The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II

213 Pages·2015·6.82 MB·English

by  Kenneth Macksey

The Hitler Options
A Greenhill Book
Greenhill
Books
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited
www.greenhillbooks.com
This paperback edition published in 2014 by Frontline Books
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S.Yorkshire, S70 2AS
Each chapter © its author, 1995
The collected work and maps © Lionel Leventhal Ltd, 1995
The right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 978-1-84832-780-1
PDF ISBN: 978-1-47384-246-5
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47384-247-2
PRC ISBN: 978-1-47384-248-9
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Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps
Contributors
Prologue
1. Operation SEA LION
Germany Invades Britain, 1940
KENNETH MACKSEY
2. Operation SPHINX
Raeder’s Mediterranean Strategy
BRYAN PERRETT
3. Operation WOTAN
The Panzer, Thrust to Capture Moscow, October–November 1941
JAMES LUCAS
4. Operation ORIENT
Joint Axis Strategy
PETER G. TSOURAS
5. Germany and the Atlantic Sea-War: 1939–1943
STEPHEN HOWARTH
6. Through the Soft Underbelly
January 1942–December 1945
GENERAL SIR WILLIAM JACKSON
7. Operation GREENBRIER
Defusing the German Bomb
JOHN H. GILL
8. The Jet Fighter Menace: 1943
DR. ALFRED PRICE
9. Operation ARMAGEDDON
Devastation of the Cities, 1943
CHARLES MESSENGER
10. Bloody Normandy
The German Controversy
MAJOR TIM KILVERT-JONES
Epilogue
List of Illustrations and Maps
Illustrations
1. Churchill inspects Channel coast defenses
2. Hitler with Rommel and Kesselring
3. German troops among burning British fuel tanks
4. Guderian and the staff of Panzer Group 2
5. Von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1
6. Japanese destroyer hit during the Battle of the Arabian Sea
7. Admiral Yamamoto ponders the dilemmas of Operation ORIENT
8. Hitler and Mussolini with Kesselring and Keitel
9. Battleships of the Mediterranean Fleet with a Swordfish torpedo bomber
overhead
10. Raeder and Dönitz debate strategy
11. Hitler with Dönitz and Göring
12. Allied convoy in mid-Atlantic
13. Allied Chiefs of Staff make plans to attack Europe’s “soft underbelly”
14. British troops pause while fighting their way up Italy
15. Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses head for vital targets in Germany
16. Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter
17. Operation GOMORRAH: Hamburg after the first daylight raid
18. General Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project
19. British Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles “Peter” Portal
20. U.S. B-26 Marauders fly for targets in northern France
21. Montgomery, Eisenhower and Tedder in Normandy
22. British specialized armored vehicles on the Normandy beaches
23. The shambles on OMAHA Beach
Maps
1. Operation SEA LION: Assault and Breakout
2. Operation SEA LION: The Battle of The GHQ Line
3. Operation SPHINX
4. Operation WOTAN
5. Operation ORIENT
6. Operation ORIENT: The Fall of Ceylon
7. Eisenhower’s Plan, Autumn-Winter 1943–4
8. Eisenhower’s Plan, Spring 1944
9. Final Phases of the War in Europe
10. Operation GREENBRIER
11. Operation ARMAGEDDON: Combined Bomber Offensive, 1943
12. Normandy: The Assault, 6 June 1944
Contributors
J H. G holds degrees from Middlebury College and The George
OHN ILL
Washington University. A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he is assigned to
the Pentagon and lives in Virginia. He is the author of With Eagles to Glory:
Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign, as well as numerous
articles in British and American journals.
S H is a retired officer of the Royal Naval Reserve and author of
TEPHEN OWARTH
several books on naval, maritime and general history. These include Morning
Glory: A History of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1895–1945; August ’39: The
Last Four Weeks of Peace; To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy
1775–1991; and (as joint editor with Derek Law, and contributor) The Battle of
the Atlantic 1939–1945: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference.
With his late father, the historian David Howarth, he co-wrote Nelson: The
Immortal Memory. He also writes articles, reviews and obituaries for a wide
variety of periodicals. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society
and the Royal Historical Society.
G S W J served the Crown for fifty years. He was
ENERAL IR ILLIAM ACKSON
commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1937, and during the War saw action
in Norway, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Malaya. His last appointment in the
Army was as Quartermaster-General in four star rank. He then went to Gibraltar
as governor and C-in-C in 1978, and on his return in 1982 he joined the Cabinet
Office Historical Section, writing the last three volumes of the British Official
History of the Mediterranean Campaigns. The final volume was published in
1987, when he retired. So far he has written nearly twenty books, mainly on
military history, including Overlord: Normandy 1944 in the Imperial War
Museum Strategy Series.
M T K -J joined his Regiment (The Royal Welch Fusiliers) in
AJOR IM ILVERT ONES
Germany in 1982. He went on to serve in Northern Ireland, Britain and the
Middle East, before attending a weapons staff course at the Royal Military
College of Science, Shrivenham in 1989 followed by Staff College, Camberley
in 1990. He was posted in December 1990 to Headquarters 3rd Armored
Division BAOR, and in November 1992 he returned to the United Kingdom and
his Regiment to command a Rifle Company in Northern Ireland, Tidworth and
Canada.
J L fought as an infantryman in the Tunisian and the Italian campaigns
AMES UCAS
of World War Two before going on to serve in Austria in the Army of
Occupation. After demobilization he worked in the Foreign Office and then the
University of London, before joining the staff of the Imperial War Museum in
1960. On retiring in 1986 he became a full-time author and has had more than
thirty books published. He has also contributed to military journals, and has led
several battlefield tours in Western Europe. For many years he was Secretary of
the British Section of the Confederation Européene des Anciens Combattants.
K M , the editor of this book, served in the Royal Tank Regiment
ENNETH ACKSEY
from 1941 to 1967. He is now known internationally as a military historian, his
40 books including Invasion: The German Invasion of England, July 1940;
Guderian: Panzer General; and The Penguin Encyclopedia of Modem Warfare.
C M served as a Regular Officer in the Royal Tank Regiment for
HARLES ESSENGER
21 years and subsequently for a further 13 years in the Territorial Army. He is
both a military historian and defense analyst, and the author of numerous books
on Second World War topics. These include The Art of Blitzkrieg: Bomber
Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 1939–1945; World War Two
Chronological Atlas; and biographies of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and
SS General Sepp Dietrich. He has recently written a hisotry of the British
Infantry, For Love of Regiment, and a review of twentieth-century warfare, The
Century of Warfare, based on an international TV/video series of that name for
which he was the scriptwriter and historical advisor.
B P served as an officer in the royal Tank Regiment and is now a
RYAN ERRETT
military historian. He has contributed to numerous military journals, and was
defense correspondent for an English newspaper during the Falklands and Gulf