The Second World War

by Antony Beevor

  IMT International Military Tribunal, Trial of of the Major German War Criminals, Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, London, 1946

  IWM Imperial War Museum sound archive, London

  JJG Journal of Joan Gibbons, unpublished diary of the assistant to Sir Nevile Henderson (private collection)

  KTB Kriegstagebuch

  KTB OKW Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtführungsstab), 1939–1945, Frankfurt am Main, 1965

  MP George C. Marshall Papers, Lexington, Va

  MPW Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw Rising Museum), Warsaw

  NA II National Archives II, College Park, Md

  NHHC Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC

  OCMH-FPP Office of the Chief of Military History, Forest Pogue Papers, USAMHI

  PDDE The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. iii: The War Years, ed. Alfred D. Chandler, Baltimore, Md, 1970

  PP Papers of Lord Portal, Christ Church Library, Oxford

  RGALI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (Russian State Archive of Literature and the Arts), Moscow

  RGASPI Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialno-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archive for Social-Political History), Moscow

  RGVA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv (Russian State Military Archive), Moscow

  RGVA-SA The ‘Special Archive’ of captured German documents in the RGVA

  SHD-DAT Service Historique de la Défense, Département de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes

  SOAG Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945, 4 vols, London, 1961

  SWWEC Second World War Experience Centre, Walton, W. Yorks.

  TBJG Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich, 29 vols, Munich, 1992–2005

  TNA The National Archives, Kew

  TsAFSB Tsentralnyi Arkhiv Federalnoi Sluzhby Bezopasnosti (Central Archive of the FSB, formerly KGB), Moscow

  TsAMO Tsentralnyi Arkhiv Ministerstva Oborony (Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence), Podolsk

  TsKhIDK Tsentr Khraneniya i Izucheniya Dokumentalnykh Kolletsii (Centre for the Conservation and Study of Historic Document Collections), Moscow

  USACMH US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC

  USAMHI US Army Military History Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pa

  VCD Vasily Churkin diary, Voennaya literatura: dnevniki i pisma, http://militera.lib.ru/db/churkin

  VIZh Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal

  VOV Velikaya otechestvennaya voina, 1941–1945, Moscow, 1984

  Introduction

  ‘the original catastrophe’: a term attributed to George Kennan; see Stephan Burgdorff and Klaus Wiegrefe (eds), Der Erste Weltkrieg. Die Urkatastrophe des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 2004, pp. 23–35, quoted Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940–1941, London, 2007, p. 3

  here ‘a boring tome’: quoted in Denis Mack-Smith, Mussolini, London, 1983, p. 200

  ‘European Civil War’: Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg, 1917–1945, Frankfurt am Main, 1988

  Michael Howard, ‘A Thirty Years War? The Two World Wars in Historical Perspective’, in his Liberation or Catastrophe? Reflections on the History of the Twentieth Century, London, 2007, pp. 35, 67; Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, New York, 2005, p. 2

  here For the demise of the rule of law in Germany, see Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich, London, 2000, pp. 149–215; Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, London, 2005; and Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, London, 1998

  Bismarck on German moral cowardice: Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, London, 2002, p. 72

  ‘The Jews must get out’: TBJG, part I, vol. iii, p. 351. The best analysis of research into the origins of the Holocaust and the historical disputes engendered can be found in Ian Kershaw’s The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London, 2000, pp. 93–133, and Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution, New Haven, 2008

  ‘People of the same blood’: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Mumbai, 1988, p. 1

  here Hitler’s plan to invade in October: see Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and the Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, p. 264

  ‘violent energy’ and plate glass: ibid., p. 274

  ‘The British and the French’: Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler, London, 1979, p. 18

  ‘I am now fifty’: ibid., p. 19

  Hitler’s speech of 30 January 1939: Domarus, vol. ii, p. 1058, quoted Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis, London, 2000, pp. 152–3

  ‘had never met’: CCA, Duff Cooper Papers, DUFC 8/1/14, quoted Richard Overy, 1939: Countdown to War, London, 2009, p. 29

  1: The Outbreak of War

  Zhukov’s summons to Moscow: Otto Preston Chaney, Zhukov, Norman, Okla., 1971, pp. 62–5

  ‘For you I have this request’: quoted Ella Zhukova, ‘Interesy ottsa’, in I. G. Aleksandrov (ed.), Marshal Zhukov: Polkovodets i chelovek, 2 vols, Moscow, 1988, vol. i, p. 38

  ‘mediocre, faceless, intellectually dim’: Dimitri Volkogonov, in Harold Shukman (ed.), Stalin’s Generals, London, 1993, p. 313

  ‘the biggest bag of shit in the army’: quoted Robert Edwards, White Death: Russia’s War on Finland, 1939–1940, London, 2006, p. 96

  For the development and course of the growing conflict, see Alvin D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939, 2 vols, Stanford, 1985; and Katsu H. Young, ‘The Nomonhan Incident: Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union’, in Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 22, no. 1/2, 1967, pp. 82–102

  ‘field initiative’: Mark R. Peattie, ‘The Dragon’s Seed’, in Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven, The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, Stanford, 2011, p. 55

  here Zhukov’s deception: Chaney, Zhukov, pp. 69–70

  here For detailed accounts of the battle see Edward J. Drea, Nomonhan: Japanese–Soviet Tactical Combat, 1939, Fort Leavenworth, 1981; Coox, Nomonhan: Japan against Russia; and Georgii Zhukov, Marshal Zhukov: Kakim my yego pomnim, Moscow, 1988

  ‘because of our indecisiveness’: quoted Chaney, Zhukov, p. 73

  Red Army casualties at Khalkhin Gol: G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, London, 1997, p. 53

  ‘Jewish democracy’: GSWW, vol. i, p. 685

  ‘mischievous’: David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, London, 1971, p. 175

  ‘with the Germans’: quoted Terry Charman, Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War, London, 2009, p. 46

  ‘There is no problem’: Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie (eds), Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–1941, New York, 1948, p. 38

  ‘Purge the ministry’: quoted Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London, 2003, p. 269

  ‘very self-confident’: JJG, 17.8.39

  Grossadmiral Raeder’s orders: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 153

  ‘I’ve got them!’: Albert Speer, quoted Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, London, 1995, p. 207

  ‘Germans in cafés’: JJG, 21.8.39

  ‘the first impression in Berlin’: FRNH, p. 9

  ‘the corporal’: ibid., p. 10

  ‘We had moved all’: JJG, 25.8.39

  ‘produced a lengthy document’: FRNH, p. 17

  ‘Grandmother dead!’: Overy, 1939, p. 68

  2: ‘The Wholesale Destruction of Poland’

  ‘here The wholesale destruction of Poland’: Hitler, 22.8.39, DGFP, Series D, vol. vii, no. 193

  ‘The dark forest’: BA-MA, RH39/618, quoted Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen, 1939, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, p. 52 Arrests in Danzig: Overy, 1939, pp. 69–70

  Danzig Anatomical Medical Institute and Stutthof: GARF 9401/2/96 and RGVA 32904/1/19

  German army thre
e million men: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 90

  ‘the bulk of its forces’: SHD-DAT, quoted Claude Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, Paris, 2010, p. 196

  francs-tireurs and sabotage: BA-MA RH37/1381; RH26-208/5, quoted Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, p. 40

  ‘friendly to the Bolsheviks’: NA II RG 242, T-79, R.131, 595

  ‘swift and ruthless’: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 82

  here Hitler to Reichstag: 1.9.39, Domarus, vol. ii, p. 1307

  ‘The actual word’: Anatole de Monzie, Ci-devant, Paris, 1941, quoted Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, p. 204

  ‘stupid and obstinate attitude’: Georges Bonnet, Dans la tourmente: 1938–1948, Paris, 1971, quoted Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, p. 195

  ‘What now?’: Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s Interpreter, New York, 1950, pp. 157–8

  ‘an extremely dangerous fool’: quoted Harold Nicolson, Friday Mornings, 1941–1944, London, 1944, p. 218

  ‘Nearly every town’: Mass Observation, quoted Daniel Swift, Bomber County, London, 2010, p. 118

  here The transformation of London: Molly Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 1939–1945, London, 1971, pp. 3–6

  Loss of Athenia: Overy, 1939, pp. 107–8

  ‘It’s to present us’: Général P. de Villelume, Journal d’une défaite: août 1939–juin 1940, Paris, 1976, quoted Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, p. 211

  Killing of 1,000 Germans in Bydgoszcz: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 138

  here 300 dead after an uprising: Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster, London, 2008, p. 8

  ‘appallingly dirty and very backward’: letter 17.9.39, BfZ-SS 28774, quoted Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, p. 43; see also BA-MA RH37/5024; RH53-18/152; RH37/5024

  ‘evasive eyes’: quoted Klaus Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten–nationalsozialistischer Krieg? Kriegserlebnis–Kriegserfahrung 1939–1945, Paderborn, 1998, p. 153

  ‘ingratiatingly friendly’: BA-MA RH41/1012 (‘katzenfreundlich’)

  ‘respectfully took off their hats’: BA-MA RH37/6891, p. 11 (‘zogen respektvoll den Hut’)

  Stürmer: BA-MA RH28-1/255

  ‘Every person’: BA-MA RH53-18/17

  Freischärlerpsychose BA-MA RH26-4/3, quoted Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, p. 109

  16,000 civilians executed: Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, pp. 241-2

  65,000 killed, and massacres near Mniszek and Karlshof: Evans, The Third Reich at War, pp. 14–15

  Kartoffelkrieg TBJG, part I, vol. vii, p. 92

  ‘Mein Pamph’: Panter-Downes, London War Notes, p. 19

  here Poles in Romania: Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War, London, 1995, pp. 35–43

  ‘The enemy always came’: K. S. Karol, ‘A Polish Cadet in Inaction’, in his Between Two Worlds: The Life of a Young Pole in Russia, New York, 1987, quoted Jon E. Lewis, Eyewitness World War II, Philadelphia, 2008, pp. 36–7

  25,000 ‘undesirables’: V. N. Zemskov, ‘Prinuditelnye Migratsii iz Pribaltiki v 1940–1950-kh godakh’, Otechestvennyy Arkhiv, no. 1, 1993, p. 4, quoted Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953, New Haven, 2006, p. 45

  Polish and German casualty figures: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 124; Soviet casualties, Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses, p. 59

  ‘Gentlemen. You have seen’: Joseph W. Grigg, ‘Poland: Inside fallen Warsaw’, United Press, 6.10.39

  ‘cheap slaves’: Franz Halder, Generaloberst Halder: Kriegstagebuch. Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres, 1939–1942, 3 vols, Stuttgart, 1962–4, vol. i: Vom Polenfeldzug bis zum Ende der Westoffensive, p. 107

  ‘from bitterness over atrocities’: GSWW, vol. ix/1, p. 811

  ‘We have seen’: 12.10.39, BA-MA RH41/1177, quoted Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, p. 7

  ‘you can’t run a war’: GSWW, vol. ix/1, p. 811

  ‘a clear-out’: Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. i, p. 79, quoted Evans, The Third Reich at War, p. 16

  Order 00485 and anti-Polish policy: see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, London, 2010, pp. 89–104

  ‘Very good!’: Leonid Naumov, Stalin i NKVD, Moscow, 2007, pp. 299–300, quoted ibid., p. 96

  ‘You are Polish elite’: Wesley Adamczyk, When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile and Redemption, Chicago, 2006, pp. 26–7, quoted Matthew Kelly, Finding Poland, London, 2010, p. 62.

  ‘Once a Pole, always a kulak’: quoted Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 86

  Sewing machines: Kelly, Finding Poland, p. 63. See also accounts in Association of the Families of the Borderland Settlers, Stalin’s Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Poland: Tales of the Deported, 1940–1946, London, 2000

  3: From Phoney War to Blitzkrieg

  ‘a strange, somnambulistic quality’: Panter-Downes, London War Notes, p. 21

  London in the blackout: Charman, Outbreak 1939, pp. 322–3

  HMS Triton SWWEC, Everyone’s War, no. 20, Winter 2009, p. 60

  ‘the spirit of Zossen’: quoted Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, p. 330

  here Soviet demands on Finland: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 12

  ‘For four miles’: Virginia Cowles, Sunday Times, 4.2.40

  ‘How strange were these’: Geoffrey Cox, Countdown to War: A Personal Memoir of Europe, 1938–1940, London, 1988, pp. 176–7

  ‘summed up in a calm British’: Panter-Downes, London War Notes, p. 25

  here Nazi Euthanasia programme: Weinberg, A World at Arms, pp. 96–7, and Evans, The Third Reich at War, pp. 75–105

  here Soviet casualties in Finland: Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses, p. 58

  Deportations of Poles and Polish Jews in 1940: Snyder, Bloodlands, pp. 140–1

  Tukhachevsky on the French army: Pravda, 29.3.35

  Reuter’s correspondent: Gordon Waterfield, What Happened to France, London, 1940, p. 16

  ‘One can’t spend’: Georges Sadoul, Journal de guerre, Paris, 1972, 12.12.39

  ‘a question only’: Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre (2 septembre 1939–20 juillet 1940), Paris, 1983, p. 142

  ‘Every exercise was considered’: Édouard Ruby, Sedan, terre d’épreuve, Paris, 1948, quoted Alistair Horne, To Lose a Battle, London, 1969, p. 163

  ‘to be inert’: quoted Quétel, L’Impardonnable Défaite, p. 253

  Bonnet’s nephew: Cox, Countdown to War, p. 142

  ‘a woman whose’: ibid., p. 138

  Polish government in exile and underground army: GSWW, vol. ii, pp. 141–2

  4: The Dragon and the Rising Sun

  ‘Sympathy with the people’: Agnes Smedley, China Fights Back, London, 1938, p. 30; ‘peasant serfs’: ibid., p. 28

  ‘In Shanghai’: Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China, New York, 1946, p. xiii

  ‘Give! Give!’: Smedley, China Fights Back, p. 31

  ‘The Communists are a’: quoted Stephen Mackinnon, ‘The Defense of the Central Yangtze’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 184

  ‘menace to our rear’: quoted Edward J. Drea, ‘The Japanese Army on the Eve of War’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 107

  Marco Polo bridge incident: Yang Tianshi, ‘Chiang Kai-shek and the Battles of Shanghai and Nanjing’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 143

  ‘Suddenly, the war’: Smedley, China Fights Back, p. 132

  General Chang Ching-chong and Shanghai: Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, London, 2007, pp. 245–6

  Failed bombing of the Izumo Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War:Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 22–3

  here The Battle of Shanghai: see Yang Tianshi, ‘Chiang Kai-shek and the Battles of Shanghai and Nanjing’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 145–54

  mustard gas and incendiaries: Hattori Satoshi, �
�Japanese Operations from July to December 1937’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 176 16th Division: ibid., p. 179

  ‘besides mass executions’: Dr Rosen to German Foreign Ministry, 20.1.38, quoted John Rabe, The Good German of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, New York, 1998, p. 145. The diary of Rabe, the local director of Siemens and the organizer of the international safety zone, provides the most reliable account of the atrocities committed in Nanking

  here For preparation of Japanese soldiers, see Kawano Hitoshi, ‘Japanese Combat Morale’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 332–4

  ‘below pigs’: Kondo Hajime, quoted Laurence Rees, Their Darkest Hour: People Tested to the Extreme in WWII, London, 2007, p. 61

  ‘All new recruits’: Cpl Nakamura’s diary taken from his body by New Fourth Army, quoted Agnes Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, London, 1944, p. 186

  ‘My emotion must have been paralyzed’: Shimada Toshio, quoted Kawano, ‘Japanese Combat Morale’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 341

  ‘I am totally puzzled’: Rabe, The Good German of Nanking, 22.1.38, p. 148; ‘You can’t breathe’: ibid., p. 172

  ‘for the use of’: Smedley, China Fights Back, pp. 227 and 230

  here 2,000 women taken from Soochow: Lary, The Chinese People at War, p. 25

  Battalion commander 37th Division: Kawano, ‘Japanese Combat Morale’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 351

  On the subject of ‘comfort women’ and rape, see Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, Oxford, 1996, pp. 94–7

  ‘a building in which’: Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 206

  here For Wuhan and Taierchuang, see Tobe Ryöichi, ‘The Japanese Eleventh Army in Central China, 1938–1941’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 208–9

  ‘use water as a substitute’: quoted Lary, The Chinese People at War, p. 61

  Red Army pilots in China: John W. Garver, Chinese–Soviet Relations, 1937– 1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism, Oxford, 1988, pp. 40–1; and Hagiwara Mitsuru, ‘Japanese Air Campaigns in China’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 245–6