Introduction to World War II Fronts and Campaigns - 1940-1941
In the Mediterranean. Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940, with an army of 1,500,000, a modern navy, and a highly rated air force. The first naval action in the Mediterranean came on July 20. It resulted in the sinking of the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleone by the Australian cruiser Sydney. Italy attacked Greece on October 28, and the British, in an effort to secure the eastern Mediterranean, sent troops to the Greek island of Crete. The British struck at the Italian fleet at Taranto on November 11-12. In this action, planes from the carrier Illustrious damaged three battleships and a cruiser, crippling the Italian fleet.
Greek-Italian War, 1940-41
In April, 1939, Italy had invaded and annexed Albania. On October 28, 1940, Italy opened an unprovoked attack on Greece from Albania. Mussolini expected an easy victory, but the Greek army, although small, was well trained and was aided by British naval and air forces.
The Italians' main effort was made along the Epirus coast, with secondary attacks from Koritsa threatening Salonica (Thessaloníki) and Athens. Italy's drives were pushed with little vigor, and the Greeks responded fiercely. By November 2 the Greeks had driven the secondary columns back and captured their base at Koritsa. When an Italian division in the main drive was routed, the Italian advance collapsed. Soon the Greeks were pushing into Albania, and by the end of the year they held a fourth of that country.
Greek gains were small during the winter, but repeated Italian attacks failed. Greece was still on the offensive when Germany entered the fighting on April 6, 1941.
Balkan Campaign, 1941
Hitler's moves in the Balkans were motivated more by a desire to protect his flank for the invasion of the Soviet Union than by any wish to aid Mussolini.
On June 26, 1940, the Soviet Union demanded that Romania cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to it. Romania, too weak to resist Soviet aggression, agreed. In September Hungary and Bulgaria demanded sections of Romanian territory. The Germans helped negotiate the "Vienna Award," by which Romania was forced to cede Transylvania to Hungary and Dobruja to Bulgaria. These concessions caused a political crisis in Romania, forcing King Carol to abdicate. General Ion Antonescu, leader of the Iron Guard, a fascist political party, became dictator. German troops moved in, and Romania formally joined the Axis on November 23. Hungary, which signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1939, joined the Axis on November 20, 1940, and also was occupied by German troops. On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria signed a treaty joining the Axis and permitting the passage of German troops through its territory.
Yugoslavia was less willing to bow to Germany. A trade treaty with Germany was signed in October, 1940, but the regent, Prince Paul, refused to permit the entry of German troops. The Germans continued to pressure Yugoslavia, however, and on March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia signed a nonaggression treaty with Germany, in effect becoming an Axis nation. There was widespread protest in Yugoslavia, and two days later General Dushan Simovich seized the government and renounced the pact. This so infuriated Hitler that he made immediate plans to invade Yugoslavia.
British Aid to GreeceGreece at first declined offers of British troops, fearing that their presence would be made an excuse for German intervention. In March, when it became evident that Hitler was going to attack, British forces began moving into Greece. While covering their movement, the British fleet won a battle off Cape Matapan on March 28, 1941. This was the first full-scale naval battle in which an aircraft carrier participated. Torpedo planes from HMS Formidable damaged the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and immobilized the cruiser Pola. When other Italian ships came to aid the crippled Pola, British surface ships attacked, and the Pola and two other Italian cruisers were sunk.
Surrender of Yugoslavia. Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, 1941. Despite unexpectedly strong resistance, the Germans overran Yugoslavia in five days. An attack down the Vardar River valley isolated Yugoslavia from Greece, where British and other Allied troops were stationed. Belgrade, the capital, was heavily bombed and was occupied on April 12. The last organized Yugoslav force surrendered on April 18.
Greece TakenThe fighting in Greece lasted only a little longer. The Germans took Salonica on April 8, isolating Greek forces in Thrace. A drive through Monastir Gap forced British troops at Flórina to fall back on a line based on Mount Olympus, but that line was soon penetrated. The Greek army that had been fighting the Italians in Albania fell back under German pressure and surrendered on April 21. On that day Greece announced it would keep up the struggle only long enough to cover British evacuation. Most of the British forces were successfully withdrawn from Greece by May 1, but valuable equipment was abandoned.
CreteOn May 20 the Germans launched an airborne invasion of Crete, which was held by the British. Their objective was to seize the island to use its airfields and naval bases, which were important to the control of the eastern Mediterranean. German paratroopers struck first, and, despite heavy losses, secured the airfields. German transports and reinforcements were then landed. The British fleet stopped much of the sea reinforcement, but lost four cruisers and four destroyers in doing so.
German air power had made possible the rapid conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece; on Crete it quickly proved decisive. Britain was hampered throughout by a lack of planes and by inadequate bases from which to fly them. British evacuation of Crete started on May 29 and was completed on May 31.
The Middle East, 1941
Great Britain had gained nothing in the attempt to aid Greece, and the withdrawal of troops from North Africa had resulted in a defeat there. Efforts to secure the Middle East proved more successful.
In April, 1941, a group of pro-Axis politicians and army officers seized control of the government of Iraq and asked for German aid. Britain had troops and airfields in Iraq, a former British mandate, and to protect these and maintain control of the country the British began landing reinforcements at Basra on April 19. The British air base at Habbaniya, which had been under attack by Iraqi troops since May 1, was reached on May 18, and on May 30 the government of Iraq collapsed. On June 4 a new pro-British government was formed.
Provoked by German use of airfields in French-controlled Syria and uncertain where Vichy France stood, British and Free French troops on June 21 invaded Syria from Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq. Damascus was taken on June 21 and resistance ended on July 12 with the installation of a Free French government.
British and Soviet troops moved to end Axis penetration of Iran on August 25, 1941. The shah (ruler) abdicated on September 16 and an agreement was made on joint occupation.
The Russian Campaign, 1941
Hitler considered the conquest of the Soviet Union to be a critical part of his plan to create a German empire. The great agricultural areas of the Soviet Union would provide room for German colonists, Soviet mineral resources would be exploited for German industry, and Soviet labor would be used in German factories. The Soviet Union was also, in Hitler's mind, an ideological enemy: Communism could never coexist with Nazism.
Hitler's invasion plan was called Barbarossa, after the nickname of the 12th-century Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. The plan called for launching three main thrusts into the Soviet Union, with the immediate goals of taking Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the north, Moscow in the center, and Kiev and the Ukraine in the south. Hitler hoped that his troops could encircle large pockets of Soviet troops, as well as capture the main Soviet industrial and agricultural regions, and thus cause resistance to collapse before winter. The plan originally called for the attack to begin in May, 1941, but it was delayed until June by the need to secure the Balkans and Greece on Germany's southern flank. This delay may have doomed the plan—had the Germans attacked according to the original schedule, they might have had time to reach their objectives before the offensive was stalled by the severe Russian whiter of 1941-42.
On June 22, 1941, the massive blitzkrieg began. The Germans, led by Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb in the north, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock in the center, and Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt in the south, attacked with some 3,000,000 men and 19 panzer divisions. Actual tank strength—about 2,400—was approximately the same as that of the 10 panzer divisions used against France in 1940. Simultaneously with the German attack, the Finnish army struck near Leningrad, and the Romanian army crossed into the Ukraine and drove toward Odessa.
Opposing ForcesThe Soviet armies were completely unprepared for the attack. Some historians feel that Stalin foolishly ignored warnings of an imminent attack, while others believe that he wished to avoid at all cost provoking Hitler into war so that the Soviets would have time to build up their forces. In any case, little defensive preparation had been made, and Soviet troops had not been mobilized. At the time of the invasion, the Soviet Union had some 2,500,000 troops near the western border. These were commanded by three heroes of the Russian Revolution—Marshal Kliment Voroshilov in the north, Marshal Semën Timoshenko in the center, and Marshal Semën Budënny in the south. Soviet troops had equipment generally inferior to that of the Germans and were initially outnumbered in all sectors but the Ukraine. Because the officer corps had been decimated during Stalin's purges in the 1930's, the troops were often poorly led.
Failure of the German PlanIn the early stages, the German blitzkrieg was as stunningly successful as it had been in Poland and France. German troops advanced quickly in Lithuania and along the Baltic coast. The Germans met tough resistance in the south, but superior leadership, training, and equipment enabled them to advance. In the center, where most of the German effort was concentrated, troops encircled large groups of Soviet forces at Bialystok. A wider pincer movement closed in on Minsk on July 5, capturing some 300,000 Soviet troops.
After these successes, and with the Soviet resistance apparently crumbling, many German generals favored a rapid tank dash to Moscow. They felt that this would destroy the Soviet command center and effectively end the Russians' ability to fight. Hitler, however, insisted that the Ukraine, with its valuable agricultural and industrial resources, should be taken first and ordered troops from the center sector to be transferred southward to be used in an impending assault on Kiev.
In late August, German forces began to encircle Kiev, linking up and surrounding the city on September 17. The Germans then turned inward to destroy the trapped Soviet armies. More than one million Soviet troops were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The Germans continued to advance in the south, entering the Crimea in October and reaching Rostov in November.
On November 15, Hitler shifted the main effort back to the center in order to capture Moscow. The Germans planned to take the fortified towns that guarded Moscow, and then drive on the capital itself. In quick succession, Orel was captured, Bryansk was surrounded, and the Volga River was crossed near Kalinin (now Tver). The Germans captured 600,000 Soviet troops by surrounding and taking Vyasma. Despite these successes, the German drive was stopped in sight of Moscow, stalled by unusually cold weather, which hampered mobility and resupply, and by ferocious resistance by the Soviets, who had been reinforced with troops drawn from other parts of the country. In early December, Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov led a counteroffensive from Moscow and drove the exhausted and freezing German troops back. Hitler ordered his troops to dig in and announced that the campaign would be halted for the winter.
The War At Sea, 1940-41
As in World War I, German submarines (U-boats) tried to cut off Britain's shipping, thus severing that island nation's most important link to the rest of the world. The use of convoys, with large numbers of merchant vessels crossing the ocean together under the protection of warships, reduced the danger from German submarines. The Germans, however, devised the "wolf pack" method of attack to counter the convoy system. When a submarine spotted a convoy, it would not strike at once but would call other submarines to the area so they could launch a massed attack. This tactic was highly effective until new antisubmarine weapons and tactics were employed. Sonar was developed to detect underwater craft, depth charges were improved, and both land- and ship-based airplanes were used to search out and bomb the U-boats.
Sinking of the BismarckIn the spring of 1941, the new and powerful German battleship Bismarck was sent into the Atlantic to raid merchant shipping. Aware of the Bismarck's movements through aircraft reconnaissance, the British dispatched a group of ships to pursue and sink it. On May 24, in the Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland), the British battle cruiser Hood and battleship Prince of Wales engaged the Bismarck. The Prince of Wales was damaged, and the Hood, one of the largest naval vessels in the world and the pride of the British fleet, was destroyed when its ammunition blew up as the result of a direct hit. The Bismarck, itself seriously damaged, tried to reach the safety of a French port, but was sighted and immobilized by carrier planes on May 26. The King George V and the Rodney arrived the next day and severely damaged the Bismarck. The crippled ship sank after the Germans began to scuttle it and the British cruiser Dorsetshire attacked with torpedoes.
U.S. Destroyers For BritainThe workhorse of the defense against submarines was the destroyer. In the evacuation of Dunkirk 85 British destroyers had been put out of service—10 sunk and 75 severely damaged. To help make up for these losses, Great Britain in September, 1940, acquired from the United States 50 overage destroyers, veterans of World War I. In exchange, the British granted the United States 99-year leases for naval and air bases on British islands in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean.
Mediterranean ActionLate in 1941, just as the crisis with Japan was developing in the Far East, the British suffered a series of disasters in the Mediterranean. The carrier Ark Royal was sunk by a submarine in November, and the battleship Barham later the same month. The cruiser Galatea met the same fate in mid-December, and a few days later Italian "human torpedoes" (torpedoes steered by skin divers) severely damaged the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant in Alexandria harbor. On December 19 Force K, which operated from Malta, ran into a minefield with the loss of a cruiser and a destroyer and damage to two cruisers.