So he's the commander in chief but not the
commander in chief? But he has to report to someone? Who's also not the commander in chief? This is getting confusing. Okay. Yeah, talk to you later. Okay, bye! March 27, 1942 We've seen that Malta is a key, if not the
key, to either side holding North Africa, but the British- who hold Malta- have been
less and less able to supply it, and how can it stay in their hands without supply? What do they do? Well, they just keep trying and trying. I'm Indy Neidell; this is World War Two. Last week the British began their program
of sending hydrogen balloons into Germany carrying trailing wires or explosives, intending
for them to sabotage electrical grids and start forest fires. American Commander Douglas MacArthur arrived
in Australia, British Commander William Slim arrived in Burma, and Chinese Nationalist
commander Chiang Kai-shek worried about the dedication and skills of his allies. There was also action, as there is every week,
in the field in the Soviet Union. There is fighting there, down at the Kerch
Peninsula, this week. As last week ended, a German counterattack
began, but though it did disrupt the Soviet preparations for their own offensive, it was
called off after just a few hours with the 22nd Panzer Division- a fresh division- losing
nearly a quarter of its 142 tanks. The 3rd Soviet offensive of the campaign begins
now on the 26th, but it suffers huge losses and is called off after less than a day. Here's a general summary of the situation
on the entire Eastern Front in late March 1942, courtesy of John Erickson, "…the multiple
Soviet penetrations were deep enough and dangerous enough to trouble most of the German command. On the Volkhov, Vlasov and Meretskov had managed
to unlock the 2nd Shock Army, which stood as yet undefeated amidst the frozen bog and
marsh near Lyuban, at Demyansk, the German 2nd Corps was undefeated but encircled, like
the German forces at Kholm. East of Smolensk and west of Vyazema, Belov's
first cavalry, Yefremov's 33rd, 4th parachute corps and strong Soviet partisan brigades
were cutting and hacking at the German lines, while to the north 11th cavalry and 39th army
occupied the long and dangerous prominence west of Sychovka. Purkayev's 3rd shock army lunged out towards
Velikie Luki, Yeremenko's 4th hung down over Vitebsk, pincers stopped in mid-air but not
without their sharpness. At Kharkov, Timoshenko kept up an immense
pressure, while in his great bulge over the Donets the Soviet bridgehead was now 60 miles
deep- and if Balakleya and Slavyansk caved in, the Soviet divisions of two fronts would
spill out from the massive Izyum bulge. Further to the south, Manstein stood outside
the gates of Sevastopol, and though he had checked a Soviet eruption into the Crimea
from Kerch, he still had two soviet armies pointed at his back." That is the situation that faces the German
Army as it makes plans for its spring offensives, which you will hear about sometime soon. The winter action in the field is grinding
to a halt for the moment, as the temperatures rise. "It is a paradox of campaigning in Russia
that, though winter destroyed armies, it is the coming of spring that halts operations. The thaw, saturating the suddenly unfrozen
topsoil with 30 inches of snow melt, turns the dirt roads liquid and the surface of the
steppe to swamp, the rasputitsa, 'internal seas' of mud which clog all movement. Motorized transport buries itself above the
axles in bog, even the hardy local ponies and the light panje wagons they draw flounder
in the bottomless mire." Stavka figures there are 16 million men of
military age in the nation and that the Red Army can be beefed up to 9 million men over
the remainder of 1942. That would be enough men to fill 400 divisions
and replace the 3 million lost as prisoners and the 1 million more killed so far. Over the winter, factories in the Urals produced
4,500 tanks, 3,000 planes, 14,000 big guns, and 50,000 mortars. The Germans are also expanding their forces. So far this year the Replacement Army- Ersatzheer-
has created 22 divisions. Women have begun to work as clerks and drivers
so the men employed in those jobs can join the infantry, and volunteers have been found
among the Russian prisoners to change sides and fight with the Germans rather than starve. So of the 1.5 million men German Army CoS
Franz Halder estimated 4 weeks ago they'd lost in the USSR, 900,000 of them are made
up. However, the deficiencies in armor and transport
are not. By now, they lack 1,600 Mark III and Mark
IV tanks, and half of the over 500,000 horses they began the campaign with last June are
by now dead. But that doesn't stop them making plans. Back on the 7th, British PM Winston Churchill
wired the US War Department, "Everything portends an immense renewal of the German invasion
of Russia in the spring and there is very little we can do to help the only country
that is heavily engaged with the German armies." This sort of throws America's general war
plans up in the air, which one day earlier were summed up by Admiral Ernest King as "Hold
Hawaii, support Australia, drive north from the New Hebrides." He is very much a Pacific First kind of guy. American President Franklin Roosevelt and
Churchill, though, are both worried that Soviet leader Josef Stalin might sign a separate
peace with Adolf Hitler if they can't somehow relieve the pressure on him, and this allows
American Army CoS George Marshall to again try to have the war in Europe prioritized,
as it was a month or two ago. So last week on the 16th, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff sat down with FDR to go over their options, of which they figure they have three. King sticks to his guns, and wants a big offensive
to drive the Japanese out of Rabaul, which would end their immediate threat to Australia,
even if this means sending nothing to Europe. The Army Air Staff is for an all out attack
in Western Europe to defeat Hitler. This would involve sending no reinforcements
at all to the Pacific, even if it costs them Australia, because they think that if Germany
collapses then so will Japan. "Marshall put forward the compromise strategic
plan worked out by Eisenhower. This was essentially the Atlantic Strategy,
with the allocation of limited forces to the Pacific Theater sufficient only to secure
Australia and Hawaii." This plan wins. They will maintain current commitments in
the Pacific, and the generals even limit the number of bomber and fighter squadrons there
so that the Navy will not be able to attack outward from the New Hebrides. British CoS Alan Brooke thinks this a clever
move by Marshall to thwart King and contain American Commander Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur is in Melbourne, where he has evacuated
from the Philippines, holding press conferences and fuming that he doesn't have a new army
to command yet. And he is less than happy when it turns out
there's not going to be a Supreme Commander to run the whole Pacific, which he figured
would be him. Army-Navy rivalry has sort of precluded that. Instead, Admiral Chester Nimitz is to be Commander
in Chief Pacific Areas, which is west to 160 degrees and includes New Zealand, Fiji, and
Samoa. MacArthur is to be Supreme Allied Commander
Southwest Pacific Area to the west of that, Australia, new Guinea, etc. The British will continue to control the Indian
Ocean Theater. MacArthur is even more perturbed that the
Joint Chiefs will still have a lot of control. He has to report to Marshall; Nimitz to King,
and any issues they have the Joint Chiefs will resolve. I've said before that Churchill wants to win
in North Africa and then invade Europe from the south. But in order for that to ever be a possibility,
Malta must be held, and to be held it must be supplied. An important convoy is sent there the 20-23rd,
but because of shipping losses and ships that are needed in the far east, they just don't
have that big of an escort force- five light cruisers and 17 destroyers that potentially
have to face the entire Italian navy. On the 22nd, the battleship Littorio, two
heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and 10 destroyers attack the convoy in the afternoon,
but despite their very heavy advantage, they are driven off with smoke screens and torpedoes. Still, only 5,000 tons of the 26,000 tons
of fuel in the convoy makes it to land on Malta because of German and Italian air attacks. The British are also having problems with
supplies and aerial attacks in Burma. The Fall of Rangoon two weeks ago had serious
repercussions. It really did provide supplies for the whole
country. And of course the fall of the south of the
country meant the Japanese controlled the best airfields, and the Allies cannot now
get any new planes or crews through Rangoon. Their radar equipment and code breaking stuff
has all been taken to India, so Magwe base, which they've been using since has literally
no early warning system of incoming enemy. By now in Burma, the RAF and the American
Volunteer Group in the Chinese Army have 38 planes left. The Japanese have 271. On the 21st, 151 bombers hit Magwe, and destroy
15 planes for a cost of two. By the 23rd, the AVG is down to 4 planes and
evacuates to Loiwing, across the Chinese border, by the 27th, the RAF has evacuated Burma as
well. On theground this week, on the 24th, Toungoo
is attacked. The 200th division of the Chinese 5th army
are the best troops the Chinese have in Burma. They are 8,500 men strong and mechanized,
though their tankettes and light armored vehicles are no match for Japanese light and medium
tanks. Their General, An-Lan Tai, sets up a perimeter
around Toungoo, but the Japanese 55th division pounds away at his positions on the west bank
of the Sittang River with artillery. The Japanese 56th reaches the area, parks
its motors, and crosses the river, closing in on the bridge across the river and threatening
to surround the Chinese 200th. The fighting is brutal for the remainder of
the week. A week of fighting in Burma, fighting in the
Crimea, and the Allies- well, the Americans- still figuring out who they will focus on
first, the Japanese or the Germans. You know, a lot changed in December 1941,
with the entry of the US into the war, and the German Army stopped before reaching Moscow. The main forces that oppose the Axis, the
US, Britain, the USSR, the Chinese, and the Free French, control over 80% of the earth's
raw materials. The US alone produces 2/3 of the world's oil
and generates a third of the world's electricity. The industrial production of the world in
1937 was at about a value of 145 billion dollars, 52 billion of that or 36% is American, 17.5
or 12% is German. These numbers are from Germany and the Second
World War Volume 6, by the way. Since they have access to the whole North
American continent, the US has pretty much unlimited raw materials. Well, nearly so at any rate, but things like
rubber they'll sort out synthetically. Germany is short of most things except coal. But even if all things were equal, the US
has one massive advantage that Germany does not- its economy is immune to physical attack
from an enemy. There's all that, and also that the USSR,
mainly without any Allied help since supplies were only just starting to arrive, survived. "…it had maintained its existence and independence
from the Western Allies, and that it had thereby laid the foundation stone for its rise to
great power status. It was no longer to be excluded from Allied
considerations of the future world order." That's another huge deal. During things like the Atlantic Charter Conference
last year, the Allies assumed the USSR would fall and Germany would gain dominance of all
of mainland Europe, so the peace envisioned by the Charter is now no longer really viable
and they'll have to get used to that. For Josef Stalin, when the US joined the war,
the 'capitalist' side of the war against Hitler was suddenly a bunch stronger than the 'socialist'
side, and he's very concerned how that might play out in a postwar world. But they all have to get along now, and they're
all suspicious of ulterior motives. Anthony Eden, who met with Stalin in December,
thinks that the USSR's 1941 boundaries, except those with Poland- but which include the Baltic
States- be recognized as official, and in return, Britain would be involved in Polish-Soviet
border talks, and they would cooperate in reconstructing Europe with the Soviets, and
have confederations in the Balkans and Central Europe. The British figured the Americans would reject
this, which they did, but the British War Cabinet approved this. Well, there's a lot more to all this- a LOT,
which I'll cover in detail eventually, but what I'm getting at here is going back to
the change in war plans I mentioned that happened back on the 7th. Churchill also wrote to Roosevelt that day,
"The increasing gravity of the war led me to feel that the principles of the Atlantic
Charter ought not to be constructed so as to deny Russia the frontiers she occupied
when the Germans attacked her." Two observations: modern war makes very strange
bedfellows; and security often trumps principle in modern war. While the Second World War may have made strange
bedfellows, this won't be the case forever. If you want to watch a series where the USA
and the Soviet Union are at each other's throats, you can do so over on our TimeGhost History
channel with our mini-series on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is right here, sometime soon. Covers it day by day, as it happened, really cool. Our TimeGhost member of the week is Andreas
Kvalvik. It's thanks to TimeGhost Army members like
Andreas that everything we make is possible, and you can join them in supporting us at
timeghost.tv or patreon.com. Don't forget to subscribe; see you next time.
21st - The US Congress passes Public Law 503, (allowing the 'evacuation' of Japanese civilians from the west coast) -- this makes EO 9066 law.
MacArthur arrives in Kooringa, Australia to be officially informed that there is no army or navy forces to take back to the Philippines to rescue the troops stranded there.
The first four P-40s arrive at Port Morseby to help defend the port are damaged by 'friendly' AA fire. More P-40s arrive later in the day, and are given a less exhuberant welcome.
22nd - US Army infantry forces in Australia meet MacArthur upon his arrival in Melbourne, Australia -- all 360 of them.
The Germans begin using Zyklon B at Auschwitz-II-Birkenau to kill ‘evacuees’.
The SD re-arrests Abwehr agent Paul Thummel for being a British agent. He had been arrested on October 13th, 1941, for the same crime, but Canaris - head of Abwehr - insisted Thummel was a double agent under Abwehr control. While Thummel *is* a double agent, he is actually under the control of MI-6. He had been freed on March 2, 1942, but watched. Today he is arrested again, and held without trial in Theresienstadt - under a different name, so the Abwehr cannot find him - and will be shot on April 20th, 1945.
In the Mediterranian, the Italian battleship Littorio, 3 cruisers and 10 destroyers seek to intercept a British convoy headed for Malta, and clash with its escorts in the Second Battle of Sirte. The British lay down heavy smokescreens, and dash out to fire at the Italians, then duck back into the smoke. The only significant damage to either side is to two British destroyers, Havock and Kingstone. The British think they hit Littorio with a torpedo, but it turns out to be one of Littorio's own floatplanes which, still on board, is set on fire by the flash from the Littorios's own main guns.
After the Italians turn for home, the British escorts can't find their convoy, which has scattered. The escort force turns away for Alexandria.
23d - German and Italian air units discover the scattered merchantmen of the convoy battle yesterday, and sink two, and heavily damage a third. Two merchantmen arrive in Malta virtually untouched, however.
In an attempt to interdict Allied surface units in the Indian Ocean, the Japanese seize the Andaman Islands. They immediately begin torturing and murdering the locals. Nevertheless, a number of the locals collaborate with the Japanese and join the "Indian National Army," and form a "peace committee" to try and better help the Japanese 'keep order.' The Japanese bring in fighter aircraft to defend the island, seaplanes for search and attack, and "comfort women" from China, Korea and Malaysia to ‘service’ the garrison.
Stafford Cripps arrives in India to try and get India to stay in the war, and not rise up in search of independence - just yet (the British say.) Cripps is Lord Privy Seal and a member of Churchill's cabinet; he brings a proposal to give India "Dominion" status (equivalent to that of Canada), with the right to secede. It gives a limit of one year after the war is concluded for an Indian Constituent Assembly to work out details of things, with a proposed timeline of 15 years for complete independence.
Cripps also hopes to find a way to avoid a two-nation (e.g. India, Pakistan) solution while still maintaining some form of shared power for minorities (Sikh, Muslim, others.) That the Indians might not be ready to govern themselves is irrelevant to the Indians - would *you* like being told you are not "ready" to be free?
Gandhi rejects the proposals, so does Nehru (these are Hindu-controlled Indian National Congress spokesmen) so does Jinnah (Muslim League.) It doesn't help that Cripps represents an unreconstructed Victorian that nobody in India trusts, and with good reason.
The Hindus are intent on maintaining their majority status to be in control of the country once independent; the Muslims prefer some sort of autonmity, either complete separation, or at least early on, in a sort US-states solution, where all would be "indian", but local groups would still have autonomy over local affairs.
In the end, it all comes to naught. The Indian ‘side’ refuses to even negotiate; Gandhi's "Quit India" movement will not be moved (even though Nehru seems to have been more willing to enter into serious talks, he wisely decides not to split from Gandhi). Nobody but Gandhi thinks that his plan of the British leaving right now - and that this will somehow deter the Japanese from invading India - will work.
Other actors see no advantage for them to participate, and (as it turns out) the British Viceroy and Secretary of State for India were working behind the scenes to sabotage the matter anyway. Things stay simmering, but the British can later claim to have "acted in good faith", though it may well be that the only one actually doing so was Cripps himself. The only long-term impact would be that the British had shown themselves willing to discuss independence, and when Churchill was out after the war, the Indians could pursue the issue to which at least the British had agreed to in theory with vigor. Cripps will feel betrayed by Churchill (which he basically was), but was convinced to stay in the government rather than outright resign - to oversee aircraft production, which he does with efficiency.
25th - Crews for the "Doolittle Raid" finish training in taking off from a carrier at Elgin airfield, in Florida.
The first US AAF pilot flies a mission over occupied France (as opposed to an American flying as part of the RAF), when Major Cecil Lessig flies a Spitfire as part of an RAF fighter sweep.
254 RAF Bombers (mostly Wellingtons) bomb Essen again, and this time actually hit the city, for minor damage.
The HYPO codebreakers come across mentions of an operation against "RZP" in Japanese radio traffic. They have come to the conclusion that any location preceeded by an "A" is an American base, so "AF" might be Midway, or Pearl Harbor, etc. Prefixes of "R" seems to be near Rabaul. But what RZP exactly is is as yet unknown.
26th - Kido Butai, with five of the six carriers who raised holy heck at Pearl Harbor, will raise the same for the next three weeks in the Indian Ocean. They depart Staring Bay, Celebes, Dutch East Indies to raid Colombo and Trincomalee in Ceylon and sink whatever convenient naval targets show up along the way. The Kaga was planned to join in, but doesn't go along; it has gone to Sasebo to repair the damage done when it struck a reef in the Caroline Islands on February 9th. They will be recalled in the wake of the Doolittle raid on the Home Islands.
From this day on, Jews of Berlin must identify their houses as containing Jews. Everybody knows this is so then when it comes time to send them all to death-camps, it will be done quickly.
Egmont Lippe-WeiSenfeld shoots down four RAF bombers in one night. He is currently nowhere near his ace-of-aces total, and not even near his maximum in one day.
115 RAF bombers go to Essen yet again, missing pretty much everything yet again.
Japanese bombers hit Corregidor, knocking out the power for freezers containing 12 tons of Carabao (a form of water-buffalo) meat for the garrison.
BB USS Washington, CV Wasp, 2 cruisers and eight destroyers are assigned to reinforce the British Home Fleet. As a result, Wasp will not be available for the carrier battles in the Pacific this summer.
(continued)