From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal
By Mike Donovan
CONTENTS
Useless Preface
Remember Pearl Harbor
The Gathering Air Storm
Tragic Magic
Sub-Plot Prelude to Battle at the Gates of Pearl Harbor
Kurusu and Nomura Can Go to Hull
The Attack
Banzai!
The Myth of the Four Hour Beating
Carrier Factor
Heroes
Fred Friendly Fire
Watertight
Return to Carriers
Dumb Bombs
No Chaser
Battleship Row
Long term Outlook for the BB Guns
“Honey, There’s a Battleship Tipping Over”
Blame Short and Kimmel First
B-17 Problem
What if the USA Had Been Ready?
Strategic Aftermath - Pearl harbor
Japan #1 Liar
Pearl Harbor Unites the USA
The Day After
Gas up at the Shell Station
Pearl Pop
Bad Timing for Japan
End of the Strategic Battleship
Donovan and Fish
Hitler and Pearl
Good Timing in the Desert, Too!
Japanese Blitz in the Pacific - December 1941
The Strike South
Philippine Factors
Attack on Luzon - And Dolittle MacArthur
Let’s All Get Smashed
MacArthur Has a Great Idea
Guam
Wake Island - And the Japanese Treatment of USPW’s
Lashua Island
Malaya - December 1941
Dec 19 - Small Italian Subs With the Hot Stuff
St Pierre and Miquelon
Arcadia Conference
Hong Kong Falls
Curtains for Australia
------------------------------
1942
Happy New Year
Black Code
DUN Deal - The Declaration of the United Nations
Invasion Visions
Rio Conference - January 15-28 1942
Home Front Strategy for 1942
OC - OWI
The Rat in the Hat - Japanese Internment
The Fall of the Philippines
Uncle Sham
Mac in Melbourne
Fall of Bataan
Fall of Corregidor
The Siknips
ABDA Cadabra
A Word on Mitchellism
Fire in New York - The Normandie
They’ll Slaya in Malaya
Winston Power Play in Parliament - January 1942
Hitler is Torn by Japanese Victories
Carrier War - Saratoga Springs a Leak - January 11 1942
USA Takes the Offense .. Sort of - January 2 1942
Shooting a Pilot
Blood for Oil - Japan Takes the Dutch East Indies - 1942
Survival of the Fittest Vals - February 19 1942
Java Jolt
Building the Bismarck’s Barrier - January 1942
Thailand
Burma
Santa Barbara Bombardment - February 23 1942
Battle of Los Angeles - February 24 1942
“Where’s Marcus?” - March 3 1942
“Japs Attack India” - April 1942
30 Seconds Over Tokyo - April 12 1942
Japanese Army-Navy Game
Do Little Did it All
Coral Sea - May 4-8 1942
Molo the Bolo Goes to Washington - May 1942
Midway June 4-7 1942
Midway Conclusions
More on Alaska
Churchill Ismay and Brooke in DC June 42
Churchill Goes to Cairo and Moscow - July 42
Planning for Gym-Torch
Guadalcanal and the Solomons Campaign
America Takes it on the Chin at Savo Island
Makin Raid August 16-18 42
More Naval Battles off Guadalcanal
Battle of the Eastern Solomons August 42
Eastern Solomons Sub Plot - I-19 Sinks the Wasp 9 15 42
Hornet Stung at Santa Cruz Oct 26 1942
Battle of Cape Esperance 11.12.42
Naval Battle of Guad. - Free For All in the Dark - Nov 12-15
Tassasfaronga 11 30 42
Europe 1942
Nazi Power
Give German Church a Break
Desert Fox and Hollywood Hype
Death of Fritz Todt Shakes up the Nazis 2.8.42
The 175 Rule
Cripps and Blood
Jack Frost Meltdown of Nazi Radar Feb 42
Old Man Winter Blues
St Nazaire Raid 3 28 42
Lubeck 3-28 - Bombs Comes Home
Great Giraud Escape 4 17 42
Bowery Boys Help Malta
Pedestal - 8 42
Heydrich Hit 5-27-42
Plane Speaking
Rostock April 1842
Splash on Some Spice 5 31 42
RAF Pounds Dusseldorf
King Goebbels
Rommel in the Summer of 42
When was El Alamein?
Mr. Montgomery
Alam Halfa September 1942
The Battle of El Alamain II
More Desert War
Lasagna Factor
The Atlantic War 1942
Man Overboard 3 27 42
Caribbean and Panama Naval Zones
Nazi Norway 1942
King Phobia
Russian Supply Convoys
PQ-17 -- Ordeal at Sea
Docu-dopes
Dieppe Raid
Super Gymnast
Mussolini’s Prediction
Torch the Plan
French Fried Complications
Cherchill Meeting October 21 1942
Bad to the Bone
November 8 1942 - The First D-Day
Is Casablanca Burning?
Can the Tunis
Congressional Elections of 1942
The Jewish Problem and the SE Post
Bose Indian Stereo System
The Battle of Russia 1942
What Kind of Man Was Stalin?
Stalingrad
Political & Supply Battle of Russia
Home Front
The Rubber Mess
About the Nazis
Movie Wars
The Nazis Were Based on Love
The Nazis A-Z
Sources
PREFACE
I highly recommend that you skip the preface.
There are more WWII books than anyone can study in a lifetime even if they never slept and were literate at birth. And that's before you get to periodicals, letters and documents. Yet an extensive yet informal narrative history for general readers has never been written. If it has, tell me who wrote it.
Historians, unlike politicians, gets a free pass on argument and debate. Historians are always on TV alone, giving their take. Networks never set historians up to argue with each other, because once the fact that one of them has to be wrong is introduced, the whole wall of infallibility and sanctimonious respect starts to tumble down. TV could accept two historians arguing a political judgement, but to focus on how one of of them surely has their facts wrong wouldn't be a good show. The more you study any subject in history, the more you see how many pros get things wrong, awfully wrong, dangerously wrong, quite often. Anyone can take a shot at the material. History is not the private property of the university historians. It belongs to anyone who wants to explore it.
On May 30 2011 I was watching NBC and a little 20 second public service treat came on about WWII to mark Memorial Day. There was the retired dinosaur anchorman Tom Brokaw telling me that on December 7 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
“The Japanese thought a devastating defeat would demoralize America, and keep her out of the war. They were wrong.”
As Orson Welles once put it, “That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me my saying so. It's just stupid.”
No one in Japan thought that attacking America was going to keep America “out of the war.” Out of what war? The war would only begin when Japan attacked, and everyone knew that, so it doesn't make much sense that Japan attacked America to keep it out of the war. In any case the idea that Japan might think that attacking America would be the one thing that would make America decide definitely not to go to war, is patently erroneous and foolish.
I read a book by the nation's number 1 political pundit Dick Morris who said on three occasions in the book that when Sadaam used poison gas in Kurdistan, it was the first time poison gas had been used since WWI. In fact, the Italians used poisoned gas extensively in its war with Ethiopia in 1935-36. The Ethiopians were pushing the Italians back, much to Mussolini's embarrassment, so his son and many other Italian pilots dropped mustard gas all over the Ethiopian positions. Mustard gas was decisive in the Abyssinian War.
In a book by Bing West, soldier/historian, he mentions that Ike had a hard time talking Churchill out of a cross-channel invasion in 1943, when the opposite was true. It was the Americans who wanted a 1943 cross-channel and the British talked FDR and General Marshall out of it. I e-mailed Bing the factual challenge but I never heard back.
I saw a documentary last week about the sinking of the Bismarck that showed a map of Axis conquests to date. Finland was painted red as in Axis conquered. But in May of 1941 Finland was inactive and not in the Axis camp. In July of 1941 Finland became a de facto Axis ally when it attacked Russia, but it was never part of the Axis, and definitely wasn't Axis controlled in May of 1941 when the Royal Navy was chasing the Bismarck.
The point is, why worry about getting some things wrong if even the pros do it all the time? Just presume I'm wrong often and go from there. The great Tom Wicker reflected near the end of his life about his writing, and he said, “One thing I learned early on, and this has served me well, is never be afraid to be wrong.”
The two dirty little secrets of the historians are, one: they are wrong so often it's unbelievable, even the great ones; no, check that, especially the great ones, and, two: they haven't really read as much as you think they have. Most historians have lives and families and no one has yet to invent the 49 hour day. They want you to thinks they have nailed down all the books in their bibliography, but no one can, not with today's lifespan of about 60 good years from 18 to 78 to study and work with. So anyone can write a history book if they study hard and work.
REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR
On December 7 1941 Japan attacked one of the most powerful countries in the world, attacking an industrial democracy with a red white and blue flag that stands for freedom. Tojo and his militarist ministers embarked on a course of war with a nation they simply should not have messed with. On that infamous December 7, 1941, Japan attacked ... Great Britian.
In the smoke and fire of Pearl Harbor few recall that on 12.7.41 Japan simultaneously invaded British Malaysia and put itself at war with England.
In fact, Japanese troops landed on British Malaysia more than an hour before the first bomb fell on Pearl Harbor! There was a brief panic in the Japanese military that this imperfect timing would compromise the Pearl Harbor operation, but Allied communication failed in Malaya, as it would fail again and again at Pearl Harbor over the next vulnerable hour. In a perfect Allied world, the news of the landings in Malaya could have been whisked all over the globe, alerting Allied bases and ships everywhere within 10 minutes.
By attacking Britian too, Japan made it natural and easy for the US and UK to not only become partners in the Asia war, but official partners in the European conflict also. After fighting an undeclared war in the Atlantic as a team for more than two years, the British and the Americans were now officially at war together.
In London on the night of December 7, Churchill went to sleep with a glorious smile. England no longer stood alone.
America was going to have to do most of the fighting for Britian in the Pacific. England was battling to survive, and could not spare the troops and the ships to fight Japan at this time. So for once the role was reversed. In the First World War the United States stood accused accused of letting Britian do all of the Allied fighting until the last moment. The British were saying the same of American behavior in the war that began in Poland. But now the shoe was on the other foot. England would have to count on America to do most of their fighting in Asia. Of course, plenty of Brits and Aussies fought and died in Malaya, Burma and New Guinea, but the USA essentially won the war with Japan one on one. Germany/Italy was the war the “Allies” (the Axis were “allies” too) won as a team.
THE GATHERING AIR-STORM
The six fleet carriers gathered in the southern Kurile Islands at the end of November 1941. They left Tankan Bay on November 26.
The big Japanese stars of the Pearl Harbor attack plan were Yammamoto, Nagumo, Genda, and Fuchida. The mastermind was Yammamoto. The operational fleet commander was Nagumo.
The stormy weather to the northwest of Oahu was like the water version of the 1940 Ardennes Forest in Europe. The defense presumes that it was an impassible physical obstacle, so no one really prepared for an attack through that corridor. Naval intelligence thought that the stormy seas of the northern pacific were too rough for carrier launchings and landings, and there was little or no serious US air recon of that corridor on any given Sunday. The Americans also doubted the Japanese ability to reach that far with a serious carrier attack.
Most of all, the American bought the bait of the Japanese armadas that were on the way to Southeast Asia with obvious hostile intentions. These fleets were highly visible, and based on these reports, FDR and co. knew that war was about to begin. They were waiting for the first reports that Japan had attacked in the Dutch East Indies, when the shocking reports came in instead about Pearl Harbor. The Navy at Pearl was not looking for enemy carriers out of the stormy northwest Pacific. They were following the reports about two Japanese task forces heading to South Asia too. US intelligence simply presumed that these two task forces were just about everything Japan had in the tank. It never crossed anyone's mind that Japan could be holding back six fleet carriers for a sudden strike deep into American territory.
TRAGIC MAGIC
Overlapping the entire story of the prelude to war and the war itself is MAGIC. The United States had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, and was reading their mail for a year before the war broke out. Japan, of course, never knew that their codes had been broken and spoke with secure confidence to its diplomats overseas. This gave America many advantages, but it had its bad side too. Knowing everything the Japanese were saying to its foreign embassies gave US intelligence a false cocky confidence that anything the Japanese were up to would be revealed in these intercepts. For example, if the Japanese were planning, lets say, an attack on Pearl Harbor at dawn on December 7, the United States would be forewarned. Breaking the Japanese code lulled the United States to sleep on D in a way.
America knew from MAGIC that after November 26, if a diplomatic accord wasn't reached between the two countries, “Thing were going to automatically happen.” US intelligence knew that this meant at attack by Japan beginning a war, but they presumed that it was going to strike at the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, the Philippines, or Hong Kong. They didn't think Hawaii. If the US knew nothing at all about Japanese intentions, there might have been more defensive cautionary preparations at Pearl Harbor on 12.7. Total knowledge is a wonderful thing, but a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
SUB-PLOT – PRELUDE TO BATTLE AT THE GATES OF PEARL HARBOR
The battle beginning the war was joined more than an hour before the first IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) airplane dropped its first bomb. This was a submarine encounter near the mouth of Pearl Harbor, and it happened before any IJN planes even got off the six decks.
The USS Anteres, an old target ship, was towing a barge into Pearl Harbor. Behind Anteres and barge was the minesweeper Condor. The anti-submarine gate was lifting to get the two friendly ships in. Scouts on the Condor spotted a periscope and part of a conning tower behind the barge. It was obviously a hostile submarine trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor. Condor notified the destroyer USS Ward, which quickly located what turned out to be a hostile midget submarine armed with two torpedoes and operated by two men. Ward sank the midget sub and World War II was under way in the Pacific, although no one appreciated it at the time. Ward reported the incident immediately. The brain trust at Pearl had time enough to begin a full scale call to battle stations but this never happened. What did they all think, that hostile submarines randomly liked to slip into the home base of the Pacific fleet and threatened to sink ships without any larger strategic purpose involved? If only I had been in charge that day, things would have been done right.
During the attack, two midget submarines tried to sink crippled battleships, but a US destroyer blew them both out of the water before they got close. The Japanese submarine part of Tora Tora Tora was a dud. There were full-sized Japanese submarines placed outside of Pearl harbor that were supposed to shoot stragglers heading out of the harbor and sink any carriers in the neighborhood. The I-class subs didn't sink anything, except their reputation.
Between the two failures, the IJN concluded that submarines weren't top priority items and cut their budget. This sub-par sub performance changed Japanese naval strategy to the exclusion of serious submarine warfare.
KURUSU AND NOMURA CAN GO TO HULL
On December 7, just as the bombs were falling at Pearl Harbor, two Japanese envoys, Hediki Kurusu and Tommy Nomura were waiting in the early afternoon outside the Washington office of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. They were supposed to meet with Cordy at one o’clock to deliver a note declaring that Japan had decided it was impossible to reach an agreement with the United States. But the coded message from Tokyo had taken too long to decipher behind the closed doors of their embassy and the two envoys were behind schedule. They were a deadly hour behind schedule. While awaiting the decipher work to finish, Nomura and Kurusu asked for an hour delay for the meeting with Hull, and got it, unfortunately for them.
The delivery of their note was supposed to allow Japan to honorably attack Pearl Harbor a few minutes after it was read by Hull. Although there was no declaration of war in the message, and it did not formally break diplomatic relations, the Japanese note was close to a declaration of hostilities.
Hull was supposed to read the note from K&N moments before the surprise Japanese air attack on Hawaii began. Instead, because of the delay, it was delivered to Hull when 8 hulls were already sunk. Nomura and Kurusu got Pearl Harbored at Pearl Harbor
The delay made the attack seem like the worst international sucker-punch of all time. This diplomatic posturing, which was supposed to avoid the appearance of treachery, only made the thing seem like treachery itself. They might just as well have delivered the note after the surrender of the Philippines for all the good it did them.
If the note had been delivered on schedule Japan still might have been accused of launching a sneak attack. But at least Japan would appear technically more in-bounds, and the indignation would have been much less of what it was in the event.
At 2:20 p.m. when Kurusu and Nomura were finally ushered in to see Secretary Hull he read the note and then is said to have given them a good loud profane piece of his Tennessee mind. They slithered out of the office feeling shamed.
I almost feel sorry for them. These were two men of peace who had chosen a life of books and diplomacy over the military life. But Kurusu and Nomura were caught on the spot, tied up in an evil game of empire.
The story of Hull swearing at the envoys is almost certainly some writer’s invention. What Hull actually said to them angrily after reading the note was;
“I must say that …in all of my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions – infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them.”
I'm a little disappointed. I would have rather read that he hurled a heavy glass ash tray right at Nomura's head who ducked just in time and then the two envoys fled the room.
In truth after the little lecture, Nomura looked upset and was about to say something when Hull shot him a look so full of rage, followed by a nod towards the door indicating ‘get out,’ that Nomura stopped his sentence on the first syllable, and the two envoys stood up and walked out. When the door shut, 2,000 sailors were already dead in the Hawaiian water.
The note to the Japanese envoys from Japan was actually translated faster by US spies than it was by the staff of the Japanese envoys. America had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes months ago.
The entire world knew that a war was imminent between Japan and the United States on the morning of December 6, 1941. The image of a United States innocently at peace minding its own business when it was suddenly attacked isn't accurate.
Nevertheless, it was just what conservative basic history says it was, a “sneak attack.”
THE ATTACK
There was another reason Kurusu and Nomura were late with the note severing relations with the United States.
At about 6:00 a.m. Admiral Nagumo, the head honcho of the 6 carrier task force, decided that because the weather was worsening, he would launch the full carrier attack force at one, about 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. He was supposed to stick to a strict timetable in order to co-ordinate the attack with diplomatic events in Washington. But Nagumo was a military man and went ahead thinking in strict military terms. “Nagu” worsened the political fallout from the attack in order to gain some tactical advantage of the moment.
Mr. Fuchida was the overall leader of the flying squadrons. When his plane took off from the carrier deck at 6:00 the war was on. Fuchida would survive the war and become a successful battle author and a Christian missionary. But first he had to kill many people for the emperor.
The attack came in two major waves. The first hit the Americans all over Oahu from 7:55 a.m. to about 8:45 a.m. The second wave contacted the northern tip of Oahu at just about this time. The first wave was heading back towards the carriers just as the second wave came in.
Most of the damage was done by the first wave.
Leader Fuchida was supposed to do a Paul Revere lantern impression with flares. When he got to the target fleet he was supposed to fire one flare out of his cockpit to signal all that the element of surprise was maintained. That meant that the torpedo planes would make the first run, and the bombers second. If surprise was lost, then he would signal with two flares. In that case the bombers wold start the attack on the airfields, and the torpedo planes would hit the ships afterwards. One if by sea, two if they see.
There was complete surprise. Some sailors and civilians waved to the Japanese pilots because it never occurred to them they were enemy planes. But stupid Fuchida wasn't sure if everyone saw his first flare, so he fired up another flare, thinking this was a repeat of his one-flare signal to those who had missed it. Naturally, most of the pilots saw two flares. The torpedo planes held off for a few minutes while the rest of the attack force went after US land-based air power all over Oahu. Japanese planes struck hard at US airfields at Wheeler, Hickham, Kanahone, Bellows and Ewa.
Maybe Fuchida's mistake helped. Half the American air power in the entire Pacific theatre was destroyed in ten minutes, and whatever chance the USA had of fighting back that day was nipped in the Billy Budd before the first battleship was hit.
It's a famous fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor began at 7:55 a.m., but the first torpedo and bomb didn't hit a battleship until 8:01. It was the airfields that began suffering at 7:55.
“Wing-tip to wing-tip” That's they way it is always described. The American planes, which should have been dispersed at a healthy distance around the fields were lined up “wing-tip to wing-tip.” This was one of the famous short-sighted blunders that Admiral Short gets singed for in hindsight history. It was his decision to line all the planes in tight bunches at all the airfields.
Why? “Because he was a wing-nut.” That's the explanation in Mistakes of Pearl, by Professor Andrew D. Clay, but that is rather simplistic, and hardly explanatory. The reason Short made this error was fear of sabotage. He didn't fear enemy air attack out of the dawn half as much as he feared Japanese or Japanese-American saboteurs. The more dispersed the planes, the more vulnerable they were in his mind to saboteurs, a word I never spell correctly the first try.
Many of his chief subordinates tried to talk him out of it, but the dummy wouldn't listen, and, as a result, every time a Japanese bomb or machine gun bullet hit the bull's eye on one sitting plane, it ignited a chain reaction of explosive contagious destruction. Planes went up like a string of firecrackers. 347 of 394 Oahu planes were destroyed or damaged. More on this later.
BANZAI
The Katefish hit all of the battleships facing out to the harbor. The California on the left, then the Oklahoma, then the West Virginia, and then the Nevada. The two battleships that were boxed in by another battleship survived the attack with moderate damage. These were the Maryland, and the Tennessee. The Vestal blocked the Arizona from torpedoes. Two cruisers on the opposite side of Ford Island also took torpedo hits in these first moments.
Most experts had long thought that Pearl Harbor was too shallow (40 feet) for torpedoes to work, but the Japanese had designed a special torpedo for the occasion and they practiced with it back in Japan until they were more than confident. The British had already blasted three Italian cruisers out of the water at Taranto with torpedoes specially designed for shallow water months earleir, but the lesson was lost on the USA. It couldn't happen here.
In about four minutes, about 12 torpedoes blasted into one ship after another in a scene Cecil B. DeMille could only dream of. The torpedoes alone were enough to make it a great victory for Japan. Ten there were the bombs.
One bomb blew up one battleship USS Arizona. It was either a 550 pound bomb from a Kate, or a 1,700 pound bomb from a Val dive bomber. The bomb went through a smokestack and struck the forward magazine. The explosion was monumental, the old BB lifting high off the water, breaking in half, and settling into the water with 1,123 men dead in a moment. The attack was five minutes old. Some of these men deep below decks were still sound asleep having Betty Grable dreams. They never knew what hit them. The Japanese planned the attack partly with the Sunday morning hangovers in mind. They knew this weak spot of American culture and exploited it.
The first ten minutes of the attack met almost 'zero' resistance. It was batting practice. Eyewitnesses almost universally identified the swooping aircraft as U.S. planes making some kind of practice drill. ‘Pearl Harbor syndrome,’ now means a willingness to disbelieve the obvious truth when something horrible is happening. It's the reverse panic attack. Just when you should for once in your life actually panic, you remain calm and tell yourself nothing serious is really happening. Pearl Harbor syndrome cost the USA dearly at Pearl Harbor.
The attack came in two waves, with a lull in the middle.
THE MYTH OF THE FOUR HOUR BEATING
The one-sidedness of the fight did not actually last long, As the various ship and land forces woke up at Pearl, both literally and figuratively, the damage inflicted became significantly smaller. 90% of the damage came in the first ten minutes of a four hour attack. The pattern in the later stages was for planes to come in for strafing or bombing runs and then have to veer off in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire, either dropping their bombs harmlessly or being shot up and damaged or destroyed. For example, late in the fight, one torpedo bomber was flying low and heading straight for the Nevada as it made a dash for the open sea (the only battleship to get under way during the attack). A five inch gun, not designed for anti-aircraft work was lowered at an even plane and fired at the plane. The shell struck the Katie torpedo and it was Katie bar the door, as the plane disintegrated in a wild explosion.
This is why I disagree with the historians who say the Japanese missed a golden opportunity when Nugamo decided against a return mission to Pearl Harbor. When all his planes were back safely a little after ten a.m. he could have ordered a second strike. The second wave of the first strike had done only ten per cent as much damage as the first wave, and they think that Nagumo missed a sitting duck by not returning. AA guns would have taken down many more planes than the 29 lost in the first strike.
The power of anti-aircraft fire was proven at Pearl, not dis-proven. If that fleet had been fully armed and ready with ack-ack alone, the day would have played out differently.
CARRIER FACTOR
The big strategic failure on a spectacularly successful day for the Japanese was the failure to find and take out the two US aircraft carriers in the Pacific Fleet, the Lexington and the Enterprise. These were the number one targets, not the battleships. It was an accident of good fortune that these two flattops were out at sea. (The term 'flattop hadn't been invented yet, btw)
The Lexington and Enterprise went out at the end of November to beef up the island airfields of Midway and Wake with a deposit of Marine fighter planes. L&E had completed their mission and were heading back towards Hawaii when news of the attack reached the ships. (The Marine pilots that landed on Wake were in for a hot time of it there over the next three weeks.)
It is well known that the Japanese were very disappointed that no US carriers were sitting ducks at Pearl Harbor. One of the main goals of the strike was to take out US carrier strength. The Japanese pilots had to settle for the vintage battleships sitting still around Ford Island.
The Americans carriers were off on a mission to stock Guam and Wake with planes. They weren't around on December 7. But if they had been, they, and the battleships might not have been such sitting ducks.
Most of the time the carriers were home in Hawaii they were on patrol. They very seldom just sat there in the harbor. The same was true of the battleships. When these carriers were patrolling around Hawaii they provided constant air cover for themselves and for the battleships. With the carriers away on a distant mission, the battleships went into Pearl Harbor in order to gain the air protection of land-based Hawaiian air power. They were just sort of sitting there marking time until their big daddy carriers got back and then they could go out on patrol again.
So it's sort of a catch-22 for the IJN. If only the carriers had been there too like sitting ducks, the day would have been that much more glorious. But that isn't true because of the carriers had been there they wouldn't have been there. If the carriers had been back at Pearl, there was a better than 50-50 chance that most of the fleet would have been on patrol with a CAP (combat air patrol) and anti-aircraft all fully armed and ready.
HEROES
Fourteen Medals of Honor were awarded for courage on 12.7. Two pilots drove frantically to a little used airstrip that “the Japs” didn't know about. It was a small grass strip. One pilot had a P-40 and the other a P-36. They went up and shot down three enemy planes, then landed to reload and refuel two more times, taking down six more. Ben Aflack played one of them.
FRED FRIENDLY FIRE
A squadron of B-17 Flying Fortresses arrived from the mainland just as the battle was peaking. They had to fight for their lives to find a way to land. One B-17 landed on a golf course, its fuselage riddled with 18 holes. These 17's were only supposed to be stopping at Hawaii on their way to the Philippines.
US carrier planes also came in to land during the attack and three were shot down by friendly nit-wits.
WATERTIGHT
Later in the war many US ships suffered much heavier damage than the blows that sank the battleships at Pearl and yet these later ships stayed afloat and continued to fight. That’s because a ship at battle stations is prepared at a moments notice to use watertight compartments to control flooding and maintain balance. The Japanese hit the Pacific Fleet when it was unprepared for either self-defense or flood control.
RETURN TO THE CARRIERS
Nagumo and Fuchida expected US air power to chase them all back to their carriers, so they tried to trick the enemy as to the whereabouts of the six 20,000-ton assassins. So one large group of Japanese planes of the first-wave left Oahu due west, and another large group left Oahu due south. They traveled more than 20 miles in the wrong direction before turning towards their home carriers, just in case they were being followed, which they, sadly, were not.
The same two operators who reported the arrival of the first planes over Opana station now reported the exact course of the Japanese planes as they flew back to their carriers. The brass ignored these reports just as they had ignored the initial reports at 7: a.m. Monday morning quarterbacks point to this as one of the American errors at Pearl Harbor. But what was the US supposed to do? Send out 16 shot up obsolete planes to follow the 351 top notch Japanese plane back to their carriers to get shot to ribbons.
Or should the US have used this info to send its two carriers after the Japanese six carriers? I wonder how that battle would have gone? That would have handed to them the victory the Japanese wanted the most, the dunking of two US carriers.
DUMB BOMBS
The Japanese not only missed out on the two big carriers, they made some dumb mistakes for which they could not blame lady luck. The pilots neglected the submarines moored at Pearl. These six subs were left unscratched and they ended up sinking far more tonnage in Japanese ships than U.S. tonnage lost at Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps the biggest error in Japanese pilot judgement was ignoring the giant oil tanks all over Oahu. The attack was all about oil to begin, yet the pilots shot up private cars on lovers-lane, ignoring mammoth storage tanks filled with 4.5 million gallons of gasoline. Pipelines were largely above ground and combed the entire area. Fires could have spread over this web of pipelines like the climax of a bad modern blockbuster movie. A small number of bombs, or even a few bursts of machine gun fire could have done more damage to the American war effort than the tally of all the battleships sunk or damaged. The explosions would have set world records. Fires would have burned for weeks. Even BP would have been impressed by scope of the oil disaster. The United States Navy would have had to bring all but the smallest ships back to San Diego for up to six months. In the meantime Japan would have a free hand to do whatever it wanted in the South Pacific. The Zero pilots put a bomb in a downtown Honolulu department store but they didn’t see any use in bombing gigantic oil tanks. Any airline passenger today can look out the window while descending into a city, and be taken by the vulnerability of the great oil tanks near the harbor. 'Wow. Imagine if a terrorist blew up one of those gas tanks? Imagine if a small plane crashed into one?'
Yet Japanese pilots at war could not appreciate the same ripe and valued targets on 12.7. They were too busy wanting to kill their fellow man. A fuel storage tank? Hey, why waste bullets? In this respect the Zeroes were flown by pilots of the same name.
NO CHASER
I disagree with those who say that Nagumo blundered by not organizing a second attack on Pearl Harbor. But I agree with the critics who feel that Nagumo should have hung around for as long as it took to find the American carriers. The six carrier task force had crossed the ocean to take out these carriers, and the IJN possessed enough power to protect itself and look around for Lex and York for several days.
BATTLESHIP ROW
A look now at the attack on a ship by ship basis.
The eight BB's at Pearl were the Arizona, Tennessee, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Maryland, California, Nevada, and the Pennsylvania. The Utah on the other (north) side of Ford Island sank but that was a target ship of no military value.
The Pennsylvania was in dry dock and took a major bomb hit that killed many sailors, but it was easily repaired in the weeks ahead.
Oklahoma was outboard of another BB and took three torpedoes before anyone knew what hit them. It capsized and was a total loss. Men were trapped inside the hull for days. Crews with torches burned out escape hatches from the top of the hull to rescue them.
The West Virginia sank at berth. Two aerial bombs scored direct hits, and no less than six torpedoes tore her up with heavy loss of life. In death, the West Virginia saved the life of Tennessee. WV was berthed on the outside and the Tennessee on the inside, so the sunken WV saved the T on the inside.
Tennessee suffered minor damage from debris but no major direct hits from Japanese munitions.
Nevada made a run for it. It was almost to the entrance at the harbor when the ship captain thought better of it and veered off. There was a real danger that Nevada might have sunk at the entrance to the harbor and blocked the fleet in and all relief ships out.
The California took two torpedo hits in the first moments of the attack. Flood control was as asleep as a drunken sailor and the battleship dropped below the deck-line. Only the upper deck could be seen on the morning of Dec 8, although California didn't fully sink to the mud until December 10.
LONG TERM OUTLOOK FOR THE BB GUNS
Except for the Oklahoma and the Arizona, all of the battleships sunk or damaged at Pearl eventually re-entered the war in active combat service. Many military officials felt that restoration of these antiquated ships (old even by 1941 standards, let alone 44 or 45) would not be cost effective. The money would be better spent on building new ones. The old BB's resting in the mud of Pearl Harbor logically should have been reduced to scrap metal.
But FDR determined that, as a morale booster, the refitting and repair of these ships would more than compensate for the money not well spent.
So Nevada and company rose from the ashes. By the end of 1944 they were all in the middle of the scrap, instead of the scrap heap. These old BB's pounded the beaches in the island-hopping campaign as a symbolic act of national defiance and anger. The guns of these 12/7 veterans spoke for the American people with each report. None of these great battleships were assigned to the Atlantic theatre.
“HONEY, THERE'S A BATTLESHIP TIPPING OVER”
This has to be my favorite story out of Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of December 7 Admiral Kimmel was asleep in his apartment on a hill overlooking Pearl Harbor. His wife came in to wake him up and tell him that some kind of commotion was going on in the bay. He grumbled something about going back to sleep. A few minutes later she came in and said to her husband, Husband E. Kimmel, the best line of the day in my estimation, “Honey, there's a battleship tipping over.”
Kimmel stared at her for a moment then leaped out of bed, ran to the patio, grabbed his binoculars and saw the Oklahoma fully capsizing amidst the general chaotic carnage of total war. A few minutes later, fighting back tears, he ripped the admiral epaulets off his shoulder. He knew he was in for a demotion. The blame for Pearl Harbor weighed on his, and Admiral Short's shoulders for the rest of their lives.
They are to blame for parking the planes too close together, causing excessive destruction to air power in the Pacific, even for the circumstance. They were to blame for lack of proper air reconnaissance, lack of adequate locked and loaded anti-aircraft batteries, having the Pacific Fleet sitting helplessly in one bunch, and mostly for lack of a general wisdom that an attack by Japan was imminent and that Pearl was a potential target.
BLAME SHORT AND KIMMEL FIRST
These two admirals took the blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster. Both were relieved of command in the days after. It's SOP to fire the manager when team fails, even if the players were the ones at fault. But Short and Kimmel were just the coaches. The managers in Washington fired their coaches, when the managers had made all the decisions.
B-17 PROBLEM
First let's look at the “wing-nut” decision of Admiral Kimmel to park all the planes real close together because he foolishly feared sabotage more than he feared a Japanese attack.
How illogical was this considering the information he had to work with? US intelligence was completely confident that the B-17's stationed in the Philippines were such super-weapons that Japan wouldn't dare overextend itself towards Hawaii and risk getting bombed from behind by the Superforts. At the beginning of 1941 there was some alert as to the possibility of an attack on Hawaii but by the middle of the year the thinking had changed. With B-17's in the Philippines, the forward line of defense and offense was now the Philippines. The United States was planning on an offensive war with Japan if Japan attacked in South Asia. That's how drunk with Billy Mitchellism the military intelligence was with confidence in the B-17. The 17's would bomb Tokyo if Japan dared mess with US. Hawaii was no longer the front line of defense. Hawaii was now secure in the rear of the combat zone and US military planners had been acting accordingly for some months.
Hawaii command had requested 200 B-17's as minimum for the recon patrols needed to make Oahu safe from a Japanese carrier attack. The process of stocking Oahu with the 17's was under way when US strategy changed in favor of defending the Philippines. Most of the 17's in Hawaii were sent to the Philippines. New 17's coming off the line in Seattle were earmarked for the Philippines. 17's in Britian were horse traded at the Atlantic Charter conference in Newfoundland in August, committing them to defend British interests in Asia. So all but a handful of the 110 or so 17's in existence went to the Philippines instead of Hawaii, despite protests by Kimmel and Short that they could not properly defend Hawaii without them.
The Pacific Fleet went through a similar political round. FDR, despite protests by some of his Admirals that they were too vulnerable in Hawaii, went to Hawaii from its usual base on the west coast. This was supposed to intimidate the Japanese from even thinking of starting up an trouble.
But when the undeclared war in the Atlantic began to heat up, FDR decided to send one fourth of the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic via the Panama Canal. He was stepping up the diplomatic threats to Japan while reducing his ability to back them up. Washington reassured Kimmel and Short that Japan would not dare attack Hawaii, not as long as B-17's were stationed in the Philippines. There was no longer any real need for vigilance at Hawaii and this attitude came from DC, not Honolulu.
On top of that, the MAGIC intercepts were, for some inexplicable reason, no longer being sent to Hawaii Command in the four months preceding the attack of December 7. Short and Kimmel were in the dark about the important Japanese diplomatic communications, as if Hawaii was some training depot in South Carolina. In 1945 Congressional hearings on the disaster at Pearl addressed this issue resolutely. But no one, not even Marshall, could offer any logical explanation why Kimmel and Short were never let in on the information out of MAGIC. The only explanation why it happened seems to be, it just did.
So that's what Kimmel and Short had to work with. Hawaii was in no danger because the B-17's on Luzon took care of that. There was no need for intense reconnaissance. The Pacific Fleet was in a reduced condition. The two carriers were off to Guam and Wake to deliver planes, and that order came out of Washington too. Kimmel and Short would have preferred to have at least one of them home for CAP (combat air patrol.)
So based on what they knew, what they had, and what they were instructed, Kimmel and Short were basically playing by the rules laid down in Washington and got caught holding the bag. Washington punished them both for the mistakes of Washington. DC said to Oahu, 'here's a dozen planes and a few old battleships. Don't worry, we aren't worried about Hawaii, so don't you. You won't be needing those carriers either. And by the way, if we're wrong, you know who's going to pay, and it isn't us.'
The MAGIC business was almost unbelievable. But I'll give you another one that is actually unbelievable, as in you won't believe me and might have to start your own research to see if I'm lying. The MAGIC information was so closely guarded by the US intelligence community that it was withheld from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the President of the United States. Yes, friends, in the last three months leading up to Pearl Harbor, MacArthur in Manila got to read MAGIC, Grew in Tokyo got to read MAGIC, and Colonel William Donovan in London, head of US intelligence, got to read MAGIC. But a great deal of MAGIC was deliberately withheld from POTUS!
If you want to do your own homework on this one start with Days of Infamy by Costello and New Dealer's War by McGillicutty. Both tell the same story about FDR being denied the MAGIC beans.
WHAT IF THE USA HAD BEEN READY?
The blame game for Pearl Harbor could fill an encyclopedia. We know that Short and Kimmell are major goats. We also know that in the days, weeks and years before the attack, some smart people had given very specific warning that this might happen. Actually there were so many specific warnings that Japan might attack Pearl Harbor that its almost wrong to even call it a surprise attack.
Navy war games in 1932 had launched an unarmed surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning from carrier based US planes. The defense team at Pearl was taken completely by surprise. US biplanes made attack runs all over the Pacific Fleet with silent guns and wooden bombs. One plane dropped a pineapple on the bridge of the Arizona.
It's possible, however, that if the failures of December 7 had never happened, and the American forces had reacted properly to the warning signals, the results might have been far worse, both militarily and politically.
Imagine if Husband E. Kimmell had three hours warning that the attack was definitely coming.
The first thing Hubby would have done is put the entire Pacific Fleet out to sea. The carriers on the way to Wake and Guam would have been ordered to do a 180 and head back towards Hawaii. This could have set up a battle between carrier air groups with the two fleets never engaging in surface to surface gunnery exchanges. The Pacific War would have opened in the most new fashioned way imaginable. It would have been the Battle of the Coral Sea to open the war, two carrier task forces going to war without ever sighting each other. And who would have won?
It should be borne in mind that Japanese naval air quality was vastly superior to US at this moment. Even fully armed and ready, the two US carriers, plus land-based air from Pearl would have been no match for 350 front-line Japanese aircraft.
The Japanese would have lost more planes than they lost at Pearl, but would have bagged a better tally for their efforts. Both of the American carriers would probably have been hit and sunk. All of the battleships would have probably been sunk in the open sea, never to be recovered. The loss of American life would have been vastly higher.
If the US carrier pilots had found the six Japanese carriers it is highly unlikely that they could have done much damage. The Japanese fleet had reserve air cover, and an armada of anti-air guns in the protective screen of destroyers and cruisers. The American planes were 10 years behind the times in technology. It could have been an ignominious slaughter, a battle of Tsushima 1905, off the island of Oahu in 1941.
For the USA all of the political capital gained from playing complete victim would have been lost along with the sea battle. The image of hung-over US sailors being gunned down trying to pull their clothes on and find the key to the ammo locker would not be part of the picture. There would be no atrocity stories of smiling Zero pilots strafing Hawaiian civilians in their cars. The war instead would have begun with what was perceived to be a fair fight. There would have been no famous cry of “sneak attack!” and “treachery!” Japan would not be the bad guy on a black horse.
To be sure, after such a sea battle, Roosevelt could have asked Congress for a declaration of war he would have got it. But the recruiting lines at armed forces stations wouldn't have been run around the block.
The United States was not fully mobilized for war on December 7. Japan had been since 1932. A fair fight could have worked out much worse than an unfair fight did.
STRATEGIC AFTERMATH - PEARL HARBOR
The problem for Japan was that the attack worked a little too well. The Japanese actually expected the Americans at Pearl to put up a much better fight.
At the northern tip of Oahu, the entire attacking force was spotted by radar and the human eye. If the warnings at the north point had been properly digested, the Pearl Fleet would have had six or eight minutes to prepare for combat defense. Men would have rushed to their battle stations and the anti-aircraft guns would have been armed or would have been in the process of arming. Some measures would have begun with regard to watertight flood control. Some aircraft would have been off the ground and fighting back. Even in this scenario, the Japanese would undoubtedly have inflicted heavy damage and won a great victory. They would likely have sunk just as many battleships. But there would have been more losses on the part of the attack force and this might well have been better for Japan.
An image of American sailors at full battle alert fighting off a superior force as best they could would have given both sides military dignity. But the attack gave this to neither side. It was just destiny for America to look like the total victim.
For both sides, it became as much a political as a military situation. It was the ugly portrait of a sucker punch. Most guys love to see a good fight. I saw one between two guys in a Brighton Ave. laundromat a few years ago that was tremendous. But not one guy in a thousand wants to see someone get knocked-out while he's minding his own business and not defending himself.
American incompetence denied Japan some of the military glory it wanted to gain from the event. As it happened the image of the attack was inglorious to most of the world. It was mass murder rather than of a great military victory. Only in Japan was it glorified.
Historic revisionism has now made it naïve to call Pearl Harbor a “sneak attack.' But I say that is exactly what it was. This was not only a ‘sneak attack’ but it was also a 'terrorist attack.' Civilians were machine gunned to death deliberately at various locations in Oahu all morning.
For this was the way of the Japanese. The Japanese Army and Navy had already murdered over a million Chinese civilians, mass raping women and mass killing children in front of their parents as a terrorist tactic.
JAPAN #1 LIAR
Japan now re-invents itself by teaching its children only the reasons Japan felt justified in going to war in 1941, without teaching their students the evil way in which the war was conducted. Japanese students learn of Nagasaki, but not of Nanking. They learn of the fire raids on Tokyo, but of not terrors unleashed on the fallen civilians of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila, or the conditions in Japanese PW Camps.
Japan did almost have legitimate reasons for going to war. But they way in which they prosecuted it, with the torture and murder of civilians and PW's on a millions scale, is what set them apart as the focus of evil in the Pacific in World War II.
War doesn't make a nation barbarian. Only barbarian war does. The barbarians of the middle ages were barbarians, not because they tried to conquer. They were barbarians because they conquered towns and then killed everybody. Japan set the globe back a thousand years with the way it treated its captured populations.
Decent Japanese writers condemn the way Japan hides the truth about the war to its young students. Bu overall Japan officially lies in its history books about World War Two and Germany does not. Korean and Chinese-Americans are seen today with bumper stickers that read, “Japan is #1 Liar.” If you see this, now you know what it means.
PEARL HARBOR UNITES THE USA
On the morning of December 8 the United States woke up in a rage. Elderly one-legged Amish preachers were eager for a place in line to sign up for front line hand-to-hand combat duty. The Pearl Harbor attack was a short term success for Japan in the military sense. In every other aspect it was a ‘catastrophic success.’
Pearl Harbor in fact revived a US martial spirit that had been sleeping since November 4 1918. Hirohito should have let sleeping eagles lie. On December 7, 1941 Japan signed itself up for a serious beating.
Politics stopped at the Pearl Harbor waters edge in America. The meatball winged Kates of Pearl torpedoed the left-wing right out of the American political equation. Now the whole country went right-wing nut. Liberalism sank with the Arizona. The entire American nation instantly became one giant militarist lunatic.
Thanks, Japan. Now the new improved Allies can take care of both you and Hitler. You did all the nations of the world a great big favor by getting big-brother Sam awake, getting him really mad, and forcing him to clean up this whole mess. The Second World War might have dragged on for another decade if the United States had not been pulled into it by Pearl Harbor. The big kid was bullying the little kids for two years, but this time he woke daddy up. Now there's going to be a spanking.
A good percentage of men would fight to protect their country from an attack that is going to take place. A much higher percentage would fight to avenge an attack that has already taken place. Defense is a reasoned emotion. Revenge is walking insanity that doesn’t understand compromise or negotiation.
A formal declaration of war against the United States by Japan would have served Japan much better than this Port Arthur repeat. Then the US could have considered the option of a negotiated settlement later, which was Japan’s long term goal from the start. Japan never dreamed of trying to conquer the United States.
Much is made about Japan's obsession as a culture with “saving face.” Well, what makes them so special? The United States had a face to save or lose too. The USA lost too much face at Pearl Harbor and now only total victory could restore it.
Japan hoped for a negotiated settlement eventually. Sure, no problem. As of December 8, 1941 the US diplomatic posture on negotiated settlement was as follows –
The United States would agree if it included the following conditions:
One, unilateral disarmament by Japan only. Two; withdrawal from all Japanese-occupied territories; Three, a trillion Yen in reparations; Four, a formal abject apology for starting the war.
At no time was Japan remotely willing to meet any of these conditions, so a negotiated settlement after Pearl was a joke, and since the “negotiated settlement” was Japan's political war plan, Japan lost the war the day it started it.
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ That is a highly inaccurate description of revenge. For in reality it should read, ‘two eyes for an eye and two teeth for a tooth.’ Why should one eye be the penalty for an eye? You have to pay for the eye you took and for the fact that you started it. If you pay back with one eye then there is no penalty for the incredibly serious crime of choosing to assault in the first place. That’s like saying that a thief only has to return your jewelry when he’s arrested for breaking into your home. In reality, the perp has to pay for the offense, as well as for what he took. The merciless US bombing of Japan in 1945 was payback time. It wasn't done just to win the war.
To the left today, the American were the bad guys in World War II because of the nuke-bombs. The heartless USA bombed all those innocent people. There's a lot of books (of recent vintage of course) that condemn the British and the USA for the terrorist strategic bombing campaign that helped to win the war.
If you visit Hiroshima you hear lectures about the evil deed and the innocence of the Japanese victims. That's convenient when you lose the war. But when Japan was winning they had no moral objections to slaughtering the innocent. Make the best of a bad outcome. I can understand Japan going for this lame angle, but it offends me when American writers take their side.
Civilians in Japan between 1937 and 1942 honored their brave fighting men and no voices were heard protesting their butchery and rape. As long as it was victory after victory, the civilians proudly supported the effort. 1937-1941 was quite a time of joy in Japan. Then when they got nuked, they got all moral about the intense outrageous evil of killing innocent people.
THE DAY AFTER
Later that December 7 afternoon, after the IJN was gone from the scene, some American planes tried to land on Oahu. Trigger happy anti-aircraft units tried to shoot them down. They had to fly off to escape the friendly fire.
In the evening of the seventh wild rumors of an impending Japanese invasion swept Oahu. There were stories about Japanese parachute drops on Barber's Point and at St Louis heights. Nawakuli Beach was allegedly under attack by an invading force that was wading in.
One widely believed report had seven Japanese transports in the process of landing on another of the major Hawaiian islands. There was no reason to disbelieve such rumors and one can imagine the fear that gripped many inhabitants. That night a complete blackout covered Oahu. Diamond Head was black against the moonless sky. Just before dawn the moon appeared and before it passed a welcome sight. Rows upon rows of planes from the mainland arrived with lights in full flashing to relieve the beleaguered garrisons and the scared civilians. Hawaii was safe.
Two Japanese carrier-based planes buzzed San Francisco on December 9, 1941 creating some panic, but they didn't do any shooting or bombing.
I get this story from a book by Ed Rollins. I don't see this story in any other book. But he says its true, so it may be. I can't imagine where they came from. I’ll bet it was from tiny planes attached to I-subs.
BLOOD FOR OIL – ON TO THE SHELL STATION
The biggest strategic success for the Japanese from the 12/7 attack was the securing of its eastern flank. It bought Japan about 8 months to do whatever it wanted in the Far East. Japan was now free to conquer the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, and to threaten Australia. Japan could possibly even attack India without fear of interception by hostile naval and air forces from the USA. This was the purpose of the Pearl Harbor/Luzon attack. While the US did have warships in its Atlantic fleet to theoretically replace the Pacific fleet, these ships were needed where they stood and besides it would take weeks to transfer them to the combat theatre of the Far East. In that time the Japanese could and did go on a shopping-spree through South Asia.
Their number one objective in going to war was the oil of the Dutch East Indies, especially Borneo, and within a couple of months it was all in their hands. Now they had the gas to keep up the bad work. While the USA was still putting out the fires at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese burned up the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Wake, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies. This was the real prize taken from Pearl. The Japanese did not want war with America. It was just that darned Pacific Fleet was in the way of its war plans against other innocent peoples.
If the Japanese had known that this fleet was not even really prepared to move out against them for many months in case of war, they probably wouldn't have attacked PH at all.
PEARL POP
There have been two pop movies made about Pearl Harbor. Tora Tora Tora (1974), was very accurate historically. The attack scenes were first-rate, but the first 90 minutes, the non-action scenes before the bombs fell are by far the most instructive.
In 2002 came the movie Pearl Harbor, a romance story with the Pearl Harbor attack as background. PH02 is a bad 'chick-flick' that lured unsuspecting males into the theatre because it was based on a manly subject.
The Hollywood left is anti-war until it becomes history, then they rush in to take the fictional credit. I'm sure Sean Penn is currently negotiating to play TR in a film about the charge up San Juan Hill.
One other note about Pearl Harbor in American culture today. Every movie shows someone running into the room shouting “Did you hear? The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!” Every newspaper headline in a fictional drama reads “Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor!” – Its the same with the fictional radio reports. The reality is that almost no one ever heard of Pearl Harbor until the attack made it famous. Newspapers actually read, “Japanese Attack Hawaii and the Philippines!” If you ran into the dining room yelling “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” everyone would look at you funny and ask, “Where the hell is Pearl Harbor?” Only Hawaiians and sailors knew the name of Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941.
2,445 US soldiers and civilians died at Pearl. One sailor died when he was struck by a flying mayonnaise jar. A bomb hit the cafeteria where the men were having breakfast and a mayonnaise jar became a projectile and killed the sailor when it struck him in the side of the head. This is straight out of the Walter Lord's book, Day of Infamy. When your number’s up, your number’s up. For this man, fate wouldn't hold the mayo.
BAD TIMING FOR JAPAN
Pearl Harbor was a political gamble for the Japanese. In order to get the USA to negotiate a peace later with Japan, the Tojo government presumed that their Axis German ally in Europe would continue to conquer the western world. Japan presumed, correctly, that the US would enter the European war when they attacked America. This gave them their guts to take America on. A lot of people wonder how Japan could be so foolish as to attack the much more powerful United States. There's your answer. They always knew that the USA would have to fight Japan with one hand tied behind its back. Military historians always toast the amazing courage of the Japanese soldier. Fine. They were nuts (the highest compliment that you're a tough guy.) But why don't they also roast the amazing cowardice of the Japanese politicians who only attacked China because it was so weak, only attacked in Indochina when France fell, only attacked the Dutch East Indies after Holland fell, and only had the guts to take on America and Britian because it thought Germany was going to win and both powers would always be tied down fighting Germany. If there's no Nazi roll, there's no Japanese attack. That's what I say.
Look at how many historians and amateur students and scholars say it over and over. “Japan knew it couldn't win.” “Japan only wanted to sue for a negotiated peace later, and knew it was going to lose eventually.”
If that were really true, Japan wouldn't have attacked. The highest deliberations of the Emperor and his leaders was always top secret with no notes. History doesn't focus enough on that part of it, that maybe Japan only really attacked because it presumed Germany was going to keep winning. And why wouldn't they think that?
Japan knew that if things went badly enough for America in a war with Germany, they might win a favorable negotiated settlement after they ran up the score against weak countries. Japan didn't dare take on Russia, because Russia was strong, even with Russia fighting the Nazi invasion. If the Japanese had foreseen the defeat of Germany in the west, it would have thought twice about kicking the sleeping dog at Pearl Harbor.
In fact, Japan attacked the United States at exactly the moment that Germany began to lose World War II in the west. Bad timing, suckers.
Unbeknownst to Tojo, Yamamoto, Hirohito or the carrier pilots of the Soryu, the Russians had just launched their first counterattack against the German invaders on December 6 1941.
On the same day the British Army launched the decisive counterattack that would eventually drive the Axis out of eastern North Africa and remove the Axis threat to both the Suez Canal and the oil of the Middle East.
How's that for timing? Just as Japan was entering the war riding the coattails of the Germans, the Germans were on that very day were getting their coattails singed.
The British victory in North Africa was strategically critical. The Germans wanted to link its divisions advancing on the southern Russian front with the Africa Corps east of Suez. Then the steamrolling Axis powers of Germany and Japan could hook up in the Middle East. For the Axis in 1941, this was not an unrealistic dream.
But from this day on, 12.6.41, the Russians had the momentum, even though the Germans had their moments in 42 and 43. The Reds over the next 3.3 years would drive the Wermacht back to Hitler's bunker. Along the way the Red Army would liberate and occupy eastern Europe.
Japan's big brother Heinz was soon not going to be in any position to help. Germany instead would get knocked out of the war. In the last three months of WWII of the war Japan was hit from the air with bombs made in Germany were falling on Japan. The Tokyo train ended the war facing the united wrath of 45 countries. Serves them right for picking on weak countries and strong countries weakened by someone else's war. Three thugs were beating up a big guy and Japan stopped by to steal his wallet. But the big guy battled back and won the fight, then chased Japan down 37 side streets, caught up with it, got his wallet back, and put Japan in the ICU.
END OF THE STRATEGIC BATTLESHIP
For 20 years the world’s military thinkers had debated the superiority of the new aircraft-carrier task force vs. the strength of the good old battleship task force. This debate went on in Japan as well as the United States and Europe. Neither side had ever fully accepted the superiority of the carrier task force. The admirals, generals and politicians were divided.
When Japan knocked out 7 United States battleships (8 if you count Utah) on 12.7 it settled the argument right there on the spot in favor of the carriers. The USA could not think in terms of battleship task forces now even if it wanted to, because it suddenly didn’t have any. The Pacific War would now be fought from the US vantage point with the carrier task force as a given.
The Japanese on the other hand could and still did believe in the equality if not the superiority of the battleship task force because they had so many good BB’s available. Some progressive Japanese hawks favored the carrier but enough powerful admirals still stuck to their old big guns. As a result their confident superiority in battleships, many major battles of the Pacific War were fought and lost because the IJN went into the fight in battleship, not carrier, task force formations. The USA certainly sank as many of their battleships later in the South Pacific as were lost in Hawaii, thanks in part to those initial losses which forcibly changed the American approach to naval warfare.
The war proved that battleships were still useful for task force support, ship-to shore fire and for anti-aircraft power, but no longer as the Queen Bee. By 1943 battleship to battleship slugfests for strategic offensive goals was as dated as a the impressions of a cruise ship comedian.
Well, maybe not that dated.
DONOVAN AND FISH
On the night of December 7, FDR held a dramatic cabinet meeting, followed by a private consultation with several select members of Congress, especially some of the Republicans. He filled them in on the details at Pearl Harbor and what he planned to do about it.
There was one Congressman, however that was persona non grata no matter what, and that was Hamilton Fish of New York. HF was explicitly banned. Fish sent a written request to be in the select audience with FDR. “Tell Ham,” said Roosevelt, “that although I cannot pick him up by the scruff of the neck and hurl him out the front door, I have many people on my very obedient staff who can.”
Fish had offended many Americans by speaking well of the Nazis right up to December 7. In 1938 he went to visit Germany and rode in Ribbentropp's private plane. Congressman Fish had opposed Lend-Lease passionately. Congressman Fish also openly disseminated the anti-semitic work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ham Fish smelled bad to FDR. You're not going to catch me sticking up for this Republican clown.
Late in the Evening of Infamy FDR had a beer and a cigar with two of his closest friends, Edmund R. Murrow the great news correspondent, and William Donovan, the soon to be leader of the O.S.S.. It was getting late and FDR mused about how,
“Tomorrow will be a routine day like any other. I will get up, brush my teeth, make a pot of coffee, and go declare war on Japan.”
Donovan laughed, while Murrow forced a sardonic smile.
By the way, Hamilton Fish was born in 1888 and lived to the age of 102! The changes he saw in his lifetime!
HITLER AND PEARL
Adolph Hitler was as surprised as anyone else when he heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t really good news for AH, even if his ally did seem capable of conquering half the Pacific. Hitler desperately wanted Japan to attack Russia, not the United States. He wanted the Soviets forced into a two-front war. He wanted Japan in on his war, not their own private war.
Instead fate handed Hitler a new enemy in the powerful United States without any material gain on his own front. In fact it was a net loss on his front. With Japan at war with America, Stalin could safely transfer his far eastern divisions to the west and toss them into the cauldron against the German Army. The USSR knew that Japan would never attack now. The Siberian divisions turned the tide on the Russian front.
Hitler had gone to extremes to avoid war with the United States. Now there was little he could do to prevent it.
The terms of Hitler’s alliance with Japan did not obligate Germany to join in the war against the United States. That’s because Japan had not been attacked. But in a general sort of way it seemed to Hitler dishonorable not to, with the maniacal martial spirit both countries professed to live by.
Hitler’s top diplomat in Washington informed Berlin on the 8th of December that Roosevelt was going to declare war on Germany at any hour now. Hitler’s ego could not stand for that.
So the so-called mad genius did something really stupid. He declared war on America.
FDR dearly wanted Hitler to declare war first. Japan fired the first military shot to start the war in the Pacific. Now Roosevelt needed to trick Hitler into firing the first official declaration of war. Then FDR would have zero problem getting Congress to support a war with Germany.
America had a key advantage because through its “magic” intercepts of Japanese diplomatic notes it knew that Berlin had recently assured Japan (mid-November) that if the United States went to war with Japan, Germany would declare war on America. In the three days after Pearl, FDR held his shot and Hitler did too as both waited out the other to make a move.
FDR was worried over how to sell war with Germany to the American people when every last American man only wanted five minutes alone in a room with Tojo. Most historians estimate that if Roosevelt had asked Congress for a declaration of war with Germany without Germany having declared war first, he would have had it, but it would have been a divided enough vote to have caused political problems throughout the next four years.
FDR on December 9 gave a radio speech in which he clearly was trying to trick Hitler into declaring war on the United States,
“Germany and Japan are conducting their naval operations
in accordance with a joint plan. Germany and Italy con-
sider themselves at war with the United States without
even bothering about a formal declaration.”
It was all false and Franklin knew it. FD was the guy who wants to start a fight with a certain someone at the bar so he shoves him and says real loud, “whadya shove me for?” And it worked.
Hitler finally gave in to his animal instincts over his political, and on December 11 he went before the Reichstag and declared war on the USA.
It was a long speech in which Mr. Hitler gave everyone a refresher course on the recent turbulent times between the two countries. He went over all the incidents in the quasi-war in the Atlantic since the fall of France. Hitler's deputies cheered him wildly. “All right! War with America! What could possibly go wrong?”
GOOD TIMING IN THE DESERT TOO!
Just as the bombs were falling at Pearl Harbor, General Erwin Rommel was meeting with his Italian allies and having it out over how bad things were suddenly going. The meeting with Rommel and the Italian generals took place on December 7 1941 and it wasn't pretty.
The Siege of Tobruk, which had lasted most of 1941 had just been broken. Rommel was preparing to evacuate all of eastern Cyrainica (Libya) and was abandoning his long standing position at the Egyptian border at the town of Sollum.
The Italians were trying to tell Rommel that the setbacks in the desert were a result of his own wild gambles, while he, as he always did, passed the blame for his own mistakes on others. One Italian later wrote that “Rommel screamed and yelled at us like an uncouth boor.” The Desert Boor, er .. eh... I mean the Desert Fox wasn't invincible after all.
In 1942 Rommel did make a comeback for a few months, but just the fact that the Nazis were getting slapped around in the desert for the first time was good enough to merit a notation on the fantastic bad timing of Japan's entry into the war. Japan was climbing on an Axis horse that was over the hill and sick with jaundice. It ran on for a few miles and then collapsed in 45, leaving Japan to hold the bag versus all the world in the summer of A-bombs. Too bad.
Cavallero, the Italian Army Master and Commander pleaded with Rommel not to retreat out of Cyrenaica because of the situation in Asia. Even though the Brits were on the attack, Cavallero believed that the Royals would have to transfer much of their desert forces to the Far East to try and avert utter catastrophe there. Cav was wrong, because he could not know that Churchill and FDR were in the process of conceding the first round to the “Japs” in order to garner strength for the main opponent, the Nazis. Britian was not about to transfer desert forces to Asia. Churchill had already erred in the spring of 1941 when he snatched stalemate from the jaws of victory by sending half his desert force across the Mediterranean in most futile attempt to save Greece. Win wasn't about to make the same mistake by sending half his desert troops to Asia.
As for retreating out of Cyrenaica, Rommel told his Italian friends that a tactical retreat out of Cyrenaica was better that a full scale retreat from all of Libya. He would look for chances to spring a stinging counter-attack. On December 28 he surprised the advancing British 22nd Armored Brigade and destroyed 60 tanks in three hours.
JAPANESE BLITZ IN THE PACIFIC DECEMBER 1941
THE STRIKE SOUTH
To the surprise of many military experts, Japan elected to try to take over the entire Pacific on three major fronts at the same time. Some at first were calling it a blunder, but were soon stunned to watch as Hirohito, Tojo, and Yamashita pulled it off. Such a daring dilution of strength was counter to military wisdom.
The three major fronts in the Far East were Malaya, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies. Churchill and Roosevelt did not expect these three places to hold on indefinitely, but they never dreamed that they would all fall so fast, nor that they could all be taken simultaneously.
One of the reasons the western experts did not think the Japanese capable of a three prong offensive was the already extended network of Japanese conquests and the IJA divisions required to hold them down. But just prior to the strike south all of the divisions holding the fort in Manchuria, Indochina, Korea, Taiwan, and China were cannibalized to beef up the divisions heading into the new theatres. These divisions sent to conquer the Dutch, the Yanks, the Brits and their native allies were overstuffed with the best men and the best weaponry. Each Japanese Army division sent south to boot MacArthur out of the Philippines or take the oil of Borneo had the firepower of two normal divisions.
So the strike south effectively ended any Japanese hope of conquering China, at least in the near future. The occupation forces in the Middle Kingdom, diluted of their best troops and equipment for the Strike South were restricted from making major offensives in China for the rest of the war.
PHILIPPINE FACTORS
One of the reasons the Pearl Harbor attack was so successful for Japan was the US decision earlier to beef up the defense forces in the Philippines. The B-17's sent to the Philippines in the summer of 41 were originally supposed to be looking out for the defense
of Hawaii. B-17 patrols probably would have been out at sea that December 7, but most of them had been shipped to the Philippines.
The B-17's that went to the Philippines changed the entire defense plan for the US and Great Britian. Both FDR and Churchill, with the backing of MacArthur, believed that the B-17 was such a formidable weapon that it could extend the defense perimeter as far as it could fly. Before the 17's went to the Philippines, the United States considered the Philippines impossible to defend. In case of war with Japan, the defense forces in the Philippines were supposed to fall back immediately to the Bataan peninsula and hold out until a US relief force could cross the sea and relieve them. That was suppose to take six months. MacArthur and his Philippino army were supposed to hang on for six months in a fallback holdout while the Pearl Harbor force organized and deployed.
The perimeter of American defense was originally supposed to be Hawaii, and therefore all effort was made to bolster the defense of Hawaii.
This was controversial enough. Many brass brains thought even this was a mistake of vulnerability. In early 1940 there wasn't much of a naval force at Pearl Harbor at all. Militarily it was not clearly wise to put huge naval forces there where they might be vulnerable to a sudden carrier attack, as many navy people warned might happen.
But political considerations prevailed. When Japan continued its aggressions in China and Indochina, FDR had to send a signal to Japan to watch its step. The fleet was really only at Pearl Harbor to try and intimidate Japan. The ships around Ford Island were a threat. If you continue to conquer Asia, America will soon have to step in, and look at the forces we have arrayed against you.
But in April 1941, with the war in the Atlantic in the balance (undeclared for America, but a war nevertheless,) FDR ordered one fourth of the Pacific Fleet to the Panama Canal and through it to the Atlantic theatre. At the same time, the United States stepped up it's tough diplomatic policy against Japan. The more the United States weakened its defenses in Asia militarily, the more it acted like the big tough guy politically. It was a recipe for disaster to tell Japan it had better watch its step while weakening its military strength to enforce these threats with.
When the B-17's went to the Philippines, the United States changed its perception of the war map. Now the outer perimeter of defense was the Philippines. These super 17 planes alone were going to hold the line in the distant Pacific for Allied defense. They were even going to protect the British in Malaya and Singapore, and were going to protect the Dutch East Indies (the oil prize.) The 17's were even supposed to constitute a direct threat to bomb Tokyo if Japan dared to attack the USA.
At face value, this was naïve, because the accuracy of the B-17 was vastly overrated, and the ability of the “Flying Fortress” to protect itself without fighter escort was also very overrated.
Even if the 17 was everything it was cranked up to be, it still created a huge hole in the American defense because it made Hawaii far more vulnerable than it ever had to be. When Hawaii was the front line of defense, there was a sense of alert there on a daily basis. But when the Philippines became the front line of defense, the forces on Hawaii became complacent. The military strategists no longer worried that Japan might launch a sudden carrier strike, feeling they wouldn't dare overextend themselves when all those B-17's were in the Philippines ready to hit Tokyo or anywhere else within their 3,000 mile range.
So naval and air patrols around Oahu were lax on December 7 because Oahu was in the rear, and it was safe to go to night clubs and drink on any given Saturday night.
So the USA put a huge battle fleet at Pearl, then degraded it to help in the Atlantic, then depleted Hawaiian air power, then sent the two carriers away on a mission to deliver planes to Wake and Guam and went to sleep in Hawaii on December 6.
History is so focused on the destruction of 7 BB's at Pearl that it forgets, or neglects to know, that these old battleships were not, as is commonly believed, the first line of offense and defense for America in the Pacific on December 7. Once the miracle B-17's were in Hawaii they, not the old battleships, were the first line of offense. When most of them flew off to Luzon, then the Philippines were the first line of defense and Hawaii was just a place for B-17's to refuel on their way further west.
The B-17's in the Philippines contributed substantially to the debacle at Pearl Harbor by intoxicating the brass with a large false sense of power and security in the far east.
Japan destroyed almost all the B-17's in the Philippines in one day! This messed up all the equations of American and British strategy. These were the weapons that FDR and Marshall were counting on and now they were gone in a flash. If Pearl Harbor had played out exactly the way it happened, but the B-17's in the Philippines had survived the first days of the war intact, there wouldn't have been complete despondent panic in Washington about the situation in Asia.
There is book about the fall of the Philippines called They Were Expendable. It might be more accurate to say this of the battleships at Pearl Harbor, while the Philippine B-17 and P-40 forces were not. The USA ended up expending both. By dividing defense resources between the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, the United States suffered defeat at both places.
The three main Allied defense pillars in the Far East were the American Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, the British fleet in Singapore, and US air power in the Philippines. In ten hours two of the three were toast and the third was on the menu.
ATTACK ON LUZON - AND DOLITTLE MACARTHUR
The disaster on December 8 in the Philippines may well have been just as much of a US disaster as Pearl Harbor. John Costello's Days of Infamy says that it was far more of a disaster than Pearl Harbor. I don't know if I want to go that far but it is a good argument.
In the middle of the afternoon of December 8 Japanese planes destroyed all but one of B-17's in the Philippines. This is far more inexcusable than the mistakes of Pearl Harbor because this happened more than nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor was over!
There is only one man who should answer to history for the catastrophe in the Philippines, and that is Dug MacArthur.
Within a week Japan had eliminated 98% of US air power in the Philippines.
The Japanese launched the Bettys, Claudes, Vals and Zekes from land bases in Taiwan on December 8 (Dec 7 in Peoria.)
The Jap. planes on Taiwan were stuck in a fog that morning of Dec 8 but took off to attack the Philippines anyway. By 7:30 AM in Manila, Pearl Harbor was five hours old news, so the Japanese had feared that US B-17 bombers based on the Philippines would strike first, destroying Japanese planes on Taiwan before they could launch.
They didn’t have to worry.
The United States forces in the Philippines were under the command of MacArthur. Political considerations restricted him from taking offensive action, and it cost the Army Air Force dearly. Both President Roosevelt and Philippine leaders hoped somehow that the Philippines might not be on the Japanese target list. They didn’t want offensive American action to bring the Philippines into the war. MacArthur had to wait and watch Japan fire the first shots before he could respond in kind. Even though America was surely at war with Japan (the official announcement would have to wait till next day,) there was still hope that the Philippines could stay out of it.
The official war plan in case Japan started it up, was for MacArthur to immediately put his B-17's in the air for a pre-emptive strike at Japanese air and naval forces on Formosa. But he never gave the order even though some of his top officers asked him to, then begged him to, then yelled at him to. But he never did.
After the war, Japanese officers told of how they were in a panic that morning on Formosa. They knew they couldn't take off and they fully expected the pre-emptive strike from the US B-17's from Luzon.
General MacArthur has this to say in his memoir,
“An attack on Formosa, with its heavy air concentrations, by our small bomber force without fighter cover, which because of the great distances involved and the limited range of the fighters was impossible, would have been suicidal.”
I am inclined to agree with MacArthur on this one. And he was certainly limited by political considerations. FDR had ordered him not to initiated hostilities from the Philippines, and unlike Truman, FDR managed to get him to obey.
LETS ALL GET SMASHED
Mac did send a few B-17's up that morning of Dec 8 but they were under orders to just look around and take pictures. They were not to drop any pineapples. Some AAF men urged Mac to evacuate the B-17's south to Del Monte airstrip, recently carved out of a pineapple field on Mindanao. The 17's would at least be out of range of Japanese air power, and considering the reports out of Pearl Harbor, the fall back of the 17's seemed wise enough and was part of the war plan options package.
When the 17's out on recon landed, Mac ordered them armed to the teeth for an attack on Formosa the following morning.
There was an inexplicable complacency at Clark. Men went off to the barracks to eat Carabao burgers and listen to the radio. They were too far from their planes when the Japanese closed in. Radio station KMZH reported that Clark AFB was under Japanese attack. The pilots laughed at the silly report and then bombs began crashing around them and the laughter died faster than a second show Friday in Atlantic City.
The Japanese had in fact already launched strikes on targets further north on Luzon. Clark AFB experienced a repeat of Pearl Harbor communications failure, but this one was twice as unforgivable because it happened ten hours after the Arizona blew up.
The first Japanese air strikes on Baguio in Luzon were not very effective. Some high level Betties missed the mark so badly that they instead tore 18 holes into a nearby golf course.
Word of this Japanese air attack was never properly delivered to anyone that mattered. A few crucial minutes later everyone at Clark looked up and saw Zeroes and land-based Betty bombers circling to attack.
Caught napping again! Twice in one fateful day!
For one hour the Japanese planes strafed and bombed US planes on Clark and shot down most of the Curtis P-40 Warhawks that tried to stop them in the air. 18 B-17’s were destroyed on the ground out of the total of 35, and most of the others were damaged. Zeke, Val and Betty crushed no less than 78 other planes, mostly on the ground, 96 planes lost in one hour.
The attack on US air power in Luzon constituted a second Pearl Harbor. If this had been the only Japanese strike that day the USA would have shouted for four years, “Remember Clark Air Base!”
Maybe some of the criticism for American lack of action in the Philippines on this first day is unfair. The US was physically under-prepared, it was true, but the real blame lies here with Roosevelt and the Philippine politicians who had a naïve hope that Japan would not attack and try to take the islands. Certainly the gung-ho MacArthur would have been happy to launch an air strike within seconds after he heard about the raid on Pearl Harbor, but Washington tied one hand behind his back. Of course in many ways it was all his own fault because he had been so cocky about the ability of the Philippines to defend itself that it never crossed his mind to send the B-17's for safe keeping to the pineapple field to the south (he did sent a few.)
Mac refused to take the offense for political reasons, yet he didn't follow the logic of his tied trigger situation by evacuating the precious B-17's to Del Monte. He probably should have made a call one way or another. Either use the B-17's for what they were built for, or at least get them out of harms way. Instead he just let them sit there on the ground and get wasted. I'm adopting the argument of historian John Costello here and his book Days of Infamy, but I'm not committed to it.
The entire tone of the early days of the war might have been a bit different if at the very hour that the last Japanese Pearl strike planes were still returning to their carriers the US had launched a successful air strike on Japanese air forces on the ground in Taiwan. Costello spends two chapters mad about this, but MacArthur's argument seems good to me. Plus the B-17 was a notoriously disappointing plane for accuracy, even with the fancy modern bombsights. I'm pretty gullible, and tend to believe the last good book I read on a controversial subject, so I don't know what to believe. I don't know why Costello thinks the Japanese on Formosa couldn't muster up some fighters from the neighborhood to wreak havoc on the B-17's.
Japanese landed troops on the north (Aparri) and west (Vigan) coast of Luzon on December 10. But Mac knew these 1 transports of troops were just a teaser for the big assault. These landings were supposed to lure the American-Philippino Army to the north. The the Japanese would then launch the big invasion on both the east and west coasts Luzon further to the south. These latter two armies would ink up and cut the US-P Army in two and then destroy each half separately with a superior force. But MacArthur held back so that he could evacuate to the Bataan Peninsula if it came to that.
Some Allied force went north to stop the invaders, and the USAAF actually dunked four of these transports. It was one of the few minor US victories in the First Battle of the Philippines.
These initial landings were not enough to send panic through Manila just yet, but, as General Wainwright aptly put it, “the rat is in the house.”
The first landing in force came on December 22 at Lingayen Gulf. The rats were all over the house.
MACARTHUR HAS A GREAT IDEA
General MaCarthur had a great idea to help stem the tide of Japanese victories. He decided on his own that the Soviet Union should attack Japan. Hey, why not? Japan was vulnerable back at the home islands. All the military force in the nation was out on a road game. If Russia attacked now, Japan would have to call back half its military force and the drive South would come to a halt.
Douglas cabled Geroge Marshall on December 10 that Japan feared the entry of Russia into the war.
“Most favorable opportunity now exists and immediate attack on Japan” would work wonders for the Allied situation in Asia.
MacArthur writes in his memoir that Marshall never returned his e-mail. It was silence on that one and “It became evident that the Soviet Union did not elect to engage in hostilities with Japan for the present.”
Yeah, no kidding. No wonder Marshall didn't return your message on December 10. It was idiotic. Russia had absolutely no selfish reason to want to jump into World War II in the Pacific, and was fighting for its life. The Wermacht was at the gates of Moscow and Mac thinks the USSR is going to launch an attack on Japan, just to help out the United States, which was not even formally allied to the USSR at this time.
MacArthur was a great soldier who eared a box full of impressive medals, but sometimes he had a loose bulb in the ceiling fixture. This proposal is almost comical. One guy decides that the biggest country on earth should jump into the war on his side because it would help his strategic situation when that nation had nothing to gain and much to lose by doing so.
Russia had already jumped through hoops and did handstands to avoid the very thing. Russian foreign policy was anchored at this time in the Pacific on specifically avoiding war with Japan, and along comes Mac saying, “Hey! I got it! If the USSR attacks Japan right now, things will improve dramatically. ... No, don't thank me. I'm just doing my duty.” ... You numbskull.
GUAM
The United States took over the island of Guam after WWI. Guam was located smack in the middle of the Japanese empire. Japan “coveted thy neighbors goods,” Guam.
On December 10, 1941 the Japanese hit Guam with more than 5,000 troops. The Guam defense force was about 250 Marines and 100 Guamanian (I’m pretty sure that’s not the right word for them) civilians with rifles. Guam had not been allowed to fortify itself between the wars for political reasons, and now stood no chance.
The battle for Guam lasted about eight minutes.. The US-Guam forces lost 17 KIA’s. The Japanese lost one soldier in the conquest of Guam. The US would not be take Guam back until 1944, and a lot of Marines died getting it back.
WAKE ISLAND - AND THE JAPANESE TREATMENT OF USPW’S
When I was 12 years old I read Wake Island, by the man in charge of the defense forces there, a Mr. Deveraux. My jaw was dropped for every bloody page. There are several books about the Battle fo Wake and I urge you to pick one and read it. That story is better than any action movie plot. Wow.
Wake held out longer than it logically should have through sheer battle courage and tenacity. The US press followed the struggle to hold Wake with front page headlines for two weeks.
There were 450 Marines and four Marine fighter planes defending Wake. 53 Americans died in battle, 49 Marines and three Navy sailors. It took Japan two weeks to conquer the tiny island and its tiny airstrip. Before they surrendered the men of Wake had sunk two Japanese destroyers and a cruiser, damaged six transports, and killed 1,300 Japanese men. The men on Wake surrendered when they ran out of bullets. The Japanese won Wake and immediately renamed it Bird Island.
The Japanese officer who accepted the white flag of surrender offered Deveraux a cigarette and told him in fairly good English that “I have been to San Francisco.” But this little scene was no harbinger of the treatment these prisoners were in for. The Japanese singled out the Wake PW's for special treatment. These Wake survivors lived out the war in a tortured life.
The Japanese were sadistic and cruel towards all American PW’s throughout the war. Germany was cruel enough. But 96 out of every 100 Yanks in German PW camps survived to go home and see their families. Only 72% of the Americans in Japanese PW camps made it back, and that’s not including those who were executed as soon as they were taken alive and never made it to a camp.
The standard explanation, one which is pleasing to the macho Japanese ego, and accepted by most Americans to this very day, is that the Japanese were so tough and martial in spirit that they looked down with disgust on any soldier that was so weak as to surrender. “The Japs” tortured and killed US PW’s because they thought them girly-men. Japanese soldiers never surrendered and shame on enemy troops who did. Japanese always fought to the death so enemy troops who didn't, well they deserved death. If that wasn’t meted out, a lifestyle of torture and abuse was the next step down. Allied wimp prisoners should be grateful for being allowed to live at all.
This explanation satisfies a lot of people on both sides. The Americans can at least feel that there was a reason for their terrible treatment, a reason that lies in the Japanese make-up. At least it wasn’t personal, just a misunderstanding between two different cultural systems. The Japanese can feel that they may have been wrong on a human level, but not on a martial one. They can gloat with subtle pride they were indeed the more savage warriors of the two groups. All history book have a wink of approval for savage warriors they ostensibly condemn. The Japanese post-war memoirs all reflect this leftover conceit. ‘We lost the war’ they muse, ‘but we still know that we were tougher than them, no one surely can doubt that.’ The Japanese after the war were the hockey fans saying, “we lost the game but, hey, (smile) we won the fights.”
But the explanation is bogus. Japanese treatment of prisoners was always far worse for those who fought hard than for those who surrendered meekly. This messes up the equation.
The Guam garrison had not put up much of a fight and surrendered quickly. These men were treated relatively well in captivity by Japanese standards. The troops of the Dutch East Indies who surrendered without a serious battle were treated comparatively well also. Singapore civilians and soldiers who surrendered even had an area of the city where they were allowed to go about their business in captivity like free-roaming chickens, a little Vichy Singapore. But the men who fought like top-notch samurai on Wake were singled out for exemplary punishment. All were beaten and tortured for years. On a routine and regulated basis, individuals from the Wake garrison would be summoned to kneel before the others. Then a Japanese swordsman cut off his head. So apparently there was nothing the Japanese respected more than a person who surrendered meekly, and nothing they hated more and respected less than soldier who fought to the last bullet. They were just mad because these US guys had killed a lot of their guys. It had nothing to do with a superior standard of macho that enemy soldiers had somehow failed to live up to. It was also racial.
The Japanese hated the white race for its oppression of the yellow. They thought of their own race as the greatest in the world, and a race destined to rule it. The PC American history books now set aside 5 five pages for self-flagellating descriptions of US racism against the Japanese before and during the war and how it helped lead to the war in the first place.
Points taken, and I'll say more on this in another segment.
But the reverse gets a free pass. The incredibly over the top yellow racism against white that was all over Asia is never even mentioned! It's as if all racism starts from the white, as if caucasians were cursed with some Biblical fault that they cannot help, while the Japanese never dished out a fair share of their own filthy racist mud. “Asia for the Asiatics” was the slogan of the Japanese as they conquered. That sounds like racism to me.
The Japanese invented the racial slur term ‘chinks'. Not a lot of people know that. The Japanese looked down on the Chinese as inferior and invented the nasty epithet 'chinks' to describe them. The term eventually backfired on them and became a world-wide racist term to describe all Asians with thin eyes.
As for the refusal of the Japanese to ever surrender, well that is mythical also. Yes, that did happen on many locations, especially when top-notch Japanese soldiers with excessive unit pride went into battle to defend the emperor in crucial battles at key stages of the war. These soldiers had a lot to lose if they lost, and a lot to win if they won, both personally and for the war effort. Because they were such elite soldiers their entire families would have been very humiliated if they did not come home in victory or in a jug of ashes. They were essentially blackmailed in the rear by the threat of family humiliation, a cultural ‘ad’ for the commanders in the field.
But as the war went badly for Japan and defeat became certain, more and more of Nippon's finest surrendered. The second rate troops of the later stages of the war did not have the pride of the Japanese West Point guys who started up the war in 1941 and 42 (or in China since 1937.) Japanese Army men of 1944 were generally not of the same demographics as those of 1942.
The USA took thousands of Japanese prisoners in the Pacific War. Most documentaries on the war imply that the United States might have captured two dozen total. The myth lingers on because it makes for better docu-drama, and PC likes to praise Japanese martial qualities as an evil, yet admirable thing. When Americans act like merciless animals in combat it is a 100% bad thing, not admirable at all.
The Japanese only smacked America around in the first months of the war when Sam was stuck with inferior military hardware across the board, was vastly outnumbered, and was committed to a Europe first policy. If America had equal weapons and an Asia first plan, the results in Asia would have been very different, even in the beginning. The myth of the superior Japanese soldier you all can stuff where the rising sun don’t shine.
LASHUA
The Japanese occupied Lashua Island (just south of the Aleutians) on December 30, 1941. The Japanese found the island deserted and built a seaplane base there. A storm destroyed the base on December 28 and the Japanese left. America took Lashua back without a shot fired. “Lash” was technically the first island taken in the so-called 'island hopping campaign.'
MALAYA DECEMBER 1941
I have to tell you a repulsive story.
When war seemed imminent Churchill sent two of Britain’s best battleships as part of a task force to Singapore. The two BB’s were supposed to be accompanied by a large aircraft carrier, but the Indomitable after service in the Mediterranean had to stop in England for some repairs. Churchill decided to sent the two big warships anyway. They would have to protect Malaya without air protection. This doomed the two battleships who would have to go it alone against Japanese air supremacy.
Originally the British and American pre-war plan was to concede Singapore and Malaya as indefensible (without telling anyone in Singapore or Malaya that, of course.) But when the USA sent those overrated B-17's to the Philippines, the British were foolish enough to think that these four engine bombers were so powerful that they could protect Singapore! Churchill changed his mind about conceding Malaya and Singapore and sent the warships there because they would have B-17 protection. The Japanese destroyed the B-17's and Britain was stuck with a naval force in Singapore that never would have been there if he knew there was even a good chance that the 17's would get roasted on day one of the war.
The two battleships sent to this dangerous mission were the Repulse and the Prince of Wales. Repulse was a heavy cruiser of 26,000 tons. It was not technically a ‘battleship’ because it did not have enough armor plating for defense to qualify, but it had the guns of a BB. The 35,000 ton Prince of Wales was one of the greatest battleship in the world.
The Japanese start-the-war plan was to attack Malaya first as the primary objective. The Philippines would be attacked at the same time but lightly, with only coastal locations occupied in order to establish airfields. The bulk of Japanese land forces, about 45,000 men, would conquer Malaya in the Strike South. As for the two dreadnoughts in Singapore, the Japanese had a healthy fear of their big-gun and anti-aircraft power in a battle for Singapore but were confident they could sink these two beauties in a short-short if only the proud behemoths would be foolish enough to sortie out to sea for some reason or another (“in a short-short” is CB-radio slang for in a short amount of time.)
In the week after Pearl Harbor Japan made several successful landings on both sides of the Malay peninsula. They also landed further north, in Thailand, which surrendered promptly on December the 9th. Way to go, Thailand. First you invade Vichy French Indochina in 1941 when the French chips were down, then you surrender to Japan without a fight. Way to go, friend.
On the eve of the Japanese landings the British scrambled Task Force Z, which consisted of Repulse, Prince of Wales, and four destroyers. Z knew where the invasion fleets were and went out to fight them, the proud fools. It was repulsive for the two great white whales to putter out of Singapore, move north, and meet the invading armadas in a mismatch.
They should have stayed put as fallback firepower in defense of Singapore, but it’s hard to imagine an admiral failing to make an attempt to stop the enemy. It was undeniably ‘suipride’ (suicide in the name of pride) to go out and meet the Japanese air force in the open sea without fighter protection. The commanding admiral, Chester Phillips knew that he had little chance as he sailed out of Sing Sing. The poster board on the Wales informed the sailors, “We are heading out to look for trouble.” They got it.
The Japanese air force sank both battleships in about 44 minutes! One Val hit the Wales pretty hard with a big bomb, but the Kate torpedoes did most of the damage.. The Kates hit Prince of Wales with eight torpedoes on both sides in less than a single minute in one of the most spectacular moments in history. The Repulse went down with the bow pointed to the sky after taking several torpedoes. A few minutes later it slept with the fishes. So much for its nickname, the HMS Unsinkable. The loss of these two capital ships was a large strategic, tactical and psychological setback for the Allies.
The Prince and the Repulse were heavily armed with anti-aircraft guns. The pre-war conventional wisdom was that between this firepower and the watertight compartments, the hulks were virtually unsinkable. When the Japanese proved otherwise the entire playing board of naval warfare turned upside down. In 44 minutes the era of the primacy of surface battleships, which had stood since about 1,000 B.C. ended, went down with the ship.
The battleship as a concept took a real beating. First Pearl Harbor, now this.
The ships at Pearl Harbor had been sitting ducks, but this was another story. The Japanese pilots this time dunked two great ships operating at full speed in the open sea, and did it with ease. For the battleship, Pearl Harbor was bad, but this was worse. Some of the battleships at Pear Harbor weren't even critically damaged.
From now on air power would be a strategic factor in warfare. Air force was no longer just useful in support of naval and ground units. Between Pearl and this it was graduation day for air power, now officially a third power all it’s own. Nothing had happened this dramatic in Europe to signal the demise of the battleship to air power. (The Allies soon became drunk with strategic air power and abused that confidence to the point of hurting the war effort but that is another argument for another section.)
One of the chief advocates of air power before the war was the admirable Admiral Phillips. He was one of the leading proponents of the aircraft carrier and one of the severest critics of the good old battleships. Now he just happened to have been assigned to a situation in which he was proven right but at his own expense. Phillips went down went down with his ship. His last words were, “I told you so!” The commander of the Repulse tried to go down with the ship but his men bodily kidnapped him off the bridge and dragged him off to the rescue. Good for them. To hell with that macho nonsense. The Japanese did that throughout the war and did the enemy a favor. Some of their best officer talent killed themselves when they lost a battle. Thank you, sirs.
Churchill learned about the loss of his battleships the same way everyone else did. The Prime Minister picked up his morning paper the next day and spat out his tea, inadvertently extinguishing his cigar. Churchill had travelled on the Prince of Wales to Newfoundland in 41 to draft the Atlantic Charter with FDR, shaping a better future for the world. Now his ship was the Prince of Whales on the bottom of the sea. Not saying too much for the prospects of making the Atlantic Charter come true.
Japan now had about 15 battleships in the Pacific. The ABDA allies (American British Dutch Australian) had none. The Japanese had 10 large aircraft carriers. ABDA had three. Things were going to get worse before they got better. The Allies couldn't just say “abda-cadabra,” and presto 12 battleships and 12 fleet carriers, 19 heavy cruisers, and 24 escort carriers, all brand new, appear to save the day.
But that day would come in 1943.
DEC-19 - SMALL ITALIAN SUBS WITH THE HOT STUFF
No sooner did London learn of the disaster off Singapore than another naval setback took place in Alexandria harbor, Egypt on Dec 19.
The war historians always stress the failures and incompetence of the Italian Navy, but when Italy did this something exiting and successful it is omitted from most WWII histories. That's a bit unfair. Slam when they have it coming, but praise them when they perform bravely and efficiently. But that isn't the way of most WWII books. They have pre-determined motifs, and anything that ruins that flow is omitted or downplayed. Like if an author thinsk Hitler was stupid and crazy, they omit anything that shows him smart and shrewd. Those who think Hitler was crazy like a fox omit stories that show him a total loony.
The Italian Navy was formidable on parade or on paper, but it fared so badly so consistently in actual combat that the fleet spent most of the war just trying to survive it by not fighting, no matter which side might win. But there were exceptions and the spuckie attack of 12 19 was one of them.
Most WWII buffs (excuse me while I vomit for having used that awful word) are aware that Japan had some wild and crazy one man human torpedo submarines and tried to use them several times, the operative word there being “tried.” But the Italians also had their one man human torpedo submarines too. The difference between the two subs was that the Italian operator was not asked to kill himself, and the Italian mini subs succeeded. They sank two British battleships in Alexandria Harbor! I try to be stingy with exclamation marks, but I think that fact deserves it.
An Italian sub let four Roman midget subs loose outside Alexandria harbor. They slipped past the entrance in the wake of a British destroyer. Four of these subs set timed fuses on a ship well below the water line.
One of the men was captured above ground and interrogated as to what he was doing here. He stammered a lame explanation for a few minutes and then a great explosion rocked a British BB, answering the question. Two battleships sank, a destroyer had its bow busted off, and a tanker took a hit.
This was done partly to get revenge for the British attack on Taranto in 1940 when Albacore Tuna bi-planes from the carrier Ark Royal Pearl Harbored the Italian fleet at bay, before Pearl Harbor was an acceptable verb.
Most military historians discount the strategic value of the sinking of two British BB's in Alex on the 19th of December. The only real value was a big morale boost for Italy and a morale setback for Britian.
I find that hard to believe. Two British battleships in the Eastern Mediterranean go down at a time the Japanese were over-running Asia and the Nazi U-boats were sinking every tanker in sight off the coast of Florida, and you're telling me that it was of no strategic importance.
Historian Marc'Antonio Bragadin says that the Raid on Alexandria gave Italy dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean for several months. What is a student to believe when such contradictions by the professionals clogs the learning pipes? All I can do is either pick a side because I believe one, pick a side just to speed the story along, or give the sides of the dispute and leave it at that.
Again, the most remarkable thing about this exciting story of the Raid on Alexandria is how often it is deliberately forgotten in the war books.
ST PIERRE AND MIQUELON 12 24 1941
Vichy France still administered foreign territory including islands in the Caribbean. Two were located off the coast of Newfoundland. St Pierre and Miquelon were anachronisms left over from the old New World Empire of Jesuit missionaries and fur traders. These two Marshall Petain islands alarmingly close to Canada and Maine.
The Vichy personnel were officially and adamantly neutral, and the US-UK alliance only dealt with Vichy to prevent the Germans from seizing the still formidable French Navy, which was still sitting delicately neutral in French ports. Hitler hadn't seized the French Navy, not yet. The Allies wanted to keep France neutralized. So America supped with the Vichy devils to keep the Vichy deal on the table to help win the military conflict.
But the Free French forces under Chuck de Gaulle had the pride of their flag on the table. They hated and fought Vichy France. It was civil war. The French would rather see Americans and Britons die siding with Vichy, than see the flag of France dishonored, and the Gaullists were obstructionists towards American efforts to treat with Vichy.
The German U-boats were on the attack in the Atlantic from the first week of the US entry into the war and the Allies feared that the radio transmitters on St Pierre and Miquelon would assist the Nazis in sinking Allied shipping without much direct political liability for the Vichy. Therefore the Canadian government, at war with Germany for some time now, decided it would probably soon have to occupy these islands.
De Gaulle approached Churchill about getting permission to raid and seize St. Pierre and Miquelon with his tiny resistance Free French Marine Corps. Winston advised patience and caution. He knew that the Americans would oppose this as disrupting to the strategic agreement in place with Vichy administrations all over the world, and advised De Gaulle that it would be better for the Allies over the long haul if the Canadians did it. A small victory for French pride on two cold little islands a galaxy far far away from the battlefront could lead to major disadvantages for US troops later in North Africa or somewhere else in the line of fire.
De Gaulle ignored Churchill’s advice and at dawn on Christmas Eve, 1941 Free French commandos slipped into the two island harbors. The FF's surprised the 12 Vichy security guards on the two islands. St Pierre and Miquelon was conquered. De Gaulle proclaimed a great victory for France.
The Free French commandos arrested the Vichy governor of the islands. He was led away in handcuffs amidst Free French hecklers yelling “viva de Gaulle,” to which he defiantly yelled back, “viva Petain!”
The American press proclaimed the fabulous news. This angered Secretary of State Cordell Hull who felt that all the work the U.S. State Department had done to reach an accommodation with Vichy France had been undermined by this reckless chauvinist adventure. Cordy spoke his mind to the press. Hull caught hell from the American public and press for condemning the taking of the Pierre/Miquelon fortresses. Cordell remained bitter for some time about these press attacks on him.
Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles praised the action. His boss, Secretary of State Hull, never forgave Sumner for the disloyalty. Hull eventually forced Welles to leave office.
ARCADIA CONFERENCE
Churchill was glad to have Uncle Sam in the war.
He cabled Roosevelt immediately after Hitler declared war on America that he must come to Washington right away. FDR might not have asked him to if Churchill hadn't insisted and he definitely insisted.
Churchill's warship was going very slow in the middle of a protective convoy when Churchill realized they were in a zone within reach of German land-based air power on the coast of northwestern France. He ordered his ship to break out alone at high speed to get out of bomber range, leaving his protective convoy behind.
Marshall, for one, didn't like the idea of this one-on-one with Churchill. General Marshall thought that Churchill could charm and persuade the gullible Roosevelt into following the British agenda on many important matters while selling it to FDR as something vitally necessary for the Allied effort.
One of Marshall (and King's) chief skeptical concerns was that Churchill would plug American resources into various spots all over the globe in order to maintain the British colonial empire. M&K didn't share FDR's deep political antipathy to colonialism, but in a simple nationalistic sense they wanted to make sure that American lives would be lost only in the most noble and immediately critical military enterprises.
The British had organizational advantage. Their military tradition was more deep-rooted, their military brass more experienced and collegiate than the Americans. The American top staff military brains trust were inexperienced and not always on the same page. Right or wrong, the British came to Washington with a definite strategy in mind for every theatre of the war. The Americans had relatively little definite strategy in mind for any theatre.
Many American brass didn't like the British. They thought they were condescending and snobby, a bunch of know-it-alls who think they can laugh at the naïve Americans. According to John D. Eisenhower, this problem wasn't too bad for east coast generals ad admirals, but “west of the Alleghanies” the dislike of the British was open and conscious. Marshall and Churchill had a rough meeting at one point over who would command in the Far East.
Churchill was a guest at the White House. Marshall thought he was leaving the hen with the fox, but FDR came out of the long visit all right. He didn't give away the store to the British. He would save that for the Russians at Yalta.
The meetings began on December 22 and did not finish until January 14 1942. The meetings were code-named ARCADIA.
Churchill was proposing an Allied invasion of western North Africa virtually immediately. But Alan Brooke and Marshall both agreed that this was not a realistic hope. It would be 11 more months before that came off.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Stalin was arguing with British Undersecretary of State Art Cadogan until three in the morning on Dec 20 about the post-war boundaries of Europe. You would think the war was already won by the way these two were going at it about how the spoils to the victors were to be divided.
Stalin was basically insisting that his slimy deals with Hitler from 1939 should stand after the Allies won the war. Russia should be allowed to keep the new boundary of the Oder River, Bessarabia in Rumania (or Romania, however you want to spell it,) plus the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Cadogan was trying to argue that the new alliance was against Hitler and these Soviet territorial grabs were made with Hitler's acquiescence. The USSR should therefore now renounce these acquisitions in the name of the spirit of the Atlantic Charter. Stalin told Cadogan what he could do with his Atlantic Charter and blew a pipeful of smoke in Cadogan's face. Arthur and Joe went at it for hours like two stray cats tied by the tail hanging across a clothes line. It was Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf at the Kremlin. In the end Stalin won because he had the territory, had no intention of giving them up, the UK needed the USSR in the war at least as much as vice verse, and because he could outdrink Art Cadogan. Even though the Wermacht was almost within artillery range of the Kremlin, Stalin negotiated as though the Red Army was almost within artillery range of the Reichstag. “Koba” had murdered people as a teenager. He wasn't about to be intimidated by Sir Arthur Cadogan.
Undersecretary Cadogan reported back to London that it was hopeless. The only way the Western Allies were going to get full cooperation from Russia in the war was to let Stalin have his way on this one. The lands that the Soviet Union seized with Hitler's help, they were going to keep after they all beat Hitler.
At one point in the Arcadia conference it became clear to all that Churchill was physically worn out from all the hard travel and all the tough meetings. Stettinius had a nice place in Palm Beach Florida and offered it to Churchill for a mid-Arcadia break and Winston took him up on it. There he was, the fat old political superstar, sun bathing on the Palm Beach beach like any other tourist for three days, although a few families complained to the lifeguard about his smelly cigar.
Churchill went back to Washington. He and FDR got along great and Churchill liked to wheel him around the White House while they talked. Churchill let FDR to a lot of the talking, which was not easy for Churchill since he was the all time windbag.
Churchill helped to light the National Christmas Tree on Christmas Eve, and thoroughly didn’t enjoy it. He address as joint session of Congress on the day after Christmas and certainly enjoyed it. It was an emotional speech and I’ve heard chunks of it and it made me very emotional.
When it was finally time to leave, Churchill caught a ship to Bermuda and was supposed to catch another one back to England. But that was thought to be too dangerous, what with the U-boats and all. So he took a big Boeing four engine instead. Churchill was sound asleep while the pilot got lost in a fog and ended up flying over French territory where the Nazis could have easily Yammammoto'd the old man. The pilot almost decided to land! But that's not that half of it! When the Boeing found it's bearings and headed back to England, the RAF sent up six Hurricane fighters to shoot it down! It was unidentified and the only reason he survived was that the RAF fighters couldn't find the “hostile” plane! Imagine the sensation in world history if the RAF had shot down Winston Churchill's plane and dunked him dead in the English Channel! It would not have been Britain's finest hour. Nor America's as the dunce pilot was a Yank, like Churchill's mother.
HONG KONG FALLS
On Christmas Day 1941 “the Japs” took Hong Kong. One of the reasons the city had to surrender was lack of fresh water. It would be the same story later at Singapore. Water was as desperately needed as guns.
After Hong Kong surrendered, the men of the Japanese army systematically murdered thousands of Hong Kong's civilians, delivering a message of terror for all the world to hear and fear. Hospitals were the scene of merciless sadistic violence. Japanese soldiers bayoneted helpless patients in their beds for no good reason, then the Japs lined up the doctors and killed them. Then they raped the nurses to death. Merry Christmas. Human nature is 500 times scarier than supernatural monsters in sci-fi horror.
CURTAINS FOR AUSTRALIA
As the year 1941 came to a close, the continent of Australia was the last stronghold of western power and democracy in the Far East Roosevelt and Churchill considered the fall of Australia to be of Paramount Pictures importance.
It was even more unacceptable to Craig Curtain, the Prime Minister of Australia. Curtain made a speech to the Aussie nation on December 29, in which he aligned himself completely with the United States and just about severed his nation's historic ties with England, at least for the expedient moment.
Churchill and Curtain had been quarreling over a number of issues. After December 7, Curtain ordered the Australian troops fighting in North Africa, a full division of them, to go back home to defend Australia. It seemed like the right thing to do.
But when the Australian division was halfway across the Pacific, Churchill decided that these troops were needed in Burma far more than in Australia. He tried to order the Aussie force to Burma, but Curtain stood up to him and demanded that these troops were going home to Australia.
Churchill tried to remind Curtain that Australia wasn't actually in any great danger. The Japanese weren't likely to actually invade Australia, a few raids notwithstanding. On the other hand the Burma front was in the balance and the Australian division would turn the course of battle and help win the war.
Curtain got very mad at this and some sharp words were exchanged between he and Mr. Churchill.
In the middle of these strained relations, Curtain made the speech of December 29, 1941 saying Australia now turns completely to the United States for help.
There was a bad reaction to the speech in England of course, but the Australian people didn't like the speech any more than the British did. Even those listening in the United States didn't think it did anyone a lot of good. Curtain's speech was a diplomatic blunder, although relatively harmless in the long run.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WORLD WAR II 1942
HAPPY NEW YEAR
On January 1 1942 the harassed British forces in Malaya received six new desperately needed landing craft from the US. They were needed for moving troops from one defensive position to another in their delaying action in front of Singapore. Japanese planes sank all six transports within hours of being delivered. Happy New year!
BLACK CODE
In North Africa, Rommel got a nice Happy new Year's telegram from Hitler saying that the boss had every confidence that the glorious Africa Corps will roll up even more impressive victories in 1942 than it did in 1941.
The Nazis opened 1942 in a tactical retreat into central Libya. The Italians blamed all the defeats on Rommel. Rommel blamed all the defeats on the Italians. The retreat was orderly.
One of the reason Hitler's prediction came partly true was because a Nazi spy in Egypt had cracked the Allies secret code, the “Black Code” (not to be confused with the “Black Codes” that were inflicted on the US Southern blacks after the Civil War.) Rommel was aware of every British plan for the first four months of 1941. This not only makes Rommel's “genius” less impressive, it's really a wonder that Rommel didn't perform better than he did!
DECLARATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt that coined the term “United Nations.” Churchill preferred 'Allied Nations' but ‘United Nations’ stuck. FDR's insatiable desire for a Wilsonian post-war utopia led to many bad things. If he had only kept the UN pact conditional on Soviet behavior, the Cold War might have been won before it started.
By the “UN Declaration” of January 1, 1942 the United Nations began. All the nations allied in the fight against Hitler signed it. It included a promise by each state to not make a separate peace with an Axis enemy state. The UN Declaration included an agreement to continue on with the Atlantic Charter as a constitution for how the war should be run and also how it should be concluded.
All of UN Declaration signees pledged to support “religious freedom.” This was a delicate subject with the Communists, i.e. the Russians, whose national religion was atheism.
The Soviets were against religion, (they allowed it, but discouraged it, and many of the priests were secret police) and the Atlantic Charter had said nothing about the subject. FDR took a lot of criticism for forgetting to get Soviet agreement on freedom of religion, a sin of omission back in 41. The US now had to find a way to obtain full UN support for a religious freedom plank without making the Soviets mad. It was solved through semantic hair-splitting by the ever clever Franklin.
FDR told several people how he had persuaded Litvinov to rethink the issue. “Freedom of Religion, ” he told the Russian Foreign Minister, implies that all are religious but are free to pick their favorite one. But, he added, “religious freedom” implies that that atheist, agnostic or anti-religious view was one of these free choices. This wording was acceptable to the Soviet Union. So Litvinov could agree to the wording on “religious freedom,” but not to “freedom of religion.”
FDR’s head speechwriter Sammy Rosenman thought that Roosevelt was naïve to think he had persuaded Litvinov on the basis of this argument. And Rosenman loved Roosevelt. If Rosenman is right, then why did the Soviets concede the issue? Probably because they wanted the lend-lease and a second-front more than they wanted to win a debating point. Besides, they were planning to grant more religious freedom at home anyway, as a war measure. So they took something they were going to do anyway, put up an argument that they refused to do it, then conceded the point, thus making it look like now FDR owed them a favor. They were always more clever than Roosevelt, and he always always thought he was more clever than them.
Soviet internal propaganda was integral to Stalin’s survival. The entire length of the Russian Soviet empire had to remain loyal. If Stalin had to let everyone go to church for a couple of hundred Sundays to win the war, he would do it. He could always close them again after the war, leaving a few show churches open for western photographers. Stalin conceding on religion was Lincoln telling Greeley that if he had to keep all the slaves in bondage to save the union, he would do it. He would sell out his principles, if that's what it took to win the war.
One last note on the Declaration of United Nations; Free France was initially supposed to be included in it, but when De Gaulle ignored Allied wishes to refrain from attacking St Pierre and Miquelon, the Allies in response ignored Free French wishes to be included in the core group of United Nations. Stalin didn't want France in, in any case, and the attack of 12 24 41 helped Stalin get his way.
INVASION VISIONS
The grand strategy of the Allies in Europe over the next four years was a debate between the American desire to attack the continent in full force as soon as possible, and the British desire to wear down Germany first and to invade only when victory seemed overwhelmingly easy. The US wanted to get in and slug it out. Britian wanted to air bomb the Axis to oblivion and then waltz to Berlin through the rubble.
World War One was largely to blame for this division between the two states of mind. The UK had a psychological make-up based on its WWI memory. The Great War was five years of hell on a sluggish stalemated battlefield; 15 rounds of indecisive war with both sides tired but showing no signs of going down; five years of useless astronomical casualties - The Sausage Factory.
The USA had no such fear, for its own WWI experience determined its psychological makeup. America jumped in on one full year of WWI action, and its lasting memory at the end was a smashing breakthrough to victory. The U.S. vision of war was not ‘stuck in the mud.’
RIO CONFERENCE – JANUARY 15-28
The USA needed all of the Americas on its side, or at least at its side. America ended up settling for at its side at the Rio Conference. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles went to Rio as FDR's personal representative.
The ultimate US goal would be to get all the nations of South America to declare war on the Axis powers. That was unrealistic at this time. Of course, they all would do so in late 1943 when it was obvious which bandwagon was worth riding on.
For now, the USA would settle for getting all the “American” nations to break diplomatic relations and sever economic trade with the Axis.
Chile and Argentina were the least co-operative. Brazil was not exactly helpful on the economic issues. But in the end most of the nations did break diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan. In spite of imperfect co-operation, Southie (South America) treated Sumner Welles like royalty wherever he went. Even though there were a lot of issues to be worked out, even the South American nations with large German populations knew that Hitler was evil and so was Nazi Germany. The Rio Conference of January 1942 was a limited yet solid success. The FDR Administration was very concerned about the potential of the Axis to infiltrate the U.S. southern flank, and Rio was a big step towards establishing a malevolent neutrality there towards the Axis.
HOME FRONT STRATEGY 42
Pearl Harbor gave the U.S. population all the morale it needed at first. But when the battlefields turned up nothing but bad news for months it was time to put the government to work on the ‘hearts and minds’ issue at home. Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels gloated in early 1942 that “the big mouth blowhard Roosevelt is losing support at home because he has no victories to show for all his talk.” He was right (and it takes one to know one, knave.)
American officials stressed that the major enemy was Hitler. Japan and Italy were “secondary fronts.” The Dutch and the Chinese objected strongly. The son of Sun Yat Sen, declared that China might have to seek a separate peace with the Japanese if the Americans maintained this attitude. The administration backed down a little, but for the entire war there was never any debate among the leaders of the US, both military and civilian. Most of the effort had to be directed against Germany. GI's and Marines in the Pacific would have to fight for years with limited resources.
But this was problematic. Most Americans were not one fifth as angry at Hitler as they were at “the Japs.” It was hard for many, if not most to accept that Japan was a sideshow compared to the real war against Hitler.
Another major problem FDR faced was the contradiction of soliciting big business to help him win the war when all he had done for the first 10 years in office was to try and destroy it. The ‘economic royalists’ he had hit so hard and often with his left fist of socialism now had to come on board. It wasn’t an easy political situation to get though.
For starters FDR had to lay off the anti-trust prosecutions throughout the war as the price of doing business with big business. Many New Dealers were angry at him for this compromise, but he could hardly get GM and General Electric on his side while trying at he same time to bust them up like his ol' second cousin Teddy. Politics makes strange bedfellows, while war makes overt prostitutes. FDR consistently alienated many of the best and most sincere veteran New Dealers throughout the war. They felt he was compromising their domestic hopes and dreams. Roosevelt tried to appease them by declaring hope for a New Deal for the entire world after the war was won, but it was just empty rhetoric.
OC OWI
To make sure everyone understood that the war was a struggle in defense of freedom, Roosevelt immediately after Pearl Harbor set up the Office of Censorship. The OC scrutinized all media for violations. The OC regularly opened the personal letters of all soldiers and citizens.
The FDR team also established the OWI, the Office of War Information, to promote the cause to the people. It should have been called the OWP the Office of War Propaganda.
Roosevelt gave an important ‘Fireside chat’ speech to the nation by radio on Washington’s Birthday 1942. You might call it ‘map night’ in America. Roosevelt asked the newspapers of the country to print large maps of the world war zones to help his listeners follow the speech. The papers complied and the President gave a long radio address outlining the situation all over the world as millions of Americans pored over the maps and focused on his serious message.
Hitler had to be the number one priority. The people didn’t want to hear this but Roosevelt didn’t sugar-coat it. To be sure, Japan was threatening to take not only all of southeast Asia and the Indonesian region, and was also capable of threatening Australia and India. The Allies feared Japan linking up with Germany in the Middle East. Roosevelt admitted these threats were real, but ..
The problem was that the distance was too great and the enemy too scattered in the Pacific. The forces he sent over there might prove both ineffective and too vulnerable at this time. Fighter planes had to be shipped over in crates on freighters. It was risky. A single Japanese torpedo could sink several squadrons of top-notch new air planes.
Roosevelt believed (or pretended to believe) that Japan had largely entered the war as part of an Axis grand strategy to divert Allied forces and supplies from the European theatre to the Asian and thus help the Germans win their war. He wasn’t going to take the bait, he told America. He said that nothing would have pleased the Germans more than to see the USA send all its might against Japan while putting the German front on the back burner.
We know today that the Axis was not as closely knit as all that, and no such clever Axis grand strategy existed. Japan did not enter the war to help relieve the pressure on the Russian or North African front. But Roosevelt’s assertion of such a plan was a logical fear at the time for any citizen to embrace. FDR may not have even actually believed this, and may have merely used it as an excuse to sell the 'Smash Germany First' plan to the US public.
It was a good speech, coming one day after his address to Congress in which he said that we would pay the Axis back ‘with compound interest.’(while twisting his fist menacingly on the syllable 'pound.' - his live audience appreciated it))
The fireside chat included a pithy satire on Hitler’s quest for ‘living space.’ Roosevelt said that “the world is too small to provide adequate living space for both Hitler and God.”
Good one.
“The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war,” he continued, “but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it.”
That's right on, brother.
THE RAT IN THE HAT– JAPANESE INTERNMENT
Shortly after Pearl Harbor Washington considered a plan to take all the Japanese Americans and put them into special camps so they could not commit sabotage against the United States. In the eyes of suspicious traumatized Americans they were Japanese first and Americans second, or, as a Mississippi Senator cried in Congress, “Once a Jap, always a Jap.” What he might have added is “Once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist.”
Many California politicians called out for inglorious internment. Attorney General Warren of California pleaded for federal protection and claimed to speak for every sheriff in the state. No one should question his redneck veracity. This was the same Earl Warren whose famed Warren Commission 24 years later would conclude that a one lone gunman named Oswald killed JFK.
An ostensibly liberal New York newspaper, P.M., led the call for imprisoning the Japanese-Americans. P.M. published a series of cartoons depicting Japanese-Americans on the west coast planning violent acts against the USA. One drawing showed very slanty Japanese-Americans in a long line wearing evil smiles outside of a private residence waiting to pick up their load of dynamite. Another drawing showed two Japanese men smiling in front of the radio saying to each other “Remember Pearl Harbor.” The author of the cartoons was none other than Theodore Geisel, the man who drew and wrote The Cat in the Hat, and all the later famous Dr. Seuss children's books.
You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch!
Many on the FDR team were against internment. At a critical White House meeting it was FDR who pushed the idea forcefully. The very white Dutchman would not back down on his yellow policy.
A few of his advisors liked it (Morganthau for one) but not most. Even J. Edgar Hoover protested to Roosevelt that these folks were loyal Americans and the FBI had discovered absolutely no evidence that Japanese-Americans were planning any acts of sabotage against the United States Government. Attorney General Frank Biddle told Roosevelt, “You cannot do this. It is wrong in every way.” Roosevelt just stared at him. Assistant AG Jim Rowe worked up the nerve to express his disapproval and give Roosevelt his best angry stare. Harold Ickes said the idea was “cruel and moronic.” FDR became more angry and said, “I'm going to do it. So stop wasting time and energy debating it.”
Roosevelt then went one step further than anyone else had ever contemplated. He insisted on Feb 26, 1942 that all the Japanese-Americans on Hawaii should be shipped east and interned (a euphemism for imprisoned.) Roosevelt scoffed at those who disagreed, reminding them that Hawaii was under martial law, so the Constitution didn't apply at the moment (as if it ever had for Roosevelt.) FDR backed off only because his military chiefs told him that Japanese-American skilled workers in Hawaii were indispensable for the war effort. The Hawaiian slanties could remain there after all.
When Teddy Geisel heard that the Japanese in Hawaii would remain he vowed revenge. The great cartoonist wrote a Christmas tale about a half-human monster that tries to steal Christmas and he made the bad guy look remarkably Japanese. I'm sort of joking, but the Grinch that Stole Christmas really does look sort of an Asian monster.
THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES
The Japanese made several small landings on northern Luzon from December 8-21 1941, then landed in attack force on the center west part of the island at Lingayen Gulf on December 22. General Jack Wainwright in command of the LDF (Luzon Defense Force) met the enemy on the beaches at Lingayen. His mostly Philippino troops fought hard ... for a moment or so, then the green brown troops fled in terror. The Japanese were marching easily towards Manila.
On Christmas Eve 41 the Japanese made a holly jolly landing on Lamon Bay on the southeast part of Luzon. General Parker led the outgunned and out-trained SLF (South Luzon Force) to meet the enemy on Lamon Beach. SLF really stood for “so long folks.” The cowards broke and ran, just as I would have done ten times out of ten in that situation. The two invading Japanese divisions started a classic military “sandwich movement” (a few old fogies still say “pincer'”) to conquer Luzon.
Lt. General Homma (pronounced 'eemoo') was in overall command of the rats in the house of Mike Quezon.
The Japanese hoped to engage the Americans and Philippinos in a decisive battle for the City of Manila. But MacArthur and Wainright avoided that. The U.S. Army evacuated Manila and, dodging the sandwich trap, fell back to a defensive front on the Bataan peninsula.
The escape to Bataan was a close call. The key choke point was the Calumpit Bridge where the highway from North Luzon to Manila connected with the highway to Bataan. The American-Philippino forces had a dramatic time getting back over that bridge to Bataan. Forward units of Homma's 14th Army were actually on the Claumpit Bridge when the US Army blew it sky high, sending about 200 Japanese men to meet the Sun God.
The siege of Bataan and Corregidor would last through the first three months of 1942. Wainwright and Parker set up a defensive line near the middle of the Peninsula from Mauban on the west coast of Bataan to Abucay on the east.
Supplies of all kinds were scarce, and grew more scarce daily from December 8 to capitulation on April 8.
On January 5 all Allied personnel went on half rations. Medicine was as desperately needed as food and guns. Nearly half the troops had malaria. Beri-beri and dysentery made things very scary. Dengue and hookworm did their worst. I don't know what either one of them are and don't want to know. I looked up beri-beri and that's enough for me for now.
On January 9 Masa Homma hit the Abucay Line hard with a suicidal assault. I and II Corps under Wainwright and Parker held the line. On January 11 Homma's homies hit the Abucay line again with all the maniacal courage it could muster. Parker's II Corps tallied 212 yellow corpses, while suffering less than half that in white/brown dead. But too much energy and material was drained in the effort. Holding the line had weakened it. Most campaigns are decided by attrition, as much as courage or strategy The Allies lost even when they won in this situation. All fighting paradoxically hastened the inevitable bad ending.
On the 14th, Homma's 14th Army broke through the western Mauban sector of the line near Mt Natib (which I climbed in 2002, all 1,247 meters of it, and my right ankle still regrets it – It is in Bataan National Park.) Wainwrights I Corps didn't hold as well as Parker's II Corps and MacArthur decided to fall back to the second BDL (Bataan defensive line) of Orion-Bagac (Orion on the west coast and Bagac on the east.) Def-line 2 was called the Orion Line, and I have no idea why the east coast anchors got both lines named after them, possibly because the east coast is hipper.
This new line was only 13.2 miles across Bataan. MacArthur cabled General Marshall that, “I intend to slug it out until my forces are completely destroyed.” Marshall cabled back that suicide was not necessary, and MacArthur didn't return the e-mail.
The IJA made some “little Inchon” landings behind the Orion Line on Bataan on January 22. Motley crew brigades of Allied forces fought well against these Japanese troops, and MacArthur writes as though these invaders were gloriously annihilated, but the tactic contributed plenty to Americo-Philippino panic and despair.
Nevertheless, the Orion-Bagac Line held. General Homma decided he would need help from Tokyo if they expected him to crack the line. The Japanese made a calculated withdrawal to a defense line of their own. The entire month of February was a stand-off on Bataan. The Japanese would not resume their march until mid-March.
During the six week lull, the Japanese conquered two thirds of the South Pacific. That'll put a damper on your faint hopes if you're stuck on Bataan in February 1942.
The six-week delay was murderous starvation and sickness on the Allies. The Japanese weren't eating like kings but they weren't eating like desperate dogs either. Mac's men and women began to eat their pack animals, like the lovely carabao. I had a neighbor in Austin Texas who had a carabao as a pet. “Metzger” was a real sweetheart. I thought of my gentle neighbor (the carabao) with sadness when I read that the Bataan defenders ate caraburgers to get them through February. When they ran of carabao, someone told them, “don't worry the cavalry is on the way to the rescue!” Yes, by week six the men were eating their cavalry horses. “Thunderburgers” (the only horse I ever rode was named “Thunder” and almost killed me... I was 12) were edible but there was going to be nothing left after that but bugs and rats or Tropicana Hotel employee cafeteria food which no one should eat ever.
UNCLE SHAM
The Americans and Philippinos called FDR and begged for reinforcements. FDR had apparently misplaced his hearing aids. The top brass had decided at the ARCADIA conference that the Allies could not save the Philippines, and to reinforce the garrison there would do no good at all. The arms sent to Phil would probably fall into enemy hands. More important, the leaders in Washington had made a definite decision that because Hitler was priority one, they could spare nothing substantial for the Pacific right now, even if it might rescue a desperate, brave, loyal, hard-fighting coalition of U.S. and Philippino soldiers.
President Quezon of the Philippines was furious with Roosevelt for abandoning Bill McKinley's “little brown brothers.” He sent POTUS some testy telegrams. My favorite one,
“My Dear Franklin,
You promised us before the war that you would never
abandon us. Now you are abandoning us. URA liar!”
Sincerely,
Mike Quezon
News reports came in from all over the world about the tremendous amount of fresh American material aid that was going to Russia. Quezon and the ordinary citizen were deeply hurt emotionally by this. Here we are dying and fighting and starving, an ally you pledged to help and protect and never abandon, and you send a zillion pounds of guns and food to Russia? Russia that made the pact with Hitler, invade Finland, and tried to start revolutions in all the western democracies? There were about 20 countries ahead of the Philippines in the supply que.
MacArthur told his army that thousands of fresh troops were on the way, along with hundreds of planes, and a dozen warships. Mac knew it was a bunch of carabao-chips, a desperate ruse to maintain morale. Douglas was wrong for lying like that.
Tokyo meanwhile answered General Home's request for reinforcements with a needling reminder that every other front is reporting one victory after another after another, so what's the deal with your Philippines? They sent them anyway, of course.
President Quezon cabled FDR that if you won't help us, then at least grant Philippine independence immediately. Then PQ will declare Philippine neutrality in the war. Then both the United States and Japan will have to withdraw from Philippine territory.
He really said this.
Was Queen foolish enough to believe this would work even if FDR had said yes? The Japanese were doing a Ghengis Kahn on the entire Far East and Q thinks they're going to evacuate a strategic island, conquered in blood, because of a transparently lame restructuring of the Philippine government. I hope MQ was just trying to influence FDR. I don't want to think that Queen was dumber than a carabao. FDR responded with a no. He would not declare the Philippines independent.
Nations win independence by winning a war, not by losing one, and it was a stupid idea. Quezon had nothing to lose by trying.
Near the end of March, a reinforced Homma resumed the attack on Bataan. Homma's IJA broke the Orion Line and it was every man for himself!
Then MacArthur retreated (he'd never put it that way) to the small island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Harbor. Corregidor was a tiny mountainous island and had a large underground bunker where a few thousand people could live and fight on, while the bombs fell overhead.
President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to evacuate the Philippines and go to Australia where he could use his skills and fame to continue the war from there. He was to go down under to prepare for the big counter-attack.
What Franklin didn't tell MacArthur was that Australia might not even survive the next attack, and FDR wanted MacArthur there for a last ditch stand there.
Mac didn't want to leave the rock. FDR insisted that he leave. MacArthur considered defying a direct presidential order. One of MacArthur's close aides suggested to him that a counteroffensive strike was obviously being planned and organized in Australia and that was obviously why FDR wanted him there. This satisfied Douggie just enough to persuade him to evacuate with family out of there. Up to this point the big Mac was risking that his family could die in a Japanese internment camp.
The Navy arranged to slip MacArthur out of Corregidor at night on a submarine. But that was too wimpy for MacArthur's taste. He insisted on the more dangerous PT boat as the means of escape. It would look better in the history books. So what if his family might be killed by a Japanese destroyer? On March 12 1942 Mac and family boarded a fast PT boat. It slipped through the Japanese blockade around Luzon soon dropped them all off on Mindanao island. MacArthur jumped in a B-17 Flying Albatross and was soon safely in Australia.
The United States, as a strategic war measure, abandoned the Philippines and the American defenders on it. The promises made to the Philippine people before the war, that Uncle Sam would always be to protect his “little brown brother” were an Uncle Sham.
MAC MELBOURNE
Doug was astonished to learn that there was no counteroffensive being planned. He was stunned to learn that there wasn't even a single trained division on the island, not even an Australian one. There were no reinforcements on the way to the Philippines, nor were there any headed towards Australia.
FDR and the Joint Chiefs felt that the only way Australia could be heftily reinforced at this time would at a price risk too high. Insuring Australia would weaken the defenses of the West Coast of the USA or the defense of the Panama Canal, neither of which were acceptable in Washington. Australia would just have to hang on for now, until American war industry could get its wheels turning for war production.
So the Allies not only abandoned the Philippines. They weren't even sending any reinforcements for Australia. MacArthur was so mad when he found all this out that he tossed a fully lit pipe through a closed window. Then he went out and gave a speech to a crowd of cheering Assisi in Melbourne in which he uttered the immortal phrase, “I came through from the Philippines and I shall return.”
ADBA military chiefs began to plan a fallback defensive operation for Australia when (not if) the Japanese invaded. The northern third of the continent (it is not an island) would be sacrificed and the Allies would defend the more populated southern half to the death. MacArthur told them what they could do with this plan. He wanted everyone to think offense. Even a small offensive operation would send a signal of immense psychological value to the enemy and to the Allied troops.
FALL OF BATAAN
General Homma started the go for broke offensive in Bataan on April 3. There was a heavy artillery bombardment of Allied positions followed by a crazed bayonet charge and several miles of advancement. The next three days were just like the first one.
The Americo-Philippinos were beaten. 80% were seriously ill or wounded. They had no defense against the air and artillery power of the Japanese, whose infantry probably could have run up the score without air and artillery help anyway.
General King, in charge of the Army in Bataan, asked MacArthur for permission to surrender, but Mac said no, fight to the last fool.
On April 8, the King surrendered his crown. Homma had his big victory. Bataan was part of Nippon. But there was still “The Rock.”
FALL OF CORREGIDOR
Back at the rock General Wainwright hunkered down as Japanese ships and planes and artillery shelled Corregidor. The Japanese had to clear the rock because it controlled the entrance to Manila Harbor, and the Japanese could not use Manila as a resource until the round-eyes surrendered Coregidor. Japan had the bottle of Manila wine, but the good guys “had the cork.”
The men trapped on Corregidor could hold on under Malinta Hill, the strongest rock on the rocky little tadpole shaped island, but the defenders could not inflict casualties on the enemy. They just sat there starving, wounded, hopeless and under orders from macho-Mac to not surrender. It was Hitlerian idiocy to demand this of Wainwright.
The Japanese landed on Corregidor on May 5. The next day, Wainwright raised the white flag over The Rock. Corregidor and the Americans and their little brown brothers fell into the hell of Japanese captivity.
General Homma wanted a general surrender. That means he wanted Allied forces on all Philippine islands to surrender. The Japanese hadn't fully conquered all of the southern islands. The Philippine government, in fact, had never fully controlled these wild unruly islands, where Islam was more popular than Christianity. The largest of these were Panay, Cebu and Mindanao. Wainwright knew that the Japanese were in the process of taking these islands and it was best to spare them the scars of war. The Allied forces in the south were forced by their own commander to surrender. Of course thousands of fighters fled to the hills and jungle to carry on guerilla warfare against the rising sons for the next three and a half years.
“REMEMBER BATAAN”
The Japanese had some prisoners to deal with and they knew only one way of dealing with them. What the Japanese did to the surrendered American soldiers and their Philippino native allies makes the entire revenge part of the end of WWII entirely justified for me. When word got out of the way the Japanese had tortured Allied PW's, and the Americans in particular, it made the USA insane with rage, and therefore guilty only of temporary insanity when it dropped the a-bombs in 45. Fighting hard in combat is brave. Torturing prisoners is yellow.
The famous Bataan Death March was the long walk back north up the peninsula to a place called Camp Frank O'Donnell. More than 22,000 PW's died in the first seven weeks after making it there. But several thousand more died on the way from hand-to-hand brutality.
The Japanese denied the prisoners of Bataan and Corregidor food, water, rest, and all medical attention. Those who stopped to bend over and cough were beaten in the stomach. A prisoner who fell down would get bayoneted through the shoulder and then yelled at to get up and keep going. The good guys were slapped, kicked, beaten, stabbed, shot, and spat on. The Japanese guards laughed as they tortured and killed at least 4,000 Prisoners of War who were doing the Walk for Hunger. This type of brutality against prisoners of war was rare in World War One. What happened to the “March of Progress”? Civilization was marching backwards to Bataan. Americans were shocked to learn of Bataan. 4,000. That's a WTC-sized mass murder with each individual tortured also.
The men running the torture show were the Japanese Army vets of Nanking and Hong Kong. They'd already killed and raped thousands of Chinese female civilians just for kicks. It was actually no big deal for them to torture and kill American and Philippino Prisoners of War as they marched them off to summer camp.
Historians enjoy mentioning that these PW's wrote a poem about themselves called, “The Battling Bastards of Bataan.” They quote it in full usually. It's a useless poem. I think the historians cite it because they get to quote a swear, without any of the responsibility for saying it themselves. That was a huge swear in 1942.
These bastards didn't suffer in vain. The BB's stimulated American morale 50 times better than they could have if the Nips had treated them decently, and better than if they had held on another two months and not surrendered. Bataan doubled up the vengeful spirit of Pearl Harbor. The sneak attack that killed 2,500 sailors was bad enough, now the Nips were torturing and murdering American and Philippino prisoners, and raping the civilians too.
Language note (P.C. says I'm not allowed to say “Japs” even though it was used 889 trillion times during WWII by everybody, including President Roosevelt the greatest liberal of al time... but P.C. never got around to banning “Nips” - short for sons of Nippon – My algebra teacher told us a joke before class in 1972 – He said “The weather today is a Japanese pilot.... there's a little nip in the air.” .. We forced a smile. Not a bad joke, but he was too milquetoast to make any joke seem really funny. Today, 'Jap' is far more offensive than 'bastards' – who in 42 would have figured that?)
When Doug Mac heard that Wainwright had surrendered Corregidor he hit the roof. Easy for him to say from an air- conditioned bivouac in Perth. What was Wainwright supposed to do, just sit there and watch his men die? They had no offensive capability at all. They all signed to fight for their country, not sit still and die. That's not the American way. That's not what the United States asks of its troops. That's part of the reason American military morale remains consistently high. No one left behind means a lot when you're thinking of signing on as a volunteer. Sorry Doug, only totalitarian states make suicide a normal part of a soldier's duty.
Most histories of the war assert that the defensive holding action by Mac, King, and Wainwright in the Philippines served a strategic purpose for the Allies by slowing down the Japanese strike south by several weeks. Mac brags about it, of course. But that opinion has been largely revised. Now the consensus seems to be that it made little or no difference in the meatball timetable. The first version may have been wishful thinking by loyal American writers who wanted to salute the Battling you-know-whats by exaggerating the importance of their fight.
Sadly, the brave defenders of Bataan and Corregidor contributed far more to the Allied effort by their suffering than they did by their fighting.
THE SICKNIPS
What drove the Japanese soldiers to such sick barbarism?
Firstly, this was Asia, not Europe. Even back in 1776 each continent had its own rules. Asia was the coldest. “Life is cheap in the east” went the phrase. Prisoners were despicable cowards, not only to the Japanese in 1942, but also to the Chinese in 1842 or the Malayans in 1799. Ghengis Kahn didn't take any prisoners. Julius Caesar put his prisoners to work as slaves. It was a different mindset, a continental divide.
This 'slay the prisoners' attitude is always attributed to the Japanese military mindset of 1942 but it goes deeper and farther back than that. American shipwrecked sailors who landed on Japan in the early 1800's were hacked to death as soon as they waved hello to their rescuers. That was the mentality of Asia. US GI's ran up against this shocking reality in Bataan in 1942 and in Vietnam in the 1960's.
Another factor is that Japanese troops were like the adult serial killer, beaten every day of their childhood by their father. It doesn't absolve them, but it explains them. Japanese war memoirs describe a life of hell in training. The Japanese draftee was beaten severely for the most trivial offense from the first day of boot camp. Japanese training officers made the rough sarge in Full Metal Jacket look like a marshmallow. Officers didn't beat the trainees just to train them, they did it for fun, as part of a cultural poison, like frat seniors beating up the freshmen just because they went through the same thing four years ago. We can't expect any of them to act mercifully towards PWs years later, and after weeks of hard combat? It was a little late for the Japanese foot soldiers to change their ways. You have to nip that “seed of rot” in the bud.
Lastly, the Japanese were following orders. The cruelty was ordered from the top down. It was a chain of evil that reached eventually all the way back to the Emperor and his wicked brother-in-lawless. Nanking and Bataan were not spontaneous. The myth is the opposite, that the top brass couldn't control what happened in the trenches. The lower troops wouldn't dare defy the desires of the higher ups, that's what I say. The lower ranks knew extreme discipline, no one denies that, who would think that these guys would take the risk of raping and killing civilians if the brass didn't wink-wink the ok at the very least. These troops got beatings for having a shoe untied, you're going to tell me they'd just go torture prisoners and rape nurses to death spontaneously, not fearing reprisals from their officers.
ABDA CADABRA
As 1942 opened there was a sense of panic in Australia. Japan had conquered far more than anyone had dreamed possible. It looked like Malaya would fall soon and Singapore could not hold out much longer after that. What would be the strategy for the ABDA coalition? The Americans, the British, the Dutch and the Australians didn’t have many good options.
Curtain and Churchill continued quarreling. Prime Minister Curtin of Australia wrote to Churchill begging for serious reinforcements for the Malayan front. If Singapore fell the Australians would consider their country more of less defenseless. Then it would be curtains for Curtin the land down under goes under. Half way measures would be a wasted effort, wrote the Aussie PM. If serious help isn’t on the way, the British could kiss the entire south-Asia front good-bye.
Curtin added a dig in one note to Winnie at the British failures at Crete and Greece. He warned that if the British failed to provide air support for Malaya, the same thing would happen here as at Crete and Greece.
Churchill responded with a testy letter back to Curtin explaining that JC should be grateful for what supplies were heading to Southeast Asia as it is. With the battle for North Africa still hanging in the balance and the threat of a link between the German armies heading south from the Baku oil fields and Rommel’s threat take the Suez still real, surely Curtin could expect only small help. And Winston didn’t appreciate being called out for his failures at Crete and Greece. He had warned the world for all of the 1930’s about the Nazi menace and was laughed off the floor of Parliament by the leftists and labor. Now he was being taken to task for not running the war properly when it was he all along that had pleaded for the defense build-up needed before the war started.
How was anyone to know, wrote Churchill, that the US Pacific fleet would perish at Pearl Harbor in 48 minutes and change the balance of power in the Pacific? And no one in England, Singapore, or Washington had expected Japanese planes to “sink the Repulse and Prince of Wales in the time it takes to make a pizza.” The USUK alliance had taken adequate measures to protect Australia. But the alliance had not foreseen the unforeseeable, and who can blame anyone for that now? It was indeed too late to get adequate reinforcements to Malaya, hence protecting Australia. So the only thing left was to retreat to Singapore and hold on for dear life until America could transfer some warships from the Atlantic, and jump-start its two-ocean navy construction program.
The American fleet was supposed to play the stepfather looking after the Aussies. But Sam was passed out at in the back alley of a bar called Pearl Harbor and wasn’t coming home to protect the family for a while. You kids are just going to have to take care of yourselves for a few nights.
Churchill also questioned the fairness of the Australian criticism in light of its own record. Australia’s volunteer divisions had fought hard and well against he Nazis in the Middle East, but the continent-nation still did not have a mandatory military draft in effect in this desperate hour. If you want to blame somebody, look in the mirror at the Labor Party in both countries whose policy of appeasement had created this entire mess in the first place, suggested Churchill.
The e-mail fight between the two Prime Ministers is fun reading. Curtin reportedly drafted a letter calling Churchill and ‘ugly arrogant twit,’ but never mailed it.
A WORD ON MITCHELISM
The sinking of the British Singapore war wagons did not mean the end of naval power by a long shot and this is where our old friend Billy Mitchell was wrong. Billy had predicted that long-range land-based armed aircraft would soon make all naval war obsolete. BM was against building the two-ocean navy and was against building aircraft carriers.
But it was the aircraft carrier, properly protected by surface battleships, that would now become the most important strategic element in the fight. Naval power had not been reduced to nil as Mitchell had prophesied. It had simply been reconstituted in a different formula. Mitchell also underrated the ability of the defense to keep up with the offense. The power of a screen of destroyers and cruisers with modern ack-ack was more than enough to keep carriers relatively safe. Mitchell had preached against carriers because they could not be protected. They were too vulnerable. Only land-based four or six engine air power was strategic anymore.
In fact, land-based strategic air did not turn the tide in either theatre until it the summer of 1945 when it polished off the Pacific War with fire raids and two atomic bombs. Naval power reigned supreme from start to finish. World War II in the Pacific was a war between aircraft carriers, not land based super-bombers. The myth is that Mitchell was the word's genius prophet who wanted the United States to build 40 aircraft carriers while the old squares at Annapolis still preached the superiority of the battleship.
Willie Mitchell thought that the Navy was useless except as a support group for strategic land-based air power. He would have taken half the funds out of the Navy and given it to the AAF if he had the authority.
FIRE IN NEW YORK - THE NORMANDIE 2-9-42
The French luxury ocean liner Normandie was sitting at Pier 88 in New York City in the cold wee hours of February 9 when a fire broke out aboard ship that was to last all day.
The Normandie was one of the biggest and greatest liners in the world. It was over a thousand feet long and many famous rich people cruised it. The lounge comedian was Maurice Chevalier, that's how prestigious this ship was.
When France surrendered to Germany in May of 1940 the Normandie was docked in New York. President Roosevelt and the Feds concocted some technical reason to hold the ship up there indefinitely so that it couldn't steam back to Vichy France and end up ferrying Nazi troops to North Africa or something. After Germany declared war on America, Roosevelt ordered the Normandie officially seized by the US government as a war prize. That was on December 12, 1941.
There had been a lot of plans to convert the Normandie into an aircraft carrier, but the Navy decided to convert it into a troop carrier instead. The new name for the ship would be the LaFayette, after the Revolutionary war hero.
This work on converting the French liner into an American GI Joe carrier was under way around the clock when the fire broke out on February 9 at 2 a.m.
By two in the afternoon the liner was on fire and listing from all the water poured into her from the firefighter boats. The design of the LaFayette was a little top-heavy as can be seen from many paintings and photos of it. Late in the afternoon the titanic LaFayette capsized in New York Harbor.
Countless thousands lined up for days to walk past the dock and see the smouldering goliath. The headlines screamed sabotage. Several Nazi saboteurs had been tried and sentenced recently for proved activities along the east coast. For many months is was generally accepted that this was a Nazi attack on U.S. soil. It was a real downer for the people of New York to see the ship there, and know it was sabotage.
One year later the investigations all concluded that it was the mistake of a drunken American welder that started the fire. The Germans had not successfully attacked New York City after all.
The Normandie-LaFayette was still a downer eye-sore for NYC for the rest fo the war. It sat on its side in NY harbor for almost three years.
It cost 3.6 million dollars and more months to turn the ship back up. It wasn't worth it. A lot of lives could have been saved if they had just let it sit there until the war wrapped up. 3.6 is one chunk of change in 1942. But the US thought the LaFayette could be put to use before the war ended. They were wrong and the Normandie was junked to a Brooklyn yard for scrap metal in 1946.
One minute you're the greatest luxury liner in the world, the next you're tied up in limbo, set on fire, capsized and sent to the junkyard.
THEY'LL SLAYA IN MALAYA
Back in Malaya the Japanese won almost every battle and continued to advance on Singapore at a rate never dreamed possible before the war.
A small but powerful Allied fleet of reinforcements was on the way. Included were 50 modern Hurricane fighters, much an upgrade over the Wildebeest fighter planes in service. All available Allied air power was diverted from ground support to convoy protection. These ships had to get through if Singapore could hope to survive. But the ground campaign suffered for lost air protection. The convoy got through and the 50 Hurricanes put up a good fight but were soon reduced to nil from sheer inferiority in numbers.
The Allies were ill prepared in countless ways. The opposite was true for the Japanese. Their spies had even set up several depots full of bicycles deep in the Malayan jungle before the war began. Soldiers landing at Kota Bharu headed straight for the bike shacks and were soon biking their way towards Singapore with a rifle in their backpack.
War Map of Malaya January 1942
The Japanese took Jehore province and closed in on Singapore Island. Singapore was supposed to be a fortress, but there was a big problem. Singapore’s expensive and powerful defenses were designed only to repel an attack in the south, an attack from the sea. There were virtually no defenses to speak of against an attack from behind on the land side. The Japanese only had to cross a river. It was a classic military blunder. Churchill and his Asian military commanders exchanged a lot of blame-throwing telegrams across the oceans while the sky fell on the Malayan front. The Prime Minister sent over a long list of obvious things to do with a tone that these talking point suggestions would somehow turn the tide if only they were followed strictly. The defenders sent back telegrams suggesting that these suggestions were being tried and were of no use. The diplo-spat translated reads ‘We’re getting killed over here while you’re pointing fingers at us telling us that we aren’t doing things properly, and we weren’t intelligently prepared. Thanks for the help, friend.’
Churchill did had reinforcements on the way to Singapore but began to have second thoughts. He began hinting to his colleagues in London that maybe it was a dumb idea to send reinforcements to Singapore. What a waste in this desperate hour to send reinforcements to Singapore when it was surely doomed. It was throwing resources away! Why not do the only wise thing and keep those reinforcement moving on to Burma instead. This was a place where they could make a decisive difference. Churchill stirred up the subject but it created a storm of indignation both in London and in Singapore, and deservedly. The leaders in Singapore wrote that the mere idea was a stab in the back. Singapore had been begging for more defensive help in the years before the war and had been told, ‘don’t worry, if war breaks out we will be there for you.’ Now that they were losing the war for the Malay peninsula the UK was going to say, ‘hey we don’t remember saying that.’ So much for leaving no one behind.
Churchill sat back quietly as the debate went on, and leaked out to the press that the reinforcements for Singapore might go to Burma. Most people forgot, or didn't know, that Churchill had originated the idea. In the end, Singapore got the reinforcements that Churchill wanted to divert to Burma.
The Japanese landed well north of Singapore, high up on the Malay peninsula. After fighting to Singapore island on land, they were able to invest the city from behind and force its surrender.
With the Japanese closing in on Singapore City, Churchill sent on February 10, 1942 a telegram to its defenders.
“I think you ought to realize the way we view [from here in
London] the situation in Singapore. … In these circumstances
the defenders must greatly outnumber Japanese forces who
have crossed the straights, and in a well-contested battle they
should destroy them. There must at this stage be no thought
of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must
be fought to the bitter end at all costs. The 18th division has a
chance to make its name in history. Commanders and senior
officers should die with their troops. … the whole reputation
of our country and our race is involved.”
What a perfectly murderous thing to suggest. When Winston was in the Boer War he escaped from a PW camp. He didn’t try to kill five Boer guards and die for the cause. His instinct was survival. Soldiers in a modern democracy aren’t told to fight to the death. That isn’t fair. That’s what Hitler tried to make the defenders do on the Russian front, and it’s a shame to see such orders being sent out in a war crisis to democratic fighting men.
Winston could not countenance the political fallout from the ignoble loss of Singapore, so therefore everyone had to die, even civilians, to buy some time. No British unit in North Africa faced such a dire command, but Singapore was special. Churchill specifically mentioned the hard fight the Americans were putting on at Luzon and how we couldn’t get shown up that way either.
But Winston did at least concede that the Japanese would not be defeated easily. He allowed that it would be a “well-contested battle.” But you guys are now under orders to not lose. Before, you were taking your chances fair and square on the battlefield like any other soldiers in all of history, but now since Winston has spoken, it was 'No surrender allowed. Amigo. ... I’m giving you orders.'
The volunteer military garrisons defending Malaya and Singapore were not well trained. Many became terrorized by stories about Japanese atrocities and fanaticism on the battlefield. Morale was low even before the battles were joined, and the inferiority in equipment and firepower was a mega-downer.
The scene at the Alexandra Barracks Hospital on Singapore island said it all about the nature of the two forces. ABH was located on the northern part of the island. A regiment of Nanking veterans of the 16th Division snuck in behind the lines and took the hospital by surprise on February 13. There were no troops defending the place so it would be irrelevant to say that the hospital “surrendered.”
The Japanese knew what to do when they entered the emergency room and spoke to the receptionist. They killed her. Then the troops made the rounds like priests and rabbis visiting the terminally ill. They killed more than 300 people in the most savage manner, including 230 patients in their beds or on operating tables. They didn't waste ammo. Most of the work was done by bayonet. The Japanese burst into one room where an operation was in progress. They killed the patient first and then the doctors. One Australian who was captured at Singapore remarked 60 years later with tears in his eyes, “I can’t imagine our blokes ever doing anything like that.”
On the 14th the Japanese commander allowed a few survivors from the hospital to go back to the Allied defense perimeter so they could tell their terror tales. He wanted Percival to surrender, but he also knew that the Allies had more manpower on hand than the Japanese. If the combined forces of Brits, Aussies, Malayans, and Chinese troops fought like maniacs to the death, the fall of Singapore would be quite costly. If he could induce surrender through threat of terror against Singapore's civilians, the fall of Singapore would be cost efficient.
The terrorism worked, but not because Percival was not willing to fight if he had a fighting chance. But his troops were relatively second-rate and he had no air or naval support. Every battle was being lost and there was no reason to hope for any change. He was like Isaac Hull at Detroit in 1813 except that this time, the reports of massacres of woman and children by wild savages was completely true and confirmed by eyewitness reports.
Percival surrendered to General Tomoyuki Yamashita on February 15, 1942 at a Ford factory at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. For this big win, Tomoyuki became the legendary 'Tiger of Malaya.' The “other Nuremburg” tried and executed Tomo the Tiger in 1946 occupied Tokyo.
After Singapore fell the victors murdered thousands of civilians. Hundreds of women were raped and then bayoneted by Japanese men. Ho hum. That was standard operational procedure for the Japanese Army in World War II.
Late in the war, Hirohito ordered the public execution of several American bomber crewmen because of their war crimes against Japanese civilians. Of all the hypocrisy.
WINSTON POWER PLAY IN PARLIAMENT JANUARY 1942
Churchill handled criticism even more poorly than I do!
The Prime Minister was tired of all the criticism of how he was handling the war. Usually he responded by blaming others for all his mistakes, or with long winded berating of anyone who criticized him, long tedious explanations of why his decisions were infallible, and then he would announce that “I of course take full responsibility for all the mistakes that have been made.”
So Churchill had this great plan to kill all criticism. In the middle of a war, he would demand a personal vote of confidence from Parliament! Now he’ll get twice the power at no risk, while pretending to be taking a great risk.
Genius! Who in their right mind would dare to vote against a national leader in wartime? No one! What a plan! This is a brave political risk in peacetime when anyone can speak and vote freely. In wartime, it is a fraud.
Near the end of January 1942 he asked for this vote of confidence or else he shouldn’t continue on as the great leader. During the debate he kept referring to this impending vote of confidence in “the government” when he had specifically made this a referendum on him personally. It looks better to ask for a vote of confidence in “your government.” With consummate slickness Winston makes his critics seem more vicious then they really are. When they really are against one insufferable man, he makes it seem that they are against the entire British government at a time of war!
In my lifetime there have been three or four times when my country has been in a war condition. Every time the President of the United States has asked for Congressional support in a military crisis he wins it. Many Congresspersons did not vote their conscience because they were torn by conflicting emotions and they did not want to get voted out of office. Who could not understand that? So a vote of confidence in wartime is not an honest referendum, it is a power play to ensure critic-free authority to conduct the war as one sees personally fit to conduct it. You smother all opposition at a time when no MP could ever vote against Winston and dream of re-election. But if you did not call the vote of confidence these MP’s could continue offer the righteous criticisms that should be heard.
Churchill taunted and challenged all his critics to come out in the open and show their true colors, knowing that he was putting them in a position where they could not. It was the blackmail of a war condition. Churchill knew how to exploit the fearful trust people put in their national leader in wartime. He told the House,
“If an honorable gentleman dislikes the government
very much and feels it is in the public interest that it
should be broken up, he ought to have the manhood
to testify his convictions in the lobby. There is no
objection to anything being said in plain English, or
even plainer, and the government will do their utmost
to conform to any standard which may be set in the
course of the debate. But no one need to be mealy-
mouthed in debate, and no one should be chicken-
hearted in voting.”
The final vote of confidence in January 1942 for Churchill was 464 to 1.
Does 464 to 1 make any sense to anyone? Idi Amin didn’t win elections in Uganda by that much of a majority. Is it possible that only one person in Parliament was against Winston Churchill at this time? It is more logical that the Liverpool football club wins their next 464 consecutive matches without giving up a single goal.
The ‘vote of confidence’ was nothing more than a classic power play. This was not your finest hour.
This mentality is partly why Churchill was so angry later in the war when Marshall and Eisenhower dared to override some of his decisions. He had become accustomed to the role of war dictator of the United Kingdom. It was a great fall to earth when he realized he couldn’t demand a vote of confidence in the US Capitol building.
After winning the rigged match, Churchill received a telegram from FDR. “It is fun to be in the same decade as you.” They were buddies. FDR used the same war blackmail to break the American two-term tradition for President, and used it twice.
HITLER IS TORN BY JAPANESE VICTORIES
Hitler was happy that his Axis partner was running over all opposition in Asia. But Hitler was a white supremacist who hated all inferior races, and to him, the Japanese were inferior. Adolph always wanted to avoid war with his racial brothers in England. It hurt him to have to bomb London. He had mixed feelings about seeing the Japanese make fools out of the white man in the Pacific region. On January 30, 1942 Joseph Goebbels made this striking note in his diary,
“The Fuehrer profoundly regrets the heavy losses sustained by the white race in East Asia, but that isn't our fault.”
Hitler must have said some serious melancholic things to Goebbels to inspire this written observation. Hitler was so sick with racism that he couldn't enjoy a sack full of money and jewels if it were delivered by an inferior race. Pearl Harbor embarrassed his white skin!
The German people evidently felt the same way. They were happy that Japan was winning, but they felt queasy about it too. All that racial superiority business didn't add up as Japanese wins continued to add up. There was never much enthusiasm for the Japanese victories in the Chancellory nor on the streets of Hamburg. The Italians were Axis white partners, and the Germans embraced them, but the Japanese were a benevolent enigma the Germans tried not to think about too much.
CARRIER WAR – SARATOGA SPRINGS A LEAK - 1 11 42
The United States had very few carriers to work with and protected them to the point of over-caution. Wake Island, for example, needed carrier support to survive but the USA let it fall to the enemy rather than risk a carrier to support it. But any carrier at sea, no matter how cautious, is still vulnerable to the submarine.
The big bad fleet carrier Saratoga was a vital part of the American Pacific strategy. A Japanese submarine sent a torpedo into her side on January 11, causing a list, and putting it on the list of ships to be repaired. Sarah was able to get back to Pearl Harbor on her own power, but had to go to Puget Sound for repairs. “Sarah” was out of action for six months.
The Japanese sub cap reported back to the Emperor that he had sunk the Saratoga. Japanese newspapers and radio had a “toga” party, bragging that Japan, just days after sinking two great British battleships, had sunk a fleet class American aircraft carrier. Liars!
USA TAKES THE OFFENSE ... SORT OF – 1-2-42
The Allies were on the run everywhere in the Pacific until February 1 1942 when two US carriers with task force protection attacked Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.
Devastator and Dauntless bombers from the Yorktown and Enterprise under the command of Jack Fletcher went after the Japs and let them know who was boss.
133 planes in all, including Wildcat fighters, took part in the attack. The Yorktown planes hit targets on the Marshall Islands of Makin, Jaluit, and Mili. The Enterprise planes pulverized Japanese targets in Kwajelin, Taroa, and Wotje. I'm sure you don't need a map to locate any of these famous places.
The Japanese never knew what hit them. The destruction visited upon them was spectacular. That is, if you believed the American newspapers over the next couple of days.
The attack, the first great U.S. offensive, was a mosquito bite on the Emperor's neck as he marched to victory all across East Asia. The attack was really just a raid, a reason for being for the Navy, a reminder to the Japanese that the Americans were not sitting by idly, and a reminder to the American people that Uncle Sam was beginning to get out of bed. It was a tactical raid for tactical purposes and if the American newspapers exaggerated the significance of the attack, well, the people who planned the raid wanted it that way.
12 US planes never made it back, and a couple of Japanese freighters sank in harbor. Some Japanese bombers were destroyed on the ground. No serious damage was done to either side,
Some enterprising Japanese pilots scrambled some Claude 99's to the sky and sought out and found the Enterprise. One Co-East Asia Prosperity Sphere pilot, his plane burning, knew he was a dead duck and tried to land on the Big E deck and start a few fires on his way out. The Claude hopper clipped the tail off a deck Devastator and then splashed back into the sea to meet Hirohito's ancestors.
One of the problems for the Yanks was the poor quality of this so-called Devastator bomber. It had a cool name, but it was a mediocre plane. The Dauntless was much better. The navy needed to use all the planes it had, and the vulnerable bug-riddled Devastator, borderline obsolete in 1942, was still in active service in 1943.
The US Navy was testing its weapons and tactics in this Marshall Gilbert raid of 2.1.42, and learned a few lessons. One of the main problems for American light bombers was the bombs. They weren't that good, because they detonated via the contact fuse. The Japanese used the delayed fuse which caused far more damage because the bomb got deeper inside the target before exploding.
Faulty US torpedoes managed to torpedo any chance of mission success for the entire first year of the war.
The Yanks needed work on their IFF (identify yourself, friend or foe) as well.
SHOOTING A PILOT
The average Japanese pilots were better than the average American pilots, but this was largely because Japanese pilot graduation standards were ridiculously high. They had better pilots but they had far too few. Japan priced itself out of the pilot market. The Japanese were so short of these overqualified pilots that every time they lost even a handful it was a major setback. Even the 40 or so lost at Pearl Harbor was a serious loss.
The United States allowed pilots to get their wings without proving they could run 80 miles, go 95 hours without sleep and then get drunk, and catch a fly in barn while blindfolded in 11 seconds, so the United States had a superiority in trained pilot numbers even at the beginning of the war. The superiority of the Japanese pilot is therefore something of an exaggeration. If the United States had required men to prove they were supermen in order to graduate, then the average US pilot would have been the equal of the average Japanese.
BLOOD FOR OIL / JAPAN TAKES THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 1942
The European powers were incapable of defending their far-flung empires in the Southwest Pacific. In Europe the mother ships of state were either conquered or threatened with extinction. There wasn't much hope for defending overseas bonus possessions like British Malaysia, French Indochina, or the Dutch East Indies. These Indie islands were arguably the reason the entire Pacific War was fought. The DEI was the prize, not a prize. Japan needed the oil to not only continue the offensive operations, Japan needed (or at least felt like it needed) the oil of the Dutch East Indies as a matter of national survival.
Combined Allied naval forces might have seemed capable of handling defense on paper but the Euros did not have a single aircraft carrier in the theatre. Japan had about a dozen or so. Japan was close to her supply chain of bases running from the home islands down to Cam Rahn Bay in Southern Vietnam. Allied supply lines stretched stressed around a globe and were threatened by Axis air, surface naval, and submarine power. The Japs had the Zero fighter, the most advanced combat plane in Asia. The Allies had old planes, barely worthy of training missions, plus a new model, the B-17, the greatest plane in the world, all of which were wiped out about 48 hours into the war having done nothing at all.
ABDA never consulted the brown natives of the East Indies about home defense tactics. The “Indians” certainly preferred the white guys as the lesser of two colonial evils, in spite of what Japanese propaganda might say.
The Allies in the Southwest Pacific were organized under the title of ABDA, which stood for the combined American, British, Dutch and Australian forces.
The ABDA team counterattacked once during the loss of the present day Indonesia to the Japanese. This was January 24, 1942 at the Battle of Balikpapan. Four ABDA destroyers surprised a force of Japanese transports and patrol boats sitting at bay near the BP (the nickname for Balikpapan) oil-fields. The attack occurred at around 1 am and in the darkness the four brave destroyers fired dozens of torpedoes, sinking four ships and two small patrol boats. The four DD’s had their way for a good hour with the vulnerable transport fleet in the wee hours of night.
The attack at Balikpapan was a psychological victory but failed in the sense that it came too late. The Japanese had already unloaded most of the troops and supplies onto Balikpapan. The black oil was already yellow. The ABDA Naval mission was supposed to block this effort.
The mission was also a let down because there were too many missed shots at point blank range. Too many torpedoes malfunctioned. This would haunt the democratic team for the first two years of the war. Just like the airplane torpedoes, the Naval torpedoes were clunkers. The Allies lost more in lost damage to the enemy from two years of bad torpedoes, than it lost at Pearl Harbor from direct damage to itself. The war could have been won faster in the Pacific if only ABDA had some half way decent torpedoes to work with like the Japanese and the Germans did. Balikpapan was only the beginning of a stream of battle reports about bum torpedoes. Again, the contact fuse was the main culprit.
To the east of Celebes was Ambon Island, which had been reinforced by the Allies. Ambon stood in the path to the Timors (today's East Timor is the home of mass political murder) which was integral to the Japanese plan to put a sandwich movement on the big prize of Java.
The ABDA air force at Ambon consisted of 13 Hudson fighter planes. These Hudsons might have been valuable if they had been used at Gettysburg, but against squadrons from the Hiryu and Soryu they were a soryu lot. The Zeroes and Vals hit Ambon hard on the 24th of January. Then on February 3 1942 an invasion force took the island against a brave but futile resistance.
On February 13, 1942 the Japanese began the invasion of the DEI in ernest with a parachute drop on South Sumatra. More than 700 of Hirohito's boys landed at Palembang with a bang.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 2 19 1942
In order to prevent the ABDA forces from intervening in the plans to conquer the East Indies, and Java in particular, the Japanese launched a surprise four carrier air attack on the little city of Darwin on the north tip of Australia.
Admiral Nugamo commanded the four veterans of the Pearl Harbor strike force, Hiru, Soryu, Kaga and Akagi.
The pathetic little Aussie air force on the ground at Darwin was caught with its wings down at 10 a.m. on the 19th of February. Japanese Kates Zekes and Vals mauled the ABDA Air Lack of Force to smithereens (whatever they are.) 188 flying yellownecks had their way with the town, much like the sunny morning at Pearl Harbor. They sank eight ships, including the Peary, and also severely damaged the Billy Preston. Darwintown was old and brittle and was just about set on fire. Civilians fled in terror, many never to return to Darwin until the war ended. The Japanese pilots returned to their carriers with only four planes lost. Darwin learned its Darwinian lesson; Survival of the fittest.
By now these pilots must have thought that war was sort of a lot of fun. They just blew away everything in sight on every mission as their motherland conquered half the world in a cakewalk. Half of these pilots would die in June.
JAVA JOLT
Nothing like a cup of java and a good book about the defeat at Java in 42. On February 26, 1942 the Japanese inflicted a disastrous naval defeat upon the ABDA cadabra naval force at Java Sea.
In command at Java was Admiral Dale “Dutch” Doorman. Nicknamed “Bouncer,” Doorman was a big bear of man from Sardis Mississippi, Annapolis class of 1922, with a two foot beard and a hearty laugh (I made all that up to sound like a typical war historian.)
Doorman had a habit of making outrageous boasts and and then backing them up. But his luck ran out in 42. He told the London Times by telegraph that he would soon “sink the entire Japanese navy without breaking a sweat.” Doorman put out a fleet of nine destroyers and five cruisers (Perth, Houston, Exeter, De Ruyter, and Java – yes, the Java sank at Java) to meet an oncoming Japanese task force. The destroyer force included two Dutch, three British and four American tin-cans.
There were plenty of factors making ABDA the underdog. The Japanese had more and better ships, were on shorter supply lines, and had complete control of the air, plus submarine strength. On top of all that the ABDA command had a language barrier. These four nations did not all speak the same language, and communication in combat suffered. Like they didn't have enough to worry about without trying to run a naval fight while giving orders to people who responded with, “Huh? No Understand”
The Japs sank Java and De Ruyter on the 26th, and within a few days had sent the other cruisers to the bottom. Instead of sinking the entire Japanese navy, the ABDA navy was taken completely off the playing screen. Java was a disaster doe Doorman. The Imperial Japanese navy showed him the door, man. The doomed Doorman went down with the ship.
The Japs had their oil, at least for the short haul. Now all they had to do was keep it for a few years while America mobilized its industry for war. Japan hoped to be so strong that the USA would by that time accept a negotiated peace.
BUILDING THE BISMARKS BARRIER JANUARY 1942
On January 23, 1942 the Japanese captured the fortress town of Raboul in the South Pacific. This event did not get big media attention like the fall of Singapore or Hong Kong, but it would cost the Allies at least as much in blood and tears. Rabaul is located in the Bismarck Archipelago.
Rabaul was the ideal location for building the Bismark's barrier. This was a line of defense in the southeast Pacific with a twofold purpose. The first was to set up a fabulous logistical base for continued conquests in the direction of the Solomon Islands and beyond. This would potentially lead to the cut-off of Allied aid from the United States to Australia, and could lead to the invasion of Australia as a consequence.
Without the capture of Rabaul, the Japanese could never have effectively launched its offensive operation against Guadalcanal, and could not have sent reinforcements there over the course of the long struggle for that island.
One of the main goals of Allied strategy over the next two and a half years was how to take out Rabaul, how to “break the Bismark's barrier.”
THAILAND
On January 26 1942 Thailand declared war on the United States and Great Britain. Of course the president of Thailand had a Japanese bayonet at his neck when he went on the radio and declared war, but he did do it.
But Thailand was no angel in all of this. When Vichy France was vulnerable and held hostage by the Nazis, Thailand in early 1941 had invaded Cambodia and Laos and started a minor war there in search of conquest. Now Japan was doing the Darwinian thing on Thailand, and forcing it to declare war on its friends, and we say “friends” with caution in light of what Thailand had tried to do France.
BURMA
The Japanese took Burma from the south.
The battle was a little tougher than it had been in Malaysia but the tide was flowing with the Japanese onslaught. “The Nips” captured Rangoon, the only large port in Burma in the second week of March 1942. The front then moved north to the Irawaiddy River Valley. The famous Burma Road ran across the IRV.
Burma Road was the treasured highway between China and India, the last line of supply between the Allies and China. The British and the Americans both believed that it was critical to keep the Burma Road open because China was going to fight hard to help win the war. It should be added that the Americans wanted the Burma road more than the British did because the U.S. believed in a post-war China under American's great fighting ally Chiang Kai Shek. The British wanted the Burma Road protected, but didn't think it was critical. It's a little paradoxical because Burma was Britain's war in Asia. The Pacific Theatre was divided up at ARCADIA and Britian was assigned the Burma War almost exclusively while the USA took on everything else.
Britian fought hard for Burma, not to help Americans hold on to the Burma Road, but because Britian saw Burma as the gateway to India. Back in 42 it was still called “British India.”
Japan fought its way across Northern Burma and expelled the British completely by the end of April 1942. Lashio surrendered on April 29, and Lashua on April 30. Advancing Japanese troops forced the evacuation of Mandalay on April 30. The Burma Road was closed for Axis renovations.
British India now faced off directly against Japanese occupied Burma. The Japanese thought it would be easy to stir up an Indian rebellion against their English masters. This was naïve thinking for many reasons, not the least of which was that the Nanking massacre was well known all over the world. Sure there was plenty of Sub-Asia hatred for British colonialism, but British colonialism was a pistachio ice cream cone compared to life under the Japanese Army. If Japan did have real dreams of a new ‘Asia for the Asiatics,’ it certainly went about it as though the slogan only really meant ‘Asia for the Japanese.’ If the Japanese had behaved more like the British Empire, they might have co-opted their newly acquired areas and won the war.
SANTA BARBARA BOMBARDMENT 2.23.42
On the night of February 23, 1942 Roosevelt gave a radio address to the nation to reassure America that things were going to be ok. Japan was winning big on every front but he was trying to put a good spin on it somehow anyway. As Franklin turned on his radio mic in Washington a contradictory event was taking place on the other side of the continent. A Japanese submarine had surfaced 12 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara California and was shelling an oil refinery in the light of dusk. The attack lasted 20 minutes and 15 rounds. None of the shells set off bigger explosions, nor were any fires started. Only one bomb did any damage at all, that to one derrick, and it didn’t slow production by a drop. The sub escaped unharmed and unchallenged by a single US shot.
The media ran big with the story of the attack on The United States. The bombardment of the west coast upstaged the FDR speech. Barbara bombardment was block headlines. The FDR speech got buried on the lower left of page 1.
The Japanese commander at the Battle of Santa Barbara deserves credit for boldness, civility, and economy. Although he failed to hit the fiery jackpot with a skill-shot, he made a good choice of targets. He didn’t aim at a home or a hospital. His mission created a psychological alarm in the USA and may have diverted resources to Pacific coastal defense that otherwise would have been expended more directly in the war effort. IF that was so then the mission was a moderate strategic success, not just a psychological victory.
I lived in Saint Babs for a week painting houses in 1976. I can still smell the air. What a beautiful spot. It was Ronald Reagan’s beloved home for his later life. Santa Barbara’s oil derricks out to sea do spoil it a little.
Santa Barbara survived the war somehow in spite of its ordeal that fateful night of February 23. It takes its rightful place with Dresden, Rotterdam, Shanghai, and Kobe as places bombed in World War II.
Later in 1942 a Japanese submarine shelled a small bay in Oregon, again doing no damage at all. The headline the next day in the Boston Globe read “JAPS BOMB OREGON!”
German U-boats slipped into east coast harbors once or twice, and could have shelled New York on at least one occasion, but chose not to, probably because they wanted to get away.
BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES 2.24.42
There was a bad high tech special effects movie in 2010 called Battle; Los Angeles about an alien invasion of LA in today's era. But there might have been something to this sort of thing back in 1942.
After the submarine attack of the night before, the west coast on the 24th of February was on a trigger-happy edge. A flight of planes was reported to be headed towards the Los Angeles area from the direction of the sea at a little after seven, the exact same time as the sub attack the night before. One anti-aircraft gunner started shooting at something and before you knew it the sky over Los Angeles was lit up in a crazed barrage of anti-aircraft fire. It was the sounds of the London Blitz without the planes. Nothing was attacking Los Angeles and several people were injured by falling debris from the expended anti-aircraft gun shells.
No one is quite sure what everyone was firing at that night. There were reports that it was a weather balloon or two that were mistaken for aircraft.
Another theory is that the American defense teams were shooting an a space saucer from another planet. This is not as laughable as might seem for there is a famous LA Times photo that seems to show a standard flying saucer sitting still in the sky while searchlights and anti-aircraft tracers are locked in on it. UFO nuts are convinced that the Battle of Los Angeles was in fact a War of the Worlds moment in WWII.
“WHERE'S MARCUS?” 3-4-42
Admiral Halsey decided to attack Marcus Island with a small carrier task force that was headed home after an earlier raid. The Marcus goal was to draw off Japanese forces on their march to the oil of the Dutch East Indies.
Halsey radioed Jack Fletcher to stop by and “pay your respects to Marcus on the way back.” Fletch replied, “Where's Marcus?”
Halsey told him back to “look at a map, dummy.” The two were close friends so no offense was taken. Marcus wasn't exactly on a straight line home to Pearl Harbor. It was an isolated Japanese island outpost only a thousand miles short of the home island of Iwo Jima, which would become famous later on. Halsey knew that he couldn't accomplish much materially by hitting Marcus, but it could provide yet another psychological boost for American morale and put another little dent in Japanese cockiness.
Commander Bud Rich led a formation of 38 Avenger and devastator bombers, accompanied by 9 Wildcat fighters on March 4 for the raid on Marcus. The defenders were taken by surprise and could put up little resistance. The US planes had their way and shot up some shacks and small boats and killed a few people, losing only one plane to AA fire.
The raid had its desired effect. One day later, Tokyo ordered a full blackout in the evening as a precaution against a feared follow up air raid. Marcus was an attention getter, and a major success for such a minor skirmish.
“JAPS ATTACK INDIA” APRIL 1942
Churchill predicted earl in 1942 that Japan was going to launch a major offensive against India, and asked FDR if all military force in South Asia therefore be placed under British command for the impending war for India. FDR cabled MacArthur and asked him what he thought, as if MacArthur was going to say, yes, please take my authority away from me here and give it to a British General.
That part was a given. MacArthur was also right when he said that Japan did not have the resources to stage a genuine invasion of India and the whole idea was absurd. He said that Japanese might invade India at some later date but only after having achieved complete victory in the South Pacific and then consolidating its gains for that type of mission.
What Japan was capable of, was raiding India with a carrier task force.
In early April 1942 the same carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor steamed west to the Indian Ocean and attacked British bases on the island of Ceylon. Kates, Zekes and Vals attacked Colombo on the west coast and Trincomalee on the east coast.
The Japanese were hoping to find the British Indian war fleet in harbor as sitting ducks like at Port Arthur or Pearl Harbor. But this time war had already been declared so most of the old UK cruisers and carriers were out to sea. The Japanese carrier air groups attacked virtually empty naval bases at Colombo and Trincomalee. It was a repeat of the frustration that the Japanese experienced when the US carriers had not been present that day of infamy.
Admiral Clem Somerville wisely did not want to engage the Japanese until he could get his mitts on some modern planes for his three carriers. But Japanese scout planes found some of his best artillery ships near the Maldives. Nagamo’s bombers and torpedo planes sank two cruisers, the Cornwall and the Dorsetshire. The next day his Kates, Zekes and Vals found the aircraft carrier Hermes and sent it to the ocean floor. Hermes was old, weighed only 10,000 tons, and had obsolete bi-planes on its wooden decks. But a carrier was a carrier and Hermes was a nice big stuffed animal for Kate and Val to take home from the fair.
The April 1942 terror strike into the Indian Ocean had pushed Japan to the pinnacle of international military glory and had extended the war truly around the globe. The world trembled. If the Japanese could move at will into the western side of India, the threat of linkage between the Nazi and Japanese empires would become genuine. People in a hundred lands hearing about the Japanese attacks in India had reason to feel paranoid. It was entirely conceivable now that the entire world could fall to totalitarianism on the march. The world feared what Churchill no only feared but predicted. But the threat was not genuine based on one carrier raid.
On the way back to Truk the sailors of the Japanese Navy were feeling pretty good about themselves when startling news reached the fleet. The men stopped singing their triumphant war songs. US planes had bombed Tokyo.
30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO - 4-12
On April 12, 1942 the US struck the Japanese homeland in miniature version of the Pearl Harbor raid (in this case after a declared war was under way). A US Navy task force snuck up on the island of Honshu in rough weather. The centerpiece of the task force was the carrier Hornet. The aircraft carrier was loaded up with twin engine Mitchell bombers not designed for carrier takeoffs or landings. These B-24’s could barely get off the carrier deck, and only when pointing into a strong wind. The bombers would then drop precariously close to the water after leaving the deck before stabilizing and rising to flight.
The aircrew on this mission, under their leader Jim Doolittle knew that there was no chance they could return and land back on the carrier. The takeoff was going to be difficult. A landing was impossible. It was a one way mission to bomb Japan. There wasn’t enough fuel to return to the ship even if they had the capability of a carrier landing. The B-24 bombers raided Tokyo and two other cities causing little strategic damage but making spectacular gains in psychological warfare. The book and the movie were named, Thirty seconds over Tokyo.
Japan had told her people (like Germany) that enemy bombs would never strike them, and now here were explosions all around the capitol city and a white star in a blue circle were in plane sight on the wing bottoms. It was a major league reality check for the Japanese people and an ominous sign for the future. By 1945 the sun would be eclipsed by the endless waves of American bombers raining merciless incendiaries on Japan’s great cities. Doolittle’s raid was the first tremor before the US industrial volcano erupted in full force.
Jimmy D’s B-24’s continued on to China and Russia for emergency landing. Some crashed into the sea of Japan, out of fuel and chance for survival. Others landed in Japanese held Chinese territory with the predictable consequences for the unfortunate fliers.
This famous raid by a small flock of medium bombers (see the book or the movie 30 Seconds over Tokyo) could Doolittle damage to the Japanese industrial capacity, but did much to increase American morale. It also put a dent in Japanese morale. The American public was positively jubilant.
Accounts of this attack always stress how little physical damage was done and how it was mostly a psychological boost for morale at home. But this fails to consider how many specific military plans were changed in Tokyo in response to the raid.
Try to image the sound and fury of a dozen B-24's raiding Boston or Chicago, dropping bombs on select targets in one minute. Do you think that wouldn't startle everyone in downtown?
James Dolittle's plane personally overflew the Imperial Palace at low altitude and he did not release his bombs but could have. He could have killed the Emperor. He was under orders to overfly the Imperial Palace but not to drop bombs on it. He was basically under orders to scare him.
Can you imagine the Emperor in his garden hearing and seeing the terror as a big US bomber buzzes so close that it hurts his eardrum? There is no proof that Hiro personally heard the noise or saw the plane, but there is certainly no proof that he didn't. His personal reaction to the sudden fear of sudden death is not recorded except in our imagination.
This changed everything. Now the emperor had to be protected. If Hirohito was living in a Bavarian mountain retreat like Hitler, then the raid could have been somewhat ignored. But Hiro could not die in a bombing raid. And remember, the meetings at the highest levels with the Emperor were always top secret. No notes were taken and all were pledged to eternal secrecy. We have to guess what the reaction was to the Dolittle raid and Pacific strategy.
In my opinion Dolittle’s raid changed the entire Pacific strategy for the Japanese. They now had to accept that the home islands were not invulnerable and they had to think more along the lines of defense. And they had to protect God from personal danger.
With the Imperial Palace threatened the Japanese began to look defensively towards the central and even the northern Pacific to find where those planes had come from. They stopped looking offensively towards the South Pacific and Australia. They had to diversify their funds to protect their investment. They were suddenly hamstrung militarily by their insipid emperor-worship.
Major Japanese defensive-minded offensives would have to be planned to take Midway and the Aleutians in order to protect the Emperor. They had to change their entire Pacific strategy to protect this guy. Dolittle’s raid changed the course of the war. It is underrated militarily. Every time I read that it did little damage and was only a psychological victory I shake my head.
Not only was the strategic result massive in changing Japanese plans, diverting offensive capabilities from the South Pacific, it also did more immediate physical damage than it is ever given credit for. B-24 bombs struck a fleet aircraft carrier under construction and delayed its entry into the war by six months. That carrier hit alone made the D-raid a tactical success. The raid came as such a surprise that there was no fighter or anti-aircraft opposition worthy of mention. All the bombers found their targets and hit them. 16 B-24’s drop their full payload on Tokyo and the writers always say it did no significant damage. But if a carrier raid dropped one good hit on one important Japanese carrier in the Bismarck Sea, that raid would be called a major success. I just think that history started off saying that the raid did no real damage and it just snowballed into historical orthodoxy. But first hand accounts by pilots who were in the raid assert that all military targets were struck. Very few bombs were wasted. The Dolittle raid did much, and it was far more than a mere psychological victory at both the tactical and strategic levels.
Some of the B-24 pilots landed in China in Chekiang province. The Chinese locals hated the Japanese as much as anyone, and helped the homeless pilots after they ditched their aircraft. The Japanese retaliated in Nazi fashion. Over the next two months they systematically executed 250,000 Chekiang Chinese civilians as punishment, and no that isn’t a typo. That’s 250,00. Some historians cite this as proof that the Dolittle raid really produced no worthy results and imply that the USA should feel guilty because it instigated this mass murder by a showboat raid of no real military value. That’s really offensive to read. The Japanese had already murdered more than million Chinese civilians in cold blood, and that’s after the battles were over. China was at war with Japan. The Chinese civilians who helped our guys knew the risks they were taking and maybe they believed that principles counted as much as life itself, which is the basis of all deadly fighting in the first place. How dare the historian condemn the Dolittle raid for this reason. So if we buy this, then the Czechs shouldn’t have murdered Heydrich because the Nazis wiped out towns in retaliation. That is catering to terrorism by allowing it to produce effective results.
The Japanese had no idea where these 16 24s had come from. They thought they were land-based. This threw them off completely. They thought that Billy Mitchell's fantasy had come true. FDR was delighted at the mystery and the American public was almost as in the dark as the Japanese. The story of the Dolittle raid was block headline news in the states but where the B-24's started from was top secret. Reporters asked Roosevelt where these planes took off from and he answered with a half-smile, “They came from Shang Gri-La.”
There had been a popular movie a few years back about a mythical Utopia beyond the Himalayas called Shang Gri La where peace and harmony ruled over a perfect world.
JAPANESE ARMY-NAVY GAME
By April of 1942 the Japanese had conquered most of the Pacific islands without the loss of single heavy ship. Not a cruiser had been dunked, just a few destroyers in five full months of serious actions. Japanese success had exceeded even their own expectations. The original plan was to establish a perimeter of defense at the outer edge of the Bismarks and New Guinea and prepare to withstand the Allied counterattack. But with victories coming so easily, Yamamoto began to plan further expansion in the direction of the Solomons, New Hebrides, and Fiji’s. What gambler can walk away from a winning roll?
The next immediate meal on the Japanese sushi menu was Port Moresby, at the southern coast of New Guinea, facing the north coast of Australia.
But would a Japanese Port Moresby lead to the next step of an invasion of northern Australia? Maybe, but some naval strategists suggested the husbanding of Japanese resources for an out and out invasion of Hawaii, including Oahu, as well as the islands of Johnston and Palmyra. Others advocated an invasion of India, starting with an amphibious assault on the big island of Ceylon.
But no, the Japanese Army wanted to hold its cards for the big historic strike against Soviet Russia. They did not want Japanese troops tied down in Oahu or Australia at the moment when Russia collapsed and Hitler won the war against Communism. Japan must be ready with many crack divisions to march west into Siberia and Mongolia. Here on the flaming carcass of the USSR was where Japan should extend itself and create a permanent Asian land empire to compliment it’s Pacific conquests, or even better, to create a land empire so great that the Pacific ocean gains would be the one complimenting those on land. A Japanese empire consisting of former parts of China and Russia had more appeal than one made up of Oahu and Ceylon. The Army held its punch through the entire war waiting for the expected collapse of Russia that never came. (When the Army finally did get its war with Russia it was in August of 1945 and was one-sided in favor of the USSR. By that time the Japanese couldn’t have stopped the Salvation Army let alone the Red.)
The sparkling Indian and Australian invasion plans never saw daylight because the military ego of Japan was divided into rival service egos. Because the Army had long dreamed of attacking Russia it could never agree to any plan involving large scale land forces in the distant oceans. The Nipponese Navy had several battalions of ground troops, but not enough for strategic land ops. There was nothing like the Marine divisions available to a Halsey or a Nimitz. Japanese naval genius rotted on the vine as they would never get the troops they needed to conquer their half of the world. The navy could take all the small islands they wanted, but they shouldn’t get any bright ideas about seizing continents. That was the Army’s job. The navy had been getting all the glory so far in this war while the army was bogged down in China. This must stop! No more grandiose schemes of empire for the navy. Australia was spared invasion because of the historic enmity between Russia and Japan and because of the historic enmity between the Japanese army and the navy.
DO LITTLE DID IT ALL
Military historians often write off Japan's Aleutian campaign as a mysteriously useless operation, but it had a logical purpose and was not merely an act of psychological warfare. In addition to extending the perimeter defense ring for the empire, the latter two campaigns were designed to draw the Americans into a major fleet battle while the odds were still stacked against us.
The Dolittle raid had to some extent provoked Japan to let up a little on the southern front and strike due east. They would assault and attempt to seize US territory in Alaska and Hawaii. The southern front had one series of large islands after another where Japanese could hunker down and establish buffer zones between the military front and the homeland. But due east was endless ocean sprinkled by small islands. The Dolittle raid had awakened Japan to its shallow defense against air attack out of the vast bleak central Pacific. With Midway and the Aleutians under their control, the Japanese would be likely to intercept a second Dolittle terror raid on Tokyo. Midway must fall so the Emperor can sleep fearlessly at night.
This was decided from the day that Mitchell struck Tokyo and it affected the size of the Naval deployments to all seas, including the Coral Sea. Thanks to the Mitchells, and no thanks to Billy Mitchell, the Japanese siphoned off too much naval power to win in any theatre. The Japanese lost at Coral Sea, Midway and the Aleutians because the Dolittle raid had broken up the power formation that had been running the table in the far east, and made it three power formations.
CORAL SEA – MAY 4-8 1942
The Battle of the Coral Sea lasted four days and climaxed in a spectacular carrier vs. carrier fight, the first one in history. Planes from both carrier groups flew off to strike each other. No naval gunfire erupted and the ships never saw each other. It was like two mob bosses sending out hit squads to take out the other guy. The mechanics never ran into each other and it was a matter of which contract would be fulfilled and which one would fail.
At Coral Sea the US lost a fleet carrier (that means big carrier) yet won a strategic victory. The U.S. had long ago broken the Japanese secret codes and knew every plan they made before every battle started. With all due credit to American bravery, skill and industrial power, the biggest factor in turning the tide of the war in these crucial months was the cracking of the codes. This was a game of cat and mouse-trap. The US had an unfair advantage throughout the war, playing poker with a marked deck, but all is fair in love and war, especially against fascists.
For the Japanese the mission at CS was the completion of the conquest of New Guinea, establishment of control of the seas around the Solomon Islands, and the establishment of airbases in both the Solomons and southern New Guinea from which to harass and threaten both Australia and the islands east of it. The final aim was to cut off Australia by taking every chain of islands around it.
If the Japanese could finish off New Guinea by taking Port Moresby the job would be almost done.
An invasion force, including two separate carrier groups was to sail from Truk in the Carolines with the destination of Port Moresby. Another separate task force, including one small carrier, with cruiser escort went east to seize the little island harbor of Tulagi in the Solomons. The Tulagi mission would establish a seaplane base to protect the flank of New Guinea ops and to take the first step towards further advances towards the Fiji’s and New Hebrides. Once the New Hebrides fell, Australia would be absolutely cut off from any hope of reinforcement. No one guessed yet that the island of Guadalcanal, across the sound from Tulagi, would end up being the entire focal point of the Pacific war for five months.
To take Moresby, the Japanese transport group, with destroyer escort, would have to make it through the Jomard Passage. The Zuikaku and Shokoku carrier groups would keep an eye out for a US interception effort which was sure to come. Both of these Japanese fleet carriers were veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack. The small carrier Shoho was to escort the transport troop task force to the Moresby invasion site and at the same time help secure the eastern flank in the Solomons. Zuikaku and Shokaku were to loiter in the Coral Sea with an eye on all fronts.
The three Japanese carrier groups never concentrated their force. This blunder has dismayed armchair admirals for several decades. I don’t know why military critics seem to somehow almost regret enemy mistakes in the field. I get up and dance when I read about them. These egghead gunpowder-brains just like to see things done the right way, even if evil is doing it. Not me. I love it when evil messes things up in warfare. Every time Lee makes a blunder in 1863 I'm delighted to read about it.
So the dynamic duo of Zuikaku and Shokoku had four mission to complete when it steamed out of Truk at the end of April. First it would drop off warplanes to the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. Then it would offer air cover for the Tulagi landings (which it failed to do); then it would seek out and destroy the US carriers in the Coral Sea, and for the finale the carriers would launch major air strikes against Allied air bases in northern Australia. The Allies would be helpless to stop them by this time.
Two US carriers Yorktown and Lexington (copyright 1927) and their protective screens went to meet the main thrust towards JP (Jomard Passage.)
But the Yorktown received a report from a scout plane of the landings at Tulagi. Captain Fletcher decided to take a chance and launch a strike against Tulagi even though he might leave his carriers vulnerable to counterattack. He kept a few of his fighters at home for defense and launched the attack.
A little less than 100 planes attacked the base under construction at Tulagi and the small ships in the area. The American planes did not perform well. The windshields of the Dauntless dive bombers kept fogging up, the attacks were not combined or coordinated. The US torpedoes were faulty as usual. The American torpedoes were the Edsels of the Second World War. Farragut had said at Mobile, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Fletcher said “Damn the torpedoes. They're faulty.” Fletcher was lucky that his attack force ships did not take a destructive counterattack while this ineffective air raid on Tulagi was on.
Just before noon on May 7th 1942, carrier planes from the Yorktown sank the IJN carrier Shoho, the first Jap-flat-top to meet the fishies in WWII. Sho long, Shoho. Sho shorry.
Carrier Battle of the Coral Sea May 6-8 1942
US navy scouts had first found the small Shoho Japanese carrier group steaming towards Jomard Passage on the morning of the 7th of May. The Shoho was coming back from dropping off a few planes and a work force on Tulagi. Shoho was long out of Tulagi when Fletcher’s Yorktown raid had hit Tulagi. The little carrier was heading west to join up with the 11 transports and their escort destroyers that were headed for the Port Moresby invasion.
The Yorktown planes eventually caught up with the Shoho. This ship was only 12,000 tons, about half the size of the Lexington, but her 24 birds could still pack a punch. US planes attacked at 11 am on the 7th of May. A few CAP Zeroes (CAP means combat air patrol to defend the ship) tried to shoot the Yanks out of the sky but they were outnumbered and only got three. What was worse they soon watched their landing deck slip beneath the waves.
The Wildcat fighters, Dauntless dive bombers and Avenger torpedo planes all got in on the action. By 11:30 Shoho was a burning wreck with holes in her flight deck and hull. Shoho said sayonara at 11:35. Sho long, Shoho. Sho shorry.
One book quotes a Japanese ensign on a nearby destroyer watching Shoho sinking, “She fought bravely to the very last.” What battle was he watching? Shoho had been commissioned in late 1941, had experienced no previous combat, and now got smacked senseless and disappeared. And this clown says, “she fought bravely.”
532 Japanese sailors went down with the Shoho. They drowned bravely. The remaining 204 were rescued. One survivor recorded that many of the Japanese sailors were screaming “Banzai!” as they bobbled in the waves. I'm not kidding you.
Doyeeeeee!
The biggest contribution Shoho gave to the world was a new word. I've used the term ‘flattop’ to reference an aircraft carrier, but prior to the Battle of the Coral Sea the word wasn’t in anyone’s dictionary, not even the Dictionary of American Slang.
Bob Dixon, one of the last pilots to leave the scene had personally seen the Shoho go down. Dixon headed back to the Yorktown and reported by radio,
“Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier. Scratch one flattop!”
The message was heard on the ships p.a. system and men on the Yorktown cheered. The message was passed all around the Pacific. “Scratch one flattop” made its way to the states. For the rest of the war aircraft carriers became known as ‘flattops’ and they still are called that today.
“Flattop” wouldn’t have stuck if this victory had not been so desperately desired and needed. Shoho was the first major Japanese warship sunk in World War II. “Scratch One Flattop” was block headline news in many US newspapers. If a 12,000 ton Japanese carrier went down in late 1944 it would be page 2 news in the Chicago papers. In the spring of 1942, this was big news
Those stranded CAP Zero fighters of Shoho, by the way, had to find an island where a Japanese freighter was sitting nearby and there make a water landing, swimming to shore as their Zeroes lived up to the name and sank.
When Shoho went below, Vice-Admiral Inouye (a great uncle to the liberal Senator from Hawaii Daniel Inouye) ordered the invasion force to turn back to Rabaul. Remember, the Zuikaku and Shokoku groups were supposed to patrol for the US carriers and fight them. Shoho was the Moresby air umbrella, not Zuikaku and Shokaku, and with Shoho, his tactical air cover, gone, Inouye decided that ‘in no way’ should Japan take this risk. So the sinking of Shoho had stopped the mission to Moresby and thus determined a strategic US victory for the Coral Sea, regardless of whatever else might happen. And plenty more was about to happen.
American carrier forces at the Coral Sea battle were at half strength because the other flattops were still making their way back from the Dolittle mission. But the flip side worked for the U.S. too. The Japanese had assigned two carrier groups to hunt and find the Tokyo raiders. Dolittle’s carriers were not found and the Japanese were without two extra carriers that might have made a major difference in their favor at Coral Sea. Would have is more like it. Without the Dolittle Raid, “the Japs” take Port Moresby.
Japan had also recently designated a carrier group to launch the aforementioned air raid on Indian Ceylon, and this Japanese fleet carrier could have pitched in decisively at Coral Sea too. The IJN spread its resources thin, then tried at Coral sea to launch one of the most important missions of the war with one of the weaker slices of the pie.
Land-based US air power was not effective in the Coral Sea battle largely because the division of command between MacArthur in New Guinea, and the Navy elsewhere sadly created inefficient co-ordination of info and attack.
Japan hit back hard at Coral Sea for the loss of Shoho. Several Japanese air bombs and torpedoes severely damaged the fleet carrier Lexington.
At first it looked like “Lady Lex” could limp back home at full speed, even if she was not capable of launching or landing any more planes. But hours after the battle, some of the fires in the middle of the ship caught a second wind. Explosions rocked the fighting lady from the inside out. The sailors sang “Lex be a lady tonight” but to no avail. The abandon ship order went out and “it was sad, it was sad, when the great ship went down” (name that tune.)
US carrier planes managed to do some damage to carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, but not enough to compensate for the dunking of the Lexington.
One Jap. carrier air group mistook a seaplane tender and an oiler for carriers far to the east of the main battle. These planes were way out of the real battle zone when they realized the mistake. Since they were already there and the mistake could not be undone, the Japanese planes sank these two small US ships, the oiler Neosho and the tender Sims on the night of May 7. Neosho had survived the Pearl Harbor attack.
The USA lost a fleet aircraft carrier, and certainly didn’t win the damage tally at the battle of the Coral Sea. But the Japanese offensive to take out New Guinea and plan for the invasion of Australia was stopped in its tracks. U.S. damage tally was much better at Midway, but it was at Coral Sea that the Japanese march to uncontested glory in Asia was finally stopped for the first time. The American people could read in the papers that Japan was not invincible. Coral Sea was a tactical draw at best but a major strategic victory for the United States.
MOLO THE BOLO GOES TO WASHINGTON 5-42
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov went to the United States in May to confer in person with Roosevelt and his advisors. He was there to speak for Stalin.
Molotov kept a pistol under his pillow at his Washington hotel. He wasn’t a warm guy and FDR didn’t enjoy talking with him at first. But after a few days and meetings they actually connected all right. Motolov wanted two things from the United States and he asked for them bluntly and repeatedly.
First he wanted more American lend-lease aid to the USSR. Second he wanted “a second front, and right this second.”
Molotov warned FDR that if Russia got knocked out of the war, the United States and Britian would face ultimate defeat at the hands of the Nazis. The United States would then be without the important food supply from the Ukraine, which was a stupid thing to say. As if the United States was worried for its impending lack of Ukrainian wheat.
FDR told him bluntly the same thing that Churchill had in London. There would be no invasion of Europe in 1942. Hopefully there would be one in 1943.
The USA and UK could not draw off enough German divisions to relieve the situation on the eastern front anyway. Even if the Allies got a foothold on Europe, the Germans had more than enough divisions to handle that. The Allies could only put five divisions ashore in a best case scenario, and that was so very unlikely.
The biggest shortage was in landing craft, the big logistics problem of the entire war effort. Admiral King believed in carriers and subs and cruisers, but he never allowed FDR to shift the building industry towards landing craft.
This was explained to Molotov who didn’t like it but had to accept it.
If it was up to Ike and Marshall alone, there might have been an invasion in 1942. But political considerations, plus the near unanimous opinion of the British military wizards that a 1942 invasion was suicidal led to the USA deferring completely to delaying any thought of D-Day 1942
MIDWAY - JUNE 4-7 1942
Midway between the west coast of the United States and Japan is an isolated island atoll that is technically part of the Hawaiian chain, but is really as far from Honolulu as Boston is from Pierre North Dakota. This is Midway, the western extremity of the Hawaiian islands.
The Japanese under the foolish leadership of Nugamo and Yammamoto decided they had to invade and capture tiny Midway atoll and its small airstrip. The decision to invade Midway cost the Japanese dearly and its carnage was the stopping point (not quite yet the turning point) of the Japanese naval offensive in the Pacific. Midway is the only earthly home of the charming and beautiful “gooney birds,” not to be confused with the blue-footed booby birds. The gooney birds clog up the runways at the Midway NAS even today (Naval Air Station.)
The USA sank four large Japanese aircraft carriers and lost one.
That was the final score at Midway. I'd say that's a “W.”
Most historians refer to the Battle fo Midway as the “turning point” of the Pacific War. I prefer “stopping point,” and here's why.
It was as if two arm wrestlers were going at it. The Japanese had been pushing the American arm towards the table for seven tough months. They had superiority in almost all aspects of the fight, especially in equipment and pilot training, plus the element of surprise. The United States had been so anti-militarist for so long that by the time FDR began to restructure his thinking in the late 1930's, it was too late to match the military lunatic Japanese when the war broke out. Uncle Sam was caught napping, and was trying to get out of bed while the burglar beat him up.
The major American victory at Midway, which I'll gladly detail, did not turn the tide of war, it merely stopped Japanese momentum. With Midway, the Americans were now beginning to lift their arm off the bad edge of table, but the Japanese were still on the upper side of the wrestle. Even the late 1942 American victory at Guadalcanal didn't turn the tide. That one brought the wrestlers arms pointing to the sky. After Guadalcanal, the Americans were only beginning to push the Japanese back in the other direction. The true turning of the tide was the less spectacular, but nonetheless decisive campaign of “breaking the Bismarks barrier,” the slow but steady counteroffensive of 1943 back up the Solomons and across New Guinea. That, combined with the coming on line in 1943 of a flood of new American planes and warships marked the the real turning point of WWII in Asia. Turning the corner to victory was a slow grind. 1943 is a relatively boring year for military exploits in the Pacific compared to the astonishing battles for Midway and Guadalcanal, but that was the year the war was won, not 1942.
The Japanese were determined to seize Midway Island for no completely obvious reason, as far as I'm concerned. For what? To stage a future invasion of Oahu? I doubt that. They clearly had more to gain by sending their carrier fleets south to cut off the supply line to Australia as a step leading to an invasion of Australia. Instead they sent four of their best carriers to take a tiny atoll in the middle of nowhere in the central Pacific and an atoll that lies within the logistical supply line of American naval and air power. Even of they took Midway, what were they going to do with it? Didn't they know how vulnerable it would be to a counter-invasion just a few months down the road? The Midway airstrip was so small it couldn't handle enough B-17's to make it a strategic threat to Japan, even if the B-17 was as accurate as its strategic air power fans thought it was. So why compose great task forces, one for the invasion backed by battleships, plus carrier task forces to fight the Americans, just to capture the nesting places of gooney birds and a small airstrip?
You know where I'm going with this. To repeat my thesis motif;
Midway had to be taken to protect the Emperor from another, possibly bigger Jimmy Dolittle raid on Tokyo. The insane Japanese worship of the allegedly divine Emperor could not allow his person to be threatened. Midway had to be knocked out, just in case that was where those planes had come from. It was was an idiotic and catastrophic strategic sea change for Japan, switching from glorious offense to prevent defense, just to save Hirohito's hide, to save Hirohito's divine face. The entire nation was humiliated by that raid on Tokyo, and remember, the highest military meetings were conducted in top secret with no notes taken and in the presence of Hirohito. Remember too that Yamamoto was against the Midway operation and never said why.
Some historians say that the invasion of Midway was the secondary purpose of the mission, that the real mission was to lure the American carriers Yorktown, Lexington and Enterprise into an open battle. The destruction of these carriers was the real goal. I do not agree. There is no question that Yammamoto desired this too, but the primary purpose was to take out land based US air power at Midway. Japan was just as naïve about the ability of the long-range strategic bomber as was the USA.
The four great Nippon carriers were at Midway in June 1942 first and foremost to protect the Japanese land invasion task force from destruction at the hands of the American carriers. If, in doing so, they could force America into a showdown fight between carrier fleets, well bring it on. But it was all about the land invasion of Midway.
Yammamoto also sent out a decoy invasion task force to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, hoping to draw off the main US carrier strength there. Four light carriers (if a 13,000 ton ship can be considered “light”) were in this group.
Most historians say that the Aleutian campaign was designed to lure the main US carriers towards Alaska, yet they also claim that the Midway invasion force was designed to lure the US fleet carriers into an open slugfest showdown at Midway? The two theories contradict. Why would the Japanese try to lure away to Alaska, the same carriers they were trying to lure into a showdown at Midway?
I say that the Aleutian campaign was the north part of the (top secret) 'protect the Emperor strategy.' Japan was still going bananas trying to figure out where those B-25's of April 25 had come from. Was Midway the Shangri-La that FDR taunted them about? Or was it in Alaska? For all they knew, the Americans had long range bomber bases in the Aleutians, and so it was time to take them out too. No effort could be spared to save H-God. They considered Hirohito a God, not a mere mortal. That was part of their conceited religion (most religions are.) What takes priority over protecting God himself? So Japan abandoned all sound military strategy in favor of a religious one. To hell with the heretofore incredibly successful drive on South Asia. Lets turn north and east, and dissipate all our military strength on a divine higher plane strike against the Americans as close to their own lines of supply and communication as possible.
The Yanks had a suspicion that the Japanese were coming to take Midway, but they also knew of Japanese plans to attack Alaska. Was Midway a feint to draw off American forces for a major assault on the Aleutian islands? Or was it vice-verse?
Fortunately American cryptographers were reading their mail. Japan codes were referring to the place of attack as “Big Dip” but what did that mean? Even with code-breaking the Yankees couldn't be sure. So a clever plan was devised where the Americans on Midway sent out messages in various formats stating that the water purification system was busted and there was a crisis. Soon the Japanese were sending out coded messages that “Big Dip” was running out of water. Only then did Nimitz know for sure that the attack was heading for Midway.
Nippon fighters Yammamoto and Nagumo had four fleet carriers, all veterans of the attack on Oahu. They were the Hiryu, Soryu, Kaga, and Akagi. The American, under Billy Halsey and Admiral Spruance had three fleet carriers, the Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet, fresh from a delivery of Spitfires to Malta..
The Japanese Midway invasion force was supported by carrier strike groups which would serve five purposes. Carrier aircraft would pound Midway, protect the invading fleet, search for and destroy American carriers and other ships, give ground support to the invasion, and finally supply the conquered Midway airfield with planes.
Like at Coral Sea, the two carrier fleets never saw each other. The Battle of Midway was fought entirely from the air at great distances.
The Japanese were to first hit Midway with carrier based attack followed by a cruiser and battleship bombardment. Then the invasion force would hit the beach and take out a presumably weakened defense force. The large Japanese carriers would then land much of its air power on Midway and keep it there permanently.
The first carrier air strikes against Midway were only moderately successful. The Vals didn't disable the runway and only managed to blow up the military prison. The soldiers actually cheered when the brig blew up. No one was in it at the time and this was funny. Now the guys could get drunk and disorderly and would only face a reprimand. There was no jail to put them in.
Midway land-based planes were already in the sky when the IJN planes arrived.
US planes meanwhile found the the BB task force and attacked. They didn't hit a thing. It was and awful performance and more than 15 planes splashed. 12 B-17's hit nothing, but all of them got back because they fought from such high altitude that even the Zeroes could get them. The older fighters and light bombers took it on the chin. The worst plane of all was the U.S. Brewster Buffalo. It was more like a turkey than a buffalo, and like the buffalo, it was virtually extinct. Going up against the Zero, the Buffalo was the real zero. The few pilots who got back alive wrote scathing reports back to Washington. One said, “If you send up any more Buffalos against Zeroes, those pilots are buffalo meat.” The Brewster Buffalo wasn't a bad looking creature at a distance, but so isn't Ellen Degeneris.
Meanwhile, some better US planes had plans. 96 Wildcats, Devastators and Dauntlesses (my personal favorite) were on the prowl from off the decks of the three Yankee carriers. Yammamoto wanted a carrier showdown and they were happy to play along.
Hiryu, Soryu, Kaga and Akagi had participated in the merciless attack on Pearl Harbor. Pilots from these huge carriers had strafed civilians in downtown Honolulu. The crewmen on these carriers had cheered when the Zekes, Kates and Vals returned from Pearl Harbor and smilingly told of the death and destruction visited on the sleeping Americans. I have exactly one half of one tenth of one ounce of sympathy for the fate that was in store for these sons of Nippon. I won't say I have absolutely none.
Large formations of US planes from all three carriers located three of the Japanese carriers early on June 4, 1942 and they attacked. They didn't do very well at all. The superior Zeroes shot them to ribbons.
Now Nagumo felt it was safe to launch a second strike against Midway Island rather than go first after the US carriers. Nag overestimated the value of targets on Midway and the certain success of the impending land invasion. His Kates were loaded for takeoff with torpedoes for the attack on the American carriers and he ordered them to be refitted with bombs instead. This would take an hour and a half. The elevators would have to run the planes up and down at a frantic pace and bombs and torpedoes would be all over the place, exposed to danger.
Just then another American squadron appeared and these guys took yet another beating. The Zeroes splashed one Avenger and Dauntless after another and the Wildcats didn't do too well either.
But the Zeroes needed altitude to be really unbeatable. The US planes had saved the day in dying. They had expended Zero strength and altitude. Out of the blue came a third wave from the US carriers and this time the Japanese were unable to stop them.
This third wave did a very poor job of accurate bombing considering how many Dauntless and Avengers had clean shots at the Soryu, Kaga and Akagi (Hiryu was off to the North.)
However.
With the Japanese carriers crowded with planes refueling and re-arming, all it took was one solid bomb hit on the flight deck and all hell would break loose. As it turned out only a very small number of bombs scored hits, but a win's a win.
In six minutes, less time than it takes to boil a hot dog, a handful of Dauntless dive bombers boiled three Japanese carriers, and they did it with relish. Oh, how I wish I could have been one of those men flying those U.S. planes. I would have gladly taken my chances. I'm not a particularly brave guy, but in that situation, against that enemy, I know I could have cut the mustard. I know that.
At 10:20 a.m. captain Jack Gallagher dove his Dauntless hard and fast, scoring a direct hit on the Kaga just below the bridge. The bomb killed several officers and starting a huge contagious fire. Three more Dauntless buzzards from the Enterprise plunked the fascist goliath with three more direct hits. The Kaga lit up like a roman candle. It wasn't an aircraft carrier, it was a floating firestorm. Explosions rocked the Kaga sending men and planes flying overboard with a violence Sam Peckinpaugh couldn't think up.
At 10:25 Adam Leslie led a dive of Douglas bombers at the Soryu. Three of his nine planes scored direct hits on the deck, all crowded with Japanese Kates planning to kill Americans. Within five minutes the Soryu was in one soryu state. Gasoline fires and ammo explosions turned the great aggressor ship into a 34,000 ton iron coffin. Commander Yamagimoto ordered the Soryu abandoned less than 15 minutes after Leslie hit the deck with his bombs.
The Kaga and Soryu were on fire from bow to stern. They were so bad off that more US planes arriving from the Yorktown didn't even bother to attack either one of them. They circled around and found the Akagi, and the crew who by now had a lump in their throat and weren't in the mood to yell “Banzai!,” as they watched the roaring fires from the other two carriers.
The planes that attacked the Akagi didn't score a very high percentage of hits. In fact, and this part of the story really brings a smile to my face, only one bomb hit the Akagi and that was all it took to sink it! How cool is that! A guy named Eddie Kroeger deposited one 1,000 bomb for the grand prize jackpot. The bomb landed right in the meatball bulls-eye of the flight deck. Gasoline and bomb explosions set the carrier on fire. Eddie Kroeger made Freddie Kreuger look like a wimp. Eddie sent hundreds of men to their death, and these weren't teenage girls at a summer camp who didn't deserve it. These were the men who attacked Pearl Harbor. One bomb sank one fleet carrier. Imagine the woman back at the US factory in Seattle putting the final touches on that one bomb. If she only knew.
Three Japanese carriers were on fire. Soryu, Kaga and Akagi were so toasted that the other Yankee planes that showed up began going after the cruisers and destroyers protecting (rather poorly) the carriers, instead.
Soryu sank at 7:13 p.m. that night. So soryu! Kaga sank only seven minutes after Soryu. They had both been hit at about 10:30 in the morning and both sank around 7:30 in the evening. The Akagi snapped, crackled, and popped all through the night and a Japanese destroyer put it out of its misery at dawn June 5 with a Kevorkian torpedo.
Now it was time to find the Hiryu and give it a taste of its own December 7 medicine.
Give Hiryu credit. She went down fighting, unlike the other three turkeys. Hiryu launched all her attack planes who found the Yorktown and did some minor damage. They returned to the Hiryu, reloaded and went back. They found the Yorktown again, but had been so convinced that they had sank it the first time that they thought they were hitting a second carrier. The second attack was highly successful. Two Kates kissed the side of the Yorktown and left it with a 26 degree list and many casualties. But the Yorktown was more safety conscious than the Japanese carriers, and water tight compartments and self-sealing fuel tanks prevented the type of disaster that had sent the Jap carriers up in a Hollywood fire. The Yorktown was severely damaged but was going to get a tow back towards Pearl.
In the meantime, the Enterprising pilots found the Hiryu. They gave Hiryu the once over. By the time the planes that had crippled the Yorktown returned to the Hiryu the landing deck was Dante's Inferno. The Hiryu went down to say hello to the other three heroes of December 7.
The next day a Japanese submarine found the crippled Yorktown and fired four torpedoes at it. One missed. Two hit the Yorktown, and the other hit a destroyer, the USS Hammann which was guarding and towing the big carrier. The Hammann broke in half and sank quickly, taking 80 men down. Yorktown had no KIA's from this attack because it had been successfully evacuated earlier. But the two torpedoes were enough to tip it over and send it down. So the final score was 4-1 USA.
A US submarine had its own success story in the aftermath of Midway. The Tambor found the Midway bombardment group (four heavy cruisers and six destroyers) at 2 am on June 5 and fired torpedoes at two heavy cruisers, the Mogami and Mikuma. They both dodged the bullets. The commander of the task force, Admiral Kurita order the entire group to turn around and get back in the other direction. During the turn, Mogami crashed into Mikuma. It was a move out of The Two Stooges. Both ships were seriously damaged (nyuk nyuk nyuk.) At dawn some land-based Midway planes found the Mikuma and attacked. One pilot did a kamikaze and smashed his old Avenger right down into the injured battlewagon. US Marine pilot Dick Fleming was trailing smoke from an AA hit and made the best of a doomed situation. The next day carrier planes from Hornet and Enterprise found the two wounded ninjas and attacked some more. Mikuma made the voyage to the bottom of the sea, while Mogami took several hits, but held on. The truculent Mogami kept on truckin all the way back to Truk.
More than 3,000 Japanese men died in the Battle of Midway including more than 100 prized pilots.
The Yankees slay four dragons in one battle. America scratched one of its flattops in the exchange. The entire strategic picture in carriers was changed. Now both sides were short on fleet carriers. The USA had plenty more floating airfields being built at home waiting to come on line in 1943. Po-lenty more. For the moment both sides were desperately short of carriers, but only one side had a flock of new ones on the way.
A sidebar now on the names of Japanese warships. The Japanese Navy named its aircraft carriers with short verses that had something to do with flight. The Hiryu means ‘flying dragon’ and the Soryu means ‘blue dragon.’ Kaga means 'dragon breath.' Akagi means (ironically) 'fire breathing dragon.'
Japanese battleships were named after ancient provinces, while heavy cruisers were named after mountains, and light cruisers after rivers. Some carriers were named after mountains because they began as battleships or cruisers before being converted to handle aircraft. Destroyers were named after famous poets.
In addition to the strategic victory there was of course the extra satisfaction because the four carriers sunk had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of the six that launched the surprise (sneak) attack, only the Zuikaku and Shokaku were now still afloat.
The Japanese media reported that their warriors had won a great victory at Midway, and had sank two American carriers to one of theirs.
The movie Midway, is a very accurate account of the battle, with Henry Fonda as Yammamoto, and Seisu Haiakawa as Admiral Spruance.
MIDWAY CONCLUSIONS
The entire Midway op was part of a two-prong plan. The first part of the plan was to invade Midway. The second mission to guard against surprise carrier attacks from the north by occupying two American islands in the Aleutians. This extended the defensive ring due east so that no carriers could slip in close like that ever again.
If the Midway and Alaska campaigns had never been dreamed of, the Japanese probably would have won the Battle of the Coral Sea, sinking both our carriers and losing none, the invasion of Port Moresby would have been successfully executed, and the line in the atolls might have been drawn at Samoa instead of Guadalcanal. The Midway effort was a disaster for Japan, and the Aleutian campaign drained valuable resources and accomplished just about nothing.
To repeat: People write of the Coral Sea as though it led to Midway, but I say that the planning for both operations was a done deal right after the Dolittle Raid, so the sequence of Coral Sea, then Midway is misleading. The diversion of forces for the Midway op was decided before the results of Coral Sea were in, and it was the existence of the Midway plan that left the Japanese with insufficient forces to win at Coral Sea. The standard version is that the defeat at Coral Sea meant that the Japanese did not have the overwhelming force they needed to win at Midway.
MORE ON ALASKA
The Japanese took the islands of Attu and Kiska just two days after the disaster at Midway. The timing doesn't say much for the oft heard theory that the Japanese Aleutian campaign was designed to draw US carrier strength away from Midway.
The seizure of Attu and Kiska disturbed the American public more than it did US military strategists. Alaska was US territory. It wasn't yet a state, but nevertheless it was a moral loss of major proportions at the American diner. Losing Alaska passed the diner test. People talked about it at the diner. Alaska was American soil, not an overseas possession like Guam. The Japanese occupied both islands on the seventh of June. It would remain under Japanese rule for nine months.
Japan Occupies Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians, June 1942
The US would not get these islands back for the rest of 1942, but did launch a few naval and air strikes against the newly established Japanese positions there. Most of the strikes were directed against Kiska because Attu was out of range for American planes based on the airfield at Dutch Harbor.
American subs sank three Japanese destroyers and several freighters in the Alaskan waters of 1942. Some US naval missions failed because of extreme fog. American ships collided, doing more damage to each other than to the enemy. They were doing their Mogami impression.
Except for drawing off some US forces, the Japanese achieved nothing by taking Attu and Kiska. The US would achieve nothing when it fought hard to get them back in 1943. FDR decided to take back the Aleutians A&K more for political reasons, than to help win the war.
It was an ice cold theatre. On one mission a US sailor fell overboard and was rescued immediately. But he was already gone.
CHURCHILL ISMAY AND BROOKE IN DC 6-42
An American clipper splashed down safely on the Potomac with three VIP passengers. Churchill and his top two military chiefs were in America again.
It was all about the confusing code word operations and which ones were on and which ones were off and which ones were maybe.
King, Marshall, and Ike, all were in favor of operation Percy SLEDGEHAMMER. This was the invasion of France in September of 1942. The British were against it. No one had any problem with operation BOLERO. This was the build up of a huge force in England in preparation for the switch to offense.
Churchill was also trying to sell operation JUPITER to the American. JUPITER was the invasion of Norway followed by a manned rocket expedition to Jupiter. As for operation ROUND-UP, the build-up of the force after SLEDGEHAMMER clears out a spot in France, Churchill told the US JCS that it was irrelevant. The Allies were so far from capable of SLEDGEHAMMER, that BOLERO was a moot point. Then there was TORCH, the invasion of North Africa.
While FDR was chatting with Marshall, Brooke and Churchill in his study, the news arrived of the defeat and surrender of the long-beseiged British garrison at Tobruk. FDR was as shaken by the news as the British, which made a deep impression on them. Before this news, the British had asked for 200 of the new US Sherman tanks for assistance to the 8th Army in Egypt, and FDR had denied the request. Without the new tanks, the the new American tank divisions would be dino’s - divisions in name only. FDR had to say no.
But when news came in on Tobruk, FDR changed his mind dramatically, and told his allies that he would get them more than 200 of the new Shermans for the desert war. The American tank commanders were unhappy with the loss of these anticipated tanks. The British were very impressed with the event. Brooke wrote of those moments in FDR’s study as moments that cemented the alliance.
Operation MIMECRUSH was a raid on Paris to kill Vichy collaborator mimes.
CHURCHILL GOES TO CAIRO AND MOSCOW - JULY 1942
Churchill flew to the pyramids to relieve Auchinleck of command and replace with Gort. But Gort died in a plane crash and that’s how the famous Monty of El Alamein got his big break.
Churchill wrote to Stalin asking if he could come to Moscow and talk intimate strategic matters with the King of the Reds. Of course, if Stalin was too busy, Churchill would understand.
Stalin wrote back that he would be happy to welcome Churchill in Moscow. Churchill wanted to tell Stalin in person that there would be no invasion of continental Europe in 1942. He didn’t dare plan to tell Stalin (or even FDR for that matter) that there would probably not be one in 1943 either.
Stalin complained bitterly that the Russians were doing all the fighting. Churchill told Stalin that the Allies were stepping up the air campaign on Germany. Stalin replied smugly,
“You British should try fighting the Germans on land some time. You might find it isn’t all that bad a thing.”
Churchill at this lost his temper with Stalin, banging the table and defending the gallant war record of the British with a fiery speech. The Russian translator stopped after a point.
Stalin said with a laugh,
“I don’t know what he’s saying but I like his sentiment!”
After that outburst, Stalin warmed up to Churchill. It was like he had to first see exactly how far he could push Churchill, and then he could relax and deal with him. A lot of people describe Stalin as surprisingly soft-spoken and polite. He pushed buttons like an evil genius, staying cool while the other guy comes apart.
Churchill explained to Stalin that the Allies were planning to invade North Africa before the end of 1942. Stalin was mildly pleased with this. But Churchill couldn’t be very specific about the Africa plan because he still had to work it out with his brass and the angry Americans who wanted an invasion of Europe almost as much as Stalin.
PLANNING FOR GYM TORCH
Churchill flew back to Cairo and then London from Moscow the same way he’s came. With a daring American pilot named Billy Vanderkloot who took off at dusk in his B-24 Liberator, flew over Axis held lands, and made it to safe territory just before dawn. Churchill’s advisors wanted him to take the slow boat to Persian and then go up to Moscow by railroad. But he believed in Vanderkloots brash guarantees for his safety. “My 24 will get you back safely in 24,” promised the wild American flyer.
The B-24, btw, was a versatile plane for a big bomber. Sometimes the Army fitted it with extra machine guns and rockets under the wings and used it for ground support. This was something a B-17 or Lancaster could not well do.
GUADALCANAL AND THE SOLOMONS CAMPAIGN
To the Pacific.
In spite of the Dolittle raid and the Midway defeat, Japan was still on the march. On August 1 1942 Japan had yet to be stopped on land in the Pacific.
The Solomon Islands were the next objective for the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. With airbases on several of these islands, Japan could not only directly threaten Australia, but could also threaten it indirectly by cutting off the supply line from the USA to that important source of hope, resistance, and dingos.
Japanese were about to open land air power on Guadalcanal.
The Solomon Barrier Was Strategically Crucial
The Solomons (the chain just south of the title on the map) was the main line of Rising Sun defense posts to block the supply route not only to Australia, but to the Allied armed forces pinned down on the southern half of New Guinea. Also threatened was the front in Burma, the supply route to China, and the oil of the East Indies.
The battle for New Guinea had created the battle for Guadalcanal. A Japanese airfield on Guadalcanal helped protect New Guinea.
The newest Japanese plan in New Guinea was a two pronged land and sea attack on Port Moresby, the last Allied stronghold on NG and a key prize of the entire Bismarck/Solomon campaign. The six month battle for Guadalcanal was really the battle for the fate of Port Moresby and New Guinea. PM was the only thing that stood between the Japanese and Australia. Whoever controlled the Solomons could control the Coral Sea by land-based air power, and with it threaten Port Moresby.
After the lessons of the battle of the Coral Sea the Japanese wanted to insure that the assault of Moresby would not be threatened on the eastern flank. Hence the Battle for the Solomons and Guadalcanal. By the end of the war Guadalcanal was as well known to the average American as Atlanta.
On the map below, from a 1921 geography book, note the misspelled name of ‘Guadalcanar’. That’s how not famous it was until 1942.
New Caledonia, New Hebrides and the Fijis; Last Line of Defense
The above map gives a good idea of the battle line in the South Pacific and the strategic significance of ‘Guadalcanar.’ The three island groups circled were the last line of defense for the Australian lifeline. New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the Fijis were the next on the menu for the greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, along with the US base in Samoa, just east off the map. If that offensive plan succeeded, the South Pacific would be a Japanese lake.
The natives in the 1942 Solomon Islands were in a world almost beyond the scope of modern civilization. Many of these islanders had never seen a wheel until a Zero or Wildcat touched down. The islands in and of themselves had little value.
Reports reached Admiral King that the Japs were hastily constructing an airfield on Guadalcanal. It was days away from completion and it already had a name, Matsuzaka Airfield, after a pilot who died at Pearl Harbor.
News of this new airport coming soon called for a change in US plans. The brass had been leaning towards one of the more westerly of the Solomons for attack. But the United States decided it had to contest the airfield before it became operational. The battle for Guadalcanal, which lasted several bloody months, was on. It was a battle for an airfield on an island, not for the island itself which had little or no value.
Guadalcanal was the Gettysburg of World War II in Asia. It became by chance, the magnet where the two sides formed up and fought. It was where both empires met. The strategic forces closed ranks on the site and slugged it out for six months. It was like two strong men fighting all day over a penny. Military dominance, morale, power, and momentum were the real prizes.
The 1st Marine Division had been training for the mission in New Zealand. It was larger than your average division, but it was worse than green. Their training was not scheduled for completion until December 1942, but MD1 was ordered in anyway at the end of July. It was the only option available. The Japanese were hastily trying to construct the airfield on Guadalcanal and there was no time left to lose. More troops would die if the enemy got an airfield than would die from lack of training in the fight to prevent it.
A US carrier task force with troop transports left New Zealand and made a rendezvous with another task force heading west from stateside. They made their way to the northern side of Guadalcanal just before dawn on August 7 1942. First the navy guns pounded the airfield, scattering the 2,000 men of the Japanese construction battalions into the jungle. By midnight there were more than 9,000 US Marines on shore. Another thousand and forty-six landed over the next two days. The Marines secured the airfield and named it Henderson Field. They all had five months of hard jungle fighting ahead of them. The US task force warships scooted away the next day with half the supplies for Guadalcanal still unloaded. The transports and the Marines were on their own.
The Japanese on Raboul had a fully loaded fleet of fighters and bombers ready to take off and hit Port Moresby when word came of the American landings on Guadalcanal. The Japanese cancelled the raid on New Guinea just before take-off, and the mission was changed to Guadalcanal.
It was a long flight to Guadalcanal from Raboul but it was manageable as long as the fighters didn’t engage in any extended dogfights far from home. The “Betty” dive bombers and Zeroes came in over Lunga Point on that first day and attacked the shipping in the harbor but not the supplies on the beach. The Japanese lost a number of aircraft in the attack and managed to sink one transport with a Kamikaze attack, the George F Elliot. It is not known whether the suicide attack was pre-planned or the act of a wounded flyer with a damaged plane making the best of a doomed situation, but it was an early example of successful suicide technique. The burning Elliot still had a role to play in the near future.
These early air raids showed a lot of determination on the part of the Japanese high command to stop the Americans in the Solomons. But too many Japanese planes crashed and burned in the attacks, making the returns far from cost effective. The Japanese often had a good plan, but “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” Raiding Guadalcanal right away was a great Japanese idea. Trading 25 planes for one empty transport ship was not.
Even if the US had fought six months on Guadalcanal and then lost, it would have helped the war effort by buying time for Port Moresby and the US industrial machine.
AMERICA TAKES IT ON THE CHIN AT SAVO ISLAND
Just past midnight on August 9 the Japanese sent a task force down the slot to blow the US transports out of the water. A squad of five US cruisers and four destroyers rushed out to stop it. In the Battle of Savo Island, the Japanese cruisers and destroyers surprised and devastated the Allied force in the dark waters off Guadalcanal. Savo was one of the worst defeats in United States military history.
Four Allied cruisers took the big dip, including one from Australia, the Canberra, and the fifth one was damaged. In the darkness, the Americans could not see the Japanese, but the still burning George F Elliot played a key role, providing flickering silhouettes of Allied cruisers for the Japanese to aim at.
One Japanese cruiser took a direct hit that killed 34 men near the bridge, but that was all in the loss column for rising son. Thousands of American sailors perished. Savo Island was a horror show night for the Navy. Incidentally, the Marines get all the glory for dying at Guadalcanal, and we love them for fighting like gladiators, but twice as many American men died in the waters around Guadalcanal as died in battle on the island. The navy guys deserve a lot of honor too.
There would be many more ship to ship battles in the waters in and around Savo Island in the months ahead. The straights between Guadalcanal and Savo soon became known as ‘Ironbottom Sound.’ So many ships sank there that it is today the deep-sea diving Mecca of the world. In the latter half of 1942 it became a favorite hunting ground for sharks. As the powerful navies came to fight it out there the word got out among the sharks. Sharks came from all over the globe to feast on fishermen.
But there was slight silver lining to the cloud of this first battle of Savo Island. The Japanese task force beat it. It wheeled around with its bag of scored points and headed back west. It failed to continue on and take out the enemy supply and transport ships, which was the true objective after all. The IJN could have done this easily enough, but the Japanese commander did not know the whereabouts of the US carriers, and he did not want to turn a major win into a loss. He had a “Midway complex.”
Indeed, fear of another Midway had made both sides cautious to a fault. Fletcher's carriers abandoned the Marines and headed for the hills to guard the mail. The carriers Wasp and Hornet made haste back due southeast out of reach of Japanese air power. Armchair historians have raked Fletcher over the coals for leaving the 16,000 green Marines on Guadalcanal without carrier air protection, and it has been argued that he could have kept the flattops there and prevented the disaster at Savo. just for starters.
But how could Fletch not have had a healthy Midway paranoia? In a few hours at Midway five carriers dunked, and Japan had lost its strategic advantage in the Pacific. The Marines were deployed successfully at Guadalcanal and it did not seem worth the risk to try and block the next counter move with the vulnerable American carriers. The mission of taking the airfield had been attained. Was it worth risking a strategic defeat in order to maintain a tactical success? At this point in the war, carriers were sinking left and right on both sides, and fear ruled the day.
Admiral Sherman, a participant and a scholar in the field of carriers of WWII states baldly that the failure to leave the carriers at Guadalcanal extended the Solomon campaign by months, not weeks. But can Sherman be certain that Japanese submarines would not have found and struck the American carriers? Hindsight is especially good when you can’t suffer any losses with you imaginary alternate plan because it never makes contact with the enemy.
The Japanese defenders on Guadalcanal were few at first and were easily chased off the airfield they had almost completed. The ‘Naval Construction Battalions’ picked up the airfield construction where the Japanese had left off. These ‘See Bees’ were the unsung heroes of Guadalcanal and many other fights thereafter. The Seebees landed alongside front-line forces and went straight to work building or repairing roads, airstrips and bases. They had a shovel on one shoulder and a rifle on the other, building and fighting at the same time. It was dangerous work. One out of four See Bees that landed on Iwo Jima, for example, did not leave the island alive.
Japanese reinforcements were dispatched to Guadalcanal, but not in numbers adequate for an offensive plan to ever work. Tokyo estimates of the American forces on Guadalcanal were inaccurate. Within a few days the Japanese landed two sets of troops totaling 6,000 on two sides of Henderson Field (the new name of the Japanese airstrip – named after a Wildcat pilot killed at Midway). But they thought they were up against only 2,000 Marines.
The Japanese Navy also suffered again from Midway complex at this time. Their reinforcement task forces sent to Guadalcanal seldom had much carrier support. Instead of seizing control of the air through carrier power and then landing reinforcements on the island, the Japanese reversed the equation. They would land their Army without air support. Then these men could seize the airfield, and when the Imperial carriers dropped planes onto their airstrip they would in effect have created their own air support. The Japanese admirals were simply afraid to lose their carriers by sending them too far from home and too close to US carrier power, whose location was usually a mystery. The eastern end of the Solomons was the end of the long lines of communication for both sides in the Pacific War.
The Japanese transports landed only at night, usually on the western end of the island, but kept steadily on, building up the force it was hoped could drive the Americans off “Hendu.” The nightly reinforcement destroyer/transport runs became known among the Marines as the “Tokyo Express.” The Express was a constant throughout the Solomon campaign. It was a strategy that did not work.
The Japanese might have been far better off if they had conceded Henderson and instead built and fortified new airfields in the Central Solomons (as they were forced to do later anyway.) They took incredible casualties on land and lost strategic control of the air in an effort to defend Guadalcanal, an extremely distant position from the Japanese homeland. The Japanese supply base from Raboul was a fraction of the distance from Guadalcanal as compared to the distance from Guadalcanal to the U.S. supply depot in Espiritu Santu.
Their land efforts to take Henderson Field from August 1942 to January 1943 cost Japan 1.5 infantry divisions killed to the last man. The three major Japanese attacks on Henderson are mapped below.
Henderson - The Decisive Land Battle of the Pacific War
MAKIN RAID 8 16-18 1942
On August 18, the US Navy and Marines launched a raid in force on the Japanese held atoll of Makin in the Gilberts. Makin's purpose was makin Japan drain off some of its forces from the Solomons. Makin was one of the earliest attacks within the Japanese defensive perimeter.
The Japanese had occupied the Gilberts only recently, and less than 100 troops garrisoned Makin.
The 220 Marines assigned to the Makin Raid were to land by submarine. Two subs, the Argonaut and the Nautilus, set out from Pearl on August 8, the extra Marines on board making an already hot overcrowded submarine all the worse for the long journey.
The subs surfaced off Makin before dawn on August 17 and sent in Marine-filled rubber boats to take the island or at least damage it. 200 Marines made it ashore and were creeping up on the sleeping Japs when some clown accidentally shot his rifle. The "Japs" woke up and the fight for Makin was on.
The Japanese force was small, but well trained, and had been alerted to the possibility of an American raid a week earlier. They put up a tough fight and killed 30 Marines in a day-long battle on the 17th. Near the end of the day, the men tried to get back to the subs but tides, coral reefs, and other problems left 100 stranded on the island, with the rest back on the subs. A Japanese plane strafed the subs and one of their rescue boats, so they gave a sad signal to the men on shore that they were diving but with a promise thy would not leave the scene.
The remaining 100 Marines had already been through a day's fighting and a Japanese air raid. They thought their situation was pretty untenable and decided to surrender. They drew up a note and tried to find a Japanese officer to raise the white flag to. The more they looked around, the more they began to realize that they had actually won. All the Japanese on the island were dead, except three men who surrendered and then tried to kill their captors. Then all the Japanese on the island were dead. The Makin Raiders had killed the entire garrison.
The next light saw an easy evacuation from the atoll with prizes of maps, radios, ect.
But there was a major mistake. A party of Marines had become widely separated from the main body and were accidentally left behind. The Japanese took the Island back and took them prisoner, then transported them to Kwajalein where they were reasonably well treated by WWII Japanese standards.
Then a certain Admiral Abe arrived and decided that the Yankee prisoners were not worth the trouble of keeping them alive. They were lined up before Admiral Abe. Japanese officers (the enlisted men refused to volunteer) beheaded them one at a time.
A Makin native had watched the whole thing hiding behind a palm tree. After the war he told the story to the Allied authorities who tried Abe and hung him. Where's the champagne?
The Makin raid was long term strategic failure because later in the war the USA would have to take the entire Makin atoll and hold it, and because of the Makin raid of 1942 the Makin atoll in the meantime was intensively fortified and garrisoned. By the time the Marines went back to the Makin atoll, they would have to fight almost 3,000 Japanese troops in strong defensive emplacements with artillery. The small victory of 1942 led to the bloodbath of Tarawa in the Makin Atoll later on.
MORE NAVAL BATTLES OFF GUADALCANAL
There were still five more major sea battles to explode off the shores of Guadalcanal. The war was still in the balance. The navies in the end decided the fate of Guadalcanal. If the Japanese could reinforce Guadalcanal in mass numbers and also prevent the US from reinforcing and supplying its own garrison then they would win the fight. Even the 1st Marines could not hold on forever against superior odds, no matter how hard they fought.
Later on in the war there would be more great sea battles, but by then the winner of the war was clearly known to both sides and the matches were uneven before they started. But in these five naval battles of later 1942 both sides were evenly matched, the outcome had immediate political implications for the world, each and every sailor and soldier knew that the fate of his country as well as his person was on the line.
The slugfests were waged by old fashioned battleships and cruisers. Carriers played a part, but most of the fighting was ship to ship. These five battles at sea, mostly in the frightful darkness, in always shark-infested waters decided the momentum of the war in lost hardware, men, and morale. The battles decided the fate of the 19,246 Marines on Guadalcanal, decided the fate of the New Guinea campaign, and decided whether Australia would have to start rationing food. These were the last giant surface to surface naval battles on the planet. They counted.
Here are the next five major naval battles for control of Guadalcanal after Savo.
Battle of the Eastern Solomons August 22-25 1942 -- Light carrier Ryujo sunk – 70 Japanese planes lost – USS Enterprise damaged
Battle of The Santa Cruz Islands October 26, 1942 – US loses the Hornet but Henderson holds. Enterprise damaged. Two Japanese carriers damaged. Costly Japanese victory overall.
Battle of Cape Esperance – November 11-12 1942 (US loses 1 DD – Japanese lose 1 DD and 1 Cruiser)
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal November 12-15 1942 (Japan loses two Battleships – US loses three cruisers)
Battle of Tassafaronga November 30, 1942 (4 US cruisers torpedoed and sunk.)
BATTLE OF THE EASTERN SOLOMONS - AUGUST 1942
Another Japanese task force arrived at the northwestern waters off Guadalcanal on August 23, 1942, including two large and one small carriers. They were going to drop off major reinforcements on the eastern side of Henderson. American airplanes met this naval force and the smaller of the three carriers, the Ryujo, went to the bottom. But Japan had actually planned this as an accepted risk. Each Japanese carrier had a small task force built around it and these three carrier groups split off in the approach to Guadalcanal. The Ryujo group sped ahead and launched its planes to attack Henderson Field and to attract the attention of US air power. In the meantime the two larger groups could slip in close to launch planes and drop off troops.
The Japanese force already in place to the east of Henderson attacked the 1st Marines with a thousand men without waiting for the reinforcements to arrive. The Japanese soldiers perished almost to the last man. 35 Marines died in exchange. Henderson was definitely safe to stage right on land for now and the Japanese task force never dropped off the relief troops anyway.
The Ryujo baiting plan worked to perfection but the US Navy messed up the rest of the Japanese plan by fighting effectively. The two larger Japanese carriers were supposed to hit the US carriers hard and sink them while their planes were busy chasing the Ryujo.
80 Japanese planes did reach the Enterprise and the Sara. They scored some hits but they failed to sink them. 107 men died on the Enterprise, but the safety systems prevented the types of fires that had doomed the four Japanese carriers at Midway.
The Vals went after the brand new battleship North Carolina, but the NCAA firepower was a cut above anything either side had ever faced to date. Anti-aircraft guns and US planes shot down 70 of the 80 Japanese Zeroes and Vals. The Kates, for some mysterious reason, were on the mission from Ryujo, but never attacked.
For Japan, the planes and the pilots were the big loss of the battle of the Eastern Solomons. These planes were some of the best in the fleet and could hardly be replaced. The pilots were some of the best in the world and could not be replaced at all. The two bombs that hit the deck of the Enterprise were no consolation in Tokyo for the decimation of Japanese naval air strength in an attack that bagged no capital ships, and failed to offer any assistance in the land battle either.
Battle reports after Eastern Solomons indicated that while the Val dive bomber pilots had performed well, there was a slight, but noticeable drop-off in the pilot performance of the Zeroes. They made some mistakes that the class of 1941 never would have. There were obviously some rookies in the Japanese line-up and they had not been forced to meet the incredibly high standards of pre-war pilots in order to get their wings. Attrition was already beginning to take its toll on Japanese air power, both in quantity and now in quality.
One American mistake was noted and had to be corrected in the future. Useless chatter on the American pilot radio had clogged up the system and created dangerous situations where important messages did not get through. From now on Yankee flyers were under strict orders not to yell things into the microphone like, “Hubba-baloooo!” or “Take that Tojo, you four-eyed monkey!” or “Splash one Zero. Yiiii-haaaa!,” or “Hey Harry! Yeeeeeeeeeoh!” All of these are from actual transcripts of the air war over the Eastern Solomons.
EASTERN SOLOMONS SUB-PLOT
I-19 SINKS THE WASP - SEPTEMBER 15 1942
Japanese submarines patrolled the Coral Sea area effectively in the immediate days after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. If you wanted to count the submarine scores, then the Japanese won the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Id rather keep the fleet actions and submarine points separate.
On September 15, 1942 a skillful, and lucky submarine captain in the Japanese Imperial Navy spotted the big jackpot in his periscope. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. It was a fleet-class aircraft carrier, the USS Wasp.
I-19 fired four torpedoes at the Wasp and two slammed into the starboard side. Unlike the American Mark-13 torpedoes which had magnetic contact fuses which usually detonated before it got the the target, the Japanese Saito III torpedoes did max damage when fired on target. Wasp managed to control the flooding well, but fires broke out that spread rapidly. It was a taste of Hiryu Soryu for the Wasp as planes on deck and below began melting and blowing up. The gasoline pumping system, which is not always active, was going full throttle when the torpedoes hit. It was horrific timing, unless you're the Japanese sub commander, in which case it was fantastic timing.
Hundreds of men gathered at the back of the carrier to avoid the fires, and the captain tried reverse gear so the flame and smoke would not get to them. But that endangered the men gathered at the front of the ship. A huge explosion send deadly flammable gas everywhere and burned to death half the officers on the bridge. 35 minutes after the torpedoes hit the Wasp, Captain McGillicutty ordered “abandon ship.”
Men had long heard rumors that if you dove into the water off a high ship with a life jacket on, you'll break your neck. They took their chances, and leaped into the sea at breakneck speed. Fortunately, the rumor proved to be false, and virtually all the men who dove into the (thankfully warm) ocean were rescued. 193 men perished on the Wasp from the fires and explosions on board, not from downing. 366 more were wounded, many scarred for life with burns. A reporter for the INS, the International News Service died in the attack. The American press mourned Johnny Singer. 1,700 men lived to fight another day. 45 planes were lost as the mighty Wasp became a coral reef. 25 airborne Wasp planes landed safely on other carriers, and a few dropped in on Guadalcanal where they made a welcome addition to the little air force on Hendu.
I’ll bet the captain of I-19 went to sleep with a smile on his face too, the lucky son of a samurai. Chalk up one for Hirohito.
Losing Wasp to a lone submarine at this crucial point in the battle for the Solomons was a severe blow for the United States, a real stinger.
30 minutes after I-19 hit the Wasp, the I-15 went after the modern carrier Hornet, not far away. The Saito III's missed the carrier but the spread hit the battleship North Carolina, and the destroyer O'Brien. The humongous NC limped back to the states for repairs. The O'Brien headed back for repairs but forgot its lucky shamrock. Mid-way through the journey 'Obie' broke in half and sank with heavy loss of life.
Two of the Emperor's submarines had inflicted more damage on the United States Navy in one hour than many of the Japanese carrier task forces had done in weeks. The loss of North Carolina was a major downer as that amazing new ship was supposed to be a major morale booster.
HORNET STUNG AT SANTA CRUZ- OCTOBER 26 1942
By late October the Tokyo Express had landed enough Japanese Marines to outnumber the US defenders by a score of 23,000 to 22,000. But since the offense needs more numbers than the defense in warfare, this was not really much of an ‘ad’ (gambling slang for advantage.) The Japanese still believed in their innate military superiority and had no doubt that a big ground attack on Henderson Field, supported by a preparatory naval bombardment would enable them to take the strip. The Tokyo express was hoping to get at least 60,000 Japanese troops in place for an all or nothing assault on Henderson Field. They were going to wipe the Marines off the map and behead those who surrendered.
The Japanese planned the attack in coordination with a delivery of carrier planes. Japanese did not assign carrier air to support the ground battle, but was only to land there after the soldiers won the land war.
On October 25 and 26 Japanese cruisers shelled the Marine positions in and around Henderson. Dauntless and Avengers sank the light cruiser Dee Mura on the 25th.
The Japanese upped the ante on the 26th. Battleships cruisers, destroyers, oilers, plus four of Tojo's best flattops came down the slot on October 26, 1942.
The four carriers were certainly not seeking out the American fleet for a carrier vs. carrier fight, although that’s what they got. They weren't there for air support, as they had no troop transport and no plans to use air power to help their ground troops. They were there to sit and wait off the north shores of the Solomons and wait for the Japanese charge on Henderson Field.
The Japanese attacked on land. A crazed banzai charge of all available Japanese men went after ‘Hendu.’ But the sick, tired rugged Marines held on and inflicted casualties on the attacking forces at a rate of 10-1. The carrier forces waited in frustration for word that they could drop off their planes. The Japanese did not take Henderson that day and never would. This was their last best hope for a land victory on Guadalcanal, although not their last try.
In the meantime a water battle was brewing between two small US carrier battle groups and the Japanese task force with its transport carriers bringing planes to Guadalcanal in the manner that a transport ships brings troops.
The Enterprise and Hornet sent its planes off to attack the enemy, but the Japanese had launched its carrier planes first. They reached the US carriers before U.S. CAP planes had reached high ground over its own fleet. Thus began the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
The Kates, Zekes, and Vals sprayed the Hornet with a can of air Raid. Three bombs and two torpedoes hit the bull-eye and won the stuffed animal. The bombs exploded deep inside the ship, doing much more damage than the torpedoes.
The Japanese planes also struck the The Big E with three bombs, forcing the mammoth to retire to the southeast, leaving her sister Hornet alone, listing, and ablaze.
Hornet was evacuated. To prevent her falling from into the hands of an enemy tow-ship, USDDs sent six Kevorkian IV torpedoes into the friendly carrier to scuttle, but Wasp refused to sink. The Navy gave up and left. The Japanese actually did pick up the Hornet and put it in tow later on but the progress was so slow that they too gave up and sank it with their superior torpedoes, the infamous ‘Long Lance.’
Besides swatting the Hornet, Jap. planes from Shokaku and Junyo found the Enterprise and put several hits on the Big E. That attack killed 44 American sailors and cancelled the E-mission to find the other big Japanese unscratched flattop.
One Enterprise hero was a landing signal officer who jumped into an unmanned Avenger on deck and fought back from the rear seat with its anti-aircraft gun. Then he began to land planes by signal, defying orders from his commander that it was too risky. If one plane pancaked or collided with anything, it might trigger off major fires on the already overcrowded flight deck. But the man did not want his flying buddies to ditch and drown. The circling planes were almost completely out of gas. After watching him defy orders and land one after another the commander stopped demanding that he stop, and told his second in command, “To hell with it. He's hot.” All planes that could land did land, and this hero saved many lives and planes (I promise I'll go back and look up his name, but I like to leave my notes behind when I write, and work from revived recollection. It keeps the writing flowing more conversationally. I feel that too much detail clogs up all military books.)
Guarding the injured Enterprise was the destroyer Porter. I-21 found Porter in periscope and launched two Saito III torpedoes (nicknamed 'Long Lance' torpedoes.) A Lieutenant Harold Wells was leaning over the Porter port side when he saw the fish wake heading towards his ship. He ran to the starboard side and waited for the explosion. When the torpedo exploded Harry saw several of his fellow sailors hurled into the sky from the port side. Thanks for warning the others, Harry. DD Porter dunked with 15 KIA's.
At this point in time, the Americans were down to one carrier in the entire Pacific and that was the damaged Enterprise! That's why I say that Midway, back in June, wasn't exactly the “turning point” of the Pacific war.
Now for the good news. Planes from the two US carriers did find some targets and put the Japanese carrier Shokaku (a snake from the Pearl Harbor attack) out of the war for half a year. Planes from Hornet found the heavy cruiser Chikuma alone at sea and dove in. The lead Dauntless dropped a direct bomb hit on the bridge, wounding the captain and killing all the top officers. Heh, heh, heh. Three more direct hits left Chikuma a pathetic wreck, but the lack of delayed fuses on US bombs saved it from sinking. The bombs only damaged topside. Chikuma eventually puttered its way back to Truk.
Dauntless dive bombers from Hornet, unaware that their carrier was gone, found the carrier Zuiho and put a bomb square on the flight deck, starting a raging fire. Zuiho was down but not out. The carrier Zuikaku was a bigger prize but the American jockeys could not find this fine target. Tojo's 'not up to the task force' steamed back northwest without ever delivering the shuttle planes.
Equally significant for the result assessment were the planes damaged on the deck of the Shokaku. Between air-to-air combat and the strike on the Shokaku, the Japanese airplane losses were 100 that day, as compared to 75 for the US.
100-75 was good enough on its face, but America could replace its airplane losses easily at this stage of its industrial re-tooling for war program, and the Japanese could not replace their losses at all. Even if the losses had been 100 US and 75 Japan, the tally would have still been to the major advantage of the Allies. Japanese pilots were shrinking along with Japanese industrial war production. The short term picture was a battle in the balance, but the long term picture was not. It pointed to defeat.
The Japanese could not risk their precious carriers or their planes any longer. From this moment on, their carrier forces (with a rare exception in the Marianas in 1944) would never be used in an offensive operation ever again! The Japanese carriers were now on defense and were more concerned with not being killed than with killing. The Japanese Imperial Navy would continue to attack and bombard Guadalcanal and would continue to land troops in a desperate effort to dislodge the US enemy, but the task forces sent down the slot from October 26 1942 on would no longer include carriers.
Of course the main event on October 26, 1942 was the all or nothing land attack on Henderson field that ended up nothing. If the Japs had taken Henderson field that day they could have had imported a substantial land-based air power there in a matter of hours. But from here on in even if they did somehow take Henderson, they wouldn't even get these planes in the aftermath. Their goal from now on was to take an airfield and then hold it with no planes to defend it with, and none on the way.
In the aftermath of the Cruz the Navy had learned one key thing. Don’t name any more aircraft carriers after flying insects that sting. It’s bad luck. The Hornet and the Wasp were bug-b-gone. An escort carrier was under construction at Bath Maine was scheduled to be named the Bumble Bee. The Navy changed the name to the USS Alfred T. Mahan.
BATTLE OF CAPE ESPERANCE - NOVEMBER 11-12 1942
In spite of continuing loses, the Japanese continued stubbornly with their plan to naval bombard Henderson every night and drop off more men and supplies in a losing battle. Admiral Scott learned of a force of two Jap. destroyers and three cruisers barreling down the slot with plans to kill American men. Scottie sent out four cruisers and five destroyers to block and stop.
In the engagement called the Battle of Cape Esperance, the Japanese accidentally ran into the American ships at the most vulnerable angle possible. They had allowed Scott to ‘cap the T’ which put all U.S. guns broadside into a favorable position, while Japanese warships could only employ their foreward turrets and even those only among the lead one or two ships.
The US would have won a complete victory except for some errors. One of the US destroyers broke formation and ruined the perfect T that had been such a gift of fortune. Textbook formation devolved into confusion as three American destroyers, Duncan, Farenholt, and Laffey, soon found themselves caught between the two lines of fire. A great situation turned bad and a US destroyer went down.
Friendly fire provided most of the lethal shells that dunked the Duncan, and another US sell tore into the Farenholt 451. The laughing Laffey managed to dodge the same-team rockets and got out safely. Injured Farenholt made its way back home for repairs.
Japan's Lucky Victory at Cape Esperance 11.12.42
All was not bad news on November 12. Japan lost a destroyer and a heavy cruiser at Cape Esperance. More importantly the US Navy held the water. The enemy mission failed. The Japanese mission was not about engaging the USN in a ship to ship fight. It was to bomb Henderson badly. Henderson didn't bombed at all that night, unless you count the troops who got bombed on whiskey celebrating that they didn't get bombed by bombs. As had happened before and would again, the sacrifices of American men at sea saved the lives of men on land.
NAVAL BATTLE OF GUADALCANAL NOVEMBER 12-15 - FREE-FOR-ALL IN THE DARK
Another major attempt was made to bomb and seize Henderson on the night of November 12/13 1942 and resulted in one of the most violent naval clashes in history. This Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was an old-fashioned ship-to-ship bare knuckles melee, involving no carriers. In was WWI revisited in the Solomons.
A primo Japanese task force steamed out of Raboul headed for Lunga Point consisting of two fleet-class battleships surrounded by nine destroyers. This bomb squad was commanded by Captain Abe, whom the Marines nicknamed ‘Dishonest Abe.’ Half a days sailing behind them was a second battle group consisting of transports loaded with troops and protected by cruisers. They were to come in and land the killers after the IJN ships pulverized the helpless defenders on Henderson.
The American force under Captain Callaghan sent out to met them consisted of five cruisers, the Helena, Atlanta, San Francisco, Portland, and Juneau, plus six destroyers. Two of these were ‘light’ anti-aircraft cruisers, but they still packed plenty of turret power. The men in these cruisers were in for a rough ride. Commander Callaghan and his flagship Atlanta were doomed.
At 1:30 in the morning one of the US destroyers made radar contact with the Japanese force. But the two teams were so close upon each other that in minutes the info was irrelevant. The two task forces had run straight into each other from opposite directions in total darkness. For the next hour they pounded each other to scrap metal in a state of total confusion. Hardly a ship on either side was not hit to some degree by both friendly and hostile fire. It was every ship for herself and fire at will.
Both sides retired just after three a.m. like wounded drunks after a barroom brawl in with the lights off. The dawn hangover revealed a bed-spinning headache of damage and destruction. Every ship in the US force had been damaged or sunk except for the Destroyer Fletcher.
Japanese shells destroyed (that means sank) the Atlanta and killed Admiral Callaghan. Among the other KIA’s on Atlanta was a young man who had already won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor, Charles Young. Helena was ripped to holy Helena by friend and foe alike. A US destroyer sent two Kevorkian III torpedoes into Helena to put it out of its misery..
And wouldn't you know it, the poor Juneau left the battle scene burning and with no steering, but other than that, in tip-top shape,
Juneau wandered helplessly north of Savo where a Japanese sub finished it off at daybreak. 700 brave American sailors died at the hands of the yellow submarine.
The infamous ‘long lance’ Japanese torpedoes did plenty of the damage in the midnight melee. IJN submarines, by the way, did not use the lethal long lance. Nor did the Imperial Japanese Air Force. Lance was the exclusive possession of the Imperial surface ships. (Samuel Eliot Morrison is credited with giving it the name ‘Long Lance.’)
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal – Midnight Melee 11.13 1942
The Japanese lost a battleship and a destroyer at NBG. You can see them sinking on the map. The American navy hit the big, but elderly battleship Hiei with 85 shells. US planes from Henderson found Hiei in the morning light and continued to rake her with weaponry. Hiei ya doin? Squads from Enterprise joined in as did another group of B-17’s from far-away Espiritu Santu in the New Hebrides. Hiei spun out of control around Savo and went down in a light fog, possibly with the help of a Japanese Hara Kari IV torpedo.
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was the only instance in WWII where the US Navy fought a battle that was decided by ship vs. ship big guns. All the other fights were decided by air power or torpedoes. Between the wars the US taxpayers payed a fortune for big guns, forgetting that new wars are won by the new weapons beginning development at the end of the last one.
The US Navy between the wars completely neglected the study and development of night fighting, while the Japanese specialized in it. The US Navy decided not to put torpedoes on its cruisers. The Japanese cruisers specialized in it. The United States paid for these two between-war mistakes at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
TASSAFARONGA 11 30 42
By the end of November the Japanese conceded that they would lose Guadalcanal, but wanted to hold on to it in order to buy time to build a new line of defense in the central and western Solomons. They stopped sending in large transports full of troops to the battle for Henderson Field, but instead turned to night supply runs with fast destroyers dropping off floating drums on the beach and then scooting back to safety.
Admiral Wright was assigned to lead
A US task force of four destroyers and five heavy cruisers went out to intercept this midnight drop-and-run shuttle on November 30. The four U.S.N. destroyers were on point, with five heavy cruisers in the rear. The Japanese ran the slot that night with 8 fast destroyers armed with guns and lances.
Weather hurt the US forces that night. Air reconnaissance was grounded in the water because the wind and sea were too calm for the little seaplanes to launch those heavy pontoons. As a result when the US destroyers ran right into the Japanese destroyers, it was too late to get out of range of the long lances. The US cruisers destroyed a Japanese destroyer in surface to surface fighting, but the Navy got more than it gave. The 7 other Japanese destroyers launched one of the best torpedo broadsides in history, hitting four US cruisers with numerous torpedoes. The Northampton sunk. The Pensacola was set on fire. The New Orleans and Minneapolis both had their bows ripped off. The Honolulu got away unscathed.
400 American sailors died at the Battle of Tassafaronga. In the struggle for Guadalcanal the Japanese had won a late round in a losing campaign. Tass was the last of the many slugfests in the waters between Savo Island and Guadalcanal.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EUROPE 1942
Some essays on the Nazis and the war in general
Most general histories see 1942 as a year that the Axis was ascendant. Germany started a new offensive in Russia. Rommel worked miracles in the desert, Eisenhower got smashed at Kasserine Pass, the U-boats had their way in the Atlantic, and Japan ran roughshod all over Asia and even threatened India.
But 1942 opened with Germany horrified by all the frozen corpses being shipped back home from the Russian front. This was not the invincible Third Reich the German people had come to know and love. There were food shortages in Germany in January of 1942 and in all the occupied countries. There were labor shortages too. There were shortages in everything, and Germany was suddenly falling back and freezing to death in Russia. Germany opened the year in an epiphany. 'This is not good. We're in a bad spot here.'
Germany had four wars going on at the same time; in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, in the air, and in Russia. The United States was just taking off its jacket to start fighting. Germany was holding on but it was completely out of resources. One front could be helped only at the expense of another already vulnerable spot. That would never change for the rest of the war.
The Japanese were winning all over Asia in the first four months of 1942. That helped German morale a little, but German leadership just had to know from day one of the year, that the war could not be won. The Jerries had lost the war in Russia simply because they had one shot at it and didn't get it done. The Russian front was relatively stable when the year opened, but Germany had lost the momentum on the biggest and most decisive of the four fronts. What good were Rommel's wins in Cyrenia with 23 tanks if Germany was tanking it in the east with two thousand tanks?
Japan was winning glorious triumphs while Germany was being halted and pushed back in Russia and in the air. Germany was barely winning the closely fought war in the Atlantic, but that wasn't enough to change the big picture. Japan was shocked at how easily they were winning. Germany at the same time was in shock they they could lose at all.
Japan entered the war with a fool's timing. Just when Germany was getting slapped around in Russia and was out of resources in Africa and was about to get pounded from the air for three straight years, Japan jumped in and ran the table in Southeast Asia for five months. History likes to wrap things up in bundles for ease of telling and for dramatic touch, but the 'Axis ascendancy' of 1942 is a bit misleading.
The fact that Russia had stopped Germany and was beginning to push them back in Russia on new Years Day, makes 1942 a year for the Allies. The party was over for the Axis, even in spite of the amazing series of conquests for Japan from January to April. By the time Germany counter-attacked in Russia in the summer, the war had evened out in Asia and Germany was losing in Africa and taking a pounding from the RAF, so even the summer offensive in the Crimea was a net negative.
NAZI POWER
If the Nazis had ever tried to enslave their own people they would have been overthrown. That's why they always had more trouble with home resistance than with resistance movements in other countries. The Nazis were blackmailed in Germany by being required to win the hearts and minds of its own in order to rule. The Nazis could control and intimidate Holland, but it could not completely do that to Germany, because they Nazis always had to pose as the friend and protector of the German people.
In the end it was the Germans who came closest to killing Hitler. There were plenty of Allied plans to assassinate him but only the Germans got close.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933-34 they could not just liquidate the German establishment. It had to be co-opted and employed. The Nazis didn't have those kind of resources. The Nazis also knew that they could not convert all the millions of workers at all skill levels to Nazi philosophy, so the task of building a new infrastructure for the entire nation was beyond their capacity in their wildest dreams. They had to turn their own conservative (meaning not-Nazi) national foundation into a little Vichy France within Germany, a foundation that would carry on the mammoth uninspiring task of administering and running a great country. The Nazis would do all the fun stuff at the top of the ladder, like make speeches, plan war, and buy fancy villas for themselves. The non-Nazis would do all the hard work of making things run. The Nazis would construct a parallel government to operate simultaneously with the older one. For example, Nazi courts would be set up in addition to the regular courts. But only Nazi crimes would be tried in the Nazi courts. The older court would still be the default mode to which all cases automatically flow, just as before. The Nazi courts were a minority legal umbrella big brother keeping an eye on the regular courts as best as as possible.
The regular courts regularly made decisions that displeased the Nazis. The Nazis would send threatening letters to an offensive Judge, make angry statements about him in the Stormer, or have a meeting where it was decided that after the war is won, we will know how to handle that guy. But the Nazis would not shoot the judge and would not fire him or replace him with a Nazi judge. There really weren't enough good Nazi judges to go around and replace the regular ones. Most of the Nazis were sociopath weirdos from beer-halls and street brawls with communist laborers. They Nazi party didn't have 3,000 finely educated judges to spread around. Besides, if the Nazis had replaced the entire judicial system with Nazi judges the people would realize they were being enslaved just like conquered Poland. The Nazis dared not make moves that conveyed that message and that handicapped their ability to rule their own nest. There was an astonishingly liberal infrastructure still intact (the Jews excepted of course.)
The same applies to all sorts of fields. The Nazi had dictatorial control of the press in Norway, but not in Germany. The Nazis did not take over all the German newspapers and tell them absolutely what they could or could not write. The Nazis set up their own presses and their own books and newspapers to parallel the establishment. They of course issued warnings to editors who printed material that was too critical of the Nazis. But they rarely dared to act and machine gun German journalists walking out of the office late at night for writing that the war was clearly being lost. It is surprising, in fact, how much criticism of Hitler and the war effort and the Nazi leaders that was actually allowed. A Luxembourg writer might disappear, but a German writer gets another warning that the Party does not appreciate such criticism.
It was the same with radio, with labor, with transportation, with the post office, the church, and even with the arts. The established non-Nazi infrastructure had the right to complain about the Nazis while the Nazis kept threatening them to watch their step or else. Meanwhile in the occupied countries, anyone who gave a Nazi a dirty look went off to a concentration camp.
It was the same with the banking industry, the same with education, the old school diplomatic function, the same with the military. The Nazis set up oversight and a small parallel organization, but they never actually set up their own foundation, their own true infrastructure.
And it was not because they didn't have a good system. They had a great system of tyranny and evil. It was pure dy-no-mite. They just didn't have the numbers, they didn't have an extra 30 million Nazis to work with for a mass Party infrastructure, especially not while running a world war. They needed all the Nazis they had to run the occupation and conquest of foreign countries. Germany was big but it wasn't that big. The Nazis didn't have the numbers. (Stalin by the way, had the numbers and that's partly why evil worked in Russia longer and better than it did in Germany.)
That is why we get the bizarre situation of Vichy France. That one was always a head-scratcher for me, that whole thing with Vichy France. Why would a victorious Germany allow France to exist with a weird amount of genuine independence? The Goebbels diary has a lot of complaining about Vichy France and how Germany should conquer the French and put them in their place.
But weren't they already conquered? There are all sorts of defiant gestures and deeds by France, so why are the French allowed such a defiant level of autonomy? Why are the French allowed their own police, their own armed forces, their own press and transportation systems?
It's only when we look and see how short of political and administrative personnel the Nazis were at home that we see how overwhelming a task it would have been for the Nazis to take on the chore of running France. Now the Vichy regime makes sense. Hitler was already overtaxed trying to run Germany, Poland, the Low countries and Norway. Adding France in June of 1940 was simply impossible. He needed his resources for Barbarossa. He made it seem like he was being merciful and diplomatic, but he was being fearful and pragmatic. It would have been all he had left and still not enough, to ask the Nazi party of Germany, already only a tolerated minority there, to now dominate and run the store in France.
GIVE CHURCH A BREAK
The two groups that gave the Nazis the most trouble at home were the Army and the Church.
The Church is definitely not getting the credit it deserves for standing up to the Nazis.
All you ever read about now is how the church co-operated with the Nazis. All that material is out there and I don't deny any of it. The photographs of priests giving the Heil Hitler, the agreements with the Vatican, the sins of the Pope for working within the Reich are all well documented and fully spotlighted. I deny none of that! The church did wrong in Nazi Germany and deserves all the criticism it gets.
But what is unfair is that the incidents of courageous defiance by the church in Germany goes virtually unremembered. Tell both sides of it fairly.
No one criticized the Nazis more openly than the Church. There were hundreds of priests, threatened with torture and murder, who continued to openly defy the Nazis. They called Hitler a madman and condemned the war as evil in the eyes of God. Then they got a phone call from the Nazis saying that “if you value your kneecaps, Father, you will watch what you say about our Fuehrer.” click – dial tone ...
The next day the priest calls Hitler “a great sinner.” The next day there is a note in the mailbox, “Father, if you value your life you will watch what you say about our Fuehrer” The next day the priest stands on the pulpit and say again that the Nazis are doing evil.
History wants the German church to have lived up to a standard of courage courage that no one else was asked to live by. Even the German Army didn't stand up to Hitler as openly as the church did and they had guns. Show me the people in a hundred professions in Nazi Germany. Can you point to any professions where they refused to cooperate with the Nazis? Everyone understands that you don't want to get beaten up or killed. Were cab drivers or comedians or landscapers expected to not accept the Nazi regime? Why are priests the only ones held to the high standard? Were they supposed to commit suicide? Were they supposed to kill Nazis who knocked on the church door? What were they supposed to do?
The Nazis were a) afraid of the church and its ability to rouse the people to rebellion, if pushed far enough and b) had no desire to administer the church world.
The Nazis couldn't destroy religion. They couldn't crush an idea like a Polish brigade. The Nazis couldn't control the church, and they couldn't destroy it. Many priests in Germany showed the same amount of courage as the American soldiers who landed on the beaches at Normandy, and don't get the fair amount of credit. I'm not a churchgoer and I enjoy bashing the church. I'm not biased in favor of the church. But the truth is the truth. The church did more than its fair share of trying to defy Hitler and its unfair that only the spineless church deeds get any post-war ink.
Many Nazi memoirs include a running account of the endless headache the church is giving them.
Stalin didn't have such problems with the church. Half the priests were KGB.
THE DESERT FOX AND HOLLYWOOD HYPE
1942 opened with Rommel on the march in North Africa. He remained on the offense until mid-February.
He is the German war hero that even the west has chosen to admire, and he has managed to outfox history.
General Erwin Rommel, the so-called “Desert Fox” became a cult hero even in England, while killing Englishmen. Germans monitoring English newspapers and radio broadcasts gloated over the reverence the British gave to their big star in the desert. Goebbels analyzed the English praise for Rommel this way,
“Rommel's advance produced a veritable shock in England. There is embarrassed stammering about the capture of Bengasi. The Reuters Agency up to this hour has not been able to offer any plausible explanation. By way of providing a good out, however, Rommel is praised beyond reason. No doubt he deserves it and nobody begrudges it to him, but on the other hand one must not overlook the fact that the English pour out this praise only to present themselves to the world as polished gentlemen, who are fair and more than fair to the enemy even in defeat.”
This is completely right on, as much as it hurts to give ugly Goebbels credit for anything.
By the end of 1942 the Desert Fox was on the run and not so glorified anymore, but the first two months of the year 1942 had Rommel a hero. If Rommel was half as great at British propaganda said he was, he never would have lost a battle.
James Mason starred as Rommel in a blockbuster 1950 film, The Desert Fox, which made Rommel look like strictly a military hero who hated the Nazis and was only reluctantly doing his duty as a soldier. They start with Rommel getting orders from Hitler to stand and fight in a hopeless situation late in 1942. The noble and wonderful soldier is disgusted with Hitler, but doesn't spell it out. We know he is a noble and good man under duress from the Mason's faces and tone. From the very start of the film we are supposed to feel bad for this poor tortured soul.
The entire second half of the movie is all about how Rommel conspired to overthrow Hitler. The moral of the movie is that Rommel was a fine and highly moral man, not merely a fine general. Erwin only reluctantly served the Nazis, and that only as a politically detached military man. When his troubled conscience could no longer stand it, Erwin joined the conspiracy against Hitler, a man he despised. He paid with his life. What a hero. This is all spelled out so clearly in the film, that if I'm exaggerating, it's on the side of understatement. This is the idea that most Americans still have of Rommel, and short takes on Rommel in general histories of the war still back this up.
But all you have to do is read the works of Keitel, Speer and Goebbels and you get the real Rommel. They aren't trying to debunk his legend when they mention that he was one of the most loyal and dedicated Nazis from way back in the early days of the party.
The fact is that Rommel was super-Nazi. Erwin loved Hitler and loved the Nazi Party until things went bad in 1943. Only then did the fox act like his nickname and slyly change his tune to conspirator against Hitler.
In the early days of the Nazi Party, not only was Rommel a member, he was the head of Hitler's personal bodyguard! When Hitler murdered the top men of the S.A. in the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, Rommel led the detachments into the rooms where Rhoem and other disloyal Nazis were shot. Rommel may not have personally pulled the trigger, but he was an accessory to Nazi political assassinations of fellow Nazis who had not been loyal enough to Hitler. The people who produced The Desert Fox were desert rats, deserting the cause of the truth to make money.
Part of the reason for the post-war halo over Rommel's hat was that the world hated Germans, yet the democracies needed German co-operation to fight the Cold War against the Russians. The west needed someone to glorify in order to appease the bitter Berliners. Who else could they say good things about in the German echelon? Rommel was a positive lightning rod for a western desire to make friends again with Germany. It's just too bad that better moral men like Admiral Canaris didn't get to become household names instead of Rommel.
Rommel was an overrated general (we'll get to that later) and he was an incredibly overrated individual. He had qualities, but his negatives are huge and history has elevated him to a place he does not deserve.
DEATH OF FRITZ TODT SHAKES UP NAZIS FEB 8 1942
He is not one of the household names of WWII but had he lived out the war he would have been, and might have been hung at Nuremberg.
Fritz Todt was a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler, whatever that is, and was such a hero of the Nazi construction industry that the Nazi construction labor army was named after him. It was called the OT, the Operation Todt.
Todt met with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on February 7 1942. He took off for Berlin on February 8 and his plane exploded in mid-air.
Fritz had been critical of the war against Russia, recommending that it be reduced to a stop loss holding action with no plans for any further offensive goals. Todt was Nazi minister of munitions at the time of his death.
The Nazis had murdered a million people and suffered a million war casualties by the time Todt died, but this was the first great Nazi to die on them. It really shook them up. The Nazi memoirs treat this as one of the great events of the war, even though most people today would just say “Fritz who?”
Hitler was so upset that he flew back to Berlin and arranged a funeral for Fritz that would have been the envy of a 19th century Pope. The Fuehrer rarely left East Prussia in these months because he was running the war against Russia down to the last tank. But losing Todt was enough to get AH to leave his maps and come home for a few days. The Todt funeral was a ceremony on a par with the Nuremburg rallies. All the great Nazi leaders gave a short eulogy, and Hitler topped it off with a great speech in which he had to stop several times to fight back tears. Adolph had a big heart, you know.
Do we have to even say that Hitler might have ordered him killed and was like the mobster at the funeral parlor showing up with the most expensive flowers? Todt was also a Luftwaffe Air Marshall and Goering had come to perceive him as a rival. Goering could have easily arranged for the plane to blow up. Few historians have ever openly suggested that Todt was may have been assassinated. A couple have, and I'm with them. It was more likely than not that either Goering or Hitler had him Fritz Todt iced. In fact, Albert Speer was supposed to be on that plane with Todt but received last minute orders to not board.
175 RULE OF 1942
Hitler issued a rule in February of 1942 that anyone in the SS caught in the act of homosexuality would be shot. It was titled “Rule 175.” For the rest of the war and beyond, the term “175” became slang in Germany for homosexual. “He's a 175er.”
Many of the top Nazis were homosexual, and authors have speculated that Hitler had same-sex encounters with Rhoem and a few others, and that this may have been part of the reason that his old pal Rhoem had to die during the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler was planning to expel Rhoem from the Party and Rhoem might talk. They were old friends, so at face value one might wonder why Hitler felt that Rhoem had to die.
There is no proof that Hitler was homosexual, but he might have been. No one used the term “gay” back then so I don't have to. Hitler might have been a homosexual. The book I was Hitler's Doctor claims he definitely was.
CRIPPS AND BLOODS
Stafford Cripps isn't a famous name of WWII today but he was in 1942. Cripps was a powerful politician in England in the 1930's and into the war years. What made Cripps special is that he wasn't just a liberal, he was a radical Marxist. In the United States he couldn't have even survived in office, not even in the “Red Decade” of the 30's. But England was more of an all-inclusive political environment than the United States (and still is of course.) Cripps was a well-respected MP offering no apologies for his left extremism. And Stafford had enough voting comrades to get elected.
So in 1942 when Cripps began to make speeches in Parliament criticizing Churchill, the Nazi intellectuals (forgive the oxymoron) became exited with joy. They honestly thought for several weeks that these little controversies within British leadership meant the impending downfall of Winston Churchill, and perhaps the installation of a left-wing Bolshevik government in Great Britian. The Nazi analysts weren't sure exactly how they could exploit the installation of a Bolshevik government in Great Britain, but they knew it had to be better than dealing with that stubborn P.M. Churchill. They hated Churchill and always insulted him in their speeches and articles and in private conversation. It was always personal. They attacked the man, ignoring his policies as if that were irrelevant compared to “his big ego” and his “disgusting conceit.”
Takes one to know one, eh Heinz?
Churchill invited Cripps into the cabinet and the Nazis were jumping for joy. They were calling each other on the phone beaming and grinning. This is it! It's over! Churchill is going down! The entire British government is collapsing! Churchill is desperate because the left is closing in on him so he has invited Cripps into the cabinet, but that is only temporary. Cripps will soon be Prime Minister and who know what that will lead to! The Nazis were applying the example of their 1933-34 seizure of power in Germany to the 1942 situation in England, the numbskulls.
The opposite was true. Left-rad Cripps was becoming more and more supportive of Churchill. Churchill did not fear Cripps. Winston did not fear Crisp's crispy criticisms, but welcomed them as part of the pluralistic democracy that both men were proud to be a part of. They both celebrated their arguments, as well as their co-operation in the press, wanting the whole world to know.
Cripps never renounced his left-wing beliefs, yet, at the same time, became a war-hawk as surely as any Conservative. Churchill welcomed Cripps into the cabinet because Cripps wanted to help in any way he could to defeat these evil Nazis trying to destroy his country. Cripps held many important posts in the British cabinet before the war ended. There was never any danger of a Bolshevik take-over in Britian, just because one famous Brit Bolo was now in the cabinet.
Besides, didn't these Nazi fools realized that the USSR was now allied with Great Britian, and Cripps could therefore easily reconcile his Marxist beliefs with this alliance? As if an avowed Marxist Russophile in London is going to be any less supportive of a war against Nazi Germany in 1942 as anyone else in Britian.
The Nazis were just desperate for good news because the Russian front was terrifying them. So they built a brick castle out of straw news. By the middle of 1943, the Nazis weren't talking about Cripps anymore at all.
JACK FROST MELTDOWN OF NAZI RADAR- FEBRUARY
The Bruneval Raid of February 1942 helped the Allies reduce bomber losses in the strategic air campaign.
Bruneval was a coast port of France where the Nazis had a large radar installation that was working effectively to direct Luftwaffe fighters to meet and greet the RAF heavy bombers. The Nazis had several such radar installations and the British decided that they needed to raid at least one and take some equipment back to England for study. Bruneval was the clear choice as it was just across the Channel. The first thought was a sea-based commando raid, but casualty estimates were too high. The next best idea was a parachute raid, Entebbe/Osama style, with the air-dropped commandos striking fast and then rescued in the nick of time on the beaches by British small craft.
The Bruneval Raid, unlike the Dieppe Raid, was a success. The raid was led by John Frost, who, naturally, never liked to be called Jack, so naturally I will call him that.
The airborne Brits got the drop on the sleeping radar station, took a German scientist prisoner, grabbed some of the most important radar equipment, and beat it back to the beach where they had a skirmish with some Kraut defenders. They got off the beach with only three killed and three wounded, and the scientific evidence. British scientists studied the equipment and the counter-measures based on this knowledge reduced RAF casualties. The men who died on the Bruneval raid did the Allied war effort a noble service.
OLD MAN WINTER BLUES
The Goebbels Diary throughout March 1942 is obsessed on one thing above all others. Was it his hatred of the Jews? No. Hatred of America for entering the war? No. His love for Germany? No. His sorrow that he was seldom with his wife? No. It was hatred of winter.
While reading Joe's comments condemning the winter I thought it was regarding the way the winter had damaged the war effort on the Russian front. But no, apparently Goebbels and Hitler both had the blues because they just couldn't wait for the spring to get here and it just never would.
Feeling blue because spring is cruelly cold and warm weather just seems like it will never get here is SOP for those who don't live near the equator. My wife and I went through it just last month. But my wife and I weren't also mass murdering millions of people at the same time. It's pretty nauseating to read of Goebbels describing his deep inner depression because of the cruelty of the cold winter and how March seems to offer no relief. He describes how bitter the Fuehrer feels about it too,
“Hitler hates the snow more than anyone I know. He agrees with me that the soul cannot be warm unless the weather is too. I have never seen him so despondent. He complains all day about the cold and how low his spirits sink every time he even sees snow.”
Oh, poor you! Joseph and Adolph are waxing poetic about the cruelty of a long winter as millions are dying out there at the end of their sword.
If the Allies had captured them alive in 45 they might have taken them to Antarctica for six weeks of outdoor interrogation in speedo swim trunks.
Joe and Adolph mention the military problem of winter only one tenth as often as they mention the personal pain they are suffering from the cold and what it does to their spirits. They just cannot be happy when it is cold outside.
What a couple of wimps! I don't like the winter but it doesn't get me depressed like it seems to do to these two martial leaders. Maybe they're really depressed because they are beginning to become aware that they cannot possibly win the war and so the winter just triggers some other element of depression already blooming in their springless souls.
There's millions of Germans freezing to death in Russia and millions more, friend and foe, in the conquered reaches of the Reich suffering far worse from the cold than they are and all they can do is selfishly think 'poor me' because the spring will just never get here. They're the first to complain that the Italians do not have the stomach for war, or that the Americans are too spoiled rotten to fight the hard life of the soldier and then you get these two dingos feeling sorry for themselves because the snow won't go away when they want it to go away. The two men are absolutely obsessed with hating the cold and hating the winter like two old ladies complaining on a bench in front of a nursing home. In their sheltered life they do not see the personal pain they inflict on others, never seeing the ramifications of everything they do.
Such small men. Together they weighed as much as the left thigh of an NFL center. The two biggest rats in all of the earth were the only two men in all of Nazi Germany that I could probably still take in a fair fight combined. We are all defined first by our physicality, and the tiny physicality of Hitler and Goebbles says it all for me.
ST NAZAIRE RAID – MARCH 28 1942
British commandos attacked the French harbor port of St Nazaire on March 28. The mission was to sabotage and destroy the naval facilities there, so that German warships would have to go all the way back to Germany when they needed refurbishing or repair. The location of Naz on the west coast below Brittany aided the German sea raiders of the Atlantic enormously.
The key pat of the raid was the big freighter Campbelltown, which was loaded up with explosives and then pushed into the harbor and into the naval repair facilities.
When Campbelltown blew up it took more than 3,000 Germans with it.
The mission was a success, and the St Naz dock facilities were kaput for the rest fo the war. Pocket Battleships and sea raiders had to go back to Bremen for repairs and replenishment.
LUBECK – THE WAR COMES HOME TO GERMANY – 3.28
On the night of March 28 1942 the Second World War became a home game for Germany. The Royal Air Force gave the city of Lubek a royal pounding from the air. 191 four-engine Sterling and Lancaster bombers found their target in the first successful mass air raid on a German city in the war.
Lubeck is a port city and an old one, mostly made of very old wood buildings. The target of the British bombers was the center of the city itself, not any specific factory. This was true terror bombing. The rif-RAF destroyed more than 50% of the city of Lubeck in a single air raid.
This is what Harris at bomber command had in mind when he planned his strategic air command's long range goals. 'A hundred more such raids over the next year or two and we are in business,' he said.
An important Heinkel airplane factory burned to the ground at Lubeck on 3-28. But the military targets destroyed were mere collateral damage from the act of trying to destroy the city itself.
More than a thousand German civilians died in the fires and explosions of Lubeck. The Luftwaffe shot down five British bombers.
The air raid was not just a successful attack per se. Lubeck scared the Germans and the German leaders big time. Their diaries are full of shock and fear that this is the beginning of some hard times ahead. If Lubeck is destroyed in one night, when is my city on the list to go down? It was terror. This is what the RAF had been trying to do for two years, but failures were piling high with no clear demonstration on record to show that strategic air power did work. Critics of strategic air power wanted it scrapped and wanted resources for air power to go for expanded ground and sea air support. But Brit Harris and Yank Spaats pressed forward with the strategic bomber campaign. The Germans had been waving their noses for two years at failed attempts by the RAF to hurt Germany from the sky. But on March 28 the RAF landed a roundhouse right right to Germany's cheekbone at Lubeck. Hitler shivered in his boots when he heard about Lubeck. I have no proof that he did, and he never told anyone he did, but he did.
Lubeck was the Guadalcanal of the air war in the West. The Allies seized the momentum in one great murderous heartless battle of terror. It was a horrible victory, but nevertheless, one of the great victories of World War II. It humbled the braggart big-mouth Nazis for the first time.
The Germans retaliated by threatening to terror bomb British cities. But since they had been doing that for a long time, the British could laugh off these threats. That was already on-going and pressing it home would only lead to the loss of too many desperately needed Focke-Wolf and Me-109 fighters. The Nazis could barely afford to lose any more bombers. They could definitely could not afford to lose any more fighters.
THE GREAT GIRAUD ESCAPE – APRIL 17 1942
Almost as much as he hated the winter, Hitler hated it when famous French Generals in Nazi PW camps escaped and made fools of his captors. He hated that.
On April 17 1942 frog General Henri Giraud made a great escape by climbing down the wall of the castle where he was a prisoner in Germany. General Giraud had also escaped from a German PW camp in World War I, which added insult to the repeat event.
Hank planned his break for more than a year. First he learned fluent German. Then he made a fine disguise, a Himmler mask. Giraud talked his way across Germany, made it to Switzerland, and then fled to Vichy France. Vichy refused to return him to Germany, which says a lot about the relationship between Vichy and Nazi. Giraud became like a hero in a spy movie and in doing so he humiliated Germany. If a top prisoner could escape, what did that say about the Reich that was supposed to last a thousand years?
Hitler was enraged at Giraud's escape. When wasn't he? A few anger management classes in 1921 and there's no WWII in 1941.
AH was such an immature infantile little man. The baby didn't get his bottle so a thousand more French Jews went to the camps to pay for Giraud's deed. There's no logical cause and effect, but when Hitler's macho pride is hurt, like any sick abuser he strikes out at any victim in his sights. The easiest and most helpless target were the Jews already stripped of their ability to effectively resist.
MALTA
In April 1942 the Germans began a large air attack on the Mediterranean island of Malta.
This key island was being used as an Allied naval and air base to harass and destroy the German shipping from Italy to the Italo-German Empire in North Africa.
Rommel and Kesselring were in agreement that Malta had to be neutralized. But there was a major argument as to whether Malta had to be completely conquered and occupied. Rommel wanted all the resources that might go into an invasion of Malta for himself to use as he pleased in Africa. Kesselring and others tried to convince Hitler (and Rommel) that Malta could only be neutralized for a time, and that if it were not taken out completely it would rise again and be the same old problem later.
After a month of pounding from the air, Kesselring was certain that Germany could take Malta with a combined forces operation. But Rommel was against it and Hitler always listened to Rommel. Goering also was against it because it would probably include another parachute attack and he had lost too many men taking Crete. The cretin didn't want to have to go through another Crete.
Kesselring pleaded that if Rommel went ahead with an offensive thrust into Egypt, the Axis would have to open up a second supply line across the eastern Mediterranean to complement the one already precariously maintained across the central Mediterranean, and it would be impossible to do this, even in the short run, as Malta would rebound. Then the primary supply line from Sicily would be choked off and then the Axis would soon find itself isolated and doomed in North Africa. This is precisely what happened in the long run. Rommel was the movie star general of his time and indeed of history. But all of his decisions were not genius right, even if superficial history and Paramount Pictures seems to think so.
When Kesselring began to argue too much with Rommel, he got an e-mail from Adolph Hitler to “Leave Rommel alone. You are a Luftwaffe man and this is none of your concern!”
There was a famous commercial in the 1970's where in a din of noisy conversation someone says, “well my broker is E.F. Hutton and he says that...” at that point all conversation stops and everyone looks to see what that person is going to say. The voice-over comes on, “When E.F. Hutton talks ... people listen.”
Kesselring could play that part. “Well my boss is Adolph Hitler, and he told me....” .... Everyone at HQ stops whatever they're doing... - Voice-over with German accent: “When Adolph Hitler gives an order ... people listen.”
Malta would not be invaded.
BOWERY BOYS HELP MALTA
Malta was running out of fighter aircraft, and the British couldn't risk/spare any more carriers in the Mediterranean. So the United States pitched in with one of the newer carriers, the Hornet.
Hornet, c) 1940, ran the Axis gauntlet in the Mediterranean in May of 1942 and helped Malta survive. In two separate runs, Hornet delivered a total of 81 flying (not in crates) Spitfire planes to Malta.
The first mission was only partly successful because the Luftwaffe followed the Spits to Malta and timed a perfect attack. Just as the Brit Spits were landing, 109s and FWs dropped in and smashed more than half the Malta squad to malted milk balls.
The second mission on May 9 1942 was code-named operation BOWERY. This time the Hornet had a smaller British carrier beside it, the HMS Eagle. Hornet sent up a CAP of Wildcats (combat air patrol,) then lifted the Spitfires one at a time to the flight deck. 64 Spitfires took off from the two flattops and the Wildcats escorted them to Malta. This time there were only three planes lost, and these were due to accident and mechanical failure.
The Wasp helped save Malta before it dunked in the Pacific later in the year, so this was the carrier's finest hour.
PEDESTAL - AUGUST 1942
The fate of Malta was in the balance, especially with the fighter planes running of gasoline. A special rescue convoy was organized to relieve the battered island. There were 14 freighters backs by a dozen warships, including two aircraft carriers. The jewell in the convoy was the US built oil tanker Ohio, one of the largest tankers in the world.
This was code named OPERATION PEDESTAL.
This convoy passed through the Straights of Gibraltar and headed for “Mother Malta.” Convoy PEDESTAL took a serious beating. It was worse than they feared. The German Navy and Air Force sank 9 of the 14 freighters. But the five that got through saved Malta. The Ohio was damaged beyond repair but it floated. Ohio made it to Malta and the Hurricanes and Spitfires yelled, “First down!”
THE ASSASSINATION OF HEYDRICH MAY 27 1942
On 5.27.42 the resistance in Czechoslovakia assassinated one of the most evil persons to ever walk the earth.
Reynhert Heydrich was probably the fourth of firth worst person in the Third Reich and possibly one of the top ten worst persons of all time. Heydrich was one of the masterminds of the Jewish Holocaust, and the only reason his name isn't as famous as Himmler is the fact that Czech partisan assassins knocked him out of the war early on May 27 1942.
RH was the second most powerful man in the Gestapo and held many evil titles in the Reich. Himmler was his boss, but Himmler actually feared Heydrich as an upstart rival. When Heinrich Himmler is afraid of you, you know you're evil.
The mission to kill Heydrich was meticulously planned in London. Czech patriots parachuted into Czechoslovakia to an area where they knew Heydrich made a daily commute. They hid and waited till his car drove by, stepped out and hurled two grenades.
Both grenades missed the car, but one landed and exploded close enough to the rear bumper to hurl shrapnel forward. A couple of pieces of metal hit Heydrich in the chest. The car stopped and the target stepped boldly outside the door and began firing his pistol at the fleeing assassins.
“Hult yoo schveinhunds!” he shouted as he kept firing. Heydrich knew he'd been hit but thought it was a minor wound. Suddenly he collapsed to the ground unconscious. It was serious.
Heydrich was taken to the SS Mission of Mercy Hospital in Prague where he made an excellent recovery over the next six days. But on the seventh day he developed a severe infection which turned into pneumonia and he died.
Hoo-ray!
The assassins got away, but not for long. The angry Nazi posse tracked them down and surrounded our heroes in a Prague Church. There were 40 other members of the Czech resistance helping him hide out and it was curtains for all of them, needless to say.
The Nazis were a group who for no reason on a beautiful sunny day when no one had done anything to them and they were in a good mood would kill ninety civilians. Imagine how they reacted to the murder of the number 2 man in the Gestapo, and a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler. The reprisals were off the scales.
The first to be punished were the Jews. So what if they had nothing to do with the killing? What did that matter? There were less than a thousand Jews left in Germany who had been allowed to live a slightly normal life because of either earlier service to Germany, or political connections. Every last one of them were rounded up and sent off to concentration camps as punishment for what happened to Heydrich. More than 16,000 other Jews in East Europe were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. In two towns in Czechoslovakia, the punishment was simply to round up all the male inhabitants of the town and shoot them in front of their wives, children and mothers. There was no proof that these particular two towns had sponsored the assassination, but the example was set. At least 20,000 innocent victims of Naziism, good people who were already suffering under the heel of the Nazi boot, were slain to pay for the murder of one bad man.
I suppose this did deter a lot of people from further acts of resistance. But it surely inspired just as many others to fight back that much harder. “When you seek revenge, first dig two graves.”
There is some historic curiosity as to why Heydrich died suddenly after making positive health progress for six days. Some have suggested that Himmler may have poisoned Reynhart because he didn't want this rival to come back and take his job away. Others believe that the grenades were deliberately packed with dangerous infectious chemicals to create just such an outcome if the victim survives a partial hit. Others just chalk it up to the dangers of primitive 1942 hospital care and the delicacy of the human body when under all kinds of sedation.
One thing is certain. I wish I could have been a bird in a nearby tree and watched Heydrich get whacked. I know I'm not supposed to feel that way, but I was trained at the movies. Someone should make a movie about the death of Schveinhund Heydrich. There was a bad one made in 1943, but it doesn't even include a scene of the assassination, and the aftermath. It is just the fictional story of someone running from the Gestapo after it happened (It stars Brian Donleavy and Pierce Brosnan.)
PLANE SPEAKING
Two excellent new British planes came on line in the spring of 1942. Arthur Harris in charge of the SBC (Strategic Bombing Campaign) put them both to good use.
The Avro Lancaster was the best heavy bomber of the war for the UK. It arrived in the spring of 1942. Mass production of the Lancaster ended with a tally of 7,368 serviceable combat bombers. That's about 500 more UK Lancasters than the comparable US B-17's produced in total. The four engine Avro powerhouse had a range of 1,600 miles, and carried 18,000 pounds of bombs. The 'Lanka' made the He-111 and the Ju-88 look like Piper Cubs.
The other exiting new plane was the RAF Mosquito bomber. It was made out of wood! The Mosquito was a medium range bomber with the payload of an He-111 and the speed of an Me-109! The wood material made it light and heavy at the same time. The Mosquito became the best British hit and run raider of the war. It was everything the Stuka wanted to be but didn't have the versatility or modernity to do it with. Just when the German Stukas and Heinkels were becoming obsolete, along comes two new British planes that make them ten times more obsolete.
The Germans did replace the old Heinkels with the new and improved Ju-88's, but the Ju-88 at best only offset the new Mosquitos. The Ju-88 was the Luftwaffe's front line heavy bomber, the supposed counterpart to the new Lancaster, yet its bragging point was that it had some of the same fighting qualities of the new British Mosquito. The Mosquito trumps the Stuka, so the Luftwaffe answers with the Ju-88 to equal the Mosquito. That leaves the heavy bomber field to the Lancaster, the Halifax, the B-17 and the B-24. The Nazis answer with nothing, zilch, neine. The Germans never had a four-engine heavy bomber to slug it out like equals with the Allies in a bombing war. Germany had the four engine Condor but it was only used for long range recon and some anti-submarine duty. Condor was never produced as a heavy bomber except a few experimental prototypes. The Luftwaffe had the big mouths, but the good guys had the big bombers.
ROSTOCK RAIDS – APRIL 1942
In the same month that the Americans struck back at Japan with the Dolittle raid on Tokyo, the RAF knocked one of Germany's important cities out of the war, or at least half out. Four RAF bomber raids of about 120 bombers at a pop hit the city of Rostock. The last one was the most accurate and 60% of the Rostock went down in flames. In the four raids, about 900 civilians died, and the RAF lost 43 planes. Germans were stunned by the loss of another city. First Lubeck, now Rostock, who's next. What bombing cologne will Art Harris try on next?
SPLASH ON SOME SPICE – MAY 31 1942
Bomber Harris, in charge of the English strategic air arm, had a big one up his sleeve for the city of Cologne. The RAF air raid of May 31 1942 was the first 1,000 bomber raid in world history.
Harris needed a big victory to convince military finance that the strategic air arm was worth maintaining. This was not the time to divert a bourgeoning air power to the Atlantic war and ground support. Harris had won a nice one at Lubeck, but this upcoming one at Cologne was going to be four times bigger. The Allies needed a big propaganda win, and they got it.
More than 1,000 bombers splashed 70,000 bombs of TNT spice on the old city of Cologne. Half of it burned down. The bombs destroyed a major factory that produced chassis, but the raid, like Lubeck, was essentially a terror attack on the city itself. Any bomb that hit anywhere near downtown was a bulls eye. 650 Colognians died in the attack.
The Nazis retaliated just as they did after Lubeck and Rostock. Goebbels ordered the Luftwaffe to “attack cultural centers in England. Seek cultural targets.” Luftwaffe Heinkels were supposed to look for museums, great statues and classroom and upper crust universities, and movie theaters and blow them to bits. How pathetic.
The Nazis were responding with jabs after getting knocked down with roundhouse rights. The RAF hit with mass four engine bomber attacks, and the Germans answered with moderate two engine bomber attacks. The Luftwaffe attacked Bath, Somerville and Portmeirion (where The Prisoner was filmed in the 1960's) in retaliation, but the weakness of the German response actually added to the British victory. The Germans were hitting back with their best, and it wasn't much, the individual tragedies on the Island notwithstanding.
The Allies propaganda machine didn't let on that they were winning. They maximized the damage done by the Germans on Bath in order to demonize the enemy and inspire the home workers to further anger and effort. They didn't brag that they were setting German cities of fire either. But behind the scenes they fully appreciated the successful raids on Lubeck, Rostock and Cologne in the spring of 1942. They had baited the Germans into demonstrating their best retaliatory punch, and it wasn't all that scary. The Germans also had to sacrifice irreplaceable pilots and aircraft in these counter-terrorism raids on Bath and Somerville. The English could replace their losses, even if they lost a given dogfight at a 1-2 ratio. It was the same that way as the Japanese in the Pacific.
RAF POUNDS DUSSELDORF 9-10-42
Another big German city that took it on the chin was Dusseldorf. Whereas Lubeck and Rostock were isolated 1942 thrashings and then were left relatively alone for the rest of the war, Dusseldorf was on the baker's menu for four years. On September 10 1942 a 900 bomber raid set half the place on fire.
The RAF had hit Dusseldorf often enough before 9.10 and would pound it plenty more in 1943 and 44. The city had 636,000 residents in 1939. On New Year's Eve 1944-45 the city had a 'First Night Festival' to boost morale. All eight remaining citizens showed up to sample free champagne and watch the fireworks at midnight as 75 Lancasters and 12 Halifax machines showed up to light up the sky with incendiaries.
KING GOEBBELS
Hitler couldn't clone himself and be the Fuehrer at home and run the war like a Napoleon abroad. So he let Goebbels run the Holocaust while he ran the war. When Hitler was at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, which was most of the time after June 22 1941, Goebbels, not Goering, gave the orders in Berlin. Joe could think up an idea or a command and just call Hitler first to get the the ok before he acted. If it was a small administrative matter he didn't even have to ring Adolph up. Goebbels could, and did, order mass executions. Much of the hell of Nazi Germany was on the personal initiative of from Goebbles. For more than two full collective years, Goebbels was essentially the dictator of Germany, while Hitler was the dictator of the military operations.
The Goebbels Diaries is one of the most best books about World War II for understanding the war and what made the other side tick. JG's mind isn't just a Nazi mind, it is the Nazi mind. It's all politics, very little boring home movies, just war and Nazism. And a lot about the Fuhrer's health. He was always concerned about the Fuhrer's health. If Hitler had the sniffles, Goebbels walked the floors at night, or went out in bad weather to get Hitler some Nyquil.
THE ATLANTIC WAR 1942
Over the course of 1942 Germany switched from offense to defense in the Atlantic. The fantastic success of the U-boat campaign of 1942 was essentially part of a defensive strategy. Hitler realized that he had lost the Battle of Britain, at least for the short term. He was not going to be able to knock the United Kingdom out of the conflict. What was worse he now had to fight the USA too. In his dream of empire, Hitler had not anticipated either of these contingencies. With two enemies to handle now, Hitler stepped up the U-boat war in a frantic switch from trying to win the war to trying not to lose it. A stalemate with the UK might lead to a negotiated peace in which he could retain most or all of his winnings elsewhere.
Production of German submarines became a top priority. If he couldn’t beat England by invasion he could try to strangle it by severing the supply lines from the United States. He almost succeeded. 1942 was a dark year for the Allies in the Atlantic. The technology of the submarine had come along way since the Turtle nearly destroyed a British frigate during the American Revolution.
The first months of 1942 were a shock to many residents of the east coast of the United States. Hitler decided at a meeting on December 12 1941 to take the U-boats to America.
Germany unleashed the U-boats on American waters and many beach-goers in Atlantic City or Miami Beach were treated to the sight of a merchant ship blowing up and going down in flames. In January 1942 far too many merchant freighters sank off the US coast.
A mere six U-boats did almost all of this damage. US Naval preparations were still rusted from two decades of pacifism (the most ineffective form of peacemaking.) The Navy and the Coast Guard put up a rather poor defense in these opening months.
Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler had a Norway complex. He was convinced that Norway was the decisive theatre at this time and kept the bulk of his U-boat and surface forces there.
The United States didn't get its first U-boat kill until March 1, 1942 when a Lockheed-Hudson aircraft destroyed U-656 near Cape Race Newfoundland. On March 15 another LH took out U-503, also the coast of Newfoundland.
The first score by an American ship came on April 14, off the coast of North Carolina when the 1918 vintage destroyer Roper blew up U-85. 29 German bodies were recovered the next day and buried within 48 hours in an American cemetery. Rumors flew around the Carolinas that American movie stubs were found in the pockets of several of the corpses. It was probably a fantasy, but the rumor indicates public awareness that the American coast was defenseless against the U-boats and that the Germans were arrogantly having their way. The thought that the Germans could land men to go hang out in theaters and then get back safely back on the ship was not all that absurd. Some claim that the U-85 was already helpless in the water after taking a couple of accurate 5-inch shell hits at the water line, and was helplessly sitting in shallow water when Roper hit 85 with depth charges. The charge is that the captain of the Roper was guilty of a war crime against a helpless foe. The charges, of course, are brought by presentists who didn't own the emotions of the time. So every P-47 pilot who strafed an unarmed train, barn, or boat was also a war criminal.
On May 9 1942 Lieutenant Commander Marcus Jester at the helm of Coast Guard cutter Icarus encountered U-352 on it's iron maiden voyage off the coast of Cape Lookout. U-352 fired torpedos at Jester's Icarius. They missed, and 352 got caught in the shallow waters on a reef. Icarius then depth-charged the stranded underwater assassin, and did it well. U-352 surfaced just long enough to get the men off the ship, and then committed sub suicide. Icarius picked up most of the German survivors.
The USA destroyed the next two U-boats in remarkable numerical sequence, greasing U-157 on June 13 and U-158 on June 30. The men on U-159 must have been sweating bullets after June 30. The next one to go was U-153 near Panama in early July.
The eighth U to go was U-701, but not without a fight. It sank the US ship YP-389 on June 19, hunting down its hunter (I think YP stands for Yacht Patrol Craft.) On June 28 the 701 torpedoed the tanker Billy Rockefeller. On July 7 a Lockheed-Hudson found U-701 surfaced and vulnerable near the North Carolina coast. The plane dropped depth charges and gave U-701 a dose of cruel fate. A US blimp picked up a few survivors drifting northeasterly towards to the open Atlantic two days later.
The eight U-kills were chump change compared to the 363 American flagged ships sunk by German submarines from December 8 1941 to July 7 1942. 2.4 million tons of Allies shipping went down to Osama bi Laden's locker in exchange about 70,000 tons of U-boats. It had taken seven months to sink eight U-boats. Ouch. In the meantime the Nazis by July of 1942 were launching eight new U-boats every 11 days. Things were not looking good in the Atlantic war in the middle of 1942.
MAN OVERBOARD! – ROLL CALL – LET'S SEE WHO'S MISSING - 3-27-42
In mid-March 1942 a US Naval task force gathered at Casco Bay Maine, where the US Maritime Academy stands active today. When I had a gig there a few years ago (where the wood ceiling was covered with crumpled up one dollar bills – patrons at the end of their meal traditionally crumpled up a buck, attached it to the end of a dart and fired it into the ceiling – I did too, but at he last second I switched to Monopoly money and no one saw me do it) I never realized that there was a time that I could have gazed out into that Casco Harbor and seen the battleship USS Washington, the aircraft carrier Hornet, plus a host of cruisers and destroyers.
Initially the brand new and long awaited Washington and Hornet were supposed to go to the desperate Pacific theatre. But Churchill convinced FDR that the situation in Madagascar trumped the situation in the Pacific.
Madagascar?
Yes.
The Germans and Japanese were planning a team effort invasion of Madagascar, the huge island off the southeast coast of Africa. The British believed that if successful, the Axis occupation would negatively change the entire dynamic of the war. The supply line to the Persian Gulf and India would be cut off, and Axis partners could soon unite in the Middle East on their way to total Eurasian domination.
Churchill wasn't asking the USA to take over the defense of Madagascar. He would send the British warships from the North Atlantic to east Africa. He was asking the United States to replace those warships in the Atlantic. Despite protests from some of his military chiefs, FDR agreed. He was always a “stop Germany first” guy.
The Casco Bay task force was the first major USN capital ship contribution to the European War. It was a big deal. John W. Wilcox was the head honcho on board flagship BB Washington.
On March 27 the task force ran into a nasty snowstorm. Several men on the Washington spotted a body face down in the water drifting back behind the ship. “Man overboard!” went the cry throughout the battleship. One witness saw one arm flailing and knew the man overboard was alive. All witnesses agreed that it was a bald guy. The Washington and two destroyers circled looking for the cold swimmer, but in the snow and the high seas it was tough. The Hornet even sent a plane off the deck to look for the downed seaman, but that plane never came back. So one pilot and plane was lost looking for the man overboard on the one in 250 chance (my odds) they could bring him back on board alive.
The next morning in calmer and sunny seas, the Washington held a full muster to determine who was missing. It turned out that the man overboard was the commander of the great new battleship, the commander of the entire task force, John W. Wilcox. Everyone else was present and accounted for.
When no one had been able to find Wilcox over the last 12 hours, people presumed that with his authority Wilcox had given orders that he wasn't to be disturbed while he consulted with Washington DC by radio, studied battle plans with important officers, or got a ten hour nap.
At first there was some speculation that the admiral overboard might have been a suicide. A couple of people had mentioned that Wilcox looked notably despondent when they talked to him during the storm.
But as more people who had last seen him were interviewed the conclusion became clear. The poor fellow had been dreadfully seasick. One story after another told of Wilcox looking “white as a ghost.” Wilcox was a top notch Annapolis officer but simply had not spent enough time at sea in rough waters to get his “sea legs.” Wilcox had evidently gone over to the rail to empty his lunch and accidentally tumbled over while doubled over at the same time the big ship took a big dip.
I feel bad for Wilcox. Not because he died, but because he got seasick. I got seasick on a whale-watch off Cape Cod in 1979 and will never forget it as long as I land-lubber live.
CARRIBEAN AND PANAMA CANAL NAVAL ZONES
The life blood of the war was oil. The life blood of war is oil. Venezuelan oil was a key to the American war effort. This wasn't lost on the Germans and they kept up a strong U-boat operation against the oil supply line which ran from Venezuela to either Aruba or Trinidad. German captains sank dozens of oil tankers between the mainland and the islands. In the first months of 1942 the Allied defense was so poor that the subs went right into Caribbean and Central American harbors and sank ships while surfaced and then meandered there way back out to sea, at night even with their running lights on. Aruba was a center of gravity for the U-boats and that's ironic since the naval audio signal to dive dive dive sounds exactly like the word 'Aroooo-baaa.'
The Panama Canal was a major defense concern for the Allies for obvious reasons. If it had knocked out the Panama Canal in a six-carrier strike on December 7 1941, Japan could have hurt the United States almost as it did at Pearl Harbor.
When Japan invaded the Aleutians in June of 1942 the United States went on high alert against a possible attack at Balboa, which is the western end of the Panama Canal on the Pacific. This was around the same time that the minted new carrier Wasp and battleship North Carolina were just passing through the PC from east to west on their way to the not very pacific Pacific war.
Panama was a political problem too, since the Panamanian government was openly sympathetic to the Nazis. That changed in November 1941 when, just in the nick of time, a government unfriendly to the Nazis took over in Panama City. But the pro-Nazi party was always waiting in the wings. Nazi saboteurs were always about, spending way too much time doing menial jobs near the Canal, getting paid a dollar day while carrying expensive cameras.
The U-boats went after traffic near the Canal in an underwater blitz at the end of June. They sank more than 15 Allied ships, mostly oil tankers, often within sight of the US Submarine Base at Coco Solo at the Eastern terminus. A Nazi sub went right into the harbor at Puerto Limon Costa Rica and sank a tanker while it was unloading. The U-boats also sank two passenger liners. The captain in one case surfaced and machine gunned to death all the passengers hanging on in life boats, including women and children.
All over the Caribbean, U-boats were shooting ducks in a barrel. They hated to go back to France to reload, because of the “target rich” environment. Allied anti-submarine ships were too few, too old, and rarely even equipped with sonar. Just like in the Pacific war, it was going to take time to get the wheels of American military industrial power turning. The Caribbean was strewn with wreckage. Anti-sub air patrol Pontiac Catalina Flying Boats (PCFB's) consistently had to drop their bombs and depth charges harmlessly into the sea so they could rescue survivors in the water. U-boat captains snubbed their sub noses at Allied countermeasures.
The Americans killed their first sub in the southern Caribbean on July 13. Air patrols hit U-153 (mentioned earlier) with depth charges and damaged it, and a few hours later the Destroyer Lansdowne finished 153 off with more depth charges. All hands on board 153 became seafood. This brought the grand U.S total of all U-boat kills for the first seven months of the war to exactly nine. They U-boats had been sinking ships as fast as they could bring another torpedo to the forward tubes. It was the easiest time for offensive submarine warfare in the history of submarine warfare. Hitler was kicking himself because he hadn't thought to build more U-boats when he had the time to do it.
NAZI NORWAY 1942
The three major remaining surface-raider threats to Allied shipping were the pocket battleships Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The Bismarck and the Graf Spee were housing fish, but these three sister ships were still a threat. Early in 1942 the Nazis decided not to send them out to the Atlantic where they would have had a 10,000 square mile killing field to work with for at least six months. Instead they stayed in the top right corner pocket of the pool table in the Norway theatre of operations. Thank you, Adolph. Tirpitz did come out a few times and attack convoys bound for Russia.
KING PHOBIA
Co-operation between the US Navy and the Royal was made difficult by the difficult nature of Admiral Ernie King, the second in command in the US Navy after Leahy who was usually in the White House.
King had a real phobia against the British and didn't trust their information and withheld too much of his when the Brits needed it. King probably made the whole Battle of the Atlantic a little tougher than it had to be.
Churchill and CIGS Alan Brooke couldn't stand King. Most people thought he was rude and humorless. MacArthur didn't like him a bit. Someone cracked that King was even-tempered. He was angry all the time. I sure with I could have met the guy.
King was also one of the Allied leaders that played a key part in winning the war. Great ability explains his rise in rank even though he was a bad egg.
RUSSIA SUPPLY CONVOYS
Most WWII buffs know about the rough and tough northern convoys to Russia running from Iceland to Murmansk or Archangelsk. There were three main ways to reach Russia by convoy ship, and the northern route was the least productive of the three. 46% of the supplies went by way of the Pacific to Siberia. but FDR wanted to show Stalin that the Allies were doing everything they could to keep Russia in the war and on its way to victory (more on this later in the Russia chapter.)
PQ-17 – ORDEAL AT SEA
The largest convoy to make the trip to Northern Russia in 1942 was also the most disastrous. PQ-17 left Iceland at the end of June and by the time it made it to Murmansk, 23 of the PQ-17's 35 freighters were down under.
Stalin accused the West of lying about the number of ships sunk. He was saying that the West wasn't really doing all it could to help and had sent out a pathetic small convoy to supply Russia, then padded the numbers with fake loss totals.
A certain Admiral Pound from Britian was the goat in the story. He made a few mistakes, such as ordering the PQ-17 ships to scatter once the attacks became too fierce. Everyone told Pound to circle the wagons and combine for defense, but he wouldn't listen. Pound died of a brain tumor in 1943. Maybe it was already manifesting itself in 1942.
PQ-17 is one of the famous bloody stories of the war. Not one book so far has explained to me what the P and the Q stand for. I think that is pretty queer.
PQ-18 left Iceland in late July with more escort protection than several earlier convoys combined. But even the 18 lost unacceptable number of freighters. After PQ-18 the Western Allies decided that it was no longer feasible to lose that many men, ships and supplies to the ocean floor. Stalin wasn't going to give them any credit for trying and dying anyway, so why bother? There were no more convoys to Russia by the Northern route for the rest of 1942.
DOCU-DOPES
A sidebar now on documentaries. The two points made earlier 1) that a full 46% of the supply to Russia went via the Pacific route, and 2) that the Northern route to Murmansk/Archangelsk were run for political considerations, are not mentioned at all in several video documentaries I have watched about the Battle of the Atlantic. My paper source is Samuel Eliot Morison, the official WWII historian of the United States Navy.
Many video documentaries are so busy adding insufferable music, fake sound effects, and corny over the top snail-slow narration, that they put only a cursory effort into sharp thorough historical content. The history facts are just a rigid predetermined canvass on which to paint the video production machine. How the thing ends up looking is the main point, not what it has to say. They would no more run their facts through the gauntlet of fierce academic criticism before they go to final cut than they would set their own houses on fire. To these producers, whose primary goal is to make money, that would be setting their houses on fire.
For every 10 people I know who get their history from documentaries, only one gets their history from books. Books require active critical thinking and aggressive absorption. Video is a passive and vulnerably uncritical method. Every time someone tells me something about history that I know is patently untrue, I don't have to ask. I know they heard it in a documentary. Documentaries split the budget twelve ways. The damn sound mixer gets as much money than the writer. In a book, more cake goes to the writer.
DIEPPE RAID – 8.42
In order to show the USSR, and the impatient western Allied press, that the time was not ripe of an invasion, a large exploratory raid was planned on the French town of Dieppe across the Channel. The Allied plan was to occupy the port for a short time, draw out the German defenses and force the Luftwaffe into a major aerial brawl. The Dieppe Raid was actually expected to fail modestly while acquiring practical intelligence, and reducing the machinery of the German air force.
On August 19, 1942 6,000 mostly Canadian men landed on the French beach at Dieppe. The raid was a complete failure. 922 men and 54 officers died in the futile battle and more than 2,000 were taken prisoner. Instead of reducing the power of the Luftwaffe, Goering's birds splashed more than 108 RAF planes, the worst day of the entire European air war for the Allies.
The D-Raid did however serve its political purpose in showing Stalin that the western second front was not yet a practical goal. America's fascist ally would have to wait and importune in vain for the second front for nearly two more years. Dieppe taught some practical military lessons that were applied in action on D-Day 44, but that is weak compensation.
Monkey Monty (general Montgomery was nick-named Monkey at Sandhurst) thought that the Dieppe Raid failed partly because of a breach in security. The landing was cancelled a few weeks earlier than it went off, and 5,000 Canadian troops went back to the farms and the pubs knowing all the details. Loose lips sank the Dieppe ship before it landed in France, in the Monkey mind. He offers no proof, but the Germans seemed so well prepared that he might be right. Montgomery had agreed to support the raid but when it got postponed he urged the Imperial Staff to cancel it for security reasons. In 1944 Ike was close to postponing the D-Day invasion but did not want to send 250,000 troops back to the English pubs with all the last minute briefings fresh in their heads.
In 1985 a well-meaning doorman at Stitches Comedy Club bet me 10 dollars that Dieppe was an invasion, not a raid. After looking it up he paid me the Hamilton. I will always have a special place in my heart for the Dieppe Raid.
SUPER-GYMNAST
At the end of 1941 General Marshall, Admiral Leahy, and Admiral King, the US military 'Brains Trust,' were already calling for a full-scale invasion of Continental Europe with a holding action against Japan. This was the agreed strategic plan even before the war actually reached America with Pearl Harbor.
By New Years Day 1942 the amazing success of the Japanese in the Pacific made the MLK group reconsider. The Allies needed to rush at least some reinforcements to the Far East to, at the very least, save Australia.
The British reluctantly agreed to reinforce the Far East far more than they'd pre-planned before Pearl. No one had expected the Japanese to do this well and so fast. Not even a pessimist.
England balked at talk of planning a cross channel invasion immediately. The UK wanted it both ways, essentially. The British wanted to keep the European theatre the top Allied priority, while at the same time dragging their feet on a 1942 invasion of Europe. The British would drag their feet through 1943 as well, much to the annoyance of quite a few important people.
In April of 1942 the Marshall Memorandum recommended a cross channel invasion in 1942, and FDR signed on to this report on May 6 1942. The 1942 D-Day assault was code named 'Sledgehammer.'
Churchill and Brooke paid yet another visit to Washington in July. Their main goal was to talk FDR, Marshall and Eisenhower out of SLEDGEHAMMER entirely. This argument went on for most of 1942. The Americans wanted a go at Europe and the British insisted that it would end in disaster.
So Marshall arranged a demonstration of US Army maneuvers at West Point. His British brass guests were surprised to be bedazzled. Brooke and Ismay were dismayed. This was the showcase division? The Americans were greener than green. They didn’t say how bad they thought the Army had performed, but they certainly strengthened their already steeled resolve not to invade France in 1942.
Ike was always in favor of attacking France on 1942.
The Russians were always at the forefront in considerations. The Allies desperately feared that Russia would lose the war, but only the United States wanted to do something about it at great risk of high casualties and possibly defeat. Britain only wanted to go in when it knew which side would win. Churchill told FDR point blank that political considerations were a part of it. If the invasion failed, FDR would still be President until 1945, but he, Churchill would be out in the alley by the scruff of the neck in about a week. These were two different political systems and Churchill put his political survival ahead of winning the war by taking a great risk. If I ever talked to God, that is one question I’d ask her. If the Allies went ahead with SLEDEGEHAMMER in November 1942, would they have held on? Would the Germans have annihiliated them? Or would they have held on and switched to ROUND-UP, the build-up of forces on the beachhead with an eye for an eventual breakout.
Normandy in 1944 was a win, and a safe one. But the Germans for two extra years to build up the defense infrastructure along the coasts too. Maybe a lesser force in 1942 could have won as a much as larger force in 1944.
So by the end of July of 1942 the British had definitely talked FDR out of SISTER SLEDGEHAMMER. Churchill feared a repeat of the sausage factory stalemate of World War One. The invasion was stuck in the mindset mud of World War One. It was now “Sludgehammer.”
The MKL trio wondered angrily why the British should ask the United States to commit most of its forces to Europe when the British didn't want to put them to work in Europe? Why should they United States send 60 divisions of Army men to Europe so they could sit around and listen to the BBC wondering when the British would get around to agreeing to a continental invasion?
The British obviously did not want to invade Europe until the Nazi war machine was a punch drunk boxer barely standing in the 14th round. The US on the other hand felt that the sooner the good guys engage the bad guys in a full-scale fight to the death the better.
Marshall and company were fed up with British caution, and began to retool their entire strategic thinking. Maybe the Allies could switch to a holding action in Europe through Naval and Air action only, and employ most of the ground troops in the Far East, where they were so clearly and desperately needed.
Churchill and his generals went over the heads of the US JCS and appealed straight to Roosevelt and Hopkins, convincing them that the Marshall plan to make Japan the new number one target was unthinkable. The British would never agree to it. It was that simple and the Allies would find themselves at a divisive impasse.
Besides, the British did have a plan to employ the fresh American troops in Hitler's Theatre.
That plan was North Africa.
The British had discussed plans for a North African invasion with US help since August of 1941, before the USA entered the war. The Nazis had been fighting the British in North Africa for two years with limited success back and forth. The Germans would be on the offense, then the British, then the Germans again. The grave danger was the Nazi threat to Egypt. If Rommel's Afrika Corps captured the Suez Canal, the entire portrait of World War II would change in a very bad way.
The plan was to take pressure off the Egyptian front by landing a couple of USUK armies on the western North African coast in the region from Casablanca to Algiers. This would create a second front, forcing the Nazis to divide their forces and thus save the Suez and, hopefully even clear the Germans and Italians entirely off the African continent. This operation, if ultimately successful, in turn would pave the way for a safer Mediterranean, allowing British supply shipping to stop making the long end run around South Africa. Clearing out North Africa would also set up a potential offensive Allied Mediterranean operation against Italy or the Balkans.
One of the main purposes of the North African campaign was to demonstrate to an angry Stalin that the democracies were not letting the Russians do all the fighting while Britian and America polished their bombers and whistled a happy tune. North Africa wasn't exactly the second front that Stalin was demanding, but it was a lot better than nothing. It was also a sop to Marshall and King who were griping that maybe the Pacific war should get the top priority if nothing important was happening against the Germans anyway. Now something was. Stalin and Marshall both favored sledgehammer, as being better than nothing.
Eisenhower in early September ordered the 8th Air Force to call off preparations for the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and to concentrate its efforts on raids designed to protect the upcoming Torch landings. Dwight D wanted the Axis airfields and submarine bases knocked out, temporarily at least, more than he wanted industry torched in central German cities. This Torch diversion of bomber resources probably set back the bomber war against Germany by six months.
On October 21 1942 90 B-17's left England to hit the Nazi submarine bases in the Bay of Biscay, France. Only 15 of 90 17's even managed to reach the target area and their TNT caused little serious damage. The Biscay raid had no fighter escort but didn't lose many planes.
The next raid came on November 9, when 31 17's and 12 24's went after the sub pens of St Nazaire. The 17's went in low and dropped their loads from a mere 9,000 feet, as opposed to the usual 23,000. But many B-17's took heavy flak damage and three went down. This was the last time the AAF tried low level attacks with the B-17.
MUSSOLINI'S PREDICTION
As the summer of 42 drew to a close, the whole world knew that the Allies would soon begin a land offensive. But where? Benito Mussolini told his staff that the Allies would not be foolish enough to try and land on the Atlantic coast, nor would they land in North Africa. He sent a note to Hitler saying that the Allied counter-attack would certainly begin in the Middle East. He thought the Allies would first try to make their way up into Iraq, like they tried in World War One.
Hitler's prediction was almost as wrong. He wrote Ben back that the Allies would have to be lunatics to even consider attacking anywhere in the west. Adolph was very overextended in Russia and the Mediterranean, and was losing slowly but surely on both fronts, yet at this moment he thinks the Allies would be insane to dare and attack him where he has the least amount of divisions.
NORTH AFRICA
ROMMEL IN THE SUMMER OF 42
Back to Rommel.
There is no Japanese Army general whose name is as familiar to Americans as Rommel.
Rommel in 1941 performed one miracle after another in his
offensive thrust against the British in the desert. He earned the nickname “Desert Fox” in 1941 when he took a small army in and did the victorious work of a large army. Rommel was inspirational, dynamic, aggressive and brilliant.
But 1942 was another story. Rommel's performance was anything but brilliant. Rommel was physically ill most of the time and this in the opinion of many was largely why he was not the same Fox in 42 that he was in 41. By the end of 1942 Erwin was the “Desert Dunce.” Yet the glory of his deeds in 41 is what has lasted for history, his bad act in 1942 virtually forgotten.
The back and forth war in North Africa continued. Rommel attacked to the east and was confident he could take Cairo before Montgomery knew what hit him. Rommel almost did, but what no one could make him understand was that the further he pushed the British east, the closer he was pushing them to some very excellent enemy supply lines from the Allied controlled Middle East. The more he won territory the further he was pushing his army away from its already precarious supply line. Any war student at the Sorbonne could tell you that Rommel was falling into a trap that would worsen the more he advanced in glorious victory. Moreover, the Allies were gaining better control of the air and the seas with each passing month, which sooner or later would add up to Nazi desert defeat.
WHEN WAS EL ALAMEIN?
The turning point of the war in the desert came at the Battle of El Alamein. Someone recently quizzed me aggressively to name the date of the Battle of El Alamein, just to make me look stupid in front of his wife. My memory shrank under pressure and said I wasn't sure if it was 1941 or 1942, but I knew it was November. Then his wife said it was 1943. I tried to tell her that the Allies were well into Italy and past Sicily by November 1943, so that was impossible, but she said she was absolutely sure of it. I then asked the quiz master to give us the answer and he said he didn't know!
The correct answer is that unlike Bunker Hill and Waterloo, El Alamein is not a single memorized date, and there were two separate protracted battles, so no one had the real answer. The first Battle of El Alamein was fought for the entire month of July 1942, and the Second Battle of El Alamein was fought from October 23 to November 4 1942. If only one had to be picked as the real Battle of El Alamein, it would be the second one, the one in November, the last days of which coincided with the American “Torch” landings at Morocco, Algiers and Oran.
MISTER MONTGOMERY
Time out to introduce Sir Johnny Hero esq. The big man of El Alamien was British Field Marshall Montgomery, whose superior strategy and winning personality had much to do with the victory. The conceited Monty would say it was all his doing.
In any case part of the reasons the Nazis came to a permanent halt at El Alamein was the imperfect performance of Rommel in his match with Monty. Granted, Monty had air power and better supply lines, but he out-coached the other fellow too, and history, don't you ever forget it.
I have definitely learned to like Montgomery by reading his memoirs and getting inside his brain. I like what I find there a great deal. I spent a lifetime reading US military authors ripping him bloody badly, and buying into that, but he has turned me.
One main way that Monty out-coached Rommel was by not falling for the macho attack formula. Rommel used to bait the enemy into attacking and then ambush them from concealed fixed positions. Rommel was like Larry Fine tapping the bad guy, saying “nya nya nya na nanya!” then running away. When the goon runs past the next doorway, Moe and Curly clock the guy with clubs and he hears birds chirping. Rommel's concealed 88's were his Moe and Curly.
Rommel had made fools out of Wavell and Achinleck in a couple of key spots, but Monty was not going to let Rommel bait him. Monty was nobody's stooge. Monty played Rommel like a violin, luring the fox with his own bait and ambush tactics.
Monty was brutal and frank with inferiors and deferential and cordial to superiors. He was never afraid to fight offensively and daringly, but he was also not afraid to fight defensively or fight a strategic retreat.
Montgomery might not have become famous if Gott hadn’t died in a plane crash on the way to relieve Auchinleck.
When Montgomery took over the Eighth Army, the reinforcements were just then pouring in. When Montgomery studied Auchinleck’s defensive holding plan he approved it and changed very little. So the guy taking over adopts the fired guy’s plan just at time when the new guy was getting all he reinforcements the other guy had been calling for for so long. In other words, to some extent, Auchinleck took an unfair fall and Monty got credit for a ring tide that wasn’t his doing.
The meetings between incoming Monty and outgoing Auchinleck were barely cordial. Montgomery thought that morale was dangerously low, so he invented a story that Auchinleck was planning a full scale retreat and now he, Monty, had come to save the day, and by God, the British army was going to hold on right here like Spartans in 300 B.C. (and I hope I made a good stab at the year there.) It wasn’t bad enough that Auchinleck was getting an unfair beating from the immediate events, now he also had to play the Washington Generals and be made to look completely inept while Montgomery rescues the world.
In Monty’s memoirs he speaks plainly about Auchinleck’s plan for a full retreat real soon as though he believes it. But the evidence is that this is nonsense. Monty made it up. Maybe he told the lie so many times, he came to believe it.
Montgomery wore a special dopey hat so that he could be more easily identified by his men wherever he went. He made himself highly visible in his stupid beret. He says that he wanted to be a mascot for the men, a symbolic focal point for the flag for all to rally around. He took himself more seriously than Jack Lord.
The thing I like best about Montgomery is that he wasn’t afraid to look like a wimp, and that always takes the most courage. When others urged him to consistently plan a great bold victorious breakthrough attack, he opted most often for defensive plans which were designed to first make sure nothing bad happens, and then hope that it will work out in some gain also (I play futures bets on baseball and football exactly that way.) It’s not that he wasn’t capable of planning or approving very aggressive attack plans, as he would in Europe in 1945. It was more that he recognized that one major defeat can cancel five major victories in equivalent change in strategic position. Monty believed, like the doctor who pledges to “first do no harm,” that a generals’ first duty was to not get clocked.
ALAM HALFA - SEPTEMBER 1942
The first British victory was at Alam Halfa, more specifically at Alam Halfa Ridge. This was in early September. Without Alam Halfa, the British might not have been able to win the follow up showdown at El Alamein in late October.
Unlike the earler battles, this time the British held a position that Rommel’s tanks could not outflank. The tank flank was the magic wand that Rommel had used for two years to gain fame, but now it was a new world. The British had the huge impassible Qattara Deprssion to hold the southern flank and keep it safe from anything but an obvious thrust through a predictable tight area. Monty knew exactly where Rommel would attack because this time there was really only one place he could. Monty set up defensive positions between three key ridges and waited in ambush for Rommel to make another one of his impressive sand blitzkreigs.
Rommel attacked on August 30. The Brits beat him back at Alam Halfa and morale switched to the Allies in the desert even though no one was winning the thing just yet. At least it ended a string of British desert defeats.
Churchill later claimed that before Alam Halfa the British Army had never won a battle in this war, but after AH, it never lost one.
The British “lost” 1,750 men at Alam Halfa, but the source note doesn’t say if “lost” means killed or killed, wounded, missing and captured. The Germans lost 2,121 and the Italians 1,027 “lost.”
The British lost 67 tanks and the Axis lost only 49, but the Germans could not replace theirs and the British could, and on short notice. In any war of attrition, the Germans lose.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN - LATE OCTOBER 1942
The thought of taking on the British Eighth Army made Rommel sick to his stomach. He was so ill that he had to go home to Austria on the eve of the opening of the famous battle that would mark the beginning of his end. I’m sort of kidding that he was sick from fear of the Eighth Army, but the fear and stress of constant war was part of what had him throwing up and being incapable of physically doing his duty. This was super-bad timing. Just when Hitler needed him most, Rommel got sick and went to Europe for emergency care. He turned over the Panzerkorps to General Stan Stumme, a man with no major battle experience. The Nazi were going into the desert playoffs without their star qb. Rommel would have to hope that the 543,000 mines placed in front of his front would hold the Tommies back when they finally made the big move to drive him from Egypt forever.
Monty knew that his key to victory was no not mess up a sure thing with wild gambles. In any battle of attrition he and the Empire wins. The German supply lines were being destroyed from the air. Malta was holding firm and gaining strength. American tanks and anti-tank guns were pouring in more and more by the day. The British were in control of the sea, and Spain was clearly not going to join the Axis and close the Straits of Gibraltar. The faiure of the German drive in southern Russia meant there would be no new supplies for the AK. Things were lookin’ good as long as Bernie didn’t throw away three aces looking for a royal flush.
So Montgomery rejected any plans for quick daring strikes at key spots to win a new age warfare type of battle. Monty played it safe and he’ll get no criticism from me on that one. He knew that his front was short, strong, secure and well supplied. He knew that the enemy had no choice but to attack. Rommel had to use it or lose it. If his Afrika Korps of three divisions couldn’t break through to the Suez son, it would run out of gas and lose whatever chance it had to do so. Rommel had to throw the dice with it all on the pass line.
Gasoline was always the deciding factor in the British favor. Rommel was always so short of gas he couldn’t do much with his material. Hitler promised him a convoy of tankers and onl one of the five got through. The rest went to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Monty’s basic plan at El Alamein was to fake a modern end-around flank attack to the south, and counter with an old fashioned frontal assault in the north straight out of World War I. The attack would be slow and methodical to give the sappers time to clear minefields, and to ensure a general conservative approach to the play.
The El Alamein plan worked. How could it not? It wasn’t designed to win a big victory. It was designed to complete the stopping of Rommel begun at Alam Halfa, and to begin a full scale push-back of the enemy towards Tunisia and away from the Suez Canal supply choke-point.
Monty was holding just about all the cards and he went with a safe conservative play. Again, if this sounds like an implied criticism, it is not. To my mind, it is a compliment. Rich people should never gamble. What’s the point? That was for Rommel the poor to do and he played his role to the hilt. Many a conservative general would have come up with wild daring schemes in Rommel’s identical situation. It was the only chance to win for ‘the dog.’
The British lost 6,129 troops in the days of El Alamein II. Rommel wasn’t beaten badly, but he lost and he knew that the dream of taking the Suez was gone for the Reich. There would be no link-up of the Afrika Korps and the German Army marching past the Caucasus Mountains.
One historian questions the wisdom of fighting the battle at all. He has a chapter called, “El Alamein, The Unnecessary Battle.” I don’t want to tackle that egg scrambler right now, so we’ll just leave that as a tempting thought for the further curious.
MORE DESERT WAR
After El Alamein, Montgomery struck back. The British counter-offensive against the Italo-German forces did not move with lightning speed. It was methodical and stopped to consolidate positions along the way. There were some setbacks here and there and Rommel launched limited counter-strikes, but the trend was clear, like a stock that has its ups and downs but at the bigger picture is clearly on the rise or decline. In late 42 and early 43 Rommel was pushed back steadily towards central North Africa, in other words, Tunisia. His Afrika Korps was being packed in like a Tunis fish sandwich.
Most of Tunisia was technically in the political possession of Vichy France. Rommel and Kesselring had real hope that Vichy French troops would fight side-by-side with German troops, or at least remain helpfully neutral. But when Italian air force planes landed in Tunis the attitude of the Vichy French changed. The Tunisians hated the Italians more than they hated the Germans. Vichy French forces instantly became a negative factor for Germany. Kesselring reached a point where he had to send Stuka dive bombers to slay hundreds of French troops in their barracks at Tunisia. Needless to say, French troops then rose up to snuff and joined the Allies against the faltering Axis occupiers.
The Axis and the Allies both had to sweat the native Moslem population, the wild card of the desert war. No one knew which side they were on at any given time. They naturally were on their own side and detested the infidels on both teams.
THE LASAGNA FACTOR
Italian troops never had the fighting spirit of the Germans for the war, and good for them. Italian officers were even less spartan than the Italian troops. German officers were appalled when they went into the Italian officer's mess and found that the food was ten times better for the brass than for the Italian enlisted men. German officers proudly chose to eat the same food as the enlisted men. They were ashamed of the Italian officers for “eating freshly baked stuffed lasagna with wine, while Italian privates ate stale white bread with water.”
Italian divisions almost always performed poorly compared to their Nazi counterparts (I know I'm not supposed to refer to German military units as Nazi, but I choose to do so. As far as I'm concerned, troops in service of the Nazi cause means Nazi troops. Supposedly only the SS divisions were Nazi and the Wermacht was not Nazi. I'll break that separatist rule whenever I feel like it.)
German generals gave top leadership posts to Italian Generals and formally served under them, but this was just to try and squeeze some productivity out of the badly performing Italian armed forces. German generals believed that if the Italians had only performed with half the macho attitude of the Germans, the war in Africa might end in victory. Many still felt that way long after the war ended.
The 'make love not war' attitude of the Italians was real enough, but the post-war Nazi memoirs probably blame the Romans too much for every failure in Africa and elsewhere. Germany had only itself to blame for every defeat because it started a world war against big bad opponents. The German revisionists always 'Blame Italy First.' Italians perhaps should be proud that their men did not fight with the same vigor as the Germans in the cause of evil war just for the sake of an evil war.
The Italian Navy was always hiding and never came to the rescue when needed. Mussolini promised every three weeks that soon the full force of the Italian navy would come out and make a decisive difference. But it never did. A certain Admiral Maugeri secretly betrayed the location of both Italian and German ships, sending many men to a watery grave. Many have condemned Maugueri, but I say it took courage to do the right thing and place humanity and justice at the head of the line, and ahead of race and country.
At El Alamein, Rommel tried to alternate German and Italian divisions along his line, hoping that the fighting spirit of German units would rub off on the Italians, but it didn’t work out.
TORCH 1942
The United States and Britian discussed military plans for the combined invasion of North Africa seven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The US-UK team expected a North Africa operation soon after American entry into the conflict, whenever that came, and both expected US entry into the war soon.
The US-UK North African Campaign began in early November 1942. The Torch probably would have been lit up several months earlier if not for the unexpected success of the Japanese in the Pacific. The Allies reassigned large quantities of ships and troops from European to Asian destinations after the Japanese Army and Navy ran over South Asia. The Allies weren't ready to take the offense in Europe until they at least put a stanch on the life threatening open wound in Asia. Instead of taking the offense in Europe and holding in Asia, as planned, the Allies had to hold in Europe so they could barely hold in Asia.
FRENCH FRIED COMPLICATIONS
There were several enemies to deal with in the North African theatre. There were the Italians, the original enemy there. Until January of 1941 it was strictly the Italians running the N.A. war. Then there were the Nazis, the main opponent. There was the surf, the weather, the sand, fears that Spain might jump in on the side of the Axis, and the absolute inexperience of US invasion forces. There was the problem of the local Moslem Arabs. And last but not least there was the complex problem of Vichy France.
The areas where the US-UK forces were going to land were part of French colonial Africa.
Some background; Back in June of 1940 while still under German attack, Reynaud and de Gaulle wanted France to fall back into the French colonial North African regions to continue the fight against the Nazis. The Free French would be the imperialist conquerors of Arabs defending themselves from Nazi conquerers. The French would use the fortress of their earlier African conquests to fend of their fellow Euro-Christian conquerers. Casablanca or Algiers would become the new capitol of France while the Nazis occupied Paris. But Petain and Weygand won the argument and semi-surrendered France to the Germans in exchange for France being allowed to continue to exist under Hitler's conditions of virtual servitude, but at least it would continue to exist. If the French didn't like Vichy, the Germans would resume the war and France would end up a province of Greater Germany.
So the deal was made and Vichy France came into being, a puppet Petain state in a corner of France in the relatively unproductive and underpopulated deep south.
The political state of the French colonial states became as complex as the political conditions in France. Quisling France had more political control over its colonial possessions in North Africa than it did over France outside of Vichy.
So this creates, two years later, a delicate set up for a military assault by Allied Forces on Colonial “French” possessions. Basically, the French troops were being told at gunpoint to fight for the Nazis while they had to shoot at their true friends to prove their sincerity to their fake friends with a gun at their back. Imagine the moral problem for the individual sailor or soldier, and the even worse dilemma for their commanding officers.
This was also a problem when French troops faced British troops. There was bad blood between France and Britian over the assault at Mers el Kebir in July 1940. At that terrible scene the British sank French Battleships at anchor like Pearl Harbor and killed many French sailors. British and French forces had also skirmished in the Lebanon.
Many French troops were much more apt by 1942 to shoot at a British ship than an American one. So Marshall Leahy and King, King FDR and Churchill concurred that the North African landings would be composed almost entirely of American ships and troops (the North African “landings” is what they are usually called, since it's hard to call them invasions. It doesn't seem right when some books call the virtually unopposed landings the “invasions” of North Africa.)
There were further complications among the Allies over diplomatic relations with Vichy or lack of them. The British had refused relations with Vichy as an act of defiance against the Nazis and as a signal of encouragement and respect to the French Resistance and the Free French Army of De Gaulle. The United States on the other hand had given formal diplomatic recognition to Vichy France, and had even sent the venerable Admiral Leahy there for a spell as official US Ambassador.
The United States felt there was plenty to be gained by having official representatives reporting on the ground in France, and in Vichy North Africa, and believed also that formal recognition of Vichy helped to ensure the strict neutrality of the powerful French Navy.
The split between the Yanks and the Redcoats over Vichy's diplomatic status made for complex negotiations with the Vichy defenders and their leaders at the sites where the Allies wanted to come on shore.
There also were French splits at Morocco between those who wanted to abandon the Vichy leadership at the first sight of “enemy” forces, and others who thought for various reasons that they still should stick to their Vichy pledged loyalty, whether it be to resist or cooperate with the invaders. In other words, whatever Vichy told them to do they felt duty bound to do.
The worst thing for the Allies would be if the Vichy French in Africa fought to the death against the Allied landing groups. The best thing would be if they embraced them as liberators and turned their guns on the Nazi troops scattered around Oran and Algiers. The in-between was most likely, and what actually happened. There was some fighting between French and American batteries, but before too long, they negotiated a cease-fire
The French Resistance in fact had already coincidentally been planning an uprising in North Africa against both Vichy and their Nazi overlords at about the same time the Yanks would be hitting the beach. The leader of the rebellion was to be General Henri Giraud, the famous man in France who had escaped a Nazi prison earlier in 1941. The Americans took a chance and met in secret with GHG and told him of the impending invasion, hoping to coordinate his rebellion with their invasion. They brought 'Hammerin Hank' to Gibraltar for top secret talks. Henri took his hosts aback when he insisted that he should command the invasion force. But the argument was moot because at that hour the armadas were already well out from their bases in Bermuda, so Henry couldn't get his arrogant way in any case.
The code name for the North African landings was “Super-Gymnast,” but it was later changed to “Torch” presumably because someone realized that Super-Gymnast was was a super-stupid name.
(Update from new research - It was Churchill who changed the name to Torch after he changed some of the details of the plan.)
THE CHERCHEL MEETING OCTOBER 21 1942
Churchill had mixed feelings about the Cherchel meeting, but he agreed to go along with it.
Cherchel was a town on the coast of Algiers where the second in Allied Command, General Mark Clark, was to meet behind enemy lines with French leaders that the Allies thought they could trust. He brought along Robert Murphy, a famous diplomat and four others. They would meet with French Vichy leaders who were pro-Ally on a house near the shore. They were not meeting with the Resistance.
It would be a dangerous mission. Mark Clark wrote a farewell letter to his wife. Clark would have several very important men with him and they would travel by stealth. A slow submarine would pick them up at Gibraltar and move at a whopping six knots an hour beneath the surface and 12 above.
The Allies hoped to meet with Darlan but the settled for a man half as important, General Mast.
The Allies needed to know what amount of fighting resistance they would be up against when they landed on French African soil. They wanted to know which French leaders were really willing to defy Hitler and join the Allies once the shooting starts, which were torn or luke-warm, and which were going to fight because they had given the Germans their word that they would.
The Allies had very sketchy intelligence about landing spots, and wanted to know what places the French would recommend. They wanted to see how well it matched the choices they had made.
The French wanted specifics about where the Allies were planning to land, when and in what force level. The Allied delegation was under strict orders from Ike and Churchill (who had developed a close personal friendship, btw) not to give away any details. They couldn’t trust a frog as far as they could throw Kate Smith, no matter how much they heard he was with them and against Hitler. hey even lied to Mast about the size of the force coming in. They said a half a million and 2,000 planes. They had exaggerated by about 8 times. This impressed mast who opened up a little after hearing the lie.
The mission learned that things were worse than they thought as far as Vichy French forces being willing to fight. Part of it had to do with what happened at el Kebir in 1940 when the British destroyed a French fleet at harbor and killed 1,200 French sailors. It learned more about the leanings of Darlan, Petain, Pasteur, and other French leaders.
The best thing the mission to Cherchel learned was that the Allies had chosen wisely in landing spots. The French recommended the exact spots the Allies had picked. The French demanded to know exactly when Frenchmen would be allowed to take over military and political leadership in liberated French territory. They wanted France to be be back in charge the moment the Yanks hit the beach at Morocco. The Allies were vague about it. It wouldn’t be right away. The Americans did not want to appoint foreign political leaders to power ahead of military operations. In other words, they weren’t going to give De Gaulle power nor any of the Vichy moderates competing with him for power, certainly not ahead of the battle.
The police raided the house while the meeting was in progress. The Arab house servants saw the coming and going of a lot of people and reported a meeting of the Resistance. The cops had no idea that General Mark Wayne Clark was in the building.
The delegates barely made it back to the sub in a dramatic escape. The second highest commander in the United States Army was at one point swimming desperately towards a rubber raft in his underwear, bleeding, having left gold and secret plans behind at the shore, while over his shoulder he could hear the police busting up the house he had just fled from, the meeting house Maison Blanche at the top of a shore bluff.
The scene where the meeting broke at the Blanche is straight out of Gone With the Wind. The French Vichy gendarmes enter the house. Mark Clark and his top brass pals are hiding in the basement holding their pistols. Clark whispers that he forgot how to fire on of these things. In the attack three British commandos are hiding. The police demand to check the attic. The host explains that, much to his embarrassment, his friends had hired some prostitutes. Please don’t go up there and arrest them. It will ruin their marriages. The gendarmes held off on going up the attic. Meanwhile Marc Clark and his group made a rough escape through a basement window and charged down the bluff to the shore, falling over, and then seeing the swimming task ahead of them in rough seas to get to the raft to take them back to the sub. They all stripped to near nude and crashed into the sea in a desperate scramble. Clark had to leave behind thousands of dollars in gold coins. He also left a detailed map and secret papers in the water that, if discovered, could really torch Torch.
When they made it back to the British sub, Clark owned up that he had left behind the volatile material. The Allies kept an eye out through spies on the comings and goings in the Cherchel area. Seeing no unusual activity, and no unusual cable traffic increase, they concluded that the papers were lost or destroyed in the water and posed no security threat. It was gone with the wind.
The scene in Gone With the Wind that I compared to Maison Blanche in Cherchel is when they pretend Ashley Wilkes is drunk after a night with a hooker, as opposed to what he really was, shot by a Union patrol rifle while fleeing from a Ku Klux Klan meeting. It’s near the end of the very long film.
A BONE TO PICK WITH YOU
The landings were planned at one time or another on five different places. An attack on five separate locations simultaneously was seriously considered. In the end it was three. For a week or so, the plan was for four landings.
Churchill walked into Ike’s office on Grosvenor Square and said,
“I have a bone to pick with you.”
Churchill did not agree with the fourth landing site at Bone. It was to far too the east, too close to Axis supply lines. The Luftwaffe could make a tragic mess of the landings. There was no need to land in Bone. The best plan was to take the three easy spots due west at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, and leave Bone alone. He also knew that the American troops were green and it wasn’t smart to get them too close to the action right away.
Both men knew that Churchill was demanding nothing and would totally respect Ike’s decision either way. But both also knew that Churchill was always welcome to speak his opinions bluntly. Ike would have been unhappy if he didn’t think Churchill was doing that all the time.
On Bulldog’s advice the Bone was taken out of the Torch.
GIBRALTAR HEADQUARTERS & THE GAY GUY
The French leader Giruad arrived at Gibraltar after safe passage on a British submarine, the Seraph. Ike and the Allies were depending on him to lead the Vichy French in non-resistance the Allied landings. Giroud was influential enough to influence Vichy French troops to not shoot Americans down, but he chose instead to be cleverly un-cooperative.
Giraud (whom you might remember from his escape from a Nazi prison about 90 pages ago) demanded a high price for his cooperation. He demanded to be named commander in chief of the entire Torch operation. He was very strident and snooty about it. The Allies wanted French co-operation in liberating French territory. They had better be ready to pay up to get it. Darlan knew that if the Vichy French military forces did not fight the Allies on the beaches of North Afrika, it would be the end of the Vichy system. Hitler would punish the French for their betrayal of a pledge made in 1940 by invading and occupying the previously unmolested area of Vichy France and crushing people just like he did everywhere else his army had won.
Giraud wanted to cooperate, but he didn’t want to be the one responsible for the Nazi retributions in Vichy France. General Mark Clark bought his haughty act. He couldn’t beleive how conceited and arrogant this guy was, and even threatened to keep him under house arrest indefinitely. But Bob Murphy of the State Department saw right through it. Giraud was merely making a demand that he knew could not be met in order to escape having to make a call. This way it would look like was choosing to cooperate, while knowing the condition to be made commander equalled not cooperating.
Churchill worried about his pal Ike and sent him telegrams making sure he was ok in the stuffy underground bunker of Gibraltar CP. Ike wrote back of a recent report that the surf at Casablanca and Port Lyautay is more than 15 feet high all but 20 days of the year. One worry wart was pushing another worry wart’s button, but as it turned out, the surf wasn’t a huge problem during the Torch landings.
When Ike was read to heady to the battlefront he needed a ride from a B-24. The pilot demurred. The weather was bad and Ike was talking about a flight at dusk on November 5. The Luftwaffe and the weather added up to no. It was risky and the pilot didn’t like the idea of either one of them risking it. Ike snapped and gave Colonel Paul Tibbets a lecture on the simplicity of choosing or not choosing to obey a direct order. Tibbets was a man of destiny. He flew Ike to North Africa safely. Later on in the war Paul dropped an A-bomb on Hiroshima from his B-29, the Enola Gay (a plane he named after Eleanor Roosevelt.)
TORCH LIGHTER FLUIDS
The amphibious operations for Torch were rehearsed in the Chesapeake Bay throughout the late summer of 42. This was a new kind of warfare and the Navy had to learn as it trained.
The various task force groups went to widely separated locations such as Casco Bay Maine and Bermuda. When they left for the African mission they took routes that started in misleading directions. One group seemed heading towards Dakar in Africa until it turned North late in the run.
One large transport ship, the Lee, developed a list and had to return to the East Coast under its new nickname, the Leaky Lee. Another ship was found to replace it, but that ship, the Contessa was manned by a rainbow coalition of foreigners. Contessa got word at sea that it was needed for patriotic duty immediately. The replacement ship was ordered to Norfolk where the foreigners left the ship for good. Now it was the barefoot Contessa. An all-American replacement crew had to be found in Norfolk. But there were no folk in Norfolk to fit the bill. So the US Navy got permission to go to all the local prisons and recruit fighting men who would receive pardons if they volunteered for these dangerous missions. It was like the plot to the movie The Dirty Dozen, although, unlike the movie where all the recruits were convicted murderers, all of the Norfolk recruits were guilty of lesser crimes than that.
OPERATION CARTWRIGHT
The Americans had to worry about the French defenders on the shore of Africa. Would the Yanks have to kill a thousand Frenchmen like the British had done at Mers el Kebir in 1940? It was a complex political and military situation. The Americans that were to hit the beach at Casablanca and Oran were under strict orders not to fire the first shot. The hope was that the Vichy French defenders would not fight. The Americans would hold their fire until they could see the whites of their flags. But if the French fired the first shots, a special code-name signal was to be sent out to all combat guns off shore to open fire and give it back to the feisty frogs. That signal was,
“Play Ball!”
Navy Commander Hewitt nicknamed this aspect of the plan “Operation Cartwright” after the man who invented baseball, Alexander Cartwright. The sailors picked up on the game and soon the nine biggest combat ships were called the “Ball Club.” The USS Massachusetts was “The Hot Corner” and the carrier Ranger was “Centerfield.” (Throughout WWII Americans used baseball cross-references. In 1944 a P-47 destroyed three Panzer tanks on one patrol and reported back by radio that he had just pulled off an “Unassisted triple-play” - The Japanese did it too - one of their favorite tortures for American POW’s they named, “The Seventh Inning Stretch” and it’s too awful to describe here - The Japanese also loved baseball. )
The Americans had no desire to kill Frenchmen and hoped that the game would be called off. But yes, sadly, at one point during Torch the order went out to the US Navy to “Play Ball!” And they did... “in a barnburner.”
TORCH DESTINATIONS
Axis intelligence watched the gathering US-led invasion force in the Atlantic and wondered where it would strike. Guesses included a trip across the Mediterranean to directly help the British Eighth Army against Rommel, a landing on the Atlantic coast for a trip across the desert to Tunisia, a direct landing in Tunisia, a direct assault on Sicily or Sardinia, or a landing at Algeria. Morocco was one of the least considered possibilities.
The Allies never seriously considered hitting Sicily at this time, although if they knew the incredibly neglected state of Axis defenses there they might have not only considered it, they might have done it. This would have completely cut off the North African Axis from its supply lines. From there they could have left the rest of the African war to Montgomery with the accumulating advantage from that supply situation. It might have taken Monty a while to beat Rommel and van Arnim, and it might have required stalemate method, but the dry German-Italians would have been in some mess with the supply line across the central club Med cut off.
By the time the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, the defenses there were three times stronger than they were in November 1942.
The western landings at Casablanca were for the most part not at Casablanca. The Americans landed on three locations around Casablanca and then converged on the city from three directions.
TORCH
The US Army landed in force in November 42 at three locations, Casablanca, Oran and Algiers (at Casablanca they arrested the usual suspects.) America had at last directly entered the war against the Nazi menace.
ROCK THE KASBAH - CASABLANCA AND PORT LYAUTEY
IS CASABLANCA BURNING?
The French fought tenaciously at Casablanca, and in a naval battle the Jean Bart dueled with the USS Massachusetts. The Americans won the ship to ship encounter mostly because of sheer numbers. The Mass attack was conducted not alone.
A three pronged attack was preparing to hit Casablanca in a final Allied drive upon the little city. Casablanca surrendered just in time to avoid a severe pummeling. An armada of ships, planes and land artillery was close to commence firing when the French saw reason. The Allied air attack was in the air and closing in when word reached the pilots to peel off. Casablanca would not have to be destroyed.
There was some serious fighting with the French at Port Lyautey. The Americans had to lay siege to the fortress of the Kasbah where the touch traitors were holed up and trying to fight back. The Army mortars and self-propelled 155 mm guns were doing plenty of damage, but then the co-ordinates were signaled out to US heavy warships off-shore. The Navy rocked the Kasbah and the Vichy defenders raised the white flag at dawn. There was also a short sharp battle for the airport.
More than 3,500 French soldiers and sailors died fighting the USA on the western shore of North Africa in November of 1942. That’s more that twice as many dead at the British tallied at Mers el Kebir (7.3.40,) but what could anyone do? The French had their reasons and so did the Allies. It was a sad fight with no real winners.
ORAN
ALGIERS
The landings at Algiers weren’t as eventful as the political meetings held in their wake.
LITTLE DARLAN - VS GIRAUD - VS DE GAULLE
A certain Frenchman named Admiral Darlan was the Vichy man in charge of the area. The Allies disliked him as a Nazi collaborator and traitor. When the United States decided to negotiate with Darlan for his acquiescence in the Torch landings there was a lot of controversy. Making a deal with Darlan was making a deal with the devil, but would it have been more wise to defy Darlan on general principles and take heavy casualties, while also stimulating a fighting spirit amongst the confused and torn French personnel?
General Eisenhower took a lot of heat for making the “Darlan Deal.” The press in America reacted slowly to the issue, but when it finally did, it acted/reacted negatively. The American press was so elated and taken with all the good news of the Torch landings that it paid no mind to the Darlan deal for about two weeks.
In Britian the press reacted even more slowly because they were almost entirely focused on the eastern NA desert war between Montgomery and Rommel. The British press gave the Torch landings page two treatment. The Darlan controversy was that much more distant to them .. at first. When the British press finally caught on they raked the USA and Ike over the coals for making a deal with the Vichy traitor Darlan. Britian had already pledged its support to De Gaulle and his Free French Army. De Gaulle hated all Vichy traitors, and he certainly was ‘on the outs’ with Darlan. Why would America sell it’s soul to Petain’s pet dog in North Afrika, when it knew that the Allies were fighting for true French liberty and liberation?
But Darlan’s Vichy had the lion’s share of the French guns. De Gaulle had 90,000 troops and no money or infrastructure outside of London. Vichy Africa alone had more than 200,000 French troops and total infrastructure. Darlan and Vichy, not De Gaulle and his FF, commanded the military forces that could inflict heavy casualties on the American invader, and the Vichy would still be there in anger even if the invasion defeated them in combat. Who was going to administer North Africa after the Americans beat up the Vichy defenders. Only the in-place and experienced Vichy bureaucracy could handle Vichy African administration, and without first winning the hearts and minds of the Vichy individuals, North Africa would quickly erupt into chaos, revolution and violence between French, Arab, Axis, rogue criminal, and US-UK invader factions. Ike wasn’t only thinking of saving American lives in the immediate combat situation when the landings happened. He was thinking of how to manage things after the victory, and for that he absolutely had to have the deal with Admiral Darlan. Vichy troops and sailors respected Darlan and if anyone less than him told them to put down their arms and stop shooting at the good guys, they might just keep shooting.
The Allies had tried to get Vichy leader Giraud to lead the way in asking Vichy to passively allow the Americans to invade them, and Vichy Africa might have listened to Giruad, and might not have. Since Giruad would not accept the responsibility of leadership, the Allies had to turn to a Vichy leader who was more respected and powerful than Giraud but was also more hated by the Free French and the liberal world opinion machine. Darlan was a better and a worse choice and the one Ike felt he had no choice but to turn to. It was Ron Reagan style ‘waltzing with dictators’ but in this case it was waltzing with the guy who already infamously waltzed with dictators.
General Mark Clark had to negotiate with Darlan att he CP in Algiers and didn’t care for “that little pest.” Clark was as discreet as a bullhorn, and the tall Yank always ragged on Darlan for his height, usually behind his back. Usually.
At one point Darlan became so stubborn on some issue that General Clark actually had Darlan under house arrest. Darlan was threatening to storm off and rescind his order to Vichy troops to not resist the American landings. “Oh no! You’re not going anywhere, my friend,” Clark told him with a scowl. Big Mark did not physically allow little Darlan to change his mind.
DESERT STRATEGY IN LATE 1942
Tunisia, the grand prize in the center of the board geographically was super-strategic. It commanded both North Africa and the Mediterranean. It was at the center of the North African map.
Both the British under Ken Anderson, and the American under Ike were of a mind that they could clear the Axis out of Afrika by the end of 1942. But bad weather, expert German fighting, inexperienced American troops, and brutally difficult geography intervened.
Germans would hold on in Tunis until May of 1943.
The fighting in ENA (East North Afrika) had been back and forth with a German victory in the desert here and a British one there for almost two years. But the overall momentum was now with Monty and Tommy.
The British with the help of American supplies and the drain on German resources in Russia, had stopped Hitler’s dream of taking the Suez Canal and were matriculating their way due west towards Tunisia while Panzer commander Rommell handed them a drubbing now and then while falling back.
Attrition was clearly favoring the British, and both sides knew it. No individual military genius was going to win North Africa for the Nazis. Now the Germans were fighting a delaying campaign, trying to extend the war in North Africa just to protect Italy and the Mediterranean, not to win the field on which they were fighting. Just when the eastern front in North Africa was slowly falling apart, here came the Americans landing to the west.
CAN THE TUNIS
Tunisia was technically not Axis held territory, and Kesselring had advised Rommel some time earlier to retreat to Tunisia where the supply line to Sicily and Italy were short and at least half- secure. Now with the Allies landing in Algeria and Morocco, Hitler knew that the arrangement in Tunisia with Vichy was irrelevant. Hitler was through with the whole Vichy thing anyway, as Darlan and Giroud certainly knew too well. So Hitler rushed new divisions across the sea to beef up the Axis defenses in Tunisia. All the help Rommel had been begging for and not getting when the battle was in doubt were going to be sent to Rommel now that the contest was no long in doubt. Now it was definitely a losing cause, but Hitler at least wanted to buy time and keep the enemy on the lower side of the Mediterranean Sea as along as possible
Axis air power based in Sicily protected the Tunis prize, so the Torch landings had to take place much further west and then the army could march overland to join the battle.
The landing at Bone, which was cancelled for D-Day November 8, got the green light on November 12 and the British were bad to the Bone and took it over by dusk on D-Day Plus 4. The British Army there was led by General Kenny Anderson, not to be confused with the Kenny Anderson who so superbly quarterbacked the Cincinnatti Bengals in the 1980. This Kenny Anderson quarterbacked the British First Army.
Commander Dwight Eisenhower was in charge of the forces landing in North Africa and he immediately felt he could move on Tunis and capture it in a lighting strike before the winter of 1942-3 set in. With one division from Algiers he raced towards Tunis. But monumentally heavy rains stopped Ike’s army in its tracks. The offensive was literally stuck in the mud. As winter set in the Axis pumped in heavy re-enforcements to Tunisia, tripling the troop level and made the dream an Ike pipe dream. The quick victory was rained out.
MERRY CHRISTMAS DARLAN
On Christmas Eve 1942 Admiral Darlan was assassinated in Algiers. Darlan was the traitor who made a deal with the Nazis to run Vichy North Africa, then made a deal with the Allies to betray the Axis when the Allies landed in Torch.
The assassin was a man named Bonnies de la Chappelle. The young angry Frenchman stormed past the front desk of Darlan’s HQ, kicked in the door and put two bullets into Darlan’s stubborn head.
British leaders spoke in Parliament the next day they were more of less glad he as dead. On December 26 de la Chappelle did the Sadaam shuffle (death by hanging.) Maybe they shouldn’t have iced him so fast. A lot of conspiracy theories have risen up around the murder of Admiral Darlan. Few experts today still believe that Bonnier de la Chappelle acted alone. One book suggests that a certain Andrei Clyde may have paid him to shoot Darlan. Bonnies and Clyde were a team.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS OF 1942
Roosevelt had specifically asked his military leaders to launch the invasion of North Africa one week before the November elections. Due to weather problems, plus moon tides, the landings were delayed until one week after the elections. To his credit, Roosevelt squashed all talk of going ahead with the early landings anyway. He would not hear of an increased risk for American fighting men in order to gain a couple of seats in Congress for his Party, even if we have to admit that he tried to exploit the operation for politics provided he could do so safely. He was like JFK that way, always thinking of politics first, but backing off when proper decency dictated.
Roosevelt had crossed the country in October campaigning for Democratic candidates, but swore the press to secrecy. He said it was to prevent an assassination attempt, but it was probably because some of his candidate endorsements had recently indicated a backlash in polls for that candidate. Franklin wanted to help but he had to keep a low profile while appearing at political hot sites along the way. Besides, FDR had publicly stated that he would not campaign for the Democratic Party in 42 because he was too busy running the war. The press protected him from being called out on that one.
The results were bad for the Democrats. The GOP won 9 seats in the Senate and 44 seats in the Congress. If not for the Solid South, the Democrats would have lost control of the Capitol Building. The New Dealers were no longer the dominating force in national politics. FDR could play a King running the war, but for his “planned economy,” the party was over.
THE JEWISH PROBLEM 1942
There was Jewish problem in Germany, and we know how the Nazis were dealing with it. But there was a Jewish problem in America too. Anti-Semitism is still a problem in the USA. On the eve of Pearl Harbor the prejudice against Jews was arguably worse than at any point in US history. This was very poor timing. Just when it needed to confront the anti-semitic Nazi menace, the USA was in an ugly anti-semitic condition itself.
Milt Mayer, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in 1942 penned a piece called ‘The Case Against the Jews.’ He was referring to American Jews, not those under the heels of Hitler.
We wonder how the Holocaust could have happened in Germany. But Germany was just an extreme and triumphant form of the same anti-Semitism I heard all around me when I was growing up in South Boston in the 1960s, the same anti-Semitism that has been around for about 2,000 years.
The disease had been most problematic and acute in Russia long before the Nazis got insane with it. But there were too many Jews in Russia to consider eliminating them, and besides they were productive for the Russian economy. They worked and farmed and ran bourgeois shops.
Germany could conceive of expelling them because the Jews were a minority. Germany tried to exterminate them because they were an unarmed minority who threatened to take too many jobs away and was committing usury against the German people. Seeking jobs, or lending money doesn't make a race evil, but a few million Nazis felt otherwise. The Jews were small enough to allow for the fantasy of driving them completely out of the country....for starters.
The Mayer article appeared in the March 1942 Saturday Evening Post. It predicted that the USA would be in an even more anti- Jewish frenzy when the war ended. The piece had such an overt anti-Semitic tone (he made a rhyme about Jewish noses and their Jewish Moses) that a backlash ensued and the editor of the Post had to resign. But just the fact that the nation's largest circulation mag could print such a piece in the first place is testament to the racism against the Jews in America at the same time that old glory was fighting the Nazis. One U.S. civilian war diarist said he used to commonly hear people refer to WWII as “the Jew’s War.”
Reports began to filter into Roosevelt in 1942 about the mass executions of Jews in German concentration camps. But FDR either thought the reports were exaggerated or did not want to react too publicly or too strongly and risk being accused of being in the hands of the Jewish monopolists. Rednecks had charged him with being a “Jew-lover” throughout his presidency. The foreign press sometimes said it too. Germans and Americans alike called him 'President Rosenfeld.' Franklin D just didn’t have any margin for error, no shoulder on the roadway with Jewish issues.
In November of 1942 Roosevelt moved. He asked Congress if he could use his war powers to ignore the laws governing immigration and let the Jewish war refugees in. It was his finest hour. But Congress blocked his proposal. Newsweek magazine for one thought that Congress acted largely because of anti-Semitism. Congress didn’t want a queue of ocean liners bringing more Jews to Manhattan as fast as they can unload.
BOSE INDIAN STEREO SYSTEM
The Nazis wanted to stir up trouble for the British in any way they could in any place they could. They saw the situation in India as ripe for exploitation along a dual or “stereo” track.
Here was Great Britian trying to oppress a great foreign country, India, while barely fighting off a great power, Germany. Within India there were three basic factions. First were those quisling native Indian fools loyal to the British. These people thought that Britian was a benevolent force that brought so many benefits to the country (roads, schools, medicine, military security for example) that it was a downright good thing to have foreign rule, as long as the foreigners were progressive within their imperialism, and as long as these individuals had good jobs within the colonial infrastructure. This group provided entire divisions of Indian troops for fighting service wherever the London King wanted to send them.
Then there were the Ghandi-ites. They believed in passive resistance, and in Indian independence. They were probably the majority of Indians.
The third group were the violent resistors. This faction wanted Britian out of India as soon as possible and they would blow up British administrative buildings to do it. If British officials died in the explosion, that was too bad, serves 'em right. This was the Malcom X Indian movement; Britian 'out now' by any means necessary.
The evil of Nazi Germany presented a dilemma for thinking Indians. Do we take this opportunity to hit our traditional oppressor while he's vulnerable, or do we recognize that the Nazis are so evil and so dangerous that for the time being, Britian is the lesser of two evils and we all should unite and support our whip-masters until the Nazi threat is taken care of first. We'll deal with Indian Independence later.
The Ghandi passive resistors took the high road and supported Britian for now. But the Malcom X Indians split into two groups. One decided to support Britain, as painful as that was. But the other group not only would not support Britian, they openly supported revolution now, and openly supported the Fascist external enemies as the vehicle to to it with.
The leader of these traitors to Buddha (no way Buddha would expect his followers to help the Nazis – no way) was a guy named Chandra Subhas Bose.
Bose spent time in all the Axis capitals during World War II. In 1942 the Nazis published a hundred articles about him, warning England that Bose was the true friend of India and that Ghandi was not a friend of India. The Nazis really hoped that a major revolution would break out in India and the pro-fascist Bose would become the national leader.
Before the war ended, the Japanese actually provided Bose with a brigade of Indian PW's that signed on to fight for the people that had locked them up in exchange for freedom. The Bose Brigade had a stereo message of Independence for India but expedient support for the fascists at the same time. They fought with a forked conscience. The Bose brigade actually fought a couple of battles on the Burma-India frontier in 1944 on the Japanese side of the ball.
In 1942 Chandra Bose was in the western newspapers a lot. Britian did actually fear him, but not as much as German propaganda claimed. Just like the Japanese who treated their conquered peoples with such cruelty that they never had a one percent chance of winning a 'hearts and minds' campaign anywhere, the Nazis were such motherless scums (and no one thinks more highly of them than I do) that they had zero chance of winning many friends in India or anywhere else outside of fatherland.
Bose died in a plane crash in August 1945 in Taiwan. He may not have died by accident.
MILITARY BATTLE OF RUSSIA 1942
The Russians had stopped the Nazi drive on Moscow on the vary day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. But stopping the Nazi advance and pushing it back where they came from were two different missions. The second one was not going to come any easier than the first one had.
The Germans fell back a little bit in early 1942 but planned a major new offensive for the spring. The Wermacht was going to drive towards the oil fields of the Cacasus/Baku region. Once the Germans took the key river and railroad junction city of Stalingrad on the Volga, they could then take half the force and wheel north and cut off Moscow from the rear, while the rest of the army went south to take the oil fields. Germany was getting desperately short of oil. Oil was the life blood of WWII and to a great extent decided it in both Europe and Asia.
The German summer offensive of 1942 started well, then slowed down late in the summer, slowed down even more in the muddy rains of the fall, and died in the snows of the winter of 42-3.
The Russians had a defensive line in and around the city of Kharkov. Stalin and the Russian General Staff got word from several spies and captured German prisoners that the Germans were planning an early fall smash through the space just north of Kharkov. Local Kharkov commander Nikita Krushchov cabled the Kremlin to corroborate these reports and ask for the proper reinforcements at the spot.
Stalin cabled back to Krushchov that,
“Hitler is trying to make a fool of you and me both. Nick, wake up. These reports are deliberate disinformation. He wants up to think that the attack is coming at Kharkov when I know for a fact that the attack is coming much further north, directly at Moscow.”
Young Krushchev, the future leader of Russia, cabled Stalin that the information was correct at face value and the Red Army had a chance to block the Nazi attack at Kharkov.
The Nazi attack of course came at Kharkov and they smashed through Russia's weak defenses.
Near the end of 1942 the Russians and Germans clashed at the great Battle for Stalingrad. But Krushchev suggests in his late in life memoirs that the Germans could have been stopped far to the west of Stalingrad if Stalin had only listened to the obvious intelligence and showed some of his own.
Another major battle took place for Kharkov in 1943 when the Russians were driving the Germans back through it, but the initial German assault through Kharkov didn't have to be, and led to the battle for Stalingrad far to the east. Krushchev claims that Stalin's blunder at Kharkov ruined a golden chance to shorten the war by two years. This may be a fantastic estimate of the 'what if' part, but Krushchev was on the ground and feels very strongly that Stalin really did Russia a disservice when he tried to show off how clever he was and how he could outfox Hitler.
More on Stalingrad after this.
WHAT KIND OF A MAN WAS STALIN?
Before we get to the battle of his namesake city, lets see that kind of a man was Dzugashvili (Stalin’s real name.)
Stalin murdered most of the people who were close to power in Russia. It wasn't easy to survive the gauntlet of high Russian political office in his time.
If you wanted to survive at Stalin's table you had to let him abuse you. That is a true story and fits in with his consummate bully personality disorder.
Stalin was the boss so he could get drunk all night and not report for work the next day of he felt like it. But his subordinates couldn't. Stalin would deliberately invite a high official to his private apartment, force the guy to drink with him all night, go to bed at dawn, and then summon the guy late the next day after Stalin had his full sleep. Since the other man had to report for work at 8 a.m. Stalin knew that the poor sap was on an all-nighter with a waking hang-over, and he would make that person attend important Politburo meetings.
Inevitably the man would fall asleep at the meeting, or at least start to. That was the moment Stalin was waiting for. Stalin would fire a rotten tomato at the guy, scaring him and waking him at the same time. This is straight out of Krushchov remembers, I am not making this up. This was a standard Stalin gag and he took to having a bowl of soft fruits and vegetables next to him so he could throws them at people.
Krushchev was horrified at this uncouth behavior, the leader on Russia and international Communism, behaving like barroom boor at Politburo meetings. Krushchev was personally hit with a tomato at Stalin's diner table. He says that it progressed to the point where Stalin began throwing forks and spoon at people and laughing uproariously. The person did not dare protest or else he might be dead by the end of the day.
All this might have been almost forgivable if Stalin had been a wise leader and a brilliant military strategist, but he was neither. Krushchev says that throughout 1941 and 1942 Stalin was completely depressed all the time and had no spring in his step. He was mentally collapsing under the stress of was and defeats. But after Russia took the offense for good in 1943 Stalin got his old pre-war confidence back.
Foreign Minister Molotov was perhaps the only man in the USSR who actually shared some power with Stalin. That's because Molotov was a loyal Marxist, a loyal Great Russian, was personally loyal to Stalin, but most importantly, knew all about foreign policy and instructed Stalin in private about what's what in the world. Stalin actually listened to Molotov, actually respected him, and only because he needed him. It was Molotov who told Stalin that if Russia made a deal with Hitler it should include Bessarabia and the Baltic states.
“Molo the Bolo” could play the violin and told the story about how he was in Siberia in exile and played for the guards. Stalin would order Molotov to play the violin for guests at the dinner table, and then insult his playing. Krushchov quotes Stalin saying,
“Those guards must have rubbed mustard in your face after hearing you play like that.”
That's a striking comment, indicating Stalin may have had some psychological disorder that manifested itself in food. First he is seen throwing food at people at important meetings and doing this in almost calculated pre-meditated fashion – then when he wants to condemn a musical performer he suggests that listeners must have rubbed mustard in the player's face. That's a little bizarre to me, to choose rubbing mustard in someone's face as a referent.
Krushchev also speaks of Stalin being verbally abusive to the British Ambassador, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that it was happening. Part of why Stalin got away with bullying the USA and Great Britian at Yalta and Potsdam was because he had already tested the waters by abusing secondary officials. To the American Ambassador he showed every courtesy, but at the same time insulted President Roosevelt and Truman, knowing full well the verbal abuse would get reported back to them.
He was playing “Fetch the water bucket” and winning. In pirate culture, whenever there is a threat to authority, the lead pirate looks at the leading threat and says, “Fetch the water bucket.” Not because he is thirsty, but because in getting away with a small amount of bullying, he is saying he can get away with the large. The true test of power is decided on small scale insults. Most bullying starts with small testing increments, and it is here that the power structure is decided. When Stalin knew he could verbally abuse the British Ambassador, he knew he could bully John Bull.
BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
On the battlefield the Russians were holding on throughout the year but the battle had very much not been decided. The United States feared that the Soviet Union would settle up with Hitler and leave the war, with the western allies holding the burning bag, just the way Russia did it to them the First World War.
For 1941-42 and again in 1942-43 the Russian winter did as much damage to the German offensive as the Russian Army did.
The German drive for the oil fields of the Southern Caucasus region was halted by a battle at a small city that was the junction of several key water and rail routes. The place was named Stalingrad.
Today is it called Volgograd.
The Battle of Stalingrad was the greatest fight of all time. It was at least twice as fearsome as the Ali-Frasier fight in Manila. It decided WWII and made the battle of Iwo Jima look like a skirmish.
The battle for Stalingrad would decide whether Hitler would run out of gasoline. Behind the Russian defenders was the road to oil, i.e. gas for the tanks gas tanks. That battle was being joined as 1942 came to a close.
Hitler felt that he had to take Stalingrad as a do or die situation, which wasn’t true. Stalin felt that he had to hold Stalingrad as a do or die situation, which wasn’t true either.
Part of the reason Stalin felt that he had to hold on to Stalingrad was because it was named after him and he had a huge ego. Part of why Hitler felt he had to capture Stalingrad was because it was named after Stalin and his arch enemy he had a huge ego.
Stalingrad was at an important railroad junction, and held a commanding spot of the vital Volga River. But logistics and strategy didn’t really dictate this as a must win for either side, even though most history documentaries will tell you so. It just looks that way because both sick leaders decided that it was so.
This was the ultimate case of city fighting in all of human history. Stalingrad was a big city and every single block was fought over. The place was heap of rubble before the fighting was even at the half way point in time. But this turned out into a big advantage for the Russians. Every time the Luftwaffe or a German 88 leveled a Stalingrad building, that was one more place for Russian fighters to hide in a fortified position with a nice line of fire looking out. The Germans built up the Russian defenses with their assault bombs (as the Allies would do at Cassino in Italy in 44.)
The Battle of Stalingrad lasted well into 1943.
POLITICAL AND SUPPLY BATTLE OF RUSSIA 1942
One of the main goals of the U.S. Office of War Information, one which it achieved all too well, was the propagation of the idea that the USSR was a wonderful supportive and heroic ally deserving all US support, sympathy and understanding. This was a war measure and a lie that overlooked the totalitarian cutthroat nature of the real Russia, especially the Russia that had teamed up with Hitler until he stabbed the big bear in the back. But the ad campaign worked quite well. In fact it worked too well.
There is a saying in show business; ‘never buy your own publicity.’ It is meant to keep artists modest and realistic about who they really are. The OWI sold the American public a bill of goods that Russia was a wonderful lovable ally that supported freedom, democracy, and liberty. Amazing work. Good clever work helping to win the war.
But America bought its own publicity about Russia big time. It would have been almost comedic foolishness if not for the seriousness of how it led to the United States into making self-destructive political and military decisions in the closing weeks of the war, and furthermore in the post-war world. It took almost two years before Harry Truman and the people woke up and smelled their own brainwash.
The United States and Great Britain had many disagreements over Allied policy towards Russia.
Britian distrusted Stalin and believed that the nationalist Russian colossus was still territorially ambitious. Churchill and others believed that the international Communist colossus was still intent on fomenting world revolution against the capitalist western governments both from without and within.
Both the US and the UK were willing to concede some of Stalin’s territorial demands for a post-war settlement. Stalin wanted western Poland, western Romania, and the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, plus Warwick Rhode Island. Britian would readily agree to the three Baltic states. They had belonged to the Russian Empire before World War One and so Russia supposedly had an historical claim of some merit.
Britian wanted a strong yet contented Russia to provide an old-fashioned balance of power on the continent after the Germans were defeated. The UK wanted a demilitarized but industrially strong Germany as well as a militarily strong France restored to their old positions of power. France and Russia could protect the peace while Germany pumped the economy. The English saw the post-war world with as much if not more cynicism than it had seen the pre-war world.
The Americans, especially FDR, saw the post-war world as a fresh canvass on which a utopian new world could be painted with new rules and new roles for old enemies. Roosevelt and Hopkins honestly believed that suffering at the hands of the Nazis had transformed Soviet Russia into a true friend who would never betray America or anyone else after the war.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Being socialists themselves, the Roosevelt gang gave every benefit of the doubt to Russia. The Roosevelt team had done so throughout the thirties, why should this be any different? The Nazi-Soviet Pact, the rape of Poland, the activities of the Comintern, and the invasion of Finland were completely absolved, and forgotten.
The US would not, however, accept Stalin’s territorial demands for the three Baltic Republics. The Wilsonian Roosevelt believed in the principles of the Atlantic Charter with all the zeal that Woodrow had felt for his pet League of Nations. The idea of allowing Baltic peoples to be swallowed up by conquerors in the name of power politics from the mind-set of the Congress of Vienna was not acceptable. Franklin liked the Soviets and heard lots of great things about Stalin. He thought that if the USA showed the Russians some trust they would respond with good behavior. But he would not allow the Soviets to enslave the Baltic republics (the USA was so consistent on this subject until 1991 when the three became free.)
Stalin asked for three favors from his strange bedfellows in 1942. He wanted The US and UK to give a lot of material help so Russia could hold on in the war. Secondly, Joey wanted the English twins to open up a second front in the west. He thirdly wanted the lion's share of all the controversial territorial concessions in a post-war settlement.
The English genies granted him his first wish readily. They would supply Russia by sea as best they could. In fact they would make supply of Russia by sea a top priority, for some selfish reasons. The other two wishes, would not be a simple yes..
The Western Allies needed to keep Russia in the war in order to win it, period. As long as 60% of total German strength was being siphoned off to the east, the war would be that much more winnable in the west. As long as Russia in the east, where “life is cheap,” bled to death making the Germans bleed and freeze to death, that many fewer expensive lives would be lost in the west.
After the war, during the bitter decades of the Cold War, the West accused Russia of being ungrateful for all the war help that the West sent them at heavy cost in lives, money, and materiel. That's a bit slick since it was done for selfish reasons. The West had given only token lend-lease help to Russia between June 22 and December 7 1941 when Russia fought Germany in a desperate struggle for survival. If Britian was at war with Germany and the United States was conducting the famous undeclared war in the Atlantic almost hoping Germany would declare war against America, why did the western allies not make a sincere effort to help Russia then?
On the other hand, Russia did not have the decency to even mention to its own people publicly during the war years all the help it did receive. The Soviets always made it seem like it was carrying the load alone, and that they were still getting the same callous lack of help from the West in 1942 and 43 that they didn't get in 1941. Even after the war, the USSR rarely mentioned the help it got from America and England, while mentioning tirelessly every perceived disrespect and Cold War sleight.
There were three lines of supply sent by sea to the USSR from 1942 to 1945. The one least mentioned in the history books was the primary one, comprising 46% of the total. This was the route from the U.S. West Coast and the Panama Canal across the Pacific to Siberia. It was the long way to get there, and Russia had to then transport the supplies across Asia to the European theatre. But it was convenient for both sides because, as long as Soviet freighters picked up and delivered the goods, the supplies did not have to run the gauntlet. Japan was not at war with Russia and seriously did not want to be. Japanese submarines let the Russian flagged freighters alone and the Pacific route was casualty free, except in a rare instance here and there of mistaken identity. This route did not require heavy warship protection, nor anti-submarine air patrols.
The second route was across the Atlantic and around the tip of South Africa to Hormuz and Basra on the Persian Gulf. From there the supplies went up through Iran and into Russia. There was a shorter route to Iran through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, but that was a hot war zone that had to be avoided. In mid 1943, when Sicily was cleared of Axis air power, the Persian Gulf supply line did finally go through the Suez, but in 1942 the route to Basra had to add a zillion extra miles by going the Bartolomo Diaz route of 1475. New York to Basra via the Cape of Good Hope took 77 days.
The third, and most important route was the 'Polar Bear Express,' the route across the North and White seas to the ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk. This route went from Halifax to Iceland to change convoy protection and refuel. Then from Iceland to Archangelsk or Murmansk the V-flotilla took about two weeks.
The attrition rates on many of these “WJ”convoys (Winston-Joe) were as staggering as Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. The WJ’s are an exiting, famous, and dangerous story of the war. But did they have to be?
The British did most of the escort work on the second and most deadly leg of the run and protested to FDR that this was an unacceptable level of loss and death. One out of every five ships on these convoy runs in 1942 were sunk as opposed to one out of 13 on the run to the Persian Gulf. FDR convinced Churchill that they convoys of terror had to go on for political reasons. The Western Allies had to show Stalin that they were doing their best to help keep Russia fighting. The ice run was the Allied answer to Stalin's incessant charges that his so-called friends were making Russia spill all the blood while they sat waiting for Germany to become feeble from fighting Russia before finally getting up off the sofa. One out of five ships sunk is Iwo Jima on ice.
The Germans fully understood the critical value of these Northern convoys and gave it their fascist all to stop them. These convoys had to pass through the area where German U-boats were in their home waters and close to their bases in Denmark and Norway. The convoys were also within range of German air power. Even the small number of German surface raiders in existence were sent out after these convoys.
The West sent many convoys to Russia in 1942 but losses were so high that massive western help would not really begin flowing into Russia until 1943. And besides that, the military industrial power of the United States did not produce the number of transport ships, destroyer escorts, and supplies needed until 1943. So 1942 showed a helpful good-faith effort in 42, but did not really make a difference until 1943.
In May of 1942 the Germans had to stop sending battle cruisers out against the convoys. This wasn't because (as Mitchell and Severdsky believed) heavy ships were obsolete, too vulnerable, and of little military value. This was because the German Navy was already short of oil (the lifeblood of the world's economy, and the dim-wit protestors of 1990 chanted “No blood for oil!” as if oil wasn't one of the few things in this world worth fighting for.)
HOME FRONT
THE RUBBER MESS
Every major participant in the Second World War faced an ongoing crisis over oil. That is fairly well known. But ‘the rubber mess’ was almost as serious. America had a large supply of domestically produced oil to compensate for the tankers dunked by U-boats. But the shortage of rubber was almost insoluble.
Most of US rubber stock came from southeast Asia (90% from Malaya,) which was now Japanese. And even if the United States could get its hands on Malayan rubber, it was a long was back to the states on a rubber-ship in a global war zone.
The Roosevelt administration was partly to blame for the rubber shortage because it had never believed the Japanese Navy could win in the Pacific the way it did when war broke out. If the FDR think tank had foreseen the destruction of the Pacific Fleet and the overrunning of rubber supplies in Malaya it would have launched an anticipatory synthetic rubber manufacturing program long before December of 1941. But it never did, so it never did.
The high tide of Japanese aggression left the US holding the rubber bag. FDR forgot to listen to his mom when she said ‘don’t forget your rubbers.’
Harold Ickes (pronounces ‘ikees’ and a prominent, if not quite famous figure in American history) was in charge of public relations over the oil rationing program and jumped in on the rubber crisis. HI told the American people at a panic press conference that the rubber shortage would be solved by a patriotic drive from ‘scrap rubber’ collected from common people and junkyards. Ikes said that such a drive would raise more than a million tons of patriot rubber and solve the shortage.
One man who didn't like Ickes' statements was Artie Newhall. Newhall, head of the WPB’s rubber procurement department and told Ickees that he was insane. (WPB= War Production Board.) Newhall had been in the private rubber manufacturing business before the war and he knew his tires, and he knew he was going to take the blame when Ickes fantasy prediction came not true.
After more than a month of frantic national effort only 32% of the goal of one million tons of scrap rubber had been achieved. Ickes was in a bad way about it. Harold's eccentricity got the best of him and he personally began stealing rubber mats from the doorways of government buildings. Security guards were grabbing the mats out of Ickes hands and explaining to him that the rubber in the mats was already recycled and could not be used for tires. They had to bark at the Interior secretary that he was going to cause injury to people who would slip and fall on the slick marble tiles because he was swiping mats.
The rubber shortage plagued the war effort from the first to the last day of the war. US jeeps, planes, and tanks got first dibs on all rubber. In inadequate supply for the military, you can imagine how little was alloted to civilians. If Joe the plumber had trouble buying gas, wait till the poor boob needs a new set of tires.
Desperate measures included a five million dollar failed effort to extract rubber from crypostegia, a plant (I’ve never heard of it either) grown on a large 'crypo-grove' in Haiti. The United States also sponsored and bankrolled and an even more expensive and equally unsuccessful rubber development project deep in the Amazon River Valley.
NEW YEAR’S EVE MOVIE - PLAY IT AGAIN SAM’S
Modern presidents like movies and show them at the White House. Nixon’s favorite movie was Flower Drum Song. Clinton often screened Beach Blanket Bingo. Kennedy’s favorite was Blackboard Jungle. Obama likes Gone With the Wind.
On New Year’s Eve 1942 President FDR screened a hot new movie for his friends. It was Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Maybe it was a playful joke and maybe it was not, but in any case, FDR was preparing to leave for Casablanca without italics in just a few days to confer personally with Churchill on how to conduct the rest of the war.
The idea of a big summit meeting in the war zone was not pleasing to General Ike who wanted politics out o his hair while he ran a war. But FDR wanted to take a trip and get out of Washington. He was tired of sitting still while Churchill Ismay, Eden and Brooke flew to him. He wanted to get out and fly. No US President had ever flown in an airplane before while President. That’s almost hard to believe, especially coming from me, but it’s true.
Not only would Franklin fly, he would fly to the fire zone. Many of his advisors were, understandably, against it. But FD was like Lincoln who voted ‘aye,’ his entire cabinet voted ‘no,’ and then Lincoln said, “very well then, the ayes have it.”
Churchill and FDR invited Stalin to the conference but he resisted their persistent requests. He was too busy running the Soviet war an an amateur military leader. Churchill and Roosevelt told Stalin they they would be willing to postpone it until March when the Russian winter war period ended, but Stalin wouldn’t budge. “You guys will have to summit without me,” he cabled.
ABOUT THE NAZIS
The internal workings of the Nazis are separated into a closing section of this book. The end of 1942 is a good time to take a good look at them. The part about how they never really conquered Germany, but really just put a tyrannical blanket over a long established conservative and powerful infrastructure should be borne in mind always.
MOVIE WARS
Goebbels was a real movie buff. He loved the movies. Who doesn't? Early in 1942 Goebbels saw a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. First he commented on what a bang-up first class entertaining production it was. Then he complained that it was anti-German and rather effective and that the rest of the German people should not be allowed to see it. He did this with a lot of movies, the knave. He'd watch all the movies the German people were forbidden to see, then write a review. He was like the town selectmen that had to vote on whether the controversial skin-flick should be banned from the local theater. They watched it 12 times and decided that they still weren't sure, and asked to see it again.
The issue of the movies was very important to the Nazis. They saw film as a weapon just as important at the Stuka or the Panzer tank. They weren't fools on that film score.
Triumph of the Will was a major Nazi propaganda movie that I had to watch in college on one of the rare days I showed up.
Goebbels said this about film in 1942,
“We must become the dominant movie power on the European continent. In so far as pictures are produced in other countries they must be only of local or limited character. It must be our aim to prevent so far as possible the founding of any new national film industry.”
The Nazis wanted to conquer the French film industry about as much as they wanted to conquer the French. The Nazis (more than the Germans in general) were culturally conceited because they knew they were uncouth. They deluded themselves into thinking they made better movies than anyone else in Europe. As for American film, they couldn't delude themselves there, but they condemned the American film industry because it was allegedly 99% owned and operated by Jews. That is a ridiculous exaggeration, of course. The actual percentage was 96.8%.
The Nazis didn't have the personnel and power to hands-on operate the French film industry as they would have liked to. But Vichy France still produced movies. The solution, as usual was for the Nazis to stand over the shoulder of French filmmakers and make sure what they produced was not offensive to the Nazis. This is the Nazis administrative system in a nutshell and goes back to the point about the Nazi umbrella government being not being very deep into the infrastructure.
The Vichy French, for example, made a fine film biography of the great French classical music composer Berlioz, (who is one of my favorite classical composers because his work is mellow, not violent.) The Nazi on the scene in France, a man by the bizarre name of Adolph Hippler, approved the film. Before it hit the movie houses of Paris and Marseilles, Berlioz! had to get the final approval of Goebbels, back in Berlin.
Goebbels went to the basement with Magda (his Nazi enabler wife) and the kids (whom they would poison in May of 1945) and they all watched Berlioz! They all loved it.
The next day he wrote a sharp note to Hippler in Paris.
Herr Hippler,
Berlioz! was a bang-up first-rater of a film. But of course it must never be shown to the people of Paris. It is too good for their morale. The film will inspire them. Berlioz! is a super nationalistic propaganda film, and it is not our job to open they way for a rise in French nationalism. We Germans should learn from this film and make more like these of our own. Because our nation was for so long divided into many small independent states, we do not have the stock of ancestral cultural heroes as the French do. We must look harder to find the ones we do have and make films like this Berlioz!
Burn every print of Berlioz!
JG
Reich Minister of Propaganda
Goebbels planned to scout the French film industry and hire all of the best actors and producers to come and work for Germany. French movie people who could not be persuaded were bribed. French talents who could not be bribed were threatened. When it comes to show biz, any form of it, it's very easy to buy people.
The Swedes of all people were very defiant when it came to the movies. They never backed down on celluloid ground. They wouldn't go so far as to make their own anti-Nazi movies, but if any other country made an anti-Nazi film they would show it at every movie house in Sweden. The Nazis would send them a threatening letter and the Swedes would tear it up and keep watching the anti-Nazi movies. They defended their neutral right to do as they pleased domestically, while appreciating they had to watch their step in foreign policy and not do anything that would hurt the German war effort.
Goebbels ranted and raved in his diaries on several occasions against the defiant Swedes. He griped that Germany should have conquered them when it had the chance, and they were lucky to be alive as a nation, and how “Germany would deal with those Swedish meatballs after the war,” (as if Germany was definitely going to win.)
The Nazis set up the Nazi International Movie Organization (NIMO). All German controlled nations or intimidated allies like Hungary and Romania, had to adhere to all its rules. But Sweden was a borderline case. The Nazis had a threatening borderline along Norway, and could attack from across the North Sea, but the physical logistics weren't good, and the Swedes knew that the Nazis were beginning to lose the war and would not attack.
The Nazis sent Sweden an application to fill out to join NIMO. Sweden tore it up and mailed it back to Berlin without a commentary note.
Hitler was a big movie buff also. His favorite genre was horror. He'd just shut off the projector and think about his life.
THE NAZIS WERE BASED ON LOVE
The Nazis were like a bunch of homeless losers at the Union Rescue Mission in 1976 who all became movie stars by the end of the 1980's and no one knew or cared by then that they were all once homeless bums. Hollywood is full of those types. Three of the biggest Hollywood stars I know (I know about 20) were homeless alcoholics, or close to that when I first met them. Show me an eccentric comedian sleeping on everyone's sofa, and annoying everyone to holy hell, and I'll show you someone ten times as likely to rise to the top in show business as a young banker doing comedy on the week-ends.
Show business and bad regimes welcome the dregs of society and give them a second chance after they have already achieved abject failure as adults. This is a key to understanding the Nazis. They had a handful of silver spooners, but the exception proves the rule. Most of them were down and out as young men while their contemporaries were getting university degrees and driving daddy's Mercedes.
Successful sane conservative regimes, like that of JFK for example, are composed of people who were clearly on the rise in life when they were 20 years old. They stayed on track. They were somewhat successful when they were 30 and by the time they were in their 40's were part of the national leadership gang.
That is the pattern with good-guy regimes. But with bad guy regimes like Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the scary reverse is true. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao ... these types were all so far down on their luck as young men that people would have laughed in your face if you predicted they would rule great countries when they were 50.
Most totalitarian leaders were young “revolutionaries” at some point. That is a bit of a euphemism for criminals who cling to a political hate group because it gives them a dignity and a status that they could never own when they looked in the cracked mirror of their flophouse. A revolutionary movement provided justification for their pathetic status. Instead of being a failure, they become an admirable victim moralist crusader. The reason they are living in a flophouse is the corrupt system that must be changed through righteous revolution Enough of them get together and organize and suddenly their failure in life becomes a feather in their cap instead of a pain in their neck. Their just cause is just a vehicle for self-advancement. They not only get a life, they get the dignity of someone above the norm,
The revolutionary may even be self-delusional enough to buy his own publicity. The Nazi may come to believe that he really hates the Jews, but the real issue is personal failure. Racists and terrorists are have-nots. Finding an outside target group makes the pain sort of go away for a while, at least until they wake up in the dark when the truth may strike without warning.
Have you ever met anyone in your life, anyone, even one time, who got fired from their job and said, “It was entirely my fault. I deserved to get fired. I don't blame them for firing me. Next time I will change my behavior and I will make myself a success at that job.” It's never happened. I'm certain that when I got fired from the radio station (twice; once in 1975, another time in 2007) it was because in both cases my station manager was a scoundrel.
That idea of turning personal failure into a badge of honor through victimization, extrapolated to a larger scale is the birth of the violent revolutionary movements. Most Islamic terrorism is based on people who failed in life and want to give failure a good name by making themselves the martyr on the cross of an evil world. Even rich Arabs who join Al Qaeda are doing so because they are chauvinists who feel their country has been beaten up. Rich people in countries at the top of the world's totem pole never go terrorist. Its either people of poor status, or people with status from countries with poor status. It's all selfish on the inside. Becoming part of a great cause makes the person great. So every loser drip weirdo gutter criminal just has to find a cause and they're cured. Instant status.
The entire Nazi Party was a great big Germanic 'Revenge of the Nerds.' The people who were beaten down to nothing by World War One united and burned down the dormitories of the jocks who had picked on them in high school. The jocks didn't know what hit them until the movie was half over, but in the end, in 1944-5 they got their jackets off, rolled up their sleeves, and set things right all over again.
The Nazi nerds had quite a run at first. And like those lame movie plots, the jocks were asleep at the wheel while the nerds were preparing the series of violent deeds to make them pay for their bullying. All the booby traps worked. When Bruno opened his can of peanut butter, a rat ran out. When Rocko started his car, the engine caught fire. Buzz woke up in his bed in the middle of a department store window. It was all going the nerds way as Hitler conquered the little countries and seemed to even be intimidating Bruno, Buzz and Rocko (Russia, the UK and the USA.)
To me this allegory is the Nazi Party explained. I don't even think they even really hated the Jews. Anti-Semitism were just a tool to rally around and help generate the quality of organization. Hating blacks gives the KKK organization. If there were no blacks they'd pick another group and keep having their beer parties. That's why I actually believe most German people when they are quoted after the war that they heard rumors that Jews were being sent to extermination camp but they refused to believe that this was even possible. They had some prejudice against them, but it wasn't anything like that. That just wasn't even on the radar. The Holocaust was partly an organizational tool for a few sick men at the top.
Which is not to say I forgive the average German. The German people were sick with self-love, German militarist chauvinism.
Reasonable leaders of Weimar did not excite the German soul, but when furious bitter leaders arose demanding revenge for the Versailles Treaty appeared, the Germans cheered, raised their fists and chanted “more! more!” Nazi leaders were embraced by a German people who were just as sick with self-love as their Nazi leaders.
The trouble with the current popular condemnation of all manner of racism is that it is entirely focused on any group that hates another group. That's too obvious and blinds the eye to the much bigger and much more dangerous problem, which is excessive love. Love of one's self, one's race, one's country is a double edged sword which leads to violence. I see Nazi anti-semitism as based on love, not hate. If no Jew had ever been born, the Versailles treaty would have left behind it a bitter self-loving movement in Germany. A bitter resentful Germany would have still would have risen from the ashes and started up a whole heap of trouble. The emotionally injured always turn to excessive self love as a cure.
Racism is just one type of evil self-love, it is not the essence of the problem. The essence of the problem is self-love per se. The very world love gets way too much of a free pass. Love is good, therefore all forms of love is good. But love is not always good. The father who loves his family and hurts a thousand others to protect his family is a bad man. See? All love is not good. Love starts more wars than hate could ever dream of matching. Love of self, love of race, love of country, love of one's side of a silly dispute, this type of love, sparks the gunpowder. Ego drives the artists and drives the tanks.
If I have a choice of two dark alleys to walk down, one of which has a homeless guy with a knife who hates himself, and another alley has a homeless guy with a knife who loves himself, I'm going down the alley that has the homeless guy with a knife who hates himself. Every guy doing life in the can killed someone because he loved himself and could not accept a humiliation. He was too fantastic a person to handle that. Somebody made a successful pass at his wife. or threw a drink in his face and paid with his life. The humble person, the person who likes himself but is not in love with himself, is hurt but can move on. The self-lover must get revenge.
THE NAZIS FROM A TO Z
HANS JURGEN VON ARNIM
Hans was the general that succeeded the Desert Fox after Rommel departed North Afrika for good. Von Armin probably performed just as well in a hopeless situation as Rommel did when he was only slightly outnumbered, but Rommel got all the glory because Churchill needed to explain British defeats. Once the Rommel legend caught on, it never looked back.
General von Armin was captured in early 1943 spent the years 1943-46 in a PW camp in the sovereign state of Mississippi.
He caught a break. If von Armin had been in charge of six or seven armies in the last two years of the war Hitler might ordered him to commit serious war crimes. And every member of the Reich had sworn a personal oath of total loyalty to the Fuehrer. If von Armin was still on the clock those last two years he might have been tried at Nuremberg.
Von Armin served on both fronts in World War One and was part of the campaigns in Poland and France.
LUDWICK BECK
Not bad for a Nazi General.
No relation to Glenn or Jeff Beck, General Ludwick Beck was part of the 1938 plot to overthrow Hitler. But Beck did not commit himself enough to the plot and that was partly why it failed.
The sudden success of the seizure of Austria hurt the plot, plus the lack of support for it from France and Britain. The Beck plotters needed assurances that they would get instant diplomatic recognition from France and Britain the instant they locked the Fuehrer up in padded cell. This was not happening and so neither did the plot. In 1938, the idea was to arrest Hitler and put him in jail. By 1944 it was a matter of killing him.
Beck was also involved in the Valkerie plot of June 20 1944. This time it was do or die, kill Hitler or die. The plot failed and Beck was soon arrested. He asked for the opportunity to kill himself. He got it. Smart move, Beck. Beat's torture. He knew he was a venerable general and he milked the credit to make a lesser of two evils exit.
JUANA BORMANN
One of the few female nazi war criminals caught and convicted after the war, Juana Bormann was an SS demented doctor who tortured Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps. She was known at Bergen-Belsen as “the lady with the dogs.” They hanged her at Nuremberg. Her last words were “I have feelings too.”
MARTIN BORMANN
Martin Bormann was Hitler's personal secretary. To get to Hitler you had top make an appointment with Bormann. Marty is always in the background of Hitler photos. MB did not like publicity but he loved power. He was the most powerful un-famous man in the Third Reich. He was also having sex with Eva Braun on the side. That's right. Bormann had the courage to tap “the bosses lady” (name the movie.)
CHOLTITZ – GENERAL DIETRICH VON CHOLTITZ
Von Choltitz was the Nazi ruler of Paris. DVC is supposedly one of the good Germans who defied Hitler and, in 1944, saved Paris from destruction. Von Choltitz even wrote a book about his good deed called “Is Paris Burning?”
When he realized the Allies were going to take it back, Hitler had ordered Paris destroyed in an act of childish vengeance. Explosives were rigged all over the city to start mass fires. But Von Choltitz refused to obey his crazy Fuhrer and did not set the bombs off.
Some French writers do not buy into this legend and say that Choltitz was a cruel murderer and no good Nazi, just a no-good Nazi.
There's an black and white movie about it called Is Paris Burning? I don't recommend it, nor the book which I have in paperback and will never finish (besides, Paris should have been burning back in 1940 with Frenchmen turning it into a Stalingrad and saving their country.
RICHARD DARRE
The food Nazi did five years in prison after the war. Richard Walther Darre was one of the leaders of Nazi philosophy, a man that men like Himmler and Heydrich looked up to for their political opinions. Darre wrote a Nazi favorite, a cross between a large pamphlet and a small book, called “Blood and Soil.” It became a Nazi slogan. It means that it's all about what race you were from and what place you were from. Who cares what kind of a person you were as an individual? What really mattered was racism and placism; what was your blood line and where were you from.
Darre was Reich minister of Food and Agriculture until late 1942 when he was made the scapegoat for the hunger that was plaguing every nook and cranny of the Third Reich except for Goering's villas. Darre resigned and the Nazi leaders wrote a lot about how his ineptitude was the reason there was no food on the Russian front, no food in occupied Holland, no food in North Africa, no food in Denmark, no food in Austria and no food in Germany. There was some food of course, but widespread food shortages were a major political problem and a major hindrance to the war effort.
Germany and the occupied territories had crisis food shortages even before Pearl Harbor. Darre was hardly to blame for that but he took all the heat for an insoluble problem. Logistics is a tougher battle than battle. It's easier to conquer than it is to administer. Germany was big, but it was too small to feed its own empire and itself at the same time. 3R had bit off more than it could chew, it had conquered more stomachs than it could stomach. By the middle of 1942 a single food train would arrive from the Ukraine to feed the citizens of Germany, and the train's arrival was big news. This was food that was desperately needed to feed German troops in the Ukraine and it gets shipped at gunpoint back to Germany, when the average citizen was not getting enough healthy food to eat.
Darre was a Nazi's Nazi. He not only loved the cause, he led it. Nazi's looked up to him for intellectual leadership, and he wrote as much Jew-hatred material as anyone in the Reich.
After the war Darre got death, but it was commuted to life in jail. Old and sickly in 1950 Richard Walther Darre was released. I don't with that. They should have hung him. He didn't pull the trigger on any Jews. He just provided the intellectual inspiration for the genocide of six million of the chosen ones; chosen by the Nazis to die for no reason at all
ADOLPH EICHMANN
The Nazis tried to eradicate the Jews. They failed. The one thing they eradicated was the first name Adolph from the list of newborn boy names. Have you ever met anyone named Adolph?
SS major Adolph Eichman was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust. If Eichman had been captured in 1945 he might not have ranked as one of the top famous Nazis. But because he was not captured until 1960, Adolph Eichmann became one of the household names of the war along with the big shots like Himmler Goering and Goebbels.
The Israeli Mossad tracked him down all over South America and they finally caught him, knocked him out with drugs, and shipped him in a potato sack on a Peruvian tomato freighter back to Israel. The pursuit, capture, trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann was a page one story running for months. He had about as much of a chance of a fair trial as a Jewish defendant in a Nazi court. That being said, he didn't deserve one anyway, plus he was guilty. They made him do the Nuremberg Shuffle in 1962.
It's a shame that he and Mengele and a few others got away for as long as they did. Some fled to South America, and others blended in with the scenery in Germany. A post-war German organization the Odessa, helped provide false identities and shelter for suspected Nazis on the lam.
Lefty artist poet Thomas Merton did a contemporary poem where he became the voice of Adolph Eichmann. Comedian Lenny Bruce quoted Merton as Eichmann,
“I rest a soldier.
I saw every Jew burned and turned into soap.
Do you think your selves better because you burned your enemies at long ranges with missiles without ever seeing what you did to them?”
Yes.
We do.
You started it and we didn't. You deserve to hang and we don't. America, Britian and the Jews of Israel did not invade Poland, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Russia, Finland, and Norway for absolutely no fair reason at all. This business of both of us did bad things, therefore both of are to blame for the crimes of war doesn't work for me. Plus your side tried to commit genocide, and partially succeeded. There are almost no Jews in Germany. Now your conscience points fingers at the victims who fought back. Nice try, Merton. The U.S bomb was dropped to to put a stop to evil, the German camps were evil itself.
No Jews served on the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Eichmann trial was the first time the Jews tried a Nazi, and the whole two-year Eichmann affair represented a deep psychological triumph for Israel.
KARL DONITZ
The man in charge of the U-boats said at Nuremberg that he was just a military man following orders and he did not deserve to stand trial at all. The tribunal bought it and he was convicted of some charges but acquitted of others. Doenitz did ten years in Spandau Prison and wrote two popular books about life as a Nazi, excuse me, life as an innocent sailor doing the job for the Nazis (the pop band Spandau Ballet was named after that prison, that much is true.)
The Tribunal also accused Doenitz (sometimes spelled Donitz) of failing to protect the lives of sunken ship survivors. They drowned at sea by the thousands when he was supposed to pick them up and serve the warm food on the overcrowded U-boats. The Nurembergers couldn't make that charge stick because the Allies had done the same thing. Both nations violated rules of war, rules made before a real war put these rules to the test.
I think Doenitz got a lesser sentence because someone had to. Otherwise the Nuremberg Tribunal would seem too much like the very Nazis they were trying, with all the verdicts and sentences in before the opening gavel sounded. They needed a couple of token light sentences to look like they had an ounce of mercy and fairness, so Speer and Doneitz caught a break. If all the others had escaped and all the Allies caught and tried only Speer and Doenitz, then Speer and Doenitz would have done the “Spandau Ballet” (death by hanging) in 1946 instead of the rest of the rat pack.
Doenitz wasn't so purely a military man, really. After Adolph Hitler did the right thing and killed himself, Doenitz became the President of Nazi Germany for 22 days.
WILHELM FRICK
Billy Frick was the Reich Minister of the Interior in the first Hitler cabinet in 1933-34. He was one of the scoundrels that was responsible for the racist laws passed against the Jews in the pre-war years. Minister of the Interior is an evil job in a good nation. In Nazi Germany, you're the devil in size nine shoes, just by taking the job.
Hitler named Heinrich Himmler to replace Frick as Minister if the Interior. That should give you some idea of his job description. He didn't kill enough Jews, so they fired him downstairs to a lesser desk job and let Himmler take over.
They hung Wilhelm Frick on October 16, 1946 and he fricken deserved it.
HANS FRITZCHE
Hans was the Wolfpackman Jack of the Third Reich, the voice of Nazi radio, the top DJ of WNAZ Berlin, FM 85, with their famous catch slogan, “All Lies, All the Time.”
Fritzche was a soldier in WWI, like most founding father Nazis. He joined the party and worked in the Propaganda ministry of J. Goebbels.
Fritzche probably enjoyed his job up until about the end of 1940. But when the war slowly but surely turned against the Nazis the more Fritzche lied through his teeth for a living every day. Hans was noted for a high-pitched voice and consistent smug sarcasm. When an English air raid struck a German hospital Hans reported the deed and said simply, “Nice going.”
Many Germans saw through Fritzche's lies. The WNAZ mailbag was filled with angry denunciations of the Nazis signed with names like, 'Santa Klaus, Somewhere, Bavaria.' The existence of so many anonymous hate letters to Fritzche provides some evidence that there were more not-brainwashed Germans than Germany gets credit for.
WNAZ had a weatherman too. “Hamburg weather, partly cloudy with a 89% chance of B-17 thunderstorms later in the afternoon, and near 100% chance of Lancaster thunderstorms during the night. And now a golden oldie from Heinz Croce, “You Don't Mess Around With Adolph.”
After the war the Allies arrested the radio voice of Nazi Germany. Fritzche was tried and acquitted by the Nuremberg boys, then tried and acquitted by Germany a year later. I guess there's no law against being a smug obnoxious radio personalty. Otherwise the United States would have to build 25 new ten-story prisons to hold them.
WALTHER FUNK
How can a guy with such a cool name be such an uncool guy? Walt Funk was the man in charge of Hitler's money. In 1943 Funk became head the SBNC, the Swiss Bank for Nazi Collaboration (that's the name I give it.)
After the war Funk was tried at Nuremberg and might have gotten away with it except that during the war the Nazis had published a glowing best selling propaganda biography, Funk, The Man and the Money. The prosecution used the book to prove that Funk knew exactly what the funk was going on.
Funk got 30 years for his money crimes and died in prison in 1960.
ADOLPH GALLAND
Galland was gallant. Gallant was not a member of the Nazi Party but he served them in the air as the best fighter pilot of World War II. That included everybody. Galland shot down 104 Allied planes, the top ace of the War.
Galland was nearly arrested and tried for treason, but they let him go. I don't mean the Nurenbergers, I mean the Nazis. Galland not only had the guts to shoot down 104 planes, he had the guts to stand up to both Himmler and Goering with complaints about the mistreatment of Luftwaffe pilots. He barely survived the war in the air and in the political home ground. The Allies had nothing but praise for him and his military skills. And he had movie-star looks too. Why not a movie about Galland? There was a 1960's WWII TV series called The Gallant Men, (very popular show in my neighborhood) but that doesn't count.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS
Isn't it odd how the weakest specimens of any race are the one's that think their race is superior? They graft racial superiority over their personal inferiority. Very few perfect looking and successful people are racists.
Joseph Goebbels was the famous ugly little Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, the man with the club foot and the big lying racist mouth.
“Little Joe” killed himself before he had the chance to stand trial in 1945. Thank Christ we didn't have to listen to that blowhard for three weeks on the stand at Nuremberg. He would have made one of the MP's pull out his pistol and kill either Goebbels or himself, screaming, “I can't listen to this anymore!”
He was in effect the dictator of Nazi Germany during the war years. He is as much responsible for the holocaust as Himmler. Goebbels was more of a fanatic racist than Himmler was. Goebbels gave orders to exterminate the Jewish race and Himmler was the motherless rat that carried out the orders. You could make a case that Goebbels took more initiative in the actual murdering of six million Jews than Hitler, who was usually tied up with military plans.
If Goebbels ordered someone arrested they were arrested. If Goebbels ordered someone shot they were shot. The image of him as the man in charge of Propaganda is incomplete. Goebbels was a co-Hilter.
Goebbels was a frustrated artist who turned to politics as a consolation prize and then rode it to the top.
HERMANN GOERRING
The fat man was in charge of the Luftwaffe. He would have swung at Nuremburg but he killed himself in the nick of time. Formally speaking, Hermie was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, but Goebbels and probably Bormann had more real power. If Hitler had died, then Goering would have moved up to number one and in that case his power would have become quite real.
Goering was an accomplished fighter pilot in WWI but near the end became too fat to fly.
Goering was a fun loving guy who laughed easily and made lots of friends. His hatred of the Jews and his love of Nazi Germany was based of more of a selfish hedonism than a hatred of others. He didn't have the insecurity that Hitler and Goebbels had, so therefore had a little less hatred of others. I'm not saying that he didn't deserve to swing at Nuremburg, because he did, but if I had a gun with two bullets in 1942 and I stumbled on Hitler Goebbels and Goering having lunch in the remote woods, Goering would get the chance to run away.
Goering was definitely a selfish swine when it came to spending lavish fortunes of Reich money on himself. He spent millions on art works, boats, cars homes, all for himself, and all with money from the blood sweat and tears of the victims of Nazi aggression. Soldiers starved and froze on the Russian front while he bought another power boat for Danube cruising.
During the Nuremberg Trials the prosecution showed film of the death camps to make their case and to humiliate the defendants in the dock. But someone made a mistake and the film appeared on the screen upside down. Jewish corpses were piled from the ceiling down. Goering began to laugh and the rest of the Nazis fell in with him. They were all soon doubled over wiping tears from their eyes laughing as the court was horrified. Goering wasn't the only one laughing but he was the callous sick laughter ringleader. If he hadn't been there, the contagion of laughter might never have kicked in. It's a spooky scene, and shows, of course, how unrepentant they all were. The disease of anti-Semitism could not be rooted out except by the grave.
HALDER – GENERAL FRANZ HALDER
Halder was one of the top German Generals at the beginning of the war, but he told Hitler the awful truth once too often and Hitler canned him in late 1942. Mostly Halder told him that the Russian was was a mistake and was destined to become a great defeat. That was way too much for Hitler to hear.
After the July plot to kill Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, Halder was arrested as a suspect, but was cleared quickly. Nevertheless, near the end of the war, Hitler feared that Halder could lead a coup against him and locked Franz up again. He was “liberated” at the end of the war, and spent two years in prison before going on to become an advisor to the US army after the war.
RUDOPH HESS
Where on earth did he get those eyebrows? You could sweep the autobahns with those eyebrows.
Hess was in the top five in the Nazi Party until he made his crazy flight to England in 1940 thinking he could broker a deal with the King for peace. Hess was a close personal friend of Hitler, if there ever was such a sad creature. When Hitler was in jail in the early 1920's Hess came to visit him every day and Hitler dictated his memoirs to him. It was Hess who ghost wrote Mein Kampf from the notes of Hitlers endless ranting in prison.
Not only did the English decide that Hess must be nuts, his own Nazi party came to the same conclusion and disowned him in absentia.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
Himmler was a chicken farmer who was in charge of the Holocaust and he carried out the orders with sadistic pleasure. He is one Nazi who is still a household name. If you want to insult your boss behind his back you can call him “a Heinrich Himmler” and everyone from all races and ages and places will get it. Himmler even looked like a bad guy. He could have become an actor and played in a hundred movies as one of those cold executive bosses of a big evil corporation - the detective tracks him down and throws him out a 20 story window and he lands on a big spike and everyone cheers and the credits roll up. What a pleasure it would be to slap him senseless every day for five hours a day.
ALOIS HITLER
Hitler's drunkard father beat him and gave him the cold heart that ruined a zillion lives. Nice goin, clod. Not all abused children are mass murderers, but all mass murderers are abused children.
ADOLPH HITLER
Imagine walking past a smelly wino in New York City trying to sell you a hand-painted post card. You buy a post card for a dollar and take his picture. 15 years later he is a great dictator in the process of nearly conquering the world. You keep staring at the old picture and then at your TV and go, “I know that guy!”
A homeless bum sleeping in flophouses in Vienna in 1913, Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and assumed dictatorial powers within a year.
Hitler was born a Roman Catholic. He loved his mother and hated his father. He hated Jews and Communists. He fancied himself a genius and a superior artist. Hitler thought he could have been a famous architect.
In World War I he won the Iron Cross for courage under fire. It wasn't so much that he picked up guns and killed people in daring charges into enemy lines. He won it by being a messenger under heavy fire countless times. By the laws of chance he shouldn't even have survived the First World War. It was sheer bad luck that the world had to reckon with him later.
Hitler was blinded by a British poison mustard gas attack and finished the war in a hospital with bandages over his face. When he got his sight back he had lost all sight of reason. When the bandages came off a monster emerged, but the damage to him didn't show physically in his face.
He joined the Nazis and tried to lead a seizure of power in 1923, but the brown revolution failed and Hitler went to jail. There he dictated his autobiography to Hess.
Hitler got a much lighter sentence than he should have for the crime of trying to overthrown the national government.
Hitler got out of jail and retooled the operation for assault from within. Trying to overthrow from without was for fools.
The nazi Party went legit and won up to 42% of nation elections, but Hitler never could win a majority. It's scary to think how close the Nazis came to being democratically elected.
HEINRICH HOFFMAN
Hitler's private photographer was Heinrich Hoffman. HH didn't like Hitler dating Hoffman's young daughter back in the early 30's. So Hitler smoothed the situation over by telling the father Hoffman he could have exclusive rights to photograph the Fuhrer, provided he allowed him to keep dating the teen-age daughter. Hitler was good to his word and never terminated the photo contract of Heinrich Hoffman. When Hitler broke up with Hoffman's daughter, Hoffman showed there were no hard feelings by introducing Adolph to Heinrich's cute blonde studio assistant Eva Braun. Hitler and Eva Braun were an instant item until the end of the war when they both died.
The two men actually became close. Hoffman took on duties as Hitler's chauffeur. Long after Hitler had broke up with the daughter, he was still close to Heinrich. Many photos of Hitler show Hoffman in the background with a camera or some car keys at his hip side. Hoffman was one of the few that Hitler could turn to to let off a little steam after a long day at the office murdering innocent people.
People pick out many famous men in the Hitler photos, but they rarely can pick out HH often very near the big AH. Those who speculate that Hitler might have had a 175 party or two in his time often name Hoffman as a “suspect.”
Hoffman wrote three books about Hitler including the popular 1933 work, The Hitler Nobody Knows. Underneath all that master race dictator stuff, he's really just a fun and sensitive guy.
Hoffman did four years in jail after the war for being Hitler's enabler.
BILLY JOYCE
Have you ever listened to an obnoxious morning disc-jockey or a self-righteous talk-show host and said out loud as you're driving, “Someone should hang this guy!” Well sometimes our dreams do come true.
William Joyce was born in Iowa, raised in Ireland, and became a devoted Nazi. Joyce went to Germany when the war started and became the Tokyo Rose of the European war. He became Lord Haw Haw and hit the airwaves for the entire war on behalf of Nazi Germany. He was the fluent English radio voice for propaganda directed at English listeners.
Lord Haw Haw hated the Jews like a Striecher. He was an awful man, but at least he wasn't an opportunist tramp. He really believed in the Nazi German cause, and he did what he did because he really wanted to.
Like Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw had a willing enemy audience. Allied soldiers couldn't wait to hear his next obnoxious fascist broadcast. If Churchill was on one station and Haw Haw was on the other, the troops argued over which one they wanted to hear.
Near the end of the war, Haw Haw was captured in Hamburg and shipped back to England for trial. The British were so hell bent to hang Haw Haw that they passed a new law on sedition and treason making the death penalty applicable for what he specifically did. The law was passed the very morning he was put on a plane from Hamburg to Bath.
In January 1946 the Allies got the last laugh on Haw Haw as he did the Nuremberg Shuffle on a London gallows. Incidentally it was Joyce who first coined the term, “Nuremberg Shuffle.” In a 1942 broadcast he threatened to bring Stimson and Knox to Germany in chains and “make them dance the Nuremberg Shuffle” at the end of a Third Reich rope.
BJ's last words were, “The Jews caused this war and I am paying for their crimes! Long live the Fuehrer!” - Someone reminded him that Hitler was already dead and before he could answer he was auditioning for Dancing With the Stars.
Joyce was actually a German citizen while he was making his broadcasts, but history remembers him as an American traitor, even though he was a British citizen before he defected to Germany.
ERNST KALTENBRUNER
Ernie K was the “Scarface” of the Nazi Party. Kaltenbruner had a rough face from battles on the streets of Germany in the 1920's. Kaltenbruner was also one of the top butchers of the Holocaust, a top SS Austrian official and, near the ned of the war, a full General of the Waffen SS. The Allies hung Kaltenbruner at Nuremberg on October 16 1946.
Kaltenbruner was once in charge of a plan to assassinate FDR, Stalin, and Churchill at the Teheran Conference in 1943.
Ernst did the Nuremberg shuffle and his last words were, “Bow to your master before you hang him!”
In 2002 someone found Kaltenbruner's personalized medal of the SS. EK had thrown it into Lake Zurich at the end of the war hoping to escape justice.
WILHELM KEITEL
Stuffy-looking heavy set Keitel looks like someone that plays someone's uncle on a bad sit-com (as if there's any other kind.)
Field Marshall Keitel was an honorary member of the NSDAP
because he was a general. The Nazis pleaded that their generals bore no political responsibility for German war crimes, but the Nuremberg Tribunal saw it otherwise. General Keitel was hanged at Nuremberg on October 16, 1946.
Some historians look down on Keitel as being a second rate person, not much of a general, and Hitler's Wermacht yes-man. When every general said “You must be crazy Adolph! .. Er I mean, it is brilliant oh great one, but we might want to examine it more closely,” Keitel could be counted on to say, “A capitol suggestion, my Fuehrer!”
There's some truth to that, but on the other hand Keitel repeatedly tried to stand up to Hitler in the first two years of the war. He risked his life arguing repeatedly with the Fuehrer. Finally the Fuehrer put his foot down and said he “would tolerate no more insubordination!” Well that sort of scared Keitel a bit and he also came to realize that he was never going to change Hitler's mind on anything anyway, so he might as well just do as he says. In the last years of the he war he became Hitler's pet dog, but he had done a lot of defiant barking before he was tamed.
Keitel was loyal to Hitler and let the hunt for the failed assassins of July 20 1944. Keitel tracked them down and turned them over to the piano wire tribunal in Kiel where they were “Kielhauled.”
Keitel also gets high praise from some military historians for his ground and map leadership in the Polish campaign and definitely in the attack against the west of May-June 1940. He got less praise for his work in Russia. Keitel issued a lot of orders that murdered a lot of prisoners. That's 20 pages reduced to one sentence. He was a bad person. His last words before they sprang the trap were, “I'm glad I did it!”
Keitel's war memoirs are very readable.
DR. ROBERT LEY
Bobby Ley was the Reich Labor Minister. He settled disputes between labor and management by threatening both with death if they didn't put aside their differences and dedicate themselves to the the Nazi cause. It was effective.
Ley was a German fighter pilot in World War One. He crashed his plane in France and may have suffered brain damage in the event. He came out of that war with a stuttering problem he didn't have before the war.
Ley was part of Hitler's inner circle. He was part of the original gang that launched the beer Hall Putsch of 1923. He edited one of the Nazi newspapers and was a virulent Jew-hater.
Ley was a lefty within the context of the Nazis. He took the socialist part of National Socialism seriously. But when it came down to put up or shut up, when Hitler decided to purge the socialists in 1934, Ley backed off, made loyalty to Hitler priority one, and saved himself.
His second wife, Inge Ley, allegedly shot herself after a marital drunken brawl, but I always suspect Nazi murder in such stories. How many women argue with their husbands and then kill themselves? I mean really. That happens often with these Nazis. Women are like cats. You can hurt their feelings for short spell, but they'll be fine again soon enough. I doubt if Inge Ley really shot herself.
EMIL MAURICE
Emil Maurice was Hitler's chauffeur. He was one of Hitler's dear and closest friends. Maurice, Rudoph Hess, and Hitler were in prison together after the failed Putsch. Maurice became head of the S.A. for a while and once shot a priest for talking too much about Hitler's affair with Geli Raubal. Emil probably had an affair with Geli too. You don't mess with the boss's lady, and that's why he lost the job. The affair between Maurice and Geli had something to do with her quarrels with Hitler that led to her alleged suicide.
During the war it was revealed that one of Emil's great grandparents was half Jewish. Himmler ordered Maurice expelled from the Nazi Party and deported. But Hitler intervened and ordered Himmler to look the other way on Emil. This Jew could still be a Nazi.
DR JOSEPH MENGELE
The Nazi that got away with it. Sr. Mengele was the demented sadist doctor of Auchwitz concentration camp. He did a lot of evil and escaped to South America after the war. The Israeli hit squads were after him for more than 30 years, but he always had one new disguise just in time. Mengele was the Whitey Bulger of Nazi hunters (Whitey is today's #1 man on the FBI's most wanted list – I knew his name around Southie as “Jimmy Bulger.”)
The bones of Dr Mengele were identified a few years after his death as a free man in 1979.
GENERAL HANS OSTER
Oster was an army general who was part of the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler at Wolf's Lair. Oster was part of the internal German resistance movement for many years. Oster worked in close with Admiral Canaris who was also a virtual double-agent for the Allies.
Oster was not discovered to be a traitor to his Hitler Oath of 1938 until the bombs were falling on Berlin and all was lost in the first week of April 1945. The Nazis arrested Oster, convicted him in a New York Minute, sent him to a concentration camp and hung him for treason.
FRANZ VON PAPEN
Franz VP was Hitler's VP. When Hitler first came to power in 1933 he allowed von Papen, a Dean Aecheson stylish career politician and diplomat to become his Vice Chancellor. Papen thought that by including Hitler in a true coalition government, he could neutralize the Nazis. Instead he gave the Nazis the opportunity to intimidate and scheme and drive all the moderates out, and thereby complete the Nazi seizure of power.
Von Papen was Chancellor of Germany in 1932 but resigned towards the end of that year, largely because of trouble with the Nazis.
During the war, von Papen bounced around a few mid-range power jobs, such as ambassador to Turkey, but it was a bump down from Chancellor or Vice Chancellor. The Nuremberg boys acquitted him of war crimes, but then Germany put him up for war crimes and he did five years before getting an early parole for good behavior. He wrote a history of World War II which to the best of my knowledge has never been published in English. I would like to read it.
ADMIRAL ERICH RAEDER
Raeder was in charge of the raiders. Erich was head of the German Navy with its pocket battleship raiders and U-boats until 1943. Hitler didn't like his job performance so he replaced him as Navy chief with Karl Doenitz.
The Nuremberg gang found Raeder guilty of preparing and waging aggressive illegal war, especially his planning the invasion of Norway in 1940. Raeder said in his defense that the English were going to occupy Norway, and Germany beat them to it, so Norway was not an aggressive war but a defensive war. He lost the argument and got life in prison.
In 1955 the old man was in ill health (goes without saying till they find a cure for old man) and the Allies took pity on him and let him out in late September 1955. He lived another five years and wrote his autobiography. The title was My Life, the same as Bill Clinton's book, except that Raeder's book didn't blame a conspiracy of his enemies for all his problems.
ERWIN ROMMEL
Rommel loved Hitler and was a devout Nazi until things went very badly in the war and all of sudden he gets a high and mighty moral streak. I wish I was the pilot that strafed Rommel's car in July 1944.
ER was in the ER from those airplane wounds when the bomb went off at Rastenburg that almost killed Hitler. Rommel was a secondary part of the plot and his complicity was discovered. The Nazis made him kill himself or face a public trial and execution. Erwin chose suicide.
The myth is that Rommel wasn't a Nazi but just a soldier doing his duty paying no attention to politics. In truth he was one of the most dedicated Nazis that ever led a German army into battle.
ERNST RHOEM
Ernie Rhoem was one of the most important and most loyal Nazis of them all. Rhoem had been there from the beginning and was an intimate friend of Hitler.
So Hitler of course ordered Rhoem murdered in 1934.
Some websites and short takes say that Hitler murdered Rhoem because he perceived Rhoem to be a rival. I don't think that's very accurate. Hitler murdered Rhoem as a matter of political expedience in his pursuit of power, but not because he thought Rhoem was going ever to become dictator instead of Adolph.
The problem was the German Army. Rhoem was part of a growing private Nazi political army, the S.A. These Storm Troopers were all over Germany. Regular German army men resented their growing power. The S.A. was a paramilitary army at the private disposal of Hitler, yet he was the one who finally came to see it as an obstacle, not a path to power.
If he did not have the support of the Wermacht, (the traditional official German Army) Hitler could never rule Germany as dictator, and could never prepare to make war. The S.A. could beat up a half a million Jews and fill stadiums at ceremonies, but they couldn't form a corp of 23 infantry and 8 armored divisions ready to conquer Poland or France. That's what Hitler needed, and the S.A. was a paper tiger when it came to those goals.
The Army agreed to support Hitler only on the tough condition that he completely disband the S.A.
Rhoem came to Hitler on July 1 1934 and said, “Old buddy, you won't cave in to these outrageous demands. I know you. I know what you stand for. The Party is Germany and you are Germany and the S.A. is the hammer of the Party, not that decrepit old Wermacht, staffed by useless old relics of World War One. Long live my Fuehrer! Long live the S.A.! ..... Adolph you're not saying anything....”
The next day Rhoem was arrested and executed on Hitlers orders, along with many other S.A. leaders. The S.A. was disbanded. This was the famous “Night of the Long Knives.” Rhoems's shadow was felt by all the ex-S.A. members for the next 11 years as they served Nazi Germany with an eye over their shoulder.
Hitler was the opportunist compromiser who could and would sell out his principles for power and not lose a wink of sleep. He knew that his old friend Rhoem was exactly the opposite so he had to kill him. He really had no choice. If Rhoem had been willing to sell his political beliefs out he could have ended as powerful as Goering or Himmler. Instead he became fertilizer.
ALFRED ROSENBERG
“Rosie” was the brains of the Third Reich, one of its ideological leaders from the early days. Alfred Rosenberg was one of the few leaders of the Reich who had an extraordinarily high IQ. He was tested at Nuremberg before they hung him. Even Hitler looked up to Rosenberg intellectually. Rosenberg was one of the writers who helped convince Hitler that the Germans were the superior race, and that the Jews were particularly inferior and had to eliminated from Europe altogether. One angry neo-fascist website claims that Rosenberg was a Jew, but that's not in any of my books.
Rosenberg was influenced by a turn of the century English racist maniac egghead named Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was so pro-German that he wrote his influential racist book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in German.
Rosenberg adopted Chamberlain's scumbaggish theories of German racial superiority and Jewish racial inferiority and modeled a best seller of his own after Chamberlain's work. Rosenberg's 1930 book was titled The Myth of the Twentieth Century, and was a retelling of most of Chamberlain's earlier racist theories. It was a Nazi must-read, like a Harry Potter book in Nazi circles, except that Harry Potter was more based on true facts.
Englishmen named Chamberlain do not have a great record in World War II.
Rosenberg was also well-known for plundering all the great art works of Jews in the occupied territories. He was planning on starting the MSA, The Museum of Stolen Art in Linz Austria, the town in which Hitler was hatched. But the war went bad before the ground was broken for Rosies's Place.
FRITZ SAUKELL
Was Fritz Saukel one of the more important Nazis. Saukel swung at Nuremberg.
Fritz joined the Nazi Party back in 1923 (one source says 1921.) Either way, he was one of the original Nazis, and he was from the beginning to the end, a loyal servant of his master, Adolph Hitler. Unlike Rommel who switched armbands when the goering got tough, Saukel was true to the last.
Fritz was a politician of some importance in Thuringia during the 1920's even before the Nazis came to power. When Hitler became boss, Saukel became governor of Thuringia. The reader may ask, 'where the hell is Thuringia?' It's right next to Bave-Strassenfurt. That should clear that up.
Saukel was the Reich Director of Labor from 1942-1945, and for this job he did the Nuremberg Shuffle.” As director of labor Saukel seized six million foreigners in German occupied imperial lands and brought them back to Germany to work as slaves. Most of these workers survived the war, and they did not live in concentration camps. But Nazi slave labor was a holocaust in itself, one of the several other forgotten holocausts of Nazi Germany.
Certainly there were at least a hundred thousand brutal deaths caused by this forced labor for which Saukel had to pay. Those who resisted forced labor were shot, and that's just for starters. Thousand died from malnutrition and cold. Millions had their lives ruined horribly, separated from their real jobs, loved ones, and homes. As far as Labor Director Saukel was concerned, if you showed your face on the street in occupied Germany, you were applying for work in Germany. Saukel died on the gallows for what Germany did to its conquered Gentiles!
Saukel got less than he deserved at Nuremberg.
HANS SCHWEITZER
Many of you have seen all those colorful Nazi propaganda posters depicting the superior Aryan man, or the Fuhrer painted in his most striking noble poses. One slick slime drew most of them and his name was Hans Schweitzer, the Herblock of the Third Reich. He worked closely with Goebbels from the beginning to the end of Nazi days.
Schweitzer, the artist in service of evil, was never tried after the war and went on to a nice career continuing to draw. Schweitzer should have been branded with a swastika tattoo on his forehead like Charles Manson.
SEYSS-INQUART
He had a weird name but is an important figure in Nazi history. Seyss-Inquart was important enough to hang at Nuremberg., always a good measuring rope for who's who in the bad guy menagerie. Seyss Inquart was an Austrian Nazi who set up the surrender of Austria by boring his way to a top post in Austria and then facilitating the Anschluss.
During the war, Seyss Inquart was Reich Protector of Holland, and not a popular man there. For the policies he executed in Holland alone, he deserved execution.
ALBERT SPEER
Hitler looked up to Speer as a show biz celebrity, the aura never wore off and that was the bottom line for Al and Addie and their close relationship. His memoir was a big deal when it came out in the 1970's.
Speer was Hitler's favored architect. Hitler fancied himself a pretty good architect, so when met the already famous architect Speer he was star-struck. Hitler underneath it all was a frustrated artist first and Speer touched something deep in him. Speer never got yelled at. Speer was star-struck with Hitler also. It was like a star athlete meeting a movie star, each in awe of the other. That's partly why movie stars marry each other. They are fans. In the mirror they see the hoax, but they buy it in others.
Al Speer might not have gone down in history as a famous Nazi if Dr. Todt hadn't died in a pane crash in 1942. Hitler turned to Speer to take over Todt's important post as Reich Minister of Munitions.
Speer made an eloquent defense for himself at the Nuremberg trials, claiming that he was really not a Jew-hater, but just an architect who gradually fell under Hitler's spell. He claimed he realized too late that he was part of something evil. Speer got 20 years. When he got of jail, his war memoir, Inside the Third Reich, was a sensation. I remember everyone talking about it. That book passed the diner test. People were reading it and debating whether they believed him sincere or not. Inside was a best-seller for the best sellout.
Other Nazis wrote their memoirs and went to the gallows. I think their books are just as informative, but they never got the sell-strategy of book publishers behind them like Speer did 20 years later. The Goebbels Diaries are far more helpful to understanding political events in the war. But those who were more guilty and have more to offer are scorned as if it is immoral to read their thoughts, while this Panzer panzy gets treated like a legitimate author because he only got 20 years and had a good alibi.
Albert's book is very snobby in my opinion. He is always looking down his nose at everyone else's taste in art, architecture, furniture, and a dozen other things.
Speer wrote another book about a conspiracy by Himmler, and someone else wrote a large book exposing Speer's post-war self-reinvention as a dirty lie and a shallow disgrace. I almost bought both of these other Speer books last week (for a buck each!) but the bag home from the Brattle book store would have become too heavy.
CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG
Any man who really tried to assassinate Hitler can't be all bad. Tom Cruise played him in the movie Valkerie. Von Stauffenberg was the man who on July 20 1944 actually placed the brief case with the ticking time bomb right under the desk of Hitler. Stauffenberg then got a planted phone call so he had to leave the room. The bomb killed four people, but not the Fuehrer. The Nazis killed 5,000 people in retaliation the Hitler bombing. Stauffenberg went paid with his life on 7-21-44.
At least von Stauffenberg wounded the bastard. He got something for his blood. Hitler spent the last year of his life with a helpless busted left arm that gave him a lot of pain.
Good work, Claus!
Pain counts!
GREGOR STRASSER
Strasser put the socialism in the Nazi Socialist Party. But Hitler never loved socialism. Adolph just needed the socialists to help him win power, then he could just kill them in a purge and move on with his right wing fascism. The German left got caught holding it's pamphlets in front of the firing squads.
Hitler ordered Greg Strasser arrested. A few days later Strasser heard a voice call out, “Gregor! You have a visitor!” When Gregor stood up and moved to the front of the cell he met a hail of bullets. It was a most undignified execution, even by Nazi standards. His body was cut up and removed in pieces. Hitler wanted no National Socialist propaganda funeral to deal with.
OTTO STRASSER
When Otto heard what happened to his brother Gregor he fled Germany and livd out the war in Canada. Smart move, Otto. Goebbels put a price tag of $500,000 (US) on the body of Otto Strasser dead or alive. Otto finished out his life as a small time ex-Nazi writer of Nazi memories.
JULIUS STREICHER
Julius Streicher is one of the biggest racist fanatics of all human history. Streicher was such a bad man that even his fellow Nazis hated him. The Nazis hated Ribbentropp more, that's about it. Stricher was number two, on the Nazi list of people not to invite to a social Nazi party. Streicher had the social skills of a tuna fish. And he hated the Jews. A lot.
Streicher was an ugly bald man. That's relevant. Gorgeous people don't develop insidious hatreds very often. The Nuremberg Tribunal passed the death sentence on Streicher, even though no formal murderous actions could be found to charge him with. The tribunal just decided that he had inspired so much hatred in others that he was guilty of accessory to 6 million murders.
He was the Karamazov of Nuremberg. Dostoyevsky wrote a famous novel about two brothers. One was the smart older brother who wrote violent left wing articles about how rich right wingers should all be killed. One day big brother came home and his little brother told him how he had killed a rich guy. The old smart boy was horrified and terrorized that his little brother had actually murdered someone.
The little brother protested, “But you told me to!”
“No I didn't, it was just a writer doing his thing! Oh my God, what have you gotten us into!”
I'm paraphrasing the novel of course, but that's what I mean when I say that Streicher was the Karamazov of Nuremberg. He was the intellectual who starts the engine of violence, or at least cut the key.
Streicher was one feisty rat. When they hung him at Nuremberg his last words were “Seig Heil! Seig Heil! I'll see you all in hell!” - Then when they dropped the floor on him he writhed around with such resistance that the knot loosened and it took him along time to die. A Streiching picture indeed.
DR FRITZ TODT
Dr. Todt was Nazi Minister of Munitions and head of the labor construction army called The OT, meaning Operation Todt. The OT was a combination of slave labor, private labor and private capital, plus Nazi labor and capital. It “employed” more than 20 million workers during World War II.
Fritz joined the Nazis before they came to power in 1933, so you know he was sincerely bad, not just a power opportunist like the Nazi come latelies.
Fritz is the man who built the famous highway system across the lengths of Germany, the famous “Autobahns.” The Nobel Prize committee considered Todt for that prize when the Autobahn was completed before the war, but Hitler forbade any Germans from taking that prize for anything. He didn't care much for peace, I guess. So Hitler invented a new highest medal in Germany and awarded it to Todt for the Autobahns.
In 1939-40 Doc Todt supervised the building of the “West Wall,” a German answer to the Maginot line. The Westwall successfully deterred the french from taking the offense against Germany when Germany attacked Poland, although the French probably wouldn't have done that even if the Westwall didn't exist.
The death of Todt, described earlier, paved the way for Hitler to bump Albert Speer from Nazi architect up to the volatile post of Minister of Munitions. Speer also took over as head of the OT. Speer became a household name of the war as an indirect result of the untimely (timely if it was assassination) death of Doctor Fritz. Had he lived, Todt would have been tried as a war criminal for the slave labor business. His early death spared him the infamy of history.
JOAHEM VON RIBBENTROP
Ribbentrop was the Nazi Foreign Minister from 1938 to 1945. Everyone hated his guts except Hitler. Most Nazis had friends and defenders, even the worst of them. But everyone hated Ribbentrop. I hate his guts, and I never even met the guy.
Ribbentrop's idea of diplomacy was to get a smaller nation foreign minister locked in a room and then intimidate them into thinking they will not get out of here alive if they do not sign a piece of paper surrendering half their country. Ribbentrop had the diplomatic skills of a wounded badger.
Before he became a big shot Nazi, Ribbentrop sold champagne. The Allies hanged him at Nuremberg and that was too good for him. Hitler had way more friends than Ribbentrop. Only his wife loved Joahem, and even that I doubt. She probably tried to leave him and got Mel Gibson threats and stayed put.
HORST WESSEL
Horst was a Nazi party activist who write the Nazi's Star Spangled Banner, the “Horst Wessel Song.” In 1930 a Communist supposedly knocked on his door and shot him in the face. Horst died a few days later and became the #1 martyr of the Nazi party. His song only then became the Nazi anthem. Don't ask me to sing it because I don't know the words. I doubt if they have it with lyrics at the HoJo's karaoke bar in Kenmore Square, where I have been known to sing Mack the Knife, (the Bobby Darin version of course.)
Goebbels gave a teary-eyed speech at Wessel's funeral. The anniversary of HW's murder became a Nazional holiday.
The Stormer declared in 1933 that Horst was ten times as noble as Jesus of Nazareth. Yeah, and I'll be the starting center on the Los Angeles Lakers next year.
It's not really clear who shot Wessel or why, but the Commies were always the great escape-goats for the Nazis. Some evidence suggests that it was his landlady who shot Horst for being behind on the rent and threatening her when she threatened him with eviction. Ten times better than Jesus, eh? Christ almighty, how could they have had the nerve to even print that in a Nazi paper?
GISILHER WIRSING
Wirsing was an editor of the Munich Mercury and a prolific National Socialist author who specialized in foreign policy matters. Nazis and Nazi fellow travelers always looked foreward to the day Gisilher's latest book hit the shelves. In 1942 he published The Continent Without Limit. It was all about America and what an evil man Franklin Roosevelt was. One of Wirsing's consistent themes was that the Nazis had a mission to bring higher standards of culture to the entire world. The world was supposedly in its lowest stage of culture at the present time, largely thanks to the decadent United States. The Nazis had to conquer the world in order to restore an earlier standard of culture, and then upgrade to a new one greater than ever known before.
The sickening Nazi ego indeed went far beyond mere racial superiority. They thought they were superior in dancing, painting, sculpture, movie making, sports, literature, comedy (I'm not kidding,) automobile design, clothing fashion, music, and wine. They probably knew that even if they were racially superior, that alone could not justify beating other nations to a pulp, so they had to add this cultural superiority conceit. It is a common trait in their writing. They were always quick to put down French or American culture because these were threats, and needn't have been since all nations can share the benefits of all cultures. Wirsing had a long record of participation in the NSDAP and the SS to go along with his jobs as editor and author.
EDUARD WIRTHS
This wirths-less scoundrel was the head of the medical department at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945. “Edzo” committed suicide in 1945 shortly after the Allies found and arrested him. Good for him.
Doctor Wirths helped to choose who was allowed to live and who had to die right away at Auschwitz. The Nazis always thought it was important to have a medical veneer over their extermination projects. The purification of the race was not just a fascist and emotional issue, it was a medical issue. That in large part explains how they could do the things they did on such a mass scale. They believed in “eugenics,” the purification of the race by medical means. This kept the Final Solution ostensibly outside the realm of simple hatred and racist passion, which of course what it was really all about. Men like Mr. Wirths played key roles in this sort of delusional enabling.
The scariest part about Wirths is that almost everyone who ever had contact with him spoke of him in admiring terms. Even many prisoners seemed to thing that he was a decent fellow. As one Auschwitz survivor put it,
“It's especially demonic that most of the Nazis at Auschwitz were not demonic.”
You know you're bad man when Dr. Mengele works for you and obeys your orders, which was true in EW's case.
ADOPLH ZEIGLER
Zeigler was Hitler's painter of choice. Hitler put him charge of making sure that all paintings in the Third Reich lived up to Hitler's superior tastes. Zeigler survived the war and faced no war crimes trial. Like many mascots, he got away with it because artists don't have to face responsibility for the repercussions of their work.
Adolph Zeigler was a moderately successful painter when Hitler discovered him on the hit stage show, “The Reich's Got Talent.”
So Hitler made him president of the Munich School of Art. Then he asked Zeigler to organize a thing called The Museum of Degenerate Art. I made up the talent show, but the MDA is real. The Museum of Degenerate Art.
Vas is dass?
I'm glad you asked. The Museum of Degenerate Art was a place where the Nazis brought all the most offensive (to them) works of art in order to fair-warn all Reich artists what not to paint, what not to sculpt. The MDA actually had a grand opening ceremony and people came from all over Germany to view all the worst works of art. Hitler and Zeigler cut the ribbon and were the first patrons of the MDA in July of 1936. Zeigler's first words when he cut the ribbon were, “Zeigler Heil!” Hitler shot him a look and he never tried to joke with the Fuehrer again.
Imagine going to a museum because everything in it was badly done and offensive? The Museum of Decadent Art was the reverse merit system. Only the bad artists get to move on to the next round and finally, with a little luck, actually get to see their bad painting in the MSA. People could actually pay money to walk around and see all the bad paintings that offended the Fuhrer and his chosen artist Adolph Zeigler. The idea was to put an end to such degenerate art. The artists had no say in whether their works were chosen and displayed. This was supposed to be public humiliation and intimidation. That would get your attention. Imagine picking up the Dresden Post and seeing a picture of Hitler pointing at your painting with a bunch of famous people around him, and the caption below says, “The Fuehrer points to an example of the type of degenerate art that must be stopped.” That'll make you drop your orange juice.
What is perhaps most insane of all is that if you look up Zeigler's paintings, the ones that earned Hitler's adoration, you will find that most of them are female nudes. A lot of Aryan women of various ages are going about their business buck naked. One of them is very very young and has nothing on but the bow in her hair! I kid you not! And this was the standard against which all the other Germans had to meet and surpass or be declared degenerate!
The MDA closed soon after the war began. I guess the war was so degenerate, that the MDA seemed boring by comparison.
These Nazis never quit. And that's from A-Z.
In news of the future, The Museum of Decadent Words opened up in the Lower Village in New York City on July 4 2130. It's a wax museum of the stand-up comedians of the period from 1984 to 2072, before the new laws came in ordering them to get their acts out of the crotch.
SOURCES
[See the end of the FDR 1945 chapter for all sources for 1933-1945.]
Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day, by John S.D. Eisenhower – c) 1982
His Father Dwight D. was working on a manuscript about the alliance between the US and the UK, but when duty called him to take over at NATO, he handed the 105 pages to his son John do do what he wanted with it. 20 years later John S.D. got to work on it. I like the son's writing in the same way I liked his dad's.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Unlike the Tom Bailey who did stand-up comedy in Boston in the mid-1980's, this Tom Bailey wrote one of the best general histories of the USA ever, and did not pick up a bimbo bartender on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1984.
A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-1945), by Paul S. Dull -c) 1978 Naval Institute Press
Like Johnny Bench and Steve Swisher, Paul Dull had better not live up to his name, and doesn't. A lot of other historians cite this as a source.
Battle Report, The Atlantic War, Prepared From Official Sources by Commander Walter Karig, USNR, with Lieutenant Earl Burton, USNR, and Lieutenant Stephen L. Freeland, USNR
- Farrar and Rinehart - c)1946 - “Published in Cooperation With the Council on Books in Wartime
This (part of a multi-volume effort) is useful but doesn’t come close to the Samuel Morison 12 volume HNSNOWWII.
Crusade in Europe, by Dwight D. Eisenhower – c) 1948
There is a famous sci-fi futuristic novel called Fahrenheit 451. The new government has outlawed all books. Firemen start book fires instead of putting out house fires (451 fahrenheit is when fire starts.) If the firemen catch you with a book it's off to jail with nothing to read, not even a label on a bottle of cleanser. Kill me please, but not that! A resistance colony hides in the woods and each individual memorizes a great and famous book to keep books alive by rote (sorry if I spoilered the 1966 movie version you might have rented, starring Julie Christie and Jack Lord.
In that resistance movement I would volunteer to memorize Crusade in Europe. What book would you pick? Most of my friends would pick See Dick Run, then party with the extra time while I worked on Crusade in Europe.
Eisenhower's writing isn't spectacular, but that's part of its charm. It's solid and factual, yet rich and stimulating in Ike's subtle way. Ike is like Columbo. He doesn't cut an impressive figure until you slowly realize how he is consistently getting to the bottom of it all better than anyone else in the room. He is also a true diplomat, a person who knows how to be firm and decisive, yet with a demeanor that cannot make a single enemy in his own camp.
It's hard to grasp how a not terribly charismatic man like Ike rose to the top in the Army and then to the Presidency. But I think the intangibles that make up his greatness really come through as you move on through this turgid, yet gripping book.
Days of Infamy, MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill – The Shocking Truth Revealed, How Their Secret Deals and Strategic Blunders Caused Disasters at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, by John Costello -c) 1994
That's certainly one of the longest and most explanatory subtitles of all time. This book was lying around my house as I was packing for a comedy trip to Atlantic City. I had put 15 books in the trunk and at the last second tossed this in thinking I would never find time for it because I was already so exhausted from reading all the conspiracy books about the start of the war with Japan. But once I cracked it, I couldn't stop reading. Another layer of new thinking on top of everything I had already learned all my life. This book has influenced the first half of this chapter a lot. Costello's main point for me, is that the Philippines set up Pearl Harbor when the B-17's sent to Luzon changed strategic thinking.
I had already had something of an obsession with the negative net record of the historically glorified B-17, and was already planning a free-lance article denouncing the sacred bomber for it's pathetic overall performance (compared to expectations) in Europe. I hadn't even considered the harm it might have done in the Asian theatre. It did plenty. Great book, well written - A little redundant at times; not as bad as me, but a little redundant.
Delivered From Evil, by Robert Leckie c) 1987
Leckie is one of the most prolific USA war historians of all time. I wouldn't even call him a military historian. Leckie is Mr. War, a “we cut them to ribbons” type of tale-teller.
Bob was a decorated Marine veteran of the Pacific War so he has some valuable insights. But his gives macro detail on all the battles he was in, while giving comparatively short large-scoped treatments to battles that counted in the war more.
He is rough on Churchill.
This is an anti-dote to chauvinist British histories of the war that treat the battles for the Pacific Islands as a secondary sideshow worth three pages, while giving the siege of Tobruk 38 pages, British histories that praise Churchill and Bomber Harris as genius valiant, and mock Ike and FDR as naïve fools.
Eagle Against the Sun, The American War With Japan, by Ronald Spector - c) 1985
How many months did they sit around thinking up the clever title? Like The American war With Japan, would not have done just as well if not better.
I’ve seen this book cited by other, more recent, historians as a first-rate work. I’m up to page 80 and I like the writing. The four pages of notes at the end of every chapter are a real drag.
Flyboys, by James Bradley – c) 2003
His version of Japanese history in the opening chapters is so despicably pro-Japanese apologist that one has to read it to believe it. This book is supposed to be a story about US flyers shot down and executed behind enemy lines, but its really an excuse for Jim to tell a rude anti-American version of American history. Matt Perry's bully visit to Japan in 1953 is what turned Japan on the road to bullying the rest of Asia later on. I am not kidding you. That's exactly what he says.
The Great Crusade, A New Complete History of the Second World War, by H. P. Willmott – c) 1989 – The Free Press
Willmott is one of the big name historians of WWII. I find him stimulating for a few pages, then confusing for a few more. He also debunks without elaborating. W.P. is something of a Japanese apologist. He thinks the China War of 1932-1945 just happened by accident and was largely triggered by Chinese actions.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 Oxford Univ. Press
Growth is a very readable and very annoying book. Page Smith claims that this is the very best general history of the United States ever written. Page is entitled to my opinion. No, it isn't. Page was a student of Morison at Harvard, like that doesn't make his a prejudiced opinion to the point of disqualified.
Guadalcanal, by Edwin P. Hoyt – c) 1981
Hoyt is a very good military historian. Even a bad one could make a good book about a tale like Guadalcanal.
I see people reading Dennis LeHane or Sue Grafton novels on the train and I feel sorry for them that they aren't reading a book like this instead. Why read fake dramas with fake good guys and fake bad guys and fake violence, and fake emotional plots, when something a thousand times greater, and real, is right there untapped, waiting to be read?
The irony is that the more useless and fictional the book, the more the person has to tell you the entire plot, like you give a hoot when you're locked into something like this.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter, and Samuel P. McCutchen NYU – c) 1954 MacMillan
History of the Second World War, by B.H. Liddel Hart – c) 1970
Brit Basil Hart is one of the most respected war historians of all time and the book is important for that reason. Hart gives so much coverage to the tank battles and the North Africa campaign that it is safe to say that it does not maintain a war coverage balance. At times I get lost in his battle details, and at times he makes profound points I had never thought of before. At other times he is dead wrong and I could cite several sources that prove it.
He's not a joy to read but no serious student of the war can pass him by.
I-Boat Captain, by Zenji Orita, with Joseph D. Harrington -c) 1976
Why are the German submarines called U-boats and the Japanese subs called I-boats. I don't know. If I read more than the first 15 pages of this book someday, I'll fill you in. My guess is that it something to do with IJN, the Imperial Japanese navy.
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, by David Bergamini – c) 1971
This is a very important book that shook up the conventional wisdom that Hirohito had nothing to do with the war. This book claims that the Emperor had everything to do with the war, and should have been tried as a war criminal.
Land Battles: North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, by Trevor Nevitt Dupuy, Col. U.S. Army Ret. - c) 1962
Basically a children's book. Perfect for me. Great maps, and the book explains things on the presumption that only the most important facts need be told, and you don;t know much to begin with. If only a lot of 400 page books had the same children's book attitude.
The Memoirs of Field-Marshall the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein K.G. - c) 1958 - World Publishing, Cleveland and New York
This is a great book and it's amazing to me how many readers will read 39 books involving the actions of this man but never will take the time to let him tell his side of the story in his own way. The whole history business is a money-making racket and the historians who need to stay moderately wealthy will never direct you to the primary sources, because they want you to read their take on the same info you can make your own judgements on just as well as they can. But they don't want you to know that or it might put them out of business.
I waited a lifetime to run into this book at a yard sale for one dollar. In the meantime there are 300 WWII books recently published by pro historians which sell for $43 and aren't one twentieth as valuable to the student as this.
Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador; The War: 1939-43, by Ivan Maisky. Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom 1932-43 – c) 1965 Scribner (Published in Moscow in 1965 – Scribner English version in 67)
Lively, well-written, fascinating, and worthwhile, this is a primary source for WWII easily accessed by anyone. He gives a new angle on quite a few topics. There aren't many Soviet Russian eyes through which we can see the war, and his is one of them. Sometimes he makes rude transparent Stalinist propaganda arguments, but often he makes points in defense of his country where I feel seriously persuaded in the rightness of his argument.
The Mighty Endeavor, American Armed Force in the European Theater in WWII, by Charles B. MacDonald - c) 1969 - Oxford University Press
The chapters on Torch and the Tunisian campaign were especially enlightening. CBM is easy to read, an occasional confusing battle page notwithstanding.
The National Experience – Part Two - A History of the United States from 1865 by Blum, Morgan, Rose, Schlesinger, Stampp, and Woodward – c) 1981 HBJ NY
They are less dull during WWII than they were during the 1880's.
The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, by Robert Jay Lifton – c) 1986
RJL is best known for his fat book on the JFK assassination in which he includes photos so gory I can't stand to look. Now he writes a book about euthanasia, sterilization and the medical experiments on live patients at Auchwitz. These stories make the Kennedy photos seem like a day at the beach. This man must have had some childhood.
The New Dealer's War, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within WWII, by Thomas Fleming – c) 2001
In spite of 400 angry rebuttals in the margins, I think this is one of the most important and readable books on the war. TF has about 7 pet theories and he boxes all the facts into the seven to prove them. He is rough on FDR's decision to run for a fourth term. He was too sick. NDW rips the Allies for the cruel decision to terror bomb the Axis cities. He tells us a lot about the inside politics of the Roosevelt Administration.
I missed this book after I was done reading it. I wished I could go back to that time when I was reading it, and my mind was ablaze in absorbing Fleming's thoughts on the war.
Out of Many; A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale), Mari Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke), and Susan H. Armitage (Washington State) - c) 1994 - Prentice Hall
This is a great textbook, but I can’t use gel writers to mark it up in anger because the glossy pages only handle the old fashioned ballpoints well. And, yes, there is plenty of Zinnish slant in here to arouse my anger.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
I've been rough on my reviews of this man and this book, but he gets a pass for the years that America fought in WWII. Morison was commissioned by the United States Navy to write the definitive history of the naval war and he did it while serving on combat ships. For this he is my hero.
The Path to Victory, The Mediterranean Theatre in World War II, by Douglas Porch – c) 2002
Doug believes that those who think the Italian campaign was an error are in error.
Pearl Harbor, by A. J. Barker – c) 1969
This is 'Battle Book #10' in the Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II. I read the first half if this book in 1981 and the second half in 2011. That's how organized my study schedule is.
These books look small because of the number of illustrations, but the font is small and the editors don't waste space. These large thin paperbacks look like they might be an easy knock off in two sittings but they aren't at least not for me.
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
Boller worked for UN Naval intelligence during WWII. He specialized in the Pacific war.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer – c) 1960 – I can't say enough about this American classic tome about Nazi Germany. If you only read one book about Nazi Germany, this is the one to read. And he was there for most of it, in Berlin.
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, by James MacGregor Burns – c) 1970 Harcourt Brace
This is an American history classic and deservedly so, although I think MacGregor tries to be “Johnny Writer” a little too often. Famous authors get away with that because they are more powerful than their editors. JMB always reads like he's writing, not like he could be talking to you in the same words. I tend to read 20 pages, then put it back on the shelf for 11 months.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty – c) 1977
This Columbia professor never gives me the feeling that he loves this country and what it stands for. Garraty doesn't seem to feel that the USA has a special mission and a special destiny in leading the world in progressive dreams. I'm not saying he doesn't feel that way, but I don't get that feeling from his work. He loves history but he is a liberal cynic relative to his era which is 1966 when he wrote the initial text. The 1977 the revised abridged edition doesn't feel like 1977.
It's a good book, but not a treat.
Titans of the Seas, The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces During World War II, by James H. Belote and William M. Belote – c) 1975 Harper & Row
These two authors, whether they realize it or not, are openly rooting for the Japanese. They come off as glue-sniffing model-building 12 year old war-lovers with a lot of facts to play with, and don't seem to realize their moral error. It's one thing to pay classy homage to the defeated opponent, it's another thing to go beyond apologist. They endlessly credit the Japanese with skill and courage. They credit Americans with “luck” and superior resources. Plenty of historians cite this book as a solid secondary source, so I respect the content as most useful, but I consider these two men, as men, most useless. Titans is a very good read with a really bad smell.
The Trail of the Fox, by David Irving – c) 1977
Very readable writer, but Irving admires General Erwin Rommel, the Fox, a little too much for my taste. No relation to Julius Irving.
The Turn of the Tide, A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field-Marshall Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, by Arthur Bryant -c) 1957
This book thinks it's the most important book about War Two ever written and says so clearly. I do not think it is. The only thing that turns in The Turn of the Tide is my stomach. The book (part one of two volumes) is riddled with offensive British chauvinism, and I blame author Bryant, not Alanbrooke. Churchill, Brooke (his real name until he changed it near the end of the war) and Montgomery are courageous geniuses. FDR, Marshall, Leahy and Eisenhower are inexperienced naïve fools who have not enough brains or common sense to know that the British are more skilled, wise and courageous than the Americans per se. This book is recommended for closed-minded self-loving Brits.
The Two-Ocean War, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1963 Little, Brown
Morison is the one who set me straight that Admiral King was one of the “principle architects” of the winning of WWII, even though he was personally a cactus.
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 - c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Relative to their era, this was a liberal history textbook. By 2010 standards, they are a trio of conservative squares.
The United States and World War II, Volume I, by A. Russell Buchanan – c) 1964
A compact general history of the war from the US centrist point of view. This is an absolutely great book. I bought it cheap without its volume II mate and now I absolutely have to find volume II even if, heaven forbid, I have to spend some real dough on it.
Victory Through Air Power, by Major Alexander P. De Severdsky – c) 1942
Severdsky was a friend of Billy Mitchell. He was one of his disciples.
Wow. This guy thinks Germany in 1942 was about to gather a force of 5,000 six engine heavy bombers that will fly across the Atlantic, destroy every city in America and then fly back to Europe without refueling. I am not kidding you. I am not overstating his case! It's sheer lunacy. What a read!
Severdsky was a famous man and a lot of people took his looney ideas seriously. He designed aircraft for a living including many a plane used in WWII. Between him and mentor Mitchell their insane visionary exaggerations of what air power could do set the war effort back significantly.
Every paragraph of VTAP predicts with absolute certainly, some miracle of destruction that heavy bombing will accomplish that never ever came true. Not even a little bit. It's comical at times, but sad how many people listened.
Wake Island, An Eyewitness Account by the Commanding Officer, James P.S. Devereux - c) 1978 - Major Books
These guys were animals!
War as I Knew It, by George S. Patton Jr. - c) 1947 – Houghton Mifflin
After the Torch landings succeeded, Patton met with the Sultan. Patton had only recently finished reading the Koran, which he thought was a “very interesting book.”
The intro tells us that his diary is so fiery rough on some of the main characters of WWII that it was appropriate to not include those excerpts. The ones we would want to read the most, those are the ones the editors decided to leave out.
I actually mailed away for this book, a rarity for me.
The War That Hitler Won, The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History, by Robert Edwin Herzstein – c) 1978
This war that AH won is the story of the Nazi propaganda machine, which worked so well that many of the myths are still accepted by history today. REH is a good writer. There is another book called The War that Hitler Won, but it's about the war against Poland.
A World in Flames, A History of World War II, by Martha Byrd Hoyle – c) 1969 Athaneum
A solid short work based on basic primary sources like Churchill, Samuel Eliot Morison, or Roskill's 'The War at Sea.'
Martha is not a professional historian and it doesn't show. She is described as a UNC graduate who maintained an interest in history after college. This is a good refresher or primer, and I read it cover to cover. If it has a slightly conservative pro-American bias, it is very understated.
Working With Roosevelt, by Samuel I. Roseman – c) 1952 Harper
This is a fine book by a fine man and a fine writer, even if he does worship FDR to a fault.
FDR's nickname for him was “Sammy.” Very clever.
The World at War, by Mark Arnold-Forster -c) 1973
This book is based on the TV documentary series of the same title narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier, the one with the dreadful fake sound effects ruining the entire production. The squealing of the tank wheels, the fake marching, the fake crying over dead babies, the fake small-talk chatter whenever big shots are gathering for a conference, the sound of bombs hitting German cities from 17,000 feet with no time delay and crystal clear sound from that high up inside a closed fuselage.
The World at War is so biased in favor of the British and against the Americans that I would like to slap this guy. MAF hates the United States more than he hates the Nazis or the Japanese, and spares no effort to belittle America's contribution to the war while extolling everything any Brit ever did.
|