FROM POLAND TO PEARL
THE USA AND THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF FDR
By Mike Donovan
[Note - Because I am always adding new material- the page numbers rarely match up exactly]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dawn at Gleiwitz 1
War 3
Reichstag Party 4
Post Party Tirade 5
The Invasion of Poland 6
They Declare 7
Back Stab in the USSR 8
West War Begins 9
54 Hours 10
Save the Slavs 11
Goring Wants Peace 12
French Freeze 16
America First 18
Poland in the Fireside Chat 20
Politics First 22
Repeal of Strict Neutrality Laws 23
Undeclared War – German Naval Strategy 24
U-Boats 25
Athenia Down 9-4-39 26
Courageous Story 29
Declaration of Panama 10-3-39 31
Royal Oak 10-14-39 33
America Discovers Columbus 34
Graf Spee Drinks the Kool-Aid 12-17 35
Captain Flint 37
Soviets Intimidate Baltics 38
Russo-Finn War 1939 39
1940
Winter War Continues 49
Welles Visits Hitler 53
Hap Hazard 54
Denmark 54
Norway 55
German War Plans 58
Maginot Line Strategy on Both Sides 59
The French Playbill 60
Tanks a Lot 63
Plane Talk 64
Communications Breakdown 65
Hitler's Plan 67
Week One – The Fall of Holland 69
Belgium Attacked 70
Ardennes Offensive Begins 71
Sedan 72
Hurricanes Can't Stop the Hurricane 75
Week Two (Weak Chapter) 76
Churchill Plays the Shamrock Card 77
De Gall of Some People 78
Churchill Shuttle 79
The Twenty-Second of May 80
Never Surrender! Always Attack! 81
Belgium Waffles 5-28-40 82
Church Churchill 83
Report to #1 With a Bullet 84
Tour of Tours 85
Miracle of Dumkoff 88
French at Dunkirk 92
Strategic Air Campaign Starts (Ruhr) MAY 15 93
The Strike South (Battle of Flanders) 95
France Defeated by Defeatism 96
Capitol Tours 95
18B 96
Franco-Brit Union Proposal 100
Reynaud – The Statue of Liberty 101
The Backstabber of Milan 101
No “Surrender” 102
Pierre's Navy 103
Armistice 104
Opinion 105
Dirty Devil Goes to Paris 106
Passive Resistance Option 107
US Intervention – Not 108
Ungrateful Frogs 109
Stalin Intervenes – June15-16, 1940 109
Seeds of Nazi Victory Planted in Defeat 110
Concluding Thoughts on the Battle of France 110
Tyler Kent – Kennedy's Spy 112
Mers el Kebir –7.3.40 – Unfriendly Firebomb 113
NDRC (A-Bomb Gang) 114
Republicans in the Cabinet 6.40 115
CDAAA 116
US Naval Strategy 116
Dark Hour at Dakar September 1940 118
Martinique Unique 119
Can England Survive? 119
FDR Takes a Vacation 120
Lend-Lease Unleashed - 9.40 121
Tripartite Pact 9.27.40 122
Felix Hendaye Oct 23 123
Sea Otter 124
Alternate Take 127
RAF – The Planes and the Myths 125
Don't Cross the Red Cross 126
“Albania” invades Greece 10.28.40 127
Coventry and Mannerheim 129
Alternate Take 130
They Can't Cut the Mustard Gas 133
Politics in America 1940 134
The Smitty Act 135
Budget Bureau 136
Selective Service Act 137
Election of 1940 138
Congressional Elections 1940 145
Arsenal of Democracy 146
North Africa 1940 – Overview 147
Desert War Begins 148
Japan and the United States 1940 149
The USSR and Japan 1940 151
Forget Pearl Harbor 152
1941
Franco-Siamese War 1.41 154
Britain is Going to Make it After All 155
Southeast Europe and Turkey 156
North Africa First Half of 1941 157
Rommel Mason 158
On to Tobruk 164
Battleaxe 165
Churchill Defended 166
Harry Hopkins Goes to London 169
Fall of Italian East Africa 170
Pacific War Scare 1.2.41 171
Matsuoka Takes a Vacation 173
Cape Matapan Square 3.41 175
Zam-Zam 4 17 41 177
Greece and Albania Fall to Evil April 41 178
Crete 180
Sink the Bismarck and Spell it Right 181
Balkan Delay Saves Russia and the War 182
Alternate Take 183
Yugo Next – March to April 1941 184
Nobody Wants to be Hungary 185
The Punisher 186
Niblack Fires First 4.13.41 187
Russo-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact 4.13.41 188
Belfast Blitz 4.15.41 189
The War in Iraq - May 1941 190
Robyn Moor 5-21 (April 18 1983) 191
Halfaya Pass (Hell-fire Pass) 6.15.41 192
Barbarrossa - Overview 193
Barbie – Military Strategies 197
Number One Nazi Blunder 200
Sorge the Communist Spy 202
Siberians to the Rescue 202
US Reaction to Barbarrossa 203
Barbarossa in the Summer 204
Barbarossa in the Fall 205
More From the Frantic Atlantic – Greenland 206
Iceland 207
USSR-Poland Non-Aggression Pact Joke 208
Atlantic Charter 8.14.41 209
North Africa and the Siege of Tobruk 210
Pacific Policy Decided at the Atlantic 212
200 Hurricanes – Put it on Stalin's Credit Card 216
Hal Greer 9.4 & Reuben James Halloween 217
Air War Europe 215
US Volunteers in Canada 216
MacArthur and the Philippines 217
More US-Jap. Relations 218
Rainbow Five 221
Strategic Air Power – Strategic Miscalculation 222
FDR Lured US and Japan Into War 225
Pearl Harbor Expedition & State of Jap. Forces 227
Eve of War 231
British Who's Who 232
Sources 236-52
DAWN AT GLEIWITZ SEPTEMBER 1 1939
Hitler needed to blame someone else for starting the war he was planning to start. So at dawn on September 1, 1939 the no-good Poles supposedly attacked a German radio station near the Polish border at the town of Gleiwitz. The troublemaker Poles shot and killed all the Germans who ran the radio station. Then the Poles got on the air and broadcast a long program of complaints about the Germans. They finished by announcing that Poland was attacking Germany and that this means war.
Of course, it didn't make much sense since Poland was a weak power and Germany was a strong power. Why would a weak power want to attack a strong power and start a war it had no chance to win? For months Germany had been threatening to attack Poland. At no point was Poland threatening to attack Germany. On the other hand, this propaganda nonsense was being sold to the people of Germany for several months. Poland was allegedly instigating acts of violence against the people of the German race living in Poland. The Poles were setting the homes of Polish-Germans on fire.
So when people in Germany heard the radio reports that Poles attacked and took over a German radio station, it wasn't that far fetched. Yet even the gullible brainwashed Germans were waking up on September 1, and waking up. This time the news of the Polish attack was accompanied by a little news blurb that Germany had “counter-attacked” and was at this very moment sending several divisions of the Wermacht in a “punitive raid” deep inside Polish territory. Yeah, right.
Even the most loyal Germans could see through this one. This was no punitive raid, and this was no counter-attack. This was the invasion of Poland that Hitler had been threatening for the entire year if Poland didn't surrender large amounts of Poland without a fight, the same way Austria and Czechoslovakia had surrendered. If Poland would not give Hitler a Munich, he would give them a Gleiwitz.
The truth was that Polish troops had not really attacked a German radio station, killed all the employees, and then broadcast a proud declaration of a new aggressive war on Germany.
Yet the world saw pictures of dead German soldiers full of bullet holes laying around the entrance to the WGLE AM 590 Poland. There were German bodies bleeding to death over the soundboard, and more dead German radio DJ's near the coffee-maker and the UPI ticker machine.
These were actually prisoners from German concentration camps. They had been drugged to the point of helplessness, dolled up in sporty German clothes, shot up a few times, and then placed bleeding in several spots around the radio station. The Polish troops who took over the station were SS troops under the direction of Captain Al Naujocks. They were just Nazi wolves in Polish sheep's clothing.
Al testified after the war (at his trial) that most of the Polish troops were so drugged when they “arrived” at the station that he thought they were dead until he noticed they were breathing. He couldn't even open their eyes with his fingers. Then the Nazis placed the dazed dupes in the right spots for a good photo-op and shot them.
The story is fairly well-known to history except for one detail that is less known. The SS troops who loyally carried out this double-cross misinformation operation had to be eliminated too. Loose lips sink propaganda ships. They might tell the story to their wives or to someone else over too many beers. For their deed for the fatherland they were shipped off to never-neverland. All the SS troops who dolled up and shot the fake Poles were shot within 24 hours of completing their mission, like the bank robbers foolish enough to think the mastermind was going to split the dough.
Another alleged provocation by the Poles was their blowing up the Dirschau Bridge connecting the two countries. Of course, the Poles only blew it up when they knew the Germans were beginning their invasion. The German commanders were upset they couldn't get to the bridge in time. The Nazi politicians took an act of pure self-defense and tried to make the best of it by using it for propaganda. The naïve British Ambassador Neville Henderson (not to be confused with Neville Chamberlain ....although they were two peas in an appeasement pod) actually complained to the British government that the Poles had provoked retaliation when they blew up the Dirschau Bridge. The first name of Neville became less popular during the war for newborn British children as the war dragged on.
WAR
Hitler got on the air at 5:50 a.m. and spoke to the German people. Adolph the drive time DJ told the Germans that the war he “had done everything to avoid” had finally come about because of Polish intransigence. “No one hates war more than I do,” he said, “But the Poles have refused every reasonable offer, and have consistently refused to even send a diplomate to speak with me and try to work out our differences peacefully.” Yes, we believe you. No one hates war more than you do. And no one hates NFL football more than I do.
The newspapers hit the fatherland newsstands that morning all over Germany announcing that the war was on. Virtually no one cheered or celebrated. It went down quietly all over Germany. What a difference from 1914 when the news of glorious war created celebrations like Germany had won the World Cup. Back in 1914 it was like that all over Europe. In Vienna thousands crowded the city square cheering the news that war had begun. In the crowd was a smiling face later clearly identified as an unemployed post-card painter named Adolph Hitler. Who can understand that insanity today?
Of course, it was the hell of World War One that changed the entire attitude towards war of the world. The Big Red One, bloody WWI, was one hell of a bad war. No one won any great battles. It took all the fun out of war that had been sick fun for 5,000 years. The Great War had ended the concept that war is great. Even the people of the militarist culture of Germany appreciated this on the morning of September 1 1939.
REICHSTAG PARTY 9.1.39
Hitler later that morning went before the rubber stamp Reichstag and gave his explanation why he had gone to war. The powerless members of the German parliament were supposed to cheer at all the right moments. But they 'mailed it in' with weak perfunctory applause breaks. They weren't happy. Hitler seemed nervous and a little on the defensive, as if he knew deep down that he was a bad boy and had done wrong. But he was such a punk that he had to go through the motions of a good boy who had done right.
Addled Addie promised that he would see this war through to victory, or he would be the last man to die on the battlefield. He reminded his sad listeners that he was a soldier himself, and he was going to see this through. If he died in office, Herman Goering would take over. If Goering died, then Rudy Hess would take over. If Hess died, then by law, the Senate would decide who was next in line. He actually said all this, as if there were any laws, and as if there were a Senate.
SWISS BIRGER SEES THE REAL HITLER
After the speech, Hitler went back to the Chancellory. His pal Goering was there with the Swedish businessman Birger Dalerus who had been trying to play intermediary between England and Germany to prevent war between the two great “Aryan” powers.
Dalerus had been taken in with all the lies about how Poland had started the whole war by blowing up the Dirschau Bridge and shooting up the radio station. Birger had spoken to Mr. Cadogan at the London foreign office but was curtly informed that there seemed to be no hope for peace since German brigades were smashing their way into Poland. Dalerus pleaded to Cadogan, “But the Poles started it!” It wasn't vicious propaganda on his part. He was just a gullible Swedish meatball.
Hitler listened as Birger told of the near certainty that England was going to declare war on Germany soon. Hitler went into a dramatic speech for Dalarus and Goering, but the real audience was the Swede, not Goering.
His voice cracking with emotion, Hitler said that he had tried everything to avid war with England. But ....
“If England wants to fight for a year, I will fight for a year; if England wants to fight two years, I shall fight two years.”
Then he paused dramatically and resumed the thought, but this time screaming as though he were in an auditorium of hysterical followers using a weak microphone,
“And if England wants to fight three years I shall fight three years!
But he was saving the best for last. In the final sentence he doubled over screaming, his body so low to the ground that he shook his fist and pounded the floor,
“And if necessary I will fight for ten years!”
Birger Dalrus slinked out the room thinking, “I never knew that he was that insane. I never knew anyone was that insane. What has this world gotten itself into?”
INVASION
Unlike France, Holland and Denmark in 1940, Poland went down fighting. But it was more a German invasion that a German-Polish War. Poland never even so much as launched a brigade level counter-attack.It was state of the art tank divisions, and Goering's Luftwaffe versus antique cannons pulled by frightened horses. That's oversimplified of course but nevertheless, in one month the overmatched forces of the Polish Army, Navy and Air Force were defeated, captured or scattered into the countryside. Some made it into other countries. By the end of the month Poland ceased to exist. Poland was to suffer six years of terror and genocide. It makes me sometimes wish I wasn’t half German.
The term “lightning war” was coined by British writers between the wars, but when the Germans used it effectively it became “blitzkrieg” and the term is remembered as a German word.
The idea was to have highly mechanized divisions race far ahead of the conventional infantry divisions, create havoc and panic behind the lines, add terror and tactical support from the air, and make mincemeat out of the enemy. This was a new type of warfare, throwing caution to the wind, as opposed to the old school reliance on precaution itself.
Poland had a large army, and a fair sized navy and air force. The Luftwaffe destroyed most of the Polish air force in the first 48 hours of the “war.” Poland resisted so poorly on all fronts that it almost not right to even call the invasion of Poland in 1939 a “war.”
Poland lost partly because of overconfidence, if you can believe that one. The Polish Army thought it was going to teach Hitler a lesson. Knowing how it all turned out, you would think Poland trembled in fear on the eve of war, but not so.
On top of loony overconfidence, Poland let political considerations determine the placement of the armed forces. Polish forces in the north were obviously not going to be able to stop the Germans because of East Prussia. With that irredentist stronghold, the Germans could attack in the north from both east and west. It would have been best to concede that area and not sacrifice needed resources in a hopeless battle. But the Poles placed several divisions in between the bread of the Nazi sandwich and, sure enough, those troops and weapons were eaten up fast.
Poland also made the mistake of trying to defend western Poland near the German border. This was the industrial heartland of Poland, but it was also too close to the enemy breakthrough line. Poland put too many eggs in the western basket and soon the bulk of the Poland Army was cut off and surrounded, to be destroyed one pocket at a time. If Poland had fallen back in the west and north, and retired to manageable short lines of supply and tactics, they might have held on for two or three months. Maybe France and England would have watched the long struggle and intervened in response. As it were, Poland held out for such a short spell that even if Britian and France decided to act, there wouldn't have been much they could have done.
Poland also failed to mobilize in time. Knowing the political situation, Poland should have been on full military alert. On the other hand, Poland did not want to give the Nazis a pretext to attack, so they were in a no-win spot on mobilization.
Poland also made a big political-military mistake, which is quite understandable. From 1919-1938 the main perceived threat was from the east. Poland geared its entire political and military strategy to the idea that the Russians would sooner or later attack them from the east. Germany was considered a relatively weak opponent because of its loss in WWI and its emasculation by the terms of the Versailles treaty. Germany didn’t really emerge as the big bad wolf until about 1937-38. All Polish war planning was geared to the wrong enemy and major deployments to the east would hurt the situation when Germany attacked from the west. It was too short a time window to re-tool all Polish military thinking and deployments from east to west, as Poland was a large country.
One important officer who performed very poorly in the German-Polish war was was General Rommel. His corps of three division was surrounded and had to surrender. I'm talking about General Rommel of Poland, not the “Desert Fox” of Germany. Same name, different record.
WELL I DECLARE
Britian and France formally declared war on Germany on September 3. Why did they take so long? More later on that one, but first, this word from the sponsors of the German attack on Poland, the Russians.
BACK STAB IN THE USSR
On September 17, 1939, Just as the Germans were beginning mop-operations of a complete victory, the Soviet Union shocked the world by invading Poland from the east. The two devils had agreed in advance to dismember and swallow Poland. This was the “Final Partition of Poland.” Three other times in the last 600 years the neighbors of Poland had wiped it off the map, dividing it among their greedy merciless selves. This time it might be forever.
In the months leading up to to war, Russia was trying to convince Poland that it was no longer an enemy. The USSR wanted to even come into Poland to prepare joint military exercises, an idea that Poland of course, rejected. But Poland did have a memory of these overtures when Warsaw got word that the Russians had crossed into Polish territory on the 17th. Poland initially actually believed at first that the Russians were intervening to the rescue! Some Polish generals were elated. They thought the Rooskies were arriving to help them, not to help enslave them, which was of course the case.
The Germans got their ‘living space’ to their east, while the Russians got their security zone to their west, a buffer state of occupied Poland. The two invaders, diametrically opposed in political philosophy (at least in theory) had collaborated fully, two muggers dividing the dead guy's wallet fair and square. These were the same Soviet Russian invaders who would be America's admirable allies later in the war.
Some historians wonder why Russia waited until September 17 to jump in and help with the dismemberment of Poland. I wonder why they should wonder. Why not let the Germans do all the hard fighting, and then walk in after the military danger had passed? The pre-agreed spheres of influence were probably going to be the same if Russia did an X, a Y, or a Z amount of military battling. Not that Stalin was compassionate and careful about spilling Russian blood, but he surely wouldn't have wanted to lose any Russian planes or tanks.
More important, Stalin probably wanted to distance himself in time from the British and French declarations of war. If Britian and France declared war on Germany on September 3, and then Russia jumped in on September 4 or 5, there would have been a lot of political pressure on France and Britian to declare war on Russia. It would have seemed too logical not to, even if the Westerly Twins didn't have any treaty requiring it. By waiting until the 17th, there was a decent interlude safety net for the Gensec, Secretary General Stalin to exploit.
The USSR jumped in because they didn’t want to get a handout from Germany. By terms of the August 23rd Satanic Pact, Eastern Poland was in Russia’s understood sphere of influence. But there were no instructions as to how Russia was going to take that sphere over. If Russia stayed back and waited for Germany to mop up all of Poland, and then the Nazis “gave” eastern Poland to Russia, then that would have been a less than desirable situation for “Uncle Joe” (and btw, I always have trouble deciding which historical man I hate more, Uncle Joe or Uncle Ho.) So the Russians “invaded” an eastern Poland that was not even resisting except in pathetic isolated pockets. The Russians suffered less than a thousand killed in action in taking east Poland. That gave Russia a little bit of leverage in claiming that east Poland was something it had taken for itself, when the reality was that it was a gift from Uncle Addie, a byproduct of a clause in Satan Santa Clause sack of toys.
The Soviet back stab removed the one hope that Poland had - the Romanian redoubt. The Polish plan in worst case scenario was to hole up in the southeast mountains near Romania and hang on until the French attacked from the west and saved the day. The Russian knife in the back took care of that geographic tactic, and the French weren’t going to come to the rescue in any case. The French took all the glory for standing up to Hitler and standing up for Poland, without actually sacrificing one pint of French blood in doing so.
TWO POLISH CAMPAIGN MYTHS
The common image of the Polish campaign is the German tanks going up against Polish Cavalry horses. The image is almost an implied Polish joke, that they were so backwards, naive and foolish about exactly what they were up against when they defied Hitler in the weeks leading up to 9.1.39. But again we go back to the point about the historic enmity between Russia and Poland which was stronger than any historic enmity between Poland and Germany. The Polish prepared for war with Russia for 20 years, and at the end of that span, it turned out that a revitalized germany was the real and immediate threat. So Poland was still cavalry oriented when that horse had left the barn. But what is seldom considered is that if Poland had been right, and Russia had invaded Poland instead of Germany, then the Polish cavalry would have been an effective tool on the wide open plains of Eastern Poland and western Russia. Poland would not have looked foolish at all by having horses still in play in 1939. So it wasn’t the fact of mass outdated cavalry that was a Polish blunder, it was the political miscalculation. It was apolitical miscalculation, rather than sheer backwardness and naivete per se that led to the scene of Polish officers with swords on horseback trying to attack Nazi tanks. The Poles might have been looked brilliant for having stuck with antiquated cavalry if the war had started with a Russian instead of a German invasion.
The other myth about the Polish campaign is that the Germans destroyed Poland with the new and innovative Blitzkreig tactic. Almost every WWII book calls it a Blitzkreig. “The world witnessed a new kind of warfare, the Blitzkreig,” they write. It goes without saying that all the TV documentaries get it wrong.
But, in fact, the Germans played a very conservative game in smashing Poland. They had the Blitzkreig plan in their back pocket but they never used it. Better safe than sorry. Why take dramatic chances against such a weak opponent?
The Blitzkrieg idea was to send heavily armored units crashing through enemy lines without infantry support, and then letting these mechanized units keep going, far past any supply line or infantry back-up. This went against all the old rules of war gaming. But the Nazis had concluded that this was a new era and the quality of the new deep penetration machines were so advanced that they could keep going and fighting alone deep behind enemy lines. Modern air support in tandem with the land deep penetration was key. When the enemy realized they did not have the anti-tank guns to stop the monsters, and the Stukas terrorized all, panic would ensue all along the front. The front line that the tanks and armored cars has left behind would collapse in panic, even if they were holding firm on all of the line except for the spots where the Blitz had blitzed. This was Blitzkreig as designed.
Blitzkreig was indeed tried in France in 1940 and worked to perfection. But it wasn’t really used in 1939 in Poland, in spite of how many times you will read that it was. The German high command rarely let the armored penetration get very far ahead of the infantry. The Luftwaffe conducted a partial Blitz ahead of the main forces, but the tank Blitz didn’t advance miraculously ahead of the troops. The Germans had so many obvious advantages that it seemed inadvisable to break out an exiting trick play to win. The Germans considered Blitzkreiging in Poland but the victory was won there the old fashioned way; on a broad front advancing carefully with all mutual support systems operating at full strength. The German bicycle did not leave its training wheels on the side of the road until May of 1940.
THE WEST DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY
On September 3, 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany. Hitler was both surprised and disappointed. He'd thought that his alliance with Russia meant a localized war in Poland, that France and Britian would not dare take him on if they couldn't get big Rus on board. Adolph knew that the Bull and the Frog had a standing treaty to protect Poland in case of German attack but he did not think they would honor it. England and France had been appeasing him for so long that he did not anticipate any defiance this time around either. Hitler had bought his own publicity, always the ultimate mistake.
Adolph did not understand that behavioral patterns in nations, just as with people, are subject to change without notice. Even wimpy democracies have their limits. France and Britain had reached theirs. Even the famously effeminate celebrity weight-loss guru Richard Simmons lost his temper and slapped a big guy across the face in a famous incident at an airport. Yes, foolish Adolph, even wimps will fight if they get pushed far enough. You can ask Billy M. (a bully I once punched in the face about 17 times in a row after years of his tormenting, perhaps the happiest 90 seconds of my entire life.)
Adolph had long accepted that he would probably have to fight France sooner or later, but was blindly naive about England. He thought he could knock out France singularly at the right moment, and somehow not then have to go to war with Britian at all. He even more surely did not want to go to war with both of them at once. In a sense he lost World War II the day he started it because he had envisioned one kind of war and ended up with another. I suggest that if he really knew that Britian and France were going to declare war on him, he might have chosen to continue his heretofore amazingly successful thug diplomacy in Europe rather than seek a military solution in Poland.
His mistaken analysis existed in large part because Hitler thought the English were his racial brothers and sisters. Hitler hated the Communists, the Jews, the Slavs, the rich, the Gypsies and the Bremen Soccer Club. But he had never hated the British. Hitler had studied British history and was, if anything, an admiring fan.
He was a foolish genius indeed. So what if they were of the same racial stock? Fortunately for the planet Hitler always had a streak of pinhead six kilometers wide.
Britain believed in democracy, freedom, and Protestant Christianity, not totalitarianism and mass murder. A God-fearing democracy's first racial loyalty is to the human race, a point Hitler could not grasp since he thought he was God.
By the way, speaking of God, Hitler grew up a Catholic but the Pope excommunicated him in the 1930's. Nevertheless to his dying day Hitler, and most of the leading Nazis continued to pay personal taxes to the Catholic Church! That was the law in Germany. Even if you were excommunicated, you still had to pay the Catholic Church tax.
54 HOUR DELAY TO DECLARE WAR
The Soviet Ambassador to Great Britian Ivan Maisky raises many provocative questions in his memoirs, even if they are coming from a stooge/tool of Stalinist thuggery. Maisky calls Britian and France out for taking three long deadly days to declare war on Germany.
The history books always say that Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, and that in response Britian and France declared war on September 3. We read this and nod approval of British and French resolution. But why did Britian and France not declare war immediately?
54 hours. It took 54 hours for France and England to declare war on Germany. In those 54 hours Germany won the war, destroying Polish air power on the ground and cutting off large Polish Armies. England and France had a clear treaty obligation not just to declare war on Germany, but to come to the aid of Poland at once. They did neither for 54 hours, and then helped in actual practice not at all. What kind of a mutual assistance treaty was this if it was only to be honored with words when the time came, and even then only 54 hours after the war started?
One explanation is that Mussolini had a peaceful settlement mediation proposal out on the table. France and Britian somehow hoped that Italian mediation could still bail the situation out, even though Mussolini's proposed his peace plan on August 31, before the war began, and even though 57 German divisions (Heinz 57) were already crashing deep into Poland.
The other explanation is that the leaders of the west just didn't want to accept reality and it took them three days to do so.
There's legitimacy to Maisky's charges, and I agree, the British and French should have declared war immediately, not three days later. But I do not agree with his further charges that Britian and France should have immediately taken full-scale concrete military steps to stop Hitler in Poland. He claims, that if they had done so, then Russia would not have been forced to intervene and protect the slavs in eastern Poland from German occupation, which is his lame excuse from what Russia did on September 17.
There's no way Britian could have done anything to save Poland, even if it had the political and military will. Any look as the map of Europe would tell any fool (and tells me) that Poland was too far away for British air strikes, the Baltic Sea was a German sea, and as far as land war goes, Britian wasn't a big land power in the first place, plus even if it was, there was no way they could have landed a second BEF on East European shores to save Poland, even if Britain was fully mobilized for war, which it was not.
France might have been able to do something on land, but it was stuck with its inflexible Maginot Line. An attack on Germany from the west would have put the best French divisions ahead of its best military asset, and, in an case, French troops could hardly be expected to fight for Poland with crazed banzai charges like the Japanese defending Iwo Jima.
So Maisky explains Russian aggression by saying that if England and France had only done the impossible immediately, then Russia wouldn't have had to do what it did to east Poland.
SAVE THE SLAVS
Now let's think about the Maisky claim, repeated four times, that the only reason Russia occupied eastern Poland was to spare the Russian and Byelorussian people of Eastern Poland the fate of Nazi occupation.
Clever. That's classic international bully talk. Hitler and Ribbentropp used the same language when they justified their pre-war aggressions in Austria, the Sudetenland, and the rest of Czechoslovakia. The Nazis claimed that the invasion of Poland was to protect the oppressed German minorities in Poland. So poor Poland just happened to have minorities east and west that could only be protected by invasion from both directions.
It's probably true that for the average Pole cicilian, life under Soviet occupation from 1939-41 wasn't as bad as life would have been under Nazi rule, but that wasn't why Russia invaded. In spite of what Maisky (Stalin's mouthpiece) says, that deal was made before September 1 1939. Russian intervention wasn't a spontaneous move out of pity for the plight of eastern Poles of slavic descent, as Maisky would have us believe.
Let's say that Maisky is right. The USSR only intervened on September 17 to protect the Russian minorities in eastern Poland. By implication, Maisky is saying that if France and England had declared war immediately, and if France had attacked from the west while Britain sent a couple of carriers into the Baltic Sea to fight the Germans on behalf of Poland, then Russia never would have taken the eastern part of Poland on September 17. Maisky doesn't come out and say this but he's implying it.
That is an interesting scenario. Maisky says that Russia's neutrality was never even moderately a de facto alliance with Germany, but strictly a non-aggression and neutrality pact. Maisky stresses that the Soviets tried in ernest in 1939 to get Britain and France to form a triple alliance against the Nazis, but that the west couldn't overcome its anti-Russian prejudice, which is fairly true, but for just reasons (The Soviet Union had proven for 20 years between the wars that it could not be trusted - then the post-war historians say that the west should have trusted the Soviets in 1939 and blame the west for the failure of the new triple alliance – seen from the perspective of 1970 or 2011, the British and French most certainly made a mistake by giving in to their anti-Bolo prejudice from the Comintern years, and leaving the Russians out of security arrangements – but from the memory bank of 1939, I take their side for not wanting to set up deals with the USSR.)
Ivan claims that Russian neutrality in the opening months of WWII, was, if anything, slightly favorable towards Britian and France, that Russia knew that Hitler was the real enemy, and that the Soviets still held out a faint hope that the triple alliance that failed in early 1939 still might find a way to come about even after September 1, 1939. On the other hand he also makes the capital point that one of the main reasons Britian and France maintained such a phony war from November to April was because the anti-Bolo crowd in England still held out hope that the west might join in an alliance with Hitler to destroy Communism, meaning Russia.
It's a fantastic accusation, and at face value absurd, but subconsciously, maybe Churchill and the gang really did hope to isolate the war to the continent and then help provoke a war between Germany and Russia. Britian could stand back and still fight the same phony war while claiming to still be at war with Germany. Maisky has the Soviet paranoia about this, but it's not entirely out of the realm of reality in my mind. The “Cliveden set” of England might not have been exactly sure how they were going to get Germany and Russia to start up with each other, but they were holding back on making a full commitment to war in the hope that something would happen on its own or some exploitable opportunity would present itself. This does shed some potential logic on the inexplicable lack of offensive action or plan out of London and Paris in the first autumn of war in 1939.
So what would the USSR have done if Britian and France intervened ferociously and immediately in Poland, and were fighting Germany in Poland through September? Would Russia have actually considered intervening against Germany when the fighting got close to he Russian border? Maisky is hinting that, not quite saying that. He calls out Britian and France, somewhat justifiably, for hesitating to declare war, when treaty obligations clearly said they should immediately, not three days later, but he gives his own country a free pass apologist explanation for what Russia did to Poland, which was ten times more perfidious than what the British and French failed to do for it.
This is what some historians call “non-factual history.” The “what ifs” of history annoy some historians who only believe in dealing with what happened. But “what if,” is not only very much a part of the historical science, and worth considering, it's also fun. Everything is inevitable after the fact, but the “what if” questions of history may be just as instructive for future generations as is “what happened.”
What if France and Britian were slugging it out vs. Germany in Poland and the scrap did reach the Russian borders? Russia in that moment might have been forced to 'pick a team.' Would the secret deal giving east Poland to Russia still have come into play, and if so how? If France and Britian had intervened, would Russia have therefore never even considered occupying Eastern Poland?
Churchill in October, not wanting to drive the Russians any further into the Nazi camp, conceded in a public statement that the Russians had only taken back the old pre-WWI Polish border region that was once Russian territory. There was even some fear of an open Nazi-Soviet alliance and a condominium of Europe with little Britian very much on the outside. So the storm of indignation over Russia taking Eastern Poland actually died down in Britain and France for expedient reasons. That is, until the Russian invasion of Finland in December.
In any case a few hundred thousand Poles spent the war in Russian prisons, and 10,000 Polish officers were murdered on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, so who could suggest that Russia was rescuing the Poles from Nazi rule?
GOERING THE PEACE-NIK
In the last weeks leading up the war, Herman Goering actually tried to convince Hitler to not go to war against Poland. Herman monster Goering swung at Nuremberg in 46, and I'm not saying he shouldn't have. He was the number 2 man in the genocidal evil Reich, and his part in mass murder once the war began spoke for itself. But few history books cover the point that Goering was deeply disturbed that Hitler was planning a real war. HG thought that the UK would not sit back and watch, but he could not convince his boss. Goering was happy that the German Reich had swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia, and that it had defied the victors of Versailles by re-arming. He was happy that Germany had re-occupied the Rhineland, and had insulted the French in doing so. But Goering had seen air combat in World War I and was a hedonist. He wanted to enjoy the spoils of all the achievements of the late 30's. He wanted to eat, drink and be merry with Mary, and maybe do some hard drugs here and there. He thought that a world war at this time would constitute a real buzz-kill.
On the other hand Nazi Foreign Minister Johann von Ribbentropp was always trying to encourage Hitler to launch the war against Poland. Not that it was Ribbentropp's idea. It was the Fuhrer's idea, to be sure, but Hitler did listen a little bit to his closest pals and if everyone had told him no way, don't do it, maybe, just maybe, Hitler would have backed off.
Von Ribbentropp was one of the worst human beings that ever walked the planet. The Nuremberg trial was unfair to him. He should have been beaten to death the day the Allies arrested him. He should not even have been allowed to hang around for a few bonus months. The history of the pre-war years is the story of von Ribbentropp bullying enemy diplomats and leaders in a style and substance that probably cannot be matched in all of human history. He was von scum.
When the word finally reached Goering that the war against Poland had begun, Herman called Ribbentropp on the phone and screamed this profanity riddled tirade at him,
“Johann! Are you happy now? You wanted war! You couldn't sleep unless you had war. Now you've got your war, you swinedog!”
Then Goering slammed the phone down.
Goering wasn't the worst of the worst, and by the way it is a myth that he was addicted to morphine while he ran the war. He was also not really a transvestite. He had a perhaps needlessly large collection of opulent evening gowns, but that was acceptable garb for a rich man in his Germany.
So if Goring isn't in the top four or five evil Nazis, who is? I'd say the Mt. Rushmore of Nazi scums were Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and von Ribbentropp, with Kaltenbruner the first runner up. These five are in a tiny cold pitch-dark smelly room in hell with ten thousand hungry rats and they never get to die. And loud bagpipes playing Believe, by Cher out of key on endless repeat 24/7.
FRENCH FREEZE
The French declared war on Hitler but did not attack Germany from the west. An attack from the French army in the west was Hitler's biggest fear. If the French had attacked from behind while Hitler was still engaged in Poland the entire Second World War might have been won for the good guys by the end of 1939. The German military in September 1939 was not strong enough to fight on two great fronts and win. The French could have marched on Berlin like a hot knife through butter.
Instead the French Army stood pat behind their impregnable “Maginot Line” the series of mighty armed forts that stretched from the Belgian frontier to the Swiss Alps.
The two democracies sat still while officially at war with Germany. They might have done this because they were hoping for a negotiated settlement. Maybe it wasn't about being yellow, maybe it was about clinging one last hope of avoiding another World War One “sausage factory.”
The Royal Air Force was instructed to attack German ships at sea but not to try to sink them if they were in German ports. They didn't want major incidents with civilian casualties jeopardizing the chance for a negotiated settlement by raising the emotional stakes.
Some war.
The war, from the end of September 1939 to May of 1940 took on the snide nickname “Sitzkreig,” or, “The Phoney War.”
In America it was called the “Phony Peace,” because America went to war with Hitler in the Atlantic Ocean while officially at peace with Germany.
AMERICA FIRST
From September 1, 1939 to December 7 1941 America stayed out of World War II even though its closest allies were directly threatened.
In the years from the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 to the attack on Poland in 1939 isolationism USA was a given, since Britain and France were only indirectly threatened. Isolationism became a bit more controversial after 9.3.39 when America's allies were actually at war with Germany.
Some U.S. politicians didn't even think the United States was threatened indirectly when Poland fell to Hitler, not even in the long term. They still believed that the two oceans were a giant moat protecting the Yankee castle. They didn't even support the idea that America should at least build up its military might with haste, just in case.
FDR thought that the two oceans were not moats but rather a pair of highways leading right up to America's front door. The German and/or Japanese navy might use these protective oceans as a red carpet for a million man march on Washington.
In between were the those who wanted the USA to stay out of the war but were not naïve isolationists. These politicians and thinkers developed a “fortress America” concept. This approach admitted that, yes, the United States should frantically build up its military. But the new build-up was never supposed to go overseas to help Poland, France or Britian. Their idea was to build a defensive minded fortress America so strong that neither Germany nor Japan would dare attack. It was ‘peace through strength,' but a peace through strength while the houses of our friends were burning.
Many famous Americans favored fortress America, including two lame Charlies, the quasi-socialist historian (and bore) Charles Beard and the never boring aviation hero Charles Lindbergh.
For the next two years and three months after 9.1, the USA tried to have it both ways. Uncle Sam shook his fist defiantly at Hitler and Japan with warlike posturing and some cautious gestures to help its friends, while actually doing nothing to commit to the fight. These non-intervention interventionist moves were dragging the US slowly but surely into the conflict they were officially so determined to avoid.
Polls when the Poles fell showed that a full 30% of Americans favored absolute isolationism. That is, their country shouldn't even take a side and try to help the western democracies with arms sales, not even on a “cash and carry” basis. About 35% favored official neutrality but with some active aid short of war on the side of the democracies. Only 2.5% favored outright intervention on the side of France and England.
Roosevelt feared throughout the Phony Peace that Britain and France might agree to a negotiated peace with Hitler, a second Munich. Nothing would have pleased Hitler more. He needed the time to regroup, exploit his conquered territories, and build up his navy and air force for the next rounds. A negotiated peace would have enabled the Nazis to build up a fleet of submarines that would have threatened the world. The Nazis had only 21 U-boats deployed in September of 1939, (although they technically had 50, if you include those in disrepair or too old to count, and had another 48 new model U's nearing completion.)
Roosevelt was completely certain that with a separate peace, Hitler would retool the machine and eventually attack the western hemisphere. The Germans would probably establish conquests, or at least decisive political infiltrations in Latin America. Germany might then transport massive military supplies to the Americas, and then plan to strangle if not actually invade the United States.
In the late 30's Churchill, not yet in power, corresponded frequently with POTUS, his acronym for the President of the United States, and the P.M. tried to reassure Franklin The Great that Great Britian would never agree to another negotiated peace along the lines of Munich.
POLAND ON FIRE 'FIRESIDE CHAT' SEPTEMBER 3 1939
On the same day that England and France declared war on Germany, Roosevelt gave a radio address to the nation from in front of his Hyde Park fireplace. His people needed to know if the United States was going to stay out of this second Great War. The President gave them a luke-warm assurance on that one,
“I hope the United States will keep out of this war. I believe that it will.”
Translation;
'Hey boss, can I have a raise?'
'It's possible. I hope so.'
FD went on to warn his listeners that the events overseas directly affected the United States. The earth was too small to hide out in one corner and expect to avoid trouble that way. Franklin warned,
“Passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every plane that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought, does affect the American future.”
Roosevelt's speechwriters were surprised (but not displeased) with a statement that Roosevelt inserted at the last moment that although the American people were being asked to remain neutral in fact, they were not being asked “to remain neutral in thought.”
POLITICS FIRST
Over the next 2.2 years, the United States slowly changed gears and prepared for a possible war. FDR always gets too much credit for leading the way. He let political concerns slow down the very efforts he was demanding.
The leaders of the giant American industries came to him humbly offering their organizational leadership to re-tool the nation for war. But FDR was a pro-labor lib who hated big industry, per se (unlike his cousin Teddy who only hated big business when it did something clearly wrong.) Frankie wanted industrial help, but he would not let industrialists take over any of the actual implementation of what he wanted them to do. FDR handcuffed the very industries that he was calling on to save the day.
Instead of letting industry organize itself for war, something they could have done ten times better than him, FDR set up his own brand new organizational structure to change gears to war. FDR was so pro-labor and anti-big industry that he couldn't bring himself to cut big industry any breaks. Big business was the enemy of labor so big business was the enemy per se. He was hiring his hated domestic enemy to try and fight the growing foreign enemy. He was asking big industry to prepare the nation for war with one hand tied behind its back.
FDR set up all kinds of brand new departments to build up the nations military strength. He appointed personal and political friends to head these departments, instead of leaders of industry, who just might have been able to do it better.
Nearly every historian makes FDR the leader of the parade, dragging the nation to preparedness kicking and screaming. But his personal need to control everything like a prince left true hawks kicking their desks and screaming at him for the inept way he went about it. We always have to read about the bold steps he took for revived military industrial strength, and these steps are praiseworthy. But valid criticisms are swept under the historical rug in making him a saint hero of the War.
People also conveniently forget that it was his brand of leftism that led to the atrocious lack of military strength in the first place. He woke up and got out of bed in the late thirties, but he was the one who first picked up the bottle of lefty sleeping pills and hit the hay in the first years in office. His mass cuts in military spending helped finance the New Dole, .. I mean New Deal during his first term. He had even pledged to do this when he ran for president in 1932 and the nation was such a pacifist mood that this pledge helped him win the election, so the nation was as much to blame as he was. He followed the lead of the people as much as he led them, as most president do.
REPEAL OF STRICT NEUTRALITY LAWS
In 1935 Congress passed a rather strict neutrality law, and Roosevelt signed it. The United States had tied its industrial hands for conducting an activist foreign policy. It was an arms dumbargo that would have made Jefferson proud. The USA couldn't sell arms to a belligerent under any circumstances. The Neutrality Law was asking the United States leadership to remain neutral in thought just when FDR had just told the citizens of the country that it no longer had to. By 1939-40 the Neutrality law of 1935 was hampering American efforts to aid the Western democracies in their fight against Hitler, and the efforts to assist China in its war with Japan. It had already nullified any chance that the USA could have helped Ethiopia in its fight against Fascist Mussolini back in 1935.
In the fall of 39 Roosevelt proposed immediate changes in the neutrality laws. But it wouldn't an be easy sell on the Hill. There was still a stubborn Republican isolationist block in Congress led by Joseph Martin, the minority leader in the lower chamber.
But how could the President appeal to the people and ask the Congress to repeal a law that he had personally supported and signed? How could he do that without suffering political damage? The Brains Trust tried to figure a way to rationalize the inconsistency and avoid the back-lash of back-tracking.
Roosevelt came up with a great idea.
“I've got it! How about if I admit that I was wrong!.”
His sycophant aides gasped in horror, “No! Not that! Anything but that!”
FDR in late September 1939 called Congress into extraordinary session and told the two Houses that it was time to repeal the Neutrality laws of 1935. Before the hecklers could call him hypocrite, he added, “I regret that the Congress passed that Act. I regret equally that I signed that Act.”
Franklin believed in the Al Davis philosophy that “it is more important to be right, at the moment, than it is to be consistent.”
Roosevelt consulted with Republican leaders after the show, and made it clear that from this moment on he was not going to pull a Wilson and leave the opposition party out of the decision making process when it came to war and peace. Whatever decisions he made would be arrived at through open bi-partisan debate. For the most part, he kept his word on this, partly by including Republicans in the War Cabinet, and partly because Republican isolationism came to a near halt with the fall of Poland, and to a complete halt with the Fall of France. Roosevelt didn't have to compromise with Republican obstructionists, because they disappeared from the field, not to re-appear again until Truman's post-war presidency. The spirit of Henry Cabot Lodge was at long last as as cold as his body in Mt. Auburn Cemetery (Senator Lodge R-MA) is blamed for the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations after WWI, making him one of the villains responsible for the coming of WWII.)
UNDECLARED WAR IN THE ATLANTIC
GERMAN NAVAL STRATEGY
A second Neutrality Act, passed in 1937 forbade sale of US weapons to active belligerents in time of war, but allowed the sale of raw materials to make weapons. The USA could ship steel to make guns but couldn’t ship guns to belligerents.
The interventionist crowd realized that these laws were hurting friends and helping enemies. England had the great navy and merchant marine, not Germany. How much was the USA hurting a Germany that couldn't buy American war materials even if it wanted to? The UK wanted the materials, had the capability of picking the stuff up, and furthermore was a friend to freedom, the US economy, and a friend per se.
The Neutrality Act of 37 had already helped the Fascists win the Spanish Civil War. Something had to be done to change these laws so the United States could help England and France in their time of troubles.
So Congress passed a new and improved Neutrality Act in late 1939. By its terms the US could sell weapons to anyone it chose to, provided the purchaser paid in cash and picked up the loot in their own ships. This law was so obviously an affront to Germany that Roosevelt included the new restriction on American flagged transportation as a compromise to Germany. The President wanted to help Britian but didn’t want a war with Germany, at least not at this time.
The Neutrality Act of 1939 set up a zone around the British Isles and the Northwestern coast of Europe. In that zone US ships were forbidden by their own government to enter for any reason. The US was not going to be sucked into this war and the best way to prevent it was to avoid incidents in which German U-boats accidentally sank American ships. If President Wilson had enacted a similar law, the USA probably would never have fought in the First World War. So in terms of avoiding incidents it was wise, but historians generally do not speak well of this zone policy. It was one of the most self-restricting laws ever passed, and it didn’t help the American economy very much to kill all direct US trade with the British Isles.
U-BOATS
A few words now about the menace of the Nazi U-boats. It is fairly well known that the best German naval weapon of the First as well as the Second World War was the submarine. There were times in 1941, 2 and 3 when it looked like the Germans might win the war by sinking Allied ships as a faster rate than they were being built, and that was scary.
It was widely believed throughout the war that German naval strategy between the wars was centered on U-boat development and production, and the devastation they brought proved that Hitler and Raeder were military master strategists.
But the U-boat campaign did not begin in earnest until well after the war had begun. On the day that Hitler invaded Poland, Germany had only 21 first class U-boats operational! There were 25 others that were old and small, or in the shop. Even this combined total of less than 50 seems tiny in retrospect.
The fact of the matter is that Hitler was not a big believer in submarine warfare. He worshipped big ships like a little boy playing with military toys. Hitler wanted to revive the big battleship navy that Germany had so proudly possessed in WWI. Hitler worshipped planes far more than ships. The Luftwaffe got most of the money to build with. The German Navy got much less. Most of the navy money went into surface raiders, not submarines. It was a strategic blunder. If Hitler had built up his U-boat fleet times five before the war began he might have won the war or at least made it much more difficult for the Allies to win.
Hitler’s grand strategy for victory was based on a continental view of the coming war. The Fuhrer never expected England to go to war to defend Poland, so he really wasn’t that concerned about the superiority of the British Navy. Addie thought he could conquer all of continental Europe without British interference. With new streams of Russian oil (he always knew he was going to attack Russia) and vast manpower resources under conquered labor he felt he could rebuild the German Navy later, not now, and then if England tried to defy him later he could stand up to John Bull with his new navy, the fruit of victory on the continent.
But when England surprisingly did declare war over Poland Hitler was left holding the raider bag. These little German battleships were no match (in quantity) for even a small portion of the giant British navy, while his U-boats, if he had produced more, could have harassed the British Imperial Navy and merchant fleet to holy hell. Instead Germany had to face a naval war with an England that it was not prepared for. If Hitler had not underestimated British pluck he probably would have built five hundred U-boats. Instead he was stuck with his handful of Raeder’s raiders above water. There weren’t enough of them to conduct offensive warfare with Britain. These toys tried to fight it out at first, but results were poor. The buoy-toys would have to be confined to protecting the German coast and harassing merchant ships. It was only after the shooting started with the UK that the Nazis hastily converted naval construction efforts from capital ships (not abandoned entirely as it probably should have been) to concentrating primarily on making U-boats.
Hitler had a land mentality partly because of his service in the First World War. If he had served in the German navy in WWI instead of the army then his mental midget mindset might have included a wise and vivid recollection of the almost amazing efficiency of the German U-boats in that conflict. Instead he daydreamed of armies, planes and battleships. U-boat sinkings to him were like poison gas, barbaric unmanly tactics without any of the glory of war that he lusted for.
The Army and the Air Force were the fuhrer’s pets. German navy men made cynical jokes throughout the war about how they were the forgotten branch of the Third Reich.
Hitler’s Italian ally was of little help in the water. Italy entered the war in 1940. The Romans did have a fine little navy, better than Germany’s, but Mussolini spent the war trying to protect it rather than employ it. Churchill cracked that the Italian Navy apparently had been “built to run away.” I was born in the generation just after WWII and there was a joke in my neighborhood as a boy that went ”What food product was named after the Italian Navy? – A: Chicken of the Sea.” Mussolini was never any more prepared to risk an open battle with the Royal Navy than Hitler was, and Benito had more to fight with.
As for aircraft carriers, Hitler never believed in them very much. So much for his military genius. The Germans tried to build only one. The construction site was bombed by the English every time it seemed that it was shaping up and the 28,000 ton Sauerkraut never made it out of the yard.
ATHENIA DOWN 9.4.39
Ten hours after Britain declared war on Germany the U-30 sank the British passenger liner Athenia 800 miles west of of Ireland.
The cruise ship had left England on September 2, headed for New York City, with more than 1,500 passengers on board. The pretty ship included hundreds of American tourists who booked it back to America when they heard on September 1 that war had broken out in Europe. England had yet to declare war on Germany but the invasion of Poland was enough to cancel the European vacation. Then, out at sea, came the announcement that England had declared war on Germany. Athenia set a zig-zag course and turned out all the lights.
But U-30 could still see the ship, even in the dark, and at 9:03 p.m. fired two torpedoes into the helpless lady.
112 Athenians died in the sea, 27 of them Americans (one source says 26, another says 28, so I'm going with 27.) No warning had been given and no effort was made to spare the lives of the passengers, either before or after the attack, as required by the London Naval Agreement of 1930, which Germany had signed. Part of the LNA stipulated that in exchange for pre-agreed mercy for passengers, merchant and passenger ships could not mount big guns of any kind, so if a sub surfaced to pick up people either before or after the attack, the civilian ship could not reveal guns and suddenly smash the sub.
England responded by announcing that from now on it would arm its civilian ships as best it could. Right away, Hitler claimed that the British had deliberately sunk the Athenia with a mine in order to draw the USA into the war, the lying scum. Adolph proclaimed that from now on all ships were fair game for his U-boats.
Doenitz went one further. He ordered his U-boat captains to machine gun the people in lifeboats so they could not help in the war effort later. The admiral's order was admirably disobeyed quite often throughout the war but was obeyed often enough. Tactics like this, employed just days into the war, are worth remembering when the revisionists now largely blame the Allies for the savagery of WWII. It certainly was one reason why Doenitz was on the dock at Nuremberg in 1946 as a war criminal.
The outrage in America over the Athenia concerned Hitler enough that he announced that from now on the U-boats would no longer attack passenger liners, but this was contradictory to his earlier pronouncement that all ships at sea were now fair game. What could Britain now do except presume the worst?
America’s 1939 Neutrality Act zoning law helped the U-boats do their worst. The U-boat commanders could sink anything they wanted in a measured zone around the British Isles. The Nazi captains didn’t have to worry in this area that they might accidentally sink an American ship and start an international incident, since the US had barred that zone to US ships.
It was only in directly in response to the sinking of the Athenia that Churchill decided that merchant freighters could and would now carry defensive guns, yet some historians make it seem that Britian was the aggressor for arming the boats. Arming freighters, they claim, made it impossible for the U-boat commanders to conduct the war with a modicum of humanity.
Look, if Hitler had only admitted that the sinking of the Athenia was a matter of human error by the captain who didn’t realize that he was torpedoing an unarmed passenger liner (as the captain claimed after the war), then Churchill might not have ordered the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine to take a new aggressive approach to the rules of international commerce in wartime. Instead Hitler said, 'if you think that was tough, we're only now just rolling up out sleeves.' Yet we have this account of things by Thomas Bailey who states without preface that,
“Winston Churchill, again First Lord of the
Admiralty, began arming all merchant ships
after the outbreak of war in 1939 and issued
orders for active resistance.”
Athenia was sunk three days after the war began. Churchill could hardly have issued these directives as the unilateral naval rules aggressor unless he did it the instant he heard that German troops had crossed into Polish territory. Churchill responded to terror at sea, he didn’t start it. This was no small ship with military men on it. The Athenia was a second Lusitania.
Then with the war a month or two under way in his history book we get this Bailey judgment in defense of the apparently decent Nazis,
“… several of the German U-boats had chivalrously
given “good warning” and had helped the orphaned
crews to safety. This kind of sportsmanship soon
became rare or nonexistent, largely because
Britain’s defensive-offensive measures made a
gentlemanly submarine war impossible.”
Blame the Allies First, eh Tom? In the name of trying to be fair and balanced, in the name of not trying to look like a chauvinist hawk, Bailey is unfair to Britian. Baily is, of course, an American historian. It's easy for him to not give Britain a break here.
A COURAGEOUS STORY
On September 15 1939 Captain Otto Schuhart in charge of U-39 spotted the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in his periscope. He was 800 miles southwest of Ireland. But the carrier was protected by two destroyers plus several Fairey bi-planes circling overhead in search of just such a U-boat as his. He trailed the carrier three miles behind for nearly two days hoping to find a chance to get a shot at it.
As night was falling on September 17 the carrier turned back into the wind to land its Fairey Swordfishes. That sent the carrier right into the U-29's path. It was a lucky break and Captain Hardshoe fired three of his own fishes at the old 22,000 ton 1915 cruiser that was converted into a carrier in 1928. Two of the torpedoes hit the mark on the portside. The Courageous capsized and sank in 18 minutes! 515 men perished including the captain, yes, I have to say it, Captain Courageous. British destroyers picked up 687 Courageous survivors.
British destroyers dropped depth charges in retaliation but, in spite of the lie by Movietone News that “no submarine could have survived such an onslaught and the British paid them back toe for toe” the U-29 returned to Germany in triumph.
The Courageous was not the best carrier in the fleet, and had been decommissioned in 1938 only to be reactivated with war looming in mid-1939. But the sinking of the carrier was spectacular news and changed British naval strategy for years. The new First Lord of the Admiralty, a Mr. Churchill, decided that carriers could no longer be risked in aggressive anti-submarine patrol on the wide Atlantic western approaches. From now on they would be used for task force and convoy protection and duty in the relatively safer waters of the Mediterranean, near Gibraltar and Egypt. The carrier was no longer to be employed and a roving offensive weapon. The Courageous kill of U-29 meant hundreds more kills for all U-boats over the next five years.
At this point in time Billy Mitchell and his co-hort Severdsky seemed right on the mark. Carriers were an obsolete concept because they were too vulnerable to be worth the cost of producing them.
Yet Hitler had mixed feelings about the great U-kill. His heart was sank with the British carrier because he was still hoping for a negotiated settlement with England. Hitler had never wanted war with England, had never envisioned war with England, considered England an Aryan brother, and did not want to get England so mad that they would never negotiate to end the state of war between the whites. The German newsreel showing the Fuhrer congratulating the crew of U-29 in person shows this ambiguity. The Fuhrer should have been beaming but he does not look happy at all and is just going through the motions. His facial expressions look like they did in 1945 when he had a bad arm and the war was lost and he pinned medals on 16 year old boys and old men.
This theme, that Hitler does not want to provoke England by hurting it too violently is a theme in the story until he finally loses it and tries to snuff out London in the summer of 1940. And it worked both ways, as the British did not want to bomb German ships in German pots for the same reason.
Indeed, some historians actually believe that Hitler actually let the British get away at Dunkirk on purpose for the same reasons. We'll get to that later, of course.
“Down goes Courageous” was a devastating blow to British morale and Naval strength, but England still had a 9 to 0 advantage to Germany in aircraft carriers.
I'm going to take a guess here and say that the fact that the Courageous was a converted cruiser had something to with why it capsized and sank so quickly.
DECLARATION OF PANAMA OCTOBER 3, 1939
The US enlisted the support of all its good neighbor amigos in Central and South America in October of 1939. The combined Americans declared a safe zone around the two continents. The belligerents on the eastern side of the sea were warned not to engage in any naval gunplay in this zone which reached far beyond any known concept of national waters. German subs and surface raiders were told not to dare attack enemy ships in this zone and the British were warned not to attack German surface raiders and subs there as well. In some places the zone was almost a thousand miles off the coast of the country concerned. The idea was to keep the war at arm’s length from the nations in the western hemisphere still at peace.
The Declaration of Panama was basically unenforceable from the start. The pursuit of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee (pronounced ‘spay’) proved it. But first, the story of the Columbus.
ROYAL OAK – NO PLACE TO HIDE – 10-14-39
The Royal Oak was a famous tree where Charles II climbed and hid to avoid the Roundheads who were out to capture and behead him in 1688. Two Roundheads stood below the tree looking for him and one point and then walked off, like a tense scene in a spy movie.
The Royal navy named a battleship the HMS Royal Oak. It fought well in World War One. By the time of WWII the RO was still in service but relegated, because of its age, to rear guard duties.
In October of 1939 The Oak sat quietly near a ridge in the bay at Scapa Flow on the northern tip of Scotland. More than 100 boys, 15 to 17 years of age, manned the ship along with 1,200 men. The boys worked the old oak as a training ship.
Scapa Flow was an important naval base for Britian. The Scot land on the harbor was protected by a small island which made the only entrance very thin. The Navy also sank a couple of old ships side by side to make the entrance virtually submarine-proof ... or so the Brits thought.
On October 14 1939 Captain Gundy Preen, in a daring and dangerous feat of skill, slipped his U-47 into Scapa Flow. Once inside he looked around for the fattest target and spotted the Royal Oak. A battleship would do just fine. His periscope was so close to the land that he saw a guy on a bicycle ride by on land flipping a finished cigarette aside as he pedaled.
Preen fired four forward bow torpedoes at the Royal Oak. Only one hit and it did so little damage that the Oak crew didn't realize they were in mortal danger, and no general quarters sounded. Then U-47 did a U-turn and fired four more torpedoes, all of the missing. So still undetected was Preen that he U-turned again, took his time re-lading the forward tubes and fired four more. This time he was closer. He confidently looked away from his periscope and at his officers. He displayed one finger at a time with a smile as the explosions timed to matched his fingers. “One (blam!) - Two (kaboom!) - Three (va-room!) - Four (nothing)”
“Three will do, volk, now lets get the hell out of here!”
U-47 dodged past the sunken ships at the entrance in a repeat performance of skill. Meanwhile the Royal Oak capsized and sank with 883 KIA's including almost all Oak ridge boys. Less than 300 of the crew survived.
Captain Preen won the iron cross for creating an iron coffin in Scapa Flow. The Royal Oak still sits capsized in 98 feet of water as an official war grave. The hull is only 15 feet below the water line. Divers are not allowed to go near it for sport.
The news was an enormous lift for German and enormous depression for British morale. Coming on the heels of the sinking of the Courageous, this was very bad indeed. Was the German submarine fleet going to pick off all the capital ships of the Royal Navy one at a time all over the globe?
In reality, the Royal Oak was an old wagon, and its loss didn't change the balance of Naval power by one half of one percent. But the press ran with it as though the sky was falling on the British Empire.
I do find it annoying that many British general histories of the war fail to mention that the Royal Oak was an obsolete BB on the edge of mothballs. They love to exaggerate how bad things were in the early days and describing the loss of a first-rate battleship makes for better reading than that of a leaky old rust-bucket training boys on it. It's similar to Pearl Harbor where most American historians include the loss of the battleship Utah, deliberately failing to mention that it was a target ship, and that the Japanese attacks on that unmanned ship were a net gain for America that day, wasting bombs that could have been dropped on oil tanks or the submarine pens.
(Note: I anglicized the name of Guenther Prien to Gundy Preen. I hate trying to remember foreign names in English books. Hitler pinned the Iron Cross on Preen while brandishing the one he had won in World War One in the List Regiment. Yes, it pains us to know it, but Hitler had won the German equivalent of the Medal of Honor in World War One for courage under fire. Every time we hate our enemies, the first knee-jerk insult is to call them “cowards!” Sometimes that just doesn't fly.)
AMERICA DISCOVERS COLUMBUS - 1939
German passenger liners all over there world had to scramble to get back to the Fatherland when the war broke out. One such ship was the Columbus (33,000 tons,) a German ship with an English name that was named after an Italian who had sailed in out of Portugal under the Spanish flag.
Columbus had already disembarked from NYC when the shooting started and most of its paying guests were Americans. The captain of Columbus reluctantly agreed to the collective request of the naturally scared passengers to jump ship in Havana. Columbus then proceeded to Vera Cruz, Mexico where there was a large colony of German expatriates. Most of the German passengers disembarked there.
In November the liner decided to chance it and make a break for Germany. From the moment it cleared Mexican international waters, US warships tailed the Columbus. The Americans were sending information to the British on the location of the enemy vessel in ‘plain English’ meaning there was little or no attempt to hide these transmissions for any curious listeners. Once the Columbus had reached the outer edge of the Panama safety zone (agreed to at the earlier foreign ministers conference in Panama City,) the British could then pick up the trail and have their way with the big ship.
The captain of Columbus however thought that the US warships were being friendly. He thought they were escorting him safely out to sea, a big brother shielding his liner from the British. He even signaled individual US warships “Godspeed and Merry Christmas” when they dropped back and let another US ship take over the escort. But the American Navy was stalking Columbus, not protecting it.
340 miles east of New Jersey, the Columbus was still within US insincere protection, but the captain thought he was now a target for British warships. One of these, a destroyer named Hyperion, confronted Columbus by firing two warning shots across her bow. The captain thought he was doomed, so he scuttled his ship. Columbus sank and burned in a Waco style suicide by fire. The German captain probably wanted to make sure that his ship was not taken intact to be used by the enemy. An American destroyer, the Tuscaloosa, was close enough by to observe these actions. Tuscy quickly steamed to the tragic site and rescued 500 of the crew of Columbus and took them to New York City for internment. The captain thanked the Americans profusely for all their help, the idiot. After the US entered the war in late 1941 the crew of the Columbus became official POW’s and lived out the war in the relative safety of the USA.
Hitler gave a speech in mid-1941 in which he specifically cited the case of the Columbus as a pre-war act of hostility by the United States against Germany.
THE GRAF SPEE – THE BATTLESHIP THAT DRANK THE KOOL-AID
I built a plastic model of the Graf Spee in 1968, a lovely compact battleship with three turrets of twin 14 inch guns. Spee was used almost exclusively as a surface raider. Its mission was not to slug it out with other battleships like Old Ironsides vs. Guerrierre, but rather to comb the Atlantic and beyond for helpless isolated merchant freighters. Graf Spee by December 1939 had sunk 10 such merchantmen. The British Navy was hunting all over the Atlantic for the raider Graf Spee, a cruiser named after a German admiral who went down with ship in the 1914 Battle of the Falkland Sea.
A three-cruiser squad of His Majesty's Ships confronted the Graf Spee of the coast of lower South America. Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter dueled with German pocket battleship. The Exeter sustained serious damage and had to retire. Graf Spee took several hits, and it's fuel pumping system was shattered. Spee barely made into Montivideo. Ajax and Achilles waited like vultures for the beaten ship to crawl out.
The GS had to put into port at Montevideo, the capitol of neutral Uruguay. The ship needed repairs to continue traveling, let alone fighting. But Uruguay did not want the Spee to stay. Uruguay was a charter signer of the Declaration of Panama. The Kraut battleship had worn out its welcome the moment it docked.
Another British cruiser was nearing arrival on the scene to bump the force of blockers up to the original strength of three. Ajax, Achilles and Prince Quigley blocked the mouth of the River Plate. Spee’s guns had longer range than any of the British cruisers and destroyers, but at close quarters the superior range was no advantage. Graf Spee had to leave Uruguay and face certain death. If the Declaration of Panama had teeth the British wouldn’t dare attack the Admiral Spee when it left Montevideo, nor would they have been allowed to bottle up the GS there in the first place.
As the Spee steamed slowly out towards the open Atlantic, a cloud of dark smoke erupted mid-ship. Explosions followed and the ship sank in the River Platte. The captain Heinz Landsdorff, had scuttled his ship and shot himself in the head.
Neither Landsdorff, nor the British cruisers had given a thought to the Declaration of Panama. Its false teeth were sitting in a glass somewhere.
The Graf Spee and the Columbus episodes happened almost simultaneously. The difference in British actions showed that the UK respected the Declaration of Panama only on a selfish selective basis. The Spee was more of a threat to British lives than the Columbus, so the Declaration of Panama was respected for Columbus, in deference to the US, while in the case of the Graf Spee the Declaration was about as effective as a screen door on a U-boat.
Ivan Maisley has the moxie to suggest in his war memoir that the sinking of the Graf Spee was a depressing setback for the Royal Navy. He lists it side by side with the loss of the Royal Oak as part of the series of losses for Britian. His reasoning? The Royal Navy did a sloppy and inept job chasing the Graf Spee down, it was bad for British morale. That's some very funny material there, Ivan.
As for my model, it sat on my dresser for a few months but then a few pieces broke off. There was only one thing left to do, a thing quite traditional in the neighborhood. I took it into my back yard and there, with the solemn observance of a few other young model-builders I forced a firecracker into the hull and then started a fire under the foreward bridge. We all enjoyed the last ten minutes of my Graf Spee.
SO LONG CAPTAIN FLINT
Another ship of history with a role in the undeclared war was the Captain Flint. This American freighter had helped rescued survivors from the downed Athenia in the first week of September. The Captain Flint (all right, its real name was City of Flint, but I changed it in tribute to Treasure Island – Captain Flint is the name of the parrot on Long John Silver's shoulder) dropped off the traumatized civilians from Athenia in New York and then headed east for England with a load of cargo that included oil, making it a legitimate prize for seizure by German warships. Sure enough on October 9, 1939 the pocket battleship Deutschland cornered and captured the City of Captain Flint on the high Atlantic. The 20 American crewmen were taken on board the battleship where they kept company with 37 Brits who were already prisoners after Deutschland had sunk their UK freighter a few days earlier.
Flint was now manned by a German crew and was flying the Nazi flag. It was too dangerous to take the prisoners to Germany through the English Channel so the Captain went north around the UK where he hoped to then make his way down the Norwegian coast to Germany. The commander hoped to snake his way south through the three miles of Norwegian waters off the coast that were immune from international attack. Norway was neutral and this was illegal other Nazi ships had done it successfully. Flint put into port near the Arctic circle in the Norway town of Tromso (I played Chuckleheads in Tromso just last month, a fine comedy club indeed.)
International law of the sea is more complex than law on land. It changes drastically every ten years or so and it is often vague, elastic, unenforceable or easily defied. Laws on prizes, belligerency, blockades, searches, seizures and other issues are a kaleidoscope of confusion and an invitation to selfish interpretation. Laws made 40 or 100 years ago are expected to be obeyed by nations that are at war, which is an almost ridiculous concept. “In the clash of arms the laws are silent,” as the Romans used to say. The Nazis at war had about as much respect for laws as they had for rabbis (rabbi means lawyer by the way, according to Lenny Bruce.)
In this situation according to international law, the Norwegian government was supposed to deny any help to the Captain Flint. Norway was a neutral and while a belligerent was free to take any prize at sea that carried war supplies, it absolutely could not take that prize into a neutral port, not even for rest and repairs. Moreover, if a prize was taken into a neutral port, the neutral state was supposed to seize the ship, intern its crew, free the prisoners and hold the ship until it could be picked by its original owners. This was a tall order for Norway in the face of a Nazi neighbor that was the menace of the continent. The Tromsonian officials didn’t get flinty and seize the Flint and intern the crew, as required by law, but they did boot the pirate ship out of port with nothing for victuals but a little fresh water. They also denied the Germans the charts necessary to make it safely down the Norwegian coast within Norwegian national waters. Norway gets a B minus for its stance in Tromso.
So the Captain Flint had to head north and then east to Murmansk in Russia.
Stalin was Hitler’s cautious ally but not a belligerent. Soviet Russia was a neutral and the same laws that applied to Norway applied to the USSR. The Nazi commander of the CF had high hopes that the Soviets would look the other way on international law. He was not to be disappointed, and that is most of the reason the entire Flint saga is told here. It demonstrates how much Russia was no friend to America and lends a spotlighted contrast to the war US propaganda later on that shouted proud that Russia was.
Flint checked in to Murmansk on October 23, 1939 and was treated rather nicely. Secretary of State Hull sent a sharp note to Moscow protesting the failure of the Russians to take the proper measures under international law. Only a prize ship in severe physical distress could land with immunity in a neutral port and Captain Flint was in good working order. Moscow would not allow the US to even make a telephone call to the imprisoned crew. When US Ambassador to the USSR Malcom Steinhardt tried to fly to Murmansk he was denied a ticket. The Russians cabled Washington claiming that the Flint was badly damaged which was a lie. The Soviets coaxed the Flint gently back out to sea but with the German crew still in control and this time with charts to make it down the Norwegian coast.
The conclusion in Washington was that the Russians weren’t trying to be nasty for the sake of being nasty, rather they did not want to provoke the Germans who were a lot closer to them than America was. Ticking off the United States at the time was a lot safer than ticking off Hitler, who could lose his temper because a bird looked at him the wrong way. And Addie had 30 or so divisions on the Russian border. That is why the US reluctantly tolerated the shabby way the Russians treated Captain Flint. The United States sort of understood their situation, caught between a rock and boulder.
The Flint made its way to the port of Narvik in Norway. This time the Norwegians interned the ship and the German crew, showing courage in the action. The Americans and Brits were free. The Flint made its way back to the United States safely. The Germans could have sunk it on the way out but Hitler wanted no more trouble with the US at this time and besides, the forbidden zone for US ships had just been set up by Roosevelt and the Congress and this was a bigger prize than one merchant ship. The US had volunteered to keep its ships out of the war zone and there was no need to shake up that equation. The U-boats let the Flint pass through the zone this one time.
SOVIETS INTIMIDATE THE BALTICS
The USSR threatened Estonia and Latvia in October 1939 with invasion if they did not allow Russian military bases on their sovereign territory. The two little countries gave in and in effect surrendered their sovereignty. The Russian used these bases in 1940 to invade and conquer these countries all the more easier in 1940. Lithuania was in the German sphere of influence. (The USSR granted these three Baltic Ave. countries their independence in 1991, but kept their military bases on them for several more years. I found this very disturbing. The west celebrated Baltic independence when everyone knows that if a foreign foe has military bases in your country, you aren't really independent. Can you imagine of the British still had military bases all over America in 1788. How independent would the new USA be then?)
RUSSO-FINNISH WAR BEGINS 1939
It was called the “Winter War.” It was fought in Northern Russia and Finland in the dead of winter and lasted almost four months. There was heavy fighting. It was full-scale war. The “phony war” wasn't so phony up in snowville.
After the division and elimination of Poland, the Soviets intimidated the Baltic states into accepting Soviet troops on their soil, which was tantamount of course to a loss of independence. Stalin’s diplomats were surprised when Finland did not follow suit. Finland refused to be bullied.
'All right,' said the Soviets, 'if you won’t let us station Russian troops on your soil, then you must let us have most of the Karelian Isthmus. Your border is within artillery range of Leningrad. This cannot stand. What if you make an evil pact with Hitler some night and all of a sudden we wake up one morning and Leningrad is being shelled and has to be evacuated.'
Russia offered a larger slice of Russian territory north of Lake Lagoda to Finland in exchange, which was like offering 100 square miles of northern Alaska as a trade for 60 square miles in Long Island. Russia also demanded two islands just south of Helsinki, which if granted would have given the Finns the right to complain that Helsinki was now in artillery range of Russian guns.
Finland had once been part of the Tsarist Russian empire. Surely it knew it was time to come back into the fold. But the Soviet emissary demanding territory and troops was rebuffed in a most certain manner. He wasn’t going to give the Finns the Ribbentrop treatment and get away with it. He wagged his finger at the Finns as he headed off for the airport and said “Stalin’s not gonna like this.” It was like a scene in a mob movie.
The Russians had been secretly building roads in the northern wilderness leading up to the Finnish border. The war was long premeditated by Moscow. They concentrated several divisions along the length of the Finnish border, even as far north as Petsamo. The bulk of the Soviet forces were set to go at the Karelian Isthmus in the the south part of the impending northern war.
Stalin and the Russians were confident that a large percentage of the socialism-loving Finnish population would support his invading armies. A lot of fifth column brigades of loyal Finnish socialists were going to form, making the invasion that much easier. This never happened. It was a foolish opinion and widely held in the USSR. Apparently the Commies bought their own publicity and thought they were not evil totalitarians, but mankind’s vanguard of progress. In reality the only person that bought that line outside the Russian borders was FDR.
The Finns had won their independence in the time of World War One, but only after a terrible Finn Civil War between the left and right, the left supported by the Soviets. The Kaiser had helped the right in Finland win the civil war and declare independence. The Finns therefore viewed the rise of Nazi Germany with less alarm than most of Europe. A strong Germany might be a deterrent to Soviet aggression against Finland. The Finnish people knew of course, that Russia had long wanted its old property back. The shadow of the bear had hung over Finnish independence for two precarious decades. It's hard not to understand that the Finns saw Nazi Germany as the lesser of two evils and, indeed a key to its own survival.
In the same transparent style that Hitler had used when he dressed up dead prisoners as Polish solders, the Russians staged a lame shooting incident on the border, blamed a Finnish guy in an international statement, and used that as a reason to take Finland back into the Russian Empire by armed force. On November 30 1939 twenty-seven Red Army divisions crashed into neutral Finland.
Since the western front was so silent in these months the world’s attention was riveted on Finland every day of the conflict. The “Winter War” was the only action story on the board. It was perhaps the only time in the history of the world when Finland was definitely center stage.
American newspapers regularly headlined events in the Winter War. Opinion in England and France was strongly pro-Finn and anti-Rus. But nowhere in the foreign world was the outrage against the action of the USSR more pronounced and widespread as it was in the USA. These brave Finns were brothers and heroes. Finland was already popular in the United States for being the only nation that had paid back its war loans from WWI. It was easy for Sam get on their side in this one.
Soviet Russia on the other hand was clearly the aggressor, was atheist, had promoted the destruction of all capitalist societies for 22 years, had made the pact with Hitler, and had stabbed Poland in the back. So it was hoo-ray Finland and boo Russia. Three years later Russia would be our best pal and Finnish pilots would be flying fighter planes supplied by Nazi Germany! What a war.
The Red Army was confident. How confident? All units were instructed to not violate the Swedish border. This meant that Stalin presumed that the Russian army would clear its way across the length of Finland like a hot knife through butter. The problem was that the butter was ice cold, hard as a rock, and the knife was dull and in disrepair.
The Russian army advanced at a snails pace and took heavy losses. The world was astonished by the resistance of the Finnish military forces. They had more to fight for and were better prepared for winter fighting. Thousands more Russian troops died from the cold than Finns did. The Finns attacked down mountains on skis, shooting up Russian units with their rifles at 20 mph, tossing hand-grenades and making spin moves on skis. I’ve seen a couple of movies that re-created these ski-scraps. The Finns wore white for camouflage while the Russians had gray uniforms for easier targeting. The Helsinki Ski-warriors were the Cinderella team on page one of the sports page that everyone cheered for.
Finland Draws a Line in the Snow - 11.39
On the above map the lighter red line to the right is the international border between Finland and the USSR on the eve of the war.
The map below (from The Winter War by Richard Condon) shows the proximity of Leningrad to Finland. The Germans, those old friends of the Finns, had 88’s that could reach downtown Leningrad from Finnish territory. But Stalin was probably not as fearful of this as he claimed. Did the USSR seriously think that Finland had plans to invade its superpower neighbor?
Stalin probably just wanted Finland back for mother Russia and used defense as a pretext for offense. This entire Finnish affair was an early example of what was later termed “pre-emptive war.”
The final outcome of the war for Finland would be the complete loss of the Karelian Isthmus to the Soviet Union, plus the loss of access to the White Sea in the north. Pardon me for giving away the story, but this isn't a damn novel. I'm looking for clarity and it's best you know that from the start.
The main military objective for the Russians on the Karelian front was Summa. They needed to wrestle Summa from Finn control. This was where the bulk of the Finnish fighting forces were stationed. The rail and road lines to Helsinki ran through Summa. It was the roadblock on the path to Helsinki and victory. The Soviets attacked the Finnish left at Taipale with weaker forces which were stopped by the Finns. But that side of the line was not important to the Red Army.
The Soviets set up a new capital of Finland at Terijoke
The Finns planned a do or die stand at the Mannerheim Line. The Mannerheim Line was no Maginot Line. It is sometimes mistakenly described by historians as a ‘series of forts. ’Martha Hoyle mistakenly writes in her history of WWII, A World In Flames, that “The Russian Army battered itself against this line of reinforced concrete fortifications.” Martha thinks that this wall of strength forced the Russians to shift the war to the north. The Mannerheim Line was little more than a series of tank traps that ran from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Lagoda. It was also an undermanned Mannerheim line. The Finnish divisions deployed along it were few in number, small in size, and lacked any serious artillery power.
I know my old ink-note is hard to read on the above map from the Ballantine book The Winter War. It says ‘Capitol of Democratic Republic of Finland.’ The tiny city of Terijoke is semi-circled. The Soviets were inventing their own special style of colonialism as they fought, a style they would repeat later on several times. It went like this; Set up a new government as soon as the sound of front-line artillery is sounding distant. Then give the country a new name and for Pete the Greats’ sake, make sure you get the word ‘Democratic’ in it. What good is a sham democracy without a fancy sign?
The Finns fought well, but the Russian made steady advances up the Kareilain peninsula. The Mannerheim Line did not block the slow steady progress of the Russian advance, and the battles to the north would have happened one way or another. It's fun to criticize my betters.
Winter War North of Lake Lagoda – Dec 1939
On December 14, 1939 The USSR was expelled from the League of Nations for its invasion of Finland, especially coming after all the other bad things it had done too.
By the end of 1939, north of Lagoda, and also in central Finland, the Russians fell short of their goals. They advanced in some spots, failed to advance in others, and actually were pushed back in one combat zone. But the war was to be decided to the south in Karelia and there it was a slow but steady story of USSR victory, although won at heavy cost.
The Russians were under-equipped and poorly led at the strategic level (until hero Timoshenko arrived later.) But they had the numbers and the will to use them. The Russians lost 200,000 killed in the war and the Finns only 25,000. Yet the Russians won the war. It was an Asian offense against a European defense. The Russian Army just kept coming while Finnish machine gunners kept mowing them down. Russian soldiers did not retreat. They were almost as afraid of their own political officers as they were of the enemy. Advance meant probable death, retreat meant certain death. This fear helped on the front lines but not in the rear where decisions important were made. Russian officers were afraid to the make the bold gambles sometimes needed to win battles for fear of Stalin’s unforgiving hatchet.
The main edge for the Russians was in tanks. The tank was still new to most Finnish troops in 1939 and terrorized many a soldier. The Russians had hundreds and the Finns had 25 or so. The Finnish Army was not well supplied with anti-tank weapons either. The now world famous ‘Molotov cocktail’ was invented by the Finns as an anti-Russian anti-tank weapon in a desperate situation. It was a bottle filled with kerosene and some other choice combustibles stuffed with an oily rag for a fuse. It went on to become the weapon of choice of political lunatics for decades (that and interrupting.) The Molotov cocktail set many Russian tanks on fire but it was rarely used in daylight. The daredevil with the Molo had to get close to the tank to make the firebomb work. The tank’s vision and infantry protection precluded that in daylight.
The Winter War was fought in sub-zero temperatures. In the central and northern theatres, there were battles fought with the temperatures 30 below zero in the daylight. Thousands of soldiers died from cold and their bodies were lost in the deep snow.
The Soviets used more than 800 military planes in the Winter War as opposed to less than 100 for the Finns. The Finns used antiquated planes for the most part. The Finns had ancient Fokker bi-planes versus modern Russian monoplane fighters.
The Soviets Sent Up Modern Planes to Meet the Fokkers
The above sample pic from the Finnish Air Force was a fighter as well as a reconnaissance aircraft. Note the swastika on the fuselage. This does not mean that the Finns were flying Nazi planes in the Winter War. The swastika was considered a good luck emblem for many flyers in Europe, and was especially in vogue in the First World War. Many British warplanes sported the swastika during and after World War One. I saw a swastika on an Asian food product packaging when I was in China in 2003 and I’m sure it had nothing to do with the Nazis. The founder of the Finnish Air Force in WWI adopted the crooked cross for the Finnish Air Force when Hitler was still in an anonymous patient in the hospital at Pasewalk. It was only a coincidence that the Nazis later actually did lend some of their planes to Finland.
The Winter War was the first to see strategic bombing, or an attempt at it. Long before Hitler bombed Rotterdam, Stalin bombed Helsinki. Stalin thought he could terrorize the Finns into surrender by bombing several of their cities. Little care was taken to concentrate on military targets. The bombing only solidified the morale of the Helsinkians.
As for this failure of strategic bombing, it wasn’t that the concept was flawed. A citizenry could be terrorized by the air, but it would take a few thousands times more clout to make it effective. Perhaps the 250 pound bombs did scare some Finns. Who knows? Anyway, Finn citizen morale became irrelevant when the Russian breakthrough came in 1940.
WWII IN 1940
WINTER WAR CONTINUES
On the first of January 1940 the Finns launched a major attack on two Russian divisions in the central part of Finland. The Red Army was trying to cut Finland in half at the belt. The effort climaxed in the Battle of Suomussalmi, and it resulted in a great victory for Finland.
The Russians were strung out in long columns over many miles on the only major road through the snow. The Finns with much smaller forces hit them on skis from all direction and created pockets of Russian troops, each out of communication with the other, and each feeling cold and surrounded. A couple of battalions of Finnish troops destroyed two Russian divisions completely. It was one of the most impressive Davey and Goliath upsets in military history. In one delightful scene thousands of Russians were fleeing across a frozen lake being chased and gunned down by Finns on skis.
South of Suomussalmi, still on the central front in the area of the town of Khumo, another Russian force invaded central Finland only to meet defeat in January 1940. This time the Soviets thought they had learned the lesson of Suomussalmi and sent in thousands of Russian troops into battle on Soviet skis. This time the were going to fight snow with snow. But the Red Army units were once again outmaneuvered, decimated and entrapped. These Soviet battalions only extricated themselves by way of the treaty that ended the war. The answer to the Russian failure at Khumo lies in part with inferior equipment. Russian rifles consistently failed to fire in the extreme cold, and as for Russian skis, they were of such poor quality that of the thousands captured from the dead and the prisoners, none were used by the Finns. They were burned for firewood.
But Finnish victories in the snowy wilderness could not compensate for the gradual deterioration of the Karelian front far to the south. Both theatres saw a lot of action, but Karelia was where the big booty was.
BRITAIN ALMOST GOES TO WAR WITH RUSSIA
Many British leaders, especially Churchill, wanted to send British troops to help the Finns fight the Russians. The proposal was for 100,000 British troops and 25,000 French troops to go over and mix it up with the Russian Army. Maybe this was the scrap with Communism that Churchill had always thought it had to come down to sooner or later. But the only way across to Finland was through two neutrals, Sweden and Norway. Neither would grant permission for transit so the plan came to nothing. They had their reasons. Sweden traded heavily with Germany, and Norway was afraid of a Nazi retaliatory invasion.
Some historians believe that the real reason that Churchill wanted to send British and French troops across Sweden and Norway was so that the French and English could take over the iron mines of Sweden, and that this was the real reason that Norway and Sweden denied passage. Sweden was sympathetic towards the Finns in this fight but was a major trading partner with Nazi Germany, supplying the Fuhrer with a steady and critically important supply of iron ore. It would have placed Sweden in a delicate position to let the British Army cross its territory.
Proposed Allied Intervention in Winter War
The dotted line is the route that the French and British troops were to take to fight the Soviet Army. It is politically significant in light of the future alliance between the UK and USSR, that army groups from the two countries almost engaged in full-scale combat in early 1940, and would have if the Swedes and Norwegians had done their part. How would the rest of the war have been different if a large battle had gone on for many months between Finland, the UK and France on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other? More incredibly, what would have happened if the France and the UK were fighting the Soviets in Finland at the time Hitler invaded Russia? The axiom that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ would have been put to the ultimate test. What a mess of political and military conflicts of interest would have presented itself on the northern front.
The Finns signed a humiliating armistice on March 12, 1940. Finland ceded all the territory that Russia had demanded before the shooting started, plus it wasn’t going to get any Russian land in return. That’s what the Finns get for being stubborn and not listening to reason.
The Finns lost plenty. It lost access to the sea in the North for at Petsamo. The Finns had built an Arctic Highway (marked in black) from The Arctic Sea to the Gulf of Bothnia. After the war that area at the top was taken by the USSR and Finland was squeezed out of Arctic ocean access forever, a pretty big loss from the Winter War. All of Karelia still belongs to Russia today.
When the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, the Finns did not sit by and watch as neutrals. They allied themselves with the Nazis. Finland attacked Russia while Russia was reeling from the Nazi invasion. Hitler even made a secret flight to Finland in the middle of the war to meet with the Finnish war leader Emil von Mannerheim, the man whose name was on the Karelian defensive line. The enemy of the Finns enemy was now their friend. When Russia won World War II Finland knew it had made the wrong call.
The ping-pong war saga of Finland is a sad one. She ran with the wrong crowd for some understandable reasons and ended up alone in the end, a victim of circumstances.
The Winter War gave Hitler a false confidence that the Soviet Army was now proven to be a paper tiger. If the Red Army could barely beat Finland after a protracted struggle full of setbacks, how could Germany had to feel confident that it could whip Russia in a full-scale war.
But Russia's setbacks included a bonus that Hitler did not consider. Russia had gained much practical military experience and had learned some valuable lessons while Hitler went to sleep on one of these lessons. In the Winter War it was Russian troops that were under-clothed for the harsh weather and froze to death. Later, when Germany fought Russia, it would be the Germans, not the Russians who forgot their mittens.
WELLS VISITS HITLER 1940
Hitler was so obviously planning to attack in the west that the entire world was alarmed. In early 1940 FDR sent an emissary to Berlin to meet with Hitler and sound out the possibility of a negotiated peace in Europe. FDR had never read Mein Kampf.
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles met with Hitler and at first was surprised at the Fuhrer’s normalcy, and his graceful speech and manner. Addie was charming while ranting about general philosophical things. But Hitler changed when Welles finally asked him bluntly if there was any chance there would be a negotiated settlement between Germany and Britain. A furious Fuhrer hit the roof and began yelling that he did not want this war. It had been forced upon him. “My life should have been spent constructing and not destroying!”
Then he added,
“I believe that German might is such as to make the triumph of Germany inevitable but if not, we will all go down together.”
Sumner Welles staggered out of Hitler’s office numbed. He stared out the limo window in a snowstorm thinking how FDR and the American people did not know what they were up against. Everything they feared about Hitler was true except for one important thing. It was even worse than feared. Once Welles reported back to FDR it was for sure that Franklin knew that he had to be %100 hawk from here on in even if he had to deceive the American public about it along the way.
The survival of Britain was crucial to the survival of America. FDR considered the idea of a German victory over both France and Britain to be completely unacceptable from a standpoint of national security. The threat of Hitler moving on to conquer the world was not too far from anyone’s mind but even if he did not attempt this, Germany in control all of Europe would be in a position to intimidate the United States politically, and could attempt to strangle the American economy in the short-term with considerable hope of success. The long-term implications of a Nazi controlled Europe were simply unacceptable.
HAP HAZARD – MARCH 12 1940
The United States was supposed to supply England and France with US- built combat planes. FDR had planely stated this after Munich.
But the head of the US Air Force was Hap Arnold and he didn;t like this plan by his boss. Arnold wanted to keep US advancements in warplane technology a US secret, and he wasn't interested in helping England. In other words he was a patriot.
So Arnold had been cleverly obstructing American planes plans to go ahead and sent England and France the best new warbirds.
In March 1940 FDR got win of what Arnold had been up to for the last couple of years and he called him into the Oval Office and gave him a brow-beating that HA surely remembered to his last day on earth. Hopkins recalls that,
“Franklin had rarely showed such anger to anyone. He told Arnold that if he so much as made an angry face at a Presidential order to pick up a piece of paper off the floor, he would find himself washing latrines on Guam. He told Arnold that he should be “thankful he was in wheelchair otherwise we would potentially settling this like men.” The people of Europe were threatened with fascist invasion and “my own commander in the air arm is making his own foreign policy behind my back. I cannot only fire you, I can tell it all the the New York Times and don't think I won't!”
Hap Arnold slithered out of the White House with smoke coming off his clothes. I found it delightful.”
Two weeks later, orders were in the works to send France, Norway and Britian a total of 2,898 fighters and bombers over the next 12 months. But the ink wasn't dry before it was too late to save the continent of Europe.
What if Arnold had taken the opposite approach and went out of his way to expedite the FDR declared policy after Munich to make a lot of warplanes and rush them to Europe.
My jury is out on Hap Arnold, one of the most important non-famous names of WWII to the non-scholar or military veteran. But he really might be one of the goats. Not only did Arnold go on to approve the bombing of Dresden and other rain-death war crimes, he also partially prevented the French from having twice the air power to resist the Nazis on May-day 1940.
I might come down on the side of defending him against those who saw Hap Arnold as a war criminal for bombing Germany, while making the war criminal charge against him for what he didn't do by obstructing.
THERE'S SOMETHING ROTTEN IN DENMARK - NAZIS
Before he attacked France, Hitler expanded his empire against smaller nations.
Denmark fell in one afternoon. Norway didn’t last long although it inflicted more casualties on the Germans than the passive Danes. France takes all the heat for copping out in the war but the French record is better than the Danes who never get called on it. A few Nazi paratroopers landed in downtown Copenhagen and it was all over.
Denmarkans waited until mid-1943 before they got around to serious resistance. Prior to 1943 they were not great Danes.
NORWAY
Many history books describe the invasion of Norway as though it was just another place Hitler wanted to swallow up on his road to glory but the story is more complicated.
Hitler did not wish to lose much of his armed force due to the conquest and occupation and of Norway, but it had come to his attention that the British were planning on establishing bases there. Churchill had convinced the British government that they should occupy key points on the Norwegian coast (with or without Norwegian permission) from which Britain could be better defended and Germany better harassed. Hitler decided that he had to beat the British to the punch and many of his generals concurred. The Germans invaded Norway to prevent it from being strategically occupied by the British.
After the Nazis occupied parts of Norway, the west reacted. British and French troops landed on several spots in Norway. They were riding high in April, thinking they could recapture Trondheim and Narvik. But they were shot down in May, the entire Allied mission being an abject failure.
Behind the lines a native Norwegian named Vikdun Quisling helped the German invaders. He was a member of the NNP, the Norwegian Nazi Party. Hoping to take Norway without a fight, they way they had taken Austria, the Nazis demanded that Quisling be elevated to Prime Minister, the way Seyss Inquart had been installed in Austria. Then Quisling could invite the Nazis in like Seyss Inquart had done. But the King of Norway was no yellow chump like his brother, the King of Denmark. Norway would fight. Not that well, but Norway would fight.
Quisling did become the nominal civil ruler of Norway after the Germans won the quick war. Quisling became one of the most hated men in the world for his national disloyalty and vile opportunism. His deed was so vile that the name Quisling was given a small g and is in the English dictionary today meaning a person who betrays his country by taking up with the invader. Many Iraqi quislings are working with the American occupational forces in Iraq today.
THE NAZI WAR PLAN
Hitler so far had conquered many weak countries one at a time, but that didn't mean his Nazi hoards could easily overrun France backed by Britain. Few analysts in the United States or anywhere else for that matter expected France to fall in one month. They thought that France could lose, but if it did it would be only after a long World War I struggle of many months at the very least. After all, this was France, with its great military history and tradition, backed up by the armies of the UK and the low countries too. 135 divisions of troops.
Hitler had wanted to attack France in the late fall of 1939, just after swallowing Poland. His generals, combined with especially bad weather convinced him to postpone. The generals tried to explain to him that the army and air force needed time to reorganize and replace losses effectively.
The weather did more of the talking than the generals. As things turned out, Hitler was glad he waited. The 1939 plan of attack (“Plan Orange”) had the thrust through the Ardennes as a diversionary attack while the bulk of his armies would march to the sea and try to force a decisive battle with the Allied forces. Many German Generals liked the plan okay, but felt that the winning battle might take up to two years of old-fashioned slugging warfare. By the spring of 1940 the assigned roles in the attack plan were reversed. The attack in the north was large but essentially diversionary. It was the central attack through the Ardennes that would be the axis for Axis German operations.
One other reason that the Nazis dropped the 1939 war plan with the Ardennes as the large feint was that a German officer with the plan in his pocket was forced to make an emergency landing in Belgium on January 9, 1940. The Belgians frisked him and captured the plans. The orange strategy was compromised permanently. Hitler was already beginning to drop the idea of the 1939 plan. On January 16th he officially dropped “Plan Orange.”
The new plan to kill France was called “Operation Yellow.”
By May 1 1940 was fairly obvious to the world that Hitler was going to attack France. Everyone knew that World War One would soon pick up where it had left off. Hitler attacked as expected. As expected he repeated the old Schleiffen plan to swing through neutral Holland and Belgium. But it was combined with the surprise attack in force through the Ardennes.
Between the wars, the British and French begged Belgium and Holland to allow them to help build their up national defenses, especially defensive fortifications. But Belgium and Holland believed that Hitler would respect their neutrality and that neutrality was better protection than prickly hostility. The diked duo felt that allowing the Brits to come in and build forts all over their countries would be provocative and might invite an invasion by Germany more than deter it.
Every few years Hitler gave very formal assurances that he would never violate, and would always respect, the sacred neutrality of Belgium and Holland. In 1937 Adolph gave his formal word of honor that not only was he not going to attack Holland or Belgium, if someone else attacked them he would come to their defense! Belgium and Holland took him seriously, out of wishful thinking, or Low stupidity.
Both nations would pay a heavy price for this naivete.
Since Belgium would not build up its defense, another plan had to be devised by France to protect itself from the Belgian trap door. France wasn't about to extend the Maginot fort system the length of its frontier with Belgium. Yet if Germany won a quick victory in Belgium, it could find itself with an undefended opening into the heart of France outflanking the Maginot Line.
The idea was that the Meuse river and a couple of other geographical markers in the center of Belgium was a better place to try and stop the Germans than at the Belgian-French border. France would advance into Belgium and defend both countries from central Belgium.
This plan was in effect before the war started. The British and French planned to rush into the western half of Belgium, but only if and when the Germans had already invaded from the east. At that point they would violate Belgian sovereignty with the approval of the Belgian King. But even if the BK refused right of transit, the British and French would probably advance anyway. Their national survival was at stake.
When Hitler attacked Poland the British and French asked Belgium if they could occupy forward positions in Belgium. But Belgium wanted to demonstrate strict neutrality and said no, even going so far as to station as many divisions of the Belgian army on the French border as on the German, as if France was an equal threat!
The Germans knew of the Allied plan to race into Belgium to meet the German attack at a more foreward position along the Dyle and Meuse Rivers. The new German plan incorporated the Allied plan into its own. Two German Armies would attack Holland and Belgium to draw the Allies into Belgium as the Allies planned. Now, with the Allied Armies committed ahead of its lines of communication, the Germans main thrust through the Ardennes would seal off a great Allied Corps. If Guderian's Panzer Groups could crash the Ardennes force and race to the sea, it would be the jackpot. The Allied Northern Armies would be trapped. This is what happened.
If the Allied Armies had waited back at the fortified Franco-Belgian border, where it was when the battle started, then that force could retreat in orderly fashion and become stronger as its perimeter shrank and it fell in with other retreating French armies. By lunging foreward (the Gamelin plan), the Allies lost the chess game in the battle of France.
THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS NOT ALWAYS A STRAIGHT MAGINOT LINE
The Maginot Line was a series of excellent forts manned at hills by strong French Army units with modern guns and elaborate tunnels. ML was the pride of France. Maginot began near the Swiss border and continued north to the Ardennes Forest. Here is stopped for a bit, on the presumption that the Ardennes was impassible for an armored division.
The Ardennes was indeed impassible during World War One. France felt that it did not have to spend a fortune on that sector of the line. It was a fatal error. North of the Ardennes, the Maginot forts continued to the point where Belgium, France and Germany come together.
There were three major things wrong with the Maginot Line. The first is the hole in the line at the Ardennes, a military blunder. Warfare was developing faster than the stodgy military scientists could digest. Few in the west realized the ability of a modern tank division to crash through a forest.
The second thing was that it prevented France from taking the offense. When Hitler was busy conquering Poland, France cold have and should have attacked Germany from the west. Hitler could not have stopped a French attack in the middle of September 1939.
But an offensive by the French would leave the French without its land-locked heavy artillery. They couldn't take the Maginot line with them. ML's strength was its weakness. Its impregnability deprived it of maneuverability.
The third huge problem for the Maginot line was related to the second. In the event of a German breakthrough at any one point in the line, the entire line becomes completely negated as a strategic asset. The Maginot Line couldn't fall back any more than it could attack. ML was a good deterrent in peacetime, but rather useless once a war broke out, unless the entire 1,000 mile line held and stalemated indefinitely. If the Germans could penetrate the Ardennes and then cross the Meuse with armor then the Maginot Line could even be threatened from the rear and its garrisons would have to split the scene in chaotic panic, as they ultimately did.
Much has been made of the military genius involved in proving the experts wrong on the matter of the impassible Ardennes. Less is made of getting armor across the Muese, but that was considered almost as impossible as getting Panzer divisions through the Ardennes. There were two feats of Germanic military excellence in the battle of France. Meuse was number two. The Frogs fought hard at the Meuse but lost, and the Krauts bridge set up a bridge over troubled waters in less than two days. German tanks began rolling over the Meuse and France was mincemeat.
Here was where the German Army made its main strategic Bltizkreig. German armored units made high-speed attacks, running far ahead of their logistical support and defying traditional ideas about mechanized warfare.
FRENCH PLAYBILL
A look now at the main actors for France in the upcoming drama. This is easier than trying to keep track of them as they are introduced to the action.
Le Brun – Pepe Le Brun is the President of France but he was a PINO, a President in name only. His name comes up here and there but Le Brun is not at the center of the decision making process. The President of the French Republic serves a single term of seven years, but the real power lies with the Premier and the Parliament. The French feared Bonapartism, so they curbed the powers of their President to a fault.
Reynaud – Paul Reynaud is the acting Premier of France as it falls to the hoards of Huns. He is a staunch patriot from one end of the crisis to the other, always in favor of resistance. It was he and De Gaulle against the Parisian defeatists at crunch time. Reynaud comes out of this story smelling like roses.
De Gaulle – Charles de Gaulle is the most famous of all the actors, but at the time he was a relatively unknown Undersecretary for War. De Gaulle did not want France to surrender to the Germans and opposed the Vichy regime. He was consistent and resolute. By the end of the war he was the hero and savior of France. Chuck went on to lead France for two decades after the war, managing to annoy and irritate several post-war US Presidents. He never managed to get himself liked by anybody outside of France. It's easy for a Yank to dislike De Gaulle, (Popeye Doyle said that “I'd rather be a lamp-post in New York than the President of France,”) but if I were Frenchman, De Gaulle would be “my main man!”
Gamelin – General Gamelin was in charge of the French General staff until replaced when the sky began to fall. He gets a lot of the blame for the poor military strategy that led to German victory in the west.
Weygand – General Weygand (pronounced ve-gah) was a conservative patriotic general of France who turned defeatist in the end. GW opposed the forming of a government in exile. As head of the Army,
Weygand was no defeatist until France was clearly defeated. The very fact that in the beginning of the Battle for France he was the defiant optimist against all reports, lent more terror to his telling the French leaders holed up at the Chateau de Cangne that it's curtains. General Weygan's opinions had as much political clout as the Premier Reynaud, and this was a problem as Weygand thought it should be that way and Reynaud did not. Weygand's decisions counted more than those of the President of France, LeBrun.
Weygand later blamed the British for the defeat of France in 1940, a cheap and untenable stand.
Max Weygand was tried after the war as a traitor and was acquitted.
Petain – Marshall Petain (pronounced Pay-tuh) is the villain of Vichy. He was such an illustrious military hero to France from his World War One days, that when he came out actively in favor of making a deal with the Nazis, it meant a lot.
Petain was tried after the war as a traitor.
Petain didn't hate the Nazis all that much because he considered them by far the lesser of two evils compared to the threat of communism. Petain didn't like the idea of surrendering to the Germans but at least with a negotiated deal, the French Army would remain intact to maintain internal order and prevent a repeat of the Commune of 1871 when military defeat led to left-wing revolution in the streets.
Pierre Laval – This guy was Time magazine's 'man of the year' in 1931 and was executed after the war as a traitor to France. Laval was Prime Minister of France several times before the war. When Marshall Petain formed a government in search of an Armistice in June 1940, Laval was named the new Foreign Secretary. He collaborated with the Nazis throughout the war and was a big name in the Vichy Government.
Darlan – Admiral Darlan was in charge of the French Navy, a big prize in the Battle for France.
The French Army may have been behind the times in technical quality, but the French Navy was not.
Darlan would collaborate with the Vichy regime. AD's relations with the United States over the next two years would be very complicated and controversial. As the Germans overran France, the status of the captured French Navy was a grave concern of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. A combination of the German, Italian and French Navy might tip the balance of sea power against Britain for the first time in 260 years, and at the worst possible moment in 260 years.
Leon Blum – Socialist leader between the wars, Blum was not in charge when the Nazis invaded, but he was arrested by the Vichy regime and spent the war years in prison. No, he is not related to John Blum who did a lot of fighting in the National Hockey League.
STRATEGY – TANKS A LOT
It would take only six weeks to defeat France. The Germans concentrated all their firepower on a handful of key spots. The Germans sought out French forces, rather than French land. The breakthroughs were breathtaking. Blitzkreig worked again. This opponent was not the Polish army. This wasn’t supposed to happen in the west.
The Germans were stealing the ideas of an English military historian, Basil Liddell Hart, who had preached this lightning warfare to his own England. But the home audience would not listen and apply. Hitler did.
The Germans made major breakthroughs at breakneck speed through Belgium and northern France. The Germans were soon behind the defenses of the French as well as in front of it, causing panic and retreat.
On paper, the Germans had some advantages, but few in the west thought it was enough to win, and certainly not enough advantage to win fast.
The French/British/Belgian/Dutch army was a collective equal in numbers (135 divisions) and had roughly equal artillery power. But for the French we include in artillery power of the impenetrable and immovable Maginot Line.
I have read so many conflicting accounts and opinions about relative tank strength and qualities between the two opposing forces that I don't know what to believe anymore. The traditional belief is that the Germans had superior tanks. The revisionist opinion is that in fact, the Allied tanks, especially the French, were superior to the German.
Other analysts split the difference. They say that the French and British had superior guns attached to inferior tanks. In any case one thing is certain. The Germans did not have a numerical superiority in tanks.
The French and British had just as many tanks as the Germans, and their tanks generally had better armor than the Germans. That is, the armor plating protecting the French tanks was thicker and stronger than the armor protecting the German tanks.
German tanks were more modern and fast. The newest German tank the Mark IV had better guns with better pop and accuracy. But these were a minority of the German tanks. The vast majority of German tanks were very old Mark I and Mark II's. The Mark I's had only two machine guns for firepower. The Mark II's had one machine gun and one 20 millimeter cannon in the turret. Compare these to the French B1's with a 75 millimeter gun and a 47 millimeter anti-tank gun. The French had more than 300 of these.
The German tank advantage was in training, morale, deployment, and strategy. The crews were high on life. War isn't so bad when you're smacking down everything in your path. Germans captured in these early years of the war were almost universally arrogant and defiant about the coming German victory. The innocent German soldier who hated the Nazis and wanted no part of this fight was largely invented after the war by Germans who understood expedience.
The German tanks beat the French by always attacking with all guns blazing, even without definite targets in sight. This caused retreat, panic, and intimidation. 'The Germans must have us in their sights otherwise they wouldn't be firing. Let's get out of here!'
Most importantly, the French and British tanks were spread out evenly (and thinly) across the length of the continent, while the German tanks were bunched in large groups at key attack points. The implications of this difference should be obvious.
Because the French and British tanks were almost always in retreat, the inferior armor of the German tanks never entered in as a factor.
The best German tanks were the Mark III and aforementioned Mark IV, plus two model T's made in Czechoslovakia. These Czech 38-T's had the best tank guns on the planet and could run down the autobahn at 27 mph (a little faster than the Marks.) On the downside, a kid with a slingshot could penetrate the 38-T's paper thin armor.
PLANE SPEAKING
Again, what is a student supposed to believe when ten different books tell me ten different things? If we are to believe Churchill, the British Hurricanes shot down everything they even got close to. They so outclassed the ME-109 that if only there were a hundred more on hand, the battle would have turned the other way.
If we believe Cajjus Bekker, the Luftwaffe was always outnumbered but did a fantastic job in spite of terrible odds.
If we are to believe Basil Liddell Hart, and several other sources too, the Luftwaffe had a 4,000 to 2,000 advantage in the air at all times.
The RAF Hurricanes fought well enough but it made little difference in the face of such overwhelming odds. The ME 109's were a match for the Hurricanes, but the Germans had a devastating advantage in medium fighter-bombers and dive bombers. The Stuka dive bomber was slow and vulnerable, but the Allies had nothing to match it, and in tactical ground support, it played a decisive role in the Nazi victory in the west.
But William L. Shirer seems to have done more homework on this subject than anyone else and he tells a different story. He concludes, after studying the research of other serious European scholars and participants of importance, that the situation in the air was one of basic equality, at least in numbers. Both sides had approximately 3,000 warplanes to work with. The Allies had an advantage in fighter aircraft, both in numbers and quality – the French fighters being grossly underrated by history – while the Germans had a clear advantage overall in bombers. The Luftwaffe bombers were light and medium all - neither side possessing or deploying heavy (four-engine) bombers at this time.
So why was it that all the French air commanders contradicted this evidence by insisting during post-war investigations that at no time did they have more than 500 warplanes on the Northern front? Apparently the French Air Force was foolishly deployed in scattered spots all over France. While France fought for its life, French fighters and bombers sat idly at airports in a dozen locations, playing protection reserve force, when soon there would be no nation left to protect.
But the myth persists that the French were up against overwhelming numbers. Historian Michael S. Byrd writes of the battle for France that “The French Air Force was obsolescent and small.” What a byrd-brain.
COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN
One of the most important reasons for the Allied disaster in the west was the poor communications system of the good guys and the very good communications system of the bad guys. The French had not kept up with the developments in communications technology between the wars and it cost them dearly in 1940.
Telephone lines were in bad shape once the fighting started, and a French General had the same chance of getting a call through as a Paris hobo at a phone booth. Messages from the high command generally had to be sent by, are you ready for this? ... Bicycle! That's right. And the couriers were often run off the road by peasant carts, cars, or military vehicles with less important missions than the guy on the bike. One commander decided to resort to carrier pigeon and was told that the only one they had left had flown off! I kid you not. It was common for crucial orders to the front line from the CP (command post) to take two days. T-w-o .... d-a-y-s.
You want to know why France fell? T-w-o ... d-a-y-s.
This helps explain why more than half the French Air Force was never deployed in active combat areas.
Even at the highest level, communications in the French army were worse than pathetic. CIC General Gamelin, every time he wanted to speak with his operational commander General Georges, had to drive 35 miles to see him in person!
The Germans communications system on the other hand operated on the cutting edge of modern technology. Every big Panzer tank was equipped with a two way radio. By todays standards, the two-way radio is a primitive toy that a child wouldn't accept as a gift, but in 1940 it was big time stuff.
The entire concept of new age tank warfare, discussed by military eggheads between the wars, and tried for the first time by the Nazis, could never have worked without the two-way radio. For the first time in warfare, verbal orders could be sent in to men and tanks in the hottest spots in battle from CP's way behind the line.
Panzer commanders controlled their tank battalions in maintained groups like they were items in a mastered video game, while French Hotchkiss and Souma tanks, fine fighting machines if properly managed, were wandering around the battlefield as hapless individuals with no battle plan.
The French communications system was Indian smoke signals versus German high technology. This factor was at least as important as any other in the big story.
HITLER'S PLAN
It's painful to admit it, but Hitler as a military tactician deserves much of the credit for the stunning victory in the Battle of France. Historians hesitate to say this, but Hitler's generals all confirm it, even those who later criticized his other war moves. Both Keitel and Rommel state clearly that the entire invasion plan for the west, down to the brigade level and on all fronts was Hitler's individual plan. It was all his idea and the Generals either liked it and went along or disliked it and went along. But they all of course went along.
Hitler's drastic defeat of France and the low countries was the greatest military victory of all time according to several historians. It certainly was up to that time. The re-conquest of Europe in 1944-5 perhaps topped the record, but that was done sluggishly on a long careful drawn up front with the clearly superior force using attrition more than breakthroughs to win the war. That front in 1944 was deliberately devoid of strategic spearheads outracing the mass of Army. That front played it safe.
Hitler and the Nazis in 1940 took an underdog army with only weak countries in its bag, and attacked a great power backed by another great power plus two small countries and threw the four of them out of the ring before the first round bell sounded.
WEEK ONE – THE FALL OF HOLLAND
LOWLIFE ATTACK ON THE LOW COUNTRIES MAY 10 1940
The headline news of May 9 in Europe was the impending changing of leadership in Great Britian. Nev Chamberlain was the whipping boy for all the failures up to this point, and a vote of confidence in him in Parliament was obviously going to go against him. On the morning of May 10, news flashed across the world that the new Prime Minister was Winston Churchill. But that wasn't the lead story.
The lead story of May 10 was that Guderian, Rommel and company had attacked France, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg simultaneously. At least one historians suggests that the UK reacted slowly to the invasion of the West because it was “preoccupied” with the change of Prime Ministers. I find that hard to believe.
NAZI DUTCH MASTERS
The Germans used paratroopers extensively in the attack on Holland. It's raining men. They were very effective in preventing the defensive demolition of certain bridges and dykes and in securing the control of select airfields.
Holland lasted less than one week. The Belgians certainly made a better show of things than the Dutch.
The Nazis informed Holland at dawn on May 10 than England and France was about to invade them, so the Germans were going to invade them instead to protect them from the Nazis.
The initial assault came by parachute, the first time in history that a major battle was decided by killers falling out of the sky. The small Dutch Air Force was no match for the Luftwaffe even if it had got off the ground, which it didn't. The Stukas and Me-109's shot the DAF to pieces on the ground at their locations in western Holland.
Paratroopers then landed on these airfields, secured them, and radioed the Luftwaffe to come land at will. More parachute lizards landed near the important Kevin Maas River. Once the Germans took the Kevin Maas, Holland was cut off from its southern half. All this happened on day one. By 3 p.m. on day one the Nazis were shooting bullets into the windows of the Hague. Things were not looking good for Holland.
But the Dutch had a plan for such a situation. It would open the dykes and flood eastern Holland. The invaders would be destroyed in the man-made tsunami. The dykes opened and the waters rushed in, but very few Germans drowned, and the German advanced was only stalled a little. So much for the dykes.
The Dutch Army retreated. A French corps under General Giraud marched north to rescue the Dutch but the Luftwaffe and the Wermacht slapped them back whence they'd came. The dykes did more to help the Dutch than Giraud's rescue force, and the dykes did damn little. The main German ground force linked up with the advance paratroop force on May 12. The Dutch Army beat retreat to the west and Queen Wilhemina caught the next plane to London, to “rule” in exile for the next five years.
On May 14 the Dutch were negotiating the terms of surrender when the Luftwaffe appeared in large numbers over Rotterdam and began indiscriminate bombing, setting the city on fire. The destruction of Rotterdam became a battle cry for the Allies for the rest of WWII. The Dutch officially surrendered while Rotterdam burned. The rotten damn Nazis may have gained something by destroying Rotterdam, I have no idea what it was, but they lost a great deal by angering the world and making the war a moral crusade, recognized as such by the tiniest countries in the most distant parts of the globe, as opposed to simple selfish nationalist warfare for all parties.
During and after the war, the argument went on about who started “terror bombing.” The Germans and post-war lefties say the Allies were the demons of WWII for what they did to Dresden, Hiroshima, a hundred other cities in Germany and Japan. The other side argues, what about Rotterdam and Guernica (which the fascists bombed for terror purposes alone in the Spanish Civil War) ? Who wrote the new rule book? Surely I don't have to bother to say which side I'm on in this historic quibble.
BELGIUM
The defense of Belgium was centered on certain obstacles and fortresses that had put up a hell of a fight in World War One, and were expected to do the same job in World War II. But these weren't the Kaiser's Huns. The Nazis had studied war between the wars while the west had generally decided that they weren't gonna study war no more. One side had a big advantage in these two approaches if a war happened.
The two main Belgium blockers were the Albert Canal, and fortress Eban Emael, which stood guard over it. The Allies didn't think that these two could hold out forever in the face of the might of the German armed forces, but they thought they could hold out for a couple of weeks at least. In that breathing spell, the Allied Gamelin plan to move up into Belgium and establish a forward position on the Dyle River could be implemented with excellence. If these two did not hold, then the divisions moving forward for the Gamelin plan would not have time to dig in. They could make it to the place where they were supposed to dig in, but they wouldn't be able to dig in and the whole idea would collapse. The forward position would be un-fortified and far more disastrously vulnerable that the original line at the Franco-Belgian border.
The guns at Fort Emael overlooked the key points in the center of the Albert Canal. Emael was thought to be the toughest spot to take in all of Europe. But it fell like a scarecrow in a hurricane, not because it was weak, but because it had an achilles heel, and a heel which, sadly again, Adolph Hitler alone appreciated.
Fort E had plenty of firepower against outside attack, but there were no contingency plans from an internal attack. In studying the fort between the wars, Hitler correctly concluded that if a parachute drop could land a small force of armed commandos on the roof, the entire fort would be vulnerable to capture in short order, its guns and protective walls both rendered irrelevant. The Nazis captured Emael in 1940 like the Americans captured Osama in 2011.
If the Germans could seize Fort Ebam and, by proxy, the Albert Canal, the road to the conquest of Holland and Belgium would be completely opened. The operation proposed by Hitler was called “Prince Albert in a Packet.” The key weapon was not Panzer Tanks or Stuka dive bombers, but rather the peaceful glider, and here the restrictions placed by the victorious allies after World War One actually played into Hitler's diabolical hands.
The Luftwaffe was limited by the victor's treaty to only a handful of warplanes, so there was only one type of plane the Germans could legally produce in large numbers before Hitler defied the League of Nations and the treaty of Versailles later on. That plane was the glider, a harmless, silent, motor-less aircraft that I want a ride on in western Massachusetts for Christmas next year (so that I will know what it sounds like to have one hour in my life without a false car alarm, back-up beeper or leafblower in my ear.). The Allies did not build more than a handful of gliders after World War One, but the Germans built an impressive fleet.
It helped Hitler that during the construction of Fort Eban Emael, a time of “peace,” German contractors worked there. The fox was helping to build the henhouse and was taking the blueprints back to Germany after the job was completed. The construction and destruction of FEE were progressing together as the fort shaped up.
At dawn of May 10 a fleet of gliders pulled by JU-88's quietly dropped 80 German paratroopers onto the roof of Ebam Emael. Before the 800 defenders had started to make their morning coffee they were forced to surrender at rifle-point. The Aryan invaders spiked the guns of Emael and blew them up with special explosives. Fort Ebban Emael, the gatekeeper of the Gamelin plan of defense dropped out of the war before the first artillery duel woke up the first Flemish peasant.
ARDENNES OFFENSIVE BEGINS
A few hours after the paratroopers seized Fort Emael the Nazis attacked in force (some might argue that the Wermacht were not “Nazis” but not I) in the Ardennes. In two days they had reached the Meuse River. During that time, they had to travel on winding roads and were very vulnerable to air attack. A few selective air ops could have bogged down the Panzer divisions for two weeks. But the Allies thought that the Ardennes was the feint and the real attack was coming upon Holland.
French air attacks concentrated on the Germans attacking the low countries while the real might of the Germans was left unmolested as it moved quickly through the Ardennes.
The French sent two divisions into the Ardennes from the Meuse as a reconnaissance in force. For more than 24 hours they made no contact with the enemy, but when they finally did they were beaten back badly and reported that this is no feint. But General Georges still believed that the real German attack was in the North. He was wrong and France would pay.
Gamelin, Georges and company were not especially worried about a Nazi thrust through the Ardennes for more reason than the allegedly impenetrable Ardennes. They also thought that the Meuse River was virtually un-crossable as long as they blew up all the bridges which (contrary to a popular failure to do so rumor throughout the war) they successfully did. On top of that the little city of Sedan was well garrisoned and there were plenty of anti-tank obstacles, pillboxes, and natural cliff barriers along the River to completely discourage any major tank crossings. Most of all, they were unanimous in the belief that the German attack in the Sedan area, now fully reported, was a feint in force.
It was easy to think that the attack on Holland was the real deal because it was as large a feint in force as had ever been employed in history, and until January 1940, it was supposed to be the main attack. They had already seen the plans from that captured pilot.
From May 10-12 the Germans moved through the forest and come out the other side to the beautiful Meuse River. Across the River the French divisions had hardly been reinforced over these 48 critical hours, even though French air reconnaissance had spotted huge formations of German machines rolling through the hills with headlights on. When the French recon pilots landed and reported what they saw, the info was never passed on to higher authorities.
The French were also certain that German tanks could never cross the Meuse unless they took out the French battalions at the water's edge on the other side. As long as these units held their ground, the Germans could never set up pontoon bridges to get the Marks across. But the French turned poodle under the threat of the German shepherd.
SEDAN
For such a small place, Sedan (pronounced c'e -duh') had already earned itself a prominent place in French military history, and it wasn't good. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 the Germans had won the decisive battle at Sedan. In WWI the Germans crashed through the French lines at Sedan on their way to threatening Paris. Now the Nazis were going to drive the dark Sedan home one more time.
The garrison at Sedan fled at the sound of the first cannon. These were not the best troops in all of France to begin with. Between-war planners had not figured on any significant attack through the Ardennes, so the grade B reservist divisions were deployed where the best divisions were needed most. These were the older men who never expected to see combat in their wildest senile dreams. They were poorly trained, and no more interested in fighting to the death than I am right now at the age of 56, which is not at all.
Along the Meuse both north and south of Sedan there were some decent French divisions, and if they had held their ground it would have been most difficult for the Panzers to get across. The French high command was still confident their forces could stop the Germans, even after the major strength of the Nazi attack was becoming clear to all. There were military and natural obstacles they could exploit, provided that the defenders showed some spirit.
The Germans wore down these French strong points not with tactics or superior firepower, but essentially with terror. The chief instrument of this terror was the Stuka dive bomber, a model of which I built as a boy, with its ugly crooked wings possessing a strange beauty.
The Stukas kept up a non-stop aerial attack on key French positions above and below Sedan on the 12th and 13th. The actual damage they wrought was not decisive, but their screeching siren as they dropped bombs terrorized and neutralized the Frenchmen. The French garrisons needed to keep their guns firing to keep the Nazis on the east side of the Meuse. The Pierres had more cards in their hand than they realized. But they got psyched out by the Stukas, a plane that later on would be exposed as such a clumsy and weak machine that it couldn't beat John Denver in a dogfight. But to the French troops in 1940 (as with the Poles in 1939) the Stuka might as well have been the F-22 Raptor. The French men dropped down in fear and prayed for the nightmare to end. The Stukas didn't destroy the French guns, but rather they convinced the French soldiers to stop using them for several hours at a pop a time during which the Nazis made their move on the Meuse.
As for Allied air support, it was the same old story. The French high command thought that if they called in air support they would be falling into the German trap. They thought that the Nazi attack along the Meuse was a ruse to siphon off Allied strength from the real front in the north. And you know by now that the opposite was the case. It was a fatal error. It was the fatal error.
HURRICANES CAN'T STOP THE HURRICANE
Over the entire course of the “six weeks war,” the French repeatedly asked (more like begged) the British for more first-rate Hurricane fighter planes. The RAF at first sent four squadrons (about 30 planes to a squadron.) Churchill then had to go to the Parliament to persuade it to authorize the sending of six more squadrons.
The Brits would have liked to send over every available Hurricane, but were afraid that if they lost too many fighters in France, there wouldn't be enough left over to protect Britain. The RAF estimated that it needed at least 25 squadrons for home defense if the nation wanted to surely survive. After that the German bombers might be able to put British aircraft factories out of business, and if that happened the Battle of Britian would be lost.
Great Britian always kept more than half of the RAF safe at home and this caused much bitterness during and after the fall of France. Weygand claimed that the RAF could have saved France, but I doubt it. It might have led to the fall of both France and Britain, which would have meant that Britian never could have returned to help restore France in 1944.
The English Spitfire fighter, much better than the pretty good Hurricane, was only beginning to come on line. The Spitfire, one beautiful plane, was the first Allied plane to match the Me-109 in quality but it had months to go before it made a statement in quantity.
WEEK TWO (WEAK CHAPTER)
The second week of the war for France, May 17-24, was even worse than the first. The Wermacht cut off the Northern Allied Army of combined French, British, Dutch and Belgian troops from the rest of the French Army.
CHURCHILL PLAYS THE SHAMROCK CARD 5-40
On May 15 1940 with the Battle for France in the balance, Churchill sent Roosevelt a long telegram pleading for help. Win wanted to win American support above and beyond what the American people would have supported.
Churchill knew how important the Irish-American voting block was to FDR so he tried to play his green card. Churchill warned Roosevelt that Britain had good intelligence that any day now the Germans were going to make large parachute drops all over Ireland. We can only wonder if he actually believed this, and wonder also if there was ever any real intelligence to suggest this.
Winston was probably pulling FDR's bum leg. He firstly wanted the US to lend Britian 50 old destroyers (this would come a bit later.) Churchill had another creative suggestion. PMWC heartily suggested that the US Navy make a “visit” to Ireland in strength. All the Yanks had to do was take a pleasure holiday to a couple of port cities in Ireland and stay a week or two. This would send the Germans a clear message to keep their blackshirts off the Irish green.
This tactic had worked well in the days of McKinley when Bill sent the Great White Fleet around the world on a pleasure cruise that advertised American Naval strength in the process. But Nazi Germany was not so easily scared, and The United States wasn't going to do it anyway.
It was a good try by Churchill in theory. But the several million Irish-Americans for the most part hated Britain and were cheerfully against intervention. And they always registered to vote in key cities in key battleground states. FDR didn't want to play with green matches.
If FDR had sent the Navy to Ireland at Churchill's request it would have called off any German invasion plans for Ireland. But since there were probably no such plans, Churchill was really just trying to trick the United States, through the race card, into making a powerful interventionist gesture. If anything Churchill should have welcomed the parachute drop on Ireland he was warning of. It would have turned the Irish-Americans on a shilling, and led to a hue and cry between beer burps for US intervention.
Germany did launch a massive air raid on Belfast in 1941 causing a catastrophe, but attempted no invasion-oriented parachute drops.
THE GALL OF SOME PEOPLE
The tall fellow with the prissy air was only a colonel, but early in 1940 he was given command of the 4th French armored division. It was a new division and just as it began to take shape the Germans attacked. Charles de Gaulle was ordered to use the 4th to try to defend Paris after the Northern Armies were cut off by the Nazi huns.
When Poland fell, De Gaulle was brought briefly into the French cabinet and was appalled by the prevalent appeasement mentality. Except for Reynaud, the ministers seemed to be focused only on how to negotiate an end to this stupid war, not with how to defeat the Nazi invaders. For example, during the “sitzkreig” some French leaders proposed making an offer to Mussolini of some of French colonial territory in North Africa if Italy would sign a non-aggression pact with France. They righty feared that if Germany got around to attacking France Italy would pile on.
No matter how stubborn, selfish, obdurate, pompous, difficult, diffident, imperial, conceited, and uncooperative De Gaulle may have been in his dealings with the USA from 1940 to 1970, he was undeniably one of the only French leaders who bravely stood up to the Nazis when the chips were down. Charlie D stood even taller than he appears in his photos. Anyone can be a nice guy. The measure of a person is how they behave in a crisis.
De Gaulle's 4th Armored led one of the few French counterattacks in the losing battle for France, although, sigh, as usual, at least one historian says it is bunk. Even if the battle performance of De Gaulle is a myth, his political performance during the spring fall of France is above reproach.
A secret Nazi plenipotentiary approached De Gaulle at one point seeking an armistice and De Gaulle yelled at him, “fiche moi la pais!” That means, in essence, 'get the hell out of my face,' and it was the one phrase I made sure I had memorized when I visited France for the first time back in 1999. Don't you hate it when English writers drop untranslated French phrases, showing off the fact that they are bilingual? I met a pretty woman on a train in Boston who said she was from France. We had a nice chat and I told her I only knew a few phrases in French. She asked me to try one out on her to see if my pronunciation was correct. I said, “fiche moi la pais,” and she punched me in the arm.
CHURCHILL SHUTTLE
Churchill flew to France several times during the Battle of France. The PM and Lord of the Admiralty met with French leaders while government documents burned in bonfires out in the French courtyards.
At one key meting the French political brass all stood around at a conference table. No one would sit. France was losing the war.
Churchill tried to stiffen the resolve of the defeatist and dejected French leaders. He told them to stand and “fight like men and stop these Huns!” They just looked at him and said, “You don't get it do you? It's over. We lost.”
Churchill told them he could not accept defeat. So what if the Germans have crashed through the Ardennes and are making headway on the Northern Front and threatening to cut off several Allied Armies there. We had all been through this before in World War One. Just send the reserves into the spots where the wall had sprang a leak and we can get on with another long struggle like World War One. When it was pointed out that the French Army had no strategic reserve, Churchill staggered to a seat, the first man to sit down in almost two hours. He couldn't believe it. What military staff plan is drawn up without a mobile strategic reserve to counter-attack just as the other side's breakthrough begins to slow down? It was fundamental in Army games all over the world. Where was the concept of strategic reserve in French war planning?
Weygand and Gamelin both claimed after the war that Churchill was exaggerating French military incompetence. What they claim they really said was “Our reserves are gone. They have been destroyed.” It makes sense. Are we really supposed to believe that Churchill was the only super military brain, and that the French general staff had not the slightest concept of the need for strategic reserves? Nevertheless, most history books that tell the story in any detail include the probably inaccurate Churchill version. As Voltaire said, “History is fables agreed upon.”
So in other words, with the Maginot line cancelled out, and no strategic reserves, the French Army and the B.E.F. were a large fighting force spread out in an ineffective line across a continent, while the German Army was concentrated in force and racing towards pay-dirt at important points.
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF MAY
On May 22 Churchill again met with French leaders in Paris. General Weygand was full of spit and vinegar. He was all in favor of the double-sided counterattack. A tall guy named De Gaulle caught the attention of Churchill, although the future leader of France did not say much.
Weygand of proposed a counter-attack idea that was all music to Churchill's ears. Two lightly armored infantry divisions and one heavily armored brigade would attack from the north at Arras and try to sever the German salient. At the same time a newly formed French Army (the seventh) would attack the German Army group from the south. The combined counterattack at the German bulge was classic military maneuvering, and on paper it had merit. The fact that both ends of the attack force would be at a three to one disadvantage to the force they were attacking, while the axiom of war is that the offense needs a three to one advantage to succeed, was not enough to deter Weygand and Churchill.
The BEF Army in the Arras theatre was commanded by General Frank Howard, and so his 2.1 division Army Group was called “Frankforce.” It had men and rifles but precious little armor.
On May 21 Frankforce surprised the Germans and attacked. The Germans fell back for a few miles then regrouped and counterattacked with a vengeance. There really was a brief panic in the German high command but it all settled down fast. By the morning of the May 22 Frankforce was frankfurter.
In the meantime from the South the melting pot Seventh French Army started their attack, thinking there was a chance to close the pincers and link up with Frankforce. If the northern attack were succeeding, the Seventh might face a lessened German force and could win the day.
Dream on, chumps. The French Seventh came up against the heart of the German Panzer force and was soundly whacked. The Allied defense had already been divided. Now it was being conquered.
Churchill's memoirs claim that Weygand made the proposal personally that the two armies smash through and link up.
After the war General Weygand claimed that he had never discussed linking up from the south with the BEF led attack from the North. Max claimed that if Winston writes that he was promised this, then the Prime Minister of England was mistaken. Weygand says that at this time he did not have any foolish hope of breaking through the German Panzer divisions, and that if Churchill remembers it this way then there was a miscommunication at the strategy meeting.
NEVER SURRENDER! ALWAYS ATTACK!
The Arras counter-attack did about as much for the Allies as the Avranches counter-attack did for the Germans in 1944. It spent the best crucial defensive armor in a wasted offensive thrust.
Tactical retreat would have made more use of the force on hand for the Allies. But counter-attack feels better to the commanders egos. Churchill never let a single soldier surrender or retreat throughout the war. It was always, “stand and fight!” “Counterattack-now!.” “This is my third telegram! Why have you not counter-attacked.?”
Why are we not attacking? Answer; Because we're here and you're not.
Millions of Americans have Churchill's six volume history of the War at home, but few read them because they are daunting and often boring too. 700 pages times six with long long telegrams quoted every two pages. I have made it through half of them and I can't believe how consistently every order form this guy to every commander is “Never surrender! Stand and fight to the last man! Attack! Only attack! Never retreat! That is an order form your Prime Minister!”
Many an angry telegram comes back the other direction. They speak in polite official language, but what the local commanders are essentially writing back is, “How dare you order me to die from in front of your Chequers fireplace!”
One day Churchill was touring a bombed out London neighborhood and he saw a group of women standing nearby. He raised his fist to them and gave them a reassuring smile and said, “We can take it!”
The women responded with angry cries of, “Easy for you to say, mate!” “We're the ones taking, it you sanctimonious twit!” There might have even been a “bloody” thrown in there by one of the younger ladies. Churchill dropped his smile and walked away to the chilling echoes of his fading hecklers. This story comes from an old man interviewed for the BBC documentary The World at War.
In the middle of the Battle for Arras (May 21-22 1940) the French lost one of its best Generals to fate. General Billotte was driving south from a meeting near Calais and he got into a car crash and died. Why couldn't his friends have at least made up a story that he was strafed to death by a Stuka?
BELGIUM WAFFLES MAY 28 1940
On May 27 King Leopold of Belgium decided that all was lost. He wanted to stop the bloodshed so he sent his emissaries out to meet the Nazis and ask for surrender terms. The King and Queen decided to remain in Belgium and surrender themselves too.
Churchill was against this. The British P.M. wanted the King to flee on the next speedboat over to England and help to lead a Belgium government in Exile. Several divisions of Belgian troops could form and train in England for a return trip someday.
Most of the Belgian Parliament did flee to England and formed an exile administration. They disowned their King, for the time being.
More important to the British than the political and psychological damage from Belgian surrender was the military loss of the Belgian flank to the the east of General Gort's northern command. On May 28 it was official. Belgium surrendered the the Germans, the Belgian Army laid down its rifles, and the King turned his crown over to the Nazi schvinehunds.
Now the British Expeditionary Force had an open flank to the east, formerly held down by the Belgians. They had to dispatch three or four division to plug the hole, and obviously weakened their center and left flanks in the process.
The surrender of Belgium forced the Allies to shrink the Dunkirk perimeter that much more and further isolated those pockets that were still holding out, especially at Lille and Calais.
CHURCH CHURCHILL
On May 28 1940 Churchill went to church at Westminster Abbey. It was a special service asking for God's help in this crisis. The British don't wear their emotions on their sleeves, but on this occasion Churchill could feel the intense passions and fear going through the congregation. To Churchill these Brits were not terrorized at the thought of death or destruction. They were terrorized by the thought that Britain, and all the democracy decency, and freedom it stood for, would die. That's why there were tears in the crowd.
After Mass Churchill solicited his Ministers, excluding War Ministers for a meeting in his private office. He had been meeting with, calling, and telegraphing War Ministers often enough. Now, in between flights to and from France, Churchill wanted a chance to brief the rest of his Government administrators about the critical situation.
27 Minsters crowded into the office, some sitting around a big polished table, others having to stand, while outside the window, the crowd could still be heard filing out from the service.
Churchill began a matter-of-fact talk about the current war situation. Belgium had surrendered. France was falling down. Dunkirk was being evacuated. Then he mentioned with no particular emphasis in a matter of fact manner that “No matter what happens at Dunkirk we shall never surrender.”
Churchill was about to start the next sentence but could not, because everyone in the room broke into a spontaneous outburst of joy and emotion. They broke from their seats and lunged at Churchill, slapping him on the back, praising his name and roughing him up with love like he had just scored the wining goal. People walking politely out in the courtyard heard the noise through the open window on the third floor. They probably thought it was a bunch of college boys enjoying a joke.
JUNE 4 1940- BILLY BULLITT BULLETIN FROM FRANCE
The U.S. Ambassador to France was Billy Bullitt, a chap with a disposition tougher than his name. Bullitt reported on June 4, 1940 to Roosevelt of his talks with Marshall Petain (pronounced “tray-tor”). The French leader was sure that Britian would not come to the rescue of France. The last 25 British Hurricane fighter squadrons would stay safe at home, and the British were not going to land four infantry divisions on the Brittany peninsula, as the French had suggested. Petain furthermore believed that after France fell, the British, after a token fight to save face, would compromise with the Nazis and agree to a negotiated settlement. The war would end with Germany in control of the continent, and with a Britian reduced in power but still intact. Roosevelt envisioned no such world and was very much upset by the Bullit report.
June 4 was also the day that Churchill made a speech in which he asked openly for help from the United States for the first time. It was a dramatic speech and needs to be quoted, for it showed that pitiful Petain was wrong about the English will to fight on. Churchill famously told his radio audience,
“We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, in the pubs, in the hills, and we shall never surrender. We shall carry on the struggle, until on God's good time, the New World, with all its power an might, steps forth to the rescue.”
In other words, ‘We shall carry on until the Americans come in and help us.’ New World was a euphemism for the USA.
Churchill went on to say that even if the island were conquered, the British government would carry on from some other place. Cleveland would be my guess.
TOUR OF TOURS
With the battle for France still in the balance, Churchill made a trip to Tours for talks with the hawkish Weygand, and the feisty Undersecretary for War, Chuck de Gaulle. These guys were the antidote to the compromising Petain, the prince who turned into a frog. Churchill hoped that his personal presence would inspire the French to fight to the finish.
But France by this time was only a few days from capitulation. Churchill at one point in the talks broke down and cried, “like a three year old girl who crashed on a bicycle.” Winnie pounded his fists on the table and said he hoped that Hitler would turn to attack England instead, thereby enabling France to hold on. But it didn't happen. Hitler at this stage of the war was smart enough to try and destroy one enemy at a time.
In fact, Hitler and his generals chose at a critical junction not even to attack Paris, even though there was a wide open road to the Eiffel Tower, less than two days drive by advance Panzer units. But the object of war is to destroy the enemy fighting forces, not to occupy territory or capitol cities. The German General Staff knew this and taught this at war school. Now it was time to practice what they preached.
Instead of sending a corps-sized spearhead into Paris, the Wermacht wheeled northwest to the coast, thereby cutting off the northern and southern Allied armies off from each other.
When the Germans captured Abbeville on May 20, the the game was essentially over. There was always hope for a comeback, but that was the key moment when France lost the battle of France.
THE MIRACLE OF DUMBKOFF
It is known as the “Miracle at Dunkirk.” Allied propaganda turned a complete defeat into a famous victory. The German Army had completely routed the British-French-Dutch-Belgian troops and they were trapped on a beach at the port city of Dunkirk. The MAD saved the day.
German forces were very close to completely annihilating this force of almost 400,000 men. Then in a miraculous effort the British requisitioned every ship that could float and many a large privately owned boat too to cross the Channel and save the Army, the BEF, and Allied troops of other countries. Royal Warships crossed the channel side by side with private yachts to save the men from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk. It was the national duty of every English boatman or woman to get his craft in order and cross the channel. It was the English version of the French taxicab fleet that saved Paris in 1914.
This flotilla did its job, and in 10 days managed to take 339,000 troops from the beaches of Dunkirk safely back to England to fight another day. They left most of their equipment behind, but machines could be replaced while trained and seasoned troops could not. These guys would be needed to defend England from invasion. They could not afford to be killed or captured defending a beach in a lost cause.
Allied propaganda celebrated the Miracle of Dunkirk as if It was something to feel good abo .. no, check that, it was something to feel great about. Never mind that the Battle of France was lost, and that the Nazis had won the greatest military victory in the history of the world up to that time, the conquest of continental Europe, a goal sought by kings for the last thousand years. No, that wasn't the headlines. Instead of “France Falls, Britian Threatened” the headlines were all about celebrating the evacuation of the defeated soldiers..
I remember reading about the MAD as a boy and finding it annoying at the age of 12. No one had to tell me that this was just a “spin” put on a bad story by the BBC newsroom. I used to scratch my head and wonder why this was being sold to me, two decades after the war, as a wonderful victory. At the time the British were basically fibbing for morale purposes, and I can understand that, but now that the war is long over, why fib any longer? It really was the “Disaster at Dunkirk,” or the “Ignominious Retreat at Dunkirk.”
The British did made best of a bad situation but it's time to stop giving all credit to the British for the miracle. Two factors completely outside the scope of British courage enabled the Miracle of Dunkirk.
The first was the weather. If the war was a poker game, than the weather at Dunkirk was a Royal Navy flush. The weather was just calm enough for the smaller craft to make the trip across the channel and back. This part if often cited.
The part that is less often cited is that the weather, while nice enough, was very cloudy almost every day. This prevented the Luftwaffe from destroying the BEF on the beach. And from destroying half of the ships of the rescue flotilla. The Luftwaffe operated at 25% capacity because of the lucky weather.
The German view was based tactically upon letting the Luftwaffe destroy the British and French on the beach while preserving their armored forces for the coming fight for the rest of France.
The other outside factor that saved the BEF, the real source of the Miracle was Hitler's idiotic decision to order his Armies to halt just when they had the British surrounded. Historians have a great time with this one. They love the “what ifs” of history and they love to debunk the alleged greatness of Hitler, especially his alleged military genius.
The Germans had done all this work to put themselves in a position where the bulk of the Allied fighting forces were trapped on a beach. It was classic military war games executed to perfection. All the war-planning and build-up had reached a successful climax. They had won the match, now all they had to do was tap in the winning putt. The German Army could attack now and destroy the entire Northern Army before any help could save it.
But wait. The Fuhrer for some inexplicable reason ordered the German Panzer groups to halt. For two weeks they sat there, hawk on a perch watching a helpless prey, while the “miracle” rescue operation went on.
Herman Goering had promised Hitler that his air power alone could knock out the stranded armies on Dunkirk. A saner leader than Hitler might have accepted Goering's assurances but at the same time told the Air Marshall that, sorry, the ground forces would be sent in anyway. A German general in his memoirs insists that it was Hitler who ordered Goering to do the job by air power alone, and that Goering actually thought it was a rather odd order considering the power of the German land forces in position to attack.
Up to this time, the Luftwaffe engaged exclusively in tactical ground support. It had no experience trying to win a major battle all on its own. (The Germans did not really think in terms of strategic bombing. That absence of Billy Mitchell fever in Berlin was one of the reasons for the tremendous German success so far. It was only the west that the took the premature fantasy of strategic air power so seriously as to be a primary part of their game plan. This western confidence that did more harm than good for the Allies overall in the entire war.)
Hitler should have known that the Luftwaffe alone was not capable of a strategic operation like the annihilation of 12 divisions trapped on a beach. He could have sent the German Army in to do a smashing job, which it surely would have done. Then history would remember the “Slaughter at Dunkirk.”
But no, Hitler held his shot while his Generals punched holes through their war maps in frustration. All this work to set up a winning three-inch putt and the boss walks away.
Some say that Hitler conferred with his generals and took this strange decision based on a fear of losing too many tanks. The shore near Belgium was low country and who knows how many tanks would be lost in flooded dykes and other wet obstacle courses. If the weather was good, the tanks would be too vulnerable to air attacks from the RAF. Hitler loved his tanks like a boy playing with his toys, and he suddenly got paranoid about losing too many, even in a major victory. It was like buying a new table for the house and never using it because it might get scratched.
So fear of tank losses, combined with Goering's false promises, combined with miraculously bad weather (from the German viewpoint,) all came together to save 339,000 men and 32 women trapped on Dunkirk.
Churchill disputes that Hitler was the 'Dumkoff of Dunkirk.' He says that it was not Hitler, but General “Rundy” Rundstedt that made the decision to halt on the outskirts of Dunkirk for no sane reason.
The operation chief of the German Army was General Brauchitsch, a tough name to spell, and and no one has ever helped me with the pronunciation. On May 25 Brau gave Rundstedt the order to march on Dunkirk, but Rundy chose to ignore it and stay put. And why did Rundy ignore the order? Because Rundy had been at the meetings with Hitler and knew how Hitler felt about possibly losing too many tanks. Rundstedt probably felt that if the attack proved too costly, he might find himself in front of firing squad in about two weeks. Hitler was like that, you know.
So even if Churchill's version is on the money, and technically speaking it was Rundy who ordered the miraculous halt outside of Dunkirk, it was still Hitler's flash of stupidity that was at the root of the matter, not a brilliant performance by the British”
Professor Wilmott says that the German Army stopped at the gates of Dunkirk so the infantry divisions could catch up to the armored divisions and then the two of them could finish the Allies in the north off. When the Luftwaffe failed to destroy the beachhead as promised and the evacuation was in full swing the Germans realized their error. By then it was too late and the defensive perimeter had been reinforced, so a German attack would not be such a simple matter anymore anyway.
The failure of the German eagle to slay the stranded rabbits on the beach is one of the controversial decisions of the war. It was certainly Germany's first major blunder.
But wait. There's more!
There may well have been political reasons for making this mistake. It is possible even, that Hitler made this mistake on purpose!
There are two theories, both backed by cited evidence, that Hitler may have deliberately let the BEF get away!
It is an established fact that Hitler never wanted to go to war with Britian. If Germany destroyed the BEF in a brutal slaughter on the beaches of Dunkirk, it would slaughter any chance for a negotiated peace with England. How could the British people go back to their daily lives in peace and dignity if they had taken 200,000 casualties in Belgium and France, most of them slaughtered like the Iraqis on Highway Nine in 1991? They couldn't.
Better to let the BEF get home to England and begin talks with the King and Parliament, than to smash them up and double-up the real war with Churchill. One step back, two steps forward. There is some evidence of this thinking in things Hitler said at the crucial hour of Dunkirk.
Hitler's words when France surrendered was most revealing. More than one German general was astonished after the Fall of France to hear Hitler begin to speak in glowing terms of the British Empire and how it was imperative that some sort of amicable solution must be found to stop the war between these two old friends. Hitler had shown genius in his war plan for France, but was naiveté in his assessment of the situation with England.
The London Blitz didn't begin until three full months after France capitulated. Hitler just didn't get it that there was no turning back on war with Great Britain.
The other quite possible explanation for the Fuhrer's order to halt the attack on Dunkirk was just as political, but this time internal.
Since the Beer Hall Putsch of the 1920's Hitler had a political problem with the Army. The German General Staff was as much a political force in German history as German politicians. This militarist nation had the highest regard for generals and the lowest regard for politicians. Hitler had to appease the generals before he could make it to the top in Germany in the 1930's, and it should be noted that most of the assassination attempts on his life came from military men who hated him, not resistance fighters from the ranks of factory workers and peasants. It was never an easy matter for the German General Staff to defer to this man. Most of them saw the Corporal of WWI as a foolish amateur who was getting lucky by way of one bluff after another. A few generals were predicting that this lucky run would end sooner or later, and that it would mean disaster for Germany. Many generals were happy enough to have taken down Poland and France, but few approved of Hitler's open-secret goal of invading Russia. The disgruntled generals wished Hitler could have taken down a few of Germany's traditional enemies on the borders and then disappear from the scene.
Goering was whispering in Hitler's ear that if we let the Army destroy the BEF at Dunkirk, it might have serious negative political consequences. Victory in the field could restore the political supremacy of the Army and could inspire an army coup against the Nazi leadership. If Hitler had any reservations about Goering's boastful (and as it turned out false) promise that his Luftwaffe could destroy the BEF without any help from the Army, these doubts were off-set by the plus factor of denying the Army a chance to restore its traditionally predominant political influence.
During the Mexican-American war, James Polk denied one of the American generals a chance for certain victory because he did not want to set up a hero to defeat him in the next election. There was more at stake and more scale in the Dunkirk situation but the principle is the same.
THE FRENCH AT DUNKIRK
Churchill made it clear that French troops would be given equal priority to British in evacuations from Dunkirk. But the majority of French troops who were manning the defensive perimeter valiantly refused the offer and held their ground while the British evacuated the British. Quite a few thousand Frenchmen did get across the channel, but many didn't bother to flee. In fact, many thousands simply preferred to stay at home even when all was lost and the boats had a space for them to England.
Even more hard to believe, but in fact a fact, is that a significant number of French troops who were evacuated to England chose to return home to France even after the armistice/surrender established Vichy France.
How can this be explained? Maybe it was a rank and file version of the dispute between Reynaud (the good guy) and Weygand (the bad guy) over the armistice. Reynaud told Weygand that “you think this guy Hitler is Kaiser Wilhelm, when he is really Ghengis Kahn.”
The German troops that had crashed through the Maginot line displayed almost no ruthlessness towards defeated French troops. Wermacht soldiers were waving to French disarmed troops and smiling at them a lot. These victorious Germans weren't machine gunning peasants off the side of the road. There had been many cases when the Germans told surrendered French troops, with the battle still joined that they could just go home if they would lay down their arms and give their word not to fight again. It was too much of a drain on German logistics to maintain the care of countless thousands of French PW's, and they were clogging the roads as bad as the civilian refugees. So the Germans yelled from their tank-tops to the French troops who surrendered to just go home. It was a shock and the French took them up on it. This was no Bataan.
Stories like these were all about and this probably led to the refusal of thousand of French troops to leave Dunkirk, and the amazing choice of so many to return to France. They were expecting the same kind of mercy they saw in the Battle of France to apply afterwards. But the German generosity was the temporary expedience of war-making and the German army was not the Gestapo and the SS that would come in later to administer the fallen French nation.
The French troops who stayed on the beach when they could have fled as well as those who came back were all put in Nazi prisons for the next four years where many of them died.
MAY 15 1940 – THE STRATEGIC AIR CAMPAIGN BEGINS
The first major British bombing attack on Germany too place on May 15 1940. The RAF sent 99 bombers over the Ruhr valley to hit oil and railroad targets. No German bombers had raided England yet.
Some say this proves that the British started all this immoral business and have some hypocrite nerve moaning about the bombing of London. This Ruhral raid was three months before the Germans bombed London.
That's a weak argument. The Nazis would have eventually bombed English cities, and the English knew it when they sent the Wellington's over the Ruhr on May 15. The Luftwaffe was attacking the BEF divisions in France, had already ruined Rotterdam, it's U-boats were sinking passenger ships and strafing civilians in lifeboats, the Jews were being rounded up in Poland for mass executions, and all of a sudden the British were the savage provocateurs because, technically speaking, they bombed Germany first. I don't think so.
THE STRIKE SOUTH – THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS
The Nazis could have taken Paris any time after May 20 but smartly chose the destruction of the enemy Northern Armies instead.
Now that the Dunkirk miracle was over, the Wermacht turned it up to full power to points south and the city of lights. “Operation V” was the final battle for France.
This phase of the war has sometimes been called “The Battle of the Somme,” but it was more of a rout than a battle. It could hardly have been less like the Battle of the Somme in World War One, when countless thousands were slaughtered on a virtually stationary and horribly scarred battlefield.
Actually in the first 24 hours of V the Germans encountered fierce resistance that stopped them dead in their tracks. But in this spirited initial defense the French expended all their remaining assets. They might have been better off falling back to a stronger defensive perimeter closer to Paris. One day after the stand, the French Army collapsed. The Nazis broke through and it was nothing but panic, surrender and defeat.
FLANDERS FEARS IN THE UK
But what if the Germans didn’t take everything they had and turned on the rest of France and the rest of the French Army? What if they took this moment in time to wheel towards “the big island.”
There are many books about Operation Sea Lion, the elaborate plan of Hitler to invade England in the fall of 1940. That didn’t happen for many reasons, not the least of which was that in the months between May of 1940 and November 1940, the British state of readiness for defense had improved immensely.
The point here being that Hitler may have missed his one chance to conquer the British in the spring of 1940 before he finished off the beaten but still in the field French. A plan as you go all out assault by German paratroopers to seize key airfields in Southern Britian would be the key. But the Germans would have to do it with very few tanks. Petain had chided Churchill for Winston’s inferences of French cowardice by saying, “Winston, if we had the same kind of tank trap you have we never would have had to run away from anybody.” Petain was referring of course to the English Channel.
There were no C-130’s in 1940 that could land and drop off 6 fat army tanks like the big birds can today. And Germany was particularly weak in heavy plane transports and bombers. This weakness of German armor transport was off-set by the May 1940 weakness of British home defense armor. There were few tanks anywhere in Britian and even fewer worth mentioning. If the Germans pulled a Crete on Coventry, there would be a situation where neither side had decisive tank support. And that could have gone either way. The Nazis had some ability to land tanks across the channel but it was limited and would require a secure beach or port.
Churchill was very alarmed at the beginning of the Battle of France that the German military brains trust might pull a smart and fast one and turn like a school of fish northwest towards Britian. While he was begging the French to fight to the last Frenchman, he was also thanking the Lord Sandwich that this wasn’t a home game for his team yet. When the Nazis drove south on Paris and the Rhone Valley they were putting London in the rear view mirror. The Germans had a slim chance of pulling a Sea Lion in May 1940, but that was probably the only time when it could have worked, even against the odds.
DEFEATED BY DEFEATISM
Defeat was humiliating enough, but defeatism was a bigger problem. The French armed forces from top to bottom, from the generals to the cooks, had little faith in their Army. Hitler had bullied everyone in Europe for the last three years now, and the French had a defeatist mindset. Once the Germans made the big breakthrough the French Army began surrendering en masse. The accounts of one battle after another was consistently the same - a shameful lack of a battle. Of course there were exceptions, but exceptions prove the rule.
It's hard to believe, even though I have read of it a hundred times, but the French right-wing preferred Hitler to French socialism and in many instances virtually welcomed the Nazi invaders. And there were a lot of right-wingers in the French Army. They didn't like Germans in a racial and nationalist sense, but they liked fascism. The big issue between world wars in French politics wasn't France versus Germany, but left versus right; socialism or its extreme form, communism, versus conservatism or its extreme form, fascism. French righties didn't necessarily like Hitler, but to a dangerous extent they liked what he stood for. They just thought it was unfortunate that his fine ideals had to be that of a national rival. All of this had a lot to do with the poor showing of France on the battlefield.
France was a great power. Between the wars, France, not Germany was generally thought to posses the greatest Army, not only in Europe, but in the world. It's easy to forget that in light of all that happened.
The United States Army, by the way, between the wars was ranked 19th in the world, right behind Portugal, which held the 18th spot.
CAPITAL TOURS
On June 9 1940 the French Government forgot Paris.
The French “leadership” fled from chateau to chateau and then from city to city. First it went to the Chateau de Cagne where some key moments in world history went down. The French government held a meeting at Chateau de Lashue but had to leave due to rats.
The French leaders couldn't stay long at the Chateaus and debated where to go next. Some said Brittany, the western peninsula close to the UK where there was still a faint hope of holding on there in a stubborn defense, or to Bordeaux where at least they could drown their sorrows in some the world finest red wines. The French leaders settled on Tours as an in-between alternative. Tours was where Charlie Martel had defeated the Moors, heroically driving those no-good Moslems out of Europe. There would be no repeat performance by Weygand at Tours. He was no Charles Martel. Weygand was ready to ask for an armistice, and had been from the moment the Germans bottled up the Allied Northern Army.
It was the French who sought out the Nazis for an armistice, not the other way around.
Reynaud and de Gaulle proposed that the French government flee to North Africa and carry the fight from there. French colonies were still a part of Greater France so France, in theory, would still live.
The British naturally wanted the French to fight on. While the eclectic rescue Navy picked up the last men at Dunkirk, the British were already planning a new BEF to send over to Brittany. Some advance units were actually landed there on June the fifth. Who knows what kind of struggle to the end could have ben carried out on the Brittany-Breton redoubt, but it never happened. How such a last ditch battle could have altered the course of the war we will also never know. A Brittany redoubt holding on like Gibraltar might have caused far less interventionary reaction in the United States than did the complete overrunning of the west, so in a sick way it may have helped that France died so shamefully and thoroughly.
Reynaud and Weygand continued to argue for days over the North Africa idea. Weygand wanted to surrender. He thought that further fighting in a hopeless cause would put needless suffering on the French people. Weygand hoped that the French Army could carry on intact in the hope of a better time and place where it could re-emerge. Max felt that having the French Army torn to bits in desperate suicidal fighting would hurt France in the long run. At least that was the story he was selling. I'm not buying.
18B
With France falling, the UK determined to take no chances with fifth columns at home. In late May of 1940 the British government rounded up and arrested more than 700 British fascists and threw them in jail without a charge or a trial. The UK kept these political prisoners locked up for more than three years.
The British justified these actions as falling under the terms of Article 18B of the defense regulations of 1939. Really, it wouldn't have made any difference if there was an 18B or there wasn't an 18B. After watching the French fifth column (“Better a Hitler than the Popular Front”) help bring France down, Britian wasn't going to take any chances at home. If there wasn't an 18B the Tommies would have written one up and arrested those they wanted to arrest before the ink was dry on the newly written law against.
The two most famous fascists arrested were Oswald Mosley and Admiral Domville. Mosley was head of the BUF, the British Union of Fascists. Domville was head of “The Link,” an organization dedicated to maintaining positive cultural “links” between Germans and Brits.
Admiral Domville invented a word for the number one problem in the world. He called it “Judmas.” The Jews and the Freemasons were the biggest threat to civilization in the admiral's eyes. Domville was once head of British naval intelligence, and Mosley was three times an MP, a member of Parliament.
Like Lincoln in 1861, Britian in 1940 decided that legal issues didn't matter in wartime. When national survival was an issue, the rights of enemies went out the window (Just like in October 2011 when the United States assassinated a suspected Arab terrorist in Yemen with bombs launched from drones.)
FRANCO-BRITISH UNION PROPOSAL
On the 16th of June 1940 Winston Churchill offered an astounding proposal to the French. Churchill said that France and England right now should unite and officially become one country under one flag. He thought that this might inspire both nations to new heroic efforts to save the day. The French parliament debated the union proposal and voted it down by a comfortable margin. It's hard to imagine that such a union would have survived one week past the end of the fighting, no matter who won.
RENAUD - THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
Paul Reynaud was furious that the French leaders would not fight it out. He had just sent a telegram to FDR promising that every French soldier would fight it out to the end, and defend Paris down to the last bullet-riddled coffee shop. Now Reynaud was embarrassed that he had even sent it. Paul didn't realize that the French were going to live up to the name of “Plan Yellow.” He was committing his word on behalf of a defiant fighting France that didn't exist. It just took him too long to realize it. The argument ended when Reynaud resigned. Weygand took over the government. Paul's resignation letter was short, “You want France, Max? You got it!”
Reynaud is my hero.
THE BACKSTABBER OF MILAN
On June 10, 1940 Italy declared war on France. On June 20 Italian forces invaded the Riviera region. France was like a boxer getting slugged around in the arena and is just about to fall down for the count when a guy comes out of the stands and hits him in the back of the legs with a crowbar. That was the Italian invasion of France in June of 1940.
The Italian people had applauded Mussolini when he chose not to go to war at Hitler's side. This actually irritated and embarrassed the Duce. He would have been happier if the Italian people were mad at him and chanting “war! war! war!” outside his house.
Italy originally promised to join Germany in any new war as part of the pact of Steel. But Mussolini privately had told Hitler he couldn't get involved until 1943 or 1942 at the earliest. So Hitler reluctantly accepted Italian refusal to help in the wars with Poland and then France in May of 1940. But in the mop up stage of the Nazi win, Italy saw that it was now or never to jump in. If Benito waited until 1943, the chance to grab the spoils of war might be lost forever. Italy also did not look with favor over any absolute German control over Europe. Mussolini now jumped into the battle before it was too late. But it already was too late. There wasn't even time enough left to try and take Nice or Corsica or Tunisia, even if Italy had the military capability. In June 1940 Italy got the long-term baggage of horror for a short term gain of very little.
THE ALPINE FRONT
Italy attacked with 33 divisions along the southern, Alpine front with France. The French fought back with six divisions. England declared war on Italy and launched air raids against Milan and Turin.
The French held firm on the Alpine Front. The Italian offensive to grab the spoils from the victor ally Germany hit a brick wall.
England seized the Italian ships in Gibraltar and grabbed several on the high seas.
The French only began to collapse when the Germans began to attack them from the North and rear. The Alpine French were still hanging in there when France semi-surrendered to Germany.
Before attacking in the west, Mussolini wanted instead to attack in the east, against Yugoslavia, but his generals talked him out of it.
When the French surrendered, Italy had already crossed into French territory, but had not won any territory worth claiming at the armistice table. Italy showed up anyway and asked for prizes at Hitler's victory table it couldn't win on the battlefield.
Hitler refused his buddy the candy. It wasn't that Hitler wouldn't have liked to give Mussolini territorial rewards for his support, however tempered that support it might have been. It was a matter of Hitler not wanting to upset the French he had just defeated, nor the British he hadn't yet defeated, and wanted to negotiate with.
France had agreed to an armistice, but not a formal surrender. The most ignominious surrender of the 20th century wasn't even technically a surrender. The Nazis needed the French to agree to a delicate arrangement based at Vichy, and needed the powerful French Mediterranean fleet to remain neutral and stay in port. If Hitler handed Italy concessions at the expense of France, when Italy hadn't done much fighting and had stabbed Pierre in the back, that delicate arrangement might collapse amidst French fury. Hitler had to say no to Moose because he needed Petain.
The problem with England was that Hitler had only two options in mind, neither of which panned out. One was that Germany defeat Great Britian in short order. The other was that Britian would agree to a truce and Hitler could keep the continent.
Mussolini was so confident that Germany was about to conquer England that he didn't argue when Hitler told him to hold off on the spoils for now. Hitler told Mussolini that the time would come when Italy would get its just rewards, and he was certainly right about that, but not in the way either of them were thinking at the time.
Mussolini was asking Hitler territories all over the Mediterranean, and especially for Gibraltar. Hitler hadn't even taken it, and if he had, that would have set the negotiations plan for England back about 1,200 years.
Imagine if Mussolini had done the shrewd and wise thing and declared strict neutrality from the beginning to the end of WWII, resisting both the threats of Germany in the early years and the threats and cajoling of the Allies in the later years. Italy might have emerged from a bomb-scarred Europe as the premier state and economy on the continent.
THE SHROUD OF TOURIN AND MILAN
The following story should give you some idea of the fighting spirit of the French people in the spring of 1940, and of the tempers of the times.
When Italy declared war on Britain and France, the British bombed Milan and Turin the next day, but with a small force of planes. A larger bomber force was gathered to fly to bases in the Riviera region. When this second and larger air strike was preparing, the local French population occupied the runways with push-carts, oxen and their miscellaneous personal belongings. These locals were afraid that Italy would come in and commit reprisals against their village for having supported the air mission. The French people stopped the air raids on Milan and Turin. If they understood how thoroughly Italy was blocked from advancing on them, they might not have so acted.
The other aspect of this story is the newness at this point of air raids on cities. This was months before Hitler Satanically ordered the destruction of London. Were these French people reacting to the shocking atrocity of the British plans to bombard cities, or just showing their yellow flags, or a combination of both?
It should be recalled that the Axis had already bombed Madrid, Shanghai and Rotterdam at this point in time, but if Churchill was so quick on the trigger to bomb Milan and Turin when Italy hadn’t even started the war, it sheds some reflective light on the Allied outrage at the concept of Hitler trying to set London on fire.
NO “SURRENDER”
Technically, France did not surrender in World War II. France agreed to a humiliating armistice with consolation prizes.
It is a paradox that during the debates among the French leaders in the days of decision, it was those who wanted to fight on who were advocating surrender. Those tried after the war as traitors were saying, “No! We should not surrender.”
The die-hards, Reynaud, De Gaulle and a majority of his ministers wanted to continue the war from North Africa. The Armies of France that were trapped by the Germans were to surrender. They would turn in their weapons, and Nazi Germany would have to administer France from top to bottom without the help of the French people. The Germans could expect resistance after surrender. Most of the French Army would be lost. But what was left of it, plus what was left of the French Air Force (not much), plus what was left of the French Navy (a great deal), plus the French government, could flee to North Africa and carry on the war from the rear sanctuary of the French colonial empire.
So surrender paradoxically meant resistance.
On the other side, Maxime Weygand and Petain wanted to avoid the humiliation of formal surrender, and wanted to spare the French people any further suffering in a lost battle. If France co-operated with the Nazis, it would spare Hitler the incredibly taxing task of administering a great nation. The Fuhrer could husband his resources for the invasion of England or Russia.
But the Nazis had to offer something big in return. They offered three big things.
One, part of France would be virtually unoccupied. This would be Vichy France, a fraction of the France of 1938, a new second rated France tucked away in the south.
Two: The French could keep their armed forces intact. The French Army and Navy did not have to formally surrender. The Germans put more than a million French soldiers in POW camps anyway, violating that part of it. But the Navy was left alone.
Three, The French could administer their own country. Except for the law requiring French citizens to help the Gestapo round up the Jews, the French people, even those outside of Vichy could (in theory) to go about their daily lives as they did before.
PIERRE'S NAVY
For the United States the big concern in these days was the status of the French Navy. France had a world class battle-fleet and the French had island possessions in North America. Were the Nazis going to threaten the United States from the Caribbean with a squadron of BB's (battleships) and U-boats in Martinique? The FDR team was deeply concerned.
The Nazis were demanding the surrender of the French Navy as a precondition to an armistice. In the meantime Churchill was asking France to deliver its Navy over to England. Petain, in one of his few intrepid moments called Hitler's bluff and said he would not and could not turn over the French Fleet to the Germans. That would be surrender and the whole point of making this deal for French collaboration was to avoid that. The Germans put the deal back on the table and the war was over for the French people, at least for now. The French Navy was to sit out the war interned in several ports.
ARMISTICE JUNE 25
Italy and France signed a cease-fire on June 24. The Armistice with Germany ending the Battle of France took effect on June 25 at 1:30 in the morning.
The Armistice (as a euphemism for surrender) ceremonies took place at Compiegne, the same town where Germany surrendered to France and the Allies in 1918. Hitler forced the French to sign the surrender document in the same railroad car in which the Germans had surrendered to the Allies in 1918. The railroad car was later transported to Berlin. An Allies air raid destroyed it in 1944. Don't tell that to the tourists who go to the famous railroad car at Compeigne today and walk through a replica.
So France posed officially as an ally of Germany to prevent more mass murder of French civilians. This odd political situation actually led later to naval gunfights between French cruisers and American/British ships, with substantial casualties. Fighting in the Middle East between Allied forces and Vichy French troops happened in several spots. The French political situation throughout the war was complicated and disturbing to the Allied war effort.
As for the rest of France outside of Vichy it was all now part of Nazi Germany.
BULLITT STAYS
United States Ambassador William C. Bullitt chose to stay in Paris as the Nazis closed in. Many wanted him to flee but he was a crazy hero sort of guy and that was out of the question. He was a pal of FDR and wanted to be the President’s eyes and ears on the spot.
Bullitt played a role in preventing any destruction of Paris by the invaders. His presence and some of the diplomatic work he engaged in, facilitated an easier transition to occupation. At least that’s what many French people believed at the time and many historians still say. But others think he should have fled and been of assistance to the collapsing Third French Republic as it felt to Tours and other places.
When France fell and Vichy took over, FDR appointed a new Ambassador to France. Admiral Leahey was well qualified, but there was no just reason for Franklin to fire Bullitt who had played his role bravely and steadfastly. Bullitt called FDR on the telephone and the two of them had a shouting match that was almost as bad as the argument I had on the phone one day with comedy booker Dick Doherty! People within hearing distance were shocked at some of the language FDR allowed to be yelled at him.
In 1941 Bullitt went to FDR with a report that the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, a close friend of FDR, was gay. That ended what had been a beautiful friendship between two former Assistant Secretaries of the Navy.
OPINION
France should have fought better, especially with its supposedly incredible military tradition. The poison that led to this shameful capitulation was rooted in the between-war political divisions marked by extremism and the reaction to it. The French extreme left bred the resentful extreme French reactionary right, which saw the German example of fascism as far preferable to French leftism. When German fascism won on the battlefield, it had a mental power base already laid down in France to work with. Indirectly, the Popular Front of the 1930's opened the front door in 1940.
To put French performance in perspective, - France lost 210,000 KIA's in WWII. The United States lost 407,000 KIA's. France was at the heart of the conflict and had no heart for it. the USA was on the fringe and showed far more heart. France should have defended France with at least half the tenacity as the United States defended Wake Island.
Britian could have shown a little more determination to keep the Nazis from controlling the continent. The UK should have combined with the French to hole up on the Cherbourg peninsula. The two armies, combined with British sea and air support could have made a permanent stand there. In 1944 the Allies saw the German presence there as such a difficult objective that they just left them there. There were still Germans holed up in the Cherbourg redoubt in early 1945. The cross-channel invasion that was so hotly debated for three years, might never have had to be. If the French and British had made a combined stand in Cherbourg, and held on somehow, imagine the amount of human, material and political resources that would never have had to be expended in 1944-45. A breakout in 1943 after a 15 month stand might have enabled the Democracies to take Berlin long before the Communist troops got to within a sniff.
That never happened because Chamberlain, Eden, and Churchill had a policy of “Save Britian First.” The Imperial staff considered a holdout campaign on Cherbourg, but they didn't want to take the chance that they might lose and then have lost too much in the process and left the possibility of a German invasion of Britian too real. Britian took the cautious and selfish approach of saving its island hide, and to hell with the frogs.
France deserves criticism, and I'm happy to dish it out, but once France knew that Britian was packing up and heading back across the channel until further notice, the entire dynamic of the war switched to pure desperation for Paris. History remembers Dunkirk as basically the end of the
THE DIRTY DEVIL GOES TO PARIS FOR SIGHTSEEING
Hitler spent one day in Paris as a tourist. He visited the Arch de Triumph, Sacre C’our, Napoleon’s Tomb at Invalides (where he stared at Napoleon’s coffin and missed the chance to appreciate the mistake Napoleon had made in invading Russia), saw the Opera House (where he tried to tip a French attendant who brusquely turned it down), and the Eiffel Tower. One fearless old peasant woman recognized him on his walking tour of the Tower of London area and heckled him with a cry in broken German, “You dirty devil!” There is no account of what happened to her. Imagine if she survived the war, and the pride she must have had to her dying day to tell others of that moment. Surely no one believed her.
Hitler caught the next flight out of Paris after a four-hour tour and got back to work on plans for the continued conquest of the world. While leaving he told a shocked subordinate that after thinking it over he had changed his mind. He would not destroy Paris. The subordinate was shocked because it was the first he, or anyone else, had had heard of the Fuhrer's sadistic plan to destroy Paris. It was like a fired Post Office worker going in for his last check and telling everyone he has changed his mind and is not going to gun them all down next Friday.
Vichy was the slimy capitol of new France. (map.) Jews in Vichy were turned over to the Nazis. The spineless years of Vichy France are a stain on the history of a great country. I love Paris, too. But it would have been rebuilt as beautiful as ever (and maybe a little more modern) if half of it had fallen in heroic house to house combat. Churchill had tried to impress this on Marshall Petain.
Paris and Petain remained pure while French honor was decimated. It would have been better to have had the reverse.
It was bad enough that the Petain team collaborated at all. But the handstands they did to perpetuate the idea in Vichy propaganda that life was pretty darned good under the Nazis was shameful.
PASSIVE RESISTANCE WOULD HAVE HELPED
France never really surrendered. It agreed to a humiliating armistice. Vichy France, one fourth the size of the old France, was technically still a country. To the French, it seemed like a good deal at the time as opposed to getting treated like Poland. France was defeated on the battlefield and didn't want to get treated like Poland. But what France didn't appreciate was the Germany didn't have the human resources left by now to treat France like Poland even if it chose to do so. A little defiance by France would have gone along way to win the war for the Allies. The French didn't even have to keep fighting to keep fighting. Just refusing to allow for the hoax of Vichy France and demanding that the Nazis accept France's complete abject surrender would have been more defiant and more effective. You guys want to be conquerers, ok, you got us, we surrender, now be good conquerers and run the country. We ain't gonna do nothing. Passive French resistance would have constituted a great deal of active resistance.
The Nazis would have been ruined if France had gone belly up and demanded conquerer's administration. By accepting Vichy and running France themselves, they did themselves a greater humiliation than a surrender. They did the true dirty work for the Nazis (the real work like keeping the sewers and electricity running) and left the fun stuff (fake 'dirty work' like shooting spies, setting up submarine bases, and sending old Jews to the camps) for the Nazis. Vichy workers from politicians to sewer workers all helped free-up Nazi human resources for the war machine.
US INTERVENTION - NOT
Throughout the Battle of France, the leaders of Britain and France reached out for a US life-saver, but FDR would not and could not enter the war to try and save France.
President Reynaud wrote several desperate pleas to FDR to intervene, and he got long and supportive letters back from Roosevelt, but no actual help.
In the final days of the Third Republic Paul sent a particularly desperate letter to Roosevelt saying that France was drowning and now turned its eyes to the Statue of Liberty one last time before it sinks beneath the waves. FDR was moved but didn't move.
Churchill backed Reynaud in his efforts. Winston wrote to FDR and asked the United States to declare war on Germany. He told his American pen pal on June 15 that only American intervention could save France. The American Charge d’ Affaires in Germany wrote to boss Franklin and asked for a US Declaration of War. The Australian Foreign Minister requested a word with the President in Washington and asked the same thing. But these four guys did not count for much compared to the mass millions of Americans who were dead set against American intervention. Only 7 percent the US population supported a declaration of war against Germany in June of 1940. The feeling was that 'we're still sore cause these frogs hadn’t even made an honest attempt to pay back our loans from the first war. Now we were supposed to die by the thousands to save them in a second one? No way.
UNGRATEFUL FROGS!
A post war myth has developed, still believed by most Americans I know, that “we saved their hides in World War II.” Yes, but was it heroic and noble? Where was the USA when France and England were battling for their lives? In May of 1940 the USA wouldn’t even sell guns to France, let alone come to the rescue in person! And Americans want the French to be forever grateful.
In 1944. France just happened to be in the way on the road to Berlin. If some Communist country that had never dreamed of democracy or friendship was in the path to Berlin US troops would liberated them with the same ferocity and courage. America pounded French villages from the air and killed plenty of women and children before the liberation. Saving France wasn’t the primary goal of the 1944-1945 campaign in Western Europe. A true friend would have helped the French stand up to Hitler in 1940 in the first place.
STALIN “INTERVENES”
On June 14-15 The Russian bear took advantage of the situation and occupied the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Hitler slammed his fist on the table when he heard about it. Estonia and Latvia were supposed to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence but Lithuania was supposed to go to Germany, as agreed in the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 23, 1939. Stalin was doing a Stalin on Hitler. But Hitler was in no position to formally protest to Stalin, nor to stop it from happening. Hitler was tied down in the west and pretending to still be Stalin's ally.
That wasn't enough for Stalin. On June 28th the Russian Army occupied a major portion of Romania, the provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina. Bessarabia was supposed to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence, again as agreed in 1939. But Bukovina was supposed to be part of the German sphere of influence and both men knew it. Stalin had a lot of nerve bullying the man who made other nations shiver in fear. Hitler was furious, (as usual - imagine getting a dollar for every time an historian or narrator says “Hitler was furious”) but there was nothing he could do about Romania either.
The United States denounced the occupation of the Baltic states and refused to recognize the Soviet suzerainty. This continued to be official United States policy until 1991, when the USSR granted independence to the Baltic states in the wake of the fake August Coup in the Crimea.
SEEDS OF NAZI DEFEAT PLANTED IN VICTORY
France was defeated. Britain stood alone against tough odds. The Second World War was going to end in a complete win for the bad guys.
That's certainly how it looked to many observers. There was a powerful element in the United States that felt that way. But the fall of France planted in defeat, the seeds of ultimate victory.
First and foremost it woke up the sleeping arsenal of democracy, the USA. When Hitler took Poland, the man in the street in Peoria didn't miss a wink of sleep. But when France fell, even the man in Peoria got a wake-up call. Maybe it was time to get involved, maybe it wasn't, but when France fell, no reasonable American could seriously think or say that the Nazi threat wasn't deadly serious. It would take two years plus Pearl Harbor for the arsenal to really retool and get to work producing mass arms, but the delivery order was written up when France fell, not when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Overnight FDR ordered the size of the US armed forces doubled. That's doubled. Congress backed him up.
The fall of France opened a trap door for the United States in the French colonial possessions. French Indo-China suddenly became an untenable colony, just waiting for someone to grab it. And we know who that grabber would be. Japan could not resist the temptation of Vietnam, and in moving into Indochina, provoked the United States to take stern measures against Japan which began the collision course to war. So by taking France, the Germans brought the United States into war with Japan, which brought the United States into the war against Germany. It was in the short run a great victory. In the long run it was the end of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.
If Hitler had never attacked France and only attacked Russia, the United States might never have entered World War II. But Hitler's strategy was to divide and conquer. He never wanted to see a repeat of World War I where Germany could have taken either front singularly, but could not sustain a successful war on two opposite gigantic fronts. So he had to neutralize Russia first (the Nazi Soviet Pact of 1939 did this,) then conquer France. Only after he took the western front out of the equation would he be ready to attack Russia. But in his calculations, he never fully appreciated the problem on his western front of a defiant Great Britian that he could kick off the continent but could not conquer. Add to this the aroused American support for the UK and Hitler had anything but a free single-front in Russia when that time came. He was always dogged in the rear by a resolute UK gathering support and arms from the new world.
And the Fuhrer had his hands full in North Africa and the Balkans as well. But he had his mind set on the Russian invasion and no facts could defer him from trying to fulfill his pre-war fantasies. Hitler fit the facts to fit his expedient needs. He convinced himself that if he could knock Russia out of the war quickly, he could then turn and face Britian with the resources of Russia at his disposal. That of course is a full story for 1941. But plans for the invasion of Russia began while France was still falling.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
All of the jokes that have been made about the French performance in World War II are deserved. Mass surrender at the first sight of battle that swept the countryside is inexcusable, even if somehow explainable. It's hard to read about professional army men fighting that way, especially since I was in the US Army for 11 years (no I wasn't.)
Perhaps the most disgraceful detail about the Battle of France is that the idea for Vichy France came from France. It was Petain and the compromisers who sought out the Nazis and proposed an Armistice with “Vichy” conditions, not the other way around. Hitler was planning to give France an old fashioned shellacking. The French traitors at worst, or wimps at best proposed an armistice whereby Hitler could conserve his resources to attack someone else. Hitler took them up on a great idea. The Vichy regime was not a diabolical invention of the Nazis, it was the diabolical invention of the French.
I love Paul Reynaud.
TYLER KENT – KENNEDY'S SPY - MAY 20 1940
Tyler Kent was an American who worked for the Nazi sympathizer Joseph P. Kennedy, the US Ambassador in London. On May 20 1940 the Brits arrested him and charged him with espionage. He had nearly 2,000 illegally stolen top secret documents in his chest of drawers.
Kent was tried in the fall and sentenced to six years. He did his time and went back to the states after the war. There is no question that he was a spy, but a historical controversy exists as to whether he was spying for the Nazis or the Soviet Russians. Tyler Kent was both a Communist and a raving anti-semite, and he never renounced either viewpoint after the war. He had a Russian girlfriend who was also convicted of espionage.
Ty Kent died broke in a Texas trailer park in 1988. Some stories just have magically happy endings.
Joe Kennedy waived Kent's diplomatic immunity protection so the British could try the spy. But some wonder if Kennedy might have made it easy for Kent to spy on behalf of the Germans, and feigned innocence and anger when Kent got caught.
FRANCE AND BRITAIN AT WAR … WITH EACH OTHER
MERS EL KEBIR – July 3 1940
French and British battleships slugging it out with each other without restraint? French and British infantry units clashing full scale? Both these scenarios are part of the story of World War II. The infantry clashes took place in Syria. The naval conflict, a mix of political and military clashes, took place around most of the Mediterranean in the summer of 1940.
Article 8 of the capitulation agreement gave the French Navy to the Nazis for internment. The French had the fourth largest navy in the world. How could the British trust that the Nazis wouldn't put a pirate skull and crossbones flag on the back of them and sail them for Germany? The British couldn't even be sure of Vichy neutrality.
The surrender of France with much of its first class navy intact created a delicate situation for Churchill and the British. What would happen if British military forces came into contact with French forces? The two nations were now both allies and enemies. Would the facts of the Vichy treaty or sentiment dictate British action? Would French gun crews fire on British targets? Would British ships shell French ships?
The answer came on July 3, 1940 when a Royal Navy Mediterranean battle group cornered a French task force at its base in Oran, Algeria. There were four French battleships and other smaller ships there, manned by French crews, and flying under the political flag of Vichy France. The French commander at Oran rejected pleas for a peaceful solution, involving some sort of qualified surrender. The Royal Navy then did what it had to do. It opened fire with all guns. The French ship guns and shore batteries answered and the battle of Oran was joined. Brit forces destroyed three battleships (one sunk, two beached) and sent 1,250 French sailors to their untimely death. The fourth battleship, the Croissant, escaped to Toulon to continue to fight for Hitler. Check that, it was the Strasbourg that escaped to Toulon, in spite of damaged by air attacks from the carrier Ark Royal.
Taking three battleships out of Nazi inventory sheets was a big win, but the psychological message was almost of equal importance. All former allies who wanted to help their captors would from now on do at their personal peril. Quisling soldiers and sailors were served notice all over the globe. There were other clashes with French Naval forces that month, and in some instances the French commanders agreed to disarm their ships by removing and surrendering parts vital to the functioning of their large guns.
Operation Le Minesweep, clearing the French Navy from the war strategy of the Germans, was a clear and quick success all over the Mediterranean, and an opportunity for Britain to put to good use its only winning card at this time, sea-power superiority.
Note: I have a book I just bought called Petain, Hero or Traitor: The Untold Story. which challenges the bad image of Petain in history. I will have to read it before incorporating it into the story.
As of now it's The Unread Story.
NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH COUNCIL – THE A-BOMB GANG
At about the exact time that France surrendered, a man was meeting with Harry Hopkins regarding the establishment of a pool of scientific researchers to develop new and advanced weapons. The goal was to bolster, through science, long range national security in the face of the long tern Nazi threat. History calls this aspect of the struggle “the wizard war.”
The man was certain Dr. Van Bush, the president of the Carnegie Institute in Washington. He had been writing back and forth with several like minded academics from the top universities. All were on the same page. They felt that the Nazis had their act together when it came to using science to develop new and better weapons, and it was the duty of the American scientific community to get on their horse and match German weapons developments.
James Conant of Harvard was another leader of this movement. The patriot eggheads proposed an organization called the National Defense Research Council. They knew exactly what they wanted. All they needed next was the President's ear.
Since Dr. Bush was in D.C. at the time, and Conant was not, the NDRC chose him to approach the President with the advanced weapons brains trust idea. Bush couldn't get in to see FDR but he managed to get some time with Hopkins.
“ Hopkins was immediately impressed with Bush's proposal, and with Bush himself. ... He had prepared a succinct memorandum outlining his proposals. Hopkins read it with approval, and then arranged for an appointment for Bush to talk with the President about it. When Bush went to the White House he was prepared to answer all kinds of questions and meet probable objections, but he found that Roosevelt had already studied the memorandum ... after uttering a pleasantry or two, he wrote on it, “O.K. - F.D.R. - and Bush was out of the President's office a few moments after he had entered it. ...
Such was the authorization to Vannevar Bush to go ahead with ... the establishment of the organizations which was responsible for the invention of the atomic bomb.”
That's from Bob Sherwood's priceless book about FDR and Harry.
Vannevar Bush was not the father and grandfather of two future Presidents of the United States. One nitwit once tried to tell me in a Las Vegas dressing room that Vannevar is the founder of the Bush political dynasty. I tried to tell him that he was getting mixed up with a man named Prescott Bush. He got mad and called me a “know-it-all.”
REPUBLICANS IN THE CABINET JUNE 1940
F.D.R. made two bold moves in in June of 1940. He named Frank Knox to the post of Secretary Navy, and Henry L. Stimson to the post of Secretary of War. Both were famous Republicans.
Both Parties objected. The Democrats felt that these jobs were supposed to go to Democrats. The Republicans were angry with the two men for accepting the jobs. Some Republicans suggested that Knox and Stimson be read out of the party like President John Tyler, who was read out of his own Whig Party while he was President.
The move was a signal to the American people that the time for uniting in a bipartisan spirit was now, not later when the fascists were knocking on the door. The President was showing a true patriotic spirit especially when one considers that he made this move in an election year and on the eve of the Republican Convention in Philadelphia.
CDAAA
The counter-organization to the America Firsters was the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The fearless leader of the CDAAA was famous William Allen White, Kansas editor and renowned political activist. No one could accuse this organization of being a big lackey of Franklin Roosevelt. White was a Republican.
The CDA, for short, had formed in 1939 under the windy title of “Non Partisan Committee for Peace Through Revision of the Neutrality Law.” Their purpose was to convince the U.S. government to repeal the anachronistic law left over from World War One which forbade the United States from aiding any faction in a foreign war.
When that law was repealed, the NPCPTRNL had no reason for existing, but its base obviously still had work to do and plenty of backing. So in 1940 it disbanded for about ten minutes and revived itself under a shorter title with a broader purpose. The CDAAA now promoted a general preparedness movement. CDAAA argued for the draft, the lend-lease, and the stimulation of mass production of warplanes.
CDAAA felt that if the British Isles went down, the United States would adopt what was left of the British Navy, and at that point would have about two years at the most to prepare for the attack on the Western Hemisphere that Hitler was sure to launch.
Demagogues and all stripes of isolationists attacked the committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The super-jerk super-demagogue Father Coughlin said publicly that the members of the CDAAA were “the most dangerous fifth column that ever set foot on neutral soil. They are the Quislings of America. They are the Judas Iscariots ... of our nation ... snakes in the grass who dare not stand upright and speak like men face to face.”
On June 10 a full page ad from CDAAA appeared in several national newspapers under the banner, “Stop Hitler Now!”
Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels read the ad during one of his speeches and taunted,
“Stop Hitler? With what?”
US NAVAL STRATEGY 1940
The fall of France marked a sea change in U.S. naval strategy. Since the end of World War One the strategy had always been one of defense. The Navy was there to protect America from a foreign threat or combination of them. After France fell the new strategy was one of offense. No longer could America sit complacently while Europe’s states fought among themselves. Britain had to survive as the minimalist goal, but stabilizing Britain was only the beginning. Nazi control of all of Europe could not stand.
A world so dominated by Hitler was unthinkable for Roosevelt, Hopkins and Hull. The counterattack might take time but from the fall of France on, the thinking at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave was offensive victory, not defense. By the summer of 1940 Germany was a clear and present menace to freedom, democracy, God, and the USA.
FDR did not tell the people that the US was planning an offensive strategy in 1940 any more than Bush did in late 1990 when he pretended that “Desert Shield” to protect Saudi Arabia was the only US policy while he was planning a counter-attack to take back Kuwait from Iraq. Both leaders kept their plans low key for the same reason. From a military and political standpoint it was best not to arouse the enemy into pre-emptive action against US forces while it prepared to strike. Roosevelt knew that it was time to roll back the Nazi tide or face long range doom.
American industry saw the beginnings of what would later be a flood of conversion to war production. Congress re-instated the draft, a peacetime for the first time in American history. The US Navy switched gears from protection to projection. US ships would now take an aggressive role while ferrying convoys across the Atlantic and back again, shooting at submarines on sight without a quiz. The American public may not have been ready for the switch from blocking to punching, but FDR was. The goal was to give military aid to Britain short of active belligerency, and hopefully get the United States in somehow. Roosevelt wanted America in this European war from this point on. It took more than another year and a half, but fortunately, the Japanese gave him his pretext on 12.7.41
The United States had planned its post-WWI naval strategy on a war with Japan in the Pacific. The US West Coast was far better prepared to battle an invasion than the more heavily populated East Coast. Sand Diego and Pearl Harbor were far stronger on “D” than Boston or Atlantic City. The helplessness of the East Coast in part determined the US strategy to worry about Hitler first, and Japan later and whenever. At this point it seemed very possible that the USA could end up in a war with Germany while maintaining a delicate peace with japan.
DARK HOUR AT DAKAR – SEPTEMBER 23-25 1940
The port city of Dakar on the west coast of Africa was a danger to the Allies. Today it is in the tiny coastal country of Senegal. Dakar was a base that could support a fascist invasion of South America. and it was controlled by the Vichy French controlled Dakar but the Nazis, of course, controlled the Vichy French to some extent. The question was how much did the Nazis control Vichy in the outposts. Could the Vichy and the Nazi energies combine to turn Dakar into a strategically threatening Axis strongpoint? Even conceding that the French gunnery officers and crew were almost hostages, they still do plenty of damage for the Nazis anyway.
So the British teamed up with Charles de Gaulle and the anti-Vichy free French to send and invasion expedition against Dakar in late September 1940. De Gaulle expected the Vichy defenders to throw down their guns and embrace him, but that didn't happen.
The invasion force included 8,000 troops, two battleships, three cruisers and an aircraft carrier. Operation Frog Menace was a combination of 'shock and awe', and 'hearts and minds.' Both failed.
MARTINIQUE UNIQUE
In the summer of 1940, while Debs Garms was winning the NL batting title, a unique situation faced the USA on the French island of Martinique. Here was the finest naval base in the Caribbean. The Vichy French still had a first-rate aircraft carrier and a heavy cruiser there, plus other smaller ships. This fleet and French planes were a threat to the Panama Canal and to Britain’s crucial Venezuelan oil supply. Would the French Navy in Martinique obey if the Fuhrer ordered it to go out and attack the Allies?
Roosevelt sent an emissary there to warn the French that if this fleet so much as conducted maneuvers of any kind without the full notification and approval of the United States, the US would treat it as a hostile foe. The semi-captive French fleet in Martinique assured Washington that it would remain strictly neutral.
CAN ENGLAND SURVIVE?
In July Hitler gave a speech in which he made a last plea for a ‘peaceful’ solution with England. He said,
“Mr. Churchill for once ought to believe me when I say that a great empire will be destroyed – an empire which it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm. I do, however, realize that this struggle, if it continues, can end only with the complete annihilation of one or other of the two adversaries.”
He couldn’t have been more prophetic. History is fascinated more by Hitler’s victories than with his ultimate defeat, but while his conquests were equaled by Rome, Alexander the Great, and Napoleonic France, the winning of the war with Germany in 1945 marked the greatest military defeat of any nation in all of human history.
FDR TAKES A VACATION
Roosevelt and Hopkins went on a Caribbean cruise. Roosevelt seemed not to have a care in the world, at a time when the world was threatened. But near the end of the cruise he emerged with a plan to save England through the “Lend-Lease” program. It was entirely the work of Roosevelt's mind, and it was what FDR was really up to on the cruise, when it seemed to some that he was irresponsibly partying.
LEND/LEASE UNLEASHED - SEPTEMBER 1940
America finally lifted a finger to give material support to Britain in her time of need. To help save Britain “from Hitler and his Huns, with the greedy Italian at his tail” the Lend Lease Program was enacted on the Second of September, 1940. By this act (agreed to in principle in July 1940) the United States loaned 50 old destroyers (but not quite ‘antiquated’ as is often written: these ‘four-pipers’ were all built after the First World War – many warships fought for England in WWII that were also built before World War I – so how old is old?) to Great Britain in exchange for a 99 year lease on some valuable naval bases in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean bases were located in Newfoundland, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, and a grape-flavored one in South America on the coast of British Guyana. The USA also threw in 10 modern Coast Guard cutters with as little public fanfare as possible. With equal quietness, the Brits slipped in the base of Argentia (not to be confused with the nation of Argentina) in Newfoundland, a base that would see much use in the war. These last two mutual items were not formally part of the Lend-Lease deal. The British even threw in a free base in Bermuda for American use, to the slight consternation of the Bermuda legislature. Bermuda was a free gift.
The United States wanted the English bases, fearing the Panama Canal was vulnerable to air attack, which it certainly was. A war game a few years earlier with friendly fire and fake bombs. The game saw a lone US plane launched from a cruiser a hundred miles away in the Caribbean drop three bombs on the most important lock before any defense began to scramble. The result from US carrier war games was worse. The US was also concerned about Nazi infiltration and eventual occupation of portions of South America. If Germany could move down into western Africa, it could find itself in striking distance of Brazil from Dakar.
Some British historians and documentary filmmakers still complain about how little America did for them in their time of need, how they did the front line fighting for freedom while the yellow Yanks sat it out on the sidelines. Well then, why did Britain do everything in its power at the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and beyond to make sure that the United States did not build up the naval supremacy that the US Navy had sought at the time? If they had not clung to the pride of historic British Naval supremacy, Uncle Sam could have been the big brother they needed when facing down Hitler in 1940. If the USA had only 50 old tin cans to offer in 1940-41, Britian had it's lust for historical naval supremacy in 1922 to blame.
American and Britain are the two truest friends in the world today. But there was still just enough suspicion left over from the rivalry of the 100 years before World War One to prevent UK support for US naval buildup in the decade after 1919.
Britain badly needed the old 50 old cans. Many historians demean the value of these old destroyers, as if they were a pathetic gesture in real terms, suggesting that the true value was the psychological and political impact of our active help. Not true.
German submarines were making life very difficult for the convoys crossing the Atlantic from Halifax to Liverpool and there was a hopeless shortage of British destroyers. If only capital ships were good sub fighters, Britain might not have needed the 50 so much. British destroyers were so overworked that more than half of them were in the shop. A large number disappeared in the evacuation of France. Battleships were a small help and a large expended resource in convoy duty since German surface ships were few and sought not a decisive gunfight in any case. A battleship chasing a sub was more of a target than a hunter, and an elephant trying to kill a rabbit.
The German surface navy was made for commerce raiding, not heavyweight boxing matches like in World War One. The racist Nazi raiders of WWII were like the racist confederate raiders of the Civil War. They were going to hit and run all over the seven seas. Catch me if you can. There would be no Battle of Jutland this time.
What Britian needed were destroyers that could counterattack submarines. The 50 hit the spot for the UK in a major way.
Later, when America was in the war, a top-end US Navy officer griped that “I wish we had those 50 old tin cans now.” It was pointed out to him that they’d been doing the front-line fighting for freedom a year longer than they could have if America had kept them. The guy shut up.
The Lend-Lease deal was exciting bad news in Berlin. Hitler wanted to break diplomatic relations with the USA but his closest advisors (this was still a point in his life when he occasionally still listened to them) cautioned that it would be better to see which way the air war in London was going before doing so. There were still vague plans on the Third Reich drawing board for invading England. If the Luftwaffe could knock out the RAF, Germany would not want America fighting on British beaches side by side with the Home Guard and Monty’s one good division on the German D-Day.
The first 8 American destroyers went over to Englishmen in Halifax on September 6, 1940. This was the same date that the Luftwaffe began its titanic air assault on the city of London/Westminster.
The American did some un-required stocking stuffing with the Lend-Lease destroyers. When the British picked them up, they found that every room on every ship was stocked with luxury items that the British had been suffering shortages of. This was an unexpected treat and a gesture of support, recognizing that life was a lot easier in the states compared to the hardships of life in Britian. British officers would open up a storage bin and cans of coffee and food would tumble out. Next to the torpedo tubes were cases of Coke-a Cola and beer. Boxes of cigarettes were under every sailors bunk bed. This is a little known story about the war and is gratefully told by a British author in the book Churchill and the Generals.
TRIPARTITE PACT 9.27.40
The urgency of inter-Allied co-operation in the west was underscored by the signing in Berlin of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940. This transformed the vague non-committal Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 into a more formal defensive alliance.
Tripartite 40 did not mean the Axis was now a united military power in concert planning to conquer the world (although the Allies would paint it as such for propaganda purposes). The T-Pact validated the mutual spheres of influences of the 3 budding empires, but it was primarily directed against the United States.
Germany, Italy and Japan agreed to help each other out by every means necessary “when one of the three contracting powers is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or in the Chinese-Japanese conflict.”
A separate article stated that this principle did not apply to the USSR.
So Germany would use the threat of Japanese intervention in the Pacific if the USA thought of entering the European War, and Japan used the threat of German intervention in the Atlantic if the US entered the war in Asia.
Coming at a time when both Japan and Germany were on a roll, the T-Pact was a real threat to US freedom of action in world affairs.
Tripartite not only declared the Soviet Union an exception to the aggressive intent of the pact, Russia was even invited to join the pact (then it would have to change its name to Qaurtpartite.) Vyacheslav Molotov went to Berlin to discus a quadrominium, but the Nazis could not accept his preconditions.
Molo asked for a Russian sphere of influence in southeastern Europe. Hitler had his eyes on the same sphere and could not concede this. When Vyacheslav left Berlin with an empty basket, Hitler made the fateful decision that Russia would have to be invaded, (although one could as easily say he made that decision while dictating Mein Kumpf to Hess in Steve Landesberg Prison in 1923)
The formation of the Tripartite Pact probably helped Roosevelt win the Election of 1940.
FELIX HENDAYE – OCTOBER 23
Operation Felix was the German plan to attack and seize Gibraltar. Hendaye was the town near the Franco-Spanish where Franco met Hitler, and where Operation Felix died a quiet death in the planning stage.
Hitler met Franco at Hendaye in order to obtain Spanish permission to attack Gibraltar, which is surrounded by 1 - Spanish territory and 2- the water. Hitler came away empty handed, humiliated, and mad at Franco.
Hitler had long dreamed of Franco joining the Axis. After all, weren't they all on the same fascist team? Germany had won Franco's civil war for him, and he should show his gratitude by joining Hitler, or at least being a grateful enabler on Gibraltar. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.
Franco made Hitler wait at the Hendaye train station for a rude spell, and Hitler was tempted to walk away back to Berlin before they even met. But he knew what he had to try and get. If Germany took Gibraltar, it locked up the Mediterranean for the Axis. Britian could only supply Egypt and Palestine by the long long way around the Horn and up the Red Sea.
No matter what Hitler said, Franco wouldn't even come close to hinting there was the remotest possibility of Spain joining Hitler in a military agreement of any kind. Not only that, Franco took the floor and didn't let it go. Franco pulled a Hitler and a Ribbentropp on Hitler, yapping and yapping until Hitler wanted to put his hands over his ears and say, “All right all right, you win, just shut up!.” It's a nice scene to visualize, Hitler being handed his head on a platter by a fellow fascist dictator who could out wind-bag the best of them, and Franco proved that by doing to Hitler what he hath done to others for years. Hendaye-10.23 was one of the decisive defeats of WWII for Germany.
When Hitler met with Mussolini a week later he told Benito,
“That man Franco is insufferable. I would rather spend the day in the dentist chair than meet with that clown again.”
That “clown” had the last laugh, and ruled Spain until 1975.
OPERATION SEA OTTER
The head of the German Air Force, Mr. Goering was so fat that the old WWI pilot could now only fly two engine planes. His ego was even fatter than his belly. Herman's monstrous delusional pride enabled him to actually think that his Luftwaffe could not only defeat England as part of a preparation for invasion, he thought the Luftwaffe could force England to surrender all by itself. He thought Germany could win through air power alone! Goering had come down with Billy Mitchell fever after Germany had avoided that plague (believing as a fact, that heavy bombers had rendered armies and navies obsolete and could change the strategic battlefield in a single day.) And he sort of convinced Hitler to listen to ludicrous Mitchellism too, and it cost them the Battle of Britian.
It was an absurd idea and only a mentally disturbed leadership, or a Severdsky enthralled with a Mitchell could have even conceived of such a thing.
Politically they were making the same mistake that Japan was making on the other side of the globe. They mistook democratic pacifism as a permanent state of mind, not realizing that once aroused, democracies are every bit as macho as dictatorships. They were like thug gangs from the street burning the homes of the rich thinking the rich were too wimpy to buy guns and start fighting back.
The plan for invading England was serious one called Operation Sea Lion. Hitler knew it could never succeed unless or until the Luftwaffe took control of the air from Britain, at least along its Southern coast. With the strong British Navy to back it up, a strong RAF would be too much in tandem for even the superior Germans.
So Goering launched a campaign to wipe out the British air fields and the planes that lived there. He's wipe them out in the air on on the ground, but, to use 1960's parlance “hey hey, ho ho, the RAF has got to go.”
This fight for air supremacy lasted several weeks and when it was not going as well as planned, Hitler and Goering both became egoistically impatient and decided that terror was a better weapon than sound military strategy. They were actually close to turning a victorious corner when they changed their mind, thank Christ.
The Nazi fools would use the military as a political weapon to demoralize the British. The Luftwaffe would bomb the British so badly that they would sue for peace. Germany took a sound military strategy that was close to winning and turned to a little boy's infantile petulant bratty solution. Good going, boys.
Now the plan became simply the bomb the main British cities, especially London. The Blitz was on. Ju-88’s, Ju-87 Stukas, Dorniers 110's, and Heinkel 111 bombers raided the great city on almost a daily basis for many weeks. September and October of 1940 was the worst of it. One in five buildings in London was either destroyed or seriously damaged. Casualties among civilians ran into the thousands. It was strategic terror bombing, but it had even less chance of success than the failed conventional military bombing campaign that preceded it.
The RAF fighters had several advantages. They had enough fuel for air to air combat over home-field, while the German fighters had a short time to operate over the target. The Spitfire had only one goal, shoot down the bombers. The German fighters had to engage the British fighters and remain close to the bombers at the same time, sometimes an impossible contradiction.
Most important, the German bombers did not have the four engine payload that could have been decisive. The Luftwaffe bombers could not destroy London even if the RAF had been far less effective. Goering's sky raiders didn’t have the muscle.
On the other hand, the British were loaded with four engine bombers and as soon as Germany tried to destroy London, the British retaliated. Not as many people around the world read about British retaliation as read of the Blitz on London. But it was better to publicize the desperate situation in London to the world rather than the retaliation.
British air raids on German targets were sadly ineffective. British bombers had more payload, but the accuracy was extremely poor, and the results were not inspiring. The smaller Luftwaffe bombers outperformed the larger RAF ones. But the RAF made their psychological and political point. The German leaders had to face the truth that their promises that Germany would never fave enemy bombing was a lie. The accurate Germans failed in their terror goal, while the inaccurate British succeeded in theirs. The British already had their backs to the was so they had little shock left in them for the Nazis to exploit. The Nazis were riding high in the saddle and only a few bombs on German cities shocked them off their high horse.
By the end of 1940 Hitler and Goering definitely knew that Operation Sea Lion was a dead animal on the beach. England was not going to die. The two cruel egomaniacs may or may not have known that the decision to bomb people instead of airfields and naval bases had been a completely idiotic and counter-productive blunder, setting a horrible precedent that would be adhered to by all the combatants until the end of the war. From now on, the civilians were targets too. Sure, they were worth only five points, a soldier was worth 25 points and a tank was worth 500 points. But from now on the civilians were targets.
ALTERNATIVE TAKE
That in short, is the conventional version of the story. But it may be mythical in some respects. The idea that England was outnumbered and doomed and that Germany was threatening to wipe England off the political map, is clearly a propaganda myth from the war that has carried over into history.
But what has been less explored is that the myth might have been true if Germany had played its cards smarter. The expose of the myth might therefore also be a myth. In other words the myth is that Germany was on the verge of invading England. The truth is that Germany never had a chance and there never really could have been one. But the last word on that is a few military arguments suggesting that with wisdom and daring, Germany could have invaded England. The unsophisticated corny view of Sea Lion comes full circle and becomes the advanced view.
The true reason Operation Sea Lion was unfeasible is that Hitler never hated England and had never planned for Sea Lion before the war began. If Germany had, then the threat to English independence would have been true in 1940-41. When Germany planned to invade Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France in 1938, 1939 and 1940 there were meetings upon meetings with Hitler and the generals. Everything was meticulously discussed and planned, with Hitler approving every last detail. Everyone knew what had to be done down to the smallest item.
Such was not the case with Sea Lion. Hitler had a few half-baked meetings with the generals and admirals in the summer of 1940, but little was specifically planned. It was all vague, except for a general idea that it was going to happen. The reason was political. Hitler could never find the hate in his heart to make a real commitment to destroy his racial brethren across the channel. He hated the upstart Checks and planned their destruction accordingly. The same with Poland and the French. But when the Battle of Britian took place, it was a result of a haphazard evolution of events, not part of a pre-planned intelligent strategy.
If Hitler had his mind made up to take England down from the moment France fell, he might have done it. If he had made up his mind to someday take England down while he was in prison, it is even more likely he would have done it. But Hitler was always sad to be at war with Britain, and any young man can tell you there is nothing less promising than a fight with a guy you're not mad at. Such was the Battle of Britian. The guy who is red with rage has a a decisive ad (advantage.) In this case it was England.
Now let's say that Hitler did indeed hate England from way back when with the same ferocity that I hate FOX network baseball announcers. Then the tactical situation might have made victory at least plausible. Instead of an ad lib strategy that fell pell mell into place, the invasion of England in August 1940 would have been carefully planned, co-ordinated with military minds, infused with Hitler's personal dynamic leadership, and could have worked.
The plan would have included interior parachute drops to take key airfields, followed by brigades landing by conventional aircraft. This would have bypassed the impregnable south England coastal defenses. The tactic had worked in Belgium and Holland. It was not outrageous to think it might have worked in England. But there was not any sense of commitment to that sort of bold strategy. An all or nothing invasion before the Spitfires came on line, in say July 1940, might have worked. Instead Hitler, in frustration out of not wanting to be at war with England at all, simply told Goering to take out the British air defenses by air power alone. Did Hitler really think he could do this by dogfighting and bombing? Or was it a last minute posturing strategy, an apology for no real strategy at all.
If Hitler really wanted to kill England, he would have rejected Admiral Raeder's nay-saying that the Royal Navy controlled the channel and an invasion was impossible. The military genius (at times) would have listened to others who argued that German minefields were all over the south British coast and the actual areas where the Royal Navy could operate effectively was much smaller than many claimed. He might have saved total Luftwaffe strength for full-scale tactical support of the invasion itself, rather than depleting it in an impossible strategic dream of wiping British defenses (and then cities) out completely first. Even if the attempted strategic air Battle of Britian had gone better for the Germans than it did, an follow-up invasion could not have worked because the Luftwaffe needed time to repair and replenish its planes and pilots.
Winning through air vs. air power alone was almost silly, since more than half the English plane factories were out of range of German bombers and lost RAF planes could be replenished indefinitely. Capture the airfields and capture the factories and you win.
Furthermore, the Germans had plenty of excellent landing craft, the Bob Seibel Ferries to cross the Channel in. “Seibels” were medium sized heavily armored ferries with 8 inch guns. They later proved amazingly effective in crossing 300,000 German troops over the Straights of Messina in 1943, even though the Allies had total air superiority at that time.
In sum, Operation Sea Lion was not feasible because deep in his heart Hitler didn't want to do it. He saved his dignity by trying to bomb England to surrender, but he was handing the Luftwaffe a task he had to know was impossible. It is therefore unfair for historians to say that the Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain. Hitler was saving face by ordering the Luftwaffe to fly to Mars and back. He was trying to take down the heavyweight champion with his weak left while saving his strong right for the upcoming battle against Russia. No wonder he lost the Battle of Britain. He didn't really fight it. He only pretended to with air power. It was just holding action disguised as an offensive threat. There was never a single senior strategy meting where Hitler and his generals made any specific plans to invade England.
RAF - PLANES AND MYTHS
One of the myths of the Battle of Britian is that the Royal Air Force fighters were slugging it out in a life or death dogfight with the Luftwaffe fighters as the British people watched in awe, their fate decided above them.
That was an accurate picture late in September 1940. But partisan Allied historians overlook the true picture up to that point which was that the Messerschmit ME-109 fighters were frustrated for many weeks because the R.A.F. fighters were avoiding air-to air combat at all costs. In fact, the British were leaving their cities open to air attack as the best choice under the circumstances.
The reason for this was that the British had an marginally inferior fighter plane in the Hurricane, and the new superior Spitfires were simply few and far between at this time. The Hurricane was no match for the ME-109. Sending up four or five of the precious and few Spitfires against 30 or 40 Me-109's would be more of less saying, 'yes, I want to lose the war. I want to give the Germans complete air superiority at this time.'
Churchill needed to buy some time while more Spitfires came on line. Only then would the R.A.F deem it wise to rise to the sky and duke it out. Until then, the fighters simply ran away day after day. In fact, in the August-early September stage, the entire purpose of the German bombing raids was to bait the British fighters into the sky so that the Germans could win the complete air superiority that Goering was under orders to achieve. Heinkels, escorted by ME-109's, would raid south England ports just to try to get a fighter fight started. The German fighters had quite the limited range, so it was easy for the R.A.F. fighters to fly away the other way and live to fight another day. Pro-Ally writers just find this so sickening a thought that they pretend that this stage of the Battle of Britian never happened. It makes sense and the way things worked out, it obviously worked. But you have to go to German sources to find a very consistent frustration that the R.A.F fighter refused to come up and fight in the first six weeks of the Battle of Britian. Perhaps in a way it was brilliantly heroic. It took courage to face the moral humiliation of running away in order to win the larger strategic victory.
By mid-September the new Spitfires began to come on line and by the end of September that image of the slugfest in the skies to decide the fate of a nation was an accurate one. With enough Spitfires beside them, even the 'Canes' performed well enough.
The English had prepared for WWII by developing further the airplane technology of WWI. The result was British bi-plane Gladiators against modern mono-Messerschmits in 1939. But the negative techno-balance had been redressed as the Battle of Britian heated up in late 1940.
RED CROSS BUOYS
German pilots who landed in England were captured and incarcerated. But German pilots who landed in the water were another story.
If British vessels got to them they were taken prisoner same as if they had landed on the island. The Germans had a serious pilot shortage (much more so than the British) and they desperately tried to rescue some of their flying men. They dropped buoys with a giant Red Cross insignia for the pilots to cling to. Then German seaplanes with a giant Red Cross insignia on them would land near the buoys and go pick them up. Or we should say, try and pick them up. R.A.F. fighters shot these Red Cross planes to pieces, and slaughtered the pilots clinging to the buoys.
The Germans complained that the British were violating international law. The British countered with the argument that the Germans had lost all protection of international law when they tried to conquer the world and burn Londontown. There was no way the British pilots and political leaders were going to allow these guys to go back to Germany, get in another Heinkel, and kill their wife, dog, and child two weeks later. No way.
ALBANIA INVADES GREECE – OCTOBER 1940
Albania means Italy of course. Italy occupied Albania months before WWII officially broke out in Poland. Mussolini wanted to keep up with the Joneses in 1940. Hitler had conquered Western Europe. Mussolini needed to show Hitler that Italy was no mere junior partner. Italy had shown it could conquer primitive tribes in Ethiopia with the help of mustard gas bombs. Now it was time to show Hitler that Moose, too, can conquer a classic European power. Italy decided to invade Greece for absolutely no reason at all. Albania would be the launch pad, and to add legitimacy to the new Italian empire enterprise, three brigades of Albanian troops were in the invading army.
The opening Italian attack into Greece lasted from October 28 to Nov 13 1940. It didn't get very far. The Greeks then counter-attacked and gradually pushed the Italians back into Greece. This phase lasted from November 14 1940 to March 8 1941.
One reason the Italians fared poorly in the opening attack was that Mussolini had recently given 600,000 Roman troops a furlough. Good timing is almost as important in war as it is in stand up comedy and Big Ben had very little of it. There had been too much criticism at home about all these young men being away for so long doing nothing that he recalled half of them just when it was time for them to do something. Just one the endless military mistakes of Sgt. Mussolini (he finished up a Sergeant in WWI.)
The Albanian troops didn't fight very well. Most of them defected to the Greeks they were supposed to be killing! These were conquered people being sent into battle to help conquer new people for the people that had conquered them. It isn't surprising that the Albanian battalions lacked elan.
Britian had given a guarantee to Greece back in April of 1939, just like the one given to Poland. Britian had enough to deal with at the moment without having to worry about honoring a commitment to Greece that was made before the Axis had devoured most of Europe. At the moment there wasn't much Britian could do, and Greece was holding off the pathetic Italian invasion well enough without British help anyway.
COVENTRY AND MANNERHEIM
The point of no return in the no-holds-barred department came with the air raid on Coventry, England on the night of November 14/15 1940.
There was heavy industry in Coventry so in that sense it was a legitimate military target, but the industrial spots were not singled out. Instead the target was the city itself. A little after 7 p.m. tea time, 500 German bombers appeared over the city and covered Coventry with incendiaries. The first waves started the fires and the later waves added fuel to the fires. The later waves used the lights of the first fires to more easily find the target. 500 English citizens perished that night, one for every bomber. More than 60,000 buildings were burned to the ground.
The Brits adopted a new word from the event. For the rest of the war any city or town destroyed by air was said to have been “coventrated.” The fires of Coventry started another fire, a burning fire in the British people for revenge. In a sense the coventration of Coventry was a strategic aid. British bomber command had been frustrated by a rank inability of its planes to find and destroy specific targets in Germany both day and night. RAF raids were costing more planes than the meager results could justify. But now with new rules of air engagement, the British were confident they could at least hit the side of a barn; that is, they could now without guilt single out any German city in range and attack it without regard for individual sites within it. All it took was a few flares to find the city and then whamo.
The British people got revenge on the night of December 16/17. Operation Abigail Rachel was a new styled air raid on the Rhineland city of Mannheim. There was industry there but at this point it no longer mattered exactly where the bombs fell as long as they fell on Mannheim. The target now was German morale.
The RAF didn't exactly manhandle Mannheim that December night. Less than 200 bombers went in and although only three were lost, the bombing was embarrassingly off-target for the most part. 500 buildings were razed (as compared to the 60,000 in Coventry). 115 German civilians died on the ground. Next to nothing was accomplished in a strict military sense. But a new order or battle was established. Jack Bull had served notice that ‘two can play at this game.’ From now on the RAF would hope to be able to locate and destroy specific targets in urban areas, but if they couldn’t, then the random destruction of cities and towns would do instead, and all the bomber crews would fly home and get a sound sleep.
The human being is the most dangerous animal. Hitler underestimated British tenacity because of his stupid racial conceits. Like the Japanese, he thought that the martial spirit of his race and nation was supposedly several cuts above that of any other. He thought there was a difference between German nature and human nature. But in reality an elderly Amish preacher in a wheelchair will punch you sooner or later if you provoke him long enough. Targeting became a lot easier after Coventry.
On December 29, 1940 the Luftwaffe raided East London in force. Some call this raid the climax of the Blitz. On that night the German bomber squadrons dropped incendiaries all over the residential area around St. Paul’s cathedral. The only purpose of these bombs was to start fires and try to burn down the city. There was not even a pretense of military targeting for there was no industry to speak of anywhere in the working class section of East London, unless you count prostitution (and I certainly don't.) Even the raid on Coventry was not as vicious as this one. This was cruel even by Blitz standards. This part of London had been spared thus far from the Blitz precisely because it was completely devoid of military or industrial targets.
In the main fire, two square miles of Londontown became a sea of orange death. 1,400 other fires had to be put out. Whatever tiny chance there was for a negotiated peace went up in flames that night as the City of London crackled in horror. (Big Ben and Parliament, by the way, are not actually in the City of London. They are in Westminster. This raid took place to the east of these attractions in London proper. So I’m half lying when I say that I proposed to my wife in London. I technically gave her the ring on the Westminster Bridge, in Westminster. )
ALTERNATE TAKE
German chauvinists have a different version of the terror raids on London and Coventry. They claim that the smoke from the first raids on strictly military targets made accurate bombing from then on impossible. That was why the rest of the bombs hit civilian areas and started tragic wildfires across residential areas.
They further state that it was the British who started the “terror raids” on German cities. Their picture is of innocent Germans sticking to strictly military targets and missing the mark, while British Wellingtons were hitting back at German cities with completely indiscriminate targeting. Some English writers in recent years also say that it was the British who started the practice or terror bombing when they hit German cities with blanket bombing of residential areas before the Germans did it back at London.
Ok, first of all, the German writers who suggest that they never ever deliberately tried terror bombing on London are just liars, or two-ounce-brains.
That being said, let's concede the point. Coventry was an accident of smoke and fires, and it was the British who first started bombing German cities with terror tactics.
So?
If I were a Brit in 1940 I would have approved. Offense is immoral, defense is moral.
Imagine if you're walking down the street and some guy starts punching you and kicking you and then punching you and kicking you some more. Then you pull a knife out and reach around and stab him in the back and he staggers off to the hospital. Then after he recovers he sues you for not respecting the rules of fighting and starts writing articles in the newspapers about what a criminal you are and how you are not a gentleman, who does not respect the rules of war.
Germany started bombing British cities first. So what if it was within certain guidelines? Germany started bombing British cities first. Britain started terror bombing first, but it was in desperate response to Germany bombing British cities first. The stab in the back analogy stands. One combatants was struggling for its very life the other was not. The one not in danger of annihilation had the luxury of posing like a gentleman. The other did not. A Dutch lop rabbit will break your eardrum with a maniacal scream and bite your finger off if cornered and threatened with death (mine did.) Left alone, it is the sweetest creature. There are no rules of warfare when your life is at stake. Too bad about Bremen and Hamburg. You're the jerks that started the world war, tried to conquer the world, and sent 6 million peace-loving Jews to the gas chamber. You got what was coming to you. The people of London and Coventry did not.
Britian went to war in protest of a series of aggressive unacceptable violations of international law by an evil empire culminating in the last straw of the Polish conquest. England's cause was just. Germany's cause was not. Who are the good guys, the ones employing terror raids in the defense of good, or the ones following the strict rules of warfare in the pursuit of world conquest and genocide? Give me a break. If you're trying to kill me, I will cheerfully fight back with any means available, and the more terror the better.
The Germans and the German apologists are suggesting that it's proper to demand that both sides adhere to the rules of warfare under international law so Germany could win a war and then follow that up with a political settlement that included Auchwitz and Buchenwald. Once the military matter was settled in Germany's favor under the rules of international law, all political international law would be banished from the earth forever.
OPERATION CUT THE MUSTARD
On of the deep dark secrets of WWII was the British plan to use mustard gas to stop the Germans if they landed on the beaches of England. England and Germany, from start to finish, refrained from the barbaric use of poison gas. (Mussolini had used it to win his war in Ethiopia) Hitler was civil when it came to a method of warfare that he had experienced in WWI. No one turned on the gas to even save France.
But after the war, a few determined reporters discovered the scary truth. If the Germans had landed on the beach of Southern England, the RAF was prepared to strafe the invaders with mustard gas. This was kept top secret during the war, and after the war.
POLITICS IN AMERICA 1940
SMITH ACT
Fascism begins at home. In 1940 Congress passed a law that would have made the Federalists of 1799 feel proud. It was a return to the good old days of the Alien and Sedition Act under John Adams.
The official title was the Alien Registration Act, but was more commonly known as the Smith Act. The ARA made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the United States government. Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia proposed the bill and it passed with flying national colors in 1940. FDR signed on.
For all practical purposes it had always been illegal to conspire actively against the United States government. Just ask Aaron Burr. But now, taken to Smitty's extreme, it would be a crime to merely write that you would like to see the government overthrown.
The Smith Act became a weapon against the left for the next two decades. Several high profile ARA trials took place during the Second World War.
BUDGET BUREAU
One of the measures the Roosevelt took to take the reins of American industry more permanently in his hands was to reorganize the Bureau of the Budget. This spending monitoring agency was long a part of Henry Morganthau's Treasury Department.
But Roosevelt didn't want a penny spent without his knowledge or permission and he couldn't control the Treasury from 1600 Pennsylvania..
Roosevelt proclaimed a limited national emergency and wrote and Executive Order which took the Bureau of the Budget from Treasury and reassigned it to the Executive Office of the President. Now all spending would emanate from the White House instead of the Treasury Department. From now on, not only would all spending be determined by Roosevelt personally, he would also have an army of spies reporting to him on every dime being spent on war preparedness. Critics said this gave Roosevelt too much power and that the Bureau of the Budget had become “Roosevelt's own private gestapo.”
SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT 1940
The young men of the United States had not faced military draft since the end of World War I. Roosevelt took a chance in an election year and reinstated the draft. Roosevelt showed, in this instance, that he was more concerned with stopping Hitler than he was with with winning the next election. It helped FDR a little that the draft age was 18 and the voting age was 21.
Congress passed the Selective Service Act in the fall, and Roosevelt personally pulled the first numbers before a live national radio audience. Franklin used the term “muster,” an old militia phrase, to describe the event. Draft sounded too accurate. Muster sounded like Lexington and Concord.
If Roosevelt had tried to get the Selective Service Act passed before the fall of France, Congress almost certainly would have said no. But the victory of Hitler on the continent changed the national mindset absolutely. The Draft passed easily, and lasted until my 18th birthday in 1973.
The first version of the draft called for mandatory military service of only one year. This was the soft sell. FDR and company wanted more, but played it safe. In the fall of 1941 a new draft of the Draft extended the length of service.
ELECTION OF 1940
Although his popularity was declining and the unwritten Constitution limited the President to two terms, FDR decided he would like to keep his White House pad another four years.
Prior to the outbreak of WWII overseas, Roosevelt was leaning towards not seeking a third term. Franklin was probably going to support his close aide Harry Hopkins for President. The name of Hopkins was in the air from 1936 to September 1939 as a serious possibility, and Mr. Hopkins wanted the job.
HH wanted it partly so he could get his revenge on a US Congress that had hated him for some time. Hopkins was considered an arrogant usurper of power who was doling out all the federal aid money from his own personal desk, a king within a king not responsible to the democracy. Congress felt it was their job to play Santa Claus, not some scrawny little private citizen who buttered Roosevelt's toast and helped him down the stairs.
The animosity between Harry and the House was open. One day Hopkins came to Congress for an appropriation. Not only did they decline the appropriation, out of pure spite they passed a bill to cut Hopkin's salary from $12,000 to $10,000.
Hopkins didn't have Congress, but he had a shot at the Presidency. FDR supported him and FDR was very famous, and was giving the Fed money to Hopkins so he could dole it out. Everyone who got money from Hopkins, might, in theory, vote for Hopkins in appreciation. Harry's opponents were afraid of his dole card. A federal check in 1940 was like a glass of “punch” in the log cabin campaign of 1840.
The Nazi invasion of Poland and the undeclared Naval War in the Atlantic changed Roosevelt's mind about running. He still wasn't sure what he would do in the fall of 1940 until the fall of France in the spring of 1940.
By that time he believed (or deluded his ego into believing) that he was the only man capable of leading the nation through the terrible war that he was by now sure was coming. Roosevelt's closest associates discussed this with him and were almost unanimous in their absolute faith that he was right. Men like Rosenman, Hopkins, Ickes, McGillicutty, and Morganthau believed in FDR as a the only man for these crazy times. If FDR was deluding himself into thinking he was some sort of a saint, he had plenty of people around him who believed it too.
A few of his old Brains Trust broke ranks and opposed him in 1940. Jimbo Farley was especially bitter and opposed him vigorously. Rex Tugwell was also out of the Saint Franklin loop, and there was a fight brewing between speechwriter Tom Tim Corcoran and the rest of the FDR team. Corcoran was being too much of a bully with his colleagues and with the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Some of Roosevelt's aides threatened to resign if FDR didn't put the cork on Corcoran, which he did. Corcoran lost his job as a top speechwriter and went to New York to run the FDR campaign there. But he knew he had been demoted and left public service forever in 1942 to become a rich lawyer. Of all the original members of the FDR Brains' Trust, Corcoran is the one it is most difficult to find any information about on the internet, so I am actually being useful here in citing this story.
Only one person close to Roosevelt agreed with his greatness but did not want him to run for a third term. This was his close personal secretary Grace Tulley. On the night when Roosevelt gave a radio address from his home accepting the nomination, everyone was smiling exempt Grace. She had tears streaming down her face. Grace loved FDR, but knew more than anyone else the wretched state of his health. Tully was crying because she knew that a third term would kill him.
Had he chosen to retire to private life, Roosevelt could have definitely made more money. Would retirement have enabled him to live an extra ten years?
One man who definitely wanted the Democratic nomination, by hook or by crook, was the father of a future president. Joseph. P. Kennedy was not happy as Ambassador to Britain. He felt that he was just an ornament over there and that the Roosevelt Administration was conducting foreign relations with the UK over his head. Kennedy didn’t even know about the destroyer lease to Britain until it was announced as a done deal. JP wanted out of the London job and had his eyes on the one at 1600 Pennsylvania.
Roosevelt had indeed kept Kennedy in the dark in London and had conducted American foreign policy through special envoys, bypassing Joe. But FDR had plenty of good reason to bypass JPK.
Kennedy had managed to make himself one of the most unpopular Americans ever to set foot in England, let alone work at the head of the American diplomatic mission. Joe Kennedy always believed that England would lose to Germany and had the incredibly bad habit of saying so bluntly to anyone who cared to listen. Kennedy would get on a double-decker bus, put in his three shillings and announce to everyone as he sat down, “You are going to lose the war.” All right, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but the point is true. The British Secret Service, the M-15, kept a close eye on Kennedy and even suspected him of conducting secret negotiations with Nazis! M-15 even suspected JP of meeting secretly with Herman Goering in Paris, but this was a false charge.
A charge that was not false was that Kennedy was trying to keep America out of the war while Roosevelt and Churchill were trying to get America in. The British foreign office compiled a secret dossier on Joe Kennedy called “Kennedania” documenting testimonials against Kennedy. Everyone got to clear the air and speak their mind about the American Ambassador. “I'd like slap him senseless,” wrote the Assistant Foreign secretary for North American affairs, Chester Broderick IV. Another diplomat, said, “Joe Kennedy is the lower than a Cape Cod lobster.”
For one thing, Kennedy was a blatant threat to British national security. If Joe Kennedy had his way, England could go rot and die while America made deals with Hitler. That would have been enough to make England hate him, even if he was a super-nice guy on the outside, which he was not.
During the London Blitz, Kennedy escaped to rural mansions, while the British people suffered and died. Many people called him a coward for that. On top of all that he was a man who only had a gangster's sophistication. He didn't mix well with genuine upper crust. In parlor conversations about literature, politics, and history Joe was a crass boor with the social skills of a wounded badger. On top of that, Kennedy used up desperately needed freighter space to ship his own capitalist enterprise booze to the United States.
But to run or not to run in 1940. The Kennedy team floated a story that JPK was considering running for President, just see what kind of a reaction it would evoke. The response was not entirely unfavorable, but clearly not enthusiastic enough to justify a serious effort. Kennedy decided on this basis not to run.
Genius!
How many fools have wasted their life's fortune on a pathetic failed attempt at the White House? This guy plants one $90 newspaper article and saves himself ten million.
FDR was willing to cordially accept Kennedy’s proffered resignation from the London post, but requested Kennedy's endorsement for a third term in 1940. Kennedy haggled. He wanted in exchange Roosevelt’s support in 1942 for his son Joe Kennedy as governor of Massachusetts.
Joseph Pat finally agreed to make an endorsement speech for FDR but declined the time slot because The Democratic Party had paid for it. JPK wanted to speak freely in his talk and insisted instead on paying for the national air time with his own money. Joe's talk defended Roosevelt on the charge that the President wanted to get the United States into the European conflict. Kennedy told America what they wanted to hear, and something he could not personally desire more strongly; He told the nation that Roosevelt was not going to send any of your boys to die in any foreign war. Kennedy was speaking for Roosevelt, but meant it more than Roosevelt did.
Other men who wanted the Democratic nomination included Jim Farley and Harold Ickes. Farley was tired of being a president-maker. He wanted to graduate from Mark Hannah to William McKinley. But with the war on in Europe, Farley backed down.
FDR won the nomination on the first ballot at the Dem Chicago Convention in July 1940.
The Vice-Presidential choice was more controversial than the Presidential. FDR picked Henry Wallace, a lefty's lefty. There was a big protest against the choice of Wallace. Henry was so all over the road with his opinions on everything that he was not considered a reliable Democrat. One speaker shouted to the DNC that, “just because the Republicans nominated an apostate, [Wilkie] doesn't mean we have to!” But F.D.R. got his way and Wallace it was. Roosevelt had to talk Ickes out of resigning from the Democratic Party, such was that passionate man's objection to Wallace.
FDR's Republican opponent in the campaign of 1940 was Wendell Wilkie of Indiana, a man who had never run for elected office before. Everyone else in the hunt was an orthodox Republican obstructionist and isolationist Then, out of nowhere, Wilkie came along as an interventionist progressive and stole the Republican nomination. Wilkie supported the destroyer deal with Britain. Breaking with the two-decade tradition of Republican isolationism, Wilkie actually felt that Roosevelt wasn’t doing enough to aid Britain in its lonely struggle against the Nazis. Wendell Wilkie had outflanked both parties on interventionism.
The Republican core leadership felt betrayed by the nomination of the progressive Wilkie. The guy even supported some elements of the New Deal. What sort of an excuse for a Republican was this guy? WW was a RINO before the term was coined.
Interventionism vs. isolationism superseded left vs. right in America 1940. Domestic politics became secondary to international crisis.
There was the usual low-life political fighting. F.D.R. had secured a captain's commission in the Army Air Force for his son Elliott. The Republicans brought this up quite a few times, accusing F.D.R. of dishonorable nepotism.
The rhetoric got mean. Republican Senator Smith was quoted saying that “Eleanor Roosevelt wears Army boots,” but when she admitted she did, the controversy died down.
The Republicans directed a lot of personal attacks against Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce, and intimate pal. Hopkins had been so ill for so many months that he wasn't even doing his job at Commerce and in the bargain was becoming a campaign liability. Hopkins voluntarily resigned from his position at Commerce, since he knew he would be asked to resign if he didn't.
In the final two weeks of the campaign it was becoming clear that the Republicans were going to lose. They tried one last desperate tactic. They started to accuse FDR as being too much of an interventionist, a man who was going to drag the United States into this foreign war. The fact that Wilkie had for months been saying that he alone, was willing to take decisive interventionist action necessary to meet the crisis did not matter. Wilkie's inconsistency and flip-flop on the intervention issue was a last ditch long-shot try in a lost cause. It hurt Roosevelt's feelings when Wilkie said that the President had not done enough for preparedness, and it hurt the NY Dutchman's feelings again when Wilkie made speeches saying that F.D.R. was going to get your sons killed in a foreign war. Wilkie didn't even want to make the contradictory accusations but his “handlers” insisted that it was his only hope of winning. They were probably right. And it was only a faint hope that didn't work in any case.
In the last two weeks of the election campaign, Roosevelt gave into pressure and made speeches in which he made promises he knew he would not be able in all likelihood to keep. He began to assure the mothers of America that “your boys are not going to go off to fight and die in a foreign war.” When some of his close advisors questioned the wisdom of such a lie, he snapped that it was not a lie. “If we are attacked, we, of course will go to war. And if we are attacked, then we will at that point not be involved in a 'foreign' war.”
One thing is certain. The Blitzkrieg in the west in May-June 1940 changed the dynamic of the American presidential election. During the time of the 'Sitzkreig' the Republican Party still stood popular and proud for old fashioned isolationism. But when France fell, everything flipped. The isolationist right held its ground, but the undecided center switched definitely towards preparedness at the least, and interventionism at the most. The average Joe now realized that the threat in Europe was a tidal surge that was going to threaten the American coastlines sooner or later. Suddenly the most famous Republican political leaders, isolationists all, were not fit to represent the American people. This is what opened the door for a Wendell Wilkie, the preparedness/interventionist to lead the Republican ticket.
F.D.R. was relieved when the Republicans chose Wilkie, not so much because he knew he could beat him (even though that was true), but rather because now the nation would not become bogged down in a destructive debate about where the people stood on the issue of the triple fascist threat. Franklin frankly now had a good political fight to fight without dragging the national interest into the middle of it.
During one speech heard by a national radio audience, F.D.R. pledged that this third term would be his final term. Many of his fans began shouting “No! No!,” and “Run again, brother!” Thinking fast, Roosevelt cupped his hand over the microphone and began to speed up his speech and talked close into the microphone. he didn't want that getting out on the air. The third term was controversial enough without a fourth term booster club fanning the fire.
Wendy Wilkie made a major blunder by dismissing the issue of the two-term tradition. Many Americans, even six or seven Democrats, were offended by the idea of FDR breaking the two-term tradition. If WW had played up this issue he would have won many more votes.
1940 – Roosevelt Breaks America’s Two-Term Tradition
After losing the election, Wilkie showed a lot of class. He went to England to support FDR in his campaign for lend-lease help to the UK.
American reporters showed less class when they read back to Wilkie the worst election campaign criticisms of FDR that Wilkie had leveled against his opponent. Wilkie laughed it off as campaign oratory.
CONGRESSIONAL
The Republicans gained three seats in the Senate in the Elections of 1940, but the Democrats still held on to their huge lead in both Houses of Congress. FDR had complete command of the Government going into and throughout World War II.
The Speaker of the House was Democrat Alben Barclay of Kentucky, the future VP under President Truman.
Harry Truman won re-election to the US Senate in 1940. But Roosevelt never endorsed him. The Democrat Governor of Missouri made an open bid for Truman's seat, and had FDR's clear support. Truman of course, later became FDR's VP.
ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
Roosevelt gave an important radio talk to the USA on December 29, 1940 which is sometimes called the “Arsenal of Democracy Speech.”
In it he outlined his concept of Lend-Lease, by which America became the Arsenal of Democracy for Britian. War materials made in the USA could better protect the USA on the British front lines than on the American back line. America was only defending itself in helping Britian defend itself.
FDR didn't write the phrase. Jean Monnet, a French diplomat in D.C. spoke of the American “arsenal of democracy” to Supreme Court Justice Frankie Frankfurter in conversation. The hot dog jumped all over it and begged Monnet to never repeat it. It was a great and useful phrase, but it would be so much more powerful if FDR could lend-lease it from Monnet in his next speech. If word got out that FDR was pulling a Joe Biden with the phrase, it would, in Frankfurter's words, “be rendered as useless as a screen door on a submarine.”
Monnet was cool about it and on December 29 the USA heard the phrase for the first time,
“There is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of an attack in another war later on.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”
Churchill had recently sent FDR a long letter (4,212 words) explaining the hard truth that England was flat broke. England needed military assistance in the form of supplies, but had no pounds to pay with. The P.M. didn't offer a plan for FDR to work with, he just pleaded the situation. Both men were certainly in agreement that the United States had to help, but now it was up to FDR to find a way to do it, and to sell it to the American people.
Roosevelt took a long cruise on the Tuscaloosa, and everyone thought he was being a little selfish in time of crisis to take a vacation, but he was hard at work brainstorming the problem. Roosevelt got off the Tuscaloosa with the whole Lend-Lease concept ready for sale.
From the present it is hard to imagine that most Americans really thought in 1940 that the two oceans could still protect the country from outside aggressions of any kind. When FDR gave his Arsenal of Democracy speech, millions of Firsters and Republican isolationists thought he was being needlessly truculent with American power (America First = 'Firsters,' a word I just invented.) Simple statements that continued Axis victories might lead to at the very least, an economic threat to the United States, were greeted by many as shocking extreme over-reaction to a manageable situation.
From the present it seems that FDR wasn't being enough of an alarmist considering that Britian stood alone, was broke, and the Axis showed no signs of being satiated by it's recent conquests. But at the time, it seemed alarmist. He would have preferred to go even further than sounding a philosophical alarm and proposing Lend-Lease, but this was as far as he dared to go given the still predominantly isolationist sentiment of the people and the Congress that reflected them.
NORTH AFRICA 1940
Unlike the other major theatres of the war, the North African campaign began by accident. Neither side pre-planned an offensive there. It just so happened that the English had a long standing status in Egypt, and Italy had a short standing empire in Libya and Tripolitania. For the first months of the war the two sides kept a safe stand-off distance from each other. But when France surrendered, Italy recognized that it now had the advantage in the desert and went on the attack to the east in the direction of the vital Suez Canal.
Britian was the former colonial ruler of Egypt, but in 1922 had granted the pyramids their independence. Great Britian had even successfully sponsored Egypt's admittance to the League of Nations in 1937.
But Britian could not just let Egypt go completely free. It had to protect its vital interest in the Suez Canal. The same treaty that gave Egypt its independence had both official and unofficial understandings that Egypt could not conduct a foreign policy inimical to Britain's interest unless it wanted to see Britian return in a bad mood. It was the standard colonial trickle down independence. Britian had the right to interfere in some judicial cases, and in many Egyptian financial laws. The last British troops were scheduled to leave Egypt in 1956. It was a slow go on the independence thing.
This qualified independence did not sit well with many political and religious factions in Egypt. Britian fought Italy and Germany in North Africa, but there was always the bonus battle of Egyptian revolutionary and reactionary unrest. Britian protected many Egyptians who only wanted protection from Britain. The Sudan was another problem. Both Egypt and Britian were claiming it for their old and new colonialisms respectively.
In 1936 King Fuad died. The new King was a 16 year old boy named Farouk who was studying in England at the time. Ironicaly, Farouk turned out be somewhat pro-Italian fascism. He gave the Italians in Egypt immediate Egyptian citizenship. Farouk enabled Axis spies to know all they could about British defenses at the Canal and Alexandria.
When it came to the Canal, even most Egyptians did not mind the idea that it was still Britain's bob, not Egypt's, to protect it. They didn't mind a little colonialist protection, especially since Mussolini was clearly already more than a threat to the region. He had already conquered Ethiopia and was menacing Egypt from Tripolitania.
Some of the Britian-haters gravitated towards extremist religious groups, and extreme Marxist groups. When Rommel's Nazis threatened Egypt, many of these desert rads actually thought that when the Germans won, they would distribute the land to the poor Arab farmers.
So the British were protecting Egypt from an Egypt that resented Britian, but feared Germany and Italy far more than they resented Britian.
Duggie Porth thinks that the threat to Egypt by the Italian and German forces was much greater than history appreciates. Sure, Italy wasn't capable of going all the way to the Canal and even Rommel later on was not capable. But if Italo-German troops had made any serious headway into Egypt, it could have sparked an anti-British uprising in Egypt in support of the Axis troops as liberators. After all, the Axis and the Arabs had virulent hatred of the Jews to untie them. The Jews all could die for all either group cared. Plus the Nazis had risen from the ranks of the have-not nations after losing WWI and paying for it in the post-war agreements. The Arabs could double relate politically to the Nazis, while they saw the West as their traditional oppressors. Egypt ans other Arab states only supported the Allies in WWII because that usually seemed the lesser of two bad choices, since the Allies were in place and in power, and not because the Arab states had any ideological affection for freedom, democracy, red wine, tea, apple pie, or any Western nation per se.
So if the book Path to Victory is right, then all actions in eastern North Africa should be viewed from his Porch. Even a small advance into central Egypt might have led to an avalanche of Axis military progress.
THE WAR IN THE DESERT BEGINS
General Graziani sent his force marching into Egypt. There was little resistance, yet the incompetence of the Italian army showed itself. One brigade got so lost in the desert that it was in danger of dying of thirst. Italian planes had to scour the desert to find it and send a relief column.
Italy had a 450 -220 edge in planes and had more modern models. Yet even this, they failed to exploit.
Facing Graziani's invaders was General Wavell's patch work forces of Empire troops from all over the world, plus some Egyptians troops, many of whom would just as soon shoot the Brits as the Italians. The British were outnumbered in troops, tanks, planes, and were on their heels in the overall momentum of the war. The Italians had better artillery and supply lines, plus a strong naval force in the region. The British therefore couldn't lose.
That's because the Italians had nothing to fight for and the British did. One side was marching with superior force inferior trained with no heart in it, fighting for a ruler who had dragged them into a war just to be able to say he had won territory when he met with Hitler. The other side was fighting against a brutal enemy Axis hell bent to conquer the world and enslave their families. In the early stages of the North Africa campaign, in the fight between Italy and Britian in Egypt one on one, elan wasn't an element, it was the element.
Graziani was the long-standing governor of Libya and was not a nice man. They called him “The Butcher.” That's all you probably need to know about how he treated the Arabs under Italian rule.
Hitler was handcuffed trying to stir up and Arab revolt in British controlled lands because he was at the same time giving strong material assistance to the Italian effort to subdue all of North Africa. His first ally nullified his fifth column.
Actually, the first action of the desert war was when the British marched west to take Fort Capuzzo, but this was not part of a strategic offensive. In September, the Italians started a strategic offensive to conquer Egypt. The Italians under General Bill Balbo penetrated into Egyptian territory as far as Sidi Barrani.
In December 1940 the British began pushing the Italians back where they came from.
JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES 1940
The key event in US-Japanese relations was the fall of France.
When France fell it could no longer defend its overseas empire in Southeast Asia. Japan was sitting in Southern China on the border with helpless French Indochina. Japan saw the hole in the line of scrimmage and hit it.
In September of 1940 the Japanese moved into the Northern half of French Indochina, the North Vietnam of the later Vietnam War. They established military bases there but at this time did not try to administer the whole country. They let the French clean up the trash and run the electrical plants, but the Japanese were setting the whole ares up as a base for a military thrust into the South Pacific.
By taking North Vietnam, the Japanese turned the United States on a dime. Nam was the last straw and was the deed that really triggered World War II in Asia. In response to this aggression the United States cut off oil and other supplies to Japan. The United States had been threatening to do this off and on for years, but now it finally happened. From this moment on Japan knew it had to either go to war to keep its oil supply flowing, or withdraw from its conquests and return to the home islands.
It must be added here before we go into more detail that many American historians consider the cutting off of Japanese oil supplies in 1940 to have been an act of aggression by the United States against Japan. They basically say that America provoked war with Japan by these actions. Many fine scholars with a straight face say that the USA started World War II in Asia because it left Japan the choice to either retreat back to its four home islands or strike at the Dutch East Indies to keep its war machine operational. FDR, they write, “goaded” Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor.
The US was already upset over the Japanese invasion of China, so why did the occupation of French Indochina constitute a far more serious threat? Answer; China did not geographically constitute a springboard for the quick occupation of the oil and rubber of Malaysia and the D.E.I., but Indochina, with it’s fine naval bases in today’s Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City did. From China, a move to grab the vital rubber and oil of South Asia could be detected in Washington from a moderate distance in time and space, and the United States could scramble a response accordingly. But from Indochina Japan could grab the supply prizes of South Asia faster than America could get out of bed to read about in the morning paper. That is why the July 1940 seizure of Indochina from the feeble Vichy government was the decisive moment in the coming of the Pacific War.
By the end of July 1940 The United States had enacted a series of economic sanctions on Japan. The fact that America was in a defense build-up mode was cited as a token explanation to Japan for the embargoes. The US had to hold on to its resources. But the real reason for the ban was to punish and deter Japanese aggression in Asia. Scrap metal, petroleum, and products derived from petroleum were first barred from export, followed fast by aviation fuel, the big one. Then came iron and steel.
The USA didn't single out Japan for export embargo, but Great Britian was given an exemption, so the point was obvious. Tensions ran high. American citizens were asked to return home from the Far East. The United States gave China a loan of 25 million dollars. The weather forecast was war cloudy.
USSR AND JAPAN 1940
Yet Japan’s biggest fear was not an attack from the United States, it was fear of an attack from Soviet Russia. America was a distant naval threat, but the USSR could intervene directly in the China theatre at the drop of a hat. The Russians still thirsted for revenge after its humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and the bear wanted some of its Pacific nuts and berries back.
If Japan struck south and then Russia attacked from behind, the entire situation would be militarily untenable. Japanese diplomacy was therefore directed largely towards obtaining a non-aggression pact with Russia. Many of the militarist leaders of Japan wanted to attack Russia first and worry about conquering the rest of southern Asia later. Generally speaking, the Army big shots wanted to hit the Russians, and the Naval brass wanted to take their chances on Russian neutrality and attack to the south. The Navy guys got their way in the end with the help of Hitler who invaded Russia in 1941, thus more or less insuring against attack from the Russian flank.
FORGET PEARL HARBOR
On October 8 1940 Admiral Richardson went to see Roosevelt at the White House and begged him to move the Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor back to its old home base of San Diego. Richardson felt that since so many ships were being transferred to the Atlantic, the Pacific Fleet was becoming dangerously less powerful and more vulnerable. The purpose of frightening the Japanese was not being served anyway, Richardson pleaded. Oahu was more than 5,000 miles from the Philippines. The Pacific Fleet wasn’t going to be able to stop any Japanese aggression in the Far East until it was all over and too late. The admiral said that the military was losing confidence in the civilian leadership in light of these unwise moves.
FDR snapped at the Admiral that this was election season and he couldn’t make a sudden move like that even if he wanted to. The public would see it as weakness. Unlike the Selective Service Act, in this case politics came first.
WORLD WAR II 1941 (TO 12-07-41)
ENGLAND AGAINST THE AXIS
THE FRANCO-SIAMESE WAR OF 1941
Hardly a soul on earth today even knows there was such an entity as the “Franco-Siamese War of 1941.” But there was.
Vichy France still ruled a Vichy-styled rump state of Indochina. The Japanese had taken the North Vietnam provinces of Indochina, leaving France still in military and police control of the rest of Indo.
Thailand and France had a history of unhappy relations going back to the French conquest of Southeast Asia in the 1880's, and a treaty in 1904 that gave some Thai-land to France in exchange for a French fried promise not to expand into the rest of Thailand.
With France on the ropes, Thailand saw it's chance for sweet revenge and attacked the French in Laos and Cambodia in January of 1941.
The Thais got the better of some tough slow jungle fighting. Meanwhile on January 16 1941 in the Gulf of Siam, a fairly impressive sea fight took place between Thai and French destroyers with a couple of cruisers in the mix. The French got the best of the sea battle, the Thais got the best of the land battle, and the Japanese held all the cards on both contestants.
The result of the Franco-Siamese War of 1941 was the reclamation for Thailand of most of the territory taken by France in 1904. In 1945 France made Thailand give it back again.
The alignment of combatants was a little off center in this little war. The Japanese would invade and conquer Thailand in December. The Japanese were ostensibly enemies of France, yet technically neutral towards Nazi controlled Vichy. So whose side would Japan be on in this one. Neither really, and that's partly why the Japanese let the French and Thais fight it out while Japan watched like a hockey ref yawning through a bloody battle on the ice.
BRITIAN IS GOING TO MAKE IT AFTER ALL
As 1941 opened America was obsessed with the bravery of the British in the face of an imminent German invasion. Yet at the same time the UK was sending out forces all over the empire to conduct offensive operations. It seemed that the British leaders had no realistic fear of Operation Sea Lion, but ‘the Nazis are coming’ made for a great motivator both at home and abroad where it generated moral and material support.
Was England really in danger of being wiped off the map in these months? The British definitely controlled the sea and had a slight ad in the air. The Germans had the advantage on land but not by a lot. England was an island. Could England survive? Hmmmm.
In 1941 Britain, to its eternal credit and glory, still “stood alone” against the Axis. But, alone as it might be, it also stood much taller than the Axis. The situation the British faced in 1940-41 has been exaggerated by history largely because the winners write the history and its more fun and rewarding to say 'we were cornered and hanging on for dear life and made a dramatic comeback.'
The people of London suffered dearly. But London was never in any danger of being truly destroyed, and its destruction would not have necessarily been strategically decisive, even if happened. Napoleon burned Moscow and then ran home crying.
The air campaign against Great Britain was a terror strategy that never had a chance, given Goering's resources. Even the Allies, the winning side, never had the capability for strategic air terror until a year after Normandy. Germany certainly didn't have it in 1941. British civilians were in more danger in the V-2 crisis of 1944 than they were in 1940. There are 40 cities in Germany that got hit acre for acre far worse than London in WWII. But London's suffering is more told of than that of all of the German cities combined. The winning side writes the history.
SOUTHEAST EUROPE AND TURKEY
With Operation Sea Lion on hold, and the secret plan for the invasion of Russia still months away, the focus of Nazi ambitions in early 41 lay in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. Hitler was alarmed at British troop landings in Greece and began to send significant forces eastward through Romania and into Bulgaria. From there they could strike south at Greece in the event that Britian sent larger forces there.
Churchill as usual had a Mediterranean mind-set and feared that the Nazis would take the Balkans and then intimidate Turkey into opening the straights of Constantinople to Germany's favor. With control of the Dardanelles, Hitler could threaten Palestine, Iraq and Egypt, changing the whole dynamic of the war.
Churchill was hoping to form a united Balkan alliance to defy Hitler. This alliance would include the subtle backing of the Soviet Union. Russia could not openly join such an alliance since it was the delicate political partner and open trading partner of Germany, but Russia had made it clear to Hitler through diplomatic exchanges that it regarded the threat of Germany to the straights of Constantinople as a threat to Russian security.
Churchill tried to scare Turkey into a more aggressive stance against the Nazis. He warned the Turk PM that if Turkey so much as protested against German incursions in the Balkans Hitler would bomb Constantinople. Win offered to send large numbers of British military aircraft to Turkey plus anti-aircraft equipment, complete with crews (with or without uniforms.)
Oil was the key, as usual. From Turkey, British bombers and fighters could easily threaten the vital oil fields of Romania. In the other direction British fighters and bombers in Turkey could simultaneously threaten the big Russian oil fields of Baku, thus deterring the Soviets from a Balkan repeat of the 1939 deal with the Nazis on Poland. There was always this possibility of a Nazi Soviet condominium in the southeast at the expense of everyone else. If Churchill could get British fighters into Turkish airbases, he might be able to stop it.
Turkey remained neutral and declined the British offer of helping to drag Turkey into WWII. Make me a jive Turkey once, shame on you, make me a jive Turkey twice, shame on me.
NORTH AFRICA – FIRST HALF OF 1941
In Flanders, the opposing armies had fought through beautiful towns. When the armies rolled on intact, the towns they left behind were in ruins.
In North Africa it was the reverse. The armies fought through ruinous harsh dry rugged land, and when they rolled on, the land behind them was the same and their equipment was in ruins. Desert warfare was fought in temperatures as high as 120 degrees. Not as high as my week in Laughlin Nevada, but very hot. Then at night the temperature dropped 30 degrees an hour until it fell below zero! I find this hard to believe but it's in several of my war books. 120 in the day and three below zero at night. I might never complain about Boston weather again.
The year 1941 began with an important Allied counterattack in North Africa. January saw only the Italians holding the line in the sand for the Axis. Churchill ordered a major offensive against the Italians because he though he could defeat them quickly and then send force across to help in the Balkans, where his mind was always focused. But Germany ended up intervening to save the Italians, just as it was do do in Greece.
The biggest problem for the Italians (besides morale) was their own Mare Nostrum. The British were still in Malta with a strong naval harbor. Malta controlled the supply lines to North Africa from Italy and Sicily. Too many Italian tankers were tanking it, and Mussolini and Cavallero (the Italian Army Chief) were reluctant to supply their desert army with what it needed.
Corny western military historians often stress how the British were so vastly outnumbered by the Italians in North Africa. This makes the first offensive by Wavell that much more impressive. It's dime-novel nonsense for the gullible. The British had plenty of advantages. They had secure supply lines and never even came close to running out of gasoline. British troops cleaned their equipment with oil. The Italians couldn't even practice maneuvers because they couldn't spare the fuel. The British controlled the sea and the sky, had a far better and more professionally trained army, had reserves of troops it could, and did, call in to help from all corners of the Empire, and they had the anger of the attacked. The Italians had Mussolini's vanity and greed to motivate them. In other words, other than the potential personal humiliation from performing poorly under fire, they had no real reason to fight at all. They weren't mad. In an even fight between two big guys, my money is on the guy who is mad. In this case, the slightly better fighter was also the one who was mad. It's little wonder that the British offensive against the Italians in the beginning of 1941 was a success.
The British cleared the Italians out of Ethiopia and these troops were shifted to North Africa. Other British forces from the Sudan moved north too.
British Empire forces broke out due west of Tobruk as the year opened, and in six weeks fought their way west to Benghazi, captured on February 5. The entire Cyrenaica region was cleared of enemy forces, the threat to Egypt was removed, and the Italian Army in North Africa was busted up.
The British still had a nagging problem in the African rear that Churchill wanted cleared up before he made his next move in the direction of Balkans. There were still pockets of Italian military resistance in Abyssinia tying down British forces that could be used to better purpose on the main front of the Mediterranean.
Churchill wanted to clean out the second rate Italian forces in all of East Africa first. Then perhaps he would look to the Balkans while holding his line in the Libyan sand.
There is no doubt that the British early in 1941 could have continued on to the west in North Africa and cleared the Axis out of there. Then Ike and Patton never would have fought in North Africa in 1942-43. We are entitled to wonder if the entire war might have gone better for the Allies if Churchill had let go of his Gallipoli complex, always thinking he had some superior shrewd game plan to work into the mix. The Prime Minister’s determination to halt the operations in North Africa so he could put all his eggs into the Balkan basket hurt the overall war effort. His Balkan focus gave the Germans enough space and time to deposit two Africa Corps divisions to North Africa under General Erwin Rommel.
Churchill wanted to save Greece more than he wanted to eliminate the Axis from Africa. But the operation to save Greece was a failure (more later) so he failed on two fronts, one through actual defeat the other through abandonment of force and supply. If Win had stuck with the obvious call of clearing out North Africa he would have at least won a big desert bird in the hand.
Churchill was a blundering dunderhead when he insisted on sending his African forces across the sea to Greece.
ENTER JAMES MASON ROMMEL
The most famous name of the campaign was of course, Erwin Rommel, “The Desert Fox.”
Rommel arrived in Libya in February 1941 and immediately took control of everything even though he was technically subordinate to Italian command.
Rommel made probes to test British weakness or strength in the area of Sirte at the bottom of the Gulf of Sidra, where Khadaffi told reagan he couldn't fly US jets in 1981. When he noticed there was little reaction to his probes, Rommel realized that Wavell had overextended himself and was ripe for a counter-attack.
Rommel took two panzer divisions and marched east across 300 miles of victory, pushing Wavell back from where he'd come from in 1941.
The Rommel Nazis took Aghedabia (the men called it
“Abra Cdabra”) on April 2 Benghazi on April 4, Pasedena on April 5, and Mechili on April 6.
Mechili was inland. Rommel had split his forces into a three-pringed attack across the desert. He wasn't going to rely solely on the Via Balba, the well-paved coastal highway that was the only good highway in the region, period.
At Mechili, Rommel's Afrika Korps captured a huge pile of Allied supplies and ammo. Rommel personally scarfed a pair of fancy Italian goggles, and he became famous for those goggles, and you can google the goggles if you don't believe me.
DF was an effective and aggressive general, but overrated. His memoir War Without Hate, proves how delusional the man was. We'll kill your family, and maim you, but we will do it without hate. It's the same delusion America suffers from today, according to many lefties. Rommel also wrote Love Without Kindness, and How to be Rich and Have No Money.
The title War Without Hate was self- apologism. ER just wanted to assuage his guilt with God. If you are in the business of killing people, you are in the business of killing people; And he knew it.
CYRENAICA DISOBEDIANCE
In April of 1941 Rommel disobeyed orders from both Berlin and Rome and marched east across Cyranaeca, which is eastern Libya.
Hitler couldn't tell Rommel that he was preparing the big attack on Russia and that if Rommel stirred up a huge war in the desert it might disrupt the Master Race plan. Hitler (and the Italian generals for the own reasons) wanted Rommel to stay put in central Cyrenaica. They wanted him to stand-off and neutralize significant British forces, but they didn't want him to try and march on the Suez Canal. Not a this time. But that's what he did, and at first he was shockingly successful. This was the beginning of a very back-and-forth battle in the desert that lasted a little over two years.
] In one engagement at Derna, he captured a very important British General O'Connor.
Read any book on Rommel and it's nothing but praise, except for historian David Irving who tells so many awful stories about this man both on and off the field. I don't know why history has to fawn over this man. Rommel was arrogant, conceited, delusional, intolerant, and blamed everyone but himself for his every failure. Sure Rommel had his caring and noble side, but he was like a personable Klansman who pulls over to help you fix a flat on a stormy night. Good for him, but he's still a goddamned Klansman.
Rommel once flew over a desert battlefield and saw a few trucks halting to rest. He had his Storch pilot (Larry Storch) swoop over as he bombed them with a paper note that said “Get moving or I'll land this Storch and send your names to Hitler!” - The trucks got moving.
Hollywood made a huge movie about this guy starring James Mason. The Desert Fox made him an admirable hero. Excuse me.. ah... people... he worked for the Nazis. Pro historians would scoff at me for lumping Rommel in with all the rest of those no good Nazis. But Rommel worshipped Hitler in the 1930's. Rommel was the head of Hitler's bodyguard and he had lobbied for the job! The leading political Nazis like Goebbels and Himmler all considered Rommel at the very top of the list of the most politically reliable Wermacht generals. And this movie paints the complete opposite picture. It makes Rommel look like the one German general who most detested Hitler! That move is a dirty lie!
Many of the senior Wehrmacht generals couldn't stand Rommel. They thought he was reckless, and only took credit for wins, while blaming others for his errors. Brautchtisch in particular did not like the Desert Fox.
Rommel actually had a high opinion of the Italian troops who fought with the Germans in the desert. It was their officer class that he thought was completely inept, which was not to say cowardly. The Italians fought hard as often as they ran away, and history only tends to remember the running away part.
An Italian general was the commander of the African theatre and Rommel operated under him. That was the official ladder of command but, of course, Rommel was in charge.
Rommel was the Amerigo Vespucci of World War II. He wasn't the greatest general (shocking assertion I know,) but he was the greatest self-promoter. Rommel had published a book before WWII began and was well aware that he was a star in the Hollywood sense of the word. To this day, the whole world thinks he was the greatest general, but the guy made so many horrible moves, and so many of his wins came from the initiatives of his subordinate commanders who disobeyed his foolish orders, that he really gets a solid B grade overall. Some great wins, but too many wrong answers to win the game show prize. Yamashita, Brooke, Zhukov, and Bradley were never big on self-promotion. You'd think they couldn't shine Rommel's boots, the way no one ever talks about their brilliant records.
Rommel had a tender side where he goes into the combat zone to tend to a wounded man who is shocked to see his famous general with bullets whizzing around his head. He was a tender killer. But he also ruined the lives of many people with insane decisions, and a reprehensible ability to completely ignore any information that interfered with one of his plans. His legendary “boldness” got a lot of people killed in stupid frontal assaults against superior enemy positions. If Rommel was in command of the Titanic he would have fired the navigator who warned him of impending icebergs, and called him a coward. He would have screamed at the guy for 20 minutes and ordered the ship to an even more northerly course just to defy the iceberg threat. Twice he would have led the Titanic through the icebergs through the sheer luck of audacity. He would have been on the cover of Time as the “man of the year” who showed the other liners the way through the icebergs.
Then four huge liners would have gone down in one day, including Rommel's Titanic, killing 6,000 people, and everyone would have realized they had been made into fools, especially for having put this lucky clown on the cover of Time.
ON TO TOBRUK
Rommel got to Tobruk around April 9 1941. The battle was scattered and confused on both sides, but the Australians in the Tobruk theatre gradually made a wise retreat into a Tobruk defensive perimeter.
Both sides appreciated the importance of Tobruk. It of course threatened Rommel's line of advance because the good guys could attack his supply line from there and ruin his dreams of taking the Suez Canal. But more important, Tobruk was the only large serviceable port in the region. Benghazi was only a medium sized port, and Tripoli was too far to the west rear to be very effective in maintaining a long range invasion to the east. Armored divisions usually needed a complete overhaul every 3,000 miles of travel. In the desert they needed it every 1,500, and the mileage was not a simple straight line on advance or retreat. Every movement took its toll and the Afrika Korps was in hot water if it thought it could take down both Libya and Egypt without the replenishing ability of a nearby Tobruk.
Rommel planned a major frontal assault on Tobruk while 30 Italian and German generals tried to tell him that it would be a tactical disaster. The conceited pig didn't listen. Like his idol, Hitler, Rommel's ears were only attached to his skull for decoration. For two weeks in April 1941 the Afrika Korps launched foolish suicidal attacks on Tobruk that ended in one beating after another.
Hoo-ray!
It didn't help that AK recon units had totally telegraphed exactly where their attacks would come.
The Dense Fox ordered the Italian divisions to attack and they advanced very aggressively towards the Australian lines .... with white flags of surrender. You can imagine how happy Rommel was with that one.
Not only that, the Australian began making some excellent punitive raids on the besiegers. Every night they hit and ran back, making the AK wonder who was really on offense here.
Most importantly, the Aussies had the best of the air and sea support battle. As long as the UK controlled the air and sea around Tobruk, it was a long shot at best that Rommel could overrun it, even if his legendary genius did it's best work. Which proves that his legendary genius was a falsehood.
The Italians, the German generals and even Hitler was trying to explain to him, that by advancing too far for glory, he was upsetting the overall strategic battle plan, which was supposed to have him holding firm in the desert and tying down British forces while the Nazis prepared the invasion of Russia. Rommel ignored all orders, including Hitler's and just presumed that as long as he delivered victories, his disobedience would be overlooked. This was true in the short run, but in the long run, the wisdom of the other German and Italians proved correct. Rommel won some exiting victories, but by overextending the limited Axis desert resources he left himself wide open for some devastating counterpunches. These British counter-attacks gave them strategic momentum and a priceless morale boost. If Rommel had held firm in the desert at the Al Aghela line, like he had been ordered to, the great counter-attacks of Auchinleck and Montgomery later on could never have taken place, at least not so spectacularly.
BATTLEAXE – JUNE 1941
Major K. J. Macksey, author of the impossibly difficult to read book Afrika Korps, says aptly that the summer of 1941 was “the point of balance” in the desert war. It was 1-1 at halftime and no one really knew who was going to win.
Operation Battleaxe was the British attempt under General Wavell to toss the German/Italian desert forces back west away from the Egyptian border area, and to relieve the Axis investment of Tobruk. Wavell named the war plan after his mother in law.
The offensive failed in a complex series of dusty desert demolition derbys. The British and their conscripted Indian allies fought well enough, and won a couple of rounds, but overall the mission tanked, and the Battleaxe fell on General Wavell. Churchill relieved him of command. Wavell waved good-bye to the desert and General Claude Hopper Auchinleck arrived to fix things up.
The German press made the most of its new icon Rommel. His successes were spotlighted and his errors were buried in the North Afrikan sand. The Italians praised themselves for Nazi victories, and even their undependable elan perked up. The British press went negative towards their own team, and that contributed to Churchill's decision to fire the coach rather than himself. It was, of course, Churchill's fog-brained blunder in sending British forces to a losing cause in the Balkans that enabled Rommel's greatness in the first place. If the London Turkey hadn't blundered trying to save Greece, there never would have been a famous “Desert Fox,” and James Mason would have stuck to playing jilted lovers in 50's chick-flick movies instead of insulting righteousness by playing manly man Rommel as if he was the greatest guy that ever lived (the offensiveness of that movie, yes, it's something of an obsession with me.)
Rommel used field reports from the BBC to help him with the Battleaxe. He just listened to the radio and adjusted his plans accordingly. Thanks BBC. (CNN has carried on the tradition in the present time. Sadaam got his information about Allied preparations, including very specific force deployment locations in 1990-91.) Fortunately the US led coalition had such a superior force advantage in 1991 that it made little difference.
CHURCHILL DEFENDED
Many historians, and many of the brass hats of D.C. in WWII are first-rate critics of Churchill's performance. Robert Leckie, one of the top American war historians of all time bashes Winston throughout his book, Delivered from Evil. It's a lot of fun to read how angry Leckie is at Churchill.
Churchill had a egoist habit of taking all the credit when things went well, and dishing out the blame equally when things went bad. The first sin in unforgivable, but the second sin is forgivable because he was actually in the right, to an extent. No major military strategic decision was ever reached and implemented without the full concurrence of the Imperial General Staff.
The CIGS, Alan Brooke (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) disagreed with Churchill as often as he agreed with the old coot. The two of them had famous arguments in London and all over the globe. CIGS AB accompanied Churchill to every major conference with world leaders like Marshall, FDR, Stalin and McGillicutty.
Sometimes it took the CIGS and all the military chiefs under him to talk Churchill out of a bad strategy. Arguments went on all night as Churchill went through a pouch of pipe tobacco and the CIGS two packs of cigs. But in the end, if the advisors did not back down, Churchill did, to his everlasting credit.
The British Parliament had, in 1940 given Churchill dictatorial powers. He had every legal right to overrule his military chiefs and the CIGS if he wanted to. PMWC could have his way in spite of all of their adamant objections. But he never used this veto power. They let him have his way on a thousand minor matters. There were times where he honestly convinced them of the rightness of his thinking. But if they did not back down, he did. If Hitler had showed the same common sense, if the Fuhrer had listened to the unanimous disagreement of his generals and admirals and deferred to their wisdom on some matters, Germany would have been a much more formidable opponent in WWII. But he didn't so it wasn't.
Churchill was big enough to be small now and then, in spite of his grandiose outward public figure. Even when he grouchily allowed his generals to over-rule (but not rule over) him, Churchill always played a positive role in public morale. This was ironically like Churchill was playing the King. The Parliament is supposed to make the real decisions while the King is the figure who keeps the national chin up through speeches and ceremony. In this situation it was almost a role reversal. The generals, more than most people realized, were making most of the hard decision of war strategy, while Churchill made the speeches to keep their chins up, and refused to let his word be law in private military consultations.
The part where Win was behaving badly was where he failed to give public credit where it was due to his generals when the public praised British victories, and blamed the generals in public for the missions that failed.
HARRY HOPKINS GOES TO LONDON
Up until the beginning of 1941, the United States had given only limited support to England. America had played around with the neutrality laws and given the Brits some seven of clubs hardware, but full diplomatic support was limited. FDR was an interventionist but could not afford to let on that he was. Even Churchill was wondering just how serious the United States was about saving England. The UK was down by three goals with four minutes left and Sam was shipping over a back-up goalie and a case of new soccer balls.
The President wanted to meet with Churchill but it wasn't easy to arrange on short notice. For starters Franklin sent his personal confidant Harry Hopkins to London. Even though Hopkins was not a prominent American by title, he was the number one FOF in the country. England received HH warmly wherever he went. Hopkins met with Churchill and the two of them even talked through several scary German air raids. This certainly brought home the point to Hopkins the seriousness of the English position.
F.D.R had sent Hopkins to England, not so much as a diplomatic gesture of support, which it was, but more as a CIA officer. The President wanted someone he trusted completely to go over there to get a read on the exact situation. He also wanted someone who could be trusted to convey to Churchill his exact feelings regarding the war.
Churchill thought that Hitler would probably not try to invade England (many of Churchill's contemporaries disagreed.) Churchill almost hoped that Hitler would try it. The PM felt that the British fighting forces would inflict a decisive defeat on Germany in the event. The British had 26 land Army divisions that weren't doing a whole lot of good sitting round on the island. He could put them to work if Hitler invaded. English air and naval power was still formidable. English land power was underrated because getting it off the island was usually the big drawback. A home game, with German lines of communication and supply at an extreme, was not as scary to Churchill as it was to many.
Hopkins was surprised at how much Churchill obviously liked America and Roosevelt. Hopkins had been led to believe otherwise and confessed this to the Prime Ribbed Minister. Churchill snapped that “This is all the doings of that scurrilous snake, Joseph Kennedy! I have an American mother, for Pete's sake!”
When John F. Kennedy wrote his book, “Why England Slept” he might have thought to include a chapter about his dad being one of the reasons why England slept.
FALL OF THE ITALIAN EMPIRE IN EAST AFRICA
Looking back from the present it is hard to take very seriously the dream of Italian Empire in Africa in the early years of WWII. Since it failed ignobly in the end it is easy to see it as an interesting story but not a terrifying drama like the Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or Hitler’s Third Reich.
Yet by the middle of 1940 the Italian dream of a Roman-African Empire had been actually achieved in a degree worthy of the empire name. And there was no reason to doubt that it might expand with the help of further German victories.
If Italy continued on its winning ways, the Axis might have triumphed as three racist empires ruling most of the world in a tri-minium. Germany would have most of Europe, plus Russia to central Siberia. Germany also would own some of the Middle East. Japan would rule from India to all points in Asia due south and east, plus some of the Middle East. Italy could have all of Africa, plus some of the Middle East and some of southeastern Europe. The crossroads of the three evil empires would be the Middle East. The Axis might allowed the Americas to survive but in obvious peril and in a second-rate status.
To the people of 1940, Italy and Mussolini were a real menace, not the laughing stock of post-war culture. In my childhood neighborhood in the 1960’s I heard these jokes often.
“What’s the shortest book in the world? – 'Italian War Heroes.'”
“What do you call an Italian submarine commander?” - 'Chicken of the Sea.' ”
“What is the first thing they teach you in the Italian Army? - How to say 'I Surrender' in 40 languages.”
The poor performance of Italy's armed forces became a joke after the end results were in. But in the reality of the time, the Italians decorated many war heroes, their navy was formidable, and they made several small nations say 'I surrender.'
The British had forces on the flanks of Italy’s Empire in Abyssinia and beyond. There were English brigades in Kenya to the south, some forces in the Sudan, and a squadron of air power across the straights at Aden. But in numbers, the Italians had the edge and since the offense has to expend more power than the defense, the reclamation of Ethiopia for emperor Heile Selassie would not be a sure or easy victory.
Churchill had large forces in Egypt and in Cyrenia (Libya) but, as we have seen, he was planning on shipping the heart of this power to Greece to the north, not to Abyssinia to the south. If however, the Italians could be cleaned out of their southeast African Empire quickly with the emergency help of units from around scattered parts of the British Empire, then all the Empire forces in Africa could then help in the Balkans.
This happened. With the foreign legion leading the charge, the Indian Brits, the South African Brits, and the Sudanese Brits (among others in the mix) defeated the Italians in East Africa as outlined on Churchill’s history map below.
1941 Decline and Fall of the Italian Empire
The British were able to take back their old colonial possessions in Somalia and Kenya from the new colonial Italians.
There was a fierce battle for Keren. The siege of Keren lasted several weeks. The world was watching the battle for Keren. When Keren fell the Italians knew that the war was lost. Keren was the gateway to the interior, the last excellent defensive position on the board for the Italians. Until a few days ago, I'd never heard of Keren.
There was the usual political complexities with Vichy. French Somaliland (Djibouti) was in the middle of the playing field. Should the British attack it, negotiate with it for co-operation, or ignore it? What was Vichy’s position politically at the moment with regards to French Somaliland?
THE PACIFIC WINTER WAR SCARE - JAN - FEB 1941
On January 27, 1941 the beleaguered US Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew sent a coded message back to Washington. It was about a rumor he had picked up from a diplomatic friend in Peru. Apparently the Japanese were planning a massive surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Back in Washington the message was duly noted and ignored.
At about this time a border clash broke out at the disputed boundary of the Mekong River between Thailand and the still nominally French controlled southern half of Indochina. Japan threatened to intervene to settle the dispute.
New rumors spread in western intelligence circles that Japan was going to use this as a pretext for major amphibious landings on the western side of the Malayan peninsula, thus threatening the security of the Indian Ocean, as it was already threatening that of the Pacific. Britain urged the US to send a naval squadron to Singapore to both protect against this and to send a message of united force to the Japanese. The idea was rejected because it was suspected that the rumor was a ruse by the British to draw the United States into the war with Germany by way of its Axis partner Japan, and that the deployment of US battleships in Singapore was more likely to provoke the Japanese than to intimidate them.
The ‘February War Scare’ did provide the USA with a chance to offhandedly warn the Japanese that they were playing with danger. Ambassador Grew was not the sort to yell at anybody, but a certain Admiral Doorman was. The admiral was meeting with Ohashi Chuichi, Vice Foreign Minister of Japan and out of nowhere, Doorman lost his cool and began to heatedly explain that the United States would not sit back passively and let the Japanese take Singapore or Malaysia, and the oil of the Dutch East Indies. By implication he was also saying that Japanese control of Indochina while not pleasant to the United States, was not a probable cause for war.
When Chuichi forced Doorman to be more blunt and asked if the seizure of Malaysia and the D.E.I. would mean war between Japan and the United States, Doorman said that his meaning was plain, and that “a Japanese threat to occupy areas from which the United States procured essential primary commodities would not be tolerated.” The 61 year old hard-of-hearing Ambassador Grew would never have done this, but when FDR heard about it he sent back to Doorman his personal approval. Grew then notified the Vice Foreign minister that he fully supported Doorman’s remarks. The United States was not going to be a doormat in South Asia. The creation of the Tripartite Axis the previous September influenced American thinking considerably. Roosevelt was angry at the idea of the three dictators trying to intimidate the United States. The formalization of the Axis alliance only toughened Roosevelts attitude regarding further aggressions at the expense of the USA or its allies.
Doorman’s temper might have bought the United States a few extra months in the Pacific War. Roosevelt was up to his ears in the struggle to pass lend-lease and he wanted no trouble in the Far East to make things worse. The US was content to warn the Japs not to take Singapore but for now, you can keep Indochina. The United States certain,y wold never go to war just for little ol' Vietnam.
MATSUOKA TAKES A VACATION FEB 1941
Japanese war plans in early 1941 were flexible, to say the least. Most of Japan's leaders were hell bent for war, but when, where and against what nation/nations were unsolved questions. Prince Konoye's government did not have complete control of the situation. Everything depended on everything else. There was the Army advocating one thing, the Navy advocating another, the Emperor's family dropping powerful hints in another, liberal diplomats stressing some other plan, liberal politicians daring to challenge someone's plan, and young assassins roving about planing to ice anyone who didn't honor Japan enough to suit their deranged taste.
In the middle of this kaleidoscopic war crisis Foreign Minister Matsuoka took a trip across the Eurasian plain to Moscow and Berlin to talk over a few things with the Axis kings.
After railing his way west across Siberia, Mat met with Molotov over cocktails and told the Vyacheslav that Japan was very much interested in a non-aggression pact with Russia.
Molotov seemed less interested than Matsuoka in a non-aggression pact, largely because Hitler hadn't attacked Russia. “Nyet, not yet,” quipped Matsuoka.
The disorient express continued on to Berlin where lucky Matsuoka would get a private audience with the superstar, Adolph Hitler.
Hitler was as divine in Germany as the Emperor in Japan, but with a couple of key differences. Hirohito, came from the top 1% of the top 1% of Japanese royal blood lines. Hitler was a mutt from the gutters of Vienna. Hirohito ruled passively, secretly, without responsibly. Hitler personally approved or wrote every command given to every person of any consequence in Germany, and published it. The contrast was between the god from heaven who did nothing and the god from the gutter who did everything.
At the Chancellery in Berlin Hitler poured Matsuoka a glass of Bavarian beer and began to talk. Matsuoka listened. 40 minutes later Matsuoka explained that he did not speak German and a translator was called in. Hitler started all over again. No problem. Hitler loved to talk.
For starters Hitler began a brag-a-log on his military conquests.
“Two hundred and forty four divisions! When you add up all the enemies who have fallen before me, it adds up to 244 divisions! I have destroyed them all with half as many troops!”
Hitler told Matsuoka over tapioca that Germany did not want war with the United States. The Fuhrer was sure that if the United States chose to help England, it could not at the same time wage an American war of its own against Japan. America had industrial might but not that kind of industrial might. It was a hint that Japan might be free to move in Asia without fearing American retaliation. Hitler assured the Japanese FM that the USA would never make offensive military moves west of Hawaii. The Fuhrer was revealing himself a dim-wit on both points.
Hitler encouraged Japan to attack Britian in Asia, thus weakening his enemy in Europe. If Japan could wear down the British Navy on the other side of the world, it could only help.
Both men were feeling each other out on the more delicate question of Russia. Hitler wanted Japan to attack Russia but could not openly say so, because he had not revealed to anyone except his most intimate yes-men (he had no advisors) that he was planning an invasion in the early summer. Hitler was searching for a way to tell Japan that it was a good time to attack Singapore, that Japan did not have to fear it's Russian flank because he would tie that one down with Barbarossa. But he couldn't reveal Barbarossa.
When Matsuoka was leaving Hitler told him, “Tell the Emperor that war between Germany and Russia is not out of the question.” Coming from this guy, that was a serious hint.
BATTLE OF CAPE MATAPAN MARCH 1941
The Italian Navy decided in the spring of 1941 that it had to make a showing in the Mare Nostrum (the nickname Mussolini had given the Mediterranean – Latin for 'Our Sea')
Hitler was already employing Rommel to rescue beaten Italian forces in North Africa. It helped Italy when Germany came to the rescue but it was also humiliating. Italy needed a victory of its own to show Hitler that it was a strong little brother, not a pathetic weak one.
This was the essence of 'Operation Grease', the Italian plan to head off to the the area around Crete in force, engage the best the British Royal navy had to offer and sink it. The Italian Naval HQ in Rome, the so-called Supermarina, heard false reports that the three British battleships in the eastern Mediterranean were badly damaged by Luftwaffe attacks. This disinformation baited the trap that in the end took the Italian Navy off the board for the rest of the war in one disastrous naval battle, the worst defeat in the history of the Italian Navy.
Before all the smoke had cleared on March 29, 1941, three Italian cruisers, the Pola, Fiume, and Zarex, plus two destroyers went down to Mario Lanza's locker. 2,878 Italian sailors and officers were dead. After Matapan, the Italian Navy never came out in force again, unless you count the day in 1943 they steamed out in full dress to surrender.
ZAMZAM 4 17 41
In the South Atlantic an incident took place in April to bring the United States and Germany closer to war. The German surface raider Atlantis found a freighter in its binoculars 35 miles away. Atlantis fired 59 shells at the freighter and three scored hits. That was enough to doom the Zamzam, an Egyptian freighter loaded with, are you ready for this, missionaries on their way to Africa to work for God among the poor.
28 of these good people were Americans.
The captain of the Atlantis felt bad when he picked up the survivors and found that he had not hit a supply ship bound for the British war effort, but rather a target full of religious Zamzam zealots. The captives prayed for the souls of their the German captors, and some Germans felt shamed to tears. The raider captain even led them all in prayers a few days later (most of the people who swore oath to the Fuhrer were members of the Catholic Church violating the First Commandment- the simple truth is a cheap shot.)
The Zamzam prisoners transferred to another German ship that treated them coldly, leaving the proselytizers in an overcrowded cargo hold.
The 28 Americans were taken back to France and allowed to go to Spain where they caught a ship back to the United States. Most of them eventually found another ship that took them to Africa. The American press had a field day ripping the German raider for sinking a ship full of holy rollers. It was zamzam fuel for the intervention fireplace.
GREECE AND ALBANIA FALL TO EVIL - APRIL 1941
Mussolini was an important ally for Hitler, especially in the Mediterranean, but Benito often caused the Fuhrer more trouble than he was worth.
The Italians took Albania in early 1939, for no reason excel greed and conquest, months before Hitler attacked Poland. The Italian army in November 1940 marched into Greece for the same reason it had taken Albania in 1939. Italy soon found itself reeling from a counter-attack and being chased back into Italian-controlled Albania. Mussolini had to get his big brother to finish the fight for him.
The irony of this for Mussolini, the brutal irony, was that Moose invaded Greece to establish enough continental territory for Italy in order to prevent an absolute German hegemony over Europe after the war. He was conducting his “parallel war” in order to also show Hitler that he wasn't just a junior partner in this 'brutal friendship.' Italy's political goals backfired when Greece counter-attacked with a vengeance, and the Wermacht had to pull the Italian chestnuts out of the Greek fire.
Hitler had vowed in 1938 that he would never forget the favor Benito had done for him at the time of the Munich crisis. AH probably could not have won any of his bloodless victories in Europe in 1938 and 1939 without Italian support. Now Hitler was true to his word, and ordered the full force of the German military into the Southeastern theatre.
Beginning on April 6, 1941 Nazi divisions entered the Italo-Greek War and won it for Italy which couldn't win it by itself.
Now Britian honored its April 1939 commitment to Greece and intervened to stop the intervening Germans. Churchill was obsessed with the Balkans in general, so he didn't hesitate to advocate a major British effort to save Greece. The troops would have to come from North Africa, and this may have been a major blunder, since the British troops didn't save Greece at all and the North African effort suffered as a result of the resources diverted to Greece.
The Germans drove the Greeks and their British allies off the peninsula and into the sea. It was Dunkirk South as the Tommies and Greeks bailed out on the beaches in the nick of time.
The British retired to their fallback position of the island of Crete.
CRETE
A month long slugfest took place for the strategically very important island of Crete. In trying to protect this last Mediterranean stronghold the British Navy engaged in a full scale war with the German Air Force. The German Air Force won. It was like two great navies having a World War One type of gunbattle, except that only one of the two was actually a Navy.
Throughout 1940 the British had slapped the Supermarina all around the Mediterranean. Italian capital ships were relatively modern, but so vulnerable to gunfire that single hits could sink them. They looked great in photographs and on display in peacetime, but in combat the British had an unfair advantage. It was called thick armor plating. Both fighters could punch, but only one had a glass jaw, and he preferred red wine to warm beer.
For several reasons, the Italians Navy did not choose to come out and fight the British in the Mediterranean in the second half of 1940. Mussolini actually though it was important to keep the Italian Navy out of action so that he would have more strength to bargain with when the war was settled diplomatically. Benito wanted a little empire here and there but he hoped the war would not last, and had little confidence that Italy had enough materials to last long in a real war. He wanted to ride in to the peace conference on Germany's bloody coattails.
But when the Germans came in to the rescue in the Balkans and reached the southern end of Greece they had stumbled onto a new role as a Mediterranean sea power. Even though the German Navy was nowhere to be found, the Germans still had become a power in the Mediterranean because the sea was an oversized Great Lake and could be controlled to some extent by land based air power provided they were on southern end of Europe. The area near Athens stuck out into that sea enough that the Nazis suddenly had a real presence there. Instead of establishing a parallel empire in the Mediterranean to rival Germany's on the continent, Italy had brought Germany in to run things in the Mare Nostrum.
Now, instead of having to fight laughable Italian naval power, the British had to fight German air power, and German air power wasn't funny at all.
Germany was doing Italy's job for it in Europe and now it was doing Italy's job at sea too. Italy had never built a single aircraft carrier because it believed that the long boot of Italy deep into the Mediterranean was more than enough to cover the area with land-based air power. But a poorly trained air force and a navy that didn't want to fight at all kind of ruined that concept a bit. Germany, however, ended up proving Italy's who-needs-carriers theory correct in the Crete campaign.
Royal Navy Admiral Richard H. Cunningham was in charge of the defense of Crete and he failed miserably. British history considers him a great hero, but the record doesn't back it up.
The Luftwaffe gave the Royal Navy took a royal pounding around Crete in May of 1941. Nine warships were sunk and 17 were seriously damaged. The aircraft carrier Formidable wasn't very. The Luftwaffe damaged Formidable to such a degree that it never re-entered World War II.
The Nazis conquered Crete by mass parachute attack. Crete was the first, last, and only time in history that mass parachute drop was the main weapon of a strategic war plan. It worked quite well. The parachute forces tumbled out of more than 500 Luftwaffe planes and 70 gliders. They landed, they saw, they conquered. Crete was evacuated. But German casualties were much higher than anticipated. All those years of planning and training and now the Nazi entire parachute corps was decimated after one successful mission. Hitler never ordered another offensive parachute attack again.
Of the 8,100 Germans who landed on Crete by parachute, 3,772 were killed in action. Holy Hitler! Count the wounded, and that's more than a 50% casualty rate, rare in any war.
Crete was a failure in the big picture for both sides because the Germans never did anything with it, and they only took it with offense in mind. Crete was to be a springboard to Cyprus and the possible cutting off of Allied oil supplies from the Iraq pipeline. Crete might also be used as a primary launching pad for an across the sea attack on North Africa. The benefits of the costly Crete win never came into play because Hitler attacked Russia on June 22 1941, and decided from then on that he needed almost all his resources there. The Nazi Crete bastion was maintained to hold off an attack, but was never built up enough to prepare for any offense. And since the British also seemed to be holding Egypt rather firmly, there went that fantasy about a Crete to Alexandria attack in tandem with Rommel hitting from the land side west.
The British never found a reason to do an Iwo Jima and take it back, so Crete sat out the war under Nazi occupation, and little military incident.
HESS FLIES TO SCOTLAND MAY 10 1941
Out of nowhere came fantastic news on May 10 1941. The Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolph Hess, the second in line of succession to power after Goering if Hitler died, the close friend of Hitler, a man who had been with Hitler in Landsburg Prison and dictated Mein Kampf, had defected to Scotland!
But had he?
What the world knew in banner headlines was the Hess had flown a lone ME-110 fighter bomber over England and landed safely in Scotland. The British had him in custody and he was talking, trying to negotiate a separate peace between Germany and Great Britian.
Hess was demanding interviews with the Prime Minister and the King. He had apparently decided to do this entirely on his own. The Nazi Party had not given its approval and Hess had told no one his plans until it was too late to stop him. Hitler heard about it and was shocked and displeased. He felt betrayed. Hess was trying to be a hero and save the world from a needless war but his thinking was naïve and delusional.
The British just kept him locked up for the rest of the war and didn't really let him have a meaningful interview with anyone of importance. If Hess really did have some great idea for a compromise peace, it never got the chance to see the light of day.
Hess went on trial at Nuremberg and got about 99 years for his role in Nazi Germany before he defected to Scotland. He was the last famous Nazi to die, when he rotted away at 94.
A lot of people on both sides just thought that Hess had gone slightly insane.
For more than ten years, Hess was the only prisoner in Spandau Prison. There was an Unsolved Mysteries episode that claimed that Hess may have been murdered because he had decided to reveal a long-kept secret.
The wreckage of the crashed Hess ME-110 is in the Imperial War Museum. I violated the sign and I touched it when the guard wasn't looking.
Every time I pass a Hess gas station I think of Rudolph Hess. I can't help it.
SINK THE BISMARCK
In May of 1941 the war had just begun. The Germans had the biggest ship that had the biggest guns. The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea. Had those guns as big as steers and those shells a big as trees.
Those are the opening lines to a Johnny Horton hit song that I played on my dad's turntable 1,941 times in the 1960's. The legendary pursuit and sinking of BB Bismarck was such an event that 20 years after the war it spawned hit record.
The Bismarck was indeed the most powerful battleship in the world in May of 1941. But it didn't have the most powerful protection screen, which BB's are supposed to have. The German Navy wasn't big enough to base a fighting task force around “Big Biz,” so instead it became a commerce raider in the Atlantic. Bismark sank 16 Allied merchant ships in six weeks before the Brits brought it to heel.
British cruisers chased Bismarck in the North Atlantic, but when Bismarck stopped to fight the Hood the “Mighty Hood went down” (Johnny Horton and a scary drum roll.) HMS Hood was a heavy cruiser. No match for the Bismarck.
It was a carrier strike from HMS Illustrious that finally stopped the Bismarck. Bi-planes that looked like they belonged in WWI attacked the Bismarck with torpedoes. The Fairy Swordfish torpedoes ruined the steering of the Bismarck.
A couple of days later a cruiser task force slugged it out with Bismarck and beat the big bad bruiser up. But it was the carrier strike that made the Bismarck vulnerable in the subsequent cruiser battle.
The difference between a cruiser, by the way, is not always in firepower. Many a heavy cruiser has the same large batteries as a battleship. What makes a battleship a battleship is heavy armor protection. The cruiser can hit hard but can't take much punishment. On the plus side, the lack of heavy armor gives the cruiser compensatory speed and maneuverability. A battleship can take it as well as dish it out. Part of the reason the Bismarck became such a legend of history is the amount of punishment it took before it finally went down. It died the death of a true battleship.
Entire books have been written about the pursuit and sinking of the Bismarck, and there was a movie about it too. The movie used models so fake that I think the plastic Bismarck model Ricky Oliveri built in 1966 looked more realistic. He blew his up with a cherry bomb after he got tired of it. I thought it was a shame, because he had actually taken care of it. It's one thing to blow up a model that fell off your dresser 20 times (like my Graf Spee, Enterprise, and Pennsylvania) and I'm all for that. But it's another to blow up an Aurora in good shape, and should be discouraged.
BALKAN DELAY SAVES RUSSIA AND THE WAR
German armies had obviously not reached America yet, but fear of Nazi invasion had hit the coast and spread inland. America was at long last wide-awake. Hitler was master of all of Europe except Russia and some neutrals. Roosevelt was beginning to perceive the full maniacal goals of the post-card painter with the bad do.
Greece had ruined Hitler’s plan for world dominance. There was honor among thieves as Hitler backed his pledge. The two months lost in the Balkans delayed Hitler’s invasion of Russia by some six weeks. When the Nazi army ran into the Russian winter it was six weeks after he would have run into it if he hadn’t helped Mussolini. At the end of 1941 the German army was on the outskirts of Moscow. The Russian winter froze the battle lines where they stood. If not for Mussolini’s inept military blunder, the Germans would have broken through Moscow and beyond before winter set in. The south Russia front with its mission to take the Baku oil fields, would have started and finished sooner as well.
On the other hand, Basil L. Hart, the war genius of the UK argues effectively that this standard version of events analysis (as summarized above) is largely mythical. Hart concludes that the German invaders would in all likelihood have been in roughly the same situation at the end of 1941 with or without the Albanian-Greek diversion. Hart is probably right, but his is not the prevailing historical view, and I am not prepared to adopt it.
At the height of the fighting in the Balkans the Greeks asked the USA to send 30 top-rate combat planes to fight the Nazis. FDR actually agreed to this but the bad guys conquered Greece before the planes could leave the states. It would have been a major political story in the course of the war if Yankee planes had arrived and battled the Luftwaffe over Greece. It might triggered the famous Hitler temper, and he might have declared war on the United States seven months before December 1941.
YUGO NEXT – MARCH-APRIL 1941
Hitler rounded off his conquest of Southeastern Europe with the capture of Yugoslavia.
Prince Paul was the ruler of Yugoslavia. His ministers were summoned to Germany and ordered to join the Axis, or else. The Nazis made it clear that they would wipe Yugoslavia off the map, and hang at least two or three people if the Prince did not join in a Balkan alliance. The Yugo ministers agreed to join the Axis. Hitler was happy (or at least as happy as an egomaniacal sociopath can be.)
Back in Belgrade the news of the Yugo capitulation set off a rebellion. Prince Paul was deposed by a spontaneous coup backed by the people. The agreement with Hitler was declared null and void. There was dancing in the streets of Belgrade as the new Yugo revolutionary government, backed by the smiling cheering and singing people told the Axis to rotate on it.
During the rising crisis in the Balkans Churchill had pushed Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey to defy Hitler as a group. He felt that a Balkan entente, backed by England, could deter Hitler from invading Southeastern Europe. This visionary triple alliance of Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey was probably a good idea; and if Turkey had agreed, perhaps Hitler would have thought twice about invading Yugoslavia. But Turkey stubbornly maintained its neutrality, and did so throughout the war. Churchill tried to scare the Turks by suggesting that neutrality would lead to Turk isolation and conquest. But the Turkish crescent had learned its lesson well from the sour experience of World War One. The Great War had downgraded the Ottoman Turks from a glorious empire into a large but not influential state at the crossroads of Eurasia. Another round like that and Turkey might end up only slightly more powerful than Monaco.
The Yugoslavs would have to go it alone and defy Hitler with songs and banners.
When Hitler first read of the coup in Yugoslavia he thought it was a joke at first, or so he claimed. He always enjoyed his bloodless European conquests and thought Yugoslavia was in the bag. Once it dawned on him that no one would dare play a practical joke on the Fuhrer, he decided that Yugoslavia not only would have to be invaded, but it must be done in excessively ruthless fashion, even for Nazis.
The reason for this was to shock and awe Turkey (Turkey and Spain were the wild cards of WWII.) Hitler was as aware as Churchill of the potential power of a Turkish alliance with the Balkan states. He ordered his forces to be extra brutal in Yugoslavia. He would make those Turks think twice about entering the war. Herr Hitler didn’t know that Turkey was not going to enter the war, period.
THE YANKS ARE COMING ... NO THEY’RE NOT
In April 1941 the British people got it into their heads that the USA was going to pick right now to intervene and save them. Part of this was the momentum that seemed to be building in that direction with the Lend-Lease situation, which they mistook as a stepping stone to an impending US declaration of war against Germany. As April dragged on and everything seemed to go from bad to worse, the British became angry with America for not showing up like cavalry in a bad “Western” (and what other kind are there, besides Shane?). It was all part of a mind-set of desperation. When all seems lost, why not cling to the only outside hope for salvation? They couldn’t put themselves in shoes 3,000 miles across the ocean and appreciate the degree of isolationist sentiment still flourishing in the USA.
Polls made it clear that 1- Most Americans believed that a war with Germany was inevitable, and 2 - Most Americans were decidedly against intervening to help Britain. These two polls seem contradictory, but were not. Most Americans thought that Germany was going to defeat Britain or render it a virtual non-factor in Europe. Therefore, the place to take a stand against Germany was not in Britian or North Africa. That would be throwing away the heart of America military defensive resources in a distant situation that was doomed to defeat. Better to husband the resources in the states and prepare for a hemispheric defense posture.
Brits would be mystified to know that not only were Americans not interested in intervening to save Britian in April 1941, they were even less interested in doing so than they had been during the Battle of Britian the previous fall! But again, this was based on a perception in 1940 that Britain could still win, against a perception in April 1941 that Britain could no longer hope to win. Britian won the Battle of Britain, but the defeats in Greece, Crete, and North Africa more than compensated in the negative. In April 1941 Germany had Europe by the neck and Britian was choking. The only other countries besides England not under Nazi control were Fascist Spain, and neutral lambs like Portugal and Switzerland. Southeast Europe was made up of countries like Bulgaria and Hungary who were stuck between a Communist rock and a Nazi hard place with no where to go but down.
NOBODY WANTS TO BE HUNGARY
Meanwhile in Hungary, Prime Minister Teleki was in a bad spot. Hitler informed him that German armies were going to have to pass through Hungary on their way to Belgrade. Or else. Hungary was nominally allied with Germany, but the alliance had been obtained under threat of Hungarian destruction and occupation.
Hitler offered Teleki a plum for the favor. Hungary could jump in at the end and take back all the territory that it lost to Yugoslavia following World War One. Hungary had joined the Central Powers in WWI and paid for it at Versailles in 1919.
But Teleki was also bound by a treaty of peace and friendship with Yugoslavia he recently signed with his own pen. And, as if Teleki didn't already have enough problems, Churchill warned him personally that if his Hungary helped the Nazis destroy Yugoslavia, Great Britian would declare war on Hungary. Most important in the mix, Teleki was no Nazi-lover and doubted that Germany could win this war.
So if Teleki agrees to Hitler’s demands he commits evil against a neighbor he had signed a treaty with, goes against his own convictions and opinions, plus Hungary might lose yet another World War. A victorious west might even try him later as a war criminal. On the other hand if Teleki defies Hitler’s demands then Hitler invades Hungary, and his people will blame him for all the deaths. In such a pathetic no-win situation Teleki chose suicide. He shot himself in his office. Most religions consider suicide a sin, but God might have forgiven Teleki for this one. I certainly do.
THE PUNISHER
Hitler code-named the invasion of Yugoslavia “Operation Punishment.” The big AH would hurt you for no reason on his best day. When he names a campaign, “Operation Punishment,” it's no idle threat.
April 6 1941, 150 Luftwaffe planes bombed and strafed the ancient city of Belgrade Yugoslavia for an hour and a half, killing six thousand civilians. As for the Yugoslav Air Force, the final score was 64-2 in planes destroyed. You know who was the 64 and who was the 2. The bombing pattern was simple terror. The Luftwaffe made no pretense about military or key infrastructure targets. It concentrated on destroying the center of the city in its entirety.
The bombing of Belgrade without a declaration of war is one of the worst atrocities in the history of warfare. It was Pearl Harbor on civilians.
Three Axis Army groups then crashed in over the borders of Yugoslavia. The Yugos surrendered 11 days later. The rebel music festival was cancelled. On April 17th the Mayor of Belgrade handed over the keys to the capitol city's defensive fortifications to a Nazi officer.
Hitler was good to his Axis friends. He gave three of them a slice of Yugo. Italy, Hungary and Rumania all took territory from Yugoslavia and called it their own. Yugoslavian independence had lasted 22 years.
NIBLACK FIRES FIRST 4 13 1941
Now to the undeclared war at sea between FDR and AH.
The United States destroyer Niblack was picking up survivors from a torpedoed allied ship on the 11th of April when its sonar thought it identified a hostile KUB (Kraut U-Boat.)
Niblack sought out the enemy and fired depth charges, though no torpedo wake had been seen heading for the US destroyer. ‘The Nibbler,’ as she was known to the men, had fired the first shot. This token tactical gesture represented a sea change in US sea policy.
The Captain of the Niblack returned to Newport Rhode Island and upon examining the battle report decided that he had not actually attacked a German U-boat at all. The sonar had turned up a false target, probably a whale. But word of the American attack leaked out to the press. The Washington Post in June ran a story that the Navy had attacked a German U-boat and editorialized vehemently against the deed. U-boat commander in chief Raeder read about it in Germany and scratched his head. This story wasn't even on Raeder's radar. No one had reported to the admiral of an attack on one of his boats by an American destroyer.
RUSSO-JAPANESE NON AGGRESSION PACT 4 13 41
One deterrent to the outbreak of war in the Pacific was eliminated when Japan and Russia signed a Non-Aggression Pact on April 13, 1941. Now Japan could concentrate on its war with China without having to worry about being attacked in the back by Russia in Manchuria.
The United States was trying to help China survive and took this new pact as an affront to its interests. If need be, Japan could now even take on America without having to worry about fighting Russia too. Japan would obviously be the underdog against the United States and Great Britian in the Far East. But to add the Soviet Union would be too many combined enemies for even the martially conceited Japanese to handle.
The pact gave Stalin a lift also. Now if Germany attacked the USSR, the USSR would not have to fight a two-front war against major powers Germany and Japan. Hitler was the big loser in the pact. Japan was announcing that its commitment to the Axis went only so far. Japan would not go to war with Russia in order to help Hitler win his leibesraum empire.
The Pact included a puppet show. It swapped puppet recognitions. The USSR agreed to recognize the puppet state of Manchukuo, and the Japanese agreed to recognize a Soviet puppet
state in Chinese Mongolia called the Mongolian People’s Republic.
Pinnochio's nose stretched across the length of the Trans Siberian Railway.
Roosevelt reacted to the pact by rescinding a standing order to send three American battleships and a carrier from the Pacific to the Atlantic to help with the U-boat war. The Pacific Fleet had less metal to spare. The Non-Aggression Pact made aggression more likely in the Pacific.
BELFAST BLITZ - APRIL 15 1941
Ireland was neutral, but Northern Ireland was British territory and fair game for German attack.
On the afternoon of April 15, a packed stadium at a big Irish soccer game in Belfast saw a solo German bomber circling overhead. Meanwhile on the air waves, German propaganda radio star Lord Haw Haw threatened sarcastically that Belfast was “going to get some Easter eggs soon.” English citizens picked up the broadcast all over the Isles. No one took it terribly seriously, but, as things turned out, the threat was very serious.
That night more than 200 medium German bombers dropped their full loads on Belfast. More than one thousand Irishmen women and children perished.
Only London topped Belfast in the number of civilians killed in Axis air raids in WWII. Other British cities, like Liverpool and Coventry were raided seriously, but none suffered as badly as Belfast. Fires spread out of control and by the end of the next day more than one fifth of Belfast homes were gone or uninhabitable. 100,000 Irish were homeless.
The event helped FDR politically. The Belfast Blitz of April 14, 1941 turned many Irish-Americans a bit more interventionist, as Irish-American hatred of Britian softened considerably under the circumstances.
THE ANGLO-IRAQI WAR – MAY 1941
There was a one month war in Iraq in May of 1941 between Britain and Iraq. Britain won and stayed there after WWII ended.
The British had controlled Iraq after WWI under the mandate system. The UK had allowed Iraq to become independent in 1932, but on condition that Britain could hold military bases in Basra and Habbayana, which is near Fallujah.
When Britain withdrew from Iraq, there was, of course, a basic understanding that if a government too unfriendly to Britian came to power, Britain might have to come back. It was a subtle imperialism, and much like more recent American imperialism. In any case, with Britian on the edge of survival, the independence of Iraq didn't mean much to Britian. British imperialism in practice, under a cloak of independence in theory, naturally produced a simmering resentment at all levels of Iraqi government and society.
Britain hoped that Iraq would declare war on Nazi Germany after the invasion of Poland, but Iraq remained neutral. Iraq at least did sever diplomatic relations with Germany but would not do the same with Italy. This made Britian unhappy and Churchill claimed that Baghdad was a trojan horse of Axis perfidy centered at the Italian Embassy.
A government friendly to the Axis came to power in April of 1941. The pro-British Emir, Abdul Illa was out. The Prime Minister, friendly to the Nazis, was Rashid Ali. Rashid engineered the coup. It was Ali vs. Great Britain for one month in Iraq.
Nazi anti-semitism appealed to the Arab nationalists, who hated Jews as a matter of religion. The leaders of the Iraqi revolt were called the “Golden Squares.”
Churchill instructed Lord Cornwallis, the British Ambassador in Baghdad, to just make sure that the port of Basra and the airbase at Habbaniya remained under British control. He reminded all British officials in Iraq that he could care less what kind of political situation reigned over the rest of Iraq, just as long as Basra and Habbayana stayed open for war business.
Basra would not be a problem. Habbaniya would be a different story.
The British had 2,300 troops, and 87 old combat aircraft at Habbaniya. Rashid Ali's Iraqi troops gathered in the hills outside of the 7 mile British perimeter at Habbaniya. Ali had 9,000 troops.
The British compound also had 5,000 British nationals who had fled Baghdad during the Arabist revolt. It was like 55 Days at Peking in 1900.
On May 2 Iraq attacked Habbaniya.
The war in Iraq, coupled with the British battle against Vichy French forces in Syria, severely hampered the ability of the British in North Africa to attain victory. When these two Middle Eastern sideshows were finally mopped up, the situation in the Western Desert got better for the King.
ROBYN MOOR
On May 21 1941 the German Navy attacked and sank its first American ship. U-69 destroyed the freighter in the Atlantic with two torpedos. The Robyn Moor went out with a political bang.
The unarmed 5,000 ton Robyn was on its way to South Africa from New York when a U-boat surfaced and halted it halfway between Brazil and Africa. German Captain Roger Metzger allowed the passengers and crew, less than 46 people altogether, 20 minutes to scramble into four rowboats where they were set adrift in the Atlantic while Metzger sank the Moor with the five inch surface gun.
The incident was moor fuel for the building fire towards war between the United States and Nazi Germany.
HALFAYA PASS – 88's RULE - JUNE 15-16 1941
An important battle took place in the North African desert a week before the invasion of Russia. The British launched a serious tank attack on Rommel and his Afrika Korps. There was a two-day battle in the 120 degree desert involving almost 300 tanks in total.
Rommel won this one.
The British had a superior tank, the Waltzing Matilda, or, as it was better known to the men, “the WM.” The WM was more heavily armored than anything the Germans had, and this Brit tank could withstand the Italian and German 37 mm tank gun-shots with little difficulty. Matilda also had more firepower than the Panzer 3's or 4's. (the British also used the Valentine Tank, and they traditionally yelled “Happy Valentine's Day!” when ever they fired a live round in combat, but the Valentine was not as good as the WD.)
Rommel took his 88mm anti-aircraft guns and dug them in in key positions at the passes along the “Sollum Line.” The British would attack through these passes and pay the toll.
The British attack was designed to relieve the on-going Siege of Tobruk. The Australians at Tobruk (a majority of the UK troops there) had fought off Rommel's first attacks mighty well. So Rommel moved on towards Egypt with the besieged Tobruk in his rear view goggles. Now he had to defend his advanced position at Sollum, to maintain his uncertain siege behind him.
Rommel knew that Tobruk threatened his line of communication and supply and had to go. The British understood the same and in Operation Battle-axe sent 260 tanks to North Africa in preparation to relieve Tobruk.
The British attacked the Sollum Line on June 15-16 1941 and the world held its breath. The Nazis held. The 88's knocked out nearly 88 tanks. Rommel became an even bigger legend and hero in Germany, in spite of the fact that about 88 officers had officially complained to the Army about his unacceptable behavior in about 88 ways. He was courts martialing men for now winning battles against impossible odds. He was blaming others for his own mistakes, big time.
If he had lost at Sollum, he might have been sacked, but Rommel won a victory and his star shot to the next galaxy.
BARBAROSSA
June 22 1941 is the other date in 1941 which will live in infamy.
The German Army invaded Russia on the broadest battlefront in world history. It was a new record. But records are made to be broken. The new record for widest battlefront was soon reached when the German Army drove deeper into Russian territory. The scale is overwhelming.
Many times in war, powerful nations cannot employ all of their divisions in battle because of logistics. If the battle is locked in on an island or a mountain pass, how many divisions can a state bring to the table?
With Operation Barbarossa, two superpower countries went to full scale war on the most mobile, fluid, accessible and massive playing board in the history of the planet. It was the “perfect storm” of war. It has not been surpassed in greatness, and let's pray it never will be. It was the super-fight in the history of the world. It was millions battling millions, literally, and on a front that in North American terms stretched from southern Canada to northern Mexico.
The invasion of Russia was very successful for the first few months. The world held its breath as the German Army chewed up Russian territory as fast as their forces could march.
By the end of it all, the invasion of Russia would prove to be a complete failure. The Russian winter would destroy the operation and set the stage for a fabulous Russian counterattack, a counterattack that would only end with German solders setting Addie's corpse on fire as the Russian troops closed in on his crib.
BARBAROSSA – THE ARMIES AND THE PLAN
Didn't this Hitler guy learn anything from Napoleon?
Adolph had made so many winning strokes of military daring for so long that he believed his own publicity, the ultimate mistake. Hitler had proven his generals wrong in the past. The working class dictator loved to taunt about how wrong the Junker military snobs had been when he took the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Then he ignored their advise and conquered Poland and then western continental Europe. They had advised him against all of this, and look at the results. One victory after another. The always furious Fuhrer would prove his timid generals wrong again. The guy must have actually believed that attacking Russia was a good idea. It was insane really, when you look at it. Russia alone, or England alone was bad enough, but to fight them both, and force these two into an alliance, with the United States already clearly lining itself up with the British side, well that's crazy defined.
The decision to attack Russia may well have been an early indication of a physical deterioration in Hitler's brain. I've read few weird things about how he was going insane and may have had a venereal disease. Didn't King George go mad and alter history from VD? Maybe Hitler invaded Russia in 1941 because of a 1921 night with a Hamburg hooker?
The other school of thought is that Hitler knew that the UK and the USSR were heading for a military alliance against him sooner or later anyway. Even while at war with England he felt that his only chance to prevent this was to knock out the USSR before it could ally itself effectively with England. Germany would put Russia in the war and take her out of it in the same lightning attack before England knew what had happened. Russia would be conquered in ten weeks, and British dreams of a Russian alliance with US support would be squelched. The old Entente of WWI would not have a chance to do reform in WWII.
Maybe Hitler was simply underestimating Russian military capabilities. Hitler was not impressed with the Soviet war machine. The idiot didn't realize that this was only because there had never been one. Soviet Communist five-year plans were centered on industrial development, not military. His attack forced the giant of Russia to switch gears. Germany was mobilized for war and had been for some time, while Stalin was asleep at the wheel as his country was forcibly mobilized for industry. Once Russia switched gears, it, like the United States after Pearl Harbor, took a couple of years to get up to snuff, but once it did, watch out.
Hitler put too much stock in the relatively unimpressive performance of Soviet forces in the war with Finland in 1939-40. 'Crazy Addie' also had a leftover military prejudice from World War One, where Russia's performance was very poor, division for division. All of the easy and most of the great German victories in WWI were won in the east against the Russian, or their hapless southeast European allies.
Racism played a role in overconfidence. The race prejudice against the east was common in virtually all German military men. Hitler didn't create this political mind-set, he sprang from it. He and many others saw the eastern plains as a great soft field to plow for a thousand miles and thousand years with Nordic genes and factories.
Just as in 1861 every Southern soldier “knew” he could take ten Yankees, the Fuhrer “knew” that one German soldier could take ten Russians. Hitler knew that slav was one letter short of slave, so he invaded against some heated advice. He was going to put Russia out of its misery and enslave it. Instead the Russians knocked Germany up side of the head.
Hitler thought he could conquer the entire country in a lightning war before that gear switching Russian industrial might had time to mobilized and deploy.
Many of Hitler's advisors thought that the attack (if it had to be carried out at all) should be anchored on a single main thrust towards Moscow which could run ahead of the broad front in search of victory. But in the end the invasion was conducted on an evenly paced front the length of eastern Europe in a North-South direction.
The evenly advancing mass front had some advantages logistically, and insured many victories, but all of the wins would be tactical. The strategic breakout victory was rendered hopeless by the lack of risk on the safe broad front. This approach made it tough for advance German armored divisions to cut Russian armies off and surrounded them.
After much debate, the Jerry Generals on the eve of war decided on a four pronged invasion with the two center groups on either side of the Pripet marshes getting the lions share of firepower. The northern and southern flank drives would have less priority.
But Hitler overruled his generals. He demanded that the northern flank be given equal if not top priority. Hitler wanted to take Leningrad in a bad way, and ordered that the two strongest center groups should not even begin to link up until Leningrad and the northern flank on the Baltic was secured. This was a major mistake by the dumkoff schveinhund.
Leningrad never fell, and was far less valuable in the first place than Moscow or the oil of the Caucasus. The Nazis spent a great deal of strength in a failed attempt to take useless Leningrad when all that energy was needed to take the center. And the center controls the game. Thanks, Hitler. Whenever things look bleak we can always count on your stupid ego. He had to take Leningrad partly because it was named after the all time hated Bolo, Lenin.
Hitler underestimated Russian strength also because he overestimated the damages done to the Red Army by the Stalin purge of the military in the late 1930's. Stalin had murdered more than half of the Red Army officer corps, seldom with sane reasons. Most of the Red Army leadership was six feet under by the end of 1938, but a recovery process had begun since Hitler had started WWII in Poland. Red Army leadership wasn't back to normal in June 1941 but it had come along way since the summer of 38 when even the great Timoshenko, the hero of the Russo-Polish war of 1920 was shot in the head on Stalin's orders.
In the months between the dismemberment of Poland and the start of Barbarossa, Stalin perhaps should have mobilized the USSR for the impending war. He definitely did not, not overtly anyway. Stalin in fact, tried to be a very supportive ally of Hitler by the agreed terms of the pact of 39 between paranoid devils.
To prepare for Barbarossa, Hitler had to transfer several large armies from western to eastern Europe without alarming the USSR to the danger of an impending attack. This was done in slick gradual steps. However by May of 1941 it was pretty obvious to Moscow what was going on.
Yet Stalin didn't panic and switch over to defcon two. He was either naïve or playing a shrewd game. Stalin may have known that he was going to be attacked at some time by Germany. But he may have also felt that if he beefed up the border with forts and increased armored formations, it would trigger the invasion he was hoping to avoid. He would rather have a little more time than a little more muscle on the frontier. By not reacting to the German transfer of a hundred divisions from France to Poland, Stalin hoped to buy a couple more months to build up the reserves for the big one.
Or he was just stupid.
If Stalin could maintain the Nazi-Soviet passive alliance he could postpone war. So Joe delivered military supplies and food to Germany on time right up to the time of the invasion! Stalin did not prepare anything but a warm butter line of defense against the Wermacht.
The 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact geographically did much harm to Russian defensive posture against Germany. For two decades, Russia had built up a reasonably good defensive line along its political borders left over from World War I. It was no 3,000 mile Maginot Line, but the “Smirnoff Line” (as nicknamed by Churchill) wasn't bad.
Then in the September dismember Russia occupied eastern Poland and part of Romania as a reward for its services in enabling Hitler's war. Now Russia's new line of defense had been moved forward past its structurally built up line. All that work between the wars was negated by the advanced line.
Russia's advanced defense line was virtually indefensible. The shrewd move in the case of attack by Germany would be to concede the new advanced line and fall back to the Smirnoff line, which in the meantime should have been even further reinforced for just such an event.
But Stalin chose to let the old line fall into disrepair and rust while the new indefensible perimeter was enforced, creating two weak lines instead of one strong one. Stalin gave the advance troops orders to not retreat if attacked. This was an open invitation to the encirclement and destruction of the best Russian rifle divisions as soon as any crack German panzer units broke through. The new line would be lost, and the old line wouldn't be of much value to fall back on.
If Hitler was occasionally a military genius and sometimes a fool, it is hard to say the same for Stalin. He was never a military genius. And he almost certainly didn't expect a full scale invasion like the one that hit him in June of 1941.
Sure, it was a clear error for Hitler to invade Russia. If you can't beat England, heck, why not try to conquer Russia too? You lose a fight to a stocky tough little guy, then pick a fight with his much bigger brother. Doyeeeee!
But Stalin was counting on Hitler's sanity. Big mistake. Stalin was just as idiotic in thinking Hitler wouldn't attack Russia, as Hitler was for attacking Russia. Barbarossa was an idiot festival on both sides.
The front ran from the Baltic to the Black Sea and comprised millions of men and tanks. The scope of the combat at all times is so overwhelming as to discourage any comedian/scholar from engaging any thing but a cursory look at it all. It was 200 divisions per side locked in wall to wall combat from June of 41 to May of 45.
This was why Sergeant Schultz of the insensitive and unfunny situation comedy Hogan’s Heroes was so terrified of being sent to ‘The Russian Front.’ Any time his commandant, Werner Klink, wanted to scare Schultz into doing something he'd say “If you don't ... the Russian Front!.” The laugh track would roll and Schultz would clean the latrine, or whatever. To a German soldier, the Russian front was almost certain death. I didn't fully understand the joke when I watched that show at the age of 12, and I don't understand today why I liked the show in the first place.
Initially the German Army and Luftwaffe had their way with Rus (the original name of the country was Rus – Slavic for “rowers.”) The Wermacht raced across the Russian steppes, plains and forests at speeds that astonished the military experts all over the worlds.
The Barbarossa Nazis were not alone. The coalition against peace included 3 Italian divisions fresh from the Albanian war. Russia's traditional enmity with most of its neighbors helped the Axis. The 200 German divisions were augmented by Germany's “allies” Rumania and Finland. Germany intimidated Rumania into joining the Axis, but Rumania had been skirmishing with Russia for centuries. It wasn't all that hard to get Rumania to contribute no less than 18 divisions to Operation Barbarossa. Most of the Rumanian divisions were deployed in the Southern front.
The Finns were happy to help Germany. The Finns wanted vengeance for their defeat in the Winter War of 1939-1940. On July 10, 1941 the Finns sent 16 divisions crashing into Mother Russia. But the Finns insisted that theirs was a separate war and were not part of the German invasion. Finland took back all it had lost in the Winter War, but stopped short of investing Leningrad, which helped Leningrad survive when the Germans invested it for 900 days. If the Finns had been in true tandem with the Nazis, they would have co-ordinated their assaults with German strategy.
Slovakia, Croatia, and Hungary also contributed to the Nazi invasion, although only at brigade strength.
THE NUMBER ONE HITLER BLUNDER OF WWII
The Germans were shocked when many of the western Russians welcomed them as liberators! I say many, as in many hundreds of thousands. A great opportunity presented itself to co-opt a significant portion of enemy resources. But the Nazis mistreated everyone in the occupied territories so thoroughly that they lost this opportunity to administer their conquered territories with local in-place “flipped” help.
Hernando Cotez in 1520 understood that he couldn't conquer Mexico without local allies. Hitler was too full of himself to get that. Many of his Generals pleaded with him to unite with the half a million Ukranians who hated Russia and Communism about as much as he did. Half the Russian Empire, the outer conquered half, hated the great Russians in the center. Get them to flip, and win the war in the east.
But Hitler didn't listen. Hitler only had ears for decoration. What the Russians had planned and hoped for in the Winter War of 1939-40 but did not get, what the Rebs in Kentucky hoped for and did not get in 1862, what the Cuban Brigade hoped for and did not get at the Bay of Pigs in 1962 - local allies in enemy territory. The Germans received on a platter in 1941 and turned their racist noses up at it. The Nazis were too rude to be shrewd. Racism giveth thee power, racism taketh away. Hitler could have won the hearts and minds war in the Ukraine, and then cashed in his rewards points on the battlefield. These conquered people wanted to take up rifles and fight the Bolo Russians side by side with the Germans, and we're talking hundreds of thousands, entire new divisions swinging the balance of power on the war-map decisively. But Hitler refused Slavic refuse. These million Stalin-haters instead became rabid Russian resistance fighters and saboteurs, taking out two Germans per person, when they wold have taken out two Great Russians per person if the Germans had been sharp enough to co-opt them.
Barbarossa was a mistake in another very important way for the Nazi world empire. The invasion of Russia put a stop to the Axis drive to dominate the Mediterranean. Half of the entire German army went crashing into Russia in a single day. All the other German fronts suffered accordingly. With most of the German Army in Russia, the Axis goal in the Near East became survival instead of conquest.
What if Hitler had taken all of the energy he expended in Russia and put it into the Mediterranean instead? He was already there in force after taking Greece and Crete, and Rommell was still fighting well in North Africa. Cyprus was within easy reach, and from there a pincer movement on the Suez Canal. Rommell would close in from the west while the divisions fresh from the fight for Greece and Crete would land and move from the Sinai. Who needs the long route from the conquered Caucasus? The Mediterranean would belong to Germany and Italy, and Malta would have to surrender soon enough. The road to the oil of the Persian Gulf would be wide open.
Stalin would have stood by and puffed his pipe while Hitler did all of this. He wasn't going to attack Germany, even if German looked weak on his western flank. But instead Hitler attacked Russia and woke up 392 Russian Army divisions for battle.
COMMUNIST SPY IN THE NAZI CAMP – SORGE
One of the most famous spies in all of history was a German by the name of Richard Sorge. He helped Russia win the battle of Barbarossa.
Sorge was a German reporter stationed in Moscow. On the outside Dick was a black-shirted Nazi, but underneath was a true believer in Marx and Communism. He was the W.E.B. Debois of WWII, black on the outside, but red on the inside.
Sorge was able to get in close contact with his allies at the Japanese embassy. He learned that the Japanese were planing a massive invasion in south Asia and the south Pacific. Sorge therefore knew that the Russian flank in the east was secure and that the numerous divisions of Russians stationed in the Far East could be transferred to the west. He passed this information on to the Russians in disobedience of duty to the Third Reich. Sorge also knew about the German plans to attack Russia in June and passed this along to the Kremlin.
Sordid Sorge's work confirmed the positive implications of the Russo-Japanese non-aggression pact (which of course could be back-stab violated by the Japanese if it suited them.) Stalin transferred many divisions from Siberia to the Russian front.
SIBERIANS TO THE RESCUE
These Rooskies from the Siburbs were good divisions that were easily capable of handling Russian winters. To the Siberian, five below was a normal lifestyle.
These troops were sent from east to west in gradual steps. Even after Barbarossa was well under way, fresh frozen battle fodder troops were still arriving regularly.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Siberian front was rendered safe. Now the Soviet Union was able to send all the remaining Siberian divisions from the eastern front to the west. Moscow now knew there would be no eastern front.
For the next three years of cold days in hell, German troops were depressed by the sight of fresh Russian brigades dressed for a trip to the Vail ski lodges in January, while they would sell their families to the devil for a single warm shoe without a mate.
US REACTION TO BARBAROSSA
It's natural to imagine that reaction to Barbarossa in the United States was overwhelming support of Russia.
But reaction to 6.22.41 in the United States was only slightly sympathetic to the USSR. Since the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of August 1939, affection for the Soviets was hardly hip, even amongst the US far hip left. That pact had made America decidedly anti-Russian. Then the Soviet Union helped Hitler swallow Poland. Then the Russians invaded Finland for no half-valid reason. Then Russia’s’ benevolent neutrality’ towards Germany enabled Hitler to conquer France, and attack Britian.
All of these gestures would have made the United States angry with Russia regardless of their internal political system. The fact the Communists International out of Moscow had been preaching the overthrow of the United States government by inside and outside revolutionaries since 1919 made support for Russia the weaker when Germany attacked on the 22nd of June.
America felt bad for Russia a little bit, did not flip and embrace the USSR. It was not until Pearl Harbor six months later that the USA suddenly re-invented its relationship with and perception of the USSR. America didn't cry a Volga for Russia in those interim six months between Barbarossa and alliance.
Shortly after the Russo-German war began, a reporter asked Senator Harry S Truman of Missouri what he felt about it. He said we should help Russia only if Germany is clearly winning the war and that if Russia starts to win the war we then should help Germany!
Harry would change his tune later, of course. He later saw the Russians as our wonderful friends. In thinking this he was abiding the war propaganda ad campaign whose purpose was to help get the most out of the alliance in the interest of wining the war. The ‘Pal Joey’ campaign worked well, probably a little too well. How Harry and the nation came to buy its own publicity about the Soviets is a major part of story of the second half of the war and the first post-war years.
BARBAROSA IN THE SUMMER
The success of the invasion of Russia in the opening weeks surprised even the most optimistic German generals, and, in fact, surprised even Hitler. By July 15 the front had advanced over 500 miles. Even the drives on the northern and southern flanks, whose forces were given the lambs share of firepower were marching forward at an amazing rate. The southern German arrow included poorly equipped Hungarian units with no reason to fight hard, and even they marched at a fantastic speed into the southern Ukraine.
The Germans, as well as the observers all over the world, thought that Russia was doomed. In the United States it was generally believed in the summer of 41 that the fall of Russia was only a matter of time. The number of Russian prisoners taken was 2.6 million, exceeding anything in the history of warfare, and the destruction of Russian planes, guns and infantry divisions was equally record-breaking.
Nevertheless, there were hints that the fight wasn't going to be the piece of devil's-food cake that it had been in the west. The Russians were giving their own land and resources the General Sherman treatment before the Germans arrived. The “scorched earth” policy wouldn't take its toll on the Germans right away. The Germans were still close enough to their supply lines of central Europe. But as the Germans extended themselves into Holy Russia, the collective effect of Soviet self sabotage took effect.
Also, when the Germans surrounded pockets of Russian troops and tried to seal off their escape routes, they found to their surprise, that in some cases, the Red Army was trying to force more of their own troops into the traps, not out! They were hunkering down and building up in their pockets. This was not the passive Danish army of May 1940.
Stalin of course did not have the character to accept any of the blame for the spectacular advance of the German army into Mother Russia. He blamed the very generals who had tried to warn him of the danger to Russian defenses. He had General Pavlov shot in early July as well as Pavlov's chief of staff, Vlakov Smirnoff. Pavlov's dog was spared, but was sent to Siberia.
BARBAROSSA IN THE FALL 1941
The German momentum began to slow down in Russia by the middle of August. Several factors were working against the master race. Even if German brigades were universally better equipped and trained than Russian, there was the frustration of being unable to stop the tide of sheer Russian numbers.
A superior German division could wipe out an entire Russian one and only lose a fifth of its strength in the battle, but that Russian division would be replaced by two new ones and the German division would not even get its losses replenished. By this pattern, what good was German superiority in tanks and planes?
And the Russian troops fought hard. Not only were they brave, they also didn't want to get shot in the back by a political commissar. Retreat for Ivan meant certain death. Courage and tenacity were the best hope for survival.
As the German army advanced into Russia, its lines of communication and supply got longer and longer. As the Russian army retreated, its lines of communication and supply became shorter and shorter. The more the Germans took territory, the more troops had to be left behind for administrative, garrison and counter-insurgency duties. The handling of two million Russian prisoners of war was a serious task to further tax Barbarossa resources. Even in defeat, there were some strategic advantages for the Soviet Union.
By August, Hitler's Generals were unanimously recommending that the main attack should be aimed at Moscow. But Hitler disagreed. He still insisted that the northern Baltic flank must be secured first, and only then should the Wermacht crash the walls of the Kremlin.
In the middle of September Hitler changed his mind and actually admitted that the Generals were right. He allowed them to switch the plan their way, but by then it was too late. The time and energy extended on the flanks had cost too much in the center. The air was getting pretty chilly at night and the attack had sputtered out and was now only advancing at a very slow pace. Moscow was so near yet so far away. Leningrad was hanging on just barely.
The fall rains arrived in mid-September and stuck German mechanized units in the mud. Russia just happened to have very few paved roads. Heh heh.
Then the Russian winter moved in and that changed everything. Talk about your home field advantage. The German soldier was underdressed for the cold weather. The Russians embraced the winter as they had done all their lives. They were not underdressed for winter. They had learned their lessons well in Finland.
Thousands of master race troops froze to death. Everyone short of a handful of generals suffered. Morale was frozen out as millions of troops now hated life in the Army.
MORE FROM “THE FRANTIC ATLANTIC” 1941
GREENLAND
When Germany conquered Denmark in the evil spring of 1940 the giant island of Greenland became a strategic threat to the United States and Britain. Greenland was a Danish possession and Greenland was now ostensibly a German property. German naval activity was increasing in Greenland over the months following the occupation of Denmark.
Early in 1941 the Danish minister in Washington gave the ok for American-British occupation of Greenland. The Nazi’s declared this invalid, but the Allies ignored the Nazi protest and occupied Greenland during the second week in April 1941.
I've never been to Greenland.
ICELAND
Hitler, rejected in Greenland turned his icy stare spurned Atlantic eyes to another strategic island naval base from which to attack allied shipping to and from Great Britain.
Iceland.
Unlike Greenland, Iceland was an independent state and had to be respected … to a point. Both Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that they had to seize the island before Germany could get its chance to. Iceland wasn't consulted.
A US Marine brigade went to South Carolina and prepared to embark on what the men thought was a mission to take Martinique before the Germans did. To their surprise they left for Iceland. The mission was the same as the Martinique one they'd trained for, it just was against a completely different target. As the mission steamed towards Iceland, political negotiations were under way for permission to launch it. The leader of Iceland, Herman Jonasson was not eager to give up his independence to an occupying force, no matter which side of right and wrong that outside force was on.
It came down to the wire. The premiere of Iceland ‘invited’ the US and the UK to come in and protect his country just as the ships were preparing to send the Marines ashore. They were probably coming shore either way so the Ice leader known among his people as ‘The Amazing Jonasson’ made the wise call.
The Americans stationed at Iceland were very surprised at how unwelcome they felt among the civilians there. There was actually a substantial amount of Icy sympathy for the Nazi cause. Nazi Germany had been trying for years to cultivate political friendship with the Icelanders on the basis of racial flattery. The Nazis informed the Icelanders that they were as pure a branch of the superior Nordic race as could be found anywhere, and awarded scholarships at German schools for select Icelandic students. This attitude melted away as the war progressed and the world could see what scum the Nazis really were, but some of this racial poison was still left over in the spring of 1941
Seizing Iceland changed the Atlantic strategy for the UK-US undeclared coalition. Now the convoys from Halifax N.S. did not have to travel non-stop to the British Isles. They could go as far as Iceland and turn back knowing that fresh ships from Britain could take-on the back leg of the journey from Iceland back to the home island. Iceland shortened the convoy route on both ends, and with Russia entering the war accidentally on the Allied side, “Ice” proved an invaluable staging ground for convoys to Russia by way of the northern passage around Scandinavia.
USSR-POLISH NON-AGGRESSION PACT 7 30 41
The Polish government in exile met with Soviet diplomats in London in July to try and work out a pact of non-aggression. By the end of the war the entire concept would be reduced to a joke as Russia simply conquered and pillaged Poland into a spineless state of misery. But for now, the enemy of my enemy is my friend for both victims of Hitler.
Maisky negotiated for Russia and General Sikorski for Poland. They met at Anthony Eden's office, who left the room when the principals arrived. There was a lot for the two parties to argue about. Mostly this pact was the start of a five year argument about the post-war boundaries of Poland and the constitution of the post-war Polish government.
The Russians were on their heels and neither side really had clear vision on the post-war government people and political parties issue. But geography was fairly easy to get a grasp on, even at this early hour in the story.
General Sikorski was adamant that the post-war boundaries should be the same as they were on August 30 1939. Why should Russia gain Polish territory when both Poland and Russia were innocent victims of Nazi aggression. Why should Poland take a geographical punishment when it was the first and worst victim of Nazi invasion?
Stalin's and the Politburo's position was that the boundaries of August 30 1939 were unfair to Russia to begin with. World War One had ripped Russia off when it created a new and larger Poland at Russia's expense in the east. Russia had done heroic work for the Allies in WWI and when the west won the war it punished its Russian ally by taking land away from it and giving it to a Poland that had not given up five million men to battle. Russia did not feel it was being immoral when it wanted it's pre-WWI boundaries back as part of the reward for taking on Germany in WWII.
Sikorski and Poland didn't see it quite that way. Poland saw Russia as a chronic aggressor state that “would invade and seize Antarctica if it thought it could get away with it.” Poland's hostility towards Russia was plain and simple. They were arch enemies from 400 years back when Poland was the advanced large empire in eastern Europe and Russia was a backwards Mongol controlled state squeezed back against the Urals.
Poland argued that the pact would have to state that the August 30 1939 boundaries would have to be restored. Russia said that the pre-WWI boundaries would have to be restored.
This stalled the negotiations and Britian and the two parties did want to get this thing done. The compromise was reached with a Soviet statement in Article 1 that “the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 regarding territorial changes in Poland have lost their validity.” That was elastic enough to satisfy both sides for now. The Poles could claim that Russia has just renounced the gains of September 1939, while the Russians could just say that this statement did not preclude new territorial negotiations later in the war based on the new realities.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics pledged to free all Polish military and civilian prisoners and detainees captured in 1939. They never kept this promise, and Polish PW's lingered in camps, and Polish captive citizens became enslaved workers in the war Gulags.
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER – AUGUST 14 1941
Churchill chugged across the Atlantic in August 1941 to meet with POTUS (FDR) at Placentia Bay in Newfoundland. The code name for this big meting was ARGENTIA. Churchill and Roosevelt drew up and published on August 14 a declaration of principles for the conduct of the war and the post-war world, The Atlantic Charter.
The Atlantic Charter took on more and more significance right up to and through beyond the end of WWII. The United Nations Charter is based on the Atlantic Charter. Leaders cited the provisions of the Atlantic Charter in 1944 with the reverence that a Constitutional lawyer cited the Constitution in a courtroom case. The AC wasn't another wind-bag wartime publicity release, this was an international Constitution for the new shaken-up world, drafted by the winners of WII, but with everyone's best interest at heart, victors and vanquished alike.
Chart-8.41 contains eight basic points, although a couple of them have two or three separate points, so it is really more like 12 points. It may be that the Charter is so close in substance to Woodrow Wilson's famous “Fourteen Points” of 1917
that they didn't want to have a number too close to 14. So they condensed a few to dodge the comparison. Few history books mention the obvious similarities between the Fourteen Points of 1917 and the eight points of light of August 1941.
I'll give you the eight points in plain language, and then the official versions.
1- Read Our Lips, No New Territories for US or UK, nor for any of our Allies.
2 – We won't dish out the spoils of war without popular local approval.
3 – All states new and old can chose what type of government to rule them, not just what individual government. - The victims of Axis aggression will get their countries back.
4 – Unrestricted free-trade for all nations
5 – Socialism today, socialism tomorra, and socialism forever – in the fight between labor and capital, or between labor and state, we are on the side of labor.
6 – Peace and love, man. But when, and only when Nazi Germany is a heap of smoldering rubble.
7 – Freedom of the seas for all nations.
8 – Revival of the useless Kellogg-Briand Pact – A new united nations organization, i.e., revive the old League of Nations except this time do it right, get it done, and with everyone on board– An absolute demand for near total disarmament in the post-war world.
Three and five are double-points, and eight is three points. It's really the twelve points of Newfoundland, not the eight.
NORTH AFRIKA AND THE SEIGE OF TOBRUK
Rommel and the German-Italian Army surrounded the coastal city of Tobruk, but they couldn't dislodge the defenders. Rommel went on to the gates of Egypt while Tobruk held on behind him, it's mostly Australian defenders were consistently reinforced from across the Mediterranean. The Luftwaffe and the U-boats tried to stop the relief convoys to Tobruk, but they only inflicted damage within acceptable limits for the British, sinking about one in five ships.
The Stukas and Me-109's of AK attacked Tobruk many times but it was not close to decisive. Tobruk's ak-ak hit back against AK air power well enough.
The situation for the German supply line was not so good. Benghazi was not even big enough to handle the needed supplies even if the Axis could get them through, which they could not. The Axis was losing nearly one in two ships sent to supply Rommel and even if they all did, and even if Benghazi somehow tripled in size and was big enough hold it all, the amount getting through wouldn't have been enough in any case.
His leading advisors continued to warn Rommel that his supply line was essentially untenable for many reason and he just continued to ignore all warnings and plan bold daring audacious macho moves to victory. They also tried to tell him that his plans to take Egypt were beyond the logistical capacity of even Tobruk if he had it, especially with Malta and Barbarrossa putting a monkey wrench into it.
Rommel did his best imitation of Grant at Cold Harbor and sent in one desert Brigade after another to take Tobruk by direct assault, the one yard run up the middle on fourth and one, and Tobruk decimated one German desert brigade after another. At least Grant just gambled and lost. Rommel was warned by one general after another not to attack Tobruk with a simple frontal assault. He rejected multiple pleas to not send his men to be needlessly slaughtered. But he knew more than all the others combined and he sent his men for three days to slaughter at the hands of the Australians defending Tobruk, who by all accounts fought like madmen. At one point they came out of their trenches mowing down stunned German tank crews and support platoons while singing in unison “It's a Long Way to Tipparary,” and I did not make that up.
Rommel pulled back and took weeks to prepare one giant WWI style assault on Tobruk for November. Meanwhile photos and reports kept coming in to his tent that the British were preparing a major offensive against him to break the siege of Tobruk. He screamed that these reports were not true, even though there wasn't a shred of evidence to support him. Rommel literally refused to even look at photographs showing him the military build up of the British Eighth Army in the east. Some genius he was, a professional commander tossing the envelope of recon pics to the floor without opening and yelling at the messenger to get out of my tent at once.
The British attacked from the east. Rommel was caught off guard and his troops took a mauling. The British broke the siege of Tobruk. But in the mix, Rommel won a couple of stunning victories like the idiot savant that he was. He saved his name and the day for the bad guys. And, as always, Rommel made sure that the German people heard only about his great victories at the tactical level, not the strategic loss of the threat to Tobruk because he hadn't guarded his back door.
The war book account of these desert slugfest always leave me a bit confused, but I can tell you that the wildest fighting took place at the airport. Sidi Rezegh was just south of Tobruk and the SR airport was a valuable prize and that spot in the desert would have been even if there had been no airport.
One of the reasons Rommel did not fear a British attack from the east was that he had personally scouted that front in his giant SUV in a mad dash through the barbed wire marking the border with Egypt. His lesser generals asked him not to go. He could too easily get killed or captured. But he was going to play Johnny Hero, and he sped into the Egyptian desert and looked around. Then his SUV got stuck in the sand. The crew spent the night keeping perfectly still as British armored vehicles moved past them several times, not realizing it was an enemy. The Tommies thought it was one of their own abandoned vehicles. Rommel could have easily been captured. And he gained a false conclusion about the British situation on the east frontier. He barely made it back, and hen prepared for the big attack on Tobruk while scoffing at reports that the British were preparing a counterattack. He had seen that area with his own infallible eyes.
Rommel was like a 20-3 pitcher with an era of 9.46. He made so many bad throws, but the good ones won the game on many occasions. In spite of some of the stupidest moves ever made on a battlefield, ER somehow came out of 1941 with some gas left in the AK tank.
The British at last broke through and officially relieved the siege of Tobruk on December 7 1941. Does that date sound familiar? Talk about bad timing for Japan. They thought they were jumping on a winning horse on its way to the trophy and they instead joined the Nazi Axis war just as the Nazis were being stopped in Russia and Afrika. The bombs were falling on Pearl while he Australian tigers were drinking a toast to the relief of the siege of Tobruk.
There was a major Hollywood movie called Tobruk, but it isn't very edifying, although at least it isn't utterly offensive like The Desert Fox. Brad Pitt plays General Auchinleck, and Russel Crowe plays Rommel (which is dumb, since Crowe is the one with an Australian accent.)
So, to review, 1941 started with the Italians retreating before Wavell's army. Rommel arrives in February and stabilizes the defensive line at el Aghelia. Then he probes the British defenses, finds it shockingly weak, and turns a raid into a full scale counterattack, taking back in the spring, almost all the gains of Wavell's late 1940 offensive drive.
But Rommel can only get around Tobruk. He can't take it, and he can't take it. He keeps attacking it while his generals say its foolish and they are proven right. The Afrika Korps moves on to the gates of Egypt but Tobruk is still a thorn in their rear. The Brits plan a major offensive to relieve Tobruk. They practically take out a full page ad in the Berlin Herald making their plans public but Rommel won't even look at the headlines. Erwin is convinced they can't and won't dare attack him because he is so great. He prepares the big one, the big attack to take Tobruk like a WWI power play. Auchinleck, the new guy, attacks out of Egypt. In a month long melee in November and December 1941, Rommel probably performs better overall, but his tanks are running out of gas right and left and the British don't have that problem. In spite of some stinging losses to Rommel's Mark 3 and 4 tanks and 88 ak aks, the British prevail and the siege of Tobruk is lifted. Both sides lose a lot of tanks but the British can replace theirs and the Germans cannot.
Rommel never realized that his conceit was the biggest problem the Axis had in the desert. If he had held still and fortified at el Aghelia instead of “stirring up hornets nest” of exiting dashing offense, he might have set up a perimeter over the long term that would have postponed Allied victory in North Afrika for some time past May of 1943 when the Axis surrendered in full. By the time Monty or whomever came up against him at an el Aghelia “Westwall” Rommel would still have had his entire tank forces ready and waiting, and entrenched with anti-tank ditches and obstacles that were built up for months, maybe an entire year! He lost 80% of his material assets in his dashes for victory and glory, when it was time to hunker down. If he was cool instead of arrogant, there might never have been a great Montgomery of El Alamein because Rommel would have been waiting patiently, and close to a stronger supply line at Tripoli, for the British counter-attack whenever they felt like getting around to it. Rommel should have applied his own brilliant tactical technique to his large strategic thinking. At the battlefield level, Rommel baited the British tank forces to chase him then hit them with concealed tanks and 88's. Whoever kept cool and held their position instead of seeking greatness on the dash was the winner. Both sides came ot appreciate that at the single battle level.
But on the large strategic plane Rommel did just the opposite. He should have read his own book. Erwin should have set up an impregnable ambush line at el Aghelia, waited and baited the Brits to attack him, and then engaged the enemy in a WWI stalemate horror show on the sand. This would have served his idol Hitler far better than his exiting victories which turned out to be phyrric in the end.
Hitler, Brautchich, Kessering, and the Italian generals all wanted Romulus to hold firm in the desert while the Wermacht cleaned up in Russia and the Balkans, but he disobeyed out of martial and personal conceit. If anyone else had pulled that nonsense they would have been sacked and maybe shot. But even Hitler was under the spell of Rommel's legend and he allowed it, especially when he saw that, at first, Rommel seemed to be winning. Rommel was famous in Germany long before Hitler attacked Poland, and his star was a hidden achilles heel in the Axis war game.
What the Dense Fox won on the short he lost on the long. Even Hitler didn't really get it, partly because Hitler always had his strategic mind on Russia and considered North Afrika a “side-show.”
BEDA LITTORIA - NOVEMBER 1941
An interesting sideshow to the North African campaign was the British Commando raid on Beda Littoria in Libya in mid-November 1941. The British were trying to capture or at least assassinate General Rommel with a daring mission behind enemy lines. It was going to be like capturing Osama in his compound in 2011.
The Commandos landed on the Libyan shore deep inside Axis territory, blew things up, killed some people, and left for home with the mission unaccomplished.
Now one history book says that Rommel was so far ahead in the front lines of the North African battleground that it was foolish for the commandos to even consider that he would be safely entrenched in the rear of the fighting front. Another history website says that Rommel was in Rome at the time. In any case, he wasn’t home when death called. The raid was an embarrassing failure. There was no execution in spite of its near perfect execution. The James mason movie opens with the raid on Beda Littoria.
PACIFIC POLICY DECIDED IN THE ATLANTIC
Historian Jack E. Costello says that the Atlantic Charter should have been called “The Pacific Charter.” That's because the more momentous decisions were the ones reached regarding the Japanese threat in the Pacific. The situation in the Atlantic theatre was about the same when Churchill sailed back to England as it was when he arrived in Placentia Bay (a place so obscure that my computer thinks I've spelled it wrong, but I did not), but the situation in the Pacific had changed plenty.
Churchill knew that Singapore and Malaya were vulnerable and on the Japanese menu. Britian alone could not offer much in the way of deterrence in its current situation of total war with Germany. But if the United States could help with deterrence in South Asia, that would be great. This may well have been Winston's prime (minister) objective for meeting with FDR in Canadian waters.
The big question was; If Japan attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, and Singapore, but did not attack the United States, would the United States intervene to defend British Asian interests? There was no US treaty commitment to do so.
The USA was already fighting an undeclared war in the Atlantic. Would America at least do the same in the Pacific if Japan attacked Britian? Also, if Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies (the oil spigot,) would the United States intervene to protect and defend Dutch territory?
The answer to this dilemma came in the shape of the new exiting B-17 bomber, the star of the movies Memphis Belle, and Twelve O:clock High.
The United States had recently made a commitment to deliver more than 100 of these new bombers to Great Britain asap. But Doug MacArthur in the Philippines wanted the B-17's there instead. FDR made this offer to Churchill; If Britian allowed the US to renege on delivery of the B-17's to England, the United States (actually it's better to say FDR personally) pledged to intervene militarily if the Japanese attacked British possessions in Asia.
This pledge never reached a point where it had to be honored because Japan on Dec 7 41 attacked both the United States and Britain in Asia. But if Japan had attacked Malaya and Hong Kong alone, the United States was pledged to commit military force to defend them.
This agreement was made in secret, and by verbal pledge, and even after the war ended, the fact of it was kept as secret as possible. The Republican opposition in 1946 could have used it against the Administration record, and it might have tipped the balance so that Dewey really did defeat truman in 1948. FDR had no right to make such a commitment of US military forces by simple man-to-man pledge on a boat in Placentia Harbor, but he did. The United States Congress had every right to not only be informed of such a commitment, it had the right to approve or not approve of it. King Roosevelt made the pledge on his own as an individual, just as Nixon did when he told President Thieu in 1973 that if North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam after the American left, the Americans would return to save the day. In Nixon's case he was out of office when the time came to honor the personal pledge, and Congress was already so tired of one-guy diplomacy with military commitments that it passed the War Powers Act to try and put a stop to it. But FDR was far more popular and powerful than Nixon was in his dreams, and never hesitated to do things like that.
It was all supposed to work out in many full-circle ways. The B-17's would go to the Philippines instead of England. But they would go there to provide an anti-Japanese deterrent for England as much as for the USA. The B-17's in the Philippines were supposed to constitute a front-line defense for Britian all over the Pacific. What's more, they were even supposed to be an offensive threat to bomb Tokyo if Japan dared to make any aggressive moves in South Asia. The B-17's were supposed to be such super-weapons that a mere 50 of them on Luzon could protect the Philippines, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies (yes, FDR committed the USA to defend the DEI too,) threaten Japan, and destroy Japanese task forces at sea.
Churchill left Newfoundland with new found confidence that British possessions in the Far East were now well protected by the same B-17's he had hoped to use against Germany.
The whole plan was naïve and foolish. A few B-17's had already been sent to England and used over Europe, and they had proved remarkably inaccurate and vulnerable to fighter attack. The plane was named the Flying Fortress because it supposedly had so many machine guns all over that it did not need fighter protection at all. So many were shot down on their first missions that Nazi radio mocked them as “Flying Coffins.”
As for the plan to bomb Tokyo, that required Soviet co-operation, and the USA didn't have it. The 17 could not go to Tokyo and back from Luzon but could bomb Tokyo. Running out of fuel, the Tokyo raiders would have to land in Soviet Siberia. The US was pretty arrogant to presume in its war planning that they had such permission from Russia. Stalin was locked in a full-scale war with Germany, Russia and Japan were historical enemies, and Stalin was well-aware that the Japanese Army was promoting the idea of starting a war with Russia while the Navy wanted to “strike south.” It was quite a stretch to think that Stalin would want to risk provoking a war with Japan just to help out the United States. In 1941 US lend-lease material to Russia was not large, and Stalin didn't owe US much. Even if he did, he wouldn't honor the debt, because he was a rat.
Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Force was brainwashing FDR, Stimson, Marshall, and even Harry Hopkins into believing that the B-17 could easily drop a few incendiaries on Tokyo and set that old wooden city on fire. Arnold believed that Japan was so scared of the B-17 that it would no longer dare to attack anyone in Asia, once a force of one or two hundred B-17's were deployed in the Philippines, and he expected 200 B-17 in place the by April 1942. Not only was the B-17 inaccurate, vulnerable, malfunctioning in a dozen ways, expensive, and short on numbers, the US didn't have Soviet permission to land in Siberia anyway, so it was a lot of bluff and boast about a plane that couldn't deliver and even if it could, still couldn't.
FDR assured Church that the United States could toy with Japan for six months while he built up US land and air forces in the Philippines. By then Japan would not dare attack and the threat would pass.
But at the same time he had cut off US oil to Japan and the IJN was going to literally run out of gas in three months. Japan felt it had to attack before it ran out of gas to attack with, and there in a nutshell is the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Many historians think that FDR deliberately provoked Japan into attacking the United States because he wanted to draw his country into the war the Germany. I don't buy it. FDR thought he could intimidate Japan out of starting a war, but his plan was based on a scroll's worth of dopey miscalculations, so he actually did provoke japan into starting the war. Japan was no more afraid of the B-17 than I am today (I believe there is only one left in flying condition and it was all but destroyed in a May 2011 fire.)
200 HURRICANES – PUT IT ON STALIN'S CREDIT CARD
In October of 1941 Stalin complained to Churchill that Britian had promised aid to Russia and nothing had come yet, just empty words and promises. Churchill promised that Britian would help Russia by increasing the air bombardment of Germany. Stalin replied that this was “like a mosquito bite on a rhino. The only way to beat the nazi animal was to bash it on the head with a pic-axe.”
Churchill cabled to Stalin that he would send Russia 200 Hurricane fighter planes immediately. These weren't as good as the Spitfire, but they were pretty good planes and better than anything the Russians were throwing up against the Me-109's on the eastern front at this time.
Ambassador Maisky met with Churchill in late October to hand him Stalin's response. Stalin's note thanked Churchill for agreeing to “sell” the USSR 200 Hurricanes. Churchill was very offended by the word sell. He was planing on giving these 200 planes to Russia with no strings attached, but this was maybe too much for Stalin's sick pride. He couldn't accept a gift. He'd rather pay for the planes than take the humiliation of a British handout. “He who asks for nothing, asks for too much”
The Stalin note also gave the British a bad time about their refusal to open up a second front in western Europe. Stalin accused the British of wanting the Russians and germans to bleed to death so the British could walk right in when both the Germans and Russians were exhausted.
Maisky could see how angry Churchill was. He suggested to Churchill and Eden that maybe the British could give material aid to Britian on a “lend-lease” basis. Both Eden and Winnie liked the idea.
It was a little absurd, really. What supplies the British had was either from the United States or was only available to Russia because the United States could fill the void on the back end. The United States (FDR personally) had invented the term and the concept to help a Britain out of money and out of war supplies. So now Britian was going to adapt the idea to its direct relation with Russia. British Lend-Lease to Russia began soon after, but in essence it was American Lend-Lease to Russia via the middle-man UK. The United States went along with this hoax than Britian was helping Russia directly because the United States was not at war with Germany, and had mixed feelings about Russia at this time. This was an acceptable arrangement in Washington. Of course, every time Britian became depleted in supply, the back end would be reloaded from America.
After Pearl Harbor, the Lend-Lease to Russia became outwardly what it really was from the start, American lend-lease to Russia.
MORE NAVAL INCIDENTS 1941 – GREER 9.4/RJ 10.31
On September 4, 1941 a German U-boat shadowed the Destroyer USS Hal Greer in the Atlantic. Greer positioned itself to attack the sub with depth charges but withheld its fire. A sister British ship asked Greer if it was ever going to get around to attacking the U-boat to which Greer replied in the negative, to the consternation of the Brit. Just then the U-boat sent a torpedo at the Greer which the destroyer dodged successfully. Now the Greer definitively attacked to kill, its depth charges sending the U-boat away. Thus began the shooting war between the United States and Germany that would last until May of 1945.
For the next three full months the American and German Navies were at open war with each other in the Atlantic Ocean.
The undeclared naval war in the Atlantic got even hotter on October 17, 1941 when a U-boat torpedoed an American destroyer, the Kevin Kearney near Iceland, icing 11 US sailors.
The two nations were at peace on the surface but beneath it, the U-boats were trying to sink U.S. ships and those of its allies.
On October 31, 1941 a Nazi submarine attacked the USS Destroyer Reuben James at a location about 600 miles to the west of Ireland. A torpedo tore into RJ's portside blowing off the bow. The James sank in five minutes, its depth charges exploding as it went down, thus ensuring that there were few survivors. Nearby ships rescued only 45 out of 162 crew. None of the officers made it. This was the first time a US ship had sank in the European war, the undeclared US war.
The Reuben James was an international news sensation, further girding the American population for participation in this new world war. The indignation over the Reuben James was helpful after Pearl Harbor when Roosevelt wanted US participation in the German scrap. A poll of November 1941 showed the USA to be 63-26% against a declaration of war against Germany, but the momentum was building both towards war and popular support for it. On the morning after the Pearl Harbor attack Germany had not yet declared war on the United States, but a poll showed 90% of Americans favoring a declaration of war by the United States against Germany. The naval war with Germany was real and the American people, while heading towards war, were hardly being dragged into a European war they did not understand or support.
Much has been written of a conspiracy by Roosevelt to lead Germany to declare war on America in the hours after the Pearl Harbor attack. It is speculated that if Germany had not declared war on the United States, Roosevelt would have had a tough time persuading Congress to include a declaration of war against Germany as a tag-on to its declaration of war against Japan. After all, Germany had not attacked the United States, Japan had.
The American people may well have been shocked to find themselves at war with the Nazis on December 8, 1941, but to the United States Navy in the Atlantic, the difference between relations with Germany after war was declared was not much different than life before it was declared.
AIR WAR EUROPE 1941
The British had won the Battle of Britian in an overall sense by the end of 1940, but the German raids on English cities did not end, and indeed continued, especially at night, throughout 1941. The bombardments were not as frequent or as severe as they had been in the fall of 1940 but that was no consolation for those who died or suffered in 1941.
The RAF tried its best to retaliate in kind against German cities, but German scientific air warfare was ahead of British. RAF bombers were bigger than the German bombers, but the Luftwaffe was advanced in guiding its craft to the targets and in delivering their bombs accurately. RAF bombing raids in 1941 were so far off the mark that it is safe to say that they did no significant damage at all to German industry and less than hoped to German morale. The scientific air campaign would gradually turn in the British favor as the war years passed, but for 1941, it was a lot of blood sweat and tears for no gain. The RAF was so clearly failing in the strategic bombing efforts that there was a strong movement in the UK brass to abandon it completely and relegate the bombers to submarine chasing and ground support in North Africa. Churchill had to intervene personally to stop the transfer of bomber ops to these support theatres. The strategic air campaign would continue. The concept was good, the execution of it needed work, that's all, argued Churchill, and he got his way.
AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS IN CANADA
England 1940-41 undeniably “stood alone, with resources so slender that one shudders to enumerate them even now.”
But some Americans were not so passive. Hundreds of Americans enlisted to fight in the RAF before Pearl Harbor by crossing the border to Canada where they were sent off to enlistment sites. In at least one case the Yank simply drove north, asked the border guards where the nearest enlistment center was, and was so directed. These volunteers trained in the wide skies over Canada. When the US entered the war most trainees elected to honor their commitment. They could have requested transfer back to the US armed forces, but chose to finish their training in Canada and fight the war in the RAF.
Canada of course was a part of the British empire and contributed a substantial part of the Allied fighting forces in WWII. This is all the more impressive because these men were all volunteers. There was never a draft in Canada in WWII, yet Canadian volunteer divisions fought in Sicily, and in other hot spots from the beginning to the end of the true ‘Great War.’ A corps of Canadians contributed mightily to the final drive across Europe in 1944-45. Canadian casualties were proportionately high for their numbers in the fight. Pretty admirable, eh?
Close co-operation between Canada and the US throughout 1940 and 1941 could have been cause for war if Hitler had wanted to choose war. Canada was formally at war with Germany and the United States and Canada were conducting naval maneuvers, assisting in establishing and maintaining bases, convoying military supply flotillas, and co-operating in war zones in shooting situations. It would have been keeping in the natural order of international relations if Germany had declared war on the United States on the singular issue of these US-Canadian coordinated defense operations. But Hitler did not war with America, partly from fear, partly from wisdom, and partly because he never really hated America. Hitler had never been to America, and America wasn’t Communist.
MACARTHUR AND THE PHILIPPINES
In mid-1941 Douglas MacArthur had been running the 7,129 islands called the Philippines for some time, but not as General MacArthur. The Army hero was retired and the Philippines had actually asked him to watch over them and help them prepare for a potential Japanese attack, which he was more than happy to do.
By July of 1941 the war clouds were so dark and thick that FDR asked Douglas to come formally back into the Army and to keep the private sector job of running the archipelago.
Japan had military plans to attack an seize the Philippines, not for its pineapples, but because it was a potential obstacle to Nippon's conquest of East Asia. If Japan “struck south,” the US Pacific Fleet could strike south too, out of bases in the Philippines, and cut off the Japanese invaders from their supply line to Indonesia. The Yamamoto gang probably overrated the ability of the United States to get the Pacific Fleet all the way to the Philippines and then move in force to the south. That would leave the rest of the U.S West Coast and Hawaii defenseless. That would have required two Pacific fleets, and the USA did not have two formidable fleets in the Pacific to work with.
If the Japanese realized how politically and geographically taxing it would have been for the US to intervene in force immediately in Indonesia in the wake of a Japanese attack there, they might never have planned the Pearl Harbor attack, and might never have had gone to war America. If they had simply just moved into Indonesia it would have been difficult for FDR to make the case to the Congress and the America people that he had to declare war on Japan. FDR would have found it difficult to make the military countermove that the Japanese presumed the USA was handily capable of, that is, sending the Pearl Harbor fleet 7,000 miles from home to stop a giant JIN (Japanese Imperial Navy) armada, and roll back the conquest of the oil fields of Indonesia.
To the Japanese high command, the threat to the Indonesian islands from the Philippines had to be taken off the board by attacking Pearl.
From a strictly military standpoint it was brilliant, from a political/strategic standpoint it was the dunce plan of the 20th century.
MORE US-JAPANESE RELATIONS 1941
Prince Konoye, the Japanese Premier, approached US Ambassador Joe Grew in September with a proposal. He wanted a summit meeting in the Pacific between himself and President Roosevelt. Konoye felt that Japan might be willing to withdraw from Indochina and southern China in exchange for a new relationship of economic co-operation between the two superpowers.
The Prince also knew that the Tripartite pact (the Axis) was a grave concern in the United States and that withdrawal by Japan from that pact was actually thinkable for Japan. The Axis was negotiable. The Japanese didn't really love those Nazis anyway. Who could? (When the Germans would visit Tokyo the swastika flags were all over the streets of Tokyo, but as soon as the Nazis left town the Nazi flags went back into the storage lockers faster than front-runner-fan caps of the team that just lost the World Cup semi-finals.)
Making the diplomatic initiative was as much a strategy as anything concrete that could be agreed from it. Then if the Konoye-Roosevelt summit meeting failed to produce a peaceful settlement and war resulted, the Hirohito cabal could blame the United States for the war. The failed meeting would have shown the world that Japan sincerely desired peace.
Ambassador Grew loved the idea of a summit meeting (although that term was not yet in vogue) and passed the KP (Konoye Plan) on to Washington.
FDR liked the idea, but Cordell Hull was skeptical. Cordy cordoned off the KP, outlining several preconditions that put a damper on things. Konoye was now going to have to agree to several principles and points of behavior before Franklin could go meet him. Asking for concessions in exchange for negotiations is rarely productive in diplomacy. Japan wold have to back down on all Cordell conditions in order to begin negotiations. Demand concessions on all points in dispute as a precondition to agreeing to a do a summit meeting to discuss all points in dispute. This is similar to the Soviet Union in the 1980’s wanting multiple concessions on nuclear weapons from the US before they would agree to meet for disarmament talks. Reagan rejected that idea as surely as Hirohito rejected the conditions that Hull demanded. Grew thought he was being clever by asking for everything and hoping Japan would concede some points as a precondition to the a Roosevelt Konoye Summit. Instead, the Hull conditions to the plan were so insulting that it ruined a potential avenue to peace.
The FDR-PK Summit never happened. For the rest of his life, Jo Jo Grew believed that if this summit meeting had been arranged, the war might well have been averted in the Pacific.
All hope was lost on October 16, 1941 when Konoye and his cabinet resigned under pressure. Konoye lived through the war and then killed himself.
While these negotiations were going on for the summit that never was, Japan actively prepared for war. On September 6, an Imperial conference resolved to make war on the US, the UK and the Netherlands if the summit idea fell through. And the Netherlands was the main thing to the Japanese.
It was all about oil. “No Blood For Oil!” they chant at rallies nowadays, as if that's a real zinger on the placard. As if blood for oil such an outrageous concept. Oil has been the prize in many wars. Oil is the lifeblood of the world's economy and it is no more or less moral to go to war for oil than it is to go to war for food.
Hedeki Tojo, the man who took the fall for Hirohito in 1945, the head of the Army, didn’t want war with the US. Of course, IJA, the Imperial Japanese Army did not want peace. The IJA was just pining for a different war, a war with Russia instead. The Army hated Russia more than it wanted Indonesian oil, but the Navy had grown more influential than ever.
The Imperial Japanese Navy wanted to strike south, but thought that a war with America unwise. Tojo asked the IJN to lead the way in asking national leadership to reconsider the plan for war with America. The IJA would back the IJN up in calling off the war.
But the IJN didn’t want to look yellow. Leaders in Japanese government who failed to do the macho thing were usually assassinated, or asked to drink the kool-aid. Everyone in high office was bound up in the macho trap. Few thought war wise, but no one had the guts to play the wimp.
So Konoye quit (he would be back later on during the war.) It was hard for Tojo to find anyone to take over the premiership in Konoye’s wake. The job was like the new sheriff in a bad western movie. The townsfolk are makin’ bets on how long this poor fool will live. Any new Japanese Premier had either a bad war or a humiliating diplomatic retreat to look forward to. Tojo finally took the job himself on October 18 1941. Hedeki Tojo, not the Divine Emperor Hirohito became the super-villain of the war in America’s eyes. Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, were the evil three stooges, not the Axis trio of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. In truth, Hirohito should have played Curly, not Tojo. Hirohito was about as innocent as Juan Corona (you’ll have to look him up.)
The USA was reading Japan's e-mail during all this. The American cryptology department had completely busted the Japanese secret codes. The US knew that Japan was sincerely hoping to avoid war, but knew also that the conditions for peace were not promising. Japan had two plans they were going to offer. If the USA rejected A they would offer plan B which was tantamount to war. If the US rejected plan B then on November 29 according to the latest intercept, “things are automatically going to happen.”
The meaning of the intercepted intelligence was plain. Japan was going to start the wheels in motion for war on the 29th of November.
So FDR knew that Japan was going to start a war and he knew when. But he didn't know where. The United States was completely blind to the idea that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and literally got blindsided on December 7.
US intelligence was erroneously confident that the Japanese would open the war by attacking Malaya, the Dutch East, Thailand and perhaps the Philippines. Pearl Harbor was not even on US radar. It was certainly on Yamamoto's (even though Japan didn't have any.)
So as expected, the Japanese offered Plan B after the US rejected the big A. According to Plan B the Japanese would agree to withdraw from Southern Indochina, but not the North (a remarkable precursor to the 10,000 day Vietnam War,) neither nation would deploy troops or ships to south Asia outside of Indochina, both countries would assist each other in acquiring Dutch East Indies oil, the USA would resume trading oil and metal to Japan, and last but most vague, the US must agree “not to resort to measures prejudicial to the endeavors for the restoration of general peace between Japan and China.”
The last one was delicate. Japan was in the middle of a full scale invasion of China and was asking the USA to stay completely out of it, and to stay out of China the name of establishing peace. US neutrality in this case meant giving Japan a free hand to play thug bully aggressor invader rapist sadist dishrag in China.
As for the Axis alliance, envoy Kurusu told Roosevelt in a personal meeting in the Oval Office on November 17 1941 that,
“Japan will never become Hitler's wind-up toy soldier. But Japan can not in good conscience abandon the Tripartite Pact, even if relations between Japan and the United States improved. Tell Fala to stop barking at me. ”
Kurusu, however, did promise that if the undeclared naval war in the Atlantic heated up, the Japanese would not take advantage of the situation and stab Uncle Sam from behind. Japan would not attack the United States if the United States went to war with Germany. Ultimately the opposite thing happened. Japan attacked America in the front and Hitler did the back-stabling from the Atlantic side, three days after Pearl Harbor.
Hull made a last-ditch counter proposal (call it Plan H for Hull.) The H-plan reasserted U.S. support for China, and asked Japan to evacuate southern Nam and limit its army in northern Nam to 25,000 troops. H-plan limited US sale of oil to Japan to barrels destined for non-military purposes.
The China pledge in Plan H was so vague that even China wasn’t reassured when America informed Chiang of the wording. America's other allies were not exactly on board with plan H either. They feared that any compromise at all with Japan would lead to accusations of the 'a-word.'
Appeasement was a dangerous epithet these days. It was hip and easy to accuse anyone short of a right-wing interventionist hawk of being guilty of 'appeasement.' Because of Neville Chamberlain’s failure at Munich, the mere fear of being called an appeaser was enough to stifle mature reasoned productive diplomacy. Political people still use the word unfairly today.
In place of plans A, B, and H, the US on November 26 proposed 'Plan U.' This was Hull's truculent brainchild also. By these new terms, Japan not only had to withdraw from Southern Indochina, it had to withdraw from Northern Indochina as well. Not only that, it had to withdraw from all of China, and the Tripartite Pact too. While Hull was at it he should have required that Hirohito must make a pilgrimage to Washington and present a solid gold plaque to FDR that reads ‘We are chumps and you are champs.’ There was the same chance of that happening as Japan accepting the Hull ‘proposal’ of November 26.
From US intercepts of Japanese telegraphy Hull had to know that his stern proposal was setting the table for war. Things were just going to automatically happen now.
RAINBOW FIVE 12/4/1941
On December 4, 1941 two major US newspapers published a spectacular story about Washington's secret war plans against Germany. It was called ‘Operation Rainbow Five,’ a plan for the US to convert its economy to war and invade Germany in 1943. America wasn't even at war with Germany!
According to Five, in the event of a two-front war with both Germany and Japan, the Asian theatre would be limited to a defensive holding action while the European conflict received the bulk of the force.
Several top Pentagon officials were accused of being the source of the leak, including the a famous general named Wedemeyer.
The leak of Rainbow Five was especially damaging to U.S. interests on the Asian front. Knowing that the main effort would always be against Germany made the Japanese all the more confident and encouraged Japan to proceed with the planned offensive against South Asia and Hawaii. Hirohito and Yamamoto now knew they'd not have to worry about facing the industrial might of the USA until 1943. They had seen the rainbow.
Hitler and his Germany could justifiably feel threatened by the aggressive US as revealed in the leaky memo. Why was the US planning an invasion of Germany if the two nations were at peace?
Hitler was reading his paper over coffee, checking out the soccer scores (as he always did) and spit out his coffee when he read the piece about Rainbow Five. Nobody does that to Adolph, … nobody. The leak of Rainbow Five was one of the more important events leading to his unilateral decision to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941.
According to historian Tommy Fleming, it was FDR himself who leaked Operation Rainbow Five to the newspapers! He wanted to trick Hitler into declaring war against the United States, and it worked. FDR expected Japan to launch a massive attack in the Far East any day now, and expected the US to declare war on Japan shortly thereafter. Roosevelt was fairly sure he could get the vote on war with Japan, but he was not so sure he could persuade Congress to declare war on Germany. Roosevelt banked on Hitler's ego. Learning about Rainbow Five in a common newspaper was an affront to Hitler's pride and put him on a hair trigger to declare war on the United States.
STRATEGIC AIR POWER – STRATEGIC MISCALCULATION
Secretary of War Stimson pleaded with the administration to do everything it could to avoid war for a little while longer. Henry L. believed that if he could buy three more months, the US could deploy a large enough force of the new B-17 bombers to the Philippines to deter any attack by Japan on American bases.
The B-17 was supposed to be a strategic bomber, the first one ever. Strategic means it can win a war, not just a battle. But it simply wasn't. Even if the 17’s had been sent to the far east, they would not have been a decisive force without adequate fighter protection, and with the superior Zeroes flying about, there was no chance of that. The designers of the B-17 thought it had so much machine gun firepower, that it would not need fighter escort, hence the name “Flying Fortress.” But that turned out to be bloody false. In addition, the B-17 was still new and still had a lot of bugs to work out.
As the European bomber war would prove, the B-17 would never reach the goals of accuracy that strategic planners hoped for. By the end of the war the Allies had thrown out the surgical strike plans and resorted to saturation terror bombing, But because in 1941 it was the new state of the art bomber plane in the world, there was understandably a little too much hope for the B-17. The only strategic impact the B-17 had was the negative strategic impact from falsely planning around its strategic quality.
Billy Mitchell and his disciple Severdsky had brainwashed the US military into thinking that wars could be won with big land-based bombers. His theories became accepted as fact and carrier development lagged because the long-long-range heavy bomber was going to supposedly make the carrier yesterday's news. The B-17 would destroy the industrial power of enemy cities, sink their old navies, destroy all railroads and shipyards, and bring the enemy to the bargaining table begging for mercy. America could have built 35 carriers and 3,000 landing craft with all the money that went into development of the B-17, and if it had, the war would have started out and ended quite differently. The US military was drunk with the futuristic visions of Billy Mitchell.
The very concept of winning wars through strategic heavy air bombing was a dream that never came true, and basing much of its WWII strategy on this visionary idea was a major blunder for the Allies. The only time in WWII that heavy bombing proved to be of any real strategic value was when the war was already nearly won the old fashioned way. The Allies were already on the ground in France and the Philippines in late 1944, by the time these mass bombing raids began to show any real strategic results, and it took the atom bomb to equate air bombing with forcing the enemy to surrender, and Billy Mitchell never envisioned the atom bomb. If the air campaign had been planned as a supplement to the primary old fashioned land and sea campaigns, if most of the money for aircraft went to faster lighter medium bombers used in ground support, the war would have ended in Allied victory much sooner than it did with the primary focus on strategic air power. The strategic bomber never had one tenth the accuracy it's fans predicted, and the ability of German industry to rebuild damaged factories quickly was ten times better than strategic bomber nuts believed.
When the war did erupt in the Pacific, the B-17's in the got wiped off the board faster than you can say, 'what were we thinking?' They literally didn't get off the ground.
American pop culture now worships the B-17 as the icon of the WWII and they make movies about how great it was. But it wasn't. This bomber bombed, and this point will be repeated in later chapters.
However, that is not to say that the strategic bomber campaign was counter-productive and did not contribute to Allied victory. Those who say that (usually ultra-lefty revisionists who are letting their moral objection to strategic bombing ruin their honest assessment of its military effectiveness) are as batty as Mitchell in the other direction. The point is that the strategic bombing of WWII was an expenditure of resources on an overrated concept that would have better gone to other areas of military production. I am not endorsing the ludicrous argument that the bombing of 100 German cities produced no positive war results at all.
FDR LURED AMERICA AND JAPAN INTO WAR
There is a whole section of the Library of Congress filled with books “proving” that FDR deliberately lured the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. These writers are absolutely positive that Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor and he did nothing. This was the only way he could rouse the nation to go to war against Japan. One of these books came out right after the war, and new versions of the same theory are published every decade. A cab driver once got furious with me for questioning the theory. He had just read one of these book, you see, and so it was a fact, and I was “obviously a closed-minded type of person,” because I said, “that's an interesting theory, but no one book is the last word on it.”
The most important proof is the oft quoted statement from Roosevelt on November 25 to Hank Stimson that he was expecting a surprise attack from the Japanese, but the question now was, “how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot.” This proves that FDR callously let 2,500 men die in horror at Pearl Harbor in a Machiavellian scheme to achieve the greater good.
Conveniently the quote is shortened for dramatic impact, but the full quote is “how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
So what was Roosevelt talking about? Did he mean a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?
By the end of November there were reports of fantastic sized Japanese naval expeditions steaming due south towards the Dutch East Indies and Malaysia. This is where FDR and everyone else expected the attack to begin. That's what the Japanese wanted everyone to think. The South Asia task forces were real and powerful, but essentially they were a smokescreen of battleships disguising the six-carrier blow at the U.S. Pacific fleet asleep at the wheel at Pearl Harbor.
American intelligence experts had long scoffed at the idea that Japan could strike the Pacific Fleet at Oahu from the west without being easily detected along the way. There had been warnings of course. War games in 1932 had the United States navy sneaking up on Pearl in a surprise air raid from carriers and dropping cardboard bombs on the battleships, but that was more or less all in fun and theory. In another war game, the planes of the USS Lexington, playing the enemy, successfully bombed the Panama Canal locks, even though a full task was trying to block the way.
The danger in the first week of December seemed especially distant for Washington since the might of the Japanese Navy was right now accounted for. The RJN with a flotilla of troop transports was on the way south to start World War II in Asia. It seemed no longer relevant whether Japan in theory could attack Pearl Harbor. The IJN certainly didn't have six spare fleet carriers to sneak up on Pearl and knock out the Pacific Fleet at the same time they were invading South Asia.
But they did. And Roosevelt certainly didn't know this.
The American top brass agreed with Roosevelt that if Japan attacked South Asia, then the United States would have to intervene, and this would probably lead to a declared war. In this context, Roosevelt told Stimson that he needed to maneuver Japan to fire the first shot. It would be tricky. Japan would be attacking British and Dutch targets, America was going to intervene, and somehow had to make it look like Japan had fired the first shot at America from South Asia. Stimson suggested that the United States launch air strikes against the Japanese invasion fleet as it steamed passed the coast of Vietnam. But this would ruin the plan to get them to fire the first shot. Basically the USA didn't know what the hell to do. FDR only knew that war was imminent, the Dutch East Indies were about to be attacked for their oil, America was going to intervene, and somehow had to look like the victims of an attack. And Roosevelt was then going to ask Congress for war against Japan, and was thinking of asking for it against Germany too.
Imagine if the US Navy had attacked the Japanese Navy as it headed towards Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies, sank 12 transports and three cruisers, and then asked for a declaration of war against Japan. That might have been a “tough sell.” This was Roosevelt's dilemma.
FDR in wanting to set bait for getting the Japanese to hit first might have been thinking of Stimson's precious B-17's in the Philippines. Maybe he was willing to let them sit as bait on the airfields of Luzon, take the first blows from the air, and then regroup and fight back. The Philippines did not have the naval power of Hawaii, but they did have the overrated B-17's. Japan didn't know they were so overrated anymore than the Americans did, and perhaps they would start hostilities with the United States by knocking out this intervention force by surprise air raid. It would be a mini-version of the same strategic concept of Pearl Harbor raid. Knock out the intervention force before it has a chance to intervene.
It's possible that Roosevelt had this in mind. Or could he could ask Wake Island, or Guam to play the sacrificed pawn. But there is no way a man of Franklin Roosevelt's core decency would set up three thousand sailors and soldiers to die at Pearl Harbor in order to justify America's entry into the war.
As it all worked out, the Pearl Harbor attack was the worst thing Japan could possibly have done, the best thing from Roosevelt's place in time. It was the greatest military victory and political blunder of the entire war. It solved all political problems for Roosevelt, made the Japanese the complete aggressor, electrified American morale for a fight, and lured the Nazis into declaring war on the United States as well. The sailors who died on the Arizona did not die in vain.
THE PEARL HARBOR EXPEDITION AND THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE ARMED FORCES
Yammamoto was against war with America but since the Emperor and others decided for it, he knew the best way to try to win was to strike a great blow at the American Pacific Fleet. The raid on Pearl Harbor was Yammamoto's idea.
Vice Admiral Nagumo tried to talk Yammamoto out of his crazy plan, but Yammamoto outranked him and that settled that. Nagumo thought the the drive south should get virtually get all the carriers available, period. Maybe Nagumo was right. If Japan had just ripped it up through South Asia for three months, it would not have been easy for FDR to get a Declaration of War against Japan. It would have taken a while for the US to muster a force to stop Japan from taking everything to the south. The Pearl Harbor attack electrified the USA military and politically, and was a strategic success and a morale warfare blunder. They gave their enemy motive to fight like maniacs for the foreseeable future.
Yammamoto reasoned otherwise. Japanese strategy called for the outer ring of mandated islands that Japan had fortified, like the Marshalls and Carolines, were supposed to protect the Japanese conquests from US naval counterattack out of Hawaii and San Diego. But these islands were not yet properly fortified and could not handle large war fleets. Yammamoto though that the United States could easily take some of the islands in the Carolines and Marshalls, and just like that, the 4-island homeland would be vulnerable to a direct strike.
The next part of the Yammamoto plan was for the US to build up some force for the big showdown and to go out and “just do it.” Yammamoto counted on Japanese victories adding compounding interest to Japanese military strength. In other words, at the very time when the US finally came out to fight, the Japanese navy and air force would be more than a match, inflicting such a dramatic beating, that FDR would have little choice but to ask for a negotiated peace. Japan could keep it's conquests and peace would return.
That was the plan! I add an exclamation mark because I believe that it was a fantastic hope. You have to give Yammamoto credit, it was a stupid plan, but someone had to come up with something, since the leaders had decided to go to war, no matter what. At least he did that. Yammamoto's plan was probably valid at the movie cliché level,
“Are you crazy, Yamamoto, It's a million-to-one shot. It'll never work!”
Then Yamamoto shoots the guy and angry decisive look and says,
“You got a better idea?”
In the movies, that means it's going to work. In this case, it didn't. By the time the United States was ready to come out and fight, and stop hiding it's resources from harm, Japan had already begun its military decline through overextension and US attrition, and the United States was finishing up about 30 aircraft carriers ready for delivery in 1943.
Japan had a large lead in military technology when it began WWII, and that's about half the reason it found the guts to start WWII.
The United States had grown militarily rusty. Japan was a well-oiled fighting machine marching off to war in front of a military worshipping society and culture. The USA was just the opposite. The liberals thought you 'cain't study war no more', and that would make it go away. Never mind what the other countries were up to. Set an example of peace and love and peace and love will follow you. No. Brigands will follow you as an easy mark.
The US was politically pacifist on foreign policy until it was just about too late.
The Japanese had superior weapons like the Zero, the best fighter plane in the world on December 6 1941. Well, that's what Zenji Orita says. I think the Spitfire and ME-109 was its equal, but what do I know? In any case it was one of the great fighter planes of all time and the United States had nothing comparable, although the P-40 would embarrass itself vs a zero, depending on the circumstance, and, especially, the pilots.
Part of the greatness of the Zero was it's pilots. The Japanese had the strictest standards for pilots, far more demanding of excellence than the pilots of the USA. But this was a double-edged swords. It meant that in the first six months of WWII the Japanese not only had better planes, they had better pilots. But on the flip side, few men could meet such a demanding standard. When Japanese pilot losses began to pile up after the first six months of the war, there weren't enough pilots of equal ability to replace them. The Japanese pilots were a few choice bites of filet mignon and then the nation was still hungry for more food and there wasn't any more. The Americans had giant plates of basic roast beef pilots, and it was all you could eat for four years. By the middle of 1943 the average American pilot was better the average Japanese. They had priced themselves out of the game, going from superstar flyers to green inept rookies. In fact, the Jack fighter that started to replace the Zero in 1944 was a better plane, but performed worse than the Zero because the Jack had a zero at the wheel.
The Japanese had 10 aircraft carriers to four in the US Pacific Fleet.
Perhaps most ominous, the Japanese had the Model-95 and Model-93 torpedo. These could travel at 50 knots and were the best in the world (this time with no argument from Europe.) They were going to sink a lot of metal before the war ended, and not just at Pearl Harbor.
The United States had a completely incompetent torpedo. The Chump-7. For the first year of the war, the Chump-7 failed to explode two out of three times! Men risked it all and died because someone back home made a really bad torpedo. So many Japanese ships would have been sunk when gains were so desperately needed if the USA only had a good torpedo. When I read of US subs, sneaking into Yokosuka harbor, firing their torpedos at sitting ducks, getting no explosions, then facing grueling destroyer and air attacks all the way back to Midway, I just feel miserable. What a sad story, and it stank up the first year of the Pacific War for USA.
Part of the Pearl Harbor attack plan was the midget submarine. Large Japanese subs held a baby sub in its steel belly. Six of these subs were to get in close to Pearl Harbor and release the mini-subs. They were one man vessels, and they were small enough to hopefully slip into Pearl Harbor. When the attack began, they were supposed to pop up and get in close with another branch of the all out offensive operation.
EVE OF WAR
Liberal general history books have a tough time telling the story of the years between the wars. The upper crust historians cannot ignore the indisputable fact that weakness and appeasement opened the way for the Axis powers to almost conquer the world. Yet they are consistently still viscerally against open admiration and endorsement of ‘peace through strength’ as a concept. How do the liberal historians resolve the dilemma?
The solution is easy. They blame ‘isolationism,’ while completely ignoring the larger issue of ‘pacifism.’ The reality is that of the two, isolationism was less of a problem. While a system of internationalist alliances will not stop an aggressor if the aggressor knows that the alliance is collectively weak militarily, an isolationist nation can deter that same aggressor if that singular state has a strong military force trained and ready to move at a moments notice.
By playing word games and blaming ‘isolationism’ rather than ‘pacifism’ the left can still blame the conservatives, rather than the liberals for the coming of the Second World War. Those no good Republican isolationists were responsible, not the mass hysteria of (Democrat led) left pacifism that stripped the United States and Great Britain of its military might between the wars.
BRITISH WHO'S WHO
At the end of each WWII chapter is a short human glossary for reference. A different major combatant for each chapter. The first chapter Poland to Pearl will cover the Brits since they are certainly in the thick of it here. [the next chapter covers the Nazis – 1943 the Italians – 1944 The Japanese - and 1945 to Warm Springs the USA and The Russians after the Truman Chapter]
ALEXANDER – H. R. L. G. ALEXANDER
Monty wouldn't like to hear this, but Alexander is considered by many historians to be the greatest British general of the Second World War. He led and fought at Dunkirk, in the North African desert, and in Sicily and Italy. Alexander won the Goat's Cross for bravery under fire in WWI before rising to the rank of Field Marshall in WWII.
HLRGA had two nicknames, “Alex” and “Boozer.” (the latter nickname was sarcastic. He never drank.)
ATLEE – Clement Atlee was Deputy Prime Minister during most of the War and became the PM after the war. Truman once said, “Always remember this about Clement Atlee; There's a lot less there than meets the eye.” But John Eisenhower writes that Atlee's mousey appearance belied his inner strength, and says that Clem was “careful, precise, and orderly.”
AUCHINLECK
General Auchinleck was the goat of the North African campaign. Auchinleck failed to stop Rommel and his Italian co-horts and got sacked. Montgomery replaced him and became the hero of El Alamein.
The British let Auchinleck down gently, reassigning him to India and other tasks, but essentially he got beat by Rommel and got fired.
BROOKE
Alan Brooke was CIGS, the Chief of the General Staff and about as important a non-famous person in WWII as you can ever find. He was just about as important as Ike, while remaining a thousandth as famous. A lot of people thought he was a real snob. Just check out some of his pictures and it's not hard to see why.
CHAMBERLAIN
Neville Chamberlain may get more blame for WWII than Adolph Hitler! The British Prime Minister wanted peace at any appeasement price and his name is now synonymous with appeasement. Now anyone who wants to back off a little and work out a compromise to avoid war is accused of being a new Chamberlain. That legacy is a bad thing. The name “Chamberlain” is hurled at any person of peace and renders their position hopeless of implementation.
After Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain became a war hawk for military preparedness. Everyone forgets that. It was Chamberlain who led the British government that honored its pledge to go to war for Poland. History forgets that part. That declaration of war from Chamberlain's, not Churchill's, Britian should have marked him as a history tough guy. But the Munich peace paper he waved at reporters as he stepped off the plane from Munich, was just too much for his legacy to handle.
CHURCHILL
The man liked to talk. And talk. And talk. Every time there is a record of an important meeting, there is comment about how as soon as it was Churchill's turn to speak everyone sat back and checked their watch to see how long this one was going to go on. You could ask him what city he was born in and get a 20 minute speech. Mark Twain met Churchill and didn't get a word in. Churchill told reporters that the two men had had a nice talk over a cigar. Twain told reporters that he had had a cigar.
Churchill had what might be the longest streak of major participation in important historical events of of anyone in human history.
He was intimately involved in the Boer War, the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War, all the while participating in British politics. The young Churchill was escaping from a Boer prison camp in 1901. The old Churchill was advising Harry Truman on how to handle the Russians in the Cold War.
His windbag propensity notwithstanding, there was no doubt that when in the presence of Churchill, one was in the presence of greatness. Even while making 100 or more foolish military decisions in the World Wars, it was still greatness.
CRIPPS
Stafford Cripps was a Marxist politician of Great Britain in the 30's and 40's. Cripps was slightly to the left of left itself.
When he entered the British cabinet in 1942, the Nazis thought it was a sign that the British government was about to collapse. But the left in Britian called off the dogs during the war, and Cripps was as supportive of the war as any rightie.
EDEN
Anthony Eden was one of the most important persons in British political history. In WWII he was number two in power after Winston Churchill. Eden not only was allowed to disagree with Churchill, it was his job.
I often get him mixed with with Atlee.
GORT
John Lord Gort was Chief of the Imperial General Staff when Hitler attacked Poland. General Gort led the British Expeditionary Force that went to France after England and France declared war on Germany on 9.3. Gort was involved in the Miracle of Dunkirk, and some historians consider him a hero for his work there.
Gort was killed just as he was about to take command of the Eighth Army in Egypt in 1942. This tragedy led to the rise of General Montgomery.
HARRIS
“Bomber Harris” was in charge of the strategic air campaign against Germany. When America joined the war, he was joined by Hap Arnold, but the initial plan to air-mass-murder babies was a harris baby. Post-war liberals have more or less declared Harris a war criminal.
HORE-BELISHA
He had a most interesting name.
ISMAY
Pug Ismay was Churchill top military aide during WWII. General Hastings Ismay was one of the few people Churchill actually listened to. Pug was at all the big meetings, and is usually close to Churchill in photographs of the Potsdam, Teherna, Casablanca, and Egg Harbor Conferences. One look at his square face and you can see how General Ismay got the nickname “pug,” to his general dismay.
MONTGOMERY
General Bernard Montgomery was the number one war hero of Great Britian in World War II. He is especially the hero of the desert campaign, and the hero of the (still to come) Battle of El Alamain.
Monty's war memoir is a great read, but his childhood days are disturbingly frank. He apparently had a horrible martinet of a mother but he won't come out and say it. He just tells one horrible story after another about what a brute she was, then tries to pass it off as something that was good for him. Very bizarre writing, actually.
POUND
Sir Dudley Pound was in charge of the Royal Navy in the first half of WWII. He became First Lord of the Admiralty on July 18 1939, and when he died on October 3 1943, Pound decided to resign from the post.
Pound did a colossal job as a battleship commander in World War One. In the Battle of Jutland his ship, the HMS Colossus, sank two German cruisers.
TEDDER
SOURCES
See the last chapter on WWII for all the sources from 1933 to 1945 – I start with a lengthy sidebar treatment of a particularly fascinating book - the rest are listed alphabetically.
I Was Hitler's Doctor [or was I?] by Dr. Karl Kreuger – c) 1941 – Biltmore books – Introduction by Sinclair Lewis – Preface by Otto Strasser
This is a most fascinating read. Karl Kreuger was Hitler's doctor until 1934 when he had to flee Germany. Kreuger was more of his shrink than his doctor doctor. Hitler confessed his sexual perversions and insecurities to Kreuger. Hitler confessed to having an intimate physical encounter with Ernst Rhoem of the S.A. Shortly afterwards, Hitler murdered Rhoem. Doc Krueger concluded that he knew too much and would have to disappear too, so he fled the country while the follow up stories of the Night of the Long Knives were still going on.
The intro is by one of the most famous Americans of the time, Upton Sinclair, who also had recently been a candidate for governor of California in the 1930's as an open socialist and lost by a wide margin. But Upton did make a famous run of it.
The preface is written by Otto Strasser. His brother Georgi Strasser was murdered on Hitler's orders on the same night that Rhoem bought the farm. Otto Strasser fled the country and lived out World War II in Canada. He wrote several books about the Nazis, but they weren't mass produced because he was still, after all, a Nazi. Otto was one of the socialists who took the left wing rhetoric of the early days of national socialism seriously. When it was time to put up or shut up about socialism, Hitler made the socialists shut up with bullets. He wiped the left out of the Nazi Party in a night of multiple political murders. Otto got the message and got out of Dodge.
Now it's 2011 and I start reading the book for the second time after being fascinated by it 20 years ago. Halfway through the re-read I go on-line to see what anyone else has to say about it.
The book comes up for sale on three major sites, and in only one instance does it get a customer review. This person thinks it's a great book and a fascist fascinating look into the mind of Adolph Hitler.
But there is one comment by another internet person, not so much on the book, but on the first review. Here's what the critic of the critic had to say,
“I thought this book was proved to be a piece of complete fiction - a hoax. Google Books lists it as "fiction." When the US Govt. undertook an extensive psychological profile to be done of Hitler they interviewed a Dr. Edward Bloch (who was Jewish) who was a doctor that had fled Nazi Germany for the United States. Dr. Bloch treated Hitler's mother Klara, including caring for her through her illness and death due to breast cancer. However, they never bothered with this "Dr. Krueger" who obviously would have been a much richer, direct source of knowledge. He was apparently an executive at IG Farben who had a falling out with the company and the Nazi Govt. and thought the book would make him money and friends within allied governments. You'll notice Kurt Krueger was also the name of one of the most famous German actors appearing in American films of the era.
If you're going to write a review you should research the historical accuracy of the book you are reviewing and wonder why it was never reprinted. A book by Hitler's Doctor's - that basically psychoanalyzes him and details his inner thoughts and emotions - would surely have a place on the history shelf of every bookstore in the world if it was authentic. Instead it was a pulp bestseller in 1943 that quickly went out of print and was never seen much after the war. What does that tell you.?” - Frank Ahern
My first reaction was, 'I feel like such a fool that I bought into this famous hoax.' I had already fallen for the Nan Britton book that insinuated that President Harding was poisoned by his wife. Now I am so gullible once again.
But having spent a few hours on the internet and a few more thinking it over, I have reconsidered.
First of all, commenter Frank makes a valuable contribution by letting us know that this book has been called a hoax. Point taken.
But on the other hand, what proof does he offer? The only proof is his use of the word “apparently.” Apparently, Kreuger actually worked for I.B. Farben. I need more proof than the word apparently.
As for his assertion that the lack of post-war reprints proves that it is a fake, I would answer that the book publishing business is based on market demand, not whether the book makes an important post-war contribution to the historical science. It's all about profit. Even if Biltmore or some other company thought it “might” or “would probably” make a profit on reprint, that would not be enough. They only re-print when they feel it definitely would return a profit, and a solid, not marginal one at that. With the flood of thousands of books coming out about World War II in the post-war years, by countless participants, it was no sure thing for anyone to re-print “I Was Hitler's Doctor.” Even if it were proven to be authentic today, it wouldn't be easy to get anyone to re-publish it and take a chance on the market with it.
So his closing thoughts 'what does that tell you?' is unfair. No publisher thought it would sell big anymore, that's all that tells me. The people who were still interested in it already owned it or could find it at the library.
I also take issue with his harsh criticism of an innocent reviewer who merely wrote how he felt about his reading experience. It's not every reader's job to investigate whether every book is a hoax or not.
“If you're going to write a review you should research the historical accuracy of the book you are reviewing and wonder why it was never reprinted.” That's quite an admonishment considering you offer absolutely no proof that the book is a hoax, other than that you “thought it was proven to be a complete fiction.” If you're going to bash a person for writing a sincere review, a person who does not claim to be an historian or a professor of politics, you should offer some proof that they are wrong other than that “I thought” it was proven to be hoax and that Kreuger “apparently” worked for I.B. Farben.
As for the fact the the United States government didn't speak with Kreuger, again where is the proof? How do you know they didn't? And even if they did not, that doesn't “prove” his book was a hoax. As if the United States government never makes mistakes!
Your comment is valuable and I would be more than willing to listen to proof that the book is a hoax, but you offer none and then attack the reviewer.
As for the Doctor having the same name as a popular movie star who played Nazis in American films, what does that tell me? It tells me that no one would be so transparently dumb as to choose the name of a famous movie star on purpose and call that much more attention to a hoax. Like if I was going sell a hoax book pretending I was Osama Bin Laden's psychiatrist, I wouldn't make it written by Dr. Tom Hanks. And if you check the Internet Movie Data Base you will note that this Karl Kreuger in 1941 had only appeared in three bit parts so small they are titled “(uncredited.)” It wasn't until later in the war and after that Karl Kreuger became a well known actor playing Nazis (he was great in The One That Got Away.) The first edition of I Was Hitler's Doctor came out in 1941 which means he was writing it in 1940 before actor Karl Kreuger had made enough money in movies to even buy the book at a store. Who would name themselves after an unknown extra? Who would even know the name of an unknown extra? Even if Kreuger had been already famous, would a man who fled the Nazis name himself after a famous actor who always played a Nazi? Furthermore Karl Kreuger is a pair of common German names. Common coincidence is no coincidence.
And I have been on Google Books on-line and Google books does not list this book as fiction. And you attack this guy for faulty research?
Another website, Axis something or other, says that the myth that Hitler had syphilis comes from “a notorious book called I Was Hitler's Doctor.” This website explains that a Williams College professor has “proven” that Karl Kreuger never was Hitler's doctor. That's all we get.
Well for one thing, Dr. Karl Kreuger concludes that Hitler thought he had syphilis but in fact says he did not! So how could this “notorious book” be the foundation of the myth that he had it? Other historians have indeed suggested that Hitler had syphilis. Where they got the info I can't say, I'm not claiming to have “proof” of anything.
Show me the proof. What's the name of the professor for Pete's sake? I trust that this professor thinks that the book is a hoax, and maybe he has some good evidence, but to think that any university professor owns infallible conclusions is a bigger hoax than I Was Hitler's Doctor even if the book was a hoax. For every university professor that says one thing about anything, there's another that says that person is wrong and here's why. That's the business they are in. They may say this or that is proof or conclusive, but give me a break. Every book on the JFK assassination is “conclusive proof” that this author is the only one that got it right.
I still say, point taken. The book is more likely than not a hoax. On the other hand, no way is this a 99% certainly. Maybe 60 or 80, but 99? No way.
Would Upton Sinclair really write an intro to a book that was a total hoax? Would Otto Strasser write a preface to a book that was a total hoax? Another doctor wrote a second preface and I don't know who he was and can't find out, but that's some brilliant hoax to get a famous American, a famous Nazi, and an American doctor to all validate the author in their introductory chapters.
Strasser never denied the authenticity of the book and he wrote two more important books about the Nazis and Hitler during the war (which by the way were never reprinted.) Upton Sinclair never had to retract his participation in the book and both these guys lived a good life after the war, long after it was out of print.
If Sinclair or Strasser had to retract their authentication of Kreuger's book, I'd like to know about it.
The book is loaded with spectacular information about Hitler's sexual insanity. It claims that Hitler was kinky perverted off the scales, that he was into S&M, that he only got off by hurting people, or being hurt (he thought it was too disgusting to spell out.) If Hitler's holocaust was founded on sexual mental illness, I think that is important. Most Hitler biographers say he was asexual or impotent. This is saying something different and something important for understanding the Second World War.
Let's concede the point that Karl Kreuger is a hoax, and he just wrote the fictional book to make money, and was smart enough to fool Upton Sinclair and Otto Strasser (an intimate of Hitler) and Biltmore Publishers though three revised editions, but lets' say he did.
A very important part of the book is not even Kreuger's pages but the six page intro by Otto Strasser, and no one has discredited his intro! For in the intro, Otto Strasser says (and offers strong evidence) that Adolph Hitler murdered his niece.
Some background is in order. Adolph Hitler was the powerful head of the Nazi Party in the late 1920's. He lived alone. He asked his half-sister Angela Raubul to come live with him and tidy up the house. She agreed and brought along her daughter Geli Raubul. Hitler became completely infatuated with young and gay Geli. By 1931 she was 23 and he was 40. Nazi leaders were shocked when Hitler showed up everywhere with his arm around his half-niece. It was scandalous but who was going to say anything? AH did what he wanted. They had an affair. Now there is some debate as to whether he actually had physical sex with her, but he was always with her and always had his arm around her in public while jaws dropped everywhere they went. People got used to it and actually learned to like having Geli around because Hitler was in a better mood when he was with her. When he walked into a function hall alone, a lot of people might get yelled at, or fired, or worse. But when he was with Geli he had the look of puppy love. Geli was attractive, pleasant, and simple. She was no supermodel, but nothing to be ashamed to bring home to mother, except that her mother was Hitler's sister and Geli was too young.
In her late teens Geli Raubel became involved with Hitler's chauffeur Emil, and it was definitely physical. Hitler was insanely jealous and fired Emil, and forbade Geli to ever see his driver again. Does this surprise anyone?
Geli tried to defy Hitler. She wanted to see other Nazi people. They screamed and shouted at each other for days. Does this surprise anyone? Plenty of people overheard it.
Perhaps by now some of you have paused and looked it up on the internet. You've seen the standard version of what happened.
On September 19, 1931 Hitler and Geli had one last screaming match over whether she could go out on a date with his ex-chauffeur. Hitler left in a rage. A day later the deaf maid got worried about Geli and used the pass key. There she was, dead on the sofa. Geli Raubul had committed suicide. She had shot herself in the chest with Hitler's revolver.
Ah, excuse me. Hello?
She shot herself in the chest with Hitler's revolver? She left no suicide note?
For starters, Hitler wasn't the sort of person to just leave his revolver around, and he wouldn't leave it where his cherished Geli Raubul could get at it. It's almost amazing to me that there is next to no speculation that Hitler might have killer her. As if Hitler wasn't a man capable of murder! Any D.A. in any state in America would be overwhelmed with suspicion if this had happened between two nobodies today. Yet this suicide story is standard in the history books.
The only rumor you might read about was that Heinrich Himmler might have shot her, if anyone did.
It is well known that for the next several days Hitler was despondent and suicidal. His close pals had to talk him out of doing himself in (if only they had encouraged him to.) Poor heartbroken Hitler was moaning and groaning for days on end how life has lost all meaning, and all the usual.
Who commits suicide by shooting themselves in the chest? When do you ever read that? Even a ditz knows you might not die from it. Suicide was not consistent with Geli's gay personality. She was always cheerful and optimistic, and that was why Hitler so needed her companionship. The only real evidence that it was a suicide was that the door to the apartment was locked from the inside. Please. Like that info can't be falsified, and even if it were true, like Hitler couldn't set it up after the fact. Like you need some super-sleuth to see that the door locked from the inside proves little in this case.
The Otto Strasser chapter says that Hitler murdered Geli Raubul in a fit of rage. Strasser says that Hitler confessed to him and that he had to kill himself out of guilt and remorse. Otto says he helped to talked him out of it and later came to regret it. And get this; the Bavarian district attorney was preparing to press second degree murder charges against Hitler but the Party intimidated him into dropping it.
Strasser in the intro to I Was Hitler's Doctor produces a recent letter to Otto from a German Priest who confirms that Hitler definitely murdered Geli Raubul. “She is buried in our Catholic cemetery and the church does not allow suicides to be buried in its cemeteries. That's all the proof you need, sir.”
The more you think about it, the more logical it seems that indeed Hitler, the brave hero of the Reich, the man who ordered others to kill millions but never actually killed anyone himself according to the record, probably did kill at least one person. An innocent 23 year old woman, his niece. The little squirt was jealous and could not bear to think of her in the arms of his big strapping chauffeur. It's too simple. It's too real.
So if this book has nothing more to offer than the intro by Otto Strasser, the book has value and is not “a hoax.”
The book came out during the war and the Nazis had secret agents and lots of money all over the world. Goebbels and the War ministry would have every reason to try to discredit Karl Kreuger in any way possible. Maybe it was the Nazis who fabricated the story that Kreuger was never Hitler's doctor and that he actually was simply a disgruntled I. B. Farben employee who wanted to make money. If the book is a hoax it's quite a fascinating and elaborate one. Maybe the story about him working for I.B. Farben is the hoax. Maybe false records still exist at I.B. Farben to this very day and they sent them to the Williams College professor.
There are some things that seem to indicate that the book is a hoax. The opening chapter says that Hitler admits to impotence and to thinking he “has the sif.” That's a pretty safe way to sell books.
On the other hand Dr. Kreuger spends a whole chapter laughing at the work of John Gunther, who wrote Inside Europe and about 20 other famous books. Gunther says that Hitler was asexual, and had no real interest in women other than for pleasing companionship. Krueger mocks him and quotes Gunther at length and says he used to look up to him, but now he can't take him seriously anymore. John Gunther was one of the most powerful authors of popular political non-fiction in America. If Kreuger was publishing a total hoax, and he wasn't really Hitler's doctor, it seems illogical to me that he would welcome the wrath of a man as powerful as John Gunther. If anyone could have hit back hard and exposed Krueger as a hoax in 1941 it would be a John Gunther. If the book was popular fiction, why didn't John Gunther break out the big gunther guns and put Kreuger down in a court of law.
In another chapter the Doc writes of a fortunate chance he had to met with the great Dr. Sigmund Freud. He quotes some of the interesting things Dr. Freud said at some length. Would a book that was fake invite the debunking wrath of the great Dr. Freud? Who would include such a story if he wanted to get away with a total lie of a book? Surely Freud would issue a public denial that he ever met this Karl Kreuger character.
It also seems possible to me that the Williams professor probably indeed proved that Karl Kreuger was not Hitler's doctor because Krueger probably operated under a fake name to protect himself from overseas assassins. Kreuger probably went to the grocery store in Grouch Marx glasses and mustache. The Williams guy may have gone on a wild goose step chase trying to authenticate a man who never existed under that name. The US authorities might have even interviewed the author on the condition of anonymity. An author by any other name is just as authentic.
We need to know more about who this guy Kreuger was, where he lived, when he died, and what the truth it. I will not stand corrected because I don't claim to be correct. I want answers to questions, I don't provide them, at least not until I get a research grant, and I don't see that happening this month.
If Hitler was a sick sado-masochist sexual pervert and a lady-killer who ordered other brave men to die in battle against other brave men, and if this book is key evidence, then it needs to be either authenticated or debunked and the evidence cited specifically.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Bailey is so readable, that it used to offend other historians. He writes with the touch of the 'historian of the people.' Of Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 he writes,
“This timely assault was an incredible stroke of good fortune for the democratic world – or so it seemed at the time. The two menaces could now slit each other's throats on the icy steppes of Russia.”
I hear he was kind of a grouch at Stanford, yet his colleagues loved him anyway.
Barbarossa, The Russian-German Conflict, by Alan Clark – c) 1965
I have the paperback re-print from 1985 (Quill, N.Y.) I thought I had a book about the eastern front in WWII, but judging by how often other historians cite this work, it might be the book about the eastern front. I'm sure the Russians have a nine volume history that has never been translated into English.
This theatre needs a three volume english work with about 200 maps by some great historian. It's very understudied here, and if all Americans knew more about it, it might be good for US-Russian relations.
There is a Russian website now with some great moving maps.
At the time of this paperback reprint, the author was an important figure in P.M. Margaret Thatcher's cabinet. I cant say I love the writing.
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
As you can see by the end note, this was a war book without any objectivity. It’s bogged down in USN self-indeulgent detail too often, but some stories make it through that are very useful, for the same reason the book overall is not very. These stories are about individuals and Americana, more than they are about striving to ind all the truth about WWII.
The relevant chapter here is called “Neutrality Patrol.”
Bitter Glory, Poland and its Fate, 1918-1939, by Richard M. Watt – c) 1939
Great book, great writing, indispensably informative about Poland between the war and its disintegration in black September. For any student of WWII, this is in the top five must reads.
The Bomber War, The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany, by Robin Nellands, - c) 2001 Barnes & Noble
It's definitely 85% about the British bomber war, and 20% about the US contribution, but a needed piece of the WWII study puzzle. It's amazing how few books have ever been written about the strategic air campaign in Europe. There were more written about bombers during the war than after it. The effectiveness of the bomber war was a hot subject of debate during the war. The morality debate didn't see much light until after the war when the danger had passed, the danger that made a hundred million decent people in the democracies so callous to what had to be done.
The Brutal Friendship, Mussolini, Hitler, and the Fall of Italian Fascism, by F.W. Deacon -c) 1962
This is 820 pages on Italy in WWII that only begins with 1940 when Italy attacked France when France was on the ropes. I can use that level of detail on this understudied underbelly of Europe. Deacon takes me through 40 pages at a sitting without one angry note in the margins where I'm annoyed at the writing. I'm not praising it either but that means great writing. Like a great actor, my idea of a great writer is one that makes you forget the medium and hear only the message.
The Collapse of the Third Republic, An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, by William L. Shirer – c) 1969
This is the sequel to his famous The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This one about the French fall is just as detailed in its 976 pages, as Rise and Fall, but it's harder to make the time for this one that his definitive history of the Nazis.
The Conquerors, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945, by Michael Bechloss c) 2002 Simon & Schuster
Bechloss is one of the most popular and respected historians today. Just not in my house.
Delivered From Evil, the Saga of WWII, by Robert Leckie – c)1987
Leckie's philosophy is, 'all of my speculations are facts now.' He is easy to read but a difficult man. Leckie dislikes Winston Churchill .... a lot.
Leckie is really a war-lover, which disturbs me because I've read five of his books.
Eagle Against the Sun, The American War With Japan, by Ronald H. Spector c) 1985 MacMillan
The quintessential brilliant book ruined by snobby notes. Are you a student in my class or my teacher? If you’re a teacher, give me a chance to trust you and roll along with the work. I’m not planning on challenging the originality or authenticity of every sentence in your bloody book.
The Grand Alliance, by Winston S. Churchill – c) 1950 Houghton Mifflin
This is volume two of his famous six volume history. No one else has ever written a history of the war at this level of detail. No one individual anyway.
This one is mostly about the year 1941. Grand Alliance is not really a book. 60% of it is a grand annoyance, a collection of very long boring telegrams. Winnie guides you through it as an editor between the installments. It's going to take the rest of my life to finish all these volumes. The study sessions tend to be one-timers. The next day I switch over to some other book by someone more readable. His writing is a as stodgy as his appearance.
The Great Crusade, A New Complete History of the Second World War, by H. P. Willmott - c) 1989 - The Free Press
Willmott provides a lot of fascinating myth busting when he’s not irritating me with battle details without any maps to make sense of it all. The two myths of the Poland campaign are his work.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 Oxford Univ. Press.
I find myself finishing anything written by either of these two hopeless snobs.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon and Samuel P. McCutchen – c) 1954 MacMillan
A high school and a college teacher combine to tell the story.
History of the Second World War, by B.H. Liddell Hart, c) 1970
Get this. After WWI Hart developed all these theories about fast striking highly mobilized divisions that would win the next world war, and tried to convince his England to adopt his ideas. England didn't listen.
Germany did, and developed the Blitzkreig, based in large part on a military historians theories. Then he writes a history of the war observing how the sides used or failed to use his ideas. What a TNT egghead.
History of World War II, Armed Services Memorial Edition, by Frances Trevelyan Miller Litt.D. LLD
With a Board of Historical and Military Authorities c) 1945
This is the 992 page relief-bounded hardcover given to every solder, sailor and marine who served in WWII at the end of the war. It's strong, but a rather unpleasant read. Trevelyan is johnny cornball, and there isn't a whiff of pity for enemy dead, and chillingly little even for the Allied dead. It's a callous history of WWII for the calloused men who just fought it.
The beginning has a two page glossy insert where two people can fill out their war service by branch, department, and small unit. They figure a few million families might have two people who served. These look like religious baptism certificates, or the forms for a family bible. The publishers wanted this to sit in millions of homes as sort of a war bible, and it did.
Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs by Albert Speer – c) 1970
I remember when these memoirs came out, and it was a pretty big deal. People argued in diners whether he was as innocent as he claimed to be. Speer was start power to Hitler, and that's how Speer became one of the top Nazis, the kind of guy who might ride in the limo talking with the Fuhrr. The man was one of the inner circle, but he only served a couple of decades in jail then got out because he was “jasht follovink ortas!.” Tried and convicted at Nuremberg. Speer wrote this extensive self-exculpatory tome, and used the money to start a new life after the can.
Hitler was just a frustrated wannabe rock star, and used politics to get to the top, doing the ol' end-around to get to autograph land. But he saw Speer as the real deal, and knew deep-down that he wasn't. Speer was a genuinely famous architect with or without the Nazis and when Hitler met Speer it was Hitler that asked for the autograph, figuratively speaking. Hitler never lost that awe of real celebrity he saw in Speer, who was even allowed to disagree with the Fuhrer without getting yelled at.
That was how a Nazi could be that close to the inner circle and yet not hang at Nuremberg. Speer got away with being the celebrity among the usurpers of celebrity, acting like a disinterested specialist in his show-biz field while the political decisions were made without him, yet right in front of him. At least that was his story and he stuck to it.
Land Battles: North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, by Trevor Nevitt Dupuy, Col. U.S. Army Ret. - c) 1962
Great maps, and great text, even though you could read the entire book in 90 minutes (which means I could read it in 180 minutes.)
The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler, by Robert Payne -c) 1973
Payne is never boring. He writes opinionated biographies of many of the world's great scoundrels. This book claims to show us an actual picture of Hitler's dead body.
The Memoirs of Field-Marshall Kesselring, by Heinz Keselring – c) 1957 – reprint c) 2007 Greenhill
Valuable contribution to the military history of the war by one of the most famous German generals of WWII. Kesselring led the stubborn German defense of Italy, and served on many other fronts also. It doesn't feel right to be reading this on the subway on my way to Harvard Square.
The Memoirs of Field-Marshall the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein K.G. - c) 1958 - World Publishing, Cleveland
I don’t even know what the K.G. stands for.
The Mighty Endeavor, American Armed Force in the European Theater in WWII, by Charles B. MacDonald - c) 1969 - Oxford University Press
Mac has a lot of pre-war material. Good book.
The National Experience – Part Two A History of the United States from 1865 by John M. Blum, Edmund S. Morgan, Willie Lee Rose, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Vann Woodward – c) 1963 – HBJ NY
Actually I own the fifth revised 1981 edition. They like FDR.
Half these guys were from Yale.
The Naval War in the West: The Raiders (Volume 4 of the Military History of World War II) – c) 1963
The Other Nuremberg, The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, by Arnold C. Brackman – c) 1987
In 1940 when Japan occupied northern French Indochina, they machine-gunned 460 Vietnamese and French prisoners in the legs, they held bayonet practice over the wounded until they all died. That happened at a place called Langson, a place in time called hell.
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
Very good modern general history for high school seniors. It’s sad how they are being brainwashed by only one point of view disguised as a straight general history.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Sam worships FDR, as did most old white scholars who wrote the history books of this era. Sam Eliot also refers to Native Americans on two different pages as 'redskins.' Personally I think it's ok to call them Indians, and that's a controversial stand, but even I have to cringe when I read on page 982 that,
“Land ownership, it was believed, would make the redskins responsible citizens.”
I did learn from Harvard man Morison that the Indians did not have the vote in Arizona or New Mexico until 1948, but that, on the other hand, they were completely exempt from the draft in WWI and WWII. Just try not to call them redskins, will ya? What's ok for the NFL, but not for Harvard.
The Path to Victory, The Mediterranean Theatre in World War II, by Douglas Porch – c) 2002
PV is very helpful on the Mediterranean. He's a little long winded at times and hard to read, but then DP hits you with something brilliant to make up for it.
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
PFB, btw, is a pleasure to read.
Roosevelt and Hopkins, An Intimate History, by Robert Sherwood – c) 1948 – This is almost certainly the best insider biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Sherwood was one of FDR's speechwriters and a very successful playwright. This is a great book.
The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1941, by Frank Dorn – c) 1974
This is one of my top five books of all time. Well written, maps that make sense, an important and understudied subject, and he was there. Frank was a U.S. brigadier General and first-hand advisor/observer in China. He is quite the critic of Chiang Kai Shek and the poor fighting record of his Nationalist Chinese Army.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia – c) 1966 – 1977 Harper & Row
Garraty calls Mussolini “an absurd poseur and mountebank,” which is annoying because I had to go look up both words. John, I agree. Mussolini was indeed a mountebank and a poseur. No question about it. You nailed it.
Their Finest Hour, by Winston Churchill - c) 1949
Splendid, indispensable, and prolific, Churchill’s six volume history is a slow burn worth doing. It was from Churchill’s rich brain that I clipped the non-history speculation on what could Italy have been in 1945 if it had never stabbed France in the back in 1940.
If “Spence” ever admitted to a mistake in here, please point the passage out to me so I can rub my eyes and make sure it’s for real. Sometimes he is lively and writes very well, while other times his long tedious smaller-font quotations from speeches and telegrams are the cure for insomnia.
The Trail of the Fox, by David Irving – c) 1977
This is a war bio of General Erwin Rommel, “The Desert Fox.” Irving does a great job of exposing the Rommel legend as full of holes, while recognizing some elements of greatness. I think this book takes Rommel down a notch in a very simple way. The author adds few extra emotionalisms, good or bad. He just tells a hundred stories where Rommel is being either a jerk, an idiot or an obnoxious egoist. Mixed in is another where Rommel is being everything he is perceived to be by history. And since history had embraced only Rommel the Great, the book takes the man down a peg, and I, for one, appreciate it.
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Richard Hofstadter was a member of the Communist Party of the USA in the 1930's. Like so many others, he left when Stalin made the pact with Hitler in August 1939.
The Vichy Regime 1940-44, by Robert Aron, in collaboration with Georgette Elgey, translated from the Swahili by Humphry Hare c) 1958 – revised paperback edition c) 1969 Beacon Press
This is an area of particular interest for me because I am frustrated by how little I understand it all.
Robert Aron is an offensive chauvinist. I like his writing but his work has an underhanded visceral prejudice against the United States built-in.
This medium large 515-pager is one good-looking book for a paperback.
Winged Victory, The Army Air Forces in World War II, by Geoffrey Perret
This book takes too long in the pre-game show. Get to the war like the title promised. WV provided the story about FDR tearing into Hap Arnold in March 1940.
A World in Flames, A History of World War II, by Martha Byrd Hoyle – c) 1970 Athaneum
When Martha tells me something I didn't already know, I re-write it completely and incorporate it into my book without giving her credit. But when I catch her in a mistake, I cite her, her book, and the passage.
|