To hell with them.  When history is written they will be the sons of bitches - not I.

- Harry S Truman
 

If the history of the past 50 years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.

- Bernard Baruch
 

Death Car...  Fight Carelessness, the Master Saboteur!
Eveready Batteries, 1942   Source: ephemeranow.com

War in Europe

Axis Powers 1942
Source: regentsprep.org

Japan and Russia had a neutrality pact, so Roosevelt, realising that enemies had to be defeated wherever they fought, set a Europe-first strategy.  At first, Roosevelt thought to open up a second front in France; however Churchill did not think US troops were ready for that kind of fighting.  He felt that even if territory were won, hanging on to it would not be worth the cost.  Due to his objections, the first operation was instead planned for North Africa.  The British still controlled Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the oil-rich areas of the Middle-East.  Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were nominally in the hands of Vichy France.  Operation Torch was to destroy the Axis forces now opposing the British forces in the Western Sahara and establish bases for the intensification of air and sea operations against the Axis in the European continent.  This was the operation where Generals Patton and Eisenhower rose to fame.

The first battles, however, did not go well – the battle of Kasserine Pass went particularly badly, though troops did learn and improved quickly.  The British had Field Marshal Montgomery but the US had never before had a 5-star general.  General Marshall was to become the first but it was deemed that “Field Marshall Marshall” had too much potential for distraction, so his title was simply left General.

Erwin Rommel

The Forced Suicide of Field Marshall Rommel, 1944 For a time, Erwin Rommel was Hitler's favourite general. Gaining prominence in 1940 as a commander of a panzer division that smashed the French defenses (the Blitzkrieg), Rommel went on to command the Afrika Korps where his tactical genius, his ability to inspire troops and to make the best of limited resources prompted Hitler to elevate him to the rank of Field Marshall.  In 1943, Hitler placed Rommel in command of fortifying the "Atlantic Wall" along the coast of France - defences intended to repel the inevitable invasion of Europe by the Allies. By the beginning of 1943, Rommel's faith in Germany's ability to win the war was crumbling, as was his estimation of Hitler.  Touring Germany, Rommel was appalled at the devastation of the Allied bombing raids and the erosion of peoples' morale.  He also learned for the first time of the death camps, slave labour, extermination of Jews and the other atrocities.  He became convinced that victory for Germany was a lost cause, that prolonging the war would lead only to his homeland's devastation.  He came in contact with members of a growing conspiracy dedicated to ousting Hitler and establishing a separate peace with Western allies. On 17 July 1944, British aircraft strafed Rommel's staff car, severely wounding him.  He was taken to a hospital and then home to convalesce.  Three days later, an assassin's bomb nearly killed Hitler during a strategy meeting at his headquarters in East Prussia.  In the reprisals that followed, a suspect implicated Rommel in the plot.  Though he may have been unaware of the attempt on Hitler's life, his "defeatist" attitude was enough to warrant Hitler's wrath.  But how could Hitler eliminate Germany's most popular general without revealing that he had ordered his death?  The solution: force Rommel to commit suicide and announce his death as due to his wounds. Rommel's son, Manfred, was 15 years old and served as part of an antiaircraft crew near his home.  On 14 October 1944, Manfred was given leave to return to his home where his father was convalescing.  The family was aware Rommel was under suspicion and knew his chief of staff and commanding officer had both been executed.  Manfred's account begins as he entered his home and finds his father at breakfast: ...I arrived at 7:00am.  My father was at breakfast.  A cup was quickly brought for me and we breakfasted together, afterwards taking a stroll in the garden.  "At noon two Generals are coming to discuss my future employment," my father said.  "Today will decide what is planned for me; whether a People's Court or a new command in the East." Would you accept such a command? I asked. He took me by the arm, and replied: "My dear boy, our enemy in the East is so terrible that every other consideration must give way before it.  If he succeeds in overrunning Europe, it will be the end of everything which has made life worth living.  Of course I would go." At about twelve o'clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate.  The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger [an aide], a badly wounded corporal and myself.  Two generals, a powerful florid man and a small and slender man alighted from the car and entered the house.  They were respectful and courteous and asked my father's permission to speak to him alone.  Aldinger and I left the room.  So they are not going to arrest him I thought with relief as I went upstairs to find myself a book. A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother's room.  Anxious to know what was afoot, I got followed.  He stood in the middle of the room, his face pale.  "Come outside with me," he said in a tight voice.  We went into my room.  "I have just had to tell your mother," he began slowly, "that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour."  He was calm as he continued: "The house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason.  In view of my services in Africa,"' he said sarcastically, "I am to have the chance of dying by poison.  The two generals have brought it with them.  It's fatal in 3 seconds.  If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you.  They will also leave my staff alone.   I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence.  If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement." Can't we defend ourselves...?  He cut me off short.  "There's no point," he said.  "It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray.  Anyway, we've practically no ammunition."  We briefly took leave of each other.  "Call Aldinger, please," he said. Aldinger had meanwhile been engaged in conversation by the General's escort to keep him away from my father.  At my call, he came running upstairs.  He, too, was struck cold when he heard what was happening.  My father now spoke more quickly.  He again said how useless it was to attempt to defend ourselves.  "It's all been prepared to the last detail.  I'm to be given a state funeral.  I have asked that it should take place in Ulm [a town near Rommel's home].  In a quarter of an hour, you, Aldinger, will receive a telephone call from the Wagnerschule reserve hospital in Ulm to say that I've had a brain seizure on the way to a conference."  He looked at his watch.  "I must go, they've only given me 10 minutes."  He quickly took leave of us again.  Then we went downstairs together. We helped my father into his leather coat.  Suddenly he pulled out his wallet.  "There's still 150 marks in there," he said.  "Shall I take the money with me?" "That doesn't matter now, Herr Field Marshal," said Aldinger.  My father put his wallet carefully back in his pocket.  As he went into the hall, his little dachshund which he had been given as a puppy a few months before in France, jumped up at him with a whine of joy.  "Shut the dog in the study, Manfred," he said and waited in the hall with Aldinger while I removed the excited dog and pushed it through the study door.  Then we walked out of the house together.  The two generals were standing at the garden gate.  We walked slowly down the path, the crunch of the gravel sounding unusually loud.  As we approached the generals they raised their right hands in salute.  "Herr Field Marshal," one said and stood aside for my father to pass through the gate.  A knot of villagers stood outside the drive.  The car stood ready.  The SS driver swung the door open and stood to attention.  My father pushed his Marshal's baton under his left arm, and with his face calm, gave Aldinger and me his hand once more before getting in the car. The two generals climbed quickly into their seats and the doors were slammed.  My father did not turn again as the car drove quickly off up the hill and disappeared round a bend in the road.  When it had gone Aldinger and I turned and walked silently back into the house.  Twenty minutes later the telephone rang.  Aldinger lifted the receiver and my father's death was duly reported.  It was not then entirely clear, what had happened to him after he left us.  Later we learned that the car had halted a few hundred yards up the hill from our house in an open space at the edge of the wood.  Gestapo men, who had appeared in force from Berlin that morning, were watching the area with instructions to shoot my father down and storm the house if he offered resistance.  One general and the driver got out of the car, leaving my father and the other general inside.  When the driver was permitted to return 10 minutes or so later, he saw my father sunk forward with his cap off and the marshal's baton fallen from his hand." References: Hart, B H Liddell, The Rommel Papers (1953); Manvell, Roger, Heinrich Fraenkel, The Men Who Tried to Kill Hitler (1964). Source: eyewitnesstohistory.com  photo source: answers.com/main

As chance would have it, the number two man in the Vichy French hierarchy, Admiral François Darlan, happened to be in North Africa visiting his sick son.  Despite his sorry record of collaboration with the Germans, Darlan soon recognised that the Vichy government was in a hopeless situation and that further fighting against the British and Americans would do nothing to advance the long-range interests of France.  Moreover, German forces were clearly gathering on the frontiers of Vichy France to occupy the remainder of the country.  Darlan proceeded to cut a deal with the Allies (under Eisenhower) that stopped the fighting throughout Algeria and Morocco.  In retrospect, the deal saved the lives of a considerable number of American and British soldiers, while eventually putting the French troops in North Africa at the disposal of the Allied cause.  Nevertheless, a huge outcry arose in Britain and the United States about dealing with the Fascist Darlan - an outcry that was only hushed by Darlan's assassination on Christmas Eve 1942.

The idea of conditional surrender seemed a betrayal, so Roosevelt stated that the new policy for the Allies would from that point on be one of Unconditional Surrender – all enemy troops had to unconditionally surrender before fighting could cease.  This had the negative effect of polarising German opposition, since many Germans were patriots but not Nazis.  But the anti-Hitler Germans would be showed the same treatment as Nazis (as if that didn’t happen anyway?), because it was Germany who must surrender, not just Hitler.  This caused even those who did not like Hitler to fight for him, and further, it cut down on the opportunity for assassination attempts.

The idea was that if countries did not surrender unconditionally, they would simply rearm and start a new world war – exactly as Germany did after WWI.  This heavily influenced the tactics used to finish the defeat of Japan.

With the Unconditional Surrender etched in stone, and the Germans driven out of Africa, Stalin resumed his push to get the Allied forces to launch a cross-channel invasion of France, but Churchill decided that the Allies needed to take Sicily, Italy, and the Balkans first – the “soft underbelly” of Europe.  Churchill feared for the future if Stalin were allowed too much free reign – if Russian forces pushed west and occupied territory, the USSR would likely keep it even after the War was over, which Churchill did not want.  At the Tehran Summit, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all met, and a date for the impending cross-channel invasion was set – spring 1944.  Roosevelt agreed that while the Allies would take Italy, as Churchill requested, they would not go on towards Greece.

Mussolini with Hitler: Two Dictators, One Parade
Source: archives.gov

By the end of 1943, Mussolini was overthrown; Hitler had to send in a rescue squad to prevent him from becoming a prisoner.  The Soviets turned the tide on the Eastern front with the Battle of Stalingrad (1943).  Both sides completely disregarded civilians, so the city was decimated, however the Russians trapped the Germans.  Unfortunately, there were 1-2 million casualties on both sides.  The siege on Leningrad was broken as well.  This fighting on all fronts caused the German forces to be spread thin, allowing Russian victories which further weakened the German Army.  (The Soviets stopped just outside Warsaw to allow the anti-Communist Polish Underground to be wiped out when they foolishly moved against the Germans thinking they could count on Russian support.)  Trusting the Russians did tend to be foolish, yes…

6 June 1944 saw the D-Day invasion under Dwight D Eisenhower – the Supreme Commander of Europe.  It was a staggering thing to plan a landing site in Normandy, as there was no port there.  While this led to the attack being truly unexpected, it also lead to the attack being almost impossible.  On top of this, bad weather caused the first British casualties when the new low-sitting tanks were waterlogged and sank.  But it was, overall, successful.

Random joke – who is generally considered to be best German general in WWII?  Eisenhower.  (He was of German extraction.)

World War II was the first war in which there were 24-hour bulletins of how the war was progressing.

The bombing in WWII was of the indiscriminate sort – no precision bombs existed.  The German city of Dresden was firebombed, causing massive civilian casualties.

In the summer of 1942, Germany began working on a new secret weapon - the V-1 Flying Bomb, a pilotless monoplane powered by a pulse-jet motor that carried a 1-ton warhead.  It was launched from a fixed ramp and travelled at 350 mph at 4,000 feet.  It initially had a range of 150 miles (later 250 miles).  Germany fired 9,521 V-I bombs on southern England.  Of these 4,621 were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire or by RAF fighters.  An estimated 6,184 people were killed by these flying bombs.  By August only 20% were reaching England.

The second secret weapon, the V-2 Rocket, was developed by Wernher von Braun and others.  The V-2 was first used in September 1944.  Like the V-1, it carried a 1-ton warhead, but this 14 metres (47 feet) long, liquid-fuelled rocket was capable of supersonic speed and could fly at an altitude of over 50 miles.  As a result it could not be effectively stopped once launched.  Over 5,000 V-2s were fired on Britain.  However, only 1,100 reached there.  These rockets killed 2,724 people and badly injured 6,000.  After the D-Day landings, Allied troops were able to capture the launch sites.  By March 1945 the attacks ended.  These were intended as terror weapons.  They were without significant military impact.

The German Ardennes Offensive, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge, started in late December 1944 and was the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II.  The German army had intended to split the Allied line in half, capturing Antwerp and then proceeding to sweep north to encircle and destroy four Allied armies, thus as Hitler believed, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis' favour.  Although ultimately unsuccessful, the offensive nevertheless tied down huge amounts of Allied resources and the slow response of the Allies to the resulting gap in their lines erased months from their timetable.  However, the offensive also allowed the Allies to severely deplete the cream of the German army outside the defences of the Siegfried Line and left Germany's remaining forces in a poor state of supply, thus greatly easing the assault on Germany afterward.  In numerical terms, it was the largest battle the US Army had ever fought.

Who would enter Berlin first?  Eisenhower allowed the Russians to be first in April 1945.  Hitler committed suicide in a bunker.  And what would be Germany’s future?  The Cold War developed…

War in the Pacific

In the first 6 months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese swept across the Pacific.  As Japanese carrier planes devastated the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor the morning of 7 December, Taiwan-based aircraft pounded the main bases of the American Fleet in the Philippines.  Over the next two days, scattered but heroic resistance failed to stop the landings.  After securing the beachheads, the Japanese launched a massive pincer attack.  Fighting gallantly, the US Forces commanded by General Douglas MacArthur were hurled back by the advance of the enemy.  MacArthur ordered a fighting retreat to the Bataan peninsula, where the defending forces, in accordance with the plan, would regroup and make an indefinite stand.  This was to delay invading enemy forces until the US Pacific Fleet could be mustered and fight its way to the Philippines.  At the Bataan peninsula, with its defensive terrain and backed by artillery from Manila Bay and nearby Corregidor, the defenders expected to hold out until reinforcements arrived.  But with the Pacific Fleet crippled at Pearl Harbor, no aid would be forthcoming.

The surrender of Bataan hastened the fall of Corregidor a month later.  More than 15,000 American and 60,000 Filipino prisoners of war were forced into the infamous Bataan Death March which became one of the most heinous war crimes ever committed by a modern military power.  Macarthur retreated but vowed, “I shall return.”

Since the Japanese had not managed to destroy the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, they still needed to neutralise America’s air threat.  The Battle of Midway (June 1942) was the turning point of the war for the Japanese, however.  Yamamoto had thought he could get a negotiated settlement, and the Japanese were overconfident – they thought they again would have the element of surprise, but the US had broken their code and listened in on their battle plans.  Admiral Chester Nimitz was in charge of the US forces there.  A codebreaker had gone to Nimitz with the theory that "AF" was actually Midway.  Nimitz seeded a message that Midway was having trouble with its water condenser; soon after, a message was received saying that AF was having trouble with a water condenser.

The Americans had a lucky break – the Japanese first attacked Midway with bombs rather than the torpedoes needed for carriers.  After the initial bombing run, no scout planes had reported sighting the American fleet, so they decided to load up with bombs again.  However the single delayed scout plane finally reported back and said that it had sighted the American fleet, which caused the Japanese to change their minds.  Due to this, when the American bombers found the Japanese carriers by accident, their planes were all still out on the deck – thus perfect targets for bombing.

In late 1942 Americans were on the offensive with an island-hopping strategy of protracted air strikes against Japan - in particular Tokyo, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.  (The US sought to win the War “one island at a time”.)  The Japanese retaliated to these bombings with Kamikaze pilots (Kamikaze translates to “Divine Wind” – back in Japan’s history, the Kamikaze wind had caused the Mongol raiding forces to sink before they could take over Japan).

Estimates of Japanese casualties varied from 100,000 to 1,000,000.

In April 1945, Roosevelt died and Truman became president.  Immediately upon his ascension to office, he learned of the Atomic Bomb.  July 1945 brought the question: Should the Atomic Bomb be used?  The rule of Unconditional Surrender applied to Japan as well (though the US did later allow Japan to keep her Emperor).  The Potsdam Agreement, or the Potsdam Proclamation, was an agreement on policy for the occupation and reconstruction of Germany and other nations after fighting in Europe had ended with the German surrender of 8 May 1945.  It was drafted and adopted by the major victorious powers, the USSR, USA, France and UK, at the Potsdam Conference between 17 July and 2 August 1945.  The participants were the top leaders of those three states, Josef Stalin, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and various ministers of foreign affairs.  (After Churchill lost the general election and resigned, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, joined.)

In a second document adopted at the conference, the Potsdam Declaration, the United States and its allies also warned Japan to surrender or face “utter destruction.”  The Potsdam Declaration was issued 26 July 1945 by Truman, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-Shek.  It outlined the terms of surrender for Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference.  After the Potsdam Declaration, the Japanese government used the term Mokusatsu, which either means "to watch carefully", or "to treat with silent contempt".  It was taken to mean the latter, which essentially justified the dropping of the atomic bomb.  The US picked a city not already devastated, or culturally significant.

August 6th and 9th saw Fat Man and Little Boy dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration upon its surrender to the Allies.

This tends to be ignored, but on August 8th the USSR declared war on Japan.  US historians sometimes discount this, but it was a major factor, since it emphasised to Japan that not only could she not win, but she had in fact completely lost.

Also, before the atomic bombs, plans were proceeding for the invasion of the home islands.  The US estimated it would suffer a minimum of 100,000 deaths, and 500,000 or more casualties.  This is usually considered to have been wildly optimistic.  Japanese casualties were not really considered, but would have been significantly higher – probably 3 times higher.  This was the official US plan, and operations to invade were proceeding as quickly as possible (hampered by bad weather).  The very first island (Kyushu) was estimated at costing anywhere from 20k – 100k American lives (with casualties in the 50-500k range) – Truman ordered this attack to go ahead before finding out about the Atomic program.  This was Operation Olympic – and was based on the entirely incorrect notion that Japan was out of planes, had no tanks, and was losing the will to fight.  It would have been… messy.  But the US believed (rightly?) that unconditional surrender was an absolute requirement to prevent another war in a couple of decades.

500,000 Purple Hearts were stockpiled in preparation for the invasion (which would have been inconceivably bloodier than Normandy).  As of 2005, all casualties since (including Vietnam, Korea, both Iraq wars) have not exhausted this stockpile.  The invasion of the home islands might well have cost more lives than the rest of the war combined – some said twice as many.

American occupation was headed by Douglas Macarthur, who began the task of rebuilding Japan.

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