Europe: A History (207 page)

By the early summer of 1940 the Nazi war machine was ready for its assault on the Western alliance. It was essential to strike while German morale was high, and before British rearmament delivered results. The campaign was based on three related strategies—an operation in the Low Countries to clear the lines, the major land operation against France, and an air operation against Britain to neutralize the Royal Navy and to keep the Allies apart. Once again, German performance exceeded all expectations. From the merciless bombing of Rotterdam on 10 May to the surrender of Belgium on the 28th, the conquest of the Low Countries took 18 days. From the crossing of the French frontier on 14 May to the fall of Paris on 16 June, the defeat of France took less than five weeks.

The fall of France was one of those bone-chilling events which mark the end of an era. France had been regarded as a major military power for three centuries. The victory of 1918 was supposed to have redeemed the disaster of 1870. Yet the French army, with British and Polish support, was now knocked out by the Nazi Wehrmacht in less time than Germany and Russia together had taken to knock out Poland. 1940 showed that 1870 was no aberration. The German invaders held no overall numerical superiority, not even in armoured vehicles; but their panzer divisions waged this second Blitzkrieg with great dash and vigour. The impregnable Maginot Line, which did not reach into Belgium, was simply bypassed; and the panzers drove a steel column between the British in the north and the main French grouping in the centre. When the outflanked French forces withdrew, they were pursued by an opponent moving with far greater speed and firepower. At Arras, a brigadier called Charles de Gaulle led the only significant armoured counter-attack. But the confusion was universal. The BEF was totally beaten, and stranded on the dunes of Dunkirk. The 51st (Highland) Infantry sold itself dearly on the cliffs of Sainte-Valérie-en-Caux. Death, capture, or evacuation were the only alternatives.

By mid-June, when Paris was facing a repeat of the terrible siege of 70 years before, the French political establishment snapped. Unlike their Polish counterparts, who had refused to treat with invaders, the French leaders took the initiative in proposing a settlement. Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, sent an underling to the symbolic carriage of Compiègne to sign the capitulation. France was to be disarmed; 2 million French soldiers were to be interned for work in the Reich; an autonomous government, based at Vichy in Auvergne, would be allowed to rule the southern half of the country, on condition that Alsace-Lorraine was returned to Germany, and northern France subjected to German military occupation. When Hitler came to receive the salute of his legions on the Champs-élysées, he was master of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Pripet. A few assorted British, Polish, and Free French forces had scrambled back across the Channel; and a new defiant English voice, Churchill’s, speaking in execrable French, crackled over the air waves: ‘Une nation qui produit trois cents sortes de fromage ne peut pas périr.’ General de Gaulle declared: ‘France has lost a battle, but not the war.’ [
EMU
]

Compared to the mighty conquest of France, the German air offensive against Britain must have seemed a secondary matter. But it proved to be one of the
Nazis’ costliest failures. Entrusted to Reichsmarschall Goring, it consisted of a mounting crescendo of nightly bombing raids against ports and factories, the so-called ‘Blitz’, and of accompanying air battles aimed at gaining supremacy over southern England and the Channel. It used a large fleet of 1,330 Heinkel and Junkers bombers, operating from bases in northern France and supported by packs of Messerschmitt and Focke-Wolf fighters. It was planned as the prelude to ‘Operation Sealion’, the invasion of Britain, whose details, including the arrest of some 1,100 prominent personalities, were well advanced. It was opposed by RAF fighter squadrons equipped with Hurricanes and Spitfires, roughly 10 per cent of which were manned by Polish, Czech, and Free French pilots. (The top ace proved to be a Czech pilot flying with the Polish 303 Squadron.) The raid on Coventry, which missed the tank factories but levelled the cathedral and 500 houses, was a minor event compared to the subsequent exploits of the RAF over Germany. But in Allied lore it became one of the prime symbols of Nazi barbarism. The Battle of Britain, which was fought over four months, culminated on 15 September—a day when the RAF’s reserves were almost depleted but when Göring reluctantly decided that the Luftwaffe’s still greater losses could no longer be sustained. The air offensive, and the invasion of Britain, were postponed
sine die
. ‘Never in the field of human conflict’, Churchill told the Commons, ‘has so much been owed by so many to so few.’ After the débâcle of Dunkirk, this was Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’.

Britain’s victory in the air was crucial on three scores. It gave the Allied cause an impregnable base, where the vastly superior land forces of the Continent could never be brought to bear. Secondly, by turning Britain into ‘the world’s most unsinkable aircraft carrier’, it secured a platform for the sensational growth of Allied air power—the decisive element of the war in the West. Thirdly, on the diplomatic front, it gained a breathing-space within which the latent alliance of the English-speaking world could mature. Churchill, who became Prime Minister on 7 May at the height of the French crisis, had strong American connections and a strong determination to involve the Americans as soon as possible. But in autumn 1940 Britain represented the last foothold of the Allied cause in Europe. Without the preservation of Great Britain by the RAF, the USA could never have intervened in the European War. As it was, American assistance kept Great Britain financially and psychologically afloat during ‘the darkest days’. In September 1940, old US destroyers were traded for the American rights to build military bases on British islands in the Caribbean. This was extended in March 1941 in the wider principles of the Lend-Lease Bill. Germany had good reason to complain.

The war at sea was not resolved so quickly. Germany mounted a determined challenge to Britain’s naval supremacy, with a line of ultra-modern ‘pocket battleships’ and a growing fleet of U-boats. The first round saw the British veteran,
Royal Oak
, sunk at her berth in Scapa flow, and the German
GrafSpee
harried to her doom in the River Plate. Then the
Bismarck
and the
Tirpitz
took to sea. The former, having destroyed her pursuer, HMS
Hood
, with one spectacular
shot, was disabled by an aerial torpedo, then sunk by the pack. The latter was chased into a Norwegian fiord. As in the First World War, however, Germany’s chief effort was put into the submarine campaign. After the French ports of Brest and Nantes fell into Nazi hands, the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ raged for three years (see below).

In the Mediterranean, Allied interests clashed with those of the Axis powers over control of North Africa and the Suez Canal. Matters were brought to a head in May 1940, when Mussolini declared war and invaded the French Alps. The Italian base in Tripoli was surrounded by the British in Palestine and Egypt and by the French in Tunis and Algiers; and it soon required the dispatch of a German
Afrika Korps
for its sustenance. The 2,000-mile shipping lane between Gibraltar and Alexandria was only protected by Britain’s half-way station at Malta, which heroically survived unending blockade and bombardment. Yet the most tragic action of the early years took place between the Western Powers. When Paris fell to the Nazis, Britain demanded the surrender of the entire French fleet, a large part of which was berthed in the Algerian base of Mers-el-Kabir. When the French admiral declined, on 3 July 1940 the Royal Navy executed a merciless order to destroy all the French ships and their crews at anchor. Attention then turned to the Libyan desert. Faced with the advance of the
Afrika Korps
on one side and with growing Jewish terrorism in Palestine on the other, Britain’s hold on Egypt remained precarious until the victory at the second battle of El Alamein on 23 October 1942. Anglo-American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria in the following month.

In the mean time, with Hitler preoccupied in the West, Stalin renewed his aggressions in the East. After the Finnish fiasco, he reverted to what the
New York ‘Times
had aptly described as ‘playing the hyena to Hitler’s lion’. This time his targets lay in the three Baltic States, and in parts of Romania, which he conveniently seized whilst the world was diverted by the fate of France.

In the Baltics, the Soviet Union had mounted a concerted campaign of subversion. Then, in June 1940, communist cells in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were activated to call for Soviet ‘assistance’. Moscow demanded the admission of the Red Army on the pretext of Soviet security interests. In the ensuing uproar, the governments collapsed; the Red Army marched in; pre-packaged plebiscites were staged with foregone results; and the Stalinist Terror set to work with unrivalled ferocity. Amongst the massacres and the deportations, an arrangement was reached to transfer the entire German population of the Baltic States to areas of German-occupied Poland. It is hard for Westerners to grasp, but from the viewpoint of Tallinn, Riga, or Vilnius, the growing possibility of a Nazi advance felt like blessed liberation from Liberation. In the case of Romania, Stalin counted more on direct German help. Romania’s fragile freedom depended largely on the continued export of oil to Germany. So when Moscow made demands and Berlin advised compliance, there was no easy way for Bucharest to refuse. On 27 June 1940, ten days after the Baltic States, the Romanian provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia were grabbed amidst fanfares of their ‘reunion with the Soviet
fatherland’. Romania, humiliated, was left smarting for revenge, [
MOLDOVA
] [
TSCHERNOWITZ
]

By the autumn of 1940 the benefits of the Nazi-Soviet partnership could be weighed; and it was obvious that Hitler was gaining more than Stalin. The industrial and strategic value of France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia was much greater than that of the Soviet conquests. Though the Führer was held off by the wily Franco, whom he had met at Hendaye, the Fascist bloc commanded the greater part of the Continent. What is more, Germany had made its colossal gains at minimal cost: a protracted contest with the West had been avoided. From Stalin’s point of view, Hitler’s success was beginning to look menacing. After France, there were only two destinations left for German expansion: one was the traditional Russian hunting-ground in the Balkans; the other was the Soviet Union itself.

The tensions surfaced when Molotov visited Berlin in November 1940. He behaved with excruciating crudity, emitting a torrent of tactless demands. One assumes that he had been ordered to test the limits of German tolerance. When the Führer admitted that Germany was engaged in ‘a life and death struggle’ with Britain, Molotov said, ‘Yes, Germany is fighting for its life and Britain for Germany’s death.’ Both sides suspected that the partnership was doomed. It is not known exactly what instructions Stalin gave to the Red Army; but on 18 December Hitler issued Instruction 21 for the preparation of Operation Barbarossa.

The Balkan crisis of April 1941 had its roots in Mussolini’s blunders. The Italian troops who had advanced from Albania into northern Greece were being mauled by the doughty Greeks; and the Duce was in need of another German rescue. Apart from that, the royal Yugoslav Government was being hounded from within and without. After the Regency had tried to sign an agreement with Germany, it’ was deposed by the military. When the Wehrmacht moved in, the country fell apart. After 11 days of fighting, the Germans were left in occupation of a huge and hostile territory. The Yugoslav Government fled into exile in London. Croatia declared itself an independent republic. Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Italians all took chunks of the carcass. Underground armies proliferated. The terrible
UstaSi
or Croat ‘insurrectionaries’ were set on ethnic cleansing of their Serbian minority, deploying the full fascist repertoire of death camps and mass executions. The royalist Četniks, who led the Yugoslav resistance, were increasingly opposed by a rival communist movement led by Josip Broz, ‘Tito’ (1892–1980). The fierce determination of the Yugoslav partisans to kill the invaders was only exceeded by their proclivity for killing each other, [
NOYADES
]