Age of Total War
Fall 2003
The Origins of the Term
Blitzkrieg
The term Blitzkrieg or lightning
war became associated with the Germans.
Especially when they overran
Poland and France.
Some attribute the term to
Hitler, Time, as well to B. H. Liddell Hart.
In reality, it was a term used
for the tactical developments used by the Wehrmacht in World War II.
The Vanquished Learn from Defeat
The Germans and Russians saw
tanks much differently than the British and the French.
Some theorists wanted to
integrate tanks with artillery,
infantry, signals communication, and engineers.
Some even went further and
thought in terms of air power
too.
Overall, tracks would increase the combat power of one side over
another.
Armor and Air Power in Britain
The old Guard limited the use of
armor.
They attempted to fit tanks into
infantry and cavalry units.
The Old Guard blocked attempts to
establish an Armor Division in the British Army.
The Old Guard rigged maneuvers to
discredit the reformers, such as J.F.C. Fuller.
The Old Guard had reformers
transferred to distant parts of the Empire.
Tank Division
The Maginot Line
The French thought it was
imaginative.
Still it was defensive.
It stretched from Switzerland to
the Ardennes.
It did not go through the French
industrial zones.
The strategy now was to stabilize
the situation until France was fully mobilized.
But the French remembered the
last war.
Weakness of French Military Thought
Could not work in a meeting
engagement.
The French felt that modern war
would cause too many casualties.
By spending so much on the
Maginot Line, the French could not provide effective aid to her allies in
Eastern Europe.
By weakening her allies, it only
helped Germany fight a single-front war.
The Diplomatic Situation
As the OKW planned; the Diplomats
talked.
Hitler felt that the British and
the French were looking for a way out.
Why die for Danzig? was a
popular refrain in Paris.
Hitler still realized that he had
to drive a wedge between London and Paris.
Time was running out since the
invasion was set for August 26, 1939.
Disputed Areas
German Objectives
The Germans wanted a quick
victory.
Before the Poles could mobilize.
They wanted to avoid a two front
war.
The Wehrmacht did not have the
necessary stockpiles for a prolonged war.
The Germans wanted to capture the
Polish railheads so they could use them.
Wanted to crush the Polish Army
as near to the Polish borders as possible.
Underestimating the Germans
Some Polish politicians thought
that if the Germans captured Danzig and the Corridor, then they would stop.
As a result, the Poles placed to
much of their forces near the border, at least a third of their forces in the
Corridor.
The
Einsatzgruppen
in Silesia
The SS formed special action
groups in Silesia.
They were called Special Action
groups.
They all operated in the wake of
the German Army.
This was called
Pacification
taking livestock at will.
Also liquidating Polish
intellectuals and Jews.
Remember Jorg Haider says these
guys are great fellows.
Why Poland Lost?
Prisoner of geography.
Most of Polands industry and
wealth was near the German border.
The same applied to railroads.
By retreating beyond the Vistula
River, all those areas were lost.
As soon as the German pincers
closed, the Soviet Union invaded Poland
The SS Mission in Poland
Did not function as an armed
military unit.
The SS
Totenkampfverbande (SSTV)
deployed three regiments to Poland
A
Judenaktion
Plundered Jewish concerns.
Dynamited and burned synagogues.
Arrest males.
Executed Jewish leaders.
The record of the SS in Poland
was one of rape, murder and plunder.
There was no Phony War in
Poland.
The German Army knew what was
happening.
The Failure of the West
Once the Germans attacked, the
French agreed to conduct operations against the Germans.
Then by the 15th day of the war,
the bulk of French forces was supposed to move into Germany.
The Poles felt that the German
offensive would have been stopped if this had happened.
The Germans were particularly
weak on the West Wall.
What did the French Do?
The French found one excuse
after another for not moving.
All the French did was scatter
leaflets on the Germans.
British Inaction
The British remained silent too.
The RAF only attacked German
naval vessels.
When offensive operations were
conducted, the Allies withdrew when the Germans counterattacked.
Why didnt the British bomb
Germany?
The Scuttling of the
Graf Spee
Hans Langsdorf didnt realize the
damage he inflicted on the British.
Instead he withdrew and sought
refuge in Montevideo.
Uruguay gave the Germans 72
hours.
On December 17 at 0700 Langsdorf
set sail, but without the crew.
Instead the
Graf Spee
scuttled and Langsdorf had committed suicide.
The U-boat War
From the sinking of the
Athenia,
the first ship sunk by a U-boat.
The loses considerably mounted.
U-boats then mounted an
effective, but little known, mine laying campaign.
Allied loses also increased due
to mines too.
The Altmark Affair
On Feb. 14, 1940, The Altmark reached
Norwegian territorial waters with British prisoners aboard.
By International Law, the
Altmark should have released the 299 prisoners, but the captain refused.
Winston Churchill then ordered
the destroyer HMS Cossack to seize the
Altmark.
This worried Hitler, since it
threatened Germanys iron ore shipments from Sweden.
The Norwegian Theater
The Plan
The initial German plan was a
rehash of the Schlieffen Plan.
Except the attack would strike
through Holland.
Because of the Luftwaffes need
for air bases.
Then right before a CPX a German
officers with the plan crashed in Belgium compromising the operation.
The Germans had to revise their
plan.
The Manstein Plan
Erich von Manstein made a major
modification.
Now the German armies would come
through Southern Belgium.
Through the Ardennes and race
toward the Channel.
Cutting the Anglo-French forces
off.
Perhaps even winning the war in
one blow.
Who Made the Difference?
The Breakthrough and French Counterattack
The Germans Bypass the Maginot Line
The Germans avoided the Maginot
Line.
And head to the French coast.
Despite a counterattack by
Charles De Gaulles 4th Armored Division on May 17th and
again on May 27th and May 29th.
With the aid of Ultra
Churchill
orders Operation Dynamo to begin.
After Dunkirk
Following the defeat of France,
Germany was victorious from the Neiman River to the Pyrenees.
This has not been done since the
time of Napoleon.
Even with those successes,
Hitler still looked East to Russia.
How Important was Espionage
in World War II?
Spies have Changed or Could have
Changed History.
Without them D-Day would have
been impossible.
World War I may have taken a
different course.
The Soviets may never have
developed the Bomb as soon as they did.
Venlo Affair
Nov. 9, 1939, Maj. Walter
Schellenberg of the SD posing as a member of the Anti-Hitler resistance enticed
two agents of the MI6, Capt. S. Payne-Best and Maj. H. R. Stevens to Venlo near
the Dutch-German border.
As Payne-Best and Stevens waited
for the meeting, a car crashed through the border crossing and Nazi gunmen kept
the Dutch police at bay.
While this was taking place, the
two English agents were kidnapped and taken to Germany and were interrogated by
the GESTAPO.
Impact of the Venlo Affair
It seems that Chamberlain, who
never had his heart in the war, wanted to end the war as quickly as possible.
His hopes were dashed by this episode.
Plus the Germans also discovered
the wide range of British agents on the continent.
The British will not release the
information on this case until 2015.
Operation Willi
Was the plot to kidnap the Duke
of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII.
The Windsors toured Germany in
1937 and many felt he was pro-Nazi.
During the early stage of the
war, he was an intelligence agent spying on the French for the British.
After the collapse of the
French, the Windsors fled to Spain and then Portugal.
Along Comes Schellenberg
Churchill was worried that the
Duke would fall into the hands of the Germans and ordered him to return to
England. There was the possible threat of military court-martial since he held
the rank of Maj. Gen.
Churchill then appointed him to
be Gov. of the Bahamas.
Hitler ordered Schellenberg to
plan an abduction of the Duke after failing to entice the Duke to go to Spain
and then detain him for his own protection.
Electrically Wired Rotors
Most post-World War I cipher
machines came from the design of the American Edward Hebern.
Wired motor machines multiplied
in the 1920s.
The leaders were Hugo Koch
(Dutch), Arthur Scherbius (Germany), and Willi
Korn.
Coming of Enigma
All these men played a key role
in the development of the ENIGMA machine in Nazi Germany.
The Japanese Enigma machine was
called the Green Machine and was far from secure.
The American machine was
M-134-C/SIGMA used by the US Army and ECM by the Navy. Apparently, the American
machines were never compromised by the Axis during the war.
How The Rotor System Worked
Input Contact
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Output Contact
K
O
G
N
J
U
P
The Enigma Machine
In the early 1920, Arthur
Scherbius developed a rotor machine the size of a cash register.
The machine was portable and he
named it ENIGMA.
It enciphered messages by the
use of the electrically wired rotor system.
Scherbius wanted to establish a
corporation to sell the device, but war-wary Germany was not ready for such a
new company
The Application of Enigma in the
Field
The coming of Hitler would
change that.
The ENIGMA machine provided the
necessary security for Blitzkrieg military operations.
The Germans believed that the
system was unbreakable.
They were wrong.
The only unbreakable code is the
one-time pad system.
Breaking of Enigma
The Poles made the first inroads
and may have done so without a computer.
As war appeared, Polish
intelligence gave copies of what they had done to the British and French.
The British made the best use of
it at Bletchely Park
Origins of Double Cross
The idea started when Arthur
Owens, a British subject, agreed to spy for Great Britain, but then switched
sides when he was dissatisfied with his financial rewards.
Owens was recruited by the
Abwehr and taught Morse Code in Hamburg.
When Owens returned to England,
he contacted MI5 about his German contact. From his cell, he proceeded to pass
to the Abwehr information provided by MI5 on the RAF, ship movements, and other
tidbits of Intel.
Objectives of Double-Cross
To control the German spy system
To catch spies
To learn about the methods of
the Abwehr and other German intelligence agencies
To break German codes and
ciphers
To learn of German intentions
from information sought from Berlin
To influence German plans
through information/disinformation sent to Germany
To deceive the Germans of Allied
intentions.
What Stood in Hitlers Way
The Channel was merely 20 miles
wide.
It was the only check on the
Nazi hordes.
The Royal Navy would have
contested the Germans at every turn.
The troops back from Dunkirk had
not weapons and could not have put up a serious fight.
The next best thing was the Home
Guard better known as Dads Army.
The fate of Britain was in the
hands of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
Britain in Bomber Range
Operation SEALION
The German had no history of
amphibious operations.
The Wehrmacht was a continental
machine.
The German navy did not have the
needed staying power to support the operation.
The logistics were enormous.
German Plans in the Meantime
The army, navy, and Luftwaffe
needed time to refit.
Germans sized barges, coastal
steamers, and anything else that could steam.
If
SEALION was to succeed, the navy needed to control the channel and the
luftwaffe had to control the air.
By June the Luftwaffe was moving
to their forward bases.
Weaknesses of the Luftwaffe
Me 109, great fighter, but did
not have the necessary range.
Me 110, a twin-engine fighter
had the range but not the maneuverability.
The Bombers, Heinkel (He-111)
and Dornier 172 and 215 were sitting ducks.
The same could be said to the
Stuka, the Ju-86/87.
The Germans overestimated their
strength and the British underestimated their own.
The British Use of RDF
RDF was another term for radar.
Both sides had developed the
system in the 1930s.
It originated from the search
for a death-ray.
In 1934,
Robert Watson-Watt
developed a practical system for the British.
After a practical demonstration
in 1935, the British bought the system.
It could pick up in-coming
aircraft flying at or below 15,000 ft, but was poor at aircraft flying above
20,000 ft.
The Opening Rounds
The Germans first targeted the
ports in Southern England.
The Germans called this the
Kanalkampf.
This was the primary round of
the air war.
The purpose was to force the RAF
to defend the shipping lanes and then bleeding them.
Dowding gave the shipping lanes
minimal support.
But in time the British were
forced into a battle of attrition.
Stuka JU 87
Round Two
The Germans thought that they
had won round one.
Instead, they received more
losses than the British.
Principally a failure of
intelligence.
The Germans now attacked air
fields and radar positions.
The British were now pushed to
the limits.
Lord Beaverbrook,
the munitions czar, was responsible for getting more machines for the RAF.
Man to Man
When the Battle of Britain
started the RAF had 3,000 pilots.
But that number would be reduced
by wastage.
The Germans had experience in
Spain, Poland, and France.
If the new British pilots lived
long enough, they may make fine pilots.
But fatigue would wear down the
British.
To supply the needed pilots,
many came from the Dominions and the occupied countries.
Eagle Day
At first the attack was
cancelled because of the weather.
When the weather changed, the
Luftwaffe attacked air fields, radar stations, and aircraft factories.
By the next day, Aug. 16, the
Germans flew missions from Denmark and Norway.
Then the Germans then began to
shift their targets that gave the British time to regroup.
Casualties were roughly equal,
but the Germans were losing control of the battle.
Great Men are Made Not Born
One of the Most Famous
Pictures of the Blitz
Never in the Course of
Human Events . . .
Edward R. Murrow, This is
London
Invasion Alert
The alert went out on Sept. 12,
1940..
Bomber Command hit German
staging areas.
The Germans then returned to
Strategic Bombing.
The British were more aware than
the have let on -- since they read the German Luftwaffe codes.
All told the British lost 790
fighters and Germans lost 1,400.
The Germans had now turned their
attention East.
The Invasion of Britain