The Changing Face of War by Martin van Creveld

Author:Martin van Creveld [van Creveld, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49439-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

4.5. Closing the Ring

In any form of coalition warfare, the essential condition for victory is political unity and a combined command system. In 1939–45, the Allies did much better in meeting this condition than the Axis countries did. Given the geographic distance that separated them, cooperation between Japan and its European allies was bound to be loose indeed. This problem was compounded by the fact that, instead of striking the USSR in the rear, Tokyo went its own way; by so doing it probably hastened, if it did not cause, America’s entry into the war.

In 1942, the Axis partners talked about mounting a combined campaign against India. However, neither Germany (the Italians hardly counted) nor Japan had the logistic resources such a gigantic pincer operation would have required, and it never even reached the planning stage.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Germans and Italians never set up a combined command system. Instead, they relied on liaison officers. The most important of them was the German military attache in Rome; only in the North African theater was there something approaching a joint Italian-German chain of command. Hitler himself saw Mussolini, the only Roman among mere Italians as he once put it, as a personal “friend.” Like some mythological hero, he vowed to stand with him to the end, and, in a sense, he kept his word. However, farther down there was as much friction as there was cooperation. In time, many high-ranking Germans came to see Italy as a drain on their own war effort—at one point they even suspected their allies, the Royal House specifically included, of leaking secrets to the British. On the Italian side, many blamed Mussolini, first for entering the war and then for doing so on the wrong side.

Churchill and Roosevelt succeeded in establishing a good personal relationship that started even before the United States entered the war and lasted until its final months. In preparation for the landings in North Africa, a combined command, SHAEF, was established, and on the whole it functioned well. To be sure, the British found their American cousins arrogant and overbearing—“overpaid, oversexed, and over here,” as the saying went—whereas the Americans often suspected their wily allies of trying to lead them by the nose. On the other hand it was General Eisenhower, as SHAEF commander, who at one point issued a directive to the effect that while he did not mind his subordinates calling one another “sons of bitches,” he would mind if anyone spoke of Americans or British in general as members of such a group.

Relations with Stalin were more difficult, and cooperation with him was never close. At times it seemed as if the Soviets were playing a deliberate game of hard-to-get, now showing a friendly face, now refusing to cooperate. Many of the problems were due to the fact that the Second Front was so late in coming. Furthermore, the need to work with the USSR itself gave rise to differences within the Western alliance, Churchill being much more suspicious of Stalin than Roosevelt was.

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