The Decisive Turning-Points

In early November 1942 the Western Allies began their landing in French North Africa. In February 1943 Japanese expansion in the Pacific was halted by the US Navy. In the same month Germany's advance came to an end with the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad. Thus, within a few months the Second World War turned to the advantage of the Allies. They had now conquered the initiative and would not lose it again. Battles at Tunis, Kursk and Saipan rounded out the turn.

As a result of these battles Vichy France would cease to be even a pseudo-independent entity. The place of France (its alignment in Europe) and, flowing from it, the future relationship of Europe to the United States would be placed on the political agenda. Italy would be invaded by the Western Allies and, in its own way, set the pattern for the future arrangement of spheres of influence on the European continent. The downfall of Mussolini and the withdrawal of German troops from the Balkans would enable, for the first time since 1938, the reemergence of a sector of the European working class - in Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece - as an autonomous protagonist in the global drama.

The tremendous increase in the Western Allies's material resources through the reconversion of the US's industrial mass-production potential into weapons output, as well as the systematic and increasingly efficient husbanding of the USSR's huge industrial capability, and reserves of manpower, fighting spirit and military command, made it inevitable that the tide would sooner or later turn after Germany's and Japan's failure to convert their Blitzkrieg victories into a final knock-out. Now the time of Blitzkrieg was over. The moment had come for confrontations between ever greater concentrations of mechanised weapons - in the first place, tanks and airplanes - and their production and utilization on the battlefields with maximum efficiency and tactical skill. Goebbels formula of total war now became a reality: total war replaced Blitzkrieg to the inevitable and progressive disadvantage of Germany and Japan. From their bases in Britain and the Mediterranean the Western Allies would submit Germany and Italy to round-the-clock bombings.

It was not purely coincidental that the decisive battles of the war occurred so close to each other. In part it was due to conscious planning. The battles of El Alamein and Operation Torch (the Allied landing in North Africa) had been coordinated from their inception. So had the approximate date of the US counter-thrust in the South Pacific. The central planners of Anglo-American strategy, Generals Marshall and Alanbrooke had, after a deal of bickering, decided to devote roughly thirty per cent of Allied resources to the war in the Pacific, and the rest to the war in Europe and the Middle East. A good deal flowed more or less automatically from these decisions. Whilst there was no joint military planning between the Western imperialist powers and the USSR, the Red Army's resistance at Stalingrad and the Terek, in the Caucasus, was obviously bolstered by the German defeats in the Mediterranean and the increase in Western supplies they facilitated. So the general links between the counter-offensive in the Mediterranean, on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific are not hard to establish.

Beyond these links, specific battles were of course conceived, fought and won. Montgomery won the battle of El Alamein by achieving tremendous superiority in guns, air power and tanks. He had over 1,200 guns at his disposal against Rommel's 200, 700 tanks to Rommel's less than 200, and absolute mastery in the air, following a deliberate build-up of forces during the summer and autumn of 1942 and the progressive starving of Rommel's Afrika Korps of regular supplies (including oil and ammunition). The battle of El Alamein destroyed the Italian North African Army. But part of the Afrika Korps was able to escape. Montgomery did not succeed in surrounding it, either at El Alamein itself or at Mersa Matruh where this had been successively planned, preferring not to over-extend his supply lines.

The success of the North African landing, Operation Torch, largely depended upon the collaboration of the local French military chiefs. The Western Allies initially transported only one hundred thousand troops, who had to cover a huge coast line and the immediate hinterland between Casablanca and Tunis. There more than a quarter of a million French troops in this arc besides the remnants of the Afrika Korps; possible German-Italian reinforcements also had to be considered. Though the French units were badly armed they were nevertheless well-trained and could have complicated the projected operation. Without first consulting the British, Roosevelt moved to obtain, if not the support, then at least the acquiescence of French military political leaders who, only days before, had been cooperating with the Germans; the 'Darlan Deal' was thus concluded. When, after Darlan's assassination, the Americans were pressed for alternative, they chose the arch-conservative General Giraud as the representative of French authority in North Africa.

The question of who would be recognised as French spokesman in this 'liberated' territory of France had significant implications vis-à-vis the future legitimacy and role of a reconstituted French state. Giraud had many qualifications in American eyes: he was anti-communist, anti-German and anti-British. In contrast, de Gaulle's close involvement with London and his ambition - and potential - to represent the French nation made him highly suspect to Washington. The difference between Giraud and de Gaulle, between the United States and Great Britain, also centred on the question of whether France would be weak or strong after the war, i.e. whether a capitalist Europe would b e pro-American or relatively independent of the USA. The British bourgeoisie clearly understood at this point that Britain would not be equal in power or influence to the USA and the USSR and therefore sought to constitute a kind of West European bloc. And since France was the key to British success in bringing together smaller West European states, Britain began to agitate for the restoration of France as a Great Power.

But the main reason for the difference in approach was Roosevelt's miscomprehension of the real social and political balance of forces in France consequent upon the growth of the Resistance movement. Giraud and de Gaulle became co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation (CNL), which assumed the power and structure of a government in exile. For the majority of the French population, and in the first place the French working class, Giraud was identified with the intention of perpetuating an authoritarian, anti-working-class and anti-republican regime after the defeat of Vichy and Germany. A 'national front' explicitly set restoration of bourgeois-parliamentary democracy, including all the basic freedoms the labour movement had enjoyed in the Third Republic, was the only realistic alternative for the French bourgeoisie to an uprising of the French working class following the collapse of Nazi occupation - a possibility only the PCF could neutralize. De Gaulle and Churchill displayed greatly superior political judgement to Roosevelt's, since they based themselves on the experience of a politically independent European labour movement which Roosevelt had never known. A Giraud solution would not have been 'pro-American'. It would have been unrealisable, or, worse from a bourgeois point of view, could have led to civil war.

The war in North Africa brought rapid success in Morocco and Algeria thanks to the cooperation of the French military, and Dakar came as an additional prize. It failed in Tunisia, however, as a result o f the French Admiral Esteva's manoeuvres. His initial intention to remain neutral collapsed with the arrival of the Germans, who entered Tunis in order to erect a protective shield for the retreating Afrika Korps. After a bloody battle Tunis was taken only in May 1943.

The key battle of 1942-43 was the battle of Stalingrad. The attack of the German Sixth Army under Von Paulus commenced on 28 June 1942 and reached the outskirts of Stalingrad exactly one month later. The Red Army's defence of the Volga metropolis was improvised under conditions of near panic. But with the participation of the workers of that great industrial city, it rapidly assumed epic proportions. Wave after wave of German assaults came within an inch of taking the whole city and were stopped each time as the Red Army and the Stalingrad workers counter-attacked and kept a sector of their city - a factory, a bridgehead - free. Their long and heroic resistance enabled the Soviet General Staff (Stavka) to prepare a counter-offensive. A considerable reserve force had assembled behind the Volga-Don front, concealed from the enemy. While General Halder was becoming increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of the long flank north and south of Stalingrad, Stavka had succeeded in assembling forces which assured it of superiority in numbers and fire power. By November 1942 the following distribution of forces obtained on the 'Stalingrad axis’:

Soviet

tanks 894

guns and mortars 13,540

aircraft 1,115

manpower 1,005,000

 

German and Axis

tanks 675

guns and mortars 10,300

aircraft 1,216

manpower 1,011,000

It should be stressed that whilst increasing Soviet reserves, shorter supply lines, US military assistance (especially in trucks and tanks), rapidly diminishing German reserves and the internal weakness of the Axis allied armies (Rumanians, Hungarians and Italians) all influenced the outcome of the battle, the decisive element was the long resistance of the Stalingrad defenders. It was this resistance which depleted German reserves and gave Stavka the necessary time to plan and organize in minute detail the encirclement of the Sixth Army. That resistance in turn clearly reflected a social phenomenon: the soldiers' and workers' superiority in urban, house-to-house or barricade fighting. Already, during the Spanish Civil War, a similar observation could be made of the battles of Barcelona and Madrid in 1936. Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet Sixty-Second Army, which formed the backbone of Stalingrad's defence, would later write: 'City fighting is a special kind of fighting... The buildings in the city act like breakwaters. They broke up the advancing enemy formations and made their forces go along the streets…The troops defending the city learned to allow German tanks to come right on top of them - under the guns of the anti-tank artillery and anti-tank riflemen; in this way they invariably cut off infantry from the tanks and destroyed the enemy's organized battle formation.”

The brilliantly conceived Stalingrad operation, Operation Uranus, was based on the possibility of two breakthroughs, to the north and to the south of the city. Starting on 19 November in the north and one day later in the south, it succeeded within four days: the Sixth Army was surrounded and, despite a desperate counterattack mounted by Von Manstein, it would never re-establish contact with the bulk of the German forces nor be adequately supplied by the Luftwaffe.

By the end of the Soviet counter-offensive the Wehrmacht had lost a quarter of a million soldiers, the Luftwaffe most of its reserves on the Eastern front, and a huge quantity of tanks, guns and ammunitions. The political and psychological gains of the liberation of Stalingrad extended far beyond the immediate military results. Thereafter, an important part of the German officer corps and the German bourgeoisie, not to speak of a broad section of the German people, lost the belief that the Third Reich could still win the war. As for Stalingrad itself, Chuikov, who was made a Soviet Marshal after the victory, committed the following picture to memory: "The city burned, covered in black smoke and in pulverised stone. From the summit of the Kurgan Hill, which was called Height 102,0 on our maps, we could see but the skeletons of buildings, ruins and mountains of bricks. Stone had not resisted the assaults, but men did. Each ruin, each skeleton of building, each pit, each stack of bricks, became a defensive stronghold. The most stubborn fight was conducted for every couple of metres, for every floor of building, and not only for streets or parts of streets. Mamayev Kurgan (a hill) was the site of the most obstinate battle. After the war it was calculated that more than a thousand shells or shrapnel splinters hit every square metre of  Kurgan. The earth was overturned by iron and lead.” The scale of the battle of Stalingrad can perhaps be grasped better if one recalls that Soviet losses in this single encounter were larger than those of the United States in the whole of World War II.

However, from the standpoint of military strategy, there was a flaw in Operation Uranus. The Soviet army had in fact, begun a double pincer operation, the first - successful - designed to cut off the forces of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, the second - aiming at the Don estuary at Rostov - intended to cut off the whole German Army Group A in the Caucasus. The latter encirclement failed. One and a half million German and allied soldiers were saved from annihilation. This was not only due to Von Manstein’s undoubtedly skilful manoeuvres but to the stubborn defence of Sixth Army at Stalingrad for two months in the face of extreme adversity as well. Contrary to a legend spread by the German generals, Marshall Chuikov correctly stresses that Hitler's resolve to stick to Stalingrad at all cost was not as irrational as it seemed. A quarter of a million troops were sacrificed in order to save more than a million. Three hundred and fifty thousand Soviet soldiers were tied down around Stalingrad by the Sixth Army's resistance; they could have made all the difference to the Red Army's capacity to take Rostov rapidly and cut off Army Group A.

The Battle of Stalingrad, like all the important turning-points of the war - the Battle of the Meuse, the Battle of Britain, the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the battles of Midway and El Alamein, the landing in Casablanca/Algiers, the landing on Guadalcanal, Operation Overlord, the attack on Arnhem and the breakthrough on the Vistula, to name only some of the most important - is further confirmation of the crucial role of surprise, hence of inadequate enemy military intelligence, in the success or failure of such sweeping operations. Whilst the Abwehr espionage service in the USSR and the normal reconnaissance services at the front - the Fremde Heere Ost - had frequently warned since summer 1942 that the Soviet counterattack would occur sooner or later between Voronesh and the Kalmuck steppe, they failed to discover the full extent of Red Army preparation - the build-up of a reserve striking force of nearly fifty divisions. Why this failure occurred remains a mystery, just as similar mysteries surround the surprise effect of all the other successful operations mentioned. Again, a likely, though no means certain, hypothesis is that army leaders - and in this Hitler was neither better nor worse than Gamelin/Daladier, Stimson/Knox, Stalin/Voroshilov, Tojo or Eisenhower - are predisposed against information which completely contradicts their established strategic concepts and thought habits, especially when political prejudice and dogma combine with outdated military doctrine.

The Battle of Midway, which restored US naval superiority in the Central Pacific, is another example o f the vital role of intelligence during the Second World War. In this case, however, the reasons for Admiral Yamamoto's failure are clear. The US Navy had broken the Japanese code and possessed full advance knowledge of his plan to draw the American naval force into a fatal show-down battle around Midway, the feinted invasion plan being the bait to catch the US aircraft carriers unawares and destroy them with planes launched from the Japanese carriers lying in wait, away from the supposed landing Armada. But the trapper was himself ensnared once the plans became known to Nimitz. The US carriers operated to the rear and not in front of the main Japanese task force. They concentrated not on the defence of Midway Island, but on catching the Japanese men-of-war. They had an additional piece of luck when the Japanese planes interrupted their initial attacks to reconvert from bombs to torpedoes. It was during that fateful interval that the US planes struck in one devastating blow and sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, which had made the mistake of operating in close formation.

Henceforth, any Japanese hopes of effacing the US navy from the Central Pacific and thus preventing a serious attack on the outward perimeter of the conquests of 1941 and early 1942 - and, later, on these conquests themselves - were finished once and for all. The way was clear for a generalised American counteroffensive: the battles of Guadalcanal, southern New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Britain and the Gilbert islands would give US forces the necessary experience as well as bring them to the outward perimeter of the Japanese Empire itself.

The Japanese high command sacrificed tremendous resources at unimportant points of the peripheral war, obstinately refusing to cut their losses and withdraw to the inner line of defence. A fundamental split between the army and the navy supervened. The army's priority was to cover its positions in Indonesia and the Philippines through offensive operations in New Guinea. The Imperial Navy, on the other hand, was preoccupied with defence of its great naval base at Truk Island, covered by its strongholds in the Solomons. These differences over strategy paralysed the Japanese high command for a fatal six months.

A similar difference in strategic conception arose between General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz. MacArthur favoured concentrating all efforts upon the reconquest of the Philippines - in the final analysis, for political reasons. He understood the discredit suffered by the Army - and Western imperialism in general - as a result of the crushing defeats of early 1942. He was afraid that without a spectacular victory there the Philippines would be permanently lost to the USA. Nimitz, on the other hand, understood that the Japanese were capable of tremendous defensive efforts in strongholds like Rabual, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, and wanted to bypass them through island hopping, aiming straight at the Japanese homeland. In the end both commanders were allowed to follow their favoured course, with a two-pronged attack towards Japan, but with the U S Navy carrying the main burden of the military roll-back.

The US landing at Guadalcanal thus became the first important test of strength between the combined forces of the USA and Japan, less because of any particular strategic importance possessed by the island, than because of Japanese obstinacy in trying to hold these distant positions' - something which led to a terrible drain on Japanese resources and a profound demoralization of the army's command.

This is an edited excerpt of The Meaning of the Second World War.

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