Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg is having a discussion about intentionality. I think this is a little off:
Whether it was necessary or not is a serious debate, but I am personally at a loss to understand why the shortcut of firebombing Dresden was less outrageous than waterboarding some SS offficer would be. Likewise, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki involved the deliberate killing of civilians. It was deemed necessary, and in my mind justifiable, to avoid (i.e. shortcut) the deaths of American and Allied soldiers via a conventional invasion.
Not exactly. The civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were collateral casualties. The actual targets were military facilities and arms factories.
Bill Whittle has a devastating video riposte to Jon Stewart’s historical ignorance on this issue.
As an aside, had Roosevelt still been alive that summer, the war might have dragged on for much longer, because his policy was unconditional surrender. He had already probably extended the war in Europe with this policy, because if he had accepted terms from Mussolini, they might have been able to take Italy at much lower cost of life. The extended weeks of negotiations entailed by the Italians’ unwillingness to accept unconditionally gave the Germans time to occupy Italy, which resulted in a bloody conquest, whereas a surrender with terms could have resulted in a more rapid Allied takeover with few casualties, and more reserves for attacking Germany from the south much earlier than Normandy.
Roosevelt wouldn’t have allowed the Japanese to (among other things) keep the emperor, and he might have run out of bombs before the Japanese would have surrendered (they only had three, and it would have taken a while to make more plutonium) and had to invade.
Truman was more reasonable. He just wanted to end the war, and would have been happy to let them have a dozen emperors if that’s all they wanted.
So FDR extended the depression by meddling in the economy right up until the war started, at which point he left it alone to focus on the war (and of course with able-bodied men in uniform, the unemployment rate finally dropped). Then he meddled in the war and probably lengthened it as well (and it would have been even worse had he not died in the spring of ’45). One wonders in the cases of both Wilson and Roosevelt how long they would have remained in power if they hadn’t been struck down by their health. Truman tried to tinker with the economy after the war, but the Republican Congress wouldn’t let him, so the economy finally recovered completely, after fifteen years.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems a little related. Will Barack Obama apologize for World War II?
Well, he didn’t exactly leave the economy alone. War production required even more regimentation of the economy.
BUT… his administration’s actions were (presumably) less arbitrary than in the 1930s. Resetting the price of gold because he felt like it? What kind of @$$h@t does that? The kind who says, “I won”.
I meant he quit tinkering with it for the sake of tinkering with it. He had a real war to use as justification, instead of the “moral equivalent” of one. Also, production became important. Before the war, he had actually made war on productivity.
Rand, did you already report on the One’s plan to limit tourist access at Normand while he is there? His flacks have started discussions with the French to do it. Couple that with what may be his most embarassing apology speech yet should leave no doubt about his elitism and his dislike of that old America that was “downright mean” according to the First Lady.
Rand,
I must take strong exception to your suggestion that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were primarily directed at military targets, with civilian casualities being merely collateral damage. While there were certainly viable military targets in these cities (Hiroshima in particular, was a major naval base, and housed an army headquarters), the primary goal of both bombings to push the so-called ‘Big Six’ (the core of the Japanese government) into accepting the terms of the Potsdam declaration. Civilian casualties, while not explicity sought after, were certainly an important expectation of the bombings, and did have a significant impact on Japanese perceptions. The firebombings of over 50 Japanese cities in 1945 are even better examples of this sort of thinking…
Whether we like it or not, civilian casualties (‘terror bombing’ was the phrase used often enough during the war) were not simply collateral, but indeed central to the purpose of the whole exercise. There is an irony here that as the American technological capability to pursue the prewar goals of strategic bombing (economic incapacitation of the enemy) increased, political considerations (the desire to end the war quickly, and without excessive loss of American life) led to a reversion to the sort of area bombing campaigns favored by Harris and other Brits.
None of this should be seen to suggest that these were war crimes (the nature of Japanese cities, for examples, made targeting civilians unnecessary, the casualties would have been high no matter how the bombs were dropped), but to pretend that civilian deaths were not a welcome outcome is simply ignoring the reality of the times.
Civilian casualties, while not explicity sought after, were certainly an important expectation of the bombings, and did have a significant impact on Japanese perceptions.
I didn’t say they weren’t. Nor did I say that civilian deaths were an unwelcome outcome. I was just making the distinction that the actual designated targets were military and war-making capability.
I would add that the war in Italy was fought to satisfy the political and diplomatic expedient of keeping Stalin happy. Stalin demanded a second front and the Brits and Americans were not prepared to give him one in France. They gave Stalin his second front in Italy instead. A bad move, since the boot of Italy is perfectly suited for defense and a nightmare for any invader. There never would have been an invasion of Germany from Italy. A quick look at a relief map will explain why.
Rand, this thread inspired me to have a look at an original document from the time — the Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee at Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945.
The document is here: “www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html”
You can draw your own conclusions — I think different parts of the document (which is quite short) support different points of view.
There never would have been an invasion of Germany from Italy.
Not directly, no, but it would have provided better bases earlier for strategic bombing, and moved the second front much further north, to Germany’s disadvantage. And there is a route through Slovenia into Austria.
Oh, and here are more original documents on the decision to use the bombs, which show that the people involved in the decision were making an informed choice. Again, readers can draw their own conclusions == if you folks want to have a debate, here are some documents to help inform that debate: “www.dannen.com/decision/index.html”
Such as what, Bob? It’s an interesting document, although it was merely the recommendations of the eggheads in Los Alamos, unlikely to be given really high weight by Groves and Truman. But the section on targets lists the industrial capacity, military capacity, and/or use as port of embarkation of each. Not a word is said about mere loss of life. There’s one comment about bombing the Imperial Palace, but this target is rejected. There’s a section on the importance of the psychological effect, but, this is important in any military operation, duh, and in this case more so because of the very limited supply of atomic bombs. (You might even argue reasonably that this was a kindness the Japanese people; the goal was to frighten them into surrender, not merely exterminate them.)
In addition to being a port, which is clearly important for amphibious and naval warfare, Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd Army, which commanded the defenses of all southern Japan, where the first invasion would have happened. A more apt military target would be hard to define.
Anyway, I’ve always been particularly grateful to Truman for ordering the bombings, despite his subsequent folly in Potsdam that left Stalin in control of Eastern Europe. My grandfather was in the Phillipines and would have gone ashore in the invasion of Japan.
And in case you need convincing that 1930s-40s Japanese militarism needed brutal extermination no less than the Nazis, google “Unit 731,” but perhaps not just after eating.
Carl, see the second link too, regarding considerations by the higher-ups. In particular see the very last links on this page, the ones that suggest that “Truman didn’t undestand” “www.dannen.com/decision/index.html”
In particular, here’s an excerpt from Truman’s diary: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.”
“He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.”
It looks like Truman didn’t understand.
Back to Barack…
Will Barack Obama apologize for World War II?
If I bet no, do I get a million to one on my money? Naw, I can’t afford the dollar.
Does is strike anyone else that BO seems to be running for president of the world? I know the office doesn’t exist… yet.
Sorry, Bob, Truman didn’t understand what? He said he wanted a “purely” military target, although God knows what “purely” means in this context. He got a military target, Hiroshima. The proof is that it had military consequences, id est the surrender of Japan.
I’m underwhelmend with anything Leo Szilard says on the topic. He was I think a bit of a fringy showboater, more apt to take positions that got him attention than positions drawn from deep moral reserves or reflection. Hard to otherwise reconcile his passionate advocacy of the atomic bomb project — remember, he’s the guy who wrote the “Einstein” letter to Roosevelt scaremongering about a Nazi Bomb that kicked off the Manhattan Project — with his later equally passionate antinukism, so he was even by his own lights an idiot in at least one of the set {1939,1945}.
Anyway, I don’t give a damn why Truman made his decision. Men are perfectly capable of doing the right things for the wrong reasons, or by accident, or even for the right reasons without understanding them (or articulating them clearly).
And this decision was right for all kinds of reasons. Here’s just one for you to think about: what would have happened in, say, the mid 50s if there’d been no Hiroshima to put the direct fear of nuclear weapons into the hearts of everyone? What are the odds that the first use of atomic weapons would have been in the megaton range, in Europe, as part of a hot war that replaced the Cold? (Keep in mind that, had Stalin lived, his biographers believe he would have probably started such a war anyway no later than 1955. His successors were more timid — and how much of that was their plain fear of the consequences, visibly demonstrated in Japan, of nuclear explosions on Mother Russia?)
That is, one of the blessings of Hiroshima is that it gave the world an enduring direct example of what nuclear weaopns can do, with a paltry 20 kt warhead, and a mere 80,000 deaths. If one is properly skeptical of the capability of men to learn from anything other than direct experience, then direct experience of The Bomb we needed to have. It’s good that we had it with a very small bomb, early on, that was one of only four in the world, rather than with a much larger one, later, that was one of hundreds.
Carl said Anyway, I don’t give a damn why Truman made his decision.
I was only addressing the reasons why the bomb was dropped. As for whether the bomb should have been dropped, I mostly agree with you (I still wonder about a demonstration explosion, as well as waiting a bit longer before the 2nd one was used, so that the news of the first one could have been absorbed.)
I still wonder about a demonstration explosion, as well as waiting a bit longer before the 2nd one was used, so that the news of the first one could have been absorbed.
Bill Whittle explains this in the video.
Bob, honestly, I think you place too much faith in what people say. Keep in mind the major reason we have the ability of speech is to convince each other of the existence of realities not evident from our senses. Dogs don’t need speech, because they never try to convince each other that shit doesn’t stink. Humans do such things. (And sometimes they’re right; the shit might actually be Roquefort, or Penicillium mold; such occasional successes keep the species in business.) Anyway, it’s very common that what people say is designed to rationalize, distract, or even deceptively conceal what the reality of what they do.
So on the whole I don’t place much weight on the reasons people wrote down for why they used the bomb, and in the way they did. Most of this stuff was written down for posterity’s sake, and was predictably noble-sounding.
Why did they really do it? You’d have to be a fly on the wall when they talked about it, and probably know the men involved pretty well, have insight into their psychology, to know that.
But if I had to guess…I’d say they used it first simply because they could, because it existed, it was a weapon, and they were at war. These things have an inevitability about them, an inertia. It’s one of the legitimate reasons for fear during the Cold War. But also, yes, I think they probably used it in rage and hatred against the Japanese people. I think, deep in their hearts, they were quite happy to have 80,000 Japanese die, even nonsoldiers, perhaps even, God help them, little babies at the breast. The war had gone on long enough, and the Japanese had been brutal enough, that few Americans could have not developed a reservoir of hatred for them. That is not the behaviour of Christians, but it’s the predictable behaviour of men, and it has its own sad logic.
I was struck by a passage in Flags of Our Fathers, a son’s narrative about his father and some of his fellow Marines, those who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. His father was a medic and a peaceable man; he spent the Iwo campaign dragging wounded men to the beach. He never spoke of the war afterward, and he did not consider it a heroic venture. His son later studied Japanese, and went for some time to live there, and he said nothing against this. But when asked, he said he could not go to Japan himself. He said he recognized it as human frailty, but he could not forget, nor forgive, what they had done on Iwo to wounded men. I expect quite a lot of people felt that way.
Hiroshima was the demonstration. It didn’t work, which is why we had Nagasaki, which did. I don’t think they needed more time, they needed more convincing, which they got. It’s not like what happened in Hiroshima was not known in Tokyo. Nor is there any chance at all that the Japanese people themselves could have influenced, over time, their government.
In plain ugly fact, I do not think it was the horror of the bomb that convinced the Japanese to surrender. It was the possibility of humiliation, of being snuffed out wholesale from the air like rats without any chance at all of striking back, of taking Americans with them. They were prepared to die fighting with bamboo sticks against machine guns, provided they could see the occasional fear in American eyes as they charged. But the idea of being slaughtered in anonymous millions by pilots who could not even see them from 20,000 feet up was just too humiliating. That’s why I think they gave in. In a sense, it was not the number of Japanese deaths that mattered to them, but the number of American. If no or very few Americans would die, however many Japanese did, then continuing the war really was pointless and undesirable.
Carl,
Rarely do I disagree with you, but your last paragraph (“They were prepared to die fighting with bamboo sticks…”) is a bit off the mark. The Japanese as a people were clearly willing to OBEY, but there was very little enthusiasm for mass suicide among the civilian population (take a look at the mass surrenders of Japanese civilians and even military personnel in Manchuria after the Soviet invasion in August 1945 for a good example of what to expect) as opposed to those in the senior ranks of the military. The hardline nationalists in the Army (and to a much lesser extent, the Navy) were perfectly willing to die for the cause, but the notion that civilians would have thrown themselves en masse at the invaders is not entirely supported by the facts. If “the idea of being slaughtered in anonymous millions by pilots who could not even seen them from 20,000 feet up was just too humiliating”, LeMay’s firebombing (which killed far more civilians than either Hiroshim or Nagasaki) would have done the trick months earlier. It is fairly clear from the postware comments of the survivors of the late wartime ‘Big Six’ that Hiroshima (and to a MUCH lesser extent, Nagasaki) were what convinced the Emperor to actually offer an opinion, which in turn forced the military to drop their opposition to accepting the terms of the Potsdam declaration.
As for Hiroshima being a legitimate military target, of course it was, but that same argument could have been made for any number of Japanese cities as well. The key was that Hiroshima had been deliberately spared any serious bombing so that it would be possible to demonstrate the power of the bomb on a largely undamaged target. This is why it was the top choice on Grove’s targeting list. Keep in mind that the decision to spare Hiroshima (in expectation of its future value as an example) was made indepedently of military considerations (port and HQ), and largely in the light of logistical ones, notably suitability for a detonation of this sort. Nagasaki (which had negligible military value) and Kokura (the original target for the second bomb, which had even less military value) were hardly legitimate military targets in the sense that Hiroshima was, yet they were both selected for obliteration.
Sadly, the bombs (note the plural) were necessary, and while we might regret the civilian deaths (I should point out that few of the Allied commanders at the time shared these regrets), it is extremely difficult to imagine how the Japanese leadership (which was deeply ensnared by its own delusional thinking about what terms it could get from the Allies) would have been convinced without the bombs.
Jardinero,
The Italian campaign had very, very little to do with Stalin’s wishes (he wanted an attack in NW Europe, not in some subsidiary theatre about which he cared little), and everything to do with Britain’s prewar planning. The Brits put enormous pressure on the US to go along with their Mediterranean strategy (Tunisia, then Sicily, then the peninsula) as opposed to the American preference for a European attack in 1943 (Roundup). Churchill, repeating his weakness in strategic thinking from WWI, supported this unconscionable waste of allied resources in an area that you correctly point out, was ideally suited for defense. It is to the eternal discredit of FDR that he went along with this…
The Japanese as a people were clearly willing to OBEY, but there was very little enthusiasm for mass suicide among the civilian population
My ex-mother-in-law was one of those civilians. I knew her pretty well. She was a girl of 15 when the war ended, and had trained to hide in a pit with a stick to use against American soldiers. I have no doubt she would’ve.
Let’s agree to disagree, Scott. This may remain one of the great unknowables of history. I wouldn’t even say you’re necessarily wrong; what I understand from my ex-mother-in-law’s family may be idiosyncratic. If nothing else, they were fairly high up in social standing, pretty invested in the fascist order of things.
Reasonable people can always agree to disagree…what a refreshing change of pace!
Rand, thanks, I had forgone Bill Whittle’s video, partly because it is long and partly because I hate the tone of his writing. But I watched it, and I actually found him more enjoyable and personable in a video format. His argument would benefit from Carl’s point about placing too much faith in what people say. I also think he isn’t thinking creatively about how to create a believable warning via a demonstration. (Although the same could be said the firebombing tactic, so why single out fission bombs? War is ugly…) Overall, I don’t know. I think Scott’s comments about the targeting (and prior non-targeting) of Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki are worth considering too, but I still don’t know what to conclude, other than that it was a complicated decision, and figuring out how much civilian deaths were desired by the different decision makers seems rather difficult to me.
Bob,
Note please that the firebombing (which by many measures was far MORE destructive than the nukes) had been going on since March of 1945, and by the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 56 square miles of Japanese urban areas had been completely ‘burnt out’. It is extremely difficult to imagine any better demonstration than this. The entire basis for the Japanese military’s determination to resist calls for surrender was their belief that they could make the Allies pay an unacceptable price by forcing them to invade the Home Islands. Had the Americans simply ‘demonstrated’ the bomb on some remote atoll (or some other sufficiently ‘out of the box’ target), it is more likely than not that this would have simply reinforced their determination to continue to resist. After all…the fact that we refrained from using it could only be seen (this by a people that had used every weapon in their arsenal, and a few new techniques that the entire civilized world considered far beyond the pale) as a sign of weakness.
Another interesting point is that given the horrific death rate from starvation and disease (a direct result of the blockade of the home islands) is that a delay of even a few weeks in Japan’s surrender would have ended up killing far more civilians than the bombs did…
Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb has a fair amount of discussion about this topic. Although it’s pretty clear that Rhodes’ sympathies lie with those who disagree with the US’s decisions, he does highlight two key pieces to the decision to use the bomb: one, we had moved heaven and earth to create the bomb, at large cost to people and treasuries, and to not use it was wasteful; and two, it was intended to scare Stalin as much as the Japanese.
The last point was more successful than many realized; one of the reasons that Stalin backed off during the Berlin crisis, and did not more strongly support North Korea during its initial invasion of South Korea, was his knowledge of just what nuclear weapons could do. Rhodes’ Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, written shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, has a lot of material from those times that were not available to earlier researchers. Both books are excellent; Rhodes’ political bias doesn’t intrude too often.
Roosevelt certainly did lengthen the war, at least in Europe. After all, it took him two years to enter it after it had already started. Americans that fought in World War II before that event can be counted on two hands. And they broke American law, and endangered their citizenship, doing so.
Roosevelt certainly did lengthen the war, at least in Europe. After all, it took him two years to enter it after it had already started.
To be fair, while Roosevelt can be blamed for many things, that’s not one of them. He would have loved to have gotten into the war sooner, but it takes Congress to declare war, and the American people had no desire for it prior to Pearl Harbor. In fact, many have accused him of allowing Pearl Harbor to happen in order to get us into the war.
Fletcher, the number of Americans who served in Commonwealth forces between 1939 and 7 December 41 was in the thousands if not tens of thousands, mostly unpublicized individuals who crossed the border and joined the Canadian army. Some of these of course were people who qualified as US citizens but who also had some connection with Canada, and who either volunteered or were subject to the Canadian draft and did not refuse to serve when called. But they easily could have some to or stayed in the US, which was not extraditing Canadian draft dodgers at that time. The Eagle Squadrons of the RAF were merely the best-publicized of American volunteers.
As to Italy, it might have actually helped Germany if it had been taken out of the war before German troops had been sent there. WWII was basically a war of attrition; trading Allied lives and materiel for Axis ones on almost any ratio was the way we won. Not defending Italy would have left the Germans with a lot more men, ammunition, and gasoline to defend Normandy with, on tighter interior lines of defense. One German general had remarked, when Italy joined the way in 1940, “Now it will take thirty divisions to defend them; if they had been on the other side we would only need two divisions to hold the passes.” He was right. Hitler really did seem to have a man-crush on Mussolini. A costly bromance.
The attack route from Italy into Slovenia was not very favorable to the attacker. Look up Battle of the Piave — all (I think) nineteen of them.
Jim, your point is interesting, but utterly completely wrong.
The Germans comitted only one top line division to the defense of Italy, along with a host of second and third-rate infantry units and a mix of independent batallions. Italy was a narrow, easily defensible theatre, where small numbers of troops, even of highly indfferent quality, could blunt the allied superiority in material and numbers. The closest parallel would be the American campaign on Okinawa, though on a somewhat larger scale.
These units were diverted from the Eastern front, not Normandy, and thus would not have been available to defend against an Allied assualt in NW Europe. Had the US simply told Churchill that they were unwilling to indulge the Brits in their disinclination to fight the Germans directly, and pushed forward with Roundup (Sledgehammer was simply not a realistic option), the Germans would have had far LONGER interfront communications issues (in 1943, the German front line was at Kursk, in 1944 it was at the Dnepr, which would have added the better part of 1000 km to their transport exchanges. Switching troops between theatres then would have been far more complex for the Germans, and would have left them in a much more precarious position on whichever front was ‘drained’ to support the other. By the way, the Americans might have even been able to forgo the sideshow in Tunisia, and left Rommel and several excellent quality divisions stranded there through 1943 had they been smart enough to ignore Churchill’s nostalgia.
The German defenses in Normandy were far, far weaker in 1943 than in 1944, the divisions there poorly trained (and missing the essential 352nd division at Omaha beach), while the Americans had more than enough troops available for the planned Roundup operations. Landing craft shortages might have been an issue, but this was the case in 1944 as well, and as matters turned out, those programmed landing craft turned out not to be essential. Without the drains imposed by the numerous Sicilian and Italian landings (not to mention Tunisia), there would have been ample craft available for Roundup. A 1943 invasion would have forced the Army Air Corps to avoid getting sucked into the pointless British efforts to bomb Germany directly in 1943, rather than simply establish air supremacy over Franch and the low countries, which in turn would have made the escort situation far simpler.
The Italians were a drain on German resources every day they were in the war, sucking up scarce fuel and vehicles that the Germans could ill-afford to spare, as well as leaving the Germans ‘chained to a corpse’ (a phrase used to describe the German relationship with the AustroHungarians in WWI, but quite applicable here as well) forced to commit troops to ‘stiffen’ their unreliable and incompetent ally. Hitler wasn’t going to cut the Italians loose, so those forces committed to Italy were there no matter what the Allies did.
Mr. Bennett, I stand corrected. As to the matter of the involvement of America as a whole; well, I stand by my initial remarks with the substitution of “Congress” for “Roosevelt”.
What was the opinion of the American public at the time?
Most Americans regarded Hitler as Europe’s problem (some as its salvation, but they were a minority) and Japan as Asia’s. In the late 1930s it was still possible to regard the oceans as sheltering America from the goings-on in the rest of the world.
Pearl Harbor changed that, though having seen the way some reacted to 9/11 I wonder if there weren’t still many among my father’s generation who didn’t think those faraway islands were worth getting all that upset over — after all, Hawaii was just a territory, not part of the States.
Scott —
There are two questions here, one of which was, if the Allies had a realistic option to invade France in 1943, would it have been better to bypass Italy entirely; the other, given that the Allies were invading Italy, would it have been better for the Germans had the Allies negotiated a quick surrender with Italy, and no German troops would have been committed to Italy at all?
Your valid comment about Germans being “chained to a corpse” would seem to support a yes answer in that event.
If the answer to the qualifying condition of question one is yes, then the answer is also yes. But would the Allies really have been in shape to invade France in 1943? Allied troop training, combat experience, and equipment were substantially better in 1944 than 1943. How would Normandy have gone if we had some more Kasserine Pass style debacles there? That would offset to some extent the weaker situation of the Germans in 1943.
Fletcher, American public opinion was mixed. Everybody wanted to avoid war if possible; more and more people were starting to think that it would not be possible to avoid it, and were starting to think about when and how we would get into the war. Even without Pearl Harbor, the quasi-war we were already fighting in the Atlantic would probably have led to full war before long.
And of course, the media and policy elites were raring to fight after June 1941. Just ask Pete Seeger about that.
Jim,
Your question regarding whether or not the Allies (specifically the US, I believe it is fair to say that the Brits and Canadians were about as good as they were going to get by 1943) were up to invading France in 1943 is a good one. Given that most of the troops that waded ashore in Normandy had never seen North Africa or Italy, I am not sure how the campaigns in the Med would have helped those troops, aside from getting rid of a few incompetent senior commanders (and let’s be honest, we got rid of Friendall, but lost Patton and got stuck with Montgomery, so it could be argued that it all evens out) and learning a bit about the limitations of some hardware, most of which wasn’t used in NW Europe in any event. More battle experience is ALWAYS a good thing, and you are correct that waiting till 1944 would have provided better (and more) equipment, but the same argument could be made in terms of waiting till 1945…surely you aren’t making that case?
A more useful question though, is whether or not the basic resources (landing craft, air support, etc.) were available, and here a more useful objection might be found. There is no doubt that some resources would have been stretched VERY thin for Roundup, but if Husky and Avalanche had been cancelled, even those shortages could have been easily dealt with. The Germans, on the other hand, would have had smaller, weaker forces in France (Rommel didn’t get there till early 1944, and virtually none of the extensive Normandy fortifications had been put into place), and their hardware would have been far inferior. Remember, it took the debacle at Kursk for the Germans to work through the ‘teething’ problems of the Panthers and Tigers, and to finally get the idea that Assault guns (the StGIII and StGIV that proved deadly in the Normandy hedgreows) were actually all that useful.
With this in mind, I believe it is fair to say that Roundup was entirely practical, and much more importantly, highly successful.
RS: That Japan was holding out in 1945 to protect the Emperor is a myth. The militarist clique wanted to protect themselves. Until after Nagasaki, the terms they demanded included no occupation of Japan, no disbanding of Japanese armed forces, and no Allied prosecution of war criminals. No responsible U.S. leader could have accepted this.
Hiroshima was one of two General Army HQs in Japan, commanding the defenses of all southern Japan (and for some reason Hokkaido). About half the people in Hiroshima were military personnel.
Also, RS: The Germans became very suspicious of Italy when Mussolini was deposed. They began preparing then to seize control if Italy surrendered. Italy wanted to surrender, but Italy wanted not only generous terms but a huge Allied force to protect them from Germany – which was not available.
Re the Mediterranean/Italian campaign: In 1942, the U.S./UK were no position to invade Western Europe. The North African campaign was the most effective action they could take at the time. It was not over till May 1943, which meant that a non-Mediterranean further attack couldn’t go off till at least September, whereas the Sicily/Italy campaign could follow immediately. Also, the U-boat menace was not contained until May 1943, and until that was established shipyards were building mainly escorts, not landing craft. Finally, without the Mediterranean campaigns, the Allies would not have had Sardinia and Corsica, and so could not have invaded southern France and captured Marseille. From October 1944, over 1/3 of the total supply for the western front landed at Marseille. All this is in addition to the direct benefits of the campaign: the removal of about 2M men from the Axis armies (the entire Italian armed forces, plus hundred of thousands of Germans) and opening the Mediterranean to Allied shipping.
It’s a genuinely open question to me. I can’t remember reading a source that didn’t think 43 was too early, but most of them didn’t go into any detail on the question. Do you have a link to a qualty debate on the matter by people who know what they’re talking about?
My impression was that Dieppe had been such a fiasco that it made all the Allied planners extremely cautious about a mainland invasion. The materiel question, in my mind, was more a matter of R&D and production pipelines — having more and better fighters, in order to assure more air superiority, for example. And although the strategic bombing campaign, in hindsight, included a lot of wasted or misdirected effort (as usual in wartime) it did have some effects on the continental transportation networks, and those may have been critical to D-Day.
Would it have been better to delay until 45? Militarily, maybe. But politically, it would have been highly unlikely. Too much danger of Stalin either rolling on to Calais, or making a separate peace. And political considerations typically trump military ones.
RR,
The allied shipyards that were busily cranking out escorts were NOT the same ones building landing craft. In point of fact, most of the escorts used in the Battle of the Atlantic were already in service by late 1942, with the extras being diverted to the Pacific Theatre (see Morrison’s excellent work on this). As for Sledgehammer not being practical, I completely agree (and in fact said so in a previous post), but remember that it was nothing more than a contingency plan in case of Soviet collapse. Certainly Roundup was far more practical, and in fact used fewer resources than the Med campaign did. Had the allies not committed to the Med campaign, it is not unreasonable to assume that those resources would have ended up SOMEWHERE…obviously in NW Europe. Finally, the troops that were to go into Normandy were in position (in Britain) prior to those used for Italy, and thus were ready BEFORE the Italian campaign. The reason that (once the North African campaign was initiated) Roundup became unlikely was because the resources to make it possible were diverted into the strategic dead end in the Med.
As to the benefits of the Med campaign, your analysis is somewhat limited. The German forces destroyed in that campaign would have been just as securely ‘out of play’ if they were sitting in the Med and Italy as garrisons. The Germans weren’t going to leave Italy (you point out yourselves that they didn’t trust them…a very good position, as it turned out), and they didn’t have the shipping to move DAK from North Africa even if they wanted to. As for the Italians, their military potential (with the exception of a few elite units, almost all of who were in …. wait for it…. North Africa) was negligible, and they were more of a benefit to the Allies (a burden on the German logistics system, and an untrustworthy ally to boot) than they were to the Germans. The notion of the Italians (and relatively limited German forces) in the Med being worth the vast committment of resources necessary to deal with them smacks of Churchill’s WWI rationalizations for Gallipoli…
Your discussion of Corsica and Sardinia, on the other hand, is far more insightful, though I remain unconvinced. Very few of the allied supplies reaching the armies in NW Europe came through Marsailles until the autumn of 1944, by which time the port of Cherbourg (which dwarfed the capacity of Marsailles) was online, and Antwerp was well within sight. Most of the supplies coming through Marsailles supported the Dragoon forces that landed in Southern France that summer. yes, there was some surplus, and certainly every bit of port capacity helped, but by the time the resources made available from Dragoon were reaching the forces in the north, they were useful, but no longer vital to the war effort. In effect, Marsailles did little more than feed itself and the forces that had been used to liberate it. In point of fact, had Marsailles not been attacked at all (and though Corsica and Sardinia made it much easier, they were hardly essential), it is likely that the Germans would have felt compelled to defend it in any event, thus tying up even more troops.
Your point regarding the Japanese motives in refusing to surrender is a very solid one, but I think there is more to it than simply that. The Japanese military leaders (including Anami, who certainly was ideologically opposed to any sort of surrender) did accept the Emperor’s decision in August of 1945, and two of them (notably Yonai) explicitly stated that the Allied promise not to interfere with the Japanese polity in the Potsdam declaration was crucial to their decision. Certainly the Emperor himself enjoyed something of a change of heart, as he had declined to involve himself in the deliberations of the Big Six until after Hiroshima, despite the fact that the Potsdam declaration predated it by several days. If the Japanese military leadership had motives of self-preservation (a not unreasoanble assumption) they seem to have altered or dropped those motivations with unseemly haste following the bombs and Soviet intervention. I might recommend to you Thomas Franks’ fine work on the subject, or if you prefer the British historical prose, Max Hasting’s oustanding ‘Retribution’
Interesting discussion.
I don’t think a 1943 invasion of France was viable, based on my reading over the years.
We did not have air superiority in 1943.
It would have been Dieppe or Gallipoli. With land transport open to
the Germans, they would have been able to get reinforcements to the landing area and penned up the lodgement, even if they could not push it into the sea.
We succeeded in 1944 because (1) Luftwaffe fighter strength had been destroyed in the Spring of 1944, (2) strategic bombers as well as
other aircraft had been used to attack bridges and other transportation targets in France, isolating the actual and feigned invasion beaches, (3) by 1944 we had a substantial number of aircraft for close air support, and we had the Gen. Quesada in charge and worked out training and doctrine to do it.
None of that was in place in 1943, even if the beach defenses were weaker and even if there were fewer troops in the West at the time.
There are other seemingly sufficient reasons why 1943 was impossible. But the lack of air dominance is fully sufficient to explain the correct decision not to try to invade in 1943.
George Marshall, a man of sound judgment, who wanted to get at the Germans as soon as possible, did not ultimately push for Roundup.
Overlord was risky as it was. The Anglo-Americans were going to get one shot at a cross-Channel attack.
Anyway, we can never know if a roll of the dice would have somehow been better. But Marshall was not going to roll the dice, and the British were dead set against Roundup, for reasons they believed were fully sufficient.
Roundup was not going to happen, for what seemed to be good and sufficient reasons to the leadership at the time. The historical record seems to support that call, and it certainly does not show it to be obviously mistaken.
Jim,
I wish I could refer you to a good discussion on the topic, but alas, I don’t have any links available. I might suggest, as an alternative, that you go to the original sources, almost all of which are fairly easily available. Morrison’s invaluable history of the USN gives some great numbers on landing craft, etc., and The deployment dates of various US divisions are easily obtained. More to the point, however, you can find the lanning documents for Roundup (the only secondary source I ever saw on the topic was something along the lines of ‘1943: The Victory that wasn’t’, and if I remember correctly, it was distinctly mediocre) as well as the US Army history of European operations in any decent library. I realize that isn’t entirely an adequate response (I apologize), but it is a good way to get started…
Dieppe was a catastrophic failure, but it was hardly an issue of readiness. It is important to remember that it was planned as a raid, not an invasion, and thus didn’t get the committment of resources that would have been necessary for any long-term invasion to succeed. The main failures at Dieppe were 1) A very strongly held port was attacked frontally; 2) Air superiority was not obtained at any time during the raid; 3) Completely inadequate naval gunfire (no more than a few destroyers) was provided; and 4) The allies did not even have local force superiority over the defenders. None of these problems (all of which were identified by members of the planning group prior to the raid) would have been ignored by an invasion planning group, and none were particularly difficult to overcome. At no time was any attempt to attack the heavily defended region where Dieppe was located even considered for an invasion (any year), and certainly the sort of unimaginative frontal assault would not have been used. Naval gunfire was already recognized as essential for a large landing (remember, Dieppe was a raid), so this factor wouldn’t have been an issue for ‘the real thing’
Air superiority is an interesting question, and it relates to your second point regarding material superiority, R&D, etc. There is no question that allied aircraft were better (and more numerous) in 1944 than in 1943. Ignoring for a moment that the same might be said of the Luftwaffe (particularly in terms of quality), the tasks associated with a successful invasion (isolation of the battlefield, air superiority, and close air support) were all well within the reach of the existing allied airforces in 1943. The main improvement between 1943 and 1944 was the introduction of the P-51, which while a truly superior aircraft, was primarily superior because of its very long range. The Mustang made most of its reputation not over France or the Low Countries, but over Germany, where its exceptional range allowed it to operate where the P-47 and P-38 (not to mention the Spitfire and Typhoon) could not. While this was a HUGE advantage for the strategic bombing campaign, it was not as vital for the short-range work necessary for invasion preparation.
As a side point, the lack of a long-range bomber escort in 1943 would have made it easier for the Allied High Command to divert bomber resources to invasion preparation (by 1944, that was becoming very difficult to do), as well as avoiding some of the ‘deep interdiction’ schemes (what the Allies called ‘The Transportation Plan’) that wasted so many aircrews and killed so many Frenchmen needlessly.
I mention Dieppe because its memory seems to have overhung the decision makers.
As to air superiority — do you happen to have the numbers at hand for the available aircraft that would have mattered? My impression had been that control of the air over France was still pretty contested in 1943. Even intermittent breakthroughs by German strike aircraft during the landings would have been disastrous.
Air dominance over all of NW Europe was certainly NOT in place by 1943, but we aren’t talking about all of Europe, we are only discussing the invasion zone. Lexington is correct that Big Week was largely responsible for destroying the bulk of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force in 1944, but given that we wouldn’t be diverting aircraft (and shipping) to the Med in the Roundup scenario, it isn’t difficult to imagine that Big Week would have been implemetned in 1943, in advance of an invasion in the same way it was in 1944. The aircraft were certainly there to do the job, but we used them for different tasks. There is no question that the airspace was contested in 1943, but to some extent this was the result of our decision not to push for air dominance at that time.
Lexington makes the interesting observation that German ground communications would make it easier to reinforce the front facing our forces. Given the fact that these troops would have to come from somewhere (almost certainly the Eastern Front), they would have had longer trips in 1943 than in 1944…long enough, as it happens that they might have actually had a more difficult time reinforcing that front than the Allies would. More to the point, however, rail capacity is not infinite, and the more railroads (particularly locomotives, a commodity that the Germans were chronically short of) used as troop transports for very long hauls, the fewer available for ongoing requirements (such as the German economy, etc.) which provides yet another benefit of an early invasion. Finally, since those reinforcements (even if possible) must come from other contested theatres, German forces in those theatres (again, the Eastern Front comes most readily to mind) would be substantially weakened, all to be benefit of the war effort.
The beach defenses were not merely ‘weaker’, they were almost completely nonexistent in 1943 (‘knots on a string’ was the phrase that Rommel used), and qualitatively less powerful as well. Almost none of the ubiquitous minefields had been laid, and the deep bunkers were extremely rare. Given the very poor quality of the troops in garrison at the time, it is reasonable to assume that the allies would have been spared some of the ugliest fighting on both the beaches and in the hedgerows.
Finally Lexington mentions Marshall. Actually Marshall was strongly in favor of Roundup, but was strongly cautioned (by Roosevelt) that this was not a subject for debate. Churchill and the rest of the British generals we adamantly opposed to Roundup, and the political leadership in the US was not inclined to argue the point. This entire discussion, however, is predicated upon the counterfactual that Roosevelt, et. al. did not acquiesce, which might very well have left Marshall in a very different frame of mind…
“The beach defenses were not merely ‘weaker’, they were almost completely nonexistent in 1943 (’knots on a string’ was the phrase that Rommel used), and qualitatively less powerful as well.”
And the defenses at Gallipoli were nonextistent when Churchill had the fleet probe them just after the Turks entered the war. It was in the time betwen the initial probe and that actual invasion that Liman von Sanders rebuilt them. Once the Allies began the buildup to Roundup the Germans would certainly have put a lot of resources into upgrading the defenses. No doubt the Allies could have pulled off the same deception as to where the invasion would hit, but they couldn’t have disguised the buildup itself.
So many variables here, very hard to say it would have worked.
Given that the Germans had an extra 12 months to spot the Allied buildup prior to Overlord, and only Rommel’s arrival in the West motivated ANY changes in Normandy (the complete focus of all other German planners was to the East around Pas de Calais) it is difficult to make the argument that sans Rommel (who certainly would have remained in the Med if it was not heavily attacked by the allies) another maverick thinker would have pushed for new defenses in Normandy. Even in the unlikely event that this had been the case, there is the question of time and resources available, as the German economic planners were still operating under the dead hand of Organization Todt during what would have been the buildup for Roundup (Speer was instrumental in providing resources for the Atlantic Wall buildup in 1943-44).
Finally, exactly what makes it certain that the Germans would have ‘detected’ the Allied buildup? In the actual event, the Germans had no spies in Britain, rarely (if ever) were able to make successful aerial recon of the build-up areas, and were completely fooled by the Allied efforts at misdirection. Certainly anything COULD have happened, but it is most unlikely that given LESS time to operate in, that the hapless German espionage operation would have done better…