James Holland: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, that’s absolutely spot-on. And it’s interesting, because the vast majority of general histories of World War II tend to focus on the strategic and the tactical. So what do I mean by that? Well, the strategic, just for those who don’t know, that’s your overall war aims, get to Moscow, whatever it might be, conquer the world. That’s your strategy. The tactical side of things is, that’s the coalface of war. That’s the attritional bit. That’s the following in his Spitfire, the tank crew, the soldier in his foxhole, it’s the actual kinetic fighting bit. The operational bit is the level of war that links the strategic to the tactical. So it is absolutely factories, it’s economics, it’s shipping, it’s supply chains, it’s how you manage your war. And one of the things where I think people have been guilty in the past, historians have been guilty in the past, is by judging warfare all on the same level. But obviously, every competent nation has a different approach to war, because of the nation they are, the size they are, their geographical location. So Britain, for example, is an island nation. Its priority is the Royal Navy, which is why the Royal Navy is known as the senior service. And in 1939, it’s easy to forget it now when you see how depleted Britain is today, but in 1939, it has comfortably the world’s largest navy. There’s something like 194 destroyers, I think it’s 15 battleships, seven aircraft carriers, and another kind of six on the way. America, it’s got the Pacific Ocean, it’s got the Atlantic Ocean, it’s got two seaboards. It has the second-largest navy in the world, but a tiny army. I mean, the US Army in September 1939 is the nineteen1h largest in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay. And it’s just incredible. It’s 189,000 strong, which might seem reasonably large by today’s standards, but is absolutely tiny by 1939 standards. Whereas, Germany’s got an army of three and a half million in 1939. So these are big, big, big differences. But America’s coming at it from a different perspective, Britain’s coming apart, from a different perspective. Britain’s empire is all about, it’s a shipping, it’s a seaborne empire. Whereas, there’s also another point, which is having large armies is actually inherently impractical and inefficient, because the larger the army, the more people you’ve got to feed, the more barracks you’ve got to have, the more space you’ve got to have for training, the more people you’re taking out of your workforce to produce tanks and shells, and all the rest of it, because they’re tramping around with rifles. e, the more space you’ve got to have for training, the more people you’re taking out of your workforce to produce tanks and shells, and all the rest of it, because they’re tramping around with rifles. So there’s an argument saying, actually, it’s really not a very good way of doing things. So very much, the British way, and subsequently, the United States way, and the way of Britain’s dominions and empire, is to use steel, not our flesh, as a principle. Because the idea is that you use technology, mechanization, modernity, global reach, to do a lot of your hard yards. That’s the basic principle behind the strategic air campaign. When we talk about the strategic air campaign, we’re talking about strategic air forces which are operating in isolation from other armed forces. So a tactical air force, for example, is an Air force which is offering close air support for ground operations. A strategic air force has got nothing to do with ground operations, it’s just operating on its own. So that’s your bomber force, or whatever, that’s your B-17s and B 24s of the Eighth Air Force, flying out of East England, bombing the industrial complex of Germany, or whatever it might be. So it’s important to understand that when you compare, you have to have in the back of your mind that Britain, compared to Germany, for example, is coming at it from a completely different perspective. And I would say one of the failures of Hitler is that he always views everybody through his own very narrow worldview, which is not particularly helpful. You want to get inside the head of your enemy, and he’s sort of guilty of not doing that. So when you’re talking about Operation Barbarossa, to go back to your original question, Lex, you’re dealing with an operation on such a vast scale, that that operational level of war is absolutely vital to its chances of success or failure. It doesn’t matter how good your individual commanders are at the front. If you haven’t got the backup, it’s not going to work. And the problem that the Germans have is yes, they’ve got their three million men on the front, and they’ve got their kind of 3,000 aircraft, and all the rest of it. But actually, what you need to do is break it down. And who is doing the hard yards of that? The way that the German war machine works is that the machine bit is only the spearhead. So people always talk about the Nazi war machine. In a way, it’s a kind of misnomer, because you’re sort of suggesting that it’s highly mechanized and industrialized, and all the rest of it. And nothing could be further from the truth. The spearhead is, but the rest of it is not. And this is the fatal flaw of the German armed forces in the whole of World War II, really, but even in this early stage, because in Barbarossa, you’re talking about 17 Panzer divisions out of the 100-odd that are involved in the initial attack. Well, 17, a Panzer division is not a division full of Panzers, tanks. stage, because in Barbarossa, you’re talking about 17 Panzer divisions out of the 100-odd that are involved in the initial attack. Well, 17, a Panzer division is not a division full of Panzers, tanks. It is a combined arms motorized outfit. So, scouts on BMWs with sidecars, armored cars, infantry grenadiers, Panzer grenadiers, which are infantry in half tracks and trucks, mechanized. It is motorized artillery. It is motorized anti-aircraft artillery. It is motorized anti-tank artillery. Of course, it is tanks as well, Panzers. But those are a really, really small proportion of, you’re talking, less than 20% of your attacking force are those spearhead forces. And inevitably, they are going to be attrited as they go. You are going to take casualties. Not only that, you’re not going to just take battlefield casualties, you’re also going to have mechanical casualties, because of the huge spaces involved. You just simply can’t function. So what you see is, in the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, they surge forward. Red Army’s got absolutely no answers to anything. Stalin, weirdly, hasn’t heeded all the warnings that this attack is brewing. And there have been plenty, incidentally. And Smolensk falls on the 15th of July, in just less than four weeks. It’s just incredible. Three and a half weeks, Smolensk has gone, they’ve done, overwhelmed the rest of what had been Poland. They’ve surged into what is now Belarus, taken Smolensk. This is Army Group Center. Army Group North thrust up into the Baltic. It’s all going swimmingly well. But then, the next several months, they barely go a hundred miles, and that’s because they’re running out of steam. The 16th Panzer division, for example, by the time it’s taken Smolensk, involved in taking Smolensk on the 15th of July, 1941, the following day, it’s got 16 tanks left, 16 out of should have 180. So it’s just being attrited. They can’t sustain it, and they can’t sustain it, because as the Russians fall back, as the Soviet Red Army falls back, they do their own scorched earth policy. They also discover that the railway line is kind of a different loading gauge, so they’ve got to change it. So it’s slightly, the Russian loading gauge is slightly wider. So every single mile, every yard, every foot, every meter of the capturing of Russian railway has to be moved a couple of inches to the left, to make it fit the German Kriegslok, in the standard train of locomotive, of the Reichsbahn. Just imagine what that’s like. And also, Soviet trains are bigger, so they can take more water, which means, the water stops in between are fewer and far between. So they have to, the Germans, when they come in, their trains, their Kriegsloks are smaller. So they have to be re-watered more often, and re-coaled more often. I mean, it’s absolutely boggling just how complicated it is, and how badly planned it is, because they haven’t reckoned on this. They’re having to kind of think on their feet.…

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