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The Third Phase: Turn of the Tide
In late December 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill and their chief advisers met in Washington. They reaffirmed the strategy of defeating Germany first, and because it appeared that the British would have all they could do fighting in Europe, the war against Japan became almost solely a U.S. responsibility. They also created the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), a top-level British-American military committee seated in Washington, to develop and execute a common strategy. On January 1, 1942, the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, and 23 other countries signed the Declaration by United Nations in which they pledged not to make a separate peace. The United Nations became the official name for the anti-Axis coalition, but the term used more often was the Allies, taken over from World War I.
Development of Allied Strategy
As a practical matter, the United States could not take much action in Europe in early 1942. It had no troops there, and it was in the midst of building forces and converting industry at home. In North Africa, the British appeared to be more than holding their own. They had relieved Tobruk on December 10, 1941, and taken Banghāzī in Libya two weeks later. Rommel counterattacked in late January 1942 and drove them back 300 km (185 mi) to al-Gazala and Bir Hacheim, but there, well forward of Tobruk and the Egyptian border, a lull set in.
Europe
The big question in the war was whether the USSR could survive a second German summer offensive, and the Russians were urging the United States and Britain to relieve the pressure on them by starting an offensive in the west. General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, believed the best way to help the Russians and bring an early end to the war was to stage a buildup in England and attack across the English Channel into northwestern Europe. He wanted to act in the spring of 1943, or even in 1942 if the USSR appeared about to collapse. The British did not want involvement elsewhere until North Africa was settled and did not believe a force strong enough for a cross-channel attack could be assembled in England by 1943. Rommel settled the issue. In June he captured Tobruk and drove 380 km (235 mi) into Egypt, to Al ‘Alamayn (El ‘Alamein). After that, the Americans agreed to shelve the cross-channel attack and ready the troops en route to England for an invasion of French North Africa.
The Pacific
Meanwhile, despite the Germany-first strategy, the Americans were moving toward an active pursuit of the war against Japan. The U.S. Navy saw the Pacific as an arena in which it could perform more effectively than in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. General Douglas MacArthur, who had commanded in the Philippines and been evacuated to Australia by submarine before the surrender, was the country’s best-known military figure and as such too valuable to be left with an inconsequential mission. The Battle of Midway had stopped the Japanese in the central Pacific, but they continued to advance in the southwest Pacific along the Solomons chain and overland on New Guinea. On July 2, 1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) directed the naval and ground forces in the south and southwest Pacific to halt the Japanese, drive them out of the Solomons and northeastern New Guinea, and eliminate the great base the Japanese had established at Rabaul, on New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago (now in Papua New Guinea).
The Russian Front: Summer 1942
In the most immediately critical area of the war, the USSR, the initiative had passed to the Germans again by summer 1942. The Soviet successes in the winter had been followed by disasters in the spring. Setbacks south of Leningrad, near Kharkiv, and in Crimea had cost well more than a half-million men in prisoners alone. The Germans had not sustained such massive losses, but the fighting had been expensive for them too, especially since the Soviets had three times the human resources at their disposal. Moreover, Hitler's overconfidence had led him into a colossal error. He had been so sure of victory in 1941 that he had stopped most kinds of weapons and ammunition production for the army and shifted the industries to work for the air force and navy, with which he proposed to finish off the British. He had resumed production for the army in January 1942, but the flow would not reach the front until late summer. Soviet weapons output, on the other hand, after having dropped low in November and December 1941, had increased steadily since the turn of the year, and the Soviet industrial base also was larger than the German.
Looking ahead to the summer, Hitler knew he could not again mount an all-out, three-pronged offensive. Some of the generals talked about waiting a year until the army could be rebuilt, but Hitler was determined to have the victory in 1942. He had sufficient troops and weapons to bring the southern flank of the eastern front nearly to full strength, and he believed he could compel the Soviet command to sacrifice its main forces trying to defend the coal mines of the Donets Basin and the oil fields of the Caucasus.
The German Drive Toward the Caucasus
The offensive began east of Kharkiv on June 28, and in less than four weeks the armies had taken the Donets Basin and advanced east to the Don River. The distances covered were spectacular, but the numbers of enemy killed or captured were relatively small. Stalin and his generals had made the luckiest mistake of the war. Believing the Germans were going to aim a second, more powerful, attack on Moscow, they had held their reserves back and allowed the armies in the south to retreat.
Hitler, emboldened by the ease and speed of the advance, altered his plan in the last week of July. He had originally proposed to drive due east to Stalingrad, seize a firm hold on the Volga River there, and only then send a force south into the Caucasus. On July 23 he ordered two armies to continue the advance toward Stalingrad and two to strike south across the lower Don and take the oil fields at Maikop, Groznyy, and Baku.
The Russians appeared to be heading toward disaster, as the German thrust into the Caucasus covered 300 km (185 mi) to Maikop by August 9. Hitler’s strategy, however, presented a problem: Two forces moving away from each other could not be sustained equally over the badly damaged railroads of the occupied territory. In the second half of August, he diverted more supplies to the attack toward Stalingrad, and the march into the Caucasus slowed. Nevertheless, success seemed to be in sight when the Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army (formerly group) closed near the Stalingrad suburbs on September 3.
The Russian Stand at Stalingrad
The USSR reached its low point in the war at the end of July 1942. The retreat was almost out of hand, and the Germans were getting into position to strike north along the Volga behind Moscow as well as into the Caucasus. On July 28 Stalin issued his most famous order of the war, “Not a step back!” While threatening Draconian punishments for slackers and defeatists, he relegated communism to the background and called on the troops to fight a “patriotic” war for Russia. Like Hitler, he had thus far conducted the war as he saw fit. In late August he called on his two best military professionals, Zhukov, who had organized the Moscow counteroffensive in December 1941, and the army chief of the General Staff, General Aleksandr M. Vasilyevsky, to deal with the situation at Stalingrad. They proposed to wear the enemy down by locking its troops in a bloody fight for the city while they assembled the means for a counterattack. See also Stalingrad, Battle of.
Guadalcanal
The Axis was riding a high tide in midsummer 1942. Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil were seemingly within Hitler’s grasp, and Rommel was within striking distance of the Suez Canal. The Japanese had occupied Guadalcanal at the southern end of the Solomons chain and were marching on Port Moresby. Within the next six months, however, the Axis had been stopped and turned back in the Soviet Union, North Africa, and the southwest Pacific.
U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942. Against a small Japanese garrison, the landing was easy. Afterward nothing was easy. The Japanese responded swiftly and violently by sea and by air. The outcome hinged on the Japanese navy’s ability to bring in reinforcements, which was substantial, and the U.S. Navy’s ability to keep the marines supplied, which was at times in some doubt. While the marines battled a determined foe in a debilitating tropical climate, between August 24 and November 30 the navy fought six major engagements in the waters surrounding the island. The losses in ships and aircraft were heavy on both sides, but the Japanese were more seriously hurt because they could not afford to accept a war of attrition with the Americans. Their warships did not come out again after the end of November, and the Americans declared the island secure on February 9, 1943.
The Anglo-American Offensive in North Africa
The turnabout in North Africa began on August 31, 1942, when Rommel attacked through the southern flank of the British line west of Al ‘Alamayn, was stopped at the ‘Alam al Ḩalfā' Ridge, and was thrown back by September 7. The newly appointed British commander, General Bernard Law Montgomery, hit the north flank on October 23 with a methodically prepared offensive and, by November 5, forced Rommel into a retreat. American and British Troops fighting together under General Dwight D. Eisenhower began landing in Morocco and Algeria on November 8, the Americans at Casablanca and Oran, the British at Algiers. See also North African Campaign.
The Germans sent reinforcements into Tunis and occupied all of France. They managed to get the Fifth Panzer Army under General Jürgen von Arnim on the scene in time to stop Eisenhower in western Tunisia by mid-December. Rommel went into the Mareth Line in southeastern Tunisia in early February 1943 and launched an attack against the Americans on February 14 that drove them back 80 km (50 mi) and out of the vital Kasserine Pass. It was his last success and one he could not exploit. Hitler recalled him in March, as the Americans and British closed in from the west and south. After being cut off from their bases at Bizerte and Tunis and driven back into pockets on the Cape Bon Peninsula, 275,000 Germans and Italians surrendered by May 13.
The Soviet Victory at Stalingrad
On the eastern front the Germans’ advances to Stalingrad and into the Caucasus had added about 1,100 km (about 680 mi) to their line. No German troops were available to hold that extra distance, so Hitler had to use troops contributed by his allies. Consequently, while Sixth and Fourth Panzer armies were tied down at Stalingrad in September and October 1942, they were flanked on the left and right by Romanian armies. An Italian and a Hungarian army were deployed farther upstream on the Don River. Trial maneuvers had exposed serious weaknesses in some of the Axis's armies.
On the morning of November 19, in snow and fog, Soviet armored spearheads hit the Romanians west and south of Stalingrad. Their points met three days later at Kalach on the Don River, encircling the Sixth Army, about half of the Fourth Panzer Army, and a number of Romanian units. Hitler ordered the Sixth Army commander, General Friedrich Paulus, to hold the pocket, promised him air supply, and sent Manstein, by then a field marshal, to organize a relief. The airlift failed to provide the 300 tons of supplies that Paulus needed each day, and Manstein’s relief operation was halted 55 km (34 mi) short of the pocket in late December. The Sixth Army was doomed if it did not attempt a breakout, which Hitler refused to permit.
The Russians pushed in on the pocket from three sides in January 1943, and Paulus surrendered on January 31. The battle cost Germany about 200,000 troops. In the aftermath of Stalingrad, in part owing to the collapse of the Italian and Hungarian armies, the Germans were forced to retreat from the Caucasus and back approximately to the line from which they had started the 1942 summer offensive. See also Battle of Stalingrad.
The Casablanca Conference
From January 14 to 24, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill and their staffs met in Casablanca to lay out a strategy for the period after the North African campaign. The American military chiefs wanted to proceed to the direct, cross-channel assault on Germany. The British, eloquently spoken for by Churchill, argued the advantages of gathering in the “great prizes” to be had in the Mediterranean, in Sicily and Italy for a start. Roosevelt supported the British, and the American military succeeded only (several months later) in getting an agreement that no more troops would be put into the Mediterranean area than were already there, all others being assembled in England for a cross-channel attack in 1944. Roosevelt gave his military another shock when he announced that nothing short of unconditional surrender would be accepted from any of the Axis powers. The policy was meant to reassure the Russians, who would have to wait at least another year for a full-fledged second front, but was likely also to stiffen Axis resistance.
Air Raids on Germany
As a prelude to the postponed cross-channel attack, the British and Americans decided at Casablanca to open a strategic air (bombing) offensive against Germany. In this instance they agreed on timing but not on method. The British, as a result of discouraging experience with daylight bombing early in the war, had built their heavy bombers, the Lancasters and Halifaxes, for night bombing, which meant area bombing. The Americans believed their B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators were armed and armored heavily enough and were fitted with sufficiently accurate bombsights to fly by daylight and strike pinpoint targets. The difference was resolved by letting each nation conduct its own offensive in its own way and calling the result round-the-clock bombing. The British method was exemplified by four firebomb raids on Hamburg in late July 1943, in which much of the city was burned out and 50,000 people died. American losses of planes and crews increased sharply as the bombers penetrated deeper into Germany. After early October 1943, when strikes at ball-bearing plants in Schweinfurt incurred nearly 25 percent losses, the daylight offensive had to be curtailed until long-range fighters became available.
The Battle of Kursk
Before the winter fighting on the eastern front ended in March 1943, Hitler knew he could not manage another summer offensive, and he talked about setting up an east wall comparable to the fortified Atlantic wall he was building along the western European coast. The long winter’s retreat, however, had shortened the front enough to give him a surplus of almost two armies. It also left a large westward bulge in the front around the city of Kursk. To Hitler, the opportunity for one more grand encirclement was too good to let pass.
After waiting three months for more new tanks to come off the assembly lines, Hitler opened the battle at Kursk on July 5 with attacks north and south across the open eastern end of the bulge. Zhukov and Vasilyevsky had also had their eyes on Kursk, and they had heavily reinforced the front around it. In the war’s greatest tank battle, the Russians fought the Germans nearly to a standstill by July 12. Hitler then called off the operation because the Americans and British had landed on Sicily, and he needed to transfer divisions to Italy. With that, the strategic initiative in the east passed to the Soviet forces permanently.
The Invasion of Italy
Three American, one Canadian, and three British divisions landed on Sicily on July 10. They pushed across the island from beachheads on the south coast in five weeks, against four Italian and two German divisions, and overcame the last Axis resistance on August 17. In the meantime, Mussolini had been stripped of power on July 25, and the Italian government had entered into negotiations that resulted in an armistice signed in secret on September 3 and made public on September 8.
On September 3 elements of Montgomery’s British Eighth Army crossed the Strait of Messina from Sicily to the toe of the Italian boot. The U.S. Fifth Army, under General Mark W. Clark, staged a landing near Salerno on September 9; and by October 12, the British and Americans had a fairly solid line across the peninsula from the Volturno River, north of Naples, to Termoli on the Adriatic coast. The Italian surrender brought little military benefit to the Allies, and by the end of the year, the Germans stopped them on the Gustav line about 100 km (about 60 mi) south of Rome. A landing at Anzio on January 22, 1944, failed to shake the Gustav line, which was solidly anchored on the Liri River and Monte Cassino.
Allied Strategy Against Japan
Strategy in the war with Japan evolved by stages during 1943. In the first, the goal was to secure bases on the coast of China (from which Japan could be bombed and later invaded) by British and Chinese drives through Burma and eastern China and by American thrusts through the islands of the central and southwestern Pacific to Taiwan and China. By midyear, it was apparent that neither the British nor the Chinese drive was likely to materialize. Thereafter, only the two American thrusts remained. Their objectives were still Formosa and the Chinese coast.
U.S. Advances in the Pacific
In the Pacific, U.S. troops retook Attu, in the Aleutians, in a hard-fought, 3-week battle beginning on May 23. (The Japanese evacuated Kiska before Americans and Canadians landed there in August.) The main action was in the southwest Pacific. There U.S. and New Zealand troops, under Admiral William Halsey, advanced through the Solomons, taking New Georgia in August and a large beachhead on Bougainville in November. Australians and Americans under MacArthur drove the Japanese back along the East Coast of New Guinea and took Lae and Salamaua in September. MacArthur’s and Halsey’s mission, as set by the JCS in 1942, had been to take Rabaul, but they discovered in the Solomons that having command of the air and sea around them was enough to neutralize the Japanese Island garrisons and render them useless. Landings on Cape Gloucester, New Britain, in December, in the Admiralty Islands in February 1944, and At Emirau Island in March 1944 effectively sealed off Rabaul. Its 100,000-man garrison could not thereafter be either adequately supplied or evacuated.
The central Pacific thrust was slower in getting started. The southwest Pacific islands were relatively close together; airfields on one could furnish support for the move to the next; and the Japanese navy was wary of risking its ships within range of land-based aircraft. In the central Pacific, however, the islands were scattered over vast stretches of ocean, and powerful naval forces were needed to support the landings, particularly aircraft carriers, which were not available in sufficient numbers until late 1943.
The first central Pacific landings were in the Gilbert Islands, at Makin and Tarawa in November 1943. Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll, 117.8 hectares (291 acres) of coral sand and concrete and coconut log bunkers, cost the 2nd Marine Division 3000 casualties in three days. More intensive preliminary bombardments and larger numbers of amphibian tractors capable of crossing the surrounding reefs made the taking of Kwajalein and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands in February 1944 somewhat less expensive.