Black J. World War Two A Military History

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range and could not therefore operate in the Atlantic. In August

1940, there were only 27 U-boats free for operations. Nevertheless,

submarines were more sophisticated than in World War One, the

Germans also had the effective Type VIIc, operational from 1940, and

they now had bases from which it was easier to threaten British

shipping. As a result, the amount of shipping sunk by U-boats rose

from the summer of 1940, at a time when British warships were

focused on home waters to cover the evacuation of forces from

France and to retain control of the English Channel in the face of

German invasion preparations. There were also severe Allied ship

losses in the winter of 1940–1, as the U-boats attacked Atlantic

convoys and developed wolf-pack tactics.

The situation, however, improved in the summer of 1941, as a

result of an increased number of escorts and of more aircraft over

and ahead of convoys.The American willingness to play a major role

in the defence of shipping in the western Atlantic was also impor-

tant. During the Placentia Bay conference of 9–12 August 1941,

Churchill and the American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

had agreed to allocate spheres of strategic responsibility. The

Americans agreed to be responsible for the western Atlantic, and,

from September, became responsible, alongside the Canadians,

for

escorting in that region. On 4 September, the Greer, an American

destroyer, was attacked by a U-boat south-west of Iceland, leading

Roosevelt to give the navy the authority to fire on German and

Italian warships in waters protected by the Americans. The British

also benefited from a major advance in the intelligence war, the

capture, on 8 May 1941, from a U-boat, of an undamaged Enigma

code machine. Their subsequent ability to decipher German naval

codes was a major advantage.

Most U-boat ‘kills’ were made on the surface, which rendered

Allied sonar less effective. Aircraft, however, forced U-boats to

submerge where their speed was slower and where it was harder to

maintain visual contact with targets. Nevertheless, neither the RAF,

which was interested in strategic bombing and theatre fighters, nor

the navy, which was primarily concerned with hostile surface

warships and content to rely on convoys and sonar to limit subma-

rine attempts, had devoted sufficient preparation to air cover against

submarines. In addition, land-based aircraft faced an ‘Air Gap’ across

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much of the mid-Atlantic, although Iceland’s availability as an Allied

base from April 1941 increased the range of such air cover. The

British had used carrier-based planes against submarines at the start

of the war, but the sinking by U-29 of the carrier Courageous on 17

September 1939 ended this practice, and the remaining fleet carriers

were needed for operations against Axis surface warships. The

demands of the bomber offensive against Germany on available

long-range aircraft restricted the numbers available for convoy

escort, while it took time to build escort aircraft carriers: the first

entered service in late 1941.

The Germans also did not devote enough emphasis to submarine

construction.As a result, they had insufficient submarines to achieve

their objectives, and those they had lacked air support. In 1940, the

Germans lost U-boats more speedily than new ones were being

brought into service. Italian submarines operated in the Atlantic

from July, but with only limited success. U-boat pressure in the

Atlantic was reduced in late 1941 as submarines were moved to

Norwegian and Mediterranean waters, in order to attack Allied

convoys to the Soviet Union and to deny the Mediterranean to

Allied shipping.

Although neither was as damaging as the submarine (70 per cent of

Allied shipping destroyed by the Germans during the war), the

Germans also sank shipping by the use of mines (6.5 per cent), espe-

cially the air-dropped magnetic mine, and aircraft, particularly the

long-range, four-engined FW200 Kondor (13.4 per cent), as well as

by surface raiders.The conquest of France and Norway provided bases

for Kondors, although there was a lack of adequate co-operation

between naval and air commands, which, in part, stemmed from

Göring’s control of air assets.

Concern about German submarines and surface warships ensured

that, from March until July 1941, British Bomber Command

concentrated on warships in docks, particularly the Scharnhorst and

Gneisenau in Brest, as well as docks and shipyards.

France’s surrender and Italy’s entry into the war greatly altered

the naval situation, especially by challenging the British position in

the Mediterranean.The British had planned that, in the event of war

with Japan, they would be able to rely on the French to protect their

joint interests in the Mediterranean, while much of the British fleet

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sailed to Singapore. The Fall of France transformed the situation.

Anxiety in 1940 about the fate of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir

near Oran in French North Africa led to a demand that it scuttle,

join the British, or sail to a harbour outside possible German

control.When this was refused, the fleet was attacked on 3 July 1940.

One battleship was sunk and two were damaged.This attack, which

led to 1,297 fatalities, weakened support for de Gaulle within France

and her empire, and made it easier for the Vichy government to

collaborate with the Germans: two days later, the government broke

off diplomatic relations with Britain. Other French warships surren-

dered or allowed themselves to be neutralised with far fewer

difficulties.

The ability of Vichy forces to fight back was made clear on 23

September 1940, when they opened fire from Dakar in West Africa

on a British-backed amphibious attempt by de Gaulle and his Free

French to seize the strategic port in West Africa. British warships

took damage from Vichy shore and ship guns and submarine torpe-

does, and, on 25 September, the operation was abandoned. Far from

being a curiosity on the fringes of the war, the Dakar operation

indicated the need for well-informed planning when mounting

amphibious operations and the difficulty of suppressing defensive

power in the absence of sustained and effective air attack. Under the

Paris Protocols of May 1941,Vichy agreed to the establishment of a

U-boat base at Dakar.

The Vichy response to the British attack at Mers-el-Kébir, two

bombing raids on Gibraltar, was ineffective. The more serious

prospect of Spanish entry into the war was not realised. Hitler met

Franco, Spain’s Fascist dictator, at Hendaye on 23 October 1940, but,

despite being offered gains in French Morocco, Spain stayed out of

the war.This discouraged Hitler from pursuing the idea of a league

of the Axis, Spain and Vichy France, with the last bribed with British

colonies. Spain’s entry would have led to an attack on Gibraltar, and

would have destroyed the British ability to operate in the western

Mediterranean, not least as the Germans would have gained airbases

in southern Spain. There was also concern in Britain that Spanish

entry into the war would enable the Germans to gain submarine

bases on Spain’s Atlantic coast, making the task of containing the U-

boats even more difficult. There was also anxiety about the

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possibility of the Germans gaining naval bases in the Canary Islands,

a Spanish territory.

Concern about the implications for the war against German

submarines led to British planning for the invasion of neutral Ireland

in order to ensure the use of the ports – Cobh, Castletown Bere and

Lough Swilly – that the British had retained the right to use when

Ireland gained independence, but which they had handed over in

1938.This concern also led to planning, in early 1941, for landings on

the (Portuguese) Azores and Canaries to pre-empt possible German

moves.That July, American forces replaced the British as the garrison

of Iceland, as part of their attempt to protect the Western

Hemisphere, a policy outlined at the Havana conference of July 1940.

There was, indeed, German interest in acquiring bases in the

Atlantic. From these, it would be possible to threaten British convoy

routes, to increase German influence in South America and to chal-

lenge American power. This was an aspect of the interest of the

Naval Staff in Germany becoming a power with a global reach

provided by a strong surface navy. However, although Hitler was

interested in Germany regaining the overseas colonies it had lost in

World War One, this was tangential to his central concern with

creating a new Europe.

The situation in 1941

As Roosevelt had successfully fought the 1940 presidential election

on a platform of neutrality, there appeared scant prospect of

American entry into the war. However, the loss of Crete to German

attack and the failure of the attempt, in Operation Battleaxe (15–17

June), to relieve the besieged garrison of Tobruk in Libya were the

last defeats for an isolated British Empire. Subsequent defeats

occurred when the Empire had powerful allies. The nature of the

war was about to change with Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union.

His refusal to accept what others might consider objective diplo-

matic and strategic considerations ensured that the local wars he

had won were, from 1941, transformed into a world war. The

Japanese shortly after took the same route, when they added war

with the USA and the British Empire to their unresolved struggle

in China.

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Meanwhile, within their conquered territories, both the Germans

and the Japanese treated the populations harshly. Large areas

(including northern France) remained under direct military

command; in others (Denmark, much of Poland) a German civilian

authority was instituted; and in others (including Manchuria,Vichy

France, Croatia) puppet states were created; although the extent to

which puppet states and indigenous civilian authorities were allowed

to take decisions varied greatly. In Europe, large numbers of people

found their citizenship status transformed, while Nazi regulations

were extended. The Germans sought to direct the economies of

conquered areas to the benefit of the German war economy. This

caused serious disruption, as did the loss of earlier maritime

economic links: with colonies, as well as with Britain and the USA.

Living standards were hit hard by the regulatory regime introduced

by the Germans and by the diversion of resources to support

Germany. In addition, there was much harshness at the individual

level. Property was seized, people brutalised, and killing continued,

particularly in Poland.

The campaigning between the Battle of France in May–June

1940 and the German attack on the Soviet Union the following

summer can seem inconsequential and, when word-space is limited,

frequently gets scant attention. Campaigns such as the Italian attack

on Greece appear of limited importance, while there seems to be an

inevitability about German dominance of the Balkans and British

victories over Italy. France having been beaten, it is not credible to

think that Yugoslavia would have avoided the same fate, and discus-

sion of Blitzkrieg concentrates on the campaigns of 1939 and 1940.

Those of early 1941 are presented as a prelude to Operation

Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, with the major question being

whether German success in the latter was hindered by earlier

commitments in the Balkans, specifically by the time that they took.

This approach underplays the importance and interest of the

earlier campaigns. As far as operations are concerned, they indicated

anew the importance of combined-arms capability and tactics, not

least in terrain where there were few communication routes. German

skill at air–land coordination was particularly important in the Greek

campaign. Furthermore, the vulnerability of naval operations to air

attack was demonstrated even more clearly than in the Norway

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campaign. Indeed, it was Mediterranean warfare in early 1941 that

indicated the degree to which air power had changed the arithmetic,

range and rationale of naval power, as Admiral Cunningham pointed

out.

Aircraft carriers clearly represented a major change to naval

warfare in World War One, but operations within range of land were

now vulnerable unless air superiority could be gained. This affected

the rationale of naval operations, because the risk of a rapid and

serious loss of ships, and thus of the loss of relative naval capability,

was now far greater. These factors were to be underlined when the

Japanese attacked in the Far East in December 1941, and were to

affect the debate over the preparations necessary before the Allies

could launch amphibious operations in Europe.The enclosed nature

of the Mediterranean, all of which is close to land, accentuated the

vulnerability of shipping there to air attack.

The African and Balkan campaigns of 1940–1 also demonstrated

the emptiness of Mussolini’s claims about Italian power. Instead, Italy

brought problems and commitments for Germany, as its defeats left

the strategic situation in the eastern Mediterranean uncertain and

apparently ripe for British exploitation.This led to a German inter-

vention that cost relatively little in the short term, but that was more

troubling in the longer term. The troops, armour and aircraft

committed to North Africa in 1942 and, even more, to Tunisia in

early 1943 would have been a small, but valuable, addition to

German force levels on the Eastern Front, while the numbers of

troops committed to garrison duty in Greece and, even more, to

anti-insurgency campaigns there and in Yugoslavia were consider-

able, and a major commitment until 1944, and added greatly to the

defensive burden of securing Hitler’s conquests.

Had the war ended in 1941 without a German assault on the

Soviet Union, then the successive German victories might have been

seen by military historians as comparable to Prussia’s success under

Moltke the Elder against Denmark (1864),Austria (1866) and France

(1870–1). The failure to force Britain to a quick peace would have

been compared to the similar problem with France in 1870–1:

swiftly won victories near the frontiers could not prevent a lengthier

commitment. There were of course many differences, not least the

naval and air dimensions, but, in essence, in 1864–71, Prussia had

used operational skill and tactical capability to offset its weakness for

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the sort of long-term or ‘total’ war faced by Napoleon in 1812–14

and by Germany in 1914–18. Greatly helped, like Moltke the Elder,

by his ability to attack opponents sequentially, rather than simultane-

ously, and by their operational deficiencies, Hitler had come close to

matching this achievement in 1939–41.

Britain still held out. The Blitz (as the Germans termed the

bombing attacks on British cities, especially London, mounted from

the autumn of 1940) failed to break civilian morale or destroy the

infrastructure. This campaign continued the Battle of Britain, but

without any operational focus or the capability to match its destruc-

tive purpose. Nevertheless, over 43,000 civilians were killed and

there was massive devastation. London was heavily attacked from 7

September, and, although it bore the brunt of the attack, there were

also destructive raids on other cities, including Coventry and

Southampton. Not least because of the absence of good aerial radar,

it was hard to hit German aircraft once they had switched to night

attacks in September 1940.

Relatively few German planes were

shot down, although the winter weather led to many losses.

However, by the late spring of 1941, the defence was becoming

more effective thanks to the use of radar-directed planes and ground

defences.The Blitz came to an end as the Germans transferred their

planes for use against the Soviet Union. It had not brought Britain

to her knees. Furthermore, the Germans lacked the submarine force

necessary to give full effect to their plans for blockade.

Britain could not be overcome, although there was concern that

Hitler would attempt an invasion in the spring of 1941.The passage

by Congress of the Lend–Lease Act in March 1941, under which

Roosevelt was granted a total of $7 billion for military matériel that

he could sell, lend or trade to any state vital to American security,

opened the way for the shipping of American military supplies to

Britain. However, the British were unable to mount a serious chal-

lenge to the German position, and the Germans hoped that the

British people would realise their plight, overthrow Churchill and

make peace.

This was a serious misreading of British politics and public

opinion. Chamberlain’s ill health opened the way for Churchill to

become leader of the Conservative Party in October 1940, and he

was strong enough politically to send Halifax to Washington. While

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public unity was not quite as strong as was claimed in wartime

propaganda, there was an impressive resolve in the face of Britain’s

perilous position. There was no equivalent to the political malaise

that had weakened France in 1940.

Hitler had grander plans than Bismarck and Moltke the Elder had

had for Prussia in the nineteenth century. He sought not to defeat

but to conquer and hold, and to remould Europe to the service and

image of a new ideology.To that end, he jeopardised the operational

successes of 1939–41 by declaring war on, first, the Soviet Union

and, then, the USA; but, to Hitler, these successes were of scant value

unless they were means to his goal.

Much of the German army was not involved in conflict in the

year between the Fall of France and the beginning of Operation

Barbarossa. This ensured that casualty levels were low, and that

training and the provision of new and improved equipment could

take place. The German military in the summer of 1941 was an

impressive force, ready and poised for a titanic struggle.

NOTES

1 J. Erickson, The Soviet High Command. A Military-Political History

1918–1941 (3rd edn, 2001), p. 499.

2 L. Lincoln, The Japanese Army in North China, 1937–1941: Problems of

Political and Economic Control (Oxford, 1975); J.H. Boyle, China and Japan

at War, 1937–1945:The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford, 1972).

3 G. Bunker, The Peace Conspiracy: Wang Ching-wei and the China War

1937–1941 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972).

4 I. Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

(1997); K. Honda, The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts

Japan’s National Shame (Armonk, New York, 1999).

5 F. Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941: From Marco Polo Bridge to

Pearl Harbor (New York, 1974); Hsi-sheng Ch’i, Nationalist China at War:

Military Defeat and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (Ann Arbor, 1982).

6 F.N. Bethell, The War That Hitler Won:The Fall of Poland, September 1939

(New York, 1972); S.J. Zaloga and V. Madej, The Polish Campaign, 1939

(New York, 1985).

7 M. Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust (3rd edn, 2002), pp. 32–43.

8N.Smart,British Strategy and Politics During The Phony War (Westport,

Connecticut, 2003).

9 A.F. Chew, The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet–Finnish Winter War

(East Lansing, 1971); C. Van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland,

1939–40 (1997).

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10 D.M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War

(Lawrence, Kansas, 1998).

11 PRO. PREM 3/328/5, pp. 23–6.

12 Pound to Admiral Cunningham, 20 May 1940, BL.Add. 52560 fol. 120.

13 K. Assmann, The German Campaign in Norway (1948); T.K. Derry, The

Campaign in Norway (1952); F. Kersaudy, Norway 1940 (1990); K.

Rommetveit, Narvik 1940: Five Nation War in the High North (Oslo,

1991).

14 N. Jordan, ‘Strategy and Scapegoatism: Reflections on the French

National Catastrophe, 1940’, in J. Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940:

Reassessments (Oxford, 1998), pp. 13–38, esp. pp. 22–9.

15 M. Melvin, ‘The German View’, in B. Bond and M.D.Taylor (eds), The

Battle of France and Flanders 1940 (Barnsley, 2001), p. 215.

16 V.F. Bingham, ‘Blitzed’:The Battle of France, May–June, 1940 (1990).

17 P. Deichmann, Spearhead for Blitzkrieg: Luftwaffe Operations Support of the

Army 1939–45 (1996).

18 M. Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945: Its Political and Military

Failure (Lanham, Maryland, 1990); J.P. Harris and E.H. Toase (eds),

Armoured Warfare (1992).

19 J.A. Gunsburg, ‘The Battle of Gembloux, 14–15 May:The “Blitzkrieg”

Checked’, Journal of Military History, 64 (2000), pp. 97–140.

20 H.A. Winters, Battling the Elements. Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of

War (Baltimore, 1998), p. 23.

21 A. Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace. From Versailles to Hitler,

1919–1940 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 126.

22 R. Overy, The Battle (2000), pp. 116–17.

23 P. Addison and J.A. Crang (eds), The Burning Blue. A New History of the

Battle of Britain (2000).

24 J.L. Granatstein, Canada’s Army. Waging War and Keeping the Peace

(Toronto, 2002), p. 186.

25 Pound to Admiral Cunningham, 24 July 1940, BL.Add. 52560 fol. 152.

26 M. Cervi, The Hollow Legions: Mussolini’s Blunder in Greece, 1940–1941

(1972). On Italian weaknesses, see M. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed,

1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge,

1982).

27 I.S.O. Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: the Early Successes

Against Italy (1954).

28 A.J. Barker, Eritrea, 1941 (1966).

29 M. Glover, An Improvised War: The Abyssinian Campaign of 1940–1941

(1987).

30 R.M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads. Mediterranean Origins of the Second World

War, 1935–1940 (Ithaca, 2002), p. 209.

31 M.A. Bragadin, The Italian Navy in World War II (Annapolis, 1957); J.J.

Sadkovich, The Italian Navy in World War II (Westport, Connecticut,

1994); J. Greene and A. Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean,

1940–1943 (Rockville, New York, 1999).

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32 Fuller pieces written for Sunday Pictorial of 27 April 1941, first

forbidden, second heavily censored, Rutgers, University Library, Fuller

papers, Scrapbooks vol. 6.

33 C. MacDonald, The Lost Battle: Crete 1941 (1993).

34 Cunningham to Pound, 28 May 1941, BL.Add. 52567 fol. 117.

35 R. Chesneau, Hood. Life and Death of a Battlecruiser (2002), p. 161.

36 G. Rhys-Jones, The Loss of the Bismarck:An Avoidable Disaster (1999); D.J.

Bercuson and H.H. Herwig, The Destruction of the Bismarck (Woodstock,

New York, 2001).

37 On whom, see M. Milner, North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian

Convoys and the Battle for the Convoys (Toronto, 1985).

38 J.Terraine, Business in Great Waters: the U-Boat Wars 1916–45 (1989).

39 W.Tute, The Deadly Stroke (1973).

40 A. Heckstall-Smith, The Fleet That Faced Both Ways (1963).

41 Cunningham to Pound, 28 May 1941, BL.Add. 52567 fols. 117–18.

42 For the problems facing ground-based anti-aircraft fire, see C.

Dobinson, AA Command. Britain’s Anti-aircraft Defences of World War II

(2001), pp. 228–33.

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