Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Point of Departure (Part 2)

The Great Sarawak Grouse Shoot

On August 12^th, 1942 a force of ABDA destroyers and cruisers, commanded by Rear-Admiral Raymond Spruance are patrolling the Celebes Sea, south of Sula Arch. At 5am, lookouts sight a straggling mass of Japanese transport planes pass overhead, heading for Borneo. The planes straggle even more after the ships put up a flak barrage, but although a few planes go down, the majority of them are too high. Spruance puts out a sighting report. ABDA air commands all over the region scramble at once.

The Japanese plan is daring. The 80 planes are making one-way trips from the island of Mindano. They are to drop their loads of paratroopers along the coast of Sarawak, where the paratroopers are to seize a beachhead for the troops that are now on their way from the Philippines by sea. The plan depends on a short sharp assault that will overwhelm the Dutch defenders and seize the oilfields. There is no fighter cover.

The plan is too daring. The Dutch Airforce has been doing some shopping recently and is armed with Grumman Wildcats. American and British units are also present. As the slow transports come into sight of Mount Great Bulu on the Tamabo Range, the Wildcats, Spitfires, MB3s and Mosquitoes are already waiting for them. The result is a slaughter that is immortalised by one RAF officer as “the great Sarawak grouse shoot”. Half of the Japanese planes fall from the sky within half an hour. The rest are systematically chewed up and destroyed as they approach their targets. A total of 357 Japanese paratroopers make it to their drop zones alive. Many are wounded. The rest die in their blazing planes. The paratroopers meet fierce local resistance, with a lot of Dutch soldiers quite glad to have someone to fight so that they can work off some of their frustrations after the fall of Holland in 1940. Most of the Japanese die, although a few flee into the mountains. One is discovered in 1971, still fighting a long-lost war.

The seabourne reinforcements find similar fates. The Japanese Navy has reluctantly scraped up the Battleship Kirishima, two cruisers and some destroyers to escort several thousand soldiers on merchantmen and troop transports. When the reports come in that the landings have failed, there is some disagreement about what to do – press on with surprise hopelessly lost or turn back and lose the chance to seize those vital oilfields?

While they are hesitating, Cunningham and Spruance are deciding. There is no way that the Japs would have sent those planes without some seabourne reinforcements as well – so where are they? Scouts soon find the Japanese force. Cunningham heads east with the Far Eastern fleet, ordering Spruance to close in to the rear of the Japanese force. As darkness falls in the evening, the Allied forces use their radar to close in masked by the night. Cunningham proved that he liked the night at the Battle of Cape Matapan, when his well-trained forces engaged the Italians. The Japanese also like the night but they do not have radar. Therefore ABC knows that the first blow can be crucial.

At 12.06am Warspite and Valiant open fire, as Barham and Prince of Wales sprint up to get into close range. Kirishima is hit hard, taking some heavy blows that ravage its upperworks and knock out its forward guns. But the Japanese are also good at fighting at night and rally quickly, with the two cruisers deploying to fire their fearsome Long Lance torpedoes. Sadly, before they get a chance to do so, Spruance intervenes. The British battleships are pounding the Kirishima into scrap, so he takes care of the Jap cruisers. His ABDA force looms out of the night and lets go with every gun they have. Neither Jap cruiser survives long. As Kirishima sags out of the fight, down by the head and blazing from stem to stern, the Allies unleash a holocaust of fire on the remaining Japanese ships. None survive. At the end of the day Tokyo has achieved exactly nothing at all from the attempt on Borneo.

“Scratch one flattop, repeat, scratch that son of a bitch!”

The Japanese combined chiefs have the unpleasant task of hearing Yamamoto saying that he told them so. The plans approved by them have all failed because the IJN was too spread out and facing concentrated enemy forces. He unveils plan MA – a strike against Midway. The Japanese fleet will combine for this, sending three fleet carriers, four light carriers and five battleships in one hammer blow against the American garrison there. The capture of Midway will provide an excellent staging ground for raids against Hawaii and should encourage the US Pacific fleet to come out and get lured to its final destruction. This should throw the Americans out of the Pacific arena for a while – long enough to stabilise the situation and launch another attempt to get that precious oil. Yamamoto will command the entire invasion force, as Nagumo is obviously not up to the job any more after his disastrous showing at the South China Sea.

Unfortunately electronic American and British ears are listening in. Intelligence experts Commander Rochefort in Hawaii and Commodore Richards in Singapore have been carefully sifting through the reports and intercepts made available by the Purple machines. The Japanese are concentrating.... there is talk of an attack on AF. Where is AF? Rochefort makes the breakthrough when he remembers that a Japanese scout plane signalled that it was passing AF in the spring. The nearest land was Midway. But how to confirm it? Richards flies to Hawaii with an idea. Why not ask the garrison at Midway to broadcast a signal in a code that they know the Japanese have broken? A signal asking for more concrete or more fuel – something that naturally would be broadcast using a less important code? Rochefort likes the idea – it is better than his own plan for a transmission about Midway’s fresh water plant to be broadcast in clear, which the Japanese might find suspicious. Richards’ plan goes ahead. And to their delight the Japanese report that AF is requesting more construction material.

The information goes straight up the pipeline to Admiral Nimitz. He starts to plan. He has Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, Yorktown and Lexington available and Halsey has recovered from a mild bout of some stress-related skin disease. He also has the garrison and airfields on Midway. The Japs will outnumber his forces, but if the Americans know when and where to strike...

Yamamoto sails from Truk on September 15^th 1942. He is on board the new super-battleship the Yamato. Also ploughing their way eastwards are the battleships Nagato, Mutsu and the Yamato’s sister ship the Musashi, to protect the carriers and to lend some muscle to the bombardment of Midway.

A week later a Catalina flying out of Midway skims through some clouds and makes an interesting discovery – the Japanese fleet on the horizon. A sighting report goes out as the Catalina hides behind every scrap of cloud cover it can. Halsey takes a hard look at the situation. It is 8pm and the Japanese are 400 miles away, although drawing closer by the hour. He is tempted to bring in a night attack, but his pilots, while well trained are still not that well trained. He decides on a dawn attack. Fighter cover will be provided by planes from the fleet and Midway. Bombers from Midway will also take part. Timing is critical; the bombers must have fighter support. The British have passed on a lot of valuable lessons. At midnight Halsey gets another stroke of luck. The submarine USS Cuttlefish, en route between Singapore and Hawaii, sights the Japanese fleet and starts to shadow it, sending location reports.

At dawn the next day the Japanese fleet is starting to launch its fighter CAP and reconnaissance screen. This is a critical moment, as the fleet is almost defenceless to air attack. It is a small window but the Americans get lucky and attack at that moment, achieving a near-perfect combination of forces, more by luck than judgement. The Japanese fighter CAP is overwhelmed by superior numbers and the next thing that they know is that torpedoes and bombs are raining down. Shokkaku gets hit first, three bombs falling to ignite the fighters assembled on its deck, followed by the bombers waiting in the main hanger. The ship is on fire from stem to stern within minutes. Zuikaku follows shortly after, a victim of Lt Commander Wade McClusky’s dive-bombers. Two of the light carriers are also hit fatally. Only Akagi and the two remaining light carriers survive unscathed. McClusky’s broadcast of: “Scratch one flattop, repeat, scratch that son of bitch!” is greeted by a roar of delight from the command crew of his carrier.

The battle of Midway

Within an hour the situation has been transformed for Yamamoto. He has lost a large chunk of his air cover to an air force that is too large to have come from Midway alone. What now? To retreat will leave the fleet exposed to another attack from this unknown American force. But if they press on – the Japanese fleet has more than enough battleships to deal with any surface force, especially if its remaining air units are sent out to find and deal with the American carriers. His decision to press on is followed by a report from an unexpected source. One of the reconnaissance planes launched just before the attack has, against all expectations, found the American fleet straight away. From the initial report it has three carriers and no battleships. Yamamoto decides to press on. Akagi and the two remaining light carriers launch their bombers.

The USS Cuttlefish has been extremely patient until now and takes a part in the action as the last of Akagi’s planes fly off. Cuttlefish’s crew has been embarrassed by the sheer inability of the USN’s torpedo department to investigate the persistent failures in US torpedoes. So, when Cuttlefish left Singapore, it had a full complement of torpedoes... but British torpedoes. Even the Limeys had sorted their fish problem out by now. Having moved carefully into position, Cuttlefish fires a full spread of six fish at Akagi. Four hit. All explode. Akagi develops first a 10 and then a 15-degree list. Even if her planes return, they cannot land on her.

The American fleet has radar and therefore has plenty of warning of the oncoming Japanese attack. The Zeros are swarmed over and the remaining Vals and Kates are mostly mauled from the sky. Some do break through the American fighter screen however, and carry out an attack on the Lexington. Hit by three bombs and two torpedoes, she is abandoned by her crew at 3pm after a series of internal explosions. However, somehow she stays afloat. At 6 pm her crew is put back onboard and start the arduous task of getting her back under control. Somehow steering is restored and the fires are put out. A week later, with a list of 15 degrees and every man onboard almost dead on his feet, she limps into Pearl Harbour. Every man in port cheers the Lady Lex in.

Despite the fact that they have knocked one American carrier out of the fight, there is little for the Japanese to celebrate. The Americans launch every plane they have, both from Midway and the fleet, at the Japanese. Akagi is an easy target, with her list and swiftly sinks. The light carriers are also singled out and sunk quickly. The Americans planes now have a massive choice of targets to go for. Many choose to go for “that big bastard”, better known as the Yamato. Lashed with bombs and bullets the superstructure takes a pounding, although the main armour belt soaks up most of the damage. Yamamoto is knocked unconscious. Then the Cuttlefish takes a hand. It has three torpedoes loaded, so it gets up into point blank range and fires them all before diving deep and getting out of the fight. Those three torpedoes all hit, exploding great holes in Yamato’s hull, flooding three boiler rooms and one engine room. Helpless, she drifts. Although the crew counterfloods, she is now labouring like a pregnant whale due to the thousands of tonnes of water in her hull. More American planes attack, and finally a dive-bomber succeeds in putting a bomb through her armour with a very lucky hit. She starts to sink. No contact can now be made at all with Yamamoto and the other ships in the fleet are also taking damage. With a heavy heart the new Japanese commander, Admiral Ozawa, leaves the broken ruins of Japan’s biggest warship behind as the fleet steams back to Truk at high speed. Midway has been a total disaster. Worse, the still-unconscious Yamamoto is picked up in a small lifeboat and captured by the Americans. His aide would have killed them both, but had fainted from loss of blood. America and her allies celebrate as the Japanese public are grudgingly informed by High Command about what has happened.

In another development the US Navy’s torpedo department is finally forced into taking a look at the detonators and, gee whiz, discovers that there is a serious flaw in the design. Changes are quickly made, especially as the Anglophobic C in C of the US Navy, Admiral Ernest King, is furious that Limey torpedoes helped to knock out the Yamato.

The ominous bulge.

The German offensive in southern Russia is going very well. The capture of Stalingrad has secured the left flank and the Germans are pouring into the Caucasus. 6^th Army stretches out eastwards, heading for Astrakhan. But as it starts to approach the city, Soviet resistance suddenly stiffens. The missing 62^nd Army has reappeared and it fights for every scrap of ground in front of the city. A furious Hitler, who wants to take the city quickly, postpones plans for the 4th Panzer Army to flow south down the coast of the Caspian Sea towards Azerbaijan. Instead, 4^th Panzer Army is thrown into the outskirts of Astrakhan and is quickly stopped dead by the Russians, who are now experts in house-to-house fighting.

Stalin and Zhukov feed in just enough troops to make good the losses that the 62^nd Army is experiencing. They need to gain time – time to build up the troops for the great counter-attack that is now massing between the Volga and the Don. Casualties on both sides are horrific.

“It was like Warsaw again – only ten, no, a hundred, times worse. We would burst into a house and try to clear it, room by room, floor by floor, breaking holes in the walls and feeding grenades through, hosing down rooms with automatic fire. We had to stay clear of the windows – there was no real front line, the Ivans could be just across the street or even next door. Sometimes the Ivans would sneak back into cleared houses at night and we would have to take the same house again.... We started with a full-strength company. Hans got it on the first day – sniper. Wohlsen was blown apart when a grenade fell on his back and exploded a second later. Lensen, poor slow good-hearted Lensen, the faithful man with the flamethrower strapped to his back... gone in a flash of flame and high-pitched squeals, like a pig dying. By the end of the week 18 of us were left. We were pulled out back to Kiev to refit. Which saved us.” Christian Sayer, The Bloodied Ground pp201-202, 1966.

By September 28^th the front lines in Russia have ground to a halt. Army Group A has stalled close to Grozny and has failed to make it over the mountains to Georgia. Army Group B is now involved in the bitter struggle for Astrakhan. Two-thirds of the city is in German hands but any further advances are slow and costly. Worse, to make up the numbers for 6^th and 4^th Panzer armies, German troops are steadily stripped from the forces holding the Don River crossings and the Don-Volga area close to Stalingrad. These are replaced with Rumanian and Hungarian formations, separated by small German formations to corset these forces, which hate each other.

As autumn turns to winter, the German public are told that the battle of Astrakhan is close to an end. Goebbels is almost right.

“They’ve invaded where?”

On October 11, 1942, parachutes start to open along the coast of Corsica, as the British 1^st Airborne Division makes its first operational jump. Hours later, French and British forces, led by Lt-General O’Connor, start to land on the beaches between Capu di Muru and Capu di Senetosa in Corsica, quickly linking up with the paratroopers, who have captured the small port of Propriano. Vichy French opposition is non-existent at best, with hundreds of delirious troops deserting to join the Allies. O’Connor soon has supplies flooding into his beachhead, as his men fortify the hills around the beaches and engineers build a string of airstrips for the RAF and FAF. Offshore the Allied Mediterranean fleet prowls. The Allies have scraped up as much shipping as they can get their hands on, which has meant the cancellation of the Dieppe raid, as troops from America also start to pour into Britain in preparation for the proposed second front. Aircraft wearing a new symbol are also starting to be seen over the skies of Europe. The Americans are arriving.

After a confused exchange of telephone calls, including one in which an incredulous Jodl barks, “They’ve invaded where?” an enraged Hitler orders that German reinforcements be sent at once to Corsica. General Student quickly puts together a paratroop division that flies out to Corsica within four days, with Panzer support coming from the tanks of the 1^st SS panzer division, which is refitting near Berlin. General Von Thoma, who has no faith in his mission at all, leads the German forces in Corsica. The few remaining Vichy formations are doubtful at best, there are allied fighters all over the sky, and British submarines are being reported between Corsica and France, sinking German ships. The Italian navy (such as still exists) had spotted Allied units heading for Corsica, but the Italian Government totally dropped the ball and somehow failed to notify its former colleagues in arms.

However, O’Connor has had five precious days to organise his forces, which have now swelled to V Corps and part of VII Corps from 3^rd Army as well as the 1^st French Corps. The Allied forces are armed with Churchill and Grant tanks, as well as a few of the new Shermans.

Von Thoma’s first attack is a muddled affair that sees the best part of a German paratrooper brigade wiped out. He falls back to regroup, despite being bombarded with directives from the Fuhrer to stand his ground and attack. O’Connor, who has been training his men relentlessly for a year and a half, pushes forwards and captures Ajaccio, a major port on the western coast of Corsica on October 20^th. Forewarned by Ultra decrypts about an armoured counter-attack by Von Thoma, he digs in. 3.7inch guns start to appear, heavily camouflaged, next to hull-down tanks.

Von Thoma’s attack is a disaster, as he loses 75 of his 102 tanks to anti-tank and artillery fire. O’Connor then pounces, sending in his forces in a series of pincer movements. By the middle of November, with most of his men captured or dead, his supplies cut off from France by the Allied air and naval blockade and with partisans rising all around him, Von Thoma bites the bullet and surrenders at Bastia. O’Connor takes his surrender and Corsica swiftly becomes an Allied fortress.

In the north, the Finns are doing a lot of very hard thinking. They had bet on a German victory so that Finland could regain the territory that it lost in the 1939-1940 Winter War. Corsica and the battle of Astrakhan are a few straws in the wind... they start secret negotiations with the Soviets for an armistice. If Finland can retain the land, then it will pull out of the war and the Soviets can launch an attack to retake Leningrad... Stalin is agreeable.

Stalin is also agreeably pleased to discover that the Western Allies have finally announced the name of the Supreme Commander in charge of the invasion of France, scheduled for some time in 1943. There has been a great deal of horse-trading going on between London and Washington. The two major theatre commanders in the Pacific are British and American. In the Mediterranean Wavell is in charge, but the majority of his forces are no longer British. Instead an American newcomer called Dwight Eisenhower is placed in command. Wavell is moved to London... to take charge of the Invasion. He quickly appoints Montgomery as his deputy, putting him in charge of all ground forces. USAAF general Spaatz is the head of the invasion Airforce and the naval commander is Admiral Bertram Ramsey, the man who got the BEF out of Dunkirk in 1940.

Thunder along the Volga

The fall of Corsica is a bitter pill for Hitler to swallow. Worse is to come. Three days after a smoke-begrimed Von Thoma met O’Connor, the Russians launch their long-awaited counter attack in the south. Thousands of guns open fire, both north and south of the tenuous bulge that leads towards Astrakhan. The guns hide a more sinister sound – the noise of Russian forces advancing.

Zhukov’s attack is hideously successful, as the Hungarian and Rumanian forces shatter and break. The few German forces try to stand their ground but are cut off by the flood and overwhelmed. Soviet tank forces pour through the Don-Volga corridor and storm Stalingrad, quickly eliminating the small German garrison and the rather larger German hospitals and airstrips there. On November 21, 1942 the northern and southern arms meet in the snow south of Stalingrad. All of Army Group B is cut off in what becomes known as the Astrakhan pocket, or Kessel (cauldron). 400,000 soldiers are trapped there, with few supplies and with the Russian winter spreading its cloak over the area. Von Paulus and Hoth, the commander of the 4^th Panzer Army, meet to discuss the situation. The vital supply dumps in and around Stalingrad have been lost. The two armies are surrounded, although the German lines have now stabilised as the Soviets consolidate their positions. There are not enough supplies for both armies to break out. Only one can. Von Paulus and Hoth both agree that any breakout must be by 4^th Panzer, which although weakened by the fighting in Astrakhan, has the tanks and mobility to punch through the Soviet lines. Any attack must come soon though and must also coincide with a German attack on the other side of the Soviet corridor. The longer that the Germans wait, the less chances they have to succeed.

Hitler, however, will not hear any talk of a withdrawal. “I won’t go back from the Caspian! I won’t!” he screams at his wilting generals. There is to be no step back from Astrakhan. Von Paulus and Hoth are to hold in place until they are relieved. The orders go out to form a new panzer army group Volga, under the command of one of Hitler’s best generals, Erich Von Manstein. Slowly, in the chaos of the southern front, the German panzers start to form up, but precious days are wasted.

Von Manstein does not like the look of the situation. At all. He is expected to break through the rapidly thickening Soviet defences with the slender forces that can be scraped together, and then advance almost 100 miles. The nearest Volga crossing is at Stalingrad, and the last thing he wants to do is get sucked into a second Astrakhan. The weather is appalling and not even that doped up blubber mountain Goering can promise he will get air cover, let alone also supply the kessel.

He does his best. Von Manstein gets to within four miles of the Volga crossings at Stalingrad before the Soviet defences grind him to a halt. He pleads with Hitler to authorise Hoth to break out to join him and then to evacuate Von Paulus in a collapsing sack formation. Hitler refuses. He has worse things on his mind, as the Soviets have launched a second attack along the southern hinge of the front, aiming for Rostov. If the city falls, then Army group A will also be trapped, along with Von Manstein’s forces. Von Manstein goes ballistic – the trapped forces in Astrakhan could be used to help repel such an attack if they were brought out in time. He is trying to fight two battles several hundred miles apart with limited resources against an enemy that has been learning very fast and for once has the men and materiel to out on a proper strategic offensive. He tells his aide: “It can’t be done. We cannot save Astrakhan and Rostov at the same time. It’s impossible.”

Hitler, however, is adamant that it can and will be done. Or else.

“Hold them – I said hold them!”

For the Japanese 1942 has so far been a really lousy year. They have totally failed to achieve any of their major objectives and to make matters worse their navy is now so short of oil that it has to shut down operations in one area to stockpile enough reserves for operations in another. Despite the efforts of certain lower-ranking officers like Fuchida, Genda and Tokojira, Tokyo has failed to see that the main reason behind Japan’s failures has been the fact that its forces have been undertaking widespread operations with different objectives and under-sized forces. The failure to take Bataan is a classic example, as in September 1942 the American-Philippine forces there start to make their presence felt. Reinforcements have been fed in, there are tanks on the ground in force for the first time and they have the backing of the British fleet.

They also have their old commander back, due to the arrival of Macarthur, who proudly proclaims that he has returned. He is rather baffled to discover that his troops, who call themselves “the battling bastards of Bataan”, hold him in a great deal of contempt for running out on them earlier in the year. Wainwright is idolised as “big W”, as the troops know that he stayed and almost starved with them.

The Japanese forces opposite the American-Phillipino army are shocked out of their trenches and rapidly buckle as the Allies push them north, recapturing lost ground. They also liberate prisoners of war captured during the siege of Bataan. Many are on the point of starvation having been horrifically mistreated by the Japanese. Wainwright’s men are not in the mood to take many prisoners after that and swiftly break out into central Luzon.

Things are also moving in Siam, where Yamashita, who has somehow glued his army back together but who also knows that the Commonwealth forces opposite him are just waiting to get their supplies in order, has been replaced by Saito. Saito is not impressed by what Yamashita has been doing and announces that Japanese tactics have so far been “a violation of the spirit of Bushido.” Yamashita is first bemused and then horrified to hear that Saito wants to hit the enemy hard with a serious of heavy frontal attacks. He points out that a) the monsoon has ended, so the RAF has total air superiority, b) the Japanese artillery is extremely weak and is heavily outranged by the Royal Artillery’s 7.2in and 25 pdr guns, that c) the enemy is well dug in and is heavily armed and finally d) the Japanese army is badly under strength and undersupplied and has been forced to start looting food from the Siamese, who are getting restless.

Saito ignores all of this and sends Yamashita back to the Home Islands with a flea in his ear. He orders a series of frontal attacks that will sweep the enemy away back into Malaya.

Preparations for all this cannot he hidden from the eyes of the RAF and an astonished Slim rubs his hands gleefully. More tanks and guns are secretly brought up and the defences are extended in some depth. Slim also contacts the new head of 5^th Army in Burma, Lt-Gen Sir Henry Maitland Wilson. Nicknamed “Jumbo” because of his size, Wilson is, despite this, also extremely intelligent. The two have been expecting a long slow bloody grind through Siam. However if the Japanese Army is defeated beforehand, they can take the initiative and turn a defeat into a rout. Moreover, the Siamese government, faced with a horde of hungry and tactless Japanese soldiers in their midst who are stealing food from the native people, have been making some discreet overtures to the British. The situation has possibilities.

On October 20, 1942 the Japanese Army starts its offensive with a series of frontal attacks that are quickly brought to a screaming halt. Saito feeds in more and more men into a bloodbath. The Commonwealth lines give here and there but are quickly restored with local counterattacks. By the end of the week Saito is forced to stop dead, having lost an estimated 40 per cent of his army in dead and wounded, a figure that horrifies even him. The RA has crushed his artillery and there are RAF planes swarming all over his few lines of supply, bombing, strafing and making a nuisance of themselves.

As Saito starts to realise that he has just gutted his own army, Slim responds. The veteran Australian 4^th division blows a hole in his lines and then other Commonwealth forces start to join the party. Badly weakened, Saito’s forces try to hold but instead collapse.

“As I entered the command post General Saito was standing staring at the maps on the wall and holding a phone to his ear. ‘Stop them! I want the Gaijin bastards stopped!’ he shouted into the mouthpiece. He paused to listen and then exploded, the veins on his forehead standing out like cords. ‘Hold them – I said hold them! No! There are no reserves left, you must make use of what you have there. Yes! Well scrape up everyone you have and throw them into the fight!’ Then he slammed the phone down and resumed puffing on a dead cigarette as the orderly officers came and went around them. A few minutes later one came in quietly and started to place new pins to our north on the map. Saito paused and then went up to him. ‘What the hell are you doing, that’s miles to the north of here, you stupid man!’

“The officer passed over a sheet of paper and then said quietly: ‘The British are attacking from Burma, sir.’ Saito just looked at him and then looked at me. ‘Get me the commander of the 60^th brigade on the phone,’ he said in a surprisingly calm voice.” The Broken Cherry Tree, Itsugi Ijajirobi, pp230-231, 1953.

Wilson attacks out of Burma, taking the Japanese forces facing him totally by surprise and outflanking Saito to the north. Desperate, Saito throws in his last remaining armoured reserves. Although present on the maps as the 60^th Armoured Brigade, the formation is, in reality little more than a battalion strong. The 60^th advances but is spotted straight away and is engaged by the tanks of Probyn’s Horse, an Indian tank regiment with an illustrious history and, despite its’ name, Sherman tanks. The 60^th is destroyed in one short savage afternoon.

By now the Japanese army in Siam is starting to creak and give way. Pressed from two sides and with British planes swooping down to destroy anything that moves on the roads, Saito cannot stay where he is but cannot fall back either without massive dislocation. By November 5^th his army has been pushed back to the line of the Nam Yon and Chao Phrraya rivers, having taken horrific casualties. Any hopes he has of gaining a breathing space here are quickly dashed when Slim and Wilson bounce the river crossings and head east, taking Bangkok on November 8^th.

The Siamese government quickly declares its neutrality, prompting a series of clashes between Japanese and Siamese forces. This adds to the strain on the Japanese army, which now starts to disintegrate, ravaged by disease, hunger and a chronic ammunition shortage. Some units stand and fight, only to be swept away by the Commonwealth forces, others withdraw slowly, harassed by the RAF and the Siamese army, and a few even rout, fleeing into the east and the uncertain pleasures of the Indochinese border, where the French impound those that they catch. The more bellicose Indochinese tribes in the hill regions have a lot of fun. A strafing Spitfire catches Saito with his staff on the road. He does not survive the encounter.

By the beginning of December Siam has been cleared of Japanese forces and Slim and Wilson start to rest and reorganise their forces.

In the Kessel

For Von Manstein the beginning of December is a total nightmare. The Soviet pounding on his lines has stretched them to breaking point and they are getting perilously close to Rostov. If the city falls then another two armies will be trapped in the Caucasus, although they should be able to fall back on the Kerch peninsula, where it should be easy to ferry them over to the Crimea.

In Astrakhan conditions are becoming appalling. Food rations are cut, and then cut again. There is a shortage of fuel and ammunition as well. Even if the Germans do break out, they cannot go very far. Supplies are being flown in, but are only a fraction of what is required, as the Luftwaffe is overstretched. The Soviets have also set up a ring of anti-aircraft guns around the city, supplemented by Yak fighters, which are increasingly dangerous as the Soviet Union’s industrial base gets moving. The airlift is taking appalling losses.

Von Manstein sends Von Eckart, one of his most trusted officers, back to the Wolf’s Lair to brief Hitler on the situation. When Von Eckart arrives he is horrified by the paucity of accurate information that is being presented to the Fuhrer. He is even more horrified by the fantastic and unrealistic plans that Hitler is making. He points out a few home truths – the Hungarians and Rumanians are collapsing, the Luftwaffe’s airlift is totally inadequate, the Astrakhan garrison is running out of supplies and the front is close to collapse near Rostov. Hitler dismisses most of these points and says that the Reich Marshall (Goring) has promised that Astrakhan will be kept supplied.

Von Eckart is then privately bawled out by Field Marshal Keitel, a brainless lackey, about his temerity in giving Hitler “unimportant details at a time when he is doing all he can for the nation.”

“I stared at the man, trying not to let contempt show in my face. ‘The Fuhrer needs all the information about a very serious situation,’ I started, only to be interrupted.

‘The Fuhrer will save the situation! You will be silent!’ Keitel barked.

I paused and listened to the voices coming out of the situation room. Hitler was explaining how it was vital that the 4^th and 6^th Armies remain there to absorb the Russian attacks and how important it was that Germany stay on the Caspian Sea. I almost choked – he wanted 400,000 starving, badly equipped men to just sit in the city while the relief force was destroyed? Where was Goring? Where was a responsible Luftwaffe officer with the details of the airlift? Then I looked back at Keitel. And for the first time I saw what the German general staff had become. Functionaries to a madman.” Taking Back My Country, Hans Von Eckart, pp200-201, 1956.

By December 20^th, the situation is critical. Acting against orders Von Manstein orders Army Group A and Panzer Army Group Volga to fall back on Rostov, where the Soviets are now just 15 miles from the city.

Hitler explodes with rage. Falling back that far will endanger the entire airlift to Astrakhan. However, Von Manstein has no choice. His units are on the verge of exhaustion; many have been fighting without replacements or rest for a month. His panzer units have performed miracles, plugging gaps in the line here and there before rushing to seal up other gaps miles away, but even they have been ground down to almost nothing. Von Manstein sends Von Eckart back to the Wolf’s Lair with his full casualty returns, which stun even Hitler. He reluctantly agrees to the pullback.

It’s a close run thing, but the last German forces, badly battered as they are, make it west of Rostov before the Soviets finally storm the ruins of the city on January 5^th. Astrakhan is on its own.

The Soviets are stunned when they finally realise they have imprisoned two whole German armies in the city. Once Rostov has fallen they start to make preparations for the destruction of the kessel. Part of their work has already been done. Increasing numbers of German soldiers are dying. According to the official records, they are dying of dysentery and battle wounds. The truth is that they are dying of starvation.

A bitter Von Paulus and Hoth are forced to watch as the remnants of their armies are engulfed in fire. Already both armies are hopelessly intermingled, which makes command and control difficult. The Germans hold in some areas but are pushed back in others, as Astrakhan, already in ruins, burns around them. A gleeful Chuikov wields his 62^nd Army like a sabre, hacking off pieces of the kessel.

With the airlift dying on its feet, the end is near. The last Junkers 52, overloaded with wounded and with desperate men clinging to its undercarriage and wings, lumbers off the ground from the only remaining airstrip within the kessel on January 10^th, 1943. The airstrip is overrun just minutes later.

On January 13^th, the Soviets launch another sustained attack on the kessel, which quickly starts to buckle as the Germans soldiers are now close to total collapse. Chuikov smashes his way through from the eastern side of the city and succeeds in cutting the pocket in half.

Close to collapse, Von Paulus appeals to Hitler for permission to surrender. Hoth launches a minor counter-attack which fails with horrific casualties and then joins Von Paulus in appealing for a surrender to stop his soldiers from suffering. Hitler refuses, claiming that the struggle at Astrakhan will tie up the Soviet forces and give time for the front in the south to stabilise. He then makes Von Paulus a Field Marshal, the implication that he cannot fall into soviet hands alive, as no German field marshal has ever been captured by the enemy.

This ploy fails as on January 15^th Von Paulus and Hoth give in and surrender. Just 150,000 men stagger out of the wasteland that was once the city of Astrakhan. Most are wounded or ill, with typhoid fever and dysentery rampant. They are formed up and marched off to the Soviet work camps where thousands more are worked to death over the next few months. A bare 7,498 survive to see Germany after the war is over.

Trading blows for time and space

The loss of the 4^th Panzer and 6^th armies leaves a gaping hole in the German order of battle on the Eastern Front. The loss of so many experienced men is a catastrophe. Both armies are reformed out of other units, but they are never again the same. The disaster in the East has another effect. The German Army is imperfectly mechanised and relies on thousands of trucks and vehicles looted from countries all over Europe. A huge number of these were destroyed in the rear areas behind Stalingrad and Astrakhan, causing a massive shortfall in transport.

Also, Hoth was one of Hitler’s most experienced panzer generals and his absence hits Von Manstein hard. He desperately scrambles to restore some stability to the front. Much to his own surprise he succeeds, but he then starts to get suspicious. The Soviets are up to something. He starts to prepare for another Russian attack.

However the blow, when it comes, is not in the south but in the north. On February 8^th the Nazi foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop, is startled to hear from his Finnish opposite number that, as Finland has achieved what it set out to secure from Russia, it is pulling out of the war. Right now. The Finns retreat to the 1939 border with Russia, where they have been building fortifications and announce that they have made peace with the Russians. German forces in Finland are told to leave. At once.

Stalin was going to agree to an armistice which could be.... renegotiated... by the Red Army in the future, but decided that after all it was better to seal off the Finns from the fascists by agreeing to peace.

The absence of Finnish forces north of Lake Lagoda means that the Russians are able to launch a major offensive close to Leningrad and catch the Germans on the hop. Army Group North reels and the Soviets enter the badly battered streets of Leningrad. Hitler had wanted to level the city to the ground, but his troops did not have nearly enough time.

The loss of the Finns sends Hitler into a towering rage that subsides as he realises what the implications are. The Bulgarians are starting to wobble in their sympathies, the Rumanians and the Hungarians are complaining bitterly about their losses and the Yugoslavians are becoming more and more pro-Allied. It is now clear that negotiations with Turkey are a waste of time, that Franco would rather saw his own foot off than join the Axis and that the Greeks are rearming heavily, especially now that Metaxas is dead and the democratic party is in the saddle in Athens. Things are, in other words, starting to unravel on Germany’s southern flank. At least Laval is firmly under his thumb. He decides to send Von Ribbentrop off on a little trip. The man has the intellect of a slug, but he can bluster well and threaten even better.

In the meantime, Von Manstein begs Hitler to let him trade space in the south for time. If he can withdraw a bit, just a bit, and concentrate his forces, he might be able to stop the oncoming Soviet offensive. Hitler, unsurprisingly, says no.

However he is overtaken by events. The Soviets launch two new offensives, one in the centre and the other in the south. The Germans are pushed back slowly but steadily, hampered by the lack of reserves and the transport crisis. Manstein orders a short pullback and then orders a slashing counter-attack in the south. However, the paucity of the forces available means that the attack is no-where near as strong as he would have liked.

By the time that the spring thaws start to arrive in late March 1943, the front line has shifted westwards. The Germans still occupy Orel and Kursk, as well as Doneck. But the Russians have taken Kharkov, creating a sinister bulge in the line.

At about the same time Hitler is having a series of meetings that both appal and delight him.

“It’s gone! The bloody thing’s gone!”

The night of March 20^th started off fairly ordinarily for the air defences of Germany. There was a partial moon and 2/10ths cloud, so the British bomber stream began arriving at about 8pm, bound for the Ruhr and the North German seaports. However there were a small number of blips, about a squadron’s worth that seemed to be making their way through the flak gaps, flying at about 500 feet initially but then climbing rapidly to about 5,000 feet over the Ruhr.

The planes are Lancasters of 617 squadron, led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson and they are all equipped with bombs dreamed up by Barnes Wallis. Wallis, who also designed the Wellington bomber, had the sheer stubbornness to bombard the Air Ministry in London with his ideas for an earthquake bomb from 1940 to 1942. Finally he succeeds with the help of airmen like Air-Marshall Tedder and Air Chief Marshall Portal.

There are two types of bombs. The smaller are the three-tonne Trick bomb, the larger are the six-tonne Tallboy bomb. Both types are tear-shaped, with slightly offset fins. The principle is simple. They are designed to spin rapidly as they fall through the air, making them extremely accurate. When they hit the ground they penetrate between 60 to 100 feet before exploding. This produces a camouflet effect that allows the explosive gases to blow a hole in the ground around the bomb, before venting upward, undermining everything around the explosion site. To put it another way, by locking the explosion into the ground, it produces a small earthquake around it. You don’t need a direct hit to destroy the target; you just need to get the bomb close to it.

617 Squadron has been practising with the bombs and the new SABS bombsight for months, training for this night. The crews are all veterans and they have become a formidable and extremely accurate team. Their target: the Ruhr dams. Initially these were listed as the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams, but after a quiet talk with an industrial economist the targets are changed to the Sorpe, Lister and Bever dams. These dams are the main suppliers of water to the Ruhr for the steel factories, as well as supplying power to a large section of the region. Should the attacks on these dams be successful (and there are enough remaining bombs), then the squadron has orders to go on and attack the Mohne, Eder and Ennepe dams.

The bombs cannot just be dumped, they have to be carefully aimed by flying parallel to the dams. To make it easier, a squadron of pathfinder mosquitoes are also present. These zoom in at zero feet, plant different coloured flares on the dams and then relay to 617 the colours that they should aim for. The marking is extremely accurate.

617 squadron makes it to the dams, although one plane piloted by Flt Lt Shannon goes missing, feared lost. Gibson makes the first run on the Lister dam. His tallboy lands at the base of the dam itself in what his bomb-aimer describes as “one bloody jammy lob”. The bomb explodes but the dam stays intact, despite a massive hole at the bottom of the dam wall. Just as the next plane, P-Popsie, flown by Flt Lt Martin, makes its approach, Gibson thinks that he can see something happen to the bottom of the dam, but he is distracted by Martin’s run. Martin drops two tricks. One hits the water by the dam wall, the other hits the base of the dam.

“Then they went off, one after the other and there was one hell of a cloud, a combination of smoke, earth and water spray. Then Spaff was shouting like a madman, yelling “It’s gone, the bloody things’ gone! My god look at that! It just bloody went like a stack of bloody cards!” I turned and the dam was rent in two, as water poured from the hole in the face of it. It jetted down, wrenching the chasm open still further and I could see it envelop the power station nearby before going off down the valley, glistening in the moonlight. I was stunned. Then Taerum broke in on the intercom. “Well,” he said in his understated Canadian voice, “The damn things do work after all, skip.” Over Enemy Land, p 270, Guy Gibson, 1944.

The Sorpe dam is constructed differently from the others, and has a rock core covered in earth. Perfect for Wallis’s bombs. Ft Lt Hopgood goes first and brackets the dam with his tricks, causing part of the crest to slump. Flt Lt Joe Macarthy, a former lifeguard from Coney Island in America, then drops his tallboy right in the middle, blowing the target markers and the dam itself to pieces. The Sorpe River re-emerges as the water floods downstream from the broken dam.

At the Bever valley, Ft Lt Munroe and Ft Lt Knight both attack and score near misses with tricks before Plt Off Otley makes a superb run and smashes the dam apart with his tallboy.

The icing on the cake comes when “Dinghy” Young makes a successful attack on the Eder dam, following up on near misses by Burpee, Townsend and Maudsley. As the squadron goes down to zero feet for the flight back to Britain, Gibson reflects that four out of six is not bad.

He is wrong. A delayed Shannon turns up at the Mohne dam shortly after the others have turned for home. He has one tallboy, the flares are burning low, his number one engine is playing up and his rear gunner has been wounded by a piece of flak that has hit his leg. Shannon, a quiet Australian who looks about 17, is in no mood to play around. In the bomb run that earns him a DSO, he plants his tallboy at the base of the dam and then waits for the smoke to die down. To his disappointment the dam is intact. He turns for home at the same time that his rear gunner, who has bandaged his leg and is looking back at the dam, shouts: “Christ, it’s gone!” Shannon turns to see that the dam has finally succumbed to the pressure of the water on the undermined section. He tells his navigator to lay in a course for home.

Five out of six. Three planes are shot down on the way home, however, making it a rather bittersweet first operation for 617. There are also a shower of medals, including the VC for Gibson and DSO’s for Macarthy, Martin, Young and Otley.

Pictures of the broken dams make front pages all around the world and Wallis is fully vindicated, although he is too much of a scientist to rub it in to his critics too much. The bombs work and he has plans for a bigger, ten-tonne, model.

Hard choices

At Rastenburg the new German armaments minister, Albert Speer, reports on the effect to a furious Hitler. The Fuhrer’s first, petulant, reaction was to order retaliatory attacks on British dams. Goering orders a full report, knowing full well that the Luftwaffe doesn’t have anything, at all, that can even scratch the surface of a dam, let alone a plane big enough to carry it. He keeps quiet and listens to Hitler as he rants on about the uselessness of the Luftwaffe.

Speer’s report is extremely depressing. The loss of one dam would have had a negligible effect. Two might have caused a few days – maybe a week – of loss of production of some of the steel factories in the Ruhr. The loss of five dams is a disaster. Speer estimates six months at least before the dams are all repaired, at the cost of pulling in workers and slave labourers from all over the Reich, diverting them from working on other projects like the Atlantic Wall. Some juggling of water supplies can be carried out, but there will be a loss of at least two months, maybe three, in many factories throughout the Ruhr. Steel production will have to be prioritised according to need. Hitler blanches. Such as? He asks. Speer lays it all out. Production of tanks, production of parts for the Luftwaffe, steel girders for fortifications, railway lines, parts for railway engines, parts for the Kreigsmarine, parts for the V-weapons... the list is a long one.

There is also the question of the sheer destruction wrought by the floods. 2,598 people are so far confirmed drowned and the number is rising by the hour, with thousands more homeless until the water recedes. Mines, factories and airfields have been flooded and roads and railways swept away. Five major hydroelectric power stations have been literally wiped off the face of the earth. And water supplies have been ruined or destroyed. All caused by one British squadron.

The bunker is silent for a while. Goebbels sits there with a look of sick fury, unable to suggest minimising the catastrophe in his propaganda. Hitler has another rant. Goering sneakily pops another morphine pill and then wanders off to get out into the fresh air. Himmler is not present, having more... pressing... things to do, like organise the deaths of millions of innocent people. Speer is silent for a while and then presses Hitler to make a decision on priorities.

Hitler has no choice. With an economic disaster on his hands he orders steel production to concentrate mostly on the tank industry. His new Inspector-General of tanks, the de-retired General Guderian, is pressing for an increase in the production of the new Tiger and Panther tanks, and the eastern front is crying out for these to re-equip the shattered panzer armies. The other industries will have to wait and in the meantime make do with what they have at the moment. Hitler orders that the V-weapons should get the next priority, but plans for a big increase in the U-boat arm are swiftly shelved.

Then Von Ribbentrop starts to make his own report about his recent trip to the Balkans. It is a long litany of complaints about the attitude of various dictators in the area who whined to him about their own problems. But, he adds, he stopped off in Rome, where he heard a very important piece of news. A member of the Italian Government with pro-German leanings mentioned the fact that the Government is currently holding Mussolini on the island of Elba. The former Duce is in an old hotel on the western side of the island, but will only be there for another few weeks before being moved to another, more secret, location prior to his trial.

Hitler is delighted and puts in a call to Himmler. He asks him to recommend the best SS officer he can find for a little mission into Italy...

“Oh...HELL!”

On March 25^th, 1943, three unmarked Junkers 52 transport planes are spotted by an Italian fisherman close to the coast of Elba. He watches curiously as the obviously heavily laden planes fly over his head, then shrugs and goes back to fishing.

Onboard the planes are 90 German paratroopers led by Major Otto Schorzeny, a bright spark in the SS, a fervent Austrian Nazi and currently desperately short on sleep after a frantic five days of non-stop organising for this mission. He was specially picked out by Himmler to organise the rescue of Mussolini.

Schorzeny is worried. Air reconnaissance has been sketchy, due to the presence of Allied fighters on Corsica, but photos of the hotel have indicated that the Italian garrison guarding the complex is based not far from the hotel, does not number more than 150 and should be easily neutralised. In theory. Schorzeny is a veteran and knows that there are a lot of unknowns here.

The planes pass the last waypoint and then pop up over the beaches, now flying over Elba itself. Within seconds the target is in sight and the planes descend rapidly, landing on a lawn in front of the hotel, where the German troops spill out. Immediately they run into trouble. There are rather more Italian guards present than had been predicted and a vicious firefight breaks out. However the Italians have been caught by surprise and are beaten off, pulling back to regroup. The Germans have 10 dead and 16 wounded, so Schorzeny orders most of his men to form a defensive perimeter around the planes, which are to be turned around so that they can make their escape. He orders 10 men to search the hotel, joining them himself.

“Up the first stairs Gemmel and I went, pausing at the top to make sure that some Italian wasn’t waiting in ambush. Then along the corridor to the first door. Gemmel paused to one side as I kicked the door in and in we went, searching the room. No-one there, so out and along to the second door. Another empty room, so was the third and the fourth. At the fifth we had a stroke of luck – there was a chambermaid sobbing on the floor. She was terrified but Gemmel put on his best behaviour and calmed her down, asking slowly where the Duce was. She pointed and stammered something. Gemmel looked at me. “Room 213, next door she says!” he muttered and off we went. The door flew open as Gemmel kicked it and in we went. The first thing we noticed was that there was a bullet hole in the window. The next thing was a pool of blood on the floor. Finally we both walked over and looked over to the other side of the bed. Duce Benito Mussolini was lying there, a small hole in his forehead and the back of head blown to red pulp. He looked terribly surprised. We just stood there for a moment. Then there was a noise at the door and the Boss (Schorzeny) ran in. He looked at the puddle and then walked over to the body. Then he pushed his helmet back. “Oh... Hell!” he said. “Berlin will blow a fuse.” Heinrich Himpfen, Silk And Mud, pp255-256, 1962.

Mussolini is extremely dead, the victim of a stray shot from the firefight. To make matters worse, the autopsy reveals that it was a German bullet. Schorzeny and his men throw themselves on the transports and make a fast getaway.

Berlin does indeed blow a fuse, as Schorzeny quickly finds out. He is ordered to take command of a weather station detail on the North tip of Norway, in the Arctic Circle, while his men are ordered to the Eastern Front.

Rome is split. The death of Mussolini has the astonishing effect of uniting most Italians. Most people on the centre and left are furious that he was killed before he could be put on trial for his crimes. The former fascist party are simply furious that he was killed at all. And by the Germans! There is a deep suspicion of German intentions. What, after all, did Hitler want with the former Duce? Many in the Italian government are now convinced that Germany is losing the war and was about to try something, such as a coup by Mussolini with German armed support, to bring Italy back in on their side. An alliance with the Allies would be tempting... but what about the German Army, entrenched beyond the Brenner Pass?

The Italian army is not in the best of shapes. Despite a year of peace, it is still desperately short of decent equipment. A huge chunk of its transportation network was captured in Libya, Greece, Albania and Abyssinia. The air force is no match for the Luftwaffe and its tanks are, by German standards, pathetic. Only its artillery is in a fit state – and artillery needs to be towed, preferably by trucks. As for the Italian navy... that hardly matters. The only way that Italy could survive against a German invasion is to hold the alpine passes – against the French side as well as the old Austrian side – until help arrived. Preferably Allied help, from the armies gathering by the day in Corsica, Tunisia and Algeria. The Italians know that O’Connor has concentrated the entire 3^rd Army in Corsica, along with the Free French 1^st Army and the new American 3^rd Army under someone called Patton. The Corsicans joking call their island the biggest parking lot in the world. They are slightly wrong – Britain is now a bigger car park. But all that strength is comfortingly close for the Italians. In French North Africa the Italians know that another American Army, the 1^st, is gathering, along with the French 2^nd Army. Nervously, the Italians consider the situation.

The view from the Wolf’s Lair

Hitler is not a happy man. His southern flank is unravelling, the eastern front is stable but desperately short of supplies and he has a major economic crisis on his hands. Raeder has resigned after Hitler refuses his request to launch an attack on the British convoys to Russia with the few remaining surface units of the Kreigsmarine and his replacement, Doenitz, is complaining bitterly about the fact that his long-awaited new U-boats haven’t been built due to the steel shortage. In fact the U-boats, after a brief reappearance in the Atlantic, have been savagely mauled again. The British, French and American ships are using new tactics and new weapons like the hedgehog to track down and destroy any U-boat they find. And thanks to the new centimetric radar invented by the British, they are finding a lot of U-boats. Faced with appalling losses, the U-boats retreat again. They do not return. Doenitz is still hopeful, but Germany has lost the Battle of the Atlantic. The torrent of American troops crossing the Atlantic becomes a flood. German signal intelligence has discovered the American 7^th and 9^th armies in southern England, along with the huge First US Army Group, based in Kent. Hitler is faced with the possibility that the Allies might invade France within the next year.

The RAF and the USAAF have also had a very successful time over the skies of France. Since autumn 1942 raids against German airfields in France have been increasing. Now they become unbearable. The German radar network in France is systematically attacked, reducing the warning time for the air raids. Hangers are bombed, planes are shot up both in the sky and on the ground and the infrastructure that keeps the Luftwaffe going is steadily eroded. Galland despairingly plans for a pullback of the most experienced formations towards the German frontier.

The creation of the Atlantic Wall is proceeding in fits and starts. The shortage of manpower and steel caused by the Dams Raid is causing long delays and frequent slowdowns, prompting Hitler to order parts to be dismantled from the Siegfried line and shipped west. The appointment of Von Rundstedt as CinC West does not help, as the cynical old man has no faith in the wall at all. Also, the Allied tactical airfleets are starting to disrupt communications in France, especially around the Pas de Calais. Bridges are being bombed, along with railway junctions, roads, communication centres and German formations.

At least the new tanks are starting to roll off the assembly lines in greater and greater numbers. Hitler wants to re-equip the panzer divisions as quickly as possible. The addition of the Panthers, Tigers and Ferdinands will add teeth to the forthcoming Operation Alerich – the pinching off and destruction of the Kharkov salient, planned for May 1943. The west will have to wait until the situation has become more favourable in the east. However Hitler does order Guderian to start to assemble a reserve panzer force, to be based somewhere in Germany. That way Germany will have a rapid reaction force of sorts, one that can be diverted to any danger point.

Unfortunately for Germany, the Russians know all about Operation Alerich. The Lucy spy ring in Switzerland has been able to discover the entire plan. Manstein is to lead the northern prong while, in the unavoidable absence of Hoth, the southern prong will be commanded by General Model. Lucy is backed up with intercepted signals showing the clandestine movements of German formations, along with information from the British, who seem to have an excellent source of their own. Stalin, who is now listening very carefully to Zhukov, starts to make his plans. A series of defensive fortifications start to spring up in the Kharkov salient. Mines are laid, artillery pieces are smuggled in by night and carefully camouflaged, new airfields mushroom and men and tanks pour into the area. The Soviets are now becoming very good at their maskirovka, a Russian word that aptly means trickery.

Tokyo Dreaming

By April 1943 the American campaign in the Philippines finally ends. After more than a year of fighting the Japanese have been exterminated, after Wainwright fights a brilliant campaign that cuts off some Japanese formations on isolated islands to let them starve and then hit them later on. The Americans call it island hopping and the 8^th Army is now very good at it. Nimitz now meets Alexander and the two take a thoughtful look at the situation. With the Philippines in Allied hands, that leaves the rest of the Japanese islands to the east. Before the wheels came off the Japanese offensives in early 1942 they had been able to occupy the Palau islands, most of the Kiribati chain and the northern tip of the Admiralty Islands. Plans to invade New Guinea and the Solomon islands were discarded after the failure to take the oil fields meant that the navy had to concentrate on the South China Sea and Midway operations... both of which had failed rather disastrously. The fact that the French were still neutral in the Pacific had even meant that the chance to take the superb natural harbour at Rabual had been turned down.

Alexander and Nimitz both have larger and larger forces at their command. Macarthur’s forces have the Philippines and Wainwright’s 8^th Army is growing in size. Nimitz now has a formidable fleet as the arrival of the big new Essex class carriers takes the pressure off his beloved but smaller and battle scarred veterans like Enterprise, Yorktown and Saratoga. Lexington is finally ready for sea again after her mauling at Midway. Marine divisions are also pouring out of the States.

Alexander has Cunningham’s Far Eastern Fleet, which, frankly now contains a huge proportion of the Royal Navy. The new battleships Howe, Anson and Vanguard have arrived, along with, more importantly, the first in the new class of the British carriers, Unicorn. Like all British carriers, Unicorn carries fewer planes than American and Japanese carriers but has armoured flight decks that can take much more damage. Slim and Wilson are busy training, resting and re-equipping their forces in Siam, while Blamey is training his Australian-British-New Zealand forces in New Guinea and Northern Australia. Park is expanding his forces with the arrival of more fighter squadrons from all over the empire. The MB3s and Spitfire Mk 4s are now being replaced by MB5s and Spitfire M7s and there are even a small number of the new Typhoons and Miles M20s, codenamed Wyverns. The question is where to use this big fist of power.

There are three possible avenues of approach for the Allies. One is to attack from the east, through the Kiribati and Marshall islands, towards the Marianas. This gives the option of being able to quickly threaten the Japanese home islands while leaving the big Japanese island garrisons, like the one on Truk, to whither on the vine, deprived of supplies. The second is to attack the Palau islands, up into the Marianas, with the same effects. Finally there is the shortest and most obvious route – an invasion of Formosa followed by an attack along the Ryukyu Islands that make up the southernmost tip of the Japanese home islands. Islands like Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The two staffs meet and start to plan.

From Tokyo the options are a little less clear. The war has so far been a complete failure, but there is still hope. The Empire has a large amount of defensive space in front of it to protect it and any assault on a stronghold like Truk would be fatal for the enemy. Yes, the attempts at seizing the oil fields have failed so far, but there is always the chance that the enemy will be rash enough to commit their forces in diverse directions and thus give the Imperial Navy the chance to crush one of their fleets and go back onto the offensive. British and American prisoners are soft. They do not live by bushido. The enemy can be beaten because they are decadent. And in the meantime there is always the war in China. If the army attacks through Kunming in the south, they can approach the Chinese-Burma border, where the meddlesome enemy is operating the annoyance that is the Burma Road. Attacks by sea are out for the time being due to the oil shortage, but attacks by land? Tokyo also plans, the admirals and generals bickering but unaware that they are whistling against the wind.

It’s a cunning idea, my Fuhrer, but…

Hitler has been taking a look at the overall situation and what he sees does not please him. He knows that, aside from the forthcoming attack on Kharkov, Germany is on the defensive on all fronts, and that the Allied presence in Corsica is a knife pointed at southern Europe. Some way has to be found to neutralise it somehow. His eyes turn to Italy. If there was a German presence in the Italian peninsula, that would achieve a number of things… German bombers could start to raid Corsica and also cut the maritime supply lines between the island and North Africa… North Africa itself could come under attack, that would show those treacherous Frenchmen… and occupying Italy would finally get those squabbling Balkan states to come to heel and back under Germany’s boot. He calls in Jodl and Keitel and tells them to get prepare immediate plans to invade Italy. Both agree that this is a brilliant idea.

OKW as a whole thinks that this is the maddest idea they have ever heard. Zeitler, who took over from the lugubrious Halder at the start of the year, is appalled. The Heer is thinly stretched as it is, without launching another invasion, let alone an invasion of a country which has an easily defendable northern frontier.

“It was the first time that I’d been to Rastenburg since the beginning of the year, and I was astonished at the sight of Hitler. He seemed to have aged several years and there was a slight trembling in his left arm and hand. Although his gaze was still keen, there was a kind of faint flickering behind it, as if something was clawing to come out. I looked at him and for the first time in my life I believed in the existence of evil. He told us all to gather round the table and I saw a map of Europe spread out.

“’We are here, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘to plan the invasion of Italy.’ The room seemed to darken slightly and I seemed to hear a faint collective inrush of breath. If he heard it he ignored it because on and on he went, working himself up into first a passion and then almost a frenzy as he attacked the treachery of the Italian Government and said how easy it would be to take Italy over and the benefits it would bring… and when he mentioned the Pope and how easy it would be to crush this troublesome priest, there was a great braying laugh from the assembled officers and a sycophantic chuckling from Goebbels. I nodded and I laughed too, keeping the façade on. But inside I was weeping, weeping for my country, weeping for the dead honour of Germany. And weeping for the thousands who would die from this man’s madness. Again.” Taking Back My Country, Hans Von Eckart, pp255-256, 1956.

The nature of the ground means that any plan is short on subtlety and long on direct force. Basically the Germans plan to blow a hole in the Italian forces guarding the border and then thrust as many divisions as possible down the long and dangerously narrow alpine passes, fanning out into the north Italian plain. From there they will neutralise any Italian resistance, isolate the Italian forces on the Franco-Italian border, and then pound southwards as quickly as possible. To sow as much confusion as possible, as well as to remove the Italian Government from the picture, a German airbourne division is to be dropped on Rome. It will effectively gut the Luftwaffe’s logistics base, but Germany should have just enough planes to do it.

Timing is everything. They cannot allow the Italian army to hold them up at any point along the line.

The German attack does not find the Italians defenceless. Rome has become increasingly worried about the build-up of Wehrmacht forces on its’ northern borders. Azzani and the King push through some tough measures, overruling the more nervous Italian ministers who just want to put their heads in the sand, avoid offending Hitler and hope that it will all go away.

The Italian Army was moving north quietly weeks before the invasion, in unmarked railway carriages – just about the only way for the Army to move at all because of its serious equipment shortages. Nine years before, the Army had manned the border to stop Hitler from invading Austria. Now Italian soldiers quietly reoccupy the old fortifications, which are sturdily built and require little in the way of maintenance. Italian artillery pieces are dug in by night and carefully camouflaged.

Naturally, German reconnaissance picks up the increased Italian presence on the border. Hitler, however, pours scorn on the news. The Italians, he declares, are useless fighters now, having lost their overseas territories, they were useless fighters 20 years before and they’ve been useless fighters since Rome fell before the Teutonic hordes of the Ostrogoths. He predicts a short, brutal, campaign.

Unfortunately he has forgotten one thing – in 1940-41 the Italian conscript armies were fighting for a leader, a cause and territories that they did not believe in. In April 1943 they are fighting for Italy itself against a cause that they regard as being brutal.

The eastern prong of the German attack gets about a mile down the valley and then bogs down as the SS Das Reich division is halted in its tracks. Italian artillery fire disables the head of the column of tanks, followed by the rear, leaving the middle to mill about in the closest that the SS ever gets to panic. All attempts to get through the roadblock of burning MkIV panzers fail as the Italians bring down a storm of fire onto anything that moves. The Italian artillery has always been the most professional arm of the Italian army and on this day it shows. When dusk comes the valley is filled with burning German tanks, halftracks and trucks.

The Germans try to blast the way clear with Luftwaffe support, but this too runs into trouble. The bulk of the German Air Force is either on the Eastern Front, getting shredded by the Red Air Force, or in Germany, having been hammered steadily by the Allies in France and the Low Countries, so only a small number of planes, mainly Me 109Fs and Ju 87s are available. The Italian air force is hopelessly outclassed with its home-grown planes, but does outnumber the Luftwaffe. It also has a small number of Me 109Es that it bought from Germany a year ago. Italian losses are terrible but they do manage to maul the Germans just enough to leave the skies clear over the battlefield.

At the Brenner Pass the western prong of the attack doesn’t even get a mile as the Italians explode mines on the side of one mountain and obliterates the head of the panzer column in a landslide that also blocks the roads completely. The battle quickly degenerates into a sniping war as the Germans try to move troops along the mountain paths and the Italians do their best to stop them. The first day of the battle ends in stalemate.

Wings over the Eternal City

The only place where the German attack had succeeded in causing panic was in Rome that morning, when the German paratroopers made their most daring drop. General Student could only scrape up enough airpower to drop a brigade’s worth of men on the Eternal City, but the impact these men had was totally out of proportion to their numbers. The Italian commanders defending the city panic, claim to have identified three German parachute divisions and flee the city.

Unfortunately for the Germans, Azzani does not panic. Correctly estimating Student’s strength to be a brigade’s worth, and a scattered brigade at that, he picks up the baton of command, launches immediate counter-attacks and orders the most panic-stricken of the absent Italian commanders to be arrested at once for cowardice.

Fighting erupts all over the city as Italian and German troops battle it out. The Germans have better training but the Italians have numbers and they soon start to make their presence felt. The German plan was to secure certain key points of strategic interest, like the Royal Palace. Unfortunately that plan is ruined by the random nature of the drop, as many of the German pilots have little experience of operations like this. The Royal Palace is fiercely defended, with even the King and the crown prince taking up rifles to defend themselves against a short sharp German attack. This single incident later gets blown up out of all proportion but helps to secure the Italian monarchy after the war.

However, another attack sort of succeeds. Hopelessly lost, a German company assaults a big building somewhere in the middle of Rome. They are rather surprised to see men wielding halberds rushing towards them while other men holding rifles storm out of what looks like a church. They rapidly realize that they are in the Vatican, which is an independent state. The first attack by the Swiss Guards is beaten off with a lot of machine gun fire and the Germans make their way into a reassuringly large building, where they discover a small crowd of wailing people huddled around a dead man in a black cassock, wearing a bloodstained white skull cap. The Pope is dead, the victim of a stray German bullet. To makes matters worse the German paratrooper captain in charge of the company is Otto Schorzeny, who had wheedled and grovelled his way to a transfer away from Norway. To kill one world leader by mistake is sheer carelessness, but two?

A second attack by the enraged Swiss Guards catches Schorzeny on the hop and his company is smashed to pieces. The unlucky man himself is captured by guardsmen and a picture of the rather bizarre moment is used by newspapers all around the world. But not in Germany of course.

The rest of the German paratroopers are hunted down in groups and are either killed or forced to surrender over the next six hours. Student, unable to gather more than 200 men to him, is helpless in the face of the forces that Azzani can deploy against him. Eventually, with almost no ammunition left and with a lot of wounded on his hands, he is forced to surrender in a house on the northernmost outskirts of Rome.

The Italians greet the defeat of the German paratroop attack on Rome with exuberance, but they cannot conceal the deep concern over the outbreak of a new war. The Italian Government appeals at once to the Allies for urgent help.

Well aware that if the Germans take Italy this will put their outpost in Corsica in grave danger, the Allies agree to send help at once, and Eisenhower confers with his senior commanders. Preparations are well under way for the invasion of Southern France, which had been pencilled tentatively in for September 1943. The plan was to land two divisions from O’Connor’s 3^rd army and two divisions from the US 3^rd Army, commanded by a rather squeaky-voiced but hard swearing man called Patton, who oddly enough gets on very well with O’Connor. The rest of their armies would follow up, along with the French 1^st Army later on. Weygand and DeGaulle were disappointed that French forces would not be landing in bulk on the first day, but were willing to supply French commandos to help with the landings.

All this now changes. A successful German invasion of Italy would threaten to outflank Corsica and could put Malta at risk again. The Italians have to be propped up – and fast. The huge numbers of ships that have been quietly assembling off the island head north-east as fast as they can, filled with troops, guns and tanks and escorted by the Allied Mediterranean fleet. Many sailors raise an eyebrow or two at the addition of the Italian Battleship Roma, sent by the Italian Government to show willing. Planes also flood across the Ligurian Sea, to land on Italian airbases.

On the fourth day of the invasion the Luftwaffe gets a nasty shock when the first Allied fighters start showing up in large numbers. Already drained by the savage fighting that the Italians are putting up, it takes some very hard knocks and retires from the fight. The skies over the Alps are now Allied territory. Worse is to follow for the Heer. The railway lines from La Spezia, Livorno and Genoa are threatening to catch fire from the sheer weight of traffic, as Allied ground forces arrive on the scene.

The first to be deployed in force is O’Connor’s 3^rd Army, which reinforces the now badly battered Italian army defending the Brenner Pass. Its arrival comes as a surprise to the Germans, who are trying to organise another attack to break through the defences.

“I was used to the sound of the Italian artillery by now, but then a new noise emerged from the cacophony of battle. A deeper note and then suddenly the head of the column was enveloped in smoke and fire and death. Hiller blanched besides me. ‘Oh Christ,’ he muttered, ‘that’s not spaghetti artillery. Tommy has arrived. That’s Tommy artillery. We’re up against it now...’” Helmut Jaeger, Death In The Mountains, p56, 1961.

The German attack, already barely crawling along stops dead, hammered by artillery and facing the tough veterans of 3^rd Army. To Hitler’s fury, every attack is a bloody failure, lashed with artillery, machine gun fire and rockets. To make matters worse, the Italian forces to the east are reinforced by Patton’s 3^rd Army, which actually knocks the German attack back to its start lines. There are also reports of French troops being spotted on the Italian side of the Franco-Italian border, where the German 1^st Army is probing cautiously. The presence of the French 1^st army is a clarion call to Frenchmen everywhere. A lot of people start to sneak over the Swiss border to try to enlist in the army. In Vichy Laval starts to get nervous. He had been prepared to bet a lot of money that German was going to win the war. He isn’t so sure now.

Neutral fury

Hitler, enraged, calls his generals together again. The war in Italy has to be settled quickly. The Allies have responded much more quickly than he anticipated, so he needs a quick decision in the south. At the moment he has two fronts, along the Italio-French border, which seems to be rather quiet at the moment, and along the old Austrian-Italian border, where O’Connor and Patton have stopped the slow German advance. Stalemate reigns there, as the ground is perfect for defence – for both sides.

Hitler now remembers a conversation he had with Mussolini at the start of 1941. Switzerland has long been irritating him. A large part of it is Herrenvolk in nature but the Swiss Nazi party is worryingly small. The French and Italian elements of the nation are also disturbing. There is no telling what those untermenschen will do. He had discussed the partition of Switzerland with the Duce who, sadly, had been deposed by traitors soon afterwards. But the central idea is still good.

Taking Switzerland would reunite a large area of Herrenvolk, would shorten the Heer’s lines of supply and would allow the outflanking of the Allied forces on the border. A short sharp campaign here – and the Swiss hadn’t been at war for more than a century, so they wouldn’t put up much of a fight – and the southern front could be wrapped up, giving Germany the initiative in the West.

Guderian has been busy creating an armoured reserve in Germany. After getting Jodl and Keitel’s enthusiastic agreement that the invasion of Switzerland is a brilliant, brilliant, idea, Hitler’s orders go out to use Guderian’s reserves. The staff at OKW are, once again, horrified.

“It was the maddest idea I had ever heard, madder even than the plan to invade Italy. Switzerland was all mountains, not the sort of ground you committed panzers to. The Swiss had been arming for years, building up a militia army that was highly trained. And in attacking a purely neutral country that was committed to staying neutral, we were spitting in the eye of the world. But none of these points made an impact with Hitler. He had ordered it and so it would be done, regardless of what the cost would be. It was now painfully clear to me that Germany was being run by lunatics. I looked at the plans and then I looked up at my new aide, Von Eckart. “I think that there are a few people you should meet, sir,” he said. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, pp201-202, 1954.

The German plan does not stay a secret for long. The Lucy spy ring, based in Switzerland, is quickly able to pass the details on to London, where Churchill is astounded. He confers with the French and Americans and then quickly has everything passed on to the Swiss government.

The Swiss, at first, dismiss the plans as so much propaganda. The Germans have no causus belli here. Why invade when Switzerland so firmly wedded to neutrality? Besides, half the top Nazis have bulging secret bank accounts in the country. Why would they risk that? Then the first signs come that the Germans are assembling an army in the Black Mountains. Swiss disbelief becomes horrified incomprehension. Then it becomes grim obstinacy. They are not going to roll over. If Hitler wants to attack, then he is going to get a punch in the mouth. The German attack is scheduled for May 3^rd 1943. The Swiss start to quietly mobilise their forces.

So do the Allies. The British 9^th Army is in the process of shipping from the Middle East to Italy, with the Polish II Corps arriving first. Now the corps gets diverted to the command of the British 3^rd Army, which expands its front eastwards to take over the areas covered by the US 3^rd Army. Patton rapidly pulls his army back from the line and sends it hurtling westwards to the Swiss border. His move is so fast that the Germans lose track of it, with Berlin concluding that the Americans are in reserve, preparing to attack through from behind the Tommies.

At dawn on May 3^rd the German attack begins. Right on the border and totally indefensible, Basel and Geneva both fall in the first hours. However these successes are followed by disasters. Taking a leaf out of the Italians book, the Swiss conduct a hard fighting withdrawal into the interior. Roads are blocked, bridges blown, tunnels collapsed. The German advance is a bloody one, with Swiss troops sniping everywhere from the mountains that they have been training in for years. One spectacular Swiss ambush sees the annihilation of an entire German infantry battalion outside the town of Sissach. It also comes as a shock to the invading troops that, although the locals speak the same language, they are not celebrating their ‘liberation.’ A few Swiss Nazis aside, the population is not at all welcoming. Plus somehow the Swiss Airforce seems to know when and where to attack the soft-skinned supply convoys, making the Germans wonder if the Swiss army left anyone behind when it withdrew... Himmler’s men also get a shock. All the Jews are missing and locals keep grinning cheerily whenever they are mentioned. There will be no victims for the gas chambers from Switzerland.

As soon as the German attack starts the Swiss Government makes a formal request for help to the Allies and Patton explodes into action. His 3^rd Army rumbles over the frontier, through the Simplon and Gotthard tunnels and up the San Bernardino Pass. The Swiss inform him that they will try to hold a line running Lausanne-Berne-Zofingen-Zurich, but they need reinforcements quickly. Patton gets there with time to spare, as his trucks, tanks and half-tracks either move up under their own power or arrive on trains. By May 8^th he has the 4^th Armoured, along with the 26^th, 11^th and 80^th Infantry divisions on the Swiss main defence line, with more armoured units on the way. The RAF, USAAAF and Swiss air force are filling the skies with planes and are already making life a misery for the Heer. The Swiss Airforce bought some excellent ME109Es from the Germans early in the war. They now start buying Spitfires and Mustangs, which makes for a very cosmopolitan array of planes.

Bumping into Patton’s forces is a very nasty shock and the German advance, already slowing to a crawl thanks to the Swiss rearguard action, comes to an abrupt halt. It is not likely to get any further in the near future. Hitler’s ‘brilliant’ idea has merely opened up another front and added another enemy to the growing list of countries that Churchill is now calling ‘The United Nations.’

There is another, less obvious impact of the invasion of Switzerland. It horrifies the few remaining neutral countries in Europe and sends shock waves around the world. Switzerland has a long and respected history of neutrality and peace. No one blames the Swiss for fighting like badgers in a bag after being invaded. Everyone blames Germany. A small but rising number of trade deals hit unexpected delays and snags. Speer especially is furious. One way of alleviating the shortages that are crippling the German war effort is to buy from abroad. With Switzerland and Italy now determined enemies and many neutral countries wavering in their economic support, things are looking very grim indeed. Not for the first time he starts to wonder if Hitler is entirely living in the real world. The thought that the Fuhrer might be mad starts to germinate in his head. To make matters worse, the enemy is now in range of the oil fields of Ploesti in Rumania, and the Lancasters and B-17s are starting to put a nasty dent in production quotas. Speer starts to get nervous about the synthetic oil facilities in southern Germany as well. If those are damaged, along with Ploesti, then the German armed forces will be left stranded, reduced to a trickle of fuel.

Hitler however – after another screaming fit – is able to rationalise the events of the past few weeks. Italy and Switzerland would have gone over to the enemy eventually, he says. Better to identify the traitor nations now, rather than later. And better to pin the Anglo-Americans in place in the mountains as well. The ground is perfect for defence, something that the German soldier is good at. No, the Allies can be left in place there. Let them beat their heads against the Alps! And once the initiative has been regained in the East, with Operation Alerich, then the panzers can roll southwards again.

The death ride of the panzers – part one

By the middle of May the German army in the east is ready. Two massive tank armies are poised each side of the Kharkov bulge, preparing to pinch the salient off and try to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front. In the north is Von Manstein, with the southern force commanded by Model.

Unfortunately the Russians are ready as well. The salient is a mass of arms and men, with millions of mines and secret defences in place. The Russians have been fortifying the salient in strict secrecy, moving in their forces at night and camouflaging everything in sight.

At 3.30am on May 16^th the German forces start to move into their jump-off positions – only to be caught in a sudden hurricane bombardment by thousands of Russian guns. Operation Alerich has started but is already in trouble. The Soviet bombardment disrupts the initial infantry advance, especially the combat engineers whose job it is to clear a way through the few mines that the Germans think are there. Losses start to mount. In the north Von Manstein swiftly realises that things are not going well. The Soviet main line of defence is in fact just the first line. There are others. Luftwaffe support is being savaged by Soviet planes. Model is also in trouble in the south, but both decide to press on. The panzer divisions are committed to the action.

The Germans use their tanks in wedge-shaped formations. The Tigers and Panthers are at the front, along with the Ferdinands, while the older and more vulnerable Mark IVs are in the rear. Unfortunately while the Tiger is an excellent tank, the Panther is still suffering from teething trouble. Engines keep breaking down (or blowing up) and the fuel lines are also vulnerable. The Ferdinand also has its problems. The main gun is excellent, but by a massive design flaw there are no machine guns mounted on the chassis. The Ferdinand can take on any Soviet tank, but is ludicrously vulnerable to a Soviet soldier armed with a Molotov cocktail. The wedge formation is a way to mix everything in and provide mutual support.

The wedges are successful at first, but then inevitably start to straggle in contact with the enemy. An increasing number of tanks are disabled, by mines, anti-tank fire and artillery, as well as mechanical breakdowns. The panzer scissors cut so far and then start to blunt. The north attack stalls first, as Manstein hits a brick wall of soviet defenders.

However, after three days the distances they start to get in the south begins to worry the local soviet commanders, who get on the phone to Stavka. The Germans have forced a crossing over the Donetz River and are threatening the communication node of Iz’um. Permission comes down to employ the Soviets’ ace card – the reserve tank armies.

When it comes, the clash at Iz’um goes down in history as the biggest clash of tank forces in history. Panthers, Tigers, Mark IVs and the few remaining Ferdinands are met head-on by a wave of T34-85s and KV2s. Mayhem ensues. The soviet tanks don’t have the range to engage the German tanks, so they rush across the green and rapidly blackening fields to meet them head on. For an entire day the battle of Iz’um rages, matched in ferocity by the battle in the skies as the Germans try to use their planes to help their ground forces and the soviets use their own to wipe out the German air cover.

Soviet losses are heavy – of the 1,122 soviet tanks engaged, a total of 498 are destroyed. But many are repairable and remain in soviet hands, as the panzer formations are badly chewed up and are forced to withdraw. Model is horrified to discover that Iz’um has been the death ride of his panzer formations – they are now just husks. German losses vary between 60-70 per cent, an unacceptable level that results in the rapid shutting down of Operation Alerich. Germany’s panzer units have been gutted.

Even as Operation Alerich is ended with no appreciable gain by the Germans, the Soviets start their counter-blow. The reserve armies that have been so carefully hidden behind the soviet lines are activated and start to attack on each side of the Kharkov bulge. The German formations facing them have been badly weakened by Operation Alerich and start to give way under a series of hammer blows. Holes appear, or rather great rents in the line.

By now the Germans are in desperate need to pull back and regroup, but Hitler refuses all requests to do this. Manstein therefore undergoes a mysterious communications breakdown which ends when his forces are on the Dnepr River. Model also has unexplained trouble with his radios. Both are railed at by the Fuhrer, but he subsides somewhat once it becomes clear that they have prevented a disaster becoming a total catastrophe. However, Manstein is still relieved of his command and Model only escapes by the skin of his teeth, not to mention some very hard talking. Model is a good nazi general and for him to have withdrawn, Hitler realises, the ground must have been covered with Russians.

The Soviet offensives continue, with blows up and down the front lines, from the Black Sea to the Baltic – but with each blow slightly weaker than the last. The Soviets have had a spectacular series of successes, but they need to get their supplies sorted out. By now the advent of Lend-Lease American trucks means that the Russians are more mobile than they have ever been before. But railway lines need to be repaired, roads need to be repaved and supply dumps need to be restocked and moved forward. Eventually, by the middle of June, the fighting splutters to an end. It is not an exhausted lull, it’s a regrouping pause for the Soviet armies, and the Germans know it. They desperately start to reform their units and dig in to get ready for the storm that they know is coming.

The Gathering Storm

But there is another maelstrom in the offing. German commanders in northern France are starting to get concerned about the build-up in Britain. Luftwaffe reconnaissance – or rather the few planes that ever make it back – is indicating that the huge amount of shipping in the gulf of Genoa has disappeared again. Spanish sources have been reporting a lot of convoys heading west through the Straits of Gibraltar. And spies in Britain have noticed that there is a lot of activity, especially around the east of England and the area of Dover. Listening stations are picking up an increase in radio traffic in the FUSAG region. The invasion is coming, German military intelligence deduces.

This is correct, but their assumption that the landings will be in the Pas de Calais is very wrong. Wavell is a big believer in Special Forces and the benefits of using disinformation to confuse the enemy. Months before he approved a set of plans known by the blanket name of Fortitude. Fortitude has a very simple premise – to make the Germans think that landings are being planned in a number of different regions. Not Normandy.

Fortitude North is planned to make the Germans think that a minor front is being scheduled for Norway, with the British 19^th Army, including the 10^th Norwegian Division, landing there. Fortitude South is to make the Germans think that FUSAG will land around the Pas de Calais. To do this the British have two ace cards. The first is that both FUSAG and the 19^th Army are figments of their fertile imaginations. A group of experienced British and American signallers are scattered all over southern and northern Britain, transmitting fictitious unit reports to non-existent headquarters. The second ace is that the entire German spy network in the British Isles is being run by Military Intelligence, assisted by some brilliant work by anti-nazis such as ‘Garbo’. A steady stream of entirely bogus reports are flooding back to Germany, mixed in with just enough genuine information to make them seem credible. Hitler’s famous intuition points to the Pas de Calais as well.

Unfortunately the Allies are not going anywhere near there. Instead the invasion is scheduled for Normandy. This allows the invasion fleet to be supported from a wide range of ports along the south coast of England – an invasion of the Pas de Calais would have to rely on a bare handful of ports. Normandy is also in range of fighter support from Britain.

Bombing of rail junctions and bridges is stepped up. To reinforce the impression that the invasion will come around Calais, the Allies make sure that for every bomb dropped west of the Seine, two or three are dropped to the east. The bomber chiefs, such as Harris, grumble a great deal at the thought of diverting planes from the great bomber offensive, but the orders stand. Marking of targets is getting more accurate as well, as the British start to use the H2S centimetric radar, which creates an accurate picture of the areas that the bombers are flying over. The pathfinders are also being used in greater numbers... and 617 squadron, along with others, is now using Tallboys on an almost nightly basis. Daylight bombing raids by the USAAF is also evolving. Long range Mustangs and Wyverns are now available to escort the B-17s. A despairing Galland sees the remaining Luftwaffe units in France and Belgium take unacceptable losses and gets authorisation from Goering to pull them back into southern France and western Germany. The skies over France now belong to the Allies. When the invasion comes the German land units will be fighting under an enemy sky.

Bridges are blown up, railway junctions reduced to twisted steel and earth, steam engines are attacked... any movement of German units starts to become impossible. And all the time the number of reconnaissance missions and sabotage operations by the French Resistance continues to grow. Laval is now deeply unpopular in Vichy France, despite the presence of his pro-fascist ‘Milice’ militia. Those who can’t get across the border to join the Free French Army are disappearing instead and joining the resistance. Life in German-occupied France used to be a cushy number for the Landseer. Now it’s a violent nightmare. The invasion is coming...

Nothing matters but oil...

In an office in Berlin, Albert Speer is desperately worried. A lot of Germany’s supplies of oil comes from the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. With British and American bombers now based in Italy, these oil fields are suddenly very vulnerable.

On May 21^st, 1943, Speer’s worst fears are suddenly realised. The American 9^th Air Force mounts a massive raid against Ploesti, far bigger than the previous ones. It flies over Yugoslav air space, with the Yugoslavian government turning a very blind eye, and approaches Ploesti from the south. German fighters are in the area, but with very little warning they cannot do much. Just 6 B-17s are shot down as the big bombers plaster the area with blockbuster bombs. Aiming is not very precise, but then it doesn’t really need to be. Derricks are damaged, oil pumps smashed, three wellheads ignite into a blazing inferno...

Ploesti is badly damaged. Worse is to come. The British have moved tallboys to Italy and the first major raid is mounted with 459 Squadron. Escorted by long-range Mosquitoes and illuminated by the fires left by the Americans, 459 Squadron finishes the job that night. Ploesti is out of action for the foreseeable future. Germany is now reliant on the small oil reserves it still has, the tiny oil wells near Lake Balaton in Hungary and its synthetic oil production capability. Unfortunately the latter is currently coming under systematic attack by the Allied bombers that are not busy bombing France and Germany.

The implications are appalling. No oil for the tanks, for the planes and for the all-important trucks that help to keep the Reich moving along the Autobahns. Germany’s ability to defend itself, let alone counter-attack is in severe danger. The precious fuel reserves will fend off disaster for the time being, but once those go as well... Speer despairingly makes out a report for the Fuhrer which he knows will be disregarded. The Fuhrer still thinks that the war can be won with the new weapons that are now being tested in that research facility in Peenemunde. Three days after Speer submits his report (which is ignored by Hitler) Peenemunde is wiped from the face of the earth by the RAF. A certain Professor RV Jones has had his eye on the place for some time and decided that now was the time to nip things in the bud. The V1 programme is put back some 6 or so months.

Part 3