Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  By August the Poles were well aware that they were under threat; the only question was when the invasion would come. The Polish thinking saw Germany as the potential aggressor and the intention was to deploy the bulk of the Polish Army against her, leaving very little on the eastern border with the USSR. Instead of trading ground and using the natural defence lines of rivers and mountains, the Poles planned to fight on the frontier. On 28 August full mobilization, including the calling up of the militia (the equivalent of the TA or National Guard), was ordered for 30 August, but on the 29th this was cancelled after British and French protests that mobilization would be seen by Germany as provocation. On 30 August the Poles listened to their own, wiser, counsels and cancelled their cancellation, ordering mobilization for the 31st. The result of all this packs on, packs off nonsense was that, when the attack did come, only about one third of the Polish Army was in its battle positions – which, incredibly, were left to individual army commanders to decide upon.

  The Germans too had undergone several false starts. On 23 August Hitler had ordered A-Day* for 26 August, and on the morning of 25 August this had been confirmed, with a jump-off time of 0430 hours, only for the order to be countermanded late that evening, although mobilization and the preparatory build-up were to continue. General Wagner, the German Quartermaster General, said that there was ‘total irresolution and chaos in the chain of command’,23 as well there might be when an operation of this size and complexity is suddenly halted. It seems that Hitler’s irresolution was caused by Italy declining to play and by last-minute British attempts to get both parties to the conference table. On 31 August OKW ordered subordinate army groups that zero hour would now be first light on 1 September.

  On paper the relative strengths of the two protagonists’ infantry show little disparity: forty German infantry divisions† to thirty-seven Polish, but seven of the German infantry divisions were motorized or partly motorized, and they deployed five armoured divisions against the Poles’ one brigade, or 3,600 armoured fighting vehicles against 750, 6,000 artillery pieces against 4,000 and, crucially, nearly 2,000 modern aircraft against 900 mostly obsolete ones. True, the Poles could field eleven horsed cavalry brigades against the Germans’ one, but the role of cavalry in this campaign did not go far beyond escort and outpost duties and route reconnaissance. But it was not just numbers and technology that counted. The Germans had far better communications; they also had units organized for the tasks they were given and a tactical doctrine that worked and that all understood. The Poles were brave and patriotic, slow and inflexible. By the end of the first week, only one Polish army had not been broken into separate units, and most of those had been surrounded. A counter-attack on 10 September by the one Polish army still intact only led to its own encirclement and by the end of the second week the Polish defence had collapsed with only detached pockets holding out. When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with the secret clauses of the Russo-German pact, there was no hope left. Warsaw surrendered on 27 September and, although sporadic fighting went on until 6 October, that was the end of Polish resistance. Around 120,000 Poles had been killed, 70,000 fighting Germans and 50,000 the Russians, and probably another 300,000–400,000 wounded. Around a million had been taken prisoner, while perhaps 150,000 had escaped abroad. Britain had declared war at 1100 hours on 3 September, with France following at 1700 the same day, but actually did nothing – indeed, there was nothing that either country could do.

  The French and British strategic viewpoints differed: as the French saw it, Russia’s strict neutrality would have forced the Germans to keep a sizeable proportion of the Wehrmacht in the East to guard against a Russian attack. It was now apparent that Russia and Germany intended to divide Poland between them and that Russia was securing Germany’s back door. The best German units would now be available to attack France and the traditional British weapon of blockade would be nullified by supplies of food and raw materials supplied to Germany by Russia. The British build-up in France was moving far too slowly and the concern was that Germany might attack before the Allies were ready. The French produced all sorts of hare-brained schemes to counter Russian influence, including invading southern Europe via Salonika (neutral territory, but never mind) and bombing Russian oil fields. Quite how this would have reduced Russian support for Germany is unclear; indeed, it would have been much more likely to increase it, and in any event the British, with far more confidence in the capabilities of the French Army than the French had themselves, would have none of it.

  For their part, the British had briefly considered whether their guarantee to Poland created a legal requirement to declare war on the Soviet Union after the latter’s invasion of eastern Poland, but the Attorney General, the senior British law officer, gave it as his considered opinion that it did not. No doubt another attorney general would have been found had the existing one come to a different opinion. Contrary to the French view, the British did not believe that Russo-German amity would survive and urged the need to delay as long as possible in order to give time for the build-up of land forces and for the blockade to work. Eventually, thought the British, German industry would be unable to sustain a war economy for long and, provided enough time was bought, the regime would become enfeebled and either collapse from within or be toppled by a modest Allied invasion.

  The Germans, or at least Hitler, rather agreed with the French. He was concerned that British industry could out-build Germany* and wanted a quick resolution of the war in the West prior to embarking on what he had clearly set out in his political manifesto, Mein Kampf – the establishment of living space for Germany in the East. Hitler originally asked for an attack on the West for early November 1939, but the general staff persuaded him that the Wehrmacht, particularly the army, could not finish one war and go straight into another. For an army that for a generation had not fired a shot in anger, other than when putting down civil unrest, the success of the Polish campaign was little short of superb, but, hardly surprisingly, not everything had gone according to plan. There were faults in some weapon systems, and much equipment had been lost or damaged and was only partly replaced by captured Polish equipment of inferior quality. Three hundred tanks, 370 artillery pieces and 560 aircraft had been destroyed and, perhaps most seriously of all, 11,000 German soldiers had been killed, with another 30,000 wounded, casualties being disproportionately heavy amongst NCOs and junior officers. While German staff work and reaction to changing situations had been superb, the organization of the armoured divisions was unwieldy – there were too many units within the division to be coordinated and controlled by one headquarters. Equipment had to be replaced, organizations adapted and numbers made up before the army could turn its attention westwards. Hitler’s half-hearted peace offering to the Allies received scant attention and the winter of 1939 and the spring of 1940 became known as the Phoney War, when the Allies concentrated on building up their strength while the Germans restructured the Wehrmacht for the next phase of the war.

  In the part of Poland conquered by Germany, the areas inhabited by ethnic Germans or considered to be vital to German security were annexed to Germany. The rest was established as the General Government. Military control swiftly gave way to a civil administration with various occupation elements pursuing different agenda. On the one hand, the NSDAP party officials and members of the General SS followed racial theories while attempting to ensure that no Polish individuals or organizations could mount any effective resistance to German occupation. Hence Jews were deported from the portion of Poland now incorporated into Germany to the General Government, and Polish army officers, members of the nobility, intellectuals, teachers and writers found themselves imprisoned, while the Roman Catholic Church found its monasteries closed and its influence severely curtailed. Atrocities followed, particularly where disaffected Poles attempted to sabotage German infrastructure or assassinate German officials. On the other hand, there was the German Foreign Office, which saw the damag
e that such behaviour was doing to Germany’s standing in the world and attempted to curb it. Senior Nazis who had actually to govern on the ground also saw the folly of antagonizing the population and urged restraint. The army confined itself to protesting against misbehaviour, recording and reporting it. Little was ever done, although sufficient mitigation was imposed to make the area governable, at least until the Warsaw Rising much later in the war.

  Elsewhere, the Russo-German pact had accepted that the Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland – lay within the Soviet sphere of influence, despite their Germanic racial origins, and in the case of the first three Russia had no great difficulty in establishing hegemony over them. Finland was a different matter, and, when a Russian demand for extra-territorial concessions in the Karelian isthmus and ice-free ports was refused, the Russians attacked. The Winter War, which lasted from 30 October 1939 until 13 March 1940, saw the Red Army (3 million strong) in their initial foray receive a very bloody nose from the Finnish Army (126,000 strong including the NAAFI manager and the guardroom cat) under the splendid seventy-two-year-old Marshal Carl Mannerheim. The British and the French saw an opportunity to help the plucky little underdog Finns and, using this as a cover, do something to prevent the Germans from importing iron ore from Sweden, which was neutral, albeit in Germany’s favour. The problem lay in the fact that the only safe route for Allied troops going to Finland was via Norway and Sweden. While the Norwegians might be sympathetic to British wishes, they understandably turned down a request for transit rights on the very sensible grounds that to grant them would only provoke the Germans. The only practical help given to the Finns came in the form of fifty-three aircraft of the RAF, which were swiftly removed when it became apparent that Russia was about to win.

  If the Allies could not use troop movements to Finland to interfere with German imports from Scandinavia, then other methods had to be found. Iron ore was exported via the Swedish port of Luleå in the Baltic, which the Allied navies could not get at, and by rail to the Norwegian port of Narvik, which they could. Luleå froze in the winter whereas Narvik was ice-free all the year round. There was a snag. Norway was neutral and German cargo ships could sail from Narvik all the way down to German ports without ever entering international waters and thus making themselves a legitimate target. However, as Machiavelli so wisely said, necessity makes virtue and the British were quite happy to breach international law if there was a reasonable chance of getting away with it. Plans were drawn up to occupy Norway if there was any sign of a German invasion of that country and or Denmark. As it happened, the Germans were already convinced that the Allies harboured ill-intent towards Norway, and had indeed an invasion plan of their own, Case North, which, entirely coincidentally, they activated on 6 April 1940, the very day that the British government informed the governments of Norway and Sweden that the Royal Navy would lay mines in Norwegian waters.

  If the history faculties at universities were to run a module on how not to conduct a military campaign, then they should forget Darius’ crossing of the Hellespont, McClellan in the Peninsula, the First Afghan War and General Galtieri’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. They need look no farther than the Norwegian campaign of 1940, for as complete and utter cock-ups go it would be difficult to better. There was a perfectly good Allied plan to invade Norway, either to forestall a German occupation or to snaffle the raw materials coming from Sweden, which involved four battalions of infantry with all their equipment on board troopships with an escort of the First Cruiser Squadron at Rosyth ready to sail. The French would also provide a contingent composed mainly of the French Foreign Legion and Polish troops who had escaped from Poland and were now under French command. The problem was that this perfectly good plan was not followed.

  On 8 April the Royal Navy began to lay mines in Norwegian waters off Narvik and the German navy put to sea towards Norway. On 9 April German paratroopers dropped on Denmark and the German navy landed troops in Copenhagen. The Danes very quickly accepted their lot. But the British wrongly interpreted the German naval activity as indicating that the Kriegsmarine was trying to break out into the North Sea, and the Royal Navy reverted to headless-chicken mode. The troops embarked for Norway were hastily disembarked, leaving their equipment on board, while various ships went rushing off hither and thither chasing a breakout that was not happening. By the time it was accepted that the German naval activity was directed at Norway and the ships chasing a non-existent breakout had returned to port, it was too late to pre-empt the German landings, which had got three divisions ashore in the first wave with another three following up. The admiral commanding the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet decided to attack Bergen, a plan vetoed by the Admiralty in London, but then un-vetoed again. An aircraft carrier was sent off with no fighter aircraft for self-protection, and all sorts of naval vessels continued to rush about to no apparent purpose. Eventually, it was decided to send troops to Norway, although neither the army and navy nor the politicians were at one as to what this might achieve.

  After much debate and interminable conferences, made worse by the refusal of the War Cabinet to meet before 0830 hours in the morning, it was agreed that two brigades, one regular and one Territorial, would be sent to Narvik, and eventually, on 11 April, the convoy sailed. Now there was order, counter-order and disorder. While still at sea, the convoy was ordered to split, with one brigade diverted to Namsos, 200 miles to the south of Narvik. This meant that the Territorials landing at Namsos would be without their anti-aircraft artillery and without their brigade commander, who was with the force commander in the leading ship heading for Narvik. Meanwhile, the naval commander was changed halfway through the approach, adding to the already strained relations between army and navy, each of whose commanders had been given different instructions. More and more senior officers got involved and at one stage there were four generals commanding what was barely enough for one.

  When the landings did eventually take place at Namsos, the Territorials were no match for the Germans, who simply rounded them up, and the landing at Narvik would not take place until 28 May, by which time it had been decided to call the operation off, and even then Narvik was captured not by the British but by a combined force of Norwegians, French and Poles. Between 4 and 8 June the Royal Navy carried out one of its more traditional roles – evacuating a beaten army to be used somewhere else – and took off 29,000 Allied troops. Such was the confusion, chaos and incompetence of the Norwegian campaign that even the politicians noticed and there was a most almighty row in Parliament, leading to the resignation of the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, and the propelling to supreme office of Winston Churchill as head of a coalition government,* which, given that Churchill was largely responsible for the shambles of Norway, was, to say the least, somewhat ironic.

  Winston Churchill has cult status in the United Kingdom. He was the man who won the war, the man who stood up against the appeasers, the only man who saw that Hitler was a threat, the only politician who as an ex-soldier himself understood the military imperatives. It is almost impossible, even now, to criticize Churchill without attracting vituperation and abuse – as he himself said, ‘History will be kind to me, for I shall write it.’ And so he did and so it is.

  There can be little doubt that Churchill’s rhetoric was inspirational, that his speeches in the dark days of 1940 and 1941 contributed hugely to the British people’s determination to stick it out, that it was Churchill’s resolution that brought it home to the government of the United States that Britain was worth supporting, that he kept alive hope in the peoples of occupied countries. Churchill had entered the Royal Military College Sandhurst in 1893 and was commissioned into fourth Hussars two years later. In his four years as a regular officer before leaving the army to go into politics, he never commanded a soldier in the field but rather used his mother’s connections to get himself attached to interesting campaigns where he could earn money as a war correspondent and write books. He was an observer with the S
panish Army in Cuba for six months, reporting for the Daily Graphic, accompanied General Sir Bindon Blood’s Malakand Field Force on a punitive foray on the North-West Frontier of India in 1897 for the Daily Telegraph (and an excellent book), wangled a place in Kitchener’s army in 1898 in the Sudan, where, now representing the Morning Post, he took part in the unnecessary and incompetently executed charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman (another excellent book), left the army in 1899 and failed to get elected to Parliament. He then went off to the South African War for the Morning Post again (two quite good books), got captured and escaped in somewhat dubious circumstances and did eventually get elected to Parliament. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900, defected to the Liberals in 1904 and turned his coat yet again when he reverted to being a Conservative in 1924. As First Lord of the Admiralty(navy minister), he took much of the blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915–16, and, when his position as a government minister became untenable, he took himself off to France and, improbably, was given command of a New Army battalion, Sixth Royal Scots Fusiliers.* That not a single man in that battalion was killed in the three and a half months at the front had nothing to do with Churchill’s skill and a great deal to do with the battalion’s location – south of the Ypres Salient, while the real action was well to the south, astride the Somme and at Verdun. Unable to keep away from politics for long, Churchill soon tired of soldiering and resigned. As a government minister again, in 1919 he was in the Cabinet that propounded the Ten-Year Rule (see Chapter 1); in 1921 he argued vehemently in favour of battleships and against aircraft carriers; in 1925 he opposed the construction of defences at the Singapore naval base; in 1927 he demanded cuts in the naval estimates; in 1928 he proposed that the Ten-Year Rule become a rolling assumption rather than being reviewed each year (carried); in 1929 he forced cuts in the army estimates and in 1930 stopped the army obtaining more tanks, before resigning in 1931 in protest over plans to prepare India for Dominion status.