British troops assaulting Japanese Bunkers, by Peter Dennis © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 229: Kohima 1944.
Throughout the 1930s the rearmament of Germany became increasingly brazen, though none realised its true magnitude until it was far too late. Herr Hitler played a masterful game of diplomacy, bending the politicians of Europe to his will, largely by playing on their unwillingness to risk another world war and a second lost generation of youth. The old men of parliament had been the young men of the trenches and few wished those days to return. Hitler was able to annexe vast tracts of land first in the Rhineland and then Austria and the Sudetenland, to expand the Greater German Reich with nothing more than feeble words of complaint from elsewhere. Eventually though, he would go too far.
This act turned out to be the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Britain honoured its pact with Poland and declared war on Germany, as did France and others. The German army smashed through the Polish forces while the allies prepared to act, and then the Soviets invaded Poland too, from the east. The Polish army, brave though it was, succumbed to the inevitable before reinforcements could be sent. Europe was stunned by the speed at which one of the major powers in Europe had fallen. This was the new style of war – this was blitzkrieg.
With Poland partitioned between the Germans and Soviets there was little Britain and France could do. In 1939 nobody had the resources and equipment to mount an invasion across mainland Europe. But after all the strong words and the loss of Poland in under a month, there was nothing. War had been declared, but where to fight?
Both sides armed themselves for the coming battle, the Germans fine-tuning their new tactics, and the British mustering whatever forces they could. The Phoney War ended in April with the invasion of Norway, then in May came the invasion of Belgium, the Low Countries and then France. One again, the speed with which events unfolded caught everyone except the Germans entirely by surprise.
The invasion was almost an exact copy of the 1914 attack, but this time there were tanks. The BEF (British Expeditionary Force) and the bulk of the French forces were in positions near the Maginot line, far to the south of where they needed to be. The BEF withdrew north quickly, trying to avoid being surrounded and losing its link with the Channel ports and a route of retreat should things go as badly as they had for plucky little Poland.
A nice day for a stroll…
An orderly withdrawal began to disintegrate as German columns penetrated deep behind the allied lines, causing havoc. Even major and successful counterattacks such as the one at Arras by the British seemed to bring only a temporary pause in the German advance. With no hope of stalling the blitzkrieg, the British fought a series of rearguard actions as they retreated north towards Dunkirk to save what little they could. The French were no more able than the British to halt the panzers, but they had nowhere to go and the surrender was signed just six weeks after the invasion began - in the same railway carriage where the Germans had signed the treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Hitler would have his revenge.
With no way to halt the Germans in sight, the British retreated to their island and counted on the Royal Navy and the RAF to save them for a similar fate to the rest of Europe. The Battle of Britain was the precursor to invasion, with the Luftwaffe promising to clear the skies of the RAF in preparation. They could not. After weeks of dogfights over the southern counties, countless bombing raids and false alarms, the invasion barges were quietly dispersed and the threat subsided. Germany had other plans.
A cheery German poster placed on the Channel Islands. No sense of humour, Jerry...
Hitler’s ally, Mussolini, had dreams of a new Italian empire to match the resurgent Reich. Unfortunately he lacked the army to obtain it, and though he began a number of attacks, he was never to emulate the success of the German forces. In 1940 he attacked Greece, and in 1941 the Germans joined in, completing its subjugation. Crete followed, and Malta was threatened by a similar airborne invasion. Rommel was sent to command the Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK) in an effort to reverse the fortunes of the struggling Italian armies in North Africa. This was Britain’s chance. Not only was its empire threatened, but it also finally had a chance to fight the Germans face to face in a territory her armies knew well. The fact that Hitler had also attacked the Soviets changed the political landscape, but made little difference to Britain’s military situation. In many ways it was to decide the fate of the Third Reich, but that battle was for the Soviets to fight. Britain would fight in the deserts of North Africa.
Paras prepare to wallop German armour with a 6-pdr
In what would become an epic struggle personified by two strong characters, Rommel led his Afrika Korps against Montgomery’s British 8th Army, known to all as the Desert Rats. In a war that was so far from either homeland, protecting routes of supply was paramount, and the war ebbed back and forth across the desert. Both sides made brilliant moves, and both sides were confounded by lack of supplies at crucial moments. The final turning point came at the end of 1942, at the second battle of El Alamein. Montgomery’s careful planning and husbanding of resources delivered him a crushing victory, and he pursued the broken DAK back towards Tunisia. Here, with the British at the ends of their overstretched supply lines, the Desert Fox stood at bay and the lines were drawn for the final act.
At the same time the Americans arrived in Tunisia, fresh from their victories in Algeria against a lacklustre performance by the Vichy French. Kasserine Pass would be their real baptism of fire. After initial Axis successes, the Allies gained the upper hand, using their vastly superior supply situation to overwhelm the remnants of the DAK. When they finally surrendered, almost a quarter of a million Axis soldiers marched into captivity as prisoners of war.
Within a month Sicily would be invaded, and a month after that was captured, Allied troops would land on the mainland of Italy itself and began to fight their way north. Mussolini’s power was crumbling fast, and he was removed from power at the end of 1943. Italy abandoned the Axis cause, but this made little difference on the ground. After a brief struggle between Italians of various factions, the Germans invaded their former ally’s territory and Allied forces faced German units instead of Italian ones. This slow battle up the length of Italy would continue until the end of the war in Europe in 1945.
The 5th Wiltshires’ attack on Hill 112, by Peter Dennis © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 143: Caen 1944.
The invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 marked the opening of a second front that even Stalin could not help but be impressed by. An armada of ships, planes and landing craft the like of which the world had never seen delivered five divisions onto the shores of France in a day, breaching the supposedly impregnable Atlantic Wall and opening the floodgates for dozens more Allied divisions to follow.
The Allied advance was slower than expected, but its main purpose of drawing divisions away from the eastern front was accomplished and the forces of the Reich were now fighting a major war on two fronts. Hitler endlessly promised wonder weapons that would turn the tide in Germany’s favour and many wanted to believe him. The Allies were not going to accept anything less than unconditional surrender and losing to the Soviet hordes was too terrible for the average German to contemplate. They had no alternative but to fight on and hope.
The Allied advance stalled for weeks in the close bocage country just behind the beaches. Montgomery was in overall command of the land battle and his plan ground slowly on, drawing as many as possible of the German’s armoured reserves to face the British in the east so that the Americans further west could punch a hole through the weaker German lines facing them. Eventually the dam broke and the Allies poured through the gaps, capturing tens of thousands of prisoners at Falaise and effectively destroying a number of panzer divisions, including several of the elite SS. The Allies rushed after the rapidly retreating remnants of the Wehrmacht.
In the east, the Soviet steamroller continued to obliterate anything that the Germans could put in its path, though time and again the Germans managed to patch a defence together and hold some sort of line. In the west the armies settled down to a quiet winter in the flooded fields of the low countries and the snowy forests of Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge was a surprise and a minor setback for the Allies, but there was nothing the Germans could realistically do to forestall the inevitable. As the winter thawed, the Allied forces crossed the Rhine and entered the heartland of the Reich. Germany was defeated.
On the other side of the world, the British had not been idle. The forces of the Emperor of Japan had struck at the end of 1941, bombing the American fleet at Pearl Harbour, and then launching a series of invasions across the Pacific. The old colonial powers suffered as well as the Americans. While the Japanese continued their long war against the Chinese, they struck out at the colonies of Britain, France and others. The fall of Singapore was a deep blow to British morale, and the largest surrender in British military history. It was only the largest of a series of early disasters. The colonial forces fought valiantly but unsuccessfully as they retreated. By the time the lines steadied and finally held, they had their backs to the Indian border.
Whilst the Americans’ Pacific war was to be fought across the many tiny islands of the Pacific, the British war in the Far East was to be a slog through seemingly endless jungle, reclaiming what had been lost in 1941 and 1942. Slowly the tide turned and the ‘Forgotten Army’ retook what had been lost. Eventually, like the Italians and Germans before them, the final major Axis nation surrendered, unable to resist the devastating power of the new atomic technology. The war was over.
FAZAL DIN VC
Rank and unit: Nayak (corporal), 10th Baluch Regiment, British Indian Army
Where and when: Battle of Red House, Meiktila, Burma, 2nd March 1945
During the intense fighting to recapture the Burmese capital, Fazal Din was leading an infantry section when they came under machine gun fire and grenade attack from a series of Japanese bunkers. Using several of his own grenades, Fazal attacked the first bunker and destroyed it, then as he led some of his section against the second bunker, they were charged by a group of six Japanese, led by a sword-wielding officer. In the ensuing combat one of Fazal’s men was cut down, and as he ran to his aid, Fazal too was stabbed in the chest. Despite the severity of his own wound, Fazal took the sword from the Japanese officer and killed him with it. He then used it to kill two more Japanese soldiers before staggering back to make his report at platoon HQ. He died of his wounds shortly afterwards.
In recognition for his bravery and inspirational action, Fazal was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
A Chindit column slips through the Burmese jungle