["THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 1943 Chiang Kai-shek is elected President of the Republic of China. His prestige rose in 1943 when he attended the Cairo Conference with Roosevelt and Churchill. Alaska Allied success against German U-boats (to US) forces the Germans CANADA to suspend their NEWFOUNDLAND operations in the Atlantic. MANCHUKUO ONGOLIA KOREA US troops recapture U N ITED STATES Attu in the Aleutian OF AMERICA JAPAN Islands in May, after AT L A N T I C CHINA their navy defeats Burma the Japanese off the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Formosa Komandorski Islands MEXICO CUBA VIRGIN ISLANDS OCEAN HAITI LEEWARD ISLANDS Mariana on March 24. Islands AM FRENCH PHILIPPINE BRITISH HONDURAS HONDURAS WINDWARD ISLANDS INDOCHINA ISLANDS GUATEMALA GUAM NICARAGUA BARBADOS BRITISH Marshall Islands EL SALVADOR TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO NORTH BORNEO ALAYA BRUNEI Caroline COSTA RICA VENEZUELA BRITISH GUIANA Islands PANAMA DUTCH GUIANA SARAWAK COLOMBIA FRENCH GUIANA TERRITORY Nauru Gilbert PACIFIC ECUADOR OF NEW GUINEA Islands OCEAN DUTCH EAST INDIES Solomon BRAZIL PAPUA Islands Ellice UAY Islands PORTUGUESE AMERICAN PERU TIMOR WESTERN SAMOA SAMOA New BOLIVIA Hebrides Fiji PARAG New AUSTRALIA Caledonia CHILE NEW URUGUAY THE WORLD IN DECEMBER 1943 ZEALAND ARGENTINA Axis powers and allies As part of the South Pacific Axis conquests to Dec 1943 Offensive US Marines land on Area under Japanese control, Dec 1943 Bougainville and the resultant Allied states victory paves the way for the US Allied conquests to Dec 1943 Neutral states attack on the Philippines. Frontiers Sep 1939 Meanwhile, a smaller invasion of Europe took place. In July 1943 But the Reich was not beyond reach. Throughout the year German a combined British-American-Canadian force struck at Sicily\u2014\u201cthe cities were pounded night and day by the airborne artillery of underbelly of Europe,\u201d as Churchill called it\u2014and from there, an Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force. The Ruhr Valley, assault of the Italian mainland was launched. The underbelly was situated in Germany\u2019s industrial heartland, was pummeled night after not as soft as the prime minister had hoped. German forces, night; the city of Hamburg was razed to the ground; and Berlin itself bolstered by Italian troops, mounted strong resistance, and clung became a regularly attainable target for the heavy bombers as the on to positions far from the Alps and the borders of the Reich. Allies gradually began to take control of the skies. 199","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 TIMELINE 1943 German surrender at Stalingrad O Allied victory in Tunisia O\u0001German U-boats withdrawn from the Atlantic O\u0001Strategic bombing of Germany O\u0001German war production O\u0001Battle of Kursk O\u0001Island-hopping in the Pacific O\u0001Invasion of Italy JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JANUARY 10 APRIL 7\u201318 MAY 11 JUNE 10 Soviet armies launch Japanese air offensive US landings on Allies decide that Operation Ring, over the Solomons and Attu Island in the the Americans will tightening the noose eastern New Guinea is Aleutians. The Island bomb Germany by around the surrounded defeated. is secured by the end day, the British will German Sixth Army of the month. bomb at night. at Stalingrad. JANUARY 27 US troops on Guadalcanal MARCH 2\u20134 The United States with captured Japanese flag Battle of the Bismarck launches its first air Sea. US B-25s sink12 raid on Germany. The FEBRUARY 1\u20137 Japanese ships bound cities of Emden and Japanese soldiers are for New Guinea. Wihelmshaven are successfully evacuated bombed during from Guadalcanal. British Avro Lancaster the day. heavy bomber JANUARY 31 FEBRUARY 4\u20137 APRIL 18 MAY 13 JUNE 22 Field Marshal Friedrich Convoy SC-118 from Operation Vengeance. Italian 1st Army US and Australian Paulus, of the German Halifax attacked in Acting on intelligence, surrenders in Tunisia. landings at Nassau Sixth Army, disobeys mid-Atlantic by 20 US fighters intercept The Allies capture Bay near Salamaua, Hitler\u2019s instructions U-boats. Thirteen Admiral Isoroku 240,000 Axis soldiers. New Guinea. and surrenders merchantmen Yamamoto\u2019s plane over at Stalingrad. are sunk. Bougainville and shoot MAY 16\u201317 JUNE 30 it down. Yamamoto, Dambusters raid. US offensive in the 200 US General Dwight the man who planned \u201cBouncing bombs\u201d are Solomons begins D. Eisenhower the Japanese attack on used against the Ruhr with the capture of Pearl Harbor, is killed. dams in Germany\u2019s Rendova Island. FEBRUARY 7 industrial heartland. It is announced by MARCH 26\u201327 Two of the three dams A Canadian naval President Roosevelt that Axis troops evacuate attacked are breached. recruitment poster General Eisenhower is to the Mareth Line in command Allied operations southern Tunisia, after in North Africa. being attacked frontally and outflanked by Montgomery. They fall back to Wadi Akarit north of Mareth. FEBRUARY 14\u201322 British 3.7 in MAY 24 Battle of Kasserine mountain howitzer Karl D\u00f6nitz Pass, Tunisia. Rommel (commander-in-chief and von Arnim of the German combine to force an Kriegsmarine) Allied withdrawal. withdraws almost all U-boats from the The surrender of Field North Atlantic after Marshal Paulus at Stalingrad record losses during the month of May.","TIMELINE 1943 \u201c We demand from the fascist tyrannies unconditional surrender \u2026 they must yield themselves absolutely to our justice and mercy.\u201d WINSTON CHURCHILL, JUNE 30, 1943 JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER German tanks at the AUGUST 17 SEPTEMBER 3 OCTOBER 1 Battle of Kursk Sixty American bombers Italy signs an armistice In Italy, US forces are lost during a raid with Anglo-American take Naples. JULY 5\u201313 on a ball-bearing forces in Sicily. Operation Citadel, factory and a German offensive Messerschmitt plant at SEPTEMBER 5\u201316 around Kursk, ends Schweinfurt in Bavaria. US paratroop landings in failure. Following at Nadzab in New victory in massive tank AUGUST 17 Guinea. Australian and battle, Soviets go on Sicilian campaign US troops recapture the offensive. ends with the Salamaua and Lae. American entry JULY 10 into Messina. OCTOBER 9 NOVEMBER 1\u20132 The DUKW, a US Allies land in Sicily. Portugal allows the US landings at amphibious vehicle Over 2,500 Allied AUGUST 22 British to use its Empress Augusta Bay ships take part in Germans evacuate military bases in on Bougainville in the DECEMBER 20 amphibious assault. Kharkov. the Azores for air Solomons. The British and JULY 24\u2013AUGUST 3 and naval patrols. American governments In four massive raids Hamburg in ruins NOVEMBER 4 decide to provide aid on Hamburg, 8,334 after bombing raids British 4.2 in mortar Germans establish the to Marshal Tito and tons of bombs are strongly fortified Gustav the Yugoslav partisans. dropped on the city. Line across the width of Italy, south of Rome. DECEMBER 24 Soviet operations NOVEMBER 6 begin to recover areas Kiev is liberated by of Ukraine west of the Soviet forces. River Dnieper. NOVEMBER 18\u201319 US amphibious landing Beginning of a on Makin Atoll sustained Allied bombing campaign against Berlin. SEPTEMBER 9 OCTOBER 13 NOVEMBER 20 DECEMBER Allies land at Salerno Italy declares war Operation Galvanic. First P-51 Mustangs in southern Italy. on Germany. US forces land on delivered to Europe. the Makin and Tarawa Bombing raids deep SEPTEMBER 11 OCTOBER 14 atolls in the Gilbert into Germany are now German forces take Further heavy US Islands in the Pacific. possible due to the control of major cities losses sustained in Mustang\u2019s external in northern Italy, a second raid on fuel tank. including Rome, Milan, Schweinfurt. Allies Bologna, and Verona. decide to choose targets within the SEPTEMBER 12 range of escort fighters. German paratroops rescue Mussolini. He then declares a new republic at Sal in northern Italy on September 25. 201","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 Allied Leaders Plan for Victory In 1943 it became increasingly clear that the high tide of Nazism was passing, and that\u2014sooner rather than later\u2014the war would end in defeat for Germany. So now the leaders of the Allied nations began to plan for victory, and to stake their separate claims in the postwar world. Churchill turned out to be a good In the event, Allied troops had only advocate for Soviet war aims at just ended the conquest of Sicily when Casablanca, insisting that aiding Roosevelt and Churchill met again\u2014 the USSR must be a priority, as in Quebec in the middle of August. \u201cno investment could pay a better dividend,\u201d and that, collectively, An Anglo-American agenda the Allies \u201ccannot let Russia down.\u201d The Quebec meeting, codenamed Disappointingly from the Russian Quadrant, was very much an Anglo- viewpoint, the British delegation American affair. Stalin was not invited; persuaded the Americans that no instead, he was one of the subjects invasion of Europe could practically under discussion. The American troops be launched that year. D-Day, the on Sicily were, it was noted, almost long-awaited second front, was exactly the same distance from Berlin of\ufb01cially postponed to the spring of as the Red Army soldiers battling for 1944. In the meantime, Roosevelt and the city of Orel. Roosevelt said that he Churchill agreed that the best way to wanted British and American soldiers take the \ufb01ght to Hitler was to bomb \u201cto be ready to get to Berlin as soon as German cities from the air. This was International heavyweights A llied conferences were the board backed up with some Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met together in one meetings of global war. Many of \ufb01ghting talk: at room only twice during the war: first at Tehran, in the signi\ufb01cant decisions about the end of the 1943 (above), and then at Yalta, in 1945, when the conduct of the war, and about the the war was all but over. shape of the world at the end of the war, were thrashed out in face-to-face BEFORE meetings between representatives of what Winston Churchill liked to call Summit meetings between national leaders the \u201cGrand Alliance\u201d\u2014the anti-Nazi were a new tool in the diplomatic armory, coalition of Britain, the United States, and air travel was the innovation that made and the Soviet Union. their engagements possible. The Big Three conference, President FREQUENT MEETINGS Roosevelt surprised In no previous con\ufb02icts had national leaders, Churchill, President Roosevelt, and Churchill by declaring their generals, and diplomats consulted so Soviet premier Joseph Stalin were that the Allies\u2019 policy frequently or so regularly. profoundly different characters, but could be nothing less each considered his own personality than the complete THE WESTERN ALLIES to be a valuable asset to his country. \u201cunconditional Winston Churchill ff\u000186\u201387 was always Whenever they met, they came to the surrender\u201d of Nazi eager to journey far and wide to make the British conference table like poker a\ufb01cionados, Germany. That policy case to his American and Russian allies. For and were prepared to play as skillfully was extended to him, these trips seem to have been a diversion as possible the hands they were dealt Fascist Italy at the from the daily grind of wartime leadership. by the vagaries of war. 1943 was a year following meeting between the two President Roosevelt ff\u0001144\u201345 also saw 46 The number of countries leaders, which took the bene\ufb01ts of regular face-to-face contact and that signed the Declaration place in May in attended numerous summits with Churchill; he of the United Nations, each Washington. The was the \ufb01rst American president ever to leave committing to fight until Allied invasion of his country during wartime. the Axis was defeated, and not to negotiate Sicily was about a separate peace with Germany or Japan. to begin, and the JOSEPH STALIN Americans and Sole dictator of his country and deeply suspicious for conferences. The \ufb01rst talks of the British were, rather by nature, Stalin ff\u000166\u201367 never liked to leave year took place during January in too optimistically, his home turf. He received Churchill at the Casablanca. This was a signi\ufb01cant expecting a rapid Kremlin in 1942, but was not persuaded to venue, chosen to underline the fact end to resistance in meet Roosevelt and Churchill together until that French North Africa was newly in the Italian peninsula. the end of 1943, at Tehran. Allied hands. Joseph Stalin was invited but declined to attend. The Red Army 202 was, at the time, engaged in the battle for the possession of Stalingrad, and he felt he could not leave his post.","ALLIED LEADERS PLAN FOR VICTORY Before the battle 0K 3E YB OMXO MT IETNL TE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T The 1943 invasion of Sicily was to be undertaken by an American army under General Patton, and a British THE UNITED NATIONS force commanded by General Montgomery, seen here addressing his troops on the eve of the attack. The United Nations is an international organization born of World War II. It did the Russians.\u201d This comment was the foreign ministers of the Big Three, of the second front. Churchill showed has its origins in the \u201cAtlantic Charter,\u201d the \ufb01rst intimation that the cooperation Anthony Eden for Britain, Cordell Hull British appreciation of the Red Army\u2019s a document drafted and signed by both between the US and the USSR was set for the United States, and Vyacheslav efforts by presenting the Soviet leader Churchill and Roosevelt at the Placentia to turn into a competition. And it was Molotov for the Soviet Union, met in with a ceremonial sword, forged from Bay Conference, in Newfoundland, in with the race to Berlin in mind that the Moscow to prepare the ground for a Shef\ufb01eld steel and inscribed with the 1941. That document called for the two Western leaders set a provisional grand summit to be held at the end words \u201cTo the steel-hearted citizens of collaboration of all countries in the \ufb01ght of the year. The three men also held Stalingrad.\u201d Stalin, for his part, could against Fascist tyranny. It also expressed date for D-Day\u2014May 1, 1944. the \ufb01rst discussions about the postwar not resist teasing Churchill at dinner a hope for a peace that would give all But for now, Stalin settlement\u2014the opening remarks in a with the suggestion that 50,000 German nations \u201cthe means of dwelling safely remained a vital debate that would later dominate the staff of\ufb01cers should be executed as war within their boundaries\u201d and that would ally. In October great-power conferences of 1944 and criminals. Churchill was so outraged allow all the citizens of the world to \u201clive at the idea (and he knew Stalin was out their lives in freedom from fear and perfectly capable of it) that he stormed want.\u201d These aspirations were o\ufb03cially out of the room. Stalin then had to adopted by the delegates attending the seek Churchill out and insist that San Francisco Conference in 1945, and he had only been joking. at which the United Nations Organization o\ufb03cially came into being. Stalin was deadly serious, however, when he demanded that a swathe of eastern Poland, roughly tracking the Curzon Line, be surrendered to the Soviet Union\u2014the Poles were to be compensated by the addition of a strip of German territory on their country\u2019s western border. Churchill agreed to this westward transposition of Poland\u2019s borders\u2014to the subsequent horror \u201c We \u2026 have shaped and con\ufb01rmed our common policy.\u201d DECLARATION OF THE THREE POWERS, TEHRAN, DECEMBER 1, 1943 Churchill\u2019s hot line 1945. For now, all they decided was of the Polish government in exile in AFTER This telephone was used by Churchill at RAF that Austria should be detached from London. It had been to protect Poland\u2019s headquarters to speak to his commanders. the German Reich and reconstituted integrity, after all, that Britain had gone The Big Three did not meet again until Churchill knew how to use his powers of as a fully independent nation. to war in the \ufb01rst place. Yalta in February 1945. By this time, the oratory to inspire his men in the field. war was in its \ufb01nal stages, and discussions Restoration of the prewar world Now, the Polish territory ceded in centered on a settlement for Germany. order was on the agenda again in the east\u2014and, in effect, new postwar November, when Churchill and Poland itself\u2014were to become part of THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY the vast buffer zone that protected the Britain, the US, France, and the Soviet Union Roosevelt held a meeting in Cairo. Soviet Union\u2019s western border. were each to have their own zones of The main subject of the talks was occupation in Germany 338\u201339 gg. the war in the Far East. Churchill Berlin, although in the Russian zone, was to was clear that one of his primary be subjected to the same four-way split. war aims was to restore Britain\u2019s SOVIET STRENGTH imperial colonies in the Far East: Stalin used his pre-eminence to argue that Malaya, Burma, Hong Kong, and all the republics of the Soviet Union should have Singapore. This was something seats at the incipient United Nations. Bartered down to just three seats\u2014for Russia, Ukraine, to which Roosevelt could not and Byelorussia\u2014this was still a huge diplomatic agree; still less was he prepared coup for Stalin. The battle lines of the Cold War to risk American lives shoring 348\u201349 gg\u0001were slowly taking shape. up the British Empire. The issue was still rankling at the end of the month, when the two Western leaders set off for Tehran in Iran. Stalin comes to the table A foothold in Italy American troops fought a hard and exhausting campaign The Tehran Conference marked the in Sicily. Although the soldiers did not yet know it, they \ufb01rst time that Churchill and Roosevelt and their British comrades were now in a race to get to met jointly with Joseph Stalin. The Berlin before Stalin\u2019s Red Army. Soviet leader arrived buoyed up by recent Russian victories, and was glad to be given a \ufb01rm date for the opening 203","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 BEFORE Showdown in the Atlantic At the start of the war, Admiral Karl D\u00f6nitz, The fight for control of the Atlantic Ocean, which had begun in the first days of the war, reached a commander of the U-boat \ufb02eet, devised a climax and a turning point in the spring of 1943. German U-boats, which had preyed on Allied shipping strategy for gaining control of the Atlantic. for years, suddenly found that they were no longer the hunters, but the hunted. AN ATTACK ON BRITISH SHIPPING T he Battle of the Atlantic was and torpedoing the freight-carrying The Mark VII depth charge weighed D\u00f6nitz estimated that, if Germany could sink a ruthless, seaborne game of ships at will. The U-boats would often 410 lb (185 kg) and carried explosive 750,000 tons of British shipping per month, cat and mouse. The aim of the be far astern of the convoy before the weighing 396 lb (179 kg). It sank 10 ft then the country would be brought to the brink Allied convoys was to slip across the armed escort could react. (3 m) per second and had a maximum ocean undetected, while the goal of In June 1942 the German U-boat the U-boat wolfpacks was to destroy By June 1942 the damage caused to operational depth of 300 ft (91 m). force sunk 637,000 tons of British as many ships as they could. Both British shipping by the German U-boat shipping\u2014a greater total than in sides measured success or failure on force\u2014supplemented by surface ships any previous (or subsequent) month. the same scale: the volume of tonnage and mines\u2014had reached a record high, The kill rate amounted to 359 tons of shipping dispatched, month by and the rate of loss was unsustainable for each German submarine at sea. month, to the bottom of the sea. for the Allies. Churchill met President Roosevelt at the beginning of 1943. of starvation and would have to sue for peace. German supremacy The two leaders agreed that the Atlantic He reckoned that he required 300 submarines must be their main priority for that to achieve this, but over the \ufb01rst winter of the Tactically, the Germans had the upper year. All other war aims depended war a mere 27 were available. The result was hand for more than three years. Their that the U-boats lost their \ufb01rst and best chance naval intelligence had broken the code The charge was controlled to sever the transatlantic link, while Britain of the British merchant navy, so they by water pressure. When it stood alone against Nazi Germany and the often had a good idea when a convoy reached a preset depth, a Royal Navy was at its weakest ff\u0001118\u201319. was due. Armed with this information, trigger inside the charge the submarines would track back and detonated the explosive. SCENE SET FOR A SHOWDOWN forth across the shipping lanes. When By 1943 D\u00f6nitz had all the U-boats he needed. a captain detected a convoy, he radioed Surge tank In January, ominously for the Allies, Hitler to all the other U-boats in the area. The appointed him head of the entire German Navy assembled wolfpack would then attack (the Kriegsmarine). The stage was now set for at night and in force, slipping through a decisive clash between German U-boats the protective cordon of escort ships and the British convoys in the North Atlantic. Firing mechanism An exploding cartridge inside this chamber forced gas rapidly into the larger expansion chamber, driving up a piston and hurling the depth charge into the air. High water A hydraulic arrestor was mounted U-boats could travel twice as fast on the surface of on each side of the expansion chamber. the ocean as under water. Above the waves, however, These stopped the arbor (the tube on they were much more vulnerable to detection and which the depth charge was mounted) attack. The submarines generally remained below from flying off with the depth charge. sea level during the hours of daylight. Expansion chamber The depth charge was the typical armament of British anti-submarine warships. Mark IV depth charge launcher One great advantage of this as a weapon was Depth charge launchers similar to this that the launchers could be mounted on the model had been in use since World War I. A primitive alternative to such deck of almost any ship with ease. launchers was simply to roll charges off the back of the ship like barrels. 204","SHOWDOWN I N TH E ATL ANTIC on being able to move men, material, AFTER and food by sea from the US to Britain\u2014and also from Britain to the The U-boats returned to the Atlantic in the Soviet Union. Military and scienti\ufb01c fall of 1943, but they never regained their experts in Britain and the United States former position of supremacy. were ordered to look at ways of countering the Germans\u2019 superiority. MORE GERMAN LOSSES An intensive effort led to a series of The Germans were never able to sink enough tactical advances and technological British ships to imperil the supply lines between innovations that were to gradually tip the US and Britain, and the price paid in lost the balance of the battle away from the U-boats and crews sunk rose at an in\ufb02ationary Germans and back toward the Allies. rate throughout 1944. This was due in part to New strategies for the Allies SQUID DEPTH CHARGE LAUNCHER One simple, yet effective, procedure emerged from a study of the \ufb01gures for shipping losses. An analysis conducted late in 1942 threw up the surprising fact that the wolfpacks generally sunk the same number of ships in each attack\u2014 no matter how many targets they had. The obvious response was to make the convoys as large as possible: better to The increase in Allied air power was Deep impact The explosion of a depth charge was less sacri\ufb01ce six ships for every hundred that supplemented by ingenious inventions deadly than it looked, because its force was greatly dissipated under water. What is more, survived, than six for every \ufb01fty. such as the Leigh Light, an airborne the turbulence caused by the blast rendered sonar ineffective for up to 15 minutes. The Allies also realized that air attack radar that coordinated with a strong increasing the probability of a kill. was an effective deterrent. The German searchlight that suddenly illuminated a This deadly device, was far more increasingly sophisticated effective than the depth charges used weaponry such as the \u201csquid,\u201d a submarine commanders preferred to targeted U-boat as a plane\u2014a Liberator in the early days of the Atlantic battle. three-barreled depth charge launcher. Aircraft now \ufb02ew into battle equipped It \ufb01red depth charges that automatically operate inside the so-called \u201cair or a Wellington bomber\u2014came in to with homing torpedoes that could seek exploded at a depth taken from sonar readings. out a U-boat beneath the waves. The gap\u201d\u2014the area of ocean that was out of attack. The Leigh Light now meant that U-boats were no longer invisible: they could be sought out and destroyed. reach of long- 72 The total number of kills credited U-boats were no ALLIES PLAN FOR D-DAY range planes. to some 40 B-24 Liberators that longer safe on the Turning the tide Measures were surface at night. These technological innovations had taken to shrink were requisitioned by RAF Coastal Improvements in an impact all at once, in the spring of The fact that the sea routes were now relatively 1943. Suddenly there was a complete the air gap and so Command in a bid to weaken the German Allied sonar (the reversal of fortunes: in March 82 ships secure made it possible for the Allies to build up were sunk for the loss of 12 U-boats; in limit the U-boats\u2019 U-boats during April and May of 1943. underwater radar April 39 ships were lost to 15 U-boats; an invasion force in Britain, and so to prepare and in \u201cBlack May,\u201d as the U-boat crews area of operations. known as Asdic) called it, the Allies lost 34 ships in the seriously for D-Day 254\u201361 gg. (Signi\ufb01cantly, Atlantic, while 43 U-boats\u2014a \ufb01fth of Aircraft carriers were attached to the made it easier to see the enemy below the \ufb02eet\u2014were destroyed. From now the German U-boats did not manage to sink on, instead of dodging U-boats, the convoy escorts; the planes \ufb02ying ahead the surface too: the depth as well as convoys and their a single US troop ship during the entire war.) escorts went looking of the ships as scouts. A number of VLR the position of a submerged U-boat for them, knowing Admiral D\u00f6nitz hoped that Germany\u2019s new they were stronger. (\u201cvery long range\u201d) B-24 Liberators also could now be ascertained. D\u00f6nitz, for his part, and, now faster, saw that he had been became available to Coastal Command. What is more, Allied planes and ships defeated by the ruthless, submarines inexorable arithmetic of were better armed in 1943 than ever attrition. He simply could (Types XII and XIII) not afford to take the losses Dramatic change of fortune before. One of the new weapons was and withdrew his battered U-boats would turn the from the Atlantic. This chart shows the losses to both British shipping and the \u201chedgehog,\u201d a salvo of 24 mortar battle at sea back in German U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean from 1942\u201343. bombs that was \ufb01red forward from his favor, but by the An almost complete reversal occurred from the start of a ship\u2019s bows. A bomb exploded on time they came into 1943, when the British adopted a series of new tactics. impact, setting off the other 23, and service, in 1945, it was too late for Merchant shipping and U-boat losses 1942\u201343 them make a 800 40 KEY difference. ADMIRAL D\u00d6NITZ Monthly merchant Monthly losses in thousands of tons Monthly losses (number of U-boats) THE PRICE OF DEFEAT 700 35 shipping losses When the end of the war was declared Monthly U-boat in 1945 306\u201307 gg, 156 German U-boat crews surrendered to the Allied forces; a 600 30 losses further 221 German captains preferred to 500 25 scuttle their ships, consigning them to the 400 20 depths, rather than bow down and hand them over to the Allies. 300 15 200 10 Spine of the hedgehog A single hedgehog spigot mortar 100 5 could sink a German U-boat. They were launched 24 at a 00 time, and exploded on contact J FMAM J J A S OND J FMAM J J A S OND rather than at a set depth, so 1942 1943 any explosion indicated a hit. Year 205","","EYEWITNESS August 9, 1942 Sinking of merchant ships Allied merchant shipping transported food, fuel, weapons, troops, and passengers throughout the war. Merchant ships, which were crewed by civilians, varied from luxury liners through oil tankers and tramp steamers. Crossing the Atlantic either solo or in convoy, they were vulnerable to attacks by U-boats and Luftwaffe. Some 30,000 merchant seamen lost their lives during the war. \u201c\u2026 at about 9 o\u2019clock I decided to turn in for the night and was partially undressed when there was a terrific explosion from the starboard side which was immediately followed by another. I jumped out of the bunk, rushed to the cabin door, which came away in my hands, saw that the mess was ablaze, and started to run down the alley way. I saw the apprentice \u2026 We rushed back into my cabin, smacked the door back into position to prevent the fire entering, undid the thumb-screws to the porthole, opened it up \u2026 and ran to the focs\u2019lehead \u2026 By this time the ship was ablaze from bridge to stern, the whole sky being lit up by the flames \u2026 I saw the starboard life boat had crashed into the sea but the port life boat was still hanging on the davits \u2026 As we were running along the foredeck to the bridge, this boat also crashed into the sea \u2026 We had to jump from the shelter deck to the falls about 6 feet [1.82m] and slide down them. Three other men threw themselves into the boat in desperation \u2026 I \u2026 noticed men running round the poop who were on fire, throwing themselves into the sea which was itself on fire \u2026 We were about 40ft [12m] from the ship\u2019s side when the 3rd officer came running along the fore-deck \u2026 He dived over the side and we picked him up \u2026 Slowly the ship drew ahead of us whilst we struggled to keep clear of burning sea. We heard some screams for help and rowed over and pulled out of the water a fireman who was terribly burned \u2026 we heard two other cries for help and found in the water an able seaman \u2026 shortly after we picked up a pumpman \u2026 We tried to pursue the ship, looking for survivors, but it was an impossible task because those in the boat were so gravely injured and collapsing, leaving only three to row against the wind and sea \u2026 The third officer and I attended to the wounded and were horrified at the extent of their injuries. There seemed no further signs of life anywhere so we hoisted sail and \u201dset course for Trinidad \u2026 CHIEF OFFICER CAPTAIN T.D. FINCH, ONE OF SIX SURVIVORS FROM THE OIL TANKER SAN EMILIANO, SUNK BY U-BOAT ON AUGUST 9, 1942 Abandoning ship Survivors from the merchant ship Laconia, which was sunk on September 12, 1942, managed to cling to a upturned lifeboat for several days before being rescued by a French ship. Sometimes U-boat crews assisted merchant seamen forced to abandon their ships. 207","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 O1 TELEPHONE OPERATOR\u2019S BADGE (GERMANY) O2 TACTICAL ENCRYPTION WALLET (BRITAIN) O5 FIELD TELEPHONE MODEL 92 (JAPAN) O3 FIELD MESSAGE BOOK (BRITAIN) O4 EE-8 FIELD TELEPHONE (US) Communications In World War II efficient and secure communications could make the difference between victory and defeat. Top-level strategic communications were routinely enciphered, and adversaries would attempt to crack hostile codes and ciphers. O1 Badge of a German telephone operator, whose parachute. Thousands of homing pigeons were parachuted O6 PIGEON PARACHUTE (BRITAIN) into France. The hope was that anti-Nazi citizens would send function in the German armed forces was usually ful\ufb01lled by them back with useful information. O7 Mark II suitcase a noncommissioned o\ufb03cer. O2 British tactical encryption radio that was used by Oluf Reed Olsen, a Norwegian agent wallet. The device enabled sliding strips to be aligned, in working for Britain in occupied Norway. Radios were a key a speci\ufb01ed but frequently changed sequence, to enable low-level information like map references to be encrypted tool of resistance movements in occupied Europe. O8 British and decrypted. O3 Field message book. This British booklet Type A Mark III radio, the smallest transceiver of the war, and one of the best. It could make contact over a distance furnished commanders with a message pad, whose covering pages, seen here, gave a reminder of the army\u2019s rules on of 500 miles (800 km). O9 German Kryha cipher machine message-writing. O4 This American EE-8 \ufb01eld telephone developed to encrypt commercially sensitive information. Its cipher was easily broken, but it was nevertheless used by was widely used for battle\ufb01eld communications throughout the diplomatic corps of several nations, including Germany. the war. It had a range of 10\u201315 miles (16\u201324 km). Obu This US Converter M-209 cipher machine could \ufb01t in O5 Japanese \ufb01eld telephone model 92, used for local a case about the size of a lunchbox, and was secure enough operations. This example was captured by the Allies during for tactical use on the battle\ufb01eld. the advance on Mandalay in Burma. O6 British pigeon 208","COM M U N IC ATION S O7 MARK II SUITCASE RADIO (BRITAIN\/NORWAY) O8 TYPE A MARK III RADIO (BRITAIN) Obk CONVERTER M-209 CIPHER MACHINE (US) O9 KRYHA CIPHER MACHINE (GERMANY) 209","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 The Invasion of Sicily The Allied leaders decided to follow up victory in North Africa by invading Sicily and then mainland Italy. This succeeded in knocking Italy out of the war but profiting from this success was not simple. Britain and the US had different ideas about how to take the Mediterranean campaign forward. T he Allied invasion of Sicily in July \u201c When we meet the 1943 was codenamed Operation enemy we will kill Husky and involved air and sea him. We will show landings on an huge scale, with more him no mercy.\u201d troops engaged than in the Normandy invasion the following year. Some US GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON, JULY 1943 150,000 soldiers took part in the initial landings, with over 3,000 ships and landing craft and around 4,000 aircraft. The landings Italian prisoners Barrel Sight mounting Truckloads of Italian prisoners fill the streets of Messina This mighty blow fell upon a poorly as Sicily falls to the Allies on August 17, 1943. The were put off guard, believing The unrifled barrel of prepared enemy. Allied deception plans demoralized Italians were often content to surrender, no landings could be expected the British mortar contrasted convinced the Axis leaders that Greece but their German allies fought with skill and tenacity. in such terrible conditions. with the rifled barrel of the or Sardinia were likelier targets for an American M2. Both were invasion. Distrust and dislike between British Eighth Army were ordered to Beginning on the morning simple and rugged weapons the Nazis and Italians also hampered land on adjoining stretches of coast of July 10 the Allies came that proved highly effective preparations. Mussolini limited the on the southeast of the island. This ashore with only light in combat. Axis forces in Sicily and insisted that tactic would enable them to support casualties. There was an they remain under the command of one another against any counterattack. awkward moment when Elevation Italian general, Alfredo Guzzoni. The operation was under the overall \ufb01rst Italian tanks and then control command of General Eisenhower, with German Panzers attacked. Allied commanders nonetheless Patton leading the American ground But the Axis armor was approached the operation with caution. forces and Montgomery the British. seen off by a combination The American Seventh Army and the of naval gun\ufb01re and the Heading for Sicily on July 9, the Allied use of captured Italian BEFORE force ran into a summer storm that came close to aborting the entire 4.2 in mortar The Axis defeat in North Africa in spring operation. For troops on board landing Both British and American 1943 opened the way for the Allies to craft, many facing their \ufb01rst experience infantry received fire strike across the Mediterranean with an of combat, seasickness compounded support from 4.2 in invasion of the Italian island of Sicily. anxiety. The bad weather added to the mortars during the dif\ufb01culties experienced by troops of invasions of Sicily CASABLANCA CONFERENCE the British 1st Airborne and US 82nd and Italy. This is Meeting at the conference in Casablanca in Airborne Divisions, carrying out the the British January 1943 ff 202\u201303, Churchill and version. Roosevelt discussed their future strategy. 100,000 The number of Churchill favored an advance through Italy, German and Italian The 4.2 in mortar was derived from striking at what he called \u201cthe soft underbelly of troops successfully evacuated from Sicily the British Stokes mortar of World War I. Europe.\u201d The US wanted operations in the to mainland Italy in August 1943 despite Originally designed for firing smoke shells, Mediterranean to be limited in order not to the Allied air and naval supremacy. divert resources from the planned invasion of the mortars were adapted to fire high- northern France. But they eventually agreed \ufb01rst Allied airborne operation of the explosive fragmentation rounds. that victory in North Africa would be followed by war. Sent in by parachute and glider an invasion of Sicily. The capture of the island to land behind the beaches on the Tripod support would make sea communications through the night of July 9\/10, the paratroopers Mediterranean more secure and might drive were widely scattered and many Italy out of the war. of the gliders came down disastrously in the sea. Yet DEFEAT IN THE DESERT the freak weather did not In mid-May 1943 the Axis forces in North work entirely to the Allies\u2019 Africa, by then cornered in Tunisia, surrendered disadvantage. The scattered ff\u0001186\u201387. The loss of a quarter of a airborne troops spread million German and Italian troops, many confusion in the enemy sent into Tunisia by Hitler in a late, futile attempt rear and coastal forces to stave o\ufb00 defeat, left the defenses of other Axis-held territories in the Mediterranean, including those on Sicily, severely depleted. 210","T H E I N VA S I O N O F S I C I LY 0 150 km bs Dec 20\u201327 0 150 miles Canadian 1st Infantry Division \ufb01ghts \ufb01erce battle for town of Ortona N Pescara bq Nov 23 Civitavecchia Ortona 8th Army crosses River I TA LY Sangro and by end of the Tiber month has penetrated bl Sep 12 Rome gro eastern end of Gustav Line Anzio 10TH ARMY San A German paratroopers use gliders 14TH ARMY Adriatic to rescue Mussolini from a hotel ppennines Foggia Sea Cassino Potenza in the Appennines where he is Bari being held prisoner Brindisi br Dec Volturno Taranto Allied advance held by the Naples well forti\ufb01ed Gustav Line Salerno bp Oct 14 bo Oct 6 US 5th Army crosses Germans withdraw to the Volturno line of the Volturno bn Oct 1 US 5TH ARMY bk Sep 9 American medic in action Watched by local people, a wounded American private Allies enter Naples, but 9 Sep 9 Diversionary landing receives blood plasma on Sicily in August 1943. Blood Germans have demolished port at port of Taranto plasma transfusions were a new life-saving technique Allied landings at first used by US forces earlier in the war. facilities before withdrawing Salerno meet with Food shortages, Allied bombing raids Ty r r h e n i a n strong resistance bm Sep 20 on Italian cities, and the unpopular Sea presence of German troops all British 8th Army links contributed to unrest. The invasion up with Salerno forces of Sicily was a \ufb01nal blow to the Duce\u2019s waning prestige. He had lost the support 3 Jul 23 6 Aug 17 5 Aug 11\u201317 of many of his closest associates. On July 24 the Grand Council of Fascism US troops Patton\u2019s forces reach Messina Germans successfully called on King Victor Emmanuel to enter Palermo before the British, but too late evacuate troops across depose their leader. Mussolini was to prevent German evacuation Strait of Messina arrested and taken to Abruzzo and the king appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio Palermo Messina head of government. Italy remained of\ufb01cially committed to \ufb01ght alongside 1 Jul 10, 1943 Sicily Reggio 4 Aug 5 7 Sep 3 Germany, but its war effort was collapsing and the government began Operation Husky. US 7th Caltanissetta Mt Etna 8th Army takes Catania Two divisions of to seek a separate peace with the Army, commanded by British 8th Army cross Allies\u2014the two eventually signed Catania 2 Jul 15 to Italian mainland an armistice on September 3, 1943. General Patton, lands to the west of the British Licata 8th Army gets bogged down 8 Sep 3 AFTER in front of Catania Gela Syracuse New Italian government of After capturing Sicily, the Allies landed Cassibile Marshal Badoglio signs secret on the Italian mainland 212\u201313 gg. On armistice with the Allies September 8, 1943, the Italian government announced its surrender, but the Germans TUNISIA Pantelleria 1 Jul 10, 1943 took over the defense of Italy. US 7TH ARMY BRITISH Operation Husky. British 8th Army MUSSOLINI\u2019S REPUBLIC 15TH ARMY GROUP 8TH ARMY lands in southeast Sicily and makes Four days after the Italian government rapid progress, entering Syracuse announced its surrender, German paratroopers KEY on the \ufb01rst day freed Mussolini from captivity. Forces loyal to German front line Sep 25, 1943 his Italian Social Republic fought alongside the Germans until the end of the war. Mussolini Gustav Line MALTA (to Britain) himself was caught and executed by Italian partisans in April 1945 306\u201307 gg. German front line Dec 31, 1943 Lampedusa Allied landing\/advance A COSTLY CAMPAIGN Italy did not turn out to be the soft target Barrel rest for anti-tank guns. The British then quickly The campaign in Sicily and Italy, 1943 anticipated by Churchill. Foul weather, harsh traveling took the port of Syracuse almost without The Allies conquered Sicily in July\u2013August 1943 and terrain, and determined and resourceful German invaded the Italian mainland in September. The defense made every advance costly and The wheeled a \ufb01ght, and Montgomery was Germans mounted a stubborn defense, holding the dif\ufb01cult. Allied forces took until June 1944 to baseplate on the tasked with advancing Allied advance south of Rome until summer 1944. reach Rome 252\u201353 gg. British 4.2 in mortar was up the east of Sicily designed to make it easier while Patton defended which they succeeded in evacuating to move around. This was his \ufb02ank\u2014a lesser almost all of their 40,000 troops to the a feature that was not role to which he Italian mainland, along with most of found on the equivalent did not take kindly. their equipment and some 60,000 of American weapon. Montgomery\u2019s their Italian allies. advance north soon bogged down Mussolini deposed as the Germans brought in more Patton took a \ufb01erce competitive troops, demoting pleasure in seeing his forces enter the the predominantly port of Messina on the morning of unenthusiastic Italians August 17 hours ahead of the British to a subsidiary role. forces. Yet for the Allies it had been a It was not long before wasted opportunity. Bolder use of their General Patton seized command of sea and air could have trapped the crucial German divisions. the opportunity to take Their escape contributed greatly to the over the initiative, staging hard \ufb01ghting the Allies would face later a triumphal progress up the west in the campaign on the Italian mainland. of Sicily to Palermo, his path cleared by local Ma\ufb01osi whose contempt toward The invasion of Sicily was, however, Mussolini made them greet the US wholly successful in its psychological soldiers as liberators. But the Germans impact upon the Italian Fascist regime. were able to pull back in good order Since the spring Mussolini had been around the key port of Messina, from facing mounting popular discontent. 211","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 Held by the Gustav Line Napoleon once said that because Italy was shaped like a boot the way into it was from the top. Allied troops in 1943\u201344 would have understood what he meant. Harsh terrain, bitter weather, and ferocious German defense meant some of the hardest fighting of the war for the \u201cD-Day dodgers in sunny Italy.\u201d T he Italian campaign in the second \u201c The stagnation of the whole half of 1943 was an excruciating campaign on the Italian front is disappointment for the Allies. In becoming scandalous \u2026\u201d August the situation seemed ripe for major gains. Italy\u2019s newly installed PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL, TO THE BRITISH CHIEFS OF STAFF, DECEMBER 1943 government of Marshal Badoglio was secretly seeking an armistice, while Neapolitan welcome take over the defense of beaches in the Gulf of Salerno. publicly continuing to assure Germany Italian civilians in Naples run forward to greet Allied the peninsula if the Italians Reacting swiftly, German forces of its commitment to the war. The soldiers entering the city on October 1, 1943. The decided to surrender. under General Karl Student Allied commanders planned landings population had staged an uprising against the Germans, occupied Rome, although in mainland Italy to coincide with an forcing them to withdraw before the Allies arrived. On September 3, 1943, failing to capture Marshal Montgomery\u2019s Eighth Badoglio and his government, 3,618 The number of bridges Army crossed the Straits which had \ufb02ed to Brindisi. built by British engineers of Messina from Sicily into in the course of the Italian campaign. As Calabria unopposed. On The Salerno operation went the Allied forces advanced they repeatedly the same day the Italian badly. A US and a British corps, had to attack across fast-flowing rivers. government signed an comprising General Mark armistice\u2014in effect an unconditional Clark\u2019s US Fifth Army with Italian surrender. Both the political surrender. But the surrender was not Montgomery\u2019s Eight Army, and military moves were, however, too made public until September 8, the went ashore in the early hours slow to catch the Germans off balance. announcement timed to coincide with of the morning of September 9. While the Allies organized their invasion a second wave of Allied landings, on The Germans under General forces, German troops took up key positions in Italy, so that they could BEFORE In summer 1943 the capture of Sicily and the collapse of the Fascist regime in Italy offered the Allies a golden opportunity for rapid advances on the Italian mainland. LANDINGS IN SICILY Between July 10 and August 17 1943 Allied forces invaded and captured Sicily ff\u0001210\u201311. They failed, however, to trap German forces The Allies fighting in the Italian campaign in 1943 included Poles, Indians, Algerians, Moroccans, French, Canadians, and New Zealanders, as well as British and Americans. defending the island. This enabled the Germans to withdraw with their equipment intact to the Italian mainland. British and American leaders had already fought over the plans and objectives for the Sicilian operation. Further disputes would follow as the Italian campaign developed. FALL OF MUSSOLINI On July 24 Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini was deposed and replaced as head of the Italian government by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had opposed Italy\u2019s alliance with Nazi Germany. 212","H ELD BY TH E GU STAV LI N E Heinrich von Vietinghoff used limited AFTER forces to such good effect that four days later the Allied troops were still The Allies eventually fought their way trapped in a shallow beachhead\u2014by to Rome in June 1944, only to face more when, according to their original plan, stubborn German resistance further north. they should have been in occupation of Naples. With German Panzers thrusting STRUGGLE FOR MONTE CASSINO to within one mile of the beaches in From mid-January to mid-May 1944 the Allies places, the Allies had to mount a major fought four battles before they dislodged the reinforcement effort to save the Germans from the heights of Monte Cassino. landings from disaster. ANZIO LANDINGS New German defenses On January 22, 1944, the Allies carried out landings at Anzio between the Gustav Line By September 15 Vietinghoff had to and Rome. Contrary to plan, they remained accept that the landings could not hemmed in to their beachhead until May. be repulsed, but he was able to stage a \ufb01ghting withdrawal to defensive FALL OF ROME positions further north. Allied troops Allied forces entered Rome on June 4, 1944 \ufb01nally entered Naples on October 1, 252\u201353 gg. The Germans pulled back greeted as liberators by a population northward to the Gothic Line and other that had evicted the Germans in sharp defensive positions between Florence and \ufb01ghting three days earlier. Bologna, holding them over the following winter. The Italian defection from the Axis German motorbike created a confused military and political The Z\u00fcndapp K800 was the situation. Tens of thousands of Italian standard German military troops surrendered to their motorbike of World War II. former allies and were carried It was much admired by off as prisoners to Germany, Allied troops when they where they spent the rest of the war providing forced captured examples in Italy. labor for the Reich. On the Greek island fought against both of Cephalonia, where Mussolini and the German Italian troops resisted occupation forces. The Allies, the German forces, progress northward in the last three 1,600 Italians died months of 1943 was grimly described in the ensuing by British General Harold Alexander as \ufb01ghting and 5,000 \u201cslogging up Italy.\u201d The mountainous more were shot in terrain well suited the defensive cold blood after being strategy pursued by Field Marshal taken as prisoners of war. Albert Kesselring. The Germans fell back on a series of forti\ufb01ed lines, the Italy joins the Allies most formidable of which was the Gustav Line which stretched across On October 13 Marshal Badoglio\u2019s Italy along the Garigliano and Sangro government declared war on Germany. rivers, with Monte Cassino as its key But by then Benito Mussolini had strongpoint. By December the Allied been freed to set up his Italian Social forces were stuck in a costly struggle Republic based at Sal\u00f2 on Lake Garda for these forti\ufb01ed positions, with no in northern Italy. Italians loyal to the immediate prospect of a breakthrough. Badoglio government subsequently fought with the Allies, while Mussolini supporters continued to \ufb01ght alongside the Germans, and Italian partisans Landing at Salerno 03K EBY oMxO MtiEtlNeT 7pt\/10pt US infantry wade ashore during the Salerno landings MUSSOLINI ESCAPES in September 1943. The first wave of US troops came under heavy fire as they approached the beaches. Arrested by the Italians after his fall from power in July 1943, Benito Mussolini was held in a hotel at Gran Sasso, high in the Apennine mountains. On September 12 ,1943, a German force, commanded by Wa\ufb00en-SS o\ufb03cer, Otto Skorzeny, crash-landed gliders on to the mountain. Mussolini was \ufb02own o\ufb00 in a light aircraft. The bold rescue was a propaganda coup for the Nazis and enabled them to install Mussolini as puppet ruler of northern Italy, heading the Italian Social Republic. 213","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 Bombing Germany by Night In 1943 the RAF waged three separate campaigns against Germany. First the bombers went for the total availability of RAF bombers on industrial heartland of the Ruhr; then Hamburg was hit, becoming the first city to endure a \u201cfirestorm\u201d; any given day rose from less than 600 and later on in the year, the bombers turned their destructive power against the German capital, Berlin. in February to almost 800 in August. W ith the bleak irony of \ufb01ghting High flyer On July 24 the might of Britain\u2019s men everywhere, the crews The Lancaster was much-loved by the crews that bomber \ufb02eet was unleashed on of RAF Bomber Command flew in it. Nicknamed the \u201cLankie,\u201d it had a high Hamburg. The tactics used were the referred to the Ruhr as \u201cHappy Valley.\u201d ceiling of 20,000 ft (6,000 m), which made it a same as before: the \ufb01rst wave would difficult target for German fighters. drop high-explosive bombs to blow The area surrounding the Ruhr River out doors and windows; subsequent area. As it was, the \ufb02ak was sometimes waves would drop incendiaries, lighting was a densely populated belt of grimy so thick that, as the clich\u00e9 went, \u201cyou could have got out and walked on it.\u201d legions of rapidly-spreading \ufb01res. The cities, with Essen, Dortmund, scale of this attack was vast. On the Keeping the Germans guessing about Duisburg, and Bochum, the target had a downside for the Allies, \ufb01rst day, 2,300 tons of bombs too. Every night of respite gave the Nazis fell in little over an hour\u2014 making up the industrial time to clear up the battered factories \ufb01ve times more ordnance and get them working again. The only than the heaviest air raid engine of the nation. way to put them permanently out of on London. The \ufb01res lit by action was to bomb them incessantly. the RAF were fanned by a The signi\ufb01cance of Firestorm in Hamburg strong wind, and stoked by the the Ruhr made it tinder-dry conditions. Single blazes However, the RAF simply did not have soon merged to form an inferno. an obvious target\u2014 enough planes to bomb the factories The raids were reprised three days later non-stop. But Britain\u2019s bombing strength and this time the \ufb02ames caused a giant especially since the was growing rapidly and though aircraft updraught that sucked in air to create a losses were high, new ones were coming hot gale. This was the \u201c\ufb01restorm\u201d that region\u2019s westerly location placed it on stream in even greater numbers. The killed 42,000 civilians and obliterated the city center. \u201cIt was a catastrophe,\u201d well inside bomber range. But the wrote Goebbels in his diary, \u201cthe Germans were keenly aware how vulnerable the area was to attack and unloaded their bombs over the from the very beginning, the entire city center. About 60 ha (160 acres) of valley was forested with anti-aircraft Essen were \ufb02attened. This pattern was guns and was alive with searchlights. repeated across the Ruhrland night The Battle of the Ruhr began in March after night, and even cities as far away 1943, and lasted until as Munich July. The \ufb01rst target 2.7 MILLION The total and Stuttgart was Essen, a city full tonnage were attacked. of essential steel mills of bombs dropped on Europe by the Allied This ringing and armaments forces. Two thirds of these were unloaded of the changes factories. Path\ufb01nder after D-Day on June 6, 1944. was a tactical Mosquitoes preceded necessity, since the main wave, dropping colored \ufb02ares to return to the same places night to stake out the attack area. They were after night would have allowed the followed by waves of Stirlings, Luftwaffe to amass too many of its Wellingtons, and Lancasters, which guns and \ufb01ghter planes in the target BEFORE \u201cIt will cost us 500 aircraft. It will cost the Germans the war.\u201d Britain\u2019s nocturnal bombing strategy was born of necessity in the \ufb01rst years of the ARTHUR \u201cBOMBER\u201d HARRIS ON THE BOMBING OF BERLIN, NOVEMBER 1943 war. After the fall of France ff 82-83, long-range bombing was the only way HEAD OF RAF BOMBER COMMAND (1892\u20131984) that Britain could strike at Germany. ARTHUR \u201cBOMBER\u201d HARRIS NIGHT FLIGHTS Daylight raids past the range of escorts would Arthur Harris, the head of Bomber Command, make the bombers prey to German Me 109s believed that bombing alone could bring and anti-aircraft guns. At night, the bombers Germany to its knees, and render a land were harder to spot; but it was hopeless to invasion of Europe unnecessary. To this end, target anything smaller than a whole town. he systematically obliterated German cities. It was a pitiless use of air power, but to IN PURSUIT OF AREA BOMBING Harris\u2019s mind there was poetic justice in it: British military leaders were faced with a \u201cThe Nazis entered this war under the rather choice\u2014abandon all o\ufb00ensive action against childish delusion that they were going to Germany or bomb city centers in the hope of bomb everyone else, and nobody was going damaging German industry and the morale to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, and of the German people. Britain chose the second Warsaw, they put their theory into operation,\u201d option\u2014\u201carea bombing\u201d\u2014and pursued it with he said. \u201cThey sowed the wind, and now ever-increasing ferocity. they are going to reap the whirlwind.\u201d 214","BOMBING GERMANY BY NIGHT KEY MOMENT dearly and did not break Germany. AFTER Still, the price paid by Berliners was DAMBUSTER RAID high; 14,000 civilians were killed or Despite the huge area bombing campaigns injured, with many more bombed out of 1943, the Allies failed in their main aims. On May 16, 1943 a squadron of Lancaster of their homes.To Harris, this was not But this did not stop Britain from continuing bombers launched a daring attack on the regrettable collateral damage, but a in its destruction of Germany. dams of the Mohne and Eder rivers in the positive result of area bombing\u2014as was Ruhr valley. 617 Squadron struck with anything that drained Axis resources. GERMAN RESILIENCE specially designed \u201cbouncing bombs.\u201d These, Bomber Harris was pitiless: \u201cIt should The area bombing campaigns of 1943 did not dropped from a height of only 60 ft (18 m), be emphasized,\u201d he told the British cripple Germany\u2019s war industries; in fact, under skipped across the water\u2019s surface, sank at the Albert Speer\u2019s energetic leadership, the output dam wall, and exploded. Power supply merely Bomber Command\u2019s unofficial motto of German \ufb01ghter aircraft increased dipped temporarily, but massive \ufb02ooding was \u201cpress on regardless,\u201d something signi\ufb01cantly 220-21 gg. Nor did the destruction devastated farmland for miles around. The bomber pilots had to do in the crucial of major cities like Hamburg undermine the success of this ingenious operation was also moment of every mission, as they flew people\u2019s will to \ufb01ght; German civilians proved a huge propaganda coup for the Allies. straight and level into storms of flak to be just as resilient and stoical as the British toward their nocturnal targets. public had been in the worst days of the Blitz. extent of which simply staggers the for want of trying. As winter loomed, cabinet in 1943, \u201cthat the destruction of DRESDEN BURNS imagination.\u201d Bomber Command\u2019s Air Of\ufb01cer Commanding-In-Chief, houses, public utilities, transport, and The Allied area bombing campaign went codename for the attack was horribly Arthur Harris, declared his aim to strike lives, the creation of a refugee problem beyond anything that the Luftwaffe had apt: Operation Gomorrah. at the enemy\u2019s capital, \u201cto burn his on an unprecedented scale, and the in\ufb02icted on Britain ff 88-91. The strategy black heart out,\u201d as he told his crews. breakdown of morale both at home was taken to logical (and morally questionable) Collateral damage This was his last chance to prove that and at the battle fronts by fear of extreme in July 1945 with the \ufb01re-bombing of aerial bombing alone could bring down extended and intensi\ufb01ed bombing, Dresden 294\u201395 gg. During the \ufb01nal few weeks No German city was ravaged like this the Nazis. But the Battle of Berlin, are accepted and intended aims of of the war, the Allies mounted four separate again until the end of the war. However, which lasted throughout the winter our bombing policy. They are not attacks that devasted the city. Ironically, since the the failure to repeat the gruesome of 1943\u201344, cost Bomber Command by-products of attempts to hit factories.\u201d USAAF was never convinced of the e\ufb00ectiveness success of the Hamburg raids was not of the RAF\u2019s wartime approach, the carpet- bombing techniques later used by Ghost town American forces in Vietnam and Cambodia The destruction of Hamburg began at 12:55am on sought to wreak destruction on a massive scale July 27, 1943. In the next hour or so, 2,326 tons of and can be seen as an adaptation to jungle bombs were dropped on the city. Temperatures reached warfare of the area bombing idea. 1,500\u00b0F ( 800\u00b0C) in the ensuing firestorm, setting fire to asphalt on the streets. The devastation was total.","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 9 Dec 13, 1943 54 Mustangs escort US raid on Kiel and defend bombers Newcastle-upon-Tyne for 40 minutes over target DENMARK 1 Mar 28\/29, 1942 KEY German cities and towns B R ITAI N North Sea 234 bombers devastate historic city of subjected to major bombing raids L\u00fcbeck. In retaliation Hitler orders bombing Other targets of Allied raids 4 Jan 27, 1943 of English cathedral cities of Exeter, Bath, Major RAF bomber base Major USAAF bomber base Liverpool Leeds Hull First USAAF raid over and Norwich\u2014the \u201cBaedeker raids\u201d Range of Spit\ufb01re as \ufb01ghter Manchester Germany targets port escort May 1943 Oldenburg Range of Mustang P-51D as of Wilhelmshaven \ufb01ghter escort May 1944 She\ufb03eld Kiel Peenem\u00fcnde Round-the-clock raids American forces often attacked German Birmingham Wilhelmshaven L\u00fcbeck Rostock cities the morning after a British raid, Emden giving the enemy no respite from the Norwich Hamburg Stettin 6 Jul 24\u2013Aug 3, 1943 nighttime bombing raids. NETH. Cardi\ufb00 Oxford Bremen Elbe Operation Gomorrah devastates \u201cGermany is Bath Dortmund Weser Hamburg, killing 40,000 a fortress, Ems Rhine Oder but it is Exeter London BochumMeuse Marienburg Hanover Berlin 8 Nov 18, 1943\u2013Mar 30, 1944 a fortress Plymouth M\u00fcnster Brunswick without Southampton Gelsenkirchen Series of raids on Berlin and other a roof.\u201d Portsmouth Essen Magdeburg major cities\u2014the \u201cBattle of Berlin\u201d PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. Duisberg ROOSEVELT, 1944 English Channel Huls Oschersleben Wuppertal bk Mar 6, 1944 GR EATER M\u00f6nchengladbach Halberstadt GERMANY Brussels Aachen Kassel First major USAAF raid on Berlin 3 Jun 1\/2, 1942 BEL. Leipzig 956 bombers take part in 2 May 30\/31, 1942 D\u00fcsseldorf Frankfurt-am-Main 5 May 16\/17, 1943 raid on Essen. Hazy Cologne Operation Millennium\u2014the Dambusters raid on M\u00f6hne, atmosphere over Ruhr; \ufb01rst 1,000-bomber Remscheid Schweinfurt Prague Eder, and Sorpe dams disappointing results Worms Mannheim raid\u2014in\ufb02icts serious damage Nuremberg 7 Aug 17, 1943 on city of Cologne Saarbr\u00fccken USAAF raid on Schweinfurt (center of Regensburg ball-bearing industry) and Regensburg, where OCCUPIED Stuttgart Harburg Messerschmitt \ufb01ghters are built, su\ufb00ers heavy FRANCE Danube losses\u201460 out of 376 bombers bombers are lost Augsburg Munich Vienna Wiener-Neustadt n In N VICHY SWITZ. 0 FRANCE 300 km 0 300 miles Bombing Germany by Day The US Eighth Air Force, based in Britain from late 1942, adopted a strategy of precision bombing against 0T 3E CBHONXO TL OI TGLYE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T targets in Germany. This meant that US crews had to fly their missions by day, when specific factories and installations could be identified. But in broad daylight, US bombers were themselves targets. NORDEN BOMBSIGHT BEFORE T he US Eighth Air Force arrived pursued\u2014a US one by day, and a British The Norden bombsight was designed in Britain in 1942, but \ufb02ew only one by night. The Combined Bomber by the engineer Carl Norden, and was If the US could take out pivotal Nazi \u201cchoke a few missions that year. None of Offensive was not so much an alliance, an extremely sophisticated, top-secret points,\u201d with a strategy superior to the targeting device\u2014a kind of \ufb02ying British one, then Germany\u2019s capacity those early sorties were directed against but a competition to see whose methods mechanical computer. A bombardier to carry on would be ruined. (bomb aimer) would input data such as targets in Germany and on all of the would break Germany \ufb01rst. airspeed and altitude, which the Norden GERMANY\u2019S \u201cCHOKE POINTS\u201d would use to calculate the trajectory of The US concept of bombing, set up before missions the bombers \ufb02ew with an RAF the bomb about to be dropped. Close the war, stated that the German economy relied to the target the Norden functioned as on 150 or so key installations. If these \u201cchoke escort. It was not until 1943 that the Overcoming problems an autopilot, keeping the approach points\u201d could be hit accurately, then Germany\u2019s straight and level and releasing the bomb ability to \ufb01ght on would be undermined. practice of precision bombing was put Once the B-17s went into action it soon at the right instant. In ideal conditions, the Norden could place a bomb dropped NATIONAL PRIDE to the test in the skies over the Reich. became clear that it would be dif\ufb01cult from a height of 20,000 ft (6,100 m) Some US strategists also thought that precision within 90 ft (27 m) of the target. bombing was a morally superior way of going The US role in the campaign against to achieve pinpoint accuracy in daylight. about the job compared to Britain\u2019s area bombing strategy ff 214\u201315. \u201cIt is contrary to Germany arose from the 1943 meeting The Norden bombsight \u201ccould drop a our national ideals,\u201d said one US general, \u201cto make war on civilians.\u201d US air commanders believed between Churchill bomb in a pickle that they had both the technology and the expertise to make precision bombing work in a and Roosevelt in 50,000 The estimated number barrel from 30,000 clinical, humane way; that they could accomplish Casablanca. The of American aircrew feet,\u201d but this was with a sharp scalpel what the RAF was clearly failing to do with a big, blunt club. leaders\u2019 joint edict killed or captured in the bombing only true if the 216 asked for \u201cevery campaign over Europe\u2014roughly the same target was seen in opportunity to rate of loss as sustained on the missions its optical lens. All be taken to attack flown by RAF Bomber Command. hinged on this Germany by day to reading, but it destroy objectives that are unsuitable for was often impossible to take in night attack.\u201d In response, General Ira Europe\u2019s gray skies. US aircraft Eaker, commander of the American were blind in cloud and so their bomber force in Britain, drew up a list bombs missed frequently. of \u201cpinpoint\u201d targets inside the Reich. A separate issue arose from the On his list were ball-bearing plants, oil fact that no \ufb01ghters were capable re\ufb01neries, aircraft factories, and U-boat of escorting the bombers. In order yards. Individual buildings or industrial to protect themselves, B-17s \ufb02ew in complexes, rather than whole cities, tight formations called \u201cboxes.\u201d This were the Americans\u2019 goal. Two meant that every plane in the box complementary but separate plans were could cover every other one. However,","BOMBING GERMANY BY DAY The Flying Fortress Nicknamed the \u201cFlying Fortress,\u201d the American B-17 bomber was equipped with 10 machine guns and four dedicated gunners\u2014more firepower than any German or British bomber in service at the time. every plane had to \ufb02y straight to avoid colliding and so were easy targets for anti-aircraft gunners. The German pilots soon \ufb01gured out how to unlock the \u201cboxes,\u201d and as the Eighth Air Force was not at full strength (the US could barely muster more than 100 aircraft at a time and the formation worked best with 300), the Germans\u2019 task was easier. Airborne disasters The critical mass of 300 was reached in the summer of 1943, and in August the Eighth Air Force attacked Schweinfurt. Most of Germany\u2019s ball-bearing factories were based there, and ball-bearings were vital for hardware. The raid was a disaster. Fighters and anti-aircraft guns wrought havoc in the US boxes; many of the B-17s missed their targets, and 36 of them were lost. US bombers hit Schweinfurt again in October but bad weather made \ufb02ying in formation dif\ufb01cult. The main force got there late to \ufb01nd the Germans waiting in ambush. Sixty of the 291 bombers committed were lost on that \u201cBlack Thursday.\u201d Worse still, the raids failed to strip Germany of ball-bearings. After \u201cBlack Thursday\u201d daylight raids into Germany were shelved and the US looked for new ways to make the B-17s impervious to an airborne siege. AFTER The US offensive paid dividends in 1944 with the arrival of the Mustang Fighters. KING OF THE AIR In the \ufb01rst half of 1944 the US bombing o\ufb00ensive was directed at rail depots in France\u2014vital groundwork for the invasion of Europe 258\u201359 gg, and precision bombing was the best way to attack without causing civilian casualties. US raids on Germany resumed. The new Mustang \ufb01ghter protected B-17s on long- distance raids\u2014it carried enough fuel to escort B-17s to the most distant targets, and rivalled the Messerschmitt 109. The Germans had a dilemma: take on the Mustangs, or hang back. Either way, the Germans were losing the capability to \ufb01ght in the air. A MUSTANG FIGHTER 217","EYEWITNESS August 17, 1943 USAAF raid on Schweinfurt During July and August 1943 B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators of the US Eighth Air Force set off from bases in East Anglia, England, in a series of bombing raids on industrial targets in Germany. RAF sorties took place at night, but the USAAF (United States Army Air Force) flew their raids during the day. The bombers came under constant attack and losses were severe, particularly during the Schweinfurt raid in August 1943. \u201cAt the briefing we were told that the target was a complex of ball-bearing plants and the war would be shortened by six months if we pulverized it. F-47 Thunderbirds were to escort us to the German border \u2026 and when we got there they waggled their wings in salute and peeled away. Within minutes we were under attack by swarms of enemy fighters. There were deadly 109s and FW 190s joined by \u2026 Me 110s and Ju 88s; the Germans were throwing everything they had at us. A 20mm shell ploughed through our right wing, missing the gas tanks by inches, and the bombardier called out what looked like .30mm holes in the cowling of the No. 2 engine \u2026 The box formations out on the far left and right seemed to be getting most of the attention, and Fortresses were falling everywhere. As they dropped out of the protection of the formation, the enemy fighters roared in for the kill. Parachutes started peppering the sky as American airmen jumped from their burning B-17s; what sickened me \u2026 was the Fortresses that exploded in mid-air, giving the crews no chance of escape. We bombed the ball-bearing works at 1511 hours and turned for home; from the fires and smoke it appeared the bombers had devastated the target. Then the Me 109s and FW 190s swooped in again. Our aircraft suffered no hits on the return journey, but B-17s in other formations were being pounded unmercifully \u2026 as American parachutes filled the air and more B-17s plunged to earth or became fireballs. The surviving aircraft\u2014many with wounded men aboard\u2014 landed at their bases at about 1800 hrs \u2026 it turned out that, of the 194 B-17s that crossed the enemy coast, 36 were shot down with the loss of 360 crew members. The Eighth\u2019s \u201cacceptable loss rate\u201d \u2026 was 5 per cent. The Schweinfurt \u201dloss rate was 20 per cent. EDDIE DEERFIELD, 303 BOMB GROUP, USAAF, ON A BOMBING MISSION TO A BALL-BEARING PLANT IN SCHWEINFURT, NORTHERN BAVARIA Deadly payload Bombs from a US Eighth Air Force bomber fall toward their target. B-17s carried a crew of 10 men and a bomb load of 6,000 lb (2,720 kg). As bombers approached the target they were met by intense anti-aircraft fire, or flak. 218","","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 The German War Industry By 1943 the tide of war was turning against Germany. Victories had given way to defeats, more men were needed to fight and there was an urgent need for armaments. The country was finally mobilized for total war and, under armaments minister, Albert Speer, production rose dramatically. million\u2014from 25.4 million in 1939 to 13.5 million in 1944\u2014as increasing numbers were sent to \ufb01ght. To \ufb01ll shortages in factories and on the land, Nazi Germany brought in workers from the occupied territories, so that, by 1944, one in \ufb01ve of all workers in Germany came from outside. During the course of the war, as many as 12 million workers came to Germany from Poland, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Russia, and the Women workers Ukraine to work in the war industries, Despite the Nazi emphasis on the woman\u2019s role as a repairing bomb damage, or on the land. homemaker, thousands of German women worked in Some came voluntarily, responding to munitions factories and in aircraft production. Many recruitment drives, while far more were were also involved in the air defense of the Reich. deported from their own countries by force. Their treatment varied, with those rationing were introduced, but news of from Eastern Europe used as virtual victories and the in\ufb02ux of luxury and slave labor by industrial concerns such other goods from the occupied territories Underground factories Until 1942, the Germany economy as Krupp, Siemens, kept the mood of Uncovered by American troops, this aircraft factory was built was not organized for a long war, underground in a salt mine at Tarthun, near Sch\u00f6nebeck. largely because Hitler believed and I.G. Farben. 7.5 MILLION The the country Six fuselages were produced every day by some 2,400 slave that blitzkrieg tactics and plundering The Nazis also number buoyant. Industry laborers, mainly concentration camp inmates. occupied territories would bring the war to a speedy close, while providing used POWs and of foreign workers employed in Germany continued to BEFORE the requirements of war. However, by 1942, it was clear that this would not inmates from death in 1944\u2014most of whom were brought in produce several Germany had been rearming for several be the case. Two thirds of Germany\u2019s years before the war began, and as a result labor force worked on war orders, but camps, many of from the occupied areas. consumer durables was better prepared for war than the output was slow and failed to meet the Allied nations. needs of what had become total war. whom labored and, unlike many One problem was that, under the Nazi GERMAN WAR FOOTING regime, the economy was poorly run in underground factories, built to other warring nations, women were Following Hitler\u2019s rise to power ff\u000124\u201325, and suffering from waste, inadequate in 1933, the German economy was e\ufb00ectively planning, and military interference. withstand bombing raids. One such not recruited into the war industries put onto a war footing. Arms production increased under Nazi rule ff\u000126\u201327 and, by In 1942, therefore, Hitler appointed his example was the V-2 assembly plant in until after 1941. Hitler\u2019s view, and that chief architect, Albert Speer, to oversee 1939, Germany had a well-developed war production with the aim of hugely Nordhausen, which was constructed by of the Nazi Party, was that women industry, a skilled labor force, increasing Germany\u2019s weapons output. and substantial Speer immediately implemented several inmates from Buchenwald, many of belonged in the home, and that the reserves of major changes: he established a Central Planning Board, liaised directly with whom starved or died from overwork. primary role of a woman was to be a NAZI PENNANT Hitler, and reduced military interference, bringing in skilled industrialists and good wife and mother. In fact, owing to coal, oil, and rubber. Over the next two years engineers. As a result, despite Allied Germany achieved rapid victories, with bombing raids on industrial centers, Life in Germany generous war pensions and these Nazi little strain on the country\u2019s economy, while ball-bearing plants, and armaments resources poured in from Nazi-occupied countries. factories, production of arms soared, Life did not change dramatically for views, the number of women in the with output of aircraft alone almost Germany was not equipped for a long war, quadrupling from 11,000 in 1941 to non-Jewish civilians living in Germany workforce declined by some 440,000 and the drain of men and equipment, especially more than 39,000 in 1944. on the Eastern Front ff\u0001192\u201393 put the during the \ufb01rst few years. Blackouts and during this time. country\u2019s economy under serious strain. Foreign labor Annual production in thousandsKEY Total mobilization Speer\u2019s so-called economic \u201cmiracle\u201d Annual production of aircraft was not achieved simply by more Annual production of tanks Following defeats at Stalingrad and in stringent planning; it was also the result North Africa, and with the arrival of of extensive exploitation of foreign 40 round-the-clock bombing, however, labor. Between 1939 and 1944 the 35 the mood of the country became more number of German men in the labor 30 desperate. Shortages began to bite, force dropped by more than 10 25 food rationing intensi\ufb01ed, some 20 civilians were evacuated from cities, 15 and the civilian death toll started to 10 rise. In February 1943 propaganda 5 minister, Joseph Goebbels, announced 0 total war measures. All men aged between 16 and 65 had to register for 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 war work, or join the Volkssturm Year (home guard); women were actively recruited into munitions factories, War production and members of the Hitler Youth and Military output more than trebled from 1942 to 1944, the League of German Girls took up with arms production accounting for 30 percent of work in hospitals, with postal and all industry. After 1944 production dropped sharply. transport services, and on the land. By 1944 the population had been mobilized but, by then, it was too late. 220","THE GERMAN WAR INDUSTRY Morale boost Joseph Goebbels bombarded the nation with posters like this, stressing the unity between industrial workers, farmers, women in uniform, and the men at the front. This poster reads: \u201cTotal war is the shortest war.\u201d HITLER\u2019S ARCHITECT (1905\u201381) ALBERT SPEER Albert Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Two years later he designed and organized the dramatic Nuremberg Rally. Between 1942 and 1945 he oversaw and directed Germany\u2019s economy, bringing in major reforms and achieving remarkable increase in munitions productivity\u2014his architectural and economic skills meant he would become a member of Hitler\u2019s inner circle. Tried at Nuremberg after the war, Albert Speer disassociated himself from Hitler but did accept \u201ccollective responsibility\u201d for war crimes. He served a 20-year sentence and died in London. Speer\u2019s claim that he was merely an architect, and knew nothing of the Holocaust, has been hotly disputed. AFTER From 1944 living conditions for civilians in Germany were deteriorating rapidly and continued to worsen until the war ended. HOMELESS AND STARVING Allied bombing devastated cities, including Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden 166\u201367 gg, leaving thousands homeless. By 1945 many city dwellers were foraging for food. Rationing had intensi\ufb01ed; by April 1945 an adult\u2019s weekly meat ration had dropped from 151\/2 oz (437 g) in May 1943 to 43\/4 oz (137 g). GERMANY DIVIDED Following the end of the war, the country was divided 340\u201341 gg\u0001between the Communist Eastern sector, and what became West Germany. 221","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 BEFORE The French Resistance The French Resistance was a movement Some French people made it their business to fight back against Nazi occupation. At first, resistance born of defeat. Almost as soon as German was passive, taking the form of information-gathering, anti-Nazi propaganda, and aid to downed Allied troops overran the northern part of France, airmen. But in 1943 armed struggle, assassination, and guerrilla warfare became their primary activites. clandestine \ufb01ghters began to engage in spontaneous acts of sabotage. T he French Resistance was not a war. Some were handwritten, others single organization. There was a printed using rubber stamps or home- DE GAULLE LIGHTS THE RESISTANCE FLAME variety of separate networks, many made presses. It was common practice Resistance \ufb01ghters, or \u201csoldiers of the night\u201d as built on a shared political or social for people to make two or three copies the writer Andr\u00e9 Malraux later called them, were outlook. In occupied France (as opposed of any newsheet that came into their French civilians \ufb01ghting Nazi occupation. to Vichy France in the south) socialists hands and pass them on. This ingenious The \ufb01rst green shoots of resistance were nurtured and trade unions formed the backbone mode of distribution\u2014the chain by General de Gaulle ff\u0001110\u201311, who in June of Lib\u00e9ration-Nord, the main resistance letter\u2014could not be stamped out by 1940 told his countrymen: \u201cMust hope disappear? network; the Front National was largely Is defeat \ufb01nal? No! Believe me when I tell you organized by pro-Soviet Communists; The SOE developed a range of specialist that nothing is lost for France. Whatever and the group known as R\u00e9sistance was equipment for their agents to use. These happens, the \ufb02ame of French resistance made up mostly of Roman Catholics. In devices included the \u201cwelrod\u201d (a silent must not be extinguished and will not be the south of France there was a small pistol), incendiaries hidden inside everyday extinguished.\u201d De Gaulle wanted a professional faction called the Arm\u00e9e Juive, or the objects, and lethal suicide tablets disguised army formed outside France. But many French Jewish Army, consisting of French as coat buttons in case of capture. civilians took him at his word, and began \ufb01ghting Zionists. They hid fellow Jews from the Nazis individually, on their doorstep. the Nazis and smuggled them across the Pyrenees into neutral Spain. the Nazis so long as a single copy stayed Female fighters In the \ufb01rst phase of the occupation, in circulation. Even the names of these The first armed resistance fighters hid themselves in subversion was the only means of publications were a call to arms: France, remote parts of the French countryside. But as the Nazi resistance. In France and Belgium as lib\u00e8re-toi! (France, Free Yourself!); hold on France grew weak, city dwellers\u2014both men and many as 1,000 underground newspapers Sous La Botte (Under the Heel of the women\u2014took up arms and fought the Nazis on the streets. and tracts were published during the Jackboot); Franc-Tireur (Irregular). A more hazardous way of hitting back was to become a link in the escape line for Allied aircrew shot down over France or Belgium. More than 2,000","TH E F R ENCH R ESI STANCE London calling AFTER The maquis did all they could to co-ordinate their actions with Allied operations. On June 5 resistance The French Resistance came into its own groups were alerted to the coming invasion by a in 1944. On the eve of D-Day almost 1,000 coded radio message: \u201cThe die is cast, the die is cast.\u201d sabotage actions were carried out and these continued until Liberation. partisans on the Eastern Front. These DISRUPTING THE NAZIS groups were large. A division of 4,000 By June 5, 1944, there was a secret army based on the alpine plateau of Vercors of 150,000 Frenchmen inside occupied harrassed the Germans throughout France, trained, armed, and ready for the winter of 1943. After D-Day they action. Saboteurs set out to disrupt the German communication lines, to 220,000 The number of hobble the German people who were response to honored by the postwar French government for their role in the VERCORS FLAG Resistance, but the total number of fighters is impossible to know. Operation Overlord: telegraph cables were cut, rail lines were blown up or engaged in a month-long battle stripped and locomotives were disabled. R\u00e9sistants delayed the deployment of the with more than 10,000 Nazi troops 2nd SS Panzer Division to Normandy by two weeks by harrying the troops all the before being crushed by an airborne way from their base in Dordogne. Allied airmen, having bailed out or From its headquarters in Baker Street, assault on their stronghold. In the 9 LB (4 KG) The weight of some crash-landed, were passed along these of the secret radios, along with so-called \u201crat lines\u201d and spirited out of SOE trained people for covert missions, wake of the battle, SS units slaughtered their batteries, manufactured the country. But the price was high\u2014it by the SOE. These could fit has been estimated that the repatriation arrranged drops of radios, arms, and all the villagers of the Vercors plateau\u2014 into a small briefcase and so were of every Allied evader was bought with easily transported by operatives. the life of one r\u00e9sistant. bomb-making materials to groups of not just the Resistance \ufb01ghters, but the FIGHTING TO THE END In the months that followed D-Day, during The escape lines could not have \ufb01ghters inside occupied territory, and women and children too. the long German retreat to the west and the worked without the aid of the British Liberation of France 268\u201369 gg, \u201cterrorist\u201d military intelligence in London. Evasion did its best to marshal the A village extinct attacks and other partisan actions had a was the responsibility of a department disparate efforts of the deeply damaging effect on the morale called MI9, but secret operations inside of the Wehrmacht, which never found an France were run by the \u201cF Section\u201d of Resistance so that they Massacres like this were e\ufb00ective way to deal with the guerrilla tactics the Special Operations Executive (SOE). and clandestine activities. dovetailed with the part of a Nazi policy 223 strategy of the British war intended to deter attacks cabinet. From May 1941 against their own. The SS to August 1944, over 400 often shot many innocent agents were sent to France hostages in revenge for the to carry messages, make wounding or killing of just contact with resistance one Nazi. One incident was groups, or train local spies the extinction of Oradour, a in the acts of sabotage. village in the Limousin region, Ways of the saboteur apparently in reprisal for an of\ufb01cer\u2019s kidnapping. In July Among the most able and 1944 the village was sealed inventive saboteurs were off and the men and women the cheminots, the French separated. The men were shot; rail workers who joined the women and infants led to a resistance groups like the Badge of courage church and set on \ufb01re. Oradour R\u00e9sistance-Fer. The Germans In 1943 de Gaulle licensed was razed to the ground and depended on the French a bronze medal to honor not rebuilt. Today, its ruins are rail network, and during the courage of R\u00e9sistants. a somber tribute, a reminder the summer of 1943 a war The front shows the cross of the price France had to pay was waged\u2014la bataille du of Lorraine\u2014their symbol. to maintain its resistance. rail\u2014against German communication lines. The Nazis attached RESISTANCE FIGHTER (1899\u20131943) civilian passenger cars to their troop transports as protection, but so expert JEAN MOULIN were the cheminots that they could time an explosion to destroy the Nazi Jean Moulin has become a symbol of carriages, leaving the others intact. French resistance to Nazi occupation. His In 1943 the Nazis began conscripting role within the Resistance was to unite, or French citizens to work in Germany. at least to coordinate, the various factions Many avoided this by \ufb02eeing deep \ufb01ghting against the Nazis. In May 1943 he into France\u2019s forests and inaccessible called a secret summit of the heads of the mountains. Here, they swelled the various organizations. The meeting in Lyon ranks of guerrilla bands known as the was raided by German troops, and Moulin maquis, in the mold of the Russian was captured. He was subjected to appalling torture by Klaus Barbie, the head of the Off the rails Gestapo in Lyon, but died without giving The R\u00e9sistance-Fer were specialized rail saboteurs and anything away. Moulin was buried in P\u00e8re came into their own after D-Day. In the first month after Lachaise cemetery in Paris; in 1964 his the invasion they cut 3,000 train lines, hampering the Nazi remains were transferred to the Pantheon. efforts to bring reinforcements to the beachheads.","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 BEFORE Prisoners of War in Europe In theory, all prisoners of war had to be The fate of POWs varied widely depending on the time and place of their capture, their rank, and treated in accordance with the Third Geneva nationality. For Allied officers, the main challenge of prison life was the open-ended tedium. For German Convention, but many countries were not or Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front, POW status often spelled death by starvation and neglect. prepared for the sheer numbers involved. I n the early days of the war, the In enemy hands prisoners. The Convention THE THIRD GENEVA CONVENTION Germans took far more prisoners Airmen were especially aware of the possibilty of capture. stated that POWs were to be The treatment of POWs was governed\u2014in theory than the Allies. The 50,000 British But to many a POW\u2019s existence was a far better option than promptly removed from the at least\u2014by the Third Geneva Convention soldiers left behind in the retreat to being stranded and exposed to other dangers. Fliers were \ufb01eld of battle; they were to of 1929, which, with the exception of the Soviet Dunkirk spent a full \ufb01ve years being over-represented in camps on both sides of the Channel. be given medical attention Union, was signed by all the nations who later shuttled from one German camp to if wounded; they were to be took part in the war. The Convention reiterated another. During that time there were housed and fed no worse than the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which incidents in which members of the the garrison troops of the stated that \ufb01ghting men who laid down their British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were capturing power; and they arms were to be decently treated. shot by their German captors. Later in were entitled to refuse to give the war, downed Allied bomber crews any information to their POW POPULATIONS were occasionally lynched by angry interrogators but name, rank, The Axis powers captured almost nine German mobs. The \ufb01rst day or two of and service number. While in million enemy combatants in the course of prisoner life\u2014between surrender and captivity they had the right to the war, two thirds of whom were Russian consignment to a camp\u2014was always correspond with family and soldiers who fell into German hands. The Allies, the most hazardous time. friends, and if they escaped and were for their part, took almost \ufb01ve million men recaptured, then they were to be prisoner between the outbreak of war and VE For the most part, the Nazis, and the punished with nothing more Day. No warring country had ever had to deal Wehrmacht in particular, respected the severe than 30 days\u2019 with POW populations of this size, and both sides codes of the Third Geneva Convention solitary con\ufb01nement. in the con\ufb02ict struggled with the scale of the task. when dealing with British and American Safe haven Many German prisoners of war arrived in England after D-Day. Most were relieved to be out of the war and were happy to undergo the indignity of a delousing when they first arrived at their POW camp.","PRISONERS OF WAR IN EUROPE Prison lifeline AFTER A Red Cross parcel was a lifeline for a prisoner of war. For signi\ufb01cant numbers of prisoners of As many as 20 million packages were dispatched from war, imprisonment abroad turned into a Britain. They contained treasures such as jam, cocoa, form of emigration. Others became hostages dried fruit, tea, and powdered eggs. during the \ufb01rst phase of the Cold War. The Convention also said that camps almost all of whom spent their time CITIZENS ABROAD As many as 26,000 German prisoners of war were to be open to inspection by in captivity cultivating the land, found something to admire in the British way of life, and elected to remain in Britain rather members of the International Red Cross. working alongside British civilians. than go back to Germany at the end of the war. Many of those sent to camps in the United States The Germans operated two types of The conditions under which some found wives in that country, and so swiftly became citizens of the nation they had been POW institution\u2014\u201cO\ufb02ags\u201d for enemy British and US of\ufb01cers were held allowed \ufb01ghting against 334\u201335 gg. of\ufb01cers, and \u201cStalags\u201d for NCOs and for no association with the local people. WAR CRIMINALS AND HOSTAGES POWs of the Eastern Front fared much worse. enlisted men. British and US Stalag The inmates of O\ufb02ags were locked up Of the 90,000 Germans who had survived the Battle of Stalingrad, all but 6,000 died prisoners were 1The number of Axis POWs who made at all times. They in Soviet camps. Disease was rife, food scarce, required to work it back home. Luftwaffe pilot Franz were not required and inmates were subjected to hard labor in in factories or von Werra escaped to the US from a to work, but they terrible weather conditions. Those that survived on farms. The camp in Canada. He traveled back to were given few were some of the million or more German combination of comforts and POWs who were deemed war criminals. They were put to work repairing the Russian regular exercise, Germany from Mexico after evading arrest. meager rations. cities that their country had helped destroy. These men became, in e\ufb00ect, hostages of the fresh air, and Until the end \ufb01rst phase of the Cold War 348\u201349 gg. The last of the survivors returned home\u2014broken, plentiful food meant that the soldiers of 1944, when Himmler took over the and aged beyond their years\u2014in 1956. assigned to rural work often fared running of the camps, a POW\u2019s food Roll-call at Colditz to December 1941 of these, two million The courtyard at Colditz was the setting for the daily were dead by the winter\u2019s end\u2014shot better than the POW of\ufb01cer class. was supplemented with parcels from roll-call. It was also the venue for regular games of out of hand or marched to death. The \u201cstool ball,\u201d a boisterous version of rugby invented Soviets were just as brutal toward Some even found the opportunity to the Red Cross. These much-prized gifts by British prisoners of war to while away the days. Germans. All the Axis troops in Soviet hands at the end of the war were forge relationships (both short- and not only kept inmates from corridors, that the inmates were free to shipped straight to the Gulags. They explore, gave plenty of inspiration and were joined by repatriated Soviet long-term) with German women. The malnutrition and hunger, they also opportunity for escape plans. POWs prisoners of war, who on their return even managed to build and conceal a were condemned as traitors for having same phenomenon occurred among allowed Allied POWs some surplus glider in the attic, but the castle was allowed themselves to be taken prisoner freed by US troops before they had a by the Germans. This double Italian prisoners of war in Britain, with which barter with the guards. chance to use it. incarceration\u2014to be a prisoner \ufb01rst of Hitler, then of Stalin\u2014was an ordeal Secret trade of this kind was one of the No such inventive pastimes were that very few men survived. available to POWs on the Eastern Front. ways in which prisoners acquired the Here the Geneva Convention meant nothing. The Wehrmacht scooped up effects of escape\u2014items of civilian more than three million Soviets in its \ufb01rst drive toward Moscow, from June clothing; samples of of\ufb01cial papers; the tools of the forger, the digger, and the lock-picker, such as inkpads and trowels. Escaping inmates Many Allied prisoners felt duty-bound to escape because they saw it as the only contribution they could now make \u201cIt was our duty to try to get out\u2014and in so doing to cause as much trouble as possible.\u201d CAPTAIN KENNETH LOCKWOOD, ALLIED ESCAPE COMMITTEE, COLDITZ to the war effort. A handful of POWs BRITISH SOLDIER AND POLITICIAN (1916\u20131979) let loose in the German countryside could divert the manpower of AIREY NEAVE hundreds of police of\ufb01cers and reservists. So even if escapees were A member of the Royal Artillery, Airey Neave recaptured, a failed attempt could be was the \ufb01rst British o\ufb03cer to escape from said to have undermined the German Colditz. He had been wounded and was war effort. But just as importantly, captured in 1940 while serving in France. plotting escape gave Allied of\ufb01cers The following year he made several escape something to do\u2014something more attempts, so was sent to the high-security exciting and more meaningful than the camp at Colditz Castle. In 1942 Neave amateur theaters, orchestras, and sports marched out of the castle in a home-made clubs that \ufb02ourished in the O\ufb02ags. German o\ufb03cer\u2019s uniform, accompanied by a fellow POW. It took them two days to A lucky few even managed to escape travel by train to the Swiss border, which from O\ufb02ag IV-C\u2014better known as they crossed unnoticed. Neave became a Colditz\u2014the medieval castle in Saxony member of parliament after the war and to which the most recaltricant escapees was assassinated by the IRA in 1979. were sent. It was meant to be escape- proof, but its many hidden nooks and 225","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 BEFORE The Battle of Kursk In the bitter winter of 1942, the Red Army The battle that raged around Kursk in July 1943 involved as many as 6,000 tanks, 4,000 planes, halted the Germans at Stalingrad. More and two million infantrymen. It was a clash of armor, the like of which the world had never sign\ufb01cantly, they chased the Axis forces seen before, and it proved decisive to the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front. back across the snows. I n March 1943 the Soviet line at be severely weakened, and at the same GERMAN FIELD MARSHAL (1887\u20131973) RECEDING FRONT LINE Kursk formed a deep bubble that was time the German line across Soviet Relentless pressure from the Soviets forced 112 miles (180 km) wide, and that territory would be straightened and ERICH VON MANSTEIN the Germans into retreat ff\u0001192\u201393 for the protruded 63 miles (100 km) to the shortened. It might then be possible to \ufb01rst time in the war. By the time the spring thaw west of the city. Hitler knew that the fortify this line and hold the Russians at Erich von Manstein was an operational came in 1943, the German front line had Kursk bulge was a weakness in the bay, forcing them to exhaust themselves commander. He devised the plan which already receded far to the west. German defenses, and that the Russians against reinforced German defenses. broke the British and French in 1940, could use it to kick off a summer but fought largely on the Eastern Front. OPERATION CITADEL offensive. He and his generals decided Hitler delays the offensive After capturing the Crimea and the Kerch At Kursk, at the southern end of the Eastern that they needed to pinch it off using a peninsula at the head of 11th Army, he Front, there was a deep Russian-occupied fast-moving pincer attack from the The kind of attack that Hitler had in went on to command Army Group Don. bulge in the line, a dangerous promontory into north and south. The Soviet armies mind worked best when there was an Although he supported the Kursk attack German-held territory. The German plan to trapped inside the bubble could then element of surprise. But the Russians he felt it was delayed too long. Von eliminate the Kursk salient was codenamed be systematically killed in the German knew that an attack on Kursk had to Manstein was sacked by Hitler in 1944. Operation Citadel. It was the last blitzkrieg Kesselschlacht (\u201ccauldron battle\u201d). come sooner or later. Field-marshal von of the war\u2014and the \ufb01rst blitzkrieg to fail. Manstein, Hitler\u2019s commander in the Kursk itself was an important rail \ufb01eld, wanted to launch the offensive FEAR OF ALLIED INVASION hub, and so a prize worth winning. But in March, but Hitler ruled that it was It was hoped that Operation Citadel might force this was only part of the hoped-for gain. better to wait out the Russian spring a summer stalemate on the Eastern Front. If the German plan worked, the Soviet thaw, during which the landscape is a This would allow the F\u00fchrer to divert some \ufb01ghting capability in the sector would sea of mud, making troop movements effort and resources to the West where, he was certain, an Allied invasion ff\u0001202\u201303 was sure to come sooner or later. Ideal tank territory \u201c The Russians exploited their victory Armored columns could maneuver as freely as ships at \u2026 There were to be no more periods sea in the open expanses of Russia. But, at Kursk, the of quiet on the Eastern Front.\u201d Soviets forced the German Panther and Tiger tanks into narrow \u201ckilling zones,\u201d picking them off one by one. HEINZ GUDERIAN, 1943","TH E BAT TLE OF KU R SK Defending Kursk 0 100 km The Soviets made thorough preparations 0 100 miles for a German attack on the Kursk bulge. The salient was protected with five or six N 4 Jul 7\u20138 concentric belts of trench lines and, in the east, six armies stood in reserve. 3 5:30am Jul 5 Orel In \ufb01erce \ufb01ghting Germans are halted at 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of German 9th Army attacks, 2ND Pz ARMY Ponyri. Advance limited trenches. The lines of but meets with \ufb01erce 9TH ARMY to 13km (8 miles) defense were laden with resistance from Soviet mines\u2014hidden beneath the 13th Army 48TH ARMY new summer undergrowth\u2014 Svapa and bristled with 20,000 ARMY GROUP Oka Malorakhangelsk artillery pieces. An army of CENTRE more than one million men lay in wait, and vast quantities of men and armor Pervyye Ponyri Ponyri Station R U S S I A were being held in reserve behind the Top tank lines. Much of this work had been Olkhovatka The Russian T-34 was decisive at the Battle of Kursk. It is concealed from the Germans, so the often said to have been the best tank design of the war. Kursk bulge was not just a fortress, it 2ND TANK ARMY 13TH ARMY More than 57,000 were built between 1940 and 1945. was also a trap: on July 5 two German Panzer armies rushed headlong straight CENTRAL FRONT 1 Jul 4 1943 almost impossible. Hitler delayed into it. Even Hitler began to have further, in April, when he decided to doubts about the progress which, he 65TH ARMY Artillery in Soviet 6th wait until June, when 300 new Panther remarked, \u201cmakes my stomach turn Guards Army opens tanks would be available. But in June over,\u201d and he was right. Kursk \ufb01re prior to Germans the High Command received alarming The 4th Panzer Army struck north reports of Soviet strength in the Kursk from the Kharkov region, and the 9th 60TH ARMY Seim launching main attack area, so Hitler decided to wait one more Panzer Army headed south from Orel. month in order that yet more Panthers The German offensive quickly ran into Rylsk Lgov 5 Jul 12 could be shipped out to the front line. trouble. Many of the long-awaited Korenovo Panther tanks broke down; many more 6TH GUARDS 4th Panzer Army advances The high price of delay were disabled by mines. These static targets were at the mercy of the Soviet ARMY 5TH GUARDS toward Prokhorovka, where Hitler had seriously underestimated the anti-tank units, whose operating system TANK ARMY it engages Soviet 5th Guards strength and depth of Soviet defenses. was \ufb01endishly ef\ufb01cient: one of\ufb01cer VORONEZH FRONT Oboyan Tank Army. The ensuing tank While he delayed, the Russians built targeted a single tank with 10 guns at Prokhorovka battle, the largest in the war, a time, before moving on to the next. 38TH ARMY halts German advance But many of the tanks that made it through the \ufb01rst line of defenses were Sumy Psel 40TH ARMY 69TH ARMY equipped with the powerful 88 mm gun. This, and the tanks\u2019 heavy armor, Gotnya Korocha helped them gain some ground in the Station Butovo \ufb01rst days of the battle. But therein lay another problem: the tanks often ran 2 5:00am Jul 5 Tomarovka Belgorod ahead of the infantry, and were caught like \ufb02ies inside a Soviet defensive web. German 4th Panzer Army attacks 4TH Pz ARMY 7TH GUARDS Here, amid swarms of foot soldiers, in wedge formation, but is met Vorskla 57TH ARMY their \ufb01repower and thick steel plating with heavy artillery \ufb01re was of little use to them: the Soviets found that the heaviest tanks could be ARMY GROUP stopped dead in their tracks with a SOUTH close-range \ufb02amethrower blast to the radiator grill. KEY Kharkov Main Soviet defence line Victory for the Soviets 2nd Soviet defence line UKRAINE 3rd Soviet defence line A week after Operation Citadel began, German gains by July 12 nets the northern prong of the attack was German advance Do already coming to a standstill, while Soviet army movement AFTER 1 MILLION The number of anti-tank two opposing tank formations clashed After Kursk, the forces of the Soviet Union and anti-personnel mines the Soviets laid at Prokhorovka. Considered the pivotal found themselves in total control of the along the front at Kursk\u2014more than 3,000 moment of the battle, this engagement war in the East. In the weeks following mines per 1,000 yards (1 km) of front. is often described as the biggest tank the battle, the Red Army took Kharkov, battle in history. Although the epithet is and captured the key city of Orel. the southern prong, moving slowly but disputable, it was certainly a titanic steadily, had advanced just 12 miles con\ufb02ict between the big German A NATION DEFEATED (20 km). On July 12 Stalin deployed Tigers and the lighter, more nimble Heinz Guderian, the brilliant architect of his main reserve\u2014the 5th Tank T-34s. The battle at Prokhorovka raged Germany\u2019s tank force, wrote: \u201cWe su\ufb00ered a Army\u2014against the southern wing. The just as furiously in the air, where the decisive defeat with the failure of Citadel. increasingly skilled Soviet \ufb02yers The armored formations, re-formed and denied the Germans the superiority to re-equipped at so much e\ufb00ort, lost heavily which they had been accustomed. in both men and equipment.\u201d In numerical terms, the Russians fared A NATION RETREATING worst: their losses were far higher than What this Soviet victory meant in e\ufb00ect was those of the Germans. But the Soviets that, from Kursk onward, the Wehrmacht could afford to take such losses, while was \ufb01ghting a permanent rearguard action. the Germans could not. Hitler, usually The Soviets drove the enemy west through the insistent that his troops \ufb01ght on, no burned-out expanses of the Ukraine, and matter what, suffered a loss of nerve went on to liberate Kiev in November. and, on July 17, he called a halt to Operation Citadel. Possibly, he was In 1944 a Red Army offensive 270\u201371 gg\u0001 distracted by the Allied landings in pushed the Germans back beyond the line from Sicily. At any rate, Germany was now which the Barbarossa invasion had originally \ufb01ghting a war on two fronts. For all been launched, in 1941. the battles still to be fought, this was a sure sign that the war in Europe was now approaching its endgame. 227","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 SOVIET MARSHAL Born 1896 Died 1974 Georgy Zhukov \u201cIf we come to a mine\ufb01eld, our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there.\u201d GEORGY ZHUKOV, IN CONVERSATION WITH GENERAL EISENHOWER, 1945 A much decorated war hero and Planning tactics at Khalkin Gol Soviet patriot, Georgy Zhukov Zhukov conducted a brilliant counter-offensive at was an outstanding military Khalkin Gol in Manchuria, inflicting dreadful casualties commander and a key \ufb01gure in the on the Japanese and preventing them from launching Russian \ufb01ght against Germany during an attack on the Soviet Union later in the war. World War II. He achieved remarkable victories at Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad, and led the Soviet forces in the \ufb01nal assault on Berlin. A member of the Communist Party, Zhukov not only dared to challenge Stalin on military matters, but was also one of the few Bolsheviks to outlive him. Zhukov was born into an impoverished peasant family. Conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, he served in World War I, winning two awards for bravery. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Zhukov joined the Communist Party and the Red Guard, later commanding a cavalry division in the Russian Civil War. His bravery and ruthlessness brought him to the notice of Joseph Stalin, then a member of the government. Stalin encouraged him to study military science, which he did in Russia and Germany. The two men worked closely together after that, though not always harmoniously. Rise under Stalin Over the next few years Zhukov rose steadily through the ranks of the army, earning a reputation for strict discipline and absolute determination. When Stalin, now head of the Soviet Union, carried out a massive purge of Red Army of\ufb01cers between 1937 and 1938, Zhukov was safely far away on the Leader of the Soviet forces Soviet commander Georgy Zhukov led Soviet forces in some of their most significant victories of the war. Second-in-command only to Stalin during the Battle of Leningrad, Zhukov fell out of favor in the 1950s.","GEORGY ZHUKOV frontiers of Manchuria, Zhukov was also assisted Soviet Union and into Germany. As TIMELINE commander of the First Byelorussian where Soviet forces were by the Russian winter. He Front, Zhukov led Soviet forces across Ukraine, through Byelorussia, into battling the Japanese. In drove Germany out of the Poland and Czechoslovakia, and toward O\u0001 December 1, 1896 Born in the village of Berlin. Under Zhukov\u2019s management, Strelkovka, about 62 miles (100 km) east of 1939 he led a successful reach of Moscow, in\ufb02icting Berlin was \ufb01rst encircled and then Moscow, into an impoverished peasant family. captured in April 1945, leading to the counter-offensive at the the \ufb01rst major German \ufb01nal capitulation and surrender of Germany. On May 8, 1945, Zhukov, on Battle of Khalkin Gol, defeat on the Eastern Front. behalf of the Soviet High Command, O\u0001 1915 Conscripted into the Russian Imperial received the German surrender. Cavalry. Promoted to sergeant and rewarded which resulted in massive for bravery during World War I. Obscure final years casualties for the Japanese. Eastern Front victories Following the end of the war, Zhukov A pioneer in the use of armored Zhukov was now back in favour remained in command of the Soviet O\u0001 November 1917 Elected chairman of his occupying forces in Germany, and led squadron\u2019s Red Soldiers Committee when the warfare, Zhukov achieved success with Stalin, who started listening to the Soviet Victory Parade in Red Square, Bolshevik\u2019s seize power in Russia. Moscow, where he inspected the troops by meticulous planning and his generals as the war progressed. and saluted Stalin. He later toured the Soviet Union with Allied Commander skillful use of tanks. He Zhukov effectively became Dwight D. Eisenhower, who publicly O\u0001 1918\u201321 Fights in the Russian Civil War with the acknowledged the debt owed to Red Army. Joins the Communist Party in 1919. applied classic cavalry Stalin\u2019s right-hand man Zhukov, saying that victory would not have been possible without him. tactics\u2014massing his when he was promoted to O\u0001 1923 Commands Zhukov was a national hero in Russia a horse cavalry tanks, smashing a hole deputy commander-in-chief, and immensely popular, both within regiment while the military itself and with the general stationed in through the Japanese Army, and he was ordered to plan public. Unsurprisingly, Stalin now Byelorussia. regarded him as a threat to his grasp and crushing the Japanese in and coordinate military strategy on power. He removed Zhukov from a pincer movement\u2014that over the entire Eastern Front. characterized much of his Zhukov was sent to direct O\u0001 1930 Given later strategy. For his Hero of the Soviet Union the defense of Stalingrad, command of achievement, Zhukov One of the most highly decorated where in January 1943, Leningrad\u2019s 2nd Cavalry Division. was awarded the title generals in the Soviet Union, using a mixture of utter ZHUKOV WITH STALIN Hero of the Soviet Union Zhukov was awarded the Hero of ruthlessness\u2014failure or Writes military manuals and advocates the use of and promoted to general. the Soviet Union medal four times. desertion were punished tanks and mobile units for offensive maneuvers. by death\u2014and brilliant O\u0001 1939 Having escaped Joseph Stalin\u2019s purge of army officers, leads Soviet and Mongolian forces Defending the Soviet Union military planning, he oversaw the in the successful defense against Japanese invaders at Khalkin Gol. Awarded the title Hero In June 1941 Germany invaded the encirclement and capture of the of the Soviet Union for the first time. Soviet Union. Unprepared in the face German Sixth Army. Soviet casualties of advancing German forces, Stalin and were immense. Western commentators Zhukov disagreed on strategy. Zhukov sometimes regarded Zhukov as far too O\u0001 1940 Promoted to full general and given the post of chief-of-staff of the Red Army. argued that troops should be withdrawn ruthless, but Soviet warfare operated \u201c If they do not attack until O\u0001 July 1941 Argues that the Red Army should winter \u2026 then we will, and withdraw from Kiev when Germany invades the will tear them to shreds!\u201d Soviet Union. Stalin disagrees; Zhukov loses post of army chief-of-staff. ZHUKOV ON THE GERMAN ARMY O\u0001 September\u2013December 1941 Put in charge of the defense of Leningrad; German advance is halted but siege begins. Assigned to defense of Moscow, and delivers the first German defeat. as Kiev was indefensible; Stalin, Toasting the Allies O\u0001 August 1942 Becomes deputy commander-in- however, insisted on defensive action. Despite the mistrust held chief of Soviet armed forces under Stalin and In the event, German forces overran by Russia for the other works on plans for massive counter-offensive Kiev and 500,000 Soviet troops were Allies\u2014and vice versa\u2014 along the whole Eastern Front. taken prisoner. Zhukov was sacked generals Zhukov (center) from his post as army chief-of-staff and and Eisenhower (second O\u0001 January 1943 Breaks through German blockade sent to direct the defense of Moscow. left) had a strong respect of Leningrad, opening a land corridor to the city. Along with 88 infantry and 15 cavalry for each other that lasted divisions and together with 1,500 tanks, beyond the end of the war. O\u0001 July 4\u201315, 1943 Directs what will be the largest tank battle of the war at the Battle of Kursk. O\u0001 1944 Directs Soviet offensive through Byelorussia. on a massive scale: for Zhukov \ufb01nal Berlin and effectively banished him to O\u0001 March\u2013April 1945 Meets with Stalin and plans victory justi\ufb01ed heavy losses and he a fairly insigni\ufb01cant posting in Odessa, the final assault on Berlin as the war in Europe was highly regarded by his troops. in modern-day Ukraine, that had a draws to a close. limited troop deployment. Following In early 1943 Zhukov directed the \ufb01rst Stalin\u2019s death in 1953, Zhukov was O\u0001 May 8, 1945 Represents the Soviet Union at breakthrough of the German blockade returned to prominence under First Germany\u2019s formal surrender. of Leningrad. At the Battle of Kursk in Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, and was July 1943, Zhukov conducted what was appointed a member of the Politburo O\u0001 1946 Returns to Moscow a national hero. Stalin to be the largest tank battle of the war, in 1957. However, after he opposed sees him as a threat and he is posted to Odessa. and gained a decisive victory. Turning moves to reduce the size and power his attention back to Leningrad, he of the Red Army, he was expelled. In O\u0001 1953 Recalled to Moscow on Stalin\u2019s death, and orchestrated Operation Bagration 1964 the new Soviet leader, Leonid appointed deputy defense minister in 1955. in January 1944, an offensive that Brezhnev, restored Zhukov to favor, ultimately led to the city\u2019s liberation. but he never returned to political or O\u0001 1957 Becomes a member of the Central military life. He spent his later years Committee of the Communist Party but has a Following the Battle of Kursk, writing his account of the Soviet disagreement with First Secretary Khrushchev Soviet forces went on the offensive, involvement in World War II and died and is placed under house arrest. driving the Germans back through the in 1974. A million people \ufb01led past his body lying in state before he was O\u0001 1964 Restrictions on Zhukov are lifted after Peace pact buried with full military honors in Khrushchev is deposed. Spends his final years Zhukov remained in Germany after the war ended, as the wall of the Kremlin in Red Square. writing his memoirs and recollections of the war. commander of the occupied forces. He signed the pact that gave Allied forces supreme command over Germany. O\u0001 June 18, 1974 Dies in Moscow at the age of 77, outliving both Stalin and Khrushchev. 229","THE ALLIES TURN THE TIDE 1943 Island-Hopping in the Paci\ufb01c In the course of 1943 the US Navy and Marines began advancing across the Pacific, seizing Japanese-held islands in a series of amphibious assaults. The taking of these often tiny island bases was rendered costly by the fanatical determination of the Japanese defenders. F uture United States strategy in intelligence. Decoding Japanese 0T 3E CBHONXO TL OI TGLYE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T the Paci\ufb01c War was settled at a communications allowed the Allies to conference in Washington D.C. in send land-based bombers to intercept AMPHIBIOUS VEHICLES May 1943. Unable to decide between a convoy of troop transports bound While landing craft had to unload their men and equipment on the shoreline, the proposals of General Douglas from Rabaul for New Guinea at the amphibious vehicles were able to carry them onto the land. Unsurprisingly these MacArthur in the Southwest Paci\ufb01c start of March 1943, sinking them all vehicles played a large and growing part in the Allied landing operations in World and the US Navy leaders in charge in the Bismarck Sea. It was a sign of War II. Introduced in 1943, the DUKW was \u201ca truck that could swim.\u201d A of the South and Central Paci\ufb01c, the the growing bitterness of the Paci\ufb01c six-wheeled vehicle, it could carry 25 men ashore or 2.5 tons of equipment. conference backed both. MacArthur War that Japanese survivors were The other key amphibious vehicle was the Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT), or was to advance along the north coast systematically machine-gunned Amtrac. LVTs were armored to turn them into assault vehicles to carry of New Guinea in the water. soldiers ashore under \ufb01re. Some were and capture the also \ufb01tted with turret guns, making them Japanese base at 17 The number of Japanese who The \ufb01rst of the into amphibious tanks. survived the Tarawa fighting offensives envisaged Rabaul on New out of a garrison of 3,000 troops and at the Washington DUKW Britain, while the 1,000 construction workers. 129 out Conference got under Solomons, further landings were carried out on the islands of Vella Lavella and Navy completed of 1,200 Korean forced laborers on way on June 30,1943. then, in November, on Bougainville, bypassing the heavily garrisoned island the conquest of the the island also survived the battle. Codenamed Operation of Kolombangara. More importantly, the major goal of taking Rabaul itself Solomons and thrust Cartwheel, it involved was abandoned. After devastating attacks by US naval aircraft on the base into the Central Paci\ufb01c, initially to simultaneous advances in northern in November, Rabaul was left behind as an impotent relic by the northward the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. New Guinea and the Solomons, where progress of the war, remaining in Japanese hands until the general The Japanese remained con\ufb01dent landings were made on New Georgia surrender in September 1945. of their ability to defend their Paci\ufb01c and Rendova, islands located to perimeter, but their con\ufb01dence was the northwest of Guadalcanal. ill-founded. Their static garrisons and The operation soon Prisoner on Tarawa Island bases, scattered across a vast area of ran into dif\ufb01culties. Very few Japanese were taken prisoner, partly because Japanese soldiers were urged by their officers to fight ocean, were vulnerable to being picked On New Georgia, a to the death, and partly because Allied troops were reluctant to allow a hated enemy to surrender. off one by one. The balance of forces large jungle-clad BEFORE was shifting inexorably against them. island, Allied troops In 1942 the tide of Japanese conquest US factories and shipyards were now struggled in the face of was halted. But Japan still held a far-\ufb02ung defensive perimeter. delivering a monumental expansion of determined resistance by a SOLOMONS CAMPAIGN war production, and fresh \ufb01ghting men garrison of more than 10,000 American landings on Guadalcanal in the Paci\ufb01c Solomon Islands in August 1942 brought a were pouring out of American training Japanese troops. In New Guinea vigorous response from the Japanese on land and sea. By February 1943 Japan had been camps. The Japanese depended on the progress was also slow and costly. forced to withdraw from Guadalcanal, but held on to other islands ff\u0001164\u201365. unbroken spirit of their men to impose By August Allied commanders were NEW GUINEA heavy casualties on the Americans, but adjusting their strategy. Instead of In the second half of 1942 Allied troops\u2014mostly Australian\u2014successfully contained a Japanese in a war of attrition the advantage lay attempting to capture the most heavily invasion of Papua ff\u0001166\u201367. The Japanese maintained their positions elsewhere on the overwhelmingly with the Allies. defended Japanese positions, Allied island of New Guinea and on New Britain. The problems faced by the Japanese forces would bypass them, leaving NAVAL BALANCE The American and Japanese navies fought a commanders were compounded by them, in MacArthur\u2019s adopted phrase, series of major battles during 1942. Despite the defeat of the main Japanese aircraft carrier force the Americans\u2019 superiority in signals \u201cto wither on the vine.\u201d So, in the at Midway in June ff\u0001162\u201363, neither side was able to impose its dominance at sea. New resources 230 The Central Paci\ufb01c offensive did not get under way until November 1943. Only then did the United States have suf\ufb01cient aircraft carriers and Americans on Bougainville The jungle terrain of the Solomon Islands created many difficulties for Allied troops. Although the Allies landed on Bougainville in November 1943, Japanese troops were still active on the island at the end of the war.","Makin Atoll Soldiers of the US 27th Infantry Division wade ashore aon November 20, 1943. As at nearby Tarawa, assaulted the same day by Marines, a coral reef kept landing craft from reaching the beaches. \u201cIt was painfully slow, wading \u2026 And we had 700 yards to walk slowly into that machine-gun \ufb01re \u2026 \u201d ROBERT SHERROD, WAR CORRESPONDENT, ON THE LANDING AT TARAWA amphibious capacity for concurrent battle of Midway. Twenty troop commander of its 3,000-strong AFTER operations in the Southwest, South, and transports carried 18,000 men of the garrison, Rear-Admiral Keiji Shibazaki. Central Paci\ufb01c. The forces assembled for 2nd Marine Division bound for Tarawa He boasted that \u201cit would take one In 1944 the Allied offensive reached the landings on Makin and Tarawa in and 7,000 troops of the 27th Infantry million men one hundred years\u201d to the Marianas and the Philippines. the Gilbert Islands were an impressive Division destined for Makin. capture the island. In fact, it took the demonstration of the expansion of US US Marines four days, from November MARSHALLS AND MARIANAS naval power. Vice-Admiral Raymond Bloody Tarawa 20 to 24, but the ferocity of the \ufb01ghting The Central Paci\ufb01c o\ufb00ensive continued with Spruance had 17 aircraft carriers at in that short period was a foretaste of landings on the Marshall Islands in February 1944. his disposal, ranging from the latest Both islands were tiny coral atolls the larger struggles that lay ahead. The assault on the Marianas 238\u201389 gg Essex-class fast carriers to small escort ringed by reefs. Tarawa was about the followed, starting at Saipan in June 1944. carriers; in comparison, the Americans size of New York\u2019s Central Park. Makin Despite a heavy bombardment from had \ufb01elded just three carriers at the was relatively lightly held, but Tarawa the sea and the air, the Marines came RETURN TO THE PHILIPPINES had been heavily forti\ufb01ed by the under \ufb01re as they went ashore. Those Fighting continued in New Guinea and the in LVTs (Landing Vehicle Tracked) were Solomon Islands until the end of the war. KEY MOMENT able to ride ashore over the coral, but Dominant at sea and in the air, the Allies were the rest jumped in and had to wade able to launch the long-awaited invasion of the DEATH OF YAMAMOTO through the water from the reef to Philippines in October 1944 240\u201341 gg. the beach. Almost a third of the 5,000 On April 18, 1943, Admiral Yamamoto, Marines who landed on the \ufb01rst day commander-in-chief of the Japanese were casualties. Many were hit before Combined Fleet, planned to \ufb02y to the island they even reached solid ground. of Bougainville to inspect front-line bases. United States naval intelligence had decoded The defense of Tarawa ended with a a message revealing details of Yamamoto\u2019s series of suicidal banzai charges by the itinerary. A squadron of 18 US \ufb01ghters, \ufb01tted Japanese\u2014taught to \ufb01ght to the death, with long-range fuel tanks, were sent from they charged at the Allies instead of Guadalcanal to intercept Yamomoto\u2019s aircraft, surrendering; only 17 of the defenders the planes \ufb02ying close to the water to avoid survived. The Marines had lost more detection by radar. Yamamoto was shot than 1,000 killed and over 2,000 injured. down over the jungle and killed. Island-hopping to Japan across the Paci\ufb01c was not going to be a soft option. 231","","7 OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 The Soviets drove the Germans from the USSR, advancing into Poland and the Balkans. The Allied D-Day landings created a second front, liberating France and Belgium, then meeting with a strong German counterattack. In the Pacific the Japanese navy was all but destroyed.","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 OVERWHELMING FORCE The Allies launch an As the Soviets near Successful Soviet offensives invasion of Normandy. the city, the Polish make advances along the whole of More than 150,000 Home Army begins the Eastern Front, from the Baltic in troops are landed on the Warsaw Uprising. five French beaches The revolt is crushed the north to the Balkans in the on D-Day, the first after 63 days when south, and also put an end to the day of the campaign. Soviet assistance fails to materialize. German occupation of Crimea. Y ICELAND A N W E EUROPE R D NO FINLAND WE S Faeroe Islands NORWAY BRITAIN (to Denmark) SWEDEN FINLAND POLAND ic Sea GERMANY AT L A N T I C FRANCE USSR North ESTONIA OCEAN I TA LY Sea Caspian Sea TUNISIABlack Sea IT LATVIA S PA I N TURKEY DENMARK B a l t LITHUANIA N AFGHANISTA IRISH GER. U S S R MOROCCO PALESTINE SYRIA PERSIA TIBET FREE IRAQ STATE B R ITAI N NETH. POLAND L I B YA NEPAL LUX. ALGERIA EGY P T TRANSJORDAN INDIA NEJD BEL. GERMANY RIO DE ORO (Saudi) SLOVAKIA OMAN FRANCE SWITZ. HUNGARY FRENCH WEST AFRICA ANGLO - ASIR HADHRAMAUT EGYPTIAN YEMEN ADEN PROTECTORATE CAMEROONS YUGOSLAVIA ROMANIA GAMBIA (British mandate) SUDAN BULGARIA A Y ALB. Black Sea PORTUGUESE GUINEA NIGERIA FRENCH ABYSSINIA FRENCH SOMALILAND CEYLON EQUATORIAL UGAN KENYA BRITISH L SIERRA LEONE GOLD SOMALILAND LIBERIA COAST AFRICA ITALIAN SOMALILAND PORTUGAL CAMEROONS DA (French mandate) S PA I N GREECE TURKEY MOROCCO M e diterr BELGIAN TANGANYIKA CONGO TUNISIA (British mandate) (to France) a n DODECANESE NYASALAND e a n Sea SYRIA ANGOLA NORTHERN INDIAN CYPRUS RHODESIA IRAQ (to Portugal) (to France) PALESTINE SOUTHERN MADAGASCAR EGYPT RHODESIA ALGERIA LIBYA SOUTH OCEAN (to France) WEST BECHUANA- PORTUGUESE AFRICA LAND EAST AFRICA SWAZILAND UNION OF BASUTOLAND SOUTH AFRICA Charles de Gaulle In Italy Allied landings In the Burma is accorded a hero\u2019s at Anzio\u2014a coastal city campaign British- welcome after Paris is Indian forces defeat a liberated by Free French located just south of Japanese attack across forces and members of Rome\u2014eventually lead the Burmese border, the Resistance. The to the fall of the capital. paving the way for battle marks the end of However, fighting with a triumphant Operation Overlord, the German forces in Italy counter-offensive. liberation of France. continues into 1945. T he year 1944 saw the Allies closing in on the German and As far as the Western Allies were concerned, the year\u2019s main event Japanese homelands. On the Eastern Front the Russians was the Normandy landings, which had been in preparation for liberated the remainder of the Soviet Union and advanced into more than two years. While France and much of Belgium were Poland. Anticipating the Red Army\u2019s arrival, the Poles rose against quickly liberated after the landings, hopes that the war in Europe their Nazi occupiers in Warsaw, but the Russians halted on the could be ended in 1944 began to fade as supply problems ultimately Vistula River and the uprising was in vain. In southern Europe the slowed the advance of the Allies and enabled the Germans to Russian advance forced the Germans to evacuate the Balkans. recover to some extent. Indeed, in December they took the Allies 234","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 1944 Japan launches major offensives in central China, in response to the US using Chinese air bases to bomb Japanese targets. ONGOLIA MANCHUKUO General Douglas Alaska CANADA NEWFOUNDLAND MacArthur makes HINA KOREA good on his promise (to US) U N ITED STATES The Dumbarton Oaks to return to liberate OF AMERICA Conference in Washington, D.C. BURMA JAPAN the Philippines from PACIFIC lays the first foundations for an Japanese occupation. OCEAN organization that eventually Volcano becomes the United Nations. Islands Delegates from the US, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China attend. AT L A N T I C OCEAN Formosa MEXICO CUBA DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HAITI Mariana VIRGIN ISLANDS Islands LEEWARD ISLANDS IAM FRENCH PHILIPPINE GUAM Marshall Islands BRITISH HONDURAS HONDURAS WINDWARD ISLANDS INDOCHINA ISLANDS GUATEMALA NICARAGUA Caroline BARBADOS BRITISH Islands EL SALVADOR TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO NORTH BORNEO ALAYA BRUNEI COSTA RICA VENEZUELA BRITISH GUIANA PANAMA DUTCH GUIANA SARAWAK COLOMBIA FRENCH GUIANA TERRITORY Nauru Gilbert ECUADOR OF NEW GUINEA Islands DUTCH EAST INDIES Ellice BRAZIL PAPUA Islands UAY PORTUGUESE Solomon WESTERN PERU TIMOR Islands SAMOA New Fiji BOLIVIA Hebrides PARAG New AUSTRALIA Caledonia CHILE NEW URUGUAY ZEALAND ARGENTINA The US secures THE WORLD IN DECEMBER 1944 the Mariana Islands from the Japanese. Air bases on Axis powers and allies the islands are then used Axis conquests to Dec 1944 by US bombers to attack Area under Japanese control, the Japanese mainland. Dec 1944 Allied states Allied conquests to Dec 1944 Neutral states Frontiers Sep 1939 by surprise with a counter-offensive. Meanwhile, in Italy, there General Douglas MacArthur continued his island-hopping in the were grim battles before the Allies entered Rome in June, but the southwest Pacific, ultimately isolating the main Japanese base at Germans again brought them to a halt before the year was out. Rabaul on the island of New Guinea. In the central Pacific Admiral In Burma the Japanese launched a major offensive in early March, Chester Nimitz secured the Marshall Islands and then went on to but this was repulsed and the Allies mounted an ultimately decisive seize the Marianas. Thereafter, the two US drives converged with counter-offensive. The Japanese also launched a series of offensives the landings in the Philippines. In the course of these operations in China, forcing the Americans to withdraw their strategic bombers. the Japanese Navy was virtually destroyed. 235","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 TIMELINE 1944 Anzio Landings O Turning Point in Burma O The Fall of Rome O D-Day O Breakout from Normandy O\u0001 Return to the Philippines O Flying Bombs O Hitler Bomb Plot O Liberation of France O Red Army Offensives O The Warsaw Uprising O Operation Market Garden O Battle of the Bulge JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JANUARY 16 FEBRUARY 4 MARCH 4 APRIL 4 Eisenhower, US secures Kwajalein Merrill\u2019s Marauders De Gaulle takes Commander-in-Chief in the Marshall Islands. begin operations in command of French of AEF (American Burma. armed forces. Expeditionary Force), FEBRUARY 8 arrives in Britain. Revised plan for MARCH 7 APRIL 12 Operation Overlord Japanese launch a In the Crimea, JANUARY 22 (Normandy landings) major offensive in Germans retreat to Allied landing at Anzio formally approved. Burma aimed at India. fortress of Sebastopol, behind the German but they hold out only Gustav Line in Italy. US troops landing until May 7. Determined German in the Marshall Islands response traps US and MAY 15 D-Day landings British force in small FEBRUARY 11 Start of deportation beachhead until May. US landings on of Hungarian Jews JUNE 4 Eniwetok Atoll in the to Auschwitz. Fall of Rome. Allied troops landing Marshall Islands. at Anzio, Italy MAY 15 JUNE 6 In Italy, Germans D-Day landings in withdraw from the Normandy. By the end Gustav Line to of the day, beachheads prepared positions are established at all closer to Rome. five landing sites. FEBRUARY 17 Germans in the Crimea MAY 17 Americans bomb fleeing from the Red Army Monte Cassino finally Japanese naval base taken by Polish troops. at Truk in the Caroline Islands, destroying almost 200,000 tons of shipping. British 5.5in Howitzer General Douglas MacArthur FEBRUARY 19 Start of \u201cBig Week,\u201d a MARCH 15 APRIL 18 MAY 27 JUNE 13 bombing campaign Allies attack Monte Japan launches a new As part of MacArthur\u2019s First V-1s launched against German aircraft Cassino for the third offensive in central strategy of leap-frogging against England. production plants. time, pounding it from China. Americans have pockets of Japanese the air and ground. to abandon some of forces in New Guinea, JUNE 19 their airbases. US forces land on US landing on Saipan Biak Island. in the Mariana Islands. MAY 31 JUNE 19 Soviets launch attack Battle of the Philippine into Romania. Sea. Japanese suffer heavy aircraft losses. MARCH 19 APRIL 28 Soviet T-34 tank Hitler orders German During a rehearsal for occupation of Hungary. the D-Day landings at Slapton Sands in MARCH 30 southwest England, City of Imphal in German torpedo boats eastern India besieged attack US landing craft. by the Japanese. A total of 749 soldiers and sailors are lost. 236","TIMELINE 1944 \u201c Only with great di\ufb03culty and by using our last reserves have we been able to improvise new fronts, both east and west. The sky over Germany grows very dark.\u201d GERMAN FIELD MARSHAL ERWIN ROMMEL, SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH, AUTUMN 1944 JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER SEPTEMBER 15 DECEMBER 3 US troops reach the British Home Guard Siegfried Line. stood down. DECEMBER 5 US Third Army advances into Germany. JULY 18 Members of the Polish Soviet Yakovlev Yak-3 NOVEMBER 2 DECEMBER 16 Americans take St. L\u00f4, underground army in Warsaw fighter plane Canadians take Germans launch strong gaining room for Zeebrugge\u2014the counter-offensive in maneuver on AUGUST 1 OCTOBER 14 last corner of the Ardennes. Start of the western flank. Warsaw Uprising. Rommel commits occupied Belgium. the Battle of the Bulge. suicide. NOVEMBER 7 JULY 18 AUGUST 3 Roosevelt wins American reinforcements Tojo resigns as Myitkyna (Burma) OCTOBER 16 fourth term. in the Ardennes Japanese prime taken by Allies. Red Army enters minister. German territory NOVEMBER 20 DECEMBER 22 in East Prussia. With Soviet troops Germans deliver JULY 18\u201320 drawing ever closer, surrender ultimatum Operation Goodwood. OCTOBER 20 Hitler evacuates his to American troops Caen falls, ending US landings in the HQ at Rastenburg trapped in Bastogne German resistance Philippines start on the in East Prussia by the advance of over a month. east coast of Leyte. (\u201cthe Wolf\u2019s Lair\u201d) through the Ardennes. and returns to Berlin. JULY 20 AUGUST 15 Allied troops push into the DECEMBER 25 Attempt to assassinate Allies launch Operation Netherlands from Belgium NOVEMBER 23 MacArthur proclaims Hitler with a bomb Dragoon, landings in French troops liberate Leyte secure. concealed in a the South of France. SEPTEMBER 17 the city of Strasbourg. DECEMBER 26 briefcase fails. Operation Market Americans besieged in AUGUST 25 Garden, airborne Bastogne are relieved JULY 22 Liberation of Paris. operation to secure by units from Patton\u2019s Start of Operation bridges in southern Third Army. Bagration, massive Paris liberation parade Holland, including Soviet offensive across on the Champs-Elys\u00e9es one over the Rhine 237 Byelorussia into Poland. at Arnhem. JULY 25 SEPTEMBER 19 Launch of Operation Russia and Finland Cobra, the Allied sign armistice. breakout from Normandy. SEPTEMBER 25 Remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division Japanese kamikaze pilot ordered to withdraw from Arnhem. OCTOBER 23\u201326 Operation Market Naval battle of Leyte Garden ends in failure. Gulf fought over a vast area in the seas around the Philippines. The Japanese suffer heavy losses and make first organized use of kamikaze aircraft.","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 Battles for the Marianas By summer 1944 Admiral Nimitz\u2019s advance across the central Pacific was making good progress. The next targets in his island-hopping campaign were the Marianas, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of the Marshalls. The Japanese, determined to hold on to the islands, devised a plan to thwart the Americans. BEFORE A dmiral Nimitz issued orders for the assault on the Marianas on The Marianas, a string of 15 islands, stretch March 28, 1944. There were to some 425 miles (685 km) in a shallow arc in be two attack forces: a northern force, the Central Paci\ufb01c. The four largest islands, consisting of two US Marine divisions north to south, are Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and coming from Hawaii, would take Saipan Guam. They became the next site of con\ufb02ict. and Tinian; and a southern force, JAPAN\u2019S FRONT LINE with one Marine division, was to land After the fall of the Marshall Islands ff\u0001230\u201331 on Guam, using Guadalcanal in the in February 1944, the Marianas became the Solomons as its mounting base. Two Japanese front line and they reinforced their army divisions would provide the garrisons, mainly with troops from Manchuria. reserve. Saipan was to be attacked \ufb01rst They also deployed some 1,000 aircraft. on June 15, then Guam and Tinian. 31.5 THOUSAND soldiers and Preparations for battle sailors on Saipan by 1944. 9 THOUSAND soldiers and The softening up of the Marianas began sailors on Tinian by 1944. 19 THOUSAND soldiers and as early as February 23, before Nimitz Japanese honor sailors on Guam by 1944. US STRATEGY had received his order to attack. Carrier A dead Japanese soldier on Saipan. The troops were still In the Allied camp, there had been a debate as to whether to seize the Japanese base at Truk aircraft struck at the four southernmost imbued with the belief that to surrender was a disgrace in the Carolines before attacking the Marianas.In mid-February 1944, however, the US launched islands, knocking out 170 aircraft and and so few prisoners were taken in the Marianas. successful attacks against Truk by carrier-borne aircraft. These destroyed 250 Japanese planes and sinking ships, losing just six US planes. sank several ships, e\ufb00ectively neutralizing the base. Therefore, on 12 March, Nimitz was ordered A successful strike was also made Their plan meant that the Japanese to make the Marianas his next objective. against Truk that month. However, would have to repulse any assault on 238 Nimitz was still concerned about the Marianas using the aircraft already Japanese interference from the based there. Unfortunately, by the end Carolines. US planes based in the of May, there were only 170 planes Solomons and Marshalls began to available, thanks to US air attacks. attack the islands in 550 The number of US craft The assault force mid-March, with which took part in the bound for Saipan carrier aircraft started to leave mounting further assault on the Marianas, making it Hawaii on May 26. attacks from the the largest US amphibious operation Two weeks later, end of the month. in the Pacific Ocean at that time. the pre-assault While the battle for Saipan continued, there were dramatic developments at These culminated bombardment sea. When the American ships began their pre-assault bombardment, Admiral in two days\u2019 worth of attacks on Truk began. While carrier aircraft attacked Soemu Toyoda, commander of Japan\u2019s Combined Fleet, ordered his ships into at the end of April, which virtually Japanese air\ufb01elds on the islands, surface the Philippine Sea in order to destroy the US carrier force. US submarines destroyed the Japanese base. ships bombarded Saipan. US frogmen spotted the \ufb02eet and surprise was lost. While these operations were sent in to check the approaches to Grenade discharger A Japanese Model 89 grenade discharger. It had a rifled were under way, Japan was the selected landing beaches, but came barrel of 2 in (50 mm) caliber and could fire a wide variety of projectiles. The Model 89 was fired from the also preparing. Apart from under \ufb01re. The Japanese now kneeling position, giving it the nickname \u201cknee mortar.\u201d sending reinforcements to knew where the landings were On June 19 the Japanese launched four air strikes from their carriers against the Marianas, they hatched those of the Americans. However, these were detected by radar en route and a plan designed to destroy intercepted. Some 219 Japanese planes were shot down. It was no less damaging the US Paci\ufb01c Fleet. They to the Japanese that two of their carriers hoped to lure the US ships to the western Carolines, where they would meet in a decisive battle against the Japanese Combined Fleet; to be, on the west coast, and based between Borneo and adjusted their own positions the Philippines, the Japanese to improve their defense in time for \ufb02eet did not want to operate the attack on Saipan, on June 15. too far from its oil supplies The battle heats up in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). Although the Japanese troops resisted \ufb01ercely, some 20,000 US Marines made Marines on Saipan it ashore, securing the beachhead. Their US troops advance behind a tank during advance inland was slow, however. The mopping-up operations on Saipan. The Japanese fought with tenacity, and the Japanese also had a few tanks, but they landing of a US Army division on June were quickly destroyed by the Allies. 17 made little difference to progress.","BAT TLES FOR TH E MAR IANAS AFTER The capture of the Marianas by the Allies meant that the Japanese were now facing an eventual defeat. NEW THREAT TO JAPAN The outcome was also signi\ufb01cant in that B-29 bombers, which would shortly be deployed to the islands, could now attack the Japanese home islands 314\u201315 gg\u0001with ease. MACARTHUR\u2019S PROGRESS Throughout this time US general Douglas MacArthur had been advancing steadily in the southwest Paci\ufb01c. Having cleared the Solomon Islands, his forces had then dealt with the Japanese in the Bismarck Archipelago, eventually isolating the main Japanese base at Rabaul, on New Britain, rather than attempting a direct attack on it. Simultanueously, there had been a series of landings on the north coast of New Guinea. AMERICA\u2019S NEXT MOVE MacArthur\u2019s drive, and that of Nimitz in the central Paci\ufb01c, were about to join up. MacArthur had his sights set on the Philippines as the next Allied target 240\u201341 gg. were sunk by submarines. The Japanese further 65 planes. The back of Japanese US aircraft strike the Marianas 0T 3E CBHONXO TL OI TGLYE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T commander was convinced that many naval airpower had been broken in what A US Navy Grumman Avenger torpedo-bomber of his missing aircraft had landed on was of\ufb01cially called the Battle of the overflying Tinian during an air strike on the island SEABEES Guam, and remained overnight in Philippine Sea, but known more prior to the landings. the area to recover them on board. popularly by the Americans as the By the time they had been secured, the Consequently, his force was attacked \u201cGreat Marianas Turkey Shoot.\u201d commanders took their own lives on infrastructure on the Paci\ufb01c islands that the following day by US carrier aircraft. July 6. The following day the surviving had been in Japanese hands had been They sank a carrier and shot down a America secures the Marianas Japanese made one last suicide attack destroyed and needed to be repaired. and it was all over. Ninety percent of The task fell to the US Navy\u2019s Construction US and Japanese naval strengths 1941\u201345 Better progress was now being made the Japanese garrison had been killed Battalions, more informally known as Ship-building in the United States outstripped that of on Saipan. Its dominant peak, Mount during the battles, at a cost of some the \u201cSeabees\u201d (from the acronym CB). the Japanese from the very outset, and from 1942 Tapotchu, was captured on June 25 16,500 casualties to the US. Formed after the US entered the war, onward, American production in aircraft carriers grew and, by early July, the island had been their ranks contained men skilled in all with significant speed. almost cleared. With defeat staring them With Saipan secured, the Americans aspects of civil engineering. Landing as in the face, the two senior Japanese now turned to Guam and Tinian. The soon as a beachhead had been secured, naval bombardment started on July 14 they would begin by improving facilities Number of ships 400 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 KEY and the landings took place one week for unloading supplies and equipment. US later. Again, the Americans got ashore Thereafter, the construction of airstrips, successfully, but had to \ufb01ght to enlarge fuel storage tanks, roads, accommodation, 350 Japanese the initial beachhead, and faced savage and hospitals followed. Versatility was counterattacks from the Japanese. their watchword, and they lived up 300 A Aircraft carriers to their motto \u201cWe Build, We Fight.\u201d (fleet and escort) Tinian was assaulted on July 24 and, again, Japanese resistance was bitter, 239 250 B Battleships but the outcome was never in doubt. The island was effectively in American 200 C Cruisers hands by August 1, while the same D Destroyers situation was achieved on Guam nine days later. The Marianas had been 150 S Submarines won, although the \ufb01nal mopping up would take another three months. 100 50 0 ABC DS ABC DS ABC DS ABC DS ABC DS","0VERWHELMING FORCE 1944 BEFORE Return to the Philippines When General MacArthur left a doomed The assault on the Philippines saw the American central and southwest Pacific drives finally join Philippines, in March 1942, he vowed to together. This also marked the last major sea battle in the Pacific Ocean and witnessed the debut the Filipino people that he would return. of a new Japanese weapon\u2014the kamikaze, or suicide, aircraft. A PROMISE KEPT O n October 12, 1944, Admiral warning message. Toyoda realized the In March 1944 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff \u201cBull\u201d Halsey\u2019s Third US Fleet true American target and now began (JCS) laid down that MacArthur was to assault launched air strikes on Formosa to concentrate his \ufb02eet with a view to the southern Philippines and then secure the main island of Luzon, while Admiral Chester and Luzon in preparation for the attacking the US invasion \ufb02eet. The Nimitz tackled Formosa (Taiwan). landings on Leyte. The Japanese plan landings themselves took place on However, severe pressure on China during that summer caused the JCS to consider a direct was for any landings in the inner ring October 20, as planned. The Japanese invasion of Japan. Both MacArthur and Nimitz insisted that the Philippines must be dealt with of islands protecting Japan to be met garrison was largely made up of new \ufb01rst ff\u0001238\u201339. The JCS relented, and so MacArthur drew up his plans. with immediate air and sea strikes. conscripts, and resistance was initially FINALIZING PLANS FOR INVASION Admiral Toyoda, commander of the variable. The next day the US troops MacArthur\u2019s intention had been to invade the southernmost large island, Mindanao, in Combined Fleet, believed that entered the capital of Leyte and the mid-November, landing on Leyte a month later. Given the situation in China, he amended Formosa and Luzon 1 MILLION The Japanese began to his plan, however. Now he would bypass were the main US number \ufb01ght with greater Mindanao, assault Leyte in mid-October, and targets and launched determination. land on Luzon in December. a series of air attacks of Filipinos killed during the war, the Meanwhile, the on the Third Fleet. majority in the final year. A quarter of Combined Fleet These damaged some a million of them fought as guerrillas. was on the move. ships, but at a cost Toyoda\u2019s plan was of around 500 planes to the Japanese. to lure the American carriers northward, The Leyte landings US troops, having just landed on Leyte, take cover from Five days later US Rangers landed on away from Leyte, by offering his four Japanese snipers. Although the landings initially went well, Japanese resistance soon stiffened, producing Suluan Island at the mouth of the Leyte surviving carriers as bait, while the some remarkably bitter fighting. Gulf. They overwhelmed the Japanese remainder of his \ufb02eet, divided in two, garrison, but not before it had sent a would pass through the Philippines MacArthur wades ashore General Douglas MacArthur joins his men as they wade ashore on the opening day of the Leyte landings. The pledge he made to the Filipino people in March 1942\u2014that he would return\u2014had been fulfilled.","RETURN TO THE PHILIPPINES 0 300 km SECOND SOUTHERN FORCE NORTHERN FORCE 9 Oct 25 0 300 miles Battle of Cape Enga\u00f1o. Four KEY Cape Enga\u00f1o Japanese carriers sunk by carrier Movement of Japanese \ufb02eets aircraft. US forces recalled to Movement of US \ufb02eets PHILIPPINE assist in battle o\ufb00 Samar. Major naval action Japanese withdraw Other action Luzon ISLANDS 5 Oct 24\u201325 Three US task groups ordered north to engage main Japanese carrier force Lingayen N Task Group 38.3 PACIFIC OCEAN South Manila 4 Oct 24\u201325 China San Bernardino Strait 8 Oct 25 Kurita\u2019s ships pass Sea Task Group 38.2 through San Attack on US escort carrier force Bernardino Strait protecting troop landings. After 3 Oct 24 Mindoro undetected brief action, Kurita sails back through San Bernardino Strait. Battleship Musashi Sibuyan Samar 3RD FLEET Land-based kamikaze attacks Kamikaze pilot sunk by planes from Sea sink escort carrier St L\u00f4 A Japanese pilot prepares for his kamikaze mission, tying Task Group 38.4 on his Rising Sun headband prior to departure. To die for Task Group 38.2 one\u2019s country and the emperor was the ultimate glory for the Japanese warrior. CENTRE FORCE Panay Gulf of Leyte Leyte secured on December 25, but only after landings had been made on its 2 Oct 23 Palawan Surigao 1 Oct 20 1944 northwest coast. MacArthur could now Strait focus on Luzon, having made an initial US submarines sink US troop landings in landing on the island of Mindoro in two cruisers and Sulu Sea Leyte Gulf mid-December. The initial assault was damage another made in Lingayen Bay, on the west coast, on January 9, 1945. No SOUTHERN FORCE Mindanao 7TH FLEET opposition was met and the landing force began to advance toward Manila. Brunei 7 Oct 25 Celebes 6 Oct 24\u201325 Three weeks later, there were further Bay Sea landings at the base of the Bataan Second Japanese force Battle of Surigao Strait. Peninsula and then at the entrance of withdraws without Japanese force shattered Manila Bay, but more prolonged by US (and Australian) \ufb01ghting lay ahead. entering Surigao Strait cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats Borneo north and south of Leyte, destroying Battle of Leyte Gulf the shipping supporting the landings, Japan\u2019s main striking force came from the Combined thereby isolating the troops on shore. Fleet\u2019s base off the island of Borneo, but was reinforced Initially, Toyoda\u2019s plan was successful, by ships from Japan itself. The fleet\u2019s Northern Force and Admiral Halsey was drawn north. represented the US carrier bait. Japanese plans foiled Japanese carriers, immediately turned AFTER about, leaving his own carriers to deal However, on October 23, US submarines with the Japanese ones. Fearing that it It would take the remainder of the war to intercepted the main strike force, sank was about to be cut off, the Northern subdue the Philippines. Under Tomoyuki two cruisers, and crippled a third. Halsey Force hastily withdrew. Toyoda\u2019s four Yamashita, conqueror of Singapore and turned south again. The following day remaining carriers were all sunk. Malaya, the Japanese fought ferociously. his aircraft engaged the Japanese \ufb02eet\u2019s Center Force between the islands of Japan\u2019s new weapon CONTINUED FIGHTING Mindoro and Luzon, sinking a battleship Nowhere was this more true than on the streets and crippling a heavy cruiser, although Leyte Gulf was the last \ufb02eet-versus- of Manila. It took two weeks of intense struggle Halsey lost one of his carriers to an \ufb02eet action in the Paci\ufb01c. The Japanese before it was \ufb01nally secured, in early March 1945. attack by planes based on Luzon. Combined Fleet had been left with no By then the city was in almost total ruin and, carriers and was in no position to worse, some 100,000 of its inhabitants had Admiral Kinkaid\u2019s Seventh US Fleet, challenge the US Navy any further. But been killed, many of them victims of Japanese which had been protecting the shipping there had been one disturbing feature atrocities. Thereafter, the \ufb01ghting moved to the in Leyte Gulf, engaged the Southern of the battle. The Japanese unveiled a rugged hinterland. The smaller Philippine islands Force and virtually destroyed it. This, new weapon\u2014aircraft packed with also had to be liberated. however, left the amphibious shipping explosives and designed to sink Allied vulnerable, and the Center Force, ships by diving onto their decks. The CLOSING IN ON JAPAN undeterred by Halsey\u2019s initial attack, \ufb01rst kamikaze victim was the US escort By March 1945 the campaign in the Philippines quickly sank an American escort carrier carrier St L\u00f4, which was sunk off Samar had become a sideshow, as had the eradication and three destroyers. Halsey, who had on October 25. On land, Leyte was of the remaining Japanese forces in New Guinea. turned north once more to deal with the The baton was handed to Admiral Nimitz, who was given the task of dealing with the last two \u201c If only we might fall\u2014like cherry stepping stones to the Japanese mainland\u2014 blossoms in the spring\u2014so pure Iwo Jima and Okinawa 310\u201313 gg. and radiant!\u201d FROM A POEM BY AN UNKNOWN KAMIKAZE PILOT 241","EYEWITNESS October 20, 1944 Landing in the Philippines On October 20, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur, with General Kruger\u2019s Sixth Army, landed on Leyte Island, so fulfilling his promise to return to the Philippines. It was an historic event. The invading US fleet was the largest assembled in the Pacific. More than 200,000 troops were put ashore, as well as supplies and equipment. Initially the invading forces met minimal resistance but on October 23 the Japanese launched a full-scale naval attack. \u201c\u2026 The Nashville, her engines bringing to life the steel under our feet, knifed into Leyte Gulf \u2026 the blackness had given way to somber gray, and even as we saw the black outline of the shore \u2026 the cloak of darkness began to roll back. On every side ships were riding toward the island \u2026 I was on the bridge with Captain C.E. Coney. His clear, keen eyes and cool, crisp voice swung the cruiser first to port, then to starboard as he dodged floating mines \u2026 then, just as the sun rose clear of the horizon, there was Tacloban [the capital of Leyte Island] \u2026 Shortly after \u2026 we reached our appointed position offshore. The captain carefully hove into line and dropped anchor. Our initial vantage point was 2 miles [3km] from the beaches, but I could clearly see the sandstrips with the pounding surf \u2026 and the jungle-clad hills rising behind the town \u2026 Across what would ordinarily have been a glinting, untroubled blue sea, the black dots of the landing craft churned toward the beaches. From my vantage point, I had a clear view of everything that took place. Troops were going ashore at \u2018Red Beach\u2019 near Palo, at San Jose on \u2018White Beach\u2019, and at the southern tip of Leyte on tiny Panson Island \u2026 At \u2018Red Beach\u2019 our troops secured a landing and began moving inland. I decided to go in with the third assault wave \u2026 I took them [President Osmena, General Valdez and General Romulo] into my landing barge and we started for the beach \u2026 As we came closer, we could pick up the shouts of our soldiers as they gave and acknowledged orders\u2026 The coxwain dropped the ramp \u2026 and we waded in. It took me only 30 or 40 long strides to reach dry land, but that was one \u201dof the most meaningful walks I ever took \u2026 GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, LANDING ON LEYTE ISLAND, PHILIPPINES A mighty force Massive landing craft carry American troops and supplies toward the beach at Leyte Island. The invading force consisted of more than 730 transports and escorts, supported by aircraft carriers and 100 warships. 242","","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 AMERICAN GENERAL Born 1880 Died 1964 Douglas MacArthur \u201c I said, to the people of the Philippines whence I came, I shall return\u201d MACARTHUR AFTER HIS ARRIVAL IN AUSTRALIA, MARCH 30, 1942 A \ufb02amboyant and MacArthur\u2019s reputation controversial suffered a blow in 1932 \ufb01gure, Douglas when he used force MacArthur was one against a protest by war of the best-known veterans in Washington. American generals Three years later he went of World War II. He to the Philippines on the commanded Allied invitation of President forces in the Southwest Manuel Quezon to act Paci\ufb01c theater and as military adviser and administered Japan create a defense force during its postwar in the islands. One of occupation by the US. his aides was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Military heritage MacArthur retired MacArthur was born into Popular hero from active service the army. He once said In 1941, following the high drama but soon came that his \ufb01rst memory was of MacArthur\u2019s stand on the Bataan back into action the sound of bugles, and Peninsula, Time magazine featured in July 1941 his early years were spent the general as their \u201cman of the year.\u201d when with his father, General President Arthur MacArthur. Having graduated Roosevelt appointed him top of the class at West Point, he was commander of the US commissioned to the US Army Corps forces in the Far East. of Engineers. He served his \ufb01rst tour MacArthur focused of duty in the Philippines, marking a on building up forces long association with the islands. in the Philippines, Subsequently, he served as an aide to although he had US president, Theodore Roosevelt, and limited resources. during World War I he was chief-of- staff of the 42nd (\u201cRainbow\u201d) Division Defense of Bataan in France. By 1925 he had been made On December 7, 1941, a major-general and in 1930 he was Japanese forces struck at appointed US army chief-of-staff, the Pearl Harbor. It was clear the youngest man at that time to hold Philippines would be next in such a prestigious position. line. There has been some debate about why MacArthur did not take what seemed to be appropriate action. In the event, when the Japanese attacked the Philippines, half of his air force was wiped out. Fortress headquarters MacArthur set up headquarters in a tunnel complex on Corregidor during the siege of the island. His withdrawal was well executed but he was unable to defend the island indefinitely. 244","DOUGLAS MACARTHUR Leader of the Pacific campaigns attack the Japanese through the islands TIMELINE Between the Allied retreat from Bataan in 1942 and the of the central Paci\ufb01c; MacArthur was triumphant return to the Philippines in 1944, MacArthur determined to liberate the Philippines. O\u0001 January 26, 1880 Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of army officer, Arthur MacArthur. commanded other campaigns throughout the Pacific, The joint chiefs-of-staff adopted what including the Battle of Los Negros in February 1944. was known as Operation Cartwheel, a O\u0001 1903 Graduates first in his class from West Point Military Academy. two-pronged strategy aimed at isolating On December 22 Japanese forces took the major Japanese base at Rabaul. O\u0001 1904 Promoted to first lieutenant in US Army Corps of Engineers and joins his father who is Manila. Always one to act on his own While Nimitz advanced through the serving in the Philippines. initiative, MacArthur, against the Solomon Islands, MacArthur advanced wishes of Washington, withdrew his along the northeast coast of New O\u0001 1906\u201307 Serves as aide-de-camp to President Theodore Roosevelt. forces\u2014and his personal press pool\u2014 Guinea, using an \u201cisland-hopping\u201d to the Bataan peninsula, setting up his or \u201cleaping\u201d strategy, bypassing main O\u0001 1914 Assigned to the War Department, serves on the Vera Cruz Expedition, Mexico. headquarters on the island fortress of centers of Japanese force, leaving them Corregidor. From there he conducted to \u201cwither on the vine,\u201d as he put it. a highly publicized defense against the O\u0001 1917\u201318 Now a colonel, commands the 84th infantry brigade during the First World War. Japanese that made him a national Return to the Philippines Decorated 13 times and cited for bravery. hero. However, supplies were low and By late 1944 MacArthur was ready to the defense had very little hope of invade the Philippines. Neither Nimitz O\u0001 1919 Becomes superintendant success. Roosevelt ordered MacArthur nor Washington approved, but as the of West Point. to leave Bataan, which initially he idol of America, MacArthur was in a refused to do. Taking into consideration strong position and he was given the O\u0001 1922 Marries MacArthur\u2019s popularity, which enabled go-ahead. On October 19, 1944, in socialite Louise him to have a powerful in\ufb02uence on the full glare of publicity, MacArthur Cromwell military strategy, Roosevelt promised landed with his forces at Leyte Gulf, Brooks. She MACARTHUR\u2019S \u201cFOUR STAR\u201d divorces him PLATE, A SYMBOL OF HIS RANK him his own theater of operations in and over the following months, often the Paci\ufb01c. In March 1942 against Washington\u2019s wishes, went on in 1929 on the to fully liberate the Philippines. grounds that he did not support her. Recapturing the islands took \u201c Our forces stand once longer than planned, but in 1945 O\u0001 1922\u201330 Serves in the Philippines. Promoted to major-general in 1925, aged 45. again on Philippine soil\u201d MacArthur was present when O\u0001 1930 Appointed chief-of-staff of the US Army. the Allies \ufb01nally took Manila. He was the youngest man to hold that rank in MacArthur presided over the the US Army at that time. MACARTHUR ON LANDING AT LEYTE ISLAND, OCTOBER 19, 1944 Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay O\u0001 1932 Controversially uses force against the \u201cBonus Army,\u201d most of whom are army veterans. on September 2, 1945. After the MacArthur was eventually ordered to war he oversaw the Allied occupation of O\u0001 1935 Sent by President Roosevelt to the Philippines to organize a defense force. escape by sea; his men, however, stayed Japan, with responsibility for restoring on Bataan. They \ufb01nally surrendered to the economy and the demobilization O\u0001 1937 Marries Jean Faircloth. The couple have one child, Arthur, born in Manila. Remains in the Japanese in April 1942 and many of the military. In 1950 he was put the Philippines as military adviser. died on the Bataan \u201cDeath March.\u201d in command of UN forces when the Korean War broke out but\u2014after he Island-hopping in the Pacific was publicly critical of US President O\u0001 June 1941 Recalled to active duty in World War II as a major-general and mobilizes the Philippine Once in Australia, MacArthur famously Truman\u2019s wish for a limited war\u2014was Army. Deploys troops to protect the islands of Luzon and Mindanao. announced that he would return to the relieved of his command. Thereafter he Philippines one day\u2014and over the next lived a fairly secluded life in New York two years that is what he worked until his death on April 5, 1964. O\u0001 April 1 1942 Awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership in defense of the Philippines. toward. He was appointed Supreme Commander of the Southwest Paci\ufb01c Commander of the Allied Powers O\u0001 December 1941 Criticized for not moving his air force to Hawaii before the Japanese invade theater, working in conjunction with General MacArthur accepts the formal surrender of the Philippines. Following the invasion, orders a retreat back to the Bataan peninsula. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander- Japan aboard the USS Missouri. He went on to play a in-chief of the US Navy. The two men major role in the reconstruction of Japan after the war rarely saw eye to eye. Nimitz wanted to as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan. O\u0001 1942 Leaves Bataan for Australia. Appointed Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area. Makes use of \u201cisland-hopping\u201d tactics. O\u0001 October 1944 Lands at Leyte Island to begin the recapture of the Philippines. O\u0001 January\u2013March 1945 Allied troops land on Luzon. MacArthur and his men cross the Central Plain and take Manila. O\u0001 September 2, 1945 Receives Japanese surrender at Tokyo Bay. O\u0001 1945\u201351 As Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), heads the Allied occupation of Japan. Organizes the war crimes tribunal. General MacArthur O\u0001 1950\u201351 Serves as commander of the UN Famous for smoking a corn cob pipe forces in the Korean War. Opposes President that he designed himself, MacArthur Truman\u2019s policy and is removed from office. was criticized for self publicity and disregard of authority but praised for O\u0001 April 5, 1964 Dies of an auto-immune disease his bold, imaginative military strategy. in the Water Reed Hospital, Washington. 245","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 BEFORE Su\ufb00ering China China had been at war with Japan since China came under increased pressure as the Japanese launched a series of offensives. Chiang 1937, but it was not until the end of 1938 Kai-shek\u2019s troops proved incapable of holding them and the Americans were forced to remove that the West gave China any help, when their strategic bombers, which had begun attacking the Japanese mainland. the US loaned it money to buy arms. AMERICAN AID I nitially, American aid had come to Chiang himself welcomed the aid he weakened by the Japanese. As it was, The Americans increased their aid in early China via Burma but, by May 1942, was receiving, but continued to believe although some six million men strong, 1941, when China, with Britain, became the \ufb01rst Japan had overrun Burma, cutting that he would last longer than the the Chinese Army remained relatively recipient of Lend Lease ff\u000196\u201397. Later that off the Allied supply route. Henceforth, Japanese and that their troops would poorly equipped and trained. Endemic year, a group of volunteer US airmen under the only way that the aid could reach eventually withdraw to face the growing corruption and growing in\ufb02ation\u2014both Colonel Claire Chennault were sent to China the Chinese was by air from India. American threat in the Paci\ufb01c. Besides, of which were rife in the region of China with their Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk \ufb01ghters. Known his ultimate enemy continued to be Mao controlled by the Kuomintang\u2014also as the Flying Tigers, the group soon began to In February 1942 President Roosevelt Zedong and the Communists. contributed to the army\u2019s plight. make quite an impression on the Japanese. had appointed General Joseph Stilwell to head a US military mission to China. \u201c The advance of our forces across the CURTISS P-40 TOMAHAWK FIGHTERS He had much experience of the country, Paci\ufb01c is swift. But this advance will be and was charged with improving the too late for China unless you act The Japanese 1944 offensive ef\ufb01ciency of Chiang\u2019s forces and now and vigorously.\u201d A small group of Japanese officers observe Chinese overseeing the delivery of Lend-Lease positions from their hilltop vantage point and plan material to them. Now, he took over ROOSEVELT TO CHIANG KAI-SHEK, SEPTEMBER 1944 their next attack. The poorly led Chinese troops were command of a Chinese force that had no match for the Japanese forces. been sent to help the British stem the Japanese invasion of Burma and led his men, on foot, into India. Chiang Kai-shek\u2019s strategy While the Communists had joined forces It suited Chiang\u2019s strategy that the with him to \ufb01ght the Japanese, Chiang Communists were not bene\ufb01ciaries of While General Stilwell was responsible was determined to crush them once the the Lend-Lease scheme, even though for the re-equipment and training of the Japanese had gone. Much to Stilwell\u2019s they were suffering Japanese pressure Chinese troops, he continued to advise growing frustration, therefore, Chiang in those areas of the country that they and cajole Chiang Kai-shek, who was was more concerned with preserving his controlled in the northeast, but were in Chungking, in an attempt to persuade forces for this purpose than in running being more active than the Nationalists. the leader to take more positive action the risk of them being further severely The Communists\u2019 situation was not against the invading Japanese troops.","SUFFERING CHINA AFTER Chennault\u2019s airfields Stilwell\u2019s fears were con\ufb01rmed when in homeland in June. By now, Japanese In fall 1944 Roosevelt decided that China Numerous airfields were built in southeast China, under must now be considered a separate instruction from Colonel (later General) Chennault. Plant April 1944 the Japanese launched a troops had forced the evacuation of the theatre of war from India and Burma. for such an undertaking was short and most of the airfields were built by hand using local peasantry. major offensive, using some 600,000 US air\ufb01elds in southern China. Chiang STILWELL\u2019S LEGACY Roosevelt relieved Stilwell, whose relations helped by the fact that aid coming troops. Their aim was to capture the now demanded the return of the with Chiang Kai-shek had reached their nadir, from the Soviet Union had dried up, and engaged General Albert Wedermeyer in because of the non-aggression pact it Allied air\ufb01elds in southeast China and divisions that Stilwell was using in his place. However, Stilwell did prove that the had signed with Japan in April 1941. Chinese soldier could \ufb01ght. The troops that to establish a land supply route northern Burma to open the new land he had trained in India were now advancing Japan on the offensive through northern Burma, building a new running from route from India to Ledo Road 248\u201349 gg\u0001as they went. Stilwell also clashed with Chennault, whose Flying Tigers were incorporated Indochina to 650,000 The tonnage of China. At the same US BOMBERS RETURN TO FIGHT into the US Army Air Force in 1942, and Korea, in order to As for the US bombers that had been forced to who had become commander of the US supplies flown from time, he resisted evacuate China, the capture of the Marianas 14th Air Force in China the following in August 1944 enabled the aircraft to be year. Stilwell was convinced that the offset the grievous India to China from July 1942. Many planes requests from redeployed, and they could now begin Chinese soldier\u2014with proper training, bombing Japan in earnest 314\u201315 gg. equipment, and leadership\u2014was as losses in Japanese were lost en route owing to the hazardous President Roosevelt good as any in the world. He worked FATE OF CHIANG KAI-SHEK hard both to prepare his Chinese troops merchant shipping flying conditions over a range of to place all ground Chiang Kai-shek himself was to turn on the in India, and within China itself, to equip Communists again, after the Japanese had and train 30 divisions, in accordance to US submarines. mountains nicknamed \u201cthe hump.\u201d forces, including surrendered, but the outcome would be with his brief from Washington. disastrous for him 346\u201347 gg. Hunan province those of the Chennault, on the other hand, was US GENERAL (1883\u20131946) a \ufb01rm believer in the omnipotence of was quickly taken, and the advance Communists, in Stilwell\u2019s hands. air power. He argued that this could GENERAL JOSEPH STILWELL severely damage the Japanese forces in headed southward. Chennault\u2019s planes Meanwhile, the Communists \ufb01ghting China and wreak havoc on the supply \u201cVinegar Joe\u201d Stilwell served three tours lines from resources-rich Southeast did their best to delay the onrush, but in the northeast of the country had in China between the two world wars, and Asia to the Japanese homeland. To this was the US military attach\u00e9 there during end he organized the construction of the Chinese troops on the ground gained from the Japanese offensive, the \ufb01rst phase of the Sino-Japanese War. numerous air\ufb01elds in southeast China At the time of Pearl Harbor, he was a corps during 1942 and 1943, and demanded offered little resistance to the attack. since it took much of the pressure off commander, and was posted to China in that the bulk of the Lend-Lease supplies early 1942. His \ufb01rst task was to stem the be given to him. Chennault\u2019s strategy While this was happening in China, them, and enabled them to reorganize Japanese advance into Burma; he also suited Chiang Kai-shek, since it would acted as Chiang\u2019s chief-of-sta\ufb00. He enable him to preserve his army, but the US began to deploy their massive their forces. The poor efforts of the became deputy to Lord Mountbatten, in Stilwell thought it would merely lead 1943, after which time his Chinese to the Japanese attacking the air\ufb01elds. B-29 Superfortresses, and these made Nationalist troops resulted in growing troops, with US Special Forces, began building the Ledo Road in northern Burma. Chinese evacuation their \ufb01rst attack on the Japanese disillusionment with the Kuomintang His relations with both the Chinese and The war was a cause of constant upheaval in China. British were di\ufb03cult and he was recalled By late June 1944, families were fleeing their homes and increased support for Mao Zedong, in 1944. But he was too good to leave in large numbers, many of them evacuating by train unemployed, and he commanded the in the face of the Japanese advance. whose troops had always fought much US Tenth Army during the Okinawa operations. He died of cancer in 1946. more actively\u2014something that the US 247 was slow to recognize. Mixed fortunes By the end of 1944, the Japanese had achieved their aims, and now had a continuous land corridor running from the southern tip of Malaya up through Indochina and China to Manchukuo. In stark contrast to the reverses that the Japanese forces were suffering on other fronts, the offensive in China had been an overwhelming success. On the other hand, the disappointing performance by Chiang\u2019s forces during the Japanese offensive convinced the Western Allies that the Chinese were no longer in a position to take a decisive part in the defeat of Japan. From now on, therefore, China was merely seen as a means of tying down one million of the Japanese troops.","OVERWHELMING FORCE 1944 Turning Point in Burma The year 1944 witnessed a major change of fortune in Burma. In March, the Japanese launched JAPANESE CANE KNIFE a major offensive designed to take them into India. It was repulsed after bitter fighting and the British 14th Army began a counter-offensive that would prove decisive. L ord Louis Mountbatten became BRITISH 2-IN MORTAR supreme Allied commander of ILLUMINATING BOMB the Southeast Asia Command in October 1943. He brought fresh as in the past, the British stood their continued, with the British gradually Jungle equipment purpose, while the British 14th Army, The 2-inch mortar was a British infantry weapon and under General Bill Slim, had been ground and fought. Some elements forcing the Japanese back. Meanwhile, could fire flares in the event of a night attack. All troops undergoing rigorous training in jungle had machetes or similar tools to hack through the jungle warfare. Mountbatten wanted to use were surrounded and were resupplied the Chindits had been advancing or use for close combat. Fighting knives like the kukri amphibious operations to weaken were sometimes the only arms used by Gurkhas. the Japanese hold on Burma, but the by air until they could be relieved and, north to link up with Stilwell, \ufb01ghting priority of shipping lay with Europe Slim\u2019s men following, to the and the Paci\ufb01c, and there was virtually after three weeks, the Japanese forces some \ufb01erce actions as they did so. Chindwin River. Three none to spare for Burma. weeks later Stilwell \ufb01nally halted their attacks. Stilwell, too, was making good progress secured Myitkyina, but by then Even so, the British had begun to the monsoon season had arrived, advance again into the Arakan, Burma\u2019s In the meantime, the \ufb01rst Chindit and, on May 11, Merrill\u2019s Marauders, calling a halt to operations. coastal region. Also, in north Burma, Now forced onto the defensive, the General Joseph Stilwell and his Chinese brigade had set off on foot and two the US Chindit equivalent, took Japanese drew up fresh plans. In the troops had begun their advance from north they intended to prevent the Ledo, building a road as they went, more were \ufb02own into rough landing Myitkyina air\ufb01eld, although the link-up of the Ledo Road with the to link up with the old Burma Road at original Burma Road. In the center they Lashio. Mountbatten therefore agreed to strips behind the 60 The percentage of Japanese Japanese in the planned to hold the British 14th Army mount a second Chindit expedition to Japanese lines in troops in Burma that died town proved too on the Irrawaddy River, as well as tie down Japanese forces in the north early March. The during the campaign. The strong for them. stemming any advance west of the and thus assist Stilwell\u2019s advance. main Japanese equivalent figure for the Simultaneously, Irrawaddy to Rangoon. offensive opened forces from China While the advances in northern Burma Japan on the offensive continued, Slim began his offensive in on the night of Allies was some 10 percent, including began to advance early December with crossings of the The Japanese also had plans. They were Chindwin. Desperately short of supplies to attempt an invasion of India in the March 7\/8. those who perished as prisoners of war. down the old expectation that the Indians themselves Supplies dropped by parachute would then rise against their colonial General Bill Slim Burma Road. Supplies are parachuted from a Douglas C-47 of the master. The main attack would be made Tenth US Army Air Force on the 10 December 1944. The in central Burma, but they would also had expected an attack, but not so Mogaung was captured by the C-47 was the workhorse of Allied air transport, and the mount a diversionary attack in the war in Burma could scarcely have been won without it. Arakan. This opened on February 6, early. His forces withdrew toward his Chindits at the end of June, 1944. However, instead of withdrawing main forward supply base at Imphal. but having spent months BEFORE Here, they resisted a succession of behind Japanese lines, the In spring 1942 the British had been driven out of Burma and there was a general belief Japanese attacks. North of Imphal a men were by now at their that the Japanese had proved themselves to be superior jungle \ufb01ghters. crucial battle now developed at Kohima, last gasp. BRITISH UNEASE the small hill village that guarded the Adding to Britain\u2019s problems was a growing independence movement in India and a severe road to Dinapur, the main railhead for Japan on the defensive famine in Bengal ff\u0001160\u201361. At the end of 1942 the British launched an assault in the supplies. The \ufb01ghting, much of which The Japanese were also exhausted Arakan, Burma\u2019s coastal region, but it stalled. In February 1943, however, a brigade-sized force was at close quarters, continued for and had virtually run out of supplies. in\ufb01ltrated Japanese lines and spent two months harassing Japanese communications. This concept two weeks until the British garrison Hence, on July 11, they called off their of long-range penetration by Orde Wingate and his Chindits (see opposite) had little could be relieved. The battle then offensive and began to withdraw, with strategic value, but did demonstrate that the British and Indian troops could \ufb01ght in the jungle just as well as the Japanese. 248"]
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