War and American Society

D-Day

*While the British and Americans were bogged down in Italy, the Soviet Union was begging for relief.

 

*On 22 June 1941, Hitler, now that he had knocked France out of the war and had Britain isolated on their island, thought he could take the Soviet Union.  German troops, assisted by Finnish and Rumanian soldiers, poured across the entire Soviet border.  Initially the blitzkrieg worked.  The Red Army was poorly trained, poorly led (partly because Stalin had killed so many of his generals in his purges), and for the moment easily defeated.

 

*Furthermore, many Soviet citizens, especially in Lithuania and the Ukraine, were so tired of Stalin’s cruelty that they welcomed the Nazis as liberators.  In most cases, these Slavic subhumans would be proven wrong, as they were made to do forced labour and those who resisted were executed.

 

*The Red Army retreated, and it used the tactic of scorched earth, destroying anything useful they could not carry with them, so the Germans would not be able to use anything left behind.  They were able to replace much of this, because since Hitler’s invasion, Stalin had benefited from American Lend-Lease, and, as they retreated, the Soviets actually dismantled their factories and shipped them beyond the Ural Mountains.

 

*By the end of 1941, Axis armies had pushed deep into Russia and the Baltic Republics, surrounded Leningrad (beginning an 872-day siege), captured Kiev, and approached Moscow. However, a late counterattack by the Red Army and the onset of winter stopped them.  

*In 1942 the German army was still kept away from Moscow, but began pushing towards the Don and the Volga, the USSR’s agricultural heartland and then moved on to the Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus.  The most important city on the Volga was Stalingrad (and capturing a city named for the Soviet leader would be good propaganda as well).

*The Germans (and their allies--Italians, Hungarians, Roumanians, and Croats) began fighting around Stalingrad on 17 July, 1942, and by late November had bombed most of the city to rubble and occupied most of its territory.  However, to try to gain complete control of the city (and the area around it, from which the Soviets continued to counter-attack), the Germans had to fight house-to-house and room-to-room for it, sometimes capturing the kitchen in a house or apartment and then having to fight for the living room.  Furthermore, the Red Army began making plans to counter-attack.

*In the winter of 1942-43, the Red Army cut the Axis soldiers off from re-supply and they began to starve and freeze in the winter. One German general felt so bad for his men that he began eating the same diet they were given until he grew so emaciated that Hitler ordered him to start eating again.

*Soon the German army that had captured Stalingrad was itself captured, completely surrounded by the Red Army.

*The German commander, Friedrich Paulus wanted to try to break out of Stalingrad and retreat in order to save his men and fight again.  Many of Hitler’s other generals advised Hitler to let him, but Hitler refused, and Paulus fought on as well as he could, but by January it was clear he could not win.

*Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus to Field Marshall on 30 January, 1943, and then, because no Prussian or German Field Marshall had ever been captured, expected him to fight to the death or commit suicide.  Paulus though, said later, "I have no intention of shooting myself for that Austrian corporal."  He surrendered on 2 February.  About 11,000 German soldiers refused to surrender, and hid in basements and ruined buildings and fought on until March.

*Around 91,000 (although perhaps as many as 110,000) Axis soldiers were captured in the Battle of Stalingrad, and most never made it home.  Of those that survived disease, starvation, slave labour, and terrible conditions in POW camps, most of the 5,000 or so survivors did not get to return to Germany until 1955.

*The Battle of Stalingrad may be the bloodiest battle in the history of the world.  The Axis lost about 850,000 men killed, wounded, and captured, and the Red Army at least 1,129,000 million casualties—close to two million men on both sides.  

*It was also nearly the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front, as the Germans were mostly on the defensive afterwards, only able to make one last major offensive, and that was an effort to repair the damage the loss of an entire army had done to Germany’s battle line.  Had thousands of German troops not been diverted to protect Italian forces in Africa and the Balkans, however, things might have gone very differently.

*The German Army had tried to relieve Stalingrad in December of 1942, but were prevented by the winter.  By the time the forces meant for this attack were able to move again, Stalingrad had fallen.  To regain lost land, the German High Command decided to attack the Soviets near the city of Kursk.  

*The resulting Battle of Kursk (really a series of battles) began on 4 July, 1943, and lasted throughout the month.  It was one last blitzkrieg of fast-moving armour supported by the Luftwaffe.  It ended up as the largest tank battle in the history of warfare, and was a German defeat, and one achieved in the early days of the campaign, not after the blitzkrieg had run its course—partly due, to successful use of infantry, artillery, and air support against the German Panzers.

*After this, the German army would be on the defensive, as the Red Army slowly pushed the Nazis west. 

 

*In fact, Russia shouldered most of the burden during the war, losing 50 men for every one that America lost.  Suffering terribly, Stalin begged the Allies to attack Hitler somewhere more important that Africa or Italy in order to take more pressure off the Red Army.

 

*The RAF and the US Army Air Corps began bombing Germany.  Unlike the German dive-bombers that were part of Blitzkrieg, however, this was strategic bombing, an attack on German factories, roads, and other facilities to destroy Germany’s ability to make war.  The Air Corps, with good sights, bombed specific targets during the day.  The RAF, who could not aim as well, practised carpet bombing at night, dropping bombs indiscriminately on large areas.  They also used firebombs, which do not need to be aimed too well.  In Hamburg, fires raged out of control to the extent that they sucked all the oxygen out of the air in places, and the Hamburg fire department invented the term ‘firestorm’ to describe this type of massive, out-of-control fire.  More than 40,000 civilians died in four firebombings of that city alone.  To the British, though, this was just revenge for the Blitz, including attacks late in the war by V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 rockets.

 

*Finally, in 1944, Eisenhower was ready to attack Germany by invading France. 

 

*The plans for this were elaborate.  Although Eisenhower meant to invade Normandy, he wanted the Germans to think he was going to invade near Calais with additional attacks in Scandinavia and elsewhere.  This series of ruses was known as Operation Fortitude, which constructed false barracks, marched around fictional units, created fake radio traffic, and even had inflatable tanks to fool any spy planes.  Part of Fortitude was commanded by Patton in the hopes that the presence of such a prestigious general would convince the Nazis of the seriousness of the plans.  Several double-agents also passed false information to the Nazis.  Operation Fortitude was so successful that when the Allies finally landed in Normandy, Hitler at first thought it was a feint to distract him from Calais.

 

*The real plan—Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord—was to invade Normandy in June, 1944.  The invasion required a full moon, clear skies, and a high tide, and was tentatively scheduled for 5 June, 1944.  However, the weather was bad, so Eisenhower delayed D-Day until the 6^th.  Feeling that the poor weather precluded an invasion, General Rommel took a short vacation to visit his family, and was not in Normandy when the attack came.

 

*D-Day is the largest amphibious assault in the history of the world.  It involved over 130,000 troops supported by 195,700 naval and merchant marine personnel, and was the first successful opposed invasion across the English Channel since William the Conqueror went the other way in 1066.

 

*Normandy was held by German forces and fortifications known as the Atlantic Wall.  Five main areas were chosen for invasion:  Juno Beach (assigned to Canada), Sword Beach and Gold Beach (assigned to Britain, with Free French help at Sword; the British also had many Polish and some other Eastern European soldiers under their command), and Omaha Beach and Utah Beach (assigned to the US).  Other special forces scaled cliffs near the main beaches to knock out smaller defensive positions, and British, Canadian, and American (82^nd and 101^st Divisions) airborne troops landed behind German lines the night before the attack to distract and disrupt their defences.

 

*Sword, Gold, and Juno Beaches all had many buildings (mostly vacation homes) near the shore which the Germans used as defensive positions, and which the British, Canadians, and French had to fight hard to take.  Juno Beach (Canada) was the second most deadly of the five beaches

 

*Omaha Beach was at the bottom of steep bluffs that the attacking troops had to climb before securing the landing ground.  Of 43,000 men under Omar Bradley, 3,000 became casualties, making it the most deadly of all the beaches.

 

*Utah Beach was the easiest of the assaults (with just under 200 American casualties).  The slope was gentle, there were no buildings for the Germans to hide inside, and the American forces actually did not land where they were supposed to, but ended up in a less defended area than expected.  Utah Beach was the only one of the five landing sites where a general officer went ashore in the first wave—Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, junior, who was the first man out of his landing craft and, at the age of 57, led his men ashore with a cane in one hand and a pistol in the other.  For this he got the Medal of Honor (making him and his father one of only two father-son pairs to win it (the other being Arthur MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur).

 

*Although the Allies suffered a total of 10,000 casualties, this was half what they feared they would lose, and taking the beaches at Normandy allowed one million Allied soldiers to land in France within a month. 

*After landing in Normandy in June 1944, the Allies began to move across France.  Although initially slowed down by the bocage, American troops, especially George Patton’s Third Army (which used tactics very similar to those of the German blitzkrieg) moved so fast that their biggest problem was getting so far ahead of their supply lines that they could not get fuel for their tanks.

*In Paris, the French Resistance started an uprising that threw the Germans out on 25 August, 1944.  After over four years of occupation, Paris was free, and the Allies prepared to advance into the Low Countries and into Germany itself.