1942: Year of Decision for the Third Reich

German-controlled territory, 1942

The year 1941 had not gone well for Germany. She “had staked all on [operation] BARBAROSSA, but that operation had failed. That failure had significantly blunted her military capabilities and placed all her war aims in jeopardy. Thus the following year, 1942, was a year of decision.

Historians Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet note that “the strategic decisions and the outcome of the battles of 1942 [would determine] the final course of the war.”[1] The whole question was, as they put it, “whether the Reich could patch together sufficient military forces to finish the war, or whether the United States and Britain, desperately arming to make up for [lost time], and the Soviet Union, grievously wounded in 1941, could hold on long enough for their economic strength to prevail.”[2] The answer to that great question would depend upon the outcomes of the battles in North Africa and on the eastern front—particularly at Stalingrad and Kursk.

Despite his intent to avoid Germany’s catastrophic error of the First World War, of having to fight a war on two fronts, one to her east and one to her west, Hitler found himself in 1942 entangled in what quite possibly was an even worse situation. Despite his best intentions, he found himself still fighting the Soviet Union, even after BARBAROSSA, while at the same time he was having to defend against a British assault against Axis possessions in east North Africa. Britain’s fight against Italian forces in Egypt and in Libya threated Germany’s control of the Mediterranean and, hence, her lines of supply. Hitler seemed to have to have little choice but to dispatch an entire corps, led by one of his ablest commanders, to restore a rapidly degrading situation on the northern coasts of the continent of Africa. Thus, the Mediterranean became a second theater of operations for Germany.

The pressure of operating in two theaters simultaneously, coupled with his own ideologically-driven ambitions, contributing to Hitler’s poor decision-making in 1942. On top of his colossal mistake at the end of the previous year—declaring war on the United States—and his destructive decision in 1942 to commit himself to operations in defense of North Africa, Hitler proceeded to make things worse for Germany by pressing his attacks into Soviet Russia even deeper and, what was even worse, without clear objectives. With his supply lines stretched in two directions, and his Luftwaffe overtaxed trying to support operations on two fronts separated by enormous distances, Hitler’s forces in the east could not be adequately resourced. Disastrous losses at Stalingrad and at Kursk ensued. The Allied TORCH landings in the fall of year threatened a rout of Axis forces in North Africa and a need to evacuate them back to Sicily and the Italian peninsula. Every bullet and every bean sent to Africa sapped his eastern front forces’ ability to sustain itself. All this made it a real possibility that yet a third front might be opened against the Reich in Western Europe. Were it not for the Allies’ decision to pursue operations on Sicily and up the Italian coastlines, the Normandy invasion might have occurred a full year earlier.

The calamitous and unforeseen events of 1941 made 1942 a year of decision for Germany. Could she maintain the fight against increasingly overwhelming odds or would the size and economic might of her Allied opponents, particularly the U.S. and the Soviet Union, enable them to prevail. Indeed, could they even survive if Germany were able to deliver a crushing blow? Simultaneous operations on two fronts—North Africa and Eastern Europe—sapped Germany’s war-making capabilities. While Germany’s strength ebbed, Allied strength grew. Momentum began to swing in the Allies’ favor. Compounded by operational mistakes in the field, Germany’s ability to resolve the great question in her own favor weakened considerably. Instead of realizing her war aims in 1942, Germany lost the strategic advantage to the Allies.


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[1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2000), 262.
[2] Ibid.