Battle of Britain
August to October 1940
Starting in August 1940, the German Luftwaffe began concentrated daylight attacks on English airbases and its aircraft industry. Hitler’s goal was to destroy the RAF and then stage an invasion of England. Well . . . maybe. From the start the Germans were at a disadvantage. As designed, the only use of the Luftwaffe was to support the German Army; thus, close air support was their mission, not bombing an enemy nation into submission. German aircraft were short ranged, the bombers were two-engine affairs with almost nonexistent defensive firepower, and they carried light bomb loads. Up against modern fighters such as the Spitfire or Hurricane they were absolutely inadequate. General Kesselring knew the weaknesses of the equipment, and, as one of the architects of the air assault, limited their key operations to southern England. Royal Air Force production areas were bombed, but this was more difficult than getting at the airfields. Air warfare against cities was not new as WWI saw numerous long-range bombing raids; nonetheless, air attacks on a world power to attain air superiority was new. Kesselring understood and followed Clausewitz’s principles (defeat the enemy’s army in the field).[225] He wanted to defeat the Royal Air Force by destroying its bases of operation, pilots, aircraft, and ability to construct aircraft.
Radar was England’s technological ace in the hole. Although primitive, the English radar stations detected incoming flights of bombers, supplying information on course and speed. Britain’s Fighter Command, under Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, then launched the intercepting fighters. The ME-109s sent to protect the bombers could not stay long over the target, thus, protecting the bombers was problematic. Furthermore, each German pilot shot down was lost to death or captivity, whereas the English pilots shot down could be recovered to fight again (unless KIA).[226] From the start the Luftwaffe took a beating. Nonetheless, the experienced Nazi pilots shot down numerous RAF aircraft, and the bombers damaged the airfields significantly. Dowding worried he might lose the fight allowing Germany to gain air superiority over Southern England.
However, fate intervened, and Hitler ordered the bombing switched to London thereby wrecking the German staff’s planning at the moment victory winged into view. This violated Clausewitz’s principle of defeating the enemy’s army (air force in this case) before doing anything else. London was further away from Luftwaffe air bases resulting in more time over enemy territory, with its flack and fighters, and less time over the target. The new raids caused extensive damage to London and the Luftwaffe, in addition to allowing the RAF to recover their losses then attack with renewed vigor. As winter approached and losses worsened, the Luftwaffe suffered defeat by Hitler’s decision, radar, and English determination. The fact that British bombing raids heavily damaged the Nazi invasion barges is another seldom-discussed key factor. Fighter Command won the battle by just surviving.
Invasion?
Watching documentaries on the Battle of Britain, we hear the narrator deeply intone that should Britain lose the crucial air battle a Nazi invasion would surely follow. This idea is pure propagandistic humbug. The RAF was hard pressed, but it retained valuable options beyond total destruction. Germany lacked the resources to invade England even if it won the air battle by a wide margin. Plus, the battle started in August, far too late to seriously contemplate an invasion because of the approach of winter and bad weather.
If Fighter Command was being destroyed, it could pull its aircraft out German range and await the invasion while rebuilding its strength. Also waiting out of range would be the English Navy with its aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and more. Upon sighting a German invasion armada, it would sail into action with all available land, sea, and air support.[227] Even with total air superiority, Germany could not have overcome such an onslaught of British ships and aircraft.[228] The Battle of Britain was history’s first struggle to gain air superiority over another nation’s territory. The Germans failed while significantly damaging their air force. This hampered Luftwaffe operations in Russia the following summer. Hitler may have been trying to get England to quit the war through this air effort; however, who can know the mind of Adolf Hitler?
The Battle of the Atlantic
September 1939 to May 1943
As the Luftwaffe suffered defeat over Britain, the war’s longest campaign started in the Atlantic.[229] However, Germany lost the Battle of the Atlantic before it started. This was a technological fight from the first, and at the start of the campaign the Germans held several advantages. Admiral Karl Donitz (also Doenitz), the German U-boat commander, devised a new way of waging war with submarines. Donitz recognized the two highest hurdles for submarine warfare were spotting a convoy and then successfully attacking it. Believe it or not, finding the convoy was the hardest part, but once found the submarines needed to sink several ships to gain victory. First, a line of scout submarines (sub) was deployed to spot convoys. After a sub acquired a convoy they radioed the position, speed, and direction of the ships to U-boat headquarters in France. Second, German HQ radioed a number of subs and ordered their convergence on the convoy for a large coordinated attack designed to inflict maximum damage while overwhelming the convoy escort. Donitz’s wolf pack concept gave the Germans a critical advantage during the first months of the war. The problem in modern war is technological and tactical advantages disappear fast.
The Germans lost before they started because they produced so few modern oceangoing submarines prior to September 1939. The majority of their subs were coastal types, designed for shallow water and not cruising on open seas. In the critical prewar years Germany produced few oceangoing subs, and one year they produced just ONE U-boat. During the essential months of 1939, Germany had twelve oceangoing subs, and struggled to keep four U-boats on the western approaches to England.[230] Even with so few U-boats, ace German captains sank numerous British merchant ships. The Royal Navy swiftly took countermeasures to avoid the wolf packs through the code breakers by just routing the convoys around the subs with known locations. With so few subs an effective picket line was impossible. The few U-boats available at war’s outbreak doomed the Nazi effort. Donitz needed three hundred oceangoing U-boats for his campaign. The admiral possessed twelve, about 4 percent of his needs.
Documentaries on the Battle of the Atlantic show German U-boats attacking from under water in daylight. In fact, few attacks occurred this way. Underwater, a U-boat was very slow and could not keep up with a convoy; therefore, Germans carried out their attacks at night on the surface. U-boats stayed on the surface when searching for convoys and, once the quarry was spotted, tracked it at a safe distance while surfaced. Underwater, the U-boats found it impossible to spot or track convoys; thus, surface operations were imperative. After a Wolf Pack assembled, the German U-boat captains awaited darkness then skillfully approached the convoy, on the surface, avoiding the escorts. Once in close, the subs, gliding low in the sea, either fired their torpedoes outside the convoy perimeter, or—if expert and fearless—sailed into the convoy itself, between the lines of ships, and commenced their attack from point blank range.
For the first few months of the war an extremely small set of brilliant U-boat commanders accounted for the majority of English shipping losses. As these superb captains and their crews were destroyed Britain’s shipping losses declined, illustrating the impact of a few extraordinary men.
By 1943, the technological advantage lay completely with the Allies as new submarine detection and fighting methods forever shifted the tide. The increasing Allied ability to place aircraft above the convoys ended the U-boats’ operational effectiveness, and Allied shipping losses fell significantly. To illustrate: in 1942 Allied shipping losses were 8,245,000 tons, for the loss of 85 U-boats; in 1943 Allied shipping losses were 3,611,000 tons for the loss of 287 U-boats. The tide turned dramatically in May of 1943 and Germany lost the undersea struggle.
All this Allied technological innovation and its rapid deployment was assisted by decision
s at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, where Roosevelt and Churchill met to co-ordinate strategy. The leaders agreed the U-boat was the number one menace to the Allied cause and directed extra resources to defeat the German undersea navy. Interestingly, their second priority was defeating the Luftwaffe, hence showing the technological orientation of the Allies. Meanwhile, Hitler’s U-boats lacked resources until it was far too late in the battle because Hitler put other priorities ahead of the Atlantic struggle. In fact, 98 percent of Allied shipping crossed the Atlantic without incident. This victory is directly attributable to the Allied emphasis on defeating the U-boat threat as their first priority. Nonetheless, from 1939 and up through May 1943, the Germans were causing major concerns with their U-boat offensives. During the Battle of the Atlantic, the Germans sank 2,603 Allied ships for the loss of over seven hundred submarines. In Operation Drumbeat alone the United States lost three hundred and ninety seven ships between January and June of 1942.
The Battle of the Atlantic, and the entire war, completely depended on another factor: industrial production.
Industrial Production
(Entire war) 1939 to 1945
Most students of war like concentrating on battles won and lost, great personalities dominating the era, or the machines of war; however, the available resources properly committed to numerous battles habitually decide wars between great powers. As such, the ability to harness and properly direct these resources is vital to the outcome of war. The nations marshaling their resources most effectively, turning those resources into what is most necessary for success, and then efficiently delivering the end product, all but assures ultimate victory. Resources include more than weapons, because properly trained men, new methods of war, and new methods of production are critical to victory. This study of stuff is termed logistics.
During the war, Hitler made many errors (to say the least), but perhaps his most important blunder was not ordering total war production prior to 1943 (or prior to 1939 for that matter). Haunted by WWI’s citizen depravations the Fuehrer wanted Germans to enjoy some consumer goods, and he hoped the war would be short. Another major error was stopping development of weapons systems (aircraft for example) taking longer than a year to move to production. Both of these decisions were directly responsible for Germany’s destruction by 1945. If Hitler had made the opposite decisions and allowed continued research on all weapons systems, and went to full production by 1940, then the delivery of jet aircraft, new tanks, new submarines, and a lot more would have taken place years sooner than actually delivered. For example, if Germany had developed and produced in quantity the ME-262 jet aircraft eighteen months sooner, the Allies may have lost air superiority over Europe thus delaying the D-Day invasion (I know . . . a lot of very big ifs).
The Allies went to total war production immediately. In the United States the huge supply of idle machinery from the Depression went back into use, out of work men got work, and a host of other economic changes took place after 1941. The Great Depression was no more, and all that pent-up potential exploded in a torrent of production and innovation stunning the Allies of the United States as well as its enemies. It took more than idle production availability to cause this industrial flood of supplies and equipment. The organization of industry, the ability to control quality as well as turn out large quantities of materials, and the ability to develop new methods of war and new methods of war production were as necessary as the machines and men of war. Immediately after Pearl Harbor General George Marshal reorganized the war department to reflect the new realities and methods of war. Even considering this change on the eve of war would chill most leaders, much less after the war had started and things were going badly. The same reorganization was happening in American industry. This was one of the secrets of success for the United States in WWII. The Americans were willing to reorganize, reshuffle, and reinvent almost everything if it would better serve the war effort. Flexibility of this nature allowed innovation on a grand scale. Often the innovation was stunning. For illustration, reflect on the Kaiser Company’s construction of transport ships in weeks using prefabrication methods rather than months by normal shipyard methods.[231]
The US Armed Forces ensured their fighting men received excellent weapons. The Americans quickly designed, tested, and put into production new aircraft that easily out performed aircraft developed before 1940. The M-1 semiautomatic rifle, designed just before the war, was rushed into production, and in months all the soldiers, airmen, and marines of the United States carried this excellent rifle. The M-1 displays the skill of the United States in focusing its efforts on where they would do the most good. The United States and the British developed new methods of anti-submarine warfare, crushing the Nazi’s undersea threat by May of 1943. In the Pacific War, the US Marines militarized a civilian amphibious tracked vehicle (LVT—landing vehicle tracked), for scaling coral reefs. First used at Tarawa, it saved the invasion. Large landings, such as D-Day, required large transports, but the Allies went further developing huge transports capable of unloading directly onto enemy beaches. This was the LST (landing ship tank). This one craft made large amphibious assault less complicated and more successful. It was one of hundreds of Allied innovations focusing on the best use of available resources.
Coupling new industrial innovations with new methods of war greatly facilitated crushing the Axis. As an example, the US Navy invented the “seatrain” concept. With seatrain the US Pacific Fleet resupplied at sea eliminating steaming back to port for supplies and refueling. This idea, and the construction of cargo ships and oilers to realize the concept, allowed the US Fleet to strike suddenly anywhere in the Pacific. Admiral Nimitz rapidly crossed Pacific, stunning the Japanese Navy and ruining its capacity to adapt. It was a major reason for Japan’s defeat by 1945. This again displays the Allied aptitude for focusing resources on ideas yielding remarkable results once implemented.
The Axis failed miserably in the realms of production and focusing the use of resources. In Germany the prime cause was Hitler. His poor decisions in military and industrial matters doomed his nation. One decision was right. He appointed Albert Speer as armaments minister in 1942. Speer displayed outstanding organizational genius. Under his oversight, the Third Reich increased armament production during the height of Allied bomber offensives against its industries. Over thirty months (1942 to 1944) he increased production fourfold. Speer receives little credit for his feat, possibly because his genius prolonged the war; yet, there is no denying he accomplished miracles of production.
For instance, Speer joined, for the first time in the Reich, minds in German universities with the need for faster construction of better submarines. Germany soon developed a superior submarine drive system that pushed the submarine’s underwater speeds beyond their surface speeds.[232] Speer adopted new prefabrication construction methods, significantly decreasing submarine construction time. It all came too late for the Reich. Allied bombing destroyed the new submarines in dry dock. If such submarines had been put to sea one year earlier, the Battle of the Atlantic could have gotten extremely dangerous for the Allies.
Germany brought its war experience to the industrial front on a few occasions. Panther tank development, although flawed, came from hard experience fighting the Soviet T-34 (the best tank of the war). An entirely new weaponry concept, the assault rifle, flowed from exceptional German field research. Their original German assault weapon, Sturmgewehr 44, became the prototype for the famous Russian AK-47.[233] The Sturmgewehr was arguably the best rifle of the war. Once more, the German idea failed to influence the war, but it exhibited German talent in conceiving an idea from combat experience then bringing it to fruition even as its industrial base was being devastated. The Sherman tank shows the Allies occasionally failed at marrying combat experience with equipment.[234] Somehow, the news that the Sherman was outclassed by German tanks in 1944 failed to reach Allied decision makers in Washington.
Hitler simultaneously maintained numerous o
verlapping projects, some of them outrageous, thereby squandering valuable resources of every nature. Hitler should have ordered production one very good but easy-to-construct and maintain tank, rather than several excellent but hard-to-build tanks. Germany needed to focus their limited resources on practical projects that could be in the field in a reasonable time. Case in point, the ME 262 jet fighter. Hitler demanded a combination fighter and bomber, thereby delaying production and squandering resources. To really impact the war an early unleashing of the ME 262 in quantity was necessary. Hitler also expended a tidal wave of human effort and hard-to-get materials on vengeance weapons such as the V-1 and V-2 rockets. The V-1 was a simple piece of equipment, easy to produce, modest in cost, and effective in reaching London. Increasing its effectiveness only required a little more effort on improving the guidance system and speed. Hitler instead opted to expend valuable resources on the V-2. Directing these men and materials to speed production of the ME 262 would have increased their impact exponentially.
One set of wasted Nazi resources is difficult to discuss. Hitler ordered the destruction of the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, mentally retarded, mentally ill, the old, the sick, the infirm, and more under the “final solution” for his Jewish problem. Millions went to the Nazi industrial killing centers. In purely economic terms this was a massive waste of resources. The use of the trains and trucks to transport these millions of victims misdirected vital transportation units to tasks unrelated to winning the war. In addition, troops were guarding the camps, workers constructing and then maintaining the facilities, and resources were also expended destroying evidence of the evil acts. Many of the murdered were loyal Germans who would have fought for their country. The thousands of men used in this killing effort were sorely needed to fight or work in factories. Some of the murdered were experts in vital fields or highly trained workers, impossible to replace. On the Eastern Front, groups of SS troops (Einsatzgruppen) roamed about killing Slavs by the hundreds of thousands, thereby misusing those resources and turning the entire population against Germany. Recognizing that the minds directing this industrialized murder were twisted, I know I am attempting logic where no logic can apply. Still, we must recognize the massive expenditure and wastage of resources extensively degraded the Nazi war effort. It also proved the true depths of evil confronted by the Western Democracies. The death camps forever answered the question, why did we fight?
The Super Summary of World History Page 40