Inferno

867 Pages·2011·16.05 MB·English

by  Max Hastings

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2011 by Max Hastings
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain as All Hell Let Loose by HarperPress, an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers, London.
Knopf, Borzoi Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hastings, Max.
Inferno : the world at war, 1939–1945 / by Max Hastings.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : HarperPress, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-307-95718-4
1. World War, 1939–1945. I. Title.
D743.H364 2011
940.54—dc22 2011013890
Jacket image: U.S. Marines blowing up cave connected to Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, December 31,
1944, by W. Eugene Smith/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Jacket design by Jason Booher
v3.1
To Michael Sissons,
for thirty years a princely agent,
counsellor and friend
Contents Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
Poland Betrayed
CHAPTER ONE
No Peace, Little War
CHAPTER TWO
Blitzkriegs in the West
CHAPTER THREE
1. Norway
2. The Fall of France
Britain Alone
CHAPTER FOUR
The Mediterranean
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Mussolini Gambles
2. A Greek Tragedy
3. Sandstorms
Barbarossa
CHAPTER SIX
Moscow Saved, Leningrad Starved
CHAPTER SEVEN
America Embattled
CHAPTER EIGHT
Japan’s Season of Triumph
CHAPTER NINE
1. “I Suppose You’ll Shove the Little Men Off”
2. The “White Route” from Burma
Swings of Fortune
CHAPTER TEN
1. Bataan
2. The Coral Sea and Midway
3. Guadalcanal and New Guinea
The British at Sea
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. The Atlantic
2. Arctic Convoys
3. The Ordeal of Pedestal
The Furnace: Russia in 1942
CHAPTER TWELVE
Living with War
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. Warriors
2. Home Fronts
3. A Woman’s Place
Out of Africa
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Bear Turns: Russia in 1943
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Divided Empires
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1. Whose Liberty?
2. The Raj: Unfinest Hour
Asian Fronts
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1. China
2. Jungle Bashing and Island Hopping
Italy: High Hopes, Sour Fruits
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1. Sicily
2. The Road to Rome
3. Yugoslavia
War in the Sky
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1. Bombers
2. Targets
Victims
CHAPTER TWENTY
1. Masters and Slaves
2. Killing Jews
Europe Becomes a Battlefield
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Japan: Defying Fate
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Germany Besieged
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Fall of the Third Reich
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1. Budapest: In the Eye of the Storm
2. Eisenhower’s Advance to the Elbe
3. Berlin: The Last Battle
Japan Prostrate
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Victors and Vanquished
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index
Other Books by This Author
Illustrations
Illustrations Ill.1 Poles catch a first glimpse of the Luftwaffe, September 1939.
(Hulton Deutsch Collection/CORBIS) Ill.2 SS, police and ethnic German
auxiliaries conducting a search at Bydgoszcz in Poland, September 1939.
(Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Ill.3
Finnish “ghost soldiers,” December 1939. (Keystone/Getty Images) Ill.4 A
Russian soldier frozen in death. Finland, March 1940. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Ill.5 German troops fighting near Haugsbygd, Norway, April 1940. (akg-
images/Ullstein Bild) Ill.6 Dunkirk evacuated, May–June 1940. (IAM/akg-
images) Ill.7 German troops enter Paris, 14 June 1940. (U.S. National Archives
& Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-PP-10A-3) Ill.8 Coventry
after an air raid, November 1940. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Ill.9 British
artillery in action in the North African desert, January 1943. (Mirrorpix) Ill.10
Frenchwoman and German official in occupied France, c. 1943. (Paul
Almasy/akg-images) Ill.11 Mass execution of Russian Jews by SS
Einsatzgruppen D, c. 1942. (Library of Congress, Washington D.C.) Ill.12 An
American family celebrates Thanksgiving, November 1942. (Bettmann/CORBIS)
Ill.13 Starving man with bread ration in Leningrad, 1941–42. (akg-images) Ill.14
German troops on the Russian front, winter 1941. (AP Photo/Press Association)
Ill.15 Japanese troops on Bataan, c. 1942. (U.S. National Archives & Records
Administration, Washington D.C.) Ill.16 Indian refugees escaping from Burma,
January 1942. (George Rodger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.17
American prisoners in the Philippines, May 1942. (U.S. National Archives &
Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 127-N-114541) Ill.18 Crew
abandoning USS Lexington, Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1942. (AP Photo/Press
Association) Ill.19 Japanese soldiers killed on Guadalcanal, August 1942. (AP
Photo/Press Association) Ill.20 Australian troops carrying a wounded comrade
to a dressing station on Papua New Guinea, December 1943. (AP Photo/Press
Association) Ill.21 HMS Vansittart on convoy escort duty in the Arctic, February
1943. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.22 Survivors of a U-boat sunk in the
North Atlantic, April 1943. (Photo by Jack January/USCG Historian’s Office)
Ill.23 WRENS wheeling a torpedo alongside a submarine at Portsmouth,
September 1943. (Imperial War Museum A 19471) Ill.24 Chinese foot soldiers,
August 1945. (Jack Wilkes/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.25 German
grenadier during the retreat from the Soviet Union, 1943–44. (Keystone/Getty
Images) Ill.26 The Soviet Union, 1943. (© The Russian State Documentary Film
and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/N. Asnina) Ill.27 Women riveters
in an American dockyard, 1942. (CORBIS) Ill.28 Twelve-year-old mill operator
at the Perm Engine-Building Works, Soviet Union, 1943. (ITAR-TASS) Ill.29 The
Red Army advances. (© The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo
Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/Minkevich collection) Ill.30 Drawing by
Zainul Abedin from his Bengal Famine series, 1943. (Courtesy of Zainul
Abedin) Ill.31 GI feeding an orphan in Italy, c. 1944. (U.S. National Archives &
Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-AA-240C-3) Ill.32 Burial at sea
for officers and men of USS Intrepid, Leyte Gulf, November 1944. (U.S.
National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 80-G-468912)
Ill.33 Pilot escaping the cockpit of a burning Hellcat fighter, September 1944.
(AP Photo/U.S. Navy/Press Association) Ill.34 A British bomber crew returns
from a raid on Germany.
Ill.35 A collaborator having her head shaved in a town near Paris, c. 1944. (U.S.
National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 111-SC-
193318) Ill.36 Japanese family hiding in a cave on Saipan, June 1944. (U.S.
Marine Corps/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.37 British soldier in
Burma, November 1944. (Imperial War Museum SE 564) Ill.38 Medics
removing a wounded U.S. soldier from the battlefield near Brest, Normandy,
August 1944. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.39 Paratrooper preparing for
the assault on Arnhem, September 1944. (Airborne Assault Museum) Ill.40
Dutch child during the “Hongerwinter” of 1944–45. (© Marius
Meijboom/Nederlands Fotomuseum) Ill.41 Two teenage German soldiers
captured on the Rhine, March 1945. (Mirrorpix) Ill.42 Russian artillery on the
Oder–Neisse front, April 1945.
Ill.43 U.S. troops at Ohrdruf concentration camp, April 1945. (AP Photo/Byron
H. Rollins/Press Association) Ill.44 U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima, March 1945.
(AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps/Press Association) Ill.45 A mother and child
among the ruins of Hiroshima. (Alfred Eisenstadt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty
Images)
Maps The Polish Campaign
The Finnish Campaign
The Invasion of Norway
The Last Phase of the 1940 French Campaign
The Invasion of Greece
The 1942–43 Advance of Eighth Army
The German Winter Offensives, 1941
The Pacific Theatre
The Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of Midway
The Russians Encircle Hitler’s Sixth Army
The Russians Exploit Victory at Kursk
Russian Advances Across Ukraine
The 1943 Landings in Italy
The 1944 Thrust into Poland
The Allied Breakout from Normandy
The 1945 Western Drive into Germany
The 1944 Allied Advances on Germany
The Russian Drive to the Oder
The Final Russian Assaults
Introduction
This is a book chiefly about human experience. Men and women from scores of
nations struggled to find words to describe what happened to them in the Second
World War, which transcended anything they had ever known. Many resorted to
a cliché: “All hell broke loose.” Because the phrase is commonplace in
eyewitness descriptions of battles, air raids, massacres and ship sinkings, later
generations are tempted to shrug at its banality. Yet in an important sense the
words capture the essence of what the struggle meant to hundreds of millions of
people, plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that in many
cases lasted for years, and for at least 60 million were terminated by death. An
average of 27,000 people perished each day between September 1939 and
August 1945 as a consequence of the global conflict. Some survivors found that
the manner in which they had conducted themselves during the struggle defined
their standing in their societies for the rest of their lives, for good or ill.
Successful warriors retained a lustre which enabled some to prosper in
government or commerce. Conversely, at the bar of a London club thirty years
after the war, a Guards veteran murmured about a prominent Conservative
statesman: “Not a bad fellow, Smith. Such a pity he ran away in the war.” A
Dutch girl, growing up in the 1950s, found that her parents categorised each of
their neighbours in accordance with how they had behaved during the German
occupation of Holland.
British and American infantrymen were appalled by their experiences in the
1944–45 northwest Europe campaign, which lasted eleven months. But Russians
and Germans fought each other continuously for almost four years in far worse
conditions, and with vastly heavier casualties.1 Some nations which played only
a marginal military role lost many more people than the Western Allies: China’s
ordeal at Japanese hands between 1937 and 1945 cost at least 15 million lives;
Yugoslavia, where civil war was overlaid on Axis occupation, lost more than a
million dead. Many people witnessed spectacles comparable with Renaissance
painters’ conception of the inferno to which the damned were consigned: human
beings torn to fragments of flesh and bone; cities blasted into rubble; ordered
communities sundered into dispersed human particles. Almost everything which
civilised peoples take for granted in time of peace was swept aside, above all the