All Hell Let Loose (108 page)

Americans sustained a highly effective operational relationship with the British, a notable achievement given the difficulty of sustaining alliances, together with mutual suspicions and differences of national outlook. The partnership worked best at the bottom, where British and American personnel collaborated amicably, and worsened progressively towards the summit of commands. Americans nursed a repugnance towards imperialism which intensified when some witnessed it at first hand in Egypt, India and South-East Asia. They cherished a hubristic belief in their own virtue, and consciousness of their own dominance. In 1945, Congress’s brutally abrupt closure of Lend-Lease reflected an absence of sentimentality about Churchill’s nation; opinion polls showed Americans more willing to forgive Russia’s Lend-Lease debt than Britain’s. Relations between the two nations might have deteriorated thereafter, but for new imperatives created by the acknowledged menace of the Soviet Union. The rapidly evolving confrontation between East and West caused the United States to accept the necessity to preserve its alliance with Britain and other European nations, somewhat to subdue its anti-imperialist scruples, and to offer the stricken Continent a portion of its vast war profits to aid economic resurrection.

Whatever Stalin’s limitations as a military commander and his monstrous record as a tyrant, he presided over the creation of an extraordinary military machine, and pursued his objectives to triumphant fulfilment. In 1945, the Soviet Union seemed the only nation which had achieved its full war aims, creating a new East European empire to buffer its frontiers with the West, and securing important footholds on the Pacific coast. Former US Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles reported an alleged 1943 exchange between Stalin and Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary. The Russian leader said: ‘Hitler is a genius, but doesn’t know when to stop.’ Eden: ‘Does anybody know when to stop?’ Stalin: ‘I do.’ Even if this conversation was apocryphal, the words reflected the reality that Stalin shrewdly judged the limits of his outrages against freedom in 1944–45, to avert an outright breach with the Western Allies, most importantly the United States. He kept just sufficient of his promises to Roosevelt and Churchill – for instance, by staying out of Greece and evacuating China – to secure his conquests in eastern Europe without precipitating a new conflict. But the Soviet Union was deluded by its military and diplomatic triumphs into a false perception of their significance. For more than forty years after 1945, it sustained an armed threat to the West at ruinous cost; the economic, social and political bankruptcy of the system Stalin had created was eventually laid bare.

The Russians emerged from the war conscious of their new power in the world, but also embittered by the colossal destruction and loss of life they had suffered. They believed, not mistakenly, that the Western Allies had purchased cheaply their share of victory, and this view reinforced their visceral sense of grievance towards Europe and the United States. They forgot their role as Hitler’s allies between 1939 and 1941. Modern Russia maintains a stubborn, defiant denial about the Red Army’s 1944–45 orgy of rape, pillage and murder: it is deemed insulting that foreigners make much of the issue, for it compromises both the nation’s cherished claims to victimhood, and the glory of its military triumph. In 2011, long after the Western Allies withdrew from almost all the territories they occupied in the wake of victory, Russia clings insistently to the national frontiers it claimed as war booty, embracing eastern Poland, eastern Finland and parts of East Prussia and Romania, together with Stalin’s Pacific coast conquests. It seems implausible that a nation ruled by Vladimir Putin will relinquish them.

The military course of the war was more strongly influenced by mass and the comparative institutional effectiveness of rival armies than by the performance of individual commanders, important though this was; any roll-call of warlords should thus include the great military managers of the United States and Britain, Marshall and Brooke, even though neither directed a campaign. Marshall showed greatness as a statesman as well as a warlord. Brooke handled Churchill superbly well, and made a notable contribution to Allied strategy between 1941 and 1943. Thereafter, however, he somewhat diminished his stature by condescension towards the Americans and stubborn enthusiasm for Mediterranean operations.

Western Allied generalship seldom displayed brilliance, though the US Army produced some outstanding corps and divisional commanders. Michael Howard has written:

The Germans and Russians proved more successful than the Western Allies in fulfilling the requirement identified by Howard: to empower commanders who fought rather than managed. For American, British, Canadian, Polish and French troops at the sharp end, the 1944–45 northwest Europe campaign seldom seemed less than horrific. But the casualty figures, on both sides a fraction of those in the east, emphasise its relative moderation once the fighting in Normandy was over. With the exception of a few such enthusiasts as Patton, Allied commanders understood that they were mandated to win the war at the lowest possible human cost, and thus that caution was a virtue, even in victory. By pursuing such a policy, they fulfilled the will both of their societies and their citizen soldiers.

The rival claims to greatness of individual commanders are impervious to objective ranking. Circumstances decisively influenced outcomes: no general could perform better than the institutional strength or weakness of his forces allowed. Thus, it is possible that Patton – for instance – might have shown himself a great general, had he led forces with the Wehrmacht’s skills or the Red Army’s tolerance of casualties. As it was, especially in pursuit he displayed an inspiration and energy rare among Allied generals; but in hard fighting, his army fared no better than those of his peers. Eisenhower will never be celebrated as a strategist or tactician, but achieved greatness by his diplomatic management of the Anglo-American alliance in the field. Lucien Truscott, who finished the war commanding the US Fifth Army in Italy, was arguably the ablest American officer of his rank, though much less celebrated than some of his peers. MacArthur was distinguished by the splendour of his self-image as a warlord, which it suited his nation to indulge, rather than by gifts as a battlefield commander. While he directed the 1944 phase of the New Guinea campaign with some flair, he floundered in the Philippines; superior resources, especially air support, were the deciding factors in his victories. MacArthur was a narrowly affordable luxury rather than an asset to his country’s strategic purposes. The outstanding personality of the Japanese war was Nimitz, who directed the US Navy’s Pacific campaign with cool confidence and judgement, often displaying brilliance, especially in the exploitation of intelligence. Spruance showed himself the ablest fleet commander at sea.

On the British side Cunningham, Somerville and Horton were outstanding naval officers, Sir Arthur Tedder the best of the airmen. Slim, who led Fourteenth Army in Burma, was probably the most gifted British general of the war, and certainly the most attractive command personality; his 1945 crossing of the Irrawaddy and outflanking of the Japanese at Meiktila were notable achievements. But Slim would have struggled to extract any better results from Britain’s desert army in 1941–42 than did Wavell or Auchinleck, because of its collective shortcomings. Montgomery was a highly competent professional; it is unlikely that any other Allied commander could have surpassed his direction of the 1944 Normandy campaign, where attrition was inescapable, but he diminished his reputation by epic boorishness in conducting the vital relationship with the Americans. ‘Monty’ deserves a significant part of the credit for the success of the invasion of France, but never achieved a masterstroke which would place him among history’s great captains.

The Soviet Union’s best generals displayed a confidence in handling large forces unmatched elsewhere on the Allied side. In the first half of the war, they suffered interference by Stalin almost as damaging to Russia’s prospects of survival as was that of Hitler to Germany’s cause. But from late 1942 onwards, Stalin became much more receptive to his marshals’ judgements, and the Soviet war effort correspondingly more successful. Chuikov deserves full credit for the defence of Stalingrad; Zhukov, Konev, Vasilevsky and Rokossovsky were commanders of the highest gifts, though their achievements would have been impossible without their nation’s tolerance of sacrifice. Soviet victories were purchased at a human cost no democracy would have accepted, no Western general allowed to indulge. The raw aggression of Soviet commanders in 1943–45 contrasts with the caution of most American and British leaders, a reflection of their respective societies. The Red Army never showed itself superior man for man to its German opponents: until the end, the Wehrmacht inflicted disproportionate losses. Russian commanders produced their finest performances in the summer 1944 Operation
Bagration
, when 166 divisions attacked on a front of 620 miles. The storm of Berlin, by contrast, was conducted with a brutish clumsiness which diminished the reputation of Zhukov.

Among the Germans, von Rundstedt displayed the highest professionalism from 1939 to the end. In the desert, Rommel displayed similar gifts to those of Patton, but like the American paid insufficient attention to the critical influence of logistics. The Allies esteemed Rommel more highly than did many German officers, partly because British and American self-respect was massaged by attributing their setbacks to his supposed genius. Manstein, a superb professional, was the architect of great victories in Russia in 1941–42, and probably Germany’s best general of the war, but failure at Kursk emphasised his limitations: hubristically, he accepted responsibility for launching a vast offensive which could not hope to succeed against superior Russian strength, dispositions – and generalship. Kesselring’s 1943–45 defence of Italy places him in the front rank of commanders. Guderian was the personification of the Wehrmacht’s skill in exploiting armour. Several of Germany’s generals, Model among them, merit more admiration for the manner in which they sustained defensive campaigns in the years of retreat, with inferior forces and negligible air support, than for victories in the period when the Wehrmacht was stronger than its foes. Hitler’s strategic interventions prevented any German commander from claiming absolute credit for victories, or accepting absolute responsibility for defeats. The institutional achievement of the German army and its staff seems greater than that of any individual general. The overriding historical reality is that they lost the war.

Yamashita, who directed the 1942 seizure of Malaya and the 1944–45 defence of the Philippines, was Japan’s ablest ground-force commander. Otherwise, the energy and courage of Japanese soldiers and junior officers were more impressive than the strategic grasp of their leaders. These were hamstrung throughout by huge failures of intelligence, which transcended mere technical inadequacy, reflecting a deeper cultural incapacity to consider what might be happening on the other side of the hill. The defence of successive Pacific islands reflected professional competence among some garrison commanders who lacked scope and resources to exploit any higher gifts. Afloat, though luck played an important part in the Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, Japan’s admirals displayed astonishing timidity, and were repeatedly outguessed and outfought by their American opponents. Yamamoto merits some respect for his direction of Japan’s initial 1941–42 offensives, but must bear a heavy responsibility for much that went wrong afterwards. Only his death in April 1943 spared him from presiding over the national march to oblivion he had always recognised as inevitable.

The impact of a conflict cannot be measured merely by comparing respective national tallies of human loss, but these deserve consideration, to achieve a sense of global perspective. There is no commonly agreed total of war-related deaths around the world, but a minimum figure of sixty million is accepted, and perhaps as many as ten million more. Japan’s losses were estimated at 2.69 million dead, 1.74 million of these military; two-thirds of the latter were victims of starvation or disease rather than enemy action. Germany lost 6.9 million dead, 5.3 million of these military. The Russians killed about 4.7 million German combatants, including 474,967 who died in Soviet captivity, and a substantial further number of civilians, while the Western Allies accounted for around half a million German troops and more than 200,000 civilian victims of air attack. Russia lost twenty-seven million people, China at least fifteen million. Some five million are reckoned to have died under Japanese occupation in South-East Asia, including the Dutch East Indies – modern Indonesia. Up to a million perished in the Philippines, many during the 1944–45 campaign for the islands’ liberation.

Italy lost over 300,000 military dead, and around a quarter of a million civilians. More than five million Poles died, 110,000 in combat, most of the remainder in German concentration camps, though the Russians could also claim a substantial tally of Polish victims. France lost 567,000 people, including 267,000 civilians. Thirty thousand British troops perished in conflict with the Japanese, many of them as prisoners, out of an overall death toll of 382,700. Britain’s total war loss, including civilians, was 449,000. Indian forces fighting under British command lost 87,000 dead. Total United States war losses were 418,500, slightly fewer than those of the UK, of which the US Army lost 143,000 in Europe and the Mediterranean, and 55,145 in the Pacific. The US Navy lost a further 29,263 men in the East, the Marine Corps 19,163. It is inconsistent to account the estimated twenty million people who died of starvation and disease under Axis occupation as victims of Germany and Japan, without making the same computation on the Allied side: between one and three million Indians under British rule perished in wartime famines.