Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  If, as demonstrated above, the efficiency of the railways was key to the German war effort, it was also essential for carrying out the greatest crime of the Second World War, the despatch of millions of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to the concentration and death camps. Just as war could not have been conducted on such a huge scale without the railways, the sheer number and speed of the deportations would have been quite impossible through road transport alone. The railways not only enabled vastly greater numbers to be transported, but since the victims were locked into freight railway wagons, the Germans needed far less manpower to supervise and transport them, which was a crucial factor in enabling so many people to be carried in a relatively short period of time. Not only did the method of transport save manpower and trucks, but crucially fuel, which was ever in short supply for the German war effort. It was telling that there were bigger arguments within the German leadership over the transport needs required to carry out the policy than there were over its morality.

  The first trains, in October 1941, between Germany and Poland (and further east to Riga), were principally to move German Jews out of Germany into ghettos where the previous inhabitants had been eliminated. The despatch of Jews direct to Auschwitz and the other death camps for extermination began in the spring of 1942 and the flow intensified over the next two years and then began to slow after the Allies landed in northern France, although the last recorded train was in March 1945. The deportations were carried out on an industrial scale and in an extremely calculated manner. For the most part, freight wagons were used, though in places where the Germans were keen to maintain the myth that the Jews were simply being ‘resettled in the east’, the victims travelled in third-class carriages. Cruelly, most of the deportees were forced to buy a one-way ticket, with children being charged half fare.

  In order to carry out the transportation of the victims, basic calculations had to be made by the railway authorities in order to ensure that the camps received the number of people that could be ‘processed’ – mostly, of course, murdered on arrival. Each freight wagon could accommodate fifty people but they were usually filled with 100 or even 150, with the result that many people died before reaching the camps. No food or water was provided, and only a bucket as a latrine, and since the wagons had no protection from the heat or cold, conditions soon became intolerable whatever the weather conditions outside. In order for the trains to proceed reasonably quickly once they were on the main line, they were limited to fifty-five wagons each. The average journey time was more than four days as the trains were given the least priority and consequently were frequently stabled in sidings for days at a time while freight and troop services were allowed to pass through. The longest journey involved a train of Jews from Corfu, who were transferred to a train on the mainland which then took eighteen days to reach its destination. By the time it reached the camp, there were only corpses on board. The total number of people transported in the trains, as ascertained from the detailed records kept by the German and Polish state railway companies, was about 8 million, packed into 1,600 trains.

  The deportations would not have been possible without the co-operation of the various countries’ rail companies, notably the French state railway, SNCF, but also its counterparts in the Netherlands and Belgium, and there were severe recriminations against these companies after the war. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post,43 200,000 German railway employees alone were involved in the deportations and ‘10,000 to 20,000 were responsible for mass murders but were never prosecuted’.

  As this grim crime demonstrates, as with all aspects of its operation, the Deutsche Reichsbahn was nothing if not efficient. Its remarkable ability to survive the Allied onslaught for so long meant that its ultimate collapse was all the more devastating. The redundancy built into the German railways before the war, with much deliberate duplication of facilities, and the priority given to maintaining the coal supply, which was the lifeblood of the system, ensured that the railways had continued functioning far beyond expectations throughout the conflict. Because they had managed to survive so long under such difficult circumstances, when they finally did collapse, virtually the whole system fell apart with frightening speed. The Germans hastened the process by destroying lines in front of the invading forces, notably blowing up all the bridges across the Rhine, with the exception of the Remagen bridge captured in March 1945, which was only partly destroyed, leaving it able to carry wagons, though not locomotives, until it collapsed ten days later. The first replacement bridge over the Rhine at Wessel was completed in ten days and within a month it was carrying nearly fifty trains per day. The destruction of the German railways, nevertheless, was again a handicap to the Allied invaders and slowed their progress on numerous occasions. From beginning to end, therefore, the railways or the lack of them played an important part in the progress of the Second World War. Surprisingly, despite the growing sophistication of aircraft and missiles, the railways would still play a part in several conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century.

  TEN

  BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

  Those damn Commies. One can almost feel the irritation of General James Van Fleet, the commander of the US and UN forces in the Korean War, as he describes the way that the North Koreans managed to keep their railways operating despite two periods of intense bombardment by the Americans aimed at destroying their railway supply lines. His account is a blend of exasperation tinged with begrudging admiration and respect for the enemy: ‘How could the Chinese Communist armies in Korea supply themselves in hostile territory 200 miles from their Manchurian base in the face of the terrific interdiction program of the USAF and Naval Air?… We knew they were getting the bulk of their supplies by rail. We knew the location of all rail lines. We had air and naval supremacy. But in spite of all our air and naval interdiction attacks, their railroads continued to keep them supplied, even to the point of building up reserves for offensive actions. How could they do it?’1

  As the general suggests, the railways played a key role in the Korean War, which may have been the first war of the Cold War era but in most respects was an old-fashioned conflict fought through infantry attacks backed by air cover and even, at times, involving troops dug into trenches. Korea was divided, without reference to the Korean people, in the aftermath of the Second World War and it was the China-supported Communist North’s attempt to invade the South which triggered the war in June 1950. In the first phase, the Communists took over nearly all the Korean peninsula. Over the next three years, they would be gradually forced back to a dividing line along the 38th Parallel by United Nations forces which mainly consisted of South Korean and US troops, though they included a sizeable contingent of nearly 100,000 soldiers from Britain and Australia, as well as men from more than a dozen other nations. Although the Americans and South Koreans had blown up railway bridges as they retreated southward in the face of the North Korean onslaught, it did not take long for the invaders to have supply trains up and running on those lines. The North Koreans were supplied from Manchuria, part of China, which under the rules of engagement was out of bounds to United Nations bombers and consequently the railways were vital in bringing supplies down south.

  The key to the strategy of pushing the Communists back north towards China was to destroy their supply lines from their base in Manchuria and this led the Americans to launch two massive aerial attacks targeted at the railways, called, hubristically, Operation Strangle and Operation Saturate. In fact, they managed neither. Despite being supplemented by a naval blockade and long-range gunfire from ships, the bombing campaigns proved ineffectual. The lessons of the Second World War had not been learnt. According to an examination of the operation by a military analyst, ‘the planners simply asserted that air attacks could make sufficient cuts in rail lines to stem the flow of supplies. This assumption ignored the recent experiences of… rail interdiction efforts in World War II, which showed that cutting rail lines was extremely difficult and that, un
til a new munition was developed, this was not a particularly effective technique when compared with the effort involved in achieving those cuts.’2 As the British and Americans had discovered when attacking Germany at the end of the war, railway lines were difficult to destroy solely from the air. And so it proved again.

  The US3 military had originally intended to target roads but then realized that the railways were far more important in the line of communication. If the railways were blocked they calculated that a fleet of 6,000 trucks would be needed to replace the 120 freight wagons carrying the 2,400 tons of supplies needed daily.4 And the North Koreans simply did not have that number of trucks, and, as ever, the roads were in a poor condition. Consequently, the first bombing operation aimed at destroying these lines, Strangle, was launched in August 1951.5 For the first three months it seemed to go well but that was mainly because supporting ground forces followed up the aerial attacks, and the seasonal rains added to the difficulties of operating the railway. Once the ground forces withdrew, however, the effectiveness of the air attacks greatly diminished. Only one in four sorties resulted in any damage to the railways and only an eighth of the 500lb bombs fell anywhere near the tracks. Moreover, more than one aircraft per day was being lost in the raids. As Operation Strangle entered the Korean winter, the results were even worse because the bombs simply skidded along the frozen ground and exploded harmlessly, littering the countryside with shrapnel but leaving the rail lines untouched.

  Even worse for the American attackers was the speed with which any damage they did cause was quickly reinstated. Or appeared to be. Wrecked bridges were replaced or, if that proved too difficult, a new line was built to by-pass the wreckage. With an almost infinite amount of Korean and Chinese manpower to call on, supplies were simply manhandled past any obstruction in the line and transferred from one set of wagons to another. Van Fleet, however, kept on being informed by his aides, who, like all staff officers before them, had over-optimism in their DNA, of the good news that the railway had been put out of commission for a long time: ‘Repeatedly I was assured by my own staff and by the Air Force and Naval Air, often supported by photographs, that “a mile or more of rails at critical points” or “the bridges at Sinanju” were “out for good”. But always a few days later, locomotives pulling trains were operating at these very locations. In short, we were witnessing this time to our own military disadvantage and frustration, another demonstration of the capacity, the durability, and the flexibility of railroads under war conditions.’6

  Partly this was because the Communists proved very clever at fooling the US forces into thinking that the bombing was more effective than it was. Bridges were made to look wrecked by having removable spans taken out during the day and replaced at night; by-pass crossings over rivers were hidden with camouflage and trains sheltered in tunnels at night. The deception worked. The post-war reports later criticized the military commanders for failing to spot that much of the photographic evidence of destruction was nothing of the sort, rather reminiscent of the famous Iraq weapons of mass destruction dossier.

  Operation Strangle had been intended to last only a month and a half, and after four months, at the end of 1951, there were calls within the military leadership to stop the waste of resources and wind it up. Instead, a new programme, Saturate, was launched. It was a more comprehensive attempt to bomb the supply lines out of existence by operating at night when the trains ran, as well as during the day. However, there were only the resources to attack a limited number of targets, and most of the railway lines were left intact. Again, any damage was repaired quickly and Saturate was deemed another failure. In total, the Americans flew a staggering 172,000 missions of reconnaissance and bombing, and fired 230,000 rounds of ammunition on ‘interdiction’ flights aimed at disrupting the Communists’ supply lines. Van Fleet, still exasperated half a decade later when writing his report on the performance of the air force in the Korean War, recalled how ‘we dive bombed and skip-bombed, we shelled with heavy naval guns, we cannonaded with ground artillery, we strafed with rockets and machine guns, we organized sabotage and guerrilla attacks. But we never stopped the Red railroads from delivering ammunition and supplies… At no time, except locally and temporarily, did the enemy limit his combat effort because of supply considerations. By every index, the Communists were able to steadily increase their flow of supplies to the front lines.’7 As John Westwood, the author of Railways at War, put it: ‘In this contest, in which the latest air and naval weapons were deployed against the railway system of North Korea, the railways emerged a clear winner.’8 The Americans had, too, probably overestimated the level of supplies needed for a lightly armed Asian army, which meant that the enemy’s troops could survive with far fewer trains than had been estimated.

  The United Nations forces themselves made heavy use of the railways remaining in their hands during the conflict. The reinforcements and supplies which were landed at Inchon on the west coast were all immediately transferred by rail to the front lines and bases on railway wagons pulled by locomotives brought over on the ships. It was, by all accounts, an incredibly efficient operation, unhampered by bombing raids since the United Nations forces dominated the air.

  In the early stages of the Vietnam War, too, the railways were perceived by both sides as the crucial transport lifeline. In particular, the 1,100-mile line between Saigon9 and Hanoi that stretches parallel to the coast for much of the country was much fought over. The initial conflict in Vietnam, which pitted the colonial power, the French, against the Chinese-supported Viet Minh seeking independence, began as the Second World War ended and throughout the conflict the government struggled to retain control of the railways. The French were acting as a proxy for the United Nations and the other main Western countries who wanted to maintain the colonial presence in south-east Asia but struggled to retain the area which they had occupied nearly a century previously. The railways were, according to a contemporary report written in 1953 by an American journalist, Paul Wohl, ‘the backbone of United Nations defenses against Russia’s Stalin and China’s Mao in Southeast Asia. Had it not been for these railroads, the French together with the Vietnam administration of their puppet, the former Annamese emperor Bao Dai, might have been thrown into the sea by the guerrillas who have the support of a large part of the intensely nationalistic population.’10

  It was, however, a struggle. Less than half the Saigon-Hanoi line was functioning and remained under French control, and running trains required huge military support. The French had lost most of the inland regions to the insurgents but, in order to maintain supplies to parts of the country still under their control, needed to run trains along the line. While for the most part the line hugs the coast, at times it veers inland and operating on those sections involved running through guerrilla-controlled areas. Therefore, rather than sending a train alone along the railway, the French ran convoys of half a dozen trains consisting of both passenger and freight cars dubbed rafale (‘gust of wind’), with the president’s former train now converted into a mobile hospital at the core. Confined to a maximum of 25 mph through fear that round the next curve there might be a gaping hole rather than a bridge, these trains only ran during the day, guarded by an armoured freight wagon at the front and an armoured train in the rear. Being French, these extraordinary convoys included wagons-cuisines complete with chef in white headgear flanked by an assistant and a butler. For the Vietnamese travelling in the train, there were ‘one or two more wagon-cuisines, complete with rijstafel [a lavish feast based on rice] and chop sticks and additional detachments of fighting culinary specialists’.

  At night, the trains stopped ‘in special encampments with barricades and watch towers established at convenient points between terminals where the convoy is re-arranged for shelter and defense’,11 and the whole set-up, as Wohl rightly points out, was ‘not so different from the one adopted in this country [the US] in the days of the great trek to the West when covered wagons were lined up for the night’.
There was indeed a kind of Wild West spirit about these trains and their commanders, who gained a legendary reputation for getting through the enemy lines. Like the wagon trains, they were constantly being attacked, bombed, mined or faced with boulders rolled onto the tracks. Several trains were damaged but, according to Wohl, ‘new units constantly are being equipped in Saigon and Hanoi’ so that la rafale could ‘safely go on during the day’.

  The armoured support trains were crucial for the convoys’ survival and patrolled the line at night: ‘Vietnam railway engineers believe that without these nocturnal train patrols which whisk ghostlike through dark rice paddies and jungles, suddenly lighting up the track or stopping for inspections and forays, the rail service could not have been carried on.’ The Viet Minh themselves had a few armoured trains and at one point two such trains from opposing sides met on the track and shot at one another across a vale where thick jungle growth had invaded the right of way. Wohl is probably not far off the mark in describing it as an event ‘unique in railway history’ but his evocative description may just be slightly over the top: ‘As the beams of the searchlights swept through the mangrove brush and guns flashed and thundered, swarms of screaming birds rose into the night, and for seconds the swish and rustle of panicky gazelles, wild pigs and zebu bulls drowned out the clanking of the moving trains… After a few minutes the gunfire stopped. Either the distance between the Vietnam and the Vietminh tracks was too great or the gunners did not aim right in the confusion. The purpose of either train was not to fight the other but to clear the track. Mission accomplished, they returned to base.’