Black J. World War Two A Military History

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the transportation system, than it was to fight in rural areas. There,

the ratio of strength and space told against the Japanese, particularly

when their opponents, most notably the Communists, employed

guerrilla tactics, moved into the rural areas of northern China and

hit Japanese communications. In addition, the movement of Japanese

troops from Manchuria into China in 1937 led to a revival in

partisan operations in Manchuria. In the Hundred Regiments

Offensive in north China in August–December 1940, the

Communists hit Japanese communications hard.This challenged the

Japanese ‘point-and-line’ pattern of occupation.

The Japanese also failed to win over sufficient Chinese support.

The Japanese had added to Manchukuo in 1933 and 1935, and also

established the ‘Provisional government of the Republic of China’ in

north China in 1937, and ‘the Reformed government of the

Republic of China’, based at Nanjing, in 1938. These states organ-

ised puppet forces, but the Japanese found them of limited value and

treated them with suspicion.

Japanese conquests in China indicated a lesson that Hitler would

have done well to consider before attacking the Soviet Union in

1941: that high-visibility gains did not necessarily lead to overall

victory. Ishiwara Kanji, chief of the Operations Division of the

General Staff, had warned that an invasion of China would lead to an

intractable commitment, with victory unobtainable and withdrawal

impossible, but more aggressive views had prevailed. He was trans-

ferred from the General Staff in September 1937, and the attempt he

encouraged to secure foreign mediation was abandoned in January

1938 when the Japanese ministry announced that the Kuomintang

government was not an acceptable participant in peace talks.This was

a sign that they intended to create their own puppet government in

China, although, throughout, there was a lack of clarity about

Japanese goals. The lack of agreement and clarity helped to thwart

both the peace initiatives towards the Kuomintang in late 1937 and

the summer of 1940, as well as the attempt to benefit from the defec-

tion, in December 1938, of Wang Ching-wei, a rival of the

Kuomintang’s leader Chiang Kai-shek. After difficult negotiations, he

eventually became the President of the Nanjing-based ‘Reformed

government’, but the Japanese could not decide how much power to

allow him, and this discredited his government.

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Japanese campaigns in China also showed that brutality did not

work, a lesson that their racialism prevented both Japan and

Germany from learning. The massacre by Japanese troops of large

numbers of civilians (the approximate number is controversial) after

the capture of Nanjing on 13 December 1937, including using

people for bayonet practice, as well as mass rapes, the culmination of

barbarous Japanese conduct during their advance up the Yangtze, did

not break Chinese morale. Instead, it testified to an emerging

immoral and callous attitude within the Japanese military.

This was

further seen in the ‘kill all, loot all, burn all’ campaign launched in

response to the Hundred Regiments Offensive in China in 1941, a

campaign whose methods strengthened Chinese resistance and made

a compromise peace less likely.

The Japanese were helped by rivalry between the other two

major forces in China, who, between them, ruled most of the half of

the Chinese population who remained outside Japanese control: the

Kuomintang and the Communists, a rivalry that led to regional

conflicts, as in 1940. This rivalry enabled the Japanese to maintain

what were in effect local truces with both, although these were not

formalised, and were challenged by both guerrilla operations and the

harsh Japanese response.There was to be no major change in China

until after the USA entered the war at the close of 1941. American

policymakers saw China as a base from which Japan could be

attacked: it was closer to unoccupied China than to American bases

in the Pacific. The Americans attempted to develop airbases in

Kuomintang-controlled China and to build up the Kuomintang

army as an offensive force.This policy, in turn, led to Japanese offen-

sives in 1942 and 1944.

The conquest of Poland

In Europe,World War Two began in 1939 with a dramatic example

of military effectiveness. The Germans lost fewer than 15,000 dead

in a Blitzkrieg that led to the rapid defeat of Poland, a state with

armed forces totalling over 1 million men, although all bar 370,000

were reservists.The Germans greatly outnumbered the Poles in aero-

planes, tanks and other mechanised vehicles, enjoyed the initiative,

and benefited from the long and vulnerable nature of the Polish

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frontier and the dispersed position of the Polish army, most of which

was infantry.The Polish air force was rapidly destroyed, a crucial step

in the German offensive. The Germans benefited from launching

surprise attacks that destroyed some of the Polish planes on the

ground, although the extent of these losses has been exaggerated and

many Polish planes were lost in aerial combat.The rapid opening by

the Germans of improvised airfields behind their advancing forces

countered the short range of their aircraft and helped the Luftwaffe

provide close air support.

In a rapid German ground offensive that began on 1 September,

and reflected the political pressure for a speedy victory and the

need to win before the British and French could attack on the

Western Front, the cohesion of the Polish army was destroyed:

German armoured forces broke through, isolated and enveloped

their dispersed military formations. In order to signal their determi-

nation not to match the fate of the Czech Republic in 1938, the

Poles had defended the full extent of their borders, rather than

concentrating in the heart of Poland to provide defence in depth

and respond to German thrusts separately.Their deployment helped

the German penetration and encirclement strategy. The German

armour was also helped by the flat terrain of most of Poland, as well

as by the dryness of the soil and the roads following the summer. In

addition, the Polish army was weak in tanks and in anti-tank guns

and training.

By forcing the Poles into a one-sided war of manoeuvre, the

Germans put them at a tremendous disadvantage, and Polish posi-

tions were successively encircled. Inner and outer pincers created by

German columns closed, isolating Polish armies, and making it diffi-

cult for them to maintain supplies or launch counterattacks.

Confidence in the latter enabled the German armour to advance

ahead of the marching infantry and with exposed flanks. This,

however, was a risky technique, especially when the Poles were able

to counteract the disorganisation and fear that came from German

attack, and the Germans also faced problems with supplies, particu-

larly the supply of fuel. Nevertheless, they were able to cope with

the problems that occurred and to regain momentum. Rivers were

crossed and major Polish cities rapidly fell. Brest-Litovsk (though not

its citadel) to the east of Warsaw fell on 14 September.

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Despite brave resistance, including a temporarily successful coun-

terattack on the Bzura River on 9–12 September (to which the

Germans rapidly responded), the German victory was total and

rapid. The Bzura counterattack was quashed by German tank rein-

forcements. However, as an important indication of the limitations of

armour, a tank advance into Warsaw on 9 September was stopped in

street fighting by Polish anti-tank guns and artillery.This contributed

to the heavy losses of German tanks (in part through wear and tear)

in the campaign.

A successful, although poorly executed, Soviet invasion of eastern

Poland from 17 September, in co-operation with the Germans, and,

along the entire length of the frontier, against limited resistance from

the few Polish forces in the region, had helped complete the picture

of Polish vulnerability.The Soviets captured Lvov on 22 September:

the Germans had earlier failed to encircle it in time.The Soviet inva-

sion removed strategic depth from the Polish defence and, in

particular, the opportunity of weakening German pressure by

dispersing their troops.

The Germans had not conquered eastern Poland by the time the

Soviets invaded, and, although much of the Polish army had been

lost, or was encircled, prior to the invasion, the Poles were still

hopeful of organising a bridgehead near the River Dniester and the

Romanian frontier.The Soviet invasion led, instead, to a decision to

retreat into Romania. Soviet and German forces joined on the upper

Dniester on 20 September, cutting off the line of retreat.

Warsaw still resisted, but it was under heavy artillery and air attack

and short of food and ammunition.This led to the surrender of the

unconquered city on 27 September. The last Polish troops stopped

fighting on 6 October. In their campaign, the Germans killed 70,000

Polish troops and took 694,000 prisoners. Another 100,000 escaped

into Romania.

Hitler had turned the defeat of Poland into an opportunity for

better relations with the Soviet Union. They shared a common

brutality and a willingness to use slaughter to achieve their goals.

The Germans and the Soviets at once began to kill Poland’s natural

leaders and intelligentsia in order to further their ends of creating a

ductile slave population. In addition, several thousand Jews were

killed by the Germans during, or soon after, the conquest, while the

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remaining Jews were obliged to live in ghettos where they were

subject to harsh conditions, especially limited food.Those who tried

to leave were killed.

Britain and France had entered the war in support of the Poles,

but, due to limited preparedness and to military and political

caution, were unable to provide assistance. The French needed two

weeks to get their artillery out of storage. In September 1939, they

advanced, but with only nine divisions, and only five miles, despite

the weakness of the opposing German forces, and then fell back after

Warsaw fell. This failure to help Poland further increased German

influence in Eastern Europe, particularly in Bulgaria and Hungary.

The British forces sent to France were small, short of equipment,

particularly tanks, transport, artillery, small arms and ammunition,

and poorly trained for conflict with the Germans. Due to the fiscal

situation, there had been no large-scale army manoeuvres for several

years. Command and control systems were inadequate. The move-

ment of the British force was too late to have any impact on the war

in Poland. The main troop landings began at Cherbourg on 10

September and it was not until 3 October that units began to take

over part of the front line from the French. Winston Churchill, the

First Lord of the Admiralty, advocated the dispatch of a fleet to the

Baltic specially prepared to resist air attack, but this rash idea, which

would have exposed the fleet to air attack in confined waters, was

thwarted by his naval advisers.

The unwillingness of the Germans to try to translate initial victo-

ries into a widely accepted peace ensured that the cessation of

offensive operations with the fall of Poland did not lead to an end to

conflict. Despite Hitler’s Reichstag speech of 6 October 1939,

calling for peace with Britain and France, no real effort was made to

negotiate one. Hitler could not be trusted and was planning to attack

in the west, although he had to delay until after the winter. In

November 1939, he rejected a Belgian–Dutch peace approach.

Britain and France were anyway determined to fight on in order

to prevent German hegemony. Sceptical about Germany’s ability to

sustain a long war, and confident that, as in World War One, the

Allied forces in France would be able to resist attack, Chamberlain

hoped it would be possible to intimidate Hitler by a limited war

through blockade.The strategy was intended to put such pressure on

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Germany that either Hitler would be forced to negotiate, or it

would lead to his overthrow.

Hitler’s response was an attack on France, Fall Gelb (Operation

Order Yellow), ordered from October, but not eventually launched

until May 1940. Hitler argued that Germany enjoyed a window of

opportunity thanks to being more prepared for war than Britain or

France, but he feared that the latter would be able to build up their

strength. Hitler was also eager to profit from the ability Poland’s

defeat offered for Germany to fight on only one front, and thus to

revert to the opportunities for success she had enjoyed in the Wars of

German Unification in 1864–71. More specifically, he was worried

that the Allies would be able from France to bomb the nearby Ruhr,

Germany’s leading industrial zone. The victorious campaign in

Poland had helped to consolidate the position of German generals

who favoured rapid armoured advance and had enhanced Hitler’s

self-confidence as a great strategist, but bad weather in the severe

winter of 1939–40, caution on the part of the German High

Command and the need for preparations delayed the attack on

France.

Military activity on the Western Front was very limited in the

interim, leading to its description as Sitzkrieg or ‘Phoney War’. The

Anglo-French forces failed to respond to German success in Poland

with a training regime able to respond to Blitzkrieg; instead training

was conventional, and there was little preparation for mobile tank

warfare, although more than was subsequently to be alleged. Nor

was there the anticipated bombing war between the combatants.

Conflict in Scandinavia

Instead, most fighting in the winter of 1939–40 unexpectedly took

place in Finland. Soviet aggression had led, first, to the demand of

major frontier changes and a thirty-year lease of Hanko for use as a

military base that would leave Finland strategically bereft, and, then,

to the staging by the Soviets of an incident on 26 November 1939

that offered them a pretext for invasion four days later.

Despite being numerically superior, and having complete control

of the air and far more artillery and ammunition, the Soviets suffered

serious defeats, especially at Tolvayarvi and Suomussalmi in

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December. Their strategy was poor, characterised by an inadequate

coordination of advancing forces, an underestimation of the fighting

quality and mobility of the Finns, and Stalin’s serious exaggeration of

Soviet military capability and failure to commit adequate resources

at the outset. Soviet inflexibility contrasted with the flexibility of the

Finns, who used ski battalions. This enabled the Finns to avoid the

dependence on roads that characterised the Soviets, and helped the

Finns to encircle Soviet columns.

The Soviets were not adequately prepared for winter operations.

Their equipment was not protected against cold and ice and there

was a lack of winter camouflage. The importance of environmental

factors was shown by the contrast with the situation in Poland.

There, the Germans had been able to use their overwhelming supe-

riority in armour, but, in Finland, the Soviets could not do so

successfully. Instead, the Finns exploited the unsuitability of terrain

and climate for armour, destroying large numbers of Soviet tanks

with Molotov cocktails: petrol bombs thrown by hand. Finnish

morale was also higher.

Soviet deficiencies in Finland indicated the need to match equip-

ment and doctrine to circumstances.The Soviet army was trained for

conflict in open country, but this was of scant value in forested

regions, where vehicles were forced to rely on roads that were

vulnerable to ambush. The same was, later, true for tanks in the

forested terrain of the Indo-Burmese frontier, although in central

Burma there were open plains suited to tanks. On the Burma–India

frontier and in Finland, the bulk of the terrain was impenetrable to

vehicles, which led to a focus on roads from which it was difficult to

deploy. This led to a vulnerability to flank attacks. Similar problems

were to be revealed by fighting in cities, although, in cities, there

were more routes of approach.

More, however, was involved in the initial Soviet failure in

Finland than terrain and training. The Soviet army also proved

unable to implement its doctrine and to operate in a flexible fashion.

In particular, there was a lack of coordination between the various

arms and an inability to implement strategic plans effectively. Thus,

control of the air was not employed to decisive strategic, operational

or tactical effect, although there was some important re-supply of

isolated units, helping them to fight on even when encircled; while

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the Soviet failure to coordinate infantry and tank advances left the

latter vulnerable to Molotov cocktails.

Eventually, in January 1940, the Soviets reorganised their forces.

They then overwhelmed the Finns with numbers, continuing to

press on the Finns north of Lake Ladoga while focusing the attack in

the south. There, in February and March, they used their superior

artillery to smash their way through the fortified Mannerheim Line,

although only with considerable difficulty.The Finns were forced by

a treaty of 12 March to cede territory as the price of peace.This cut

short British plans to stage a euphemistic ‘uninvited landing’ in

Norway as a prelude to sending troops to help the Finns.

These plans had an unrealistic air, as the determination of both

Norway and Sweden to remain neutral in the Russo-Finnish Winter

War greatly limited British options, while the British were not really

prepared for winter conflict. The plans also reflected the extent to

which the Soviet Union was identified with Germany, although it

was not in fact at war with Britain and France. Nevertheless, the pact

between the two countries led to a large-scale supply of Soviet

economic resources to the Germans. This encouraged French

thoughts of air attacks on the Soviet oilfields at Baku, and an expedi-

tion to Thessaloniki in Greece in order to contest any German

and/or Soviet advance into the Balkans.

Soviet casualties in the war with Finland were about 392,000

men. The combination of deficiencies in the Winter War campaign

with those in the attack on Poland in 1939 stimulated demands for

military reform in the Soviet Union; pressure that was accentuated

by evidence of German success. An evaluation of the campaign led,

in May 1940, to the issue of Order No. 120 by the Supreme Military

Soviet.This pressed for changes, including better training, more fluid

infantry tactics and better all-arms coordination.This was part of the

action–reaction cycle of responses to problems that was so important

to military capability during World War Two.

Perhaps more significantly, the Winter War contributed to a

misleading impression of Soviet incompetence that influenced

Hitler’s attitudes when he attacked in 1941. As far as more general

lessons were concerned, the conflict apparently demonstrated both

the degree to which resources did not dictate outcomes and the

extent to which they did in the end. In reality, neither was true. In

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February 1940, the Soviets were able to focus the conflict on the

Karelian Isthmus and to employ appropriate artillery-support tactics

in order to breach the Finnish positions.

The Soviet Union’s other campaign in 1940 – the occupation of

the independent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as

agreed with Hitler – was far less difficult than that in Finland. The

Soviets met scant resistance from vastly outnumbered and disunited

forces that lacked any international support. The common border

between Germany and the Soviet Union, established by their joint

attack on Poland, was now lengthened, as Lithuania had had a border

with Germany.The advance of the Soviet border in 1939 and 1940

undermined Soviet military defences, as there was not sufficient time

to implement a new defensive scheme before the German attack in

1941. On the other hand, the Soviets had considerably deepened the

area that the Germans would have to conquer. The Soviets also

intimidated Romania into ceding Bessarabia and northern

Bukovina, again with Hitler’s grudging agreement.

In April 1940, other neutrals were also attacked. Anxious to pre-

empt the danger of British moves, and keen to establish submarine

bases from which to attack British shipping, the Germans, in

Operation Weserübung, invaded Denmark and Norway: Denmark was

to be occupied in order to improve German ability to operate in

strategic Norway, in particular by gaining airfields.

Denmark rapidly fell on 9 April to a surprise attack in which the

Germans made effective use of their air power. Airborne troops,

including the first parachute assault, complemented those landed by

ship, while other units advanced overland.The Danish military was

weak and poorly prepared, and intelligence reports of a forthcoming

attack were largely ignored. Resistance was speedily overcome.

In Norway, the Germans largely relied on amphibious landings.

Oslo, however, was captured by airborne troops, although only after

much confusion and the loss of the Blücher, a heavy cruiser escorting

a planned amphibious landing. The ability to take advantage of the

seizure of the airfield in order to compensate for the blocking of the

landing, and to airlift in troops, was symptomatic of the responsive-

ness of the German command structure.The fall of Oslo on 9 April

was a powerful psychological blow to Norwegian resistance. As a

sign that the German policy of terror would not be restricted to

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Eastern European conquests, the Germans, on 9 April, threatened to

shoot Norwegians who resisted, and followed up by shooting a

number of civilians in order to demoralise the population.

Thanks both to tougher resistance and to Anglo-French interven-

tion, Norway took longer to fall than Denmark, although the initial

German success was decisive, as all major cities, harbours and military

bases had been seized, and the cohesion of opposition shattered.The

Germans lost about a quarter of their navy in the campaign, but, again,

their air power made a major impact. It helped exacerbate the limita-

tions of the Norwegian resistance and of the Anglo-French naval and

land intervention. The failure of the poorly-directed British navy to

prevent the initial landings or, subsequently that day, to disrupt them

was a serious problem, and was part of a more general failure of naval

management. The British were initially convinced that the Germans

were planning to sail into the Atlantic. A Luftwaffe attack ended moves

by the British surface fleet on invasion day, although British

submarines had an impact. The possibility of naval action was shown

on 10 and 13 April, when British warships sailed into Ofotfjord to

wreck the German squadron that had attacked and occupied Narvik.

On land, however, the British suffered from inadequate training

and equipment, and a lack of air cover and appropriate artillery.

Despite terrain that was unsuitable for their attacks, the Germans

proved better able to seize and maintain the initiative and to over-

come successive defensive positions. As a result, the British were

evacuated from Åndalsnes, south of Trondheim, on 1 May and from

Namsos, to the north, on 2–3 May. The Germans then advanced

north towards Narvik, where Allied forces were putting the isolated

German garrison under great pressure: the town fell to the Allies on

28 May.The Allied attempt to delay the German advance on Narvik

met with scant success, but that was not the decisive factor in

German success.They were further helped by the distraction of their

attack on the Low Countries and France on 10 May. The Allies

evacuated the Narvik area, their last base, on 8 June. Next day, the

Norwegian army accepted armistice terms. The Germans installed a

puppet government under the Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling: he

became Minister President in 1942, although the Reichskommissar

was a dominant figure. King Haakon VII and the elected govern-

ment went into exile in Britain.

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