The Heinkel He-111 entered service in 1935, and the B model served with
distinction in the Spanish Civil War, where it was fast enough to fly
unescorted. Nearly 1,000 He-111s were in service at the start of the war; they
formed a significant part of the Luftwaffe's medium bomber strength early in
the conflict, although they were roughly handled during the Battle of Britain
in spite of carrying nearly 600 lb of armor. Later versions had better
defensive armament and were used in various roles, including torpedo bombing.
Approximately 7,450 He-111s were built before production ended in 1944.
OUTBREAK
At 4:30 on the morning of September 1, 1939, Hitler's
Luftwaffe (air force) commenced the bombing of airfields all across Poland.
Simultaneously, a German battleship "visiting" the Polish port of
Danzig opened fire on Polish fortifications, and the Wehrmacht (army) surged
across the Polish frontier. The rapid combined air, sea, and land assault was
the essence of blitzkrieg (lightning war), and the superbly trained and
equipped German forces swept aside the valiant but outgunned and outnumbered
Polish forces. On September 27, Warsaw fell to the invaders; the next day, the
town of Modlin surrendered. In a single action, 164,000 Polish soldiers became
prisoners of war. By early October, the last organized Polish force, at Kock,
had been crushed. It mattered not at all that two days after the invasion both
France and Britain honored their treaty obligations to Poland by declaring war
on Germany.
As agreed in the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet
Union and Germany, Stalin also invaded Finland, which the Soviet Union annexed
on March 12, 1940, after a brief but bloody war.
So it began again, a war sparked by nationality conflicts in
east-central Europe and provoked, in part, by a German stab at continental
hegemony that expanded into a global conflict touching every continent. It was
more a total war than even WORLD WAR I had been, since the belligerent powers'
civilians not only contributed to their war efforts but also became targets for
their enemies. Subject populations also became targets. Most horrific was
Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, but Germany also attacked
Slavs and other ethnic, social, and political groups deemed inferior by or a
threat to Nazi ideology. Stalin expanded the Russian terror against the
Ukrainians to the conquered Poles. Even in the Pacific, the Japanese- American
conflict at times degenerated into brutal race war. Indeed, World War II all
but eliminated the age-old diplomatic distinction between combatants and
noncombatants, with the result that not only would its death toll greatly
exceed that of the Great War, but also civilian casualties would vastly
outnumber those of the military.
Yet again the war in Europe developed into a contest between
a German-held Europe and an Allied coalition attacking on its periphery. Again,
the United States kept clear of the conflict until its own sovereignty was
insulted by direct attack. But unlike the last war, the Italians quickly joined
the Germans rather than remaining neutral, and the Soviet Union-itself soon
invaded by Germany- did not collapse as imperial Russia had. Instead, Joseph
Stalin's Russia held out while France fell to the Nazis, and thus ultimately
the Soviets instead of the French joined the British and the Americans in the
wartime conferences of the "Big Three." Although Japan, joining the
Axis powers, invaded China and Southeast Asia and provoked the entry of the
United States into the war, it also managed to remain neutral toward Russia. In
turn, the anti-Fascist Allies, while determined to reduce Germany to rubble,
nevertheless simmered with tension over varying strategies and war aims. In
fact, World War II was in many ways a label for several parallel or overlapping
wars, and the central conflict in Europe overlay a three-way struggle for power
among Nazism, democracy, and communism. Once Germany fell and Japan was bombed
into submission, these subterranean struggles among the Allies burst into the
open in a new kind of war and an odd sort of peace.
EARLY FIGHTING
While Poland reeled and withered under blitzkrieg, no
significant fighting took place in the West. Although France and Britain had
declared war on Germany, they took little action, and, in its first months,
World War II on the Western Front was derisively described by the British as a
"Sitzkrieg" or, more commonly, the "Phony War." France and
England did cooperate in an attempt to mine and occupy Norwegian ports to close
them to German Uboats. The German navy and Luftwaffe, however, were quick to
occupy Denmark and then, with the help of Norwegian turncoat Vidkun Quisling
(1887-1945), took over Norway as well, installing Quisling as head of a Nazi
puppet regime. The British military hurriedly evacuated Norway on June 6, 1940,
and, at the insistence of Parliament, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) appointed
his harshest critic, Winston Churchill (1874-1965), First Lord of the Admiralty
in his war cabinet on September 3, 1939.
Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, and Norway had all
fallen under Nazi control when, on May 10, 1940, German forces surged into
Holland, Luftwaffe bombers almost totally leveling Rotterdam. Simultaneously,
German ground forces advanced through Belgium, marching around the northern end
of the Maginot Line. Within 10 days, sweeping ineffectual French resistance
aside, the German armies reached Abbeville, on the French coast, just below the
Straits of Dover.
The invasion of France cut the Allied armies in two, with
French forces to the south of the invaders and British to the north. Belgium
had little choice but to surrender, which it did on May 28, 1940; the British
Expeditionary Force, which had been dispatched to the continent, now faced
almost certain annihilation or capture. By means of a heroic and massive
amphibious operation, most of the British forces made a hair's-breadth escape
across the English Channel from the coastal town of Dunkirk. This evacuation
not only saved the British army from complete destruction but also rescued
Britain from imminent invasion.
Despite the lightning speed with which France had been
overrun, Premier Paul Reynaud (1878-1966) wanted to continue the war. He was
voted down, however, and chose to resign rather than accept an armistice. His
vice premier, a popular hero of World War I, Marshal Henri Phillipe Pétain
(1856-1951), sued for peace, asking Hitler for an armistice, even as Pétain's
World War I subordinate and protege, Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle (1890-
1970), broadcast to France from London (where he happened to be stationed at
the outbreak of the war) an appeal to the French people never to surrender.
Despite de Gaulle's plea, on June 22, 1940, Pétain signed an armistice by which
two-thirds of France was yielded to German occupation. The rest of the country
was to be administered by Pétain from Vichy as a German puppet.
The fall of France left Germany master of the European
continent, and it left England to stand alone against Nazi aggression-although
de Gaulle, operating from England, worked feverishly to organize the "Free
French" resistance against the Nazi occupation of his homeland.
Winston Churchill, who had replaced Chamberlain as prime
minister on May 10, 1940, appealed to President Roosevelt for aid from the
United States. On November 4, 1939, Roosevelt had secured repeal of a U. S.
arms embargo on belligerent nations. In response to Churchill's appeals, on
December 8, 1940, he proposed instituting the Lend- Lease program, which was
passed into law in March 1941. This gave the president authority to aid any
nation whose defense he believed vital to the United States and to accept
repayment for such aid "in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect
benefit which the President deems satisfactory." The United States, not
yet in the war, was rapidly on its way to becoming the "arsenal of
democracy."
From August 8 to August 18, 1940, the Luftwaffe began the
first phase of the Battle of Britain, mainly by attacking coastal areas and
ports. The British Royal Air Force (RAF), although outnumbered, outflew the
Germans and inflicted severe losses on the attackers. From August 24 through
September 5, the second phase of the battle began with attacks concentrated on
RAF bases. These attacks were far more effective, but, at Hitler's direction,
the Luftwaffe shifted its strikes from the RAF bases to the civilian
population, with massive bombing raids on London during September 7 through
September 30.
In the meantime, the British responded by bombing Berlin
(August 24-29), which caused relatively little damage but did have a profound
psychological effect on the Germans and was instrumental in Hitler's
(militarily poor) decision to concentrate on civilian targets instead of wiping
out the RAF. Once the Germans had lost momentum, British forces were able to
destroy vessels massed for an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) during
September 14-15, thereby preventing a rapid German victory. Sporadically, from
November 1940 to May 1941, a number of English cities, including London, were
subjected to the "blitz," an intensive nighttime bombing campaign.
Designed to break the English will to fight, it served only to strengthen the
people's desire to resist and to win.
During 1940-41, war also raged in the Balkans, the
Mediterranean, and in Africa, theaters in which Germany's ally Italy fought
with poor success. Japan, which, on September 27, 1940, had formally signed a
threepower pact with Germany and Italy to form the Rome- Berlin-Tokyo Axis, was
fighting in China, India, and Indo-China. At the end of 1941, by attacking
Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, Japan would bring the United States into the
war.
On June 22, 1941, without warning, Germany suddenly abrogated
the nonaggression pact with the USSR by invading the Soviet Union and
penetrating deep into Soviet territory. On December 8, 1941, the day after
Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the United States joined
Britain in its lonesome and perilous stand against the Axis. But the year
closed with Germany, in a phrase Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-98) had
used to justify his nation's aggression in the late 19th century, very much
"in the saddle."
Further reading:
P. M. H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Longman, 1986);
Alan Bullock, Hitler, a Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962);
Guy Chapman, Why France Fell: Defeat of the French Army in 1940 (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969); David Irving, Hitler's War (New York: Avon
Books, 1990); Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940
(London: Oxford University Press, 2003) and France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944
(London: Oxford University Press, 2001); John Keegan, The Second World War (New
York: Viking, 1989); John Lukacs, The Last European War, 1939-1941 (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); B. J. C. McKercher and Roch Legault, eds.,
Military Planning and the Origins of the Second World War in Europe (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 2001); Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg,
Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003); Richard
Storry, A History of Modern Japan (London: Cassell, 1962); A. J. P. Taylor, The
Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1982) and (ed.), History
of World War II (London: Octopus Books, 1974); H. P. Willmott, Empires in the
Balance (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1982).
No comments:
Post a Comment