The Victory Campaign (May 1944 - August 1945)

By Strategicus

Originally published in 1947, “This volume is the last of the series in which I have attempted to write the history of the war while it is actually taking place. It does not appear during the war for the best of reasons; but it is unduly late because of a number of personal mischances and because it covers much more ground than the earlier volumes. The battle-piece it attempts to portray is, in fact, the greatest in the history of the world. Never before have campaigns of the size and scope taken place. In the numbers engaged, in the amount of material used, in distances covered, in the novelty of the tactics and in the almost incredible brutality of some of the methods used, the campaigns of this period from May 1944 to the middle of August 1945 are unique.”

Richly illustrated throughout with maps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787204478

Strategicus

Herbert Charles O’Neill (1879-1953) was a journalist, working variously on the editorial staff of The Daily Mail, as a columnist on The Spectator and Assistant Editor of The Observer. He was also an author, specialising in writing military books such as The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War (1922), and some ten books about WW2 under the pseudonym “Strategicus”, a name which he used whilst with The Spectator.

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Text originally published in 1945 under the same title.

© Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE VICTORY CAMPAIGN

(MAY 1944 - AUGUST 1945)

BY

STRATEGICUS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

MAPS 6

CHAPTER 1—THE FIRST BLOW 7

CHAPTER 2—THE INVASION OF NORMANDY 16

1. Preparations 16

2. The Battle of the Landing 19

3. The Capture of Cherbourg 23

4. The Capture of Caen 27

5. St. Lô 29

6. Break Through 31

7. The Germans strike back towards Avranches 32

8. Falaise 33

9. The Hitler Plot 35

CHAPTER 3—THE DRIVE TO WARSAW 37

1. The Advance to the Gothic Line 37

2. The Finnish Campaign 40

3. The Vitebsk Offensive 43

4. The Fall of Minsk 45

5. The Tiger and Panther Lines 46

6. The Advance to the Vistula 46

7. Estonia and Latvia Cut Off 48

8. The Tragedy of Warsaw 49

CHAPTER 4—PURSUIT AND CHECK 52

1. Invasion from the South 52

2. The Liberation of Paris 53

3. The Race to the Frontiers 54

4. The West Wall 60

5. Arnhem 60

6. Clearing the Scheldt 62

CHAPTER 5—THE BALKAN COLLAPSE 65

1. Resumption of the Rumanian Campaign 65

2. The Baltic Campaign 68

CHAPTER 6—VICTORIES IN BURMA AND THE MARIANAS 73

1. Japanese Defeat at Kohima 73

2. Capture of Myitkyina 75

3. Approach to the Philippines 78

CHAPTER 7—THE ALLIED WINTER OFFENSIVE 80

CHAPTER 8—THE DANUBE CAMPAIGN 87

1. The Arctic Sector 88

2. Invasion of East Prussia 88

3. Towards Budapest 90

CHAPTER 9—THE ARDENNES COUNTER-OFFENSIVE 95

CHAPTER 10—IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 102

CHAPTER 11—FROM THE VISTULA TO THE ODER 105

1. The Fall of Budapest 106

2. The Vistula Break-out 108

3. East Prussia Overrun 112

4. Prelude to the Advance on Berlin 114

CHAPTER 12—THE APPROACH TO THE RHINE 118

CHAPTER 13—THE RHINE CROSSING 127

CHAPTER 14—COLLAPSE 136

1. The March on Vienna 136

2. Breakthrough in Italy 141

3. To Berlin 142

CHAPTER 15—RANGOON AND OKINAWA 148

1. Air Supremacy 148

2. Growing Naval Ascendancy 148

3. Clearing North Burma 149

4. The Dash for Rangoon 150

5. Invasion of Leyte 151

6. The Battle of Leyte Gulf 152

7 Invasion of Luzon 153

8. Iwo Jima 153

9. Invasion of Okinawa 154

CHAPTER 16—FINALE 156

CHAPTER 17—SUNSET OVER JAPAN 162

1. The Okinawa Campaign 163

2. Landing in Borneo 166

3. The Air Offensive 167

4. The Atomic Bombs 169

5. Surrender 169

CHAPTER 18—THE FÜHRER PRINZIP 173

CHAPTER 19—IS IT PEACE? 180

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 182

DEDICATION

To M.

but for whom this book would

never have been

written

"The British nation will therefore be considered as the most valuable ally in the world as long as it can be counted on to show that brutality and tenacity in its government, as well as in the spirit of the broad masses, which enables it to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters upon, no matter how long such a struggle may last or however great the sacrifice that may be necessary or whatever the means that have to be employed; and all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations."—Mein Kampf

PREFACE

This volume is the last of the series in which I have attempted to write the history of the war while it is actually taking place. It does not appear during the war for the best of reasons; but it is unduly late because of a number of personal mischances and because it covers much more ground than the earlier volumes. The battle-piece it attempts to portray is, in fact, the greatest in the history of the world. Never before have campaigns of the size and scope taken place. In the numbers engaged, in the amount of material used, in distances covered, in the novelty of the tactics and in the almost incredible brutality of some of the methods used, the campaigns of this period from May 1944 to the middle of August 1945 are unique.

The task of presenting a reasonably intelligible account of such operations in the space has been unusually difficult. There has naturally been much more material available; but not so much as would have appeared probable, has been of real value. I have ignored the superficial ‘revelations’ which have appeared from the American side. All they can be said to reveal is the presumed immaturity of the minds to which they are addressed. But it is really astonishing that reports coming from official sources can differ so much in fact and in emphasis. I have pointed out such discrepancies as seem to need correction.

It may be said that it is too soon to write the history of the war. Some of the critics have pointed this out in reviewing the earlier volumes. But a few others have appeared to suggest that everything was thoroughly well-known to them. This has astonished me. As far as I know, I am the only writer who has provided contemporary comment on the two great wars of our time; the only one, also, who has seen the unfolding of a war from the official standpoint as well as from the outside. Official experience taught me, at least, how to read the reports of correspondents; and it is, presumably, the sort of experience upon which Intelligence officers depend in their sifting of foreign newspapers. Moreover, I have found in writing this history that very much, indeed, was unknown to me when I was writing contemporary comment, and very much more fell into a pattern at which I could only make a guess at the time.

I have, perhaps rather tiresomely, repeated a number of points which I made in my earliest articles and my first volume. I plead no indulgence for that. I hope they may find some acceptance. Unless we realize that weapons do not of themselves win victories, that material defences may betray rather than protect us, that it is not merely the evil and degenerate who prepare war and not unilateral demobilization that prevents it, that peace is no more to be had for the wishing than any other precious thing, and that, in fine, we shall not find safety in any slogan or cliché, our civilization will remain in peril.

November 1946

MAPS

1. FROM CASSINO TO ROME

2. BETWEEN THE LOIRE AND THE SEINE

3. THE ADVANCE TO THE VISTULA AND (LATER) ACROSS EAST PRUSSIA

4. THE ALLIES’ ADVANCE TO THE GERMAN FRONTIERS (INSET: MAP OF THE CAMPAIGN IN HOLLAND, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1944)

5. THE ADVANCE INTO THE BALKANS, TO BUDAPEST AND TO VIENNA

6. THE BATTLEFIELDS OF BURMA AND THE FAR EAST

7. ILLUSTRATING THE ALLIES’ WINTER OFFENSIVE IN THE WEST AND THE ARDENNES COUNTEROFFENSIVE

8. THE APPROACH TO THE RHINE AND THE ADVANCE INTO GERMANY

9. THE ADVANCE TO THE ODER AND THE ALLIES’ CONVERGENT OFFENSIVE

CHAPTER 1—THE FIRST BLOW

It was on the afternoon of Friday, May the 12th, that people in Britain heard for the first time that the 5th Army, with the regrouped 8th, had struck, between Cassino and the sea, the ‘first blow’ (to use General Alexander’s words) in those battles which will be launched ‘from east to west from north to south’ and which will ‘result in the final destruction of the Nazis’.

Thus came to an end the lull in major operations which had lasted for three weeks. The Germans had been hammering at the Russian positions east of Stanislau and at the bridgehead across the lower Dniester in the neighbourhood of Tiraspol. Punishing as were these local attacks, they had been held, substantially, in spite of the skill and force used. Of more importance was it that Sevastopol had fallen on the preceding Tuesday (9th) to three days’ attack. The Russians had held it for eight months. The difference measured the decline of the enemy’s strength. By this day, Friday, the last resistance had been crushed. In the five weeks of the Crimean campaign 50,000 enemy officers and men were killed and 61,587 were taken prisoner, including the commander of the 5th Army Corps, Lieutenant-General Boehme, and the Commander of the 111th Infantry Division, Lieutenant-General Gruener. More than 3,000 guns of all calibres had been captured. Between Sunday and Friday alone 20,000 were killed and 24,000 captured.

The Italian offensive was not unexpected. For weeks the Mediterranean Air Forces had been particularly aggressive in their attacks on the communications that supplied Kesselring’s armies and it was thought their mobility and capacity for action had been severely damaged for some weeks. Under cover of this interdiction operation the 8th Army had transferred its main force west of the Apennines through the blizzards, snows, and ice of April; and the Germans had noted the disappearance of several famous units. The army had destroyed the Pescara dam; and a force about to attack would not first make the ground over which it must advance waterlogged. Even the best Commanders tend to repeat their successful manœuvres and General Alexander might be expected to attempt, west of the Apennines, a drive similar to that from Massicault to Tunis.

He had left little more than two divisions to hold the Adriatic sector and he had now some fourteen divisions west of the Apennines. Kesselring had still five divisions east of the mountains, about double that number on the Anzio sector and had allotted only seven to the thirty-mile front between Cassino and the sea. Alexander had, therefore, a considerable superiority. His air control was complete, his artillery ample. He was able to concentrate some 2,400 guns, a greater number than at Alamein, though the density was not so great. He had more and better tanks for the first time.

But the door of the Liri Valley is set in an area which is nature’s gift to the defensive; and, in attempting to march on Rome by way of the Via Casilina (Highway Six), he was entering an area which none of the troops that fought there will ever forget. Via Casilina bounds on the north the rough plain into which the hills north and south appear to have spilled their accumulated drifts of open country. Below it the Gari River (called Rapido north of Cassino) cuts through the plain to the Liri, which flows with the Gari to form the Garigliano that runs for miles through steep hills. The plan was to cross the Gari in force under cover of attacks from the north, where the Poles were installed in the hills north-west of Monastery Hill, and from the south of the Liri. Cassino, in the angle of the pincers, was not to be directly attacked. About the town and the mouth of the Liri were, therefore, dead areas. The Moroccan troops of General Juin and the Americans were to strike at the flank to the south. The Liri was the boundary between the 5th and 8th Armies and hence the extremely tough pivot of the whole German position was to be left to the latter.

In his Order of the Day Alexander said that the ‘Allied Armies are assembling for the final battles...’; and this note was latent in the warning issued by the Governments of the three main Allies to the Axis Satellites that they ‘must decide now, while there is yet time for them to contribute to the inevitable Allied victory, whether they intended to persist in their hopeless and calamitous policy of opposing that victory.’

Hopes, therefore, ran high. Moreover, the news came to Britain with a lovely spring day, warm with the breath of early summer. In Italy, too, the weather had deferred to the season; the muds of winter had turned into dust when the short but deadly bombardment played the overture. It was in such circumstances that in the evening mists, made denser by the smoke of battle, the 8th Indian Division took their assault boats across the Gari, here flowing between steep banks, and secured just that requisite breathing space to make good their footing on the west bank of the river. Then fell the curtain of spandau, nebelwerfer, and small-arms fire which was to sow death among the first Indian division to land in Italy. Nevertheless, they had established a small if precarious bridgehead across the river before midnight. It was held and reinforced and, before eight o’clock on that Friday morning, ‘Oxford Bridge’ was in situ. In less than an hour the first Sherman rumbled over. It was followed by long columns of armoured vehicles, the earliest murmur of the march on Rome.

The Indian troops cemented their grip by the capture of Sant’ Angelo, though its caves, cellars, and tunnels had to be cleared up later. On their right the 4th British Division had to advance through crossfire from Cassino and endeavour to cut up behind the town to Via Casilina. In spite of their counterattacks there and against the Poles, the 1st Parachute Division had begun to lose part of the outer glacis of the pivot of their position. The Germans could not reinforce from adjacent sectors because Juin’s French force, fighting with incomparable élan in the tangle of hills below the Liri, had stormed Mts. Faito, Feuci, and Majo which threatened their main communications; and on the French left the Americans had pressed through Castleforte and crossed the road between Minturno and Ausonia. In four days the deep defensive of the Gustav Line had been broken, not merely bitten into as the 36th American Division had earlier done at disastrous cost. The Americans were now advancing across the Formia road; and the French, after an advance of six miles, were looking towards Esperia in the switch position known as the Hitler Line. Only badly weakened and disorderly units were left in the breach they had torn in the Gustav Line. With the heroic advance of the Poles past Monastery Hill and Cassino, and the pressure of the 4th Division across the Gari, the Germans were compelled to fight desperately to keep open their communications with Cassino and the hill positions about it.

By this time the Germans had contrived to bring down some reinforcements from the neighbourhood of Rome, among them the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division (the former 90th Light Division which had been so faithful an enemy from Alamein). But as the attack was even encroaching on the pivot of the position and the Americans on the other flank were scaling the almost perpendicular sides of the outlying shoulder of (yet another) Sant’ Angelo, the enemy could not stabilize the situation. Such was the position on Wednesday. May the 17th; and the following day, six and a half days after the attack had opened, General Alexander was able to announce that the Gustav Line had ceased to exist. Cassino and the Monastery had fallen. The 4th Division had cut Via Casilina two miles west of Cassino with a force of tanks, and the East Surreys entered Cassino from the west on Thursday afternoon, May the 18th. The Germans had fled. Cassino was an almost featureless ruin. But that was the least important part of the damage. The 1st Parachute Division, the élite of the German Army, lost over half its strength; and heavy loss had been inflicted upon some other of their most famous divisions. There were also some 4,500 prisoners in the cages. But the battle had been bloodless on neither side, though the Allies had at length the satisfaction of capturing positions which had resisted as costly attack for four months.

There was, however, no pause. The Hitler Line, pivoting about the area of Monte Cairo and thence stretching by Piedimonte, Aquino, and Pontecorvo to Esperia from whence it curved south-west, south of Itri to Terracina, lay beyond. Canadian armour had already entered the battle on the sector of the 8th Indian Division, and the 2nd New Zealand Division was beginning to take a hand beside the 2nd Polish Corps. As the attack on the Hitler Line began on May the 19th the French were already in possession of Esperia and hill positions beyond, and the Americans on Monte Rivazzo, some two miles from Itri, were in command of the exit from the Gaeta peninsula.

The defences in front of the Allies had been photographed from the air—miles of anti-tank ditches, dense wire belts, concrete pill-boxes, and sangars arranged from boulders, with antitank guns—and they looked a formidable barrier. And the enemy had now twelve divisions in the line. The strongest part of the position centred in Monte Cairo which with its spurs formed a tough knot. There was, moreover, another switch position established on the twenty miles from Pico to Fondi and thence to Terracina on the Appian Way; but only twenty-five miles beyond lay the Anzio bridgehead. The defences of the Hitler Line had already been compromised by the French capture of Esperia; and when with American tanks they pushed through the hills beyond the town, the Germans saw the wisdom of withdrawing to the switch position. The French had broken through the Hitler Line and were looking down, from a peak 4,000 feet high, on to the road between Pico and Itri, two miles away. Farther north the British troops, with the assistance of tanks of the New Zealand Division, were engaged in a savage contest for the Aquino aerodrome; and farther north still the Poles were struggling to maintain a foothold they had won on some of the spurs of Monte Cairo. From this point as far as the Liri only the outposts of the Hitler Line had been driven in while the French were beginning to attack the switch positions. They were held off Monte Leucio by repeated counterattacks. But farther south, with the help of the Americans, they captured Campodimele; and the Americans, after clearing the Gaeta peninsula, pushed through Itri and captured Fondi in the switch line. An impetuous dash carried their patrols into Terracina on the morning of Saturday, May the 20th; but they were pushed out again. Nevertheless the Germans were clearly being hustled out of positions in some disorder.

On the following day the Americans secured a deeper lodgement in the switch line by the capture of Monte Biagio, about a mile north of the Fondi road. At the other end of the line the Poles had penetrated into Piedimonte, though Monte Cairo was still firmly in German hands. It was south of Via Casilina that the Allies had begun most critically to weaken this, the strongest sector of the Hitler Line. The Canadians were penetrating the defences north-east of Pontecorvo while farther south the French, with the Americans on their left, were moving on the town and were threatening the Pontecorvo-Pico road. They succeeded in cutting the road, and even captured Monte Leucio on Monday, May the 22nd. Their first impetuous attack gave them only a temporary hold; for the peak, giving observation over the Liri Valley and all the enemy communications up to Via Casilina, was so vital to the German position that they delivered a prompt and heavy counterattack.

So matters stood on May the 22nd with the Germans stubbornly holding on to the pivot of their position while the French and Americans were through it and engaged on the switch beyond. But early on the following morning a new phase opened in the battle. The British and Americans who had been holding the Anzio bridgehead broke out and advanced against the German positions as the 8th Army struck a powerful blow against the Hitler Line in the Liri Valley. At Anzio, Mackensen’s 14th Army was now reduced to five divisions, and seven of the divisions in the 10th Army had been badly cut up in the last ten days. Kesselring was finding it difficult to reinforce or reorganize between the Liri Valley and the sea; but, in spite of this, the resistance was still strongly maintained, and from Monte Leucio to Monte Cairo the Germans gave ground only slowly and after exacting a heavy price. But at length Kesselring saw the wisdom of withdrawing; and when the Canadians, operating as a corps for the first time, attacked between Pontecorvo and Aquino they effected a breach and in two days penetrated to the River Melfa, a tributary of the Liri. Advancing some five or six miles, they compelled the evacuation of Pontecorvo and enabled the French to clear Pico. With the 78th Division on their right the Canadian armour brought the Hitler Line to its last legs. Farther south the Americans had begun to win their way to the Sacco River through hard fighting and, covering ten miles across rough country, they reached the fringes of the Lepini mountains. Terracina was entered and they had set their feet on the Appian Way.

The following morning at about 7.30 a young American officer from the main body of the 5th Army encountered near Borgo Grappa, some five miles east of the Mussolini canal, another American officer accompanied by a British reconnaissance car. It was Thursday, May the 25th, two days after the carefully synchronized attack had been launched. A few days after the patrols had met, the Army commander, General Clark, appeared. A daring and talented soldier, he was never far from the van of his troops; and this was, as he said, ‘an eventful day for the 5th Army’. For the first time land communications had been established with the bridgehead since the landing four months before.

The Anzio force had been set in motion when it was already clear that the Hitler Line was on its last legs. Its role was to cut across the 10th Army’s line of retreat and, with this end in view, under cover of an attack by the British with tanks and artillery towards the upper Moletta at 4.30 on the morning of May the 23rd, the Americans struck towards the north after a short and heavy bombardment. Their immediate objective was the town of Cisterna on the Appian Way and the railway to Rome; and since it was the obvious direction of any major thrust, its approaches were defended by numerous mines, dense wire, and carefully sited strong points. Although they had also struck eastwards beyond the Mussolini canal where the Pontine marshes and the Pontine settlements—Littoria, Pontinia, and Subaudia—lay, thereby clearing the way for the junction with the main body of the 5th Army, this did not ease their progress towards the north. They were still entangled in the dense defences after three days’ advance. But by this time they had crossed the Appian Way on both sides of Cisterna. In spite of heavy counterattacks the town was encircled by noon and was captured a few hours later. The number of prisoners taken since the beginning of the offensive had grown to 10,000.

On this day, too, signs began to multiply that more distant vistas were opening. While the Canadian Division were taking Pontecorvo, the 78th Division, one of the best-known British units, was pushing through Aquino and the Poles were finally clearing up Piedimonte. On the next day, May the 26th, Monte Cairo, which for months had seemed unattainable, was overrun by the Poles, and on their right the 2nd New Zealand Division captured Terelle. Their flank was covered by the Italian Liberation Corps, now mentioned for the first time. The Canadians and British had firmly established their bridgehead across the Melfa. The Hitler Line no longer existed.

Hot sunshine invaded the Italian theatre as the Allied plan developed. The French had begun to penetrate into the eastern mass of the Lepini mountains, as the Americans pressed up the roads running north from Cisterna. They reached Cori which lies but ten miles from the Via Casilina and seven from Velletri, the same distance as Cisterna; and their armoured patrols advanced towards Valmontone, on the Via Casilina itself. At the same time Velletri was attacked from Cisterna. This town was one of the cardinal points of the last defence position south of Rome, only nineteen miles beyond. This position, connecting Valmontone with Velletri and running to the sea about Ardea, was covered by the peaks of the Alban hills and the fortified railway line running in front of them. Velletri was the centre; and lying on the lower slopes of the hills, surrounded by acres of vineyards, it presented a formidable position to the attack. But on this Friday morning, May the 26th, the 5th Army made another spurt forward towards the Alban hills and Lake Albano, and it carried them so near the south-west of the hill bastion that hopes and fears filled the air with rumours. Rome was expected to fall, and newspapers prepared the way by announcing that ‘more big news’ was to come. This was partly due to encounters with ‘Alarm Companies’ composed of cooks, clerks, orderlies, and odds and ends. Reinforcements had sunk to single regiments of divisions brought from the north or the Adriatic. Such facts gave the impression of desperate straits and raised hopes that were destined to be unfulfilled.

Though Velletri came into the immediate foreground on this day, it did not fall for another week. Like a confirmed invalid it appeared to be endowed with immortality. For three days it even held out against attack when the Americans had captured the height that gave observation of it from the rear.

The day following the alarms about Velletri the Americans cleared the village of Artena. If this battle had not occurred, Artena would never have occupied the attention of people in two hemispheres. But lying so near Valmontone on Via Casilina, its capture suggested that this road itself was about to be cut; and, indeed, it was at once turned into a springboard for a fresh assault on the highway to Rome. Via Casilina was brought under American fire and made useless for the supply of the German positions at Frosinone and farther east. Only by night, or by means of secondary hill roads to the north, could the troops be fed, reinforced, or withdrawn; and the Allies were steadily overrunning the Lepini mountains from the east and south. The New Zealand Division