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World War II (1 Viewer)

OPERATION GOMORRAH---THE FIREBOMBING OF HAMBURG

"The last time London was burnt, if my history is right, was in 1666. …Well, they are sowing the wind."

(British Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, watching German aircraft bomb London).

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (by a Jewish author).

Hamburg was the most important city in the north of Germany, a large port and industrial center, with shipyards, U-boat pens and oil refineries as well as other manufacturing. Bombing raids had been conducted since early in the war, but the concentrated bombing beginning on July 24 and through August 3, 1943, was the heaviest raid in the history of aerial warfare that had been been conducted up to that time.

There were some initial raids but on the night of 27 July, shortly before midnight, 739 aircraft attacked Hamburg. The unusually dry and warm weather, the concentration of the bombing in one area, and firefighting limitations due to Blockbuster bombs used in the early part of the raid culminated in the so-called "Feuersturm" (firestorm). The tornadic fire created a huge inferno with winds of up to 150 mph and reaching temperatures of 1,500 °F, which incinerated some eight square miles of the city. Asphalt streets burst into flame, and most of the casualties (40,000) caused by Operation Gomorrah happened on this night (many killed were in shelters). On the night of 29 July, Hamburg was again attacked by over 700 aircraft. The last raid of Operation Gomorrah was conducted on 3 August.

Operation Gomorrah caused at least 50,000 deaths, mostly civilians, and left over a million other German civilians homeless. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs dropped, and 250,000 houses destroyed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from later allied interrogation of high officials, that Hitler thought that further attacks of similar weight might force Germany out of the war.

Hamburg was hit by air raids another 69 times before the end of World War II. This attack presaged the future firestorm attacks on Dresden and Tokyo.

Inevitably, an attack of this magnitude, even though it was directed primarily against strategic targets, brings ethical questions to the fore. Whether we believe this attack was ethical or not, depends largely on our view of war. At one end of the spectrum are those who believe no killing, no warfare is ethical. At the other end is the sense that anything that destroys the enemy's capacity to fight is ethical. Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes.

This is probably not the place for a huge debate on the ethics of a particular action in war. However, I think for the most part, nations tend to follow a pattern of equivalence. They abstain from some action if the enemy abstains from it; but if the enemy crosses a particular line, then they feel justified in doing so. Not arguing the ethics of that either; only that it seems to work out that way in practice.

 
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Ozymandias said:
This is probably not the place for a huge debate on the ethics of a particular action in war. However, I think for the most part, nations tend to follow a pattern of equivalence. They abstain from some action if the enemy abstains from it; but if the enemy crosses a particular line, then they feel justified in doing so. Not arguing the ethics of that either; only that it seems to work out that way in practice.
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The air war over Europe was a prime example of that. No bombing of cities by the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Then a mistake is made by a German formation. The Brits retaliate by bombing Berlin. Hitler then retaliates by changing the German's whole focus from military targets to civilian centers. When the Brits finally go on the offensive, they target German cities. The Germans then use V-1s and V-2s to indiscriminantly bomb. So the Brits unleash hell on Hamburg and Dresden.
 
Christo said:
Ozymandias said:
This is probably not the place for a huge debate on the ethics of a particular action in war. However, I think for the most part, nations tend to follow a pattern of equivalence. They abstain from some action if the enemy abstains from it; but if the enemy crosses a particular line, then they feel justified in doing so. Not arguing the ethics of that either; only that it seems to work out that way in practice.
Click to expand...
The air war over Europe was a prime example of that. No bombing of cities by the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Then a mistake is made by a German formation. The Brits retaliate by bombing Berlin. Hitler then retaliates by changing the German's whole focus from military targets to civilian centers. When the Brits finally go on the offensive, they target German cities. The Germans then use V-1s and V-2s to indiscriminantly bomb. So the Brits unleash hell on Hamburg and Dresden.
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This is all true, but it's also important to note that the Germans bombed civilians indiscriminately in Poland, well before the Battle of Britain, and in Russia afterward. In part, as the Germans pointed out at Nuremberg in defense of these actions after the war, this was a means of forcing civilians in panic to flood the roads, making army movement in defense difficult to execute. It was cold-blooded, but very effective.But there is another element to the bombing of Poland and Russia- the Germans considered the Slavic races to be Untermenschen- subhumans- not too much above Jews and certainly not subject to "fair" rules of war as an Englishman or American was.

The whole question of the bombing of civilians and what makes it justified (as opposed to terrorism) is a complicated one, and it served to make the Nuremberg Trials thorny and sometimes even hypocritical.

 
The Rescue of Mussolini Part 1

Back in the spring of 1938, when Hitler had annexed Austria, he had anxiously waited to see if Italy, Austria's historic protector, would intervene. That was the point when Mussolini, against Ciano's warnings, had decided to throw in with the Nazi dictator then and forever. He told his ambassador to tell Der Fuhrer that the Italians were "disinterested" in Austria. Hitler replied to the Italian ambassador: "Tell Mussolini that I will never forget him for this! Never never never! Even if the whole world is against him, I shall stand by his side!" Though Hitler was one of the greatest liars and breaker of promises in world history, this was one vow he intended to keep. One day after Mussolini's arrest, the Nazi Leader sent for the commando leader Otto Skorzeny to come to the Wolf's Lair.

Skorzeny epitomized Hitler's blond Aryan super race. He stood 6' 4", weighed a muscular 206 pounds and was handsome even though his face was saber-scarred from a duel over a ballet dancer. In a breaking voice, Hitler told him, "Mussolini, my friend and comrade-in-arms was betrayed yesterday by his king and arrested by his countrymen. I cannot and will not leave Italy's greatest son in the lurch. I will keep faith with my old ally and dear friend. He must be rescued promptly or he will be handed over to the Allies."

Hitler did not know where Mussolini was being held. But he ordered Skorzeny to find him and bring him safely into Germany. Skorzeny would have the full cooperation of Major Karl Student, the chief of airborne troops who had conducted the capture of Crete. Finding the vanished Duce was not so easy. Skorzeny sought him on La Maddalena Island off the Sardinian coast, in Rome, in the towering Abruzzi hills. Conflicting reports sent him rocketing off on wild goose chases. Mussolini had suffered a stroke and lay dying in a northern clinic. He had committed suicide. He was in Spain under the protection of General Franco. He was in Sicily disguised as a humble blackshirt. Then, by an incredible stroke of luck, he was located. A message to the Italian Ministry of Home Affairs had been intercepted. It said: "Security precautions around Gran Sasso di' Italia have been completed.

In the Gran Sasso were the highest peaks of the Arpennines. It was skiing country. A favorite resort was the Hotel Campo Imperatore, 3,000 feet aove the village of Assergi on the plain. It could be reached only by funicular railway. Even if rescuers seized control of the funicular, Mussolini's guards would be alerted and prepared to resist by the time tehy reached the top. Probably, they were under orders to kill Il Duce if any attempt were made.

Agents in Assergi reported that many carabinieri had moved into the area. The locals were furious because the staff of the Imperatore had been fired without advance notice. All tourist information on the Gran Sasso had mysteriously vanished from Rome travel agencies. Because Hitler had forbidden any intelligence operations in the country of his partner, there was not a shred of information available on the area where Mussolini was undoubtedly being held. A hastily taken and smudged aerial photograph showed only that there seemed to be a small airfield where a light Stork scout plane might land, but nothing bigger. The treacherous air currents of the Gran Sasso also ruled out a drop of parachutists. General Student decided that the rescue must be made by Skorzeny's troops mounted in gliders. A Stork to carry Mussolini to safety would land at the same time. The gliders would be wrecked of course, but Skorzeny's commandos would get away by taking the carabinieri guards hostage.

 
ISLAND HOPPING STRATEGY

“Victory has many fathers; defeat is an orphan.”

The most successful strategy used against Japan in the Pacific War was the leapfrogging of strongly held Japanese positions, to move closer to Japan, and to leave those strongholds to “wither on the vine”. It meant that the focus would be on cutting Japan's lines of communication, rather than defeating island after island that was occupied and fortified by the Japanese.

Both MacArthur and the US Navy claimed to be the authors of the strategy, but the likelihood is that it gradually emerged as discussions were held regarding the different Japanese outposts in the Pacific. This strategy began to be implemented in late 1943.

Leapfrogging had a number of advantages. It would allow the United States forces to reach Japan more quickly and not expend the time and manpower to capture every Japanese-held island. Also, perhaps most importantly, it would give them the element of surprise and keep the Japanese off balance, giving the Allies the initiative.

The overall leapfrogging strategy would involve two prongs. A force led by Admiral Nimitz, with a smaller land force and larger fleet, would advance north towards the island and capture the Gilbert and Marshall Islands and the Marianas, going in the generally direction of the Bonin Islands.

The Southern prong, led by General MacArthur and with larger land forces, would take the Solomons, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, advancing toward the Philippines. However, the principle of leapfrogging was not always followed in the Pacific. MacArthur, when he moved south to attack Mindanao, after capturing the Philippines, and when instigated the reconquest of portions of Borneo, violated the “basic tenets” of island hopping. However, at least in the first case, that was an almost inevitable choice since MacArthur when leaving, had promised Philippines people to come back as soon as possible. And he did hold to his promise.

Beginning with Operation Cartwheel, (which we will discuss next), they bypassed the heavily fortified Japanese positions and concentrated the limited Allied resources on strategically important islands that were not well defended but capable of supporting the drive to the main islands of Japan. This strategy was possible in part because the Allies used submarine and air attacks to blockade and isolate Japanese bases, weakening their garrisons and reducing the Japanese ability to resupply and reinforce.

No better example of this exists than Rabaul, the major Japanese base in the South Pacific, with its airfield and thousands of troops. The Japanese expected the American attack; they poured airplanes and tanks and cannons and war material and troops into Rabaul. They dug trenches and gun emplacements, strung hundreds of miles of barbed wire, set up fortified anti-aircraft gun emplacements and prepared for the onslaught.

And the Americans never came.

 
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OPERATION CARTWHEEL

Operation Cartwheel (1943–1944) was a major military strategy for the Allies in the Pacific theater of World War II. Cartwheel was a twin-axis of advance operation, aimed at militarily neutralizing the major Japanese base at Rabaul. The operation was directed by the Supreme Allied Commander in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA), General Douglas MacArthur, whose forces advanced along the northeast coast of New Guinea and occupied nearby islands. Allied forces from the Pacific Ocean Areas command, under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, advanced through the Solomon Islands towards Bougainville. The Allied forces involved were from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and various Pacific Islands.

The New Georgia Campaign was a series of battles as part of Operation Cartwheel, the Allied grand strategy in the South Pacific. The campaign took place in the New Georgia group of islands, in the central Solomon Islands from June 20, 1943, to August 25, 1943, between Allied forces and the Empire of Japan.

The Japanese had captured New Georgia in 1942 and built an airbase at Munda Point which began operations in December 1942 to support the Guadalcanal offensives. As it became clear at the end of 1942 that they could not hold Guadalcanal the Japanese commanders guessed that the Allies would move towards the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain, and that the central Solomon Islands were logical steps on the way.

The Imperial Japanese Army believed that holding the Solomon Islands would be ultimately unsuccessful and that it would be better to wait for an Allied attack on Bougainville which would be much less costly to supply and reinforce. The Imperial Japanese Navy preferred to delay the Allied advance for as long as possible by maintaining a distant line of defense. With no effective central command, the two services implemented their own plans: the navy assumed responsibility for the defense of the central Solomons and the army for the northern Solomons.

On the initiative of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, a plan known as Operation Cartwheel was developed, which proposed to envelop and cut off Rabaul without capturing it, by simultaneous offensives in the Territory of New Guinea and northwards through the Solomon Islands.

In early 1943, Japanese defenses were prepared against possible Allied landings on New Georgia, Kolombangara and Santa Isabel. By June 1943 there were 10,500 troops on New Georgia and 9,000 on Kolombangara well dug in and waiting for an Allied attack.

The first Allied landings were on 20 June 1943 by the United States 4th Marine Raider Battalion at Segi Point on New Georgia. There was no resistance, and airfield construction began there on 30 June. From 12 July planes from Segi Point provided close air support for the battle.

On 30 June, the 4th Raiders captured Viru Harbor. The main landing was made on the same date at Rendova Island, west of Munda. Munda point, the Japanese airbase on New Georgia Island, was the main objective of the assault on the island. This base was not taken until August 5, 1943.

The Japanese facilities at Bairoko Harbor, 13 km (8 miles) north of Munda, were secured by American forces on 23 August, after weeks of difficult jungle operations. Fighting continued on islands west of New Georgia until October 1943.

The Battle of Vella Lavella was fought from August 15 to October 9 of 1943 between Japan and the Allied forces from New Zealand and the United States. Vella Lavella is an island located in the Solomon Islands that had been occupied by Japanese forces. The Allies successfully recaptured the island.

The Salamaua–Lae campaign was a series of actions in the New Guinea campaign of World War II. Australian and United States forces sought to capture two major Japanese bases, one in the town of Lae, and another one at Salamaua. The campaign to take the Salamaua and Lae area began with the Australian attack on Japanese positions near Mubo, on 22 April 1943. The campaign ended with the fall of Lae on 16 September 1943. While the fall of Lae was clearly a victory for the Allies, and it was achieved more quickly and at lower lower cost than anticipated, a significant proportion of the Japanese garrison had escaped through the Saruwaged Range, to the north of Lae, and would have to be fought again elsewhere. The Huon Peninsula campaign was the result.

The Huon Peninsula campaign was a series of battles in which Australian forces assaulted Japanese bases on the Huon Peninsula.

The campaign began with an amphibious landing at Scarlet Beach, near Finschhafen on 22 September 1943. It included the battles of Finschhafen and Sattelberg. It concluded with the capture of the village of Sio on 15 January 1944.

The Japanese 20th Division faced the Australian 9th Division during the campaign. The Japanese lost almost two thirds of their original 12,600 personnel (killed, wounded or ill), while the Australians lost 1,028 soldiers.

The Battle of the Treasury Islands was fought between 27 October and 12 November 1943 between Allied and Japanese forces on the Treasury Islands; part of the Solomon Islands.

Allied operations to retake Bougainville (operation Cherry Blossom) from the Japanese 17th Army began with Landings at Cape Torokina by the U.S. Marine 3rd Division on November 1, 1943. The Allies intended to establish a beachhead around Cape Torokina, within which an airfield would be built. Allied forces did not plan, at this time, to try to capture the entire island of Bougainville from Japanese forces. An attempt by the Imperial Japanese Navy to attack the U.S. landing forces was defeated by the US Navy in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, on November 1 and November 2. A subsequent attempt by Japanese land forces to attack the Allied beachhead was defeated in the Battle of Koromokina Lagoon.

Protracted and often bitter jungle warfare followed, with many casualties resulting from malaria and other tropical diseases. U.S. Marine operations to expand the Allied beachhead resulted in the Battle for Piva Trail, Battle of the Coconut Grove, Battle of Piva Forks, and the Battle of Hellzapoppin Ridge and Hill 600A. The Marines were eventually replaced by the U.S. Army's Americal Division and other Army units.

And so it continued, island by island. Bypassing the strong ones, seizing others with weaker defenses and pushing the Allies closer and closer to Japan. The aim eventually was Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Those would be the springboard for the eventual invasion of Japan.

But in the meantime, there was MacArthur and the Philippines. And there was a little atoll, strategically placed, by the name of Tarawa.

If you are interested in where this was, here is a map of Operation Cartwheel. Rabaul is on New Britain, upper center of the map, slightly to the left. During their occupation the Japanese developed Rabaul into a powerful base. The Japanese army dug many kilometres of tunnels as shelter from the Allied air forces. By 1943 there were about 110,000 Japanese troops based in Rabaul. They were still there, waiting, at the end of the war.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SolomonsCartwheel.jpg

And here is a map of the overall Pacific Theater. You can see why Iwo Jima and Okinawa are the targets for the eventual invasion of Japan.

http://combinedfleet.com/battles/

 
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THE BATTLE OF TARAWA

This is a battle which need never have been fought.

Yes, Tarawa atoll did stand astride the US Navy's advance to the Marshall Islands (which were necessary for the advance to the Marianas Islands—which again were necessary in order to have airfields to support the Philippine invasion), but it could have been effectively neutralized by aerial bombing and ship bombardment. As it was, the US Navy faced an entrenched Japanese force which were prepared to fight to the death; and it extracted a heavy toll on the Marines and the Navy (there was also a significant US Army contingent).

In order to set up forward air bases capable of supporting operations across the mid-Pacific, to the Philippines, and into Japan, the U.S. needed to take the Marianas Islands. The Marianas were heavily defended, and in order for attacks against them to succeed, land-based bombers would have to be used to weaken the defenses. The nearest islands capable of supporting such an effort were the Marshall Islands, northeast of Guadalcanal. Taking the Marshalls would provide the base needed to launch an offensive on the Marianas but the Marshalls were cut off from direct communications with Hawaii by a garrison on the small island of Betio, on the western side of Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Thus, to eventually launch an invasion of the Marianas, the battles had to start far to the east, at Tarawa.

The Japanese forces were well aware of the Gilberts' strategic location and had invested considerable time and effort fortifying the island. The 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force of 2,619 men under the command of Commander Takeo Sugai was an elite Japanese marine unit. This unit possessed 14 Type 95 light tanks led by Ensign Ohtani. In order to bolster the defenses, the 1,247 men of the 111th Pioneers (similar to American Seabees) along with the 970 men of the Fourth Fleet's construction battalion were brought in; approximately 1,200 of the men in these two groups were Korean forced laborers. A series of fourteen coastal defense guns, including some 8-inch guns bought from the British before the war, were located around the island and placed in concrete bunkers. A total of 500 pillboxes, "stockades" built from logs, and forty artillery pieces were scattered around the island. An airfield was cut into the bush along the high point of the island. Trenches connected all points of the island, allowing troops to move where needed under cover. Kaigun Shōshō Keiji Shibazaki, who commanded the garrison, had boasted that "it would take one million men one hundred years" to conquer Tarawa.

The American invasion force was the largest yet assembled for a single operation, consisting of 17 aircraft carriers (6 Large and 11 baby carriers), 12 battleships, 8 heavy and 4 light cruisers, 66 destroyers, and 36 transports. The force carried the 2nd Marine Division and a part of the Army's 27th Infantry Division, for a total of about 35,000 soldiers and Marines.

The naval forces opened fire on November 20, 1943, shelling continually for over an hour and a half, stopping only briefly to allow dive bombers from the carriers to operate against fixed positions. Most of the larger Japanese guns were knocked out during this period. The island was at most points only a few hundred yards wide and the bombardment turned much of it into rubble. By the time of the invasion it was thought that no one would remain to defend what was left of the tiny island.

The attack plan consisted of three major beaches, Red 1 through Red 3, along the northern coast of the island; Red 1 on the extreme west at the "toe" of the island and Red 3 to the east against the pier. Beaches Green and Black were the western base and southern shore respectively, and not considered suitable for initial landings. The airstrip, running roughly east-west, divided the island into north and south.

The Marines started their attack on the lagoon at 09:00, later than expected, and found themselves stuck on a reef some 500 yards off shore. Marine battle planners had allowed for Betio's neap tide and expected the normal rising tide to provide a water depth of 5 feet over the reef, allowing larger landing craft, with drafts of at least four feet (1.2 m), to pass with room to spare. But that day and the next, in the words of some observers, “the ocean just sat there,” leaving a mean depth of three feet (0.9 m) over the reef. (The neap tide phenomenon occurs twice a month when the moon is near its first or last quarter, because the countering tug of the sun causes water levels to deviate less. But for two days the moon was at its farthest point from earth and exerted even less pull, leaving the waters relatively undisturbed.)

When the supporting naval bombardment stopped to allow the Marines to land, the Japanese emerged from the deep shelters where they had sheltered from the naval gunfire and quickly manned their emplaced gun positions. The Navy boats caught on the reef were soon set on fire by the Japanese artillery and mortar fire. Troops jumped out of the boats and started making their way ashore, under machine gun fire the entire time. The small number of Amtrac amphibious tractors were able to make it over the reef, with some difficulty, but many were knocked out by larger guns as they climbed over the reef, and half of the Amtracs were out of action by the end of the day. The first assault wave was only able to land a few men, who were pinned down against the log wall on the beach.

Several early attempts to land tanks and break through the wall failed when the landing craft were hit on the run in and either sank or had to withdraw while taking on water. Two tanks eventually landed on the east end of the beach but were knocked out of action fairly quickly. Another three tanks were able to land on the western end and helped push the line in to about 300 yards from shore, but one of these fell into a shell hole and another was taken out by a magnetic mine. The remaining tank was used as a portable machine gun pillbox for the rest of the day. A third platoon was able to land all four of their tanks on Red 3 around noon and operate successfully for much of the day, but by the end of the day only one tank was still operable.

By noon the Marines had successfully taken the beach as far as the first line of Japanese defenses. By 15:30 the line had moved inland in places but was still generally along the first line of defenses. The arrival of the tanks started the line moving on Red 3 and the end of Red 2 (the right flank, looking south towards the island), and by nightfall the line was about half-way across the island, only a short distance from the main runway.

During the later hours the Japanese defenders continued harassing fire. In one action, a Japanese Marine swam out to one of the disabled amtracs and brought its .50-caliber M2 machine gun into action against the rear of the U.S. Marine lines. By the time U.S. forces retook the vehicle, several men had been injured or killed.

With the Marines holding a line on the island, the second day turned to cutting the Japanese forces in two, by expanding the bulge near the airfield until it reached the southern shore. Meanwhile the forces on Red 1 were instructed to secure Green beach, the entire western end of the island.

In the end, taking Green proved somewhat easier than expected. With heavy resistance all through the area, the commander decided to avoid direct combat and instead called in naval fire from offshore. Inching their way forward during the day, the artillery spotters were able to take out machine gun posts and remaining defenses. After the fire stopped, the troops were able to take the positions in about an hour with few losses.

Operations along Red 2 and Red 3 were considerably more difficult. During the night the defenders had set up several new machine gun posts between the closest approach of the forces from the two beaches, and fire from those machine gun nests cut off the American forces from each other for some time. By noon the U.S. forces had brought up their own heavy machine guns, and the Japanese posts were put out of action. By the early afternoon they had crossed the airstrip and had occupied abandoned defensive works on the south side.

Around 12:30 a message arrived that some of the defenders were making their way across the sandbars from the extreme eastern end of the islet to Bairiki, the next islet over. Portions of the 6th Marines were then ordered to land on Bairiki to seal off the retreat path. They formed up, including tanks and pack artillery, and were able to start their landings at 16:55. They received machine gun fire, so aircraft were sent in to try to locate the guns and suppress them. The force landed with no further fire, and it was later found that only a single pillbox with 12 machine guns had been set up by the forces that had been assumed to be escaping. They had a small tank of gasoline in their pillbox, and when it was hit with fire from the aircraft the entire force was burned. Meanwhile other units of the 6th were sent onto Green north (near Red 1).

By the end of the day, the entire western end of the island was in U.S. control, as well as a fairly continual line between Red 2 and Red 3 around the airfield aprons. A separate group had moved across the airfield and set up a perimeter on the southern side, up against Black 2. The groups were not in contact with each other, with a gap of over 500 yards between the forces at Red 1/Green and Red 2, and the lines on the northern side inland from Red 2/Red 3 were not continuous. Nevertheless it is at this point, as seen in retrospect, that the U.S. began to gain the advantage.

The atoll commander, Kaigun Shōshō Keiji Shibazaki, was killed in his concrete command post, complicating Japanese command issues.

The third day of the battle consisted primarily of the consolidation of existing lines and the moving onshore of additional heavy equipment and tanks. During the morning the forces originally landed on Red 1 made some progress towards Red 2 but at some cost. Meanwhile the units of the 6th Marines landed on Green to the south of Red 1 formed up while the remaining battalion of the 6th landed.

By the afternoon the 1st Battalion 6th Marines was sufficiently organized and equipped to take the offensive. At 12:30 they started and were soon pursuing the Japanese forces across the southern coast of the island. By the late afternoon they had reached the eastern end of the airfield and formed a continuous line with the forces that had landed on Red 3 two days earlier.

By the evening the U.S. clearly had the upper hand. The remaining Japanese forces were either squeezed into the tiny amount of land to the east of the airstrip, or located in several pockets near Red 1/Red 2 or near the eastern edge of the airstrip.

Realizing this, the Japanese forces formed up for a counterattack, which started at about 19:30. Small units were sent in to infiltrate the U.S. lines in preparation for a full-scale assault but were beaten off by concentrated artillery fire, and the assault never took place. Another attempt was made at 23:00 and made some progress.

At 04:00 the expected Japanese assault finally took place, in the same location as the probe five hours earlier. When the battle ended about an hour later, 200 of the 300 attackers were found dead in front of the U.S. lines, the vast majority killed by artillery fire. The Japanese had little left with which to defend the atoll.

Only one Japanese officer, 16 enlisted men and 129 Koreans were alive at the end of the battle. Total Japanese and Korean casualties were about 4,713 dead. For the U.S. Marine Corps, 990 were killed and a further 2,296 wounded. A total of 687 U. S. Navy personnel also lost their lives in the landing attempts, giving a total of 1,677 American dead. Although the United States forces were seven times larger than the defending garrison, the Japanese were able to inflict substantial damage upon the U.S. force.

Yes, it is true that the US learned many lessons in Tarawa, which were to be used in further amphibious invasions, particularly Iwo Jima. But they came at a terrible cost.

What was certain, however, is that regardless of the difficulties, the US Navy, Marines and the US Army did not lack courage and fighting spirit. Four Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded for actions on Tarawa.

 
Great, great narrative by Ozy. It also saves me time. I think, for at least the time being, I will stick to the ETO (European Theater of Operations.) Ozymandias is doing too fine a job and I have little to add.

 
Think of the courage it takes to storm a beach. People dying to the left and right of you, and the enemy is ahead, in a hidden position, while you're wide open with no cover.

I don't think I could do it. Frankly, I'm too much of a coward. I can't imagine what guts those Marines had.

 
timschochet said:
Think of the courage it takes to storm a beach. People dying to the left and right of you, and the enemy is ahead, in a hidden position, while you're wide open with no cover. I don't think I could do it. Frankly, I'm too much of a coward. I can't imagine what guts those Marines had.
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I don't know if I could, either. These were ordinary men, pulled away from their jobs as mechanics or farmhands or salesmen or teachers or bookkeepers. But in the end, they did it because they had to; because they would not let their comrades down. William Manchester, writing about why he had escaped from a hospital in Paris to return to the front during the Battle of the Bulge, said something along these lines: "Years later, in a thundering revelation when one realizes one's true motives, I recognized why I had escaped from the hospital and returned to the battlefield. Those were my comrades, the best friends I had ever had, and I could not bear to think of them in battle and me not doing everything possible to save them." Ordinary men, with extraordinary courage. We should eternally honor them.As Lincoln said: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
 
The Rescue of Mussolini Part 2

On Sunday, September 12, 12 towing planes took off from the airfield at Pratica di Mare with a dozen frail gliders swaying in the wind behind them. They carried 108 men led by Otto Skorzeny. 30 miles away a Stork also took off- from a bumpy sheep pasture at Castel Gandolfo, the summer home of the popes. The Stork arrived over Imperatore before the gliders. Its pilot looked around him anxiously, A Stork's flying time was only 3 and a half hours. But then, with relief, he saw the gliders.

Ahead of Skorzeny's glider the towplane had released the towrope. The glider sank sickeningly downward. Skorzeny and his men straddled the crossbars, the wail of the wind in their ears.

Below eas the hotel, squat, white, and horseshoe-shaped. Tiny ant men were spilling out of it. With dismay Skorzeny saw that the "landing field" was only a ski run. The pilot tried desperately to brake their 50 mile an hour descent. Terrain rushed up toward them: scrub, parched grass, and deadly boulders. They hit the ground, sliding screeching on their belly while the boulders made matchwork of the glider. Sunlight flowed into the wrecked cabin. Skorzeny leaped out, brandishing a machine pistol, and saw the hotel terrace only 20 yards away.

Inside his hotel room Inspector-General Giuseppe Gueli lay on his bed, taking a siesta The roar of the towplanes and crash of the gliders awakened him. Lieutenant Faiola burst into the toom, shouting: "What do we do?"

Gueli's orders were to kill Mussolini in such an event. But he replied instantly: "Give up without hesitation!" Both men ran to the window to lean out, shouting, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" At a second-floor window appeared Mussolini's bald head. "Do not shed blood!" he cried to the commandos sprinting for the hotel.

Skorzeny and a commando saw an open door and ran through it. A carabinieri was bent over a radio transmitter. The commando kicked the man's stool out from under him while Skorzeny smashed the transmitter with the butt of his machine pistol. But the radio room was a dead end. Skorzeny ran outside. A crouching commando offered his back. Skorzeny jumped up on it and scaled a 9 foot wall. He ran into the main building, racing up a staircase three steps at a time. "Mani in alto!" he shouted as he ran. "Hands up!"

On the second floor Skorzeny instinctively threw open the door of Room 201. Inside were three frightened men: Gueli, Faiola, and Mussolini. It was not the virile strutting Duce whom Skorzeny had seen on the Palazzo Venezia's balcony in 1934, but still, in this broken, balding old man with the eyes huge in his shrunken face, he recognized him.

"Heil, Duce!" he cried. "Duce, the Fuhrer sent me! Duce, you are free!" Mussolini embraced and kissed him. "I knew my friend Adolf Hitler would not leave me in the lurch."

It had taken Skorzeny 4 minutes to free Mussolini, and not a shot had been fired. At 3 pm, over the objections of the Stork's pilot but on the insistence of Skorzeny, Mussolini and his liberator both took off for Practica di Mare. Because of Skorzeny's added weight, they very nearly crashed on takeoff, but the pilot skillfully held the plane steady. When they landed, Mussolini took the pilot's hand and said in German, "Thank you for my life."

The newsreel of Hitler shaking Mussolini's hand was seen around the world. It was a great propaganda coup for the Third Reich, at a time when their fortunes of war had taken severe setbacks. Mussolini was declared dictator of German occuppied Italy. But in truth this was all a sham. The Italian dictator was not allowed to make any decisions of importance; he was nothing more than a shell of his former self. From being a prisoner of his own people, he was now a prisoner of the Germans.

 
BATTLE OF CAPE ST. GEORGE

The Battle of Cape St. George was a naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II fought on November 26, 1943, between Cape St. George, New Ireland, and Buka Island (now part of the North Solomons Province in Papua New Guinea). It was the last engagement of surface ships in the Solomon Islands campaign.

Americans had landed troops on Bougainville on November 1, 1943. This posed a threat to the Japanese base on Buka Island to the west, and 900 Japanese Army troops were loaded on the destroyer transports Amagiri, Yugiri, Uzuki and sent together with the destroyers Onami, Makinami under the command of Captain Kiyoto Kagawa to reinforce the garrison.

The United States Navy learned of the convoy and sent the five Fletcher-class destroyers Charles Ausburne, Claxton, Dyson, Converse, and Spence under the command of Captain Arleigh Burke to intercept it.

The Japanese destroyers landed the 900 troops and supplies, embarked an equivalent number of Navy personnel (that the Army troops replaced), and were returning to Rabaul when at about 01:40 they were spotted on radar by the U.S. warships. Superior radar allowed the American ships to approach and launch their torpedoes at about 01:55 before the Japanese sighted them. Onami was hit by several torpedoes and sank immediately. Makinami was hit by one torpedo, disabled, and then sunk by gunfire. The transport destroyers fled in different directions; Burke pursued Yugiri and sank her about 03:30.

The battle marked the end of the Tokyo Express and the end of Japanese resistance in the Solomon Islands, and the success of Allied efforts to achieve superiority in night combat using radar. There were no more surface engagements in the Pacific War until the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign began with the invasion of Saipan in June 1944

An addendum here to talk about Captain Arleigh Burke. Burke was born far from the sea, in Boulder, Colorado. On 8 June 1923, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy, was commissioned ensign in the United States Navy, and married Miss Roberta Gorsuch of Washington, D.C..

Over the next 18 years, Burke prepared himself for combat, serving in battleships and destroyers, and earning a Master of Science in Engineering at the University of Michigan. When World War II came, he found himself, to his great disappointment, in a shore billet at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.. After persistent effort on his part, he received orders to join the fighting in the South Pacific.

Burke would spend the remainder of the war in the South Pacific. He successively commanded Destroyer Division 43, Destroyer Division 44, Destroyer Squadron 12, and Destroyer Squadron 23. The latter squadron, known as the "Little Beavers", covered the initial landings in Bougainville in November 1943, and fought in 22 separate engagements during the next four months. During this time, the Little Beavers were credited with destroying one Japanese cruiser, nine destroyers, one submarine, several smaller ships, and approximately 30 aircraft.

He usually pushed his destroyers to just under boiler-bursting speed, but while en route to a rendezvous prior to the Battle of Cape St. George, a boiler casualty limited his squadron to 31 knots, rather than the 34 they were otherwise capable of. Thereafter, his nickname was "31-knot Burke," originally a taunt, later a popular symbol of his hard-charging nature.

In March 1944, Burke was promoted to Chief of Staff to the Commander Fast Carrier Task Force 58, which was commanded by Admiral Marc Mitscher. While serving with this famed carrier force, Burke was promoted to the temporary rank of Commodore, and participated in all the force's naval engagements until June 1945, shortly before the surrender of Japan. He was aboard both Bunker Hill and Enterprise when they were hit by Japanese suicide planes during the Okinawa campaign.

After the end of the war, Burke reverted to his permanent rank of Captain and continued his naval career by serving in a number of capacities, including once more as Admiral Mitscher's chief of staff, until the latter's death in 1947. Burke then took command of the USS Huntington (CL-107) for a cruise down the east coast of Africa. He was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1949 and served as Navy Secretary on the Defense Research and Development Board.

At the outbreak of the Korean War, Admiral Forrest Sherman, then Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Burke to duty as Deputy Chief of Staff to Commander Naval Forces, Far East. From there, he assumed command of Cruiser Division Five, and, in July 1951, was made a member of the United Nations Truce Delegation which negotiated with the Communists for military armistice in Korea. After six months in the truce tents, he returned to the Office of Chief of Naval Operations where he served as Director of Strategic Plans Division until 1954.

In April 1954, he took command of Cruiser Division Six, then moved in January 1955 to command Destroyer Force Atlantic Fleet. In August 1955, Burke succeeded Admiral Robert B. Carney as Chief of Naval Operations. At the time of his appointment as Chief of Naval Operations, Burke was still a Rear Admiral, Upper Half (Two Star) and was promoted over the heads of many Flag Officers who were senior to him.

Admiral Burke had never served as a Vice Admiral (Three Star), so he was promoted two grades at the time of his appointment as CNO.

It might be added that Burke was almost dismissed from the Navy because he was part of the “Revolt of the Admirals” a near mutiny which took place in 1949. During that time, when the US was downsizing its military, the Air Force and Army had propounded the doctrine that the Navy was no longer needed because the Army and the Air Force could do everything the Navy could do and do it better and cheaper. (Everyone was fighting for territory).

When Omar Bradley head of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, seemed to be siding with that view, a number of admirals resigned, and the others were fired.

Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson famously said: “There's no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me that amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We'll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.”

Congress got into the act, and issued several reprimands. The Armed Services Committee questioned the qualifications of the Army and Air Force chiefs of staff, who had testified in support of Johnson, to determine vessels appropriate for the Navy. The committee, disapproving of Johnson's "summary manner" of terminating the carrier program and his failure to consult congressional committees before acting, stated that "national defense is not strictly an executive department undertaking; it involves not only the Congress but the American people as a whole speaking through their Congress. The committee can in no way condone this manner of deciding public questions."

In the event, President Truman stepped in and saved Arleigh Burke for the Navy (and the country). As was mentioned above, he went on to become the CNO (under Eisenhower) and served for an unprecedented three terms. He was a strong supporter of the Navy's nuclear submarine program, and the Navy's position on the need for aircraft carriers has been amply vindicated in the decades since.

 
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Italy, continued

When Montgomery's 8th Army landed in Italy on September 3, it wheeled to the right or east, making for the German airfields at Foggia, not far from the Adriatic coast. 6 days later, the American 5th Army under Mark Clark began landing at Salerno on the Meditteranean. At the same time, the Germans took control of Rome, where the Italian government had panicked. King Victor Emmanuel, Badoglio and the chief military leaders fled to the south under Allied protection. Without orders, the Italian armed forces of about 1.7 million men were either disarmed by the Germans or threw away their uniforms and melted into the population. Italy had become an occupied country and the Italian army had ceased to exist and was no use to the allies.

However, the Italian fleet did sail from its ports, eventually joining the Allies. This left Bari, Brindisi, and Taranto open, and they were seized by Admiral Cunningham's ships, thus allowing the British 1st Airborne Division to occupy the heel of Italy.

At Salerno early success was brief. Clark had hoped for surprise but as the assault boats roared towards the beach in the early-morning darkness, a loudspeaker ashore began crackling, and a German voice roared in English, "Come on in and give up. You're covered!" They were indeed, and then made naked by the eerie light of enemy flares floating down from the black. German guns emplaced above the beachhead on both flanks and to the front delivered a plunging fire on them. Nevertheless, the Americans continued to come in, gradually establishing a foothold on those pebbly beaches, and then fighting inland to expand it. 4 days later a massive German counterattack came close to hurling the Americans into the sea. General Clark rushed to the fighting front to tell his soldiers, "We don't give another inch. This is it! Don't yield anything. We're here to stay!"

But after Kesselring sent his tanks clanking into the battle, the Americans very nearly did not stay. The German chief had 600 tanks. Had he massed them for a single pulverizing stroke, it is probable that he would have crushed the invaders. But he committed them piecemeal, and the American soldiers at Salerno, assisted by naval gunfire and by close-up aerial support from bases in North Africa and Sicily, held their ground.

Meanwhile, Monty's steady drive up the Adriatic coast had unmasked Kesselring's left flank. To straighten his line he had to fall back on Naples. Next the 8th Army seized the Foggia airfields, providing Allied aerial support right on the edge of the battlefield. Kesselring retreated again, abandoning Naples. Before he did, however, his engineers with customary thoroughness made a blackened, smoking desert of one of the oldest cities of Westen civilization. Churches, schools, and hospices were put to the torch. Harbor facilities were systematically wrecked. The prisons were thrown open in a deliberate attempt to hamstring the advancing Americans with a horde of criminals; hospitals were looted, and the harbor was sown with sunken ships and the streets mined with booby traps. Yet, within a month the skill and resourcefulness of American engineers had Naples harbor partially cleared and operative. Next, civil affairs officials, representative of that merciful new wrinkle on the ugly face of war, began to provide for a hungry and horrified populace.

 
Italy, Continued

Naples and Foggia were the high point of the fall campaign in Italy. After them, Kesselring began to make good on his promise to Hitler that he could hold Italy against all comers. To do so he threw a series of defensive lines across the peninsula, taking advantage whenever he could of its narrowest points. Minefields and demolitions guarded every possible approach to his lines. Mortar and machine-gun positions were dug in and carefully camoflaged to blend in with the countryside. Artillery was registered on every road and trail or bivouac area. Kesselring's was a textbook defense erected in terrain made for the defender. It was a jumble of steep hills, laced with valleys and gorges through which raced swift cold streams fed by mountain lakes. The rivers twisted and turned so frequently that one American division crossed the Volturno so many times a GI burst out in exasperation: "Every damn river in this fool country is named Volturno!"

Painful as the two-pronged Allied advance had become, winter stopped it dead. Torrential rains carried away bridges, washed out roads and turned the earth into mud. The Italian campaign was now almost a repetition of the static trench warfare of the last war. It was once again a front without flanks, leaving no room for maneuver. Tanks were next to useless in such terrain, and when the weather was clear enough for the Allies to take advantage of their aerial superiority, saturation bombing to provide alleys or lanes for penetration was no more effective than had been the massive artillery bombardments of World War I. Why then did not the Allies draw their vaunted amphibious whip and turn Kesselring's flanks with amhibious landings in his rear? There was just not enough sea power and landing craft to do it. There would never be enough to meet the demands of a two-ocean war- given the emphasis on strategic bombing- and most of what had been available had left the Mediterranean for the Pacific. New production was earmarked for the buildup in Britain for the cross-Channel invasion in 1944.

Stalled though the Italian campaign indubitably was, it still had been a boon for the embattled Soviets. By rushing 13 divisions into Italy- including the two SS divisions from the Eastern front- Hitler caused fatal delays to Operation Citadel. This in turn had an effect on the Battle of Kursk, as Ozymandias has noted earlier.

 
I have now concluded the narrative for the ETO for 1943. Before beginning 1944, I plan on doing a series of posts on the American homefront, along with some related stories that need to be told. Hopefully, Ozymandias will continue his excellent description of the Pacific War, (and perhaps Burma as well?)

 
The Home Front- Introduction

During March 1942, according to an anecdote then sweeping the country, a woman on a bus was reported to have said loudly, "Well, my husband has a better job than he ever had and he's making more money, so I hope the war lasts a long time." At that, another woman rose and slapped her face, blurting out, "That's for my boy who was killed at Pearl Harbor. And this" - a second slap- "is for my boy on Bataan."

The story has an air of apocrypha (what mother had sons on Oahu and Luzon?), but its widespread acceptance suggests that it told wartime America something about itself. For tens of millions the war boom was in fact a bonanza, a Depression dream come true, and they felt guilty about it. Not so guilty that they declined the money, to be sure- that would have been asking a bit too much of human nature and wouldn't have helped combat troops a bit- but contrite enough to make them join scrap drives, buy war bonds, serve in Civil Defense units, and once in a while buy a lonely soldier a drink.

Every great war is accompanied by social revolution, and the very dimensions of this war were bound to alter America greatly. Few realized that then. The New York Daily News really believed the GI's were fighting "to get back to the ball game and the full tank of gas," and GIs themselves sometimes thought they were battling for Mom and apple pie. But history does not let those who make it get off that easily. No country could have survived America's convulsive transformation of 1941-1945 without altering its essence and its view of itself. The home front was in reality a battleground of ideas, customs, economic theory, foreign policy, and relationships between the sexes and social classes. Rosie the Riveter, like Kilroy, was everywhere, and she would never be the same again.

The most obvious change was the immense transfusion of cash into what had been an austere economy. In 1942 Washington was pumping 300 million dollars a day into U.S. wallets and purses. After the windup in 1945, the total cost of the war was reckoned at 245 billion dollars- more than the combined annual budgets of the United States from 1789 to 1940. In 1939, the Gross National Product (the total value of the goods and services produced by the American people) had been 91 billion dollars. In 1945 it was 215 billion, a jump without precedent in the history of the world. The problem of unemployment- anywhere from 8 to 15 million throughout the entire decade of the 1930's- had disappeared. The number of working Americans had grown from 45 million to 66 million, over 5 million of them women. The country's old, pre-Crash confidence was back. Corporate profits in 1943 exceeded those of 1929.

For women, life would never be the same. For African-Americans, especially those who migrated north and west for employment in the big cities, life would never be the same, and their new spending power would force the rest of America to treat them differently, as we shall see. Actually, it can be argued that the America we know and understand today was forged during these crucial years.

 
The Home Front, Continued

Joseph Goebbels cried, "The Americans are so helpless that they must fall back again and again upon boasting about their materiel. Their loud mouths produce a thousand airplanes and tanks almost daily, but when they need them they haven't got them and are therefore taking one beating after another!" This was mindless, even antic, but there was something disconcerting about a country which could field an Army of 12 million men, fight two awesome empires at the same time, build a Navy larger than the combined fleets of its enemies and its allies- and still record a 20% increase in civilian spending over 1939. "We live in the light, in relative comfort, and complete security," said Edward R. Murrow, who was then a broadcast journalist in London, and just becoming famous. "We are the only nation at war which has raised its standard of living since the war began. We are not tired, as all of Europe is tired."

The years between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day were decisive in changing America partly because national mobilization blurred the lines between the classes by putting everyone shoulder to shoulder. Even more important, the war led to the transfer of economic power to the disenfranchised. Before the boom America had been a country which people sought products. With the arrival of the consumer society during World War II, products would seek people, and it has been this way ever since; our current definition of the free market capitalistic system we live under stems from this change.

At the forefront of this change was the triumph of American industrial capacity. It was this moment in history that Henry J. Kaiser, an aggressive, 60 year old industrialist emerged. Kaiser had played key roles in the building of Boulder Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Bonneville Dam, and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. In March 1942 he had just acquired shipyards in California and Oregon, and there he was introducing revolutionary techniques of prefabrication and assembly which would lead to the mass production of shipping without loss of quality.

From the outset, Kaiser's industrial triumphs became legend. Beginning with an initial keel to delivery time of over 200 days, he cut the average work time on a Liberty ship to 40 days, and that September, the 10th month of the war, he established a world record by launching the 10,000 ton Liberty Ship John Fitch in 24 days after laying the keel. By then he had 100 ships in the Atlantic, and this was only the beginning. By 1944, he was launching a new escort aircraft carrier every week- and he and his fellow shipbuilders were turning out entire cargo ships in 17 days. During the first 212 days of 1945 they completed 247 of these, better than one a day, but long before that Kaiser had cast an eye elsewhere. If he could make Liberty ships, he argued in Washington, why couldn't he build cargo planes too? Immediately he was surrounded by government designers and engineers telling him his plans were impossible. But mastering the impossible had been the story of his life, and this time he acquired a partner, one Howard Hughes, who had done almost everything Kaiser had done and established a few flying records besides. In late 1942 they struck a bargain: each would invest 50% of the capital and harvest 50% of the profits.

Kaiser and Hughes were charismatic; they became celebrities. Yet, they are best remembered as representatives of their time. The production miracle was accomplished by thousands of hard-driving executives and millions of workers, some skilled veterans and some young women fresh from the kitchen or the bargain counter. American resources and American freedom had united them in a joint effort that Japanese emperor worship, Mussolini's rhetoric, and Albert Speer's productive genius could not match.

 
The Home Front, Continued

To a generation which has grown up under the sound of supersonic booms, some miracles doubtless seem unimpressive. Aerospace designers of today, for example, are inclined to regard the B-17 Flying Fortress as quaint, somewhat like an antique. But in the 1940's it was a technical triumph, just right for its time. If the passage of nearly 70 years has rendered obsolete the weapons which came off World War II assembly lines, it cannot touch the exploits of those who toiled there, competing with equally determined workers in Krupp, Fiat, and Mitsubishi factories and overwhelming them.

To put United States military production in perspective, it may be useful to note that on May 10, 1940, when the Wehrmacht burst through the Lowlands and the Ardennes, its historic blitzkrieg was supported by 3,034 aircraft, 2,580 tanks, 10,000 artillery pieces, and 4,000 trucks. In the 5 years following the French collapse, America turned out:

Warplanes 296,429

Tanks (including self-propelled guns) 102,351

Artillery pieces 372,431

Trucks 2,455,964

Warships 87,620

Cargo ships 5,435

Aircraft bombs (tons) 5,822,000

Small arms 20,086,061

Small arms ammunition (rounds) 44,000,000,000

If I had to choose one single post in this entire narrative to explain the inevitable outcome of World War II, this would be it. No other post either myself or Ozymandias or anyone else could write is equal in importance in terms of describing the final result as this one. Simply put, American industrial might was unfrigginbelievable, and it won the war.

 
The Home Front, Continued

At the end of World War I, Woodrow Wilson wanted to change the nature of the United States' relationship with the world by creating the League of Nations. In this effort, he was defeated by a group of Republican isolationists who believed in George Washington's Farewell Address advice to "avoid foreign entanglements."

FDR shared Wilson's vision. He believed the mistake by Wilson had been to wait until AFTER the war to make his proposal. He knew that the same thing would probably occur when this war ended: Congress, representing the public, would be tired, want things to return back to normal, and Republicans might once again revert to isolationism. Therefore, he determined even before Pearl Harbor, long before the outcome of the current war was decided, to plan for the future of the world and what the role of the United States would be in that future. It is critical to an understanding of American actions during the Second World War to realize that this was always at the back of Roosevelt's mind.

After Pearl Harbor, FDR had the support of statesmen who had long opposed his view in these matters. Isolationism had become a dead issue. Senator Arthur Vandenberg was in the middle of his long, historic swing towards advocacy of a world community. Only Hiram Johnson of California, dying with his cause, continued to argue that America should "go it alone." In the Autumn of 1943 Johnson delivered the last major isolationist speech. Then, on the question, "Should the Senate resolve its willingness to join in establishing international authority to preserve peace?" the vote was 85 yes, 5 no, 6 absent. The House had already passed a similar resolution- introduced by young Representative J. William Fulbright of Arkansas (who decades later would be Bill Clinton's mentor) 360 to 29. The way was then clear for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, which drew up a preliminary draft for American participation in the United Nations. The Senate ratified it, 89 to 2, and in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, diplomats hammered out agreements providing for an international bank and world fund for stabilizing currencies and rebuilding war torn countries.

Ever since then, of course, there have been many Americans who are opposed to the United Nations. But it's important to note that it was nearly unanimous at the time.

 
The Home Front, Continued

The great assembly lines were moving round the clock, preparing the armies of Russia, Britain, the Commonwealth, the Free French, and America's own servicemen for the decisive assaults of 1944. Typewriter factories were making machine guns; auto plants, bombers. In Connecticut Igor Sikorsky had opened the world's first helicopter assembly line. Another Connecticut plant, in Stratfort, was making more than 6,000 Corsair fighter planes. Chrysler was turning 25,507 tanks over to the Army.

Because of the complexity of sophisticated machines, there was no way to predict what next week's civilian shortage would be. Only a professional hoarder, with a large staff and unlimited funds could even have attempted to stay a jump ahead of the quirky market. Sugar, butter, alcohol, meat, cigarettes- scarcities of these made sense; they were needed for the troops or war industry. But why was it that in the very week that cigarettes came back, every store was out of book matches? How did it happen that tire-rationed motorists, deciding to ride bicycles, hurried downtown to find that bicycle rationing had begun only yesterday? And why on Earth did the war effort absorb hair curlers, wigs, kitchen utensils, lawn mowers, paper, girdles, tea, diapers, bronze caskets, electric toasters, waffle irons, egg-beaters, tin soldiers, electric trains, asparagus tongs, beer mugs, spittoons, birdcages, cameras, cocktail shakers, corn poppers, exotic leather goods, and lobster forks? THe invariable answer to ever plaintive question was the snarl, "Don't you know there's a war on?" Well, yes, one knew, but still...

It didn't make much sense, a fact well known to Jimmy Byrnes who ran his Office of War Mobilization in the cramped East Wing of the White House, which was still being built. (Byrnes' news ticker was in the men's room.) In many cases the the makers of the missing oddments were now producing cams and cogs for the war machine, of course; like civilian pleasure boats, waffle irons and lobster forks weren't going to be manufactured for the duration. But that was no excuse for not unloading backlogs of stock. The only real answer was that a national mobilization of this kind was bound to be marred by kinks and foibles. You couldn't expect to issue sugar ration cards to an estimated 122,604,000 Americans- 91 percent of the population- without something going awry. There were blunders, some of them incredible. The Philadelphia ration office had to close down temporarily because it had neglected to ration food for itself. Everyone plagued by the housing shortage had heard the story of the Los Angeles murder. A local reporter named Chick Felton arrived at the scene, verified the corpse was dead, and headed for the victim's address at a run. "Can I rent the apartment?" he panted. The landlady shook her head and said, "I already rented it to that police sergeant over there.

Apart from black marketeers, or strategically placed civilians- like the Detroiters who slipped across the Canadian border and stripped bare the shelves of prosperous Windsor- most home-front civilians had to resign themselves to involuntary asceticism, and did so cheerfully. It did, after all, take some gall to gripe while standing beneath a war bond poster showing a dying GI and the legend: "He gives his life- you only loan your money." Naturally, some wants were easier to bear than others. Except for the inhabitants of skid rows, few Americans felt frantic about the War Production Board's whiskey drought, which lasted from the autumn of 1942 to the summer of 1944. (Incorrigible drinkers put up with unappealing substitutes like Olde Spud, bearing spirits distilled from waste potatoes and skins, just as incorrigible smokers puffed desperately away at such obscure cigarette brands as Fleetwoods.)

Transportation was another matter. On Februrary 1, 1942, when the last auto assembly line was converted to war production, Detroit had 500,000 precious new cars in stock. The OPA took title to all of them, stored them in government warehouses, and doled them out to applicants with airtight priorities, such as county physicians. By July, 1944, only 30,000 autos were left- a 3 day peacetime supply for the country's car salesmen, even in the shabby 1930s- and the monthly OPA quota was arbitrarily cut by 22%.

If you already had a car, you had to face the gasoline shortage. An ordinary citizen without a defense job received a black "A" stamp on his windshield entitling him to 3 gallons a week. This was death for racetracks and roadhouses; they had to fold. Trolley cars were popular in cities. When distances were short, walking seemed a sensible solution, but even this posed special problems; civilians were rationed 2 pairs of shoes a year, and J. Edgar Hoover reported that shoes were 3rd on hijackers' lists behind liquor and rayon. In the last year of the war remarkable varieties of vehicles were to be seen in America: horses and buggies, resurrected bicycles built for two, elegant Baker Electrics, puffing Stanley Steamers built in 1925.

 
Way upthread there is a bit of discussion about the morality of the Allied bombing campaigns of WWII. It must be noted that the worst "attrocites" of the bombing were the attacks on Hamburg and Dresden and to a lesser extent, Berlin. These were largely because of the British strategy of "area bombing" usually at night by massed formations of bombers (Lancasters and Halifaxes) vs. the US daylight "precision bombing" by B-17s and B-24s. The "precision bombing" was supposed to only hit factories and war production sites because they could be seen during the day. The 8th Air Force suffered immense caualties doing this and the Brits thought them daft. They went at night, when they couldn't see a specific target, but they sure could see a whole city, especially after it was set on fire.

Which way is more "moral"? I certainly can't say. But the US approach was the predecessor to the much more "precision bombing" that is being done today in Afghanistan and was done in Iraq previously by laser guided "smart" bombs.

 
DCThunder said:
Way upthread there is a bit of discussion about the morality of the Allied bombing campaigns of WWII. It must be noted that the worst "attrocites" of the bombing were the attacks on Hamburg and Dresden and to a lesser extent, Berlin. These were largely because of the British strategy of "area bombing" usually at night by massed formations of bombers (Lancasters and Halifaxes) vs. the US daylight "precision bombing" by B-17s and B-24s. The "precision bombing" was supposed to only hit factories and war production sites because they could be seen during the day. The 8th Air Force suffered immense caualties doing this and the Brits thought them daft. They went at night, when they couldn't see a specific target, but they sure could see a whole city, especially after it was set on fire.Which way is more "moral"? I certainly can't say. But the US approach was the predecessor to the much more "precision bombing" that is being done today in Afghanistan and was done in Iraq previously by laser guided "smart" bombs.
Click to expand...
On the other hand, when the US firebombed Tokyo, there wasn't much precision involved. The problem is that in the total war of the 20th century, the production of war material was an essential part of warmaking capability. Is Rosie the Riveter, working in a shipyard making a destroyer, a "civilian'? Distinctions get blurred. There have been efforts in the past to impose some limits on death and destruction, but they usually only work if both sides observe them. (Such as abstaining from the use of poison gas in WW2--it was extensively used in WW1).
 
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The Summits Part One

During 1943 there were two more important conferences between Roosevelt and Churchill and their war chiefs, and then a third between these two and Stalin. The first of the two Anglo-American meetings was at Quebec during August 17-24. IT was code named Quadrant.

At Quadrant both wartime strategy and postwar policies were discussed. There were arguments about the extent of operations in Italy, but these were overshadowed by the dispute over the invasion of France. Both General Marshall and Secretrary of War Stimson had persuaded FDR to insist that Italian operations be limited and that nothing should detract from Overlord, as the cross-Channel assault was called. Churchill naturally enough wanted an extensive Italian campaign. He argued that this was a means of weakening the Axis and of gaining Western influence in Southern Europe and the Balkans to thwart Soviet ambition there. FDR was drawn toward this theory but did not believe he could justify a greater commitment to such operations for political reasons alone. Thus, he extracted from the reluctant Churchill a promise that Overlord would go forward undiminished on May 1, 1944.

But FDR and Churchill were unable to reach an agreement on an attitude towards Charles De Gaulle and his Free French Committee of Natural Liberation. Roosevelt still hated de Gaulle personally, believing he would make a dangerous military dictator and an opponent of his own plans for postwar decolonization and arms control. With Stimson's solid support FDR refused to approve any use of the word "recognition" with regard to the Free French.

Collaboration on atomic energy was also agreed upon at Quadrant. During the Trident conference in May, Churchill had obtained from FDR informal agreement to a resumption of joint research, but at Quebec they came to a formal compact under which neither would impart any information about atomic development to any third party- meaning the Soviet Union- without the other's consent.

Both FDR and Churchill were unaware that, thanks to a very well organized espionage ring, Josef Stalin was already receiving all information about atomics that he needed. The control was a certain Anatoli A. Yakovlev, who operated out of New York's Soviet consulate. Yakovlev worked through Harry Gold, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and David Greenglass, Ethel's brother who was a privileged Army enlisted man at Los Alamos and in consultation with Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs, like Fermi, Compton, and Oppenheimer, was a highly gifted atomic physicist and a member of the Los Alamos inner circle. The transfer went Fuchs to Greenglass, Greenglass to Ethel Rosenberg (who was not aware of what was being passed), Ethel to Julius, and Julius to the Soviet Consulate. This allowed the Soviet Union to know all aspects of the bomb and prepare for their own.

 
The Summits Part 2

The second meeting took place during November 22-26 at Cairo and code-named Sextant. It's chief concern was the Far East and the role of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China in any invasion of Japan. From the start Roosevelt and Churchill were in disagreement. The British chief considered any increase in Far Eastern operations to be a diversion from his own plans for the Mediterranean. Thus he was irked when Roosevelt made China the first order of business. The American chief's objective was to raise Chiang's prestige as a member of the Big Four and to strengthen United States- China relations with an eye toward imposing stability on the postwar Far East. There was talk of reopening the Burma Road as a supply route to China. Chiang said he would support such a project if the United States and Britain agreed to amphibious operations in the Bay of Bengal.

Churchill refused. Even Roosevelt was dubious about such plans, and as the conference progressed, he began to become irritated by Chiang's insistent demands. But he did have the conference draw up the so-called Cairo Declaration, committing the Allies to restoring to China the lands taken from her by Japan. There was also an agreement to try to persuade Turkey to enter the war on the Allied side, but the attempt failed. The conference ended with Chiang emerging as a stronger partner in the Alliance and a general agreement for a Far Eastern operation involving Burma. However, Churchill and Roosevelt later agreed to postpone the Burmese project until after the cross-Channel invasions.

 
The Summits, Part 3

The first meetin of the Big Three- the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union- was held at Tehran, from November 28 to December 1, 1943. FDR had planned to stay at the American legation, but reports of a Nazi plot against the Big Three led him to accept Stalin's invitation to stay at the more secure Soviet Embassy. Roosevelt came to the meeting with high hopes of establishing a rapport with Stalin. He had great confidence in his powers of persuasion through personal encounter and believed he could address political issues concerning the postwar organization of Europe. Thus, he joined Stalin in taunting and teasing Churchill, believing that by belittling one partner he could ingratiate himself into the good wishes of the other. When Stalin at dinner on the second night began to needle Churchill as desirous of a "soft" peace for Germany, which the Soviet leader, of course, considered at the least abhorrent, Roosevelt did nothing to defend the "former naval person" with whom he had had such a warm and intimate correspondence and relationship for 6 years. He even sided with Stalin in his barbaric proposal to execute 50,000 captive German officers, rather than to have been aroused by Churchill's noble anger and steadfast refusal even to discuss such an atrocity. At a private meeting of the Big Three on the 4th day, FDR began to tease Churchill about his disposition, his resemblance to the "John Bull" of the political cartoons, his cigars and other habits. By this he thought to have broken down Stalin's reserve and to have established a good relationship with him. History would show that he had done the opposite, that Stalin saw at once that he was dealing with a man flawed by a superficial knowledge of the power politics of Europe.

Roosevelt's plan for controlling the world through "four policemen"- Britain, the United States, China and the Soviet Union- drew Stalin's scorn. He said the Four Policemen would not be welcomed by the small nations of Europe. They would resent China as an enforcer. Stalin also did not think that China would be very powerful after the war. Rather than the Four Policemen Stalin thought that there should be one committee for Europe and another for the Far East, a proposal similar to Churchill's plan for regional councils in Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. the three to comprise the Supreme United Nations Council.

There was also much discussion of the Polish question. Churchill, observing that the Allies had gone to war to defend Poland, wanted a strong Poland. He reassured Stalin that the U.S.S.R.'s western frontiers would remain inviolable and that any accretion of land to Poland would have to come from Germany. Stalin, however, was noncommittal in his replies. He also did little to allay Roosevelt's worries about American public opinion in the impending 1944 presidential elections. FDR did not wish to alienate the numerous Americans of Polish or Balkan ancestry. Although he agreed that the U.S.S.R. should redefine Poland's borders to satisfy Soviet security concerns, he tried to impress upon Stalin the importance Americans attached to self-determination. In this he received little satisfaction. Both he and Churchill might not have been so agreeable to Stalin's "security concerns" had they known that their partner was already grooming the men of his puppet "Lublin government" for the eventual takeover of Poland. Postwar plans for a conquered Germany were also discussed, with Stalin pressing hard for a punitive peace. He feared a revival of German nationalism. He was not impressed by Churchill's private proposal that Germany could be controlled so long as Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union remained close friends.

 
The Summits, Part 4

Opening of the Second Front in France overshadowed all other problems in France. 35 Divisions were to be used. Stalin made it plain that he would not be convinced of Overlord until the western Allies had named its supreme commander. It was perhaps this skepticism that compelled FDR to finally make up his mind. For months he had wavered between Marshall and Eisenhower for the top command. Just before the Cairo Conference, FDR and Ike had toured Tunisian battlefields together. Roosevelt said that he dreaded the thought of not having Marshall in Washington. But then he said that it was only fair that the chief of staff should have a chance to command a great field army. Eisenhower took this to mean that Marshall would lead Overlord. He was positive of it when Admiral King told him: "I hate to lose General Marshall as chief of staff, but my loss is consoled by the knowledge that I will have you to work in this job." Eisenhower said that he took this to be an "official notice."

Marshall to command Overlord, Eisenhower to replace him in Washington, this was indeed Roosevelt's preferred solution to the problem. But this would create an absurd situation: Dwight Eisenhower, the protege of George Marshall, would become Marshall's boss. He would also be the boss of Douglas MacArthur, whose protege he also had been. That might be acceptable to Marshall, yearning to command this greatest of modern operations, but never to MacArthur. Roosevelt tried to solve the dilemma by asking Marshall to state his personal preference. Marshall replied like a true soldier of democracy: He would serve wherever he was sent, and would never be his own judge or advocate. Actually, as FDR said, he could not sleep at night with Marshall out of the country. As the Tehran conference was breaking up, he dictated a note to Stalin: "The immediate appointment of General Eisenhower to command of Overlord has been decided upon."

Stalin was elated, and for the first and last time the Big Three adjourned in apparent harmony. The feelings of George Marshall are unrecorded; he was a quiet man not given to expressing his feelings. Certainly his disappointment must have been vast. His entire life he had sought a military command, and he failed to reach it because his organizational skills were so outstanding. He was crucial to the war effort, and has to be considered one of the greatest men in American history for his efforts both during and after the war. Above all, he was a patriot.

It is doubtful if Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever made a better appointment than to name Dwight David Eisenhower to the most coveted command in the history of warfare; and it may be that the Western allies owe Joseph Stalin a vote of thanks for hurrying the often dilatory president into making his decision. Obviously, there could have been no other choice. Marshall had made himself too valuable to be spared, even for Overlord. Since command had to go to American, it had to be Eisenhower.

But there were other reasons, chief among then Ike's capacity to command a coalition. There is no more difficult way to wage war, and it may be said that much of Napoleon's success may be attributed to the fact that he always fought coalitions. By Eisenhower's devotion to the Alliance and his guiding principle of teamwork he had made a coalition work. When Sir Andrew Cunningham left the Meditteranean to become the first sea lord, he said to Eisenhower, "I do not believe that any other man than yourself could have done it."

Ike also had shown he was capable of field command, He had made the mistakes of inexperience early on in North Africa, but he had profited by them, as he did again in Sicily and Italy. Canny football coach that he had been, he reviewed his own performance with the same detachment and insights of a coach watching the movies of the preceding Saturday's game. From such self-criticism comes self-confidence, and Eisenhower's belief in himself inspired confidence in him among his subordinates. He was also eminently fair, forever correcting and adjusting, constantly gathering all available information bearing on a decision, and then, having heard what he considered to be the last word, making it.

Above all, Dwight Eisenhower was trustworthy. Even Bernard Montgomery, certainly his harshest critic, drew attention to this quality when he said, "his real strength is his human qualities...He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bit of metal. He merely has to smile at you and you trust him at once." If Dwight Eisenhower had commanded in another age, it might have been said of him what Macaulay said of Napoleon: "An eye to see and a hand to execute. All men saw that he was king."

 
DCThunder said:
Way upthread there is a bit of discussion about the morality of the Allied bombing campaigns of WWII. It must be noted that the worst "attrocites" of the bombing were the attacks on Hamburg and Dresden and to a lesser extent, Berlin. These were largely because of the British strategy of "area bombing" usually at night by massed formations of bombers (Lancasters and Halifaxes) vs. the US daylight "precision bombing" by B-17s and B-24s. The "precision bombing" was supposed to only hit factories and war production sites because they could be seen during the day. The 8th Air Force suffered immense caualties doing this and the Brits thought them daft. They went at night, when they couldn't see a specific target, but they sure could see a whole city, especially after it was set on fire.

Which way is more "moral"? I certainly can't say. But the US approach was the predecessor to the much more "precision bombing" that is being done today in Afghanistan and was done in Iraq previously by laser guided "smart" bombs.
Click to expand...
This is a very interesting thread.just some unstructured personal sidenotes one bomb war and what the german perception is:

- most of the German books/documentaries about the destruction of german cities start with the attack and destrucion on Coventry (some with Rotterdam and Warsaw). There was even a word in the german language for such a tactic: Coventrieren, which means destroying a town with bombs like the Luftwaffe did with Coventry in 1940. So it is pretty clear who started the whole thing and it is well known by the germans.

- The earliest memory my mother has, was when her family was running from the church hidding in the woods while the nearby village was bombed by the germans during the occupation of Yugoslavia.

- I live in Stuttgart, Germany. The highest point of the city is the Birkenkopf also known as "Monte Scherbelino". You can go up there and have a pretty wide view around the area. It became the highest point of the city after World War 2 when the whole debris of the bombings had to be brought someplace, so that the city could be rebuilt. 15 million m³ of debris made the mountain 40 meters higher. You can see a lot of stones and fragments of the old building lying lose around the mountain top.

Quiet a few big german cities have such mountains and it is not forgotten where the debris came from.

- In general Germans don´t argue about the destruction of their old town centers ("It was war") with the exception of Dresden which is seen as very unnecessary.

- I am no expert to this but IMO the main reason to bomb during the day was to hit the target more effectively and not reduce the casualities of the civilians. The reduction of civilian causalities was just a side effect. Also a lot of the industrial production has been moved under ground and couldn´t be easily hit or detected at all. Some of the hills and woods around industrial centers have big tunnel systems where the production went on even during the bombings.

- Most of the pre-war houses like the one I live in, have a bunker in the/as cellar. It is hard to believe, how it must have been sitting in this camber and awaiting the bombs at the same place where I stock my old stuff today. My landlord who lives there since her youth once told me how it was during the alarms and that the house was heavily damaged when the neighbours house was directly hit. It was just a couple of meters and she wouldn´t be alive today.

- Because the public bunkers are built very solid they often haven´t been dismantled after the war so they are still present today. On my way to work I see two every day ( for example: http://www.schutzbauten-stuttgart.de/pages...-cannstatt.php). It reminds one how frightening it must have been to know that the war isn´t far away in Russia but directly in your town whenever the alarm goes of.

 
Great post, kblitz! Rest assured, we will discuss Dresden in detail when the narrative catches up to it.

When I was in college I actually had a class devoted to the subject of the morality of strategic bombing. It was taught by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, the same man who was notorious for giving the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. He was a radical on the subject (he considered men like John McCain to be war criminals for what they did in Vietnam) but he was also very well informed, and he gave us a history on the subject, discussing World War II in detail, particularly the bombings of Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, Dresden, Tokyo, Berlin, of course Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the actions of General Curtis LeMay. Fascinating class. My disagreements with Dr. Ellsberg were many, but it was one of the few courses that sticks in my mind nearly 25 years later.

 
We have now reached the year 1944 in the Narrative. I will continue to stick with Europe. Hopefully Ozymandias will cover events in the Pacific. If he is too busy or simply doesn't get around to it, I will come back and relate those events when I am done with Europe. Here are the events I plan to cover:

Italy: Anzio

Italy: Monte Cassino

Russia's Drive West

The Plot against Hitler

Leningrad: lifting the Seige

Preparations for D-Day

D-Day at Normandy

The Russian summer Offensive

Tito and Yugoslavia

The Attempt on Hitler's Life

The story of the 442nd Brigade

The Warsaw Uprising

Breakout from Normandy

The French Resistance

Patton's Counterattack

The invasion of Southern France

The Liberation of Paris

The Drive for the Rhine

Operation Market-Garden

Rommel's end

The Battle of the Bulge

As always, several of these will take multiple posts, and there may be some additional subjects we need to cover along the way. This thread is nowhere near it's conclusion anytime soon.

Here is a list of events and issues I'm hoping that Ozymandias will choose to cover, otherwise I'll get to them after I'm done with Europe:

Burma

The Battle for New Britain

The Admiralty Islands

The Marshall Islands

The Marianas Islands

The Invasion of Saipan

Guam

Biak

FDR at Pearl Harbor

Peleliu

Invasion of Leyte

The Battle of Leyte Gulf

 
Anzio, Part 1

The chief reason for the invasion of Italy was the Allied desire to draw German divisions away from the Eastern front and to keep them preoccupied when the invasion of France began in the spring of 1944. A lesser reason was the capture of Rome.'

The Eternal City was more of a political than a military objective. Its capture would signal the fall of the first Axis capital and herald the inexorable advance of Allied arms. It might also, as Winston Churchill constantly hoped, encourage revolt in the occupied countries. Militarily, Rome was surrounded by useful airfields and was the nerve center of the Italian communication system. Its capture was assigned to Lt. Gen. Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army, which had landed at Salerno and successfully resisted Kesselring's attempt to drive it back into the ocean. The Fifth moved rapidly up the peninsula's southwest coast, the shinbone of the Italian boot- and took the abandoned though wrecked port city of Naples. Kesselring's decision not to defend Naples was taken by Clark and his commanders to suggest that he would also choose to fight in northern Italy and thus also to surrender Rome. Hitler had indeed tentatively approved this strategy. It had been advanced by Rommel, now commander of northern Italy. Rommel believed that a front acrossthe Po Valley would shorten the supply line to Germany and eliminate the risk of having the position turned by Allied landings to the rear.

Because Hitler was disgusted with the Italians and wanted to be rid of them, he leaned in Rommel's direction and even had orders drawn making the Desert Fox supreme commander in Italy. But then Kesselring, commander in southern Italy, countered with the argument that the mountainous south would be easier to defend and to abandon it would bring Allied bomber bases closer to Germany. Rome, he said, was too great a symbol to be so lightly relinquished. The artful Kesselring- "Smiling Albert" as he was called- also played on Hitler's obsessive determination not to surrender a foot of conquered soil. Thus it was his plan that was chosen and himself who became Supreme Commander. The Fifth Army now must make a fighting march on Rome.

 
Anzio, Continued

The U.S. 5th Army was almost as much a polyglot force as the British 8th Army. Of its 100,000 soldiers a little more than a third were Americans, about a sixth were British and the remainder were New Zealanders, Indians, Gurkhas, French, French North African colonials, Poles, and even Brazilians. Differences in language, religion, and customs multiplied the usual or inevitable difficulties of organizing such a large force for combat. Some of the soldiers from India and North Africa were Moslems who had to be fed a special diet. Two separate supply lines were needed to service disparate American and British ammunition and spare parts.

The 5th command structure was perhaps an equal difficulty. At 47, Mark Wayne Clark- always called Wayne by his friends- was not exactly beloved by his subordinate generals. Even the Americans resented him as a brash upstart whose meteoric rise above colleagues much his senior was ascribed to his friendship with Eisenhower. Maj. Gen. Fred L. Walker, commander of the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, had once been Clark's instructor. Under Clark were many non-American officers who measured their battle experience in years whil bue Clark counted his in weeks. Salerno had been his first combat command. Clark also did not have the complete confidence of Sir Harold Alexander, commander of Allied Forces in Italy, nor of Field Marshal Wilson, who would succeed Ike as supreme commander in the Mediterranean. Their understanding of the political consideration Britain had to give its Commonwealth detachments was not matched by Clark, and just because "the American eagle" was the equal of his subordinates in egotism, willfulness and thirst for glory, his dealing with them was not exactly diplomatic.

Even more formidable than these two difficulties was the terrible Abruzzi mountains through which the Allies must pass. The Abruzzi cover the southern Italian peninsula from Naples to Rome. From Clark's headquarters at Caserta, they ran 190 miles and there was no way around them. Behind each jagged, rugged hill lay another one at least as daunting. Clark himself wrote, "Each hillside became a small but difficult military problem that could be solved only by careful preparation and almost inevitably by the spilling of blood. " Although the Allied air forces controlled the air, they could not prevent the supplying of the Gustav Line, and even thier vaunted superiority in artillery was limited or cancelled out by the rocky, labyrinthine Abruzzi. During a bombardment of German positions around San Pietro, 206,929 shells were fired, but a party of Germans in an underground bunker in the target area calmly continued to play cards without moving from the table.

Clark had two possible routes: the famous old Appian Way running along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, or Route 6, the equally ancient Via Casilina farther inland. Because the Appian Way passed through the Pontine Marshes, which the Germans could easily flood, Clark selected the Via Casilina. Although its first 75 miles from Caserta wound through the Abruzzi, the route then opened on the Liri Valley, from which the path to Rome would be comparatively easy.

Finally, to these three difficulties was added a fourth, the weather. If the prospect of a fighting march on Rome from the south was intimidating in the best of weather, to attempt it in winter was barely short of sheer folly. And as men of the 5th Army headed north in that October of 1943, the cold downpours of late autumn were already pelting their faces, making seas of mud everywhere, sometimes yellow, sometimes black, and in their rawness hinting at the freezing rains and light snows of the winter that lay ahead. Ernie Pyle, the GI's laureate and among American servicemen probably the most beloved of war correspondents, had this to report of the combat soldiers' ordeal during an Abruzzi winter:

Our troops were living in almost inconceivable misery. The fertile black valleys were knee-deep in mud. Thousands of men had not been dry for weeks. Other thousands lay at night in the high mountains with the temperatures below freezing and snow sifting over them. They dug into the stones and slept in little chasms and behind rocks and in half-caves. They lived like men of prehistoric times, and a club would have become them more than a machine gun. Hw they survived the dreadful winter at all was beyond us who had the opportunity of drier beds in the warmer valleys.

 
Anzio, Continued

On both sides this was mountain warfare at its cruelest. Men fought in small units, often fewer than a hundred, sometimes a handful. Frequently they wee isolated from their officers. It could take as long as 3 hours for one unit to join another only 500 yards away. The danger of shrapnel was multiplied by flying rock splinters, and the roar of the guns was so magnified by echoes crashing and reverberating around the hills that many a soldier would find himself unnerverd and unable to fight on. Hot food was supposed to be delivered daily to the combatants on both sides was almost always cold when it reached the front. Delivery was usually by mule, the chief instrument of supply in the Abruzzi. Thus the Abruzzi fighting wore on through October, November, and December of 1943, continuing in mid-January until the 5th Army at last neared the intermediate objective of the Liri Valley, only to be halted at the Rapido River outside Kesselring's Gustav Line.

The Gustav Line stretched for 50 miles from Minturno near the Tyrrhenian Sea, along the Garigliano River to the Liri Valley, across the valley to Cassino town, thence abruptly upward for 5 miles along the promontory of Monte Cassino, finally rising stll higher into the Abruzzi where it tailed off. Its defense was under the direction of Panzer Gen. Frido von Senger und Etterlin, a tall, athletic, extremely cultivated and charming man, who could converse fluently on the arts and history in 3 languages. Senger was a child of the aristocracy of southern Germany, and had been a Rhodes Scholar. No admirer of the Nazis, he kept his convictions to himself, rising to top command on the merits of his professional skill. It was Senger's 14th Panzer Corps of about 75,000 men that made the U.S. 5th Army's march on Rome such a bloody ordeal.

Now, at the Gustav Line, Senger proposed to stop the Allies cold. His engineers improved enormously on the natural defenses of the terrain, using steel and explosives to fortify the numerous limestone caves in which local peasants had sheltered themselves and their animals. Mindful of Stalingrad, where a city in rubble proved more formidable than one intact, Senger made a fortress of Cassino town by wrecking it. But the keystone of the Gustav Line was the promontory of Monte Cassino, a massive, 5 mile ridge rising 1,500 feet to dominate the Liri Valley, as well as the Via Casilina beneath it. And to get at Monte Cassino, Clark must first cross the Rapido.

When the 5th Army stalled in front of the Rapido, it was proposed to turn the Gustav Line at Anzio, a village at the Tyrrhenian sea about 60 miles above it. A landing at Anzio might cut Kesselring's line of communications south of Rome, and force him to withdraw north of the city. If not, it might compel him to draw off strength from his right flank and enable Mark Clark's 5th Army on the Allied left to break through to Rome. Winston Churchill was the most ardent advocate of this plan. Eisenhower was never enthusiastic about it, but then, because he had been named commander of the cross-Channel invasion, he became reluctant to influence a decision in a theater he was about to leave. H. Maitland Wilson of Britain succeeded Ike as Mediterranean chied, and he did not so much approve of the Anzio operation as go along with Churchill's advocacy of it.

Anzio was about 60 miles above the stalled Allied left flank, and 35 miles below Rome. Anzio had good landing beaches opening on fairly level terrain suitable for maneuver. Good roads led to the Alban Hills some 20 miles inland, and this high ground commanded the entrance into Rome. Seizure of the Alban Hills might force Kesselring to pull all the way back north of Rome.

Anzio would come under the overall command of Mark Clark, who also planned to support the operation with an attack of his own across the Rapido.

 
Anzio, Continued

The Rapido gains its name from its swift, plunging descent from the Abruzzi mountains to the level Liri plain, where, joining the Liri River, it becomes the Garigliano, flowing another 15 miles to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Clark believed an attack across the Rapido would prevent Kesselring from shifting forces north from the Liri Valley to oppose the Anzio landing. It might even induce the enemy to move troops away from the beachhead, and if the crossing was successful, it might open the road to Rome to Allied armor. The attack would be made by the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, a Texas National Guard outfit, and be preceded by two British thrusts across the Garigliano downstream. The first was near Minturno at the mouth of the river and was intended to draw off troops from the Liri Valley; the second farther upstream was to seize heights commanding the American crossing point.

The first British attack on the night of January 17 caught the Germans by surprise. Minturno was easily taken and a large beachhead established across the river. At once General von Senger appealed to Kesselring for reinforcements. The field marshal sent him his entire reserve- 2 divisions- a daring move based upon his certainty that no new Allied landings were in the immediate offing. Within 3 days the new troops evicted the British at Minturno. They also helped to repulse the British attempt on the heights of San Ambrogrio across the Rapido. The Germans still looked down the throats of the Americans. Worse, on the Allied side was a heavy minefield 1,000 yards wide through which the GI's must pass. Engineers were to sweep corridors through it, and would also bring up the boats for the crossing. After dark the night of the 20th- a daylight attack was considered suicidal- the 141st Infantry's riflemen moved towards the river. A heavy fog engulfed them. They groped their way through muddy fields. At the river, they found that enemy shellfire had destroyed half the boats. Now it fell on them. They scattered for cover, leaving the safe corridors and blundering into the minefields where many were killed or wounded. Still, they pushed out into the river. Some of their boats holed by German shells began to sink. Others capsized. Still more drifted downstream out of control. Only 400 men of the 141st got across the Rapido, and these were eventually isolated. At dawn the attack was called off.

Upriver, the 143rd Infantry fared no better. Hardly a handful of soldiers had reached the farther bank. It was almost certain that they could not advance and doubtful if they could get back alive. At dawn Clark ordered a renewal of the assault- in daylight. He had ordered a frontal assault across an unfordable river into unsilenced enemy guns- in the darkness that usually complicates operations- and now he sought to make good his losses by attacking in broad daylight in full view of an unscratched and confident enemy. The result was foreordained: on the 22nd the attack was called off. The 36th had lost 1,681 men killed, captured, or wounded.They would suffer a total of 2,255 casualties in renewed fighting, and the 36th Infantry Division, which joined the battle on the 25th, lost 2,066 men. Eventually, the Rapido was crossed, in part because of the American soldier's tenacity but in greater part because Kesselring now needed his reserve to help hurl the Allies at Anzio into the sea.

 
Anzio, Concluded

A force of 110,000 men- mostly Americans- had been placed under the command of Gen. John P. Lucas. His orders were to land at Anzio, and if the enemy reacted in strength against him, to take the defensive. If, however, there was a chance for the offensive, he was to move rapidly on the Alban Hills. Such orders leave much to the discretion of the commander, and General Lucas does not seem to have been a very daring leader. He was a professional soldier and a meticulous planner, but he was already fatigued by 4 months of mountain warfare in Italy and 8 days before the operation he turned 54. "I am afraid I feel every year of it," he wrote in his diary. Again and again Lucas confided of his forebodings to his diary. At one point he writes, "These 'Battles of the Little Big Horn' aren't much fun and a failure now would ruin Clark, probably kill me, and certainly prolong the war." At another: "The whole affair has a strong odor of Gallipoli, and apparently the same amateur is still on the coach's bench." In fairness to Lucas, there were shortages of landing boats, the troops assigned to him demonstrated their inexperience during a confused rehearsal, and there was good cause to doubt the success of an operation carried out 60 miles away from support of the main body. Still, Lucas seems to have brooded more over the consequences of failure than to have exulted over the possibilities of success. "They will end up by putting me ashore with inadequate forces and get me in a serious jam," he told his diary. "Then, who will take the blame?"

Yet Lucas's forces were more than adequate when the U.S. Navy began landing them on January 22, 1944. They had taken the Germans completely by surprise and were all but unopposed. An assault force of some 50,000 men and 5,200 vehicles had sailed 120 miles north from Naples and never been detected. What had happened was that Clark's assaults upon the German right flank, especially a bloody attempt to cross the Rapido River, had forced Kesselring to send his reserves south. Lucas had the golden chance to deliver the stroke that might capture Rome. But he did not take it.

Instead of launching a strong offensive toward the Alban Hills, Lucas busied himself building up his beachhead. He feared that he moved immediately on the hill mass, he might overextend himself and be chopped up piecemeal. But while Lucas waited to grow stronger, Kesselring was recovering from his surprise and organizing a powerful counterattack. (NOTE- It's extremely ironic IMO that Lucas would refer to Gallipoli in his diary, in a manner critical to Churchill, because Lucas made the exact same mistakes as the commanders of the Dardanelles. Then as now, Churchill's only mistake was to believe his subordinate commanders were as daring as he was. If Churchill had been blessed with commanders like Erwin Rommel or Robert E. Lee, he probably would have won one sensational battle after another, because his grand strategies were always based on commanders seizing the initiative. Unfortunately, throughout his career, Churchill was always saddled with these mediocre, cautious generals who blew opportunities.)

Thus began the bitter, seesaw battle of Anzio. Kesselring hurled some 90,000 men, of whom 20,000 were noncombatant troops, against Lucas's 100,000. The German also introduced one of Hitler's secret weapons, a miniature tank named the Goliath. About the size of a big dog, the Goliath was stuffed with explosives and operated by remote control. It was a failure as colossal as its namesake, and the factor that told at Anzio was the dogged valor of Lucas's men, clinging stubbornly to their toehold while naval gunfire in the roadstead behind them scourged the Germans. In this battle also, some of Kesselring's troops behaved badly, one so-called crack regiment of unblooded soldiers actually fleeing in panic to prove, once again, that there are no "crack" units of rookies.

In the end, the Anzio gamble did not succeed. Churchill, with his unflagging faith in such peripheral maneuvers, was understandably bitter. "We hoped to land a wildcat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche," he said. "Instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping in the water." Kesselring's swift reaction had put the Allies on the defensive there, and Anzio contained was of no use to Clark contained. Worse, having paid such a bloody price to get across the Rapido, he now faced the bristling defenses of Monte Cassino, and at its southern end perched high on the first and steepest hill of the promontory, gleaming gray and yellow in the sun like a sentinel guarding the road to Rome, stood the ancient Abbey of Saint Benedict.

 
Monte Cassino, Part 1

(Note- the 442nd was heavily involved in the battle of Monte Cassino. But since I plan on telling that story in full detail later, because it also involves the invasion of France, I'm going to leave them out of this part of the narrative for now.)

In the year 529, it is said, the wandering Saint Benedict chose Monte Cassino as the site for the monastery that was to become the motherhouse of Western monasticism, as well as one of the most sacred structures in Christendom. Monte Cassino was not only sacred, but also strategic and spectacular. The Italian war college taught that the abbey was the very model of a fortress that should not be subjected to direct assault, and its sweeping view of the Liri Valley was not only breathtaking in an ascethic sense but from a military standpoint complete. During the Dark Ages Monte Cassino's monks were formost among the scholars who preserved and added to the learning of previous ages. Music and art also flourished in the abbey. In its multiplicity of chapels and crypts were spendid mosaics and frescoes in a severe and formal fashion intended to be a visual counterpoint to Gregorian chant. The Abbey of Monte Cassino was nothing less than an enormous museum of the culture of 15 centuries. Priceless illuminated scrolls were contained in intricately carved cases, while the walls and corridors were hung with the paintings of the Italian masters of the late Renaissance. To Monte Cassino's own store of treasure had been added much of the art of Naples. After the first Allied bombing of the port, Naples emptied its art gallery and archaeological museum and shipped their contents to Monte Cassino for safekeeping. Some 200 cases arrived, and though they were never uncrated, they as well as paintings on loan from the Naples Triennal Exposition, among them 11 Titians, an El Greco and the only 2 Goyas in Italy.

As the sound of battle drew closer to the abbey, the monks became worried about the treasure in their care. There was no hope of dismantling the splendid decorations of walls and ceilings, corridors and columns, ut the portable wealth of Monte Cassino, along with its invaluable archives, could certainly be transferred somewhere else. Gregorio Diamare, the 79 year old abbot of Monte Cassino, had no illusions about the abbey's immunity to the ravages of war. Twice before the Abbey of Monte Cassino had been destroyed: sacked by the Lombards in 580-590, rebuilt in 720 only to be destroyed by the Saracens in 884 and restored 70 years later.

Fortunately, mainly through the efforts of Capt. Maximillian Becker of the Hermann Goering Division, most of the art works were eventually moved to the Benedictine monastery in Rome. Although 15 cases had been secretly stolen by Goering division officers, eager to present them to the art-pilfering Reichsmarschall on his 51st birthday, for some inexplicable reason Goering did not accept them and the objects were later restored to their owners. Most of the monks also left for Rome, leaving Abbot Diamare with only his assistant, Dom Martino Matronola, and 3 or 4 other monks.

Now the great abbey, 4 stories high and almost as deep below the ground as it was high above it, an immense stone structure covering 7 acre, was empty. Even most of its food animals- pigs and sheep and chickens- were gone, taken by the Germans who "recompensed" the abbey for a small fraction of their worth. Abbot Diamare and his handful of monks were now hardpressed to feed a flood of refugees who had fled the wrath of war engulfing their villages or the destruction of Cassino town. Eventually there were from 1,000 to 2,000 refugees inside the abbey, many of them sick and some of them dying. Soon Allied intelligence along with the Allied soldiery began to wonder if some of these refugees were not in fact German soldiers.

 
Monte Cassino, Continued

The problem of the "sanctity" of the Abbey of Monte Cassino revolved around the question of whether or not there were German troops inside the monastery. If there were, they could reasonably be presumed to be fortifying it. Machine guns and antitank guns could easily be mounted in it's 4 tiered rows of windows. These same openings offered excellent observation posts, the building's 10 foot thick walls could resist artillery while an HQ deep below ground would be safe from bombs.

Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, the German ambassador to Italy, had repeatedly assured the Vatican that there were no "regular German troops" inside the abbey. The Allies simply did not believe him. Von Senger had fortified the area directly outside the abbey, and as a result, American soldiers pinned down before the abbey for weeks began to complain of enemy artillery fire. They swore it came from the abbey. They also chafed at Clark's order banning direct shelling of the abbey, clamoring for it to be lifted. News reports of their dilemma began floding the states. A typical dispatch read: "The Catholics in the artillery battalion would be only too glad to do the firing. Catholic boys are dying because we are leaving it alone."

The American home front was outraged. Washington was bombarded with angry protests: "Dear General Marshall: All the stone monuments of Italy, be they 3,000 years old, are not worth the life of one of our boys." FDR was accused of being afraid of losing Italian American votes in the next election. The basis of this remarkable outburst was the conviction that the Abbey of Monte Cassino was crawling with German soldiers. It was a conclusion nourished by the Allied media. At one point the Vatican proposed sending neutrals to the abbey to investigate, but this was not done.

In many ways, this story reminds me of the certainty of the Bush Administration that Iraq possessed WMDs. The Allies were determined to ignore evidence to the contrary that there were no German troops inside the Abbey. Clark, in desperation for a victory which would vindicate his lack of success on the Rapido and in Anzio, also rejected the proposal of a flanking movement which had been made by the Free French commander, Juin. Military historians now believe that this flanking movement would have isolated the area around the abbey without great destruction and loss of life, and led to the fall of Rome just as quickly or even quicker. But Mark Clark did not want to avoid battle. And battle meant a frontal assault on Cassino, and the bombing of the abbey.

Years after the war there continued to be fierce debate over who actually ordered the bombing of the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Was it Clark? Was it Harold Alexander? Was Gen. Freyberg, the commander of the New Zealand divisions who would lead the attack? After the fact, all of them blamed each other, (though Clark is seen publicly as the culprit, he claimed until the end of his life that Freyberg requested it, and Alexander approved the request, and he was just following orders.) Whatever the case, the important point is that there was little hesitation at the time. All three officers believed the German troops were there.

But they weren't. The only ones in the Abbey were the monks and refugees, unarmed. On February 15, 144 B-17s flew over the monastery and turned it into rubble. Between 100 and 200 civilians were killed.

 
Monte Cassino, concluded

Destruction of Monte Cassino had harvested headlines all over the world, most of them favorable to the Allies. In the United States, the influential Cardinal Francis Spellman defended the action. Of course Goebbels denounced it, calling the Americans "barbarians" and claiming that there were no Germans in the abbey. No one believed him, even though in this instance he was telling the truth. For almost 4 decades following the end of the war, both America and England continued to maintain the myth of a German military presence inside Monte Cassino. Only the publication of the a diary kept by two of the monks that was finally published in the 1980's make it clear that the Germans did not occupy the abbey.

But it is also true that most Allied officers and men believed they were there. Supposedly, Clark was unsure, and later claimed he doubted it. Why then, didn't he resist Alexander's orders to bomb? Or perhaps even resign in protest? The answer is this is probably asking too much of any career officer, and it would not have changed anything. Despite the accusations of some radical leftist historians who want to attack anything the United States does, the bombing of Monte Cassino was not a crime but a blunder.

Meanwhile, the Germans continued to resist in the areas around Monte Cassino, and this little publicized but incredibly bloody series of battles lasted for 3 months. First Americans charged and were thrown back. Then British did the same and failed. Then a group of New Zealanders and Indians made a number of incredibly brutal charges against the cliffs, and almost triumphed, but in the end were thrown back again. Finally in March another group of Americans (including the 442, more on this later) and 50,000 Free Polish made another violent charge and were thrown back again. No ground was gained.

In May a badly shaken Mark Clark at last accepted the wisdom of the flanking movement. But instead of trying the Abruzzi on his right he sent the North African troops of the French Corps through the even wilder Aurunci mountains on his left. The colonials fought their way through terrain that everyone else considered impassable, and when they seized the high ground overlooking Monte Cassino, the Germans finally abandoned the area. On May 18 the Poles advanced over a silent landscape entering the ruins of the abbey to find it empty. Monte Cassino had fallen. Kesselring, knowing the writing was on the wall, made plans to withdraw from Rome as well, taking up prepared positions in the Arpennines 175 miles above the Eternal City. Meanwhile, the Americans broke out of Anzio and went clattering up the Via Casilina. On June 3, they brushed aside the last German defenses and on the following day they entered Rome.

To the chagrin of Clark and the entire 5th Army, almost no one in the United States noticed. All eyes were transfixed on Normandy.

 
Postscript to Monte Cassino: The abbey of St. Benedict has been rebuilt by the Italian government in 1964. They made a big deal of publicly proclaiming at the time that this was done without the "stain" of American money. But this is a disingenuous claim; the fact is that so much of Italy after the war relied on American funds for the rebuilding of its cities (especially Naples and Rome) that funds that might have been required elsewhere were thus freed.

Today the Abbey is a great tourist attraction; streams of buses daily disgorge crowds of camera wielding visitors. It also continues to be used as a symbol of anti-American agitation in Europe.

 
THE BATTLE OF NEW BRITAIN

We have previously referred to Rabaul, which was the main Japanese base in the South Pacific, with strong air forces and more than 100,000 men. Rabaul was in the northeast corner of New Britain, and the objective of Allied forces was to neutralize it. As part of this offensive, the Allies landed troops at Cape Gloucester in the northwest part of the island in December 1943.

The Battle of Cape Gloucester was a major part of Operation Cartwheel, the main Allied strategy in the South West Pacific Area and Pacific Ocean Areas during 1943-44, and it was the second WW II landing of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, after Guadalcanal. The main objective of the American and Australian allies was the capture and expansion of the Japanese military airfield at Cape Gloucester. This was to contribute to the increased isolation and harassment of the major Japanese base at Rabaul. A secondary goal was to ensure free Allied sea passage through the straits separating New Britain from New Guinea.

Supporting operations for the landings in Cape Gloucester began on December 15, when the U.S. Army's 112th Cavalry Regiment was landed at Arawe on the south-central coast to block the route of Japanese reinforcements and supplies from east to west.

The main operation began on December 26 with a naval barrage on the Japanese positions on Cape Gloucester by U.S. Navy and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) warships, followed by air attacks by planes from the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). These attacks were followed by the landing of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, under the command of Major General William H. Rupertus.

The Marines were opposed by the Japanese 17th Division, commanded by Major General Iwao Matsuda, which was augmented by "Matsuda Force" — the 65th Infantry Brigade and elements of the Japanese 51st Division, the main body of which continued to resist Allied offensives on mainland New Guinea. Matsuda's headquarters was at Kalingi, along the coastal trail northwest of Mount Talawe, within five miles (eight kilometres) of the Cape Gloucester airfield.

The result was a convincing Allied victory by April, 1944 establishing the Allies firmly on New Britain, and commencing the isolation of Rabaul.

This was followed up by the campaign for the Admiralty Islands, which was a daring and bold move by MacArthur, and ended up being the key to the whole operation.

 
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Russia Drives West

The year 1943 had seen a remarkable upturn in the fortunes of the Soviets. Because of Tehran, a confident Josef Stalin expanded his war aims from the simple expulsion of Germany from Soviet territory to the conquest of Eastern Europe, the center of which is Vienna and not Berlin. To do this he drastically altered the winter offensive of 1943-1944, shifting it to a southeasterly direction both to liberate the Ukraine and to use it as a springboard for the invasion of the Balkans. Thus, the way to Vienna would be thrown open.

In December, 1943, Hitler's 3 army groups were still deployed from the Baltic to the Black Sea: the Nothern under Kuchler, the Central under Busch and the Southern under Manstein. The Northern and Central fronts were both stronger than the Southern. They were not only more easily defended by the advantage of natural features, but they had also been held for some time and thus had been fortified. The Southern front under Manstein, however, was one huge salient, with it's northern and southern flanks exposed to Soviet blows.

The new southern offensive under General N.F. Vatutin was launched on Christmas Eve under cover of a thick morning fog. It overran the German positions on the first day andspread so rapidly that Manstein's counterstrokes were too late to cover it. Within a week the Soviets had retaken Zhitomir and driven even farther south. On January 3, 1944, Soviet mobile forces moving westward captured Novograd and on the following day they crossed the prewar Polish frontier.

By then Manstein had realized that the Soviets were attempting to cut him off by driving him away in a southwesterly direction. He knew also that he simply did not have enough strength to hold his imperiled position. So he asked the supreme command for permission to withdraw to prepared positions in the west. By halving his front he would save 12 divisions. On January 4, having received no reply, he flew to HItler's HQ to beg for permission to make a radical shift of forces from his right to his left wing, and also for reinforcements. Hitler refused. He would not evacuate the Dneiper because to do so would mean the loss of the Crimea, thus inducing Turkey to side with the enemy and also increasing uneasiness in Bulgaria and Romania. He could not give Manstein more troops from the North because a defeat in the North would mean the defection of Finland. Nor could troops be transferred from the west, where it was apparent the Anglo-Americans would soon invade, or from Italy where Kesselring was trying to hold off troops twice his number.

Simply put, the German gamble to conquer half the world had lost, and now the Wehrmacht was stretched too thin. Just as in World War I, there was too much territory to defend. Hitler's whole scheme to avoid this problem had been to strike quickly at France, force Britain to surrender, and then conquer Russia. The first part had worked, but now it was all crumbling, and once again, a two front war threatened the destruction of Germany.

However, Hitler did not seem to acknowledge this crisis. He was confident that from May onward his new U-Boats would create havoc among the western Allies, and he spoke of "secret weapons" that would be shortly unleashed, turning the war in his favor. (More on this shortly).

Manstein flew back to his command with a heavy heart. He knew that at best he could delay the Soviets with a series of well-timed counterstrokes. But he could not stop them. Hitler, he now realized, was the enemy of the German nation. But what could be done about this? Would removing Hitler, (assassinating him) improve the situation? Manstein began to discuss this with other generals. There had been a resistance movement plotting to remove Hitler since 1938, led by former Army Chief of Staff Ludwig Beck, but it had been so ineffectual that up to this point. It did have ties to the Abwehr (the secret service) and Admiral Canaris, and this was suspected by Heinrich Himmler. We will discuss this group in greater detail a little later in the narrative. But the important event in the first few months of 1944 was that as a result of the Russian attacks and the renewed American offensive in Italy, Erwin Rommel decided to join the conspirators. He was actually recruited by Dr. Karl Strolin, a close friend of Rommel's wife, who herself was convinced that the war was lost.

Rommel was a torn man in these months. Already ill, he spent his time attempting to approve the defenses of the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of the American invasion. At the same time, he and his new chief of staff Gen. Hans Speidel, was in touch with the conspirators.

 
THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS CAMPAIGN I

The Admiralty Islands lie about 350 miles west of Rabaul, with a fine harbor and flat areas where airfields could be built, although part of the terrain is mountainous, and the climate is tropical. Although the campaign was not marked by huge battles and enormous loss of life, it was a key strategic objective, and gaining the islands would significantly shorten the war.

Three B-25 Mitchell bombers had flown over Los Negros Island on 23 February 1944. The airmen reported that there were no signs of enemy activity and the islands had been evacuated. Lieutenant General George Kenney, the commander of Allied Air Forces in the South West Pacific Area, went to MacArthur and proposed that the unoccupied islands be quickly taken by a small force. According to Kenney: "The General listened for a while, paced back and forth as I kept talking, nodded occasionally, then suddenly stopped and said: That will put the cork in the bottle."

Never one to hesitate, MacArthur sent out orders on 24 February 1944 for a reinforced squadron of the 1st Cavalry Division to carry out a reconnaissance in force in just five days time (note: a reconnaissance in force is what is done when an area is thought to be lightly defended—if the enemy isn't there, you occupy—if he is there, you withdraw). If the Admiralty Islands had been indeed evacuated, they would be occupied and a base developed. General MacArthur and Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, the commander of Allied Naval Forces in the South west Pacific Area, would be on hand to make the decision but otherwise they delegated command to Rear Admiral William Fechteler, the commander of Amphibious Group 8. To accommodate them, the light cruiser USS Phoenix was ordered to sea. At the time it was in Brisbane, with over 300 of its crew on shore leave. Trucks with bull horns broadcast the code word recalling the crew.

In order to achieve surprise, and to reach the Admiralty Islands in just five days, high speed transports (APDs) were required. The LSTs were too slow to make the required distance in the time. Only three APDs were available: USS Brooks, Humphreys and Sands. Each could accommodate 170 men. The remaining troops were carried on nine destroyers: USS Bush, Drayton, Flusser, Mahan, Reid, Smith, Stevenson, Stockton and Welles. Between them, the destroyers and APDs carried 1,026 troops.

This force was commanded by Brigadier General William C. Chase, commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. It included the three rifle troops and the heavy weapons troop of the 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry; a platoon from Battery B, 99th Field Artillery Battalion with two 75 mm pack howitzers; the 673rd Anti-Aircraft Machine Gun Battery (Airborne); and 29 Australians of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), who were to assist in gathering intelligence and dealing with the native population, some 13,000 of whom lived in the Admiralty Islands.

Once the decision to remain was known, a follow-up force with the rest of the 5th Cavalry and 99th Field Artillery Battalion, 40th Naval Construction Battalion and 2,500 measurement tons of stores would depart from Finschhafen in six Landing Ships, Tank (LSTs), each towing an LCM of Company E, 592nd EBSR. When an aide expressed concern over assigning such a hazardous mission to a unit without combat experience, General MacArthur recalled how the 5th Cavalry had fought alongside his father's troops in the campaign against Geronimo. "They'd fight then," he said, "and they'll fight now."

Major General Charles A. Willoughby's G-2 (intelligence) section did not agree with the airmen's assessment that the islands were unoccupied. Drawing on Ultra and Allied Intelligence Bureau reports from interrogating local civilians, it reported on 15 February that there were 3,000 Japanese troops in the Admiralty Islands. On 24 February, it revised the estimate to 4,000. G-2 attributed the lack of anti-aircraft fire to the Japanese logistical situation, believing that it was a measure to conserve ammunition.

Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, the commander of U.S. Sixth Army later recalled that no one at his headquarters credited the information that the islands were unoccupied. In the original plan, a team of Alamo Scouts was to have thoroughly reconnoitred the island before the landing. Krueger had a six-man party of Alamo Scouts inserted on the southern coast of Los Negros by PBY Catalina under cover of a bombing raid on 27 February. The Alamo Scouts reported that the south coast was "lousy with Japs".

The chosen landing site was a small beach on the south shore of Hyane Harbour near the Momote airstrip, on Los Negros Island. The airstrip could be seized quickly; but the surrounding area was mangrove swamp, and the harbour entrance was only about 750 yards (700 m) wide. "Since the whole operation was a gamble anyway," Samuel Eliot Morison noted, "one might as well be consistent." The gamble paid off. The Japanese had not anticipated a landing at this point and the bulk of their forces were concentrated on the other side of the island to defend the beaches of Seeadler Harbour.

The weather on 29 February 1944 was overcast with a low cloud ceiling that prevented most of the planned air strike. Only three B-24 Liberators and nine B-25 Mitchells found the target. The naval bombardment was therefore extended for another 15 minutes.

Each APD lowered four Landing Craft, Personnel, Ramped (LCPRs). Each LCPR carried its maximum load of 37 men, who boarded them by climbing over the APDs' sides and down cargo nets into the LCPR.[29] The unarmoured LCPRs were still used by the APDs because their davits had not been strengthened to carry the heavier, armoured LCVP.

The first wave landed without casualties at 08:17, but once the bombardment lifted the Japanese emerged from their dugouts and machine guns and shore batteries began to open up. The landing craft, on returning, came under crossfire from enemy machine guns on both sides of the harbour. The fire became so heavy that the second wave was forced to reverse course until the enemy fire was suppressed by destroyers. The third and fourth waves also came under fire. A correspondent from Yank, the Army Weekly described the scene:

"As we neared the channel, the Navy men in the bow hollered to us to keep our heads down or we'd get them blown off. We crouched lower, swearing, and waited. It came with a crack; machine-gun fire over our heads. Our light landing craft shuddered as the Navy gunners hammered back and answered with the .30 calibers mounted on both sides of the barge. As we made the turn for the beach, something solid plugged into us. "They got one of our guns or something," one GI said. There was a splinter the size of a half dollar on the pack of the man in front of me. Up front a hole gaped in the middle of the landing ramp and there were no men where there had been four. Our barge headed back toward the destroyer that had carried us to the Admiralties. White splashes of water were plunging through the 6 inch gap in the wooden gate. William Siebieda, S 1/c, of Wheeling, West Virginia, ducked from his position at the starboard gun and slammed his hip against the hole to plug it. He was firing a tommy gun at the shore as fast as wounded soldiers could pass him loaded clips. The water sloshed around him, running down his legs and washing the blood of the wounded into a pink frappe."

Four of the twelve LCPRs had been damaged. Three were soon repaired, but they could not be risked further, for without the LCPRs, the reconnaissance force could not be evacuated. The emergency plan provided for an APD to enter the harbour and take troops off from a jetty but this would clearly be a desperate measure indeed. Over the next four hours, the boats continued to make trips to the beach, but only when it was believed that the destroyers had suppressed the enemy guns. Heavy rain made it safer by reducing visibility. The last destroyer was unloaded at 12:50. By this time the navy had lost two men dead and three wounded.

For the moment it was safer ashore. The cavalrymen overran the airstrip. Sporadic opposition allowed them to set up the antiaircraft machine guns on the beach, unload supplies, and patrol inland. Two soldiers were killed and three wounded. At 16:00, General MacArthur and Admiral Kinkaid came ashore. The general inspected the position. A lieutenant warned him that a Japanese sniper had been killed in the vicinity just a few minutes before. "That's the best thing to do with them," the General replied, and continued on. MacArthur made the decision to stay, ordering Chase to hold his position until the follow-up force arrived. He then returned to Phoenix. Fechteler's force departed at 17:29, the transports having unloaded and most of the bombardment force having exhausted its ammunition. Bush and Stockton remained to provide on-call naval gunfire support.

 
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ADMIRALTY ISLANDS II

There was a furious battle for the beach head, but the Allies were able to keep unloading supplies and more troops. In the process, ammunition, construction equipment and stores piled up. To obtain a larger perimeter that could accommodate a proper dispersal of stores, General Chase ordered an attack to expand the perimeter. An air strike was requested. B-25s of the US 345th Bomb Group were intercepted by an estimated fifteen Japanese fighters. These were driven off by eight escorting P-47 Thunderbolt fighters, which claimed eight Japanese aircraft shot down.

General Krueger was gravely concerned about the seriousness of the situation on Los Negros. In response to urgent request from General Chase, Krueger arranged with Admiral Barbey for the movement of the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division to be expedited. At Krueger's request, the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry would travel in the three APDs. Other units would arrive on 6 and 9 March instead of 9 and 16 March. Krueger realised that Hyane harbour was too small to support the entire division, but there were good beaches around Salami Plantation on the western shore of Los Negros. In order to use them, and to permit a shore-to-shore operation against Manus from Los Negros, Seeadler Harbour would have to be opened up.

From the Japanese perspective, the battle was not going too well either. The Japanese had expected a landing on Seeadler Harbour, this being the logical American objective, and had concentrated their forces around the Lorengau airfield. The defence of the Momote airstrip and Hyane harbour was the responsibility of Baba Force, built around Captain Baba's 1st Battalion, 229th Infantry Regiment. Colonel Ezaki ordered Baba to attack the beachhead but a suspicion that the Hyane Harbour landing was a diversion, coupled with false reports of enemy activity at Salami had him retain the 2nd (Iwakami) Battalion of the 1st Independent Infantry Regiment there instead of sending it to assist Baba Force.

By 2 March, Ezaki had resolved to attack the Hyane beachhead with his whole force. The difficulties imposed by the terrain, and disruption by American artillery and Allied naval gunfire forced a postponement of the attack to the night of 3 March.

At 21:00, a lone Japanese plane dropped eight bombs, cutting telephone wires. Once it had departed, yellow flares went up and a Japanese ground attack was launched, supported by mortar fire. Offshore, Dechaineux' destroyers came under attack from four Betty bombers. The 1st Squadron, 5th Cavalry's position was attacked by about two reinforced platoons, which were met by a hail of automatic weapons and mortar fire. The heavy jungle in this sector permitted some infiltration but the Japanese force was not strong enough to overrun the 1st Squadron.

The main Japanese attack was delivered by the 2nd Battalion, 1st Independent Mixed Regiment from the direction of the native skidway, together with detachments from the Porlaka area, and fell on the 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry. The troopers noticed a change in Japanese tactics. Instead of infiltrating silently, they advanced across the open, talking and in some cases singing. Their advance took them straight into anti-personnel mines and booby traps, which duly exploded, and then into the fields of fire of the Americans' automatic weapons, including several .30 water-cooled Browning heavy machine guns, but the advance continued.

The guns of the 211th Coast Artillery (AA) Battalion and 99th Field Artillery Battalion fired through the night, attempting to break up the Japanese attack from Porlaka. Shortly after midnight, Japanese barges attempted to cross Hyane harbour but were engaged by the anti-aircraft guns and did not reach the American positions. A Bofors 40 mm gun position was captured by the Japanese, who in turn were driven off by the Seabees. Manning the heavy Browning machineguns, the 5th Cavalry's gunners piled up the Japanese dead until the guns had to be moved to get clear fields of fire. One of the Browning guns that held the position was later left in its place, as a monument.

Sergeant Troy McGill, occupied a revetment with his squad of eight men. All members of the squad were killed or wounded except McGill and another man, whom he ordered to fall back to the next revetment. McGill fired his rifle until it jammed, then clubbed the Japanese with it until he was killed. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

By dawn, the Japanese attack had subsided. Over 750 Japanese dead were counted in and around the American positions. No prisoners were taken. American casualties were 61 dead, and 244 wounded, including nine dead and 38 wounded Seabees. The 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry and the 40th Naval Construction Battalion received Presidential Unit Citations. General Chase called for an airdrop of ammunition, prodigious quantities of which had been expended during the night, and had Warramunga fire on the native skidway.

The task of silencing the Japanese guns guarding Seeadler Harbour fell to Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley's Task Force 74, consisting of the heavy cruiser HMAS Shropshire, light cruisers USS Phoenix and Nashville, and destroyers USS Bache, Beale, Daly and Hutchins. They bombarded Hauwei Island for an hour on 4 March but on 6 March USS Nicholson was struck by a Japanese shell fired from Hauwei. With minesweepers scheduled to attempt to enter Seeadler Harbour again on 8 March, Admiral Kinkaid ordered Crutchley to try again. On the afternoon of 7 March, Task Force 74 bombarded Hauwei, Ndrillo, Koruniat, Pityilu and northern Los Negros. Shropshire fired 64 8-inch (203 mm) and 92 4-inch (102 mm) shells, while the American cruisers and destroyers expended 1,144 5-inch (127 mm) and 6-inch (152 mm) shells. The next day, two destroyers, two minesweepers, an LCM (flak) and six LCMs carrying trucks and supplies entered the Seeadler Harbour without being fired upon. This cleared the way for the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division to land at Salmi on 9 March.

By 7 March, the Seabees had the Momote airfield ready. Artillery spotting aircraft began operating from the strip on 6 March and a B-25 Mitchell made an emergency landing the next day. Guided by a B-25 Mitchell, twelve P-40 Kittyhawks of No. 76 Squadron RAAF arrived from Kiriwina via Finschhafen on 9 March, the remaining twelve aircraft of the squadron following the next day. They were joined by the ground crew of No. 77 Squadron RAAF, which had arrived by LST on 6 March. The rest of No. 73 Wing RAAF arrived over the next two weeks, including the Kittyhawks of No. 77 Squadron RAAF and Supermarine Spitfires of No. 79 Squadron RAAF. Operations began on 10 March and henceforth ships and ground units in the Admiralties had air support just minutes away.

Following the securing of the island of Los Negros, the Allies cleared the Japanese out of Manus Island after some fierce battles. They then mopped up the remaining outlying islands.

In his final report on the campaign, General Krueger reported that 3,280 Japanese dead had been counted and 75 had been captured. Perhaps 1,100 more were missing, and were never seen again. American casualties were 326 killed, 1,189 wounded, and four missing. Some 1,625 Americans had been evacuated for all causes, including wounds and illness. One Australian was wounded. ANGAU reported that one native had been killed and one wounded in action, three were killed by the Japanese and 20 had been accidentally killed and 34 wounded by air, artillery and naval bombardment.

AFTERMATH

The value of the Admiralty Islands was enormous. In the grim arithmetic of war, their capture saved more lives than they cost by obviating the need to capture Truk, Kavieng, Rabaul and Hansa Bay. As an airbase, the Admiralties' value was great, for aircraft based there ranged over Truk, Wewak and beyond.

As a naval base, their value was greater still, as they combined a fleet anchorage with major facilities.

A well-known rule of thumb is that an attacking force needs a 3:1 superiority to ensure success. In the opening stages of the battle of Los Negros, the ratio was more like 1:4. In the end the Allies won, "simply because," wrote Morison, "the United States and Australia dominated that stretch of ocean and the air over it." When queried about the naval support, General Chase replied that "they didn't support us; they saved our necks". Chase's own defensive tactics were also a vital factor. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his part, as was MacArthur.

Allied commanders, and later historians, debated whether the Admiralty Islands Campaign was the bold action of a great commander or a reckless endeavour that courted disaster. Admiral Fechteler felt that "we're damn lucky we didn't get run off the island," and Admiral Barbey, for one, believed that the original plan would have resulted in overrunning the islands in short order with fewer casualties. It would certainly have been much less risky, but it is doubtful whether an assault on the well-defended beaches of Seeadler Harbour would have resulted in fewer casualties.

Whereas, in accelerating both MacArthur and Nimitz' campaigns, it shortened the war by at least a month. Thus, in the final analysis, the campaign "had the great virtue of hastening victory while reducing the number of dead and wounded".

 
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Leningrad, Continued

When last we left Leningrad in the summer of 1941, the Germans had surrounded the city, but failed to penetrate it. At that point the bulk of Army Group North was diverted (eventually to fight at Stalingrad) and the remander settled in for a long siege. It was a devastating siege; certainly the worst in world history. It lasted 880 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. No other modern siege is even comparable, though the source I am using mentions Vicksburg. But Vicksburg lasted only two months, and 2,500 people died. Leningrad lasted nearly three years, and 1.3 million people died. Half of them starved.

When the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, the population of Leningrad was about 2,500,000. However, as the Germans advanced into Russia, a further 100,000 refugees entered the city. The area that the city authorities controlled produced just 1/3rd of what was needed for grain, 1/3rd of what was needed for coal, 1/12th of what was needed for sugar and half of what was needed with regards to meat - if the supply lines could be kept open. On September 12th, those in charge of the city estimated that they had the following supplies:

flour for 35 days

cereals for 30 days

meat for 33 days

fats for 45 days

sugar for 60 days

The nearest rail head outside of the city was about 100 miles to the east at Tikhvin - but this was soon to fall to the Germans on November 9th. By mid-September (two weeks into the siege), Leningrad was effectively surrounded and cut-off from the rest of Russia with minimal food and energy supplies for her population. The siege was to last for 900 days.

While the city had a rail network of sorts, Stalin ordered that all vital goods in the city that could help defend Moscow be moved out of Leningrad and to the capital.

Rationing had been introduced almost immediately. Soldiers and manual workers got the most of what was available, followed by office workers then by non-working dependents and children. The city authorities found it difficult to grasp just how serious their situation was. While certain food was rationed, restaurants continued to serve non-rationed food in their 'normal' way. The authorities also failed to inform people in Leningrad just how much food there was - this was probably done so as not to panic people, but if people had known the true situation, they could have planned accordingly. The number of shops handling food was drastically cut to allow for better control - but it also meant that people had to queue for much longer. There is also evidence that money could buy food away from rationing and the black market thrived where it could away from prying eyes.

Winters in Leningrad are invariably extremely cold. The winter of 1941-42 was no exception. Lack of fuel meant that the use of electricity in homes was banned - industry and the military took priority. Kerosene for oil lamps was unobtainable. Wood became the major source of heat in homes with furniture and floor boards being burned in most homes.

The food needed to fight the cold was simply not available. If bread was obtainable, people had to queue in the bitter cold in the hope that some might be left by the time they got to the front of the queue. Dogs and cats were hunted for food and stories emerged of cannibalism - freshly buried bodies were, according to some, dug up in the night. Gangs of people braved German guns to leave the city and dig up potatoes in fields outside of the city. This actually did bring in some food that was not kept by those who ventured out - the potatoes were handed in to the authorities and then distributed equably.

The city authorities ordered that a bread substitute be concocted by those who might have the skill, as they knew that flour was in very short supply. 'Bread' baked by bakers even in the first few months of the siege contained only 50% rye flour. To boost the loaf, soya, barley and oats were used. However, the oats were meant to feed horses and malt was used as an alternate substitute. Even cellulose and cottonseed were tried in an effort to produce bread. Both had little nutritional value but there was plenty of both in Leningrad. The city developed ingenious ways to produce 'food' - cats and sheep intestines were stewed, flavoured with oil of cloves and the resulting liquid became a substitute for milk; seaweed was made into broth and yeast was made into soup. Regardless of all the work done by the experts in Leningrad, food remained in very short supply and people were only getting 10% of the required daily calorific intake - despite the fact that most of their work was labour intensive. One writer in the city, Tikhonov, wrote about workers who ate grease from bearings in factory machines and drank oil from oil cans such was their hunger. People collapsed in factories and on the streets - and died. The city organised mass burials to cope with the number who died. When not enough grave diggers could be found, explosives were used to blow a hole in the ground and the bodies were simply thrown in with the expectation that snow would simply cover them up. Where people died in the street, there was a scramble for their ration card.

 
Leningrad, Concluded

November 1941, while the siege was in its early stages, 11,000 people died of what the authorities called 'alimentary dystrophy' (starvation) - over 350 a day. However, this number greatly increased as the winter took a hold on the city.

The two lifelines Leningrad had were constructing a road out of the city to allow supply trucks to get through and using Lake Lagoda as a means of transport.

Thousands of people assisted in building the road that was meant to link to Zaborie - the next major staging post east of the fallen Tikhvin. The road was more than 200 miles long when it was completed in just 27 days. However, though it was termed a road, in many places it was barely more than a track not wide enough for two lorries to pass. Parts of it were too steep for lorries to cope with and the snow made parts of it impossible to use. On December 6th, the city authorities announced that the road - known by the people as the 'Road of Life' - was to be used for the first time. The news was well received in the city but, in truth, the road was not capable of providing all that the city required for survival. Over 300 lorries started out on the first journey but breakdowns and blizzards meant that the most distance travelled in any one day was 20 miles.

On December 9th, the city received news that Tikhvin, with its vital railhead, had been recaptured by the Russians. The Germans who had occupied the town were the victims of Hitler's belief that the Russian campaign would be over quickly. They had not been issued with winter clothing and became victims of both the weather and a major Russian assault. 7,000 Germans were killed in the attack and they were pushed back 50 miles from Tikhvin. Railway engineers were brought in by the Russians to repair the line and bridges. For one week they ate food supplies left by the Germans in their retreat. As a result, and by the standards of those in Leningrad, they ate well and all the required repairs to the line were finished in just one week. Supplies started to trickle into the beleaguered city.

Another supply route was to use the frozen Lake Lagoda. Ironically, though the weather was extremely cold for the people of Leningrad, it was not cold enough to sufficiently freeze the lake to allow it to cope with the weight of lorries. The lake was frozen enough to stop barges bringing in supplies but the ice had to be 200mm thick to cope with lorries. It only achieved such a thickness at the end of November, and on November 26th, eight lorries left Leningrad, crossed the lake and returned with 33 tons of food. It was a major achievement - but the city needed 1000 tons of food each day to function. Once the ice had proved reliable and safe, more journeys were made and occasionally this mode of transport brought in 100 tons of food a day.

Though the 'Road of Life', the rail system and the use of Lake Lagoda brought much needed relief to the city, they could not provide all that was needed and the city's records show that 52,000 died in December 1941 alone - lack of food and the cold accounted for over 1,600 death a day. However, the figures collected by the city were for those who were known to have died and been buried in some form or another. They do not include people who died at home or on the street and whose bodies were never found. The official death total for the whole 900 day siege is 632,000. However, some believe (such as Alan Wykes) that the figure is likely to be nearer 1 million.

The rail link to Tikhvin did allow the authorities to move out the worst medical cases. But the frozen lake and the man-made road also accounted for many refugees who fled the city - against the wishes of those who ran the city. 35,000 left Leningrad in December 1941 alone, at a time when manpower was required. No records exist as to how many died while attempting to leave Leningrad. By the end of 1942, the city had a population of less than 1 million. In June 1941, it had been 2.5 million. Though the authorities may have had great difficulty gaining accurate figures for the city's true population, the effect of the siege is clear from these figures. Disease, starvation and those who fled the city may well have accounted for 1.5 million people.

The siege was only lifted after the Germans, as part of their general retreat, withdrew in the face of the advance of the Red Army. Then in one of the great ironies of the war, those who had led the city in its time of need were arrested by the KGB (presumably on the orders of Stalin). Their crime was that they had failed to contact Moscow frequently enough during the siege to ask for support and guidance and that this policy of acting alone like mini-tsars could not be tolerated. Those arrested, after 900 days of being besieged, now had to face Stalin's gulags.

 
timschochet said:
Leningrad, Continued

It was a devastating siege; certainly the worst in world history. It lasted 880 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. No other modern siege is even comparable, though the source I am using mentions Vicksburg. But Vicksburg lasted only two months, and 2,500 people died. Leningrad lasted nearly three years, and 1.3 million people died. Half of them starved.
Click to expand...
The only other modern siege that comes to my mind would be Sarajevo: it lasted longer but with less victims. And compared to Leningrad people were halfway supplied with food and other necesseties of live through tunnels and air supplies .
 
MARSHALL ISLANDS AND THE MARIANAS I

If you look at a map of the Pacific, you can see that the Gilbert and Marshall Islands lie south of a line between Hawaii and the Philippines. The Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian and Rota) lie further west, closer to the Philippines and north of the line. It was obvious that these islands had to be taken or neutralized before the forthcoming liberation of the Philippines.

We have previously dealt with Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands. Following the capture of Tarawa, at considerable cost, the rest of the Gilberts were lightly defended. However, in the attack on Makin Island, the escort carrier Liscome Bay was torpedoed and sunk, with the loss of over 600 lives.

The US then moved on to the Marshall Islands. The largest island there was Kwajalein atoll, and the US forces took it in a brief but bloody 5 day campaign from January 31, to Feb 4, 1944. Employing the hard-learned lessons of the battle of Tarawa, the United States launched a successful twin assault on the main islands of Kwajalein in the south and Roi-Namur in the north. The Japanese defenders put up a stiff resistance though outnumbered and under-prepared. The determined defense of Roi-Namur left only 51 survivors of an original garrison of 3,500.

The Japanese employed the “beach line defense”, which proved a costly failure, and they learned from the battle that beachline defenses were too vulnerable to bombardment by ships and planes. This meant that in the future Japanese defenses became prepared in depth, and the battles of Peleliu, Guam, and the Marianas proved far more costly to the United States. Before the Marianas, however, there were the Caroline Islands, and Truk.

TRUK LAGOON

Truk was the largest Japanese naval base outside of Japan. The lagoon was over 800 square miles in area, surrounded by 11 islands, and had been fortified by the Japanese until they considered it the “Gibraltar of the Pacific”. It was a counterpart to Pearl Harbor. The place was considered the most formidable of all Japanese strongholds in the Pacific. On the various islands, the Japanese Civil Engineering Department and Naval Construction Department had built roads, trenches, bunkers and caves. Five airstrips, seaplane bases, a torpedo boat station, submarine repair shops, a communications center and a radar station were constructed during the war. Protecting these various facilities were coastal defense guns and mortar emplacements. At anchor in the lagoon were the Imperial Japanese Navy’s giant battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, tankers, cargo ships, tugboats, gunboats, minesweepers, landing craft, and submarines.

Once the American forces captured the Marshall Islands, they used it as a base from which they launched an early morning attack on February 17, 1944 against Truk Lagoon. The Japanese withdrew most of their heavy units. Operation Hailstone lasted for three days, with an American bombardment of the Japanese wiping out almost anything of value - 60 ships were sent to the bottom of the lagoon, and 275 airplanes destroyed.

To ensure air and naval superiority for the upcoming operations, Admiral Raymond Spruance ordered the attack on Truk. Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's Task Force 58 had five fleet carriers (Enterprise, Yorktown, Essex, Intrepid, and Bunker Hill) and four light carriers (Belleau Wood, Cabot, Monterey, and Cowpens), embarking more than 500 planes. Supporting the carriers was a large fleet of seven battleships, and numerous cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and other support ships.

Fearing that the base was becoming too vulnerable, the Japanese had relocated the aircraft carriers, battleships, and heavy cruisers of the Combined Fleet to Palau a week earlier. However, numerous smaller warships and merchant ships remained in and around the anchorage.

The U.S. attack involved a combination of airstrikes, surface ship actions, and submarine attacks over two days and appeared to take the Japanese completely by surprise. Several daylight, along with nighttime airstrikes, employed fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo aircraft in attacks on Japanese airfields, aircraft, shore installations, and ships in and around the Truk anchorage. A force of U.S. surface ships and submarines guarded possible exit routes from the island's anchorage to attack any Japanese ships that tried to escape from the airstrikes.

In total the attack sank three Japanese light cruisers (Agano, Katori, and Naka), four destroyers (Oite, Fumizuki, Maikaze, and Tachikaze), three auxiliary cruisers (Akagi Maru, Aikoku Maru, Kiyosumi Maru), two submarine tenders (Heian Maru, Rio de Janeiro Maru), three other smaller warships (including submarine chasers Ch-24 and Shonan Maru 15), aircraft transport Fujikawa Maru, and 32 merchant ships. Some of the ships were destroyed in the anchorage and some in the area surrounding Truk lagoon. Many of the merchant ships were loaded with reinforcements and supplies for Japanese garrisons in the central Pacific area. Very few of the troops aboard the sunken ships survived and little of their cargoes were recovered.

Maikaze, along with several support ships, was sunk by U.S. surface ships while trying to escape from the Truk anchorage. The survivors of the sunken Japanese ships reportedly refused rescue efforts by the U.S. ships. Agano, a veteran of the Raid on Rabaul and which was already en-route to Japan when the attack began, was sunk by a U.S. submarine, the USS Skate. Oite rescued 523 survivors from the Agano and returned to Truk lagoon to assist in its defense with her anti-aircraft guns. She was sunk soon after by air attack with the Agano survivors still on board, killing all of them and all but 20 of the Oite's crew.

About 275 Japanese aircraft were destroyed, mostly on the ground. Many of the aircraft were in various states of assembly, having just arrived from Japan in disassembled form aboard cargo ships. Very few of the assembled aircraft were able to take off in response to the U.S. attack. Several Japanese aircraft that did take off were claimed destroyed by U.S. fighters or gunners on the U.S. bombers and torpedo planes.

The U.S. lost twenty-five aircraft, mainly due to the intense anti-aircraft fire from Truk's defenses. About 16 U.S. aircrew were rescued by submarine or amphibious aircraft. A nighttime torpedo attack by a Japanese aircraft from either Rabaul or Saipan damaged the Intrepid and killed 11 of her crew, forcing her to return to Pearl Harbor and later, San Francisco for repairs. She returned to duty in June, 1944. Another Japanese air attack slightly damaged the battleship USS Iowa with a bomb hit.

The attacks for the most part ended Truk as a major threat to Allied operations in the central Pacific; the Japanese garrison on Eniwetok was denied any realistic hope of reinforcement and support during the invasion that began on February 18, 1944, greatly assisting U.S. forces in their conquest of that island.

The Japanese later relocated about 100 of their remaining aircraft from Rabaul to Truk. These aircraft were attacked by U.S. carrier forces in another attack on April 29-30, 1944 which destroyed most of them. The U.S. aircraft dropped 92 bombs over a 29 minute period to take out the Japanese planes. The April 1944 strikes found no shipping in Truk lagoon and were the last major attacks on Truk during the war.

Truk was isolated by Allied (primarily U.S.) forces as they continued their advance towards Japan by invading other Pacific islands such as Guam, Saipan, Palau, and Iwo Jima. Cut off, the Japanese forces on Truk and other central Pacific islands ran low on food and faced starvation before Japan surrendered in August 1945.

 
You have to marvel at the grim determination of these Japanese defenders willing to die on these islands in the face of overwhelming numbers of Americans. Clint Eastwood's film Letters From Iwo Jima captures this resolve, and it is quite possibly the finest war movie I have ever seen. Highly recommended.

 
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