AXIS CONQUEST
Blitzkrieg in France, 1940. Source: Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv.
During a brief ceremony on June 21, 1940, elated Wehrmacht leaders handed the defeated French generals the terms of the armistice on the western front. To “right an old wrong” Hitler chose the same railroad car in the forest near Compiègne in which the Germans had surrendered to General Foch on November 11, 1918. In the presence of the Führer, General Wilhelm Keitel explained to General Charles Huntziger the severe conditions designed to “prevent a resumption of the fighting,” to facilitate “the continuation of the war against Britain,” and to lay the basis for a hegemonic peace. Three-fifths of France would be occupied, all refugees had to be turned over to the Germans, the war costs were to be borne by the losers, captured soldiers would remain POWs until the end of the fighting, and the rest of the country was to become a zone libre, governed from Vichy. Having at last reversed the defeat of World War I, Hitler seemed “afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.” After a futile attempt to soften these terms, the humiliated French envoys had no choice but to accept the “very hard conditions” the next day.1
Surprised by the speed and thoroughness of the victories, neutral observers attributed the German success to a novel conception of mobile warfare, called Blitzkrieg. Witnessing “Hitler’s amazing, aweinspiring armed forces in action,” U.S. journalist Louis P. Lochner explained this innovative method as a revolutionary combination of “terrorizing Stukas” in the air and “speedy mechanized units” on the ground, striking “quick as lightning.” Frustrated by the immobility of the trenches, military theorists from Captain Basil H. Liddell Hart to Colonel Charles de Gaulle had tried to develop a new way of breaking through enemy lines that proved particularly attractive to the German command, since it restored the initiative to the attacker. In practice, this kind of warfare consisted of air reconnaissance and dive-bombing, followed by massed tank assaults and supported by mobile infantry to cut into an enemy’s rear with pincer movements, encircle defenders, and force their surrender.2 Because the Wehrmacht had only a limited number of tanks and mechanized infantry divisions, it was their concentration that made the sudden attacks successful.
Astonished by its effect, later analysts have emphasized the military and political advantages that the blitzkrieg synthesis offered to the expansionist Nazi dictatorship. Short attacks allowed the only partly rearmed Wehrmacht to concentrate its mechanized forces on a few sectors of the front at a time. The speed of the strikes tended to isolate a particular victim, preventing what Hitler wanted to avoid—a two-front war. At the same time, slashing supply lines, sowing confusion, and discouraging defenders in order to hasten their surrender led to the capture of large numbers of troops and matériel. Winning such limited wars against one opponent after another made it possible to husband scarce resources of oil and steel, exploiting the defeated enemies in order to carry the war to the next victim. Finally, the relentlessness of the advance, magnified by weekly newsreels, also generated a sense of Nazi momentum that enticed hesitant allies like Italy to join the fray.3 Though critics have started to question the novelty and singularity of the lightning-war strategy, they have hardly been able to deny its surprising success.4
The general who contributed most to this innovative form of warfare was the tank commander Heinz Guderian. Born into a West Prussian officer’s family in 1888, he was educated in military academies and served as an intelligence specialist in World War I. Put in charge of a transportation unit, he closely studied the potential of armor from the writings of British theorists like J.F.C. Fuller. Convinced that the use of tanks as spearheads made it possible to exploit the storm-trooper breakthroughs, he argued for building an independent Panzer force. Hitler endorsed the idea of creating armored divisions so as to overcome the static nature of trench warfare. In actual combat Guderian proved to be a daring commander, leading the Wehrmacht’s breaking of the French lines at Sedan and the subsequent push to the Channel coast. His insistence on electronic communication between tanks, their massed and mobile use, and close dive-bomber support proved to be a magic formula. While Guderian was a model professional officer, he was also a moral failure by not questioning the criminal use to which his talents were put.5
The key to the Wehrmacht’s initial success was therefore the creativity and ruthlessness with which it exploited the offensive possibilities offered by “modernest warfare” [sic]. As all belligerents had similar weapons at their disposal, their tactical use by the Germans made the difference by creating an image of invincible force bearing down on its hapless opponents. Since every major combatant possessed an advanced industrial economy, Germany’s only advantage was its head start in war production, which devoured more than 20 percent of its GNP in 1939. Because all countries involved in the war also controlled extensive media such as radio stations, newsreels, and newspapers, the Nazis led merely in the shamelessness of their propaganda toward their own and other audiences, which seemed credible at least for a while. Another important difference lay in the inhumanity of the National Socialist dictatorship, which had no compunction about killing for political ends whether it involved enemy soldiers or civilians. But overall, it was the marshaling of the most modern weaponry and tactics for attacking purposes that contributed to the Nazis’ early victories.6
INITIAL INVASIONS
Nazi Germany’s “flagrant, inexcusable, unprovoked act of aggression” against Poland was immediately recognized as the start of another world war. In contrast to the widespread enthusiasm of 1914, American journalist William S. Shirer found “no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria” in Berlin.7 Remembering the terrible suffering of the Great War, most adults were reluctant to obey the call to arms and willing to do their duty only when they had no other choice. Pointing to the Third Reich’s inferiority in population size, economic production, number of troops, amount of weapons, and reliability of allies, commentators expected the combined Polish, French, and British armies, supported by their colonies and dominions, to win the renewed contest, if only they were really willing to fight. In contrast, Nazi Germany could merely count on novel weapons technology, militarized attitudes, well-trained soldiers, daring leadership, and ruthless policies. The speed and extent of the Wehrmacht victories during the first half of the war therefore caught everyone by surprise.
Though the number of soldiers on either side looked about even, the Polish campaign turned out to be amazingly brief and successful for the German army. Part of the reason was the technical superiority of its newer airplanes, tanks, and artillery; another part was its favorable strategic position, which had the defenders surrounded on three sides. Wehrmacht corps under Generals Fedor von Bock, Walther von Reichenau, and Gerd von Runstedt attacked from East Prussia, Silesia, and Slovakia, while the Polish generals sought to stop them at the frontier and withdrew to a better defensive position behind the Vistula and the Bug only when it was too late. Though Poland’s western Allies declared war, they failed to mount a relief offensive, while the Soviet Union attacked from the rear on September 17 as well. Polish soldiers fought gallantly, but they were clearly outgunned, with one army after another surrounded and compelled to surrender. When Lublin fell on September 23 and Warsaw capitulated five days later, effective resistance ceased. While the German invaders also incurred substantial losses, within four weeks they had conquered their eastern neighbor.8
Map 6. Nazi domination: Europe at the beginning of December 1941. Adapted from Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Potsdam, Germany.
The invasion of Poland also marked the beginning of the ideological war of annihilation, still somewhat uncoordinated but nonetheless deadly. Owing to the swiftness of the German advance, overrun Polish defenders continued to fight behind the lines, precipitating brutal antipartisan reprisals. When “liberated” by the Wehrmacht, ethnic Germans also retaliated by killing more than fifteen thousand Poles in revenge for Polish atrocities against about one-third that number of Volksdeutsche. The mass murders committed by seven SS Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units charged by Heinrich Himmler with subduing hostile elements in the rear of the advancing troops as well as with the eradication of the intelligentsia in order to break the back of Polish nationalism, were even more systematic. The twenty-seven hundred men of these roving death brigades rounded up and shot more than fifty thousand professors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, priests, and political leaders—an unprecedented bloodbath designed to reduce the Poles to the role of passive serfs. At the same time the ethnic Germans, military, and SS also killed about seven thousand Jews, hastening the flight of survivors to Soviet-occupied territory.9
In contrast, the western front remained strangely quiet for the first seven months, leading pundits to wonder about “the phony war.” While the Allies vastly outnumbered German forces by about a hundred divisions to twenty-three, they failed to assault the Westwall except for one diversionary attack at the Saar. Instead, the French huddled behind their own fortified border, called the Maginot Line, which stretched all the way from the Swiss to the Belgian border. Building on the experience of trench warfare, it was a marvel of concrete bunkers, artillery turrets, machine-gun nests, and anti-tank obstacles, supported by underground troop quarters, ammunition dumps, and communication lines. Waiting for the buildup of the British army and trusting in the power of the Royal Navy, General Maurice Gamelin decided to keep three-quarters of a million soldiers in a defensive posture, hoping to defeat the Germans by letting them attack. But not even the impatient Hitler was foolhardy enough to comply, since he first needed to resupply his troops. Since there was little action in the West, the Poles received no aid, and the opportunity for defeating the Nazis passed.10
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union surprisingly attacked Finland, starting what is commonly called the Winter War. Behind the cover of the German invasion of Poland, Moscow had been collecting its spoils as stipulated in the Nazi-Soviet Pact by occupying eastern Poland, trying to regain its tsarist possessions. Though formerly a Russian province, independent Finland resisted Stalin’s attack by fighting valiantly and ingeniously in the snow. Western public opinion was outraged by this communist aggression, struggling for some way to help the Finns, while Berlin stood passively by in order not to offend its eastern partner. Vastly underestimating the resolve of Finnish resistance, the Soviets bungled the initial offensives against the Mannerheim Line and lost about two hundred thousand men. But eventually their numerical superiority and heavier weapons began to tell, allowing the reinforced Red Army to breach the defensive positions. Compelled to surrender over 10 percent of their Karelian territory and 30 percent of their economic resources in the peace treaty of March 15, 1940, the courageous Finns nonetheless managed to preserve their independence.11
Before risking a western offensive, Hitler decided to strike in Scandinavia, invading Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940. The German navy had long coveted North Atlantic bases like Trondheim that would allow it to break out of the confines of the North Sea. At the same time the iron ore from the Swedish mountain at Luela, crucial for the war effort, had to be shipped through Narvik when the Baltic Sea was frozen during the winter. British destroyers were intent on interdicting this supply line, forcing German freighters to maneuver within the three-mile line of the coast—the farthest extent of Norway’s jurisdiction. Controlling the exit from the Baltic, Denmark merely had the misfortune of being on the way to its northern neighbor. Admiral Erich Raeder was concerned that the Royal Navy would mine the Norwegian coastal waters regardless of neutrality conventions and might even prepare a landing in order to assure itself of that country’s “favorable neutrality.” Though the operation was a logistical nightmare because of the small size of the German navy, Hitler authorized the gamble, hoping that surprise and the support of Norwegian Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling would carry the day.
The occupation of Norway turned out to be a race between the Royal Navy’s laying of mines and the German landing of troops. Encountering little active resistance, the Wehrmacht overran Denmark within six hours on April 9, 1940. With the help of the remaining ships of the Kriegsflotte and heavy air support, between fifteen and twenty thousand German troops—infantry hidden in merchantmen as well as hundreds of paratroopers—landed in Norway as well. Bypassing the superior Royal Navy, the invasion achieved virtually complete surprise and managed to overcome locally fierce resistance, capturing not only the capital Oslo but also the ports of Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik along the coast. Five days later British forces succeeded in a counterlanding, seeking to rout the entrenched occupiers with larger numbers, since a good part of the German naval forces such as the new cruiser Blücher and ten destroyers had been sunk during the invasion. But in the fierce fighting the Wehrmacht troops, supported by some local collaborators, held on, and in early May the British withdrew, abandoning Norway to Nazi rule.12
At the end of the first winter of World War II, Hitler could congratulate himself on “a brilliant military performance,” even if the main challenge still lay ahead. Assaulting one weaker victim after another with more advanced weapons and greater ruthlessness in fighting, the Nazis had overrun Poland and conquered Denmark and Norway. These initial victories improved the strategic position of the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsflotte in the coming struggle for continental hegemony with bigger foes. But the attack of Poland had also embroiled Germany in a European war with France and Britain, supported by their colonies and dominions. At the same time, Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister after the bungling of the Royal Navy in the Norway campaign. This put the more resolute Winston Churchill into 10 Downing Street—who galvanized the nation’s fighting spirit with his promise of “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” until Britain achieved “victory at all costs.” Finally, with German resources stretched to the breaking point due to losses and economic bottlenecks, France still held out behind the formidable Maginot Line. While the opening victories had created the myth of an irresistible blitzkrieg, the outcome of the war was far from decided.13
VICTORY IN THE WEST
The German attack on France on May 10, 1940 was an even bigger gamble than the invasion of Norway, since the western Allies were better prepared and had larger resources. On both sides, recollections of the Great War’s stalemate in the trenches led the generals to expect a protracted struggle. Moreover, the strategic situation favored the defense, because the Maginot Line looked impregnable, while the Belgian and Dutch neutrals north of the line were protected by major rivers such as the Rhine, Meuse, and Schelde, which were difficult to cross. Also, in contrast to the prior blitzkrieg victims, the western Allies had a considerably larger number of tanks (4,200 to 3,254), airplanes (4,469 to 3,578), and divisions (151 to 135) at their disposal, not to mention the Royal Navy ships that commanded the sea. Finally, their general staffs had had sufficient time to study the new tactics of the Wehrmacht and to devise countermeasures. Even the Nazi propaganda machine predicted, in typical hyperbole, that the battle would “decide the future of the German nation for the next thousand years.”14 Nonetheless, the Germans were again quickly victorious.
One key reason was the abandonment of the original plan of attack through the Low Countries, which the Allies expected, as it would repeat the thrust of the previous war’s Schlieffen Plan. It appeared only logical that the Germans would bypass the Maginot Line and concentrate on sweeping through the less-fortified neutral countries of Holland and Belgium in order to conquer the Channel coast and carry the fight to England. The need to resupply and disagreements among the German planners forced the operation to be postponed successively from fall to spring, while intelligence leaks and the Allies’ capture of part of the plans from a staff officer in a downed airplane in Belgium made a fundamental revision necessary. The new strategy, advocated by Erich von Manstein, proposed to launch the assault through the mountainous territory of the Ardennes so as to skirt the French defenses and make “a sickle cut” toward the Channel coast, separating the Low Countries from the Anglo-French forces. This risky alternative restored the element of surprise, since the deceived Allies rushed their main troops to Holland and Belgium to save their client states.15
Another cause of the Wehrmacht’s success was the speed, size, and firepower of the assault on the Low Countries, which terrorized the defenders and caught them off guard. Paratroopers and glider landings spearheaded the initial attack, seizing many bridges and airfields in spite of some severe losses. The regular ground forces quickly followed, cutting off Holland two days later. When the city of Rotterdam refused to surrender, the Luftwaffe mounted a devastating attack that annihilated the old town and cost many civilian lives. In panic, the Dutch surrendered on May 15, but Queen Wilhelmina went into exile to continue the fight. Belgian resistance lasted just a few days longer. On May 16 General Erich Hoepner’s tanks broke through the defenses of the Dyle-Breda position, which had been reinforced by Allied troops. Brussels fell a day later, and on May 28 the surrounded Belgian army surrendered, with King Leopold III going into captivity with his troops. Though the Allies had expected the direction of the assault, they were unable to stop the German steamroller.16
Finally, the concentration of superior German force on the main point of attack, compounded by Allied errors, sealed their fate. Considering the Ardennes “impassable for tanks,” the French defended the area at the northern end of the Maginot Line only with inferior strength. Though the narrow roads, deeply cut valleys, and extensive forests created logjams, panzer units succeeded in crossing the Meuse as early as May 14. Sending reinforcements north had left too few armored and infantry divisions to stop the advance, and Gamelin had to admit to an exasperated Winston Churchill that he had no reserves left at all. Though Hitler got increasingly nervous that the overstretched pincers might be cut off, excited tank commanders including Guderian and Erwin Rommel pushed ahead with “reconnaissance in force,” wreaking havoc in the Allied rear. In spite of counterattacks by General de Gaulle and the British, the Wehrmacht reached the Channel on May 20, encircling most of the French in Flanders and pinning the British to the coast. Due to the massing of tanks and close air support, Hitler had won another gamble.17
Sure of victory, the German leadership then made a major blunder that resulted in the “miracle of Dunkirk,” and which still remains somewhat of a puzzle. On May 24 General von Runstedt ordered the German units to stop their pursuit of fleeing British and French, allowing them to construct a defensive perimeter around the one remaining Channel port under their control. No doubt the tank divisions had incurred significant losses, needing to resupply and repair so as to recover from the rapidity of their advance. Moreover, Hermann Göring promised Hitler that the Luftwaffe would deliver the “coup de grace” by bombarding the penned-in enemy—but bad weather kept his bombers on the ground for several decisive days. During this respite the Royal Navy launched a daring rescue operation, requisitioning all manner of craft from battleships to civilian sailboats in order to evacuate 338,226 Allied soldiers to Britain. This resolute action saved the core of the British army and some French units, turning military defeat into a propaganda victory through Churchill’s impassioned promise that Britain would never surrender.18
The subsequent battle for France rapidly turned into a rout, since the “complete breakdown of French society” prevented the organization of an effective defense. Though the new commander Maxime Weygand decided to hold the line along the World War I trenches of the Somme and Aisne, he lacked sufficient manpower and armor, because he did not dare denude the Maginot Line. On June 5, the Wehrmacht attacked from the northeast with Army Group B striking to the west around Paris and Army Croup A rolling up the eastern defenders in the fortified positions from the rear. After intense fighting, both pincer movements broke through the defensive lines. On June 10 Mussolini, who had been nervously waiting to see which side would win, also invaded France in order to get his share of the spoils. Declared an open city, Paris fell on June 14, and three days later Guderian reached the Swiss frontier, trapping three-quarters of a million French soldiers in the Maginot Line—since their heavy guns could only fire eastward! Having fled to Bordeaux, the dejected French government had no choice but to sue for peace.19
Put in force on June 25, the armistice contained severe conditions that divided France and reduced the “free zone” to subservient status in spite of its titular neutrality. As long as the war against Britain lasted, three-fifths of the country would be occupied, while Alsace-Lorraine reverted back to the Reich. The occupation costs were to be borne by the French, and one million POWs would remain imprisoned until the end of the war. The French navy was to be disarmed, but since it had escaped to North Africa, the British sank most of its ships lest they fall into Nazi hands. The new government, established in the spa town of Vichy, would retain a force of one hundred thousand men, exactly what the Weimar Republic had been allowed. In these humiliating circumstances, the rump parliament created a more conservative, Catholic, and authoritarian constitution under the World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain. This so-called Vichy government sought to “alleviate the misfortune” of the French nation by collaborating with the victors as much as it had to. This rationale was denounced from London by the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle.20
The stunning victory over France cemented Hitler’s self-confidence, increased his popularity at home, and fueled hatred abroad. Silencing domestic critics, Nazi propaganda touted the modernity of the military and the Führer’s genius as “the greatest commander of all times.” Foreign admiration of “the magnificent machine” of the Wehrmacht neglected to point out the considerable losses of 714 tanks and 1,236 airplanes in France, not to mention some forty thousand dead. Though there was less random violence than in the East, during the heat of the fighting German soldiers also committed war crimes, and resistance members as well as Jews soon felt the brunt of Nazi persecution. The success also put much of the raw material and production resources of France at the Reich’s disposal, easing some economic strains through exploitation and the requisitioning of slave labor. Strategically, the possession of the Atlantic coast and of the airfields close to the Channel improved the German position in the coming battle with Britain. Drawing Italy into the contest, the fall of France marked Germany’s ascendancy over continental Europe.21
EXTENDING THE WAR
By rallying Britain to resist, Winston Churchill denied Hitler victory and thereby prolonged the war. Born in 1874 into an aristocratic family of politicians, the unruly young Winston was trained in military school. Multitalented, he tried his hand at journalism but became a controversial Conservative politician, rising to various government offices such as first lord of the Admiralty and chancellor of the exchequer. His rampant imperialism and reactionary views on domestic issues put him into the wilderness in the 1930s, blunting his insistent warnings of the Nazi menace. Only on May 10, 1940, was he chosen as prime minister of the National Union government in order to mobilize the British populace with his unbending will and strengthen the French resolve to fight. Endowed with great oratorical power, he vowed “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”22 His close relationship with U.S. president Roosevelt was another asset, as it guaranteed the Lend-Lease help, essential for the island democracy to hold out alone.
In the struggle against Britain, the German navy proved an utter disappointment. The prohibitions of the Versailles Treaty had effectively retarded the development of new battleships, leaving the Kriegsmarine much smaller than the Royal Navy. Though inflicting some damage, its battleships, notably the Graf Spee and the Bismarck, were quickly scuttled or sunk. Realizing that he could not compete with England in this way, Hitler switched priorities to building submarines in order to mount a counterblockade against merchant shipping. While the infamous U-boats had some success, such as sinking the battleship Royal Oak in home waters, they were clearly incapable of controlling the surface of the sea. Outnumbered by the British and heavily damaged in the Norwegian campaign, the German navy simply did not have enough ships left to carry the forty divisions across the Channel that the planners of Operation Sea Lion required for an invasion of Great Britain.23 In spite of all the investment of money and resources in preparing an amphibious assault, the mere twenty-some miles of water between Calais and Dover ultimately proved an insuperable obstacle.
Between July and October 1940 the Battle of Britain turned into a contest for air superiority, since the German navy would require control of the skies to implement its invasion plans. Technically, the opposing aircraft such as Messerschmitts and Spitfires were roughly equivalent, with the former being faster but the latter more maneuverable. Bombers like the Heinkel 111 and the Junkers 88 needed fighter cover, because their slower speeds made them easy targets. Once again the strategic situation favored defense, since German planes had enough fuel for only about an hour over Britain, whereas shot-down defenders could parachute to safety over their own territory. Moreover, the attackers’ range was limited to the southern and central part of the United Kingdom, leaving the airfields and factories in the North out of reach. While German pilots were better trained and used more effective formations, British radar tracking proved superior, allowing a more flexible and instantaneous response due to an early warning of attacks. The ensuing dogfights over Britain therefore became the first battle entirely waged in the air.24
Numerically the combat with the Royal Air Force (RAF) was a virtual draw, but this result represented a strategic defeat for the Luftwaffe, since it failed to gain air superiority. After initial success over the Channel, the Germans launched their “eagle attack” in mid-August, trying to destroy radar installations and enemy fighters, but switched thereafter to airfields and airplane factories and finally to civilian targets such as Coventry. Between July 10 and October 31 the RAF lost 544 pilots and 1,547 planes, while the Luftwaffe had about 2,000 crew killed and 1,733 aircraft shot down. The German air force consistently underestimated its opponents and found some of its planes, including the Stukas and twin-engine Messerschmitt 110 fighters, unsuitable. Moreover, neophyte British pilots fought rather bravely, their replacements were trained more rapidly, and factories produced 50 percent more planes than in Germany. By mid-October, it was clear that Göring was unable to fulfill his promises, forcing Hitler to break off the attacks.25 Mislabeled as “the blitz,” the Battle of Britain, against an adversary of equal modernity, was the Nazis’ first real defeat.
The Italian entry into the war extended the conflict into North Africa when Mussolini invaded Egypt in mid-September 1940. Hoping to reach the Suez Canal, the fascist forces made some gains against the British, then dug in at Sidi-el-Barrani. But General Archibald Wavell counterattacked so successfully as to dislodge and defeat the invaders, taking 130,000 prisoners. To avoid the loss of the Libyan colony, Hitler came to Mussolini’s aid by dispatching the Afrika Korps under the command of Erwin Rommel in January 1941. The German troops succeeded in restabilizing the front, initiating a hit-and-run contest with General Bernard Montgomery called the “desert war.” Its daring exploits have become romanticized in fiction, since the protagonists treated each other with a dash of chivalry missing from other battlefields. Rommel eventually captured the port El Tobruk, but the goal of cutting “the life-line of the British Empire,” the Suez Canal, continued to elude him. Since Hitler did not believe in African colonies, he put insufficient resources into this campaign, and Islamic uprisings in Syria and Iraq failed to threaten Allied control.26
Another Italian blunder pulled the Wehrmacht into the Balkans, although Hitler had not intended to commit troops there, preferring diplomacy instead. On the one hand, Russia occupied the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina during the French campaign, seeking to convert its sphere of influence into direct control. On the other, Berlin tried to secure its fuel supply by a “weapons for oil treaty” with Romania and by sending troops; Hitler also signed an alliance with Bulgaria and stationed forces there as well. Intent on recapturing the eastern part of the Roman Empire, Mussolini attacked Greece with massive force on October 28, 1940. But spirited defense and British help pushed the Italian invaders back into Albania. In early April 1941 a putsch overthrew the Belgrade government since it seemed to be too pro-German, abrogated its treaty commitments, and sought help from the Soviet Union. Though Berlin had so far tried to mediate territorial disputes on the Balkans, local conflicts and growing tensions between the big powers precipitated Hitler’s impromptu decision to secure his southern flank by military force.27
On April 6, 1941, the Wehrmacht attacked Yugoslavia and Greece from bases in Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Although both countries fought valiantly to preserve their independence, German superiority in armor and airplanes made the Balkan campaign another classic blitzkrieg operation. After Belgrade had fallen to a concentric assault on April 17, Yugoslavia capitulated, only to be divided into an independent Croatia, ruled by the pro-Nazi Ustasha, and a remnant of Serbia, which lost its border regions to the other German allies. Since Greece was supported by several British divisions, the fighting there took another ten days until Athens was occupied on April 27 and the British withdrew their forces. Finally, a daring parachute attack secured German control of the strategic island of Crete, which dominated Mediterranean shipping lanes. While the victories had been as swift as usual, the Balkans tied down a large German occupation force, since the underground resistance waged a fierce partisan warfare, leading to ugly reprisals.28 Moreover, this diversion delayed the German campaign against Russia by six crucial weeks.
The aftermath of the victory in the West proved disappointing to Hitler since the conclusion of hostilities continued to elude him. Thanks to Churchill and the British refusal to panic, London remained unwilling to settle, while the tenacious defense of the RAF gave the overconfident Luftwaffe a bloody nose. Instead, the grandiloquent incompetence of its Italian ally drew the Third Reich into peripheral theaters from North Africa to the Balkans, devouring resources and manpower without bringing much strategic gain. In the spring of 1941 the Wehrmacht was still capable of beating less-modern continental enemies in blitzkrieg fashion, but the German population grew restive, since all the victory fanfares had not ended the war. While offering the economy additional resources, the territorial gains nonetheless diluted German military strength by demanding the stationing of occupation forces for control. After having conquered the southeastern part of the continent, the Führer once again faced the Napoleonic dilemma of whether to seek an arrangement with the British or march on into the East.29
LIVING SPACE
Though it ultimately turned out to be a disaster, Hitler’s decision to invade Russia had both ideological and economic motives. Since the Nazis believed that Germany was overcrowded, their remedy was not the acquisition of colonies in Africa, deemed unsuited for white settlement, but conquest of agrarian living space in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Ukraine, whose inhabitants would need to be displaced. While Berlin’s continental bloc with about three hundred million people looked impressive on paper, it lacked essential raw materials and foodstuffs such as grain, iron ore, and oil, all of which had to be imported. The Soviet Union had been a reliable partner in delivering the missing resources but was asking for arms and finished goods that might one day be turned against Germany. Since so many Red Army generals had been killed in the Great Purge, the German command underestimated its fighting power based on its mediocre performance in the Winter War. Lacking the patience and factories to outproduce the British and their American helpers in airplanes and ships, Hitler turned his Wehrmacht to the one remaining target—Soviet Russia.30
Begun in the early morning of June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa largely achieved tactical surprise because it proceeded in classic blitzkrieg fashion as a series of deep thrusts by three army groups surrounding the defenders and forcing them to surrender. The Soviets’ building of the Molotov Line in its new western territories following their decision on a strategy of forward defense also played into German hands. Stalin ignored reliable intelligence reports of the attack, considering them disinformation, including even a pointed warning by the spy Richard Sorge. The confident and battle-tested Wehrmacht invaded with about three million German and six hundred thousand allied soldiers, but from the beginning it possessed fewer tanks, airplanes, and cannon than the Red Army. In March 1940, Hitler had characterized the coming struggle to his generals as an ideological “war of annihilation,” calling for the extermination of communists and Jews. Though the defenders fought courageously, the Germans succeeded in overrunning western Russia from Riga to Odessa, capturing millions of soldiers in the pockets of Bialystok, Minsk, and Smolensk.31
Euphoric over such huge victories, the Nazi attackers were confident that they could end the campaign before the onset of winter. But the Soviets created a State Defense Committee to coordinate their efforts, and Stalin called for a “Great Patriotic War” in order to rouse patriots and the Orthodox Church to fight for Mother Russia rather than for communism. On July 12, Britain and the Soviet Union also signed the alliance treaty that had previously eluded them, and the United States gradually extended its Lend-Lease program to include Russia, sending crucial matériel at the moment of highest need. Meanwhile, to secure the coal and oil supplies of the Donbas and link up to his Finnish allies, Hitler diverted part of the Wehrmacht from the attack on Moscow to thrust south into the Ukraine and also north to encircle Leningrad. This strategic shift yielded 660,000 POWs in the pocket of Kiev and another 600,000 in the area of Vyazma and Bryansk. Confident that with such incredible losses there would no longer be enough Red Army troops left to resist, the German command announced at a press conference on October 10, 1941, that the war had been won.32
When the attack on Moscow finally began ten days later, the Germans came tantalizingly close but failed to capture the capital. The sight of Guderian’s and Hoepner’s tanks about twenty miles north and south of the Kremlin created a mass panic, arrested only by force of the NKVD. But fall rains stopped the supplies of the Wehrmacht by turning the interminable dirt roads into mud, making them impassable. In mid-November a desperate Stalin ordered the Red Army to burn all villages, fields, and factories close to the front lines in order to deny the invader the possibility of resupplying from the land. Moreover, winter arrived about a month early, with temperatures dropping as low as –35 degrees Celsius, immobilizing the tanks in their tracks due to congealing oil, jamming the artillery cannons, and freezing the limbs of soldiers without proper winter clothes. Finally Soviet general Georgy Zhukov also drew reserves away from Asia and threw every last man into battle, willing to take heavy casualties for the sake of the fatherland.33 By December the awful weather and fresh defenders had stopped the seemingly inexorable German advance.
The following Russian counteroffensive almost unhinged the entire eastern front, since it sent the outworn German attackers into full-fledged flight. Stalin had ruthlessly moved most war production behind the Ural Mountains, out of reach of the Luftwaffe. Some Russian weapons like the Katyusha rocket thrower and the T-34 tank were superior to anything the Wehrmacht could muster. Though often insufficiently trained, Soviet troops, fearing to be shot when retreating, fought with grim determination for “Holy Russia.” In contrast the depleted invaders suffered from the cold, broken-down equipment, and overstretched supply lines. Suddenly thousands of German soldiers found themselves surrounded and desperately tried to break out. In mid-December Hitler took personal command of the eastern front and issued a “stand or die” order, calling for fanatical resistance. Though the Russians had lost about six million in dead, wounded, or POWs, the roughly one million German casualties seemed to make more of a difference. Only with its last reserves did the Wehrmacht restabilize the front—albeit one hundred miles to the west.34
Part of the Nazi failure was also political, because the brutal treatment of Russian POWs and civilians alienated the local population. At least in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, the Germans had initially been welcomed as liberators from Stalin’s yoke. But indiscriminate repression, economic exploitation, and mass murders by the SS Einsatzgruppen made it abundantly clear that they had not come as friends. Both by circumstance and design, the starvation of Russian POWs in the winter of 1941–42, which killed over two million soldiers as well as many civilians in Belarus, sent a chilling message that the Brown conquerors were even more ruthless than the Red commissars. Though many prisoners were willing to join the anticommunist Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov, Hitler was never ready to offer them an attractive goal of a post-Communist state. Instead, the ruthless murder of Communist Party members and Jews inspired a partisan movement that hid in the forests and disrupted German supply lines. Hence the Nazis failed to take advantage of the widespread anticommunism, ethnic hatred, and religious resentment that might have helped their cause.35
Since Hitler still sought to win the war in the East, he mounted a final offensive in Russia during the summer of 1942. After beating back a Soviet attack at Kharkov, the Wehrmacht strove to secure Ukrainian grain and Caucasus oil as prerequisite for the continuation of the war. Waging fierce battles, the Germans took the Crimea in early July. A first thrust moved southward toward the Caspian Sea, reaching Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in the Caucasus, on August 21, 1942. A second, more eastward offensive approached the industrial city of Stalingrad, which controlled the Volga crossing, at the end of the same month. In tough house-to-house battles, the Wehrmacht managed to capture most of the city but could never quite gain complete control, suffering heavy losses in the process. While this dual advance gained a lot of territory, it stretched supply lines even further and necessitated a defensive posture in the central and northern part of the interminable Russian front. The German military machine could still win battles, but it was no longer able knock a major opponent like the Soviet Union out of the war.36
The Russian campaign stopped the German advance across Europe and transformed the character of the warfare, ultimately leading to Hitler’s fall. Begun as yet another blitzkrieg, the struggle turned precisely into the kind of war of attrition between major industrial powers that a midsize, even if militarized continental country such as Germany could not win. Hitler’s boundless expansionism had created a two-font war by forcing the British Empire and the Soviet Union into a reluctant alliance strong enough to withstand the Nazi attack. First the Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over England, and then the Wehrmacht met its match in the cold of the Russian winter. The German leadership continually underestimated the size of the country, the number of Red Army soldiers, the quality of Soviet arms, and the Russians’ capacity for suffering. Any other country would have succumbed to such an assault.37 While German soldiers posing in the Caucasus Mountains or the desert at El Alamein made catchy propaganda photos, this was as far as they would get. The tide of war was about to turn.
GLOBAL STRUGGLE
Propelled not just by Nazi Germany but also by Fascist Italy and militarist Japan, the war gradually developed into a truly global struggle, drawing in virtually all major countries. Lacking a master plan, the nationalist expansionism of the Axis powers had connected separate theaters of war into one worldwide conflict. In ideological terms, the National Socialist, communist, and liberal democratic visions of modernity were vying for primacy. In economic terms, industrialized warfare demanded resources from around the globe that were easier to obtain for the western sea powers than for the land-based fascists. In diplomatic terms, two large multistate alliances were fighting each other, since not just the British Empire and the Soviet Union but also the Nazis could draw on the help of allies and client states in Europe and Asia. Finally, in military terms, troops from the Canadian and Australian dominions as well as soldiers from colonies in India and Africa lined up against regular forces and volunteer SS units from all over Europe. More encompassing than the first time, the second clash became truly a world war.38
Once the League of Nations was emasculated, it became ever more difficult to remain neutral during the worldwide conflict. Surrounded by Nazi-held territory, democratic Switzerland mobilized its militia-style army but did much financial business with its German neighbor and became a haven for spies. Social Democratic Sweden, cut off from the world by the Wehrmacht, was compelled to sell its iron ore, timber, and other industrial products to Berlin, while serving as a refuge for escaping Jews. Though Italian Fascist and Nazi troops had helped him win his military coup, General Franco kept Spain out of the war as a result of American diplomatic pressure, only allowing volunteer units like the Blue Division to fight in Russia. Hitler was similarly disappointed that the right-wing dictator Antonio Salazar did not permit Portugal to join the Axis, even if it supplied valuable tungsten. The Irish Free State refused to side with England, while Turkey also stayed out of the war. As long as the Nazis were winning, the continental neutrals cooperated with them, but once the fortune of battle turned, they started to help the Allies as well.39
Japanese aggression against China created another regional war in Asia that was initially only loosely linked to the European conflict. Already in July 1937 an incident in Peking had triggered a full-scale invasion by the Japanese army against the Nationalist Chinese regime of Chiang Kai-shek, leading to the occupation of a huge swath of territory around Shanghai and Nanking. After the attack on China, Japanese troops in Manchuria got embroiled in protracted border clashes with the Red Army in Outer Mongolia in which they suffered a surprising defeat. In line with the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Tokyo therefore signed its own nonaggression treaty with the Soviet Union in April 1941. Pushed by its ambitious navy, the Japanese government instead began to turn southwestward in order to take advantage of the defeat of the colonial powers by securing oil-rich Indonesia from the Dutch, taking over French possessions in Indochina, and threatening British control of India. After Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940, each power continued to pursue its own national priorities.40
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt watched the European and Asian dictators with growing apprehension, since his hands were tied by the prevailing isolationist sentiment in the United States. The Republican Party’s repudiation of the League, the revisionists’ criticism of the Versailles Treaty, and the suffering of the Great Depression had turned the American public inward. Disliking Germans ever since his childhood vacations, and having served as assistant secretary of the navy in World War I, Roosevelt began to warn in October 1937 that aggressors would have to be “quarantined.” In order to circumvent the Neutrality Acts designed to keep the country out of war, he authorized an ingenious “cash and carry” policy in November of 1939 that would allow the Allies to buy weapons and thereby improve U.S. business. Declaring America an “arsenal for democracy,” FDR then swapped fifty old destroyers for British naval bases and started systematic rearmament. In March 1941 he maneuvered a the Lend-Lease Act through Congress to support Britain and safeguarded transatlantic shipping lanes with naval escorts just short of war.41
Hitler deeply resented the increasing flow of aid in raw materials and weapons from the United States to his opponents. In part, he was fascinated by America’s size, speed, inventiveness, and economic power, attributing such dynamism to the Aryan roots of the white population. He found much to admire, such as the efficiency of Fordist mass production, the glamour of Hollywood movies, and the high living standard of regular citizens. At the same time, he was repelled by the diversity of immigration and the mixture of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, considering the country a racial hodgepodge that could only breed decadence. When transatlantic hostility grew, the Führer began to denounce New York more openly as the center of the “world Jewish conspiracy” that was opposing his plans at every turn. Since the Nazi leader expected a future intercontinental showdown with the United States, he tried to expand the German power base—its territory, industry, and resources—so as to get ready for such a conflict. While some Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine officers dreamt of a direct attack on the United States, such a transatlantic invasion remained utterly beyond German military capacity.42
The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, finally drew the Unites States into World War II as a full-fledged belligerent. Since the British and French armies were engaged in Europe, the American Pacific Fleet was the only sizable force standing between Japan and its goal of establishing a Southeastern Resources Area in Asia. The numerical equality of Japanese and American forces in aircraft carriers, battleships, and destroyers suggested to Admiral Yamamoto that a stealth attack would be the best way to eliminate the opposing fleet once and for all. Since U.S. commanders could not imagine such a strike, their defenses were lax. Hence successive waves of Japanese airplanes, dropping specially designed torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs, wreaked terrible havoc, sinking or damaging all eight American battleships along with several cruisers and destroyers, not to mention numerous naval aircraft. The shock of such an unexpected assault inspired an angry resolve to fight. Congress declared war on Japan by a vote of 470 to 1 the very next day. While FDR railed against “a day that will live in infamy,” Berlin, too, was completely surprised.43
Three days later Hitler inexplicably declared war on the United States, turning an undecided contest into certain defeat for Germany. Since he had not informed Tokyo about his attack on Russia, the Japanese did not alert him to their strike against the U.S. Navy, absolving him of any obligation. In fact, the consultation within the Axis was so poor that there was no overall strategy, though a joint attack on Russia might have yielded Siberian resources for Tokyo and toppled Stalin in the bargain. Although he had some sense of the productive capacity of the United States, the Führer ignored the warnings of his economic advisers and, judging by current troop strength alone, disastrously underestimated its military potential and political resolve. Perhaps he persuaded himself with the thought that the declaration of war only formalized an informal war already taking place on the sea, allowing German U-boats to sink American vessels on sight. Ignoring the huge disparity between the resources and industry of the two countries, he gambled on winning while he was still ahead.44 With one stroke, this erroneous decision hastened his own doom, while it solved FDR’s long-standing problem of wanting to fight in Europe but not having enough popular support to do so.
The Japanese attack and the German declaration of war on the United States closed the circle of combatants, creating a truly worldwide contest. The separate expansionist designs of the fascist regimes had cemented an unlikely Grand Alliance between liberal democracy and communism that was ideologically disparate but nonetheless worked well enough against a common threat. No doubt the attacking dictatorships had a well-oiled war machine, fierce fighting spirit, and valuable combat experience that gave them advantages in the short run. But the various defenders possessed a larger population, bigger economy, and more resources that, once fully mobilized, would allow them to prevail in a drawn-out conflict.45 Initially, the Japanese repeated the pattern of blitzkrieg successes by conquering a good part of Southeast Asia, helped by anticolonial resentment. But when it became clear that the new conquerors were even more exacting than the old imperialists, local populations turned against them. In this global struggle of competing modernities, the fates of Europe and of Asia were now closely joined.
LIGHTNING WARFARE
Already during the struggle, military writers had begun to debate the characteristics of modern warfare, which had increased its intensity and violence even in comparison with the horrors of the First World War. One new element was the greater killing power caused by advances in weapons technology such as bombers, tanks, and mobile artillery, though the relative advantages of one side over another tended to remain fleeting. A second dimension was a more massive propaganda that turned the contest into a struggle of ideologies, depersonalizing enemies and motivating mass armies to sacrifice for their cause. A third novelty was the systematic use of terror against civilian populations through bombardment from the air or indiscriminate reprisals, which created panic and induced surrender. A fourth dimension was the more thorough mobilization of the economic basis for mass-producing weapons, feeding the population, and maintaining morale. A final factor appeared to be the respective nature of the political systems, which gave the dictatorships an important edge in unleashing attacks but also rendered them vulnerable in defeat.46
During the first half of the war Nazi success rested on a new synthesis of combat elements, called blitzkrieg, which was especially suited to Germany’s rapid rearmament but limited resources. According to American eyewitnesses, the concerted use of technically advanced weapons like armored tanks, dive-bombers, and mobile artillery proved so intimidating as to be well-nigh irresistible. The novel tactic of breaking through defenses with a superior concentration of force, then cutting communication and supply lines as well as surrounding defenders in pockets, resulted in the capture of huge numbers of POWs. Moreover, the strategy of picking off one presumably weaker opponent after another permitted a series of brief campaigns, which prevented effective aid by potential allies and left the victim little choice but to surrender. Finally, the consistent use of terror against civilians and the propagandistic exploitation of victories created a climate of fear and a sense of invincibility that made resistance seem pointless. During the initial phase of the war, this improvised attacking formula worked so well as to surprise even its inventors.47
The western democracies developed a different style of warfare that favored defense, since it was constrained by parliamentary oversight. During the respite offered by the Munich Agreement, Britain and France rearmed to such a degree that they had a clear superiority in available weapons and troops, usually a sufficient deterrent against attack. But their passivity left the overmatched Poles in the lurch, and the concentration of the RAF on defending Britain also did little to stem the panic of the Low Countries. Immobilized by internal division and self-doubt, the French, though an even match on paper, mistook the main thrust of the German assault, remained behind the Maginot Line, used their weapons badly, and lacked the fighting spirit to stand up to the confident invaders. That left Great Britain behind the Channel to carry on the fight, ably defended by its navy and air force. Increasing material help from the United States as well as assistance from the empire made up for the defeat on the continent. The greater appeal of freedom and the superiority of resources also boded well in an extended struggle.48
The Soviet Union produced yet another way of fighting modern war that was initially disastrous but gradually became unstoppable as the conflict wore on. At the beginning Stalin’s dictatorial control almost lost the struggle because of his incredulity about a German attack and his decimation of the officer corps in the purges. But eventually his orders to relocate industry and exploit the gulag made it possible for Russia to survive. The Communists relied on seemingly inexhaustible mass armies that continued to amaze the invading generals: “Whenever one dozen [divisions] is destroyed, the Russians put another dozen in its place.” The Soviets’ simpler but more durable technology was well suited to the Russian climate and easy to produce in great numbers. As relic of the Civil War, the Soviets also used political commissars for ideological mobilization and reactivated dormant feelings of nationalism. Finally, the Soviet military operated with an utter disregard for individual lives, accepting untold casualties. While Red Army attacks were rather methodical, their unrelenting pounding eventually wore down the Wehrmacht.49
Though the Nazi synthesis was initially effective, the transformation of the conflict from short bursts to a prolonged war of annihilation blunted the blitzkrieg approach. Putting a premium on control of resources and industrial production, the prolongation of the struggle shifted the balance of power to the Grand Alliance, which had a larger population and bigger economic base. Lacking oil and other raw materials, the Nazis tried to develop substitutes such as hydrogenation from coal, but such replacements were costly. While the exploitation of the continent through slave labor and extraction of resources did enable Germany to continue to fight, the ruthlessness of repression made the Nazis “bitterly hated” and inspired an ever-growing resistance movement. Even though some German weapons were technically superior at the outset, the Allies began to surpass them in both quantity and quality by the middle of the war.50 Ironically, Hitler ultimately became a victim of his own success formula: By its risky strategy of attack to compensate for material inferiority, the Third Reich created a superior Grand Alliance that would defeat it in the end.