Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War (66 page)

58.
Mitcham’s figures, which are based upon Niepold’s older work, are in
The German Defeat in the East 1944–45
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001), 16, 36. Hardesty,
V. Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Power
(Minnetonka, MN: Olympic Marketing Corp, 1982) is best here.

59.
W. Murray,
Luftwaffe
and Muller,
German Air War,
are good introductions here.

60.
For details of the Sturmoviks, see “Ilyushin Il-2,” Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2
; also described in A. Brookes,
Air War over Russia
(Hersham, Surrey: Ian Allen, 2003), 63.

61.
Erickson,
Road to Berlin,
ch. 5; Mitcham,
German Defeat in the East;
Glantz and House,
When Titans Clashed,
ch. 13.

62.
See “Operation Bagration,” Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation-Bagration
; Mitcham,
The German Defeat in the East,
ch. 1; and the fuller account in S. Zaloga,
Bagration 1944: The Destruction of Army Group Centre
(Oxford: Osprey Press, 1996).

63.
See in particular Habeck,
Storm of Steel,
232–33. The irony of the Soviet armies becoming more flexible just when the German armies were seizing up is covered in the middle chapters of Glantz and House’s fine work
When Titans Clashed,
ch. 9–13; Stone discusses this in
A Military History of Russia,
202ff.

64.
Mitcham, S.
Blitzkrieg No Longer,
passim.

65.
Ibid.; Erickson,
Road to Berlin,
ch. 11–16, provides enormous detail.

66.
See the horrifying details in N. Fergusson,
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
(New York: Penguin, 2004); now supplemented by I. Kershaw,
The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45
(London: Allen Lane, 2011).

67.
Mitcham,
Blitzkrieg No Longer,
215–16. Zeitzler’s reflective piece appeared in the April 1962 issue of
Military Review,
with the intriguing title “Men and Space in War: A German Problem in World War II.” It is so little known, and so worth recovering. Willmott also stresses this point, in a nifty comparative way, in
The Great Crusade,
ch. 5, “Time, Space, and Doctrine.”

68.
O. P. Chaney,
Zhukov,
rev. ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), provides fine detail.

1.
See, for example, D. J. B. Trim and M. C. Fissel, eds.,
Amphibious Warfare 1000–1700
(Leiden: Brill, 2006); and, for those reliant upon the electronic
media, a rather good Wikipedia piece is
http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibious_warfare
(accessed May 1, 2008). There is the impressive work by D. Abulafia,
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
(London: Allen Lowe, 2010), with great coverage of campaigns in that sea.

2.
Accounts of such raids are in Bernard Fergusson’s classic
The Watery Maze: The Story of Combined Operations
(London: Collins, 1961), along with chapters on full invasions themselves. But Fergusson is so enthused about any actions taken against the enemy that the operational distinction is not made clear.

3.
Ibid., 47.

4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibious_warfare
, the “16th century” portion, is the quickest way to get to this tale. Scholars interested in most details can check on the “Terceras Landing.”

5.
See B. H. Liddell Hart,
The British Way in Warfare
(London: Faber and Faber, 1932), especially ch. 1; and the more modern treatment by M. E. Howard,
The Continental Commitment
(London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1972).

6.
For the Tanga fiasco, see Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
24–29.

7.
See A. Millett and W. Murray, eds.,
Military Effectiveness
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1988), especially the introduction and the conclusion to vol. 1.

8.
It is hard to know where to start (or stop) with references to Gallipoli. The military account is Alan Moorhead’s
Gallipoli
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956), with R. Rhodes James,
Gallipoli
(London: Batsford, 1965) best on the political side; and a very fine recent survey by L. A. Carlyon,
Gallipoli
(London: Doubleday, 2002). Those far from a good library can find a fair summary, with a useful ANZAC angle, in “Gallipoli Campaign,” Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gallipoli
.

9.
See Correlli Barnett,
Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), 540–43; Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
36–43; and the important memoir by the ISTCD’s first director, L. E. H. Maund,
Assault from the Sea
(London: Methuen, 1949).

10.
S. W. Roskill,
The War at Sea, 1939–1945
(London: HMSO, 1954–61), vol. 1; Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
ch. 3–13.

11.
The two great historians of the twentieth-century Royal Navy, Arthur Marder and Stephen Roskill, disagreed on many issues. On Churchill’s interference and poor performance in the Norwegian campaign, however, there was remarkable overlap: see A. J. Marder, “Winston Is Back!”
English Historical Review,
supp. 5 (1972); S. W. Roskill,
Churchill and the Admirals
(London: Collins, 1977), ch. 8 and appendix, 283–99.

12.
B. H. Liddell Hart,
History of the Second World War
(London: Cassell’s, 1970), 226. For the Crete campaign, see Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
ch.
11–12, and especially C. MacDonald’s
The Lost Battle: Crete 1941
(New York: Macmillan, 1993), especially the truly scary chapter 10, “Ordeal at Sea.”

13.
W. Murray and A. R. Millett,
A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 106. The Norway airpower statistics are in Liddell Hart,
History,
59, with the
Prince of Wales
/
Repulse
statistics on 226.

14.
Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
203–6, is withering; Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
59–69, is eye-opening. See also A. J. Marder’s detailed study
Operation “Menace”
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

15.
Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
166; Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
864–68.

16.
On Combined Operations’ learning curve, see Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
545–46, and ch. 11–15 of P. Ziegler’s
Mountbatten: A Biography
(New York: Knopf, 1985).

17.
The literature on the Dieppe Raid is itself a minefield. Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
175–85, is unrepentant about its utility. See, by contrast, T. Robertson,
The Shame and the Glory
(Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1967), and Denis and Shelagh Whitaker,
Dieppe: Tragedy to Triumph
(Whitby, ON: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 293–304, which is very critical but ultimately comes down on the benefits of the operation for the later D-Day successes.

18.
Fergusson,
Watery Maze,
185; Churchill’s language was rather more circumspect—“Their sacrifice was not in vain”—when he later wrote his
History
. But it is clear from D. Reynolds’s illuminating study,
In Command of History: Churchill Writing and Fighting the Second World War
(London: Penguin, 2004), 345–48, that Churchill, Ismay, Mountbatten, and others in the British high command were embarrassed about how to explain the operation after the war.

19.
On Anglo-American “jointness,” especially between 1942 and 1944, there is nothing quite like H. Feis’s classic
Churchill Roosevelt Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Fought
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 37–324. The more military aspect is covered by M. Matloff,
Strategic Planning for Coalition War, 1943–1944
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1994), and M. E. Howard’s superb
Grand Strategy,
vol. 4:
August 1942–September 1943
(London: HMSO, 1972).

20.
Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
554.

21.
Ibid., 563. A wonderful account of all this chaos is R. Atkinson,
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943
(New York: Holt, 2002).

22.
See M. E. Howard’s judicious
The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), as well as his official history,
Grand Strategy,
vol. 4. Barnett’s unrelenting criticism here of Mediterranean “blue water” strategy in
Engage the Enemy,
ch. 17–18, 20–22, seems to me less balanced. S. E. Morison gives an American perspective in
Strategy and Compromise
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1958) as well
as his
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947–62), vol. 9.

23.
Morison,
History,
vol. 9, is marvelously thorough. Liddell Hart,
History,
ch. 27 and 30, is nicely succinct. Atkinson’s
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
(New York: Holt, 2007), is epic at ground level.

24.
Liddell Hart,
History,
445; see also Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
627–650.

25.
For the above, see Liddell Hart,
History,
460–65; Morison,
History,
vol. 9, part III; Atkinson,
Day of Battle,
part Two.

26.
Liddell Hart,
History,
526–32; Atkinson,
Day of Battle,
part Three; and Morison,
History,
vol. 9, part IV.

27.
Note also the titles of the major parts of Liddell Hart’s
History,
part V, “The Turn,” part VI, “The Ebb,” part VII, “Full Ebb,” and part VIII, “Finale.”

28.
The text is probably most easily found in David Eisenhower’s biography of his grandfather,
Eisenhower at War 1943–1945
(New York: Random House, 1986), 252.

29.
There are thousands of books on D-Day and the Normandy campaign, including some superb official histories (British, Canadian, U.S.) on their air forces, armies, navies, and intelligence. I thought the best single-volume works to be M. Hastings,
Overlord
(London: Michael Joseph, 1984); S. Ambrose,
D-Day, June 6th, 1944
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994); and C. Ryan,
The Longest Day
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959). There are also some marvelously good maps and illustrations in
Purnell’s History of the Second World War,
5:1793–942.

30.
Barnett,
Engage the Enemy
, ch. 24–25, gives a very fine summary of the planning and organization, as does
Purnell’s History,
5:1794–5, 1870–5.

31.
“Bertram Ramsay,” Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Ramsay
.

32.
R. Overy,
Why the Allies Won
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), 183.

33.
C. Gross and M. Postlethwaite,
War in the Air: The World War Two Aviation Paintings of Mark Postlethwaite
(Marlborough, UK: Crowood Press, 2004), 78.

34.
M. K. Barbier’s
D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007) is a really important study on this topic, and nicely supplements C. Cruikshank’s
Deception in World War II
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), which has remarkable, sometimes hilarious photographs. But the serious student of this deception should also consult a more cautious work: C. Bickell, “Operation Fortitude South: An Analysis of Its Influence upon German Dispositions and Conduct of Operations in 1944,”
War and Society
18, no.1 (May 2000): 91–122. The article has an excellent bibliography, although obviously not including the findings in Barbier and other later works.

35.
F. H. Hinsley et al.,
British Intelligence in the Second World War,
vol. 3, part 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), section 13,
Overlord,
is impressive in describing both deception and intelligence aspects of the Normandy operation. See also two other esteemed works, D. Kahn,
Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War Two
(New York: Macmillan, 1978), and M. E. Howard,
Strategic Deception
(London: HMSO, 1990), which is also vol. 5 of
British Intelligence in the Second World War
.

36.
F. H. Hinsley et al.
British Intelligence in the Second World War
, vol. 3, part 2, 107n, 127, 153, on Resistance attacks. Quite amazing details of SOE cooperation with the French are in M. R. D. Foot,
SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945
(London: BBC Publications, 1984), esp. 222–29.

37.
Quoted in Overy,
Why the Allies Won,
195. As usual, a superb, brief summary.

38.
This is probably better captured in the great scene in the 1962 movie version of Ryan’s book
The Longest Day
(with Curt Juergens playing Blumentritt) than in any written account.

39.
There is an unsurpassed analysis (with excellent maps and tables) in Roskill,
War at Sea,
vol. 3, part 2, 5–74; but see also Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
ch. 24–25, for another version; and Ambrose,
D-Day,
ch. 5–9.

40.
There is a remarkable photo of four Beaufighters, coming in from all directions to attack German minesweepers and destroyers inside a Channel port in June 1944. Photo is in C. Bekker’s
The German Navy 1939-1945
(Hamlyn: London/New York, 1972), 179.

41.
Roskill,
War at Sea,
vol. 3, part 2, 53–59, details the containment and defeat of the U-boats as well as the Allied losses.

42.
Hobart’s career has attracted a number of studies, including a nice biography by K. Macksay,
Armored Crusader
(London: Hutchison, 1967), and an extremely lively article by T. J. Constable, “The Little-Known Story of Percy Hobart,”
Journal of Historical Review
18, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1999), also at
ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n1p-2_Constable.html
(accessed Feb. 20, 2008). The illustrations of these weird contraptions in
Purnell’s History,
5:1834–5, 1919, are worth savoring. Churchill’s directive about reemploying Hobart is in Constable’s electronic version of this remarkable story.

43.
Quoted in Ambrose,
D-Day,
551, a characteristically generous acknowledgment of what was happening on beaches other than Omaha and Utah.

44.
Ibid., 323; he devotes nine chapters to the Omaha Beach story. See also Hastings,
Overlord,
105–21; and Murray and Millett,
A War to Be Won,
417–23, which is extremely critical of Bradley, the U.S. Navy, and the whole Omaha operation. I am also obliged to Professor Tami Biddle for bringing me to a better understanding of the panoply of difficulties facing the Omaha planners and commanders.

45.
Ambrose,
D-Day,
576; Roskill,
History,
vol. 3, part 2, 53, give an unusually exact total of 132,715 men landed. It is not clear when these various tallies were taken—at dusk, at midnight, or at dawn next day—or whether the airborne forces are included. It hardly matters.

46.
D. Eisenhower,
Eisenhower at War,
425–26.

47.
Barnett,
Engage the Enemy,
843–51; and, less tartly, Roskill,
History,
vol. II, part 2, 142–53.

48.
See its use in
Purnell’s History,
5:1793.

49.
There is a rather nice Anglo-American synergy here, spotted by J. A. Isley and P. A. Crowl,
The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its Theory, and Its Practice in the Pacific
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 583–84: the larger landing craft ship and infantry craft were of British design, the LVTs and DUKWs were an American idea. Together the match was perfect.

50.
Ibid., 581–82. Their ch. 12, “Amphibious Progress, 1941–1945,” is a fine reflection, with some cross-references to European amphibious operations as well.