Why Hannibal Lost Axis Indians Fight for Castile Last Warrior-King Pacific Cargo Cult Home Front Heroes HistoryNet.com
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Features
Letters 6 News 8 Reviews 72
24 Tears of Chios An 1822 massacre finally prompted Europe to help Greece wrest its freedom By Anthony Brandt
32 Contesting Castile In the mid–14th century two half-brothers turned Iberia into a battleground By Douglas Sterling
Departments
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Interview Jessica Sherry
Valor No Man Left Behind
On the cover: A Greek fighter hoists a rebel flag over Salona during the 1821–29 War of Independence from WorldMags.net Ottoman rule. PHOTO: Louis Dupré/Private Collection/Photo © The Fine Art Society, London/Bridgeman Images
WorldMags.net War Games 79 Captured! 80
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The Last Warrior-King
Why Hannibal Lost
Russian Czar Nicholas II’s wartime misadventures had disastrous consequences By Richard Selcer
The Carthaginian was one of history’s greatest tacticians but fell short as a strategist By Richard A. Gabriel
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Hometown Heroes
Enemy of My Enemy
Rationing and scrap drives may not seem heroic, but they helped our fighting men By Sarah R. Cokeley
Subhas Chandra Bose befriended the Axis in his fight against the British Raj By Rafe McGregor
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What We Learned From... Strasbourg, 357
Hardware Carthaginian War Elephant
Hallowed Ground Nine-Army Battle Historical Park, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: LOUIS DUPRE/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO © THE FINE ART SOCIETY, LONDON, UK/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; ALBUM/ART RESOURCE, NY; HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; ERNEST PRATER/PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; IMAGE FROM NEW VANGUARD #150 WAR ELEPHANTS BY KONSTANTIN NOSSOV, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD; ARTHUR SIEGEL/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK WELSH, WWW.PATRICKWELSH.COM
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Pierre Ortiz served honorably in the French Foreign Legion and U.S. Marine Corps but entered into legend as a European operative of the OSS By Laura H. Lacey
IN T H E ARCHIVES:
Hannibal’s War in Italy Hannibal’s bold crossing of the Alps at the outset of the Second Punic War unnerved the Romans and remains in our imagination By Daniel A. Fournie
Interview BBC personality Dan Snow reads, writes, posts, films, records and speaks about the past in his quest to be “The History Guy” Tools Navistar’s counter to the improvised explosive device is the 19-ton MaxxPro MRAP, designed to deflect blasts and keep on trucking
Reviews Lindsay Powell has written the definitive biography of Marcus Agrippa, one of ancient Rome’s greatest military figures
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U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISION
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STEPHEN HARDING EDITOR BRIAN WALKER ART DIRECTOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR SARAH R. COKELEY SENIOR EDITOR JENNIFER E. BERRY SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN
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WorldMags.net Letters
Whose 2nd Division? [Re. “Into the Hornet’s Nest,” by Jack Woodville London, January 2016:] While I enjoyed reading and learning of the heroic exploits of the young soldiers comprising the 71st Brigade in France during October 1918, I believe it would have been more historically accurate if the article had also noted that (unless I’m mistaken) the described 2nd Infantry Division was actually t h e Marine Corps’ 2nd Marine Division under the command of Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., is named after him and was dedicated in December 1942 on his passing that November. Lejeune was also the 13th commandant of the Marine Corps. Colonel Joseph C. Yannessa U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) JACKSONVILLE, N.C. Editor responds: You’re correct that legendary Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Lejeune commanded the 2nd Division, but during World War I the 2nd was an Army division
6 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
that comprised both infantry and Marine regiments. Twice during the war Marine generals commanded the division. The other Marine commander was Brig. Gen. Charles Doyen, the first recipient of the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, who died of influenza before he was able to command the division in the field.
Rethinking Rommel [Re: January 2016 cover headline, W A S R O M M E L A FRAUD?:] I have the greatest admiration for both Military History and Maj. Gen. David Zabecki, but I think someone chose the wrong word to describe Erwin Rommel. I understand Rommel did indeed burnish his reputation—as did George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and every German general who claimed to have fought the Russians in order to curry greater postwar favor with the Allies. But Rommel was brilliant in World War I and certainly no slouch in France
Paraguay [Re. “Death of a Nation,” by Jorge E. Taracido, January 2016, about the War of the Triple Alliance:] The author seems to imply that Francisco Solano López was somehow a sympathetic character in that conflict. Indeed, for some reason he actually still is regarded as a national hero in Paraguay. However, anybody who has read anything about that conflict knows that López was a raving lunatic with delusions of grandeur who made Adolf Hitler seem a levelheaded statesman by comparison. It is said he actually believed he was going to make himself emperor of all South America. He was the stereotype of the Latin American dictator and actually insisted upon being addressed as “El Supremo.” One reason the war dragged on as long as it did was because his troops were more afraid of him than they were of the enemy, because they knew that if they surrendered, he would have their entire families executed.
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However, the author is certainly correct in suggesting the war was a disaster for Paraguay. Robert Guttman TAPPAN, N.Y.
Cinco de Mayo Regarding “Mexican Standoff” [by Benjamin Wood, November 2015]: Check to see whether Cinco de Mayo is really a national holiday in Mexico. Years ago I had a Mexican co-worker, and he told me [May 5] wasn’t a big day in Mexico. Maybe a holiday in Puebla and in or around the respective state, but nationally it wasn’t a holiday or even an acknowledged observance. John H. Thompson OGDEN, UTAH Editor responds: While Mexico no longer observes Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday, the nation did observe May 5 nationwide for many decades following the 1862 Battle of Puebla, and public schools in Mexico still close on that date each year. A far more significant national holiday is Independence Day, celebrated on September 16 to mark the beginning of the 1810–21 Mexican War of Independence. Send letters to Editor, Military History HistoryNet 1600 Tysons Blvd., Suite 1140 Tysons, VA 22102-4883 or via e-mail to
militaryhistory@ historynet.com Please include name, address and phone number
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and the Western desert in World War II. I’m not sure playing up one’s successes (or allowing the propaganda machine to do so) constitutes fraud, even if Rommel did undercut some of his peers. “Careerist,” certainly, but I’d hardly call every careerist in every military a fraud, especially someone with Rommel’s reputation. Lt. Col. Mark Fassio U.S. Army (Ret.) PENDLETON, KY.
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NewsWorldMags.net By Brendan Manley
Women may serve in any capacity —if they meet same standards.
The U.S. Department of Defense [dod.gov] has opened the door for women to serve in any military capacity, including direct ground combat—provided they meet the same physical and professional standards as men. Critics remain concerned that women are generally smaller and weaker than men, and that the government may force service branches to adopt civil employment standards that lower the bar for women, thus jeopardizing unit readiness, effectiveness and cohesion. Proponents argue the move
will provide women a faster track to career advancement. In the decades after the nation’s founding women served in various military support capacities, and some showed a willingness to take up arms. During the American Revolution, Mexican War, Civil War and SpanishAmerican War, for example, a handful of women disguised themselves as men in order to serve. In both world wars tens of thousands of women served as nurses and in various support staff roles. During World War I more than 12,000 women enlisted in the Navy and Marine Corps. During World War II the number of women in active duty jumped to 350,000, and they served in all branches. In 1948 Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, granting women permanent status in the military and entitling them to veterans benefits. In the 1970s the service academies began to admit women. In 1994 the Pentagon established a rule that prohibited women from serving in units below brigade level “whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.” Regardless, of the nearly 300,000 women who have deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands have engaged in direct combat. The latest decision reverses the ban, potentially opening tens of thousands of occupational specialties to women.
‘They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat’ —Ashton Carter, U.S. Secretary of Defense 8 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
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Arlington Bars Female Pilots Families of World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) are disputing a 2015 directive by former Army Secretary John McHugh that bans WASPs from having their ashes placed at spacestrapped Arlington National Cemetery [arlingtoncemetery.org], a privilege they’d enjoyed since
2002. Under federal law WASPs and other civilian employees and contractors are only eligible for burial at Veterans Affairs cemeteries. The statute largely affects the Merchant Marines, 243,000 of whom served in World War II.
Want to Buy a Surplus M1911? The U.S. Army is set to transfer its remaining stock of 100,000 pre-1945 Colt M1911A1 .45 ACP handguns to the Civilian Marksmanship Program [thecmp.org] for sale to the public. The Army spends $2 per pistol annually to store its surplus M1911s, which it replaced in 1985 with the Beretta M9. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act permits the transfer, as well as sales of all other surplus Army firearms.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: CPL. ANDREW KUPPERS/U.S. MARINE CORPS; U.S. AIR FORCE/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
DOD OPENS ALL JOBS AND DIRECT COMBAT TO WOMEN
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RECORD
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MCKENRICK LEE PHOTOGRAPHY/NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE; HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; STAFF SGT. JEREMY WILSON/U.S. AIR NATIONAL GUARD; THILAK PIYADIGAMA/THINKSTOCK
National Museum of USAF Expands On June 8 the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force [www.national museum.af.mil], at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, will open its new $40.8 million fourth building. The 224,000square-foot space will house more than 70 aircraft in four galleries. Highlights include the Lockheed C-141C Hanoi Taxi (which airlifted the first U.S. POWs out of North
Vietnam in 1973) and the Boeing VC-137C SAM 26000, which served Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon as Air Force One.
Sri Lanka Repairs Colonial-era Fort Archaeologists in Sri Lanka [archaeology.gov.lk] are restoring centuries-old Jaffna Fort, which Tamil rebels severely damaged during the violent insurgency they waged through 2009. Workers
are clearing ordnance and rebuilding brick structures throughout the star-shaped limestone fort, founded in 1618 during the Portuguese colonial era and later expanded under Dutch and British rule. Restorers will repair the Dutch church and governor’s mansion in the next stage of the project, set to run through 2018.
ONGOING OUEST TO ID ROMANOVS Russian researchers are comparing DNA samples from Czars Alexander II and Alexander III to definitively identify the remains of Romanov heir Alexis Nikolayevich and sister Maria, the murdered children of Czar Nicholas II (left; see P. 42). On July 17, 1918, in Yekaterinburg, Bolsheviks shot and bayoneted Nicholas, wife Alexandra and their five children, burned and doused the bodies in acid, then buried the remains in a mass grave that archaeologists unearthed in 1991. Alexei and Maria were missing from that grave but found nearby in 2007. Prior testing had confirmed their identity, but the Russian Orthodox Church—which has canonized the Romanovs—requires stringent proof before interring the family in St. Petersburg this spring.
DOD LOOKS TO REARM U.S. BASE PERSONNEL American military personnel are one step closer to regaining their right to carry firearms on base and at reserve and recruiting centers nationwide. In 1992 the Department of Defense restricted on-base firearms possession to designated staff performing law enforcement or security duties. A provision in the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act requires Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to establish a process for individual base commanders to allow service members to arm themselves. The recent legislation comes on the heels of multiple base shootings in recent years, including the July 2015 mass murder of five U.S. servicemen at two Tennessee military installations, an attack the FBI deemed an act of domestic terrorism.
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April 3, 1367 Anglo-Gascon forces led by Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and England’s Prince of Wales, rout a Franco-Castilian army at the Battle of Nájera, during the Castilian Civil War (see P. 32). Edward’s support for Peter I’s claim to the throne over his half-brother Henry soon evaporates.
April 14, 1944 Colonel Shaukat Malik of the Indian National Army (see P. 64) leads a Bahadur Group unit in the capture of Moirang during the INA’s Axis-allied effort to secure Indian independence from British rule.
May 218 BC Carthaginian commander Hannibal (see P. 58) sets out north from Cartagena with an army of some 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 37 elephants. That fall his invasion force crosses the Alps into Italy.
May 18, 1821 Reacting to an uprising on Polygyros during the Greek War of Independence (see P. 24), Yusuf Bey, the Ottoman governor of Thessaloniki, orders the massacre of some 200 Greek hostages. A far worse slaughter of Greek citizens on Chios the next year prompts international support for the ultimately successful revolution.
May 27–28, 1905 Japanese warships wipe out the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, effectively ending the Russo-Japanese War. Russia loses all its battleships and most of its cruisers and destroyers in the defeat, prompting Czar Nicholas II (see P. 42) to seek peace.
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a controversial comfort woman statue from outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Japan has previously apologized for its actions and in 1994 established the Asian Women’s Fund [awf.or.jp] to compensate former comfort women in South Korea, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Taiwan and Indonesia. Many victims rejected that largely private fund, however, instead calling for formal redress from the Japanese state. The resolution comes at a time of warming relations between the two nations, both important U.S. allies. Given China’s growing assertiveness and the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, the United States has been working to build a strong coalition in the region, and the accord addresses a longstanding stumbling block to that effort. The agreement fell on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 treaty that established diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea.
‘The government of Japan painfully acknowledges its responsibility’ —Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida 10 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
The National Archives [archives. gov] has released the Strategic Air Command’s declassified “Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959,” which includes a prioritized list of enemy targets
compiled for U.S. bomber pilots in the event of nuclear war. “Designated ground zeros” include military installations and industrial centers in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. The list also targets “population,” with a notation that the “requirement to win” trumps concerns about fallout affecting “friendly forces.”
American translators question comfort women in Burma in 1944.
Japan and South Korea have reached a “final and irreversible” resolution to their decadeslong dispute over Japan’s practice of forcing women to serve as sex slaves, aka “comfort women,” for its soldiers before and during World War II. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of women, including many Koreans, were lured or forced to work at Japanese military brothels from the early 1930s through 1945. Likely due to the social stigma, just 238 South Korean victims have publicly spoken of their experiences; only 46 of the women are still living. As part of the Dec. 28, 2015, accord Japan issued a formal government apology and agreed to create an $8.3 million fund from state coffers to help care for surviving victims. The nations further resolved to “refrain from criticizing and blaming each other” on the international stage, and Korean officials agreed to consider relocation or removal of
Archives Releases Nuclear Target List
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Judge Tosses Out WWI Cross Suit A federal judge has dismissed a court challenge to a memorial cross [savethepeacecross.com] erected on public land 90 years ago in Bladensburg, Md. The plaintiffs had argued that the 40-foot cross, dedicated in 1925 to World
War I dead from Prince George’s County, “violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.” The judge ruled the cross a “historically significant war memorial” not “a government effort to promote or endorse religion.”
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: SHEARER/U.S. ARMY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MARK GAIL/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
JAPAN AND KOREA RESOLVE ‘COMFORT WOMEN’ DISPUTE
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NewsWorldMags.netWARRIOR WOMEN Archaeologists with the Russian Academy of Sciences [ras.ru/en/ index.aspx] have unearthed a private arsenal of weapons amid the ruins of Ignatievskoye, a Moscow-
area village dating from the 16th-century reign of Czar Ivan IV Vasilyevich, aka Ivan the Terrible. Unearthed from a timber-lined storehouse in the home of one of Ivan’s top officers, the cache included cuirasses, belts, sabers, arrows and spiked helmets in their original leather-lined boxes.
MOH Recipient Tibor Rubin, 86 Holocaust survivor and Korean War Medal of Honor recipient Tibor Rubin died on Dec. 5, 2015. In 1944–45 the Hungarian-born Jewish teen survived 14 months
in a Nazi concentration camp. In 1948 he immigrated to the United States and later enlisted in the Army. Rubin received the Medal of Honor in 2005 for his actions as a soldier and POW during the Korean War. An earlier Pentagon review determined he’d been overlooked due to religious discrimination.
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COLOMBIA LAYS CLAIM TO GALLEON SAN JOSE
The decision by the U.S. Department of Defense to open ground combat roles to women (see P. 8) calls to mind a roster of female fighters through the ages. Notable figures include:
Artemisia
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos recently tweeted that his navy had “found” the Spanish treasure galleon San José, sunk off Cartagena by a British warship in 1708 with a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds worth an estimated $1 billion in today’s dollars. Turns out Santos is flying a false flag. His boast follows Colombia’s latest courtroom win in a longstanding legal dispute with U.S. salvage firm Sea Search Armada, which actually did find the wreck in 1981 and has since fought for a share of the treasure. In 2011 and 2015 U.S. courts dismissed its bid on technical grounds and declared the galleon property of the Colombian state. Santos says his country will construct a purposebuilt museum in Cartagena to display artifacts from the wreck.
DUTCH CONFIRM CAESAR ACCOUNT Archaeologists in the Netherlands have confirmed through radiocarbon dating and other tests that a long-excavated site in Kessel-Lith is the location of the 55 BC annihilation of the Germanic Tencteri and Usipetes tribes by Roman forces under Julius Caesar. The clash—described in Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars—was the earliest known battle on Dutch soil and ended with the Roman massacre of tens of thousands of men, women and children. In recent decades researchers have unearthed scores of human bones, as well as swords, spearheads and other 1st century BC relics from the site.
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Artemisia was queen of the fortress city of Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum, Turkey) in the 5th century BC. A naval commander and ally of Persian King Xerxes I, she earned infamy at the 480 BC Battle of Salamis when her ship lowered its colors, then rammed and sank a Persianallied ship to dupe and evade a pursuing Greek ship.
Zenobia After the assassination of her husband and stepson in 267, Zenobia ruled the Palmyrene empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Within two years she had repelled Roman forces from Egypt, Anatolia, Syria Palaestina and Lebanon, at times marching alongside her troops.
Lady Trieu Dubbed the “Vietnamese Joan of Arc,” the 20-something rebel raised a 1,000warrior army to oppose 3rd century Chinese invaders. She reportedly wielded two swords and rode into battle atop a war elephant.
Nakano Takeko A 19th century Japanese female samurai, Takeko fought for the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1868–69 Boshin War. While leading a force of fighting women against imperial forces, Takeko was shot down and had her sister cut off and bury her head to prevent its capture.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PRISMA ARCHIVO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, LONDON/THE IMAGE WORKS; MICHELANGELOOP/THINKSTOCK; PAUL MORSE/GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY & MUSEUM
Russians Unearth Ivan-era Arsenal
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The EOD Warrior Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supported by donations, grants, and volunteer fundraising events and activities held throughout the country and around the world each year. Your tax-deductible donation enables the foundation to provide ongoing support and service to our nation’s EOD warriors and their families. To make a donation or for more information on ways to support our mission, please visit: www.eodwarriorfoundation.org.
Disarming Challenges www.eodwarriorfoundation.org
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WorldMags.net Interview Jessica Sherry Waiting for John Frum
Members of Tanna’s John Frum movement re-enact the military drills their forebears witnessed during World War II.
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What inspired you to film Waiting for John? I thought the general idea of cargo cults was surreal, and the specifics were even more fascinating. The movement is an interesting microcosm, an example of how and why religion works, and I thought that by telling the story of this relatively recent and extreme belief system, the film could reveal some of the universal tenets of all religions. What are the origins of the Frum legend? Oral history on Tanna Island says John Frum predicted the arrival of the Americans as early as 1940, before Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of war in the Pacific, with some stories even dating to 1938. The first written account of the movement was in 1941, when British government agent James Nicol
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wrote about strange kava ceremonies and many pigs being killed in the name of John Frum. It’s difficult to know for sure if America was mentioned in the first prophecies in the 1940s, or if John’s predictions and identity evolved with the religion. What happened when Americans’ arrived in 1942? John Frum had promised that Americans would bring good things to the people of Tanna and would be their brothers in the fight for freedom. The American military brought a miraculous amount of cargo to many remote islands in the South Pacific—refrigerators, canned food, planes, trucks —all technologically advanced goods the islanders had never seen, especially in such vast quantities. The arrival of the Americans fulfilled John’s
MATTHEW MCKEE/EYE UBIQUITOUS/CORBIS
Who was John Frum? To Melanesians on the South Pacific island of Tanna tradition holds that John Frum prophesied Americans would arrive on the island and shower them with all good things. Though it’s unclear whether John Frum was a real person, in the midst of the Pacific War in 1942 American soldiers did arrive as predicted. And indeed they brought with them wondrous cargo never before seen by the Tannese, reinforcing their beliefs and propelling the prophecy into a religion. While filming the documentary Waiting for John [waitingforjohndoc.com], director Jessica Sherry immersed herself in Tanna’s culture and traditions to shed light on the “cargo cult.” Military History recently spoke with Sherry about the John Frum movement, its lasting legacy on Tanna and the unwitting role the U.S. military played in reinforcing its beliefs.
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prophecy and changed the balance of power in the region, undermining European authority and empowering the native peoples.
ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK WELSH, WWW.PATRICKWELSH.COM
How did the war affect the Tannese? In 1942 military bases were built on the neighboring islands, so many of the young men on Tanna waited on the beach to enlist and support the Americans. The Americans paid well, and the men saw an opportunity, but I’m sure some of the islanders just wanted to find out if the rumors of miraculous cargo were true. Many accounts say the Americans treated the islanders with respect, especially compared to how they were treated by Europeans. The islanders worked side by side with the soldiers, many of whom were black—the people of Tanna were amazed and proud to see black Americans working with white Americans. Because of all this there was a pro-American sentiment on many of the islands, especially Tanna. How did Tanna’s cargo cult differ from others in the Pacific? Many cargo cults popped up around the South Pacific, especially in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and in the New Hebrides (present-day Vanuatu). Tanna was at a particular breaking point in the 1940s, when the native people were looking for a way to resist colonial repression, band together to seek freedom and protect their traditional culture. The John Frum movement had strong leaders and resisted the colonial powers. This tumultuous situation gave people a reason to believe, beyond just spiritual curiosity or worldly desires. Many religions that have staying power were created in the face of oppression and the need for uprising. Why does the John Frum movement endure? The ancestors of today’s village leaders went to prison during the colonial period because of their beliefs. The current elders remember their heritage, and the religion remains the most
important thing to them. The John Frum movement represents the way in which the indigenous people reclaimed their identity and power, which has led to the survival of the community and its traditional beliefs. Though it may seem a contradiction to believe in a brotherhood with America and preserve traditional customs, there is a partnership there in the minds of John Frum believers.
How has the movement changed since the war? The village of Lamakara is still a very traditional place, but today most people know how trucks or airplanes are made. Many people have cell phones and know that the Internet exists; their understanding of the world has evolved. They hope for help from America, and they still believe in the brotherhood between America and Tanna.
It’s also much smaller now and is in danger of fading away. People now understand where the cargo came from and have more outside influences and other options. Younger generations often pull away from tradition, and that’s true for the John Frum movement, too. How many followers remain? It’s hard to say. There are about 250 people who live in the John Frum village of Lamakara and actively practice the religion. Others live in nearby villages and visit Lamakara every Friday night to show their devotion. I can’t give an exact number of remaining believers, but I know it’s much less than it was in
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the 1990s, when there were more than 5,000 active members. Describe a typical John Frum ceremony. Every Friday evening people gather for a celebration. Believers walk from surrounding villages to visit Lamakara, and at sundown they gather around the town square, singing songs about the movement’s beliefs, its history and its leaders. Women dance in hula skirts in an outer circle, and men dance in the inner circle to the sounds of guitars. This celebration goes on until sunrise and truly is a spiritual experience. Every February 15 members celebrate John Frum Day, the day on which the original leaders first raised the American flag. A ceremonial march— to show their respect for America and their brotherhood—is performed by the young men of the village, and they paint USA in red on their chests and march in military formations their grandfathers saw during World War II. The men carry bamboo sticks painted with red tips to represent the U.S. soldiers’ rifles. The people believe such demonstrations may convince America to return with their cargo or at least their support for the movement. Their current leader, Chief Isaak, would very much like to visit the White House, but he’s still waiting for an invitation. Was John Frum a vision, an idol or an actual person? Believers maintain he is a spiritual being. The men on Tanna drink a lot of kava, and visions are common. Maybe someone came up with the idea that people needed to rise up against the colonialist rulers, and good things would happen if they did. John Frum was the figure that represented this message, and it took hold. As time went on, the figure of John Frum evolved with the culture’s needs. When U.S. forces arrived during the war with all their cargo and equipment, it seemed miraculous. The islanders hadn’t heard of refrigerators or canned food before, so they believed the spirits must be involved. I think John Frum became American right around then. MH
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ValorWorldMags.net No Man Left Behind Giunta, the first living American awarded the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War, left the Army in 2011 as a staff sergeant.
Specialist Salvatore Giunta U.S. Army Medal of Honor Afghanistan Oct. 25, 2007
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or repeatedly risking his life to recover stricken fellow soldiers under what his citation describes as “withering enemy fire,” U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2010, thus becoming the first living American since the Vietnam War to receive the decoration. On the night of Oct. 25, 2007, then Specialist Giunta and five other squad members of 1st Platoon, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, were leading the platoon down a moonlit mountain spur toward their combat outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. The men had spent the day providing overwatch for another platoon operating in the valley. The day had been quiet, though the unit’s radiomen had picked up chatter among Taliban insurgents.
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Spaced 30 to 45 feet apart, the sixman squad had walked only a few hundred feet when engulfed in a hail of AK-47 rounds fired by three Taliban fighters directly to their front and machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire from a dozen other insurgents to the left of the trail. Crews of Apache helicopters overhead could hear the firing but could not respond, as the fight was at such close quarters. At the base of the ridge the men of 2nd Platoon also heard the firing, but the rough terrain delayed their response. The opening shots of the ambush had downed the two soldiers in the lead—Sergeant Joshua Brennan, walking point, and Specialist Frank Eckrode—and mortally wounded Specialist Hugo Mendoza, the platoon medic. Staff Sgt. Erick Gallardo, the squad leader and third in line, tried to move forward to help Brennan and Eckrode but was driven back by RPG explosions. He was backpedaling uphill to join Giunta and the others when struck in the helmet by an AK-47 round.
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Giunta immediately jumped up and ran through the wall of lead to aid Gallardo, who was uninjured and quickly recovered his senses. As the two scrambled for cover, an AK-47 round slammed into the front ceramic plate of Giunta’s protective vest, while another hit the bazooka-like SMAW-D “bunker buster” slung across his back. Counterintuitive as the tactic may seem, the best way to defeat an ambush is to charge into it, and Gallardo, Giunta and Pfcs. Kaleb Casey and Garrett Clary did just that. With Casey firing his M249 squad automatic weapon and Clary an M203 grenade launcher, the foursome stepped off, hurling grenades, firing at enemy muzzle flashes and moving forward until locating Eckrode. While Gallardo treated his wounds, and Casey and Clary laid down covering fire, Giunta searched for Brennan. But he was gone. By then the enemy was withdrawing, covering the retreat with small-arms fire. Giunta moved on alone and spotted two insurgents dragging Brennan. The specialist immediately opened fire with his M4 carbine, killing one of the Taliban and scaring off the other. He then recovered the badly wounded Brennan and got him to cover. Gallardo soon joined Giunta, and the two remained at Brennan’s side, talking to him and rendering what first aid they could until a medic from another platoon arrived. The Apaches, an AC-130 gunship and a high-flying B-1 bomber wreaked vengeance on the fleeing insurgents as a medevac Blackhawk came in to remove the wounded and Mendoza’s body. Giunta and the other survivors then resumed the twohour march to their outpost. Brennan died the next day in surgery. The Korengal firefight had lasted three minutes. MH
FROM TOP: U.S. ARMY; BROOKS KRAFT/CORBIS
By Chuck Lyons
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What We Learned From... WorldMags.net Strasbourg, 357 By Thomas Zacharis
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n Nov. 6, 355, Roman Emperor Constantius II proclaimed his cousin Flavius Claudius Julianus, a 23-yearold student in Athens, Caesar of the western provinces. A few days later the ever-paranoid emperor married off Julian to his own sister Helena and assigned the young theosophist to the rebellious province of Gaul, perhaps hoping his potential rival would die there in battle. On December 1 Julian dutifully headed east to confront an invasion by a confederation of Germanic tribes known as the Alemanni. In 356 Julian recovered Colonia Agrippina (present-day Cologne) from the Franks, only to be besieged by the Alemanni for several months southeast of Paris. When he mounted a twopronged counterattack along the Rhine in 357, his column lost time chasing German raiders, while the larger second column fled under ambush by Alemanni forces and retired into winter quarters. Emboldened by intelligence that Julian had only 13,000 men, the Alemanni king, Chnodomar, gathered 35,000 German warriors on a hillside
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outside the ruined Roman fortress at Argentoratum (present-day Strasbourg) and openly defied the Caesar. The Alemanni right, under Chnodomar’s nephew Serapio, lay concealed amid thick woods, ready to ambush the approaching Romans. Chnodomar anchored the left with his best cavalry, interspersed with foot soldiers assigned to bring down the Roman horses. The center comprised a mix of Germanic chieftains and their warriors. Julian arranged his infantry in two disciplined lines, with his cavalry on the right. As the armies closed, an overconfident Chnodomar and fellow chieftains dismounted to lead their warriors into battle. The Roman left, under Julian’s deputy, Severus, detected Serapio’s concealed troops and was moving against the Alemanni center when Julian’s cavalry gave way. With the Roman cavalry out of the picture, Chnodomar charged Julian’s center. While the Alemanni warriors were generally larger and stronger, the Romans had superior training and discipline and inflicted heavy casualties. Regardless, a shock force of Germans
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managed to breach the Roman line and force its way to the heart of Julian’s position. There his elite veterans ultimately prevailed, forming a tightening crescent around the exhausted Alemanni, whose pullback degenerated into a rout. Pursued to the banks of the Rhine, most of the Germans swam to safety, but Chnodomar himself fell captive, and Julian sent him to Constantius as a prize. The Romans claimed 243 men killed and estimated Alemanni losses at 6,000 slain in combat and 2,000 killed or drowned while seeking to swim the river. Julian prudently did not cross the Rhine but instead campaigned to drive any remaining Germans from Gaul. His victory restored Roman control of the Rhine’s right bank and set the young commander on course to eventual coronation in Constantinople as the last non-Christian emperor of Rome.
Lessons: Don’t cramp your own style. The
Alemanni formed their line between the Rhine and heavy woods, restricting their maneuverability and neutralizing their numerical advantage. Use good horse sense. By dismounting to lead their warriors into battle, Chnodomar and his chieftains ceded combat oversight and denied themselves a cavalry option. Never underestimate an opponent.
The Alemanni had already driven off superior Roman forces led by professional soldiers. They assumed that Julian, an inexperienced young intellectual, would be easy to defeat. He proved them wrong. Quit while you’re ahead. Julian wisely held his pursuing Romans at the Rhine, as the forests beyond harbored waiting bands of hostile Germans and Franks. MH
JOHANN MICHAEL METTENLEITER/AKG-IMAGES
Julian’s Roman veterans outfought and outlasted the exhausted Alemanni.
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WorldMags.net Carthaginian War Elephant By Jon Guttman / Illustration by Peter Dennis
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arthaginians first encountered war elephants in Sicily while battling Greek general Pyrrhus of Epirus in 278–276 BC. Daunted and impressed by the pugnacious pachyderms, they soon began importing North African forest elephants for their army, using Indian mahouts hired through Egypt, as well as riders from Syria, Numidia and other states. Tactical acumen in their use, on the other hand, took years and heavy casualties to perfect. In 255 BC the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus opened the Battle of Bagradas with a charge of some 100 elephants in the Carthaginian stomp of Consul Marcus Atilius Regulus’ Roman army. From then on both the Carthaginians and Romans overestimated the animal’s martial abilities. Four years later at Panormus (present-day Palermo), Sicily, Roman Consul Lucius Caecilus Metellus directed his entrenched light troops to harass the Carthaginian elephants with a rain of arrows and javelins, which caused the beasts to panic and turn on the Carthaginian troops, resulting in a rout that restored Roman confidence about facing elephants. While Carthage ultimately raised a force of 300 war elephants, Hannibal brought just 37 of them on his legendary 218 BC traverse of the Alps. Though most survived the arduous trek, they only figured significantly at the Battle of the Trebbia in December, when they panicked the Roman horses and auxiliaries. Many died in battle, and a subsequent cold snap killed all the rest but one. When he returned to Carthage in 202 BC to face Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio at Zama, Hannibal gathered 80 elephants, though neither they nor their mahouts were experienced. Scipio sought to eliminate them as a factor by leaving lanes between his maniples, through which the beasts, lured by skirmishers, might charge without breaking up the Roman line. Scipio succeeded in his ploy and won the battle. MH
1. Roman poets Juvenal and Lucretius both refer to towers perched atop the Carthaginian war elephants’ backs. These were probably made of wood, their outer walls further protected by the gleaming shields of the helmeted spearmen concealed inside. 2. Roman playwright Plautus described Hannibal’s personal elephant, Surus, as entering battle draped in red cloth. Blood-red caparisons and harnesses were likely standard, both for protection and for their psychological effect on the enemy. 3. The effectiveness of war elephants depended on training and experience—both for the animals and their mahouts, the men who guided them. Carthage hired foreign civilian mahouts, who were never as well protected as the soldiers within the towers.
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IMAGE FROM NEW VANGUARD #150, WAR ELEPHANTS, BY KONSTANTIN NOSSOV, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD.
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WorldMags.net MILITARY FORCES THROUGHOUT HISTORY— FROM TRIBAL BANDS TO REGIONAL MILITIAS TO STANDING NATIONAL ARMIES— SHARE CERTAIN ATTRIBUTES.
Whether successful in combat or not, all have used weapons, all have developed and utilized tactics, and all have considered means to feed and provision themselves while on campaign. Most such forces have had some sort of leadership hierarchy, commonly known today as a chain of command. Those with no such hierarchy—anarchists, for example, or those whose politics demanded each operation be planned by committee and voted on by all members—have been almost universally self-defeating and, understandably, quickly succumbed to their better-organized adversaries. Successful military operations require planning, of course, but a requirement to achieve consensus before taking any proposed action has historically been the fast lane to death, destruction and defeat. Simply put, effective military organizations must have designated leaders at various levels; such forces are not democracies, and not everyone gets a vote. That said, overall control of a military force by a single, all-powerful person whose decisions are final and irrevocable —particularly one who believes him or herself imbued with godlike powers or infallible judgment—has rarely been a good thing. Czars, dictators and those claiming to be the handpicked earthly representatives of the almighty tend to be uniformly poor military commanders. With no requirement to heed the advice of “inferiors,” they often make decisions that lead to widespread death and destruction—often followed by their own untimely demise and the end of their dynasties. MH
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Tears of Chios The slaughter of civilians on this Aegean island finally prompted Europe to help Greece throw off four centuries of Ottoman rule By Anthony Brandt 24 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
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EUGÈNE DELACROIX/SCALA/LOUVRE, PARIS/ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK
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Unveiled at the 1824 Paris Salon, Eugene Delacroix’s The Massacre at Chios helped turn European public opinion against the Turks and increase sympathy and support for Greek self-rule.
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Ibrahim Pasha
In 1823, shortly before his death in Greece and after having spent much of his fortune to help finance the ongoing 1821–29 Greek War of Independence, English poet Lord Byron shared his unfavorable impression of the country with Julius Millingen, the British physician who would attend him in his last days. “I know this nation by long and attentive experience,” he told the doctor. “The Greeks are perhaps the most depraved and degraded people under the sun.” Earlier that year he had expressed similar disgust at the lack of local response after a road building accident. “They are such barbarians, that if I had the government of them, I would pave these very roads with them.” Odd that a people who originated the term “barbarian” as a name for anyone who was not Greek should have the term applied to themselves, but Byron had a point. While the poet referred to Greece as a nation, it wasn’t one in any sense of the word. Its people spoke the same language, but they were a far cry from their classical forefathers who had founded and inspired Western civilization. The revolution was certainly not what anyone would call a well-organized event, as the Greeks were divided into political factions based on deep regional hatreds, with a largely illiterate peasantry and leaders obsessed with gaining power for themselves. In the midst of it the Greeks waged two civil wars, and in its aftermath an opposing political faction assassinated the founding president. In 1832, when after nearly 400 years of occupation by the Ottoman empire and a decade of war Greece at last secured its independence, the European powers wisely found a king to govern the country. It had taken a massacre to get their attention.
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Otto of Bavaria
nder Ottoman rule Greece was a complicated place. The Greek Orthodox Church was headquartered in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the very heart of the Ottoman empire, and Sultan Mahmud II was pledged by an extant treaty with Russia not to interfere with the church and to protect Christians from insult and injury by his fellow Muslims. Some of the sultan’s closest advisers and many in the Ottoman bureaucracy were Greek. In Greece itself Turkish and Greek merchants lived side by side and traded freely with each other. Constantinople’s rule was largely nominal—functionaries collected taxes, small garrisons occupied the cities and towns, and feudal overlords held sway in the countryside. Still, Turkish governance was neither consistent nor stable. The Ottoman armies that occasionally marched in to enforce rule in areas prone to resistance were scarcely better disciplined than the Greek rebels opposing them. The mountaindwelling klephts (Greek for “thieves”), as one group of rebels was known, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Turks, though they were willing to switch sides if to their advantage. The armatoloi, armed Greek bands ostensibly fighting for the Ottomans, also shifted their allegiance when convenient, as did the warlike Souliotes, from the namesake northern mountain fastness of Souli. In the early 19th century Greeks comprised a patchwork of tribes, clans, brigands, peasants and scattered intellectuals schooled in western Europe, and they dwelt in a state of chaos characterized by shifting loyalties and the deceitfulness on which Byron often remarked. One issue on which Greeks largely agreed, however, was their desire to break the Ottoman yoke. Taxes were onerous, and the collectors corrupt. Greeks were Christian, the Turks
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FROM LEFT: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; JEAN PLATTEL/ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; JOSEPH KARL STIELER/ HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; OPPOSITE: THOMAS PHILLIPS/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
Theodoros Kolokotronis
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English poet Lord Byron, depicted in traditional Mediterranean garb, toured much of the region during his short lifetime and helped finance the Greek War of Independence before his 1824 death in Missolonghi at age 36.
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Muslim. Ottoman rule was arbitrary and often cruel, and when the Turks needed soldiers, they simply took them, one son per family. The Greeks were willing to fight for their independence, but as their loyalties remained localized, it became nearly impossible to create a national government, assemble a national army or act collectively in any way. They were plenty determined and courageous, but European-style warfare— with well-organized armies maneuvering in the open—was unknown to them, and they had little in the way of artillery. Still, they wanted freedom and had risen over the centuries in abortive revolutions. They also had the sympathies of the western European powers. Greece was the fountainhead of Western civilization—all Europe knew of Plato, Socrates, Thucydides, Pericles and Aristotle—and the feeling was universal its people ought to be free.
The spark that ultimately led to the Greek uprising was the creation of the Filiki Eteria, or Society of Friends. Formed in 1814 in Odessa, Russia, by three expatriate Greeks determined to overthrow Ottoman rule, the secret society started with no money, few members and no inkling how to achieve its goals. Over the next several years the group slowly gained supporters in the thousands, first among the émigré population of Greek merchants in Russia and Western Europe and then among notable military figures and intellectuals within Greece itself. The actual fighting began in 1821 in the Ottoman domains of eastern Europe. Alexandros Ypsilantis, a Russian officer and former aide-de-camp to Czar Alexander I, was the newly elected leader of the Filiki Eteria. He believed that by provoking unrest in the Ottoman-ruled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, he might inspire Greece and the Balkan countries to rise against the Turks. Bearing a razor-sharp Knowing Greece would need outside support blade of Damascus to succeed, Ypsilantis sought to pull Russia into steel, a Turkish dagger the revolution, but there his hopes were dashed. like the one pictured While Czar Alexander was an Orthodox Chrisabove—which may have belonged to Sultan tian and sympathetic to Greece, he was also an old school autocrat who believed in established Hyder Ali of Mysore— authority. Russia condemned the uprisings, proved formidable in close-quarters combat. the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church denounced them, and Ypsilantis was unable to coordinate rebel forces. That June, in the only real battle with Turkish forces, the Greeks were cut to pieces on a plain in Wallachia. Out of the 400 or so inexperienced student volunteers Ypsilantis had recruited into his Sacred Band, more than half were killed. Ypsilantis and the survivors fled the field.
A Sultan’s Dagger
28 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
By then, however, Greece had risen against the Turks. Earlier that year regional leaders had gathered at Vostitsa (present-day Aigio), a port on the Gulf of Corinth, to discuss plans. Predictably, they couldn’t agree on a course of action, but unrest spread, rebels gathered, and in March widespread fighting broke out. In one town a force of 2,000 armed Greeks simply marched on the town’s small Turkish garrison. No shots were fired. The Turks surrendered on a promise of mercy—they did not receive it. Few survived. The rebels easily took several other small towns, but then came the rising at Patras, a large and prosperous commercial port with foreign consulates and a central citadel. As a Greek army of 5,000 gathered, many Turkish residents left, while others sought refuge in the citadel. Ottoman troops searching a house for hidden arms set fire to the structure when the owner barred the door. The fire quickly spread, and some 200 houses were consumed in the ensuing conflagration. Fighting broke out in the streets, the Greeks cut the water supply to the fortress and began digging a mine beneath its walls. Patras would have fallen had it not been for the arrival of Turkish reinforcements, who staved off repeated—and ultimately unsuccessful—attacks on the fortress. In the early days of the rising klepht commander Theodoros Kolokotronis, a onetime British officer, emerged as a preeminent rebel leader. He was among the first to impose some sort of military structure on Greek forces, and under his leadership they won a decisive early clash at a village called Valtetsi. As the Ottomans approached, Kolokotronis ordered his men to fortify the church, cut firing slots in the walls and build redoubts atop a commanding slope. Though the Greeks had run from such pitched battles, this time they stood their ground, held off the Turks and then, as the enemy withdrew, fell on them in a fury and killed hundreds. It was the first major rebel victory of the war. Other victories followed as the Greeks gained in numbers and focused their attacks on the Ottoman fortresses ringing the Peloponnese, southwest of Athens. They failed to take them all, however, and as the conflict swung back and forth, they lost many of the ones they had seized. But taking any of them was a symbolic, heartening victory for the Greeks. As they lacked siege artillery, they relied on cutting water supplies to the citadels and starving out the defending Turks. That’s exactly what happened at Tripolis, a fortified town whose walls were 6 feet deep and 14 feet high. Kolokotronis saw it as the linchpin fortress in the Peloponnese chain. The siege began in the spring of 1821 and stretched into the fall. It ended when Greek rebels broke through a blind spot in the defenses and opened a gate from within. By then starvation, disease and death were endemic, and the surviving 8,000 Turkish soldiers and 30,000 citizens were in no shape to do anything but plead for mercy.
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CZARTORYSKI MUSEUM, CRACOW, POLAND/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
The Greeks were willing to fight, but as their loyalties remained localized, it became nearly impossible to act collectively in any way
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CARL HAAG/BENAKI MUSEUM, ATHENS/HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Early 19th century Greeks comprised a patchwork of tribes and clans that lived in a state of armed chaos characterized by shifting loyalties.
A small Turkish cavalry contingent managed to fight its way out of Tripolis. Still others held out within the citadel at the heart of town. When that fell, Kolokotronis entered to claim the riches gathered there for safekeeping, while outside the citadel his unrestrained rebel troops indulged their bloodlust. One observer estimated the Greeks massacred 8,000 Turks the first day. Two thousand civilian refugees earlier granted safe passage from the city were taken to a ravine and murdered. It was going to be an especially nasty war.
While Greece lacked a formal navy, the residents of its many islands owned fleets of ships that traded throughout the Mediterranean. Their vessels were smaller but faster and far more agile those of the Ottoman navy, and the Greek tactic of ramming enemy warships with explosives-laden fire ships soon negated the advantage of the Turks’ superior guns. A fire ship could do more than sink a single vessel; sometimes the resulting inferno spread and took out whole fleets.
It helped that the Turks weren’t particularly good sailors; theirs was largely a land-based empire. At the outset of the revolt most of their captains were Greeks, whose subsequent departure left the Ottoman navy leaderless—a handicap exacerbated by the Turks’ poor gunnery skills. In the opening years of the conflict the Ottoman navy sallied forth several times each summer but accomplished little other than to resupply the citadels along the Peloponnese coast. Within months of the massacre at Tripolis the Turks exacted their revenge on the Aegean island of Chios. Chios was famous for its principal product, a translucent resin called mastic that originates as sap from small trees on the southern end of the island. Known by the Greeks as “tears of Chios,” it remains an ingredient in food products throughout the Middle East and was popular among harem women as chewing gum, as it whitened teeth. In 1822 the Greek population was peaceful, the Turkish garrison quiet and the hand of government light, leaving Chios to run itself. That spring a small Greek fleet arrived, attacked the garrison and sought to persuade islanders to join the rebellion. Some did, but the vast majority refused, insisting they could contribute little to the war and noting they were only a few miles from the Turkish mainland. Like it or not, however, Chios was at war. In response to the rebel incursion, Turkey sent 1,000 soldiers to the island. The Greeks responded with 1,500 troops of their own, and battle was joined. When the sultan sent 15,000 more men— mostly volunteers with plunder on their minds—the small Greek contingent fled, leaving the 120,000 islanders helpless. The result was a massacre; the Turks killed randomly and rampantly, enslaving those Chians who survived. Estimates of the number of those slaughtered ran upward of 50,000, with an equal number enslaved.
While the massacre on Chios was an immense tragedy, it represented a major turning point in the war. Until then the European powers had kept out of the conflict, declaring their neutrality. Many had profitable trade agreements with the Ottomans, and their governments and monarchs generally frowned on rebellion under any circumstances. But the bloodbath on Chios disgusted the people and leaders of
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A period illustration depicts the crowded disposition of troop-laden Ottoman and Egyptian ships within the western Peloponnese port of Navarino as a fleet of European warships approaches on Oct. 20, 1827.
Europe. Britain threatened the withdrawal of its ministers from Constantinople. In France painter Eugène Delacroix exhibited his depiction of the massacre at the 1824 Paris Salon, further arousing public opinion. Across the continent sympathy for the Greek cause solidified. The Greeks, despite their successes in the Peloponnese, certainly needed Europe’s help—financial in particular. Greek troops were hard enough to control under ordinary circumstances. Without pay they were virtually impossible, routinely heading home between battles and focused on plunder instead of fighting. The establishment of a recognized government was also extremely problematic. Rivalries abounded. Military leaders disliked and distrusted civilian leaders and vice versa. Under such circumstances what government was going to lend them money? It was not a government that broke the logjam, but an English poet—Lord Byron. Answering an appeal from rebel leaders, he sailed to Greece in the summer of 1823, landing on one of the British-held Ionian Islands and trailing his extraordinary fame behind him. He had been in Greece before and loved the people, but he entertained no illusions about their character. He advanced his own money
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to the cause and helped secure substantial loans from a private British committee dedicated to helping the Greeks win their independence. Months passed before he could venture to the Greek mainland at Missolonghi, which had been under siege by the Turks for nearly a year. In early 1824 he was slated to lead an expedition against the Turkish fortress at Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, but he fell ill and died of a fever before firing a shot. These decades removed, it is hard to appreciate Byron’s popularity and impact. As a leading poet of the era he had gained fame to a degree only a Hollywood star could hope to achieve in our time. The young noble was the embodiment of the Romantic movement and in death became a martyr to the cause of liberty. Sympathy for the Greeks, already strong across Europe, surged following news of Byron’s passing. Reinforcing the growing popular and governmental commitment to Greece’s independence were Greek reverses in the war and the revolution’s internal politics. First came civil war. The opposing factions—a Peloponnesian one led by Kolokotronis, the other by political forces representing much of continental Greece, with the bigger Greek islands also becoming involved—came to blows in 1824 over who would lead the country, levy taxes and ultimately control the nation’s fate. It was a shooting war but with little bloodshed. Following later that year, the second was a reprise of the first. Each conflict featured a clash of egos, as well as opposing
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PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE/PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
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When it appeared the Turks at Navarino were about to launch a fire ship, the European naval guns opened up and quickly decimated the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet.
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regions. The power struggles that had plagued Greece for centuries were all in evidence—and then there was Kolokotronis, whose desire for control could not be contained. The Greeks set aside their differences only when forced to unite again in 1825 against the sultan, who had called in his own foreign help—a force under Ibrahim Pasha, son of self-declared Egyptian Khedive Muhammad Ali, who added his territorial ambitions to the mix. In return for their help the Egyptians wanted not only Crete and Cyprus, which had joined the revolution, but all of the Peloponnese. And in a series of campaigns they took it. But as one British observer noted, “Ibrahim marched where he pleased but only ruled where he was.” It is one thing to defeat a country, something else entirely to occupy it.
The fighting dragged on another few years, but growing British, French and Russian intervention sealed the fate of Ibrahim’s army and guaranteed victory for the Greeks. The European triumvirate’s demands for a cease-fire and negotiations grew increasingly insistent even as British, French and Russian naval units gathered in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ottomans and Egyptians put together a new fleet to bring yet more reinforcements to Greece, the ships gathering in Navarino Bay on the west coast of the Peloponnese. On Oct. 20, 1827, the European fleet entered the anchorage. When it appeared the Ottomans were preparing
to launch a fire ship against the European ships, shooting broke out. The firing quickly spread, erupting into a fullscale naval battle within the confines of the bay. When the smoke cleared, the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet had lost most of its ships and thousands of men, while the Europeans lost not a single ship and fewer than 200 dead. The aftermath involved prolonged, complex negotiations among the western European powers, Russia, the Ottoman government, the Egyptians and the Greeks. Peripheral conflicts included a yearlong war between the Russians and Turks that ended with Russian troops camped 40 miles from Constantinople, as well as a naval blockade of Egypt. Continued negotiations resulted in the installation of a minor European aristocrat, Otto of Bavaria, as king of Greece in May 1832. All that remained was to turn Greece into an actual functioning nation. MH A frequent contributor to Military History, Anthony Brandt is the author of The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage. For further reading he recommends The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom and the Birth of Modern Greece, by David Brewer, and The Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence, by David Howarth.
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Contesting Castile Before there was a Spain, two half-brothers waged a less-than-chivalrous civil war for control of a powerful Iberian kingdom By Douglas Sterling
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In 1366, having been deposed as king of Castile by his illegitimate half-brother Henry, Peter I, right, teamed with Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and England’s Prince of Wales, to reclaim his throne.
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On Aug. 1, 1366, a tri-masted Castilian carrack eased alongside a pier on the Adour River in Bayonne, France. Aboard were Peter I—until five months earlier the king of Castile (encompassing much of present-day Spain)—his daughters and a handful of advisers. The carrack also carried Peter’s personal belongings and a few chests of coin and jewels—the remains of the monarch’s disposable wealth. Deposed by his illegitimate half-brother Henry of Trastámara and deserted by many of his allies, Peter had retreated steadily in the face of the usurper’s advances and finally fled the peninsula altogether. Two days after his arrival in Bayonne, Peter—whom detractors disparaged as “Peter the Cruel”—and his entourage traveled north to Capbreton. Riding south from his capital at Bordeaux, Edward—Duke of Aquitaine and England’s Prince of Wales—met Peter with great pomp and embraced him warmly. A contemporary chronicler wrote that Edward pledged to help Peter regain his throne, “even if it cost me my dukedom, and my life to boot.… A bastard never wrought an act of folly as great as this without paying for it at the edge of the sword.” With that the two toasted their alliance with wine served by a chevalier wearing golden spurs. In Bordeaux, over several days marked by dancing and feasting, Peter plied Edward with flattery and lavish gifts, including a golden table ornamented with rich gems. And he held forth the promise of even greater riches. In return Edward vowed to assemble an army large enough to return Castile to its rightful ruler. It was a pledge that bore consequences neither man foresaw.
Edward’s decision to back Peter’s bid to regain his throne was neither altruistic nor made simply out of obligation to a fellow royal. Their meeting at Bordeaux came during a lull in the Hundred Years’ War—10 years after Edward’s defeat and capture of French King John II at the Battle of Poitiers, and six years after the Treaty of Brétigny nominally settled the struggle. But the power struggle continued, as proxies on either side sought to maintain or expand their political influence and territory. Among the advantages England may have anticipated from an alliance with Castile was Peter’s help in subduing, or at least distracting, the bands of Frenchpaid mercenaries (routiers) then ravaging the countryside in English-ruled Aquitaine. Castile’s substantial fleet might also tip the naval balance in England’s favor. By mid-month Charles II of Navarre, whose kingdom lay sandwiched between Aquitaine and Castile, had joined Edward and Peter. Though Charles was widely known to be 34 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
a fickle, devious and treacherous ruler whose loyalty was never certain, an alliance with him—if it could be maintained—would buffer Aquitaine’s southern f lank. But Charles wasn’t the only untrustworthy member of the burgeoning alliance; Peter himself was making promises he could never hope to fulfill. Edward and Charles agreed to foot the campaign expenses in exchange for promised financial compensation and land grants, including lucrative Castilian coastal communities and shipbuilding centers. But in a kingdom riven by factions, Peter couldn’t make such concessions without alienating his subjects and supporters. Unbeknown to his allies, he never intended to repay them. Peter had other, more obvious shortcomings. Edward’s chief counselors (among them Sir John Chandos, whose herald left a poetic chronicle of the prince’s reign) advised against the alliance, pointing out that Peter’s cruelty and arrogance had initially prompted his overthrow. He was even rumored to have murdered his wife Blanche of Bourbon. Furthermore, Peter had been excommunicated, so any support for him would draw the displeasure of Pope Urban V. But Edward’s dreams of glory and his resolve to defend a fellow royal from the usurpation of one known as “the Bastard” trumped all protestations of caution. At the time Edward’s hold on Gascony was weakening, thus the prince also relished an excuse to both occupy his subjects and restock his depleted coffers. Initially, however, mounting campaign costs only served to further deplete those coffers. He sold and melted down palace silver plate for coin and even wrote to his father, King Edward III, for a share of the ransom paid thus far by France for John II, who had since died in captivity. In the end Edward raised sufficient funds without having to tax the inhabitants of Aquitaine, which would have left a discontented populace in the prince’s rear. Gathering the necessary forces was also relatively easy. Numerous English and Gascon knights had joined the ranks of the “free companies,” men who had resorted to pillaging in the time of the treaty. When called to arms by the prince, Sir Hugh Calveley and other such mercenaries flocked to his standard. According to chronicler Jean Froissart, the prince hired some 12,000 of these company troops. Edward also called on his Aquitanian lords to join the expedition with their own contingents and retainers. He assembled the army at Dax, in the foothills of the Pyrenees near Navarre. Also gathering were rumors the ever-unpredictable Charles of Navarre was contemplating another turn of his coat. In return for land and even more riches than Peter had promised, Charles had reportedly promised Henry
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After seizing the throne of Castile, Henry exploited the ongoing power struggle between England and France to secure military aid from Bertrand du Guesclin, a French mercenary leader.
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rothers will be brothers. But half-brothers Peter and Henry (formally Peter I and Henry II of the Crown of Castile) took sibling rivalry to a new level during their decidedly uncivil 1366–69 civil war. Rather than fight their own battles, the brothers brought in England and France to wage a proxy war on their behalf. Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and England’s Prince of Wales, vowed to help Peter regain his throne, while usurper Henry hired military muscle under French mercenary Bertrand du Guesclin to defend his claim. Caught in the middle was two-faced Charles II of Navarre, who agreed to allow Edward’s army passage through his kingdom, then tried a side deal with Henry for more loot. Edward proved more persuasive, and the war was on.
Edward’s March to Nájera Two routes led to Burgos. Edward chose the more direct route west across high country through Salvatierra. Finding Henry waiting for him at Vitoria, he veered south to cross the Ebro at Logroño and then turned west on the road to Nájera. Henry also got there first.
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DISTANCES: Huércanos to Nájera, 2 miles/3 km Nájera to Navarette, 9 miles/14 km MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK/SWMAPS.COM
The Battle of Nájera
Henry had anchored his line behind the rain-swollen Najerilla River, the strongest position in terrain otherwise devoid of cover. But the usurper, eager to reassure the wavering Castilian nobles, ignored his officers’ advice and crossed the river to attack first. The decision forced his men to attack uphill in plain view of Edward’s army. After an opening exchange of arrows and sling stones, du Guesclin’s men-at-arms met those of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in bitter close combat. Henry’s superior numbers started to tell, until John, Count of Armagnac, and his Gascon knights charged out to attack Henry’s left flank. The move panicked Henry’s cavalry, which fled the field, and Armagnac pivoted to encircle du Guesclin. Henry tried to break the circle, but then his standard fell, and his men bolted.
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he would bar passage of Edward’s army through Navarre. To forestall any such weakening of Charles’ resolve, Edward ordered Calveley to invade Navarre from his camp in northern Castile. Calveley crossed the Ebro River and captured a number of towns in his march toward Charles’ capital city of Pamplona. At this display of force Charles knuckled under, insisting his support of Henry had been insincere and renewing his promise to open the passes into Castile.
On Feb. 14, 1367, the lead elements of Edward’s army set out for Roncesvalles Pass, the gateway to Castile. The prince’s younger brother John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 38 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
commanded the vanguard. The 26-year-old had arrived in Bordeaux in early December with between 400 and 500 soldiers, mostly archers. In Brittany a force commanded by Sir Robert Knolles joined the column, as did other such prominent knights as Thomas d’Ufford, William Beauchamp, John Neville and Edward’s counselor Sir John Chandos, the latter perhaps the most experienced knight in the army besides the prince himself. The main body of the army followed the next day. Included were knights from Normandy, Hainault, Brittany and Gascony, as well as levies from Aquitaine. Estimates number the army at upward of 25,000 men. It was a formi-
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BENJAMIN BURNELL/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO © PHILIP MOULD LTD, LONDON/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
Edward’s support of Peter was hardly altruistic. The prince likely expected the king’s support in subduing French mercenaries in neighboring Aquitaine.
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/© HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2016
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dable force for the time, made even more daunting by the roaming bands of free company men, who proceeded to rob and pillage the lands of the duplicitous king of Navarre. The road to Roncesvalles led across the Nive River and then upward through a narrow gorge. The march was grueling and dangerous, with bitter cold and the ever-present fear of ambush dogging the men of the van. Certainly some must have recalled that six centuries earlier the famed Frankish knight Roland had been ambushed and killed in the same pass. When Henry learned Edward was on the march, he sent word to Bertrand du Guesclin, a free company leader from Brittany who had helped him seize the throne, imploring him to rally his forces to the defense of Castile. Du Guesclin had earned his laurels fighting for France against England in the opening phase of the Hundred Years’ War and had been awarded a pension by the dauphin (the future Charles V). Having spent several years fighting in various campaigns outside the boundaries of the Treaty of Brétigny, he now returned to help his client keep his throne. Prince Edward’s intent was to march on the Castilian capital of Burgos. The most direct route through Salvatierra and Vitoria traversed rugged high country that would tax his men and leave them vulnerable to ambush. The alternative route through Logroño on the Ebro was easier to cross but longer. Edward sent a force of 160 foot soldiers and 300 mounted archers under Sir Thomas Felton south through Logroño to scout for Henry’s army, then set out for Salvatierra with the bulk of his army. Peter implored Edward to sack the town as an example, but its inhabitants yielded without resistance, and the prince kept his army in check as he awaited Felton’s report on Henry’s position. When it came, it was a surprise: The Castilian army had crossed the Ebro and was coming on. Edward was reportedly impressed by Henry’s boldness and glad the usurper appeared to desire battle. Perhaps Edward was eager to do battle, but he first made an attempt to dissuade Henry from the fight. The prince sent a message by herald to the Castilian camp, offering to mediate between the half-brothers and extending honorable terms in return for Henry’s renunciation of his claim on Castile. The offer fell on deaf ears; as a reigning king and son of another, Henry had no intention of abdicating. The armies closed on Vitoria.
On reaching Vitoria and anticipating attack, Edward deployed his army in order of battle, its thousands of banners soon fluttering in the stiff March breeze. But the Castilians already occupied a strong position in the hills and chose not to make a frontal assault, electing instead to harass Edward’s exposed and vulnerable force with pinprick raids. One destroyed a detachment under Calveley, after which the Castilians raided Lancaster’s camp and surprised Felton’s scouts, killing or capturing them all. Edward’s subordinates, including Chandos, advised the
between the half-brothers and extended honorable terms in return for Henry’s renunciation
prince not to read too much into these early losses, insisting that Henry’s army, though more than twice the size of Edward’s force, would lose decisively when it joined combat with the flower of the English army. With Henry commanding the heights and the dismal March weather taking a toll on Edward’s men and horses, the prince changed tactics. He broke camp and abandoned the direct road, crossing the Ebro at Logroño and gaining the road to Burgos that passed through the towns of Nájera and Santo Domingo. The maneuver obliged Henry to come down from the hills to protect Burgos. Recrossing the Ebro, he hurried to Nájera to interpose his army between the prince and the capital, anchoring his defensive line behind the rain-swollen Najerilla River. The terrain otherwise offered the Castilians little defensive cover. Having faced Edward in battle before, most of Henry’s military commanders advised their sovereign not to attack. Du Guesclin urged him to further strengthen his defensive position by digging ditches and using the army’s wagons as bulwarks. While the Castilians were well supplied from Burgos, he noted, the English were backed up against mountains bare of forage. Within days du Guesclin argued, famine would force Edward’s army to retreat “like a stag from a dog.” Were the prince to attack, he added, so much the better, as Henry’s formidable defensive line would stop him cold. Henry knew du Guesclin’s advice was sound, but it was also politically impossible. With his half-brother Peter advancing on the Desperate for Edward’s capital at the head of a large army, Henry was support, Peter showered fast losing face. Many nobles of Burgos had the Prince of Wales with already deserted his cause, largely due to his lavish gifts intended to inability to reward them satisfactorily after cement their alliance. the usurpation. Were Henry to waver, the prinAmong the treasures was the 170-carat red cipal nobles would switch their allegiance to spinel that remains the Peter. Henry must show both a willingness to centerpiece of Britain’s fight and confidence that God would reward imperial state crown. his cause with victory.
The Black Prince’s Ruby
The grassy plain separating the two armies rose gently toward the English encampment at Navarette. Henry’s best chance for victory was to force the English to attack him across the Najerilla and not risk his army in an uphill advance. But much of his force comprised light cavalry, which performed best on open ground and would be wasted in
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defense behind a river. So, against du Guesclin’s best counsel, during the night of April 2–3 Henry’s army crossed the Najerilla and encamped on the far bank. At dawn it advanced, with du Guesclin’s men in the vanguard. Henry’s army consisted of three divisions. The first was the French contingent under du Guesclin and Marshal Arnoul d’Audrehem, supported by many of the Castilian nobility, including Henry’s younger brother Don Sancho. Joining them was the military order of Alfonso XI, the Knights of the Band—named for the red sashes its members wore and comprising some 1,000 foot soldiers flanked by cavalry. The second division comprised a core of 1,500 knights under Henry’s direct command, two wings of mounted men-at-arms and assorted units of crossbowmen, slingers and lightly armed horsemen. A division of mixed levies brought up the rear. When told of Henry’s advance, a delighted Edward exclaimed, “By St. George, this bastard is a valiant knight!” The prince immediately ordered his army forward, the troops descending from the high ground of Navarette. They moved in tight columns with banners flying and their shields emblazoned with the emblem of St. George, a red cross on a white field. Edward’s army, too, comprised three divisions. The Duke of Lancaster commanded the first. The prince himself led the second, Intended to protect a with Peter at his side. Heading the third was wearer’s gloved hand John, Count of Armagnac, with other Gascon and wrist from enemy nobles. Even as the armies readied for comsword blows, this 14th bat, batches of free company men deserted century hourglass Henry’s line, dashing across the plain to swell gauntlet would have Edward’s ranks. been familiar to Peter, Henry and Edward. The usurper sent du Guesclin forward on foot to meet Lancaster head-on. As the men of both vanguards advanced, English archers on the wings loosed their arrows into the Castilian horse, and Henry’s slingers responded in kind. The reinforced armor worn by du Guesclin’s men initially blunted the penetrating power of the fearsome English longbows, and many of the bowmen themselves succumbed to the hail of Castilian sling stones. But the relentless rain of English arrows soon reduced the slingers, and they ceased to be a factor in the battle. After the initial clash, the opposing men-at-arms threw aside their lances and hacked into each other with battle
Iron-Fisted Resolve
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axes, swords and daggers. Bloody hand-to-hand combat raged, and for a time it seemed the Castilians had the upper hand, as the English slowly gave ground. But at that point Armagnac’s Gascon knights charged into the fray, and at the sight Henry’s left wing, led by Don Tello, fled without striking a blow. Pressing his advantage, Armagnac immediately pivoted his formation and tore into du Guesclin’s left flank and rear. With Edward stiffening the center, du Guesclin’s division was virtually surrounded. No longer was the battle a melee of parallel ranks hacking away at each other. It was instead a compact ring, bristling with spears, two-handed swords and double-edged axes, an ever-narrowing noose that constricted around the Castilian vanguard. Seeing the difficulty du Guesclin was in, and realizing the tide of the battle depended on his relief, Henry repeatedly attempted to break the circle from without. At that critical juncture the fall of Henry’s royal standard sparked a panic among his forces. The Castilian horse fled the field, and after a final attempt to free du Guesclin, Henry followed. Many of his knights fought on, desperately seeking an escape, but the bulk of the usurper’s army was soon in headlong flight toward the Najerilla, its panicked men pursued by vengeful English and Gascon riders who slaughtered many on the plain and in the bottleneck of Castilians trying to cross the sole narrow span across the river. Du Guesclin, his vanguard cut off and losing men at every sword stroke, could no longer hold out. After ignoring a first appeal to surrender, du Guesclin heeded the second issued by Edward himself. Peter, witnessing the capitulation, asked for the prisoners to be delivered up to him, but Edward was all too aware of his ally’s sanguinary disposition and refused. Peter then rode out across the field strewn with dead and wounded, crying out for the “son of a whore who calls himself king of Castile!” The day after the battle Peter encountered a Gascon knight leading a captive. Recognizing the prisoner as a courtier who had gone over to Henry, Peter killed the man on the spot, angering the knight as well as Edward when told of the incident. It was an early sign of the bad blood that would doom their alliance within a few short months.
Peter’s renewed reign was destined to be brief. Edward, falling ill and disgusted by his erstwhile ally’s continued cruelty, arrogance and failure to honor his debts, soon returned to France. Though he had little to show for his outlay of money, men and materiel, Edward did bring with him a 170-carat ruby, extracted from Peter in partial payment, that remains the centerpiece of Britain’s imperial state crown (see sidebar, P. 39). From exile in France, Henry soon raised a new army with the ransomed du Guesclin and resumed the long and bitter civil war. In March 1369 he caught up to Peter at Montiel, in southeastern Castile, and for the last time defeated his half-brother, who holed up in the city fortress.
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Men-at-arms threw aside their lances and hacked into each other with battle axes, swords and daggers. Bloody hand-to-hand combat raged
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Fifteenth-century Flemish artist Loyset Liédet rendered this illustration of the decisive 1367 Battle of Nájera between du Guesclin and Henry’s Franco-Castilian force, left, and Edward’s victorious Anglo-Gascon army.
A desperate Peter sent a courier to bribe du Guesclin, promising Henry’s confidante money and land if he would switch his allegiance. Lured from the castle ostensibly to seal the deal, Peter was assassinated, reportedly at his brother’s own hand. Not all of the Englishmen who fought Henry were done with Castile, however. In 1371 Edward’s brother John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married Peter’s daughter Constance of Castile and through her claimed the throne, albeit from a safe distance in London. When Henry died in 1379, his son John succeeded him, but all the while Lancaster was
spinning schemes to take the kingdom by force. In 1386 John launched an ultimately failed expedition to Castile and renounced his claim to the throne two years later. Before doing so, however, he married his daughter Catherine to the young nobleman who eventually became King Henry III of Castile, which—in one of history’s great ironies—rejoined the lines of contentious half-brothers Peter and Henry. MH Kentucky-based bookseller and freelance writer Douglas Sterling is a contributor to several HistoryNet magazines. For further reading he recommends Pedro the Cruel of Castile, 1350–1369, by Clara Estow; The Life of Edward the Black Prince 1330–1376, by Henry Dwight Sedgwick; and Bertrand of Brittany: A Biography of Messire du Guesclin, by Roger Vercel.
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Nicholas II may not have led men in battle, but he did command from the front—to the ultimate detriment of his country, his army, his family and himself By Richard Selcer
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ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; BACKGROUND: MAK ART/ISTOCK/THINKSTOCK
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Czar Nicholas II had ample training but no actual command experience—and it showed during his visits to the World War I Eastern Front.
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General Mikhail Alekseyev
Reporting on recent Russian military adventures in eastern Ukraine, Time magazine put Russian President Vladimir Putin on its cover with the headline WHAT PUTIN WANTS. The editors answered their own rhetorical question, listing PREMIER, PRESIDENT and CZAR in descending order with the first two crossed out. If Time is right and Putin has ambitions of being a 21st century czar, he should study the military misadventures of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II. Nicholas occupies a unique niche in history as the last warrior-king to lead his armies from the front. The history of Europe is littered with other monarchs who personally led troops in combat—some victoriously, most not so much—notably Charles XII of Sweden, Peter the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Britain’s George II and Emperor Napoléon I of France. In 1743 George II was the last British monarch to ride into battle, but Continental royalty was old-fashioned. The last European monarchs to face each other on the battlefield were France’s Napoléon III and Italian ally Victor Emmanuel II against Austria’s Franz Josef I at Solferino in 1859. Known as “the Battle of the Emperors,” that engagement for all practical purposes brought down the curtain on emperors as field marshals. With the advent of mechanized warfare in the 20th century most everyone agreed wars should be left to the professionals. Fighting kings seemed a thing of the past—at least until Czar Nicholas II, “Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.”
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General Aleksey Brusilov
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orn into the Romanov dynasty, Nicholas’ position in relation to his army was different from that of his contemporaries George V of England, Franz Josef I of Austria and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. More so than any other European army, the Imperial Russian Army pledged its loyalty to its sovereign. Its uniforms bore the imperial coat of arms, not the Russian flag. Nicholas considered himself a soldier in the finest tradition of Romanov royal sons. He had received extensive military training and instruction in his youth and been appointed to the elite Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Life Guards, giving him the right to wear an officer’s uniform for the rest of his life. In photographs Nicholas is always pictured in uniform and often surrounded by similarly uniformed men, suggesting he was a full-f ledged member of the officer corps. Yet, not even in the imperial Russian military did he ever reach the rank of general, and unlike his idol, Peter the Great, he never commanded men in battle. The closest he got to any action was reviewing the troops. Those who knew Nicholas best admired him for what he was—a modest, charming, mild-mannered fellow who happened to be next in line to the throne when his father died in 1894. The immense burden of measuring up to his illustrious ancestors rested on narrow shoulders. He tended to follow the advice of the last person with whom he spoke, especially if that person were his wife, Alexandra “Alix” Feodorovna, a member of the German nobility and a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria.
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Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich
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The immense burden of measuring up to his illustrious ancestors rested on narrow shoulders
Nicholas arrives at the Eastern Front in the spring of 1915. The czar was haunted by Russia’s defeat in the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. Convinced his hands-on command would have turned the tide, he resolved to oversee operations in World War I.
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As the world geared up for war in 1914, Nicholas was haunted by memories of the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. In humiliating twin defeats at the hands of the Japanese— at Mukden, Manchuria, on March 10, 1905, and in the Tsushima Strait on May 28—Russia lost 100,000 men and the better part of its navy. The czar was forced to accept a peace treaty mediated by the United States only to learn afterward that Russian land forces had been in a good position to drive the Japanese from Manchuria. The military debacle and resulting loss of confidence on the Russian home front helped spark political and social unrest. Nicholas convinced himself that had he gone to the front for a firsthand view of things, he would have made the right decisions.
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t the outset of World War I Russia’s biggest military advantage was its vast manpower reserve. Since the days of Alexander I the elite branches of the army had been the artillery and the cavalry, neither of which had changed its doctrine or organization since the Napoléonic wars. The army’s greatest weaknesses were its industrial backwardness and a highly politicized officer corps, with hundreds of supernumerary generals and colonels. Events soon proved that Russian soldiers’ bravery and devotion to their “Little Father” were no substitutes for rifles, motor transport and a modern air force. At the top was Nicholas Romanov, all anyone could ask for in an ally—a team player, loyal and principled—but not a seasoned commander in chief. Nicholas’ decisions on the eve of the war placed Russia at a disadvantage even before the first shots were fired. He had long sought to avoid conflict by remaining in personal telegraphic contact with his German counterpart and cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II. Ultimately pressured by his own generals to seize the initiative, Nicholas ordered partial
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mobilization of the army on July 28, 1914. The next day, after being advised that halfway measures would throw the army into chaos, the czar ordered general mobilization, causing an alarmed German high command to shift into high gear with its own war plans. After receiving a telegram from Wilhelm, Nicholas again ordered partial mobilization, then on renewed pressure from his generals and ministers changed his mind once more and reinstated general mobilization, thus exasperating his own military and confusing his allies. Regardless, on August 1 Germany declared war on Russia, and German troops crossed the Belgian border three days later. Nicholas ordered an immediate invasion of Prussia. These early miscalculations set the pattern for the czar over the course of the conflict. On the first day of the war he appointed his cousin Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich supreme commander in chief, adding cryptically, “until I can join the army.” The czar’s military advisers all agreed with his decision. Fifty-sevenyear-old Nikolayevich was a graduate of the General Staff Academy, had fought bravely in the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War and was awarded the nation’s highest military decoration. However, Nicholas decided to pick his cousin’s staff. Nikolayevich first established his Stavka, or general headquarters, at the railway junction of Baranovichi (in present-day Belarus), roughly midway between the German and Austrian fronts. In 1915, under pressure from German advances, he relocated it farther east to Mogilev. Though the high command did its best to keep Nicholas in Petrograd (recently renamed from St. Petersburg to sound less German), the war was not yet a month old when the czar made his first of many visits to the Stavka. No one could accuse him of lacking courage. When he did visit, the generals tried to keep him occupied by having him inspect fortifications, decorate heroic soldiers and make rousing
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At a training camp in Veliky Novgorod, Nicholas consecrates a dragoon regiment about to deploy. Russia entered the war with a vast manpower reserve, but it sorely lacked modernization.
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Though the Russian high command encouraged Nicholas to remain in Petrograd, the czar first visited the front within a month of the outbreak of hostilities. Above, he scans enemy positions through a trench periscope.
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Nicholas became so absorbed with events on the front lines that he failed to anticipate the political upheaval in Petrograd that overthrew his monarchy, spawning revolt and civil war.
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By July 1917, four months after Nicholas’ abdication, Bolshevik-led armed demonstrations like this one in Petrograd had thrown Russia into chaos.
speeches. They were happiest when he remained home at the imperial palace. In Mogilev he stayed in the provincial governor’s house but was at headquarters each morning by 9:30. There he reviewed reports, usually followed by a leisurely lunch, and in the afternoon he might visit the men in their camps before ending the day visiting field hospitals. Reviewing his soldiers in formation never failed to cheer him, leading Nicholas to believe he was really making a difference. After a dinner prepared by his personal chef and served on the royal dinnerware, he would sit in on planning sessions until late at night. He often brought his young son and heir, Alexis, with him on these visits, considering it good training for the future emperor. Meanwhile, Alexandra remained in Petrograd as regent, running the country in his absence, listening to no one but Grigori Rasputin, her manipulative mystic adviser.
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icholas’ early hesitation to inject himself directly into military operations lasted less than a year. Leaving final decisions to the supreme commander and his staff was fine, but Nicholas’ title and the Life Guards uniform he invariably wore made it impossible to ignore his helpful suggestions—which were really orders in more circumspect language. A facial expression in council, even the twitch of any eyebrow, could indicate disapproval, and one did not rise to high rank in the imperial Russian army without knowing how to placate royalty. In the second year of the war he detailed his activities in a book, His Royal Highness Emperor Nicholas II Serving in the
Army, published under the imprimatur of the Ministry of the Imperial Court. According to the memoir he had personally met thousands of soldiers, thanked them for their service and consoled them for their losses. He expressed hope his presence would inspire them to even greater “feats of defiance.” The book recapped his visits to fortifications, field hospitals and captured German entrenchments—of which there were few. It included a portrait of Nicholas in his Life Guards uniform. As most of his soldiers were illiterate, the book was obviously aimed at the upper classes back home, to remind them of the burdens their emperor had to bear. By 1915 good news was hard to come by. The army had been pushed out of eastern Prussia and Poland, knocked back on its heels on almost every front, in the process losing 1 million men killed or wounded with another threequarters of a million captured. No army could sustain such losses. The intensely loyal and modestly trained force that had entered the war had been largely destroyed. By 1917 only one officer in 10 was a veteran; their replacements were conscripts and malcontents. Nicholas tried to stay informed about field operations on every front, rewarding performance and weeding out incompetence, and always in the back of his mind was the belief his position gave him the divine right to assume personal command should he so choose. The thought horrified his senior officers, but Nicholas’ wife encouraged it; Alexandra firmly believed her “Nicky” should be at the head of his soldiers. By the latter half of 1915 refugees and dispirited soldiers choked the roads leading out of Russian Poland. Nicholas felt he could remain on the sidelines no longer. The only
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Nicholas II Silver Ruble
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icholas’ first year as supreme commander seemed to confirm he had picked the right man for the job. He replaced the timid General Nikolay Ivanov on the Southeastern Front with the dynamic Aleksey Brusilov, who in the summer of 1916 justified his promotion by directing what one historian has called “the most massive and successful Allied offensive” of the war, nearly knocking out
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Austria-Hungary and shaking the German high command down to its jackboots. Yet each time Nicholas did something commendable, he did something reckless, such as calling off Brusilov’s successful offensive due to mounting casualties, or appointing his uncle the incompetent Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich to lead an army outside the regular chain of command. Whatever morale benefit Nicholas’ presence produced at army headquarters, it was more than offset by the rampant intrigue and growing despair encouraged by his frequent absences from court. Indeed, Nicholas generally enjoyed himself at the Stavka. Back in Petrograd he saw nothing but carping and crisis all around. At the Stavka he could issue sweeping orders everyone quickly obeyed. On June 14, 1916, he held a council of his ministers and generals, groups that never communicated directly. They met in an open-sided tent erected alongside the imperial train. To buck up the fainthearted, Nicholas announced his unwavering commitment to “fight to a victorious end.” Later that year he dismissed his prime minister for seeking to open negotiations with Germany toward a separate peace. Nicholas was determined there would be no surrender. He had made that mistake with Japan. Never again. Nicholas’ decision to name himself supreme commander fed his ego and brought a certain degree of stability to military operations, but it also tied his own fate to that of his armies. Their collective failures became his personal failures. One of the few pieces of good advice he had received came in 1914 from Rasputin, who had begged him not to get involved in the war, “for war will mean the end of Russia and [the royal family], and you will lose to the last man.” As the advancing Germans continued to rout and annihilate Russian troops, the blame fell on Nicholas. His doctor and Alexandra each worried he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Adding to his woes on the battlefront was unrest on the home front, and in March 1917 politics overtook military matters. Radicals in the State Duma decided the monarchy had to go. They seized power and formed a provisional government. When word reached Nicholas in Mogilev, he hopped a train and raced toward Petrograd, a day’s ride north. The czar seemingly believed he would save his empire. In later years historians and czarists alike would criticize his decision to leave army headquarters. Though the Russian army was battered by mutiny, mass desertion and massive casualties, Nicholas was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. A brewing revolution awaited him in Petrograd. The Stavka, the sole remaining instrument of his royal authority, was perhaps the safest harbor for him. Regardless, he never made it to Petrograd. In the early morning hours of March 3, 1917, Czar Nicholas met secretly with four men—Duma representatives Aleksandr Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin and generals Nikolai Ruzsky and Yuri Danilov—in a car of the imperial train parked at Pskov, little more than halfway to Petrograd. They told him that both the general populace and his beloved army
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way to save Russia was to take charge of the army himself. From Mogilev he telegraphed his cousin George V in England: “In this serious time which my country is going through, I have decided to take the leadership of my armies in my own hands. In announcing to you this fact, I once more express my conviction that with God’s help and through the combined efforts of the Allies, their final victory will crown this bloody war.” It may not have been the King’s English, but it was clear enough to perturb George V about the state of affairs with his Eastern ally. By mid-August Grand Duke Nicholas was out and Czar Nicholas in as supreme commander, with General Mikhail Alekseyev as chief of staff of the Stavka. Nicholas still saw his own role largely as morale booster rather than field commander, but everyone from his allies to his ministers in Petrograd knew the truth—he was commander in chief in all matters. Defenders of the move have since argued that no one else One of Europe’s oldest at his disposal was capable of command, but currencies, the ruble it is apparent Nicholas believed in some mysdates from the 13th tical way his hour was at hand. He did not century. Nicholas II so much have the inspired courage of a Joan was the last czar to of Arc; in an unguarded moment he mused appear on the coinage. aloud, “Perhaps a scapegoat is needed to save Russia stopped minting Russia.” Ever in his corner, Alexandra enrubles in 1915, and the czar distributed many to couraged his fantasy of being personally soldiers as mementos. called to save Russia, and she saw only better days ahead with him at the head of his armies. The Russian officer corps met the stunning turn of events with remarkable acquiescence, perhaps due to their avowed loyalty to the czar first and nation second. But while the way was open for Nicholas to exercise his full royal prerogative, in characteristic fashion he hesitated. Though regularly presiding over councils of war, he tried not to impose his will except when necessary to resolve an argument. His officers all knew this, however, thus they often resolved arguments in keeping with his opinions. Nicholas leaned heavily on Alekseyev, a hardheaded and unpopular traditionalist. But unlike his cousin Wilhelm, Nicholas did not feel bound to respect the hierarchy of his general staff. He sometimes ignored them, who then suggested summoning senior commanders for personal meetings, during which he interrogated them closely about their plans.
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FROM LEFT: HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; THE PRINT COLLECTOR/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The officials advised Nicholas the only way to save the nation and the dynasty was to transfer power—in short, abdicate were in revolt, more out of disillusionment and war-weariness than any conspiracy. The officials advised him the only way to save the nation and the dynasty was to transfer power— in short, abdicate. They had expected an argument; what they met was meek compliance. Nicholas signed the papers they drew up, naming his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich successor (a decision negated by the provisional government the next day) and reappointing Grand Duke Nikolayevich to the post of supreme commander in chief. Having removed himself from all decision-making, Nicholas returned to the Stavka rather than continuing to the capital, perhaps believing it his duty. The next day he addressed the written announcement of his abdication not to the nation or even the Duma but to his beloved army, to the end clinging to his view of himself as warrior-king. The signed document even referenced the revolutionary upheaval from a military standpoint: “Internal popular disturbances threaten to have a disastrous effect on the future conduct of this persistent war.” Yet even in the midst of internal collapse he sought to cheer his men: “The cruel enemy is making his last efforts, and the hour approaches when our glorious army together with our gallant allies will crush him!…May the Lord God help Russia!” A March 2 entry in his journal reflected darker thoughts: “All around me are treason, cowardice and deceit.” As usual the train had already left the station for Nicholas II. After 500 years of czarist rule Russians had forced out their emperor, ending Nicholas’ reign and the 300-year Romanov dynasty. No one was more surprised than Nicholas when the army dutifully fell in line with the provisional government. A year later the revolutionary Bolshevik government signed a treaty with Germany, ending Russia’s participation in World War I, though civil war loomed.
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apoléon III reportedly once said of his nemesis Franz Josef that the Austrian monarch could lose a battle, perhaps even a war, and still remain emperor, whereas he, the French emperor, was dependent on success to keep his throne. Nicholas II faced a similar predicament in World War I. Wilhelm II or Franz Josef might have negotiated a peace settlement as late as the spring of 1918 and remained in power. But from the time he took over as Russian commander in chief, the czar’s fate hung largely on his success on the battlefield. History must assess Nicholas’ performance on several levels: Did his conduct rally his people to the throne? Did his participation in war councils have a positive effect? Did he do his duty? On only one of those points did Nicholas succeed: Whatever else he did or did not do, no one could ever accuse him of not doing his duty. His precipitous fall is unprecedented. Nicholas had never received so much love from his people as he did at the outbreak of the war. Unfortunately, he mistook their love of the monarchy and Mother Russia as love for himself. Vladimir Putin seems to entertain dreams of being another Peter the Great. He should take heed, lest he become another Nicholas II. However the current Ukrainian mess plays out, perhaps Putin can draw comfort from the fact that in 1996 the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Nicholas and his family as saints, complete with gilt halos on their iconic image. Win or lose, Putin might aspire to that distinction. MH Fort Worth native Richard Selcer has taught and written about history for four decades. He is the author of 10 books and dozens of magazine articles. For further reading he recommends The Last Tsar, by Edvard Radzinsky; and Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias, by Dominic Leven.
Left: Nicholas and his family became a target of Bolsheviks. In July 1918 communists shot and bayoneted all seven to death in this room in Yekaterinburg (see P. 9).
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HOMETOWN
HEROES When war production shifted into high gear in 1941, Americans on the home front sacrificed simple pleasures for those fighting overseas By Sarah R. Cokeley On the United States’ entry into World War II, shortages of basic goods began almost immediately. Even as the nation emerged from the Great Depression, Americans remained proud of its reputation as the land of plenty, and it was hard for many to imagine life without even modest luxuries.
Though the robust war economy created new jobs and significantly boosted wages, rationing prompted Americans on the home front to conserve and support the war effort by adhering to the motto “If you don’t need it, don’t buy it!” With the war’s end in 1945 civilians anticipated an end to rationing, but the practice lingered until supply levels stabilized in 1946. MH
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OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Through that first winter the federal government called for voluntary rationing on such items as metals, rubber, paper, food and fuel, promoting the effort with patriotic posters that urged Americans to remember their duty. By the spring of 1942, however, it was clear voluntary rationing wouldn’t be enough, and the wartime Office of Price Administration began issuing ration books and tokens to families nationwide. Efforts initially focused on sugar consumption, but rationing soon governed the purchase of virtually every basic commodity. Drivers were restricted to a few gallons of gasoline per week, and ride-sharing became commonplace. Ration books for meat, canned goods, coffee and dairy products ensured everyone got their fair share of necessities. But the feds also regulated the sales of such luxury items as cars and kitchen appliances.
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Actress Rita Hayworth donated the bumpers of her Lincoln Continental to a 1942 scrap metal drive, quipping she was “harvesting a bumper crop for Uncle Sam.”
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ALFRED PALMER/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; EDWARD MEYER/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; WALTER SANDERS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; MARJORY COLLINS/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); ANN ROSENER/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION/NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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A As more and more men entered military service, and women filled in at workplaces, children eager to lend a hand learned how to purchase food and household items with ration stamps. B With both canned goods and fresh produce rationed, even city residents began growing and canning their own food, a practice most learned through government-produced self-help pamphlets. C A woman displays her victory garden harvest. The government encouraged citizens to grow a variety of produce and preserve it, as the fruits and veggies of such labor were exempt from rationing. D Ration stamps ensured everyone received the necessities, but with regulation came the black market. Slashed points without a slashed price indicated the item was available “under the table.” E Some children participated in the war effort by collecting goods for reuse. Going door to door with wagons, kids—like these boys in Washington, D.C.—collected impressive amounts of recyclables. F Discarded newspapers and other scrap paper proved a vital commodity, often for use as packing for goods bound overseas.
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G Americans donated mounds of scrap aluminum pots, pans and other household items but later learned only virgin aluminum could be used in aircraft construction.
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H As much of the world’s rubber supply came from Southeast Asian plantations captured by the Japanese, rubber was among the first commodities rationed. I Parachutes were made of nylon and silk, so hosiery also disappeared from shelves. Resourceful women took to coloring their legs with makeup and drawing fake seams. J In a publicity photograph for a Red Cross blood drive on behalf of wounded soldiers, actress Carole Landis watches as producer Cecil B. DeMille donates a pint. K Scrap piles popped up everywhere. This one in Tulare, Calif., included everything from rubber tires to cars of yesteryear, posted with an appeal to DO YOUR PART. L The government issued gasoline ration cards rated A through X. Motorists with “A” cards were limited to 3 to 5 gallons per week, while “X” drivers had unlimited access. M The NO GAS sign on pumps at a local Gulf station goes to show that even if one had a ration card, a nonessential driver might be out of luck in a gasoline shortage. N Models strut the latest in ration-friendly footwear—shoes without rubber soles.
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The Carthaginian commander ruled the battlefield but never understood his role in the broader political struggle By Richard A. Gabriel
AKG-IMAGES/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY
With tactical victory as his sole focus, Hannibal boldly crossed the snow-covered Alps in 218 BC to invade the Roman heartland.
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WorldMags.net Among the basic distinctions in warfare is the difference between tactics and strategy. The term tactics refers to the operational techniques military units employ to win battles. Strategy, on the other hand, addresses the broader political objectives for which a war is fought and the ends, ways and means employed to obtain them. For strategy to succeed, there must be at least a rough connection between tactical objectives and the broader objectives for which the war is waged. Otherwise, battles become ends in themselves, often with grave strategic consequences. Such was the case with Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general widely considered one of history’s most able and talented field commanders. He invaded Roman Italy in what historians still regard as a classic campaign, won every major engagement he fought and yet ultimately achieved none of Carthage’s strategic objectives. and statesman Hamilcar Barca, who rallied his North African nation-state from defeat in the First Punic War (264–241 BC) to conquer much of Iberia (present-day Spain) before his death there in battle in 228 BC . Hannibal had essentially grown up in military service, and following the 221 BC assassination of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, who had replaced Hamilcar, Hannibal took charge of the Carthaginian army. He soon proved a brilliant field commander who applied his intellect and martial skills to the singular end of winning battles. Again, however, battles are the means to a strategic end, not ends in themselves. Hannibal, a sworn enemy of all things Roman, lost sight of that fact when he launched the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). While the conflict would rage across the Mediterranean world, victory in Italy was Hannibal’s sole objective. To achieve it, he marched the bulk of his army in Iberia across southUndoubtedly one of ern Gaul (present-day France) history’s greatest field and, famously, over the Alps into commanders, Hannibal the Roman heartland. saw his campaign in Italy Hannibal approached his operas the only campaign of ations in Italy not as one campaign the Second Punic War, in a larger war but as the only camthus setting himself up paign in the only war. He seemed for strategic failure. to believe that if he won enough battles, he would win Italy, and if he won Italy, victory would be his. Ultimately, however, his confusion of tactics with strategy caused him to commit a number of operational failures that led to his defeat in Italy. And his loss there was to have dire consequences for Carthage.
Wars evolve within the cultural contexts adversaries bring to the conflict. For Romans war was a straightforward predatory exercise employed to destroy an enemy’s regime. Battles were means to the larger political ends of conquest, occupa-
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Born in 247 BC, Hannibal was the son of Carthaginian general
WorldMags.net tion and economic exploitation. To accept defeat risked having an enemy impose such conditions on one’s own citizens, something Rome would pay any price in blood and treasure to prevent. Romans fought wars until decisively won. Only then did negotiations follow. Hannibal’s perspective on war was rooted in the influence of Hellenistic culture. In his view the object was not the destruction of an enemy’s state or political regime. Instead, armies fought battles on one another’s turf until it became clear to the political leadership of the losing side there was nothing more to be gained and perhaps much to lose by further combat. The antagonists then entered into negotiations and reached a settlement of a commercial or geographic nature. Hannibal believed his battlefield victories would force Rome to the negotiating table. This Hellenistic approach restrained Hannibal from attacking Rome itself when presented two opportunities— first after his 217 BC victory at Lake Trasimene and again after Cannae just over a year later. In Hannibal’s mind an attack on Rome was unnecessary to the final outcome of the war. When the Romans refused to discuss peace even after the disaster at Cannae, Hannibal’s plan began to unravel. It was one thing to expect the Gauls to join his campaign against Rome, but the assumption that Rome’s Latin allies or Roman colonies would join in any significant numbers was wholly unfounded, based on a lack of understanding of Roman culture and history. Had this not been clear to Hannibal before, it must surely have been after Cannae. As a fallback he sought to create a confederacy of Italian and Greek states that would become de facto protectorates of Carthage once the war was over. For Hannibal’s plan to have any chance of success required sufficient manpower to accomplish two things: First, to hold the towns and cities while protecting agricultural resources nec-
essary to feed the occupying troops; second, to sustain a large field army to deal with any Roman offensives. The problem was it required far more manpower than he possessed or could possibly raise and supply in Italy alone. Hannibal’s revised plan, therefore, depended on Carthage to provide manpower and logistical requirements
Iberia, while Carthage aimed to retain Iberia and recover territory in Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily it had lost in the previous war. Rome clearly perceived Carthage’s strategic intent: Of the 11 legions deployed after Hannibal arrived in Italy, two were sent to Iberia, two to Sardinia, two to Sicily and one to the port of Tarentum (present-day
In his view armies fought until it became clear to the political leadership of the losing side there was nothing more to be gained by further combat from outside Italy, something it refused to do for sound strategic reasons. Moreover, the plan gave no consideration to the ability of the Roman navy to blockade southern Italian ports and disrupt supply convoys from Carthage. Most important, Hannibal’s southern Italian confederacy was essentially a defensive strategy that left intact and unchallenged the Roman manpower and resource base north of the Volturnus (Volturno) River, thus enabling Rome to rebuild its armies until ready to resume the offensive. Even if it coalesced, Hannibal’s league of rebel towns in southern Italy could not impede Rome’s war effort sufficiently to induce it to seek peace. Hannibal’s failure to attack Rome was his greatest tactical mistake. The Roman historian Livy tells us that when Carthage recalled Hannibal in 203 BC, he called down “curses on his own head for not having led his armies straight to Rome when they were still bloody from the victorious field of Cannae.” But history must regard Hannibal’s failure to attack Rome within the context of his greater failure to understand the strategy that guided the conduct of the war. Both Carthage and Rome viewed the war in a far broader strategic context than did Hannibal. Rome sought to preserve gains it had obtained during the First Punic War and perhaps seize
Taranto) to block any invasion by Philip V of Macedonia, though he had yet to ally with Hannibal. Only four legions deployed within Italy to meet Hannibal’s invasion. Had Hannibal also taken the broader perspective, he would have understood that an attack on Rome would have made sound tactical and strategic sense. A march on the capital after his victory at Trasimene would have forced the Romans to come to its aid, drawing off their forces from outside Italy. By then only one intact legion, at Tarentum, remained to defend Rome. At Trasimene, Hannibal had destroyed Gaius Flaminius’ army, while his subordinate Maharbal had destroyed Gnaeus Servilius Geminus’ cavalry. The two nearest Roman legions were on Sardinia, but 70 Carthaginian warships patrolled its waters to prevent Roman troop transports from reaching the mainland. Had Hannibal immediately marched on the capital, even as a feint, Rome would have been forced to recall some of its legions, exposing Sicily, Sardinia or Iberia to Carthaginian attack and invasion. His failure to act represented a lost opportunity even he, in hindsight, realized might have turned the tide of the war.
At the outbreak of war Carthage had initially given Hannibal a free hand, having had little choice but to support
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WorldMags.net their field commander in his Italocentric strategy. But after Cannae, when it became clear Rome could not be forced to the negotiating table, Carthage favored a more direct approach to regaining its lost possessions. What Carthage wanted most from the war was to retain possession of Iberia, with its lucrative silver mines, commercial bases and monopoly on the inland trade. It also wanted to recoup its bases in Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and some of the offshore islands and thus control the sea-lanes in the eastern Mediterranean. After Cannae, Carthage moved to secure these possessions by reinforcing them, as in Iberia, or attempting to seize them militarily—as in Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. If Carthage could establish a significant military presence in its former possessions, it would be in a strong position to retain them once the war ended and negotiations ensued. Hannibal’s superiors viewed his operations in Italy as little more than a localized campaign designed to tie down as many Roman legions as possible while they brought military pressure to bear at more important strategic locales. It had wisely revised its strategic approach and objectives—a direct
money are now recalling me,” he is said to have complained, adding that his defeat came not at the hands of Romans “but the Carthaginian Senate by their detraction and envy.” As with many of history’s great field commanders, Hannibal had succumbed, at least in part, to his enemy’s superior logistics.
Hannibal’s accusation that the Carthaginian Senate had failed to send him critical supplies and troops when most needed was dead on. Throughout the course of the Second Punic War, Carthage sent Hannibal only one resupply expedition—a marginal force of 4,000 Numidian horse, 40 elephants and some money in 215 BC. After that he received nothing, as Carthage had redirected its resources to a strategy in which victory in Italy no longer occupied a central place. Carthage’s failure to properly resupply Hannibal cannot be blamed on a lack of available resources. Indeed, the manpower and resource base of the Carthaginian empire was greater than Rome’s. The troop and resupply expeditions Carthage sent out in support of military operations during the Second Punic War were substantial, in some
The strategic ground shifted beneath his feet, reducing a commander who had once ruled the battlefield to little more than a sacrificial pawn consequence of Hannibal’s failure to realize his myopic goals in Italy. Hannibal felt betrayed by Carthage after Cannae. When in 203 BC his superiors ordered their commander to abandon his Italian campaign and return to Africa, Livy records that Hannibal “gnashed his teeth, groaned and almost shed tears.” He openly blamed Carthage for its failure to support his campaign with troops, supplies and money. “The men who tried to drag me back by cutting off my supplies of men and
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cases larger than Hannibal’s entire army in Italy. In 215 BC, for example, Carthage sent to Iberia 12,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry, 20 elephants and a quantity of silver with which to hire mercenaries. Later that year it sent an even larger force to Sardinia. In 213 BC Carthage dispatched to Sicily 25,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 12 elephants. In 207 BC it sent to Iberia 10,000 additional troops to replace losses from the Battle of Baecula. Finally, in 205 BC Hannibal’s brother Mago and a force
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of 12,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and a number of elephants invaded Liguria in northern Italy. Carthage was able to resupply and reinforce its armies in the various theaters of operations thanks to its ready supply of transport ships—not surprising for a commercial and shipbuilding nation-state that could construct or hire from traders as many transports as needed for any contingency. Moreover, the Roman naval presence off southern Italy was never sufficient to cover all bases at once, so there was no good reason why supply transports could not have gotten through to Hannibal. Right up to war’s end Carthage had more than enough men, materiel and transports to support Hannibal in Italy. It simply chose not to send them.
Ironically, Carthage’s strategic shift away from Italy after Cannae came at a time when Hannibal’s momentum was at its zenith. Paradoxically, it was his very successes in the field that led Carthage to reconsider its strategy. When Mago returned to Carthage in 215 BC to request troops and supplies for Hannibal, he addressed the Senate. At that meeting Hanno, head of the faction that had opposed the war from its outset, asked Mago the following questions: “First, in spite of the fact that the Roman power was utterly destroyed at Cannae, and the knowledge that the whole of Italy is in revolt, has any single member of the Latin confederacy come over to us? Secondly, has any man belonging to the five and 30 tribes of Rome deserted to Hannibal?” Mago had to answer they had not. “Have the Romans sent Hannibal any envoys to treat for peace?” Hanno continued. “Indeed, so far as your information goes, has the word ‘peace’ ever been breathed in Rome at all?” Mago again replied in the negative. “Very well then,” Hanno concluded. “In the conduct of the war we have not advanced one inch: The situation is precisely the same as when Hannibal first crossed into Italy.” Hanno’s point was
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FROM TOP: ERNEST PRATER/PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; MAP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP; AKG-IMAGES/HENRI MOTTE
Top: Hannibal’s tactical victory at Lake Trasimene opened the road to seize Rome. His failure to take the capital revealed his misunderstanding of Carthage’s strategy. Bottom: Despite Hannibal’s initial successes, Carthage lost confidence in its famed general, withdrew support and recalled him to Africa.
that Hannibal’s strategy to bring Rome to the negotiating table by defeating its armies in the field had already failed. If none of the Latin allies or Roman tribes had deserted by that point, it was highly unlikely any further defections in the south of Italy or additional victories Hannibal might win there would prompt Rome to seek peace. If Hannibal could not destroy Rome on its own soil, as Carthage believed, then what was the point of the war? In true Hellenistic fashion the Carthaginian statesmen decided their priorities lay in maintaining control of Iberia and perhaps regaining Sardinia, Corsica and other areas lost earlier. If that was the strategic objective of the war, then how did Hannibal’s continued presence in Italy contribute to that end? The answer was to tie down as many legions as possible in Italy while Carthage concentrated its efforts in the other theaters of operations. Italy became a sideshow, and Hannibal was left to his fate so that when the war ended, Carthage might be able to hold on to what it had won elsewhere. In the end Hannibal failed in Italy not because he was defeated on the battlefield but because his tactical victories had not contributed to Carthage’s overall strategic objectives. After Cannae the strategic ground shifted beneath Hannibal’s feet, reducing a commander who had once ruled the battlefield to little more than a sacrificial pawn in a much larger game he never really understood. MH Richard A. Gabriel is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of more than 50 books. For further reading he suggests his own Hannibal: The Military Biography of Rome’s Greatest Enemy.
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In the quest for India’s independence, one fervent nationalist made a pact with the Axis to overthrow the British Raj By Rafe McGregor
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BPK, BERLIN/BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK/ARCHIV HEINRICH HOFFMANN/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
As head of the militant Indian Independence League, Subhas Chandra Bose (above, seated beside Heinrich Himmler) chose unsavory bedfellows in his armed bid to end British rule.
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hortly after 2 p.m. on Aug. 18, 1945, a Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine bomber turned transport of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force lifted off from the island of Formosa (present-day Taiwan). The plane was bound for Manchukuo—Tokyo’s puppet state in northeast China—but just after takeoff the bomber lost its port engine, spun out of control and crashed to the ground. While the pilots and senior passenger, a Japanese general, were killed instantly, several others, including the two other VIPs aboard, initially survived the crash. One of the VIPs had been drenched in fuel from the aircraft’s ruptured tanks, and as he and his companion struggled to escape the tangled wreckage, his fuel-soaked clothing ignited, turning him into a human torch. Though rescuers managed to smother the flames, the badly burned man died within hours. Though horrific, his death was in many ways something of an anticlimax. For most of his adult life the man had been a prominent Indian nationalist and controversial figure in his country’s effort to win independence from Britain. Colonial authorities had repeatedly jailed him, but it is for his activities in the two years before his death for which he is most often remembered. His name was Subhas Chandra Bose, and he was head of the Japanese-allied and -supported Indian National Army.
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Great Britain had ruled much of the Indian subcontinent since the mid-19th century, and by the early 20th century several native Indians had emerged to lead the movement toward swaraj (Hindi for “self-rule”). The most famous of these nationalists was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known by the honorific mahatma (Sanskrit for “venerable”). Gandhi assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921 and stressed that nonviolent resistance to British rule was the pathway to independence. Less well known are the contributions made by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, longtime head of the Muslim League, and Bose, who in 1943 became head of the Indian Independence League. Bose was a Bengali from Cuttack in eastern India who eschewed a career in the Indian Civil Service for a life of political activism. Unlike Gandhi and Jinnah, he believed only violence would succeed in freeing India from British hegemony. In World War I the British Raj had contributed 1.4 million men to the empire’s armed forces. These troops had initially served on the Western Front, but the combination of heavy losses with a particularly cold winter caused morale to flag, and the two Indian divisions were redeployed to Mesopotamia in 1915. Two years later, in recognition of India’s service and sacrifice, the British government made its first concessions toward Indian self-rule. Less than six months
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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; AKG-IMAGES/ARCHIV PETER RÜHE; SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Above: Bose was one among the self-rule movement who believed only violence would topple the Raj. Top right: Mahatma Gandhi confers with members of the Indian National Congress in 1939 after it forced Bose to resign as president of that body. Right: Bose meets with Adolf Hitler in June 1942 while seeking Axis recognition of an independent India.
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BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-263-1580-04, PHOTO: BET
German-uniformed Sikh members of the Free India Legion train along the Normandy coast of France. Formed in January 1942, the legion comprised Indian Army prisoners of war whom Bose persuaded to join the Nazis.
after war’s end, however, Anglo-Indian relations soured in the wake of the April 13, 1919, Jallianwala Bagh massacre, when British-led Gurkha riflemen fired on a peaceful protest in Amritsar, Punjab, killing several hundred civilians and wounding more than 1,000. The Indian National Congress transformed from a political elite into a mass movement in the 1920s, and as civil disobedience and political violence soared in subsequent years, Britain responded with mass detentions. On July 2, 1940, Bose was arrested for his role in a brewing demonstration in Calcutta. He languished in prison for months. In late November he went on hunger strike, resisted forced feeding and was released to house arrest in Calcutta a week later, a month before he was due to stand trial for sedition. Bose had long believed in the need for external support against the British, and Soviet anti-imperialism made Russia the logical choice. He escaped from house arrest in mid-January, travelled to Afghanistan and attempted to gain entry to the Soviet Embassy in Kabul. After three days of refusals, he tried the Italian Embassy. The Italians kept him in Kabul for six weeks, eventually routing him via Moscow to Berlin, where he arrived in early April 1941. There Bose sought Axis recognition of an independent India, and in May he took the first steps toward raising an anti-Allied Indian unit, on agreement that all
Indian Army prisoners of war would be sent to Annaburg camp near Dresden. When Bose visited the camp in December to recruit troops, the prisoners were initially hostile, but his charisma proved persuasive, and the Free India Legion formed in January 1942. In all some 2,600 men served in the legion, though it saw little action. Adolf Hitler’s continued refusal to recognize Indian independence convinced Bose to seek support for his cause elsewhere. On Feb. 9, 1943, he left Germany aboard the submarine U-180, from which he transferred to the Japanese sub I-29 in the Indian Ocean. By mid-May Bose was in Tokyo.
In the weeks following the December 1941 outbreak of war in the Pacific the Japanese had made seemingly unstoppable advances in Southeast Asia, beginning with amphibious landings in southern Thailand and northern Malaya. The Japanese steamrolled nearly 600 miles in 55 days, taking 50,000 Indian, Australian and British prisoners. On Feb. 15, 1942, Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival—the British commander in Malaya—surrendered at Singapore, leading 85,000 more soldiers, half of them Indian, into Japanese captivity. On March 7 the British evacuated the Burmese capital of Rangoon and retreated north. The arrival of the monsoon season in May brought a halt to operations and found Japanese forces on the banks of the Chindwin River, poised to enter India.
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By mid-1942 the Japanese had occupied much of Southeast Asia and were preparing to enter India through Burma, a campaign in which the INA played a key role. Right: A Japanese soldier adjusts a Sikh’s camouflage.
Among the forces tapped to participate in the Japanese invasion was the Indian National Army (INA). The INA had initially formed in Malaya in mid-1942 under the direction of Japanese liaison officer Major Iwaichi Fujiwara and Captain Mohan Singh, a Punjabi officer whom the Japanese had placed in charge of all Indian POWs. By that fall some 40,000 Indians had pledged allegiance to Singh, who had been promoted to general, and he aimed to recruit an army of 250,000 men to spearhead the liberation of India. Singh was no diplomat, however, and did not hide his antagonism toward all imperialists, European and Asian alike. While he quickly raised the first division of the INA, the Indian commander spent the second half of 1942 in a series of bitter arguments with his Japanese superiors over almost every aspect of the force. In late December the Japanese dismissed and arrested Singh. Learning that Bose was en route to Tokyo, they put the INA’s formation on hold (the terms First INA and Second INA are sometimes used to distinguish Singh’s administrative unit from Bose’s combat unit). Soon after his arrival in the Japanese capital Bose met with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, and they quickly reached an agreement: Japan would recognize Indian independence but maintain a military presence in liberated India until the conclusion of the war. On July 4 Bose took command of the INA, and on October 21 he was sworn in as prime minister of the Provisional Government of Free India. The INA was allied to, rather than a component of, the Japanese imperial armed forces and had two primary goals: the liberation of India and the formation of a defense force to maintain independence. When Bose took command, the
INA comprised the 1st Division, 12,000 troops divided into four regiments (the Japanese term for a brigade-sized unit) under the command of Lt. Col. Mohammad Zaman Kiani. There was also a special forces unit, later called the Bahadur Group, and a unit of female soldiers and nurses, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (which never saw combat). In addition to the pool of tens of thousands of POWs, the INA also recruited from the Indian populations of Malaya, Burma and Singapore, and there was never a shortage of volunteers. Still, the INA suffered from organizational problems. First and foremost was poor leadership. Many junior officers had risen through the ranks without the benefit of leadership training, and most senior officers had been junior officers in the British Indian Army and promoted without attending staff college. Bose himself was a politician and not a soldier. Though his decision to leave field command to his officers was wise, it deprived the INA of his force of character and personal magnetism. Another problem the INA faced was a lack of suitable equipment—its units were lightly armed, with all four regiments of the 1st Division (the Subhas, Gandhi, Azad and Nehru) designated as “guerrilla” instead of “infantry” troops. Despite Bose’s drive and enthusiasm, the Japanese remained concerned about the loyalty and combat readiness of INA troops, so it was agreed only the Subhas (1st Guerrilla Regiment) and four Bahadur Group units (each company strength) would initially participate in the invasion of India.
The Japanese plan was to launch a diversionary attack in Burma’s Arakan region with the Twenty-Eighth Army, following which the Fifteenth Army would cross the Chindwin
Bose and Tojo reached an agreement: Japan would recognize Indian independence but maintain a military presence in liberated India 68 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
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FROM LEFT: MAP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP; AKG-IMAGES/ARCHIV PETER RÜHE (2)
An INA soldier and his loader put a British .303-caliber Vickers machine gun to use against its former owners.
River into the northeastern Indian region of Manipur and make for the towns of Imphal and Kohima. It was during the diversion in Arakan the INA scored its first combat success. On Feb. 4, 1944, a Bahadur Group under Captain L.S. Misra infiltrated the British lines and overran the 7th Indian Infantry Division headquarters. The Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army—which included the 1st Battalion of the Subhas— fought its way to the Indian border. In April INA troops took Moirang, and the town became the army’s first headquarters on Indian soil. Meanwhile, the Fifteenth Army crossed the Chindwin and entered India on March 19, with the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Subhas undertaking counterinsurgency operations against British-led Chin guerrillas. In late April the INA’s Gandhi (2nd Guerrilla Regiment) suffered heavy losses in its failed attempt to secure a critical airfield at Palel. By then both Imphal and Kohima were under siege by Japanese forces, but British defenses were holding. The INA’s Azad (3rd Guerrilla Regiment) joined the fray in late May, but the British broke siege of Imphal on June 22, and on July 3 the Japanese began withdrawing. INA units were among those assigned to cover the Japanese retreat, which threatened to become a rout as the monsoon exacerbated widespread disease and supply problems. The Nehru (4th Guerrilla Regiment) and the first regiment of the newly raised INA 2nd Division were ordered forward but were
unable to reach the front before the Japanese halted operations. When the Nehru was ordered to Myingyan from Mandalay, 600 soldiers refused. Bose then placed the regiment under the command of one of his most reliable—and controversial—officers, Major Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. The attempted invasion of India was ultimately a disaster for the Japanese and their INA allies. Of the 6,000 Indian combatants involved only 2,600 returned, of which 2,000 were hospitalized with malaria, malnutrition or both. Casualty estimates recorded some 400 killed in action, 1,500 dead of disease or starvation, 800 captured and 715 deserted. The INA had also failed to have the anticipated propaganda impact, in part due to a British-imposed media blackout on all mention of the INA, a strategy that successfully prevented the outbreak of nationalist violence within the borders of the Raj. Despite such setbacks, Bose continued to recruit, preparing for the defense of Burma in the face of the expected British assault. By late 1944 the INA had almost reached its goal of 35,000 men and women under arms, per agreement with the Japanese, and included three divisions, the Bahadur Group, and the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, spread across Burma and Malaya.
The Japanese retreat from Imphal had continued to the Irrawaddy River, although the front at Arakan had remained
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INA troops wearing British helmets and carrying British Lee-Enfield rifles—likely captured by the Japanese in Singapore—prepare to assault an Indian Army position during the Burma Campaign.
static during the monsoon. The British offensive began in December, with the 81st (West Africa) Division swiftly retaking the territory lost in the Arakan. On Jan. 14, 1945, the British IV Corps crossed the Irrawaddy at Thabbeikkyn, near Mandalay, and established several bridgeheads. On Feb. 14, the 7th Indian Infantry Division attempted to cross the Irrawaddy at Nyaung-U and Pagan. Dhillon’s Nehru held the opposing bank against the initial assaults, inflicting heavy casualties on the British. Dhillon had been allocated 12 miles of riverbank to defend, however, and his 1,200 men were thinly spread. When the British subjected them to massed tank and artillery fire, their morale first wavered and then broke—240 INA soldiers surrendered, while many others fled into the surrounding jungle. A furious Bose initially reprimanded Dhillon, though the INA leader soon backtracked and promoted the young major to lieutenant colonel for his efforts in what was obviously an impossible situation. The remnants of Dhillon’s regiment, about 400 men, defended Taungzin from March 15 to 17, suffering heavy casualties before retreating to Mount Popa. Mount Popa was defended by Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal’s 2nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division, which had the lion’s share of the INA’s heavy weapons and a small contingent of Japanese troops. On March 30 Captain Mahinder Singh Bagri, in command of a company from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, was defending Kabyu, on the northern slopes of Mount Popa, with a Japanese company. The British attacked in battalion strength with armor, and when they appeared to flounder in a minefield, the Japanese commander unwisely ordered a frontal attack. After taking heavy
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casualties, the Japanese retreated and were at risk of being routed when Bagri launched a counterattack, hitting the British in the flank and enabling the Japanese to complete their withdrawal. But the British advance was relentless. The 7th Indian Infantry Division arrived at Mount Popa on April 2 under the cover of an intense aerial bombardment. At noon the following day the British launched an armored assault that quickly overran INA headquarters. Sahgal held fast in the face of desertions and ordered a counterattack after dark. The attack succeeded, but when he attempted to follow it up, he discovered that most of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry, including all the officers, had deserted. Sahgal retreated from Mount Popa, and the rest of the INA’s combat history is a narrative of collapse and disintegration punctuated by moments of desperate heroism. On April 20 the Japanese began to evacuate Rangoon, and Bose decamped for Singapore. The INA surrendered Rangoon to the British on May 4, with Dhillon and his 50 remaining men raising the white flag on May 13. The story of the INA was over—or so it seemed.
Bose was informed of the impending Japanese surrender two days before Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast announcement on August 15. Undeterred, he reverted to his original plan—to seek Soviet recognition of his Provisional Government of Free India. He flew from Singapore to Bangkok and on to Saigon. There he found a place on the bomber bound for Tokyo via Dairen in Manchuria. Bose had intended to deplane at Dairen and make his way to Russia. The crash that killed him also marked the end of the INA.
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FROM LEFT: THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS/AFLO; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS, IND 4851; BETTMANN/CORBIS
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Above: Japanese officers surrender their swords to the 25th Indian Division, which had allied with the British. Above right: Lord and Lady Mountbatten greet excited citizens outside the Constituent Assembly of India in August 1947 as the nation readies for the switch to self-rule.
Some 43,000 troops had served in the INA, and the repatriation of those who’d survived the war began in May 1945. Despite the severity of the charges against soldiers who had taken up arms against the empire, the British —not wanting to fuel Indian nationalist feelings in an increasingly volatile political climate—decided to prosecute only INA members who had committed war crimes. Two factors then conspired to transform the well intentioned, but militarily ineffective INA into a major impetus behind Indian independence. The first was the appearance in cities across India of thousands of uniformed men, a united front of patriotic heroes about whom nothing was previously known. The British refusal to acknowledge the existence of the INA now proved counterproductive, as veterans spun wildly exaggerated tales of its military exploits and achieved legendary status among the population. In August 1945 the wave of approval for the newly discovered INA skyrocketed with the announcement of Bose’s “martyrdom” and the arrival from Europe of Indian soldiers in German Wehrmacht uniforms. There had, it seemed, been an international crusade to free India during the war. In November the British made a series of pragmatic but shortsighted decisions regarding the courts-martial of INA war criminals: The first, a joint trial of three officers, was to be held publicly, in Delhi’s Red Fort, and concurrent with general elections. The accused happened to be a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sikh (representing three of India’s major religions), and they faced either exile or the death penalty if convicted. Two of the defendants, Sahgal (Hindu) and
Dhillon (Sikh) had distinguished themselves in combat, and it was Dhillon’s accomplishments under fire that garnered public sentiment rather than the prosecution’s accusations that he was a sadist who had tortured POWs. Found guilty of treason on Dec. 31, 1945, all three were sentenced to deportation for life. In what proved another pragmatic but shortsighted decision, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the British commander in chief in India, remitted the sentences. Intended to quell unrest, his decision was instead taken as an acknowledgment of the officers’ innocence. On Feb. 18, 1946, as further courts-martial got under way, the Royal Indian Navy mutinied. It began in earnest in Bombay and quickly spread to involve 20,000 sailors across dozens of ships and shore establishments. The mutiny had a distinctly nationalist flavor, as sailors aboard ship and ashore hoisted the Indian tricolor, and it spread to other elements of the armed forces and the Indian police. An alarmed British Prime Minster Clement Attlee acknowledged the contributions Bose and the INA had made to Indian nationalism, and the trials ended in May without any executions. The British government granted India its independence effective Aug. 15, 1947. Shortly before midnight on August 14 Muslim-majority Pakistan was partitioned from British India; shortly after midnight India’s Hindu majority took control of its nation. It is hardly surprising that when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tricolor that day, he did so atop the Lahori Gate of the Red Fort. MH Rafe McGregor, a visiting fellow at the University of Leeds, has published more than 100 magazine articles and reviews, journal papers, short stories and novellas. For further reading he recommends Subhash Chandra Bose: The Springing Tiger, by Hugh Toye, and The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942–45, by Peter Ward Fay.
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WorldMags.net Reviews One Nation, Under Arms The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945, by Nicholas Stargardt, Basic Books, New York, 2015, $35
In May 1945, as Germans regarded the ruins of their devastated country, they faced history’s harsh judgment for the brutal and barbaric policies and actions of the Third Reich. At the time many Germans told Allied occupation authorities they had known nothing about the attempted extermination of the Jews or the widespread enslavement and mass murder of civilians in Poland and Russia. As early as the convening of the Nuremberg Trials in November 1945 Germans began drawing a sharp line of distinction between the “evil SS,” perpetrators of the aforementioned crimes, and the honorable Wehrmacht. The SS then, became the “alibi of the nation.” And indeed, without a strong conviction in the idea of the “clean Wehrmacht,” Germany and the NATO allies might not have been able to establish the Bundeswehr in 1955. The “Good Germans vs. Nazis” dichotomy held up reasonably well for some 20 years, until the next German generation in the mid1960s started questioning their parents’ accounts of life during the war. And although the immediate postwar rationalization hung on more or less for another
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two decades, it came increasingly under challenge. The turning point finally came in 1985, when German President Richard von Weizsäcker delivered a speech to the Bundestag proclaiming that May 8, 1945, had been the day of Germany’s liberation rather than the date of its surrender and occupation. From that point the social taboos about the Third Reich period started to crumble, and critical inquiry expanded. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust seriously undermined the assertion everyday Germans knew nothing about the genocide. Finally, between 2001 and 2004 the traveling Wehrmachtsausstellung exhibition in Germany examined the army’s complicity in the
Holocaust and pretty well demolished the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht.” Oxford professor Stargardt’s The German War offers the latest reassessment of life under the Third Reich. Rather than focusing exclusively on the experiences of either soldiers or civilians, he deftly weaves both sets of narratives into a rich and complex tapestry. Drawing from extensive archival records and the wartime letters and diaries of ordinary German citizens and soldiers, Stargardt builds his chronicle around the framework of the major military actions of the war, intertwined with stories on an individual level. Addressing such pivotal and traumatic events as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Babi Yar and Katyn massacres, Stalingrad, the largescale bombing of German cities and the Normandy landings, he frames the key questions: Were the German people largely victims or perpetrators? What were the Germans saying during the war vs. after? How did they react as they came to understand the extent of the genocide being committed in their names? And why did they fight on as long as they did? Stargardt strives, quite successfully, to achieve balance in his assessment. He identifies a complex and deeply rooted lack of “or-
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ganic solidarity” that challenges the Nazi notion of a “national community.” But it also undermines the hypotheses of those historians who on the one hand see the Third Reich as a “consensual dictatorship,” and those who have portrayed it as a regime fighting against a continually growing sense of defeatism and social opposition. The reality was not so starkly black and white. But as Stargardt concludes, “So many German men and women played active roles in the mass organizations of the party that no sharp line can be drawn between regime and society.” Offering essential insights into the collective German wartime psyche, The German War is an important book that will stand the test of time. —David T. Zabecki Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, by James M. Scott, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2015, $35 After the catastrophic losses at Pearl Harbor, American political and military leaders sought a much-needed morale boost for its citizens and troops. Army Air Forces Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid on Japan in April 1942 energized Americans and jolted Japanese out of the mistaken belief they were immune to attacks on their home soil.
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RECOMMENDED
Target Tokyo is a compelling account of the raid from its conception to its aftermath, highlighting Doolittle’s particular talent as a commander. Scott conveys the practical difficulties of the raid, including the drastic but critical modifications to Doolittle’s B-25s and the hazards of launching such massive planes from the carrier Hornet, whose flight deck comprised a much shorter runway than the bombers normally used. Scott also explores Japan’s wartime mindset, describing how the raid on Pearl Harbor and victories elsewhere in the Pacific lulled its lead-
ers into believing American forces could not penetrate Japan’s air and naval defenses. The book graphically describes the physical and mental suffering of Doolittle’s pilots after capture and of their benign Chinese rescuers, who were the unfortunate victims of retaliation by Japanese forces. Scott’s gripping narrative relates how the nearsuicidal raid by Doolittle and his men curtailed Japanese hubris and paved the way for eventual victory by American forces in the Pacific. It serves as a cautionary tale of the need for constant alertness against enemy at-
tack and is a sharp reminder of the danger of complacency in wartime. —S.L. Hoffman Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century, by Alastair Horne, Harper, New York, 2015, $28.99
Napoléon, by David A. Bell
Having just turned 90, veteran historian Horne (To Lose a Battle: France, 1940; The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916; Napoléon: Master of Europe, 1805–07) has had time to consider the commonalities of war. In this volume he settles on hubris (excessive pride or self-
Subtitled A Concise Biography, Bell’s text indeed cuts to the chase, summarizing Napoléon’s life and times in little more than 100 pages. That said, it offers an accurate, readable and comprehensive account of his reign for readers unable or unwilling to invest weeks in a traditional 1,000-page survey of the emperor.
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WorldMags.net Reviews RECOMMENDED
India’s War, by Srinath Raghavan
Raghavan chronicles India’s involvement in World War II and significant war contributions across the globe. India’s War also highlights the British colony’s postwar move toward independence, shedding light on the political, economic and social transformation that in turn contributed to the rise of modern South Asia.
The Winter Fortress, by Neal Bascomb
The race to build the first atomic bomb could easily have been won by the Nazis. Bascomb relates the gripping story of an Allied raid on Norway’s Vemork power plant, a key facility in the Nazi effort to produce “heavy water.” Primary sources lend authority to the narrative, making it all the more evocative.
74 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
confidence), delivering his usual riveting account of a half-dozen 20th century campaigns during which one side and often both behaved stupidly—in other words, with glaring hubris. Horne’s epitome of hubris is pre-1945 Japan. Historians pay generous attention to that nation’s suicidal decision to take on the United States in 1941, but Horne begins even earlier. History buffs recall Japan’s dazzling victory in the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War mostly from its naval battles—the first involving steel-armored ships firing long-range guns. As in fleet actions of the world wars that followed, victory favored the side with luck and technical superiority. Horne emphasizes the more obscure land campaign —which also presaged the coming global slaughter. A large Japanese army conducted repeated frontal assaults against entrenched Russian forces and won, though by a whisker and with dreadful casualties. Easy pickings from World War I reinforced the nation’s vanity, and by the 1930s its leaders took for granted that Japan deserved to rule Manchuria more than the subhuman (in their eyes) Chinese or distant Soviets. They had little trouble with the Chinese and in 1938 attacked Soviet forces, which initially performed poorly. Unexpectedly, Stalin sent against the Japanese 50,000 men plus hundreds of tanks and aircraft under
as Japan). Winning battles is preferable to losing, but wars are won by resources, persistence and luck. America’s least hubristic generals (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower) required all three attributes. Horne may not make his case, but readers will enjoy the attempt. —Mike Oppenheim
then unknown General Georgy Zhukov. An obscure, bloody 1939 campaign crushed the Japanese, leading to a truce and nonaggression pact that enabled Stalin to devote his attention to Europe. These events occupy more than half the book, but Horne does not finish there with Japan. After a fine section on Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, ending in history’s biggest battle, the siege of Moscow, he devotes 50 pages to the Pacific War, mostly the Battle of Midway, before finishing off with admirable accounts of the Korean War and the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Horne admits to emphasizing Japan, as he hadn’t written much about it. Victory made it stupid with hubris, but that’s what victory often does. Bellicose nations with aggressive generals win early battles, turn stupid and lose (witness Napoléonic France, the Confederacy, Germany in two world wars as well
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European Armies of the French Revolution, 1789– 1802, edited by Frederick C. Schneid, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2015, $34.95 While authors have written countless volumes about the French revolutionary army and its role in preserving republican ideals until that Bonaparte fellow came along, almost nothing has been written in English about the armies of its rivals Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Russia, Spain, the Ottoman empire and the various German and Italian states in the critical years of 1789–1802. In Vol. 50 of the University of Oklahoma Press’ Campaigns and Commanders series, Schneid, a history professor at North Carolina’s High Point University, culls insights from nine leading scholars to analyze the structures and organizations of all the armies that fought during that period. The modern French army was Jacobite by origin. It was
WorldMags.net IN A DIFFERENT 1990... the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention, dominated by Maximilien Robespierre, that concluded compulsory service must be absolute if the revolution were to be rescued from its enemies. In August 1793 the Convention decreed a levée en masse—the first national draft in European history. Thus the volunteers of the previous year were joined by the conscripts of 1793 and 1794. The participating essayists generally agree that the changing face of warfare in the decade following the 1789 uprising did not spark a “revolution in military affairs”; that came later during the Napoléonic wars. Among some of their other interesting conclusions is that it was impossible for the Austrian army to undergo reforms similar to the French army’s, as to do so would have negated the monarchy itself. Another is that the czar’s army was quite capable of holding its own against revolutionary France; Russia’s real weakness lay in its financial structure and its social and economic conditions. After the Sept. 20, 1792, Battle of Valmy writer and statesman Johann Wolfang von Goethe told Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar and his Prusso-German staff, “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.” Readers of this excellent book are likely to agree. —Thomas Zacharis Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, by Frank McLynn, Da Capo Press, Boston, Mass., 2015, $32.50 Who was the greatest conqueror the world has ever known? Adolf Hitler, Hirohito, Napoléon, Tamerlane, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great? They were all small
potatoes compared with the greatest of them all. Genghis Khan rose from a position of obscurity within an obscure culture in one of the most obscure corners of the world to conquer an empire stretching from the Adriatic to the Sea of Japan and from Indonesia to the Arctic Circle. Looking back over the centuries, authors either dismiss him as a historical aberration with a minimal impact on human history or as a fascinating if somewhat obscure personality whose impact changed the world forever. Regardless, there is no denying that Genghis Khan’s saga is one of conquest and bloodletting on a colossal scale that invariably makes for a rattling good read. Historian and writer McLynn has taken great pains to separate fact from myth in recounting his subject’s genuinely prodigious achievements. Starting with one major contrast with the aforementioned conquerors, there was absolutely nothing in Mongol society to have furnished a precedent for the rise of Genghis Khan. The author explains how he had to create not only an empire and his own position in it but also the very social and legal framework within which he was able to create it. For example, Genghis Khan established the Great Yassa, in which the laws and rules of the Mongol society were codified, something that had never existed in Mongolia and was subsequently applied throughout the empire. Genghis Khan is a fascinating new study of one of the most infamous yet least known characters in history. It will doubtless prove popular with those who want to learn more about the most successful conqueror, not only of his own age, but of all ages. —Robert Guttman
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+ After the Battle of the Norwegian Sea, NATO is determined to invade Eastern Europe. + As the Army of the Danube assembles under General Schwarzkopf, the United States gathers a massive fleet in the Pacific. + Meanwhile in the Politburo the struggle between the hawks and the doves reaches critical mass and Mikhail Gorbachev makes move to take control of the situation. + The battle moves to communist territory in World War 1990: Operation Eastern Storm.
WORLD WAR 1990 OPERATION EASTERN STORM By William Stroock Available on
WorldMags.net Hallowed Ground Nine-Armyy Battle Historical Park, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
B
etween 1539 and 1855 Burma and Siam (presentday Thailand) fought some two dozen wars. Their long-running conflict was one of the bitterest rivalries in military history, yet it remains largely unknown in the West. The Burmese instigated most of the wars with incursions into the fertile lands of the Mon people just north of Siam. These attacks often preceded full-scale invasions south into central Siam via Three Pagodas Pass and four other passes that access the valley and village of Kanchanaburi. The armies also clashed up north around Chiang Mai, but the decisive battles in the Burmese-Siamese wars usually raged around Kanchanaburi, at the confluence of the Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai rivers—brought to popular attention in the 20th century by the novel and subsequent war film The Bridge on the River Kwai. In 1766 a 60,000-man Burmese army advanced on Three Pagodas Pass, which was defended by some 3,000 Siamese troops. Much like 300 Spartans held out against tens of thousands of Persians for three days at the 480 BC Battle of Thermopylae, so too the hard-pressed Siamese held Three Pagodas Pass for several days. Their stubborn resistance prompted the Burmese general to send most of his army through the other passes surrounding Kanchanaburi. King Ekkathat of Siam’s Ayutthaya Kingdom chose not to engage the Burmese army as it gathered on the central plain below the passes. He instead withdrew the bulk of his army east from Kanchanaburi to the capital city of Ayutthaya, hoping the monsoon rains would force the Burmese to suspend the invasion. But the besieging army outlasted the misery of the wet months and in April 1767 sacked the starving, disease-ridden capital. Only a Chinese invasion of Burma later that year forced the occupiers to withdraw. In 1784 the Siamese successor to the throne, King Rama I, received word from spies that Burma was again preparing
76 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
an invasion. Burmese King Bodawpaya planned to advance through Kanchanaburi with an unprecedented 144,000 well-armed and highly trained troops organized into nine armies, which would surge through the five passes and form up on the central plain for a decisive final battle. Rama and his brother, General Maha Surasinghanat, knew their 70,000-man army would not be able to stop the Burmese if they made it down onto the plain. Resolving to meet the Burmese in the passes, Rama organized five armies of 12,000 troops—some bearing muskets, though most armed with swords—each with a support unit of smoothbore cannon and war elephants carrying musketeers and smaller swivelmounted cannon. The brothers would command a reserve of 10,000 elite warriors ready to plug any holes that might develop in the lines. While we don’t know the exact day in January 1786 the invasion came, we do know that in speeches to their troops on the eve of battle both Rama and his brother stressed that Siam was facing its greatest peril. They told the men they would need to band together as what Eastern military theorists dubbed a “death army”—a force willing to fight to the bitter end without regard for personal survival. The troops spent the night at Buddhist and Hindu shrines, burning incense to their ancestors and preparing themselves for almost certain death. Just after dawn Bodawpaya sent his armies into the passes, each division led by war elephants and troops clad in body armor. They ran headlong into Siamese formations, and soon thousands of men were engaged in hand-to-hand combat, slashing at each other with swords and firing muskets and cannon at point-blank range. War elephants went down in bellowing agony, randomly crushing men of both armies to death. Amid the carnage the Siamese slowly pushed the invaders back down the passes, the decisive moment coming when
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FROM TOP: MICHAEL BRANZ/FLICKR; NARONG SANGNAK/EPA/CORBIS
By Steven M. Johnson
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A statue of Rama I caps a monument at the Nine-Army Battle Historical Park, north of Kanchanaburi. Below: Costumed performers and a live elephant re-enact the epic battle.
Rama led the reserve force into Three Pagodas Pass and routed the Burmese. In the hours that followed the Siamese killed or wounded an estimated 70,000 Burmese while losing 15,000 of their own. Few of the more than 1,000 war elephants that participated in the battle survived. Corpses littered the passes, and the waterways around Kanchanaburi ran red with blood. Rama I and his “death army” saved Siam, and Burma never again posed a major threat to the country that has been known as Thailand since 1949. To commemorate the people’s greatest victory, the Royal Thai Army started construction on the Nine-Army Battle Historical Park in 1999. The park visitor center, 25 miles north of Kanchanaburi, features dioramas of the various phases of the battle and examples of period weaponry and armor. Park attendants often suggest visitors leave the grounds before sunset, lest they encounter the ghosts of those killed in battle— advice most locals heed. MH Freelance writer and author Steven M. Johnson teaches at Paññ¯as¯astra University in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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WorldMags.net InTheirWords the civil war | year by year
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WorldMags.net War Games 1
2
Switching Sides Benedict Arnold became a synonym for turncoat, but others also reneged on allegiance to their respective flags.
3
4
1. After his defeat at Pilleth in 1402, Sir Edmund Mortimer renounced his allegiance to whom?
6
A. Charles VI of France
Royal Roughhousers
B. Robert III of Scotland
Can you match the monarch to the battle in which (for better or worse) he played a prominent role?
D. Owain Glyndwr
C. Henry IV of England
2. Which battle did Benedict Arnold fight after his defection to the British?
1. Philip II of France 2. Henry V of England
7
8
3. Peter I of Russia
A. Saratoga
B. New London
C. Quebec
D. Valcour Island
4. Alexander III of Macedon 3. Which Japanese battle was notorious for its hinging on the turning of key leaders?
5. Edward II of England 6. Frederick II of Prussia 7. Louis II of Hungary
A. Sekigahara, 1600
8. George II of Britain
B. Mikatagahara, 1572
9. Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden 10. Francis I of France
Battlefield Bards
C. Yamazaki, 1582 D. Nagashino, 1575
____ B. Mohács, 1526
When the sword proved mightier than the pen, these literary notables put on a uniform. Recognize any of them?
____ C. The Granicus, 334 BC
____ A. Joyce Kilmer
A. Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte
____ D. Dettingen, 1743
____ B. Horace
B. Louis-Nicolas Davout
____ E. Marignano, 1515
____ C. Ulysses S. Grant
____ F. Breitenfeld, 1631
____ D. Aeschylus
____ G. Bouvines, 1214
____ E. Ambrose Bierce
____ H. Agincourt, 1415
____ F. Philip Freneau
____ I. Rossbach, 1757
____ G. Miyamoto Musashi
A. Anton Mussert B. Pierre Laval
____ J. Poltava, 1709
____ H. Wilfred Owen
C. Léon Degrelle
Answers: A4, B3, C5, D6, E2, F1, G7, H8
____ A. Bannockburn, 1314
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4. Which of Napoléon Bonaparte’s former marshals swore to arrest him in 1815, only to rejoin him?
C. Emmanuel de Grouchy D. Michel Ney 5. Which Belgian turncoat fought in the German Waffen-SS during World War II?? D. Vidkun Quisling Answers: C, B, A, D, C
Answers: A5, B7, C4, D8, E10, F9, G1, H2, I6, J3
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WorldMags.net Captured!
After a June 1944 air raid on New Cross, south London, a seemingly unflappable Englishwoman makes time for her daily “cuppa” despite the devastation around her.
80 MILITARY HISTORY MAY 2016
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MIRRORPIX/THE IMAGE WORKS
Tea and Sympathy
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