Mike Merritt

WITH a population of around 10,000 during World War II, Peterhead seemed unlikely to be one of Hitler's top targets.

But a new book - Luftwaffe Over Scotland, by Les Taylor - claims the fishing port was the second most bombed place in Britain after London.

The reason was not because of its strategic value, but Peterhead's geographical position. It was the first urban area the Luftwaffe saw as they attacked the UK from Norway.

The town was bombed 28 times during World War II - followed by Aberdeen with 24 raids, Fraserburgh 23, Edinburgh 18, Montrose 15 and Glasgow 11.

In total, there were more than 500 German air raids on Scotland - ranging from single aircraft hit-and-runs, to mass bombings by 240 planes.

During the air war in Scotland, 2500 people died and 8000 were injured.

And more than 200 enemy aircraft were shot down on Scottish territory. Although Peterhead was attacked more times than any other Scottish town, Clydebank suffered the greatest loss of life in one raid - the Clydebank Blitz.

In the book, Les reveals that the terror bombing of the Clydeside - which killed 800 people over two nights - was never planned by the Nazis.

Les, 48, who lives near Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, has spent the last five years carrying out detailed research for the book.

He read hundreds of documents from municipal authorities, the German military, the former Scottish Office, newspaper clippings, the Imperial War Museum and interviewed eye witnesses.

He said: "From that first attack until the Battle of Britain, all the action took place over Scotland."

The worst loss of life came in Clydebank in March 1941, when 236 German planes were sent to bomb naval targets such as the Admiralty oil storage farm at Dalnottar and the old John Brown Shipyard.

Les said: "It has never been explained before why so many people in Glasgow were killed in that raid.

"But it was because of what is known as 'creepback' - keeping away from the fierce anti-aircraft fire.

"The Germans were forced to release their bombs early over Glasgow to avoid the gun fire and get away from the danger area.

"The bombing was never intended. The bombs were scattered across the Glasgow area. Of the 1300 people who died, only 500 were in the intended target area of Clydebank."

The Greenock Blitz, again over two nights, in May, 1941 - the second and last of the German mass bombings in Scotland- claimed 250 lives.

But British night fighters from Ayr, who engaged the bombers, caused the fleeing Germans to also drop bombs across south-west Scotland, too.

However, the Germans did strike their intended targets in both raids - and only three German planes were downed, all in the Greenock attack.

However, Les said that raid was considered a failure because only one person was killed for every two tonnes of explosive dropped - roughly one per cent of the military's pre-war planning calculation.

In total, a massive 1000 tonnes of explosive was dropped in the two raids alone - equivalent to one of the war's most infamous attacks on Coventry.

Scotland's main interest to Hitler was that it was home to so many strategic naval anchorages.

One of the most important was Scapa Flow in Orkney, from where a major air battle was fought three months before the Battle of Britain.

In 1940, between April 8 and April 10, up to 60 German bombers attacked at a time.

"It was in effect a rehearsal for the Battle of Britain," said Les. "It was also the first time radar was used to intercept and attack enemy planes, which was a major factor in the Battle of Britain. The tactics used in Orkney were just the same.

"The Germans mounted the attack as part of their invasion of Norway and to try and drive the Navy out of Scapa Flow. In my view it should be officially recognised as The Battle of Orkney."

Scotland claimed many UK firsts during the war. The first civilian victim of the war in Britain was James Isbister, who was killed in a German air raid on Orkney on March 16, 1940.

The previous October, the Luftwaffe carried out their first raid over Britain, with an attack above the Firth of Forth on two warships. A total of 16 sailors were killed aboard HMS Mohawk.

The same day, painter and decorator Joe McCluskie was shot in the stomach. He was hit by friendly fire from a Spitfire chasing a Junkers 88 over central Edinburgh. Fortunately, he survived.

Les said: "This book is the first complete record of German air attacks on Scotland. Following the summer of 1940, the nature of those attacks turned to terror bombings against civilians."

The first strafing occurred in July, 1940, when a Junkers 88 machine gunned Queen Street in Peterhead. Incredibly, nobody died.

Hitler wanted to match the British terror bombing of German cities by inflicting the same devastation on the UK.

He appointed General Major Dietrich Pelz as attack leader and his first raid came on April 21, 1943, when 125 people were killed in Aberdeen after 29 German Dornier 217s from the elite KG2 Squadron attacked the Granite City.

It was also the last German raid on a Scottish city during the war, though the honour of being the last casualty fell to a Mrs McGregor on the same day.

The farmer's wife, from Fraserburgh, was hit on the head from a falling slate after a bomb exploded near her house. Luckily she survived.

Scotland also staged the last air battle in Europe, which was fought off the Aberdeenshire coast on April 21, 1945.

Mosquitoes from the Banff strike wing intercepted 18 torpedo bombers - only four made it back to Norway.

A prolonged Allied tactical air-interdiction program during the autumn and winter of 1944 effectively closed the Brenner Pass and created an acute German fuel shortage that drastically reduced the mobility of Army Group C in northern Italy (commanded by Vietinghoff after Kesselring was severely injured in a road accident in October). Although the Germans still had over half a million men in the field, the Allies had been invigorated in both spirit and outlook by substantial reinforcements, including the Brazilian Expedition Force, and an abundant array of new weapons.

On 9 April, after the ground had dried, Alexander launched his spring offensive, with Eighth Army attacking through the Argenta gap. Fifth Army struck on 15 April, and just 10 days later, both Allied armies met at Finale nell’Emilia, after having surrounded and eliminated the last German forces. The Allies then advanced rapidly northward, the Americans entering Milan on 29 April and the British reaching Trieste on 2 May. Fifth Army continued to advance into Austria, linking with the U.S. Seventh Army in the Brenner Pass on 6 May.

The isolated and hopeless position of German and RSI forces led Schutzstaffel (SS) General Karl Wolff, military governor and head of the SS in northern Italy, to initiate background negotiations for a separate surrender as early as February 1945. The talks, facilitated by Allen Dulles, head of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland, held much promise, although they were complicated and took place in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and mistrust. Wolff wished to avoid senseless destruction and loss of life and to repel the spread of communism; he also hoped to ingratiate himself with the West in case war crimes trials were held in the future. From the Allied perspective, Wolff offered the prospect of preventing the creation of a Nazi redoubt in the Alps. The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, halted the talks in April, forestalling their conclusion before the Allied spring offensive, but by 23 April, Wolff and Vietinghoff decided to disregard orders from Berlin. Wolff ordered the SS not to resist the Italian partisans on 25 April, and an unconditional surrender was signed four days later, to be effective on 2 May, six days before the German surrender in the West.

The Italian Campaign gave the Allies useful victories in the interval between the reconquest of the Mediterranean and the reconquest of northwest Europe. In a theater of increasingly secondary importance, Kesselring’s position was merely a defensive one, and the best the Allies could claim was that they kept 22 enemy divisions from fighting in another theater. Allied casualties came to 188,746 for Fifth Army and 123,254 for Eighth Army, whereas German casualties were about 434,646 men. The Italian Campaign did, however, afford the Allies experience in amphibious operations and the stresses of coalition warfare, all of which proved invaluable during the invasion of France.

References: Carver, Michael. The War in Italy, 1939–1945. London: Macmillan, 2001. D’Este, Carlo. World War II in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Press, 1990. Gooch, John. Italy and the Second World War. London: Cass, 2001. Graham, Dominick, and Shefford Bidwell. Tug of War: The Battle for Italy, 1943–45. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. Higgins, Trumbull. Soft Underbelly: The Anglo-American Controversy over the Italian Campaign, 1939–1945. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Howard, Michael. The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War. London: Greenhill, 1968. Lamb, Richard. War in Italy, 1943–1945: A Brutal Story. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Starr, Chester G., ed. From Salerno to the Alps. Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1986. Strawson, John. Italian Campaign. London: Secker and Warburg, 1987.

By mid-December, it was clear that the efforts to break through the German defenses were futile. Meanwhile, Fifth Army successfully cleared the heights dominating the Mignano gap after much hard fighting, but it was stopped at the Rapido River. Allied forces had reached the defensive position of the Gustav Line, which generally ran along the Garigliano, Rapido, and Sangro Rivers. One of the key points was the town of Cassino on the Rapido. However, four successive attacks by Fifth Army failed to make any significant headway. The winter campaign had degenerated into a situation in which two separate armies were attempting to penetrate the Gustav Line.

In four months, the Allies had slogged just 70 miles from Salerno and were still 80 miles from Rome. Fifth Army alone had incurred 40,000 casualties, far exceeding German losses, and a further 50,000 men were sick; meanwhile, six experienced divisions were withdrawn for the cross-Channel invasion of France, Operation OVERLORD. The supreme Allied commander of the European Theater of Operations and U.S. forces in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Montgomery also departed to lead the cross-Channel invasion. In recognition of British predominance in Italy, General Maitland “Jumbo” Wilson was appointed to head the Mediterranean Command, and Lieutenant General Oliver Leese became commander of Eighth Army.

Kesselring, who was appointed commander of Army Group C on 21 November, now had 15 (albeit weakened) divisions in Tenth Army vigorously holding the Gustav Line. On 22 January 1944, in an attempt to unhinge this force, the Allies launched another amphibious landing, Operation SHINGLE, at Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome. The U.S. VI Corps, under Major General John Lucas, achieved complete surprise and safely landed 70,000 troops within a week, but it failed to exploit the advantage. Churchill later wrote, “I had hoped that we were hurling a wild cat on to the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.”

Kesselring hastily improvised eight divisions into Fourteenth Army, commanded by General Eberhard von Mackensen. This force resolutely counterattacked at Anzio, employing “Goliath” remote-controlled, explosive-filled miniature tanks for the first time in the war. The beachhead was saved only by the excellent tactical use of intelligence in one of ULTRA’s most important triumphs. Major General Lucian K. Truscott replaced Lucas, but for three months, he could do no more than hold the defensive ring. Meanwhile, Allied forces to the south were unable to break through the Gustav Line. Losses were heavy on both sides as the Allies battered against the line. VI Corps held on at Anzio but was unable to break out of the beachhead. A stalemate persisted until spring.

On 17 January, V Corps launched an attack on the Gustav Line but was forced to call it off within a month, after the badly exhausted troops had advanced just 7 miles, at a cost of 17,000 casualties. The New Zealand Corps then attempted a direct assault on Monte Cassino, preceded by the questionable bombing by 145 B-17 Flying Fortresses that destroyed the famous monastery. The 1st Parachute Division troops defending the heights were some of the German army’s finest, and they did not flinch. They now took up positions in the ruined monastery. A third attack by New Zealand and Indian infantry, using even heavier air and artillery bombardments, also failed to break through, not least because the rubble created an impregnable defensive position.

On 11 May, the Allies launched a fourth attack, Operation DIADEM, in which General Alexander coordinated Fifth and Eighth Armies as an army group for the first time. The aim was to destroy the German armies. In an astonishing feat of arms, Polish and Free French troops seized Monte Cassino, and XIII Corps broke the Gustav Line in a set-piece battle. Moreover, Kesselring, who had been duped into expecting another amphibious landing farther north, was slow to send reinforcements southward.

Alexander was alerted to the German movements through ULTRA intelligence, and when victory seemed complete, he ordered the Anzio breakout on 23 May. He planned for the U.S. VI Corps to strike directly inland to encircle the German Tenth Army. Rome would thus be ripe for the taking, but more important, the Germans would be unable to form any organized defenses in the rest of Italy, enabling the rapid occupation of the country right up to the Alps. However, Clark, perhaps the most egocentric Allied commander in the war, was enticed by the glory of capturing Rome and altered the direction of his thrust toward the city. Fifth Army linked up with VI Corps on 25 May and made the triumphant march into Rome on 4 June, but the spectacle of the first capture of an Axis capital was eclipsed by the Allied invasion of France two days later.

Clark’s change of objective from Alexander’s intent enabled Kesselring to withdraw to the Pisa-Rimini Line, 150 miles north of Rome. This line was the first of the next series of defense lines across the peninsula that were known collectively as the Gothic Line, which he reached in August. Alexander still hoped to make for Vienna, but the Italian Campaign had assumed a definite secondary status to the invasion of France. Six divisions were withdrawn in the summer, and when the autumn rains and mud forced operations to be suspended at the end of the year, another seven divisions were withdrawn.

Kesselring formed the six divisions in the south of Italy into the Tenth Army under General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, but he had anticipated a landing at Salerno and stationed the 16th Panzer Division in the area. At Salerno, Fifth Army attacked with two corps abreast: the U.S. VI Corps and the British X Corps. Initial resistance was light, but the Germans reinforced by 11 September and, despite their weakness, launched a counteroffensive that almost split Fifth Army between the two invading corps. By 15 September, the beachhead was secure, in large part because of an overwhelming weight of firepower in the form of accurate naval gunfire and massive air support and because more reserves were landed. Fifth Army then began an advance on Naples, 30 miles away. Montgomery, disappointed that he had only been assigned a secondary role, was needlessly cautious in his advance—so much so that a group of dismayed war correspondents drove themselves through German-occupied territory to contact Fifth Army more than a day before Montgomery’s advanced units managed to do so on 16 September.

Two days later, Kesselring ordered a fighting withdrawal to the first of the series of mountainous, fortified defensive lines, from which the Germans planned to defend the approaches to Rome. On 1 October, Fifth Army captured Naples while Eighth Army advanced up the Adriatic coast and captured the airfields at Foggia; there, the Allies installed the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force to launch strategic bombing raids against the Reich. By early October, the two Allied armies had formed a continuous, 120-mile line across the peninsula running along the Volturno and Biferno Rivers. But in the previous three weeks, Fifth Army alone had taken 12,000 casualties.

Henceforth, the campaign in Italy became a slow, remorseless, and grinding battle of attrition, and as the rain and snow turned the battlefield into a muddy quagmire, the appalling struggles resembled World War I battles. Kesselring had fortified a series of defensive lines, known collectively as the Winter Line, between Gaeta and Pescara. The western end based on the Garigliano and Rapido Rivers, known as the Gustav Line, was particularly strong and hinged on the great fortress of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino.

On 12 October, the Allies began the Volturno River Campaign, with the objective of seizing the approaches to Rome. Their plan was too ambitious, given the Germans’ skill at defending the mountainous terrain. Between the Volturno and Rome lay 120 miles of rugged country. Fifth Army’s VI Corps successfully attacked across the line of the Volturno River, and X Corps seized two crossings. To exploit the success, General Clark ordered an advance across the entire Fifth Army front. Particularly in the VI Corps area, poor roads, demolished bridges, and the difficulties of bringing supplies forward combined with German resistance to slow the advance. Meanwhile, in a series of bitterly contested actions, Eighth Army crossed the Trigno River and advanced to the Sangro River. By 15 November, however, the Germans had stopped the advance along the Winter Line, a position that extended along the Garigliano River to Mount Camino, the Mignano gap, the mountains to the northeast, and the Sangro River to the Adriatic Sea.

The Winter Line Campaign, lasting from 15 November 1943 to 15 January 1944, marked the failure of the Allied plan for a major winter offensive. Eighth Army was to break through on the Adriatic coast and then swing left behind the Germans, at which time Fifth Army would advance. When the two came within supporting distance, Fifth Army would launch an amphibious operation south of Rome. Although its efforts to break into the German position were initially successful, Eighth Army fell victim as much to weather as to the German defense. In early December, the Sangro River, vital to Eighth Army communications, rose 8 feet, and bridges were under water or washed away.

At the American-British Casablanca Conference in January 1943, with a cross-Channel invasion of France no longer an option for that year, British Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and their military staffs agreed to follow the Axis defeat in North Africa with an invasion of Sicily. Several weeks later, the Americans also agreed to a subsequent invasion of the Italian Peninsula. This campaign would allow the Allies to retain the strategic initiative, expand their control in the Mediterranean, open a second front on the mainland of Europe to relieve pressure on the Soviets, and provide air bases closer to strategic bombing targets in Austria, Romania, and parts of Germany.

In a month-long campaign commencing on 10 July 1943, in their largest amphibious assault in the war to date, Allied troops defeated Axis forces in Sicily. The Allied conquest of Sicily had a profound effect in Italy, where, faced with growing unrest and the reluctance of Italian forces to oppose the Allies, the Fascist Grand Council launched a coup d’état that overthrew Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and installed a new government led by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Secret negotiations between the Allies and the new Italian government for an armistice began immediately but soon became bogged down by the Allied insistence on unconditional surrender. A “short military armistice” was eventually signed, on 3 September. Meanwhile, however, Adolf Hitler used the interlude to move another 16 German divisions to Italy, including the crack 1st SS Panzer Division from the Soviet Union.

The Germans then occupied the entire country and took control of most of the Italian army. Much of the Italian fleet escaped to Malta. On 12 September 1943, German commandos led by Schutzstaffel (SS) Standartenführer Otto Skorzeny rescued Mussolini from captivity in the mountains at Grand Sasso in a daring airborne raid. Hitler then installed Mussolini as head of the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in northern Italy.

The strategic logic for continuing the Allied campaign in the Mediterranean appeared obvious to the British Chiefs of Staff, who saw an invasion of Italy as an opportunity to accomplish several goals: to continue the ground war against Germany utilizing experienced troops who would otherwise remain idle for a year; to draw Axis troops away from France and the Soviet Union; and possibly to create opportunities elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, were far less convinced and believed that Allied efforts should be directed to the cross-Channel invasion of France, now sanctioned for the spring of 1944. They were also skeptical of British motives, fearing that the postwar preservation of colonial interests was a high priority for Britain—a goal they vehemently opposed. A final decision to invade the Italian mainland was not made until the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943, but there was no strategic plan other than to continue the existing operations. The Americans were reluctant to commit to a new Italian campaign, and there was no new, large-scale amphibious landing in northern Italy. Any such operation would have been beyond the range of Allied fighter aircraft, and it is an open question whether that type of operation and an airborne raid to capture Rome would have brought the campaign to a rapid conclusion.

The Allied invasion plan envisaged a pincer movement across the Straits of Messina by General Sir Harold Alexander’s 15th Army Group, with the first objective being the vital southern Italian port of Naples. In Operation BAYTOWN, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army crossed from Sicily to Reggio di Calabria on 3 September, followed by the British 1st Airborne Division, which landed by sea at Taranto six days later. The main assault, by 165,000 troops of the Anglo-U.S. Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, went ashore at Salerno in Operation AVALANCHE, 35 miles south of Naples, on 9 September. Salerno was chosen chiefly because it was the farthest point in the north for which air support could be provided from Sicily. The Allies hoped that, once ashore, their invading forces would somehow find a way to open the road to Rome before the end of the year.

German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had convinced Hitler that Italy could be easily defended because of its ideal terrain. The central mountainous spine of the Apennines rises above 10,000 feet and has lateral spurs that run east and west toward the coast, between which are deep valleys containing wide rivers flowing rapidly to the sea. The north-south roads were confined to 20-mile-wide strips adjacent to the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts, where the bridges that carried them were dominated by natural strong points.

“Why do people have a fixation with the German military when they haven’t won a war since 1871?” -- Tom Clancy

I’ve always been interested in the German military, especially the Wehrmacht of World War II. As a young boy, I recall building many models, not just German Panther and Tiger tanks, but famous Luftwaffe planes as well. True, I built American tanks and planes, Shermans and Thunderbolts and Mustangs, but the German models always seemed “cooler,” a little more exotic, a little more predatory. And the German military, to my adolescent imagination, seemed admirably tough and aggressive: hard-fighting, thoroughly professional, hanging on against long odds, especially against the same hordes of “godless communists” that I knew we Americans were then facing down in the Cold War.

Later, of course, a little knowledge about the nightmare of Nazism and the Holocaust went a long way toward destroying my admiration for the Wehrmacht, but -- to be completely honest -- a residue of grudging respect still survives: I no longer have my models, but I still have many of the Ballantine illustrated war books I bought as a young boy for a buck or two, and which often celebrated the achievements of the German military, with titles like Panzer Division, or Afrika Korps, or even Waffen SS.

As the Bible says, we are meant to put aside childish things as we grow to adulthood, and an uninformed fascination with the militaria and regalia of the Third Reich was certainly one of these. But when I entered Air Force ROTC in 1981, and later on active duty in 1985, I was surprised, even pleased, to discover that so many members of the U.S. military shared my interest in the German military. To cite just one example, as a cadet at Field Training in 1983 (and later at Squadron Officer School in 1992), I participated in what was known as “Project X.” As cadets, we came to know of it in whispers: “Tomorrow we’re doing ‘Project X’: It’s really tough …”

A problem-solving leadership exercise, Project X consisted of several scenarios and associated tasks. Working in small groups, you were expected to solve these while working against the clock. What made the project exciting and more than busy-work, like the endless marching or shining of shoes or waxing of floors, was that it was based on German methods of developing and instilling small-unit leadership, teamwork, and adaptability. If it worked for the Germans, the “finest soldiers in the world” during World War II, it was good enough for us, or so most of us concluded (including me).

Project X was just one rather routine manifestation of the American military’s fascination with German methods and the German military mystique. As I began teaching military history to cadets at the Air Force Academy in 1990, I quickly became familiar with a flourishing “Cult of Clausewitz.” So ubiquitous was Carl von Clausewitz and his book On War that it seemed as if we Americans had never produced our own military theorists. I grew familiar with the way Auftragstaktik (the idea of maximizing flexibility and initiative at the lowest tactical levels) was regularly extolled. So prevalent did Clausewitz and Auftragstaktik become that, in the 1980s and 1990s, American military thinking seemed reducible to the idea that “war is a continuation of politics” and a belief that victory went to the side that empowered its “strategic corporals.”

War as a Creative Act

The American military’s fascination with German military methods and modes of thinking raises many questions. In retrospect, what disturbs me most is that the military swallowed the Clausewitzian/German notion of war as a dialectical or creative art, one in which well-trained and highly-motivated leaders can impose their will on events.

In this notional construct, war became not destructive, but constructive. It became not the last resort of kings, but the preferred recourse of “creative” warlords who demonstrated their mastery of it by cultivating such qualities as flexibility, adaptability, and quickness. One aimed to get inside the enemy’s “decision cycle,” the so-called OODA loop -- the Air Force’s version of Auftragstaktik -- while at the same time cultivating a “warrior ethos” within a tight-knit professional army that was to stand above, and also separate from, ordinary citizens.

This idolization of the German military was a telling manifestation of a growing militarism within an American society which remained remarkably oblivious to the slow strangulation of its citizen-soldier ideal. At the same time, the American military began to glorify a new generation of warrior-leaders by a selective reading of its past. Old “Blood and Guts” himself, the warrior-leader George S. Patton -- the commander as artist-creator-genius -- was celebrated; Omar N. Bradley -- the bespectacled GI general and reluctant soldier-citizen -- was neglected. Not coincidentally, a new vision of the battlefield emerged in which the U.S. military aimed, without the slightest sense of irony, for “total situational awareness” and “full spectrum dominance,” goals that, if attained, promised commanders the almost god-like ability to master the “storm of steel,” to calm the waves, to command the air.

In the process, any sense of war as thoroughly unpredictable and enormously wasteful was lost. In this infatuation with German military prowess, which the political scientist John Mearsheimer memorably described as “Wehrmacht penis envy,” we celebrated our ability to Blitzkrieg our enemies -- which promised rapid, decisive victories that would be largely bloodless (at least for us). In 1991, a decisively quick victory in the Desert Storm campaign of the first Gulf War was the proof, or so it seemed then, that a successful “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA in military parlance, was underway.

Forgotten, however, was this: the German Blitzkrieg of World War II ended with Germany’s “third empire” thoroughly thrashed by opponents who continued to fight even when the odds seemed longest.

What a remarkable, not to say bizarre, turnabout! The army and country the U.S. had soundly beaten in two world wars (with a lot of help from allies, including, of course, those godless communists of the Soviet Union in the second one) had become a beacon for the U.S. military after Vietnam. To use a sports analogy, it was as if a Major League Baseball franchise, in seeking to win the World Series, decided to model itself not on the New York Yankees but rather on the Chicago Cubs.

The New Masters of Blitzkrieg

Busts of Clausewitz reside in places of honor today at both the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and the National War College in Washington, D.C. Clausewitz was a complex writer, and his vision of war was both dense and rich, defying easy simplification. But that hasn’t stopped the U.S. military from simplifying him. Ask the average officer about Clausewitz, and he’ll mention “war as the continuation of politics” and maybe something about “the fog and friction of war” -- and that’s about it. What’s really meant by this rendition of Clausewitz for Dummies is that, though warfare may seem extreme, it’s really a perfectly sensible form of violent political discourse between nation-states.

Such an officer may grudgingly admit that, thanks to fog and friction, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” What he’s secretly thinking, however, is that it won’t matter at all, not given the U.S. military’s “mastery” of Auftragstaktik, achieved in part through next-generation weaponry that provides both “total situational awareness” and a decisive, war-winning edge.

No wonder that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were so eager to go to war in Iraq in 2003. They saw themselves as the new masters of Blitzkrieg, the new warlords (or “Vulcans” to use a term popular back then), the inheritors of the best methods of German military efficiency.

This belief, this faith, in German-style total victory through relentless military proficiency is best captured in Max Boot’s gushing tribute to the U.S. military, published soon after Bush’s self-congratulatory and self-adulatory “Mission Accomplished” speech in May 2003. For Boot, America’s victory in Iraq had to “rank as one of the signal achievements in military history.” In his words:

"Previously, the gold standard of operational excellence had been the German blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France in 1940. The Germans managed to conquer France, the Netherlands, and Belgium in just 44 days, at a cost of ‘only’ 27,000 dead soldiers. The United States and Britain took just 26 days to conquer Iraq (a country 80 percent of the size of France), at a cost of 161 dead, making fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison.”

How likely is it that future military historians will celebrate General Tommy Franks and elevate him above the “incompetent” Rommel and Guderian? Such praise, even then, was more than fatuous. It was absurd.

Throughout our history, many Americans, especially frontline combat veterans, have known the hell of real war. It’s one big reason why, historically speaking, we’ve traditionally been reluctant to keep a large standing military. But the Cold War, containment, and our own fetishizing of the German Wehrmacht changed everything. We began to see war not as a human-made disaster but as a creative science and art. We began to seek “force multipliers” and total victory achieved through an almost Prussian mania for military excellence.

Reeling from a seemingly inexplicable and unimaginable defeat in Vietnam, the officer corps used Clausewitz to crawl out of its collective fog. By reading him selectively and reaffirming our own faith in military professionalism and precision weaponry, we tricked ourselves into believing that we had attained mastery over warfare. We believed we had tamed the dogs of war; we believed we had conquered Bellona, that we could make the goddess of war do our bidding.

We forgot that Clausewitz compared war not only to politics but to a game of cards. Call it the ultimate high-stakes poker match. Even the player with the best cards, the highest stack of chips, doesn’t always win. Guile and endurance matter. So too does nerve, even luck. And having a home-table advantage doesn’t hurt either.

None of that seemed to matter to a U.S. military that aped the German military, while over-hyping its abilities and successes. The result? A so-called “new American way of war” that was simply a desiccated version of the old German one, which had produced nothing but catastrophic defeat for Germany in both 1918 and 1945 -- and disaster for Europe as well.

Just Ask the Germans

Precisely because that disaster did not befall us, precisely because we emerged triumphant from two world wars, we became both too enamored with the decisiveness of war, and too dismissive of our own unique strength. For our strength was not military élan or cutting-edge weaponry or tactical finesse (these were German “strengths”), but rather the dedication, the generosity, even the occasional ineptitude, of our citizen-soldiers. Their spirit was unbreakable precisely because they -- a truly democratic citizen army -- were dedicated to defeating a repellently evil empire that reveled fanatically in its own combat vigor.

Looking back on my youthful infatuation with the German Wehrmacht, I recognize a boy’s misguided enthusiasm for military hardness and toughness. I recognize as well the seductiveness of reducing the chaos of war to “shock and awe” Blitzkrieg and warrior empowerment. What amazes me, however, is how this astonishingly selective and adolescent view of war -- with its fetish for lightning results, achieved by elevating and empowering a new generation of warlords, warriors, and advanced weaponry -- came to dominate mainstream American military thinking after the frustrations of Vietnam.

Unlike a devastated and demoralized Germany after its defeats, we decided not to devalue war as an instrument of policy after our defeat, but rather to embrace it. Clasping Clausewitz to our collective breasts, we marched forward seeking new decisive victories. Yet, like our role models the Germans of World War II, we found victory to be both elusive and illusive.

So, I have a message for my younger self: put aside those menacing models of German tanks and planes. Forget those glowing accounts of Rommel and his Afrika Korps. Dismiss Blitzkrieg from your childish mind. There is no lightning war, America. There never was. And if you won’t take my word for it, just ask the Germans.

William J. Astore (wastore@pct.edu), a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular, teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. To catch him in a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview discussing the U.S. military's fascination with the Wehrmacht, click here.

2010 William J. Astore

On 12 May the Soviets launched a major offensive designed to retake the city of Kharkov – second city of the Ukraine, fourth largest in the USSR, and an important centre of industry, communications and transport. Unfortunately, the Soviet offensive coincided with German plans for offensive action in the same area preparatory to the launch of Operation Blau. The German 6th Army and 1st Panzer Army were already concentrating and mobilising and were able to mount an effective defence and counter-offensive. Not only did the Russians fail to recapture Kharkov, but the three Soviet armies involved in the operation were encircled by the Germans and largely destroyed. Soviet casualties were nearly 280,000, including 170,000 killed, missing, or captured. Around 650 tanks were lost and nearly 5000 artillery pieces. The battle was over by 28 May. General Ewald von Kleist, commander of 1st Panzer, surveyed the carnage around Kharkov:

‘The fierceness of the fighting is testified by the battlefield: at focal points the ground as far as one can see is so thickly covered with the cadavers of men and horses that it is difficult to find a passage for one’s command car.’ (Boog et al, 2001, p.950)

To an extent the Soviets were unlucky to run into such strong German forces, which just happened to be nearly ready and waiting for them. Moreover, as Geoffrey Jukes has commented (Jukes, 1968, pp.15–16), had Bock launched his attacks in the Kharkov area first then Army Group South might have run unexpectedly into strong Soviet forces and found itself in serious trouble.

But the Soviet disaster at Kharkov also stemmed from Moscow’s own misconceptions and miscalculations. While the Germans were preparing Operation Blau the Soviets were making their own plans. The basic strategic approach of Stalin and the Soviet high command was that for 1942 the Red Army would stay mainly on the defensive. At the same time some localised offensive actions were agreed, the largest of these operations being the one at Kharkov. Stalin certainly favoured this offensive but it seems that the initiative and pressure for action came mainly from Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and other officers of the Red Army’s South Western Front that conducted the operation. (Timoshenko was subsequently transferred to other duties in the Northern theatre of operations).

At the same time the impetus for Soviet offensive action at Kharkov needs to be seen in the context of a larger strategic miscalculation. Like the Germans, the Soviets had underestimated their enemy. Stalin and the Stavka believed that in the winter of 1941–2 they had come close to precipitating German military collapse on the Eastern Front and that German reserves and resources were exhausted. A further misapprehension was the belief that the main German threat was to the central sector of the Eastern Front and that any major offensive action would be directed at Moscow. The root of this misperception – which persisted throughout the Stalingrad campaign – was threefold. First, was Stalin’s belief that, as in 1941, the decisive struggle would be fought before Moscow which was deemed more important strategically and psychologically than any other Soviet target. Second, there was the fact that 70 German divisions remained concentrated in the central sector, many only 100 miles from Moscow. Third, was the impact of a very effective deception campaign mounted by the Germans – Operation Kreml. This consisted of extensive fake preparations for an attack on Moscow, helping to persuade Stalin that Operation Blau, even once it was well underway, was a diversion or, at most, an operation of secondary importance.

In the context of this web of speculation and calculation the campaign to retake Kharkov did not seem such a great risk, particularly given the large Soviet force committed to the operation – three-quarters of a million strong, including many of the newly-organised tank brigades, the Red Army’s armoured counter to the German panzer divisions.

Although the Kharkov operation was very costly for the Soviets, important lessons were learned too: above all, the wisdom of staying on the strategic defensive and the necessity for retreat in adverse circumstances. For the Germans, on the other hand, the Kharkov victory inflated their expectations of success in the southern campaign and reinforced their belief in Soviet weakness.

The role of the Red Army during the Warsaw Uprising remains controversial and is still disputed by historians. The Uprising started when the Red Army appeared on the city’s doorstep, and the Poles in Warsaw were counting on Soviet aid coming in a matter of days. This basic scenario of an uprising against the Germans launched a few days before the arrival of Allied forces played out successfully in a number of European capitals, notably Paris and Prague. However, despite retaining positions south-east of Warsaw barely 10 km from the city center for about 40 days, the Soviets did not extend effective aid to the desperate city. The sector was held by the understrength German 73rd Infantry Division, destroyed many times on the Eastern Front and recently reconstituted. The division, though weak, did not experience significant Soviet pressure during that period. The Red Army was fighting intense battles to the south of Warsaw, to seize and maintain bridgeheads over the Vistula River, and to the north, to gain bridgeheads over the river Narew. The best German armored divisions were fighting on those sectors. Despite that, both of these objectives had been mostly secured by early September. The Soviet 47th army did not move into Praga, on the right bank of the Vistula, until the 11th of September. In three days the Soviets gained control of the suburb, a few hundred meters from the main battle on the other side of the river, as the resistance by the German 73rd division collapsed quickly. If the Soviets had reached this stage in early August, the crossing of the river would have been easier, as the Poles then held considerable stretches of the riverfront. However, by mid-September a series of German attacks had reduced the Poles to holding one narrow stretch of the riverbank, in the district of Czerniaków. The Poles were counting on the Soviet forces to cross to the left bank where the main battle of the uprising was occurring. Though Berling’s 1st Polish army did cross the river, their support from the Soviets was inadequate and the main Soviet force did not follow them.

One of the reasons given for the failure of the uprising was the reluctance of the Soviet Red Army to help the Resistance. On 1 August, only several hours prior to the outbreak of the uprising, the Soviet advance was halted by a direct order from the Kremlin. Soon afterwards the Soviet tank units stopped receiving any oil from their depots. By then the Soviets knew of the planned outbreak from their agents in Warsaw and, more importantly, from the Polish prime minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk, who informed them of the Polish plans a few hours before. The Red Army’s order to halt just a short distance away on the right bank of the Vistula, and not to link up with or in any way assist the Resistance forces, is blamed on post-war political considerations and malice by Stalin. According to this opinion, by ordering his forces to halt before entering the city, Stalin ensured that the Home Army would not succeed. Had the Home Army triumphed, the Polish government-in-exile would have increased their political and moral legitimacy to reinstate a government of its own, rather than accept a Soviet regime. The destruction of Polish resistance guaranteed that they could not resist Soviet occupation, that it would be the Soviets who “liberated” Warsaw, and that Soviet influence would prevail over Poland. At times during the uprising the NKVD actively arrested Home Army forces in the East of Warsaw and a large proportion of RAF losses were caused by Soviet anti-aircraft fire.[citation needed] This appears to strengthen the claim that the Western Allies were deliberately blocked from providing support to the Poles so that any independent-minded Polish forces were destroyed before the arrival of Soviet troops.

One way or the another, the presence of Soviet tanks in nearby Wołomin 15 kilometers to the east of Warsaw had sealed the decision of the Home Army leaders to launch the uprising. However, as a result of the initial battle of Radzymin in the final days of July, these advance units of the Soviet 2nd Tank Army were pushed out of Wołomin and back about 10 km. On 9 August, Stalin informed Premier Mikołajczyk that the Soviets had originally planned to be in Warsaw by 6 August, but a counter-attack by four Panzer divisions had thwarted their attempts to reach the city. By 10 August, the Germans had enveloped and inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviet 2nd Tank Army at Wołomin. When Stalin and Churchill met face-to-face in October 1944, Stalin told Churchill that the lack of Soviet support was a direct result of a major reverse in the Vistula sector in August, which had to be kept secret for strategic reasons. All contemporary German sources assumed that the Soviets were trying to link up with the insurgents, and they believed it was their defense that prevented the Soviet advance rather than a reluctance to advance on the part of the Soviets. Nevertheless, as part of their strategy the Germans published propaganda accusing both the British and Soviets of abandoning the Poles.

The Soviet units which reached the outskirts of Warsaw in the final days of July 1944 had advanced from the 1st Belorussian Front in Western Ukraine as part of the Lublin-Brest Offensive Operation, between the Lvov-Sandomierz Operation on its left and Operation Bagration on its right. These two flanking operations were colossal defeats for the German army and completely destroyed a large number of German formations. As a consequence, the Germans at this time were desperately trying to put together a new force to hold the line of the Vistula, the last major river barrier between the Red Army and Germany proper, rushing in units in various stages of readiness from all over Europe. These included many infantry units of poor quality, and 4–5 high quality Panzer Divisions in the 39th Panzer Corps and 4th SS Panzer Corps pulled from their refits.

Other possible explanations for Soviet conduct are possible. The Red Army geared for a major thrust into the Balkans through Romania in mid-August and a large proportion of Soviet resources was sent in that direction, while the offensive in Poland was put on hold. Stalin had made a strategic decision to concentrate on occupying Eastern Europe, rather than on making a thrust toward Germany. The capture of Warsaw was not essential for the Soviets, as they had already seized a series of convenient bridgeheads to the south of Warsaw, and were concentrating on defending them against vigorous German counterattacks. Finally, the Soviet High Command may not have developed a coherent or appropriate strategy with regard to Warsaw because they were badly misinformed. Propaganda from the Polish Committee of National Liberation minimized the strength of the Home Army and portrayed them as Nazi sympathizers. Information submitted to Stalin by intelligence operatives or gathered from the frontline was often inaccurate or omitted key details. Possibly because the operatives were unable, as part of a repressive totalitarian regime, to express opinions or report facts which diverged from the party line, they “deliberately resorted to writing nonsense”.

According to noted Eastern Front historian, David Glantz, the Red Army was simply unable to extend effective support to the uprising, which began too early, regardless of Stalin’s political intentions. German military capabilities in August—early September were sufficient to halt any Soviet assistance to the Poles in Warsaw, were it intended. In addition, Glantz argued that the Warsaw would be a costly city to clear it of Germans and unsuitable location as a start point for subsequent Red Army offensives.