100 Mistakes That Changed History: Backfires and Blunders That Collapsed Empires, Crashed Economies, and Altered the Course of Our World

by Bill Fawcett

  The two prongs of the German attack took some time to recover from the disruption caused by the surprise Soviet barrage. At 4:30 AM, rather than 2 AM as scheduled, both armies began their attack. At first the Germans, at high price, managed to break through the defenses. But it was slow going, with losses mounting. In the north the Ninth Army was able to push forward only six miles at the cost of two-thirds of its tanks. The Ninth’s losses after six days were 25,000 men and 200 tanks. In the south, the Fourth Panzer had more men and tanks and was comparatively more successful. But by July 12, the only way to continue their attack had been by committing all of the German reserves to it. By that day, the southern attack had lost half its tanks, and to continue attacking, it gathered the 600 tanks that remained into a single force.

  Marshal Zhukov realized that the northern penetration had been stopped and that the Germans were just about played out. He released his reserve, the Fifth Guard Tank Army, in an attack on the massed German tanks, which were still spearheading the Fourth Army’s attack. The two tank forces met about fifty miles from Kursk. The day was foggy and the tanks had intermingled by the time the Fourth Panzer was aware of the 1,500 Russian tanks. A wild melee followed, with some tanks fighting literally barrel to barrel. The Germans lost more than 300 tanks, and by nightfall, the Fifth Guard Tank Army was torn and in ruins. But those German tank losses made it impossible for the offensive to continue. The Battle of Kursk was over.

  Within days, Russian offensives on both sides of the Kursk bulge began. These really did not stop until Berlin. By betting it all on a “decisive battle” that even he must have realized his army could not win, Hitler completely ceded the initiative to Russia for the rest of the war. Germany was never again able to make up for the tanks and trained crews lost attacking Kursk. Had the limited counterattack plan, which was the alternative, been chosen, the Wehrmacht might have retained enough tanks and planes to slow or stop the Soviet army. Without those lost tanks, even the most valiant and brilliant tactics could do no more than cause local delays. The Battle of Kursk was a mistake that sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany and guaranteed the Soviets control of eastern Europe.

  83

  OPINION OVER REALITY

  Asleep at the Switch

  1944

  Erwin Rommel knew that he had to stop the Allies on the beach when they invaded France. This was mandated simply by the dominant air superiority the British and Americans had. The field marshal had seen, in North Africa, what damage the aircraft could do to any column of troops or formation of tanks. If the Allied army got a foothold on the French coast, they might well be able to reinforce it quicker and in greater numbers using ships from Britain than he could transport over what remained of the French highways and railroads. History is to show that he was correct. Part of Rommel’s reaction to this reality was to pour money and labor down the drain of the West Wall. His other efforts were spent attempting to ensure that there would be enough men, tanks, and artillery near where the Allies landed to throw them back into the sea.

  Erwin Rommel’s opinion was not shared by everyone. Having seen the damage ships’ guns could do at Salerno, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt wanted to let the Allies land and then chew them apart on a line that was just out of the range of the naval weapons. Hitler, as always, did not want to give up an inch of French soil and pushed to make the beach defense of the West Wall so strong that the landing craft never made it to shore. But he also encouraged the competing views of both of his field marshals.

  A chart of the actual command situation in France in 1944 would resemble a plate of spaghetti, with lines of command and responsibility that bore little resemblance to those on the charts on the walls of the high command in Berlin. The high command (OKW) ran the war in the west, but Hitler personally could, and often did, override their decisions. These changes could be quite painful for the staff and OKW generals: By this time, the Führer was disposed to screaming fits and loud lectures. Just telling Hitler something he did not want to hear could be hazardous to your career; and explaining why any order or demand he made was wrong could have fatal consequences. Often these consequences involved a long train ride to the Eastern Front.

  While Field Marshal Wilhelm von Keitel was in overall command of France, he did not have control of the Third Air Fleet, which Goering held tightly, or Navy Group West. The navy group had few ships, but it did control most of the heavy guns built into the West Wall. So the man in charge of defending France was not in control of much of his shore artillery and none of the aircraft in the theater. The ground forces in France and the Low Countries were commanded by von Rundstedt. He controlled, when his orders were not countermanded by Hitler, fifty-eight divisions, including seven panzer divisions. Also in France were almost totally independent panzer units controlled by the SS. The SS were responsible directly to only Hitler or their own headquarters in Berlin.

  Preparing to meet the Allied landing as it moved inland, von Rundstedt located a strong reserve force, including most of the panzers available, near Paris. Erwin Rommel felt that with Allied air superiority, any unit not close to the front would be unable to get there until it was too late to matter. So he lobbied to have the best units, including most of the tanks, stationed near the beach. He even went over his commanding officer’s head, talking Hitler into giving him control of all seven of the panzer divisions in France. Needless to say, Field Marshal von Rundstedt was upset to be overruled and went himself to the Führer. So Hitler reversed himself and gave control of the panzers back to von Rundstedt. But both men continued to bicker, and eventually Hitler made a compromise by assigning three of the panzer divisions to Rommel and four to von Rundstedt for the OKW reserve. This was a mistake since now neither field marshal had a large enough force to be decisive.

  Complicating the scenario for the Germans even more was the question of where the Allied landing would be. For a range of reasons, which included excellent deceptions in England to the opinion that the V1 and V2 rockets were so effective that they had to be the Allies’ first target, Hitler and many of his generals were sure the real landing would be at the Pas-de-Calais. It also sat across the narrowest part of the Channel. There was even a lot of chatter and messages from Nazi spies who had turned into double agents that the landing at Normandy was really a diversion and no more than a large raid. Every effort was made to reinforce the defenses based on this mistaken assumption.

  Because of the complicated command structure, the rivalry between the German field marshals, and the expectations of Hitler, when 75,000 British, Canadian, French, and American troops landed on four beaches, only the three panzer divisions under Rommel reacted. And he was proven correct about one thing. Even the nearby panzers had problems moving short distances by day due to attacks by the Allied airplanes. And the four panzer divisions commanded by von Rundstedt? They sat and waited. Not just for Hitler to wake up in the morning and approve an order to move, but for Hitler to wake up and realize Normandy was the real landing. Then when the tanks of OKW reserve finally began to move toward the fighting, they soon found out just how much Rommel had been correct. Harassment by the Allied air forces slowed or simply prevented them from moving at all during daylight. More than half the German panzers took no part in the fighting during the first and most vulnerable days of the landing.

  Hitler made the mistake of splitting the best weapon Germany had to meet the Allied invasion with: its armored units. By doing so, he ensured they could not all join in a truly decisive counterattack. Then because of Hitler’s mercurial nature and his holding on to the belief that the real Allied invasion was still going to be at Pas-de-Calais, there was a delay in committing more than half of his panzer divisions until it was too late. By the time they arrived, the landings were a success, and Germany’s defeat in France almost assured.

  On D-Day in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the first wave that landed on Juno Beach suffered 50 percent casualties. On Utah Beach, things were just as bad. The assault went so badly on Omaha Bea
ch that General Omar Bradley almost pulled the troops back off when they bogged down with massive casualties only a few yards onto the sand of the beach. At any one of these beaches, the addition of a panzer division to the initial defense might well have wiped out or driven off the landing. If each beach had one additional division, the entire invasion would have been in shambles. With only two beachheads left, the flanks of both would have been open to the very type of attack the panzers excelled at. In addition, if the fourth reserve panzer division had been in the area where the paratroopers landed, this would have meant their total destruction.

  With intense naval bombardment and massive air support, the Allied armies might well have gained and expanded their five D-Day beachheads. If Eisenhower had been willing to endure the casualties, there would have been enough men waiting offshore to reinforce what beaches were held, even in the face of momentous losses. D-Day most likely still would have succeeded, but only at a terrible cost in lives. The loss might have been so great that the breakout and conquest of France might well have been delayed by weeks or longer. So by personality, purposely muddled command, and a decision made as a compromise, Hitler himself made the key mistakes that guaranteed the success of the Normandy D-Day landing.

  84

  THE HIGH PRICE OF RACISM

  Liberators Lost

  1933-1945

  You can talk about what battlefield mistakes Germany and Japan made that lost those nations World War II. Taking an overall strategic view, both nations were basically overwhelmed. The Japanese lost because they simply could not compete with the industrial strength of the United States. No matter how valiantly Japan fought, going it alone against a nation that was launching one fleet carrier and at least another jeep carrier each month, they were going to lose. The Germans not only shared being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of manufacturing that poured out of the United States, Britain, and Russia but also were swamped by the manpower of their opponents. If it weren’t for a fundamental mistake—a tragic flaw, more accurately—by both of the Axis powers, this would not have been the case.

  The problem was the irrational and self-destructive racism that was so heartily embraced by both nations. Racism first cost Germany much at home. Hitler and the Nazis did not need to bash the Jews to get elected in 1933. The fear of the communists and economic collapse gave them that victory. But Hitler and his henchmen were so sold on their Aryan superiority that they overlooked what they denied Germany by banishing or killing off that nation’s Jews. The group that contributed a higher percentage of volunteer soldiers than any other in World War I was the German Jews. Their patriotism was widely recognized during that war. In science and manufacturing, they had always contributed far beyond their numbers. Many of the world’s top scientists were German Jews. Almost all eventually fled the country. Among those who fled to the United States was Albert Einstein. Out of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, if the same percentage had instead been left alone and served in the Wehrmacht in World War II, this would have added at least ten more divisions of highly educated soldiers. Ten more divisions might have taken Moscow.

  Nothing portrays the cost of Aryan racism more than footage of Nazi units “liberating” towns in Ukraine. The Soviet Union had conquered Ukraine. It was never part of Russia culturally or politically, and it is adamantly not today. Ukraine had actually been part of Germany itself for much of 1918, having been sold out by the Bolsheviks as part of their peace agreement with the kaiser. When Germany collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation with a population equal to that of Poland. Eventually, through betrayal, Ukraine was absorbed by the Soviet Union. Always too independent and resistant to communism, Ukraine was punished by Stalin in every way he could manage. In the years before the second war, 9 million Ukrainians were killed by Stalin either directly or by consciously created famines. So when the Germans arrived, they were treated like lost brothers and liberators. Wehrmacht officers helped open churches and were feasted and flirted by the local population. These millions of people were ready to work for and fight for Germany. Within weeks, the SS began implementing secret orders for occupied Slavic territories. The order included the elimination of all Jews, leaders, priests, teachers, and military officers. The stated eventual goal of the SS plan was to depopulate large parts of Ukraine and enslave the survivors. The then-empty Ukraine was to be settled by German overlords.

  A supportive Ukrainian population could have provided up to a million additional soldiers to fight against Russia. This would have replaced all the losses taken at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 to 1943. But because of the Aryan myth and the sheer sadism of the SS, three months after the Germans were welcomed in Ukraine, its forests were full of guerrillas. Instead of tying up tens of thousands of soldiers with occupation duties, Ukraine should have provided hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting alongside the Germans. The story was the same for the Balts, the White Russians, the Tartar, the Mongolian, and even the German Balts. They were a ready source of support and recruits for the manpower-poor German army, but the Nazi leadership could not get past their extreme racism and wasted this great potential asset. The final result was that as the formerly hated Soviets recaptured Ukraine and its neighbors, the surviving men often volunteered to join the ranks of the Red Army. German racism turned a literal army of peoples that hated the communists into their willing recruits.

  Germany did not have the monopoly on racism in the 1940s. The Americans put tens of thousands of Japanese Americans into camps for no more reason than they looked Japanese. The heroic combat record of the Nisei division in Italy shows the fallacy of that action. There was also the treatment by the army of black soldiers. Many were allocated to noncombat roles and denied promotion on no other basis than their skin color. It wasn’t until twenty years after the end of World War II that the last Jim Crow laws disappeared. But anything any of the Allies did paled compared to the sheer barbarism of the Japanese toward other Asian peoples and everyone else during the war.

  In places such as Indochina and the Philippines, it had not been that long since British, French, and American troops had been battling with local independence movements. One of the reasons the Thompson machine gun was developed was to knock down machete-swinging Philippine rebels who were impervious to pain because of the druglike effects of the plants they chewed. Certainly as soon as the Japanese left, all of Vietnam went right back to trying to throw out the French. Each of these countries had millions who would and did embrace a pan-Asian philosophy. But the Japanese soldiers were indoctrinated to treat everyone not Japanese as inferior and not really human. This attitude was so pervasive that all over Asia it was rare to see any non-Japanese assisting them in combat. This contrasts with the tens of thousands of Indian and Malaysian troops that joined with the British to repel the Japanese. In almost every country where Japanese had been welcomed for throwing out the European colonial master, within days, powerful resistance movements had sprung up.

  The Japanese had a habit of shooting or beheading anyone who annoyed them, even their own soldiers, without as much as a hearing. This behavior reflected the barbarism that permeated all of their behavior. Officers treated their men with disdain, and the common soldiers passed on that hate and brutality with enthusiasm. The Japanese made it clear to all other Asians that they were held in contempt and were unworthy of respect. Americans rarely remember that 80 percent of those who died on the Bataan Death March were Philippine. The Philippine people never forgot, though. By actually acting like they promised to with their co-prosperity sphere, Japan might have been able to recruit literally millions of new soldiers. They could have much more effectively tapped the resources of Indochina and might even have had enough soldiers to complete the conquest of China. The entire war in China and the Pacific would have been far different and an Allied victory far from assured.

  The mistake and cost of racism were obvious even at the time. But like the Confederacy being asked to recruit former slaves as soldiers, the Im
perial Japanese and Nazi Germans found that acting against their prejudices was inconceivable. They had every reason, and hard necessity, to treat potential allied peoples well and always failed to do so. Simple racism, more than any strategic blunder, doomed the fascists.

  85

  STUCK TO A BAD BARGAIN

  Stopping at the Elbe

  1945

  At the time of the Yalta conference, World War II in Europe was almost over. By February 1945, the Germans’ last gasp, the surprise attack at Ardennes, had failed. There was no further chance of a serious German counterattack. The three leaders who met there, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, knew this. Germany had no more left, and Japan, while still dangerous defending their islands, had no offensive strength left. The discussions and agreements were more about the shape of post-war Europe than about the ongoing war. There were actually two major areas of agreement at Yalta. One was to confirm the formation of the United Nations and its structure. The other laid out who would occupy what parts of Germany and the fate of the rest of occupied Europe.

  Poland was to be clearly under the Soviet thumb. Russia had not done well against invasions coming out of Poland since the Red Army almost lost the 1920-1921 Polish-Soviet War. They were taking no chances of that happening again, even if it meant occupying Poland forever. There were details, but Stalin publicly agreed that most of eastern Europe would get elected governments within a year or so. History has shown the Soviet dictator had no intention of keeping his word on any free elections, but the United States wanted his help if it became necessary to invade the Japanese home islands, so they accepted this. Any invasion of the homelands was going to be vicious and generate a lot of casualties. A million or so hardy Russian soldiers joining in could make the conquest a lot easier. Also there were Japanese soldiers in Asia—mostly in China, Korea, and Mongolia—who needed pressure kept on them.