How Hitler Could Have Won World War II (20 page)

Manstein also found that Hitler feared to denude secondary fronts to gain superiority at the point where a decision had to fall. For example, the failure to assemble a large army to relieve Stalingrad had proved disastrous. Hitler could not make rapid decisions. In most cases he finally released too few troops, and sent them too late.

“Obstinate defense of every foot of ground gradually became the be all and end all” of Hitler's leadership, Manstein wrote. “Hitler thought the arcanum of success lay in clinging at all costs to what he already possessed.” He could never be brought to renounce this notion.

When Hitler refused to approve withdrawal of German forces to the Dnieper and a campaign to transform defeat into victory, Manstein turned to the now-urgent job of saving the southern armies from being cut off and destroyed.

While Manstein's thin forces sought desperately to build a defensive wall in front of the Donetz, 6th Army's death struggle began. Air supplies dwindled in the face of atrocious weather, long flights, and fierce Russian air defenses. On December 26, only seventy tons of supplies were flown in. Bread began to run out, fats virtually vanished, soldiers went on an iron ration of one meal a day. As the new year began, numbing cold, hunger, and steady Russian attacks weakened the army day by day.

On January 9, 1943, a Russian delegation called on 6th Army to give up. On Hitler's orders Paulus rejected the demand. Manstein supported the Fuehrer's decision. Although the army was perishing, it still had a strategic role to play—tying down the maximum number of Soviet troops to permit the rest of the German army to get away.

The Soviets were fully aware of 6th Army's continued service and unleashed a violent attack on January 11, breaking through at several points. They ousted the Germans from most remaining shelters, especially in the westernmost part of the pocket. The Germans now huddled in the ruins closer to the Volga.

Weather and Soviet fighters reduced air deliveries to a trickle. Soviet attacks seized Pitomnik, the best airfield. Supplies totaled only 90 tons from January 17 to 23, 1943. Russian forays broke up the caldron into separate blocks. After January 28, the wounded and sick no longer were given bread. The Germans lost their last airfield at Gumrak. Efforts by Luftwaffe crews to throw out packages from the air helped little. Soviet regiments climbed out of their covers and overran one position after another. On February 2, the last resistance ceased.

The Luftwaffe had evacuated 25,000 wounded and specialists, but about 160,000 men died and 91,000 were captured. Most of the prisoners soon succumbed to exposure or typhus. Only 6,000 saw their homeland again, some after twelve years of captivity. Paulus, promoted by Hitler to field marshal on the assumption that he would shoot himself, did not, and surrendered to the Russians.

Manstein got little help from Hitler in saving the remainder of the German forces on the southern front. In a series of massive retreats, Germans abandoned Kursk and fell all the way beyond Kharkov, 430 miles west of Stalingrad.

But Manstein prevented a rout, overcame Hitler's inability to see the danger facing the army, and held Rostov open long enough for the Germans to withdraw from the Caucasus. Even so, Hitler insisted on keeping the 17th Army in the Kuban region of the northern Caucasus opposite the Crimea, where it served no purpose. Manstein formed a new line along the Mius River, some forty miles west of Rostov, and stopped the Soviet advance.

Manstein was even able to get Hitler's permission to authorize an envelopment of the overextended Russian forces at Kharkov, which Manstein recaptured on March 14, 1943. It was the last great success of German arms on the eastern front.

16 THE WESTERN ALLIES STRIKE

IN JULY 1942, WITH ROMMEL STOPPED JUST SIXTY MILES FROM ALEXANDRIA AND the Germans advancing toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus, there were two major issues dividing the Allies: what the Americans and British were going to do to help defeat Hitler and whether Stalin would seek a separate peace.

American and British leaders were well aware that they could not overcome Germany without the Soviet Union. However, Joseph Stalin, complaining bitterly that they were leaving virtually all the fighting to the Red Army, was putting out peace feelers in Stockholm.

Western leaders didn't think these feelers would amount to much if they attacked the Germans directly and took pressure off the Soviet Union, as Stalin had been demanding for months. But the British and Americans were virtually immobilized by an acrimonious dispute about what they should do. The Americans, led by George C. Marshall, army chief of staff, wanted a direct advance by a five-division amphibious landing around Cherbourg in Normandy in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer). But the British pressed for an indirect or peripheral strategy, a combination of massive air attacks on German cities and smaller, less-dangerous invasions in the Mediterranean.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw more clearly than anyone that the western Allies must show Stalin that Russia was not being left to face Hitler alone. He decided that the Americans had to fight the Germans
somewhere
in 1942. Since an invasion of France was out, given British opposition, FDR cut the Gordian knot and ruled that the American strike had to be in North Africa.

Roosevelt left it to Marshall to decide where Americans would go in Africa—as reinforcements to the British 8th Army building strength to challenge Rommel at El Alamein or landings in French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), controlled by Vichy France. Marshall, knowing that 8th Army would remain under British General Sir Bernard Montgomery, chose French North Africa (code-named Gymnast), and was able to name his protégé, Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as commander.

Gymnast was an old British plan that called for a descent on Algeria if 8th Army won decisively in Libya and pushed for the Tunisian border. As Montgomery was now girding at El Alamein, the aim of Gymnast (its name changed to Torch because it sounded grander) was to seize Tunisia before the Germans got there and force Panzer Army Africa and the Italians to surrender.

Torch at once gained the advantage Roosevelt was hoping for: when Stalin heard about it, he stopped complaining about a second front. But the decision to turn to the Mediterranean aroused dark suspicions among American planners that Churchill was maneuvering the United States into the “soft underbelly” strategy. They feared this would lead to the invasion of Italy, and perhaps Greece, and fatally undermine the plan to collide with the Germans on the beaches of France.

President Roosevelt was less worried, because he hoped “an air war plus the Russians” could defeat Hitler, and a cross-Channel assault might not be necessary.

Western Allied military strength was not being concentrated in ground forces, as was the case for Russia and Germany. The United States and Britain put great emphasis on air and naval power, and Roosevelt set a limit of 90 army divisions for Europe
and
the Pacific, while the British mobilized 27. Many U.S. divisions had not even been formed, and only 70 ever got to Europe, yet Germany had 260 divisions actually in the field, and the Russians many more.

The Allies decided to invade French North Africa, but not when or where. Because of supply and troop transport problems, the American chiefs of staff set the date at November 8 and announced they planned to confine the landings to the west or Atlantic coast of Morocco, primarily around Casablanca. The British were shocked. The invasion, they said, should be made inside the Mediterranean on the Algerian coast, so troops could advance quickly to Tunisia.

The Americans chose Casablanca—1,100 miles from Tunis and Bizerte, the main Tunisian ports—because they feared the French would resist strongly in Algeria, while the Germans might rush through Spain, seize Gibraltar, block the Strait of Gibraltar, and prevent supplies from reaching the troops.

The British were dismayed at such extreme caution and argued that the American plan would allow the Germans to seize Tunisia, frustrating the entire purpose of the operation. Eisenhower came around to the British point of view, and proposed eliminating the Casablanca landings.

But Marshall would not take the chance of supplies being cut off at Gibraltar and FDR ruled the Americans had to land at Casablanca, to guarantee an Atlantic supply base, but could also land at Oran, 250 miles west of Algiers. He suggested that the British land a few days later at Algiers and points eastward. Roosevelt also wanted the British to keep a low profile, reasoning that the French were angry with them for attacking their ships after France surrendered in 1940 and for invading the French colony of Madagascar in May 1942. The 135,000 men in the French forces would probably resist the British, but perhaps not the Americans.

Churchill was willing to play down British participation, but said Algiers—the biggest city and nerve center of French North Africa— should be occupied the same time as Oran and Casablanca. FDR and Churchill finally agreed to joint American-British landings at Algiers simultaneous with the others.

But in the exchanges, the idea of landings farther east was dropped— killing any chance for a quick Allied victory in North Africa and prolonging the diversion of Allied effort in the Mediterranean.

In the final plan, the Western Task Force, guarded by U.S. Navy ships with 24,500 Americans under Major General George S. Patton Jr., was to land at Casablanca. The 102 ships (29 transports) sailed directly from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Center Task Force, protected by the Royal Navy with 18,500 American troops under Major General Lloyd R. Fredenall, was to capture Oran. It sailed from the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Eastern Task Force, also sailing from the Clyde and guarded by the Royal Navy with 9,000 British and 9,000 American troops, plus 2,000 British Commandos under American Major General Charles W. (Doc) Ryder, was to land at Algiers. Once ashore all Allied forces at Algiers were to come under a newly created British First Army commanded by Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Anderson and drive toward Tunisia.

Americans and Britons landed in North Africa on November 8, a couple weeks after General Montgomery's 8th Army finally attacked Rommel's weak and poorly supplied army at El Alamein. Resistance by the French army was symbolic in most cases, though not all, and the French air force was nowhere to be seen. But the French navy defended itself strongly.

The solely American landings of George Patton's Western Task Force took place in three points on the Moroccan Atlantic coast: a main effort at Fedala, fifteen miles north of Casablanca; and subsidiary ones at Mehdia, fifty-five miles farther north; and at Safi, 140 miles south of Casablanca. Fedala was the nearest landing beach to Casablanca, the only large and well-equipped harbor in this part of Africa. Mehdia was the closest beach to Port Lyautey, whose airfield had the sole concrete runway in Morocco. Safi served to guard against intervention by a large French garrison at inland Marrakech, and also had a port where medium tanks could be unloaded. The new LSTs (Landing Ships Tanks) now being produced were not ready for Torch.

French army resistance was insignificant at Fedala and Safi, and by the afternoon of November 8, the Americans had attained their goals. Only at Mehdia did French troops resist strongly. Fighting ceased on November 11 after the senior French officer in North Africa, Admiral François Darlan, signed a cease-fire.

However, a sea fight broke out north of Casablanca at 7:04 A.M., November 8, between the American battleship
Massachusetts
and two French heavy cruisers, coastal batteries, and the battleship
Jean Bart,
which lay immobile in Casablanca harbor. American gunfire destroyed the main artillery batteries of the battleship. Other American warships warded off an attempted attack on troop transports by a French light cruiser and eight destroyers. Only one French ship returned undamaged, but the French made heavy hits on American warships.

The landings of the Center Task Force at Oran and the Eastern Task Force at Algiers took place with little resistance.

Eisenhower's principal goal was to assemble his troops, build a supply line, and advance on Tunis, in hopes of getting there before the Germans. But the Atlas Mountains of eastern Algeria proved difficult, and bringing forward supplies a great problem. Now the extreme caution of the Americans in refusing to land closer to Tunisia began to exact its toll.

The German navy had held since 1940 that Tunisia was the key position in the Mediterranean—because it dominated Axis traffic routes to Africa and was an ideal base from which to invade Sicily and mainland Italy. The navy believed the Allies would try to seize Tunisia at the first opportunity.

The Axis had ample warning. The German foreign office was flooded with news, much of it dead on target. A report from the Vatican, for example, pinpointed the landings and said they would take place between mid-October and mid-November. A failed British-Canadian raid on Dieppe, France, on August 19 gave an even more certain sign. It showed that no landing would be made on the Continent in 1942, and this turned the arrow on French North Africa.

Adolf Hitler did nothing to prepare for the expected invasion. But, once it came, he moved fast, though not in great force, to hold a bridgehead in Tunisia. On the morning of November 9 he gave Albert Kesselring, German commander in the Mediterranean, a free hand, and the same day Kesselring sent in one fighter and two Stuka groups, and parts of the 5th Parachute Regiment, to occupy the Tunis airport, and, on the night of November 12, the city of Tunis.

Hitler also marched into unoccupied France and seized the French island of Corsica. The move (Operation Anton) began on November 11 and was finished in three days. The shock this gave did much to swing French officers in North Africa to the Allied side. The Germans did not immediately advance into the harbor of Toulon, where the vast bulk of the remaining French fleet lay at anchor. They hoped they could keep the fleet for Axis use, while Admiral Darlan was trying, without success, to get it to move to North Africa. On November 27, after having mined the harbor exits, German troops pressed into the base with the aim of seizing the ships. The French crews scuttled the entire fleet, including the battleship
Strasbourg,
before the eyes of the Germans.

General Walther Nehring, former commander of Africa Corps, took charge in Tunisia on November 15 as commander of 90th Corps, though he had only about 3,000 troops. Without waiting to concentrate, he thrust westward. The French division in Tunisia, under General George Barré, though much stronger, pulled back toward Algeria, hoping to join the Allies before clashing with the Germans.

General Anderson sent a British force to capture the port of Bougie, 110 miles east of Algiers, on November 11, and the next day seized the harbor and airfield of Bône, sixty miles from the Tunisian border. Coastal convoys began running in supplies and troops to both ports.

Anderson sent the British 78th and 6th Armored Divisions to take Tunisia. One part reached Djebel Abiod, fifty miles west of Bizerte, on November 17, where it collided with a small German parachute engineer battalion under Major Rudolf Witzig, the same officer who had seized Belgium's fort Eben Emael in 1940. Another British force seized Tabarka, a few miles west. The day previously a British paratroop battalion took Souk el Arba, south of Tabarka and eighty miles from Tunis. Meanwhile the American 509th Parachute Battalion landed near Tébessa, close to the Tunisian border, to cover the southern flank and secure an airfield there. Two days later it made an eighty-mile bound southeast and seized Gafsa, only seventy miles from the Gulf of Gabès.

General Anderson delayed his advance to consolidate his forces, giving the Germans a chance to expand the bridgehead. On November 17, a German parachute battalion of 300 men under Captain Walter Koch pushed westward, against a French force under General Barré that withdrew to the road center of Medjez el Bab, thirty-five miles west of Tunis, with an important bridge over the Medjerda River. There the French were reinforced by a British parachute battalion and an American artillery battalion.