A World at Arms (129 page)

This victory made possible not only the continuation of the bombing offensive itself but the invasion and the two special air operations designed to assist it. One which was long the subject of controversy was the attack on the transportation system, especially in Western Europe. This project was called for to assist the consolidation of a bridgehead in an area where a dense transportation network made it potentially easy for the Germans to bring vastly superior forces to bear, and to bring in reserves more quickly than the Allies could bring in reinforcements. The head of the British Bomber Command was especially vehement in his opposition to using his bombers to support the invasion by transportation and other bombing missions; many in the London government were concerned about the heavy French civilian casualties expected to result from such bombing.
²²⁹
The directives to do so were, however, issued by Eisenhower under the authority of the Combined Chiefs of Staff; they were implemented and as it turned out with far greater success (and fewer civilian casualties) than both Harris and the British had anticipated.
²³⁰

The British, however, did continue some area bombing of German cities while their aerial dropping of mines in the North Sea, Baltic, and Danube probably did more serious damage to Germany’s powers of resistance.
²³¹
More dramatic in its impact on German industrial and military effort was the great air offensive against the oil industry. Since this closely coincided with the invasion itself, as it began in mid-May, it is reviewed in
Chapter 12
; in this field also the ability to read German codes quickly provided the Allies with information on the effectiveness of their efforts.
²³²

Whatever the dangers and the doubts, there was no way to defeat Germany but by a frontal assault from east and south, from the west and from the air. At one time, air power advocates had asserted that the last named could do it alone. It was obvious, whether he admitted it or
not, that Harris’s offensive had not done so and could not do so, however great the damage his bombers inflicted. In forwarding on January 27, 1944, to President Roosevelt a report on Germany’s war potential by a group of distinguished historians given access to all secret information in American possession, General Arnold, the commanding general of the United States army air forces, expressed himself as concurring in the findings of the committee, which he summarized to the effect that a German surrender would come when the resistance of her ground forces could no longer be maintained because her air defenses were no longer adequate.
²³³
Bombing could contribute, but no early decision was to be expected; it would all depend on the success of the invasion.

The Germans looked to 1944 with the immediate problem of the Allied bombers preceding the great one of the invasion. The answer to the bombers, in spite of the obvious one of defending fighters, was seen in an air offensive. General Hans-Jürgen Stumpf was finally put in real charge of air defense against Allied air attacks at the beginning of February;
²³⁴
there was a long-range plan for putting key industries underground;
²³⁵
and a short–term one of dispersing the aircraft industry geographically to reduce its vulnerability;
²³⁶
but an offensive was still considered the preferable procedure. A projected strategic air offensive against the Soviet Union was aborted as a result of the situation at the front; the Germans simply could not withdraw bombers from support of ground operations in substantial numbers as the Red Army continued to pound their ground forces, a process which in any case was driving them from the bases needed for long-range bombing operations against the intended targets.
²³⁷
Any such projects were further hampered by the continued problems of the long-range bomber, the Heinkel 177, with its four engines driving two propellers, originally so that it could be used as a dive-bomber. Given the tendency of this plane to incinerate its crews, it may have been just as well that the Germans never brought it into large-scale production. What planes of this type and all sorts of other (mostly older) types could be made available were, however, thrown into a last bombing offensive against
England.

From January to May 1944, a collection of over 500 bombers launched what came to be called the “Baby Blitz” against England. Though involving more planes than any attacks on England since 1941, these raids inflicted little damage and minor casualties while costing over 300 bombers which might have been available to attack the invasion beachheads. The delay in availability of the V weapons–itself in large part as a result of the Allied bombing–and the desire of Hitler to strike at Britain were behind the effort conducted to a large extent with pre-war
bomber models and inexperienced crews. This was surely no way to hold off the Western Allies.
²³⁸

The basic German strategy for 1944 was to continue to hold the front in Italy as far south as possible
²³⁹
and to hold as well as they could in the East but to concentrate on defeating the expected Allied invasion in the West. The basic assumption was and remained that Germany’s best prospect lay in building up the military forces in the West sufficiently to crush the invasion attempt, because this would take advantage of her strong position in the West and the enormous risks of any great amphibious assault (which the Germans themselves had not dared to attempt at the height of their victory in 1940). Such a triumph, because of the losses in men, materiel, and morale inflicted on the Allies, would make it impossible for the latter to launch a second attempt that year, if ever, thereby releasing German forces for a major counter-offensive in the East. This in turn would drive back the exhausted Russians so that they could either be crushed in turn or forced to sue for peace. And while this was in process, the new submarine types would be coming into service to hold off any effort of the Western Allies to mount a new invasion in the West.

At meetings with his own military leaders and with his allies Hitler repeatedly sketched out this strategy in the first months of 1944; and since his actions fitted in with the strategy, it may be accepted that for once he was explaining what he really believed.
²⁴⁰
Urged by the Japanese as before, and now also by his French puppet Pierre Laval, to make a peace with the Soviet Union so that he could concentrate all his forces on the defeat of the British and Americans, Hitler always came back to the strategy just outlined.
²⁴¹
He was confident that it would succeed, in part because by this time he believed that the mass murder of the Jews and all opposed to the regime had, as he explained to a loudly cheering assemblage of officers on May 26, removed all possibility of problems at home.
²⁴²
A Germany not subject to the stab-in-the-back which he imagined responsible for defeat in 1918 could not be beaten this time. He was in fact so confident that early in May 1944 he assured Herbert Backe, the Minister of Agriculture, that Germany would soon retake the richest part of the Ukraine, and that preparations for its control and exploitation should be made promptly.
²⁴³

The real prospects of Germany were much dimmer than Hitler thought. He had in reality not concentrated forces in the West to anywhere near the extent which the danger there called for.
²⁴⁴
And, as the record of his conversation with Japanese Ambassador Oshima Hiroshi on May 27, 1944, reveals, he had been successfully misled by the great deception operations of the Allies. In the East, he had fallen for the
Soviet scheme to make the Germans believe that their summer offensive would be launched in the Lwow area; in the West, he had been equally successfully fooled into believing the Allied army far larger than it really was with plans for several diversionary attacks and then the main landing across the Dover Straits.
²⁴⁵
The German hopes for victory in 1944 would prove to be based on very weak foundations on all fronts.

^a
It is worth noting the concern in London that the Americans, if asked to occupy the Falkland Islands, might hand them over to Argentina. As Brooke noted in his diary on January 2, 1942, “While we argue Japs likely to step in” (Liddell Hart Centre, Alanbrooke Papers).

^b
Roosevelt personally checked at the Map Room, the White House command center, for any news at 20 minutes after midnight (Log 10 July 1943, FDRL, Map Room Box 195, Log la). On June 6, his scotty Falla had accompanied the President into the Map Room only to be told by Roosevelt that he was not permitted to be there (ibid).

^c
Nigel Hamilton, Montgomery’s adoring biographer, writes: “he now deliberately decided to make Alexander pay for his mistakes. He would not undertake any further operations for the moment, merely sit and watch” (
Monty,
2: 401). Equally critical, Lamb,
Montgomery,
pp. 32–51.

^d
It should be noted that it was Model who was instrumental first in having “Citadel” delayed and subsequently in obtaining authorization to retreat when the delayed operation failed. Klink (
Operation “Zitadelle”,
p. 27 I) believes that Model had hoped to have the whole project cancelled.

^e
It was British back–sliding after he had repeatedly received their agreement that led Roosevelt to take an anti-British tack at Teheran. When at Quebec Churchill agreed to an American commander for the invasion, he assumed that the appointment would go to Marshall. At that time Roosevelt appears to have thought so also, but he then believed that the appointment would also include control of the Italian campaign.

^f
Hull had insisted on going, and this helped precipitate Roosevelt’s decision to let Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles go.

^g
The alleged reluctance of Britain and France on the issue of close military collaboration had been used by the Soviet Union as an excuse for signing with Germany in 1939. it should be noted that the British believed that the shuttle bombing concept was a poor one in practice because they thought that it would require an excessive allocation of manpower and spare parts to bases in the Soviet Union; see Sinclair to Churchill, 24 October 1943, PRO, PREM 3/11/10 (Churchill agreed with Sinclair’s position).

^h
The British had been pushing for a federation among the smaller states of East and Southeast Europe, but ran up against a Soviet veto at the Moscow meeting. There is no reason to believe that such a construction would have been created in the absence of Soviet objections.

ⁱ
The agreement had been that, because an American rather than Brooke was to command the cross-Channel invasion, a British officer would assume Eisenhower’s post in the Mediterranean. On the whole command issue, see Sainsbury,
Turning Point,
pp. 159–60; Mat10ff,
Strategic Planning
1943–1944,
chap. 12
; British documents in PRO, PREM 3/101.

^j
That this would also have meant vastly greater damage to British cities, especially London, from the new German weapons was no more apparent in the fall of 1943 than that the schedule implicit in the British proposals would practically certainly have led to the first atomic bombs being dropped on Germany rather than Japan.

It should be noted that Brooke’s Diary for 9 November 1943 includes the statement: “First we must go in Italy till we reach the Pisa-Rimini line. This will entail postponing Cross-Channel operation some 2 months” (Liddell Hart Centre, Alanbrooke Papers). Of course additional landing ships would have been built during those months, but the word “some” is instructive. See also Stoler,
Politics of the Second Front,
p. 133.

^k
If Stoler’s explanation of Stalin’s comments at Moscow is correct, namely that the Soviets then hoped for a collapse by Germany in 1943, it would make sense to assume that the German counter–attack west of Kiev just before the Teheran Conference impressed the Soviet leader with the fact that the war was not going to end for some time. Stalin’s insistence at the conference on weakening Germany permanently may also have been influenced by the recent set-back to the Red Army at the front.

^l
It was clearly understood from the beginning that there would be no intermediate command between Eisenhower and the army groups on the continent as the British at times suggested (with Montgomery in mind). The situation in the Mediterranean, where Alexander commanded the single army group in Italy, was seen as entirely different from that in Overlord with two and eventually three army groups. Note Stimson to Roosevelt, 20 December 1943, Hyde Park, Map Room Box 167, Naval Aide, A 16. This issue had been discussed in the British Cabinet on December 15, see CAB >65/40.

^m
British planning for the reallocation of troops and other resources to the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany began in December 1943, see CAB 119/167, 165; the “Redeployment Program for the War against Japan,” 17 November 1944, referred to just over one million men. Major RAF planning had begun in November 1943 (documents in AIR 20/768).

ⁿ
Churchill’s Personal
Minute
D 147/3 of 31 July 1943, stating that he did not want the date 1948 mentioned as the hypothetical date for ending the war with Japan, may give some insight into the timetable being thought about in London. (CAB 120/744).

^o
There is even an account which argues that Chiang may have withheld support from the units opposing the Japanese in exchange for some deal by which the Japanese puppet governments in China would join him after the Japanese left, in a war against the Communists (Boyle,
China and Japan,
pp. 317–21). The same author also argues, however (pp. 312–13), that in the spring of 1944 the Japanese were seriously considering making peace with the Chinese Communists. These matters await further investigation.