AIR POWER SET THE STAGE FOR INVASION OF A/0RM4A/Dy[
Fascists!” In their advance they used everything
on wheels. Their own and American-made guns,
famirs and trucks rolled along the roads between
horse-drawn carts, high-backed old carriages, sur
reys and wagons. Horsedrawn vehicles clattered
behind with piles of ammunition and food. Soldiers
rode on captured bicycles and motorcycles, battered
motor cars obviously seized along the way and new
ones fresh from factories. It was a weird and awe
some procession. But against Hitler’s precise Wehr
macht it got results.
Eight Soviet armies were in the field—from
Leningrad to Vitebsk, there were General Leonid
A. Govorov’s Leningrad army; General Kiril A.
Meretzkov’s Volkhov River army; General Markian
M Popov’s 2nd Baltic army; General Ivan Bag
ramian’s 1st Baltic army.
Two armies pounded at the central front, from
tiie Pripet marshes to the Ukraine.—Marshal Kon
stantin K. Rokossovky’s White Russians and Gen
eral Nikolai F. Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainians.
Marshal Ivan S. Konev with his 2nd Ukrainians
and Marshal Rodion Y. Malinovsky with his 3rd
Ukrainians provided the Soviet pushing force from
the middle Dnieper to the Black Sea.
On January 4, 1944, the Russians rode across the
Polish border. In March, as they drew closer and
closer to the outskirts of the Reich, Hitler occupied
his satellite states of Hungary and Romania. It was
something of a futile gesture. The next month
Konev leaped the Bug River, then the Dniester,
and stormed into Bessarabia. Two German armies
fled so fast they left virtually all their equipment
behind. The 1st Ukrainians, now headed by Mar
shal Georgi K. Zhukov as a replacement for the
ailing Vatutin, stormed into Tarnapol on the ap
proaches to Slovakia.
By the end of April the Nazis held only 140,000
square miles of Soviet-claimed territory. They had
been driven back 900 miles from Stalingrad, and a
graphic story of their “crusade against the Bol
shevists” now was told in the black-bordered obit
uary columns of their newspapers.
In Italy, winter and Kesselring’s defenses bogged
the Allies On January 22, in an attempt to break
the deadlock, Clark made another landing behind
the Nazi lines at Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome.
Fof 48 hours the invasion appeared destined for
speedy success. Then1 Kesselring counter-attacked
at Anzio and at Cassino, in the south, to prevent
the Allies from moving up to meet the landing
force. Anzio approached Salerno in bloodiness and
Allied desperation, but warships and planes again
helped save the beachhead. Monte Cassino monas
tery became a key Nazi defense point in the south.
The Allies bombed the abbey, but Kesselring simply
put more pillboxes in its rubble.
In May British and Polish troops broke the
Cassjno line, and by the end of the month the
Anzio forces also smashed out of their beachhead
to join the main American units .in the Pontine
marshes. On June 4 Clark’s weary veterans were
under the spires of St. Peter’s.
THE NAVY EXPLODES'TRUK
THE MacArthur-Nimitz drives continued moving
irresistibly in the Pacific. The General began the
new yeai with a quick thrust that secured Saidor.
near Finschhafen, almost without opposition and
then sent his First Cavalry Division to grab Manus
in the Admiralty Islands, one of the best sea and
aii bases in the Pacific.
But the Rising Sun still felt safe on New Guinea
fot the Japanese had built at Wewak one of the
most powerful garrisons in their outlying empire.
MacArthur simply by-passed Wewak in a “swift,
massive stroke.” In April he jumped to Hollandia
and nearby Aitape and easily won his beaches
against the weakened opposition. And when the out
guessed Japanese moved up from Wewak, MacArthur
had defenses ready to kill them.
The Yanks now could almost see the Philippines
ahead. In May they moved on the Wakde Islands,
115 miles west of Hollandia, and landed on Biak, off
western New Guinea’s coast. There were only a few
more jumps to come—and then vengeance for
Bataan.
Nimitz took a different route. From the Gilberts
his planes and warships under the command of
Admiral Spruance ripped the Marshalls to the
north, and on January 31 troops landed on the atoll
of Majuro to find the Japanese had fled. This was
a magnificent gift, for Majuro had a fine naval
anchorage well suited to the Navy’s needs, and
while Marines moved up to Roi and Namur and
Army forces climbed onto Kwajalein, carriers under
Admiral Marc Mitscher already were resting in its
waters.
The carriers soon moved, along with battleships,
cruisers and destroyers, up to the most dreaded
enemy base in the whole central Pacific. This was
mysterious, rocky Truk, the “Japanese Pearl Har
bor." It was believed Truk would cost many thou
sands of lives if taken by direct assault. Yet some
thing had to be done about it before the inner
ridges of the Japanese empire could be cracked.
Two days of sea and air bombardment left the
enemy’s shipping broken and sunk, his planes
bullet-ridden on the ground and splattered from
crashes in the waters. Army Liberators took up the
attack and soon once-terrifying Truk ceased to be a
threat. The Japanese Navy decided it was too un
safe for a fleet base. It was “neutralized.”
EISENHOWER WINDS UP
GENERAL EISENHOWER went to England in
January, the announced Supreme Allied com
mander for the invasion. The broad-faced, friendly
Texas-born general had proved his ability to work
with British and French in North Africa and Sicily.
Now he was to combine all the forces in the west
into a solid front.
Already books full of plans had been approved
by Roosevelt and Churchill, by the American Army
Ch'ief of Staff, General George C. Marshall; the
Navy Commander in Chief, Admiral Ernest King,
and an array of gold-braided military men in
Washington and London.
If Ike were concerned about the risks in this
tremendous problem of invasion — perhaps the
greatest military problem any commander ever
faced in history—he could at least be assured that
he would have an incredible amount of strength
with which to solve it.
The British were speculating wryly then of the
chances of their island sinking under the weight
of Allied troops and equipment concentrated on it.
The entire countryside became a vast network of
invasion supply dumps with mountains of munitions
above and beneath the ground. There were mil
lions of bullets, incendiaries by the thousands, ton,
after ton of bombs. Motor trucks and tanks were
stationed on parking grotihds that stretched as
far as the eye could see.
More and more supplies were coming, too,
'T'OTAL U. S. military personnel, men and
women, reached a maximum of approximately
12.500.000 with 8,300,000 men, 100.000 WACs and
45,500 nurses and other women in the Army;
3.300.000 men, 82,000 WAVES and 11.000 nurses
in the Navy; 161,500 men and 10,060 SPARS in
the Coast Guard; 458,000 men and 18,400 women
in the Marines.
World War II put more than 15,000,000 persons
under arms. Here are estimated figures on the
maximum armed forces of the main belligerents.
United States, 12.500,000; British Empire, 9,500,
000; Russia, 20,000,000 to 27,000,000; France, 3.500
000; China, 5,000,000; Germany, 8,500,000; Japan,
4,000.000; Italy, 1.300,000.
Government estimates of war costs, civilian
and military, made at the end of the war, in
cluded: $87,860,000,000 in France, $4,452,660,775
in Belgium, $3,019,200,000 in Holland, $2,488,034,
000 in Norway and $2,000,000,000 in Denmark.
Certain costs were still rising and others were so
intangible as to be impossible to estimate in cash,
government officials stated.
Americans paid $119,346,229,000 in taxes dur
ing war time ... a peak of 10,300,000 workers
was reached for the U. S. munitions industry
alone—approximately one munitions-maker for
every man in the Army or Navy. . . . American
soldiers fired more than a billion rounds of small
arms ammunition. ... Office of Price Administra
tion regulations applied to some 8,000,000 articles
and services. . . . C. S. blood donors gave a total
of 13,300,000 pints for the armed forces. . . .
America produced 60,000,00 deadweight tons of
merchant ships and lost 7,000,000 tons. . . . The
nation’s railroads handled some $2,000,000 Army
troops in organized movements.
through waters in which it now was perilous for
the U-boats to travel. This in itself was a major
triumph. Allied shipbuilders- and merchant mariners
had fought a ship-by-ship battle with the German
subs in 1942, with the United States and Britain
straining to put more vessels on the sea than the
Nazis could send below it. But in 1943 the Allies
began to win. Radar, which had helped in the battle
of Britain, was used extensively to search out U-boat
positions. More destroyer escorts were added to
convoys. Planes patrolled great areas of the convoy
routes. By the end of 1943, the Battle of the Atlantic
had become primarily >he enemy’s headache, for
more U-boats than AllJld ships were being sunk.
Eisenhower named an Anglo-American staff: Air
Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder became his
deputy commander; Admiral Sir Bertram Home
Ramsay was to head the naval operations, with
Admiral A. G. Kirk leading the American task
force. Over the air forces was Air Chief Marshal
Trafford Leigh-Mallory. General Spaatz was to di
rect American bombers based in England and Italy
with General Doolittle heading the Eighth Air Force
in Britain.
The beret-wearing “Monty" was assigned to di
rect the ground forces—and there was a pleasant
augury in the fact that he would again meet the
Marshal Rommel he had so clearly out-foxed in
the desert. General Omar N. Bradley was named
America’s chief ground officer.
In early 1944, the first specific phase of the in
vasion began in the air.
BOMBERS BLAZE THE PATH
“NAZI COMMUNIQUE: Terror bombers of the
R.A.F. were over Germany today. They destroyed
a hospital and a church. The Luftwaffe shot down
867 planes. Only one of our cities is missing."
'T'HAT was the tenor of a story told by Allied
*■ pilots and bombardier crews in Britain in 1944
and it pointed up as much as anything the effect
the air assault was having on the Reich.
In November, 1943, the R.A.F. had opened a
new offensive against Berlin to knock out the ball
bearings plants on which Hitler’s wheeled army
depended, and the raids continued on an even
greater scale in 1944. By February 15, when an
estimated 1,000 bombers cascaded almost 3,000 tons
in a half-hour attack, more than 28,000 tons were
dropped on the capital in this winter campaign.
Blockbusters snapped electric cables, broke water
mains, tumbled buildings. Then incendiary bombs
were dropped, followed by more blockbusters that
splashed flames over the city. It was reported that
Berlin was dying, her railroad stations destroyed,
more than half her homes demolished.
The Nazis put all their defensive hopes in fighter
planes. But a “second front” would succeed only u
Goering’s fighters were held off from the invasion
channels and landing beaches. Allied air forces were
given orders to destroy those fighters in the fac
tories, on the ground, and in the skies.
On Saturday night, February 19, the R.A.F. struck
at a Messerschmitt assembly factory at Leipzig
The next day the Americans returned. At the sam
time the AAF bombed fighter-plane factories a
Brunswick, Oschersleben and Bernberg.
That night the R.A.F. went in again. On Monday
Doolittle sent his heavies in and on Tuesday t y
were joined by bombers from Italy. The two tor
struck again on Thursday and on Friday more t
2,000 planes blasted aircraft factories at Regensbu B>
Augsburg, Furth and Stuttgart.
Official reports said only: “Enemy fighter re
sistance was on a reduced scale.”
But, said General H. H. Arnold, commanding
general of the U. S. Army Air Forces, “those five
changed the history of the air war.” ^
Production was stopped completely at sofm^TaZj
the plants and slowed at others. Instead o ^
plane output being quadrupled as planned, ^
to less than that of August, 1942. Goering 1° .
craft in the air and many more on the gro ‘
In the five days the AAF lost 244 big-?°^oUid
and 33 fighter planes. But now the Luftwair ^ w
have to conserve its dwindled force ana
battle only when the odds were strongly and
Now the bombers went after oil refine: coffl.
synthetic plants to cut the flow of fuel to
ing front. . Wehr
Next were the railroads over wnicn <■* jy.jghters
macht would have to move reinforcements.^^.
and bombers roared up and down the. tjng up
from the Netherlands to the Pyrenees, trains.
enemy airfields, railroad yards and freigh River
In May every major bridge over the be ^oW if
from Paris to Le Havre was smashe • riSOns
Eisenhower struck at Calais, the Wazl