By Nicholas Stargardt

Richard J. Evans has never had any time for historical myths or alibis. Long before he was cross-examined by David Irving in 2000 for five days in the witness box of the High Court on the matter of Irving's Holocaust denial, he had weighed into the debate that rocked Germany in 1986, about the "past that would not go away". He took on, among others, the influential editor of the literary supplement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and biographer of Hitler, Joachim Fest, arguing that he was guilty of a form of neoconservative romanticism.

In 2000, the High Court found that Irving crudely distorted facts, peddling a ten-fold inflation of the numbers killed in the Dresden bombing raids and then reducing the numbers killed in Auschwitz by a factor of ten in order to establish a moral equivalence between Allied bombing and the murder of the Jews. Fest's gloss on the Nazi era was altogether more subtle and well-founded. He played up Hitler's irrationality, so that the German people would appear as both his dupes and his final victims, implying they had been no more than innocent bystanders to Nazi atrocities. In its most vivid form, this is the myth of the Führer raving in his bunker in Berlin, bent on taking the German people to their deaths with him, the shuffling, shaking figure played to perfection by Bruno Ganz in the film Downfall, a film whose script was written in the main by Fest.

Evans has no doubt that Hitler was, as he put it in his second volume of his history of Nazi Germany (of which The Third Reich at War is the completion), "in the driving seat". Hitler personally decided to invade Poland, to kill German psychiatric patients, to declare war on the Soviet Union and the USA and, whatever the complex dynamics within the regime, to kill the Jews. But this is not the ground which conservative romantics have traditionally focused on in Germany: it is not the genocidal and ultimately self-destructive quality of Hitler's grand policy decisions which have preoccupied them, so much as his conduct of the war against the Red Army.

Fest's version of the endgame in Berlin built on the myth that Hitler's generals told the West German public in the 1950s when they published their memoirs. It is the alibi of the incompetent corporal meddling in military matters he did not understand and preventing them from winning the war. Professor Evans is no admirer of Hitler's intelligence, but he is careful to show that his military interventions were not particularly irrational. Two which have been much debated were delaying the assault on Moscow in August 1941, until the Ukraine had been conquered, and pulling out of the Battle of Kursk two years later. Evans shows that the German generals did not have much better plans of their own: they too thought that the Soviet Union would be much easier to defeat than France had been. And above all, they subscribed to a Prussian tradition of looking for the decisive battle which would destroy all of the opposing forces. They too pushed on recklessly in 1941, instead of slowing down their advance by making the preparations they needed to weather a Russian winter.

Indeed, drawing on the newest German research, Evans revises standard accounts of the Battle of Kursk to depict a pyrrhic victory, in which Soviet losses of men and machines were between six and ten times those of the Germans. The factors that guaranteed the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany lay elsewhere: demography and economics dictated that the Germans were unable to go on sustaining their lower losses. Evans writes about the individual military campaigns with verve, and leaves the reader in no doubt that the Third Reich collapsed only when it was defeated and occupied. Nonetheless, he is also clear that this outcome could not have been avoided by more competent commanders, and the Germans were not Hitler's unwitting victims.

Like other historians writing during the past decade, Evans draws attention to the fact that the public, murderous violence of German troops began, not in the middle of the war with the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, but at the very beginning, with the invasion of Poland. The German assault on Poland was not just the beginning of the Second World War. It was also the start of Hitler's bid to create a colonial empire on the European continent. The scale of brutality and the racial re-ordering of populations had no precedent, even in the earlier German annexations of the Czech lands. German troops looted, robbed and attacked civilians with impunity, raping women and torching Polish villages where German units had been attacked. "Pacification" of the conquered territories combined with Hitler's orders to "liquidate" the Polish elites and to clear the annexed territories of western, and later central, Poland for German settlement.

Hermann Voss wrote in April 1941 that he "really liked the town of Posen". Recently appointed to a chair in the Medical Faculty in the newly founded Reich University there, Voss had joined the intellectual elite spearheading the much-trumpeted "re-Germanization" of western Poland. By the time he arrived, hundreds of thousands of Poles had already been driven out of their homes and either dumped in the "native reservation" (as Hitler called it) of the General Government, or sent to work in Germany. In all, some 900,000 Poles would be expelled from the western Polish territories which Hitler had decided to incorporate directly into the "Great German Reich". But there were still too many Poles for Voss's liking. A month later, he noted that the university crematorium had been handed over to the Gestapo: "The Poles they shoot are brought here at night and cremated. If one could only turn the whole of Polish society into ashes!".

In a classic piece of doublethink, the Strength through Joy leisure organization arranged tours of the Warsaw Ghetto, "where", as Evans puts it, "the conditions the Germans themselves had created confirmed visitors in their sense of superiority over the ragged, starving and disease-ridden Jews they encountered". Since the 1980s, left-wing German historians like Ernst Klee have written about the hordes of German soldiers, snapping photos at the mass executions of Jews and other civilians, as "execution tourists". Pursuing this image further, Evans shows how typical German reactions to their war in Poland and later in the Soviet Union fitted into a pattern of "negative tourism": everything from lice and dirt to the lack of running water and the fearful, "deceitful" faces of the local population confirmed Germans' belief that their own land was better, purer and more beautiful, and hence justified their treatment of the locals as "sub-humans" without rights.

Citing numerous examples in which "ordinary" Germans went on the rampage against the "Eastern Jews", Evans writes about this orgy of violence with great power and moral force. It is also central to his interpretation of the war as a whole. What was first tried out in Poland served as the model for racial and colonial policy later in Eastern Europe and the conquered Soviet territories. The brutality of this war of conquest, which was conducted not just by the whole of the German state but also by much of German society, is what gives Evans's final volume its drive and unity.

Whether the focus is on the massacres carried out by the SS and the ethnic German militias, or on the actions and reactions of rank-and-file troops, Evans is surely right that the differences between what they did in 1939 in Poland and in 1941 in the Soviet Union were more of scale than of kind. True, there were military protests in 1939 and 1940 which were completely absent in 1941, but the Wehrmacht also cooperated and participated in much of the early violence: by the time it handed over control to the civilian administration on October 26, 1939, a mere eight weeks into the war, it had burned 531 towns and villages to the ground and killed thousands of Polish prisoners of war, all this without any of the special orders which prefaced the attack on the Soviet Union. In both cases, this was an ideological war of conquest and colonization, and was quite unlike the war Germany waged in the West. It also created the preconditions for the murder of the Jews across the entirety of occupied Europe, a secret that could not be kept from German society at large.

Perhaps the oldest myth of all about the Third Reich is the one Germans told each other and Allied re-education officers in the wake of their defeat: "We didn't know anything about the genocide of the Jews". Against the plea of ignorance, Evans agrees with Saul Friedländer that the murder of the Jews became an open secret in wartime Germany. What that meant is much less obvious. Friedländer saw this as a key element in radicalizing German society and, steeped in a common culpability and fear of post-war retribution, tying it to the regime to the bitter end. Although Evans finds evidence of widespread fear of Soviet revenge, his interpretation is much closer to Ian Kershaw's than to Friedländer's, emphasizing a more passive sense of guilt. Like Kershaw, too, Evans sees 1943 as the turning point for German morale in the war. Whereas Kershaw has emphasized the defeat at Stalingrad, however, Evans focuses on the British and American air raids on German cities as the key to alienating Germans from the Nazi regime and convincing them that the war was lost: "Fear and guilt were driving the great mass of Germans to dread the retribution of the Allies. From 1943 onwards, they were mentally preparing themselves to deflect this retribution as far as they were able, by denying all knowledge of the genocide once the war was lost".

As the home front became more war-weary, both the shrillness of Nazi ideological exhortations and police terror increased. But Evans is far too careful a historian to plump wholeheartedly for the line established by Martin Broszat that German society was kept in the war by terror alone, a view that merges too easily into an alibi story of its own. Evans argues convincingly that terror was central to establishing Nazi rule in the 1930s and played an important role in the war, too. But he shows that attaching the death penalty to "spreading malicious rumours" did not lead to its automatic application: usually a warning concluded denunciations of this kind. Those Germans who were condemned to death for passing defeatist remarks in the middle years of the war often had a prior history of "opposition" to the Nazi regime; and, although the reports on public opinion are rife with defeatist remarks by Germans, capital punishment on the home front was meted out disproportionately to forced foreign workers. All this makes sense in a regime which used terror far more selectively against its own than against those lower down their racial hierarchy, such as the Czechs, Poles, Russians and, after 1943, the Italian military internees.

At least as important as terror was entertainment. Evans shows us a society which waged the most brutal of wars while attending the music hall and watching escapist films. An accomplished pianist himself, Evans is particularly attuned to changes in the musical repertoire. As news from the front got worse, at Bayreuth the Götterdämmerung gave way to the brighter colours of the Meistersinger. But by this time even Hitler, the festival's greatest patron, had given up listening to his recordings of Wagner for the operettas of Franz Lehar.

It is hard to do justice to the humanity and scholarly range of The Reich at War. Evans is equally at home dissecting the state of the war economy as he is narrating the daring rescue of Mussolini by Otto Skorzeny and German glider troops; writing about the petty humiliations meted out to the composer Richard Strauss by Joseph Goebbels and the persecution of his Jewish daughter-in-law; or the failure of German physicists to develop their nuclear programme and the concentration camp prisoners who built the V-2 rockets in the tunnels of the Harz. Underneath this well-paced narrative, Evans has gathered and probed the enormous literature on Nazism, the Holocaust and the Second World War, in order to test historical arguments against the facts of policy implementation, social profiling and economic statistics. He carries the huge load lightly, but, for those who read endnotes avidly, it is there.

A number of guides help to keep us on track, as Evans intercuts the panoptic vision provided by hindsight with the glimpses of contemporary diarists and letter writers. General Heinrici is there, representing the older generation of conservative generals, whose nationalism kept him loyal to the end. Luise Solmitz, who performed much the same role for Protestant middle-class housewives in the pre-war volume, is forced gradually and painfully to surrender her illusions, as both her Jewish husband and half-Jewish daughter became ever more "the playthings of dark and malicious powers". Wilm Hosenfeld, who gained posthumous fame in Roman Polanski's inspirational film The Pianist, as the good German who protected Wladyslaw Szpilman in the ruins of Warsaw, brings a rare timbre of self-accusation at the German conduct of the war, so striking because it is discordant amid the torrent of propaganda reiterating soldiers and officials. The acute observations of Victor Klemperer in Dresden are matched by those of the equally critical and self-critical Polish doctor Zygmunt Klukowski in Szczebrzeszyn. They give much more than human interest to Evans's narrative, providing an essential individual and moral scale to a war which destroyed and defied most senses of proportion.

Richard Evans published the first volume of his trilogy in 2003. Five years and some 2,400 printed pages later, The Third Reich at War brings it to a triumphant completion. This is both a masterful historical narrative and the most comprehensive account of Nazi Germany, which will rank alongside Ian Kershaw's Hitler as the first port of call for scholars and general readers alike.

Richard J. Evans
THE THIRD REICH AT WAR 1939-1945
878pp. Allen Lane. £30.
978 0 713 99742 2
US: Penguin Press. $40. 978 1 594 20206 3

Nicholas Stargardt teaches Modern European History at Magdalen College, Oxford. His most recent book is Witnesses of War: Children's lives under the Nazis, 2005.

During January 1942 a sirocco, with incessant rain, blew in from the sea on to the slopes of Mount Etna and down over the Sicilian plains. For the Luftwaffe's bomber and fighter Gruppen which a few weeks before had returned to the Sicilian airfields at Catania and Gerbini, Trapani, Comiso and Gela, it was hardly a promising start to the new year.

Field-Marshal Kesselring, who, on November 28, 1941, had been withdrawn with his staff from the central sector of the Russian front and designated "Commander-in-Chief South", had ordered large-scale air operations against Malta. But though squadrons were already raiding the island, the attack in force was delayed by the weather.

February came and the rain clouds suddenly gave way to spring sunshine; the bombers flew southwards over a deep blue sea flecked with white foam crests. As the weeks went by the raids grew more numerous, and the British Mediterranean fortress grew accustomed to a round-the-clock alert. But frequent though they now were, the raids were still being mounted only by smal7l formations.

Major Gilchrist, then Intelligence Officer of the British 231 Infantry Brigade, has given the following description: "At first the bombing was cautious. Three Ju 88s would come over three or four times a day, escorted by a large number of fighters. After a time ... the raids increased to about eight a day, and often five Ju 88s were used. . . . The targets were airfields and dispersal units and occasionally the dockyards."

[R. T. Gilchrist, Malta Strikes Back (Gale&Polden, 1946), pp. 4 & 5.]

That the Germans still came in sections of only three to five was no longer due to the weather, but to Kesselring's deliberate tactics of giving the enemy no rest. Whatever advantage this might have had, however, was dissipated by the fact that the defence could concentrate its fire seriatim, especially against individual Ju 88 dive-bombers. Losses were severe, and the aircraft that returned without being hit were few.

"I was flying close to the left of our squadron commander," reported Lieutenant Gerhard Stamp, pilot of a Ju 88. "Looking about, one could see our Me 109 escort. It seemed nothing much could really go wrong, especially on such a fine day."

Stamp belonged to 2 squadron of Lehrgeschwader l, commanded by Captain Lüden and based at Catania. They had been briefed to dive-bomb the airfield of Luca and destroy the Blenheim and Wellington bombers based there. The Messerschmitt escort was provided by II/JG 53 under Captain "Earl" Wilcke.

From the south coast of Sicily to Malta is only fifty miles, scarcely more than a quarter of an hour's flight. As the rocky island loomed out of the water, it was not long before Valetta, the capital, with its great harbour and naval base distributed over three deep inlets, came into view. As the bombers approached they were greeted by heavy flak. The shells exploded close below them, and Stamp's machine was tossed in the air. "Let's hope the next salvo isn't a hundred feet higher!" commented Goerke, his flight mechanic.

By the spring of 1941 Malta's flak had already won a "good reputation" amongst the German bomber crews. Then the aircraft concerned had been mostly Stukas, and it was apparent that the British guns were centrally controlled. As hundreds of them went off at once, the manoeuvrable little Ju 87s just had time to alter height and direction before, fifty seconds later, multitudinous explosion puffs appeared exactly along their previous course. Nor was the fire at one altitude only. As the bombers went down, salvos would go off at 9,000, 6,000 and 4,500 feet, and finally all the light flak on land and on the ships in harbour would join in.

"Their flak was certainly not to be trifled with," was the verdict of Captain Helmut Mahlke, commander of III/StG 1. On February 26, 1941, a direct hit had torn an enormous hole in his starboard wing, and only a combination of luck and skill had got him back.

Since then the British flak had not rested on its laurels, and was now better still. As Stamp went down through the barrage, he thought only of getting below it. Following his C.O., he pulled out the diving brakes and, peeling off after him, aimed for Luca's crossed runways. As he descended they were reduced in his bomb-sight to one, at the end of it six bombers clustered together. The observer called out the descending altitude, then struck Stamp on his knee to indicate the last moment to bomb. A pressure on the red button atop the control column, and the bombs fell away. The Ju 88 pulled out automatically.

The C.O.'s plane ahead flew as if in a drunken frenzy, popping to left and right, and up and down, as it carried out the motions of the "flak waltz". Seconds later Stamp got ready to do the same. Right ahead was a black wall streaked with flashes and no choice but to fly through it. Thuds and bangs followed, like a multiple box on the ears.

"Undercarriage is down!" called Goerke. But it was only the flap, the legs remained up ; otherwise the loss of speed would have been fatal. If the engines survive, thought Stamp, we'll be through. But at that moment Noschinski, the radio-operator, called: "Three Hurricanes attacking from starboard astern."

The fighters had been waiting on the edge of the flak zone. At full boost Stamp went low down over the sea, and Noschinski behind him gave a breathless running commentary as he watched the Hurricanes in their turn attacked by Me 109s and two of them shot down. When Stamp came in to land at Catania, half an hour later, he found the pressure pipe had been shot away and the undercarriage could not be lowered, even with the hand pump. With a belly-landing imperative, he flew low over the hangars firing off Very lights. The airfield was promptly cleared, and ambulances and fire-engines got under way.

"After tightening our seat-belts I began the approach run," said Stamp. "With the flaps also out of action my speed was too great and I had to open the throttle and make another circuit. At the second attempt there was a tearing jolt, and I shouted to release the roof, but bouncing up, the machine again became airborne. There was little runway left. Then there was another jolt, dirt sprayed over the cockpit, and we went skidding and ploughing straight at a great concrete wall. I applied the brakes--as if that could help! Finally the plane lurched to the right and stopped ten feet away from it."

It was a hair's-breadth escape. Stamp reported to his Gruppenkommandeur, Captain Joschen Helbig. The latter screwed up his eyes, and said: "You don't seem to have been very popular in Malta. Perhaps you'd better take over the ops officer's job and at the end of the season get yourself a new toboggan."

The Luftwaffe's second assault on Malta-beginning in December 1941 and reaching its height in April 1942-was preceded by a bitter lesson in command of the sea. Whoever possessed Malta held the key strategic position in the central Mediterranean. For the British it represented an "unsinkable aircraft carrier". As a naval and air force base it not only protected their own shipping route from Gibraltar to Alexandria and the Suez Canal at its most dangerous point; it also threatened the Axis supply route from Italy and Sicily to North Africa, obliging the Italians to make a wide detour.

In theory it might equally be supposed that a base so near to an enemy country, in the Italians' "own"mare nostrum, was untenable. Italian bombers had attacked it in the summer of 1940, violently at first but soon with diminishing strength. As for the Luftwaffe's first offensive against the island-by General Geisler's X Air Corps in spring 1941-this had only the limited objective of holding down Malta while Rommel's Afrika Korps was being ferried across to Tripoli. In this it was successful, but the proposal of Vice-Admiral Weichold, Germany's naval chief in Italy, to occupy the battered island at once, fell on deaf ears. Malta could breathe again.

From April 6, 1941, the Luftwaffe was mainly engaged in the Balkan campaign, and two weeks later Hitler decided in favour of the risky airborne landing on Crete, despite the efforts of his general staff to persuade him that Malta, though only one twenty-sixth the size, was strategically the more important target. Then came the Russian campaign. X Air Corps had meanwhile left Sicily for operations in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean.

Thus in the summer months of 1941 Malta had the chance to recuperate. Of three large supply convoys totalling thirty-nine transports that reached the island that year only one ship was lost. They brought weapons, ammunition, fuel and victuals. Air Vice-Marshal H. P. Lloyd, who took over command of the R.A.F. units in May, is said to have remarked: "You wouldn't have known there was a war on."

But the R.A.F. did not forget that there was: it harried the enemy with bombers and torpedo planes. Nor did the Navy. In addition to the 10th Submarine Flotilla, "Force K", comprising cruisers and destroyers, took up station there in the autumn. Malta had resharpened her sword, as the German-Italian supply convoys discovered. The sword smote from the air, on the sea, and beneath it.

On September 18th the British submarine Upholder torpedoed the Italian troop transports Neptuniaand Oceania, both high-speed steamers of 20,000 tons laden with troops and equipment for Africa, and 5,000 men were lost. Off Benghazi bombs from three Malta-based Blenheims also sank the Oriani. Shipping losses of nine per cent in August rose to thirty-seven per cent by September, thus seriously affecting both the capacity and morale of the Italian transport fleet.

In November catastrophe reached its zenith. On the 9th "Force K", consisting of two British cruisers and two destroyers under Captain W. G. Agnew, detected an Italian convoy steaming by moonlight and sank the lot-five freighters and two tankers totalling 39,787 tons.

Rommel's forces in Africa suffered accordingly. He received neither munitions nor fuel by sea, and air deliveries alone were inadequate to keep his Afrika Korps on the march. It remained stuck on the Egyptian frontier, and the British 8th Army was able to prepare its own autumn offensive in peace. On November 18th it strode out into the desert, and by the year's end Rommel had been thrown back to Marsa el Brega, the place he had started from in the spring.

The total losses to the supply fleet in November were twelve fully-laden ships totalling 54,990 tons-or forty-four per cent of the transports that set sail. Admiral Weichold actually forwarded to Berlin the figure of seventy-seven per cent and Grand Admiral Raeder sounded the alarm at the Führer's headquarters. The alternatives were seldom clearer: either Malta must again be subdued or the Afrika Korps was lost. So the Luftwaffe had to return to Sicily.

Hitler recalled Kesselring from his winter H.Q. in front of Moscow, and in December General Loerzer and the staff of II Air Corps followed him to Messina. With the original Geschwader decimated in Russia, the Corps had to be reorganised. Fitting it out for sub-tropical warfare consumed further time. Five bomberGruppen, all equipped with the Ju 88 A-4, finally arrived one after the other in Sicily, plus one Ju 87 and one Me 110 Gruppe. Fighter protection fell to the lot of the top-scoring JG 53, with four Gruppen of Me 109Fs. Altogether they represented a force of 325 aircraft. But of these only 229 were serviceable.

The units had hardly arrived before they were thrown into the battle. Single aircraft or formations of up to squadron strength patrolled the sea lanes or escorted the transports as they ran the gauntlet to North Africa, and after the long months of quietness bombs fell again on Malta. But while things became tougher for the British the Germans, though their operations were so far small in scale, were also finding them disproportionately costly.

The experience of the night-fighter Gruppe, I/NJG 2, was typical. Two months previously it had been carrying out "intruder" operations against British bomber bases in England-till Hitler personally cancelled this form of warfare. Though now based at Catania under Captain Jung, it had frequently to detach squadrons to North Africa and Crete, so that in Sicily itself there were seldom more than ten aircraft available at any one time. None the less, they flew day and night, and one crew after another failed to return.

On December 3rd Lieutenant von Keudell sighted a rubber dinghy in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and promptly summoned a rescue craft. By doing so he saved the life of the German air attaché in Rome, Major General Ritter von Pohl, who had come to grief while flying to join Kesselring for an initial conference on operations. Eight weeks later Keudell himself was missing after a mission against Malta.

Shortly after Christmas Lieutenant Babineck, youngest pilot of the Gruppe, was claimed by light flak over Valetta, after he had said over the radio: "Am diving through 10/10 cloud at 1,500 feet." Lieutenant Schleif, on a night intruder operation over Malta, shot down a Blenheim bomber in flames just as it was landing. Attempting to repeat his success on January 18th, his guns failed, and on the following night, over Luca, the flak got him at 600 feet, and his Ju 88 went down like a flaming torch. Lieutenant Haas never returned from his night pursuit of a British bomber. Lieutenant Laufs failed to find his airfield, obscured by darkness and clouds, and crashed into the slopes of Mount Etna. The adjutant, First-Lieutenant Schulz, was last seen diving into the sea just off the coast, and Corporal Teuber hurtled from 4,000 feet to destruction on Benghazi airfield after engine failure.

So it went on, day after day, week after week. To Colonel Deichmann, II Air Corps' chief of staff, the losses-especially those of the bombers over Malta-seemed almost incomprehensible. Perhaps the targets were too dispersed, with each having to be dive-bombed separately. For pin-point bombing was still the gospel according to Jeschonnek, Luftwaffe chief of general staff. It was an obsession both with him and the other Luftwaffe leaders. And over Malta it was finally exposed as a false conception.

Under Kesselring's direction Deichmann worked out a plan of his own. According to this, apart from identified anti-aircraft batteries and a few special targets, the whole tactic of dispersed dive-bombing was abandoned. In future the bombers would act as a united force, with the following programme:

1. Hit the British fighters on the ground by a surprise attack on their base, Ta Kali.
2. Attack the bomber and torpedo-plane bases of Luca, Hal Far and Calafrana.
3. Attack the docks and harbour installations of Valetta naval base.

After strong discussion this plan was approved at the beginning of March, 1942, and preparations were started. Then there was a hitch: matrixes used for multiplying copies of the orders, instead of being burnt, were found by a security officer in the act of being carted off by a dealer in a sack of waste paper. Who could be sure that the British had not already got wind of the coming operation? So the attack was delayed to see whether they changed their dispositions. But no; aerial photography showed the Spitfires and Hurricanes still concentrated at Ta Kali-that being the necessary precondition for surprise to succeed.

By March 20th the Germans were ready. As darkness fell the British fighters landed from the day's concluding sorties. Suddenly German bombers were again reported approaching over the sea. The Englishmen listened: it was not the usual high-pitched whine of just a few Ju 88s. It was the deeper, throbbing tone of a large formation.

As the first wave arrived, closely followed by the second, bombs rained down-more and more of them, all on the same target, Ta Kali. Workshops and other buildings went up in flames. For this twilight assault II Air Corps had called upon every crew with night-flying experience, and the force amounted to about sixty bombers, with an escort of Me 110s and other night-fighters.

But there was another thing. Stereo photographs had revealed a ramp on the airfield's boundary, leading downward. Beside it was a huge heap of earth and rock. It presumably meant that the British had blasted out an underground hangar!

To cope with such an inaccessible target a number of Ju 88s had been fitted with 2,000-lb. armour-piercing rocket bombs. In this case the planes had once more to dive, for with a high starting velocity the rockets could penetrate such rocky ground up to forty-five feet. Meanwhile other machines attacked the ramp itself with incendiary bombs, in the hope that the burning oil would set on fire the fighters supposedly parked inside.

To this day the Germans do not know whether this attack with special weapons was successful, or indeed whether the underground hangar ever existed. The British still remain remarkably reticent about the matter. It is only on record that when the bombers attacked again next morning, they encountered no fighter opposition. With Kampfgruppen 606 and 806 from Catania, I/KG 54 from Gerbini, two Gruppenof KG 77 from Comiso, plus the fighters of JG 53 and II/JG 3 ("Udet") and the Me 110s of III/ZG 26, over 200 German aircraft were over Malta within a short period. Again Ta Kali was the target, as if no other existed on the island. It was the first example of "carpet bombing" in the whole war, and by the evening the British fighter base looked as if it had been subjected to a volcanic eruption.

On March 22nd it was the turn of the other airfields, in accordance with "phase two". But on the fourth day the "Deichmann Plan" was interrupted by the British attempt to bring a new supply convoy through to the hard-pressed island. With the Germans again in control of the air, it was a desperate attempt, and the convoy-four transports carrying munitions, fuel and victuals-had been constantly shadowed since leaving Alexandria four days earlier.

On the 22nd the Italian fleet tried to attack it, but was driven off by the strong British escort of four cruisers and sixteen destroyers. The Italian intervention meant, however, that instead of the convoy reaching Malta that night, it would only do so the next morning.

It thus fell victim to the Luftwaffe. Twenty miles off the island the transport Clan Campbell was sunk by a direct hit. The naval supply ship Breconshire was towed in a crippled condition to Marsa Scirocco bay, where further attacks finished her off. The remaining two transports foundered three days later, in Valetta harbour. Before then, during the rare pauses between raids, the British managed to rescue 5,000 tons of their valuable cargo. It represented, however, a bare fifth of what the four transports were carrying, and hard times for Malta lay ahead.

The third phase of the bombardment began at the end of the month with Valetta's harbour and docks as main target. In April the attack intensified, and Britain's destroyers and submarines were forced to depart, as the last of her bombers had done already. The mortal danger confronting the sea lanes to North Africa had been successfully combated. As his supply transports steamed into Tripoli and Benghazi unmolested, Rommel could breathe again.

In mid-April his enemy played another card. The American aircraft-carrier Wasp left Gibraltar and penetrated the Mediterranean to longitude five degrees east. Forty-seven brand new Spitfires took off from her deck and reached Malta with the last of their fuel. But though the Wasp remained out of range of the German Sicilian-based bombers, II Air Corps was kept fully informed of the enemy project by Captain Kuhlmann's radio monitoring service. Even the Spitfires' landing times could be calculated.

Twenty minutes after they had done so, and before they could be serviced, the bombs hailed down once more on Hal Far and Ta Kali airfields, after which only twenty-seven Spitfires remained serviceable. In the next few days even these were reduced by combat with JG 53's Messerschmitts.

By the end of the month the Germans hardly knew where to drop their bombs. So far as could be judged from the air, every military target had been either destroyed or badly damaged. In an order of the day II Air Corps summarised its successes: "During the period March 20th till April 28, 1942, the naval and air bases of Malta were put completely out of action.... In the course of 5,807 sorties by bombers, 5,667 by fighters, and 345 by reconnaissance aircraft, 6,557,231 kilograms of bombs were dropped. . . ."

It was, in fact, almost as much as had been dropped on the whole of Britain during the zenith of that battle in September, 1940.

Malta's airfields had been reduced to deserts, the quays and dockyards to wreckage and the warships themselves had been driven out. Only the crowning achievement remained: the occupation of the island prepared under the code-name "Operation Hercules".

Grand-Admiral Raeder had been pressing for this for a long time. Field-Marshal Kesselring also tried to get Hitler to sanction the plan. But the latter prevaricated, saying merely, "I shall do it one day!"

Meanwhile Mussolini and his chief of staff, Marshal Count Cavallero, declared that they would not advance another step in North Africa till Malta had fallen. Rommel even offered to lead the landing himself. But Hitler wanted to leave the conduct of the operation to the Italians.

However, on April 29th at the Führer's Obersalzberg H.Q. near Berchtesgaden, Mussolini stated: "To concert the plans for such a landing we need another three months."

In three months a lot could happen.

In the evening of May 10th four British destroyers left Alexandria, set course north-north-west, and steamed at high speed into the darkness. At their head was the Jervis, carrying the flotilla commander, Captain A. L. Poland, followed by the Jackal, Kipling and Lively.

Their course was designed to bring them by next morning midway between Crete and North Africa, in the hope that they could then proceed west, far enough away from the dozen or so German air bases to north and south to remain undetected by reconnaissance aircraft. It was a slim chance, but much depended on it.

The purpose of the mission was to intercept an Italian convoy of three transports and three destroyers currently on its way from Tarante to Benghazi. For with Malta no longer in action as a naval and air base, the German-Italian supply fleet had recovered from its catastrophic losses inflicted the previous autumn and once more sailed virtually unmolested.

Its safety was further ensured by the fact that the R.A.F.'s new base between Derna and Benghazi had promptly been lost again when Rommel's bold counter-offensive against the British 8th Army at the end of January won back Cyrenaica as far as the Gazala Line. Since then the R.A.F.'s only hope of attacking the convoys was by means of long and dangerous flights past the German fighter bases in Cyrenaica. When Beaufort torpedo-planes and Blenheim bombers had attempted such an attack on a convoy eighty-five miles south-east of Malta, six of them had been shot down by its Me 110 escort supplied by Captain Christl's III/ZG 26.

So now the British Navy was to have a go. But the chances of four destroyers, coming all the way from Alexandria, achieving anything like the naval successes of November 1941, were rated at ten to one against. Captain Poland's orders were to attack only if he succeeded in intercepting the convoy off Benghazi at dawn on May 12th-and then only if he had remained undetected the whole of the previous day. For the heavy loss of British naval ships in recent weeks had shown that the Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean was making its presence felt.

On the 11th everything at first went well. Round noon the British destroyers stood between Crete and Tobruk. It was the critical moment, with the Mediterranean at this point only about 200 miles broad and under constant German reconnaissance-the British called it "Bomb Alley".

Soon after noon the Jervis radar picked up a single aircraft, and the British officers held their breath. Had the flotilla been discovered and its position reported? Its fate hung by a thread, and a few minutes later the thread snapped. Circling well out of range the reconnaissance plane radioed : "Four destroyers, square xx, course 290, distance twenty-five miles."

On the bridge of the Jervis Captain Poland gave the order to turn back and head for Alexandria. His own orders-to break off the operation as soon as he was sighted-left him no alternative. But the danger was not averted.

Alerted in Athens, X Air Corps sent out the élite Lehrgeschwader I/LG l from Herakleion in Crete, followed by II/LG 1 from Eleusis in Greece.

At Herakleion the Gruppenkommandeur, Captain Jochen Heibig, quickly briefed his pilots. Since the Cretan air-sea battle of a year ago they had become specialists in this type of work. All knew that destroyers, with their high speed and manoeuvrability, were their most difficult opponents-likely to recede from the bomb-sight at the moment of bomb release. "It's like trying to catch a fish with your hands", as one pilot said. "It needs practice, patience, and very swift reactions."

He might have added "courage": the courage needed to dive from 12,000 feet into a wall of fire that increased each second in intensity. Helbig now ordered his men to dive down to 2,500 feet and use their accumulated speed to pull out low over the sea and so evade the worst of the flak.

The Gruppe had fourteen Ju 88 A-4s serviceable. As they flew south from Crete Helbig led them in a wide curve to approach the enemy ships from the south-west-a piece of deception that nearly succeeded. For the Jervis had just been in radio contact with two Beaufighters on their way from Africa to act as escort, and next moment they seemed to appear in the heavens. But then the seamen started: there were too many of them . . . they could only be German!

The attack began a few minutes after 15.30, Helbig leading off against the command destroyer. The sea boiled as the 500-lb. bombs exploded amongst the frantically writhing vessels. But there seemed to be no hits. No one observed the direct hit on the Lively, or the near miss that tore her whole side open. Within three minutes she sank, but by then the bomber crews were headed back to Crete, dispirited at their apparent lack of success. On arrival Helbig ordered the machines to be refuelled and bombed up again, and said to the crews: "We attack again this evening out of the setting sun. This time we shall dive to 1,500 feet."

At 17.00 II/LG 1 under Captain Kollewe attacked from Greece-in vain: all its bombs missed. And when Helbig made his second attack about two hours later, he this time had only seven aircraft. But they were flown by the best of his crews. There was no wind and the Mediterranean was smooth as a pond.

Taking advantage of the sinking sun he dived obliquely from astern, on the same course as the ships. This tactic enabled him to follow each evasive movement as it was made. Down came the bombs from 1,500 feet-and they struck home. Four hits were counted on one destroyer.

Following crews also hit the bull's-eye-First Lieutenants Iro Ilk, Brenner, Backhaus and Leupert. Helbig reported: "The first destroyer broke apart and sank quickly. Another was on fire, with her afterdeck under water."

That was the last the bombers saw as they flew off. In fact, the Kipling sank within a few minutes, followed by the burning Jackal next morning after a vain attempt to take her in tow. Of the four destroyers that had left Alexandria only Captain Poland's flagship, the Jervis, returned, with 630 survivors from the others on board.

For his Gruppe's success Captain Helbig was decorated with the Oak Leaves of the Knight's Cross with Swords. Kesselring sent him a case of champagne, and the German Navy a British life-belt fished from the sea in the battle area. Even the British press wrote with respect of the "Helbig Flyers".

None the less, the British had the last word. In June a convoy of eleven transports, with an unusually strong protective force, once more left Alexandria for Malta. Before it did so, however, Herakleion was visited at night by a British sabotage team, which stole up to the Gruppe's Ju 88s and planted mines on the starboard wing roots. Awakened by the explosions, the "Helbig Flyers" suddenly found they had no more aircraft. A reserve Gruppe promptly gave up its own to them.

The British were clearly resolved to leave no stone unturned in the attempt to get a convoy through to Malta. For the exhausted and starving island it was a matter of life and death.

During the evacuation of Crete the British Mediterranean Fleet was once more subjected to heavy air bombardment. The Stukas of StG 2 were now operating from Scarpanto, thus dominating the Straits of Kasos to the east of Crete. A number of cruisers and destroyers laden with troops were either sunk or severely damaged.

Already on May 26th Admiral Cunningham had suffered a new blow, when his only aircraft carrier, theFormidable , was subjected to heavy air attack. Late in the morning II/StG 2, which had been sent to support Rommel in North Africa, and while on the look-out for troop transports, happened upon the British battle fleet, hitherto completely unreported. The Formidable at once turned into the wind and sent off her fighters. But the Stuka commander, Major Walter Enneccerus, dived straight down to attack, followed by the squadrons of First-Lieutenants Jakob, Hamester and Eyer.

The aircraft carrier's flight deck was struck at the point of gun turret No. 10, and other bombs tore open her starboard side between bulkheads 17 and 24. She then limped back to Alexandria.

It was an echo of what had happened four and a half months previously, when the same Stuka Gruppehad handed out similar punishment to the Formidable 's sister ship, the Illustrious , west of Malta.

II/StG 2 under Major Enneccerus, and I/StG 1 under Captain Werner Hozzel, had only just arrived at Trapani in Sicily on January 10, 1941, when they received information that a British supply convoy, with a large escort of warships, was headed westwards for Malta. Staking all, the Stukas swept down from 12,000 to 2,000 feet into the concentrated fire of the ships and planted six bombs on the Illustrious . Though she did not sink, she had afterwards to be repaired in the United States-a job requiring several months.

On the following day, January 11th, II/StG 2, guided by a "pathfinder" He 111, gave chase to the British fleet as it steamed back eastwards. At extreme range, nearly 300 miles east of Sicily, the Stukas attacked out of the sun and sank the cruiser Southampton with a direct hit in the engine-room.

This represented the first operation by X Air Corps, which in fulfilment of an agreement between Hitler and Mussolini had been posted to Sicily to bolster up the reeling Italian forces. Air General Hans Ferdinand Geisler and his staff accordingly took over the Hotel Domenico in Taormina. Their air force was given the following comprehensive duties :

Bar the narrows between Sicily and Tunis to British shipping. Mount an air offensive against Malta. Provide air support for the Italians in North Africa, and subsequently secure the transport of the German Afrika Korps to Tripoli. Assault all reinforcements for Wavell's army going via the Suez Canal.

Though the last assignment seemed the most important-i.e., to hamper the British offensive in Cyrenaica-it was also the most difficult. As a base of operations against the Suez Canal the island of Rhodes was the obvious choice. Unfortunately, however, it was without stocks of fuel, and to supply it was a difficult problem. Benghazi had plenty, but within a few days it would be occupied by the British.

There, however, II/KG 26 under Major Bertram von Comiso was hastily sent from Sicily. Of its fourteen He Ills three were lost by a collision on landing, and a further three were billed for a reconnaissance role over the canal. Thus the Gruppe's effective strength was reduced to eight.

During the afternoon of January 17th the expected report arrived: a convoy stood off Suez, about to enter the canal from the south. Accordingly at half-hour intervals, and in darkness, the bombers took off on their mission. The two quartets of He 111s were briefed to scour the canal from opposite directions, one on the right bank, the other on the left.

From Benghazi to Suez is 700 miles, which meant that the target area was almost out of range. Only at the most economical cruising speed and airscrew trimming had the He 111s a hope of fulfilling their mission and returning to base. In view of these difficulties X Air Corps' chief of staff, Major Martin Harlinghausen, decided to lead the attack in person. Though the Corps meteorologist, Dr. Hermann, forecast an adverse wind of forty m.p.h. for the return flight, it was hoped to counter this handicap by flying at the most favourable altitude, 12,000 feet.

After a four-hour flight the He 111 carrying Major Harlinghausen, and piloted by Captain Robert Kowalewski, reached Suez and turned north. They flew along the canal, rounded Bitter Lake and continued. But not a ship did they find. The convoy seemed to have been swallowed up.

The other aircraft were sent against alternative targets, but Harlinghausen was loath to give up. On reaching Port Said, he considered returning, but instead turned and repeated the search, this time southwards. Again nothing was seen, and a stick of bombs was dropped on the Ismailia ferry. Once more they came to Bitter Lake, and suddenly there were the ships, widely dispersed and at anchor for the night.

The He 111 tried to bomb a steamship, but missed. The whole operation had failed.

The return flight straight across the desert was hair-raising. At 12,000 feet the Heinkel had unexpectedly to battle against a storm of at least 75 m.p.h. But on board the plane its strength was not realised, for it was now pitch dark, and there were no landmarks by which the ground speed could be measured. Harlinghausen calculated that they would be back in four and a half hours, but at the end of them there was no welcoming beacon. Five hours passed, then five and a half-still nothing. Finally, with his last drops of fuel, Kowalewski had to make a belly-landing in the desert. The ground was indeed so level that he could have landed normally on his undercarriage.

After a brief discussion the four airmen set fire to the wreck, and set off north-west on foot. Benghazi could not be far off, they thought. In fact, it was 175 miles.

Next morning the burning wreck was spotted, but the crew had disappeared. Only four days later were they found by a searching aircraft, which landed beside the exhausted men. Their rescuer was none other than First-Lieutenant Kaupisch, whose He 111 had been the only one to get safely back to Benghazi. Becoming aware of the high-altitude wind force, he had clung low down to the coast. All the others had made emergency landings in the desert, and three of the crews became British prisoners-of-war.

Compared to the stripped-down divisions left holding the defensive front, the German southern attack forces that assembled for Operation Blau seemed sleek and powerful. However, this appearance was deceiving. The divisions assigned to Army Group South (later divided into Army Groups A and B) suffered from many deficiencies that compromised their offensive and defensive capabilities.

In May 1942, most of the infantry divisions in Army Group South stood at about 50 percent strength. Although brought nearly up to strength over the next six weeks, the southern divisions had little time or opportunity to assimilate their new troops. Only one-third of the infantry divisions committed to the upcoming attack could be taken out of the line in early spring for rehabilitation; the remaining divisions stayed in their old winter defensive positions and tried to train and integrate their replacements even as they fought desultory defensive battles against minor Russian attacks. As a result, the general training standards in the southern assault forces were far below those of the 1939-41 German armies. Losses in officers, NCOs, and technical personnel during the 1941 winter battles had further sapped the combat abilities of the German forces. In fact, many German units now regretted the use of artillerymen, signalers, and other specialists as infantry during the winter months since they were so hard to replace. Moreover, even after strip-ping vehicles and equipment from the northern forces, Army Group South's divisions lacked their full complement of motor transport. According to a General Staff study in late May, the spearhead forces (those divisions that would actually lead the attacks toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus) would embark with only 80 percent of their vehicles, and the follow-on infantry divisions and supply columns would be slowed by shortages of both horses and vehicles. For all of the ruthless economies inflicted on their poorer relatives to the north, Army Groups A and B would therefore be more clumsy, be less mobile, and have less logistical staying power than the German armies that had launched Barbarossa a year before.

Army Group B had two distinct missions in Operation Blau: first, to carve its way eastward along the southern bank of the Don River some 300 miles to Stalingrad, and second, to post a defensive screen along its northern flank as it went, protecting its own rear and the further unfolding of Army Group A's attack to the south. Though not the decisive thrust (Army Group A would actually push into the Caucasus toward the strategic oil fields), Army Group B's mission was crucial to German success.

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Army Group B's far-flung tasks could not be accomplished with the German divisions at hand. Consequently, the most critical jobs were given to the more powerful German armies, and the less-demanding tasks were allotted to a polyglot of allied contingents. The Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army were to attack toward Stalingrad, while the veteran Second Army was to seize Voronezh and then form the link between Army Group Center's defensive front and Army Group B's flank pickets. The job of covering the long flank in between was handed to allied armies of lesser fighting value.

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In the spring of 1942, Hitler prevailed on the Reich's military partners to provide additional combat forces to augment the German armies. Romania, Hungary, and Italy all reluctantly consented to deploy additional forces on the Eastern Front, though they each insisted that their contingents fight under their own army headquarters rather than as separate divisions in German corps and armies. By early August, thirty-six allied divisions were committed in the southern portion of the front, roughly 40 percent of the total number of Axis divisions in that region. Even though German liaison staffs were assigned to these forces, the combat effectiveness of the allied armies was generally poor. So by relegating the allied forces to purely defensive missions along the German flanks, the German High Command figured to minimize the demands placed on these forces while still conserving Wehrmacht divisions for crucial combat roles.

Through early summer, the forces posted along Army Group B's northern flank had little difficulty in fending off Soviet assaults. A Second Army afteraction report on 21 July 1942, following the defeat of Soviet counterattacks near Voronezh, was particularly reassuring. Written at the request of the General Staff's Training Branch in Berlin and circulated throughout the German Army's higher echelons, this report allayed lingering fears caused by the Red Army's winter successes in 1941-42. "Russian infantry in the attack is even worse than before," the report began. "Much massing, greater vulnerability to artillery and mortar fire and to flanking maneuver. Scarcely any more night attacks. This report brightened the prospects for successful defense along Army Group B's northern flank.

Despite this reassurance, Army Group B's left wing remained vulnerable. Hitler's own interest in this potential weakness began in early spring when he ordered that the Second Army be reinforced with several hundred antitank guns as an additional guarantee against the collapse of Blau's northern shield. In anticipation of its defensive operations, Second Army also had been assigned numerous engineer detachments, labor units, and Organization Todt work parties for general construction and fortification. After its successful attack on Voronezh in early July, Second Army attempted to fortify its portion of the exposed flank using these assets throughout the remainder of the summer.

To the east beyond Second Army, however, the Don flank was held by troops of the Hungarian Second Army, the Italian Eighth Army, and the Romanian Third Army. Other Romanian formations, temporarily under the command of Fourth Panzer Army, held the open flank south of Stalingrad. As expected, these forces proved to be mediocre in combat, leading German commanders to be even more uneasy about this long, exposed sector. By September, General Maximilian von Weichs, the commander of Army Group B, regarded his northern flank to be he so endangered that he ordered special German "intervention units" (Eingreifgruppen) rotated into reserve behind both the German- and allied-held portions of his left wing.

The use of intervention units was not new to German defensive doctrine. In fact, the Elastic Defense doctrine of 1917 and 1918 had required that intervention divisions be used to reinforce deliberate counterattacks against particularly stubborn enemy penetrations. In 1942, however, the role of these intervention units went beyond counterattack. They could also provide advance reinforcement "corsetting" to threatened sectors since, according to Weichs' explanation, the Russians "seldom were able to conceal preparations for attack." Thus, the intervention units could support faltering allied contingents, hopefully steeling their resistance until additional help could arrive.

In October, General Zeitzier, the new chief of the Army General Staff, began to echo Weichs' concerns. In a lengthy presentation to Hitler, Zeitzier argued that the allied lines between Voronezh and Stalingrad constituted "the most perilous sector of the Eastern Front," a situation that posed "an enormous danger which must be eliminated." Although Hitler made sympathetic noises, he refused to accept Zeitzier's conclusions and ordered no major changes to German deployments or missions.

Even though the Fuhrer rejected Zeitzier's recommendation that German forces withdraw from Stalingrad, he did authorize minor actions to help shore up the allied armies. One of these measures was the interspersing of additional German units (primarily antitank battalions) among the allied divisions. In accordance with Hitler's published defensive instructions, if the allied units were overrun, these few German units were to "stand fast and limit the enemy's penetration or breakthrough. By holding out in this way, they should create more favorable conditions for our counterattack." Another protective measure was the repositioning of a combined German-Romanian panzer corps behind the Romanian Third Army. This unit, the XLVIII Panzer Corps, consisted of only an untried Romanian armored division and a battle-worn, poorly equipped German panzer division. Weak as it was, this corps was not placed under the control of the Romanians or even Weichs. Rather, it was designated as a special Fuhrer Reserve under the personal direction of Hitler and therefore could not be committed to combat without first obtaining his release." Finally, from October onward, German signal teams were placed throughout the allied armies so the German High Command could independently monitor the day-to-day performance of those forces without having to rely on reports from the allies themselves. These and other measures were not executed without some friction, however: the Italians, for example, huffily rejected German suggestions for improving their defensive positions.

The allied units were not the only soft spots on the defensive flank. By autumn, several newly raised German divisions, hastily consigned to Army Group B in June in order to flesh out its order of battle, were also causing some concern. For example, barely days before its preliminary June attack on Voronezh to secure the German flank, Second Army had received six brand-new German divisions. Though game enough in their initial attacks, these units quickly began to unravel due Tu poor training and inexperienced leadership. In one case, the 385th Infantry Division reportedly suffered "unnecessarily high losses" including half of its company commanders and five of six battalion commanders in just six weeks, due to deficient training. This fiery baptism ruined these divisions for later defensive use. The loss of so many personnel in such a short period of time left permanent scars, traumatizing the divisions before time and battle experience could produce new leaders and heal the units' psychological wounds. Second Army assessed the situation on I October 1942 and informed Army Group B that these once-new divisions were no longer fully reliable even for limited defensive purposes and that heavy defensive fighting might well stampede them. Unless they could be pulled out of the line for rest and rehabilitation, these divisions, which accounted for nearly half of Second Army's total infantry strength, could only be trusted in the defense of small, quiet sectors.

The German southern offensive thus trusted its long northern flank to a conglomeration of listless allied and battle-weary German units. Like the forces farther north on the defensive front of Army Groups Center and North, these armies were stretched taut, manning thin lines with few reserves beyond insubstantial local forces. Barely strong enough to hold small probing attacks at bay during the summer and early fall, these armies lacked the strength to meet a major Russian offensive without substantial reinforcement.

Shielded by this doubtful defensive umbrella, Operation Blau made good initial progress. In fierce house-to-house fighting, General Friedrich Paulus' Sixth Army gnawed its way into Stalingrad, the projected eastern terminus of Army Group B's defensive barrier. Despite nagging shortages of fuel and other supplies, as well as Hitler's confused switching of forces and missions, Army Group A had cleared Rostov and penetrated the northern reaches of the Caucasus Mountains by late August.

At this point, the German campaign lost whatever coherence it might have possessed earlier. Forgetting that Army Group B's mission was but secondary to that of the advance toward the oil fields, Hitler became obsessed with capturing Stalingrad. Ordering not only Sixth Army but even the cream of Fourth Panzer Army into the city, Hitler committed the German forces to a prolonged battle of attrition for control of Stalingrad's rubbled streets and factories. By late autumn, Operation Blau had degenerated into a test of military manhood between Hitler and Stalin on the Volga.

Whatever the outcome of the battle for possession of Stalingrad, by October it was clear that another winter defensive campaign was imminent. As described earlier, Hitler's Operations Order I ordered winter defensive preparations on all parts of the front, though in that same directive he bade the Stalingrad fighting continue. Yet even the Sixth Army in and around Stalingrad began to take preliminary steps for a winter defense. After discussions with Sixth Army staff members, an Army High Command liaison officer dispatched a memorandum to Berlin in mid-October assessing the feasibility of fortifying a miniature "east wall" on the Volga steppes and recommending the transfer of additional engineer units to Paulus' command for that purpose.

The German defensive arrangements along the Don River held together only until 19 November, when a Red Army offensive flattened the Romanian Third Army northwest of Stalingrad and knifed southward toward the rear of the German Sixth and Fourth Panzer Armies.

A day later, another Soviet attack burst through the Romanian lines south of Stalingrad. On 23 November, these pincers met near Kalach, severing Sixth Army's land supply routes. The collapse of the Axis defenses along the Don River and the encirclement of Sixth Army transformed the situation of the southern front, casting the Wehrmacht forces there into a desperate struggle for their very survival.

The ensuing winter defensive battles in southern Russia can be divided into three separate phases. In the first phase, lasting from 19 November until 23 December 1942, the Germans scrambled to hold an advanced defensive line near the confluence of the Don and Chir Rivers from which they could support relief operations toward Stalingrad. Once the attacks to relieve Sixth Army were irretrievably repulsed, the focus of German defensive efforts shifted. During the second phase, lasting from the last week of December 1942 to mid-February 1943, German divisions fought to block another huge Soviet envelopment, this one aimed at the rear of the entire German southern wing near Rostov. Finally, from mid-February until the spring thaw, the third phase of the winter battles saw the restabilization of the front south of Kursk.

German defensive operations differed in each phase, and these differences reflected variations in the mission, the strength and composition of German forces, and the actions of the enemy. In no case, however, were these chaotic defensive actions conducted along doctrinal lines. Instead, from the initial collapse of the Romanian armies in November 1942 to the stabilization of the front in March 1943, German defensive operations were once again almost completely extemporaneous.

The first phase of fighting focused on the fate of the beleaguered German Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Ordered to stand fast and repeatedly assured by Hitler that Sixth Army would be relieved, General Paulus swiftly put his forces into a giant hedgehog defensive posture.

Establishing an effective defensive perimeter at Stalingrad was doubly difficult due to a desperate shortage of infantrymen (the bulk of whom had fallen in the earlier street fighting) and the lack of prepared positions. On the eastern face of the Stalingrad pocket, German troops continued to occupy the defensive positions built up during previous fighting for the city. However, the southern and western portions of the perimeter lay almost completely on shelterless steppes, and the hasty defenses there never amounted to more than a few bunkers and shallow connecting trenches. (Because the steppes were almost treeless, no lumber was available for building fires for heat or for constructing covered defensive positions.) Significantly, the subsequent Soviet attacks to liquidate the surrounded Sixth Army came almost exclusively from the south and west against the least well-established portions of the German defenses. On 23 November, well-built positions to the north of Stalingrad were rashly abandoned without orders by the German LI Corps commander, General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, who had hoped thereby to provoke an immediate breakout order from Paulus. This hasty action sacrificed the 94th Infantry Division, which was overrun and annihilated by Red Army forces during the movement to the rear, and also gave up virtually the only well-constructed defensive positions within the Stalingrad Kessel.

Sixth Army had difficulty in defending itself because of insufficient resources. Lack of fuel prevented the use of Paulus' three panzer and three motorized divisions as mobile reserves. Hoarding its meager fuel supplies for a possible breakout attempt, Sixth Army wound up employing most of its tanks and assault guns in static roles. Likewise, shortages of artillery ammunition and fortification materials hindered the German defense. The Luftwaffe's heroic attempts to airlift supplies into Stalingrad were hopelessly inadequate: since daily deliveries never exceeded consumption, the overall supply problem grew steadily worse in all areas. In some ways, the aerial resupply effort was counterproductive. Scores of medium bombers were diverted from ground support and interdiction missions to serve as additional cargo carriers, a move that emptied the skies of much-needed German combat air power at an extremely critical period.

For both tactical and logistical reasons, then, what the Nazi press dramatically called "Fortress Stalingrad" was, in reality, no fortress at all. Surrounded by no less than seven Soviet armies, Sixth Army was marooned on poor defensive ground without adequate forces, prepared positions, or stockpiles of essential supplies. Forbidden by Hitler to cut its way out of the encirclement, Sixth Army's eventual destruction was a foregone conclusion unless a relief attack could reestablish contact.

In response to this crisis, Hitler created Army Group Don under Field Marshal von Manstein on 20 November. Manstein was to restore order on the shattered southern front and, even more important in the short term, to direct a relief offensive to save Sixth Army. To accomplish this, Hitler promised Manstein six fresh infantry divisions, four panzer divisions, a Luftwaffe field division, and various other contingents.

Sixth Army's temporary aerial supply and eventual relief required the Germans to hold a forward defensive line along the Chir River, where the most advanced positions were only about forty miles from the Stalingrad perimeter. This line also covered the main departure airfields for the airlift and could serve as an excellent jumping-off point for a counterattack to link up with Sixth Army.

While Manstein worked out his plan for a relief attack, the Chir River line was held by whatever forces could be scraped together. Initially, these forces consisted of mixed combat units swept aside by the Russian offensive, alarm units called out from various support units, service troops, rear area security forces, convalescents, and casual personnel on leave. All these were formed into ad hoc battle groups and plugged into an improvised strongpoint defense along the Chir "like pieces of mosaic."

That this rabble managed to hold the Chir line, and even some bridgeheads on the eastern bank, was due as much to Soviet indifference as to German improvisation. Through early December, the Soviet High Command was content to tighten its coils around Stalingrad and made little effort to exploit the German disarray farther west. In so doing, the Soviets were avoiding their great strategic mistake of the previous winter, when Stalin's failure to concentrate forces on major objectives frittered away excellent opportunities to no decisive gain.

In mid-December, however, the fighting on the Chir front accelerated, with both sides committing substantial forces to this crucial area. On 12 December, Manstein began his relief attack toward Stalingrad. Intending to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the rescue effort, Soviet forces hurled themselves against the Chir line at several points. Meanwhile, the Germans reinforced the ragtag elements along the Chir with fresh units, most notably the reconstituted XLVIII Panzer Corps (11th Panzer Division, 336th Infantry Division, and 7th Luftwaffe Field Division). These mid-December defensive battles demonstrated both the capabilities and the limitations of German defenders during this phase.

The XLVIII Panzer Corps intended to hold its sector of the Chir front with two infantry divisions forward and a panzer division in reserve. The 336th Division was an excellent, full-strength unit that had recently arrived on the Russian Front from occupation duty in France. Even though reinforced somewhat with Luftwaffe flak and ground combat units, the division could only man its wide front by putting all its assets forward, holding only a handful of infantry, engineers, and mobile flak guns in reserve. Even so, the 336th Division formed "the pivot and shield" of the German defense. The 7th Luftwaffe Field Division, though well equipped and fully manned, was poorly trained and lacked leaders experienced in ground combat. Behind the infantry, General Hermann Balck's 11th Panzer Division, which had recently been transferred from Army Group Center after fighting in several tough defensive battles, assembled for duty as a mobile counterattack force. Although its infantry strength was fairly high, it (like other weakened divisions from the northern defensive front) had only a single battalion of Panzer Mark IVs in its entire tank regiment.

On 7 December, even as the Germans were still settling into position, Soviet tank forces penetrated the left flank of the 336th Division. The Germans had not yet had time to lay mines or erect antitank obstacles, and their few Paks could not be used effectively. (Though relatively flat, the steppes were crisscrossed by deep ravines that provided excellent covered approaches into the German positions.) Facilitated by the weakness of the German antiarmor defenses, Russian tanks forced their way through the thin infantry defenses, overran part of the division's artillery, and thrust some fifteen kilometers into the division rear. In a three-day running battle, the 11th Panzer Division carved up this Russian tank force with repeated counter-attacks against its flanks and rear. Despite the heady successes enjoyed by Baick's panzers and mechanized infantry (reports claimed seventy-five destroyed Russian tanks), the fighting was not all one-sided. For example, between 7 and 10 December, Russian tanks overran one infantry battalion of the 336th Division three different times.

Even tougher fighting followed. Beginning on 11 December, fresh Russian attacks charged against the Chir front, forcing several local penetrations. Though eventually broken by counterattacks and the fire of the 336th Division's artillery, these Soviet probes threatened to erode the German defenders by-attrition. In one case, a German battle group holding a bridgehead south of the Don-Chir confluence lost 18 officers and 750 men in ten days of combat. Breakthroughs in the 336th Division's front between 13 and 15 December produced an extremely confused situation, with groups of enemy and friendly troops finally so intermixed that German artillery could not be used effectively for fear of firing on its own forces. Moreover, Soviet tanks again broke through as far as the German artillery positions, overrunning some guns and knocking out others by direct fire. By nightfall on 15 December, the situation of the 336th Division had become so grave that, according to one staff officer, the division's continued survival depended "exclusively on outside help."

Again, the 11th Panzer Division saved the German position on the Chir. Harkening to desperate appeals from the 336th Division for additional antitank support, the 11th diverted three of its precious tanks to buttress the flagging infantry, while the balance of the German armor hammered the Soviet flanks. By 22 December, the Chir front was quiet as both sides slumped into exhaustion.

The battles on the Chir River had been a masterpiece of tactical improvisation by the Germans. Although regular combat troops were gradually brought into the fighting through reinforcement, the initial German defense had been conducted almost entirely by hastily organized contingents of service troops. While the performance of these units in no way matched that of regular combat veterans, their gritty stand fully vindicated the German Army's policies of training, organizing, and exercising rear-echelon alarm units on a regular basis.

Doctrinally, the committed German infantry forces in the XLVIII Panzer Corps' sector lacked the manpower and local reserves to conduct a competent defense in depth. Additionally, the German defense was throttled by Hitler's standing orders against tactical retreat, leaving the forward divisions little choice but to hold on to their initial positions even when penetrated or over-run. Short of antitank weapons, the German infantry forces were almost powerless against the Soviet armor. Had it not been for the availability of the 11th Panzer Division as a "fire brigade" counterattack force, the German defenders would almost certainly have been doomed to eventual annihilation in their positions clustered along the Chir.

The deft counterattacks by 11th Panzer Division repeatedly exploited speed, surprise, and shock action to destroy or scatter numerically superior Soviet forces. The generally open terrain provided a nearly ideal battlefield for mobile warfare, and the tank-versus-tank engagements almost resembled clashes in the North African desert more than they did other battles in Russia.

The Germans used simple command and control measures to conduct this fluid combat. According to General Balck's postwar accounts, command within the 11th Panzer Division was exercised almost entirely by daily verbal orders, amended as necessary on the spot by the division commander at critical points in the fighting. Liaison between the panzer units and the forward infantry divisions also was managed largely on a face-to-face basis. These casual arrangements were made possible in part by the rather simple coordination procedures that developed during the Chir fighting. The positions of the forward German infantry were well known and, due to Hitler's insistence, seldom changed. The broad sectors and relatively low force densities on both sides tended to leave units conveniently spaced. Balck's well-trained and experienced forces seldom operated in more than two or three maneuver elements. General Balck was thus able to truncate normal staff procedures largely because there were very few moving parts in the German machine, and even those were comfortably separated. However, the rude German control methods sacrificed many of the benefits of synchronization and close coordination. By General Balck's own admission, for example, little effort was made to integrate indirect fire with the German maneuver forces.

The German defensive efforts benefited from other favorable circumstances. The Soviet attacks on the Chir front were not conducted in overwhelming strength and were intended primarily as diversions to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the Stalingrad relief expedition. Also, the Russian assaults were piecemealed in time and space. Instead of a single, powerful attack in one sector, the Red Army forces jabbed at the Chir line for nearly two weeks with several smaller blows. As a result, the Germans were able to make the most of their limited armored reserves. Equally beneficial was the poor Soviet combined arms coordination in these battles. The Russian attacks were conducted mainly by tank forces, and the Soviet infantry played only a minor accompanying role. Therefore, the Germans concentrated their panzers solely on the destruction of the enemy armor and paid scarcely any attention to the enemy riflemen. This also greatly magnified German combat power, placing a premium on the superior tactical skill of the German tank crews while allowing the weaker German infantry to remain huddled in dugouts. Furthermore, the Red Army artillery remained amazingly silent throughout the battles, which left the Russian tank forces to fight without the benefit of suppressive fires. Soviet air power likewise was ineffective.

The German defensive successes on the Chir River were victories of a limited sort. First, despite their tactical virtuosity, even the German panzers were unable to wrest the operational initiative from the Soviets. Throughout the December actions, the Germans were compelled to respond to the uncoordinated Red Army blows by fighting a series of attritional engagements. The Russians retained complete freedom of maneuver and, in all likelihood, could have crushed the German resistance if they had been more skillful in massing or in coordinating their efforts. Second, even though the Germans inflicted serious losses on their enemies, they also suffered substantial casualties of their own. The hapless 7th Luftwaffe Field Division disintegrated during the Chir battles, and by mid-January, its ragged remnants had been amalgamated into other formations. The 11th Panzer Division, whose bold exploits saved the Chir position on several occasions, saw its combat power diminished by half from the beginning of December. Third, though driving back Soviet attacks, neither the 11th Panzer Division nor the balance of the XLVIII Panzer Corps was able to hold the ground that it won by counterattack. To defend terrain required infantry, and neither the panzer formations nor the overextended German infantry divisions had sufficient riflemen to conduct a positional defense. Conversely, German tanks performed best in fluid combat and were notably less successful when trying to drive Red Army troops from their consolidated positions. For example, the Soviets managed to hold a few well-entrenched bridgeheads on the western bank of the Don-Chir line despite repeated German armored attacks.

Although rebuffed by the skill and steadfastness of the German defenders, the Soviet attacks against the Chir River line succeeded in preventing reinforcement of Manstein's relief attack on Stalingrad. Under Manstein's concept, the XLVIII Panzer Corps was to have joined those elements of Fourth Panzer Army (LVII Panzer Corps) making the main relief attempt from farther south. However, as already seen, the XLVIII Panzer Corps had struggled just to stave off its own destruction and never entered into the offensive effort. Without that support and without even the full reinforcements that Hitler had originally promised, the German drive to open a corridor to Sixth Army had to be abandoned after 23 December. From that time on, the defensive battles in the south entered a new phase, with German defensive efforts shifting to the containment of a new major Soviet offensive attempt to sever the entire Axis southern wing.

The new Russian offensive began by scattering the Italian Eighth Army, which was still in position on the northern Don. Driving southward toward Rostov, the Soviets aimed at cutting the communications of both Army Group Don and Army Group A. Also, this attack directly enveloped the German defensive line on the Chir, making the German position there untenable. This not only spoiled all prospects for a renewed attack to free Sixth Army, but it also resulted in the eventual loss of the forward airfields supplying Paulus' encircled divisions.

In contrast to the earlier jabs against the Chir line, the new Russian advance swept forward on a broad front, brushing aside the counterattacks of the weak 27th Panzer Division (earlier posted behind the Italians as a stiffener) as if they were bee stings. Clearly, the sleight-of-hand defensive tactics used by the Germans so successfully on the Chir River were not sufficient to cope with this new threat.

Two major problems hampered German attempts to forge an effective defensive response to the ripening crisis. The first problem was the lack of fresh combat forces. The best units in the German Army, groomed in the spring of 1942 to carry out Operation Blau, were now either wintering uselessly in the Caucasus (Army Group A) or else withering away at Stalingrad or in vain attempts to relieve it (Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army). The various impromptu commands set up to defend the Chir and lower Don were barely adequate for that task alone and stood little chance in a set-piece battle against the massive new Soviet onslaught.

In addition, reinforcements could be shifted from other parts of the front only with difficulty. The drained units of Army Groups Center and North had been stripped of assets months earlier to provide resources for the Blau offensive and were hard-pressed to resist the Soviet attacks drumming against their own positions. Therefore, local commanders from the northern defensive front, who saw only their own pressing problems, opposed attempts to siphon reserves away from them. Only at the highest command levels could the assembly and transfer of reserves be accomplished fairly and effectively. In this case, however, the smooth redistribution of forces by Hitler and the Army High Command was handicapped by complex variations in the status and structure of German units.

By this point in the war, most German divisions had major discrepancies between their paper organization and their actual structure. This was due partly to unredeemed combat losses, partly to the German Army's de facto policy of propagating organizational peculiarities by constantly changing the divisional structure of newly forming units, and partly to the stripping of resources from some divisions for assignment elsewhere. Some frontline units, for example, had little or no motorized transport, substituting instead horse-drawn wagons or even bicycles for logistical and tactical mobility. Others were short their full complement of artillery or else had entire battalions fitted out exclusively with captured guns. Other divisions lacked reconnaissance units or even full infantry regiments that had been detached for antipartisan duties.

In addition to organizational oddities, German divisions also differed greatly in combat readiness due to fluctuations in their morale, training, replacement status, combat experience, fatigue, and quality of junior leadership. These eccentricities made centralized management of German forces extremely difficult, since nearly every division deviated in some way from its normal status. Since Hitler and the Army General Staff were not always aware of these organizational peculiarities, some confusion ensued when corps and army commanders, ordered to release divisions for emergency use elsewhere on the front, sometimes forwarded units that were unsuited for the particular missions for which they had been requested. In December 1942, the Army High Command initiated a new reporting system to correct this situation, requiring corps and army commanders to submit secret subjective evaluations of their divisions' combat worthiness on a regular basis. (Frontline commanders found it to be in their own interest to be as candid as possible in these assessments, since a frank statement of liabilities was considered to be some protection from having to feed additional forces into the "Stalingrad oven.") Such inventories made the paper management of the threadbare German resources more efficient, but the fundamental lack of adequate combat forces to cover the expanding Eastern Front crisis remained unresolved.

The second problem shackling German operations was the Germans' own Byzantine command arrangement. Afield in the southern portion of the Eastern Front were three autonomous army groups (Army Groups A, B, and Don). No single commander or headquarters coordinated the efforts of these army groups save for the Fuhrer himself. From his East Prussian headquarters, Hitler continued to render his own dubious brand of command guidance. Inspired by the success of his stand-fast methods the previous winter, the Fuhrer now balked at ordering the timely withdrawal and reassembly of the far-flung German armies, even truculently resisting the transfer of divisions from the lightly engaged Army Group A to the mortally beset Army Group Don. Hitler's opening response to the new Soviet offensive against the rear of the German southern wing was to decree a succession of meaningless halt lines, ordering the overmatched German forces to hold position after position "to the last man."

Field Marshal von Manstein, whose Army Group Don was to halt the Soviet offensive, confronted both of these major problems head-on. In a series of teletype messages to Hitler, Manstein pleaded for the release of several divisions from the idle Army Group A in the Caucasus in order to put some starch into the German defense. Though relenting too late to assist the relief attack on Stalingrad, Hitler at last ordered a few divisions and then finally all of First Panzer Army to move from Army Group A to Manstein's control."

Manstein also pressed Hitler about command authority. In late December, Hitler offered to place Army Group A under Manstein's operational control. However, this consolidation of authority was not consummated because, as Manstein later explained, Hitler "was unwilling to accept my conditions" that there be no "possibility of interference by Hitler or of Army Group A's invoking . . . decisions in opposition to my own." Less than two weeks later, furious that Hitler was still insisting on a no-retreat policy and forcing him to beg permission for each tactical withdrawal, Manstein presented the Fuhrer with an ultimatum. On 5 January, Manstein sent a message to the chief of the Army General Staff for Hitler's consideration: "Should . . . this headquarters continue to be tied down to the same extent as hitherto, I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by my continuing as commander of Don Army Group. In the circumstances, it would appear more appropriate to replace me. . . ." Hitler chose to ignore Manstein's ultimatum, but he did at last concede a singular (though temporary) degree of autonomy and flexibility to Manstein for the conduct of defensive operations. Although Hitler's draconian stand-fast policy remained officially in effect, Manstein was allowed freedom of maneuver by means of a face-saving charade: instead of asking permission, Manstein would simply inform the Army High Command of Army Group Don's intention to take certain actions unless specifically countermanded, and Hitler by his silence would consent without actually abandoning his hold-to-the-last-man scruples.

As a result of this arrangement, Manstein conducted operations from early January until mid-February largely unfettered either by Hitler's customary interference or the rigid no-retreat dictum. No other German commander was allowed to enjoy these two privileges on such a large scale for the remainder of the war. As a consequence of this independence, German defensive operations during the second phase of the southern winter battles evinced a measure of flexibility, economy, and fluid maneuver unsurpassed on the Russian Front during the entire war.

While these command arrangements were being ironed out, the operational situation continued to deteriorate. Still more Soviet attacks had routed the Hungarians and the Italians, completing the disintegration of the entire original flank defensive line along the Don River east of Voronezh. By late January, hardly any organized Axis resistance remained between the surviving units of Army Group B (Second Army) at Voronezh and the hard-pressed forces for Army Group Don along the lower Don and Donets Rivers. The German Sixth Army, now in its death throes at Stalingrad, ironically provided one source of hope: the longer Paulus' troops could hold out, the longer they would continue to tie down the powerful Russian armies encircling them, thereby delaying the reinforcement of the widening Soviet attacks farther to the west.

Manstein's overall concept of operations was to combine the withdrawal of First Panzer Army units from the Caucasus with the establishment of a defensive screen facing northward against the onrushing Soviets. One by one, the First Panzer Army divisions were pulled through the Rostov bottleneck and redeployed to the northwest, extending the makeshift German defensive line ever westward. The Soviets could still outflank this line by extending the arc of their advance to the west and, in fact, did so even while maintaining frontal pressure along the Donets. Each of these wider envelopments, however, delayed the final decision and allowed Manstein to leapfrog more units into position. Moreover, the farther the Soviets shifted their forces to the west, the more tenuous the Russian supply lines became."

This operation was exceedingly delicate. Any major Soviet breakthrough or uncontested envelopment could cut through to the rail ganglia on which both Army Groups A and Don depended for their supplies. Army Group Don thus had to accomplish three tasks simultaneously: slow the Soviet frontal advance, shift units from east to west to parry Soviet envelopments, and preserve its forces by allowing timely withdrawals to prevent encirclement or annihilation.

These tasks had to be performed under several tactical handicaps. First, even with the gradual reinforcement by First Panzer Army, Manstein's forces remained generally inferior to those of the enemy. Discounting the late arrivals, most of the divisions of Army Group Don were extremely battle worn, having been in continuous combat for over two months. Too, the preponderance of the German forces were less mobile than the Soviet tank and mechanized forces opposing them, a factor that weighed heavily against Manstein's hopes of exploiting the Germans' superiority in fluid operations.

Second, many of Manstein's forces were grouped together under impromptu command arrangements. The German order of battle included several nonstandard control headquarters identified simply by their commanders' names, such as Army Detachment Hollidt, Group Mieth, and Battle Group Adam. Even many of the divisions assigned to the various headquarters lacked normal internal cohesion. For example, by January 1942, the 17th Panzer Division was conducting defensive operations with an attached infantry regiment (156th Infantry Regiment), which possessed neither the training nor the vehicles to allow it to cooperate smoothly with the division's tanks and organic Panzergrenadiers.

Similarly, in mid-January, two infantry divisions within Army Detachment Hollidt contained substantial attachments from two shattered Luftwaffe field divisions, while one so-called division (403d Security Division) was actually a division headquarters controlling several thousand troops whose furloughs had been abruptly canceled." These ad hoc forces generally lacked the precision that comes from habitual association and common experience, and this internal friction was magnified by the rapidly changing combat conditions confronting Army Group Don. Moreover, none of the improvised groupings were structured for sustained combat; therefore, they lacked the technical and support assets that normally would have serviced such large units.

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Third, though relatively fresh and well organized, the First Panzer Army divisions arriving from the Caucasus came with their own special problems. In Manstein's words, these forces suffered from the "hardening up process which inevitably sets in whenever mobile operations degenerate into static warfare." Their relatively inactive sojourn in the Caucasus from September to January had caused these "troops and formation staffs [to] lose the knack of quickly adapting themselves to the changes of situation which daily occur in a war of movement." The first symptom of this stagnation was the snail-like pace of the Caucasian disengagement. Having accumulated "weapons, equipment and stores of all kinds.. . which one feels unable to do without for the rest of the war," the divisions of First Panzer Army invariably requested "a long period of grace in which to prepare for the evacuation." When finally committed to combat along the Donets, these forces maneuvered lethargically at first, their earlier snap and elan dulled by the routine of prolonged positional warfare.

Finally, the Germans were plagued by the enormous mobility differential between their own infantry and panzer forces. In previous campaigns, this problem had been most evident in offensive operations, as during Barbarossa when the swift panzers had outrun their infantry support. In southern Russia in January and February of 1943, this disparity proved equally disruptive in defensive operations, vastly increasing the difficulty of orchestrating German maneuver.

Since the bulk of the German combat power consisted of infantry, of necessity the German defensive tactics were built on the less-mobile infantry forces. The infantrymen, their numbers frequently including engineers, flak units, and various alarm units, were disposed in forward defensive lines. Because of their standards of training. The training of tank crews never ceased, even in combat. In the 17th Panzer Division it was the practice to hold a critique after each engagement, in which successes and failures were discussed, just as after peacetime exercises." Equally important was the aggressiveness, imagination, and flexibility of the German leaders. Commenting on the operations of its improvised mobile rear guard, the 294th Division's after-action report explained that "the choice of a leader [was] especially important" since such units "[were] not led according to field manuals or even according to any fixed scheme."

Despite its aggressiveness and skillful use of mobile forces, Manstein's defense of the German southern wing was not a mobile defense in the classic sense. Army Group Don's forces could not be insensitive to the loss of territory, since to have done so would have endangered the vital rail lines leading through Rostov. Furthermore, the bulk of Manstein's formations were relatively immobile and could only be used in a succession of static defenses. Although playing an important role, the German panzer and motorized forces operated principally as intervention forces in support of the pedestrian infantry.

The German defensive method was thus actually a potpourri of tactical techniques. What set these battles apart from others was Manstein's style of control. What Manstein did, and what Hitler, as a rule, did not, was to provide firm operational guidance to his subordinates and then to allow those commanders to use their forces and the terrain to maximum advantage. The hard-pressed infantry forces, often composed of hastily assembled patchwork units without any real unit training, were best employed in static defenses from prepared positions. Mobile panzer and motorized bands delivered sharp counterattacks to help sustain the infantry defenses and, occasionally, kept the enemy off-balance with preemptive spoiling attacks. If the infantry's main positions became engulfed, the panzers and mechanized infantry helped the slower forces to disengage. The mobile formations also fought delaying actions while subsequent main positions were being organized. Major defensive lines were designated well in advance, allowing units to make deliberate plans for their withdrawals. (This practice alone added considerable coherence to German operations. Hitler usually procrastinated about allowing retreats until, when finally ordered, the withdrawals had to be done pell-mell to avoid encirclement.) For example, in fighting its way back from the Chir to the Donets in January, a distance of roughly 100 miles, Army Detachment Hollidt occupied no less than nine intermediate defensive lines. Its movement from the Donets

15-cm Nebelwerfer being fired.

German Forward Observer and his team.

A horse-drawn heavy gun changing its firing position and moving through the sandy soil of eastern Poland during the first advances into Russia, 1941.

Germany led the world in the development of artillery tactics during World War I. Between 1916 and 1918, Colonel Georg Bruchm端ller pioneered many of the most important artillery tactical methods: neutralization and suppressive fires, as opposed to simple destructive fires; performance of specific tactical missions by specially trained artillery groups, including infantry support, counterbattery, and deep attack; and fire preparations organized into phases to accomplish specific tactical objectives. In early 1918, Bruchm端ller championed the work of Captain Eric Pulkowski, who developed a technique of meteorological corrections-still in use today, albeit computerized-that made accurate predicted fire both possible and practical.

Ironically, Germany in the interwar years all but abandoned most of the artillery lessons it had taught the rest of the world during World War I. German artillery had been so devastating that the Versailles Treaty only allowed the postwar German army 284 artillery pieces, none larger than 105 mm. As late as 1936, three years after Adolf Hitler came to power, the German army still had only 284 guns. An army not allowed any significant amount of artillery, then, focused on developing alternative tactics centered on the tank, which in theory was supposed to provide its own close fire support. This in turn led the Germans to conclude that even if they had adequate artillery, the guns and especially their ammunition supply would not be able to keep pace with the tanks.

The Germans did recognize that even a massive tank force would sometimes encounter stiff opposition that would slow the momentum of the advance. In such situations, the additional required fire support would come from the air. By 1940, the Germans had developed an impressively sophisticated air-to-ground coordination system that was capable of concentrating as many as 2,700 aircraft over a critical sector. As successful as this system was in France, the Germans did recognize that their panzer forces would still benefit by the addition of highly mobile, organic fire-support assets. At that point they started to develop and field a limited number of self-propelled assault, antitank, and field guns.

The German system of relying primarily on air power for fire support worked fairly well in France. As the war progressed, though, the Germans came to realize that their approach was subject to flaws in three critical areas: mass, weather, and air superiority. When the German army invaded the Soviet Union, the operational theater was so vast and Soviet ground forces were spread so widely that the Luftwaffe could not be overhead everywhere it was needed at one time. The weather in the Soviet Union also severely restricted Luftwaffe operations. But conventional field artillery is practically impervious to weather conditions, and the massively gunned Red Army almost always had adequate fire support. Finally, as the war progressed and attrition sharply affected the Luftwaffe, the Germans lost air superiority. The real importance of the Combined Bomber Offensive mounted by the western Allies was not so much its effect on Germany's industrial base, but rather the steady attrition of Luftwaffe fighters and pilots. By late 1944 and 1945, Germany no longer controlled the air over its own territory, let alone over the battlefields in France or the Eastern Front.

Again abandoning lessons it had taught the world in 1918, the German army of World War II rarely emphasized the massing of artillery above the divisional level. It failed to provide artillery concentrations at the corps, army, or army group levels. The Soviets, though, considered artillery at those levels to be decisive. By 1944, the Germans had come to fully recognize their critical error with respect to artillery, and they desperately tried to recreate the fire-support structure and assets that had served them so well in 1918. By then, however, it was too little, too late.

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IKA = Infantriebekampfungsartillerie, translated as 'Counter-infantry Groups', their mission was close support and they were controlled by the attack divisions, basically one group per forward division, typically about 75% of artillery and most trench mortars had this role, sub-groups were assigned to first line infantry regiments, a group comprised at least 2 artillery regiments and often more.

AKA = Artileriebekampfungsartillerie, translated as 'Counter-artillery Groups', mission counter battery, about 20% of artillery controlled by corps HQ, AKA usually had sound ranging and flash spotting attached. Sometimes included 'overwatch batteries' (superimposed in British terms) to attack hostile batteries newly located during the attack.

FEKA = Fernkampfungsartillerie, translated as 'Long Range Artillery Groups', mission depth fire against HQs, reserves, etc, controlled by corps.

Note that groups did not equate to batteries, battalions, regiments or any other standard organisational structure. Basically they were composite organisations of the size deemed necessary to do their job.

SCHWEFLA = Schwereste Flachfeurartillerie, roughly translated as 'heavy long range guns', mission special destruction tasks, controlled by army, had own air observation section.

MW = Minenwerfen, infantry mortars.

IBB = Infantriebegleitbatterien, translated as Accompanying Artillery Batteries, originally called shock batteries. Each attacking infantry regiment had 1 battery of 4 guns operating in 2 sections, followed 1000-2000m behind first assault wave. Guns had horse draught.

IGB = Infantrie-Geshuetzbatterien, translated as Infantry Gun Batteries, 6 guns operated as single guns assigned to infantry battalions, normally just behind the second line of the assault wave. Guns entirely man-handled.

German Artillery Practices in regards to Wargaming

Germany had what most game designers (certainly among micro-armor aficionados, anyway) regard as the "typical" system. There are specially trained Forward Observers (FOs) associated with each artillery battalion. The FOs are detailed to be with and travel with advanced elements which are being supported by the particular artillery battalion. For communications back to their artillery, the FOs had either a radio, or in the German case, more often a wire line strung out behind them going ultimately back to the battery. Yes indeed, I did say "wire". Apparently German artillery was a distant third behind the Luftwaffe and panzers for radio-communications equipment, and they had a wire-based system which they knew how to make work.

The position of the firing battery had to be surveyed to precisely locate it on a map. By survey, I mean the time-consuming whole nine yards of using transits (surveyor's telescope) and the like along with the hand calculations to get the battery's precise position on the map. Thereafter, the FOs, survey teams, recon units or whatever, would further survey major terrain features (whenever possible), and further add new "known" positions to the map back at the artillery HQ. These locations became "firing points".

To call for fire, an FO had to scurry off to one of the firing points, and take an angle and range estimate to the potential target from the known firing point. Because of the need to do spotting from known points, and the technical training required to be part of this fairly complex system, only specially trained FOs were ever likely to call for impromptu fire support (I believe). The data was called in to the firing battery over the wire. Human computers back at the battery then did the trigonometric calculations (by hand or maybe with limited slide rule assistance) to calculate where on the map the apparent target was relative to the firing point, and from that then calculate the apparent angle and range to the target from the firing battery. Part of the calculation was to factor in the meteorological data (apparently even a slight cross-wind can hopelessly throw off the accuracy of a shell fired through miles of the troposphere and stratosphere. Other variable also had to be factored in (gun wear, temperature, gun caliber, munitions type, etc. Now the battery was ready to fire one spotting round. Time from initial call-in to first spotting round: Approximately 15 minutes. Then if the spotting round's explosion was visible to the FO, the FO could correct (i.e., "left 200, down 400 yds") and another spotting round fired and so on until one fell "close enough". At this point the FO could do the call for "fire for effect" and the entire battery and/or batteries could open up.

One major problem of the above system was that apparently even trained observers tend to have something like 20% errors when estimating ranges from the observer's position to a target. Along with all the other potentially unrecoverable errors (variable winds, uneven terrain, etc.), this could lead to some pretty wild initial spotting rounds and therefore to even more delay in delivering effective fire.

The calculations for subsequent spotting rounds could usually be made much more quickly than for the initial round because it was likely the corrections would be relatively small. Therefore simple linear interpolations could be used to fudge to an adequate firing solution. Given that typical time of flight is something like 30 seconds, and needing several additional minutes for the necessary communications, calculations, and gun laying, I'd guess maybe 3-5 minutes is required for each extra spotting round.

However, when the artillery came down, it landed pretty much where Jerry wanted. In other words, the concept of "drift" should have been largely irrelevant to an impromptu German barrage. On the other hand, however accurate the barrage may have been, given the above process, you have to figure a savvy target might have some idea what was coming.

The only really good thing you can say about the above system is that it was much better than what had previously existed. In World War I practice, it was virtually impossible to do impromptu fires unless the firing battery could directly see the target. So in comparison to WWI practice (and to Russians), the German system seemed quite good, and even had some advantages over the British system. (Like accuracy!)

Of course, a battery could always engage in map fire (also known as blind fire) where essentially no reliance is placed upon initial spotting rounds. This apparently tends to result in fairly inaccurate results and tends therefore to be limited to harassing fires. It's probably reasonable to allow for some sort of "drift" factor in the context of a game when engaging in such fire.

There are several optimizations to the above process to speed the delivery of effective fire. First, any previously targeted location could have fires very quickly brought against it because all previous firing data was logged and could be easily re-used (you'd better believe they saved that data, given what a bother it was to calculate). Also, fire could be fairly quickly and accurately delivered against targets located near a known firing point (read that as: "near a previous target") because the necessary calculations were relatively easy to perform to correct for small target location changes. Consequently, if most of the places the Germans needed to shoot at could be ascertained ahead of time, there is little reason to see why individual German batteries could not fire as effectively as U.S. artillery.

In a prepared defense (or in a prepared attack) the battery could in theory have any number of pre-plotted firing points so that effective fire could be quickly delivered as needed. This technique is also known as "registered" fire (the pre-plotted locations being considered "registered"). Even in a hasty defense, defending units probably tended to have at least a few firing points to cover the more obvious lines of attack and could call in fire request via wired phone (a much more reliable communications method than the radios of the day).

At the end of December 1941, the 78th Division, which had been a conventional infantry formation, was given a new description and a new role. From that date on it became the 78th Sturm Division, and was given a higher than normal establishment of weapons in order to increase the firepower of its three constituent infantry regiments, the 14th, 195th and 215th. Each had battalions made up of three infantry companies, a standard heavy weapons company plus another one equipped with infantry guns, a pioneer company, a troop of cavalry and a signals platoon.

During March and April 1943, there was an increase in strength, and the artillery establishment of each regiment was then made up of an HQ battery, three battalions of light field howitzers and a battalion of heavy field howitzers. The anti-tank battalion had two companies, each armed with heavy PAK on self-propelled (SP) artillery mountings. The heavy mortar battalion was motorized, and was made up of three companies, each fielding twelve mortars.

The SP battalion had an HQ, an HQ platoon and three SP batteries, each of ten guns. The flak battalion was composed of three batteries, and had a strength in guns of 18 light and 8 heavy 88-mm pieces.

The total of weapons in the divisional arsenal was: 616 light machine guns, 76 heavy machine guns, 94 medium mortars, 40 heavy mortars, 12 light flame-throwers, 61 heavy PAK guns, 14 light infantry guns, 6 heavy infantry guns and 24 projectors.

The assault division was created out of the former infantry division within the space of seven weeks, and in February 1943, while still incompletely raised, was put back into action to seal a gap that had been torn in the German front. Then, in June, it took part in the Kursk Offensive (Operation CITADEL) as part of Model's 9th Army, and when Army Group Centre was destroyed in the summer of 1944, the 78th was among the formations lost in that debacle. The division's losses in bayonet strength, and therefore firepower, were partly compensated for by a higher distribution of fast-firing automatic weapons, by the replacement of the 81 mm mortars by those of 12-cm calibre, and by the issue of handheld rocket launchers, such as the Panzerfaust. The anti-tank unit was also equipped with the high-velocity 7.62-cm PAK, and the SP units were grouped into a brigade to give them greater flexibility.

The westwards retreat of the German Army from the middle of 1944 took the 78th into Galicia and then into Moravia, where, at the war's end, its remaining units passed into captivity.

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The 78. Infanterie-Division was formed on 26 August 1939 as part of the 2nd wave of division formations in Wehrkreis V (Stuttgart); the cadre came from Artillerie-Kommandeur 5 in Ulm.

It was re-named the 78. Sturm- (Assault) Division on 1 January 1943. Apparently, the distinguishing characteristics of this assault unit were that it had additional Flak, Assault Gun, and mortar battalions not found in standard infantry divisions.

In July 1944, the division was destroyed near Minsk. A division of the 29th wave that was forming was redesignated as the 78th and titled as an assault division on 27 July 1944 by Heinrich Himmler. However, the official orders of battle list the division at that time as the 78. Grenadier-Division. On 9 October 1944, the division was redesignated the 78. Volksgrenadier-Division, and then as the 78. Volks-Sturm-Division on 1 January 1945.

The division surrendered to the Russians at Deutsch-Brod in 1945.

In broad terms, the division was located in these areas during the war:

Sep 1939 - April 1941: Germany and France
May 1941: Poland
June 1941 - June 1944: With Army Group Center in Russia
Aug 1944 - Jan 1945: Galicia
Feb 1945 - Mar 1945: Upper Silesia
April 1945: Moravia
May 1945: Bohemia

78. Sturm-Division
Standort:	01.01.1943 Stuttgart		Ersatzgestellung:	01.01.1943 Gren.Ers.Btl.195 T端bingen
Gliederung der 78. Sturm-Division: Stand 01.02.1943
Sturm-Reg.14		I.Btl., II./AR 178
Sturm-Reg.195		I.Btl., III./AR 178
Sturm-Reg.215		I.Btl., I./AR 178
Art.Reg.178		Stg.Abt.189, Flak.Abt.178, Nebel-Werfer-Abt.178
Div.Einh.178		Feld.Ers.Btl.178, Pz.Jg.Abt.178, Aufkl.Abt.178, Pi.Btl.178, Nachr.Abt.178, Inf.Div.Nachschubf端hrer 178
Nachtrag:
Gliederung der 78. Sturm-Division: Stand 01.06.1943
Sturm-Reg.14		I.,II.Btl.
Sturm-Reg.195		I.,II.Btl.
Sturm-Reg.215		I.,II.Btl.
Stg.Abt.189
Heeres-Flak.Abt.293
Art.Reg.178		I.-IV.Abt.
Div.Einh.178		Feld.Ers.Btl.178, Pz.Jg.Abt.178, Aufkl.Abt.178, Pi.Btl.178, Nachr.Abt.178, Inf.Div.Nachschubf端hrer 178
Nachtrag:
ab 01.04.1944 mit Div.Sturm-Btl.78 ,im Juli 1944 bei Minsk vernichtet, Wiederaufstellung als 78.GD

A nose-to-tail transport column of 21st Panzer Division with Einheits-programme personnel carriers of the 8th infantry company; in front are light standard cars.

The organisation of German army supply and administration services was generally conceded to be very efficient; even up to the final months of the war, allied Intelligence reports were commenting in some surprise on how well a beaten army could yet hold together, and they were certainly efficient enough to organise support for the Ardennes offensive of December 1944 at a time when the allies reckoned that the whole army organisation should have been in chaos. The secret lay in simple administration with few and clearly defined spheres of responsibility, a basic structure which could be rapidly expanded or contracted as the military situation dictated, and an ability to utilise local resources to the maximum. In particular the two functions of transport and handling were clearly separated. The figure above shows the basic system of pushing forward supplies which, with minor variations, was applicable to all items.

TRANSPORT: Down to Divisional level, this was the responsibility of the Senior Supply Officer at Army, who had at his disposal a number of standardised units known as Kolonne or Columns. The six major types and capacities were:

(i) Fahrkolonne: Horse-drawn unit with a capacity of 30 tonnes.

(ii) Leichte Fahrkolonne: As above but of 17 tonnes capacity.

(iii) Leichte Kraftwagen Kolonne: A motorised column of 30 tonnes capacity.

(iv) Schweres Kraftwagen Kolonne: As above but of 60 tonnes.

(v) Leichte Kraftwagen Kolonne fur Betriebstoff: MT fuel column with a capacity of 5,500 gallons.

(vi) Schweres Kraftwagen Kolonne: As above but carrying 11,000 gallons.

All except (iv) were commonly found also as parts of the organic units within divisions and as components of the Divisional services which had a normal allocation of eight or nine columns of various types, the composition depending on the Division. It should be noted that Corps, as such, played a very small part in supply although later in the war it often controlled the forward supply dumps. Transport within Divisional units was divided into unit supply (baggage, rations, etc) which was provided by the light columns, and unit battle transport (Gefechtstross) which was issued down to company level and carried the ready use supplies and equipment. It was quite common, especially when the organisation was streamlined towards the end of the war, for unit supply transport to be taken under Regimental or even Divisional control where this was deemed necessary.

HANDLING: Formations down to Regiment level had special units known as supply companies(Nachschubkompanien) or, at Army, battalions (Nachschubabteilungen). These provided the labour for actually unloading and reloading consumable supplies and were controlled by special administration platoons; the only major exception was in the case of motor fuel where handling was undertaken largely by trained men of the transport columns. It was a basic rule that supplies were taken as far forward as possible without transshipment.

REPAIR AND REPLACEMENT OF EQUIPMENT: All major units had first line repair and maintenance sub-units to cope with running repairs, and Divisions had workshop companies for harder tasks. If a repair job was too big for these it was passed back direct to Army which maintained fully equipped field workshops capable of complete rebuilds and also had 'parks' - units which acted as reception and issue organisations for weapons and equipment. Army in turn might return vehicles and weapons to the O K H pool for onward transmission to the manufacturers and would indent on GHQ or Army Group for new stores.

OTHER SUPPLIES: It is not possible here to detail all the supply organisations (eg medical or veterinary). Suffice to say that these were generally on the same principles: to and from unit - division - direct to army, and thence to and from home area (Wehrkreis) and that, with so many horse-drawn divisions the veterinary services in particular were comprehensive. All were characterised by the same simplicity and flexibility of organisation, enabling intermediate stages of supply to be bypassed easily if the tactical situation demanded.

German East Africa
A civilian pilot, Bruno Brüchner, was the first pilot to fly in German Africa. He was sponsored by a confectionery company, Rudolf Hertzog, so take part in various air shows in Africa with an AGO pusher Biplane made by Pfalz. He first stopped off in German South West Africa in May 1914 to fly several displays, then travelled to German East Africa to fly shows there but the events were cancelled by the outbreak of the First World War. In August 1914 he and his mechanic and the biplane were incorporated into the Schutztruppe. During one of the first reconnaissance missions over the Northern coastline of German East Africa Brüchner was shot down by a British gunboat. He managed to land on the coast but was badly injured and the plane severely damaged. Both were out of action. The plane was repaired at Dar-Es-Salaam and Brüchner's place was taken by Oberleutnant Erich Henneberger, a Schutztruppe officer who had previously passed his pilot's test in Germany. Before he saw action he crashed during a test flight and was killed. His observer, Leutnant der Reserve von Gusmann, was badly injured and the plane again was wrecked. This time the plane was rebuilt on floats as a seaplane to assist the SMS Königsberg in time for Brüchner's recovery from his injuries. Soon however, petrol supplies ran low and the plane was dismantled.

German South West Africa
When Brüchner sallied to German South West Africa, two other pilots were onboard the same ship sent to form a new Schutztruppe air force. One was Leutnant Alexander von Scheele, an army pilot who was appointed to command the new Schutztruppe air force, the other was Willy Trück, an Aviatik factory pilot. A third pilot, the Austro-Hungarian, Paul Fiedler, joined them shortly after. They had two aeroplanes between them, an Aviatik and a Roland, both biplanes. Trück and Fiedler initially performed test flights on the aircraft under the supervision of Scheele and it was reported that neither aircraft was particularly fit for flight in the the climate of South West Africa. Before the aeroplanes could be replaced however, war broke out and they were pressed into service. Von Scheele now took over the role of piloting the Aviatik from Trück, while Fiedler flew the Roland. Both pilots flew many sorties over South African lines during the campaign, gaining valuable information on enemy troop movements (Fiedler was also a keen and useful photographer) and dropping bombs on enemy positions. Both pilots were injured and both planes were damaged to various extents throughout the campaign by crashes and enemy gunfire often meaning their grounding for weeks at a time. The last mission was flown by von Scheele in May 1915. The Schutztruppe surrendered in July and both planes were destroyed before falling into enemy hands.

Tsingtao
In July 1914 the imperial navy sent two aeroplanes to the German naval base at Tsingtao. Both aeroplanes were Rumpler Taube monoplanes. The pilots were Gunter Plüschow and Friedrich Müllerskowski. Müllerskowski was badly injured and his aeroplane wrecked in a test flight in July 1914 leaving Plüschow as the only active pilot with an aeroplane in Tsingtao when war broke out. During the siege he ran spotting missions over the Japanese lines and claimed to have shot down a Japanese aeroplane with his pistol. When the garrison surrendered and went into captivity he was ordered to escape by flying his aeroplane into China, where he crash landed and started an epic journey back to Germany.

Cameroon
Two aeroplanes, a Rumpler Taube monoplane and a Jeannin monoplane were sent to the Schutztruppe in Cameroon during 1914. They arrived just before the outbreak of war and were still unassembled in their packing crates when they were captured by British troops. The airfield to which they had not yet been delivered was being built at Garua in the North of the colony by Hans Surén, a Schutztruppe officer who had previously passed his pilot's test in Germany. The captured aeroplanes were sent, still cased, to assist the newly formed South African air force but did not see action.

Pilots

Bruno Brüchner (1881-1948) was born in Ebersach, Saxony. He gained his pilot's licence (No. 53) in 1911. He was a civilian pilot who sailed with his wife to Africa to perform flying displays for the National Exhibitions in Windhoek and Dar-Es-Salaam. When the war broke out he offered his services to the Schutztruppe of German East Africa (as described above). Brüchner and his wife were interned by the British in East Africa during the war where he suffered from malaria. After the war he returned to Germany where he bought land on the Obersalzberg Mountain including Berchtesgaden, until Adolf Hitler acquired it from him in 1938.

Leutnant Alexander von Scheele (18__-1939) was an army officer who passed his pilot's test (No. 169) in 1912. In 1914 he was appointed to command the new Schutztruppe air force. He flew many combat and reconnaissance missions over South African lines during the war in an Aviatik biplane (see above). In May 1915 he was injured in a crash and did not recover to fly again before the end of the campaign. He was kept as a prisoner of war at Okahandja until the end of the war. He initially emigrated to Argentina before returning to Germany to join the Luftwaffe where he attained the rank of Oberst. He was killed while flying as a passenger in an air accident in Spain shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Leutnant Paul Fiedler (18__-1955) joined the Austro-Hungarian army in 1903. He was promoted to the rank of Leutnant der Reserve in 1909 and retired into civilian life. In 1910 he passed his pilot's licence (No. 19 in the Austro-Hungarian system). He sailed to German South West Africa to fly test flights for the early Schutztruppe air force. In August 1914 he was conscripted into the Schutztruppe with the rank of Leutnant. He flew many combat and reconnaissance missions over South African lines during the war In a Roland biplane (see above). After the surrender of German South West Africa, Trück along with other non-regular members of the Schutztruppe gave his word not to take up arms against the Entente and was released on parole. Following the war he briefly returned to Austria, then again to South West Africa where he managed a farm until 1926 when he again returned to Europe.

Willy Trück, (1889?-1981) was an Aviatik factory pilot, He sailed to German South West Africa to fly test flights in the Aviatik aircraft for the early Schutztruppe air force. In August 1914 he was conscripted into the Schutztruppe, although von Scheele took over the piloting of the Aviatik in wartime. After the surrender of German South West Africa, Trück along with other non-regular members of the Schutztruppe gave his word not to take up arms against the Entente and was released on parole. Following the war Trück stayed on in South West Africa as a businessman, pilot and farmer. He died in Cape Town in 1981.

Leutnant zur See Gunther Plüschow (1886-1931) - nick-named the "Dragon Pilot" due to a tattoo of a dragon on his left arm- was a naval officer who passed his pilot's test after only three days of flying in February 1914. He was sent straight to Tsingtao with his aeroplane arriving in July. When war broke out he was the only German airman available for active duty in Tsingtao. During the siege he ran spotting missions in a Rumpler Taube over the Japanese lines and claimed to have shot down a Japanese aeroplane with his pistol. When the garrison surrendered and went into captivity he was ordered to escape by flying his aeroplane into China, where he crash landed and started an epic journey back to Germany. When the garrison surrendered and went into captivity he escaped and made his way back to Germany via China, Japan, America and Gibraltar where he was briefly captured by the British and taken to England, only to escape once more and make his way back to Germany via Holland. He was the only German prisoner to escape from a British mainland POW camp during either World War. He also wrote several books including one on his experiences in China and his journey back to Germany called "Escape from England" (published by Ripping Yarns). After the war he explored uncharted areas of Chile and Patagonia where he died in a flying accident in 1931.

Oberleutnant Erich Henneberger (18....-1914) became an army officer in 1907, originally with the rank of Leutnant. After passing his pilot's test he was transferred to the East African Schutztruppe in June 1914. When Bruno Brüchner was recovering from wounds received when shot down by a British gunboat, Henneberger took his place as German East Africa's only pilot. However, before he saw action, he crashed and was killed during a test flight in November 1914.

Leutnant der Reserve Wilhelm Gutzmer von Gusmann (18__-1917) was Henneberger's observer, He was injured in Henneberger's fatal crash in 1914 but later made a full recovery in hospital. He then fought with the Schutztruppe until he died of wounds received at the Battle of Mahenge in June 1917.

Leutnant Friedrich Müllerskowski (1886-19__) joined the German infantry in 1907 and transferred to the Seebatallion in 1912. He passed his pilot's test in Germany before being posted out to Tsingtao where he was badly injured in a test flight days before the outbreak of war. He thus did not see active service during the siege of Tsingtao, being relased from hospital only shortly before the German surrender. For the remainder of the war he was held as a prisoner of war in Japan at the Kumamoto and Kurume camps and returned to Germany in 1919 where he rejoined the army. In 1920 he retired with the rank of Major.

Linienschiffsleutnant Viktor Klobucar (1878-1965) of the Austro-Hungarian imperial and royal navy passed his pilot's test in 1913. In 1914 he was an officer on the SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth at Tsingtao and became good friends with Gunther Plüschow . Although he was not posted in this role as a pilot, nor did he have an aeroplane at Tsingtao, he is included on this list simply as another potential pilot in the German colonies. He fought at the siege of Tsingtao and was captured by the Japanese. He spent the rest of the war in the Japanese prisoner of war camps at Kumamoto, Kurume and Aonogahara before being released in 1919. He died in Zagreb in 1965.

Leutnant Hans Surén (1885-1972) earned his commission as a Leutnant in the imperial German army in 1905. He passed his pilot's test in 1912 and the following year was posted to the Cameroon Schutztruppe. In 1914 he was ordered to prepare an airfield at Garua in the North of the colony and was presumably intended to pilot one of the aeroplanes sent from Germany. Surén never flew in Cameroon as the aeroplanes never arrived at his airfield, they both having been captured by the British while en route. After the war he wrote books extolling the values of a healthy sporting life, nude bathing and aryan supremacy. Although Hitler was an admirer of his books, Surén spent the last years of Nazi rule in prison having fallen foul of the regime.

Hauptmann Eugen Kirch (.....) earned his commission as a Leutnant in the German 28th Infantry Regiment (2nd Rhineland) in 1895. He served in the Cameroon Schutztruppe in 1912 and on his return to Germany in 1913 passed his pilot's test. He was one of the pilots designated to fly the aeroplanes sent to Cameroon in 1914 but war broke out before he set sail, thus leaving him stranded in Germany. During the First World War he served in the 3rd Flying Battalion (3. Flieger-Batallion) and later commanded the 4th Flying Battalion on the Western Front.

In the early 1990s, two gray-haired war veterans got together to talk about old times, as they had done on several previous occasions. Both men were fit and prosperous. Ted Shipman was well-known for his work with the Red Cross. Hans Kettling had a successful business in Düsseldorf.

During their reunion, there was much talk and many reminiscences-about the war, and about what they had said and done when they were both still fairly young and foolish. Their meeting was probably not very different from any one of a thousand other such reunions, except for one detail-at their first encounter, Ted Shipman had tried to kill Hans Kettling, and had very nearly succeeded.

The first time they met was 15,000 feet over Yorkshire, in the summer of 1940. At the time, Ted Shipman was Pilot Officer Edward Shipman, Royal Air Force, of 41 Squadron; he was at the controls of a Supermarine Spitfire Mark I. Hans Kettling was an Oberleutnant in the German Luftwaffe, piloting a Messerschmitt Bf 110.

Oberleutnant Kettling's unit, The Richthofen Geschwader, had taken off from Stavanger, Norway, as an escort to Heinkel 111 bombers that were to attack air bases in the Englsih Midlands. Before they reached the coast of England, however, Pilot Officer Shipman and the rest of 41 Squadron were up to intercept. P/O Shipman attacked two Bf 110s without any results before getting behind Oberleutnant Kettling.

Shipman fired "a long burst" at the Bf 110, saw the starboard engine begin to smoke heavily, and watched Kettling's fighter make an "erratic" turn to port, "apparently out of control.'' Kettling dove for the clouds, but was attacked by more Spitfires before he could make good his escape.

When his second engine was hit and his rear gunner shot, Kettling made a crash-landing in a field. He and his gunner, Obergefreiter Fritz Volk, were taken prisoner by "cut-throats with sticks, stones, and hayforks." The cut-throats quickly surrendered their prisoners to the police, much to the relief of the two Germans.

In the police cells, Volk's wounds were treated; both he and Kettling were given "an excellent dinner." They spent the next few months in England. Kettling was eventually sent to Canada, where he spent the rest of the war.

Many years after the war had ended, Shipman and Kettling were re-united by a British aviation enthusiast. In their old age, the two former adversaries became good friends. But in 1940, they were deadly enemies-two young fliers at each other's throats. "I would have shot Ted Shipman without a thought," Kettling said. Shipman probably felt the same way about Kettling.

Britain and Nazi Germany were also at each other's throats in the summer of 1940, as they faced each other across the narrow English Channel-or, as the Germans called it, "der Kanal." The war had been a one-sided affair up to that point, all in favor of Germany. In six weeks, the Wehrmacht had overrun Belgium and the Netherlands; had overwhelmed France, and forced the once-magnificent French army to surrender; and had trapped the British army against the Channel on the beaches of Dunkirk. Only good luck, and bad judgment on the part of the Germans, allowed most of the British forces to escape-plucked off the French beaches and evacuated back to England by a makeshift navy of small boats and pleasure craft, in the "Miracle of Dunkirk."

Britain now faced the enemy alone. Soon after France surrendered in June, German forces moved into position just across the Channel from southern England and waited for the order to attack. Adolf Hitler hoped that no such attack would be necessary. He thought that Britain's position was hopeless, and was convinced that the government in London would ask for an armistice, just as the French had done. The German Chief of Staff, Alfred Jodl, predicted: "The final victory over England is now only a question of time."

But Hitler and his General Staff had misjudged the opposition. The British made it very clear that they had no intention of surrendering. Winston Churchill, who had warned of the consequences of German re-armament during the 1930s, had become Prime Minister on 10 May-the same day that the "Phoney War" came to an abrupt end when German forces invaded the Low Countries. In a speech before the House of Commons, Churchill eloquently summarized the British position:

What General Weygand has called "The Battle of France" is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Britain may not have thought of the time as their finest hour, but now they knew what their position was- there had been talk of an armistice in London as well. They also knew that there were some very rough times in store for them.

Hitler and his General Staff now knew the British position, as well, and they were incredulous. They knew- better than the British public-how desperate Britain's position was; German intelligence kept them well informed. Although the British army had been rescued from captivity at Dunkirk, the High Command knew that all of their equipment had been left behind in France. Some soldiers did not even have rifles; many who took their rifles back to England had no ammunition for them.

On 19 July, Adolf Hitler made his famous "peace offer" to Britain in a speech in Berlin's Reichstag, an "appeal to reason and common sense" which was meant to persuade the British to end the war. The British response was quick and emphatic-in the words of William L. Shirer, "a great big No." No specific terms were mentioned by Hitler, but Britain made it quite clear that they wanted no part of Hitler or his guarantees of peace.

Hitler realized that he would now have to prepare for war with Britain, which would mean an invasion of England. He did not want this war; he feared that it might prove long and costly, and might cost more than he could afford. But now he had no choice.

At that point in time, no invasion plans existed-which was one of the main reasons Hitler wanted to avoid war with Britain. His generals were masters of land warfare-as they had just proved in France-but had no idea of the sea or of amphibious operations. The Wehrmacht could have crushed the British army, if they had the chance to fight. But separating the German armies from their enemy-and from domination of Europe- was the English Channel. Hitler's armies would have to cross the Channel if they intended to win the war.

The invasion of England was not something that Hitler looked forward to; he knew enough about history to realize that no one had succeeded in a cross-Channel invasion in nearly 900 years. But he had great faith in his military forces, which had perfected the blitzkrieg, "lightning war," which combined the forces of infantry, armor, and air power to crush and overwhelm the enemy. In just six weeks, the German army and Luftwaffe had done something that the Kaiser's armies had not been able to accomplish in more than four years during the First World War-force France to surrender.

Hitler would have preferred an armistice. But if the British wanted war, he would see to it that his Luftwaffe would give them all the war they wanted. On 16 July, the Führer's Headquarters issued "Directive No. 16 on the Preparation of a Landing Operation against England":

Since England, despite her militarily hopeless situation, still shows no sign of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England, and if necessary to carry it out.

The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English homeland as a base for the carrying on of the war against Germany and, if it should become necessary, to occupy it completely.

Britain was now Nazi Germany's only active enemy. The United States and the Soviet Union were not yet involved. The Russians were Germany's implicit ally-they would continue to sell oil to Germany, oil which would fuel the bombers that would attack London. The United States would remain stubbornly neutral-a growing cause of resentment among the British.

Germany and her war machine had just crushed France and the Low Countries. Now, German forces were beginning preparations for "Operation Sea Lion," the invasion of England. During the month of July, Luftwaffe bomber and fighter units began moving to bases in northern France, a few minutes" flying time from southern England.

For Germany, the coming battle would decide the outcome of the war. Britain, however, had two battles. The first was for survival against the Luftwaffe. The second, equally desperate, was to win allies in their war against Germany.

The fight for a strong, dependable ally, especially an American ally, would become as important as the battle against Germany and the Luftwaffe. As much time and effort would be spent on the propaganda war, time and effort to convince Americans that Britain could win the battle, as was spent on the battle itself.

Even in the history of warfare, where the unusual tends to be commonplace, the Battle of Britain is unique. In previous wars, campaigns lasted for a matter of days or weeks, but the Battle of Britain went on for 114 days-the official dates are from 10 July to 31 October 1940. It was also history's first great air battle. Its outcome was decided entirely by aircraft, and the daily fighting was carried out by a comparative handful of pilots and aircrew on either side.

Historians have divided the battle into phases, but do not always agree on how many phases, or when they began or ended-Some insist upon four phases; others say five phases. Some German historians consider the first phase of the battle, der Kanalkampf, to be a separate battle, since the Luftwaffe considered it an attack on shipping in the Channel instead of an air battle.

In addition to being a source of controversy, the battle has also become the greatest source of romantic myth and legend since the fall of Troy. All sorts of words, true and otherwise, have been expended on the subject. One American writer thought the British people had found "a fearful elation" in the knowledge that "they would soon be fighting for their very survival," and that the country exhibited "a mood of Shakespearean poetry- drama."

An actual participant in the battle was no less rhapsodic. "They were wonderful, weird, exciting days," said one squadron leader. "High summer, 1940-that is a time to look back upon with wonder," wrote Hugh Dundas, a Spitfire pilot with 616 Squadron. And British writer Richard Collier could not restrain himself from going on about the "chivalrous jousting of the skies."

Reality was a good deal less romantic, however. Britain was unprepared for Operation Sea Lion. Winston Churchill knew it; so did his war cabinet and all senior military commanders, although they tried to convince America otherwise. The fact was that only one fully-equipped division could be activated against a German landing. The Admiralty admitted that the navy would not have the strength or the numbers to prevent the crossing of a German invasion fleet. And RAF Fighter Command had lost nearly half its strength in the French campaign-one hundred aircraft had been shot down at Dunkirk alone.

German commanders realized that the Luftwaffe would have to win control of the air over the Channel if an invasion were to succeed. Otheriwise, the army and naval landing units would be mauled by the RAF before they could get anywhere near the English landing beaches.

German army High Command (OKH-Oberkommando des Heeres) originally planned to land 40 divisions on the south coast, between Ramsgate, Kent, and Lyme Bay, and advance north to Maldon, Essex. This would isolate London, which could then be taken at leisure. This plan was scaled down to a landing of nine divisions between Folkstone and Brighton, a much narrower front, which would be supported by two parachute divisions-a total of 200,000 men.

Senior naval staff officers drafted a reply to the army's plan, suggesting a small landing force and stressing the problems that the navy would face during a large amphibious landing. Although the army and the navy did not see eye to eye, both sides agreed on one item: air supremacy would be vital to the success of any invasion.

Luftwaffe units, of both Bomber and Fighter Command, were already moving into position. On 26 July, Jagdgeschwader 26 was ordered from its bases near the Rhine to the Channel coast. (Jagdgeschwader is normally translated as ''Fighter Wing.") The Geschwader's three gruppen (squadrons) occupied three airfields near Calais: Audembert; Marquises Ost; and Caffiers. Both Caffiers and Marquises had been used by the Royal Flying Corps-the predecessor of the Royal Air Force-in 1914-18. Major Adolf Galland, soon to become almost legendary for his abilities in flying and shooting, would command III Gruppe (about 30 Messerschmitt Bf 109s).

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the Luftwaffe's flamboyant (and drug-addicted) commander-in-chief, was confident that his air force would have absolutely no trouble in subduing the RAF. Overconfident, in fact. He predicted that the RAF wouldn't last a month-one of several remarks that would come back to haunt him.

But Göring could be excused for having too much faith. Morale among pilots and aircrew was high-they had just destroyed France's Armee de l'Air in just over a month, and believed that they would do the same to the RAF. The Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff, Generaloberst Hans Jeschonnek, reflected the German air force's optimism when he predicted, "The Luftwaffe [alone] will conquer England in a matter of weeks."

In Britain, the mood could not have been more different. The Luftwaffe had come away from the Battle of France in triumph; the RAF escaped in tatters. At the beginning of June, in the wake of their losses in France, Fighter Command had only 413 serviceable aircraft: 79 Blenheims (used primarily as night fighters); 9 Defiants (obsolete 2-man fighters); 162 Spitfires; and 163 Hurricanes.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, said that he would not be able to guarantee air superiority for more than 48 hours if the Luftwaffe "developed a heavy air attack on this country at this moment."

The optimistic attitude of the Luftwaffe in the spring of 1940 is evident in Oberleutnant Hans Ulrich Kettling, who joined the air force in the late 1930s. He decided to join Fighter Command, and was assigned to the Richthofen Geschwader, which flew the brand-new Messerschmitt Bf 109.

Originally, young Hans had intended to join the merchant navy, but vacancies were scarce-it was the middle of the Depression, and more young men than usual were anxious to get away from an economically devastated Germany. In 1936, his school's headmaster addressed the top class; the message was that the new Luftwaffe was looking for recruits. The Luftwaffe offered another way to get out of the Depression.

Hans listened to his headmaster's talk, and became "desperately interested." He had read about the pilots of the First World War, especially Manfred von Richthofen, and considered himself a "patriotic German." He also belonged to the Nazi Youth movement, although he says that he was not an ''ardent Nazi."

After he completed his training, Kettling was assigned to the Richthofen Geschwader. "Can you imagine that for a young man's pride?" he asked-joining a unit that was named after one of Germany's leading heroes, and one of his own personal idols.

But Kettling and his fellow pilots were not being trained to bolster their pride. By 1937, Germany was already preparing for war on a number of fronts-against Austria; against "Red" Spain; against Czechoslovakia; against France-and had drafted two Kriegsfalle (literally "war plans") for war on two fronts. In 1938, with the Munich crisis, Germany nearly precipitated war when its forces occupied Sudeten Czechoslovakia.

Like most Germans, Kettling believed the official word from Berlin concerning these events. "We were told that we were going into other countries to protect our borders from foreign intrigue by Russia and France," Kettling recalled. "Perhaps we wanted to believe. Perhaps we were young."

And perhaps he really didn't care. Adolf Hitler had transformed Germany from a weak and anxious little country into a strong and aggressive power. The means by which he had accomplished this did not concern Kettling; it also did not matter very much to millions of other Germans. It was this mentality that allowed Hitler to become absolute dictator, and to start a war that would devastate half the world.

War finally came when German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939; two days later, Britain declared war on Germany. But war seemed a happy adventure to a young and inexperienced Luftwaffe officer; Kettling didn't worry. His unit was equipped with the Bf 109; pilots who had flown them in the Spanish Civil War, as part of the Fascist "Condor Legion," said that the 109 was the best fighter in the world. Kettling had flown a few combat sorties in Czechoslovakia, where his unit met "a bit of resistance" from a few obsolete bi-planes. Most of the Czech fighters had been destroyed on the ground. "War, it seemed, was very easy," he recalled.

Before war was declared, Kettling's Staffel was transferred. His unit would now fly the twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstörer (destroyer). Kettling was impressed with the new aircraft. "Not a fighter. A destroyer. Heavy armour. Two engines. Longer range . . . . in front, we had two cannon and four guns, all controlled by a switch on the stick. Lovely! You could break up a bomber with one squirt, clear a road, scatter a regiment."

During the Polish campaign in the autumn of 1939, the Luftwaffe fought against obsolete airplanes, mostly bi-planes with fixed landing wheels. Kettling speaks of the campaign in Poland as "lovely days" of excitement, and of "free hunting" against targets of opportunity.

Kettling also fought in the Norwegian campaign of early 1940. His Staffel had been ordered to an airfield that was thought to have been captured by German paratroops. But when Kettling and his unit arrived, they discovered that the field was still in British hands. Their Bf 110s were attacked by obsolete Gloster Gladiator biplanes, which shot down one of the Messerschmitts.

The airplanes were low on fuel, so they had no choice but to land. On the ground, Kettling and his radioman/gunner carried the rear machine gun out of the plane, "and started fighting like infantry." A short while later, a couple of Junkers troop carriers also landed; the troops they carried rescued the two fliers from the British army. This operation earned Kettling the Iron Cross.

But in spite of these encounters-or maybe because of them-war was still an adventure for Kettling. The Luftwaffe had not yet come up against a modern air force-airplanes that could compete with Messerschmitt fighters, flown by determined pilots. In the coming months, Kettling's opinion that war was "very easy," as well as the Luftwaffe's aircraft, pilots, and methods, would face its first real test.

If Hans Kettling thought war was an easy adventure, Ted Shipman hadn't thought about war at all. "We spent most of our time in tents, playing cards. Talking. There was no real emotion or apprehension for most of us. Awar was on, so what? That's what we had trained for. What's to worry about. It showed how little we know."

Shipman had been in the Royal Air Force for ten years by the time the Battle of Britain was approaching. He joined in 1930 because he was "tired of hoeing turnips" on his father's small farm. But memories of the First World War also influenced his decision to join. He remembered FE-2 bi-planes landing at a nearby aerodrome between 1914 and 1918, and had heard stories of two older cousins in the Royal Flying Corps.

Civilian instructors, not the RAF, taught him to fly. A fellow aircraftsman went to get a free test flight at a flying school; Shipman went along for company. When the instructor asked,

''How about you, too, son?" Shipman said yes. Six months later, he was awarded his "A" license.

Shipman did a bit of flying as part of his duties; he was personal fitter to an air commodore, and sometimes "took the stick" of the commodore's personal bi-plane. But he was not taken on as a pilot until 1935, when world events began to look ominous. Benito Mussolini, dictator of Fascist Italy, had invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and Adolf Hitler was making belligerent noises in Germany. The British Air Ministry were becoming increasingly concerned (unlike their American counterparts).

"I don't think anyone believed there was going to be another big war," Shipman said. "But there was enough going on in Europe for someone to think we ought to have a few more pilots." Shipman trained as a fighter pilot in obsolete bi-planes, like the Gloster Gladiator, and received instruction in obsolete tactics-flyng in tight "V" formation. The V, or ''vic," formation may have looked very impressive at an air show, but would prove lethal to British pilots in combat-emphasis was placed upon keeping tight formation and watching the flight leader, instead of looking out for the enemy.

In June 1939, however, conditions took a definite turn for the better-41 Squadron was equipped with the Supermarine Spitfire Mark I. These early Spitfires had their limitations, Shipman remembers. They only had "a single wooden propeller, and you had to pump up the wheels by hand. But it was marvelous. It gave you everything you loved about flying-and ten times more. As a fighting machine? No, no, no . . . we still didn't think we'd be using it for that. It was just a superb aeroplane to fly."

Although the situation over on the Continent was going from bad to worse, with Hitler making threats to invade both Poland and Czechoslovakia, the pilots of 41 Squadron carried on with their training, and tried not to think about what might happen. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, and Britain and France declared war two days later, nothing much changed. For the first few weeks, war was "a seamless continuation of the previous not-very real training." In October, however, reality revealed its unwanted presence in the form of a German patrol craft on the prowl.

Pilot Officer Shipman's flight scrambled to intercept the intruder over the North Sea, and was vectored to the area by the ground controller; "Suddenly, at 10 o'clock, this distant plane." Nobody had seen a German machine up to that time. Shipman led his section down to have a good look-"I was anxious about ID," and did not want to shoot down a British plane by mistake.

Changing from a peacetime mentality to a war mentality was not an easy transition, even for a fighter pilot. Firing eight Browning .303 caliber machine guns at a tow target was one thing; shooting at a real airplane, with real men inside of it, was something else again. P/O Shipman wanted to make very sure of his quarry before be pressed the firing button.

And, oh God, it was! One of them! The last thing I wanted to see was there-black and white crosses. Nothing else for it; I had to go to war.

I dropped behind him and gave him a real pasting. He started to go down in a long spin. The others then had a bash. We watched him go into the sea, saw several figures get into a dinghy, and radioed the position to base.

Shipman does not identify the type of aircraft that he and his flight shot down. He only added that he asked permission to visit the three surviving German crewmen in the hospital (and was refused permission). He didn't want to talk much about 41 Squadron's-and his own-first kill. "It was a big shock." he says.

Following this somewhat violent start, P/O Shipman and 41 Squadron had a quiet winter. Over Dunkirk, they also had a rather quiet time-Shipman flew seven sorties over the beaches, thinks that he saw one German plane, and never fired a shot. After Dunkirk, 41 Squadron were transferred to Catterick, in North Yorkshire. From Catterick, they flew patrols against intruding enemy bombers, and waited to be called down to the battle over southern England.

Shipman and his fellow pilots had confidence in themselves and in their Spitfires. But they were not overly eager to go down and join the battle-they had heard all about the losses. Shipman realized that he would have to go if called. "But jumping up and down for the chance? No."

Shipman was right about the losses suffered by Fighter Command-in July and August, the number of pilots who were killed and wounded was staggering. The RAF were pressing every pilot they could get into service to fill the vacancies. The Royal Navy transferred 75 pilots to Fighter Command. A few Army pilots, trained to fly unarmed reconnaissance aircraft, were also transferred to RAF fighter squadrons following an "accelerated"-meaning rushed-training course.

Fighter Command did manage to acquire some combat-seasoned pilots from countries that had been occupied by the Germans: Belgians, French, Czechs, and Poles. The problem was that there were so few of them-only 12 French pilots managed to escape to England, and only 29 Belgians got away.

But these pilots also had their drawbacks. Many were not accustomed to advanced fighters like the Spitfire and the Hurricane. Most had flown planes without retractable landing wheels-out-of-date bi-planes, which was one reason why the Luftwaffe enjoyed such great success. After giving an expert display of rolls, loops, and dives, these foreign pilots would sometimes wreck their planes when they forgot to put their wheels down before landing.

The language problem was another drawback. The Poles, for instance, were among the best, and most determined, pilots in Fighter Command. The only trouble was that they didn't speak any English; they didn't understand ground controllers, and could not be vectored to intercept an incoming flight of enemy aircraft. Before they could be classified as operational, the Poles would at least have to learn the basic rudiments of English. They would also have to learn flight jargon, such as "angels," "vector," ''bogey," and "bandit." Without the ability to communicate with ground control, the Poles would be as good as useless, for all their experience and determination.

Because of the desperate shortage of pilots, Fighter Command also decided to accept American volunteers. The Yanks might not have the combat experience of the Poles or the Czechs, but at least they spoke a language that was roughly similar to English. They could be vectored toward an incoming enemy bomber formation by ground control, and could sometimes even be understood when they spoke. (They might also prove useful as a propaganda device, to sway the opinion of neutral America.) The official records of the Royal Air Force list only seven Americans as having served with RAF Fighter command during the summer of 1940.

The seven "official" Americans in Fighter Command during the summer of 1940 are:

Pilot Officer Arthur Donahue: 64 Squadron;

Pilot Officer J.K. Haviland: 151 Squadron;

Pilot Officer W.M.L. Fiske: 601 Squadron;

Pilot Officer Vernon Keough: 609 Squadron;

Pilot Officer Phil Leckrone: 616 Squadron

Pilot Officer Andrew Mamedoff: 609 Squadron;

Pilot Officer Eugene Tobin: 609 Squadron

Flight Lieutenant James Davies was one American who is not included in the RAF's official records. Jimmy Davies was born in Bernardsville, New Jersey, in 1913, and attended Morristown High School. His family moved to Connecticut before he finished high school; Jimmy then went to the Gilbert School in Winstead. When he was about 18 or 19 years old, he and his parents moved again, this time to Bridgend in South Wales.

He couldn't quite decide what he wanted to do with himself-he studied radio at Cardiff College for a while, and "did this and that for a year or two." In 1936, he decided to join the Royal Air Force. He took a short service commission, and was posted to a fighter squadron. Davies flew bi-planes until just before the war broke out. In 1939, his squadron, 79 Squadron, was re-equipped with Hawker Hurricanes. By this time, Davies had been promoted twice, to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. (The U.S. Army Air Force equivalent is Captain.)

At the time, F/Lt. Davies and the rest of 79 Squadron were stationed at Biggin Hill aerodrome in Kent. In the coming Battle of Britain, Biggin Hill would acquire the dubious distinction of being one of the most active- and most frequently attacked-RAF stations. But at the beginning of the war, it was just another fighter base; its pilots and ground crews spent most of their time waiting for something to happen. Things first began to happen for 79 Squadron on 21 November. F/Lt. Davies was leading a section of four Hurricanes near Dover on that particular day, when a Dornier Do 17 "flying pencil" bomber was spotted at 12,000 feet, about 2,000 feet below the Hurricanes. No one had seen a German airplane up to that time, so "we went down carefully to make sure."

British fighters had already shot down other RAF aircraft on at least one occasion-on 6 September, a group of Spitfires destroyed two Hurricanes, thinking them Messerschmitts; and anti-aircraft gunners shot down a twin-engine RAF Blenheim. Nobody wanted to be responsible for another fiasco like that one.

It didn't take very long to recognize the intruding aircraft as a Dornier; its thin pencil of a fuselage was unmistakable. Davies went after him, got close behind him "and gave him three sharp bursts of fire." Another member of his section, a Sergeant Pilot Brown, also got in several good shots. The Dornier turned over on its back, began an inverted dive toward the Channel, and crashed into the water with a huge splash.

When Davies returned to Biggin Hill, he was handed a package-a bottle of champagne, compliments of the station commander. It had been 79 Squadron's first fight with a German aircraft, and they had won. The Dornier had also been the first enemy airplane destroyed over British home waters of the Second World War, and had been Biggin Hill's first German aircraft. "In those days, one German aircraft was something to celebrate," Davies said. During the coming months, Biggin Hill and its pilots would see hundreds of German aircraft; at the end of August 1940, the station itself would be attacked almost on a daily basis.

After spending a quiet winter, Davies was sent to France when German forces invaded the Low Countries in May 1940. His second victory came on 14 May, when he shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 110. His squadron was in France only for eleven days; they were withdrawn to England after covering the evacuation of British and French forces at Dunkirk. By the end of June, Davies had been credited with six enemy aircraft destroyed, and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. On the day that he was to have been presented with the DFC by George VI, 25 June 1940, Davies was himself shot down and killed.

Following the presentation ceremony at Biggin Hill that day, the King asked about the remaining DFC on the table. He was told about the expatriate American. A squadron mate of Davies thought that the King was "quite moved."

Davies' six enemy aircraft destroyed by the end of June 1940 would make him the first American ace of the war. American record books do not recognize him, however; his achievement, being the first American to destroy five or more enemy planes, seems to have been overlooked rather than snubbed. Which seems incredible, in light of Britain's attempts to convince the United States that the war was America's fight. Jimmy Davies was born in America, spent most of his life there, became the first American to win the Distinguished Flying Cross-and almost no mention was given either to him or his accomplishments. But there would be other opportunities, and other Americans, that would present themselves in the coming weeks; this time, the Ministry of Information would use their publicity value to the fullest advantage. (A great deal of time, energy, and effort-and money-has been expended over the question: Who was the first American killed in the Battle of Britain? F / Lt Davies was killed two weeks before the battle officially began, on 10 July 1940, yet very little mention is made of him.)

On 2 July 1940 OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, which is usually translated as High Command of the Armed Forces) issued this directive:

The Führer and Supreme commander has decided: That a landing in England is possible, providing that air superiority can be attained and certain other necessary conditions fulfilled. The date of commencement is still undecided. All preparations to begin immediately.

". . . provided that air superiority can be attained . . ." The beginning of history's first great air battle was just a week away. Its outcome would be decided by factors unheard of and undreamed of by leaders of previous wars.

'The German Army is the German people under arms' was the proud boast which had guided and inspired the soldiers of that Army since the creation of the Empire in 1871. As a declaration of faith it was as true under Hitler as it had been under the Kaisers.

The German Army which fought the Second World War was one of three armed services. Under the unity of command policy which Hitler introduced, these were not so much individual forces as partners in a tripartite organization. The Army still considered itself primus inter pares ('first among equals'), but was forced to accept that it was just a partner. Later, another service would be created, adding another partner to the tripartite group: the Waffen-SS. As that organization, which was not a national but a Nazi Party body, rose in numbers and influence, so did the Army diminish.

The Army, Navy and Air Force were under the authority of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht - OKW) whose component parts were the High Commands of the Army (Oberkommando des Heeres - OKH), of the Navy (Oberkommando der Marine - OKM) and of the Air Force (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe - OKL). The Waffen-SS, although under the aegis of Himmler's party organization, was also subordinate to both the OKW and OKH when its own divisions and corps were in the field.

The unified structure of the armed forces made it not only possible but very easy to transfer whole units from one service to another. In the section dealing with the 9th Mountain 'Gebirgs' Division, it will be seen that that division received reinforcements of men from the Luftwaffe's disbanded 'Boelcke' fighter squadron. In like fashion, the depleted ranks of the 7th SS Mountain Division in Jugoslavia were filled out with drafts taken from German Navy units in the Aegean, who had previously served with another SS Gebirgs Division. There were many similar examples of cross-service postings, particularly towards the end of the war. This was a very flexible system of operating, and indeed flexibility can be seen as one of the chief characteristics of the Wehrmacht. It was that flexibility which enabled commanders conducting operations to create battle groups (Kampfgruppen) to meet any military need which might arise. The commanders knew that the rank and file would fight with as much elan in a hastily created Kampfgruppe as they would in their parent units. The confidence of the generals was justified because the soldiers considered themselves to be not so much Prussian infantry, Saxon engineers, Austrian Panzermen or Bavarian gunners, but rather soldiers in the common cause of service to the German Fatherland.

That they had been conscripted into the service was less important to them than the fact that in the armed forces they had the opportunity to serve Germany and, for the overwhelming majority of them, this was an opportunity which was eagerly grasped. From Napoleonic days, conscription had been the means by which the ranks of the Army's regiments had been filled, and over the course of decades the average German man no longer saw the few years spent in the Army as servitude - which had been the case in feudal days - but as an honourable duty to his Fatherland. Conscription was abolished during the period of the post-Imperial Republic of Weimar (1918-33), and was replaced by a professional force of volunteers. These were soldiers in a weak Army whose potency had been eroded by the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. Those conditions not only forbade the Army to have tanks or heavy artillery, but also ordered the disbanding of its general staff, the Army's brain. Another Allied edict was that the Army's brawn, its soldiers, had to be reduced in number to just 100,000 men. That weakness in numbers coupled with lack of suitable weapons had forced the military leaders of Weimar Germany to rethink national strategy and to see their Army's future role as being wholly defensive. It is the measure of Hitler's success that within a few years he had eradicated the defeatist attitudes which those commanders had accepted as irrevocable for more than a decade.

Not that the Nazi Party had been alone in its efforts. Earlier than its attempts, Hans von Seeckt, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army from 1920 to 1926, sought covert ways through which the Army's potency could be increased and the restrictions of Versailles evaded. He realized that although the treaty limited the number of men who could serve in the Army, nothing had been laid down about the type of training they were to be given. From the volunteers who came forward to serve in the Army he selected the best, and set out to create from this body of hand-picked soldiers a force of leaders. To achieve this, each member of the rank and file was trained to take over the duties of the man immediately senior in rank to him, and the officers were sent to technical institutes and to universities, where they became familiar with modern techniques which _could be adapted for 4 military purposes. During Seeckt's period of office he created links with the Soviet Communist government, and in a secret agreement, the German Army and the embryo Luftwaffe were able to develop and practise on Soviet territory those battlefield techniques which later became known as 'Blitzkrieg'.

When Hitler and the National Socialist Party which he led came to power on 30 January 1933, the first moves were made towards fulfilling one of the main parts of the Nazi programme: 'We [the Nazi Party] demand the abolition of the mercenary army [of the Weimar republic] and its replacement by a national army of the people [one made up of conscripted soldiers]'. Hitler made good this pledge within two years and, by reintroducing conscription, convinced the German people that under him the Reich would be made strong again and its Army restored to its former place among the great military powers of Europe. With impressive speed, the Fuhrer raised the Army from the weak Weimar force of seven infantry divisions in 1933 to a mighty body of fifty-one divisions by 1939. That total consisted mainly of infantry formations, but also included five Panzer, four Light or Motorized and three Gebirgs Divisions.

To aid the expansion of the Army which Hitler demanded, the OKW relied upon an existing nationwide military framework. The Reich was organized territorially into Military Districts (Wehrkreise or Wehrbezirke - see map opposite, each of which was an administrative body for the corps, usually two in number, which were raised in its district. Those corps contained field and depot divisions as well as replacement regiments of infantry and artillery. In peacetime, the Wehrkreis was the highest level In the military hierarchy, and the corps was the senior military body within the Wehrkreis.

Following the outbreak of war, two major levels of Army hierarchy were set up: a Field Army, usually made up of two corps; and an Army Group, containing two Field Armies. Those major bodies had existed in peacetime, but only in embryo form. To support those major formations when they were raised for active service there were cadres of units, known as Army or Army Group Troops, which included heavy artillery, engineers, service units and similar administrative formations. Those various bodies were not on permanent attachment to any particular major formation, but lay in suspended animation until the OKW decided which Armies/Army Groups were to fight in a new war. Then, from the reservoir of support formations, the OKW would make a selection and appoint them to their new parent unit.

In the years preceding the Second World War, there were fifteen Wehrbezirke, each of which had a territorial affiliation. For example, Wehrkreis I In Konigsberg controlled the I and XXVI Corps, which between them raised and administered a number of divisions.

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With the reintroduction of conscription in 1935, plans were drawn up so that the confusion which had arisen in 1914 when General Mobilization was proclaimed could be avoided. When the mobilization orders of 1914 were issued, so many men reported in the early days that their numbers swamped the Army induction process. By 1938, the Third Reich had worked out its mobilization plans, and these were ready to be implemented. The most important was that Germany's future soldiers were to be inducted in 'waves' or annual classes: men of the same age who had acquired the same standard of pre-military training, either in the Hitler Youth or in the National Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst - RAD).

In the final year of peace, the mobilization plans were gradually introduced. Among the first groups to be conscripted were men of the oldest classes, who had already completed some form of military service and whose call-up was intended to give them a refresher training course. As the result of this slow and carefully controlled conscription, the Army was built up to fighting strength, both in men and formations, with no disruption to national life. The conscription scheme ran so well that in the first years of the war it was possible for men to be discharged from the service because of their occupation or on medical grounds. It had always been an accepted practice in Imperial times that students and others who were in reserved occupations could have their call-up deferred or even cancelled. The Nazi government continued that practice, and at the end of the campaign in France in 1940, Hitler even found it possible to demobilize a number of the men in the older 'waves'. That flexible system of conscription remained unchanged until Germany suffered a series of serious defeats on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Thereafter, not only were those men who had already been demobilized recalled to the colours, but both the lower and upper age limits to conscription were amended. In 1943, the failure of the German summer offensive at Kursk (Operation CITADEL) forced the Army onto the defensive, and the severe manpower losses which had been suffered compelled the en bloc transfer of Luftwaffe and Navy units into the Army and also into the SS, in order to maintain the strength of the Field Army.

These measures, stringent though they were, were not enough to cover the continuing losses, and the deteriorating situation forced Hitler to abandon earlier directives on exemptions. Even men who had been excused front-line service because they were the last sons of families or were the fathers of large families became eligible for conscription. Men who in earlier years would have been discharged on medical grounds were kept in the service and formed into battalions or even regiments of men with the same medical complaint or disability. Thus, Allied troops who invaded Normandy in June 1944 found whole formations of German soldiers with stomach complaints, and others who had hearing difficulties. Later in the war, increasingly stringent comb-outs of rear echelon military formations and of the civil population were able to produce a limited number of men for the front line, but the shortage could not be resolved even when the Volkssturm (the Nazi Party's levee en masse of civilians) was raised late in 1944.

It had been one of the German Army's most strongly held policies that only German citizens were eligible to serve in it, but in a dramatic change of policy, it was decided late in 1942 that foreign volunteers would also be permitted to enlist. This was a move that had already begun In the Waffen-SS, an organization which, not being bound by the Army's restrictive policy, had recruited aliens as early as 1940. The extent of that SS recruiting campaign can be seen in the fact that thirty-nine Waffen-SS divisions were raised. In this context, mention must be made of the differences in nomenclature of Waffen-SS units. The SS divisional titles described three types of men: national Germans (Reichsdeutsche - those born within the 1938 borders of the Reich); ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche - those living in foreign countries outside the 1938 borders); and foreign volunteers.

Reichsdeutsche formations had a simple description of name and type - Jager or Panzer. Volksdeutsche units carried the term 'Freiwillige' ('volunteer') in their titles (for example, the 7th SS Freiwillige Gebirgs Division 'Prinz Eugen'), while foreign units bore the description 'Waffen' ('weapon') in theirs. An example of this was the 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division of the SS 'Handschar' Croatian No.1. There was an exception to that rule in the 5th SS Panzer Division 'Viking', which was made up of neither Reichsdeutsche nor Volksdeutsche, but of foreigners (Norwegians, Danes and Dutch), and did not bear the distinction 'Freiwillige'. When the Army began to recruit foreigners, it restricted itself chiefly to the Asiatic and non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, who were formed into infantry divisions. Later in the war, a Cossack cavalry division was raised by the Army authorities. To some extent, the decline in the numbers of men holding the battle line could be overcome by arming the soldiers with newer weapons which had faster firing capabilities, so that the same volume of fire could be achieved using fewer soldiers. The advantage gained by equipping front-line units with those fast-firing guns was short-lived, for the Red Army's high command ordered massive increases in the weight and number of Soviet partisan attacks. To combat this uprising in the Army's rear area, whole divisions of German soldiers had to be taken from the battle line and put into action, a loss of manpower for which no faster-firing machine guns could compensate.

At this point it is necessary to explain one aspect in the wartime structure of the OKH. That force, which had been a single body in peacetime, divided upon mobilization, with one branch forming the Field Army and the second making up the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer). The tasks of the latter included training replacements for the Field Army, administration and unit documentation. This separation into field and replacement formations began at the level of regiment and extended up to that of corps. There was no such separation in the case of the largest formations: Armies or Army Groups. When hostilities commenced, the operational or fighting sections of the high command accompanied the Field Army, leaving behind in Germany the officers and the organization of the Replacement Army.

Each formation in the Field Army had its own smaller replacement unit (Ersatzeinheit). For example, an infantry regiment had as its Ersatzeinheit an infantry battalion which carried the same number as its own. That battalion gave long and thorough training to 12 the new intakes of men, and despatched them to the field unit when replacements were called for. In addition, it was to the Ersatzeinheit that the regiment's wounded, convalescents and those discharged from hospital were returned. The system of combat formations in the Field Army and a replacement unit in Germany to train the new soldiers worked very well until a period in the war was reached when, because of the manpower shortage, the partly trained men of Ersatz units were sent out on active service to fight in anti-partisan operations.

There was another administrative division in the Field Army. The German Army made a great distinction between the combat zone (Operationsgebiet), the home area (Heimatsgebiet) and a buffer zone known as the military administrative zone (Gebiet der Kriegsverwaltung), whose alternative name was the Occupied Territory. In addition, the Operationsgebiet was itself divided into a combat zone (Gefechtsgebiet) and the Rear Area (Riickwartiges Gebiet). To remove the burden of day-to-day administration from the senior commanders of fighting formations, the Rear Area was administered by units over whom the battle commander had little if any control. This separation of responsibilities demonstrated the clear distinction drawn by the German Army between the tasks and authority of the commander in the field and the tasks and responsibilities of the rest of the Army, particularly the Replacement Army.

Peter Shaw's model of a Class 52 (Austerity class) Locomotive

The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 was perhaps the most significant event in modern history. From the defeat of Germany, evolved the world we know today. Significantly the freedom we have to express our opinions and to debate topics such as this are the direct result of the actions of millions of brave men and women who fought to defeat Hitler's regime. We owe a great debt to the many who paid the ultimate sacrifice for what we take for granted today.

As much as the defeat of Germany was achieved by force of arms from the Allied nations, defeat also came from within. Germany was not adequately prepared for war in 1939, and the early victories were achieved through the relatively new tactics of Blitzkrieg, modern equipment, superb training and leadership, ineptitude of the enemy and plain good luck.

Significantly Germany's ill preparedness for war manifested itself in the first months of war and by December 1940 was readily apparent in the German transport system which was buckling under the demands of the German armed forces. This was no more apparent than with the Reichbahn, the German railways, an amalgamation of the former state railway systems.

The Reichbahn was forced to absorb a vast network of railways in varying condition, and locomotives and rolling stock that were often incompatible. As there were few common designs the new railway system was burdened by operational problems, increased and often duplicated costs and a maintenance headache of mammoth proportions.

Much of the plant and equipment was built in the late nineteenth century and the early 1900's and had not been modernized because of the Great War, the chaos of the Weimar republic and the Depression. As much as a massive modernization programme was begun, with a view of upgrading track and other facilities, the construction of standardized locomotives and rolling stock, it was not complete by the beginning of war. This problem grew as the war progressed as they advanced deeper into the Soviet Union. Because of the restricted loading gauge and the increased demands of the German forces, the Reichbahn was forced into a never ending cycle of building more locomotives and rolling stock to achieve the task.

With the invasion of the Soviet Union the demands on the railways reached crippling proportions, culminating in the coal shortage of winter 1941/1942. There was no shortage of coal, but a lack of coal wagons which had been appropriated by the Wehrmacht and due to the chaotic conditions at the railheads behind the front these wagons were simply tipped off the tracks to allow space for the following trains.

Equally problematic for the Germans were the loss of over 100,000 trucks and 200,000 horses between the opening of Barbarossa and March 1942. These losses were to have an impact against the chances of success some six months later at Stalingrad.

It was clear such a situation could not continue otherwise the rail system would soon collapse. Albert Speer (Minister for Armaments and Munitions Production) and Erhard Milch (Director of Air Armament&state secretary in the Air Ministry) were charged with setting the railways right, and with brutal efficiency they cleared out the railway administration, sacking the incompetent heads of the railways and throwing out the rule book. To alleviate some of the operational problems, longer and heavier trains were run at faster speeds. An accelerated programme of converting the Russian broad gauge system to the German standard gauge system, the construction of longer passing loops and new railway yards was set in motion.

Short term measures alleviated the crisis, but only a massive construction programme would provide a permanent solution. The effects of the enforced intervention was highly visible in 1943 with the construction of over 4,500 locomotives and nearly 52,000 freight wagons. As formidable as these figures may seem they were never enough to resolve the crisis that engulfed the Deutsche Reichsbahn from 1939 to 1945.

Rheinmetal Borsig were charged with building a family of Austerity class locomotives, all based on standardized designs. One of these locomotives was so successful over ten thousand were built and many remained in service until the end of steam operations in Europe.

All these measures were only partially or such successful as the demands from the various fronts, in particular the Eastern Front, continued to place undue strain on a system that was not designed for such traffic. To transport a fully equipped panzer division could require up to three hundred trains. Multiply that out over the entire Eastern front, coupled with the normal supply demands and it is easy to see why the German railways could not keep up with the demands of war.

In addition the railways had to compete for labour, cope with the burden of transporting Jews, which coincidentally often had priority over trains heading for the front. Until the bombing campaign against the railways intensified in 1943 the system held together. Most aiming points for these raids were on the town centres, where the central railway stations and yards were situated, so as the bombing tempo increased, so did the damage and disruption.

As much as the emergency measures freed up the traffic to and from the Eastern front it was obvious the chain of patched up railway lines leading to the railhead on the river Chir over 100 kilometers west of Stalingrad were incapable of supporting German forces. The track was not well ballasted or in good condition, slowing trains considerably. The Luftwaffe used four trains per day, but this was not enough and many supplies, especially fuel were flown into German held airbases. Further compounding the problems were a rail yard too small to cope with the traffic and the resulting congestion placed great strain on the largely horse drawn vehicles supplying German troops in Stalingrad.

This situation was compounded in late October 1942 when it was obvious the Soviets were preparing an offensive against the flanks of the German forces. To reinforce the 3rd Romanian army, Hitler ordered the 6th Panzer division with two infantry divisions to transfer from France on the 4th November. Nearly one thousand train loads were required for this move east and it was nearly one month later these forces arrived, long after the Soviet offensive had surrounded Paulus' 6th army.

The situation was hardly better in the buildup for Operation Citadel, with lengthy delays of moving the troops and equipment forward. On a smaller scale the sheer difficulties in transporting the new Tiger tanks to the front caused delays, that were only resolved with a combination of ingenuity, skill and a lot of sweat.

By mid 1943 the Allied bomber offensive was causing very real disruption for the railways. Although damage could be repaired relatively quickly by experienced crews, damage was becoming cumulative in some areas where bombing was frequent. Of added concern were the rising casualties amongst train crews, mechanical and maintenance staff along with the various administrative branches that kept the trains running. While the personal strength reached over one and a half million by the end of 1943, the replacement of skilled personal was not easy, as a consequence the standard of maintenance gradually declined and the accident rate which had been on the rise since the beginning of the war, worsened.

This was compounded in early 1944 when after the defeat of the Jagdwaffe in February-March, American fighters after completing escort duties were allowed to attack targets of opportunity. They were so successful in shooting up anything that moved, the Deutsche Reichsbahn reported in June the daily average number of trains wrecked in May by marauding Allied fighters was over forty trains per day! This loss rate was outstripping German production of locomotives and rolling stock, already in decline to the increasing demands of the German armed forces. Now repair crews had to range far and wide over the German countryside, clearing train wrecks and repairing track. The destruction of railway bridges became a further dislocation as these were harder to repair. Another grave concern was the massive loss of experienced train crews, placing further strain on the overburdened system. A worse situation existed in the occupied countries, especially France where the railway system had been damaged beyond repair by Allied airpower in preparation for the D-Day landings. Without the railways the German army was forced to endure lengthy and dangerous road marches attempting to reach the battlefronts.

Fortunately for the Deutsche Reichsbahn Allied air support for the invading forces diverted much airpower away from German targets, however day and night bombing of German cities continued to pummel the railway system. Though the railways operated right till the collapse of the Third Reich, the ability to adequately supply German armed forces in the chaos of the collapse was no fault of the railway crews and staff who performed Herculean efforts to keep the trains running.

The German railways, like German industry was not prepared for war in 1939, and incompetence and poor planning led to the crisis of early 1942. The efforts to alleviate the situation, while tackled with vigour and considerable expense would never make up the shortfalls of the early war years, ensuring the German armed forces could never be adequately supplied to fight a protracted war.

A common factor soon appeared, especially on the Western front, where German armoured columns were forced to drive to the battlefronts because the railways were no longer operational.

By war's end the German railways were a barely functioning shambles, though some services were still operating remarkably efficiently. With the flow of spare parts, replacement troops, fuel, munitions and rations slowed to a trickle by the collapse of the railways the effectiveness of German forces decreased dramatically.

Six years earlier the German railways were hard pressed to supply Germany's war needs and they never were able to. Without an adequate supply chain, no nation can win a war.

The American railroad system

The American railroad system was blessed with a generous loading gauge and consequently with fewer train movements could move greater tonnage. Thus America won the tonnage per mile war, which was to be a critical factor in 1944.

Another factor was the wear and tear on track and equipment. All combatants during the war experienced a decline in the efficiency of their railway systems under the increased traffic demands, America included. By the end of the war, many US railroads were in a bad way from these demands. Consequently in the immediate post war period many railroads were forced to spend heavily on track and plant repairs, replacement of locomotives and rolling stock without any assistance from the US government which was spending its tax dollars on airports and highways.

Consequently some railroads went into insolvency or were forced to amalgamate with their competitors. The replacement of worn out engines was another problem and proved to be prohibitive. Companies were faced with replacing large numbers of steam locomotives, not a cheap option by any stretch of the imagination. Diesel locomotives were a cheap option and the railroads embarked on a massive dieselization programme. Unfortunately for the railroads a lot of the first generation diesels weren't much good and they were forced to replace them within ten years. This was an expense many companies could not afford, indirectly leading to more bankruptcies and forced amalgamation of some railroads.

In consequence the demands of America's war effort had large scale and long terms effects on the US railroads and that was without the dropping of one bomb on the US mainland.

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The take-off signal flashed in the darkness and the sound of aero-engines rose to a roar as the first three Ju 52s began to move across the airfield. They did so more sluggishly than usual, for each dragged a heavy burden-a second aircraft without engines: a glider!

As the tow-rope grew taut the latter jerked forward and jolted faster and faster down the runway. Then, as the towing craft left the ground, the glider pilot drew the stick carefully towards him, and the rumbling of his under- carriage grew suddenly silent. Seconds later the glider was sweeping noiselessly over hedges and fences and gaining height behind its Ju 52. The difficult towed take-off had been accomplished.

The time was 04.30 on May 10, 1940. From Cologne's two airfields, Ostheim on the right bank of the Rhine, Butzweilerhof on the left, sections of three Ju 52s were taking off at thirty second intervals, each towing a glider. Becoming airborne, they steered for a point above the green belt to the south of the city, there to thread themselves to a string of lights that stretched towards Aachen. Within a few minutes forty-one Ju 52s and forty-one gliders were on their way.

The die had been cast for one of the most audacious enterprises in the annals of war: the assault on the Belgian frontier fortress of Eben Emael, and the three bridges to the north-west leading over the deep Albert Canal-the keypoints of the Belgian defence system to the east.

In each of the forty-one gliders a team of parachutists sat astride the central beam. According to their appointed task their number varied between eight and twelve, equipped with weapons and explosives. Every soldier knew exactly what his job was once the target was reached. They had been rehearsing the operation, initially with boxes of sand and models, since November 1939.

They belonged to "Assault Detachment Koch". Ever since this unit had reached its training base at Hildesheim, it had been hermetically sealed off from the outside world. No leave or exeats had been granted, their mail was strictly censored, speech with members of other units forbidden.

Each soldier had signed a declaration : "I am aware that I shall risk sentence of death should I, by intent or carelessness, make known to another person by spoken word, text or illustration anything concerning the base at which I am serving."

Two men were, in fact, sentenced to death for quite trifling lapses, and only reprieved after the operation had succeeded. Obviously its success, and there- by the lives of the paratroops, depended on the adversary having no inkling of its imminence. Secrecy was carried so far that while the men knew the details of each other's roles by heart, they only discovered each other's names when all was over.

Theory was succeeded by practical exercises by day, by night, and in every kind of weather. Around Christmas time the operation was rehearsed against the Czech fortified emplacements in the Altvater district of the Sudetenland.

"We developed a healthy respect for what lay ahead of us," reported First-Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig, leader of the parachute sapper platoon which was due to take on the Eben Emael fortifications single-handed. "But after a while our confidence reached the stage where we, the attackers, believed our position outside on the breastworks safer than that of the defenders inside."

Outside on the breastworks . . . but now did they propose to get that far?

The construction of the fortress, like that of the Albert Canal itself, dated from the early 'thirties. Forming the northern bastion of the Lüttich (Liège) defences, it was situated just three miles south of Maastricht, in a salient hard by the Belgian-Dutch frontier. In that position it dominated the Canal, the strategic importance of which was plain: any aggressor advancing along the line Aachen-Maastricht-Brussels would have to cross it. The defence had made preparations so that all its bridges could be blown at a moment's notice.

The fortifications themselves were embedded in a hilly plateau, and ex- tended for 900 yards north and south, 700 yards east and west. The individual emplacements were scattered, seemingly at random, over a five-cornered area (see plate following page 96). In fact, with their artillery casemates, armoured rotating cupolas carrying 75-mm and 120-mm guns, plus anti-aircraft, anti- tank and heavy machine-gun positions, they constituted a shrewdly planned defence system. The different sectors of the complex were connected by underground tunnels totalling nearly three miles in length.

The fortress seemed all but impregnable. On its long north-eastern flank was an almost sheer drop of 120 feet down to the Canal. The same applied to the north-west, with a similar drop to a canal cut. To the south it was protected artificially-by wide anti-tank ditches and a twenty-foot-high wall. On all sides it was additionally protected by concrete pillboxes let into the sides of the walls or cuttings, which bristled with searchlights, 60-mm anti- tank guns and heavy machine-guns. Any enemy attempt to get into the place seemed doomed to failure.

The Belgians had foreseen every possibility but one: that the enemy might drop out of the sky right amongst the casemates and gun turrets. Now this enemy was already on his way. By 04.35 all the forty-one Ju 52s were air- borne. Despite the darkness and the heavily laden gliders behind them there had not been a single hitch.

Captain Koch had divided his assault force into four detachments, as follows:

1. "Granite" under First-Lieutenant Witzig, eighty-five men with small arms and two and a half tons of explosives embarked in eleven gliders. Target: Eben Emael fortifications. Mission: to put outer elements out of action and hold till relieved by Army Sapper Battalion 51.

2. "Concrete" under Lieutenant Schacht. Ninety-six men and command staff embarked in eleven gliders. Target : high concrete bridge over Albert Canal at Vroenhoven. Mission: to prevent bridge being blown, form and secure bridgeheads pending arrival of army troops.

3. "Steel" under First-Lieutenant Altmann. Ninety-two men embarked in nine gliders. Target: steel bridge of Veldwezelt, 33⁄4 miles NW of Eben Emael. Mission: as for "Concrete".

4. "Iron" under Lieutenant Schächter. Ninety men embarked in ten gliders. Target: bridge at Kanne. Mission : again as for "Concrete".

Rendezvous was duly made between the two groups of aircraft, and all set course for the west, following the line of beacons. The first was a fire kindled at a crossroads near Efferen, the second a searchlight three miles further on at Frechen. As the aircraft approached one beacon, the next, and often the next but one, became visible ahead. Navigation, despite the dark night, was there- fore no problem at least as far as the pre-ordained unhitching point at Aachen. Yet for one aircraft-the one towing the last glider of the "Granite" detachment-things went wrong while still south of Cologne.

Just ahead and to starboard its pilot suddenly noticed the blue exhaust flames of another machine on a collision course. There was only one thing to do: push his Ju 52 into a dive. But he had, of course, a glider in tow! The latter's pilot, Corporal Pilz, tried frantically to equalise the strain, but within seconds his cockpit was lashed as with a whip as the towing cable parted. As Pilz pulled out of the dive the sound of their mother aircraft died rapidly away and suddenly all was strangely silent.

The seven occupants then glided back to Cologne-one of them the very man who was supposed to lead the assault on the Eben Emael fortress, First- Lieutenant Witzig. Pilz just managed to clear the Rhine, then set the glider softly down in a meadow. What now?

Climbing out, Witzig at once ordered his men to convert the meadow into an airstrip by clearing all fences and other obstacles. "I will try to get hold of another towing plane," he said.

Running to the nearest road he stopped a car and within twenty minutes was once again at Cologne-Ostheim airfield. But not a single Ju 52 was left. He had to get on the 'phone and ask for one from Gutersloh. It would take time. Looking at his watch he saw it was 05.05. In twenty minutes his detachment was due to land on the fortress plateau. Meanwhile the Ju 52 squadrons, with their gliders behind them, droned westwards, climbing steadily. Every detail of their flight had been worked out in advance. The line of beacons to the German frontier at Aachen was forty-five miles long. By then the aircraft were scheduled to reach a height of 8,500 feet: a flight of thirty-one minutes, assuming the wind had been correctly estimated.

Squatting in their gliders, the men of detachment "Granite" had no idea that their leader had already dropped out of the procession. For the moment it was not all that important. Each section had its own special job to do, and each glider pilot knew at exactly which point of the elongated plateau he had to land: behind which emplacement, beside which gun turret, within a margin of ten to twenty yards.

It would moreover have been bad planning if the loss of individual gliders had not been provided for. As it was, each section leader's orders included directions as to what additional tasks his team would have to perform in the event of neighbouring sections failing to land.

Nor was Witzig's glider the only one to drop out. Some twenty minutes later that carrying No. 2 Section had just passed the beacon at Luchenberg when the Ju 52 in front waggled its wings. The glider pilot, Corporal Brendenbeck, thought he was "seeing things", especially when the plane also blinked its position lights. It was the signal to unhitch! Seconds later the glider had done so-all thanks to a stupid misunderstanding. It was only half way to its target, and with an altitude of less than 5,000 feet there was no longer a hope of reaching the frontier.

The glider put down in a field near Düren. Springing out, its men requisitioned cars and in the first light of day sped towards the frontier, which the Army at this time was due to cross.

That left "Granite" with only nine gliders still flying. Sooner than expected the searchlight marking the end of the line of beacons came into view ahead. Situated on the Vetschauer Berg north-west of Aachen-Laurensberg, it also marked the point at which the gliders were to unhitch. After that they would reach the Maastricht salient in a glide, their approach unbetrayed by the noise of the towing aircraft's engines.

But in fact they were ten minutes too early. The following wind had proved stronger than the Met. men had predicted, and for this reason they had also not reached the pre-ordained height of 8,500 feet, which would enable them to fly direct to their target at a gliding angle of one in twelve. Now they were some 1,500 feet too low. Lieutenant Schacht, leader of "Concrete" detachment, wrote in his operations report: "For some undisclosed reason the towing squadron brought us further on over Dutch territory. Only when we were some way between the frontier and Maastricht did we unhitch."

Obviously the idea was to bring the gliders up to something like the de- creed altitude. But if this move contributed to the security of the force in one way, it certainly hazarded it in another. For now the droning of the Junkers engines alerted the Dutch and Belgian defence.

The time was shortly after 05.00 hours-nearly half an hour still before Hitler's main offensive against the West was due to open. Though eight to ten minutes ahead of time, owing to the wind, the gliders needed, in fact, another twelve to fourteen to bring them over the target. At five minutes before zero hour these silent birds of prey were to swoop down amongst the pill- boxes of the Canal bridges and the fortress... before any other shot was fired. But now the element of surprise seemed to have been lost.

At last the gliders were set free, and the noise of their mother aircraft died away in the distance. But the Dutch flak was now on its toes, and opened fire on the gliders before they reached Maastricht. The little red balls came up like toys, amongst which the pilots dodged about in avoiding action, happy that they had sufficient height to do so. None was hit, but the long and care- fully guarded secret of their existence was now irrevocably exposed.

As long ago as 1932 the Rhön-Rossitten-Gesellschaft had constructed a wide wing-span glider designed for making meteorological measurements at high altitude. The following year, taken over by the newly established German Institute for Gliding Research (DFS) at Darmstadt-Griesheim, this flying observatory-known as "Obs"-was used for the first gliding courses under Peter Riedel, Will Hubert, and Heini Dittmar. It was tested for the first time in tow by Hanna Reitsch, later to become one of the world's best known women pilots, behind a Ju 52.

Ernst Udet soon got wind of the project and went to inspect the "Obs" at Darmstadt. He at once recognised a possible military application. Could not large gliders like this be used for bringing up supplies to the front line, or in support of a unit that had become surrounded? Perhaps it could even operate as a kind of modern Trojan horse by landing soldiers unnoticed be- hind the enemy's back.

Udet, in 1933, was still a civilian, and not yet a member of the new camouflaged Luftwaffe. 'But he informed his comrade of World War I, Ritter von Greim, about the "Obs", and shortly afterwards the Institute received a con- tract to build a military version. The prototype, under the designation DFS 230, duly emerged under the direction of engineer Hans Jacobs. The "assault glider" of World War II fame was thus already born.

Series production started in 1937 at the Gothaer vehicle factory. Its wings were high-set and braced, its box-shaped fuselage was of steel covered with canvas, and its undercarriage jettisonable: the landing was made on a stout central skid. This was another mark of Udet's influence: as early as the twenties he had made some venturesome landings on Alpine glaciers with a ski- undercarriage.

The unladen weight of the assault glider was only 16 cwt, and nearly 18 cwt could be loaded-equivalent often men plus their weapons.

By autumn 1938 Major-General Student's top-secret airborne force included a small glider-assault commando under Lieutenant Kiess. Tests had shown that such a method of surprise attack on a well-defended point had a better chance of success than parachute troops. In the latter case not only was surprise betrayed by the noise of the transport aircraft's engines, but even if the troops jumped from the minimum height of three hundred feet they still swayed defenselessly in the air for fifteen seconds. Further, even the minimum time of seven seconds to get clear of the aircraft spread them out on the ground over a distance of about 300 yards. Precious minutes were then lost freeing themselves of their parachutes, reassembling, and finding their weapon containers.

With gliders, on the other hand, surprise was complete thanks to their uncannily silent approach. Well-trained pilots could put them down within twenty yards of any point. The men were out in no time through the broad hatch at the side, complete with weapons, and formed a compact combat group from the start. The only restrictions were that the landing had to await first light, and the area had to be known in advance.

It was this dictate of time that nearly caused the whole Albert Canal and Eben Emael operations to miscarry. For the Army supreme commander proposed to launch the opening attack of the western campaign at 03.00 hours, in darkness. Against this Koch argued that his detachment must make its own assault at least simultaneously with the main one, and preferably a few minutes earlier. And before dawn this was impossible.

At that point Hitler himself intervened and fixed zero hour at "sunrise minus 30 minutes". Numerous test flights had shown that to be the earliest moment at which the glider pilots would have enough visibility.

So it was that the whole German Army had to take its time from a handful of "adventurers" who had the presumption to suppose that they could subdue one of the world's most impregnable fortresses from the air.

At 03.10 hours on May 10th the field telephone jangled at the command post of Major Jottrand, who was in charge of the Eben Emael fortifications. The 7th Belgian Infantry Division, holding the Albert Canal sector, imposed an increased state of alert. Jottrand ordered his 1,200-strong garrison to action stations. Sourly, for the umpteenth time, men stared out from the gun turrets into the night, watching once again for the German advance.

For two hours all remained still. But then, as the new day dawned, there came from the direction of Maastricht in Holland the sound of concentrated anti-aircraft fire. On Position No. 29, on the south-east boundary of the fortress, the Belgian bombardiers raised their own anti-aircraft weapons. Were the German bombers on the way? Was the fortress their objective? Listen as they might, the men could hear no sound of engines.

Suddenly from the east great silent phantoms were swooping down. Low already, they seemed to be about to land: three, six, nine of them. Lowering the barrels of their guns, the Belgians let fly. But next moment one of the "great bats" was immediately over them-no, right amongst them!

Corporal Lange set his glider down right on the enemy position, severing a machine-gun with one wing and dragging it along. With a tearing crunch the glider came to rest. As the door flew open, Sergeant Haug, in command of Section 5, loosed off a burst from his machine-pistol, and hand-grenades pelted into the position. The Belgians held up their hands.

Three men of Haug's section scampered across the intervening hundred yards towards Position 23, an armoured gun turret. Within one minute all the remaining nine gliders had landed at their appointed spots in the face of machine-gun fire from every quarter, and the men had sprung out to fulfill their appointed duties.

Section 4's glider struck the ground hard about 100 yards from Position 19, an anti-tank and machine-gun emplacement with embrasures facing north and south. Noting that the latter were closed, Sergeant Wenzel ran directly up to them and flung a 2-lb. charge through the periscope aperture in the turret. The Belgian machine-guns chattered blindly into the void. Thereupon Wenzel's men fixed their secret weapon, a 100-lb. hollow charge, on the observation turret and ignited it. But the armour was too thick for the charge to penetrate: the turret merely became seamed with small cracks, as in dry earth. Finally they blew an entry through the embrasures, finding all weapons destroyed and the gunners dead.

Eighty yards farther to the north Sections 6 and 7 under Corporals Harlos and Heinemann had been "sold a dummy". Positions 15 and 16-especially strong ones according to the air pictures-just did not exist. Their "15-foot armoured cupolas" were made of tin. These sections would have been much more useful further south. There all hell had broken loose at Position 25, which was merely an old tool shed used as quarters. The Belgians within it rose to the occasion better than those behind armour, spraying the Germans all round with machine-gun fire. One casualty was Corporal Unger, leader of Section 8, which had already blown up the twin-gun cupola of Position 31.

Sections 1 and 3, under N.C.O.s Niedermeier and Arent, put out of action the six guns of artillery casements 12 and 18. Within ten minutes of "Granite" detachment's landing ten positions had been destroyed or badly crippled. But though the fortress had lost most of its artillery, it had not yet fallen. The pillboxes set deep in the boundary walls and cuttings could not be got at from above. Observing correctly that there were only some seventy Germans on the whole plateau, the Belgian commander, Major Jottrand, ordered adjoining artillery batteries to open fire on his own fort.

As a result the Germans had themselves to seek cover in the positions they had already subdued. Going over to defence, they had to hold on till the German Army arrived. At 08.30 there was an unexpected occurrence when an additional glider swooped down and landed hard by Position 19, in which Sergeant Wenzel had set up the detachment command post. Out sprang First-Lieutenant Witzig. The replacement Ju 52 he had ordered had succeeded in towing his glider off the meadow near Cologne, and now he could belatedly take charge.

There was still plenty to do. Recouping their supplies of explosives from containers now dropped by Heinkel 111s, the men turned again to the gun positions which had not previously been fully dealt with. 2-lb. charges now tore the barrels apart. Sappers penetrated deep inside the positions and blew up the connecting tunnels. Others tried to reach the vital Position 17, set in the 120-foot wall commanding the canal, by suspending charges on cords.

Meanwhile hours passed, as the detachment waited in vain for the Army relief force, Engineer Battalion 51. Witzig was in radio contact both with its leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Mikosch, and with his own chief, Captain Koch at the Vroenhoven bridgehead. Mikosch could only make slow progress. The enemy had successfully blown the Maastricht bridges and indeed the one over the Albert Canal at Kanne-the direct connection between Maastricht and Eben Emael. It had collapsed at the very moment "Iron" detachment's gliders approached to land.

On the other hand the landings at Vroenhoven and Veldwezelt had succeeded, and both bridges were intact in the hands of the "Concrete" and "Steel" detachments. Throughout the day all three bridgeheads were under heavy Belgian fire. But they held-not least thanks to the covering fire provided by the 88-mm batteries of Flak Battalion "Aldinger" and constant attacks by the old Henschel Hs 123s of II/LG 2 and Ju 87s of StG 2.

In the course of the afternoon these three detachments were at last relieved by forward elements of the German Army. Only "Granite" at Eben Emael had still to hang on right through the night. By 07.00 the following morning an assault party of the engineer battalion had fought its way through and was greeted with loud rejoicing. At noon the remaining fortified positions were assaulted, then at 13.15 the notes of a trumpet rose above the din. It came from Position 3 at the entrance gate to the west. An officer with a flag of truce appeared, intimating that the commander, Major Jottrand, now wished to surrender.

Eben Emael had fallen. 1,200 Belgian soldiers emerged into the light of day from the underground passages and gave themselves up. In the surface positions they had lost twenty men. The casualties of "Granite" detachment numbered six dead and twenty wounded.

One story remains to be told. The Ju 52s, having shed the gliders of "Assault Detachment Koch", returned to Germany and dropped their towing cables at a prearranged collection point. Then they turned once more westwards to carry out their second mission. Passing high over the battle- field of Eben Emael they flew on deep into Belgium. Then, twenty-five miles west of the Albert Canal they descended. Their doors opened and 200 white mushrooms went sailing down from the sky. As soon as they reached the ground, the sound of battle could be heard. For better or worse the Belgians had turned to confront the new enemy in their rear.

But for once the Germans did not attack. On reaching them the Belgians discovered the reason: the "paratroops" lay still entangled in their 'chutes. They were not men at all, but straw dummies in German uniform armed with self-igniting charges of explosive to imitate the sound of firing. As a decoy raid, it certainly contributed to the enemy's confusion.

Berlin, 31 August 1939

SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ARMED FORCES MOST SECRET

1. Now that all the political possibilities of disposing by peaceful means of a situation on the Eastern Frontier which is intolerable for Germany are exhausted, I have determined a solution by force.

2. The attack on Poland is to be carried out in accordance with the preparations made for Case White, with the alterations which result, where the Army is concerned, from the fact that it has in the meantime almost completed it. dispositions; Allotment of tasks and the operational target remain unchanged.

Date of attack: September 1, 1939.

Time of attack: 4:45 A.M. This timing also applies to the operation at Gdynia, Bay of Danzig and the Dirschau Bridge.

3. In the West it is important that the responsibility for the opening of hostilities should rest squarely on England and France. For the time being insignificant frontier violations should be met by purely local action.

The neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, to which we have given assurances, must be scrupulously observed.

On land, the German Western Frontier is not to be crossed without my express permission. At sea, the same applies for all warlike actions or actions which could be regarded as such.

4. If Britain and France open hostilities against Germany, it is the task of the Wehrmacht formations operating in the West to conserve their forces as much as possible and thus maintain the conditions for a victorious conclusion of the Operations against Poland. Within these limits enemy forces and their military-economic resources are to be damaged as much as possible. Orders to go over to the attack I reserve, in any case, to myself.

The Army will hold the West Wall and make preparations to prevent its being outflanked in the north through violation of Belgian or Dutch territory by the Western powers . . .

The Navy will carry on warfare against merchant shipping, directed mainly at England . . . The Air Force is, in the first place, to prevent the French and British Air Forces from attacking the German Army and the German Lebensraum.

In conducting the war against England, preparations are to be made for the use of the Luftwaffe in disrupting British supplies by sea, the armaments industry, and the transport of troops to France. A favorable opportunity is to be taken for an effective attack on massed British naval units, especially against battleships and aircraft carriers. Attacks against London are reserved for my decision.

Preparations are to be made for attacks against the British mainland, bearing in mind that partial success with insufficient forces is in all circumstances to be avoided.

ADOLF HITLER

Wolfram Wette. _The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality_. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, preface by Peter Fritzsche, and foreword by Manfred Messerschmidt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. xix + 372 pp. Abbreviations, notes, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-02213-3.

Reviewed for H-German by Donald S. Detwiler, Department of History,

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

New Light on the Darkest Chapter in German Military History

For over a generation after the Second World War, German atrocities in western Poland, the Balkans and the Soviet Union were generally attributed to the SS. The German Army was widely regarded as having refrained from actions contrary to the laws of war. However, the army's role came under increasingly critical scrutiny during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979, the Military History Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Federal Republic of Germany began publication of its projected ten-volume history of the war, a series providing a peerlessly objective, comprehensive and authoritative account of _Germany and the Second World War_.[1] The first three volumes, on the origins and early phases of the conflict, revealed the army's full complicity in planning and executing a ruthless war of aggression, and the fourth volume, on the background and course of the war against the Soviet Union through early 1942, documented the participation of the army in an unprecedented war of annihilation. The publication of this volume, reissued as an affordable paperback, triggered outrage in some German circles-especially among those who saw the Cold War as a virtual extension of their country's heroic but tragically unsuccessful anti-communist crusade against the Soviet Union.[2] But the controversy over this 1,172-page monument of historical scholarship did not engage the general public, nor did increasingly critical works published during the following years. A fundamental change in German public opinion came only in the 1990s, with the traveling Wehrmacht Exhibition of photographs assembled by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, which illustrated the German Army's involvement in atrocities previously attributed to the SS and its auxiliaries.

In this fine work, Wolfram Wette explains how the German Army came to play its terrible role in the East, how that role was downplayed or denied during the postwar period, and how it has recently become more widely acknowledged in Germany. His approach is clearly indicated by the subtitle of the original German edition: _Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden_.[3] To understand why the German army's senior generals were prepared to engage in an unprecedented war of extermination--something utterly contrary to the law of war and their own military tradition--the book begins with an analysis of the German perception of Russia since the beginning of the twentieth century and then shows how, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the German defeat in the First World War, ideologically radical nationalists conflated anti-communism and antisemitism into the sinister image of Jewish-Bolshevism--a conception Adolf Hitler adopted and intensified, but by no means invented.[4] Wette writes that in the course of the 1920s and 1930s, the perception of the Soviet Union as a mortal threat came to be accepted by most of the leaders of the German Army, so that, by spring 1941, those with misgivings about Hitler's impending attack on Russia were isolated and "unable to change the course of official policy in any phase of the war" (p. 23).

Turning to antisemitism in the German military, Wette describes antisemitic bias in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Prussian officer corps. Jews did not receive regular or (after 1885) even reserve officers' commissions in the Prussian Army (though they occasionally did in the Bavarian and Saxon armies). The traditional antisemitism of the nineteenth century was confessional rather than racial; persons of Jewish descent whose forebears had adopted Christianity and become assimilated into German society-like the family of Fritz-Erich von Lewinski, who took the name Erich von Manstein by adoption-were not subject to the discrimination endured by Jewish relatives (pp. 74-75). By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a radical variant of racial antisemitism emerged, based on racial ideology. It found increasing acceptance in the German Army during World War I, as illustrated by the notorious Jewish census of autumn 1916: the Prussian minister of war ordered statistics to be gathered on the number of Jewish soldiers serving in the Prussian Army. The results belied the antisemites' assumption that the Jews were not doing their part, so the findings were not released during the war. Only later did it become known that the statistics demonstrated that, proportionally, as many Jews bore arms during the war as non-Jews (p. 37). But the rumors generated by the Jewish census reinforced the tide of racial antisemitism, which, after Germany's defeat, was intensified by allegations by right-wing politicians and former military leaders. General Erich Ludendorff, former chief of staff in the German Army's supreme command, was among the most conspicuous proponents of the myth that Jews joined with socialists and Bolsheviks to undermine the war effort, with the consequence that Germany had in fact not been defeated at the front, but stabbed in the back. It was thus no accident, Wette notes, that when Hitler emerged with his allegation that Jews and Bolsheviks were Germany's most dangerous enemies, Ludendorff joined him in the attempt to overthrow the republican government in 1923 and, after its failure, ran for and was elected to the Reichstag, where he served as a National Socialist deputy until 1928. Wette recounts that during the period 1918-33, antisemitism persisted in the German Army, that militarism flourished among veterans' groups and patriotic associations and that fanatical nationalism and racial antisemitism led to a wave of assassinations. In 1925 widespread respect for the military was reflected by the election as president of the aged Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. When Hitler became head of state and supreme commander of the Armed Forces upon Hindenburg's death, its members promptly took a solemn oath of obedience to him personally.

Within less than a year, well before the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, the commanding general of the German Army, Baron Werner von Fritsch, directed that officers should marry only women of "Aryan" descent. Early in 1939, the High Command of the Wehrmacht began an indoctrination program for the rank and file of all three service branches. One instructional text circulated among the troops was a vitriolic diatribe against the Jews, rehashing antisemitic propaganda since the Jewish census of 1916, and concluding that the struggle against Judaism was necessary in the quest "for a new and more just world order" (pp. 84-88). The ideological solidarity reflected in Fritsch's antisemitism and the adoption of this training program did not mean that there was no friction between Hitler and his generals during the 1930s. "Members of the military elite expressed doubts about Hitler's radical war strategy," Wette writes, "as General Ludwig Beck did, for example, in 1938" (p. 153). Shortly after the war began, protest arose from two senior generals "against the liquidations carried out by the SS forces that had marched into Poland with the German army" (p. 101).[5] In Serbia, on the other hand (invaded in spring 1941), Wette points out, the German Army took matters into its own hands, killing thousands and "disguising the measure as the 'execution of hostages'" (p. 103). All of Serbia's Jews were dead within a year.

However, the crucial test of the unconditional loyalty of the German military leaders to Hitler and his radical ideological goals was to come with the campaign against the Soviet Union. Twelve weeks before the attack, Hitler summoned to the Reich chancellery the approximately 250 generals commanding the three-million-man force that would invade Russia. In an almost two-and-a-half hour speech he made it clear that the forthcoming struggle, code-named Operation Barbarossa, would be drastically different from the war in the West. The Wehrmacht was to ignore the traditional comradeship-in-arms between soldiers of opposing armies, for this was to be a war of annihilation with the goal of exterminating the "Bolshevist commissars and the Communist intelligentsia" (p. 91).

Wette writes that in the postwar trial of the German High Command at Nuremberg, participants in Hitler's conference testified that commanders had afterwards protested that Hitler's planned extermination would violate their soldierly principles and undermine discipline, whereupon Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army, had agreed to convey their misgivings to higher authority and had actually tried to bring about a change in policy through the Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, Wilhelm Keitel, but did not succeed (p. 92). Although research on this episode in the 1960s led to the testimony in question being discounted as self-exculpatory, further study at the Military History Research Institute in Freiburg during the 1970s and 1980s confirmed that there had indeed been objections, even though they had not deterred the preparation by the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) and the High Command of the Army (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH) of a series of orders subsequently judged to have been criminal.[6] On April 28, 1941, the OKH ordered army collaboration with the SS in the campaign: special SS units had sole responsibility for carrying out their missions, but were under the authority of the army with respect to marching orders, food and shelter. In other words, the German Army was to cooperate in carrying out the kind of mission against which two generals had bitterly protested in Poland in 1939 and about which some expressed misgivings following Hitler's conference. Hitler's decree of May 13 on the exercise of court-martial jurisdiction in the area of Barbarossa licensed such harsh conduct toward civilians that German soldiers knew they could treat civilians as they pleased without punishment. On May 19, the OKW called upon soldiers to eliminate all resistance ruthlessly, particularly Bolshevik agitators, partisans, saboteurs and Jews (p. 94). And an OKW order of June 6 with an OKH supplement of June 8 directed that political commissars should be summarily shot.

Among concrete cases of Wehrmacht involvement in massacres were two in the early months of the Russian campaign near Kiev, in the area controlled by Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau's Sixth Army, accompanied by SS Special Command 4a under SS-Colonel Paul Blobel (p. 113). The circumstances of the August 1941 massacre are documented because of futile efforts to prevent it by a German Army staff officer. On August 20, 1941, in Belaya Tserkov, two German Army chaplains informed the First General Staff Officer of the 295th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, of the pitiful plight of children brought to their attention by soldiers who had heard them crying in a school in which they had been locked for days without food. At the school, Groscurth was informed by an SS sergeant that the children were to be shot, as their parents had been. Groscurth arranged for a postponement while he appealed the decision. When he telephoned the staff of Army Group South he was referred to the headquarters of the Sixth Army, from which he elicited a promise that a decision would be sought by evening from the army's commander. Reichenau promptly decided that the action should be effectively concluded, but contacted Blobel and ordered it postponed because it had not been properly handled. He directed that the SS-colonel go with a representative of the Sixth Army High Command to Belaya Tserkov the following morning. The next day the children were executed. In a letter to his brother a few months later, Groscurth wrote of Reichenau and his like: "One can't view the responsible people with anything but the deepest contempt. Because this is so, Germany will be destroyed; I no longer have the slightest doubt of that" (pp. 107-111).

The Babi Yar massacre near Kiev in September 1941 was "the largest single case of mass murder that took place under the aegis of the German Army, namely the high commander of the Sixth Army, Field Marshal von Reichenau, during its war of conquest and annihilation against the Soviet Union," according to Wette.[7] A few days after the occupation of Kiev, downtown buildings were blown up, killing hundreds of members of the Wehrmacht. On September 26, SS and Wehrmacht officers met and decided that as a reprisal the majority of the Jews in Kiev should be killed. In trial testimony long afterwards, a former SS officer at the meeting described the division of labor between the SS and Wehrmacht by saying that "We had to do the dirty work. I will never forget how ... [Brigadier General Kurt] Eberhard said to us in Kiev, '_You_ have to do the shooting'".[8] However, Wette continues, "not only did the general have no objections to the plan for the massacre as such, but, given the ongoing arson attacks, he was actively promoting it, as an SS report to Berlin confirms: 'The Wehrmacht welcomes the measures and requests a radical approach'" (p. 115). At Babi Yar, as the SS subsequently reported, 33,771 were shot to death on September 29 and 30 (pp. 112-117). This action was followed in October and November 1941 by the first major ghetto massacres, carried out under the orders of Brigadier General Anton von Bechtolsheim, the Wehrmacht commander in Belorussia, ostensibly to eliminate resistance. However, as Wette points out, the Soviet partisan movement became a serious factor only in 1943. During the initial phase of the German occupation, in 1941-42, when 100 Russian "partisans" were reported killed for every German casualty, Wehrmacht reports equated Jews with partisans, masking the fact that "the Jewish population represented the most significant group of victims in these operations" (pp. 127-128).

In a report to the OKW on the situation in the occupied Ukraine at the beginning of December 1941, Brigadier General Hans Leykauf estimated that 150,000 to 200,000 Jews had been executed. He acknowledged that this action represented the "'elimination of superfluous mouths to feed,'" but pointed out that it also had economic disadvantages: "If we shoot the Jews, let the prisoners of war die, and condemn a considerable part of the urban population to starvation, and if we are further going to lose a part of the rural population to hunger next year, then the question that must be answered is: Who exactly is supposed to produce [anything of] value here?'" (p. 126). Leykauf's reference to the fate of Russian POWs in German captivity touches on one of the most terrible atrocities of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht "allowing more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war to starve to death" (p. 244). No less indelible a stain on the record of the Wehrmacht was the killing of some 46,000 Italian military internees and prisoners of war (p. 224).

Regarding Hitler's relationship with his generals and their acquiescence in and support of measures that were actively opposed by at least a few of their peers, Wette points out a bond between the supreme commander and his highest-ranking officers that became generally known only decades after the war: Hitler's very generous gifts. Grants of land or money to reward outstanding service had been traditional in Europe through the early twentieth century, but they were bestowed ceremoniously with publicity. Hitler's gifts, on the other hand, were made privately and discreetly on personal occasions, such as a birthday or a wedding.[9] Turning from the senior generals to the German armed forces as a whole, Wette notes that of some twenty million men (about half the male citizens of Germany) who served during the war, no more than two million were volunteers (p. 158). Although the overwhelming majority were conscripts, most of them served loyally and many with strong conviction.

The initial point of departure for the postwar legend of the guiltless German Army was the final Wehrmacht Report of May 9, 1945, issued under the authority of the new Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who had succeeded Hitler as German head of state. Little more than six months later, on the eve of the opening of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, two former field marshals and three former generals submitted a memorandum on "The German Army from 1920 to 1945" for consideration by the tribunal in the impending prosecution of the German "General Staff and High Command" as a criminal organization-at the suggestion of a prominent member of the U.S. staff for the Nuremberg trials, Major General William J. Donovan, wartime director of the recently dissolved Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who opposed prosecution of "German Army field commanders (who were 'just doing their duty')."[10] The memorandum argued that the army had been against the National Socialist party and the SS, disapproved of most of Hitler's important decisions and opposed war crimes. The defense of the generals on trial at Nuremberg was largely based on the image of the German armed forces reflected in the final Wehrmacht Report and in this memorandum. Former Wehrmacht officers tended to take its contents at face value. For many, the credibility of this stance was reinforced by the rejection, in the final verdict of the International Military Tribunal, of the indictment. Nonetheless the verdict assigned members of the high command responsibility for the suffering of millions. Consequently, the tribunal formally recommended bringing them to trial.

This recommendation was followed in subsequent trials conducted under American aegis at Nuremberg from December 1946 to April 1949, including Case 12, United States of America vs. Wilhelm von Leeb, et al., "The High Command Case" (December 1947 to October 1948). Thirteen senior officers were indicted and, after the suicide of one, twelve were tried and ten convicted. Among the charges were the murders or deportations of Allied prisoners of war captured along the coasts of Greece and western Europe. Two defendants, Admiral Otto Schniewind and Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, were acquitted altogether and the rest of them were acquitted of committing "crimes against peace," insofar as none had been involved, at a policy level, in conspiracy to commit aggression. One of them, von Leeb, sacked by Hitler for urging retrenchment to a stronger line on the northern Russian front, was convicted only of "crimes against humanity" and sentenced to time served. The remaining ten, convicted of war crimes as well as crimes against humanity, received sentences ranging from five years to life.[11]

Three months before the verdicts in the High Command Case, the Berlin Blockade and Airlift had begun, setting the stage for a transformation of relations between the western Allies and their recent enemy. A symptom of and contributing factor to this transformation was a program initiated at the end of the war, when U.S. Army historians began interrogating senior German prisoners of war for operational and other information to be used in writing the official history of the conflict. Within a few years, many of Hitler's former generals became civilian employees of the U.S. Army, under the overall supervision of the former Chief of Staff of the Army, General Franz Halder, in what became known as the German Military History Program.[12] Wette points out the irony of Wehrmacht officers reproducing their view of the war at the behest of the Allies. Under Halder, the authors of the military studies tended to distinguish the bitter but decent form of warfare waged by the army's troops from the criminal operations of the SS and to attribute the German Army's defeats to problems beyond the generals' control, not least of all Hitler's dilettantism and refusal to accept competent military advice. Thus, as Wette observes, Wehrmacht leadership defended themselves with a pre-emptive view of their roles based on source material restricted from the view of some scholars until the 1960s or later. In the 1950s and 1960s quite a few of the leading German officers who had participated in this project began to go public with their own memoirs and works on various aspects of the war. Many of them, Wette observes, tended to treat Hitler as a rank amateur who spoiled the work of the professionals, as suggested by the title chosen by Manstein for his book, Lost Victories.[13]

More important for the public image and the self-esteem of the Wehrmacht elite than its semi-acquittal at Nuremberg, according to Wette, were two public declarations made early in 1951. The first came on January 23 from the new NATO Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, well known to have had harsh words for the Wehrmacht in the past. At a press conference in Frankfurt, he announced that he, for his part, did not believe that the German soldier as such had lost his honor, adding that he had come to the conviction that there was "a real difference ... between German soldiers and officers as such and Hitler and his criminal gang." The second important declaration came on April 5, 1951, when Chancellor Konrad Adenauer made a statement formally vindicating blameless German soldiers who had served their country honorably in a speech to the Bundestag in connection with a revision of the constitution of the Federal Republic entitling former career soldiers of the Wehrmacht to government-funded retirement. Eisenhower's statement and Adenauer's pronouncement "may be regarded," Wette writes, "as marking the end of the postwar period as a time of humiliation, impotence, and a lack of professional opportunities for the former Wehrmacht elite" (p. 237).

These developments did not occur in a vacuum; they reflected the West German political atmosphere at the time, as illustrated by an incident recounted by Wette.[14] In fall 1952 Wilhelm Kappe, a war criminal convicted by the British for murdering a Russian POW, escaped from prison to the home of relatives in Aurich in Lower Saxony. When Wilhelm Heidepeter, a merchant who was head of the Social Democrats in the city council, learned of this, he reported it to the police. Heidepeter was verbally and physically threatened, and then stripped of his party offices, with no objection raised in the German press. Although the British High Commissioner for Germany, Ivone Kirkpatrick, stated that Kappe had been convicted of murdering an Allied citizen, many Germans demanded the release of "so-called war criminals." The U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy, received death threats for refusing to pardon war criminals held on death row at Landsberg. In the course of the 1950s this mood did not change.

The Bundeswehr, established in 1955, was inevitably comprised of Wehrmacht veterans.[15] However, its founders saw to it that its institutional character was quite different from that of the traditionally conservative German Army infused with the authoritarian spirit of Prussian militarism. Under the leadership of reformers, particularly Wolf von Baudissin, the Federal Republic was to have an army of citizens in uniform with rights and privileges, even for soldiers in the lowest ranks, that would have been unthinkable in the Wehrmacht.[16] However, the background of the overwhelming majority of its personnel (and virtually all of its officers) led many to identify themselves with the German military tradition as they understood it. Many lacked interest or understanding of the democratic program of the reformers. In response, Christian Democrat Kai-Uwe von Hassel issued a "Traditions Decree" in 1965. It avoided dealing with most of the issues in the heated debate between reformers and traditionalists, but praised the members of the resistance who had participated in the plot of July 20, 1944, in terms, Wette notes, "to which the majority of Wehrmacht veterans were by no means receptive" (p. 264).

In the context of the bitter armaments controversy at the beginning of the 1980s, increasingly serious public criticism of the Bundeswehr's understanding of its relationship to the Wehrmacht emerged, as reflected in the practice of occasionally naming barracks for generals who had been fervent National Socialists. Social Democratic defense minister Hans Apel took the important step of issuing on a second "Traditions Decree" in 1982 explicitly acknowledging that the armed forces had been misused in part through their own responsibility and that the Bundeswehr could not draw its military tradition from such an unjust regime. Christian Democrat Manfred Wörner, who succeeded Apel after the fall of Helmut Schmidt's government less than two weeks later, declared in his inaugural speech that he would dump the new decree as soon as possible, as he was stridently urged to do by traditionalists in the Bundeswehr, veterans' organizations and the right-wing press. As it turned out, however, he did no such thing-in all likelihood, Wette writes, because a growing number of scholarly publications had prevented him from making the opposite case. Traditionalists in the Bundeswehr had to observe the new guidelines, but veterans' organizations "challenged the politically unwelcome findings of academic military historians and were not above attacking their reputations, even demanding the dismissal of Manfred Messerschmidt, then the chief historian at the [Defense Ministry's] Military History Research Institute" (p. 266).

Further studies in the 1980s and early 1990s rendered the image of an innocent Wehrmacht altogether untenable, so in a speech to Bundeswehr commanders in November 1995 another conservative minister of defense, Christian Democrat Volker Rühe, reaffirmed the 1982 decree unequivocally, explicitly disavowing the Wehrmacht as a source of tradition for the Bundeswehr. Several months earlier, the Institute for Social Research opened the Wehrmacht exhibit. Viewed by hundreds of thousands in thirty-three German and Austrian cities, its graphic depictions of Wehrmacht involvement in atrocities, together with the publicity it triggered, contributed to a breakthrough in German public consciousness.[17] Toward the end of the book, Wette recounts the renaming in Rendsburg of the Bundeswehr barracks previously named for a Wehrmacht general. In 2000, Fritz Stern gave an address at the ceremony, honoring a soldier, Anton Schmid, whose heroic decency in rescuing Lithuanian Jews led to his execution.[18]. In 1994 (two years after the initial publication of Wette's study), the barracks at the general staff college of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg were renamed in honor of von Baudissin, the principal advocate of reform in the postwar German armed forces.[19] In his conclusion, Wette notes "a major process of reorientation" as the generations that conducted and experienced the war have passed away, allowing the dispersion of the myth of the Wehrmacht (p. 296). Measured by the values of contemporary civil society rather than those of Germany's earlier martial culture, Wette concludes, "only the resistant minorities in the Wehrmacht who in one way or another refused to be a part of the war of annihilation may hope to command respect."[20]

Wette closes with the affirmation that "the legend of the Wehrmacht's 'clean hands' now belongs to the past" (p. 297). For most Germans today, especially those of the younger generation, this may well be true, but many older Germans and non-Germans continue to hold the Wehrmacht in considerable esteem. Some of those who do may criticize Wette's study for what they see as a blanket condemnation of an army in which millions served without cause for reproach, accusing him of tarring all German soldiers with the same brush. But that misses the point entirely. The book is not, as suggested by the ill-chosen English subtitle, about the Wehrmacht's history, myth and reality in general, but rather, as indicated by the subtitle of the original German edition, specifically about its ideological perception of the enemy, its participation in a war of annihilation and its postwar legend of innocence. In this concise monograph, one of Germany's most distinguished military historians provides a carefully argued and extensively documented study of the Wehrmacht as an institution: its cultural roots and ideology; its role, in Hitler's words, as one of the pillars of the Third Reich; its dedicated participation in Hitler's war of annihilation; the establishment and cultivation of the postwar legend of its innocence; and, finally, the belated acknowledgment throughout Germany of its criminal past, as formally demonstrated by the official disavowal of its traditions by the Bundeswehr.

As a contribution to the literature on German history, Wette's work can be said to complement and provide a kind of sequel to the late Gordon A. Craig's magisterial study, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (1955), because the last third of his book, extending to the beginning of the twenty-first century, is devoted to the post-1945 cultivation of a positive image of the Wehrmacht, followed by its erosion during the past three decades. In his preface to the English edition, Peter Fritzsche explains the importance of Wette's contribution to a clear understanding of the Wehrmacht's criminal role in the war. The foreword by Manfred Messerschmidt, former chief civilian historian of the Military History Research Institute, translated from the original edition, concludes with the observation that "Wette's book ... represents a necessary step in the early stages of reconceiving the past .... [and] demonstrates how the findings of earlier critical studies can be incorporated into a new overall picture" (pp. xvi-xvii).

Although this work is a landmark in German military historiography, the English edition can unfortunately be recommended only with a serious caveat. Though readable, it lacks the felicity and precision of Wette's masterfully crafted monograph, often failing to convey if not distorting significant nuances in his treatment of complex issues. Moreover, because of mistakes and omissions throughout the volume, several of which are noted below, meticulous scholars citing the work may wish to refer to the German edition or, at the very least, check any passage cited in the English translation to verify its fidelity to the original.[21]

Notes

[1]. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, _Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg_, vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5/1, 5/2, 6, 7, 9/1, and 9/2 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979-2005). Seven volumes have been published in English translation: _Germany and the Second World War_, ed. Military History Research Institute (Oxford: Clarendon Press): vol. 1, The Build-Up of German Aggression (1990); vol. 2, _Germany's Initial Conquests in Europe_ (1991); vol. 3, _The Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939-1941_ (1995); vol. 4, _The Attack on the Soviet Union_ (1998); vol. 5, _Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources_, Part I, 1939-1941 (2000), Part 2, 1942-1944/5 (2003); vol. 6, _The Global War: Widening of the Conflict into a World War and the Shift of the Initiative 1941-1943_ (2001); and vol. 7, _The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943-1944/5_ (2006). The translation of "Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt" as "Military History Research Institute"-despite "Forschungsamt" literally meaning "Research Office"-is reminiscent of the usage adopted in the postwar Anglo-American translation of Documents on German Foreign Policy , Series C (1933-1937) and Series D (1937-1941), in which "Auswärtiges Amt" (literally, "Foreign Office") was rendered in English as "Foreign Ministry" because, as explained to me by the last American editor-in-chief of the series, the late Howard M. Smyth, the British insisted that there was really only one Foreign Office in the world-the one in London.

[2]. Horst Boog, Jürgen Förster, Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Klink, Rolf-Dieter Mueller, and Gerd R. Ueberschär, _Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion_ (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991).

[3]. Wolfram Wette, _Die Wehrmacht. Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden_ (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 2002), the edition cited here. In 2005 a paperback edition was published in Frankfurt by the Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.

[4]. Wette's treatment of this theme can be read as a kind of sequel to his monograph on the cultural and ideological background of World War II, published in translation under the title "Ideology, Propaganda, and Internal Politics as Preconditions of the War Policy of the Third Reich," as part 1 of _Germany and the Second World War _, vol. 1, pp. 9-155; the German original is available in the updated, unabridged paperback reprint of the opening volume of the Military History Research Institute series: Wilhelm Deist, Manfred Messerschmidt, Hans-Erich Volkmann and Wolfram Wette, _Ursachen und Voraussetzungen des Zweiten Weltkrieges_ (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989), pp. 23-208.At Freiburg since 1998, Professor Wette was affiliated with the Military History Research Institute from 1971 to 1995.

[5]. These were General Johannes Blaskowitz, commander of the Eighth Army in south Poland, and General Georg von Küchler, commander of the Third Army that invaded Poland from East Prussia. The vigor with which Blaskowitz pursued his allegations earned him the enmity of Heinrich Himmler and accounts for his not having been promoted to field marshal, despite his seniority and ability, whereas Küchler was advanced to that rank in June 1942 (Mark M. Boatner III, _Biographical Dictionary of World War II_ [Novato: Presidio Press. 1996], pp. 45-46 for Blaskowitz and pp. 295-296 for Küchler).

[6]. Whereas Wette writes in the German edition (on p. 97) that this further study was undertaken "in den 70er und 80er Jahren im Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt Freiburg i. Br." (i.e., "in the 70s and 80s at the Military History Research Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau"), the English edition states (on p. 92) that it was done "in the Military History Research Institute (Potsdam)." Because the reference to the 1970s and 1980s is deleted and Potsdam has been

substituted for Freiburg, the English edition implies that the further study in question could not have been undertaken before the 1990s (insofar as the institute was moved from Freiburg to Potsdam only after German unification). A more serious flaw in the translation is the deletion of Wette's reference to the finding regarding this incident published in Germany and the Second World War, vol. 4, _The Attack on the Soviet Union_ (cited above in note 1). Note 7 on p. 316 of the English edition of Wette's book omits his summary (in note 8 on p. 308 of the German edition) of the passage (on p. 498 of vol. 4) where Jürgen Förster wrote that "it was probably at a joint breakfast of the Army High Command with the senior commanders that the first protests were voiced against Hitler's ideologically motivated conduct of the war. But that protest was primarily directed against the exclusion of the courts martial, which the commanders feared might lead to a slackening of discipline and good order. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the army and field commanders seriously considered compelling Hitler to relinquish his demands by threatening collective resignation. After all, there was agreement on the view that political commissars in the Red Army did not have combatant status." In other words, like terrorists in the early twenty-first century, they were regarded as not being entitled to formal proceedings in a military court-martial, and no supreme court in the Third Reich had the standing to rule otherwise.

[7]. My translation from pp. 115-116 of the German edition (cited in note 3 above) because the English edition mistranslates the phrase, "während ihres Eroberungs- und Vernichtungskrieges gegen die Sowjetunion" to read "during its campaign against the Soviet Union" (p. 112).

[8]. The English edition incorrectly translates Eberhard's rank of "Generalmajor" as "major general" rather than "brigadier general," the corresponding rank in the American and British armies. Throughout the book, the rank of general officers is mistranslated. The succession of ranks of flag officers in the German Army (compared to the U.S. Army) was "Generalmajor" (U.S. brigadier general), "Generalleutnant" (U.S. major general), "General der Infanterie," "General der Artillerie," and so on (U.S. lieutenant general), "Generaloberst" (U.S. general) and "Generalfeldmarschall" (U.S. general of the army). The ranks of generals in the Bundeswehr have cognate designations to corresponding American ranks.

[9]. This is explained in Thomas Scheben, "Review of Gerd R. Ueberschär

and Winfried Vogel, _Dienen und Verdienen - Hitlers Geschenke und seine

Eliten_," H-War, H-Net Reviews, January, 2000, at

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=12723949617727 .

(Published by S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt in 1999, the book was reprinted in 2006 as a paperback by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.) Scheben also mentions that the family of Field Marshal von Leeb still owns Bavarian forestland worth over a million dollars that Hitler gave him during the war. In _Hitler and His Generals: The Hidden Crisis, January-June 1938_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974), Harold C. Deutsch documented that Hitler personally gave General Walther von Brauchitsch 80,000 RM to induce his wife to agree to a secret divorce (preventing a public scandal that would have precluded him from succeeding Werner von Fritsch as Commanding General of the German Army).But the earliest published report on Hitler's practice of giving lavish gifts to others of which I am aware was a German magazine article in 1980 by Peter Meroth, "Vorschuß auf den Endsieg," _Stern_ 25 (June 12,

1980), pp. 86-92. In 1992, Gerhard L. Weinberg speculated on how average

soldiers during the last weeks of the war might have felt had they been aware of the "gifts" routinely given to members of the high command, suggesting the role of bribery as a fertile field of study for understanding German army cohesion despite its material disintegration in the last weeks of the war, in addition to fear of the military justice system ("Some Thoughts on World War II," _Journal of Military History_ 56 (1992): pp. 659-668).

[10]. Telford Taylor, _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir_ (New York: Knopf, 1992; paperback repr., Boston: Little, Brown Back Bay Books, 1993), p. 148. The OSS was dissolved by Harry Truman's executive order of September 20, 1945 (ibid., p. 239). Donovan saw the Cold War coming, regarded the Germans as potentially valuable allies, and vigorously sought to have all but the very top military leaders exonerated. As recounted by Taylor on pp. 145-149, 180-186, and 236-240, the categorical rejection of Donovan's approach by the chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, led to his abrupt departure from Nuremberg within two weeks of the submission of the memorandum on the German Army, which had been signed by Brauchitsch (Commander-in-Chief of the Army, 1938-41), Manstein (an army group commander on the Russian front, 1942-44), General Franz Halder (Army Chief of Staff, 1938-42), Lieutenant General Walter Warlimont (Deputy Chief of Operations of the High Command of the Wehrmacht throughout the war), and Lieutenant General Siegfried Westphal (Chief of Staff of the High Command on the western front, 1944-45). As he recounts in his memoir, Taylor played a central role in the preparation and presentation of the General Staff and High Command case at the International Military Tribunal. He subsequently served as chief prosecutor in the follow-on trials conducted by the U.S. Army in Nuremberg from December 1946 to April 1949, including the High Command Case (1947-48). His personal memoir does not deal with the later trials, which he treated concisely in Nuremberg Trials: War Crimes and International Law (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1949).

[11]. Like the two field marshals, Albert Kesselring and Manstein, whom the British tried and convicted in the late 1940s, they were released in the 1950s. The Manstein case had been particularly controversial in Britain, where, Wette writes, "former Prime Minister Winston Churchill went so far as to contribute to a fund so that Manstein would be able to pay two British defense attorneys" (p. 225).

[12]. On the program and the more than 2,500 studies it produced, see James A. Wood, "Captive Historians, Captivated Audience: The German Military History Program, 1945-1961," Journal of Military History 69 (2005): pp. 123-147. For a 24-volume selection of archival facsimiles of the English translations of 213 of the studies, see _World War II German Military Studies_, ed. Donald S. Detwiler; Charles B. Burdick and Jürgen Rohwer, associate editors (New York: Garland, 1979). Charles B. Burdick of San Jose State University was attached, as a young U.S. Army reserve officer, to the Historical Division's German group coordinated by Halder.

[13]. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, ed. and trans. Anthony G. Powell (London: Methuen, and Chicago: Regnery, 1958; Novato: Presidio Press, 1994). Among other such works available in English cited by Wette are Franz Halder, Hitler as Warlord, trans. Paul Findlay (New York:

Putnam, 1950); Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, trans. R. H. Stevens with David Woodward (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., and London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1959; Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990); Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, trans. Constantine FitzGibbon (New York: Dutton, 1952; New York: DaCapo Press, 1996); Albert Kesselring, A Soldier's Record, trans. Lynton Hudson (New York: Morrow, 1954); and Siegfried Westphal, _The German Army in the West_ (London: Cassell, 1952). Dönitz was responsible for the Final Report of the Wehrmacht of May 9, 1945, and Manstein, Halder, and Westphal were three of the five signers of the generals' memorandum of November 19, 1945.

[14]. The episode was initially described in an article entitled "Das ganz normale Grauen [Everyday Horror]" in the newsweekly Der Spiegel 16 (April 14, 1997), pp. 64-67, by Norbert Frei, author of _Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration_, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

[15]. In 1958 over 12,000 officers in the Bundeswehr had served in the Wehrmacht. All officers from the rank of colonel upward were screened by a board of review comprised of thirty-eight public figures named by the president of the Federal Republic on the nomination of the federal

government and approved by the Bundestag. To criticism that all the higher officers in the Bundeswehr had been in the Wehrmacht, Adenauer is said to have responded that NATO did not want any eighteen-year-old generals from him ("Geschichte der Bundeswehr" (last revised January 5, 2007), _Wikipedia, die freie Enzyklopädie_, at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr. Adenauer's comment about NATO was an allusion to the fact that the Bundeswehr was not an independent force under German command, but integrated into NATO under an American supreme commander. On the establishment of the Bundeswehr, see Donald Abenheim, _Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the

West German Armed Forces_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

[16]. Not only may Bundeswehr soldiers file complaints under guaranteed "whistle-blower" protection, but they also have the right to appeal directly to a special office of the Bundestag (whether or not they have chosen to seek redress through official military channels).

[17]. For a concise account of the Wehrmacht Exhibition and its public impact, together with consideration of the criticism of flaws in it and references to the relevant literature as well as links to related websites, see, in addition to the discussion in Wette's book, "Verbrechen der Wehrmacht" (last revised November 6, 2006), _Wikipedia, die freie Enzyklopädie_, at

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung.

[18]. In her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt (quoted on pp. 279-280 by Wette) wrote of the impact of the testimony of a Jew telling what Schmid had done for him: "During the few minutes it took Kovner to tell of the help that had come from a German sergeant, a hush settled over the courtroom; it was as though the crowd had spontaneously decided to observe the usual two minutes of silence in honor of the man named Anton Schmidt [sic]. And in those two minutes, which were like a sudden burst of light in the midst of impenetrable, unfathomable darkness, a single thought stood out clearly, irrefutably, beyond question-how utterly different everything would be today in this courtroom, in Israel, in Germany, in all of Europe, and perhaps in all countries of the world, if only more such stories could have been told" (Hannah Arendt, _Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil_, rev. and enl. ed. [New York: Viking, 1964], p. 231). Ten years after the initial appearance of the volume under review, Wette saw to it that more such stories were indeed told in _Retter in Uniform.Handlungsspielräume im Vernichtungskrieg der Wehrmacht_, ed. Wolfram Wette (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002).

[19]. _Die Geschichte der Generalleutnant-Graf-von-Baudissin-Kaserne (GBK)_ (Stand vom 06.03.2006), at

http://www.fueakbw.de/index.php?ShowParent=430&show_lang=de.

[20]. Translated by the reviewer from Wette, Die Wehrmacht (pp. 288-289), because of the mistranslation in the English edition, where, on p. 296, one reads that "only those few resistance fighters in the Wehrmacht who protested against extermination in one way or another deserve our respect," a rendering that suggests that the translator was oblivious to the fact that open protest against extermination by a resistance fighter would have been suicidal in the Third Reich. Wette did not write of "those few resistance fighters" who "protested," but of "die widerständigen Minderheiten der Wehrmacht, die sich dem Vernichtungskrieg auf diese oder jene Weise verweigert haben." In addition, near the top of p. 297 of the English edition one reads that the officers involved in the conspiracy against Hitler were "anti-democratic," but the German original states (on p. 289) that they were "keine Demokraten," that is, "no democrats," a significant distinction, particularly in the context of Wette's carefully nuanced conclusion.

[21]. Wette's original work successfully filled the need for an authoritative, even-handed, impeccably scholarly treatment of its very controversial subject, but the English version is so badly flawed that it can be recommended only with reservations. Lest the errors in the translation mentioned so far leave the impression that the Harvard University Press edition, despite occasional lapses, can be depended upon to be generally faithful to the German original, here are five further examples of the kinds of mistakes that make necessary the caveat with which this review unfortunately has to be concluded: on p. 38, lines 4 and 5, General Erich Ludendorff's political advisor, Colonel Max Bauer, is called "a spokesman for the extreme right-wing Pan-German Party," rather than "a spokesman in the supreme army command for the extreme right-wing Pan-German Party." The failure to translate and include in the sentence the prepositional phrase "in the supreme army command" (i.e., "in der OHL," on p. 47 of the original edition) indicates that Bauer served as a spokesman for a political party, presumably in the kind of public role that partisan spokesmen have. Such a role would have been out of the question for him as a general-staff officer. On p. 84 one reads: "In 1935 Fritsch became commander in chief of the Wehrmacht," whereas Wette wrote of his having been made "commander in chief of the army" (i.e., "Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres," on p. 89 of the original edition), not of the armed forces (the Wehrmacht, which included the navy and air force in addition to the army, of which Werner von Blomberg at the time was commander in chief). On p. 117, in a description of the mass shootings at Babi Yar, "drei Gruppen von Schützen, mit insgesamt etwa 12 Schützen" (on p. 121 of the original edition) is translated "three groups of soldiers, with about twelve men in each." A few lines later, the sentence, "Die Schützen standen jeweils hinter den Juden und haben diese mit Genickschüssen getötet," is translated "The soldiers stood behind them and killed them with shots to the base of the skull." To begin with, there were about twelve riflemen altogether in the three groups, not twelve in each. But far more important is the mistranslation of "Schützen." This German word means "riflemen," not "soldiers," the German word for which is "Soldaten." The mistranslation of "Schützen" as "soldiers" tells the reader that the killers were German Army soldiers, whereas in fact they were members of the SS. That the killing was to be done by SS members rather than army personnel was spelled out two pages earlier, on p. 115, where it is stated that the Wehrmacht city commandant, Brigadier General Eberhard, told the representative of the SS, "You have to do the shooting" (with the "you" in italics). On p. 142, in the passage where Wette writes (on p. 143 in the original edition) of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke having successfully led the wars of unification, the translator has inserted a phrase (not in the German original), apparently with the intention of helpfully informing the reader that this was done under Germany's "first Kaiser, the former King Wilhelm I of Prussia." However, Wilhelm I was by no means the "former" King of Prussia. When he reluctantly assumed the title of German Kaiser, he proudly remained King of Prussia, as did his heirs. On p. 297, the translation states that "most German citizens now feel respect for soldiers who deserted from the Wehrmacht, and those 'defeatists' and 'underminers of morale' who refused at some point to follow their leaders during the war," whereas Wette wrote not of "defeatists" ("Defätisten"), but of "conscientious objectors" ("Wehrdienstverweigerer," on p. 289 of the original edition), who were criminalized during the Third Reich.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (February, 2007)

Plan Martin Map of Operations: 12/16/44 - 2/3/45.

"We can still lose this war... The Germans are colder and hungrier than we are, but they fight better."

--Patton, December 1944

German Attack Plans Fall 1944

The following historical synopsis taken from The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, by Hugh M. Cole (italicized passages my emphasis):

"The weaknesses of the [Hitler's] plan were diagnosed by Rundstedt and Westphal as follows: sufficient force was not available to attain the distant goal of Antwerp; the German situation on the Western Front was so precarious that it was questionable whether the divisions slated for the offensive could be kept out of the moil of battle prior to D-day; the Allies might launch an offensive of their own, "spoiling" the German attack; the northern and southern flanks of the offensive would be dangerously open, the exposure increasing with every mile gained in the advance; finally, there was a better than average chance that all the attack could produce would be a salient or bulge of the Great War variety, consuming too many German divisions in what would be ultimately only a holding operation. The solution, as seen by Rundstedt and Westphal, was to produce an operations order which would be less ambitious as to the terrain to be conquered and which would aim at maximum destruction of Allied forces with minimum risk.

After a meeting that lasted several hours, Model agreed to submit a new army group plan incorporating most of OB WEST's [i.e. Rundstedt's] Martin study. Actually Model and Rundstedt found themselves in accord on only one point, that the Hitler scheme for seizing Antwerp was too ambitious and that there was no purpose to plans carrying beyond the Meuse River. Quite independently, or so it would appear, the two headquarters had arrived at the Small Solution, or the envelopment of the enemy east of the Meuse River. The fact that Model was violently opposed to the Fuehrer's solution and thus could expect no support from OKW may have made him more amenable to Rundstedt's exercise of the command decision. When the revised Model plan arrived at OB WEST headquarters on 28 October, it followed the general outline of the Martin plan. All of this work was preparatory to the receipt of further instructions promised by Jodl. These arrived at OB WEST headquarters by special courier during the night of 2 November.

Jodl seems to have had no hesitation about setting the two alternatives before Hitler. First, he could go ahead with the Big Solution, aiming at the seizure of Antwerp and the encirclement and destruction of the Allied forces north of the line Bastogne-Brussels-Antwerp. This would require a drastic revision of German strategy on all fronts. Combat divisions would have to be stripped from the Eastern Front in particular and given to OB WEST. Replacements and supplies for other fronts than the west would have to be reduced to a mere trickle. Obviously ground would have to be surrendered elsewhere if the great attack in the west were to be successful; therefore local commanders must be allowed to make their own decisions as to retrograde movement. (Surely Hitler must have gagged on this item.) This was not all. Jodl and Buttlar-Brandenfels recommended extreme measures to wring the extra divisions which the Big Solution required out of the German people. The Third Reich would have to be turned into a fortress under martial law, with total mobilization of men, women, and children-a step which was not taken in fact until the spring of 1945.

Closely linked with the Big Solution was the question of the form in which the attack should be delivered. The Hitler concept called for a single thrust on a wide front; this broad zone of action, so the argument ran, would make it difficult for the enemy to concentrate his forces for a riposte. When the Allies commenced to react, and only then, a secondary attack would be launched in the north from the Venlo area by two army corps under Army Group H (Student). Rundstedt, on the other hand, hoped to deny the enemy the ability to mass for a counterthrust by employing a double envelopment, the two prongs of the attack moving simultaneously from their jump-off positions. His reply, on 3 November, to the OKW instructions was phrased most carefully, but despite the protestation that the points of difference between the OKW and OB WEST plans were "unessential," Rundstedt made clear his opinion that a concentric manoeuvre was a must:

"It is a requisite that a powerful [secondary] attack be launched from the area Susteren-Geilenkirchen simultaneously with the [main attack] of Sixth SS Panzer, Fifth Panzer and Seventh Armies; otherwise the destruction of the strong [Allied] forces already concentrated in the Sittard-Liege-Monschau triangle cannot be achieved." [Ltr, Rundstedt to Jodl, 3 Nov 44, OB WEST, KTB Anlage 50, vol. I, pp. 47-50.]

Jodl visited OB WEST headquarters on 26 November, only to find that Rundstedt and Model were determined to cling to the Small Solution and the concept of concentric attack. Once again Hitler handed down his edict: "There will be absolutely no change in the present intentions." But Model was tenacious. Taking advantage of a conference which Hitler called in Berlin on 2 December, Model brought forward his heavy artillery: Sepp Dietrich, Hitler's old crony, and "Little" Manteuffel, the panzer general with the big reputation, both supporters of the Small Solution. Still Hitler refused to budge. One last attempt to win over the Fuehrer was made four days later when Rundstedt and Model submitted their final draft of the operations order for Wacht am Rhein. The accompanying map showed a second prong to the attack, this carried as in the first OB WEST plan by the XII SS Corps. Again Hitler rejected the suggestion.

Although Model and Army Group B were not consulted in the preparation of this answer from Rundstedt to Jodl, the army group planners made haste to repudiate any plan for a simultaneous two-pronged attack. The force making up the northern arm in Rundstedt's scheme, the XII SS Corps, was too weak to carry through a simultaneous secondary attack; nor would Model agree to further reduction of the main effort as a step in beefing up the northern thrust. The OB WEST chief of staff could do no more than note this disclaimer from the subordinate headquarters: "The simultaneous attack of the XII SS Corps is regarded as essential by Field Marshal von Rundstedt for the purpose of tying down [the enemy]. Considering the weakness of our forces, OKW is of the same opinion as you. We will have to await a decision." [ Ltr, Westphal to Krebs, 6 Nov 44, OB WEST, KTB Anlage 50, vol. I pp. 67-70.]

The OB WEST appraisal of Allied strength, as set forth in Martin, accorded the Allies a two to one superiority. Although the front was relatively quiet, the main Allied effort was recognized as being directed against the flanks of the German line (the Fifteenth Army in the north and the Nineteenth Army in the south). But the German long-range estimate of Allied intentions predicted that the Allies first would attempt to clear the Schelde estuary, as a preliminary to opening the port of Antwerp, and follow with a shift to the Venlo-Aachen sector as a base for operations against the Ruhr. Recognizing, therefore, that the Allied north wing with its four armies was heavily weighted, Plan Martin emphasized protection of the north flank of the attack, adding extra divisions for this purpose and feeding in a vital secondary attack by six divisions debouching from the salient south of Roermond.

The axis of the advance, as proposed in Martin, would be Butgenbach-Trois Ponts-Werbomont-Ourthe River-a Meuse crossing north of the line Huy-Antwerp. The Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies, right and left, would attack on a narrow front, the main strength of the two armies driving between Simmerath and Bleialf on a front of only twenty-five miles. This was the salient feature of the Rundstedt plan: a heavy concentration for breakthrough on a narrow front. The area selected for the thrust of this sharp, narrow wedge offered the best tank going to be found; no rivers need be crossed by the main attack until the Ourthe was reached. Flank cover would be given by the advance of the Fifteenth Army in the north and the Seventh Army in the south. The secondary attack from the Roermond sector, heavy with armor, would effect a juncture with the main advance near Liege.

Plan Martin, then, exemplified Rundstedt's desire to design and cut a coat matching the amount of cloth he expected to have. He wanted immediate results, to be won by a quick breakthrough on a narrow front with the entire field of battle reduced considerably in size from the maneuver area envisaged in the original Hitler directive. The simultaneous secondary thrust from the Roermond salient was regarded by Rundstedt as essential to the OB WEST plan.

The Hitler-Jodl plan provided for an attack to be carried by the three armies of Army Group B advancing abreast. Plan Martin placed the Seventh Army to the left and rear of the two assault armies with its northern corps advancing behind the southern wing of the attack.

Correspondingly, the Hitler-Jodl attack issued from an attack front sixty-five miles wide; the Martin attack took off from a forty-mile-wide base. In the first case the southern terminus of the penetration would be Grevenmacher; in Martin this terminus was set at Dasburg. Where the Hitler-Jodl attack moved straight through the Belgian Ardennes, that outlined in Martin skimmed the northern edge of the Ardennes. Of the thirteen panzer divisions listed by Hitler and Jodl, only four would be thrown into the first wave with six following in the second wave. The remaining three were to be held out for later employment in the holding attacks planned for Army Group Student. In Martin, contrariwise, Rundstedt put all of the panzer divisions he counted as available (twelve in number) in the first attack wave. As to reserves, the Hitler-Jodl order of battle counted four divisions in this category but provided for their commitment as the third wave of the attack. Rundstedt, far more concerned than OKW with the potential weakness of the southern flank, would assemble the three divisions of his reserve along the southern boundary of the expanding salient.

The decision to let the Sixth Panzer Army gather the largest sheaf of laurel leaves, if any, was politically inspired. Its commander, Sepp Dietrich, was high in the party and the panzer divisions assigned for the attack were SS divisions. Hitler's letter on 1 November calls Dietrich's command the Sixth SS Panzer Army, a Freudian slip for this army did not officially bear the title SS and would not for some time to come. The question at issue, however, was the location of the Sixth Panzer Army. Rundstedt wanted the main effort to be launched in the center and so wished to reverse the position of the two panzer armies in the final deployment. But this was only one of several points at which the deployment outlined by OB WEST in the Martin plan (as finally agreed to by Model) differed from that given by Hitler's 1 November letter of instructions."

Taken from The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, Chaps. II&III by Hugh M. Cole.

http://www.army.mil/cmh/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_cont.htm

*****

Plan Martin Modifications to Wacht am Rhein

Introduction

Field Marshall von Rundstedt, widely respected by many Allied generals, put forward the essential plan to be enacted here once it became clear that this offensive was inevitable, although he called for even more armored divisions in the first wave, to be employed upon a narrower front than engaged here, and breaking to the north-west. Rundstedt's Plan Martin also saw 6th SS Panzer Army and 5th Panzer Army reversed in their starting positions, as they have been in this study. The aim was to effect an encirclement of US 1st and 9th Army forces in the Aachen area by linking with another German attack debouching from the Roermond salient to the north of Aachen. This was the "small solution", scorned by Hitler, which would attempt to destroy Allied resistance east of the Meuse before crossing the river in force. Hitler's "big solution", with which he ignored and overruled the advice of all his generals, was to go straight at the Meuse before hooking right. It is assumed in this study that Hitler finally allowed Rundstedt and Model to proceed with Plan Martin with the proviso that, once across the Meuse at Liège, the attack force would strike directly towards Antwerp. Rundstedt, Model, et al., readily agree to this, knowing they had small hope of doing so, but feeling there were good odds that they could at least pull off the smaller solution envisioned by Plan Martin

For Germany at this late date in the war, Rundstedt's plan was the most rational alternative (that is if seeking peace terms is ruled out), even if the odds were slim: deliver a crushing envelopment to retake Aachen and seriously maim the Allies to prevent the Ruhr area from falling in the near future, and putting the Allied schedule back by months. Once accomplished, a focus on the eastern front is made possible with this breather created in the west. It is not emphasized in many histories, but the US and British were scraping the barrel for infantry replacements by the end of 1944, being forced to cannibalize other formations-the entire 50th & 59th Infantry divisions for the British, and many AA and rear service units etc. for the Americans. This deficit was especially highlighted for the US after the carnage of Hürtgenwald which resembles-in hindsight to be fair-the idiocy of Stalingrad as the High Command pushes good assets after bad, feeding troops into a meat grinder for a location that has no great strategic value, but somehow manages to attain a sort of mystical "symbolic" value. This set things up very well for a German counter-attack:.

"Over a period of ninety days, nine U.S. divisions were chewed up and spit out as the Allied High Command tried to push their way through the Hürtgen with one failed frontal attack after another. The cost to the attacking U.S. First Army was put at 33,000 casualties (24,000 dead & wounded in combat plus another 9,000 victims of trench foot, disease or combat exhaustion). It

compares with the casualties suffered by U.S. Marine Corps during their 36-day assault on the island of Iwo Jima, about 26,000."

http://members.aeroinc.net/breners/buckswar/

This scenario corrects the first two defects in the German plan, with respect to initial disposition and reinforcements, without stretching historical reality overly in the doing. All the forces used here were available, the majority of them actually on the West Front prior to the attack. The overall assumption, borne out by the stated intentions of Rundstedt's plan, is that everything possible was put into this attack. The Germans simply didn't have enough forces to engage in any other offensive activities on the entire front with this operation in effect.

This scenario also gives the US the possibility of an enhanced counter-attack under the historical rubric of Bradley taking over command of the entire front, with Montgomery denied command of the northern shoulder (see events below). Montgomery, as usual, was overly cautious in his response to the German attack.

Details of changes made to in [OPArt Wargame] Wacht am Rhein

The wonder about this "what if?" scenario is that it was not implemented at the time: if one is going to stake everything on one last blitzkrieg, then one should put everything possible into it. This conflict joins a long list of botched battles for the Wehrmacht from Stalingrad on, where the dead hand of Hitler moves above the planning maps, restlessly ensuring defeats with unerring consistency. Attacking Elsenborn ridge, throwing your best armored troops against this dug-in position, in two waves, was almost guaranteed to produce an inconclusive slug-fest. It was Pickett's Charge for the Germans. This was realised too late, after Manteuffel had broken out further south, and the second SS wave and some, but not all, available reinforcements were routed down there accordingly, wasting precious time and resources. The second German failure had to do with the inexplicable holding back of reserves once a breakout was attained. Both SS divisions, and the two "Führer" brigades, were in fact right behind the front, ready and waiting; 9th Panzer & 15th Pz. Gr. divisions for example, were both fed into the campaign on the 23rd, far too late to affect the general course of events. Other key units, enhanced replacements and equipment, could have been made available but were not as Hitler adamantly refused to make sacrifices on other fronts in an all-out effort to make the Ardennes blow truly massive. One must give credit where it is due however, insofar as Hitler's choice of attack was inspired, and his insistence that all orders pertaining to the offensive be limited to a small circle of generals sworn to secrecy, and that all unit commands pertaining to the build-up be conducted through land lines, not radio, equally so. His "intuition" correctly sensed an Allied penetration of High Command enigma messages, and these measures, along with the covering forests of the Schnee Eifel, allowed the Wehrmacht to pull off an amazing surprise attack in the West. Hitler was also correct in seeing that Wacht am Rhein-whatever the final odds against it succeeding, was in fact the Reich's last chance. No attack on the Ostfront had even the remotest hope of inflicting the sort of blow that could be thrown in the West. And so Hitler's offensive was correct in terms of form, but lacked the substance that his Field Marshals demanded.

It is ironic that this last major German offensive was to be called "The Rundstedt Offensive" by some, in as much as Rundstedt was only nominally in charge of all forces on the Western front. Rundstedt's Plan Martin, submitted by OB West, had been rejected by OKH (Hitler) in all its premises and details. This then provided the genesis for this project, in essence a huge 'what-if' campaign, one that was entirely possible for the Germans to have put together had Hitler given the green light for various operations in the Fall of 1944 designed to reduce Army frontage in the east primarily, thereby freeing up more units for Wacht am Rhein/Plan Martin. These break down as follows:

The Grossdeutschland Korps commanded by von Saucken in the Fall of 1944 in Prussia was the nominal parent of both the Führer Begleit and Führer Grenadier brigades (each more a pocket panzer division), both historically used in the offensive. The Grossdeutschland Pz Division, and the GD Korps are added to the Wacht am Rhein order of battle. The Courland Front in the Baltic begins to transfer units to East Prussia, a final evacuation of units scheduled before the December 16th attack date in the Ardennes. The German player will have the option to have this overall OB West reserve Corps (including FB & FG Bdes) appear in its entirety D +4 days on either the north, center, or southern wing of the offensive.

Likewise the Hermann Göring Panzer Korps (in Prussia as well) under Schmalz joins 7th Armee in the southern attack zone, taking control of the already present 5th FSJ (parachute-infantry) division, along with the HG Panzer division. This was in response to Brandenberger's (7.A) strong requests for added maneuver elements with which to deal with the inevitable counter-attack from Patton's 3rd Army in Lorraine against the extending southern flank of the German salient.

Operation Nordwind in the Vosges aimed at Strassbourg (December 31st) is cancelled and the following units made available for the Ardennes attack:

17th SS Pz. Div. 25th Pz.Grenadier Div.

--17th SS & 25th Panzergrenadier division are largely built up to strength after the defensive battles in the Lorraine: 17th SS Panzer is added to 6th Panzer Army reserve; 25th Panzergrenadier is assigned to the HG Korps.

10th SS Pz. Div. 11th Pz. Div. 3rd Pz. Grenadier Div.

--10th SS Panzer, 11th Panzer, and 3rd Panzergrenadier divisions, all previously engaged in the Aachen defensive battles against US 9th Army, are retained in the Roermond salient under XII SS Panzer Korps and refitted with troops and equipment.

6th SS Gebirg Div.

--6th SS Gebirg (mountain) division, 7th FJ (para-inf), & 257th VGD are likewise withdrawn from the Vosges front, rebuilt, and sent into the Ardennes as Army reserves: 6th SS mountain assigned to 6th Panzer Army, 257th VGD to 5th Panzer Army, and 7th FJ Div to Brandenberg's 7thth Army reserve in the south, on D +3. Other units from the former Army Group Kurland in the Baltic are assumed to have been sent to maintain defensive lines around Strasburg, and 126th ID (from Kurland) arrives turn 14 as 1st Army's reserve.

269th Division is withdrawn from Norway (as was 560th VGD historically) and designated 15th Armee reserve for its attack out of the Roermond salient.

Units historically used in the attack, but were delayed in starting from their jump-off lines (e.g. 902nd StG Bde, parts of 3rd FJ division, & 15th PzGr Div., historically sent in piecemeal Dec. 23rd ) are assumed to have attained these positions before the assault.

The last assumption is that OKH radically diverted replacements and equipment to the Ardennes front from September through December, thus allowing almost all offensive formations to have 80-90% of their Theatre TO&E level by December 16th. Likewise, a more potent supply situation was created for the four attack armies.

Additional Forces Breakdown

Total additions to historical offensive armies: 11 divisions, of which:

Originally in area and retained: 3

From cancelled Operation Nordwind: 5

Divisions from Russian front: 2

From Norway: 1

South of offensive front:

From Kurland to 1st Army, south of offensive 2 divisions

Summary of improvements:

Most formations historically used in the offensive are now available, as stipulated in Plan Martin, rather than having a staggered reinforcement schedule (historical).

All formations are at 80-90% TOE levels, except units engaged in defensive battles against US 9th & 1st Army offensives aimed at capturing the Roer dams, as well as the US 102nd division's attack and recent capture of Linnich, in an attempt to clear the Roermond salient from the east, all of the above ongoing operations when the Ardennes attack commences.

In addition to the division increase, an additional SS Tiger Abt is moved from the east front to the Roermond salient, as are two motorized artillery regiments, and Korps artillery attached to the Grossdeutchland and Herman Göring corps.

OKW failed to anticipate the supply difficulties involved in moving materiel forward with the advance without the usual rail assets assisting. It is assumed here that the Germans made somewhat better plans to move supplies forward, although their means were limited at this point of the war, especially in terrain as difficult as the Ardennes in winter.

A fifth factor, left to the German player, involves capturing St. Vith and Bastogne at the earliest possible date to avoid the supply bottleneck which historically occurred. The introduction of all these forces into a developing salient will create a severe overall supply constriction if these two towns are not captured early on, and this is precisely what happened historically. It is therefore assumed that Rundstedt, in getting the go-ahead for his plan, would have realized that the capture of Bastogne in the south was critical, both in terms of supply lines for the advance, but also as a critical area to hold before Patton's 3rd Army arrives in force.

German 5th and 6th Panzer Armies have their positions reversed, with 5th Army now to the north, and 6th in the centre.

The Roermond salient area extends the campaign map to entirely include the northernmost US 9th Army, as well as the southern end of the British 2nd Army; likewise the southern front has been extended to entirely cover US 3rd Army dispositions. This primarily does away with the usual division X arrives at point Y on turn Z issue of Allied reinforcements, and instead presents the Ardennes campaign in full active context, allowing the Allied player (with some formation activation constraints) to free units and send them as desired. It also provides a broader scope for offensive actions, first and foremost the inclusion of the critical Roemond salient in the north, but also possible offensive actions by either side in the southern Lorraine area, although both sides are faced with extensive enemy fortification belts there: the Maginot Line once again for the Germans, and the Westwall extending south for the US.

In addition to 6 above, the Allied player also has Theatre Options to bring British and Canadian reinforcements onto the map (north), and two US divisions (south), in excess of the scheduled British XXX Corps, at a set victory point cost per group. As well, the US 8th strategic air force (heavies) based in England, has its presence extended.

Overview of the Plan Martin Campaign

The historical "Battle of the Bulge" ended (depending upon the historian) around January 15th 1945, when US forces had pushed the Wehrmacht back over its start lines. The Plan Martin campaign, while primarily focusing upon an enhanced German effort, also widens the scope of the campaign's geography to allow for a full front dynamic as opposed to the usual discrete Ardennes treatment: this gives both sides advantages and disadvantages. For the same reason the campaign is extended to February 3rd 1945 (turn 100) and this is not primarily in place to give the Germans more time to accomplish their objectives. This enhanced German offensive is not a radical force alteration, and if the Germans are to attain a victory it is clear that it has to be grabbed early on at a rapid pace before the force and airpower disparity of the Allies inevitably stalls their advances, at least in the hands of a competent Allied player. Indeed, another 2-3 weeks in January and February will not give the Germans greater odds of winning, but will increase the chances of their losing, and more badly than historically was the case. The extended campaign will increase the chances for the Allies, in employing all their resources, and some from off the map north and south, of pulling off a strategic victory, not simply in halting the Germans and pushing them back over their start lines (which is an operational draw). They can seriously think about advancing to the Rhine earlier than the historical advance, and hand the German opponent in this model a decisive defeat.

Historical Note: there were in fact, a large number of small air activities at the beginning of this campaign.

Strategic Considerations

Historically, as the well-known story goes, Eisenhower, after some deliberation, and against the feelings of many of his generals who detested the British Field Marshall, agreed with Montgomery to subordinate 9th and part of 1st armies to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. There were some compelling reasons for this at the time, some logistical, but the political was an equally important factor. As Bradley had placed his own Army Group HQ too far forward in Luxembourg, it would have been more expeditious, at least in the short term, to have Montgomery take over up north given the rapidly expanding German salient. Politically, and this weighed heavily on Eisenhower-giving Monty the authority there would almost certainly mean that his reserve XXX Corps would be brought south without having to be asked. In point of fact, direct orders from Eisenhower would have caused friction and political problems for US/British relations, but it was entirely within Eisenhower's mandate to order any troops as needed.

Montgomery had been causing these sorts of problems in any case and would continue in his attempts to "punch above his weight" until the end of the war. As far as logistics go, I've never really understood why this issue is usually presented in rather black and white terms. What with the ever formidable American proficiency with logistics, engineering, and rapid establishment of communication networks, I do not see why Bradley could not have moved his HQ back to Liege or Brussels, causing some limited command control problems until the located HQ is in place and functioning to be sure; however, a few days of disrupted overall Army Group command while this was done, would likely have been short-term pain for long-term gain. Insofar as this model is giving the Germans far more strategic scope than was the case in the historical Ardennes campaign, it is only fair to give this option full consideration, as Eisenhower was obliged to. Bradley was not as radical as Patton in his ideas for campaigns certainly, but he was nowhere near the pedantic conservative "set piece" operations of Montgomery. This was borne out historically in the battle as Montgomery's slow counter-attack developments were a major crimp in what the US might have accomplished if he had remained up in Holland.

Historical Note: the British 6th, US 82nd, 101st and the green 17th Airborne divisions, were all strategic reserves mid -December. Given the shortage of on-hand reserves, but equally the weather, terrain, and logistical drawbacks, all four airborne divisions were rushed in as regular infantry. Certainly committing these units in this manner was wasting their talents somewhat, but after Arnhem, and the onset of winter weather, it was clear that large airdrops would have to wait until the following Spring at least. Apart from that, given the serious nature of the German offensive, getting elite units in front of German spearheads overruled all other criteria.

German Paradrop: Operation Hohes Venn:

The Heydte battalion was formed by combing German parachute divisions for experienced jump-trained men, and Heydte was able to form a 1200 man battalion. This operation was remarkably inefficient for the Germans as transport planes were delayed, and many of the pilots non veteran, and ending up dropping the unit all over the place in what was the first German night air drop operation:

The paratroopers were to jump at dawn on D-day, first opening the roads in the Hohes Venn leading from the Elsenborn-Malmedy area toward Eupen for the armored spearhead units, then blocking Allied forces if these attempted to intervene. Colonel von der Heydte was told that the German armor would reach him within twenty-four hours.

The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge, p.271, by Hugh M. Cole. http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_11.htm

In this enhanced German effort scenario it is assumed that the operation was better organized and, as the unit had been hastily formed with the Germans never having engaged in night drops (with the small-scale exception of saboteurs and agents etc.), the unit will now be operable (Dec. 16th PM) Historically, due to transport snags at Paderborn, the planned dawn drop on the 16th ended up being carried out that night.

Historical Note: a number of rivers in the Ardennes do not really qualify as major rivers per se; however, the terrain usually had even small rivers and streams with steep banks and fast moving water. The German tank units on the Our river part of the front were not able to cross until late day on the 16th, after heavy bridges were constructed by specialist units.

Enhanced Effort 'what if', for both sides

'What-if' scenarios try to work as close to historical "facts on the ground" as possible. The original Wacht am Rhein plan come nowhere close to fulfilling the radical changes put forward by Jodl with Rundstedt and Model backing him. This view proposed a ruthless stripping of units and equipment from other fronts, and a total mobilization of all Reich labour, industrial, and military resources. It is worth repeating here:

"This would require a drastic revision of German strategy on all fronts. Combat divisions would have to be stripped from the Eastern Front in particular and given to OB WEST. Replacements and supplies for other fronts than the west would have to be reduced to a mere trickle. Obviously ground would have to be surrendered elsewhere if the great attack in the west were to be successful; therefore local commanders must be allowed to make their own decisions as to retrograde movement. (Surely Hitler must have gagged on this item.) This was not all. Jodl and Buttlar-Brandenfels recommended extreme measures to wring the extra divisions which the Big Solution required out of the German people. The Third Reich would have to be turned into a fortress under martial law, with total mobilization of men, women, and children-a step which was not taken in fact until the spring of 1945."

( from The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, cited above, by Hugh M. Cole)

It is obvious from the revised German OB herein that I have aimed for a middle ground between the above Total War variant, and the historical Wacht am Rhein. I have not drastically affected other fronts in order to create an historically improbable Bulge 'what if'. In fact, I have followed Rundstedt's operational plan without putting into place massive troop arrivals from other fronts; what is assumed though, is a complete replacement & equipment priority for the attack armies, from September to mid-December of 1944. There is only one critical departure from the historical donnée and this is the necessary withdrawal from the Kurland area in the east, its only strategic purpose, as far as I can make out, was to retain a testing and training area for the new XXI and XXIII U-boats beyond Allied bomber range. The Kurland divisions go primarily to the Ostfront, with two going to the Saar front to take up the slack for 5 divisions historically used in the late-December German Nordwind offensive which is cancelled. A total of 2 divisions (elite divisions to be sure, along with their Korps HQs and assets) are brought from Prussia for Rundstedt's Plan Martin. One infantry division is brought down from Norway which still leaves OKH with a formidable defensive force there. The Italian front makes no sacrifice. So, of a total of 11 extra German divisions, 8 were already on the western front.

But the point to be made here is that against an extra 11 German divisions, the British and Americans can make use of options to bring in the entire British XXX Corps, the 2nd Canadian Corps, and two US divisions from the south, for a total of 11 divisions themselves. I think a German advance to within the Antwerp area is highly unlikely against a reasonably competent Allied opponent; however, a rapidly developing envelopment of the Aachen area by German elite units, with Allied airpower very much muted, if not absent... this is quite possible, as both Rundstedt and Model realized.

Increasing the Geographical Scope of the campaign:

This model also provides a broader strategic scope as both wings of the historical "Battle of the Bulge"are covered from the British 2nd Army front lines in southern Holland, down to the US 7th Army in Lorraine. 3rd Army under Patton will likely respond to the German offensive much as they did historically; 3rd Army will, however, be facing a much tougher southern wing to the overall offensive with the HG Panzer Korps present. If the southern front in this model promises to be quite different for this reason, the north will radically diverge from the historical and this is precisely what Rundstedt and Model realized, while Hitler did not, dooming the entire offensive to its inevitable historical stasis as a large, but firmly contained, German salient. Rundstedt's plan complicates things immensely for the Allies with its powerful northern simultaneous attack from the Roermond salient. Which reserves should go to block the Roermond attack, and which can be sent down to deal with the larger attack in the Ardennes? What other reserves off-map north and south should be brought on? Given the dynamic pace of the German thrusts on either side of Aachen, should control of this area go to Montgomery or to Bradley with his hastily relocated HQ? And finally, allocation of forces early on is critical as one cannot be certain where the German strategic reserve (The Grossdeutschland Korps) will appear-north, centre, or south? All of these issues are posed in this scenario.

The Strategic Dimensions of Plan Martin

The German attack, one of the most consummate surprise attacks in the annals of warfare, completely derailed Allied offensive plans, put the command structure in some disarray, created the potential for some major rifts between Montgomery and the Americans, and basically had Eisenhower scrambling, sending whatever units he had in the rear areas or England, to deal with what was a serious and powerful offensive. Plan Martin should, at least, demonstrate that the Allies were very fortunate Wacht am Rhein was entirely Hitler's plan in all its details. In any case, the German offensive created a front-wide shock wave for the Allies. This was no local counter-attack, it was an attempted strategic blow. That being the case, it was mandatory to extend the map area to cover a fair part of the Western front, to give both sides a fuller operational context, and to provide other options that could be employed-the coverage of the Roermond salient to the north first and foremost, as this was the key precondition of Plan Martin. As I've noted elsewhere, the campaign has been lengthened to give the Germans time to shoot their offensive bolt, and to be driven back in the last half of the campaign far more than was historically the case. Their only powerful strategic reserve has the potential here to be mauled far more than was the case, and an Allied advance towards the Ruhr accomplished much earlier than the historical. The German attack, in my view (and in Patton's I am sure) was a double or nothing venture which could have ended with a crippling defeat for the Germans. As it was, the far from inspired Allied grinding back of the German salient ended the campaign with no decisive victor. Certainly, in terms of the larger scope of the war this was a strategic defeat; but considered purely in front context this was a clear draw.

Hitler as "GROFAZ"

The conservative old-school Rundstedt had no great love for Nazism, and Hitler was well aware of this, using him as little more than a figurehead in nominal command of OB West. Rundstedt noted that his command authority was so etiolated that the only independent command he had was the detailing of guards for his HQ: Hitler demanded authority for any troop movement, right down to battalion level. Allied generals had a respect for Rundstedt as they sensed he was on a higher plane, both ethically and professionally, than any other German Field Marshal, at least since Rommel had been forced to commit suicide. They would not have been surprised to learn, before the end of the war and could talk to him, that he had seen German defeat as inevitable and had had the courage to advise Hitler to seek terms in 1944. For "GROFAZ" of course this was blasphemy, and it is a measure of Rundstedt's considerable talents that he was still reinstated to command OB West after being dismissed earlier that summer following the Normandy breakout. His organizational expertise turned things around remarkably after the Falaise debacle, and the Allies were in for some very unpleasant surprises as they charged towards Germany to further scatter and rout what was seen as a completely defeated enemy. Not only was Rundstedt able to stabilize things and give the US some nasty combat experiences at Metz, Aachen, and Hürtgenwald, as well as the decisive defeat of the grand overall Montgomery Market Garden venture (this actually more Model's doing to be fair), he was also able to create a powerful reserve force which saw highly experienced and veteran cadres which had escaped Falaise, rebuilt. Rundstedt put together the best offensive plan possible, and even found an unlikely ally in the ardent Nazi Fieldmarschall Model, commanding Army Group B on the West front. Like Rundstedt, Model felt Hitler's plan did not have a leg to stand on. Their HQs repeated pushed the idea for an envelopment of Aachen, and the plan was adamantly rejected by Hitler-the rest, as they say, is history.

Allied Complacency

British major General Strong, intelligence officer at SHAEF, had specifically warned Bradley the Germans might use their reserves to break through the thinly held VIII Corps area in the Ardennes. The General was dismissed by Bradley on December 12th with the flippant remark: "Let them come!" This telling anecdote, along with the fact that his Army Group HQ was too far forward in Luxembourg, less than 20 kms from German lines, and well within range of German long-range artillery, indicates a background mindset on the Allied side that was complacent, one of many factors (that I won't detail here) that allowed for the most unlikely and monumental Allied intelligence failure of the war. Plan Martin will likely prove that it could, even should, have been far more of a strategic blow than was historically the case. Eisenhower and Bradley were quick to see the defects in 12th Army Group's dispositions, and set about correcting them in a hurry. By contrast, "GROFAZ" admitted no errors, ignored his best generals, and the Allies can be thankful they had the compulsively ignorant campaign directives of Hitler to deal with, and not the cool appraisals of a talented professional like Rundstedt.

Originally by

Daniel R. McBride

Edited by me to introduce you to the Operational Art of War series of computer wargames.

Bibliographical Notes

(Note: this is a partial listing some of the more important sources used.)

Cole, Hugh M. The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge. US Army Center of Military History, 1965.http://www.army.mil/cmh/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_cont.htm

Connell, Mark J. The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge (Battles in Focus S.), Brassey's (UK), 2003.

Dupuy, Trevor. Hitler's Last Gamble. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Gaul, Roland. The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg: The Southern Flank December 1944-January 1945 : The Germans (The Germans, Vol 1) Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1995.

Gaul, Roland. The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg: The Southern Flank December 1944-January 1945 : The Americans (The Americans , Vol 2) Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2001

Mitcham, Samuel W. Hitler's Legions: The German army Order of Battle, World War II. New York: Dorset Press, 1985.

The first Joint Operation of the Wehrmacht and the implications for success

by Korvettenkapitän Henning Faltin (GE N)

Abstract

'Weserübung Nord', the invasion of Norway by Germany during World War II, deserves special contemplation because it is the first jointly planned and conducted operation in modern warfare. This paper focuses on the command structure on the operational level and demonstrates its contribution to the success. Moreover it demonstrates the tremendous effort undertaken by the German troops on the tactical level. But despite the operational- and tactical-level success, fundamental problems existed on the strategic level regarding unified planning and direction. The German navy under Admiral Raeder heavily promoted and influenced the planning and conduct of 'Weserübung'. On the contrary, the heads of army and air force rejected the invasion in Norway and attempted to allocate only few forces in face of the upcoming invasion in France. Finally Hitler assumed for the first time direct control over the forces and his inability to conduct large-scale military operations became obvious. This paper shows that the overwhelming success of 'Weserübung' was only possible because the failures and rivalries on the strategic level were more than compensated by the performance on the operational level and the joint fight of the German troops.

When the first mountain troops in parachutes were dropped at Narvik, one soldier fell directly in the water. Asked how he ended up there he replied: With the help of the three branches of the 'Wehrmacht': The army sent me up here, the air force transported me, and the navy pulled me out of the water.

General Dietl, "Das Leben eines Soldaten"

Introduction

Operation 'Weserübung', the German invasion of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, was a very interesting campaign. Firstly, it was characterized by speed, focus, bold action and surprise and hereby represents a perfect example for the German Blitzkrieg philosophy; and secondly, it was the first German operation in modern warfare, which was planned and executed jointly by navy, army and air force. These facts are the reason that operation 'Weserübung' is one of the best-examined military episodes of World War II. The main focus of research however, emphasized the reasons for the campaign whereas the study on the aspects of the joint command structure and the resulting implications for the success of the invasion was only conducted with minor efforts. Only during the recent decade with the restructuring of NATO and the tendency towards joint headquarters on the operational level has the interest of military academics shifted to joint warfare. From this perspective, operation 'Weserübung' definitely warrants examination, because it was truly 'joint' in planning and conduct. But despite this fact it was overshadowed by serious rivalries and disputes among the strategic headquarters of air force, army and navy and the newly invented Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (high command) under Hitler's direct control.

'Weserübung' was the first test for this new command structure. The success of this operation was at risk during all of its three phases: the planning for an invasion in Norway from 1939 on; the invasion itself; and the consolidation against an allied counter-invasion. This paper will initially analyze new joint command structure of the Wehrmacht and will illustrate the different motivations for or against this operation demonstrate the degree of influence during the three phases.

'Weserübung Nord' was a strategic and military necessity in the eyes of the German high command. It was planned and conducted as a joint operation and was heralded as a success from this standpoint.However, analysis indicates that this was not a matter of course. With disputes and rivalries on the strategic level between the army, navy, air force and high command and with Hitler assuming strategic command of the forces for the first time, joint operations were severely hampered and a defeat could only be prevented because the efforts on the operational and tactical level made up for the weak strategic level.

This paper concentrates on the so-called 'Weserübung Nord', the invasion of Norway. The occupation of Denmark -or 'Weserübung Süd'- will not be reviewed because this part of the operation faced, due to the early capture and cooperation of the Danish king, little military resistance.

DISCUSSION

At the time operation 'Weserübung' was executed the German strategic command was in a transition.Starting with the death of the then German president von Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler had fastened his grip on the Wehrmacht (armed forces) and intended to convert the politically independent general staff, capable of making and unmaking governments, into an instrument of his will. Until 1938 the Reichskriegsministerium (war ministry of the Reich) led the Wehrmacht, where Hitler had no direct influence. Within this ministry the three services were organized beside each other; a joint command structure did not exist. The operational command for each branch was the traditional general staff.Basic principles within this command structure were unity of command, mission tasking and delegation of authority. Regarding a possible war in the future the German general staff identified the need for transition towards a joint command, which should draw up a unified military strategy and should support the Commander in Chief (CinC) in the conduct of the common operations of the three branches of the armed forces (Gesamtkriegführung). It was supposed to be the coordination instrument between navy, army and air force. Hitler realized the chance that such an idea bore-centralized control of all branches of the armed forces. Consequently, in 1938 he dismissed the war ministry and created the new joint command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). It had no command authority over the three services and was not designed as a true joint operational staff. It rather gave Hitler the control over the German military. Irrespective of his lack of experience and capacity he announced himself as CinC of the armed forces and assumed command over the three services. Furthermore he gave up the general staff system in favour of a joint High Command, which had merely the function to advise Hitler and to mediate between him and the CinC's. Its command structure was designed according to the national-socialistic ideology, the Führerprinzip, and enabled Hitler to assume overwhelming joint command.

This modification was a major failure and had disastrous impacts on the course of World War II. Hitler, now head of the state, political leader and CinC, was simply not able to fulfill the various duties involved.Additionally, his personality did just not allow delegation and relief. Permanently presuming conspiracy, Hitler preferred close control rather than trust, and always remained more "concerned with the unquestioning obedience of his disciples than with the capacity of his collaborators." Through this new OKW Hitler generated the war machinery, which denied any possible opposition. The following graph illustrates the strategic command structure from 1938 on:

Control of

The operational level of command was embedded in this structure as Wehrmachtführungsstab (armed forces operational staff) under Jodl. The major problem here was that it proved itself as too small in the conduct of any large-scale operation. The navy for example was represented only by a handful of staff officers, which "suited the continental conceptions of Hitler himself". The small size of the OKW would admittedly ensure the mobility and flexibility needed for the application of the Blitzkrieg strategy and would make certain that Hitler would not loose the overview. The manpower and experience especially for combat support requirements was not sufficient at all. "Jodl's staff was in any case too weak and too one-sided for conducting a global war." The general staffs of the branches had the adequate staffs at their disposal, but they remained reluctant to accept the OKW as superior command. The refusal by the CinC's of the army, navy and air force thwarted a clear line of command on the operational level throughout the war. The high command on the other hand never became independent from Hitler and could not accomplish its role as superior command for the coordination of the three services.

This difficult command structure took away the operational command from the general staff and lifted it on the strategic level under the direct influence of Hitler. Hereby it also permitted the CinC's and the ideological leaders to interfere with operations. In fact, it was not a military tool towards more joint efficiency; it was merely Hitler's instrument to control the armed forces. For 'Weserübung' this bore a huge risk because the CinC's were not uniformly convinced about the necessity of an invasion in Norway but had divergent motives. The following paragraphs will demonstrate the problems among navy, air force, army and political party concerning 'Weserübung'.

The navy, under Admiral Raeder, initially drew the attention to the northern theatre of operation. The roots lay in the experiences of World War I.. During this war, the contribution of the navy, in comparison to the German army, remained marginal until its end.. Great Britain had, despite the fact of Norway's neutrality, closed the bottleneck between Scotland and Norway and hereby contained the German Hochseeflotte (Grand Fleet) in the North Sea. Raeder was determined to avoid the same situation and to secure a decisive role for the navy in World War II. Therefore Norway played a key role in his considerations.

After the outbreak of World War II the Royal Navy tried again to enclose the German navy within its territorial waters, and this challenged the aim of Raeder's naval strategy - disruption of the British trade routes in the Atlantic mainly with surface ships. But at first Norway remained strictly neutral and the British embargo failed to be effective. German warships and merchant ships could still enter the Atlantic via Norwegian territorial waters. Furthermore Germany's special concern, the flow of iron ore from the Swedish city Kiruna, remained unobstructed. As long as Norway's neutrality was not violated by the allies, Germany had unlimited access to the Swedish iron ore and to the Atlantic.Therefore, Germany formally notified the Norwegian Government at the start of the war that Germany would respect its neutrality.

For Great Britain the Norwegian neutrality was their Achilles heal. Winston Churchill, then First Sea Lord, was well aware of the possibilities of blockading Germany through Norway and of opening a northern front for Germany by landing troops, but under the given situation the Royal Navy could not control the leak of the Norwegian territorial waters, and especially the delivery of iron ore to Germany. Raeder became alerted when at the end of September 1939 Admiral Canaris, then Chef der Abwehr (Chief of Foreign and Counter Intelligence), informed him "that certain ominous signs pointed to Britain's intention to land forces in Norway.". On October 10, 1939 Raeder briefed Hitler about the latest intelligence and drew his attention onto a possible invasion of Norway by Great Britain. Until that time Hitler had given no thought to this potential problem because "he was not very familiar with the conditions of naval warfare." Hitler and Raeder came to the agreement that the neutrality of Norway was in Germany's best interest and that no imminent threat existed so far. But in November 1939 the issue was raised again when the Soviet Union invaded Finland. After all, this aggression gave Churchill a good opportunity to order preparation for an invasion in Norway, not only to land troops for the support of Finland, but furthermore in order to gain control over the iron ore resources around Kiruna and to threaten Germany from the North. Once more intelligence warned about an Allied intent to land in Norway in order to intervene in favour for Finland. It was confirmed in December 1939, when Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian nationalists, met Hitler. As a result from this meeting Hitler ordered the OKW to deal with the Norway subject. The product of this planning, Studie Nord (Study North), was completed at the end of December and again came to the result that Norwegian neutrality was favoured; however, it was decided to start joint preparations for an invasion in Norway. Raeder realized that sea power is a product of the fleet and sufficient bases and he recognized that he had to focus Hitler's attention to the operational need of bases outside of the German Bight in order to avoid containment of the navy by Britain. Furthermore, he saw the risk of a northern Allied front and the implications for the control of the Baltic Sea and the North German coastline. Finally, he realized the strategic necessity of the iron ore supply from Sweden to Germany via Norwegian territorial waters. His influence was the initial driving force for conduct of 'Weserübung'.

The position of the air force was different. Feldmarschall Göring endeavored to prove the decisive importance of the air force for modern warfare and especially for the Blitzkrieg strategy. Within the last few years they had developed capabilities that would be described today as revolutions in military affairs. For example, paratroops or strategic airlift that had huge significance during the later conduct of 'Weserübung'. Even Göring intended to increase the importance of the air force relative to the two other services. But Göring had concentrated his efforts on air-land war. The component for air-sea war consisted only of two groups comprising some sixty aircraft, which had previously belonged to the navy. It had been neglected because Hitler had positively assured him that any war with Britain before 1942 could be ruled out. Consequently, Göring focused on Fall Gelb, the invasion of France, and intended to concentrate his efforts. 'Weserübung' meant a distraction for him, and he was very reluctant to assign forces. He argued that the German offense in France would bind all allied forces. No Allied troops would be available for any operation in Norway, and all own forces should be employed in France. When he realized in January 1940 that 'Weserübung' was inevitable, Göring became over-confident, claimed that the German dive-bombers were able to drive the allied naval forces from the sea and intended to take over the operational planning for 'Weserübung'. Hitler was aware about Göring's ambitions but refused this approach because he regarded the air force general staff and in particular Göring himself as not qualified for the planning and conduct of joint operations and he was aware that the navy undertook the main effort. He even declined that the head of the planning staff within the OKW should be an air force officer. This embarrassed Göring and he became very averse to the support of 'Weserübung'. During the conduct he successfully insisted that all air force assets remained under his command throughout the operation.

Like the air force, the army was very reserved towards planning for an invasion in Norway. The attack on Poland was just finished and all planning efforts concentrated on the offensive in the west. The result was uncertain; nobody expected the later overwhelming success of the invasion of France. Norway had never been considered as a possible theatre of operations. Halder, then chief of the general staff of the army, rejected any operation in Norway because of the difficult terrain, poor transport lanes and too long logistic chains. He argued that operations in Norway would be possible only with a concentration of the military industry for army purposes, and this was unacceptable for the other services. Another reason for the reluctance of 'Weserübung' was that the operational command for this operation was held within the OKW. Halder regarded the OKW as a strategic planning organ and had earlier warned Keitel to stay out of the conduct of operations. With the assignment of 'Weserübung' to the OKW this command for the first time assumed responsibility for operational planning, which until then had been the general staff's alone. Halder concluded that this arrangement would usurp the role of the general staff. 'Weserübung' would reduce the role of the general staff and entail a huge aversion among the strategic level of the army towards this operation.

Finally, the Nazi party has to be taken into account. Rosenberg, the chief ideologist of the Nazi party and Hitler's advisor, promoted the invasion in Norway for two reasons. In his view the Scandinavian race was regarded as truly Arian, and Norway played a key role in the future Grossgermanisches Reich (Greater German Empire). Trondheim for example should be developed as one of the main German cities. The second consideration was the access to heavy water. This material was necessary for the production of the atomic bomb, and the only company in Europe that produced it was located in Norway. Even though these thoughts were out of the focus of the military leaders, it probably motivated Hitler to agree on the invasion in Denmark and Norway.

On January 27, 1940 Hitler ordered, based on intelligence reports about increasing Allied activity in Norway, to establish a special staff within the OKW, which should encompass one senior officer from each branch of the armed forces. He was aware that the navy held the main effort at the initial stages of 'Weserübung' and assigned the lead of the planning staff to a naval officer. When this staff under the command of Kapitän zur See Krancke constituted on February 5, 1940 the representative of the air force was still missing due to Göring's protest. The staff developed a plan of operations for the invasion in Norway called 'Weserübung'. During the planning the operations staffs of all three services were excluded from participation. The army was especially embarrassed when the naval officer Krancke, who was not even a member of the general staff but the commanding officer of the cruiser Admiral Scheer, increased the earlier demand for one division of army troops up to corps size without even consulting the army headquarter and general staff.

'Weserübung' started off under these diverging motives. Despite the need for joint cooperation on the operational level intense rivals on the strategic level in fact had a huge influence and endangered the whole operation. The next section will show how the Hitler and the operational command dealt with this problem.

On February 16, 1940 the discussion about Norwegian neutrality reached a peak due to the Altmark incident. The attack by the British destroyer HMS Cossack within Norwegian territorial waters and the inability of the Norwegian navy to prevent the border violation alerted the German military planners.Raeder stated, "This incident proved without a doubt that Norway was completely helpless to maintain its neutrality even if the Norwegian government wished to do so." Hitler chose to intervene with military means and ordered to establish a special joint staff (Sonderstab Gruppe XXI) under the direct command of the OKW. Instead of assigning the operation to the general staff of the army under General Halder, Hitler chose to appoint a relative junior officer at the lower corps command level, General der Infanterie von Falkenhorst, who accepted gladly. The army was not even officially informed and found out about this assignment only when the OKW bypassed the normal army channels and started assigning units to the operation.

By putting von Falkenhorst directly under his command Hitler deliberately excluded the army general staff and the staff of the air force from any active participation in the planning of 'Weserübung'. Hereby he neutralized the negative influence of both branches. But he had generated another problem: The OKW and the general staff became two parallel headquarters.

Von Falkenhorst's staff -Gruppe XXI- encompassed only fifteen officers, and suffered from the lack of manpower within the OKW. His group was simply too small to oversee all the associated functions such as logistics or intelligence and called upon the general staff for help. The general staff branches had to formulate large parts of the plan, "their efficiency suffered from having two sets of superiors simultaneously", and this caused further friction between the army and OKW.

The navy and the air force were not assigned under the command of this staff. Raeder and Göring had the political power to keep the OKW out of their spheres and both services remained independent from von Falkenhorst. Another reason might have been that Hitler anticipated seniority problems between Raeder and Göring as CinC's on the one side and von Falkenhorst as Joint Task Force Commander on the other side. This entailed an organizational problem because the operational headquarters were not established in one location. Von Falkenhorst's Gruppe XXI planned to operate from Oslo, the air force general staff stayed in Hamburg, and the OKW and the navy remained in Berlin, and the operational planning staff had no joint structure.

The latter facts show that during the planning phase the concept of 'joint' was merely a phrase than reality. In fact, navy and air force conducted their planning for 'Weserübung' completely separate from von Falkenhorst's staff. 'Weserübung' lacked a single line of command at the operational level from the onset, and unity of command was not achieved. The following graphs demonstrate the intended and the actual command structure during operation 'Weserübung' and support this statement:

Intended structure

Actual structure

On March 1, 1940 Hitler issued his 'Directive for occupation of Denmark and Norway'. The mission statement is an early indication of the limited authority that von Falkenhorst had as joint commander over his naval and airborne assets:

"The task of group XXI: Capture by surprise of the most important places on the coast by sea and airborne operations. The navy will take over the preparation and carrying out of the transport by sea of the landing troops as well as the transport of the forces which will have to be brought to Oslo in a later stage of the operation. It will escort supplies and reserves on the way over by sea. The air force, after the occupation has been completed, will ensure air defense and will make use of Norwegian bases for air warfare against Britain."

General von Falkenhorst developed, based on Krancke's preparations, the operational plan. He knew that the operation depended on the navy and air force for solving the transport problem and probably expected difficulties with Raeder and Göring in the conduct of the operation. Therefore his operation order was very detailed and left no questions open. This bore a huge risk. He employed several new ideas like transport of infantry by combatant ships and airlift and he relied on forces like the paratroops, which had not yet proved their combat efficiency.

During the initial phase of the conduct, the transportation of the ground troops into theater, the main effort lay on the navy; and this phase remained under the command of Admiral Raeder. Several supply ships deployed towards Norway and waited for the main force to follow. Von Falkenhorst held command over all land forces. The initial landing was conducted on April 9, 1940 with small detachments at five cities along the Norwegian coastline between Narvik and Oslo. The remaining army troops arrived via airlift and sealift during the following week. The parachute troops were tasked to seize airfields in order to enable close air support for the ground troops provided by the air force. The air fo

Carl Wahlbom's (1810-1858) painting of the Battle of Lützen. The scene shows the death of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden on November 6, 1632.

Date

November 6 (O.S.) or November 16 (N.S.), 1632

Location

Near Lützen, southwest of Leipzig, present-day Germany

Result

Pyrrhic Swedish victory

Belligerents

(1)Sweden

Protestant German states

(2)Holy Roman Empire

Catholic League

Commanders

(1)Gustavus Adolphus †,

Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar,

Dodo Knyphausen

(2)Albrecht von Wallenstein,

Gottfried zu Pappenheim †,

Heinrich Holck

Strength

(1)12,800 infantry 6,200 cavalry 60 guns

(2)10,000 infantry 7,000 cavalry, plus 3,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry on arrival 24 guns

Casualties and losses

(1)3,400 dead 1,600 wounded or missing

(2)3,000-3500 dead or wounded

The Battle of Lützen was one of the most decisive battles of the Thirty Years' War.

Prelude to the battle

Two days before the battle, on November 14th (in the Gregorian calendar, 4th in the Julian calendar) the Catholic general Wallenstein decided to split his forces and retreat his main headquarters back towards Leipzig. He expected no further move that year from the Protestant army, led by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, since unseasonably wintry weather was making it difficult to camp in the open countryside. Gustavus Adolphus, however, planned otherwise. On the early morning of November 15 his army marched out of camp towards Wallenstein's last-known position and attempted to catch him by surprise. But his trap was sprung prematurely on the afternoon of November 15, by a small force left by Wallenstein at the Rippach stream, about 5-6 kilometres south of Lützen town. A skirmish delayed the Swedish advance by two or three hours, so that when night fell the two armies were still separated by about 2-3 kilometres (1-2 miles).

Wallenstein had learned of the Swedish approach on the afternoon of November 15. Seeing the danger, he dispatched a note to General Pappenheim ordering him to return as quickly as possible with his army corps. Pappenheim received the note after midnight, and immediately set off to rejoin Wallenstein with most of his troops. During the night Wallenstein deployed his army in a defensive position along the main Lutzen-Leipzig road which he reinforced with trenches. He anchored his right flank on a low hill, on which he placed his main artillery battery.

The day of battle

Morning mist delayed the Swedish army's advance, but by 9 AM the rival armies were in sight of each other. Because of the complex network of waterways and a great deal of misty weather, it took until 11 AM before the Protestant force was deployed and ready to launch its attack.

Initially the battle went well for the Protestants, who managed to outflank Wallenstein's weak left wing. The much feared and respected Finnish Hakkapeliitta cavalry, under their colonel Torsten Stålhandske played a key role in this action, spreading terror into the Imperial rear and panicking Wallenstein's baggage train. Just as disaster seemed imminent, Pappenheim arrived with 2,000-3,000 cavalry and halted the Swedish assault. This made Wallenstein exclaim, "Thus I know my Pappenheim!". However, during the charge Pappenheim was fatally wounded by a small-calibre Swedish cannonball. At the same time Pappenheim's counter-attack collapsed, his troops mortified to see their beloved commander fatally wounded before their eyes. He died later in the day while being evacuated from the field in a coach.

The cavalry action on the open Imperial left wing continued, with both sides deploying reserves in an attempt to gain the upper hand. Soon afterwards, towards 1PM, Gustavus Adolphus was himself killed leading a cavalry charge on this wing. However, in the thick mix of gunsmoke and fog covering the field, his fate remained unknown for some time. However, when the fog and smoke from the gunnery ceased, his horse was seen between the two lines, Gustavus himself not on it and nowhere to be seen. His disappearance paralysed the initiative on the hitherto victorious Swedish right wing, while a search was conducted. His partly stripped body was found an hour or two later, and was secretly evacuated from the field in a Swedish artillery wagon.

Meanwhile, the veteran infantry of the Swedish centre had continued to follow orders and attempted to assault the strongly entrenched Imperial centre and right wing. Their attack was a catastrophic failure - they were first decimated by Imperial artillery and infantry fire and then ridden over by Imperial cavalry charging from behind the cover of their own infantry. Two of the oldest and most experienced infantry units of the Swedish army, the 'Old Blue' Regiment and the

Yellow or 'Court' Regiment were effectively wiped out in these assaults; remnants from them streamed to the rear. Panic spread among the Protestant ranks, made worse by rumours of the king's death. Soon most of the Swedish front line was in chaotic retreat. The royal preacher, Jakob Fabricius, rallied a few Swedish officers around him and started to sing a psalm. This cool act calmed the minds of many of the shaken soldiers, who halted in hundreds. The calm thinking of Swedish third-in-command 'Generalmajor' Dodo Knyphausen also helped staunch the rout: he had kept the Swedish second or reserve line well out of range of Imperial gunfire, and this allowed the broken Swedish front line to rally.

By about 3 PM, the Protestant second-in-command Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, having learned of the king's death, returned from the left wing and now assumed command over the entire army. It seems that contrary to the popular legend he kept the secret of the king's death from the army as a whole, but vowed to personally avenge the king by winning the battle or to die trying. However, his efforts went in vain. A soldier soon discovered the death of Gustavus Adolphus.

The effect it had upon the Swedish soldiers was not what Saxe-Weimar thought. The effect it had on the soldiers was similar to the effect Theodoric's death had upon the Visigoths during the Battle of Chalons. A general cry soon rose up from Gustavus' army. "They have killed the King! Avenge the King!," shouted soldiers from Gustavus' army. His soldiers charged Wallenstein's men.

It was a grim fight, with terrible casualties on both sides. Finally, with dusk falling, the Swedes captured the linchpin of Wallenstein's position, the main Imperial artillery battery. The Imperial forces retired back out of its range, leaving the field to the Swedes. At about 6PM Pappenheim's infantry, about 3,000-4,000 strong, after marching all day towards the gunfire, arrived on the battlefield. Although night had fallen they wished to carry out a counter-attack on the Swedes. Wallenstein, however, believed the situation hopeless and instead ordered his army to withdraw to Leipzig under cover of the fresh infantry.

Strategically and tactically speaking the battle of Lützen was a Protestant victory. Wallenstein was forced out of Saxony where he had hoped to winter his troops at Saxon expense, and retreated to Bohemia. Having been forced to assault an entrenched position Sweden lost about 6,000 men including badly wounded and deserters. The Imperial army lost perhaps 3,000-6000 men.

Aftermath

The Protestant army achieved its main goal of the campaign - to rescue Saxony from the Imperial onslaught. A more long-lasting consequence of the battle was the death of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, leader of the Protestant forces. Without him to unify the German Protestants, their war effort lost direction. The Catholic Habsburgs had time to recoup their losses and regain their balance, and the war continued until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Date

At this time the Catholic Holy Roman Empire used the Gregorian calendar, but Protestant Sweden still used the Julian calendar. Hence the Battle of Lützen occurred on November 16 for the Catholics but on November 6 for the Swedes. In Sweden the death of Gustavus Adolphus has a long tradition of being commemorated on November 6, despite the country's adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 18th century.

Order of Battle
(from Lutzen 1632, by Richard Brzezinski, Osprey Campaign Series 68, 2001)

Swedish Army - King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden, Army Commander

Right Wing - King Gustavus II Adolphus

Front Line - Overste Torsten Stalhandske
Smaland regt (400)
Ostgota regt (100)
Uppland regt (250)
Sodermaland regt (200)
Vastgota regt (400)
Finland regt (500 in two bodies)
5 bodies of 200 commanded muskeeters
(mainly from Brandestein and Lowenstein regts, each with two 3 pdr. regt guns)

Rear Line - Overste von Bulach
Georg v. Uslar regt (160)
v. Dalwigk (Hessian) composite regt (380)
Beckermann regt (150)
Bulach regt (120)
Goldstein regt (150)
Wilhelm v. Saxe-Weimar regt (120)

Infantry Center

Front Line - Generalmajor Count Nils Brahe

Kyle's Swedish Brigade (1581)
East Gotland regt
Dalarna regt
Uppland regt
West Gotland regt
Finland regt
5 3 pdr. regt. guns

Yellow Brigade (1221)
Brahe regt
Livgardet Kompanie
5 3 pdr. regt. guns

Blue Brigade (1100)
Winkel's regt
5 3 pdr. regt. guns

Bernhard's Green Brigade (2036)
Bernhard (Green) leibregt
Leslie regt
Wildestein regt
5 3 pdr. regt. guns

Front line reserve: Henderson (muskeeters) regt (228)

Rear Line - Generalmajor von Knyphausen
Duke Wilhelm Brigade (1726)
Bose (Saxon) regt
Pforte (Saxon) regt
Whilelm of Saxe-Weimar (Saxe-Weimar) regt

Knyphausen's Brigade (1120)
Knyphausen (White) regt

Thurn's Brigade (1832)
Thurn regt
Isenburg regt
Landgrave of Hesse (Green) Guard regt (Hessen)
T. v. uslar (Hessen) regt
Erbach regt

Mitzlaff's Brigade (1834)
Mitzlaff regt
Gersdorff regt
von Rosen regt

Rear line reserve: Ohm (cavalry) regt (300)

Left Wing - Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar

Front Line - Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar
Duke Bernhard v. Saxe-Weimar Leibregt (500 in two bodies)
Karberg regt (220)
Wrangel (Courlanders) regt (230)
Tiesenhausen (Livonian) regt (300)
Courville regt (300)
5 bodies of 200 commanded muskeeters
(mainly from Brandestein and Lowenstein regts, each with two 3 pdr. regt guns)

Rear Line - Oberst Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
Hofkirchen (Saxon) regt (350)
Prinz Ernst von Anhalt (Saxon) regt (300)
Lowenstein regt (200)
Brandestein regt (200)
Steinbach regt (200)
Stechnitz regt (80)

Field Artillery - 20 Guns, mostly 12 and 24 pdr.

Imperial Army - Duke Albrecht von Wallenstein, Army Commander

Right wing - Duke Albrecht von Wallenstein
Holck Cuirassiers regt (250)
Alt Trcka Cuirassiers regt (250)
Des Fours Cuirassiers regt (300)
Haagen Arquebusiers regt (800)
Drost Arquebusiers regt (250)
Commanded muskeeters in front of cavalry (150)
Croats cavalry detachment (100 ?)

Garrisoning Lutzen orchards:
Trcka dismounted dragoons regt (100)
Commanded muskeeters (300)

Windmill heavy artillery battery:
14-17 guns (5 24 pdr., 4 12 pdr., 4 6 pdr.)

Center - Generalwachtmeister Graf Colloredo
Oberst Berthold von Waldstein
Oberst Grana

First line
Battalia
Waldstein regt (1500)
Alt-Sachsen regt (800)
2 regt. guns
Battalia
Colloredo regt (700)
Kerhaus (Chiesa) regt (1200)
2 regt. guns
Battalia
F. Breuner regt (500)
Grana regt (1000)
2 regt. guns
Battalia
GenFZM Breuner regt (900)
2 regt. guns
Battalia
Camargo regt (800)
Reinach regt (detach.) (150)
2 regt. guns

Second line
Bredow Cuirassiers regt (300)
Baden regt (500)
Westphalen Arquebusiers regt (150)
Alt-Breuner regt (500)
Tontinelli Cuirassiers regt (250)

Third line
Westrumb Arquebusiers regt (100)
Commanded muskeeters (500)
Goschultz Arquebusiers regt (250)

Left wing - FML Graf Holck
Gotz Cuirassiers regt (400)
Piccolomini Cuirassiers regt (500)
(together with 2 coys of Wallenstein Lancer Guards)
Leutersheim Arquebusiers regt (200)
Lohe Cuirassiers (150) and Loyers Arquebusiers (200) regt
Commanded muskeeters in front of cavalry (150)

Heavy artillery battery:
6-7 guns (4 24 pdr., 2 12 pdr.)

Croat light cavalry - General Graf Isolano
Corpes croats regt (300)
Isolano croats regt (250)
Reway croats regt (250)
Beygott croats regt (100)

Pappenheim Corp - FM Graf von Pappenheim

Sparr Cuirassiers regt (300)
Bonninghausen Arquebusiers regt (500)
Lamboy Arquebusiers regt (250)
Orossy croats regt (450)
Batthyani croats regt (200)
Forgach croats regt (100)
Polish cossacks (250)
Pappenheim dragoon regt (140)
Merode dragoon regt (160)

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Famous as a pre-war airliner with a number of formidable long-distance flights and records to its credit, the four-engine Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor was designed by Kurt Tank in 1936, and underwent military adaptation into a fairly potent anti-shipping aircraft with the Luftwaffe. Ten pre-production Fw-200C-0 maritime reconnaissance aircraft were delivered to the Luftwaffe in September 1939, some of them serving with I/KG 40 in 1940. The five crew production Fw 200C-1 was powered by four 830-hp (618.9-kW) BMW 132H engines, was armed with a 20-mm gun in the nose and three 7.92- mm (0.31-in) guns in other positions and could carry four 250-kg (551-lb) bombs. Apart from long-range maritime patrols over the Atlantic, the Fw 200C-1S also undertook extensive mine laying in British waters during 1940, each carrying two 1000-kg (2,205-lb) mines. Numerous sub variants of the C-series appeared, of which the Fw 200C-3 with 1,000-hp (745.7-kW) Bramo 323R-2 radials was the most important. Later in the war the Fw 200C-6 and Fw 200C-8 were produced in an effort to enhance the Condor's operational potential by adaptation to carry two Henschel Hs 293 missiles in conjunction with FuG 203b missile control radio.

Rugged operating conditions highlighted the Fw 200's numerous structural weaknesses and there were numerous accidents in service, and for a short time in the mid-war years Fw 200s were employed as military transports, 18 aircraft being flown by Kampfgruppe zur besonderen Verwendung 200 in support of the beleaguered German forces at Stalingrad. Other Condors were used by Hitler and Himmler as personal transports. Focke-Wulf Fw 200 production for the Luftwaffe amounted to 252 aircraft between 1940 and 1944.

Fw 200 was the very first airplane to fly non-stop between Berlin and New York making the journey on August 10, 1938 in 24 hours and 56 minutes. The return trip on August 13 1938 took only 19 hours and 47 minutes. These flights are commemorated with a plaque in the Böttcherstraße street of Bremen.

A Danish aircraft named Dania was seized by the British after Denmark was invaded by German forces in 1940. It was operated by BOAC and was later pressed into service with the British Royal Air Force. It was damaged beyond repair in 1941.

The Japanese Navy requested a military version for search and patrol duties, so Kurt Tank designed the Fw 200 V10 with military equipment. This plane was held in Germany because war had broken out in Europe and became the basis for all later military models used by Luftwaffe.

The Luftwaffe initially used the aircraft to support the Kriegsmarine, making great loops out across the North Sea and, following the fall of France, the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft undertook maritime patrols and reconnaissance, searching for Allied convoys and warships that could be reported for targeting by U-boats. The Condor could also carry bombs or mines to use against shipping and it was claimed that from June 1940 to February 1941 they sank 365,000 tons despite a rather crude bombsight arrangement. From mid-1941 the aircraft were instructed to avoid attacking shipping and avoid all combat in order to preserve numbers. In August the first Condor was shot down by a CAM ship launched Hawker Hurricane, and the arrival of the US-built F4F Wildcat fighter, operating from the Royal Navy's new escort aircraft carriers was a very serious threat.

Several damaged Condors landed in Spain during the war. In the beginning they were repaired and returned to their bases in France. Later, from Operation Torch, the Spanish government interned the four aircraft that arrived (but crews were still allowed to return to Germany). As the planes could not be used they were sold by Germany to Spain and only one of the three flyable planes operated in the Spanish Air Force, spares were obtained from the rest of planes. Due to lack of spares, damages and political reasons they were grounded and scrapped around 1950.

Some Condors crashed in Portugal. Crews were allowed to go back to Germany while the British authorities were allowed to inspect the plane and documentation. Some crews (at least one full crew) died in these crashes and all crew members are buried in the civilian cemetery of Moura (Alentejo Province) in Portugal.

Winston Churchill called it the "Scourge of the Atlantic" during the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945) due to its contribution to the heavy Allied shipping losses by German U-boats.

Unterseeboot 47 (U-47) was a German type VII B U-Boat (submarine). She was laid down on February 25, 1937 at Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel and went into service on December 17, 1938.[1]

U-47 became famous when, on October 14, 1939, under the command of G端nther Prien, she managed to enter the base of the British home fleet at Scapa Flow through a hole in the defence line, and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak.

The Royal Oak was in Scapa Flow in a largely unprepared state, although the Second World War had recently begun.

U-47s first two salvos did nothing more than sever an anchor chain. After reloading the bow tubes the last salvo of three torpedoes struck the battleship causing severe flooding. Taking on a list of 15 degrees, her open portholes were submerged worsening the flooding and the list to 45 degrees; she sank within 15 minutes with the loss of over 800 men.

U-47 carried out ten combat patrols and spent a total of 238 days at sea. She sank 30 enemy merchant ships (164,953 tons) and damaged eight more. She did lose a sailor, Heinrich Mantyk, overboard on September 5, 1940.

U-47 had a displacement of 761 metric tons, 865 tons submerged. She was powered by two 1400 PS (1 MW) diesel engines and two 375 PS (280 kW) electric motors. Her speed was 17 knots (31 km/h) on the surface and 7.6 knots (14 km/h) submerged. Her underwater armament consisted of four torpedo tubes in the bow and one in the stern. The deck artillery consisted of an 88 mm gun and a 20 mm anti-aircraft automatic cannon. The vessel's range was 6500 nautical miles (12,000 km).

U-47 went missing on March 7, 1941 and she was once thought to have been sunk by the British destroyer HMS Wolverine west of Ireland, but it turned out that the ship attacked there was actually the U-A, part of the Foreign U-Boats corps. To date, there is no official record of what happened to the U-47 or her 45 crewmen, though a variety of possibilities exist, including mines, a mechanical failure, a victim of her own torpedoes, or possibly a later attack that didn't confirm any kills - by the corvette team of HMS Camellia and HMS Arbutus.

Many years later, in September 2002, one of the unexploded torpedoes that the U-47 had fired off-course during the attack on HMS Royal Oak rose to the surface from its resting place at the bottom. The unexploded torpedo, minus its warhead, gradually drifted towards the shore, where it was spotted by a crewman aboard the Norwegian tanker Petrotrym. A Royal Navy tugboat intercepted the torpedo, and after identifying it as belonging to the U-47 63 years earlier, EOD personnel detonated it a mile from shore.

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JU 290

The need for a long-range maritime patrol aircraft was great, and the Ju 290A‐2 answered the call. Little was changed except for the addition of an aft dorsal turret, changes to navigation equipment and the addition of FuG 200 Hohentwiel search radar. Flying by the summer of 1943, the first example went to Rechlin for tests while two further machines were delivered to the newly established Fernauflarungsgruppe 5. Five Ju 290A‐3s followed, these having; low‐drag Focke‐Wulf air turrets. 1./FAGr 5 began operations from Mont‐de‐Marsan on 15 October 1943, followed a month later by 2./H AGr 5. Covering a large area of the Atlantic, the Ju 290s provided target information for U‐boats, but also flew general reconnaissance missions for the hard‐worked KG 40 at nearby Mérignac.

Five Ju 290A‐4s were the next aircraft from the line, these introducing the Focke‐Wulf turret in the forward dorsal position also. Armament for these comprised a single MG 15120‐mm cannon. With A‐2s, A‐3s and A‐4s in regular service, several operational shortcomings were noted, and these were rectified largely by the Ju 290A‐5 version. Chief among these was the introduction of protection for the fuel tanks and heavy armour around the flight crew. The waist gun positions were improved and fitted with MG 151s in place of the MG 131 machine‐guns used in earlier models. The crew complement went from seven to nine to provide more dedicated gunners.

The A‐5 was the most numerous version with 11 examples, entering service in the spring of 1944 to general acclaim by its crews. 4. /FAGr 5 formed around this time, but throughout its career the Gruppe rarely had even 20 aircraft on strength, totally inadequate for its operations.

With the Normandy landings in June 1944, the Mont‐de‐Marsan base became threatened by Allied invasion, and FAGr 5 left for Germany in August 1944. Throughout its operational career the Ju 290A had been well liked by its crews, and although several were lost to Allied attack, none were lost to any other causes.

Western Front Air OoB for 26 June 1944:

X FliegerKorps, HQ Angers,

Strategic/Maritime Reconnaissance Stab/FAGruppe 5 Mont-de-Marsan

1 (F)/5 Mont-de-Marsan

2 (F)/5 Mont-de-Marsan 15 x Ju 290 total

4 (F)/5 Nantes 4 x Ju 290

3(F)/123 Corme Ecluse 7 Ju 88

1 (F)/SAGr129 Biscarosse 4 Bv 222

Bombers: Stab KampfGruppe 40 Bordeaux-Mérignac x FW 200

1/&2/KG40 Toulouse-Blagnac 12 He 177

II/KG40 Bordeaux-Mérignac 12 He 177

7/KG40 St Jean d'Angely

8/ & 9/KG40 Cognac (these staffeln of III/KG40 had 23 FW200 between them.

By Admiral Reinhard Scheer

When the portion of the Fleet that had been sent cast had returned from the conquest of the Baltic Islands, some weeks elapsed before the ships and torpedo-boats had had the damage repaired that they had suffered from mines and from running aground. The winter months brought no change in the activities of the Fleet, which were directed towards supporting the U-boat campaign.

In the spring of 1918, when our army was attacking in the west, English interest was bound to centre in the Channel. Through agents, through the aeroplane service in Flanders, and through following the enemy's wireless messages, we ascertained that he had materially reinforced the warships protecting his transports, and that large ships had been sent to the Channel, and parts of the crews of the Grand Fleet had been sent to reinforce those of the light craft in the Channel. On the other hand, the enemy had carefully improved the convoy traffic between England and Norway since the successful raids of the Brummer and the Bremse, and of the boats of Torpedo-Boat Flotilla II. Our U-boats had learnt that the steamers were assembled there in large convoys, strongly protected by first-class battleships, cruisers and destroyers. A successful attack on such a convoy would not only result in the sinking of much tonnage, but would be a great military success, and would bring welcome relief to the U-boats operating in the Channel and round England, for it would force the English to send more warships to the northern waters. The convoys could not be touched by light craft. But the battle-cruisers could probably, according to information received, deal with all exigencies likely to arise if they could have the necessary support from the battleship squadrons.

So far as could be made out convoys mostly travelled at the beginning and middle of the week. Consequently Wednesday, April 24, was chosen for the attack. A necessary condition for success was that our intentions should be kept secret. It was enjoined upon the officers in command of the subordinate groups to use their wireless as sparingly as possible during the expedition, which was to extend beyond the Skagerrak up to the Norwegian coast. On the pretext of manœuvres in the Heligoland Bight all warships at our disposal were assembled on the evening of the 22nd in the Schillig Roads. Here the officers in command of the various groups were informed of our intentions and received their orders. The plan was to attack the convoy with the battle-cruisers, the light cruisers of Scouting Division II, and Torpedo-Boat Flotilla II under the leadership of the officer commanding the Scouting Divisions, Admiral von Hipper, while the remainder of the ships took up a position from which, in case of need, effective support could be given to the cruisers. All other flotillas were to remain with the main body of the Fleet. Torpedo-Boat Flotilla V could not be included, as its radius of action was too small. The commander of this flotilla, Commander von Tyszka, was entrusted with the conduct and protection of the convoy service through the mine-fields south-west and west of Horns Reef.

To ensure safety of progress through the mine-fields in preparation for this enterprise, protective barriers had been placed about 70 sea miles west of Horns Reef, running from north to south. The area between Horns Reef and this protective barrier was to be the starting-point of the expedition. The U-boats that had recently put to sea had received orders to seek opportunities for attack off the Firth of Forth and to report all warships and convoys that were sighted.

On the 23rd at 6 A.M. the various groups put to sea, Admiral von Hipper leading with the Scouting Divisions I and II, with the Second Leader of the torpedo-boats and Torpedo-Boat Flotilla II; following him came the main body of the Fleet in the following order : Scouting Division IV, Squadron Ill, the Flagship of the Fleet, the First Leader of torpedo-boats, Squadron I, Squadron IV, and with the main body Torpedo Flotillas I, VI, VII and IX. Immediately after they left the jade a heavy fog descended. As far as List the way was clear; from there it led through enemy mine-fields; to get through these it was necessary for the Fleet to be accompanied by minesweepers, and therefore a certain amount of visibility was needful at least two miles. At first we were able to proceed at 14 knots. But when, at 11.30 A.M., we reached the entrance to the mine-field and visibility was only 100 metres, we had to anchor. Half an hour later it cleared up; one could see three to four nautical miles, and the expedition could proceed. The journey through the mine-fields passed off without a hitch. When darkness fell the boundary had been reached, and the mine-sweepers could be dismissed. The poor visibility had so far favoured the enterprise. The enemy line of submarines on guard round the German Bight seems to have been broken through, if indeed it was occupied at all.

During the night it cleared up; daybreak brought fine, clear weather. At 8 A.M. the Moltke reported to the High Sea Commander: "Grave damage, speed four knots, position about 40 sea miles W.S.W. of Stavanger." All haste was made to reach the scene of the accident; the Strassburg, the foremost ship in the line of advance, was detached to the Moltke, and the battleship Oldenburg made ready to tow. At 10.40 A.M. the Moltke was sighted; soon after von Hipper appeared from the N.W. with his two Scouting Divisions. He had detached the Moltke at 6 A.M. to the main body of the Fleet. At that time she could still do 13 knots. He had not received the message that she was reduced to four knots. When towards 9 A.M. he received the news that the Moltke could not move and that the Flagship had not made out the signal-which, however, was a mistake-he decided to go to her assistance himself. He sent no report to the main body of the Fleet owing to the orders that the use of wireless messages should be reduced as much as possible. He had the more reason for this course because when he turned he was already in the northern part of the convoy route, and thanks to the clear weather he could see that for the time being nothing was in sight, and that any approaching convoys would not escape him if he made a fresh advance later. As the Moltke had now been taken charge of by the main body the Admiral received orders to advance again to the north. On this second occasion he searched the convoy track as far as the 60th degree of latitude but sighted nothing.

At about 11.45 A.M. the Moltke was taken in tow by the Oldenburg. The manoeuvre was carried out without a hitch in the shortest possible time. The main body of the Fleet with these two ships then set out on the return journey; their speed was 10 knots. There were two routes open to us; the one led through the Kattegat, the other straight into the German Bight. By choosing the former the Fleet would presumably have avoided a meeting with the English Fleet which had time to come up and oppose us, as we could only go at a slow speed in order not to leave the Moltke in the lurch. But the road through the Kattegat was very roundabout, and in addition the passage through the Belt would have been very difficult for the damaged ship, and in order to protect the tow all our ships would have had to return through the Little Belt. This was undesirable for two reasons, firstly, on account of the Danes, and secondly because it might provoke the English to lay mines in the Kattegat. This latter proceeding might be very unpleasant for our U-boats, and I decided, therefore, to return through the North Sea into the Bight in spite of the possibility of being attacked by superior forces.

Meanwhile the following condition of affairs had been discovered on board the Moltke. The inner propeller on the starboard side had been flung off (the ship had four propeller shafts); the turbine had raced, and before the machinery for stopping it could act the training wheel had flown to pieces. Fragments of the wheel had penetrated the discharge pipe of the auxiliary condenser, several steam exhaust pipes, and the deck leading to the main switch-room. The central engine-room and the main switch-room were immediately flooded owing to the damage to the auxiliary condenser, while the wing engine-room made water rapidly. Salt water penetrated into the boilers, and the engines gradually ceased to work. Through a curious chain of circumstances an accident to a propeller, slight enough in itself, had brought the ship completely to a stand, so that it was powerless to move. Two thousand tons of water had flowed into the ship before a diver succeeded at length in closing the valves which controlled the flow of water in and out of the auxiliary condenser. It was not till then that they got the water under control. In the afternoon the port engines were able to run at half speed; but for the time being there was no guarantee that they would continue to run. The ship would have to be towed right into the Bight, and the highest speed attainable by the tow was 11 knots. At this rate of progress we could not reach the belt of mines west of Horns Reef before dawn the next day.

Information received from the Naval Staff at 2 p.m. concerning the times of arrival and departure of convoys indicated that we had not been lucky in our choice of a day to attack them. Apparently the convoys from England to Norway had crossed the North Sea the 23rd.

At 6.30 P.M. we received a wireless message from a U-boat that eleven enemy cruisers were about 80 miles behind us. But probably the U-boat had mistaken the cruisers that were following us under Admiral von Hipper for those of the enemy.

At 8.50 p.m. the towing cable of the Oldenburg broke, which entailed a delay of an hour. For the night the tow was left at the end of the line. At 11 p.m. Admiral von Hipper had approached to within 30 nautical miles of the main Fleet. At dawn all the ships were together. The enemy was nowhere to be seen. The journey through the belt of mines was accomplished according to plan. Minesweepers met and convoyed the Fleet back in the same manner as on the outward journey. One mine-sweeper, " M 67," struck a mine and sank; most of the crew were saved.

Off List the Moltke was cast loose, and was able to proceed at a speed of 15 knots. About an hour after she had been cast loose, at 7.50 p.m., she was attacked by a submarine 40 nautical miles north of Heligoland and was hit amidships on the port side. She could not avoid the torpedo, but was able to turn towards its course so that it struck at a very acute angle. The injury did not prevent the ship from entering the Jade under her own steam.

Unfortunately the expedition did not meet with the success hoped for. The opportunity of joining issue with our Fleet was not made use of by the enemy, although by the wireless messages which had to be sent owing to the accident to the Moltke he must have known of the presence of our ships. The bringing in of the Moltke under such unfavourable conditions of sea and weather as arose during the night of the return journey was an eminent military achievement, especially the part played by the Oldenburg (Commander, Captain Lohlen) which towed her, and the work done in stopping the leak by the men on board the Moltke deserves great praise.

This expedition was unfortunately the last which the Fleet was able to undertake.

LINK

HPS - Jutland

The Naval Campaigns Club

#J259 The Final Mission, by Steve Osmanski
The Final Mission: This is a "what if" recreation of the actual last sortie of the Imperial German Navy. The Germans sought to find and destroy the Scandinavian convoy, which was expected to be escorted by a division of capital ships. Their intelligence was faulty, and the convoy (escorted by the 2nd BC Squadron) had sailed a day earlier. Historically this mission resulting in nothing but the loss of SMS Moltke's starboard propeller (it just fell off!) and a torpedo hit to her as well, as she limped home. There are actually two "what ifs" in this scenario. The first assumes the Germans had sailed a day earlier, and so made contact with the convoy. The second concerns the British submarine J-6. She sighted the German sortie but failed to report it thinking the ships were British. If she had correctly identified and reported the Germans, the British Battle Cruiser Force would have sailed to reinforce the convoy escort. There are two changes to the historical order of battle. The convoy is simply missing; I couldn't think of a way to put merchant ships in. This is one thing I wish JT would add to the database. Second, the British large light cruisers HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious are also missing, since they're not in the database either. The .pdt file is customized quite a bit, to give the British actual gunnery superiority over the Germans, and the CH chance is just about equal. Note that the British have been practicing their tactics and can now do the 180 turn in column, just like the Germans. The Germans want to sink as much of the convoy escort as possible, but don't dally and don't get drawn too far north, as the British battlecruisers (led by HMS Repulse) are closing in from the west.

By Greg Borisko

By the end of July, 1941, the Wehrmacht was on the verge of winning a quick, decisive victory over the Soviet Union. Army Group North had swiftly overrun the Red Army's frontier defenses and had advanced rapidly along the approaches to Leningrad. Army Group Center had also been successful. In short order, both Army Groups had crashed through the frontier defenses and, in the course of their advances, encircled huge numbers of Soviet troops. Army Group South's accomplishments were less spectacular. Progress was slow compared to the other two army groups because of heavy concentrations of Soviet manpower. However, these Soviet forces were effectively pinned down. Stalin was unwilling to lose the resources located in the Ukraine and Donets Basin, which the German Army Group South would have likely captured had Soviet forces been shifted to the north. With two of the best months for campaigning ahead, Germany seemed poised to overwhelm the Soviet colossus in the space of a summer. On the edge of victory though, the German high command became paralyzed over what the next course of action should be. By the time a firm decision was made, the war in the east could not be so easily won. The root of the German problem lay in a lack of strategic direction and an increasingly chaotic command and control system in the highest echelons of the Army. Individual personalities only added to this chaos.

Planning of Operation Barbarossa took a number of forms after the defeat of France and the Luftwaffe's inability to subdue the RAF as the prelude to a full scale amphibious assault on Britain. The major conflict in the planning phase was the gulf between what the Wehrmacht's planners and Hitler believed should be the primary goal of the offensive. The Army High Command (OKH- Oberkommando das Heeres) sought to make Moscow the focus of the upcoming offensive. This proposal adhered to traditional concepts about the conduct of war. OKH correctly assumed that the Soviet Union would concentrate their strength in defense of the capital. Moscow was more than just the capital of the Soviet Union; it was an important industrial center, and major communication and transportation hub. The capture of Moscow would have effectively isolated the greater part of the western Soviet Union from the extensive manpower and physical resources of the Far East. The capture of Moscow would have potentially eliminated the greater part of Soviet military forces in the field and made re-supply, reinforcement and replacement of those remaining more difficult.

The reason for the conflict between OKH and Hitler was that Hitler's attention lay elsewhere. He was far less concerned with purely military objectives. Economic and ideological objectives dominated Hitler's thinking. After the successful conclusion of the battles on the frontiers, Hitler believed the Wehrmacht should strive to capture Leningrad, the birthplace of Bolshevism and capture the resource-rich Ukraine and Donets Basin. Achieving these dual goals would result in the political and economic collapse of the Soviet state. In Hitler's mind the capture of Moscow need not be pursued.

At the beginning of August, these differing visions regarding the further prosecution of the war came into conflict. At a conference at Army Group Center's headquarters in Borisov (August 4, 1941), Hitler met with a number of the commanders from this army and a representative from OKH. The field commanders argued that Moscow should be the objective of the next phase of the campaign. Hitler, however, disagreed, designating Leningrad as the primary objective with either Moscow or the Ukraine to follow. The next goal of Barbarossa now appeared to be set and the campaign would once more move forward. However, German strategy shifted again within the days of this conference.

OKH developed a new plan which argued that a dual goal could be accomplished. Specifically, OKH called for a simultaneous offensive against both Moscow and the Ukraine. Army Group North's attack on Leningrad would be postponed. Army Group Center's thrust along both these axes was to be accomplished by splitting General Heinz Guderian's Panzer Group Two. Guderian, with part of his armour group and supporting infantry was to drive south to aid in the encirclement of Kiev. The remainder of his group would support the main thrust on Moscow conducted by General Herman Hoth's Third Panzer Group. Parts of Guderian's armoured group would replace elements of Hoth's that had been dispatched to Army Group North. Unfortunately, Guderian had not been informed by OKH of this plan to split his Panzer Group. This new operational vision conformed to yet another change in Hitler's strategic focus. Over the course of August, Hitler increasingly saw both the threat and potential of the Ukraine and Crimea. The threat was that the Crimea could become a base for Soviet strategic bombing of Ploesti, Germany's primary source of oil in Rumania. The potential to avoid such strategic bombing lay in gaining the resource rich Ukraine, Donets Basin and Crimea.

After three weeks of delays and strategic indecision, the OKH plan was ready to be presented to Hitler. However on August 23 personality conflicts intervened. On that date, Guderian met with Hitler. Although Guderian stated his case to Hitler about the importance of continuing the advance on Moscow, Hitler would not consider this course having focused on the Ukraine. Eventually, Guderian was told to prepare for the thrust southward. True to his personality, Guderian only requested that his panzer group be kept whole. Hitler agreed. In one act, Guderian had wrecked any hope of pursuing an advance on Moscow in August. Whether Guderian made this request because of ego (being excluded from the main drive on Moscow) or for legitimate military reasons (concentration of force), any hope of the Wehrmacht securing victory in 1941 was lost (see references to Fugate and Guderian below). Only at the end of September did the belated attack on Moscow begin. By then, the lateness of the season and the growing weakness of the Wehrmacht ensured that they would not capture Moscow.

This episode illustrates a problem that would plague German military operations: secrecy between the general staff, field commanders and Hitler. On this occasion, the OKH failed to communicate its plan to commanders in the field and/or to Hitler. Had this plan been communicated to all levels of the command structure, the Kiev battle might not have taken place in isolation but been accompanied by an advance on Moscow. As it was, the head of the OKH, General Halder, became outraged with Guderian. Their relations, Guderian recalled in "Panzer Leader", never improved.

A further problem was the tendency to present overly optimistic reports to Hitler concerning enemy forces. At the August 4 meeting with Hitler, Guderian gave the impression that the Red Army was defeated yet a coherent, stubborn defense was still opposing the Wehrmacht all along the front. Halder, too, was overly optimistic when dealing with Hitler. At the beginning of August, Halder implied that the Red Army was all but defeated yet in the privacy of his diary admitted that fresh Soviet formations were entering the battle on a regular basis. Hitler seized on such rosy thinking and manipulated it to his purposes. At the Orsha Conference (a high level German command meeting held on November 13, 1941, during which the decision to go for Moscow or not should be made in 1941 or to put the Wehrmacht on the defensive for the winter) he turned Halder's earlier rosy assessments into a rational for continuing the push on Moscow despite the onset of winter and the exhaustion of the Wehrmacht (Erickson and Dilks).

Despite winning important victories at the onset of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler and the Wehrmacht were unable to capitalize on their initial successes. The lack of a firm, shared strategic vision to pursue after the initial frontier battles was a blunder of major proportions. Hitler, in particular, was detrimental to his own cause. By placing ideological and economic goals above those of a purely military nature, Hitler's ideas led to the division of his forces. Without concentration, the Wehrmacht was neither strong enough to capture both Leningrad and the Ukraine as Hitler hoped nor take Moscow as OKH argued. Moreover, the Red Army, though it had suffered severe early losses, had not been defeated. Recognizing this, the logical course of action should have been to begin the attack on Moscow in August. Because the majority of Soviet forces were being concentrated for the defence of the capital, their defeat would have allowed Hitler's goals to be achieved more easily in 1942. His repeated clashes with both OKH and field commanders over the course of August was symptomatic of the friction that would paralyze the Wehrmacht later in the Barbarossa campaign and throughout the rest of the war.

Bibliography

Barbarossa by John Erickson and David Dilks - (Difficult to get - provides a good, succinct discussion of the Orsha Conference pp 214-215.)

The Road to Stalingrad by John Erickson

Thunder on the Dnepr by Bryan I. Fugate and Lev Dvoretsky (pp 229-237)

The Decisive Battles of the Western World, 1792-1944 by J.F.C. Fuller - (out of print)

Panzer Leader by Heinz Guderian (pp. 199-202)

History of the Second World War by B.H. Liddell Hart

Lost Victories by Erich von Manstein (Manstein's book provides a reference for the difficulties faced by field commanders as the war progressed. In particular, see the chapter "Hitler as Supreme Commander".)

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age by Peter Paret

Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East by Earl F. Ziemke and Magna E. Bauer

About the Author

Greg Borisko has been wargaming since the early 80's. He started playing board games (especially Squad Leader) and proceeded to computer games. He is something of a military historian, actually getting Master's in the field, though nobody in the real world really cares. So, Greg went back to technical school to learn electronics. He's married, the father of a dog who may not be of this world and the father to a wonderful little boy. Plans are already in the works to indoctrinate the child to be a fan of the Boston Bruins and Red Sox - just like his dad. Greg recently took a job as a research technician at the University of Saskatchewan where he will be working on radar systems.

(1640-1705; king of Hungary and of Bohemia from 1655; Holy Roman emperor from 1658).

The second surviving son of Emperor Ferdinand III (ruled 1637-1657), Archduke Leopold was destined by dynastic tradition to enter the church, where he could use the wealth and influence of high ecclesiastical office to further Habsburg dynastic interests in Europe. His older brother, the heir apparent, died in 1654, however, and Leopold, at age fourteen, had to take his brother's place and abandon clerical vows in order become the dynastic patriarch. The young archduke's education was overseen by tutors and aristocratic mentors who molded him for an ecclesiastical career. Leopold early adopted the intense Catholic piety expected of him and the gentle manners appropriate to a merely supporting role. He grew to manhood without the military ambition that characterized most of his fellow monarchs. From the beginning, his reign was defensive and profoundly conservative.

His first crisis concerned the Habsburg dynastic succession in the future, for in seven years death had reduced the living male Habsburgs to only two: Leopold and his sickly cousin Charles II of Spain. In 1666 Leopold married the younger daughter of Philip IV of Spain, the infanta Margareta (1651- 1673); of their four children, only one, Maria Antonia (1669-1692) lived beyond the first year. A second marriage in 1673 to Claudia Felicitas of the Tyrol (1653-1676) brought two more daughters, both of whom died in their first year. In 1676 his third marriage to Eleanora Magdalena of Neuburg (1655-1720) finally produced a male heir in Joseph I (ruled 1705-1711) and then another son, Charles VI (ruled 1711-1740).

Two decades of dynastic crisis encouraged Leopold's neighbors to contemplate the Habsburg lands should Leopold fail to provide a male heir. France coveted the Spanish territories along the Rhenish frontier; in the east the Turks seized control of Transylvania in 1663 and invaded Hungary the next year. A coalition of imperial and Hungarian forces defeated the invaders at St. Gotthard in 1664. Leopold then surprised and disgusted his generals by concluding a hasty treaty at Vasva ́r accepting Turkish occupation of most of what they held and paying a large tribute to the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman government in Turkey. Leopold defended the treaty by pointing to French threats against the Low Countries. The immediate consequence, however, was the emergence of a conspiracy among Hungarian magnates who accused Leopold of wasting their blood. Leaders formed armed bands that moved about Hungary attacking both imperial and Turkish units, leading to renewed Turkish incursions. When the plot developed into a plan to murder Leopold, the court struck back, rounded up all the leaders, and executed them. Characteristically, Leopold himself favored clemency for the plotters, several of whom had been childhood friends, but sterner voices prevailed in his councils.

The imperial court at Vienna was a multilingual assembly of some two thousand persons, only about a hundred of whom participated in decision making through the judicial, financial, and military councils. Around them were small swarms of secretaries, copyists, investigators, bodyguards, lawyers, and others who were gradually coalescing into a primitive bureaucracy. Beyond them was a larger swarm of laborers, janitors, kitchen help, grooms, stable hands, laundresses, and court purveyors. All of these enjoyed the privilege of being subject to a special judiciary under the court marshall.

The aristocratic elite that dominated the governing councils generally split into two distinct factions: ''westerners,'' who followed Leopold's own preference for appeasing the Turks in order to concentrate on the French threat, and on the other side the ''easterners,'' who insisted that the Turks were the greater threat. That group included most of the military leaders, courtiers with great properties in Hungary or Croatia, and above all the church hierarchy, which followed the papacy's lead in the crusade against militant Islam.

It was clear that Leopold's territories could not provide the resources to allow major military campaigns in both Hungary and the Low Countries. Unrest in the east and French invasions into the Netherlands forced Leopold to enter into an alliance with the Calvinist Dutch Republic. This move unsettled his conscience for years, but the commercial wealth of the Protestant sea powers combined with the human and material resources of central Europe formed the basis on which subsequent Habsburgs built their Danubian empire. The war with France, which began in 1673, lasted beyond the end of his reign with only two brief periods of armed peace.

To deal with the eastern problems, Leopold was advised to resort to a policy of repression, revoking the privileges and freedoms guaranteed by Hungary's constitution and occupying the country with German troops, who would be paid by the local counties and the magnates. Spontaneous uprisings produced a general revolt. Vienna responded with a program of violent repression, setting up special courts that prosecuted Protestant preachers, angering popular opinion in Protestant states. The repression lasted until 1676, when Leopold had to remove the imperial garrisons from Hungary to fight against France. Hungary again fell into civil war between Catholic magnates loyal to the emperor and Protestant nobles defending their freedom of religion as guaranteed in their constitution. Restoration of traditional liberties in 1681 merely intensified the rebellion.

A deadly plague spreading up the Danube hit the Austrian provinces in 1679, forcing the court to move to Prague. Vienna lost about a fifth of its population. That disaster alongside the diversion of war with France led the Turkish vizier Kara Mustafa to undertake a massive onslaught against the west. In 1683, moving unexpectedly quickly, a Turkish army of nearly a hundred thousand surrounded Vienna on 16 July. Leopold fled with his councils to Passau, where the government began organizing the city's relief. A relieving force gathered above Vienna attacked the besieging forces on 12 September. With the help of King John Sobieski III of Poland, the long battle ended with the Turks in full retreat down the Danube.

The triumph of 1683 turned Leopold's attention to the east. The shift of power in Hungary came slowly. Remaining rebel forces gradually accepted Leopold's offered amnesty. By 1686 Buda fell, the next year imperial forces occupied Transylvania, and in 1688 the great fortress of Belgrade fell. Vienna had just begun celebrating when France invaded the Palatinate. This forced Leopold once again to choose between allowing France to ravage the empire and concentrating on the east, or taking the great risk of fighting a two-front war. Leopold agreed to a greater war, which is known as the War of the League of Augsburg. For nearly a decade neither front produced clear results. In 1691 the Turks retook Belgrade. In 1697, with Prince Eugene of Savoy in command, imperial forces defeated the main Turkish army at Zenta. Two years later the Treaty of Karlowitz fixed the eastern boundary of the Habsburg empire where it remained largely unchanged until the twentieth century.

The treaty of Ryswick temporarily interrupted hostilities with France, but upon the death of Charles II in 1700, war broke out again over the Spanish succession. Leopold sent his forces into northern Italy to occupy what they could of Spanish possessions there. The war soon became global, involving struggles in Germany, Flanders, Italy, Spain, Canada, New England, and the West and East Indies. Leopold died in 1705 at the peak of its intensity. He left a monarchy strengthened by military success, but in much need of institutional reform. Leopold was not a forceful personality. He believed sincerely that his conscientious piety would be sustained by divine providence, which would produce the necessary miracles for survival. He was a master at the art of representing his sovereignty on an elaborate baroque stage, staging complex allegorical productions, performing in them, and composing oratorios and incidental music for them. Vienna's premier role in the development of western music owes much to this modest emperor's cultivation of the one art form that could bridge the many languages spoken by his subjects.

Prussian, Meckenlinburg-Schwerin and Free City of Hamburg troops

Austrian, Saxon, Hanoverian and Bavarian troops

SEVEN WEEKS' WAR, the name given to the war of 1866 between Prussia on the one side, and Austria, Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony and allied German states on the other. Concurrently with this war another was fought in Venetia between the Italians and the Austrian army of the South.

In 1830 Prussia, realizing from the breakdown of her mobilization for the war then impending with Austria that success was impossible, submitted to the Austrian demands, but her statesmen saw from the first that the " surrender of Olmütz," as it was termed, rendered eventual war with Austria " a military necessity." Preparation was begun in earnest after the accession of King William I., who selected Bismarck as his chancellor, Moltke as his chief of staff and Roon as his minister of war, and gave them a free hand to create the political situation and prepare the military machinery necessary to exploit it. Within six years the mobilization arrangements were recast, the war against Denmark in 1864 proving an opportune test of the new system. The number of field battalions' was nearly doubled, two-thirds of the artillery received breech-loading rifled guns, the infantry had for some years had the breech-loading " needle-gun," and steps were initiated to train an adequate number of staff officers to a uniform appreciation of strategic problems, based on Moltke's personal interpretation of Clausewitz's Vom Kriege. There was, however, a fundamental disagreement in the tactical ideas of the senior and those of the junior officers. The former, bred in the tradition of the Napoleonic battle, looked for the decision only from the employment of " masses "; the latter, trained with the breech-loader and without war experience, expected to decide battles by infantry fire only. Both overlooked the changes brought by the introduction of the long-range rifle (muzzle- and breech-loading alike), which had rendered impossible the "case shot preparation" which had formed the basis of Napoleon's tactical system. The men were trained for three years in the infantry and four years in the cavalry and artillery, but the war was not popular and many went unwillingly.

In contemporary military opinion, the Austrians were greatly superior in all arms to their adversary. Their rifle, though a muzzle-loader, was in every other respect superior to the Prussian needle-gun, and their M.L. rifled guns with shrapnel shell were considered more than sufficient to make good the slight advantage then conceded to the breech-loader. The cavalry was far better trained in individual and real horsemanship and manoeuvre, and was expected to sweep the field in the splendid cavalry terrain of Moravia. All three arms trained their men for seven years, and almost all officers and non-commissioned officers had considerable war experience. But the Prussians having studied their allies in the war of 1864 knew the weakness of the Austrian staff and the untrustworthiness of the contingents of some of the Austrian nationalities, and felt fairly confident that against equal numbers they could hold their own.

The occasion for war was engineered entirely by Bismarck; and it is doubtful how far Moltke was in Bismarck's confidence, though as a far-seeing general he took advantage of every opening which the latter's diplomacy secured for him. The original scheme for the strategic deployment worked out by Moltke as part of the routine of his office contemplated a defence of the kingdom against not only the whole standing army of Austria, but against 35,000 Saxons, 95,000 unorganized Bavarians and other South Germans, and 60,000 Hanoverians, Hessians, &c., and to meet these he had two corps (VII. and VIII.) on the Rhine, the Guard and remaining six in Brandenburg and Prussia proper. Bismarck diverted three Austrian corps by an alliance with Italy, and by consenting to the neutralization of the

Federal fortresses set at liberty von Beyer's division for field service in the west. Moltke thereupon brought the VIII. corps and half the VII. to the east and thus made himself numerically equal to his enemy, but elsewhere left barely 45,000 men to oppose 150,000. The magnitude of the risk was sufficiently shown at Lahgensalza. The direction of the Prussian railways, not laid out primarily for strategic purposes, conditioned the first deployment of the whole army, with the result that at first the Prussians were distributed in three main groups or armies on a front of about 250 m. As there had been no money available to purchase supplies beforehand, each of these groups had to be scattered over a wide area for subsistence, and thus news as to the enemy's points of concentration necessarily-preceded any determination of the plan of campaign.

Of the lines of concentration open to the Austrians, the direction of the roads and railways favoured that of Olmütz so markedly that Moltke felt reasonably certain that it would be chosen, and the receipt of the complete ordre de bataille of the Austrian army of the north secured by the Prussian secret service on the nth of June set all doubts at rest.

According to this, the Austrian troops already in Bohemia, 1st corps, Count Clam-Gallas, 30,000 strong, were to receive the Saxons if the latter were forced to evacuate their own country, and to act as an advanced guard or containing wing to the main body under Feldzeugmeister von Benedek (and, 3rd, 4th, 8th, l0th corps) which was to concentrate at Olmütz, whence the Prussian staff on insufficient evidence concluded the Austrians intended to attack Silesia, with Breslau as their objective. On this date (June 9th) the Prussians stood in the following order; The army of the Elbe, General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, three divisions only, about Torgau; the I. army, Prince Frederick Charles (II., III., IV. corps), about Gorlitz; the II. Army under the crown prince (I., V., VI.) near Breslau; the Guard and a reserve corps of Landwehr at Berlin. As the army of the Elbe was numerically inferior to Clam-Gallas and the Saxons, the reserve corps was at once despatched to reinforce it, and the Guard was sent to the crown prince. Further, in deference to political (probably dynastic) pressure, the crown prince was ordered eastwards to defend the line of the Neisse, thus increasing the already excessive length of the Prussian front. Had the Austrians attacked on both flanks forthwith, the Prussian central (I.) army could have reached neither wing in time to avert defeat, and the political consequences of the Austrian victory might have been held to justify the risks involved, for even if unsuccessful the Austrians and Saxons could always retreat into Bavaria and there form a backbone of solid troops for the 95,000 South Germans.

Advance of the Elbe and I. Armies.-This was one of the gravest crises in Moltke's career. To overcome it he at length obtained authority (June 15th) to order the army of the Elbe into Saxony, and on the 18th the Prussians entered Dresden, the Saxons retiring along the Elbe into Bohemia; and on the same day the news that the Austrian main body was marching from Olmütz towards Prague arrived at headquarters. Moltke took three days to solve the new problem, then, on the 22nd, he ordered the I. and II. Armies to cross the Austrian frontier and unite near Gitschin, a point conveniently situated about the convergence of the roads crossing the Bohemian mountains. As during this operation the II. army would be the most exposed, the I., to which the army of the Elbe had now been attached, was to push on its advance to the utmost. Apparently with this purpose in view, Prince Frederick Charles was instructed to break up his army corps into their constituent divisions, and move each division as a separate column on its own road, the reserve of cavalry and artillery following in rear of the centre. The consequences were the reverse of those anticipated. On the afternoon of the 26th the advance guards of the I. army and army of the Elbe came in contact with the Austrians at Huhnerwasser and Podol and drove the latter back after a sharp engagement, but, having no cavalry, could neither observe their subsequent proceedings nor estimate their strength. The prince, seeing the opportunity for a battle, immediately issued orders for an enveloping attack on Munchengratz by his whole army, but, owing to distances and the number of units now requiring direction, it was late in the following day before all were in readiness for action. The Austrians then slipped away, and the whole of the next day was spent in getting the divisions back to their proper lines of advance. Clam-Gallas then retired deliberately to Gitschin and took up a new position. The Prussians followed on the 29th, but, owing to the lie of the roads, they had to march in two long columns, separated by almost a day's march, and when the advanced guard of the left column, late in the afternoon, gained touch with the enemy, the latter were in a position to crush them by weight of numbers, had they not suddenly been ordered to continue the retreat on Miletin.

Battles of the II. Army: Trautenau and Nachod.-Meanwhile the situation of the II. Army had become critical. On its right wing the I. corps (General v. Bonin) had received orders on the 27th to seize the passages over the Aupa at Trautenau. This was accomplished without much difficulty, but the main body was still in the denies in rear, when about 3 p.m. the leading troops were attacked by an overwhelming Austrian force and at Soor and Koniginhof (Guard corps) on the 28th and 29th, and at Schweinschadel (Steinmetz) on the 29th, the Prussians in every encounter proving themselves, unit for unit, a match for their adversaries. It is customary to ascribe their successes to the power of the breech-loader, but there were actions in which it played no part, cavalry versus cavalry encounters, and isolated duels between batteries which gave the Prussian gunners a confidence they had not felt when first crossing the frontier.

Junction of the Prussian Armies.-By the morning of the 30th it was clear that the junction between the two armies could be completed, whenever desired, by a forward march of a few miles. But Moltke, wishing to preserve full freedom for manoeuvre for each army, determined to preserve the interval between them, and began his dispositions to manoeuvre the Austrians out of the position he had selected as the best for them to take up, on the left or farther bank of the Elbe.

This is so characteristic of yon Moltke's methods and of the tactical preconceptions of the time that it deserves more detailed notice. Neither army had covered its front by a cavalry screen, both preferring to retain the mounted troops for battlefield purposes. Hence, though they were only a few miles apart, each was ignorant.

BOHEMIAN CAMPAIGN 1866

Driven back in confusion; the confusion spread and became a panic, and the I. corps was out of action for the next forty-eight hours. Almost at the same hour, a few miles to the south-eastward, the advanced guard of the V. corps (Steinmetz) began to emerge from the long defile leading from Glatz to Nachod, and the Prussians had hardly gained room to form for action beyond its exit before they too were attacked. Steinmetz was a different man from Bonin, and easily held his own against the disconnected efforts of his adversary, ultimately driving the latter before him with a loss of upwards of 5000 men. Still the situation remained critical next day, for the I. corps having retreated, the Guard corps (next on its left) was endangered, and Steinmetz on his line of advance towards Skalitz (action of Skalitz, June 28th) could only count on the gradual support of the VI. Corps. Benedek's resolution was, however, already on the wane. From the first his supply arrangements had been defective, and the requisitions made by his leading troops left nothing for the rest to eat. While trying to feed his army he omitted to fight it, and, with the chance of overwhelming the Prussians by one great effort of marching, he delayed the necessary orders till too late, and the Prussian II. Army made good its concentration on the upper Elbe with insignificant fighting of the other's position. Moltke, knowing well the danger for a great army of being forced into a battle with an unfordable river behind it, and with his naturally strong bent towards the defensive in tactics, concluded that Benedek would elect to hold the left bank of the Elbe, between the fortified towns of Josephstadt and Koniggratz, with his right thrown back and covered by the lower courses of the Aupa and the Mettau. Frontal attack on such a position being out of the question, he decided, after weighing well the weaknesses of the Austrian flanks, to direct his principal efforts against the left (i.e. southern), although that entailed the uncovering of the communication of the II. Army and a flank march of almost the whole of the I. and II. Armies across the front of the Austrians in position. As an eminent French critic (General Bonnal) says, this was but to repeat Frederick the Great's manoeuvre at Kolin, and, the Austrians being where they actually were and not where Moltke decided they ought to be, the result might have been equally disastrous. Nevertheless the necessary movements were initiated by orders at noon on the 2nd of July, and one phrase in these saved the situation. According to these orders, the Elbe army was directed to Chlumetz on the way to Pardubitz, the I. army diagonally to the south-east across the front of the Austrian position. Two corps of the II. army were to make a demonstration against Josephstadt on the 3rd of July, and the other two were to move in a general direction south-west to keep touch with the I. Prince Frederick Charles was warned to guard the left flank of his marching troops and authorized to attack any forces of the enemy he might encounter in that direction, if not too strong for him. On receipt of these orders (about 3-30 p.m. July 2nd) the prince immediately despatched officers' patrols towards the Elbe, and about 6 p.m. these, having crossed the Bistritz, discovered the enemy in considerable force, at least three corps, behind the line of low hills which here border that stream. The remainder of the Austrian main body, the whole of which was in fact still on the right bank of the Elbe, was hidden from view behind high ground farther to the eastward.

The 2nd of July.-The three Austrian corps were exactly the target Prince Frederick Charles desired. He promised himself with the I. and the Elbe armies an easy victory if he attacked them. Orders in this sense were issued about 7 p.m. They instructed every corps under his command to be in readiness for action towards the Bistritz at 3 a.m. on the 3rd, and in a concluding paragraph announced that the crown prince had been requested to co-operate from the north. A copy of the orders and an explanatory letter were in fact despatched to the II. Army, another copy also went direct to the king. Both appear to have been delayed in transmission, for the former only reached the crown prince's quarters at 2 a.m. He was then asleep and had given orders that he was not to be awakened. His chief of the staff, Blumenthal, was absent at the royal headquarters, and since the bearer of the order had not been warned of the importance of the despatch he carried, no one roused the prince. At 3 a.m. Blumenthal returned and read the letter, and without troubling to disturb his chief he dealt with the matter himself in what is certainly one of the most remarkable documents ever issued in a grave crisis by a responsible staff officer. Briefly he informed Prince Frederick Charles that the orders for the II. Army based on the instructions received from the royal headquarters, having been already issued, the cooperation of the I. corps alone might be looked for.

Meanwhile the duplicates had reached Moltke, and he, knowing well the temperament of the "Red Prince " and the impossibility of arresting the intended movement, obtained the royal sanction to a letter addressed to the crown prince, in which the latter was ordered to co-operate with his whole command. This vital despatch was sent off in duplicate at midnight and reached von Blumenthal at 4 a.m. In face of this no evasion was possible. Army orders were issued at 5 a.m., but still the urgency of the situation was so little understood that had they been verbally adhered to the force of the II. Army could hardly have been brought to bear before 5 p.m., by which time the defeat of the I. army might well have been an accomplished fact. Fortunately, however, the initiative of the Prussian subordinates was sufficient to meet the strain.

Battle of Koniggratz (Sadowa).-Thick mist and driving rain delayed the I. and Elbe armies, but by 5 a.m. the troops had reached their allotted positions. The 7th division now moved forward, taking as point of direction the wood of Maslowed (or Swiep Wald), and supported on the right by the 8th division which was to seize the bridge of Sadowa. The leading troops of the former easily rushed the Austrian outposts covering the' wood, but the reserves of the Austrian outposts counterattacked. The firing drew other troops towards the critical point, and very shortly the wood of Maslowed became the scene of one of the most obstinate conflicts in military history. In about two hours the 12 Prussian battalions and 3 batteries found themselves assailed by upwards of 40 Austrian battalions and 100 guns, and against such swarms of enemies each man felt that retreat from the wood across the open meant annihilation. The Prussians determined to hold on at all costs. The 8th division, belonging to the same corps, could not see their comrades sacrificed before their eyes, and pushed on through Sadowa to relieve the pressure on the right of the 7th division. Meanwhile fresh Austrian batteries appeared against the front of the 8th division, and fresh Prussians in turn bad to be engaged to save the 8th. Fortunately the Prussians here derived an unexpected advantage from the shape of the ground, and indeed from the weather. The heavy rain, which had delayed the commencement of the action, had swollen the Bistritz so as to check their advance and thus postpone the decision, whilst the mist and driving rain hid the approaching troops from the

Austrian gunners, whose shells burst almost harmlessly on the sodden ground. Then when once across the stream it was discovered that unlike the normal slopes in the district the hillside in front of them showed a slight convexity under cover of which they were able to re-form in regular order. The advantage of the breech-loader now began to assert itself, for the Austrian skirmishers who covered the front of the guns could only load when standing up, while the Prussians lay down or fired from cover. The defenders were therefore steadily driven up the hill, and then cleared the front to give the guns room to act. But the Austrian gunners were intent on the Prussian batteries farther back, which as the light improved had come into action. The Prussian infantry crept nearer and nearer, till at under 300 yds. range and from cover they were able to open fire on the Austrian gunners under conditions which rendered the case fire of the latter practically useless; but here was the opportunity a great cavalry leader on the Austrian side might have seized to restore the battle, for the ground, the shortness of the distance, and the smoke and excitement of the cannonade were all in favour of the charge. Such a charge as prelude to the advance of a great infantry bayonet attack must have swept the exhausted Prussians down the hill like sheep, but the opportunity passed, and the gunners finding their position untenable, limbered up, not without severe losses, and retired to a second position in rear. This withdrawal took place about 2 p.m., and the crisis on the Prussian side may be said to have lasted from about 11 a.m. By this time every infantry soldier and gun within call had been thrown into the fight, and the Austrians might well have thrown odds of three to one upon the Prussian centre and have broken it asunder.

Arrival of the II. Army.-But suddenly the whole aspect of affairs was changed. The 2nd and 4th Austrian corps found themselves all at once threatened in flank and rear by heavy masses of Prussian infantry, the leading brigades of the crown prince's army, and they began to withdraw towards the centre of their position in ordered brigade masses, apparently so intent on keeping their men in hand that they seem never to have noticed the approach of the Prussian reserve artillery of the Guard which (under Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen) was straining forward over heavy soil and through standing corn towards their point of direction, a clump of trees close to the tower of the church of Chlum. Not even deigning to notice the retreating columns, apparently too without escort, the batteries pressed forward till they reached the summit of the ridge trending eastward from Chlum towards the Elbe, whence the whole interior of the Austrian position was disclosed to them, and then they opened fire upon the Austrian reserves which lay below them in solid masses of army corps. Occurring about 2.30 p.m., and almost simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Austrian guns on their left already alluded to, this may be said to have decided the battle, for although the Saxons still stood firm against the attacks of the Elbe army, and the reserves, both cavalry and infantry, attempted a series of counterstrokes, the advantage of position and moral was all on the side of the Prussians. The slopes of the position towards the Austrians now took on the usual concave section, and from the crest of the ridge every movement could be seen for miles. The Austrian cavalry, on weak and emaciated horses, could not gallop at speed up the heavy slopes and the artillery of both Prussian wings practically broke every attempt of the infantry to form for attack.

Close of the Battle.-Still the Austrians made good their retreat. Their artillery driven back off the ridges formed a long line from Stosser to Plotist facing the enemy, and under cover of its fire the infantry at length succeeded in withdrawing, for the Prussian reserve cavalry arrived late on the ground, and the local disconnected efforts of the divisional cavalry were checked by the still intact Austrian squadrons. Whereas at 2.30 p.m. absolute destruction seemed the only possible fate of the defeated army, by 6 p.m., thanks to the devoted heroism of the artillery and the initiative of a few junior commanders of cavalry, it had escaped from the enclosing horns of the Prussian attack. In spite of heavy losses the Austrians were perhaps better in hand and more capable of resuming the battle next morning than the victors, for they were experienced in war, and accustomed to defeat, and retired in good order in three organized columns within easy supporting distance of each other. On the other hand, the Prussians were new to the battlefield, and the reaction after the elation of victory was intense; moreover, if what happened at Huehnerwasser affords a guide, the staff would have required some days to disentangle the units which had fought and to assign them fresh objectives.

Final Operations.-The convergence of the Prussian armies on the battlefield ended in the greatest confusion. The Elbe army had crossed the front of the I. army, and the II. Army was mixed up with both. The reserve cavalry reached the front too late in the day to pursue. Thus the Austrians gained 24 hours, and the direction of their retreat was not established with any degree of certainty for several days. Moreover the little fortresses of Josephstadt and Koniggratz both refused to capitulate, and the whole Prussian armies were thus compelled to move down the Elbe to Pardubitz before they could receive any definite new direction. Meanwhile Benedek had in fact assigned only one corps with the reserve cavalry to oppose a Prussian advance towards Vienna, and the remaining seven retired to Olmütz, where they were on the flank of a Prussian advance on Vienna, and had all the resources of Hungary behind them to enable them to recuperate. They were also still in railway communication with the capital. On purely military grounds the Prussians should have marched at once towards the Austrian field army, i.e. to Qlmütz. But for political reasons Vienna was the more important objective, and therefore the I. and Elbe armies were directed towards the capital, whilst the II. Army only moved in the direction of the Austrian main body. Political motives had, however, in the meantime exercised a similar influence on the Austrian strategy. The emperor had already consented to cede Venetia to Italy, had recalled two corps from the south to the capital, and had appointed the archduke Albert to command the whole army. The Army of the North, which had reached Olmütz on the l0th of July, now received orders to move by road and rail towards Vienna, and this operation brought them right across the front of the II. Prussian army. The cavalry established contact on the 15th in the neighbourhood of Tobitschau and Rochetinitz (action of Tobitschau, July 15th), and the Austrians finding their intention discovered, and their men too demoralized by fear of the breechloader to risk a fresh battle, withdrew their troops and endeavoured to carry out their concentration by a wide circuit down the valley of the Waag and through Pressburg. Meanwhile the Prussian main army was pursuing its advance under very adverse circumstances. Their railway communication ended abruptly at the Austrian frontier; the roads were few and bad, the country sparsely cultivated and inhospitable, and the troops suffered severely. One third of the cavalry broke down on a march of 97 miles in five days, and the infantry, after marching 112 miles in ten days, had to have a two days' halt accorded them on the l7th. They were then in the district about Brünn and Iglau, and on the l8th the royal headquarters reached Nikolsburg. News had now been received of the arrival of Austrian reinforcements by rail at the capital both from Hungary and Italy, and of the preparation of a strong line of provisional defences along the Florisdorf position directly in front of Vienna. Orders were therefore issued during the 18th for the whole army to concentrate during the following days in the position held by the Austrians around Wagram in 1809, and these orders were in process of execution when on the 21st an armistice was agreed upon to commence at noon on the 22nd. The last fight was that of Blumenau near Pressburg on the 22nd; this was broken off at the stated time.

Langensalza.-In western Germany the Prussian forces, depleted to the utmost to furnish troops for the Bohemian campaign, were opposed to the armies of Hanover and Bavaria and the 8th Federal corps (the last consisting of Hessians, Wurttembergers, Badensers and Nassauers with an Austrian division drawn from the neutralized Federal fortresses), which were far superior in number. These minor enemies were, however, unready and their troops were mostly of indifferent quality. Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, which were nearest to Prussia and therefore immediately dangerous, were dealt with promptly and without waiting for the decision in the main theatre of war. The I3th Prussian division (v. Goeben) was at Minden, Manteuffel's troops from the Elbe duchies at Altona, v. Beyer's division (Federal fortress garrisons) at Wetzlar. On the 15th and 16th of June Beyer moved on Cassel, while the two other Prussian generals converged on Hanover. Both places were in Prussian hands before the 20th. The Hessians, retired upon Hanau to join the 8th Federal corps; only the Hanoverians remained in the north, and they too, threatened by Beyer's advance, marched from their point of concentration at Gottingen southward for the Main. With proper support from Bavaria the Hanoverians could perhaps have escaped intact; but the Bavarians considered that their allies (about 20,000) were strong enough by themselves to destroy whichever of the converging Prussian columns tried to bar their way, and actually the Hanoverian general v. Arentschild won a notable success over the improvised Prussian and Coburg division of General v. Flies, which advanced from Gotha and barred the southward march of the Hanoverians at Langensalza. The battle of Langensalza (June 27th) showed that the risks Moltke deliberately accepted when he transferred so many of the western troops to the Bohemian frontier were by no means imaginary, for v. Flies, outnumbered by two to one, sustained a sharp reverse before the other columns closed in. But the strategic object of General Vogel v. Falckenstein, the Prussian commander-in-chief in the west, was achieved next day. By the morning of the 2gth Manteuffel and Goeben lay north, v. Flies's column (backed by a fresh brigade) south of Langensalza, and Beyer approached from Eisenach. Whatever had been the prospects of the Hanoverian army five days previously, it was now surrounded by twice its numbers, and on the 29th of June the capitulation of Langensalza closed its long and honourable career.

The Main Campaign.-The Prussian army, now called the " Army of the Main," of three divisions (one being unusually strong), had next to deal with the 7th (Bavarians) and 8th (other South Germans) Federal corps in the valley of the Main. These were nominally over 100,000 strong and were commanded by Prince Charles of Bavaria. The ordre de bataille of the 8th corps is interesting. It was commanded by Prince Alexander of Hesse; the 1st division (3 infantry brigades, I cavalry brigade, 6 batteries) came from Württemberg; the 2nd division (2 infantry and I cavalry brigades, 5 batteries) from Baden, the least anti-Prussian of all these states; the 3rd division (2 infantry and I cavalry brigades, I rifle battalion, 4 batteries) from Hesse-Darmstadt; the 4th division consisted of an Austrian brigade of 7 battalions (three of which were Italians), a Nassau brigade, and two batteries and some hussars of Hesse-Cassel. The remainder of the Hesse-Cassel troops, which had retired southward before Beyer's advance on Cassel, went to the Rhine valley about Mainz. The centre of the rayon of the 8th corps was Darmstadt, and the Bavarian line extended from Coburg to Gemunden. It appears that Prince Charles wished to march via Jena and Gera into Prussia, as Napoleon had done sixty years before, but the scheme was negatived by the Austrian government, which exercised the supreme command of the allies. The Bavarians did, however, advance, and made for the Eisenach-Gotha region, where the Prussian-Hanoverian struggle was in progress. Meanwhile the 8th Federal corps advanced also, but actuated probably by political motives it took the general direction of Cassel, and between the two German corps a wide gap opened, of which Vogel v. Falckenstein was not slow to take advantage. On the day of Koniggratz the Prussians moved into position to attack the Bavarians, and on the 4th of July v. Goeben won the victory of Wiesenthal (near Dermbach). The 7th corps thereupon drew back to the Franconian Saale, the 8th to Frankfurt, and on the 7th of July the Prussian army was massed about Fulda between them. Vogel v. Falckenstein moved forward again on the 8th, and on the 10th the Bavarians were again defeated in a series of actions around Kissingen, Waldaschach and Hammelburg. Meanwhile Prince Alexander's motley corps began its advance from Frankfurt up the Main valley to join the Bavarians, who had now retired on Schweinfurt. The army of the Main, however, had little difficulty in defeating the 8th corps at Laufach on the 13th and Aschaffenburg on the 14th of July. The Prussians occupied Frankfurt (16th). Vogel v. Falckenstein was now called to Bohemia, and v. Manteuffel was placed in command of the army of the Main for the final advance. The 7th and 8th corps now at last effected their junction about Wurzburg, whither the army of the Main marched from Frankfurt to meet them. The Federals advanced in their turn, the Bavarians on the right, the 8th on the left, and the opponents met in the valley of the Tauber. More partial actions, at Hundheim (23rd), Tauber Bischofsheim (24th),Gerchsheim (25th), Helmstadt (25th) and Rossbrunn (26th) ended in the retreat of the Germans to Wurzburg and beyond; the armistice (Aug. 2nd) then put an end to operations. A Prussian reserve corps under the grand duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, formed at Leipzig, had meanwhile overrun eastern Bavaria up to Nuremberg.

This campaign presents the sharpest contrast to that of Bohemia. Small armies moving freely within a large theatre of war, the occupation of hostile territory as a primary object of operations, the absence of a decision-compelling spirit on either side, the hostile political "view" over-riding the hostile "feeling"-all these conditions remind the student of those of 17th and 18th century warfare. But the improved organization, better communications and supplies, superior moral, and once again the breech-loader versus a standing target, which caused the Prussian successes, at least give us an opportunity of comparing the old and the new systems under similar conditions, and even thus the principle of the " armed nation" achieved the decision in a period of time which, for the old armies, was wholly insufficient.

The various treaties of Prague, Berlin and Vienna which followed the armistice secured the annexation by Prussia of Hanover, the Elbe duchies, the electorate of Hesse, Nassau and Frankfurt, the dissolution of the existing confederation and the creation of a new North German Confederation under the hegemony of Prussia, and the payment of war indemnities to Prussia (the Austrian share being £6,000,000). Venetia was ceded by Austria to Napoleon III and by him to King Victor Emmanuel.

A common sight: Light field wagons (IF 1) being towed behind a prime mover. Note, unusually, the unit insignia on the rear one showing they belong to an artillery regiment.

The general utility of the horse in warfare began to decline in the mid-nineteenth century. The introduction of the rifle and then the machine gun made using horses on the battlefield highly dangerous. World War I, with its endless lines of trenches, doomed the cavalry as an effective tactical arm forever. But the horse still soldiered on in a number of ways, most notably for transport purposes. Horses actually saw more service during the Second World War than during the First. Indeed, despite the popular image of Polish lancers futilely charging German tanks (which never took place outside of the imagination of the German propaganda ministry), the horse cavalry made something of a comeback during the war, albeit not in its traditional roles. So unexpected was this development that it caught most armies by surprise. The German Army, for example, began World War II with one cavalry division. This performed profitably during the Polish and French campaigns but was converted into the 24th Panzer Division early in the Russian campaign. Soon afterward, the peculiar circumstances of the Russian front prompted the Germans to raise new mounted formations, which were found particularly effective in antipartisan operations and raids, notably in the frequent dense forests of western Russia. By the end of the war the Germans had seven horse cavalry divisions, mostly in the Waffen SS, largely comprised of non-German personnel, mostly Ukrainians and various Central Asians who preferred to fight against Stalin rather than for him.

Consider the vaunted Wehrmacht, whose pride was the mechanized might of the panzers. When Hitler invaded Russia on June 22, 1941, the German Army had over 750,000 "hippotrain" (horse-drawn) guns and other vehicles, in contrast to only about 600,000 motor vehicles, including some 3,500 armored fighting vehicles. Aside from the operational limitations that the use of horses and mules imposed on the German Army, they also proved an enormous logistical burden. On average, to feed three horses doing useful work hauling howitzers and such required the services of two more horses to haul their weekly rations of feed and fodder. And since horses and mules are not as sturdy as cars and trucks, during the war on the Eastern front the German Army lost an average of 1,000 horses a day. About 75 percent of these losses were due to combat, 17 percent to heart failure brought on by overwork, and the balance, 8 percent, to diseases, exposure, and starvation. Replacing horses was a major problem. Nevertheless, since the Germans had an inadequate supply of motor vehicles, they continued to rely on horseflesh through the entire war. The total number of horses used by the German armed forces during the war is unknown, but losses appear to have totaled about 2.7 million, nearly double the 1.4 million that were lost in World War I. This includes animals killed for food: Unlike wrecked trucks, dead horses could be eaten, and this was done regularly by Germans and Russians alike.

CAVALRY DIVISIONS (KAVALLERIE DIVISIONEN)

The position regarding German cavalry (ie genuine mounted troops) is not entirely clear since it was very little used in the West and, hence, there is little Intelligence information. At the outbreak of war there were in existence the four Leichte Divisionen with their mounted rifle regiments and also 1st Cavalry Brigade. This unit after participating in the Polish campaign attached to a Panzer group, was raised to divisional status in time for the 1940 French campaign. As a partly mechanised mobile Division it then fought in Russia until the end of 1941 when it was converted into 24th Panzer Division.

It would appear, however, that there were always cavalry units operating on the Russian front after 1941. Certainly the Waffen SS had their SS Cavalry Division (the SS Division Florian Geyer), with mounted infantry Regiments, and mounted regiments were operating as autonomous units with the army during 1942 and 1943. In May 1943 six regiments were combined to form the Army Kosaken Division (Cossack Division) patterned after the Russian cavalry and having largely horse-drawn support units roughly equivalent to those in a mountain division but without anti-tank protection. This was a true cavalry Division and operated as such until it was taken over by the SS at the end of 1944 and split up to form the nucleus of XV SS Kavallerie Korps (2 Divisions); these two appear to have been organised similarly to mobile infantry divisions so far as the war situation allowed. For a period, until it was annihilated there was also a Hungarian Cavalry Division in the order of battle. The cavalry units taken to form Kosaken division were obviously missed since, by February 1944, at least three strong cavalry regiments were operating with Army Group Centre. Between February and May 1944 these were organised into the basis of 3 and 4 Kavallerie Brigaden each composed of two, two battalion regiments with strong and partly motorised supporting units. These were obviously a means of providing mobile striking forces under Russian conditions where the horse had advantages even over motor transport at times, and were mounted infantry rather than true cavalry. With the 'loss' of Kosaken Division they were both upgraded to Divisional status from the end of February 1945 by the addition of appropriate Divisional services units. At the war's end there were two army and four SS Cavalry Divisions officially in the field with a fifth SS one forming.

Horse-drawn Transport

German Divisional horse-drawn transport was designed to be as efficient as such vehicles could be. It was issued both to Infantry Divisions and to infantry corps supply columns on a definite scale and can be divided into two major types: battle transport (Gefechtstross) and support or supply transport.

The battle transport, issued to infantry formations down to platoon level, was intended for carriage of ready-to-use supplies and heavy weapons. The intended vehicles were modern, light and often steel-bodied. Mounted on pneumatic tyres, they comprised two-horse wagons (usually the Hf 7 or Stahlfeldwagen - Steel fieldcart - and various patterns of one and two-horse limber and trailer units. The most common were the If 8 Infanteriekarren, small load carriers with tarpaulin covers and capable of taking an AA machine gun mounting; and the two-horse MG Wagen 36 with its communications variants. These were true limbers carrying 2-3 men and coupled to two wheeled caissons containing guns, tripods and ammunition, or other equipment; they were issued to the heavy-machine gun sections using MG 34s and MG 42s. Typical allocations to a 1944 pattern infantry rifle company were: HQ one If8; each rifle Zug two If8; heavy machine gun Staffel one Hf7 and two If8.

The support vehicles were often of more archaic pattern dating back in some cases to WW I and included the very widely used Hf I light field cart, a wooden vehicle pulled by two horses and various limber and trailer combinations

A concept of foreign policy emerging in the late nineteenth century in Imperial Germany against the background of the country's rise as a major industrial and trading nation. Coming out of the period of retarded economic growth known as the Great Depression of 1873-1895, German entrepreneurs were pushing for the acquisition of colonies in search of raw materials and markets for their goods. Already in the 1880s, Reich chancellor Otto von Bismarck had responded to these pressures and, in the larger context of the European "scramble for colonies," had acquired territories in Africa and Asia. His successors, and Bernhard von B端low in particular, promoted this overseas expansion even more vigorously after becoming the trusted adviser of Kaiser Wilhelm II, first as foreign secretary and from 1900 as chancellor. He was the person who coined such popular slogans of imperialist power politics as that of Germany seeking "a place in the sun" next to the other Great Powers. In the twentieth century, he added, Germany would either be "the hammer or the anvil" of world politics when it came to a redistribution of colonies and the allocation of territories that had not yet been annexed by the Europeans. Nor did he leave any doubt that he wanted Germany to be a hammer.

Given these claims, there has been a good deal of debate among historians as to the meaning of Weltpolitik. In the early years after World War II, most scholars tended to interpret it as some rather aimless yearning for prestige and for recognition of Germany as a latecomer to the international system, especially by Britain, then the dominant power in the world. No doubt Weltpolitik lacked precision in the public discourse of the time. But later work, based on newly discovered archival sources, has shown that this indeterminacy was more deliberate and that behind the slogans of the day there was a precise and well-thought-out strategy to make certain that Germany would succeed at the bargaining table when, as was widely expected, there would be a redistribution of colonies in the new century. Thus the ailing Portuguese Empire was thought to be an object of future power-political negotiation.

The kaiser and his advisers in the late 1890s were convinced that the German voice would not be heard unless it was backed up by military might. Although Germany had the strongest army in Europe, it was also clear that it would be useless against British naval power. Only a large German navy would be able to buttress future German claims. This is why it has been argued more recently that Weltpolitik, the vagueness of its definition for popular consumption notwithstanding, did have a hardcore plan to expand the Imperial navy into a powerful instrument that was capable of challenging even the Royal Navy. The fate of Weltpolitik was therefore inseparably linked to the success or failure of the kaiser's naval program. By 1910-1911, both had run into serious trouble. In 1909 B端low lost his job, not least because his Weltpolitik diplomacy had led to the isolation of Germany. He could not prevent the conclusion of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale in 1904, nor the formation of the Triple Entente of 1907, which brought in Russia. By 1911, it was also evident that the Tirpitz Plan was at its end, because the British, suspicious of German naval expansion, had "outbuilt" the kaiser in the arms competition that also began around 1904-1905.

Weltpolitik was now replaced by a retreat by Germany to the European continent. Stepped-up expenditure for the army began to replace the earlier massive funding of the navy. Berlin began to support its only reliable ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and developed a siege mentality that contributed to the attempt to break out of the perceived encirclement of this Dual Alliance by Britain, France, and Russia in July 1914. The unleashing of World War I was therefore a preventive strike against France and Russia before the position of the two Central European powers had deteriorated to the point where the armies of the former could no longer be defeated, that is, before it was too late and the latter would become the "anvils" of the great power system.

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(May 2, 1852-April 17, 1937)

German General

Tenacious Gallwitz stood directly in the path of American and French offensives during the final months of World War I. He eventually yielded to superior Allied numbers and resources but extracted a heavy price for the victory along the Western Front.

Max von Gallwitz was born in Breslau, Germany, on May 2, 1852, into a family of common origin. He joined the army in 1870 and that year saw service in the Franco-Prussian War as an artillery officer. After the impressive Prussian victory, which led to the unification of Germany as a single nation, his prospects for advancement seemed grim. Not only was he a commoner in an officer corps dominated by glittering aristocrats, but he also practiced Catholicism in a predominately Protestant army with long traditions of bias against his creed. Nonetheless, Gallwitz proved himself an outstanding junior officer, and he rose steadily through the ranks on merit. In 1896, he gained a promotion to colonel and shortly after received the appointment of chief of artillery in the War Ministry. He became a major general in 1902 and lieutenant general commanding the 16th Division three years later. Good performance, sound judgment, and attention to detail then led to his appointment as inspector of field artillery with the rank of full general in 1911. Two years later Gallwitz's acceptance was confirmed when Kaiser Wilhelm I elevated him into the ranks of Prussian nobility.

When World War I commenced in August 1914, Gallwitz commanded the elite Guard Reserve Corps on the Western Front. After distinguished fighting at Namur, Belgium, his forces transferred to the east, where they fought in the decisive victory at the Masurian Lakes in September 1914. By dint of excellent service, Gallwitz was elevated to command an army group bearing his name in February 1915. Having crossed the Narev River in Poland after heavy fighting, he took 111,000 Russian prisoners in a series of battles around Pultusk. That fall Gallwitz transferred south as head of the 11th Army and helped orchestrate the conquest of Serbia in September 1915. He was preparing for an all-out assault against the Allied bridgehead at Salonika, Greece, when orders arrived transferring him back to the Western Front. Successively leading troops in the Verdun and Somme sectors, his Fifth Army was renamed Army Group Gallwitz with the addition of troops from Army Division C.

After the defeat of Paul von Hindenburg's and Erich von Ludendorff's spring offensive, German forces were increasingly placed on the defensive. By the fall of 1918, it fell upon Gallwitz to hold a defensive line in the Meuse-Moselle region against increasing numbers of newly-arrived American troops. The recent failure also ushered in Allied counterattacks across the Western Front, and German forces were hard-pressed to contain them. However, the U.S. commander, Gen. John J. Pershing, was determined to keep the American Expeditionary Force intact and not parceled out to assist French and British efforts elsewhere. For his first target he selected the St. Milhiel Salient, a large pocket of German forces south of Verdun. On the flank of the critical Meuse-Argonne sector, it posed a threat to any advances toward the German border. Pershing received permission to attack, although only after haggling with senior French commanders, who wanted American forces concentrated for the upcoming Meuse-Argonne offensive. Pershing nonchalantly agreed to participate in both operations once he had neutralized the salient. On September 12, 1918, 550,000 American doughboys, aided by an additional 110,000 French, attacked Gallwitz's men along a 50-mile front. Preparations were intense and included bombardment by 2,900 artillery pieces, sorties by 1,500 aircraft, and support from 267 tanks. German resistance was fierce and professional, but the Allied advance scored impressive gains. However, Pershing's progress proved deceptively easy. Gallwitz had already concluded that Allied advances elsewhere made St. Mihiel untenable, and he ordered a strategic withdrawal to straighten out the German line. Making excellent use of the terrain, the badly outnumbered Germans fell back in good order, fighting a series of tenacious rear-guard actions. By the time Pershing ordered a halt on September 16, the St. Mihiel Salient, which had existed since 1914, was finally erased. Furthermore, Pershing had proved a point to both Allies and Germans alike: that his inexperienced Americans could fight effectively. To that end they captured 15,000 prisoners and 450 artillery pieces at a cost of 7,000 casualties. The doughboys had made an auspicious debut.

The next trial of strength came at Meuse-Argonne, a critical sector on the Western Front. It was also heavily defended, as the Germans had three years to prepare numerous and interlocking fields of fire, several belts deep. Gallwitz's forces may have been bled white from months of continuous combat; being well-trained, experienced, and professionally led, however, they still evinced plenty of fight. At length Pershing massed upward of 600,000 French and American troops, 500 cannons, nearly 500 tanks, and a 500-plane strike force under Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell. Logistical arrangements for the entire operation were entrusted to a lowly colonel, George C. Marshal, who subsequently gained renown for his efforts. Pershing intended this final battle to be a fight to the finish.

The offensive kicked off on September 26, 1918, into terrain that was heavily forested and favoring the defense. The inexperienced Americans charged manfully into prepared German positions and were mowed down by intense machine-gun fire. The process was slow and costly, but Gallwitz simply fed a continuous stream of reserve divisions to threatened points, and the Germans held. Casualties mounted as the Allies inched north toward the Belgium border, but four days later Gallwitz's defenses had completely derailed the offensive. Pershing then frantically reorganized and resupplied his battered divisions before resuming the attack on October 4, 1918. The exhausted Germans gave ground slowly and in good order, making the Americans pay heavily at every step. But the end was in sight. After four years of continuous warfare, Germany was at the breaking point, and the arrival of millions of American troops underscored the futility of further combat. All fighting ceased on November 11 when the Armistice was signed. The Americans had made better progress during the later phase of the campaign, which cost them 117,000 men in 47 days of intense combat. German losses were nearly as heavy and included upward of 20,000 prisoners.

The Meuse-Argonne offensive was the most important operation ever mounted by U.S. forces in World War I and was a direct factor in the collapse of Germany. Once again, Pershing demonstrated the value of his enthusiastic but inexperienced men. But if the victorious Yankees could claim that they had "learned to fight by fighting," the indomitable Gallwitz proved to be a stern teacher. He was subsequently one of a handful of diehards who opposed the Armistice and urged the government to rally the people for a defense of the homeland. As an indication of how highly Gallwitz was regarded, many politicians spoke of him as a successor to the now disgraced Hindenburg.

After the war, the general mustered out and parleyed his popularity into politics. From 1920 to 1924 he completed several terms in the Reichstag (national assembly) as a deputy of the German National People's Party. He died in Naples on April 17, 1937, the most accomplished enemy that America encountered during World War I.

Bibliography

Brose, Eric D. The Kaiser's Army: The Politics of Military Technology in Germany During the Machine Age, 1870-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; Bull, Stephen. World War One: German Army. Herdon, VA: Brassey's, 2000; Echevarra, Antulio J. After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000; Gudmundsson, Bruce I. Storm Troop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army. New York: Praeger, 1989; Kincaide, Norman L. "Sturmabteilungen to Freikorps: German Army Tactical and Organizational Development." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1989; Maddox, Robert J. "The Meuse-Argonne Offensive."American History Illustrated 10, no. 3 (1975): 22-35; Maddox, Robert J. "The Saint Mihiel Salient: Pershing's 'Magnificent Victory.'" American History Illustrated 16, no. 1 (1981): 42-50; Terrance, John.To Win a War: 1918, the Year of Victory. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2000; Trumpener, Ulrich. "Junkers and Others: The Rise of Commoners in the Prussian Army, 1871-1914." Canadian Journal of History 14 (1979): 29-47.

Max von Gallwitz on the Battle of St Mihiel, 12 September 1918

Before the attack on the St. Mihiel triangle the American troops had been greatly strengthened. Their divisions had been welded together into army corps. By the beginning of September we learned of the formation of an independent Pershing American army, which was lying between the second and eighth French armies.

American divisions had fought honourably in the big battles which ended with the failure of our offensive at the Marne in July and August. It was an obvious suggestion to follow up this gradual development with some big feat, accomplished exclusively or largely by American troops under their own supreme command. An opportunity offered itself at St. Mihiel which had long been known.

Our position between the Meuse and the well-known height of Combre, southeast of Verdun, looked like an outstanding nose. It had taken this formation after the first battle in the Summer of 1914, and had been retained, fortified and honoured as the field of many single combats.

We had seven divisions that occupied this line, but they were reduced in number and among them were three of the militia and one Austrian division. The peril of this faulty triangle had always been patent to us. It lent itself to attack on all sides. We had repeatedly discussed the question of giving up this triangle. The chief in command agreed with me that no big battle in this territory was permissible.

But while we waited, the crisis came on apace. We never had time to carry off the materials we had gathered during an occupation of several years. On the other side lay the consideration that the yielding of a position held for years would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Naturally we disregarded such considerations when the situation in other parts of the theatre of war was difficult.

There had been indications that something was brewing on the other side, but we were not certain as to which direction the attack might take. We were informed that the objective of the Americans was Metz and the territory east of that fortress, which would threaten our communication with the rear.

The centre of the enemy rear guard and communications was located on the southern side of the triangle, while on the northwest side everything was quiet, indicating that danger in the latter quarter was remote.

Then from foreign sources came the news that the American attack had been postponed - that the army was not yet ready for a big offensive movement.

We were surprised, therefore, when, on September 12, a concentrated attack was launched against the triangle. It was soon demonstrated that this was not a partial attack, but the execution of a great concentrated drive. The order to retire, which I gave on my own responsibility, but too late, could not prevent the loss of many troops and much material which had to be left behind.

The first deep advance took place on the southern side and was directed against two of our divisions, extending some twenty-three kilometres. Against the front covered by this attack nine or ten American divisions were led into battle, six being held in reserve.

The two divisions which I had in reserve behind the southern front could not succeed in turning the tide. The artillery and infantry collaborated better than ever, but there was little skill in profiting by the advance.

The American fliers made themselves very disagreeable. We learned that 800 of them were active at the front. Our units retired from the Mihiel position in order, although with losses. All of the retiring divisions, except one that was scattered (one which held Alsace-Lorraine men), were still employed in the front lines.

Although our retirement had been effected in good order, the enemy naturally considered it as forced.

I have experienced a good many things in the five years of war and have not been poor in successes, but I must count the 12th of September among my few black days.

Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923

(originally Waldstein; 1583-1634),

'Torn by the hatred and favour of each faction, his name merges unsteadily with the past.' ('Von der Parteien Gunst und Hassverwirrt, schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte.')- Friedrich Schiller's lines on Wallenstein

Bohemian noble, soldier, and statesman who played an important role in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein was born in Bohemia (today the Czech Republic). Given a Protestant upbringing, he converted to Catholicism in 1606. In 1609, his Jesuit confessor arranged his marriage to a wealthy widow who may have been some ten years his senior. When she died in 1614, he inherited all her estates. During the Bohemian rebellion that began in 1618, he remained loyal to the ruler, the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II (ruled 1619-1637), and profited enormously from the latter's victory over the rebels. He was appointed governor of the kingdom of Bohemia and bought up a large number of confiscated estates so that he came to possess most of northeastern Bohemia. These estates were consolidated into Friedland, of which he became duke in 1623.

In 1625, when the emperor decided to raise an army of his own to counter the threat from Christian IV of Denmark (ruled 1596-1648), Wallenstein was the obvious choice to be commander in chief; he was appointed on 7 April. It is often said that he raised and paid for this army at his own expense, and there is certainly some truth to it: he was able to put together a force of over 24,000 without recourse to the imperial treasury. His great personal wealth and his ability to obtain loans were important factors, but Wallenstein's primary aim was to sustain his forces with requisitions from any territory they occupied. He also used his duchy of Friedland as a source of supplies.

During the Danish phase of the war (1625- 1629), Wallenstein enjoyed considerable military success. He defeated the Protestant commander, Count Ernst of Mansfeld, at Dessau in 1626, and early in 1627 he marched into Holstein and Jutland (the Danish mainland) before turning east into Mecklenburg and Pomerania. The dukes of Mecklenburg had supported Christian IV, so the emperor deprived them of their titles, transferred their confiscated estates to Wallenstein (February 1627), and the following year made him the sole duke of Mecklenburg (January 1628). This arbitrary move caused some disquiet among all hereditary rulers.

The campaign of 1628 was anticlimactic. The complete defeat of Denmark turned out to be an impossibility: although the emperor appointed Wallenstein ''General of the Oceanic and Baltic Seas'' in February 1628, without a fleet the Danish islands were beyond his reach. He attempted to capture the port of Stralsund in the summer of 1628 (May- July), but without success. Although he defeated Christian again at Wolgast in September, Wallenstein warned the emperor that if peace were not made, Sweden might undertake a full intervention. He also warned that the cost of maintaining his 100,000-strong army was placing an intolerable burden on the north German states. Peace was made at Lubeck (July 1629).

Wallenstein's success and his financial exactions from friend and foe alike created enormous resentment and, with the coming of what was thought to be peace, the princes turned on him at the Electoral Diet in Regensburg and made a formal request for his dismissal on 16 July 1630. Surprisingly, Ferdinand agreed to comply; the general was dismissed on 13 August. Equally surprising was the fact that Wallenstein also complied. Indeed, it would appear that he had come to feel that the maintenance of such a large army was unsustainable and greeted the end of his responsibility with relief. Although there are some indications that Ferdinand had come to distrust his general, his dismissal deprived the emperor of military power just as he faced invasion from the Swedish king, Gustavus II Adolphus.

The success of Gustavus II Adolphus in 1631 forced the emperor to recall Wallenstein, and he was appointed commander in chief (with considerable powers) once again in April 1632. Although he was not victorious at the Battle of Lutzen in November, the death of the Swedish king in that battle created a new political situation. Surprisingly, Wallenstein did not go on the offensive, but sought to conduct negotiations with all concerned parties in an effort to bring peace (and probably to obtain territory and titles for himself). However, his independence, his alleged double-dealing, his reliance on astrological predictions, and his bizarre behavior (it was asserted that on arrival in any town he ordered all dogs and cats to be killed because he did not like the noise they made) undermined his credibility with everyone. By now he had become a liability to the emperor, who saw him as a traitorous conspirator (and dispensable now that Spanish aid was imminent). Accordingly, in January 1634 he ordered Wallenstein's capture (or liquidation), and the following month he was assassinated-by an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman.

Wallenstein was the most important military entrepreneur in the Thirty Years' War, and his alleged treason and murder have overshadowed the considerable success he had in his first imperial generalship (1625-1630), when he raised the emperor to the zenith of his power. An enigmatic figure, his life became the subject of a dramatic trilogy by the German poet, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Asch, Ronald G. The Thirty Years' War: The Holy