World Wars 1914–1945

By Amber Books Ltd

The two world wars were amongst the most convulsive events in human history. Millions of people died, many millions more had their lives transformed, and the nature of warfare itself was changed forever. The Era of World Wars 1914-45 – volume six in the Encyclopedia of Warfare Series – charts the cataclysmic world wars of the twentieth century. This is a chronological guide to conflict on every continent, including the far-reaching effects on Africa, China and the Middle East, as well as the more familiar battlegrounds such as Verdun and the Somme in 1916, Stalingrad in 1942, and Normandy in 1944. This volume tells the story of the millions involved in the world wars and surrounding conflicts. Featuring full colour maps illustrating the formations and strategies used, plus narrative descriptions of the circumstances behind each battle, this is a comprehensive guide to the two world wars and the other conflicts of the era. The Encyclopedia of Warfare Series is an authoritative compendium of five millennia of conflict, from the ancient world to the Arab Spring. Written in a style accessible to both the student and the general enthusiast, it reflects the latest thinking among military historians and will prove to be an indispensible reference guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
• Release date: Sep 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782741275

Book preview

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WARFARE

WORLD WARS

1914–1945

This digital edition first published in 2013

Published by

Amber Books Ltd

74–77 White Lion Street

London N1 9PF

United Kingdom

Website: www.amberbooks.co.uk

Appstore: itunes.com/apps/amberbooksltd

Facebook: www.facebook.com/amberbooks

Twitter: @amberbooks

Publishing Manager: Charles Catton

Project Editors: Sarah Uttridge and Michael Spilling

Design Manager: Mark Batley

Design: Colin Hawes, Andrew Easton and Rick Fawcett

Cartographer: Alexander Swanston at Red Lion Media

Consulting Editors: Marcus Cowper and Chris McNab

Proofreader: Alison Worthington and David Worthington

Indexers: Malcolm Henley, Michael Forder and Penny Brown

With thanks to Patrick Mulrey, Ben Way and Martin Dougherty for their assistance

Copyright © 2013 Amber Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-78274-127-5

All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purpose of review no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or publisher, who also disclaim any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details.

www.amberbooks.co.uk

Titles available in the Encyclopedia of Warfare series:

Ancient Wars

c.2500BCE–500CE

Medieval Wars

500–1500

Early Modern Wars

1500–1775

Revolutionary Wars

1775–c.1815

Imperial Wars

1815–1914

World Wars

1914–1945

Modern Wars

1945–Present

CONTENTS

WORLD WAR I 1914–18

Western Front

Eastern Front

Italian Front

Balkan Front

Middle East

Africa

China

Naval

RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR 1917–20

GREEK-TURKISH WAR 1919–23

POLISH-LITHUANIAN WAR 1920

JAPANESE INVASION OF MANCHURIA 1931-32

ITALO-ABYSSIANIAN WAR 1935–36

SPANISH CIVIL WAR 1936–39

SOVIET-JAPANESE BORDER WAR 1938–39

SLOVAK-HUNGARIAN WAR 1939

ITALIAN INVASION OF ALBANIA 1939

WORLD WAR II 1939–45

Poland and Finland 1939

Norway 1940

Low Countries 1940

France 1940

Battle of Britain 1940

The Balkans 1940–41

The Eastern Front 1941–44

Italian Front

Western Front 1942–45

Africa and Middle East 1940–43

Atlantic, Mediterranean and North Sea 1939–45

Second Sino-Japanese War 1937–45

The Pacific 1941–42

South Pacific 1942–45

Central Pacific 1943–45

Northern Pacific 1943

South-East Asia 1943–45

Allied Air Campaign Against Japan

AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

HOW TO USE THE MAPS

KEY TO THE MAP SYMBOLS

BATTLES AND SIEGES INDEX

GENERAL INDEX

MAPS

Marne, 6–12 September 1914

Race to the Sea, 1914

Neuve-Chapelle, March 1915

Verdun, 1916

Somme, July–Nov 1916

Vimy Ridge, 1917

Messines, 7 June 1917

Third Ypres, 1917

Cambrai, 1917

German Spring Offensives, March–April 1918

Black Day, 8 August 1918

Tannenberg, 1914

Masurian Lakes, 1914

Caporetto, 24 October–12 November 1917

Vittorio Veneto, 24 October–3 November 1918

Gallipoli, 1915

Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914

Jutland, 31 May 1916–1 June 1916

Zeebrugge Raid, 1918

Spanish Civil War, 1936–39

Suomussalmi, December 1939

Invasion of France, 1940

Meuse, 1940

Invasion of Crete, May 1941

Operation Barbarossa, June–October 1941

Leningrad, 1942–44

Stalingrad, October 1942–January 1943

Stalingrad, January–February 1943

Third Battle of Kharkov, February–March 1943

Kursk, 1943

Operation Bagration, June–July 1944

Berlin, May 1945

Invasion of Sicily, 1943

German Defensive Lines, Italy, 1943–44

Anzio, 1944

Operation Overlord, End of First Day, 1944

Falaise Pocket, 6–9 August 1944

Market Garden, 1944

Ardennes Offensive, 1944

Defence of Bastogne, 20–27 December 1944

El Alamein, 1942

Taranto, 1940

Matapan, 27–29 March 1941

Sinking the Bismarck, 1941

Convoy PQ17, 27 June–10 July 1942

Track of Carriers to Pearl Harbor, 1941

Malaya, 1941

Java Sea, 1942

Coral Sea, 4–8 May 1942

Midway, 4–7 June 1942

Solomon Island Campaign, US Gains, 1943

Guadalcanal Landings, October 1942

US Operations in the Pacific, 1944

Leyte Gulf, 1944

Tarawa Atoll, 1943

Saipan, 1944

Guam, 1944

Iwo Jima, 1945

Assault on Okinawa, 1945

Allied Recapture of Burma, December 1944–April 1945

FOREWORD TO THE SERIES

by Dennis Showalter

The Encyclopedia of Warfare offers five characteristics justifying its possession. First, it is chronological. Its entries reflect a fundamental characteristic of history. History is linear. It starts somewhere in time. It goes somewhere in time. Its events interact in a temporal context. And the encyclopedia’s chronological perspective enables making connections that otherwise might remain obscure. It contextualizes, for example, the 1147 siege of Lisbon with the Crusader-Turkish wars of the same period – and in the process demonstrating the comprehensive aspect of Christian–Muslim rivalry. Lisbon was far from Jerusalem only in terms of miles.

The encyclopedia is also comprehensive. It eschews a Western-centric perspective that too often sacrifices understanding for familiarity. The chronological chapters are subdivided by time and place. Thus they integrate the ancient wars of China and of South and South-East Asia, the battles of early Rome and those of Ireland in the twenty-fifth century BCE (a single entry, to be sure, but meriting consideration!) Cross-referencing cannot be easier. And that cross referencing enables not merely juxtaposition, but comparison on a global scale of war’s methods and war’s consequences.

The encyclopedia is concise. Its entries honour a time-tested formula. They address ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and thereby offer frameworks for further investigation of taproots and ramifications. But that does not mean a ‘one size fits all’ template. Events recognized as important – Hattin, Gettysburg, the Somme – are more fully developed without distorting the essentially economical format. Nor are the entries mere narratives. They incorporate analytical dimensions relative to their length and insightful whether phrases, sentences or paragraphs – like the comment that Crusader Jerusalem’s 1187 surrender to Saladin involved ransoming most of the population ‘at reasonable rates’!

The encyclopedia is user-friendly and clearly written. Not only are its more than five thousand entries individually intelligible. The graphics synergise with the text, enhancing rather than challenging or submerging it. The maps in particular are models of their kind, both accurate and informative.

Finally the encyclopedia is concentrated on warmaking. It eschews military history’s framing concepts, whether economic, cultural or gender, in favour of presenting war at its sharp end. That enables covering the full spectrum: wars and revolutions, campaigns and counter-insurgencies, battle and sieges. And in turn the encyclopedia’s format facilitates integrating, rather than compartmentalising, war’s levels and war’s aspects. In these pages Marathon and Hastings, the rise of the Roman Empire and the British Empire, become subjects for comparison and contrast.

The Encyclopedia of Warfare, in short, admirably fulfills the definition of a work that provides information on many elements of one subject. Its value, however, is also in context. This work makes broader contributions to military history’s reference apparatus, and to its reference mentality, on two levels. The encyclopedia complements the electronic era’s meme of ‘six degrees of separation’. The idea that everything is no more than six steps away from everything else is a natural byproduct of websurfing, where a half-dozen mouse clicks can lead far away indeed from the original reference point. It also encourages diffusion: engagement on peripheries at the expense of the centre.

The Encyclopedia of Warfare encourages and facilitates refocusing on war’s essential elements: the planning, conduct and result of using armed force. Diffusion is a natural aspect of the currently dominant approach to military history as an academic discipline. The concept of pivotal events has been overshadowed by an emphasis on underlying structures: reaching out from the operational towards the institutional, the political and the social dimensions. War’s sharp end at best jostles for place. It can lose out to an intellectual disdain that is also aesthetic and moral. Warfare, in the sense of making war, is arguably to the twenty-first century what sex allegedly was to the Victorians. It involves emotions nice people do not feel and actions nice people do not perform. Writing about it becomes the new pornography, pandering to appetites best left neither nurtured nor acknowledged.

The encyclopedia contributes balance and perspective to this discourse. Its contents reinforce the specific, unique nature and function of armed forces compared to any other institutions. Its entries demonstrate that warmaking has had a direct, significant impact on human affairs; that combat has fundamentally altered history’s course in both short and long terms. To understand this is to understand the world in which we live. And The Encyclopedia of Warfare enables that understanding in an impressive fashion.

DENNIS SHOWALTER

June 2013

The Era of World Wars 1914–45

The two world wars of the twentieth century were amongst the most convulsive events in human history. As well as costing millions of lives, they changed the nature of warfare itself, placing the advantage with manoeuvre and firepower.

World War I 1914–18

Western Front

■ LIÈGE, 5–16 AUGUST 1914

Liège was one of the most powerful fortress complexes in the world in 1914, comprising a dozen interlocking strongpoints. The German Second Army needed to neutralize it quickly to secure the rail and road network of Belgium. The Germans used every weapon in their arsenal, including Zeppelins and custom-designed 420mm artillery guns. The fortresses held out long enough to slow the German advance and provide something of a moral victory for the Allies. Ludendorff became a hero in Germany when he pounded on the door of the citadel with his sword to demand Liège’s surrender. Its capture allowed the Germans to continue their aggressive 1914 war plans.

■ MULHOUSE, 7–10 AUGUST 1914

The 45,000 troops of France’s VII Corps, under Gen Louis Bonneau, failed to seize Mulhouse from the 30,000-strong German XIV and XV Corps, led by Gen Josias von Heeringen. About 7000 French soldiers died.

■ HAELEN, 12 AUGUST 1914

German Uhlan light cavalry and infantrymen were unable to outflank the Belgians across the River Gete. The Germans’ poor tactics, lacking artillery support, together with strong response from the Belgian infantry and cavalry, decided the day.

■ LORRAINE, 14–25 AUGUST 1914

France’s ill-starred offensive failed to recover Alsace-Lorraine. The French First and Second Armies were defeated by the German Sixth Army, under Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht, and the Seventh Army, under von Heeringen.

■ NAMUR, 20–23 AUGUST 1914

At the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse rivers, German FM Karl von Bülow’s Second Army, and elements of the Third Army, under Gen Max von Hausen – comprising 107,000 men in total – besieged the garrison at Namur fort and 37,000 soldiers of the Belgian 4th Division, under LGen Michel. German and Austrian siege artillery proved decisive, with 304mm mortars and the 420mm ‘Big Bertha’ siege howitzer smashing the ill-prepared fortress and Belgian entrenchments.

■ CHARLEROI, 21 AUGUST 1914

Von Bülow’s Second Army pushed south across the Sambre, driving into French Gen Charles Lanrezac’s Fifth Army. A flank attack by von Hausen’s Third Army, threatening encirclement, forced the French withdrawal. The French lost 30,000 men, the Germans 11,000.

■ ARDENNES, 21–23 AUGUST 1914

Having misperceived German moves north of the Meuse, France’s Gen Joseph Joffre ordered Gen Pierre Ruffey’s Third Army and Gen Fernand de Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army on a disastrous attack into the Belgian Ardennes. Their defeat cost France the vital Briey coalfield.

■ MONS, 23 AUGUST 1914

Deployed on the French left flank, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), comprising two infantry corps and one cavalry division (70,000 men), was under the command of FM Sir John French. In its first fight of the war, the BEF faced the German First Army (160,000 men), under GenOb Alexander von Kluck, which attempted to envelop the Allied armies in the west. With 600 guns supporting, the German juggernaut advanced. The BEF’s defence cost von Kluck 5000 casualties.

■ LE CATEAU, 26 AUGUST 1914

British Gen Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien’s 55,000 troops of the BEF II Corps withstood 140,000 Germans of von Kluck’s First Army. A gallant artillery duel checked the German advance long enough for BEF infantry to escape the encirclement.

■ GUISE (ST QUENTIN), 29 AUGUST 1914

With the French withdrawing south to the Marne, Lanrezac’s Fifth Army counter-attacked, slowing the advance of von Bülow’s Second Army south of the Oise. The fighting cost 10,000 French and British casualties, and 7000 Germans.

■ MOSELLE RIVER, 4–9 SEPTEMBER 1914

The French First and Second Armies, under Gens Castelnau and Dubail, held the eastern end of Gen Joffre’s line against Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprechet’s Sixth and Seventh Armies (Bavarians) advancing on Nancy. Frustrated by their repulse, the Germans shelled the city before withdrawing.

■ OURCQ RIVER, 5–9 SEPTEMBER 1914

French Gen Michel-Joseph Maunoury’s Sixth Army held ground against von Kluck’s First Army advancing on Paris. The delaying action helped widen the gap between the First and von Bülow’s other four German armies.

■ MARNE RIVER I, 6–12 SEPTEMBER 1914

The culminating battle of the opening campaign of WWI, the First Battle of the Marne was then the largest battle ever fought. After moving through Belgium and northern France, the German First Army was supposed to move to the west of Paris as part of a giant encirclement. Their aim was to cut the city off from support and supplies, in theory, forcing its quick surrender. Without Paris, the Germans presumed that the French and British would surrender, allowing them to move the bulk of their forces east to face the Russians. The plan demanded much from inexperienced soldiers and left little room for the inevitable fog and friction of war. Due to the unexpected stiff resistance of the Belgians, German forces could not match the pace that their pre-war planners had set for them.

After several weeks of fighting they were unable to complete the manoeuvre as designed, although they had managed to place leading elements within 50km of Paris. Their success was sufficient to chase the French Government to Bordeaux and to force the British commander, Sir John French, to consider a withdrawal of his battered forces out of the line. Only strong pressure from the French and from the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, convinced Sir John to return his weary troops to the fight. Instead of executing the risky manoeuvre west of Paris, the Germans opted instead to send the First Army east of the city as part of a proposed double envelopment of the Allied armies. Both sides had extended their lines from Paris to Verdun, a distance of almost 240km. The Germans hoped to pressure the Allies from both sides, forcing them in upon themselves and destroying them in one campaign.

Allied aviators detected the German maneuvre and the resulting exposure of the First Army’s right flank. Quick work by French commander Joseph Joffre and Paris district commander Joseph Gallieni put Allied forces in a position to pressure the German flanks. A renewed effort by the BEF and a French Ninth Army commanded by Ferdinand Foch attacked the centre of the extended German line while the Allied right held around the fortresses of Verdun. The German attempt had failed. On 9 September, fearful that the Allies could move quickly into a gap that had opened up between the German First and Second Armies, Gen Helmuth von Moltke ordered his forces to retreat to the Aisne river and entrench. There were more than 250,000 casualties on each side. The Germans had suffered twice as many casualties as they had in the entire Franco-Prussian War. Trench warfare had begun.

■ AISNE RIVER I, 12 SEPT–3 OCTOBER 1914

Von Bülow