A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

  The Japanese commanders in the South Pacific, based further north at Rabaul in New Britain, reacted immediately. A large Japanese naval force arrived and the American naval commander, Vice Admiral Frank Fletcher, was compelled to withdraw after losing four cruisers. The Japanese ships ferried the 17th Army under General Haruyoshi Hyakutake to the island and Japanese units swarmed towards the airfield to drive the Americans into the sea. Short of supplies and air support, the marines dug in. They found Japanese tactics almost suicidally primitive. Unarmed Japanese, reported one marine officer, would continue to attack armed marines until they were mown down. Some swam across from small nearby islands without weapons and little uniform to join in the fight. From 670 Japanese defending the islands around Tulagi, 655 chose to fight to the death rather than surrender. When the newly arrived Japanese army units began to attack, almost all the 900 Japanese were killed in the first wave, for the loss of 40 marines.

  In a naval engagement during the Battle of Guadalcanal on 12 November 1942 smoke pours from USS San Francisco, hit by a crashed Japanese plane (centre right). The ships of both sides suffered heavy losses to aircraft attack in the narrow waters around the island.

  Over the weeks that followed the marines faced an extraordinary ordeal. Hit from the air and subject to regular naval bombardment, they held on to a small segment of the island while wave after wave of Japanese soldiers tried to dislodge them. On 12 September around 6,200 Japanese soldiers were in position to storm the airfield. They chose as their main advance line a small ridge to the south, which was defended by Colonel Merritt Edson’s Marine Raiders – around 840 marines who had earlier raided the nearby Japanese base, seizing supplies and documents. They had been sent to the ridge for a brief rest. Instead they found themselves facing the main axis of the Japanese assault. For two nights around 3,000 Japanese fought to gain possession of the ridge. The marines were exhausted, deprived of sleep and short of ammunition, but, inspired by their commander, they fought endless waves of Japanese infantry charging towards the one remaining defensive position, Hill 123, with fixed bayonets. When American morale began to suffer, Edson rallied the men tirelessly, standing all the time rather than taking cover. Fighting with bayonets hand-to-hand stifled all attempts at infiltration, but Japanese soldiers were expected to fight to the death. Their constant assaults, recalled another marine, were ‘like a rain that subsides for a moment and then pours the harder…’

  A field of dead Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal after their banzai charge on 26 October at the second battle of the Matanikau River. Japanese tactics on the island became crude frontal assaults in which more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers died.

  The Japanese commanders finally abandoned the attempt; their men were also exhausted and hungry, with some units down to no more than one-fifth of their strength. It was the first major defeat for the Japanese army since the start of the Pacific campaign. At least 830 Japanese were killed for the loss of 80 marines. The Battle of Edson’s Ridge – or Bloody Ridge – was the turning point of the whole battle and it depended on the remarkable courage of a few hundred marines fighting their first major engagement against an enemy that was expected to triumph or die in the attempt. The victory on Bloody Ridge not only secured the survival of the first American invasion of Japanese-held territory but exposed the myth of Japanese invincibility that had taken root after the first months of Japanese military successes.

  In October the Japanese commanders on the island again tried frontal assaults against the airfield perimeter but were once again repulsed with heavy losses. In November the decision was made to expand Japanese forces sufficiently to overwhelm the small American enclave. Japanese naval vessels navigated the narrow strait running the length of Guadalcanal to deliver men and supplies – the so-called ‘Tokyo Express’. By 12 November, the Japanese army reached its largest extent on the island but a series of naval engagements on the nights of 12–13 and 14–15 November cut off Japanese attempts to land more men and supplies, and new American army units arrived to strengthen the garrison. The Japanese high command reluctantly accepted that the island could not be held and planned an eventual withdrawal. More than 20,000 Japanese died on Guadalcanal against the loss of 1,752 American servicemen.

  On 8 February 1943 the last Japanese left the island in a well-concealed evacuation. Vandegrift went on to command the Marine Corps; General Hyakutake lived out the last years of the war hiding in the jungle on the island of Bougainville, in the northern Solomons. Colonel Edson fought in most of the major Pacific island campaigns, rose to the rank of major general, and committed suicide in 1955.

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  No. 84 STALINGRAD

  19 August 1942 – 2 February 1943

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  Stalingrad was one of the longest battles of the Second World War and the bloodiest. It has rightly come to symbolize the epic struggle between the German armed forces and the Red Army. It was regarded at the time as a turning point in the war against the Axis states, and has remained a firm favourite for anyone reflecting on the key moments when the tide turned in the conflict. The battle was also an exceptional test of men under fire, first for the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies as the Germans advanced into the city, then for the German 6th Army as it faced encirclement and annihilation. Men on both sides were pushed to the limits of endurance and beyond. More than 400,000 lost their lives in the effort.

  Neither side had predicted the battle. Hitler decided to open his summer campaign in the south of Russia in 1942, and detailed his forces to capture the Caucasus oilfields and cut the Volga river link with northern Russia around the city of Stalingrad. He expected a quick victory, and thought the Red Army would crumble. Stalin and his generals expected a renewed assault on Moscow and put the bulk of their forces in the centre and north of the Soviet–German front line. When the German Operation Blue opened on 19 June, the German army found the south to be even weaker than expected. Progress was rapid and by 19 August the German 6th Army, commanded by General Friedrich Paulus, and units of the 4th Panzer Army had arrived at the outskirts of Stalingrad. Paulus expected to capture the city in days and to cut the vital Volga trade route.

  The city was defended by the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which had retreated in growing disorder across the steppe and into the city. Here they dug in and waited for the Germans. They were supported by no more than 300 aircraft, and the artillery and rocket launchers on the far side of the river. Otherwise the Soviet defenders were outnumbered and outgunned by the 250,000 Axis forces (including Italian and Romanian divisions) that had begun the campaign. On 19 August Paulus began his assault and four days later he had reached the Volga north of the city. On 23 August 600 German bombers pounded the city, reducing great areas to ash and rubble. Slowly the defenders were pushed back towards the river until they controlled only a factory area in the north, the area around the Central Station and the small hill, Mamayev Kurgan, which dominated the central area. Under constant bombardment, they fought in many cases to the death. A few weeks before, Stalin had issued Order number 277 ‘Not a Step Back’, by which any retreat or withdrawal was to be treated as cowardice.

  On 7 September the Soviet commander in the city, General Alexander Lopatin, did order a withdrawal and was promptly sacked. He was replaced by General Vasily Chuikov, a tough, brave, no-nonsense commander, who shared the hardships of his men and risked his life over and over again. The Stalingrad front was placed under General Andrei Yeremenko, who, like Chuikov, was a tough commander who was wounded seven times during the battle, but continued to command from his hospital bed. A week after Chuikov arrived, Paulus launched what the Germans thought would be the decisive push to drive the Red Army out of its last redoubts and capture the western bank of the Volga. The German advance was remorseless; the 62nd and the 64th were divided when the Germans reached the Volga to the south of the city. The Central Station changed hands fifteen times. Mamayev Kurgan was charged by one side, then by the other. A trickle of reinforcements and supplies m
ade its way to Chuikov; ferries full of the wounded crossed the other way.

  The courage of the Soviet defenders was exceptional. Some failed to cope and it is claimed that over 13,000 were shot for desertion or dereliction of duty. For the rest Stalingrad became a symbol for which they were prepared to give their lives. Chuikov bullied his men but he also inspired them. They became adept at the art of street fighting, a form of urban guerrilla warfare that has become familiar since 1945, but which had not yet been seen in the war. By day German forces, supported by tanks and aircraft, blasted their way forward street by street, block by block; by night Soviet soldiers would work their way back through the ruins, using knives and bayonets to kill their opponents silently, or sometimes rushing an isolated German unit with terrifying yells and machine-gun fire. German soldiers learned never to show themselves for fear of Soviet snipers – skilled hunters who killed anything that moved. The ruins proved a useful asset for the Red Army, slowing down the movement of tanks and providing hundreds of foxholes and hidden alleyways from which to launch a sudden ambush.

  Red Army soldiers fight in the ruins of the Red October Factory in the heart of Stalingrad in January 1943, shortly before the final defeat of the German 6th Army. Both sides displayed an exceptional endurance in harsh conditions and under continuous fire. More than 600,000 soldiers died during the gruelling five-month battle for the city.

  Unknown to either side in Stalingrad, the Soviet high command had devised a way to end the battle. In September General Zhukov, Stalin’s deputy, and the chief-of-staff, Alexander Vasilevski, drew up a plan to cut across the long, exposed Axis flank, strike at the weaker Italian and Romanian divisions, and encircle the 6th Army, cutting it off from effective rescue. It was a bold plan but Stalin accepted it and agreed to use all the reserves to build up, in complete secrecy, a force of over 1 million men, 14,000 guns and 979 tanks on either side of the long Axis flanks. German intelligence failed to detect it. The whole plan depended on the ability of Chuikov to keep his small and battered force fighting for the month it took to organize the counter-strike. This was the supreme test. On 9 November Paulus prepared one more assault to clear the remnants of Chuikov’s forces. Bitter hand-to-hand fighting left both sides exhausted. On 12 November the fighting slowed down and the Germans dug in.

  Chuikov’s small force had done enough. On 19 November the counter-strike, Operation Uranus, began. The weaker Axis divisions crumbled and within five days the two prongs of the Soviet attack met at Kalach on the Don Steppe. Paulus was encircled with 330,000 of his men. Hitler refused to allow him to break out and an attempt by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein to drive through the Soviet lines to rescue the 6th Army was too weak in deteriorating winter weather. The fighting resumed in Stalingrad, but this time it was the German army doing the desperate defending. Operation Kol’tso (‘Ring’) began on 10 January and the 47 Soviet divisions and 300 tanks quickly cleared the approaches to the city. With nowhere to go and with constant orders from Hitler’s headquarters to stand firm, Paulus and his men displayed a remarkable courage, fighting against heavy odds an unwinnable and pointless battle. On 31 January Paulus finally surrendered. German forces to the north of the city surrendered three days later. Famished, poorly clad and ill, the defenders trudged into captivity where most died on the route. The extraordinary courage of the Soviet defenders had made it possible to inflict the largest defeat the German army had ever experienced: 147,000 dead and 91,000 prisoners. For the final siege the Red Army paid with 485,000 dead, injured or missing. Chuikov went on to become a marshal and to capture Berlin; Paulus was recruited by the Soviet side as leader of a ‘Free Germany’ movement among German prisoners of war and ended up in retirement in East Germany.

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  No. 85 FOURTH BATTLE OF MONTE CASSINO

  11–18 May 1944

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  The Battle of Monte Cassino is usually remembered for the destruction by bombing on 15 February 1944 of the fourteenth-century Benedictine monastery on the mountaintop overlooking the small Italian town of the same name, Cassino. Yet the battle for the mountain top really began after the monastery had already been destroyed. Here German paratroopers from the First Fallschirmjäger Division, part of the Gustav Line set up by the German army in central Italy in late 1943 to block the advance of Allied armies, dug into defensive positions high above the Allied forces and withstood every effort to dislodge them until the assault that began on 11 May by two divisions of Polish soldiers. The Poles succeeded, under withering fire and in the toughest terrain, in capturing the heights, an achievement of remarkable audacity.

  The scale of the Polish success can be measured against the repeated failure to dislodge the Germans from the heights in three battles for Monte Cassino that took place between January and March 1944. The aim of the Allied armies, under the command of the British general Harold Alexander, was to push up the Italian peninsula towards Rome, with US General Mark Clark’s 5th US Army on the left and General Oliver Leese’s 8th British Army on the right. Progress was slow as a result of poor weather and a landscape of hills, mountain crags and small rivers that made mobile warfare difficult. Snow, mud and rain made tracks impassable except by mule or horse. German artillery and machine-gun emplacements could easily be concealed in this topography and a lethal field of fire established over the narrow valleys and defiles. On 22 January 1944 an attempt was made to outflank the Gustav Line by landing on the coast at Anzio, south of Rome, and attacking the German forces commanded by General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin from the rear. The Anzio assault failed to break out of the beachhead. In the end the only way out of the impasse was to assault the Gustav Line directly, which meant attacking the Monte Cassino massif. The first battle began on 17 January but American troops made little progress against two ridges, Snakeshead and Phantom, which dominated the mountaintop and the monastery, and the operation was called off on 11 February. A second assault by the 4th Indian Division began on 15 February but petered out three days later with no gains. An assault on Cassino itself by the New Zealand Corps between 15 and 23 March took massive casualties but failed to dislodge the enemy.

  The assault was halted until large new resources could be brought forward. Alexander’s staff drew up a new plan, Operation Diadem, designed to outflank the German defenders and drive down the valley of the River Liri towards Rome. A French corps was to take the Aurunci Mountains to the south; British, Indians and Canadians were deployed for the attack on the valley, but the critical task of finally clearing Monte Cassino and the ridges around it was given to the Polish 2nd Corps under General Władysław Anders, who was given ten minutes by the British commander to decide whether or not to accept the assignment. Anders saw the risks but wanted a Polish success, so that the cause of Poland would be brought ‘to the fore of world opinion’, and he agreed. The Polish Corps had been formed from Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, who had been allowed to leave Russia and join British forces in North Africa. The Polish units had a good number of mountain troops, accustomed to the forbidding terrain, and a great deal of unrestrained enthusiasm for killing Germans. In early May huge supplies of equipment and ammunition were secretly moved into position (but much smaller quantities of food and water). The Poles were forced into a silent and patient wait for the start of the operation, a situation for which they were temperamentally ill-suited. Finally at 11 p.m. on 11 May a massive artillery barrage opened up on German positions. Anders told his men to remember the sacred slogan ‘God, Honour, Country’ and two hours later the Polish divisions were released up the slopes of the mountain, one towards the strongpoint known as Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge and the other towards Colle Sant’Angelo on Phantom Ridge.

  Conditions for both sides were appalling. Dry, dusty weather made water supplies imperative, but military equipment took priority. Artillery and mortar fire shattered the rocks and cliff face, sending shards of rock as lethal as shrapnel in all directions. Dead bodies were left where they fell and quickly d
ecomposed. German paratroopers were issued with gasmasks to keep out the putrefying odour. The Poles had to cope with mines on every track, including the S-Mine, nicknamed the ‘de-bollocker’ by the British because it was triggered to leap in the air, spraying ball-bearings at groin height. There was little cover for the attackers. The Poles were forced to fill sandbags with stones to provide some rudimentary protection. On the first day of action the 1st Carpathian Brigade, assaulting Point 593, had only one officer and seven men left alive and unwounded. There were 4,000 Polish casualties in the first assault, for little gain. Since the wounded were difficult to evacuate, they were treated where they lay and in many cases carried on fighting. Hand-to-hand combat between small groups of soldiers characterized much of the fighting and neither side readily took prisoners. The Germans took high losses, but fought in many cases to the death because of the persistent rumour that the Poles killed out of hand any German they caught.