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On the Russian Front, the German army built up to perhaps its peak of strength, certainly its high point since 1941. The German plan was to attack a large salient around the city of Kursk, encircling large numbers of troops and tearing a gaping hole in the Soviet line. As a matter of fact, the Soviets expected this move, and had not only fortified the salient's boundaries but established a reserve line behind it. The German Army built up carefully, and the attack was delayed to take advantage of some new heavy tanks coming into service. This was a mistake, as the tanks did poorly in practice, due to poor design and mechanical unreliability, and it gave the Red Army another month to dig in. When the attack finally fell, the northern pincer went approximately nowhere, but the southern one battled through kilometers of well- prepared defense lines in an incredible and pointless feat of arms. (Editorial comment: This, to me, typifies the German war effort. Nobody matched the Germans in a division to division fight, but all of the Allies had a better idea of how the war should go than Hitler and the German General Staff.) Finally, the southern pincer was stopped by Soviet tank reserves, while the northern pincer was taken in the rear by a well-prepared Soviet counteroffensive. The Red Army took the initiative, and never lost it thereafter.
Most of the rest of the war was marked by carefully planned Soviet offensives, never quite where the Germans expected them. The German responses were frequently strong and effective, and often the Germans were able to cut off and destroy Soviet spearheads, but when each offensive was over the Soviets were in a better position. The initiative also allowed the Soviets to economize on manpower, which was becoming increasingly scarce, by knowing which parts of the front were going to be quiet, and manning these with "fortified zones" heavy on machine guns and artillery, and light on soldiers.
The Kursk offensive was complicated by the Western Allies. First, the flow of war supplies to the Soviets had turned into a torrent. Second, the Allied air forces had stepped up their strategic bombing campaign, forcing the German air force to defend the homeland. During the Kursk battle, more German aircraft were lost over Germany than over the battlefield. Third, the Allies landed in Sicily, forcing the Germans to withdraw forces to face the British and Americans there. The Germans realized that Sicily could not be held, and carefully evacuated it. The Allies consistently put some pressure on the rearguard, but overall the campaign was done on the German schedule. The Allies landed in Italy itself shortly thereafter, causing Italy to leave the war. This was done in incompetent fashion, so the Germans were able to disarm most Italian troops and occupy the peninsula, but it still changed Italy from an Axis asset to a drain on German resources. Slogging up the Italian boot was long, painful work, and the Germans were able to defend with relatively few troops, but it was still another commitment and another threat. The Allied attempt to invade at Anzio was not an immediate success, but it lengthened the line and forced the Germans to consider invasions at other points. Eventually, Allied air forces operated out of Italy to bomb Axis economic targets in the Southern Mediterranean.
In the Pacific, the Allies slowly clawed their way up the Solomon islands in the general direction of the Philippines. There were no great naval battles, but in the ones that did occur the Americans showed improved tactics. The Japanese had prepared another group of carrier planes and pilots, and threw them away by using them as land-based air in a series of ineffective strikes against the American landings. The American carrier forces conducted raids as they built up their strength. Near the end of the year, Pacific Fleet had reached critical strength: no conceivable Japanese defenses were likely to defeat it. It struck at Tarawa in the Gilbert islands, and began the long trek to Tokyo. The standard Pacific Fleet practice was to attack each island group in turn, take a few large and convenient islands as bases, destroy the aircraft and watercraft on the other islands, and let the Japanese troops starve. This relied on the invincibility of Pacific Fleet, as each attack had to be planned on the assumption that the Japanese would commit everything they had in the defense of an island chain. At this point, strategy was no longer an issue in the Central Pacific, as the United States Navy was going to do what it was going to do, and Japanese resistance would affect nothing but the details.
At the end of 1943, the remaining course of the war was fairly apparent. The Soviet Union would continue to defeat the Axis on their front; they were getting very close to the point where further advances would conquer some of the smaller Axis powers, thereby further weakening the Axis. The Western Allies would continue their air offensives, which had debatable effect on war production but forced the Germans to use large numbers of fighters and anti-aircraft guns to defend themselves. They would further engage the Germans wherever possible, both in Italy and, soon, in France. In the Pacific, the Allies would continue the advance on Japan, regardless of what the Japanese might do.
The major difference between this war, compared to many other coalition- based wars, is that this is how it turned out. The natural grand strategic outcome in a war like this is that victorious partners fall out with each other before the military conclusion, as each power in a war has somewhat different goals. This is particularly prominent in cases where co-belligerents have vastly different interests, such as the Communist Soviets and the democratic capitalist Western Allies. Germany should have been able to surrender to the Western Allies on favorable terms, either making peace with the Soviet Union or joining with former enemies to attack it. Stalin was painfully aware of this, and was afraid of this for the duration of the war, wanting to see Germany broken as a major power. However, the utter diplomatic and moral bankruptcy of Nazi Germany prevented this. Even before the Allies found the first concentration camps, Germany was considered uncivilized, and both the Americans and British were determined that Nazi Germany was not going to survive the war. The only possible hope for Germany was a coup to remove the Nazis; this did not happen, was unlikely to happen, and would not have been completely successful anyway. The Western Allies were not going to accept a negotiated peace that did not, for example, include Germany disarmed and under Allied military government. This stands in stark contrast to the end of the First World War. The Versailles treaty under which Germany surrendered was considered extremely harsh, but left Germany more or less intact and sovereign, with a drastically reduced army and navy. The logical conclusion is that Hitler was considerably less adept at diplomacy than Kaiser Wilhelm.
In the Pacific, the natural course of events would be that Japan would accept defeat before total conquest, and offer an acceptable deal. The Japanese could not hope for a falling-out among their enemies, since the United States alone was quite sufficient to utterly defeat them. The United States was not interested in only partially defeating Japan, however, but was determined to obliterate the system under which the Japanese waged war. The full extent of Japanese atrocities was not known until after the war, but the Japanese already had a reputation as inhuman enemies to be exterminated. While some of this was due to racism, most was due to Japanese actions against civilians and prisoners. Further, the Japanese were convinced that they enjoyed divine favor and protection, and that the gods would simply not allow them to be defeated if they fought with all their might. There was even a faint element of realism: Japanese strategy from the start had been based on the concept of exhausting the American will to fight before Japan had been too badly defeated, and that strategy could still work. However, the Japanese leaders were mostly out of touch with reality, and had no idea they'd been defeated.
Go backward to The First Repulses
Go forward to Struggles Against Defeat
All contents of these pages Copyright 1997, 1998 by David H. Thornley.