LACK OF PLANNIN 15 page

. NO RETREATof 1942 had belonged to the Russians. In the snow and freezing weather, they had held the Germans and, in places, had even driven them back. But by spring 1943, a bruised but still unbeaten Nazi army prepared for another series of war-winning attacks. While pressure was kept on Moscow and Leningrad, the real German effort would be in the south.were a number of good reasons for the shift. The open steppes and dry plains of southern Russia were more conducive to the Blitzkrieg and massive pincher movements that had served the Wehrmacht well in 1941. The area was much less well fortified and more thinly populated. So southern Russia offered a much better opportunity to break through or capture major elements of the resurrected Soviet armed forces. But perhaps the most compelling reason for the move against southern Russia was that the Reich desperately needed the oil that was on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains.vast attacks were planned. One was to sweep south and grab the oil. The other was to move east and capture the most important city on the Volga River. The Volga was the key route for the Russian north and south transport. It also had to have appealed to Hitler that to control the vital Russian supply line of the Volga River, the city Stalin had named for himself, Stalingrad, had to be occupied.original plan to capture Stalingrad was not a mistake. The city was the key to controlling the southern Volga River. It was also one of Russia’s premier weapons manufacturing centers. Perhaps even more than this was the propaganda value of capturing the former Tsaritsyn, named now after the Soviet dictator and Hitler’s greatest nemesis, Stalin. Even the strategic plan started well. Army Group A, under Paul von Kleist, broke through line after line of Russian defenders, crossing Russian defense lines set up on river after river. Army Group B, commanded by Hitler’s favorite general, Friedrich von Paulus, also punched its way through several Russian armies until, by August 23, 1942, the two panzer armies in it had reached the banks of the Volga and were approaching their objective, the city of Stalingrad.’s at this point that a series of mistakes doomed half a million German soldiers and changed the momentum of World War II irrevocably. All of these mistakes were made worse by Hitler’s choice of commander for the Sixth Panzer Army, von Paulus. The general had been chosen not because of his battlefield experience but because he got along with the testy Adolf Hitler. And in Nazi Germany that qualified you for anything, even command of one of the few elite panzer armies. In 1941, Friedrich von Paulus had shown himself to be an excellent administrator and planner. He was the chief architect of Operation Barbarossa and was known for his skill at staff work. The problem was that von Paulus as a field commander… well, he was a very good staff officer. He did a competent but unimaginative job and obeyed orders, Hitler’s orders, to the letter.Army Group B approached Stalingrad, Hitler personally ordered half of its armored strength, Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army, to hurry south and join up with Army Group A. It was to assist in the final lunge for the Caucasian oil fields. The decision was a mistake that cost both army groups the use of that armored formation for weeks while it changed direction and moved south. Still, even with his Sixth Panzer Army alone, von Paulus began to successfully attack Stalingrad.city of Stalingrad in 1942 had grown in a long strip along the Volga River, ten miles long and from a few to five or six miles deep. Most of the large buildings and factories were located near the river. Even at half strength, the power of a panzer division was great, and soon the Sixth Panzer was grinding into the city from north, west, and south. To the east was the Volga River, and herein was a continuing mistake the unimaginative von Paulus made. He never attempted to cross the Volga, and so he was never able to completely surround or cut off Stalingrad.Volga was able to act as the route for reinforcement and supply throughout the battle for the city. By never even attempting to cross the Volga, the Germans provided the city’s defenders with a safe base from which hundreds of thousands of reinforcements were shuttled into the city. The east bank also provided a safe location for masses of artillery, which later constantly punished the Germans. Such an attack certainly was possible, especially early in the battle for the city, and was a much better use of the highly mobile armored units in a panzer army than was house-to-house urban warfare. So von Paulus failed to surround a city he was attacking and left the enemy a secure and unmolested base just a few hundred very wet yards away from it.September on, the Germans drove the Russian defenders back against the Volga. By December, the defenders no longer could maintain a continuous line. Only pockets of fierce resistance remained. But those pockets were constantly reinforced. In one such pocket was the now-famous Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory. The plant had been converted to manufacturing T34 tanks and continued in production even when completed tanks, often showing mostly unpainted metal, would roll off the line, be armed, manned, and find themselves in combat as they pulled out of the factory’s doors.the Germans would occupy a part of the city after hand-to-hand fighting during the day and then would have to pull back to their bases for supply. The Russians would reoccupy the ruined buildings that night. The next day, the Nazis would have to retake the same building again. Russian soldiers, many ill trained, were poured into Stalingrad by the tens of thousands and died in equally great numbers. The sewers under the city also became the scene of a surreal parallel battle where the dead and wounded simply disappeared into the muck. By the time cold weather arrived, the Sixth Army controlled nine-tenths of the city. Their own casualties had been high, but the Russians’ casualty numbers were much higher. It was von Paulus’ stated hope that he was punishing the Russian Sixty-second Army so badly they soon would have to give up the city. He was wrong. On November 8, Luftflotte 4, a good portion of the Sixth Army’s bombers, had to be withdrawn. They were needed in North Africa. Just as the Russians had been forced into a strip less than a thousand yards deep, the German pressure began to ease.November 19, everything changed. For months Marshal Zhukov had been accumulating fresh Russian armies and just waiting until winter and enough troops arrived. Now he had both. The Battle of Stalingrad itself had taken the efforts of the entire Sixth Panzer Army. With the Fourth Panzer Army gone, von Paulus had to use whatever else he had at hand to defend the flanks of the salient that ended in Stalingrad. The flanks north and south of the city were held only by thinly spread Romanian divisions and backed up by virtually nothing. These underequipped and often reluctant Romanians could see and hear the buildup as two tank armies and eighteen infantry divisions prepared to attack in just the north. They begged for reinforcements, but von Paulus had no one to send and was focused on completing his conquest of the city. At sunrise on the nineteenth, Russian Operation Uranus began when overwhelming numbers of Soviet tanks and infantry easily shattered the Romanian divisions north of Stalingrad. Two days later in the south, the Romanian IV Corps received the same treatment. The Romanians who were not killed or captured were forced into Stalingrad. Within days, both attacking Soviet armies had met and closed the trap. This time it was the Germans who were encircled. More than a quarter of a million men in the Sixth Panzer Army and allied formations were trapped in Stalingrad.German high command wanted to order an immediate breakout. But a month earlier Hitler had told a crowd of thousands in the Berlin Sports Palace that the German army would never withdraw from Stalingrad. He would not take back his promise. He instead met with Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe. Goering promised that his flyers would be able to deliver 750 tons of supplies per day into the city. Unfortunately, the reality was far different. To haul 750 tons, the Luftwaffe needed every transport and most of the bombers on the eastern front to fly four supply missions each day. The trouble was there was not enough daylight for four missions, or often even two. Nor was there ever enough aircraft available. The most tonnage that was ever actually flown into the trapped army, in one day, was 289 tons on December 19. The average, though, was only ninety-four tons per day, or an eighth of the amount needed. Each day, the trapped soldiers had less ammunition and less to eat. By the end of the airlift, in January 1943, the Luftwaffe had lost almost 500 aircraft. One out of every two planes had been shot down or crashed trying to fulfill Goering’s promise. But Hitler himself ensured that the pilots’ efforts were all in vain.they had joined up, the Russian armies formed a defensive position facing both Stalingrad and the Germans outside to the west. They formed lines of circumvallation, whose design would have looked familiar to Caesar’s legionnaires at Alesia. Unfortunately for the trapped Sixth Army and von Paulus, this worked just as well for Zhukov as it had for Caesar. Arguably the best commander the Germans had was sent to deal with the problem of saving the Sixth Panzer Army. This was Erich von Manstein. He mounted a counterattack using Hoth’s Fourth Panzer. It penetrated to within thirty-four miles of Stalingrad against determined Russian opposition. Again, the German high command asked for permission for the Sixth Panzer Army to break out and join up. Again, Hitler refused, and von Paulus, knowing that this decision likely doomed his army, obeyed. Facing overwhelming numbers of Russian tanks, Hoth eventually had to withdraw. A few weeks later, the Soviets launched an offensive named Winter Storm. This attack almost trapped all of Army Group South and forced a general withdrawal of more than 100 miles. The Sixth Army in Stalingrad was now separated by almost 150 miles from the new German defensive line.flights, having to cross even more unfriendly territory, became less frequent and suffered higher losses. German soldiers on the lines in Stalingrad literally starved when they did not die of exposure first. Ammunition was rationed and medical supplies virtually gone. Then the airstrip was overrun, and the last German plane to land took off again carrying wounded and a few officers on January 23.the middle of January, the Sixth Army became a formation that was broken into pockets. The Russians then approached von Paulus with an offer. If he surrendered, his men would be treated well, receive medical help, and be guaranteed repatriation after the war ended. Seeing no chance of escape or victory, von Paulus asked Hitler for permission to surrender. This was Hitler’s reply:is forbidden. 6 Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution towards the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world.von Paulus obeyed and turned down Zhukov’s offer. On January 30, having doomed the army and its commander once more, Hitler promoted von Paulus to field marshal. The Führer then informed the hapless commander that no German field marshal had ever surrendered. Finally, the former staff officer acted on his own. Though by this point the only action left to him was to surrender. He did this, including the men defending his pocket, the next day. Two-thirds of the Germans trapped in Stalingrad had died. The remaining 91,000 had all surrendered by February 2. Of those men, less than 5,000 ever returned alive to Germany, most many years after the war had ended.’s mishandling of the Battle of Stalingrad, from appointing a personal favorite but untested commander to twice refusing to allow the army to save itself, cost Germany half a million soldiers. Half a million veteran soldiers would have made France impregnable to an Allied landing or delayed the Russian advance on Berlin for months. The men of the Sixth Panzer Army would be desperately needed as the Soviet war machine pushed west, but they were all lost because of Adolf Hitler’s mistakes.

. TOO LITTLE, TOO LATEstrategy of pinching off a salient, or bulge, created by the last surge of the Soviet army’s central front’s winter offensive was not a bad one. Some action that would punish and slow the relentless advance of the Soviet army was a necessity. Since Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht had been reacting to the Russian army, and they knew that their first priority had to be to get the initiative back. Russian tank production was beginning to peak at so many tanks per month that that German high command did not believe the figures. Worse yet, German production had hit a snag. They had stopped some of the production of their work-horse panzer IVs in favor of building the Panther and Tiger models. A problem was neither of those tanks could be produced in numbers sufficient to replace the Mark IVs lost. In the month that the German tank industry changed over to producing the two new and much more powerful tanks, only twenty-five Tigers were manufactured. The Panthers also continued to have such severe reliability problems that, as Heinz Guderian bluntly noted in his memoir Panzer Leader, they were “simply not ready for the front yet.” But Hitler, seeing the war effort crumbling on every side, put inordinate faith in his new “super weapons,” among these the Panther and Tiger tanks and the ME262 jet fighter/bomber.were really only two choices for the German army. Many of the most experienced field commanders, including Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian, master of the Blitzkrieg, wanted to continue as they were. This was to use the superior tactics and skills of the German forces by forming mobile reserves that responded to and destroyed every Soviet army penetration. If they could crush enough tanks and their supporting infantry, both the numbers and the skill level of their opponents would fall. Just as in World War I, when the Russian soldiers felt they were being wasted, they revolted.chief of staff, General Zeitler, had a more ambitious plan. He wanted to return to the sweeping encirclement of 1941. His idea was to draw the Russian army in and destroy them in one large battle. This was, not surprising, a form of the decisive battle fallacy found all through history. He felt that he had found the ideal location for such a confrontation. The Russians had pushed forward into the German position and formed a deep bulge located in almost the center of all of the German positions. On one flank of the penetration, the Wehrmacht held the city of Orel, and on the other, Kharkov. Both cities were major rail centers and so ideal locations for the buildup of forces needed to pinch off the salient. The German armies would encourage the Soviets to place, in or near Kursk, as many tanks and soldiers as possible. Then they would pinch it off by converging on Kursk in the center, trapping so many Russians that their offensive capability would be crippled. This plan is shown on the map (see page 320). The reality would have much shorter lines for the German advances: barely showing in the north and half as long in the south.wanted a decisive victory, and one at Kursk both would be dramatic and had a better chance of knocking Russia out of the war. So on May 4, 1943, Hitler decided on Zeitler’s plan, dubbed Operation Citadel, and ordered it be implemented. At this point, it became his plan and so it was sacrosanct and unchangeable by anyone else. The war was going badly on all fronts. Hitler had become, at best, unstable and tended to irrational screaming fits or worse. Just telling him what he did not want to hear was risky. He was still the absolute dictator of the Reich.problems appeared immediately. The first was that the Russians were already preparing a defense in depth of the salient. Line after defensive line was being prepared with antitank guns, machine guns, and fortifications. The Russian tanks, which were the target of the exercise, were being placed farther back. This meant that before there could be Blitzkrieg, the German panzers would have to slug through miles of fixed defenses. Experienced panzer general von Mellenthin saw the aerial photos of those defenses and correctly described the attack as being a “Totenritt,” a death ride. Field Marshal Guderian tried to get Hitler to cancel the attack. According to Guderian, the Führer admitted that thinking about the plan made his stomach turn, but he refused to cancel it. Hitler wanted a decisive victory that would change the war and give him the victory he thought he had in 1941.second problem was there simply were not enough of the new Tiger tanks to guarantee a victory. The T-34 and KV-1 Russian tanks had sloped and thick frontal armor. The 75mm cannon on the Mark IVs had difficulty penetrating it. The 88mm gun on the Panthers and the Tigers cut through the Russian sloped armor and were effective at twice the range of the guns on the Soviet tanks. Hitler counted on his secret weapon tanks to counterbalance the far superior numbers of Soviet armor. But there were far fewer than 100 Tigers ready on May 4, when the plan was agreed to. Optimistically, assuming that the incredibly slow production of the new tanks would accelerate given time, Hitler solved this problem by delaying the attack until July 4.delay ignored two realities. To break through and encircle the Russians west of Kursk, the panzers had to fight through the defenses being prepared. The two-month delay benefited both sides, but the Russians more. Waiting for enough Tigers meant allowing two more months of Russian construction on the defenses. The delay also gave the Soviets two more months of tank and assault gun production. According to Jane’s World Armoured Fighting Vehicles, the Soviets were manufacturing almost 2,000 tanks and a few hundred assault guns each month in 1943. This compared with no more than 1,000 a month for the Germans, with only a small percentage of those being the Tiger. So the longer the battle was delayed, the greater the German inferiority in the number of tanks grew. There were also an estimated 44,000 tanks the Americans and British built in 1943. Time was not on the Nazis’ side, but still Hitler ordered a delay of two months. It is no wonder that thinking about the battle for Kursk upset Hitler’s stomach.to make sure things went badly, there was also a Russian spy network, code name Lucy, that extended all the way up into the German high command. It made sure Stalin was apprised of the plan and any changes right up to and during the battle itself. It also allowed Stalin and Zhukov to know the numbers and plans for Citadel. It is significant that, knowing all this, they actually waited for the German Kursk offensive and even held out large formations from that battle for counterattacks once it failed. It seemed everyone but Hitler knew his offensive was doomed to failure. But Hitler was the only one who could stop it.midnight on July 4, two hours before Operation Citadel’s scheduled jump-off time, a massive Soviet barrage hit the German assembly areas on both flanks. This put every Wehrmacht soldier on notice of what their commanders already knew. There would be no surprise for the long-planned and -prepared attack. Within the Kursk bulge, the Russians had placed 20,000 artillery pieces, many of them antitank guns grouped by the dozens and protected by earth and concrete defenses. Inside or near the salient were 3,600 tanks, 2,400 aircraft, and 1.3 million soldiers. Every square mile of the bulge had been saturated with more than 5,000 land mines evenly split between personnel and antitank. Civilians drafted from the nearby cities had dug thousands of miles of trenches and ditches deep enough to slow or trap a tank.two German attacks consisted of 10,000 guns, 2,700 tanks, 2,000 airplanes, and 900,000 soldiers. These men all came from the best-equipped and most-experienced veteran divisions left to the Wehrmacht. Even with the loss of surprise and knowing about the defense they faced, the sheer size of the attack force gave the German commanders some degree of optimism. General Mellenthin stated, “No offensive was ever prepared as carefully as this one.”two prongs of the German attack took some time to recover from the disruption caused by the surprise Soviet barrage. At 4:30 AM, rather than 2 AM as scheduled, both armies began their attack. At first the Germans, at high price, managed to break through the defenses. But it was slow going, with losses mounting. In the north the Ninth Army was able to push forward only six miles at the cost of two-thirds of its tanks. The Ninth’s losses after six days were 25,000 men and 200 tanks. In the south, the Fourth Panzer had more men and tanks and was comparatively more successful. But by July 12, the only way to continue their attack had been by committing all of the German reserves to it. By that day, the southern attack had lost half its tanks, and to continue attacking, it gathered the 600 tanks that remained into a single force.Zhukov realized that the northern penetration had been stopped and that the Germans were just about played out. He released his reserve, the Fifth Guard Tank Army, in an attack on the massed German tanks, which were still spearheading the Fourth Army’s attack. The two tank forces met about fifty miles from Kursk. The day was foggy and the tanks had intermingled by the time the Fourth Panzer was aware of the 1,500 Russian tanks. A wild melee followed, with some tanks fighting literally barrel to barrel. The Germans lost more than 300 tanks, and by nightfall, the Fifth Guard Tank Army was torn and in ruins. But those German tank losses made it impossible for the offensive to continue. The Battle of Kursk was over.days, Russian offensives on both sides of the Kursk bulge began. These really did not stop until Berlin. By betting it all on a “decisive battle” that even he must have realized his army could not win, Hitler completely ceded the initiative to Russia for the rest of the war. Germany was never again able to make up for the tanks and trained crews lost attacking Kursk. Had the limited counterattack plan, which was the alternative, been chosen, the Wehrmacht might have retained enough tanks and planes to slow or stop the Soviet army. Without those lost tanks, even the most valiant and brilliant tactics could do no more than cause local delays. The Battle of Kursk was a mistake that sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany and guaranteed the Soviets control of eastern Europe.

. OPINION OVER REALITYRommel knew that he had to stop the Allies on the beach when they invaded France. This was mandated simply by the dominant air superiority the British and Americans had. The field marshal had seen, in North Africa, what damage the aircraft could do to any column of troops or formation of tanks. If the Allied army got a foothold on the French coast, they might well be able to reinforce it quicker and in greater numbers using ships from Britain than he could transport over what remained of the French highways and railroads. History is to show that he was correct. Part of Rommel’s reaction to this reality was to pour money and labor down the drain of the West Wall. His other efforts were spent attempting to ensure that there would be enough men, tanks, and artillery near where the Allies landed to throw them back into the sea.Rommel’s opinion was not shared by everyone. Having seen the damage ships’ guns could do at Salerno, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt wanted to let the Allies land and then chew them apart on a line that was just out of the range of the naval weapons. Hitler, as always, did not want to give up an inch of French soil and pushed to make the beach defense of the West Wall so strong that the landing craft never made it to shore. But he also encouraged the competing views of both of his field marshals.chart of the actual command situation in France in 1944 would resemble a plate of spaghetti, with lines of command and responsibility that bore little resemblance to those on the charts on the walls of the high command in Berlin. The high command (OKW) ran the war in the west, but Hitler personally could, and often did, override their decisions. These changes could be quite painful for the staff and OKW generals: By this time, the Führer was disposed to screaming fits and loud lectures. Just telling Hitler something he did not want to hear could be hazardous to your career; and explaining why any order or demand he made was wrong could have fatal consequences. Often these consequences involved a long train ride to the Eastern Front.Field Marshal Wilhelm von Keitel was in overall command of France, he did not have control of the Third Air Fleet, which Goering held tightly, or Navy Group West. The navy group had few ships, but it did control most of the heavy guns built into the West Wall. So the man in charge of defending France was not in control of much of his shore artillery and none of the aircraft in the theater. The ground forces in France and the Low Countries were commanded by von Rundstedt. He controlled, when his orders were not countermanded by Hitler, fifty-eight divisions, including seven panzer divisions. Also in France were almost totally independent panzer units controlled by the SS. The SS were responsible directly to only Hitler or their own headquarters in Berlin.to meet the Allied landing as it moved inland, von Rundstedt located a strong reserve force, including most of the panzers available, near Paris. Erwin Rommel felt that with Allied air superiority, any unit not close to the front would be unable to get there until it was too late to matter. So he lobbied to have the best units, including most of the tanks, stationed near the beach. He even went over his commanding officer’s head, talking Hitler into giving him control of all seven of the panzer divisions in France. Needless to say, Field Marshal von Rundstedt was upset to be overruled and went himself to the Führer. So Hitler reversed himself and gave control of the panzers back to von Rundstedt. But both men continued to bicker, and eventually Hitler made a compromise by assigning three of the panzer divisions to Rommel and four to von Rundstedt for the OKW reserve. This was a mistake since now neither field marshal had a large enough force to be decisive.the scenario for the Germans even more was the question of where the Allied landing would be. For a range of reasons, which included excellent deceptions in England to the opinion that the V1 and V2 rockets were so effective that they had to be the Allies’ first target, Hitler and many of his generals were sure the real landing would be at the Pas-de-Calais. It also sat across the narrowest part of the Channel. There was even a lot of chatter and messages from Nazi spies who had turned into double agents that the landing at Normandy was really a diversion and no more than a large raid. Every effort was made to reinforce the defenses based on this mistaken assumption.of the complicated command structure, the rivalry between the German field marshals, and the expectations of Hitler, when 75,000 British, Canadian, French, and American troops landed on four beaches, only the three panzer divisions under Rommel reacted. And he was proven correct about one thing. Even the nearby panzers had problems moving short distances by day due to attacks by the Allied airplanes. And the four panzer divisions commanded by von Rundstedt? They sat and waited. Not just for Hitler to wake up in the morning and approve an order to move, but for Hitler to wake up and realize Normandy was the real landing. Then when the tanks of OKW reserve finally began to move toward the fighting, they soon found out just how much Rommel had been correct. Harassment by the Allied air forces slowed or simply prevented them from moving at all during daylight. More than half the German panzers took no part in the fighting during the first and most vulnerable days of the landing.made the mistake of splitting the best weapon Germany had to meet the Allied invasion with: its armored units. By doing so, he ensured they could not all join in a truly decisive counterattack. Then because of Hitler’s mercurial nature and his holding on to the belief that the real Allied invasion was still going to be at Pas-de-Calais, there was a delay in committing more than half of his panzer divisions until it was too late. By the time they arrived, the landings were a success, and Germany’s defeat in France almost assured.D-Day in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the first wave that landed on Juno Beach suffered 50 percent casualties. On Utah Beach, things were just as bad. The assault went so badly on Omaha Beach that General Omar Bradley almost pulled the troops back off when they bogged down with massive casualties only a few yards onto the sand of the beach. At any one of these beaches, the addition of a panzer division to the initial defense might well have wiped out or driven off the landing. If each beach had one additional division, the entire invasion would have been in shambles. With only two beachheads left, the flanks of both would have been open to the very type of attack the panzers excelled at. In addition, if the fourth reserve panzer division had been in the area where the paratroopers landed, this would have meant their total destruction.intense naval bombardment and massive air support, the Allied armies might well have gained and expanded their five D-Day beachheads. If Eisenhower had been willing to endure the casualties, there would have been enough men waiting offshore to reinforce what beaches were held, even in the face of momentous losses. D-Day most likely still would have succeeded, but only at a terrible cost in lives. The loss might have been so great that the breakout and conquest of France might well have been delayed by weeks or longer. So by personality, purposely muddled command, and a decision made as a compromise, Hitler himself made the key mistakes that guaranteed the success of the Normandy D-Day landing.

. THE HIGH PRICE OF RACISMcan talk about what battlefield mistakes Germany and Japan made that lost those nations World War II. Taking an overall strategic view, both nations were basically overwhelmed. The Japanese lost because they simply could not compete with the industrial strength of the United States. No matter how valiantly Japan fought, going it alone against a nation that was launching one fleet carrier and at least another jeep carrier each month, they were going to lose. The Germans not only shared being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of manufacturing that poured out of the United States, Britain, and Russia but also were swamped by the manpower of their opponents. If it weren’t for a fundamental mistake—a tragic flaw, more accurately—by both of the Axis powers, this would not have been the case.problem was the irrational and self-destructive racism that was so heartily embraced by both nations. Racism first cost Germany much at home. Hitler and the Nazis did not need to bash the Jews to get elected in 1933. The fear of the communists and economic collapse gave them that victory. But Hitler and his henchmen were so sold on their Aryan superiority that they overlooked what they denied Germany by banishing or killing off that nation’s Jews. The group that contributed a higher percentage of volunteer soldiers than any other in World War I was the German Jews. Their patriotism was widely recognized during that war. In science and manufacturing, they had always contributed far beyond their numbers. Many of the world’s top scientists were German Jews. Almost all eventually fled the country. Among those who fled to the United States was Albert Einstein. Out of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, if the same percentage had instead been left alone and served in the Wehrmacht in World War II, this would have added at least ten more divisions of highly educated soldiers. Ten more divisions might have taken Moscow.portrays the cost of Aryan racism more than footage of Nazi units “liberating” towns in Ukraine. The Soviet Union had conquered Ukraine. It was never part of Russia culturally or politically, and it is adamantly not today. Ukraine had actually been part of Germany itself for much of 1918, having been sold out by the Bolsheviks as part of their peace agreement with the kaiser. When Germany collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation with a population equal to that of Poland. Eventually, through betrayal, Ukraine was absorbed by the Soviet Union. Always too independent and resistant to communism, Ukraine was punished by Stalin in every way he could manage. In the years before the second war, 9 million Ukrainians were killed by Stalin either directly or by consciously created famines. So when the Germans arrived, they were treated like lost brothers and liberators. Wehrmacht officers helped open churches and were feasted and flirted by the local population. These millions of people were ready to work for and fight for Germany. Within weeks, the SS began implementing secret orders for occupied Slavic territories. The order included the elimination of all Jews, leaders, priests, teachers, and military officers. The stated eventual goal of the SS plan was to depopulate large parts of Ukraine and enslave the survivors. The then-empty Ukraine was to be settled by German overlords.supportive Ukrainian population could have provided up to a million additional soldiers to fight against Russia. This would have replaced all the losses taken at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 to 1943. But because of the Aryan myth and the sheer sadism of the SS, three months after the Germans were welcomed in Ukraine, its forests were full of guerrillas. Instead of tying up tens of thousands of soldiers with occupation duties, Ukraine should have provided hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting alongside the Germans. The story was the same for the Balts, the White Russians, the Tartar, the Mongolian, and even the German Balts. They were a ready source of support and recruits for the manpower-poor German army, but the Nazi leadership could not get past their extreme racism and wasted this great potential asset. The final result was that as the formerly hated Soviets recaptured Ukraine and its neighbors, the surviving men often volunteered to join the ranks of the Red Army. German racism turned a literal army of peoples that hated the communists into their willing recruits.did not have the monopoly on racism in the 1940s. The Americans put tens of thousands of Japanese Americans into camps for no more reason than they looked Japanese. The heroic combat record of the Nisei division in Italy shows the fallacy of that action. There was also the treatment by the army of black soldiers. Many were allocated to noncombat roles and denied promotion on no other basis than their skin color. It wasn’t until twenty years after the end of World War II that the last Jim Crow laws disappeared. But anything any of the Allies did paled compared to the sheer barbarism of the Japanese toward other Asian peoples and everyone else during the war.places such as Indochina and the Philippines, it had not been that long since British, French, and American troops had been battling with local independence movements. One of the reasons the Thompson machine gun was developed was to knock down machete-swinging Philippine rebels who were impervious to pain because of the druglike effects of the plants they chewed. Certainly as soon as the Japanese left, all of Vietnam went right back to trying to throw out the French. Each of these countries had millions who would and did embrace a pan-Asian philosophy. But the Japanese soldiers were indoctrinated to treat everyone not Japanese as inferior and not really human. This attitude was so pervasive that all over Asia it was rare to see any non-Japanese assisting them in combat. This contrasts with the tens of thousands of Indian and Malaysian troops that joined with the British to repel the Japanese. In almost every country where Japanese had been welcomed for throwing out the European colonial master, within days, powerful resistance movements had sprung up.Japanese had a habit of shooting or beheading anyone who annoyed them, even their own soldiers, without as much as a hearing. This behavior reflected the barbarism that permeated all of their behavior. Officers treated their men with disdain, and the common soldiers passed on that hate and brutality with enthusiasm. The Japanese made it clear to all other Asians that they were held in contempt and were unworthy of respect. Americans rarely remember that 80 percent of those who died on the Bataan Death March were Philippine. The Philippine people never forgot, though. By actually acting like they promised to with their co-prosperity sphere, Japan might have been able to recruit literally millions of new soldiers. They could have much more effectively tapped the resources of Indochina and might even have had enough soldiers to complete the conquest of China. The entire war in China and the Pacific would have been far different and an Allied victory far from assured.mistake and cost of racism were obvious even at the time. But like the Confederacy being asked to recruit former slaves as soldiers, the Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germans found that acting against their prejudices was inconceivable. They had every reason, and hard necessity, to treat potential allied peoples well and always failed to do so. Simple racism, more than any strategic blunder, doomed the fascists.

. STUCK TO A BAD BARGAINthe time of the Yalta conference, World War II in Europe was almost over. By February 1945, the Germans’ last gasp, the surprise attack at Ardennes, had failed. There was no further chance of a serious German counterattack. The three leaders who met there, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, knew this. Germany had no more left, and Japan, while still dangerous defending their islands, had no offensive strength left. The discussions and agreements were more about the shape of post-war Europe than about the ongoing war. There were actually two major areas of agreement at Yalta. One was to confirm the formation of the United Nations and its structure. The other laid out who would occupy what parts of Germany and the fate of the rest of occupied Europe.was to be clearly under the Soviet thumb. Russia had not done well against invasions coming out of Poland since the Red Army almost lost the 1920-1921 Polish-Soviet War. They were taking no chances of that happening again, even if it meant occupying Poland forever. There were details, but Stalin publicly agreed that most of eastern Europe would get elected governments within a year or so. History has shown the Soviet dictator had no intention of keeping his word on any free elections, but the United States wanted his help if it became necessary to invade the Japanese home islands, so they accepted this. Any invasion of the homelands was going to be vicious and generate a lot of casualties. A million or so hardy Russian soldiers joining in could make the conquest a lot easier. Also there were Japanese soldiers in Asia—mostly in China, Korea, and Mongolia—who needed pressure kept on them.February and late April, the Allied armies pushed into the heart of Germany. By late April, the question was more one of what areas would be occupied rather than of defeating those remnants of the Wehrmacht that were still fighting. There was also concern about rumors of a guerrilla army forming in the south German mountains. These turned out to be false, but it was a worrisome possibility. The big question was, where would Eisenhower push? To the frustration of Patton and other commanders, the decision was made to turn away from Berlin and to actually reverse any penetrations into eastern Europe. This was ordered even as it became more apparent that Stalin had no intention of granting any real elections or giving up one ounce of control in any part of the nations Russia occupied. Word came down from Roosevelt, and the U.S. Army was effectively ordered to concede eastern Europe to the Soviets. The mistake here was not agreeing to the terms at Yalta. The mistake was not being concerned about a final guerrilla retreat in the mountains that never existed. The Americans’ real mistake was adhering to their parts of the treaty when it was already apparent the communists had no intention of honoring any of it.the U.S. president and army been prescient enough to foresee the Cold War, as Churchill did, would Eisenhower have ordered a continued push? His divisions could have gotten to Berlin first, considering how resistance had collapsed. It would have been possible for the highly mobile American mechanized divisions to reach Austria, Berlin, Albania, Bulgaria, and maybe Czechoslovakia. Would, as Patton expected, or maybe hoped, this have resulted in a shooting war between the former allies? It was a war that neither side would have been guaranteed to win. But Russia was a nation as tired of war as the others.is no way to know what the world might have looked like had Roosevelt and then Truman risked war and stood up to Stalin. What America did instead was stick to the terms of a treaty that had become meaningless. This mistake resulted in tens of millions of eastern Europeans being condemned to fifty years of communist repression.

. MISQUOTEDdiplomat’s tool is words, and it is reasonable to assume someone who has risen to be the top diplomat for the United States means what he says. So when Joseph Stalin and Kim Il-sung invaded South Korea, they were shocked and honestly amazed at the vehement reaction from the United Nations (UN) and the United States. They had every right to be, since effectively they had been given permission to attack by the U.S. secretary of state.of State Dean Acheson, on January 12, 1950, made a speech to the National Press Club. This was a policy speech and not casual remarks. It seemed likely that the speech was intended to act as a warning to the now-antagonistic communist Russia, China, and their satellites. In this speech, Acheson described the American post-World War II sphere of influence as it extended all over the world. The problem came when he described the U.S. interest in the Pacific and mentioned Japan, but not Korea. Imagine Kim Il-sung’s joy when he heard that coveted South Korea was not protected by the United States.problem of mixed signals on Korea was also complicated by politics. President Truman was a Democrat, and the Congress was controlled by the Republican Party. And the Republicans did not like many of Truman’s foreign policies. As a result, when Truman requested $60 million in aid for South Korea, Congress refused to pass it. Then a bill that would finance 500 advisers and training personnel to assist in equipping the South Korean army with modern weapons was defeated in the House by the close vote of 193 to 192. Those in power in Moscow and Pyongyang saw a clear message. America was abandoning South Korea.action taken by Truman on April 25, 1950, might have cleared up the matter and put the North Koreans on notice. This was National Security Directive 68, which committed American resources to counter any communist aggression “anywhere in Asia.” It was a strong and clear statement and could have been an equally clear warning. The problem was national security directives are classified top secret.public statement by John Foster Dulles, Truman’s special envoy to Asia, likely was intended to put the communists on notice. Unfortunately, he worded his statement in typical diplomatic terms, obscuring the message. The closest Dulles came to a definitive statement was in his speech to the South Korean Assembly. He said that America was “faithful to the cause of human freedom and loyal to those everywhere who honorably support it.” Not exactly fighting words to warn off an aggressor.Korean troops poured over the thirty-eighth parallel on June 17, 1950. The poorly armed and disorganized South Korean army was incapable of serious resistance. The few American units in Korea were quickly forced to retreat south. Then the world responded to the invasion.all they had heard, it was likely that both Stalin and Kim Il-sung found the adamant reaction by the United States a shock. Had the Soviet Union or China actually expected a military response from Truman, it is likely that they would have not allowed Kim Il-sung to attack. Certainly they would not have let the invasion happen while they were boycotting the Security Council. Because the Russians were not attending the UN Security Council meetings, the council was able to pass a resolution calling for strong military force to support and restore South Korea. Before the conflict ended, 50,000 UN soldiers, mostly Americans, were killed along with many times that number of North Koreans and then Chinese. It was a high price to pay for what was effectively just sloppy language.

. EGO OVER WISDOMmistake that changed the Korean War and cost more than 10,000 American lives was caused by ego. Not just the ego of one man, though there was a man whose ego was as enormous as his reputation. That man was General Douglas MacArthur. It also involved a bad attack of victory disease by the chief of staff and a good bit of racial prejudice. The problems that resulted from this mistake are still in the news.all began because the North Korean Army (NKA) attacked South Korea. (The diplomatic mistakes that caused this are discussed on pages 335-337.) In the first few weeks after their surprise attack, the NKA forced the few South Korean and American divisions into a small area in a southern corner of the Korean peninsula that became known as the Pusan Perimeter. Then, on September 5, in a bold move, MacArthur landed 70,000 men at Inchon. The successful landing was above and behind the bulk of the North Korean Army. Within days, the Americans had taken back Seoul and fought their way across Korea. At the same time, United Nations forces in the Pusan Perimeter broke out and swept north. Cut off from retreat, not to mention food, ammunition, and fuel, while pressed from two sides, the NKA simply collapsed.Korea was a communist country, and it was known that it got support from Red Premier Mao’s China. When it was apparent that there were no longer substantial North Korean forces left to even slow MacArthur should he push above the old border at the thirty-eighth parallel, the Chinese asked the Indian ambassador to notify Washington that it would be considered an unacceptable threat to the People’s Republic of China for North Korea to be occupied. This was tantamount to a public promise to attack. Unfortunately, the CIA designated the ambassador as an unreliable source and ignored China’s message.were no aircraft overflying China and Manchuria. MacArthur and his staff had been in the habit of depending on the radio intelligence of the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) to keep them informed about the Chinese. But the signal intelligence agency was unable to break the Chinese codes and were reluctant to admit so. What intelligence did come in, before MacArthur’s troops continued north, came from the CIA. Unfortunately, what they provided was more analysis that conformed to their own general beliefs instead of real intelligence. By their own later analysis of their efforts in 1950, they reported, “While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950.”while the Chinese felt that they had publicly warned the United States to stop, no one got the message. Regardless, the Chinese communists had put the world on notice, and not responding strongly would have been a terrible loss of face for Mao’s relatively new government. Former admiral and the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Kichasaburo Nakamura, warned the Truman government that China would be required to react strongly if MacArthur continued, but again, the message was ignored. Nor would such a warning have been welcomed. Buoyed by his Inchon victory, MacArthur’s attitude might be characterized as: They wouldn’t dare., urged by the South Korean leader Syngman Rhee, launched his two corps north, sending the Ten Corps up along the southern coast and the Eight Corps to land at a port 100 miles north of the thirty-eighth parallel. Both forces then advanced against little resistance. The operations could be best characterized as a cleanup. As both corps approached the Chinese border, they began to capture first individual and then entire Chinese units. Still everyone on the U.S. side refused to believe the Chinese would attack.CIA had information that they simply refused to believe as of October 13. It correctly placed 498,000 Chinese combat troops and 370,000 additional security and support troops on the Korean border. Daily summary reports were issued by the CIA. Their report for October 13 said that “China had no intention of entering the war in any large-scale fashion.” The three-quarters of a million soldiers were explained as being on the border within miles of the invading UN forces “to protect the hydroelectric plants along the Yalu River that provide power to the Manchurian industrial area.”November 24, the CIA stated that even though they had identified twelve Chinese divisions inside Korea and that China did have the capability for a large-scale offensive, they did not appear to be preparing to launch one. Before this CIA analysis could reach MacArthur’s headquarters, his two corps were under attack by 300,000 Chinese. The Eighth Army took 4,000 casualties as it made a fighting retreat and the Tenth Corps First Marine Division was surrounded and survived only by making one of the most heroic fighting withdrawals in history.Chinese had told everyone they were going to attack. Then they stated that, having done so, they had to attack if MacArthur’s offensive continued. Next they left a half million men along the border for weeks. Then the Chinese sent smaller units into Korea that were seen, and some Chinese soldiers were captured by the advancing American forces. And still no one of authority from MacArthur to the CIA analysts believed that, even after they had repeatedly said they would, the Chinese would actually attack. The cost of this arrogance was two more years of war, tens of thousands of UN casualties, and perhaps a million Korean dead. There is still no peace treaty between North and South Korea.

. DIRTY TRICKat 3M in Minnesota were trying to make a better formula for synthetic rubber. The rubber shortages of World War II had made such research important even into the 1950s. As sometimes happens, one of the lab assistants spilled an ounce or so of one of the many compounds onto the tennis shoe of scientist Patsy Sherman. Trying to redeem himself, the lab assistant worked hard to remove the substance from the shoe. Nothing worked, not soap, alcohol, or water. In fact the stained area repelled everything he tried. Sherman and another researcher, Sam Smith, began working with the spilled substance. Between them, they refined the chemical and, in 1956, 3M began selling Scotchgard.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1114