The Second World War Read online

  On 17 February, furious that his orders were being ignored, Hitler flew to Zaporozhye for a showdown with Manstein. But Manstein had things well in hand. He moved Fourth Panzer Army headquarters to take control over the II SS Panzer Corps, now reinforced with the Totenkopf Division, and prepared the First Panzer Army to strike the Soviet attackers from below. Hitler felt obliged to fall in with his plans. Manstein’s double counter-attacks destroyed Popov’s armoured force and almost encircled the 1st Guards and the 6th Army. The troops of the 25th Tank Corps, by then out of fuel, had to abandon all their vehicles and make their way on foot back towards Soviet lines.

  In the first week of March, Fourth Panzer Army advanced back on Kharkov, and Hausser eventually retook the city on 14 March after an unnecessarily costly battle. Heavy spring rains soon brought further operations to a halt. Soviet prisoners of war were to put to work burying the dead. Most were so famished that they searched the bodies for scraps of food in pockets, but this was deemed to be looting the dead. Usually they were just shot, but the odd sadist would take it further. One tied three Soviet prisoners accused of theft to a gate together. ‘When his victims had been secured,’ wrote another soldier, ‘he stuck a grenade into the pocket of one of their coats, pulled the pin, and ran for shelter. The three Russians, whose guts were blown out, screamed for mercy until the last moment.’

  Hitler had his eye on the immense Kursk Salient for a summer offensive to restore German superiority on the eastern front. Yet the German army in the Soviet Union had been disastrously weakened. Apart from the loss of the Sixth Army and those of its allies, there had been heavy casualties in the withdrawal from the Caucasus, to say nothing of the fighting around Leningrad and the Red Army’s Rzhev Offensive against the Ninth Army. Many vehicles had been abandoned in the retreat when they ran out of fuel, and were finished off with a grenade in the engine. Panzers were often reduced to towing several trucks filled with wounded.

  The Wehrmacht’s strength on the eastern front had also been reduced by the transfer of troops to Tunisia, and to France in case of an Allied invasion. Operations in the Mediterranean continued to inflict heavy losses on the Luftwaffe, as did the strategic bombing campaign against German cities and aircraft factories. And the need to protect the Reich had led to the withdrawal of fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft batteries, giving air superiority to the Soviets for the first time. By the spring of 1943, German strength stood at just over 2,700,000 men, while the Red Army mustered just under 5,800,000, with four and half times as many tanks, and three times as many guns and heavy mortars. The Red Army also possessed greater mobility, thanks to the flow of Jeeps and trucks provided by American Lend–Lease.

  A part of the increase in the Red Army’s strength came with the recruitment of young women to a maximum strength of 800,000. Although many had served from early in the war, and well over 20,000 had done so in the Battle of Stalingrad alone, the greatest intake began in 1943. Their military roles now extended well beyond their previous ones of doctor, medic, nurse, telephone operator, signaller, pilot, air observer and anti-aircraft guncrew. The bravery and competence shown by women, especially during the Battle of Stalingrad, encouraged the Soviet authorities to recruit more, and there were more women serving in the Red Army than in any other regular army during the war. Although there had been a number of women snipers who became famous for their deadly skills, the main influx came with the establishment of a woman’s sniper school in 1943. Women were considered to resist cold better than men and to have a steadier hand.

  These intrepid young women, however, also had to cope with the attentions of male comrades and especially superiors. ‘These girls evoked memories of school-leaving dances, of first love,’ wrote Ilya Ehrenburg. ‘Almost all those I met at the front had come straight from school. They often winced nervously: there were too many men around with hungry eyes.’ A number found themselves forced to become a senior officer’s ‘campaign wife’–known as a ‘PPZh’ (short for pokhodno-polevaya zhena) because it sounded like PPSh, the Red Army’s standard sub-machine gun.

  Coercion was often crudely applied. A soldier recounted how an officer ordered a young woman in their signals platoon to accompany a fighting patrol, simply because she had refused to sleep with him. ‘Many were sent back to the rear because they were pregnant,’ he wrote. ‘Most soldiers did not think badly of them. This was life. Every day we spent facing death at the front line, so people wanted to get some pleasures.’ But very few of the men acknowledged any responsibility and took every means to avoid their tearful victims before they left. Ehrenburg’s friend and colleague Vasily Grossman was appalled by the flagrant exploitation of rank to achieve sexual favours. He regarded the ‘campaign wife’ as the Red Army’s ‘great sin’. ‘Yet all around them,’ he added, ‘thousands of girls in military uniform are working hard and with dignity.’

  In the rugged hills west of Tunis, Anderson’s First Army still struggled to hold on. Its performance was hindered by a confused command structure, a failure to concentrate its badly co-ordinated forces and fraying tempers between British, French and American officers. Allied troops were no match for the highly professional German counter-attacks, combining Stuka dive-bombers, artillery and panzers.

  Both sides complained bitterly about the pouring rain and the filth and mud. ‘It’s unbelievable what one has to endure,’ a Gefreiter wrote home, clearly unaware of how much worse conditions were on the eastern front. General von Arnim had arrived to take over the forces in Tunisia, now designated the Fifth Panzer Army. Arnim prepared defences against renewed Allied attacks and Tunisian Jews were rounded up for forced labour. The Jewish community was also ruthlessly plundered for gold and money.

  Rommel’s withdrawal from the Mersa el Brega Line in December 1942 and the lack of Allied success in Tunisia encouraged Montgomery to push on. But he missed every opportunity to encircle the remnants of the Panzerarmee, especially when it halted at the Buerat Line. On 23 January 1943, the Eighth Army entered Tripoli led by the 11th Hussars. But again Rommel had already pulled back to begin fortifying the Mareth Line at the base of the Bay of Gabes, so as to link up with Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army.

  Accepting that the war in North Africa was lost, Rommel advocated a Dunkirk-style evacuation of his troops. His forces had neither sufficient fuel nor sufficient armament, and he despaired of making Hitler see sense. During a furious exchange at the Wolfsschanze in late November, Hitler had refused him permission to withdraw from the Mersa el Brega Line, and had even accused Rommel’s troops of throwing away their weapons in the retreat from Alamein. In fact, Rommel’s withdrawal, evading the Eighth Army, had been the most skilfully conducted part of his whole desert war.

  Mussolini’s attempts to persuade Hitler to end the war in the Soviet Union fell on the stoniest ground. The surrender at Stalingrad and the loss of Libya represented a serious blow to the Duce’s morale. He sacked his son-in-law, Count Ciano, from the position of foreign minister and nursed his depression by retiring to bed in an attempt to evade reality.

  General von Arnim was concerned that the American II Corps under General Lloyd Fredenhall in the south might cut through from the mountains on the road from Kasserine down to the sea at Sfax. This would separate his Fifth Panzer Army from Rommel’s Panzerarmee. Arnim explained the situation to Rommel, and requested his rearmed 21st Panzer Division to dislodge the badly equipped French detachment in the Faïd Pass.

  The 21st Panzer attacked on 30 January, and General Fredenhall’s II Corps reacted slowly in response to the French calls for assistance. The next day, when a combat command from the US 1st Armoured Division finally put in a counter-attack on the rocky pass, the Germans were waiting for them. The line of Sherman tanks suffered attacks from Messerschmitts and well-concealed anti-tank guns. Over half the force was knocked out and the survivors extricated themselves, reversing around burning vehicles. Another American attempt to advance a few hours later also failed with heavy casualties. Fredenhall, a disastrous c
ommander, split his forces even more despite Eisenhower’s instruction to the contrary. He sent another combat command off on a wild goose chase, with conflicting orders. Its infantry support, all green troops, were bombed in their trucks by Stukas. The blooding of these inexperienced troops from the 34th Infantry Division went from bad to worse over the next few days as Fredenhall, who seldom left his headquarters far in the rear, ordered more and more attacks.

  Rommel decided to remove the American threat altogether with a three-pronged offensive. On 14 February, the 10th Panzer Division attacked westwards out of the Faïd Pass, while the 21st Panzer Division came up from the south in a pincer. Seventy American tanks were destroyed in the first day’s fighting round Sidi Bou Zid. One of them was knocked out at a range of 2,700 metres by a Tiger’s 88mm gun. The shell of the Sherman’s 75mm could not penetrate a Tiger’s frontal armour even at point-blank range. On 16 February, a panzer crewman wrote home to apologize disingenuously for not having written, but his division had been fighting the Americans over the last couple of days. ‘You will have heard from yesterday’s Wehrmacht announcement that we shot up more than ninety tanks.’

  Next day, the Afrika Korps detachment in the south advanced on Gafsa, triggering a panic-stricken withdrawal. Near Sidi Bou Zid a Sherman battalion from the 1st Armoured was ambushed and wiped out in a futile but brave counter-attack. Blazing and burned-out American tanks littered the landscape, while Tunisian Arabs continued to till their fields. American tank crewmen staggered back with blackened faces, like dismounted troopers after the charge of the Light Brigade. Neither Fredenhall nor Anderson had any idea of what was going on at the front.

  On 16 February Rommel went to Gafsa. He was cheered by the surviving inhabitants, after the retreating Americans had destroyed much of the town when blowing up their ammunition dump. He wanted his Afrika Korps troops to overtake the Americans, who were pulling back towards Tébessa where he planned to capture their major supply dump. Arnim, however, regarded the idea as too risky, and a triangular argument was conducted with Kesselring.

  That night, the panzer divisions advanced on Sbeïtla. And on 17 February, while some American units fled in panic, others stood and fought well, as 21st Panzer Division acknowledged. Fredenhall sent whatever detachments he could to the Kasserine Pass, but on 20 February the collapse began. Major General E. N. Harmon witnessed the debacle. ‘It was the first–and only–time I saw an American army in rout. Jeeps, trucks, wheeled vehicles of every imaginable sort streamed up the road towards us, sometimes jammed two and even three abreast. It was obvious that there was only one thing in the minds of the panic-stricken drivers–to get away from the front, to escape to some place where there was no shooting.’

  Fortunately for the Allies, Rommel and Arnim were in fierce disagreement. Trying to do too many things, they split their forces to take Tébessa in the west, as well as drive north to Thala and on a parallel road to Sbiba. With mixed British and American forces blocking the routes to Thala and Sbiba, supported at the last moment by American artillery, the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions were stopped. And eventually the Afrika Korps detachment on the road to Tébessa was also halted by American anti-tank guns and artillery. Rommel was impressed by the effectiveness of American gunnery. And as the skies cleared, Allied aircraft began to attack his withdrawing panzers. He returned to the Mareth Line on 23 February, confident that he had inflicted a blow on the Allies heavy enough to discourage further advances.

  Unable to believe that the Germans had retired, the Allied troops were slow to move back to the Kasserine Pass. It was littered with burned-out tanks, crashed aircraft and corpses in all directions. When they saw Tunisians looting the dead, American soldiers opened fire with Thompson sub-machine guns, either shooting to kill or just to scare them off. Fredenhall’s II Corps had lost over 6,000 men, 183 tanks, 104 half-tracks, more than 200 field guns and another 500 transport vehicles. It had been a savage baptism of fire, made worse by confused orders from above. Troops fired at their own aircraft, destroying or damaging thirty-nine of them, and Allied squadrons attacked the wrong targets. On 22 February, some B-17 Flying Fortresses bombed a British airfield instead of the Kasserine Pass.

  Although Rommel was promoted to command Army Group Afrika over the head of General von Arnim, he heard too late of Kesselring’s plan for another offensive further north called Operation Oxhead. This did not begin until 26 February, when it should have been co-ordinated with attacks around Kasserine the previous week. German losses were far greater than British, and they lost the majority of their tanks.

  The Comando Supremo, which Hitler had allowed to reassert control in the interests of Axis unity, refused Rommel permission to withdraw from the Mareth Line. Well aware that Montgomery was preparing an offensive, Rommel decided to put in a spoiling attack, but Ultra intercepts provided all the warning the British needed. Montgomery rushed up artillery, anti-tank guns and tanks to the threatened sector, where they were concealed. On 6 March, the Germans advanced into a killing zone targeted by all the artillery of the whole corp. Rommel lost fifty-two tanks and 630 men. Kesselring and Rommel unfairly suspected the Italians of betraying the plan.

  Rommel, suffering from jaundice and totally exhausted, felt that it was time to return to Germany for treatment and a rest. On 9 March, he left North Africa for the last time. The following evening he was received by Hitler at the Werwolf headquarters. Hitler refused to listen to his arguments that Army Group Afrika should be withdrawn across the Mediterranean to defend Italy. He even rejected any plans to shorten the front in Tunisia. Rommel, whom he now regarded as a defeatist, was ordered to depart on a rest cure.

  Patton, frustrated by the lack of action in Morocco and by the way the British seemed to be running the whole war in North Africa, had recently written: ‘Personally, I wish I could get out and kill someone.’ At last his prayers to see action were granted. In the second week of March, Eisenhower sent him, with Major General Omar N. Bradley as his understudy, to take over from Fredenhall. Eisenhower sacked a number of other officers and Alexander wanted to get rid of Anderson, but Montgomery would not release the one person Alexander wanted as the new commander of the First Army.

  Patton wasted no time at all in getting a grip on II Corps, starting with saluting and correct dress. The corps was terrified of its new commander, and military police became known as ‘Patton’s Gestapo’. Patton was appalled by the numbers of soldiers evacuated because of combat fatigue. He was also frustrated to hear that his orders were not to charge through to the sea and cut off Rommel’s Panzerarmee (now renamed the First Italian Army) from General von Arnim in the north. Instead, his task was simply to threaten its flank to help Montgomery. Patton suspected that Montgomery wanted all the glory, but Alexander, who had been shocked by the shambles at Kasserine, was not yet ready to trust American troops.

  Patton could console himself with his promotion to the three stars of a lieutenant general. Reinterpreting his orders, he pushed his divisions forward, retaking Gafsa and advancing to the Eastern Dorsale massif which dominated the plain to the sea. When the 10th Panzer Division tried to force back Patton’s 1st Infantry Division from the heights at El Guettar, it was savagely mauled and lost half its remaining tanks.

  Montgomery decided to send XXX Corps in a frontal attack on the Mareth Line to fix the enemy, while outflanking him to the south-west in a long manoeuvre by Freyberg’s New Zealanders, supported by tanks. But the Germans were well aware of Freyberg’s long left hook, and the attack on 20 March by the 50th Division proved a disaster. Montgomery, having prematurely claimed success, was shaken. But, recovering rapidly, he sent Horrocks with X Corps round to reinforce the New Zealanders in an attack towards the coast over thirty kilometres behind the Mareth Line. At the same time he sent the 4th Indian Division on a closer flanking advance. On 26 March, the New Zealanders and Horrocks’s armoured brigades surged forward together, smashing the weak German defences at the Tebaga Gap. General Giovanni Messe, commanding the F
irst Italian Army, withdrew all his forces rapidly up the coast towards Tunis. Although a success of sorts, the Axis forces had again escaped.

  The Desert Air Force harried the retreating German forces. One casualty was Oberst Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, who lost a hand and an eye to a strafing fighter. On 7 April, units of the First and Eighth Armies met up. The two organizations could hardly have been more different. The desert veterans in their battered, sand-coloured tanks and trucks showed a remarkable nonchalance, to say nothing of a disrespect for dress regulations. Their war, although harsh at times, had on the whole seen a much greater respect for the lives of prisoners and very few civilian casualties in the almost empty desert. The local tribe of Senussi had been able to avoid the worst of the desert fighting, although some of them and many of their camels had legs blown off in the minefields.

  The First Army, in the mainly mountain warfare of the far eastern Atlas, had found itself in a far dirtier conflict. The shock of war when over-confident green troops, especially American units, were hit by experienced panzer and panzergrenadier units was traumatic. While there were a number of psychological casualties, a majority became rapidly brutalized as a survival mechanism. A few even became totally dehumanized, with the sadistic killing of prisoners and even the random shooting of Tunisian Arabs for fun, with potshots at those on camels, treating them like a shooting range in a fairground. British soldiers were generally better disciplined, but they too were imbued with the racist ideas of the time. Only a few made friends with the locals. French troops were no better. Ironically, these officers and soldiers from the former Vichy army wanted to take revenge on their Arab subjects who had in many cases collaborated with the Germans, largely because of their anti-Jewish policies. Yet even as the campaign edged towards its end in victory, relations between the three Allies seemed to worsen, with British arrogance provoking a rampant anglophobia among many American officers.