And so, for the German Army operating on the Eastern Front, 1943 was ending with an outlook as gloomy as that of
1942. There had been no new Stalingrad but between Kursk and Zhitomir the German resistance was on the verge of a breakdown. Since July, they had lost
104,000 men, half of these wounded. A remarkable inconsistency in the figures published at this time was revealed when the Russians claimed 900,000 of the enemy had been killed and 1,700,000 wounded in this same period. More remarkable still was that on November 6, Stalin made a statement to the effect that thd Germans had lost four million men in the past year. If this had been remotely true, the war would have been over.
It is undeniable, however, that the remorseless attacks of the Red Army were
Inexorably flattening the German armies along a 1,250-mile front.
Hence the growing pessimism in the German Army among the generals and chiefs-of-staff. In the preceding spring Field-Marshal von Manstein was able to hope that, if there were a reform of the high command, the Wehrmacht could still draw even. Six months later, when Lieutenant-General von Choltitz, acting commander of XLVIII Panzer Corps, spoke to his chief-of-staff, Mellenthin, it was not about drawing the game, or even of stalemate. According to the latter, Choltitz, as if in a vision, described the situation as waves of Soviet troops pouring over every breakwater Germany could contrive, possibly reaching Germany herself. Mellenthin thought Choltitz unduly pessimistic.
Thus on that day 86 of the 278 German divisions deployed between Rhodes and Narvik were unavailable for the Eastern Front and these included nine of the 42 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions.
That same autumn General Guderian, convinced of the need for a change in the high command, went to G. H.Q.:
'T went to see Jodi, to whom I submitted my proposals for a reorganisation of the Supreme Command: the Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff would con-
Trol the actual conduct of operations, while Hitler would be limited to his proper field of activities, supreme control of the political situation and of the highest war strategy. After I had expounded my ideas at length and in detail Jodi replied laconically: 'Do you know of a better supreme commander than Adolf Hitler?’ His expression had remained impassive as he said this, and his whole manner was one of icy disapproval. In view of his attitude I put my papers back in my briefcase and left the room.”
In the Pacific the year 1943 was marked, as far as Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur were concerned, by a series of limited offensives which, whilst gradually wearing down the Japanese forces, were to give the Americans and their Australian allies the necessary bases for the decisive offensive of 1944. The objective of this latter offensive was the complete and final destruction of the Japanese military machine. No more than with the Germans were the Washington political and military leaders prepared to accept, with or without Tojo, anything less than Japan’s total and unconditional surrender.
Any change of opinion over these radical aims would have aroused the opposition of the American public. When he held supreme command, Mussolini several times complained that his fellow citizens did not whole-heartedly support him in his war effort. The war against Japan was deeply felt by the American people and, in Churchill’s entourage, during the conferences which took him across the Atlantic, it was often noticed that the reconquest of some obscure copra island in the far corner of the Pacific raised as much enthusiasm in New York and Washington as did a whole battle won in Africa or Italy. The White House and the Pentagon had to take thesefeelings into account.
Along with the concern shown by Roosevelt and Hopkins for the U. S.S. R., a concern which caused them to urge the opening of a second front, there was also the fact that the Americans did not look favourably on their hero MacArthur being kept short of men and materiel whilst in Europe U. S. forces stood idle on the wrong side of the Channel. In the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff Committee, that was the sentiment of the rugged Admiral Ernest J. King; instead of giving complete and immediate support to the principle of "Germany first’’, the centre of gravity of American power should be shifted over to the Pacific. To forestall this reversal of strategy the President and General Marshall were therefore constrained to set in motion Operation "Round-up”, which was to become "Overlord”.
On the ways to get to Tokyo and the means to be employed there was, to put it mildly, lively discussion between Admirals King and Nimitz on the one side and General MacArthur on the other. This is not surprising, as each of these leaders was a man of strong character and not given to compromise solutions of which his conscience would not approve.
It fell to General Marshall to pronounce judgement on their arguments and, in the last resort, to impose a solution. We shall see under what circumstances he did this, but let us say at once that it was done with both authority and a sense of opportunity.
World History
