History of the Second World War (6 page)

Except for coal, Britain herself lacked most of the products which were required in quantity. But so long as the use of the sea was ensured, most of them were available in the British Empire. In the case of nickel about 90 per cent of the world’s supply came from Canada, and most of the remainder from the French colony of New Caledonia. The main deficiencies were in antimony, mercury, and sulphur, while the petroleum resources were insufficient for war needs.

The French Empire could not supply these particular deficiencies, and was in addition short of cotton, wool, copper, lead, manganese, rubber, and several smaller needs.

Russia had an abundant supply of most of the products; she lacked antimony, nickel, and rubber, while the supply of copper and sulphur was inadequate.

The best placed of all the powers was the United States which produced two-thirds of the world’s total petroleum supply, about half the world’s cotton, and nearly half the copper, while being itself dependent on outside sources only for antimony, nickel, rubber, tin and, partially, for manganese.

In striking contrast was the situation of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo triangle. Italy had to import the bulk of her needs in nearly every product, even to coal. Japan was almost as dependent on foreign sources. Germany had no home production of cotton, rubber, tin, platinum, bauxite, mercury, and mica, while her supplies of iron-ore, copper, antimony, manganese, nickel, sulphur, wool, and petroleum were quite inadequate. By the seizure of Czecho-Slovakia she had gone some way to reduce her deficiency of iron-ore, while by her intervention in Spain she had been able to secure a further supply of it on favourable terms, and also of mercury — although its continuance depended on her use of the sea. Again, she had succeeded in meeting part of her need for wool by a new wood substitute. Likewise, though at much greater cost than the natural product, she had provided about a fifth of her rubber requirements from ‘buna’, and a third of her petrol needs from home-produced fuel.

Here lay the greatest weakness of all in the war-making capacity of the Axis, in times when armies had come increasingly to depend on motor-movement, and air forces had become a vital element in military power. Apart from coal-derivatives Germany obtained about half a million tons of oil from her own wells, and a trifling amount from Austria and Czecho-Slovakia. To make up her peacetime needs she had to import nearly five million tons, the main sources being Venezuela, Mexico, the Dutch Indies, the United States, Russia, and Rumania. Access to any of the first four would be impossible in wartime, and to the last two only by conquest. Moreover, it was estimated that Germany’s wartime requirements would exceed twelve million tons a year. In the light of this it was hard to expect that any increase in artificial fuel could suffice. Only the capture of Rumania’s oil-wells — which produced seven million tons — in an undamaged state could offer a promise of meeting the deficiency.

Italy’s requirements, if she entered the war, would increase the drag, since of the probable four million tons a year which she would require in war, she could only count on providing about 2 per cent, from Albania, even in the case of her ships being willing to cross the Adriatic.

To put oneself in a possible opponent’s shoes is a good check on shaking in one’s own. Gloomy as the military outlook had become, there was reason for comfort in the inadequacy of German and Italian resources for sustaining a long war — if the powers opposed to them at the outbreak could withstand the early shocks and strains until help came, In any such conflict as was now on the horizon the fortunes of the Axis would turn on the chance that the war could be settled quickly.

PART II THE OUTBREAK - 1939-1940

CHAPTER 3 - THE OVERRUNNING OF POLAND

The campaign in Poland was the first demonstration, and proof, in war of the theory of mobile warfare by armoured and air forces in combination. When the theory had been originally developed, in Britain, its action had been depicted in terms of the play of ‘lightning’. From now on, aptly but ironically, it came into world-wide currency under the title of ‘Blitzkrieg’ — the German rendering.

Poland was all too well suited for a demonstration of Blitzkrieg. Her frontiers were immensely wide — some 3,500 miles in all. The stretch of 1,250 miles adjoining German territory had recently been extended to 1,750 miles by the occupation of Czecho-Slovakia. This had also resulted in Poland’s southern flank becoming exposed to invasion — as the north flank, facing East Prussia, was already. Western Poland had become a huge salient that projected between Germany’s jaws.

The Polish plain offered flat and fairly easy going for a mobile invader — though not so easy as France would offer, because of the scarcity of good roads in Poland, the deep sand often met off the roads, and the frequency of lakes and forests in some areas. But the time chosen for the invasion minimised these drawbacks.

It would have been wiser for the Polish Army to assemble farther back, behind the broad river-lines of the Vistula and the San, but that would have entailed the definite abandonment of some of the most valuable parts of the country. The Silesian coalfields were close to the frontier, having belonged to pre-1918 Germany, while most of the main industrial zone, though farther back, lay west of the river-barrier. It is difficult to conceive that the Poles could have maintained their hold on the forward areas even in the most favourable circumstances. But the economic argument for making the attempt to delay the enemy’s approach to the main industrial zone was heavily reinforced by national pride and military over-confidence, as well as by an exaggerated idea of what Poland’s Western allies could do to relieve the pressure.

The unrealism of such an attitude was repeated in the Polish dispositions. Approximately a third of the forces were concentrated in or near the Corridor, where they were perilously exposed to a double envelopment — from East Prussia and the west combined. This indulgence of national pride — in opposing Germany’s re-entry into the piece of her pre-1918 territory for which she had been agitating — was inevitably at the expense of the forces available to cover the-areas more vital to Poland’s defence. For in the south, facing the main avenues of approach, the forces were thinly spread. At the same time nearly another third of Poland’s forces were massed in reserve north of the central axis, between Lodz and Warsaw, under the Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Smigly-Rydz. This grouping embodied the offensive spirit, but its aim of intervening with a counterattack did not correspond to the Polish Army’s limited capacity for manoeuvre, even if this had not been cramped by German air attack on the rail and road routes of movement.

The Poles’ forward concentration in general forfeited their chance of fighting a series of delaying actions, since their foot-marching army was unable to get back to the positions in rear, and man them, before they were overrun by the invader’s mechanised columns. In the wide spaces of Poland the un-mechanised state of her forces was a heavier handicap than the fact that she was caught by surprise before all her reserves had been called up. Lack of mobility was more fatal than incomplete mobilisation.

By the same token, the forty odd infantry divisions of normal pattern which the Germans employed in the invasion counted for much less than their fourteen mechanised or partially mechanised divisions made up of six armoured divisions, four light divisions (motorised infantry with two armoured units), and four motorised divisions. It was their deep and rapid thrusts that decided the issue, in conjunction with the overhead pressure of the Luftwaffe which wrecked the Polish railway system, and destroyed much of the Polish air force in the early stages of the invasion. The Luftwaffe operated in a very dispersed way, instead of in large formations, but it thereby spread a creeping paralysis over the widest possible area. Another weighty factor was the German radio bombardment, disguised as Polish transmissions, which did much to increase the confusion and demoralisation of the Polish rear. All these factors were given a multiplied effect by the way that Polish over-confidence in the power of their men to defeat machines led, on the rebound, to a disintegrating disillusionment.

The German forces had crossed the Polish frontier shortly before 6 a.m. on September 1; air attacks had begun an hour earlier. In the north, the invasion was carried out by Bock’s Army Group, which comprised the 3rd Army (under Kuchler) and the 4th Army (under Kluge). The former thrust southward from its flanking position in East Prussia, while the latter pushed eastward across the Polish Corridor to join it in enveloping the Poles’ right flank.

The greater role was given to Rundstedt’s Army Group in the south. This was nearly twice as strong in infantry, and more in armour. It comprised the 8th Army (under Blaskowitz), the 10th (under Reichenau), and the 14th (under List). Blaskowitz, on the left wing, was to push towards the great manufacturing centre of Lodz, and help to isolate the Polish forces in the Poznan salient, while covering Reichenau’s flank. On the right wing, List was to push for Cracow and simultaneously turn the Poles’ Carpathian flank, using Kleist’s armoured corps to drive through the mountain passes. The decisive stroke, however, was to be delivered by Reichenau, in the centre, and for that purpose he was given the bulk of the armoured forces.

The success of the invasion was helped by the way that the Polish leaders, despising the defensive, had devoted little effort to the construction of defences, preferring to rely on counterattacks — which they believed that their army, despite its lack of machines, could effectively execute. Thus the mechanised invaders had little difficulty in finding and penetrating open avenues of advance, while most of the Polish counterattacks broke down under the combined effect of a repulse to their forward movement and a deepening German threat to their own rear.

By September 3 — when Britain and France entered the war — Kluge’s advance had cut the Corridor and reached the Lower Vistula, while Kuchler’s pressure from East Prussia towards the Narev was developing. What was more important, Reichenau’s armoured forces had penetrated to the Warta, and forced the crossings. Meanwhile List’s army was converging from both flanks on Cracow, forcing Szylling’s army in that sector to abandon the city and fall back to the line of the Nida and the Dunajec.

By the 4th Reichenau’s spearheads had reached and crossed the Pilica, fifty miles beyond the frontier. Two days later his left wing was well in rear of Lodz, after capturing Tomaszow, and his right wing had driven into Kielce. Thus the Polish Rommel’s army covering the Lodz sector was outflanked, while Kutrzeba’s army was still far forward near Poznan, and in danger of being isolated. The other German armies had all made progress in fulfilling their part in the great enveloping manoeuvre planned by Halder, the Chief of the General Staff, and directed by Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief. The Polish armies were splitting up into uncoordinated fractions, some of which were retreating while others were delivering disjointed attacks on the nearest enemy columns.

The German advance might have travelled still faster but for a lingering conventional tendency to check the mobile forces from driving far ahead of the infantry masses that were backing them up. But as newly gained experience showed that such a risk was offset by the opponents’ confusion, a bolder course was pursued. Exploiting an open gap between Lodz and the Pilica, one of Reichenau’s armoured corps raced through to the outskirts of Warsaw on the 8th — it had covered 140 miles in the first week. By the following day the light divisions on his right wing reached the Vistula farther south, between Warsaw and Sandomierz. They then turned northward.

Meanwhile, near the Carpathians, List’s mobile forces had swept across the Dunajec, Biala, Wisloka, and Wislok in turn, to the San on either flank of the famous fortress of Przemysl. In the north Guderian’s armoured corps (the spearhead of Kuchler’s army) had pushed across the Narev and was attacking the line of the Bug, in rear of Warsaw. Thus a wider pincer-movement was strongly developing outside the inner pincers that were closing on the Polish forces in the bend of the Vistula west of Warsaw.

This stage of the invasion had seen an important variation of plan on the Germans’ side. Their view of the situation was momentarily confused by the extraordinary state of confusion on the Poles’ side, where columns appeared to be moving in many different directions, raising clouds of dust that befogged the aerial view. In this state of obscurity the German Supreme Command inclined to the belief that the bulk of the Polish forces in the north had already escaped across the Vistula. On that assumption, they gave orders that Reichenau’s army was to cross the Vistula between Warsaw and Sandomierz, with the aim of intercepting the Poles’ anticipated withdrawal into south-eastern Poland. But Rundstedt demurred, being convinced that the bulk of the Polish forces were still west of the Vistula. After some argument his view prevailed, and Reichenau’s army was wheeled north to establish a blocking position along the Bzura west of Warsaw.