History of the Second World War (100 page)

The reprieve which the Germans obtained by stabilizing the situation on the main front, between the Carpathians and the Baltic, was offset by the development of a wider threat, along a more indirect line of approach. This was inaugurated by a Russian offensive on the Rumanian front, following political moves which had helped to clear the way for the advance.

On August 20 the troops of the ‘2nd Ukrainian front’ (now Malinovsky) struck south from Jassy down both sides of the Sereth, in the direction of Galatz. It was a threat to the flank and rear of the large salient that still projected into southern Bessarabia. The ‘3rd Ukrainian front’ (now Tolbukhin) attacked it more directly, advancing westwards from the lower Dniester. At the opening they met stiff opposition, and the enemy only gave ground slowly, but the pace soon quickened.

On the 23rd the Rumanian radio announced that Rumania was at peace with the Allies and at war with Germany. Marshal Antonescu had been arrested, and his successor had accepted Russia’s terms, involving an immediate change of sides.

Profiting by the general confusion, the Russians swept into Galatz on the 27th, occupied the great Ploesti oilfields on the 30th, and entered Bucharest the next day. The tanks had covered 250 miles in twelve days’ driving. In the next six days they covered nearly 200 miles more to reach the Yugo-Slav frontier, at Turnu-Severin on the Danube. A large part of the German forces were trapped in the Bessarabian salient or overrun on the march. The whole of the German 6th Army, totalling twenty divisions, was lost. The defeat was as disastrous in that respect as Stalingrad.

Rumania’s capitulation had spurred the Bulgarian Government to sue for peace with Britain and America. For although it had abstained from joining in the invasion of Russia, it had reason to be uneasy about the Russians’ view of its neutrality. That fear was well justified. Bulgaria’s readiness to submit to the Western Allies did not satisfy the Soviet Government, which promptly declared war on Bulgaria, and followed this up with an immediate invasion from the east and north. The invasion was merely a parade, for the Bulgarian Government ordered that no resistance should be offered, and expedited its own declaration of war against Germany.

The way was clear for the Red Army to exploit the widest open flank that had ever been known in modern war. The turning manoeuvre was mainly a problem of logistics, governed by the factors of movement and supply, rather than the enemy’s opposition. More than 100,000 Germans had been taken prisoner in the Rumanian trap, and the possibility of filling their place was nullified by the desperate situation in the West, where by the end of September over half a million had been captured on the various fronts.

The autumn saw the gradual development of a great wheel by the armies of the Russian left wing through the vast spaces of south-eastern and central Europe. All that the Germans could do was to put an extra brake on it by holding onto the successive communication-centres as long as possible and destroying the communications when they were compelled to fall back. Their available forces were scanty compared with the space to be covered, but fortunately for them the communications in that region were also scanty, while natural obstacles were plentiful. So the oncoming menace became a movement in slow-time, while the Germans gained time to extricate their forces in Greece and Yugo-Slavia.

They might have imposed a greater delay but for the leverage which the Russians had gained by a dash into the north-western corner of Rumania during the first weeks of confusion produced by her change of sides. Racing round the southern flank of the mountains, a mechanised force had entered this projecting stretch of Rumanian territory, occupying Temesoara (Temesvar) on September 19 and Arad on the 22nd. This carried the Russians across some of the routes north from Belgrade and close to the southern frontier of Hungary, only 100 miles from Budapest. Such a daring advance could only have been risked against an opponent who had no strength for a counterstroke to pinch off the wedge. Even as things were, it could not be exploited until larger forces had been accumulated in the wedge. That was a slower process, yet it proved quicker than the more direct advance through the mountains into Transylvania.

It was not until October 11 that the enemy were ejected from Cluj, the Transylvanian capital, which was 130 miles farther east than Arad. But by then Malinovsky had built up his strength in the wedge, advanced over the Mures into the Hungarian plain, and spread across the routes running back from Transylvania. When Cluj fell to his right wing, the leading columns of his left wing were 170 miles to the west of it, and less than sixty from Budapest. The indirect approach now paid a big dividend.

The following week a fresh leverage was created when the troops of the newly reactivated ‘4th Ukrainian front’ under Petrov burst through the Carpathian passes from the north — on the stretch, from the Tartar Pass to the Lupkov, that was held by the 1st Hungarian Army — and descended into Ruthenia. Petrov then turned westward into Slovakia. In that week, also, the Yugo-Slav capital was liberated as the result of Tolbukhin’s advance across the Danube from the southern side of the wedge, carried out in conjunction with Marshal Tito’s partisans. The German garrison put up a tough fight but was finally driven out on the 20th. That it had stayed so long was surprising, but stranger still was the fact that considerable German forces had remained in Greece, obedient to Hitler’s principle of no voluntary withdrawal. It was the first week of November before they quitted Greece to attempt a Xenophon-like retreat through 600 miles of wild and hostile country.

The liberation of Belgrade and the Russians’ arrival in the Hungarian plain marked the completion of the first stage of the great wheel.

Having closed up to the line of the Tisa River on an eighty-mile front, from north of Szolnok to Szeged, Malinovsky launched a powerful drive direct for Budapest on October 30. He had now assembled over sixty-four divisions, including the Rumanian. His forces had only fifty miles to go. Gradually pushing back the German and Hungarian forces, some of their columns reached the suburbs of Budapest on November 4, but bad weather put a brake on their attempt to rush the city before the defence consolidated. Like other cities that had been stubbornly defended, Budapest proved a hard nut to crack. At the end of the month the Russians were still blocked there, and had made little progress in efforts to envelop its immediate flanks.

Petrov was also held up in his attempt to push west from Ruthenia into Slovakia and come to the aid of the Slovak partisans. The rugged nature and corridor shape of Slovakia cramped manoeuvre.

Baulked at Budapest, the Russians began a wheel within a wheel. Tolbukhin’s forces, totalling some thirty-five divisions, were brought up from Yugo-Slavia, and in the last week of November they launched a wide outflanking manoeuvre from a bridgehead gained near the junction of the Danube and the Drava some 130 miles south of Budapest. By December 4 they had reached Lake Balaton, on the rear flank of the Hungarian capital. At the same time Malinovsky opened a fresh attack north of Budapest as well as a fresh assault on the city defences. But the combined effort was checked, and at the end of the year Budapest was still unconquered. Even after it was isolated by a renewed encircling attack at Christmas, it continued to hold out — until the middle of February.

At the other end of the Eastern Front, the Baltic flank, the autumn campaign had run a somewhat similar course — starting with a collapse and ending in a check. Germany’s summer defeats had brought the Finns to bow to the inevitable — almost simultaneously with Rumania and Bulgaria — and early in September they accepted the Russian armistice terms. These included the provision that they were to take action against any German forces which were not out of Finland by the 15th. Following a German attempt to land on the island of Hogland, in the Gulf of Finland, the Finns announced that they were now at war with Germany.

The surrender of Finland cleared the way for a concentrated Russian offensive against the Germans’ Army Group North — now commanded by Schorner, in place of Friessner. The forces of two ‘fronts’ — Govorov’s and Maslennikov’s — advanced against Schorner’s front, while Eremenko’s enveloped his flank, and Bagramyan’s menaced his rear. It seemed hardly possible the Germans could escape from the bottom of such a deep bottle, especially as the bottleneck was so narrow. But within a week they had fallen back nearly 200 miles to reach the shelter of the Riga defences, without any large numbers being cut off; and Bagramyan’s forces had not succeeded in their efforts to cut the bottleneck. Once more events had shown the difficulty of attack on narrow fronts, where the defence enjoys an adequate density.

To retrieve the opportunity, the Russian Command strongly reinforced Bagramyan’s group for the purpose of striking towards the Baltic coast south of Riga — from the direction of Siauliai in central Lithuania. This fresh offensive was launched on October 5. Profiting from the wide front, and the enemy’s concentration near Riga, it reached the coast, north and south of Memel, on the 11th. Two days later Schorner abandoned Riga and fell back into Courland — the north-west ‘peninsula’ province of Latvia. Here, however, his isolated forces succeeded in maintaining a prolonged resistance. So, too, did the closely encircled garrison of Memel. But the Russians had a surplus of strength that could be used to invest these positions. Their problem turned on capacity of supply and space for manoeuvre.

Having cleared their Baltic flank, they now tackled East Prussia, launching a strong offensive here in the middle of October. But defence again scored against direct attack on a cramped front — where the lines of approach were canalised by lakes and marshes. The main thrust was towards the Insterburg Gap, but it was blunted in a big tank battle near Gumbinnen — the scene of the Russians’ first illusory success in 1914. Other thrusts, on neighbouring sectors, also failed to penetrate far enough to disrupt the front. By the end of October the offensive petered out, and deadlock reigned.

The Germans’ amazing rally in the East, and the West, and also the centre of Europe was striking proof of the combined effect of their contracted front and the attackers’ extended communications — as well as of the way the Allies’ ‘unconditional surrender’ policy had helped Hitler to stiffen the Germans’ resistance. Moreover, the course of the autumn campaign showed how elastic defence, aptly applied, might spin out time until Germany’s new weapons were ready. But Hitler was only prepared to take its course as confirmation of his principle of rigid defence.

Under that conviction he not only refused to allow his commanders in the West to make a timely withdrawal from their Ardennes bulge, but ordered a move to bolster up Budapest that fatally weakened his front in the East.

CHAPTER 33 - THE CRESCENDO OF BOMBING — THE STRATEGIC AIR OFFENSIVE AGAINST GERMANY

The theory and doctrine of strategic air attack was developed in England at the end of the First World War and during the years following. It was partly, or even predominantly, a product of the creation on April 1, 1918, the last year of that war, of the Royal Air Force, as an independent Service — combining the former Army and Navy air arms. The theory was espoused the more ardently by the new, third, Service because it constituted a justification for the existence, and independence, of the Royal Air Force.

Ironically, the theory soon came to be strongly supported by Major-General Hugh Trenchard, who had commanded the Army air arm, the Royal Flying Corps, in France, and in that capacity had opposed the creation of a third, independent Service. In January 1918 he was brought back from France to become the military head of the new Service, as Chief of the Air Staff. Almost immediately, he clashed with the newly appointed Secretary of State for Air, Lord Rothermere, and was replaced as Chief of the Air Staff by Major-General Sir Frederick Sykes, another air pioneer. Trenchard himself was then appointed to command the independent bombing force that had been set up in the autumn, with the aim of bombing Berlin and other targets in Germany, following the raids on London by the German Gotha bombers in 1917-18, which had an effect on the morale and thinking of British military chiefs out of proportion to the damage they caused. But even by the time of the Armistice, in November, 1918, the R.A.F’s bomber force comprised only nine squadrons and had barely begun operations — indeed, only three of the large Handley-Page bombers designed for attacking Germany had been delivered by that time. But Trenchard had become an enthusiastic advocate of independent strategic bombing. This was made very clear when in 1919, after the war ended, he was brought back to London to reassume his post as Chief of the Air Staff, and continued in that office for the next ten years, until 1929. During the interval the theory of air strategy had been considerably developed by Brigadier-General P. R. C. Groves, who was Sykes’s right hand and Director of Flying Operations on the Air Staff

In America, the idea was taken up ardently by Brigadier-General William Mitchell in the 1920s, but he soon ran into trouble with the older Services, and was driven out, in reaction to his enthusiastic aggressiveness. Not until many years had passed, and a new generation had come into power, did the U.S.A. become a leading air power and exponent of strategic air attack.

A still later generation of historians has come to attribute the theory to an Italian general, Giulio Douhet, who in 1921 wrote a book about the future of air warfare. But his writings, although of interest to study in retrospect, had in Europe at least no influence at all during the formative period.*

* I came across a French translation of Douhet’s,
The Command of the Air,
when on a visit to Paris in 1935, and on returning to England mentioned it to several friends on the Air Staff, but found that none of them had heard of it. Indeed, long before that time, Air Staff doctrine was far more fully developed. A translation in English of Douhet’s writings appeared in America only in 1942, and in Britain in 1943. Moreover, it had made little impact in Italy. When I visited the Italian forces in 1927, by official invitation, neither Marshal Balbo, the Air Minister, nor any of the air chiefs under him at that time, even referred to Douhet’s writings in conversation, although they were remarkably frank in discussion, and showed keen interest in the new ideas on air strategy that had been developed in England.