German 88-mm Flak Guns

Chief of Staff of the Kondor Legion Wolfram von Richthofen

The German participation in the Spanish Civil War was an experience that incorporated a number of principal-agent relationships conducive to innovation. The Luftwaffe units in Spain were exposed to important external information, were informal in much of their organizational structure, and necessitated a very close yet unrestrictive relationship between agents experimenting in actual combat and the high-level principals monitoring them. The German Army was able, from 1936- 1939, not only to test innovation already accomplished but also to further advance existing doctrine through direct participation in the Spanish Civil War.

At the start of the Spanish Civil War, commander Francisco Franco of the Nationalist Forces passed to two German businessmen a message requesting military aid from Germany. Hitler eagerly assented and commanded Goring to begin using the Luftwaffe for aid, which began with airlifting Spanish military personnel and equipment from northern Africa to Spain. In an impressive demonstration of German military efficiency and readiness in 1936, a significant German presence was on the ground in Africa assisting only four days after Hitler’s decision. The full four years of participation with Franco’s forces, from 1936-1939, provided the Luftwaffe with a wide range of experience in air and joint land-air operations, and provided ideal testing of innovations in armor doctrine. The German participation went further than simply practicing and testing their current doctrine; the campaign was structurally unique in that the force was relatively small and tightly-knit, and necessitated a simple, informal command structure that grouped both Army and Luftwaffe units under a single Luftwaffe command, the Condor Legion.

Commanders were of high quality, forward thinking, and tactically very hands on. Junior officers had many opportunities for expressing new ideas, that they were able to directly test in actual combat. The poor quality of the opponent and near absence of air opposition encouraged realistic experimentation without fear of heavy losses, especially in the area of joint air-land operations.

By October 1936 the Spanish civil war had developed into a stalemate, prompting the Wehrmacht high command to increase the small German force there into a larger operation. The force was upgraded to over 5,000 Luftwaffe personnel using over 100 of their most advanced aircraft; the new force was named the Condor Legion—it included a bomber group, fighter group, reconnaissance group, staff, flak battalion, logistics supply battalion, and medical group. New preproduction prototype German aircraft models were included for combat testing. Army participation included a tank battalion and around two hundred military advisors, supported by the Condor Legion logistics group and all serving under Major General Hugo Sperrle and Chief of Staff von Richthofen, both senior Luftwaffe officers. During the subsequent years of combat the Germans would gain the opportunity to test a wide array of new aircraft and to assess their military faults and benefits, making the needed changes. Equally important was the constant testing of tactics and combat formations with the new weaponry.

This informal command structure, placing both the Luftwaffe and Army under the same command, was important in helping produce the air-ground coordination and blitzkrieg innovations soon to come. It was a simple structure; the commander of the Condor Legion reported directly to the Special Staff W (the high command structure in Germany coordinating the effort), which reported to the Army high command. The Condor Legion had the benefit of an easy access to the highest levels of leadership, yet enjoyed relative freedom from intrusive oversight. They were separated geographically and possessed tactical authority to control the course of the war. Hitler and the central government showed almost no interest in the day to day management of the operation, leaving the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to direct the effort. The lack of micro-management by central command allowed Condor Legion commanders to operate as agents with more freedom to experiment and incorporate. These commanders were also principals of the Condor Legion, and the disentanglement from central command provided stronger principal-agent links between these commanders and their agents in the field.

Commanders Sperrle and Richthofen were very hands-on commanders, overseeing attacks and constantly constructing forward bases so that they could personally witness the actions. The difficulty of coordinating air-ground attacks, especially with Spanish forces, necessitated this intense involvement, but it allowed the highest command level—commander and chief of staff—to see innovative air-ground tactics employed first-hand. Richthofen had come to Spain specifically hoping to see the Luftwaffe and its equipment in action, and has been described as the “spiritual mentor” of close air support development by Karl Ries and Hans Ring in their book on the Condor Legion. The highly vested commander is an important commodity for innovation, and the command in Spain was both eager to succeed and willing to remain ever-present during innovative tactical operations. As with the German maneuver, it becomes obvious how important it can be for leaders to personally witness innovation.

Agents of course had incentives to successfully innovate because they were involved in actual combat, and despite the obviously inferior nature of the enemy, their lives were dependent on the success of the operation. Even the junior officers not directly exposed to combat were responsible for the successful execution of a real war effort. Another benefit of having a small and somewhat independent operating force was demonstrated by the ability of junior officers to express novel ideas to higher command. One young lieutenant, Werner Molders, developed ideas on tactical fighter formations that were implemented during the course of the operation in Spain. He changed the traditional three plane “V” formation into a pair formation, a superior structure which the Condor Legion used to great effect. The combination of the highly vested yet unrestricted leadership and small operating core of junior officers with incentive to innovate is a perfect example of the proper principal-agent relationship, neither excessively top-down nor bottom-up.

Another informal aspect of the German command in Spain was the necessity of operating through the Nationalist Spanish command in order to coordinate with ground units. At first this might seem like a detriment to the process of innovation, given that Spanish military leadership was of such low quality compared to their German collaborators. In the ground-support sphere, however, it led to improved communications structures. In order to better coordinate attacks, Luftwaffe personnel had to work tirelessly to find ways of jointly planning the air and ground offensives. Besides having to work hard at the command level, the Luftwaffe placed communications and liaison teams at the front lines for better information sharing. Herbert Mason describes these inter-service cooperation lessons as being very beneficial for the later blitzkrieg operations during the Second World War.

Air-ground coordination improved a great deal during the campaign based on the increased effort for managerial efficiency. The informal command link reinforced the obvious need for good air-ground coordination because the Spanish Army was repeatedly unable to follow up after Luftwaffe forward attacks. It was a constant irritation to the German commanders, who became aware of what a well-coordinated attack could accomplish and what innovative information sharing would need to take place to achieve it. Thus in only a year’s time of combat experience in Spain, the Luftwaffe had truly mastered close air support. On the December 29, 1937, they participated in a battle in Teruel, in which they executed excellent forward bombing that allowed the Nationalist ground forces to follow up, then seamlessly switched to bombing of the follow-up Republican reserve forces This battlefield proof of the effectiveness of ground attack led directly to technological innovation; Condor Legion commanders requested the development of heavily armored aircraft made specifically for ground attack. The Henschel and Focke Wulf companies produced the Henschel 129 as a result.

Incentives for the German commanders were naturally based in part on the fact that they were participating in a real conflict, trying to secure a military victory and protect the lives of their troops. Many German officers experiencing the innovative work in Spain later gained valuable promotions, demonstrated by Sperrle’s advancement in 1937 to field marshal of the Luftwaffe, and the promotion of officers Drum, Plocher, Galland, and Seidemann to the rank of general. Von Richthofen later served as a senior commander in most of the major theaters of the war, including Britain and Russia. An example of direct processing of innovation due to command promotion from the Spanish Civil War to the main Luftwaffe force came after evidence of German deficiency in night and bad weather flying. The German accidents resulting from poor visibility crashes had an immediate impact on Condor Legion commanders, and new training practices were immediately implemented. Sperrle in 1937 returned to Germany to become a commander of the Luftwaffe Third Air Fleet, and immediately strengthened the deficient night and bad weather training.

The importance of Sperrle’s promotion should not be underestimated; he later found himself in the position to directly implement exercises and experimentation designed to strengthen CAS practices. Both Sperrle and von Richthofen were two of the very few Luftwaffe officers to achieve the rank of field marshal. In Germany Sperrle ordered Luftwaffe commanders to set up joint war games with Army units, and used his influence to get Army commanders to allow the participation of the Luftwaffe in their own war gaming and exercises. His Luftwaffe officers were not allowed to merely attend these exercises, but had to participate as commanding air officers.

German air power innovation was aided, particularly in the north of Spain, by their opponents’ lack of air power. German Luftwaffe operations in the Basque region of northern Spain were carried out virtually unopposed by enemy aircraft, giving Luftwaffe command the opportunity to execute ground support, bombing and experimental operations at will. The experimental process benefited from the environmentally-constructed high error tolerance. This historical anomaly suggests opportunities for successful innovation can be abundant when competing against a highly inferior enemy. Ineffective opposition led to high error tolerance for experimentation because there was much less chance of penalty for unsuccessful attempts at actions like close air support or use of massed armor. For example, the near-perfect operating conditions for the Stuka dive-bombers, due largely to the ineffectiveness of Spanish anti-aircraft guns against them, led to tactical perfection and large-scale passing on of lessons learned to parent units in Germany.

An alternate source of information was provided by the participation of the Russian military, which committed forces on behalf of the Spanish Republic. The military value of the fighter/bomber was further emphasized for the Germans in March 1937 when Russian-piloted fighter aircraft nearly decimated a motorized corps of Italian troops. The action demonstrated the devastating potential of tactical ground bombardment. These results, in particular, were analyzed by the German command and the international military press.

A unifying military culture occurs when both commanders and sub-units envision the same set of possibilities. This was facilitated by the comprehensive exposure of large numbers of the Luftwaffe to the Condor Legion’s innovations. In the interest of providing combat experience for its officers, over fourteen thousand German personnel of all levels of rank were rotated in and out of Spain, seeing and participating firsthand the new innovations. The rapid production of combat veterans that returned to their units after a year of service in Spain ensured the rapid integration of the new tactics throughout the operating core of the Luftwaffe. The experience had an immense influence on Luftwaffe doctrine, tactics, and technology through its involvement in every type of air campaign. Commanders and managers involved with innovation also infused the Luftwaffe; in addition to Sperrle and von Richthofen, future generals Drum, Plocher, and Seidemann all gained combat experience in the Spanish Civil War. The Luftwaffe gained a command staff experienced in planning and execution of joint land-air combat operations. This heavy exposure to innovation worked the same way as the comprehensive post-War studies of the German Army’s failures and the changes that needed to be made—by saturation through involvement of a large number of officers.

The commitment by the German Army of one armored battalion to the Spanish campaign, under the leadership of the Luftwaffe, provided excellent opportunities for testing blitzkrieg tactics. These opportunities began after the Fascist forces had essentially broken the fixed Nationalist lines and initiated a war of maneuver. In what was considered one of the first true blitzkrieg operations, in 1938 the armored force was able to break through the front lines and make a thirty-six kilometer advance in one day. The Luftwaffe had to make several forward deployments to continue support to the quick-moving armor squadron, gaining valuable experience for future blitzkrieg operations. Many attribute the German experience in the Spanish Civil War as the final field test of the joint doctrinal and operational lessons that had been first introduced at Kazan and Lipetsk.

In 1937 when the German Army held the all-important autumn maneuvers in which blitzkrieg proved itself beyond a doubt, the close air support employed was a direct result of Sperrle’s participation in the Spanish Civil War and the Condor Legion’s experience with blitzkrieg. As Herbert Mason confirms, Condor Legion commander Richthofen—like Sperrle before him—became a passionate supporter of the Luftwaffe’s close air support role in blitzkrieg operations. During the invasion of Poland, Richthofen was so committed to securing the benefits of air and ground cooperation he had learned in Spain that he shared command headquarters with Tenth Army commander von Reichenau. This excellent inter-service cooperation, also learned through dealings with the Spanish officers, facilitated Richthofen’s close air support to Reichenau’s armor during that campaign and was a key element in the next year’s success in France. Indeed, Richthofen’s close air support against the French at Sedan facilitated the crossing of the Meuse and the breakout from the Meuse river bridgeheads on 15 May 1940 by Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps and the XLI Panzer Corps, the seminal event in the Allied collapse in the West.

In another irony, this German advantage was fleeting. The blitzkrieg successes against Poland and France, going down from the wide to the narrow openings of a funnel, were inverted in the following campaign against the Soviet Union where the German forces traversed the funnel from narrow aperture to wide, dissipating their mass over the vast Russian land mass and stretching their air assets to beyond the breaking point. Strategic mismanagement and over-extension will always trump doctrinal innovation and tactical brilliance.

German Plan for Army Group A

There is documentary evidence that provisional invasion plans were drawn up, and that orders for certain preparations were issued. At the same time there remains considerable controversy as to whether Operation Sea Lion ever amounted to more than a generously resourced bluff - a deception operation on a grand scale. A successful bluff, after all, requires great effort if it is to look like the real thing, and requires the pretence of full preparations. If an enemy is to be deceived, so too must many of the supposed 'participants', in this case including many senior officers in the Wehrmacht and Kreigsmarine. This is not as difficult to achieve as it might sound. Except at the very highest level, confidentiality ensures that even quite senior officers are only aware of the aspects of an operation which directly involve them, and this helps explain how some of the Generals failed to see through the charade, and failed to realise that an invasion could not work. Most simply assumed that other parts of the operation would deal with any difficulties they anticipated.

Preparations for Sea Lion were certainly extensive, and detailed. At least 250 Panzers were modified as amphibious assault vehicles, with water seals and long 'Schnorkels', while the number of horses to be embarked was reduced when Halder decided that his Cavalry would use bicycles instead of horses. Newsreels were even prepared for use in the immediate aftermath of a landing (shot during rehearsals, and convincingly cut with real footage from the Battle of France), while food for the various troops, horses and dogs was gathered. But in the end, this was as much wishful thinking as the plans to deport all British males between 17 and 45 to the Reich, or as the appointments of Nazi bureaucrats to run Britain after a successful invasion. Nor was the planned removal of Nelson's column from London (to be re-erected in "Berlin as a symbol of victory) any more real!

There is a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis that Hitler never intended to invade Britain at all. Some suggest that the flotilla of barges supposedly assembled for the invasion actually served two purposes. They were primarily assembled as a bluff, but one which could have been turned into reality had circumstances persuaded Hitler (the supreme opportunist) that an invasion could have succeeded. Interestingly, the number of barges assembled in the Channel ports declined steadily after mid-September, dropping from 1004 on 18 September to 691 by the end of the month. Similarly, on 10 September, the first two divisions that had been on standby for Sea Lion quietly moved east. More would soon follow. This was hardly consistent with the build-up prior to an invasion, and conclusively demonstrated that by mid-September, at least, Sea Lion had ceased to be a reality, if it ever had been real at all.

Yet S-Day was eventually scheduled for 21 September, with a final go-ahead date on 11 September. The operation was officially ordered, but was postponed on 17 September. This was, officially at least, a postponement and not a cancellation and preparations and rehearsals continued unabated into October. But on 12 October, General Wilhelm Keitel, the Chief of Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW - Hitler's replacement for the War Ministry), acknowledged that it was now continuing 'only as a means of exerting political and military pressure on England' and that its execution would 'possibly' take place the following year. In the meantime, this 'bluff' had been an expensive one, dramatically slowing down industrial production, producing food shortages at home, and putting at risk the 1941 harvest. Iron ore and coal built up at the Baltic ports, with insufficient barges to transport it to the Ruhr, and even priority programmes (V-boat construction for example) began to slip. Barges were actually converted and crewed for their new role, consuming 75,000 cubic metres of concrete, 30,000 tonnes of iron girders and 40,000 cubic metres of wooden planks, plus 4000 towlines and huge quantities of canvas, chain and armour plate. Huge numbers of former seamen were transferred from the army and Luftwaffe, and the Kreigsmarine mobilised its reserves.

Hitler himself never showed much interest in the planning for Sea Lion, in marked contrast to the planning which had led to the conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France. When the Kreigsmarine and Wehrmacht initially produced various invasion studies, Hitler expressly forbade any real preparations, concentrating first on the drive to capture Paris, and then on celebrating his victory. This lack of involvement may have had little significance, since Hitler was very much a land-based military thinker, unable to understand the problems of air and sea power. Those who believe in the reality of Sea Lion use Hitler's land-based thinking to explain that he was thus bound to leave detailed planning in the hands of his subordinates. But others see in this lack of involvement a confirmation that Sea Lion was never more than a 'planning option'. Hitler was, after all, psychologically driven to be directly involved in the planning of all of his great victories.

While Hitler often relied on luck, daring and surprise to 'carry the day', and was often inadequately prepared to meet well-ordered opposition, the Wehrmacht's lack of preparation for an invasion of Britain was in an entirely different league. The Allied D-Day landings took two years to prepare, with huge logistical problems to overcome. Some now ask how, if Hitler ever intended mounting a real invasion, he ever dreamed that he might succeed with so little preparation and planning? Incredible as it may now seem, the complete lack of detail in the Sea Lion plan, and the failure to take account of logistics, opposition and other factors may simply have represented a complete lack of understanding of the scope of the proposed undertaking, and the nature of the English Channel itself. As if to confirm this, a High Command memo compared the proposed operation to a 'river crossing on a broad front'.

But lack of preparation may not have been the main factor in preventing an invasion. After one meeting to discuss invasion plans, General Halder noted in his diary that Hitler 'believes that England must be forced into making peace. The reason: if we destroy England militarily, the British Empire will fall. Germany will gain nothing from this. German blood would have been spilt for Japan, America, and others.' There is no doubt that Hitler had some difficulty in seeing the British people (as opposed to their leaders) as being a natural enemy, and because of this, he had little stomach for a war against (or an invasion of) Britain, particularly while communist Russia was still in existence on his doorstep, so to speak. While Nazi peace overtures were rudely rebuffed by Churchill's government, Hitler still held back from the kind of all-out war against another Aryan nation which an invasion would have represented. He was never quite sure what an invasion of Britain would achieve, and when asked about the invasion plan is quoted as having said 'Let us by all means conquer Britain. But what then, and what for?' Hitler knew that even if an invasion were successful, the effort of holding on to the island nation would prevent him from launching the attack on Russia.

Even if it is accepted that Hitler himself ever seriously contemplated an invasion, there is plenty of evidence that any such plans had been shelved indefinitely long before the Battle of Britain reached its climax. The lack of transport ships, the unsuitability of the Rhine barges commandeered for the operation and the Kreigsmarine's lack of naval superiority cast doubt on the viability of any landing operation. There was little chance that any invasion fleet could have survived the Channel crossing in the face of Royal Navy intervention, and even with air superiority, the Luftwaffe as equipped in 1940 could not have prevented such an intervention.

But whatever Hitler's motivation, and whatever he thought about Sea Lion's prospects, there is little doubt that many in the German High Command never took it seriously. Even after the issue of Fhrer-Direktiv 16, Generals JodI and Jeschonnek remained convinced that there would be no invasion, and profoundly doubted that Germany could actually mount such an operation. Even Goring, fanatically, loyal to Hitler, lacked much faith in the planned invasion. He would probably have enjoyed the opportunity to show off his Luftwaffe, but was always worried that the proposed invasion would not, or could not work, and was astonished and angry to find that his air campaign was subordinated to the needs of the army and navy in the invasion.

Goring remained hungry for glory and prominence, and hoped that his Luftwaffe would make Sea Lion an unnecessary irrelevance by forcing Britain to surrender or sue for peace through bombing alone. His overall concept for an independent air campaign was sensible enough, aiming as it did to probe Britain's defences, then destroy the RAF on the ground and in the air, simultaneously destroying Britain's aircraft industry and attacking harbours and shippIng to cut off vital imports. Goring felt that this campaign in itself could bring Britain to its knees. Goring's total faith in the efficacy of air attacks may now appear to be .profoundly unrealistic, but for anyone schooled in the air power theories of the 1920s, the belief that a war could be won by bombing alone was by no means unusual, and was almost an orthodoxy. In any case, had the Luftwaffe been properly equipped for a true strategic bombing campaign, then perhaps Goring's high expectations would not have been so wide of the mark. But in 1940, the Luftwaffe was a tactical air force, tailored to the needs of army support, and ill-equipped and ill-prepared for autonomous strategic operation.

Summary of an exercise held at the Staff College, Sandhurst in 1974.

The full text is in 'Sealion' by Richard Cox. The scenario is based on the known plans of each side, plus previously unpublished Admiralty weather records for September 1940. Each side (played by British and German officers respectively) was based in a command room, and the actual moves plotted on a scale model of SE England constructed at the School of Infantry. The panel of umpires included Adolf Galland, Admiral Friedrich Ruge, Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, Rear Admiral Edward Gueritz, General Heinz Trettner and Major General Glyn Gilbert.

The main problem the Germans face is that are a) the Luftwaffe has not yet won air supremacy; b) the possible invasion dates are constrained by the weather and tides (for a high water attack) and c) it has taken until late September to assemble the necessary shipping.

22nd September - morning

The first wave of a planned 330,000 men hit the beaches at dawn. Elements of 9 divisions landed between Folkestone and Rottingdean (near Brighton). In addition 7th FJ Div landed at Lympne to take the airfield.

The invasion fleet suffered minor losses from MTBs during the night crossing, but the RN had already lost one CA and three DDs sunk, with one CA and two DDs damaged, whilst sinking three German DDs. Within hours of the landings which overwhelmed the beach defenders, reserve formations were despatched to Kent. Although there were 25 divisions in the UK, only 17 were fully equipped, and only three were based in Kent, however the defence plan relied on the use of mobile reserves and armoured and mechanised brigades were committed as soon as the main landings were identified.

Meanwhile the air battle raged, the Luftwaffe flew 1200 fighter and 800 bomber sorties before 1200 hrs. The RAF even threw in training planes hastily armed with bombs, but the Luftwaffe were already having problems with their short ranged Me 109s despite cramming as many as possible into the Pas de Calais.

22nd - 23rd September

The Germans had still not captured a major port, although they started driving for Folkestone. Shipping unloading on the beaches suffered heavy losses from RAF bombing raids and then further losses at their ports in France.

The U-Boats, Luftwaffe and few surface ships had lost contact with the RN, but then a cruiser squadron with supporting DDs entered the Channel narrows and had to run the gauntlet of long range coastal guns, E-Boats and 50 Stukas. Two CAs were sunk and one damaged. However a diversionary German naval sortie from Norway was completely destroyed and other sorties by MTBS and DDs inflicted losses on the shipping milling about in the Channel. German shipping losses on the first day amounted to over 25% of their invasion fleet, especially the barges, which proved desperately unseaworthy.

23rd Sept dawn - 1400 hrs.

The RAF had lost 237 planes out 1048 (167 fighters and 70 bombers), and the navy had suffered enough losses such that it was keeping its BBs and CVs back, but large forces of DDs and CAs were massing. Air recon showed a German buildup in Cherbourg and forces were diverted to the South West.

The German Navy were despondent about their losses, especially as the loss of barges was seriously dislocating domestic industry. The Army and Airforce commanders were jubilant however, and preparations for the transfer of the next echelon continued along with the air transport of 22nd Div, despite Luftwaffe losses of 165 fighters and 168 bombers. Out of only 732 fighters and 724 bombers these were heavy losses. Both sides overestimated losses inflicted by 50%.

The 22nd Div airlanded successfully at Lympne, although long range artillery fire directed by a stay-behind commando group interdicted the runways. The first British counterattacks by 42nd Div supported by an armoured brigade halted the German 34th Div in its drive on Hastings. 7th Panzer Div was having difficulty with extensive anti-tank obstacles and assault teams armed with sticky bombs etc. Meanwhile an Australian Div had retaken Newhaven (the only German port), however the New Zealand Div arrived at Folkestone only to be attacked in the rear by 22nd Airlanding Div. The division fell back on Dover having lost 35% casualties.

Sep 23rd 1400 - 1900 hrs

Throughout the day the Luftwaffe put up a maximum effort, with 1500 fighter and 460 bomber sorties, but the RAF persisted in attacks on shipping and airfields. Much of this effort was directed for ground support and air resupply, despite Adm Raeder's request for more air cover over the Channel. The Home Fleet had pulled out of air range however, leaving the fight in the hands of 57 DDs and 17 CAs plus MTBs. The Germans could put very little surface strength against this. Waves of DDs and CAs entered the Channel, and although two were sunk by U-Boats, they sank one U-Boat in return and did not stop. The German flotilla at Le Havre put to sea (3 DD, 14 E-Boats) and at dusk intercepted the British, but were wiped out, losing all their DDs and 7 E-Boats.

The Germans now had 10 divisions ashore, but in many cases these were incomplete and waiting for their second echelon to arrive that night. The weather was unsuitable for the barges however, and the decision to sail was referred up the chain of command.

23rd Sep 1900 - Sep 24th dawn

The Fuhrer Conference held at 1800 broke out into bitter inter-service rivalry - the Army wanted their second echelon sent, and the navy protesting that the weather was unsuitable, and the latest naval defeat rendered the Channel indefensible without air support. Goring countered this by saying it could only be done by stopped the terror bombing of London, which in turn Hitler vetoed. The fleet was ordered to stand by.

The RAF meanwhile had lost 97 more fighters leaving only 440. The airfields of 11 Group were cratered ruins, and once more the threat of collapse, which had receded in early September, was looming. The Luftwaffe had lost another 71 fighters and 142 bombers. Again both sides overestimated losses inflicted, even after allowing for inflated figures.

On the ground the Germans made good progress towards Dover and towards Canterbury, however they suffered reverses around Newhaven when the 45th Div and Australians attacked. At 2150 Hitler decided to launch the second wave, but only the short crossing from Calais and Dunkirk. By the time the order reached the ports, the second wave could not possibly arrive before dawn. The 6th and 8th divisions at Newhaven, supplied from Le Havre, would not be reinforced at all.

Sep 24th dawn - Sep 28th

The German fleet set sail, the weather calmed, and U-Boats, E-Boats and fighters covered them. However at daylight 5th destroyer flotilla found the barges still 10 miles off the coast and tore them to shreds. The Luftwaffe in turn committed all its remaining bombers, and the RAF responded with 19 squadrons of fighters. The Germans disabled two CAs and four DDs, but 65% of the barges were sunk. The faster steamers broke away and headed for Folkestone, but the port had been so badly damaged that they could only unload two at a time.

The failure on the crossing meant that the German situation became desperate. The divisions had sufficient ammunition for 2 to 7 days more fighting, but without extra men and equipment could not extend the bridgehead. Hitler ordered the deployment on reserve units to Poland and the Germans began preparations for an evacuation as further British attacks hemmed them in tighter. Fast steamers and car ferries were assembled for evacuation via Rye and Folkestone. Of 90,000 troops who landed on 22nd September, only 15,400 returned to France, the rest were killed or captured.

However immense the losses suffered by Napoleon in Russia, his extraordinary administrative skills enabled him to rebuild his army by the spring of 1813, though neither the men nor the horses could be replaced in their former quality or quantity. The Sixth Coalition, which had been formed by Britain, Russia, Spain, and Portugal in June 1812, now expanded as other states became emboldened to oppose Napoleonic hegemony in Europe. The Prussian corps, which had reluctantly accompanied the Grande Armée into Russia, declared its neutrality by the Convention of Tauroggen on 30 December 1812, and on 27 February 1813 Frederick William formally brought his country into the coalition by the terms of the Convention of Kalisch, signed with Russia. The Austrians remained neutral during the spring campaign, with Fürst Schwarzenberg’s corps, which had covered the southern flank of the French advance into Russia, withdrawing into Bohemia.

By the time the campaign began in the spring, Napoleon had created new fighting formations from the ashes of the old, calling up men who had been exempted from military service in the past, those who had been previously discharged but could be classed as generally fit, and those who, owing to their youth, would not normally have been eligible for front-line duty for at least another year. With such poorly trained and inexperienced, yet still enthusiastic, troops Napoleon occupied the Saxon capital, Dresden on 7–8 May, and defeated General Wittgenstein, first at Lützen on 2 May and again at Bautzen on 20–21 May. Both sides agreed to an armistice, which stretched from June through July and into mid-August, during which time the French recruited and trained their green army, while the Allies assembled larger and larger forces, now to include Austrians, Swedes, and troops from a number of former members of the Confederation of the Rhine.

When the campaign resumed, the Allies placed three multinational armies in the field: one under Schwarzenberg, one under Blücher, and a third under Napoleon’s former marshal, Bernadotte. The Allies formulated a new strategy, known as the Trachenberg Plan,[1] by which they would seek to avoid direct confrontation with the main French army under Napoleon, instead concentrating their efforts against the Emperor’s subordinates, whom they would seek to defeat in turn. The plan succeeded: Bernadotte drubbed Oudinot at Grossbeeren on 23 August, and Blücher won against Macdonald at the Katzbach River three days later. Napoleon, for his part, scored a significant victory against Schwarzenberg at Dresden on 26–27 August, but the Emperor failed to pursue the Austrian commander. Shortly thereafter, General Vandamme’s corps became isolated during its pursuit of Schwarzenberg and was annihilated at Kulm on 29–30 August.

The end of French control of Germany was nearing. First, Bernadotte defeated Ney at Dennewitz on 6 September; then Bavaria, the principal member of the Confederation of the Rhine, defected to the Allies. The decisive battle of the campaign was fought at Leipzig from 16–19 October, when all three main Allied armies converged on the city to attack Napoleon’s positions in and around it. In the largest battle in history up to that time, both sides suffered extremely heavy losses, and though part of the Grande Armée crossed the river Elster and escaped before the bridge was blown, the Allies nevertheless achieved a victory of immense proportions that forced the French out of Germany and back across the Rhine. A Bavarian force under General Wrede tried to stop Napoleon’s retreat at Hanau on 30–31 October, but the French managed to push through to reach home soil a week later. Napoleon, his allies having either deserted his cause or found themselves under Allied occupation, now prepared to oppose the invasion of France by numerically superior armies converging on several fronts.

[1]The Allies gathered in July at Trachenberg and crafted an attritional strategy that would ultimately counter Napoleon’s generalship by avoiding battle with him and beating his subordinates. Former Marshal now King Charles John of Sweden, Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte, met the tsar at Trachenberg, where the former recommended a policy of engaging French forces commanded by the marshals, but not engaging Napoleon directly. Rather, Allied forces should withdraw from him. Bernadotte was also given command of the Army of the North. The fighting in early autumn seemed to vindicate this policy with the victory at Dennewitz on 6 September.

THE TRAPPINGS OF NAZI POWER.

Hitler leads a motorcade down from the Reichstag in Berlin. Ceremonial on a massive scale was designed to hypnotize both the German people and foreigners. Nowhere was this more evident than at the annual party rallies at Nuremberg. The overwhelming impression of disciplined mass restored the belief of the German people in both themselves and their country, throwing off the disillusion of the Weimar years, and binding them to Hitler. It also impressed other nations, helping to foster appeasement among the democracies and making Germany's neighbours more amenable to Hitler's demands. Both Mussolini and Stalin also encouraged these public shows of strength.

(Above) Tiger 131 is examined by troops hours after it was captured in Tunisia in 1943

The Tank Museum in Dorset has launched a £40,000 public appeal to keep a gun-toting 57-ton German tank which was considered one of the most formidable armoured vehicles in World War Two on the road.

The notorious Tiger Tank, 131, was captured by Allied troops in an explosive battle in Tunisia in 1943, having been struck by a six-pound shot after knocking out two British Churchill tanks.

Produced in 1942 to meet the German Wehrmacht's vision of a panzer towering enough to provide a psychological edge over Allied crews, the Tiger was one of only 1,354 units made, seeing action in Russia, Tunisia, Sicily and North-West Europe.

A photo of a tank parading around a stadium

The Tiger pulls the Crowds at Tankfest 2009

It boasted a lethal 88mm gun of deadly accuracy and sheet armour thick enough to deflect most Allied anti-tank weaponry at anything less than the closest range, but was hampered by its vast weight and girth during campaigns in bad conditions.

The engine had "a nasty habit of catching fire", according to its technical description, and the gearbox was liable to failure when subjected to stress.

The Museum's Tiger represented a major trophy for Western forces, who gained vital intelligence from inspecting the abandoned vehicle. King George VI and Winston Churchill both visited the tank in Tunis, and it was displayed on Horse Guards Parade in November 1944 before heading to its current Bovington home in a "somewhat sorry state".

via Tank Museum in £40,000 public appeal to save WWII Tiger Tank | Culture24.

The first flying-boat design to be built by Hamburger Flugzeugbau GmbH, the aircraft-building subsidiary of Blohm und Voss, under the direction of chief engineer Dr Ing. Richard Vogt, was the Ha 138. Three prototypes of the original twin-engine design were each to have been powered by a different manufacturer's l,000-hp (746-kW) engine for comparative evaluation, but development delays necessitated redesign to accept three 650-hp (485-kW) Junkers Jumo 205C engines. Almost two years after the completion of the mock-up, the first prototype (Ha 138 VI) took off on its maiden flight, the date being 15 July 1937. A second prototype (Ha 138 V2), with a modified hull design, joined the test programme at the Travemünde centre in November, but the aircraft were quickly proved to be unstable, both hydrodynamically and aerodynamically. Modifications to the vertical tail surfaces failed to improve the performance adequately and radical redesign was undertaken. The result was the Bv 138A, adopting the designation system of the Blohm und Voss parent company. The hull was much enlarged, its planing surfaces were improved, and the revised tail surfaces were carried by more substantial booms. The prototype was followed by five more pre-series Bv 138A aircraft, preceding the initial production version, the Bv 138A-1 first flown in April 1940, and built to a total of 25 for the reconnaissance units of the Luftwaffe, with which it first saw action during the Norwegian campaign of 1940. Armament of this version comprised one 20-mm cannon in the bow turret, and two 7.92-mm (0.31-in) MG 15 machine guns in open positions located behind the centre engine nacelle and at the rear of the hull. Structural strengthening of the fourth pre-series aircraft, and the installation of 880-hp (656-kW) Jumo 205D engines and armament comprising one 20-mm MG 151 cannon in the bow turret, a similar weapon in the rear hull position, with provision to carry up to 331 Ib (150 kg) of bombs beneath the starboard wing root, resulted in the Bv 138B-0 prototype. This was followed by 19 examples of the production version, designated Bv 138B-1, but the major production version, the Bv 138C-1, resulted from further structural strengthening and the addition of a 13-mm (0.51-in) MG 131 machinegun in the position behind the centre engine nacelle. Introduced in March 1941, the Bv 138C-1 was built to a total of 227 units before production ended in 1943. Final variant was the mine-sweeping Bv 138 MS with a degaussing loop of dural, field-generating equipment installed and armament deleted, all of them conversions from the Bv 138B-0 pre-production aircraft.

Specification

Bv 138C-1

Type: reconnaissance flying-boat

Powerplant: three 880-hp (656-kW) Junkers Jumo 205D 6-cylinder verticaIIy opposed inline piston engines

Performance: maximum speed 171 mph (275 km/h) at sea level; cruising speed 146 mph (235 km/h); service ceiling 16,405 ft (5000 m); maximum range 3,107 miles (5000 km)

Weights: empty 17,8571b (8100 kg); maximum takeoff 32,408lb (14700 kg)

Dimensions: span 88 ft 7 in (27.00 m); length 65 ft 3 1/2 in (19.90 m); height 21 ft 8 in (6.60 m); wing area 1,205.60 sq ft (112.00 m2)

Armament: one 20-mm MG 151 cannon in the bow turret, one similar cannon in the rear hull position and one 13-mm (0.51-in) MG 131 machine-gun in the position at the rear of the centre engine nacelle, plus three 110-lb (50-kg) bombs under starboard wing root, or (Bv 138C-1/U1) six 110-lb (50-kg) bombs or four 331-lb (150-kg) depth-charges

Operator: Luftwaffe

In early 1940 work began on the design of a transport aircraft to assist and ultimately replace the venerable and ubiquitous Junkers Ju 52/3m, of which more than 500 had been in service on 1 September 1939, when the German invasion of Poland precipitated World War II. A twin-engine design, the Arado Ar 232 featured a pod and boom fuselage with an hydraulically-operated rear loading door and a novel arrangement of 11 pairs of small wheels used to support the fuselage during loading and unloading operations, the tricycle main landing gear having been partially raised by means of two hydraulic rams.

The first two prototypes, flown in 1941, were powered by two 1,600-hp (1193-kW) BMW 801MA radial engines, but the insatiable demands of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 production lines necessitated a change of engine for subsequent aircraft. The selection of the lower-powered BMW-Bramo 323R-2 meant that four engines were needed and the third aircraft introduced a 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) increase in wing centre section span to accommodate them. This was the first of 20 Ar 232B aircraft, some of which saw service with Luftwaffe units, initially on the Eastern Front and, later in the war, with the 'special missions' Kampfgeschwader 200. A surviving aircraft from 3./KG 200 was flown from Flensburg to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough after the capitulation. Others were used during hostilities for experimental purposes, including one with a boundary-layer control system, one with four Gnome-Rhone 14M radial engines, and another with fixed landing gear and skis, for operations in Norway.

Specification

Type: heavy transport

Powerplant: four 1,200-hp (895-kW) BMW-Bramo 323R-2 9-eylinder radial piston engines

Performance: maximum speed 211 mph (340 km/h) at 15,090 ft (4600 m); cruising speed 180 mph

(290 km/h) at 6,560 ft (2000 m); service ceiling 26,245 ft (8000 m); range 658 miles (1060 km)

Weights: empty 28,224 lb (12802 kg); maximum takeoff 46,595 lb (21135 kg)

Dimensions: span 109 ft 10 3/4 in (33.50 m); length 77 ft 2 in (23.52 m); height 18 ft 8 in (5.69 m); wing area 1,534.98 sq ft (142.60 m2)

Armament: one 13-mm (0.51-in) MG 131 machine-gun in the nose, one or two similar weapons at the rear of the fuselage pod and one 20-mm MG 151/20 cannon in a power-operated dorsal turret

Operator: Luftwaffe

Habsburg emperor.

Joseph I’s reign was dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), which pitted Bourbon France and Spain against the ‘‘Grand Alliance’’ led by Austria and the Maritime Powers. Born to Emperor Leopold I and Eleonore of the Palatinate-Neuburg, Joseph’s upbringing was notable for the absence of Jesuit influence and the resurgence of German patriotism during lengthy struggles against France and the Ottoman Empire. In 1699 he married Wilhemine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who his parents hoped would tame his youthful excesses, which included wild parties and a string of indiscriminate sexual escapades. He was soon admitted to the privy council, where he became the center of a ‘‘young court’’ of reform minded ministers eager to resolve the daunting financial and military crises that confronted the monarchy during the opening years of the war, which Leopold had entered to secure the far-flung Spanish inheritance for his second son, Archduke Charles (the future Holy Roman emperor Charles VI). Their first victory came in 1703, with the appointments of Prince Eugene of Savoy and Gundaker Starhemberg to head the war council (Hofkriegsrat) and treasury (Hofkammer). Shortly afterward, John Churchill, the duke of Marlborough, was induced to march a British army into southern Germany, where it combined with imperial troops in destroying a Franco-Bavarian force at Blenheim (August 1704).

Although the great victory saved the monarchy from imminent defeat, Joseph had to overcome a succession of new challenges after succeeding his father (5 May 1705), which included the need to wage war on multiple fronts in Germany, the Spanish Netherlands, Italy, the Low Countries, and Spain, while simultaneously suppressing a massive rebellion in Hungary led by Prince Ferenc II Rákóczi. Joseph’s strong German identity informed vigorous initiatives within the empire, including reform of the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) and the banning of several renegade German and Italian princes who had sided with the Bourbons. Yet he gave little assistance to the imperial army fighting along the Rhine frontier or to the Maritime Powers campaigning in the Low Countries. Instead, he focused his resources (together with considerable Anglo-Dutch loans) on Italy, which Prince Eugene delivered in a single stroke at the battle of Turin (1706), after which the French evacuated northern Italy, much as they had abandoned Germany after Blenheim. A small force expelled Spanish forces from Naples the following spring. Joseph’s other principal concern was Hungary, where Rákóczi had aroused widespread support against Leopold’s regime of heavy taxation and religious persecution. Although Joseph dissociated himself from his father’s policies and promised to respect Hungary’s liberties, he refused Rákóczi’s demand that he cede Transylvania as a guarantee against future Habsburg tyranny. As a result, the war dragged on for eight years, as Joseph committed roughly half of all Austrian forces to the difficult process of reconquering the country. Once victory was assured, relatively generous terms were granted the rebels at the peace of Szatmár (April 1711), signed just ten days after Joseph’s death.

With Italy secured and the Hungarian rebellion under control, Joseph shifted his attention to the last and least pressing of his war aims—his brother’s acquisition of the rest of Spain’s European and American empire. Prince Eugene and a small force were sent to join Marlborough’s Anglo-Dutch army in the Spanish Netherlands, most of which fell after their victory at Oudenarde (1708). Joseph also instigated a short war with Pope Clement XI at the end of 1709, forcing him to recognize Charles as king of Spain. By 1710, the first Austrian troops were fighting alongside their British, Dutch, and Portuguese allies in Spain itself. Nonetheless, a combination of logistical difficulties, timely French reinforcements, and the Spanish people’s dogged support for the Bourbon claimant, Philip V, doomed the allied effort. Unsuccessful peace negotiations at The Hague (1709) and Gertruydenberg (1710) failed to deliver what the allies could not win for themselves. Finally, a new British cabinet initiated secret peace talks with Louis XIV at the beginning of 1711, foreshadowing the Peace of Utrecht two years later.

Despite his untimely death from smallpox (17 April 1711), Joseph attained his two main objectives: securing an Italian glacis to the southwest and reconciling Hungary to Austrian domination, albeit with constitutional safeguards. Indeed, both achievements endured until 1866. Much of his success rested with a talent for choosing and managing able ministers to whom he could delegate much of the responsibility for realizing policy objectives. At the same time, Joseph jeopardized these gains through extramarital liaisons, which prevented his wife from bearing children after he gave her a venereal infection in 1704. Although he was survived by two daughters, the absence of a male heir foreshadowed the dynasty’s extinction in 1740.

The German troubadour Tannhäuser (ca. 1220-ca. 1270) is depicted in this 14th-century manuscript as a Teutonic knight, wearing the order’s uniform of a white cloak with a black cross. The knights of the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Teutons (Teutonic Order) were essentially tough warriors, but even those who hated and feared them respected their skill, piety, dedication and discipline. The order’s Prussian masters and grand masters practiced power politics, but backed their diplomacy with fasts, processions, and continual prayer, and made periodic inspections of the spiritual life of their convents. When not on campaign the order devoted much time to peaceful business encouraging agriculture and trade.

Central and east-central Europe were the scene of much crusading activity: the Wendish Crusade along the west Baltic coast; crusades in Prussia) Livonia) and Lithuania; the Hussite Crusade in Bohemia; and the march of the Children's Crusade up the Rhine river and over the Alps into Italy.

The crusade against the Wends set a precedent for later attacks on Baltic pagan peoples by Christian rulers such as Waldemar I of Denmark (1157-82). The Poles also strove to impose their influence in the area, while further east the Swedes moved into pagan Finland. In 1171 Pope Alexander III declared all wars against the pagans of the north equal to crusades to the Holy Land. Later popes attempted to control these wars by sending legates, but even then legates and bishops could call crusades without obtaining specific papal approval in advance. This enabled Danish kings to create a Baltic empire and supported Polish expansion into Prussia and Russia, while the Teutonic knights exploited it for their ongoing crusading operations.

Prussia and the Teutonic Order

In the twelfth century the Baltic coast was sparsely populated and Poland's rulers assumed that they could easily conquer and convert the pagan tribes of Prussia. King Boleslaw IV's (1146-73) campaign in 1173 began well, but support for it among the Polish nobles ebbed away after his death. Furthermore, the Polish church lacked missionaries to proselytize among the Prussians, and it was not until after 1215 that the newly appointed bishop of Prussia- supported by Conrad of Masovia, Poland's most powerful duke-began a mission that it was hoped could convert the entire region. Such an approach had succeeded in Pomerania, but it failed in Prussia, probably because there was no single local ruler to work through. In the 1220S Prussians overran Culm, the one Prussian province Conrad had been able to conquer, and attacked Polish villages and abbeys, seizing people to be sold as slaves or put to work on the warriors' farms.

Conrad approached several military orders for aid, offering them lands if they would build castles, provide garrisons, and bring in farmers to produce food. He would help as much as he could, especially in raising crusader forces to assist them. The Templars, Hospitallers, and even the Spanish order of Calatrava sent small units, and Conrad founded a military order of his own-but they were all ineffective. The Prussians could be pacified only by larger and better organized armies, and then held down by permanent garrisons. To this end, in 1225 Conrad invited in the Teutonic Order, which had close ties to the emperor Frederick II. When the order was invited to Prussia, Frederick gave it generous grants of rights and all the lands its knights could conquer. The church encouraged them as well and attempted to protect the rights of Prussian converts.

The first units deployed, in 123 I, were small, and had to raise additional forces in Poland, Germany, and Pomerelia (West Prussia). By the end of the thirteenth century the Teutonic Order had conquered all of East Prussia. Polish and German migrants eventually outnumbered the Prussian converts, and behind the dense wilderness that divided Prussia and Poland an autonomous state was set up. The order subsequently defended its independence from both Polish and papal efforts to influence its military and political decisions.

The Teutonic Order relied largely on Germans for its crusading armies, but Poles and even Russians aided the order in crusades against pagan Lithuania. This cooperation ended in 1309, after a dispute over the order's occupation of Pomerelia and Danzig (Gdansk), which the Poles claimed. The ensuing conflict with Poland disrupted the Lithuanian crusade until the Peace of Kalish in 1343.

Around this time the Polish kings and the archbishops of Riga called for the Teutonic Order to be suppressed. However, unlike the Templars, who were subject only to the pope, the Teutonic knights were subject to both the pope and the emperor. By skillfully playing off one overlord against the other, the order succeeded in avoiding a similar fate to the Templars. The refusal of the Prussian regional masters of the order to deal with papal legates meant that subsequent generations heard only one side of the order's quarrels with the Poles and the archbishops of Riga. As a result, the order acquired an exaggerated reputation for brutality.

Under grand master Winrich von Kniprode (1352-82), the crusade against the Lithuanians became a spectacle of chivalry that attracted nobles from all parts of the Holy Roman empire, as well as from France, England, and Scotland. The climax of every campaign, apart from raids and sieges (there were very few battles), was the celebration of the Round Table, a magnificent-chivalric display involving the most important knights. They compared themselves to the Arthurian knights and heaped praise upon the noble chosen to bear the banner of St. George into battle.

Climate and practical considerations determined the seasons for campaigning. High summer and fall were the best times for crusaders to travel overland and by sea. But in December and January crusader armies could also march across the frozen rivers, lakes, and swamps of the uninhabited frontiers; consequently, winter became the favorite time of year for expeditions up the Nemunas (Memel) river into Lithuania, despite short days, unpredictable storms, and dangerous thaws.

In 1386-87, following the marriage of Duke Jogaila (Jagiello) of Lithuania to Jadwiga of Poland, Lithuania underwent conversion, bringing this "eternal" crusade to an end. In 1399 the Poles and Lithuanians joined the Teutonic Order in pacifying the Samogitians, the last Lithuanian pagans. But eleven years later relations between these regional rivals had deteriorated into war. The conflict reached a climax at the battle of Tannenberg (Grunwald) in 1410, where the Poles and Lithuanians crushed a seemingly invincible crusader army led by the Teutonic knights. The order soon recovered its lost territories, but its power was severely dented.

Livonia and the Swordbrothers

Further north, Livonia, roughly the region occupied by modern Latvia and Estonia, was ethnically diverse and had no single powerful ruler who could lead its Christianization. By the end of the twelfth century Russians were moving in from the east and Lithuanians raiding from the south, while pirate ships of pagan Estonians and Kurs were plaguing the villages and shipping of Germany and Scandinavia.

In 1188 an elderly German Priest, Meinhard travelled on a mission of conversion of conversion to Livonia's Daugava (Düna, Dvina) river. He was subsequently made the first bishop of the region (his successors became archbishops of Riga), but conversion was slow and in 1195 Pope Celestine III authorized a crusade, reaffirmed in 1198 by Innocent III. The first crusaders to Livonia, led by the second bishop, Bertholt, were merchants from the Baltic island of Gotland. They returned home before ice closed the Baltic Sea, and the third bishop, Albert, despite having a good base in Riga, was unable to garrison his castles properly. By establishing a military order, the Swordbrothers, in 1202, he made possible a rapid expansion of his domains. The bishop was supported by native peoples seeking revenge on traditional enemies, and by crusaders from Germany and Denmark. They crushed the pagans in Estonia, warded off Russian and Lithuanian attacks, then made a peaceful conquest of Kurland.

In time the Swordbrothers saw that the bishop intended to cast them aside once their task was accomplished and they ceased to cooperate with him. Albert appealed to the pope, and a compromise in 1227 divided Livonia between the bishops and the Swordbrothers - but left the key issue of the order's sovereignty unresolved. After the Swordbrothers were defeated in Samogitia in 1236, they were absorbed into the Teutonic Order as the semiautonomous Livonian Order. Albert's successors sought to assert their authority over the order. The pope upheld the verdicts against it, but did not enforce them, seeing the order as Livonia's only effective defense against Orthodox Russians or pagan Lithuanians. In effect, Rome treated the order as de facto rulers of Livonia.

The Livonian Order assisted the campaigns of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia by striking into Lithuania and Samogitia from castles along the Daugava and in Kurland. There were also conflicts with the Russian cities of Novgorod and Pskov, including a crusade (see sidebar on page 128), especially after 1300, when these commercial states were usually governed by hostile Lithuanian princes.

After the battle of Tannenberg, the Livonian Order invaded Lithuania repeatedly, but in 1435 the order's army of Lithuanians, Germans, Russians, and Tatars was routed by its Polish and Lithuanian opponents. Afterward power in Livonia was exercised by the Livonian Confederation, an assembly composed of the master of the Livonian Order, the bishops, three abbots, and delegates of the cities of Riga, Dorpat (Tartu), and Reval (Tallinn).

In 1500 the Livonian Order won a tough victory at Pskov over Ivan the Great of Russia (1462-1505). But with the coming of the Reformation the order's days were numbered.

THE LATER HISTORY OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER

Following the disaster at Tannenberg in 1410 there were proposals to relocate the Teutonic Order to the Ukraine or along the Danube River, but the grand masters found it impossible to support garrisons at such a distance from their Prussian and German bases. In 1525 the last grand master in Prussia, Albrecht von Hohenzollern, Margrave of Brandenburg-Anhalt and duke of Prussia (1525-68), became a Protestant and secularized the Prussian lands. He made some knights and prelates into vassals, let others leave for German convents, and pensioned off the rest. This was the end of the Teutonic Order in Prussia.

When Prussia became a Protestant state the Livonian knights lost their most valuable ally and source of recruits. Dependent on mercenaries, the order declined in numbers and vigor. In 1557 the Russian armies of Ivan the Terrible invaded Livonia and in 1559 the order's small army was defeated. When Sweden, Denmark, and Poland entered the war, Livonia was divided among them.

28cm Kanone 5 mit Lastenträger Tiger II (speculatively illustrated)

[1] A drawing from the Polish publication, 'Kuriozni Zbronjni Projekty Treti Rise' (Armoured Curiosities of the Third Reich) showing the K5, complete with a crudely shortened shell-hoist platform at the loading end, being carried by two lengthened Tiger IIs

24cm Kanone 4 mit Lastenträger Tiger I

Further speculation from the Walter Spielberger Tiger Book

A most interesting project was begun in 1943 at the instigation of the army. It was decided that, owing to the increasing intensity of Allied air attacks, a railway gun should be developed that was capable of cross-country detours around points at which the track had been destroyed. The gun itself was also intended to carry an integral turntable platform so that it could be lowered to the track and the bogies run clear, leaving the weapon ready to fire from the platform with 360° traverse. This idea resembled the American 14 in M1920 rail gun, but the idea was then carried further by a suggestion that it should then be possible to partly dismantle the K 5 and transport it across country on special transporters based on the chassis and running gear of the Pz Kpfw VI (Tiger Tank). In this, one transporter was to carry the breech mechanism, two were to carry the barrel between them, two were to take the gun-carriage and one was to move the platform. The mounting was also to be designed to take either the barrel of the 28cm K 5 or a new 38cm howitzer with a planned range of 25000m (27340 yard) with an 800kg(1764lb) shell. The whole project received a great deal of thought and would no doubt have been successfully completed in due course, but it was still in the planning stage when the war ended.

[1]The profile drawing of two Tiger IIs carrying a K5 doesn't match the text description though, which says the whole load was broken into 4 loads transported by up to 7 Tiger IIs.

The Tiger was one of the German responses to the appearance of new Soviet tanks in 1941 and in particular of the T-34. At the time the German Army had no heavy tanks, except for a few experimental vehicles. However, once the new Russian tanks were encountered the German High Command realised the need for tanks more powerful than the existing Pz.Kpfw.IV. In consequence two new tanks were hurriedly developed. One was the 56 ton Tiger, whose design incorporated some features of one of the earlier experimental tanks but which was armed with a tank version of the 88mm anti-aircraft gun that had already proved highly effective as an anti-tank weapon. The other was a new medium tank which became the Panther, a 43 ton vehicle armed with a 70 calibre long, high velocity 75mm gun. The Panther began to be produced in January 1943 and, together with the Tiger, gave the German tank units a qualitative superiority over the Russian tank units. But both tanks were produced on a relatively small scale, the total production of the original Tiger I amounting to 1354 and that of the Panthers to 5976 (1.75). In consequence, there were not enough Panthers to reequip the Panzer divisions completely with them and the Tigers were generally held back in independent battalions.

Both tanks had the same general layout as Pz.Kpfw.IV and five-man crews but apart from having much more powerful armament and thicker armour they were much more advanced mechanically. As a result of its combination of characteristics the Panther came to be regarded as the best medium tank of the 1943-45 period while the second version of the Tiger became the most powerful tank to be used during the Second World War. Thus, Tiger II was armed with a higher performance 88mm gun which was 71 calibres long and which could pierce considerably thicker armour than the 122mm gun of the IS-2. It was also heavily armoured, its frontal hull armour being 150mm thick, although this contributed to its weight of 68 tons, which made it the heaviest tank used during the war. But the total production of Tiger II amounted to only 489 vehicles.

In the meantime, while the Tiger and the Panther were being developed, the existing German tanks were belatedly armed with more powerful guns. In particular, Pz.Kpfw.IV was armed in 1942 with more powerful 75mm guns, first 43 and then 48 calibres long, instead of the short barrelled gun of 24 calibres, which had been used in German tanks since the Grosstraktoren of 1929.

New designs and improved versions of the existing vehicles developed in response to the appearance of the T-34 and KV not only made German tanks more than a match for the Soviet tanks in terms of gun-power but also put them well ahead of British and US tanks.

Post-War Heavy Tank Abandoned

During the 1960s there was also a shift of emphasis from nuclear weapons back to conventional forces as a result of the onset of strategic parity between the United States and the Soviet Union. In view of this and the fact that the armoured forces of the United States and its allies continued to be numerically inferior to those of the Soviet Union, the US Army made a major effort to gain qualitative superiority by developing in collaboration with the German Army a 'revolutionary new tank', which was designated MBT-70 (2.5). However, the MBT-70 programme proved to be over-ambitious and was terminated in 1971 by the US Congress on grounds of excessive cost. In consequence, the US Army embarked in 1972 on the development of a more conventional tank, the XM-1.

The controversy surrounding the MBT-70 obscured a significant change that had taken place at the time in US Army policy in favour of a single type of battle tank. The MBT-70 embodied it and moves towards it had already resulted in the withdrawal from service in 1964 of US heavy tanks. The Soviet Army retained its heavy tanks for several more years and they formed part of the Soviet forces which invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. But during the 1970s the Soviet Army also concentrated on a single type of battle tank, as did other armies.

A policy of concentration on a single type of battle tank was eminently sensible because no other tank could be superior to it and. therefore, could be justified if the tank on which development concentrated was already as good as it could be as a battle tank. Other types of tanks could always be designed, of course, for different, special roles but they were bound to be inferior, overall, to the more versatile battle tanks designed to defeat the widest possible range of battlefield targets, including enemy tanks.

An extreme example of tanks designed for such special roles were the infantry and cruiser tanks which the British Army employed right up to the end of the Second World War in spite of their serious deficiencies. However, in 1944 while British troops were still fighting in Normandy, their commander, General Montgomery, proposed the abolition of the division between infantry and cruiser tanks and the adoption instead of a single type of 'capital' tank. As it happens, the latter was eventually developed into a heavy gun tank, which was used in small numbers between 1955 and 1966. But in the meantime the policy of using a single type of battle tank was put into effect with the adoption as such of the Centurion tank in 1949.

The French Army decided even earlier than the British to concentrate on a single type of battle tank. In fact, such a tank began to be considered even before the war ended and was developed as part of the French Army's post-war re-equipment programme. However, its development did not proceed beyond a number of prototypes and was abandoned in the mid-1950s when the French Army turned its attention to another and lighter type of battle tank. The latter stemmed from an agreement reached in 1957 with Germany to produce a common 'European' tank although, eventually, each country adopted its own design. But the French AMX-30 and the German Leopard retained at least one feature in common in being less heavily armoured than other contemporary tanks such as the British Chieftain and, to a lesser extent, the US M60 tank. In this respect their design reflected the view, which had become widespread, that heavy armour was no longer as valuable as it had been because of progress in the development of anti-tank guided missiles and other weapons with shaped charge warheads that could perforate the thickest tank armour.

Major Eastern Front battle and the largest tank engagement in history. The Battle of Kursk demonstrated the end of German dominance on the Eastern Front. The 1942–1943 winter campaign had left a 120-mile-wide bulge around Kursk, an important rail junction north of Belgorod and Kharkov, protruding 75 miles deep into German-held territory.

Adolf Hitler saw the salient as an opportunity. By reducing it, his army could regain prestige lost by previous setbacks. By April, plans to blast the Soviets from Kursk were under discussion, and they were solidified into Operation ZITADELLE (CITADEL) by early May. The plan was to reduce the salient with two armor-led pincer attacks at the northern and southern shoulders that would meet in the middle, surrounding all of the forces in the pocket. From the north near Orel, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge’s Army Group Center would launch General Walther Model’s Ninth Army, led by two panzer corps. The main thrust, however, would come in the south from Field Marshal Fritz Eric von Manstein’s Army Group South, with Colonel General Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army moving north from near Belgorod.

Hitler left the start date for the operation open to sometime after 1 May. He then delayed it to June and again to July in order to build up the panzer forces with newly developed heavy Tiger and Panther tanks and Ferdinand 88 mm self-propelled assault guns, although they had been rushed into production and suffered from design flaws.

The Soviets knew of the plans for the impending German offensive through reconnaissance and intelligence agents. Soviet leader Josef Stalin wanted a preemptive spoiling attack, but Stavka representative Marshal Georgii Zhukov convinced him that within the Kursk salient, the Central Front, under General Konstantin Rokossovsky, and General Nikolai Vatutin’s Voronezh Front would be able to absorb the initial German blows with the defenses they had established, and to the rear, General I. S. Konev’s Steppe Front could then counterattack.

Both sides built up armor and troop concentrations for the coming battle. The Germans amassed 900,000 men in 50 divisions, of which 19 were panzer and motorized, with 2,700 tanks and assault guns, 10,000 artillery pieces, and 2,000 aircraft. The delay, however, allowed the Soviets to assemble 1.3 million men, 3,600 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces, and 2,400 aircraft. Some 300,000 local civilians joined the Red Army in laying a massive array of tank traps, minefields, and dug-in antitank guns designed to channel the German armor into kill zones for Soviet artillery.

The German attack commenced on 5 July. In the north, the Ninth Army assaulted on a narrow, 30-mile front but managed to penetrate only 6 or 7 miles in seven days of fierce fighting. The fighting resembled some of the fierce attrition battles of World War I. Fourth Panzer Army in the south did slightly better, pushing to the third Soviet defensive belt about 20 miles deep. The critical stage of the battle came between 11 and 12 July when General Hoth turned his panzer spearhead northwest to envelope the Soviet 1st Tank Army, and with about 400 tanks, his forces reached Prokhorovka Station. Zhukov responded with a counterattack of five tank armies, two coming from the Steppe Front. This engagement was a cauldron embroiling more than 1,200 tanks from both sides (three-quarters of them Soviet) in the largest tank battle of the war. By the end of 12 July, Prokhorovka lay littered with the burned-out hulks of German and Soviet tanks.

At that point, on 13 July, Hitler called off the offensive in order to withdraw panzer forces to reinforce units in Sicily, where the Allies had landed three days earlier. The German commanders had no choice but to conduct a fighting retreat in the face of a Soviet counteroffensive that began on 12 July. By 5 August, the Soviets had retaken Orel and Belgorod, and they retook Kharkov by 23 August, an action that the Soviets consider to be part of the Battle of Kursk. By that reckoning, Kursk involved 4 million men, 13,000 armored vehicles, and 12,000 aircraft, making it one of the largest battles of the war.

In the Battle of Kursk, the Germans lost an estimated 70,000 men killed, 2,900 tanks, 195 self-propelled guns, 844 artillery pieces, and 1,392 planes. More important, the battle cost the German army the strategic initiative. The Germans now began an almost continuous retreat that would end in Berlin.

References

Glantz, David M., and Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Jukes, Geoffrey. Kursk: The Clash of Armour. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.

Salisbury, Harrison E. The Unknown War. New York: Bantam Books, 1978.

Werth, Alexander. Russia at War, 1941–1945. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.

The battle of the Heligoland Bight had degenerated into a confused melee in which British light forces were being worsted, when Beatty took a bold gamble by intervening with battlecruisers in heavily mined waters. The resulting rout was greatly damaging to German morale.

In July 1914, even before his appointment, Jellicoe had concluded in a lengthy memorandum to the First Lord that 'it is highly dangerous to consider that our ships are superior or even equal [to those of the enemy]'. Had he known that British projectiles would be liable to break up harmlessly on striking German armour, he would have been even more circumspect.

On 28 August 1914 Commodore Tyrwhitt's Harwich Force forayed against German light forces active in the Heligoland Bight. In uncertain visibility and in the face of rapid German reinforcement, the British were soon hard-pressed and Tyrwhitt called for assistance from the two battlecruisers that comprised his deep cover. Jellicoe had not been able to inform him that he had reinforced them with three more battlecruisers under Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty. The impetuous Beatty did not hesitate to sweep in with all five capital ships. He sank three enemy cruisers but risked his big ships to mines and to uninformed friendly submarines. While the victory was due to overwhelming force rather than good planning, it boosted British morale and caused the Kaiser to think even more defensively.

Unsuspected by the Germans, the British had obtained several of their naval codebooks. Used in conjunction with a chain of radio intercept and direction-finding stations, these proved a valuable indicator of German activity and intentions. The hub of this service was the Admiralty's later-famous 'Room 40', loosely controlled by Captain William R. ('Blinker') Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence.

To popular disappointment, the Grand Fleet did not seek a second Trafalgar but adopted a policy of containment. The Germans responded by endeavouring to erode its superiority. By using Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers to bombard English east coast towns it was hoped that Royal Navy squadrons would be goaded into pursuit, to be led into minefields or submarine traps, or into ambush by superior German forces.

Still lacking experience, Room 40 failed to warn of Hipper's first such foray when, on 3 November 1914, he shelled Great Yarmouth for twenty minutes while a cruiser mined the coastal shipping lane. In accordance with his Kaiser's instructions, von Ingenohl brought his two supporting battle squadrons no further than the Bight.

Admiral Fisher, the First Sea Lord, predicted further such provocations and was proved correct when Room 40 discovered one due for 16 December. As Hipper's force alone was specifically identified, only Beatty's battlecruisers and one battle squadron were directed to intercept, with the Harwich Force also at sea. Von Ingenohl, too, was out in support with the battle fleet and his scouting forces clashed with those of the British in the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing that he was risking an action with the whole Grand Fleet, he broke away Beatty, unwittingly let off the hook, and still assuming the enemy to be Hipper alone, actually pursued this enormous quarry until, at 8.54 a.m., he received word that Scarborough was being bombarded. Within half an hour, unaware of Beatty's approach or von Ingenohl's retreat, Hipper withdrew. He was contacted by British light cruisers but these lost the scent due to an ambiguous signal from Beatty.

Although the raids held no military significance, the Admiralty was stung by vehement press opinion and its own inability to guarantee intervention.

The Luftwaffe, the newest of the military services, was the least professional and suffered the most from promotions not based on merit. Göring surrounded himself with advisers whose principal qualifications were that they were Nazis, as opposed to experienced aviation military officers. Many times they either offered poor advice or, not wishing to anger him, agreed with whatever ideas he developed. Increasingly, Göring, who held numerous offices in the Reich, largely abandoned his command of the Luftwaffe, intervening only in fits and starts and often with disastrous results, as during the 1940 Battle of Britain. During the war, the Luftwaffe was also the agency least conscious of communications security.

The Luftwaffe controlled all air services but had little interest in naval aviation. Airborne troops were Luftwaffe personnel, and the air force also had charge of antiaircraft artillery. Eventually the Luftwaffe even fielded 22 ground divisions, including the Hermann Göring Armored Division. The Luftwaffe itself was organized into Luftflotten (air fleets), constituted so as to perform a variety of roles and consisting of a wide variety of aircraft types. At the beginning of the war, Germany had four Luftflotten, and during the course of the conflict three more were added. The next operational division was the Fleigerkorps (flier corps), and below that was the Fleigerdivision (flier division). These last two each contained several Geschwader (squadrons) that were designated as to types (including fighters, bombers, night fighters, training, and so on). Each division controlled three to four Gruppen (groups) comprising three or four Staffein (squadrons). In September 1939, the Luftwaffe had 302 Staffein.

At that point, Germany’s chief advantage was in the air, for at the start of hostilities the Luftwaffe was certainly the world’s most powerful air force. In September 1939, Göring commanded more than 3,600 frontline aircraft. The death in 1936 of strategic bomber proponent General Walther Wever, however, had brought a shift in emphasis to tactical air power. This remained the case throughout the war. Although Germany developed four-engine bomber prototypes, these were never placed in production. It could be argued, however, that a tactical air force was the best use of Germany’s limited resources.

The German air force was essentially built to support ground operations. It suited ideally the new blitzkrieg tactics, and the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber was a highly accurate form of “flying artillery.” Impressed by U.S. Marine Corps experiments with precision dive-bombing, the Germans embraced this technique; indeed, all German bombers had to be capable of dive-bombing. This entailed considerable aircraft structural change with attendant production delays and a decrease in bomb-carrying capacity. The flying weight of the Junkers Ju-88 twin-engine bomber went from 6 to 12 tons, sharply reducing both its speed and its bomb-carrying capacity. Nonetheless, the Germans developed some exceptional aircraft. In addition to the Stuka, they had a superb air superiority fighter in the Messerschmitt Bf-109, certainly one of the best all-around aircraft of the war.

The Germans did not have numerical or technological superiority over their opponents. Against Adolf Hitler’s 136 divisions (2.5 million men), the French, British, Belgians, and Dutch could field 135 divisions (more than 2 million men). The Allies and neutral powers also had more tanks (perhaps 3,600, compared with 2,500 for the Germans). The Allies were sadly deficient, however, in numbers of antiaircraft guns and aircraft. Against 1,444 German bombers, the Allies could send up only 830 fighters. These would have to cope with 1,264 German fighter aircraft, more than 1,000 of which were Bf-109s. Overall, the German air fleets deployed in the west numbered 3,226 combat aircraft, whereas the British and French had half that number.

The German army and air force displayed ingenuity and adaptability in the invasion of the Low Countries. In the heart of Rotterdam, Heinkel float planes landed infantry which paddled ashore in inflatable boats.

Infantry-carrying gliders had been towed behind transport planes to land on the roof of Belgium's titanic Eben Emael fortress. On the Luxembourg frontier, German soldiers posing as tourists and dressed in civilian clothes went ahead of the main force to disconnect the demolition devices. The invaders used Dutch uniforms and an armoured train to take the bridge at Gennep. Parachute troops came tumbling out of the sky to seize the mile long undefended bridges at Moerdijk.

Three-engined Junkers airliners crammed with infantry were crash-landed on Dutch roads.

Most of this 'exotica' was used against the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium by the Germans of Army Group B. There was not very much of it and its actual contribution was small. These gimmicks were not a portent of wars to come, they were a stage conjuror's trick to hold the attention of the audience while Army Group A brought the rabbit from the Ardennes woodlands.

Although Germany had overrun France and northwestern Europe rather swiftly in the spring of 1940, its victory was by no means one-sided. The Luftwaffe had committed about 1,000 first-line fighters to the campaign, while the Allies between them had nearly as many. Allied losses were heavy, including aircraft abandoned during the hasty Allied retreat. These losses included about 65 Spitfires, 350 Hurricanes, and 300 DeWoitine 520s (a very good French fighter quite literally just coming off the assembly line during the battle). But the Luftwaffe also took a beating, with nearly 500 Messerschmitt fighters lost, plus many bombers. Pilot losses on both sides had also been serious. Moreover, in an inspired moment, the RAF shipped German pilot prisoners to Great Britain, thereby removing them from the war permanently.

The Luftwaffe played key roles in the German victories over Poland in 1939 and over France and the Low Countries in 1940. Its limitations first became evident during the Battle of Britain, when Göring attempted to wage a strategic bombing campaign with a tactical air force. Germany’s defeat in this battle was its first setback of the war.