Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 137 i History of War

 Operation Market Garden, launched 80 years ago, has gone down in history as an equally audacious and tragically flawed campaign. It began with the goal of striking a decisive blow across the Rhine, accelerating the liberation of the Netherlands, the advance into Germany and ultimately – hopefully – Germany’s surrender. Instead the Allied commanders were faced with a costly setback, with thousands killed, captured or wounded, while Dutch citizens were left with months of further occupation, as well as retributions and even famine. In its final days the operation focused on the survival and withdrawal of Allied forces in the village of Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem. Here Airborne and Glider Pilot forces held a desperate defensive line against overwhelming German attacks. FOLLOW THE HISTORY OF WAR TEAM /HISTORY OF WAR…

On 20 June 1956, two FLN prisoners were executed by guillotine in the courtyard of Barberousse Prison. The killings marked the beginning of a year-long struggle that came to be known as the Battle of Algiers. This was not, as its name suggests, a set-piece confrontation but rather a protracted guerrilla campaign in the Algerian capital. Emboldened by the FLN’s growing support, an immediate response to the dual execution was demanded by Saadi Yacef, the FLN’s commander in Algiers, who issued orders to “shoot down any European [aged] 18 to 54. No women, no children, no elders.” A spate of random attacks followed and over the next four days, 49 pied-noir civilians were gunned down in the street. On 10 August, the far-right pied-noir group Union Française Nord-Africaine (UFNA) responded…

In the early hours of 26 September 1944, the exhausted survivors of British 1st Airborne began to evacuate the northern bank of the Rhine. This was the shameful culmination of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden. It had commenced nine days earlier with high hopes of ‘bouncing the Rhine’ at Arnhem and thrusting into the Ruhr – the Nazis’ industrial heartland. Instead, it turned into a nightmare race against time as Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks’ British 30th Corps fought to first reach the US 101st Airborne Division at Eindhoven and then the US 82nd Airborne Division at Nijmegen. The third step of relieving the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem and Oosterbeek infamously became a ‘bridge too far’. Horrocks failed thanks to German resistance at Nijmegen and the presence…

Roosevelt constantly shifted his wartime decisions in line with the unstoppable tides of the US electoral system. Immovable presidential elections in 1940 and 1944, and a Congressional election in 1942, left him at the constant mercy of anti-interventionist public opinion. However, Roosevelt had learned valuable lessons during a deeply traumatising past electoral defeat. O’Brien says: “Roosevelt was chosen to be their vice-presidential candidate in 1920. He ran an energetic campaign, barnstorming the country and spending a lot of time discussing the value of internationalism and the League of Nations, as was the Democrat policy at the time. They got destroyed in the election. What Roosevelt takes from this is that active foreign policy is never a winner [in elections].” During the 1940 campaign, Roosevelt fell back on his previous domestic…

With the siege finally over, Leningraders began to reflect on their almost 900-day-long ordeal. They believed their suffering was uniquely severe and should be celebrated as such, yet Stalin was quick to downplay anything that could galvanise the Leningraders. Buttar reflects on Stalin’s attitude towards them: “It was always this stroppy city full of pesky intellectuals who saw the world differently.” Stalin had already begun to manipulate history before the war ended, forever shaping the Soviet Union’s memory of the ‘Great Patriotic War’. It was to be seen as a triumph over German fascism by the combined strength of the Soviet people, an immense achievement that would have been impossible for the Western capitalist nations. This narrative forced the Soviets into a cognitive dissonance that prevented Leningraders’ full siege experience…

DESERT RAIDS WITH THE SAS THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF ONE MAN’S EXPLOITS DURING WWII – FROM FINLAND TO NORTH AFRICA AND ITALY – AS TOLD BY HIS SON Author: Gerald Hough Publisher: Pen & Sword Price: £14.99 (Paperback) Released: Out now Major Anthony Hough rarely talked about his war, to the regret of his son Gerald. So he used a diary found after his father’s death as the starting point to reconstruct the story of his service in North Africa with The Rifles Brigade and the SAS, and his subsequent escape from a POW camp in Italy. In doing so he embarked upon a journey of personal awakening and discovery about the exploits of a man who he says had been “emotionally absent” during his youth. But how to tell the…

PHILLIPS O’BRIEN Phillips is professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrews University, and has written extensively on the Second World War. Over on page 44 he discusses his new book The Strategists, which studies five wartime leaders’ different strategies. MARK SIMNER This month Mark recounts the sinister rise of one of Hitler’s most ruthless generals: Ferdinand Schörner. A zealous Nazi, late in the war he earned the grim reputation for executing scores of his own men – until he attempted to flee West (p58). PRIT BUTTAR Alongside a distinguished career in medicine, Prit has become a leading expert on the Eastern Front, with multiple publications on the Siege of Stalingrad, Operation Bagration and others. On page 66 he discusses the second volume of his history on the Siege of Leningrad.…

On 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, bringing to an end almost six years of brutality and bloodshed in Europe. As millions across the continent celebrated, the first great tragedy of the post-war era was unfolding a short distance across the Mediterranean. What happened there that day and in the following weeks would sow the seeds of a tragic conflict between France and the North African country it had occupied for more than 100 years. Rich in oil, gas and iron ore, Algeria had long been considered the jewel in France’s imperial crown. By 1945, however, its relationship with its North African neighbour was a messy one. Decades of colonisation had created a political and legal morass in the country, one that was further complicated by Algeria’s…

FIELD MARSHAL BERNARD MONTGOMERY Montgomery was blamed for underestimating the German reaction to Market Garden. Regarding the poor condition of 2nd SS Panzer Corps, he confessed: “We were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively; its battle state was far beyond our expectation.” After the battle he wrote to Urquhart: “There can be few episodes more glorious than the epic of Arnhem, and those that follow after will find it hard to live up to the standards that you have set.” LIEUTENANT GENERAL FREDERICK BROWNING Browning, commanding the British 1st Airborne Corps, ignored repeated intelligence warnings about the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps. He was firmly of the view that Urquhart was facing troops that were “low category”. He promised 1st Airborne Division that “the latest…

Two books mark Churchill’s 150th birthday Britain’s most iconic war leader is once again commemorated in Imperial War Museum works that illustrate his colourful character and legendary leadership during WWII The Imperial War Museum (IWM) aims to bring new life to Winston Churchill’s legacy by collating unique objects, artworks, images and first-hand accounts from its archives into two books: Churchill: A Visual History and Winston Churchill. Both will be published in the autumn. Churchill: A Visual History adds to IWM’s popular Visual History series, which includes illustrative histories of D-Day and the Battle of Britain. Visual History aims to provide rich, easy-to-read and vivid overviews of popular topics across the Second World War. This latest instalment tells the complete story of Churchill’s life, from war correspondent to one of history’s…

In 1920, the remains of an unidentified serviceman of the First World War were secretly disinterred, transported to London and laid to rest at Westminster Abbey, at the west end of the nave. For a nation still mourning the colossal sacrifice and loss during the war, the tomb served to represent over 500,000 war dead with no known resting place, for bereaved families and loved ones to visit. The history of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, and how it can relate to our modern experiences of war, is the subject of the latest book and nationwide theatre tour by John Nichol, himself a war veteran who’s now an author and historian. Here he speaks with History of War about the key figures involved in creating the Unknown Warrior’s resting…

The Second World War ravaged Europe’s economy and infrastructure, leaving imperial powers like France unable to hold on to the vast empires they’d controlled for years. All over the world, independence movements now began to challenge the colonial system, in many cases taking up arms against their European overlords. By 1954, France had been defeated by the Viet Minh army in Indochina and forced to withdraw from its former colony there. Meanwhile closer to home, in the Maghreb of northwest Africa, Tunisia and Morocco were also on the brink of booting out the French. Inspired by the events taking place around them, Algeria’s independence movement now made its move. At its vanguard was a new organisation, the Front de libération nationale (FLN), which became a rallying point for a spectrum…

17 SEPTEMBER • Market Garden commences. Lieutenant Colonel Frost seizes Arnhem bridge but is cut off from the rest of 1st Airborne at Oosterbeek to the west. 20 SEPTEMBER 7.10PM • British 30th Corps gets over the Waal at Nijmegen. 22 SEPTEMBER • 30th Corps reaches Driel and the Rhine. Germans renew their attack on the cauldron and are repulsed. 22/23 SEPTEMBER • Poles at Driel attempt to reinforce 1st Airborne. 23 SEPTEMBER • German panzers are thrown at the cauldron. 25 SEPTEMBER 8.08AM • Operation Berlin, the evacuation of 1st Airborne, is announced for that night. 9PM • 30th Corps shells German positions around Oosterbeek. 9.30PM • Evacuation of 1st Airborne across the Rhine commences at two locations. 19 SEPTEMBER • Germans continue to thwart reinforcements reaching Frost. 21…

The Second World War saw grand military strategy play out on the largest scale ever seen, stretching across most of the globe. Shaping this complex strategic situation were what historian Phillips O’Brien calls “The Five”: Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Franklin D Roosevelt. In The Strategists, O’Brien rejects the prevailing view among his contemporaries to argue that Second World War strategy was individualistic, shaped by the idiosyncrasies of these individuals. Laying out each leader’s experience of the First World War, the interwar period and their ascendency to power, O’Brien paints a vivid picture of how their wartime character and decision-making was formed. O’Brien spoke with History of War to discuss each of The Five’s background and character, and how that translated into the way they led…

Scotland’s King James IV was a quintessential Renaissance prince, ruling his kingdom in an era when the great works of Greece and Rome were being recovered and classical culture reborn across Europe. He vigorously supported the new learning, but a king’s first and foremost role in that day was that of war-leader, and James was every bit the warrior-monarch. He adopted new weapons and tactics for his army, and poured vast resources into developing a national navy for Scotland that could compare with that of young King Henry VIII in England, Scotland’s larger and more powerful neighbour to the south. There had already been much conflict between England and Scotland for hundreds of years. In 1502, an attempt was made to bring calm to long-troubled Anglo-Scottish relations with the nations…

As the snow melted in the spring of 1942, Leningraders emerged from the worst winter experienced by a population under siege. Amid a mounting death toll driven by starvation, cold, disease and shells from the Wehrmacht’s siege artillery, Red Army command began to plan the counter-attacks that would finally free the city from its suffering. Using original Russian source material, Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar traces the monumental effort and “mind-numbing” Soviet sacrifice to break the siege and push the Wehrmacht west in his new release Hero City: Leningrad 1943-44. He then considers how this triumph continues to shape Russia and its politics. Buttar spoke with History of War about history’s most deadly siege, sharing his thoughts on the varied experiences of the Leningrad Front, the terrain that made a…

SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN BEGINS After the liberation of Paris in late August 1944, the Allies paused to regroup and consolidate their stretched supply lines. Facing demands from Generals Bernard Montgomery and Omar Bradley that the Allies should make direct thrusts into Germany, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower opted for a ‘broad-front’ strategy to gain ground across all sectors. This advance faced the imposing Siegfried Line. Built in the late 1930s, this 390-mile (630km) defensive system ran along the western border of Germany and featured 18,000 bunkers and scores of tank traps. Breaking through the entire line took until early 1945. BATTLE OF PELELIU Codenamed Operation Stalemate II, the Battle of Peleliu saw the US III Amphibious Corps face the island’s 11,000-strong Japanese garrison. In planning the operation, Major General…

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