The Second World War

by Antony Beevor

  For the Madagascar campaign, see Smith, England’s Last War against France, pp. 281–355

  ‘This admiral knows how to swim’: Édouard Herriot, Épisodes, 1940–1944, Paris, 1950, p. 75

  ‘I hope the Vichy people’: quoted Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890– 1944, New York, 1990, p. 397

  ‘Jee-sus Christ!’: quoted Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943, New York, 2003, p. 123

  ‘How Green is our Ally’: Guy Liddell diary, 6.1.43, TNA KV 4/191

  ‘Bring on the panzers!’: Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 160

  26: Southern Russia and Tunisia

  ‘temporary encirclement’ : BA-MA RH 20-6/241

  ‘a bull-necked’: GBP

  ‘that would be a Napoleonic ending’: BA-MA N601/v.4, p. 3

  ‘whatever the circumstances’: Manfred Kehrig, Stalingrad: Analyse und Dokumentation einer Schlacht, Stuttgart, 1974, p. 562

  here For a discussion on the numbers surrounded and their different sources, see Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, London, 1998, pp. 439–40; Rüdiger Overmans,

  here ‘Das andere Gesicht des Krieges. Leben und Sterben der 6. Armee’, in Jürgen Förster (ed.), Stalingrad: Ereignis, Wirkung, Symbol, Munich, 1992, p. 442; BA-MA RH20-6/239, p. 226; Peter Hild, ‘Partnergruppe zur Aufklärung von Vermisstenschicksalen deutscher und russischer Soldaten des 2. Weltkrieges’, in A. E. Epifanov (ed.), Die Tragödie der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Stalin-grad, Osnabrück, 1996, p. 29

  ‘it’s useless to feed’: 12.12.42, TsA FSB 40/22/11, pp. 77–80

  ‘Even death is preferable’: NKVD Don Front interrogation, 12.12.42, Sold.

  here Karl Wilniker, 376th Infantry Division, TsA FSB 14/5/173, p. 223

  ‘The worst is past’: Sold. K.P., 14.12.42, BfZ-SS

  ‘We’ll never see’: Divisionspfarrer Dr Hans Mühle, 305th Infanterie Division, 18.1.1943, BA-MA N241/42

  ‘We have got to believe’: H. Paschke; ‘If we lose the war’: Hugo Miller, both 25.1.43, GBP

  ‘morbid sense of honor’: quoted Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 197

  SOE involvement in Darlan’s assassination and OSS reactions: based on conversations with the late Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, Sir Brookes Richards, Evangeline Bruce and Lloyd Cutler

  ‘son-of-a-bitch’: conversation with Susan-Mary Alsop

  ‘in the German way’: BA-MA N395/12

  ‘The German soldier suffers’: Divisionspfarrer Dr Hans Mühle, 305th Infanterie Division, 18.1.1943, BA-MA N241/42

  ‘I and the whole German Wehrmacht’: BA-MA RH20-6/236

  ‘It’s twenty days since we were encircled’: TsA FSB 40/28/38, pp. 69–72

  ‘On the first day of the holidays’: TsA FSB 40/28/38, pp. 52–3

  ‘crushing the wounded’: Divisionspfarrer Dr Hans Mühle, 305th Infanterie Division, 18.1.1943, BA-MA N241/42

  ‘When liberating the’: TsA FSB 14/4/1330, p. 17

  ‘from the beginning of December 1942’: Abakumov to Vishinsky on atrocities by German soldiers to Soviet prisoners of war, 2.9.43, TsA FSB 14/5/1, pp. 228–35

  Soviet prisoners dying at Gumrak when given food: Yevgeny Fyodorovich Okishev in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, p. 222

  ‘Surrender out of the question’: BA-MA RH19VI/12, p. 324

  ‘like wild animals’: BA-MA RW4/v.264

  ‘Paulus was completely unnerved’: Zakhary Rayzman, personal account. I am grateful to his grandson, Val Rayzman, for passing it to me

  ‘great agitation caused’, ‘so-called factual’: BA-MA RL 5/793

  ‘days of apolitical soldiering’: GSWW, vol. ix/1, p. 589

  ‘Total War–Short War!’, ‘Do you want Total War?’: Deutsche Wochenshau, Feb. 1943. Goebbels’s Totaler Krieg speech: Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, 1942 bis 1945, Munich, 1997, pp. 67–8

  27: Casablanca, Kharkov and Tunis

  ‘other buggers to’: Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem-Zem, London, 1992, p. 73

  ‘We had all seen the enemy’: ibid., p. 80

  ‘we came, we listened’: quoted Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 289

  ‘nothing but a clerk’: diary, 16.1.43, Martin Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii: 1940–1945, Boston, 1974, p. 155

  ‘A dashing, courageous’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 361

  ‘Ike is more British’: diary, 12.4.43, Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii, p. 218

  ‘the Greek slaves’: Macmillan to Richard Crossman in Nigel Fisher, Harold Macmillan, New York, 1967, pp. 100–1

  ‘I am a cross between’: Eisenhower to Paul Hodgson, 4.12.42, EP 687, quoted Crosswell, Beetle, p. 360

  ‘under a transparent crust of ice’: Irina Dunaevskaya, 15–16.1.43, in Zvezda, no. 5, 2010, p. 64

  ‘Your prayers’: Dmitri Kabanov, Pamyat pisem ili chelovek iz tridzatchetverki, Moscow, 2006, p. 36

  ‘a two-storey barrack’: VCD, 22.2.43

  Blue Division: Payne, Franco and Hitler, pp. 146–54; X. Moreno Juliá, La División Azul: Sangre española en Rusia, 1941–1945, Barcelona, 2004; Jorge M. Reverte, La División Azul: Rusia 1941–1944, Barcelona, 2011

  ‘Can this possibly be’: Nikolai Ayrkhayev, Far Eastern Affairs, no. 4, 1990, p. 124

  ‘For the last week and a half’: Ivan Ivanovich Korolkov, 10.2.43, in Pisma s ognennogo rubezha (1941–1945), St Petersburg, 1992, pp. 30–4

  ‘When his victims’: Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier, London, 1993, p. 149

  Relative strengths on the eastern front: Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed, p. 151

  Women in the Red Army and at Stalingrad: see Reina Pennington, Women and the Battle of Stalingrad’, in Ljubica Erickson and Mark Erickson (eds), Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy, London, 2005

  ‘These girls evoked memories’: Ehrenburg, Men, Years–Life, vol. v, pp. 81–2

  ‘Many were sent back to the rear’: Yevgeny Fyodorovich Okishev in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, p. 172

  ‘great sin’, ‘Yet all around’: Grossman papers, RGALI 1710/3/50

  ‘It’s unbelievable what’: Gefr. Karl B., 28.12.42, 334.Inf.Div., BfZ-SS 48 037A

  ‘You will have heard’: Gefr. Siegfried K., 15.Pz.Div., 16.2.43, BfZ-SS 09 348

  ‘It was the first–and only’: quoted John Ellis, The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II, London, 1993, p. 265

  American losses: Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 389

  ‘Personally, I wish I could’: Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii, p. 163

  ‘Patton’s Gestapo’: Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 402

  ‘Rifle butts appeared everywhere’: John Kenneally, The Honour and the Shame, London, 1991, pp. 83–5

  28: Europe behind Barbed Wire

  SS Galicia Division: Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, London, 2008, p. 459

  ‘Niggers’: quoted ibid., p. 152

  ‘Greater German economic sphere’: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 322

  ‘stand his booming voice’: quoted Terry Charman, ‘Hugh Dalton, Poland and SOE, 1940–42’, in Mark Seaman (ed.), Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War, London, 2006, p. 62

  ‘extraordinary fellow, Van!’: quoted J. G. Beevor, SOE: Recollections and Reflections, 1940–1945, London, 1981, p. 64

  ‘We soldiers are like gods’: Lt Peter G., 714.Inf.Div., 24.6.41, BfZ-SS 41 768 B

  ‘Balkan mentality’, Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, p. 339

  ‘Belgrade was the only great city’: quoted ibid., p. 423

  ‘tourist country’: GSWW, vol. ii, p. 323

  here Stunted growth of the young in France: Collingham, The Taste of War, p. 172

  the great advantage of remaining above the fray: conversation with Sir Brookes Richards, 1993

  ‘Personally, I think it is time’: Guy Liddell diary, 14.1.43, TNA KV 4/191

  ‘nothing was more like Vichy than Algiers’: conversation with General Pierre de Bénouville, Jan. 1993

  273 Luftwa
ffe aircraft destroyed: Thomas Polak, Stalin’s Falcons: The Aces of the Red Star, London, 1999, p. 355

  ‘Heil Hess!’: Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 476–7

  Englandspiel: for the best account, see M. R. D. Foot, SOE in the Low Countries, London, 2001

  here Danish food supplies for Germany: Collingham, The Taste of War, p. 175

  here Vemork Operation: Jens-Anton Poulsson, The Heavy Water Raid, Oslo, 2009

  29: The Battle of the Atlantic and Strategic Bombing

  ‘five divisions, twenty squadrons’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 285

  ‘In which case’: John Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 145

  Butt Report: see SOAG, vol. iv, pp. 205–13

  ‘air destruction was so exaggerated’: PP, folder 2c, quoted Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945, Princeton, 2002, p. 2

  ‘a pattern of exaggeration’: ibid., p. 69

  ‘to bomb them harder’: Trenchard, quoted ibid., p. 71

  ‘revolting and un-English’: Admiralty memorandum of April 1932, quoted Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber, London, 1980, p. 24

  ‘baby-killing’: P. B. Joubert de la Ferté, ‘The Aim of the Royal Air Force’, May 1933, TNA AIR 2/675

  ‘intentional bombardment of’: TNA AIR 14/249

  ‘take the gloves off’: quoted Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 188 For the lives of bomber aircrew, see Patrick Bishop, Bomber Boys, London, 2008, and Daniel Swift, Bomber County, London, 2010

  ‘had to hose it out’: quoted Swift, Bomber County, p. 56

  ‘keyed up like a violin’: ibid., p. 70

  ‘a glorified bus driver’: Bishop, Bomber Boys, p. 48

  ‘Now terror will be’: Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 308

  Churchill’s dinner at Chequers, and ‘England is the place’: Donald L. Miller, The Eighth Air Force: The American Bomber Crews in Britain, New York, 2006, pp. 58–9

  ‘The worst thing is seeing’: quoted Swift, Bomber County, p. 95

  ‘A shell bursting beneath you’: quoted Bishop, Bomber Boys, p. 103

  here Experience of US aircrew: see Miller, Eighth Air Force, pp. 89–136

  ‘The Eighth Air Force’: Donald L. Miller, Eighth Air Force, p. 109

  ‘primary objective will be’: Casablanca Directive, quoted Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 215

  here For German accounts, see Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft, 1939 bis 1945, Munich 2004; Rosa Maria Ellscheid, Erinnerungen von 1896–1987, Cologne, 1988; Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg, 1940–1945, Munich, 2002; Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland, Berlin, 1990; Hans-Willi Hermans, Köln im Bombenkrieg, 1942– 1945, Wartberg, 2004; Heinz Pettenberg, Starke Verbände im Anflug auf Köln. Eine Kriegschronik in Tagebuchnotizen 1939–1945, Cologne, 1981; Martin Rüther, Köln im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Alltag und Erfahrungen zwischen 1939 und 1945, Cologne, 2005; Martin Rüther, 31. Mai 1942. Der Tausend-Bomber-Angriff, Cologne, 1992; Dr P. Simon, Köln im Luftkrieg. Ein Tatsachenbericht über Fliegeralarme und Fliegerangriffe, Cologne, 1954; Anja vom Stein, Unser Köln. Erinnerungen 1910–1960. Erzählte Geschichte, Cologne, 1999

  ‘All the inhabitants’: Hermans, Köln im Bombenkrieg, p. 30

  ‘With two other men’: Pettenberg, Starke Verbände im Anflug auf Köln, pp. 162–8

  ‘Children were running’: Lina S. in Rüther, Köln im Zweiten Weltkrieg, p. 167

  ‘Everywhere you heard the screams’: ibid., p. 243

  ‘This could all’: Heinz Boberach (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich. Die Geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, 1938–1945, Herrsching, 1984

  Hamburg firestorm: Friedrich, Der Brand, pp. 112–18, 191–6; Bishop, Bomber Boys, pp. 125–9; Miller, Eighth Air Force, pp. 180–4; Keith Lowe, The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943, London, 2007

  ‘It sounded like’: quoted Miller, Eighth Air Force, p. 198

  ‘like a Parachute invasion’: ibid., p. 199

  ‘The sky arches’: TBJG, part II, vol. x, 27.11.43, p. 136

  ‘like a stage-set for’: Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, p. 153

  Battle of Berlin: Friedrich, Der Brand, pp. 119–21, 483–7; Bishop, Bomber Boys, pp. 206–14, 293–4; Moorhouse, Berlin at War, 318–35

  ‘ashamed of area bombing’: Harris to Sir Arthur Street, under-secretary of state at the air ministry, 25.10.43, TNA AIR 14/843, quoted Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 22

  ‘In periods of sustained’: Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 229

  ‘the Luftwaffe will go’: Swift, Bomber County, p. 143

  ‘Jupiter complex’: quoted Friedrich, Der Brand, p. 101

  30: The Pacific, China and Burma

  ‘smelled like goats’: quoted Rafael Steinberg, Island Fighting, New York, 1978, p. 194

  ‘Don’t squeeze that trigger’: Leckie, Helmet for my Pillow, p. 214

  gyokusai ideology of ‘death before dishonour’: Kawano, ‘Japanese Combat Morale’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, p. 328

  White Russians in Shanghai: Wasserstein, Secret War in Shanghai, p. 239

  nothing more than ‘a hopeless crank’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 479

  ‘You might as well eat’: ibid., 19.4.43, p. 394

  31: The Battle of Kursk

  here For the best analysis of the Kursk operation, see David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk, Lawrence, Kan., 1999; also Bellamy, Absolute War

  ‘Victory at Kursk’: quoted Bellamy, Absolute War, p. 577

  ‘When I think of this attack’: General Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, New York, 1952, p. 247

  ‘Each reconnaissance group’: Mikhail Petrovich Chebykin, http://www.ire-member.ru/pekhotintsi/chebikin-mikhail-petrovich/

  here German and Soviet strengths: Glantz and House, The Battle of Kursk, p. 65

  Wittmann: Patrick Agte, Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War II, Mechanicsburg, Pa, 2006, vol. i, p. 60

  Ultra and Luftwaffe airfields: Christopher Andrew and Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, London, 2000, pp. 135, 156, 159

  Sikorski aircrash: conversation with Victor Cazalet

  ‘I believe that this’: Fhj.Uffz. Werner K., 2.Bttr./le.Flak-Abt.74, BfZ-SS L 20 909 ‘a wonderful image for the newsreels’: Uffz. Herbert Peter S., 19.Pz.Div., 7.7.43, BfZ-SS 13 925

  ‘If something of the sort’: Sold. Karl K., 36.Inf.Div., 7.7.43, BfZ-SS 08 818C

  ‘cannon-bird’: Agte, Michael Wittmann, p. 100

  ‘Our Luftwaffe is really fantastic’: H’Fw. Willy P., 167.Inf.Div., BfZ-SS 19 279 D ‘shells hit them’, ‘A gun-layer fired’: RGALI 1710/3/51

  ‘My division is already’: Uffz. Ludwig D., Stabs-Bttr./Art.Rgt.103, 4.Pz.Div., 12.7.43, BfZ-SS 44 705

  ‘Ah, you bastards, you’re Vlasov men’: Reshat Zevadinovich Sadredinov, 4th Battery of 1362nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, 25th Anti-Aircraft Division, in Drabkin (ed.), Svyashchennaya voina, p. 137

  ‘The Luftwaffe was bombing’: RGALI 1710/3/51

  ‘This was face-to-face’, ‘The quieter it is’: RGALI 1710/3/51

  ‘everything was on fire’, ‘A lieutenant, wounded’: RGALI 1710/3/51

  Ninth Army losses: Glantz and House, The Battle of Kursk, p. 121

  ‘By midday’: Pavel Rotmistrov, ‘Tanks against Tanks’, in John Erickson (ed.), Main Front: Soviet Leaders Look Back on World War II, London, 1987, pp. 106–9

  ‘With an unbroken Stuka-spirit’: Lt Paul D., III.Gru./St.G.2 ‘Immelmann’, 18.7.43, BfZ-SS L 16 641

  ‘Those wearing camouflage’: Amza Amzaevich Mamutov, http://www.ire-member.ru/pekhotintsi/mamutov-amza-amzaevich/stranitsa-3.html

  ‘It’s now very hot’: San.Sold. Helmut P., 198.Inf.Div., 10.7.43, BfZ-SS 29 740

  ‘In five days’: Lt Paul D., III.Gru./St.
G.2 ‘Immelmann’, 10.7.43, BfZ-SS L 16 641

  ‘The Russians are keeping’: O’Gefr. Robert B., 6.Pz.Div., 10.7.43, BfZ-SS 24 924

  ‘What I saw left me’: quoted in Frank Kurowski, Panzer Aces, Winnipeg, 1992, p. 279

  ‘They were around us’: Rudolf Lehmann, The Leibstandarte, vol. iii, Winnipeg, 1993, p. 234, quoted Glantz and House, The Battle of Kursk, p. 185

  ‘The atmosphere was choking’: Anatoly Volkov, quoted Lloyd Clark, ‘The Battle of Kursk 1943’ in The Wishstream, 2010, p. 140

  ‘Tanks even rammed one another’: Amza Amzaevich Mamutov, http://www.iremember.ru/pekhotintsi/mamutov-amza-amzaevich/stranitsa-3.html

  ‘Germans were crushed’: ibid.

  ‘This war was never’: Lt Paul D., III.Gru./St.G.2 ‘Immelmann’, 18.7.43, BfZ-SS L 16 641

  Operation Rumyantsev, ‘For the weary German infantry’: Glantz and House, The Battle of Kursk, pp. 246–7

  ‘The smell of burning’: RGALI 1710/3/50

  ‘The men are now fighting’: RGALI 1710/3/50

  ‘The 1943 warrior’: BA-MA RH 13/50, quoted GSWW, vol. ix/1, p. 597

  ‘intellectual, introspective’: ibid., p. 598

  32: From Sicily to Italy

  ‘Their hearts are really in the Pacific’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 15.4.43, p. 393

  ‘He would have to meet’: quoted Hastings, Finest Years, p. 375

  ‘Allies must fight in separate’: Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii, 28.4.43, p. 234

  ‘He is a little fellow’: ibid., p. 237

  ‘indignant that Giraud’: Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 414

  ‘hordes of tiny craft’: Jack Belden, Still Time to Die, New York, 1943, p. 269

  ‘some menacing looking Arabs’: quoted Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, New York, 2007, p. 40

  ‘God certainly’: Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii, p. 280

  ‘From the high ground’: Joe Kelley, SWWEC

  ‘The people of this country’: Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers, vol. ii, p. 291

  ‘one could buy’: ibid., 20.7.43, p. 295 186 cases of VD: Jim Williams, SWWEC