Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  89 Shtemenko, ‘Profile of a Staff Officer’, p. 359; Zhukov, Greatest Battles, pp. 221, 262.

  90 Details in R. Payne, General Marshall (London, 1952), and M. Stoler, George C. Marshall: Soldier-statesman of the American century (Boston, 1989).

  91 Stoler, George C. Marshall, p. 110.

  92 L. Bland (ed.), The Papers of George Catlett Marshall: Vol. 2, ‘We Cannot Delay’, July 1 1939 to December 6 1941 (Baltimore, 1986), p. 633, letter from Marshall to Harry Woodring, 8 October 1941.

  93 Bland (ed.), The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, p. 249, ‘Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars’, 19 June 1940.

  94 Weigley, History of the US Army, pp. 422–32; Stoler, George C. Marshall, pp. 93–5.

  95 Stoler, George C. Marshall, pp. 101, 109.

  96 W. Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters (London, 1964), pp. 243–4.

  97 P.E. Schramm, Hitler the Man and the Military Leader (London, 1972), p. 11.

  98 Ibid., pp. 100–11, 149.

  99 ‘Memorandum dictated by General Alfred Jodl on Hitler’s Leadership, 1946’, in Schramm, Hitler the Man, p. 198, appendix II.

  100 Schramm, Hitler the Man, p. 137; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 241; W. Warlimont, ‘The German High Command during World War II’, in D. Detweiler (ed.), World War II German Military Studies (24 vols, New York, 1979), VI, MS T–101, pp. 6–8. Halder quotation in Nuremberg Trials, background documents, case xi, Körner Defence Doc. Book, 1b, p. 81.

  101 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 166; Warlimont, ‘German High Command’, pp. 27–9, 57–9.

  102 R.J. Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (London, 2001), p. 371, interrogation of Keitel, 27 June 1945.

  103 Ibid., pp 276–9, interrogation of Alfred Jodl, 29 June 1945. See too K. Zeitzler ‘The German Army High Command’, December 1949 in World War II Military Studies, vol VI, pp. 100–1.

  104 Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, pp. 249–51.

  105 Ibid., p. 260.

  106 Zeitzler, ‘German Army High Command’, p. 100.

  107 B. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill (London, 1948), p. 468; see too J. Strawson, Hitler as Military Commander (London, 1971), pp. 228–32.

  108 Schramm, Hitler the Man, appendix II, pp. 194, 205.

  109 J. Steinhoff, The Last Chance: The pilots’ plot against Göring 1944–45 (London, 1977).

  110 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 471–3; Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs 1939–1945 (London, 1990), p. 487.

  111 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 463.

  112 R. Reuth, Goebbels (London, 1993), pp. 352–3; text of appeal in Strawson, Hitler as Military Commander, pp. 223–4.

  113 H. A. DeWeend (ed.), Selected Speeches and Statements of General of the Army George C. Marshall (New York, 1973), p. 249, speech at Yale University, 16 February 1944.

  114 F. Genoud (ed.), The Testament of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann documents February–April 1945 (London, 1961), pp. 51–2, 76–7, 104–5.

  115 Heinz Guderian, ‘Unification and Co-ordination – The Armed Forces Problem’, MS T–113, October 1948, German Military Studies VI, pp. 6, 18.

  9 Evil Things, Excellent Things

  THE MORAL CONTEST

  1 M. Spinka, The Church in Soviet Russia (Oxford, 1956), pp. 82–6.

  2 A. Werth, Russia at War 1941–1945 (London, 1964), pp. 429–38.

  3 Spinka, Church in Soviet Russia, p. 85; Werth, Russia at War, p. 435.

  4 W.P and Z. Coates, A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations (London, 1944), pp. 696–7; G.K.A. Bell, The Church and Humanity 1939–1946 (London, 1946), p. 217, sermon, 7 September 1941.

  5 F. Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (London, 1947), pp. 28–9.

  6 R.H. Dawson, The Decision to Aid Russia 1941 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1959), pp. 188–9.

  7 Dawson, Decision to Aid, pp. 87–8.

  8 H. Trevor-Roper (ed.), Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944 (London, 1953), pp. 144–5, entry for 13 December 1941; p. 722, entry for 29 November 1944.

  9 S. Roberts, The House that Hitler Built (London, 1937), pp. 275–6; H. Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head (London, 1969), pp. 163–72.

  10 Dawson, Decision to Aid, pp. 266–9.

  11 W.S. Churchill, The Second World War (6 vols, London, 1948–54), III, p. 331. See Roosevelt’s views in S. Butler (ed.), My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (New Haven, 2005), p. 9: ‘The principles and doctrines of Communist dictatorship are as intolerable and alien to American beliefs as are the principles and doctrines of Nazi dictatorship.’

  12 Churchill, Second World War, III, p. 332.

  13 J. Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (London, 1985), p. 404, entry for 21 June 1941; Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The struggle for survival 1940–1965 (London, 1966), p. 79, entry for 15 August 1942, ‘… the P.M.’s only interest was to defeat Hitler; that was an obsession with him.’

  14 A. Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin: A not so Grand Alliance, 1943–1945 (Columbia, Missouri, 1993), appendix 2, pp. 232–40.

  15 G. Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: Volume 3, As I Please 1943–1945 (London, 1968), pp. 178–9.

  16 Dawson, Decision to Aid, p. 99; H. Cantril (ed.), Public Opinion 1935–1946 (Princeton, 1951), p. 1187.

  17 Colville, Fringes of Power, pp. 363, 404.

  18 B. von Everen, ‘Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Problem of Nazi Germany’, in C.L. Egan, A. W. Knott (eds), Essays in Twentieth Century American International History (Lanham, Maryland, 1982), pp. 138–9; E. Morgan, FDR: A biography (New York, 1985), pp. 44–5.

  19 Von Everen, ‘Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Problem of Nazi Germany’, pp. 145–8; H. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (3 vols, London, 1955), III, pp. 468–9, entry for 18 September 1938; Morgan, FDR, pp. 734–5; W. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as wartime statesman (Princeton, 1991), p. 199, who records Roosevelt’s remark after the Teheran conference that Abyssinian doctors should be let loose on Germany to practise ‘their particular brand of surgery’.

  20 H. Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower (London, 1946), p. 524, entry for 10 July 1944. On the general question of Allied treatment of German POWs, see J. Bacque, Other Losses: An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners of war after World War II (London, 1989), esp. pp. 23, 31–2 for Eisenhower’s attitude.

  21 For example Werth, Russia at War, p. 176, who saw posters on the walls of Moscow in 1941 portraying Hitler as a giant crab, crushed by a Soviet tank, or as a giant rat under the slogan ‘Crush the Fascist vermin!’

  22 Werth, Russia at War, p. 417; Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 344.

  23 V. Gollancz, Shall Our Children Live or Die?: A reply to Lord Vansittart on the German problem (London, 1942), pp. 5, 7.

  24 The Background and Issues of the War (Oxford, 1940), pp. 92–3.

  25 Gollancz, Shall Our Children Live or Die? pp. 62–3.

  26 Von Everen, ‘Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Problem of Nazi Germany’, p. 141.

  27 E. Tennant, True Account (London, 1957), p. 183; Bell, Church and Humanity, pp. 80–5, talk on ‘The Threat to Civilization’, Canterbury, 15 October 1942.

  28 H.G. Wells, The War in the Air (London, 1908), pp. 352–4.

  29 W. Lippmann, U.S. War Aims (Boston, 1944), p. 47.

  30 R.J. Overy, ‘Air Power and the Origins of Deterrence Theory before 1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies 14 (1992), p. 82.

  31 M. Rader, No Compromise: The conflict between two worlds (London, 1939), p. v.

  32 Bell, Church and Humanity, p. 51.

  33 J. Stalin, The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (New York, 1945), p. 43, Order of the Day, 23 February 1942.

  34 J. and C. Garrard, World War 2 and the Soviet People (London, 1993), pp. 16–19. Order 227 was more an enabling decree than an order to kill regardless. Out of the 34 million Soviet citizens mobilised, 442,
000 were sent to penal units, and 436,000 imprisoned. See J. Erickson, ‘Soviet War Losses’, in J. Erickson, D. Dilks, Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 262.

  35 J. Barber, ‘The Image of Stalin in Soviet Propaganda and Public Opinion during World War 2’, in Garrard, Soviet People, p. 46.

  36 R. Parker, Moscow correspondent (London, 1949), pp. 21–2.

  37 I. Ehrenburg, Men, Years – Life: The war years 1941–1945 (London, 1964), p. 123.

  38 P. Grigorenko, Memoirs (London, 1983), p. 139.

  39 Werth, Russia at War, p. 416.

  40 On attitudes to death, A. Sella, The Value of Human Life in Soviet Warfare (London, 1992), esp. pp. 151–71; the ‘public language’ in Stalin, Great Patriotic War, pp. 33–4, speech in Moscow, 6 November 1941, and pp. 45–6, Order of the Day, 23 February 1942.

  41 G.H. Roeder, The Censored War: American visual experience during World War Two (New Haven, 1993), pp. 20–1.

  42 Roeder, Censored War, p. 25.

  43 O. Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and war in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1991), p. 96.

  44 M. Wells, ‘Aviators and Air Combat: A Study of the US Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command’, University of London PhD thesis, 1992, p. 137.

  45 A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London, 1991), esp. chs 5 and 7.

  46 H.A. DeWeend (ed.), Selected Speeches and Statements of General of the Army George C. Marshall (New York, 1973), p. 251, address to the American legion, 18 September 1944.

  47 J.W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and power in the Pacific war (New York, 1986), pp. 83–4.

  48 A. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York, 1958), p. 107.

  49 Dower, War Without Mercy, pp. 16–17. The image of the good war inspired Studs Terkel’s book of the same title: The ‘Good War’: An oral history of World War Two (New York, 1984).

  50 See the discussion in S. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War Two (New York, 1993), and C.C. Crane, Bombs, Cities and Civilians: American airpower strategy in World War II (Kansas University Press, 1993).

  51 Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 16; P. Winterton, Report on Russia (London, 1945), pp. 6–15; Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin, pp. 69–75.

  52 W.J. West (ed.), Orwell: The war commentaries (London, 1985), pp. 20–1.

  53 West (ed.), Orwell, p. 22; Orwell, Collected Essays, pp. 168–70: ‘But Stalin seems to be becoming a figure rather similar to what Franco used to be, a Christian gent whom it is not done to criticize’ (p. 170).

  54 Directorate of Army Education, The British Way and Purpose (London, 1944), appendix B, pp. 570–1.

  55 Letters of Thomas Mann 1889–1955, trans. R. and C. Winston (2 vols, London, 1970), I, p. 377, letter to Agnes Meyer, 7 October 1941.

  56 Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 355, entry for 10 February 1941.

  57 Stalin, Great Patriotic War, p. 30; Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!, p. 106.

  58 W. Shirer, Berlin Diary (London, 1941), pp. 161–2, entry for 3 September 1939.

  59 M. Muggeridge (ed.), Ciano’s Diary 1930–1943 (London, 1947), pp. 263–4, entry for 10 June 1940.

  60 United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), Pacific Theatre, ‘The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale’ (Washington, June 1947), p. 15.

  61 USSBS, Pacific Theatre, Report 72, ‘Interrogation of Japanese Officials’ (2 vols, Washington, 1946). Midway was taken by most of those interrogated as the turning-point. For example vol. I, p. 6, ‘After Midway I thought it was defensive holding from that time on’; p. 169, ‘it was the opinion of most officers that the loss of the aircraft carriers during the summer of 1942 stopped the expansion …’; p. 266, ‘I think the failure of the Midway Campaign was the beginning of total failure …’; etc.

  62 T. Kase, Eclipse of the Rising Sun (London, 1951), p. 66.

  63 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale’, pp. 16–17, 24

  64 Fading Victory: The diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki 1941–1945 (Pittsburgh, 1991), p. 33, entry for 2 December 1941.

  65 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese morale’, p. 25.

  66 R. Nagatsaku, I Was a Kamikaze (London, 1973), p. 22ff; USSBS, Pacific Theatre, Report 1, ‘Summary Report’ (Washington, 1 July 1946), p. 12.

  67 Kase, Eclipse, pp. 78–80; I. Nish, ‘Japan’, in J. Noakes (ed.), The Civilian in War: The home front in Europe, Japan and the USA in World War II (Exeter, 1992), pp. 98–101.

  68 USSBS, ‘Summary Report’, p. 23; Kase, Eclipse of the Rising Sun, pp. 67–8.

  69 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale’, p. vi.

  70 USSBS, ‘Summary Report’, pp. 17–21; Nagatsaku, I Was a Kamikaze, p. 43.

  71 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale’, p. 21; USSBS, ‘Summary Report’, p. 21; USSBS, Pacific Theatre, Report 2, ‘Japan’s Struggle to End the War’ (Washington, 1 July 1946), pp. 21–2, memorandum of meeting between Prince Konoye and Emperor Hirohito 14 February 1945; Konoye told the emperor, ‘I think that there is no longer any doubt about our defeat … The greatest obstacle to ending the war is the existence of the military group which has been propelling the country into the present state ever since the Manchurian Incident …’

  72 W.A. Boelcke (ed.), The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels Oct. 1939 to March 1943 (London, 1967), pp. 175–6, conference of 22 June 1941; pp. 192–5, conferences of 7th, 11th and 19 December 1941; R.G. Reuth, Goebbels (London, 1993), pp. 291–3.

  73 F. Taylor (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries 1939–1941 (London, 1982), p. 415, entry for 16 June 1941.

  74 M. Jonas, The United States and Germany: A diplomatic history (New York, 1984), pp. 232–3.

  75 N. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims: The establishment of the New Order (London, 1974), pp. 351–2, 327; Bartov, Hitler’s Army, pp. 66–72, 84–8.

  76 J. Forster, ‘The Relation between Operation Barbarossa as an Ideological War of Extermination and the Final Solution’, in D. Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and implementation (London, 1994), p. 92; O. Bartov, ‘Operation Barbarossa and the origins of the Final Solution’, in Cesarani, The Final Solution, pp. 127–9.

  77 C. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1993).

  78 Taylor (ed.), Goebbels Diaries, p. 426.

  79 M. Messerschmidt ‘Deserteure in Zweiten Weltkrieg’ in W. Wette (ed.), Deserteure dei Wehrmacht: Feiglinge – Opfer – Hoffnungsträger (Essen, 1995), pp. 61–2; O. Hennicke, F. Wüllner ‘Über die barbarischen Vollstreckungsmethoden von Wehrmacht und Justiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg’ in Wette (ed.), Deserteure, pp. 80–1.

  80 Bartov, Hitler’s Army, pp. 96–9. The Soviet figures are calculated from J. Erickson, D. Dilks (eds), Barbarossa: the Axis and the Allies (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 262.

  81 Taylor (ed.), Goebbels Diaries, p. 425, entry for 23 June 1941; Spanish ambassador in W. Kimball (ed.), Churchill and Roosevelt: The complete correspondence (3 vols, London, 1984), II, Churchill to Roosevelt, 1 January 1943, enclosing Special Intelligence Serial No. 75.

  82 U. von Hassell, The von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944 (London, 1948), p. 182, entry for 13 July 1941.

  83 See in particular K. von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler (Oxford, 1992); P. Hoffmann, The German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

  84 Morale figures from USSBS, European Theatre, Report 64B, ‘The Effects of Strategic Bombing on German Morale’, vol. I (Washington, May 1947), p. 16 (including 16 per cent who considered the war lost from the outset); Goebbels remark in Z. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda (Oxford, 1973), p. 164.

  85 A. Fredborg, Behind the Steel Wall: Berlin 1941–43 (London, 1944), p. 164.

  86 Ibid., pp. 218–19.

  87 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, pp. 314–26, conferences of 6th, 21st and 25–7 January 1943.

  88 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on German Morale’, pp. 14, 16; von Hassell, Diaries, p. 301, entry for 2 January 1944, p. 303, entry for 23 February 1
944.

  89 F. von Schlabrendorff, The Secret War Against Hitler (London, 1966), p. 223.

  90 Details from von Schlabrendorff, Secret War Against Hitler, pp. 229–40.

  91 M. Baigent, R. Leigh, Secret Germany (London, 1994).

  92 Details from von Schlabrendorff, Secret War Against Hitler, pp. 276–92; Baigent, Leigh, Secret Germany, pp. 46–58; H. B. Gisevius, To the Bitter End (London, 1948), pp. 526–56.

  93 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on German Morale’, pp. 14–16. Of those willing to fight to the end 24 per cent claimed never to have wavered, 5 per cent to have wavered and then recovered confidence.

  94 USSBS, ‘Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale’, p. 23.

  95 Ugaki, Fading Victory, pp. 665–6; kessen in Nish, ‘Japan’, pp. 99–100.

  96 G. Tempel, Speaking Frankly About the Germans (London, 1963), pp. 43–4.

  97 P. Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer SS (London, 1990), pp. 606–11.

  98 T. Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (London, 1993), pp. 168–9.

  99 Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, p. 211.

  100 G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (London, 1948), pp. 29–31.

  10 Why the Allies Won

  1 F. Genoud (ed.), The Testament of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann documents February–April 1945 (London, 1961), p. 70, 17 February 1945.

  2 Ibid., pp. 63, 79, 98–9, 15th, 20th and 26 February 1945.

  3 Ibid., pp. 101–2, 26 February 1945.

  4 Ibid., pp. 52, 82–3, 87–8, 13th, 21st and 24 February 1945.

  5 W. Averell Harriman with E. Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941–1946 (London, 1976), pp. 90–1.

  6 R.H. Ferrell (ed.), The Eisenhower Diaries (New York, 1981), p. 53, entry for 5 March 1942.

  7 United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), Pacific Theatre, Report 72, ‘Interrogation of Japanese Officials’, vol. I (Washington, 1946), p. 285.

  8 F. Gilbert (ed.), Hitler Directs His War: The secret records of his daily military conferences (New York, 1950), p. 24, conference of 5 March 1943.

  9 H.A. DeWeend (ed.), Selected Speeches and Statements of General of the Army George C. Marshall (New York, 1973), p. 249, remarks at the award of the Howland Memorial Prize, Yale University, 16 February 1944.