p. 147: “Baltic to the Black Sea.” The army had suffered over a million casualties and received 800,000 replacements, but required 200,000 men to police the million square miles of Soviet territory Germany had occupied. See Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 6, 778–85, 911–26. See also Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
p. 147: “Halder wrote in his diary.” Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 296–98.
p. 147: “forces that had been surrounded.” The German army survived the winter of 1941–1942 by holding key urban areas as bastions—Schlüsselburg, Novgorod, Rzhev, Vyasma, Briansk, Orel, Kursk, Kharkov, and Taganrog. Russians advancing around them could be cut off by flanking strokes from the strongholds. The German term for this process was einigeln, or to curl forces into a ball as der Igel, the hedgehog, does when it is threatened.
p. 149: “under Fedor von Bock.” Walther von Reichenau had replaced Gerd von Rundstedt as army group commander, but he died of a heart attack in January 1942.
p. 149: “the oil fields of the Caucasus with four.” Hitler assembled a million men in fifty-four divisions. In addition there were about 200,000 men in twenty allied divisions (six Hungarian, eight Romanian, and six Italian). The allied divisions were deficient in modern weapons and training. The main striking forces were 1,500 tanks in nine panzer and seven motorized (now designated panzergrenadier) divisions. Also, cannons mounted on tank chassis (self-propelled guns) were coming on line. Unlike previous campaigns, Schnellentruppen—fast troops—were not concentrated, but divided among the five armies (2nd, 6th, 17th, and 1st and 4th Panzer). The panzer armies had three armored and two motorized divisions apiece, but also thirteen infantry divisions between them. All the infantry divisions relied on horse-drawn wagons and the legs of the soldiers. There was thus a marked disparity in mobility between the fast troops and the foot-sloggers. The Soviets assembled about 1.7 million men in 81 rifle divisions, 38 rifle brigades, 12 cavalry divisions, and 62 tank and mechanized brigades in sixteen armies and four fronts. The Soviets had 3,400 tanks, 2,300 of them superior KVs and T-34s. See Tarrant, 30–32; Mellenthin, 144–59.
p. 149: “‘forces at Stalingrad to check it.’” Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 214.
pp. 149–150: “‘able to exact a heavy toll.’” Mellenthin, 160.
p. 152: “of the entire city.” On Soviet Lieutenant General V. I. Chuikov and his 62nd Army rested the defense of the city. Chuikov began with eight divisions. To neutralize German air and artillery superiority, he told his men to “hug” the Germans—remain so close that the enemy could not use air strikes or artillery without endangering his own men. The battle was fought out by small groups often separated by a single street or wall. German soldiers were in general better trained than Red soldiers, and by October had split Soviet defenses into four shallow bridgeheads, with front lines only 600 feet from the river front. The Reds resupplied and reinforced their troops at night by boats crossing the Volga. See Glantz and House, 122–23.
p. 153: “‘idiotic chatter’ in his presence.” Goerlitz, 418.
p. 153: “officers of the old German army.” Ibid., 418.
p. 153: “‘through the adjacent fronts.’” Manstein, 302.
p. 154: “either side of Stalingrad.” Stalin had divided his forces into twelve “fronts” under supreme headquarters or Stavka. These fronts usually had about four armies, which directly controlled attached divisions. There was no corps headquarters. What the Russians now called corps were groups of tank and motorized brigades that actually were the size of divisions, controlled by the front commander. Stalin sent a senior general and staff from Stavka to direct several fronts involved in a single operation. The system had the advantage of reducing intermediate headquarters and permitting fast movement of forces in fluid situations. It had the disadvantage of requiring commanders to direct large numbers of units. Stalin returned to army corps in the summer of 1943, before the system had been fully tested. See Liddell Hart, Second World War, 261; Glantz and House, 154.
Chapter 15: Manstein Saves the Army
p. 157: “‘hundreds of miles of front.’” Manstein, 320.
pp. 157–158: “Luftwaffe Field Division arrived too late.” The Luftwaffe Field Divisions were an invention of Hermann Göring, and they were a disaster. Göring formed them because the air force had far too many men for its few aircraft. He persuaded Hitler it was wrong to expose Nazi-indoctrinated air force men to reactionary army generals. He formed twenty-two Luftwaffe divisions, but the men had no training in ground combat, and the officers knew little of tactics or strategy. The divisions could only be used in static roles, and even here suffered extreme casualties and were largely ineffectual. See Goerlitz, 421.
p. 160: “forbidden ‘by order of the Fuehrer.’” Manstein, 334.
p. 162: “‘risks in the military field.’” Ibid., 277.
Chapter 16: The Western Allies Strike
p. 165: “peace feelers in Stockholm.” Dahms, 414.
p. 165: “invasions in the Mediterranean.” FDR sent Marshall and Ernest J. King, U.S. Navy chief, to London July 18–24, 1942, with orders either to convince the British chiefs of staff to accept Sledgehammer or agree that the Americans fight in Africa, while extracting from the British a promise to plan for a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 (Operation Roundup). Roosevelt knew the British would reject Sledgehammer and agree at least to plan Roundup. The real purpose of the conference was to demonstrate to Marshall the true state of affairs. See Liddell Hart, Second World War, 312; Kimball, 152; Bryant, 341–45.
p. 166: “cross-Channel assault might not be necessary.” Kimball, 166.
p. 166: “260 divisions actually in the field.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 6, 713.
p. 167: “same time as Oran and Casablanca.” Churchill, Second World War, Hinge of Fate, 531–38.
p. 169: “French Admiral François Darlan, signed a cease-fire.” The diplomatic jostling leading up to Torch was complicated, but it was only a sideline. The Americans were hoping the French could be convinced to give up without a fight or after token resistance; hence Roosevelt’s insistence on the invasion looking like an American affair. FDR and Churchill refused to use Charles de Gaulle, chief of the Free French, because they didn’t like him for his insistence on French rights at every turn, and because officers in Africa were loyal to Vichy, not him. They settled on General Henri Giraud, an army commander in 1940 who had escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp. Giraud turned out to have few brains and much conceit, and wanted to be supreme commander of the invasion. Admiral Jean-François Darlan, a notorious collaborator with the Nazis, commander of all French armed forces and presumed heir to Henri Philippe Pétain, leader of Vichy France, happened to be in Algiers visiting a severely sick son when the Allies arrived, and, after tortuous negotiations, became the designated French head of government, while Giraud became commander of armed forces. Darlan called off French resistance but was assassinated December 24 by a disaffected young Frenchman. French forces in North Africa went over to the Allies and formed the nucleus of a large French army, which served with distinction later. But de Gaulle remained the true French leader, as confirmed by his wild reception by the people of Paris on liberation day, August 25, 1944. See Liddell Hart, Second World War, 317–21, 326–32; Kimball, 167–70, 173–75; Bryant, 414, 419, 423–30; Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 6, 715–17; Blumenson, The Duel for France, 359–66.
p. 170: “arrow on French North Africa.” On August 19, 1942, the British undertook a raid against Dieppe on the French Channel coast with two Canadian brigades, commandos, and tanks (Operation Jubilee). The aim was to test landing tactics and amphibious equipment. The raid was repulsed, with 3,400 casualties among the 6,100 men committed. The Dieppe failure was a propaganda victory for Germany, and it seemed to confirm Hitler’s boasts about the impregnability of the European fortress
. The Allies concluded that special assault methods and equipment had to be developed, cooperation between air, sea, and land forces improved, and that major seaports were too well protected to be assaulted. This led to building artificial harbors for the Normandy landings. See Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 6, 710–11; Zabecki, vol. 2 (Paul Dickson), 1447–49; Dahms, 369–70; Kimball, 163; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1950), 626.
p. 173: “invasion of northwest Africa.” Rommel, 192.
p. 175: “British mobile columns.” Ibid., 327, 395.
p. 176: “to keep their weapons.” Ibid., 358fn.
p. 176: “‘very great value,’ Rommel wrote.” Ibid., 396.
p. 177: “‘of nothing but jewelry and pictures.’” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol 6, 730–31; Rommel, 365–66.
p. 177: “secure from encirclement.” On January 6, 1943, the Italian command asked Rommel to transfer a division to Tunisia to assist in the defense there. Rommel, eager to get his Africa Corps out of Libya, selected the 21st Panzer Division, but required it to leave all its tanks, guns, and other equipment, saying the division could be reequipped in Tunisia. See Irving, 257–58.
p. 177: “‘be it to the west or the east.’” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 6, 732.
p. 179: “armies, not the air forces.” RAF nighttime attacks with incendiaries burned out large parts of the residential areas in the industrial Ruhr of western Germany, Cologne, and elsewhere. The greatest attacks were on Hamburg and Berlin. The Hamburg assault, which began July 24, 1943, created horrible firestorms that killed 32,000 people, made 900,000 homeless, and destroyed more than a quarter of a million houses and apartments. The Berlin assault began on November 19, 1943. Luftwaffe night fighters and antiaircraft defenses were readier for this threat, shooting down 492 aircraft and damaging 952 more so badly they had to be withdrawn from use. The 2,700 dead were far below the loss at Hamburg. Of 250,000 bombed-out Berliners, Joseph Goebbels evacuated many, and the remainder got emergency shelter. U.S. Army Air Force leaders believed B-17 bombers could deliver precision strikes on selected targets by flying in close formations or “combat boxes” that German fighters would be unable to penetrate. They were wrong. Losses were heavy. U.S. Army Air Force chief Henry H. (Hap) Arnold sent in Republic P-47 Thunderbolts to protect the bombers. The P-47s had only a short range (590 miles), however, and were unable to accompany the B-17s deep into Germany. The American theory had its first great tests on August 17, 1943, when German fighters shot down 36 of 183 B-17s on a raid against ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt, and 24 of 146 bombers attacking the Messerschmitt works at Regensburg, both beyond the range of the P-47s. Production at both places continued. Eighth Air Force staged a second raid on Schweinfurt on October 14, 1943, using 291 B-17s. On the return flight, German fighters shot down 60 bombers, 17 crashed into the sea or in England, and 36 were damaged beyond repair—a single-day loss of 38 percent. Ball-bearing production was not interrupted. The cost was so great that doubts arose whether daytime bombing could be continued. However, Allied air commanders recognized the value of the North American P-51 Mustang fighter, which, with wing tanks, could reach a range of 2,200 miles, with a top speed (440 mph) comparable to the P-47, and higher than the top German piston-engined fighter, the Focke Wulf 190 (about 400 mph). P-51s did excellent service accompanying B-17s on deep raids into Germany. Even so, German industry was not paralyzed. Armaments minister Albert Speer transferred important industries to the east in 1942. Factories that had to remain were repaired quickly, large firms decentralized, and entire production branches transferred into caves, unused mines, and tunnels. Production actually increased. In 1943 Germany built 6,000 tanks (1942: 4,200) and 109,000 trucks and other vehicles (1942: 81,000); 36,500 cannons (1942: 23,500); 16,000 mortars (1942: 6,800); 4,180 antitank guns (1942: 1,300); and 4,400 88-millimeter antiaircraft guns (1942: 2,900); as well as 25,600 military aircraft (1942: 15,400). Most important, the destruction of German cities did not lead to a German collapse, as Sir Arthur T. Harris, chief of Bomber Command, had predicted. The German people began to identify their fate with that of the Nazi regime. See Dahms, 427–33; Crane, 93–119; Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II.
p. 179: “to defeat the submarine menace.” Early in 1943 Hitler replaced Erich Raeder with Karl Dönitz, his U-boat expert, as navy chief. A big reason for the Allied shipping losses in 1942 was the disruption of Magic intercepts because of a change in the naval code of German Enigma radio signals early that year. At the beginning of 1943 cryptologists at Bletchley, England, broke the code, but soon the Germans put a new roller in the Enigma machines and another blackout ensued. German naval intelligence had cracked the Allied code, leading to the greatest convoy battle of the war, which commenced on March 16, 1943. The fast convoy HX 229 caught up with the slower convoy SC 122 in the Mid-Atlantic. The two convoys, with nearly a hundred ships, ran into 38 waiting U-boats, which sank 21 freighters totaling 141,000 tons, at the cost of one submarine. This disaster set off extraordinary efforts. At Bletchley, Magic cryptologists broke the new Enigma code, while naval leaders at last solved the problem of the “black pit”— the Atlantic gap 600 miles wide not covered by air patrols that stretched from Greenland to the Azores. Here Dönitz concentrated his submarines, where they attacked convoys as they left air cover and broke off when they regained it. A conference in Washington called by Admiral Ernest J. King ordered escort carriers to shield convoys through the gap and stepped up use of B-24 Liberators to cover the gap from land. These measures, plus vastly improved radar (a 10-centimeter wavelength apparatus that could not be picked up by U-boats), broke the hold of the subs. In May, the Allies sank 41 U-boats, 24 by aircraft. With these catastrophic losses, Dönitz ended convoy battles until scientists could come up with defenses, but no one developed any. Germany had lost the “supply war.” See Dahms, 421–24; Overy, 25–62; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 370–94.
Chapter 17: Kasserine and the End in Africa
p. 183: “half the strength of the division.” The Allies relied on Ultra intercepts, which seemed to point toward Fondouk, though observers on the spot noticed a German buildup at Faid. The concentration on Fondouk, Omar Bradley wrote, “came to be a near-fatal assumption.” See Bradley and Blair, 127; Bradley, 25.
p. 184: “withdrawal to the Western Dorsals.” Bradley, 25.
p. 184: “some of the supply dumps there.” General Lucian Truscott described Fredendall as “outspoken in his opinions and critical of superiors and subordinates alike…. He rarely left his command post … yet was impatient with the recommendations of subordinates more familiar with the terrain and other conditions than he was.” Omar Bradley wrote that Fredendall’s command post “was an embarrassment to every American soldier: a deep underground shelter dug or blasted by two hundred engineers in an inaccessible canyon far to the rear, near Tebessa. It gave the impression that, for all his bombast and bravado, Fredendall was lacking in personal courage.” See Bradley and Blair, 128.
p. 184: “‘uncertainty of command.’” Liddell Hart, Second World War, 405.
p. 185: “‘small private show of his own.’” Rommel, 401.
p. 185: “‘against the strong enemy reserves.’” Ibid., 402.
p. 187: “far lower tank losses.” Blumenson, Patton, 181.
p. 187: “barred his return to Africa.” Rommel, 418–19.
p. 188: “the defeat at Kasserine.” Alexander’s most damning indictment of Americans was in a letter to Alan Brooke: “They simply do not know their job as soldiers and this is the case from the highest to the lowest, from the general to the private soldier. Perhaps the weakest link of all is the junior leader who just does not lead, with the result that their men don’t really fight.” See Hastings, Overlord, 25.
p. 188: “attacks eastward, out of the mountains.” Bradley and Blair, 141.
p. 188: “could find to oppose it.” Om
ar Bradley agreed with Alexander, for he wrote that 2nd Corps “did not possess the force required for so ambitious a mission. Had we overextended ourselves from Gafsa to Gabès, we might have been seriously hurt on the flanks by an Axis counterattack.” He also wrote: “Alexander was right, 2nd Corps was not then ready in any respect to carry out operations beyond feints.” Bradley wrote that Patton and he accepted the corps’s limitation “with good grace.” However, a May 1943 German evaluation was much more complimentary. It said Americans had an ability to learn on the battlefield and would develop quickly into worthy opponents. See Bradley, 59–51; Bradley and Blair, 142; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 413, 415; Doubler, 28. Bradley’s timidity shows a dramatic contrast with Rommel. One could scarcely doubt what Rommel would have done if he’d had four times as many men as the enemy placed firmly on the enemy’s flank.
p. 189: “turn into a superb field commander.” Bradley and Blair, 98–101, 139; Bradley, 43–45; Blumenson, Patton, 12, 17.
Chapter 18: The Invasion of Sicily
p. 195: “cross-Channel invasion.” Kimball, 214.
p. 196: “commanders in the Mediterranean.” Churchill, Second World War, Hinge of Fate, 812–31.
p. 196: “‘the Messina bottleneck first.’” Bradley and Blair, 162–63.
p. 197: “‘an overwhelming victory.’” Ibid., 162; Liddell Hart, Second World War, 446.
How Hitler Could Have Won World War II Page 36
