p. 55: “forced to cede to others.” Close to midnight on November 11, 1940, thirty obsolete Swordfish torpedo bomber biplanes from the British aircraft carrier Illustrious sank one and heavily damaged two Italian battleships lying at anchor at Taranto. The British lost two aircraft, and eliminated Italy as a naval competitor in the Mediterranean. The air strikes proved that bombers could sink capital ships. The Japanese learned the lesson, and were the first to realize that thereafter aircraft carriers were to dominate naval warfare. See Zabecki, vol. 2, 1708–9 (Francesco Fatutta).
p. 56: “for a hasty departure.” Beginning January 19, 1941, small British forces struck from Sudan in the north and Kenya in the south to evict the Italians from their East African colonies of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland, and from British Somaliland, which they had occupied in 1940. The British were aided by Ethiopians who accompanied Emperor Haile Selassie, exiled by the Italians when they conquered Ethiopia in 1935–1936. The Italians had 160,000 native and 100,000 Italian troops, but they retreated before the much smaller British forces. By April 6, 1941, the British had occupied Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and most other important places in the colonies. The last Italian force surrendered at Gondar, Ethiopia, on November 27. The campaign demonstrated poor leadership by Italian officers and a tendency of Italian soldiers to surrender or run away.
p. 57: “680,000 troops in Romania.” Romanian King Carol II was forced to abdicate in favor of his eighteen-year-old son Michael I, but General Ion Antonescu took control of the country and joined the Axis on November 27, 1940.
p. 59: “Yugoslavia from all quarters.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3 (by Detlef Vogel), 417–84; Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, 131–35.
Chapter 6: Attacking the Wrong Island
p. 62: “‘in the Mediterranean.’” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3, 487.
p. 63: “‘toward the Suez Canal.’” Ibid., 488.
p. 65: “actually in British lines.” Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 238–43.
p. 69: “‘not let the army down.’” Zabecki, vol. 1, 268 (Philip Green).
p. 70: “‘The day of parachute troops is over.’” Ibid., 138–39.
Chapter 7: Rommel’s Unappreciated Gift
p. 71: “elements of his corps arrived.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3 (Bernd Stegemann), 615–30.
p. 71: “‘far as the eye could reach.’” Rommel, 101.
p. 72: “‘movement around the south.’” Ibid., 91.
p. 72: “‘according to his wishes.’” Schmidt, 77.
p. 73: “‘attempt to recover Benghazi.’” Alexander, 244; Rommel, 105.
p. 76: “the ‘armored brigade’” A British brigade was made up of battalions and corresponded in size and function to a regiment in the German, American, and most other armies. The terminology grew out of the fact that most British soldiers were assigned to a regiment, which was not a tactical organization but the military home of its members. Individual battalions of this regiment were attached to brigades, but were generally called “regiments” instead of battalions.
p. 76: “only a limited combat role.” At this time the Mark III had a 50-millimeter gun with moderate velocity, while the Mark IV had a short-barreled 75-millimeter gun with relatively low velocity. Both had a top speed of about 25 mph. Neither gun could penetrate the 78-millimeter frontal armor of the British Matilda infantry tank, and had difficulty stopping the faster (30 mph) British Mark V cruiser tanks with 40 millimeters of frontal armor. Moreover, the British tanks were armed with a two-pounder (40-millimeter) gun with higher velocity and slightly better penetration (44 millimeters of armor at 1,000 yards) than the German tank guns. Since the German medium tanks had only 30 millimeters of frontal armor at this time, the two-pounder could often stop them.
p. 76: “‘That’s your affair!’” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3, 617.
p. 77: “‘at one stroke,’ Rommel wrote.” Rommel, 109.
p. 79: “the end of 1941.” Fuller, vol. 3, 419.
p. 79: “‘would have been impossible.’” Rommel, 120.
Chapter 8: Barbarossa
p. 82: “slightest threat to his dictatorship.” In the purges, beginning in May 1937, at least 30,000 of the Red Army’s 75,000 officers were imprisoned or executed, including the vast majority of senior officers. Another 10,000 were dismissed from the service. See Glantz and House, 11; English and Gudmundsson, 83.
p. 82: “Communist party agents in the army.” These political officers had the power to veto commanders’ orders during the revolutionary wars and disturbances in the 1920s and early 1930s. After 1934 Stalin withdrew this power, reimposed it during the purges, then withdrew it after the Finnish campaign. The commissars were restricted to political education of soldiers and ensuring political conformity among officers. See Keegan, Second World War, 177.
p. 82: “hobbled the German army.” Hitler insisted that all generals understand no holds were to be barred. In March 1941 he laid down the law to the chiefs of all three services and key army field commanders. Halder’s diary recorded Hitler’s words: “The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies…. I insist that my orders be executed without contradiction. The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore the commissars will be liquidated. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law … will be excused. Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it.” On May 13, 1941, Keitel issued a new order in the name of the Fuehrer, which limited courts-martial. Civilians suspected of criminal action were to be brought at once before an officer. This officer was to decide whether they were to be shot on the spot. In the case of offenses committed against enemy civilians by Wehrmacht members, prosecution was not obligatory, even where the deed was a military crime. See Shirer, 830–31.
p. 84: “have to defend all three.” Liddell Hart, Strategy, 255.
p. 84: “along the Bug River to Smolensk.” Army Group North had twenty infantry divisions, and three panzer and three motorized divisions, in the 18th Army under George von Küchler, 16th Army (Ernst Busch), and 4th Panzer Group (Erich Hoepner). Army Group Center had thirty-one infantry divisions, nine panzer and seven motorized divisions, and one cavalry division in 9th Army (Adolf Strauss), 4th Army (Günther von Kluge), 2nd Panzer Group (Heinz Guderian), and 3rd Panzer Group (Hermann Hoth). Army Group South had thirty infantry divisions, and five panzer and four motorized divisions, in 6th Army (Walther von Reichenau), 17th Army (Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel), and 1st Panzer Group (Ewald von Kleist). Attached were the 3rd Italian Corps of four divisions, a Hungarian corps, a Slovak division, and a Croatian regiment. To protect the right flank of Army Group South were the 11th Army made up of Romanian and German forces, and the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, nominally under the command of Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator. The Finns in the north had sixteen divisions (150,000 men), assisted by four German divisions, two infantry, two motorized. In the German general reserve were twenty-four infantry divisions, and two panzer and two motorized divisions. See Fuller, vol. 3, 424.
p. 86: “‘of armaments manufacture, Moscow.’” Guderian, 515. Hitler’s entire Directive 21 of December 18, 1940, is reprinted in Guderian, appendix 22, 514–16. The essential elements also are in Fuller, vol. 3, 421–24.
p. 87: “‘were all grossly underestimated.’” Guderian, 261.
p. 88: “enemy flanks to create caldrons.” Count Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German General Staff 1891–1905, sought to achieve modern Cannaes in Vernichtungskriege, or “wars of annihilation.” The aim was to avoid frontal attacks by deep, concentric encircling movements around enemy flanks w
ith infantry armies to drive enemy forces into pockets where they had to surrender or be annihilated. Blitzkrieg was different. Its principal element was a deep penetration through a narrow gap punched into the enemy’s line. The aims were to paralyze the enemy’s ability to respond and to gain decisive objectives far in the enemy’s rear. As happened in the campaign in the west in 1940, flanks remained only thinly guarded, or not at all, the speed of the panzer advance acting to prevent enemy reaction. For an analysis of Cannae, see Alexander, 45–48. For a summary of blitzkrieg and caldron battles, see Tarrant 5–7, 12–14, 31.
p. 89: “and 2,770 aircraft.” Shortage of oil was already severely restricting German operations. There was only enough for a small fraction of transport to be motorized, and this limited the number of mobile divisions. Most divisional supply was delivered from railheads by horse and wagon. Fuel shortage to some extent explains the lackadaisical German attitude regarding production of tanks. After the campaign in the west in 1940, Hitler doubled the number of panzer divisions but halved the number of tanks. In 1941 each panzer division (17,000 men) was authorized two or three panzer battalions, or 150–200 tanks, but divisions averaged only about 125. Motorized infantry divisions were slightly smaller, but now were equipped with an armored battalion (about 50 tanks). The typical German infantry division had 15,000 men, in three regiments, plus four horse-drawn artillery battalions. See Glantz and House, 28–29; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 157–58; Fuller, 425; Guderian, 144.
p. 89: “invisible to German intelligence.” The Soviet field army, when the Germans invaded, had six to ten divisions in two rifle corps, one incomplete mechanized corps, but little maintenance support. See Glantz and House, 36–41.
p. 90: “were many more warnings.” Ibid., 41–42; Shirer, 843–44; Keegan, Second World War, 179–80.
p. 90: “‘will be no war.’” Keegan, Second World War, 181.
p. 91: “in the 1940 campaign.” The tank division had 11,000 men in two tank regiments (375 tanks), one motorized rifle regiment, and reconnaissance, antitank, antiaircraft, engineer, and signal battalions. Most tanks were obsolete light models, but a few formations had the new KV-1 heavy and T-34 medium tanks, both vastly superior to the German Mark IIIs and IVs. The Red Army had about 1,800 of these new tanks when the war started. The T-34 weighed 26.5 tons and could travel at 31 mph (against the Mark IV’s 25 tons and 25 mph), and had good armor (45-millimeter front, 40-millimeter sides). It carried a high-velocity 76-millimeter gun compared to the Mark IV’s low-velocity 75-millimeter and the Mark III’s medium-velocity 50-millimeter gun. The 47.5-ton KV-1 also carried a 76-millimeter high-velocity gun, but had 90-millimeter armor. Both tanks were impervious to almost all German weapons, except the 88-millimeter high-velocity antiaircraft gun. Russian mechanized forces were weakened by bad logistic support and poor radios, which made coordinated maneuvers almost impossible. Also, the number of motor vehicles in mechanized corps was extremely low. See Glantz and House, 36; Keegan, Second World War, 177; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 158; Zabecki, vol. 2, 1115–17 (Paul W. Johnson, Robert G. Waite).
Chapter 9: Falling Between Two Stools
p. 92: “and achieved air supremacy.” Arguments that the Balkan campaign caused a fatal delay of six weeks in attacking Russia are incorrect. The campaign could not have commenced any earlier. Spring 1941 was exceptionally wet. The Bug River and its tributaries were still in flood stage well into May, and the ground nearby was swampy and almost impassable. See Fuller, vol. 3, 420; Guderian, 145.
p. 93: “submission in a week.” Only a day after the Germans invaded, Joseph Stalin caused the Supreme Soviet to establish the State Defense Committee, or GKO, with himself as chairman, with a Supreme Command, or Stavka, which he also dominated, placed under the GKO.
p. 93: “‘blinded us for a few moments,’ Guderian wrote.” Guderian, 156.
p. 94: “‘obedience and endurance.’” Liddell Hart, Second World War, 162.
p. 94: “something that shortly did happen.” On July 27, troops were read an order sentencing nine senior officers to death for being defeated. Others were shot in secret or committed suicide rather than face executioners. “Special sections” of the NKVD were deployed behind the lines to shoot deserters. On July 16 Stalin restored the “dual authority” of the political commissars—meaning once more they could overrule decisions of commanders.
p. 94: “‘by an order of an officer.’” Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 86.
p. 97: “‘an attack toward Moscow.’” Guderian, 190.
p. 97: “Ukraine and Crimea.” Ibid., 198–200.
p. 98: “Rasputitsa (literally ‘time without roads’).” Glantz and House, 80.
Chapter 10: Failure Before Moscow
p. 101: “‘unbounded determination to win.’” Kimball, 92.
p. 102: “first meeting of the two leaders.” At Placentia, FDR and Churchill agreed to the “Atlantic Charter,” which reflected American ideals. It included Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”: freedom from want and fear, and freedom of worship and speech. Plans for a postwar international system remained vague. The charter called for “self-determination” of peoples to choose their form of government, but it didn’t condemn colonies of the imperialist powers or Stalin’s claims in eastern Europe. The charter also referred to “economic liberalism,” calling for equal access for all to trade and raw materials, thus implicitly opposing closed trading blocs, including Britain’s empire preference in commerce. See Kimball, 99–101, 205–6; Zabecki, vol. 1, 15–16 (Spencer Tucker).
p. 102: “convoys to Iceland.” Britain had occupied Iceland on May 10, 1940. The United States took over protection of the island in April 1941 and sent in troops to guard it in July 1941.
p. 103: “request by generals for retirement.” Goerlitz, 402–4.
p. 104: “clothing turning into rags.” Keegan, Second World War, 198–99.
p. 105: “‘the situation was reversed.’” Guderian, 237.
pp. 105–106: “‘great wear to the engines.’” Ibid., 233–34.
p. 107: “with no loss to themselves.” Glantz and House, 87.
p. 109: “‘very difficult to get out of.’” Mellenthin, 153.
Chapter 11: To and Fro in the Desert
p. 110: “‘carried there at all costs.’” Churchill, Second World War, The Grand Alliance, 246.
p. 111: “‘tearing my tanks to bits.’” Liddell Hart, Second World War, 179.
p. 112: “never be allowed to reorganize.” Rommel, 198–200.
p. 115: “conditions favorable to the British.” Liddell Hart, The Tanks, vol. 2, 103.
p. 115: “‘smash them in detail?’” Ibid.
Chapter 12: No Change in Strategy
p. 126: “supplies from America.” Dahms, 342–43.
p. 126: “oil fields of Iraq and Iran.” Rommel wrote that “in the summer of 1942, given six German mechanized divisions, we could have smashed the British so thoroughly that the threat from the south [Mediterranean] would have been eliminated for a long time to come. There is no doubt that adequate supplies for these formations could have been organized if the will had been there.” See Rommel, 192.
p. 129: “won the Battle of the Atlantic.” Dahms, 344–45.
p. 129: “the Caucasus oil fields and Murmansk.” Ibid., 342.
p. 130: “‘clear away the problems involved.’” Rommel, 191–92.
Chapter 13: The Drive to El Alamein
p. 131: “but he was turned down.” Rommel, 203.
p. 132: “nearly won a total victory.” On January 22, 1942, Hitler designated Rommel’s force as Panzer Army Africa. In addition to Africa Corps (21st and 15th Panzer Divisions) and 90th Light Division, it included the Italian 20th Corps (Ariete Armored Division and Trieste Motorized Division), 21st Corps (Pavia, Trento, and Sabratha Infantry Divisions), and 10th Corps (Bologna and Brescia Infantry Divisions). Later the Italians committed another armored division, the Littorio. Only it and 20th Corps were motorized, and hence of an
y use in mobile warfare. The others had little organic transportation. See Ibid., 181, 195, 198.
p. 132: “moved 2nd Air Corps back to Russia.” Ibid., 203fn; Dahms, 357.
p. 134: “be conducted offensively.” Rommel, 194.
p. 134: “‘decided to strike first.’” Ibid., 193–94.
p. 136: “‘far as the eye could see.’” Lucas, 98–99.
p. 137: “‘to wherever danger threatened.’” Rommel, 208.
p. 138: “‘and use up their strength’” Ibid., 211.
p. 139: “‘strength at the decisive point?’” Ibid., 217.
p. 141: “‘given me one more division.’” Ibid., 232.
Chapter 14: Stalingrad
p. 146: “and surrounded 6th Army.” Stalingrad’s main significance was to block oil from the Caucasus that Stalin had to have to stay in the war. Barge traffic from the Caspian to the Volga and northward became the main route for oil after the Germans broke the oil pipeline from the Caucasus at Rostov on July 23. Gunfire on the river was as effective in blocking barge passage as possession of Stalingrad itself. The Russians hurriedly laid a railway line west of the Caspian Sea from the oil fields at Baku to Astrakhan on the Volga. They also built a new rail line in the steppe from Astrakhan to Saratov, 250 miles northeast of Stalingrad, bypassing the city. In addition, the Russians sent 1,300 trucks a day over roads east of the Volga. When Averell Harriman asked Stalin if Russia needed more tanks, he answered that he’d rather have trucks. See Shirer, 909; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 247; Dahms, 370.
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