WWII History 2016-08

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WWII HISTORY

Contents

Columns 06 Editorial A resurgent Russian Army?

08 Profiles Jay Rencher displayed incredible heroism clearing obstacles from Utah Beach.

14 Ordnance Engine maker Hall-Scott found new life with the wartime need for its products.

18 Insight A Japanese soldier on Guadalcanal wrote a poignant letter days before his life ended.

24 Top Secret

August 2016

Features 28

The Battle for Aachen Emperor Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire—the First Reich—with its capital at Aachen, lasted 1,000 years. Hitler insisted on a fanatical defense of the city.

Aside from the well-known Holocaust against the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, the Nazis also persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals.

66 Books A small group of naval aviators was sent to fight on Guadalcanal.

70 Simulation Gaming Poland-based Deep Water Studio crowd-funds a survival-based submarine simulation, while World War Toons goes free-to-play.

By Arnold Blumberg

Seek ... Attack ...Destroy One American destroyer escort group’s 12-day fight changed the course of World War II in the Pacific. By Patrick J. Chaisson

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Konev Strikes In early 1945, Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev executed a stunning offensive against the Germans in the Vistula-Oder area.

Cover: A German tank on the advance in North Africa, photographed during fighting in Tunisia in February 1943.

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Rommel’s Victory at Kasserine

ADVANCE INTO GERMANY

G.I. Fight for Aachen

See story page 58.

ADVANCE ON POLAND

Red Army’s Brutal Assault FIRST PERSON

D-DAY LANDING: Clearing Mines on Utah Beach

By Pat McTaggart

Caravan 52 Exhausted The 1940 exodus from Paris as the German Army approached choked the roads from the city with refugee traffic. By Tim Miller

by Fire at Kasserine Pass 58 Trial Reeling from his defeat at El Alamein, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel intended to toss the dice again before leaving North Africa for good. His target was the green American Army in Tunisia. By Eric Niderost

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WWII History (ISSN 1539-5456) is published six times yearly in February, April, June, August, October, and December by Sovereign Media, 6731 Whittier Ave., Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101. (703) 964-0361. Periodical postage paid at McLean, VA, and additional mailing offices. WWII History, Volume 15, Number 5 © 2016 by Sovereign Media Company, Inc., all rights reserved. Copyrights to stories and illustrations are the property of their creators. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. Subscription services, back issues, and information: (800) 219-1187 or write to WWII History Circulation, WWII History, P.O. Box 1644, Williamsport, PA 17703. Single copies: $5.99, plus $3 for postage. Yearly subscription in U.S.A.: $19.95; Canada and Overseas: $31.95 (U.S.). Editorial Office: Send editorial mail to WWII History, 6731 Whittier Ave., Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101. WWII History welcomes editorial submissions but assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of unsolicited material. Material to be returned should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. We suggest that you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope for a copy of our author’s guidelines. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WWII History, P.O. Box 1644, Williamsport, PA 17703.

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Editor ial A resurgent Russian Army? DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR, AS THE SOVIETS CHOSE TO REMEMBER

World War II, the 1st Guards Tank Army was one of those outstanding combat units responsible for the eventual defeat of the Third Reich, rolling across the steppes, through Eastern Europe, and into the streets of the Nazi capital of Berlin. Author Michael Peck of nationalinterest.org has picked up on a recent development that may just signal a shift in Russian military thinking, strategy, and tactics. According to Peck, the 1st Guards Tank Army, one of six such armored units formed in the Red Army during World War II, lives again. During its glorious history, the formation, which is roughly equivalent to a corps in comparison to the structure of most Western military organizations, fought through the epic Battle of Kursk, the fighting in Ukraine during the winter of 1943 through the spring of 1944, the summer 1944 advance into Poland, and the drive on Berlin, spearheading the Red Army offensive from the Vistula River across the Oder River during the approach to the city. From its inception on February 7, 1943, through the end of World War II, the 1st Guards Tank Army was commanded by Colonel General Mikhail Katukov. The coveted “Guards” designation was earned in combat in April 1944, as the unit led the fighting advance through the western Ukraine to the border of Romania, encircling the German First Panzer Army and inflicting heavy losses on the enemy in the process. During the Cold War, the 1st Guards Tank Army was the tip of the Eastern Bloc spear, stationed in Poland with the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG). Its role undoubtedly would have been to lead a lightning strike into Western Europe in the event of war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO forces. In 1998, the 1st Guards Tank Army was formally disbanded and passed at least temporarily into history. Peck attributes that military move to Russian belt tightening, cutting defense spending in the wake of the Cold War era. His speculation on the reemergence of the 1st Guards Tank Army is intriguing to say the least. “Resurrecting it now and stationing it in western Russia, amid NATO moves to position troops and equipment in Eastern Europe, may be Moscow’s way of reminding the world what happened the last time a Western nation went to war with Russia,” he related. Peck also notes that the defense-related website Southfront.org says recent combat experience in the Ukraine has raised an awareness of the value of large, maneuverable armored units compared to smaller independent formations that lack the firepower and weight of numbers to rapidly subdue an enemy force. The 1st Guards Tank Army will be posted in the Western Military District in close proximity to the Balkans, Poland , and Ukraine. Its strength is estimated at approximately 500 tanks, including the T-72B3, an upgraded variant of the aging T-72 that was first delivered to the Russian Army in 2013, the T-80, and the state-ofthe-art T-14 Armata. Its table of organization includes the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Division, the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Mechanized Infantry Division, the 6th Tank Brigade, and the 27th Sevastopolskaya Mechanized Infantry Brigade. No doubt, the eyes of Western military analysts will be closely watching the reintroduced 1st Guards Tank Army. Its tradition and fighting prowess demonstrated seven decades ago serve as points of pride for the Russian Army and, as Peck suggests, perhaps a warning to the West. —Michael E. Haskew 6

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Profiles

I By Rob Morris I

National Archives

D-Day Combat Engineer Jay Rencher displayed incredible heroism clearing obstacles from Utah Beach. NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD JAY RENCHER BLINKED THE SALT SPRAY FROM HIS EYES, filled his lungs, and again plunged beneath the cold, roiling waves. Minutes earlier, his three-man team had slipped stealthily from a pitching landing craft into the frigid waters of the English Channel, each man burdened with a full pack, rifle, extra clips of ammunition, blasting caps, and 60 pounds of explosives. Struggling through neck-high water, swallowed by five-foot swells every few moments, Rencher prayed he would not step in a hole and disappear forever, weighed down by his clothing and equipment. He glanced at his watch. It was a little after 5 AM, eerily quiet as the darkness began to yield to the pale dawn. In the distance, he listened to the waves breaking against the rocky shore. The date was June 6, 1944, and Rencher and his fellow demolitions experts with the U.S. First Army’s First Engineer Special Brigade, 531st Amphibious Regiment were in the vanguard of the greatest amphibious invasion in the history of the world. They had been told that the success of the invasion hinged in large part on their carefully timed work over the next few hours. They had also been told that within two hours most of them would be dead, mowed down clearing the sea approaches, the beaches, and the minefields beyond, which had been strewn with millions of mines. The squads’ failure to clear the area could quickly turn the D-Day landings into a bloody and tragic debacle. Rencher’s team was in the Tare Green Beach sector of Utah Beach, near the Normandy town of St. Mere Eglise. Groping semi-blind in the murky waves, Rencher located the heavy two-inch-thick steel underwater cable strung to prevent amphibious landings. He surfaced, flicked the flint on his Bic lighter, and dove under again. He had already wrapped plastic explosives around the cable, attaching a cap and a five-foot fuse. Touching the flame to the fuse, gratified to see it sparking, he swam away as fast as he could. He had gone 20 feet when the cable blew, the water muting the blast. He glanced at the German sentries on the beach, but they remained impassive and unaware. But 8

WWII HISTORY AUGUST 2016

LEFT: Nineteen-year-old Jay Rencher was a member of the First Engineer Special Brigade, 531st Amphibious Regiment, and cleared obstacles from Utah Beach on D-Day. TOP: In this famous photo of the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, American infantrymen of the 16th Regiment, 1st Division seek shelter from German mortar and small-arms fire behind a hedgehog beach obstacle.

it was getting light, and it was only a matter of time before the men would be detected. Born in 1924 into a farm family in Snowflake, Arizona, Rencher grew up with a rifle in his hand. At 14, his father charged him with killing the jackrabbits that raided the family alfalfa crop. Bullets were 50 cents a box, almost a full day’s wage, and he learned never to waste one. It paid off. Later, when he arrived at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he impressed his trainers by getting the highest marksman score of any soldier up to that time, 248 out of 250. Due to his experience in high school on a survey crew, he was assigned to the Army Engineers and shipped to England in 1943. “I figured I’d be sitting in England surveying airports and roads,” he remembers. “I was happy. I thought it would be a wonderful way to fight a war.” Upon arrival in England, he found the Army had different plans. Rencher was assigned to the 531st Amphibious Engineer Battalion, part of the First Engineer Special Brigade, a unit that had led every major water invasion in the European Theater in World War II. The product of

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the Army’s need for a quick-strike amphibious force to spearhead landings in Europe and the Pacific, the unit had formed in May 1942 and shipped to England in August. Soon it distinguished itself in the landings at Arzew, Algeria, Gela, Sicily, and Salerno, Italy. Based on its success, the 531st was assigned the task of being among the first to hit the beaches on D-Day, clearing a path for the invasion. Command pulled no punches; it was to be a suicide mission. “You are going to be cannon fodder,” Rencher remembers being told, “and most of you will be killed. We anticipate that three out of every four men will be dead within the first hour. For that reason, we are making the unit triple-strength. Each man will train with two partners, so that there will be one man to get the job done after the other two are killed.” “We all felt like fugitives from the law of averages,” remembered one officer who had participated in all three. Now 87 and retired in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Rencher admits that he should have been scared to death, but he had the blessing of youth and was unfazed. “I was 19 years old,” he chuckled, “and I thought I was indestructible. I had no wife, no children. I was happy. As far as I was concerned, it was ‘Hip-hip-hooray, here we go!’” Beginning December 13, 1943, the 531st trained nonstop for the invasion. “We worked hard every day,” remembered Rencher. “We made a hundred mock invasions, just our battalion, maybe 500 men. We’d use an English beach. We’d come ashore with the battalion and practice on simulated mines laid out on the beaches.” On many of those days, as Rencher and his mates rehearsed, they noticed top brass standing on the bluffs above, watching them with binoculars, a reminder of how much was riding on their ability to disarm the terrifying array of explosives the Germans had laid in the waters and on the beaches of Normandy. “By the time of the invasion, we knew exactly where we were supposed to go and what we had to do,” said Rencher. “Our job was to detect and disarm all the different types of mines that the Germans had in the water and on the landing beaches. They had around 20 different types. There were half a dozen mines just for personnel, as well as tank mines and water mines. Some were concrete with dynamite inside. Some came up out of the ground six feet when you set them off and exploded right in your face.” Rencher’s three-man squad consisted of himself, Otis Hamm of Biloxi, Mississippi, and Dan Shellenberg of Youngstown, Ohio. “Hamm was the veteran,” said Rencher. “He’d made all three previous invasions. He knew how to 10

WWII HISTORY AUGUST 2016

ABOVE: Many years after his D-Day exploits, Jay Rencher is pictured with his wife, Louise, at their home in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 2010. BELOW: German antitank Teller mines, attached to posts buried in the sand at an angle, were planted liberally across the beaches of Normandy. Jay Rencher and his fellow engineers hit the beaches early to clear obstacles for the American landings.

National Archives

detect and disarm everything. Shellenberg and I were only 18 when we began training, and he made us as professional as he was.” Hamm was a tough and demanding taskmaster. He knew that his survival depended on training the two younger men to do their jobs to perfection. He hounded them, pushed them, and beat them into becoming a well-honed team. As a veteran of the three previous beach assaults, Hamm had no delusions about the deadliness of their mission. There was little room for error. “He figured, based on his experience, that he would be the one of the three of us who would not be killed and that Shellenberg and I would be killed,” remembered Rencher. Their task required good ears, steady hands, and more than a little luck. “For each mine, we had to find the teeny-tiny detonator,” recalled Rencher. “We worked as a team. One of us had the mine detector, a disc about one foot across with a handle and a meter with a dial on it. There were earphones that would hum and the dial would tell you when it had detected metal.

We had to detect each mine, we had to disarm them, and often the mines themselves were booby trapped. General [Field Marshal Erwin] Rommel had ordered 50 million mines for the beaches. At the time of the invasion, he had over 20 million of them installed. “The best day for attack would have been June 5, but the weather was too rough. June 5 and 6 had the lowest tide for the next six months. The 5th was ideal and the 6th was not quite as good, but General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, decided to go for it on the 6th. We were loaded onto 10 LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) ships the night of June 5, and then we waited for the sea to calm. We left about 6 PM. H-Hour was at 0600, and the 531st had to land at 0500 to clear the beaches. The waves were about five feet high, and we got very seasick! In a way being seasick helped us because we couldn’t stand to stay on the landing craft any longer. About a half-mile off the beach, they loaded us into 30-man landing craft for the final approach.” Utah Beach was eerily quiet. “I had 60 pounds of explosives in my pack, both TNT and composition explosives,” said Rencher. “The good thing about the TNT was that a bullet could pass right through it and it wouldn’t blow up. You had to have a blasting cap to detonate it. But I also had to carry those. If a bullet hit one of the blasting caps it would have detonated that 60 pounds of TNT, and I would have been completely vaporized.” Once the two-inch cable was blown, the three-man team moved on to blow the teller mines that the Germans had put on the top of wooden posts driven into the sand. Their purpose was to blow up approaching landing craft. “Most were below the waterline,” said Rencher. “We had to wrap plastic explosives around each post and blow it up. The Germans also had obstacles that we called ‘spiders’ [the Germans called them hedgehogs]. Each one was basically a big angle-iron sticking up that would cut up the boats as they tried to land. We blew these as well. “During the time the 200 of us engineers were in the water, we had no fire at all from the Germans on the beach. We had no fire at all for the first hour. They didn’t see us, and they didn’t know we were there. In that first hour we knocked out everything in our assigned area, making and marking a 50-yard-wide lane for the landing craft. Each group of three men was doing the same up and down the beach. “Once we were on the beach, on dry ground, we took two great big rolls of wire, with oak woven into it, each weighing around 300 pounds. These were carried in on Jeeps that by

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National Archives

now had landed. We laid the contraption down and across the beach so that vehicles wouldn’t get stuck in the sand.” Their next objective was a minefield, conveniently marked by the occupying Germans to keep the French and their animals away. Before Rencher’s team could reach it, a German 88mm cannon and two 40mm cannons opened up on them and on the approaching landing craft, each packed with soldiers. “These guns were terribly effective,” recalled Rencher. “I knew we had to do something about this in a hurry. Hamm and Shellenberg had about 30 pounds of TNT between them, and I had about 25 pounds left. I decided to use it all to take out the pillbox [which was delivering heavy fire]. The pillbox had 13 feet of concrete on the front side facing the sea, but only nine inches in the back. So I took the 55 pounds of TNT to the back of the pillbox, lit the fuse, ran under the nearest sand dune, opened my mouth wide, and screamed to protect myself from the concussion. There was a horrible explosion. Sand rained down on me, but luckily no concrete. I was deaf for the next 30 minutes. That was the end of that pillbox. No one survived. “We moved across another 50 yards of sand to a plain wire fence [where a sign was posted] that read ‘Achtung: Minen!’ and began slowly clearing a 10-foot-wide section through the minefield. One man ran the mine detector and deactivated the mines. We marked the cleared area with ribbon. The other two would follow him and set each mine about two feet outside the ribbon. It was about 0600. We were being shot at now. We looked ahead, and the minefield was about 200 yards deep. “About 100 yards into the minefield, Hamm was running the detector and we’d cleared almost 100 mines. They were laid out in a pattern, about every four or five feet. Hamm motioned for me to move up and take over for him. This whole time, we had been standing up! It never occurred to us, even with all our training, that standing up made us a good target! “I went up and got the detector. About five minutes later, the Germans cranked down an 88mm artillery piece so that it was aiming right at me. The first shell whistled over us and missed. The second shell landed behind me, between Otis and Dave, who were about 50 feet back.” Rencher heard Hamm groaning and crawled back to check on his fallen comrades. Hamm had been hit badly in the legs and needed immediate medical attention. Rencher told Shellenberg to help him drag Hamm back to the aid station, which medics had set up on the beach.

This photo taken by photographer Robert Capa, one of the few frames he captured on D-Day that survive, depicts American infantrymen struggling through the surf on Omaha Beach amid hedgehog and ramp obstacles placed by the Germans to disable landing craft.

Shellenberg did not respond, so Rencher shook his friend. He was limp, and his helmet fell off revealing a shrapnel hole in the side of his skull. He had been killed instantly. “Two infantrymen helped me drag Hamm back to the aid station. After we got there, I told them that they were now engineers. I showed them how to move the mines after I detected them. That’s all the training they got. But I told them to lie down; if one of us stood up we would all be killed. By this time, there were lots of men on the beach, getting killed.” Rencher and his two inductees completed their mission under heavy fire. With the minefield cleared, Rencher’s job as an amphibious engineer was completed. He trudged back to Utah Beach to find out about his buddy Hamm, who had been so certain that he would be the one to survive. “The medic told me that they had taken him to the hospital ship and amputated both of his legs,” said Rencher. “They amputated them just below the knee. Hamm was a professional baseball player. When he came to, he saw what had happened and asked what had happened to his legs. When they told him, he said, ‘What the heck does a baseball player do without any legs?’ and he turned to the wall, and he died. After the invasion, they named all the roads used by the troops and vehicles in Normandy. One of them is named Hamm and another is named Shellenberg. They were among the very first men killed on D-Day. “The commander had been right. Before 7 in the morning on June 6, 1944, two of the three of us were dead. But we had met our objectives, which were to cut the cables, destroy the water obstacles, build a road across the sand, and

clear the minefield.” Because of his special training as a combat engineer, Rencher was snatched up from a replacement depot by an armored engineer battalion, ending up with the 14th Armored Division. “I fought my way across Europe, through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany,” he remembered. Rencher fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was the American GI who formally accepted the surrender of the Moosburg prison camp, at the time 90 miles behind the most forward enemy positions. Rencher took the commander’s Luger and Beretta pistols and his fancy sword, later giving them away because his wife did not want Nazi memorabilia in their house. A devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Rencher attended Brigham Young University, where he received a degree in chemistry, and then Rutgers University, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry. After teaching a short while at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, he was hired by the U.S. government to supervise the training of sailors in the new nuclear Navy. He trained more than 25,000 sailors during his career at the government facility in the Arco desert. Married for 62 years to his wife, Louise, Rencher had, in his words, “a wonderful life,” blessed with eight children, 32 grandchildren, and 38 great grandchildren. Rob Morris is a military historian who lives in Ammon, Idaho. He is the author of Untold Valor: Forgotten Stories of American Bomber Crewmen over Europe in World War II (Potomac Books, 2006) and several other books on World War II topics. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Ordnance

I By Ric A. Dias I

Wikimedia

Fighting to Survive

a number of impressive successes in spite of his lack of formal education past the seventh grade. Bert C. Scott was a Stanford University-educated son of an influential California businessEngine maker Hall-Scott found new life with the wartime man who had begun working at his father’s farflung enterprises. In 1910 the two opened the need for its products. Hall-Scott Motor Car Company, named after the first product they sold, a gasoline-powered AMERICA’S INVOLVEMENT IN WORLD WAR II WAS SO DEEP AND BROAD THAT IT rail car called a motor car. That same year they demanded that virtually every citizen, farm, and company become involved. Therefore, even a sin- erected a shop in Berkeley near the shore of San gle person, small family farm, or modest-sized company could make a meaningful contribution Francisco Bay. The company’s high-performance and cutting-edge designs allowed it to to the war and thereby have some small degree of global impact. Such was the case with the Hall-Scott Motor Car Company of Berkeley, California. All but for- emerge as a leading name in the up-and-comgotten today, Hall-Scott powered Allied militaries on sea and land to victory with its thousands ing field of aviation, and it was soon building dozens of engines each year plus of high-performance engines, earning the appreciation of fighting men across the A restored M26 tow truck a handful of rail cars. globe and some visibility in the public, not to mention record profits totaling miltransports an M4 Sherman World War I presented Halllions of dollars. This is all the more remarkable given that just a few years before medium tank on a flatbed Scott with a sudden flood of the war Hall-Scott, mired in the depths of the Great Depression, was dangerously trailer. During World War II, orders—several thousand airclose to bankruptcy. Such was the profound impact of World War II. the Hall-Scott company craft motors. Domestic producHall-Scott’s origins date back to the early 20th century, when two ambitious built engines for the M26, tion of aircraft measured just young men launched a company to build light rail cars and engines for airplanes which hauled vehicles and heavy equipment. hundreds per year before the and automobiles. Elbert J. Hall, a mechanic and engine builder, had begun to amass

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Both: National Archives

conflict; then overnight the U.S. government and its allies ordered thousands of planes for the war. Hopelessly overwhelmed, aircraft engine makers yielded to the auto industry to fill the production shortfall. Hall-Scott enjoyed wide recognition in spite of its modest production, leading the U.S. government to order 1,250 of its A-7a motors, and the Russian government to order hundreds more. Hall-Scott’s in-line 4-cylinder A-7a stood out because of its aluminum pistons and crankcase, overhead camshaft and valves, and hemispherical (also known as a “hemi”) shaped cylinder heads. Its 606 cubic inches produced 100-110 horsepower, enough to propel a small plane. Hall-Scott quickly added hundreds of men and much production capacity but still could not meet demand, so the company signed a deal with automaker Nordyke & Marmon to build under license another 1,000 A-7a engines. World War I was spectacularly lucrative for Hall-Scott, which registered record production and profits. With the Great War ending in 1918, HallScott engine production plummeted, as did America’s aviation market, even though innovations continued. Surplus war engines inundated the already contracted market. Pivoting quickly, the small California engine maker introduced a number of new engines for new markets, sold warmed-over World War I models, built engines for other engine makers, and began production of the popular aftermarket Ruckstell 2-speed rear axle for the Ford Model T. In 1925 rail car maker American Car and Foundry (still a rail car builder today, known as ACF Industries) purchased Hall-Scott, giving it, at least in theory, some cover from the ups and downs of the marketplace. E.J. Hall’s engine designs continued to dazzle, and all his postwar designs employed overhead cams, hemi heads, and extensive use of aluminum components. A few models even burned liquefied gas (natural gas, butane, propane, etc.). Hall-Scott enjoyed some successes in the 1920s, but the Great Depression began its stranglehold on the economy late in that decade and slashed engine demand; in 1932 Hall-Scott sold just 145 engines. Could the company survive the hard times? In 1937, Hall-Scott Motor Car Company, drowning in red ink, was thrown a lifeline from the U.S. government. The threat of war had begun to surface, and so did the demand for marine power. The governments of the United States and its allies had begun shopping for high-speed, gasoline-fueled marine engines, making Hall-Scott a potential supplier. Hall-Scott had an engine on the shelf repre14

WWII HISTORY AUGUST 2016

ABOVE: The Hall-Scott Invader and Defender engines were used to power a variety of marine vessels during World War II. Among these were small craft such as this 38-foot U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat. BELOW: During a training exercise in England with simulated explosions providing an air of realism, an M26 truck powered by a Hall-Scott engine pulls a tank out of a crater.

senting the leading edge of marine technology that it hoped would interest these motivated buyers. Dubbed the Invader, it was released in 1931, and it was the last engine designed by E.J. Hall before he left the firm. The all-new Invader displaced 998 cubic inches, arranged its six cylinders in-line, and weighed about 2,000 pounds. It used a cast iron alloy (iron, chrome, nickel) block, aluminum pistons, crankcase, and cam cover, and twin ignition (two distributors and coils, two sets of spark plugs, etc.). The Invader “breathed” well as it had two valves at the top of each cylinder head set in a “cross flow” arrangement, operated by a chain-driven overhead camshaft. The

big six belted out 190-275 horsepower depending on features. The long stroke of each cylinder (the bore and stroke measured 5½ by 7 inches) helped it develop 700-750 foot-pounds of torque. It got great press, which led it to become highly desired by rum runners in the closing years of Prohibition. Capable though the Invader was, the Navy needed more engine. Hall-Scott was in a tough spot. Here finally was the promise of significant demand, but the company could not satisfy the customer’s need for power. While Hall-Scott had a history of developing new designs quickly, its genius cofounder E.J. Hall had left several years before, meaning that an all-new engine was out of the

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question. With limited time, capital, and inhouse talent to develop a new high-output motor, Hall-Scott made a bold proposal: take two Invaders and arrange them at a 60-degree angle to each other around a common crankshaft, making a V-12. Hall-Scott engineers could handle this assignment, and they soon had a new engine, the Defender. The big V-12 proved to be exactly what the customer wanted, and production began in 1939. The Defender came in two displacements, an early 1,996 cu. in. (twice that of the Invader) version and a later 2,181 cu. in. version (its bore enlarged to 5¾ inches). In fact, the 2,181 engine also came in a supercharged version, which produced substantially more power. Being based on the Invader, the Defender carried many of its essential features with some differences—the V-12 had a two-piece iron alloy block unlike the one-piece Invader block, and both engines had twin ignition, but the V-12 sported a 24-volt system, unlike the 12-volt in the other. Power ranged from impressive to awesome— 575 horsepower for 1,996 cubic inches for the V12, 630 horsepower for the 2,181 cubic inches and a whopping 900 horsepower for the “blown” Defender! By the war’s end in 1945, the Hall-Scott factory had shipped more than 6,500 Defenders. Perhaps most famously, Hall-Scott Defenders powered craft not in the American fleet, but in the British—the Fairmile A, B, and C motor launches. The government of Great Britain as well as a few Commonwealth nations, such as Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand ran Fairmiles in World War II. The wooden-hulled Fairmiles measured about 110 feet long, displaced about 60-85 tons, and with each ship having two or three Defenders in their engine bays, some supercharged, they could make 20-25 knots. Fairly fast and maneuverable, Fairmiles earned their keep in escort, harbor defense, rescue, sub chasing, and minesweeping and laying duties. According to one British marine writer, Fairmiles “gave outstanding service in many theatres.” And what of the Invader? The thirst for internal combustion engines was unquenchable in World War II, which was certainly good for any engine maker. Underscoring this importance, the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin famously and succinctly opined that the war was won by “engines and octane.” But the Invader was more than just an average engine. It was too good to be overlooked, even if the Defender was the first “Scottie” to reach big production numbers. There would be thousands of marine craft that could use a 190-275 horsepower, high-speed, 6-cylinder, gas-burning marine

engine, so soon enough tiny Hall-Scott found itself swamped with orders, as it had been decades earlier. Therefore, just as in World War I, Hall-Scott handed over some production of one of its highly desirable engines to a large automaker for volume output. In 1942, Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit signed a deal with Hall-Scott to build 4,000 Invaders under license. Hudson manufactures Invaders from 1942 to 1944, making few changes of substance (including adding a heat exchanger and adopting coolant as opposed to sea water for engine cooling) to the Hall-Scott design, which facilitated a quick rollout time. Visually, however, the two motors looked different because Hudson expended some real effort to identify the engine as its own, scrubbing any reference to Hall-Scott from the engine in the process. This was unlike World War I, when Nordyke & Marmon clearly indicated on the engine that the A-7a was built under license from Hall-Scott. The Hudson name and/or triangle symbol appeared in at least five places on the Invaders they built, on the cam cover, coil cover, gear box, and on the exhaust manifold twice. Hall-Scott left few corporate logos and names on its Invaders. In fact, the notably clean look of the Invader led one reviewer in 1931 to write that it had “sleek” lines. It appears that perhaps Hudson tried to squeeze a bit of glory from its brief association with this fantastic engine. The Invader, whether built by Hall-Scott or Hudson, found plenty of wartime customers. Invaders powered a handful of landing, patrol, and rescue craft with one or more of the big six-cylinder engines working in the engine bay. A common application was in the U.S. Coast Guard’s picket boats, wooden craft that were often 36 or 45 feet long, capable of 20-30 knots, built by a number of boat yards, from the obscure such as Kirkland Marine to the famous such as Chris-Craft. The U.S. Navy had begun using diesel engines in the 1920s, but there was still call for gasoline-fueled craft in the 1940s, and Hall-Scott was happy to provide power. There was one more evolution of Hall-Scott’s big marine engine during World War II. In 1940, Hall-Scott released a new land engine based on the Invader, calling it the 400 series. Over the next couple of decades, Hall-Scott fielded a number of closely related land engines, all of which sprung from this first Invader derivative. Like the Defender before it, the 400 shared the Invader’s essential features—iron alloy block, aluminum pistons, crankcase and cam cover, overhead valves and camshaft, cross flow and hemi head, and twin ignition. HallAUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Scott bored out the cylinders one quarter of an inch to 5¾ by 7 inches, yielding 1,090.6 cubic inches. Rated at 295 horsepower at 2,000 rpm and 940 foot pounds of torque at 1,350 rpm, the Hall-Scott 400 had plenty of power and a distinctive, deep, rumble issuing from its exhaust. An engine of this size would be of interest to those looking to power large trucks, and in the 1940s that included Uncle Sam. Sales were modest in the first couple of years the 400 was available, but the sales picture changed considerably when the War Department placed a large order for a slightly modified version of the 400, naming it the 440. The U.S. government mandated a few changes to the 400 to make the 440—a shaftdriven power steering pump, positive crankcase ventilation (P.C.V.), a beefed-up water pump shaft, and an oil filter bypass. The 440 had a lower compression ratio than the base 400, just 5:4:1, so the 440 carried a power rating of 240, about 55 less than the 400. Still, the two engines were very similar. During World War II the United States relied on gasoline-fueled engines for almost all its land vehicles, unlike its foe Germany which used diesel widely. This American use of gas power included many of its large tow trucks, perhaps the most awesome tow truck of the war being

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the 440-powered M25/M26/M26A1. San Francisco-based specialty truck maker Knuckey advanced the basic design of this heavy hauler in 1942. Knuckey had the talent to flesh out the basic winning design and, located across the bay from Hall-Scott in Berkeley, its leaders knew of the recently released 400. They included the locally built engine in their proposed truck design. But Knuckey did not possess the productive capacity to build the truck in number, so that task got handed off to volume vehicle maker Pacific Car and Foundry (still a truck builder today, Paccar is the parent company of Peterbilt and Kenworth). Discussing the truck is made a bit more complicated because of its various names. Technically, the M26A1 was the sheet metal body version of the truck, the M26 was the armored version, and the M25 was the truck when coupled to its trailer (the Fruehaufbuilt M15). And it had nicknames too, like the colorful “Dragon Wagon” (a nickname shared with other vehicles) and “Pacific,” referring to the maker. For the sake of simplicity, here the truck is referred to as the M26. Production of the M26 began in Renton, Washington, headquarters of Pacific Car and Foundry, in 1943, but it did not stay there long. Looking around in its own backyard, the com-

pany converted buildings at a fairground in Billings, Montana, as the next factory for the giant truck. The M26 performed work back home and on the front lines, with the armored version being more popular in harm’s way. It transported freshly fueled tanks to battle and empty, broken, or damaged tanks away. It hauled trucks, scrap metal, artillery, landing craft, and other boats, captured enemy vehicles, and anything else that it could drag, pull, or load onto its trailer. With its beefy construction and abundant Hall-Scott power, the M26 was rated to haul 40 tons but innumerable times easily pulled much more. The M26’s job was facilitated by having winches mounted to the truck, one under the front and two behind the cab. There was also a folding boom behind the cab. It also came with a highly adjustable fifth wheel attached to the frame to accommodate a trailer. The truck had three axles, all powered, making it a “6x6.” The Hall-Scott’s power flowed through a transmission with 12 forward and three reverse gears, and a final drive ratio of just 7:69:1. That “low” gearing and chain drive (which delivered power to the rear axles) imposed some limits on top speed, under 30 miles per hour, but attaining a high top speed was not the M26’s performance objective any-

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National Archives

way. More of a concern might have been its fuel mileage—the M26 came with a 120-gallon gas tank, but with its 1 to 3 miles per gallon, consumption range was limited. Pacific assembled about 1,372 Dragon Wagons, and Hall-Scott built about 1,700 of its 440 engines, which led to plenty of the trucks and engines having life after the war. For years following the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic, M26’s pulled houses, ore, lumber, or other cargo, their massive Hall-Scott engines rumbling out their distinctive deep, smooth note. With the end of World War II in 1945, just as in the wake of World War I, Hall-Scott engine production slid quickly. Short-sighted management at its parent company siphoned off millions of dollars Hall-Scott had earned, money desperately needed to transition to the rapidly changing peacetime market, leaving Hall-Scott weak and vulnerable. The Korean conflict brought another surge of engine sales in Berkeley, but it was small compared to the two world wars—mostly several hundred highprofit Defenders and some bus engines. The long-struggling ACF finally cut HallScott free in 1954, unable to squeeze any more money from it to cover its own perennial shortfalls. Too small and poorly capitalized to expand in the dynamic postwar engine market,

making (1915-1999) Hercules churned out over two million motors, the biggest single customer being Uncle Sam. But Hercules, like ACF before it, did not invest the capital into HallScott needed to make it competitive, so “Scotties” ceased rolling out of the large Canton factory around 1970. War, especially World War II, allowed HallScott, a production small fry, to flex its muscles and thrive. World Wars I and II encouraged Hall-Scott to develop new products, to hire more employees, and expand operations. Had the company enjoyed better leadership during World War II, war demand, which made the company bigger and more efficient than it had ever been before, could have positioned Hall–Scott to be competitive in the postwar market for years, perhaps changing the face of American industrial engines. During World War I Hall-Scott produced thousands of aircraft engines. The company achieved production and profitably records.

specifically into heavy-duty diesel, management looked for a buyer. Finally, Hercules Motors Corporation of Canton, Ohio, was found in 1958. Fans of war vehicles know this firm because during its 84-year history of engine

Ric Dias graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1995 with a Ph.D. in history. He is a professor of history at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Dias has written on Kaiser Steel Corporation and the Cold War. With former company employee Francis Bradford he wrote Hall-Scott, The Untold Story of a Great American Engine Maker, published by SAE International in 2007.

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Insight

I By Phil Scearce I

U.S. Army Art Collection

of the Pacific War, the Japanese had reached a logistical tipping point: success after far-flung success had stretched supply lines too thinly for adequate support of Japan’s distant conquests. Lance Corporal Koto and his countrymen were at the precise place and time that the strain became too great. Koto wrote, “Every day there is bombing by enemy airplanes, naval gunfire and artillery fire. No sign of friendly planes or of our navy appears. The transports haven’t come yet either. I have not eaten properly since the 24th of November; many days I have had nothing to eat at all. From tonight on indefinitely, again without expecting to return alive, I am going out resolutely to the front line. Even though I am holding my rifle with a right arm that doesn’t move easily, now is the time for me to dominate a military contest. I must serve as long as I can move at all. “The Regimental Commander, Colonel Hiroyasu, 16th Infantry, died in battle. The battalion commanders are all either wounded or

In this painting by a Japanese war artist, confident soldiers of the Empire appear relaxed prior to going into action somewhere in the Pacific. The Japanese considered themselves superior to their Western enemies; however, their overconfidence sometimes resulted in heavy casualties. RIGHT: Colonel Kiyono Ichiki commanded the ill-fated unit to which Corporal Kiyoshi Koto belonged during the fight for Guadalcanal.

Last Letter Home A Japanese soldier on Guadalcanal wrote a poignant letter days before his life ended. ON DECEMBER 1, 1942, LANCE CORPORAL KIYOSHI KOTO WROTE HIS LAST letter home. By that time, his unit’s command structure was decimated and the battle strength of his army and its supporting navy was ravaged. As he wrote, the characters on the page of Koto’s letter took shape weakly because he had been wounded in the right arm by a shell during an attack five days earlier. He struggled to carry his rifle because of his injury, and he had not eaten because critical supplies had not reached the beach, let alone the front, on the embattled island where he had fought for days. Koto understood very well that he was a dead man. Koto’s unit of the 16th Japanese Infantry Regiment was situated west of the Matanikau River and across from the 164th Infantry Regiment of the U.S Army’s Americal Division (23rd Infantry Division), on the island the Japanese called Gadarukanaru and the Americans knew as Guadalcanal. U.S. Marines who came ashore on Guadalcanal almost four months earlier had been unopposed in spite of Japanese defense theory that prescribed a fierce, overwhelming reception for enemy landings at the shore. But the size of the island Koto’s unit and his comrades occupied was too great for defense of its many miles of shoreline. And most critically for the balance 18

WWII HISTORY AUGUST 2016

dead. My own company commander is dead. Two of the platoon commanders have been wounded; one of them entered the hospital for medical treatment and was with me there. In our company NCOs are acting as platoon commanders and privates as squad leaders. At present my company has come down to a total of only 30 men. Of the soldiers in my squad three were killed, four wounded, and at present four in good health are doing hard fighting. As I too am soon to leave for the front lines I should like to see their cheerful faces. The platoon leader, convalescing and almost up, says ‘Go to it!’” Koto includes greetings to members of his

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U.S. Marine Corps

U.S. Marines take up defensive positions along the shoreline at Guadalcanal. Early in the battle for control of the island, the Japanese came to grief when assaulting well-defended Marine lodgments.

family and closes, “I am writing this as a farewell letter.” Three months earlier, an injured, hungry soldier like Kiyoshi Koto, with no hope of victory, no authority to retreat, and no expectation of relief, may have seemed to the Americans opposing him to be a reasonable candidate for surrender. But as the fight for Guadalcanal unfolded, American forces witnessed what would be the first of many subsequent encounters with Japanese units committed to die to the last man, however hopeless the outcome of the fight. This shocking event, known today as the Battle of the Tenaru River (actually fought at the Ilu River), closed the first Japanese effort to counterattack the Marines holding Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, the vital airstrip that allowed American planes to operate in support of the ground troops. It established a pattern for the war, a pattern with cultural roots deep in the Bushido code. Japanese construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal began in early July 1942, and American planners quickly realized the threat that such an airfield presented. From Guadalcanal, Japanese bombers could attack shipping between the United States and Australia. When American forces began moving toward Guadalcanal in mid-July, their Japanese counterparts were aware of a large convoy leaving San Francisco, but they concluded that the United States was reinforcing Australia or possibly sending support to Port Moresby on the island of New Guinea. This mistaken analysis might have been over20

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come on the eve of the American invasion had it not been for bad weather. The anxious Marines gripping their rifles aboard landing craft on August 7, 1942, may have never reached the beach if the two previous days’ weather had been clear and one of the four Japanese patrol planes that fanned out from Florida Island each day had spotted their transports. Fortunately for the Marines, the previous couple of days had been stormy around Guadalcanal. Severe weather and thick clouds shielded the American ships as they approached. When the Marines landed, the unarmed Japanese construction crews working on the airfield nearby and their small guard detachment were already gone, having fled in terror when American warships opened up on their positions and American aircraft swooped in for bombing runs. The Japanese left behind not only their hot breakfasts, but also valuable equipment including road rollers, two gas locomotives on rails, a fleet of Chevrolet trucks, generators, thousands of gallons of gas and oil, a gas-powered winch, dozens of hand tools, and food supplies including canned Alaskan king crab and, to the delight of the Marines, a refrigeration unit and hundreds of cases of beer. The Marines established a perimeter, landed and dispersed supplies, and set about finishing the airfield with the captured Japanese construction equipment. Meanwhile, the Japanese 17th Army was ordered to retake Guadalcanal with naval support from the Combined Fleet. The units available to Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake, commander of the 17th, included the 28th Infantry Regiment under Colonel Kiy-

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onao Ichiki. Ichiki’s regiment was closest, near Guam and already aboard transports that would have landed the unit at Midway had the effort to seize that atoll proceeded as the Japanese intended. Ichiki’s regiment would reach Guadalcanal in two echelons five days apart, but Ichiki confidently planned to attack the Americans with his first echelon alone. He was grateful for the assignment because it was a chance to achieve the glory that had been denied his regiment when the Midway landings were aborted. Seven months of victory after victory over American and British forces had infused the Japanese with a sense of invincibility. They had supreme confidence in themselves and an equal disdain for American fighting will and skill. This mind-set, as yet unfazed by the navy’s setback in the epic Battle of Midway, together with the Japanese high command’s gross underestimation of the size of the American forces at Guadalcanal, predisposed Ichiki to take dramatic missteps. He determined to attack with half his force before he was landed ashore and able to make an objective assessment of American strength. After landing, Ichiki ignored warning signs of the American presence and firepower when an advance patrol of his unit was routed, and he threw his lightly armed men into a frontal assault without probing the American perimeter for gaps. Ichiki’s first echelon had landed east of the Marine perimeter just after midnight on August 19 and immediately marched toward the Americans nine miles away. Then, in the early morning darkness of the 21st, Ichiki’s men attacked the American line. They attacked at the precise place the Marines had aptly named “Hell’s Point.” A company of Ichiki’s command rushed across the sandbar at the mouth of the river, and Marine rifles, machine guns, and a 37mm gun responded with a hail of fire that decimated the first Japanese thrust. A few Japanese soldiers reached the American-held west side of the sandbar, forced their way through a barbed wire barrier, and died in hand-to-hand combat with Marines. Ichiki sent two more companies forward but failed to pierce the American line. Ichiki brought forward his machine-gun company with eight guns along with a pair of 70mm guns, but American artillery began answering the Marines’ call for support. Under the barrage, Ichiki withdrew most of his remaining troops behind the line of battle while a company of Japanese soldiers went into the ocean beyond the sandbar in an effort to flank the American line. These troops were cut down in the surf by American machine-gun and artillery fire. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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National Archives

Dead Japanese soldiers lie half buried in the sand near the mouth of the Ilu River after a vicious fight with U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal that decimated the ranks of the Ichiki Detachment. The location was initially referred to as the Tenaru River due to a mislabeled map.

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WWII HISTORY AUGUST 2016

Daylight brought no further movement by Ichiki, but the Marines seized an opportunity to press the attack and wipe out Ichiki’s remaining force. A battalion moved south and crossed the dry bed of Alligator Creek (as the river was known by the Marines) inland and placed one company on Ichiki’s left to block an escape along the creek, sent another company toward the beach to block retreat along the coast, and attacked Ichiki’s now surrounded men with two companies from the rear. Ichiki’s force was trapped in a shrinking perimeter with increasingly intense American fire supported by strafing runs by excited Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter pilots who had reached Henderson Field only the day before and were seeing their first action. American light tanks crossed the sandbar to flank the Japanese then turned inland and raked the coconut grove where Ichiki’s surviving soldiers desperately fought on, the tanks crushing trees and routing Japanese soldiers in their path. When the tanks returned to their own line and the Marines allowed themselves to believe, for the moment, that the fighting was over, leaderless Japanese soldiers resumed firing on approaching Americans. Some tried to escape to the sea, where they were killed on the beach or shot by Marine riflemen as they swam away. Victorious Marines finally approached the scene of the firefight. Some hoped to find souvenirs like small arms, helmets, or most prized of all, the small national flags called hinomaru yosegaki, signed by family with well wishes and calls for victory, carried by some Japanese in their packs or worn around their waists for

good luck. Other Marines simply scanned the scene of the carnage, fascinated by what they had accomplished. Meanwhile, corpsmen with their medical kits searched among the Japanese wounded whose lives they might be able to save. But the battle was not over for some. A few of the Japanese soldiers who were still alive begged for help, then shot Americans as they responded to their cries. Dying men detonated grenades when Americans approached. One wounded Japanese soldier suddenly fired his handgun at a group of American officers, missed, and then fatally shot himself in the head. Motivated by this refusal of the defeated Japanese to quit the fight, Marines backed away, formed a line at the creek bank, raised their rifles, and fired away at the prostrate enemy soldiers, most of whom were already dead. The Marines lost 34 men. Japanese dead numbered nearly 800, including Ichiki. The Americans captured hundreds of Japanese rifles and 30 machine guns, as well as grenade launchers and light weapons, but of most immediate benefit were captured Japanese shovels. The scale of the fight was not great in comparison to others during World War II in the Pacific or in the annals of military history, and it was only the first of many actions on land and in the waters off Guadalcanal’s coast that would ultimately decide the outcome of the battle for the Solomon Islands. Colonel Kiyono Ichiki’s defeat was the first incident in which American fighting men became aware of the cultural differences they would encounter in combat with their Japanese adversaries. After the battle, Marine Maj. Gen.

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Alexander A. Vandegrift, commanding U.S. forces on the island of Guadalcanal, described it this way in a letter to his superior officer, Lt. Gen. Thomas Holcomb: “I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded will wait until men come up to examine them and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade. You can readily see the answer to that….” The answer, as the balance of the war proved prophetically true, was combat with no quarter. And the actions of soldiers under Ichiki’s command offer a glimpse into the mind of Lance Corporal Kiyoshi Koto, who also refused to surrender when he found himself in a losing battle, wrote his farewell letter home, and in the last days of November 1942 went forward to fight and die. He had no illusions about his future. Instead, his thoughts were with home and with his brothers in arms along with a final hope that he could save his family the pain of not knowing what had happened to him. Lance Corporal Koto was hungry and wounded, but it is unlikely that he was troubled by his hunger or his pain as he reached the front on the day he had written his letter. Koto was killed in action about midnight on the same day, and his letter was never delivered. Instead, an American soldier pulled the letter from Koto’s uniform pocket and took it to his intelligence officer. The letter was translated into English while a few of Koto’s captured countrymen dug a grave for him somewhere on Guadalcanal, and the short paragraphs that Koto had hoped would give his family a sense of closure instead became a source of information and a curiosity for his American enemy. Every Japanese sailor and soldier was familiar with the Song of the Warrior, an ancient ballad that captured the centuries of fighting culture that made surrender unthinkable for Kiyoshi Koto. If I go to sea, I shall return a corpse awash; If duty calls me to the mountain, a verdant sword will be my pall; Thus for the sake of the Emperor, I shall not die peacefully at home. After the war, the Japanese returned to Guadalcanal to reclaim their dead. Americans, their former enemies, were among those who helped the Japanese locate the graves of their countrymen, and perhaps Lance Corporal Kiyoshi Koto was among those whose remains were finally taken home. Author Phil Scearce has conducted extensive research on World War II in the Pacific. He resides in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Top Secret

I By Blaine Taylor I

All photos: National Archives

“But worst of all was the fact that, out of a certain common predisposition, a sect gradually began to form in the SA which made up the nucleus of a conspiracy directed not only against the normal conceptions of a healthy people, but against the security of the state as well.” Thus, the Führer was officially acting as if he had not known about Rohm’s homosexuality since the first days of their association in 1920, when, in fact, he had turned a blind eye toward it from the start because he needed such men as the burly brawler and his thugs in the movement. In his book The Hidden Hitler, German author Lothar Machtan claims that the Führer himself was gay and that the two men may have been lovers. Ironically, just as the Nazis persecuted the Jews in part because some of their own top leaders were, in fact, at least partly Jewish, including SS General Reinhard Heydrich and Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch, so, too, did they also do the same with homosexuals, as a means of covering their tracks in a sense. States Andrew Hollinger, assistant director of media relations and communications for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “As part of the Nazis’ attempt to purify German society and propagate an ‘Aryan master race,’ they condemned homosexuals as ‘socially aberrant.’ “Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted Stormtroopers raided the institutions and gathering places of Aside from the well-known Holocaust against the homosexuals. Greatly weakened and driven underground, this subculture had flourished in Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, the Nazis also persecuted the relative freedom of the 1920s, in the pubs Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals. and cafés of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Bremen and other cities.” Indeed, by 1928, there were an estimated 1.2 AT 8 PM ON THE EVENING OF FRIDAY, JULY 13, 1934, GERMAN REICH CHANCELLOR Adolf Hitler stepped to the speaker’s lectern of the Reichstag in Berlin’s Kroll Opera House to million homosexual men in the Weimar Repubexplain his murderous conduct during the recent Nazi “Blood Purge” against the top leadership lic. Legal prosecution of homosexuals did not begin under the Third Reich, however, but cadre of the brownshirted SA Stormtroopers during the weekend of June 30-July 2, 1934. In front of him stood steel-helmeted, armed SS troopers, and there were more placed strategi- under the Second Reich of Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1871, the year the new German cally throughout the chamber, the first and only time such an event occurred throughStanding meekly in ranks, Empire was established by Reich out the 12 years of the Third Reich. Indeed, Hitler feared assassination from his own followers as a result of the “national murder weekend,” and rightly so, for concentration camp inmates Chancellor Prince Otto von Biswear colored triangles on marck, the Iron Chancellor. some of the victims had been his most intimate followers, such as his SA Chief of their prison uniforms. A Paragraph 175 of the criminal Staff, Captain Ernst Rohm. pink triangle denoted a code outlawed acts of “unnatural During his address, the chancellor for the first time made public mention of the homosexual, green a proindecency” between men. Six sex life of the man who had been reputedly closest to him, a man whose alleged homofessional criminal, blue an years later, this was redefined by sexuality was reportedly well known throughout Nazi Germany and even abroad. immigrant, and red a politi“The life which the Chief of Staff—and with him a certain circle of others—began cal prisoner. The systematic the German Supreme Court as an “intercourse-like act” alone, thus to lead was intolerable from any National Socialist point of view,” Hitler said. “As persecution of homosexumaking arrests and convictions of if it were not terrible enough that he himself and his circle of devotees broke every als by the Nazis existed for years in the Third homosexuals relatively difficult. single law of decency and modesty, still worse, this poison now began to spread in Reich. On the other hand, since 1900 ever-increasing circles.

Wave of Persecution

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under the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German Regular Police or Kripo had been compiling lists of suspected homosexual men called “pink lists” from all across the Reich—but little or no use was ever made of them. By 1932, however, on the eve of the Nazis’ assumption of governmental power, Berlin’s municipal leaders began enforcing public morality laws to close bars and social clubs catering to homosexual customers. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of the German Reich by President and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and everything began to change as the Nazis espoused a platform of law and order, traditional values, an ideology of virulent anti-Semitism, and the persecution of unwanted social groups. Recalled one homosexual, “Then came the thunderbolt of January 30, 1933, and we knew that a change of political climate had taken place. What we had tried to prevent had taken place. Over the years, more and more of my political friends disappeared, of my Jewish and of my homosexual friends. Fear came over us with the increasingly coordinated pressure of the Nazis. “For Heaven’s sake not to attract attention, to exercise restraint, [and] 1933 was the starting point for the persecution of homosexuals. Already in this year we had heard of raids on homosexual pubs and meeting places. Maybe individual, politically uneducated homosexuals who were only interested in immediate gratification did not recognize the significance of the year 1933, but for us homosexuals who were also politically active, who had defended the Weimar Republic, and who had tried to forestall the Nazi threat, 1933 initially signified a reinforcing of our resistance. “In order not to mutually incriminate ourselves, we decided to no longer recognize each other. When we came across each other in the street, we passed by without looking at one another. There were certain possibilities for us to meet, but that never happened in public. “For a politicized homosexual, visiting places which were part of the homosexual subculture was too dangerous. Friends told me that raids on bars were becoming more frequent, and someone had written on the wall of the Hamburg S-Bahn between Dammtor Station and the main station, ‘Street of the Lost.’ “That was some sort of film or book title. We found this graffiti very amusing, for most of us tried to cope with the thing by developing a sort of gallows humor.” On May 6, 1933, Nazi student groups and

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sympathizers ransacked the Institute for Sexual Science founded by Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld, a Jewish homosexual physician. According to Hollinger, Dr. Hirshfeld was “one of Germany’s leading advocates of civil rights for homosexuals. Four days later, much of his Institute’s library was destroyed in a public book burning.” The notorious event was sponsored by Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Josef Goebbels. The institute had sponsored research and discussion on marital problems, sexually transmitted diseases, and laws relating to sexual offenses, abortion, and homosexuality. For 30 years, Dr. Hirshfeld spearheaded efforts to decriminalize homosexuality. In 1933, he happened to be in France, where he remained until his death. On June 8, 1933, and in November 1934, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and the Human Rights League, both homosexual rights organizations, were dissolved. Captain Rohm was shot on July 2, 1934, without trial, and the previous April 20, the Gestapo, established by Luftwaffe chief and Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring, was taken over by Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. In October Himmler set up a division to deal with homosexuals within the department. One of its first acts was to instruct the Kripo to gather all the pink lists from across the Third Reich. On June 28, 1935, the Nazis published their revised Paragraph 175 provisions, and subsequent judicial interpretations expanded the range of punishable “indecencies between men.” These now included “simple looking” and “simple touching.” The harsher, amended version of Paragraph 175 went into effect on September 1, 1935, thus punishing a broader range of “lewd and lascivious” behavior between men. In 1936 Himmler became national chief of the German Police, and on October 10 created the Reich Central Office for Combatting Homosexuality and Abortion, or Special Office (II S), a subdepartment of Executive Department II of the Gestapo. During 1936-1939, a total of 78,000 men were arrested under the new, broadened Paragraph 175. Prosecutions reached their peak between 1937 and 1939, asserts Hollinger. “Half of all convictions for homosexual activity under the Nazi regime occurred during those years. The police stepped up raids on homosexual meeting places, seized address books of arrested men to find additional suspects, and created networks of informers to compile lists of names and make arrests.” On February 18, 1937, Reichsfuhrer Himmler addressed his higher SS and police leaders at Bad Tolz on the subject of homosexuality as 26

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ABOVE: Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld, a homosexual physician, was the victim of Nazi violence when his Institute for Sexual Science was vandalized by student groups in May 1933. BELOW: Ernst Rohm, head of the notorious SA, was an early member of Hitler’s inner circle until he was killed in the blood purge of 1934. Rohm was a homosexual.

he saw it. “With a static number of women, we have two million men too few on account of those who fell in the war [of 1914-1918].... You can well imagine how this imbalance of two million homosexuals and two million war dead, or in other words a lack of about four million men capable of having sex, has upset the sexual balance sheet of Germany, and will result in a catastrophe. “There are those homosexuals who take the view that what I do is my business, a purely private matter; however, all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation, signify world power or ‘Swissifica-

tion.’ The people which has many children has the candidature for world power and world domination. A people of good race which has too few children has a one-way ticket to the grave, for insignificance in 50 or a hundred years, for burial in 250 years… “Therefore, we must be absolutely clear that if we continue to have this burden in Germany, without being able to fight it, then that is the end of Germany, and the end of the Germanic world….” The Nazis also felt that homosexuals formed self-serving groups, the emergence of a state within a state that could disrupt the social harmony and fabric of the Reich. In addition, Nazi policy asserted that homosexual men carried a “degeneracy” that threatened the “disciplined masculinity” of Germany. In some cases, homosexuality was deemed a mental illness, and thus many men were institutionalized while others were forced to choose between “voluntary” castration and imprisonment. This “voluntary” castration, encouraged openly after 1935, was so that homosexual men could “free themselves” from their “degenerate sex drive,” or so the euphemisms went. In the Nazi concentration camps, they were subjected to forced castration in medical experiments as well. Indeed, at Buchenwald, SS Dr. Karl Vaernet performed operations designed to “convert” men to heterosexuals, including the surgical insertion of a capsule that released the male hormone testosterone. “Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality,” explains Hollinger. During the 12 years of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945, an estimated 100,000 of the approximately 1-2 million homosexual men in Germany were arrested, and of these 50,000 officially defined as gay were sentenced under Paragraph 175. Most of these were held in regular prisons, while from 5,000 to 15,000 more were incarcerated in concentration camps. How many of the latter died? No one knows for sure, but researcher Rudiger Lautmann believes that the death rate for the “175ers” may have been as high as 60 percent. States Hollinger, “All prisoners of the camps wore marks of various colors and shapes, which allowed guards and camp functionaries to identify them by category. The uniforms of those sentenced as homosexuals ... included a large black dot and a ‘175’ drawn on the back of the jacket. Later, a pink triangular patch appeared…. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals.”

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From the publishers of WWII HISTORY &

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BLITZKRIEG on the Russian Front

Standing mutely at attention in bitterly cold weather, prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp are under the watchful eyes of Nazi guards. This photo was taken on December 19, 1938.

The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality, and lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled a “licentious lesbian” on her mug shot, but she was also a “stateless Jew,” a sufficient cause for deportation and gassing in a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany in 1942, a year after the program was to have been officially halted at Hitler’s order. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II began, vastly increasing Himmler’s powers across the whole of German-occupied Europe, although the SS did not generally persecute and arrest homosexuals outside the Reich. In July 1940, Himmler issued orders to the officers of the Kripo that homosexuals convicted under Paragraph 175 who were known to have had more than one sexual partner were to be sent directly to a concentration camp after their formal release from prison. Beginning in 1943, the SS, in concert with the German Ministry of Justice, launched an explicit program of “extermination through work” to destroy Germany’s “habitual criminals,” including homosexuals. The vast majority of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis included native Germans and acquired Austrians after the 1938 annexation of that nation. Asserts Hollinger, “Unlike Jews,

men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in Eastern Europe, nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.” The war ended on May 8, 1945, with the total defeat of the Third Reich and the collapse of the Nazi state, and yet Paragraph 175 remained in effect under the new Allied governments that partitioned the former Nazi Germany. Some homosexuals liberated from Nazi camps were even transferred to German prisons to serve out the remainder of their sentences under Paragraph 175. Eleven years after the war ended, in June 1956, the Federal Republic of Germany Reparation Law for Victims of National Socialism declared that internment in a concentration camp for homosexuality disqualified an individual from receiving state compensation. In 1969, Paragraph 175 was revised to decriminalize homosexual relations between men over the age of 21. On May 8, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, homosexuals murdered by the Nazis received their first public acknowledgment in a speech by West German President Richard von Weizacker, and in 1994 after the reunification of East and West Germany, Paragraph 175 was abolished altogether. Finally, in 2002, the German Parliament pardoned homosexuals convicted by the Nazis under Paragraph 175. Thus, the wheel had finally come full circle to where it was prior to 1871. Towson, Maryland, freelance writer Blaine Taylor is the author of 12 books on World War II.

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The Battle for

AACHEN BY ARNOLD BLUMBERG

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IN

EMPEROR CHARLEMAGNE’S HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE—THE FIRST REICH—WITH ITS CAPITAL AT AACHEN, LASTED 1,000 YEARS. HITLER INSISTED ON A FANATICAL DEFENSE OF THE CITY.

National Archives

their directive to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in northwestern Europe, the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff ordered Allied forces to land in France in June 1944, break out of Normandy, and mount an offensive “aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” To this end, Allied planners designated the first major target inside the Reich to be the Ruhr industrial region, an area of vital economic importance. An offensive against the Ruhr would compel the Germans to commit their remaining forces so that the Allies might bring them to battle and destroy them. There were four major approaches to the Ruhr from France: the Plain of Flanders, the Ardennes Forest, the Metz-Kaiserlauten Gap, and the MaubeugeLeige-Aachen axis north of the Ardennes. On September 5, 1944, Eisenhower chose the route the American armies would follow through the German defensive line known as the Siegfried Line or West Wall directly to the north and south of the ancient city of Aachen. Once Aachen and its environs were captured, the Allied high command envisioned a rapid advance to the Rhine and then on to the Ruhr with the end of the war in Europe soon following. Militarily, Aachen had little to recommend it. Lying in a saucer-like depression surrounded by hills, it was not a natural fortress. This was surprising since in October 1944 the town lay between the twin bands of the Siegfried Line that split north and south of the city. To the west was the relatively thin Scharnhorst Line, while to the east and behind Aachen During the fight for stood the more heavily fortified Schill Line. Aachen in the autumn Aachen itself was defended by the 246th Volksof 1944, an American grenadier Infantry Division commanded by Colonel soldier crouches beside Gerhard Wilck. The 246th had taken responsibility an abandoned gun and aims his M1 Garand for this sector in late September 1944 from the 116th rifle at a distant Panzer Division. North of the city were the 183rd target. The American Volksgrenadier and 4th Infantry Divisions, while to occupation of Aachen the south lay the 12th Infantry Division, collectively delivered the ancient designated the LXXI Corps under the command of seat of government of Charlemagne’s Holy Lt. Gen. Friedrich J. Kochling. Roman Empire into Although the 246th Division had not engaged in Allied hands. any major combat within its own zone, Wilck’s troops had nevertheless been decisively weakened. In the desperate efforts to stem the American First Army’s recent breakthrough of the West Wall, Kochling had stripped his front of troops, including four of Wilck’s seven infantry battalions. The entire 404th Infantry Regiment and a battalion each of the 352nd and 689th Infantry Regiments had been attached to neighboring divisions. On October 7, 1944, the U.S. XIX Corps entered Alsdorf, six miles north of Aachen, in an initial move to encircle the city and attack it from the rear. From there the Americans pressed southward toward Wurselen. The prospects for keeping Aachen in German hands looked bleak, yet Kochling’s Wehrmacht superiors had not let him down completely. Their most immediate step had been to assemble an effective force to retake Alsdorf in hopes of preventing the enemy encirclement of Aachen. The main component of this force was the Schnelle (Mobile) Regiment von Fritzschen comprising three bicycle-mounted infantry battalions and an engineer company. In support was the 108th Panzer Brigade with 22 self-propelled assault guns. Any genuine hope of denying Aachen to the Americans for an extended time lay not with the small Schnelle combat group but with a promise from Commander-in-Chief West Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt to commit his most potent theater reserves. These were the 3rd Panzergrenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions. Attaching these to the headquarters of the I SS Panzer Corps headed by General Georg Keppler, von Rundstedt intended to stabilize the front in the Aachen region. Since leaving the city in September, the 116th Panzer Division had been built up to 11,500 men but it fielded only 41 tanks AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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The 1st Division’s 18th Infantry Regiment, under Colonel George H. Smith, was tasked with capturing Verlautenheide. For this job the regiment formed assault teams armed with flamethrowers, Bangalore torpedoes, and pole and satchel explosive charges to eliminate the German pillboxes guarding the objective. In support of the special attack teams, a self-propelled battery of 155mm field guns and a company of tank destroyers would direct fire on the enemy defenses. Air assets and 11 batteries of artillery would soften up Verlautenheide before the infantry went in. The division’s other two regiments were to aid the attack by making feints on their respective fronts. Once the town was captured, a company of tanks would join the infantry there. Because the American attacks were confined to a combined front of only five miles, German shelling inflicted significant losses. However, simultaneous American assaults prevented the German defenders from mounting adequate counterattacks to meet the dual threat to their positions. As a result, by October 10 the 18th Regiment had reached its final objectives, including the Aachen suburb of Haaren a mile north of the city, and had cut the two main roads into Aachen. On the same day, 1st DiviNational Archives

ABOVE: German panzergrenadiers accompanied by a Sturmgeschutz IV assault gun mounting a 75mm main weapon advance through the rubble strewn streets of the city of Aachen. RIGHT: Field Marshal Walther Model, commander of German Army Group G, confers with Colonel Gerhard Wilck, who led the 246th Volksgrenadier Division during the tough fighting around the city of Aachen.

out of an authorized armor force of 151 PzKpfw. IV and PzKpfw. V Panther medium tanks. Although the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division was in reality little more than a motorized infantry division, numbering 12,000 soldiers, 31 75mm antitank guns, and 38 field artillery pieces. From October 5 to 7, Kochling waited in vain for the arrival of the promised reinforcements. They had been dispatched earlier, but disruptions by Allied air attacks on the rail lines had resulted in serious delays. In the meantime, Kochling feared Aachen would be lost. At the time, the number of German troops defending Aachen and its surrounding area was 12,000, including the reduced 246th Volksgrenadier Division, a battalion of Luftwaffe ground troops, a machine-gun fortress battalion, and a Landesschutzen Battalion, all under the command of Lt. Col. Maximilian Leyherr. From the American viewpoint, the timing of the operation to encircle and reduce Aachen depended on the progress of the penetration of the West Wall north of the city. As soon as XIX Corps took Wurselen, three miles to the north 30

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of Aachen and behind the Siegfried Line, Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins’ VII Corps in the south was to attack from a jump-off point near the town of Eilendorf east of Aachen, seize Verlautenheide, a strongpoint in the second band of the West Wall, and connect with XIX Corps at Wurselen. With Aachen isolated, part of the VII Corps would reduce the town while XIX Corps and the rest of VII Corps drove east and northeast to the Roer River. Once the Roer was crossed, a quick thrust through the Cologne Plain would bring the U.S. First Army to the Rhine within easy striking distance of the Ruhr. On October 7, with Alsdorf in American hands, Maj. Gen. Leland Hobbs, commander of the U.S. 30th Infantry Division, urged his XIX Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett, to order an immediate advance on Wurselen. Hobbs was confident he could join his division with those of the VII Corps in two days. With approval from Lieutenant Courtney H. Hodges, commander of the First Army, Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner’s 1st Infantry Division, VII Corps began its drive to Wurselen that afternoon.

sion captured its initial objectives and 30th Division prepared to advance southward on the jungle of factory buildings lying just outside Aachen. The same day the Americans were closing the ring around Aachen, lead elements of the 3rd Panzergrenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions reached the town and were committed to battle. However, Field Marshal Walter Model, commander of Army Group G, which included German forces in Holland and Belgium, did not feel he could launch any serious counterattack until October 12.

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Map © 2016 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN

On October 11, the 26th Infantry Regiment initiated an attack on Aachen while the 18th held a line from Verlautenheide to Haaren. In response, a hasty but strong German counterattack by the 3rd Panzergrenadier led by 15 PzKpfw. VI Tiger and captured American-built M4 Sherman tanks was launched on the 15th. The appearance of Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers and massive American artillery fire broke up the German attack the following day. As the 1st Division battled outside Aachen, to the north Hobbs’ 30th Division started its run from Alsdorf to Wurselen, a distance of only three miles, on October 7. For the next nine days its advance was bathed in blood. Hobbs’ path south to Wurselen was impeded by numerous pillboxes even though his division had begun its advance beyond the West Wall. In addition, Hobbs had to navigate through highly urbanized coal mining country filled with slag piles, mine shafts, and villages all well suited for defense. Further, on several occasions the Germans threatened the American advance. The first attempt was a move on Alsdorf by the 108th Panzer Brigade and the von Fritzschen Regiment against the division’s eastern flank on October 8. This effort was foiled by the American 743rd Tank Battalion, which drove the enemy out of Alsdorf after the Germans lost several tanks. On the 11th the “Old Hickory Division” clashed with the 108th Panzer Brigade again and stopped this second German counterattack, clearing the road to Wurselen with the aid of air strikes. The following day the Nazis showed they still had fight left in them when they once more attacked the 30th Division. This drive was spearheaded by the 108th Panzer Brigade and supported by the newly arrived 60th Panzergrenadier Regiment and Kampfgruppe Diefenthal. After an all-day contest, the American line remained intact thanks in large measure to massive air and artillery support. However, Hobbs had suffered more than 2,000 casualties in six days of heavy fighting. He felt compelled to call for assistance in closing the gap around Aachen. Reinforced with the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division and a battalion of Sherman tanks from the 2nd Armored Division, Hobbs’ men had battled their way by October 16 to Hill 194 on the southern fringe of Wurselen, 1,000 yards from the advance positions of the 1st Division’s 18th Regiment. The Aachen gap was finally closed. When the American encirclement of Aachen began on October 7, the city was already a

Attacking from multiple directions, troops of several American divisions isolated the German city of Aachen, which was eventually surrendered after days of heavy fighting. Aachen was the first substantial German city to fall to the advancing Americans.

scarred shell. Of a prewar population of 165,000 souls, less than 20,000 remained there. By early October 1944, a number of Royal Air Force bombing raids had reduced Aachen to a sea of rubble. Few of its inhabitants could have doubted that the end was near when on October 10 the Americans delivered an ultimatum to the garrison commander to surrender. Dutifully, Lt. Col. Leyherr rejected the demand in accord with Hitler’s “last stand” order. Two days later, Wilck took over as the city’s military commander and established his headquarters in the Palast-Hotel Quellenhof in Farwick Park in the northern part of the town. To storm Aachen proper, Huebner had only two infantry battalions of his 26th Regiment— less than 1,100 combat infantrymen under Colonel John F.R. Seitz. The rest of the division was spread out elsewhere along the front, and

one additional battalion was his only reserve. Within the inner city defenses Wilck had 5,000 men, most of them from his division, as well as 200 police officers under arms. His armor strength was only five PzKpfw. IV tanks. The artillery consisted of eight 75mm, 19 105mm, and six 150mm guns. As long as he could communicate with the outside, Wilck could receive substantial additional artillery firepower. General Huebner planned to cautiously attack Aachen because American positions at Wurselen and Haaren were so thinly held that German reinforcements from outside the city might break into the town from the northeast. As a divisional staff member put it, the 26th would have to attack “with one eye cocked over its right shoulder.” Yet in striking from the east through Aachen’s back door, the regiment had a distinct advantage since the German defenses in that area AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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National Archives

ABOVE: American artillerymen fire a powerful M-12 155mm self-propelled gun at a target in the streets of Aachen in October 1944. These weapons were employed to blast stubborn German bunkers when tank fire proved ineffective. BELOW: An antitank panzerschreck by his side, a German soldier peers from the doors of a cellar inside Aachen.

Alamy Images

were understandably the weakest. Prior to its attack on Aachen, the 26th Regiment had been chewing away at the eastern suburb of Rothe Erde. To reduce the regiment’s frontage, Seitz placed a provisional infantry company on his left facing the city and tied into the defenses of the 1106th Engineer Battalion positioned south of Aachen. Although the engineers were to keep contact with the attacking force, they were not equipped to participate in the assault. That attack was to be led by the 2nd Battalion, 26th Regiment under Lt. Col. Derrill M. Daniel. Its starting point was the ruins of Rothe Erde, and the battalion was to move westward through the heart of the city. The 26th’s 3rd Battalion, commanded by Lt. 32

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Col. John T. Corley, stationed between Rothe Erde and Haaren, was ordered to attack north and west, take the factory district lying between Aachen and Haaren, and then move west to seize three hills dominating Aachen on the city’s northern edge. The bulk of the hill mass 3rd Battalion was to capture had been made into a public park known as the Lousberg. The high ground rose 862 feet and cast a shadow over the entire city. To the Americans it was known as Observatory Hill after an observation tower on its crest. A lower knob on the southeastern slopes of the hill was crowned by a cathedral and is called the Salvatorberg. Down the southeastern slope in Farwick Park stood the PalastHotel Quellenhof.

On October 11, the IX U.S. Tactical Air Force dropped 62 tons of bombs on the outer perimeter of Aachen. Twelve artillery battalions of the 1st Division and VII Corps then unleashed 4,900 rounds on the town. After the fire fell silent, American patrols entering still encountered strong enemy fire. Over the next two days more air raids were conducted, and another 5,000 artillery shells hit the town. By nightfall on October 12, the 3rd Battalion had cleared the industrial area between Aachen and Haaren in preparation for the main assault. Moving through the center of Aachen on a 2,000-yard front, Daniels’ men had to plow through the maze of rubble and damaged buildings in their path and maintain contact with Corley’s command. Dividing his men into small assault teams, Daniels sent one tank or tank destroyer with each platoon. The armor would keep the buildings under fire until the accompanying riflemen made their assault; the armor would then shift its fire to the next building. Augmented by light and heavy machine-gun fire from the streets, the tank shelling drove the German defenders into the cellars where the American soldiers would then attack using hand grenades. When they met strong resistance, the Americans used demolition charges and flamethrowers handled by two-man teams attached to each company. The men did not wait for actual targets to appear; they assumed each building held hostile forces. Light artillery and mortar fire swept forward several streets ahead of the infantry, while heavier artillery pummeled German positions farther to the rear. To maintain contact between his units, each day Daniels designated a series of checkpoints based on street intersections and prominent buildings. No unit was to advance beyond a checkpoint until it had established contact with an adjacent unit. Each rifle company was given a specific site to advance to; company commanders in turn designated a street to each of their platoons. After a few bitter experiences of Germans bypassed in cellars and sewers emerging to attack the GIs from behind, the Americans learned that firepower and deliberate progress were more important than speed. In the other half of the attack, Colonel Corley’s battalion driving west toward the high ground on Observatory Hill found its route blocked on the first day by stoutly defended blocks of apartment buildings. The men measured their gains in buildings, floors, and even rooms. Someone said after the battle that the fight was “from attic to attic and sewer to sewer.” As riflemen from Company K advanced down Julicher Strasse, a 20mm cannon opened

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fire from a side street, driving them back. Two American tanks were then knocked out by Panzerfaust shots. One of the steel monsters was remanded by Company K’s Sergeant Alvin R. Wise, who began to spray adjacent structures with the tank’s machine guns. He and two buddies got the engine started and drove the vehicle to safety. Having discovered that some buildings and air raid shelters could withstand tank and tank destroyer fire, Corley called for 155mm selfpropelled artillery support. The next morning the big weapons proved their worth by devastating a strongly built house. Impressed, the regimental commander sent one of these artillery pieces to his other battalion. By nightfall on the first day, Corley’s men had reached the base of the Lousberg. The next day, October 14, a rifle company was able to reach Farwick Park. Yet the American hold on that objective was tenuous at best since the rest of the battalion was hung up battling defenders holed up in structures approaching the park. The Germans still held the hotel, the Kurhaus, the Orangerie greenhouse, and several garden buildings. As early as October 13, Wilck had asked for reinforcements. That night 150 men from the 404th Infantry Regiment strengthened the defenses on Observatory Hill. SS Battalion Rink, part of Kampfgruppe Diefenthal, attempted to join the defenders but was sidetracked by an attack on Wurselen by the 30th

Division. The next day, Kochling was able to slip eight assault guns into the city to help the garrison. On the 15th, SS Battalion Rink finally entered the town. On the same day, Colonel Corley renewed his attack on Farwick Park. By noon, under cover of a mortar barrage, his men had wrested control of the garden buildings and the greenhouse from the enemy but were unable to capture the Hotel Quellenhof. Just as the colonel sent a company supported by a 155mm gun to flank the hotel, the Germans launched a counterattack. Made up of the remains of the 404th Regiment and SS Battalion Rink, the Nazi blow was parried by the an infantry company occupying the north edge of Farwick Park. The fight continued for an hour before the Americans had to fall back from the enemy advance, which was supported by several assault guns. By 5 PM, the steam had run out of the German attack. As Corley’s men stopped the German attack near Farwick Park, Huebner postponed any renewed advance in Aachen, even as Corley confidently proposed the opposite course of action. The reason for the division commander’s reticence was the punishing blows the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division had been administering to the U.S. 16th Infantry Regiment near Eilendorf. He ordered Colonel Seitz to hold in place until the situation along the division’s eastern wing was stabilized. As it turned out, Huebner’s stay of any offensive action in

Aachen lasted only a day. By October 16, the 16th Infantry Regiment had repulsed the efforts of the 3rd Panzergrenadiers to break the American line. Further, the long-awaited juncture between the 1st and 30th Infantry Divisions, which finally closed the Wurselen gap north of Aachen, allayed the American general’s concern for the safety of his southeastern flank. Huebner still held back the 26th Infantry Regiment for another 24 hours while he awaited the arrival of reinforcements from VII Corps before continuing the fight for Aachen. General Collins had decided to reinforce the two battalions—one of tanks and the other of armored infantry from the U.S. 3rd Armored Division—that had been readied to counterattack any enemy penetration at Eilendorf. Thanks to the stiff defense put up by the 16th Infantry Regiment, this force, called Task Force Hogan, was no longer needed at Eilendorf. As a result, it was sent to fight on the north flank of Corley’s unit, launching a right hook against the Lousberg. Part of Task Force Hogan’s armor was also to occupy the village of Luarensberg, a key to the West Wall defenses north and west of Aachen and still in the hands of the depleted German 49th Infantry Division. The commander of an M4 Sherman tank of the U.S. 745th Tank Battalion looks through binoculars from his turret hatch on the day before the city of Aachen fell. In the distance is an M10 tank destroyer, a lightly armored but heavily armed and open-turreted vehicle designed specifically to take on enemy tanks.

National Archives

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American soldiers advance cautiously past a large concrete air raid shelter in the city of Aachen. The shelter was occupied by German civilians and soldiers seeking to escape the heavy bombing and continual artillery bombardment that preceded the capitulation of the city.

In addition, General Collins attached to the 1st Division a battalion of the 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. Huebner was to use this battalion strictly defensively to cover the growing gap between Daniels’ unit and the 1106th Engineer Battalion located south of Aachen. On October 18, with all the American forces in place, the 1st Division’s commander ordered his men to renew their attack on Aachen. At that time the German garrison had only 4,392 combat effectives. In Farwick Park, Colonel Corley’s formation set out to regain the ground it had lost three days before, pass onto Observatory Hill, and help Task Force Hogan’s drive on the rest

of the Lousberg. One platoon quickly recaptured the Kurhaus. While the enemy sheltered from an American artillery barrage in the hotel basement, a platoon under 2nd Lt. William D. Ratchford stormed into the hotel lobby. Hand grenade duels erupted at every entrance to the basement. With the threat of machine-gun fire directed at them, the Germans surrendered. Twenty-five defenders had died in the fight for the hotel. A search of the building revealed large caches food and ammunition, as well as a 20mm antiaircraft gun sited on the second floor. With Farwick Park and its buildings firmly in American hands, Daniels’ men set course

T H E G E R M A N W E S T WA L L The West Wall, also commonly known as the Siegfried Line, ran from the Swiss border to the point where the Rhine River enters the Netherlands and included two components: the Army Position, which closely followed the frontier, and the Air Position, which was farther back and formed an air defense zone. In reality, the length of the first position was never really developed beyond the elementary stage. Nevertheless, during World War II the West Wall was the fortified line with the greatest depth in relation to its length. The West Wall ran along the Rhine River and the elevated terrain of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Valley and through the low, rolling terrain of the Saar region. Farther north, it traveled through the wooded and rough ground of the Hunsruck and Eifel along the remainder of the Belgian border to the Dutch frontier, and on to the sea. The West Wall spanned 400 kilometers and consisted of four major sections: Aachen, Trier, Pflaz (the Palatine), and Oberrhein (Upper Rhine). The main defensive zones were the Aachen Advanced Position, the Orscholz Position in the Trier sector, the Hilgenbach Position, 34

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on a methodical sweep through the center of the city. On the 19th Corley’s troops captured Observatory Hill against light opposition as Task Force Hogan overran the heights of the Lousberg. Because the 30th Division had already occupied the village of Laurenberg, Huebner directed Task Force Hogan to sever the Aachen-Laurensberg highway a short distance from the village. By nightfall on the 19th, part of the task force had taken a chateau 200 yards from the road. Meanwhile, in a written proclamation Colonel Wilck exhorted his command to “fight to the last man.” However, exhortations would do little to alter the city’s fate. By the end of October 19, the German high command had decided to withdraw. The headquarters of the 1st SS Panzer Corps was ordered to suspend any offensive actions to relieve Aachen, and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, down to half its original strength, was instructed to prepare to leave the Aachen front. On October 19-20, resistance in Aachen rapidly crumbled as Daniels’ battalion, along with elements of the 110th Infantry Regiment, eviscerated the town. Soon Daniels and company cut off the residential section of the city from its western environs. The next day Colonel Corley’s battalion reached a large air raid bunker near Lousberg Strasse. Unknown to the GIs, this was Colonel Wilck’s command post. As Corley called up his 155mm self-propelled gun and used it to pump a few shells into the shelter, Wilck decided to end the fight for Aachen. Using 30 American prisoners as go-betweens, Wilck requested they arrange the surrender of his garrison. Two members of the 1106th Engi-

the Sprichern Position in the Pfalz, the Fischbach Position, the Ettlinger Position, and the Korken Wald (Forest) Position on the Upper Rhine. Most of these sites formed switch lines or oblique lines running off the main line of the West Wall. The West Wall offered an excellent defensive position. Begun in 1936 after the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland, most of the West Wall had been constructed from 1938 to 1940, during which time a third of Germany’s total cement production was used in its creation. More than 3,000 concrete pillboxes, bunkers, and observation posts were built. Its perceived strength was derived from German propaganda about its alleged invincibility. By 1944 it had been neglected for four years. In fact, the Germans had never intended its fortifications alone to stop any invaders, but only to delay them until sufficient mobile forces could come up and counterattack. Regardless of its overall shortcomings, sections of the West Wall, especially around the city of Aachen, were formidable. While the Scharnhorst Line west of the city consisted mainly of dragon’s teeth, minefields, and barbed wire, the Schill fortified sector five miles east

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neer Battalion, who had been taken captive by the Germans in the early fighting for Aachen, and two German officers dashed into Lousberg Strasse as small-arms fire cracked around them. When American soldiers entered the bunker, Wilck and his staff had already packed their bags and were ready to go. As the Germans left the bunker, Staff Sergeant Ewart M. Padget, one of the former prisoners from the 1106th Engineers, nabbed the prize souvenir of the occasion, Colonel Wilck’s service pistol. At Corley’s headquarters, the 1st Division’s assistant commander, Brig. Gen. George A. Taylor, accepted the German surrender, and at 12:05 PM on October 21 it was all over. By nightfall the Americans had completed a sweep of the entire city, rounding up 1,600 German soldiers. The end of the battle for Aachen witnessed a city, as one America observer later wrote, “as dead as a Roman ruin, but unlike a ruin it has none of the grace of gradual decay.... Burst sewers, broken gas mains and dead animals have raised an almost overpowering smell in many parts of the city. The streets are paved with shattered glass; telephone, electric light and trolley cables are dangling and netted together everywhere, and in many areas wrecked cars, trucks, armored vehicles and guns litter the streets....” Fully 80 percent of the city had been destroyed by a combination of RAF bombing and American shellfire. Although the Germans had failed to prevent Aachen’s encirclement and held out for only five days after it was surrounded by the Americans, the real measure of the fight from their standpoint was the telling cost to the Germans. The 30th Division took 6,000 German prison-

German soldiers surrender to American troops on October 19, 1944, two days prior to the official end of hostilities in Aachen. When the Germans formally surrendered, the Americans rounded up 1,600 exhausted and dazed enemy personnel.

ers, the 1st Division another 5,637, including 3,473 captured within the city. The way the Wehrmacht units were squandered in the fight without any major achievement was indicated by the fact than an equivalent of 20 battalions had been used in counterattacks against the 30th Division. Yet in only a few instances had any of these involved more than two reinforced infantry battalions. A never ending compulsion to stave off possible future crises had sucked the defenders into the abyss of piecemeal commitment of their forces. On the American side, the Old Hickory Division and its attached units had lost 3,100 men since the start of the West Wall Campaign on

October 2, 1944. The Big Red One sustained 498 casualties from the two battalions of the 26th Infantry Regiment. Of these, 75 were killed and nine missing. With these divisions depleted and exhausted, Hodges and his boss, General Omar Bradley, commander of the American 12th Army Group, believed the U.S. First Army had to be reinforced before it could take offensive action again. This was the achievement of the doomed German defense of Aachen. Arnold Blumberg is an attorney with the Maryland state government and resides with his wife in Baltimore County, Maryland.

National Archives

Heading toward the enemy in Aachen, American soldiers hitch a ride aboard an M4 Sherman tank as it crosses the Siegfried Line on the German frontier. Note the antitank dragons’ teeth that stretch into the distance.

of town was another story. It included mutually sited pillboxes 20 to 30 feet wide, 40 to 50 feet deep, and 20 to 25 feet high with at least half the construction underground and the upper part hidden by overgrown vegetation. The walls and roofs were reinforced concrete three feet thick. Most had two firing embrasures, one covering the entrance and the second an arc of 50 degrees, after which the field of fire from the next pillbox in line would take over. The standard troop complement was seven men per embrasure. Density was about 10 pillboxes per mile with most placed on forward slopes, usually 200 to 400 yards behind the antitank obstacles. Roads leading through the dragon’s teeth—five rows of pointed concrete pyramids increasing in height from 21/2 feet in front to five feet at the rear, were provided with gates and three rows of steel beams embedded diagonally in a concrete foundation. The gates were made of two 12-inch H-girders welded together and hinged at one end to a concrete pillar. When required these could be swung across the road and bolted to a similar pillar on the opposite side. Being the weak point in the defensive chain, the gates were covered by machine guns from nearby pillboxes. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Seek... Attack... Destroy 36

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ONE AMERICAN DESTROYER ESCORT GROUP’S 12-DAY FIGHT CHANGED THE COURSE OF WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC. BY PATRICK J. CHAISSON

ADMIRAL SOEMU TOYODA NEEDED ANSWERS. The newly appointed commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, Toyoda found himself facing several unpleasant facts. By May 1944, Allied naval and air strength in the Pacific Ocean was growing at an alarming rate. Already, fast-moving enemy forces had advanced far across northern New Guinea and into the Admiralties and through the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific. Toyoda could not yet determine whether the next American thrust would head north into the Marianas or continue west toward Palau and the Philippines. The six carriers, 10 battleships, and 40 other warships of his First Mobile Fleet could crush an enemy advance, but those vessels carried only enough fuel for one decisive sea campaign. Before sending Japan’s last remaining surface force into battle, Toyoda required hard evidence of American naval activity and intentions. Much had changed since the heady days of 1941 and early 1942. Japanese longrange patrol aircraft, once able to roam far into Allied territory, could now only rarely penetrate the enemy’s air defense umbrella. Radio interception, so useful during the war’s first months, was rendered virtually useless by advanced American communications security procedures. That left submarines as Toyoda’s sole reliable means of reconnaissance. Both: National Archives Unfortunately, Japan’s largest, most capable fleet subs—the oceangoing I-class boats—were increasingly being pressed into service as transports hauling food and supplies to Imperial Japanese Army garrisons marooned by leapfrogging Allied forces. Scouting duties would have to be performed by the smaller Roclass submersibles of Rear Admiral Noboru Owada’s Submarine Squadron Seven. These vessels were designed for coastal patrol, however, and lacked the surface radar systems ABOVE: The Hedgehog, which became more common Owada deemed so necessary for among Allied warships on antisubmarine duty as conducting reconnaissance missions. World War II progressed, proved highly effective in What their crews did not lack was its role. The weapon fired a circular pattern of two dozen 24-pound explosive bombs. courage. Each Ro-class boat then OPPOSITE: The destroyer escorts of the U.S. Navy anchored at Saipan in the Marianas comprised a class of small, swift, and heavily armed held between 40 and 60 sailors, the warships designed specifically to hunt enemy subcream of the Imperial Japanese Navy marines. The most successful destroyer escort of World War II was the USS England, which compiled undersea force. Combat veterans all, an astounding number of kills against Japanese subthese well-trained seamen posed a marines in the brief span of 12 days in May 1944. substantial threat to any Allied vesThis destroyer escort was photographed during a sel caught in their periscope sights. refueling operation in August 1944. Yet Owada’s orders were to locate and report enemy warships not sink them. He directed his boats to picket a 200-mile track between New Guinea and the Caroline Islands labeled the NA Line. Should they spot an Allied armada steaming toward the Philippines, these scouts were sure to radio back with positive confirmation. Armed with this intelligence, Admiral Toyoda could then order his Combined Fleet into the climactic battle he believed would win victory for Japan. On May 15, 1944, the seven Ro-class boats of Submarine Squadron Seven departed Saipan to take up stations along the NA Line. Their 650-mile voyage would take six days and was tracked closely both by Owada’s staff on Saipan and Combined Fleet headquarters in Japan. The progress of Squadron Seven was followed by another group of naval officers, listening from a heavily guarded facility at the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. These men belonged to Fleet Radio Unit-Pacific (FRUPac), the top-secret signal intelligence center responsible for collecting and decoding all enemy radio communications intercepted by the U.S. Navy. Already FRUPac had helped win a stunning AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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American victory at Midway, not to mention its role in Operation Vengeance, the ambush of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto by U.S. Army Air Forces Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters in 1943. This brilliant team of mathematicians, puzzle solvers, Japanese linguists, and electronics experts was about to change history once again. A routine radio transmission, made on May 13, 1944, set in motion what would become one of the most epic battles in the annals of antisubmarine warfare. This short, encrypted message came from Lt. Cmdr. Yoshitaka Takeuchi, captain of the fleet sub I-16. Takeuchi’s report, plucked from the airwaves by American technicians, advised Admiral Owada that his vessel was due to arrive with food and supplies for the bypassed garrison at Buin on the southwest tip of the island of Bougainville on May 20. FRUPac analysts deciphered enough of Takeuchi’s dispatch to estimate his course and time of arrival at Buin. This information quickly made its way to Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey’s Third Fleet headquarters, also at Pearl Harbor, for action. Halsey had to move fast, though, since intelligence such as this was extremely perishable. Countless factors from weather to mechanical breakdowns to unpredictable sea conditions might put I-16 miles from where the Americans thought it was. And just because FRUPac knew the whereabouts of an enemy sub did not mean the U.S. Navy could get hunter-killer teams there quickly enough to find and sink it. Fortunately for the Allies, a small group of destroyer escorts (DEs), purpose-built to attack submarines, was then awaiting orders at Purvis Bay off Florida Island in the lower Solomons. The group, designated Escort Division 39, consisted of USS England (DE-635), USS George (DE-697), and USS Raby (DE-698), all newly commissioned Buckley-class vessels on their first war cruise. Kept busy thus far with routine convoy escort duties, few sailors aboard these three DEs had yet seen combat. A series of events would rapidly transform them into seasoned veterans. On May 18, a communiqué from Third Fleet arrived directing Escort Division 39 to intercept a “Japanese sub believed heading to supply beleaguered forces at Buin.” After posting its estimated location, the electrifying message concluded: “He is believed to be approaching this point from the north and should arrive in that area by about 1400 [hours] 20 May. Good hunting.” Each of the three DEs in Escort Division 39 measured 306 feet in length with a beam of 36 feet. Fully combat loaded, a Buckley-class destroyer escort displaced 1,740 tons. Two Gen38

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U.S. Navy

Lieutenant John A. Williamson, executive officer of the USS England, was responsible for the warship’s highly successful submarine killing patrol that shattered Japanese early warning in the Pacific in the spring of 1944. Both: U.S. Navy

Lieutenant Commander Walton B. Pendleton (left), captain of USS England, allowed the experienced executive officer of the destroyer escort, Lieutenant John A. Williamson, to handle the vessel during attacks on Japanese submarines. The highly successful sub killing USS England was named for Ensign John Charles England (right), killed at Pearl Harbor.

eral Electric turbo-electric engines drove the vessel to a top speed of 24 knots, while maximum cruising range exceeded 5,000 miles. A ship’s company typically included 15 officers and 198 enlisted men. A suite of electronic sensors assisted the crew in its mission of locating enemy targets. SL search radar helped find surface vessels, while SA “bedspring” radar identified possible aerial threats. But the DE’s primary detection system was QSL-1 sonar, which sent a pulse of highintensity sound called a “ping” into the water. Echoes reflected off such solid objects as a submarine returned to the ship, where trained sound operators could then determine the contact’s range and bearing. The destroyer escort also packed a lethal punch. Apart from 20mm Oerlikon and quadmounted 1.1-inch antiaircraft cannons, each

Buckley-class DE came equipped with three Mk 22 3-inch/50-caliber deck guns—two forward and one aft. Three 21-inch torpedoes in a triple tube launcher mounted atop the superstructure deck were intended for surface vessels, while a battery of depth charge projectors on the ship’s fantail could devastate plunging submarines with a string of “ashcans” each containing up to 600 pounds of high-explosive filler. Just entering service in the Pacific that spring was a new and deadly weapon, the Mk 10 “Hedgehog” forward-firing spigot mortar. The DEs of Escort Division 39 all carried this Britishdesigned projector, which fired a salvo of two dozen 24-pound contact-fused charges intended to fall in a circular pattern up to 270 yards ahead of the ship. Hedgehog rounds could be aimed to fall slightly right or left of center line and would only explode if they struck a submarine. By 1944, Japanese submarine captains had learned how to evade blindly dropped depth charges; Hedgehog-equipped destroyer escorts could now track a target on sonar throughout their attack and thus greatly increase the chance of a precision kill. Sub hunting was a complicated, intricate task that required every officer, NCO, and bluejacket—from soundmen to Hedgehog gunners to the engine room gang—to work together as a team. Even the newest hands in Escort Division 39 knew their only chance to defeat the foe was through relentless training, and aboard one of those DEs training had become an obsession. Since its commissioning in December 1943, the USS England, named for Ensign John Charles England, killed at Pearl Harbor, had earned the reputation of being a “taut ship.” Her crewmen devoted themselves to achieving excellence in equipment maintenance, ship handling and, above all, proficiency with the vessel’s weapons systems. They knew theirs was a killor-be-killed profession; coming in second against a Japanese submarine meant violent death on the lonely ocean. Leading the England’s company to excellence was an unlikely taskmaster. Lieutenant John A. Williamson, a 26-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama, served as the ship’s executive officer (XO). Taking a reserve officer’s commission in 1940, Williamson soon found himself aboard the destroyer USS Livermore in the North Atlantic. Although the United States was then technically not at war, fully armed American warships on the “Neutrality Patrol” regularly shepherded convoys to and from Great Britain during the height of the U-boat peril. During his nine months of escort work, Williamson often witnessed firsthand the horrific toll that German subs were taking on Allied merchantmen.

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National Archives

Lieutenant Williamson next served as an instructor at the Subchaser School in Miami, where he helped train the Navy’s next generation of sonar operators. He then skippered a wooden-hulled patrol craft along the East Coast before receiving orders to join England for duty in Pacific waters. As XO, Williamson brought to his new ship a remarkable combination of battle experience, technical knowledge, and passion for excellence. The England’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. Walton B. Pendleton, was a middle-aged career Navy officer who practiced an unusual hands-off style of command. Recognizing his executive officer’s leadership talents, Pendleton wisely gave few orders while allowing Williamson the freedom to prepare England for wartime service. The combination worked; months of incessant drills had made her crew supremely confident, even cocky. Lieutenant Williamson and the few other veterans on board knew, however, that combat would prove to be the ultimate test for this little warship and her spirited crew. Shortly before dusk on May 18, 1944, the three DEs of Escort Division 39 set out to find and sink I-16. Along with Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton aboard England, Lt. Cmdr. Fred H. Just commanded George, while Lt. Cmdr. James Scott II skippered Raby. Commander Hamilton Hains, acting as Officer in Tactical Command, controlled division operations aboard George. By noon the next day, England, George, and Raby were northwest of Bougainville, steaming in a line 4,000 yards apart with sonars actively sweeping the ocean. At 1325 hours the England’s junior soundman, Roger Bernhardt, suddenly reported, “Contact!” In disbelief, the officer of the deck concluded that Bernhardt must instead have heard some fish—I-16 was supposed to be miles away. But the young sonar operator stood his ground. “Echoes sharp and clear, sir,” Bernhardt replied. “Sound is good!” With that, the crew of the England sprung into their well-practiced action drill, only this time it was for real. Pendleton and Williamson made for the bridge while all over the ship crewmen rigged for battle. George and Raby stood by while England pursued the target. A dry run convinced her skipper that this was indeed a submarine; on the next approach Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton launched a salvo of Hedgehog projectiles. Soundman Bernhardt did not hear them detonate but doggedly maintained sonar contact with the wildly maneuvering I-16. A second volley of Hedgehogs discharged at 1350 hours yielded one muffled explosion. They had hit the sub but not fatally. Two more attacks proved fruitless; in frustration, Pendleton turned

ABOVE: Photographed after its spectacular success in sinking six Japanese submarines during a 12-day patrol in May 1944, the USS England was damaged by a Japanese kamikaze suicide plane 12 days after this image was captured. BELOW: The headquarters of FRU, Pac (Fleet Radio Unit-Pacific) occupied a few nondescript buildings in Honolulu. However, its impact on the conduct of World War II in the Pacific was enormous.

U.S. Navy

the conn over to Lieutenant Williamson. The ship’s captain would observe while his battletested XO maneuvered England around for her fifth run against the wily Japanese supply boat. When he judged the time right, Williamson ordered “Fire!” At 1433 five or six Hedgehogs struck I-16, resulting in a series of rapid thuds. Two minutes later a giant underwater blast shook England, lifting her fantail completely out of the water while knocking sailors to their knees. “At first,” Williamson remembered, “we thought we had been torpedoed.” In fact, it was the end of Lt. Cmdr. Takeuchi and the 106 other submariners aboard I-16. Soon, proof of its destruction began rising to the

surface. Search parties from George and Raby discovered bits of cork, a chopstick, and other wooden debris, while the sudden appearance of a dozen thrashing sharks served as a grim reminder of war’s human cost. The recovery of a 75-pound bag of rice convinced Commander Hains that his DEs had indeed killed a Japanese supply submarine. England, George, and Raby held station well into the night while all around them grew a massive oil slick, some three miles wide and six miles long, marking the last position of I-16. Escort Division 39 was not the only Allied force sent out in search of I-16. American patrol planes also scoured the region, flying well into the zone where Admiral Owada had sited the AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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seven Ro-class subs of his NA Line. On May 17, one of these aircraft spotted Ro-104 toward the northern edge of that track and radioed a contact report. While nowhere near as capable as their adversaries, Japanese signal intelligence operatives could easily intercept and translate plain voice transmissions such as this radio call. The sighting convinced Owada that his picket force had been compromised, so he sent out coded instructions directing the boats of Submarine Squadron Seven to shift their positions 60 miles westward. FRUPac heard every word. A team of cryptanalysists at Pearl Harbor immediately began work to decipher Owada’s message; within 48 hours they had plotted the exact latitude and longitude of each sub on the relocated NA Line. A courier then delivered this white hot intelligence to Admiral Halsey’s staff for immediate action.

one after the other. This meant crossing the boundary between Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Area and General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area, but Hains was authorized to do so if he found himself in hot pursuit of fleeing enemy vessels. In the early morning murk of May 22, one of George’s radar operators detected a surface contact 14,000 yards off her starboard bow. It appeared to be a submarine, and all three DEs raced forward at flank speed to catch their vulnerable quarry on top. George managed to illuminate the conning tower of Ro-106, commanded by Lieutenant Shigehira Uda, but the submarine crash dived before she could bring her torpedoes or deck guns to bear. England and Raby circled while their sister ship acquired the target on sonar. George let go one salvo of Hedgehogs at 0414 hours but then

Both: National Archives

ABOVE: An unidentified Japanese Ro-class submarine takes evasive action on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. American antisubmarine tactics and weaponry took a heavy toll in Japanese submarines during the latter years of World War II. OPPOSITE: Crewmen aboard a U.S. Navy warship load 24-pound Hedgehog antisubmarine bombs into the projector that was capable of launching them in a circular spread up to 270 yards ahead of the ship. The explosives would detonate only if they struck a target below the surface of the ocean.

Escort Division 39 was perfectly positioned to intercept Owada’s boats. Late on the afternoon of May 20, Third Fleet sent Commander Hains an exhilarating order: “Seven Japanese submarines are believed to be preparing to form a scouting line in a position between Manus and Truk. Subs 30 miles apart on line. Seek out — attack—and destroy.” As his destroyer escorts got underway, Hains considered how they would roll up the enemy patrol track. His plan was simple: find the northernmost submarine, sink it, and then swing southwest to snare the remaining boats 40

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mournfully reported that she had lost contact. England’s soundmen heard Ro-106 just fine, though, and Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton soon received permission to take over. Their first run, at 0433, yielded no hits. Either exasperated or superstitious, Pendleton abruptly gave the bridge to Williamson, who had led England to success on her first kill. Overtaking Ro-106 from its stern, England loosed a Hedgehog volley at 0444 hours. Eighteen seconds later three 24-pound warheads detonated 275 feet below. As before, a huge deepwater explosion marked the final moments of

Lieutenant Uda’s boat and its 49 crewmen. England had scored again. At dawn, watchstanders aboard George sighted an oil slick and some wood fragments adrift in the vicinity of England’s attack. This was sufficient confirmation of Ro-106’s demise, so the tiny flotilla of sub killers turned toward a rendezvous with its next target: Ro-104, Lieutenant Hiroshi Izobuchi commanding. By sundown, the hunter-killers of Escort Division 39 had closed in on their unsuspecting prey. Nightfall called for a new tactic, and the trio of DEs opened its interval to 16,000 yards between ships to better detect a surfaced submarine. It worked—at 0600 hours on May 23, Raby reported: “We have a radar contact bearing 085 degrees, range 8,000 yards.” The fight was on. Warned by its electronic emissions receiver, Ro-104 dived in time to avoid Raby’s deck guns but could not stop the aggressive DE from lashing it with sonar pulses. Rapidly changing speed, direction, and depth, the cagy Izobuchi avoided three of Raby’s Hedgehog attacks as well as another four from George. Ro-104 even used its own sonar to ping on the Americans’ frequency, spreading confusion above as the submarine made good its escape. It was now 0819 hours. Weary of this futile two-hour battle, Hains told Raby and George to sheer off. “Give way to the England,” he ordered with a note of annoyance in his voice, and once more this deadly little warship moved in for the kill. With Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton at the conn, England fired a salvo to starboard that missed. Again, the captain yielded tactical control to his good-luck XO for a second run. Under Williamson’s direction, England launched a full pattern of Hedgehog rounds at 0834 hours. Fourteen seconds later her soundmen reported at least a dozen hits followed by the now familiar deep-water crash of a dying submarine and the 58 souls aboard it. At Hains’s request, England then dropped 13 depth charges to finish the job. Within a few hours, telltale debris from Ro104 along with a spreading oil slick began to surface. England’s whaleboat crew recovered pieces of deck planking and cork stoppers as well as small pieces of wood with Japanese characters imprinted on them. Ravenous sharks also made their appearance, casting a somber mood over England’s company. Jubilation over their recent victories was muted by the knowledge that dozens of human beings were perishing in each attack. Lieutenant Williamson learned of the crew’s new mood later that day when a young seaman encountered him on his way to the wardroom. After requesting permission to speak, the blue-

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jacket asked how many enemy sailors were on those submarines England had been sinking. “It depends on the type of sub,” Williamson replied. “Probably somewhere between 40 and 80.” “Sir,”’ the youth then questioned, “how do you feel about killing all those men?” The XO could only say that war is about killing, and the more ships they sank the sooner it all would be over. This seemed to reassure the fresh-faced rating but continued to trouble Williamson for the rest of his days. Already England had taken the lives of more men than she had aboard. Putting aside for the moment such thoughts, England’s company continued its run down the NA Line with the other warships of Escort Division 39. At 0122 hours on May 24, George’s radar detected another surface contact dead ahead at a range of 14,000 yards. This was Ro-116, skippered by Lt. Cmdr. Takeshi Okabe, which crash dived the moment its warning sensors identified George’s distinctive radar emanations. Okabe fought his boat masterfully. As the trio of DEs passed overhead he kicked his vessel’s rudder into a fishtail maneuver that disrupted the Americans’ firing runs, all the while counterpinging to distract sonar sensors. Okabe also employed rapid up and down movements to further confound the hunter-killers on his trail. Recognizing he was up against an unusually skilled opponent, Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton wasted no time in putting his executive officer at the helm. Also tracking Ro-116 was lead soundman John Prock, who together with Roger Bernhardt had helped England find and fix three earlier targets. Now Prock suggested a ruse that might keep this bothersome submarine still long enough to enable a Hedgehog attack. During a firing run, the sound crew would normally increase their rate of sonar pulses to more accurately fix a sub’s location. This tactic alerted the enemy below that England was about to attack; Prock recommended keeping a steady ping rate on the next approach. They gave it a try. At 0214 hours, Lieutenant Williamson yelled, “Fire!” and a flurry of Hedgehogs reached out for the elusive Japanese submarine. A few seconds later, three to five charges exploded at a depth of 180 feet. This time there was no resounding crash to mark Ro116’s death, but dawn revealed conclusive evidence of its doom in the form of insulating cork, decking, and patches of fuel oil floating around nearby. Scavenging sharks were also sighted. Later, Navy intelligence confirmed that Ro-116 had gone down with all 56 hands. At this point, Commander Hains needed to

make a major decision. His DEs had been fighting hard for six days. Supplies of fuel and especially ammunition were now down to critical levels. Moreover, they were about to enter General MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area, a zone labeled “off-limits” to Third Fleet vessels unless in active pursuit of an enemy sub. Should his flotilla continue on, head for the nearest friendly port, or return to Purvis Bay for resupply? Hains’s choice was made for him by the arrival on May 26 of Task Group 30.4, centered on the escort carrier USS Hoggatt Bay (CVE75). Captain William V. Saunders commanded this force sent by Admiral Halsey to assist in antisubmarine operations. After learning of Escort Division 39’s extraordinarily productive week, Saunders directed Commander Hains’s warships to make for Seeadler Harbor at Manus in the Admiralty Islands. This was MacArthur’s territory, and here Lt. Cmdr. Pendleton saw an opportunity to continue the winning streak. Rather than head straight for Manus, Pendleton suggested, why not bend the track “coincidentally” on the same bearing as the enemy’s NA Line? The other skippers agreed. Now authorized to cross into the Southwest Pacific Area, Escort Division 39 resumed its hunt. That evening, Raby reported a surface contact bearing 180 degrees, range 14,000 yards. One minute later, at 2304 hours, England also acquired the target on radar. It was Ro-108, Lieutenant Kanichi Obari commanding. All three destroyer escorts charged in, but when Raby fell out of position England took over for a rare surface engagement. Just as her crew was about to launch torpedoes, however, Ro-108 submerged. With John Prock at the sound tower and England’s engine gang slowing

her to 10 knots, Lieutenant Williamson maneuvered the agile warship into a bow-attack position. At 2323 hours, he let fly a salvo of Hedgehogs, exactly half the projectiles remaining on board. Any error now would prove embarrassing, if not fatal, for the high-scoring DE. Williamson need not have worried. A series of muffled blasts from 250 feet down signaled the annihilation of Ro-108 and the 58 men who died with it. The next morning search teams found a huge oil slick as well as numerous pieces of flotsam drifting in the vicinity of England’s attack. Polished mahogany fragments from a chronometer case convinced the crew that one of their Hedgehog charges had struck the enemy sub’s conning tower. Commander Hains’s warships then made for the American base at Manus, arriving there by 1500 hours on May 27. Awaiting them at Seeadler Harbor was the destroyer escort USS Spangler (DE-696), which had sailed from the Solomons with a welcome resupply of Hedgehog rounds. After spending the night to take on fuel, ammunition, and provisions, the destroyer escorts—now accompanied by Spangler— headed back into the patrol area where Task Group 30.4 was now operating. The next two days passed uneventfully, but early on May 30, one of Captain Saunders’s destroyers acquired a target and pressed in with depth charges (at this point in the war, fleet destroyers were not equipped with Hedgehogs). George and Raby were close enough to offer assistance; Commander Hains ordered them in while directing England and Spangler to sweep a sector about 30 miles to the south. So began a two-day battle against one of the Continued on page 69 AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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part of the war, Konev commanded a succession of fronts that helped drive the Germans from the Motherland. After the destruction of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket in early 1944, he was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Now, in the opening days of 1945, he was ready to strike again. Both Konev and Zhukov had similar orders. They were to smash the German forces along the Vistula and drive to the banks of the Oder River in preparation for the final assault on Berlin. In the process, Zhukov would capture the key cities of Warsaw, Radom, Lodz, and Poznan. Konev’s route would take him through Kielce, Czestochowa, Krakow, and Katowice and into the heartland of Silesia’s industrial area. General Fritz-Hubert Gräser would be Konev’s main opponent as he covered the 500-

manded the XXIV Panzer Corps in 1944 and took over as commander of the 4th Panzer Army in September of that year. Although designated as a panzer army, the 4th was woefully short of armor. General Johannes Block’s LVI Panzer Corps consisted of two German (17th and 214th) and one Hungarian (5th Reserve) infantry divisions. General Hermann Recknagel’s XLII Army Corps had four infantry divisions (72nd, 88th, 291st, and 342nd), and General Maximilian Freiherr von Edelsheim’s XLVIII Panzer Corps had three infantry divisions (68th, 168th, and 304th). The Army Reserve consisted of General Walther Nehring’s XXIV Panzer Corps, which had two panzer divisions—the 16th and 17th. Brig. Gen. Dietrich von Müller’s 16th had a depleted strength of nine obsolete PzKpfw. IIIs,

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Although the German Army was one of the most mechanized military forces in the world, nothing could completely replace the horse, particularly during the long retreat from the Soviet Union. In this photo taken in January 1945, German solders use horses and sleds to transport supplies during their retreat.

600 kilometers from the Vistula to the Oder. Gräser was born in Frankfurt on March 11, 1888, and entered the Kaiser’s army as an officer candidate in February 1907. He fought in World War I and retired from the Army in October 1933. Rejoining the German Army in October 1935, he was promoted to colonel in October 1938 and led Infantry Regiment 29 of the 3rd Infantry (later Panzergrenadier) Division (PGD) during the opening phase of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Gräser was wounded while commanding the regiment, and after his recovery he took command of the division in March 1943. He com44

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13 outgunned PzKpfw. IVs, and 62 PzKpfw. V Panther tanks. Colonel Albert Brux’s 17th had a strength of 65 PzKpfw. IVs and 19 PzKpfw. IV/70 tank destroyers. Most of the crews, however, were hastily trained and would see combat for the first time. Brig. Gen. Karl-Richard Kossmann’s 10th PGD and Brig. Gen. Georg Jauer’s 20th PGD were also in the army’s area of operations. Terrain was an important factor in the German defense plans. Most of the area that Konev would have to cross was basically flat with few hills or forests. It was excellent tank country. Besides fortifications placed in front of the Sandomierz bridgehead, there were hastily built

defenses along the Nida and Pilica Rivers. Behind them, defensive lines ran along the Warta and Notec Rivers with a further line about 120 kilometers to the west. Most of these fortifications were weak, and few were actually manned due to a shortage of troops. Konev planned to use his extensive mobile forces to make lightning thrusts and seize crossings along all these lines of defense. Engineers would follow closely behind to build bridges across the rivers. Any built-up urban areas would be bypassed if the first attempt to take them failed. Follow-up troops would be used to surround and destroy any of these areas of resistance. To accomplish his mission Konev had about 1.1 million men, of which about 750,000 were combat troops. German intelligence estimated that three or four Soviet armies occupied the Sandomierz bridgehead. There were actually six and part of another. The Russians had brought maskirovka (deception) to a new level to fool the Germans. Because of the terrain inside the bridgehead, units and vehicles were cleverly camouflaged and radio traffic was kept at a minimum. New formations were brought across the Vistula only at night, and evidence of road traffic was quickly covered up. Konev used Lt. Gen. Pavel Poluboiarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps to simulate the existence of two tank armies south of the bridgehead on the eastern side of the river. About 500 dummy tanks were also assembled in the area and were filmed by German air reconnaissance. Fake radio traffic added to the deception. With all these measures, the Germans were partially convinced that an attack would come from the south as well as from the bridgehead. Inside the bridgehead, Konev had most of Lt. Gen. Vladimir Gluzdovskii’s 6th Army (four rifle divisions) occupying about 40 kilometers of its northern sector. Facing west were Col. Gen. Vasilii Gordov’s 3rd Guards Army (nine infantry divisions, three tank brigades, one motorized rifle brigade, and three assault gun regiments), Lt. Gen. Nikolai Pukhov’s 13th Army (nine rifle divisions, three tank regiments, and four assault gun regiments), and Lt. Gen. Dmitri Leliushenko’s 4th Tank Army (five tank brigades, three mechanized brigades, one motorized rifle brigade, five tank regiments, one assault gun brigade, and four assault gun regiments). South of those units were Col. Gen. Konstantin Koroteev’s 52nd Army (nine rifle divisions and one tank brigade), Col. Gen. Pavel Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army (seven tank brigades, one tank regiment, five mechanized

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brigades, one motorized rifle brigade, one assault gun brigade, and six assault gun regiments), and Maj. Gen. Georgii Poluektov’s 5th Guards Army (eight rifle divisions, one airborne rifle division, two tank regiments, and eight assault gun regiments). Konev’s flank was occupied by Col. Gen. Pavel Kurochkin’s 60th Army (nine rifle division). On the eastern bank of the Vistula stood Lt. Gen. Dmitrii Gusev’s 21st Army (nine rifle divisions) and Lt. Gen. Ivan Korovnikov’s 59th Army (seven rifle divisions). The maskirovka at Sandomierz had been brilliant. The Germans estimated that they were outnumbered by about 3.5 to one, while the actual figure was double that. To combat the tanks of the 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions, the 4th Guards Tank Army had about 800 tanks, while the 3rd Guards Tank Army had about 750. At the focal points of the attack, the Soviets would outnumber the Germans by a ratio of 10-15 to one. “My husband later told me that our intelligence had totally failed us,” wrote Gräser’s widow, Eldegard, in a 1971 letter to the author. “He knew that he was outnumbered, but he had no idea how really bad it was.” Konev would be covered by an umbrella from the 2nd Air Army. The 2nd had four bomber, 10 fighter, and four air assault divisions. This massive force would hold what was left of the Luftwaffe at bay—although the weather during most of the operation would make for bad flying conditions—while Konev’s armor pushed forward. Usually the Soviets would use their infantry to breach and widen the enemy line. Armor would then exploit the breaches a day or two later. This time, Konev planned to use most of his armor on day one. At 0500 on January 12, Konev’s artillery opened fire on von Edelsheim’s XLVIII Panzer Corps. An estimated 420 guns per half kilometer rained hell upon the three divisions of the corps for 45 minutes before the barrage suddenly halted. During the lull, hundreds of Red Army infantry platoons swarmed out of the bridgehead and quickly moved toward the German positions. Their objectives were key positions in the bridgehead perimeter, and most of these were captured from the stunned German survivors. With the preliminary objectives in hand, Konev’s artillery opened up for another 15 minutes, pounding German secondary positions. On the heels of the barrage the Soviet infantry that had captured the bridgehead defenses moved out again. Other infantry battalions were also sent forward to occupy the previously captured positions. “All the gunners had to do is shoot straight,”

Soviet artillerymen train their heavy field gun on a distant German target during fighting around the Polish city of Krakow in January 1945. The Soviets frequently used mass artillery barrages to inflict heavy casualties on the reeling Germans.

Konev wrote in his memoirs. “And they never failed: not once did they get an alarm signal— ‘Stop, you are hitting your own men’—from any of the troops attacking along the entire front.” Major General Paul Scheuerpflug’s 68th Infantry Division felt the full fury of Poluektov’s 5th Guards Army as the 32nd (Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Rodimstev), 33rd (Lt. Gen. Nikita Lebedenko), and 34th (Maj. Gen. Gleb Baklanov) Guards Rifle Corps drove forward. Scheuerpflug’s left flank was also hit by the 52nd Army’s 73rd (Maj. Gen. Sarko Martirosian) and 78th (Maj. Gen. Georgii Latyshev) Rifle Corps. To Scheuerpflug’s right, Maj. Gen. Ernst Seiler’s 304th Infantry Division was attacked by Maj. Gen. Petr Tertyshnyi’s 15th Rifle Corps and Maj. Gen. Mikhail Ozimin’s 28th Rifle Corps of the 60th Army. Their job was to drive a wedge between the 4th Panzer Army and General Friedrich Schulz’s 17th Army in preparation for a drive on Krakow. The other division of Edelsheim’s corps, Colonel Maximilian Rosskopf’s 168th, was hit by the 3rd Guards Army’s 21st (Maj. Gen. Aleksei Iamanov) and 76th (Lt. Gen. Mikhail Glukhov) Rifle Corps and the 13th Army’s 102nd (Maj. Gen. Ivan Puzikov) and 27th (Maj. Gen. Filipp Cherokmanov) Rifle Corps. With such a concentrated force attacking them, the 68th and 168th Infantry Divisions simply disappeared. Scattered groups tried to make their way westward, but for the most part they were overwhelmed by masses of

brown-uniformed troops. By the end of the day, most of the regiments in those divisions had been reduced to an understrength battalion or worse. Recknagel’s corps was in much the same position. Seeing the disintegration of the German lines, Konev unleashed his armored and mechanized forces. The 4th Tank Army and 3rd Guards Tank Army weaved their way through the advancing infantry to spread out ahead of them. This forced Gräser to prematurely commit the 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions, as there was little or no resistance from the shattered German infantry. He also ordered Brig. Gen. Hermann Hohn to form his 72nd Infantry Division into three battle groups and move south to hit the flank of the Soviet penetration. As the panzer divisions began arriving on the scene, they were initially engaged by the advancing Soviet armor. With the inexperience of the panzer crews, the Germans suffered extensive losses. After the first engagements, the Soviets continued to move to the west, bypassing the disorganized German armor. By the end of the first day of battle, the Soviet tank and mechanized forces had penetrated 20-25 kilometers behind the German line with the Red Army infantry about 10-15 kilometers behind them. The rapid Soviet advance coupled with the devastating artillery barrage totally disrupted the German communications network. “There was total chaos,” Frau Gräser recalled her husband saying. “Most of von Edelsheim’s and Recknagel’s corps were no longer there. The AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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ABOVE: During their rapid advance against the retreating Germans in the winter of 1945, Soviet troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front rush through the rubble of the town of Gleiwitz, Poland. OPPOSITE: In this photo taken in February 1945, a collection of German armored vehicles moves forward along a snowy road to counterattack the advancing Soviet Red Army. At this point, the Red Army was nearing the Oder River, and the Germans were hard pressed to maintain an effective defense.

divisions were just gone.” On the 13th the situation grew even more chaotic for the Germans. The 17th Panzer Division had been bypassed on its northern flank by the 4th Tank Army’s 10th Guards Tank Corps and Maj. Gen. Sergei Pushkarev’s 6th Guards Mechanized Corps. Maj. Gen. Vasilii Novikov’s 6th Guards Tank Corps and Lt. Gen. Ivan Sukhov’s 9th Mechanized Corps bypassed the division’s southern flank. Its position around the town of Chmielnik, about 32 kilometers south of Kielce, was growing more and more hopeless as the infantry of the 13th and 52nd Armies advanced. A yawning gap of 40-50 kilometers separated the 17th from Sieler’s 304th Infantry Division, the only one of Recknagel’s divisions that showed any form of cohesion in retreating from the Soviet onslaught. Gräser’s parent headquarters, General Josef Harpe’s Army Group A, was only able to scrape up one regiment of Brig. Gen. Georg Kossmala’s 344th Infantry Division from its reserves to try to close the gap. It was soon pushed aside by Lebedenko’s 33rd and Baklanov’s 34th Guards Rifle Corps. Harpe also ordered a combat group of Jauer’s 20th PGD to aid the combat groups of the 72nd Infantry Division. It was stopped cold by Soviet infantry that was following hard on the heels of the 4th Tank Army. The battle groups of the 72nd met the same fate as they 46

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ran into the infantry of the 3rd Guards Army. First Lieutenant Karl Zimmer was the leader of the II/Gren. Rgt. 105 of the 72nd. He recalled the events of the 13th in a 1984 letter to the author: “We could see the Russians in the distance advancing toward us. Their artillery fire quickly forced us into defensive positions. Our own artillery responded weakly. We met the Russians with defensive fire, but they continued to come at us, pushing us back again and again.” While Gräser’s troops were fighting for their lives, the Soviets made matters worse on the 14th when Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front burst out of its bridgeheads at Magnuszew and Pulawy after an exceedingly heavy bombardment against the defenses of General Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz’s 9th Army. As had happened in Gräser’s sector only two days earlier, the German forces that survived the barrage were thrown back in disarray. There seemed little the Germans could do to stem the Russian tide. The situation of the 4th Panzer Army grew more critical as Soviet mechanized forces continued to push west. Elements of Maj. Gen. Vasilii Grigorev’s 31st Tank Corps (directly subordinated to the 1st Ukrainian Front) were within 10 kilometers of the Pilica River by the end of the day with largely undefended positions in front of them. South of Kielce, the 16th and 17th Panzer

Divisions were almost encircled. “My battalion, with the remaining elements of the 2nd Panzer Battalion/Pz. Rgt. 30, was located about 12-15 kilometers south of Kielce in open terrain,” recalled Major (later colonel in the Bundeswehr) Hans-Günther Liebisch, commander of the I/Pz. Gren. Rgt. 40/17th Pz. Div. “We suffered from heavy attacks from fighter ground attack aircraft, but these were discontinued due to the defensive fire of the mechanized infantry fighting vehicles.” Konev was also driving on Krakow. His 59th Army, protected on the left by the 60th Army, was bearing down on the city. Von Edelsheim’s XLVIII Panzer Corps, consisting of the shattered 68th and 168th Infantry Divisions and the reduced 304th Infantry Division, was transferred to Schulz’s 17th Army. To try to stop the Soviets, Harpe ordered a regimental group of the 10th PGD to take up positions at Walbrom, about 14 kilometers north of Krakow. He also sent Brig. Gen. Karl Arning’s 75th Infantry Division to an area south of Walbrom. On January 15, the 3rd Guards Tank Army crossed the Pilica River, bypassing the positions of a combat group of the 10th PGD at Koniecpol, about 30 kilometers east of Chestochowa. While the Soviets ferried more troops and supplies across the river, the Germans set up a hasty defensive position in front of the city, using whatever troops were on hand. North of Krakow, Poluboiarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps, followed by the 59th Army’s 43rd and 115th Rifle Corps, broke through the 75th Infantry Division’s line north of Krakow and continued its drive westward. To counter the advance, Harpe ordered Maj. Gen. Hans Wagner’s 269th Infantry Division into an area about 24 kilometers northwest of Krakow. Inside the Kielce area the situation was desperate. The 16th Panzer had managed to break clear of the encirclement, but 17th Panzer was still in dire straits. The remaining elements of the division attempted to get out of the cauldron but hit a heavily defended blocking position in the early morning of January 15. Antitank guns raked the Germans, and the few remaining vehicles finally fought their way to meet the rear guard of the 16th Panzer. “After three days of battle the battalion, together with what remained of other battle groups, particularly the 2nd Panzer Battalion, had broken through several ranks of enveloping enemy elements and had finally made contact with elements of the 16th Panzer,” Liebisch recalled. “No uniform command and control had existed in these operations. The will to break through had induced us to joint action. The 17th Panzer was no longer.”

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The survivors of both panzer divisions were reformed into a combat group commanded by General Dietrich von Müller, the commander of the 16th. Soviet units were already inside Kielce, and the city was ablaze in several areas. Combat Group von Müller, unable to stop the Soviet flood, hooked up with some German infantry units and moved westward to attempt to establish a new defensive line. While Russian troops battled at Kielce, Rybakov’s 3rd Guards Tank Army, supported by the 31st Tank Corps, bore down on Chestochowa. There were a few rear elements on the German side that put up a fight, but there was little real opposition to the Soviet advance. To the southeast Poluboiarov’s Independent 4th Guards Tank Corps was at the forefront of Korovnikov’s 59th Army as it drove on Krakow. Arning’s 75th Infantry Division put up a desperate fight, but the Soviets pierced its lines in several places, forcing it into a fighting withdrawal. The hard-pressed 17th Army was able to send only a few small units to man positions north of the city, where they were momentarily able to slow the Russians. In Berlin, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, General Heinz Guderian, was pleading for more troops to be sent to the Eastern Front. As early as January 9, he had telephoned Hitler’s western headquarters, where Hitler was overseeing the Ardennes Offensive, to make the Führer aware of the tremendous danger poised in the East. After laying out his case for switching troops from the West to the East, Guderian

was met with a few seconds of silence. “The Eastern Front must make do with what it’s got,” Hitler finally responded. Hitler did, however, order General Dietrich von Saucken’s Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland (GD) to move from its positions in East Prussia south to the Lodz area—a move that infuriated Guderian. The corps was one of the key units in the East Prussian defenses, and its absence would make the dangerous situation in that sector even more perilous. Nevertheless, the corps arrived piecemeal at Lodz and would not be fully organized until the 18th. By the end of January 16, Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front was encircling Warsaw. Harpe ordered German troops out of the city just before the encirclement was complete, saving most of the XLVI Panzer Corps. The city fell to the Soviets the following day. Radom also fell on the 16th. Farther south the fighting continued to rage around Kielce. Shattered units hovered around Nehring’s XXIV Panzer Corps. The majority of the units were encircled in an area northwest of the city and had formed hedgehog positions to keep from being overrun. The fighting was savage, but luckily for the Germans most of the Soviet armor and mechanized forces were still pushing westward. At the end of the day, Novikov’s’s 6th Guards Tank Corps was at the outskirts of Radomsko with Latyshev’s 78th Rifle Corps guarding its southern flank. The 31st Tank Corps, with the accompanying 33rd and 34th Guards Rifle

Corps, was also within a few kilometers of Chestochowa, and Soviet artillery was already shelling German positions east of the city. Warsaw fell to Zhukov’s troops on the 17th. As Soviet and Polish forces entered the devastated city, few of its inhabitants were on hand to greet them. It was estimated that of the 1,310,000 people that resided in the city in 1939, fewer than 100,000 were left when it was liberated. While Zhukov took the glory in taking Warsaw, Konev’s forces continued to batter their way westward. Chestochowa was now encircled and was under attack by Colonel Grigorii Polishchuck’s 9th Guards Airborne Division, Colonel Vladimir Komarov’s 13th Guards Division, and Maj. Gen. Vikentii Skryganov’s 14th Guards Rifle Division. The city would fall later that evening. Meanwhile, the 7th Guards Tank Corps and the 31st Tank Corps had bypassed the city and continued to drive west. At Krakow, Arning’s 75th Infantry Division was barely hanging on north of the city. The 75th was helped by the arrival of Brig. Gen. Georg Kossmala’s 344th Infantry Division. To counter the Germans’ defense, Poluboiarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps swung southwest around the German line while the 60th Army continued a frontal assault. In the Kielce sector, the situation became more serious. Nehring’s XXIV Panzer Corps and Recknagel’s XLII Army Corps were surrounded and cut off from each other. They formed “floating pockets” that slowly moved

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German soldiers, some of them camouflaged against the winter landscape, pause along a ravine during their retreat toward the Oder River. Entire German divisions disappeared during the initial Soviet attack.

westward, fighting off Russian attacks from all sides. They would eventually link up as they tried to reach the German line. German 1st Lieutenant Zimmer recalled joining the Nehring pocket: “What was left of my battalion made its way through the [Nehring pocket] line. Some units of the 72nd were still with Recknagel, and some had also made their way here, but we had no cohesion. My battalion was thrown into the line with a unit of the 88th Division on one side and a unit from another division on the other side.” Nehring was now surrounded by five Russian rifle corps, a cavalry corps, two tank corps, and a mechanized corps. To stay put would mean annihilation, so the pocket continued to move to the west with combat units on the perimeter and service, supply, and medical troops in the middle. “On the afternoon of the 17th we broke out westward,” Colonel Liebisch recalled. “On the 18th we were fortunate enough to get to an army supply depot where we were able to refuel. After that, we blew up the depot. We formed a moving pocket. How many soldiers were in the pocket I don’t think we will ever be able to find out. There are estimates that more than 100,000 soldiers were in this pocket. The armored personnel carriers of the battalion alone carried at least eight divisional commanders. One commander was not in that group. The 17th Panzer’s commander, Colonel Brux, was 48

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wounded in the Kielce area and was taken prisoner on the 17th. He would not return to Germany until January 1956. The Soviet advance was going as planned. With the fall of Chestochowa on the evening of the 17th, the infantry could follow the mechanized and armored forces driving toward the Oder. With little opposition facing them on the ground and no serious threat from the air, Russian supply columns were on the move day and night to keep Konev’s mobile forces going. The tank and mechanized brigades were sometimes operating 50-80 kilometers ahead of the infantry armies, and each of the tank armies required about 300 trucks per day just for fuel supply. Another 300 trucks were required for ammunition. It was truly a tremendous logistics operation. Although massive fuel dumps were in place at the start of the offensive, the Russians were also able to capture several German dumps as they advanced. Specialists tested the captured fuel to make sure that it had not been sabotaged before it was used by Red Army vehicles. The enemy dumps were important as the front advanced since the supply convoys could only deliver one-third to one-half of the required fuel and ammunition for one day of combat operations. The captured enemy dumps could greatly decrease the time it took for a convoy to reach the front and return.

Food for the troops seems to have been a low priority. Although the Red Army soldiers carried some food, mainly American made Spam, they were expected to live off the land. While liberating Polish towns, cities, and villages, they also liberated anything they could eat, causing even more hardship for the Polish population. On January 18, German resistance stiffened east of Katowice. To avoid being encircled by the 4th Guards Tank Corps, the units defending positions north of Krakow began withdrawing to the west. Maj. Gen. Friedrich-Carl Rabe von Papenheim’s 97th Jäger (light) Division was filtering units into the line between the positions of the 75th and 712th Infantry Divisions. Elements of Brig. Gen. Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski’s 20th Panzer Division were also arriving on the scene. In addition to these units, five Volkssturm battalions manned defenses about 30 kilometers north of Katowice in a line running from the town of Myszkow to Wozniki. Unlike their counterparts in the West, most of the Volkssturm units in the East put up a decent fight. It was, perhaps, easier to surrender to the Americans or the British than it was to the Red Army, which was seeking revenge for atrocities committed in its own country. The Volkssturm was made up of young teenagers, old men, and those who were previously deemed unfit for military service. Armed with a hodgepodge of weapons, they were best used in defensive positions rather than for attacking. In many cases they were defending the very towns that they lived in. Krakow fell to the 60th Army on the 19th. As the Germans had all but abandoned it, the city remained mostly intact, escaping the fate of many other Polish cities that were destroyed by Soviet artillery and air power. Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army had by now crossed the Prosna River. Its advance elements were less than 60 kilometers from Breslau and the Oder River and were on the border of Middle Silesia. Gräser ordered Maj. Gen. Hans Wagner’s 269th Infantry Division and Maj. Gen. Heinrich Wosch’s 408th Replacement Division to the western bank of the Oder to take up positions near the towns of Picse and Kepno. The floating pocket of Nehring’s corps, now augmented by the survivors of the LVI Panzer Corps that had been able to fight their way through to Nehring, continued to retreat westward with Jauer’s 20th PGD, along with a few attached battalions, forming the rear guard. With the 3rd Guards Army pressing from the south and east and Maj. Gen. Vladimir Kolpakchi’s 69th Army of Zhukov’s front coming

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the bridge for demolition when von Saucken arrived on the scene. He immediately ordered the demolition charges removed and instead put more men into the bridgehead, hoping that Nehring’s pocket could make contact. Although the GD Panzer Corps was in serious danger of being surrounded, the Germans held their ground. Units of the 9th Army’s XL Panzer Corps were fighting on the GD’s northern flank, but the forward elements of Leliushenko’s 4th Tank Army had already crossed the Warthe in the south. Inside the Nehring pocket the fighting raged on all fronts as it made its way toward Sieradz. Casualties mounted as men and equipment were blown apart by Soviet tank and artillery fire. Luckily for the Germans, the weather remained bad, preventing massive attacks from the Red Air Force. As the 52nd Army moved into Rybalko’s for-

move forward again. North and east of Katowice, the Germans still held a defensive line. However, these defenders were also being threatened by Rybalko’s forces moving toward them from the northwest. With his forces spread so thin, Rybalko’s men were taking disturbing casualties as they met moderate to heavy resistance. One of those casualties was Maj. Gen. Nikolai Oganesian, the chief of artillery for Rybalko’s army. The battle for Katowice continued without letup the following day. Forces from the 31st Tank Corps and Lt. Gen. Viktor Kirillovich Baranov’s 1st Guard Cavalry Corps were pushing toward Gleiwitz (Gliwice), about 20 kilometers west of Katowice. Following close behind were Gusev’s 117th and 118th Rifle Corps. The advance threatened the rear of von Edelsheim’s XLVIII Panzer Corps, which was now under the control of the 17th Army, hold-

Map © 2016 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping. Minneapolis, MN

down from the north, the pocket turned to the northwest, hoping to link up with the GD Panzer Corps, which had been pushed out of Lodz and was moving southeast. There were four rifle corps nipping at Nehring’s heels, and Jauer’s rear guard was hard pressed to slow them down. By January 20, elements of the 17th Panzer were able to cross the Pilica River north of Sulejow. The Soviets reacted by hitting the pocket north of Piotkow, about 15 kilometers north of the crossing. Although it was making progress, the wandering pocket was still more than 70 kilometers from von Saucken’s GD Panzer Corps, which was defending an area around Sieradz. South of the pocket, Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army had reached the Silesian border. The only thing stopping him from accomplishing his objective of driving on Breslau was the hastily constructed defenses of the 269th and 408th Divisions, which were now augmented by 10 Volkssturm battalions. Inside Breslau itself, a mix of army and Luftwaffe battle groups and Volkssturm battalions numbered only about 18,000 men. Konev was conscious of the rapid westward movement of Zhukov’s front in the north. There was a rivalry between the two men that was encouraged by Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. Both wanted to capture the prize of Berlin, and the January operation was a giant step toward that goal. Although the armies in the northern sector of his front were almost keeping pace with Zhukov, Konev’s southern armies, particularly the 21st, 59th, and 60th, were running into heavier opposition as more German divisions and combat groups arrived from the south to man the line. To break the German defenses west of Krakow, Konev ordered Rybalko to stop his westward advance and make a 90-degree turn south to strike the rear of the enemy line. In a matter of hours, Rybalko had Maj. Gen. Sergei Ivanov’s 7th Guards Tank Corps racing south to take up new positions along the Oder River south of Oppeln. Novikov’s 6th Guards Tank Corps was directed to an area east of Oppeln, while Sukhov’s 9th Mechanized Corps guarded the army’s left flank. The infantry of the 52nd Army would soon move forward to fill the void left by Rybalko’s maneuver. Despite repeated Russian attacks on the 21st, von Saucken’s men held onto their positions in the Sieradz area. They had established a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Warthe (Warta) River around one of the few bridges in the area that could support armored vehicles. Engineers of Colonel Hermann SchulteHeuthaus’s PGD Brandenburg were preparing

Across a front many miles long, Marshal Ivan Konev launched a crushing offensive in the winter of 1945 and drove the Germans back steadily from the Vistula River to the Oder River, placing the Soviets in position to strike directly at the German capital of Berlin.

mer positions, its units attacked the German line with an artillery barrage before moving to engage the enemy. Colonel Mikhail Puteiko’s 254th Rifle Division pushed the 269th Infantry Division out of Kepno, which brought it about 65 kilometers from Breslau. The rest of Martriosian’s 73rd Rifle Corps followed. Along with the neighboring 78th Rifle Corps, the advancing infantry now set its sights on the city of Öls—only 25 kilometers east of Breslau. Northwest of Krakow, Rybalko’s march to the south was already having its effect. German units were forced to retreat to avoid being cut off in the rear, and the 59th Army was able to

ing out north and west of the city. North of Breslau the 4th Tank Army was assaulting Rawciz, about 22 kilometers east of the Oder. Directly east of Breslau, the hardpressed 408th Division and some Volkssturm battalions had to give up Namslau (Namyslow), located about 50 kilometers away. New defensive lines were nonexistent, and the only things slowing down the 4th Tank and 52nd Armies were the churned-up terrain and some hastily laid minefields. By now, the Nehring pocket had broken up into several groups, each battling its way to freedom. On January 22, the battle group that AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Liebisch’s battalion was attached to made contact with elements of the Brandenburg Division after breaking through the Russian defenses. It gave only partial relief, since the survivors of the battle group found out that Soviet forces were already west of Sieradz, which meant more heavy fighting before they reached the Oder River line. Although many units of the Nehring pocket were now making contact with von Saucken’s corps, more troops trying to escape were still spread out and cut off. About 65 kilometers east of Sieradz a trapped combat group containing part of the XLII Army Corps fought a desperate battle with second echelon troops of the 3rd Guards Army around the town of Petrikau (Piotrkow). The combat group was finally overcome, with some of the men taken prisoner. Most of the Germans were killed, including General Recknagel, commander of the corps. Around Katowice, the Germans still held out north and east of the city. Stretched to the limit, Maj. Gen. Ernst Seiler’s 304th Infantry Division defended the area north of Gleiwitz against assaults from the 31st Guards Tank Corps. Seiler had just assumed command of the division after its previous commander, Brig. Gen. Ulrich Liss, had been wounded and taken prisDuring their pursuit of the retreating Germans, Soviet soldiers cross the Oder River on a pontoon foot bridge. By January 26, 1945, the Red Army had established a line east of the Oder, and within weeks, the final push to Berlin would begin.

Both: Ullstein Bild

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oner the day before. On Seiler’s left flank Colonel Hans Kreppel’s 100th Jäger Division held off forces of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps about six kilometers east of the Oder. Konev’s forces reached the Oder on the 23rd, and Soviet engineers and assault units immediately set to work. The engineers of Pushkarov’s 6th Guards Mechanized Corps crossed the river followed by some motorized rifle forces and established a small bridgehead about 50 kilometers northwest of Breslau. In the 5th Guards Army sector, Rodmistev’s 32nd Guards Rifle Corps sent assault troops across the river around Ohlau (Olawa) and Brieg (Brzeg) between 25-35 kilometers southeast of the city. In many cases the Germans remained unaware of these crossings, allowing the Soviets to establish the jump-off points for future operations. For the next two days the battle around Katowicz grew in intensity. The 1st Guards Cavalry Corps succeeded in wresting Gleiwitz from the 30th Infantry Division and the 20th Panzer Division, and the 118th Rifle Corps was advancing into the western suburbs of Katowice itself. Southeast of the city, Kurochkin’s 60th Army was pressing hard against Niehoff’s 371st and Arndt’s 359th Infantry Divisions, which were defending positions in front of the Polish town of Oswiecim, which was known to the Germans as Auschwitz. The bridgeheads across the Oder were reinforced, and supplies began to be ferried across the river in anticipation of the assault on Breslau. Leliushenko’s 4th Tank Army was already

pushing westward north of the city and was advancing on Steinau, which was only defended by a Volkssturm battalion and a couple of ad hoc combat groups. To the north the floating pocket continued its westward flight. Bypassing Soviet concentrations around Ostrova, units of the pocket were able to destroy some Soviet supply columns as they fought their way to the Oder. By now Nehring’s pocket had moved ahead of von Saucken’s GD Panzer Corps, which was conducting a strong rearguard defense. Both groups hoped to reach the Oder near Glogau. By the 26th, Konev’s armies had occupied the eastern bank of the Oder in an area 20 kilometers north of Steinau to Kossel (Kozle), about 90 kilometers south of Breslau. The only exception was a German bridgehead east and northeast of Breslau, which was occupied by the 269th Infantry Division and a mixed bag of combat groups that faced Martirosian’s 73rd Rifle Corps. Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army had pushed German forces west of Katowice farther south, threatening at least three corps of the 17th Army with encirclement. Surprisingly, this presented Konev with a dilemma. His primary objective was to take the Silesian industrial area intact. A prolonged German defense of the area would be costly for the 1st Ukrainian Front and would more than likely destroy most of the industrial centers in the area, which was 110 kilometers long and 70 kilometers wide. “I admit I was experiencing an inner con-

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flict,” he wrote in his memoirs. “Several days earlier ... I had issued orders for an encirclement.” The opportunity to destroy approximately 100,000 enemy troops was very tempting. However, the close house-to-house fighting would cause frightening casualties. With the war’s end in sight, the losses would be a heavy burden for any commander. “As a result of my meditations I finally decided not to encircle the Nazis, but to leave a free corridor for their exit from the Silesian area and finish them off later, when they came out into the field,” he wrote. To accomplish the plan, Konev ordered Rybalko to stop moving south and to make another 90-degree turn for an advance on Ratibor (Raciborz). He also ordered the 59th and 60th Armies to increase pressure on the Germans in the Katowice area. On January 27, Colonel Fedor Krasavin’s 100th, Maj. Gen. Petr Zubov’s 322nd, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Grishin’s 286th, and Colonel Vasilii Petrenko’s 107th Rifle Divisions fought their way into Oswiecim. As the Germans retreated the Soviet troops came upon the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complex. During the previous months the Germans had tried to destroy as much as possible within the camps and had evacuated most of the camp prisoners, but there were still about 9,000 left at the facilities. The discovery did not generate much interest at the time. Majdanek concentration camp had been liberated on July 23, when the Russians took Lublin, so the existence of such camps was already known. Western newspapers had published photos of the camp, and they were too busy following events on the Western Front to find much time to report on the Auschwitz camp. The enormity of the crimes perpetrated at Auschwitz would only become known later. Konev received reports about the camp, but he did not visit the scene. “It was not that I did not want to see that death camp with my own eyes,” he wrote. “I simply made up my mind not to see it. The combat operations were in full swing, and to command them was such a strain that I could find neither time nor justification for abandoning myself to my emotions. During the war I did not belong to myself.” The final days of January proved Konev right in stopping Rybalko’s drive to the south. German forces in the Katowice area retreated through the corridor left open to them, and the 59th and 60th Armies captured the industrial area east of the Oder largely intact. Martirosian’s 73rd Rifle Corps had pushed the Germans out of their bridgehead east of Breslau,

Soldiers of the German Volkssturm listen to orders from an officer as they prepare to man positions along the banks of the Oder River. This photo was taken in early February 1945, and by that time the Volkssturm, essentially old men and boys, had been pressed into service in a futile attempt to stop the Red Army advance into the heart of Nazi Germany.

and the entire eastern bank of the river was now in the 1st Ukrainian Front’s sector. In the north the forward elements of Nehring’s pocket finally reached safety near Glogau. During the final push to the Oder, General Block was killed on the 26th, making him the second corps commander in the 4th Panzer Army to become a casualty since the offensive began. As more units crossed the Oder, Nehring received orders to strike south along the western bank. Von Saucken was also ordered to strike south along the eastern bank of the river and hit the Soviets consolidating their positions in the area. Lacking the panzers and personnel, it was an impossible order to fulfill. Although both generals complied, Russian strength was just too much to overcome. On February 2, the remnants of the GD Panzer Corps were able to cross the Oder on a pontoon bridge constructed by Nehring’s troops and join their comrades on the western bank. That same day, the Soviets declared the Vistula-Oder operation completed. There were still pockets of German troops trapped on the eastern side of the Oder, but they were soon mopped up. Although still fighting the Germans south of the Silesian industrial area, Konev had achieved his primary goals. His troops had advanced up to 600 kilometers in 21 days, smashing the 4th Panzer Army and a good part of the 17th Army, and his forces were now moving to encircle Breslau. He had also saved much of the industrial infrastructure in

eastern Silesia from destruction. The Germans had lost tens of thousands killed and wounded. Entire divisions had been decimated and would never be rebuilt, while others were reduced to little more that reinforced battalions. Liebisch stated that his battalion of the 17th Panzer Division was reduced to about one third of its original strength. The battleworthiness of both the 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions was rated low after the operation was finally over. Konev’s losses were placed at 26,219 killed and 89,567 sick and wounded. His average daily losses were 5,034 soldiers. The 1st Ukrainian Front had lost about 10 percent of its total force, but many of those losses could be replaced. With the conclusion of the Vistula-Oder operation, the Soviets were within striking distance of Berlin. Reinforcements, supplies, and equipment would have to be brought up for the Russian armies on the Oder before they were ready to strike out again. There were also German forces in Hungary, East Prussia, northern Poland, and on the Baltic coast that would have to be taken care of. Although the war was not yet over, the end of the Third Reich was only a little more than three months away. Author Pat McTaggart is an expert on World War II on the Eastern Front and a frequent contributor to WWII History. He resides in Elkader, Iowa. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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D

uring the afternoon of May 16, 1940, flames rose from the block of Foreign Office buildings on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris. Earlier that morning the alarming news that the Germans were approaching Laon, less than 100 miles northeast of the French capital, had sent the government into a panic; by 11 AM all ministers and staff were told to ready themselves for departure at any time. Part of these preparations lay in the destruction of the archives, and Alexis Léger, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, began immediately. After the orders were given, the windows of the Foreign Office overlooking the Left Bank of the Seine were flung wide open, and thousands of files were thrown onto the lawn, gathered in piles, and set alight. While the order to prepare for imminent departure was rescinded later that evening, what the average citizen of Paris had seen could not be undone. The smoke and flames were so thick that those on the other side of the city thought the Germans had arrived, and they became aware of the more alarming likelihood that their own government would abandon the city. By the time most government officials were on the roads, nearly two million Parisians, and millions more who had fled northern France and the Low Countries, were following behind. Inevitably associated with France’s astonishingly rapid military defeat, the exodus from Paris is not given nearly the attention of the later Resistance. Even claims that the exodus lit the fuse of Resistance—if only by showing the French people’s instinctual aversion to living under occupation—convinces very few. Nevertheless, it remains one of the great human dramas of World War II. The citizens of Paris who left the city in June 1940, and who came to feel like refugees in their own country, were preceded in May by more than two million refugees from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Like those who fled Paris, many of them left their homes ahead of the German advance, and they experienced in miniature the larger exodus of June and afterward—roads crowded with refugees traveling on foot or in loaded-down horse carts, all of them heading south into France while the French military headed north. This confluence of civilian and military people and machines clogging the roads became all too easy targets for German planes. The refugees experienced an exhausted arrival in Paris, where they camped out in train stations, desperately trying to find family and friends they had become separated from along the way. They felt that they were either welcomed, pitied, or looked upon with suspicion by the Parisians,

The 1940 exodus from Paris as the German Army approached choked the roads from the city with refugee traffic.

Exhausted who continued on with their daily lives. Slowly, however, and especially after the Germans entered France on May 13 and the refugee numbers started to include fellow French people, the citizens of Paris began to suspect that they too might be among these fleeing crowds. It was another month before the Nazis entered Paris, and up to then Parisians were caught in a situation that seems unbelievable today. With the media censored (and with what was allowed only being broadcast sporadically throughout the day), the government and military and the general populace clinging to a simple French pride that saw defeat as

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impossible, and with officials downplaying or attempting to keep the experiences of the refugees quiet, the majority of those in Paris remained ignorant as to how dire the situation already was. “They will see we are not Poles or Norwegians!” the American journalist A.J. Liebling overheard one citizen saying, remarking himself, “Confidence was a duty.” Initial suggestions to evacuate the city were condemned as defeatist and part of some fifth column plot to demoralize the people. After the war, the writer Léon Werth recalled seeing that the grass on the Champs Élysées was still being tended to and thinking, Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1971-083-01, Photo: Tritschler

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Caravan “If the situation was serious they would not bother to water the grass.” But as May turned into June, as the disaster at Dunkirk unfolded, and despite a May 19 order explicitly forbidding civilian evacuation of the city, people came around to the inevitable. “While we were talking, sadly and quietly, among the trees,” one remembered, “the French were losing the war.” Georgette Guillot, a secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, wrote of the moment when she and her

colleagues began to feel ashamed “to be negligently sitting at the terrace of a café.” Historian Marc Bloch, who was later executed in 1944 for his part in the Resistance, wrote of those early days: “Had we not had the atrocious images of the ruins of Spain [the aerial bombings of Guernica and Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War] frequently put before our eyes in cinemas? Had we not been repeatedly exposed to report after report on the martyred Polish villages?”

BY TIM MILLER With panic and distress etched on her face, a woman pulls a horse and cart laden with personal belongings and to which a pair of goats has been tied as she flees from the French capital of Paris before the advancing German onslaught in the spring of 1940.

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Both: AKG Images

It was naïve to assume that Paris would not be next, and on June 3 the Renault and Citroën factories in the 15th and 16th Arrondissements were bombed; hundreds of civilians were killed and their homes destroyed. Three days later a second French defensive line collapsed, sending into Paris new waves of French refugees, who were now joined by French troops. Liebling wrote of “garbage trucks parked in the middle of the street to balk airplane landings,” and on June 8 all schools in Paris were closed. The wave of departures already emanating from the city began to swell. That day, a confident German journalist wrote with glee, “The horses of our Eastern Prussian cavalry are already drinking from the Seine,” as they were now less than 40 miles away. On June 10, the entire government left for Tours, and like the refugees these officials could not stay put, moving later to Bordeaux, Clermont Ferrand, and finally to the resort town of Vichy. The city’s gasoline reserves were set on fire on June 11, and those left behind, mostly the elderly and the very poor, thought the smoke was evidence of the German arrival. But it was merely another dark beacon for the advancing enemy army, which finally entered the city on Friday, June 14. By then all roads out of Paris were filled with refugees from the city, the Low Countries, and northern France. Those who had left their homes in the city had done so in a rush. Writer Rupert Downing recalled steadfastly refusing “to look too long at my possessions, lest the 54

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temptation to try and take them prove too much for me,” while others had no idea what to do, packing and unpacking over and over. Those who could had boarded the last impossibly crowded trains west to Brittany, or south. But for the rest, the later Resistance leader Marie-Madeleine Fourcade summed up their situation: “People loaded furniture and knickknacks onto vehicles of all kinds, as houses were cleared of their contents and passengers, furniture and objects alike took shelter under pyramids of mattresses. Dog owners killed their pets so they would not have to feed them. In this sad frenzy of departure people rescued whatever possessions they could save.... Weeping women pushed old people who had been squashed into prams.” The American journalist Virginia Cowles also recalled seeing a hearse overloaded with children. After the war, one refugee was almost ashamed to admit that the initial few days on the road had the feeling of a “large countryside party” or some holiday adventure that included lucky good weather, the chance to sleep outdoors, and picnics along the way. Journalist Georges Sadoul especially remembered the teenagers: “The happiest of them all are these 18-year-olds who dash by in gangs on bikes, boys and girls traveling light who appear almost cheerful in their [newly gained] freedom heading toward the unknown.” This was before broken axles, and then abandoned trucks and cars, and then abandoned

belongings of all kinds littered the roadside. The slow discovery came that they had all either packed too much, packed sentimentally rather than practically, or simply overdressed in layers of clothes they ended up peeling away under the warm sun. Nearly everyone also ran out of food in only a few days. Once the French military appeared on the roads and began picking up as many civilians as it could, Germans began attacking these now slow-moving columns, and parents with small children made various preparations. Identification papers were put into the children’s socks in case they lost their shoes. Mothers on foot allowed their children to be taken by military convoys or refugees who had trucks or cars, preferring the safety of a hopefully brief separation until the next village or town to the increasingly open risk of being on the road. And so almost immediately messages began to appear chalked on roadsides or left at official buildings, detailing where certain families were or begging for information on someone now lost. For the duration of the war, newspapers in the south would overflow with columns of “missing notices,” and from 1940 to 1942, the Red Cross reunited an astounding 90,000 children who had been separated from their parents. As the journey was so sluggish and halting, sometimes as slow as eight miles an hour, cars either broke down or just ran out of gas. Léon Werth wrote of traveling 70 feet at a time and then stopping for six or seven hours while the more affluent who had set off comfortably with

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maps now hitched rides with peasants and their horse-drawn carts. The recollections of so many reached back into history for the right description. The streaming crowds were compared to those who had escaped Pompeii or to the barbarian migrations of the 4th century; they were something out of the Dark Ages or Middle Ages, something out of a medieval feast day procession, a medieval famine, or a Brueghel painting. Virginia Cowles wrote simply enough, “The great bridge over the Loire looked like a long thin breadcrust swarming with ants.” The usual civilities slowly eroded. The aunt of Georgette Guillot’s friend died along the way, and with nowhere to bury her she was strapped to the roof of a car; after sleeping for a night in a barn, her family rose to find the car and the body with it was gone. Journalist Gilles Perrault, only nine at the time of the exodus, remembered the sleepless nights on the road, disturbed by the screams of women being raped. The refugees were horrendously overcharged by the first farmers, shops, restaurants, or gas stations they came across, and as a result they became pillagers, using abandoned houses for shelter and gardens for food. In one instance they entered a village screaming, “The Germans are coming!” Once the villagers fled, their homes and stores were emptied at will. Shocked, Rupert Downing slowly came to the realization “that I had now joined the ranks of those who had fled from Poland, Belgium, Holland, and now France. We were refugees.” By this time the Germans were continuing their push south, and the aftermath of their aerial attacks, the private scenes of such a public horror, were many and terrible. The body of a young girl was rolled up in some blankets, her father carrying the bundle and in search of a cemetery. A mother was barely able to drive, but now with her husband shot dead she made her way with their three children. One witness, only a child at the time, remembered thinking it was all a game. “We felt like we were playing at Robin Hood or Cowboys and Indians…. We didn’t realize how serious it was.” Meanwhile, to avoid German air attacks some preferred to travel only at night, while trains carrying civilians did so in the evening with all the lights out. It is not hard to imagine the anxiety of an overcrowded, deafeningly silent train traveling through the French countryside in the summer darkness. Perhaps most psychologically damaging of all, however, was the fact that many refugees had no ultimate destination in mind, and hardly any of them, those from the Low Countries or

the north, or the working-class from Paris, knew exactly where they were, having never been south. One woman recalled that people simply “followed along in a line as if we were all going to the same place.” Writer Georges Adrey recalled, “Nothing is worse than walking straight ahead, on the off-chance, without being able to stop somewhere and say, ‘On such and such a day, at such and such a time, our ordeal will come to an end.’” For some, this simply became their life during the war. Novelist Roland Dorgèles wandered from town to town for four years “camping here, renting elsewhere, moving further away, always seeking a safer place.” Aside from those who branched off and headed west for Brittany, south was the only

After the initial shock, local populations came to consider it their duty to the help the displaced. Many found jobs that made them reluctant to return home when the possibility arose, while others found themselves amusingly useless outside of an urban environment, grateful but astonished at the hospitality of those living in villages without electricity, and who still cooked over an open fire. A little girl at the time of the exodus later recalled her family’s rural shock. “We were astonished to find that the house only had an earthen floor. My mother, father, and brother slept in the attic where there were five stacks of maize under the mattress. What seemed strange to us was that we were in our own country and we had discovered another world.” Others, the

ABOVE: The former occupants of an automobile push the vehicle along a road somewhere in France after it has run out of gas. The roads from Paris into the French countryside were clogged with refugees fleeing the onrushing Germans, who invaded their country on May 10, 1940. OPPOSITE: Camping in a forest near Paris, these refugees appear somewhat bewildered by the sudden series of events that has made them homeless. The swiftness of the German advance through France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940 took the world by surprise and resulted in the mass dislocation of many citizens of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

direction the refugees could go, to Chartres and Orleans, Nantes and Tours, over the River Loire where many mistakenly though the Germans would halt their advance, to Dijon and Limoges and Vichy, Bordeaux and Toulouse. Especially after the Atlantic coast was declared in the zone of German occupation, refugees flooded the handful of major towns on or near the Mediterranean. Marseilles was called the capital of the exodus, while the population of Cahors ballooned from 13,000 to nearly 70,000. Simone de Beauvoir described a village café, which must have been a good spot for a game of checkers or backgammon, as “a huge railroad station buffet.”

danger notwithstanding, continued to find a vacation experience in their journey. Some who made it south had never been to the sea, while the factory workers of Paris, who rarely left their stuffy apartment blocks, were not about to end what amounted to a cheap seaside holiday. One large group that could not take even this solace was the Jews of France and the Low Countries. Many of the former had arrived in France from Russia and Eastern Europe in the years after World War I, and as the new war neared the population most vulnerable to German aggression was nevertheless suspected of being part of some fifth column seeking to defeat France from within. As a result, foreign AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Jews were interned in a handful of camps spread throughout the country, and after the Germans entered the north the French government had the decency to transfer Jews interned there to camps in the south. Inevitably, though, just as the Belgian and other Low Country refugees had become objects of suspicion, the fleeing Parisians also found another scapegoat for their predicament. Cries of “We have been betrayed!” easily turned into “The Jews sold us out.” As the French military defeat came to pass, however, and as the armistice allowed the Nazis to extradite anyone they wanted, those interned rightly feared being handed over, and many (though far from all) camp officials allowed those Jews to escape and attempt to leave the country. So much is told by the stories of two Jewish writers who attempted to flee France. Walter Benjamin, who had already left Germany a decade earlier, fled Paris and made it to Spain, hoping to immigrate to the United States through Portugal. On September 25, when it seemed the Spanish were about to return him to France, he took an overdose of morphine rather than face that future. A few months later, Hannah Arendt, with the help of an American diplomat who issued more than 2,000 illegal visas for Jews, was able to leave France, pass through Spain to Portugal, and arrive in New York. Chance, more than anything else, is what mattered. People died for no reason and survived for no reason. This occurred after French Jews, 90 percent of whom lived in Paris, had been among the first to flee the city. Many of them, including those who had served in World War I, were caught in an inconceivable situation. They felt they had proven their loyalty to France and considered it unpatriotic to leave. The Vichy government, which ended up rescinding the citizenship of many recently naturalized Jews and sent upward of 60,000 demobilized foreign Jewish soldiers to internment camps, had no illusions and openly encouraged the Jews of Bordeaux to leave the country. Countless stories were told of those who made it to a port and, tickets and all the necessary paperwork in hand, prevaricated in the overnight before their departure, boarding and disembarking their ship only to finally stay in the country. Léon Werth wrote, “They could not and would not leave their France.” There were also those who refused to return home, and in time their presence in villages and towns did put a strain on the locals. Initially the government had offered aid to French refugees, and one way of forcing them to repatriate was to cancel the benefits. Even in this 56

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situation, however, people stayed, and they found living a little bit desperately or with families who kept them on and expected very little in return to be preferable. This refusal to repatriate was understandable, after all, since so many felt their government had abandoned them. Virginia Cowles described the previous government as “leaders who had given them no directions, no information, no reassurances; who neither had arranged for their evacuation nor called on them to stay at their places and fight for Paris.” By the time it was in a place to demand everyone’s orderly return, the Vichy government was merely assisting the Nazis. This sad conclusion had been arrived at slowly during the middle and end of June. On the 13th, the day before the Germans entered Paris, it was declared an open city to save it from the fighting. Three days later, upon the news that President Franklin Roosevelt would not help and after the French government also refused the extraordinary offer of uniting Great Britain and France into one Franco-British union, there was nothing left to do the next day but accept the German terms of surrender. On June 17, at 11:30 in morning, the new prime minister and a hero of World War I, Marshal Philippe Pétain, addressed France over the radio, announcing he would seek an armistice. All towns with a population greater than 20,000 were declared open, and the disheartening sight began of French soldiers marching on their own toward Germany. Assuming that a British capitulation was imminent, many of them became prisoners so willingly under the belief that the war would be over soon enough and they would be demobilized and sent home. As it happened, a million and a half were sent to POW camps, and more than 900,000 were still there in 1944. Other soldiers simply wandered off or became part of the crowd of refugees. One diarist wrote, “Unarmed soldiers are wandering around aimlessly. In our only local paper a long column publishes messages not just from families seeking one another, but even from officers who would like to find their companies or regiments! What have we come to?” News of the impending armistice, which was signed on June 21, came as a shock to the refugees, and many only heard the June 17 broadcast in another’s home or through the open windows they were passing. They must have wondered why they had bothered to leave, since many would have stayed in Paris had they known it would be declared open. Instead, they were far from home and continued to be attacked until June 25, when the armistice went into effect. Those who saw no reason to con-

tinue wandering tried to return to Paris, but many found bridges and rail lines and stations destroyed. By early July, as the total number of refugees in France was estimated at close to eight million, of which 6.2 million were French, it was to the benefit of the Germans and the new Vichy government that they be returned. This could only be done with the collaboration of the two forces, and as Hitler was actively planning an invasion of Great Britain he told Mussolini it was imperative the French government remain in the country. The implementation of Occupied and Unoccupied Zones in France was his way of achieving this, of appearing to give Pétain some sense of remaining in power, when all it actually did was allow the Vichy government to denigrate the failures of the previous regime and in turn allow the Germans to portray themselves as saviors. One widespread tract began: “Poor French people, see how your government and its prefects have abandoned you, how they have lied to you and presented us as barbarians, raping women and massacring men, when we are all ready to help you.” What this meant for the refugees was a fairly surprising series of logistical feats. By July 20, enough railway lines and bridges had been repaired to allow for regular train service from the Unoccupied Zone into Paris, and from August 11 service was spread to the rest of the country. By October and November, the majority of the refugees had been returned home one way or another. Of course, there were the expected nightmares. Pierre Girard wrote of the eight days it took to travel less than 300 miles, from Clermont Ferrand to Paris. Much of the repatriation occurred before the Germans could consistently monitor the demarcation line so that travelers in some areas passed back and forth easily, while others faced Germans who ruthlessly followed protocol on paperwork, identification, and luggage restrictions. Other times, the demarcation line was closed suddenly and seemingly arbitrarily, and sometimes trains or cars could not run due to a shortage of fuel. One French official wrote of the sad situation he and his friends endured, remembering a discussion about gasoline that sounded “as if we were connoisseurs talking about our wine cellars and our most precious wines in better days.” Many refugees, however, returned to a Paris that was quite different from the city they had evacuated. The clocks had been set ahead an hour to match Berlin, and the city was under curfew with major roads in and out blocked with sandbags. To some, it took time for reality to set in, and so for a moment it was merely amusing to note that most of the German soldiers were carrying cameras and acting like

Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L05223, Photo: Unknown

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tourists. Parisians said things like, “We were told they were so terrible! But they are so very nice,” and some could grin at the relationships budding between German soldiers and French women, the horrible retributive violence those women would undergo still years away. The day the Germans entered Paris, the official newspaper of the Nazi party, the Völkischer Beobachter, gloated, “Paris was a city of frivolity and corruption, of democracy and capitalism, where Jews had entry to the court, and niggers to the salons. That Paris will never rise again.” Soon enough, the occupying forces dropped the veneer of soldierly decency and lived up to these words. In September it was announced that civilians would be imprisoned or executed if Germans were attacked, and the writer Maurice Sachs called occupied Paris “a rather lovely spectacle like that of a destroyed civilization.” Simone de Beauvoir, who had fled Paris and returned by the beginning of July, wrote later that month with astonishing clarity about what had already happened to her city and her country. She said of the exodus that for three weeks she had been nowhere, and had been no one, everyone caught in a kind of collective anguish that robbed them of their individuality. “Nowhere did I get a better feel for what victory must have meant for the Germans,” she said, than by their obvious self-satisfaction, adding, “There was not a French face

that wasn’t a living defeat.” This defeat seems best illustrated not by the shoddy French government or by fleeing soldiers, but by the terrified exodus of ordinary people at their most powerless and desperate. One woman de Beauvoir met “lived in terror of being abandoned by everyone and shot.” While the later Resistance had its share of executed French men and women, it was also backed up with a collective strength embodied in the words of an anonymous pamphlet, which appeared as early as late 1940: “Don’t be under any illusion: these people aren’t tourists. Take your time, ignore what they say, shun their concerts and their parades.” The exodus produced no words like these and was merely millions of people unmoored from their civilian lives and utterly helpless in the face of the advancing enemy. The entirety is all there in a scene Virginia Cowles witnessed during one of the early days on the road. A van had run out of gas halfway up a hill, and its occupants, a mother and her four children, were blocking the way, desperately begging for someone to give them gasoline. After no one did, Cowles wrote, “Three men climbed out of a truck and in spite of her agonized protests, shoved the car into the ditch. It fell with a crash. The rear axle broke and the household possessions piled on top sprawled across the field. She screamed out a frenzy of abuse, then flung herself on the ground and sobbed. Once again the

Standing atop the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, German soldiers and collaborationist French officials see to the raising of the swastika-emblazoned Nazi banner from one of the most recognizable symbols of French national pride. Paris endured four years of Nazi occupation before its liberation by the Allies in August 1944.

procession moved on.” That was not the France anyone wanted to remember, made selfish and brutal by the terror of this new life. Nearly all the voices from the exodus are silent, the few surviving either those of writers or those reluctantly interviewed in old age. A huge silence of mostly women and children remains, their men off fighting or interned, and there is mostly silence from those of the Low Countries whose homes were destroyed. This silence is impossible to sum up, but grief beside a grave is as good an image to use as any. Novelist Irene Nemirovsky, who later died in Auschwitz, concluded the following about her government’s collapse, and in doing so perhaps speaks for the exodus as well. “The French grew tired of the Republic as if she were an old wife. For them, the dictatorship was a brief affair, adultery. But they intended to cheat on their wife, not to kill her. Now they realize that she is dead, their Republic, their freedom. They are mourning her.” First-time contributor Tim Miller resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Reeling from his defeat at El Alamein, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel intended to toss the dice again before leaving North Africa for good. His target was the green American Army in Tunisia. BY ERIC NIDEROST

IN

the winter of 1942-1943, the Allies had every reason to believe that they were on the verge of total victory in North Africa. It had started in November 1942, when German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s much-vaunted Panzerarmee Afrika was decisively defeated by the British Eighth Army at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Rommel’s setback was not merely a defeat but a full-scale rout, and surviving German and Italian units were forced into a headlong retreat through the burning deserts of northern Libya. Rommel seemingly was trapped between American forces advancing to block his retreat and British forces in hot pursuit to his rear. The Axis disaster at El Alamein coincided with Operation Torch, three coordinated Allied landings in French North Africa at Casablanca, in Morocco, and at Oran and Algiers, in Algeria. Operation Torch, approved after a series of sometimes acrimonious discussions between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was designed to open a second front to augment the valiant Russian efforts against Nazi Germany in the East. Owing to French sensibilities, the landings were mainly an American effort. The Americans came ashore on November 8 waving the Stars and Stripes and were immediately met with fierce resistance from French colonial troops loyal to the collaborationist Vichy government back home. At Oran, British naval cutters Walney and Hartland were sunk by French fire, costing the Allies

TRIAL BY FIRE AT KASSERINE PASS an additional 445 unnecessary casualties before the political situation was sorted out. At Algiers, a five-day delay in the proceedings was finally resolved, and Vichy commander Jean Darlan reluctantly agreed to end colonial resistance to the Allied landings. The need for continued cooperation from Darlan was eliminated— along with Darlan—when the admiral was assassinated on Christmas Eve by a Free French intelligence operative. The way was clear for a concerted drive on the grievously wounded Panzerarmee. For even the gifted Rommel, the end seemed near. In two years of unremitting desert warfare, he had performed wonders, earning him the respect and admi58

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ration of friends and foes alike. Allied air and naval forces often reduced his supplies to a trickle, and he was usually outnumbered by his British foes. German Führer Adolf Hitler, preoccupied with his ongoing Russian campaign, failed to appreciate the strategic significance of North Africa. Many of Rommel’s fellow officers were oldschool aristocrats bred in the Prussian tradition, and to them he was little more than a middle-class upstart. In spite of all these difficulties, Rommel had won a number of brilliant victories and came within an ace of capturing the Suez Canal, key to the entire Middle East and Great Britain’s lifeline to India and East

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U.S. Army Art

German tanks race into battle at Kasserine Pass through the blowing sands of the Tunisian desert in this captured German painting.

Asia. Rommel led from the front; he was a masterful tactician and strategist imbued with an offensive spirit that swiftly exploited enemy weaknesses. Rommel had become larger than life, a man christened with the enduring sobriquet “the Desert Fox.” Even his enemies gave him grudging admiration. In the fall and winter of 1942-1943 the fox seemed at bay, surrounded by a host of Allied hounds. Panzerarmee Afrika was a broken reed, a mere shadow of its former self. About half of Rommel’s command had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, and 450 tanks and 1,000 guns were taken or destroyed. Rommel himself was

exhausted and increasingly prone to periods of ill health. He was plagued by headaches, and to make matters worse, he came down with a painful bout of nasal diphtheria. Yet Allied hopes of total victory turned out to be premature. The Torch landings, besides giving the green American troops an exaggerated idea of their own prowess, had finally aroused Hitler from his lethargy on North African affairs. Enraged, he occupied southern France and began to pour reinforcements into Tunisia. German and Italian troops were easily ferried into Tunisia from Sicily, only one night’s voyage distant. General des Panzertruppen Hans-Jurgen von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Map © 2016 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN

ABOVE: The two-pronged German attack on the Western Dorsal range of the Atlas Mountains. Rommel had hoped to unite both wings at Kasserine, but he was overruled. OPPOSITE: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel surveys the field of battle near the wreckage of a British Bren gun carrier.

was the main element in the eleventh-hour surge of Axis troops. By January 1943, Rommel had retreated some 1,400 miles across the spine of northern Africa, and his men’s morale was as low as their casualties had been high. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s Eighth Army took Tripoli—Rommel’s main supply base—on January 23, but the triumph was short-lived. The Allied pursuit was literally bogging down, with heavy winter rains turning Tunisia’s yellowish soil into a sea of primordial muck. Rommel retained hopes of linking up with von Arnim’s forces and effecting an orderly withdrawal of 60

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all German forces from North Africa. But to do so, he believed that it was necessary to inflict a stinging defeat on the newly arrived Americans before they could complete a fatal encirclement with the British Army along the old French fortification line at Mareth on the Libya-Tunisia border. His counterpart, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was supreme commander in the Mediterranean Theater, a job that demanded tact as well as diplomatic skills. Eisenhower performed both tasks admirably, but he was too often handicapped by political considerations in the early stages of the campaign. In

early February he had to drop everything to attend the famous Casablanca Conference and consult with Roosevelt and Churchill on Allied plans. He finally left the conference on February 12 and immediately took a tour of the Tunisian front. Meanwhile, Rommel received word that he was to be recalled to Germany for rest and recuperation. There was to be a reorganization of his forces; Panzerarmee Afrika would be designated the German-Italian Panzer Army and placed under the command of Italian General Giovanni Messe. But the Desert Fox did not want to leave Africa on such a sour note. Rommel wanted to redeem himself and restore his reputation, tarnished after El Alamein and what to him was an ignominious retreat. Rommel was a keen observer and a strategic opportunist. He saw weaknesses in the American forces, whose troops were green and largely untested. Rommel began to think in terms of an offensive, using the Fifth Panzer Army and, he hoped, a rested and re-equipped Panzerarmee Afrika. If Rommel could smash through the inexperienced American line, he could rush through Kasserine Pass and take Tebessa, a major Allied supply hub. There was also a possibility that Rommel could sweep north and take the remaining Allied forces—now facing von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army—in the flank and rear. If and when his plan was approved, Rommel knew that he would not have to worry about Montgomery’s Eighth Army advancing in his rear. The old French fortifications at the Mareth Line would hold Montgomery in check—at least for a time. Rommel planned to man the Mareth Line with his infantry, reserving his more mobile armored forces for the proposed attack. The American II Corps would be Rommel’s primary target. It was commanded by Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall, a man full of bravado and macho posturing. He had a habit of tough-guy talking that alienated subordinates and sometimes made his orders unclear. Rommel argued for an immediate offensive, and at first it seemed like a tough sell. On paper, German operations in Africa were controlled by the Italian Comando Supremo, although Rommel generally had a free hand. Now the Desert Fox had to deal with Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who had been appointed Oberbefehlshaber Sud (Commander in Chief, South), an area that encompassed the whole Mediterranean. Meeting with Kesselring and von Arnim at a Luftwaffe airbase at Rhennouch, midway between Tunis and Mareth, Rommel presented his plan. It was a frosty meeting. Rommel and von Arnim knew each

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National Archives

other well, but in their case, familiarity did not breed affection. As the well-born son of a Prussian general, von Arnim resented Rommel’s parvenu status and heroic image, which he considered overdone. Kesselring did not like Rommel any more than von Arnim did, but he was inclined to give Rommel one last chance. Rommel’s plan was approved, although scaled down. Instead of one major offensive thrust through the mountains, there would be two separate attacks. Von Arnim would launch an offensive codenamed Operation Frühlingswind (Spring Wind), while Rommel would attack to the south of von Arnim under the designation Morgenluft (Morning Air). Tunisia, a fist of land thrusting out into the Mediterranean Sea, is a region of arid plains and formidable mountain ranges. The Western Dorsal and Eastern Dorsal are two offshoots of the Atlas Mountains that run roughly parallel to the coast, 70 miles inland. These two rocky “backbones” are all but impassable, save for a number of passes that cut through their rugged slopes. Allied units had already advanced through the Western Dorsal and established a front line that touched the western edge of the Eastern Dorsal. The northern part of the line was held by the British First Army under Lt. Gen. Sir Kenneth A.N. Anderson. Americans felt uncomfortable around Anderson, considering him a prototypical dour Scotsman. Like most British officers, he liked to closely supervise the tactical plans of subordinates, which to American sensibilities felt too much like uninvited interference. Anderson’s main focus was the northern segment near the coast, where he

felt the decisive showdown with the Germans ultimately would take place. The center of the Allied line was held by Free French troops of the XIX Corps d’Armee. They were largely colonial troops of varying quality, poorly equipped until the Americans gradually gave them more up-to-date weapons. The officers were almost stereotypes of Gallic pride, always eager to show their courage and quick to take offense at perceived slights to French honor. But it was the southern end of the Allied line that gave Eisenhower the most worry. As soon as he was able to break away from the Casablanca Conference, he traveled to make an inspection of the II Corps. Eisenhower was appalled; in some respects, things were even worse than he had imagined. The problems started at the top. Fredendall had established his headquarters an incredible 80 miles to the rear of the front line in a nearly inaccessible ravine. He seemed obsessed with air attack, and he had a swarm of 200 engineers busily digging a network of underground bunkers for himself and his staff. As Eisenhower remarked later, “It was the only time during the war that I ever saw a higher headquarters so concerned over its own safety that it dug itself underground shelters.” Not wanting to embarrass Fredendall, Eisenhower had merely cautioned his corps commander not to stay too close to his command post, adding the less-than-inspiring observation that “Generals are expendable just as is any other item in an army.” Fredendall did not take the hint. Eisenhower also visited the oasis village of Sidi Bou Zid, near the western entrance of the Faid

Pass that sliced through the Eastern Dorsal. Axis forces were on the other side of the mountain chain, and who knew what their plans might be? If they decided to mount an offensive, Eisenhower saw only too clearly that the American forces were ill prepared to resist. The troops were green, which could not be helped, but they were also lackadaisical. Defensive minefields had yet to be put down, although Americans had been in the area for at least a couple of days. There were always excuses and assurances that such tasks would be done tomorrow. Some troops had not even bothered to dig foxholes in the desert terrain. Eisenhower pointed out with disgust that the Germans always dug minefields, placed machine guns, and had reserve troops standing by, but the Americans seemed content to throw their backpacks on the ground, stack their rifles and grenade belts in an untidy heap, and head off to the nearest village tavern for some unearned rest and relaxation. A recent circular letter from Eisenhower to his subordinate commanders, cautioning them “to impress upon our junior officers the deadly seriousness of the job,” had gone unheeded. Although Eisenhower did not know yet where the Germans would launch a major attack, he knew in his bones that one was coming soon. Confirmation of a sort had come from his chief intelligence officer, British Brig. Gen. Eric Mockler-Ferryman, who had assured Eisenhower that the Germans were planning to attack the British and French positions on the northern flank of the Allied line. American Brig. Gen. Paul Robinett, whose Combat Command B (CCB) of the 1st Armored Division was temporarily attached AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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to the British sector, had vigorously disputed this claim, telling Eisenhower that his own tanks had penetrated all the way across the Eastern Dorsal without running into a single advanced enemy position. Robinett had tried to warn Anderson as well, but the Scotsman had airily dismissed his warnings. Eisenhower was inclined to believe Robinett, and he ordered Fredendall to gather his scattered armored units into a mobile reserve ready to confront any German attempt to break though the mountain passes. Eisenhower’s reasoning was sound, but already too late. It was the evening of February 13, and for the Americans casually guarding the southern line, time had run out. The first part of the German offensive— Operation Frühlingswind—began in the early morning hours of February 14. The 10th Panzer Division smashed through the Faid Pass, using a blinding sandstorm as perfect cover. At

away from each other to provide mutual support. The hilltop infantry was reduced to helpless observers of an American debacle swiftly unfolding on the plains far below. Colonel Thomas D. Drake of the 165th Infantry Regiment, 34th Division, was situated on Djebel Ksaira, watching the spectacle below with growing frustration. Drake phoned the command post at Sidi Bou Zid, warning them that some American artillery was already showing signs of panic. The commanders in the rear refused to believe it, insisting that the men were only shifting positions.“Shifting positions, hell,” Drake responded. “I know panic when I see it.” Nearby, the Americans on Djebel Lessouda were also powerless to intervene in any meaningful way. A strong southwesterly wind had smothered all sounds of the German buildup the previous night, and Major Norman Par-

Both: National Archives

U.S. soldiers, weapons at the ready, advance warily toward German positions across the rock-strewn desert.

the same time, the veteran 21st Panzer Division raced through the mountains to the south of Sidi Bou Zid, then turned north, intending to link up with the 10th Panzers. The Nazis’ initial targets were a pair of hills, known locally as djebels, that guarded the road from Faid to Sebeitla. After encircling these Allied-held outposts, von Arnim’s troops would capture Sidi Bou Zid itself. The two hills in question, Djebel Lessouda and Djebel Ksaira, flanked Sidi Bou Zid and seemed like good defensive positions—on paper. Fredendall had placed infantry units on the tops of each hill, intending them to slow the German advance until American armor could deal with them. Unfortunately, there were too few men on the hills, and they were too far 62

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son’s patrolling G Company had run headlong into the lead elements of the 86th Panzer Grenadiers and 7th Panzer Regiment that morning, getting themselves knocked out of commission and losing all radio communications with Djebel Lessouda. Once the sandstorm lifted, Lessouda’s commander, Lt. Col. John Waters, could plainly see what he estimated to be at least 60 German tanks and numerous other vehicles. Waters was the sonin-law of Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, who had not yet become famous as one of America’s best military leaders. Waters earlier had cautioned his men after their easy victory over the French during the Torch landings: “We did very well against the scrub team. Next week we hit the Germans. When we make a showing against

them, you may congratulate yourselves.” His words would prove to be prescient. American armor moved forward to confront the growing threat. Colonel Louis V. Hightower’s force—two companies of tanks and about a dozen tank destroyers—rumbled out of Sidi Bou Zid to attack the 10th Panzer headon. Hightower and his inexperienced crews were brave but badly outnumbered and were facing a well-prepared enemy. German 88mm artillery scored hit after hit, turning American armor into flaming coffins one by one. The M3 Sherman tanks used by the Americans, which for some reason they had nicknamed “Honey,” were given a more mocking, if accurate, nickname by the Germans—“Ronson,” after the cigarette lighter, because they burst into flames so readily. Hightower’s force was facing Mark VI Tiger tanks, new and powerful additions to the German arsenal that had a firing range twice as long as the American tanks. The combination of German artillery shells and long-range tank fire proved too much for Hightower’s men, who tried in vain to conduct a fighting retreat in the face of heavy odds. Hightower’s own tank was knocked out, but not before he had destroyed four panzers. Hightower and his crew managed to escape the burning hulk and sneak away from the battlefield amid the smoke and dust. (“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Hightower said reasonably.) They were the lucky ones—only seven of Hightower’s 51 tanks survived the defeat, however. The other 44 American tanks were lost, and Sidi Bou Zid had to be abandoned. American Brig. Gen. Raymond A. McQuillin, commanding Combat Command A (CCA) within Sidi Bou Zid, fell back to a new position seven miles southwest of the town, while German Colonel Hans Georg Hildebrandt took possession of the stronghold. Before long, 21st Panzer linked up with 10th Panzer, and they moved quickly to consolidate their gains. The 2,500 American infantrymen on the two hills were now cut off, literally islands of resistance in a German sea. Drake still stubbornly held Djebel Ksaira and Waters held Djebel Lessouda, but chances of a successful breakout were diminishing by the hour. Meanwhile, back at his headquarters, Fredendall refused to allow Waters and Drake to escape while there was still time. Fredendall’s stubbornness was compounded by faulty assumptions and bad intelligence. British General Anderson, Fredendall’s superior, was convinced that the German drive on Sidi Bou Zid was merely a diversionary attack for a larger blow farther north. Allied intelligence also insisted that there was only one Panzer division

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in the south. As a result, only one tank battalion—Lt. Col. James Alger’s 2nd Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment—was sent to deal with the Germans and rescue the Americans trapped on the two hills. Alger’s equipment was good—mainly M-4 Sherman tanks—but his tactics were poor, and his men were brave but inexperienced. They did not realize they were going to face not one but two Panzer divisions. The result was an almost textbook example of what not to do in desert armored warfare. Alger’s counterattack began on February 15. The 58 Shermans came forward at a high rate of speed, which meant that huge dust clouds marked their passage. So much dust was kicked up that crews were blinded, and the thick plumes made them easy to spot and target. The American tanks rolled forward in a rough V-shaped formation, with tank destroyers on the flanks. It was like an old-style cavalry charge, but the Germans were about to bring the Americans into the 20th century. German artillery hidden amid olive groves opened fire, and German tanks attacked Alger’s flanks. Before long the Americans were trapped, engaging veteran Mark IV Tigers at point-blank range. Only four American tanks managed to escape the debacle. The entire battalion was wiped out, with 55 tanks lost and some 300 men dead, wounded, or captured, including Alger, who was taken prisoner. Divisional commander Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward was left literally in the dark about the attack’s outcome. So much smoke and dust were kicked up in the battle that he could only report to Fre-

dendall, “We might have walloped them, or they might have walloped us.” It was soon clear who had done the walloping. Realizing at last that rescue was impossible, Fredendall gave belated permission for the two trapped hilltop forces to try to break out on their own. Drake led his men down the slopes of Djebel Ksaira under the cover of darkness, but he soon encountered German tanks, which surrounded him and his 600 men in a large cactus patch. Drake tried to bluff his way out, shouting “Go to hell!” when the Germans demanded surrender, but it was no use. He and his men were soon made prisoners. Waters and many of his command were also taken prisoner, with perhaps one-third—about 300—out of the original 900 getting back to Allied lines. The whole Allied line was in jeopardy, and the Germans seemed on the brink of a major victory. There was nothing left to do but fall back to the next line of defense—the Western Dorsal chain, some 50 miles away. With luck, the Western Dorsal passes—particularly the vital Kasserine Pass—could be held and the German offensive stopped. The retreat to the Western Dorsals proved to be a nightmare. The battered II Corps had been badly defeated, and with that defeat came a crisis of confidence. Fredendall, who had pulled back to the town of Kouif, complained to Eisenhower: “At present time, 1st Armored [is] in a bad state of disorganization. Ward appears tired out, worried and has informed me that to bring new tanks in would be the same as turning them over to the Germans. Under the cir-

A column of German Mark III tanks rolls across a desert road. Hitler initially sent Wehrmacht units to North Africa to support his faltering Italian allies.

cumstances [I] do not think he should continue in command. Need someone with two fists immediately.” Eisenhower had no intention of removing Ward, but he did send a trusted lieutenant, Maj. Gen. Ernest Harmon, to advise Fredendall “during the unusual conditions of the present battle.” The roads leading west were jammed with fleeing American vehicles, providing easy targets for rampaging German Stuka dive-bombers swooping down from the sky like avenging furies. Eisenhower, who had left before the battle to return to his headquarters at Constantine, Algeria, began shuttling reinforcements to Ward and McQuillin at Sbeitla, an old Roman crossroads 13 miles northwest of Sidi Bou Zid. “Our soldiers are learning rapidly,” Eisenhower reported to Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. “I assure you that the troops that come out of this campaign are going to be battlewise and tactically efficient.” Moreover, said Ike, the men were “now mad and ready to fight. All our people, from the very highest to the very lowest, have learned that this is not a child’s game and are ready and eager to get down to business.” It was the best face he could put on the looming disaster. In the meantime, Rommel’s Operation Morgenluft had swung into action south of von Arnim’s so-far-successful Frühlingswind. Rommel met with little resistance, and the field marAUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Both: National Archives

shal was delighted when the Allied airfield at Thelepte was captured with 50 tons of muchneeded fuel and lubricants on the morning of the 17th. But the offensively minded Rommel was disturbed by the fact that von Arnim had not fully exploited his successes at Sidi Bou Zid. Von Arnim argued that he could not advance too far because the supply and fuel situation was iffy at best. Rommel was unconvinced. Rommel wanted to assemble all available Axis forces for a major thrust through Kasserine Pass. Once though the pass, he could take the major Allied supply depot at Tebessa then push on to the Tunisian coast at Annaba (Bone). With any luck, this northwestern thrust would get him behind Anderson’s British First Army, which could be trapped and annihilated at the Germans’ leisure. Rommel’s bold plan depended on immediate action, but his superiors had to approve it first. At least a day was wasted while Kesselring and the Italian high command mulled it over. In the end, the proposal was given the green light under the code name Sturmflut (Hurricane), but it was a somewhat vague, watereddown version of the field marshal’s initial proposal. Under Sturmflut the Axis forces were to push through Kasserine Pass, then start heading in the direction of Le Kef. Compared with Rommel’s original plan, this was a shallow, halfhearted envelopment of Allied forces—but something was better than nothing. All Rommel knew for sure was that he had the green light, and he acted accordingly. The battle for Kasserine Pass was about to begin. Fredendall’s urgent task was to defend the Western Dorsal barrier against Axis attack—but 64

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where was Rommel going to strike? Kasserine was not the only pass that cut through the mountains, so he spread his forces thin to cover all possibilities. Some British and French units came down to help, but the Allied defenses were still weak. Kasserine was initially defended by Colonel Anderson Moore’s 19th Combat Engineer Regiment, a unit whose main duties were construction, not fighting. Fredendall summoned Colonel Alexander Stark of the 26th Infantry and told him to hold the pass. “I want you to go to Kasserine right away,” Fredendall said, “and pull a Stonewall Jackson.” It was typical of Fredendall when issuing orders to make colorful quips, phrases that contained little real substance. Stark arrived at Kasserine Pass on February 19, just as the Germans were beginning their attack in hopes of a breakthrough. Kasserine Pass was (and still is) a rocky defile that narrowed to about 1,500 yards. Once past that bottleneck, Kasserine’s western entrance broadened to a wide basin that split into two roads. One road led west to Tebessa and the vital Allied supply base, while the other trailed north to the town of Thala. The Americans had artillery positions in place at both roads, ready to concentrate fire when the enemy emerged from the narrow Kasserine bottleneck. February 19 was miserable for all the combatants. A cold wind chilled soldiers to the bone, and drenching rains added to the discomfort. The Germans tried to slip though American positions under the cover of a thick enveloping fog, but their unavoidably noisy movements were detected. American artillery, tank destroyer, and small-arms fire soon sent

them packing. The German attack on Kasserine was led by General Karl Bulowius, who seemed to hold such contempt for the Americans that he kept ordering direct assaults. About 3:30 PM, Bulowius sent the Germans forward once again, this time backed by Italian tanks. They ran into American minefields placed there earlier by the long-suffering engineers and were stopped dead in their tracks. Bulowius, still confident, waited for the coming of night. The Germans would infiltrate American defenses under cover of darkness, slipping through the hills and ridges that formed Kasserine’s shoulders. These phantom raiders were partly successful, unnerving green units already shaken by the heavy fighting. On the Tebessa road, one company of engineers broke and ran, and a group of German infiltrators in stolen uniforms captured 100 Americans. Panic became contagious, and the situation was so fluid that some officers did not know what was going on. American soldiers, individually and in small groups, abandoned their positions and sought safety in the rear. Even some forward artillery observers abandoned their posts, shouting, “The place is too hot!” American infantry reinforcements and British tanks arrived during the night and stabilized the situation. Saturday, February 20, dawned cold and wet, but the Germans had still not achieved the desired breakthrough. Rommel had arrived, and was not happy with what he saw. Time is everything in war, and Rommel knew that he did not have much left to achieve victory. Montgomery’s Eighth Army was still far to the

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going southwest toward the Tebessa supply center, the other going north to Thala and then on to the town of Le Kef. Le Kef was the nominal objective of Sturmflut, but Rommel was lukewarm about enveloping the British First Army. In the end, the field marshal sent forces down both routes. Kampfgruppe DAK (Deutsches Afrika Korps) went up the road toward Tebessa, while the 10th Panzer traveled north toward Thala and Le Kef. By now, more and more Allied units were being redeployed and coming into the battle, stiffening resistance. Colonel Paul Robinett’s Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division gave the Germans a rough time on Tebessa road. Accurate tank and artillery fire stalled the Axis drive, and American infantry pushed the Germans back and actually recaptured some equipment that had been lost earlier. Even Rommel admitted that the enemy had counterattacked “very skillfully.” German forces driving down the northern road enjoyed greater success against the Allied ABOVE: American M-3 Lee tanks, with hull-mounted 75mm cannons and 37mm machine guns, raise clouds of dust in the Tunisian desert. RIGHT: Blast from a German bomb rattles this GI as he moves into position at Kasserine Pass.

east, but was fast approaching the Mareth Line. “Those fellows are all too slow,” he complained to aides when he found the 10th Panzer Division resting comfortably near Sbietla. When division commander Brig. Gen. Fritz von Broich explained awkwardly that he was waiting for an infantry battalion to attack first, Rommel exploded. “Go and fetch the motor cycle battalion yourself, and lead it into action too,” he ordered. He was tired of listening to lame excuses from his less-daring subordinates. Rommel’s presence had a positive effect, and for a time it seemed as if the heady days of 1941-1942 were back again. The Germans employed a relatively new weapon, Nebelwerfer, multiple-rocket launchers, which the Americans quickly dubbed “Screaming Meemies” because of the terrifying sounds they made in flight. The 10th Panzer Division finally moved through the pass in force, only to be met by a handful of British Valentine and Crusader tanks and American tank destroyers positioned in roadblocks. The British and Americans fought valiantly, but the issue was never in doubt. The Allied armor, outnumbered and outgunned, was destroyed in detail. Twenty-two American tanks and 30 half-tracks littered the valley floor. The Germans were through the main part of Kasserine Pass and seemingly on the point of a major breakthrough. Once on the western side of the pass, Rommel faced two roads—one

forces defending Thala. British Brig. Gen. Charles Dunphie’s 26th Armoured Brigade fought hard but their equipment could not match German tanks. British Crusader and Valentine tanks were outranged and outgunned, and their armor was thinner. Soon the desert landscape was littered with knocked-out British armor, their flaming hulls sending thick black coils of smoke into the sky. Dunphie pulled back to a ridge threee miles south of Thala, having lost 38 tanks, 28 guns, and 571 men captured. British defenses had crumbled, and the road to Thala was open. Axis forces might have been victorious, but they were not unscathed. German and Italian personnel losses had been relatively light, although some individual Italian units had been decimated. The main problem was a crippling shortage of fuel and ammunition. More and more Allied units were coming into the fight,

some from as far away as Morocco, and Axis advances—once so promising—had slowed to a crawl or been stopped in their tracks. On February 21, American Brig. Gen. LeRoy “Red” Irwin arrived at Thala with three artillery battalions and two cannon companies—a total of 48 guns in all. Despite having made a grueling four-day, 800-mile forced march from western Algeria, Irwin’s men immediately moved into place to support the exhausted British. The next morning, the 10th Panzer was met with a thunderous Allied artillery barrage. Von Broich, having already endured a dressing down by his field marshal, a nerve-wracking attack at the front of his motorcycle battalion, and a brutal hand-to-hand melee with stiffbacked British defenders, called off the advance. After reading an intercepted message from the British commander declaring that “there is to no further withdrawal under any excuse,” Rommel realized that the Allies intended to stop him where they stood, or die trying. Down to his last 250-300 kilometers’ worth of fuel, Rommel conceded the obvious. He called off all further offensive actions and withdrew to the east. The Desert Fox’s last gamble had failed. In their first extended combat of the war, the Americans had sustained losses of 6,600 killed, wounded, or captured—more than 20 percent of their entire personnel. In a sense, however, the U.S. Army was the real winner at Kasserine Pass. The North African campaign was a painful but necessary testing ground for American forces, enabling them to gain experience and fine-tune weapons and tactics. Incompetent or mediocre commanders such as Fredendall were weeded out and replaced. In their place, more competent and aggressive commanders such as George S. Patton were groomed for larger things. American training on the whole was sound, but armored theory had to be rethought and reforms introduced. Rommel had shaken the Americans out of their cocksure complacency, hardening them for a long, drawn-out struggle. Thanks to the hard lessons so painfully learned at Kasserine Pass, American forces would be better prepared when they mounted their next major invasion—on the coast of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Books

Navy Pilots at Cactus

I By Christopher Miskimon I

when their carrier was damaged and forced to leave the area. The motley collection of Army, Navy and Marine aircraft gathered on the island came to be known as the Cactus Air A small group of naval aviators was sent to fight on Guadalcanal. Force, so called due to Guadalcanal’s code name of Cactus. The story of the contributions these pilots made in the eventual victory is told THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN STILL SHONE BRIGHTLY OVERHEAD AS FOUR in The Battle for Hell’s Island: How a Small destroyers raced eastward toward the island of Guadalcanal. The quartet of vessels—Amagiri, Band of Carrier Dive-Bombers Helped Save Yugiri, Asagiri, and Shirakumo—was 70 miles from the island and racing there at its best speed. Guadalcanal (Stephen L. Moore, NAL Caliber, The destroyers were making a “Tokyo Express” run. Each ship was packed with reinforcing New York, 2015, 512 pp., maps, photographs, troops for the forces struggling to throw the U.S. Marines back into the ocean. If they arrived safely notes bibliography, index, $27.95, hardcover). The pilots who crewed these dive bombers it would add to the Marines’ troubles, which included infantry assaults, snipers, air attacks, and were a cross-section of American society. Many bombardment from offshore. As the destroyers grew closer, a pair of American Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers on a had been students who entered flight training in scouting patrol appeared overhead. The pilots, Jesse “Dog” Barker and Harry Liffner, spotted the the years just before the war started. The warships and radioed back to Guadalcanal. As the American fliers back on the enlisted men who rode in the planes were all island began preparing a strike, Barker and Liffner attacked the small convoy on trained as radio operators; some did so speciftheir own. Strangely the four ships did not try to maneuver or evade the attack, ically to gain flight status. During missions they but just steamed ahead in line. Barker was credited with hitting one of the destroy- also operated the SBD’s defensive machine guns, placed to fire at any following enemy ers on the stern, causing it to leak oil and lose power. Back on Guadalcanal, 11 SBDs took off to attack the convoy. Flown by both Navy planes. These men formed close-knit teams who and Marine crews, these planes arrived over the Japanese force in half an hour. Just flew, fought, and sometimes were shot down after 6 PM they began their attacks. Shirakumo was soon struck by an American together during desperate missions against bomb, followed by Asagiri, the leading Japanese ship. It was hit amidships by a Japanese forces. Combat missions involved flying against 1,000-pound bomb; moments later it exploded, sinking quickly and taking the warships and transports and convoy’s commander to the bottom of the ocean. Shirakumo began trailing oil. U.S. Navy Douglas braving antiaircraft fire to drop Two other pilots dove on Yugiri, and one of their bombs landed almost directly SBD-3 Dauntless dive their bombloads before returning amidships, starting a large fire. Amagiri was the only ship to inflict damage in bombers of the Cactus Air to Henderson Field to refuel and return, shooting down one of the SBDs. The rest of the American fliers returned to Force en route to attack rearm. Adding to the danger Guadalcanal. Amagiri took Shirakumo under tow, and all three remaining ships the Japanese seaplane were waves of Japanese fighter returned home without landing any troops. base at Rekata Bay, planes flying cover for their ships The Navy pilots on Guadalcanal were part of Flight 300, a group of fliers from Santa Isabel Island, and bombers hitting the airfield. August-September 1942. the aircraft carrier Enterprise sent to Guadalcanal to reinforce the island’s defenses

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The hazards of combat combined with the poor living conditions, substandard diet, and disease threat meant few of these men left the island without suffering injury or sickness. Despite all this, the naval aviators continued to do their jobs, flying mission after mission until the Japanese gave up on Guadalcanal. It was another step on the road to Tokyo and victory in the Pacific War. This book is a tribute to the dive bomber crews who helped turn the tide of war in the Pacific. It is a remarkable story of both endurance and courage, and the author weaves together their story in a readable, articulate style full of the small details that make such a tale fascinating to read. Guadalcanal is generally seen as the Marine Corps’ fight and with good reason. However, this book brings to light the small but significant contributions of a hitherto unknown group of Navy men who did their part in one of World War II’s turning point battles. M4 Sherman Tanks: The Illustrated History of America’s Most Iconic Fighting Vehicles (Michael E. Haskew, Voyageur Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2016, 223 pp., photographs, index, $40, hardcover) The Sherman tank is both an iconic symbol and an item of controversy in the history of World War II. It was the ubiquitous American tank of the war, serving on all fronts with every American force to take the field. It also partially equipped every major Allied nation’s armored forces. For a nation fighting on multiple fronts, all of which were thousands of miles away from the factories, the M4 was almost ideal. It was reliable, easy to maintain, and maneuverable. Shermans were light enough to be shipped long distances and durable enough to last from the beaches of Normandy to the Rhine River without needing a major overhaul, something no Tiger tank could do. They were mass produced and steadily improved throughout the war. Despite these advantages, the Sherman had its drawbacks and its critics. It was one of the best tanks in the world in 1942, but the pace of German tank development quickly outpaced its design. The M4’s standard 75mm gun had only middling antitank performance, and the armor was too thin to resist many of the weapons arrayed against it. Even improved models were still considered vulnerable. In truth, the Sherman had both faults and strengths, but modern popular media has

New and Noteworthy

US Navy Carrier Aircraft vs IJN Yamato Class Battleships: Pacific Theater 1944-45 (Mark Stille, Osprey Publishing, 2015, $18.95, softcover) Yamato and Musashi were the most powerful battleships ever built, but they never faced enemy battleships in combat. Both were lost to carrier aircraft in harrowing battles. At War on the Gothic Line: Fighting in Italy 1944-45 (Christian Jennings, Thomas Dunne Books, 2016, 384 pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $27.99, hardcover) A narrative of the harsh fighting experienced on the Italian Peninsula along the rugged German defenses of the Gothic Line. Includes accounts from both sides of the battle. In Defense of Freedom: Stories of Courage and Sacrifice of World War II Army Air Forces Flyers (Wolfgang W.E. Samuel, University Press of Mississippi, 2015, $29.95, hardcover) The stories of 27 airmen are told in this gripping study of aerial combat. Technical details flow seamlessly with narratives of the action. Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel (Daniel Allen Butler, Casemate Publishers, 2015, $32.95, hardcover) An in-depth study of a complex man whose battlefield acumen was mixed with blind obedience to Hitler, an obedience he eventually foreswore at the cost of his life. Return of the Dambusters: The Exploits of World War II’s Most Daring Flyers After the Flood (John Nichol, Overlook Press, 2016, $35.00, hardcover) The Royal Air Force’s No. 617 Squadron gained fame as the Dambusters. This book covers their continued achievements after their most famous mission. Donovan’s Devils: OSS Commandos Behind Enemy Lines—Europe, World War II (Albert Lulushi, Arcade Publishing, 2016, $25.99, hardcover) The story of ordinary soldiers recruited for extraordinary missions throughout Europe. They organized resistance movements, rescued downed pilots, and carried out sabotage of enemy resources. The Bitter Taste of Victory: In the Ruins of the Reich (Lara Feigel, Bloomsbury Press, 2016, $32, hardcover) A history of postwar Germany under occupation. It tells the story of those who worked to rebuild the shattered nation. Beyond the Call: The True Story of One World War II Pilot’s Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front (Lee Trimble with Jeremy Dronfield, Berkley Caliber, 2016, $17, softcover) The story of Captain Robert Trimble, a bomber pilot selected for a secret mission to rescue American POWs trapped between the Germans and Soviets in Eastern Europe. Coventry: November 14, 1940 (Frederick Taylor, Bloomsbury Press, 2015, $30, hardcover) The German air attack on Coventry was a pivotal moment in the Battle of Britain. The indiscriminate bombing increased American support for England but also influenced the future Allied bombing campaign. The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb (Neal Bascomb, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, $28, hardcover) This is the story of the Allied effort to deny the Germans access to “heavy water,” a component of an atomic weapon. The Nazis could only obtain it at Vemork, a factory in Norway.

AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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chosen to focus on its shortcomings. This book takes all of this into account and gives a balanced, detailed account of the M4’s history. The author acknowledges the tank’s shortcomings while highlighting the extraordinary versatility of the design and the men who crewed them. The writing is full of interesting vignettes covering the Sherman’s development, manufacture, and combat service. The illustrations are equally fascinating; photographs are mixed with period advertisements, movie posters, and line drawings to show not only how the Sherman was used but how it was represented in popular culture at the time. The overall layout makes the book easy to read; both text and imagery keep the reader turning the pages. No One Avoided Danger: NAS Kaneohe Bay and the Japanese Attack of 7 December 1941 (J. Michael Wenger, Robert J. Cressman, and John F. Di Virgilio, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2015, 208 pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $34.95, hardcover) The attack on Pearl Harbor was a harrowing day for American service members in Hawaii. The naval base suffered extensive loss of life and damage. The experience sits deeply in the American consciousness even today. But Pearl Harbor was not the only facility to come under attack that dreadful morning. Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay was a distant peripheral base situated some 15 miles northeast of Pearl Harbor. It was even separated from Pearl by the green but imposing Ko’olau Mountains. Despite this distance, Kaneohe Bay was attacked that morning by Japanese carrier planes, destroying a number of Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats among other damage. Smoke billowed into the air from the numerous heavy fires started during the attack. The sailors and Marines at the station did all they could to fight back, save their wounded, and preserve what was left of the station. This new work is part of the Pearl Harbor Tactical Studies Series, which preserves and presents the history of December 7, 1941, in as great a detail as possible. The authors conducted interviews, searched archives, translated Japanese documents, and conducted expert analysis. The result is a coherent in-depth study of an important piece of that day’s events. The illustrations cover both American and Japanese participants, the attack, and the aftermath, including the burial of a Japanese flyer killed in the action. The events at Kaneohe Bay have 68

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long been given short shrift in the overall study of the Pearl Harbor attack; this book redresses that imbalance. India’s War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia (Srinath Raghavan, Basic Books, New York, 2016, 560 pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $35.00, hardcover) The Indian Army served across the globe during World War II. Its war began in 1939 with a simple message from India’s governor that India would support England in the struggle against Nazi Germany. Later the war expanded with the entry of Imperial Japan. Over the course of the war, the Indian Army served in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy, and Southeast Asia. It protected its own borders before taking the war to the Japanese in Burma and elsewhere. Not only did 2.5 million soldiers serve in its army, but millions more Indians supported them in the nation’s war industries. This was the largest all-volunteer army in history; it not only defended its homeland but also helped save the rest of the world. The story of India during World War II is relatively unknown in the West, and this book goes far to redress that imbalance. It explains not only how India helped win the war, but also how its efforts prepared it for the postwar world and India’s expanding role in it. The author includes assessments of India’s military, political, economic, and industrial capacities and development. It is an all-encompassing work that gives a detailed look at India during the war. Browned Off and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945 (Alan Allport, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, UK, 2016, 395 pp., photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $40.00, hardcover) The British Army swelled to some 3.5 million strong during World War II. The vast majority went from civilian to soldier almost overnight. They had to leave their families, jobs, and homes to enter the comparatively strange world of the military. Many felt this generation of young men to be soft and lazy, not up to the task of defeating Nazi Germany. To the world’s benefit this turned out be pessimistic and wrong. The men and women of the British Army went on prove they were fully capable of the difficult task ahead. This book is a social history of the British sol-

dier at war. It reveals how they adapted to the necessities of martial life and how England’s army, like the American one, had to adapt to the citizen-soldiers it created. The United Kingdom’s Commonwealth culture also presented issues of class, race, and even nationality requiring disparate elements from different nations to cooperate. The author looks at the British Army with a new bent. Rather than a straightforward history of the war, he gives the reader a story focused on those who made up that army and carried out its mission. The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War (Jonathan Dimbleby, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2016, 560 pp., maps, notes, bibliography, index, $34.95, hardcover) Control of the Atlantic Ocean was vital to the Allies’ victory in World War II. Having such control allowed them to move vital supplies to the United Kingdom, the springboard for attacks against the Axis. It also permitted freedom of Allied movement around the European periphery, choosing when and where they would land on the Continent. This forced the Germans to spread defensive assets across the coastline, never sure where an attack would come. This control of the sea came at a high cost and after a long struggle. The German U-boat campaign nearly brought England to its knees. Combating it involved ships, aircraft, spies, intelligence analysts, politicians, and scientists. It took years to get the upper hand against the Nazi submarine fleet, but a combination of Anglo-American cooperation, new technology, and better tactics put paid to the German effort and allowed their opponents the freedom of action they needed to achieve victory. This general history of the Atlantic naval war provides the reader with a supremely detailed and in-depth study of the entire campaign. It covers the gamut from talks between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the actions of individual ships and their crews. The major personalities, events, and actions are related with good detail and insightful analysis. Eisenhower’s Thorn on the Rhine: The Battles for the Colmar Pocket, 1944-45 (Nathan Prefer, Casemate Publishing, Havertown, PA, 2015, 350 pp., maps, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, $32.95, hardcover) The city of Colmar sat on the

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southern approaches to the Rhine River and the German Reich. The Sixth Army Group comprising of the 7th U.S. and 1st French Armies began a concerted effort to take Colmar and the surrounding area in December 1944. They were up against the German 19th Army, like most Nazi formations a mixed bag of experienced veterans and half-trained recruits. They defended a region of rough hills and ruined towns in the depths of a cold winter, showing great determination and courage in holding off the Allied attacks. It took until well into 1945 for the French and more than four American divisions to overcome the German resistance. Most of it went unheralded at the time, overshadowed by the Ardennes fighting to the north. The difficult fighting in the Colmar Pocket is brought to vivid life in this new work. Details of many small actions are woven into the overall narrative, enabling the reader to get a sense of the hardship and cost the fighting in this region brought for the soldiers of both sides. Clear maps and good appendices provide added detail. Warbird Factory: North American Aviation in World War II (John Fredrickson, Zenith Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2015, 224 pp., photographs, appendices, notes, index, $40.00, hardcover) Between 1938 and 1944, North American Aviation (NAA) made more aircraft than any other company in America, over 40,000 planes. Their main factory was located in Inglewood, California, in the Los Angeles area. Their three main products were the AT-6 Texan two-seat trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, and the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, among others. The Inglewood facility was assisted by other plants in Kansas and Texas. Together they fed the Allies’ great hunger for combat aircraft to defeat the Axis worldwide. NAA was a major part of the “Arsenal of Democracy.” The story of NAA’s great factories is laid out in this new photobook. Hundreds of images tell the story, many of them from the company’s archives, now owned by Boeing. These pictures show how NAA’s diverse wartime workforce, including women, African Americans, and Asian Americans all pulled together to produce some of the most complex machines of the era. The accompanying text completes the tale, covering the events, personalities, and actions which carried NAA forward into the annals of history.

USS England Continued from page 41 most able submarine officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Captain Ryonosuke Kato had made Ro-105 (skippered by Lieutenant Junichi Inoue) his flagship and was now ducking every punch the hunter-killers of Escort Division 39 could throw at him. Both George and Raby made multiple attacks throughout the morning, even scoring a few Hedgehog hits, but the stubborn Ro-105 refused to die. Kato employed every ruse he knew, jettisoning oil and debris while blowing air from his boat’s tanks in an attempt to deceive the prowling DEs overhead. Just after sunset, Captain Kato took more direct action. Snapping briefly to the surface, Ro-105 loosed a brace of torpedoes at its tormentors. All missed but served notice to the Americans that this was an exceptionally dangerous opponent. Doubling their efforts, George and Raby continued to hound Ro-105 all night. Their crews knew that sooner or later the Japanese boat would run out of breathable air or battery power and be forced to surface. Shortly after 0300 it did—directly between the two DEs. Neither of them could get off a shot, but Raby briefly managed to lay a searchlight beam on the nettlesome submarine before it once again slipped beneath the waves. That shaft of light caught the attention of England’s lookouts, still 30 miles to the northwest. Together with Spangler, the veteran subkiller rushed in to offer assistance. At first it was not welcome. “We’re not telling you where we are,” a prickly voice taunted Williamson over talk-between-ship radio. “We have a damaged sub, and we’re going to sink him. Don’t come near us!” Commander Hains offered a more measured response, keeping England and Spangler off at 5,000 yards while his other two DEs continued to track Ro-105 on sonar. At first light the attack resumed. First George then Raby went forward with Hedgehogs; both missed. “It’s your turn, Spangler,” Hains ordered. She ran in and fired a volley of projectiles, which also failed to connect. “Okay, England, it’s your turn,” Commander Hains said with resignation. The 30-hour battle came to a close at 0736 hours on May 31 when at least 10 well-aimed Hedgehog charges exploded 180 feet below the surface. Five minutes later a resounding undersea boom sounded the death knell for Ro-105 and its 55 crewmen. Soon too came up the usual field of fuel and wooden detritus accompanied by 10 or so frenzied sharks.

The USS England had just sunk six submarines in 12 days, an unprecedented feat in the chronicles of naval warfare. Yet her mission was not over. FRUPac had reported a total of seven enemy boats on the NA Line; England and her companions spent the next two weeks vainly searching for any remaining subs. Unbeknownst to them, Admiral Owada had once more repositioned his boats. Ro-109 and Ro-112 thus escaped the deadly American hunter-killer teams then combing South Pacific waters. England’s triumph was more than just an amazing feat of seamanship; it held strategic consequences as well. After learning that most of his submarine pickets had been destroyed, Admiral Toyoda became convinced the American fleet was heading south toward Palau or the Philippines. Issuing orders for Operation A-Go, his decisive sea campaign, Toyoda began moving Japanese forces from the Marianas southward. Consequently, many ships and planes needed to defend the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam were not available when a U.S. invasion fleet appeared off those islands in mid-June. For this reason, historian W.H. Holmes considers England’s 12-day battle as “the most brilliant antisubmarine operation in history.” Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, expressed his satisfaction in another way. “There’ll always be an England in the United States Navy!” King exclaimed in an uncommonly exuberant congratulatory message. Security concerns meant the exploits of England and her fellow DEs could not be made public for months. In fact, the key role FRUPac played in this campaign was not recognized until decades later when the U.S. Navy finally declassified its operational records. Great credit also belongs to the crews of George and Raby. While their sister ship made all the kills, these DEs provided invaluable assistance by detecting and running down several enemy submarines. For their outstanding combat performance, the men of England were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, making them one of only three destroyer escort crews in World War II to be so recognized. Receiving the Navy Cross and promotion to commander, Walton Pendleton left the ship he loved to command an escort division in Alaska until war’s end. And John Williamson, the officer who had contributed so much to England’s record of accomplishment, received the best prize of all. When in September he again took USS England out to sea, Williamson did so as her newly assigned commanding officer. Patrick J. Chaisson is a retired military officer who writes from his home in Scotia, New York. AUGUST 2016 WWII HISTORY

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Simulation Gaming

BY JOSEPH LUSTER

POLAND-BASED DEEP WATER STUDIO CROWD-FUNDS A SURVIVAL-BASED SUBMARINE SIMULATION, WHILE WORLD WAR TOONS GOES FREE-TO-PLAY. UBOOT PUBLISHER PLAYWAY • GENRE STRATEGY • PLATFORM PC • AVAILABLE JANUARY 2017 (ESTIMATED) We’ve had plenty of strategy games in the past that have given players looming, distant control of military units, from land-based vehicles to those in the air and sea. That includes submarines, but there aren’t many titles that take

them on like Deep Water Studio’s UBOOT, which hit Kickstarter back in May. It only took the project a few days to exceed its starting goal of $20,000 CAD ($15,493 USD), and it will be interesting to see how this project expands once it passes through the often precarious crowdfunding stages. At the moment there’s nothing but promise on the horizon for UBOOT, which is one of the many benefits of establishing a relatively slick funding campaign. The conceit is immediately attractive to anyone interested in the survival aspects of war. As your U-boat rocks and sways above and below the tumultuous seascape, you’ll be in charge of keeping your crew alive in the most inhumane conditions. What makes UBOOT especially unique is that you’re not controlling the U-boat, you’re controlling the crew members who control the Uboat. That means you need to monitor their physical and mental health, because, as the campaign puts it, “if the sailors are hungry, tired and their spirit is low, there’s no chance of winning even a skirmish.” This idea plays into how you run your ship as a captain, too. If you’re a particularly harsh captain it will raise both the overall discipline and the trauma level of the crew. It’s important to balance these aspects,

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because high levels of trauma will bring out secret features of each sailor. For instance, one might reveal his alcoholism, while another will go berserk. Sailors may also turn out to be cowards, or worse, spies. The sailors in UBOOT aren’t just faceless statistics you’ll need to micro-manage; each one has his own story, personality, skills, and weaknesses. You’ll be able to observe them at work and during free time, from meals to lines for the sole onboard toilet; from petty bickering to genuinely helpful reports. The team at Poland-based Deep Water Studio isn’t shy about the similarities between their game and Fallout Shelter, which drew a similar scenario within the shelter-based confines of the Fallout universe. If you’re familiar with the mobile hit, that should give you a pretty solid idea of what to expect from UBOOT. Historical and mechanical buffs will also find quite a bit to absorb thanks to Deep Water Studio’s commitment to recreating the inner workings of the U-boat down to the finest details. You’ll be able to watch the air compressors and pumps go to work, with leaks posing a constant threat. If they’re not patched up in quick order you run the risk of sinking the entire boat. In terms of the course of the war, Deep Water Studio hasn’t altered history in any way, but they have put the fate of your own crew in your hands. That means you can decide where to go, what to do, and even whether or not the cook deserves to be shot for botching a meal. In addition to the side-view visuals used for the general boat monitoring process, Deep Water Studio is attempting to live up to its name with a next-gen water system. They know how

important this is to the realism of a submarine simulator, so they’ve gone all out in development and have placed their system in the Unity Assets Store for other developers to use. By the time you read this UBOOT will be through the crowdfunding stages and, ideally, well into fully funded development. Anything can happen in the world of crowdfunding, so keep that in mind if you’re looking forward to the finished product. In the meantime, planned stretch goals aim to add German voiceover, experimental ships and equipment, multiplayer, and playable Allied submarines, so hopefully we’ll have even more to look forward to when UBOOT is finished.

U P D AT E WORLD WAR TOONS PUBLISHER RELOAD STUDIOS • GENRE SHOOTER • PLATFORM PC/VR • AVAILABLE 2016 We previously covered an upcoming virtual reality first-person shooter called World War Toons, which, as you might have guessed from the title, is a more cartoonish take on the WWII shooter genre. Since then Reload Studios announced plans to release World War Toons as a free-toplay game, with plans to add content on a regular basis for years to come. The free-to-play model has been very successful for games like wargaming’s World of Tanks series, including World of Warplanes and World of Warships. As Reload Studios CEO James Chung stated, “Going F2P gave us the wiggle room to reach a wider audience already familiar with this model. We have to modify the monetization model a bit, but the basic structure of how people would consume our content would be applicable to other regions such as Europe or Asia.” World War Toons is coming to various virtual reality platforms, including PlayStation VR, so stay tuned for more on one of the first WWII experiences of the stillgestating modern VR era.