Wwii Test #2, Fall 2005

Andy Wilson History 443 November 22, 2005 2.

World War II was one of the darkest hours in the history of mankind. The armies

of Nazis Germany were marching across the globe squashing any resistance in their way. Those nations that attempted to resist the onslaught of the Axis armies were either quickly defeated or sustained terrible loses. Yet the terrible armies of Germany and Japan were eventually checked and thrown back. In many instances during 1942 and 1943 the resilient Allied armies fought back and achieved great victories which turned the tide of war in their favor. These victories are attributed to costly mistakes made by Axis commanders but without the tenacity and bravery of the Allied soldiers there would not have been a victory in the Pacific and Asia. The First major defeat for the Nazis occurred in the deserts of North Africa. In September of 1940 the Italians attempted to take British possessions in North Africa and create for themselves a huge empire. The Italian invasion of Egypt stalled and in eight weeks the British, under the leadership of General Sir Archibald Wavell destroyed the Italian army. With the Italians sorely defeated in North Africa, Hitler was forced to help his allies and send his Afrika Korps under the leadership of General Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox.” Rommel struck with his forces and pushed the British back into Egypt. The battle for North Africa was back and forth with the any advances by either side quickly being lost. In the spring of 1942 Rommel attacked into Egypt with his newly reinforced army and made substantial gains, advancing to within 60 miles of the Alexandria. But he British, under the leadership of General Sir Claude Auchinleck, were not finished and quickly dug a defensive line between El Alamein and the Qattara

Depression. The battle, which came to be known as the first battle of El Alamein, halted Rommel in his tracks and prevented the Afrika Korps from advancing to the Suez Canal, cutting Britain’s lifeline to its possessions in Asia. Nearly two months later, at the second battle of El Alamein, the British under General Montgomery attacked the Rommel and forced him to retreat back into Libya. Without reenforcements Rommel retreated but was hastily pursued by the British who forced him to retreat into Tunisia. There were indeed miscalculations on the part of the Nazis in North Africa Had the Germans been victorious at the first battle of El Alamein they surely could have advanced into the oil rich countries of the Middle East effectively cutting off Great Britain from one its most important resources. If Hitler had focused more on strategy and placed more forces into the North African campaign he might well have thrown out the British and starved them from resources in their colonies, cut the lend-lease line to Russia through Iran, and threatened India. Had this happened the British and the Russians would have been starved to the peace table. But this scheme could have only been reached had the Nazis avoided the costly invasion of the Soviet Union which drained many men and much material from the German war effort. In the summer of 1942 Germany smashed its way into Russia driving the Russians back to the gates of Moscow. Operation Barbarossa, as the invasion of the Soviet Union was named, was a three pronged attack designed to quickly crush the Russians. The northern prong advanced into the Baltic, the central prong moved towards Moscow, and the southern prong moved into the oil fields of the Caucasus. The southern advance was that which brought the Germans into the conflict at Stalingrad. Having failed to take Leningrad and Moscow, Hitler focused on seizing Stalingrad and the rich

oil fields of the Caucasus. On September 13, 1942 the battle of Stalingrad began and lasted until February 2, 1943 with the surrender of General Von Paulus. The Germans were determined to take the city at any cost and the Russians were determined to old it at any cost. Fighting in the city was a ferocious battle of attrition, were fighting proceeded block to block, house to house, and room to room. On November 19, 1942 General Zhukov launched a counter attack to the north and south of Stalingrad which trapped the Germans inside the city. There were attempts made by the Germans to reinforce the trapped troops but they failed. Stalingrad was a catastrophic defeat for the Germans. 200,000 troops were lost and 90,000 captured. Hitler had miscalculated the resolve of the Russians and of his own decision making. His decision to invade the Caucasus, without securing Stalingrad proved devastating. He had believed that attacking to the south would bring the Russians to their knees but instead he overextended his supply lines while attempting to fight a war on a front 500 miles long. Partisan forces behind the German lines increasingly attacked supply routes and the onset of winter made it harder and harder to supply the front lines. Hitler miscalculated the effectiveness of his own army and underestimated the resilience of the Russians. With the defeat at Stalingrad the Germans were forced to the defensive and were never again able to mount an offensive on the Eastern front. Hitler’s desire for Stalingrad was the crucial turning point that cost him the war in the East. In the East the Japanese fared equally as well as the Nazis in the early years of the war. The Japanese had forced the Allies out of the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, as well as numerous smaller islands in the Pacific. But in 1942 there were two crucial battles that turned the tide in the Pacific, one on land and the other

on sea. The first battle was that of Midway which occurred on June 4-6, 1942. In the aftermath of the Doolittle raids the Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, desired to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet in order to protect the Home Islands. His plan was to attack Midway Island and therefore lure the fleet out of Hawaii and destroy them. Unbeknownst to Yamamoto, U.S. had cracked the Japanese code and the carriers were in fact setting a trap for the Japanese at Midway. Admiral Nagumo, who was in command of the Japanese fleet, launched an air attack on Midway which went according to plan. Yet as the attack planes were refueling a group of American torpedo planes appeared and were quickly shot out of the air. With their air cover refueling and rearming on the carriers and their decks covered in bombs and fuel, the Japanese were attacked by a group of dive bombers that had strayed off course and three of their four carriers were severely destroyed. Without the carriers the Japanese could not attack Midway. The battle of Midway shifted the naval balance in the Pacific. Japan had lost three of its main battle carriers as well as many irreplaceable pilots. The defeat at Midway marked the end to Japans initiative on the high seas. As Stalingrad had placed the Germans on the defensive, Midway did the same by placing he Japanese on the defensive. After Midway the Imperial Navy would be constantly on the defensive. In the battle of Midway, U.S. intelligence turned the battle from a horrible defeat to a miraculous victory. The Japanese did not make mistakes so much as the Americans were lucky. Had the American planes not fond the Japanese carriers when they did the battle may have ended with the destruction of the U.S. fleet and the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands. Without Hawaii the U.S. would not have been able to send troops and supplies to Australia and the U.S would have lost its toe-hold in the Pacific.

The turning point on land in the Pacific was the battle of Guadalcanal from August 1942-January 1943. U.S. marines attacked the airfield on Guadalcanal in order to keep the Japanese from securing a foothold in the Solomon Islands. By operating their airfield on Guadalcanal the Japanese would have been able to disrupt American supplies and troops going to Australia. The fight was led by Marines who were, at the time, the only group trained and capable of fighting an amphibious, island war. During the entire six month battle there were seven naval battles and ten land battles. These battles were horribly brutal and vicious; over 5,000 seamen died in the naval fighting alone and the Japanese lost 2,300 irreplaceable aviators as well as 21,000 ground troops. Neither Americans nor Japanese took any prisoners; this shaped the nature of the conflict in the Pacific for the remainder of the war. The jungle atmosphere also contributed to the misery of the common fighting man. After the naval battle of Guadalcanal the Japanese were unable to supply and reinforce the troops on the island, which led to their ultimate defeat. Beginning in December of 1942 the Marines pressed out from their perimeter around Henderson field and began mopping up the Japanese still held up on the island. The Battle of Guadalcanal was the first defeat on land that the Japanese had sustained in the war up to that point. As with the battle of Midway, the Japanese defeat marked a shift in momentum and initiative to the U.S. The Japanese lost two thirds of their ground forces as well as many irreplaceable aviators. Never again in the war would the Japanese army be able to make a significant attack against the U.S. The battle of Guadalcanal was not a lost or won by a mistake, the victory on the island ripped from the hands of the Japanese by the tenacity of the American Marines, Navy and Army. The only move that the Japanese could be faulted for at Guadalcanal was the beginning of

suicide attacks. These attacks needlessly wasted the lives of Japanese soldiers who could have retreated and fought another day. By beginning suicide attacks the Japanese set a costly precedent which would drain them of many men. As can be seen in every instance fate seemed to favor the Axis powers, yet in each battle they failed. One might as themselves: what factors led to Axis failure to sustain the momentum gained in the early years of the war? First, in the case of both Germany and Japan, the expansion was too rapid and they gained far too much territory. The Germans and the Japanese were forced to protect immense supply lines that stretched for thousands of miles. Neither army had the men or the resources to sustain and protect these lines from partisans and attacks, which led to the lack of supplies reaching the frontlines and the inability of the troops to continue fighting. Second, Allied intelligence quickly broke the codes of both Japan and Germany. American code-breakers were crucial in the defeat of the Imperial Navy at Midway and British code-breakers at Bletchley Park were successful in deciphering the German code and defeating the German “wolf-packs.” Third, in the case of the Germans the megalomania of Hitler proved their undoing. Hitler’s refusal to listen to the sound judgment of his generals cost him numerous battles; over 200,000 men at the battle of Stalingrad alone. If Hitler had listened to his generals he would have not attacked the Soviet Union without the mechanized divisions needed to carry troops and supplies to the front lines. Theses factors are not the only ones that need to be considered. One must also look at the tenacity and courage exhibited by the fighting of all the Allied armies. Without their ultimate sacrifice, none of what was accomplished could have obtained. Mush laurel is given to the generals but it was the determination of the ordinary grunt that who really caused the turning points of WWII.

4.

“Battles might be won or lost, but our power to fight, to keep ourselves alive

rested on the outcome of the struggle for control of the Atlantic.” This statement was made by Winston Churchill and describes the desperate situation Britain was in during the early years of the war due to the attacks on their lifelines by German submarines. The British could have afforded to lose and win other battles but if they had lost the Battle of the Atlantic all of their efforts would have been for naught because without the materials necessary for the war effort the British war machine would have crawled to a halt.

From

1939 until 1942 the U-boats of the German Navy harassed the merchant and naval vessels of both Great Britain and the U.S. From the beginning of the war until 1942, German Uboats presented the geatest threat to the safety and welfare of Great Britain because they threatened Britain’s means to feed and arm themselves. Unable to obtain supplies from continental Europe, the British were forced to look overseas, its dominions and empire as well as the United States, in order to obtain the raw materials needed to build the equipment necessary to continue the fight against the Nazis. The first victory of British in the Battle of the Atlantic was the defeat of the German surface fleet. The British submarine Salmon torpedoed the German cruisers Leipzig and Bluecher, followed by the scuttling of the Graf Spree in Montevideo Uruguay. In May of 1941, the great German battleship Bismarck was chased down and sunk off the coast of Greenland. Nearly 2,300 sailors went down with the ship. By the summer of 1941 the Royal Navy had won control of the surface seas but underneath the waves the U-boats still lurked and posed a deadly threat. The U-boats were by far the greatest threat to the British war effort. Not only did they threaten to cut off Britain from badly needed supplies but they also threatened to

stop supplies going to Russia and North Africa. With the U.S. entry into the war the Germany extended the U-boat war to the shores of North America. The plan was called “Operation Drumbeat.” Drumbeat was carried out by five long-distance U-boats who roamed freely from Canada to the Caribbean taking advantage of the woefully inadequate U.S. Navy that was fighting a desperate battle in the Pacific and therefore not giving the Atlantic its top priority. In a mere six months, the German raiders sank nearly 400 Allied ships and as many as 5,000 Allied sailors died. In 1942 merchant men had a higher risk of dieing than did American troops in the jungles of Bataan. It was estimated that the sinking of one freighter was the equivalent of four railroad trains of seventy-five cars apiece. The raids forced Admiral Ernest King to establish the convoy system and improve antisubmarine aviation. In 1942, it appeared as if the Allies were on the verge of losing the Battle of the Atlantic. U-boat production soared and they began using the new “wolf-pack” method to attack convoys. U-boats would use triangulation to direct other boats to the location then they would attack and overwhelm the escort ships. This method proved to be deadly affective because in 1942 over one thousand Allied ships were sunk with only eighty-six submarines lost. There was a bright spot that year as the British captured a German enigma machine and began deciphering the code used to direct U-boat actions. This allowed for convoys to skirt areas where U-boats were known to be. This did not stop the U-boats however who now numbered over 300 boats. In the first part of March 1943 the U-boats sank ninety-seven Allied ships. This was the darkest period for the Allies throughout the entire Battle of the Atlantic but a dramatic change was about to happen.

In May of 1943 one of the most dramatic changes had occurred in the Battle of the Atlantic. The battle had gone from its most bleak point to Allied supremacy in one month. This was in large part done by advances in industry, technology and tactics. The first aspect was that America was building more merchant ships than the U-boats could sink. By 1943 Henry J. Kaiser constructed 140 Liberty ships in just one month. Kaiser also convinced President Roosevelt to send small carriers along with the convoys. These carriers used new planes equipped with new radar technology and homing torpedoes which became the scourge of the U-boats. The Navy also used search and destroy teams comprised of fast destroyers and the previously mentioned small carriers armed with torpedo planes. In what the Germans came to call “Black May,” Admiral Doenitz would lose 27,491 of his 39,000 men and 754 of the 863 U-boats in his force. Yet the German lose was not without a significant amount of damage done to the Allies. During the long years of the Battle of the Atlantic the U-boats had sank almost 2,775 merchant vessels and 175 warships. The Battle of the Atlantic was a costly battle that was fought to maintain the supply lines between the Old World and the New. It was a colossal effort on the part of the German U-boats to stem the tide of material and men that was streaming into Great Britain. The Allied seamen who fought and died in the effort are now a mere footnote, barley mentioned in the large histories of WWII. But their sacrifice was as important as those of the men who died on the beaches of Normandy. Without the effort of the Allied merchant seamen and Naval seamen Britain would have surely been starved to death by Doenitz’s wolf-packs. The Battle of the Atlantic is important not because of the number of vessels involved or of men killed. It is important because it sustained the small, brave

nation of Great Britain in its effort to ward of the onslaught of the Nazis. Without the Allied victory in the Atlantic Europe may very well have been lost, because without Great Britain Hitler would have been able to focus all of his energy on destroying the Soviet Union. The Battle of the Atlantic was indeed of the utmost importance to the outcome of the war in Europe.