Changes in character of war: causes, meaning, perspective

Mehnert, Klaus, 1906-1984

eVols at University of Hawaii at Manoa

NEW FACTORSSHANGHAI, AVGUST/SEPTEMBER 19•• No. 2/3-such as the cold during the first warwinter in the USSR---<leprived them of it,the German leaders constantly held thoinitiative in their hands. They· used itwisely: after long periods of calm anddetermined preparation, they carried outbrief, decisive thrusts. They never struckunless they ..;were sure of the re.'lult and,from the military point of view, they suf-fered practically no failures. This was alsoadmitted by their foes in every case exceptin that of the aerial campaign of Hl40 againstEngland which, the enemy claimed, hadfallen short of c~:pectation~.If the war in Europe had continued withthe tempo of the first phase, it would havebeen over long ago. But for various reasonsthe first phase ended before the war did.Germany went to war with the USSRbecause she believed that she could nolonger afford passively to watch the rise ofthe gigantic menace of two hundred millionpeople harnessed to Bolshevism. Nobodyhad pointed out the danger of the Redflood for Europe more emphaticaUy and moreconsistently than the leaders of National-Socialist Germany. Yet, to everybody'ssurprise, it was..1ar greater than even theyhad depicted ikWe must bear in mind that, before 1942,the Soviet Union had been underratedthroughout "the world a..\l a fighting power:(1) I\oIilitarily: the number of her trainedreserves, her available arms, her industrial181~CENIURYTHE SECOND PHASEBy KLAUS MEHNERTT/ie filth anniver8ary and 'lie clim<n: of the European war are approach.i"9all we go to pres". E1M'ope t4 an inferno. ThollMmd8 of plane8 are layiTl..g tl'GIlteh.er cities. MiUioft4 of men arll loeked in terrible .baules. Compari"l1 the presentlfituation with 'Iud prtt-ailing in Europe on the fir8t. 8CCOrnJ, or third war CI1miver·"aric8. and contrasting the destruction in human lives and material values thell andtUnD. one realizes hoto romp/dely the character of the war hUll changed. Tile folluwingcssay i8 ccmcerned wit" th;8 change, its cause8. meaning. and per8pect;1JIl8.VOL. vnSO far this wa.r has passed through twophases. The first, lasting thirty-eightmonths up to the Allied landing inNorth Africa and the Red count,eroffensiveat Stalingrad, was one of colossal Germansuperiority, as the campaigns in Poland,Norway, Western Europe, the Balkans,North Africa, and Eastern Europe haveshown, when German forces reached Egyptand the Volga and when Allied tonnagewas approaching its lowest point of abouttwelve million tons. During this entirepbMe, tho loss in life and property on bothsides was extremely small-small comparedwith the results achieved and also comparedwith the losses being suffered by the twocamps at present. It was the phase of theGerman blitzes. Though the fighting neverceased completely, it was concentratedin 0. few short, highly successful campaigns.Ever;}' war ha.'l its horrors, particularlyfor tbe defeated side. But if war must be,then the blitz war with small losses andgreat political results is preferable. This istrue also for the defeated side. In a blltllcampa,ign it loses the war, which is badenough, but in a long-drawn-out war itsuffers in addition irreplaceable losses in lifeand property. Historians, no matter ofwhich nationality, will some day classifythe German campaigns of the war's firstphase as exemplary military achievements.Germany's overwhelming advantage layin her superiority in strategy, leadership,training, arms, economic mobilization, andnational attitude toward the wa,r. Apartfrom periods when objective circumstancesTHE XXtb CENTURYMATCHED POWERThus the fight put up by the USSR wasgreater than anybody had expected. Uti-lizing the vastness of its area, its manpower,and its resources, the Red Army survivedthe heavy blows dealt it by the GermanWehrmacht. This gave Roosevelt time,with the aid of ~is huge politica.l machineand thousands of leftist and Jewish intel-leCtuals who control the intellectual life ofthe country, to bring about a cha.nge in theformerly pacifist-isolationist attitude of theAmericans toward foreign affairs and to putthe entire nation on a war basis.Germany's blitzkrieg strategy requiredfor its success the unpreparedness of theenemy for this type of war. The longer thewar lasted, the more her enemies were ableto learn from it. This was the reason whyit functioned 80 smoothly in 1939 and 1940,less well in 1941 and 1942 against the Soviets,who had had two years' time to adapt them-selves, and why it did not work in 1943and 1944, when the Allies were not onlyfamiliar with it but even began to employ itthemselves, including total mobilization. Inother words: in 1939 and 1940 the stre.tegyof the second World War employed byGermany triumphed easily over the strategyof the first World War still employed bythe Allies. By 1944 both sides were fullyversed in modern warfare.1£ we add that by means of technicalinnovations the Allies were able, at leasttemporarily, to neutralize the German sub-marines, and finally that they were aidedby two cases of treason-Darlan's andBadoglio's-we have mentioned all theprincipal reasons why the war's first phasecame to an end. We see now why Ger-many, although having many more soldiers,tanks, planes, guns, and an even moredetermined population than in the days ofthe French campaign, no longer possessesher unchallenged superiority and why thewa.r entered upon its second phase, that ofmatched power. By matched power we donot mean that both sides are evenly matchedin every respect-the Allies have more men,arms, raw ma.terials, the Germans a higherquality of soldiers and officers and a morefa.vora.ble strategic position. We mean thatboth sides are matched from the point ofview of their fighting strength as a whole,and that neither side has the overpoweringsuperiority which Germany held during thefirst years. Just as it was characteristic of'10capacity to produce more, and her abilityto conduct a modern war, were not properlyevaluated; and the purge of the Red generalsin 1937, as well as the poor showing of theRed Army in Finland in 1939, were over-rated in their significance.(2) Politically: the long series of purgesfrom 1935 to 1938 was taken as an indicationof internal weakness, while actually it wasprimarily an indication of Stalin's change-over to a new type of world-revolutionarystrategy, a change-over with which manyold Bolsheviks did not agree. Moreover,the whole world had always made a radicaldistinction between the Bolshevist leadersand the Russian people, a circumstancewhich led to the belief that the Russianpeople would turn against the Bolsheviksafter the first powerful thrusts from out-side.(3) Psychologically: the Russians wereassumed to be by nature incapable of sus-tained effort over a long period. After afirst fiare-up of energy had spent itself, theywould, it was believed, relapse into apathy.IThese opinions, held by the majority ofpeople everywhere, were due to a faultyevaluation of the USSR as well as of theRussians. The first was chiefly the resultof many people in every country continuingto see the SO\'iet state as it had been in theyears of Revolution and Civil War andclosing their eyes to the hundred millionchildren born since then and permeatedwith Bolshevist ideas, to the thousands ofindustrial plants built, and to the strangle-hold which the Bolsheviks had acquired overtheir people by a ghastly combination ofterror and propaganda. The misunderstand-ing of t.he Russians, on the other hand, wasla.rgely due to the Russian literature of thenineteenth century. In this literature, theclassical heroes are the "useless people,"from Eugene Onegin to the owners ofChekhov's Cherry Orchard. Oblomov, whospends his life thinking out great schemesbut never gets out of his dresaing gown,became for many the amiable personificationof Russia. They overlooked the fact that theOblomovs represented only a tiny fractionof the people, of whom, as a whole, they knewvery little. They forgot that the Russianshad conquered two fifths of the Eurasian.continent in barely five hundred years.Hence they never suspected that the Bolshe-viks would succeed, by a shrewd falsificationof history, in merging Russian patriotism withthe drive toward a world revolution. •,THE SECOND PHASE 71the first phase that on the forty-third dayof the German Western campaign the wholeof France had to conclude an armistice, it ischaracteristic of the ph88e of matched powerthat on the forty-third day of the inv88iollcampaign the Allies have occupied less thanone per cent of France, notwithstandingthe fact that Germany is opposing themwitb only part of her annies, the majorityof them being in Eastern Europe and Italy.Once the war bad entered its second phase,a totally new situation arose. The GermanHigh Command understood this. It changedits strategy radically. Following tho rulesof cool reasoning and paying no attentionto questions of prestige, it went ou thedefensive and gradually withdrew its armiesfrom the Nile and the Volga to CentralEurope. But this geographical concentra-tion of forccs was not enough. The entireGerman war machine and economy, whichhad been geared perfect,ly to the require-ments of the wa.r's first phase, had to bechanged; the German Army, reared in thespirit of da:lhing offensive, had also to betrained for the harder task of large-scale with-drawals; new wcapons had to be invent{ldand mass-produced; the German nation,accustomed to headlines telling of capturedcities and countrics, had to adjust itself tothe idea of a long war; and the occupiedcountries had to be mobilized to a fargreat{lr degree than before.To the Anglo-Americans, who had a,)waysclailned that the Germans were only ableto fight a war of the first-phase type, itcame as a surprise when they saw - howquickly and completely Germany adaptedherself to the requirements of the secondphase. Yet there is nothing surprising inthis. Had the German nation been fightingin order to win a quick and easy victory,it might have been thrown off its ba,)anceby the realization that there was no longerany chanco of this. But Germany is notjust fighting for vict.ory: sho is fighting for adecision, the decision over her life and herfuture, the lieeision whether the Europe oftomorrow will be a Soviet state or an Ameri-can colony--or a community of nations basedon the spirit of neit~er Marx nor Morganbut on that of 11 }<~uropean socialism. Incomparison to this goal, the question ofRhort war or long war, yes, even of thetemporary loss of German territory, shrinksin significance, amI once the Germansrealized that t,he decision could not bebrought about by the methods of tho firstphase they calmly went to work to ac-complish it by the methods of t,he seeondph88e. For this they needed time. Andso, in this phase of matched power, we finda completely different attitude toward thetime factor: now it W88 Germany who wa,'5stalling for time, while the Allies were in ahurry "to finish her off" before she W88 ableto adjust herself to the new situation.Germany was aided in gaining time bythe Greater East Asia War, where two ofher enemies are locked in a grim strugglewith her ally Japan. Mter hONing metwith disastrous defeats, these common foesof Gennany and Japan were only able towrest small parts of their former lossesfrom the heroically fighting Nipponesearmed forces at the cost of immense effortand heavy losses. The battles in thoPacific contributed appreciably towarddelaying the full force of the Allied counter-offensive and enabling Germany to preparefor the next round.THE CHANCES FOR SUPERIORITYThe great question is: how long is thephase of matched power to last1 Will it befollowed by a new phase of supreme superi-ority on one side? Let us consider thepossibilities one by one.We can take it for granted that bothsides are doing their utmost to gain un-challenged superiority. What are the Alliedchances of obtaining it? The Anglo-Ameri-cans IJave been preparing the invasion foryears. They waited so long that theybecame the object of scorn and ridicule onthe part of their Red allies. (One of theSO\'iet jokes told in England before theinvasion had it that Churchill was rousedfrom bed at three o'clock in the morning byan urgent telephone call. As ho took upthe receiver he heard Stalin's familiar voicesaying: "Hello, Winnie, I'm in Calais;you ca.n come now, the danger isover.") In the end, many people thoughtthe Allies had built up such overwhelmin~forces during all this time that they wouldcrush the German 'armics once the invasionhad started. Indeed, we have every reasonto assume that since June 6 tbe Allies havethrown everything they possess-not yet inquantity, but in quality-into the struggle.But the first month and a half of the invasionbattle has produced nothing that promisesto endow the Allies with the desired complete superiority over the Germa.us. It alsoseems unlikely that they still have some-thing up their sleeve which would suddenlygive them this superiority. Why should72 THE XXtb CENTURY..they be waating their strength in terriblebattles of attrition if they have the powerBimply to overwhelm the Germans?In following the battle in Normandy onecan hardly escape the conclusion that theAllies greatly underestimated Germanstrength. The German press has probablyeontributed to this with its realistic de-scriptions of Germany's situation. Somepeople migbt even think that the wickedGermans' purposely exaggera.ted their dif.ficulties in order to make the popula.tions inthe AlLied camp relax their efforts, deceivedby the prospect that "if is all over anyway."The Germans are more likely than theAllies to have new weapons ready or inpreparation which they have not yet throwninto the fray. They have a far betterreason for holding them in reserve: to waituntil sufficiently large Allied foroes havelanded to make their employment worthwhile. Tho way in which the GermanHigh Command postponed the use of theV·I t.o just the right moment speaks for thecoobless of its decisions. There have beenhints from Berlin tbat the road from nothingto V·l was far harder and longer than that(rom V.] to V-2 and V-3.THAT LAST OUNC.EBut in an objective analysis sucb as thiswe must state bhat we cannot know forcertain whether such new weapons wouldbe able to end the phase of matched powerand reinst,all Germany in the unquestionedsuperiority of the first pbase. Honco weJOust also consider the remaining possibility-namely, that the phase of matched powerwill continue. In this case, what would betho outlook for Europe, apart from thegradual pulverization of j<"rance, Italy,Eastern Europe by the war, apart from themounting destruction of French, German,and English towns froUl the air?11 two men of cq ual strellgth fight in thering, the referee awards the vietory, afterall agreed number of rounds, to the munwho has won the most points. But if thereis no agreed munoor of rounds and no ref-eree to supervise the figbt--and that isexactly tLUJ situation in Europe today-tlleywill fight until one or the other is too ex·. hall8ted to continue, If they are evenlylUltched, the cbanees are that by then tbeother will also be near collapse, and that itis just the willner's add itional ounce ofstrength which carries him through beyond'lis ad"enlllry's fall. TlJis extra ouncc is amatter of spiritual rather than materialstrength. Who is more likely to bave ittThe Red armies have stepped acr088 theirborders into foreign lands. There is dreadfulmisery at borne. Will such ideas as "re·venge," "world revolution," or "liberationof tbe Slavs," be able to give tbemtbat last ounce of strength? The Amerie8Jl8fighting on European soil are many thoufWldsof miles from their bomes. Even accordingto their own figures, their 1088eS in thesecond World War have already surpassedthose of tlte first. The question uppermostin their minds must be: Why do we baveto fight and die bere in Europe? Theattitude toward the war as we found itexpressed in recent American magazines anddescribed in our June and July issues is notexactly the one to give that final deter·mination to carryon to the end. Moreover,both the USSR and the USA are hugeempires which would remain Illllong therichest i.n the world even if their armieswere not to return vietorious.The psychological situation of Germanyis totally different. By their insistence onunconditional surronder and by the widelybroadcast discussion of their postwar plans,her enemies have made it q \lite clear toevery German what is in store for him ifthe Allies should ever be in a position todictate peace. If a German sol<lier were totry to explain why he fight.s the way hedocs-to his last bullet o\"on when his ownposition seems hopeless-he would probablygive an answer similar to tho 'one T'im,/!.',scorrespondent John Scott recently received.Scott describes how at 11 Swedish airport hehappened to meet a German who had j listarrived by plane from Germany. Tlieirconversation ended in this way:"We must win," the Gorman said suddenly inn low voic:o. Ho looked up nt· me alld repeated:"Wo've got to win." He miscd his voice andstruck t.he table lightly with hiB halld.. t·o emplaasi:r.ehi; words. "We m'/u<e win!" The German's ("COhad no l\nirnosity, but 8impl~' blind rosolution.And if one wore to ask that German onwhat he ba~es his hopes that his countrywill win the great decision of this war, hewould say, not in these words but to thiseffC'Ct: We will either·win back our militarysuperiority and fliug the .intruders out ofEurope in such a WilY that they will neverdare to come back, or, at the worllt, we willmake them pay lluch a terrible price forevery square mile of Eu.ropean soil thatthey tbem:;el\'cs wiJ.l decidt' to g{·t ont whilethere are still some of thl"m left.

The Second Phase

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The Second Phase

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