Black J. World War Two A Military History

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tanks (three-quarters Soviet) involved, was, in fact, a number of sepa-

rate engagements, in which it is unclear how many tanks were

involved.The Germans had Panther and Tiger tanks, but the standard

Soviet T-34 had been upgraded, and was used effectively at close

range, where it matched up well with the new German armour.The

Soviets suffered greater losses (about 5 to 3 ratio in tanks), but their

force was not destroyed. As Soviet production of aircraft and tanks

was far greater than that of Germany, battles such as that of Kursk

aided the shift in the situation in their favour; the Soviets could

better afford to take losses, while German losses that day made it

difficult to maintain the offensive. The Soviet threat to the rear of

the northern pincer, in an offensive launched on 12 July, combined

with Hitler’s wish to move troops to respond to the Allied invasion

of Sicily on 10 July, further undermined the German effort. On 13

July, Hitler cancelled the operation, which had greatly weakened his

forces in the east.The battle also showed how the struggle in the air

had moved against the Luftwaffe. Large numbers of Soviet fighters

prevented it from gaining control of the skies, and, although German

ground-attack planes inflicted much damage on Soviet forces, the

same was true of their opponents. Although attacking on a far more

concentrated front than in 1942, let alone 1941, the Germans had

advanced less than 40 miles.

Having stopped the Germans, the Soviets were now in a position

to counterattack.Their own forces had not been so exhausted in the

defensive struggle that they could not move over to the offensive.

This reflected the presence of large reserve forces, a particular

strength of the Soviet military, and also an organisational system that

was better able to meet the demands of an offensive than had been

the case in the more improvised circumstances at the beginning of

the year.The Germans were heavily outnumbered, while the Soviets

were increasingly effective in attack.

The Soviet counter-offensive, which finished on 27 August,

regained all the lost territory and went on to make bigger gains: the

German Orel and Kharkov salients to the north and south of the

Kursk salient, Kharkov falling on 21–2 August.The Germans proved

less effective in defence than the Soviets. They did not have a

prepared defensive system to match that of the Soviets, in particular

effective artillery support. In addition, German tank losses in the

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Kursk offensive lessened the availability of the mobile reserves neces-

sary to resist offensives successfully.

The success of the Soviet offensive deserves attention, for too

much of the discussion about the Eastern Front in 1943 has been

devoted to Operation Citadel. This both fails to put the German

defeat in the context of a wider Soviet success, and also enables an

analysis of the operation’s failure to serve as an explanation of

Germany’s wider difficulties. This is misleading, because Operation

Citadel was a failure of the Germans on the offensive, but the wider

Soviet success represented a failure of the Germans on the defensive.

Linked to this is the extent to which German generals writing

after the war, especially Manstein, attributed German strategic and

operational mistakes and weaknesses to Hitler.This neglected serious

deficiencies in the German military. For example, after the war,

Manstein criticised Hitler for his preference for holding positions

rather than turning to mobile defence, but the latter posed serious

logistical challenges, especially for fuel supplies. Tactical and opera-

tional choices have to be considered against such a background,

although Hitler was scarcely willing to subordinate issues of strategy

and operations to such practical matters.

Before the struggle round Kursk had finished, the Red Army had

already launched an offensive further south, advancing on a broad

front. Soviet forces drove the Germans from the Donets, and, by the

end of December 1943, had recovered Ukraine east of the Dnieper

and Kiev, and created two large bridgeheads across the river. These

lessened the defensive value of the Dnieper to the Germans and

were to be used as the base for a fresh Soviet offensive the following

year. The commitment of German troops and armour on the

Orel–Kursk front lessened the resources available to resist the Soviets

in Ukraine.Although Hitler had called for an ‘East Wall’ anchored on

the Dnieper, this remained an empty boast. Furthermore, Hitler’s

delay in giving Army Group South permission to retreat to the

Dnieper, as Manstein had requested in July, led to it suffering heavy

casualties in open terrain in which it lacked prepared defences.

Similarly, the response to Soviet advances further south was mishan-

dled, enabling the Soviets to cut off the German forces in the

Crimea. Repeatedly, the Germans had held individual Soviet

advances only to be placed under fresh pressure by breakthroughs

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135

from a new direction. It was this that led to the loss, first, of the

Dnieper line and, then, of Kiev. This Soviet flexibility reflected not

only resources but also operational skill.

Further north, the Soviets recaptured Smolensk on the central

front, although there was little movement on the northern front near

Leningrad, other than in January when the Soviets broke the

blockade. Neither side focused its efforts on operations near

Leningrad.

The campaign of 1943 reflected the shift in the relationship

between the German and Soviet armies, in particular the growing

relative numerical weaknesses in the tank and air strength of the

former, improvements in Soviet armour and aircraft,

and the

enhanced operational capability of the Soviet army.This was inspired

by Soviet theories of deep operations advanced in the 1930s, but

now refined in the cauldron of war. Rather than seek encirclements,

the Soviets deployed their forces along broad fronts, launching a

number of frontal assaults designed to smash opposing forces and to

maintain continued pressure. The Soviets denied the Germans the

ability to recover from attacks, lessened their ability to move units to

badly threatened positions, and searched out the weakest points in

their positions.This lessened the value of German defensive ‘hedge-

hogs’. While they had an operational importance on narrow-front

campaigns, narrowing the advance and challenging its flanks and

rear, these ‘hedgehogs’ were less significant in resisting broad-front

attacks, particularly when they could not rely on air support or

armoured counter-offensives. The loss of air support also ensured

that it would not be possible to reinforce encircled positions by air.

Thus, the Germans could not respond as the British could to

Japanese attack on the Indian frontier in 1944. Instead, their posi-

tions were vulnerable, as British defensive ‘boxes’ had been in North

Africa to the Afrika Korps in 1941–2.

The strategic advantage had passed to the Red Army as its

strength, confidence and operational capability increased. This shift

was important to the dynamics of the Allied coalition. The Soviet

Union was now clearly going to play a major role in the future of, at

least, Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the failure of the Kursk offensive

and the success of the subsequent Soviet advances meant that the

Germans were less able to spare troops for the Italian campaign

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136

(where the Allies were held but not driven back), and, even more,

that the mobile reserve necessary to oppose successfully a Second

Front in France was being destroyed in the Soviet Union. German

tank and other losses on the Eastern Front in late 1943 and early

1944 were heavy, and, although the campaigns after Kursk

commonly receive little attention in general histories of the war,

they were important in the degradation of the German army, even

more so because the bulk of the German army was deployed on the

Front, while the Western allies were inflicting little damage on the

German army in this period.The course of campaigning would have

been less serious for Germany had the political situation been

different. However, the failure to obtain peace with any one of their

opponents put the Germans in a difficult position to secure victory,

or, at least, avoid defeat, on any of its fronts.

War with Japan

In 1943, the Japanese also suffered heavy blows at crucial points of

their perimeter, although, in the Pacific, in China and on the Burma

front, both sides rebuilt their forces and there was far less fighting

than in 1944. Furthermore, the bulk of the Japanese army remained

committed to China and Manchuria. In the former, guerrilla oppo-

sition (largely by the Communists) remained a problem, but, in

January 1943, the Nanjing-based puppet government of Japanese-

occupied Central China declared war on the Allies, and its army,

which may have been 900,000 strong, took over much of the task of

local control.

Nevertheless, the threat to their position led to major Japanese

defensive efforts on the Pacific perimeter. They were more vulner-

able there than in Burma, where the failure of their first Arakan

offensive indicated that the British had mastered neither jungle

operations and tactics nor the regional supply situation. Arakan, on

the coast of Burma, provided an axis of advance for British troops

from India, as well, hopefully, as an opportunity for weakening

Japanese forces that might attack India, but it proved difficult to

translate moves on the map into the field, and the Japanese remained

more adept at mobile jungle warfare, challenging British advances in

Arakan by outflanking them. Further east, Orde Wingate’s campaign

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with his Chindit force behind Japanese lines in Burma was more

promising, but did not lead to any long-term weakening of the

Japanese position. The campaign also showed that, although the

British could operate in the jungle, not least by using aerial supply, it

was difficult to counteract the impact of disease and exhaustion.

The Japanese were less successful in the Pacific. They lost both

Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and their position in eastern

New Guinea.The fate of Guadalcanal, which the Japanese had seized

on 7 July 1942 and on which the Americans had landed on 7

August, had been settled by American naval success in the naval

battle of Guadalcanal of 12–16 November 1942, which compro-

mised the ability of the Japanese to support their force on the island.

The fighting quality of the well-led American marines, in difficult

terrain and against a formidable opponent, was crucial on the island

itself, ensuring that repeated attacks on the American positions

failed. In January 1943, the Americans launched an offensive against

the Japanese, and the latter evacuated their troops from Guadalcanal

the following month.

The naval campaign indicated not only the impact of carrier

aircraft,

but also the important role of surface ships other than

carriers. On 14 November 1942, off Guadalcanal, the radar-

controlled fire of the battleship Washington pulverised the battleship

Kirishima. Destroyer torpedo attacks could also be very effective, as

when used by the Japanese, with their Long Lance torpedoes, off

Guadalcanal on 13 and 30 November. In the night-time surface

actions, carriers could play little role, but losses of carriers earlier in

the campaign also encouraged reliance on surface shipping. Japanese

submarines were also responsible for American losses.

Midway had shown the power of carriers, but also their vulnera-

bility. They were a first-strike weapon, and required a doctrine

similar to that developed in the Cold War for nuclear confrontation.

This vulnerability led to a continued stress on battleships and

cruisers, both of which were also very important for shore bombard-

ment in support of amphibious operations. Air power in the Pacific

was seen as a preliminary to the latter, rather than as a war-winning

tool in its own right. Battleships and other surface warships were also

seen as a valuable support for carriers against air attack, providing a

powerful anti-aircraft screen.The Japanese, in contrast, continued to

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assume that battleship firepower would play a key role in a decisive

naval battle, and this led them to underrate the need to retain carrier

strength.

Due to their losses in 1942, the Japanese had lost their lead in

carrier strength, and, by the spring of 1943, only one fleet carrier

was prepared for conflict. The others listed were damaged or light

carriers. Three more were due for completion that year, but the

Americans were planning or building far more. There was a similar

disparity as far as cruisers, destroyers and submarines were

concerned. The marked difference in the industrial capability and

effective war mobilisation of the two powers was readily apparent,

and this was to be accentuated by naval action.Whereas the Japanese

navy could not strike at the American economy, the inroads of

American submarines affected the movement of raw materials to

Japan and, therefore, its industrial capability.

The difference between the two economies was also seen in the

construction of merchant shipping, in which the Americans opened

up a massive lead. The American advance in the Pacific would have

been impossible without the ability to ship large quantities of

supplies and to develop the associated infrastructure, such as

harbours and oil-storage facilities. In many respects, this was a war of

engineers, and the American aptitude for creating effective infras-

tructure was applied to great effect in the Pacific.

In the Guadalcanal campaign, the Americans developed a degree

of co-operation between land, sea and air forces that was to serve

them well in subsequent operations. They also inflicted important

losses on the Japanese. At sea, there was an equal loss of warships, but

the build-up of American naval resources ensured that they were

better able to take such losses. On land, the Japanese had lost nearly

24,000 men (the American army and marines lost 1,752 killed); but,

more seriously, they had lost over 600 airmen. Many were well-

trained pilots and they could not be replaced.The same was true of

the air war over New Guinea. This contributed to an increasingly

apparent aspect of the Pacific war, a decline in the quality of Japanese

air power that reflected an inability to ensure good training for pilots.

The Japanese defeat in the Guadalcanal campaign was also very

important to American morale.The island had strategic importance,

but it took on a significance to contemporaries that exceeded both

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this and the size of the Japanese garrison. It was important to

demonstrate that the Japanese could be beaten not only in carrier

actions, but also in the difficult fighting environment of the Pacific

islands, while, for Pacific campaigns to succeed, it was necessary to

show that air and sea support could be provided to amphibious

forces, both when landing and subsequently. In addition, Coral Island

and Midway had been defensive successes, but, at Guadalcanal, the

attack had clearly been taken to the Japanese and, despite much

effort, they had been unable to hold the position.

Also, the time taken to defeat the Japanese on the island, and the

large number of islands they continued to hold, ensured that it would

be necessary to focus American efforts carefully, a policy that required

the identification of key targets. Thanks to a growingly apparent

American superiority in the air and at sea, the Japanese would be less

able to mount ripostes and any bypassed bases would be isolated.

Thus, the Pacific war was to become one that was far from linear.

In eastern New Guinea, American and Australian forces finally

prevailed in particularly arduous fighting conditions: the jungle, the

mountainous terrain, the heat, the malaria and the rain combined to

cause heavy casualties. Amphibious and overland attacks led to the

capture of Salamaua and Lae in September 1943. The Allies had

benefited from intelligence gained by interceptions, as well as from

gaining control of the air, to which this intelligence and the absence

of radar to help protect Japanese airfields greatly contributed.

Combined with Guadalcanal, this success ensured that Australasia

was protected and prepared the way for further Allied attacks. The

Japanese still had substantial forces in New Guinea, and there was

fighting there until the end of the war, but successive positions were

taken, in part thanks to amphibious operations.

Heavy Japanese losses of aircraft and crew over Guadalcanal

helped the Americans seize the initiative in 1943, as they began a

process of island-hopping in the Solomon Islands in June with an

attack on New Georgia. Carriers played a major role, but so also did

the creation and securing of airfields.They were important not only

for their attack role, but also as part of the far-flung American

command and control and supply systems. The value of air power

had been dramatically displayed on 3–4 March 1943, when a convoy

carrying troops to reinforce New Guinea was attacked by American

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and Australian planes with the loss of over 3,600 Japanese troops and

four destroyers.

The Americans were not only effective thanks to their land-based

aircraft and carriers. Covering the landing on Bougainville in the

Solomons on 1 November 1943, a force of American cruisers and

destroyers beat off an attack that night by a similar Japanese

squadron, with losses to the latter in the first battle fought entirely

by radar. Radar also helped carriers defend themselves against air

attack. It was an important aspect of the application of science.

The Solomons advance culminated with the capture of Admiralty

Island at the end of February 1944.The Japanese base in Rabaul was

now isolated, while, on Bougainville, Japanese forces that had been

beaten away from the defensive perimeter round the Allied bridge-

head were left. Maps of American advances tend to ignore the

Japanese positions that remained, but, nevertheless, they lacked

strategic relevance.The notion of a broad-front advance meant less at

sea than on land (where vulnerability on the flank was far more of

an issue), but American policy depended on an ability to neutralise

as well as outfight Japanese units. In 1943, they were able to demon-

strate this ability.

The consequences of this were also seen at the northern tip of

the Japanese advance, in the western Aleutians. After the Americans

had gained air and naval dominance and beaten the Japanese on Attu

in May 1943, the Japanese garrison on Kiska became of little conse-

quence. The Americans did, however, invade it that August, only to

discover that the Japanese had already evacuated the island at the end

of July. Thereafter, Japanese concern about an American approach,

via the northern Pacific, to Hokkaido, the northern of the ‘home

islands’ that make up Japan, led to the stationing of significant forces

in the region, although the Americans did not take this approach. It

was logistically difficult and there was a lack of intermediate bases

that could be seized: the Soviet Union was neutral. The Japanese

presence in the western Aleutians and Hokkaido failed to prevent

the development of the route from Alaska to the Soviet Far East as

the most significant source of Western matériel for the Soviet military.

There was also a lack of much action on what had become

another peripheral front, the naval war in the Indian Ocean. The

Japanese concentration on the Pacific ensured that there were no

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raids into the Indian Ocean, and no British warship was lost there in

1943. Conversely, the British fleet there was run down to support

operations in the Mediterranean and, whereas the British had had

two carriers to cover the attack on Madagascar in May 1942, from

January 1943 there were none until October, when an escort carrier

arrived.

The Americans benefited in the Pacific from better aircraft.

Whereas the Japanese had not introduced new classes of planes, the

Americans had done so, enabling them to challenge the Zero, which

had made such an impact in the initial Japanese advances. Now the

Americans had the Corsair, the Lightning and the Hellcat, each of

which outperformed the Zero. The Lightning was a twin-engined

plane, while the Corsair and the Hellcat had powerful Pratt and

Whitney air-cooled radial engines. In addition, their specifications

included better protection, which enabled them to take more

punishment than Japanese planes. The Japanese had designed the

Zero with insufficient protection, in part because its light weight

increased range and manoeuvrability, but also because the safety of

their pilots was a low priority. When combined with the growing

disparity in quality between pilots, a matter of numbers, training and

flying experience, it was clear that the Japanese could not compen-

sate for growing numerical inferiority in the air. Masters in aerial

combat, American fighters were able to provide cover for their

bombers, which were, anyway, better able than their counterparts in

Europe to deal with opposition without heavy losses.With far more

territory to cover, the Japanese lacked a fighter defence system to

match that of the Germans.

In the Central Pacific, the Americans opened up a new axis of

advance in 1943. They captured key atolls (especially Makin and

Tarawa) in the Gilbert Islands in November, although only after

difficult assaults on well-prepared and highly motivated defenders:

Tarawa cost 3,000 American dead and wounded.

The Japanese willingness to fight on even in hopeless circum-

stances, a product of effective indoctrination as well as great bravery,

ensured that there were very few prisoners and also led the

Americans to seek to take few.This has led to some discussion of the

war as a racist struggle, but, although American society was one in

which racism played a major role, there are few signs of a policy of

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indoctrination of troops against the Japanese. Instead, it was the

fervent determination of the Japanese to fight on in hopeless

circumstances, the difficulty, had they wished to do so, of surren-

dering given the nature of the battlefield, as well as episodes in

which they pretended to surrender and then killed their supposed

captors, that helped to ensure that the Americans did not anticipate

appreciable numbers of prisoners. Although there was some killing

of those trying to surrender, this was not common, and there was no

equivalent to the systematic killing of SS troops by the Soviets, let

alone the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners by the Germans and

of Allied prisoners by the Japanese.

American successes in the Gilberts helped prepare the way for

operations against the Marshall Islands in early 1944. This route

revived the pre-war Plan Orange, and represented the shortest route

for an advance on the Philippines. The army wanted a southern

drive, the navy a central Pacific drive, but the real story was that the

Americans had enough resources to do both.The choice of strategy

was important alongside the availability of resources, because,

however weak the Japanese might be becoming at sea and in the air,

there were a large number of Japanese island bases and it was neces-

sary to plan an effective strategy that did not involve the loss of too

many men or too much time in attacking most of them. The

Americans gained cumulative experience in successful amphibious

operations and in their coordination with naval and air support.

They developed and used a variety of effective specialised landing

craft, including tracked landing vehicles. However, the difficulties

that were to be faced by the Americans on Omaha Beach in the D-

Day landings in Normandy in 1944 showed that the lessons learned

in the Pacific were not universally applicable: some that were,

however, were not applied in Europe, but there was also the issue of

the dynamic nature of German defensive ideas and constructions.

Battle of the Atlantic

In 1943, the Allies also won the Battle of the Atlantic.The previous

year, 1,664 merchantmen had been sunk by submarines and U-boat

losses were less than new launchings. For the first time, there were

enough U-boats to organise comprehensive patrol lines across North

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