hills to fight on as guerrillas.
Meanwhile, the British badly bungled the campaign in Burma and were driven out to take refuge in India. Only the terrain, heat, humidity, impenetrable jungle, and lack of supply lines kept the Japanese from following. Losing Burma was serious for another reason, however, in that the Burma Road that supplied Chiang’s Nationalist Chinese forces was cut, and the Chinese were already frayed by having to deal with the Communists and various free-agent warlords. Although Chiang ostensibly had 1.2 million men in his forces, only half that number were directly controlled by his generals.
Allied forces elsewhere fared no better. In Papua New Guinea the Japanese secured the excellent harbor at Rabaul, and pushed eastward into the Solomon Islands. By May the Japanese Navy was ready to send an invasion force to secure Port Moresby, on the south coast of New Guinea, as a stepping-stone to attack Australia. The situation in the South Pacific looked dire.
While the arithmetic of war output and personnel overwhelmingly favored the Americans and British in the Pacific, that was not obvious in early 1942. Quite the contrary, Japan’s onslaught had gained unprecedented areas of territory and people—more than any other empire in human history in so short a time. Despite Franklin Roosevelt’s boast in April 1942 that “for every advance that the Japanese have made…they have had to pay a very heavy toll in warships, in transports, in planes and in men,” the price Japan paid was minimal and, at times, nonexistent.20 They had lost virtually no important ships prior to May 1942. In fact, it was a strategically meaningless air raid by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle on the Japanese home islands that revived American morale, and, in a sense, turned the entire Pacific war in a new direction.
Doolittle’s raid was the brainchild of Navy captain Francis Low, who was on the staff of the antisubmarine warfare division.21 Twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bombers were to take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier, fly over Tokyo and other targets, then continue on to safe havens inside China. Removing all nonessential weight and expanding the planes’ fuel capacity, the crews trained on specially marked landing fields, then the aircraft were flown to Alameda Naval Air Station and loaded aboard the Hornet. On April 18, 1942, seven hundred miles from Japan, the Hornet was spotted by a Japanese picket boat and Doolittle’s raiders were forced to take off well ahead of schedule and with two hundred extra miles to fly. All the planes were lost, but some flyers, including Doolittle, were rescued by Chinese who took them safely out of Japanese-held territory. Others were captured, subjected to show trials in Japan, and executed. Regardless of this heavy price for what was virtually a stunt, the Doolittle raid electrified the American public and terrified the Japanese, who concentrated on defending their home islands. Indeed, Doolittle’s men practically forced Admiral Yamamoto into his attempted invasion of Midway, which would prove Japan’s undoing.
The story of the Battle of Midway is well known to many Americans as one of the greatest victories in American history. Courage and luck probably played equal parts, helped by excellent intelligence work in Hawaii and sound decision making by Navy commanders.
A preliminary battle was fought in May 1942 in the Coral Sea which pitted Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s two American carriers against two of the Japanese fleet carriers that had been at Pearl Harbor and a light carrier. In the first naval engagement strictly between carriers and in which no surface vessel saw an opposing vessel, Fletcher lost the Lexington, the Navy’s largest carrier, while sinking the Japanese light carrier, damaging one of the fleet carriers, and downing a hundred planes. Whether it was labeled an American defeat or draw, its most important impact was that the heavy loss in aircrews forced both large Japanese carriers to miss the upcoming Midway campaign.
Admiral Yamamoto led a massive strike force, spearheaded by four fleet carriers under Vice Admiral Nagumo—the overseer of the Pearl Harbor attack—to seize Midway atoll (and its airstrip) and to simultaneously lure out the remaining American carriers (the Japanese thought there were only two left, thinking both of Fletcher’s vessels had been lost at Coral Sea). Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, who normally would have commanded the American force, was in the hospital, afflicted with a nasty skin rash. In typical American style, a subordinate, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, stepped into the breach to command Halsey’s task force of two carriers. Fletcher’s last carrier, the Yorktown, had been damaged at Coral Sea, but superlative repair work by 1,500 workmen at Pearl Harbor—some ferried by plane to the carrier while it was still en route—allowed him to catch up with Spruance and take command. Armed with intelligence that confirmed Midway was indeed Nagumo’s target, the Americans positioned themselves northeast of the atoll, and despite numerous Japanese reconnaissance flights—one of which flew directly over the U.S. force—remained undetected. Nagumo’s planes failed to knock out the landing strip on Midway, requiring a second strike, but just as Nagumo ordered the planes to rearm with bombs for attacking a land target, spotters saw American torpedo planes coming in. During the brief, deadly fight that followed, the U.S. forces scored no hits and lost most of their planes, but in the process, Nagumo’s fighters had to land and refuel. At that precise moment, with all the carrier decks full of planes, fuel, and bombs—and no air cover to speak of—two squadrons of dive bombers appeared in the skies over the Imperial Fleet. Three carriers were set ablaze immediately by American bombs. Nagumo sent his remaining squadrons of dive-bombers and torpedo planes to the last known location of the Yorktown, which took crippling injuries, forcing the Yorktown’s returning planes to land on Spruance’s Enterprise. Fletcher delegated tactical command to Spruance, who launched a retaliatory strike with a cobbled-together force of Enterprise and Yorktown dive-bombers that destroyed the last Japanese carrier. Midway was saved, and the pride of the Japanese strike force was scuttled. Hard fighting was ahead, but after Midway, the negotiated peace leaving Japan as the master of Asia and the Pacific was a pipe dream.
Guadalcanal followed as the United States was able to seize the initiative. The islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida, part of the Solomons group, had fallen into Japanese hands and constituted a dagger aimed at the supply lines of Australia. In August 1942, Allied forces led by the American 1st Marine Division under Major General Alexander Vandegrift landed to scatter the few Japanese defenders and Korean laborers. Over the next five months, heavy Japanese reinforcements staged suicidal attacks on land and seven major naval assaults to reclaim the island. Fighting in extreme tropical weather and often in knee-deep mud, the Marines held on grimly. At one point, on Edson’s Ridge, 830 Marine Raiders defeated 3,000 Japanese supported by artillery in heavy fighting.22 As Henderson Field on Guadalcanal became operational and was able to mount serious air attacks in conjunction with naval forces, the Japanese were forced to reinforce their troops at night through the infamous “Tokyo Express” of destroyers dashing down the “Slot” (New Georgia Sound) to the northwestern tip of Guadalcanal. By December the decimated 1st Marines had been withdrawn and replaced by two Army divisions, the 25th and the Americal, the 2nd Marine Division, and various other smaller units. The issue was no longer in doubt: Japan had to withdraw in an operation completed early in February 1943.
After Guadalcanal, the United States went permanently on the offensive. MacArthur attacked in New Guinea, and American submarines began to whittle down the Japanese merchant marine. Although both sides lost twenty-four warships in the Solomons battles, Japan could not afford to break even, especially considering the massive naval construction program started by FDR in 1940, which bore fruit in 1943. The Japanese army attempted to defend its acquisitions, spreading large numbers of troops throughout the Pacific, but MacArthur’s “Island Hopping” campaign cut off those forces from supplies; then, often in
grueling tunnel-to-tunnel combat, eliminated the suicidal troops who still remained. Slowly, Americans came to understand that this was no traditional Western enemy who surrendered when doomed: the Japanese were Bushido warriors who fought to the last.
Germany’s Russian Quagmire
As the United States focused its attention on the Pacific, in Europe the Eastern Front took center stage. The Wehrmacht once again reminded the Allies that it was the world’s most efficient army, and rapidly recovered from its horrendous losses during the winter. After the spring rainy period called rasputitsa when the roads became bottomless mud bogs that were impossible to traverse, Germany planned Case Blue—a strategic offensive aimed at the rich oil fields of the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia. The German offensives during the spring had been resounding but worrisome successes: in Operation Fredericus, Kharkov was saved from a Soviet attack, virtually annihilating Soviet marshal Semyon Timoshenko’s three armies and capturing 240,000 prisoners and 1,249 tanks.23 The southern flank was secured by the capture of the Crimea by von Manstein, netting another quarter million prisoners.24 Ostensibly those were successes, but they took longer than planned, and resulted in fewer prisoners than expected. The Soviet Army in 1942 was a different army from that of 1941—mass assaults were not as common as individual units became more capable, and surrenders were much fewer.25
Some in the German High Command, particularly the chief of staff, Colonel-General Franz Halder, already thought Case Blue constituted the last throw of the dice. With the Wehrmacht unable to replace its losses during the winter—as the Soviets had, with their seemingly endless pool of men—unless a decisive summer campaign could be mounted, the end for Germany was inevitable. Victory in Russia needed to occur in 1942, in order to confront the Americans who could be expected to attack in late 1942 or 1943. Even more critically and urgently, Germany needed to secure the coal and industrial area of the Don basin and seize the Caucasus oil fields to mechanize its army.
Army Group Center had barely survived the winter of 1941–42, and on the entire Eastern Front through March 1942, the German Army had suffered losses of 1.1 million men, or 35 percent of its force. General Staff estimates put the army at 625,000 fewer men on the Eastern Front than it had at the start of Barbarossa.26 German infantry divisions fell to one half and even one third their normal strength, and Hitler (at Speer’s urging) refused to release German males from industrial production. In addition, more than 180,000 horses had died during the winter, and only 20,000 replacements had been received.
Nonetheless, on April 5, Hitler issued ambitious new orders for a summer offensive: destroy the remainder of the Soviet military forces and control the principal war-making industrial facilities and resources. Army Group North was to capture Leningrad and link up with the Finns, Army Group Center was to remain stationary, and Army Group South was to break through, seize the oil-producing area in the Caucasus, and reach the Caspian Sea, a goal that suggested the Nazis potentially aimed to reach Persia.
Indeed, it is critical to understand the genuine apprehension that consumed all Allied leaders in mid-1942. Japan had yet to lose a major battle prior to Midway and seemed unstoppable; there were even fears of a Japanese landing in Santa Barbara, California. FBI reports showed that Japanese spies in Hawaii and California were active, and those memos—unavailable until recently and virtually uncited by historians—constitute evidence that explains in large part Roosevelt’s internment orders for Japanese-Americans.27 In Russia, the Soviet winter offensive might have been nothing more than a temporary setback for the Nazis and their losses made good by reinforcements. Who was to say that the astounding success of the Germans in the fall of 1941 could not be repeated? Who knew if the next wave of Soviet soldiers would fare any better than the first? And what if, by some stretch of the imagination, Germany held the Caucasus and Japan marched westward through Burma and reached Persia to link all the Axis powers in one massive alliance that controlled much of the earth’s oil?
In hindsight it is easy to dismiss such fears as vast overreactions, but in the context of 1941 and early 1942, the Allies had yet to stop either the Nazis or the Japanese on any kind of permanent basis. One could later see the astounding weaknesses of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and Japan’s continued abyss in China—yet these weaknesses had existed in 1939, and look at what Axis power had accomplished. What the Battle of Britain, Doolittle’s raid, and the defense of Moscow did, more than anything, was restore confidence that in fact the Allies were not facing supermen, either Aryan or Nipponese, and that reasoned, ordered, and steady counteroffensives could prevail.
Inside Hitler’s headquarters, however, the thirst for raw materials—particularly oil—reached desperate levels. Hitler’s gaze was transfixed on oil—Germany’s future lifeblood, and, as he saw it, the driving force in technology for the next few centuries.28 Here, Hitler proved unusually prescient—Japan went to war over oil, and oil would become arguably the dominant economic resource for the next hundred years. In May of 1942 at the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel told General Georg Thomas, “The operations of 1942 must get us that oil [in the Caucasus]. If we’re not successful, we will not be able to mount any operations in the next year.”29 Hitler went further. Speaking to his assembled generals in Poltava a few days later, he said, “If I can’t acquire the oil from Maikop and Grozny, then I must liquidate [put an end to] this war.”30 He announced that the destruction of Soviet forces in front of the Don was merely a preparation for capturing the Caucasus oil fields and crossing the Caucasus Mountains.
Halder, who personally opposed the strategy, nevertheless continued to support Hitler’s plans. During the spring of 1942, however, he decided an operation across the Caucasus was no longer possible (mostly due to German transportation problems), and in June assessed a coordinated attack from Russia and North Africa against the Middle East as equally impossible. He became increasingly pessimistic about the Russian operation (“criminal madness,” he labeled it), estimating Case Blue would take 700,000 to 800,000 Soviet prisoners, but not destroy the Red Army’s ability to continue the fight. German intelligence on the Eastern Front noted that even if the new offensive achieved complete success, the Red Army would lose forty divisions but replace them with one hundred new divisions by winter. Halder concluded the war was no longer winnable, especially after he looked at POW totals that reflected an insufficient number of surrendering enemy soldiers. If the army succeeded in capturing the oil fields by some extraordinary feat of arms, the Russians surely would have destroyed them, and even if not, there was no possibility, either by land or across the Black Sea, of transporting the oil back to Germany. No German Rockefeller existed to lay miles of oil pipeline per day, let alone defend it.
It made no difference, as Hitler couldn’t keep his eye on the ball. Against Halder’s advice, in July he transferred Field Marshal von Manstein and five divisions of his army that had conquered the Crimea to Leningrad to help capture that city—using troops that could have helped take the Caucasus. Then he decided to attack Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultaneously, a move for which Halder knew the German forces were inadequate. A frustrated Halder ineffectually opposed Hitler almost daily, particularly with respect to the capabilities of the Red Army. When Hitler remarked that in spite of constant victories, the great destruction of the Red Army eluded him, Halder informed him that Stalin avoided decisive engagements deliberately. Hitler responded, “Nonsense, he’s fleeing, he’s finished, he’s at his end from the blows we’ve given him in the last several months.”31 Halder’s diary recorded, “The continual underestimation of enemy possibilities is taking grotesque forms; it’s becoming dangerous.”32 Hitler “retired” Halder in September, and the general was fortunate not to be shot. History would record Stalingrad as the war’s “turning point” (although some historians point to Kursk in the summer of 1943, where German armor was decisively defeated), but actually the impr
oved Soviet efficiency in battle during the summer of 1942 shut the door on any ultimate German victory.
Death in the Desert
Although the Italian-German campaign in North Africa was seen by Hitler to be a secondary and relatively unimportant theater, it wasn’t for Mussolini and Italy. Libya, most of which Italy had incorporated into its national territory, possessed 1,100 miles of Mediterranean coastline. Although the provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were considered strategic by Italy, the area was a drag on the Italian economy, exporting less than $6 million in goods to Italy in 1938 while importing more than $46 million in subsidized goods and services by the Italian government. After acquiring Libya in 1912 from the Ottomans, Italy had made some efforts to colonize it: by 1939, out of a population of 900,000, 150,000 were Italians. Libyan oil reserves would have been a major consideration for Italy had anyone known about them, but oil was not discovered in Libya until 1959.
Every bit as acquisition-minded as Hitler, Mussolini sought an Italian empire, making a stab at adding Egypt in 1940. After his army had advanced sixty-five miles into Egypt, it halted and dug in. Strategically, the 86,000 British troops in the entire Middle East were being threatened by not only Marshal Rodolfo Graziani’s 250,000-man Libyan army, but also the 350,000-man Italian Army in Ethiopia and East Africa. The Western Desert Force defending Egypt comprised two divisions: the 4th Indian Infantry and the British 7th Armored, plus a heterogeneous force called the Selby Group. Thirty-six thousand men under General Richard O’Connor, a bold and uncharacteristically aggressive British officer, would attack an army of more than 200,000. Bantam-weight, shy, and soft-spoken, O’Connor struck with great audacity on December 7, and after three days, the only Italians left in Egypt were prisoners. By early in January, the British had captured the bulk of Graziani’s army. O’Connor’s men had advanced six hundred miles, taking more than 130,000 prisoners.
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