How Hitler Could Have Won World War II
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German soldiers crouch behind a bullet-pocked wall during fighting in the Crimea in November 1941. (AP/Wide World Photo)
German panzers roll through Libya toward the battlefront on the Egyptian frontier in April 1941. The German commander, Erwin Rommel, was preparing for a British offensive there around Sollum and Halfaya Pass. (AP/Wide World Photo)
German troops rush through a burning Russian village in the early stages of the invasion in June 1941. (Topham/The Image Works)
Soviet T-34 tanks advancing into action. The T-34, with good speed, sloping thick armor that could deflect many shells, wide tracks that could move well in mud or snow, and a high-velocity 76-millimeter cannon, was the most successful tank in World War II. Panzer leader Heinz Guderian attributed the collapse of the German attack on Moscow in December 1941 to the T-34. Later the Soviets mounted an even more powerful 85-millimeter gun on the tank. (Topham/The Image Works)
A German antitank gun crew in action in Russia in the summer of 1942. German armored forces could generally outmaneuver Soviet defenders because German organization and leadership were normally superior. This allowed German panzers to make astonishing advances despite heavy opposition. Adolf Hitler forfeited this great advantage of maneuverability by requiring German forces to fight a close-in, street-by-street battle in Stalingrad and by demanding that Germans defend every inch of the territory they occupied. (Topham/The Image Works)
General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commanding the German 5th Panzer Army in Tunisia, was envious of Erwin Rommel’s fame and withheld forces Rommel might have used to sweep behind the Allied armies and force their surrender or retreat in the battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943. (Topham/The Image Works)
Friedrich Paulus (foreground), commander of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, shortly after he surrendered on January 31, 1943. Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal on the assumption that he would shoot himself to avoid capture. He did not. (Topham/The Image Works)
The major Allied leaders at the Teheran conference in late November 1943. Seated (from left): Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; American president Franklin D. Roosevelt; and British prime minister Winston Churchill. (Topham/The Image Works)
German SS General Sepp Dietrich, commander of the 6th Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)
General Charles de Gaulle inspects French soldiers who escaped from German prison camps and joined the Free French movement, which de Gaulle led. De Gaulle received wild acclaim when he arrived in Paris with liberating forces on August 25, 1944. (Topham/ The Image Works)
SS Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper, whose battle group massacred eighty-six captured and unarmed Americans and a number of Belgians at Malmédy during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)
Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, who said “Nuts!” to a German demand that he surrender the American 101st Airborne Division he commanded at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)
General George S. Patton Jr., the most aggressive and imaginative Allied commander in the west, who led the American 7th Army into Sicily and the 3rd Army through France after the breakout from Normandy in late July 1944. (Topham/The Image Works)
Leaders of Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Seated (from left): RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, deputy commander; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander; British field marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, ground forces commander. Standing (from left): General Omar Bradley, American ground commander; Royal Navy Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsey, naval commander; RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, air support commander; and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff. (Topham/The Image Works)
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt awards Iron Cross decorations to German soldiers who distinguished themselves in combat. Rundstedt commanded Army Group A, which struck through the Ardennes in May 1940 and led quickly to the defeat of France and the eviction of the British from the Continent. Rundstedt commanded an army group in Russia and was commander in chief in the west when the Allies invaded Normandy in June 1944. (Topham/ The Image Works)
The senior Allied commanders in Normandy in June 1944 (from left): Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, chief of all ground forces; General Miles C. Dempsey, commander of the British 2nd Army; and General Omar Bradley, commander of the American 1st Army. (Topham/The Image Works)
General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army and President Roosevelt’s principal military adviser. Marshall was slated to become commander of the invasion of Normandy in 1944, but Roosevelt decided that he could not dispense with his advice and gave the command to Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Topham/The Image Works)
General Hasso von Manteuffel (second from right) discusses defense plans in France just prior to the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944. Manteuffel conducted a brilliant defense in Tunisia in 1943 against Allied forces and commanded the 5th Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. (AP/Wide World Photo)
Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov, who led the Soviet drive into Germany in 1945, makes a toast at Frankfurt shortly after the German surrender. With him is American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, western Allied supreme commander. (Topham/The Image Works)
Albert Speer (left), Nazi armaments chief; Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (center), German U-boat chief and last chancellor of the German Reich; and General Alfred Jodl, operations chief of the high command, at their arrest at Flensburg, Germany, on May 24, 1945. (Topham/The Image Works)
Notes
A note on the Notes: Some references cite only the last name of the author or editor. These works are cited in full in the Selected Bibliography. References not so listed are cited in full where they appear. Numbers refer to pages.
Chapter 1: Germany’s Opportunity for Victory
p. 2: “after France fell.” Kimball, 48.
p. 2: “the European continent.” Ian Kersaw in Finney, 132.
p. 3: “Schutzstaffel or SS.” Dahms, 332–38.
p. 4: “or were murdered.” This book focuses on the military and political decisions open to Germany in World War II. Nothing in it should be misunderstood as approval for what the Third Reich did in six years of pillage and genocide, carried out by Nazi authorities and private soldiers alike. This book seeks to explore how close we came to losing the war, and how close Adolf Hitler came to creating the unspeakable world he wanted. There is insufficient space to examine the Holocaust and other murderous programs Hitler and Nazi Germany pursued to the very last days of the war. There are many fine books on this aspect of Nazism. Two of the best are Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and an official German study of the Einsatzgruppen, or murder units, in eastern Europe from 1939 to 1942: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges (The Troops of the War of Ideology) by Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm. For human losses, see Zabecki, vol. 1, 32–34 (Paul J. Rose); Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 83–84.
p. 6: “kinds of vehicles.” Fuller, vol. 3, 379–81.
p. 7: “‘had time to react.’” Rommel, 124.
p. 7: “infantryman could walk.” France had about 3,400 modern tanks, though not all were in organized tank units. Britain sent about 700 tanks to the Continent, mostly Mark VI light tanks, with 14-millimeter armor and armed with two machine guns, the rest Matildas, a powerful, slow (maximum speed 15 mph, but operating even slower) “infantry” tank with 70-millimeter main armor. Most were the Mark I version armed only with a machine gun, and only 50 were Mark IIs with a high-velocity two-pounder (40-millimeter) gun. On May 10, 1940, 2,300 French tanks had been formed into 51 battalions: 12 in three armored divisions, 12 in three light mechanized divisions, 27 in independent battalions. Each French battalion usually had 45 medium or light tanks, or 33 heavy tanks. The French deployed mostly infantry tanks with thick armor (34–60 millimeters), short range, and slow speed. Most had a good 37-millimeter gun, and some had an
excellent high-velocity 47-millimeter gun. Either could pierce most German armor. See Goutard, 27–28; Zabecki, vol. 2, 1107–10, 1131–32 (Kenneth J. Swanson, Robert G. Waite, and John Dunn); Ellis, 88–89.
p. 8: “speed of only 240 mph.” This was the 1938 model with a 490-mile range used in the 1940 campaign. In 1941 the Ju-87D came out with a 4,000-pound pay-load and a 950-mile range. The D-model saw heavy and successful service in North Africa and Russia.
p. 8: “on the battlefield.” The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) were the first to develop close tactical or battle cooperation between aircraft and ground troops. A Stuka could drop a bomb within a hundred yards of any target designated by the ground forces. The Luftwaffe sent liaison officers to corps and panzer divisions to relay requests for support. In the campaign in the west, panzer forces could receive air support forty-five to seventy-five minutes after the request was made. See Corum, 271–75.
Chapter 2: The Campaign in the West: 1940
p. 9: “east of Holland.” Dahms, 162; Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 2, 238–47 (Hans Umbreit).
p. 11: “the French army.” Manstein, 100–102; Cooper, 198–200.
p. 11: “‘was inadmissible,’ Manstein wrote.” Manstein, 103–104.
p. 12: “‘of the German offensive.’” Ibid., 118.
p. 13: “‘had to say,’ Manstein wrote later.” Ibid., 121.
p. 15: “vulnerable to ground fire.” Goutard, 32–37.
p. 16: “on only slightly inferior terms.” Zabecki, vol. 2, 962, 964–66, 983–85 (Carl O. Schuster, Philip C. Bechtel).
p. 16: “could be moved forward.” Kiesling, 140–42.
Chapter 3: The Defeat of France
p. 20: “Walther von Reichenau’s following 6th Army.” Zabecki, vol. 2, 1471–72 (Kevin Dougherty); Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 2, 285–87 (Hans Umbreit); Dahms, 166–69; English and Gudmundsson, 61.
p. 21: “to Antwerp, Belgium.” The Allied land forces were divided into the 1st Group of Armies (Billotte), located between the English Channel and Montmédy, and including 7th Army (Giraud), the BEF (Gort), 1st Army (Georges Blanchard), 9th Army (André Corap), and 2nd Army (Charles Huntziger); the 2nd Group of Armies (Gaston Prételat) between Montmédy and Sélestat (thirty miles south of Strasbourg on the Rhine River), and including 3rd Army (Charles Condé), 4th Army (Edouard Réquin) and 5th Army (Victor Bourret); and the 3rd Group of Armies (Georges Besson) between Sélestat and Geneva, Switzerland, with 8th Army ( Joanny J.M. Garchery) and 3rd Army (Robert Auguste Touchon).
p. 22: “to the German panzers.” Goutard, 111–13.
p. 22: “‘Victory whatever the cost!’” Churchill, The Second World War, Their Finest Hour, 25–26.
p. 23: “in their thrust westward.” Guderian’s three divisions had 276 tanks each, Reinhardt’s two divisions 218 each; Hoth’s 5th Division had 324 tanks, his 7th Division 218; Hoepner’s two divisions had 324 tanks apiece, and the 9th Division (detailed to Holland) 229: total 2,683. Of these, 640 were Mark Is, 825 Mark IIs, 564 Mark IIIs, and 654 Mark IVs. The Mark Is were inadequate for combat and were relegated to reconnaissance. They weighed 6.5 tons, were armed with two machine guns, and had maximum armor 15 millimeters thick. The Mark IIs also were inadequate, weighed 10.5 tons, had only a 20-millimeter gun and 30-millimeter armor. The Mark IIIs carried a 37-millimeter gun and had 57-millimeter maximum armor. The Mark IVs mounted a short-barreled 75-millimeter gun and had maximum of 60-millimeter armor. All four models could travel at about 25 miles per hour. However, the tanks designated Mark IVs in the 6th, 7th, and 8th Panzer Divisions were Czech Skodas. They weighed 11.5 tons, could travel 21 miles an hour, had 25-millimeter maximum armor, and carried a 37-millimeter gun. See Goutard, 27; Chapman, 347; Zabecki, vol. 2, 1111–14, 1133 (Paul W. Johnson and Robert G. Waite).
p. 23: “‘think there is any danger?’” Chapman, 113.
p. 25: “‘guns had been abandoned.’” Ibid., 121.
p. 28: “‘boundless shores’ (Uferlose).” Dahms, 171.
p. 28: “and seized Bouvellement.” Guderian, 108.
p. 31: “attempted no further attack.” Ellis, 90–98.
p. 32: “‘and protective movements.’” Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk, 132.
pp. 33–34: “‘the liberation of the Old.’” Churchill, The Second World War, Their Finest Hour, 118.
p. 35: “51st Highland Division.” Rommel, 44–67.
p. 35: “‘the back of its neighbor.’” Kimball, 51.
Chapter 4: Hitler’s First Great Error
pp. 36–37: “‘their finest hour.’” Churchill, The Second World War, Their Finest Hour, 225–26.
p. 38: “pick up low-flying aircraft.” One of the greatest British feats in the war was breaking the German Enigma cipher machine’s code by the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley, between Oxford and Cambridge. Radio intercepts of Enigma-encoded messages gave the Allies advance warning of many German actions, plans, and dispositions. A Berlin commercial company invented the Enigma machine, and the army adopted it in the late 1920s and other governmental agencies in 1933. The machine mechanically enciphered plain text messages by means of three cipher drums, or rotors, with twenty-six letters along the rims and a fourth stationary reflector or reversing cipher drum. Changing the connections of these four rotors gave almost infinite potential codes. The Germans regarded Enigma transmissions as unbreakable. Polish intelligence turned over one of these machines to the British in late July 1939. Mathematicians at Bletchley began a laborious process of breaking the codes based on the repeated sequence of letters an operator was obliged to preface messages with to show the receiving station how he had geared or set the machine. Luftwaffe keys were the first broken, but Gestapo keys were never broken. The Bletchley operation was code-named Ultra. Its first great victory was in the Battle of Britain, when Ultra was able to give key advance information on Luftwaffe operations to the RAF. See Zabecki, vol. 2, 959–60, 1290–91 (Alexander Molnar, Jr.); Keegan, Second World War, 163–64, 497–502; Ronald Lewin, Ultra Goes to War: The Secret Story, London: 1978.
p. 42: “role in deciding the war.” Shirer, 775–82; Dahms, 211; Zabecki, vol. 2 (Robert G. Waite), 1405–9; Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, 87–108.
p. 43: “to British Guiana (Guyana).” Hitler made a great strategic error when he signed the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan on September 27, 1940. The alliance was aimed at maintaining American neutrality by raising the prospect of a two-front war, against Germany and Italy in Europe and against Japan in the Pacific. This threat increased the determination of American leaders to arm the nation. But the pact encouraged Japan to risk an attack on the United States in the belief that in a two-front war Americans would be unable to defeat the Japanese navy, leaving control of the Pacific to Japan. This decision probably cost Germany and Japan the war. By seeming to offer Japan the opportunity to exclude the United States from the western Pacific, the pact encouraged Japan to seize the colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands in Southeast Asia (the so-called southern strategy). This diverted Japanese attention from its designs on Siberia, and led to a neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union in April 1941.
p. 44: “American entry into the war.” Paul Kennedy points out that the economic power of the United States dwarfed that of every other nation. In 1938, with at least half of its capacity idle because of economic depression, the United States still produced almost 29 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, more than twice that of Germany, whose factories were operating at maximum capacity. In 1937 the United States had three times the income of the entire British Empire, almost seven times that of France, four times that of Germany, and sixteen times that of Japan. In 1937, the United States possessed 41.7 percent of the entire world’s war-production potential. Germany’s share was 14.4 percent, the Soviet Union’s 14, Britain’s 10.2, France’s 4.2, Japan’s 3.5, and Italy’s 2.5. See Kennedy, 325–33.
p. 44:
“a peaceful solution.” Kimball, 69–76; Zabecki, vol. 1, 108–9 (Paul G. Pierpaoli, Jr.).
Chapter 5: The Fatal Turn to the East
p. 45: “‘the spring of 1941.’” Hitler’s meeting occurred at Berchtesgaden in his Berghof (retreat) at Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps. All the top leaders of the armed forces were there.
p. 45: “invaded Russia in 1812.” Liddell Hart, Strategy, 236.
p. 48: “against the Soviet Union.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3, 191–200; Shirer, 813–15.
p. 49: “if the United States entered.” Shirer, 829; Kimball, 84.
p. 49: “never counsel Hitler correctly.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 3, 197.
p. 49: “than capture of London.” Fuller, vol. 3, 413.
p. 53: “a single panzer division for Africa.” Alexander, 237. Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov went to Berlin on November 12, 1940, to discuss a four-power entente and “delimitation of spheres of influence.” Joachim von Ribbentrop, German foreign minister, outlined a remarkable proposal for Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union to divide up Eurasia and Africa. But the plan had an air of unreality about it. Hitler had devoted large portions of Mein Kampf to describing his hatred of Communists and his desire to eradicate them. It is doubtful whether Joseph Stalin believed Hitler was serious. On November 26, he demanded a base in Bulgaria to secure control of the Dardanelles. This would place Romania under Soviet threat, and Romania’s Ploesti oil fields were a matter of life or death for Germany. Hitler abandoned the idea of a four-power alliance, and reached his final decision to attack the Soviet Union.