Inferno
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2011 by Max Hastings
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain as All Hell Let Loose by HarperPress, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, London.
Knopf, Borzoi Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hastings, Max.
Inferno : the world at war, 1939–1945 / by Max Hastings.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : HarperPress, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-307-95718-4
1. World War, 1939–1945. I. Title.
D743.H364 2011
940.54—dc22 2011013890
Jacket image: U.S. Marines blowing up cave connected to Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, December 31, 1944, by W. Eugene Smith/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Jacket design by Jason Booher
v3.1
To Michael Sissons,
for thirty years a princely agent,
counsellor and friend
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE Poland Betrayed
CHAPTER TWO No Peace, Little War
CHAPTER THREE Blitzkriegs in the West
1. Norway
2. The Fall of France
CHAPTER FOUR Britain Alone
CHAPTER FIVE The Mediterranean
1. Mussolini Gambles
2. A Greek Tragedy
3. Sandstorms
CHAPTER SIX Barbarossa
CHAPTER SEVEN Moscow Saved, Leningrad Starved
CHAPTER EIGHT America Embattled
CHAPTER NINE Japan’s Season of Triumph
1. “I Suppose You’ll Shove the Little Men Off”
2. The “White Route” from Burma
CHAPTER TEN Swings of Fortune
1. Bataan
2. The Coral Sea and Midway
3. Guadalcanal and New Guinea
CHAPTER ELEVEN The British at Sea
1. The Atlantic
2. Arctic Convoys
3. The Ordeal of Pedestal
CHAPTER TWELVE The Furnace: Russia in 1942
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Living with War
1. Warriors
2. Home Fronts
3. A Woman’s Place
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Out of Africa
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Bear Turns: Russia in 1943
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Divided Empires
1. Whose Liberty?
2. The Raj: Unfinest Hour
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Asian Fronts
1. China
2. Jungle Bashing and Island Hopping
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Italy: High Hopes, Sour Fruits
1. Sicily
2. The Road to Rome
3. Yugoslavia
CHAPTER NINETEEN War in the Sky
1. Bombers
2. Targets
CHAPTER TWENTY Victims
1. Masters and Slaves
2. Killing Jews
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Europe Becomes a Battlefield
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Japan: Defying Fate
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Germany Besieged
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Fall of the Third Reich
1. Budapest: In the Eye of the Storm
2. Eisenhower’s Advance to the Elbe
3. Berlin: The Last Battle
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Japan Prostrate
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Victors and Vanquished
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index
Other Books by This Author
Illustrations
Illustrations
Ill.1 Poles catch a first glimpse of the Luftwaffe, September 1939. (Hulton Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
Ill.2 SS, police and ethnic German auxiliaries conducting a search at Bydgoszcz in Poland, September 1939. (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Ill.3 Finnish “ghost soldiers,” December 1939. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Ill.4 A Russian soldier frozen in death. Finland, March 1940. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Ill.5 German troops fighting near Haugsbygd, Norway, April 1940. (akg-images/Ullstein Bild)
Ill.6 Dunkirk evacuated, May–June 1940. (IAM/akg-images)
Ill.7 German troops enter Paris, 14 June 1940. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-PP-10A-3)
Ill.8 Coventry after an air raid, November 1940. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Ill.9 British artillery in action in the North African desert, January 1943. (Mirrorpix)
Ill.10 Frenchwoman and German official in occupied France, c. 1943. (Paul Almasy/akg-images)
Ill.11 Mass execution of Russian Jews by SS Einsatzgruppen D, c. 1942. (Library of Congress, Washington D.C.)
Ill.12 An American family celebrates Thanksgiving, November 1942. (Bettmann/CORBIS)
Ill.13 Starving man with bread ration in Leningrad, 1941–42. (akg-images)
Ill.14 German troops on the Russian front, winter 1941. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.15 Japanese troops on Bataan, c. 1942. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington D.C.)
Ill.16 Indian refugees escaping from Burma, January 1942. (George Rodger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Ill.17 American prisoners in the Philippines, May 1942. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 127-N-114541)
Ill.18 Crew abandoning USS Lexington, Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1942. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.19 Japanese soldiers killed on Guadalcanal, August 1942. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.20 Australian troops carrying a wounded comrade to a dressing station on Papua New Guinea, December 1943. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.21 HMS Vansittart on convoy escort duty in the Arctic, February 1943. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.22 Survivors of a U-boat sunk in the North Atlantic, April 1943. (Photo by Jack January/USCG Historian’s Office)
Ill.23 WRENS wheeling a torpedo alongside a submarine at Portsmouth, September 1943. (Imperial War Museum A 19471)
Ill.24 Chinese foot soldiers, August 1945. (Jack Wilkes/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Ill.25 German grenadier during the retreat from the Soviet Union, 1943–44. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Ill.26 The Soviet Union, 1943. (© The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/N. Asnina)
Ill.27 Women riveters in an American dockyard, 1942. (CORBIS)
Ill.28 Twelve-year-old mill operator at the Perm Engine-Building Works, Soviet Union, 1943. (ITAR-TASS)
Ill.29 The Red Army advances. (© The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/Minkevich collection)
Ill.30 Drawing by Zainul Abedin from his Bengal Famine series, 1943. (Courtesy of Zainul Abedin)
Ill.31 GI feeding an orphan in Italy, c. 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-AA-240C-3)
Ill.32 Burial at sea for officers and men of USS Intrepid, Leyte Gulf, November 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 80-G-468912)
Ill.33 Pilot escaping the cockpit of a burning Hellcat fighter, September 1944. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy/Press Association)
Ill.34 A British bomber crew returns
from a raid on Germany.
Ill.35 A collaborator having her head shaved in a town near Paris, c. 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 111-SC-193318)
Ill.36 Japanese family hiding in a cave on Saipan, June 1944. (U.S. Marine Corps/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Ill.37 British soldier in Burma, November 1944. (Imperial War Museum SE 564)
Ill.38 Medics removing a wounded U.S. soldier from the battlefield near Brest, Normandy, August 1944. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.39 Paratrooper preparing for the assault on Arnhem, September 1944. (Airborne Assault Museum)
Ill.40 Dutch child during the “Hongerwinter” of 1944–45. (© Marius Meijboom/Nederlands Fotomuseum)
Ill.41 Two teenage German soldiers captured on the Rhine, March 1945. (Mirrorpix)
Ill.42 Russian artillery on the Oder–Neisse front, April 1945.
Ill.43 U.S. troops at Ohrdruf concentration camp, April 1945. (AP Photo/Byron H. Rollins/Press Association)
Ill.44 U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima, March 1945. (AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps/Press Association)
Ill.45 A mother and child among the ruins of Hiroshima. (Alfred Eisenstadt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Maps
The Polish Campaign
The Finnish Campaign
The Invasion of Norway
The Last Phase of the 1940 French Campaign
The Invasion of Greece
The 1942–43 Advance of Eighth Army
The German Winter Offensives, 1941
The Pacific Theatre
The Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of Midway
The Russians Encircle Hitler’s Sixth Army
The Russians Exploit Victory at Kursk
Russian Advances Across Ukraine
The 1943 Landings in Italy
The 1944 Thrust into Poland
The Allied Breakout from Normandy
The 1945 Western Drive into Germany
The 1944 Allied Advances on Germany
The Russian Drive to the Oder
The Final Russian Assaults
Introduction
This is a book chiefly about human experience. Men and women from scores of nations struggled to find words to describe what happened to them in the Second World War, which transcended anything they had ever known. Many resorted to a cliché: “All hell broke loose.” Because the phrase is commonplace in eyewitness descriptions of battles, air raids, massacres and ship sinkings, later generations are tempted to shrug at its banality. Yet in an important sense the words capture the essence of what the struggle meant to hundreds of millions of people, plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that in many cases lasted for years, and for at least 60 million were terminated by death. An average of 27,000 people perished each day between September 1939 and August 1945 as a consequence of the global conflict. Some survivors found that the manner in which they had conducted themselves during the struggle defined their standing in their societies for the rest of their lives, for good or ill. Successful warriors retained a lustre which enabled some to prosper in government or commerce. Conversely, at the bar of a London club thirty years after the war, a Guards veteran murmured about a prominent Conservative statesman: “Not a bad fellow, Smith. Such a pity he ran away in the war.” A Dutch girl, growing up in the 1950s, found that her parents categorised each of their neighbours in accordance with how they had behaved during the German occupation of Holland.
British and American infantrymen were appalled by their experiences in the 1944–45 northwest Europe campaign, which lasted eleven months. But Russians and Germans fought each other continuously for almost four years in far worse conditions, and with vastly heavier casualties.1 Some nations which played only a marginal military role lost many more people than the Western Allies: China’s ordeal at Japanese hands between 1937 and 1945 cost at least 15 million lives; Yugoslavia, where civil war was overlaid on Axis occupation, lost more than a million dead. Many people witnessed spectacles comparable with Renaissance painters’ conception of the inferno to which the damned were consigned: human beings torn to fragments of flesh and bone; cities blasted into rubble; ordered communities sundered into dispersed human particles. Almost everything which civilised peoples take for granted in time of peace was swept aside, above all the expectation of being protected from violence.
It is impossible to detail within a single volume the vastness of the war, the largest event in human history. I have already described aspects of it in eight books, most significantly Bomber Command, Overlord, Armageddon, Retribution and Winston’s War. While any work such as this should be self-contained, I have striven to avoid repetition of either anecdotage or analysis of large issues. For instance, having devoted an entire chapter of Nemesis to the 1945 dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems fruitless to revisit my own arguments. This book sustains a chronological framework, and seeks to establish and reflect upon the “big picture,” the context of events: the reader should gain a broad sense of what happened to the world between 1939 and 1945. But its principal purpose is to illuminate the conflict’s significance for a host of ordinary people of many societies, both active and passive participants—though the distinction is often blurred. Was, for example, a Hamburg woman who ardently supported Hitler, but perished in the July 1943 firestorm generated by Allied bombing, an accomplice to Nazi war guilt or the innocent victim of an atrocity?
In my pursuit of the human story, wherever possible without losing coherence my narrative omits unit identifications and details of battlefield manoeuvres. My maps are deliberately impressionistic, rather than providing military detail. I have tried to create a global portrait: the strategic narrative emphasises aspects of the conflict which I have not examined elsewhere, and about which there seems more to be said—for instance, India’s experience—at the expense of others which have been exhaustively explored, such as Pearl Harbor and the battle for Normandy.
The Jewish genocide became the most coherent fulfilment of Nazi ideology. I wrote in Armageddon about the ordeal of concentration-camp prisoners, and have here instead addressed the evolution of the Holocaust from a Nazi perspective. So widespread is a modern Western perception that the war was fought about Jews that it should be emphasised this was not the case. Though Hitler and his followers chose to blame the Jews for the troubles of Europe and the grievances of the Third Reich, Germany’s struggle with the Allies was about power and hemispheric dominance. The plight of the Jewish people under Nazi occupation loomed relatively small in the wartime perceptions of Churchill and Roosevelt, and less surprisingly in that of Stalin. About one-seventh of all fatal victims of Nazism, and almost one-tenth of all wartime dead, ultimately proved to have been Jews. But at the time their persecution was viewed by the Allies merely as one fragment of the collateral damage caused by Hitler, as indeed Russians still see the Holocaust today. The limited attention paid to the Jewish predicament by the wartime Allies was a source of frustration and anger to informed coreligionists at the time, and has prompted powerful indignation since. But it is important to recognise that between 1939 and 1945 the Allied nations saw the struggle overwhelmingly in terms of the threat posed by the Axis to their own interests, though Churchill defined these in generous and noble terms.
One of the most important truths about the war, as indeed about all human affairs, is that people can interpret what happens to them only in the context of their own circumstances. The fact that, objectively and statistically, the sufferings of some individuals were less terrible than those of others elsewhere in the world was meaningless to those concerned. It would have seemed monstrous to a British or American soldier facing a mortar barrage, with his comrades dying around him, to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater. It would have been insulting to invite a hungry Frenchman, or even an English housewife weary of the monotony of rations, to consider that in besieged Leningrad starving people were eatin
g one another, while in West Bengal they were selling their daughters. Few people who endured the Luftwaffe’s 1940–41 blitz on London would have been comforted by knowledge that the German and Japanese peoples would later face losses from Allied bombing many times greater, together with unparalleled devastation. It is the duty and privilege of historians to deploy relativism in a fashion that cannot be expected of contemporary participants. Almost everyone who participated in the war suffered in some degree: the varied scale and disparate nature of their experiences are themes of this book. But the fact that the plight of other people was worse than one’s own did little to promote personal stoicism.
Some aspects of wartime experience were almost universal: fear and grief; the conscription of young men and women obliged to endure new existences utterly remote from those of their choice, often under arms and at worst as slaves. A boom in prostitution was a tragic global phenomenon which deserves a book of its own. The conflict provoked many mass migrations. Some of these were orderly: half the population of Britain changed residence in the course of the war, and many Americans took new jobs in unfamiliar places. Elsewhere, however, millions were wrenched from their communities in dreadful circumstances, and faced ordeals which often killed them. “These are strange times,” wrote an anonymous Berlin woman on 22 April 1945 in one of the great diaries of the war, “history experienced first hand, the stuff of tales yet untold and songs unsung. But seen close-up, history is much more troublesome—nothing but burdens and fears. Tomorrow I’ll go and look for nettles and get some coal.”
The nature of battlefield experience varied from nation to nation, service to service. Within armies, riflemen experienced far higher levels of risk and hardship than millions of support troops. The U.S. armed forces suffered an overall death rate of just five per thousand men enlisted; the vast majority of those who served faced perils no greater than those of ordinary civilian life. While 17,000 American combat casualties lost limbs, during the war years 100,000 workers at home became amputees as a result of industrial accidents. Men who found themselves on battlefields when their nations were in retreat suffered more heavily than others who served in times of victories; Allied warriors who saw action only in 1944–45 had a far better statistical prospect of survival than, say, airmen or submariners who began operational service earlier, when their cause was faring badly.