WORLD WAR II in 1944
BY MIKE DONOVAN
IKE IT IS
Stalin asked Roosevelt at Teheran (Nov 43) who was going to lead the cross-channel invasion of the continent in 1944. FDR said he hadn't decided. Stalin puffed his pipe smoke into FDR's face and said, “so you fellows aren't really serious about the project, then.”
That had irritated FDR and he announced, first week in January 44, that the Supreme Commander for the great operation was Dwight D. Eisenhower. General Marshall was in on the decision. There were a lot of generals who had fought more battles than Eisenhower, and were really more up the ladder and deserved the chance ahead of him in some ways. But Ike was able, personable, and didn't have a Patton or MacArthur ego that would lead to trouble. The impetuous and martial generals had to take a back set to a cooperative and efficient clerk who had never really seen combat up close, unless you count the two days he helped set fire to the tents of the 1932 Bonus Marchers trying to occupy Washington D.C.
Ike was reliable. He would stick to the plans laid down in Washington. A Mac or a Patton could not be counted on to do that. Those types would think they knew better than Washington, and would change the play at the line of scrimmage. Ike wouldn't.
Ike was “reliable” and that term means a lot more than just showing up on time and sober. Being obedient and kissing up to the boss in the corporate world isn't admirable. In a soldier it is, even at the highest levels. That's why Ike got picked over 20 other more famous more experienced, more qualified military leaders. The very modesty that had held him back in times of peace, was his greatest asset in times of war.
ANZIO JAN-APRIL 1944
The main story as the New Year opened was Anzio, the Inchon that failed.
In 1950 during the low point of the Korean War General MacArthur conceived and executed a brilliant plan to strike amphibiously behind enemy lines. At Inchon he established a beachhead behind the front along the coast and forced the enemy front line to retreat to avoid being surrounded and destroyed. Inchon was a great success.
Anzio was the exact same plan, except that it didn't work. More than 4,300 Americans died at Anzio. That wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't the North Korean Army of 1951 that the Allies faced. This was a much more formidable opponent and the geography didn't help either.
The Gustav Line under 'Smiling Al' Kesselring was holding fast in central Italy. Something had to be done to break this WWI type stalemate on the Italian peninsula.
The Anzio invaders were supposed hit and hold a beachhead, and then break out, the same way they would later at Normandy. But the Italian land was rugged and challenging and the German counterattack staggering. The Americans and their Allies almost were completely annihilated on the beachhead. Casualties were dreadful. The Anzio beachhead only managed a delayed breakout long after it would have made a difference.
So guess who was the big thinker behind the Anzio gamble that failed? It was none other than Winston Churchill. Some British historians don't mention that.
Ike was against the Anzio plan because he wanted all of the Allied resources concentrated on the cross channel invasion from England. Ike was also ill at ease about arguing about Anzio because he was about to get bumped up to commander of the Normandy invasion. He was a lame duck General on the Italian campaign strategy table and wanted to remain neutral so he didn't protest. He didn't want to leave his successor without the chance to make his own decisions. Ike only conceded the Anzio plan to Churchill to keep the Brits happy and it blew up in everyone's face.
Anzio was 34 miles south of Rome and 57 miles north of the Allied line advancing (or trying to advance) north. Part of the plan was for the Fifth and Eighth Armies under General Clark to attack the Gustav line to the south of Anzio to deter the Germans from counterattacking at Anzio. U.S. General Lucas was in charge of the invasion and military historians have raked him over pretty good for the failures of this famous battle.
Lucas was supposed to secure the beachhead and then hopefully advance to the Alban Hills 20 miles to the interior. “Albie” was key to holding the Anzio area, and for staging a march on Rome to settle up with Mussolini for his back in '22. Lucas was allowed to decide for himself whether to hold the beach and fortify it for defense, or to advance most of his force offensively and try and take the Alban Hills. Lucas made the wrong call.
On January 22 1944 a force of 5,000 men crashed the beach at Anzio. The invaders did not take decimating casualties on the initial landing and the diversionary attack by Clark to the south took place as planned. But Lucas chose to fortify his position in anticipation of a concentrated counterattack he was sure would come. General Luke didn't exploit the momentary chance to advance and he gave Smiling Al time enough to organize a powerful counterattack on the Anzio beachhead.
February 16 1944 was a critical day in the history of the war. That was the day when the Germans came darned near close to driving the Allied Armies at Anzio into the Tyrhhanean Sea. It was a close call but Anzio held on in severe fighting. More than 4,000 Allied soldiers died at Anzio.
What happened at Anzio stayed at Anzio. Even though the Americans held, and weren't defeated, captured, or mauled, they effectively lost the contest. An Allied Army trapped and under attack even at a choice location behind German lines was of no help to the overall war effort. Now there were two fronts in Italy stuck in the mud. The Gustav line and Anzio were chewing up bodies and supplies while gaining little or no ground. We hope you're happy now, Winston.
Through general attrition backed by superior forces, the Allies did break out of both the Gustav and the Anzio stalemates but it wasn't until May of 1944. By now the war had moved its spotlight to the English Channel. Four months passed by on the Italian front at the beginning of 1944 with no exiting positive results whatsoever. Anzio finished off the verdict on Churchill “soft underbelly” campaign. It wasn't soft. Churchill was soft ... as a Italian grape.
Some war writers blame General Lucas for the failure at Anzio. He is the McClelland of the Italian campaign. Luke did his best and acted according to what he knew from the center of the wheel of combat. His diary indicates that he never believed in wisdom of the mission, and some military historians think that this was part of the reason he was defeated. Defeatism breeds defeats, is the theory. But defeatism can also be a wise inner voice shouting the truth in the face of macho mania. If every General was too optimistic that would lead to military catastrophes just as easily as defeatism.
Churchill and Lucas combined to take the blame at Anzio but the other team has to get some credit amidst the blame game. The Allies thought that their aerial bombing was demolishing German morale and that fighting was going to get easier with each passing week. Instead the reverse was true. The Germans were getting stronger in spite of their losses. Lucas blamed Churchill for an impending failure even before the Yankee general set foot on Italian soil. He wrote in his diary that the Anzio plan had “a strong odor of Gallipoli, and apparently the same amateur is still calling the shots.”
Lucas had a reason for his caution. He was one of the ground commanders at the battle of Salerno. 'Luke' had seen what could happen when a beachhead was not properly built-up to withstand a counter-attack. The Allies had nearly been driven into the sea at Salerno and Lucas was there. Lucas had Salerno on his brain at Anzio.
True, the Germans generals confirmed in their memoirs that if Lucas had attacked, he could have not only taken the vital Alban Hills, he could have marched on Rome like Mussolini in 1922. But Lucas chose not to take this gamble, and there is the key. It was a gamble. To the omniscient historians on both sides it wasn't a gamble. But it was. Lucas bet the wrong horse, but it was a gamble. When the results are in, it doesn't look like it was ever gambling.
The Germans were nowhere near close enough to make a concentrated counter-attack in the immediate hours after the Allies landed on the beach at Anzio on January22 1943. Lucas did not know that and felt he could not take a chance and get his men chopped like ground beef on the beaches. Also, who is to say that even if Lucas had made the right call and attacked out of his beachhead immediately at Anzio, that the worst fears of caution might have come true, but at a later date.
Let's say Lucas took the Alban Hills as all the armchair quarterbacks say he should have. Then he strikes out for Rome as he should have. Now the unforeseen enters the battlefield because the board has changed. The board has gone far past the time-line of revisionists focused on one mistake a month earlier. Hitler has rushed several divisions to the spot and the Fascists re-take the Alban Hills. Lucas is on his heels being driven back to an unfortified beachhead and Lucas looks like the dummy for not holding firm and reinforcing the beachhead before striking out for the Alban Hills. The Gustav Line holds firm and no help can get through to save Lucas.
Winston Churchill says that the Anzio plan was perfect but that he had no control over command decisions on the ground and if the wrong one was made, that was not his fault. Some fool-proof plan; Any commander can implode it by making any independent decision. Typical Churchill, the man who never made a mistake, especially when he makes them.
Anzio was, however, in an indirect way, a strategic success. Anzio forced the Germans to send divisions stationed in France to central Italy,
On the eve of the Anzio Inchon, the German generals were having meetings about moving 8 divisions of the Wermacht from Italy to France to prepare for the anticipated invasion from England. After Anzio the Germans instead moved 8 divisions from France to Italy. That's a swing of 16 divisions in western Europe. 16 less instead of 16 more. That's a 32 division swing.
Then there was Churchill's often stated excellent point that the Allied troops would be sitting around doodling for another year if we all just wait for OVERLORD. They should be doing what soldiers do. Put these boys to work anywhere we can find a spot to land 'em.. This was a war of attrition as well as a war of territory gained and lost. Keeping abundant Allied troops employed anywhere was good for the war effort.
Beachheads like Anzio also sent another important signal to the Russians that the Allies were doing everything possible to hold up the western end of the log.
Churchill often spoke of the shame of sitting around and watching the Russians do all the fighting. WC used this line whenever anyone questioned one of his bold plans of attack. It was hard to argue with his logic and against his revered person in those times. If the Americans had had their way, there never would have been an Italian campaign, and Normandy would have happened a few months earlier and with all the forces of the Allies at its singular disposal. Eisenhower and Marshall favored ANVIL, the invasion of the French Riviera in 43 to the Italian campaign, but baby Winnie usually got his way while always whining that he never did.
Churchill used his power and played the 'London Blood' card to get the campaigns in the Mediterranean to go. Anytime he didn't get his way he'd make a speech about the blood sweat and tears of the British people under the rain of Nazi bombs, and you had to back off.
Could the war have been won sooner and with less bloodshed if the Mediterranean campaigns of Churchill had never been? I'm asking.
The one German failure at Anzio was the little robot bomb known as Goliath. The little invention was the size of a suitcase and moved on little wheels towards the Allied lines packed with dynamite. The Goliaths all failed to explode properly. When Kesselring heard about it, he exploded.
SNAKE EYES AT MONTE CASSINO – FEB 1944
The Anzio attack was supposed to be coordinated with an attack along the Gustav Line to the South. The Germans were holding firm across the peninsula. The battle theatre was commanded by the high ground of Mount Cassino. At the top was an ancient monastery by the same name. It was built in the 500's by the ancient monks of St. Benedict.
A New Zealand military leader named Freyburg went to the American commander Mark Clark and declared that Monte Cassino had to be destroyed. He wanted Allied air power to do it. Freyburg believed that MC could not be taken down by artillery fire pointing up steep mountains.,
Freyburg had no proof that the Germans were using or planning to use the monastery for military defense. He had no proof that the Heinies were even in the building. But Freyburg was using his powers of deduction to come to a plausible conclusion. Monte Cassino had the thickest deepest, and strongest stone walls in all of Europe. The Germans knew the rules of warfare were based largely upon who controls the high ground. Times were desperate for the Wermacht. Conclusion; The Germans were there and had to be blown off of Mount Cassino, and the only way to do it was to use bomber planes.
As for civilians, the Germans would certainly have booted them out by now. At worst a few stubborn monks who refused to leave might die along with the Germans, but that was the price of war.
Most of the American commanders were not enthused about the Monte Cassino bombing mission, code-named “Operation Snake-Eyes.” But the New Zealand divisions had contributed mightily to the war effort, and going along with a New Zealous idea was part of holding up the American end of a little quid quo pro.
At 5:30 in the morning on February 15 1944 the Allies launched an air raid on this one building on a scale that was usually reserved to try and take out the heart of an industrial city. Monte Casino had stood tall for 1,500 years. In five minutes it was reduced to rubble, and then reduced to more and smaller rubble in later raids that same morning. The raid was a total success. Monte Cassino was absolutely destroyed.
But no Germans were inside, nor had they ever been. The monks, meanwhile, were safe inside deep underground bunkers with food and plenty of candles. Upstairs, inside the monastery, a sanctuary of the Lord, were 200 Italian refugee civilians. They all perished in the Allied attack on Cassino. It was one of the worst days in American history and certainly in the Allied war effort. It ranks up there with that USAF missile that hit a civilian Iraqi shelter during the first Gulf War and killed hundreds of civilians there.
Not only did the raid fail to destroy a German position, the air assault on the Benny Abbey created in the rubble a highly defendable structure. The Germans decided to occupy and defend the abbey two days after it was destroyed. Then they put up a fierce fight to defend it. Stalingrad had taught the lesson of using destroyed buildings for defense, and it was a favored tactic for the rest of the war.
The blunder of Monte Cassino is fair game for historians. But the commanders at the time were faced with a lot of things pointing to go. The troops on the ground were complaining that artillery fire was coming from high ground at or near the Abbey. If the Germans weren't in the building, they were holed up at the building's edge. If they weren't, the American troops believed that they were, and that was equally significant. When the grumbling reached the American correspondents, their papers back home picked up on a tough story. Headlines griped how US GI's were dying in Italy because America wanted to respect the sanctity of a monastery. Editorials unanimously called for US planes to destroy the Abbey of St Benedict.
If there was a voice of caution or reason, it was not published. It was a big drama unfolding on millions of American breakfast tables, this siege of Benedict Abbey. Political pressure was on the commanders to raise the ante and raze the abbey.
No one had proof that the Germans were inside the Abbey but it seemed inconceivable that they wouldn't be. The German asserted that they had left the Abbey alone. What did it matter what they said? The Germans had lied a thousand times since 1933. Why would they pick right now to start being honest? The Allies simply didn't believe that the Germans would not elect to occupy the Abbey and fortify it for defense.
The Abbey had been destroyed twice before but that was back in the three digit years. It had stood unmolested since 777.
It's a great shame that it happened. The Allies gained nothing from the mission except slaughtering civilians and ruining a great work of architecture and history. Fortunately, most of the great works of art in storage at the Abbey were evacuated before the attack. But the building itself was art. It was decorated in fabulous historic masterpieces of ornamentation. The blunder at Monte Casino also provided the Germans with a fine propaganda story which they exploited. It was easy to make the Americans look like the bad guys with posters showing the action packed story of Monte Casino.
But the Monte Cassino tragedy was an accident. Italy had joined the Axis of Evil on purpose. Everybody knew the scoop with Hitler by the time Italy joined up. This Benedictine accident of war was Italy's fault, not America's.
Just because Italian people cheered and threw flowers when the Brits, Yanks and Canucks conquered Italy, doesn't mean the Italian people in general weren't partly responsible for the government that ruled them in this era of war and fascism. The government is a reflection of its society, not the whip-master of it. A few million Italian people somewhere along the way had supported this guy Mussolini, and supported fascism.
Italy's war guilt is hardly ever mentioned because the German one is larger and much more interesting. But it was Benito Mussolini in the 1920's who practically invented modern fascism and Hitler who imitated him. Then in the 1930's the Austrian student surpassed the Italian master and Mussolini's fascism became the number two to Hitler's. Italy knew very well what deal it was making with the devil when it joined the Axis. Italy allied itself with Hitler long before Japan signed along to make it a three-some. Until things went bad, the Italian people did not seem to mind this world of Italian conquest too badly. When it went sour it was hail to our liberators and hang the Duce. But during the glory years, the Italian resistance movement did not make itself legendary.
Italy's conquest of Ethiopia lit the fuse that started the Second World War. Hitler took his cue when the League of Nation's failed to stop Mussolini's acquisition of a Mediterranean African empire. Hitler also took note when England and France were more afraid of losing influence with Italy than they were interested in standing up to her. These two wouldn't even support an oil embargo against Italy. When the western powers and the League did nothing while Mussolini rocked Africa, Hitler knew the hour had come for his day in history. Italy started the Axis ball rolling.
Italy also stabbed France in the back in the days of that nation's collapse, entering the war only when victory was easy and certain, an act of national disgrace. Italy had invaded Albania for no reason at all and tried to invade Greece for the same reason. Italy had turned over two or three thousand Jews to the Germans in 1944 for transportation to death camps. The point being that Italy reaped what it sewed in the last months of the war. Monte Cassino was part of that harvest, and the atrocity was not intentional.
The Abbey has since been rebuilt and is now a major tourist attraction. I'd sure like to go there and imagine. The Italians proudly point out that the Abbey was rebuilt after the war without a nickel of American money. But the USA gave Italy millions to help rebuild after the war in general. Without that American aid, the Italian government would never have had the pockets to rebuild the Abbey.
SOVIET PASTA-TUTES – MARCH 13 1944
The Americans were divided about maintaining the royal regime of King Victor Emanuel and the nominally democratic Badoglio. FDR said “I want the King out, period.” But many on his team pleaded with him that co-operating with royalty was the most productive choice, however politically distasteful it might be.
Then the Soviet Union sold out its principles to gain a foothold in Italy. The
Communists “pastatuted” themselves by recognizing the Royal Italian government for the long term. The Italians then allowed an exiled Communist troublemaker named Togliatti to come back to Italy. The Italians rolled out the “Red Carpet” for the Tagster.
Palmiro Togliatti was no friend of the west, and no friend of democracy. He was a classic Comintern Commie. But the Viva-Badoglio gang gave him the keys to the city in exchange for Russian recognition. It would now be difficult for FDR to boot the Royals off the boot without creating a rift in the Allied camp. (Pastatute – is show biz slang for any Italian who sells out the race for cheap show biz stereotyping profit, like the actors in the Sopranos or in the Joey and Maria's Comedy Wedding interactive dinner theater.)
FALL OF ROME 6 4 44
Allied forces entered Rome at long last on June 4 1944, just two days before the Normandy Invasion.
The great irony of the fall of Rome is that its timing completely negated its propaganda and political value when, in fact, the entire Italian campaign had been launched for just these goals. Rome was a difficult military victory and a disappointment politically. Rome was supposed to fall long before the big invasion, and thus provide a key milestone on the path to D-Day. Instead its timetable was backed up so far that it ran in to D-Day and had minimal political contribution. FDR got to say, “The first of the enemy capitols has fallen. One up, and two to go” on the radio, but it probably wasn't worth the price in time, blood, and resources to get there.
In the short weeks before the city fell, Rome became a chaotic civil war zone of political terror. Rome was more dangerous when the Nazis left than when they were in control. Communists, Fascists, Nazis and the groups who hated them were all at each other's throats as one rule of law departed, and another still hadn't arrived. Many former Fascists were given an offer they couldn't refuse by gangs of angry Italian partisans.
The Pope during all of this was a man named Pius XII. The Catholic Church had made many immoral compromises with the Nazis both in Germany and now here in Italy too. Many have taken the Church to task for its complicity in World War Two, and Pope Impious in particular.
GOTHIC LINE
The German armies in Italy retreated to a new defensive perimeter known as the “Gothic Line.” This was the last mountainous strip due north across the barrel of the Italian peninsula. Behind the Gothic Line was the juncture of Bologna and the Po River valley. If the Allies could break into the Po Valley, they would win the Italian campaign. If not, they'd be stuck on a Bologna sandwich.
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Luft-stalag III was the site of the famous “Great Escape.” It happened on the night of March 24. No less than 75 Allied prisoners escaped L-3.
PATTON LEAKS
In March of 1944 Patton was preparing for D-day and deliberately staying far away from the media lights of London. GAP took up at a CP (command post) in the rustic rural suburbs. One day a nearby friendship club for American and British service personnel opened up and Patton gave a short speech. He wanted to say something nice about the grand alliance but he went too far. He said that these friendship clubs celebrating the unity of the two nations was a fine idea because, “undoubtedly it is our destiny to rule the world.”
Reporters raced for the telegraph wire. You can imagine the wildfire of criticism that followed when this statement got out. Patton didn’t know that all it took was the presence of a single reporter to send that story fast all over that world the US and UK were to rule. Once again Patton’s off-the-field antics were the talk of the newspapers back in the states. Ike had to step in and cover for him again. The Soviets could not have been very happy about not being included in Patton’s new world order. The rest of the countries of the world couldn’t have been too thrilled about it either. France probably didn't appreciate it, but then again when did France ever appreciate anything except France?
INVASION PLANS
Finally, after all the prodding by the Americans and Stalin, Churchill and the British were going to invade cross-channel, like some people think to this day they should have and could have in 1943.
The one thing that I would stress, that very few books do, is the weakness of the German defenses overall on the five Normandy Beaches. The Allies won the battle of D-Day because of excellent intelligence and deception work. Disinformation created the atmosphere for victory. The German defense was second-rate at Normandy.
Victory in this case didn't mean reaching geographical target goals on day one, day two or day twenty. Victory meant getting on the continent and solidifying the position at the very least, and by that standard, D-Day was a great victory. The English speaking countries were back, and this time they had 12,000 planes.
In the interest of self worship and drama, the documentaries and books about D-Day always stress the tough fighting, the heavy casualties, the incredible heroic courage of the troops wading ashore.
Considering the size of the force, and the scope and importance of the mission, the casualty toll on D-Day was not prohibitive. It was well within acceptable limits for risk to gain ratio.
The opposition on D-Day was not the cream of the Wermacht crop. The best divisions were either set up to defend the short beach near Caen, fighting the Russians, or locked down on the Gustav Line in Italy.
Hitler had 59 Divisions for defending the West Wall and the beaches of France. Rommel and Guderian both thought the Allied attack was going to come to the east near Caen, this was the key to victory.
The troops defending the five beaches of Normandy were not top flight divisions at all, and there weren't enough of them.
Allied fighter-bombers roamed the coastal areas of France for weeks, destroying almost any train, tank or reuck that moved. The P-47 Thunderbolt was as as fast and maneuverable as a Japanese Zero, and had the bomb capacity of many a medium bomber. It had plenty of range from England to smack up the Germans defenses. The areas behind the Normandy beach were littered with burned out hulks of German vehicles long before D-Day. Roads and railroads were torn up, bridges knocked over. All this plus the incredible naval bombardment, the carpet bombing by 17's and 24's, the paratroop drops on the flanks, the anti-mine companies that cleared minefields, made D-Day a slam dunk win. The weather and some pillbox fire were the biggest problems. The Luftwaffe never showed up.
If the Allied deception of the true intended location of the invasion had failed, D-Day would have been another story.
PIKE'S PIQUE
One of the most spectacular plans for the invasion plans for Overlord was invented by a British thinker on the staff of Lord Mountbatten named Commander Quigley Pike. In the end his wild idea was never adopted. A piqued Pike wrote an article after the war asserting that many lives would have been saved by his wild invention. This can't be proven or disproved but the story is certainly interesting.
Pike's plan was to build virtual aircraft carriers made of, are you ready for this? ... ice! That's right. Pike believed that if wood pulp and other items were mixed in with ice, the structure could be built up indefinitely and would not melt even in the August waters of the English Channel. The bergs would allow aircraft to land and take off close to shore, allowing less refueling and shorter logistics for offensive and defensive missions. The ice carriers would displace more than one million tons (the biggest carriers of the day were about 35,000 tons) and would even have engines at the rear to propel them to and fro.
What little melting did take place was proven in experiments to be actually productive. The melted combined materials would solidify when they reached the edge of the floating airfields making the ice-craft stronger as it melted a little bit here and there along the journey.
It gets even crazier. What about the rocking and rolling of the sea interfering with safe landings and take-offs?
Easy. Pipelines would be laid beneath the routes near the French coast. Pike's pipes would take in air from England and the air would be controlled released to form trillions of tiny bubbles that would rise to the surface and stabilize the plane of the iceberg. I couldn't make this up.
The British took the idea quite seriously until it was proposed to Ike who burst out laughing and bursted their bubbles. Pike hated Ike for the rest of his life, and never forgave the general for laughing at his idea even though Dwight tried to apologize as Pike stormed out of the room.
MORE PLANS FOR OVERLORD
The invasion of Europe was planned for 1943 but did not materialize until 1944. The US was rather hoping that the invasion would be a British-led and managed affair but Churchill had the wisdom of John Adams in 1776. Churchill knew that the US was supplying most of the hardware and manpower and he insisted that the operation be led by an American Supreme Allied Commander and an American force commander. The US national morale would be boosted by US leadership and in the long run Churchill knew he would have a better chance at victory with US national good-will in his pocket.
Eisenhower became Supreme Commander in Europe and Omar Bradley was to lead the invasion itself. George Patton was hurt by not being picked but too bad about his ego. (I'm currently awaiting the arrival in the mail of War as I Knew It, by George Patton – I can't wait to read it! I have a fairly negative opinion of him, but when I'm done with the book I suspect that will have changed. “Acquaintance softens prejudice,” said Aesop.)
The invasion of Normandy was called OVERLORD. A second simultaneous invasion was planned for the Riviera called ANVIL. This second invading force was to march up from the Mediterranean and hook up with the Normandy force on the way to victory.
The British saw the ANVIL front as a diversion to support the general attack to the north, a feint in force to relieve the pressure on the expected German counterattack in northern France. The Americans took the ANVIL plan more seriously and saw this second front as a strategic offensive that could easily swing right and liberate Austria, and could also engage the German Army in central France.
Ike wanted at least two divisions for ANVIL, a pittance compared to the 15 or so Corps (each with several divisions) that were to come ashore at Normandy. But there was a desperate shortage of capable amphibious assault landing craft and Churchill insisted that two divisions worth for ANVIL was too taxing on OVERLORD. Ike would have to launch ANVIL with one division. As D-Day got closer the landing craft shortage became even more pressing and Ike sadly agreed that the ANVIL would have to hit the southern shore of France shortly after the D-Day invasion. There would be no two front assault on D-Day.
Just as there was inter-service rivalry within the American armed forces, and rivalry between British and American forces, there was also a rivalry for supply and support between the Pacific and European theatres. A lot of Pacific people were frustrated that the European war always had to take priority. On the eve of D-day there were American generals in Europe who were unhappy that the Pacific effort was receiving any landing craft at all, while Pacific admirals were shocked that the European Generals would so callously let US Marines die in the action-packed Pacific just so they could have everything they needed in a theatre that was so often stalled. But the Pacific guys just had to hold on with what they had and even had to sacrifice some of their short stock of landing craft for the big one in Normandy.
MESS REHERSAL
A dress rehearsal for the cross-channel invasion was staged in April 1944. A small town in England by the name of Port Jervis was ‘assaulted’ by an amphibious force designed to replicate a slice of the divisions involved. During this rehearsal the naval force was slow getting there because a couple of real S-class Nazi U-boats attacked the dress rehearsal. Two LST’s were sunk. More than 700 men went down to their deaths in the rehearsal, a staggering figure when it is considered that less than 5,000 Americans men died on 6.6 D-Day, most of them on the beach.
FORCES AND PLANS
Air support would be strong for D-Day but it would not be well-rehearsed. The air arm was desperately trying to knock out the V-2 rocket sites all over Northern Europe that were subjecting London to the “Little Blitz.” In the half year before D-Day more than 30,000 sorties were launched against V-2 sites. This prevented Ike and Monty from having squadrons to practice with for the invasion, something all the OVERLORD Lords wanted very much. The planes could be spared on D-Day buy not one d-day sooner.
The invasion was scheduled for either June 5, 6, or 7. These were the only three days in the month with favorable tidal patterns for a dawn invasion with some element of surprise.
The attack had to come at mid-tide, and mid-tide had to cooperate by coming at dawn. Low tide would have put the assault force too far off the beach. In a sense, low-tide could help. Mines and obstacles would have been visible, but marching a quarter mile from the beach to the shore would likely have given the shore defense a Tarawa style killing field. High tide on the other hand would have launched the force close to the target, but the defensive underwater obstacles would have been fully submerged and undetectable. Too many landing craft would have been demolished long before they reached the shore without the help of a single German gun.
So the trick was to hit the shore with enough water to land with, but enough glass empty space to make the obstacles partially visible. Then the obstacles could be attacked and disabled, creating lanes for large scale approach through these safe tracks.
A major objective of OVERLORD was the port of Cherbourg. A look at the map would make this seem a bit strange. Theoretically, the Normandy invasion, if successful, would isolate and entrap the city. Cherbourg could be left behind while the breakout from Normandy would race east to victory in Germany.
The problem was the amount of long-term huge-scale reinforcement that would have to come into the continent in the aftermath of D-Day. The beaches of Normandy were useful enough for the immediate goal of putting 10-15 divisions ashore and establishing a beachhead. But to win the war the OVERLORD force was only the beginning, and to maintain logistics and supply, a seriously fine port close to England was an imperative, not a wish. Therefore the Allies would take Cherbourg even though it was to the west of Normandy and Berlin was to the east. Cherbourg had to serve as the New York City harbor for the conquest of both France and Germany (Anvil's Marsailles would surpass Cherbourg.)
The American half of the invasion would split in two. Two divisions, supported heavily by paratroop operations behind enemy lines would land slightly to the west of the Normandy beach on the southeastern corner of the Cotentin Peninsula. This was Utah beach. The objective of the Utah divisions was to battle their way west and cut off German reinforcements from the peninsula. Then Cherbourg could be invested and taken. From there the sky was the limit on Allied European reinforcements.
GERMAN PLANS
Everyone knew on both sides of the channel that a cross-channel invasion was imminent. The Germans had to decide how to play defense. Guderian was in charge, but Hitler put Rommel in the field, which meant that Guderian had a close friend of Hitler overseeing his every move. Rommel pretended he was subordinate to Guderian, but he wasn't. The structure was not good for the Nazis because one bad general is better than two good ones. The Germans also had a coordination problem with sea and air forces because Raeders' navy and Goering's Luftwaffe were problematically independent. Too much branch ego going around in the rival services and it hindered the German war machine in June of 1944, as it had throughout the war.
Guderian wanted to fall back from the beaches and form a tougher wall from which to set up a devastating counterattack after the Allies got ashore. Let em come in and then we'll whack em. Rommel disagreed and thought that all the force available should be there to stop them on the beaches. “The day they land will be our only chance to stop them. Even if we win, it will be, the longest day.” And now you can rent the movie or read the book, The Longest Day and you'll know who coined it.
The end result was a blending of the two General ideas meaning neither of them were properly tried. The one thing that Rommel appreciated that Guderian didn't was that Allied bombing had so disrupted railroad transport in France that even if Guderian was right he was wrong. The idea of holding back from the front, seeing where they land, and then racing there to hit them with everything the Wermacht had left was a good idea on paper but wars were fought on the railroad, not on Guderians' notepad. Rommel knew that his own plan was a long shot, while Guderian's was impossible.
The one thing that both Rommel and Guderian had in common was a belief that the attack was coming to the east of where it did.
WEATHER OR NOT
The biggest problem facing the Allies was the weather. The Allied chief meteorologist was Captain Stagg. All Ike asked of his weatherman was smooth seas, a moonlit clear sky, and a tide not too high as to cause me to drown, but not too low as to prevent small craft from getting close enough for successful troop displacements. If the seas were too choppy and they went ahead anyway, the naval gunfire would be far less effective from the rolling ships, plus the guys might be too sick to fight once they landed.
On June 2 Stagg reported that the the weather for the next few days was going to be overcast and stormy, and he couldn't be sure at all if there would be any break by June 5 which was supposed to be go-daddy day. Ike ordered the US forces destined for Omaha and Utah beaches to head out into the Channel on June 3 since they had the longest to travel. He could pull them back if the whole thing was postponed. At 345 a.m. on June 4 Stagg told him that the stormy weather was winding down but there was low thick cloud clover, meaning the Allied air power would be rendered useless. Air superiority was the top Allied trump card, so Ike said no, not yet, and he ordered Brad's troops to turn around and make back to the south coast of England.
A little after 9 pm on the fourth, Stagg reported to a full meeting of the D-Day brass that the bad weather was beating it to the east faster than expected, and that there would almost definitely be a short window of good weather from late on June 5 to mid-day on June 6. After that it might get stormy again. A great cheer broke out in the room. Ike asked his Chief of Staff Beedle Smith and Marshall Montgomery their opinion. Smitty said it was “riskier than taking a hit on 15”, but it was the best chance they had. “If it gets really stormy in the middle of the sixth, it might be disastrous.”
When Ike asked Monty his opinion, the General, who was listening with his head down, looked up and said, “Go for it, man.”
If Eisenhower postponed it another day the tides would change and the invaders could not come ashore until two hours after daylight, giving the Germans too much time to organize resistance and counterattack at select spots. Also if the assault landed on the eighth or ninth the British forces would have to land at a different time of morning because of tidal variations. That would give the Germans a chance to destroy one Allied army first and then turn on another with concentrated fire. If June 9 came and went without an attack the mission would have to be postponed until July. This would slow the schedule for a campaign across Europe and leave the Allied Armies still in France at the onset of winter, even if all went well.
There was also a security concern over the prospect of postponement. The quarter million troops sealed up in embarkation points in England would disperse back into the towns of England where loose lips might sink many ships.
If bad weather might have caused half the attack force to founder without firing a shot, then postponement might be the lesser of two evils. It was time for a gamble, one way or another.
At four am on June 5, Ike gave the order in these words, “OK, we'll go.”
The armada of 5,000 ships hit the road from ports stretching from the North Sea all the way around to Wales. Stagg's weather report began to look lame as the weather was rough, and it got worse as it chugged along. Then, like a miracle, halfway across the channel in stormy cloudy weather with choppy seas the weather broke for the better just enough to save the day. Not only did the weather not hurt the OVERLORD operation (parachute operations notwithstanding) but it actually served to help a great deal.
Because of the bad weather the Luftwaffe did not attack the D-Day armada. Goering’s planes did not attack the moorings in Southern England. Herman’s hellions did not attack on the crossing. They did not even attack in any significance during the landing itself. In fact Nazi recce did not even bother to conduct routine patrols on June 5 nor on the morning of the June 6. The German air arm stayed put at zero hour. When it counted, Goering's Air Force turned into Herman’s Hermits. It was Sicily revisited. The Jerries assumed that if the weather was too rough for them, it also had to be too rough for any enemy attack force.
There is no doubt that the German air force would have found the most target rich environment of the entire war if it had committed its resources to stopping the Normandy invasion. But just when a daring risk might have given the Germans a major gain and stalled the invasion, the Luftwaffe instead decided to use caution and fall back to air bases in northeastern France in anticipation of what it thought would be the main allied attack in the Caen area. Of course, in fairness, no matter how you slice it, the Allies did had a 30-1 superiority in the air, which just might have had a little to do with Goering's decision to not risk his air force at Normandy. There had to be something left to defend Germany with if and when it came to that. Ike had 12,000 planes to work with, one for every dollar I made in 1975. The Luftwaffe more or less conceded a beachhead in France to the Allies.
Hitler did have plenty of brand new deadly V-1 rockets available. He could have sent them over to hit the force just as it was leaving England. His generals wanted him to, but he wanted to wait until the number of V-1's had been built up to a point where he could conduct a sudden strategic assault on England and win the war through terror. He had Mitchell fever for his V-1's just as when he tried the London Blitz back in 1940. The strategy was as misguided as a malfunctioning rocket. Ike said after the war that if the Germans had hit his force with the V-1's as the Allies were leaving England, the entire operation would have been considerably more difficult. Hitler became a nine year old boy when under stress, and made his military moves accordingly. When things went well, he was 40.
PARACHUTE KEY
The ket to the entire operation was the initial parachute drops to secure both flanks of the Normandy Beach in order to cut off any potential German counterattack from outside the landing zones. Three entire airborne divisions landed on each side, the two Americans on the west and one British on the east, 24,000 human raindrops in all. The drop was scheduled for the dark hours before dawn. The British rainmen secured their eastern flank without a hitch, but high winds scattered US 82 and 101 all over the area. 82-101 still managed to compensate for their error and secure the west flank also.
Major General Matt Ridgeway commanded the 82nd Airborne, and Major General Maxwell Taylor commanded the 101st. Both of these men were to play major roles in future American history. Taylor, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, argued for a nuclear first strike on Cuba and the Soviet Union, and Kennedy had to cool him off.
The first chutes to land were called “Pathfinders.” They had extra pounds, beacon and radar equipment to guide the rest of the planes, and gliders to the drop zones.
The Allies also dropped more than a thousand dummy parachute troops deep behind the beach. No, this was not a brigade of troops who liked country and western music, I mean big sacks of cloth - floating scarecrows. Then the Germans came upon the fake troopers and reported back that the Normandy invasion was surely a deception and that the real invasion was, as expected, coming to the Calais area. Very clever!
The 82nd had to secure the flooded marshes behind Utah Beach around the town of St. Mere, and along the Merderet River. The landings didn't go smoothly. Casualty rates were almost 50% killed at the St night-Mere, and along the murderous Merderet River.
I hate to tell you this next one. Many of the pilots of the airborne divisions lost their nerve when German flack began popping all around their aircraft. They dropped the troops well short of the target. A few girlymen flyboys simply banked and rolled back to England without dropping their chutists at all! I love these stories! These pilots would rather face dishonorable discharge than honorable death.
I can't condemn anyone that ran away. Remember the story of the Red Badge of Courage. This book was about a soldier who came out of the Civil War with a stack of medals for bravery. In chapter one, when he faced his first battle he ran like a scared baby. In was only in his second battle that he found his courage. These pilots had never seen hostile fire before.
ARTILLERY OPENER
The battle was joined before dawn with a massive artillery duel between Allied combat ships and the formidable shore batteries of the German defenders. The goodies had 9 battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers and 70 corvettes hurling shells along the five beaches and beyond. They had more than 6,300 ships to protect.
The Germans had anticipated this terrible naval shelling and had reconstructed most of their pillboxes so that they were triple armor protected from the sea direction. Not even the 16 inch guns from the Iowa class BB's could destroy German shore artillery in advance. The German artillery paid the price for this protection. The field of fire for German guns was reduced to a left and right direction. The frontal position was blocked by the protection. The guns could fight after the Allies landed but could not fight back until the Allies landed.
The Allied navy made sure it shelled the Calais area plenty to keep the Germans off guard as to where the real invasion was coming.
Ship vs. Shore - Gunfight at the D-Day Corral - Dawn 6-6-44
Even when it was well under way, Hitler and Rommel still thought it was a ruse designed to draw the best German divisions to the west while the real Allied force was to attack far to the eastern shore at Caen. The Germans were afraid of sending top divisions to Normandy and then having them cut off when the Allies advanced near Caen.
The reverse was the reality. The Allies used deception to help the cause, making loud preparations for an attack on Caen in the hope that it would draw German Normandy divisions to the east and away from the real target, and it worked. They leaked information about the attack coming where it wasn't. They stationed hundreds of dummy gliders on the southeast coast of England on the shortest straight line to Caen and Pas de Calais.. They placed more than a thousand dummy tanks there too, plus dummy barracks, and dummy transport ships. And the German dummies fell for it. In the D-Day game of cat and mouse, “We made mince-meant out of that mouse.”
On 6/6 in the American sector Omaha Beach gave the most trouble. This was where the men most needed Mutual of Omaha insurance. The Utah Beach was relatively smooth sailing.
Brits on the Left (stage left) – Omaha Center – Utah on the Right
The three British/Canadian beachheads to the east faced much stronger German resistance overall especially in the Caen area. This was expected and was part of the overall Allied strategy. While the Germans committed their main force to stopping the BC force, the American flank could then wheel against lesser resistance around the southern flank of the Caen theatre and launch the Allied breakthrough to Paris, Berlin, and victory. The British divisions would stop Rommel’s top divisions and form the spoke, while the Yanks were to run around the outer rim.
The Germans never launched a major counterattack on the Normandy beachheads. The only counterattack came from mother nature. The biggest summer hurricane to hit Normandy in 40 years ripped the Allied positions from June 19-22 destroying thousands of vehicles. The storm damaged the temporary harbor at Omaha to the point of no return. One US division was off-shore in ships waiting to disembark when the storm struck. The men had to sit tight in the rolling seas for four days. Many were still seasick for several days after the storm.
By the end of June a full one million anti-Axis troops had been put ashore on the coast of France. US casualties to this point totaled 9,000 killed and 51,000 wounded, including General Eisenhower who suffered a severe knee injury while disembarking on an LST to make some hands-on observations.
It was the same knee that young Dwight had blown out on a football field at West Point ending a potential career in the NFL (no kidding.)
MANHATTAN TRANSFER
On June 13, 1944 while the Allied armies were still pinned down in Normandy, the USA and UK signed a document that was almost as significant as the D-Day invasion. On that day Churchill and Roosevelt signed an ‘Agreement and Declaration of Trust.’
At issue was the nuclear bomb under development in the United States. A few liberals were suggesting that US-UK should share this developing technology with the world, which obviously included the Soviet Union. By this signed paper, the UK and US decided to just say no to the USSR and to global sharing. The nuclear bomb or bombs to be used in combat, plus the next generation of bombs expected to be operational after the war, were to be now and forever exclusively controlled by the two English speaking Allies.
The Manhattan Project was the name for the top secret scientific and industrial effort producing a-bomb which could shorten the war. The nuke would stop terror through terror.
People still debate today whether the bomb should have been used. Was it a mistake strategically? Was it wrong morally?
Lets start the answer with money. The nuke project was costing the US two billion dollars when every nickel was needed for bombs, bullets, landing craft and everything else. Allied leadership never took seriously the idea that if the bomb worked they would then not use it. If they had even entertained such a thought, the money would never have been poured into it in the first place. Americans were living a life of rationing and sacrifices for the war. It would have been absurd to spend two billion wartime dollars on a weapons program and then decide not to use it. And back then, a new car sold for $500. So 2 billion is not what you're thinking.
There was no liberal protest against the development of the nuclear bomb, mostly because the project was secret, so secret in fact that Vice President Harry Truman had no clue that the Manhattan Project existed. There might have been a protest movement if the bomb had developed publicly. The League of Nations outlawed the use of poison gas after World War I, and surprisingly, not even Hitler or Tojo had used it in WWII (Mussolini did in Abyssinia.)
Atomic secrecy was essential. Military concerns sheltered the builders and users of the bomb from political concerns until after the thing was detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The anti-nuclear movement couldn’t get off the ground until the two nukes hand already hit the ground.
The Germans were trying to develop the nuclear bomb too, and everyone that counted knew it. Allied airpower targeted German factories that were believed to be part of the Nazi-nuke program.
It is worth noting that the day before the Declaration of Trust was signed, the first German V-1 rocket landed in London. The threat of German super-weapons saving the day at the last moment was real, and the need for speed on the A-bomb was underlined in London blood. The V rockets also underscored the absurdity of holding back for high and mighty moral reasons.
GIVE US A BREAK
The big Allied Normandy 'breakout’ was planned for the beginning of July. The war could go on for years if the Germans cold establish a WW1 type of trench warfare, even if the Allies were pushing slowly on through superior force. A stalemate would give the German scientists time to get thousands of V-1's and maybe a nuke rocket in order. So the goal was a major breakout somewhere along the German lines through which the Allies could pour in mechanized armored divisions. This breakout could leave the Germans no choice but to retreat in a panic. The Krauts could not afford of find the heart of their defensive formations trapped and encircled by the advancing Yanks, Canuks, Limeys and Frogs. The could win, retreat, or get trapped.
The breakout target was the 16 mile stretch between St. Lo and Coutances (and don’t ask me how to pronounce Coutances,) but German resistance was stronger than anticipated and an alternative had to be devised.
Trying to Break Out of the Normandy Box 7-44
While the Americans were conquering Brittany, the British and Canadian divisions were slugging it out with the Jerries for the city of Caen. They fought hard and took heavy casualties yet after weeks of war had little to show for their efforts. It almost looked as if the Brits were not cutting the mustard. The Americans were occupying and consolidating an entire region to the west and meanwhile Monty’s crew couldn’t even take one city. There was a lot of criticism going around.
But the criticism was unfair and wrong. The inch-by-inch struggle for Caen was nothing less than mission accomplished with flying colors. The Brits and the Canadians were supposed to draw off as many German divisions as possible so as to enable the Americans to achieve a breakout with a pivoting swing motion around the Caen front. In the end this is exactly what happened. The Germans were indeed putting the heart of their armored corps into the defense of Caen. The Brits and Canadians faced a mightier force than the Americans did. Ironically, the more the BC mission succeeded the harder it was for them to gain any ground. The more the Germans threw reinforcements into the battle for Caen the better for the Allies, but the worse for the men on the spot. Caen was siphoning off German resources superbly. Ike couldn’t defend Monty in public because he was happy to let the Germans think they were winning a decisive victory at Caen. Criticism of Monty was helping Ike and the Allies.
There was a short gap between the American and the UK sectors. With German Panzer divisions plugging into the battle for Caen some generals worried that the Germans might move to fill the gap between the two groups. To solve the problem a ‘rubber division’ sent to fill the no-man’s land. This was a Potemkin Village division made up of inflatable rubber tanks backed up by a lot of radio vehicles sending out thousands of reports and commands to deceive the enemy. The Germans never moved on the rubber gap.
JOHN SOUSA ARTILLERY
American love to celebrate the Fourth of July, and today is a short writing day because I am going out to celebrate with 800,000 others on the Charles River in Boston (2011.)
I'd like to honor the veterans who made this possible by thinking back to noon on Tuesday July 4 1944. Generals Bradley and Gerow were looking at the First Army artillery and thinking that a 48 gun salute to start an offensive might be a fun idea to celebrate the Fourth. It would open the important drive on a certain and I can't countenance why it was so important, but the town of Countances was.
Gerow had an idea for Bradley. How bout if we line up every major piece of artillery in the First Army, guns of every caliber, and at exactly noon, we fire them all off at once and “give them a taste of John Sousa.”
And so the Allies kept the guns quiet all morning on the Fourth and then killed a bunch of Germans at the crack of High Noon. 1,134 big guns of all shapes and sizes opened up the drive on Countances.
On several occasions in my work I have notes a battle on the Fourth of July and made a sadistic joke about how they were celebrating the fourth with their own special brand of fireworks. It turns out that Americans in the field on the Fourth rarely missed the callous joke in the first place.
PAS DE CALAIS DECEPTION
I mentioned earlier the fictional dummy army at Southeast England. Before D-Day tremendous amounts of military radio traffic buzzed the region with only a moderate attempt at secrecy. Double agents behind enemy lines tipped off their contacts that the main force was destined for Pas de Calais. Higher ups were loose-lipped about the Calais operation and it trickled down to the enlisted men who spread the rumor as an unwitting act of duty. The famous General Patton was sent to southeastern England with media fanfare to take command of a “secret” gathering invasion fleet.
This phantom invasion force stood pat during D-Day and the next few weeks while the Germans at Calais stared across the Channel and waited. It didn’t really exist. But the invisible divisions in southeaster England nevertheless fought a great phantom battle and pinned 19 German Divisions down at the Pas de Calais when they were desperately needed against the US and UK forces in Normandy.
Now, even near the end of July, when Bradley was beginning to break out of the Normandy box, these 19 German divisions still sat and waited at the Pas de Calais for the attack that never came. Chumps! Suckaaas!
Over an over, day after day, the master-race stubbornly refused to be drawn to the west to reinforce the desperate Normandy front. Incredibly, the Germans actually thought that the D-Day invasion was a feint! The logic is understandable up to around June 9 1944, but what is less understandable is that after knowing through hard experience the size of the D-Day invasion force, the Germans could still believe late in July that there was a much larger Allied force in reserve waiting to strike Calais as soon as the Panzer divisions cleared out.
In life and war, it is consistently stressed that you should never underestimate your enemy. What is less often promoted is the idea that you should never overestimate your enemy. Either extreme can cause problems or even disasters. The western deployment of a majority of those German divisions could have boxed the Allies in Normandy for a long time.
DOWN WITH CHAUVINISM
Every American General respected Montgomery’s ability, but his ego was a problem throughout the war. I read Monty's memoir, and came out of it liking him very much, but that doesn't change the fact that his ego was a problem in the efficient conduct of WWII (as was Patton's and MacArthur's and FDR's on the US end.)
Who was actually in command of the Allied invasion forces? Was it Ike or Monty? Or was it Bradley? The answer changed from month to month. The complexities and problems of command structure in the war effort may be important but let’s skip it. It is boring at worst and annoying at best to me. Who is nominally in command at what level over what Army group commanding what divisions with jurisdiction over what decisions, well all I can say is, I read those chapters but it doesn’t mean you have to. But Monty’s ego problem and how he got some of our guys mad at him might be lively enough.
On July 27 1944 Monty in a state of high anxiety wrote a letter to Churchill. What was the issue? Was it a lack of air support? No. Was it about a deviation from agreed strategy? No. It seems that Supreme Headquarters had issued a statement that the British had recently suffered “quite a serious setback.” Montgomery was red with rage, more angry than he had ever been with Hitler or over the Holocaust. Apparently in the battle at issue the British had only retreated a mile or so “there is no justification for using such an expression!”
Reading the memoirs of the war leaders, the soldiers, and even the later historians of both Britian and America I am constantly disappointed by the rivalries between the two teams. The Churchills and Bradleys are thin skinned to no end about US performance versus British, the ‘my flag fights better than your flag’ competition from generals down to rank and file combatants is endless. Add to that the snooty military scholars who dryly emphasize their own flag’s achievements while subtly de-emphasizing those of the other team, and you have the chauvinist picture.
The US and the UK were all on the same team fighting a threat to all that is decent in this world. Why does it matter so much whose country performed better or who got the more glory? After all, wasn’t the sin of German, Italian, and Japanese national pride one of the reasons the war started up in the first place? Is it not one of the world’s best quotations that there is no limit to how much we can accomplish as long as we don’t care who gets the credit?
British writers who compile full general histories of the war always give token short treatment of both the Pacific theatre and the US participation in the European. If that be your attitude, just write a book about the British war effort. Don’t call it a full history and make it seem as though the British did 90% of the fighting. The same is true in reverse. Too many American authors writing general histories of the war tend to think that the British North Africa campaign was worth 6 pages but the fight for Wake Island worth 12.
The alliance between the US and UK is the greatest international alliance in history and I hate to see it denigrated by intra-mural competitive hostility. I found this inter-Allied rivalry a depressing head-shaker even when I read World War II books as a boy.
GRAND MILITARY STARTEGY AFTER D-DAY
The Americans had an endless stream of genius ideas and executed them with gallantry. The British had a lot of lame foolish ideas and executed them ineptly.
Eisenhower wanted to attack the Reich on a broad front stretching from the north coast to Switzerland. Some others wanted a front to be led by a single spearhead which would run far ahead of the main front, a sort of Anglo-Blitzkrieg, the difference being than main force running ahead of the infantry divisions was an entire Army, not a couple of armored divisions as in 1940.
The supply problem was so great that the entire front could not advance at full throttle. The line had to slow down for the slowest armies. When gasoline and other supplies caught up all along the line, the attack could then continue. The line of advance had to stop again and let supply catch up every few weeks.
The big-blitz plan envisioned one key army outrunning the supply line of the entire front and knocking Germany out of the war way ahead of schedule. The spearhead would take Berlin while the bulk of the German army was still in the field.
With the war so hopeless in general or Germany, the Allies might be able to buck the military maxim that the object of war was not territory, or the enemy capitol, but the destruction of the enemy fighting forces. With Hitler's insanity, the Clauswitz formula was not etched in stone.
With a Hitler at helm it did little good to demonstrate that your own fighting forces were now so superior that it was time for the enemy to quit. That had worked for a thousand years but it could never work on the thousand year reich, where it didn't matter that the war was lost. The entire nation was dedicated by oath to the will of one man, a man with an ego the size of 700 professional tennis players combined. So as long as Hitler didn't want to surrender, Germany could not surrender. He was not merely the King of Germany, he was Germany. Sane rules of war need not apply.
In this unique atmosphere, destruction of the enemy's fighting forces was merely a means to an end, not the end in itself. Millions more Germans had to suffer and die because AH didn't want to face the hangman. For this war, capture of the enemy's capitol was the only real object of the war. It was Clausevitz standing upside down on his head. Catch the guy and you catch victory in a bottle. The enemy was going to fight until the King was dead or in chains.
With Berlin in Allied hands the German fighting forces might well still be large and at large, but any new German leader would surrender quickly once that stupid oath was off the playing board.
So for the Allied offense planners, maybe it was better to take a chance. Send either Monty in the North or Patton in the center with the bulk of allied supplies and have them charge Berlin like a boxer trying to end the contest by giving 105% effort in a single round. A lot of people advocated this. Begged and pleaded might be better words than advocated. But Ike was a technician and an organizer, a company manager as soldier. He wasn't going to take a chance. Ike ran the war like a businessman, and the president of General Motors isn't going to invest the entire company bankroll on a bold venture that involves risk, even if that risk is 75-25 in his favor. Conservatives like Ike thought that the plan of a gradual advance on a long front was foolproof, and events would prove that it was. The greatest danger in the field was having an allied army cut off and destroyed, and the broad front concept would make this virtually impossible. We will never know if a bolder plan would have ended the war sooner, saved many more lives, and prevented the Russians from taking over much of central Europe.
This historical quarrel is a bit surprising to read at times, because Eisenhower over the long haul of history has come down to us as shining hero in every way. But in the first generation of historians of the post-war world, older scribes who had seen the war years, we find many people giving Ike a rather bad time of it for messing up the grand strategy for the final drive to win the war. Robert Leckie, for example, writes with exasperation that “General Eisenhower was not audacious.”
I take Ike's side. Even after reading all the criticisms of his Army years and his President years later, I still buy into the basic shining hero stuff. It requires audacity to remain conservative in a storm of bold radical suggestions.
HITLER LOSING IT
Hitler was losing what little sanity he ever had in the head. The big AH may well have been suffering from venereal disease and he was no longer even capable of rational dictatorial decisions. Even his old insane self would have been welcomed at Wermacht headquarters. He ordered German commanders to hold their positions even when retreat to consolidate and maybe even soon counterattack was the obvious wise choice. Impractical macho orders only were going out to the field commanders. Battles were even lost because Hitler was sleeping and no one dared to wake him up to ask him to make a decision.
Hitler had already mass murdered millions of Poles, Russians and Jews. Now by refusing to surrender in a lost war he was murdering millions of his own pure Aryan buddies. He'd killed millions of enemies, now he was killing his friends too. The only hope now was for someone to have the chance and the courage to ice the Fuhrer.
Hitler had his own Dr. Conrad Murray to give him so many meds that this man, already wacko to begin with, was now a wacko wacked out on meds.
LIFE IN GERMANY
This wasn’t what the brochure said it would be back in 1938. Allied bombers overhead, no food, no gas, no good reports from the front. Then the Germans were expected to go to the movies and cheer for the lies in the latest Goebbels propaganda film. The Nazis used to show the propaganda film second, after the short entertainment feature. By 1944 the Germans were always walking out of the theater after the entertainment piece. Only the very young, very brainwashed or very stupid still believed in the movies saying that victory was around the corner. The corner of some other universe maybe. They switched the order in 1944 and showed the victory is near movie first. By that time nearly everyone in the theater knew some soldier who was dead or maimed. You couldn’t jive them anymore.
THE RESISTANCE AND THE PRICE – ORADOUR 6-10-44
The Resistance kidnapped a high ranking Waffen SS officer named Kampfe on June 9 1944. Word got around that the Resisters were going to execute Kampfe somewhere in high visibility as a warning to the Nazis that their time had come.
The Nazis retaliated with one of the worst atrocities of the war, at least one of the worst that didn't involve the systematic extermination of millions of Jews in the camps to the east.
If you enjoy a good bottle of red Beaujolais wine, you might have downed a glass of Saint-Julien now and then. About 12 miles to the east of that wine-mecca, in the Bordeaux region, just NW of Limoges is the village of Oradour. It was here that the Nazis took out their revenge for the kidnapping of Major Kampfe.
The Krauts entered the village and surrounded it so no one could escape. They rousted the Oradour men to a barn and set up machine guns. Then the Nazis herded the Oradour women and children into the town church.
The men in the barn were shot up in the legs so they would not die right away. Then they were doused with gasoline. Apparently the acute petrol shortage in the Nazi military effort wasn't as important as cruelty missions. Needless to say, they set the barn on fire and no one got out alive.
The Germans didn't machine gun the women and children in the legs. That would have been mean. Instead they set the church was set on fire and they all died. A few burning women and children climbed dazed through broken pane glass and were shot to death. All 642 villagers in Oradour perished to warn the French Resistance to knock it off.
The man in charge of the SS unit that carried out the Oradour Massacre was named Major Dickmann. Sometimes the story writes itself. He would have been tried and executed after the war but he died in battle within two weeks of the massacre. This time he wasn't up against unarmed children and he got what he deserved, although even that was too good for him. (He really should have been turned over to New Jersey's “Ice Man.”)
The Nazis razed the village to the ground after all the people were dead. Today the village of Oradour is, like Auchwitz, a Nazi atrocity tourist destination. No one lives there, but travelers must pass through it on the little state highway. The ruins of the church still stand and a burned out car sits in front of it. Such was life under Nazi rule. And the left still points more fingers at Allied bomber raids on Dresden than at Nazi massacres like Oradour and Monte Sole in Italy which most of them never even heard of.
FOX VERSUS FOX
On July 17, 1944 a Spitfire on patrol in France shot up the car that was carrying General Erwin Rommel, wounding the Desert Fox in the tail. The pilot's name was Charlie Fox, a Canadian. Fox shot Fox in his touring car. Flying glass and shrapnel injured Rommel in the face but that wasn’t what wounded Rommel seriously. The driver lost control and the car rolled so violently that it hurled all four men to the pavement like toy dolls and then crashed into a tree. Rommel's head hit the street with such a thud that he stood up for a moment covered in blood, began to give some order, and then collapsed. Taken to a hospital, Rommel fell into a full coma.
WHO SHOT ER?
The Americans have a standing claim that a guy named Jenkins shot up Rommel's car with the guns of a P-47 Thunderbolt. A South African pilot also says he was the one that shot up Rommel's car. I say it was Wiley Post.
In any case the Americans are accused of practically lying to take credit for the attack on Rommel. British logs insist that the only planes to patrol the area were two Spitfires from the Polish brigade, one of which was flown for some reason by a canadian pilot, Mr. Fox. Then why does the more detailed study by David Irving note an attack earlier by eight enemy fighters that Rommel's car avoided completely, before the attack by two Spitfires later on in the day. Obviously the first attack might well have been American P-47's on several strafing missions. So the Americans were honest in thinking they had shot Rommel, where in fact it was the Spitfires.
German radio at first reported to the public that Rommel had died in the strafing attack.
That strafing attack took Rommel out of active service both as a general and as a conspirator. If Rommel had taken a more active part in the Valkerie plot of July 20, it might have worked better.
KLUGE TAKES OVER
Rommel was out of action for a while, maybe for eternity. His driver also went into a coma and that man died. Would Rommel live?
General von Kluge was pleased to take over military operations in Normandy. Kluge honestly felt that Rommel wasn't a good general. He saw Rommel as an egoist who was so busy having fun with daring gambles that his record added up to counterproductive foolishness. Rommel's payoffs didn't make up for his blunders, except in the western press, and the Wermacht wasn't fighting a war to pleas the enemy newspaper writers in search of colorful characters. Von Kluge wanted to stop the invaders, not win some fancy battle and get headlines.
KILL HITLER 7 20 44
Some daring men were willing to pull the trigger personally. In mid-44 a handful of brave German officers conspired to frag the master. The German resistance group FDP (the Front for Decent People) that sponsored the assassination attempt was led by a Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruse with the eye patch.) If Hitler wouldn’t surrender and spare the country a million more needless deaths then perhaps it was time for him to have a chat with Bismarck.
Anyone willing to risk his life inside Germany to kill Hitler has to be considered a saint, so Santa Claus von Stauffenberg, a German Army officer went to meet Hitler at the 'Wolf's Lair' near Rastenberg in Eastern Germany on July 20 1944. Stuffed in Stauffenberg's briefcase was supposed to be plans for organizing the home army in a last ditch effort to defend the Reich. But Santa had a surprise toy in his bag; two bombs with Hitler’s name on them.
The meeting was supposed to take place in a tightly confined underground bunker, but the July heat led to someone’s untimely suggestion that the meeting be taken upstairs to an outdoor hut. Claus made the best of it and put the blow-up briefcase under the desk while Hitler and seven other high ranking officers in the hut pored over some documents and maps. There was a phone call for von Stauffenberg and he left the room. The call was staged to get him out of there. One of the two bombs in the case went off killing two generals. Hitler was only wounded. Adolph had his outer pants blown off. His hearing was been permanently damaged (no great loss since he never listened to anyone anyway), and his left arm was badly mauled. Adolph got up in the middle of the smoking aftermath and loudly proclaimed this to be proof that he was protected by God.
Hitler’s left arm was never the same and he spent the rest of the war with this painful physical handicap and a new even more rotten attitude. His left arm was limp and he was forced to hold it most of the time in public with his right. It’s a good thing for him that the official ‘seig heil’ salute was a right-arm movement, not left. Otherwise Hitler couldn't even heil himself.
The men who conspired to kill Hitler were arrested and faced a highly public trial in Germany. Needless to say they did not get short sentences at minimum security facilities with conjugal visits. Clarence Darrow, and a million marks couldn’t have saved them. They were hung slowly on meat hooks while film was rolling so it could be later sent to Hitler. Did he watch these films with popcorn? These poor saints were the only true German war heroes of the entire conflict.
I have always thought that hanging slowly on meathooks was not the worst that Hitler could have done to them. I have a vivid imagination. They got off the hook rather easily considering the medieval tortures he could have put them through. They were lucky he let them die.
John Toland says that Hitler's left arm was lame in the last year of his life because of too many injections by his quack doctor, and that it was his right arm that was injured in the blast, and only slightly. Most history books say that the blast injured his left arm.
VON KLUGE - VON SUSPECT
Hitler was suspicious of everyone but his dog in the aftermath of 720. He heard a vague rumor that General von Kluge, the man directing the national defense against the Normans was in with the conspirators, which vG was not. Hitler didn't have enough proof, yet, and he knew that he needed the capable von Kluge to command the front, so he couldn't just order a hit on his leading general. Hitler instead made sure that every order he sent to Kluge was written in nasty, rude, insulting language. Von Kluge got the hint and feared that he would be arrested and executed any day. General Von Kluge now had to keep both eyes on the battlefield all day and then go to sleep with one eye open. This terror probably made von Kluge a less effective decision maker for the rest of the battles.
CHERBOURG BOTTLED UP
On July 25th the US Army entered the Citadel of Cherbourg, capturing the commandant and 8,000 German troops in an underground shelter system. The stubborn commandant refused to order other German units in the area to lay down their arms, so the mop-up took a few more days but vital port of Cherbourg was secured.
The Cherbourg defenders had presumed they could hold out for some time so they had stocked their bunkers with a lot of food and, more importantly to the GI’s, a lot of wine. A lot of wine. More than you're thinking. This Allied prize had to be rationed out carefully. Ike saw to it that the vino was not hoarded by rear echelon units while the front line guys went sober. The Generals ‘liberated’ the Champagne, the lower officers got the fine Burgundy, the GI’s got the Bordeaux, and the Beaujolais was sent back for the Navy guys. The Merlot was offered to the German prisoners who refused it and complained to the Red Cross. War is hell.
Friendly fire was a problem, as it is in all wars. Fighter planes occasionally were culpable, but the bombers made the most errors. They have to work from higher altitudes and hit wide areas with ultra-dumb bombs. The dumb bombs hit the Thirtieth Infantry Division so hard on two occasions in France that it actually refused all bomber support for the rest of the war!
DROP THE ANVIL – JULY 44
Churchill in early 1944 desperately tried to convince the Americans to drop their plans for invading the Riviera, the plan called ANVIL. The P.M. wanted the Americans to load up from Italy to invade the south of France, but for the armada to keep going through the Straits of Gibraltar, turn north to the Bay of Biscay and instead land in force at St. Nazaire (see map I don't have for you right now.)
Churchill's argument, which he carried on red-in-the-face with Ike, FDR, Marshall and even Hopkins was based on the false assumption, first of all, that the German forces in the Riviera were formidable and would slow down this southern ANVIL invasion enough that little could be gained in a future link-up with the Normandy armies.
Winnie may have been correct in his belief that the Allies needed a huge port to take in supplies, they didn't have one right now, and St Naz would be perfect. We'll give him that one.
Ike counter-argued that even if Churchill's idea was sound, there were too many difficulties involved at the tactical level to implement such a grand strategic change on short notice.
WSC sent some almost testy telegrams to FDR about this and got a firm no back from the American King. Of all the important Americasn only Bedell Smith supported him to drop or alter ANVIL, and since you've never heard of Bedell Smith, that says about as much as you need to know about his chances of getting the Americans to change their minds.
Churchill, to his credit, gave up when he realized he could not make the Yanks tank, and he gave his customary, “let's pray to God you're right” support to ANVIL.
It was on or around July 10 1944 that the USA now had more troops in the combat field than the British did, including all world theatres. This tree was going to grow more and more towards US dominance exponentially, and Churchill was now more than resigned to having to accept American dominance of strategic decisions from now on. It was a drop in pride and power after years of playing WWII like his own personal video game, but Churchill was willing to back down in the name of the assurance of total victory. I'd say he gets points for maturity here.
He did manage to get the name of ANVIL changed to DRAGOON. he says it was to insure secrecy in case the Krauts had discovered the ANVIL plans, but a few historians say the name was changed in protest that he had been “dragooned” into accepting it.
If it had all been up to Churchill, there would have been no ANVIL for either the Riviera or for St. Naz. He would have kept as many divisions as possible in Italy for a winning drive north and then to the east into the Balkans. Churchill got miffed anytime anyone used the term “into the Balkans” to describe this proposed plan. He only wanted to take the Trieste and the Istria Peninsula. This was hardly the same as driving “into the Balkans,” he said, but, of course, after taking the IP he could then have driven into the Balkans and won his political victories there.
Stalin, naturally was opposed to Churchill's plan to drive through Italy and then east “into the Balkans.” The tense confrontational situations that might have arisen “in the Balkans” in 1945 between Allied and Soviet troops are an interesting question for non-factual history.
WAYNE MAKI – JULY 21 1944
They were called the Maquis (pronounced like the hockey player that Bruin Teddy Green beaned with his stick in the early 70's, Wayne Maki.) These were the French Resistance fighters who hid in the Vercours, the upper plateaus of southern France. It was like the bad movie, Red Dawn. They lived on blueberries and small game, and fought both Vichy France and Nazi Germany from the highlands. They were hip and young and brave and were not going to lay down. They were going to stand up, like Beansie did to Richie Aprille.
The Vercours Maquis were supposed to help out with the Allied Southern invasion of France, code-named DRAGOON (formerly ANVIL.)
The Germans surrounded and invested the highlands of the Vercours Maquis in July of 1944. The Resisters pleaded for Allied gliders to land with re-enforcements so they could hold out and help with the upcoming southern invasion.
The Germans heard about the Maquis redoubt, and had no doubt about what to do about it. They surrounded and invested the Maquis plateau pad in July 19.
On July 21 the brave defenders looked up and saw 23 gliders coming in for a landing. Hoo-ray! Out of the planes stepped German soldiers. The Allies had let them down. It was a free-for all fight on the Vercours Plateau. The Germans were good at what they did, and had better weapons. It was barroom bouncers with guns versus painters with pen-knives. Nearly 700 admirable Maquis died in the action, compared to only 101 dislikable Germans.
Historians have had a few things to say about they way the Allies abandoned the soldiers of the Vercours maquis. And I'm not going to quote any of them.
BREAKOUT JULY 24-6 1944
The Americans finally made the big breakout just south of St. Lo. Ike and Omar had given up on the western route near Countenances. They were still mired in terrain unfriendly to their own tanks and wanted to break through to solid fields to the south where the tanks could get the chance to work.
Ike asked the USAAF to experiment a bit and load their fighters with fairly heavy bombs. Their job wasn’t ground support, but the same job as artillery. They were to get in close and hammer the positions the way artillery or heavy bombers usually did. Hundreds of fighters were used as strategic bombers, paving the way for the breakout.
Breakout at St. Lo. July 24-7 1944
One of the problems plaguing the Allied effort was the hedgerows of the area. Hundreds of tanks were getting stuck on them with their guns pointing to the sky and their thin plated undersides exposed to explosive danger. A sergeant came up with a device that saved the day. He plugged a giant pitchfork onto the Sherman tanks. The tanks went into the hedges and tore them up in a cloud of dust.
Sergeant Cullen won a medal for his invention which no doubt saved thousands of US lives. He did not get a ticket home however. Sergeant Cullen went back to work and lost a leg in a French forest. A ticket back to the States in those days cost an arm and a leg..
The advance American divisions began to pick up speed. The soldiers in the TT Corps, called themselves ‘The Brest Men’ as it was their job to capture the city of Brest (map below). The men reached the outskirts of Brest on August 7. The Twelfth Army Group was meanwhile beginning a slow but more powerful movement in the north. This was the core drive for Berlin and victory and it was just now, in early August, getting out of the gate.
Brittany Spearheads to August 7 1944
As the American spearheads raced in all directions across Brittany the German defense forces scattered to three ports for safety, Brest, St Malo and St Nazaire. French resistance forces as well as formal units of the Free French Army were very active and helpful in this campaign.
Many small German units refused to budge from their positions to make a wise retreat for the ports. Hitler had ordered each and every soldier to hold his position and give no ground under penalty of death. Thousands of soldiers were more afraid of Hitler than they were of their own commanders so they disobeyed direct orders and hampered the German effort to create effective resistance.
Reports came to Bradley on the 7th that the Yanks had captured Brest. Omar did not believe it. He knew Brest could put up a better fight than that. He was right, as usual. Patton once said to him, “You’re right Brad. Damn it, you’re always right.” I'm sure Bradley's wife never said that, though.
Brest held out and fought hard until September 19. When the fighting ended and the Yanks came in, the city was a useless ruin. Between sabotage and Allied bombardment by land, sea and air, the port was completely unusable for taking in supplies.
St. Malo and St Nazaire were invested at the same time as Brest, but these holy ports were left to themselves for the rest of the war. No attempt was made to take them. The garrisons were locked in to make no trouble and that was that. It was Pacific island hoping, continental European style..
But Ike and Omar determined that Brest was different and had to be taken. When it ended on 9.19 the battle for Brest had cost 10,000 US casualties.
A lot of Monday morning quarterbacks have since claimed that Brest should have been left alone just like Saints Malo and Naz. The professors scratch their beards in front of the fireplace 20 or 50 years later and say the Ike and Omar made a blunder. By implication they are suggesting that the Generals sent a lot of guys to a needless death or wound at Brest.
But Brest was a hot fight while Malo and Nazaire were not. The besieged Brest garrison there was made up of top notch parachute divisions commanded by a die-hard Fuhrer-loving General. Brest was fighting back and inflicting casualties. Therefore a larger force was required to hold Brest in line. With artillery firing back from inside the city the Americans couldn’t sit there and file their nails for another 10 months. Ike and Omar needed those troops for the push east. The only way he could free them up for redeployment was to grab Brest. It had to be conquered.
MORGANTHAU PLAN AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1944
The US Secretary of State was Cordell Hull. But he had no more say in foreign policy than my grandfather Charlie Donovan who was a loadmaster on the USS Maryland at the time. The real Secretary of State was King Roosevelt along with his Secretary of the Treasury Morganthau. Harry Hopkins also had a lot of input. Both had more clout than Hull. No one had ever voted for Hopkins.
FDR was never highly knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and the Senate had never voted to authorize Morganthau from Treasury to make foreign policy either. But Morganthau certainly did. His qualifications? He was a FOF, Friend of Franklin. Morgy had many more hats than his official one at Treasury.
In early August 1944 Morganthau and his trusted Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Henry Dexter White went to Britain to consult with English leaders over the fate of Germany after the war. Hull was ordered to mow the White House lawn.
Morganthau asked a lot of common people what should be done with Germany after the USUKUSSSR victory. The answer often came back that Germany should be reduced to nothingness. But the big money people wanted to restore it. Morganthau already knew what he wanted to hear so he was really push-polling bell-hops and taxi drivers to justify decisions he had already reached. Henry M was emotionally charged up from the damage he saw in London from the V rockets.
Morgy and White agreed that the thing to do was to slice up Germany after the war into several small countries, and take all industry out of the country on trains and ships to places where it could be used peacefully. The two men went to the American Embassy for a US pow-wow on the plan. Ambassador to Great Britian Winant and his crew listened closely as White took the floor. Germany should be downgraded to a fourth rate power, he ranted. The Ruhr and Saar industrial regions should become pastoral farmlands with chirping birds and tumbleweeds. Winant protested that this would leave all of Europe vulnerable to Soviet domination. Harry White dismissed this argument as nonsense, as well he should have. Henry Dexter White was a Soviet spy serving as a double-agent in the US Treasury Department throughout the war. He was doing Stalin’s bidding and enlisting Morganthau’s help.
Churchill’s people had already told Morgy and White that the plan was insane. Yes, Germany had to be rehabilitated. But a strong Germany was essential to European economic recovery and strength, and was also needed as a bulwark against a Communist plague from the east. Soviet spy/US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury HD White heartily disagreed, dismissing fears of Soviet Communism as antiquated reactionary paranoia. Harry Dex knew he had the full support of the naïve Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Dex knew he could put his arguments forth forcefully, without fear of looking foolish.
On 8.19.44 Morganthau was back in D.C. and had a meeting with the President at the White House. Henry complained about the lenient treatment the British had in store for post-war Germany. FDR agreed and said he just needed a half hour alone with Churchill and he could change his mind, a preposterous conceit. It was bad enough that he thought he could charm and awe his friend Churchill; what was far worse was that FDR also thought he could do the same with his adversary, Stalin.
Modern warfare today emphasize that ‘we are not at war with the [fill in nation] people, only their leaders.’ Roosevelt was in quite the opposite mood when he rapped with Morganthau that summer day,
“We have got to be tough with Germany
and I mean the German people, not just
the Nazis. You either have to castrate or
you have got to treat them … so they just
cant’ go on reproducing people who want
to continue the way they have in the past.”
Morganthau placed White in charge of a committee to draft a plan for a Carthaginian occupation of Germany after V-day. This came to be known as the “Morganthau Plan” but the head-writer of the first draft was by H Dexter “Red” White.
In early September 1944 FDR conferred with his closest advisors at Hyde Park as they went over the Morganthau Plan. Both Franklin and his wife approved the plan. They both agreed that eliminating Germany from the Europe equation would stimulate the economies of England and Belgium, although why they believed this is not clear. Morganthau suggested that a majority of the German people between the ages of 20 and 40 could be expelled from the country and made to work on some grand TVA style project in remote inner Africa. Folks, I'm not making this up. He knew this would be unfair to the children of these adults, but Henry thought a way could be found through that issue, though he never said what that way was.
FDR took Morganthau with him to meet Churchill in Quebec in mid-September 1944. The British Prime Minister objected to the Morganthau Plan, saying that reducing Germany to a medieval farmland would be like tying England ‘to a dead body.’ But Morganthau used linkage to loosen Churchill's resistance. Morganthau attached cooperation on his plan to American financial generosity towards the UK after the war. Three billion in new lend-lease aid after the war if you fall in with this. Churchill accepted unhappily. When he went back with the agreement to London, Foreign Secretary Tony Eden hit the roof and the two Brits had an open feud.
The plan also faced opposition at home in America. Stimson and Hull at War and State crusaded against the plan.
Hull was mad because of the interference of Treasury in affairs of State. This had been going on for too long and Hull soon resigned as Secretary of State. The Morganthau Plan was the last straw for Cordy.
Hank Stimson went on record protesting that the Morganthau Plan made a mockery out of the Atlantic Charter and its idealistic promises of freedom for all peoples after the war. The charter specifically gave the same rights to the conquered as to the conquerors. Forcing 40 million Germans to the unemployment line by the calculated destruction of all German industry was not right, Stimson argued.
A high US official leaked the Morganthau Plan to the press while Henry was in Quebec with Churchill and the President. There was a considerable negative reaction to the plan from the American press, public and Congress.
The details of the Morganthau Plan traveled the globe and landed in Germany. The fact that Morganthau was Jewish played into hands of the Minister of Nazi Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who made the most of the opportunity. His theories that the Jewish international money interest were plotting to enslave Germany now looked more than logical to the average German. Goebbels exhorted his people to fight to the last man. They might as well, he explained.
Some historians “credit” the Morganthau Plan with inspiring the fanatical resistance of the German Army in the last year of the war. Tom Dewey in the fall campaign for President accused his Democratic incumbent opponent of a strategic blunder in first devising the Morganthau Plan and then letting it leak.
The timing of the publicity storm was made the worse by the near stalemate developing at that time on the continental battlefield. This seemed to be no time to inspire the German defenders of Fortress Europe.
FDR met with Hull and told his Secretary of State that he did not know how the story had leaked, which was true, and that he had always thought the plan a bad idea, which was not true. Morganthau was left holding the hot potato, drafted by a Russian spy and with his moniker on it.
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS – A HALF A MILLION OF THEM
As Patton’s 3rd Army was racing east the question turned to the liberation of Paris. Reporters were asking Ike and Brad when and how soon. But the Allied command had no compelling need or desire to liberate Paris as soon as possible. Bradley had never been there. He wanted to win a war, not liberate one specific city. A special plane flew from England to his CP with a special envelope. He thought it was some top secret command to change battle plans. It was actually a little flag that he was to put on his jeep as he drove triumphantly through Paris. Omar put it aside and continued his business as usual. Paris was no more significant militarily than, say, Beaugency or Tavers (two small Loire valley towns I’ve actually stayed in).
The First World War had given Paris an image of Americans to the rescue and marching through the city as heroes. This image had become part of American culture. The new war still had that mindset for a similar scene but it was a completely different situation. Paris was not conquered in WWI. US troops could march down the streets there in comfort and ceremony with no effect one way or another on battle logistics.
This time Paris was occupied and the Germans this time were in the middle of a fierce and fluid fight. They were retreating at breakneck speed towards a new line of defense on the German border. Ike Patton and Bradley had a job to do and liberating Paris was not it. Defeating the fighting forces of Germany was. They were planning to surround Paris and leave it there while they continued their hot pursuit of the fleeing Krauts. Reporters asked Bradley if he was going to shell Paris and he said he was not going to damage a cobblestone of the city. The promise was kept.
To Ike and Brad, taking Paris would divert several divisions from the chase, and exacerbate the supply problems he was already fending off desperately. Feeding Paris would become the Allied responsibility and he had his hands full already keeping his troops fed. If fighting was heavy, the Americans might even be blamed for much of the destruction.
It was cold hearted to leave Paris in German control for several more weeks but the logic was not so callous under closer examination. Battling for Paris could slow down the Allied war effort by several weeks. Was it really in the best interests of the citizens of France to slow down the timetable for V-Day in order to claim a lovely but essentially symbolic prize? Ike thought not and Brad agreed.
So that was the plan. Leave Paris alone and isolate the German garrison holding the city, a formidable one we might add. Isolated and not under attack, the divisions holding Paris would be reduced to a flock of German tourists who just happened to have guns. They couldn’t go anywhere. They couldn’t do anything.
But events inside the city forced Ike and Brad to change their plan. The FFI and French resistance forced the American hand. The FFI are formally organized Free French military units organized with the help of the other Allies.
The resistance became more brave as the liberation armies began closing in on Paris. Beginning around August 7, The Resistance started shooting German troops and blowing up German patrol cars. The German commander of Paris a General von Choltitz had orders from Hitler that if he was forced to evacuate Paris, he should destroy it on the way out. Paris was to be burned razed to the ground like Warsaw.
A Swiss envoy approached von Choltitz and begged him not to destroy Paris. The General replied that this was not his intention in spite of the awful order from Hitler. However if the resistance kept blowing up German officers as they sipped coffee in the cafes he would change his mind and do as he had been commanded.
So word got out to the Resistance to cool it. If they would hold their fire, the Germans would leave the city, and leave the city intact. It worked for a few days but the sabotage attacks on Germans picked up again. This time it looked like the Resistance was beginning to win the day.
The Swiss rep then approached General von Choltitz and asked him to reconsider. The General admitted that the cause was lost but he would “not surrender to an irregular army.” His military pride could not stand to surrender crack disciplined Wermacht divisions to street revolutionaries with shotguns, pipe bombs, and beards.
The Swiss rep got a good idea. If he could persuade the Allies to send in a dignified formal military force into Paris to accept the surrender, then von Choltitz would save face and a lot of needless death might be spared. Von Choltitz was agreeable to this if it could be arranged. An emissary from von Choltitz and the Swiss guy made it under a flag of truce to Patton’s CP. The idea was adopted immediately.
Eisenhower had any of a dozen divisions US he could have sent in to take Paris but he performed a magnanimous deed and assigned the task to the only legitimate Free French Division, the 1st. It was made up of French free citizens from North Africa and French exiles in England. The 1st was supplied with United States Sherman tanks and plenty of equipment. The 1st FFI had already fought well and fully during the struggle to break out of the Normandy box.
So when the French claim that they liberated Paris themselves, it is a clever exaggeration. The Free French liberated Paris because, in spite of quarreling with the Americans, were they still America's friends and the chance to go in first was a gift from Ike, and good for him. The Resistance did more to liberate Paris than the 1st French Division which simply marched in to accept the surrender, and the Resistance forced the US to come into town when we didn’t want to just yet.
Paris was liberated on August 25. Soon thousands of US soldiers were marching down the Champs Elysees while joyous Parisians smiled and cheered. You’ve probably seen these famous photos. But the grunts in the photos are not smiling. It’s not that they weren’t happy to liberate Paris. They were simply tired and sad from the hard fighting and knew that they still had much more work to do which might kill them. They had less to smile about than the mesdames y mademoiselles of Paris.
In fact there is more to these pictures than a thousand words. De Gaulle had asked Ike for two US divisions to maintain order in Paris. Ike said no, but he had an idea that might be of assistance to the proud General. There were US divisions just west of Paris that were headed east of Paris to resume the fighting. Ike could have them march in parade down the main avenue with Bradley and De Gaulle at the reviewing stand. They would not lose a step in their movements towards the battle while at the same time lending authority to the tall French patriot. This is what happened. It may have been the only instance in the history of combat that full divisions marched in a ceremonious victory parade parade while on their way to a hot war zone. The Americans who marched past De Gaulle that afternoon were literally in the midst of a full scale battle later that same day!
The French resistance came out of the woodwork just as the Germans were fleeing. There was a lot of sudden combat in the city just before the Allied troops marched in. Some French historians have the moxie to now claim that the Resistance in fact had won the battle for Paris, not the Allied armies. No wonder they coined the word ‘chauvinism.’ If a lion runs out of a burning zoo a Frenchman might shout, “And don’t ever try to intimidate me again!”
On the other hand it would be equally wrong to minimize their achievements just because they ridiculously maximize them. Ike said that the consistent help of the French resistance and the Free French forces speeded up the war by several weeks. I'm just saying that without Allied armies on the march, the Resistance would have stayed in the woodwork indefinitely. They didn't win Paris until Paris was already surrounded by the American Army.
ON TO GERMANY –WHO WILL LEAD? – WHO GET THE GLORY?
With Paris liberated and the Germans back on the heels of their jackboots, the Allies had different ideas about the routes to take and the forces to deploy in order to win the war.
The British thought they should lead the way with the bulk of the Allied forces assigned to their route near the coast with the US central forces as complimentary fronts. The Americans on the other hand thought that they should lead the attack with the British/Canadian armies supporting the operation with a secondary front along the coast. In the end it was decided that Monty’s front near the coast was to be the main event in the march to Berlin with American central armies in a complimentary role. But this only inspired these American divisions to fight above and beyond the call of duty so as to outrace the British to the main prizes in Germany. In other words, Monty was scheduled to get there first but the Americans were determined to run ahead of schedule and show the world which was the better fighting force.
The national ego competition among the Allies is understandable but a real turn off to read about. Not to say that I wouldn’t have fallen in with it if I had been a Brit or a US soldier. I’m sure I would have resented Monty and the Limeys in their need for all the credit and the glory if I was a GI. And I’m sure I would have resented the big ego of Patton and the Yanks and their need for all the credit and the glory if I had been a Canadian, Brit or New Zealand soldier.
The rivalry between the two groups trying to win the war is a dominant theme of World War II especially after 1943. I suppose the only solution to this low base emotion in a war for higher plane ideals would have been to train the forces on an integrated bases and deploy them as combined units. If this idea had been taken up and adopted in late December 1941, then maybe a combined US-UK Corps of several divisions could have operated in harmony and unity of purpose on the continent by the time of the decisive offensive of 1944. But both countries loved their flag more than they loved victory and the idea was as untenable then as it was in 1918 when Pershing was asked to integrate the American doughboys into the French and British divisions, an idea which Pershing rejected as what would be called today a ‘non-starter.’
This ideal dream of integrated Allied units in WWII was not only never adopted, I might be the first person ever to even suggest it. The concept of United Nations had never worked out in peace, why should anyone in 1941 think it might work out in war?
AVRANCHES COUNTERATTACK
The wheel was beginning to turn. The American end of the two pronged assault was turning and slowly picking up speed around the Caen front. What was the German high command to do.
There were three basic choices. One: Continue on fighting as things stood and let the Allies decide all the new moves on the board. Two: organize a serious retreat to make a better stand at a better defense line to the east. Three; counter attack and try to reach the sea at Avranches.
The first wasn’t as bad an idea as might sound, but it was not anyone’s idea of a great idea either.
The second was militarily shrewd but did entail some risks. In leaving their present positions, German units would suffer some losses and would end up leaving heavy equipment. They might be caught in a hastily sprung trap on their way out the back door.
The third idea was Hitler’s own. What a surprise. Mr. Macho orders a counterattack. However it wasn’t completely dumb in theory. If it worked and the German army reached the sea off of the town of Avranches the Allies would be split in two. They would then be back in the Normandy box (albeit with a lot more breathing room), but the units in Brittany would be cut off from the main force and the lines of supply to them would be very threatened. In a fantasy session on a map at the Wolf’s Lair the Hitler scheme might have seemed even as proof of his alleged military genius. There was only one little problem with the Avranches counter-attack plan. The Allies had overwhelming physical superiority in all aspects of combat, except tank quality, and that was more than offset by our vastly superior numbers. The retreat plan was a little bit risky, but the attack plan was extremely risky.
Hitler’s Avranches plan could only work if the German were truly the master race capable of superhuman fighting miracles. The Avranches counterattack was really a test of his racist theories.
It should come as no surprise that of all the plans discussed with his Generals, Hitler’s plan to counterattack was the one adopted. The Avranches surprise offensive was to be the first of two major counterattacks against the USUK alliance, the other coming in the more famous Battle of the Bulge.
Hitler’s Stupid Avranches Counterattack 8.44
The German counterattack was launched on -------. It gained some ground at first but came to a halt at the town of Mortain. In the meantime Bradley had sent an entire Corps (many divisions) around the southern flank to the rear of the German offensive. Monty’s boys to the north started down from the back and north side in an attempt to close the trap on a large German Army. This Falaise-Argentan trap (see map) didn’t quite work completely but was certainly an overall success. The closing trap that never quite shut did manage to squeeze the retreating Germans into one narrow escape pocket from which they became easy targets for around the clock aerial massacre. The Germans extracted most of the troops but little of the precious heavy equipment. The trap bagged thousands of prisoners and many tanks, for which we can all give many tanks.
DOUBLE EDGED SWORD OF ALLIED BOMBARDMENTS
The cleanup of the Brittany peninsula continued while the bulk of the Allied forces drove to the east. Brest was taken on September 19, but it had been so damaged by our bombing and their scuttling that it was useless as a port and was never repaired or utilized in spite of it’s good location.
In fact this would be a problem for the rest of the campaign. Allied bombing was improving by the month as the war progressed and by 1944 it was generally excellent and devastating. Then we marched into the conquered territory and found that we had no infrastructure to work with. We had destroyed it before we came in and now were stuck with our fine work. Ike, Patton, Hodges and Bradley had to deal with the torn up the railroads, bridges and roads that they had torn up themselves before they got there. Yesterdays superb battle report was tomorrows logistical nightmare. Allied bombardment of the continent slowed down later Allied advances as efficiently as the German Army.
V1 V2 V3
Hitler had lost the first air Battle of Britian but he still had a couple of evil tricks up his scummy sleeve. German science and industry had developed a new series of advanced strategic weapons. These were the so-called “V” weapons, the V1 flying rocket, the V2 pure rocket, and the V3 the cross channel super-cannon. The V stood for victory. They could as easily have stood for vicious. The V’s were powerful but not accurate and were all essentially designed to terrorize and kill English civilians.
The V1’s were pilotless bombers, not unlike the weapon Joe Kennedy was flying when he was killed in action over the English Channel.
But there were key differences. Kennedy’s plane was primitive compared the scientifically advanced V weapons. Kennedy flew a plane loaded with bombs that he would bail out of when it neared the target, then a radio signal would guide it to the point of designated impact.
The V weapons had no pilot. They left the continent without soul and flew to London and other places on their own and landed inhumanly and inhumanely.
The V-1 started the second Battle of Britian. This was a low flying pilotless aircraft that looked like a giant dart with little fins on the side, not quite long enough to earn the name of wings. It streaked low over the sky and landed with a one ton bomb exploding on impact. It was not very accurate but it was powerful. Almost 3,000 V1’s struck London and other targets.
The V2 was a more dangerous weapon because it was almost impossible to shoot down. This was a truly staggering scientific advancement in warfare. The V2 was a legitimate ICMB. It was launched from France or Holland and shot up into the stratosphere and incredible 50 miles then arched over and crashed into England at 5,000 feet per second. The V2 was silent in flight and no one could know when they were about to strike. The V2 made the V1 look like a paper airplane.
The weakness of the V2 however was the same as the V1. Neither were very accurate and could not hit strategic targets. They needed a city the size of London to guarantee a direct hit. That meant that they were nothing but ant-morale bombs for Allied civilians. The war was going so well in general for the Allies however that these bombs could not make a sea change in civilian or military morale, except for the individuals injured or killed.
If they had been introduced earlier in the war it might have been a different story. If they had been tipped with a small nuclear warhead they might have won the war.
Those who denigrate the morality and effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaign in World War II should focus on the damage and setbacks that these bombings handed to Hitler’s rocket campaign, which was considerable. The scientific war was won by these bombers, even if we concede that they produced disappointing results in other areas of strategic analysis.
The V3 was the greatest gun barrel ever told. It was a 400 foot long artillery piece that would be able to shell London in conventional form from unconventional distance. Fortunately for Piccadilly, the experimental models were plagued with bugs and the experimental testing produced poor results. By the time the V3 had any faint hope for successful development and deployment, the Allied armies had already overrun the plants where they were to be produced.
In September 1944 the American Army crossed over into Germany proper.
NO OIL FOR BLOOD
The Allies were racing as fast and as hard as they could towards Germany and victory but the attack began to run out of gas. That means literally ran out of gas. The gas shortage that stalled Patton and his friends was worse than the one that OPEC slapped on the US in 1973. At least we were only trying to get to work. The US Army was trying to kill Germans and didn’t have any gasoline to chase them with. We had no oil for blood.
These weeks had been heady. The entire front was moving ahead of schedule and Patton was lighting up the world’s headlines with his rush to the east. This was the only period of the war when such advances were achieved by the good guys.
There had been a lot of talk among the boys and the brass about ending the war in time for everyone to be home for Christmas. If the gasoline had been there this might have come true. There was little to stop Patton from crashing deep into Germany. But his third army especially out of all the corps groups was short on gas. The boys would be home for Christmas, … in 1945.
The Allies had actually counted of fierce German resistance to provide time enough to build up the supply line from Cherbourg and the improvised channel ports as the battle moved on. But the Germans foiled out logistical plan by collapsing with the help oh Hitler’s stupid Avranches counterattack.
Now both the Brits and the Yanks were pleading for gasoline and Ike had to decide who gets it. Gasoline, not German resistance was now deciding the entire war strategy in Europe. An underwater pipeline had even been built under the English channel to Normandy. Another pipeline was being constructed from Normandy to the fluid front, but the construction could not keep pace with Patton sitting on top of a tank moving at 22 miles per hour yelling ‘yiiii-haaaa!” The advance had outraced it’s supply lines in a big way. It was a military crisis.
Ike had two basic choices. He could move the entire broad front slowly with the gas he had. Or he could give the most gas to Patton and let his impetuous Third Army drive a spectacular spearhead into the heart of Germany well ahead of the rest of the front. He didn’t have enough gas to do both.
Eisenhower decided on the broad and slow moving front, and he would give most of the gas to the Brits so they could clear out the Scheldt (the lowlands where the rivers reach the sea), take Antwerp, and thereby revitalize the supply situation. Patton would have to stop for coffee and wait for the war to catch up while he cursed Monty’s name.
This precious gas was Monty’s now. It was fourth and one and Monty had to pull off a one yard slug to Antwerp to get more gas and supplies for everyone. The American Generals were not happy but they understood. Instead Monty wasted all the gas on a long bomb that sailed over the receiver’s head, a daring scheme to make him look like a military genius. It was a plan that failed. There is no doubt Monty’s failure at Arnhem prolonged the war.
Before we examine Monty’s bad report card it should in fairness be added that Patton’s plan to race to victory ahead of the pack was no sure thing. He complained after the war about how if only he had the gas he could have ended the war so much sooner. But Patton neglects to add that he would have driven straight into much stronger resistance than any Allied Corps had scrapped with to date. Being that far ahead of the front, if anything went bad in the basic fighting, he might have been surrounded and annihilated. And even if he had enough gas to advance, it didn’t mean he had enough to engage in a hard and long fight in some fixed position, and re-supply to an Army that far ahead of the pack would have been an obvious problem.
If Patton had been defeated and captured, the post war critics would have said ‘if only they had tried Monty’s plan.’
A BRIDGE TOO FAR FETCHED - 9-44
It was called OPERATION MARKET GARDEN and Hollywood made a disappointing movie about it. OMG was General Monty’s plan to land several airborne divisions by parachute behind German lines. Ike didn’t love the idea but accepted it as a gamble worth taking. Bradley was against it.
If it worked, the Siegfried line, (or “West Wall”) would be outflanked from the rear and the path to Berlin would be more or less wide open out of the coastal northeast direction.
Bradley objected because the MG plan bypassed the main objective on the coast which was the lowland area of Holland and the vitally important city of Antwerp. The Allies needed a new major supply port to replace Cherbourg, which was at this point, a point too far.
By Monty’s stupid plan, the British coastal force would turn north away from the US group and open a hole in Hodges’ flank. Ike would have to take a division or two away from Patton to plug that gap. Monty’s bad plan also ignored the critical target of Antwerp. Even if his bold plan worked and a path was indeed opened up to Berlin beyond the Siegfried line, the problem of supply would still be as a bad as ever, if not worse. There were no vegetables in the Market Garden plan for the armies to eat with, and no gasoline for them to drive with.
VICTORY IN LUXEMBOURG
The combined armies of the Allies liberated France, Belgium and the Netherlands, but there was one country that was freed by the United States armed forces alone. That was tiny Luxembourg, which was captured in early October.
The ‘Luxors’ as the GI’s called them affectionately, were free at last. They decorated their streets and buildings with gay banners and pictures of their lovely Grand Duchess Charlotte. Many buildings gratefully sported photographs of President Roosevelt. Unfortunately some of the pictures were of Teddy Roosevelt! They didn’t know better; Right name, wrong prez.
Not everyone in Luxembourg was thrilled with the Americans, however.
The Luxembourg Forest was rich with wild boar, and had many streams filled with trout. With the obvious food shortage for the US Army the LF became a prime natural supply depot. The Yanks slayed the Luxembourgians as if they had mistaken them for Germans. Two-seater unarmed reconnaissance planes were flying low over the forest and the rear man was gunning down the boar with machine gun fire. The Luxembourg game warden was not happy and he protested the unsportsmanlike slaughter. But the Yanks could give a boars tail what he thought. These hardened soldiers were indifferent to human life by now. Our animals weren’t about to weep for these animals. The game warden lost the boar war, and the GI’s were more than happy to munch down their happy-meals of boarburgers and troutfries.
PLATOON
The general image of World War II is that the guys in the Pacific took a far higher percentage of casualties in combat than did the guys in Europe. Well, yes and no.
The casualty percentage of a marine division hitting the beach at Okinawa was much higher than an Army division attacking a position in Germany in 1945. It is often cited that one in three Marines were killed or wounded in some of these island battles in the Pacific.
But these Marine divisions were almost exclusively made up of front line fighters. The logistical support came from Navy ships at sea. So their casualty rate would reflect this high percentage since the support people weren’t necessarily part of the division itself.
In Europe every person involved in logistical support was part of the division. Plus these Euro division were more heavily armored to fight long campaigns over vast land areas. Tanks, machine gun and artillery units made up a majority of the divisions fighting personnel, and the casualty percentages in the armored units were relatively sane.
Logistical support personnel at the corps and Army group level are also thrown into the mix so that the result is a misleading percentages of casualties per 100 fighting men in Europe as compared to the Pacific. The guy typing letters in Cherbourg is counted as a guy who fought and didn’t get wounded. There were few such back end warriors to fatten down the stats in the Pacific.
The point being this; The infantry platoons in Europe suffered horrific combat casualties, in many places a higher ratio in fact than the Marines of Okinawa. I think the European fighters have never been showered with the gory glory they earned. There’s a hundred documentaries a month on TV showering patriotic praise on the bravery and sacrifice of the Marines in the Pacific. But the same bravery and sacrifice of the men in Europe are seldom sung.
In a US Army division in Europe of 14,000 men, only 3,240 were infantry. These 81 platoons did most of the dying, even if we realize that the armored units shared in the fighting. The Army estimated before the invasion of France that 70% of the casualties in Europe would come from the infantry platoons. At wars end the figure arrived at was 83%. Add the logistical support people from the corps level and we get one out of seven men in a corps (remember, a corps is an organized fighting unit of several divisions, and an Army is an organized fighting unit of several corps) are in the infantry. These one out of seven took more than six out of seven of the casualties. Add the Army group level support people and you get one out of ten men in Europe are in the infantry, and they supplied almost nine in ten of the dead.
During the breakout from St. Lo the 30th Division suffered 3,933 combat casualties, or at face value, one out of every four men in the division. This alone is a staggering figure, quite comparable to Iwo Jima. But 75% of those St. Lo casualties came from the infantry platoons so the casualty rate for infantry in the 30th for the St. Lo breakout was more than 90%! One could ague that a fighting man had a better chance of living through the entire chain of battles in the Pacific than an infantry man did of surviving a chain of battles in Europe. Perhaps that’s why when we meet veterans of the European war they are seldom front line infantry men. I know this first hand. Since I was a teen-ager I have always tried to make conversation with any man I find out had served in WWII. I rarely meet men who served in infantry platoons in Europe. The only way to meet most of them is to bring flowers to Europe and find their white cross.
The infantry platoons suffered in others ways that the percentages do not acknowledge. It was called ‘trenchfoot.’
As the fall began to turn towards winter in 1944 the rains came before the snow. November drenched a million infantrymen in cold rain. They were not dressed for the occasion.
The supply problem in general was so severe that it was called ‘the supply famine.’ Ammunition and gasoline were desperately needed to directly take and save lives, so little things like a million clean socks were not high on US Army priority at the moment. By the beginning of December 1944 the US generals realized they had made a mistake. A disease swept the ranks. The prolonged exposure of the lower legs and feet to wet and cold in tight Army boots was damaging the blood vessels of these poor men. Like they didn’t have it bad enough, now they couldn’t feel their legs and feet and fell over when they tried to stand. Trenchfoot took more of U.S. men off the front line than any German counterattack of the war. 12,000 troops, mostly infantry of course, had to be sent back for hospitalization. Most of them were physically unable to ever fight again, and a tragic number were left physically handicapped for the rest of their lives.
The trenchfoot losses were not counted as casualties since the injuries had not come from fighting, and none of them won a purple heart for their purple feet. The story only adds to the point that the US Army infantry in Europe were every bit as heroic as the (deservedly) glorified Marines of the Pacific.
PRIVATE LUCKY
Historian Robert Leckie would disagree with the last statement. His history of WWII has the Marines in the superior position compared to the Army.
Some of the things he says are too hot for me to steal. I will say a few things now, but remember, I'm speaking for Leckie, not me.
The British soldiers in Europe were shamefully irresolute. They didn't fight as a hard as the Americans. They felt that the war was won, they had done five years worth of fighting, and the main thing now was to not get killed. Let the Americans do the dying now. Leckie believes that the British forces near the shore under Monty would have advanced farther and faster if they had fought harder.
On the other hand the Americans were loaded with deserters. It was one of the dirty little secrets of the war. USA Deserters were rounded up by the thousands and sent back to the front without punishment, to the astonishment of a few Britons.
Most of the time that a Marine and and Army division fought side by side, the Army division messed things up and didn't show much gallantry, but the Marines fixed up the Army division's mistakes and showed incredible gallantry.
The number of GI's who claimed “battle fatigue” was another mark of shame. Leckie cites a figure of 909,000 of the wounded of WWII was from “battle fatigue.” Today they called it TSD, traumatic stress disorder. But a tremendous number of these were feigned illnesses. No wonder Patton slapped that soldier.
The real shame was that this malingering was all done openly and there was little social penalty for doing so. The consensus was that it was ok to try and get out of being killed in a war that was already won. It was like jury duty. Every forsaken defendant in America is judged by 12 people too stupid to not find a way out of jury duty. The GI's on the front line in Europe were like that. They had to pass through a series of negative hurdles to get to the front lines.
The German soldier on average was well-trained, well-motivated, extremely disciplined, well-equipped, and very combat experienced. The average American soldier was only an average soldier. There was no doubt about it, the average German divisional commander had a lot more to work with in his 15,000 men, than and American general had with his 15,000. And the German always had better tanks.
Leckie compares US Army troops in Europe to German Army troops, but he doesn't openly compare US Marine troops to German.
THE DESERTED FOX - OCTOBER 14 - HEIL IN PEACE
On October 14, General Erwin Rommel committed forced suicide in the back of an SS car a few miles from his home.
Two army generals, Tom Maisel and Nicky Burgdorf came to visit the hero of North Africa at his home in West Herrlingen and asked Mrs. R. to go upstairs for a few minutes while “the men have a talk.”
Maisel and Burgdorf told Rommel that he had assisted the men who plotted to kill Hitler and that he was under arrest. Rommel would go to trial in Berlin and would hang after a shameful spectacle of a trial. His wife Lucy would get no pension, and would probably be sent to a camp.
However, the Fuhrer, in consideration for his past services, was giving him the option of a quiet quick suicide. Lucy would get her pension, and Rommel would be buried as a hero with no mention of his assassin associations.
They Maisel told Rommel that death by cyanide “will take about three seconds.” But, as Jonestown proved 976 times in 1978, death by cyanide is a bit rougher than that. There's a lot of staggering around and convulsions. It's not pretty.
The men took a drive, pulled over near a farm, and the generals stepped out for a walk. An SS officer sat in the front seat as Rommel took the cyanide capsule. The SS driver wept as he saw Rommel die in his rear view mirror. He put the General's hat back on his dead head, and reported to Bergdorf and Maisel that, “it's done.”
Hitler was happy that Rommel chose suicide. He knew it would be bad for his war effort to have his most popular general in the prisoner's dock of a Nazi court.
After reading the memoirs of several Nazis I have this to say about General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, the man played by James Mason in the movie The Desert Fox; Rommel, the one general who most opposed to Hitler; and this honorable man finally paid with his life.
The top Nazis laugh at this popular western image of Rommel who hated Hitler and was the least Nazi of all the generals. The opposite was true! Rommel loved Hitler and the Nazi Party possibly more than any other German General. He offered to serve as Hitler's bodyguard in the 1930's and held that job for years. He made sure that people who plotted to hurt Hitler were punished without mercy.
It was only after the war began going very badly that Rommel suddenly got this noble conscience about the wrong that Hitler was doing to Germany.
A lot of documentaries, books and web sites go beyond exonerating Rommel. They make him a hero. I refuse to accept Erwin Rommel as heroic at all.
Why should I? Because he took a corps of a meagre two divisions and chased Britian all over Africa for two years with it? First of all, that one went back and forth, and in the last phases Rommel was out-generaled several times. But no one counts his second half performance.
The Nazis in passing always speak of Rommel as the one general who believed in the Nazi Party cause more than all the others. And the Hollywood version tells us the opposite. Go to any website and read the lie.
Rommel-lovers speak of how he prevented many Jews from going to Concentration camps, at times defying Hitler's orders.
Well, he also helped sent plenty of Jews to concentration camps by winning battles for Hitler, protecting Hitler's person, and lending his great name and reputation to the Nazi Party. Even if he saved 100,000 Jews, he was still a major Nazi Party stalwart. Like he didn't know that anti-Semitism in brutal action was part of the deal with the National Socialist Party. Like he didn't know that the man he protected was a rabid anti-Semite with deadly power.
Goebbels said that Rommel was a fine general, but that his ability had been vastly overrated by the enemy for propaganda purposes. Goebbels accused Churchill of inventing Rommel's greatness because that explains away all those British defeats in the desert. By calling Rommel a brilliant genius leader, Churchill was letting his own military leadership scorecard have an excuse towel. Who could beat this superhero?
I think the little worm is right on this one. Goebbels' nailed it.
After the war ended, the Rommel cult grew. The West wanted to find some way to make friends again with the defeated Germans. Kissing up to the image of this one specially exempted Wermacht hero was a good thing for that. Then when the major movie came out about him, the whole Rommel the Great Person (not just Rommel the Great) thing really took off. Now it's common knowledge that he was one of the finest human beings that ever lived.
I wish I could have been the Spitfire pilot that strafed up his car.
THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE 12 1944
In December the Germans launched the their final serious offensive operation of the war, a counterattack in the Ardennes forest that at first succeeded but was stopped after heavy casualties on both sides. 30 divisions were engaged on each side. The attack was a surprise and a success, at least for a little while. The Wermacht drove a huge ‘bulge’ into the Allied front line, hence the name. More than 600,000 American men fought in the BOB. 19,000 US troops died in it, more than a third as many as died in 14 years in Vietnam. The Germans lost 100,000 killed, wounded and captured. It was the last throw of the dice for Germany and it came out box cars. Hitler expended all the resources he needed so desperately for a long hard defensive struggle on an exiting but hopeless offensive gamble. There would have been no gamble had they been directed towards defense. They would have been put to maximum use.
As you may have guessed, the huge counterattack was Hitler’s idea. The only time he ever suggested retreat to someone else in his career as military leader was the day he asked his wife to join him when he chose to shoot himself. Adolph had chosen retreat for himself back in the 1920’s when he hit the dirt in terror during the Beer Hall Putsch while other reb Nazis marched forward amid gunfire, but he never ordered retreat for any of his military commanders in the field during WWII.
Like his stupid Avranches counterattack, the Ardennes counterattack had some merit in theory. The plan was to send the best of his remaining fighting forces on the attack into the center of the Allied line and make a bee-line towards the port of Antwerp. This was the main supply depot for the Allied armies. Antwerp had the gasoline and other supplies that the Germans needed even more desperately than Monty and Ike. If Hitler could stay on the offense until the Wermacht reached Antwerp he might be able to turn the war around by cutting the Allied armies in half and hijacking their supplies at the same time.
What else was left for a man in his position, a man who would surely hang at the end of the war of captured alive? Even knowing in retrospect that the attack failed after some shocking initial success, what was the alternative? If Hitler wisely husbanded his defensive resources in tight by-the-book fallback positions, could he win the war? No way. He could prolong it and kill that many more Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, Brits and New Zealanders; but could he win the war? The answer was obvious.
There’s not doubt that Hitler threw away his last hope for a truly effective defense of Germany when he committed his best divisions to this famous gamble on offense just to the west of Germany’s borders. Hitler was saying in effect, “It's a million to one, but it's the only chance we've got.” Hitler would rather throw it all away on a victory gamble than husband his defensive resources wisely.
If only real life were like the movies, the Ardennes counterattack would have worked. For anytime someone in a movie says “It’s a million to one shot, but it’s the only chance we’ve got,” that of course means the plan is undoubtedly absolutely going to work, and spectacularly. In real life it means what it means.
General Bradley feels guilty in his memoirs about the initial Allied failure at the Battle of the Bulge. He always stresses that he was not the only one that underestimated German counterattack capabilities. Omar reminds us that Montgomery and Eisenhower too felt that the Germans could not make any major offensive moves in its present condition. All three then were wrong, although history puts most of the blame on Brad, hence his touchy self-defense.
One fallacy about the Battle of the Bulge is that a German counter-attack caught the Americans completely by surprise. That is only partly true. The US Army did actually expect a German counter-attack and even anticipated that it would probably come in the Ardennes. But they thought it would be a limited counter-attack designed to force Patton to slow down and backtrack in his full steam advance on the southern flank. Patton’s 3rd Army group was so ahead of the rest of the war that Bradley, in trying to think like a German, deduced that if he were in Rundy’s shoes this is what he would do. A counter-attack would force Ike to order Patton to double back and take the 3rd army train off the track for a few precious weeks. The 3rd Army could not afford to risk being cut off and the counter-attack would have to be stopped per se. 3rd Army would be ordered back for both reasons.
The Army brains trust were confident that the expected counterattack could not get very far with its deteriorating and desperate forces. They felt that the US deployments were more than a match for any German counterattack anywhere. They were perfectly willing to call Patton back to help and let the Germans win their limited strategic objective of slowing the Allies down. Ike was worried that Patton was (as usual) too far ahead of his supply and sanity lines anyway.
When the Germans finally attacked it was the last Blitzkrieg, and for a little while was working so well that some of the men in the Wermacht must have felt that happy days were here again.
The Germans did some clever things to prepare for the surprise attack. They waited for a long stretch of bad weather before they were willing to signal go. It was classic military thinking flipped inside-out and backwards. Rather than hope for clear weather so that its air could be used effectively, and for dry weather so it could march and fire its guns effectively, General Heinz planned to use bad weather so the enemy could not employ its air arm effectively, and looked for rain so that the enemy could not fire their heavy guns effectively.
For secrecy, the troops on the front who were not pure German were pulled back to serve in homeland defense in central Germany. There was no radio communication allowed discussing the attack or any aspect of it. They also gave the Allies a taste of their own disinformation medicine with false radio traffic and dummy Command Posts in places they were not going to attack.
The lowest trick in the book was played when they sent hundreds of specially trained Germans fluent in English and with flawless American accents dressed in captured American uniforms behind US lines to harass and mislead. These bastardos were specially trained in little mock Americatowns in Germany so they could pass interrogation by US troops if they were stopped on roads. They tried their best to learn American culture, which was their weak point in detection. Language skills do not cover cultural skills and they knew that. These guys could diagram an English sentence better than the average GI, but they couldn’t tell a suspicious MP what was the last thing James Cagney said in the movie White Heat.
When the German attack began on December 16, the word got around fast about these spies behind American lines dressed as Yanks. For a while every soldier and officer became paranoid of everyone else in the Army.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Sergeant Siracco, Sir.”
“ Who was the fourth President of the United States?”
“James Madison.”
“Who won the first Battle of Bull Run?”
“The South.”
“Not so fast! Who won the National League battling title in 1940.”
“That would be Debs Garms of the Pittsburgh Pirates, but what a lousy fielder.”
“Pass friend.”
But if the guy had said ‘Babe Ruth” he would have been shot at sunrise.
Even generals had to pass the test. General Bradley was asked at one checkpoint to answer a football question.
“Name the position on the offensive line between the center and the tackle.”
He told the guard that it was the guard.
The suspicious American asked the General who was married to Betty Grable.
“I wish the hell I was,” said Bradley.
“Pass friend.”
One suspect later answered the same question with, “Clark Grable” and was shot.
One of the key missions for these fake Americans was to assassinate General Eisenhower. That was quite the compliment for the future president that Germany thought it could almost change the war around if only they could kill this guy. The hit squads were supposedly all over France looking for Ike. They did not like Ike.
The Americans countered by having Ike drive around in high profile all over Paris in his famous luxury squad car. The only catch was that the man in the back seat with the window rolled down as a Colonel who happened to be a dead ringer for the man from Abilene. He bravely volunteered to pose as Eisenhower and ride around Paris to draw out the assassins. No one ever took a shot at the phony Ike. The US press would do that when he became President.
One other key advantage helped the Germans achieve surprise. When Germans were operating in France of Belgium there were thousands of native spies doing everything they could to gather information about troops movements strengths and plans and pass it on to the Allies. Millions of other civilians were spies of opportunity. If an opportunity to spoil things for the Germans came their way, they wouldn’t hesitate to pass it on.
But by now the Germans were falling back and preparing for their counter-attack from inside the German borders. The information well of French postmen, children and housewives had dried up.
On December 16 1944 the Germans launched the great counterattack through the Ardennes forest. At the point of attack the Americans fell back and regrouped along several lines.
But while the central US armies were absorbing the attack and falling back, their positions were growing stronger as the attack was growing weaker. The Wermacht did not have the resources to maintain its strength as it advance. Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, Bradley, Hodges and Patton all knew this, and while they were a bit upset with being thrown back, it does not appear that anyone ever believed for a moment that the Germans could reach the port of Antwerp of even Liege for that matter.
The Wermacht was living in the past. In 1940 they had broken through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes and had routed the French. But that was against the inflexible Maginot Line and against a large French army with old equipment, outdated tactics, and against a French air force that was inferior to Germanys.
Even if their plans worked out, the Germans could only advance in a strong but moderately sized line, a ‘bulge’ in the long and wide Allied line. That would have to mean that they would be ridiculously vulnerable to flank attacks from the massive Allied armies north and south of the bulge. In this case especially to the south because that’s where crazy Patton’s 3rd Army group was. As Patton watched the German attack develop he commented to Bradley, “This time the Kraut’s stuck his head in a meatgrinder.”
In their rapid advance, the Germans had bypassed and surrounded the Allied occupied fortress town of Bastogne. This German version of island hopping was a far cry from the US Pacific version. The Nazis had bypassed the Bastogne stronghold like Nimitz in the Pacific, but in this case they could be bit from behind. The Battling Bastards of Bastogne were surrounded, yes; but they consisted of an entire corps, anchored by the 101st Airborne Division. Eisenhower knew that the Bastogne ‘garrison’ was surrounded, but he never really feared for their survival. Besides, Patton was on the way to relieve Bastogne, so no worries, mate. General McAuliffe, in charge of the surrounded divisions inside the Bastogne area was offered surrender terms by the German commanding the investing forces. “Nuts” was his famous one word reply.
In the northern area of the advancing German bulge, the US Army stubbornly held on to the communications crossroads town of St. Vith. This thin counter-bulge the Germans had to eventually continue around and past like a gutter rain stream going around a popsicle stick.
So while the all of nothing German offensive continued to advance, it had already left two key military objectives behind and was now conquering second rate targets like trees and some country cottages.
The first key goal of the ‘krauts’ was to reach the Meuse River, sever Allied communications there, and then race for Antwerp. The attack was moving forward but losing momentum as it advanced. Ike and Bradley were supremely confident that the Germans might possibly smell the campfires of Dinant on the Meuse one day, but they would never reach the river.
But Marshall and the brass brains in Washington were alarmed that the attack was actually succeeding. The generals on the ground were irritated by this dramatic and sometimes very public panic and gloom portrait being promulgated that they felt were not matched by the real situation in the field.
The writers at the Scribe Hotel in Paris were adding fuel to the alarmist fire, giving the Battle of the Bulge the Tet Offensive treatment.
In the north and west front of the Bulge the Americans were holding firm and reducing the advance to an ineffective crawl. In the south the Germans were being hit with a Patton flank attack of major proportions.
The two main problems in the US camp, especially on the northern side of the Bulge were communications and a lack of reserves. Both problems fed on each other and the bad weather that was helping the Germans so much was worsening Ike’s communications problem. For these two reasons Supreme Allied Command asked Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in the North to assume temporary command of the northern sector of the Battle of the Bulge. Monty had communications and Monty had reserves.
Bradley reluctantly allowed the schnozzola to take command of all American Armies in the Battle except Patton’s 3rd.
The Field Marshall took over and the first thing he did was delay committing any of his troops until he had casually finished mopping up spots on his own front. The US generals were beside themselves. The fight here was desperate, Monty had been summoned to help and now he was dallying to make sure his own front was spotless while the Germans attacked Americans in full force.
By the time Mr. pause and delay entered the fray, the battle had already been won by the Yanks and his help wasn’t really needed anymore.
The turning point came at the west end of the line when the Second Panzer division and clashed with the US Second Armored Division for three days of Christmas, December 23-25 1944. It was 2 against 2. The advance of the German attack was been officially stopped on Christmas morning. Santa had arrived at Hitler’s house with a card for Hitler that read, “Happy Holiday Hitler! The advance on Antwerp has been repulsed and thrown back. Now you have lost all 24 of your best divisions for homeland defense.”
In the meantime the newspapers and radios of the world were singing of how Monty had saved the day.
Montgomery then gave a Commander McBrag press conference that has to be read to be believed,
“Von Rundstedt … obtained tactical surprise. He
drove a deep wedge into the center of the US
First Army … the Germans had broken right
through a weak spot and were headed for the
Meuse.
As soon as I saw what was happening I took
certain steps myself … And I carried out certain
movements … so as to meet the threatened danger.
… I was thinking ahead.
Then the situation began to deteriorate .. national
considerations were thrown overboard; General
Eisenhower placed me in command of the entire
Northern front. …
You thus have the picture of British troops
fighting on both sides of American forces who
have suffered a hard blow.
The battle has been most interesting; I think
possibly one of the most interesting and tricky
battles I have ever handled.”
This guy must have 30,000 mirrors in his house, and no windows. The excerpt says it all about General Monty and why Patton couldn’t stand him. These statements are so conceited, self-centered, and unfair that I might have to give back the eggs I had for breakfast from just typing them up. It’s almost unreal, like a character you’re too obviously supposed to dislike in a badly written movie. No wonder that this press conference made the American officers and enlisted men in the field very mad at Montgomery.
Monty was also speaking with an implied aura as if he had been given permanent command of all the Allied armies in Europe. He had only been given temporary command because he had a communications advantage and reserves. Bradley immediately gave his own press conference in which he emphasized that the command structure in place when the Bulge Battle began would soon be restored (as it was.)
But the British press were giving Monty the ticker tape parade in their pages. They were calling for the hero Monty to lead all troops for the rest of the war. Bradley went to Eisenhower and told him that if he were placed under Montgomery’s command he would ask to be sent back to the states. “After what has happened, I cannot serve under Montgomery,” he said firmly. Patton grabbed Bradley’s arm and backed him up. “If Bradley quits, then I will be quitting with him.”
As the Bulge was winding down, Churchill saved the situation with a humble anti-chauvinist speech in the House of Commons on January 18 1945. Winston was well aware of the ill-feelings building between the two brasses. This speech was his finest hour,
“ I have seen it suggested that the terrific battle which has
been proceeding since December 16 on the American
front is an Anglo-American battle. In fact, however, the
United States troops have done almost all of the fighting
and have suffered almost all the losses. …
Care must be taken in telling our proud tale not to claim
for the British armies an undue share of what is undoubtedly
the greatest American battle of the war, and will, I believe,
be regarded as an ever-famous American victory.
Even Churchill had as much as he could take of Monty’s pompous egoist exaggerations. Win was trying to win a world war, not medals for Monty or any other commander under the Union Jack. If Marshall and Ike had been willing to threaten Patton with dismissal for his misbehavior, Churchill was equal to the task with his prima donna Montgomery.
MALMEDY MASSACRE - “THE 81”
The worst atrocity of the Battle of the Bulge was the Malmedy malady, a mass murder of US PW's.
On December 17 an SS commander named Peiper ordered the execution of a band of Army brothers after these Yanks surrendered near the Belgian town of Malmedy.
The SS opened up with machine guns on the herd of surrendered GI's. There's a lot of gory details, like the officer who went among the bodies asking if anyone needed medical attention. When a wounded man moaned “yes! me!” the officer looked him up and shot him in the head.
A few did survive by playing dead in the pile, and a few others broke for the woods where a handful made it out alive. One group fled into a Belgian Cafe, the “Dew Drop Inn” The Germans found them, set the cafe on fire, and shot the men one at a time when they fled the fire.
Many Germans went on trial in 1946 for the Malmedy Massacre. 11 SS men got the death sentence and 22 others long prison sentences.
By 1956, however, all of them were released. By then it was more important to make friends with the German people in the fight with Communist Russia, than it was to punish German war criminals. There's guys in Texas who served 15 years in prison for selling their neighbor a hit of LSD, and in Germany guys who murdered 81 prisoners served 11.
Peiper was the celebrity of the freed killers. In 1974 Communist underground rebels paid the Peiper. They set his house on fire while he was sleeping and he never got out. An autopsy revealed that Peiper had a bullet wound in his chest. Fires, can do that, you know.
I feel the same way about the Malmedy Massacre that I feel about “The Fifty” in the movie The Great Escape. The Fifty were escaped Americans who were shot when captured by the Gestapo. The film was dedicated to “The Fifty.”
Big deal.
With the millions of civilian, battle, and PW deaths happening all over the world, I fail to see why I am supposed to single this incident out as the one that stirs my soul. Any one village in Poland in 1939 alone suffered more than the 81 dead men of Malmedy. Then you get to six million Jews, 20 million Russian peasants, the 1.3 million who died in air raids from both sides, (that's my rough estimate, by the way,) the Rape of Nanking, and I sort of don't get it. After describing 30 million deaths for one rough page after another, the historian breaks out the violin music and give us an extensive account of a mass murder of 81 American fighting men captured in the heat of battle at Malmedy. That's supposed to be the thing that finally moves me. I was moved when the Japanese bombed Shanghai in 1931.
The Malmedy Massacre was horrible and was the worst atrocity committed against American prisoners in WWII. But I think the moral of the nearly cult level study of the Malmedy Massacre and the Great Escape is that American lives are more scared than lives of distant lands and races.
It reminds me of the fake Dover Delaware newspaper headline spoofing provincialism,
DOVER MAN FEARED MISSING AS NUCLEAR BOMB DESTROYS NEW YORK CITY –
Malmedy is kind of like the Wilmington man.
Hitler, by the way, had given expressed orders to all commanders to shoot all captured American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge. Perhaps Peiper was not completely evil.
MONTY TAKES THE CREDIT
Bradley and Patton were hurt when Monty later gave a press conference and took all the credit for saving the Americans at the Bulge. They Americans had asked for Monty's help on the north to relieve pressure on the northern (left) flank, but Montgomery's intervention wasn't the decisive thing in winning the battle. But Monty told the press that. The Americans were beat and desperate and had asked him to take over and he did and his decisions and divisions saved the day. He had been resolute, bold, brilliant, gallant, and victorious. The Americans were thanking him over and over.
It was not true at all. Bernie M hadn't taken over full command of the Bulge operation, he had only been asked to stage an attack from the north
to help out, not save the day. The Americans were never in any danger of losing the battle and, with it, the entire momentum on the war, as he Me Monty it seem.
Most British historians write about Monty like he was God. Most American historians write about him like he was obnoxious snob. I guess I'm undecided. ...All right, he was an obnoxious snob.
Historian Charles B. McDonald (U.S.) complied a list of all the consecutive times BLM ordered a needless retreat, the Americans disobeyed or overruled him, and then the attack advanced very successfully, proving General Montgomery not only wrong, but afraid. Let's face it, that's what they are saying in so many gentler words – I'm not saying that about Monty! But a few American military historians do. Obnoxious snob? Yes. Yellow coward sort of General? No. But a lot of USA USA USA historians certainly skirt the line in just about coming out and saying that.
Then the British historians make Ike a clown, Patton a fool, Bradley a coward, Hodges a dimwit dolt and you get the charming spirit of the US-UK alliance as it has tricked down into the history books.
Both teams of historians hate each other more than they hate the Axis.
I'd like to find a couple of WWII histories by Canadian authors and see what tone they take. Or a French historians general history of the war that isn't intended to be focused on the French or polemic. A history of the war by that definition by 20 different nations would be most useful. No history is free of the polemic unless it's written by a robot, but seeing what leaks out while they try to be free of the polemic is enlightening.
THE RUSSIAN FRONT AND THE “LIBERATION” OF RUMANIA, BULGARIA, AND HUNGARY
When the Russians conquered Romania, Hungary surrendered without a fight and volunteered to fight with the Russians. Hungary had only allied itself with Hitler at gunpoint, and hoped that all was forgiven and Russia would allow it to switch sides again.
There were no Hungarian clubs in the United States, rooting for those poor people, like in the 1800's.
I'll cover some basics, but if someone would please write a good 600 page book on the history of these three countries in World War II the world needs it, and I'd read it till I drop to sleep. It's one of the missing link in WWII studies in the USA. I have never seen a History Channel documentary on that subject, ever. These countries also connect to Yugo and Greece, so it's an important and underdeveloped field for the young historians. Get movin!
Yako Malinovsky headed the Red Army group that switched oppressors for the Hungarian people. I refuse to always say “liberated.” Mik von Horthy was the leader of Hungary. It was a “kingless monarchy.” MVH was a naval admiral who ruled Hungary with the powers fo a royal king.
The Nazis had stayed out of Hungary as long as Hungary followed Hitler's foreign policy wishes and supplied the Wermacht a division of troops. But after Normandy, and with the Red Army approaching, Hitler sent the German troops in to satisfy their Hungar. Color that state of Hungary Nazi red. Under duress, but Nazi red.
Von Horthy was ready to give in to the approaching Russian army and Hitler knew it. He sent his super-hero Skorzeny to Budapest to prevent the defection of Hungary to the Soviets. Otto Skorzeny was a legendary German war hero and adventurer who had rescued Mussolini from the Partisans in impressive fashion with a glider commando raid. But Skorzeny couldn't cover all the problems with a single airborne battalion which was what he had to work with in Budapest. Skorzeny cornered von Horthy into backing down, but von Horthy's son took over and began to negotiate with the Soviets. Hitler then came up with this Mickey Mouse plan to have Skorzeny kidnap the son and bring him back to Germany. The name for the plan to kidnap the regent son was called “Mickey Mouse.”
Skorzeny met with von Horthy Jr. and had him arrested, wrapped in a big yellow quilt, and smuggled out of Hungary to the Reich.
When father von Horthy heard this he refused to be blackmailed, and informed the Crown Council that Hungary should surrender unconditionally to the Russians, no matter who has to do it.
JUNE 1944 B-17’s AT POLTAVA
The Americans had asked for use of Russian air bases to help with the bomber campaign against Germany. These would be ‘shuttle bases’ allowing USAF bombers to hit Germany and continue on to Russia for a landing. This would increase the range of the bomber operations by decreasing the length of the return trip.
The Soviets reluctantly agreed after much haggling over gifts in exchange. For some time Stalin demanded Russian air bases in Italy as part of the bargain.
Four air bases were finally allowed in the Ukraine for shuttle bombing. About 95 B-17’s finally made it to Poltava in the Ukraine. The Americans asked for anti-air defenses and some Russian fighter plane protection for the base, but this was flatly refused. US requests to conduct air reconnaissance missions was also denied. The first squadron of B-17’s was attacked by ground fire from the Russians. Several US planes that tried to conduct air reconnaissance were attacked by Russian fighters, the planes landing with hundreds of bullet holes.
On June 22 1944 the German air force launched a major raid on the US B-17 base at Poltava. Nearly every bomber was destroyed while German fighters shot up the pilot barracks at will. There had been a reason why the Americans wanted air recon, fighter protection and anti-aircraft batteries.
The shuttle bombing campaign was a lost cause. The pilots were sent back to Britian to be refitted for other missions. Each pilot was given a top secret
debriefing in which he was ordered not to discuss the Poltava raid in public and to not be critical of our Soviet Allies. The FDR foot slurping of the dastardly Soviet regime reached all the way into the world of the individual pilot. Stalin could have rubbed a piping hot spaghetti dinner into FDR’s face and the Dutchman would have thanked him and asked for some grated cheese with that. FDR had a limitless supply of ‘other cheeks’ to offer Stalin throughout the war whenever another US interest took a punking. Stalin had to be exhausted from all the slapping he dished out.
RUSSIAN FRONT - POLISH POLITICAL PROBLEM 1944
In late July 1944 the Poles heard radio broadcasts from Moscow informing them that help was only a few miles away. The Russian army was here to the rescue. Sure enough Zhukov’s big guns could even be heard in the distance. The radio told them that now was the time for the long planned Warsaw uprising.
So the persecuted Poles in Warsaw rose in rebellion. The rebels called themselves the Polish Home Government. The PHG was represented in London, but not recognized by the USSR as a political body with any rights to head the Polish state now or tomorrow.
As the Russian Army reached the gates of Warsaw in 1944 the Poles in the city, led by Bor Komorovsky, broke out in a spectacular uprising against their German occupiers. After six years of genocidal oppression the Poles were now finally on the offense. The Germans were taking plenty of casualties.
At that very moment Stalin deliberately halted the Russian advance so that the Poles could not win. Stalin wanted to take over a helpless Poland, not a proud one fresh from a resistance victory. He wanted the Russians to liberate Poland, and did not want to let the Poles claim credit for liberating their own capitol.
Instead the Russians waited until many thousands of Polish patriots had been killed, before moving in. The Warsaw uprising (read the novel Mila 18) fell short. The vengeful Nazis razed Warsaw to the ground one block at a time. Only when the German and literally destroyed the city did the Russians resume the offense in the east.
The Allies were angry with Stalin for this and Stalin said too bad. FDR was sincerely upset with Stalin but poor Franklin still didn't get it. FDR still believed that Stalin could be courted into joining the family of nations after the war so he let Stalin get away with the murder of Warsaw.
Churchill on the other fist, wanted the rest of the coalition to take a firm diplomatic stand against Stalin over the Polish question, but Winston was a lone wolf. Churchill did not trust Stalin as far as he could throw Kate Smith in a winter jacket, but the PM needed the support of the USA more than he needed to be proven right on Poland and on Stalin. Churchill acquiesced in the pattern of Stalin bullying the naïve FDR who actually thought that he and Joe were friends. He really did.
On August 1, 1944 20,000 Poles staged their long awaited Warsaw uprising. The Russian army stopped dead in its tracks 12 miles from the city and let the Poles fend for themselves. The world watched in frustration and horror as the Poles fought their Nazi overlords against insurmountable odds for weeks as the Red Army whistled and played dominoes within artillery striking distance of the city. The Americans and the British requested Russian permission to help Warsaw with air power. Would Stalin allow the Allied planes to land in Russia at the stretch end of their fuel run? - No
Half of the Polish rebels were killed and a majority of the rest were wounded. The rebels inflicted many casualties on the Germans but on their end it was carnage. The Nazis then razed Warsaw to the ground with a merciless that would make Sherman tremble.
What was going on?
The Warsaw revolt was an act of political resolve against two invaders, Germany and the USSR. Germany was actively oppressing the Poles. The Soviet Union had done so in 1939 and was about to enter the city. The rebellion was indirectly directed politically at Moscow, which is why Moscow stabbed the rebellion in the back. It was better for Stalin to let the Nazis chop up the Polish political problem for him, then Stalin could chop the Nazis after they were done with the Poles. It all worked out quite well.
Stalin wanted a Communist government in the new liberated Poland, one that he could control at the least, one which he created from the ground up at the most. The USUK allies had officially sponsored the exiled Polish government in London (the PHG) as the true government of Poland. USUK expected this London government to take over in Poland after the Russians liberated it from the Nazis. It was a naïve hope. Stalin gave lip service throughout the war to the London Polish Home Government. He knew he could always stage a political fight with it later and then rescind the agreement over the contrived issue. Or, if it came down to it, he could simply change his mind and play tough guy without even a pretension of propriety.
The British took the London Polish government quite seriously, since it lived in London and more importantly, since the British had entered the war in the first place strictly in defense of Polish independence. Churchill was going to be damned if he would take his nation to war in 1939 to stop one oppressor of Poland only to later endorse a different oppressor of Poland in 1944 or 45.
FDR was a problem for Churchill on Poland. FDR agreed with Winston on the necessity of a truly independent Poland after the war. This was right according to the sacred Atlantic Charter. But FDR was not as adamant about it and actually wanted a strong Soviet Russia to be one of the four policemen of the world after the war, especially in Europe, an idea that gave Churchill the dry heaves.
To Roosevelt, looking the other way on Soviet spheres of influence in eastern Europe might be the price of obtaining the good will of the USSR at the new United Nations. FDR hinted to Stalin more than once that he felt this way but, he confided in Joe, he could not say anything until after the election of 1944. There were 8 million Polish voters in the USA and FDR had to win at home before he could treat with Pal Joey over the Polish question. Poland had been the most problematic issue of all for the diplomats at Versailles in 1919. It was going to destroy the Grand USUKSR Alliance in 1944-5. (SR stands for Soviet Russia.)
Great Britian meanwhile asked Stalin for permission to drop supplies and arms to the fighting Poles trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. The planes would have to land in Soviet Russia after deliveries. There was not enough gas range for two way trips. Stalin said no and Churchill was furious. Churchill wanted to drop the supplies and land the planes in Russia anyway, and if one plane or crew were mistreated he would pull the Allied convoys out of the Murmansk run to Russia. But FDR would not back him up on this defiant idea and it was abandoned, along with the martyrs of Warsaw.
Stalin knew that these urban warriors were 98% loyal to the London Polish government in exile. He was liquidating his potential future political opponents by baiting them into an uprising and then letting Hitler’s SS do the work of the NKVD for him. Stalin would cleanse Warsaw politically without spending a ruble or a life of his own money. It was a great idea by a brilliant politician and it worked beautifully for the scum.
CHURCHILL GOES TO QUEBEC AND MOSCOW – SEPT-OCT 1944
The Prime time Minister went to Quebec in September for a late war conference with FDR. Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy and wanted assurances from the United States that a monetary system would be established after the war that would assist in Britain's economic survival. It was at this meeting that the groundwork was laid for the later agreements at Bretton Woods and Dumbell Dumbarton Oaks.
Churchill had to save face, since he was coming hat in hand for US help, so he proposed that the British put together a fleet of warships and sent it to help the US in the Pacific War. Roosevelt liked the idea, but the US Navy talked him out of it. The Navy not only didn't need Britain's help at this point, they didn't want to have to try and co-ordinate the activities of two Navies in the Pacific. The logistics would be a big pain in the neck. One admiral, who shall remain nameless (since he never existed or said it,) said, “Churchill might as well send us the rubber duckies from his bath tub for all the good a British Fleet would do us at this point in the war.” It was a memorable quote indeed.
From Quebec, Winnie flew to Moscow to consult with Stalin at the Kremlin. They discussed the future of Poland. Somehow this rabid anti-Communist conservative became partly convinced that this was a new and more decent Stalin he was talking to.
Stalin had a 100% Communist Polish government all set in Moscow waiting for him to install it in Warsaw when the Russian won Poland. Churchill had a 100% anti-Communist Polish government all set up in London waiting or Churchill to install in Warsaw when the Russians won Poland. Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Which government was really going to set up in Warsaw after the Red Army suffered 200,000 casualties in the 1944 Battle of Poland? Stalin assured Churchill that the next government of an independent Poland would be all inclusive. The Communists would dominate the government, but would not control it completely. Non Communist Parties would be represented in the new Polish Diet, including members of the Polish exile government in London.
Ha ha ha ha!
Was this British leopard really changing his spots and taking Stalin's word of honor as being worth more than one tenth of one ruble at the height of war inflation?
Some British historians (esp. Mark Arnold-Forster) show their apologist bias when they claim that Churchill believed Stalin. Winston wasn't that naïve. These historians are, but Churchill wasn't.
Churchill was pretending to believe Stalin's sincerity the way FDR really did in order to at least save a piece of the East Europe pie for the good guys, and that piece was Greece. Churchill had long had a Balkan complex. He had wanted to invade the Balkans after the Allies had won half of Italy. If Churchill had won his way the D-Day invasion would have been put on the back-burner while a Balkan invasion was put on the front-burner. Ike and Marshall had to strong arm Churchill away from an invasion of Greece in 1944 and make him go along with D-Day. If Churchill had his way, the red Army would have been in Paris while the Allies were rolling up the Balkans.
Since he couldn't invade Greece because the Americans wouldn't go along with it, he would play Stalin's game for the political permission to control Greece for the Allies. Churchill sold out Eastern Europe in order to get Greece. He agreed that the USSR could have the predominant interest (conquest) in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, if Stalin gave him Greece.
This was partly because his ego was still hurt from his blunderheaded and disastrous decision in 1941 to take an Allied army on the winning march in North Africa and ship it across the Mare Nostrum to Greece to stop the Nazis there. The Nazis beat the living tea out of Britian in Greece in 41 and as a bonus the failure in Greece ruined Wavell's offensive in North Africa. Now in 1944 Stalin handed him the right to liberate and politically influence Greece in exchange for Churchill's whistling past the lost freedom of the rest of East Europe. I hope you are getting the impression that I don't particularly like Winston Churchill.
The Soviet Union could have taken Berlin in 1944 with an all-out drive of its top armies. But Stalin was using the military situation to attain historic Russian goals in the direction of the Mediterranean. Churchill may have had it wrong when he insisted that the Allis should invade the Balkans in 44. But he had it right at the least when he said that Stalin was going to try and take the Balkans, if he didn't cut a deal and trade the rest of EU.
Stalin knew that if the war ended and the Nazis were still garrisoning Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, then he might lose them. The Allies might even allow free elections and genuine democracy, and Stalin couldn't have that. Free elections might include Communist parties in a coalition government, but that was chump change compared to complete authoritarian control in the wake of a victorious “liberation” army.
So after Warsaw, the Red Army headed southwest with half of its divisions to liberate the Balkans. While the western press was focused primarily on the race to Berlin between the Yanks and the Russians, there was a second race going on between Churchill and Stalin for political control of the Balkans.
If the Red Army had raced west to beat Germany only, it might have overshot the runway and lost the chance to control much of the Balkans.
BACK TO THE BALKANS
The British returned to Greece and the Balkans in the fall of 1944 after their embarrassing expulsion in 1941. First came Crete. Allied ships surrounded the German garrison at Crete, so there was no chance for them to escape.
British marines hit the Greek beach on September 24, 1944, at around the same time Mac was going back to the Philippines. The hills of Greece were little better suited for mobile war than Italy and it took the Brit troops two weeks to reach Corinth even though the German resistance was passive aggressive.
The Tommies took Athens on October 14.
Meanwhile the British didn't have the forces to spare for a full capture of the Crete garrison or a total occupation and administration of the large island. When British forces landed on Crete the Germans surrendered to them. But these prisoners could not be fed, housed, clothed, or transported to an off-island PW camp. The Germans were simply allowed to go about their lives on Crete until the war ended provided they didn't start any trouble. British troops lived on one side of Crete while the surrendered Germans lived on the other. The situation was in-concrete.
On the mainland a civil war came up in the aftermath of liberation. The Brits had a war to run and didn't need to have to fight revolutionary Greek organizations conducting guerilla operations against Brits, Greeks, Germans, and political opponents within the country. But that's what they had to do. The National Revolutionary Front was especially troublesome. The NRF had a military force called the ELAS which did much harm. Communism was involved. These Greek firefights went on until the war ended and beyond and had much to do with the emergence of the Cold War in the years 1945 to 1948. In 1944 Stalin appeased Churchill by curbing Communist activities in Greece. But in 1945 as the war wound down, he broke his pledge made to Churchill at the Kremlin in October 1944 and let the Communists try to turn Greece into Spain in 1936.
YUGOSLAV CIVIL WAR
It was like three guys playing a game of one on one basketball. The Nazis, the Yugolaslav Communist coalition under Tito, and the royalist commandos, the Chetniks, under the leadership of Draja Mikhailovich were all at war with each other in a “three for all.”
Draja was part of the old RYA, the Royal Yugoslav Army. His partisan military force was called the Chetniks. They had fought for Serbia in World War One and now they were supposedly fighting the Nazi invaders in WWII. The West chose to supply and support Mikahilovich and the Chetniks, but then the word reached London that the guns and ammo being shipped to the Chetniks was being used to fight other Yugoslavs in a civil war.
Churchill sent a man named Fitzy Maclean to Belgrade to look around and report back. Fitzy confirmed the worst and told it all to Winston.. Mikhailovich was the head of a ruthless group of butchers who prided themselves on cruelty and were more out to kill Tito's Slavic followers than they were out to kill Nazis. It was fairly well known that the Royalists had even collaborated with the Nazis while publicly proclaiming that they were fightin them.
One fact was certain. The Tito group was fighting the Nazis much more effectively and resolutely than the Royalists under Draja. The British and the Americans began supplying Tito and disowning any further affiliation with the Chetnicks and Raja.
Stalin disliked Tito from the start because Tito was a very independent Communist and never came close to submitting to the will of Moscow.
Stalin asked Tito what he would do if the British invaded Yugoslavia without Tito's permission. Tito told Stalin he would fight the British.
THE SO CALLED NEUTRALS – CHEESY MEATBALLS
The USA made a deal with Sweden in late 1939 to continue exporting vital food and other supplies to Sweden in exchange for Sweden keeping a brake on it's co-operation with Nazi Germany. Sweden pretended to co-operate but secretly kept supplying Germany with all the iron ore and other war materials that Hitler needed. By the middle of 1943 the State Department was very mad at Sweden, and the Allies looked like they were winning the war in Italy and Russia. Sweden changed its tune and promised serious cutbacks in helping Germany. Sweden promised it would soon stop allowing Nazi armies to freely travel across its territory.
By the spring of 1944 however, prior to D-Day, the Allied offense seemed halted and Sweden flipped again. Those meatballs actually increased aid to Nazi Germany to levels not seen since the war began.
A company called SKF was the scandalous Scandinavian offender. Britian was cleverly trying to buy so much of SKF's ball-bearings that there simply wouldn't be any left for German orders, and Germany was running out of money faster than Britian was (thanks to Uncle Shylock.) So SLF built another factory in order to keep up with German demands for ball-bearings. The United States protested, and public opinion got wind of it and there was a lot of anger towards Sweden in the United States in 44. The United States continued to send food to Sweden so Stockholm have more resources to give to Germany. It was a delicate balance because no one in Washington wanted to drive Sweden closer to Germany by getting too tough with them.
Switzerland was just as cheesy about the whole thing. The Swiss were the famous neutrals of WWII sitting in the heart of the cauldron sucking on Ricola cough drops and watching the world burn around them.
A lot of people know how the Swiss played banker to the Holocaust, and funded the rise of Hitler in many ways. The book, Trading With the Enemy covers that part well. What is less known is that Switzerland provided a great deal of arms and munitions to Germany throughout the war. Germany paid for it, of course, but this was no sly bank juggling to help hellboy Himmler's Holocaust indirectly. This was open arms supply-side trading with a Germany desperately short of war materials.
Britain cut off food supplies to Switzerland before the USA got into the war in hope of restraining Swiss aid to Germany. Switzerland made a show of pretending to slow down supplies of coal to Germany, but the truth was hard to conceal. By the beginning of 1944 Switzerland was clearly sending far more supplies of war-helpful exports to the Nazis than it had at any point in the war previous. The Swiss were trying to hide and juggle the export statistics from the Allies but the Allies had some excellent Swiss watches and caught them playing with the books. Relations between the Allies and the Swiss reached a new low in 1944. It would be easier for my 78 year old mother-in-law to climb the North Face of the Eiger in her bathrobe drunk on rum than to get the Swiss to stand up to the Nazis. And thank God Ruth's back surgery was a success!
ASIA 1944
THE CBI 1944
The China India Burma theatre was controversial because British and American goals were different and so arguments over strategy were inevitable. Even the Americans were divided.
General Stilwell favored a ground offensive in Burma to open the road to China decisively and aid Chiang Kai Shek's Nationlist Army to throw Japan out of China.
General Claire Chenault, of Flying Tiger's fame had Billy Mitchell Fever (a deadly disease.) CC thought that U.S. air power alone could drive the Japanese out of China. It's a ridiculous idea, in retrospect, but at the time it was a serious proposition and the war effort suffered for it in the CBA, just as it did in Europe and the Pacific. The idiotic exaggerated confidence in the ability of air power to win wars is a constant of modern history. LBJ and Nixon tried to win the Vietnam War with air power, and we know what happened there, too. Stillwell thought that China should be liberated by a serious ground campaign, with air support.
Britian, unlike America, didn't care much what happened to China either during or after the war, so it didn't want to risk losing too much blood and material to help out there. Britian wanted US naval power to do whatever had to be done in China, thinking that securing Chinese coastal cities shouldn't be a big deal for big-Navy America. Britian wanted to secure Burma, but not in order to use Burma as a stepping stone to liberate China by land. Britain wanted Burma in order to protect India, and asked India to help with the fighting. But India was in the middle of a severe famine (what a shocker) and could hardly be expected to go full throttle to help their English masters continue to dominate them by fighting for them.
Stilwell and Chenault went to Washington to have it out in the presence of FDR. The Prez would arbitrate and make the call. After listening to both of them he decided in favor of Chenault. Stilwell was so bitter that he took on a whole new attitude when he went back to China, getting the nickname “Vinegar Joe,” and it wasn't a compliment (my nickname in Atlantic City is “sunshine,” and it's not a compliment either.)
To this day, history sides with Chenault unfairly. Every night there is some new documentary with 90 year old men on my Tellie telling me how everyone loved Chenault and how tough he was. That whole Flying Tigers thing really distorts the record. The cartoon decal of the tigers teeth on Chennault's planes in 1940 gives him a free pass for his awful strategic decisions later in the war when it counted more. History is just as drunk with air power as the Allies were during the war. The planes are more fun to produce documentaries about. Planes are cool and look great on film. Stupid decision and the tough life of the ground war get far less glory in documentaries. For example, I can find a documentary every night on some channel about how great the B-17 was. They drag out the one that still flies and interview 49 guys on their death bed, but they never tell us how disastrous that plane was for the overall war effort from day one to day 1,065. Chenault was in charge of those incredibly cool Flying Tiger P-40's and he risked his life against superior odds when the chips were down. That is all true. But he advocated winning the war in China by sheer air power and for that, CC is a dunce who hurt the war effort.
The CBI is known today as the acronym for the California Bureau of Investigation.
WWII IN THE PACIFIC IN 1944
KWAJALEIN AND TRUK
The island hopping begun at Tarawa in the Gilberts next moved westward ho to the Marshalls.
The Gilberts became unsinkable carriers projecting US air power into the Marshalls, while the real carriers (many of them fast giant and brand new) lay in wait for the final assault. For weeks the Japanese air defenses in the Marshalls suffered sustained air raids from the Gilberts until on January 29, 1944 amphibious forces of the USA assaulted the island of Kwajalein. This time the Navy bombardment lasted three days before the Marines came ashore, and this time the Marines arrived in new improved landing craft with 20 and 40 millimeter guns on them as well as a battery of 4.5 inch rockets. There would be no repeat of Tarawa at Kwajalein.
Japanese air power was almost non-existent by the time of the Kwajalein landing but the Emperor’s troops on the ground fought to the death and inflicted 2,000 casualties on the Americans before the last rifle was silenced. The Japanese suffered 8,000 killed or wounded. The US Navy lost an escort (light) aircraft carrier to a Japanese sub in the Marshalls campaign but little else.
Optimism in the US camp ran high after Kwajalein but it would prove to be a false spring. Later island battles would be much tougher. Japan had semi-conceded Kwajalein. Japan had decided that these outer island groups should be defended hard but that the bulk of the Japanese fleet and troop power should not be risked to maintain them. The US strategy of luring the Japanese out to defend the outer islands wasn't going to work, but the plus side of that was that these outer islands would now surely fall and America could use them as stepping stones in the grand counter-offensive.
With airbases now in both the Gilberts and the Marshalls, the US could strike at the Carolines. Truk was the premiere base in the Carolines. The Japanese had occupied Truck at the end of World War I and had guarded it so closely that no Caucasian had laid eyes on the place. Truk was a mysterious and threatening place to most American sailors soldiers and flyers.
The Carolines were no longer a threat to our road to Japan with the capture of Tarawa and Kwajalein but were a threat to the ongoing New Guinea fight and Allied plan to retake the Philippines. The great Japanese military base at Truk was a problem. Truk was nicknamed “The Gibraltar of the East.” With island-hopping strategy, Truk did not have to be occupied. But Truk had to be neutralized. It was capable of supplying air attack against many Allied objectives, including the Marianas, a chain whose capture by the Americans would mark the doom of Japan’s cities.
Admiral Spruance, in command of the Fifth Fleet was sent to attack Truk in early February. He had many new and fast carriers and had for escorts shiny new battlewagons galore. On February 17 1944 several US carriers launched a full scale attack on Truk. We hit it with everything our carriers had. It was the largest conventional all carrier attack in human history and it was a grand success. Truk took a beating and a half.
2 17 44 Truk Out of Luck
So many Japanese transport and warships were sunk at Truk that it was the single highest transportation logistical loss by any side in the war in a single day. With Truk in ruins, Nimitz could take the Navy on a right hand turn towards the Japanese home islands.
ADMIRALTY ISLANDS CAMPAIGN
MacArthur was turning the tide slowly in the New Guinea campaign, while the Solomon Islands were being secured. The Japanese main military base was as Rabaul. With US control of the entire Solomon chain, there was a chance to block Rabaul in a classic chess move. A subordinate pointed this out to MacArthur who lit up like a Christmas tree, seeing at once the wisdom and genius of the play. If the US could take the Admiralty Islands of Manus and Los Negros, Mac would have Rabaul surrounded, its lines of communications severely threatened.
Seizure of Admiralty Islands Threatens Japanese Fortress Rabaul
During February and March of 1944 these two Islands were admirably taken. There was some hard fighting but the Japanese defenders were not top of the line units. An astonishing 500 Japanese PW’s were taken on Manus and Los Negros. So much for the myth that the Japanese soldier always fought to the death in World War II.
JUNE 15 1944 D-DAY FOR JAPAN
Most Americans are familiar with the date of June 6,1944 as D-Day for Nazi Germany. Just as ominous for the Axis was the calendar date of June 15, 1944.
Two events marked 6.15 as the hour of doom for Japan. They were OPERATION EIGER, and the invasion of Saipan, both of which began on 6/15.
THE MATTERHORN SANCTION
Curtis Lemay was in charge of the CBI air theatre. There is a show on TV today called the Mentalist. The stars work at the California Bureau of Investigation. They flash their badges and yell, “CBI!.” In World War II it stood for the China Burma India war zone.
LeMay did the best he could to train new B-29 crews and get the plane airworthy for the long haul to Japan.
The plan to raid Japan with B-29's based in India and China was originally named OPERATION EIGER. The brass changed it to OPERATION MATTERHORN. I like Eiger better, because of the novel by Trevelyan. The mountain nickname for the mission had something to do with getting B-29's over the Himalayas to bases in China. From there they would raid targets in Japanese-held Manchuria or try to hit the cities and factories of Southern Japan. They could also reach the South Pacific if needed.
The B-29 was so new that the crews were training by fighting. There were a lot of kinks to work out in the Superfortress. B-29 stood for 'Bout 29 malfunctions.'
The cost of transporting B-29's around the world to India was large, and drained war money. The plane itself, for all the money spent on it, was slow in getting cost-efficient work done.
Supply lines from China to Burma were always thin, and more than half the B-29 missions/sorties in the summer of 44 were transporting fuel to other B-29's.
The forward US base in China was at Chengtu. On June 15 a flock of 29's reached Southern Japan from Chengtu and dropped their bombs. They hit Yawata in Kyushu, the southernmost Island of Japan. Only one bomb hit the real target, a factory that made Zero fighters. Damage to downtown Yawata from accidental fires was serious, but the accuracy score was a report card F.
If not for one bomb, it would have been an F-.
The US didn't let on that mission had sort of flopped. The press praised a glorious day. When word of the raid reached the halls of Congress a cheer erupted.
In spite of the bad aim, the 29's were demonstrating a range of operation and a payload that was unprecedented in all of history. It was only a matter of time before the 29’s would begin to hit cities in the heart of central and eastern Japan. All it would take is a few closer airfields. Even one would do.
But the route to Japan from India and China was deemed too costly, and by the end of 1944, all Superfort missions against Japan took off from the Marianas. The Japanese were threatening to capture the Chengtu airfield with a new offensive push in China. Matterhorn doesn't matter now. Time to pack it in.
The Eiger Sanction against the Japanese was a failure. Much of 1944 Allied resources were spent on this Billy Mitchell fantasy about long-range four engine air power winning a war by itself. With the money that could have been spent on 2,000 desperately needed landing craft, they built these giants that could barely hit the side of the barn in perfect weather, and plenty of them crashed. It's not even a good-looking plane!
American military historians claim that the Matterhorn was a success because of all the lessons learned that were applied later in 1945 by the 21st Air Force in the Marianas. That's a sorry rationalization. The Matter-mission accomplished little and was 20 million spent on a free agent that was injury prone and didn't put up good numbers when he did play.
BATTLE FOR SAIPAN IN THE MARIANAS
On that same fateful June 15, the first Marines assault wave hit the beach in the attack on Saipan. The defense of Saipan was fierce and desperate. The Japanese knew the stakes. They knew that the Marianas were only 1,500 miles from Japan and that the defense of Saipan was tantamount to a defense of Japan itself. The Japanese Army defended Saipan with suicidal ferocity.
The Japanese already had Aslito Airfield built near the south coast of Saipan. It was the primary objective for the USA, although the captured field would need Seabee expansion to handle the B-29, plus a new name. The AAF would send 29's from CBI to Saipan as soon as the field became available. From here the Superfortresses could threaten nearly all the major cities in Japan.
The US Navy surrounded Saipan and shelled it for days. The carriers sent in hundreds of planes for close-up bombing raids. By the time D-Day arrived for Saipan, some Marine commanders predicted that by the time they hit the beach, “the Japs are going to run away!” Wrong.
Two Marine and one Army division landed on June 15. The main force hit the southwest beach by the name of Chalan Kanoa (or Charan Kanoa, depending on the particular mapmaker.) Mount Fina Susa was the high ground facing this beach and the Japanese were well dug in and full of 75mm artillery. The landing was tougher than expected and US casualties were high. Saipan was a fry pan. More than 3,000 Americans would die there before the battle officially ended on July 9. As always, sources vary. One website says, 3,432 Americans died on Saipan. Robert Leckie, historian-Marine says it was 2,949. I say it was 3,089. In any case, Saipan was fours years worth of KIA's in today's war in Iraq/Afghanistan.
By June 25 the battle was in full swing, probably the largest US land battle of the Pacific war. Commander Saito (no relation to the Red Sox 2009 pitcher Takahashi Saito) rallied the defense to a big do-or-die counterattack. There was some room on Saipan for a genuine tank battle. Saito sent more than 30 tanks after the Americans. Japanese infantry was behind and on these tanks, hitching a ride to death. The US Shermans gave out more than they got back and an off-shore destroyer busted one Japanese tank. The IJA broke through the Army and Marine lines, and got in their rear. In a wild free for all, the Americans got the best of it and the latter hours were just slaughtering Japanese troops. 4,350 Japanese got greased in Saito's Saipan Banzai, a thousand more than US KIA's in the entire Saipan campaign.
There is a bizarre epilogue Banzai to mention. The Japanese men in hospitals did not want to be left out of the suicide attack. Just when the Marines thought it was all over, from out of the Saipan hills came 200 men from hospitals charging towards the American lines. Many were on crutches and all were sick or heavily bandaged. Some had weapons but only one arm to fire it with. Many had no weapons but charged with knives taped to the end of a bamboo pole. Some soldiers had to be helped along by others in order to charge. The Marines couldn't believe the rag-tag little battalion that was coming after them. It was a cartoon. They withheld their fire as long as they mercifully could before blasting every one of them off the face of the earth.
My father-in-law Albert Quigley Wenzel flew 11 missions on Saipan in a P-47, strafing sniper grids puffing smoke back at him until there were no more snipers. My grandfather Chuck Basil Donovan loaded shells into the USS Maryland 16 inch guns that bombed it.
Commander Saito killed himself on Saipan as the battle was being lost. Also drinking the Hari-Kool-aid on Fry Pan was Chuichi Nugamo, the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Of the 30,000 Japanese defenders on Saipan, only 1,000 got out of there alive.
These suicides bring a warm smile to my face, but the ones at Marpi Point bring a sad frown. Most of the civilian population went up to the cliff on Parpi Point and jumped to their deaths. It was mass suicide with mothers and fathers killing their children and then jumping off, or jumping off with children in their protecting arms. The Japanese had brainwashed them into believing that the Americans were going to rape and murder the women, and torture and murder the men.
JIVE TURKEY SHOOT
The Japanese Navy threw every plane it had against the American Marianas attack force. Land-based Japanese planes combined with three carriers of planes made the attack complete and formidable. 700 meatball planes went out to kill Uncle Sam. The Japanese commanders honestly felt there was a chance for a major victory against the US carrier task forces. But the US war machine had built up far too much of a lead in quantity, quality and concentrated deployment. The US also had a sound lead in trained pilots. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese had a substantial lead in pilots, both in numbers and in quality. That had all change quite a bit by now.
A massive aerial dogfight took place over the Marianas for several days in June. When all the smoke had cleared the United States had lost 65 planes. The Japanese lost more than 600. In a hundred and seven hours Japanese air power in the Pacific was removed as an effective force. The procession of Rising Sun splashdowns earned a nickname for history. It was called ‘The Marianas Turkey Shoot.’ From now on it was kamikaze defense for Japanese air power.
When Saipan was taken on July 9, 1944 after some of the toughest fighting anywhere in the war on either front, the USA had that closer airfield they had always wanted. Now the B-29’s could reach within effective combat radius, all but the northern cities of the four Islands. Tokyo was on the menu.
TALLY HO JUNE 19 1944
The Taiyo was the Titanic of Pacific aircraft carriers. It was the biggest and the unsinkable. Heh heh, no it wasn't.
The IJN sent its entire three fleet-carrier air power against US Task Force 58 and the birds had been annihilated by flak and American fighters in the Turkey Shoot. To make matters far worse for the IJN, two US Submarines then took down two of the three Japanese fleet carriers that had already lost their fighting force. Most of the Japanese planes that survived the MTS returned to find they didn't have a home carrier to go to.
The USS Albacore sank the fleet carrier Taiyo on June 19 1944 with one torpedo. It was a great day for the submarine they nicknamed, “The Big Tuna.”
Kawasaki Industries at Kobe had taken three years to build Taiyo. It was launched in March 1944 and was pronounced to be the world's first unsinkable aircraft carrier. The flood control and water-tight compartments were a step above anything else on the seas, and the armor plating protection was first-rate. Taiyo was the Yamato of aircraft carriers, a new 33,000 ton monster that set new standards. The “Japs” might have won the war with 15 of them in 1942, but with only one in 1944 it was a different story.
When the Albacore tuna fish hit the carrier at the forward starboard area, fires started and gaseous fumes began spreading through the ship. The commander of the Taiyo gave the wrong order. The captain increased ship speed in the hope of blowing the fumes and fires out with sea-wind. This move only increased the spreading of the volatile gasses. Sure enough, the gasses lit up and the Taiyo began to snap crackle and pop like Kellogg's Rice Krispies. As the Taiyo went down the Albacore captain, Waldo Evans of Chicago watched through the periscope and sang, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good-bye.”
On June 19 the Sub USS Cavella found the 26,000 ton carrier Shokaku. Cavella shook up Shokaku with three torpedo hits. Captain Matsabura ordered abandon ship, but not in time to save 1,272 veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack. Destroyers picked up 571 survivors.
The Marianas Turkey Shoot eliminated Japanese carrier air power, then two subs eliminated two big Japanese carriers.
BATTLE FOR GUAM
The Japanese had captured Guam back in December of 1941. Now comes payback time. D-Day for Guam was July 21 as thousands of Army and Marine men hit the beaches of the western shore, where all the main objectives were, especially the airfield on the Oronte Peninsula.
The Battle for Guam was a tough one, with the same suicidal Banzai charges like the ones back on Saipan.
My two favorite stories out of the Battle for Guam involve Japanese hare-kareoke near the end of the campaign.
After fending off a futile Banzai charge the night before, the Marines woke at dawn to the sight of Japanese soldiers flying 20 feet into the air like little stuffed dolls being hurled up by a happy child. These guys were committing suicide by deliberately stepping on magnetic mines.
Funny stuff.
One day later a squad of Japanese troops walked towards the American lines with their arms folded. Were they surrendering?
No. They had each put a pulled hand grenade on their head, placed their helmet on top, and walked towards the American lines with their arm folded. Happy Fourth of July!
How I love a good human interest story.
BATTLE FOR TINIAN – JULY 24 TO AUGUST 1
General Mike Schmidt led the Marines on the invasion of Tinian on July 24. The US captured it after one tough week of battle with the crazed defenders. The coach of the losers in this one was a man named Ogata. US KIA's were 328. Japanese KIA's were 8,010.
Tinian was important because it had a good airstrip. The bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off on time from tiny Tinian.
STUBBORN PELELIU SEPTEMBER 15 TO OCTOBER 15
The idea was to take a Japanese island airbase in the Paulau Islands in order to keep the east flank secure for MacArthur when he attacked in the Philippines. The Paulaus were halfway between New Guinea and the Philippines, but well off to the northeast making it the point of a triangle with the larger island groups at the base. An American commander, who shall remain nameless (Admiral Frances Pace,) demanded the Paulau Island mission, even though most of the top brass thought it was completely unnecessary. Many felt that Japanese air power in the Palau Islands was so negligible as to not be worth risking material and men to negate. The US had enough carrier air power to handle any feeble threat out of the Paulaus. So the mission went forward and was a costly win. Nearly 1,500 American soldiers died in the Battle for Peleliu. Historians still argue over it (they'll argue about anything, and no one will ever win.)
The target airfield was on the little Paulau Island of Peleliu. I believe the pronunciation accents the first syllable, but don't hold me to that.
The Japanese fought to the last crazy man. Of the 8,122 Japanese casualties, not a single one was registered in the books under 'wounded.'
The Japanese applied many lessons of other recent battles. Commander Toshiba Saganaku declined the desperate Banzai charge as soon as the enemy hit the beaches approach. Instead his defenders hid in the hills in nearly impregnable positions. They would have to be rooted out in small nips.
D-Day at Peleliu hit the southwest beaches and seized the airport. The next few days grew the airport perimeter and isolated Japanese resistance in the Goombala Hills of Peleliu.
Peleliu was the first place that napalm was used in battle. Corsair carrier planes strafed the Japanese mountain holdout in the center of the island.
Bull Halsey was against the operation to take Peleliu (Operation Pell-Mell,) but others told him the whole campaign could be wrapped up in ten days. The last Japanese were not cleared from Pel until the end of November.
Halsey handed out a few I-told-you-so's later on.
1,300 Marines died on Peleliu, the rest were GI's. Most of these 1,300 KIA's on Peleliu had survived six months of hard fighting on Guadalcanal. You want to find American heroes, try the white crosses on Peleliu (I'm presuming most of them were buried there.)
More than one history book calls Peleliu, “The Forgotten Battle of the Pacific War,” which made me feel much better, since I'd known near zero about it until very recently.
PHILIPPINES 1944
There was a decision to be made about the Philippines. As far as grand strategy was concerned, some felt that the only thing really needed in the Philippines was a good air base from which to increase the threat to Taiwan and Japan proper. Others, especially Mac, thought that the final invasion of Japan had to be launched from some large land base, and that Formosa came up short on good ports. The Philippines might be the place to stage the grand war from. It's easy to forget now, since we know the war was won by the atom bomb, that a land invasion of Japan wasn't just a possible vision, it was a definite idea that was in deep planning already.
There were political considerations. The Philippines were our little brown brothers under our administrative care. It would have seemed cold to let them suffer under Japanese rule another year while we concentrated on airfield checkerboard strategy alone. More importantly, the Big Mac ego had to be appeased. Doug MacArthur had promised that “He shall return” and winning one airbase on Luzon would not cover this grandiose promise. FDR decided that the Philippines would have to be rescued. The first landings took place in December of 1944. The Japanese defenses on Luzon withdrew inland to fortified mountainous positions, so the initial landings were lightly contested. MacArthur waded ashore with the cameras rolling the following January.
LIBERATION OF THE PHILIPPINES
In the fall of 1944 the United States Armed Forces planned for the liberation of the Philippines.
The initial assault was planned for the large southern island of Mindanao. But Admiral Halsey reported that there was so little resistance to his naval air strikes all over the region that the United States should bypass Mindanao. In fact Halsey thought the United States should just concentrate all energy towards a direct invasion of the primary northern island of Luzon, ignoring all the other lesser islands entirely.
But Admirals King and Lashua both thought that the USA needed land based air support before any invasion of Luzon should be undertaken. That meant that Luzon should not be taken first. But the opinion of Halsey counted for good and plenty.
Halsey's carriers has raided the islands of Leyte and Mindanao, and noted a remarkable lack of Japanese resistance. Maybe an invasion of Luzon did indeed require land-based air support, but Leyte was another story. Halsey felt that his flattops could cover an invasion of Leyte, and then an air base there could provide the land-based air power the brass demanded for an invasion of Luzon.
In a compromise the USAF (meaning United States Armed Forces – the United States Air Force didn't exist) decided to take on the Philippines halfway up the ladder. The USAF would invade the Philippine island of Leyte.
The naval Battle of Leyte Gulf is famous, but the land battle to take Leyte island was the whole reason the Battle of Leyte Gulf took place. The Japanese made up their mind that the US would not take Leyte Island and that the last of Japan's military resources would be expended towards that end. The Japanese threw everything they had at the USAF in order to stop them from taking Leyte and they failed.
LEYTE INVASION
On October 20, right on schedule, the Marines hit the beach on the eastern shore of Leyte Island. Resistance was fierce but the Marines advanced at a slow but steady pace.
Japan sent four fleets at Leyte from four directions. It was everything but the Emperor's kitchen sink.
BATTLES FOR LEYTE GULF
The greatest naval battle in the history of the world was the Battle of Leyte Gulf. You add up the four major clashes plus submarine actions in a span of less than 72 hours and it's hard to argue with that large statement. The Japanese lost three battleships, ten cruisers, 11 destroyers, 3 light carriers and one fleet carrier, plus 500 planes. The Americans lost one light carrier and two escort carriers plus two destroyers and 200 planes. Considering how far America was ahead in warships and industrial production putting new ones on line every week, the Battle of Leyte was even more one-sided than it seems on stat paper.
The Battle for Leyte, like Gettysburg, Waterloo, and Guilford Court House, is overstudied by gunheads. The main thing is them all being mad at Admiral Bull Halsey for the big mistake he made in going after a decoy force of four Japanese aircraft carriers to the North of Leyte. These were just bait to draw him away from the San Bernadino Straight. While Halsey was chasing Ozawa up north and sinking his four decoy carriers, Kurita's Center force of cruisers and battleships would come through the straight and shoot up the Leyte Island invasion force and sunk its escort carriers. Things partly worked out that way and in the Battle of Samar, the Japanese won a minor victory thanks to Halsey's going for the bait.
The most amazing thing about this criticism is that it fails to appreciate how wonderful the war was going for the United States if sinking four enemy carriers was a tactical error because the Japanese were just throwing carriers away by then as bait. That's not saying a whole lot for the Japanese situation. They had only 65 planes left for the four carriers. Zuikaku, Chitose, Kobobo, and Laziaka should have flown more than 300 planes. The 65 were mostly new untrained pilots, and by now the US Hellcat's, Corsair's and Mustangs were much better planes than anything they flew to meet them. Halsey sank four Japanese carriers and that act is considered a famous military blunder of WWII! Can you beat that? When Nimitz sank four carriers at Midway he became as famous and beloved as Babe Ruth overnight. Military historians write of him sinking four carriers at Leyte as one of the low-lights of the Leyte battle!
There are four major actions that make up the famous “Battle of Leyte Gulf.” Most histories get so caught up in all the complex details of the naval actions that they just about miss the main point, so here is the main point.
Leyte Gulf was payback time for Pearl Harbor. The Japanese wanted a final showdown in the Pacific and they got it at Leyte Gulf. It was all they had left against a now far superior US Navy. The USN beat the IJN by a score of about 44-6. It was over at the end of the first period. After Leyte, the Japanese should have done its people a favor and did the right thing and surrendered. Instead they fought on and brought ruin and tragedy to a million private citizens in 40 Japanese cities.
You could easily argue that Leyte was six or seven battles, if you want to include the Battles of the Philippine sea and the land campaign for Leyte.
Four major naval conflicts were,
One – The Battle of the Subiyan Sea, which is the name someone gave to a pack of US submarines decimating a fleet of Japanese battleships and cruisers and turning that fleet around in terror.
Two – The Battle of Surigamo Strait – This is where the American Navy “crossed the T” and beat up a fleet of cruisers and destroyers.
Three – The Battle of Cape Espano – This is where Halsey chased down and sank four Japanese carriers and this was a huge blunder as they were only “bait.”
Four - The Battle off Samar – Kirita's Center force came back after retreating from the sub attack. It came out into the Philippine Sea and shot up a weak American task force of escort carriers. It was too little too late to make much difference in the overall strategic tally sheet for the Leyte campaign. Halsey is supposedly to blame for many of the deaths at Samar because he was foolishly far away.
THE PRINCETON AND THE BIRMINGHAM
Japanese land based bombers from Luzon attacked Kinkaid's task force and hit the Princeton, a light carrier if that oxymoron ever existed.
CROSSING THE T AT SURIGAO
The most famous episode in all the battle for the Libration of the Philippines was the clash at Surigao Straight, the centerpiece of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Most historians count several naval clashes around Leyte as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but a few of the guys claim that the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Battle of Surigao Straight are one and the same thing.
This was the last time in Naval history that anyone got the chance to cross the T. If a line of battleships is the top horizontal line of the “t,” and the enemy approaching is the vertical line of the “t” then the top horizontal has a decisive advantage. The top of the t can bring all its guns to bear on the enemy and they can in response only shoot the forward turrets of the forward ships.
In any case, more than 75 Japanese aircraft carriers and 26 Japanese battleships were sunk at Surigao (that estimate might be high, I am getting my stats from A History of World War II, by Glenn Beck.)
1901 REVISITED – BATTLE OFF SAMAR
A follow-up battle to Surigao Straight took place off the Island of Samar, an island that saw savage fighting in the Philippine Insurrection of 1899 between US and Philippino forces.
In this naval battle of WWII, the US Navy lost a small carrier, the Gambier Bay. Two other American small carriers were severely damaged. The USAF inflicted some damage in return but overall, the Naval Battle off Samar was a defeat for the United States.
But the Japanese took more serious losses in the Surigao theatre than they inflicted off Samar. Japanese losses in ships, men and planes meant the end of Japanese offensive strategic power in the Pacific.
LAND BATTLE FOR LEYTE
Okinawa, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima are practically household names in America today, but the turning point in the Pacific War could arguably have been the land battle for Leyte Island. The naval battle of Leyte Gulf gets all the ink, but the land battle for Leyte spilled more American blood.
General Yamashita was concentrating his forces on Luzon where his troops could use some excellent geographical features to the advantage of the defense. But General Terauchi, the 'Southern Area' commander ordered Yama san to move as many troops as possible to Leyte in the center of the archipelago.
Yamashita, the “Tiger of Manila,” (hanged in 1948 for war crimes) protested that the soldiers and materials would best be used defending Luzon. Terauchi Suzuki told him, “It's not up to you. What part of direct orders from your superiors do you not understand?” Terauchi felt that it was all or nothing at Leyte and he had some logic besides his pride. If Japan allowed the USAF to set up air bases in the central Philippines, the fate of Luzon would be sealed anyway. Luzon might be able to put up a more stubborn defense than Leyte, true, but the only chance to actually prevent ultimate defeat in the Philippines would be to stop the Americans in the central islands.
Once the United States took the Philippines, the war would be lost. The strategic value of these islands had motivated the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in the first place. In 1941 Japan realize that the Philippines were a threat to the Japanese supply lines to its anticipated East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (an empire by conquest) so the Philippines had to be conquered, and in order to do that, the Philippines had to be cut off from its Pacific Fleet by sinking it in Honolulu. Now the Japanese had to defend the Philippines by the same strategic thinking.
It was all coming full circle. If the United States took back the Philippines, the Japanese would face the original situation that had it had worked so hard to prevent by pre-emptive attack on Pearl Harbor. The liberated Philippines would be the nightmare come true, the Japanese southern EACPS empire completely cut off from its supply lines to the home islands. The Japanese oil of Indonesia wouldn't be of much use if it could not be shipped home and the same went the other way for men, food and all sorts of other supplies.
So Yamashita was tactically correct when he pleaded to keep his troops on Luzon, but Terauchi was strategically correct when he told Yamshita to shut up.
Bad weather caused the American land forces almost as much trouble as Japanese fighting forces. The whole Leyte goal was to secure land based air power, yet every time the American constructed an airstrip on Leyte, rainstorms of Biblical proportions made it unserviceable. The Yanks had airports secured at Tacloban, Dulag, Burauen, and Paramus by the middle of November, but none of them could send up more than a couple of planes a week. American air power in the Philippines was stuck in the mud.
The Japanese held the western part of Leyte Island stubbornly. Their defense was centered on the western port of Ormoc.
The Japanese continued to rush reinforcements onto western Leyte Island at night. They weren't going to give up this island without a serious fight. It was a second Guadalcanal style effort, this time with the sides not equal, but the tactics were similar. The Americans were getting the better of the battle in the day but could not stop the Japanese from putting in more troops and supplies every night.
The Americans didn't unfurl their “Mission Accomplished” banner on Leyte until December 15. It took the United States almost two full months to take Leyte Island, yet most Americans only know about the naval battle, which was really four.
MINDORO
The plan to use Leyte airfields to backbone the invasion of Luzon was ruined by the Noah's Ark level rainstorms. So in December 1944 the Americans invaded and secured the island of Mindoro, just south of Luzon and northwest of Leyte. 1,211 Japanese slaves of the Emperor defended Mindoro Island but most of them fled inland when US war wagons and airplanes pounded the shore area just prior to the Army and Marines hitting the beach.
Mindoro provided the airstrips that actually worked.
DIVINE WIND – COBRA 12 17 1944
The Japanese Kamikaze attacks began in late October 1944 and would increase in volume in 1945, especially during the battle for Okinawa. These suicide pilots were so named because of an historic typhoon that destroyed a Mongolian invasion fleet hundreds of years earlier, doing the Japanese defensive work for them from the heavenly sky. The legend of the divine wind became part of Japanese culture and it was adopted as symbolic of the Japanese suicide bomber missions.
The first Kamikaze attacks didn’t do all that much damage to Sam’s ships, but a real ‘divine wind’ did. Typhoon Cobra hit the US Fleet in the far eastern Pacific on the night of December 17-18 1944 doing more damage than any Japanese air squad ever could. Cobra put forth sustained winds of more than 140 miles per hour with gusting of higher caliber. The typhoon sank three US destroyers, knocked off 146 American planes and killed 778 men. Cobra was the real kamikaze and did not fail in its mission.
The large carriers handled the storm relatively well but the escort carriers were tossed around violently. It was on these smaller carriers that the planes were destroyed, many simply snapping off their moorings and spilling over into the sea. One carrier had a major fire from planes smashing up into each other and fuel lines rupturing.
A second real Kamikaze, a storm, would strike the US fleet in 1945. It’s a good thing that the symbolic divine winds were not as effective as the real ones.
USA POLITICS IN 1944
THE GREAT SEDITION TRIAL OF 1944
In August of 1944, the Roosevelt Administration put 30 Americans on trial for sedition. They were allegedly trying to overthrow the United States government. Their real crime was that they hated FDR and since he controlled the Justice Department like puppets, it wasn't difficult for him to get the Attorney General to arrest them and put them in jail (try to.)
In 1942 Roosevelt kept on AG Biddle's back about stifling all criticism. He's mail an newspaper article that dared to criticize him to Biddle and include a clearly angry note, “what are you doing about this?” Biddle would try to say that these people had a constitutional right to criticize the President. Then FDR would treat Biddle like a bad dog. He would stop being cordial and would only give Biddle an angry stare when B was at a meting with FD and others. Biddle couldn't stand the hate coming from FDR any longer. On July 21, 1942 Biddle issued 28 indictments against Americans for sedition. They didn't go to trial until 1944. By that time two more had ben added to the dog house.
The 30 bad Americans were a mixed bag. There was no united conspiracy to be sure, even if they were seditionists. My favorite character was Liz Dilling, because I have two of her 1930's books, (one of which is autographed by sportscaster Bob Costas, but that's another story.) Elizabeth's mid-1930's books claim that the FDR Administration is riddled with Reds. Her hardcovers are bright red to emphasize the point. Don't leave them on a pile of white shirts. They will bleed red into them, even after all these decades (trust me on that one.) LD's extremism is regrettable, because some of her evidence would have been admissible if she understood the value of a little temperance. She offers a thousand cases of Communist infiltration in the United States. The 600 that are absurd cancel out the 400 that needed to be told. Today, her books are a comic novelty, but I doubt that every page is off the mark. There are good legitimate books that make the same point, but they are written by apostate American Communists who were involved in the red. These can't be dismissed. A responsible scholar can find some real accurate gems amidst Dilling's hateful insanity.
In any case, the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 ended in a mistrial. The presiding judge died, and the case was not resumed in a new trial. It never really appeared as if the prosecution was going to win anyway. The Great Sedition Trail was The Great Mistrial from the start.
MORE US POLITICS 1944
FDR and the New Deal were sinking in public affection as 1944 unfolded. Southern conservative Democrats (and what other kind were there?) were often uniting with Republicans to stop FDR war measures.
Roosevelt proposed sending only federal ballots to the troops overseas, thus allowing them to vote only for President and Vice President. The Southern Dems and the Republicans overrode this idea and full ballots, including state candidates, were sent to the soldiers and sailors. The administration opposition came from a belief that while FDR had a major war advantage in the presidential vote, these servicemen and women might be more even-handed in looking at state and local candidates. FDR was trying to help the Democratic Party but even some Dems thought this was not right. FDR was always a political pig.
Some financial issues created friction for Roosevelt. In the early spring of 1944 Congress forgave certain federal tax liabilities for the year 1942 for all taxpayers. The Capitol gang then had to dig down and create more money to make up the amnesty losses. The treasury department said we would need at least a new $10 billion to keep the war and the nation running smoothly. Congress came up with a new plan to raise less than 3 billion.
The bill contained many pork-barrel exemptions for corporations in certain locales. Congressmen were playing log-roller in wartime and FDR was not going to play along. The corporate favors part of the bill made the pink in Roosevelt turn red with rage. He not only vetoed the bill he added a speech denouncing the bill and the principles behind it. He took a few swipes at those who would be exempted and those who sponsored the exemptions.
The backlash against Franklin’s veto was pronounced. Senator Alben Barkley, citing the disrespectful language of the veto, offered to resign as majority leader of the Democratic Congressional delegation. He called Roosevelt’s veto language an, “assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of Congress.” The Congress at the urging of Barclay (a future Vice President) overrode FDR’s veto of the revenue bill.
The prospects for the Democrats holding on to the White House in 1944 were shaky. Polls in early months indicated that if the war was still going on in November, Roosevelt would probably win against any Republican candidate, but it might be close. Republican Wilkie was running a steady 48 points against 52 for FDR. However if the war was over by then, the polls showed that FDR would lose big against almost anybody!
What was much worse, polls showed that if anyone but Roosevelt ran for the Democrats, they would lose big to virtually any Republican, with or without the war going on! So much for the image of Roosevelt as the universally beloved national war leader.
This was a bleak choice for the Democrat brains trust. We can either stick with this increasingly feeble and increasingly unpopular old guy who can’t win if the war ends too soon. Or we ask him not to run for a fourth term and face certain defeat.
Roosevelt complicated the political dilemma for 1944 by being almost incredibly ill for a functioning elected official, let alone a candidate. He looked so old and haggard he could have hosted 60 Minutes if the show had existed then. He was 62 going on 90. His private secretary on four occasions in 1944 walked into a room at the White House and found FDR passed out on the floor. He had lost the flow of blood to the brain and fallen out of his wheelchair. Another secretary tells of him passing out while dictating an important state letter to her. Roosevelt told the press he had bronchitis, but that was like the captain of the Titanic saying there’s a leak in the boat. FDR had about eight major malfunctions ripping his body apart throughout 1944. He was in an advanced stage of heart disease. People at Yalta had been horrified by his gaunt appearance and inability to talk forcefully, and that was back in 1943. The President’s physical collapse was progressively getting worse as 1944 rolled on and the Democratic Party had to decide about him running again.
FDR did what he could to fight his physical demons. He was always at Hyde park resting up, or at Jimmy Byrne’s upscale home in South Carolina. His favorite place to recover was at Warm Springs Georgia. He slept much of the day away at the White House so as not to inflame his many ailments with a work schedule. On the advice of one of his physicians, he cut down from forty to five cigarettes a day.
It was wrong for the Democrats to let a man this sick run for office, but how can you blame them if he was the only guy with a chance of winning?
A DEPRESSING SUBJECT
Some historians now insist that President Roosevelt suffered from depression but I don’t put much stock in that. I think almost everyone does, at least now and then. After all, we are all on death row. There’s plenty to be unhappy about it if anyone reflects long and hard enough. I just don’t think it’s a new insightful political fact that FDR suffered from ‘depression.’
And even if he did, so what? The poor man was in a wheelchair, smoked 40 cigarettes a day, was being called a Communist every week in the press or in Congress, was sending hundreds of people to their death every day, and his gay wife looked like the Pope’s grandmother. Sure he was probably a little down now and then. But it's not a significant historical fact in my book, and I feel the same way about Nixon. Let’s just evaluate the man’s job performance at face value and leave the psycho-babble out of it. Next we’ll have Doris Goodwin telling us that FDR was “probably very lonely.”
ELECTION OF 1944
The Republican front runner for 1944 was General Douglas MacArthur. Dugout Doug most definitely wanted the job. But a minor scandal knocked his candidacy off balance. Letters he had exchanged with Congressman Al Miller of Nebraska damaged Big Mac when they were leaked in the press. These letters showed MacArthur fearing that in persons of the New Dealers, America faced an internal threat almost as scary as the external one. That was an extreme charge and didn’t sit well with the electorate. People still continued to talk about a Big Mac presidency, but less and less as the days went by. MacArthur’s potential as a candidate didn't die, it just faded away.
The Elephants settled instead on little Tommy Dewey of New York State.
For the Dems. FDR decided he would run for a fourth term and that settled that. What suicidal fool would challenge this Demi-god ?
FDR had no business claiming he was healthy enough to run for president in 1944. The President looked and sounded terrible during his rambling acceptance speech at the convention. If he wasn't the sitting president of the country he would have walked half the room. The next morning one Republican editor demanded that FD take a full physical and share the results with the American public.
A battle of newspaper and magazine editors developed. The pro-Democrat newspapers and magazines tried to hide President Roosevelt’s failing body with shrewdly chosen photographs, while Republican rags went out of their way to show FDR looking at his most tired and haggard. In one photo he looked even worse than I did in the mirror this morning!
With Franklin Roosevelt was in obviously frail health the Convention placed an intense focus on who would be the Vice Presidential nominee. Few insiders believed that FDR would live out another term. Roosevelt actually didn’t believe it either, and took the VP matter very seriously. Franklin did not want Henry Wallace to be the next president.
Incumbent Henry Wallace and Carolinian crusader Jimmy Byrnes were the clear front-runners for Vice President. But Henry Wallace was too left for the conservative Democrats, and Byrnes, was too redneck for the liberal Democrats. A compromise candidate was needed, sought and found in the person of Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri. Truman had no enemies and a fairly quiet record in the Senate, plus an heroic record of service in the United States Army in World War One. Political people cleverly described Truman in 1944 as “The Missouri Compromise.”
Roosevelt sat Truman down one day in the Rose Garden shortly after the Dem Convention and told him the real reason he had chosen him for VP. Franklin told Harry that he wasn’t just a compromise. FDR wanted someone ‘slightly to the right of center’ to take over if (when) he died. FDR knew that the New Deal had been pretty radical left and he wanted the country to digest what it had swallowed. It was almost a death-bed apology for the extremism of the New Deal.
Another intimate of FDR backs this up. FDR told him the exact same story about why he picked Harry Truman. That’s why he could not let Henry Wallace stay on the ticket. Franklin liked Hank, and influential Eleanor believed in Wallace. But Wallace was to the left of Roosevelt. The country had changed already enough in that direction, even for FDR. The country wasn't ripe for a President Zinn in 1945.
In April 1945, Less than one year after the convention nominated him for Vice President, Harry Truman became President.
The Dewey Decimate System -1944
FDR clobbered TD in 1944. In 1948 Dewey defeated Harry Truman. At least that’s what a Chicago paper thought in that famous false headline. Dewey lost a very close one to Truman in 1948, making him a two time loser.
MONTY – STUBBORN TO A FAULT
No, we don't mean General Montgomery, but rather a company about as powerful in its own right as general Montgomery was in his Army.
The giant national mail order house of Montgomery Ward was supposed to cooperate with all the US government measures as decreed in the Smith Connally Act. But the President of Monty Ward was Sewell Avery, a man with all the warmth and charm of a wounded badger. Ward said that his company was complying with all war measures and that the Smith Connally Act did not apply in the case of the Montgomery Ward Corporation. Silly Sewell didn't want to work with labor unions, while FDR was determined that the rights of labor were not going to take a step back because of the war emergency. The President in April of 1944 settled the argument by seizing Monty Ward and turning it over to the Department of Commerce!
Now the Montgomery Company was forced to make a collective bargain with labor in keeping with the “wishes” of the War Labor Board, after which the company was return to its “rightful” owners.
By the late fall of 1944 the WLB was again angry with MWC. The Labor Board determined that Montgomery Ward was paying wages that were below the ability of its workers to live on, and ordered Monty Ward to give out pay raises. Sewall Avery refused to pay up, and the WLB decided to end the problem forcefully. The US government took over the Montgomery Ward mail order company for the remainder of the war. Sewell didn't get his company back until six days after Nagasaki.
IN THE MOOD ... TO GET TORTURED TO DEATH 12 15 1944
Glenn Miller was the young hip superstar musician of his time. People trembled to meet him, such was his celebrity.
On December 15 1944 the USA was stunned to learn that Miller’s plane had disappeared over the English Channel. Glenn Miller was on the Chattanooga Choo Choo to heaven. It was the day the music died in WWII.
Glenn Miller was the Amelia Erhart of WWII. It was a mystery how his plane had vanished.
In the 1980's a couple of RAF pilots claimed they knew what had happened. A cancelled bomber mission fleet jettisoned their bombs
over the Channel and didn't know that a friendly plane was below them. Glenn Miller's plane took Lancaster bomb hits.
But there's a guy who is all over the off-beat radio talk show circuit with a book called the Glenn Miller Conspiracy. The book claims that Miller spoke fluent German and was working with US intelligence at the highest levels. Miller was supposed to get into Germany and meet in secret with German Generals who were plotting to overthrow Hitler. Miller might be able to facilitate an armistice shortly after the Fuhrer fell. But Miller got caught by loyal Hitlerites and was tortured to death in a Berlin prison.
If that's all true than Miller makes Moe Berg look like a piker. More Berg was a former major league catcher who also was an American spy during WWII. His book, Athlete, Scholar, Spy is compelling, but not compared to the Glenn Miller Story. The movie by that title with Jimmy Stewart had nothing on this wild extension of his story. The number one entertainer in America goes away to rescue millions from the continued war and dies in a Nazi prison and no one even knew about it? That's pretty amazing, even on the basis that it only might be true.
It sounds like Miller's mission was what the Rudolph Hess mission 1940 was supposed to be in that Nazi's de-railed mind.
USSBS
They called it “uzz-buzz” and its findings involved both theatres of war. Late in 1944 it was decided that the best way to make the most of the impending Japanese bombing campaign was to have a team of objective brainiacs study the effects of the air campaign on Germany.
So began the United States Strategic Bombing Survey.
It took far longer to complete the mission of its directives because the war with Germany took far longer to complete than expected. Thanks to Monty's idiot Market Garden and the unexpected counter-attack at the Bulge, the Nazi war was not going to be over by Christmas 1944. Uzz-bizz was in full operation at the end of 1944, and had a large self-sustaining staff in England and France. At the end of 1944 it had reached no official conclusions, mostly because it as yet had no access to Germany. It was hard to assess damage to German cities until we could get into one or two of them and look around. The Allies also needed to interview important German leaders before it knew how well the bombing had worked, but that too was impossible.
When uzz-buzz completed its report on the air campaign against Germany in April of 1945 the conclusions would be startling.
The targeting of specialized industry was a mistake. Raids on ball-bearing plants were an utter failure. They did not slow down German production one bit. Raids on railway transport and oil facilities did much better.
The attrition rate for American pilots was spooky. Was this World War I or II? A pilot had to fly 30 missions before he could go home to see the wife. Then he could retire if he wanted to. Such a man had run the gauntlet. The odds of any given pilot surviving a 30-mission run were one in three!
On the other hand, once a pilot had survived about ten missions, it was more likely than not he would survive the next 20, for most of this horrible overall attrition stat comes from fatal mistakes made on the first two or three times out with green crews.
At the end of each chapter/book of the WWI years I try to build a glossary of the important people of one of the parties to the scrap. In 1942 I covert those whacky Nazis. The Italians get 1943. The British get 1941 and the Yanks get 1945. Here for 1944 are the “Japs.” And that's what everyone called them, even President Roosevelt, and he did so in public statements, so let's be serious about the p.c. rule that says no once can call them that anymore. It's like calling a man a Brit or a Yank, or a Canuck. They called the German's Heinies and Krauts and they called the Japanese Nips and Japs. I think it's a bit much to write a history of WWII and not be allowed to use the word 'Japs.' I put it in quotations, or use an abbreviation, but I don't always mean it.
THE JAPANESE OF WWII – A-Z
Anami – The last Minister of War in Japan's WWII, Anami did the world a favor and offed himself in the final days.
Asaka – Prince Asaka is known as 'The scourge of Nanking.' He was the Heinrich Himmler of the Far East. If God forgives everyone he forgave Asaka. But only if.
Doihara – General Kenji Doihara was hung at Tokyo 1946, and its a shame he couldn't have been summarily beheaded the moment he was captured. He was one of the worst war criminals of all time. He ran several POW camps in which thousands of prisoners were tortured and killed on his personal orders.
Hashimoto -
Higashikuni – Prince Naruhiko Higashukuni was Hirohito's uncle and on of the founding mother-fathers of the Emperor's Cabal that turned Japan into a militarist aggressor state. Higa was the leader of a Japanese spy ring in Europe and then in China in the pre-war years. Naru was ultimately forced into the humiliating position of become Prime Minister of the “surrender cabinet” of 1945-46.
Hirohito - The Emperor of Japan who was spared the hangman's rope in order to save lives in the occupation. Hirohito was not the passive figurehead tending to his fish tanks that history says he is, a few smart books notwithstanding.
Ishiwara Kanji - This Jap. general was one of the strongest proponents of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. He led one of the Japanese armies that sacked China. After the war he attended the “Other Nuremburg” war crimes trials but was not charged. In fact, IK charged president Truman with war crimes against the Japanese people.
Kido - Marquis Grissom Kido was Hirohito's afternoon golfing partner. His diary is one of the primary sources of the era for all historians. The Kid says that if you were a bad golfer you couldn't advance very far in the imperial court. Kido took the prison fall for Hirohito after the war.
Konoye – Prince Konoye was a close confidant of Hirohito and became the Prime Minister twice during the war years.
Kusaba – Tatsumi Kusaba was in charge of the Twenty-fifth Army in Malaya in 1942. Kusaba was a 'class a' war criminal in the figurative sense, and a Class A War criminal officially at the Tokyo War Tribunal. Kusaba did the Sadaam shuffle in 1946.
Kurita – Vice-Admiral Kurita got a US grade A whipping at Leyte Gulf in October of 1944. At one point his flagship cruiser went down and he was fending off sharks until rescued. Then he was transferred to another cruiser tocontinue on towards further beatings.
Matsui – Iwane Matsui died on the gallows as the “Butcher of Nanking.” But the real Butcher of Nanking was Prince Asaka. Matsui wasn't a great guy by any means, but he took the fall for atrocities he did not sign off on.
Mitsumasa - Yonai Mitsumasa was the Prime Minister of Japan for the first half of 1940. He was forced to resign in July 1940 because he opposed the military alliance with Germany. As long was was PM the Axis pact would not be happening. Mitsumasa was lucky to escape the office of OM with his life. If he hadn’t resigned he probably would have been slain by an Army assassin.
Mitsumasa was a Navy Admiral and then Navy Minister who preached the avoidance of war with England and America. He did not believe that Japan could win, and you can imagine what a traitor thy called him for daring to say that. Mit was like Brett Butler at the South fancy gala in Gone With the Wind who told the men that “The Yankees can whip us. All we have is slaves, cotton, and ... arrogance.”
Mitsumasa became PM in January 1940 largely because of these “liberal” views. But when Hitler won in the West in May-June, the situation changed completely and Yonai had to go, dead or alive, and he chose to resign.
Nomura – Diplomatic stooge who handed Hull the note that Japan was unhappy with the United States, while Pearl Harbor had been under attack for, “oh about an hour, ... hour and a half.”
Okawa – A big “Strike South” person. Dr. Okawa pretended to be insane at the “Other Nuremberg” and was not convicted. Okawa ran the notorious ULH. The University Lodging House was on the Imperial Palace Grounds and it was here that the plots were hatched to rule the Asian-Pacific world.
Ozawa – Vice-Admiral Ozawa admirable agreed to take a decoy carrier strike force into the Philippines in late 1944 to draw the wrath of Halsey's naval air power. Halsey did not disappoint him.
Saionji – “Genro” Elder statesman and advisor to Hirohito – Moderate maker of Prime Ministers. The man from Okitsu was used by Hirohito to give a false veneer of constitutionalism and reason to the Imperial cabinets. He died in 1940 at the age of 92.
Shigemitsu – “Shiggy” Shigemitsu was the Japanese Foreign Minister when the ship went down. He took over in 44 and signed the surrender on the USS Missouri on 9.2.45. The US press gave him the nickname, not me.
Shima – Vice-Admiral Shima led the strike force from the Pescadore Islands into Leyte Gulf for Operation Sho-time. He didn't win that one.
Suzuki – Remind me never to buy a used 'Suzuki Samuri.' Who wants to ride in a car named after a Japanese fascist? Tei-ichi Suzuki was the man in administrative charge of the Rape of Nanking. Suzuki was in charge of the economic administration of Japan in the war years. He got life in prison at the Allied War Tribunal. - Hoo-ray! He was released in 1956. - Boo.
Togo – Fred Togo, (who was named after a small country in Africa by his father) was the Foreign Minister who was sentenced to life in Biloxi after the war. Some Japanese claim that of all the war criminals, Togo and Yamashita were convicted unjustly.
Tojo – Hediki Tojo was War Minister during the war years and he was certainly a war criminal who got what was coming to him after the war. But he took the fall for Hirohito who was also a war criminal.
Toyoda – Admiral Toyoda was in charge of Japanese Naval forces in the South Pacific after lightning struck Yamamoto. Toyoda took a major beating at Leyte Gulf. Oh, what a feeling.
Yokoyama – Imasu Yokoyama was executed after the war for cutting the heads off of American pilots on PW camps.
SOURCES (just getting started on compiling this ...For a complete list see the end of the FDR 1945 chapter)
Admiral Halsey's Story, by Bull Halsey
Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day, by John D. Eisenhower - c) 1982 - Doubleday
This is a very well written account of the stressful alliance between UK and US. As the son of General Eisenhower, John S. has special insights and plenty of inside source materials.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University -c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Bailey can not only turn a phrase, he makes great points in the shortest space possible. He calls Ike a “master of organization and conciliation.”
The Conquerers, Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Germany, 1941-1945, by Michael Beschloss – c) 2002 - Simon & Schuster
The ubiquitous Beschloss gives us his recent scholarship on the fall of Germany.
Delivered From Evil, by Robert Leckie – c) 1987 – 948 pg
General history of WWII for chauvinist Americans who love war books. I couldn't put it down. Delivered pays extra detail to the battles for the Pacific Islands because Leckie was there in a Marine helmet that he used for a pillow. 948 pages of no-nonsense work without 120 pages of tiny font notes up the back, the bane of all the new snobby history books.
American tough guy historian Leckie praised the Germans more than he praises the British, which a coincidence, since most British historians praise the Germans more than they praise the Americans.
Eagle Against the Sun, The American War With Japan, by Ronald H. Spector - c) 1985
A lot of modern historians cite this as the best general history of the Pacific War. I hope he’s no relation to Arlen Spector.
This would be a great book if it wasn’t so stunk up with notes. I’m so impressed.
The Great Crusade, by H. P. Willimotte - c) 1982 - MacMillan Free Press
This guy makes brilliant points left and right, but I prefer a solid general account of things. HP is a top talent, but a little too smart for me. It's more an analysis of everything that happened in WWII than it is an account of it.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 Oxford Univ. Press.
This is one of the most famous America History books of all time, although not one of the best. It's good, but it's not what it's cranked up to be.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter New Hampshire), and Samuel P. McCutchen of New York University (Walla Walla Washington) – c – 1954
Two strict disciplinarians write a history book at the height the right-wing hysteria in America.
Inside the Third Reich, by Albert Speer
Speer was tried and convicted at Nuremberg for his role as Hitler's architect, and Labor Minister near the end of the war. He served 20 years and then got out and reinvented himself through this book, which was a huge sensation when it was out. Everyone was reading it. This book actually passed the diner test. People in diners all over America were talking about it. The big issue was whether to believe all his excuses and explanations about his actions as a Nazi.
Much of ITR is about building buildings and other things it's hard to be mad at him for. The best way to read this is to not even focus on the author and just note his remarkable and valuable portraits of all the other people in the Reich, especially Hitler. Al Speer was definitely one of the intimates, and Hitler had very few.
Japanese Destroyer Captain, by Captain Tameichi Hara, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with Fred Saito and Roger Pineau - c) 1961
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, by David Bergamini
Bergy thinks that Emperor Hirohito was a conspirator in the attack on Pearl Harbor and everything else bad the Japanese did. He's pretty rough on the guy. The writing bogs down in confusing detail of Japanese names from time to time, but JIC is a very important work, and one that has influenced my thinking a great deal.
The Liberation of the Philippines – Ballantine Book
The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan
It was Rommel who coined the phrase.
The Luftwaffe War Diaries, by Cajus Beckker
Definitely one of the tope ten must reads on WWII. If there's a
better history of the Luftwaffe in WWII from the German perspective, I'd like to know what it is. Very influential book in my perception of WWII.
The title is misleading because it doesn't really rely heavily on diary entries of German pilots. There's a few, but mostly this is a solid general history of the German air force in WII.
The Mighty Endeavor
The National Experience – Part Two A History of the United States Since 1865 by John M. Blum, Edmund S. Morgan, Willie Lee Rose, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Vann Woodward – c) 1981 Fifth Edition – Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich
These are some of the big name historians of their time. I don't think HBJ did a great job with the layout and design. Not an uplifting pleasure to hold and look at. Three Yalees a CUNY, a UCBK, and one from Anthonys Hopkins.
Omar Bradley, A Soldier's Story, by Omar Bradley
I don't think this should be filed as A Soldier's Story, by Omar Bradley, not the way the book seems to sell it.
Bradley was the ground manager for the American Army offensive in Europe that won the war. Ike was the executive supreme commander.
OB is one of the finest books I have ever read about any subject. Usually when I get near the end of a big book I look foreward to hitting the finish line, giving the book a 1-10 rating with a comment at the end, and then jumping into another book. In this case I was genuinely sad that it had to end. There's about 20 books I have ever read that are like that. Ike's Crusade in Europe is another one. These two books are twins. The physical design and the maps look so similar that some of the same producers might be involved in both.
Both books are such a joy to read. I just disappear into that time and that world, and lose awareness of all around me. If my wife calls my name I jump out of my skin when I'm lost in a great book like Omar Bradley or Crusade in Europe.
The best part of all is how important they are. It would be great to read a book that well done about one battle in some distant and small war. But to read two books that great about something so huge and important helps to make life a stimulating treat.
Bradley has to be the most famous WWII American general among the ones who aren't famous.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press, 1,128 pages
Unlike most historians who need to 'bone-up' on the chapters they are working on, Sam had to dummy down his knowledge of WWII in order to write the short relevant chapter here. He was the official historian of World War II for the United States Navy, and he served courageously in the South Pacific.
The Path to Victory – A History of WW2 in the Mediterranean
Superb! One of the best books ever!
I haven't read 11 pages yet.
Present at the Creation, my Years in the State Department, by Dean Aecheson – c) 1969
Aecheson went on to become Secretary of State during the Korean War, but he was high up enough during the Second World War that the opening chapters of his infinitely snobby book provide a lot of valuable material, especially on US problems with the neutrals.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer
The Bible.
The Rising Sun, Vol II by John Toland
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Brooklyn College and Columbia University – c) 1977
Garraty also taught history for 12 years at the University of Michigan. JAG definitely voted for FDR in 1944.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945, by Barbara W. Tuchman - c) 1970
This was a very popular book when it was out. People who didn’t usually read WWII book were reading it. It’s still popular with both historians and general readers.
Tuchman was one of the few famous historians in her time. JFK read “Babs” Tuchman and made his staff read her too (The Guns of August - 1963.)
Triumph and Tragedy, by Winston S. Churchill – c) 1953
The Prime Minister wrote the most prolific history of WWII of all time. But not the most terrific. It's an 8 million page polemic about how he was right on everything and everyone else was wrong on everything, and here's
thousands upon thousands of long tiny font telegrams from the time to prove it. Has anyone ever honestly survived this entire six volume read?
The Two Ocean War, by S.E. Morison
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College - c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Dano Aaron is one of the founders of the Library of America which keeps the political classics in the rotation, even if they can't turn a profit for Random House. His memoir The Americanist was published in 2007. He wrote it when he was 94. Only the historian can have such dignity in old age.
War as I Knew It, by George Patton Jr.
The War That Hitler Won, The Most Infamous Propaganda campaign in History, by Robert Edward Herzstein - c) 1978
I read 90 pages before it crossed my mind that Herzstein might be a Jewish name. Really fine writing by Bobby Edzo. WTHW provided the story about all the walkouts at the German movie houses.
A World in Flames, by Martha Byrd
This is a solid short general history of the war by a scholar who could have written a long and fancy one if she wanted to. Her sister Caroline wrote a book about the Great Depression.
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