The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk

On 5 July 1943, the armed forces of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany met in the biggest and most significant battle since the German defeat at Stalingrad. The Battle of Kursk, though not as well-known as Stalingrad, proved to be as significant for the destruction it caused amongst German personnel and material. The battle ended all chances for the Germans to retake the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front and grimly set the stage for two years of heavy fighting that would eventually lead to the Soviet capture of Berlin.

The Battle of Kursk, noted as one of the biggest field battles of the war.

Background

During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Russians successfully encircled the German Sixth Army fighting within the city, allowing them to prepare a grander offensive to cut off the German forces trying to seize Russian oil supplies in the Caucasus region. As it turned out, the tenacious German defence of Stalingrad allowed their comrades the time needed to evacuate: hundreds of thousands of German troops retreated from the Caucasus and managed to establish a new defensive line several hundred miles to the west, running from Rostov in the south to Leningrad in the north. This line was almost straight apart from one major protrusion: the Red Army had successfully retaken the city of Kursk, forming an immense (180 miles wide) salient into the German lines.

The German generals immediately saw an opportunity to retake Kursk and eliminate the Russian forces surrounding the city. The nature of the salient would allow German forces to attack simultaneously from the north and south, cutting off the city and forcing it to surrender. This was the classic German strategy, although it was also one that the Russians had used to devastating effect on the Germans at Stalingrad. Despite the likelihood of success, some German generals (such as Manstein and Guderian, the architects of blitzkrieg) thought the plan was too risky, as it mean using hundreds of thousands of German troops to retake a target that was, on its own, of limited value. Hitler, surprisingly, agreed but also noted that this was the last opportunity for the Germans to undertake an offensive campaign that they had a good chance of winning on the Eastern Front. If they succeeded, they could regain the initiative. If they failed, the war would likely be lost.

Unfortunately for the Germans, the Russians were well aware of their preference for attacking salients. Once it became clear that Kursk was a target the Germans could not ignore, the Russians began pouring men, tanks and artillery guns into the area. They established a defence in depth consisting of artillery pieces, minefields and anti-tank guns, with huge numbers of T-34 and KV-1 tanks ready to sweep in and knock out the advancing enemy panzers. And as the Germans dithered, so the vast area surrounding Kursk became even more impregnable.

Offensive Delayed

The original German plan had been to launch the offensive at the start of April 1943, only two months after their defeat at Stalingrad. At this point Kursk was still fairly vulnerable to attack, with the Russian military build-up only just getting underway. Hitler was finally persuaded into approving the operation, but was unhappy with the performance of the German Panzer IV tank against the T-34, the Russian mainstay. He wanted the heavier tanks that had been in development for some time available for use.

The first of these tanks was the Panther, a formidable machine designed to directly rebuff the T-34. Equipped with a heavier gun and better armour (though this resulted in less speed), the Panther was - eventually - the outstanding German tank of the Second World War. Even more formidable - at least on paper - was the Tiger. Larger, more heavily-armoured and better-armed than either the T-34 or Panther, the Tiger was a monstrous machine capable of causing immense damage. The expense of building them meant they would always be some what rare, but they were a much-needed force-equaliser against the numerically superior Russian tanks.

The problem was that the deployment of both tanks was running behind schedule, and the Kursk offensive was delayed several times due to the manufacturers not meeting their delivery targets. The Germans finally received enough of both tank to satisfy Hitler, who set the date for the offensive to begin as 5 July 1943.

The Plan

The German plan called for the 2nd Army to hold the Russians at bay on the west-facing side of the salient whilst the 9th Army under General Model attacked the salient from the north and the 4th Panzer Army (under General Hoth) and Army Detachment Kempf (under General Kempf) attacked from the south. As early as the end of April Model had become concerned over aerial reconnaissance that showed the scale of the Soviet build-up, pictures which convinced even Manstein that the plan was probably too ambitious, but Hitler had become committed to 'Operation Citadel'. General Guderian, infamous for his seeming total disregard for Hitler's formidable temper, suggested that Hitler abandon the operation and indeed all offensive plans for 1943. Instead they could use Manstein's plan to lure the Russians to attack on the southern front and then destroy them with a counter-offensive. Hitler's response was surprisingly downbeat: he agreed with Guderian and said the thought the operation turned his stomach. But it was the only option on the table and he was determined to see it through rather than do nothing.

Soviet signal flares are fired ahead of an armoured assault.

Military Forces and the Opening of the Battle

The three-month delay proved costly for the Germans, as the Russians had time to almost quadruple their own armoured forces in the salient and lay immense minefields. They brought in 300,000 civilian workers to help construct these defences rapidly. They constructed a defensive zone almost 190 miles in depth, the result of an almost unprecedented amount of preparation time: three months in the fast-moving war was almost luxurious. Just under 2 million men and just over 5,000 tanks were deployed in the Kursk region, backed up by over 25,000 artillery pieces and mortars. More than 3,000 aircraft were also assigned to the defence of the region. Startlingly, the Russians were able to deploy a minefield density of over 3,000 mines per square kilometre throughout the forward areas of the salient, enough to immensely slow down the German advance (or so it was hoped).

On the German side, some 900,000 troops, 3,000 tanks (including 240 Tigers and over 200 Panthers), 2,000 aircraft and 10,000 artillery pieces and mortars were deployed for the offensive. Not only were the Germans attacking a numerically superior enemy (not unusual for them), they were also attacking with a deficiency in material and a lack of available reinforcements (which was more unusual) if things went wrong.

In terms of tanks, both sides brought an unusually high number to the battle. The Germans committed 70% of their total available tank forces on the Eastern Front to the operation. The Russians brought in just under half of their total tank forces in existence at that time. The Russians also deployed considerable numbers of anti-tank mines, anti-tank artillery pieces and anti-tank rifles, resulting in a Russian superiority of both armoured numbers and also other anti-tank forces. Hitler was relying on the superiority of the Tigers and Panthers (as well as the newly-deployed Ferdinand tank destroyer) to turn the tide of numbers.

On the aerial side of things, the air superiority that the Germans had enjoyed throughout the war was beginning to wane. Constant British (and now American) air raids on Germany had called away fighters to defensive duties, and operations in North Africa were also putting a heavy toll on the Luftwaffe. The Red Air Force had also been compromised by poor equipment, but by the time of Kursk this had been remedied by the introduction of the Yak-9 and La-2 fighters and especially the Sturmovik IL-2 ground attack aircraft (arguably the outstanding Russian aircraft of the war). The Germans were slower to bring new equipment to the battle, though an upgraded Stuka and more Focke-Wulf FW-190s did help. Overall, neither side enjoyed air superiority in terms of equipment over the battlefield, though the Russians did enjoy numerical superiority.

Probing attacks by German scouts and pioneers were launched on the evening of 4 July. This resulted in a Russian artillery bombardment just after midnight which proved less effective than hoped. A major Red Air Force attack on German airfields was also fought off with heavy Soviet losses. On the southern face of the salient the Luftwaffe was able to quickly achieve local superiority to cover the ground offensive, but in the northern sector the Russians were able to hold the Germans at bay, resulting in aerial stalemate. The Germans returned fire with their own artillery bombardment, but this also failed to make much impact on the Russian positions, which were too well-dug-in.

The Offensive in the North

On the northern sector the Germans launched an overwhelming attack with mobile artillery and infantry, with Model's plan being to break open holes in the Russian lines that their panzers could exploit. Given that the weight of the defences was oriented towards resisting armour, this proved to be a reasonable decision, though it was criticised at the time. The northern forces achieved a breakthrough when they successfully identified a weak spot in the Russian lines between two divisions and drove into the gap, spearheaded by two dozen Tigers. The Russians fought them off by deploying 90 T-34s, but the Tigers made a formidable impression: 42 T-34s were destroyed to the loss of seven Tigers. Despite this impressive showing, the three-hour tank battle delayed the Germans and allowed the Russians to reinforce and beat off the attack.

Elsewhere in the northern sector the Germans ran into repeated problems: the sheer mass of the minefields slowed their advance to a crawl, which made them easy prey for enemy artillery and mortars. In one area the Germans achieved a breakthrough by using their Ferdinand tank-destroyers in an offensive capacity to attack a Russian artillery position, but the destroyers' lack of machine guns weapons left them easy prey for Russian small arms and anti-armour weapons.

With the German advanced slowed - only 5 miles' progress was made on the first day, astonishingly feeble by German standards - the Russians counter-attacked in force on the second day across the northern sector. The T-34s spearheading the attack enjoyed superior speed and manoeuvrability to the Tigers, but were now facing an enemy who could destroy them at range and shrugged off counter-fire (for too long, the T-34's advantage over the Panzer IV). The Russians suffered devastating losses in the attack and had to pull back.

The next few days saw heavy exchanges of fire, but Model refused to mass his tanks for a sustained assault, fearing the depth of the Russian minefields and the formidable anti-tank forces arrayed against him. On 12 July he - reluctantly - began preparations for a major armoured offensive but was caught off-guard by a Red Army advance  on Orel to the north which threatened to encircle him. With little choice, Model withdraw the entire German 9th Army from the battlefield. Whilst his caution had preserved his forces remarkably well (only 143 vehicles lost), it had also failed to achieve anything of note, only to prove the impressive nature of the Soviet defences. Still, Model's deployment of the Tiger tank was successful, achieving a kill-to-loss ratio against the until-then superior T-34 that served as a nasty wake-up call to the Russian commanders that their front-line tank need improving.

Though limited in speed and number, the superior firepower of the German Tiger inflicted tremendous losses upon the Russian forces during Kursk.

The Offensive in the South

The Germans launched a major assault from the south of the Kursk salient on 5 July. Unlike the more cautious attacks in the north, the southern German forces arrayed their tanks in concentrated spearheads. They brought large amounts of fire to bear on single parts of the Russian line. The Russians had also failed to anticipate the likely main axis of attack on the southern front, forcing them to spread out their defences. In short, the attack in the south allowed the Germans to unleash one of their favourite tactics: bringing maximum offensive power to bear against a single part of the enemy line, overwhelming the enemy's superior overall numbers on a local level.

These attacks in the south were impressive, but also exposed some serious problems. 200 Panthers were ordered into the fight, only for a dozen of them to break down before they even started action. After further thirty-three suffered mechanical breakdowns on the battlefield, leading to a failure rate of almost 25% without taking into account enemy action. The reason for this was simple: the Tiger had been deployed on a small level since late 1942 (though Kursk represented its first deployment on a mass scale) and some of its mechanical kinks had been ironed out (though others remained). The Panther had been rushed almost straight from the factory to the battlefield with little time for testing. The Panther's mechanical unreliability proved to be a major headache for the Germans, with battlefield-reliable Panthers not entering service until August 1944, far too late in the day to change the outcome of the war.

Despite the Panthers' teething troubles, the Germans did succeed in penetrating the Russian positions and getting to the second defensive line. Unfortunately, they could not follow up on this success: reinforcements were slow to arrive and in some cases were halted by katyusha strikes knocking out the bridges behind the German front units. Unexpected German tank successes forced some of the Russian armour to dig in. Helped by camouflage, these dug-in tanks worked as stationary (and hard-to-spot or hear) gun turrets and slowed the German offensive even further. Russian armour continued to counter-attack, achieving great successes against the weaker German tanks but continuing to face stiff resistance from the Tigers: one German Tiger destroyed 22 T-34s single-handed, winning its commander the Knight's Cross.

German progress in the south was slow but steady, but on 12 July, the same day the northern front collapsed and had to withdraw, they broke through the Russian lines near the town of Prokhorovka. The Russians had rushed as much armour as possible to meet the incursion, putting the pieces in place for the greatest tank battle in history.

The Battle of Prokhorovka

On the morning of 12 July, General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army advanced on Prokhorovka, its tanks clustered in one powerful spearhead. The Russian 5th Tank Guards Army responded, and the two massive armoured forces collided south-west of the town.

The resulting tank battle was fought on a flat plain extending across seventeen miles and lasting eight hours in stifling heat. The numbers involved are disputed, with conservative estimates stating that only about 900 tanks were involved (593 Russian tanks and 37 self-propelled guns versus 300 German tanks and guns), and more outlandish ones putting the figures closer to 2,000. Whatever the numbers, it was the biggest tank engagement of the Second World War. Hundreds of tanks advanced  across a relatively narrow front, resulting in a lengthy, sustained exchange of fire. The fighting was fierce and at close-quarters, allowing the T-34s to close with and engage the Tigers on a more equal footing. The Germans achieved aerial superiority over the battlefield and inflicted tremendous damage on the Russian forces. Despite the German tenacity and their strength of their tanks, the Russian lines held and the Germans were forced to withdraw. Both sides left hundreds of tanks smouldering on the battlefield, but the losses were more devastating for the Germans, who could ill afford to lose them and were slower replacing them.

Though still formidable, the Battle of Kurk proved the need for an upgraded, more powerful variant of the T-34 to answer the new German tanks.

The Closing Stages

By 16 July the Germans had won some ground and were holding it, but the lack of reinforcements compared to a steady replenishment of Russian tanks and troops began to tell. The German breakthroughs were impressive, but also not as significant as they first appeared: in some places the Germans still had five rings of defences to penetrate before they could capture the salient, and they had exhausted themselves battling through the first two. The Germans had also suffered devastating tank losses, with their problems compounded by the extremely poor performance of the Panther: out of the 200 present in the southern sector on 5 July, only 38 were still operational on the morning of 10 July, to the fury of the tank commanders. Only a few had been destroyed or captured, with the rest simply failing to work.

On 16 July the attack was called off and the Germans, exhausted, fell back to their start line. On 3 August the Soviets launched Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, a major military operation designed to retake the city of Kharkov. Despite German resistance, the city fell on 23 August. The Germans were forced to retreat towards Kiev, meaning that not only had they failed to take the Kursk salient, but the Russians were able to successfully use the salient as a springboard for further, successful offensives into the southern part of the German lines and begin the re-conquest of the Ukraine.

In the north the Russians had launched Operation Kutuzov, an effort to liberate the city of Orel north-west of the Kursk salient, on 12 July. This operation forced the Germans to completely abandon the northern assault on Kursk or risk being encircled. On 5 August Orel itself fell, driving the Germans even further back and opening up a possible route for the Russians to advance on Smolensk.

By the end of the Battle of Kursk, the Germans had suffered a serious strategic reversal on the Eastern Front. It had lost a substantial number of its tanks on the Eastern Front, lost two major conquests (Orel and Kharkov) and was in danger of losing two, much more important cities (Smolensk and Kiev itself). The technological superiority of the Tiger and - when it worked - the Panther was proven, but both tanks were expensive to build and ineffective against the T-34 when it was fielded against them in superior numbers. Even the technical superiority of the German tanks was lost a few months later when the Russians (for a modest increase in price) upgraded their tanks with a new, heavier gun, resulting in the T-34/85. Once again, the T-34 was able to engage German armour at longer ranges without sacrificing their superior speed.

Kursk was the last throw of the dice for Hitler on the Eastern Front. Never again would the Germans be able to mount a large and sustained offensive in the east, and the stage was set for the infamous Russian offensives of 1944, Operation Bagration.

The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad

The 23rd of August, 1942, is a significant date in history. Seventy years ago, the German Sixth Army began its assault on a remote, obscure city in southern Russia called Stalingrad. This battle - begun as a mere sideshow to a grander attempt to cut off Russia's supplies of oil - proved the most significant turning point of the war and became - arguably - the most famous single battle of the conflict. Two totalitarian superpowers clashed for control of a city bearing the name of one of their leaders, fighting a gruelling battle lasting six months and costing over one and a half million lives.

Russian Katyusha rocket batteries during the Red Army's counter-attack at Stalingrad.

Background
As related in my article on Barbarossa last year, the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union on 21 June, 1941. They attacked on a vast scale, using over three million troops and thousands of tanks and aircraft. By the autumn they had taken or besieged most of Russia's major cities but Hitler proved uncharacteristically timid when the time came to advance on Moscow (likely due to Hitler's obsession with the story of Napoleon's defeat in Russia). By the time he finally authorised the attack it was too late in the year, and the German armies were finally halted by freezing temperatures. An unexpected Russian counter-attack in December threw the Germans back almost a hundred miles from Moscow, the first significant tactical defeat suffered by the Germans in the war, but failed to rout them. A new front was stabilised, and both armies reinforced and prepared for a resumption of hostilities in the spring.

As 1942 opened, the Russians anticipated a renewed offensive on Moscow and concentrated a significant portion of their resources on defending the city. However, Hitler believed that Moscow was, in itself, not a strategically worthwhile target. With the Red Army focused in the north, Hitler believed an opportunity existed for a stunning victory in the south. He divided the former Army Group South into two forces, Army Group A and B, and planned for them to advance eastwards, along the northern coast of the Black Sea. In the basin between the rivers Don and Volga, one group would turn south into the Caucasus Mountains with the objective of capturing almost all of Russia's major oil fields, in what is now Chechnya and Armenia. The other would turn north and take and hold the city of Stalingrad, to be used to secure the German flanks against a possible counter-attack.

It was an impressive plan, concentrating the Germans' offensive power against the weakest part of the Russian line and designed to cut off the Red Army from the source of its fuel. If the Germans could pull one more rabbit out of the hat, they might simply starve the Russians into surrender due to a lack of supplies, rather than face a battle of attrition that the numerically superior Russians could win.

The plan - Operation Blue - began unexpectedly early on 19 May 1942. Marshal Timoshenko of the Red Army launched an offensive designed to recapture the city of Kharkov, but in doing so exposed his flank and was comprehensively defeated, losing a quarter of a million men in the process. Maintaining the momentum of the counter-attack, the Germans advanced eastwards. On 23 July the city of Rostov fell, allowing the Germans to advance swiftly eastwards towards the Volga.

The task of taking Stalingrad fell to the Sixth Army under General von Paulus, a notable formation which had already won impressive victories in France and the initial invasion of the USSR. In accordance with blitzkrieg doctrine, which required an overwhelming aerial bombardment to soften up the target ahead of an infantry and armoured attack, the German Luftwaffe launched a massive bombing raid on Stalingrad on 23 August, 1942. The attack flattened a large portion of the city, killing upwards of 40,000 civilians. Elements of the Sixth Army entered the city's suburbs on the same day, marking the beginning of the battle.


The Sixth Army Advances

Reducing the city to rubble proved to be a costly error. The closed-in streets of the city had now been turned into a bewildering warren of collapsed walls, bombed-out streets and half-fallen buildings. The Germans found it almost impossible to deploy their tanks with any effectiveness, whilst the close nature of the fighting restricted the use of both air power and heavy artillery. They were also confounded by the unusual layout of the city.

Stalingrad - formerly Tsaritsyn and today called Volgograd - was only about two miles wide, but extended along the Volga's shores for about seventeen miles. The German plan for taking the city involved multiple incursions from the suburbs to the river, reducing the city to several small pockets of resistance which could then be eliminated in detail. The problem was that the Volga - almost two miles wide at Stalingrad - proved a straightforward (if extremely hazardous) way of reinforcing the city. Red Army troops would pour across the river on a daily basis, braving aerial and artillery bombardment to reinforce the troops already in the city. The Germans found it difficult to seal off each pocket from reinforcements, especially the core of the city where the bulk of the 62nd Army, commanded by the formidable General Chuikov was concentrated. Chuikov was a charismatic commander who would allegedly break off from key radio conferences with his commanders to run outside his bunker and personally drive back German assaults with a machine gun before nonchalantly rejoining the conversation (although sadly this is probably apocryphal).

As a result of the ferocious Russian defence, the Battle of Stalingrad descended into a grinding battle of attrition, something the Germans had purposely avoided in WWII up to this point. Their key weapons of blitzkrieg, speed and movement were denied to them by the terrain and by Hitler's insistence that the city had to be captured and fortified, rather than simply razed. In addition, the Sixth Army found itself at the end of a very long, very tenuous supply chain (Stalingrad was 1,380 miles from Berlin), with every bullet, can of fuel and replacement soldier having to travel a long way to reach the troops. Russian reinforcements were able to enter the city almost at will, however.

The result of this was a gruelling infantry battle, with some buildings being captured, recaptured, bombed and then reoccupied multiple times during the same day. On both sides snipers wreaked havoc on enemy morale, with several of them becoming extremely famous (Vasily Zaitsev - the main character in the movie Enemy at the Gates - is the most famous, although his famous 'sniper duel' with a German counterpart appears to be apocryphal). To the Germans' shock, a significant number of the Russian soldiers they faced were women: more than 75,000 women fought at Stalingrad, as medics, snipers, pilots and (despite official policy to the contrary) as front-line combat troops. A large number of civilians who'd been trapped in the city during the battle were also pressed into military service. Bolstered by such factors, the Russian defence was tenacious and impressive, but still the defenders gave ground. By the start of October over 80% of the city was in German hands.

However, Stalin and his most skilled general, Marshal Zhukov, had concocted an utterly audacious scheme to defeat the Germans. Rather than flood the city with reinforcements, as they could have done, they only sent in enough men to hold the city and pin the Germans in place. At the same time, they assembled two immense formations, one to the north and the other to the south, of Stalingrad. As von Paulus became more desperate for victory, he reassigned all of his elite units into the city itself, leaving the flanks of the Sixth Army to be guarded by allied troops: Hungarian, Italian and Romanian forces supplied by Hitler's erstwhile allies to help make good Germany's lack of manpower (at least compared to the USSR). Unfortunately, these troops were known to be of inferior quality to the German soldiers, lacking their training and equipment.

On 19 November 1942 - the day the Second World War apparently spun on a dime - the Red Army hit the demoralised, under-equipped Hungarian and Romanian forces on the flanks of the Sixth Army with everything they had. In less than two days the Russians shattered the flanks and overran them, sweeping around the Sixth Army in two huge waves which met at the town of Kalach, the main river crossing over the River Don directly on the Sixth Army's line of retreat. The Sixth Army was completely surrounded, and the besiegers had suddenly become the besieged.


The Sixth Army Besieged

Immediate efforts were launched to relive the Sixth Army, but the German armies operating in the Caucasus were too far away to immediately respond. The Sixth Army itself was massively outnumbered - by at least three-to-one, not counting the Russian troops inside Stalingrad itself - and could make no headway. Initially there was panic at the German high command about how the Sixth Army could feed itself, leading Goering to declare that he could keep the entire army fed and resupplied by the air. In the event, the Luftwaffe never managed to deliver enough supplies to keep even half the Sixth Army fed for one day.

The only hope was for a German army to relieve Stalingrad. Field Marshal Manstein led three Panzer divisions in a relief effort which got to within 30 miles of the city, but suddenly had to abandon the attack when the Russians set in motion an even larger operation, this time designed to retake Rostov and trap the entirety of the former Army Group South in the Caucasus. This would have been a catastrophe of unprecedented scale for the German army, but the Russian effort was thwarted and the German forces in the Caucasus were able to escape the trap before it could be sprung. However, this now put the German armies hundreds of miles to the west of Stalingrad, unable to offer even a glimmer of hope for the besieged Sixth Army.

Despite this, Hitler refused to permit the Sixth Army to surrender. He encouraged von Paulus and his men to fight on to the bitter end and die gloriously in the name of the Reich. He even promoted Paulus to Field Marshal, noting that no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered or been take alive, a subtle hint as to how he hoped Paulus would comport himself. Paulus declined to die a 'heroic' death, however. On 1 February 1943 he offered unconditional surrender. Somewhere between 90,000 and 110,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner and the Sixth Army ceased to exist, the first time an entire German field army had been completely destroyed during the Second World War. Less than 6,000 of those troops would survive to see home again, the majority dying of disease in Soviet gulags. As the defeated soldiers were marched out of the ruined city, Russian soldiers and civilians jeered at them and the prescient insult of, "This is how Berlin will soon look!" was commonly made.

The defeat shocked the Germans. The size of the calamity could not be covered up, and unusually pessimistic Nazi leaders such as Goebbels took to the airways to warn German citizens that they would now face 'total war'. For the Russians, it was a morale boost on an unprecedented scale. It passed the strategic initiative in the war to them and it also showed the value of planning long. Stalin's insistence on constant attacks was now replaced by patient planning, something that paid off just a few months later in the Battle of Kursk (a victory for the Russians as great, if not moreso, as Stalingrad's).

Overview
Stalingrad was a significant defeat for the Germans. It wasn't their first major defeat in the war (they'd been beaten by the British at El Alamein in October 1942 and at Moscow in December 1941)  but it was the first time an entire German field army had been comprehensively destroyed. Whilst the destruction of the Sixth Army was impressive, it was more significant in forcing the hasty German evacuation of the entirety of southern Russia, ending the threat to Russia's oilfields, without which the Soviet Union could not stay in the fight. It also restored faith and hope to the Allies that the Russians could prevail: even after the Russian victory at Moscow, expectations that the Russians could win the conflict had still been low in London and Washington. The battle became a symbol of Russian defiance, and even during the Cold War when the USSR's role in Hitler's defeat was underplayed in the West, the name of Stalingrad was still infamous.

The 70th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa

On 22 June 1941, seventy years ago yesterday, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, beginning one of the most bloody struggles in human history. In terms of the number of men and materials committed, the casualties sustained (military and civilian), the development of fresh technologies and its grand strategic importance, the war between Germany and Russia was the Second World War. Everything else - the Pacific, D-Day, the Battle of Britain - was a mere sideshow (which is not the same as saying that they were unimportant or irrelevant, and indeed they were vital in many ways, but the scale of the war in Eastern Europe was considerably vaster in scale and scope).

A streamlined map of the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa.

The war in the east is relatively little-known in the UK and USA. The Cold War led to a general playing down of the Russian contribution to the Allied victory in the war for several decades, something that was only lifted with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent opening of the Soviet historical archives. Since then a lot of work and research has been done, ultimately proving that the war in the east was considerably more titanic and horrific than even first thought, as the Soviets themselves had downplayed their own colossal losses during the conflict. In WW2 overall, somewhere between 50 and 70 million people were killed. Of those killed, at least 27 million died in Russia alone, and even that figure is probably low-balling it. That's not counting the millions of German soldiers who died fighting on the eastern front, or the hundreds of thousands of German civilians killed in the Russian counter-invasion of Germany during the closing months of the war. All-told, around half and possibly considerably more of the total casualties of the conflict were incurred in this one theatre. To put the scale of things into context, at the battle for Kiev alone, the Russians lost more men killed and captured than the United States lost in the entire war. At the Siege of Leningrad alone, the Russians lost more lives than the USA and UK incurred combined in the entire war.

These numbers, to Western eyes used to discussing with horror the thousands killed in the bombing of Coventry or on the beaches on D-Day, are almost impossible to comprehend. Russia was only able to withstand and bear them only because it was in the grip of a regime as brutal and possibly even more cynical than that of the Nazis themselves.

Backdrop
In WWI, Russia, France and Britain fought against the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Russia invaded Germany from the east but was halted at two huge battles (at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes) and thrown back. Over the course of three years, the Germans pushed deep into Russian territory. After the Russian Revolution, Lenin sued for peace, giving up a huge amount of territory in western Russia to the Germans. When Germany was defeated in turn by Britain, France and the United States, it had to give that land back to the Soviet Union and cede even more territory to an independent Poland, something that rankled. Germany was a small, over-populated state squeezed in by surrounding European powers. The idea of having open spaces to live in, particularly the vast, lightly-populated fields and plains of the Ukraine not that far to the east, was very attractive. In his 1924 book, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler made a great play of this idea, calling it lebensraum ('living space') and making it a cornerstone of Nazi ideology and German political and military aims.

Under Lenin and then Stalin, the Soviet Union was under no allusions that Germany presented a long-term threat. Stalin instituted a series of policies to modernise Soviet agriculture and industry, transforming it from a backwater to an industrial superpower in just over a decade of constant - and extremely costly - effort. With the threat of a new war growing through the 1930s, Britain and France attempted to forge a new alliance with Russia, similar to the one that was in place in 1914. The Soviets were open to the suggestion, but pointed out that in order to attack Germany, they would need to cross Poland. The Polish government vehemently opposed this, fearing they'd be occupied-by-proxy if millions of Soviet soldiers crossed through their territory. The severity of this argument reached new heights in 1938 at the Munich Conference, when Chamberlain used the threat of a Russian attack to try to coerce a peace agreement from Hitler. The outcome of the conference was the effective partition of Czechoslovakia and France standing down from its prior commitment to defend Czechoslovakia with military force. Stalin was furious, believing that this was a betrayal of Czechoslovakia.

Stalin instead pursued a plan for a separate peace with Hitler, culminating in the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, in which the two diametrically-opposed regimes agreed to a close alliance. The cynicism of this move shocked the world, and was soon put into practice when the two powers jointly invaded Poland and carved the country up between them. Britain and France went to war regardless but Germany, with no need to worry about its eastern frontier, was able to bring its full might to bear against them, defeating and conquering France and driving the British army from the continent.

However, right from the start, Hitler planned to betray the pact. His goal was the lebensraum which could only be gained from Russian territory, the annihilation of the Slavic people (whom he considered to be sub-human), the extermination of the millions of Jews living in the Soviet Union and Germany's acquirement of Russia's immense oil reserves and other natural resources. To this end the Red Army would have to be destroyed. Emboldened by the unexpected success of the blitzkrieg tactics used against Poland and France, Hitler gave the order on 18 December 1940 formally confirming that Germany would invade the Soviet Union no later than May 1941.

The Russians knew that the Germans would turn on them, but Stalin believed that it would not be for some time. He believed he had until 1943 before the Germans would be ready to mount a war against him and that Germany would not launch a war in the east with Britain still undefeated in the west, so whilst the Red Army began making preparations to defend against an invasion, there were not very far-advanced by the time the spring and summer of 1941 rolled around.

Countdown
As it turned out, the Germans were unexpectedly delayed by unfolding complications on their southern front. Britain landed significant numbers of troops in Greece to aid that country against an Italian offensive, whilst a massive uprising in Yugoslavia threatened to destroy Axis influence in that country. Hitler had to break off a number of forces earmarked for the Russian operation to put down the revolt and retake Greece (as well as taking Crete to stop the British using it to reinforce their Greek bridgehead). The importance of this delay has been debated at length: the weather conditions on the frontier between Germany and the USSR were atrocious for much of May 1941, and a delay into June would likely have been warranted anyway.

During the countdown to the conflict, the Germans began moving immense numbers of men and material eastwards. They established three huge Army Groups along the frontier, and sent significant numbers of troops north to Finland to bolster the Finnish army there. These movements could not escape the attention of Stalin, but Stalin remained convinced that Hitler would not invade Russia as it would mean a two-front war, something Hitler was as ideologically opposed to as he was in favour of war with the Soviets. Stalin was not aware that Hitler had convinced himself that Britain, whilst still in the fight, was effectively neutralised and besieged, and thus could play no further significant role in the conflict. Stalin instead became convinced that Hitler was bluffing in the hopes of winning further economic and political concessions from the Russians and would not be convinced otherwise, even when plans for the invasion fell into Russian hands and multiple Russian agents in Berlin and elsewhere reported that the German military and politicians were openly discussing the coming invasion.

As such, on the evening of 21 June 1941, the Red Army was unprepared for combat. Its divisions and formations along the frontier with Germany were under-strength and in some cases under-equipped. They were not in a line of battle, and some divisions were scattered over dozens of miles. They'd even been warned that Germans might stage 'provocations' for political purposes and they were not to fire back if fired upon by the German forces.

At Nuremberg, various Nazi officials and generals suggested that they knew the attack on the USSR was foolhardy and that they tried to argue Hitler out of it. For the most part, this was untrue. The German military had a very poor opinion of the Red Army following Stalin's purges, which had left most of the officers dead and the new officers untrained and untried. The Red Army's showing against Finland in the Winter War had been shambolic at best, the Russian victory only coming about due to overwhelming superiority of numbers. Russian equipment also appeared to be inferior to the Germans, most notably with regard to aircraft. This opinion was shared elsewhere: analysts in Washington and London both believed that the Russian state was so rotten it would collapse if a German invasion was successful and not quickly repelled. On the eve of the war, the Germans had near-total expectations of a swift and stunning victory.

German forces invading Kharkov.

Barbarossa
At approximately 2am on 22 June 1941, the German military launched an assault on the Soviet Union that was unprecedented in scale and scope. Over 3.3 million men crossed the frontier, backed by thousands of aircraft and tanks. The Luftwaffe launched huge air raids on Sevastopol and other Russian cities in the south of the country, whilst the German navy had mined the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland, throwing Russian shipping into chaos. The generals and political leaders in Moscow flatly refused to believe an invasion was happening, and it was some hours before the reality sank in. At this point Stalin, apparently so shocked by the invasion that he'd been rendered near-insensible, went to ground for several days, leaving the Soviet leadership unsure about what action to take.

The Germans invaded in three formations. Army Group North, under General von Leeb, advanced northwards through the Baltic States towards Leningrad. With the Baltic States recently conquered by the Russians, the natives welcomed the Germans and assisted them in identifying collaborators and providing intelligence on the Red Army's positions. Army Group Centre under Field Marshal von Bock invaded on a north-easterly axis towards Minsk, whilst Army Group South under Field Marshal von Runstedt advanced to the south-east towards the southern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula.

Virtually the entire Russian air force was obliterated in the opening salvos of the attack: five thousand planes were destroyed in the first week, most of them on the ground. This allowed the Luftwaffe to concentrate on attacking Red Army formations on the ground, pounding them almost unimpeded. This was blitzkrieg in its purest form, across a territory so huge that the Germans could employ it to staggering levels. The aircraft would hit the enemy formations first, sometimes devastating them with few to no losses taken, before German Panzers and ground troops went in in waves, encircling and surrounding thousands of Russian troops at a time and forcing them to surrender. This process was repeated again and again, quickly and efficiently.

German progress was impressive: nine days into the attack, the ancient Latvian capital of Riga fell. Less than a week later Minsk fell, with 290,000 Russian prisoners taken. On 10 July the Finns, backed up by German reinforcements, crossed the frontier and retook the Karelian isthmus, cutting off Leningrad from the north. The German forces at Minsk then moved out and took a relieving Soviet army by surprise, encircling it and capturing an additional 394,000 soldiers. By 5 August, Smolensk to the north-east, halfway between the frontier and Moscow, had fallen. In mid-August Stalin vowed to Churchill that the Soviet Union would never surrender Kiev and would defend the ancient Ukrainian capital to the last drop of its blood. Instead, it had fallen by 19 August, with more than 650,000 Red Army soldiers taken prisoner. Sevastopol was under siege soon afterwards. On 27 August Army Group North reached the outskirts of Leningrad and began establishing siege lines around the southern side of the city, whilst the Finns cut off the city from the north.

Eight weeks into the invasion, the Germans had inflicted incredible losses on the Russians: millions of Russian troops had been killed, wounded or captured and millions more civilians had been killed, wounded, captured, put under occupation or forced to flee. The Russians had lost thousands of tanks and aircraft. Riga, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Leningrad and Sevastopol, some of the greatest cities in the Soviet Union, were in enemy hands or under siege.

The Russian T-34 tank, their most formidable weapon against the Nazi invasion.

The Germans were pleased by their successes, but now started noted what these victories had cost them. German losses were higher than anticipated, due to the fanatical zeal of the Russians in fighting to the last man (as the Russian commissars had made it clear that any soldier who surrendered was a traitor and any who retreated would be shot), meaning that sometimes each enemy force had to be exterminated in its entirety, rather than simply convinced into surrendering once it was surrounded, as had happened in France and elsewhere. The Germans were also concerned that they had badly underestimated the strength of the Red Army: they had expected to face 200 enemy divisions but had counted well past 360. Finally, the Germans' much-vaunted technical superiority had been matched by the Russian deployment of rocket artillery batteries, the katyushas, which were easily mobile and extremely deadly. Even more of a shock was the Russian deployment of the KV-1 and T-34 tanks, which completely outstripped anything in the German arsenal. Stories of it taking several Panzer IVs to stop a single T-34 abounded, and only the extremely piecemeal nature in which the new Soviet tanks were deployed stopped them from becoming a bigger problem.

In addition, the swiftness of the German advance had left tens of thousands of Russian partisans behind the German lines, and these partisans now proved to be a huge nuisance, disrupting supply convoys, waylaying reinforcements and destroying infrastructure that the Germans urgently needed to keep the front line moving. Essentially, by the late summer of 1941 the Germans had expended their initial momentum and inertia and were becoming bogged down, especially at Leningrad and Sevastopol.

The Advance on Moscow
The German generals now urged Hitler to move decisively on Moscow with Army Group Centre and take the city. Originally, Moscow had been labelled as a secondary target at best, its capture or destruction desirable for political and propaganda purposes, but militarily valueless. This was a questionable decision by Hitler, since Stalin (now back in the saddle following his initial breakdown) was directing the entire war effort from Moscow. Capturing or killing him, or forcing him to flee the city, would effectively decapitate the Red Army and be of military value. However, Hitler was somewhat obsessed with the story of Napoleon (he had visited Napoleon's tomb in Paris after the French surrender and had said it was the finest moment of his life) and in particular with his war with Russia, when Napoleon had taken half a million troops to capture Moscow, succeeded, but then forced to retreat by a bitter winter which killed most of his men before they saw home. Hitler, rather uncharacteristically at this stage of the war, dithered, and lost valuable days and weeks before he finally ordered the assault on Moscow.

The time lost proved critical. It wasn't until 2 October, with the temperature already starting to fall, that Army Group Centre began its advance. Initially it was business as usual, with the Germans taking another 650,000 prisoners at Vyazma and Bryansk. Soviet resistance stiffened, and the pace of the German advance slowed. In mid-October huge rainfalls turned the area the Germans were crossing into a miasma of mud and rain. By mid-November the mud had frozen, which allowed better progress, but it also brought new problems. The Germans lacked proper winter clothing, and the fuel in their trucks was freezing solid overnight, meaning they could only be started by soldiers lighting fires underneath their vehicles to thaw them out.

Fighting outside of Moscow.

Nevertheless, the army approached the outskirts of Moscow. The plan was to entrap the city in a classic pincer movement, with Guderian advancing southwards to Tula and Reinhardt north to the Moskva River. The two armies would then turn and meet beyond Moscow. Unfortunately, the weather made the plan unworkable. Temperatures hit -20 C at the end of November. By 5 December, Guderian was reporting -30 and Reinhardt -38. The German forces were essentially frozen solid and could not advance. Hitler, fuming, was forced to call a temporary halt whilst the generals debated whether to try to press on, stay where they were, or try to withdraw to a safer line.

These discussions were quickly rendered moot. On 6 December the Red Army launched a major counter-offensive. The Germans were completely taken by surprise, convinced they had driven back all of the Red Army units in the area. They were not aware that Stalin had received intelligence from his top agent in Tokyo that the Japanese were about to launch a huge offensive against Britain and America in South-East Asia and the Pacific, leaving them no forces to menace the eastern Soviet frontier. Taking an uncharacteristic gamble, Stalin withdrew tens of thousands of fresh troops from the Soviet Far East and shuttled them to Moscow. Under the command of the formidable General Zhukov, these forces reformed into two wings and launched their counter-thrusts, their soldiers equipped with winter clothing (and, where necessary, skis) and their already-superior tanks operating with fuel that didn't freeze.

The Germans suffered their first major reversal on the eastern front, but not easily. The Germans fought hard, giving ground only when absolutely necessary. On 15 January 1942 Hitler authorised a withdrawal to a stable line 90 miles from Moscow and repulsed Russian attempts to breach it. Never again would an attack on Moscow be attempted, for the next year's campaign Hitler's attention turned to the southern front...and a city on the distant Volga called Stalingrad.

Aftermath
Operation Barbarossa was over. The Germans had killed over four million Red Army soldiers, but lost more than a million men themselves in the process. They had taken millions of Red Army troops prisoner, killed millions more Russian civilians and expended vast amounts of resources, only to find the Russians still capable of raising fresh armies and still capable of mounting huge counter-offensives. Hitler's hopes for victory diminished even further when, twenty-four hours after the Russian counter-offensive began, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, drawing the United States into the war. In possibly his most demented decision of the entire war (but it has tough competition), Hitler chose to declare war on the United States four days later, sealing his own doom by pitting Germany simultaneously against the two greatest economic powers in the world.

Seventy years on, Operation Barbarossa remains one of the largest military operations in history (strong arguments suggest it is still the biggest single military incursion of its kind) and the turning point of the Second World War. Without it, and if the Germans had never attacked the Soviet Union, the shape of history would have been very different indeed. The fact that it remains obscure amongst the general population of the UK and USA remains stunning.

The Russian Dunkirk

I am currently on a brief break from SFF to reread Harrison E. Salisbury's classic book about the Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), The Nine Hundred Days. Whilst a full review will follow (eventually; this book is 600 pages of tiny type) one episode mentioned in the book is almost completely unknown in the West and seemed worthy of its own article: the so-called 'Russian Dunkirk'. This event took place in August 1941, but the seeds of it were sown the previous year.

The cruiser Kirov, commanding the Tallinn evacuation.

The USSR, flush from its (costly) victory over Finland in the Winter War, occupied the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in June 1940. Combined with the pushing back of the Finnish borders from the Karelian isthmus in the north, this gave Leningrad a protective 'shield' which would safeguard it from immediate attack should war break out. Formerly the city had only been 20 miles from the borders of nations sympathetic to Nazi Germany (and any resident of Seoul will tell you that living 20 miles from a hostile nation can be somewhat worrying).

The problem was that the 'shield' was never fortified properly. The Soviet Baltic Fleet established new bases in Tallinn and Riga (the capitals of Estonia and Lativa respectively), but the building of fortifications and defences at the ports and on their landward sides proceeded at a slow pace, due to Stalin's fear that Hitler would seize on any military build-up in the area as a provocation. When the Germans invaded on 22 June 1941, both the Soviet armies and the fortifications in the area were totally unprepared to face them. Field Marshal Von Leeb's Army Group Nord pushed aside the Soviet defences with near-contemptuous ease and advanced into the Baltic States. Simultaneously, Finnish and German naval forces succeeded in laying hundreds of thousands of mines along the coast of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, threatening to cut off the Baltic Fleet's forward elements in Riga.

The Baltic Fleet gave up Riga as being indefensible (the city fell nine days into the invasion) and pulled back to Tallinn. The natives of the Baltic States saw the Germans as liberators (they changed their minds when Hitler refused to allow the Baltic States to reconstitute themselves as independent states, even as ones allied to Germany) and many refused to support efforts by the Soviets to hold the territory or throw up defensive lines. As a result, it fell to the Fleet's own military police, sailors and marines, aided by the shattered remnants of Red Army groups in the area, to defend Tallinn. They managed to fortify Tallinn just enough to make it difficult for the Germans to take without a major offensive.

This act, combined with the stalwart defence of the River Luga to the south-west of Leningrad, probably saved Leningrad from being quickly overrun. Von Leeb had to split off significant forces to take Tallinn (otherwise he'd have been in danger of attack from 80,000 armed Soviets on his left flank; a proposal to do exactly this was rejected by the Soviet command) which made turning the Luga line even tougher. It took a month to dislodge the defenders from that line and to start penetrating Tallinn's suburbs in earnest.

Having held Tallinn against siege for three weeks, the Baltic Fleet pulled out on the night of 27-28 August. The Fleet had to navigate 200 miles and several large minefields, all within range of Finnish coastal batteries and Luftwaffe airbases, with both German U-boats and Finnish torpedo boats in the area. The Fleet not only had to evacuate its own personnel and Red Army troops (many of whom stayed behind to buy the Fleet more time, or were simply pinned down and unable to get to the ships) but also thousands of Soviet civilians, including journalists covering the conflict. All-told, 30,000 personnel escaped on 190 transport ships, protected only by a single Soviet cruiser of note, the Kirov, and a few smaller naval vessels.

The journey can only be described as nightmarish. The Kirov and several other naval ships acted as minesweepers and drew enemy fire (a German U-boat almost sank the Kirov, but an escort spotted the torpedo in the water and took the hit instead), but there were too many ships to protect, spread out over a huge area. The Luftwaffe had a field day, and between them and their naval and Finnish counterparts they sank over sixty of the transports and several of the naval warships. Of the 30,000 who embarked in Tallinn, only 18,000 made it off at Kronstadt (Leningrad's colossal naval bastion, located in the Gulf of Finland near the city) and Leningrad itself the following day.

It wasn't a totally unmitigated disaster - the Kirov's survival was an important bonus as the ship later took up station within Leningrad's river network as a mobile artillery platform and performed sterling work in the city's defence - but it was still a severe fiasco. The captain of at least one of the ships involved was shot for abandoning his post (in reality he'd been blasted into the sea by a shell that had destroyed the bridge and had to be picked up by another ship), whilst it was later revealed that the minefields had been concentrated along the coast; if the fleet had swung out wide into the deeper water, it wouldn't have suffered anywhere near as many casualties, though obviously this was not known at the time.

The near-total-ignorance in the West of not just this event but most of the Soviet-German conflict remains startling as the 70th anniversary of WWII continues to roll on. As we get to the 70th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa later this year, hopefully the sheer scale and significance of the Eastern Front will become better known and appreciated here. After all, if Hitler hadn't decided to abandon the offensive against Britain in favour of Barbarossa, Britain would have been (eventually) invaded and defeated quite easily.

And now for something different: Battle of Britain Day

Today is the official Battle of Britain Day in the UK. Most years it passes without much fanfare, but as this year is the 70th anniversary of the campaign there has been a much greater focus on it through television programming, newspaper and online coverage.


The Battle of Britain was fought in the summer of 1940 and, at the time and still in the British popular imagination, marked the defeat of the most serious threat to the continued existence of the UK in nine centuries. Seven decades of historical research and access to the German archives have shown that the danger was considerably less than imagined at the time. The ability of the Germans to mount an invasion of Britain in the summer or autumn of 1940 can best be described as 'risible', something that Hitler was well aware of, and the preparations for invasion were effectively a smoke-and-mirrors campaign designed to shock the British into coming to terms before the Germans turned their attention eastwards. The German navy had been mauled in the Norway campaign and it had absolutely no landing craft to speak of, certainly nothing to compare to the array of specialised, multi-purpose machines fielded by the British and American forces on D-Day. The prospect of the Wehrmacht storming ashore at Eastbourne from pleasure yachts and canal barges (basically an offensive version of the retreat from Dunkirk), with little to no support from Panzers or mobile artillery, seems rather farcical, a notion shared by Hitler and most of his commanders.

Of course, Hermann Goering, in typically understated style, declared that the Luftwaffe could do the job of artillery, tanks and ships all one go, knocking out the RAF, sinking the Royal Navy and providing effective air cover for the invasion force (despite the slight problem that the Luftwaffe's best fighters only had enough fuel to stay over south-eastern Britain for 15 minutes at a time, and couldn't reach the north of the country at all). The RAF disabused him of this notion over the course of three months of fierce combat, during which time the Luftwaffe lost a startling five times as many pilots and aircrew as the British and their allies (French, Czech and Polish pilots also played major roles in the battle, as did many from the Commonwealth countries and a single squadron of Americans, notably not including Ben Affleck).

Eventually, admitting that the Luftwaffe could not do this job (causing a loss of face for Goering that he never entirely recovered from), Hitler ordered his air forces to switch their focus to bombing London and other cities in a terror-bombing campaign, which was not particularly successful either. Even this campaign was drastically reduced the following year when the frustrated Germans launched their invasion of the Soviet Union instead, beginning the two-front war Hitler had once vowed never to launch and which led to his eventual demise.

Whilst the UK was not in as great a danger of invasion as envisaged at the time, the Battle of Britain was still strategically important. It demonstrated to the rest of the world that Britain was still in the fight, and the defeat of the perceived serious threat of invasion was regarded as Hitler's first major military upset during the Second World War, denting his aura of invulnerability (in fact, it was arguably the first time Hitler had not taken a gamble and won since the Munich Putsch of 1923). American popular and political support, which was somewhat lukewarm whilst it appeared that Britain's defeat was imminent, was rallied and helped convince the American government to increase its material support of Britain over the following year. In addition, the demonstration of the effectiveness of British airpower led to aerial offensives against military and industrial targets in Germany and occupied France continuing with cessation until the end of the war, hampering German military adventures elsewhere. British technology, particularly in the fields of radar and aircraft design, was also improved immensely by experiences during the battle (the Spitfire, whose contribution to the battle is sometimes overstated to the detriment of its cousin the Hurricane, went on to become a very fine aircraft in later stages of the war). Finally, the simple fact that Britain was still in the fight tied down roughly a million German troops in France and Norway that were not available to reinforce the Eastern Front, troops whose absence the Germans would come to rue in December 1941 outside the suburbs of Moscow.

The battle also impacted on my family. One of grandfathers was an ARP warden working in London during the battle and the Blitz that followed, whilst the other worked as RAF ground-crew on several airfields in the south-east. My home town of Colchester was not directly attacked, but dozens of airfields were located all around it which took part in the battle, whilst my older aunts and uncles watched the battle as children from their back gardens. I grew up with stories of this time, which informed my later interest in this period.

One thing that cannot be disputed is that thousands of pilots and aircrew (many still in their teens), and thousands more civilians, were killed during this period. The heroism and sacrifice of these people should not be forgotten.

British government issues apology to Alan Turing

The British government has issued a posthumous apology to Alan Turing, the WWII cryptanalyst who broke the German Enigma codes. The machines he used to do so are generally regarded as the earliest direct predecessors to modern computing. He also developed the 'Turing tests' which are still the basis for determining how well a computer can emulate human thought (and SF novels frequently use the term 'Turing scale' to determine if an AI has become sentient or self-aware).


Despite his absolutely vital work, which led to massive boosts in gaining intelligence for the Allies, Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency in 1952 after admitting to being in a homosexual relationship (the same charges which had been brought against Oscar Wilde). He was given a hormonal drug, a so-called 'chemical castration', which resulted in him, among other things, developing breasts, something which deeply humiliated him. His security clearance was revoked and he was unable to continue his studies into computing. He committed suicide two years later.

Gordon Brown issued the apology today, acknowledging that the British government let down a man they owed a tremendous debt to.

It could have come sooner, a lot sooner, but with the 70th anniversary of WWII now underway, I suppose it's a good time to issue this apology and draw more attention to one of our more under-sung heroes of the Second World War.

In a more direct SF&F-related role, he also has a cameo appearance in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

Wertzone Classics: Band of Brothers

Filmed in 2000 and transmitted in 2001, Band of Brothers is a 10-part mini-series which remains the most expensive TV series ever made (at least until the budget for its new companion series, The Pacific, is revealed). The series was developed by Steven Spielberg as a continuation of the themes and ideas he explored in his hit 1998 movie, Saving Private Ryan. Whilst the film's running time meant that only a small portion of the Second World War could be depicted, the greater scope and length afforded to a series meant that more of the conflict could be shown and the characters' story arcs would be more satisfying. Also, it was decided that, unlike the purely fictitious Saving Private Ryan, the TV companion piece would be based on true events and real soldiers. The rights to the book Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose were purchased and Ambrose and the surviving soldiers portrayed in the book were brought in to consult on the project.


Band of Brothers opens in 1942, shortly after the formation of the 101st Airborne Division by the US Army. The first episode follows the training of Easy Company at Toccoa, Georgia, over the course of a year. They are placed in the care of Captain Herbert Sobel (Friends' David Schwimmer) who trains them far harder than the other men of the 101st, with the result that soon the company has a reputation as the best company in the division. However, Sobel's methods make him highly unpopular with the men, especially when it is revealed that his nerves fail him in field exercises. The unit is shipped to England to train and prepare for D-Day, but Sobel's limitations are eventually recognised and he is relieved of command. The second episode has the 101st parachute into Normandy just ahead of the beach landings. When Easy Company's commanding officer is killed during the drop, it falls to Lt. Richard Winters (Damien Lewis) to assume command and lead a daring attack on a German artillery position targeting the beaches. Winters becomes the closest thing to a central character and is one of only a few characters to appear in every episode.

What initially impresses about Band of Brothers is its authenticity. Its production values would be impressive for a movie, but for a TV series they are stunning. But where the series really works is its focus on the characters. Whilst some events are dramatised or compressed for timing reasons, pretty much everything that happens in the series is based on a true event and every one of the main characters is based on a real person. This makes the series unpredictable and strongly emotionally resonant: if a character is wounded or killed without warning, it is because his real-life counterpart was wounded or killed at that point of the war. This is also why every single actor brings his A-game to his role: when the person you are playing is actually going to be watching your performance, or if he has passed away and his friends are, then you definitely need to be on top form.

The producers seemed to realise early on that simply having ten episodes of non-stop carnage would get boring pretty quickly, so each episode is built around different characters and premises, and the individual episode directors are allowed to indulge their own artistic styles somewhat more than is normal on a television drama. A particular stand-out is the sixth episode, which focuses on Easy Company's medic during the Battle of the Bulge and follows him from unit to unit, seeing his friends get wounded and having to patch them up, or having to watch them die. It is an incredible piece of television drama. As is traditional with HBO, they don't make things too easy for the viewer. Easy Company is made up of several platoons, with some episodes focusing entirely on one group and others on all of them, meaning that characters appear, disappear and reappear from episode to episode. Characters are also promoted, demoted, wounded or killed off and the viewer is expected to work out who is who and what they are doing sometimes very quickly. This lack of spoon-feeding is as refreshing here as it is on other HBO productions such as The Wire, but casual viewers may find themselves swamped on first viewing.

The series employs an interestingly desaturised colour tone, which puts its feel somewhere between full colour and black and white. Whilst this adds immensely to atmosphere, it does make telling some of the characters apart difficult, again on first viewing, especially as most of the time they are wearing full combat gear and helmets. For these reasons the series rewards careful re-watching and is also better suited to the DVD format, with the viewer able to watch several episodes in a row and work out who is who and what their roles within the company are.

The series' action sequences rival some of the strongest war movies in their intensity and vividness, but it's in the quiet moments that it excels. The banter between the men is authentic and the importance of the bonds that form between soldiers in combat with regards to keeping them sane is strongly emphasised (more cliched, "I love you, Sarge!" moments are firmly absent, thankfully). In fact, one of the strongest moments in the series comes when one of the company's toughest, most effective lieutenants suddenly breaks down after seeing two of his men get their legs blown off in front of him. The mental pressures of the war are portrayed as being as dangerous and difficult to deal with as enemy action. Questions of morality in warfare are also intelligently raised: one soldier is rumoured as having brutally gunned down more than a dozen unarmed German PoWs on D-Day but later proves himself to be the bravest and most efficient officer in the unit whose actions repeatedly save the lives of his men.

Band of Brothers (*****) is a staggeringly impressive piece of work, not just for its incredible budget and impressive special effects, but for its intelligent and often powerful writing, phenomenal acting and the resonance provided by knowing that pretty much everything that happened in the series is based on a real event. It is available on DVD in the UK and USA, and also now on Blu-Ray in the UK and USA.

Designated Targets by John Birmingham

This is the second novel in the Axis of Time trilogy. I reviewed the first book, World War 2.1: Weapons of Choice over a year ago and enjoyed it, although it did fall a little towards being a stock military thriller, despite the excellent premise. The sequel represents a significant improvement in quality.


World War 2.2: Designated Targets picks up the story a couple of months later. Thanks to a wormhole experiment gone badly wrong, a UN multinational taskforce en route to relieve Jakarta from a terrorist incursion in 2021 has been transported back to 1942. Its arrival destroys the American Pacific Fleet just before it defeats the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. Despite this, the arrival of the UN taskforce and its pledge of allegiance to the Allied cause initially looked set to swing the war decisively in the Allies' favour, hopefully ending it months or years earlier than it would have done otherwise. Unfortunately, this proves not to be the case. The Russians, Japanese and the Germans all capture ships from the taskforce which ended up being transported further away and their foreknowledge of the future has enabled them to make drastic changes to their war plans far more quickly than the Allies can adapt.

The Germans and Russians have negotiated a ceasefire and now the Germans are concentrating their forces in Normandy and Calais, aware that capturing Britain before the US begins building up its invasion force there in strength is critical. The Japanese have withdrawn significant troops from China in order to launch a full-scale invasion of northern Australia, forcing MacArthur to divert resources to the building of immense fortified lines around Brisbane. The UN taskforce's precious stocks of missiles and advanced ammunition, which cannot be replaced, are running low. However, the US industrial machine is already rapidly adjusting to the information the taskforce has brought with it, with more advanced tanks (to replace the deathtrap Sherman M4s), aircraft and weapons from later in the war being rushed into production early.

The book's storyline follows several military campaigns, notably the invasion of Australia and the German preparations to assault southern Britain, but at the same time also concentrates on the sociological impact of the arrival of the fleet from the future. J. Edgar Hoover's authority has been eroded with the revelation of his personal habits, resulting in him using the FBI's resources to try and destroy the UN taskforce commander's credibility, making great comment of his force's use of women, coloured and (ironically) homosexual troops, not to mention the fact that the taskforce includes German, Russian and Japanese contingents. Meanwhile, the Russian and German high commands are undergoing pre-emptive purges in light of the revelation of the 20th July plot against Hitler and those Soviet leaders who later usurped Stalin's chosen succession after his death (Beria gains some revenge on Khruschev in a rather unpleasant scene). There's also some nice gallows humour here, as Hitler's initial rage at discovering the 'treachery' of several prominent Nazi leaders (notably Goering) late in the war is muted by his tearful appreciation of them going to their graves defending Nazism at Nuremberg.

Birmingham uses the situation for humour to good effect on several occasions, such as Himmler using grandiose musical accompaniment to his PowerPoint presentations (using a captured laptop) and later berating Microsoft for its badly-programmed products. Meanwhile, an American entrepreneur snaps up the rights to represent the 7-year-old Elvis and 16-year-old Marilyn Monroe long before they became famous in the 'other' timeline. As Britain faces the prospect of invasion, the BBC telecopies prints of later WW2 movies and Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V to bolster morale, whilst wiseguys in New York City become overnight fans of The Godfather and The Sopranos. However, the Allies decide to hold back on showing Schindler's List until they really need to fire up the populace against the Nazis.

Birmingham also holds fire on some of the elements he went overboard on in the first book. The poor prospects for black people, women and homosexuals in the WW2 era was rammed home a bit too often to the point where it slowed the progression of the story. In this sequel these elements continue to be pursued, but more subtly through the narrative rather than being info-dumped every few chapters.

There are some weaknesses, most notably the idea that Stalin would agree to a peace deal with Germany when he is told that Russia will win the war in Europe anyway seems massively out-of-character and extremely unlikely. Birmingham suggests that Stalin agrees to this to make preparations for the Cold War against the USA, but this isn't very convincing. Mostly, however, Desginated Targets (****) is a more thoughtful and interesting exploration of the issues raised by its impressive premise, whilst still featuring a lot of action.

The novel is published by Penguin in the UK and Del Rey in the USA. The final novel in the trilogy, Final Impact, is also available now and I hope to get to it shortly.

Wertzone Classics: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Sometimes a book comes along that leaves the reader dazed with the author's vision, scope and ambition. Neal Stephenson has done this a few times with his work, but arguably never better than in Cryptonomicon.

The novel follows two stories in parallel. In WWII, a group of cryptologists based at Bletchley Park are struggling to crack the German codes so the British and Americans can more effectively combat the German U-boat threat. In the present, a group of businessmen are attempting to build a data haven in the (fictious) Pacific state of Kinakuta. Both plotlines draw on codes, cryptology, cryptoanalysis and the blurring of the genres of science fiction and historical fiction (a line which is even further muddied by the subsequent Baroque Cycle, which serves as a quasi-prequel series to this novel).

It is difficult to describe the book. It's scope is huge, sprawling across Europe, America, the Phillippines and other parts of the world in two different time periods, incorporating dozens of major characters of note and very effectively educating the reader about the science of codes and puzzles (far more effectively than the amateurish Da Vinci Code) before the two storylines very effectively come together at the end of the book. Stephenson's style is very readable, occasionally dense, but often very funny. There are longeurs and apparently unrelated episodes in the book which are masterfully re-incorporated into the greater narrative to form a cohesive whole. It's a book about secrets, what it costs to hold those secrets, and the consequences when those secrets are revealed. It's a war story and a techno-thriller at the same time. It's an adventure story about the hunt for lost treasure and also a book about the value of information. It is a unique work.

Cryptonomicon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2000 and unquestionably deserved it. If The Separation was the first truly great SF novel of the 21st Century, than Cryptonomicon is almost certainly the last great SF novel of the 20th, and one of the few works that I would apply the label 'genius' to.

Cryptonomicon (*****) is available from Arrow Books in the UK (with a gorgeous cover painting) and from Avon in the USA.

Wertzone Classics: The Separation by Christopher Priest

The Separation is the eleventh and most recent novel by British SF author Christopher Priest, published in 2002 when it promptly won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the BSFA Best Novel Award and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. For reasons that remain unknown, the British publishers tried to kill the book at birth, releasing it with a minimum of fanfare and remaindering it as soon as humanly possible. Luckily, Gollancz saved the book and released it in a handsome paperback edition in 2004, where as part of their Priest reprint range it has remained in-print and with increasing critical acclaim ever since.

The Prestige is regarded as Priest's best and most well-known book. The Separation is a book that at one moment is similar (another novel about duality and identity) and at once utterly different. It very nearly defies a plot summary, since any attempt to convey the storyline would be in itself verging on a spoiler. But I will do my best.

A historian working in 1999 becomes intrigued by a minor historical figure, a pacifist in Second World War Britain briefly mentioned by Churchill in his war memoirs. This man, JL Sawyer, is soon revealed to be one of a pair of identical twins. In 1936 Jack and Joe Sawyer take part in the Olympic Games in Berlin as coxless rowers, winning a bronze medal, but soon the outbreak of war separates them: Jack becomes a bomber pilot, tormented by the destruction he wreaks each night on German cities. Joe, the pacifist, becomes a Red Cross ambulance driver helping find survivors of the nightly Blitz on cities such as Manchester and London. Their stories are related as a series of diaries and memoirs written by both and also in (mostly fictional) historical documents relating to the period, some by such personages as Churchill, Goebbels and Rudolph Hess. Other devices come into play, particularly towards the ending of the book.

Priest is well-known for his slippery plots, pulling off narrative sleights-of-hand and 'twist' moments that make M. Night Shymalan's films look like the work of an amateur hack. Here he seems to reveal the twist very early, within a few pages (and silencing the critics who claim his books are rarely 'overt' SF). However, he rapidly pulls the rug out from the reader's feet again, and then again. Amidst the confusion generated by the shifting narrative, however, a pattern slowly emerges which seems confirmed in the extremely haunting conclusion. Some may deem the ending to be a 'cop-out' but nothing it as it seems, for the revelation apparently inherent in the book's finale does not explain events earlier in the book, leading to much greater thought being demanded from the reader to examine the truth of the story.

The Seperation, like most Priest books, hides an incredible amount of depth behind its deceptively simple, almost sparse prose. Characters are built up and deconstructed with nearly contemptuous ease in front of us. Priest captures the atmosphere of WWII Britain and the moral confusion of the reality of war with vivid storytelling techniques and the use of statistics and historical texts (real and feigned). Priest even educates the reader in areas about the war that have not been very well explored (the state of conscientious objectors in WWII Britain is not something I had previously considered).

The Separation is an extraordinary book, even moreso than The Prestige. The lack of an 'absolute' conclusion or explanation for what has happened in the book may irritate some readers, but I found it extremely refreshing to read a book that demands that the reader actually think, rather than being spoon-fed the answers on a plate. It is in places beautifully written: Priest's take on Churchill is so good I was startled to find several impressive and very 'Churchillian' pieces of dialogue were Priest's own invention and not taken from any kind of historical record. In other places the theme of the book is so vast that sometimes it threatens to overwhelm the more human moments of the story (the reader is perhaps invited to furiously think "What the hell is going on?" rather than simply sit back and have the tale unfold). However, this is more likely to have just been my reaction to the story rather than an inherent problem. I would say that I found myself preferring The Prestige to The Seperation by a hair's breadth, but this may just have been brain hoisting the surrender flag. After greater reflection, I suspect I will find myself approving it the more of the two books.

The Separation is an excellent, headily atmospheric novel that forces the reader to think about what they are reading carefully. I recommend it without hesitation. This book was nearly stillborn due to the stupidity of the original publishers and the literary world would be a much poorer place without it.

The Separation (*****) is available from Gollancz in the UK in two editions: as part of their Christopher Priest range and as part of their Future Classics range. The book is also available in the USA from Old Earth Books.