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Invasion Pearl Harbor:
Strike in All Directions
Japanese Perspective
T
hough daring, the Japanese
air raid on Pearl Harbor on 7
December 1941 didn’t work to
prevent the Americans from rebuilding
there and then using that base as the
jump-off point for their counteroffensive
across the Pacific. In the attack, the
US lost five battleships sunk and three
others badly damaged, while 18 other
warships were also sunk or damaged
and some 300 aircraft were destroyed.
Over 2,000 US military personnel and
civilians were killed, with over 1,000
more seriously wounded. In return, the
Japanese lost only 29 planes, five midget
submarines and one fleet submarine.
Their victory seemed complete, but
that balance sheet was soon revealed
to have been decisively misleading.
Only one thing could actually have
made Oahu and Pearl Harbor useless
The invaders: Japanese SNLF infantry on parade
6 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
to the Americans: the seizure and
occupation of the island by a Japanese
ground force. And though, immediately
after the air raid, the US Army went
on full alert to defend the island from
seemingly imminent invasion, no
such effort followed up the air raids.
The 360 Japanese planes that
attacked that day, though successful in
destroying US ships and planes, failed
to do what Japanese soldiers of their
regular army or elite SNLF (Special
Naval Landing Forces) could’ve done:
take and hold Oahu. SNLF units, of
course, did succeed in similar-sized
amphibious operations in the invasions
of the Dutch East Indies in early 1942;
so it’s certainly possible such a unit,
perhaps together with a regular army
formation of about the same size,
could’ve been similarly well used in
an amphibious invasion of Oahu.
Even though Japanese planners
by
Adrian McGrath & Ty Bomba
considered the historic air-raid-only
operation a high-risk affair, and rightly
so, it had little chance itself of provid-
ing a knockout blow. Even if the oil
storage tanks and the docks had been
destroyed (as has since been much
discussed by historians), and even if
the US aircraft carriers in the Pacific
had all been sunk, the Americans could
have and would have continued the
war. The US still had three carriers in
the Atlantic that could’ve been moved
to the Pacific, and production of new
carriers would’ve no doubt then have
been given even higher priority.
Even if the Japanese had accom-
plished the best possible results from
their air raid, then, it still wouldn’t have
knocked the US out of the war. Had
the Japanese been able to secure Oahu
as an imperial base, however, they
would thereby have at least set back the
American counterattack for the longest
time possible — putting it perhaps as
much as a year or two off its historic
time track. The start point for the US
counteroffensive would had to have
been California. Further, once operat-
ing from Oahu, it’s not impossible to
imagine the Japanese could’ve then also
launched carrier-based air raids on the
US west coast and the Panama Canal.
What’s certain is, had the Americans
lost Oahu in 1941, they would’ve had
to retake that island before moving
anywhere west of it across the Pacific
toward Japan. Whatever the details
involved, the loss of Oahu would’ve been
catastrophic in its effect on the historic
course of the US war effort. Since the
potential reward was so great for the
Japanese if they captured Oahu, then,
it’s difficult to understand why their
military, which was already taking a risk
with an air-raid-only operation, didn’t
also attempt an amphibious invasion in
an move similar to the one they eventu-
ally planned for Midway Island in 1942.
There had been a few Japanese
officers who supported the idea of an
all-out attack on Hawaii, including
an amphibious invasion, during the
planning run-up in 1941. The most
distinguished of them was Com. Minoru
Genda, who was air operations officer
for Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, the
line officer in charge of the actual strike
group. Genda was generally regarded as
the best naval air officer in the Imperial
Japanese Navy, and he was the true
mastermind of the Pearl Harbor raid,
which he developed in consultation with
Combined Fleet Commander Isoroku
Yamamoto. It was Genda who first
called for such elements to be included
in the air attack as: maintaining the
element of surprise before the attack,
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 7
making the US carriers the main targets,
using a maximum number of Japanese
carriers (even at the cost of some
efficiency in the other operations as,
for example, in the Dutch East Indies),
attacking with four types of warplanes
for maximum tactical flexibility, and
striking heavily at US ground-based
aircraft as well as the US fleet.
Clearly, Genda was prepared to
take great risks for great returns. In
his view, if the Americans lost Oahu
to an invasion, not only would their
resultant strategic position be terrible
defensively, the Japanese would also be
in an excellent position to go farther.
He realized a Japanese-controlled
Oahu would mean, essentially, Japan
effectively controlled the entire northern
and central Pacific, at least when
accomplished in conjunction with their
other planned operations. In Genda’s
opinion, an amphibious invasion the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, and other would’ve been precarious at best.
force of 10,000 to 15,000 elite Japanese islands in the push south, which were to Adm. Yamamoto himself was mostly
troops could take Oahu, assuming the occur simultaneously with the Hawaii against a ground invasion, simply based
preparatory air attack achieved its goals. operation. Moreover, even if a Japanese on the consideration of the already
Despite Genda’s great credibility, his landing force managed to secure over-stretched resources available to
idea for an amphibious invasion of Oahu all of Oahu, by Genda’s own further him at the start of the war. His attitude
was turned down for several reasons. calculations, it would then have taken in turn led the loyal Genda to fall into
First, it was seen as simply too risky. It an average of two supply ships arriving step. Note, however, Yamamoto was
would be difficult to maintain surprise there each day in order to maintain the “mostly” against the idea of a ground
long enough to get the first aerial attack- garrison. Those supply ships would’ve invasion. That’s because he understood
ers launched from their carriers, much had to sail directly from Japan, or from it was — scarce resources aside — an
less carry out a day-long invasion land- other large bases that were as far away. excellent idea. He calculated that, in the
ing. Additionally, troops and transport Such a line of communication, unavoid- longer run, Japan would inevitably be
ships were needed for the invasions of ably stretching across half the Pacific, defeated by the greater industrial, demo-
graphic and military might of the United
States. He therefore believed the overall
The Midway Connection strategy Japan had to adopt to win such
a lopsided conflict was one based on the
In the decades after World War II, the common interpretation offered by American old samurai principle for fighting while
historians was it had only been Gen. James “Jimmy” Doolittle’s 18 April 1942 raid on Tokyo outnumbered in individual combat:
that finally crystallized in the Japanese high command the intent to invade and occupy the happo yabure (strike in all directions).
Hawaiian Islands, thereby widening the protective buffer zone between the edge of American According to the strategy of happo
power and the home islands. We now know, however, that effort, which culminated in the yabure, if a person is surrounded by
US triumph in the Battle of Midway in June of that same year, was only the last in a string enemies in numbers precluding a
of imperial plans stretching all the way back to 1909. Further, even just within the context of conventional approach, he should react
Japan’s World War II planning (as discussed in the main article), we also know Yamamoto by striking as swiftly and unceasingly as
had resolved on a quick-as-possible return to Hawaii as early as 8 December 1941. possible in multiple directions. In practi-
Indeed, the capture of Midway was to have only been the first step ashore in a cal terms that meant a series of swiftly
multi-stage Japanese island hopping campaign — all conducted under the codename sequenced blows emanating from all
“Eastern Operation” — which would likely have resembled a mirror image of the around Japan’s strategic perimeter in
advance the Allies began conducting in the Solomon Islands later that same year. That the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Those
is, amphibious, carrier-supported strikes and landings were to have been made first, strikes were then to be just as quickly
in order to secure airfields for land-based aircraft. Those land-based planes would followed by a Japanese diplomatic
then have provided the stronger air cover necessary to allow further amphibious and effort to end the war on favorable terms
naval moves eastward along the chain of the Hawaiian archipelago. It was all to have before their enemies could regain
culminated in the complete conquest of all the islands no later than September 1943. their balance and counterattack.
That ultimate Japanese plan — to be fair, due to the impetus provided by Doolittle’s That less than wholehearted com-
raid — was fleshed out in considerable detail. Its ground component was to have mitment to the air-raid-only plan on
been an all-army affair, with an order of battle centered on the 2nd, 7th and 53rd Infantry the part of Yamamoto left an opening
Divisions, reinforced by an independent engineer and tank regiment (one each). for two officers junior to Genda (a Capt.
Another connection between the air raid on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway Kuroshima and a Comm. Watanabe) to
comes from the fact the Japanese wargamed both operations prior to each one’s execution.
The story of the Japanese Midway wargame is, again, well known to readers of American
military history: Yamamoto chose to ignore the results of that game — in which he lost
almost his entire carrier force — and went ahead with the plan anyway, only to lose almost
his entire carrier force in reality. Perhaps the admiral can be at least somewhat forgiven
on that score, though, when it’s recalled the earlier Pearl Harbor wargame had predicted
dire losses for the Japanese, none of which had come true. It had been the harsh outcome
of the earlier wargame, however, that had finally convinced Yamamoto to give up the
invasion plan for Oahu. Having missed that golden opportunity based on one wargame’s
inauspicious outcome, he wasn’t about to do so again on that same seemingly faulty basis.
Of course, the factor neither of the Japanese wargames had properly handled was
that of surprise. During the Hawaiian operation, the Japanese pilots expected they
would be flying into a situation in which the American forces they were attacking were
already aware a state of war existed between their two nations. That turned out not to
be the case, however, because the delivery of the Japanese declaration of war had been
delayed by their embassy in Washington. Thus the American surprise on 7 December
wasn’t just partial or momentary; it was total. Six months later at Midway, the Japanese
had no reason to suspect their opponents knew, due to the US Navy’s successful MAGIC
code-breaking operation, that they were returning to Hawaii. The decisive element in both
battles, then — which the Japanese had in abundance at Pearl Harbor but not at all at
Midway — was surprise. As the 4th century Roman strategist Vegetius wrote: “In war,
valor is more useful than strength of arms, but even greater than valor is timing.”   ★
Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi,
commander of the Oahu strike

8 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

work further on the idea. Their study led
them to believe such an operation stood
a good chance of success, but only if
launched in tandem with the air raid in
order to gain the maximum advantage
from surprise. Beyond that, they thought
the next critical step would be for the
invaders to get off the landing beaches
and into the interior as quickly as pos-
sible, before the defending US ground
force could gain its footing, and there
fight a decisive battle of annihilation.
At Imperial Army Headquarters,
Yamamoto’s happo yabure was derisively
referred to as “Combined Fleet adven-
turism.” That wasn’t surprising, and
came as no shock to Yamamoto, since he
knew most in the army high command
had long considered any deflection of
effort away from mainland Asia to be
a waste of resources. Matters finally
came to a head during the wargaming
Japanese soldiers eating hurriedly before
going ashore in an amphibious invasion
of the Hawaii operation, which was held
in the Army War College auditorium
from 5 through 17 September 1941.
Those wargames were well attended
by officers from both services, and
debate — at times spilling over into
heated argument — peaked on 13
September. On that day the latest
round of gaming indicated, even
when just using the more conservative
air-raid-only scheme, the Japanese had
to expect to lose at least two aircraft
carriers sunk in their strike group,
with likely another two damaged,
perhaps heavily, along with 127 of their
planes destroyed. Yamamoto watched
the wargamers and listened to their
arguments in silence for a long while.
Finally, he calmly instructed Vice Adm.
Seiichi Ito, vice chief of the navy general
staff and in overall charge of the games,
that planning should henceforth go
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 9
ahead without further consideration
of an amphibious landing. That was
his diplomatic way of announcing his
mind was fully and finally made up.
One episode that might still have
brought on a last-minute decision to
invade came on 17 November, when Lt.
Comm. Suguru Suzuki returned from
a one-week stay aboard a Japanese
merchant vessel anchored in Honolulu
harbor. (He hadn’t actually gotten
ashore because the docked vessel
was kept under guard by US Marines;
however, Japanese consular officials
managed to smuggle aboard numerous
intelligence reports.) On the basis of
what he saw, read, and was told while
there, Suzuki offered the conclusion the
US defense was actually so vulnerable
and disorganized only two Japanese
divisions would be needed to secure not
just Oahu but the entire island chain.
 He also mentioned the consular
officials believed many of the islands’
160,000 ethnic-Japanese residents
would “actively cooperate” with the
operation. (About 40,000 of them were
issei — born in Japan, and the total
ethnic-Japanese population made
up about 40 percent of the overall
Hawaiian populace at the time.)
Suzuki gave his report in person to
Matome Ugaki, Yamamoto’s chief of
staff. Ugaki, in turn, remained sensitive
to the intense argumentation that had
only recently been worked through at
the War College. He therefore declined
to threaten that heatedly achieved con-
sensus: he neither forwarded Suzuki’s
written report to his boss, nor did he
arrange for the commander to make any
further personal presentations of it.
The nascent Japanese plan to invade,
and not merely raid, Pearl Harbor
The defenders: US Navy commanders on Oahu prior to the attack was thus finally and fully rejected. It
nevertheless remains one of the great
“what-ifs” of World War II, and it gained
that status long before the end of the
war. That is, on 8 December 1941, when
the reports came into Yamamoto’s head-
quarters of the stunning success of the
air raid, coupled with what appeared to
be the complete strategic surprise — not
just tactical — gained over the
Americans, he was thunderstruck. He
went to Genda and admitted he’d been
wrong to turn away from the invasion
scheme. Further, he instructed Genda
to begin planning for such an invasion,
which was to be launched “at the earliest
opportunity” (which idea, of course,
was finally ended with the Japanese
defeat at Midway six months later).

US Perspective

The US Army command on Oahu

late in 1941 was more concerned about
the possibility of locally originating
sabotage than with invasion. In those
officers’ views, Oahu was amply
defended against all outside attack, and
some considered it to be an unassailable
fortress. That was because there were
always major ships in port, including
aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers.
Further, there were several airfields on
the island, including Wheeler, Hickam,
and Bellows, which held a multitude of
warplanes, with further aerial reinforce-
ments arriving all the time. (There were
in fact over 300 US warplanes on Oahu,
and some brand new B-17s actually
arrived during the Japanese attack.)
There were also two divisions of infantry
on the island along with four battalions
of Marines. Further, there were shore

10 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

batteries that could fire on attacking
enemy vessels. On paper, the island
was indeed a fortress with over 25,000
defenders. In reality, however, there were
serious weaknesses in the defense.
As it turned out, of course, the US
warships, rather than making a sortie
in strength to become an active part of
that defense, were instead turned into
so many ‘sitting ducks’ when they were
hit at anchor unprepared to fight.
In addition to the powerful surface
The beaches: US planes fly above Waikiki Beach
units, there were also 21 US submarines
operating out of Pearl Harbor on the
date of the attack. Indeed, the presence
of those boats was another cautionary
given by the Japanese officers who
opposed the invasion scheme. They
feared so many submarines immediately
set loose into the beachhead area, and
also free to search out the carrier
strike group, couldn’t help but score
significant kills. Even more, the moon
on 7 December was just one day off full
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 11
(waning Gibbous); so the Americans
could’ve pressed their attacks at night.
As it turned out, however, 11 of
Pearl’s 21 boats were stateside for repair
and overhaul on the day of the attack.
Even more, though we can never know
for certain about the performance the
remainder would’ve turned in against
a Japanese invasion, we can surmise a
likely outcome based on what happened
in a similar situation in the Philippines
around the same time. In Manila
there were 29 submarines that, by 22
December, managed to make 45 sepa-
rate attacks in and around the Japanese
landing sites on Luzon. That effort
produced only three sinkings, all mer-
chantmen. The effort’s overall failure was
later analyzed to have been due to the
submariners’ inexperience, poor tactical
intelligence, and the legendarily faulty
early-war US torpedoes. (That last prob-
lem wasn’t technologically solved until
late in 1943.) Those were all problems
that would’ve also inescapably bedeviled
US submarines operating out of Pearl
Harbor in the face of an invasion there.
Of course, the ultimately complicat-
ing factor for the Japanese, at least on
the naval side of the equation, would’ve
come from the fact the three US aircraft
carriers usually at Pearl Harbor were
elsewhere. Upon learning of an invasion
on Oahu, they could’ve soon been
poised to attack either the Japanese
fleet or aid the US ground defense.
Along the coast itself, or at least
along the most invasion-favorable
stretch of the south shore between Koko
Head and Barber’s Point, the otherwise
powerful US shore batteries were
immobile and only faced south. Even
more, the men manning them weren’t
fully trained or otherwise prepared
for war, and the positions themselves
were susceptible to aerial attack
(because they lacked fortified roofs).
The US ground-based aircraft on
Oahu could’ve been valuable in aerial
combat, and could’ve also threatened
serious harm to any amphibious
invaders. That could only have
happened, however, if the Japanese
failed to knock them out in the initial
air strikes prior to the invasion.
Thus, with most ships in the US
fleet sunk, damaged, or otherwise
Somewhere in the Pacific: Japanese infantry
12 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
jammed up in port, the immobile shore
guns either bombed or avoided by the
invaders simply landing in an area
away from them, and ground-based air
power removed by the initial Japanese
raids, that left only the US Army
infantry and Marines immediately
available to defend the island.
The two-division US Army force on
Oahu was large but wasn’t prepared for
war. The 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions
had only been established on 1 October
1941, and many of the soldiers hadn’t
yet been fully equipped or completely
trained. (Historically, the 24th didn’t
finish its training and organization
period until the spring of 1944, while
the 25th wasn’t committed to combat
until December 1942.) Their field
artillery units weren’t functional on 7
December. Because of that complete
lack of combat experience, coupled
with the fact unit-training hadn’t
yet gotten above battalion-level, it’s
certain there would’ve been massive
confusion and indecision among the
officers as well as in the ranks. As there
was historically even when there was
no invasion, the Marines, traditionally
more determined — even though they
were equally as green as their Army
compatriots — might’ve been expected
to put in a better showing; however,
there were relatively few of them and
they also lacked all organization and
unit-training above battalion level.
What If?
What would have happened
had the Japanese launched an
amphibious assault on Oahu after the
air raid on 7 December? Of course,
no one can know for sure. Given the
historic air raid was a tactical success,
it’s certainly possible — if not entirely
probable — that a ground assault
would’ve also shared that success.
In general, we can see that, for the
Japanese ground force to succeed,
their naval airpower would have to
destroy the US fleet in port, eliminate
the US planes on the ground, and
then provide combat air support to
the subsequent ground attack. The
Japanese ground force would’ve in
turn had to capture or neutralize the
American airfields on the island, most
likely seize Honolulu and, of course, take
or otherwise neutralize Pearl Harbor.
Given that the Japanese fleet
approached the Hawaiian Islands from
the north and west (and really had no
other option due to their overarching
need to maintain surprise), coupled with
the US fortifications along the south
coast and the generally too-steep beach
gradients of the west coast, the invasion
would’ve likely come ashore on the
north or east coasts. On the north coast
in December the surf is higher than 15
feet 57 percent of the time. While not
rendering that area absolutely unusable,
it was far riskier than the east coast
where, particularly in well-sheltered
Kaneohe Bay, the surf was much gentler.
Once ashore, the task of the Japanese
would’ve been to get across the coastal
mountains and into the vital American
infrastructure of the flat interior. Taking
Honolulu would’ve been particu-
larly important, because — in the exact
opposite of what otherwise might be
expected — all US military communica-
tions on the island ran through civilian
facilities in that city. Beyond that, it
would’ve been critical to seize or other-
wise neutralize the airfields, thus block-
ing that potential route of US resupply
(and opening it for themselves).
The American forces would’ve
had to try to hold out by denying
the invader the airfields and the
naval base, while hoping US carriers
and submarines at sea either sank
or chased away the Japanese fleet.
Resupply could’ve been expected to
start to become critical for both sides
after no more than about three days
of combat. The longer it would take
for the Japanese to seize the entire
island, or at least the aforementioned
critical points on it, the better chance
the Americans would’ve had to win.
Again, though we can never know
for sure such a campaign’s outcome,
history does provide another example of
a similar one fought historically around
the same time, though on a smaller
scale: the US defense of Wake Island.
There a force of about 500 US personnel,
mostly Marines, at first stoutly resisted
a Japanese invasion conducted with
about 1,000 men. At squad and platoon
levels, the US defense was everything
coupled with official Federal policies
that were at least “racialist,” Oahu would I n t r o d u c i n g
no doubt have been given a large con-
stabulary garrison, with most or all the the Decision Games
Japanese — no matter where they’d been

Folio
that could’ve been hoped for: aggressive, born — moved to internment camps on
determined and resolute. At every one or another of the islands or even the

level above that, however, on both land
and sea, it was marked by command
indecision and paralysis, poor to
non-existent communication, lack of
an overall plan and general confusion.
Coupled with the Japanese determina-
tion shown there — for instance, they
crashed their destroyer-transports on
shore when it proved too difficult to
get their small boats safely in — we can
see the outcome of combat on Oahu
would’ve been anything but certain.
Another potentially important
factor, coming from the civilian society
on Oahu, would’ve manifested itself
had any number of Issei risen in
support of an invasion. While posing
little direct military threat to US
forces, such a development would’ve
certainly and completely poisoned
the relations between them and all the
US mainland. The economic, strategic
and social disruption from that would’ve
been immense and long lasting over
the years and decades that followed.
In the final analysis, then, though the
impediments to a Japanese landing’s vic-
tory on Oahu would’ve been numerous,
the potential rewards also outweighed
the risks. From a purely strategic
perspective, the only truly disastrous
outcome for the Japanese would’ve
occurred had their aircraft carriers been
sunk in a counterattack by US carriers
or submarines. Failing that extreme
outcome, even had the Japanese landing
force been defeated — or if it simply had
to be abandoned once ashore — the
gains for the Japanese would still
have been great. In return for risking
the equivalent of two regiments, they
likely would’ve bought themselves up
Game
Series
The Folio Game Series provides
dozens of games using the same
eight-page Standard rules
(Musket & Saber for 19th century battles,
Fire & Movement for WWII and
Modern battles) with a short Exclusive
rules sheet for each individual game to
capture the unique aspects of each battle.
Each game can be played in about 90
minutes, allowing for multiple games to
be played in an afternoon or evening.
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ethnic-Japanese on the island, both
during and after the campaign. During
the campaign, it would’ve worked to
further slow and confuse US command-
control. Particularly in the urban areas,
it’s easy to imagine the distrust (and
likely acts of retribution) that would’ve
to two years more to prepare for the US
onslaught west of Hawaii. If nothing
else, that time could’ve been well put below
to use in China or India, which in turn SAIPAN: Conquest of the Marianas
would’ve freed many more Japanese 1/10th actual size
forces for the defense of the homeland. see back cover for full list of titles
It would seem, then, the ultimate SAIPAN
WORLD WAR

overarched and slowed all American element in this matter was surprise, and
Conquest of II BATTLES
the Marian
as FOLIO GAM
Saipan was a
critical objective E SERIES
Navy’s “island in the
hopping” campaign US
Pacific; its two in the
airfi
for heavy bombers.elds were suitable
divisions were Hence three
scheduled to US

operations once any kind of ad hoc history shows the Japanese had that in
on 15 June 1944, invade Saipan
supported by

Saipan
two-dozen battleships nearly
bombardment that had begun
two days before. a
30,000 fanatic More than
Japanese were
on the island, entrenched
dug into caves
formidable defensive and other
battle for Saipan positions. The
proved to be
fiercest battles one of the
of the Pacific
deadliest up to
that time for
War, and the
both sides. Conquest of the
Maria nas

guerrilla group made its first attack. abundance in December 1941.  ✪

Saipan utilizes
the
combat system new Fire & Movement
that’s designed
can augment so players
their units with
fire” during the “support
course of the
naval bombardment turn. From
can receive support to bazookas, units
positions and to engage enemy
formations, allowing
to develop at combat
all levels. A single
battalion, for engineer
example — perhaps
by flamethrowers supported
assault a lone — could be tasked

After the campaign — assuming the

enemy to
defending a plateau. infantry regiment
underway, however, As its attack gets
may suddenly the engineer
come under fi battalion
mortars. More re from enemy
support will be
take the plateau, needed to
but assets are
limited.
In Saipan the
attritional design
Combat Results of the new
Table simulates
nature of the the true
battles in the
are typically two-sided Pacific. Units

US stayed in possession of the island or SOURCES

can incur casualties, formations that
the realities of accurately replicating
combat and the
losses sustained high
by
the actual fighting both sides during
the battle is thus on Saipan. Winning
a matter of maneuver,
firepower and
asset management.

Game Conten
ts:

retook it later — we can also imagine

• 17 x 22” (43
x 56 cm) terrain
• 80 die-cut counters map
• One Standard
• One Exclusive
Rules booklet
for this series Saipan
Rules booklet
for this title
PLAYERS
2

LEVEL II III X XX XXX

BATTALION

Smith, Carl. Pearl Harbor 1941: The Day of Infamy.

the longer-term outcome as a further
HEX SCALE
mi (536 m)
PLAYING TIME
1-2 hrs
Each counter represents
formation from among an individual historical

Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing, Ltd., 1999.

COMPLEXITY
that fought for Saipan, the Japanese and US forces •••••
LOW
1611 including armor
marine battalions,
engineers, amtracs
regiments,
SOLITAIRE Minutes to learn.
and more. •••••
HIGH Quick to play.
Historically Accurat

drag on the overall US war effort being

A FOLIO SERIES
A product of
Copyright ©
GAME
Decision Games, e.
2010. All Rights Inc.

Stephan, John J.
Reserved.

Copyright ©
2010, Decision
Games, Inc. All
Rights
www.decisiongameReserved. Made & Printed

Hawaii Under the Rising Sun:

s.com in U.S.A.

directed from Oahu. That is, given the Japan’s Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor.
broadly accepted racism of the day Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1984.
(on both sides of the racial divide),

Tokyo’s man P.O. Box 21598 | Bakersfield, CA 93390-1598

(661) 587-9633 phone | (661) 587-5031 fax
in Washington:
www.decisiongames.com
Ambassador Admiral
Nomura and his staff

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 13

Design Corner
Joseph Miranda
Invasion
Pearl Harbor
Invasion Pearl Harbor, designed by
Adrian McGrath & Chris Smith, deals
with a fascinating historical “what
if.” That is, what if a Japanese ground
force had invaded Oahu at the time
of their historic carrier air attack on 7
December 1941? The “what if” aspect
always creates challenges for a designer.
One of the things the designer has to
do in a case like this is determine a point
of view. Since the battle being modeled
didn’t actually occur, there have to be
some basic assumptions made initially.
In Invasion Pearl Harbor, that means
taking a look at both sides’ ground
forces. Historically, the US Army was in
relatively poor shape at that time. The
divisions on the island had only recently
been created by splitting in two the
previous single division that had been
stationed there. Their artillery still hadn’t
been uncrated, and unit-training hadn’t
taken place above company level. So
the designers show American forces as,
essentially, nothing more than a mass
of rifle companies. Add to that the game
takes place over the three days imme-
diately following the devastating aerial
attack on Pearl Harbor, and you can see
how the US ground force representation
further reflects the element of surprise
as well as the historic breakdown
in American command control.
The Japanese have two elite, but
only regimental-sized, forces: a special
naval landing force (SNLF) and an
infantry regiment. Those units are
14 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
also infantry, since they wouldn’t have
been able to carry much in the way
of heavy weapons for the invasion.
The Japanese player has to select
an invasion beach, trading off ease of
landing (heavy versus light surf) versus
the distance to his main objectives
on the island. Looking at the order of
battle, you can see the Japanese are out-
numbered, but they have a distinct edge
in command control, being allowed to
move and fight within the American
turn cycle. The US player moves his
forces by randomly picking chits and
activating the corresponding sub-com-
mands. The Japanese player can choose
to interrupt that process at any time to
launch his ground force into action. That
shows the relative advantage of superior
command control in a simple manner.
Broadly, the Japanese are operating
inside what today would be called the
American player’s “OODA loop.” (That’s
US military jargon for the time it takes a
commander to “Observe, Orient, Decide
and Act” — or, in English, the time need-
ed for him to decide to do something,
give an order to get that thing done,
and then see it actually carried out.)
Another advantage for the Japanese
player is his ability to use gunfire sup-
port from battleships offshore, as well
as calling in air strikes from his carriers.
That involves the bigger picture. Both
the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) and
USN (US Navy) had aircraft carriers
operating in nearby waters. There’s a
sub-routine for players to engage each
other’s carriers, and that can have a
dramatic impact on the game. It would
also affect the bigger picture, since
the destruction of either side’s carriers
at the very opening of the Pacific war
would’ve had huge implications.
There are also some special rules.
The Japanese player can declare
“Banzai!” charges. Plus Japanese units
get “attack momentum” when they
advance after combat, allowing them
to attack again immediately. Again,
that reflects the two sides’ relative
differences in tactical proficiency and
command efficiency at that opening
stage of the war. If the Japanese get
rolling, they can tear up an entire US
line in one series of attacks. That might,
however, also leave them overextended
to such an extent that a US counterat-
tack can cut them up badly in return.
The Americans have battleship
row. Even though those USN battle-
wagons were sunk or damaged
at their moorings, they can still
fire their big guns. They can make
things hot for the Japanese.
The Japanese have to move quickly
in order to secure their objectives. The
idea is, even if they don’t capture the
island, they can still cause enough
damage to significantly alter the course
of the Pacific war in their nation’s favor.
Effectively, in the game Oahu becomes
an arena for both sides to fight what
could’ve been a decisive battle.  ✪
Invasion Pearl Harbor
Invasion Pearl Harbor: What If the Japanese Invaded? (IPH), To purchase the game that covers the battles featured
was designed by Adrian McGrath and Chris Smith and developed by Ty Bomba. in this issue send your name and address along with:
A low-to-intermediate complexity, strategic/operational-level,
alternative history wargame of the campaign that could’ve resulted $30 US Customers
had the Japanese decided to launch an amphibious invasion of Oahu at $36 Canadian Customers
the same time as their historic air raid. The game is intended for two $38 Overseas Customers
players, one commanding the Japanese and the other commanding the
US forces. The game system is focused so as to present the ground- All prices include postage for first class or airmail shipping.
commanders’ views of the campaign. Aero-naval operations — though CA residents add $1.98 sales tax. Send to:
important in play — are presented more abstractly than would be
the case in a design centered on those aspects of the campaign. Decision Games
Each hex on the 34x22 large-hex map equals one mile (1.62 ATTN: WaW Game Offer
km) from side to opposite side. Each game turn represents about PO Box 21598
four hours of daylight or an entire night. Playing pieces (176 iconic Bakersfield CA
counters) represent ground units of approximately company size, or 93390
individual aircraft carriers or battleships, or enough aircraft sorties
(about two to three dozen) needed to affect battlefield events at
this scale. The rules contain a little less than 11,000 words. Two
experienced players can finish a match in less than four hours.

BB Hiei
6

2
2

IJA-5
7

1 3

CV
Enterprise

2
3
USMC-1

US Army

1
The Greek Civil War, 1943−49
by Brian R. Train

Greek communists

16 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

G
reece was a deeply divided
country during the first half of
the 20th century. The population
of slightly over 7 million was overwhelm-
ingly rural, poor and illiterate. The
economy was mostly agricultural, but
the country was barely self-sufficient in
food. Social and economic development
was almost exclusively confined to the
two main urban centers of Athens and
Thessalonika. Politics were tumultuous.
Factors complicating the situation
included the aftermath of a disastrous
war against Turkey in 1921−23, the Great
Depression, regular intervention in
politics by the military, party factional-
ism, corruption and nepotism. The
system of government was technically
a constitutional monarchy until 1936,
when a right-wing dictatorship under
Ioannis Metaxas (with the connivance
of King George II, who’d been restored
in a fraudulent plebiscite) ended normal
political life. Martial law was declared,
and the Greek Communist Party was
made illegal and driven underground.
Of its membership of 14,000, over 2,000
were imprisoned or sent into exile.
Metaxas died in January 1941,
but the persecution of communists
continued. In the confusion surround-
ing the German invasion of April 1941,
many of the leaders of the Communist
Party escaped from prison and went
underground to organize resistance.
As in Yugoslavia, the secretive nature
and harsh discipline of the communist
movement made its members some
of the most effective guerrillas.
National People’s Liberation Army).
At about the same time, other armed
resistance groups sprang up. Most of
them were small and didn’t flourish,
with the exception of EDES (National
Republican Greek League), an organiza-
tion made up largely of former Army
officers and recruits from the Epirus
region in northwestern Greece.
The first of several British military
missions to Greece arrived at the end of
September 1942. They had three initial
objectives: 1) to establish networks
to help Allied soldiers who evaded
capture to escape to Egypt; 2) to create
espionage and intelligence networks
to monitor the movement of supplies
bound for the Afrikakorps through
Greece to the port of Athens; and 3) to
assist in guerrilla warfare and sabotage
to disrupt Axis supply networks and air-
fields, tie down occupation troops, and
generally interfere with the occupation.
Later, a fourth objective was
added: that of strategic deception.
Operation Animals, part of a larger plan
codenamed Operation Barclay, called for
increased levels of guerrilla activity in
the summer of 1943, intended to make
the Germans think the Allies would
invade southern Greece. It worked: 1st
Panzer Division and Rommel himself
were transferred to central Greece for
four critical weeks while the Allies invad-
ed Sicily. Similar activity was fostered in
the summer of 1944 as part of Operation
Zeppelin, another Allied deception
plan to distract the Germans from the
Allied landing in southern France.
British Special Operations
Executive (SOE) agents sent to Greece
contacted both ELAS and EDES, and
in November 1942 managed to destroy
the Gorgopotamos Bridge in central
Greece, putting the major railway to
Athens out of action for six weeks.
That would prove to be the greatest
single success of the SOE in Greece,
and the only time ELAS and EDES
cooperated in the same operation.
Both sides had a dilemma. By mid-
1943 it was apparent the Axis would lose
the war and, as Greece was one of the
countries on the outer fringe of

Occupied Greece

The Axis occupation of Greece got

off to a rough start. Most of the country
was occupied by the Italian Army, an
insult to the Greeks, who’d success-
fully resisted its invasion in the 1940
campaign. The Germans controlled
the major cities, western Macedonia,
Crete and some of the islands of the
Aegean, while Bulgaria occupied and
annexed eastern Macedonia and Thrace.
That autumn a famine began that
multiplied both the misery of the civilian
population and their will to resist.
The communists began to organize
a popular front, known by its Greek-
language acronym EAM (National
Liberation Front), which was composed
of several left-wing and socialist parties
but was controlled by the reds. By
early 1942 the communists, working
through EAM, started to bring together
the armed resistance under the banner
of ELAS (Greek-language acronym for

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 17

occupation, liberation was just a matter
of time. The communists, working
through EAM and ELAS, wanted to be
in military and political control of the
country when that day arrived. That
meant controlling or eliminating the
other resistance groups. The com-
munists had no interest in collaborating
with those other groups, yet they had to
consider the attitude of the government
of Great Britain, which was then the
only Allied power in the Mediterranean
that could help their resistance. Unlike
the majority of the Greek populace, the
British government was strongly pro-
monarchist. Greek King George II was
living safely in London, as he had from
1924 to 1935, and he was fully supportive
of the right-wing government-in-exile.
SOE planners mainly subscribed to
the idea the most effective resistance
fighters would come from the more radi-
cal elements of society. That was proving
to be the case in occupied Yugoslavia,
where the communist-dominated
partisans under Tito were outfighting
the royalist-dominated Chetniks. Based
on that supposition, SOE adopted a
conciliatory attitude toward ELAS and
supplied it with arms, ammunition, food
and money. In the fall of 1943, however,
the British became more supportive of
EDES, which thereafter received most
of the supplies. (It should be noted
the SOE supplied the Greek resistance
movement with a total of less than
Volunteer female communists receiving military training.
18 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
1,000 tons of arms and ammunition
during the entire war, which was a
small fraction of what was provided
to the Yugoslav partisan movement.)
On 8 September 1943, Italy sur-
rendered. Its 12 divisions and four
regiments occupying Greece and the
Dodecanese Islands were disarmed
and taken prisoner, mostly by the
Germans but some by ELAS units. Most
went quietly into captivity, but about
12,000 defected to the resistance. Most
notable in that group was the entire
24th Pinerolo Infantry Division, then
located in Thessaly. At first the unit was
to be used en masse to attack German
airfields in Larissa, but on 15 October
ELAS disarmed the Italians and took
their weapons for its own troops: over
12,000 rifles and other small arms
and 20 pieces of mountain artillery.
ELAS immediately accused the other
resistance groups of collaboration with
the enemy, and used the Italian weapons
to attack all rival units within reach of its
own bands. That marked the beginning
of the first round of the Greek Civil War.
For two weeks it appeared ELAS
might succeed in wiping out the compe-
tition; however, a German anti-guerrilla
operation intervened. Built around their
elite 1st Mountain Division, combined
with their usual harsh policies of reprisal
killings and deportations, another
famine, and the growing strength and
ability of collaborationist “security
battalions,” the Nazis soon had ELAS
maneuvering simply to try to save itself.
In the first two months of 1944, ELAS
resumed limited attacks against its
main rival EDES, but the Allied Military
Mission then forced an armistice by
which the two groups agreed to stop
fighting in return for more supplies.
ELAS had reduced EDES to less than
500 combatants, but their numbers
were soon built back up to several
thousand when they were joined by
the survivors of the other organiza-
tions along with recruits spurred
to join by the German reprisals.
Battle for Athens
The spring and summer of 1944
saw further maneuvers by EAM and
ELAS. A Free Greek Government,
republican and left-wing in character,
was created in the mountains in March
and presented itself as an alternative
to the government-in-exile. It was also
a front organization dominated by the
communists, but less obviously so than
the EAM. Soon there was unrest among
the free Greek ground and naval units
stationed in the Middle East and Italy, as
cadres of mutineers among them began
to defy the authority of the govern-
ment-in-exile in London. Those rebels
were disarmed by British troops in late
April. Over 8,000 mutinous troops were
imprisoned or sent to labor battalions,
while smaller units were reformed from
among the officers and men who’d
stayed loyal to the government-in-exile.
The two main new units were the 3rd
Mountain Brigade of about 3,000 men,
and the Sacred Squadron, an elite unit
of officers used as a raiding force in
the islands of the Mediterranean.
The government-in-exile realized
it was expedient to give a little, and in
the summer a Government of National
Unity, including six ministers affiliated
with EAM, was formed in Caserta, Italy.
The leaders of ELAS and EDES also
agreed to place their troops under the
command of Gen. Ronald Scobie, the
British officer detailed to command the
Allied forces sent to liberate Greece.
The Soviets entered Sofia, Bulgaria,
in September 1944 and installed a
client government there that promptly
declared war on Germany. It was
obvious to the Germans the time had
come for them to leave Greece or be
cut off by the advancing Red Army. The
occupation force in mainland Greece left
almost as quickly as they had come in
1941, though Crete remained occupied
until V-E Day in 1945. Resistance forces
moved quickly to occupy the resultant
vacuum and seize the weapons and
ammunition deliberately left behind by
the Germans in the hope the partisans
would use them against each other and
the Allies. British forces began landing
in the Peloponnese on 3 October 1944.
There were a few combat troops
(the 2nd Parachute Brigade and the
23rd Armored Brigade, both operating
as motorized infantry) and many
administrative, engineer and service
support troops. The latter were needed
to repair the extensive damage the
Germans had done to the infrastructure
and to distribute relief supplies to
the starving civilian population.
By the beginning of November, the
Germans had completely evacuated
mainland Greece. ELAS forces, by then
almost 50,000 strong and organized
into 10 divisions of 2,000 to 8,000 men
each, controlled the entire country
except for an EDES enclave in the
Epirus region and the two cities.
The Bulgarians had withdrawn on
25 October, to be used against the
Germans remaining in Yugoslavia and
Hungary, and had handed over control
of eastern Macedonia and Thrace to
ELAS. Disorder spread as old scores
were settled, and an extreme right-wing
organization known as “X” (Chi),
which had stayed mostly dormant in
Athens during the occupation, emerged
to claim considerable influence.
The ELAS leadership sensed there
was an opportunity. The British, for the
moment, were too weak to dominate
the situation militarily, and the political
situation was still too fluid for the
(nominally) restored national govern-
ment to assert its authority. The arrival
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 19
in Athens of 3rd Mountain Brigade and
the Sacred Squadron in mid-November,
and the intransigent attitude of the gov-
ernment, signaled to ELAS it was now
or never if they wanted to seize power.
During the last half of November
the six EAM ministers in the national
government resigned, and ELAS began
to maneuver its best troops into two
main formations: a southern group
of 18,000 men (consisting of the 2nd,
3rd and 13th ELAS Divisions) with the
mission of seizing Athens and Piraeus;
and a northern group of 23,000 men
(consisting of troops from the 1st, 8th, 6th,
9th, 10th and 11th ELAS Divisions), with
the multiple objectives of containing the
British troops in Thessalonika, prevent-
ing EDES from reinforcing Athens, and
then confining and eliminating EDES.
Meanwhile, Gen. Scobie had been
warned there would be trouble and had,
in late November, airlifted two brigades
of the 4th Indian Infantry Division from
Italy to Patras and Thessalonika.
The incident that sparked new civil
war was the refusal by ELAS to disarm
its National Guard (an organization it
had hastily created in mid-1944 out of
its reserves) and hand over the areas it
controlled to the National Civil Guard.
The latter was an even more hastily
organized paramilitary organization
staffed with government conscripts and
former security battalion troops. On 3
December a massive anti-government
demonstration in Athens was fired on
by police — or perhaps the police were
fired on first, what exactly happened has
never been established — and the sec-
ond round of the Greek Civil War began.
Civil War
In the north, 1st ELAS Division bottled
up the single British brigade group in
Thessalonika while the other five divi-
sions moved against EDES in the Epirus
region. In the south, 2nd ELAS Division
moved into Athens, soon followed by
the 13th, while the 3rd cut the road to the
port in Piraeus. The initial targets were
police stations, National Guard barracks
and government buildings. At first they
avoided combat with regular Greek and
British troops, but within a week they’d
begun to engage them sporadically.
Field Marshal Alexander, who arrived
in Athens on 11 December to assess the
situation, was worried enugh to divert
4thBritish Infantry Division, then in tran-
sit by sea from Italy to Egypt, to Piraeus.
ELAS forces were effective, at least at
first. Their tactics ranged from infiltra-
tion and ambush to company-sized
assaults supported by mortars and light
artillery. The British and Greek govern-
ment forces in Athens were hemmed
into smaller and smaller enclaves in
the core of the city, with less and less
ammunition and supplies. They had
no heavy armored vehicles and only
limited artillery, and while they had
air superiority they weren’t allowed to
Greek resistance fighters
20 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
use those aircraft inside the city itself.
The organizational and leadership
deficiencies of ELAS then began to tell
against them. The decision to seize
power had been taken hastily, and
the divisions proved unable to move
quickly and decisively against targets
likely to offer serious resistance. By
20 December the majority of the 4th
British Infantry Division had arrived
in Piraeus. With superior organiza-
tion and firepower, including air
and naval gun support, they cleared
the road to Athens by the 24th.
On Christmas Day, Winston
Churchill arrived in Athens to convene
a conference of major Greek political
leaders and representatives of the Allied
powers. The Greek attendees indicated
that establishing a temporary regency of
Archbishop Damaskinos, followed suc-
cessively by disarmament of the guerrilla
forces, new elections, and a plebiscite
on the rule of King George II, would be
acceptable. On his return to London,
Churchill used his personal influence
with the Greek king to persuade him to
step aside for the good of the nation.
There was as yet no ceasefire, but
ELAS realized they could no longer win
a military victory, at least not in the
streets of Athens. On 31 December the
last remnants of EDES were evacuated
to Corfu by the British Navy, after weeks
of hammering by three strong ELAS
divisions. On the same day, ELAS
opened negotiations with Gen. Scobie
for a ceasefire. Those talks continued for
two weeks while British troops further
expanded their control outward from
Athens. On 2 February 1945 the two
sides concluded the Varkiza Agreement,
under which ELAS was to disband and
hand over its arms and equipment.
The six weeks of open combat in
December and January ended as a
significant military and political defeat
for ELAS. For the second time in a year,
their tactical and logistical shortcomings
had robbed them of victory once they
came up against regular troops. Further,
the communists lost their EAM popular
front facade on 10 January 1945, when
the socialist and labor factions resigned
from it. Worst of all, in their retreat
from Athens, ELAS units had taken an
estimated 20,000 hostages with them
into the mountains. Many of those
people died of illness and exposure and
some were executed. That hardened the
popular mood against the communists.
ELAS lived up to the letter but not
the spirit of the Varkiza Agreement. They
turned over the specified amounts of
arms and equipment, but they cached
many of the better weapons in the
mountains. About 5,000 of its most dedi-
cated members crossed the border into
Yugoslavia and Albania, going to zones
controlled by communist partisans.
War Ends & War Starts
The remainder of 1945 passed in
continued political and social turmoil.
Greece had suffered badly under the Axis
occupation: over half a million people, where the borders of Albania, Yugoslavia arrived, sometimes not until several
eight percent of the prewar population, and Greece converge. DSE had also days after the attack, the villagers would
had died of famine or disease or been managed to infiltrate troops by land be punished by the government for
killed outright in the crossfire. The and sea to the Peloponnese, and there allowing the guerrillas to take supplies
economy was in ruins, and while Greece were even low levels of activity on from them, making the situation worse.
was the second largest European recipi- Crete and the Dodecanese Islands. At first, the Greek government
ent of United Nations relief supplies, The number and frequency of treated the insurgency as a police matter
there was no progress toward rebuilding. attacks increased as well. The DSE to be handled by the Gendarmerie (a
Several succeeding governments failed played to its strengths by conducting militarily armed police force responsible
to bring political stability, and the raids and ambushes of isolated border for security outside the cities, which had
communists added to the discord by posts, convoys and police stations. replaced the National Civil Guard in late
encouraging strikes, demonstrations Several bands would concentrate for 1945; in 1947 it was about 32,000 strong)
and sabotage. Revenge killings by both night attacks on towns and villages in and municipal police (about 7,500
left-wing and right-wing organizations which the place would be cut off, the divided between the two major cities).
added to the atmosphere of lawlessness. police station destroyed, and security That approach was necessitated by the
Elections were to be held in January forces and informers executed. The fact the Greek National Army (GNA)
1946, but they were postponed to the guerrillas would then carry off food, proved unable to intervene effectively
end of March. By mid-February the livestock, recruits and hostages, for several reasons. Its men were mostly
central committee of the Communist dispersing back into the hills and forests unwilling conscripts and were badly
Party had decided to seek victory at dawn. When the police or army trained (the army had expanded,
through armed struggle one more time.
On 30 March, the night before the
elections, a band of 60 ex-ELAS
guerrillas raided a village near Mount
Olympus in the first overt act of the
final round of the Greek Civil War.
During the rest of 1946 more and
more guerrillas re-entered Greece from
Yugoslavia and Albania. The Greek
National Army (GNA) estimated that by
June there were over 2,500 such fighters
in the country; by December there
were over 8,000 troops of the officially
renamed Democratic Army of Greece
(DSE in Greek). By the beginning of
1947 the DSE had established itself in
several bases inside Greece, mostly in
the frontier area around Lake Prespa Greek delegation at the World Youth Festival in Budapest, August 1949

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 21

too rapidly, from a brigade in 1944 to
seven divisions by the end of 1947).
Leadership was also lacking: the officers
were careerist in mindset and unwilling
to show initiative, while direction from
the top came from an over-controlling
National Defense Council of generals,
politicians and civil servants in Athens.
The army was badly under-equipped
and was unable to move quickly, as it
had few vehicles. Large portions of it
were kept dispersed in small garrisons
by politicians who wanted a military
presence in their hometowns.
The Greek government realized
it needed significant help and asked
for additional aid from the British in
February 1947. Britain, however, had
already expended over 400 million
pounds to aid Greece since 1944 and
was entering its third year of postwar
austerity; it could no longer afford
to help. British military aid ceased,
except for a small military mission of
175 personnel who concentrated on
training. The few thousand British
troops remaining in Greece were
withdrawn over the next two years.
The Truman Doctrine
On 12 March 1947, US President
Harry Truman made a speech to
Congress in which he announced Greece
would receive $150 million (1.5 billion in
2010 dollars) in military aid and as much
again in economic aid. That was the first
formal declaration of what would come
to be known as the Truman Doctrine.
The aid began to arrive that August.
Emboldened, the GNA launched
several offensives between April and
July in the Roumeli region (the Pindus
Mountains and Thessaly). Those sweeps
met with only limited success, as the
army didn’t deploy enough troops
to effectively cordon the swept area;
the DSE would simply withdraw and
return later. In the fall and winter of
that year DSE units did begin to engage
in larger and larger battles, when the
communist leadership decided it was
politically important to establish and
maintain control of territory in which an
alternative government could operate.
In October they launched a week-long
assault on the town of Metsovon in
the Pindus Mountains, using for the
first time 75mm and 105mm artillery
they’d been given by the Yugoslav
Army. That attack was defeated, but
two months later an even larger battle
took place in the town of Konitsa.
The communists had announced the
formation of a Free Greek Democratic
22 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
Government, and a concerted attack
using over 2,000 troops and most of
the available artillery was made against
Konitsa so as to give the guerrilla
government a capital. In response, the
Athens government finally outlawed the
Communist Party, reinforced Konitsa,
and began a campaign of massive arrests
of real and suspected enemies, followed
closely by media suppression and purges
of the public service. After two weeks
and heavy losses, the DSE withdrew to
its bases in the Grammos Mountains.
The insurgency still exerted control
over much of the Greek countryside,
but it wasn’t the type of permanent or
legitimate control to which the people of
Greece could gravitate, or that a foreign
power could recognize diplomatically.
The year 1948 proved to be one
of stalemate and attrition. American
military aid and advisors began arriving
in quantity; between August 1947
and March 1948 over $71 million had
come in the form of 75,000 weapons,
7,000 tons of ammunition, 2,800
trucks and enough aircraft to form two
squadrons. A headquarters called the
Joint US Military Advisory and Planning
Group (JUSMAPG) was established to
control the 250+ American officers who
served as staff and logistics advisors
or were directly attached to GNA units
in the field. The GNA was further
enlarged and relieved of much of its
garrison duties by the expansion of
the National Defense Corps (a lightly
armed village militia), and its divisions
were reorganized and re-equipped.
Even so, there was little time or
opportunity to retrain the GNA at the
small-unit level (battalion and below),
which was crucial in conducting a
counterinsurgency, and to resolve its
chronic leadership problems at all levels.
JUSMAPG, which had decided on a pri-
marily military solution to the problem,
therefore concentrated on teaching the
higher echelons of the GNA the rudi-
ments of combined arms warfare, to use
superior mobility (another 8,300 trucks
and 4,000 mules arrived in June 1948) to
conduct large encirclements and then
apply massive firepower. Essentially, the
Americans trained the GNA in the image
of their own army. That was actually all
they had to offer, because in 1947−48
the US Army had no counterinsurgency
doctrine. Several large-scale offensives
in the spring and summer failed to
bring on a decisive battle, and the
GNA proved unable to maintain a
significant operational tempo.
While the government forces
struggled with their difficulties,
the DSE was having problems of its
own. No foreign government extended
it diplomatic recognition, not even the
USSR or Yugoslavia. The DSE use of
terror tactics, and its practice of seizing
hostages from the villages, had hardened
much of the public against them. That
was worsened by the paedomasm
(collection of the children): in 1947−48
almost 28,000 children were abducted
by DSE forces and taken to Yugoslavia
to be raised in hostels and orphanages.
Even more importantly, the leader-
ship of the insurgency underwent a
schism concerning the appropriate
strategy to follow. Gen. Markos,
commander of the DSE, had relied
mostly on a protracted guerrilla warfare
strategy. That had more often than not
kept the GNA off balance and allowed
the DSE to defeat in detail small
government garrisons. In the fall of
1948, however, Nicholas Zakhariadis,
secretary general of the party and its
political commander, forced Markos
to switch to a conventional strategy in
which DSE bands and companies were
consolidated to operate in brigades
of three or four battalions, with those
brigades then to be further concentrated
into five divisions. The DSE troops were
neither trained nor equipped to operate
that way, and so ended up pitting their
weaknesses against GNA strength.
The communist switch in strategy
had come about because it had become
obvious a general civilian uprising
wasn’t going to happen, and American
aid would only increase. The rest of the
communist leadership therefore became
impatient with Markos’s protracted
struggle strategy. They thought a sudden
move to seize power by force of arms
could work before the GNA became too
strong. At the same time, though, the
most important factor was an event they
could neither have anticipated nor influ-
enced: the departure of Yugoslavia from
the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.
Since the fall of 1947, Stalin had
become angry at Tito’s increasingly inde-
pendent line of domestic and foreign
policy on a number of issues, especially
his wish to create a Balkan federation
of states that would be dominated by
Yugoslavia. Stalin had already indicated
to Tito his wish the Greek insurgency
not be supported. His basis for that was
the so-called “percentages agreement”
he and Churchill had worked out at the
Moscow conference in October 1944.
The two heads of state had agreed,
literally on a single sheet of notepaper,
that Great Britain should have 90 percent
influence in Greece and Russia 10
percent, the reverse for Romania, while only on limited support from Albania Sources
Yugoslavia would be 50 percent for each. and Bulgaria. It persisted in its efforts Asprey, Robert B. War in the Shadows. Doubleday, 1975.
Churchill probably meant the to hold territory in positional battles Barentzen, Lars (ed).
Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War.
arrangement to last only for the and began to fall apart. By the end of Museum Tusculaneaum Press, 1987.
duration of the war, but Stalin August, a three-phase, six-division Gerolymatos, Andre.
Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage in Greece, 1940−44.
continued to observe it after V-E Day. attack by the GNA called Operation Pella Publishing, 1992.
(It’s important to note the Soviet Union Torch extinguished the main DSE Gitlin, Todd.
“Counterinsurgency: Myth and Reality in Greece.”
never recognized either of the Greek stronghold in the Grammos/Vitsi area In Containment and Revolution, Beacon Press, 1967.
communist governments created, nor near Lake Prespa. About 8,000 DSE Klonis, N. I. Guerrilla Warfare. Robert Speller & Sons, 1972.
Kousoulas, D. George. Revolution and Defeat.
did it ever extend ELAS or the DSE any fighters escaped to Albania, but it was Oxford Univ. Press, 1965.
form of material aid.) Even as Britain obvious the insurgency couldn’t con- Murray, J. C. “The Anti-Bandit War.”
In The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him.
was withdrawing from Greek affairs by tinue. On 16 October the communists Praeger Pubs., 1962.
1947, Stalin didn’t want to antagonize announced a unilateral ceasefire. O’Ballance, Edgar. The Greek Civil War, 1944−49.
Faber & Faber, 1966.
the British or the Americans there, The Greek Civil War was over. More Sarafis, Marion (ed).
lest they respond by interfering in than 158,000 people had been killed Greece: From Resistance to Civil War. Spokesman, 1980.
Thayer, Charles W. Guerrilla. New American Library, 1963.
another Balkan country or Turkey. in its third and final round, 75 percent Woodhouse, C. M. The Struggle for Greece, 1941−49.
When it was formally announced of them civilians. The economy had Hart-Davis, 1976.
Zotos, Stephanos. Greece: The Struggle for Freedom.
in June 1948 that Yugoslavia was been thoroughly wrecked, and Greek Thomas Crowell, 1967.
expelled from the Cominform (the domestic politics would remain polar-
international communist organiza- ized down to the present day.   ✪
tion run from Moscow), purges of
Titoists began in communist political
organizations throughout Europe.
The majority of the Greek communist
leadership backed Zakhariadis, and by
extension the party line of loyalty to the
USSR and the switch to a conventional
warfare strategy. Markos, who’d been
associated with Tito since the days
of the Axis occupation, was removed
from command in January 1949.
That same month, Gen. Alexander
Papagos was appointed commander-in-
chief of the GNA. He’d commanded the
army during the Italian invasion of 1940,
was a national hero, and had taken the
post only on the condition there would
be no political interference with his deci-
sions. He immediately relieved or trans-
ferred a number of inefficient or insuf-
ficiently aggressive division and brigade
commanders, and set about conducting
a coordinated campaign to clear Greece
of insurgents. In February a full infantry
division and four commando units were
transferred to the Peloponnese, the
island was isolated by the Greek Navy,
and by mid-March it was declared free of
DSE activity. In April the GNA began to
move north to clear the Roumeli region
and the southern Pindus Mountains.
Their actions were coordinated with
police arresting and detaining numbers
of suspects in the larger towns, and
complete evacuations of smaller villages,
so as to deny the DSE supplies, recruits,
intelligence and all chance of re-infiltrat-
ing the zone once it had been cleared.
On 10 July 1949, Tito, who was under
political attack and economic blockade
by the rest of communist Europe,
announced the border with Greece
would be closed and support for the
DSE shut down. The DSE, by then split
into two factions, could therefore rely Greek resistance fighters

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 23

Polish infantry on the march

24 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

Bzura, 1939:
The Polish Counteroffensive
by Maciej Jonasz

A
s German spearheads drove Gen. Kutrzeba’s plan envisaged Phase 1: Poznan Army Attacks
toward the center of Poland, an assault by the entire Poznan Army
they bypassed the Polish Poznan across the Bzura between the towns of The Battle of the Bzura River began
Army. That force, commanded by Maj. Leczyca and Lowicz. An “operational on the morning of 9 September 1939,
Gen. Tadeusz Kutrzeba and based in group” of three infantry divisions in the when the commander of the Polish 25th
western Poland, at first fought only center, supported by a heavy artillery Infantry Division ordered one of his
minor border skirmishes, and then soon regiment, were to deliver the blow battalions to probe the German line.
found itself behind the frontlines and that would destroy the German 30th One of the companies that crossed the
out of contact with its neighbor, Lodz Division. The whole army was then to river captured a small village named
Army, to the south. The latter force was exploit southeast, coming in behind the Tum. Those troops dug in and began
conducting a fighting retreat eastward. German forces pursuing the withdraw- harassing fire against enemy supply
The Poznan Army therefore also moved ing Lodz Army. The idea was to overrun columns spotted moving nearby, despite
east to try to regain contact with Lodz any other enemy units encountered a strong German counterattack.
Army. By 8 September it was facing the along the way, and then eventually Later that day the main body of the
north flank of German Army Group link up with Lodz Army. The ultimate Poznan Army began to cross the Bzura
South, commanded by Gen. Gerd von objective was to relieve Warsaw, which under the cover of an artillery barrage
Rundstedt, across the small Bzura River. was threatened by German Tenth Army. and stormed the German positions.
Moving south to join the Poznan
Army were the surviving units of Maj.
Gen. Wladyslaw Bortnowski’s Pomorze
Army. Bortnowski’s command had
suffered severe casualties in the fighting
in the northwest at the very beginning
of the campaign, with several of its divi-
sions crushed by German armor in the
Polish Corridor. Once the Germans took
control of the Corridor, they moved the
bulk of their forces to the east and used
them to strike south from there toward
Warsaw. That move inadvertently left
the Pomorze Army free to make its move
south under only minimal pressure.
Facing the Poznan Army across the
Bzura was Maj. Gen. Kurt von Briesen’s
30th Infantry Division, covering the
northern rear flank of Gen. Johannes
Blaskowitz’s Eighth Army. Spread over
a front of 19 miles, the 30th Division
concentrated its forces in the towns
along the Bzura and controlled the
space between them with outposts
and patrols. Because the Germans
were overextended during this por-
tion of their advance, the 30th was
on its own, with the nearest friendly
units approximately a day away.
German air reconnaissance failed to
detect the Poles as they moved at night.
Thus, Eighth Army didn’t expect an
attack into their rear area. The German
high command then dismissed the
skirmishes that began to take place
along the front of the 30th Division as
nothing more than localized events.

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 25

On the far right the Cavalry Group,
composed of the Podolska Cavalry
Brigade and a regiment made up of
survivors from the Pomorska Cavalry
Brigade, pushed back the lead elements
of the German 221st Landwehr Infantry
Division and then fanned out into the
enemy rear area. As they advanced, the
Polish cavalry captured many prisoners
and supply vehicles. Those units’
commands were still unaware of the
threat from the fast moving horsemen.
The 25th Division captured Leczyca,
and on the 17th forced another
bridgehead across the river. The 14th
Infantry Division’s attack failed due
to fierce German resistance. On the
left, the Wielkopolska Cavalry Brigade
captured the town of Bielawy.
When reports of the fighting came
into the German 30th Division’s head-
quarters, its commander at first ordered
counterattacks intended to push the
Poles back across the Bzura River;
however, as the scale of the Polish attack
became apparent, he switched his force
into a defensive stance and sent out an
urgent request for assistance. During
the following days the Polish advance
continued along the entire front. Some
units within the 30th Division were
destroyed, and over 1,500 Germans
were captured. The 30th Division then
26 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
began a general withdrawal, sometimes
in disorder, with its commander having
to be evacuated due to wounds.
Despite the apparent success of the
counteroffensive, the Poles were also
suffering heavy casualties. Flanking
attacks were neglected in favor of
simpler frontal assaults, and their lack
of radios reduced the coordination
of Polish artillery support. Additional
German units were entering the battle
zone, and resistance began to stiffen.
The climax of this phase of the battle
was reached on 12 September, when
the entire Eighth Army was turned to
deploy against the attacking Poles.
Arranged in a line between Ozorkow and
Glowno, those German infantry divi-
sions then began to execute piecemeal
counterattacks that failed to make any
headway. The Poles held their ground
and inflicted heavy losses on the few
tanks the Germans had available (the
Eighth was an infantry army). By the
end of the day the entire German line
was reeling. They evacuated Ozorkow
as the Poles began to envelop it,
and the Germans then continued
to pull back in an effort to break
contact. Only on their right did they
succeed, blocking the advance of the
Wielkopolska Cavalry Brigade toward
Glowno and then cutting it off from the
rest of the Poles’ Bzura River force.
Then the lead units of the Pomorze
Army arrived in the form of another
operational group commanded by
Brig. Mikolaj Boltuc. That group was
composed of two infantry divisions, the
4th and 16th. The latter entered combat
on the east flank of the overall battle,
with its 64th Regiment attacking into
Lowicz. A tough fight followed that
lasted the whole night and was finally
only decided when the Polish com-
mander threw in his reserve battalion.
That unit managed to get behind the
Germans, initiating a panic that was
only barely contained by their com-
manding officer. At the same time, the
4th Division crossed the Bzura, cleared
out some German units in its vicinity,
and prepared to take over the assault
on Glowno the following day. On Eighth
Army’s western flank, the 221st Landwehr
Division showed little offensive spirit as
it faced the aggressive Polish cavalry.
By 12 September, then, the overall
situation had become serious enough to
warrant von Rundstedt ordering Tenth
Army to divert its XVI Panzer Corps
away from Warsaw in order to come
to the rescue. The XI Army Corps was
also on the way to assist Eighth Army,
while the Luftwaffe was directed to
concentrate its air assets on that sector.
Phase 2: Redirection
On the 12th Gens. Kutrzeba and
Bortnowski made a tour of the command
posts of their assault divisions. Their
impression wasn’t favorable. Their forces
had suffered significant casualties, and
the advance was starting to slow as
the Germans were reinforced. The two
generals therefore decided to change
their axis of advance from the southeast
to a more easterly direction, thereby
moving past the center of the stiffening
German resistance while still getting
nearer to Warsaw. They ordered Poznan
Army to pull back across the Bzura while
Pomorze Army attacked between Lowicz
and Sohaczew. The Poznan Army was
then to redeploy on Pomorze Army’s left,
again cross the Bzura north of Lowicz,
and from there advance east to Warsaw.
The execution of this new phase of
the battle began on the 13th. That day the
Poles successfully moved back across the
Bzura and then marched toward their
new attack positions. That move sur-
prised the German command, who were
in no position to take advantage of it.
Unfortunately for the Poles, the 16th
Division also withdrew across Bzura
owing to an error in communication.
That left Lowicz to be retaken by the
Germans, even though it was to have
Maj. Gen. Tadeusz Kutrzeba
Born in 1886 in the part of partitioned Poland that was under Austro-Hungarian
occupation, Tadeusz Kutrzeba joined the Austro-Hungarian Army as an officer-cadet and
completed engineering school as the top student in his class. He took part in work on various
fortifications, including the design of defensive works in the empire’s Balkan provinces, thanks
to which he witnessed the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
During the First World War he served on all the fronts where Austro-Hungarian forces
fought, including a tour of duty as a liaison officer with German units on the eastern front.
In 1918, with the rebirth of Poland, Kutrzeba joined the Polish Army as a captain. He
took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, during which he served in staff slots in all
the major battles of that war, ending it with the rank of a lieutenant colonel. During the
inter-war years he became the commandant of the School of Warfare in Warsaw, where he
conducted numerous studies concerning the resurgent military potential of the Germans.
In 1939, promoted to major general, he was given
command of the Poznan Army. He started the war by
conducting some limited offensive moves into German
territory, and then executed the only large-scale Polish
offensive of the 1939 campaign: the Battle of the Bzura
River. After the failure of that offensive, he managed
to break through to Warsaw. There he became the
second-in-command of all Polish forces in the city. On 28
September he conducted the surrender negotiations with
the Germans. His counterpart in those negotiations was
Gen. Johannes Blaskowitz — the commander of Eighth
Army, which Kutzreba had faced on the Bzura. He spent
the remainder of the war in a German prisoner-of-war
camp, where he secretly ran a school of military studies
for junior officers. After the war Kutrzeba moved to
England, where he worked for the Polish government-
in-exile until his death from cancer in 1947.  ★
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 27
been the Pomorze Army’s bridgehead
for launching its new offensive.
Even so, the new Pomorze Army
attack achieved some initial success;
however, aerial reconnaissance soon
reported large German armored forces
were concentrating along its projected
axis of advance. That report surprised
Gen. Bortnowski, who then reacted by
temporarily halting the entire attack,
fearing heavy casualties. That decision
eliminated all chance for a Polish
victory along the Bzura, as it gave the
Germans the time to complete their
reinforcement of the battle zone with
several divisions, including the aerially
spotted 1st and 4th Panzer Divisions.
The Poles attempted to regain their
offensive momentum during the follow-
ing days, but they failed. The Germans
soon regained all the terrain that had

28 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

been lost to the Poles south of the Bzura,
and the two involved Polish armies then
found themselves in a pocket hemmed
in by the Bzura and the Vistula Rivers.
By the 16th it became clear to the
Polish command their only option was
to try to break out and thereby save as
much of their pocketed force as possible.
That could only mean an attack directly
to the east where, on the other side of the
Bzura, lay the Kampinos Forest through
which the infantry and cavalry could
infiltrate to either Warsaw or Modlin.
At the same time, of course, the
Germans continued attacking the pocket.
At one point 1st Panzer Division broke
through the Polish line and drove into
the middle of the pocket, its tanks barely
missing the village where the Pomorze
Army headquarters was located.
The breakout through the Kampinos
Forest was spearheaded by a cavalry
group led by Brig. Roman Abraham
and composed of the Wielkopolska and
Podolska Cavalry Brigades. The cavalry
first created another bridgehead across
the Bzura, then moved swiftly along the
tracks that crisscrossed the forest, break-
ing through the still-thin German lines
there. Under constant and increasingly
heavy artillery and air attack, Polish units
started losing cohesion. At one point
during their own trek east, Gen. Kutrzeba
and his staff found themselves alone
in the woods. A small group of Polish
soldiers, survivors from several different
units led by an energetic junior officer,
chanced upon them and served as close
escort during the rest of the march.
The running and confused fight
through Kampinos Forest lasted until 20
September, when 20,000 men reached
Warsaw. They left behind another
20,000 dead. Most of the Poles’ artillery
and all of their armor also had to be
abandoned due to lack of transport
and fuel. The survivors then took part
in the defense of the Polish capital until
Warsaw surrendered on the 28th.
The other elements of the Poznan and
Pomorze Armies failed to break out. By
the end of the 17th, those armies effec-
tively ceased to exist. All communications
broke down, and the army headquarters
could no longer exert control over
surviving units. With the capture of Gen.
Bortnowski, operations effectively ceased.
Summary
The Battle of the Bzura was made
possible due to two factors. First, the
region where the Poznan Army was
initially stationed was bypassed by the
main German thrusts into Poland. That
meant an entire Polish army retained its
full combat strength until an opportunity
to deploy it appeared. The Pomorze Army
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 29
was also able to find temporary safe
haven after withdrawing from the north-
west front, owing to the fluid situation.
The second factor was the failure of
German intelligence to effectively track
the movement of those two entire Polish
armies. The quick German victory in
advancing across the Polish Corridor
led them to conclude the Pomorze
Army had been destroyed there. The
Germans then also estimated the
Poznan Army had already redeployed
to Warsaw. The reason for the Germans’
confusion was the night marches used
by the Poles, which allowed them to
evade Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance.
The resulting battle gave the Poles an
opportunity to engage, and potentially
defeat, Eighth Army. That, in turn, gave
Poland more time to resist the German
onslaught. Alas, it wasn’t enough to turn
the tide of the overall campaign. If noth-
ing else, the Soviet invasion of Poland on
17 September sealed the country’s fate.
The pre-war Polish plan had
been realistic enough to take into
consideration the disparity in strength
of the opposing forces, and they didn’t
expect to defeat the Germans outright.
Rather, the Polish armies were expected
to hold long enough for the French
and British to take the offensive on the
western front and thus turn the tide
in the larger war. A successful Bzura
 offensive, culminating in the destruction
The Air War of an entire German army, would have
weakened the Germans enough to have
The air campaign during the Battle of the Bzura could be broken into two made a strategic difference — provided,
phases. Both of those phases, due to the weakness of the Polish Air Force, of course, there was actually an Allied
were dominated by the Luftwaffe. During the first phase, before the extent offensive on the western front.
of the Polish attacks became clear, the Luftwaffe was largely absent over the Mistakes made by the Poles resulted
battlefield: all its assets were then being dedicated to support the main German in the unnecessary failure of their
axes of advance. Only after the strength of the Polish effort became clear, on 12 Bzura offensive. At lower levels there
September, did the German high command order strong air assets into the area. was a lack of coordination between
Polish air strength in the skies over the Bzura was limited to only a few dozen regiments and battalions. As a result,
PZL P-11 fighters and even fewer light PZL.23 bombers. The P-11 was an outdated plane, otherwise victorious units failed to
slow and lightly armed, though more maneuverable than the faster German machines. The take advantage of their local successes
pilots who flew them proved capable of not only holding their own in the air but also of in order to move deep and outflank
achieving a good kill ratio. German units. The commands of the
The Polish pilots did their three Polish divisions at the spearhead
best to protect the skies of the attack also tended to wait for the
over their ground forces, but units on their flanks to advance, instead
they were too few and were of immediately exploiting successful
therefore unable to stop the attacks to obtain true breakthroughs.
torrent of bombs that fell Similarly, available forces were seldom
on the surrounded divisions utilized to quickly reinforce success.
after the 12th. By the 17th That lack of coordination was the
the conditions in the Bzura result of the poor communications that
pocket had deteriorated so plagued the Polish army throughout the
much that surviving Polish 1939 campaign. During the inter-war
aircraft were evacuated to years, industrial progress had been made
the east of the country.  ★ PZL P-11 that resulted in some top of the line
equipment being produced in Poland,
but there was still too little of it to satisfy
the needs of a modern army. There was
also a lack of trained staff officers who
could provide commanders with the kind
of situational awareness — especially
during fluid offensive operations — that
would make possible coordinated efforts.
At the higher level there was no
coordination between Gen. Kutrzeba’s
force and the remainder of Lodz Army
or the forces already concentrated in
Germans capture tankettes Warsaw. Lodz Army, by the time of the
start of the Bzura offensive, was already
decimated, and its soldiers exhausted,
by having participated in non-stop
combat since the opening hour of the
Polish Lancers, 1939 war. Even so, limited pressure placed
on the Germans’ Tenth Army by Lodz
Army could’ve worked to delay the
reinforcement of Eighth Army. In turn,
that would’ve had serious consequences
for the Germans, whose front was fluid
Polish prisoners
and over-stretched. Again, though, the
lack of sufficient communications among
the Polish higher-level headquarters
precluded that kind of coordinated effort.
Finally, there was the decision to
break off the offensive and then resume
it along a new axis. That gave the
Germans the time they needed to bring
in strong reinforcements, including
two panzer divisions. Those reinforce-
ments weren’t only strong enough to
block the Polish attempt to resume
their offensive action; coupled with
significant additional support provided

30 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

by the redirected Luftwaffe, they were
able to destroy the two Polish armies.
Despite the failure of the Bzura offen-
sive, it formed an important part of the
1939 campaign in Poland. Unfortunately,
the Western Allies decided to remain
passive until the full force of the Germans
was turned against them in 1940.  ✪
Sources
Rezmer, Waldemar.
Armia Poznan 1939.
Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona 1992.
Zawilski, Appoloniusz.
Bitwy Polskiego Wrzesnia, vol 1.
Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Ksiegarnia, 1972.
Bitwy Polskiego Wrzesnia, vol 2.
Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Ksiegarnia, 1972.
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 31
Komisja Historyczna Polskiego Sztabu Glownego w Londynie.
Polskie Sily Zbrojne w Drugiej Wojnie Swiatowej:
Kampania Wrzesniowa 1939, Parts 3 & 4. London:
Instytut Historyczny im. Gen. Sikorskiego, 1986.
Ciechanowski, Konrad. Armia Pomorze. Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1982.
Kutrzeba, Tadeusz.
Bitwa nad Bzura. Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1958.
Analysis: Economic Strengths
& Weaknesses of Imperial Japan
by John W. Whitman
D
uring World War II, Japan proved
especially vulnerable in the
industrial arena. The nation
was resource poor and had to make do
with what it had. “Have not” realities in
money, resources, and manufacturing,
as well its high command’s refusal to
face the reality of a long war, chroni-
32 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
cally hampered its planners. Industrial
production was slow to produce needed
items; capacity was small, and an
overarching vision of how to improve
those things was limited. Japan’s
leaders mostly didn’t understand the
military potential of a nation is directly
proportional to its industrial potential.
Though the Japanese government
high command talked about total war,
they didn’t understand it. While they
established an Institute for the Study
of Total War, and used slogans such as
“Defense State” and “Super-Defense
State,” the institute was really only a
subordinate group within the cabinet
who dealt with economic mobilization.
Even had the Japanese better
grasped the requirements of total war,
they were unqualified to participate
in it. Primarily, they didn’t realize the
unprecedented importance of materiel.
Their industrial base was fatally unbal-
anced, being tightly focused on a narrow
range of weaponry at the expense of
technological and scientific investiga-
tion, innovation, and production.
Japan, in fact, didn’t have a master
plan for any kind of war, let alone one
for total war. Unlike US leaders, who
early on determined Germany would
be their priority enemy, the Japanese
never selected a priority enemy or
theater. If it was to be the Soviets, they
had to concentrate on strengthening the
army. If it was to be the American, then
the navy should have priority. Given
that lack of resolution, no one could
develop an industrial plan to support
the missing national strategy. Nor could
logisticians explain their nation’s indus-
trial inadequacies if they didn’t know
what the strategists intended to do.
The Japanese gambled on win-
ning quick victories in 1941−42,
which were to have then resulted in
a favorable negotiated settlement.
They had no extended plan on how to
thoroughly defeat the US, nor did they
have the technology or raw materials
for a sustained war effort against
an industrial power the size of the
US. They also underestimated their
own rates of consumption for oil in
particular, the major raw material for
which they started the war. Their own
sources of oil provided only 12 percent
of their peacetime requirements.
Once war began, the Japanese
remained only dimly aware an industrial
battle was underway, that victory would
be decided in factories, and that they
were losing on that front. Though the
Japanese began the war over access to
the petroleum of the East Indies and
other resources of Southeast Asia, they
didn’t clearly see war in logistical or
economic terms, offensively or defen-
sively, either for themselves or for their
enemies. They didn’t envision the scale,
depth or breadth of US wartime produc-
tion or its technological successes.
The Japanese expected to fight
outnumbered, and they assumed their
unique national spirit would overcome
enemy materiel superiority. Some
Japanese even believed any reliance
on materiel would ruin their armed
force’s spiritual strength. That approach
worked in the opening months of the
war, and against an unprepared foe
such as the Chinese, but once American
industry geared up, it was unable
to deal with the changed reality.
The Japanese military had sufficient
trained personnel, weapons and stock-
piles for no more than a half-year of
quick campaigns. Not until September
1941 had they decided to actually launch
a war against the US and Britain, and
even then they didn’t mobilize to full
scale. For land power, they decided to
draw on forces already in place in China
and Japan. Final prewar preparations
consisted of little more than requisi-
tioning and fitting out ships, shifting
personnel, establishing air and sea bases
and depots and stockpiling munitions.
Similarly, the Japanese didn’t ade-
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 33
quately allow for wastage. They made no
provision for pipelining supplies: items
stocked at magazines, ports of embarka-
tion, and en route on ships and trains, at
ports of debarkation, and forward sup-
ply dumps, but not yet available to front
line units. Nor did they adequately esti-
mate what amount of supplies would be
lost in transit across active war theaters.
They also failed to address systemic
leakage: the individually minor, but
large in aggregate, losses through theft,
rot, hard handling, weather, erroneous
decisions, black markets and the like.
Conquest of Resources
Japan’s attack into Southeast Asia
in the opening months of the Pacific
War gained their empire raw materials.
Unlike Germany, however, which con-
quered industrialized nations in Europe
that had infrastructures operated by
educated populaces, Japan entered
areas void of modernity. The Japanese
therefore couldn’t augment their indus-
trial strength by capturing an Asian
equivalent of the Skoda arms center in
Czechoslovakia, or the French shipyards,
as no such industrial centers existed.
The Japanese did only a mediocre
job in running the captured oil
refineries. The main reason for that was
their military had begun conscripting
skilled workers out of the petroleum
industry as early as 1937 in order to
serve in the armed forces. Workers who
remained in the industry received low
wages and were poor at performing
maintenance. They had to frequently
shut down equipment, and they allowed
excessive corrosion to build up before
maintenance work was done. Quality
fell off as that machinery deteriorated.
Not surprisingly, the home island oil
industry also stagnated. No new oil wells
were drilled in the home islands in 1941
or 1942. The petroleum industry even
lost its designation as “essential.” As a
result, home island oil work lost its pri-
ority in construction, maintenance and
skilled labor. The industry actually aban-
doned some partially completed plants.
The government also wrong-headedly
curtailed synthetic oil plant construc-
tion, and also cut off that industry from
basic materials. As a result, home island
oil production declined 10 percent.
The Japanese also depleted
their own manpower base to fill key
economic positions in the conquered
territories. Ninety-six thousand
administrators, technicians and
businessmen left Japan and sailed to
the new territories in 1942. They were
followed by 142,000 more in 1943.
While the Japanese accomplished
their early war strategic aims, especially
concerning oil field acquisition, that
success then led to further complacency.
Conquest had been so easy it seemed all
the Japanese had to do was carry home
the booty. (That was indeed necessary,
as the processing capacity in Malaya and
the Dutch East Indies was negligible.)
Still, there were some broader suc-
cesses. Coal, iron and semi-processed
materials came in from Manchuria.
Rich coking coal and iron was available
from Japanese-occupied areas in China.
Iron, manganese, chromite and copper
became available in the Philippines.
Bauxite imports (essential for
aluminum) rose, and the home island
stockpile increased despite the wartime
increase in consumption. High-grade
bauxite, tin, iron and manganese waited
in Malaya. Nickel could come from
Women welders in a Japnese factory, 1944
34 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
the Celebes, and copper, tin, tungsten,
lead and zinc awaited Japanese
mining crews in Burma and Thailand.
Local commanders failed, however,
to fully develop those resources.
In September 1942, the US began
its strategic counteroffensive in the
South Pacific. That drew Japanese
assets, especially shipping, into the
Solomons and New Guinea. In turn,
that reduced the shipping available to
exploit the “Southern Resource Zone,”
as the Japanese termed Southeast Asia.
What Japanese administrators did
extract from Borneo, Java, Malaya and
Sumatra thereafter ran into ever more
serious transportation bottlenecks.
For example, Japan had imported
3.3 million tons of iron-ore from Malaya
and the Philippines in 1940, much of
which was carried in foreign vessels.
In 1941 the Western embargoes denied
Japan’s blast furnaces the superior
grade iron ores they’d been importing
from those two countries. One would
imagine, then, that conquering the
mines and ports in those lands would
again release a flood of ore to Japan.
Yet the Japanese couldn’t manage
to bring home more than 200,000
tons in any one year (six percent
of prewar imports), all because of
war-induced strains on transport.
Though the Japanese had nearly a
year to integrate the captured countries
into their economy before the Allied
Pacific counteroffensive began, they
were inefficient in doing so. Their
economic managers continued to
operate under plans developed before
Pearl Harbor. That inefficiency paled,
however, in comparison to the growing
shipping shortage. Japan’s shipping con-
struction program simply couldn’t sup-
port a long war. Cargo ship building had
peaked in 1937 at 307,226 tons, roughly
47 ships of 6,500-ton size. Production fitting out because of higher priority work
slipped badly in 1938−41, from 265,250 piling up behind her in line. It wasn’t
tons to 174,101 tons. The cause for that until March 1943 she entered service.
decline was the diversion of shipyard Both government-controlled and
capacity to warships. Not until 1942 private shipyards built excellent ships,
did shipyard expansion proceed far but neither had organized themselves for
enough to increase cargo tonnage. mass production. The Navy completed
just 10 destroyers in 1942. Skilled workers
Overall Naval Construction were scarce, and they became more
scarce as industry expanded and the
The Japanese naval high command Army drafted men out of the shipyards.
was aware of prewar US plans for a The Navy did plan warship produc-
two-ocean fleet, as well as the 1940 tion on a scale intended to counter US
legislated increase to that already large building, but insufficient industrial
construction scheme. That created a true assets existed to allow those plans to
dilemma for the Japanese: their merchant be executed. The Japanese had earlier
and naval shipyards were already work- abrogated international arms limitation
ing at full capacity. Further, when one agreements so as to free themselves from
looks at Japan’s full capacity in relation to the restrictive limit on major warships.
that of the US, it was unimpressive. For The problem was, with that abrogation,
example, though a shipyard managed to the American tonnage limit was also
launch the cargo ship Tsukushi Maru in free to increase, and it increased far
June 1940, it could not then complete her faster than the Japanese could chase it.
Never, it seems, did anyone in author-
ity point out that even staying close to
American naval strength was impossible
over the long term. Instead, planners
drafted unattainable schemes that, if
they could’ve been fulfilled, would’ve
given hope to Japanese naval strategists.
For a nation that chose the arena
and the time to start a war, Japan was
amazingly unprepared for the necessary
naval expansion. When their high
command made the actual decision for
war in late 1941, the Army command
believed it could successfully fight
Japan’s enemies on land in the Southern
Resource Area and, as events would
show, they were largely successful
there over most of the course of the
war. The Navy’s situation was never so
optimistic. Japanese admirals could
count ships, and the US naval building
program was so astonishingly large as
to eventually make a mockery of their
service. Simply put, Japan’s long-term
Imperial Japanese seapower: Furutaka class heavy cruiser.
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 35
naval construction capacity was in no
position to support the decision for war.
Planners saw no way to match US
production. They also simply assumed
the risk of ignoring British production,
arguing German air and sea power would
counterbalance and distract the Royal
Navy. The solution to the American
production problem, then, was to
attack and achieve victory before the
force ratio imbalance became too
great. That was a short-term solution
that couldn’t work in a long war.
Cruisers & Destroyers
A further surprise comes from exam-
ining Japan’s minimal effort at heavy
and light cruiser construction once
war began. Those types of vessels were
the (often unheralded) major combat
platforms of World War II-era fleets,
and heavy cruiser production in the six
years before the war had been good:
two in 1935 and one per year in 1936−39
(the US produced just three during that
same period). Japan got only one new
heavy cruiser onto the ways after 1939.
In contrast, the US effort in heavy
cruisers was 24 laid down from 1941
through the end of the war, with
16 launched and commissioned.
The Americans also planned six
Alaska-class large cruisers (sometimes
called battle cruisers), a much more
significant construction effort than
a standard heavy cruiser. The yards
launched three of those, but the Navy
commissioned only two. The third was
84 percent complete when canceled.
The Japanese laid down their single
wartime heavy cruiser, the Ibuki, on 24
April 1941, launching her on 21 March
1943. She would never serve as a heavy
cruiser, for new work then began to
convert her to a light aircraft carrier.
A Japanese yard laid down a second
unnamed heavy cruiser (“Warship No.
301”) of the Ibuki-class on 1 June 1942,
but construction stopped within 30 days
as a result of the Battle of Midway: room
had to be made to build another aircraft
carrier. In the end, the US out-built
Japan in large and heavy cruisers by
a ratio of 27-to-two hulls laid down,
or 13-to-zero ships commissioned.
Nor could Japan approach America’s
proficiency in producing destroyers.
In 1941, Japan laid down nine new
destroyers while the Americans laid
down 87. The average time needed for
a Japanese yard to produce a destroyer
was 12 months. US yards got their
time down to five. American wartime
destroyer production swamped the
Japanese Navy, even after deducting for
vessels sent to the Atlantic. During the
war the US laid the keels of 365 destroy-

Japanese workers in a pre-war air raid drill

36 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

ers, launched 362 and commissioned
323, while Japan commissioned 31.
Japan commissioned another 32
ships that were more destroyer escorts
than destroyers. They were the smaller
Matsu-class and Tachibana-class, which
were designed to perform only as convoy
escorts. They weren’t expected to oper-
ate with fast fleet units, though some
did. In contrast, the USN commissioned
327 destroyer escorts while releasing
another 78 to go to the Royal Navy, eight
to Brazil, six to the Free French and two
to China. US yards also built 77 frigates,
which were bigger than Japanese
destroyer escorts but also slower.
Economic Mobilization
Only after Guadalcanal did the
Japanese fully address economic
mobilization. Money spent on muni-
tions plants and equipment had
actually declined in 1942 from 1941
levels, while conversion of civilian
plants to munitions production hadn’t
been extensive. The Japanese therefore
rewrote their industrial objectives,
at last seemingly taking into account
that they needed a supreme effort.
November 1942 marked the start of
Japan’s total mobilization. Priorities
would be aircraft and merchantmen
production. Neither replacement
nor maintenance of civilian facilities
would be funded. Production was to be
rapidly increased to the limit of Japan’s
economic potential, but time was
actually working against them. Nearly
three years passed from the start of the
war, and two from their decision to push
for maximum production, before the
Japanese economy reached its peak.
Machinery and equipment shortages
slowed expansion in manufacturing
areas such as anti-aircraft ammunition
and explosives. Steel deliveries for
ground ordnance in 1943 increased
less than seven percent from 1941.
Excess and unused production capacity
began to emerge in a few areas, heavy
ammunition as an example, because of
a shortage of raw materials. Ordnance
manufacturers then transferred
substantial quantities of machine tools
to aircraft plants, which was good for
aircraft but bad for Army weapons. The
Army, in turn, requisitioned tools from
civilian plants, which was good for the
Army but bad for the civilian plants.
Overall, Army production increased by
52 percent in 1943 over 1941; however,
even that increase, after two years of
war, was inadequate for the task at hand.
Production of some items soared,
such as large Army radios, from a trivial
96 sets in 1942 to a still anemic 455
in 1943. Small radios went from 800
sets in 1942 to 3,140 in 1943. Even so,
those numbers were miniscule when
compared to those achieved by Japan’s
enemies. Part of the reason for such
small increases was due to increased
priorities given to Army and Navy air
ordnance. Production there increased
each quarter in 1942 and 1943, until it
was 345 percent of 1941 production.
Growing numbers of unskilled
laborers on assembly lines meant poor
utilization of machine tools, breakdown
of tools, and poor maintenance of tools.
One plant lost 1,000 skilled workers
to the military and then had to try
to replace them with 4,000 unskilled
workers. The number of workers in the
oil refining industry nearly doubled,
from 13,439 in 1941 to 24,195 in 1943,
but barrels refined per man dropped
from 8.18 in 1940 to 3.25 at the end of
1943. More supervisors were needed
to manage and train newcomers. As
demand for supervisors grew, less-
qualified supervisors began training
less-qualified workers, which meant
ever-worsening training for new men,
who then required more supervisors.
Building new factories to construct
war materiel was also difficult. Cement
production had peaked in 1939, and
steel production in 1937. Civilian
contractors were swamped with orders
they couldn’t fill. Large construction
firms had orders equaling twice what
they could accomplish. In the growing
absence of cement and structural
steel, firms had to use lumber. That
quickly created a lumber shortage.
Across the production and construction
industries, anyone who dared give a
careful, realistic, conservative estimate
of production risked being dismissed.
Japan’s construction industry hadn’t
been prepared for war, and the men in
charge of it then underestimated the
amount of construction they needed
to do. Construction firms found their
experienced men plucked away by
the draft and had to hire untrained
workers to replace them.
Military engineers develop much of
their hardware by converting civilian
machinery to military use. As with so
much of Japan’s war effort, the nation’s
civilian engineering infrastructure and
civilian engineering equipment were
inadequate. Japanese prewar construc-
tion was far more dependent on manual
labor than that in other industrialized
countries. Depression-era manpower
had been so plentiful and wages so
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 37
low that contractors hadn’t found it
profitable to invest in machinery. Skilled
civilian engineers and modern power
equipment didn’t exist in significant
numbers. For American engineers in
World War II the bulldozer was their
trademark; for Japanese engineers,
it was the pick and shovel.
Army Production & Manpower
Japan lacked the capacity to build
masses of trucks, so its Army simply
assumed the coming war would be
non-mechanized. It cut truck produc-
tion from “B priority” in 1942 to C in
1943 and 1944. Anti-aircraft guns were
outmoded and fielded in insufficient
numbers, even though priority for them
rose to B in 1942 and to A in 1943 and
after. The high cost of manufacturing
cannon meant mortars often replaced
rifled artillery. On the assumption
there would be no need for heavy
artillery in the Pacific, production of
big Army cannon dropped from A
priority in 1941 to D in 1942. It had
no priority at all in 1943 and 1944.
The small Japanese electronics
industry meant the large numbers of
radios needed to tie infantry, artillery
and supporting forces together didn’t
exist. That industry suffered from both
a shortage of laboratory space and
competent researchers. The Japanese
made poor use of the competent
men they did have, and they failed to
display the imagination that might
have otherwise driven new research.
Constant drafts of skilled men
out of the plants into the military
resulted in women and high school-
aged youth being placed on assembly
lines. Physically substandard college
students and nonessential workers
from other industries also entered
the war plants. Military demands for
manpower then reached even into
those worker categories. Manufacturers
protested they couldn’t meet military
production requirements because of
the excessive drain on the work force.
By mid-1944, productivity and
the quality of workers had drasti-
cally declined. Workers were weary,
undernourished and unenthusiastic.
Japan imported increasing numbers of
Koreans to replace Japanese on heavy
labor tasks. In 1941, nearly all workers
employed in home island industries
were Japanese men; by 1944, half were
women, students, and Koreans. In some
cases, rather than transport children
to work in factories, manufacturers
continued on page 41 »
The Shipping War
Japan’s sealift capacity, in particular,
cargo ships above 10,000 tons, best illustrates
the country’s weakness in this category. sOn
8 December 1941, Japan had 15 such ships
dedicated to military sealift. Excluded from
that count were similarly sized merchantmen
requisitioned as naval auxiliaries, such as
seaplane carriers, hospital ships, armed
merchant cruisers, passenger liners then under
conversion to aircraft carriers, submarine
tenders, tankers, and the like. In 1941 alone the
Japanese detached six vessels from the merchant
marine for conversion into military auxiliaries.
The Japanese would later move most of
those naval auxiliaries back into logistical
roles but, as of 8 December 1941, the 15
available 10,000+ ton vessels grossed 195,201
tons, averaging 13,013 tons. That was
Japan’s entire stock of large merchantmen
dedicated to sealift. Because they had so few
of those vessels, and because they were so
important, each could be considered a “national
resource” rather than a tactical vessel.
Compare those figures to the Allied com-
mitment of large lift vessels to the Singapore
campaign, just one of many worldwide demands.
Starting on 21 December — when the first British
convoy departed Bombay toward Singapore
with reinforcements, to the conclusion of the
sealift effort in early February — the Allies
committed 18 merchantmen of 10,000+ tons.
Those vessels grossed 335,076 tons, an average
of 18,616 tons each. In just that one theater,
then, with the single terminus of Singapore, in
that one category of vessel, during a campaign
for which the Allies weren’t prepared, the
38 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
Allies committed 58 percent more national
resource tonnage than Japan’s entire merchant
fleet possessed as dedicated lift vessels.
Additionally, the Allies sustained their
Singapore reinforcement effort over longer sea
lines of communication than did the Japanese.
Five of the eight British convoys to Singapore
originated in Bombay. That sea line of
communication was 10 times the length of
Japan’s Saigon-to-Malaya line and nearly five
times that of their Hainan-to-Malaya line.
The point here is to compare Allied sealift
strength, after two years of war and losses, to
Japan’s December 1941 national resource ton-
nage. The Americans began December 1941 with
47 10,000+ ton lift vessels grossing 705,260 tons.
In 1939, Germany’s biggest three liners grossed
134,059 tons. When added to other 10,000+ ton
ships, Germany’s prewar large merchantmen,
excluding tankers, totaled 677,990 tons. In 1939,
Italy boasted 26 liners/cargo vessels above
10,000 tons, including four bigger than anything
the Japanese had. Italy’s tonnage in that class of
vessel reached 525,651. In 1939 the Netherlands,
after excluding seven ships at 108,000 tons then
under construction, operated 33 such vessels
grossing 486,110 tons. The largest liner in the
world in 1939, France’s Normandie, grossed
83,423 tons. That one ship grossed more than
a third of Japan’s 10,000+ tonnage. France’s
10,000+ ton lift assets hit 593,387 tons.
British assets were huge, even as late
as 8 December. Oddly, British merchant
marine resources were larger in December
1941 than in September 1939. Despite the
Axis submarine and air war against British
shipping, Britain had added so much tonnage
through new construction, capture of Axis
vessels, and acquisition of neutral shipping,
that she was roughly 3 million tons stronger.
Alone, Cunard White Star line — after the
Royal Navy commandeered nine vessels as armed
merchant cruisers — still had 10 of the class
that grossed 375,896 tons, nearly twice Japan’s
total. After losing five vessels by 8 December,
The Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company still
operated 245,248 tons. After losing four vessels
sunk and five requisitioned, the Peninsular &
Oriental Steam Navigation Company still had
eleven 10,000+ ton lift vessels that grossed
206,392 tons. The Canadian Pacific Steamships
line, after losing four sunk and two requisitioned,
still had nine that grossed 164,497 tons.
Of course, given the war’s geo-strategic
scope, Japan’s industrial base didn’t need to
produce ship tonnages equal to that of all her
enemies. Even so, in comparison to her allies and
enemies, Japan was decisively weak in large-
ship tonnage. She attacked nations that were
operating robust shipping assets, albeit reduced
by two years of war and with the worst losses yet
to come. Unlike the Allies, though, who in 1942
lost more merchant vessels than existed in the
entire Japanese merchant marine, Japan couldn’t
absorb losses and fall back on a large inventory.
Japanese shipyards continued to expand
in 1943. The old-line yards expanded by
24 percent, and the new yards grew by 23
percent. Shipyards also started to turn out more
standardized merchantmen. Planners diverted
more and more steel to shipbuilding and diverted
more and more of the economy to ships. From
1 April 1943 until 31 March 1944, 1.095 million
tons of new merchant shipping slid down
the ways. In that same period, however, the
Japanese lost 2.5 million tons. Shipyards thus
Tsukushi Maru
replaced only 43 percent of what was lost.
The Japanese had begun to standardize
their maru construction in 1941; however, they
increased production too late and had to build
their effort on a modest shipbuilding infra-
structure. Shipbuilders settled on five standard
cargo ship designs, and that standardization
was all well and good, but their failure was in
timeliness. In 1942, yards completed just five
6,400-ton cargo ships of the prewar variant that
would become the wartime standard Type 1A
(first year, model A). Seven more prewar variants
of the Type 1A came off the ways in 1943.
Only on 31 October 1943 did yards complete
the first war-built standard cargo ship of 6,400
tons, the first true Type 1A. The next three Type
1A ships became available in late December.
During the first two years of war, then, Japan
completed just 16 mass-produced 6,400-ton
cargo ships (if one adds the 5,500-ton Type
1K ore carriers, then another 26 ships were
produced). In US Liberty ships alone, which were
the closest equivalent to the first four Japanese
Type 1A cargo ships, American yards were two
years ahead of the Japanese. In late 1942, the
US was averaging three Liberty ships a day.
Japanese builders were quicker at putting
their new wartime standard medium tanker
into service. Like the Type 1A cargo ships, a
prewar variant of the Type 1TM (first year,
tanker, medium, grossing roughly 5,200 tons and
a maximum speed of 15 knots), came off the
ways in 1942 and 1943, but yards delivered only
Awa Maru
six. Palembang Maru, the first of 32 oil-burning
prewar and war-built Type 1TM, appeared in
August 1942. Yards completed one such tanker,
Ichiu Maru, in 139 days. A submarine sank her
on her maiden voyage. The problems, as always,
were timeliness and quantity. Only four 1TM
arrived in 1942, 23 in 1943, and five in 1944.
That was the entire production of 1TM, the
second most important tanker Japan built.
Builders launched a few other transports,
cargo ships and tankers through 1942 into late
1943, but they were peacetime models, expensive
in time, labor and materials when compared to
wartime models. March 1943 was the second
best tonnage month for Japanese shipbuilding
that year, 118,765 tons, which wasn’t to be
exceeded until December. One of the products
was the 7,908-ton Konron Maru, laid down before
the war. She served for just six months before
being torpedoed and sunk on an unescorted
Shimonoseki to Pusan run. More long-lived
were three other big March products, 9,547-ton
Nigitsu Maru (laid down in June 1941 as an
ocean liner), 8,135-ton Tsukushi Maru (laid down
in June 1940 for passenger/cargo service), and
11,249-ton Awa Maru (laid down in July 1941 for
passenger/cargo service). Those four ships were
exceptions to the anemic 1943 production record.
Tanker losses increased in 1943 and
exacerbated Japan’s problems in getting oil to the
home islands. Japanese management of Southern
Resource Zone oil throughout the year produced
49.6 million barrels, roughly 75 percent of 1940
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 39
production. In 1942, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo
repeatedly told his cabinet the nation’s oil supply
was assured, but of that 49.6 million barrels,
only 14.5 million reached Japan. The rest was
either consumed by forces in the south, was lost
en route to Japan, or simply sat in storage tanks
waiting space in the over-committed tanker fleet.
Though Japan had too few tankers
delivering too little oil, the overall situation didn’t
deteriorate sharply through 1943. Regardless,
one must keep in mind Japan’s tanker strength,
even at its peak, was minor when compared
to its opponents. The 8 December count of
44 8,000+ ton Japanese tankers describes a
weak force. In 1939, Norway operated or had
on order 165 tankers or whaling vessels of
8,000+ tons. In that same year, the US had 173
on hand or on order, and Britain had 176.
Japan couldn’t build ships fast enough.
Losses, though relatively small through the end of
1943, were still too great, and shipyard capabili-
ties were always too small. One example was
Japan’s production of its largest tanker, the Type
1TL (first year, tanker, large). Yards completed
the first of those 10,000-ton, 18.5-knot tankers
in June 1943, 18 months into the war. From June
through December, only eight Type 1TL ships
entered service to support a war the Japanese
had started, in great part, to bring oil to the home
islands. The US equivalent to the Japanese Type
1TL tanker was the T-2. In 1943, US yards added
133 T-2 to the 33 already built. The shipping
war was won in the shipyards of the US.  ★
 Ammunition & Weapons
The Japanese based their ammunition re-supply on expenditure
rates from the Russo-Japanese War and from their more recent
experience in China. Ammunition was issued in Kaisenbun increments:
the number of rounds necessary for each weapon in a division
for four months of combat. Planners assumed only 20 days of
actual weapons firing every four months. In comparison, US ground
ammunition supply tables, dated 23 December 1941, allotted roughly
three times as much ammunition as did the Japanese Kaisenbun.
Japanese totals were based on what could be produced.
Experience quickly showed that triple the amount of munitions
produced was actually needed. As it turned out, the men in the front
lines commonly fired all the ammunition available, and there was never
enough. The Army wanted to triple the Kaisenbun for its southern
armies as well as for the units in Manchuria. As the war progressed,
there was also a need for more artillery ammunition, but the Japanese
couldn’t keep up with that trend because, as steel became harder to
produce, artillery shells became correspondingly harder to manufacture.
Production and transport shortfalls prevented any
hope of increasing the Kaisenbun for the troops on Japan’s
far-flung frontiers. Gunpowder and ammunition plants had
never been attractive investments for private concerns.
Expansion would occur only if the government funded it.
Munitions plants take time to build and enter production.
Japanese weapons production figures were often so small as
to be completely out of touch with the reality of requirements. The
Army produced 604 heavy pieces of field artillery (larger than 105mm)
from 1941 through 1945. The US produced 7,803 155mm and larger
guns, many of which were self-propelled. At the same time, Japan
produced 6,512 pieces of 70mm to 105mm sizes. The US produced
27,082 self-propelled guns and howitzers of similar caliber, as well
as 116,114 tank guns and wheeled howitzers. Japan produced
2,073 mortars in World War II whereas the US produced 105,054.
Japan deliberately set tank production priority low in 1943. Their
1941 light and medium tank production (all were light models when
40 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
compared to other countries) totaled 1,024 vehicles. In 1942, it was
1,065. US light and medium tank production was 4,052 in 1941 and
24,997 in 1942. The Japanese had 12 plants that could’ve produced
more tanks (had there been the plan and the steel), but the decision
to cut tank production meant eight of those facilities converted
to produce prime movers, marine engines and aircraft parts.
Japanese production dropped to 786 tanks in 1943, while
US output in 1943 peaked at 29,497. The Japanese built a single
large wartime plant dedicated to construction of combat vehicles
in 1942. Due to economic weakness and tactical doctrine, Japan
never developed a range of armored and motor carriages for
self-propelled weapons. The Japanese Army produced just 26
self-propelled guns in 1942, 14 in 1943 and 59 in 1944.
In November 1943 the Japanese established the Munitions Ministry,
so as to unify and control administration and production of both raw
materials and military materiel. That reorganization brought a shake up
of managerial functions. The Japanese hoped the new ministry would
provide coherent and unified direction to the war economy, a way to
efficiently move men, materials, capital and transport assets to key war
industries. It was also supposed to control labor and wages and manage
finance. Execution of such administration and production had previously
been left to various government departments and the Army and Navy.
A Total Mobilization Bureau was established within the new ministry
to provide what amounted to a “general staff” for the war economy.
Regardless of the plan, the ministry was a failure. It failed
to coordinate labor, money and accounting. Decisions resulted
not from a judgment of what was best for the country but from
bitter arguments in which the strongest personality got what
he wanted. The Army and Navy continued to draw up their own
munitions production plans and put their own supervisors in
munitions factories. Those junior officers brought with them little
industrial training or experience. The three ministries would often
end up ordering the same item from the same factory. Factory
managers then had to figure out who actually needed what.  ★
Young students get
on-the-job training
» continued from page 37
moved their machines into the schools.
Other statistics shed light on the
vast differences in Japanese and US
manpower quality, raw material avail-
ability, and machine differences. For
instance, in the production of smokeless
powder in 1944, the Japanese produced
4.4 tons a day while the US produced
70 tons a day. Even more, it took the
Japanese 1,012 man hours per ton, while
the US expended just 5.5 man hours
per ton, a 186-fold efficiency difference.
To produce a ton of tetryl, an explosive
used as a detonator, the Japanese
expended 1,178 man hours while the
US expended 67, a 17.6-fold difference.
The Japanese produced 166 lbs. of tetryl
a day, and the US produced 7,500 lbs.
a day. The Japanese produced 44,000
tons of organic high-explosive in 1944
versus the US total of 1.1 million tons.
1945
By 1945 the war had drained the
Japanese people and their country. The
attrition had reached the populace.
Though intense US bombing of the
Prime Minister Tojo addresses the Diet
home islands didn’t begin until March, Japan went to war with enemies so
production of military supplies was superior in all industrial respects that
already off 20 percent from its peak. no possibility existed for victory in a
The output of weapons and munitions long war. Its leaders gambled on a short
began a steep decline, mainly because war, but even though the victories in the
of the growing lack of steel. Routine first year of fighting gave it the potential
iron ore convoys out of Singapore for industrial warfare, Japan could
and Hainan Island had ceased. By never exploit its available resources
early 1945, steel deliveries to plants sufficiently to win through.  ✪
producing ground and anti-aircraft
ordnance were one-third that of 1941. Sources
Civilians were tired, over-worked, Evans, David C. & Mark J. Peattie.
poorly fed and badly clothed. For Kaigun. Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the
Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887−1941.
example, in August 1944, 30 percent of Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
female workers and young apprentices Parillo, Mark P.
The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II.
at one Mitsubishi factory suffered from Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993.
beriberi. Japan had curtailed production
of civilian items as early as 1937, and
there had been no stockpiling of civilian
goods prior to then. There was thus little
cushion when the war forced drastic
curtailment of consumer goods. Shoes
were hard to find; so the government
ordered the production of straw sandals.
Clothing, household furnishings,
farm equipment, rubber and paper
products were scarce. Wherever people
gathered, they talked about food and
the failure of the rationing system.
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 41
The cover of Signal magazine, March 1943; translation:
« On the eastern front ¶ SPANISH SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR EUROPE ¶ ‘Iron Crosses for the bravest of the brave’ the German general said »

42 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

Spain in World War II:
The Blue Division in Russia, 1941−44
by Javier Romero

T
he opening of Operation Spain needed imported petroleum and role on the diplomatic front, as well as
Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 was wheat. Further, the country was still in the internal politics of Spain, between
received with satisfaction by suffering from the effects of the civil war. 1941 and 1944. To understand why that
the Spanish military, as they had felt Any Spanish involvement in World War was so, it’s necessary to understand the
ideologically uneasy about the German- II would therefore have to be minimal. combat history of the division itself.
Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939. The The Germans and the Falange had to The Falange had initially proposed to
official view in Franco’s Spain was the content themselves with sending a single form a division recruited among its party
communists, led by the Union of Soviet division of volunteers to fight in the east. militias and under its own command
Socialist Republics, were responsible for During its entire existence, that in the style of the Germans’ Waffen SS
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War division was a political football with and the Italian-Fascist Blackshirts, but
of 1936. If the Spanish military could which the Falange and the military the military blocked that idea. During
be said to have been satisfied with the tested their leverage inside Franco’s the civil war, Franco’s generals had
German attack on the USSR, the Spanish regime. The “Blue Division,” and its never allowed political militia units to
ruling party, the Falange was wildly successor “Blue Legion,” played a key grow larger than battalion-size. The
enthusiastic. The idea quickly grew
of sending an expeditionary force to
avenge the Red aggression of 1936−39,
when the Soviet Union actively
supported the Spanish Republic.
Franco accordingly offered Germany
Spain’s military support for the inva-
sion on 24 June, and Ramon Serrano
Suñer, the leader of the Falange and
Spain’s foreign minister, spoke to an
enthusiastic crowd gathered in central
Madrid. He called on his listeners
to join the Germans in the fight to
save European civilization from the
Bolshevik menace. Despite the desires
of the Falange and the support of the
German embassy, however, Franco
couldn’t afford to declare war on the
USSR. Britain controlled the seas, and

Departure from Madrid, 17 July 1941

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 43

military wouldn’t tolerate political army officers. Even some of the Falange new division to be organized. Finally, the
units of any strength large enough to party leaders who volunteered had to general whom Franco picked to com-
compete with its own power. In 1941 march to the front as simple privates. mand the division was Agustín Munoz
that policy remained unchanged — after Only a third of the sergeants and lieuten- Grandes. He was an army officer, but one
all, Franco came from the army. ants were Falangists; all other NCO and with well-known Falangist sympathies.
When the division began recruiting, officer posts went to army regulars. At The first volunteers departed from
then, the volunteers who came forward the same time, as a concession to the Madrid on 13 July 1941, amid much
received regular army uniforms and Falange and to avoid the impression the enthusiasm, aboard trains draped in
ranks, and the division’s sub-units were regular Spanish Army was involving itself Spanish, German and Italian flags.
placed under the command of regular in the war, Franco ordered an entirely Eighteen more trains departed from
different Spanish cities during the
following days, taking some 18,000
Spanish Blue Division Organization volunteers to the Grafenwohr training
center in Bavaria. When all had arrived
The Blue Division was a political unit, but it had regular army in Germany, the troops were issued
cadre and staff. That was an important distinction between it and with German Army uniforms in order to
many of the other political units raised during World War II, such further maintain the illusion of Spanish
as the Italian Blackshirts. Moreover, many of the rank and file had non-involvement; however, they wore
fought during the Spanish Civil War as NCOs and junior officers; the blue Falange shirts underneath
so troop quality was from the start well above average. Still, there their Wehrmacht tunics. So the unit
always remained an undeniable political element. Most of the quickly came to be called the “Blue
volunteers were committed Falangists, convinced of the rightness Division” (Division Azul in Spanish).
of the Nazi crusade against the communist Soviet Union. The nickname stuck, both in Spain
and in Germany, though the official
Order of Battle, August 1941 Spanish name was Division Espanola de
Voluntarios (Spanish Volunteer Division).
Gen. Agustín Munoz Grandes (pictured above) It was listed as the 250th Infantry Division
Chief of Staff Col. Jose M. Troncoso by the Germans in their order of battle.
The division was organized fol-
Divisional HQ Company lowing the then-standard German
250th (Motorized) Mapping Platoon three regiment pattern, instead of the
262 Infantry Regiment (Col. Pimentel) four regiment organization of Spanish
Signals Platoon | Engineer Platoon | Bicycle Recon Platoon divisions. The 250th had one artillery
1/262, 2/262 & 3/262 Infantry Battalions and three infantry regiments, a recon
Anti-Tank Company (12x3.7 cm guns) battalion, an anti-tank battalion and
Infantry Gun Company (2x15 cm & 6x7.5 cm guns) corresponding support and logistics
263 Infantry Regiment (Col. Vierna) units. Their uniform, equipment and
Signals Platoon | Engineer Platoon | Bicycle Recon Platoon weapons were entirely German, though
1/263, 2/263 & 3/263 Infantry Battalions they wore an armband with the Spanish
Anti-Tank Company (12x3.7 cm guns) national flag and the word “Espana”
Infantry Gun Company (2x15 cm & 6x7.5 cm guns) embroidered on it. On 31 July the men
269 Infantry Regiment (Col. Martínez Esparza) swore loyalty to the Fuehrer in the
Signals Platoon | Engineer Platoon | Bicycle Recon Platoon struggle against Bolshevism, in a slightly
1/269, 2/269 & 3/269 Infantry Battalions modified version of the oath sworn by
Anti-Tank Company (12x3.7 cm guns) German troops. Four weeks later the
Infantry Gun Company (2x15 cm & 6x7.5 cm guns) first elements left for the eastern front.
250 Artillery Regiment (Col. Badillo)
Regimental Staff Into the East
1/250, 2/250 & 3/250 Battalions, each with 3 batteries (4x10.5 cm guns each)
4/250 Battalion with 3 batteries (4x15 cm each) The division detrained in the
250 Recon Battalion Suwalki-Grodno area in Poland, not
Motorized Anti-Tank Platoon (3x3.7 cm guns) far from the 1939 demarcation line
Two Bicycle Squadrons between the USSR and the German
250 Anti-Tank Battalion Reich. From there, the volunteers had
Motorized Signals Platoon to walk more than 620 miles (1,000 km)
3 x Motorized Anti-Tank Companies (each 2x5 cm PAK 38, 9x3.7 cm guns) to the nearest railhead available for
250 Signals Battalion their use inside the USSR at Vitebsk. At
Motorized Telephone Company a pace of 18 to 25 miles (30−40 km) per
Motorized Radio Company day, the division took 45 days to arrive,
Motorized Light Signals Supply Column and from there it re-boarded other
250 Field Training Battalion trains to the front. During the march
3 x companies east the Spaniards suffered their first
250 Divisional Supply Troops casualties: four killed and 34 wounded,
Supply, field hospital, veterinary, postal, etc.   ★ mostly by mines. They also witnessed
the harsh realities of the war in the east:

44 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

Blue Division troops; some wear SCW decorations (note the Spanish flag on the helmet)
the destruction caused by the battles of
June and July, and the brutal German
policies toward Poles, Jews and Russians.
Initially scheduled to reinforce
Army Group Center’s drive on Moscow,
the 250th was redirected to Army
Group North’s Sixteenth Army. On 12
October, Spanish National Day, the
division began to relieve the 126th
Infantry Division on the Volkhov
River. The Spanish sector included the
confluence between the Volkhov and
Lake Ilmen and the city of Novgorod.
That same day, the first snow began to
fall along that portion of the front.
Across the Volkhov
On 19 October the division was
ordered to take the offensive. Its 269th
Regiment crossed the Volkhov and estab-
lished a bridgehead to reinforce a similar
move by the German 18th Motorized
Division. The offensive of Army Group
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 45
North toward Tikhvin was ultimately
intended to link up with the Finns along
the Svir River east of Lake Ladoga, there-
by completing the siege-ring around
Leningrad. The Soviets counterattacked
continuously and by 6 November the
Axis offensive been stopped cold, both
figuratively and literally. All Axis units
east of the Volkhov were ordered onto
the defensive, while the temperatures
dropped dramatically: down to ‑23
degrees Fahrenheit (‑30 Centigrade)
Spanish positions on the Volkhov front in 1941−42 from a 1956 book by Esteban Infantes

46 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

in mid November, and down to ‑40 Around Leningrad in Operation Predator, which was
degrees (both scales) in early December. aimed at cutting off the Soviet salient
The Spaniards held their own, As 1942 opened, the division began that had been established on the
gaining the respect of their German to rebuild, using an influx of men from west bank of the Volkhov River during
comrades-in-arms while defending their several replacement battalions then their counteroffensive. The salient
sector against overwhelming odds. Field arriving at the front. At the same time, was cut off and destroyed despite the
Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, Army survivors among the early volunteers desperate resistance of the Soviet 2nd
Group North commander, evacuated began to be sent back to Spain as Shock Army within it, and the Spaniards
the Tikhvin drive on 9 December. Its their tours of duty were completed. again distinguished themselves.
first weeks at the front had thus exacted Incidentally, on 2 May, while the rest of In August 1942, the division was
a heavy toll on the Spanish division to the German Army’s divisions reduced ordered closer to Leningrad. There
little effect. By mid-December 1941 it their regimental infantry battalions from were rumors the unit was going to
had suffered some 2,400 casualties. three to two each, in order to somewhat participate in the long-delayed assault
After the retreat to a position again make up losses suffered during the win- on the city itself. That participation
behind the Volkhov, the Blue Division ter campaign, the Blue Division main- was viewed as being a reward for the
got caught up in the fierce Soviet tained its original organization of nine division’s outstanding performance, as
winter counteroffensive aimed at fully infantry battalions. That made it one of conquering Leningrad, the cradle of the
relieving Leningrad. Again the Spaniards the largest infantry divisions in the East. Bolshevik revolution, would be a major
distinguished themselves, holding their In April 1942, elements of the accomplishment. Indeed, shortly before
positions as if “nailed to the ground,” division were detached to participate arriving at its new sector, the Spaniards
as Munoz Grandes put it. The 2nd
Battalion of the 269th Regiment acted as
the division’s reserve, suffering heavy
casualties in the process. Of special note
was the feat of the ski company that,
in February 1942, crossed frozen Lake
Ilmen to relieve a trapped German garri-
son in Vsvad. To do so, the skiers moved
and fought for 11 consecutive days,
enduring temperatures as low as ‑62
degrees Fahrenheit (‑52º C). When the
ordeal was over, only 12 men out of 207
in the company were still on their feet.
The Blue Division’s stalwart
performance was also a propaganda
coup for Franco. Munoz Grandes was
awarded the Knight’s Cross in March
1942. Hitler praised the division in
a speech in Berlin on 26 April.

Gen. Agustín Esteban Infantes Translation: « BLUE DIVISION ON THE ROADS OF RUSSIA, SPAIN TO FIGHT WITH COURAGE »

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 47

were issued maps of the city. Hitler had
in fact signed Fuehrer Directive No. 45
(Operation Northern Light), ordering
an assault into the city to be conducted
by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s
Eleventh Army. Hitler hoped the partici-
pation of the Blue Division in so great a
victory would pave the way toward full
Spanish involvement in the war; how-
ever, the actual assault, initially sched-
uled for September, was postponed, and
then cancelled for good in October. That
was due to the diversion of reserves to
destroy yet another Red Army penetra-
tion of the lines, as well as the crisis
developing farther south at Stalingrad.
The division then held an 18 mile
(29 km) sector of the front south of
Leningrad, between the towns of
Pushkin and Krasnyi Bor. The area
was important, as it was crossed by
the Moscow-to-Leningrad railway
line and, if the Spanish position was
breached, the Soviets could relieve the
siege of Leningrad. The Blue Division
was also well within range of the huge
concentration of guns the Soviets
had assembled to defend Leningrad.
During their first three weeks in their
new sector, more than 4,000 shells
landed within their positions, and
that was during a “quiet” period.
Continuous artillery fire, sniping,
skirmishes and patrolling took their
toll. During the first four months
outside Leningrad, the division lost
seven percent of its front line effectives.
Spanish Sailors in the German Navy, 1941−44
As the lengthening lists of dead and
wounded arrived in Spain, enthusiasm
for the expeditionary force began to
evaporate. There were no longer enough
volunteers to replenish the ranks, and
many former Republican soldiers (who
were forced to do five years of military
service as a way of integrating them
into Franco’s order) were offered the
opportunity to redeem themselves
by fighting in the Blue Division.
Politics Again
The evolving situation in the Soviet
Union and elsewhere in the global war
further influenced the politics behind
Division Azul. Rommel’s defeat in Egypt,
the pending disaster at Stalingrad, and
the Allied landing in North Africa — the
latter close to Spain’s Moroccan protec-
torate — allowed the Western Allies to
intensify their diplomatic and economic
pressure on Franco to withdraw the
division from the war. Franco complied
in part by replacing his Falangist and
pro-German Foreign Minister Sunez
with the more moderate Count Jordana.
Franco also relieved Munoz Grandes
from his command by the simple expe-
dient of promoting him to lieutenant
general, thereby bringing him home and
“kicking him upstairs.” That had been in
the works for some months, as Grandes
was growing too popular both with
Hitler and the Falange. Grandes received
a hero’s welcome in Madrid, but not
before stopping at Rastenburg to receive
the oak leaves for his Knight’s Cross from
the hands of the Fuehrer. His successor,
Gen. Agustín Esteban Infantes, was an
efficient but apolitical professional.
At the military front, the Soviets
opened 1943 with a new offensive again
aimed at relieving Leningrad, Operation
Spark. That attack was unleashed on 12
January by the Leningrad and Volkhov
Fronts. Two Soviet armies attempted
to envelop the German XXVI Corps
defending south of Lake Ladoga. The
Blue Division had to take over the sector
of the division to its right when that unit
was sent to reinforce the beleaguered
corps, and it was also ordered to send
reinforcements to its relief. Infantes
chose to send the veteran 2nd Infantry
Battalion of the 269th Regiment.
The battalion fought, almost literally,
to the last man in the battles around
Lake Ladoga. Out of 550 men, 418
were casualties by late January (124
KIA), with one company commander
wining a posthumous St. Ferdinand
Cross, Spain’s highest military award.
The sacrifice, however, was in vain,
as the Soviets managed to destroy the
German defenses south of Ladoga and
then move on to establish an overland
link with Leningrad, thus ending 16
months of German blockade. Shortly
after the success of Spark, the Red
Army launched a follow-on push
to clear the sector defended by the
Spaniards, and thus move the city
beyond range of the Axis artillery fire.
It was to be the Blue Division’s bloodi-
est day: the Battle of Krasnyi Bor.

Just like the army and air force, the Spanish Navy contributed to the war against Krasnyi Bor
Russia, though in a different manner. The participation of the ground and air elements
received a lot of coverage during and after the war (there have been hundreds of In a single day of fighting on 10
books and a few films and documentaries), neither the Germans nor the Spaniards February 1943, the Blue Division lost
gave much publicity to the service of Spanish naval personnel on German ships in 3,600 men out of the 5,600 involved.
the Baltic Sea. In fact, it was kept secret by the Spanish Navy until the 1990s. The determined resistance of the
In the summer of 1940, Germany and Spain signed the Bar Agreements, by which the division stopped the onslaught of four
Germans agreed to transfer technology and technical advice to the Spanish Navy to build Soviet rifle divisions, 80 to 100 tanks,
submarines, mine warfare and torpedo boats. In exchange, the Spanish would supply two ski brigades and 150 artillery
Germany with certain strategic minerals (tungsten, wolfram, copper). By the summer of batteries. An estimated 7,000 to 9,000
1942 the Spanish Navy was also granted authorization by the Germans to send personnel Red Army troops fell that day. Gen.
to receive training under combat conditions aboard ships operating in the Gulf of Finland. 
 Infantes committed everyone he had,
The first contingent of Spanish sailors arrived in Germany in November 1942. They including the remnants of the 2/269,
served aboard ships and participated in several actions, such as mining and counter-mining, plus artillerists, clerks, cooks and all
maintenance of the mine barrier closing the Gulf of Finland, anti-submarine patrols, and other rear echelon troops. Another 100
defense against Soviet air raids. By March 1943 the first group was back in Spain. A second officers and men, who were in the rear
contingent arrived in April 1943 and participated in the same type of missions until the summer. waiting to be rotated back to Spain, also
Overall, some 134 Spaniards served on German ships in the Baltic during 1942−43. volunteered to go back to the front.
Spaniards served on the following ships: two cruisers (Admiral Scheer and Emden), six After enduring their bloodiest day,
mine warfare ships, six minelayer boats and two anti-submarine boats. The Spanish the Spaniards fought through six more
crews of six fast attack boats given by Germany to Spain also received training with months of static warfare. They managed
the 9th Fast Attack Flotilla in Gotenhafen (now Gdynia) in June and July 1943.  ★ to keep their sector more or less intact,
while taking an average of 30 casualties
per day. During the summer of 1943

48 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

the division was ordered to deploy in
depth while setting up two defensive
lines to the rear. There was again to be
no German summer offensive against
Leningrad. With the Wehrmacht fully
and permanently on the defensive,
Spanish morale began to fall.
On 5 October 1943 the Spaniards
began to be relieved by the German 81st
Infantry Division. On 12 October, the
second anniversary of the arrival of the
Blue Division at the front, they fought
one last action when the last elements
in line fended off a local Soviet attack.
After that the division was concentrated
in reserve, not far from Oranienbaum.
The troops thought they were being
given rest before returning to the fray,
but they never moved back to the front.
Franco had ordered them back to Spain.
Withdrawal
By the fall of 1943, the disintegrat-
ing Axis situation across Europe (the
Italian armistice in September, the
Allied landings at Salerno, the failure of
Germany’s Kursk offensive, and the loss
of Kharkhov) translated into increased
pressure on Franco from the American
and British ambassadors in Madrid.
By 1943 almost all of the petroleum
consumed by Spain came from the USA.
With North Africa in the hands of the
Allies, the British ambassador hinted at
the possibility the Allies might invade
Spanish Morocco. The message was
clear: if Franco wanted to be tolerated
in post-war Europe, he had to be com-
pletely neutral during the remainder of
the war. That meant a complete with-
drawal of the Spanish from the USSR.
And Spain was not alone in that
regard. By mid-1943, Hitler’s other
allies — Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and
Italy — had all withdrawn their remain-
ing forces from the front. Apart from the
Finnish army, the Spanish division was
the only major non-German combat
unit still in the east. Finally, Franco was
well aware that, by that stage of the war,
Germany could no longer react militarily
to a Spanish declaration of neutrality.
Therefore, on 1 October 1943 the
Spanish Foreign Ministry informed
the Germans the Blue Division would
return to Spain. To save face, a substitute
unit was formed from volunteers
who wanted to remain on the eastern
front. The new, smaller, unit would
be called the Blue Legion (Legion
Azul), and it would fight to extinction:
no more replacements would arrive
from Spain. The Spaniards would also
maintain a fighter squadron in Russia.
Blue Legion in January 1944. The Spaniards were
heavily engaged during the retreat
Formed from one artillery and toward the Narva line against both
two infantry battalions (some Soviet regulars and partisans.
2,200 men), the Blue Legion was Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front,
activated in November 1943 near the pressure on Spain from Britain
Narva. It moved onto the front in and the US continued to increase.
December, where it was integrated into For the Allies it would be a major
the German 121st Infantry Division. propaganda coup to show Germany
The Legion witnessed the final and was entirely alone. In February
full lifting of the siege of Leningrad 1944, therefore, the Allies decided to
The P Line: Franco’s Maginot Line
Spain began building the P for “Pyrenees” Line during the fall of 1944. Planning
had begun as far back as 1942, and the most vulnerable sectors of the border had been
fortified as early as 1939. The line was to include 10,000 bunkers, with some 4,500
actually built, most of them between 1944 and 1948. After that date work slowed and
was then cancelled during the early 1950s. By that time, of course, the Cold War was
in full swing and Franco then a useful NATO ally because of his anti-communism.
Built using conscript manpower and little equipment, the P-Line can be considered
a light fortification system when compared with the huge concrete emplacements of
Germany’s West Wall or France’s Maginot Line. Still, its construction represented a
major economic effort for a country still reeling under the effects of a civil war.
The system was built around Centros de Resistencia (Resistance Centers) or CR. Each CR
was formed by several mutually supporting Puntos de Apoyo (Support Points). Each platoon- or
company-sized SP had several bunkers, complete with observation posts, underground depots
and warehouses. On paper, each SP was to be equipped with two machineguns or automatic
rifles, one infantry or mountain gun, one anti-tank gun, one anti-aircraft machinegun, one
81mm and one 50mm mortar. Each heavy weapon would have its own bunker. The ensemble
would be linked by trenches and foxholes and surrounded with barbed wire and mines.
Every CR was to have 40 to 60 bunkers of several types. The anti-tank and artillery bunkers
were generally oriented toward the interior of the valleys along the frontier in order to keep
the roads there under enfilade fire. The machinegun bunkers, foxholes and pillboxes were
distributed around the anti-tank and artillery bunkers to protect them from infantry assault.
There were 100 CR in Catalonia, 20 in Aragon and 56 more in Navarre and the
Basque country. Those areas had for centuries been the traditional invasion routes
across the Pyrenees. The Spanish Army periodically inspected the bunkers until 1980,
when the P-Line was finally abandoned. Nowadays, some of the bunkers (for instance,
the bunkers of CR 52 and 53 in Martinet de Cerdanya, Catalonia, or those of CR 111 in
Canfranc, Aragon) have been restored and can be visited by military aficionados.  ★
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 49
cancel petroleum deliveries to Spain
for one month as a demonstration
of their economic dominance.
Fearing more drastic Allied
measures, Franco began to prepare for
an Allied invasion. During 1944 he had
the building of the P-Line accelerated
along the frontier with France. Finally,
though, the constant Allied economic
and diplomatic pressure brought him
around. The Blue Legion, then resting
and reorganizing in Estonia, was
ordered to return to Spain, as was the
Spanish fighter squadron deployed
in the Army Group Center sector.
Those who refused were threatened
with losing their citizenship. In May
1944, less than one month before the
Normandy landing, the last elements
of the Spanish expeditionary force
crossed the Pyrenees back into Spain.
Spaniards generally maintained
good relations with the civilian
populace in their sector. After the
war the Soviet government could not
find any cause to file accusations
of war crimes against them.
Politically, the Division Azul served
Franco better than the Falange itself.
Through it, Franco got rid of the
radicals who weren’t happy with his
regime by sending them to the other
side of Europe. More importantly, he
also used it help maneuver Spain into a
good position among the war’s winners,
first by sending the division to support
Germany at little cost to Spain itself,
and then by withdrawing it to ensure
himself a place in post-war Europe.  ✪
Sources
Moreno, Xavier.
La Division Azul. Sangre espanola en Rusia, 1941−1945.
Barcelona 2004.
Kleinfeld, Gerald and Lewis Tambs.
Hitler’s Spanish Legion: the Blue Division in Russia.
Carbondale, Il. 1979.
Escuadra, Carlos. Bajo las Banderas de la Kriegsmarine.
Marinos espanoles en la armada alemana, 1942−1943.
Madrid, 1998.
Blanchon, J. L, P. Serrat & L. Esteva.
La Línea P :
topographie et conception d’un systeme de defense.
Fortification et patrimoine magazine nº 3, Paris 1997.
Blanchon, J. L, P. Serrat & L. Esteva.
La Division Azul : 50 aniversario.
Historia 16, nº 183, Madrid 1991.
Ezquerra, Miguel. Berlín a vida o Muerte. Barcelona, 1975.
Caballero Jurado, Carlos. “Los ultimos de la division azul: el
batallon fantasma” Defensa magazine, no. 142. Madrid,
1990.

Balance Sheet

The Russian campaign cost Spain

5,000 dead, 8,000 wounded, 1,500 cases
of frostbite and some 372 prisoners
out of 45,500 troops sent. In return,
the Spaniards inflicted some 50,000
casualties on the Red Army. Thus the
‘blood debt’ for Germany’s help during
the Spanish Civil War was paid in full.
The Blue Division was the most
decorated unit in Spanish history. Its
troops and officers received eight St.
Ferdinand Crosses and 44 Medallas
Militares (equivalent to the US Silver
Star), plus two Knight Crosses (one
each for its two commanders), two
German Crosses in Gold, and 2,497 Iron
Crosses, among other decorations.
Perhaps most amazingly, the

Diehards, 1944−45

Despite official late-war Spanish neutrality, many radical Falangists were willing to
comply with the promise of “1 million Spanish bayonets to defend Berlin from the Red hordes,”
which Franco had made in more optimistic times. Aware of that, the Germans organized the
recruitment of Spanish volunteers. They also tried to recruit volunteers among the thousands
of Spanish workers in France. Some of them were used to infiltrate the French resistance,
as those groups had thousands of Spaniards in its ranks, most of them civil war veterans.
Company-sized Spanish units fought in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia in 1944-45 in the
German 3rd Mountain, 121st Infantry divisions and the Brandenburg Panzergrenadier Division.
The Waffen SS also formed several Spanish units. One company fought partisans in
Italy from November 1944 until the end of the war as part of the 24th SS Mountain Infantry
Division. The 101st and 102nd Spanish SS Volunteer Companies fought in Pomerania in
February 1945 as part of the Wallonian SS Brigade. The survivors were transferred to
Einheit Ezquerra, a Spanish SS unit organized by Capt. Miguel Ezquerra, a Blue Division
veteran who’d refused to return to Spain. According to his memoirs, that unit participated
in the final defense of Berlin in April 1945 as part of the 11th SS Nordland Division, taking
part in the fighting around the Moritz Platz and the Luftwaffe Ministry building.  ★

50 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010

 Game Preview

The South Seas

Campaign,
1942−43

The South Seas Campaign, 1942−43

(SSC), designed by Joseph Miranda, is
a two player, strategic-level wargame
of intermediate complexity that covers
the struggle for control of the naval,
air and land lines of communication
between Australia and the US during
those two years. Most ground units in
the game represent divisions, brigades
or regiments. Aircraft units represent
two groups or air regiments (six to
eight squadrons). Ship units mostly
represent one fleet aircraft carrier,
divisions of two light or escort carriers,
two battleships, four cruisers, squadrons
of six to eight destroyers (plus Japanese
light cruiser destroyer leaders), and
various numbers of other ship types.
On the area map, each inch equals 90
miles. Each turn represents from two
weeks to two months, depending on the
tempo of action at any given time.   ✪

World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 51

Observation Post
Elite Beat
The Indian Army in World War II
When the Second World War
began, the Indian Army (of the British
Commonwealth) numbered 189,000
men in 82 battalions. Though well
trained and led, those units at first
lacked tanks, motorized transport and
artillery. Further, the battalions weren’t
organized into brigades or divisions
until 1940. Starting then, three battalions
were usually brigaded, and three
brigades bound together with an artil-
lery regiment to form a division. There
were also 37 British infantry battalions
in India when the war began, and they
were integrated into the new Indian
divisions. Higher-echelon formations
(divisions, brigades and regiments)
were all commanded by British officers,
who made up the majority of the
officer corps. Even so, by the end of the
Second World War there were more than
8,000 Indian commissioned officers.
Gen. William Platt had two Indian
divisions at his disposal when he invad-
ed Italian Eritrea in March 1941. Starting
in the Sudan, 4th Indian Division, which
had already fought the Italians at the
Battle of Sidi Barani in Libya (December
1940), crossed into Italian Eritrea and
engaged 17,000 well trained, equipped
Italian troops. They fought a series
of sharp engagements, pushing the
Italians north toward the Red Sea. The
worst fighting was in February at Keren,
a town in the mountains and rough
terrain south of the Eritrean capital
and accessible only through a pair of
ravines that were heavily defended by
Italian forces. The 4th Indian Division
pushed into the Italian positions there
for more than a week without success.
The attack was renewed in mid-March
by 5th Indian Division, which didn’t fight
its way through the ravines to take Karen
until the 27th. With that battle lost, Italian
forces surrendered throughout Eritrea.
More desert fighting was seen by
10th Indian Division. Commanded by
Gen. William Slim, who would go on to
glory in Burma, the 10th had first seen
52 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
action in Iraq against the native forces
used there in a coup that deposed the
British-client Iraqi monarchy and put
a pro-Axis dictator in its place. In the
wake of the coup, the division was
rushed from India to Iraq and landed
in Basra without a fight. From Basra,
10th Indian Division slowly advanced
north, eventually taking the key cities of
Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. Later, the
10th also participated in the invasion of
Vichy Syria, spearheading the northern
thrust along the Euphrates to Aleppo,
a campaign in which the division was
“blooded, but not too deeply,” according
to Gen. Slim. In August 1941, the 10th
was chosen once again, this time for the
joint Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. The
division started off in the central border
region and drove for Paitak pass in the
Zargos Mountains, which it took with
ease. From there, it marched toward
the city of Kermanshah, where its com-
manders accepted the surrender of all
Persian forces. During the campaign, the
10th lost just 22 dead and 42 wounded.
Both 4th and 10th Indian Divisions
fought in the desert campaign against
Rommel. During Operation Crusader
(November−December 1941), the 4th
launched a holding attack against
German forces while 4th British Armored
Brigade moved around the flank,
pushing Rommel past Bengazi.
The 10th Indian Division saw
heavy fighting at the Battle of Mersa
Mettruh (24−27 June 1941) along with
elements of 5th Indian Division. There
the Indians, along with the elite 2nd New
Zealand Division, were surrounded by
German forces and forced to breakout
to the east. The 4th Indian Division later
fought in Italy, most famously in the
battle for Monte Cassino, conducting
two frontal assaults against German
forces there without success.
Indian units actually provided the
bulk of Britain’s ground force manpower
in the Far East. The first units to fight
Japanese forces in that theater were 9th
and 11th Indian Divisions during the
Malaya disaster. The 11th was ground
down as the Japanese advanced
south through Malaya, and then was
annihilated in early January by a
Japanese armored attack at the Battle
of Slim River. The 9th Indian Division
managed to survive to the end of the
siege of Singapore, when it was sur-
rendered with the rest of the garrison.
When the Japanese invaded Burma
they encountered 17th Indian Division,
which fought well and fell back in good
order, though it took thousands of casu-
alties in the process. With India directly
threatened, the British Commander-
in-Chief there, Sir Archibald Wavell,
abolished the old Indian command
structure to form 14th Army (at the time
five divisions divided into IV and XV
Corps), which he placed under Slim.
At Wavell’s insistence, the British
effort to reconquer Burma began in
December 1942 with a modest offensive
down the Arakan peninsula, a narrow
strip of land bisected by a steep moun-
tain range. Taking it would protect the
important port of Chittagong (in mod-
ern Bangladesh) and outflank Japanese
forces on the main front to the north.
Conducted by XV Corps, the attack was
spearheaded by 14th Indian Division,
which had been reinforced to an
unmanageable strength of nine brigades.
The assault got off to a good start,
with units advancing along both sides
of the mountains. Early in the new year,
however, the division was stopped by
Japanese troops entrenched at a place
called Donabik, about 10 miles from the
end of the peninsula. With the attack
bogged down, the Japanese hit 14th
Indian Division’s flank, badly mauling
two brigades. On orders from Slim
the rest of the bloated division, whose
commander he removed, withdrew
from Arakan. When the Japanese
attacked Arakan in February 1944, 5th
and 7th Indian Divisions bore the brunt
of the assault, turning back the attack
in the bloody Battle of the Admin Box
(named after the 7th’s administrative and
headquarters area, which was converted
into an all-around defensive perimeter).
While Slim deployed four divisions
to support the Admin Box defense, in
March the Japanese attacked Imphal,
a major staging area for a planned
summer offensive. Slim was cau-
tiously advancing 17th and 20th Indian
Divisions toward the Chindwin River
when the Japanese attack began.
Both formations fell back in good
order and joined 23rd Indian Division
and 50th Indian Parachute Brigade in
a defensive arc around Imphal. The
parachute brigade fought a delaying
action at Sangshak, northeast of Imphal,
while 17th, 20th and 23rd Indian Divisions
exacted a heavy toll from the Japanese
as they attacked along the southern
front. By then, however, the Japanese
had cut off land communications,
forcing resupply by air. Also coming
by air was 5th Indian Division, which
deployed to the northern sector. When
the Japanese tried to turn Slim’s left,
they were met and stopped at Kohima
ridge by the British 4th Royal West Kents
(161st Brigade, 5th Indian Division),
an action that finally and fully broke
the back of the Japanese offensive.
Indian divisions led Slim’s grand
offensive of 1945, operations Capital
and Extended Capital: a three-pronged
attack aimed at liberating Mandalay.
The northern thrust was led by 19th
Indian Division, which began its push
south toward Mandalay on 26 February.
Fighting through “tankable country”
(in the words of Slim), two brigades,
62nd and 64th, bypassed Japanese strong
points, leaving them for 98th Brigade
to clean out, and were on the city’s
outskirts by 8 March. They fought their
way inside on 10 March, meeting stiff
resistance at Mandalay Hill and Fort
Dufferin, with the latter not wrested
from Japanese hands until 20 March.
The central prong of the assault was
spearheaded by 20th Indian Division
with the objective of taking the Japanese
stronghold at Kysuke, 20 miles south
of Mandalay. The division crossed the
Chindwin on 2 March and split up.
The 32nd Brigade pushed east against
the town, while 100th Brigade moved
southeast, sometimes as much as 12 or
18 miles per day, inflicting heavy casual-
ties along the way. By 17 March, 32nd
Brigade reached Kyasukse’s outskirts,
clearing the town after many days of
what Slim termed “stubborn fighting.”
The southern thrust was first led by
the veteran 7th Indian Division, with its
attack breaching Japanese lines about 20
miles downriver from Mandalay. The 17th
Indian Division then burst through that
opened door and, on 5 March, occupied
the town of Meiktila. Both divisions
engaged and repulsed repeated Japanese
counterattacks. As the battle dragged
on, 5th Indian Division’s airborne brigade
was flown into Meiktila to support the
17th. They held firm against successive
assaults, forcing the exhausted Japanese
to leave the town in British hands.
Those same divisions spearheaded
Slim’s drive into eastern Burma. The 7th
Indian Division fought its way down the
east bank of the Irrawaddy River, as 5th
and 17th Indian Divisions raced toward
Rangoon and 19th Indian Division
brought up the rear. On 10 April a
major battle was fought at the village of
Pyawbe, which fell to 17th Division after
four days of heavy fighting that killed
more than 2,000 Japanese. From there,
in the words of Slim: “They were off!”
The 5th Indian Division pushed
the demoralized Japanese south,
fighting sharp actions for the towns
The Royal Indian Army Service Corps were the first Indian troops to see action during World War II
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 53
along the way. On 29 April, Japanese
forces counterattacked in the vicinity
of Toungoo, some miles behind the
main advance. They were met and
turned back by a brigade of 19th Indian
Division. By then, 17th Indian Division
had retaken the lead and was heavily
engaged at the village of Pegu, about 40
miles north of Rangoon, taking it on 1
May. There the drive stopped when the
monsoon season began early and turned
the roads into muddy bogs, rendering
advance and ground supply almost
impossible. On 2 May, an amphibious
landing, codenamed Operation Dracula,
was conducted south of Rangoon, and
the next day elements of 26th Indian
Division entered the abandoned city.
In sum, the record of Indian arms on
the Allied side during the Second World
War is impressive. India contributed
more than 2.5 million men to the cause,
more than any other member of the
Commonwealth. Nearly 180,000 were
killed, wounded or captured. In the
Mediterranean and East Africa they
were decisive in the campaign to defeat
the Italians. In the Middle East they put
an end to Axis meddling in Syria and
Iraq. In the Far East, they destroyed a
Japanese army and liberated Burma.
— William Stroock
Observation Post
Technology
Backdate
The Liberty Ships
During the Second World War the
US was noted for its superior logistics.
That ability to get anything, anywhere,
in massive quantities was itself a prized
commodity. Ideas that had earlier been
modeled and developed by Henry
Ford and the other mass-production
specialists allowed the US to deliver
huge amounts of equipment to the
ever-hungry Allied war machine all
around the globe. The use of “liberty
ships” — so called because President
Roosevelt predicted they would “bring
liberty to Europe” — was crucial
within that overall effort. With over 18
shipyards producing 2,751 of them,
they are the most-produced large
ships of any type ever constructed.
The earliest forms of liberty ships,
and the original idea for producing large
numbers of identical ships, can actually
be traced back to the First World War.
Then the Emergency Fleet Corporation
was formed by the US Shipping Board,
as it was perceived the country’s armed
forces lacked the transport ships needed
to meet its commitments. The corpora-
Liberty ship at sea
54 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
tion intended to sub-contract work to
private US and foreign companies in
order to build the ships, which were to
be constructed according to specific
preset designs with pre-fabricated parts.
The first such yard was
located at Hog Island in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. As it turned out, it would
actually be the only yard that would
build the vessels. They built two types
of designs, and the contract was origi-
nally for 180; however, only 122 were
completed by war’s end. Those ships,
though advanced for the time, weren’t
available quickly enough to have much
of an impact on the war, the first one
only being completed on 5 August 1918.
The first “Type A” design was a gener-
al cargo hauler, while the second, “Type
B,” was intended to be able to serve as
either a troop transport or hospital ship.
Only 24 ships were completed before the
armistice, with 12 of each type seeing
service. The ships were noted for being
modern; they were oil-powered and
capable of speeds of up to 15 knots. They
were called “Hogs,” not just because
of their place origin, but also because
they weren’t aesthetically pleasing to
the eye. Designed to be mass produced,
they were ugly next to more sleek craft.
The Hog Island ships would see
extensive use in the Second World War,
with 58 of them being sunk during that
later conflict. Their program would
also provide the basis for the future,
much larger, liberty ship program.
In a continuation of the Hog Island
designs, the 1936 American Marine Act
was passed to subsidize commercial
naval vessels to support the US Navy as
auxiliaries. An initial order of 50 ships
was given in 1936, with the number
increasing steadily each year until 1940,
when 200 were ordered. The designs
required steam turbines instead of coal
fired boilers; however, US industry then
lacked the ability to build all the needed
turbines; so, many of the ships weren’t
completed, despite increasing urgency
that the orders for them be filled.
The United Kingdom got involved
when it ordered 60 ships to replace
losses due to German U-Boat attacks
in 1940. The resultant “Ocean Class”
design took a technological step back
because it called for coal-powered
reciprocating engines (the UK lacked
domestic oil fields but had substantial
coal mines). The Ocean Class was based
on a design first produced in 1879.
The US Maritime Commission then
ordered the design further modified,
replacing riveting with welded sections
to decrease labor costs, and including
oil-fired boilers, for which the US did
have, by that time, sufficient production
capacity. That redesign, designated
the EC2-S-C1, became the standard.
The resultant ships were 442 feet
long with a beam of 57 feet. They drafted
28 feet and displaced 14,245 tons.
Their range was 23,000 miles, and their
deadweight capacity was 10,856 tons.
A wartime propaganda poster claimed
each such ship’s 8,000 ton cargo space
could carry 2,840 jeeps, or 440 light
tanks, or 230 million rounds of rifle
ammunition, or 3.4 million C-Rations.
Due to wartime material constraints,
and the need for new shipyards to
begin construction on unfamiliar
designs, many cost-cutting measures
were introduced. Wood was used on
all interior features and amenities,
from furniture and fixtures to linings
and hatch covers. In fact, those hatch
covers could be detached to double as
life rafts if a ship were sunk. Anchors
were first shortened, then the design
went from having two to only one.
The ships were slow and, only doing
10 knots, were considered sitting ducks
for U-Boats. In order to make up for
that, they were reinforced with concrete
from their bottoms to three feet above
the waterline. New technology, in the
form of degaussing cable, was also
placed around each ship. That was
done to create an anti-magnetic field to
repel magnetic torpedoes and mines.
The ships were also armed with two
3-inch guns, one in the bow and the
other in the stern, to be used against
surfaced U-Boats and raiders. Eight
20mm machineguns were mounted
as an anti-aircraft deterrent.
The liberty ships were owned
and operated by private companies,
despite their armament. Their crew
size was 45, with an additional 36
gunners, but over time that changed
to 52 with the gun crew dropping to
29. All quarters were located in the
center of the ship in order to minimize
the need for plumbing and heating
facilities and further reducing costs.
The most important cost-saving
measure came from the use of pre-fab-
ricated parts. A liberty ship consisted of
250,000 different parts. Almost every one
of them was a pre-fabricated module
based on a mold built from a scale
model and then enlarged. The final pro-
duction pieces were assembled on the
dock to form 100 separate sections. That
modular component construction also
allowed ships to be more easily repaired
in far off ports and other locales.
The first of the new ships was
constructed in an inefficient 230 days;
however, at the height of wartime
production they were being completed
on an average of 42 days, with three
completed every day. One ship, the
Robert E. Parry, was completed in 4.5
days as a publicity stunt, though it still
required fittings and other features
before it was ready for sea operations.
The ships were named after
various deceased notables, including
the signatories of the Declaration of
Independence. In another popular
move, any group that raised $2 million
($26 million 2010 dollars) in war
bond sales was allowed to propose
a name. That led to one ship being
named the Stage Door Canteen, after
a popular New York City nightspot.
Another noted ship was the Stephen
Hopkins, the first ship of the US Navy
to sink a surface combatant in a gun
duel in World War II. On 27 September
1942, the liberty ship encountered the
German surface raider Stier. Due to the
thick fog, neither vessel’s crew was able
to get a good look at their opponent
until the range had closed to less than
two miles. A fierce battle then began.
The Hopkins was equipped with a single
4-inch deck gun, but the Stier was soon
too shot up to continue the battle, and
its crew scuttled her two hours later.
In June 1945 several liberty ships
were converted into mobile repair
depots for the use of the Army. In fact,
some of them were converted to carry
the new R-4 helicopters, making them
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 55
the first such specialized carriers.
Other variants included the T2 tanker
series, of which 490 were built.
The entire liberty ship class was
noted for fractures developing in their
hulls, with several actually splitting
in half. Over 1,500 suffered from that
failure, which was initially blamed
on poor welding and overloading;
however, it was later discovered it
was actually due to the poor grade
of steel used in construction. That
steel, when encountering cold and icy
conditions, would turn from ductile to
brittle, causing it to freeze and snap,
leaving fissures throughout the welds.
Earlier ships, using rivets in the steel,
were proved better able to handle
such stress and didn’t break up.
That and other developments led
to the creation of “victory ships.” They
were designed more like warships. They
were manned by regular naval officers,
and were given a more substantial
complement of anti-aircraft guns along
with a 5-inch stern gun. A quarter of
them were specifically designed as
“attack transports,” and they had a
higher maximum speed of 17 knots.
The first of those new types were
launched in January 1944, with
15 completed by May. By the time
they saw action, the hard-fought
part of the Atlantic anti-submarine
campaign was over, and only two
were ever lost to U-Boats. Others
were deployed to the Pacific, where
some were sunk by kamikazes.
The liberty ship program was a
crucial ingredient in winning the war.
The ships, though substandard in some
ways, were able to be mass-produced in
record numbers, and went on to become
responsible for much of the deployment
of troops and material to both the
Pacific and European theaters. They
also went on to become the backbone of
global oceanic trade in the years imme-
diately after the end of war, while the
late-war victory types made up much
of the postwar replenishment fleet.
— David March
Observation Post
Behind the Lines
Graveyard at Wiseman’s Cove
The battle for Okinawa in 1945,
codenamed Operation Iceberg, was
one of the largest amphibious invasions
of the Second World War. Adm. Kelly
Turner was selected to command the
Allied invasion force. He in turn selected
a group of small islands called Karema-
Retto as the preliminary landing point.
Those islands were about 20 miles west
of the southern tip of Okinawa. They
were grouped in a rough circle and so
offered a protected anchorage for ships
and a seaplane base for search and
rescue missions of downed pilots. On
26 March the US 77th Infantry Division
hit the beaches and quickly seized the
islands. The main attack on Okinawa
began on 1 April. Some 1,600 Allied
ships were involved in transporting the
assault troops, providing gunfire, carrier
aviation cover and logistical support.
Both sides recognized the Okinawa
operation as a prelude to the invasion
of the Japanese home islands. The
Japanese were desperate to stop that
invasion, and their efforts included the
mass use of suicide forces to destroy
American ships. The Japanese had
conducted kamikaze attacks in prior
battles, but the Okinawa campaign took
them to a new level. Japanese pilots flew
some 1,900 kamikaze missions over
USS
Bunker Hill
hit by two
kamikazes in
30 seconds on
11 May 1945
off Kyushu;
372 dead,
264 wounded
56 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
Okinawa, involving several thousand
aircraft (some alone, some in groups).
Dozens of US ships were sunk or badly
damaged. As the battle dragged on, the
attacks on the invasion fleet intensified.
The Americans began to have a serious
problem because damaged ships
needed to be sailed or towed back to
bases on Guam and Hawaii for repair.
The distance involved made that
impractical. Turner therefore selected
the anchorage at Karema-Retto to
become the fleet repair forward base.
The codename for the task force
commander at Karema-Retto was
“Wiseman,” and the repair anchorage’s
code name was “Wiseman’s Cove.”
LST (Landing Ship Tank) 884 and the
transport USS Hinsdale were the first
kamikaze victims towed there. Soon
the anchorage was filled with dozens
of badly damaged warships. They were
met by damage-control parties and
casualty collection teams. Because of
the threat of delaying while still within
range of kamikaze attacks, casualties
were often kept aboard their stricken
ships while they traveled to Karema-
Retto. Thus, Wiseman’s Cove was soon
known as “Wiseman’s Graveyard.”
Once the ships arrived, damage-con-
trol teams assessed their condition. The
ships were divided into three categories:
locally repairable, repairable for transit
back to the US, and beyond repair. One
of the more gruesome tasks was the
clean up and disposal of human remains
that hadn’t been immediately taken care
of after the battle. Ships that could be
repaired were placed in a dry dock that
had been towed to the anchorage. Ships
that could be stabilized were prepared
for the cross-ocean transit to the
United States. Ships that were mortally
wounded were cannibalized for parts.
Much of the work was done by the
survivors of the damaged ships’ crews.
Those ships with working guns were
kept manned against the threat of
additional kamikaze attacks, and several
ships were indeed sunk by kamikazes
after reaching the supposedly safe
anchorage. One of the worst losses
was an attack on 27 April against the
casualty collection ship USS Pickney.
The destroyer USS Aaron Ward was
taking on ammunition from the supply
ship Mayfield Victory. At dusk a flight of
Navy PBM seaplanes was returning to
the anchorage. A single kamikaze snuck
in immediately behind that forma-
tion and thereby avoided detection.
Anti-aircraft guns initially held their
fire to avoid hitting the friendly planes;
so the lone attacker was able to close
with the ships. As the batteries began
firing, the Aaron Ward cast off lines
and began sailing away. The kamikaze
skimmed past the destroyer and the
transport, striking the Pickney. Sixteen
wounded sailors and 18 medics and
crew members on the Pickney perished.
Even so, Kerama-Retto provided a
relatively secure repair and refit location
that was also still strategically near the
Okinawa fighting. Sailors reported the
worst time at Kerama-Retto was at night,
when the damaged ships were blacked
out. Night watches were set with rifles
and machineguns to repel anticipated
Japanese suicide swimmers and small
attack boats (which never came).
The ultimate value of the anchorage
at Kerama-Retto was proven by the
fact it provided vital maintenance
throughout the Okinawa campaign.
—Roger Mason
Historical
Perspective
Operation Dovetail:
Bungled Guadalcanal Rehearsal
The decisive American victory at the
Battle of Midway in June 1942 allowed
the Joint Chiefs of Staff to shift strategy
in the Pacific from one of defense to
attack. The offensive move settled on
was intended to block further Japanese
advances toward Australia while also
securing the lines-of-communication
to the southwest Pacific. To that end the
Joint Chiefs directed the seizure of the
lower Solomons Islands (Guadalcanal
and Tulagi) be undertaken. That would
be the first move toward eventually
securing New Guinea, Rabaul, New
Britain and New Ireland as part of
the overall advance on Japan.
In order to carry out that mis-
sion — the first major American
counterattack of the Second World
War — the Navy would need the Marine
Corps to provide a landing force. By
June 1942 the 1st Marine Division
(formed in February 1941) arrived in
New Zealand under its commander
Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift. He’d
hoped to have time to give his men
more training in amphibious warfare
before they entered combat, but he
was disappointed in that regard.
Since 1933, with the establishment
of the Fleet Marine Force as an integral
part of the Navy, the Marine Corps
had been developing its doctrine and
practice of amphibious warfare. In 1934
the theoretical basis for future Marine
Corps amphibious operations was
laid down in the Tentative Manual of
Landing Operations. In 1938 the manual
became official when it was incorporat-
ed into Fleet Training Publication 167,
Landing Operations Doctrine. As revised
in May 1941, it provided the doctrinal
basis for US amphibious operations at
the time of the invasion of Guadalcanal.
Though the theory for amphibious
missions had been established by
1941, the training necessary to fit
performance with theory remained
limited. The main training effort
focused on the practical experience to
be gained from the annual fleet landing
exercises, which were first conducted
in 1935 and continued annually into
early 1941. Those exercises revealed
problems in undertaking amphibious
operations, mostly in the realm of
shortages of seagoing troop transports,
poor ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship
communications, an insufficient
number of landing craft, along with
weaknesses in combat loading, the
organization of supply on the beaches,
and the uncertainty of effective naval
gunfire support. To further complicate
matters, by the summer of 1942 only a
fraction (1st Battalion, 1st Regiment) of 1st
Marine Division, which was to lead the
assault on Guadalcanal, had undergone
any sustained amphibious training.
In early July 1942 the plan for
the first US Navy strategic offensive
since the Spanish-American War
was submitted by its originator, Rear
Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, then
director of the War Plans Division. That
scheme, carrying the uninspiring title
“Limited Amphibious Offensive in
the Southwest Pacific,” was approved
by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, senior
American naval commander in the
theater. Turner was tagged to command
the operation. He cautioned Nimitz
that the troops, ship personnel, and
air crew allocated to the task weren’t
adequately prepared to undertake an
amphibious operation, and he urged
a period of training be conducted.
Nimitz agreed and ordered a six-day
exercise be run through 23 and 28 July.
Koro Island, part of the British-
owned Fiji Islands, and 1,100 miles
east of Guadalcanal, was chosen for
the rehearsal area. Due to its distance
from any Japanese territory, it was
deemed the most secure place to hold
the practice landings. Unfortunately,
the American naval officers who
scouted the site did so at high tide,
and thus failed to discern that, when
the tide went out, entrance onto
the island by landing craft would be
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 57
difficult and dangerous due to the
jagged coral reef surrounding the
place. That unsuspected fact would
make “Operation Dovetail” (codename
for the rehearsal) problematic.
Delay in gathering the ships of Task
Force 62 (75 transports and warships),
and loading the invasion force onto
the transports in New Zealand, caused
a postponement until 28 July. Further,
since the actual Guadalcanal landing
was to start on 7 August, the rehearsal
was reduced to just four days covering
the period 28 through 31 July.
The rehearsal called for landing
19,000 Marines on Koro Island via three
landing sites: Red, Blue and Green
Beaches, with the last representing the
projected assault on Tulagi. The first
two days would be devoted to putting
troops on the island, while the last
two would see them returned to the
transports. As planned for the actual
Guadalcanal-Tulagi operation, the
5th (less 2nd Battalion) and 1st Marine
Regiments would land on Red Beach;
the 1st Raider Battalion plus the 2nd
Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and the
1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment were
to come ashore on Blue Beach; while
the 1st Parachute Battalion would dis-
embark on Green Beach. Two fire-sup-
port groups, made up of cruisers and
destroyers, would simulate shore bom-
bardment in support of the landings on
28 July, and then perform actual live-fire
bombardment on the 29th. Fighters
and dive bombers from the aircraft
carriers Saratoga, Wasp and Enterprise
were to simulate air attacks on the
island on the 28th, followed by real
strafing and bombing runs on the 29th.
At 9:00 a.m. Operation Dovetail
began with the launching of 36 wooden
Higgins boats along with 30 X-boats
and ramp boats lowered over the sides
of their troop transports 8,000 yards
north of Koro Island. Every boat carried
36 Marines, each man loaded down
with 70 lbs. of equipment. The assault
craft assembled in five waves 500
yards from the transports, then they
headed for the line of departure 3,500
Observation Post
yards farther south. Not surprisingly,
the exercise, being the first full-scale
amphibious operation ever conducted
by the US Marines and Navy, ran behind
schedule: it wasn’t until 2:00 p.m.
the run-in to the beach began.
By the time the boats approached
Koro, the tide had gone out, exposing
large coral heads, some two or three
feet in diameter, visible just below
the surface. With a two-foot draft
on the loaded boats at the stern, the
propellers of many of them struck the
coral and were damaged. Many of the
boat coxswains heading for Red Beach
stopped their vessels and ordered
their Marine passengers over the side
while still 100 yards from the landing
area. There the water was well over
the heads of the Marines, and many
barely escaped drowning. Other boat
crews navigated around the coral to
land their passengers onshore. Even
so, some Marines, especially those
from the troop transport Fuller, missed
Red Beach by over 1,800 yards.
As the confusion mounted on and
offshore at Red Beach, the next wave
from the Fuller approached. Within it
was naval Lt. Jack Clark, beach master
of the Fuller, as well as the man in
charge of all landing craft repairs. After
reaching the island, he went along the
shore to see how the overall operation
was faring. He was soon convinced
things were generally falling apart and,
if it continued, many of the boats would
be so badly damaged they wouldn’t
be available for the actual attack on
Guadalcanal. He contacted Capt.
Theiss, skipper of the Fuller, who in turn
radioed that assessment to Adm. Turner
and Gen. Vandegrift. Those officers sent
out a boat carrying their aides to survey
the situation. Soon afterward the signal
to abort the entire exercise was issued.
While the men from the Fuller
struggled ashore, most boats carrying
members of the 1st Marine Regiment,
which were then still coming in from
the transports Elliott, Barnett and the
flagship McCawley, were also signaled
to return to their ships. Of the Higgins
58 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
boats coming from the Elliott, those
carrying Company F, 2nd Battalion,
1st Marine Regiment; Battery H, 3rd
Battalion, 11th Marine Artillery Regiment
and the Navy beach party, failed to
note the recall order and went on to
make their landing in water waist-high.
Another Marine who saw the return
signal, but elected to ignore it, was
Col. Clifton Cates, commander of the
1st Marine Regiment. After seeing the
other boats pull back from the beach,
and then realizing why, he muttered “To
hell with it,” and with only his orderly
as company he jumped over the side
of his small boat and waded ashore.
While the assault craft returned
to their transports, other troops,
mostly support personnel, hadn’t
even completed their loading
process for the move to Koro. Slow
and complicated loading procedures,
as well as mechanical breakdowns of
numerous landing craft, were to blame.
While the landings on Red Beach
foundered, those taking place on Blue
Beach ran close to plan, as did the
smaller landing on Green Beach. Most
of the troops on the former had to
off-load about 100 yards from shore and
wade in due to the coral obstructions.
As night fell, the Marines on Koro
tried to make camp, gather food and
rest. Most of the supplies and equipage
that was supposed to land with them
had failed to do so. As a result, those
men had little food or shelter that night.
Starting 29 July the troops who’d
stayed on Koro the night before were
ferried back to their transports. Adm.
Turner was furious with the results
of the 28th and determined no forces
would be landed on the island on the
30th. Instead, the troops would simply
board the landing craft, approach
to within 2,000 yards of Red and
Blue Beaches and then return to the
transports. The original plan had
called for a live-fire exercise by the
warships and aircraft of Task Force 62
for 30 July, and that would proceed.
At 10:00 a.m. flight operations began
with aerial attacks on the north end of
the island. No foul-ups occurred, and
the carrier commanders expressed sat-
isfaction with their part of the rehearsal.
Off of Red, Blue and Green Beaches
stood six destroyers, four cruisers and
five minesweepers prepared to conduct
a pre-landing bombardment to start
at 10:30 a.m. At 10:15 a.m. Marines
from the Fuller mistakenly landed on
Red Beach. As the second wave neared
shore, the destroyer USS Ellet, with just
minutes to go before the Navy was to
begin firing on Koro, was seen racing
toward shore. Her captain frantically sig-
naled all troops were to leave the island.
That process was soon begun, while the
shore bombardment was postponed to
mid-afternoon. When the ships’ guns
did finally open fire, the opinion of
most who observed it was the accuracy
was terrible due to the fact the gunners
lacked experience against shore targets.
On 31 July two battalions of the 2nd
Marine Regiment and elements of the
11th Marine Artillery Regiment boarded
landing craft and moved to within
2,000 yards of Blue and Red Beaches,
respectively. Having accomplished that
feat, they returned to their transports.
Unfortunately, some of the landing
boats heading back to the transports
were missed and not picked-up as Task
Force 62 weighed anchor and steamed
for Guadalcanal that evening. The boats
chased the transports until they were
spotted and taken aboard. Operation
Dovetail was thus mercifully over.
Lessons were learned from the
Koro rehearsal that benefited the
Guadalcanal invasion, including
improved combat loading and the
general pooling of landing craft
among the transports. That aside, the
conclusion reached by Gen. Vandegrift
in his autobiography probably best
summed up the general opinion of
the outcome of Operation Dovetail.
He wrote: “I shuddered to think
what would have happened if those
beaches [at Guadalcanal] turned-out
to have been defended in strength.”
 — Arnold Blumberg
Mysteries Revealed
Monopoly & POWs
During World War II, the British
Secret Service’s branch M19, responsible
for developing escape and evasion
techniques, explored ways to help
captured British airmen and other Allied
prisoners escape from German POW
camps, especially by providing maps
of the region in which those facilities
were located. Since paper maps rustled
in clothing and dissolved in water, silk
fabric became the material of choice.
A British company, John Waddington,
Ltd., already made silk maps for airmen
to carry in flight. That company was,
coincidentally, also the UK licensee
for the Parker Brothers Monopoly
board game. It took British military
ingenuity, coupled with Waddington’s
board game expertise, to get maps and
other escape materials into the POW
camps so escapees could better find
their way through hostile territory.
The Germans, who only minimally
adhered to the Geneva Convention,
were at the same time increasingly
having to ration food and other supplies
to their own soldiers. So they welcomed
aid packages for the POWs they held.
Games and other pastimes qualified
for inclusion in those packages, and
shipments from the International Red
Cross and other charitable institutions
underwent less scrupulous examination
by the Germans. Monopoly games
and other pastimes, including Chess
A silk map of Germany from a “special edition”
POW Monopoly game
sets and playing cards, kept the POWs a third of the escapees used them.
busy. Since less boredom promised After the war, all the special escape
fewer problems for the German guards, editions of Monopoly were destroyed.
those diversions were welcomed An archive of correspondence and
in the shipments to the camps. samples of the maps from Waddington
M19 therefore commissioned were donated to the British Map
the Waddington Corp. to develop a Library in London. An exhibition titled
“special edition” of Monopoly. Only Wall Tiles and Free Parking: Escape
a few security screened employees and Evasion Maps of World War II,
worked in a closed off room preparing displayed some of those items for
the new edition. They cut small spaces public view for the first time in 1999.
into the game boxes, pieces and board This year (2010) marks the 75th
where metal files, a magnetic compass, anniversary of the introduction of
and a regional silk map, relative to Monopoly. When its designer, Charles
specific camps, could be concealed. Darrow, sold it to Parker Brothers in
Actual German or Italian or French 1935, he never imagined it would be
currency complemented the supply of instrumental in helping Allied soldiers
play money. A red dot in the corner of who would be prisoners of the Germans
the “Free Parking” space indicated the during a coming World War. The “GET
games that contained escape materials. OUT OF JAIL FREE!” card that’s thrilled
Since the British government didn’t players for generations never had more
want to compromise the integrity of the meaning than when the classic game
International Red Cross, which would’ve was used to save Allied soldiers’ lives.
worked to block future deliveries of
other much needed supplies to the —Annie Laura Smith
POWs, fake charities were instituted
to serve as covers for the smuggling
of the special games into the camps.
They then devised a code to ensure
delivery of each altered Monopoly
game was sent to the appropriate
destination. A period was added after
different locations on the board, while
the board designations were changed
from locations in the United States to
reflect sites in London. For example,
a period after Marylebone Station
meant it was a game destined for Italy.
Though some reports about the
maps indicated they included sites
of safe houses, such really wasn’t the
case. If an escaped POW were captured
with such a map, that information
would’ve led to the deaths of the
resistance members or partisans who
supported those safe houses. Complete
details of the clandestine endeavor
was only fully declassified in 2007.
The exact number of the roughly
35,000 Allied troops who escaped
from German POW camps using the
Monopoly materials may never be
known. It is believed, however, at least
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 59
NK_sixthpage.indd 1 11/03/10 3:15 PM
Media Reviews
The Maginot Line 1940: Battles
on the French Frontier, by Marc
Romanych and Martin Rupp (Osprey
Publishing, Campaign Series #218,
2010). Reviewed by Andrew Hind.
Throughout the 1930s, at great
expense, France built a series of
imposing fortresses along its German
border that were intended to serve as a
deterrent to invasion. The Maginot Line
was the lynchpin of French strategy.
In May and June 1940, that strategy
was revealed to be ill-founded when
Germany won a stunning victory
across western Europe, defeating the
Allied armies and occupying Belgium,
Holland, and France in only six weeks.
History books tell us that instead of
directly assaulting the Maginot Line,
the Germans identified a weak point
60 World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010
in the Ardennes and were able to
smash through that lightly defended
section to outflank the fortifications.
France fell a few short weeks later.
While true, that overview is
incomplete. The French defenses were
outflanked and their whole nation did
indeed succumb less than a month
later. But what most historiographic
studies don’t tell is that Germany did
indeed attack the Maginot line in 10
separate corps-level and division-level
attacks. Those operations resulted in
some of the heaviest fighting of the
campaign, but were overshadowed
by the French Army’s defeat and
subsequent surrender, and thus have
been largely forgotten. Until now. This
96-page book examines the opposing
armies, their leaders and their plans,
and provides a detailed examination of
the seven largest German operations
launched against the Maginot Line.
The Good The best aspect of this
new release is the subject matter
itself. This volume is one of precious
few English-language books, and
easily the most digestible, to cover
this aspect of World War II. Though of
modest size, the book still manages
to look at the campaign in depth, and
it offers strong analysis of the failings
of the French command and the
fortifications in which they put so
much trust, thereby identifying why
the battle was ultimately lost by them.
The book is also strong because
its authors, Marc Romantch and
Martin Rupp, are two of the most
esteemed English-language voices
on this subject. Romantch has been
studying the Maginot Line for 15
years and is a member of Association
du P.O. de Sentzich, a Maginot Line
historical preservation group. Rupp
has been researching German records
concerning combat operations against
the line since 1987, and has personally
surveyed the battlefields. You couldn’t
find two people more qualified, and
it shows in this masterful volume.
As usual for Osprey, the maps and
illustrations are superb, complementing
the text and allowing the unfolding
events to come to dramatic life
The Bad There’s little to complain
about. I would’ve liked to have seen
more about the opposing command-
ers and how their personalities and
experiences shaped the campaign.
More importantly, the text explains
there were a total of 10 division-sized
and corps-sized operations against
the Maginot Line, but it only details
seven. What about the other three?
Overall This valuable and
readable book fills an important
historiographic niche, and it deserves
a place on the bookshelves of every
student of the Second World War.
Attention WaW Readers:
We’re always looking for media reviewers for
Strategy & Tactics and World at War.
Any media will do: book, magazine, film,
website, etc. Absolute maximum word count
is 500. We want critical analysis, not just
descriptions. Contact Chris Perello, at:
chris@christopherperello.com

In the Cockpit II: Inside the History
Making Aircraft of World War II,
by Roger D. Coonor & Christopher
T. Moore (HarperCollins, 2010).
Reviewed by Chris Perello.
Three Heroes of Assisi in World War II:
Bishop Giuseppe Nicolini, Colonel
Valentin Műller, Don Aldo Brunacci,
by José Raischl SFO and Andrė Cirino
OFM (Editrice Minerva – Assisi, 2005).
Reviewed by Annie Laura Smith
Almost literally a nuts-and-bolts
work, this book presents close-up
photos of the cockpits and other
interior portions of 34 aircraft from
WWII. Each photo is accompanied by
a textual explanation the component
parts, including both technical
and operational ramifications.
The Good The detail is amazing. It
gives the reader an almost personal
feel for what it was like to sit in these
machines. Even the larger bomber
seats look sparse, cramped and
cold. From a historical perspective,
this kind of technical data supports
more general conclusions about
aircraft capabilities in operationally
oriented works, reinforcing the fact
the largest forces are made up of
individual components. The photos
are plentiful, the views appropriate,
and the organization logical.
Though German troops occupied
Assisi, Italy, during World War II, several
hundred Jews fled there for protection
because they revered the spiritual legacy
of St. Francis. The brave Assisians, who
sheltered and hid those Jews from
the Germans at great personal risk,
sustained that legacy. Bishop Giuseppe
Nicolini (the bishop of Assisi), German
Col. Valentin Müller (a physician
and devout Catholic), and Don Aldo
Brunacci (the bishop’s secretary)
coordinated that successful endeavor.
The book chronicles how the
citizens and clergy were able to keep
the refugees from being arrested and
deported to concentration camps. They
escaped the fate of 7,000 other Jews who
were deported from Italy to Auschwitz.
The German commander wasn’t told
about the Assisian underground’s
World at War 14 | OCT−NOV 2010 61
The Bad If there’s a negative here, it’s
that even more detail about aircraft
performance would’ve been nice. All
aircraft are designed for a purpose,
and that design necessarily involves
trade-offs: speed vs. maneuverability,
range vs. armor, guns vs. bombs,
and so on. Adding material about
those mechanical realities and
design trade-offs would increase
the level of understanding about
aircraft technology that much more.
Granted, such an approach would
actually make for a different work,
but the book already has aspects
of an aircraft design manual.
Overall A fun read, probably even
for those not broadly interested in
military history. For those of us who
are, it is an excellent resource.
aid to the Jews. He would have been
considered a traitor had he known
about their mission and not acted to
stop it, yet he did intervene against the
SS and Gestapo on a regular basis.
It is significant these interviews
corrected misinformation that appeared
in the movie The Assisi Underground.
That film failed to give credit to Nicolini.
The State of Israel presented the Medal
of the Righteous Gentiles to Brunacci
and (posthumously) to Nicolini in 1977.
St. Bonaventure University awarded
Brunacci the Gaudete Medal in 2004
in recognition for his exemplifying
the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi and
inspiring others. Footnotes throughout
the book provide documentation
and information for further research.
This book is an excellent reference for
Judaica and Holocaust studies.  ★
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What If: Pearl Harbor Invasion | Greek Civil War: Prequel to Cold War | Bzura Counteroffensive, 1939 | Japan Mobilizes for War

The Strategy & Tactics

Tactics of
of World
WorldWar
WarIIII #14 OCT−NOV 2010

1941
Pearl Harbor
5.99
$

What if the Japanese Invaded?