Black J. World War Two A Military History
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campaign they matched this operationally. However, the fundamentals
necessary for success were lacking. North Africa was peripheral to the
main area of German commitment, whereas it had far greater impor-
tance for Britain, and the American adoption of the ‘Germany First’
policy led to the Torch operation. In North Africa, British Empire
forces were able to make a major contribution. Although this was
lessened by the impact of Japanese entry into the war, Britain’s impe-
rial position, and the success of overcoming Axis, pro-Axis and
potentially pro-Axis forces in Italian East Africa, Syria, Iraq, Persia and
Madagascar, gave the British strategic depth.This ensured a favourable
supply situation, with the flow of matériel from the Indian Ocean as
well as, for aircraft, from West Africa via French Equatorial Africa and
Sudan. Aside from an ability to direct resources to the region, the
British benefited from a superior infrastructure in moving them
when there: the Germans were faced with limited capacity in the
Libyan ports and poor overland routes thereafter. The British, in
contrast, especially when on the defensive, and therefore able to use
shorter routes, benefited from a better transport infrastructure.
Western Europe
Allied forces made no lasting impact on German positions in
Western Europe in 1942, although the threat of invasion was
emphasised by commando attacks, by the successful combined-
services attack on the dry dock at St Nazaire on 28 March and by
the raid on Dieppe on 19 August.The latter assault on a well-forti-
fied position led to heavy Allied, mainly Canadian, casualties, to
accurate machine-gun, artillery and mortar fire, and underlined the
problems of amphibious landings. It also showed that attacking a
port destroyed it; hence the need to bring port facilities with the
invasion in 1944. In the Dieppe raid, the RAF lost 106 planes to
the Luftwaffe’s 48, indicating a serious problem that had to be over-
come were an invasion to be mounted. It was also clear that an
invasion would require more intelligence and a greater prior
bombardment from air and sea. The Dieppe raid lacked the latter
because the RAF was committed to the bombing campaign on
Germany, and, in addition, it had been hoped to benefit from the
element of surprise.
ATTACKS HELD, 1942
124
The Germans used a large amount of resources preparing to resist
attack. Indeed, there were more German troops and their allies
defending Western Europe in late 1942 than there were British
forces in Britain. This was an important Western contribution,
although far less than that of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the
Germans kept few élite units in Western Europe.
On 11 November 1942, in response to Operation Torch, the
Germans occupied Vichy France, with Italian support.There was no
resistance.Vichy’s most strategically important capability, the warships
in Toulon, were scuttled by the French on 27 November as the
Germans pushed into the naval base, which had remained outside
their control by prior agreement: 3 battleships, 7 cruisers, 32
destroyers and 16 submarines were among the warships scuttled.
Most of Vichy France became a German-occupied zone, although
the Italian-occupied zone was greatly expanded.
In order to make a direct impact on the Germans in Western
Europe, the Allies stepped up their bombing of Germany and occu-
pied Europe. Lübeck, many of whose buildings were wooden, was
badly damaged in a firestorm on 28 March 1942. On the night of 30
May, the British launched over 1,000 bombers at Cologne. Although
the raid did not achieve all its objectives, in terms of destruction of
industry and morale, it indicated the ability of the Allies to make a
major attack on a German city, and was seen as a way to persuade
the British public that the Germans could be hit hard. However, for
attacks to be sustained, it would be necessary to have a major build-
up in air power, in terms of not only the number of planes but also
their quality.As a sign of what was to come, most of the casualties in
Cologne were civilian. The British air force was supplemented by
the Americans from July 1942. The Cologne attack was an excep-
tion. Most of the raids were fairly small scale, but they were
important to the development of an effective ground-support system
to support a bombing offensive, as well as in the gaining of opera-
tional experience.The Germans, in turn, continued to bomb British
cities, especially in the Baedeker raids.
Meanwhile, the Nazis had expanded their war on the Jews. The
Wannsee meeting of 20 January 1942 determined to give force to
what was intended as a ‘Final Solution’, in which all European Jews,
including those not hitherto under German control, were to be
ATTACKS HELD, 1942
125
deported to death camps and slaughtered. A series of camps were
opened including Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec in Poland, Maly
Trostinets near Minsk, and Jungerhof near Riga, while the camp at
Auschwitz near Cracow in Poland was extended and was to be the
site where the largest number of Jews were killed.
21
Aside from Jews,
large numbers of gypsies were also killed in the death camps,
22
as
were others deemed unacceptable.
1942 reviewed
On the respective fronts, Midway, Stalingrad and El Alamein were
clear turning points in the flow of the war, although it had been the
German failure before Moscow in December 1941 that had been
the real turning point in the war on the Eastern Front. The state-
ment that German failure at Stalingrad marked ‘the final conclusion
of a process of diminishing options of victory in the east’
23
is more
generally applicable to defeats on other Axis fronts.
In April and July 1942, George Marshall, the American Chief of
Staff, had pressed for an invasion of France that year. The success of
Operation Torch cannot conceal the risks of such a scheme, not least
in terms of Atlantic and Channel weather, lack of shipping, and
German opposition, including U-boats in the Atlantic. There was
still a need to win the Battle of the Atlantic and to gain air domi-
nance, as well as to plan operations and train, equip and move forces.
There was also the need to confront an ever more zealous oppo-
nent. The difficulties that faced the Germans before the Soviet
counterattack led a furious Hitler to sack General Franz Halder, the
Chief of the Army’s General Staff, on 9 September 1942, and this
was followed by a transformation of much of the officer corps as
established ways of appointing and promoting officers, including
notions of class and honour, and staff-officer training, were replaced
by an emphasis on ideology and fighting fervour: ‘Führer-selection
through battle.’
24
Churchill announced on 10 November 1942 that recent successes
signified not ‘the beginning of the end’, but ‘the end of the begin-
ning’.The Allies could now move over to the offensive, not as a series
of counterattacks, but as part of a planned attempt to undo Axis
conquests and then to take the war to the Axis states themselves.
ATTACKS HELD, 1942
126
NOTES
1 B.A. Millot, The Battle of Coral Sea (1974); J.B. Lundstrom, The First
South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941–June 1942
(Annapolis, 1976); D.A. Thomas, Japan’s War at Sea: Pearl Harbor to the
Coral Sea (1978).
2 R. Paull, Retreat from Kokoda (1958); P. Brune, Those Ragged Bloody
Heroes: From the Kokoda Trail to Gona Beach, 1942 (Sydney, 1991).
3 I. Hata and Y. Izawa, Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units in World War II
(Annapolis, 1989); J.B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air
Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, 1984).
4 H.P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific
Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, Maryland, 1983).
5 T.A. Wray, Standing Fast: German Defensive Doctrine on the Eastern Front
During World War II: Prewar to March 1943 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
1987).
6 L. Goure, The Siege of Leningrad (Stanford, California, 1962).
7 D.M. Glantz, Kharkov 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster Through Soviet
Eyes (Rockville, New York, 1998).
8 J.S.A. Hayward, Stopped at Stalingrad:The Luftwaffe and Hitler’s Defeat in
the East, 1942–1943 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1998).
9 G. Jukes, Stalingrad:The Turning Point (1968); L. Rotundo (ed.), Battle for
Stalingrad: The 1943 Soviet General Staff Study (1989); A. Beevor,
Stalingrad (1998).
10 On whom, see W. Goerlitz, Paulus and Stalingrad (1963).
11 D.M. Glantz, Zhukov’s Greatest Disaster: The Red Army’s Epic Disaster in
Operation Mars, 1942 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1999), pp. 319–20.
12 J.W. Baird, ‘The Myth of Stalingrad’, Journal of Contemporary History,4
(1969), pp. 187–204.
13 S.W. Mitcham, Rommel’s Greatest Victory: The Desert Fox and the Fall of
Tobruk, 1942 (Novato, California, 1998).
14 C. Barnett, The Desert Generals (1960); R. Parkinson, The Auk:
Auchinleck, Victor at Alamein (St Albans, 1977); J. Strawson, El Alamein:
Desert Victory (1981).
15 M. Carver, Dilemmas of the Desert War (1986).
16 A.J. Levine, The War Against Rommel’s Supply Lines, 1942–1943
(Westport, Connecticut, 1999).
17 S.W. Mitcham, Rommel’s Desert War:The Life and Death of the Afrika Korps
(New York, 1992).
18 M. Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War (1968); K.
Sainsbury, The North African Landings 1942:A Strategic Decision (1976).
19 A.L. Funk, The Politics of Torch:The Allied Landings and the Algiers Putsch,
1942 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1974).
20 G.F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (Washington,
1957).
21 O. Bartov, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and
Representation (Oxford, 1996).
ATTACKS HELD, 1942
127
22 B. Alt and S. Folts, Weeping Violins: The Gypsy Tragedy in Europe
(Kirksville, Missouri, 1996); K. Fings, H. Heuss and F. Sparing, From
‘Race Science’ to the Camps. The Gypsies during the Second World War
(Hatfield, 1997).
23 B. Wegner, ‘The Historical Topos of the Second Campaign against the
Soviet Union’, in H. Boog et al., Germany and the Second World War. VI.
The Global War.Widening of the Conflict into a World War and the Shift of the
Initiative 1941–1943 (Oxford, 2001), p. 1,214.
24 M. Knox,‘1 October 1942:Adolf Hitler,Wehrmacht Officer Policy, and
Social Revolution’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), esp. pp. 821–3.
ATTACKS HELD, 1942
128
By 1943, the war had taken on the character of attrition, on land,
at sea and in the air. The high tempo of campaigning used up
troops and material, but the availability of massive resources
enabled the Allies to attack on a number of fronts at once, and to
return to the attack despite casualties and wear and tear.The Allies
also benefited from the extent to which the Germans had used up
important military assets during their ambitious offensives in
Russia and North Africa in 1942, while the Japanese had done the
same at Midway.
Allied insistence on an unconditional surrender, a policy
announced by Roosevelt at the press conference after the Casablanca
conference of 14–24 January 1943, and the fanatical nature of
Hitler’s regime combined to ensure that it would be a fight to the
finish, and thus contributed to the prolongation of the war.
Unconditional surrender was a response to the character of the Nazi
regime. It also underlined the flawed political analysis of the German
military leadership. Their willingness to accept Hitler not only
morally corrupted them, as the military came to collaborate in
Hitler’s genocidal policies, but also led them into a conflict in which,
from 1941, limited war and political compromise ceased to be
options. As a consequence, the operational ability of the German
military was linked to a task that risked, and in the end caused, not
only their defeat but also their dissolution, along with the total
conquest of Germany.Yet, it would be wrong to suggest that, except
for Hitler, the German military would have made appropriate
strategic decisions. There were serious flaws in the German high
129
CHAPTER FIVE
Mounting Allied pressure, 1943
command, although these were seriously exacerbated by Hitler’s
ideas and management.
1
Conflict in Russia
Again, the most important fighting in the European theatre in 1943
was on the Eastern Front. German defeat at Stalingrad had led to
very heavy casualties and to the loss of a mass of matériel.These losses
were not only the Sixth Army but were also heavy amongst the units
that had tried to relieve it. The southern portion of their Eastern
Front was left short of men and equipment, and the initiative was
totally lost. The German units that had advanced into the northern
Caucasus were now threatened with encirclement.
There had also been a major shift in psychological advantage. The
loss of an entire army and the failure to relieve it were serious blows
that contrasted markedly with the situation during the Soviet counter-
offensive the previous winter.The strength and fighting quality of the
German army relative to that of the Soviets appeared to have deterio-
rated. The prominence of the struggle for Stalingrad in German
propaganda the previous year ensured that the blow fell all the heavier.
At the command level, Hitler suffered a major loss of confidence and
there were serious doubts about the quality of decisions.
Parallel to this, there was a welcome boost for Soviet confidence
and morale. This affected both military commanders and the wider
public. German failure also led to a marked increase in partisan
activity behind the lines, both because of higher morale but also
because the prudence of collaboration with the Germans was now
seriously in question.
The Red Army exploited the success of the Stalingrad counter-
offensive, although Stalin’s hopes of trapping German forces north of
the Caucasus and of the rapid reconquest of Ukraine proved wildly
over-optimistic. Although there was usually much more movement
than on the Eastern Front in World War One, the Front in World War
Two also took on the character of a prolonged struggle of attrition.
On 13 January 1943, the Soviets launched a new offensive,
seeking both to advance on Kharkov, moving into Ukraine, and also
to seize Rostov, cutting off German retreat from the Caucasus.These
plans expanded in new offensives launched on 29 January and 2
MOUNTING ALLIED PRESSURE, 1943
130
February.The latter called for an advance from Kharkov both to the
Dnieper and north-west to attack the flank of Army Group Centre.
The Soviets were swiftly successful, capturing Voronezh (26 January),
Kursk (8 February) and Kharkov (16 February), and advancing close
to Dnepropetrovsk on the Dnieper (18 February).The Soviets were
most successful against the over-extended Second Hungarian Army
south of Voronezh, which was destroyed with the loss of over
100,000 men.The Soviets were better equipped and the Hungarians
lacked anti-tank guns powerful enough to stop the Soviet tanks.
2
However, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the commander of
the reconstituted Army Group South, proved skilful at mobile
defence and stabilising the front.The Germans counterattacked from
20 February, benefiting from the extent to which the Soviet forces
had been exhausted by the offensive, not least with wear and tear to
their tanks, and from their ability to defeat their opponents in the
air, albeit at the cost of many planes. The Germans were able to
inflict heavy casualties, destroying most of the Soviet 3
rd
Tank Army.
The Soviets lacked nearby reserves to maintain the offensive. The
Germans recaptured Kharkov on 15 March 1943 and Belgorod on
18 March, before ending the advance on 21 March.This was the last
German offensive victory in the east.
The Germans had thus returned the front to the situation it was
in prior to the launch of Operation Blue. Given their failure at
Stalingrad, this was unexpected, but it reflected Stalin’s mishandling
of the Soviet offensive, Manstein’s command skills, the continued
fighting skill and morale of most of the German forces in the region,
and the availability of air support.The Soviets, nevertheless, in addi-
tion to destroying the forces deployed in the Stalingrad operation,
had reversed German gains from the previous year, and the German
counterattack still left the Soviets in control of Kursk and Rostov.
The Soviets had closed the approaches to the Caucasus, safeguarding
their oil supplies, while the campaign had left them with a salient
centred on Kursk. This offered opportunities for exploitation in a
subsequent offensive as it threatened the flanks of German salients to
north and south, thus challenging both the centre and the south of
the German front. At the same time, the Soviet offensive had indi-
cated the incremental nature of success. It was only possible for
advancing forces to achieve so much before exhaustion, losses and
MOUNTING ALLIED PRESSURE, 1943
131
supply difficulties had an impact and led to, first, the slackening and,
then, the stopping of the offensive. Until 1945, there was to be no
one-campaign end to the war. This gave the conflict an attritional
character and led to an emphasis on resources.
The net effect of nearly a year’s conflict was a major exhaustion
of German resources without equivalent gains, while Soviet effec-
tiveness and resilience had both increased. The Soviets were also
benefiting from the build-up of munitions production from areas far
distant from German attack.
Soviet successes were not restricted to the southern front. In
January 1943, the siege of Leningrad had been broken.Although this
did not have the strategic importance of the Stalingrad campaign, it
was a powerful sign of Soviet success and a symbol that resilience
under pressure would be rewarded. The Soviet offensive against
Army Group Centre in late February achieved little, in part because
of the thaw that also affected operations elsewhere, but also because
the Germans retired to a shorter line, and were thus able to beat off
attacks.The shortening of lines increased their defensive strength and
the availability of reserves. This, however, signalled a recognition of
their inability to fight their way through to Moscow.
In July 1943, the Germans launched their last major offensive of
the war on a principal theatre of the Eastern Front, an attempt to
break through the flanks of the Soviet Kursk salient and to achieve
an encirclement triumph to match the Soviet success at Stalingrad.
Still engaging in strategic wishful thinking, Hitler saw this as a battle
of annihilation in which superior will would prevail and ensure the
destruction of Soviet offensive forces. More mundanely, the elimina-
tion of this salient would rob the Soviets of a position from which
they could attack neighbouring German salients in the flank. Had
Operation Citadel succeeded, the Germans were considering a
further advance to the north-east, designed to outflank Moscow
from the south and east, and thus avoiding the direct approach from
Army Group Centre against strong Soviet defences. However, such a
follow-up offensive would have faced serious resource problems, not
least the replacement of destroyed or damaged tanks and other
mechanised vehicles, and the availability of fuel.
To prepare for the offensive, Hitler focused munitions produc-
tion on his armour. He was not temperamentally ready to accept
MOUNTING ALLIED PRESSURE, 1943
132
the idea of staying on the defensive and conserving resources while
trying to make success cost his opponents dear. Such a policy
seemed politically unacceptable. It would test the morale of the
German population, undermine the cohesion of the Axis coalition,
and, at best, produce defensive successes and buy time, rather than
winning victory. Hitler hoped that the latter would undermine the
Allied coalition, by lessening Western confidence in the likelihood
of Soviet victory and increasing Soviet demands for a Second Front
in France.
To mount an offensive, the Germans were able to draw on the
benefits of greatly increased production of tanks, aircraft and artillery,
and of the introduction of new types of each, including the Tiger
and Panther tanks, Ferdinand self-propelled guns and the Focke-
Wulf 190A fighter. Manpower losses over the previous year had been
replaced, and in 1943 the Germans had their largest number of
troops under arms, with about 6.55 million men in the army and
0.45 million in the Waffen-SS, compared to a joint strength of 3.76
million in 1939, 4.49 million in 1940, 5.4 million in 1941 and 5.94
million in 1942.The Germans benefited greatly from the absence of
a Second Front, such that two-thirds of their army were deployed on
the Eastern Front: there were now more German troops there than
at the start of Barbarossa.
The Red Army was ready for such a challenge. Forewarned by
accurate intelligence information, a product of the intelligence war
that the Germans were losing, the Soviets had prepared a dense
defensive system of six belts, appropriately designed to resist tank
attack, including extensive anti-tank defences, field fortifications and
minefields. This provided a defence in depth and artillery-support
system that inflicted heavy casualties when the Germans attacked on
5 July.They had about 2,400 tanks and self-proclaimed guns, 1,800
planes, and 700,000 troops against 3,400, 2,100 and 1.3 million,
respectively, on the Soviet side.
Once the German armour had been weakened, as it fought its
way through the defences, the Red Army was better able to commit
its tank reserves, which it did with some success, from 6 July, against
the northern German pincer and, decisively, on 12 July, against the
southern. In the latter, at Prokhorovka, what has traditionally been
seen as the largest tank battle of the war, with about 1,200–1,500
MOUNTING ALLIED PRESSURE, 1943
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