Opening the East, January 1944
Despite Soviet successes north of the Danube, the Italians continued to make good progress against the German occupation forces in Thrace, and the fall of Istanbul just after the new year opened up the opportunity of liberating much of Anatolia, where the Turkish resistance had finally gained an upper hand in the south and west against the Axis.
In a conference at Rome, Italian, American and British commanders developed a plan that would see a combined Allied force (led by Graziani as the Italians commanded the most troops in the theatre) attempt to seize as much of Turkey as they could. Using the Indian armies stationed in Syria and the Italians crossing the sea from Istanbul, they hoped to link up with the Turkish resistance and retake Ankara, while US Marines landed on the south coast of Turkey to prevent the occupation forces from concentrating against the Allies.
The Axis position in the west was considerably weaker than anyone, even Hitler, believed. Only third-rate units were being used in the area, as all veterans and elite forces had been pulled from Army Group D to fight on the Western Front, while only a pair of understrength panzer divisions were available to provide any sort of heavy fighting power at all. What resistance the Germans did offer was quickly swept aside, and by the end of the winter all of Turkey west of Ankara had been liberated.
The eastern half of the country would prove much more difficult. Not only were the Allies operating at the end of lengthy supply lines (stretching back to Albania and Egypt), but the mountainous terrain favoured the Soviet defenders, while Stalin had sent some of his best mountain divisions, recruited from the Caucasus and having proven themselves in the invasion of Finland. As the winter weather prevented the Allied air forces from gaining a decisive advantage, Graziani called a halt to the operation. When clear skies returned, Stalin had sent his first production run of MiG-262s to the south, where they would prove a difficult foe.
Battle of the Rhineland, January 1944
After Manstein’s force had been wiped out, the Allies had planned on waiting until the winter passed before commencing the invasion of Germany. Their positions north of Arnhem meant that any defensive line based on the Rhine could be outflanked by the British, and it was believed likely that the Germans would prefer to hold out in the Rhineland, where most of their industry was concentrated.
The appearance of the Red Army on the Danube changed that, as although the Soviets had not yet joined the battle directly in Germany (although the VVS had been taking over from the Luftwaffe for a long time), Allied intelligence had found that Stalin was certainly considering doing so, especially after Churchill refused a Soviet peace offer that would have seen the Communists control all of Europe east of the Oder and north of the Danube.
The operation to take the Rhineland began in late January 1944, with the British 2nd Army leading the largest force out of the Arnhem bridgehead and along the banks of the Rhine. Manstein, now the overall commander of all the German forces on the Western Front, had expected an offensive in that sector, where the Allies had their only bridgehead over Germany’s greatest river. To stop the offensive, he pulled the best units of the remaining Wehrmacht from all along the Western Front to fight in the north, while brand new Wolf tanks were being driven out of the factories and straight onto the front line, not even giving the tanks’ paint time to dry.
With the Germans now tied up in the north, the combined Allied command launched the second stage of the offensive. Using most of the American forces in Europe, including the recently formed 3rd American Army under the command of General Patton, the second stage of the plan called for an offensive through Belgium and the southern Rhineland to smash through the crumbling German defence and seize bridges across the Rhine near Mainz, threatening Frankfurt and encircling the Ruhr between the two forces. Patton, who was known for his aggressive armoured tactics (which had denied him army command during the trench battles of 1942 and 1943), proved to be the perfect man to lead the operation, capturing Frankfurt before orders got through ordering him to halt just east of Mainz for supplies to catch up. The fall of Frankfurt came as a shock to Manstein, who had managed to hold up the British in the built-up areas of the Ruhr.
Battle of the Shetlands, February 1944
Throughout the later months of 1943, the Kriegsmarine’s battleship fleet had expanded from two battleships to six, as the Friedrich der Große-class entered service. Hitler’s four new ships, KMS Friedrich der Große*, KMS Großdeutschland, KMS Hindenburg and KMS Ludendorff were for the most part a slight enlargement of the Bismarcks, able to maintain the 30 knots of their predecessors, while weighing just over 60,000 tons and carrying 16” guns.
At the end of January, two factors came together that gave Hitler the opportunity to use his new naval power for the first time. Not only was the position in the Rhineland quickly becoming a disaster, and a victory at sea could be used to boost morale, but weather reporters predicted that conditions in the North Sea would be terrible over the next several days, which would give the ships time to slip through the Allied patrols. At Kiel, the Kriegsmarine’s officers protested, stating that the fleet had no hope of winning in what was mockingly called “Operation Suicide Charge”, in face of the British, French, Japanese and US Navies, each individually far superior to the Kriegsmarine. Hitler was steadfast in his determination to battle the Allied navies, and drafted orders for the SS to march into Kiel should Admiral Raeder order the Kriegsmarine to mutiny. Raeder reluctantly decided to order the Kriegsmarine out to sea, eventually admitting to reporters that “it would have been a shame to scuttle our fleet a second time at Scapa Flow”.
In addition to the six battleships, the Kriegsmarine could still call on fifteen destroyers, 22 submarines, the cruiser KMS Prinz Eugen and the two pocket battleships KMS Admiral Scheer and KMS Graf Spee, as well as thirty Fw 200 Condor bombers based in Norway. Between them, the Allies could call on more than thirty fleet carriers, 28 battleships and over 300 smaller ships from the various fleets based in the Atlantic. Despite this, the Kriegsmarine force managed to sneak through the North Sea unnoticed, while the Royal Navy remained unconvinced that the intelligence reports of the Kriegsmarine passing by southern Norway were true, thinking the move so stupid as to be impossible.
On February 9th, the Germans’ good luck ran out. The weather had cleared earlier than expected, and the Kriegsmarine ran into a small Allied task force built around the USS South Dakota and the enormous IJN Yamato. As Admiral Yamamoto set urgent radio reports back to London and called for all nearby Allied fleets to move to a position near the Shetland Islands, a massive battleship duel erupted. Several ships were badly damaged, and the Großdeutschland was forced to break away from the engagement and head to nearby Bergen for repairs towards the end of the day.
On the second day of the battle, the tide of the battle shifted decisively against the Germans. Yamamoto’s call for reinforcements had seen US Admiral Spruance pull together a task force comprised of eight fleet carriers, five battleships including the Yamato’s newly built sister ship Shinano, and a wide variety of smaller ships including heavy cruiser USS Alaska, another recent build. As the Kriegsmarine had no carrier escort (their only carrier having been sunk early in the war), Spruance wanted to avoid another gun duel, instead opting to launch a massive air strike against the Germans. The first wave of torpedo bombers quickly sent Bismarck and Hindenburg to the bottom, while Raeder attempted to finish off the stricken Yamato. Two hours later, Spruance launched a second wave of bombers, which effectively finished off the Kriegsmarine as a fighting force (KMS Ludendorff would be the only German ship larger than a destroyer to survive the battle, Großdeutschland being sunk by a submarine before it reached Bergen harbour). Allied losses had included five destroyers, 94 aircraft (mostly shot down by the large numbers of AA emplacements on the new German battleships) and the Yamato, but although the Allies would spend months repairing damage, the battle was an unquestionable victory, and second only to Jutland as the largest naval battle in history.
Head of the Viper, February 1944
For many in Germany, the destruction of the Kriegsmarine in a worthless attack was the final straw. Despite his boasts and initial successes, particularly in securing Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then forming an alliance with the strongest power in the world, Hitler had overseen one disaster after another since the invasion of France. Not only had the German people had to endure three years of the Western Front, which had gone no better than during the First World War, but in recent months they had been forced through worse. Allied bombing raids had visited most major German cities, destroying huge swathes of urban area, not just industrial targets but civilian homes as well. As the Rhineland began to fall under Allied occupation, German confidence in the war, waning since 1940, finally collapsed.
As Hitler announced a conference to begin in Berlin on February 24th, several high-ranking officers in the Wehrmacht began to consider removing Hitler from power and replacing him with a leader who would use the incredible advantages of an alliance with the USSR more effectively before Germany was conquered by the Allies outright. As the 24th neared, several officers informed Hitler that they would not be able to attend due to pressing needs at the front, while others travelled to Berlin, preparing to assassinate the Fuhrer and as much of the Nazi leadership as they could get.
Fortune favoured the plotters, as an Allied bombing raid on Berlin the previous night had disrupted usual security procedures. Hans Oster, who had led a plot in 1938 intending to kill Hitler should the Sudetenland crisis become a war, managed to smuggle a bomb into the conference room by hiding it in a briefcase. During the conference, it became necessary to cover the large table with a map of the Western Front, with the briefcase being used to hold down one of the corners. Oster left the conference early, claiming that an urgent report meant that he was needed back at Abwehr headquarters (the messenger was himself a member of the conspiracy, and the “urgent report” forged). Twenty minutes later, the bomb exploded. Hitler and Himmler were among the seventeen officials killed, as were Rudolf Hess and Martin Bormann, two prominent figures who were considered by many as likely successors to Hitler.
- BNC
(* = Yes, I'm aware that Hitler had thought about naming the first 2 H-classes after Gotz von Berlichingen and Ulrich von Hutten, but those names suck so I'm not using them)
I'd forgotten about that. The Meteor would be looking at a late 1944 introduction.
