(Cost, approximately 250,000 casualties)
In October 1944 the war in Europe is entering its sixth bloody year.
Its sixth year!
As Courtney Hodges’ 1st US Army grimly fights its way through the notorious Siegfried Line, Nazi Germany’s heavily fortified West Wall, and into the homeland of the Third Reich, let us take a moment to remember all the other bloody Octobers that have preceded this one since the war began.
October 1939 — Case Yellow: Fall Gelb
On October 6th, 1939, Poland finally surrendered to Hitler’s crushing blitzkrieg after a month of bitter but hopeless resistance. Hitler gave a speech that evening proposing a peace conference with France and Britain to avoid additional war in Europe.
“My chief endeavor,” he lied, “has been to rid our relations with France of all trace of ill will … I have devoted no less effort to the achievement of Anglo-German friendship …”
But even as he gave this speech, he told the German high command, the OKW, to prepare a plan for invading Belgium, Luxembourg and France in the following spring. He had no intention of stopping until he had conquered all Europe.
The plan that eventually won Hitler’s approval was developed by General Erich von Manstein and was codenamed Case Yellow or Fall Gelb in German. (Winston Churchill, always in search of a memorable turn of phrase, adopted the more flamboyant name Operation Sickle Cut, Unternehmen Sichelschnitt, to describe it in his histories.)
Fall Gelb was put into action the following spring with brilliant success. Now, five savage years later, Belgium, Luxembourg and France have just been rescued from Hitler’s grasp and it is Germany’s turn to suffer invasion.
Von Manstein survived the war and a conviction for war crimes. He published a memoir entitled ‘Lost Victories, Verlorene Siege,’ in which he successfully reinvented himself as an honest soldier forced to carry out orders he found repugnant.
October 1940 — Balham
It is now a year later. The war is a year old.
The Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command’s 11 Group under Air Vice Marshall Keith Park have just won the aerial Battle of Britain, but English cities are suffering from massive nightly air raids as the German Luftwaffe attempts to bomb Britain into submission.
Without airborne radars—which have not yet been invented—the British fighters cannot find Goering’s bombers in the dark. Without accurate night navigation aids the Luftwaffe bomber pilots cannot see their targets and most bombs fall into civilian areas in South and East London, often targeting the random fires caused by previous, equally random, bombs.
in an Underground station
Just after 8 pm on October 14th a 700lb bomb lands on Balham Underground Station in South London. The armor-piercing bomb explodes 30 feet beneath the roadway just above the station platforms, which are being used by Londoners as bomb shelters. Over 60 people are killed.
A bus, driving in blackout conditions, drives straight into the crater. The passengers and crew survive.
October 1941 — Stanislawow’s Bloody Sunday
It is now a year later. The war is two years old.
These days we tend to think of the Holocaust in the context of Auschwitz and other massive concentration camps, but the genocide against the Jews is better understood as endless waves of horror endlessly repeated, rather than as a single catastrophic convulsion.
For example, in October, 1941 in eastern Europe:
- October 1st—4,000 Jews are killed at Vinius in German-occupied Lithuania
- October 3rd—additional 2,000 killed
- October 12th—in a massacre known as ‘Bloody Sunday,’ between 8,000 and 12,000 Jews killed at Stanisławów in German-occupied Poland (now part of Ukraine)
- October 16th—additional 3,000 killed at Vilnius
- October 22nd to 24th—between 25,000 and 34,000 Jews killed at Odessa in Romanian-occupied Ukraine
- October 22nd to 30th—35,000 Jews killed in Kaunus in German-occupied Lithuania
- October 24th—additional 5,500 killed at Vilnius
- October 29th—1,000 Jews killed at Bolehiv in German-occupied Poland
- October 29th—additional 2,500 killed at Vilnius
The most common method of extermination was to have the victims dig trenches in which they were then shot and buried.
October 1942 — El Alamein
It is now a year later. The war is three years old.
At long, long last the fortunes of war shift in the Allies’ favor. A major battle at El Alamein in Egypt stops Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, from reaching the Suez Canal. Thousands of miles to the north, in the Caucasius, the Battle of Stalingrad will soon stop Hitler’s armies in Russia. The flood tide of Axis expansion is cresting.
The Battle of El Alamein (technically the 2nd battle) was fought on the Mediterranean coast about 50 miles west of Cairo. It pitted the Panzerarmee Afrika, consisting of the German Afrika Corps and three Italian Divisions, under the combined command of Erwin Rommel, against the British Eighth Army under Bernard Montgomery. It was a long battle of attrition, beginning on October 23rd and lasting until November 11th.
Although fortunes in the desert war had ebbed and flowed back and forth for over two years, in general Rommel had held the upper hand. The British had been unable to find a winning strategy despite having superior numbers and logistics. Churchill brought in a new team of generals, Harold Alexander and Bernard Montgomery, in August, 1942.
Montgomery’s plan was to build up an overwhelming force before committing to battle, and by October he had almost twice as many men, twice as many artillery guns, and twice as many tanks. In addition, he had almost unlimited supplies of fuel, whereas Rommel had only a few days of reserves.
Crucially, Rommel was on sick leave when the battle began in October, leaving his deputy, the mediocre Georg Stumme, in command. Stumme was killed in the early stages of the battle and his deputy, Wilheim von Thoma, was forced to take over. By the time Rommel got back to Africa, the Panzerarmee Afrika had lost the initiative and never recovered it. Montgomery used his superior numbers to wage a battle of attrition until Rommel, running out of fuel, was forced to retreat, having lost 80% of his tanks.
Montgomery
Stumme
Rommel
October 1943 — Schweinfurt: Black Thursday
It is now a year later. The war is four years old.
A fight to the death has been raging in the skies over Germany for a year. The USAAF Eighth Air Force, under the command of Jimmy Doolittle, sends hundreds of B17 Fortresses and B24 Liberators in bomb Germany by day, while Lancasters and Halifaxes of the RAF’s Bomber Command, under ‘Bomber’ Harris, bomb at night. The Allies’ bomber forces are instruments of destruction on an industrial scale.
The fight is brutal. The Allied aircrews sustain 50% casualties while German towns and cities suffer under raids up to a thousand bombers strong.
At this stage of the war the B17s are not always protected by fighter escorts. Although the bombers are heavily armed and fly in ‘boxes’ for mutual protection, they are highly vulnerable to attacks from Luftwaffe fighters.
The mission required the B17s to fly without fighter escorts for more than two hours and was very costly: 60 B17s were lost and another 100 severely damaged. These losses were sufficient to cause a two-month delay before the follow-up raid on Schweinfurt.
The second raid, on Thursday October 14, consisted of 291 B17s, again flying without escorts for most of the operation. The results were even worse. Another 60 B17s were lost and 140 damaged, and the Schweinfurt factories were repaired within 6 weeks.
So heavy was the damage sustained by the Eighth Air Force that daylight raids over Germany were suspended for 4 months. The second raid became known as the Black Thursday raid.
October 1944
It is now a year later. The war is five years old, the Allies have invaded Europe on D Day and freed France, Belgium and Luxemburg, and Courtney Hodges’ 1st US Army is fighting its way through the Siegfried Line.
Surely Nazi Germany is on its last legs? Surely this can’t drag on much longer?
Don’t bet on it. The worst is yet to come.
