Black J. World War Two A Military History
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Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II (Lexington, Kentucky,
1995).
22 D. Raser, And We Shall Shock Them:The British Army in the Second World
War (1983); S. Bidwell and G. Dominick, ‘The Second Round:
1939–1945’, in Fire Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War,
1904–1945 (1982).
23 C. Stacey, The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe,
1944–1945 (Ottawa, 1960).
24 S.D. Badsey, ‘The American Experience of Armour 1919–53’, in J.P.
Harris and F.H.Toase (eds), Armoured Warfare (1992), p. 142.
25 C.B. MacDonald, The Battle of the Bulge (1984); T.N. Dupuy, D.L.
Bongard and R.C. Anderson, Hitler’s Last Gamble:The Battle of the Bulge
(New York, 1994); D.S. Parker, Battle of the Bulge. Hitler’s Ardennes
Offensive:The German View of the Battle of the Bulge (1997).
26 C.Whiting, The Battle of the Bulge: Britain’s Untold Story (Stroud, 1999).
27 F.C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (Washington, 1954).
28 R. Lamb, Montgomery in Europe 1943–45: Success or Failure? (1983).
29 S. Hart, Montgomery and Colossal Cracks: The 21
st
Army Group in
Northwest Europe, 1944–5 (Westport, Connecticut, 2000).
30 Penney to Major-General John Sinclair, Director of Military
Intelligence,War Office, 2 May 1945, LH. Penney 5/1.
31 For his defence of his strategy, see D.D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe
(1948).
32 LH.Alanbrooke papers, 6/2/35.
33 M.J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the
Ballistic Missile Era (Washington, 1995).
34 W. Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933–1945 (1985); S.L.
McFarland and W.P. Newton, To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air
Superiority, 1942–4 (Washington, 1991).
35 G.P. Gentile, ‘General Arnold and the Historians’, Journal of Military
History, 64 (2000), p. 179.
36 R. Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II
(Oxford, 1985); S. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War Two (New
York, 1993).
37 N. Gregor, ‘A Schicksalsgemeinschaft? Allied Bombing, Civilian Morale,
and Social Dissolution in Nuremberg, 1942–1945’, Historical Journal,43
(2000), pp. 1,051–70.
38 A.C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945
(Chapel Hill, 1998).
39 The best general account of the subject is R.J. Overy, The Air War,
1939–1945 (1980).
40 H. Feis, The China Tangle: The American Effort in China from Pearl Harbor
to the Marshall Mission (Princeton, 1953).
41 D. Wilson, When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War,
1937–1945 (1982); J.C. Hsiung and S.I. Levine (eds), China’s Bitter
Victory:The War with Japan, 1937–1945 (Armonk, 1992).
DEFEATING THE AXIS, 1944
204
42 W.Y’Blood, Red Sun Setting (Annapolis, 1980).
43 S.R. Taaffe, MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign
(Lawrence, Kansas, 1998).
44 S.L. Falk, Liberation of the Philippines (1971); W. Breuer, Retaking the
Philippines (New York, 1986).
45 E.P. Hoyt, The Battle of Leyte Gulf:The Death Knell of the Japanese Fleet
(1972).
46 G.W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power. The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990
(Stanford, California, 1993), pp. 261–2.
47 D.P. Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma
Campaign (DPhil., Oxford, 2001).
48 H. Probert, The Forgotten Air Force:The Royal Air Force in the War against
Japan 1941–45 (1995).
49 C. Malkasian, A History of Modern Wars of Attrition (Westport,
Connecticut, 2002), pp. 104–8.
50 Pownall to Ismay, 26 April 1944, LH. Ismay 4/26/2; PRO. WO.
33/1819, p. 50.
51 R. Callahan, Burma, 1942–1945 (1978); L.Allen, Burma:The Longest War,
1941–45 (1984); D. Smurthwaite (ed.), The Forgotten War: The British
Army in the Far East 1941–1945 (1992).
52 Penney, conversation with Dr. Ripley, U.S. Office of Strategic Services,
6 June 1945, LH. Penney 5/2.
53 B. Bond, The Pursuit of Victory. From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein
(Oxford, 1996), p. 154.
54 A.W. Purdue, The Second World War (1999), p. 150.
55 M. Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945: Its Political and Military
Failure (1978).
DEFEATING THE AXIS, 1944
205
In 1945, the Thousand Year Reich came to an end, followed by the
Japanese empire.There is a certain inexorable inevitability about the
demise of both, but it is necessary to remember that the final course
of both struggles was far from inevitable, that the year saw bitter
fighting, and that many troops and civilians died.
The conquest of Germany
In Europe, the Red Army finished its advance from the Volga to
Berlin, driving on indeed to the Elbe, a distance greater than that
achieved by any force in Europe for over a century. Against bitter
resistance, the Soviets were victorious in the Vistula–Oder Offensive
of January–February 1945. Breaking out from their bridgeheads
across the Vistula, the Soviets again indicated the ability of their army
to make rapid progress in winter conditions, although they were
helped by greatly outnumbering the Germans in troops and equip-
ment: Army Group A was outnumbered by about 2.2 million troops
to about 400,000. Heavy German casualties in 1944 had lessened the
available manpower and diluted fighting quality, not least because the
replacement regiment system had broken down.
Attacking from 12 January, the Soviets fought their way through
the German defence lines, greatly helped by plentiful artillery, in
which their margin in numbers was about 7.5 to 1. Rapidly
advancing Soviet tank forces (margin in numbers about 5.5 to 1)
then exploited the victory, in what had become a pattern of success
in ‘deep operations’. Warsaw fell on 17 January and Krakow on 19
206
CHAPTER SEVEN
The fall of the Axis
206
January, and the Oder was reached on 31 January.The Red Army was
able to establish bridgeheads across the river at the start of February.
However, as with other advances, there were growing problems
with supplies, while strong German resistance in Silesia also helped
narrow the front of advance. When the offensive finished in early
February, the Soviets were close to Berlin (35 miles), but the presence
of German forces to the north (East Prussia and East Pomerania) and
south (Upper Silesia) ensured that a strengthening of the position on
the flanks in March, as well as re-supply of the forces in the main axis
of advance, would be required before there could be an advance on
the Nazi capital. Breslau, the fortified capital of Silesia, held out until
7 May, but the state of its garrison – without air cover or tanks –
testified to the condition of the German army.
The last stages of the war demonstrated the continued strength of
Soviet operational art. This stressed firepower, but also employed
mobile tank warfare. Attrition and manoeuvre were combined in a
coordinated sequence of attacks that reflected Soviet operational
skill.This can be seen in the conquest of Poland, much of which was
completed in January 1945: the Red Army used large numbers of
tanks, which were able to exploit opportunities prepared by short
and savage artillery attacks.The individual Soviet tank armies gained
space to manoeuvre and this prevented the Germans from consoli-
dating new defensive positions. For forces that had broken through
their opponents, mobility enhanced the ability to prevent their
opponents from falling back in order. Mobility replaced the
sequence of new front lines that World War One advances had had
to face with the open battlefield, in which retreating opponents had
to rely on defensive hedgehog positions that could be encircled, if
the momentum of the offensive could be maintained. The limit of
the new advance was often that of maintaining petrol supplies, as in
the Red Army’s advance through Poland in early 1945.
Responding to Soviet requests and seeking to show that they were
providing help, British and American heavy bombers attacked cities
that were rail nodes to the rear of the front, particularly Magdeburg
and, most damagingly, on 13–14 February, Dresden. The heavy
civilian casualties accorded with the intention of causing chaos.
The Soviet delay in resuming the drive on Berlin was accentuated
by poor weather in March, and enabled the Germans to build-up
THE FALL OF THE AXIS
207
their defences west of the Oder in February and March. However,
the Soviets themselves built up their forces as well as widening their
bridgeheads across the Oder.
The Soviets followed up in April with the crowning Berlin
Operation. Keen to benefit from competition, Stalin launched two
Fronts to take Hitler’s capital: 1
st
Belorussian under Zhukov and, to its
south, 1
st
Ukrainian under Koniev. By deleting boundary lines
between the Fronts’ advances, Stalin gave them an added inducement
to compete. The attacks were mounted in the morning of the 16
April, but Zhukov’s troops encountered well-prepared defences bene-
fiting from the Seelöw Heights west of the Oder as well as from the
delay in the Soviet advance since early February. On 16 April,
Zhukov accompanied his attack with the use of 143 searchlights
designed to dazzle the Germans. In fact the air was so thick with
rubble from the Soviet barrage that the searchlights could not pene-
trate. The Soviets were also hampered by the night-time German
abandonment of the first line of defences before the attack was
launched. This ensured that the Soviet artillery had less impact
initially than had been anticipated. Zhukov’s failure to make progress
on the first day led him to commit his armour, which he had held
back for exploitation, too early, ensuring heavy losses from German
anti-tank guns. Although eventually successful, Zhukov’s Front had
taken both heavy casualties and more time than had been anticipated.
The continued Soviet use of frontal attacks, particularly on the
Seelöw Heights on 16–18 April, was, by Western standards, wasteful
of manpower. This practice contributed to the Soviets having mili-
tary casualties far greater than that of any combatant. The April
frontal attacks were also accompanied by an extensive use of armour
and artillery. Zhukov, in particular, had massed a formidable amount
of the latter: about 9,000 guns and 1,400 rocket launchers.
Having breached the German defence belts, the Soviets advanced
to encircle Berlin from north and south, completing the encir-
clement on 25 April.The city centre was attacked the following day.
The Red Army fought its way into the centre, with large numbers
of German troops, many recently conscripted boys and old men,
fighting on amidst the heavily bombarded rubble, although they
knew that their cause was hopeless. The Soviets used particularly
intensive artillery fire throughout the operation.
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208
Hoped-for relief could not be obtained: the forces Hitler called
on, the Ninth and Twelfth Armies, were both weak and were them-
selves under great pressure. The Soviet offensive on Berlin was
supported by advances to north and south, and German troops in
the region were fully engaged.With the Soviets storming the bitterly
defended Reichstag, Hitler, convinced that he had been let down by
the German people and military, committed suicide on 30 April.
Other Nazi leaders followed. On 2 May, the remaining German
forces in Berlin surrendered. Other Soviet forces had advanced to
the Baltic coast and the Elbe.
1
Further south, the German counter-offensive from Lake Balaton
towards Budapest, Operation Spring Awakening, launched on 5
March, had been fought to a halt by 15 March.
2
The Soviets bene-
fited from their resources, their ability to hastily create defensive
positions, and the impact of mud on the German tanks. Advancing
Soviet forces overran Slovakia, while, on 13 April, others finally
captured Vienna after bitter fighting in the city.The Soviet forces in
Austria did not subsequently advance far; there was certainly
nothing to compare with the advance of American troops across
southern Germany and into Austria.
Meanwhile, Anglo-American forces had advanced across the
Rhine in March. The Germans had made a major effort to defend
their country west of the Rhine, but that had led to major losses in
fighting west of the Ruhr and in the Saarland in February and
March.The former proved difficult for the Allies, not least due to the
number of rivers, the poor weather and the tenacity of the resis-
tance; but, once the Allies attacked along the entire line, the
Germans found it difficult to reinforce hard-pressed sectors. The
withdrawal of German troops to face the Soviets helped the Western
Allies. Cologne fell on 5 March and the Ludendorff rail bridge
across the Rhine at Remagen two days later. This gave the
Americans a bridgehead across the river: German counterattacks and
the use of V-2 rockets failed to destroy the bridge.
3
Once the Rhine had been crossed in strength, German resistance
became much weaker. As in 1944, the Allies benefited from the
breakout into a more mobile stage of conflict, and in addition, in
1945 the Germans were badly affected by the accumulated losses of
campaigning in the West since the previous June.Their capacity for
THE FALL OF THE AXIS
209
mounting a counter-offensive had been gravely weakened, while
their forces were short of manpower, equipment and petrol, lacked
air support, and were heavily outnumbered in tanks. Heavy Allied
strategic air attacks were having a devastating effect, and were also
making German failure readily apparent.
The Americans advanced from the Remagen bridgehead, while
Anglo-American forces crossed the lower Rhine near Wesel on 24
March in an operation coordinated with an Anglo-American
parachute landing.
4
German military cohesion broke down as units
were isolated by advancing Allied forces.The German army did not
fight very well once the Rhine had been crossed: morale was low,
and the total Allied control of the air greatly weakened German
resistance. The German Army Group B defending the Ruhr was
encircled on 1 April and what was left there (317,000 troops)
surrendered on 18 April. There was no force available to mount a
counterattack.
Anglo-Canadian forces on the northern flank of the advance
cleared the eastern Netherlands and advanced into northern
Germany, crossing the Weser on 5 April. Thereafter, there were
further advances in Holland and Germany, with a crossing of the
Elbe on 29 April, Hamburg falling on 3 May, and an advance to the
Baltic at Lübeck (which fell on 2 May), designed in part to block
Soviet troops from advancing into Denmark. British conviction of
Nazi iniquity was fortified by the liberation of the concentration
camp of Bergen-Belsen.
Meanwhile, the Americans had reached the Elbe (near
Magdeburg) on 11 April. The encirclement of Army Group B
ensured that there was a massive gap in the German defences, and
that resistance was limited. American forces in central Germany
advanced east, capturing cities that would subsequently be handed
over for Soviet occupation, including Leipzig on 19 April; although
there was no advance on Berlin, a decision that was subsequently
criticised as helping the Soviets to establish a more powerful position
for the Cold War.
5
American and Soviet troops made contact near
Torgau on the Elbe on 25 April.
In southern Germany, although forces in Nuremberg put up a
strong resistance, there was a rapid American advance to the Danube,
which was crossed on 22 April, and an even more rapid advance
THE FALL OF THE AXIS
210
thereafter. Munich was captured on 30 April, and American units
advanced into Austria, taking Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck, and
moving through the Brenner Pass to join up, on 4 May, with
American forces advancing from Italy. The fall of Hitler’s eyrie at
Berchtesgaden on 4 May made it clear that there would be no last-
ditch resistance, based on a National Redoubt, in the Alps.
6
The Allied forces that had advanced through Trent to the Brenner
were part of the breakout in northern Italy. Operations there had
been delayed by the strength of German resistance and by the winter,
with little change in the front line after the stopping of the American
advance on Bologna in late October 1944, although the 8th Army
had slowly moved up the east coast to, and past, Ravenna in
December 1944 and January 1945, albeit in the face of firm resistance
benefiting from the series of rivers the British had to cross. The
failure of the Allies on the Italian front to hamstring German policy
was shown in December 1944 when Hitler was able to launch his
Ardennes attack without having to withdraw forces from Italy.
The Allied offensive in Italy resumed on 9 April 1945. The 8th
Army slowly fought its way through the German defensive positions
and the Argenta Gap, while the Americans broke through the moun-
tains south-west and west of Bologna, reaching the Lombardy plain.
The Germans had lines to fall back on in Italy – the Po, Adige
and Alpine Lines – but their cohesion was now broken, and the
Allied advance created a wider front for operations.The Allies were
rapidly able to exploit their advantage, the Americans advancing on a
number of axes, including via Modena to Parma and Piacenza, as
well as north to Lake Garda, Mantua and Vicenza, and north-east to
Padua. As the German position disintegrated, the Allies were able to
advance in all directions: the Americans to Milan (29 April),Turin (2
May) and along the Ligurian (Mediterranean) coast, where German
resistance had been hitherto most successful, to Genoa (27 April),
and the British to Venice (29 April).
German defeats across Europe had already revived the Italian
resistance, which had been bloodily suppressed by the Germans the
previous winter. The partisans liberated Genoa, Milan and Turin
ahead of the Allied army. With Mussolini shot by partisans on 28
April while trying to flee to Switzerland, the demoralised remains of
his Fascist forces ceased fighting. On 29 April, the German
THE FALL OF THE AXIS
211
commander in Italy agreed an unconditional surrender. It took effect
on 2 May, the day in which British troops reached Trieste, blocking
the advance of Tito’s Communist forces.
The Germans were still in control of large areas, including
Norway, Denmark, most of Austria and much of southern Germany,
but they had been totally defeated. The Luftwaffe had been
outfought, and the lack of flying training and fuel had gravely
compromised its capability. Although there were still large numbers
of U-boats, they were unable to inflict serious losses on Allied ship-
ping, although, had new types become operational, they would have
posed a more serious challenge.
Based at Flensburg, Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, wanted to
maintain resistance to the Soviets while negotiating terms with
Britain and the Americans, a measure that he hoped would enable
more Germans to escape Soviet occupation, but, on 5 and 6 May, the
Western Allies insisted on unconditional surrenders. On 7 May, the
Germans, indeed, surrendered unconditionally, the surrender
becoming effective the next day.
The surrender process, however, was not without serious prob-
lems. The capitulation agreed on Lüneburg Heath on 4 May, for
German units in the Netherlands, Denmark and north-west
Germany, was rejected by the commander of the garrison on the
Danish island of Bornholm, and he did not surrender until 9 May,
when Soviet bombing attacks on the previous two days was followed
by the arrival of warships. Other, larger, German forces fought on
near Prague until 11 May against a massive Soviet army, much of it
recently used against Berlin. The Americans had occupied Pilsen on
6 May, but held back from advancing on Prague, as they had earlier
done on Berlin. German forces across Europe, from Brittany to
Courland and Norway to the Channel Islands, had all surrendered
by 12 May.
7
Fears that U-boats would continue operating proved
unfounded.
The collapse of Japan
Japan took longer to defeat. In the Pacific, the Americans could
choose where to land, but the fighting and logistical problems of
operations on shore were formidable, and Japanese determination to
THE FALL OF THE AXIS
212
fight on led to heavy casualties.This was seen both in the Philippines
and on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Japanese on the
Philippines did not surrender after the Americans landed on Luzon
on 9 January. Although the Japanese XIV Area Army had more than
0.25 million troops, its condition reflected the degradation of the
Japanese war machine. There were only about 150 operational
combat aircraft to support it, and their planes and pilots could not
match the Americans in quality; most were destroyed by American
carrier planes before the invasion. Naval support had been destroyed
the previous autumn. The troops lacked food and ammunition and
the relatively few vehicles available had insufficient fuel.
Rather than engaging the Americans where they were likely to
be strongest – in the invasion zone and the plains between there and
Manila – Yamashita deployed his troops to take advantage of areas of
difficult terrain. The naval garrison of Manila, however, refused to
evacuate the city and vigorously defended it, leading the Americans
to turn to an extensive use of artillery. Combined with Japanese
atrocities, this may have led to the death of 100,000 Filipino civil-
ians. Manila was not completely regained until 3 March, although
American troops had entered the city on 4 February.
Japanese forces, which held out in northern Luzon until the end
of the war, were able to make little effective contribution to the war
effort other than tying down Allied forces and causing heavy casual-
ties: the American army alone suffered 145,000 casualties. This
attritional end was an important Japanese goal, although they, in turn,
suffered heavily, not least from starvation and disease. The Luzon
operation was accompanied by other attacks in the extensive
Philippine archipelago.With space at a premium and with knowledge
of the end, it is easy to neglect such attacks in order to focus on the
preparations for the assault on Japan, but they are of importance not
least for the light they shed on relative capability and on strategic
goals. The Americans were keen to use the Philippines as a base for
the invasion of Japan. The islands they had already captured were
crucial as bases for air attack, but they were not large enough to
provide the staging areas required. While gaining such positions in
central Luzon, particularly Clark Field and Manila Bay (where
Corregidor fell on 28 February), the Americans also needed to ensure
the security of shipping passages. This led to a series of amphibious
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