Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941
Page 2
Jodl, General Alfred. As head of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, responsible for overall strategic planning; Hitler’s main adviser on military strategy and operations; strong Hitler loyalist.
Keitel, Field Marshal Wilhelm. Head of the High Command of the Wehrmacht since February 1938, though completely subservient in that position to Hitler.
Müller, Heinrich. Head of the Gestapo since 1937; directly responsible to Heydrich.
Ott, General Eugen. Ambassador in Tokyo since 1938.
Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich. Commander-in-Chief of the German navy.
Ribbentrop, Joachim von. Reich Foreign Minister since February 1938.
Rosenberg, Alfred. Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories from July 1941.
Schulenburg, Count Friedrich Werner von der. Ambassador in Moscow since 1934.
Warlimont, Major-General Walter. Head of the National Defence Department of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff since November 1938; directly subordinate to Jodl.
Weizsäcker, Ernst von. State Secretary in the German Foreign Office since March 1938; head of the diplomatic staff; had a tense relationship with Ribbentrop.
JAPAN
Hirohito. Emperor since succeeding his father, Yoshihito, in 1926; deified symbol of the ‘Showa’ era, meaning ‘illustrious peace’.
Kido Koichi, Marquis. As Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal from 1 June 1940, the Emperor’s closest counsellor.
Konoe Fumimaro, Prince. Prime Minister in 1937, when the war against China began; resigned in January 1939, but reappointed as premier in July 1940; resigned again (nominally) along with the entire government in July 1941; immediately reappointed as Prime Minister for the third time; final resignation at the failure of his policies on 16 October 1941.
Kurusu Saburo. Former ambassador to Germany, sent to Washington as a special emissary in November 1941 to assist Nomura explore the possibilities of staving off war.
Matsuoka Yosuke. Strongly pro-Axis and mercurial Foreign Minister from July 1940 to July 1941, when he was effectively forced out of office.
Nagano Osami, Admiral. Chief of the navy General Staff.
Nomura Kichisaburo. Ambassador to the United States from April 1941.
Oikawa Koshiro, Admiral. Navy Minister between September 1940 and October 1941.
Oshima Hiroshi. Pro-Axis ambassador to Germany, 1938–9, and took up the position again in February 1941.
Shimada Shigetaro. Succeeded Oikawa as Navy Minister in October 1941.
Sugiyama Gen, General. Army Minister in 1937; later chief of the army General Staff.
Togo Shigenori. Former ambassador to Berlin and Moscow; appointed Foreign Minister in Tojo’s government in succession to Toyoda in October 1941.
Tojo Hideki, General. Former chief of staff of the Kwantung Army; Army Minister in Konoe’s second administration; appointed Prime Minister in October 1941.
Toyoda Teijiro. Navy Vice-Minister in 1940; successor to Matsuoka as Foreign Minister between July and October 1941.
Yamamoto Isoroku, Admiral. Former Navy Vice-Minister; mastermind behind the plan to attack Pearl Harbor; commander of the attack fleet.
Yonai Mitsumasa, Admiral. Konoe’s predecessor as Prime Minister between January and July 1940.
Yoshida Zengo, Admiral. Navy Minister between July and September 1940 (when he resigned on grounds of ill-health).
ITALY
Alfieri, Dino. Ambassador to Berlin from May 1940; more acceptable to the German leadership than Attolico.
Attolico, Bernardo. Ambassador to Berlin from 1935 until his anti-interventionist stance prompted Hitler to request his recall in late April 1940.
Badoglio, Marshal Pietro. Commanded the victorious Italian army in Abyssinia in 1935–6; chief of the Supreme Command of the armed forces since 1925; in this capacity, Mussolini’s main military adviser; resigned in December 1940 in the wake of the debacle in Greece.
Cavagnari, Admiral Domenico. Chief of staff of the navy, and Navy Under-Secretary until his dismissal in December 1940.
Ciano, Count Galeazzo. Foreign Minister from 1936; married to Mussolini’s daughter, Edda.
Graziani, Marshal Rodolfo. Former viceroy of Abyssinia; army chief of staff, 1939–41; Italian commander in north Africa, 1940–41.
Jacomoni, Francesco. Governor of Albania from 1939.
Mussolini, Benito. Leader of the Fascist Party since 1919; head of government since 1922; in addition, in control of the armed forces as War, Navy and Air Minister since 1933; popularity and hold over the Italian state–bolstered by the artificially manufactured Duce cult–at their height after the victory over Abyssinia in 1936; in foreign affairs by 1940, however, increasingly under the shadow of Hitler.
Pricolo, General Francesco. Chief of staff of the air force, 1939–41.
Roatta, General Mario. Deputy chief of the army staff from 1939 to 1941.
Soddu, General Ubaldo. Under-Secretary for War since 1939 and deputy chief of the Supreme Command of the armed forces from June 1940; Mussolini’s most trusted military adviser; replaced Visconti Prasca as commander in Albania in November 1940, but soon revealed his own inadequacies in the Greek campaign; resigned on health grounds in January 1941.
Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy. Sovereign since 1900; also Emperor of Abyssinia and King of Albania; head of state to whom, ultimately, Mussolini, too, was responsible (as the latter’s removal from power and arrest in July 1943 were to show).
Visconti Prasca, General Count Sebastiano. Incompetent military commander of Albania, sacked in November 1940 as one of the scapegoats for the failure of the offensive in Greece.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Grew, Joseph C. Long-standing, highly experienced and skilful ambassador to Japan; one of the strongest advocates of attempts to defuse the growing crisis in 1941.
Hopkins, Harry. Hugely energetic ‘fixer’ for Roosevelt, despite serious illness; close to the President, a member of his regular ‘inner circle’, and sometimes entrusted with especially important missions as a personal envoy.
Hornbeck, Stanley K. Chief adviser to Cordell Hull on the Far East, and an outright ‘hawk’ in his views on the threat from Japan.
Hull, Cordell. Secretary of State since 1933; a strong believer in the principles of self-determination and international cooperation laid down by President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, but increasingly drawn into a hard line in protracted negotiations with Japan in 1941.
Ickes, Harold L. Secretary of the Interior and a strong interventionist.
Knox, Frank. Secretary of the Navy from June 1940; alongside Stimson, and a fellow Republican, he pushed for a more assertive defence policy than Roosevelt was prepared to pursue.
Marshall, General George C. Army chief of staff since 1938; superb organizer, who pushed for and presided over a huge and rapid increase in the size of the army between the start of the European war and Pearl Harbor.
Morgenthau, Henry. Secretary to the Treasury; strong proponent of economic assistance for Great Britain; given the task of organizing war production.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. Inaugurated as President in January 1933; re-elected 1936; elected again for an unprecedented third term in November 1940; concerned in the main with domestic recovery from the Depression until the late 1930s, but then, increasingly anxious about the threat from Germany and Japan, commissioned the start of what would prove an immense armaments programme.
Stark, Admiral Harold. Chief of Naval Operations since 1939; a key advocate of according planning priority to the Atlantic over the Pacific.
Steinhardt, Laurence. Ambassador to the Soviet Union since 1939.
Stimson, Henry L. Secretary of War from June 1940; a strong proponent of American interventionism in the war.
Welles, Sumner. Under-Secretary of State and close to Roosevelt, which led to some antagonism in his relations with Hull.
THE SOVIET UNION
Beria, Lavrenti. Chief of the NKVD (the secret police) from 1938; in
charge of internal security.
Dekanozov, Vladimir. Soviet ambassador to Germany from December 1940.
Golikov, General Filip. Head of Soviet military intelligence.
Malenkov, Georgi. Stalin’s right hand in the General Secretariat of the Communist Party, and manager of the party’s bureaucracy; following the German invasion, put in charge of the evacuation of industrial production to the east, and of supplies for the Red Army.
Maisky, Ivan. Ambassador to London since 1932.
Merkulov, Vsevolod. Commissar for State Security (head of the network of foreign intelligence, which was separated in February 1941 from Beria’s NKVD and remained distinct from the organization of military intelligence).
Mikoyan, Anastas. Member of Stalin’s ‘inner circle’ in the Politburo; responsible for foreign trade.
Molotov, Vyacheslav. Commissar for Foreign Affairs since May 1939 and, until 5 May 1941, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Prime Minister of the state government).
Oumansky, Konstantin. Ambassador to the United States since 1939.
Stalin, Joseph. General Secretary of the Communist Party; from 5 May 1941 chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars; unchallenged supreme ruler of the Soviet Union, in control of all the main levers of power, political and military.
Timoshenko, Marshal Semion. Defence Commissar from May 1940; held responsibility for the organization and training of the Red Army.
Voroshilov, Marshal Kliment. Defence Commissar until May 1940; long-standing adviser to Stalin on military matters.
Zhukov, Marshal Georgi. Came to prominence as commander during the conflict with Japanese forces in Mongolia in 1939; chief of the Soviet General Staff from January 1941.
Fateful Choices
Forethoughts
The Second World War recast the twentieth century in ways that are still felt today. And that war–the most awful in history–took its shape largely from a number of fateful choices made by the leaders of the world’s major powers within a mere nineteen months, between May 1940 and December 1941. These two thoughts underlie the chapters that follow.
The nearer the twentieth century came to its end, the more it became evident that its defining period had been that of the Second World War. Of course, the First World War was the ‘original catastrophe’.1 It shattered political regimes (the Russian, Austrian and Ottoman empires all fell in its wake), destroyed economies and left a searing mark on mentalities. But the highly unstable, volatile societies and political structures that emerged proved to be of short duration. The immense social, economic and political cost of the seemingly pointless four-year-long carnage meant that a further great conflagration was always probable and gradually became inescapable. The Second World War was in obvious ways the unfinished business of the First. But this second great conflict was not only even more bloody–costing upwards of fifty million lives, between four and five times the estimated death toll of the war of 1914–18–and more truly global; it was also more profound in its lasting consequences and its reshaping of the world’s power structures.2
Both in Europe and in the Far East, previous power pretensions–those of Germany, Italy and Japan–collapsed in the maelstrom of destruction. A combination of national bankruptcy and resurgent anti-colonial movements put paid to Great Britain’s world empire. Mao’s China was a prime legatee of the demise of Japan and the upheavals of the war-torn Far East. And, above all, the two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, neither of them very super before 1939, now held each other at bay with nuclear arsenals in a Cold War that would last until the final decade of the century. The constellation of power left by the Second World War did not lead to a third cataclysmic conflict–to the surprise and relief of many contemporaries of the early Cold War years–but provided the framework for the phoenix-like recovery both of the European continent and of the Far East with, astonishingly, the defeated countries of Germany (at least its western half) and Japan as the economic driving forces.3 Only with the unpredictably peaceful (in the main) end of the Soviet bloc in 1989–91 did the world enter its post-postwar era. The impact of the Second World War had, then, been huge, lasting and defining.
The Second World War also left humanity with a new, horrible word which also relates to what has increasingly come to be seen as a defining characteristic of the century: genocide.4 And, though it was lamentably far from the only instance in that benighted century, what later came to be known as ‘the Holocaust’–the planned attempt by Nazi Germany to wipe out a targeted eleven million Jews, a genocidal project unprecedented in history–left the most lasting and fundamental mark on future decades. In terms of power-politics, the legacy of the Holocaust ensured, and gave legitimacy to, the foundation of the state of Israel, supported by much of the world but ferociously attacked by the new country’s neighbours who had lost land, and inevitably leading to unending, even increasing, turmoil in the Middle East, with huge implications for the rest of the world. And in terms of mentalities, the ever greater preoccupation with the Holocaust, the further it recedes into history, has profoundly affected views about race, ethnicity and the treatment of minorities. The context for the killing of the Jews had been the Second World War. But, more than just context, the murder of the Jews had been an intrinsic part of the German war effort. This inbuilt genocidal component of the Second World War has come to play an increasingly important part in shaping historical consciousness during subsequent decades.
Before May 1940 two separate wars, in separate continents, had broken out. The first was the bitter war raging in China, following the attack by the Japanese in 1937. The second was the European war which had commenced in 1939 with Germany’s attack on Poland, followed two days later by the declarations of war on Germany by Great Britain and France. Terrible atrocities–by the Japanese in China, and by the Germans in Poland–had already become hallmarks of both wars. But at this stage, spring 1940, the genocidal onslaught which was soon to take place in eastern Europe was still in the future. And, although the war in the Far East was of vital concern to the European powers and to the United States, it remained down to this point distinct from the European war, which itself had not geographically extended (apart from Albania, under Italian rule since the invasion of April 1939) beyond parts of central and eastern Europe held down by German arms. The war in Europe was, conversely, alerting eager eyes in Japan to the possibilities opening up of rich pickings in east Asia at the expense, especially, of the biggest imperial power, Great Britain. But the expansion, as Japan’s leaders well understood, presaged a possible showdown, not only with Britain, but, even more dangerously, with the United States. In Europe, too, the war was set to widen. In the autumn Mussolini set the Balkans aflame with his attack on Greece. And by the end of the year, Hitler’s determination to invade the Soviet Union the following spring was translated into a firm military directive. Meanwhile, American aid for the beleaguered Britain was increasing. The entire world was being rapidly drawn into a single gigantic war.
The chapters that follow examine a number of interlinked political decisions with immense and dramatic military consequences, between May 1940 and December 1941, that transformed the two separate wars in different continents into one truly global conflagration, a colossal conflict with genocide and unprecedented barbarism at its centre. Of course, by December 1941 the war still had far to run. Many vagaries were still to occur over the course of the war. Obviously, other crucial decisions, though mainly strategic and tactical, were yet to be taken. And towards the war’s end, with Allied supremacy now assured, the geopolitical framework of the postwar settlement–the basis of the Cold War soon to emerge–was laid down in the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. But the remaining three and a half years of the war would, nevertheless, essentially play out the consequences of the decisions taken between May 1940 and December 1941.5 These were indeed fateful decisions–decisions that changed the world.
The choices made by the leaders of Germany, Great Brit
ain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan and Italy–countries with very different political systems and different decision-making processes (two Fascist, two democratic, one Communist, one bureaucratic authoritarian)–fed from and were interwoven with each other. How were these decisions reached? Each chapter seeks primarily to answer this question. But related questions arise straight away. What influences were brought to bear on those responsible for the decisions? How far were decisions pre-formed by government bureaucracies, or shaped by competing power-groups within the ruling elites?6 How rational were the decisions–and they were decisions that meant war–in terms of each regime’s aims and in the light of the intelligence it was receiving? What role was played by the individuals at the centre of the decision-making process, and how greatly did this differ within the varying political systems? What freedom did the war leaders have in reaching their decisions? How significant, in contrast, were external and impersonal forces in conditioning and limiting the decisions? To what extent did the room for manoeuvre in making decisions diminish over the months in question? How far, in other words, did the scope for alternatives narrow, or even disappear altogether, over the nineteen months in question? And what consequences, short and long term, did the decisions have? These are some of the considerations in mind in what follows.