Only in one area, at Prokhorovka in the south, did an SS Panzer force break through. Zhukov rushed a reserve Soviet tank force to the area. Both combatants had around 900 tanks and fought an epic battle at close quarters. The engagement raged for eight hours and has gone down as the largest tank battle in history. One German officer described it as the ‘veritable death ride of the 4th Panzer Army’. Both sides suffered terrible losses but there was still no German breakthrough.
With a victory no longer in sight Hitler called off Operation Citadel. Zhukov’s devastating counter-offensive was about to be unleashed, which would drive Nazi forces out of Russia.
60. ‘MINCEMEAT IS SWALLOWED ROD, LINE AND SINKER!’
As noted before, after the capture of Tunisia in May 1943 the obvious next stop for the Allies was Sicily. However, taking the Italian island could be a costly exercise if the Axis forces had it well defended. Two men in London working on a small committee dealing with subterfuge and double agents hatched a plan to deceive the Axis powers about where the Allied armies would now strike. It became known as Operation Mincemeat.
The two men in question were Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu, who worked on the Twenty Committee (after the Roman numerals for double cross –‘XX’). Their idea was that a body with important documents would be found floating in the sea off the coast of Spain after an imaginary plane crash. The documents would make out that the Allies were intent on attacking Sardinia and Greece next not Sicily. Spain was sympathetic to the Axis cause and any papers found would inevitably end up in Berlin. The problem was this: how do you convince the Germans that the documents are genuine?
The body of a deceased vagrant was found for the task. His new synthetic identity was that of a Major W. Martin, who was attached to Allied headquarters in North Africa. The key document was a letter from the vice-chief of the Imperial General Staff, which set out the supposed future ‘plans’ in the Mediterranean. The false documents were placed in a briefcase and attached to his belt. He was given false identity papers and letters from various people in his imaginary life including a fiancée. Crucially for the deception, not all the documents were in perfect order. For example, his ID card was a replacement for one he had ‘carelessly’ lost and his pass for the Allied HQ had expired. The body in its uniform was placed in a canister and filled with dry ice and despatched in a submarine, whose crew then left the body floating off the south-west coast of Spain. The Allies now awaited events.
Sure enough after a short while a Spanish fishing fleet returned to port with an unusual haul. The contents of the briefcase were secretly ferreted to the German embassy in Madrid, where a copy of the documents was made and hurriedly sent on to Berlin. Everything was then returned apparently unopened to the British attaché in the Spanish capital. Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, was decidedly doubtful about the documents but Hitler declared himself convinced of their veracity. Decrypts from Bletchley confirmed that the Führer had taken the bait. A triumphant message was sent to Churchill: ‘Mincemeat is swallowed rod, line and sinker!’
The deception worked a treat. Sicily was not turned into a fortress. Instead defences were bulked up in Sardinia and Greece. Amazingly, Hitler even moved panzer divisions to Greece from France and the Russian front, where they were sorely needed. When the Allies duly invaded the island in July they had an unexpectedly easy time of it.
61. ITALY WAS NOT SUCH A SOFT UNDERBELLY
After their victories in North Africa, the Allies were intent on the conquest of Italy. Churchill had convinced the Americans that Italy was the ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe. It would soon be rolled up and the Allies could then proceed to launch offensives into France and assist the Soviet Union in the Balkans. This policy suited Britain, which wanted to protect its imperial interests in the Mediterranean (Malta, Gibraltar and the Suez Canal) and also avoid heavy losses which might be the result of launching a second front with a direct cross-Channel invasion of France. For the moment the Americans agreed but Stalin, the Soviet leader saw it as a strategy to leave the Soviet Union to do most of the fighting.
Operation Husky, the codename for the invasion of Sicily, started on 10 July 1943. The American general George Patton landed his forces on the south of the island and the British general Montgomery in command of the Eighth Army landed on the south-eastern tip. Limited Axis troops were slowly driven back. Montgomery found it hard going in the mountains on the east coast where resistance was tough, while the American General Patton raced across the island in the west and reached the north-east coast before him – much to Montgomery’s chagrin!
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini now found his position untenable. His own Fascist Grand Council voted him down and the Italian king dismissed him. General Badoglio was appointed Prime Minister and set about secretly negotiating terms with the Allies while proclaiming his loyalty to Germany. These discussions with the Allies were long and protracted and the Germans suspected some treachery was going on. Almost inevitably, just prior to the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland in September, the Germans swept down and took control of the whole of Italy.
Operation Avalanche saw a double landing. Montgomery landed in Reggio on the toe of Italy while the Americans under General Mark Clark landed further north at Salerno, just south of Naples. The intention was to trap German armies in a pincer. However, this time Hitler’s forces under Field Marshall Albert Kesselring put up such fierce resistance that the Americans almost considered re-embarkation. Nevertheless, the Allies eventually won through and Kesselring pulled his forces back north of Naples.
This first part had been relatively easy but the avowed aim of driving on to Rome proved much more testing. The German commander soon showed himself to be a master of defensive operations. By using the mountainous terrain and rivers that straddled the peninsula he was able to create defence lines that proved incredibly difficult to break. As winter set in rain, sleet and snow caused the Allied advance to grind to a freezing and muddy halt. Taking Italy was going to be a slow and painful process.
The Americans were becoming sceptical of Churchill’s Mediterranean strategy. General Mark Clark summed it up when he noted that Italy was less of a ‘soft underbelly’ but more of a ‘tough old gut’!
62. MUSSOLINI IS SAVED IN AN AUDACIOUS RESCUE
After the deposal of Benito Mussolini in July 1943 (Fact 61) Hitler was determined to rescue his old chum. He may have been a complete chump but the Führer retained a lingering respect for his old comrade in arms. SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, who headed a small special commando outfit, was selected for the task. The new Italian government had imprisoned the dictator in a secret location and it was not until the end of August that the Germans gleaned that Mussolini was being held in a hotel in a mountain retreat called Gran Sasso.
In view of its inaccessibility and the rough terrain gliders were used carrying in total 108 paratroopers. When the operation went ahead on 13 May complete success was achieved. Luckily, bloodshed was avoided as the Germans had brought an Italian general along who persuaded the guards to lay down their arms. Mussolini was then whisked off to Rome in a tiny Fieseler Storch. There was only room for two people including the pilot, but Skorzeny managed to cram himself in, intent on taking his prize to the Führer himself. The heavily overloaded plane proved a hair-raising flight.
Mussolini was immediately taken to Hitler’s command post on the Eastern front. The German leader delightedly told Skorzeny ‘Today you have carried out a mission which will go down in history.’ Despite the congratulations Hitler later declared himself ‘extraordinarily disappointed’ by the broken-down appearance and defeated look of his old ally. Perhaps unwillingly Mussolini was then despatched back to northern Italy to head a puppet regime called the Salò Republic.
63. THERE WAS A BAD AND A GOOD GOERING
Hermann Goering was the baddie. He had gained fame as an air ace in the First World War before joining the Nazi Party in 1922. Like many he was inspired by Hitler’s me
ssage that Versailles should be torn up and Germany made great once again. His loyalty to Hitler was rewarded with the job of Luftwaffe chief and was effectively deputy Führer. However, he was also responsible for setting up the notorious Gestapo and establishing a reign of terror when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
His brother, however, was quite a contrast. Although the brothers had grown up together in a fairy tale castle in Bavaria, they turned out quite differently. Albert was a humanitarian and abhorred the Nazi Party with its brutality and anti-Semitism. When the Nazis took over in Austria in 1938 he worked tirelessly to get exit visas for his Jewish friends. Likewise, later on while Export Director of the Czech firm Skoda he helped Jewish workers to escape and even turned a blind eye to the resistance. The remarkable fact is that he often requested (and received!) his brother’s signature releasing Jewish workers for him. The Gestapo had arrest warrants out for him several times but Hermann always intervened to save his brother.
After the war Hermann was found guilty at the Nuremberg trials and committed suicide before facing the hangman. Albert, unfortunately, spent two years in gaol before the Allied authorities believed his story. He died in a penniless state in 1966. Those he saved have never forgotten his kindness.
64. DÖNITZ CALLS IT A DAY IN THE ATLANTIC
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was in charge of the German U-boats that were rampaging across the Atlantic and sinking vital supplies bound for Britain courtesy of her American ally. In the first few months of 1943 things appeared to be going very well for the Nazi commander. He now had 300 submarines that could almost range at will and were enjoying something of a turkey shoot with 108 merchant ships sunk in March alone. The Führer was delighted.
Within a few months, however, the situation was to change dramatically in favour of the Allies. America and Britain had to overcome the U-boat problem if they were to challenge Hitler in the west. There was not going to be a cross-Channel invasion of France if massive quantities of troops and supplies could not be safely ferried across the Atlantic. Clearing the Atlantic was a priority.
So what caused the change about in fortunes? To begin the Allies were able to overcome the problem of the ‘Black Gap’. This was a vast area in the centre of the Atlantic which could not be covered by Allied aircraft. New long-range Liberator aircraft with shortwave radar at last enabled the Allies to cover this space. In addition, planes were also able to hunt down submarines at night thanks to the Leigh Light, which was a powerful marine searchlight. Once the U-boat had been discovered it could be despatched with a lethal depth charge.
Improvements in radar meant that even periscopes could be spotted at some distance away. This was the result of the creation of the cavity magnetron and centimetric radar. A further innovation that was starting to prove effective was the use of special support groups of destroyers whose purpose was solely to hunt down and destroy U-boats. With the benefit of radar developments these hunting groups proved evermore effective. An added weapon in this area was ‘Huff-Duff’ (HF/DF), which was a high frequency direction finder that enabled the short wave messages between U-boats to be detected. Once the U-boat had been located depth charges could be used to bring it to the surface. A development on this idea was the ‘hedgehog’, which was a multiple bomb launcher fired from the front of destroyers – it sent out twenty-four small bombs each fitted with contact fuses. Only a direct hit with an enemy submarine produced the desired explosion.
The final icing on the cake was the work carried out at Bletchley. Two U-boats were boarded enabling code books to be seized and the German naval codes to be broken. This permitted convoys to be rerouted and for individual submarines to be hunted down.
Already by May the writing was on the wall for the Germans. In that month alone forty U-boats were sunk with a further 141 lost by the end of the year. Such a high loss rate was unacceptable and Dönitz was forced to withdraw his U-boats in the Atlantic.
Hitler realised all too well that very soon the Allies would be able launch a second front.
65. CHURCHILL SETS EUROPE ALIGHT
Winston Churchill was keen to strike back at the Nazi regime immediately after the fall of France in June 1940. So in the following month an organisation was set up called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) whose sole mission was, in the great man’s words, ‘to set Europe ablaze’. The way this was to be achieved was set out in its founding charter, which stated that action was to be ‘by way of subversion and sabotage’. Its work was to be entirely secret and its existence was never acknowledged by the government.
The tentacles of this new organisation were to stretch into almost every part of Axis-occupied Europe. There was a huge mixture of operatives within the organisation – from upper-class, Cambridge-educated officers to peasants and prostitutes. Indeed, the SOE was not above using the underworld for operations. In addition, women were sent into front-line duties and as many as fifty were later dropped into France. Training meant going through a ‘series of sieves’ at the end of which only the most hardy and resourceful were selected.
A brief overview of the operations will give the reader an idea of the scale of the endeavours. France and Yugoslavia were given greatest attention, but no country was neglected. Norway, for example, received a stream of agents and supplies during its period of Nazi occupation. The most spectacular operation was against the Norsk Hydro Plant, where heavy water was being manufactured for Germany’s atomic bomb project. In February 1943 agents managed to enter the plant through a poorly guarded side entrance. After blowing up a section of the plant the Norwegians escaped over a snowy plateau. Incredibly, despite being chased by 12,000 German troops they managed to avoid capture. Later on, a ferry containing a heavy water consignment for the Reich was blown up, too. It marked the end of Nazi attempts to build a nuclear bomb.
In what is today the Czech Republic, Reinhard Heydrich had set himself up as Governor General. You may recall that he was a leading light of the SS and responsible for setting up the Holocaust. Heydrich’s rule was especially brutal and he was a tempting target. In May 1943 two specially trained Czech agents were parachuted in and in broad daylight ‘the blond beast’ was gunned down in a Prague street. Alas, the agents did not escape and Nazi retribution was ferocious. Nevertheless, it showed that nowhere in Europe was safe for the Nazi occupiers.
France, of course, received the most attention with 500 agents being parachuted in. It had its own special division called ‘F’ section under the control of a certain Major Maurice Buckmaster. The support given to the resistance there created a constant problem for the Nazi authorities and the coordinated sabotage efforts at the time of the Normandy landings proved especially effective.
SOE was not decisive in the war, nor was it always successful. However, it did important work and gave vital assistance to resistance networks across Europe.
66. THE CHINESE GET HELP VIA THE HUMP
The war in China has often been a neglected part of the history of the Second World War in the West. This may be because of the fact that Western forces had very little involvement there and therefore not a great deal of understanding of the conflict. Then there is the complication of the confused political situation and finally, of course, the difficulty of Chinese names!
For the Chinese hostilities began much earlier than in Europe. Already in 1931 the Imperial Japanese Army had seized a part of northern China called Manchuria. However, hostilities didn’t really heat up until 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident when Japan decided on a full-scale invasion of China. The Massacre of Nanking when 300,000 Chinese died marked the beginning of a particularly gruesome conflict. After Pearl Harbour in December 1941 China formally declared war on Japan and the Axis powers and became one of the Allied powers.
The Japanese in 1937 believed that they would have an easy time of it and even boasted that they would be able to conquer China within three months. The reason for this is that China was in a state of civil war with the communists under Mao Zedong on the
one side and the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek on the other. In addition to this, there were various warlords who controlled vast areas of the country. In modern terms it would be called a failed state. Nevertheless, all sides eventually agreed to bury the hatchet and to fight as a united front against the invader.
By 1941 the Chinese nationalist government (or Kuomintang) was still putting up fierce resistance although lacking the military capacity to launch large-scale offensives that could drive the enemy out of their country. By 1942 the Japanese controlled large areas of the north and coastal areas of China, however they were finding it difficult to make further headway and occasionally even suffered defeats. As a result of this the Japanese resorted to using various nasties not permitted by the Hague conventions; for example, chemical weapons were employed in 1938 and later on a variety of pathogens were deployed, such as bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid and dysentery. The war was leaving a trail of utter misery and devastation.
The Americans were keen to offer assistance to the Chinese in any way possible. The problem was how to get help to them as the coastal areas were mostly occupied. At first the main route to China was via the Burma Road that led through from India. This was cut with the Japanese invasion of Burma itself in 1942. After this the Americans flew sorties over the Himalayas, which became known as the Hump. By 1945 they had delivered 650,000 tons of supplies to the nationalists but in the process almost 600 planes were lost on the hazardous flight.
The Second World War in 100 Facts Page 10
