Military History and Ted Williams

The thought occurred to me that I might want to take a break from military history and read something else. So, at the library, I selected a biography of a famous baseball player, Ted Williams, who played for the Boston Red Sox. Imagine my shock when I opened to the table of contents and found this ...

       Prologue

1     Boston

2     San Diego

3     Minnesota

4     Boston

5     .406

6     World War II

7     Boston 

8     Korea

9     Boston

10   Boston

11   Cooperstown

12   Washington

There it is. Two wars. In a book about the national pastime. I can't get away from it! I'll tell you more about it after I've read the book, but Hall of Famer, Ted Williams took time away from his baseball career twice to serve in the armed forces as a fighter pilot.

One of the Army's Lowest Points Ever

From Geoffrey Perret's There's a War To Be Won ...

"The 11,000 men who surrendered on Corregidor were, they soon discovered, not considered prisoners of war by their captors.  Instead, they were treated like a low form of life, on a par with parasites and vermin.  [Japanese Lt. Gen. Masaharu] Homma [commander of the main Japanese invasion force in the Philippines] threatened to murder all of them unless [Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan M.] Wainwright [commander of U.S. forces in the Philippines] ordered subordinate commanders throughout the Philippines to surrender themselves and their men.

"The Japanese put Wainwright in front of a microphone at a Manila radio station.  [Army Chief of Staff, General George C.] Marshall wanted someone who knew Wainwright well to listen in and tell him if the broadcast was genuine or a Japanese hoax.  J. Lawton Collins, recently appointed commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, had served for three years under Wainwright and admired him unreservedly.  Collins listened to the broadcast as Marshall requested.

"There was no doubt about it.  That was Skinny Wainwright, his voice dulled by exhaustion, choking with emotion as he ordered his men to surrender.  That was Skinny Wainwright, with his limp from a bad riding accident, always leaning on a stick when not in the saddle.  That was Skinny Wainwright, humiliated, defeated, heading for captivity and possibly a cruel death.  Collins sat by his radio that balmy evening in Hawaii, his round, boyish face wet with the tears shed for his friend." 

Marshall, McNair, and Army doctrine

George C. Marshall became the Army Chief of Staff on 1 September 1939. Incidentally, this was the same day that the Germans overran Poland in a sign of things to come. The United States was not at war yet, but those who could discern the times knew that we soon would be. 

One of the first things General Marshal did—and he did a lot—was to completely, totally, from top to bottom—revamp Army doctrine. That’s right, one of his first concerns was the fundamental principles that would guide the Army in its pending war. He had to raise an Army practically from scratch, equip it, and then train it to fight a world war against a well established enemy. So he set about very early on to remake the Army’s intellectual base. 

He was in a hurry about it, too. 

"He shut down the War College and the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth,” writes historian Geoffrey Perret. “Marshall wanted their instructors and students to get to work writing more than 150 new field manuals that would incorporate the most modern military doctrine. He hoped to get this task done in three months.” Three months! “'Impossible,’ said the general he asked to supervise it. Marshall retired him next day and turned to the commandant at Leavenworth, Brig. Gen. Leslie J. McNair."[1]

And I would bet my last dollar that Marshall’s fundamental concern was not the accessibility of those manuals, it was their content.


PS:  It took McNair four months instead of three.

---

[1] Geoffrey Perret, There's a War to be Won (New York, Ballentine Books, 1991), 24.

The Latest from Rick Atkinson

The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson's new book covering the last year of the European war, from Normandy to Berlin, will be published in May 2013.  

The Guns Last at Last Light will be the third in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy.  The first two volumes were ...

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944,

Rick Atkinson

Atkinson is also the author of several other books on military history ...     

     In the Company of Soldiers

     The Long Gray Line

     Crusade

Happy Birthday John -- I Wish

John H. Edinger, Jr., 1940-2010
(Photo: John H. "Jack" Edinger, III)

John would have been seventy-three years old today. I tried to always send him a card. His birthday follows so closely behind Christmas and New Years that it kind of sneaked up on me and I had to rush to find a card. As often as not, if memory serves, my card was late. 

Along with the card I also generally bought him a book. Books were about the only kind of gift from me that he appreciated. It was a challenge to find one that he had not already read or knew about. Memorable are the occasions when I got him one that he really enjoyed. He would tell me all about it, many times over the breakfast table at some greasy spoon, in Mount Airy where he lived or else here in Augusta. Whenever Connie and I visited him and Mom—or whenever the two of them visited us—John and I always went out for breakfast. It seems we did just about all our talking over sausage and eggs, grits on some mornings and hash browns on others, sometimes a little bacon, or a stack of pancakes, and gallons and gallons of coffee. 

On Cancer and Cornelius Ryan

Informative, captivating, and at times quite moving

Some of my favorite lines from A Private Battle, by Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan ...

Cornelius Ryan, speaking of his awards, plaques, and medals ...  

"each one less an honor than a challenge to make my work better."

On the subject of his research ... 

"Professionally, I have never accepted a single piece of historical data without researching it to the fullest, collecting all the opinions and interviews I could."

In reference to A Bridge Too Far ... 

"This will be the most difficult writing I've ever attempted.  And this book is the greatest challenge I've ever faced.  I've got to do it well or not do it at all.  No matter what happens to me, I want my books to stand the test of time."

"You don't jolt a reader or a patient until rapport has been established."

"It is my profession to ask questions, to probe, to get at reasons, more so now than ever when my unreliable body must function in spite of what ails it."

To his first cancer doctor who berated him for asking so many questions and who said to him, "You are not medically trained, yet you insist on medical language," Ryan replied ... 

"No, not precisely.  I simply want to know what you have found, and I want permission to question what I don't understand."

Hitler's Strategy by Late 1943

Hitler and the Nazi symbol

As 1944 dawned, Hitler faced this problem: that a successful Soviet offensive in the east would probably cost him the Ukraine and Belorussia—potential areas of German lebensraum, but space that was not essential to the Reich’s existence. A successful U.S.-British invasion in the west, however, could well cost him the Rhine-Ruhr region—the life’s blood of his Army. The former areas were expendable, but not the latter. Therefore, by all means possible, Germany must prevent the western Allies from gaining a foothold on the continent. The Axis’ central problem, therefore, was for the Wehrmacht to throw the invaders back into the sea. The Wehrmacht certainly tried to accomplish this, but obviously failed. Hence the decisiveness of D-Day.

Allied establishment of a second front in Western Europe would spell certain doom for the Third Reich. Hitler knew this. He also knew, as 1944 approached, that an Allied invasion from England was imminent, which is why he sent Rommel to northern France. The Reich’s strategic aim, given that it must soon fight on two fronts, east and west, was “the defeat of one enemy so that all resources could be concentrated against the other and a stalemate achieved.”[1]

The invasion, therefore, must be stopped in its tracks. As early as March 1942, as he withdrew his Luftwaffe from the battle over the skies of Britain, Hitler’s concept of the situation in the west was that “Atlantic coast defenses should be so organized and troops so deployed that any invasion attempt would be smashed before landing or immediately thereafter.”[2] 

On this point, Rommel and Hitler agreed.  “The main battle line,” he said,” must be the beach.”[3]

So at the beginning of 1944, Hitler faced this problem: a successful Soviet offensive in the east would probably cost him the Ukraine and Belorussia—potential German lebensraum, but not essential to the Reich’s existence. A successful U.S.-British invasion in the west could well cost him his Rhine-Ruhr region—the life’s blood of his Army. The former areas were expendable, but not the latter. Therefore, by all means possible, Germany must prevent the western Allies from gaining a foothold on the continent. The Axis’ central problem, therefore, was for the Wehrmacht to throw the invaders back into the sea.

______________________________

[1] David Fraser, Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 453.

[2] Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 36.

[3] Fraser, 455.

Chronology of the Normandy Campaign

6 June 1944	Allied landings in Normandy.
7 June	Bayeux falls.
8 June	U.S. First and British Second Armies link near Port-en-Bessin.
12 June	Omaha and Utah beachheads united.
13 June	British 7th Armored Division checked and repelled at Villers-Bocage. Germans open V-1 flying bomb offensive against Britain.
17 June	Rommel meets Hitler at Margival, near Soissons.
18-21 June	The ‘great storm’ in the Channel.
18 June	U.S. VII Corps reach west coast Cherbourg peninsula at Barneville.
19 June	Americans take Montebourg.
22 June	Russians open their summer offensive against Army Group Center with 146 infantry divisions and 43 tank brigades attacking on a 300-mile front.
25-29 June	British Operation EPSOM southwest of Caen.
26 June	Americans in Cherbourg.
27 June	Resistance in Cherbourg ends.
29 June	Rommel meets Hitler at German Armed Forces High Command in Berchtesgaden.
1 July	General Gyre von Schweppenburg (Panzer Group West) sacked and replaced by General Hans  Eberbach. Americans secure Cap de la Hague.
2 July	Von Rundstedt (OB-West) sacked and replaced by von Kluge.
8 July	British attack Caen, Americans seize La Hay-au-Puits.
10 July	British occupy Caen.
17 July	Rommel wounded and replaced as commander of Army Group B by von Kluge.
18 July	British Operation GOODWOOD east of Caen. Americans take St. Lo.
20 July	Hitler wounded by assassination attempt at his headquarters at Rastenburg (Prussia), abortive conspiracy and its aftermath rocks the Third Reich.
25 July	American Operation COBRA launched west of St. Lo.
30 July	British Operation BLUECOAT launched southeast of Caumont. Americans “turn the corner” at Avranches.
31 July	Russians within 10 miles of Warsaw.  Uprising begins.
1 August	Hodges assumes command of U.S. First Army; Patton’s Third Army activated; Bradley becomes commander of U.S. Twelfth Army Group.
7 August	Germans launch Mortain counter-attack. Canadian Operation TOTALIZE launched towards Falaise.
10 August	TOTALIZE broken off.
12 August	U.S. XV Corps takes Alencon.
14 August	Canadian Operation TRACTABLE launched towards Falaise. DRAGOON landings in southern France.
17 August	Model assumes command of German armies, orders full retreat east from Allied pocket. Falaise falls.
19 August	Polish Armored Division and U.S. 90th Division reach Chambois.
21 August	Falaise Gap closed.
25 August	Paris falls.
1 September	Eisenhower assumes direct command of Allied ground forces. Montgomery promoted to Field Marshal
2 September	U.S. First AND Third Armies ordered to halt by Eisenhower in view of huge fuel and supply problems.
3 September	Brussels falls.
16 September	U.S. First Army units cross the German border near Aachen.
17 September	Operation MARKET-GARDEN launched against Arnhem and the Maas and Waal bridges.

__________________________

Source:  Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 333.

Turning Point(s) of the Second World War

George C. Marshall. Was his appointment as Army 
chief of staff the turning point of World War II?

Fighting the Second World War was an immense operation.  Viewing the war as a single event, one must still be cognizant of its many parts and pieces.  These parts and pieces—the war’s battles and campaigns—were the subplots of the overall war.  Each had its own story, its own unique circumstances and challenges, its own turning points.  Like beauty, the construing of any single one of these as the point upon which the entire outcome of the war turned, depends much upon the eyes of the beholder.

A couple of years ago, historian Laurence Rees framed a question for a list of distinguished historians (he doesn’t say how many), asking each of them, “what was the turning point of World War II?”  What is probably not so surprising is that he got a range of answers.  One gentleman, writes Rees, thought the entire war turned upon the Germans’ victory in France in May of 1940.  His argument was that the French and the British had the advantage in terms of terrain and equipment, that attacking with such a disadvantage the Germans assumed a huge amount of risk, and that the outcome of the battle turned upon the superiority of German leadership.  “If the [Allies] had not performed so appallingly in this one fight,” argues this one historian, “then World War II would have ended by the summer of 1940 in an ignominious defeat for the Germans.”[1]

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was the answer to Rees’s question by two historians, Conrad Crane and Akira Iriye. Crane, a former West Point history professor and current director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, chose Pearl Harbor because that is the point when the conflict became truly a world war.  Mr. Iriye, a Harvard University professor of Japanese descent, chose Pearly Harbor because it “turned out to be such a monumental mistake.”[2]

Six historians, including Robert Dallek and Max Hastings, chose Stalingrad.  "Stalingrad changes everything," said Hastings.  "Once the Germans have been thrown back from Stalingrad, once they've lost that battle, the war was never the same again."[3]  Winston Churchill is said to have exclaimed “we have won!” the minute he learned of what happened at Pearl Harbor.  But another historian, Richard Overy, argued that Stalingrad was “not a turning point necessarily in strategic terms, because a lot more has to be done before the Soviets can be certain of defeating Germany."  But what was made clear there, more than anything else, is that the Germans were vulnerable.[4]

Air Superiority: The Impact of the Allies' Strategic Bombing Campaigns in World War II

Bomber Harris

The Allies’ gaining of air superiority, in each of the major theaters of the war, essentially determined the conflict’s outcome in that theater. Superiority in the air meant two things. First, it meant that the Allies could capitalize on their vast advantage in terms of strategic bombing. Second, because of their advantage in strategic bombing capabilities, they soon achieved significant advantages in terms of battlefield maneuver. Superiority in the air enabled the Allies to mass firepower against the enemy in two domains, on land and from the air. Allied air superiority meant that the enemy was restricted to fighting only, or mainly, in the land domain. 

Virtually ever since the invention of the airplane, aviators have believed that wars could be decided by air power alone. Even today there are many who subscribe to this view, despite much evidence to the contrary, but the opinion was much more widely held during World War II, when air power was just coming into its own. In America, the name of Billy Mitchell attaches itself to many of the early theories touching upon the effectiveness of air power. Essentially, what Mitchell espoused as early as the 1920s was set forth in a concept written by Sir Charles Webster and Dr. Noble Frankland, entitled The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany part of which was cited in B. H. Liddel-Hart’s history of the Second World War— 

“The strategic air offensive is a means of direct attack on the enemy state with the object of depriving it of the means or will to continue the war. It may, in itself, be the instrument of victory or it may be the means by which victory can be won by other forces. It differs from all previous kinds of armed attack in that it alone can be brought to bear immediately, directly, and destructively against the heartland of the enemy Its sphere of activity is, therefore, not only above, but also beyond that of armies or navies.”

Against Germany. “The Army Air Forces (together with Britain’s Bomber Command) blasted German cities into rubble using mainly B-24 and B-17 heavy bomber aircraft, but the war in Europe ended only when Allied armies occupied Germany’s territory.”[1] Strategic bombing—by itself—was never the ‘be all, end all’ solution to the essential military problem of the war, which was to destroy the warfighting capabilities of the Axis nations. 

The Impact of Lessons Learned When Really Learned

World War II Soldier

In 1942, in the war in North Africa, the Americans were stung by a serious defeat at Kasserine Pass. In that defeat, their eyes were opening to the realities of war. They received a further sting from a British general’s biting criticism. General Alexander, the 18th Army Group Commander, called his American allies “soft, green, and quite untrained [lacking] the will to fight. My main anxiety,” he said— 

“is the poor fighting value of the Americans. They simply do not know their job as soldiers and this is the case from the highest to the lowest. Perhaps the weakest link of all is the junior leader, who just does not lead, with the result that their men don’t really fight.”[1]

But even as the U.S. soldier was licking his wounds, something was changing. Ruthlessly, Eisenhower began sacking incompetent commanders. Soldiers who could lead started doing so. The Brits, who had been fighting for almost two years, referred to the Americans’ experience as Kasserine as their “being blooded.” There is a line in Rick Atkinson’s history on the war in North Africa that succinctly describes this change. Atkinson’s line was this, that— 

“a great sorting out was under way: the competent from the incompetent, the courageous from the fearful, the lucky from the unlucky. It would happen faster in the American Army than it had in the British. Alexander was not wholly wrong, but he was wrong.”[2]

“The Battle of Kasserine Pass was humiliating.” That’s how one of General George C. Marshall’s biographers described it.[3] It had the effect, however, of galvanizing the American fighting spirit. Eisenhower himself spoke of “lessons learned,” and of how all his soldiers and commanders were actively “seeking from every possible source methods and means perfecting their own battlefield efficiency,” and of how good a teacher combat had been.[4] Kasserine Pass was to the Atlantic theater what Pearl Harbor had been in the Pacific. It was defeat, it didn’t taste very good, and it made GIs want to do something about it. 

The Falaise Pocket

The battle of the Falaise Pocket, which took place from 16 to 19 August 1944, took its name from a combat situation that developed late in the Normandy Campaign, subsequent to the Allied breakout which turned the direction of the Allied invasion eastward toward Germany. A popular military history website has postulated, concerning this battle, that it actually gave rise to the operational thinking behind the more famously known operation—MARKET-GARDEN. The gist is that the “unexpected” success of Operation OVERLORD, the Normandy Campaign, created an opportunity for striking Germany’s industrial region much more quickly than earlier thought possible. For it had been anticipated that the advance of the western front towards Germany would be a long, hard slog—and it was that until about eight weeks into the Normandy Campaign when, rather suddenly, the German defenses in front of the southward advance of the Allied right flank, in the west around the town of St. Lo, collapsed. “What actually happened,” writes the author of this particular posting—

“was that the Allies were bogged down for many weeks in a virtual stalemate in Normandy and that the German defense … virtually collapsed overnight leading to the Falaise pocket, which was a complete disaster for the Germans, of the same magnitude as Stalingrad had been on the Eastern Front.”[1]

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

Now, while it is somewhat of a stretch to compare the impact upon the Third Reich of battle of the Falaise Pocket with the stupendous disaster at Stalingrad, it is no stretch to say that the German lines fronting St. Lo did collapse virtually overnight. Because of the generally steady advance of British armor-supported infantry operations in the vicinity of Caen, on the Allies left flank—in the east and therefore much closer to Paris—German forces in the west, facing the steady advance of U.S. forces in the west faced the possibility of being cut off. Quite literally overnight those western units were pulled back to shore up the defense of the approaches to the Seine River—and to Paris. Their pull-back, coupled with the rapid advance and eastward turning of the U.S. divisions under Bradley, the so-called Allied breakout, created a “pocket” or an ever-dwindling space between the advancing Allied front on the right (west), as it wheeled eastward, and then northeastward, and the rear of the Allied (Dempsey’s) forces on the left (east). For a time there was a very real possibility that 80,000[2] Germans might be caught in this pocket and be totally wiped out. That they were not destroyed was the result of a combination of factors, the most significant being the Allied ground commander, Montgomery’s, propensity for over-cautiousness, the slowness of the Allied operational machinery to take swift advantage of developing battlefield situations, and the length of the Allied lines of communications, particularly behind the right wing advance of Bradley’s. The very last thing the Allied commanders wanted was to make the kind of mistake that would put their forces into the kind of predicament the Germans in the vicinity of the town of the town of Falaise found themselves in late August, 1944. Hence, though much of their equipment was destroyed,[3] “something over 20,000” German soldiers, “with only the clothes on their backs and personal weapons,”[4] lived to fight another day.

---

[1] Unknown, “Operation Market-Garden,” History of War.org, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/
battles_arnhem.html (accessed 27 July 2012).

[2] Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (New York, E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1983), 430.

[3] Maps of World War II: Battle of the Falaise Pocket: August 16-19, 1944, On War.com, http://www.
onwar.com/maps/wwii/westfront/falaise.htm (accessed 27 July 2012).

[4] Max Hastings, OVERLORD: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 314.

Kursk

Soviet T-34 Tank

Kursk had been “the springboard from which the [Germans] had launched [their] summer (1942) offensive,” during which they had pushed southeastward into the Caucus region, and westward towards Stalingrad.[1] But in July 1943, the Russians had pushed the front back almost to where it had started the year before. At Kursk, there occurred the largest tank battle of World War II. It was “an immense knotted mass of tanks,” according to a Soviet colonel who fought there,[2] a showcase, perhaps, of armored warfare as the Soviet T-34 main battle tank took on the German Panzers and Tigers. Above all, Kursk was the climactic battle of the German’s Operation ZITADELLE (Citadel), 4 – 13 July 1943. 

The aim of Operation ZITADELLE was cut off the Russian forces that had invested Kursk. Perhaps it is only a bit of a stretch to describe what happened at Kursk as the eastern front’s equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge. As in the west once the Allies had established their lodgment in Normandy, the Germans line of advance in the east had, since mid-1942 been steadily retreating. Germany was on the defensive. B. H. Liddel-Hart, in his history of the Second World War called the events of 1942 “the turn.” Similar to his thrust through the Ardennes that he would make in December 1944, the purpose of which was to open a hole in the Allied lines and cut off the enemy lines of communications from north to south, Hitler sought to make a “break-through” of the Soviet lines running north-to-south by “pinching off the great salient” of Kursk. It was the principle that “‘attack is the best defense.’”[3]

Model’s Ninth Army struck south from Orel while Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army struck north from Kharov. “Altogether, the attacking German forces numbered 435,000 soldiers, 9,960 artillery pieces and mortars, and 3,155 tanks …. Against these the Soviets brought a million soldiers, 13, 013 artillery pieces and mortars, and 3.275 tanks; in reserve, [they had] 449,133 soldiers, 6, 536 artillery pieces and mortars, and 1,506 armored fighting vehicles.”[4]

The key to the Soviet’s victory at Kursk was that they knew in advance what the German plans were, thanks to Ultra intercepts the British had shared with them. Plus, they had prepared extensive, layered defenses within the city, and they kept a substantial reserve—tactics they had learned during course of the war. “When Hitler abandoned Operation Citadel on July 13, the Germans' last opportunity to influence events on a strategic level in the East was lost.”[5]

____________________

[1] B. H. Liddel-Hart, History of the Second World War (Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky and Konecky, 1970), 480. 

[2] Robert M. Citino, “The Greatest Tank Battle of All Time,” History Net.com, http://www.historynet.com/the-greatest-tank-battle-of-all-time.htm (accessed 28 July 2012). 

[3] Liddel-Hart, 485. 

[4] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War To be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 296. 

[5] George M. Nipe, Jr., “Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory inWorld War II,” History Net.com, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-kursk-germanys-lost-victory-in-world-war-ii.htm (accessed 28 July 2012).

***************
For both sides, combined, the number of tanks in the battle of Kursk was close to 8,000.  At El Alamein, the number was 2,000.  In the Persian Gulf War, the total number of tanks and other armored vehicles in the conflict was approximately 10,000.  [Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 249-250].

FORTITUDE

FUSAG was fake, but
Patton was very real.

Allied Operation FORTITUDE was a program of deception—and a supplemental operation—to Operation OVERLORD, the Normandy Campaign. At the center of the FORTITUDE deception was the entirely fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG) ostensibly commanded by the very well-known American officer, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton. In what today would be termed a military information support operation, FUSAG was given a network of installations, had its own imaginary organizational structures, fabricated radio message traffic, conjured up plans, missions, and briefings, even false insignia. The ghost command had its own— 

“training grounds, a communications network, plans, orders of battle, and a specific target, the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, or even, so the Germans were encouraged to believe, farther northeast [and thus further away from Normandy] on the Belgian and Dutch coasts.”[1]

German intelligence agents in England repeatedly confirmed much of this “evidence” which completely fooled the German high command, including Hitler, as to both the magnitude of the Allied forces available and the intended target for their imminent cross-channel attack So convinced were the Germans of the reality of FUSAG, that even after the Normandy landings had begun, the German high command kept the powerful 15th Infantry Division positioned, and most of their Panzer units held in reserve, to defend against what they were sure would be soon coming, the main cross-channel attack by Patton’s forces striking the Calais area, 100-150 miles northeast of Sword Beach. 

As evidenced by the German high command’s decisions regarding its Panzer reserves and its heavily armed 15th Infantry Division, not only is the Third Reich’s strategy for its defense of its western approaches discovered, but the fundamental purpose of Operation FORTITUDE is revealed. Its purpose was to fool the Germans into thinking the invasion would come at a place far away from the area of the actual landings. German uncertainty as to where the landings would occur left them with no choice but to defend well over a thousand miles of coastline from Denmark in the north to the Bay of Biscay in the west, forcing them to violate Frederick the Great’s dictum that he who defends everything defends nothing. Once the invasion came, the deception wrought by FORTITUDE remained so strong that senior commanders up to and including Hitler remained steadfast in their conviction that it was just a feint and that the real invasion would come further up the coastline. 

__________________________
[1] Martin Gilbert, D-Day (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2004), 61.

Never Lost a Battle

Marshal Zhukov

Gregori Zhukov (1896-1974) achieved the rank of marshal in the Soviet Army and, in Russian lore, is known as “the man who never lost a battle.”[1] Zhukov’s military experience included World War I, the Russian Civil War, and World War II or The Great Patriotic War as it was known in Stalin’s Russia. Between the two world wars, Zhukov studied the tactics, techniques, and procedures armored warfare, then just emerging, incorporating what he learned into Russian military doctrine. In WWII, Zhukov led Soviet forces against the Japanese in fighting along the Mongolian-Manchurian border, emerging triumphant after the “Battle of Lake Khasan” and “was [afterwards] made a Hero of the Soviet Union.”[2] Zhukov successfully defended Moscow during the German’s ill-fated Operation BARBAROSSA. Later, along with Aleksandr Vasilevsky, Zhukov “planned Operation URANUS”[3] which caused the defeat of Nazi General von Paulus at Stalingrad. The Soviets’ employment of Zhukov’s armored warfare doctrine along with the T-34 Tank, which Zhukov championed,[4] plus the Marshal’s leadership, enabled the Russians to defeat the Germans at Kursk and gain a firm upper hand on the eastern front. Zhukov also planned led the victorious Red Army in Operation BAGRATION—the ‘liberation’ of Belorussia and Poland—and in the Battle of Berlin which brought the war in Europe to its conclusion.

____________________________
[1] Military Commanders of World War II, History Learning Site, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/georgy_
zhukov.htm (accessed 25 July 2012).

[2] Kennedy Hickman, “World War II: Marshal Georgy Zhukov,” About.com (Military History), http://military
history.about.com/od/1900s/p/zhukov.htm (accessed 25 July 2012).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Publications International, Ltd., Ed., “T-34 Medium Tank,” How Stuff Works, http://science.howstuffworks.com/t-34-medium-tank.htm (accessed 25 July 2012).



***************

There's a new book out about Marshal Zhukov, called Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, by Geoffrey Roberts.

Ultra in a Nutshell

Enigma device

Ultra was a codename used by the Allied powers to refer to the signals intelligence gained via the clandestine interception of encrypted German communications via their so-called Enigma encryption devices. Intercepted German transmissions were decoded by Allied intelligence experts then disseminated to senior commanders.

The breaking of the Enigma code was “largely the work of Polish intelligence services,” who shared their knowledge with British and French intelligence in 1939 as it became clear that there would soon be war.[1] During the war, Allied Ultra operations were conducted in secrecy at Bletchley Park in England. By April, 1940 “some messages were being read within 24 hours of dispatch …. By the time of the D-Day landings, the Naval Enigma was being broken almost instantly.”[2]

The Germans never suspected that a vulnerability existed within their communications procedures and that the Allies were so effectually exploiting it. ‘Ultra intercepts,’ as they were called, were like a “secret weapon” for the Allies. Unfortunately, the intelligence gained from those intercepts was never a guarantee that the best military decisions would be made. In the run up to Operations MARKET-GARDEN, for example, it was learned through Ultra that “some of Germany's best panzer divisions would be refitting in the town selected as the goal of the British 1st Airborne Division and the operation's final objective on the Rhine [River]—Arnhem.”[3] Though Field Marshal Montgomery’s headquarters was aware of the intelligence, they altered nothing in their plans, and the rest, as is often said, is history.


______________________________
[1] John Barrat, “Enigma and Ultra: The Cypher War,” Military History Online, http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com
/wwii/atlantic/enigma.aspx (accessed 25 July 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Williamson Murray, “World War II: Ultra—The Misunderstood Allied Secret Weapon,” Historynet.com, http://
www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-ultra-the-misunderstood-allied-secret-weapon.htm (accessed 25 July 2012).

George C. Marshall in World War II

George C. Marshall, U.S. Army
15th Chief of Staff

George C. Marshall (1880-1959), a 1901 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute,[1] was an officer in the United States Army who notably served during World War I as General John J. Pershing’s aide de camp and, during World War II, as the Army’s chief of staff, appointed to the latter position by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Marshall became chief of staff on 1 September 1939, the same day the German army invaded Poland;[2] and “at the time, the U.S. had only 180,000 troops (by some accounts, it was even less), which ranked it sixteenth militarily in the world.”[3]

During the war, as the time for the invasion of France drew near, it was thought by many that President Roosevelt would name Marshall, because of his tremendous ability and prestige, as the commander of the operation that would ultimately decide the war in Europe. Even Marshall, himself felt that he should be so appointed, though he steadfastly refused to put forward his own name for consideration. Ultimately, however, it was Eisenhower who was chosen to be the Supreme Allied Commander. FDR’s rational for not selecting Marshall was that he felt that he “could not sleep at night with [Marshall] out of the country.”[4] So, instead of commanding the armies of Normandy, Marshall continued as Chief of Staff for the war’s remainder, but also, as his biographer, Forrest Pogue described him, in his capacity as the “organizer of victory.”[5]

As the organizer of victory, Marshall built the Army. Building the Army included the mobilization of enough men to give the operational commanders what they needed, the mobilization of American industry to supply those men with the materials required, the construction of bases at which to train the men, and ships to transport them to the theaters of war. By spring of 1944, under Marshall’s leadership, “the United States … was shipping [nearly] that number of soldiers to Great Britain each month … By nightfall [on D-day] the Allies had landed 165,000 men, more than eight divisions, a force larger in size than the entire U.S. Army when Marshall too command in 1939.”[6]

In December, 1944, before the war’s conclusion, Marshall was promoted to “General of the Army” and given his fifth star.[7] At the time, only one other officer had been pinned with five stars, Marshall’s mentor, General Pershing. Pershing, who was still living at the time, bore the title of “General of the Armies.” Marshall insisted that his be limited to “General of the Army,” because he felt it wrong to be considered Pershing’s equal. After the war, Marshal served as President Harry S Truman’s ambassador to China, then later as Truman’s secretary of state. 

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[1] History of the Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Military Institute, http://www.vmi.edu/uploadedFiles/VMI/Communications_Marketing/Media_Relations/fact_sheets/
VMI_History_Fact_Sheet_021709.pdf (accessed 25 July 2012).

[2] Detailed Marshall Chronology, George C. Marshall Foundation, http://www.marshallfoundation.
org/about/chronology.html (accessed 24 July 2012).

[3] Timeline of Marshall’s Life, George C. Marshall Foundation, http://www.marshallfoundation.
org/about/timeline/ww2.html (accessed 25 July 2012).

[4] Ibid., 13.

[5] Marshall Bibliography: Selected Works, George C. Marshall Foundation, http://www.marshall
foundation.org/about/bibliography.html (accessed 25 July 2012).

[6] Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990), 453-455.

[7] Marshall Chronology, Op Cit.

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.

Operational Warfare and the Second World War

Excellent overview of WWII

Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, students of how wars are fought, define military operations as “the violent actions undertaken by armed forces in the pursuit of strategic objectives.”[1] The pair describe the revolutionary nature of that era between the world wars as the “origins of a catastrophe.”[2] Gregor Dallas, a student of how wars end, notes that in post-World War II England “war rationing was at its height in 1948 (not 1945) and ended only 1954.”[3] England had been victorious in that war. Imagine, then, how it must have been in Germany, between the wars, in a country that had tasted defeat. 

Most of us have always believed that the First World War was concluded on the eleventh of November, 1918 with the signing of the Armistice, and that the terms of the peace were set out in the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, except for that brief pause that November, the fighting continued—in the east, while the Allies withdrew back to the west from whence they had come. A state of war continued between Germany and Poland. In Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution was proceeding apace. The old empires of the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs seethed as they came apart at the seams. Lines on maps were redrawn. Populations were in upheaval. Governments across Europe rose and fell and were replaced by yet other governments. 

Most of us believe also that the seeds of the Second World War were sown by the First and that the conclusion of the first one furnished the reasons for the one that followed barely two decades later. “From the moment he grabbed power,” observes Gregor Dallas, “Hitler promised Germans that there would never be another 1918.”[4] Versailles had imposed a harsh “peace” upon Germany. “The peace of 1919,” write Murray and Millet, “collapsed because the Allies, whose interest demanded that they defend it, did not, while the defeated powers had no intention of abiding the results.”[5]