Andrew Roberts - The Storm of War. A New History of the Second World War

A New History of the Second World War

ALLEN LANE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

ALLEN LANE

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2009

Copyright Andrew Roberts, 2009

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-193886-8

To the memory of Frank Johnson
(19432006)

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 4 June 1940

Contents

PART I
Onslaught

PART II
Climacteric

PART III
Retribution

List of Illustrations

Endpapers: Flak over a German city, 1940 (ullstein bild/Topofoto)

List of Maps

Poland, 1939

Finland, 19391940

Norway, 1940

France and the Low Countries, 1940

The Battle of Britain, 1940

The Battle of the Atlantic, 19391943

Russia and the Eastern Front, 19411943

Stalingrad, 19421943

The Holocaust

The Far East, 1941945

The Far East: Burma, 19411945

The Far East: Pacific, 19411945

The Far East: The Philippines, 19411945

North Africa and the Mediterannean, 19391943

El Alamein

Sicily and Italy, 19431945

Monte Cassino and Anzio, 19431944

The Battle of Kursk

The Allied Combined Bombing Offensive

The Normandy Landings, 1944

France and Germany, 19441945

The Eastern Front, 19431945

Preface

Writing history, A. J. P. Taylor used to say, was like W. C. Fields juggling: it looks easy until you try to do it yourself. The writing of this book has been made much easier for me through the enthusiastic support of friends and fellow historians.

The historian Ian Sayer owns Britains largest private archive of hitherto unpublished Second World War material, and he has been fabulously generous with his time, advice and extensive knowledge of the period. It has been a great pleasure getting to know him in the course of researching this book, which I wrote at the same time as Masters and Commanders, since many of the sources and actors overlap.

Visiting the actual sites and scenes of many of the climactic moments of the war has been invaluable, and I would like to thank all those who have made my visits to the following places so enjoyable: the Wehrmacht headquarters at Zossen-Wunsdorf; the Maginot Line; Grings former Air Ministry and Goebbels former Propaganda Ministry in Berlin; RAF Uxbridge; the estate Hitler gave Guderian in Poland; the Cabinet War Rooms; the U-boat 534 in Birkenhead; the Lancaster bomber Just Jane at East Kirby, Lincolnshire; the site of Hitlers Reich Chancellery on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin; the Sevastopol diorama and U-boat pens in the Crimea; the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin; RAF Coltishall; Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises; the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall; the Maison Blairon in Charleville-Mzires; the former German air-raid shelters on Guernsey; the Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde outside Berlin; the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre at Berchtesgaden; the Wolfschanze at Rastenburg; the Livadia Palace at Yalta; and Stalins dacha at Sochi in the Crimea.

I should particularly like to thank Oleg Germanovich Alexandrov of the excellent Three Whales Tours (www.threewhales.ru) for taking me around the Moscow Defence Museum, the Kremlin, the Armed Forces Museum in Moscow and the Museum of the Great Patriotic War; also Svetlana Mishatkina for showing my wife Susan and me around Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and in particular the Grain Elevator, the Mamayev Kurgan, the Red October, Barrikady and Dzerzhinsky Tractor factories, Crossing 62, Field Marshal Paulus headquarters, the Rossoschka Russo-German Cemetery and the Panoramic Museum; also Lieutenant-Colonel Alexandr Anatolyevich Kulikov for taking me round the Museum of Tank Construction at Kubinka, and Colonel Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Budjony for showing us the museum of the Officers Club in Kursk and the battlefields of Jakovlevo and Prokhorovka.

I should like to thank the indefatigable Colonel Patrick Mercer MP for taking me on a fascinating tour of the 1944 battlefields south of Rome, and in particular to the Alban Hills, the Allied Landing Museum at Nettuno, the former Factory (Aprilia), Campoleone, the Commonwealth Beach Head Cemetery at Anzio, the crossing over the Moletta river where Viscount De LIsle won his Victoria Cross, the Boot wadi off the via Anziate, Monte Lungo, San Pietro Infine, the Gari river crossings, SantAngelo in Theodice, the Commonwealth, Polish and German War Cemeteries in and around Cassino, the Rapido river, the Monte Cassino Monastery Museum and the Monte Cassino History Museum. I should also like to thank Ernesto Rosi at the American War Cemetery at Nettuno for showing me where to find the grave of General George C. Marshalls stepson, Lieutenant Allen Tupper Brown.

I should once again like to thank Paul Woodadge of Battlebus Tours (www.battlebus.fr) for conducting me on battlefield tours of Omaha Beach, Beuzeville-au-Plain, La Fire, Utah Beach, Les Mzires, Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Brville, Angoville-au-Plain, Merville Battery, Strongpoint Hillman, Sword Beach, Pegasus Bridge, Juno Beach, Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Lion-sur-Mer, Gold Beach and Crpon, as well as taking me to the Ryes Commonwealth War Cemetery at Bazenville and the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.

It was kind of SPC Trent Cryer of Fort Myer, Virginia, to show me around the Pentagon, and in particular for tracking down the pen used by Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz and the Japanese delegation aboard USS Missouri on 2 September 1945 to sign the surrender document that ended the war. I would also like to thank Magdalena Rzasa-Michalec for Susans and my visit to AuschwitzBirkenau, which she guided us around with great expertise, and David and Gail Webster for giving us a tour around de Gaulles wartime country residence of Rodinghead in Ashridge Park. Richard Zeitlin of the Veterans Museum in Madison, Wisconsin has also been most helpful.