TURNING POINTS: The Eastern Front and the Pacific Theater

 TURNING POINTS: The Eastern Front and the Pacific Theater

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy halted the seemingly unstoppable progress of Japanese expansion across the Pacific at the Battle of Midway.

 On the other side of the world, German and Russian forces were engaged in the titanic struggles of Stalingrad and Kursk. Both campaigns have been called turning points.

Ironically, and given hindsight, the end for Germany began on June 22, 1941, when they crossed into Russia and started Operation Barbarossa. The Japanese, in turn, began their slow march to total destruction on 7 December 1941. What both nations little understood, was that they had, either by arrogance or ignorance (and potentially both) started a global world war of a scale unheard of in human history.

 For the Germans, the quick, sharp and short victories across the militarily weak and politically apathetic West filled them with a hubris that embraced a most unrealistic appreciation for what lay beyond the Polish border of Soviet Russia.

 The Germans broke into Russia with three very strong armored formations, fully supported by “60% of the Luftwaffe”[1] that drove quickly into the vast interior threatening the major cities of Leningrad, Kiev and ultimately, Moscow.

The German plan was a rapid and overwhelming thrust that exercised combined arms attacks to double envelope, and thus, surround Red Army formations. Vast numbers of Red Army soldiers were captured in a series of concentric thrusts with the idea being the destruction of the Soviet Army. The Germans “very much wanted to destroy as much of the Red Army as close to the border as possible”[2] thus denying a protracted struggle for the Russian interior.

 The push towards Moscow, months later, stalled the entire German effort and the affair took on a much more lengthy and bloody campaign. The Germans worst nightmare came into being by December 1941 and the winter, lengthy lines of communications/maintenance, and the vastness of the frontage coupled by the tenacity of the Red Army all delivered a military theater that the industrial capacity of Germany would find difficult to support.

As 1941 turned into 1942, the German war effort now spread out from Norway to Finland, the Baltics, the low countries of Europe and France occupied, and fighting across North Africa. As the German Army and Luftwaffe were spread thin, industrial capacity was spread even more thinly. Manufacturing had to be prioritized and time was needed in order to either focus on aircraft production, U-Boat production or the much-needed armored vehicles required for combat in the vast Eastern Front. And so too with respect to human capital. The Army formations across the Eastern front had suffered from 1941 into 1942 with manpower always short. No single unit was at its authorized strength. “These factors combined to make two choices clear for Hitler and his advisors. The Army could remain on the defensive in the East or it could launch one offensive on one sector of the front.”[3]

The carnage and humiliation that was Stalingrad was a tremendous loss for the Germans who had blitzed all across Europe and Russia between 1939 to that cold February of 1943. The German Army had finally been beaten and the ‘blitzkrieg’ stopped. 1943 was the year of crisis for the Germans as they were again beaten back in July at the Battle of Kursk and subsequently, in August the Allies landed in Italy. The initiative was now dominantly on the side of the Allies.

 

As for Japan, they too marched across Asia quickly swallowing up Indochina (Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaya) as well as the Philippines, Burma, Korea, and landings across the Pacific from Borneo and Papua New Guinea to the Aleutian Islands. Looked at another way, the Imperial Japanese Army was now spread out all across Asia and the Pacific in isolated and remote locations that all had logistics support requirements from the Japanese home islands. And the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), with its Mobile Strike Force of aircraft carriers, were now charged with canvassing the length and breadth of the Pacific.

 1942 proved alarming for the IJN as the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 blunted and repulsed the Japanese attempt at landing on Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Both the IJN and the U.S. Navy lost a precious carrier each but it was the Battle of Midway that shaped the rest of 1942 and forced the Japanese to limited land based offensive operations. As U.S. Navy power only increased exponentially for the rest of the war, the IJN shrank until it was but a shadow of its former self in 1945.

 What was at stake at the Battle of Midway? Or better yet, why did the Japanese plan and execute the attack for Midway? Victor Davis Hanson writes in The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won that in the Pacific in 1942 the Japanese “seemed to have some chance of successfully invading Midway, destroying the remaining American carrier fleet, and achieving some sort of draw in the Pacific war, while cutting off Australia by militarizing the Solomon Islands.”[4]

 In summary, the Battles of Stalingrad, Kursk and Midway all proved fortuitous for the remainder of the Second World War. Their place in that war’s history continues to be debated. But what is certain in the clash of arms between 1939-1945 is that 1942-1943 proved to be the turning point. Time and space was purchased in blood and treasure allowed the industrial giants of both Russia and the United States to catch up and then surpass the combined efforts of the over stretched and diminishing Axis powers.

 

 

[1] Weinberg, Gerhard L A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1994, p.264

 

[2] Ibid, p.265

 

[3] Ibid, p.409

 

[4] Hanson, Victor Davis The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won, New York, Basic Books: 2017, p. 506