A World at Arms (92 page)

By 1942, the Germans had made substantial progress with both an unmanned airplane, which came to be called the V-I, and a long-distance rocket, the ancestor of the intercontinental ballistic missile, referred to by the Germans as the A-4 and known subsequently as the V-2. These and other new weapons are discussed in
Chapter 10
; but two aspects of their development must be mentioned in this context. First, these weapons were beginning to approach a stage of development that seemed to make it realistic to expect their use in the war before much longer.
¹⁴⁹
Second, as all were developed with attacks on London in mind, these weapons were expected to exert an enormous influence on the course of the war not only because of their assumed destructiveness but also because of the anticipated morale effect of their use against the population of the British capital. Finally, these two devices were to be joined by a third, a very long-range cannon in which serial explosions along a lengthy barrel were expected to drive a shell all the way to London in a revised edition of the shelling of Paris in World War I.
¹⁵⁰
First discussed in January 1943 and ordered in May 1943, this .contraption, known as the V-3, was eventually used only in December 1944 and against Luxembourg at that. Its development, however, and the vast resources absorbed by it, as well as by V-1 and V-2, must be seen as a part of German strategy for the future conduct of the war early in 1943.

By one of the great ironies of World War II, it was a conversation on March 22, 1943, between two German generals captured in the fighting in Tunisia which convinced the British, who had bugged their room, that the rumors of secret rocket weapons were based on facts.
¹⁵¹
As the obvious intended victims, the British thereafter made greater efforts to find out about the development and nature of these weapons, efforts which led to the bombing of the experiment station at Peenemünde in the summer of that year.
¹⁵²
It was this bombing which, together with technical problems, shortages and internal rivalries delayed the introduction of the new devices until well into 1944 when their impact on the war was very much less than the Germans had expected in early 1943 as they looked forward to their employment.
¹⁵³

In the more conventional forms of aerial warfare, the Germans in 1943 did begin to pay more attention to defending their cities and industries, where the Allied bombing offensive was making an impact on the public.
¹⁵⁴
Although a major shift of resources to the construction of fighter airplanes would not be made until 1944, there were greater allocations and a transfer of air force units from the Eastern Front already in 1943.
¹⁵⁵
The reaction which was most important in their own eyes, however, was quite different. In early March 1943, a major new
air offensive against Britain was ordered and planned. The hope was that very serious blows would be struck against the British Isles from the air; that these would force the Allies to halt or reduce their own air offensive; that the heavy bombing of London would drive a wedge between the hard–hit British and the as yet immune Americans; and that in this way Germany could reclaim the initiative in the air war. In practice, it all turned out very differently, with a small bombing offensive against England beginning in late January and ending in late May 1944; but for an understanding of German strategy in 1943, it must be noted that the anticipation in Berlin was that here was a major component of the Axis war against the Western Allies.
¹⁵⁶

Against the Soviet Union, the Germans planned a new major offensive. In spite of some skepticism among German officers,
¹⁵⁷
Hitler and his top military advisors, Jodl the head of operations in the OKW (high command of the armed forces), and Zeitzler, the Chief of the General Staff of the army, anticipated a major victory for Germany, a victory which would enable her to outlast the shaky alliance of her enemies. Newly strengthened divisions, including hundreds of the new heavy tanks, would smash a major portion of the Red Army in operation “Citadel” (Zitadelle) against the Kursk salient held by the Soviets at the end of the winter’s fighting. Tactical withdrawals were to strengthen other sectors of the Eastern Front, and the big offensive would show that German might was and would remain unbroken on the continent even as the submarines kept the Western Allies from returning to it.
¹⁵⁸

There were, however, serious problems with this strategy. The German army would indeed hold together. Fear of defeat, ideological commitment and unit cohesion made up for the loss of confidence after a second terrible winter. An enormous program of systematic bribery of the highest ranking generals and admirals would, Hitler hoped, assure the loyalty of those at the top.
¹⁵⁹
For those in the lower ranks, there was in addition to all other incentives the terror of the German system of what passed for military justice; a repressive aspect of the Nazi regime which is only now being examined honestly but whose average of about 5000 executions per year for a wartime total of over 30,000 belongs in any serious examination of German military cohesion into the last bitter days of 1945.
¹⁶⁰
But this solidity of the armed forces could not make up for the bravery, inventiveness, strategic planning, and greater armed might of her enemies, who saw the balance of 1943 from very different perspectives.

The Soviet leadership looked toward the future in terms of the most recent and dramatic events on the Eastern Front. On the one hand, the great victory of Stalingrad and the liberation of most of the Caucasus,
the Don basin and much of the Donets industrial area, together with the opening of a land corridor to Leningrad, were an enormous boost to morale and self-confidence. The German assault had been halted a second time and on this occasion with a widely recognized and spectacular Soviet victory. On the other hand, the accomplishments had not only exacted an enormous further toll in casualties, they had ended in a very serious set-back at the front. Until more evidence becomes available from the Soviet side, it must be taken as given that the shock of the reverse of March 1943, culminating in the German recapture of Kharkov, the second largest city in the Ukraine, had a major effect on Stalin and his associates. If the Germans could pull themselves together after a second disastrous winter and carry out such a smashing counter-offensive, then the road ahead was certain to be a grim one.

It is from this perspective that one should, I believe, view the soundings for a separate peace with Germany through contacts in Stockholm in the spring and summer of 1943 which are reviewed in
Chapter 11
. Similarly, the exploration by the Soviet Union government of an alternative government for Germany inherent in the establishment of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers in the summer of 1943 belong in this context. Perhaps there were less horrendously costly ways of ending the war with Germany than fighting centimeter by bloody centimeter all the way to Berlin.

In the absence of a return to Western Europe by British and United States forces for some time as yet, Stalin could contemplate these other alternatives. And if they proved impossible, the news of soundings for a settlement might well induce either greater speed or greater concessions–or both-in the Soviet Union’s Western Allies.
ⁿ
There would, thus, be pressure on the British and Americans to carry a larger share of the war, but there was every reason to make preparations for the Soviet Union to move forward with its own operations. These preparations took two forms in the spring of 1943, military and political.

On the military side, the Soviet Union systematically strengthened its front, especially the exposed Kursk salient. After considerable internal debate, it was decided that the best procedure for the Red Army was to build up a strong defensive system on the sectors most likely to be attacked by the Germans and then to launch a large summer offensive of its own, using the greater arms production of the Ural area.
¹⁶¹

The major political plan involved the first and most important neighboring country on the European side of the U.S.S.R.: Poland. Here was the country which the Soviet Union had partitioned with Germany in 1939, whose successor leadership generation the Soviet Union had decimated by the killing of the officers and reserve officers captured in the 1939 campaign, but to whose government-in-exile it had made some concessions in the wake of the German attack in 1941. Now that the tide on the Eastern Front was turning, this last measure could be reversed. Early in 1943 Stalin explained to Polish Communists that a new army and government would have to be established for Poland and that he would soon break relations with the government-in-exile in London.
¹⁶²
The Soviet government’s announcement of January 16,1943, that all those who were on Soviet territory in November 1939 were Soviet citizens–with its implication that there were now no more Poles in the Soviet Union-meant that Moscow’s 1941 promise to the Polish government that interned and deported Poles would be allowed to enter the Polish army had been revoked.
¹⁶³
By April, the formation of a new Polish army under Soviet auspices, led by General Berling was beginning.
¹⁶⁴
The reaction of the government-in-exile to the discovery at Katyn of the graves of those Polish officers from one of the Soviet prison camps provided Stalin with an excuse for breaking relations with the Sikorski government on April 25,1943.
¹⁶⁵
The inability of the Western Powers to provide effective support to the Polish government gave the Soviet Union a clear road to a new system for whatever Poland survived the war,
¹⁶⁶
and this road was smoothed further for them by the death of Sikorski in an airplane accident at Gibraltar on July 4.
¹⁶⁷
With the leading figure of the government-in-exile gone from the scene, the Soviet Union thereafter disregarded whatever protestations in behalf of an independent Poland came from their Western Allies. If the Red Army had to fight its way across every kilometer into Germany, the intervening area would be under full Soviet control.

As for the Western Allies, they had already committed themselves to fighting for the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. They had observed the repeated rumors of a German-Soviet separate peace with great concern for some time and continued to be extremely and continually worried about that possibility.
¹⁶⁸
These worries were always being reinforced by their interception and reading of Japanese diplomatic telegrams which alluded to the possibility of such an eventuality; and their own inability to launch a massive landing in Western Europe heightened apprehensions. The British government in particular drew from this situation the conclusion that every possible concession should be made to the Soviet Union and, as recounted in
Chapter 11
, tried hard to
persuade the United States of the wisdom of such a policy.
¹⁶⁹
Even if the attempt to cooperate in the future with the Soviet Union did not in the end work out, it was in Eden’s opinion better at least to try to get along.
¹⁷⁰
The British would provide the Soviet Union with whatever intelligence they could glean about German plans for a new offensive from their code-breaking, especially their new success with the German non-Morse secret printer.
¹⁷¹
As for American and British Lend Lease supplies to the Russians, these were steadily being increased, in spite of a row raised by United States Ambassador Standley over the refusal of the Russians to give their allies any credit for them.
¹⁷²
The negotiations for the Third Supply Protocol in May and June 1943 were made especially difficult by Soviet refusal to help with air protection for the Murmansk route or to exchange information. At Roosevelt’s insistence, spurred by fear of a separate Soviet-German peace and knowledge of the postponement of the Second Front, the policy of unconditional aid was continued.
¹⁷³

The Western Allies had their eyes focused on the follow-up to Tunisia. They would land in Sicily in the summer of 1943 and were continuing preparations for a landing in Western Europe in May 1944. On the former project, there was a new plan which shifted the United States army from the northwestern section of Sicily to the southeastern, right alongside the British.
^o
As for the second project, the big landing in the West, Churchill still had some reservations, as is explained in
Chapter 11
, but he did want an offensive against Germany as early in 1944 as possible and came back to the invasion of Norway as a possibility.
¹⁷⁴
As for the contingency of a German internal collapse, in April 1943 the Western Allies began plans for the rapid occupation of Germany in that unlikely event, plans code-named “Rankin” and later to be important in the context of projects for the occupation and division of the Third Reich.
¹⁷⁵
These plans called for the quick landing of United States and British troops on the continent. If Germany did collapse, the Western Allies certainly wanted to be in Central Europe in force as rapidly as possible.

There was, however, little expectation in London or Washington that the war would end either soon or easily. First the U-Boats had to be defeated and then a series of landings on the continent would follow. In the meantime, a massive bombing campaign was continued to soften up Germany, and if any portion of that bombing offensive appeared to be faltering, the timing and other aspects of the raids would have to be
shifted–but the objective remained the same.
¹⁷⁶
New technical navigation and bomb aiming devices were introduced beginning in March 1943, and increasing numbers of planes were becoming available for ever larger raids on the Ruhr district.
¹⁷⁷
The attack on German dams in the Ruhr area on May 16–17, and the planning for the huge July 1943 series of raids on Hamburg, accompanied by the use of a new device to confuse German radar, belong in the context of the escalating bombing campaign.
¹⁷⁸