From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal
By Mike Donovan
WORLD WAR II COMES TO AMERICA
On December 7 1941, Japan attacked one of the greatest countries in the world, starting war with a rich and powerful democracy with its famous red white and blue flag that stands for freedom. Yes, on that fateful 12/7 Tojo and Hirohito and his ministers embarked on a course of war with a nation they simply should not have messed with. On that day of infamy, December 7, 1941, Japan attacked … Great Britian.
In the smoke and fire of Pearl Harbor it is largely forgotten that on 12.7.41 Japan simultaneously invaded British Malaysia and put itself at war with England too.
In fact, Japanese troops landed on British Malaysia more than an hour before the first bomb fell on Pearl Harbor! There was a brief panic in the Japanese military that this imperfect timing would compromise the Pearl Harbor operation, but Allied communication failed in Malaya, as it would fail again and again at Pearl Harbor a short hour later. In a perfect Allied world, the news of the landings in Malaya could have been whisked all over the globe, alerting Allied bases and ships everywhere within 10-15 minutes.
By attacking Britian too, Japan made it only that much more natural and easy for the US and UK to not only become partners in the Asia war, but official partners in the European conflict as well.
The British and the Americans were now officially at war together vs. the Axis after fighting an undeclared war in the Atlantic as a team for more than two years.
America was going to have to do most of the fighting for Britian in the Pacific. With it's very survival at risk at home in Europe, England could not spare the troops and the ships to fight Japan at this time. So for once the role was reversed. In the First World War we were accused of having let Britian do all of our fighting for us until the last moment. The charge had also been applied to the European theatre in WWII up to this point. But now the shoe was on the other foot. England would have to count on America to do most of the fighting in Asia. Of course, plenty of Brits and Aussies fought and died in Malaya, Burma and New Guinea, but the USA essentially won the war with Japan one on one. Germany/Italy was the war the “Allies” (the Axis were “allies” too, but historically, the name has stuck) won as a team.
“TIGER! TIGER! TIGER!”
JAPAN ATTACKS HAWAII, THE PHILIPPINES, AND MALAYA 12.7.41
December 7, Washington D.C.
Two Japanese envoys, Hediki Kurusu and Tommy Nomura were waiting in the early afternoon in the outer office of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. They were supposed to meet with Cordy at one o’clock. They were supposed to deliver a note to Hull declaring that Japan had decided it was impossible to reach an agreement with the United States. But a coded message from Tokyo had taken too long to decipher behind the closed doors of their embassy and they were behind schedule. They were in fact an hour behind schedule,, a deadly hour behind schedule. Nomura and Kurusu asked for an hour delay for the meeting with Hull, and got it, unfortunately for them.
The delivery of this note was supposed to be enough to allow Japan to honorably attack Pearl Harbor a few minutes after it was read by Hull. Although there was no declaration of war in the message, and it did not formally break diplomatic relations The Japanese note was close to a declaration of hostilities.
Hull was supposed to read the note from K&N moments before the surprise Japanese air attack on Hawaii began. Instead, because of the delay, it was delivered to CH more than an hour after the attack began. The only diplomats that got Pearl Harbored at Pearl Harbor were Nomura and Kurusu.
The delay made the attack seem like the worst international sucker-punch of all time. In fact this diplomatic posturing only made the treachery seem all the more devious and wrong. They might just as well have delivered the note after the surrender of the Philippines for all the good it did them.
If the note had been delivered on schedule Japan still might have been accused of launching a sneak attack. But at least Japan would appear technically more in-bounds, and the indignation would have been much less of what it was in the event.
At 2:20 p.m. when Kurusu and Nomura were finally ushered in to see Secretary Hull the attack was already well under way and known to him. Cordell read the note and then is said to have given them a good loud profane piece of his Tennessee mind. They slithered out of the office feeling shamed.
I almost feel sorry for them. These were two men of peace who had chosen a life of books and diplomacy over the military life. But Kurusu and Nomura were caught on the spot, tied up in an evil game of empire.
The story of Hull swearing at the envoys is almost certainly some writer’s invention. What Hull actually said to them angrily after reading the note was;
“I must say that …in all of my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions – infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them.”
I'm a little disappointed. I would have rather read that he hurled a heavy ash tray right at Nomura's head who ducked just in time and then the two envoys fled the room.
In truth after the little lecture, Nomura looked upset and was about to say something when Hull shot him a look so full of rage, followed by a nod towards the door indicating ‘get out,’ that Nomura stopped his sentence on the first syllable, and the two envoys stood up and walked out. When the door shut, 2,000 sailors were already dead in the Hawaiian water.
The note to the Japanese envoys from Japan was actually translated faster by US spies than it was by the Japanese envoys. The Japanese diplomatic codes had been broken some months ago and we were reading their mail faster than the relative amateurs could decipher their own work in the Japanese embassy.
The entire world knew that a war was imminent between Japan and the United States on the morning of December 6, 1941. The image of a United States innocently at peace minding tits own business when it was suddenly attacked is an exaggeration. Nevertheless Hull had every right to feel violated and enraged.
THE ATTACK
Japan started an aggressive war against America and friends. 275 miles northwest of Oahu, the six 'Jap' carriers turned to the mighty wind in rolling Pacific seas. The waters would be anything but pacific this day.
On 12.7.45 just before dawn the first wave of fighters and bombers were launched to the wild cheers of the carrier crews of the Hiryu, Soryu, Kaga, Akagi, Zuikaku and Shokoku. 363 Kates (torpedo bombers), Zekes (single seat fighter) and Vals (dive bombers) swooped in on sleepy Honolulu and had a field day bombing and strafing the unprepared American planes, ships and human beings at will. Seven battleships were sunk.
The battle actually was joined ten minutes before the first airplane dropped its first bomb. Outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor at 6:45 a.m. the USS Condor, a small minesweeper on recon patrol spotted a periscope slipping into Pearl. It notified the destroyer USS Ward, which quickly located what turned out to be a hostile midget submarine armed with two torpedoes and operated by two men. Ward sank the midget sub and World War II was under way in the Pacific although no one apparently appreciated it at the time. Ward reported the incident immediately, so the brain trust at Pearl had time enough to begin a full scale panic call to battle stations but this never happened. What did they all think, that hostile submarines randomly liked to slip into the home base of the Pacific fleet and threatened to sink ships without any larger strategic purpose involved? If only I had been in charge that day all with my smug hindsight, things would have been done right.
The USS Arizona took a Val 500 pound bomb down a smokestack. It crashed and popped right in the ammo storage department. The explosion rocked the world. The Arizona was blown sky high and came back down in two pieces, sending more than a thousand groggy young American men to a tourist-trap grave.
The attack was deliberately planned for a Sunday morning to exploit American culture. Sunday morning is hangover time for sleepy servicemen.
The first ten minutes of the attack met almost 'zero' resistance. It was batting practice. Pearl Harbor syndrome cost us dearly at Pearl Harbor. Eyewitnesses almost universally identified the swooping aircraft as our own planes making some kind of practice drill. ‘Pearl Harbor syndrome,’ now means a willingness to disbelieve the obvious truth when something horrible is happening. It's the reverse panic attack. Just when you should for once in your life actually panic, you remain calm and tell yourself nothing serious is really happening.
The attack came in two waves, with a lull in the middle.
The one-sidedness of the fight did not actually last long, As the various ship and land forces woke up at Pearl, both literally and figuratively, the damage inflicted became significantly smaller. 90% of the damage came in the first ten minutes of a four hour attack. The pattern in the later stages was for planes to come in for strafing or bombing runs and then have to veer off in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire, either dropping their bombs harmlessly or being shot up and damaged or destroyed. For example, late in the fight, one torpedo bomber was flying low and heading straight for the Nevada as this ship was making a dash for the open sea (the only battleship to get under way during the attack). A five inch gun, not designed for anti-aircraft work was lowered at an even plane and fired at the plane. The shell struck the Katie torpedo and it was Katie bar the door. The attacking plane disintegrated in a wild explosion.
Later in the war many US ships would suffer much heavier damage than the blows that sank the battleships at Pearl and yet these later ships stayed afloat and continued to fight. That’s because a ship at battle stations is prepared at a moments notice to use watertight compartments to control flooding and maintain balance. The Pacific Fleet not only was hit without a chance for combat defense, it was also struck without a fair chance for flood control.
The biggest strategic failure on a spectacularly successful day for the Japanese was the failure to take out the two US aircraft carriers in the Pacific Fleet, the Lexington and the Enterprise. These were the number one targets, not the battleships. It was an accident of good fortune that these two flattops were out at sea. (The term 'flattop hadn't been invented yet, btw)
The Lexington and Enterprise had been sent out at the end of November to re-enforce the islands of Midway and Wake with a deposit of Marine fighter planes. They had completed their mission and were heading back towards Hawaii when news of the attack reached the ships. (The Marine pilots that landed on Wake were in for a hot time of it there over the next three weeks.)
The Japanese not only missed out on the two big carriers, they made some dumb mistakes for which they could not blame lady luck. The pilots neglected the submarines moored at Pearl. These six subs were unscratched and they ended up sinking far more tonnage in Japanese ships than American tonnage sunk at Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps the biggest error in Japanese pilot judgement was ignoring the giant land-based oil tanks all over Oahu. The attack was all about oil to begin, yet the pilots shot up private cars on lovers-lane instead of mammoth storage tanks filled with 4.5 million gallons of gasoline. Pipelines were largely above ground and combed the entire area. Fires could have spread over this web of pipelines like the climax of a bad modern blockbuster movie. A small number of bombs, or even a few bursts of machine gun fire could have done more damage to the American war effort than all the battleships sunk or damaged. The explosions would have set world records. Fires would have burned for weeks. Even BP would have been impressed by the oil disaster. The United States Navy would have had to bring all but the smallest ships back to San Diego for up to six months. In the meantime Japan would have a free hand to do whatever it wanted in the South Pacific. The Zero pilots put a bomb in a downtown Honolulu department store but they didn’t see any use in bombing gigantic oil tanks. In this respect the Zeroes were flown by pilots of the same name.
Any airline passenger today can look out the window while descending into a city, and be taken by the vulnerability of the great oil tanks near the harbor. 'Wow. Imagine if a terrorist blew up one of those gas tanks? Imagine if a small plane crashed into one?'
Yet Japanese pilots at war could not appreciate the same ripe and valued targets on 12.7. They were too busy wanting to kill their fellow man. A fuel storage tank? Hey, why waste bullets?
The blame game for Pearl Harbor could fill an encyclopedia. We know that Short and Kimmell are major goats,. We also know that in the days, weeks and years before the attack, some smart people had given very specific warning.
In fact, Navy war games in 1932 had launched an unarmed surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning from carrier based US planes. The defense team at Pearl was taken completely by surprise. US biplanes made attack runs all over the Pacific Fleet with silent guns and wooden bombs. One plane dropped a pineapple on the bridge of the Arizona.
It's possible, however, that if the failures of December 7 had never happened, and the American forces had reacted properly to the warning signals, the results might have been far worse, both militarily and politically.
Imagine if Husband E. Kimmell had three hours warning that the attack was definitely coming.
The first thing Hubby would have done is put the entire Pacific Fleet out to sea. The carriers on the way to Wake and Guam would have been ordered to do a 180 and head back towards Hawaii. This could have set up a battle between carrier air groups with the two fleets never engaging in surface to surface gunnery exchanges. The Pacific War would have opened in the most new fashioned way imaginable. It would have been the Battle of the Coral Sea to open the war, two carrier task forces going to war without ever sighting each other. And who would have won?
It should be borne in mind that Japanese naval air quality was vastly superior to US at this moment. Even fully armed and ready, the two US carriers, plus land-based air from Pearl would have been no match for 350 front-line Japanese aircraft.
The Japanese would have lost more planes than they lost at Pearl, but would have bagged a better tally for their efforts. Both of the American carriers would probably have been hit and sunk. All of the battleships would have probably been sunk in the open sea, never to be recovered. The loss of American life would have been vastly higher.
If the US carrier pilots had found the six Japanese carriers it is highly unlikely that they could have done much damage. The Japanese fleet had reserve air cover, and an armada of anti-air guns in the protective screen of destroyers and cruisers. The American planes were 10 years behind the times in technology. It could have been an ignominious slaughter, a battle of Tsushima 1905, off the island of Oahu in 1941.
For the USA all of the political capital gained from playing complete victim would have been lost along with the sea battle. The image of hung-over US sailors being gunned down trying to pull their clothes on and find the key to the ammo locker would not be part of the picture. There would be no atrocity stories of smiling Zero pilots strafing Hawaiian civilians in their cars. The war instead would have begun with what was perceived to be a fair fight. There would have been no famous cry of “sneak attack!” and “treachery!” Japan would not be the bad guy on a black horse.
To be sure, after such a sea battle, Roosevelt could have asked Congress for a declaration of war he would have got it. But the recruiting lines at armed forces stations wouldn't have been jammed around the block.
The United States was not fully mobilized for war on December 7. Japan had been since 1932. A fair fight would have worked out much worse than an unfair.
BATTLESHIP ROW
A look now at the attack on a ship by ship basis.
The eight BB's at Pearl were the Arizona, Tennessee, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Maryland, California, Nevada, and the Pennsylvania. The Utah on the other (north) side of Ford Island was sunk but that was a target ship of no military value.
The Pennsylvania was in dry dock and took a major bomb hit that killed many sailors, but it was easily repaired in the weeks ahead.
Oklahoma was outboard of another BB and took three torpedoes before anyone knew what hit them. It capsized and was a total loss. Men were trapped inside the hull for days and were rescued by crews with torches burning out escape hatches from the topsided hull.
The West Virginia was sunk at berth. Two aerial bombs scored direct hits, and no less than six torpedoes tore her up with heavy loss of life. In death, the West Virginia saved the life of Tennessee. WV was berthed on the outside and the T on the inside, so the downed battleship saved the one on the inside. Tennessee suffered minor damage from debris but no major direct hits from Japanese munitions.
Except for the Oklahoma and the Arizona, all of the battleships sunk or damaged at Pearl eventually re-entered the war in active combat service. Many military officials felt that restoration of these antiquated ships (old even by 1941 standards, let alone 44 or 45) would not be cost effective. The money would be better spent on building new ones. The old BB's resting in the mud of Pearl Harbor logically should have been reduced to scrap metal.
But FDR determined that as a morale booster, the refitting and repair of these ships would more than compensate for the money not well spent.
So Nevada and company rose from the ashes. By the end of 1944 they were all in the middle of the scrap, not the scrap heap. These BB's pounded the beaches in the island-hopping campaign as a symbolic act of national defiance and anger. The guns of these 12/7 veterans spoke for the American people with each report. None of these great battleships were assigned to the Atlantic theatre.
AFTERMATH ANALYSIS OF PEARL HARBOR
The problem for Japan was that the attack worked a little too well. The Japanese actually expected the Americans at Pearl to put up a much better fight.
At the northern tip of Oahu, the entire attacking force was spotted by radar and the human eye. If the warnings at the north point had been properly digested, the Pearl Fleet would have had six or eight minutes to prepare for combat defense. Men would have rushed to their battle stations and the anti-aircraft guns would have been armed or would have been in the process of arming. Some measures would have begun with regard to watertight flood control. Some aircraft would have been off the ground and fighting back. Even in this scenario, the Japanese would undoubtedly have inflicted heavy damage and won a great victory. They would likely have sunk just as many battleships. But there would have been more losses on the part of the attack force and this might well have been better for Japan.
An image of American sailors at full battle alert fighting off a superior force as best they could would have given both sides military dignity. But the attack gave this to neither side. It was just destiny for America to look like the total victim.
For both sides, it became as much a political as a military situation. It was the ugly portrait of a sucker punch. Most guys love to see a good fight. I saw one between two guys in a Brighton Ave. laundromat a few years ago that was tremendous. But not one guy in a thousand wants to see someone get knocked-out while he's minding his own business and not defending himself.
American incompetence denied Japan some of the military glory it wanted to gain from the event. As it happened the image of the attack was inglorious to most of the world. It was mass murder rather than of a great military victory. Only in Japan was it glorified.
Historic revisionism has now made it naïve to call Pearl Harbor a “sneak attack.' But I say that is exactly what it was. This was not only a ‘sneak attack’ but it was also a 'terrorist attack.' Civilians were machine gunned to death deliberately at various locations in Oahu all morning.
For this was the way of the Japanese. The Japanese Army and Navy had already murdered over a million Chinese civilians, mass raping women and mass killing children in front of their parents as a terrorist tactic.
JAPAN #1 LIAR
Japan now re-invents itself by teaching its children only the reasons Japan felt justified in going to war in 1941, without teaching their students the evil way in which the war was conducted. Japanese students learn of Nagasaki, but not of Nanking. They learn of the fire raids on Tokyo, but of not terrors unleashed on the fallen civilians of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila, or the conditions in Japanese PW Camps.
Japan did almost have legitimate reasons for going to war. But they way in which they prosecuted it, with the torture and murder of civilians and PW's on a millions scale, is what set them apart as the focus of evil in the Pacific in World War II.
War doesn't make a nation barbarians. Only barbarian wars do. The barbarians of the middle ages were barbarians, not because they tried to conquer. They were barbarians because they conquered towns and then killed everybody. Japan set the globe back a thousand years with the way it treated its captured populations.
Decent Japanese writers condemn the way Japan hides the truth about the war to its young students. It lies in its history books about World War Two and Germany does not. Korean and Chinese-Americans are seen today with bumper stickers that read, “Japan is #1 Liar.” If you see this, now you know what it means.
PEARL HARBOR UNITES THE NATION
On the morning of December 8 the United States woke up in a rage. Elderly one-legged Amish preachers were eager for a place in line to sign up for front line hand-to-hand combat duty. The Pearl Harbor attack was a short term strategic success for Japan in the military sense. In every other aspect it was a ‘catastrophic success.’
Pearl Harbor in fact revived a US martial spirit that had been sleeping since November 4 1918. Hirohito should have let sleeping eagles lie. On December 7, 1941 Japan signed itself up for a serious beating.
Politics stopped at the harbor waters edge in America. The Zekes of Pearl torpedoed the left wing right out of the American political equation. Now the whole country went right-wing nut. Liberalism sank with the Arizona. The entire nation was one giant militarist lunatic.
Thanks, Japan. Now we can take care of both you and Hitler. You did all the nations of the world a great big favor by getting their sleeping giant big-brother awake, getting him really mad, and forcing him to clean up this whole mess. The Second World War might have dragged on for another decade if the United States had not been pulled into it by Pearl Harbor. The big kid was bullying the little kids for two years, but this time he woke daddy up. Now there's going to be a spanking.
A good percentage of men would fight to protect their country from an attack that is going to take place. But a much higher percentage would fight to avenge an attack that has already taken place. Defense is a reasoned emotion. Revenge is walking insanity that doesn’t understand compromise or negotiation.
A formal declaration of war against the United States by Japan would have served Japan much better than this Port Arthur repeat. Then the US could have considered the option of a negotiated settlement later, which was Japan’s long term goal from the start. Japan never dreamed of trying to conquer the United States.
Much is made about Japan's obsession as a culture with “saving face.” Well, what makes them so special? The United States had a face to save or lose too. We lost too much face at Pearl Harbor and now only total victory could restore it.
As of December 8, 1941 the US diplomatic posture on negotiated settlement was as follows –
The United States could accept a negotiated settlement with Japan only if it included the following conditions:
One, unilateral disarmament by Japan only, Two; withdrawal from all Japanese-occupied territories; Three, a trillion Yen in reparations; Four, a formal abject apology for starting the war.
At no time was Japan remotely willing to meet any of these conditions, so a negotiated settlement after Pearl was a joke, and since the “negotiated settlement” was Japan's political war plan, Japan lost the war the day it started it.
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ That is a highly inaccurate description of revenge. For in reality it should read, ‘two eyes for an eye and two teeth for a tooth.’ Why should one eye be the penalty for an eye? You have to pay for the eye you took and for the fact that you started it.. If you pay back with one eye then there is no penalty for the incredibly serious crime of choosing to assault in the first place. That’s like saying that a thief only has to return your jewelry when he’s arrested for breaking into your home. In reality, the perp has to pay for the offense, as well as for what he took. The bombing of Japan in 1944-5 was payback time. It wasn't done just to win the war.
To the American left today, we were the bad guys in World War II because of the nuke-bombs. The heartless USA bombed all those innocent people. But Japanese soldiers in 1937 and 1941 were honored by their families and showered with praise and support when they went off to subjugate innocent nations. As long as it was victory after victory, the civilians proudly supported the effort. 1937-1941 was quite a time of joy in Japan. Then when they got nuked, they got all moral about the evil of killing innocent people.
THE DAY AFTER
Later that December 7 afternoon some American planes tried to land on Oahu. Trigger happy anti-aircraft units tried to shoot them down. They had to fly off to escape the friendly fire.
In the evening of the seventh wild rumors of an impending Japanese invasion swept Oahu. There were stories about Japanese parachute drops on Barber's Point and at St Louis heights. Nawakuli Beach was under attack by an invading force that was wading in.
One widely believed report had seven Japanese transports in the process of landing on another of the major Hawaiian islands. There was no logical reason to disbelieve such rumors and one can imagine the fear that gripped many inhabitants. That night a complete blackout was enforced on Oahu. Diamond Head was black against the moonless sky. Just before dawn the moon appeared and before it flashed by a welcome sight. Rows upon rows of planes from the mainland arrived with lights in full flashing to relieve the beleaguered garrisons and the scared civilians. Hawaii was safe.
Two Japanese carrier based planes buzzed San Francisco on December 9, 1941 creating some panic, but they didn't do any shooting or bombing.
I get this story from a book by Ed Rollins. I don't see this story in any other book. But he says its true, so it may be. I can't imagine where they came from.
BLOOD FOR OIL – ON TO THE SHELL STATION
The biggest strategic success for the Japanese from the 12/7 attack was the securing of its eastern flank. It bought Japan about 8 months to do whatever it wanted in the Far East. Japan was now free to conquer the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and to threaten Australia. Japan could possibly even attack India without fear of its forces being intercepted by hostile naval and air forces from the USA. This was the purpose of the Pearl Harbor/Luzon attack. While the US did have warships in its Atlantic fleet to theoretically replace the Pacific fleet, these ships were needed where they stood and besides it would take weeks to transfer them to the combat theatre of the Far East. In that time the Japanese could and did run a shopping-spree through South Asia.
Their number one objective in going to war was the oil of the Dutch East Indies and within a couple of months it was all in their hands. Now they had the gas to keep up the bad work. While we were still putting out the fires at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese conquered the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Wake, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies. This was the real prize taken from Pearl. The Japanese did not want war with America. It was just that darned Pacific fleet was in the way of its war plans against other innocent peoples.
PEARL HARBOR POP TAKES
There have been two major movies made about Pearl Harbor. Tora Tora Tora (1974), was very accurate historically. The attack scenes were first-rate, but every high school student should watch more intently the first 90 minutes, the non-action scenes before the bombs fell.
In 2002 came the movie Pearl Harbor, a romance story with the Pearl Harbor attack as background. This is a bad chick-flick that lured unsuspecting males into the theatre because it was based on a manly subject.
In the last scene, all the military chiefs are at a conference table with FDR, shortly after the Pearl attack. They are advising caution and retreat. FDR cuts them down to humiliation and demands that we go on the attack. He is calling for the famous Dolittle raid on Tokyo, launched in April of 1942. John Voight Roosevelt rises from his wheelchair to show how determined he is to fight back, as opposed to his milquetoast military leaders who are recommending retreat.
To suggest that the military chiefs did not want to take the offensive but were overruled by the macho FDR is a bit much even for West Hollywood. As if FDR had guts and the admirals and generals didn’t! Hollywood painted the military men as mice and the Democratic icon as the only courageous leader in the room. The Hollywood left is anti-war until it becomes history, then they rush in to take the fictional credit. I'm sure Sean Penn is currently negotiating to play TR in a film about the charge up San Juan Hill.
One other note about Pearl Harbor in American culture today. Every movie shows someone running into the room shouting “Did you hear? The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!” Every newspaper headline in a fictional drama reads “Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor!” – Its the same with the fictional radio reports. The reality is that no one ever heard of Pearl Harbor until the attack made it famous. Newspapers actually read, “Japanese Attack Hawaii and the Philippines!” If you ran into the dining room yelling “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” everyone would look at you funny and ask, “Where the hell is Pearl Harbor?” Only Hawaiians and sailors knew the name of Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941.
2,445 US soldiers and civilians died at Pearl. One sailor died when he was struck by a flying mayonnaise jar. A bomb hit the cafeteria where the men were having breakfast and a mayonnaise jar became a projectile and killed the sailor when it struck him in the side of the head. This is straight out of the Walter Lord's book, Day of Infamy. When your number’s up, your number’s up. For this man, fate wouldn't hold the mayo.
BAD TIMING FOR JAPAN
Pearl Harbor was a political gamble for the Japanese. In order to get the USA to negotiate a peace later with Japan, the Tojo government was presuming that their Axis German ally in Europe would continue to conquer the western world. Japan presumed that the US would enter the European war. If things went badly enough for America in a war with Germany, the US might be forced to treat for peace in Asia. But if the Japanese had foreseen the defeat of Germany in the west, it would have thought twice about kicking the sleeping dog at Pearl Harbor.
In fact, Japan attacked the United States at exactly the moment that Germany began to lose World War II in the west. Bad timing, suckers.
Unbeknownst to Tojo, Yamamoto, Hirohito or the carrier pilots of the Soryu, the Russians had just launched their first counterattack against the German invaders on December 6 1941. On the same day the British Army launched the first day of the decisive counterattack that would eventually drive the Axis out of eastern North Africa and remove the Axis threat to both the Suez Canal and the oil of the Middle East.
So just as Japan was entering the war riding the coattails of the Germans, the Germans were on that very day were getting their coattails singed.
The British victory in North Africa was strategically critical. The Germans wanted to link it’s Russian front divisions with the North Africa Corps east of a conquered Suez. Then the steamrolling Axis powers of Germany and Japan could hook up in the Middle East. For the Axis in 1941, this was not an unrealistic dream.
But from this day on, 12.6.41, the Russians had the momentum and over the next 3.3 years would drive the Wermacht back to Hitler's bunker. Along the way the Red Army would liberate and occupy eastern Europe.
Japan's big brother Heinz was not going to be in any position to help. Germany instead would be knocked out of the war before Japan. In the last weeks of the war Japan was hit from the air with bombs made in Germany. Japan ended the war facing the united wrath of 45 countries.
END OF THE STRATEGIC BATTLESHIP
For 20 years the world’s military thinkers had debated the superiority of the new aircraft-carrier task force vs. the strength of the old battleship task force. This debate went on in Japan as well as the United States and Europe. Neither side had ever fully accepted the superiority of the carrier task force. The admirals, generals and politicians were divided.
When Japan knocked out 8 United States battleships on 12.7 it left us with no choice but to settle the argument right there on the spot in favor of the carriers. The USA could not think in terms of battleship task forces now even if it wanted to, because it suddenly didn’t have any. The Pacific War would now be fought from the US vantage point with the fleet choice of the carrier as a given.
The Japanese on the other hand could and still did believe in the equality if not the superiority of the battleship task force because they had so many good BB’s available. Some progressive Japanese hawks favored the carrier but enough powerful admirals still stuck to their old big guns. As a result their confident superiority in battleships, many major battles of the Pacific War were fought and lost because they went into the fight in battleship, not carrier, task force formations. We certainly sank as many of their battleships later in the South Pacific as we lost in Hawaii, thanks in part to those initial losses which forcibly changed our approach to naval warfare.
The war proved that battleships were still useful for task force support, ship-to shore fire and for anti-aircraft power, but no longer as the Queen Bee in battleship task forces. By 1943 battleship to battleship slugfests for strategic offensive goals was as dated as the horse and buggy.
HITLER AND PEARL
Adolph Hitler was as surprised as anyone else when he heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t really good news for the AH, even if his ally did seem capable of conquering half the Pacific. Hitler desperately wanted Japan to attack Russia, not the United States. He wanted the Soviets forced into a two-front war. He wanted Japan in on his war.
Instead he was handed a new enemy in the powerful United States without material gain on his own front. In fact it was a net loss on his front. With Japan at war with America, Stalin could safely transfer his far eastern divisions to the west and toss them into the cauldron against the German Army. The Siberian divisions turned the tide on the Russian front.
Hitler had gone to extremes to avoid war with the United States. Now there was little he could do to prevent it.
The terms of Hitler’s alliance with Japan did not obligate Germany to join in the war against the United States. That’s because Japan had not been attacked. But in a general sort of way it seemed to Hitler dishonorable not to, what with the maniacal martial spirit both countries professed to live by.
Hitler’s top diplomat in Washington informed Berlin on the 8th of December that Roosevelt was going to declare war on Germany at any hour now. Hitler’s ego could not stand for that.
So the so-called mad genius did something really dumb. He declared war on America.
FDR dearly wanted Hitler to declare war first. He had already tricked Japan into firing the first military shot to start the war in the Pacific. Now he needed to trick Hitler into firing the first official declaration of war to start the game up in the Atlantic.
America had a key advantage because through its intercepts of Japanese diplomatic notes through 'Magic' it knew that Japan had recently (mid-November) been assured by Berlin that if the United States went to war with Japan, Germany would declare war on America. In the three days after Pearl, FDR held his shot and Hitler did too as both waited out the other to make a move.
FDR was worried over how to sell war with Germany to the American people when every last man here only wanted five minutes alone in a room with Tojo. Most historians estimate that if Roosevelt had asked Congress for a declaration of war with Germany without Germany having declared war first, he would have had it. But it would have been a divided enough vote to have caused political problems throughout the next four years.
FDR on December 9 gave a radio speech in which he clearly was trying to trick Hitler into declaring war on the United States,
“Germany and Japan are conducting their naval operations
in accordance with a joint plan. Germany and Italy con-
sider themselves at war with the United States without
even bothering about a formal declaration.”
It was all false and FDR knew it. He was the guy who wants to start a fight with a certain someone at the bar so he shoves him and says real loud, “whatdya shove me for?” And it worked.
Hitler finally gave in to his animal instincts over his political, and on December 11 he went before the Reichstag and declared war on the USA.
It was a long speech in which Mr. Hitler gave everyone a refresher course on the recent turbulent times between the two countries. He went over all the incidents in the quasi-war in the Atlantic since the fall of France. Hitler's deputies cheered him wildly. “All right! War with America! What could possibly go wrong?”
JAPANESE BLITZ IN THE PACIFIC DECEMBER 1941
THE STRIKE SOUTH
To the surprise of many military experts, Japan elected to try to take over the entire Pacific on three major fronts at the same time. Some at first were calling it a blunder, but were soon stunned to watch as Hirohito, Tojo, and Yamashita pulled it off. Such a daring dilution of strength was counter to military wisdom.
The three major fronts in the Far East were Malaya, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies. Churchill and Roosevelt did not expect these three places to hold on indefinitely, but they never dreamed that they would fall so fast, nor that they could all be taken simultaneously.
One of the reasons the western experts did not think the Japanese capable of a three prong offensive was the already extended network of Japanese conquests and the divisions required to hold them down. But just prior to the strike south all of the divisions holding the fort in Manchuria, Indochina, Korea, Taiwan, and China were cannibalized to beef up the divisions heading into the new theatres. All of these divisions sent to conquer the Dutch, the Yanks, the Brits and their native allies were overstuffed with the best men and the best weaponry. Each Japanese Army division sent south to boot MacArthur out of the Philippines or take the oil of Borneo had the firepower of two normal divisions.
The strike south effectively ended any Japanese hope of conquering China, at least in the near future. The occupation forces, diluted of their best troops and equipment for the Strike South were restricted from making major offensives in China for the rest of the war.
PHILIPPINES ATTACKED
The same morning that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor it also hit the US bases in the Philippines hard, destroying most of our Far Eastern air power in one day. The Japanese attack planes were launched from land bases in Taiwan. The three main Allied defense pillars in the Far East were the American Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, the British fleet in Singapore, and US air power in the Philippines. In ten hours two of the three were toast and the third was on the menu.
The Jap. planes on Taiwan were stuck in a fog that morning of Dec 7 (Dec 8 Asia time) but took off to attack the Philippines anyway. By 7:30 AM Pearl Harbor was five hours old news, so the Japanese had feared that US B-17 bombers based on the Philippines would strike first, destroying Japanese planes on Taiwan before they could launch. They didn’t have to worry.
The United States air forces in the Philippines under the command of the one and only “Mad Doug” MacArthur was restricted from taking offensive action by political considerations. Both President Roosevelt and Philippine leaders hoped somehow that the Philippines might not be on the Japanese target list. They didn’t want offensive American action to bring the Philippines into the war. MacArthur had to wait and watch Japan fire the first shots before he could respond in kind.
The B-17’s were sent aloft on a mission to basically stay off the ground. The Japanese air forces on Taiwan and Formosa were playing the same game. They were sometimes taking off and flying random patterns just so as not to get caught on the ground in a US air strike.
Just when the B-17’s over Clark began to run out of fuel the Japanese were closing in. It was terrible timing. Worst of all there was communications breakdown of the first order in reporting the incoming Japanese planes. The pilots landed and went off for a leisurely lunch. The Japanese had in fact already launched strikes on targets further north on Luzon. Clark AFB saw a repeat of Pearl Harbor communications failure, but twice as unforgivable because this one happened ten hours after the Arizona blew up.
The first Jap. planes struck near Baguio in Luzon and were not very effective. Some high level Betties missed the mark so badly that they instead tore 18 holes into a nearby golf course, making it a 36 hole course.
Somehow this information was never properly delivered to anyone that mattered. A few crucial minutes later everyone at Clark looked up and saw Zeroes and land-based Betty bombers circling to attack. But then it happened. It was the first recorded instance of ‘Pearl Harbor Syndrome’ and it happened on the same day. Men looked up and smiled saying things like, “here comes the navy.” In some barracks there were radio reports on the news of a Japanese air strike on Clark Air Base which elicited laughs and jeers from the men … until they saw jeeps and bodies flying past the window. We were caught with our guard down. Again. For one hour the Japanese planes strafed and bombed US planes on the airfield and shot down most of the P-40’s that tried to stop them in the air. 18 B-17’s were destroyed on the ground. Zeke and Betty crushed no less than 78 other planes, mostly on the ground. 96 planes were lost in one hour as MacArthur cried 96 tears.
The attack on US air power in Luzon constituted a second Pearl Harbor. If this had been the only Japanese strike that day the famous cry would have been “Remember Clark Air Base!”
American lack of action in the Philippines on this first day has been criticized unfairly. The US was physically under-prepared, it was true, but the real blame lies here with Roosevelt and the Philippine politicians who had a naïve hope that Japan would not attack and try to take the islands. Certainly the gung-ho MacArthur would have been happy to launch an air strike within seconds after he heard about the raid on Pearl Harbor but politics would not let him.
The entire tone of the early days of the war might have been a bit different if at the very hour that the last Japanese Pearl strike planes were still returning to their carriers the US had launched a successful air strike on Japanese air forces on the ground in Taiwan. It could have happened.
GUAM
Guam was located smack in the middle of the Japanese empire, and that was before the war started. Japan had coveted Guam since the end of World War I.
On December 10, 1941 the Japanese hit Guam with more than 5,000 troops. The US and Guam defense forces numbered about 250 Marines and 100 Guamanian (I’m pretty sure that’s not the right word for them) civilians with rifles. Guam had not been allowed to fortify itself between the wars for political reasons and stood no chance.
The battle for Guam lasted about eight minutes.. The US-Guam forces lost 17 KIA’s. The Japanese lost one soldier in the conquest of Guam. The US would not be take Guam back until 1944.
WAKE AND THE PW’S
Read a book, any book (there are several) about the battle for Wake Island. You will close the last page and just say ‘wow!’
There were 450 Marines and four Marine fighter planes defending Wake. 53 of them died in battle, 49 Marines and three Navy sailors. It took Japan two weeks to conquer the tiny island and its tiny airstrip. Before they surrendered the men of Wake sank two Japanese destroyers and a cruiser, damaged six transports, and had killed 1,300 Japanese men. The men on Wake surrendered when they ran out of bullets. The Japanese had won Wake and they immediately renamed it Bird Island.
The Japanese officer who accepted the white flag of surrender offered the American a cigarette and told him in fairly good English that “I have been to San Francisco.” But this little scene was no harbinger of the treatment these prisoners would get. The men who surrendered at Wake were singled out for special treatment. The 'Wakers' lived out the war in a tortured life under Japanese rule.
The Japanese were sadistic and cruel towards all American PW’s throughout the war. 96 out of every 100 Yanks in German PW camps survived to go home and see their families. Only 72% of the Americans in Japanese PW camps made it back, and that’s not including those who were executed as soon as they were taken alive and never made it to a camp.
The standard explanation, one which is pleasing to the macho Japanese ego, and accepted by most Americans to this very day, is that the Japanese were so tough and martial in spirit that they looked down with disgust on any soldier that was so weak as to surrender. They tortured and killed the PW’s because they thought of them as girly-men. Japanese soldiers never surrendered and shame on enemy troops who did. The Japanese always fought to the death so as for those on the other side who did not, well they deserved death and if that wasn’t meted out, a lifestyle of torture and abuse was the next step down. The Allied prisoners should be grateful for merely be allowed to live at all.
This explanation satisfies a lot of people on both sides. The Americans can at least feel that there was a reason for their terrible treatment, a reason that lies in the Japanese make-up. At least it wasn’t personal, but just a misunderstanding between two different cultural systems. The Japanese can feel that they may have been wrong on a human level, but not on a martial one. They can gloat with subtle pride they were indeed the more savage warriors of the two groups. All history book have a wink of approval for savage warriors they ostensibly condemn. The Japanese post-war memoirs all reflect this leftover conceit. ‘We lost the war’ they muse, ‘but we still gloat that we were tougher than them, no one surely can doubt that.’
But the explanation is bogus. Japanese treatment of prisoners was always far worse for those who fought hard than for those who surrendered meekly. This messes up the equation, does it not?
The Guam garrison had not put up much of a fight and surrendered quickly. These men were treated relatively well in captivity by Japanese standards. The troops of the Dutch East Indies who surrendered without a serious battle were treated comparatively well also. Singapore civilians and soldiers who surrendered even had an area of the city where they were allowed to go about their business in captivity like free-roaming chickens, a little Vichy Singapore. But the men who fought like top-notch samurai on Wake were singled out for exemplary punishment. All were beaten and tortured for years. On a routine and regulated basis, individuals from the Wake garrison would be summoned to kneel before the others. Then a Japanese swordsman cut off his head. So apparently there was nothing the Japanese respected more than a person who surrendered meekly, and nothing they hated more and respected less than soldier who fought to the last bullet. They were just mad because our guys had killed a lot of their guys. It had nothing to do with a superior standard of macho that our guys had somehow failed to live up to. So it was personal after all. It was also racial.
The Japanese hated the white race for it’s oppression of the yellow. They thought of their own race as the greatest in the world, and as a race destined to someday rule it. The PC American history books now set aside 5 five pages for self-flagellating descriptions of US racism against the Japanese before and during the war and how it helped lead to the war in the first place.
Points taken.
But the reverse gets a free pass. The incredibly over the top yellow racism against white that was all over Asia is never even mentioned! Its as if all racism starts from the white; as if honkies were cursed with some Biblical fault that they cannot help, while the Japanese never dished out a fair share of their own filthy racist mud. “Asia for the Asiatics” was the slogan of the Japanese as they conquered. That sounds like racism to me. They invented the term ‘chinks,’ by the way, these victims of American racism. They looked down on the Chinese as inferior and invented the nasty epithet 'chinks' to describe them.
As for the refusal of the Japanese to ever surrender, well that is mythical also. Yes, that did happen on many locations, especially when top-notch Japanese soldiers with excessive unit pride went into battle to defend the emperor in crucial battles at key stages of the war. These soldiers had a lot to lose if they were captured and a lot to win if they won, both personally and for the war effort. Because they were such elite soldiers their entire families would have been very humiliated if they did not come home in victory or in a can of ashes. They were essentially blackmailed in the rear by family humiliation, a cultural ‘ad’ for the commanders in the field.
But as the war went badly for Japan and defeat became certain, there were more and more surrenders. The second rate troops of the later war did not have as much pride on the table as the Japanese West Point guys who started up the war in 1941 and 42 (or in China since 1937.) Japanese Army men of 1944 were generally not of the same demographics as those of 1942.
We took thousands of Japanese prisoners in the Pacific War. Most documentaries on the war will imply that we might have captured two dozen total. But again, that is a myth of World War II. It lingers on because its political correct to verify and dignity Japanese martial qualities as an evil, yet somehow admirable thing. Like our Marines didn't match them in combat.
The Japanese only smacked America around in the first months of the war when we had inferior military hardware across the board and were vastly outnumbered. The myth of the superior Japanese soldier they can stuff where the rising sun don’t shine.
LASHUA
The Japanese occupied Lashua Island (just south of the Aleutians) on December 30, 1941. The Japanese found the island deserted and built a seaplane base there. A storm destroyed the base on December 28 and the Japanese left. Lashua came back to the states without a shot fired the first island taken in the island hopping campaign.
MALAYA DECEMBER 1941
When war seemed imminent Churchill sent two of Britain’s best battleships as part of a task force to Singapore. The two BB’s were supposed to be accompanied by a large aircraft carrier, but the Indomitable after service in the Mediterranean had to stop in England for some repairs. Churchill decided to sent the two big warships anyway. They would have to protect Malaya without fighter protection. This doomed the two battleships who would have to go it alone against Japanese air supremacy.
The two battleships sent to this dangerous mission were the Repulse and the Prince of Wales. Repulse was a heavy cruiser of 26,000 tons. It was not technically a ‘battleship’ but considering the superior efficiency of its heavy guns, Repulse by theatre standards was every inch a battleship. The 35,000 ton Prince of Wales was one of the greatest battleship in the world.
The Japanese war plan to start the war was to attack Malaya first as the primary objective. The Philippines would be attacked at the same time but lightly, with only coastal locations occupied to establish airfields. The bulk of Japanese land forces, about 45,000 men, in the Strike South would conquer Malaya. As for the two dreadnoughts in Singapore, the Japanese had a healthy fear of their big-gun and anti-aircraft power in a battle for Singapore but were confident they could sink these two beauties in a short-short if only they would be foolish enough to sortie out to sea for some reason or another.
In the week after Pearl Harbor Japan made several successful landings on both sides of the Malay peninsula. They also landed further north, in Thailand, which surrendered promptly on December the 9th. Way to go, Thailand.
On the eve of the Japanese landings the British scrambled Task Force Z, which consisted of Repulse, Prince of Wales, and four destroyers. They puttered out of Singapore to move north and meet the invading armadas.
They should have stayed put as fallback firepower in defense of Singapore but that is true only because we know what happened. It’s hard to imagine an admiral failing to make an attempt to stop the enemy. But it was undeniably ‘suipride’ (suicide in the name of pride) to go out and meet the Japanese air force in the open sea without fighter protection. The commanding admiral, Chester Phillips knew that he had little chance as he sailed out of Sing. The poster board on the Wales informed the sailors, “We are heading out to look for trouble.” They got it.
The Japanese air force sank both battleships in about 44 minutes! The Vals hit the Wales pretty hard with one bomb, but the torpedo planes did most of the damage. The Repulse went down with the bow pointed to the sky after taking several torpedoes. The Prince of Wales was hit by eight torpedoes on both sides in less than a single minute in one of the most spectacular moments in history. A few minutes later it became the Prince of Whales. So much for it’s earlier nickname, the HMS Unsinkable. The loss of these two important capital ships was a large strategic, tactical and psychological setback for the Allies.
The Prince and the Repulse were heavily armed with anti-aircraft guns and the pre-war conventional wisdom was that between this firepower and the watertight compartments, the hulks were virtually unsinkable. When the Japanese proved otherwise the entire playing table of naval warfare was turned upside down. In 44 minutes the era of the primacy of surface battleships, which had stood since about 1,000 B.C. came to an end.
The battleship as a concept was taking a real beating. First Pearl Harbor, now this.
The ships at Pearl Harbor had been sitting ducks, but this was another story. The Japanese pilots had taken down ships at full speed in the open sea and did it with ease. Pearl Harbor was bad, but this was worse. Some of the battleships at Pear Harbor weren't even critically damaged.
From now on air power would be a strategic factor in warfare. Air force was no longer just useful in support of naval and ground units. It was graduation day for air power, now officially a third power all it’s own. Pearl Harbor had been the first strategic air attack against a port city. Now air power had sunken battleships at full defense alert in the open waters.
A sad irony of that fateful day is that one of the chief advocates of air power before the war was the admirable Admiral Phillips. He was one of the leading proponents of the aircraft carrier and one of the severest critics of the good old battleships. Now he just happened to have been assigned to a situation in which he was proven right but at his own expense. Phillips went down went down with his ship. The commander of the Repulse tried to go down with the ship but his men bodily kidnapped him off the bridge and dragged him off to be rescued. Good for them. To hell with that macho nonsense. The Japanese did that throughout the war and did us a favor. Some of their best officer talent killed themselves when they lost a battle.
Thanks!
Churchill learned about the loss of his battleships the same way everyone else did. The Prime Minister picked up his morning paper the next day and spit out his tea. Japan now had about 15 battleships in the Pacific. The ABDA allies (American British Dutch Australian) had none. The Japanese had 10 large aircraft carriers. We had three. Things were going to get worse before they got better. We couldn't just say “abda-cadabra,” and presto 12 battleships and 12 fleet carriers appeared with 19 heavy cruisers 55 escort carriers beside them to save the day.
But that day would come.
ST PIERRE AND MIQUELON 12 24 1941
Vichy France still administered foreign territory including islands in the Caribbean. Two were located off the coast of Newfoundland. St Pierre and Miquelon were anachronisms left over from the old New World Empire of the Jesuit traders. SP/M were administered by Vichy French administrators.
The Vichy personnel were officially and adamantly neutral, and the US-UK alliance only dealt with Vichy in order to prevent the Germans from seizing the French Army and Navy. The French Navy was still formidable and was sitting neutrally in French ports. Hitler had not taken them over and painted them with swastikas, not yet. The Allies wanted to keep France neutralized. So we supped with the Vichy devils regularly. We wanted to keep the Vichy deal on the table to help win the military conflict.
But the Free French forces under Chuck de Gaulle had the pride of their flag on the table. They hated and fought Vichy France. It was civil war. They would rather see American die on the battlefield than the flag of France dishonored, and they were obstructionists towards American efforts to treat with Vichy.
The German U-boats were on the attack in the Atlantic from the first week of the US entry into the war and it was quickly realized that the radio transmitters on St Pierre and Miquelon would assist the subs in sinking Allied shipping, without direct political liability for the Vichy. Therefore the Canadian government, at war with Germany for some time now, had decided it would probably soon have to occupy these islands.
De Gaulle approached Churchill about getting permission to raid and seize these islands with his tiny resistance Free French Marine Corps. Winston advised patience and caution. He knew that the Americans would oppose this as disrupting to the strategic agreement in place with Vichy administrations all over the world. Churchill advised De Gaulle that it would be better for the Allies over the long haul if we let the Canadians do it. A small victory for French pride on two cold little islands a galaxy far far away from the battlefront could lead to major disadvantages for US troops later in North Africa or somewhere else in the line of fire.
De Gaulle ignored Churchill’s advice and at dawn on Christmas eve, 1941 Free French commandos slipped in through the two harbors and surprised the 12 Vichy security guards on the two islands. St Pierre and Miquelon had been conquered. De Gaulle proclaimed a great victory for France.
The commandos arrested the Vichy governor of the islands. He was led away in handcuffs amidst hecklers yelling “viva de Gaulle,” to which he defiantly yelled, “viva Petain!”
The American press ran with it and proclaimed the fabulous news. This angered Secretary of State Cordell Hull who felt that all the work the state department had done to reach an accommodation with Vichy France had been undermined by this reckless chauvinist adventure. Cordy spoke his mind to the press. Hull caught hell from the American public and press for condemning the taking of the Pierre/Miquelon fortresses, and he was bitter about it for some time.
Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles praised the action. Secretary of State Hull boss never forgave him for the disloyalty. Hull eventually forced Welles to leave office.
ARCADIA CONFERENCE
Churchill was glad to have Uncle Sam in the war and he traveled to the United States to confer with Roosevelt and the American leaders on December 22. Churchill spent a lot time in America during the first two months after Pearl Harbor.
HONG KONG FALLS
On Christmas Day 1941 “the Japs” took Hong Kong. One of the reasons the city had to surrender was a lack of fresh water. It would be the same story later at Singapore.
The men of the Japanese army systematically murdered thousands of Hong Kong's civilians, delivering a message of terror for all the world to hear. Hospitals were the scene of merciless sadistic violence. The sick and helpless were bayoneted in their beds for no good reason. Rape was a matter of course. Many nurses were raped and murdered in Hong Kong in December of 1941. Merry Christmas.
CURTAINS FOR AUSTRALIA
The continent of Australia was the last stronghold of western power and democracy in the Far East as the year 1941 came to a close. The fall of Australia to the Japanese was unacceptable for Roosevelt and Churchill too.
It was even more unacceptable to Craig Curtain, the prime Minister of Australia. Curtain made a speech to the Australian nation on December 29, in which he aligned himself completely with the United States and virtually severed the historic tied with England, at least for the expedient moment.
Churchill and Curtain had been quarreling over a number of issues for some time. After December 7, the Australian troops fighting in North Africa, a full division of them, were ordered to go back home to defend Australia. It seemed like the right thing to do.
But when the Australian division was halfway across the Pacific, Churchill decided that these troops were needed in Burma far more than in Australia. He tried to order the Aussie force to Burma, but Curtain stood up to him and demanded that these troops were going to their homeland of Australia.
Churchill tried to remind Curtain that Australia wasn't actually in any great danger. The Japanese weren't likely to actually invade Australia, a few raids notwithstanding. On the other hand the Burma front was in the balance and the Australian division would turn the course of battle and help win the war.
Curtain got very mad at this and some sharp words were exchanged between he and Mr. Churchill.
In the middle of these strained relations, Curtain made this speech of December 29, 1941 saying Australia now turns completely to the United States for help.
There was a bad reaction to the speech in England of course, but the Aussies didn't like the speech much more than the British did. Even those listening in the United States didn't think it did anyone a lot of good. Curtain's speech was a diplomatic blunder, although relatively harmless in the long run.
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WORLD WAR II 1942
This is divided into three sections – The War in the Pacific – The War in Europe, and the War on the home front – The political war is sprinkled throughout.
On January 1 1942 the harassed British forces in Malaya received six new desperately needed landing craft from the US. They were needed for moving troops from one defensive position to another in their delaying action in front of Singapore. The six were sunk by Japanese planes within hours of being delivered. Happy New year!
DECLARATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt that coined the term “United Nations.” Churchill preferred 'Allied Nations' but the ‘United Nations’ stuck and carried on until it re-invented itself as the post-war peace institution by the same name. FDR's insatiable desire for a Wilsonian post-war dream come true led to many bad things happening overall. If he had only kept his goals conditional on Soviet behavior, the Cold War might have been won before it started.
By the “UN Declaration” of January 1, 1942 the United Nations began on January 1, 1942. The nations allied in the fight against Hitler signed it. It included a promise to not make a separate peace with an Axis enemy state. The UN Declaration included an agreement to continue on with the Atlantic Charter as a virtual constitution for how the war should be run and also how it should be concluded. All of UN Declaration signees pledged to support “religious freedom.” This was a delicate subject with the Communists, i.e. the Russians.
The Soviets were against religion (they allowed it, but it was discouraged and most of the priests were secret police,) and the Atlantic Charter had said nothing about the subject. FDR took a lot of criticism for forgetting to get Soviet agreement on freedom of religion, a sin of omission, back in the fall. The US now had to find a way to full UN get support for a religious plank without making the Soviets mad. It was solved through semantic hair-splitting by the ever clever Franklin.
FDR told several people how he had persuaded Litvinov to rethink the issue. “Freedom of Religion, ” he told the Russian Foreign Minister, implies that all are religious but are free to pick their favorite one. But, he added, “religious freedom” implies that that atheist, agnostic or anti-religious view was one of the free choices. This fit the Soviet Union. So Litvinov could agree to the wording on “religious freedom,” but not to “freedom of religion.”
FDR’s head speechwriter Sammy Rosenman thought that Roosevelt was naïve to think he had persuaded Litvinov on the basis of this argument. And Rosenman loved Roosevelt. If Rosenman is right, then why did the Soviets concede the issue? Probably because they wanted the lend-lease and a second-front more than they wanted to win a debating point. Besides, they were planning to grant more religious freedom at home anyway, as a war measure. So they took something they were going to do anyway, put up an argument that they refused to do it, then conceded the point, thus making it look like now FDR owed them a favor. They were always always more clever than Roosevelt and he always always thought he was more clever than them.
Soviet internal propaganda was integral to Stalin’s survival. The entire length of the Russian Soviet empire had to remain loyal. If Stalin had to let everyone go to church for a couple of hundred Sundays to win the war, he would do it. He could always close them again after the war, leaving a few show churches open for western photographers. Stalin conceding on religion was Lincoln telling Greeley that if he had to keep all the slaves in bondage to save the union, he would do it.
The Grand Strategy of the Allies in Europe over the next four years was a debate between the American desire to attack the continent in full force as soon as possible, and the British desire to wear down Germany first and to invade only when victory seemed overwhelmingly easy. The US wanted to get in and slug it out. Britian wanted to bomb them to oblivion and then waltz to Berlin through the rubble.
World War One was largely to blame for this division between the two states and the two states of mind. The UK had a psychological make-up based on its WWI memory. The Great War was five years of hell on a sluggish stalemated battlefield; 15 rounds of indecisive slugging with both sides tired but showing no signs of going down; five years of useless astronomical casualties. The USA had no such fear, for its own WWI experience determined its psychological makeup. America had seen less than one full year of combat, and topped it off with a smashing breakthrough to victory at the end. The U.S. vision of war was not ‘stuck in the mud.’
RIO CONFERENCE – JANUARY 15-28
The USA needed the rest of the on it's side, or at least at it's side. They ended up settling for at it's side at the Rio Conference. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles went t Rio as FDR's personal representative.
The ultimate aim would be to get all the nations of South America to declare war on the Axis powers. That was unrealistic at this time. Of course, they all would do so in late 1943 when it was obvious which bandwagon was worth riding on.
For now, the USA would settle for getting all the nations to break diplomatic relations with the Axis powers, plus sever all economic trade relations.
Chile and Argentina were the least co-operative. Brazil was not exactly helpful on the economic issues. But in the end most of the nations did break diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan. Sumner Welles was treated like royalty wherever he went. Even though there were a lot of issues to be worked out, there was a general feeling that even those South American nations with large German populations knew that Hitler was evil and so was Nazi Germany. The Rio Conference of january 1942 was a limited yet solid success. The FDR Administration was very concerned about the potential of the Axis to infiltrate the U.S. southern flank, and Rio was a big step towards establishing a malevolent neutrality there towards the Axis.
HOME FRONT STRATEGY 42
Pearl Harbor gave the population all the morale it needed; at first that is. When the battlefields turned up nothing but bad news for months it was time to put the government to work on the ‘hearts and minds’ issue at home. Nazi Goebbels in his diary was gloating in early 1942 that “the big mouth blowhard Roosevelt is losing support at home because he has no victories to show for all his talk.” He was right.
American officials stressed that the major enemy was Hitler. Japan and Italy were called secondary fronts. The Dutch and the Chinese objected strongly. The son of Sun Yat Sen, declared that China might have to seek a separate peace with the Japanese if the Americans maintained this attitude. The administration backed down a little, but for the entire war there was never any debate among the leaders of the US, both military and civilian. Most of the effort had to be directed against Germany. Our guys in the Pacific would have to fight for years with one hand tied behind their back.
But this was problematic. Most Americans were not one fifth as angry at Hitler as they were at “the Japs.” It was hard for many to accept that Japan was a sideshow compared to the real war against Hitler.
Another one of the major problems FDR faced was the contradiction of soliciting big business to help him win the war when all he had done for the first 10 years in office was to try and destroy it. The ‘economic royalists’ he had hit so hard and often with his left fist of socialism now had to come on board. It wasn’t an easy political situation to get though.
For starters FDR had to lay off the anti-trust prosecutions throughout the war as the price of doing business with big business. Many New Dealers were angry at him for this compromise, but he could hardly get GM and General Electric on his side while trying at he same time to bust them up like his second cousin Teddy. Politics makes strange bedfellows, while war makes overt prostitutes. FDR consistently alienated many of the best and most sincere veteran New Dealers throughout the war. They felt he was compromising their hopes and dreams in domestic politics. Roosevelt tried to appease them by declaring hope for a New Deal for the entire world after the war was won, but it was just empty rhetoric.
To make sure everyone understood that the war was a struggle in defense of freedom, Roosevelt immediately after Pearl Harbor set up the Office of Censorship (that was sarcasm, btw.) All media was scrutinized for violations. Personal letters of all soldiers and citizens were regularly opened for security purposes.
The FDR team also established the OWI, the Office of War Information, to promote the cause to the people. It should have been called the OWP the Office of War Propaganda.
Roosevelt gave an important ‘Fireside chat’ speech to the nation by radio on Washington’s birthday 1942. You might call it ‘map night’ in America. Roosevelt asked the newspapers of the country to print large maps of the world and its war zones to help his listeners follow the speech. The papers complied and the President gave a long radio address outlining the situation all over the world as millions of Americans pored over the maps and focused on his serious message.
Hitler had to be the number one priority. The people didn’t want to hear this but Roosevelt didn’t sugar-coat it. To be sure, Japan was threatening to take not only all of southeast Asia and the Indonesian region, and she was also capable of threatening Australia and India. The Allies feared Japan linking up with Germany in the Middle East. Roosevelt admitted these threats were real, but ..
The problem was that the distance was too great and the enemy too scattered in the Pacific. The forces we sent over there might prove both ineffective and too vulnerable at this time. Fighter planes had to be shipped over in crates on freighters. It was risky. Several squadrons of our top air weapons could be sunk by a single Japanese torpedo.
Roosevelt believed (or pretended to believe) that Japan had largely entered the war as part of an Axis grand strategy to divert Allied forces and supplies from the European theatre to the Asian and thus help the Germans win their war. He wasn’t going to take the bait, he told America. He said that nothing would have pleased the Germans more than to see the USA send all it’s might against Japan while putting the German front on the back burner.
We know today that the Axis was not as closely knit as all that, and no such clever Axis grand strategy was contemplated. Japan did not enter the war to help relieve the pressure on the Russian or North African front. But Roosevelt’s assertion of such a plan was a logical fear at the time for any citizen to embrace. FDR may not have even actually believed this, and may have merely used it as an excuse to sell the 'Smash Germany First' plan to the US public.
It was a good speech, coming one day after his address to Congress in which he said that we would pay the Axis back ‘with compound interest.’(while twisting his fist menacingly on the syllable 'pound.' - his live audience appreciated it))
The fireside chat included a pithy satire on Hitler’s quest for ‘living space.’ Roosevelt said that “the world is too small to provide adequate living space for both Hitler and God.”
Good one.
“The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war,” he continued, “but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it.”
That's right on, brother. That's right on.
THE RAT IN THE HAT (UNCLE SAM'S)– JAPANESE INTERNMENT
Shortly after Pearl Harbor a plan was discussed in Washington to take all the Japanese Americans and put them into special camps so they could not commit sabotage against the United States. In the eyes of suspicious Americans they were Japanese first and Americans second, or, as a Mississippi Senator cried in Congress, “Once a Jap, always a Jap.” What he might have added is “Once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist.”
Many California politicians called out for the inglorious internment policy. Attorney General Warren of California pleaded for federal protection and claimed to speak for every sheriff in the state. No one should question his veracity. This was the same Earl Warren who's famed commission 24 years later would conclude that a one gunman named Oswald had killed JFK.
An ostensibly liberal New York newspaper, P.M., led the call for imprisoning the Japanese-Americans. P.M. published a series of cartoons depicting Japanese-Americans on the west coast planning violent acts against the USA. One drawing showed very slanty Japanese-Americans in a long line with evil smiles outside of a private residence waiting to pick up their load of dynamite. Another drawing showed two Japanese men smiling in front of the radio saying to each other “Remember Pearl Harbor.” The author of the cartoons was none other than Theodore Geisel the later famous Dr. Seuss children's books.
You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch!
Many on the FDR team were very much against internment. At a critical White House meeting it was FDR who pushed the idea forcefully. The very white Dutchman would not back down.
A few of his advisors liked it (Morganthau for one) but not most. Even J. Edgar Hoover protested to Roosevelt that these folks were loyal Americans and that his FBI had discovered absolutely no evidence that Japanese-Americans were planning any acts of sabotage against the United States Government. Attorney General Frank Biddle told Roosevelt, “You cannot do this. It is wrong in every way.” Roosevelt just stared at him. Assistant AG Jim Rowe worked up the nerve to give Roosevelt his best angry stare. Harold Ickes said the idea was “cruel and moronic.” FDR became more angry and said, “I'm going to do it. So stop wasting time and energy debating it.”
Roosevelt then went one step further than anyone else had ever contemplated. He insisted on Feb 26, 1942 that all the Japanese-Americans on Hawaii should be shipped east and interned, (a euphemism for imprisoned.) Roosevelt scoffed at those who disagreed, reminding them that Hawaii was under martial law, so the Constitution didn't apply at the moment (as if it ever had for Roosevelt.) FDR backed off only because of the pleas of his military chiefs who told him that the Japanese-American skilled workers in Hawaii were indispensable for the war effort. The Hawaiian slanties were allowed to stay.
When Teddy Geisel heard that the Japanese in Hawaii would not be removed he vowed revenge. The great cartoonist would write a Christmas tale about a half-human monster that tries to steal Christmas and he would make the bad guy look remarkably Japanese.
THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES
The Japanese made several successful landings in the Philippines against light resistance.
The Japanese hoped to engage the Americans and Philippinos in a decisive battle for the City of Manila. But MacArthur and Wainright avoided that trap. The U.S. Army evacuated Manila and fell back to a defensive front on the Bataan peninsula.
Fighting on Luzon and the Bataan peninsula was fierce. The Americans and Philippinos fought hard but their calls for reinforcements went unheard in the states. FDR and General Marshall turned a deaf ear. The top brass had decided at the Arcadia conference that the Philippines could not be saved and that to reinforce the garrison there would do no good at all. The arms sent there would probably fall soon into enemy hands. More important, the leaders in Washington had made a definite decision that because Hitler was priority one, nothing substantial could be spared for the Pacific right now, even if it might help a desperate.
President Quezon of the Philippines was furious with Roosevelt for abandoning his little brown brother. He sent him some testy telegrams,
“You promised us before the war that you would never
abandon us. Now you are abandoning us. URA Liar!”
MacArthur tried his hand at lying too. He told the troops that thousands of fresh troops were on their way to help, along with hundreds of planes. Doug was just trying a desperate ruse to keep the fighting morale up, but I think he was wrong for lying like that to these desperate fighters.
The US-Philippine Army continued to slowly fall back on the Bataan peninsula, putting up an effective delaying action. Tokyo reprimanded the Japanese commander of the front by telegraph that every other front is one victory after another after another, except the Philippines.
President Quezon cabled FDR that if you won't help us, then grant Philippine independence immediately. Then we will declare our neutrality in the war, and both the United States and Japan will have to withdraw from our territory.
He really said this.
Was Quezon foolish enough to believe this would work even if FDR had said yes? The Japanese were doing a Ghengis Kahn on the entire Far East and he thinks they're going to depart from an invaded strategic island because of a transparent political restructuring. I hope he was just trying to influence FDR. I don't want to think that Quezon was even dumber than Neville Chamberlain. FDR said no.
The Japanese continued to plow forward. Then MacArthur retreated (he'd never write it that way) to the small island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Harbor. Corregidor was a tiny mountainous island and had a large underground bunker where a few thousand people could live and fight on while the bombs fell overhead.
President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to evacuate the Philippines and go to Australia where he could use his skills and fame to continue the war from there. He was to go down under to prepare for the big counter-attack.
What Franklin didn't tell MacArthur was that he was worried about the ability of Australia to even survive the next attack and wanted MacArthur there for a last ditch stand there.
Mac didn't want to leave the rock. FDR insisted that he leave. MacArthur considered defying a direct presidential order. One of MacArthur's close aides suggested to him that a counteroffensive strike was obviously being planned and organized in Australia and that was obviously why FDR wanted him there. This satisfied Douggie just enough to persuade him to evacuate him and his family out of there. Up to this point the big guy was willing to let his family die in a Japanese POW camp.
It was arranged to slip MacArthur out of Corregidor at night on a submarine. But that was too wimpy for MacArthur's taste. He insisted on the more dangerous PT boat as the means of escape. It would look better in the history books. So what if his family might be killed by a Japanese destroyer.
The PT boat slipped through the Japanese blockade around Luzon and soon MacArthur was in Australia, where he learned that there was no counteroffensive being planned. He was stunned to learn that there wasn't even a single trained division on the island, not even an Australian one. There were no reinforcements on the way to the Philippines, nor were there any headed towards Australia.
FDR and the Joint Chiefs felt that the only way Australia could be heftily reinforced at this time would be to weaken the defenses of the West Coast of the USA or the Panama Canal, neither of which were acceptable. Australia would just have to hang on for now, until American war industry could get it's wheels turning into a war production machine.
So the Philippines were abandoned. Australia would not even be reinforced. MacArthur was so mad when he found all this out that he tossed his pipe through a closed window while it was fully lit. Then he went out and gave a speech to a crowd of cheering Aussies in Melbourne in which he uttered the immortal phrase, “I came through from the Philippines and I shall return.”
ADBA military chiefs began to plan a fallback defensive operation for Australia when (not if) the Japanese invaded. The northern third of the continent would be sacrificed and the more populated southern half would be defended to the death. MacArthur told them what they could do with this plan. He wanted everyone to think offense. Even a small offensive operation would send a signal of immense psychological value.
Back at the rock General Wainwright was surrounded by Japanese troops and was under attack by Japanese ships and planes. The men trapped on Corregidor could hold on, but could not inflict casualties on the enemy. They just sat there starving, wounded, hopeless and under orders from macho-Mac to not surrender. It was Hitlerian idiocy to demand this of Wainwright. A white flag was finally raised on Corregidor and the Americans and their little brown brothers fell into the hell of Japanese captivity.
Then came the infamous “Bataan Death March.” The Japs (can I call them that in this instance?) forced the PW's to march the length of the Bataan peninsula to a despicable camp, but the march was worse than the camp. Our guys were tortured as they marched. A man who asked for a rest or a sip of water would get a bayonet through his leg while the Japanese soldiers laughed. They were slapped, kicked, beaten, shot, and sometimes even called bad names. This type of brutality against prisoners had been absolutely unknown in World War One, unless you count the Turks in Armenia.
The guys running the show were the Japanese Army vets of Nanking and Hong Kong. They'd already killed and raped thousands of Chinese female civilians just for kicks. It was actually no big deal for them to torture and kill American and Philippino Prisoners of War as they marched them to the camp.
For this suffering, these heroes became known all across America as the “Battling Bastards of Japan.” That was a big swear word for 1942 and using it commonly in the US media was a mark of how mad we were.
Their suffering was not in vain. These bastards stimulated American morale 50 times better than they could have if they had been treated decently, and 25 times better than if they had held on another two months and not surrendered. Bataan doubled up the spirit of Pearl Harbor. The sneak attack that killed 2,500 sailors was bad enough, now they're torturing and murdering our prisoners.
Next time you're planning to watch a horror movie, why not invest the two hours reading about what happened to our guys on Bataan. It's a lot more horrible and a lot more educational. And it's a lot more frightening than a computer monster because it's the evil in ourselves.
When Doug Mac heard that Wainwright had surrendered Corrigedor he hit the roof. Easy for him to say from an air conditioned bivouac in Perth. What was Wainwright supposed to do, just sit there and watch his men die? They had no offensive capability at all. They all signed to fight for their country, not sit there and just die. That's not the American way. That's not what we ask of our troops. That's part of the reason American military morale remains high. We value lives, and try to protect them.
Most histories of the war assert that the defensive holding action in the Philippines served a strategic purpose for the Allies by slowing down the Japanese strike south by several weeks. But that opinion has been largely revised. Now the consensus seems to be that it made little or no difference in the red meatball timetable. The first version may have been wishful thinking by loyal American writers who wanted to salute the bastards by exaggerating the importance of their fight. Sadly, they contributed far more to the Allied effort by their suffering than they did by their fighting.
It's not easy trying to comprehend this incomprehensible Japanese barbarity. Here are a few possible explanations.
Firstly, this was Asia, not Europe. Even back in 1776 the rules of war were different, according to continent. “Life is cheap in the east” went the phrase. Prisoners were considered despicable cowards, not only to the Japanese in 1942, but also to the Chinese in 1842 or the Malayans in 1799. Ghengis Kahn didn't take any prisoners. Julius Caesar put his prisoners to work as slaves. It was a different mindset, a continental divide.
This 'slay the prisoners' attitude is always attributed to the Japanese military mindset of 1942 but it goes deeper and farther back than that. American shipwrecked sailors who landed on Japan in the early 1800's were hacked to death as soon as they waved hello to their rescuers. That was the mentality of Asia. US GI's ran up against the same shocking reality in Vietnam in the 1960's.
The other slightly exculpatory factor is that Japanese troops were like the serial killer that was beaten every day by their father. It doesn't absolve them, but it explains them. War memoirs of Japanese regulars are most shocking in the early chapters covering their days in training. The Japanese draftee was beaten severely for the most trivial offense from the first day of boot camp. Japanese training officers made the rough sarge in Full Metal Jacket look like a marshmallow. How could we then expect any of them to act mercifully towards PWs years later, and after weeks of hard combat? It was a little late for them to change their ways.
Lastly, the Japanese were following orders. The cruelty was ordered from the top down. It was a chain of evil that reached eventually all the way back to the Emperor and his wicked brother-in-lawless. Nanking and Bataan were not spontaneous.
FAR EAST ABDA STRATEGY
As 1942 opened there was a sense of panic in Australia. Japan had conquered far more than anyone had dreamed possible. It looked like Malaya would fall soon and Singapore could not hold out much longer after that. What would be the strategy for the ABDA coalition? The Americans, the British, the Dutch and the Australians didn’t have many good options.
Curtain and Churchill continued quarreling. Prime Minister Curtin of Australia wrote to Churchill begging for serious reinforcements for the Malayan front. If Singapore fell the Australians would consider their country more of less defenseless. Then it would be curtains for Curtin and the land down under. Half way measures would be a wasted effort, wrote the Aussie PM. If serious help isn’t pumped into the theatre immediately, the British could kiss the entire south Asia front good-bye. Curtin added a dig at the British failures at Crete and Greece. He warned that if the British failed to provide air support for Malaya, the same thing would happen here as at Crete and Greece.
Churchill responded with a sharp and testy letter back to Curtin explaining that he should be grateful for what supplies were heading to Southeast Asia as it is. With the battle for North Africa still hanging in the balance and the threat of a link between the German armies heading south from the Baku oil fields and Rommel’s heading east to and possibly past Suez still real, surely Curtin could expect only small help. And Winston didn’t appreciate being called out for his failures at Crete and Greece. He had warned the world for all of the 1930’s about the Nazi menace and was laughed off the floor of Parliament by the leftists and labor. Now he was being taken to task for not running the war properly when it was he all along that had pleaded for the defense build-up needed before the war started.
How was anyone to know, wrote Churchill, that the US Pacific fleet would perish at Pearl Harbor in 48 minutes and change the balance of power in the Pacific? And no one in England, Singapore, or Washington had expected Japanese planes to sink the Repulse and Prince of Wales in the time it takes to make a pizza. The USUK alliance had taken adequate measures to protect Australia. But the alliance had not foreseen the unforeseeable, and who can blame anyone for that now? It was indeed too late to get adequate reinforcements to Malaya, hence protecting Australia. So the only thing left was to retreat to Singapore and hold on for dear life until America could transfer some warships from the Atlantic and commence in its naval industrial war construction program. The American fleet was supposed to play the role of the stepfather looking after the Aussies, but now we all had to face reality. Sam was passed out at in the back alley of a bar called Pearl Harbor and wasn’t coming home to protect the family for a while. You kids are just going to have to take care of yourselves for a few nights.
Churchill also questioned the fairness of the Australian criticism in light of it’s government’s record. Australia’s volunteer divisions had fought hard and well against he Nazis in the Middle East, but the land down under still did not have a mandatory military draft in effect in this desperate hour. If you want to blame somebody, look in the mirror at the Labor Party in both countries whose policy of appeasement had created this entire mess in the first place.
The letter fight between the two Prime Ministers is fun reading. Curtin reportedly drafted a letter calling Churchill and ‘ugly arrogant squid’ but he never mailed it.
A word on strategy; The sinking of the British Singapore war wagons did not mean the end of naval power by a long shot and this is where our old friend Billy Mitchell was wrong. Billy had predicted that long-range land-based armed aircraft would soon make naval war obsolete. But it was the aircraft carrier, properly protected by surface battleships, that would now become the most important strategic element in the fight. Naval power had not been reduced to nil as Mitchell had prophesied. It had simply been reconstituted in a different formula. In fact, land-based strategic air did not turn the tide in either theatre until it the summer of 1945 when it won the Pacific war with fire raids and two atomic bombs. Naval power was still supreme as 1942 dawned and for the first four years of the war naval power was to remain supreme. World War II in the Pacific was a war between aircraft carriers, not land based super-bombers.
Back in Malaya the Japanese won almost every battle and continued to advance on Singapore at a rate never dreamed possible before the war. A small but powerful fleet of reinforcements was on the way. Included were 50 modern Hurricane fighters, much an upgrade over the Wildebeest fighter planes then in service there. All available Allied air power was diverted from ground support to convoy protection. These ships had to get through if Singapore could hope to survive. But the ground campaign suffered for lost air protection. The convoy got through and the 50 Hurricanes put up a good fight but were soon reduced to nil from sheer inferiority in numbers.
The Allies were ill prepared in countless ways. The opposite was true for the Japanese. Their spies had even set up several depots full of bicycles deep in the Malayan jungle before the war began. Many soldiers landing at Kota Bharu were soon biking their way towards Singapore with a rifle on their back.
War Map of Malaya January 1942
As the Japanese gained control of Jehore province the defense realized to their horror that Singapore’s expensive and powerful defenses were designed only to repel an attack in the front from the sea. There were virtually no defenses to speak of against an attack from behind on land. It was a classic military blunder. Churchill and his Asian military commanders exchanged a lot of blame-throwing telegrams across the oceans while the sky fell on the Malayan front. The Prime Minister sent over a long list of obvious things to do with a tone that these talking point suggestions would somehow turn the tide if only they were followed strictly. The defenders sent back telegrams suggesting that these suggestions were being tried and were of no use. Their diplo-speak translated reads ‘We’re getting killed over here while you’re pointing fingers at us telling us that we aren’t doing things properly, and weren’t intelligently prepared. Thanks for the help, friend.’
Churchill had reinforcements on the way to Singapore but began to have second thoughts. He began hinting to his colleagues in London that maybe it was a dumb idea to send reinforcements to Singapore. What a waste in this desperate hour to send reinforcements to Singapore when it was surely doomed. It was throwing resources away! Why not do the only wise thing and keep those reinforcement moving on to Burma instead. This was a place where they could make a decisive difference. Churchill stirred up the subject but it created a storm of indignation both in London and in Singapore, and deservedly so. The leaders in Singapore wrote that they had been stabbed in the back by the mere idea. Singapore had been begging for more defensive help in the years before the war and had been told, ‘don’t worry, if war breaks out we will be there for you.’ Now that they were losing the war for the Malay peninsula the UK was going to say, ‘hey we don’t remember saying that.’ So much for leaving no one behind. Much to his ruthless chagrin, Singapore got the reinforcements that Churchill wanted to divert to Burma. Churchill sat back quietly as the debate went on and people, fortunately for him, forgot that he had originated the idea.
The city-state of Singapore was supposed to be an impregnable fortress, but that was analysis based on an attack that was presumed to come from the sea. The Japanese landed well north of Singapore, high up on the Malay peninsula. After fighting to Singapore island on land, they were able to invest the city from behind and force its surrender.
With the Japanese closing in on Singapore City, Churchill sent on February 10, 1942 a telegram to its defenders.
“I think you ought to realize the way we view [from here in
London] the situation in Singapore. … In these circumstances
the defenders must greatly outnumber Japanese forces who
have crossed the straights, and in a well-contested battle they
should destroy them. There must at this stage be no thought
of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must
be fought to the bitter end at all costs. The 18th division has a
chance to make its name in history. Commanders and senior
officers should die with their troops. … the whole reputation
of our country and our race is involved.”
When Winston was in the Boer War he escaped from a PW camp. He didn’t try to kill five Boer guards and die for the cause. His instinct was for survival. Soldiers in a modern democracy aren’t told to fight to the death or be called yellow. That isn’t fair. That’s what Hitler tried to make the defenders do on the Russian front, and it’s a shame to see such orders being sent out in a war crisis to democratic fighting men. But Winston could not countenance the political fallout form the ignoble loss of Singapore, so therefore everyone had to die, even civilians, to buy some time. No British unit in North Africa faced such a dire command, but Singapore was special. He specifically mentioned the hard fight the Americans were putting on at Luzon and how we couldn’t get shown up that way either. So often it was all about pride.
But Winston did at least concede that the Japanese would not be defeated easily. He allowed that it would be a “well-contested battle.” But you guys are now under orders to not lose. Before you were taking your chances fair and square on the battlefield like any other soldiers in all of history, but now since Winston has spoken, it was no surrender. I’m giving you orders.
The volunteer military garrisons defending Malaya and Singapore were not well trained. Many became terrorized by stories about Japanese atrocities and fanaticism on the battlefield. Morale was low even before the battles were joined and the inferiority in equipment and firepower was a mega-downer.
The scene at the Alexandra Barracks Hospital on Singapore island said it all about the nature of the two forces. ABH was located on the northern part of the island. A regiment of Nanking veterans of the 16th Division snuck in behind the lines and took the hospital by surprise on February 13. There were no troops defending the place so it would be irrelevant to say that the hospital “surrendered.”
The Japanese knew what to do when they entered the emergency room and spoke to the receptionist. They killed her. Then the troops made the rounds like priests and rabbis visiting the terminally ill. They killed more than 300 people in the most savage manner, including 230 patients in their beds or on operating tables. They didn't waste ammo. Most of the work was done by bayonet. The Japanese burst into one room where an operation was in progress. They killed the patient first and then the doctors. One Australian who was captured at Singapore remarked 60 years later with tears in his eyes, “I can’t imagine our blokes ever doing anything like that.”
On the 14th the Japanese commander allowed a few survivors from the hospital to go back to the Allied defense perimeter so they could tell their terror tales. He wanted Percival to surrender, but he also knew that the Allies had more manpower on hand than the Japanese. If the combined forces of Brits, Aussies, Malayans, and Chinese troops fought like maniacs to the death, the fall of Singapore would be quite costly. If he could induce surrender through threat of terror against Singapore's civilians, the fall of Singapore would be cost efficient.
The terrorism worked, but not because Percival was not willing to fight if he had a fighting chance. But his troops were relatively second-rate and he had no air or naval support. Every battle was being lost and there was no reason to hope for any change. He was like Isaac Hull at Detroit in 1813 except that this time, the reports of massacres of woman and children by wild savages was completely true and confirmed by eyewitness reports.
Percival surrendered to the 'Tiger of Malaya' Yamashita on February 15, 1942 at a Ford factory at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula.
Thousand of civilians were murdered after Singapore fell. Hundreds of women were raped and then bayoneted by Japanese men. Ho hum. That was standard operational procedure for the Japanese Army in World War II.
Later in the war, Hirohito ordered the public execution of several American bomber crewmen because of their war crimes against Japanese civilians. Of all the hypocrisy.
WINSTON POWER PLAY IN PARLIAMENT JANUARY 1942
Churchill handled criticism even more poorly than I do!
The Prime Minister was tired of all the criticism of how he was handling the war. Usually he responded by blaming others for all his mistakes, with long winded berating of anyone who criticized him, long tedious explanations of why his decisions were infallible, and then, when there was no way anyone dared speak up to continue the argument even if they had valid points, he would announce that “I of course take full responsibility for all the mistakes that have been made.”
This is poor in spirit on many levels. First you blame others then claim to be such a big man that you will take the blame for their mistakes. After I have made it clear that no one dares to criticize me without a ten to one retaliation that is made effective by the pulling of rank, then I put a sign on my desk that says “The Buck Stops Here.” Trumanesque indeed. Harry Truman and Winston Churchill both have one thing in common for me. I loved both these guys until I read their tirelessly vicious and conceited memoirs. When others tell their story for them they look like complete heroes. When they tell their own story they look bad.
So Churchill had this great plan to kill all criticism. In the middle of a war, he would demand a personal vote of confidence from Parliament! Now he’ll get twice the power at no risk, while pretending to be taking a great risk.
Genius! Who in their right mind would dare to vote against a national leader in wartime? No one! What a plan! This is a brave political risk in peacetime when anyone can speak and vote freely. In wartime, it is a fraud.
Near the end of January 1942 he asked for this vote of confidence or else he shouldn’t continue on as the great leader. During the debate he kept referring to this impending vote of confidence in “the government” when he had specifically made this a referendum on him personally. This is just another one of his pretentious humilities. It looks better to ask for a vote of confidence in “your government.” With consummate slickness Winston makes his critics seem 100 times more vicious then they really are. When they really are against one insufferable man, he makes it seem that they are against the entire British government at a time of war!
In my lifetime there have been three or four times when my country has been in a war condition. Every time the President of the United States has asked for Congressional support in a military crisis he has had it in spades. Many Congresspersons did not vote their conscience because they were torn by conflicting emotions and they did not want to get voted out of office. Who could not understand that? So a vote of confidence in wartime is not an honest referendum, it is a Stalinist power play to ensure critic-free authority to conduct the war as one sees personally fit to conduct it. You smother all opposition in the Union Jack cloth at a time when no MP could ever vote against Winston and dream of re-election. But if you did not call the vote of confidence these MP’s could continue offer the righteous criticisms that should be heard in order to add qualities of fairness and decency to the decisions affecting the lives of a million fighting men.
Churchill taunted and challenged all his critics to come out in the open and show their true colors, knowing that he was putting them in a position where they could not. He was the little punk backed by a gang of bullies telling the other guy, “go ahead, take a swing at me. I dare you. Here’s my chin. The first one’s free. Let’s see what you got.” The gang of bullies was the blackmail of a war condition. The fearful trust we put in a national leader in wartime is an unfair political advantage. Churchill knew how to exploit it. He told the House,
“If an honorable gentleman dislikes the government
very much and feels it is in the public interest that it
should be broken up, he ought to have the manhood
to testify his convictions in the lobby. There is no
objection to anything being said in plain English, or
even plainer, and the government will do their utmost
to conform to any standard which may be set in the
course of the debate. But no one need to be mealy-
mouthed in debate, and no one should be chicken-
hearted in voting.”
The final vote of confidence in January 1942 for Churchill was 464 to 1. At least a hundred were voting to save their political seat under the duress of war.
Does 464 to 1 make any sense to anyone? It makes perfect sense if what I said above was true. Idi Amin didn’t win elections in Uganda by that much of a majority. Is it possible that only one person in Parliament was against Winston Churchill at this time? It is more logical that the Liverpool football club wins their next 464 consecutive matches, and without giving up a single goal.
The ‘vote of confidence’ (by a real ‘confidence man’) was nothing more than a classic power play. Well done, sport. This was not your finest hour.
This mentality is partly why Churchill was so angry later in the war when Marshall and Eisenhower dared to override some of his decisions. He had become accustomed to the role of dictator of the United Kingdom. It was a great fall to earth when he realized he couldn’t demand a vote of confidence in the US Capitol building. He couldn't use strong-arm tactics to retain the right to continue conducting the war like a boy playing a board game.
After winning the rigged match, Churchill received a telegram from FDR. “It is fun to be in the same decade as you.” They were buddies. FDR used the same war blackmail to break the American two-term tradition for President, and used it twice. But at least FDR let his generals run the war and didn’t force his country to accept all of his bad military decisions. Just many of his political ones on foreign policy.
HITLER IS TORN BY JAPANESE VICTORIES
Hitler was happy that his Axis partner was running over all opposition in Asia. But Hitler was a white supremacist who hated all inferior races, and to him, the Japanese were inferior to the white race. Adolph always wanted to avoid war with his racial brothers in England. It hurt him to have to bomb London. He had mixed feelings about seeing the Japanese make fools out of the white man in the Pacific region. On January 30, 1942 Joseph Goebbels made this striking note in his diary,
“The Fuehrer profoundly regrets the heavy losses sustained by the white race in East Asia, but that isn't our fault.”
To me, that is one profound notation in a very political diary by his close friend Goebbels. Hitler must have said some serious melancholic things to Goebbels to inspire this written observation. Hitler was so sick with racism that he couldn't enjoy a sack full of money and jewels if it were delivered by an inferior race. Pearl Harbor embarrassed his white skin!
The German people evidently felt the same way. They were happy that Japan was winning, but they felt queasy about it too. All that racial superiority business didn't add up while Japanese wins added up. There was never much enthusiasm for the Japanese victories in the Chancellory nor on the streets of Hamburg. The Italians were Axis white partners, and the Germans embraced them, but the Japanese were a benevolent enigma they tried not to think about too much.
BLOOD FOR OIL / JAPAN TAKES THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 1942
The European powers were incapable of defending their far-flung empires in the Southwest Pacific. In Europe they were either conquered by the Axis or threatened with extinction. There wasn't much hope for defending overseas bonus possessions like the Dutch East Indies. These islands were arguably the reason the entire Pacific War was fought. The DEI was the prize. Japan needed the oil to not only continue the offensive operations, Japan needed (or at least felt like it needed) the oil of the Dutch East Indies as a matter of national survival.
Combined Allied naval forces might have seemed capable on paper but the Euros did not have a single aircraft carrier in the theatre. Japan had about a dozen or so. Japan was close to her supply chain of bases running from the home islands down to Cam Rahn Bay in Southern Vietnam. Allied supply lines stretched around a globe and were threatened every mile by Axis air, surface naval, and submarine power. The Japs had the Zero fighter, the most advanced combat plane in Asia. The Allies had old planes, barely worthy of training missions.
The brown natives of the East Indies were rarely consulted. They certainly preferred the white guys as the lesser of two colonial evils, in spite of what Japanese propaganda might say.
The Allies in the Southwest Pacific were organized under the title of ABDA, which stood for the combined American, British, Dutch and Australian forces.
The ABDA team counterattacked once during the loss of the present day Indonesia to the Japanese. This was January 24, 1942 at the Battle of Balikpapan. Four ABDA destroyers surprised a force of Japanese transports and patrol boats sitting at bay near the oil-fields there. The attack occurred at around 1 am and in the darkness the four brave destroyers fired dozens of torpedoes, sinking four ships and two small patrol boats. The four DD’s had their way for a good hour with the sitting transport fleet in the wee hours of night.
The attack at Balikpapan was a psychological victory but failed in the sense that it came too late. The Japanese had already unloaded most of the troops and supplies onto Balikpapan and the oil was theirs. The mission was supposed to block this effort.
The mission was also a let down because there were too many missed shots at point blank range. Too many torpedoes malfunctioned. This would haunt the democratic team for the first two years of the war. The war probably could have been won faster in the Pacific if only we had had some half way decent torpedoes to work with like the Japanese and the Germans did. Balikpapan was only the beginning of a stream of battle reports about bum torpedoes.
To the east of Celebes was Ambon Island, which had been reinforced by the Allies. Ambon stood in the path to the Timors which was integral to the Japanese plan to put a pincer movement on the big prize of Java.
The ABDA air force at Ambon consisted of 13 Hudson fighter planes. These Hudsons might have been valuable if they had been used at Gettysburg, but against squadrons from the Hiryu and Soryu they were a sorry lot. The Zeroes and Vals hit Ambon hard on the 24th of January. Then on February 3 1942 and invasion force took the island against a brave but futile resistance.
On February 13, 1942 the Japanese began the invasion of the DEI in ernest with a parachute drop on South Sumatra. More than 700 of Hirohito's boys landed at Palembang with a bang.
DARWINIAN AIR RAID - SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 2 19 1942
In order to prevent the ABDA forces from intervening in the plans to conquer the East Indies and Java in particular, the Japanese launched a surprise four carrier air attack on the little city of Darwin on the north tip of Australia.
Admiral Nugamo commanded the four veterans of the Pearl Harbor strike force, Hiru, Soryu, Kaga and Akagi.
The pathetic little air force on the ground at Darwin was caught with its wings down at 10 a.m. on the 19th of February and was mauled to smithereens (whatever they are.) 188 Zeroes and Kates had their way with the town, much like Pearl Harbor. They sank eight ships, including the Peary, and also severely damaged the Billy Preston. The town was old and brittle and was pretty much set on fire. Civilians fled in terror, many never to return until the war ended. The Japanese pilots returned to their carriers with only four planes lost.
By now these pilots must have thought that war was sort of a lot of fun. They just blew away everything in sight on every mission as their motherland conquered half the world in a cakewalk. More than half of these pilots would die in June.
On February 26, 1942 the Japanese inflicted a disastrous naval defeat upon the “ABDA cadabra” naval force at Java Sea.
Admiral James “Dutch” Doorman, a big bear of man with a two foot beard and a hearty laugh, was in command at Java. Nicknamed “The bouncer', Doorman had a habit of making outrageous boasts and and then backing them up. But his luck ran out in 42. He told the London Times by telegraph that he would soon “sink the entire Japanese navy without breaking a sweat.” Doorman put out of fleet of nine destroyers and five cruisers (Perth, Houston, Exeter, De Ruyter, and Java) to meet an oncoming Japanese task force. The destroyer force included two Dutch, three British and four American tin cans.
The Japs sank Java and De Ruyter on the 26th, and within a few days had sent the other cruisers to the bottom. Instead of sinking the entire Japanese navy, the ABDA navy was taken completely off the playing board. Java was a disastrous defeat for Doorman. The Imperial Japanese navy showed him the door, man. Doorman was doomed, and died on the De Ruyter in a disastrous defeat for democracy. The lovable admiral went down with the ship.
The Japs had their oil, at least for the short haul. Now all they had to do was keep it for a few years while America mobilized its industry for war.
BUILDING THE BISMARKS BARRIER JANUARY 1942
On January 23, 1942 the Japanese captured the fortress town of Raboul in the South Pacific. This event did not get the media attention of the fall of Singapore or Hong Kong, but it would cost the Allies at least as much in blood and tears. Rabaul is located in the Bismarck Archipelago.
Rabaul was the clear ideal location for building the Bismarks barrier. This was a line of defense in the southeast Pacific with a twofold purpose. The fist was to set up a fabulous logistical base for continued conquests in the direction of the Solomon Islands and beyond. This would potentially lead to the cut-off of Allied aid from the United States to Australia and the invasion of Australia as a consequence.
Without the capture of Rabaul, the Japanese could never have effectively launched its offensive operations against Guadalcanal, and could not have sent reinforcements there over the course of the long struggle for that island.
One of the main goals of Allied strategy over the next two and a half years was how to take Rabaul, how to “break the Bismarks barrier.”
THAILAND
On January 26 Thailand declared war on the United States and Great Britain. Of course the president of Thailand had a Japanese bayonet at his neck when he went on the radio and declared war, but he did do it.
BURMA
The Japanese took Burma from the south.
The battle was a little tougher than it had been in Malaysia but the tide was flowing with the Japanese onslaught. “The Nips” captured Rangoon, the only large port in Burma in the second week of March 1942. The front then moved north to the Irawaiddy River Valley across which ran the famous “Burma Road.” This was the treasured highway between China and India, the last line of supply between the Allies and China. The British and the Americans both believed that it was critical to keep the Burma Road open because China was going to fight hard to help win the war. It should be added that the Americans wanted it more because it believed in a post-war China under its ally Chiang Kai Shek. The British wanted the Burma Road protected, but didn't think it was critical.
Japan fought its way across Northern Burma and expelled the British completely by the end of April 1942. Lashio surrendered on April 29, and Mandalay was evacuated before the advancing Japanese troops on April 30. The Burma Road was closed.
This brought the new Japanese empire to the boundary of India. British India faced off directly against Japanese occupied Burma. The Japanese thought it would be easy to stir up an Indian rebellion against their English masters. They were in error for many reasons, not the least of which was that the Nanking massacre was well known all over the world. British colonialism was an ice cream cone compared to life under the Japanese Army. If Japan did have real dreams of a new ‘Asia for the Asiatics,’ it certainly went about it as though the slogan only really meant ‘Asia for the Japanese.’ If the Japanese had behaved more like the despised British Empire, they might have co-opted their newly acquired areas and won the war.
SANTA BARBARA BOMBARDMENT 2.23.42
On the night of February 23, 1942 Roosevelt gave a radio address to the nation to reassure America that things were going to be ok. Japan was winning big on every front but he was trying to put a good spin on it somehow anyway. As Franklin turned on his radio mic in Washington a contradictory event was taking place on the other side of the continent. A Japanese submarine had surfaced 12 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara California and was shelling an oil refinery in the light of dusk. The attack lasted 20 minutes and 15 rounds. None of the shells set off bigger explosions, nor were any fires started. Only one bomb did any damage at all, that to one derrick, and it didn’t slow production by a drop. The sub escaped unharmed and unchallenged by a single US shot.
The media ran big with the story of the attack on The United States. The bombardment of the west coast upstaged the FDR speech. Barbara bombardment was block headlines. The FDR speech got buried on the lower left of page 1.
The Japanese commander at the Battle of Santa Barbara deserves credit for boldness, civility, and economy. Although he failed to hit the fiery jackpot with a skill-shot, he made a good choice of targets. He didn’t aim at a home or a hospital. His mission created a psychological alarm in this country and may have diverted resources to Pacific coastal defense that otherwise would have been expended more directly in the war effort. It that was so then the mission was a strategic success, not just a psychological victory.
I lived in SB for a week painting houses in 1976. I can still smell the air that I breathed. What a beautiful spot. It was Ronald Reagan’s beloved home for his later life. Santa Barbara’s oil derricks out to sea do spoil it a little.
Santa Barbara survived the war somehow in spite of its ordeal that fateful night of February 23. It takes its rightful place with Dresden, Rotterdam, Shanghai, and Kobe as places bombed in World War II.
Later in 1942 a Japanese submarine shelled a small bay in Oregon, again doing no damage at all. The headline the next day in the Boston Globe read “JAPS BOMB OREGON!”
BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES 2.24.42
After the submarine attack of the night before, the west coast on the 24th was on a trigger-happy edge. A flight of planes was reported to be headed towards the Los Angeles area from the direction of the sea at a little after seven, the exact same time as the sub attack the night before. One anti-aircraft gunner started shooting at something and before you knew it the sky over Los Angeles was lit up in a crazed barrage of anti-aircraft fire. It was the sounds of the London Blitz without the planes. Nothing was attacking Los Angeles and several people were injured by falling debris from the expended anti-aircraft gun shells.
No one is quite sure what everyone was firing at that night. There were reports that it was a weather balloon or two that were mistaken for aircraft.
Another theory is that the American defense teams were shooting an a space saucer from another planet. This is not as laughable as might seem for there is a famous LA Times photo that seems to show a standard flying saucer sitting still in the sky while searchlights and anti-aircraft tracers are locked in on it. UFO nuts are convinced that the Battle of Los Angeles was in fact a version of Worlds War II.
“JAPS ATTACK INDIA” APRIL 1942
In early April 1942 the same carrier forces that attacked Pearl Harbor steamed west to the Indian Ocean and attacked British bases on the Island of Ceylon. Kates, Zekes and Vals attacked Colombo on the west coast and Trincomalee on the east coast.
The Japanese were hoping to find the British Indian war fleet in harbor, sitting ducks like at Port Arthur or Pearl Harbor. But this time war had already been declared so most of the old UK cruisers and carriers were out to sea. The Japanese carrier air groups attacked virtually empty naval bases at Colombo and Trincomalee. It was a repeat of the frustration that the Japanese experienced when the US carriers had not been present that day of infamy.
Admiral Clem Somerville wisely did not want to engage the Japanese until he could get his mitts on some modern planes for his three carriers. But Japanese scout planes found some of his best war wagons near the Maldives. Nagamo’s bombers and torpedo planes sank two cruisers, the Cornwall and the Dorsetshire. The next day his Kates, Zekes and Vals found the aircraft carrier Hermes and sent it to the ocean floor. Hermes was old, weighed only 10,000 tons, and had obsolete bi-planes on it’s wooden decks. But a carrier was a carrier and Hermes was a nice big stuffed animal for Kate and Val to take home from the fair.
The April 1942 terror strike into the Indian Ocean had pushed Japan to the pinnacle of international military glory and had extended the war truly around the globe. The world trembled. If the Japanese could move at will into the western side of India, the threat of linkage between the Nazi and Japanese empires would become genuine. People in a hundred lands hearing about the Japanese attacks in India had reason to feel paranoid. It was entirely conceivable now that the entire world could fall to totalitarianism on the march.
On the way back to Truk the sailors of the Japanese Navy were feeling pretty good about themselves when startling news reached the fleet. The men stopped singing their triumphant war songs. Tokyo had been bombed by US planes.
DOLITTLE DOES MUCH WITH LITTLE 4-42
On April 12, 1942 the US struck the Japanese homeland in a weak and miniature version of the Pearl Harbor raid (in this case after a declared war was under way). A US Navy task force snuck up on the island of Honshu in rough weather with a single aircraft carrier loaded up with twin engine bombers not designed for carrier takeoffs or landings. These B-24’s could barely get off the carrier deck, and even then only when pointed into a strong wind. The bombers would then drop precariously close to the water after leaving the deck before stabilizing and rising to flight.
The aircrew on this mission, under their leader Jim Doolittle knew that there was no chance they could return and land back on the carrier. The takeoff was going to be difficult. A landing was impossible. It was a one way mission to bomb Japan. There wasn’t enough fuel to return to the ship even if they had the capability of a carrier landing. The B-24 bombers raided Tokyo and two other cities causing little strategic damage but making spectacular gains in psychological warfare. Japan had told her people (like Germany) that its people would never be struck by enemy bombs, and now here were explosions all around the capitol city and a white star in a blue circle visible on the wing bottoms. It was a major league reality check for the Japanese people and an ominous sign for the future. By 1945 the sun would be eclipsed by the endless waves of American bombers raining merciless incendiaries on Japan’s great cities. Doolittle’s raid was the first tremor before the US industrial volcano erupted in full force.
Jimmy D’s B-24’s continued on to China and Russia for emergency landing. Some crashed into the sea of Japan, out of fuel and chance for survival. Others landed in Japanese held Chinese territory with the predictable consequences for the unfortunate fliers.
This famous raid by a small flock of medium bombers (see the book or the movie 30 Seconds over Tokyo) could Doolittle damage to the Japanese industrial capacity, but did much to increase American morale. It also put a dent in Japanese morale. The American public was positively jubilant.
Accounts of this attack always stress how little physical damage it did and how it was mostly a psychological boost for morale at home. But this fails to consider how many specific military plans were changed in Tokyo in response to the raid.
The Emperor could have been killed. He was going about his business on a nice sunny day and suddenly, boom boom. Bombs were going off all over Tokyo.
James Dolittle's plane personally overflew the Imperial Palace at low altitude and he did not release his bombs but could have. He could have killed the Emperor. He was under orders to overfly the Imperial Palace but not to drop bombs on it. He could have killed Hirohito but was basically under orders to scare him.
Can you imagine the Emperor in his garden hearing and seeing the terror as a big US bomber buzzes so close that it hurts his eardrum? There is no proof that Hiro personally heard the noise or saw the plane, but there is certainly no proof that he didn't. His personal reaction to the sudden fear of sudden death is not recorded except in our imagination.
This changed everything. Now the emperor had to be protected. If he was living in a Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, then the raid could have been somewhat ignored. But Hiro could not die in a bombing raid. And remember, the meetings at the highest levels with the Emperor were always top secret. No notes were taken and all were pledged to eternal secrecy. We have to guess what the reaction was to the Dolittle raid and Pacific strategy.
In my opinion Dolittle’s raid changed the entire Pacific strategic outlook for the Japanese. They now had to accept that the home islands were not invulnerable and they had to think more along the lines of defense. And they had to protect God from personal danger.
With the Imperial Palace threatened the Japanese began to look instead of only towards the South Pacific and Australia, towards the central and even the northern Pacific as well. They had to diversify their funds to protect their investment.
Major Nippon offensives would have to be planned to take Midway and the Aleutians in order to protect the Emperor. They had to change their entire Pacific strategy to protect this guy. Dolittle’s raid changed the course of the war. It is underrated militarily. Every time I read that it did little damage and was only a psychological victory I shake my head. Not only was the strategic result massive in changing Japanese plans, diverting offensive capabilities from the South Pacific, it also did more damage than it is ever given credit for. B-24 bombs struck a fleet aircraft carrier under construction and delayed its entry into the war by six months. The carrier hit alone made it a tactical success. The raid came as such a surprise that there was no fighter or anti-aircraft opposition worthy of mention. All the bombers found their targets and hit them. 16 B-24’s drop their full payload on Tokyo and the writers always say it did no significant damage. But if a carrier raid dropped one good hit on one important Japanese carrier, that raid would be called a major success. I just think that history started off saying that the raid did no real damage and it just snowballed into historical orthodoxy. But first hand accounts by pilots who were in the raid assert that all military targets were struck. Very few bombs were wasted. I say the Dolittle raid did much, and it was far more than a mere psychological victory at both the tactical and strategic levels.
Some of the pilots landed in China in Chekiang province they were succored by the locals who hated the Japanese as much as anyone. The Japanese retaliated in Nazi fashion. Over the next two months they systematically executed 250,000 Chekiang Chinese civilians as punishment, and no that isn’t a typo. That’s 250,00. Some historians cite this as proof that the Dolittle raid really produced no worthy results and imply that we should feel guilty because we instigated this mass murder by a showboat raid of no real military value. That’s really offensive to read. The Japanese had already murdered more than million Chinese civilians in cold blood, and that’s after the battles. China was at war with Japan. The Chinese civilians who helped our guys knew the risks they were taking and maybe they believed that principles counted as much as life itself, which is the basis of all deadly fighting in the first place. How dare the historian condemn the Dolittle raid for this reason. By that logic we should not conduct any military operations for fear the enemy might get mad and do something bad in retaliation. So if we buy this, then the Czechs shouldn’t have murdered Heydrich because the Nazis wiped out towns in retaliation. That is catering to terrorism by allowing it to produce effective results. If civilians fought back all the more when terrorized, it would nullify the gains of terrorism.
The Japanese had no idea where these planes had come from. They thought they were land-based. This threw them off completely. FDR was delighted at the mystery and the American public was almost as in the dark as the Japanese. The story of the Dolittle raid was block headline news in the states but where the B-24's started from was top secret. Reporters asked Roosevelt where these planes took off from and answered with a half-smile, “They came from Shang Gri-La.” There had been a popular movie a few years back about a mythical Utopia beyond the Himalayas called Shang Gri La where peace and harmony ruled over a perfect world.
JAPANESE ARMY-NAVY GAME
By April of 1942 the Japanese had conquered most of the Pacific islands without the loss of single heavy ship. Not a cruiser had been dunked, just a few destroyers in five full months of actions. Japanese success had exceeded even their own anticipated goals. The original plan was to establish a perimeter of defense at the outer edge of the Bismarks and New Guinea and prepare to withstand the Allied counterattack. But with victories coming so easily, Yamamoto began to plan further expansion in the direction of the Solomons, New Hebrides, and Fiji’s. What gambler can walk away from a winning roll?
The next immediate meal on the Japanese sushi menu was Port Moresby, at the southern coast of New Guinea, facing the coast of Australia.
But would this lead to the next step of an invasion of northern Australia? Maybe, but some naval strategists suggested the husbanding of Japanese resources for an out and out invasion of Hawaii, including Oahu, as well as the islands of Johnston and Palmyra. Others advocated an invasion of India, starting with an amphibious assault on the big island of Ceylon.
But no, the Japanese Army wanted to hold its cards for the big historic strike against Soviet Russia. They did not want Japanese troops tied down in Oahu or Australia at the moment when Russia collapsed and Hitler won the war against Communism. Japan must be ready with many crack divisions to march west into Siberia and Mongolia. Here on the flaming carcass of the USSR was where Japan should extend itself and create a permanent Asian land empire to compliment it’s Pacific conquests, or even better, to create a land empire so great that the Pacific ocean gains would be the one complimenting those on land. A Japanese empire consisting of former parts of China and Russia had more appeal than one from taken what used to be called Oahu and Ceylon. The Army held it’s punch through the entire war waiting for the expected collapse of Russia that never came (when the Army finally did get its war with Russia it was in August of 1945. By that time the Japanese couldn’t have stopped the Salvation Army let alone the Red.)
The sparkling Indian and Australian invasion plans never saw daylight because the military ego of Japan was divided into rival service egos. Because the Army had long dreamed of attacking Russia it could never agree to any plan involving large scale land forces in the distant oceans. The Nipponese Navy had several battalions of ground troops, but not enough for strategic land ops. There was nothing like the Marine divisions available to a Halsey or a Nimitz. Japanese naval genius would rot on the vine as they would never get the troops they needed to conquer their half of the world. The navy could take all the small islands they wanted, but they shouldn’t get any bright ideas about seizing continents. That was the Army’s job. The navy had been getting all the glory so far in this war while the army was bogged down in China. This must stop! No more grandiose schemes of empire from the navy. Australia was spared invasion because of the historic enmity between Russia and Japan and because of the historic enmity between the Japanese army and the navy.
At the same time they would take and hold Tulagi in the eastern Solomons.
Military historians often write off the Aleutian campaign as a mysteriously useless operation, but it had a logical purpose and was not merely a psychological ploy to mess with our head. In addition to extending the perimeter defense ring for the empire, the latter two campaigns were designed to draw the Americans into a major fleet battle while the odds were still stacked against us.
The Dolittle raid had to some extent provoked Japan to let up a little on the southern front and strike due east. They would assault and attempt to seize US territory in Alaska and Hawaii. The southern front had one series of large islands after another where Japanese could hunker down and establish buffer zones between the military front and the homeland. But due east was endless oceans sprinkled by small islands. The Dolittle raid had awakened Japan to the shallow defense against air attack out of the vast bleak central Pacific. With Midway and the Aleutians under their control, they would be likely to intercept a second Dolittle terror raid on Tokyo. Midway must fall so the Emperor can sleep fearlessly at night.
CORAL SEA – MAY 4-8 1942
The Battle of the Coral Sea lasted four days and climaxed in a spectacular carrier vs. carrier fight, the first one in history. Planes from both carrier groups flew off to strike each other. No gunfire erupted and the ships never saw each other. It was like two mob bosses sending out hit squads to take out the other guy. The mechanics never ran into each other and it was a matter of which contract would be fulfilled and which one would fail.
At Coral Sea the US would lose a fleet carrier (big carrier) yet win a strategic victory. The victory came largely because the U.S. had long ago broken the Japanese secret codes and knew every plan they made before every battle started. With all due credit to American bravery, skill and industrial power, the biggest factor in turning the tide of the war in these crucial months was the cracking of the codes. The whole game of cat and mouse was turned into a game of cat and mouse-trap. The US had an unfair advantage throughout the war, playing poker with a marked deck, but all is fair in love and war, especially against fascists.
For the Japanese the mission was the completion of the conquest of New Guinea, establishment of control of the seas around the Solomon Islands, and the establishment of airbases in both the Solomons and southern New Guinea from which to harass and threaten both Australia and the islands east of it. The final aim was to cut off Australia by taking every chain of islands around it.
If the Japanese could finish off New Guinea by taking Port Moresby the job would be almost done.
An invasion force, including two separate carrier groups was to sail from Truk in the Carolines with the destination of Port Moresby. Another separate task force, including one small carrier, with cruiser escort went east to seize the little island harbor of Tulagi in the Solomons. The Tulagi mission would establish a seaplane base there from which to protect the flank of the New Guinea ops and to make the first step towards further advances towards the Fiji’s and New Hebrides. Once the New Hebrides fell, Australia would be absolutely cut off from any hope of reinforcement. No one guessed yet that the island of Guadalcanal, across the sound from Tulagi, would end up being the entire focal point of the Pacific war for five months.
To take Moresby, the Japanese transport group with destroyer escort would have to make it through the Jomard Passage (map). The Zuikaku and Shokoku carrier groups would keep an eye out for a US interception effort which was sure to come. Both of these Japanese fleet carriers were veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack. The small carrier Shoho was to escort the transport task force to the Moresby attack site and at the same time help secure the eastern flank in the Solomons. Zuikaku and Shokaku were to loiter in the Coral Sea with an eye on all fronts.
The three Japanese carrier groups never concentrated their force. This blunder has dismayed armchair admirals for several decades. I don’t know why military critics seem to somehow almost regret enemy mistakes in the field. I get up and dance when I read about them. These egghead gunheads just like to see things done the right way, even if evil is doing it. Not me. I love it when evil messes things up in warfare. Every time Lee makes a blunder in 1863 I'm delighted to read it.
The dynamic duo of Zuikaku and Shokoku had four mission to complete when it steamed out of Truk at the end of April. First it would drop off warplanes to the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. Then it would offer air cover for the Tulagi landings (which it failed to do); then it would seek out and destroy the US carriers in the Coral Sea, and for the finale the carriers would launch major air strikes against Allied air bases in northern Australia which would be helpless to stop them by this time.
Two US carriers Yorktown and Lexington (copyright 1927) and their protective screens went to meet the main thrust towards Jomard.
But the Yorktown received a report from a scout plane of the landings at Tulagi. Captain Fletcher decided to take a chance and launch a strike against Tulagi even though he might leave his carriers vulnerable to counterattack. He kept a few of his fighters home for defense and launched the attack.
A little less than 100 planes attacked the base under construction at Tulagi and the small ships in the area. The American planes did not perform well. The windshields of the Dauntless dive bombers kept fogging up, the attacks were not combination coordinated. The US torpedoes were faulty as usual, the Edsels of the Second World War. Fletcher was lucky that his attack force ships did not take a destructive counterattack while this ineffective air raid on Tulagi was on.
Just before noon on May 7th 1942, carrier planes from the Yorktown sank the Shoho, the first Jap. flattop taken down in WWII.
Carrier Battle of the Coral Sea May 6-8 1942
US navy scouts had found the smaller Japanese carrier group steaming towards Jomard Passage on the morning of the 7th of May. The Shoho was coming back from it’s mission of dropping off a few planes and a work force on Tulagi. Shoho was long out of there before Fletcher’s Yorktown raid had hit. The little carrier would now join up with the 11 transports and their escort destroyers that were headed for the Port Moresby invasion.
But the Yorktown planes did eventually catch up with the Shoho. This ship was only 12,000 tons, about half the size of the Lexington, but her 24 birds could still pack a punch. US planes attacked at 11 am on the 7th of May. A few CAP Zeroes (CAP means combat air patrol to defend the ship) tried to shoot the yanks out of the sky but they were outnumbered and only got three. What was worse they soon watched their landing deck slip beneath the waves.
The Wildcat fighters, Dauntless dive bombers and Avenger torpedo planes all got in on the action. Shoho was a burning wreck by 11:30 with holes in her flight deck and hull. Shoho said sayonara at 11:35. One book quotes a Japanese ensign on a nearby destroyer watching Shoho sinking and said “She fought bravely to the very last.” What battle was he watching? Shoho had been commissioned in late 1941, had experienced no previous combat, and now got smacked senseless and disappeared.
532 Japanese sailors died with the Shoho. The remaining 204 survived in the water to be rescued. One survivor recorded that many of the Japanese sailors were screaming “Banzai!” as they bobbled in the waves. I'm not kidding you. Yeah, right. We’re scared now.
The biggest contribution Shoho gave to the world was a new word. I have already used the term ‘flattop’ to reference an aircraft carrier. But prior to the Battle of the Coral Sea the word wasn’t in anyone’s dictionary, not even the Dictionary of American Slang.
Bob Dixon, one of the last pilots to leave the scene had personally seen the Shoho go down. Dixon headed back to the Yorktown and reported by radio, “Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier. Scratch one flattop!.” The men on the Yorktown cheered, and the message was passed all around the Pacific. “Scratch one flattop” made its way to the states. For the rest of the war aircraft carriers became known as ‘flattops’ and they still are called that today.
“Flattop” wouldn’t have stuck if this victory had not been so desperately desired and needed. Shoho was the first major Japanese warship sunk in World War II. “Scratch One Flattop” was block headline news at the time.
Those stranded CAP Zero fighters of Shoho, by the way, had to find an island where a Japanese freighter was sitting nearby and there make a water landing, swimming to shore as their Zeroes lived up to the name and sank.
When Shoho went south, Vice-Admiral Inouye (a great uncle to the liberal Senator from Hawaii Daniel Inouye) ordered the invasion force to turn back to Rabaul. Remember, the Zuikaku and Shokoku groups were supposed to patrol for the US carriers and fight them. Shoho was the Moresby air umbrella, not Zuikaku and Shokaku, and with Shoho gone, Inouye decided that ‘in no way’ should Japan take this risk. So the sinking of Shoho had stopped the mission to Moresby and thus determined a strategic US victory for the Coral Sea, regardless of whatever else might happen on the tactical front. And plenty more was about to happen there.
American carrier forces at the Coral Sea battle were at half strength because the other flattops were still making their way back from the Dolittle mission. But the flip side worked for us too. The Japanese had assigned two carrier groups to hunt and find the Tokyo raiders. Dolittle’s carriers were not found and the Japanese were without two extra carriers that might have made a major difference in their favor at Coral Sea. Would have is more like it. Without the Dolittle Raid “the Japs” take Port Moresby.
Japan had also recently designated a carrier group to launch an air raid on the Indian Island of Ceylon (this war was truly a world war) and this Japanese fleet carrier might have pitched in decisively at Coral Sea too.
Land-based US air power was not effective in the Coral Sea battle largely because the division of command between MacArthur in New Guinea and the Navy elsewhere sadly created inefficient co-ordination of info and attack.
Japan hit back hard at Coral Sea for the loss of Shoho. In the carrier vs. carrier fight several Japanese air bombs and torpedoes severely damaged the Lexington. It looked like Lady Lex could limp back home at full speed, even if she was not capable of launching or landing any more planes. But hours after the battle, some of the fires in the middle of the ship caught a second wind. Explosions rocked the fighting lady from the inside out. The abandon ship order had to go out and ‘it was sad it was sad when the great ship went down’ to quote a childhood ditty about Titanic.
US carrier planes managed to do some damage to carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, but not enough to compensate for the dunking of the Lexington.
One Jap. carrier air group mistook a seaplane tender and an oiler for carriers far to the east of the main battle. These planes were way out of the real battle when the mistake was realized. Since they were already there and the mistake could not be undone, the Japanese planes sank these two small US ships, the oiler Neosho and the tender Sims at 8 at night May 7. Neosho had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.
The USA lost a fleet aircraft carrier, and certainly didn’t win the damage tally at the battle of the Coral Sea. But the Japanese offensive to take out New Guinea and plan for the invasion of Australia was stopped in its tracks. U.S. damage tally was much better at Midway, but it was at Coral Sea that the Japanese march to uncontested glory in Asia was finally stopped for the first time. The American people could read in the papers that Japan was not invincible. Coral Sea was a tactical draw at best but a major strategic victory for the United States.
MIDWAY
The Battle of Midway Island, June 4-7 1942 was the first major Allied clear cut victory in the Pacific War.
By the spring of 1942 the two giants were arm wrestling and Japan had been pushing Uncle Sam towards the table for months. At Midway we stopped the momentum and started pushing the arm back. At Guadalcanal the arms were even and pointing to the sky.
Three Japanese aircraft carriers were destroyed at Midway in five minutes and a fourth sank the next afternoon from fires. The USA slayed four dragons in one battle, the Hiryu, Soryu, Kaga and Akagi. America scratched one flattop in the exchange. The entire strategic picture in carriers was reversed. Now the US had the edge in carriers with more being built at home waiting to come on line.
A sidebar on the names of Japanese warships. The Japanese Navy named its aircraft carriers with short verses that had something to do with flight. The Hiryu means ‘flying dragon’ and the Soryu means ‘blue dragon.’ Battleships were named after ancient provinces. The Japanese named the heavy cruisers after mountains and the light cruisers after rivers. Some carriers were named after mountains because they began as battleships or cruisers before being converted to handle aircraft. Destroyers were named after sumo wrestlers.
Midway is the westernmost of the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese gathered a large amphibious invasion force with battleship protection to occupy the island. If they could capture the airbase at Midway, the Japanese could harass Pearl Harbor. More important, this would keep the USA Pacific War effort back on its heels and on the defensive, thus freeing the Japanese to continue their offensive in southeast Asia, especially with an eye towards Australia. Occupation of Midway would also protect the Emperor from another terror overflight from Shangri-la.
The Yanks had a suspicion that the Japanese were coming to take Midway, but they also knew of Japanese plans to attack Alaska. Was Midway a feint to draw off American forces for a major assault on the Aleutian islands? Or was it vice-verse?
Fortunately we were reading their mail. Japan codes were referring to the place of attack as “Big Dip” but what did that mean? Even with code-breaking the Yankees couldn't be sure. So a clever plan was devised where the Americans on Midway sent out messages in various formats stating that the water purification system was busted and there was a crisis. Soon the Japanese were sending out coded messages that “Big Dip” was running out of water. Only then did Nimitz know for sure that the attack was heading for Midway.
The Nips had five carriers and Nimitz 3.
The Midway invasion force was supported by carrier strike groups which would serve five purposes. The carrier aircraft would pound Midway, protect the invading fleet, search for and destroy American carriers and other ships, give ground support to the invasion, and finally supply the conquered Midway airfield with planes.
The two carrier fleets never saw each other. The great battle was carried out strictly from the air at great distances.
In addition to the strategic victory there was extra satisfaction because the four carriers sunk had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of the six that launched the surprise (sneak) attack, only the Zuikaku and Shokaku were now still afloat.
The movie Midway, is a pretty good account of the battle details, with Henry Fonda as Yammamoto.
ATTU AND KISKA 1942
Because the emperor’s life had been directly threatened by the Dolittle raid on Tokyo, the Japanese diverted major land, naval and air forces to a campaign to the remote cold northeast that had not been thought necessary before.
The entire Midway op was part of a two-prong plan. The first part of the plan was to invade Midway. The second mission to guard against surprise carriers was the occupation of two American islands in the Aleutians. This extended the defensive ring due east so that no carriers could slip in close like that ever again. This was the main reason for the Midway mission also. The Dolittle raid changed the course of the war materially by changing the direction of the Pacific war from the Japanese vantage point. Instead of focusing overwhelming on advancing in the Solomons and cutting off the lifeline to Australian by seizing Samoa and the Fijis, the Japanese split their forces in order to protect the emperor. The effort failed horrible and deprived Japan over overwhelming superiority at the Battle of the Coral Sea. If the Midway and Alaska campaigns had never been dreamed of, the Japanese probably would have won the Battle of the Coral Sea, sinking both our carriers and losing none, the invasion of Port Moresby would have been successfully executed, and the line in the atolls might have been drawn at Samoa instead of Guadalcanal. The Midway effort was a disaster for Japan, and the Aleutian air bases they built never did much of anything.
I know I am repeating the point but it deserves repetition. People write of the Coral Sea as though it led to Midway, but I say that the planning for both operations was a done deal right after the Dolittle Raid, so the sequence of Coral Sea, then Midway is misleading. The diversion of forces for th Midway op was taken before the results of Coral Sea were in, and it was the existence of the Midway plan that left the Japanese with insufficient forces to win at Coral Sea. The standard version is that the defeat at Coral Sea meant that the Japanese did not have the overwhelming force they needed to win at Midway.
The Japanese took the islands of Attu and Kiska just two days after the disaster at Midway. This disturbed the American public more than it did US military strategists. Alaska was US territory. Later it would become a state but nevertheless it was a oral loss of major proportions at the American diner. Alaska was still American soil, not an overseas possession like Guam. The Japanese occupied both islands on the seventh of June. It would remain under Japanese rule for none months.
Japan Occupies Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians, June 1942
The US would not get these islands back for the rest of 1942, but did launch a few naval and air strikes against the newly established Japanese positions there. Most of the strikes were directed against Kiska because Attu was out of range for American planes based on the airfield at Dutch Harbor.
American subs sank at least two Japanese destroyers and several freighters in the Alaskan waters of 1942. Some US naval missions failed because of extreme fog. American ships collided, doing more damage to each other than to the enemy.
Except for drawing off some US forces, the Japanese achieved nothing by taking Attu and Kiska. The US would achieve nothing when we fought hard to get them back in 1943.
It was a cold war. On one naval mission a US navy man fell overboard and was rescued immediately. But he was already gone.
GUADALCANAL AND THE SOLOMONS CAMPAIGN
In spite of the Dolittle raid and the Midway defeat, Japan was still on the march. On August 1 1942 Japan had yet to be stopped on land in the Pacific.
The Solomon Islands were the next objective. With airbases on several of these islands, Japan could not only directly threaten Australia, but could also threaten it indirectly by cutting off the supply line from the USA to that important source of hope and resistance. Japanese land air power on Guadalcanal could threaten the lines of supply to Australia. If Japan could actually take Fiji and the New Hebrides, then the lifeline to Australia would definitely be cut off. The threat would then be a reality.
The Solomon Barrier Was Strategically Crucial
The Solomons (the chain just south of the title on the map) was the heart of a line of Rising Sun defense to block the supply route not only to Australia, but to the Allied armed forces pinned down on the southern half of New Guinea. The front in Burma, the supply route to China, and the oil of the East Indies were also in the balance.
The battle for New Guinea had created the battle for Guadalcanal. The next bold move being planned by the Japanese in New Guinea was a two pronged land and sea attack on Port Moresby, the last Allied stronghold there and the great prize of the entire Bismarck/Solomon campaign. The six month battle for Guadalcanal was really the battle for the fate of Port Moresby and New Guinea. Moms Moresby was the only thing that stood between the Japanese and Australia. Whoever controlled the Solomons could control the Coral Sea by land-based air power, and with it threaten Port Moresby.
After the lessons of the battle of the Coral Sea the Japanese wanted to insure that the assault of Moresby would not be threatened on the eastern flank. Hence the Battle for the Solomons and Guadalcanal. By the end of the war Guadalcanal was as well known to the average American as Atlanta.
On the map below, from a 1921 geography book, note the misspelled name of ‘Guadalcanar’. That’s how not famous it was until 1942.
New Caledonia, New Hebrides and the Fijis; Last Line of Defense
The above map gives a good idea of the battle line in the South Pacific and the strategic significance of ‘Guadalcanar’. The three island groups circled were the last line of defense for the Australian lifeline. New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the Fijis were the next on the menu for the greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, along with the US base in Samoa, just east off the map. If that offensive plan succeeded, the South Pacific would be a Japanese lake. The last ditch supply line was the short gap between the Solomons and the three circled island groups.
The natives in the 1942 Solomon Islands were in a world almost beyond the scope of modern civilization. Many of these islanders had never seen a wheel until a Zero or Wildcat touched down. The islands in and of themselves had little value unless there was a sudden tuna shortage
Reports reached Admiral King that the Japs were hastily constructing an airfield on Guadalcanal. It was days away from completion and it already had a name, Matsuzaka Airfield, after a pilot who died at Pearl Harbor.
News of this new airport coming soon called for a change in US plans. The brass had been leaning towards one of the more westerly of the Solomons for a counterattack. But the United States decided it had to contest the airfield before it became operational and the battle for Guadalcanal which lasted several bloody months was on. It was a battle for an airfield on an island, not for the island itself which had little or no strategic value on its own.
Guadalcanal was the Gettysburg of World War II in the Pacific. It was where both empires met. The strategic forces closed ranks on the site and slugged it out for six months. It was like two strong men fighting over a penny. Military dominance, morale, power, and momentum was the real prize. For the last eight exiting months Japan had conquered almost half the globe and had the mo. But with Guadalcanal, the party was over. Payback time began in the Solomons.
The 1st Marine Division had been training for the mission in New Zealand. Their training was not scheduled for completion until December 1942, but they were ordered in anyway at the end of July. The Japanese were hastily trying to construct the airfield on Guadalcanal and there was no time left to lose. More troops would die if the enemy got an airfield than would die from lack of training in the fight to prevent this.
A US carrier task force with troop transports left New Zealand and made a rendezvous with another task force heading west from stateside. They made their way to the northern side of Guadalcanal just before dawn on August 7 1942. The navy guns pounded the airfield, scattering the 2,000 men of the Japanese construction battalions into the jungle. By midnight there were more than 9,000 US Marines on shore. Another thousand and forty-six landed over the next two days. They all had five months of hard jungle fighting ahead of them. The US task force scooted away the next day with half the supplies for Guadalcanal still unloaded. The transports and the Marines were on their own.
The Japanese on Raboul had a fully loaded fleet of fighters and bombers ready to take off and hit Port Moresby when word came of the American landings on Guadalcanal. The Japanese raid on New Guinea was cancelled at the last moment before take-off, and the mission was changed to Guadalcanal.
It was a long flight to Guadalcanal from Raboul but it was manageable as long as the fighters didn’t engage in any extended dogfights far from home. The “Betty” dive bombers and Zeroes came in over Lunga Point on that first day and attacked the shipping in the harbor but not the supplies on the beach. The Japanese lost a number of aircraft in the attack and managed to sink one transport with a Kamikaze attack, the George F Elliot. It is not known whether the suicide attack was pre-planned or the act of a wounded flyer with a damaged plane making the best of a doomed situation, but it was an early example of successful suicide technique. The burning Elliot still had a role to play in the near future.
These early air raids showed a lot of determination on the part of the Japanese high command to stop the Americans in the Solomons. But too many Japanese planes were shot down in the attacks, making the returns far from cost effective. The Japanese often had a good plan, but no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Raiding Guadalcanal right away was a great idea. Trading 25 planes for one empty transport ship was not.
The diversion of the air attack from target Raboul to target Guadalcanal says much of the Guadalcanal campaign and indeed the entire Solomons campaign. Even if the US had fought six months on Guadalcanal and then lost, it would have helped the war effort by buying time for Port Moresby and the US industrial machine.
New Guinea, not the Solomons, was the last protective wall standing between the Japanese advance and the Australians. If the Japanese took Port Moresby they could not only bomb Australian cities at will, they could have invaded northern Australia rather easily. Soon they would be eating dingoburgers. The Guadalcanal campaign was primarily an operation to save Australia and New Guinea.
Just past midnight on August 9 the Japanese sent a task force of their own to shoot the transports out of the water. A squad of five US cruisers and four destroyers rushed out to stop it. In the Battle of Savo Island, the Japanese cruisers and destroyers surprised and devastated the Allied force in the dark waters off Guadalcanal. Savo was one of the worst defeats in United States military history.
Four cruisers were sunk, including one from Australia, the Canberra, and the fifth one was damaged. In the darkness, the Americans could not see the Japanese, but the still burning George F Elliot played a key role, providing flickering silhouettes of our cruisers for the Japanese to aim at.
One Japanese cruiser took a direct hit that killed 34 men near the bridge, but that was all. Thousands of American sailors perished. Savo Island was a horror show tragic night for the Navy. Incidentally, the Marines get all the glory for dying at Guadalcanal, and we love them for fighting like gladiators, but twice as many American men died in the waters around Guadalcanal to gunfire, drowning and sharks as died in battle on the island. The navy guys deserve a lot of honor too.
There would be many more ship to ship battles in the waters in and around Savo Island in the months ahead. The straights between Guadalcanal and Savo soon became known as ‘Ironbottom Sound.’ So many ships sank there that is today the deep-sea diving Mecca of the world. In the latter half of 1942 it became a favorite hunting ground for sharks. As the powerful navies came to fight it out there the word got out among the sharks. Sharks also came from all over the globe to feast on human hoagies.
But there was slight silver lining to the cloud of this first battle of Savo Island. The Japanese task force wheeled around with its bag of scored points and headed back west. It had failed to continue on and take out the supply and transport ships which had been the true objective after all. This could have been done easily enough, but the whereabouts of the US carrier forces was unknown to the Japanese commander and he did not want to turn a major win into a loss. He was suffering from “Midway complex.”
Indeed, fear of another Midway had made both sides cautious to a fault. The Marines at Guadalcanal had been abandoned by the carrier task force as soon as they had come ashore. The carriers Wasp and Hornet made haste back due southeast out of reach of Japanese air power. Admiral Fletcher has been raked over the coals by armchair historians for leaving the 16,000 green Marines on Guadalcanal without carrier air protection, and it has been argued that he could have kept the flattops there and prevented the disaster at Savo (just for starters.)
But how could Fletch not have had a healthy Midway paranoia? In a few hours at Midway five carriers had sunk between the two sides, and Japan had lost it’s strategic advantage in the Pacific. The Marines had been deployed successfully at Guadalcanal and it did not seem worth the risk to try and block the next counter move with the vulnerable American carriers. The mission of taking the airfield had been attained. Was it worth risking a strategic defeat in order to maintain a tactical success?
Admiral Sherman, a participant and a scholar in the field of the carriers of WWII states baldly that the failure to leave the carriers at Guadalcanal for support extended the Solomon campaign by months, not weeks. But can Sherman be certain that Japanese submarines would not have found and struck our carriers if he could re-write history and force them to stay put in Ironbottom Sound for three days? Hindsight is especially good when you can’t suffer any losses with you imaginary alternate plan because it never makes contact with the enemy.
The Japanese defenders on Guadalcanal were few at first and were easily chased off the airfield they had almost completed. The ‘Naval Construction Battalions’ picked up the airfield construction where the Japanese had left off. These ‘See Bees’ were the unsung heroes of Guadalcanal and many other fights thereafter. The Seebees landed with front-line forces to build or repair roads, airstrips and bases. They had a shovel on one shoulder and a rifle on the other, building and fighting at the same time. It was dangerous work. One out of four See Bees that landed on Iwo Jima, for example, did not leave the island alive.
Japanese reinforcements were dispatched to Guadalcanal, but not in numbers adequate for an offensive plan to ever work. Tokyo estimates of the American forces on Guadalcanal were inaccurate. Within a few days the Japanese had landed two sets of troops totaling 6,000 on two sides of Henderson Field (the new name of the Japanese airstrip – named after a Wildcat pilot killed in the first days of action there). But they thought they were up against only 2,000 Marines.
The Japanese also suffered from Midway complex at this time. Their reinforcement task forces sent to Guadalcanal seldom had much carrier support. Instead of seizing control of the air through carrier power and then landing reinforcements on the island, the Japanese reversed the equation. They would land their Army without air support. Then these men could seize the airfield, and when the Imperial carriers dropped planes onto their airstrip they would in effect have created their own air support. The Japanese admirals were simply afraid to lose their carriers by sending them too far from home and too close to US carrier power, whose location was usually a mystery. The eastern end of the Solomons was the end of the long lines of communication for both sides in the Pacific War.
The Japanese transports landed only at night, usually on the western end of the island, but kept steadily on, building up the force it was hoped could drive the Americans off Matsuzaka Field (as it was named when they had had it at first.) The nightly reinforcement destroyer/transport runs became known among the Marines as the “Tokyo Express.” The Express was a constant throughout the Solomon campaign. It was a strategy that did not work.
The Japanese might have been far better of if they had conceded Henderson and instead built and fortified new airfields in the Central Solomons (as they were forced to do later anyway.) They took incredible casualties on land and lost strategic control of the air in an effort to defend Guadalcanal, an extremely foreward position from the Japanese homeland. The Japanese supply base from Raboul was a fraction of the distance from Guadalcanal as compared to its U.S. supply depot in Espiritu Santu.
Their land efforts to take Henderson Field from August 1942 to January 1943 cost Japan 1.5 infantry divisions killed to the last man. The three major Japanese attacks on Henderson are mapped below.
Henderson - The Decisive Land Battle of the Pacific War
MAKIN RAID 8 16-18 1942
On August 18, the US Navy and Marines launched a raid in force on the Japanese held atoll of Makin in the Gilberts. Its purpose was to divert Japanese forces from the Solomons. Makin was one of the earliest attacks within the Japanese defensive perimeter.
The Japanese had occupied the Gilberts only recently, and Makin was garrisoned by less than 100 troops. Nimitz thought that if he attacked Makin, he'd be making trouble for the Japanese. He'd force them to divert forces there.
The 220 Marines of the Makin Raid would be landed by submarine. Two subs, the Argonaut and the Nautilus, set out from Pearl on August 8, the extra Marines on board making an already hot overcrowded submarine all the worse for the long journey.
The subs surfaced off Makin before dawn on August 17 and sent in Marine filled rubber boats to take the island or at least damage it. 200 Marines made it ashore and were creeping up on the sleeping Japs when some clown accidentally shot his rifle. The "Japs" woke up and the fight for Makin was on.
The Japanese force was small but well trained and had been alerted to the possibility of an American raid a week earlier. They put up a tough fight and killed 30 Marines in a day-long battle on the 17th. Near the end of the day, the men tried to get back to the subs but tides, coral reefs, and other problems left 100 stranded on the island, with the rest back on the subs. A Japanese plane strafed the subs and one of their rescue boats, so they gave a sad signal to the men on shore that they were diving but with a promise thy would not leave the scene.
The remaining 100 Marines had already been through a day's fighting and a Japanese air raid. They thought their situation was pretty untenable and decided to surrender. They drew up a note and tried to find a Japanese officer to raise the white flag to. The more they looked around, the more they began to realize that they had actually won. All the Japanese on the island were dead, except three men who surrendered and then tried to kill their captors. Then all the Japanese on the island were dead. The submarine Marine Makin Raiders had killed the entire garrison.
The next light saw an easy evacuation from the atoll with prizes of maps, radios, ect.
But there was a major mistake made on evacuation day. One of the parties of Marines had become widely separated from the main body and were accidentally left behind. They were later taken prisoner and transported to Kwajalein where they were reasonable well treated by WWII Japanese standards.
Then a certain Admiral Abe arrived and decided that the Yankee prisoners were not worth the trouble of keeping them alive. They were lined up before Admiral Abe. Japanese officers (the enlisted men refused to volunteer) beheaded them one at a time.
A Makin native had watched the whole thing hiding behind a palm tree. After the war he told the story to the Allied authorities who tried Abe and hung the bastard.
The Makin raid was long term strategic failure because later in the war we would have to take the entire Makin atoll and hold it. Because of the Makin raid of 1942 the Makin atoll in the meantime had been intensively fortified and garrisoned. By the time the Marines went back to the Makin atoll, they would have to fight almost 3,000 Japanese troops in strong defensive emplacements with artillery. The small victory of 1942 led to the bloodbath of Tarawa in the Makin Atoll later on.
MORE NAVAL BATTLES OFF GUADALCANAL
There were still five more major sea battles to come off the shores of Guadalcanal. Their historical importance is hard to underestimate. The war was still in the balance. The navies in the end decided the fate of Guadalcanal. If the Japanese could reinforce Guadalcanal in mass numbers and also prevent the US from reinforcing and supplying its own garrison then they would win the fight. No matter how hard they fought, even the 1st Marines could not hold on forever against such odds.
Later on in the war there would be more great sea battles, but by then the winner of the war was clearly known to both sides and the matches were uneven before they started. But in these five naval battles of later 1942 both sides were evenly matched, the outcome had immediate political implications for the world, each and every sailor and soldier had his heart in his throat knowing that the fate of his country as well as his person was on the line.
The slugfests were waged by old fashioned battleships and cruisers. Carriers played a part, but most of the fighting was ship to ship. These five battles at seas, mostly in the frightful darkness, in always shark-infested waters decided the momentum of the war in lost hardware, men, and morale, decided the fate of the 19,246 Marines on Guadalcanal, decided the fate of the New Guinea campaign, and decided whether Australia would have to start rationing food. These were the last giant surface to surface naval battles on the planet. They counted.
Here are the next five major naval battles for control of Guadalcanal after Savo.
Battle of the Eastern Solomons August 22-25 1942 -- Light carrier Ryujo sunk – 70 Japanese planes lost
Battle of The Santa Cruz Islands October 26, 1942 – US loses the Hornet but Henderson holds.
Battle of Cape Esperance – November 11-12 1942 (US loses 1 DD – Japanese lose 1 DD and 1 Cruiser)
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal November 12-15 1942 (Japan loses two Battleships – US loses three cruisers)
Battle of Tassafaronga November 30, 1942 (4 US cruisers torpedoed and sunk.)
BATTLE OF THE EASTERN SOLOMONS - AUGUST 1942
Another Japanese task force arrived at the northwestern waters off Guadalcanal on August 23, 1942, including two large and one small carriers. They were going to drop off major reinforcements on the eastern side of the Henderson front. This naval force was met with American airplanes and the smaller of the three carriers, the Ryujo, was sent to the bottom. But this had actually been planned as an accepted risk. Each Japanese carrier had a small task force built around it and these three carrier groups split off in the approach to Guadalcanal. The Ryujo group sped ahead and launched its planes to attack Henderson Field and to attract the attention of US carrier and land air power. In the meantime the two larger groups could slip in close to launch planes and drop off troops.
While waiting for reinforcements the Japanese force already in place to the east of Henderson attacked the 1st Marines with a thousand men and were killed almost to the last man! 35 Marines died in exchange. Henderson was definitely safe to stage right on land for now and the Japanese task force never dropped off the relief troops.
The Ryujo baiting plan worked to perfection but the US Navy messed up the rest of the Japanese plan by fighting effectively. The two larger Japanese carriers were supposed to hit the US carriers hard and sink them while they were busy chasing the Ryujo. 80 Japanese planes did reach the Enterprise and the ‘Sarah’ but they failed to sink them. 70 of the Japanese planes out of 80 were shot down. This was the big loss of the battle for Japan. These planes were some of the best in the fleet and could hardly be replaced. The pilots were some of the best in the world and could not be replaced at all. The two bombs that hit the deck of the Enterprise were no consolation for the decimation of Japanese naval air strength in an attack that bagged no capital ships and failed to offer any assistance in the land battle either.
I-19 SINKS THE WASP - SEPTEMBER 15 1942
Japanese submarines patrolled the Coral Sea area effectively in the immediate days after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. They hit several ships, including the freshly launched battleship North Carolina. She made the West Virginia look like a clipper ship. No sooner had we put this new type of advanced battleship into play than it was taken back to the states for heavy repair.
Then on September 15, 1942 a skillful, and lucky submarine captain in the Japanese Imperial Navy spotted the big jackpot in his periscope. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. It was a fleet-class aircraft carrier, the USS Wasp. The I-19 skipper fired his torpedoes and sank the carrier. I’ll bet he went to sleep with a smile on his face too, the lucky son of a samurai. Chalk up one for Hirohito.
Losing Wasp to a lone submarine at this crucial point in the battle for the Solomons was a severe blow for the United States, a real stinger.
HORNET STUNG AT SANTA CRUZ- OCTOBER 26 1942
By late October the Tokyo Express had landed enough Japanese Marines to outnumber the US defenders by a score of 23,000 to 22,000. But since the offense needs more numbers than the defense in warfare, this was not really much of an ‘ad’ (gambling slang for advantage.) The Japanese still believed in their innate military superiority and had no doubt that a big ground attack on Henderson Field, supported by a preparatory naval bombardment would enable them to change the name of the airstrip back to its original name of Matsuzaka. The Jap-attack was planned in coordination with a delivery of carrier planes. The carrier air was not even assigned to first support the ground battle, but was to land there after it was won and constitute instant regional air power for Japan.
A large task force of battleships cruisers, destroyers, oilers, and four of their best flattops came down the slot on October 26, 1942. Other Japanese cruiser groups had pounded the Marines on Henderson on two successive nights prior. The carriers were not providing air support, and were certainly not seeking out the American fleet for a carrier vs. carrier fight (although that’s what they got.) They were there to sit and wait off the north shores of the Solomons and wait for the Japanese charge on Henderson Field.
A crazed banzai charge of all available Japanese men went after ‘Hendu.’ But the sick, tired rugged Marines held on and inflicted casualties on the attacking forces at a rate of 10-1. The carrier forces waited in frustration for word that they could drop off their planes. The Japanese did not take Henderson that day and never would. This was their last best hope for a land victory on Guadalcanal, although not their last try.
In the meantime a water battle was brewing between two small US carrier battle groups and this Japanese task force with its transport carriers bringing planes to Guadalcanal in the manner that a transport ships brings troops.
The Enterprise and Hornet sent its planes off to attack the enemy, but the Japanese had launched its carrier planes first. They reached the US carriers before U.S. planes had reached high ground over its fleet. Thus began the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
The Kates, Zekes, and Vals sprayed the Hornet with a can of air Raid in the form of three bombs and two torpedoes. The bombs did more damage than the damn torpedoes as they penetrated the deck and exploded deep inside the ship.
The Japanese planes also struck the The Big E with three bombs, forcing the mammoth to retire to the southeast, leaving her sister Hornet alone, listing, and ablaze. In the middle of all this the DD Porter (DD is military for Destroyer) took a hit from a Japanese submarine torpedo and had to be scuttled.
The Hornet was abandoned and then attacked with US torpedoes to prevent her falling into the hands of an enemy tow-ship. But while Hornet had lost it’s stinger its wings still buzzed. The US navy could not sink it, and eventually gave up and left. The Japanese actually did pick up the Hornet and put it in tow later on but the progress was so slow that they too gave up and sank it with their superior torpedoes, the infamous ‘long lance’.
But all was not bad that day for the Americans. The planes from our two carriers did find some targets and put the Japanese carrier Shokaku (a snake from the Pearl Harbor attack) out of the war for half a year, and severely damaged the heavy cruiser Chikuma. The Japanese not up to he task force steamed back northwest without ever delivering the planes to Matsuzaka Aerodrome.
Equally significant for the Americans were the planes damaged on the deck of the Japanese carrier. Between air-to-air combat and the strike on the Shokaku, the Japanese airplane losses were 100 that day, as compared to 75 for the US. This was a larger US victory than might seem because America could replace its airplane losses easily at this time and the Japanese could not replace them at all. Even if the losses had been 100 US and 75 Japan, the tally would have still been to the major advantage of the Allies. By the fall of 1942 the US industrial war machine was grinding out planes at a fantastic pace, while Japanese industry, never a match for American to begin with, was severely strained and shrinking.
The Japanese could not risk these carriers or their planes any longer. From this moment on, their carrier forces (with a rare exception in the Marianas in 1944) would never be used in an offensive operation ever again! The Japanese carriers were now on defense and were more concerned with not being killed than with killing. The Japanese Imperial Navy would continue to attack and bombard Guadalcanal and would continue to land troops in a desperate effort to dislodge the Marines, but the task forces sent down the slot from October 26 1942 on would not include carriers.
Of course the main event on October 26, 1942 was the all or nothing land attack on Henderson field that ended up nothing. If the Japs had taken Henderson field that day they could have had imported a substantial land-based air power there in a matter of hours. But from here on in even if they did somehow take Henderson back, they could not have received these planes in the aftermath. Their goal from now on was to take an airfield and then hold it with no planes to defend it with, and none on the way.
In the aftermath of the battle the Navy had learned one key thing. Don’t name any more aircraft carriers after flying insects that sting. It’s bad luck. The Hornet and the Wasp were bug-b-gone. A new fleet carrier under construction, the USS Bumble Bee, got it’s name changed to the Dayton.
BATTLE OF CAPE ESPERANCE - NOVEMBER 11-12 1942
In spite of continuing loses, the Japanese continued stubbornly with their plan to bombard Henderson every night with warships and to drop off more men and supplies in a losing battle. Admiral Scott learned of a force of two Jap. destroyers and three cruisers barreling down the slot with plans to kill American men. Scottie sent out four cruisers and five destroyers to block and stop.
In the engagement, called the Battle of Cape Esperance, the Japanese accidentally ran into the American ships at the worst possible angle. They had allowed Scott to ‘cap the T’ which put all U.S. guns broadside into a favorable position while Japanese warships could only employ their foreward turrets and those only among the front one or two ships.
The US would have won a complete victory except for some errors. One of the US destroyers broke formation and ruined the perfect T that had been such a gift of fortune. Textbook formation devolved into confusion as three American destroyers soon found themselves caught between the two lines of fire.
Friendly fire provided most of the lethal shells that dunked the Duncan, and another US sell tore into the Farenholt. The Laffey managed to dodge the same-team rockets and got out safely. Injured Farenholt made its way back home for repairs.
Japan's Lucky Victory at Cape Esperance 11.12.42
All was not bad news on November 12. Japan lost a destroyer and a heavy cruiser at Cape Esperance. More importantly the Navy held the liquid ground. The enemy mission failed. It was not to engage us in a ship to ship fight. It was to bomb Henderson badly. Henderson was not bombed at all that night. As had happened before and would again, the sacrifices of our men at sea saved the lives of men on land.
NAVAL BATTLE OF GUADALCANAL NOVEMBER 12-15 - FREE-FOR-ALL IN THE DARK
A major attempt was made to bomb and seize Henderson on the night of November 12/13 1942 and resulted in one of the most violent naval clashes in history. This Naval Battle of Guadalcanal did not involve any carriers, but was an old-fashioned ship-to-ship bare knuckles melee.
Out of Raboul on a course for Lunga Point steamed a primo Japanese task force consisting of two fleet-class battleships surrounded by nine destroyers. This bomb squad was commanded by Captain Abe, whom the Marines nicknamed ‘Dishonest Abe.’ Half a days sailing behind this was a second battle group consisting of transports loaded with troops and protected by cruisers. They were to come in and land the killers after the big boys had pulverized the helpless defenders on Henderson.
The American war wagons sent out to met them consisted of six destroyers plus five cruisers named Helena, Atlanta, San Francisco, Portland, and Juneau. Two of these were ‘light’ anti-aircraft cruisers, but they still packed plenty of turret power. The men in these cruisers were in for a rough ride. Commander Callaghan and his flagship Atlanta were doomed.
At 1:30 in the morning one of the US destroyers made radar contact with the Japanese force. But the two teams were so close upon each other that in minutes the info was irrelevant. The two task forces had run straight into each other from opposite directions in total darkness. For the next hour they pounded each other to scrap metal in a state of total confusion. Hardly a ship on either side was not hit to some degree by both friendly and hostile fire. It was every ship for herself and fire at will.
Both sides retired just after three a.m. like wounded drunks after a barroom brawl. The dawn hangover revealed a bed-spinning headache worth of damage and destruction. Every ship in the US force had been damaged or sunk except for the Destroyer Fletcher.
Japanese shells destroyed (that means sank) the Atlanta and killed Admiral Callaghan. Among the other KIA’s on Atlanta was a Captain Young, a man who had already won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor. How hero can you get? The Helena was hit badly by friend and foe alike. Helena was finished off by a special destroyer consistently given the unenviable task of sinking damaged U.S. ships, the USS Kevorkian.
The poor Juneau left the battle scene a helpless cripple..
Burning, with no steering, Juneau wandered helplessly north of Savo where a Japanese sub finished it off at daybreak. Wouldn't juneau it, a Japanese sub found her at daybreak and finished her off. 700 brave American sailors died at the hands of the yellow sub captain.
The infamous ‘long lance’ Japanese torpedoes did plenty of the damage in the midnight melee. Their submarines, by the way, did not use the lethal long lance. Nor did the Imperial Japanese Air Force. Lance was the prized possession of the Imperial surface ships only. (Samuel Eliot Morrison is credited with giving it the name ‘Long Lance.’ Interesting.)
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal – Midnight Melee 11.13 1942
The Japanese lost a battleship and a destroyer at NBG. You can see them sinking on the map. The American navy hit the big, but elderly battleship Hiei with 85 shells. US planes from Henderson found Hiei in the morning light and continued to rake her with weaponry. These planes were joined by squads from the carrier Enterprise and another group of B-17’s from far-away Espiritu Santu in the New Hebrides. Hiei spun out of control around Savo and went down in a light fog, possibly with the help of a Japanese submarine torpedo. Heh heh heh.
TASSAFARONGA 11 30 42
By the end of November the Japanese had conceded that they would lose Guadalcanal, but wanted to maintain it in order to buy time to build a new line of defense in the central and western Solomons. The Imperial Navy stopped sending in large transports full of troops to the battle for Henderson Field, but instead turned to night runs with fast destroyers dropping off supplies on the beach in floating drums and then scooting back to the safety.
Admiral Wright was assigned to lead a small US task force to intercept this midnight drop-and-run shuttle. On November 30 the US Navy sent in four destroyers in the lead, with five heavy cruisers in the rear. The Japanese ran the slot that night with 8 fast destroyers armed with their guns and lances.
Weather hurt the US forces that night. Air reconnaissance was grounded in the water because the wind and sea were too calm for the little seaplanes to launch, those heavy pontoons needed wind to lift with. As a result when the US destroyers ran right into the Japanese destroyers, it was too late to get out of range of the long lances. The US cruisers destroyed a Japanese destroyer in surface to surface fighting, but the 7 other Japanese destroyers launched one of the best torpedo broadsides in history, hitting four cruisers with numerous torpedoes. The Northampton sunk. The Pensacola was set on fire. The New Orleans and Minneapolis both had their bows ripped off. The Honolulu got away unscathed.
400 American sailors died at the Battle of Tassafaronga. In the struggle for Guadalcanal the Japanese had won a late round in a losing cause at Tass. It was the last of the many slugfests in the waters between Savo Island and Guadalcanal.
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EUROPE 1942
THE BATTLE FOR NORTH AFRICA - 1.42 TO TORCH
THE DESERT FOX
The year opened with Rommel on the march in North Africa. He remained on the offense until mid-February.
General Erwin Rommel, the so-called “Desert Fox” became a cult hero even in England, even though he was killing Englishmen. Germans monitoring English newspapers and radio broadcasts gloated over the reverence the British gave to their big man in the desert. Goebbels analyzed the English praise for Rommel this way,
“Rommel's advance produced a veritable shock in England. There is embarrassed stammering about the capture of Bengasi. The Reuter Agency up to this hour has not been able to offer any plausible explanation. By way of providing a good out, however, Rommel is praised beyond reason. No doubt he deserves is and nobody begrudges it to him, but on the other hand one must not overlook the fact that the English pour out this praise only to present themselves to the world as polished gentlemen, who are fair and more than fair to the enemy even in defeat.”
This is completely right on, as much as it hurts to give Goebbels credit for anything.
By the end of 1942 the Desert Fox was on the run and not so glorified anymore, but the first two months of the year 1942 made Rommel a hero. If Rommel was half as great at British propaganda said he was, he never would have lost a battle.
James Mason starred as Rommel in a blockbuster 1950 film, The Desert Fox. It made Rommel look like strictly a military hero who hated the Nazis and was only reluctantly doing his duty as a soldier. They start with Rommel getting orders from Hitler to stand and fight in a hopeless situation late in 1942.
The entire second half of the movie is all about how Rommel conspired to overthrow Hitler. The moral is that Rommel was a moral man who only did his duty as a soldier. Erwin only reluctantly served the Nazis, and that only as a detached military man. When his troubled conscience could no longer stand it, he joined the conspiracy against Hitler, a man he despised. He paid with his life. What a hero. This is all spelled out so clearly in the film, that if I'm exaggerating, its on the side of understatement. This is the idea that most Americans still have of Rommel, and short takes on Rommel in general histories of the war (no pun intended) still back this up.
But all you have to do is read the works of Keitel, Speer and Goebels and get the real Rommel. They aren't even trying to debunk his legend when they mention that he was one of the most loyal and dedicated Nazis from way back in the early days of the party.
The fact is that Rommel loved Hitler and loved the nazi Party until things went bad in 1943. Only then did the Fox act like his nickname and slyly change his tune to conspirator against Hitler.
In the early days of the nazi Party, not only was Rommel a member, he was the head of Hitler's personal bodyguard! When Hitler murdered the top men of the S.A. on the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, Rommel led the detachments into the rooms where he Rhoem and other were shot. Rommel may not have personally pulled the rigger, but he was an accessory to Nazi political assassinated. The people who produced The Desert Fox were desert rats, deserting the cause of the truth to make money.
Part of the reason for the halo over post-war Rommel was that the world hated Germans and yet the democracies needed German co-operation to fight the Cold War against the Russians. The west needed someone to glorify to appease the bitter Bitburgers. Who else could they say good things about in the German echelon? Rommel was a positive lightning rod for a western desire to make friends again with Germany. Its just too bad that better moral men like Admiral Canaris didn't get to become household names instead of Rommel. He was an overrated general (we'll get to that later) and he was an incredibly overrated individual.
DEATH OF FRITZ TODT SHAKES UP NAZIS FEB 8 1942
He is not one of the household names of WWII but had he lived out the war he would have been and might have been hung at Nuremberg.
Fritz Todt was a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler, whatever that is, and was such a hero of the Nazi construction industry that the Nazi construction labor army was named after him. It was called the OT, the Operation Todt.
Todt had met with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on February 7. He took off for Berlin on February 8 and his plane exploded in mid-air.
Fritz had been critical of the war against Russia, recommending that it be reduced to a stop loss holding action with no plans for any further offensive goals. Todt was Nazi minister of munitions at the time of his death.
The Nazis had murdered a million people and suffered a million war casualties by the time Todt died, but this was the first great Nazi to die on them. It really shook them up. The Nazi memoirs treat this as one of the great events of the war, even though most people today would just say “Fritz who?”
Hitler was so upset that he flew back to Berlin and arranged a funeral for Fritz that would have been the envy of a 19th century Pope. The Fuehrer rarely left East Prussia in these months because he was running the war against Russia down to the last tank movement. But losing Todt was enough to get him to leave his maps and come home for a few days. The Todt funeral was a ceremony on a par with the Nuremburg rallies. All the great nazi leaders gave a short eulogy, and Hitler topped it off with a great speech in which he had to stop several times to fight back tears.
Do we have to even say that Hitler might have ordered him killed and was like the mobster at the funeral parlor showing up with the most expensive flowers? Todt was also a Luftwaffe Air Marshall and Goering had come to see him as a rival. Goering could have easily arranged for the plane to blow up. Few historians have ever openly suggested that Todt was probably or even perhaps assassinated. There is an occasional mention that a few people speculated that he may have been killed. I'm going to say that it was more likely than not that either Goering or Hitler had him iced.
MALTA
In April 1942 the Germans began a large air attack on the Mediterranean island of Malta.
This key island was being used as a naval and air base to harass and destroy the German supplies being shipped from Italy to the Italo-German Empire in North Africa.
Rommel and Kesselring were in agreement that Malta had to be neutralized. But there was a major argument as to whether Malta had to be completely conquered and occupied. Rommel wanted all the resources that would go into an invasion of Malta for himself to use as he pleased in Africa. Kesselring and others tried to convince Hitler that Malta could only be neutralized for a time, and that if it were not taken completely it would rise again and be the same old problem later.
After a month of pounding from the air, Kesselring was certain that Malta could be taken by a combined forces operation. But Rommel was against it and Hitler always listened to Rommel. Goering also was against it because it would probably include another parachute attack and he had lost too many men taking Crete and the creton didn't want to have to go through another Crete. Kesselring pleaded that if Rommel went ahead with an offensive thrust into Egypt, the Axis would have to open up a second supply line across the eastern Mediterranean to complement the one already precariously maintained across the central Mediterranean. It would be impossible to do this even in the short run as Malta would rebound and then the primary supply line from Sicily would be choked off and then the Axis would soon find itself isolated and doomed in North Africa. This is precisely what happened in the long run. Rommel was the movie star general of his time and indeed of history. But all of his decisions were not genius right, even if superficial history seems to think so.
When Kesselring began to argue too much with Rommel, he got an e-mail from Adolph Hitler to “Leave Rommel alone. You are a Luftwaffe man and this is none of your concern!”
There was a famous commercial in the 1970's where in a din of noisy conversation someone says, well my broker is E.F. Hutton and he says that...” at that point all conversation stops and everyone looks to see what that person is going to say. The voice-over comes on, “When E.F. Hutton talks ... people listen.”
Kesselring could play that part. “Well my boss is Adolph Hitler, and he told me....” .... Everyone at HQ stops whatever they're doing... - Voice-over with German accent: “When Adolph Hitler gives an order ... people listen.”
Malta would not be invaded.
ROMMEL TO EL AL AMEIN AND BACK
Rommel in 1941 had performed one miracle after another in his offensive thrust against the British in the desert. He earned the nickname “The Desert Fox” in 1941. There is no Japanese Army general whose name is as familiar to Americans as Rommel. He took a small army in 1941 and did the victorious work of a large army. Rommel was inspirational, dynamic, aggressive and, dare I say it, brilliant. It's such a trite word for military men but he earned it.
But 1942 was another story. Rommel's performance was anything but brilliant. Rommel was physically ill most of the time and this in the opinion of many was largely why he was not the same Fox in 42 that he was in 41. By the end of 1942 Erwin was the “Desert Dingo.” Yet the glory of his deeds in 41 is what lasted for history and his bad act in 1942 is virtually forgotten.
The back and forth war in North Africa continued. Rommel attacked to the east and was confident he could take Cairo before Montgomery knew what hit him. He almost did, but what no one could make him understand was that the further he pushed the British east, the closer he was pushing them to some very excellent supply lines from the Allied controlled Middle East. The more he won territory the further he was pushing his army away from its already precarious supply line. Any war student at the Sorbonne could tell you that Rommel was falling into a trap that would be the worse the more he advanced in glorious victory. The Allies were gaining better control of the air and the seas with each passing month.
At El Alamein, Montgomery held and the two teams faced off for a few weeks. Then Montgomery struck back. The British counter-offensive against the Italo-German forces did not move with Desert Fox lightning speed. It was methodical and stopped to consolidate positions along the way. There were some setbacks here and there and Rommel launched limited counter-strikes, but the trend was clear, like a stock that has its ups and downs but stepping back to look at the bigger picture is clearly on the rise. Over the summer of 42 Rommel was pushed back steadily towards central North Africa, in other words, Tunisia.
Most of Tunisia was technically in the political possession of Vichy France. Rommel and Kesselring had real hope that Vichy French troops would fight side-by-side with German troops, or at least remain helpfully neutral. But when Italian air force planes landed in Tunis the attitude of the Vichy French changed. They hated the Italians more than the Germans and French forces instantly became a negative factor. Kesselring reached a point where he had to send Stuka dive bombers to grease hundreds of French troops in their barracks at Tunisia. Then they got a chance to rise and join a rebellion against the faltering Axis occupiers.
The Axis and the Allies both had to sweat the native Moslem population. No one knew which side they were on at any given time. They naturally were on their own side and detested the infidels on both teams.
THE LASAGNA FACTOR
Italian troops never had the fighting spirit of the Germans for the war, and good for them. Italian officers were even less spartan than Italian troops. German officers were appalled when they went into the Italian officer's mess and found that the food was ten times better for the brass than the gunk being served to the Italian enlisted men. The German officers proudly chose to eat the same food as the enlisted men as a symbol of the unity of martial spirit required for an Army from top to bottom. They were ashamed of the Italian officers for “eating freshly baked stuffed lasagna with wine, while Italian privates ate stale white bread with water.”
Italian divisions were almost always performing poorly compared to their Nazi counterparts (I know I'm not supposed to refer to German military units as Nazi, but I choose to do so. As far as I'm concerned, troops in service of the Nazi cause means Nazi troops. So I'll just break that separatist rule whenever I feel like it.)
The Italian Navy was always hiding and never came to the rescue when needed. Mussolini promised every three weeks that soon the full force of the Italian navy would come out and make a decisive difference. But it never did. Hence the joke I heard as a kid, “What do you call the Italian Navy?” - “Chicken of the Sea.”
German generals gave top leadership posts to Italian Generals and formally served under them, but this was just to try and squeeze some productivity out of the badly performing Italian armed forces. German generals always believed that if the Italians had only performed with half the macho attitude of the Germans, the war in Africa might be won.
The 'make love not war' attitude of the Italians was real enough but the Germans in their post-war memoirs probably blame them too much for every failure in Africa and elsewhere. Germany had itself to blame for every defeat because it started a world war against Allies with superior power, period. Yet they always 'Blame Italy First.' Italians should be proud that their men did not fight with the same vigor as the Germans in the cause of war for war's sake. A certain Admiral Maugeri secretly betrayed the location of both Italian and German ships, sending many men to a watery grave. Many have condemned 'Maggott Maugueri', but I say it took courage to do the right thing and place humanity and justice at the head of the line in front of race and country.
THE ATLANTIC WAR 1942
In 1942 Germany switched from offense to defense in the Atlantic. Hitler realized that he had lost the Battle of Britain, at least for the short term. He was not going to be able to knock the United Kingdom out of the conflict. What was worse he now had to fight the USA too. Neither of these contingencies had been anticipated and now with two enemies to handle Hitler stepped up the U-boat war in a frantic switch from trying to win the war to trying now not to lose it. A stalemate with the UK might lead to a negotiated peace in which he could retain most or all of his winnings elsewhere. Production of German submarines became a top priority. If he couldn’t beat England by invasion he could try to strangle it by severing the supply lines from the United States. He almost succeeded. 1942 was a dark year for the Allies in the Atlantic. The technology of the submarine had come along way since the Turtle had nearly destroyed a British frigate during the American Revolution.
The first months of 1942 were a shock to many residents of the east coast of the United States. Hitler decided at a meeting on December 12 1941 to take the U-boats to see America.
Germany unleashed the U-boats on American waters and many beach-goers in Atlantic City or Miami Beach were treated to the sight of a merchant ship blowing up and going down in flames. In January 1942 many merchant freighters were sunk off the US coast.
A mere six U-boats did this much damage. US Naval preparations were still rusted from two decades of pacifism (the most ineffective form of peacemaking) and put up a rather poor defense in these months.
Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler had a Norway complex. He was convinced that Norway was the decisive theatre at this time and kept the bulk of his U-boat and surface forces there.
HITLER PLAYS POCKET POOL IN NORWAY 1942
The three major remaining surface-raider threats to Allied shipping were the pocket battleships Tirpitz, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. The Bismarck and the Graf Spee were housing fish but these three sister ships were still a threat. Early in 1942 the Nazis decided not to send them out to the Atlantic where they would have had a 10,000 square mile killing field to work with for at least six months. Instead they stayed in the top right corner pocket of the pool table. They stayed in the Norway theatre of operations. Than you, Adolph.
DIEPPE RAID – 8.42
In order to show the Russian allies that the time was not ripe of an invasion, a large exploratory raid was planned on the French town of Dieppe. The Allied plan was to occupy the port for a short time, draw out the German defenses and force the Luftwaffe into a major aerial brawl. Th Dieppe Raid was actually expected to fail modestly while acquiring practical intelligence, and reducing the machinery of the German air force.
On August 19, 1942 6,000 men landed on the French beach at Dieppe, most of them Canadian. Of these men half were either killed or captured. Instead of being reduced in power the Luftwaffe splashed more than 108 RAF planes. The Dieppe Raid was a disaster. The 108 planes lost was the worst day of the European war in the air for the allies.
The Raid did however serve its political purpose in showing Stalin that the western second front was not yet a practical goal. He would have to wait and importune in vain for nearly two more years. Some practical military lessons from Dieppe were learned and applied in action on D-Day 44.
In 1985 a well-meaning doorman at Stitches Comedy Club bet me 10 bucks that Dieppe was an invasion, not a raid. After looking it up he paid me the Hamilton. I will always have a special place in my heart for the Dieppe Raid.
SUPER-GYMNAST
At the end of 1941 General Marshall, Admiral King and Admiral Leahy (our version of the military Brains Trust) were already calling for a full-scale invasion of Continental Europe with a holding action against Japan. This had been the agreed strategic plan even before the war actually reached America with Pearl Harbor.
By the time New Years Day had arrived in 1942 the amazing success of the Japanese in the Pacific made the MLK group reconsider just a bit. Some reinforcements had to be rushed to the Far East to at the very least, save Australia.
The British reluctantly agreed to reinforce the Far East to a degree greater than had been pre-planned before Pearl. But they balked at talk that a cross channel invasion should be planned immediately. The UK wanted it both ways essentially. The British wanted to keep the European theatre the top Allied priority, while at the same time they dragged their feet on a 1942 invasion of Europe, and would drag them through 1943 as well much to the annoyance of everyone but Churchill.
In April of 1942 the Marshall Memorandum recommended a cross channel invasion in 1942, and FDR signed on to this report on May 6 1942. The 1942 D-Day assault was coed named 'Sledgehammer.'
By July of 1942 the British had talked FDR out of sledgehammer. The invasion was stuck in the mindset mud of World War One. It was now sludgehammer.
The MKL trio wondered angrily why the British should ask the United States to commit most of its forces to Europe when the British didn't want to put them to work in Europe? Why should they United States send 60 divisions of Army men to Europe so they could sit around and listen to the BBC wondering when the British would get around to agreeing to an invasion of the continent?
The British obviously did not want to invade Europe until the Nazi war machine was a punch drunk boxer barely standing in the 14th round. The US JCS on the other hand felt that the sooner the good guys engage the bad guys in a full-scale fight to the death the better. Marshall and company were fed up and began to retool their entire strategic thinking. Maybe the Allies could switch to a holding action in Europe through Naval and Air action only, and use most of the ground troops available for fighting in the Far East, where they were so clearly and desperately needed.
Churchill and his generals went over the heads of the US JCS and appealed straight to Roosevelt and Hopkins, convincing them that the Marshall plan to make Japan the new number one target was unthinkable. The British would never agree to it. It was that simple and the Allies would be at a divisive impasse.
Besides, the British did have a plan to employ the fresh American troops in the Hitler Theatre. That plan was North Africa. The British had discussed plans for a North African invasion with US help since August of 1941, before the USA entered the war, so it wasn't a shocking idea. The Nazis had been fighting the British in North Africa for two years with limited success back and forth on both sides. The Germans would be on the offense, then the British, then the Germans again. The grave danger was to Egypt. If the Africka Corps of Rommel took the Suez Canal, the entire dynamic of World War II would change in a very bad way.
The plan was to take pressure off the Egyptian front by landing a couple of US-UK armies on the western North African coast in the region from Casablanca to Algiers. This would create a second front, forcing the Nazis to divide their forces and thus save the Suez and, hopefully clear the Germans and Italians entirely off the African continent. This operation, if ultimately successful, in turn would pave the way for a safer Mediterranean, allowing British supply shipping to stop making the long end run around South Africa. Clearing out North Africa would also set up a potential offensive Allied Mediterranean operation against Italy or the Balkans.
One of the main purposes of the North African campaign was to demonstrate to an angry Stalin that the democracies were not sitting around letting the Russians do all the fighting and dying while Britian and America polished their bombers and whistled a happy tune. North Africa wasn't exactly the second front that Stalin was demanding, but it was a lot better than nothing. It was also a sop to Marshall and King who were griping that maybe the Pacific war should get the top priority if nothing important was happening against the Germans anyway. Now something was. Stalin and Marshall both favored sledgehammer, as being better than nothing.
Eisenhower in early September ordered the 8th Air Force to call off preparations for the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and to concentrate its efforts on raids designed to protect the upcoming Torch landings. Dwight D wanted the Axis airfields and submarine bases knocked out temporarily at least, more than he wanted industry torched up in central German cities. This torch diversion of bomber resources probably set back the bomber war against Germany by six months.
On October 21, 1942 90 B-17's left England to hit the submarine bases in the Bay of Biscay. Only 15 of 90 17's even managed to reach the target area and their TNT, dropped from 17,000 feet as opposed to the usual 23,000, caused little serious damage. The Biscay raid had no fighter escort but fortunately didn't lose many planes.
The next raid came on November 9, when 31 17's and 12 24's went after the sub pens of St Nazaire. The 17's went in low and dropped their loads from a mere 9,000 feet. But many B-17's took heavy flak damage and three were shot down. This was the last time the AAF tried low level attacks with the B-17.
TORCH 1942
The United States and Britian had already discussed military plans for the combined invasion of North Africa seven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The US-UK team expected that the North Africa op would get under way quite soon after American entry into the conflict whenever that came, and both expected it to come sooner rather than later.
The US-UK North African Campaign began in early November 1942. Torch probably would have lit up several months earlier if not for the unexpected success of the Japanese in the Pacific. Considerable ships and troops were reassigned from European to Asian destinations after the Japanese Army and Navy ran over South Asia like fictional monsters. The Allies weren't ready to take the offense in Europe until they at least put a stanch on the life threatening open wound in Asia. Instead of taking the offense in Europe and holding in Asia, as planned, the Allies had to hold in Europe so they could hold in Asia.
FRENCH FRIED COMPLICATIONS
There were several enemies to deal with in the North African theatre. There were the Italians, the original enemy there. Until January of 1941 it was strictly the Italians running the NA war. Then there were the Nazis, the main opponent. There was the surf, the weather, the sand, fears that Spain might jump in on the side of the Axis, and the absolute inexperience of US invasion forces. There was the problem of the local Moslem Arabs. And last but not least there was the complex problem of Vichy France.
The areas where the US-UK forces were going to land were part of French colonial Africa.
Some background; Back in June of 1940 while still under German attack, Reynaud and de Gaulle wanted France to fall back into the French colonial North African regions to continue the fight against the Nazis; imperialist conquerors defending themselves from Nazi conquerers from the fortress of their earlier African conquests. Casablanca or Algiers would become the new capitol of France while Paris was occupied. But Petain and Weygand won the argument and semi-surrendered France to the Germans in exchange for France being allowed to continue to exist under Hitler's conditions of virtual servitude, but at least it would continue to exist. If the French didn't like the deal they could go back to the war and watch their country get exterminated like a bug, to continue on only as a province of Greater Germany.
So the deal was made and Vichy France came into being, a puppet Petain state in a corner of France in the relatively unproductive and underpopulated deep south.
The political state of the French colonial states became at least as complex as the political conditions in France proper. Quisling France had more political control over its colonial possessions in North Africa than it did over the heart of France to the north of Vichy.
So this creates a delicate set up for a military assault by Allied Forces on Colonial “French” possessions. Basically, the French troops were being told at gunpoint to fight for the Nazis while they had to shoot at their true friends to prove their sincerity to their fake friends with a gun at their back. Imagine the moral problem for the individual sailor or soldier.
This was also a problem when French troops faced British troops. There was bad blood between France and Britian over the assault at Mers el Kebir in July 1940. At that terrible scene the British sank French Battleships at anchor like Pearl Harbor and created many funerals. British and French forces had skirmished in the Lebanon.
Cooler heads understood the greater good that a French-British alliance meant, but nevertheless many French troops were much more apt by 1942 to shoot at a British ship than an American one. So M-L-K FDR and Churchill concurred that the North African landings would be composed almost entirely of American ships and troops. It's noteworthy that the North African “landings” is what they are usually called, since it's hard to call them invasions against a friend holding their ground under duress and only pretending to even aim their guns in anger.
There were further complications among the Allies over diplomatic relations with Vichy or lack of them. The British had been shunning relations with Vichy as an act of defiance against the Nazis and as a signal of encouragement and respect to the French Resistance and the Free French Army of De Gaulle. The United States on the other hand had given formal diplomatic recognition to Vichy France, and had even sent the venerable Admiral Leahy there for a spell as official US Ambassador.
The United States felt there was plenty to be gained by having official representatives on the ground in France and North Africa reporting on conditions there, and believed also, that formal recognition of Vichy helped to ensure the strict neutrality of the powerful French Navy.
The split between the Yanks and the Redcoats over Vichy's diplomatic status made for complex negotiations with the Vichy defenders and their leaders at the sites where the Allies wanted to come on shore.
There also were splits within the French at Morocco between those who wanted to abandon the Vichy leadership at the first sight of “enemy” forces, and others who thought for various reasons that they still should stick to their Vichy pledged loyalty, whether it be to resist or cooperate with the invaders. In other words, whatever Vichy told them to do they felt duty bound to do.
The worst thing for the Allies would be if the Vichy French in Africa fought to the death against the Allied landing groups. The best thing would be if they embraced them as liberators and turned their guns on the Nazi troops scattered around Oran and Algiers. The in-between was most likely and what actually happened. There was some fighting between French and American batteries and a compromise cease-fire was quickly reached.
The French Resistance in fact had already coincidentally been planning an uprising in North Africa against both Vichy and their Nazi overlords at about the same time the Yanks would be hitting the beach. The leader of the rebellion was to be General Henri Giraud, a famous man in France who had escaped a Nazi prison earlier in 1941. The Americans took a chance and met in secret with Giraud and told him of the impending invasion, hoping to coordinate his rebellion with their invasion. They brought 'Hammerin Hank' to Gibraltar for top secret talks. Henri took his hosts aback when he insisted that he should command the invasion force. But the argument was moot because at that hour the armadas were already well put out from their bases in Bermuda, so he couldn't get his arrogant way in any case.
The code name for the North African landings was “Super-Gymnast”, but it was later changed to “Torch” presumably because someone realized that Super-Gymnast was was a stupid name.
THE FIRST D-DAY NOVEMBER 8 1942
Axis intelligence watched the gathering US-led invasion force in the Atlantic and wondered where it would hit. Guesses included a trip across the Mediterranean to help with the Eight Army against Rommel, a landing on the Atlantic coast for a trip across the desert to Tunisia, a direct landing in Tunisia, a direct assault on Sicily or Sardinia, or a landing at Algeria. Morocco was one of the least considered.
The idea of hitting Sicily at this time was never seriously considered by the Allies, although if they knew the incredibly neglected state of Axis defenses there at the time they might have not only considered it, they might have done it. This would have completely cut off the North African Axis from its supply lines. From there they could have left the rest of the African war to Montgomery with the accumulating advantage from that supply situation. It might have taken Monty a while to beat Rommel and van Arnim, and it might have to be done with some stalemate methodism, but the German-Italians would have been in some mess with the supply line across the central club Med cut off.
By the time the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, the defenses there were three times stronger than they were in November 1942.
The US Army landed in force at three locations, Casablanca, Oran and Algiers (at Casablanca they arrested the usual suspects.) America had at last directly entered the war against the Nazi menace. The spectacular press coverage in America of the Torch landings was not reflective of the fight that went with it. It was a huge event for the average American back home, but just another day at the bloody beach in the Mediterranean to grizzled veterans like Rommell, Cavallero, and Monty.
A certain Frenchman named Admiral Darlan was in charge of the area. The Allies disliked him as a Nazi collaborator and traitor, a quisling with a French accent. When the United States decided to negotiate with Darlan for his acquiescence in the US landings there was a lot of controversy. Making a deal with Darlan was making a deal with the devil in many eyes, but would it have been more wise to defy Darlan on general principles and take heavy casualties while also stimulating a fighting spirit amongst the confused and torn French personnel?
There would be plenty of fighting ahead when these US forces, once ashore, headed east to join the scrap that had been going on in the desert for some time. The prize due east was Tunis. There the Germans would hold on until the very end in May of 1943. Tunis geographically was super-strategic. It commanded both North Africa and the Mediterranean. It was at the center of the North African map.
The fighting in the east had been back and forth with a German victory in the desert here and a British one there. But the overall momentum was with the British. They had stopped Hitler’s dream of taking the Suez Canal and were matriculating their way due west towards Tunisia while Panzer commander Rommell handed them a drubbing now and then. But attrition alone was clearly favoring the British and both sides knew it. No military wunderkind was going to win North Africa for the Nazis. Now the Germans were fighting a delaying campaign, trying to extend the war in North Africa just to protect Italy and the Mediterranean, not to win the field on which they were fighting. Just as the eastern front was slowly falling apart here came the Americans landing to the west.
CAN THE TUNIS
The Tunis prize was protected by Axis air power based in Sicily so the landing had to take place much further west and then the army could march overland to join the battle, much like the British landing in lower Maryland in 1813, rather than attack Washington D.C. directly.
Commander Dwight Eisenhower was in charge of the UN forces landing in North Africa and he immediately felt he could move on Tunis and capture it in a lighting strike before the winter of 1942-3 set in. With one division from Algiers he raced towards Tunis. But monumentally heavy rains stopped Ike’s army in its tracks. The offensive was literally stuck in the mud. As winter set in the Axis pumped in heavy re-enforcements to Tunisia, tripling the troop level and making any dream of a quick victory impossible.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS OF 1942
Roosevelt had specifically asked his military leaders to launch the invasion of North Africa one week before the November elections. Due to weather problems and moon tides the landings were delayed until one week after the elections. To his credit, Roosevelt squashed all talk of going ahead with the early landings anyway. He would not hear of an increased risk for the American forces in order to gain a couple of seats in Congress for his Party, even if we have to admit that he tried to exploit the operation for politics provided he could do so safely. He was like JFK that way, always thinking of politics first, but backing off in decency when propriety dictated.
Roosevelt had crossed the country in October campaigning for Democratic candidates but swore the press to secrecy. He said it was to prevent an assassination attempt but it was probably because some of his endorsements had recently indicated a backlash in polls for that candidate. He wanted to help but he had to keep a low profile while appearing at sites along the way. Besides, FDR had publicly stated that he would not campaign for the Democratic Party in 42 because he was too busy running the war. The press protected him from being called out on this one.
The results were bad for the Democrats. The GOP won 9 seats in the Senate and 44 seats in 42 in the Congress. If not for the Solid South, the Democrats would have lost control of the Capitol Building. The New Dealers were no longer a majority force in national politics. FDR could play King in running the war, but for his “planned economy,” the party was over.
THE JEWISH PROBLEM 1942
There was Jewish problem in Germany that was being solved by mass murder. But there was a Jewish problem in America too. Anti-Semitism is still a problem in the USA. On the eve of Pearl Harbor it was arguably worse than at any point in US history. This was very poor timing. Just when we needed to confront the anti-semitic Nazi menace, the USA was in an ugly anti-semitic condition itself.
Milt Mayer, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in 1942 penned a piece called ‘The Case Against the Jews.’ He was referring to American Jews, not those under the heels of Hitler.
It is easy to wonder today how the Holocaust could have happened in Germany. But Germany was just an extreme and triumphant form of the same anti-Semitism I heard all around me when I was growing up in Boston in the 1960's, the same anti-Semitism that has been around for about 2,000 years.
The disease had been most problematic and acute in Russia long before the Nazis got insane with it. But there were too many Jews in Russia to consider eliminating them, and besides they were productive for the Russian economy. They worked and farmed and ran bourgeois shops.
Germany could conceive of expelling them because the Jews were a minority. Germany tried to exterminate them because they were an unarmed minority who threatened to take too many jobs away and was committing usury against the German people. Seeking jobs, or lending money doesn't make a race evil, but a few million Nazis felt otherwise. The Jew were small enough to allow for the fantasy of driving them completely out of the country.
The Mayer article appeared in the March 1942 Saturday Evening Post. It predicted that the USA would be in an even more anti- Jewish frenzy when the war ended. The piece had such an overt anti-Semitic tone (he made a rhyme about Jewish noses and their Jewish Moses) that a backlash ensued and the editor of the Post had to resign. But just the fact that the nations largest circulation mag could print such a piece in the first place is testament to the racism against the Jews in America at the same time that old glory was fighting the Nazis. One U.S. civilian war diarist said he used to commonly hear people refer to WWII as “the Jew’s War.”
Reports began to filter into Roosevelt in 1942 about the mass executions of Jews in German concentration camps. But FDR either thought the reports were exaggerated or did not want to react too publicly or too strongly and risk being accused of being in the hands of the Jewish monopolists. Rednecks had charged him with being a Jew-lover throughout his presidency. This was said of him all over the world as well. Germans and Americans alike called him 'President Rosenfeld.' Franklin D just didn’t have any margin for error, no shoulder on the roadway with Jewish issues.
In November of 1942 Roosevelt moved. He asked Congress if he could use his war powers to ignore the laws governing immigration and let the Jewish war refugees in. It was his finest hour. But Congress blocked his proposal. Newsweek magazine for one thought that it was largely because of anti-Semitism. Congress didn’t want a queue of ocean liners bringing more Jews to Manhattan as fast as they can unload.
THE ASSASSINATION OF HEYDRICH MAY 27 1942
The resistance in Czechoslovakia (and I actually just spelled it right in one try!) assassinated one of the most evil persons to ever walk the earth in May of 1942.
Reynhert Heydrich was probably the fourth of firth worst person in the Third Reich and possibly one of the top ten worst persons of all time (not counting soccer announcers.) He was one of the masterminds of the Jewish Holocaust, and the only reason his name isn't as famous as Himmler is the fact that Czech partisan assassins whacked him on May 27 1942.
RH was the second most powerful man in the Gestapo and held many evil titles in the Reich. Himmler was his boss, but Himmler actually feared Heydrich as an upstart rival. When Heinrich Himmler is afraid of you, you know you're evil.
The mission to kill Heydrich was meticulously planned in London. Czech patriots were parachuted into Czechoslovakia to an area where they knew he made a daily commute. They hid and waited till his car drove by, stepped out and hurled two grenades.
Both grenades missed the car, but one landed and exploded close enough to the rear to send shrapnel forward. A couple of pieces of metal hit Heydrich in the chest. The car stopped and SS scum stepped boldly outside the door and began firing his pistol at the fleeing assassins.
“Hult yoo schveinhunds!” he shouted as he kept firing. Heydrich knew he'd been hit but thought it was a minor wound. Suddenly he collapsed to the ground unconscious. It was serious.
Heydrich was taken to the SS Mission of Mercy Hospital in Prague where he made an excellent recovery over the next six days. But on the seventh day he developed a severe infection which turned into pneumonia and he died.
Hoo-ray!
The assassins got away, but not for long. They were tracked down and surrounded in a Prague Church. There were 40 other members of the Czech resistance helping him hide out and it was curtains for all of them, needless to say.
The Nazis were a group who killed people for no reason on a beautiful sunny day when no one had done anything to them and they were in a good mood. Imagine how they reacted to the murder of the number 2 man in the Gestapo, and a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler. The reprisals were off the scales.
The first to be punished were the Jews. So what if they had not even been behind the killing? What did that matter? There were less than a thousand Jews left in Germany who had been allowed to live a slightly normal life because of either earlier service to Germany, or political connections. Every last one of them were rounded up and sent off to concentration camps as punishment for what happened to Heydrich. More than 16,000 other Jews in East Europe were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. In two towns in Czechoslovakia, the punishment was simply to round up all the male inhabitants of the town and shoot them in front of their wives, children and mothers. There was no proof that these particular two towns had sponsored the assassination, but the example was set. At least 20,000 innocent victims of Naziism, people who were already suffering under the heel of the Nazi boot, were killed to pay for the murder of one bad man.
I suppose this did deter a lot of people from further acts of resistance. But it surely inspired just as many others to fight back that much harder. When you seek revenge, first dig two graves.
There is some historic curiosity as to why Heydrich died suddenly after making positive health progress for six days. Some have suggested that Himmler may have poisoned him because he didn't want this rival to come back and take his job away. Others believe that the grenades were deliberately packed with dangerous infectious chemicals to create just such an outcome if the victim survives a partial hit. Others just chalk it up to the dangers of primitive 1942 hospital care and the delicacy of the human body when under all kinds of sedation.
One thing is certain. I wish I could have been a bird in a nearby tree and watched Heydrich get whacked. I know I'm not supposed to feel that way, but I was trained at the movies. We are supposed to cheer when the bad guy gets killed in the final minutes of the flick. Someone should make a movie about the death of Schveinhund Heydrich. There was a bad one made in 1943, but it doesn't even include a scene of the assassination, and the aftermath is just the fictional story of someone running from the Gestapo.
MILITARY BATTLE OF RUSSIA 1942
On the battlefield the Russians were holding on throughout the year but the battle had very much not been decided. The United States feared that the Soviet Union would settle up with Hitler and leave the war with the western allies holding the burning bag, the way Russia did in the first World War.
For 1941-42 and again in 1942-43 the Russian winter did more damage to the German offensive than the Russian Army did. The German drive for the oil fields of the Southern Caucasus region was halted by a battle at a small city that was the junction of several key water and rail routes. The place was named Stalingrad. The battle for Stalingrad would decide whether Hitler would run out of gasoline. That battle was being joined as 1942 came to a close.
POLITICAL BATTLE OF RUSSIA 1942
One of the main goals of the U.S. Office of War Information, one which it achieved all too well was the propagation of the idea that the USSR was a wonderful supportive and heroic ally deserving all US support, sympathy and understanding. This was a war measure and a lie that overlooked the totalitarian cutthroat nature of the real Russia, especially the Russia that had teamed up with Hitler until he stabbed the bear in the big back. But the ad campaign worked quite well. In fact it worked too well.
There is a saying in show business that says ‘never buy your own publicity.’ It is meant to keep artists modest and realistic about who they really are. We sold the American public a bill of goods that Russia was an wonderful lovable ally that supported of freedom, democracy, and liberty. Amazing work. Good clever work helping to win the war.
But the American liberal leadership bought their own publicity about Russia big time. It would have been almost comedic foolishness if not for the seriousness of how it led to the United States into making self-destructive political and military decisions in the closing weeks of the war, and in the post-war world. It took almost two years before Harry Truman and the people woke up and smelled the self-brainwash.
The United States and Great Britain had many disagreements over Russian policy.
Britian distrusted Stalin and believed that his nationalist Russian colossus was still territorially ambitious and his USSR political Communist colossus was still intent on fomenting world revolution from and without against the capitalist western governments.
Both the US and the UK were willing to concede some of Stalin’s territorial demands for a post-war settlement. Stalin wanted western Poland, western Romania, and the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, plus Warwick Rhode Island. Britian would readily agree to the three Baltic states. They had belonged to the Russian Empire before World War One and so Russia had an historical claim of some merit.
Britian wanted a strong yet contented Russia to provide an old-fashioned balance of power on the continent after the Germans were defeated. The UK wanted a demilitarized but industrially strong Germany as well as a militarily strong France restored to their old positions of power. France and Russia could protect the peace while Germany pumped the economy. The English saw the post-war world with as much if not more cynicism than it had seen the pre-war world.
The Americans, especially FDR, saw the post-war world as a fresh canvass on which a utopian new world could be painted with new rules and new roles for our old enemies. Roosevelt and Hopkins honestly believed that suffering at the hands of the Nazis had transformed Soviet Russia into a true friend who would never betray America or anyone else after the war.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Being socialists themselves, the Roosevelt gang gave every benefit of the doubt to Russia. They had done so throughout the thirties, why should this be any different? The Nazi-Soviet Pact, the rape of Poland, the activities of the Comintern, and the invasion of Finland were completely absolved, and forgotten.
However the US did not accept Stalin’s territorial demands for the three Baltic Republics. The Wilsonian Roosevelt believed in the principles of the Atlantic Charter with all the zeal that Woodrow had felt for his pet League of Nations. The idea of allowing peoples to be swallowed up by conquerors in the name of power politics from the mind-set of the Congress of Vienna was not acceptable. Franklin liked the Soviets and heard lots of great things about his pal Stalin. He thought that if we showed the Russians that we trusted them they would respond with good behavior. But he would not allow the Soviets to enslave the Baltic republics (the USA was so consistent on this subject that it never gave formal recognition to these nations until 1991 when they were granted actual independence.)
Stalin asked for three favors from his strange bedfellows in 1942. He wanted The US and UK to give a lot of material help Russia hold on in the war. This wish was readily granted. German U-boats were putting heavy losses on the northern convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk, so the second pipeline of supplies up through Iran was developed rapidly.
Massive western help would not really begin flowing into Russia until 1943. Secondly, an issue that is a constant in the story of the war, Joey wanted the English twins to open up a second front in the west. FDR and Win told him he would have to wait until 1943. He thirdly wanted controversial territorial concessions in a post-war settlement.
HOME FRONT ISSUES 1942
THE RUBBER MESS
Every major participant in the Second World War faced an ongoing crisis over oil supply. That is fairly well known. But ‘the rubber mess’ often hit even harder. America had a large supply of domestically produced oil to compensate for the tankers full that German U-boats were sending to the bottom off our East coast. But the shortage of rubber was almost insoluble.
Most of US rubber stock came from southeast Asia, which was now under Japanese control. And even if we could get our hands on Malayan rubber, it was a long was back to the states on a rubber-ship it in a global war zone.
The Roosevelt administration was partly to blame for the rubber shortage because it had never believed the Japanese Navy could win in the Pacific the way it did when war broke out. If the FDR think tank had foreseen the destruction of the Pacific fleet and the overrunning of our rubber supplies in Malaya (where the USA procured almost 90% of our rubber supply) it would have launched an anticipatory synthetic rubber manufacturing program long before December of 1941. But it never did, so it never did.
The high tide of Japanese aggression left us holding the rubber bag. FDR forgot to listen to his mom when she said ‘don’t forget your rubbers.’
Harold Ickes (pronounces ‘ikees’ and a prominent figure in American history) had been placed in charge of public relations over the oil rationing program and now he jumped in on the rubber crisis too. He told the American people at a panic press conference that the rubber shortage would be solved by a patriotic drive from ‘scrap rubber’ collected from common people and junkyards. This would raise more than a million tons of patriot rubber and pretty much solve the shortage.
One man who didn't like Ickes' statements was Artie Newhall. Newhall was head of the WPB’s (War Production Board) rubber procurement department and he told Ickees that he was insane. Newhall had been in the private rubber manufacturing business before the war and he knew his tires. Newhall was going to take the blame when Ickes prediction came not true.
After more than a month of frantic national effort only 32% of the one million ton scrap rubber goal had been achieved. Ickes was in a bad way about it. Harold's eccentricity got the best of him and he personally began stealing rubber mats from the doorways of government buildings. Security guards were grabbing the mats back out of Ickes hands and explaining to him that the rubber in the mats was already recycled and could not be used for tires. They had to bark at the Interior secretary that he was going to cause injury to people who would slip and falls on the slick marble tiles because he was swiping mats.
The rubber shortage plagued the war effort from the first to the last day of the war. Our jeeps, planes, and tanks had to get first dibs on all rubber. Not only was it always an inadequate supply for the military, you can imagine how little was alloted to civilians. If Joe the plumber had trouble buying gas, wait the poor boob needs a new set of tires. lot's o' luck.
Desperate measures included a five million dollar failed effort to extract rubber from the crypostegia plant (I’ve never heard of it either) on a large plantation in Haiti. The US sponsored and bankrolled and an even more expensive and equally unsuccessful rubber development project deep in the Amazon River Valley.
NAZI PLAYBILL
We'll close this clambake with a look at who's who in the enemy camp, a playbill for the Nazis and Krauts, and a discussion of what the Nazis were all about. It just didn't seem that there was any right time to slip it into the story so it seemed better to save it for the end in a special segment. And I'm going to save the big A.H. for last.
THE NAZIS WERE BASED ON LOVE
The Nazis were like a bunch of homeless losers in the Union Rescue Mission in 1976 who all became movie stars by the end of the 1980's and no one knew or cared by then that they were all once homeless bums. Hollywood is full of those types. Three of the biggest Hollywood stars I know (I know about 20) were homeless alcoholics, or close to that when I first met them. Show me an eccentric comedian sleeping on everyone's sofa, and annoying everyone to holy hell, and I'll show you someone ten times as likely to rise to the top in show business than a young banker doing comedy on the week-ends.
Show business and bad regimes welcome the dregs of society and give them a second chance after they have already achieved failure as adults. This is a key to understanding the Nazis. They had a handful of silver spooners, but the exception proves the rule. Most of them were down and out as young men while their contemporaries were getting university degrees and a ride home from their rich dad.
Successful sane conservative regimes, like that of JFK for example, are composed of people who were clearly on the rise in life when they were 20 years old. They stayed on track. They were somewhat successful when they were 30 and by the time they were in their 40's were part of a national leadership gang.
That is the pattern with good-guy regimes. But with bad guy regimes like Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the scary reverse is true. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao ... these types were all so far down on their luck as young men that people would have laughed in your face if you predicted they would rule great countries when they were 50.
Most totalitarian leaders were young “revolutionaries” at some point. That is a bit of a euphemism for criminals who cling to a political hate group because it gives them a dignity and a status that they could never have when they looked in the cracked mirror of their flophouse. A revolutionary movement provided justification for their pathetic status. Instead of being a failure, they become an admirable victim. The corrupt system that must be changed through righteous revolution is the reason they are living in a flophouse. Enough of them get together and organize and suddenly their failure in life becomes a feather in their cap instead of a pain in their neck. They are now part of a great cause, but really the deep truth is that the cause is just a vehicle for self-advancement.
The revolutionary may even be self-delusional enough to believe his own pamphlets. The Nazi may come to believe that he really hates the Jews, but the real issue is personal failure. Racists and terrorists are have-nots. Finding an outside target group and an intellectual rationalization to blame them with makes the pain sort of go away for a while, at least until they wake up in the dark when the truth may strike without warning.
Have you ever met anyone in your life, anyone, even one time, who got fired from their job and said, “It was entirely my fault. I deserved to get fired. I don't blame them for firing me. Next time I will change my behavior and I will make myself a success.” It's never happened. I'm certain that when I got fired from the radio station (twice; once in 1975, another time in 2007) it was because my station manager was a rotten scoundrel.
That extrapolated to a larger scale is the birth of the violent revolutionary movements. 99% of all the Islamic terrorism is based on people who failed in life and want to give failure a good name by making themselves the martyr on the cross of an evil world that is determined to give the best people the shaft. Even rich Arabs who join Al Qaeda are doing so because they are chauvinists who feel their country has been beaten up. Rich people in countries at the top of the world's totem pole never go terrorist. Its either people of poor status, or people with status from countries with poor status. Its all selfish on the inside.
The entire Nazi Party was a great big Germanic 'Revenge of the Nerds.' The people who were beaten down to nothing by World War One united and burned down the dormitories of the jocks who had picked on them in high school. The jocks didn't know what hit them until the movie was half over, and in the end they put on their muscles shirts and set things right all over again.
The Nazi nerds had quite a run at first. And like those lame movie plots, the jocks were asleep at the wheel while the nerds were preparing the series of super-pranks to make them pay for their bullying. All the booby traps worked. When Bruno opened his can of peanut butter, a rat ran out. When Rocko started his car, the engine caught fire. Buzz woke up in his bed in the middle of a department store window. It was all going the nerds way as Hitler conquered the little countries and seemed to even be intimidating Bruno, Buzz and Rocko (Russia, the UK and the USA.) But when the bullies finally recovered and got together to get their counter-revenge, it was look out nerds, here come the jocks. They're back and they're stronger than ever and this time they're really really mad.
To me this allegory is the Nazi Party explained. I don't even think they even really hated the Jews. Anti-Semitism were just a tool to rally around and help generate the quality of organization. Without Anti-Semitism, there still would have been a Nazi Party and a WWII. There would just have been a different target group to organize on. That's why I believe most German people when they said after the war that they heard rumors that Jews were being sent to extermination camp but they refused to believe that this was even possible. They had some prejudice against them, but it wasn't anything like that. That just wasn't even on the radar. The Holocaust was an organizational tool for a few sick bastards at the top.
Which is not to say I forgive the average German. The German people were sick with self-love, German militarist chauvinism. This chauvinism was so deeply entrenched in the German psyche that when bitter leaders out for revenge because Germany had ben humiliated by the Versailles Treaty appeared, they were embraced by a German people who were just as sick with self love as their Nazi leaders.
The trouble with the current popular condemnation of all manner of racism is that it is entirely focused on any group that hates another group. That's too obvious and blinds the eye to the much bigger and much more dangerous problem, which is excessive love of one's self, one's race, one's country. I see Nazi anti-semitism as based on love, not hate. If no Jew had ever been born, the Versailles treaty would have spawned a bitter self-loving movement in the 1920's in Germany and Germany would have still risen from the ashes and started up a whole heap of trouble. Racism is just one type of evil self-love, it is not the essence of the problem. The essence of the problem is self-love per se. The very world love gets way too much of a free pass. Love is good, therefore all forms of love is good. But love is not always good. The father who loves his family and hurts thousand of others to protect his family is a bad man. See? All love is not good. Love starts more wars than hate could ever dream of matching. Love of self, love of race, love of country, love of one's side of a silly dispute, this type of love, sparks the gunpowder.
If I have a choice of two dark alleys to walk down, one of which has a homeless guy with a knife who hates himself, and another with a homeless guy with a knife who loves himself, I'm going down the alley that has the homeless guy with a knife who hates himself. That other guy is far more deadly. Every guy doing life in the can killed someone because he loved himself and could not accept some humiliation. He was too fantastic a person to handle that. Somebody threw a drink in his face and paid with his life. The humble man is hurt but can move on.
The United States is a melting pot. Lets pretend it is 200 years from now and the black-white racism thing is solved. It's really a nation with no racial identity. Caucasians don't even dominate the demographics at all. Its a perfect melting pot.. Then there's a hate movement against another country, also a developed melting pot, which leads to a US instigated world war. It would be hard to point a finger at America and say, “You guys were just like Hitler when he warred against the Jews!” But the comparison could well be on target. Self-love chauvinism may or may not take the specific form of racism, but it's a different manifestation of the same thing. The Jews were an excuse for a bunch of egocentric failures who loved themselves deeply, a Jewish horse to ride into town on and take over the place. If the Nazis had wiped out every last Jew, they would have then looked for some other group to take out all their love on.
THIRD REICH CAST
MARTIN BORMANN
Martin Bormann was Hitler's personal secretary. To get to Hitler you had top make an appointment with Bormann. Marty was always in the background when photos of Hitler were taken. He did not like publicity but he loved power. He was the most powerful un-famous man in the Third Reich. He was also having sex with Eva Braun on the side. That's right. Bormann had the courage to tap “the bosses lady” (name the movie.)
JOSEPH GOEBBELS
Joseph Goebbels is famous as the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. He was a hateful little egomaniac racist who killed himself before he had the chance to stand trial in 1945. Goebbels certainly is a household name in world history.
But what is less known is that “Goebbels ran the country while Hitler ran the war.” That is the firm and studied opinion of the foreign correspondent who knew him and later translated his diaries. Hitler was onsessed with the war and saw to every detail. How could he run the administration of Germany at the same time. After all, Hitler spent a full half of the war at the Wolf's Lair in east Prussia. Goebbels stayed behind in Berlin. Someone was running Germany, and that man was Goebbels.
He was in effect the dictator of Nazi Germany during the war years. He is as much responsible for the holocaust as Himmler. Goebbels was more of a fanatic racist than Himmler was. Goebbels gave the orders to exterminate the Jewish race and Himmler was the cold motherless rat that carried out the orders. But the orders came from Goebbels. In face, you could make a case that Goebbels took more initiative in murdering six million Jews than Hitler, who was usually obsessed with military details.
Goebbels issued orders and they were obeyed. If Goebbels ordered someone arrested they were arrested. If Goebbels ordered someone shot they were shot. The image of him as the man in charge of Propaganda is false. He was in charge of that, but he as in charge of a whole lot more. In fact, he was in charge, period. Goebbels was a co-Hilter.
HERMANN GOERRING
The fat man was in charge of the Luftwaffe. He would have swung at Nuremburg but he killed himself in the nick of time. Formally speaking, he was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, but Goebbels and probably Bormann had more real power. If Hitler had died, then Goering would have moved up to number one and in that case his power would have become quite real.
Goering was a fun loving guy who laughed easily and made lots of friends. His hatred of the Jews and his love of Nazi Germany was based of more of a selfish hedonism than a hatred of others. He didn't have the self-hatred that Hitler and Goebbels had, so therefore had less hatred of others. I'm not saying that he didn't deserve to swing at Nuremburg, because he did; but if I had a gun with two bullets in 1942 and I stumbled on Hitler Goebbels and Goering having lunch in the remote woods, Goering would get the chance to run away.
RUDOPH HESS
Hess was in the top five in the Nazi Party until he made his crazy flight to England in 1940 thinking he could broker a deal with the King for peace. He was a close personal friend of Hitler, if there ever was such a sad creature. When Hitler was in jail in the early 1920's Hess came to visit him every day and Hitler dictated his memoirs to him. It was Hess who ghost wrote Mein Kumpf from the notes of Hitlers endless ranting in prison.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
Himmler was a chicken farmer who was put in charge of the Holocaust and he carried out the order with relish. He is one of the Nazis who is remembered by history as a household name. He could have become an actor and played in a row of movies as a cold executive boss of a big corporation who is cold and completely corrupt and in the end the detective tracks him down and throws him out a 20 story window and he lands on a big spike and everyone cheers and the credits roll up. He is the ultimate cold insensitive humorless corrupt executive. What a pleasure it would be to slap him senseless every day for five hours a day, then let him sleep naked in a cold room filled with just enough rats to not kill him.
ADOLPH HITLER
Imagine walking past a smelly wino in New York City trying to sell you a hand-painted post card. You buy a post card for a dollar and take his picture. 15 years later he is a great dictator in the process of nearly conquering the world. A homeless bum sleeping in flophouses in Vienna in 1913, Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and assumed dictatorial powers within a year.
Hitler was born a Roman Catholic. He loved his mother and hated his father. He hated Jews and Communists. He fancied himself a genius and a superior artist. Hitler thought he could have been a famous architect.
In World War I he won the Iron Cross for courage under fire. It wasn't so much that he picked up guns and killed people in daring charges into enemy lines. He won it by being a messenger under heavy fire countless times. By the laws of chance he shouldn't even have survived the First World War. Hitler was blinded by a British poison mustard gas attack and finished the war in a hospital with bandages over his face. When he got his sight back he had ost all sight of reason. When the bandages came off a monster emerged, but the damage to him didn't show physically in his face.
ALFRED ROSENBERG
“Rosie” was the brains of the Third Reich, one of its ideoplogical leaders from the early days. Alfred Rosenberg was one of the few leaders of the Reich who had an extraordinarily high IQ. He was tested at Nuremberg before they hung him. Even Hitler looked up to Rosenberg intellectually. Rosenberg was the writer who helped convince Hitler that the Germans were the superior race, and that the Jews were particularly inferior and had to eliminated from Europe altogether.
Rosenberg was influenced by a turn of the century English Nazi named Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was so pro-German that he wrote his influential racist book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in German.
Rosenberg adopted Chamberlain's jerky theories of German racial superiority and Jewish racial inferiority and modeled a best seller of his own after Chamberlain's work. Rosenberg's 1930 book was titled The Myth of the Twentieth Century, and was a retelling of most of Chamberlain's earlier racist theories.
Englishmen named Chamberlain do not have a great record in World War II.
Rosenberg was also well-known for plundering all the great art works of Jews in the occupied territories. He was planning on starting a museum of stolen art in Linz Austria, the town in which Hitler was hatched.
JULIUS STREICHER
Julius Streicher is of the striking racist fanatics of all human history. He was probably the second most hated Nazi by his fellow Nazi. He had the social skills of a tuna fish. And he hated the Jews. A lot.
Streicher was an ugly bald man who preached so much hatred that he was hung at Nuremberg even though no formal murderous actions could be found to charge him with. The tribunal just decided that he had inspired so much hatred in others, who then carried out acts of murder, that he was guilty of accessory to 6 million murders and collectively, that was good enough to hang him for.
He was the Karamazov of Nuremberg. Dostoyevsky wrote a famous novel about two brothers. One was the smart older brother who wrote violent left wing articles about how the rich right wing -ers should all be killed. One day he came home and his little brother told him how he had done what he told him to do. He had killed a rich guy. The old smart boy was horrified and terrorized that his little brother had actually murdered someone. “But you told me to!” - “No I didn't, it was just a writer doing his thing! Oh my God, what have you gotten us into!”
I'm paraphrasing the novel of course, but that's what I mean when I say that Streicher was the Karamazov of Nuremberg.
Streicher was one feisty rat. When they hung him at Nuremberg his last words were “Seig Heil! Seig Heil! I'll see you all in hell!” - Then when they dropped the floor on him he writhed around with such resistance that he loosened the hangman's knot and it took him along time to die. A Streiching picture indeed.
DR FRITZ TODT
Nazi Minister of Munitions and head of the labor construction army called Operation Todt or OT, which is appropriate since half the labor force were slaves and certainly had to put in a lot of overtime. They didn't get paid time and a half for the “OT” in the OT. The OT was a combination of slave labor, private labor and capital, and Nazi labor and capital. It “employed” more than 20 million workers during World War II.
Fritz joined the Nazis before they came to power in 1933, so you know he was sincerely bad, not just a power opportunist like the Nazi come latelies.
He is the man who built the famous highway system across the lengths of Germany, the famous “Autobahns.” The Nobel Prize committee considered him for that prize when the Autobahn was completed before the war, but Hitler forbade any Germans from taking that prize for anything. He didn't care much for peace, I guess. So Hitler invented a new highest medal in Germany and awarded it to Todt for the Autobahns.
In 1939-40 Doc Todt supervised the building of the “West Wall,” a German answer to the Maginot line. The Westwall successfully deterred the french from taking the offense against Germany when Germany attacked Poland, although the French probably wouldn't have done that even if the Westwall didn't exist.
The death of Todt, described earlier, paved the way for Hitler to bump Albert Speer from Nazi architect up to the volatile post of Minister of Munitions. Speer also took over as head of the OT. Speer became a household name of the war as an indirect result of the untimely (or timely if he was assassinated) death of Doctor Fritz. Had he lived, Todt would have been tried as a war criminal for the slave labor business. His early death spared him the infamy of history.
JOAHEM VON RIBBENTROP
Ribbentrop was the Nazi Foreign Minister from 1938 to 1945. Everyone hated his guts except Hitler. Every other Nazi had friends and defenders, even the worst of them. But everyone hated Ribbentrop's guts. Its really striking when even the worst Nazis in the world hate your guts and you are a top Nazi. There is no excuse for what a scum-bag he was. Ribbentrop's idea of diplomacy was to get a smaller nations' foreign minister locked in a room and then intimidate them into thinking they will not get out of here alive if they do not sign a piece of paper surrendering half their country. Ribbentrop had the social skills of a wounded badger with rabies.
Before he became a big shot Nazi, Ribbentrop sold champagne. The Allies hanged him at Nuremberg and that was too good for him. Hitler had way more friends than Ribbentrop. Only his wife loved him, and even that I doubt. She probably tried to leave him and got Mel Gibson threats and stayed put.
SOURCES
See the end of the FDR 1945 chapter for all sources for 1933-1945.
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