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.

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[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).



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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.


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[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]

Chiang Kai-Shek

Chiang

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was the prominent leader the Nationalists in China, also known as the Kuomintang, in the late 1920s. “In 1927 [Chiang’s forces] “marched north from Canton to unify the country,” causing a fear of “anti-foreign attacks” among the small U.S. contingent that had been based in that country after the conclusion of World War I.[1] In the run up to World War II Chiang was the Chinese leader whom the Roosevelt administration had placed its hopes upon for thwarting Japanese imperialistic designs on the Chinese mainland and the corresponding threat to U.S. interests in the region. During the war, Chiang was a burdensome ally, demanding ever more resources from the United States, but never actually delivering on his promises to fight the Japanese. His relationships with the commander of U.S. ground forces in the region, Lt. Gen. Joseph Stillwell, and “U.S. General Claire Chennault, commander of the Fourteenth Air Force,”[2] waxed hot and cold, mostly cold. The two U.S. commanders disagreed as to the best way to defend China against the Japanese. Each preferred the capabilities of his own service. Air power, being at that time regarded by many international leaders as the ‘thing to have,’ was naturally preferred by Chiang who tended to side with Chennault. His designs of an air defense of the Chinese mainland never materialized, as Stillwell surmised, because Chiang was never serious enough about ‘boots on the ground’ to properly defend Chinese air fields. The Japanese overran them.[3] Chiang’s weakness forced the Allies to expend scarce resources in the Pacific theater and prolonged the fighting there. 

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[1] John Whiteclay Chambers, II, Ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 116.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

The Cherry Society

Hashimoto

The Cherry Society, also known as “Sakura” was “formed secretly [in 1930] under [Japanese] Lieutenant Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto and [Captain] Isamu Cho,” both active duty [military] staff officers.[1] Their goal was political reform. They sought “the elimination of party government by a coup d’état and the establishment of a new cabinet based upon state socialism, in order to stamp out Japan's allegedly corrupt politics, economy, and thought.”[2] Reportedly, the group’s membership numbered “several hundreds” by October 1931, shortly before their attempted overthrow of the government. Their plans (which may have been patterned after Hitler’s failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923) called for the instigation of “massive riots in Tokyo [which they deduced would cause] the call-out of troops, the proclamation of martial law, and [ultimately] the execution of a coup d’état.”[3] Also included in their plans was “to form a cabinet under the premiership of the then-War Minister, General Ugaki.” But their coup failed and their cause came to nothing.[4] The group’s socialist bent may have contributed to Prince Konoe’s government to conclude a Neutrality Pact with the Soviet Union, in April 1941, just prior to the Second World War.[5] That agreement had the effect of removing the threat of attack from the Soviet Union, thereby allowing the Japanese to concentrate on their thrusts to the southwest, into China, and to the south and southeast, against the United States. Historians Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet did not include mention of the Cherry Society in their joint history of World War II because their stated intent was to “concentrate on the conduct of operations by the military organizations that waged the war.”[6]

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[1]Saburo Hayashi, “Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War (Marine Corps Association, 1959), http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/utm/kogun.txt (accessed 29 June 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] 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), 166.

[6] Ibid., x.