1941: A Turning Point

As the year 1940 ended, Britain still stood on its own but it had taken in large numbers of troops from countries now under German occupation, including Polish, French, Czechoslovakian and Dutch troops who had escaped and made their way to Britain. Some of these men volunteered for new units that were being raised, such as the commandoes and the parachute regiment. Mainland Europe was a no-go area in terms of any type of campaign and the only way of engaging the Germans was through nuisance raids to gain information and prisoners. The first commando raid was undertaken on the night of 23/24 June 1940 by No .11 Independent Company, which sent a party to pick up information from the Boulogne and Le Touquet part of the French coast. Between July and September the same year, several further raids had been mounted, which included the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. It was only at sea with the Royal Navy or with Bomber Command that Britain could hit back at Germany. The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee had been sunk in December 1939 and the Royal Air Force had bombed Berlin in late August 1940. Further air attacks against targets in Germany continued and it was only in North Africa that Britain could continue the fight in direct contact with the enemy. After the rout of the Italians from Somalia and Ethiopia in late April 1941 the position left a stand-off or stalemate in the west of Egypt as the British Army turned westwards to face the combined build-up of Italo-German forces. It was only a question of time before a campaign was launched.

Most British tanks at the time, such as the Matilda Mk II and the cruiser types, mounted a main armament comprising a 2-pounder gun, which the crews were reliably informed was the best weapon there was. As they would later discover, the weapon was useless against German tanks and it was only when the Valentine with its 6-pounder gun arrived that any parity was achieved. Rommel’s forces included the 5th Light Division (later to become the 21st Panzer Division), which arrived two days before he landed and was followed by the 15th Panzer Division, which arrived in April. His tanks were mostly Mk II and Mk III Panzers armed with 2cm and 5cm guns respectively along with machine guns. He had other armoured vehicles and some older designs, and the Italian tanks were barely adequate, being lightly armed and armoured. The Italian M13/40 was armed with a 47mm gun and protected by 40mm of armour, but its speed of only 20mph and operational range of 125 miles limited its capabilities. By comparison the British Cruiser may have been armed with only a 40mm gun and protected by 40mm of armour but it could reach speeds of up to 27mph and had an operational range of 200 miles. Also, with 110 rounds of ammunition carried for the main gun and 4,500 rounds of ammunition for the two machine guns, the Cruiser could fight on for a lot longer than most Italian tanks. The Panzer III tanks were a different matter altogether but they had a limited operational range, and the Panzer II design suffered from a lack of hitting power. Deliveries of vehicles, whatever their vintage, continued to arrive to bolster the Germans in men and equipment and they built up their strength.

The nominal commander of the Axis forces was General Italo Gariboldi, the Italian commander-in-chief in North Africa, but Rommel had complete operational command and was answerable only to the German High Command in Berlin. The Italians had had a presence in Africa since sending troops into Libya in 1934 and following the invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. The British Army had maintained garrisons in the region since the end of the First World War. This made the Germans the newcomers to desert warfare, but Rommel and his troops were fast learners and they quickly developed the skills necessary to operate in the harsh conditions. The Deutsch Afrika Korps (DAK) had been raised especially for the campaign and, together with the Italians, would be termed the Deutsch-Italienische Panzerarmee. It has been opined that the campaign in North Africa was really nothing more than a ‘sideshow’ for Hitler, who already had his mind on attacking Soviet Russia. As a result the Afrika Korps would always find itself short of supplies, replacement vehicles and tanks. In October 1940 Major General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma told Hitler that in any future war involving German troops in the North African theatre, the ‘overriding consideration’ in his opinion would be one of logistics. Consequently they learned how to maintain their vehicles properly and kept them operational; their engineers had an enviable rate of recovering tanks from the battlefield. British veterans have often remarked how when the fighting stopped after a battle the Germans always remained on the battlefield to salvage what they could. For example, after Operation Battleaxe, the failed British attempt to relieve Tobruk in June 1941, the Germans recovered eighty-eight of the 100 tanks knocked out in the fighting. These would be cannibalised to repair other tanks or repaired and returned to the battle. The Germans also had transporter vehicles that brought the tanks forward, thereby saving wear and tear on the tracks.

By contrast the British had few transporters, which meant that their tanks had to move forward to the battle area on their tracks and then fight. The British had naval domination in the Mediterranean and air superiority with aircraft operating out of Malta, and the two forces could attack the German and Italian supply convoys between them. Such was the intensity of these attacks that only one vessel in four arrived with fuel and supplies. On average the Afrika Korps would receive some 47 per cent of the supplies and equipment that were sent. The remaining 53 per cent were sunk and in November 1941, for example, only 30,000 tons of an expected 70,000 tons of fuel and ammunition arrived. This severely limited the operational capability of Rommel’s tanks. If not with total impunity, the British could certainly send their convoys with a good chance of getting through due to both naval escorts and good air cover. The Italians told Hitler that convoys sailing across the Mediterranean had to be suspended because: ‘the British [RAF and Royal Navy] on Malta are slaughtering us!’ Malta had to be supplied with fuel if air and naval operations were to continue and the Italian and German air forces bombed the island relentlessly.

Operation Pedestal

In August 1942, arguably the most famous convoy of the war arrived in Malta with much-needed supplies of fuel for the aircraft to continue the defence of the island. Operation Pedestal set out with a convoy of fourteen merchant ships escorted by destroyers and aircraft carriers on 2 August and eight days later passed the Strait of Gibraltar where it ran the gauntlet of the voyage to Malta. On 13 August three merchantmen arrived at the island but the fuel tanker Ohio was not with them. Two days later the battered Ohio entered the Grand Harbour at Valletta lashed between two destroyers. Five merchantmen arrived including the Ohio, which delivered 11,500 tons of fuel and oil. This allowed Malta to continue to be used as a base from where Rommel’s convoys could be attacked. It has been estimated that 100,000 tons of shipping supplying the Afrika Korps was sunk in September 1942, including 24,000 tons of fuel, as a result of the Ohio delivering its cargo. In turn the losses meant that the Germans and Italians would be operationally restricted during the Second Battle of El Alamein which began on 23 October 1942.

The British Army was also learning lessons and began a programme of developing vehicles to serve in specialist roles on the battlefield. They also modified tanks to cope with the extreme conditions of desert warfare, such as a batch of 161 tanks that they received. These were the first in a series of specialised vehicles that would later lead to further developments for other theatres of operations.

Initially the British Army lacked the means to recover tanks in the desert and the engineers in the specialist support regiments such as the REME and Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) completed ‘in-field’ modifications by fitting winches and cranes to trucks. Things would continue to improve so that by the Second Battle of El Alamein, 23 October to 4 November 1942, more than 1,000 tanks and other AFVs belonging to X Corps were repaired in workshops and returned to battle during a three-week period. When the Lend-Lease Act was ratified in March 1941, specialised heavy 10-ton rated recovery trucks began to arrive from America to supplement the lighter 3-ton lorries that formed the backbone of the British Army’s transport fleet. The heavier vehicles were produced by companies experienced in the manufacture of heavy-duty lorries for use on massive projects such as the construction of dams in America. These vehicles were also suitable for use in the desert with their four-wheel drive capability. In earlier wars food for troops and forage for the horses had formed the bulk of supplies being transported. Here in the desert and in other theatres this level would fall to an average of 10 per cent – petrol oil and ammunition took priority. The British understood the importance of their vehicles and veterans of the campaign reported: ‘Your vehicle was your life, quite literally. We loved our vehicles and we’d do anything to keep them going.’ They did too and marvels were worked in maintenance.

The one great universal fear that was common among tank crews of all armies was the dread of catching fire during a battle. If the vehicle exploded completely on being hit, the chances were that no one knew anything about it. When the vehicle caught fire it was terrifying. A tank crewman remembers:

There was one particularly nasty form of ending one’s days if one is trapped in a tank and the tank blows up and is on fire. Nobody who’s been involved in this will ever lose the awfulness or the horror of screams of men trying to get out of their vehicles. If a tank is shot up and burning it didn’t matter whose side it was on, the crew had to escape. Once they’d escaped from this tank I know of no occasion when they were ruthlessly shot down by machine guns. They had the elements to face, they had sand and thirst and hunger to face and the fact that they were out of their tank and couldn’t make it back to their base was sufficient. If you could take them prisoner you would, but you wouldn’t do anything out of hand.

Generally speaking the tank crews did not have the facilities to take prisoners and it was left to the infantry to sort and escort them back and put the captives into ‘the bag’.

Rommel’s orders were simply that he was to conduct an ‘aggressive defence’. This went against his tactical and strategic battlefield policies, which embodied the much paraphrased principle that ‘the best form of defence is attack’, a doctrine that is sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. This was the man, after all, who had written the book Infantry Attack: he wanted to come to grips with the enemy and the only way that could be done was by mounting an offensive. Rommel later wrote of his decision to launch an attack: ‘There’ll be consternation amongst our masters in Tripoli and Rome and perhaps in Berlin too.’ He went on as though to take the blame in case things went wrong: ‘I took the risk against all orders because the opportunity seemed favourable.’ Wavell did not believe that the Germans were in any state of readiness to mount an attack and thought that they would need to spend more time organising themselves and building up their reserves. He was proven wrong when on 24 March Rommel made his first moves in what would be a three-pronged attack using the 5th Light Division and the Italian motorised division, which set out from a point 90 miles west of El Agheila. Tanks had never been subjected to such use and the toll on men and machines was punishing, as by the first day the distance to El Agheila had been covered using motorcycles and lorries to escort the tanks. The British began to retreat. The speed of Rommel’s advance surprised even his superiors in Berlin as he kept up the pressure. By 1 April the Germans were approaching Agedabia and heading for Benghazi. Facing them were tanks of the 5th Royal Tank Regiment. Sergeant Jake Wardrop wrote of the situation: ‘We sat behind a ridge and waited until they came, then popped up and let loose. There seemed to be nothing in front but tanks coming on, but we kept firing and they slowed down and finally halted and shot it out stationary.’ It was a scene that would be repeated many times in the months to come.

Another unit facing the attack was the 2nd Armoured Division, which had been sent to Egypt as a reinforcement unit and would have the most unfortunate and short-lived history of any unit of the entire war. Raised in December 1939 it did not begin to receive vehicles, tanks or troops until March 1940, when the 1st Armoured Brigade took into service around 150 Vickers Mk VI light tanks, which were armed variously with either a .50in-calibre machine gun or a 15mm heavy machine gun mounted in a turret with a single .303in machine gun mounted co-axially. One of the reasons for the slow build-up was that priority in tanks and equipment was allocated to the 1st Armoured Division, which was serving as part of the BEF in France. When the 2nd Armoured Division was finally completed, its strength in October 1940 stood at 344 tanks (all of which were inadequately armed for the task that lay ahead) and 10,750 men. The tanks were predominantly Cruisers such as the A9, A10 and A13 Mk III, all of which were armed with 2-pounder guns in their turrets with short-range and limited penetrating capability. The 2nd Armoured Division landed in North Africa in early 1941 and was seen as a great boost to General Wavell who was pushing the Italians back. When Rommel launched his counter-attack in March 1941 the 2nd Armoured Division found itself heavily engaged and on 8 April was caught in a pincer movement between the Italian 10th Bersaglieri Regiment and the German 5th Light Division and 15th Panzer Division. Some men were lucky to escape and made their way to the port of Tobruk, which was being held against a German siege. The rest were either killed or taken prisoner at Mechili. On 10 May 1941, less than eighteen months after it was formed, the 2nd Armoured Division was officially declared disbanded and did not re-form again during the war.

The Cruiser tank design came about in the 1930s when Britain realised that it had to begin a tank rearmament programme in view of the developments being unveiled in Germany at the time. A number of new tank and other armoured vehicle designs by different manufacturers were investigated for the British Army. Some proved successful and were developed and introduced to service while others were rejected. Britain may have been instrumental in introducing the tank to the battlefield during the First World War, but in post-war years had lost any advantage it enjoyed and failed to maintain the impetus of armoured warfare. The new tank designs that were built in the 1930s, it could be argued, were too little too late. To add to the problem was the fact that those tank designs that did enter service were slow, had limited combat range and were armed with a main gun that was less than up to the task of engaging enemy tanks. The gun was usually a 2-pounder of 40mm calibre, which was fitted to the likes of the A12 Matilda Mk II, A9 Mk I Cruiser or the Crusader Cruiser tanks. Among the tanks to suffer from inadequate armament and reduced combat range was the Cruiser Mk IV, which entered service in December 1938 and was officially termed the A13 Mk II.

The Cruiser Tank

The tank design that was to become the Cruiser Mk IV or A13 got off to a shaky start, but eventually it did enter service and was deployed to France in time to oppose the German blitzkrieg in 1940. To begin with, because of a lack of suitable hull designs on which to base any future tank, the British were forced to approach America for a vehicle, which was quite remarkable considering that at the time America was only producing light tanks in very small numbers. In 1936 Morris Motors was asked to develop a new tank and was presented with a Christie-designed vehicle straight from the drawing board on which to base their design. The vehicle required modification in order to meet the needs of the British Army along with original ideas as agreed on by the team of design engineers.

The Christie tank had a good speed cross-country and on roads could achieve up to 50mph, but the British Army wanted changes if it was to meet their criteria for a vehicle capable of functioning in battle. For example, the speed, while impressive, had to be reduced because high speeds meant that the crew would be thrown about during any manoeuvring and could prevent them from operating at maximum potential. The speed reduction was achieved by using a Nuffield Liberty V–12 water-cooled petrol engine of American design, which was originally built for aircraft and dated back to the First World War. For use in the new tank the engine was de-rated to deliver only 340hp, allowing speeds of up to 30mph, but this was still better than the A9 Mk I Cruiser tank introduced into service in 1938 and better than the German Panzer III and Panzer IV. It was a reliable engine and, even in its de-rated version, still permitted the Mk IV cruiser to scale vertical obstacles of some 2ft in height and to span gaps of over 7ft 6in wide, with an operational range of 90 miles.

The first version of the of the new Mk IV Cruiser entered service in late 1938 and about 335 vehicles were built by the time the production run ended in 1939. Some of these vehicles were used to equip units serving with the 1st Armoured Division when it was deployed to France on the outbreak of war in September 1939 as part of the BEF, and they would remain there, abandoned, after the final withdrawal was completed. The Mk IV had armour protection of between 6mm and 38mm, which afforded protection against machine-gun fire but not against anti-tank guns such as the PaK36 3.7cm or PaK38 5cm and certainly not against the heavier guns. In all there were four variants of the Mk IV Cruiser and all measured 19ft 5in long, 8ft 4in wide and 8ft 6in high. In addition to the main armament of a 2-pounder gun, the tank was armed with a co-axially mounted .303in-calibre Vickers machine gun and had smoke grenade dischargers on the turret. The turret sharply sloped with the intention of deflecting projectiles, but the lower half of the turret sloped sharply inwards towards the hull, which was a design fault that could allow anti-tank shells to become trapped or be deflected to the base of the turret. It was something that the crew had to live with and would prove to be the undoing of many Mk IV tanks during the fighting in France in 1940.

Vehicle Name	Manufacturer	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
Cruiser Mk IV (A13)	Morris Motors	1938	2-pounder gun and .303in-calibre Vickers machine gun	14.8 tons	30mph
Cruiser Mk IVA	Morris Motors	1939–43	2-pounder gun and BESA 7.92mm-calibre machine gun	14.8 tons	30mph
Cruiser Close Support	Morris Motors	1940 onwards	3.7in howitzer and 3x Vickers .303 machine guns	12 tons	25mph
Cruiser Mk VC	Morris Motors	1940–43	2-pounder gun and a machine gun	tons

The layout of the running gear comprised four road wheels, with the drive sprocket at the rear and the idler wheel at the front. There were no return rollers and so the track often had the appearance of being too slack for driving. The second version of the Cruiser tank was the Mk IVA, which included some modifications to the gearbox and also saw the Vickers machine gun being replaced by a BESA 7.92mm-calibre machine gun. The third version was a ‘Close Support’ or CS tank, and was followed by the Mk VC. The Cruiser tank was deployed to the western desert where it went into service with some armoured units of the 7th Armoured Division. The Christie-type suspension served well in the desert conditions and overall the tank was useful, but was it finally withdrawn from that theatre of operations in 1942. In the fighting in France the tank fared poorly against German tanks, which were used more boldly and in greater numbers. Photographs from the campaign show Mk IV tanks badly shot to pieces. In the final stages of withdrawal from Dunkirk in June 1940, the British Army could not embark any of its heavy equipment such as artillery, trucks or tanks and all of this had to be abandoned. This included those Mk IV Cruiser tanks sent out in 1939 that had survived the campaign. While the Germans often pressed into service any useful vehicle or weapon, the Cruiser tanks do not appear to have been worth their while. Instead, they stripped captured vehicles of anything of use and what was left was consigned to the scrap heap. The withdrawal of the Mk IV from service in the Middle East also marked the end of the Cruiser’s short but bloody service with the British Army.

The Rolls-Royce Armoured Car

Not all armoured vehicles used by the British Army in the Middle East were committed to the front line. Some had the vintage of their design going against them and for that reason were deployed to other roles such as airfield security with the Royal Air Force. One such vehicle was the Rolls-Royce armoured car, which dated back to the First World War. In 1940 there were about seventy-five in service in the Middle East. They had originally been built using the chassis of conventional vehicles, on to which was built an armoured body formed from steel plates. The armament comprised a Vickers .303in-calibre machine gun fitted into a fully traversing turret mounted mid-section above the crew compartment. These armoured cars had been used as reconnaissance vehicles in the First World War and their machine guns were for self-defence. The original Rolls-Royce designs from the Derby factory were the progenitors of later designs and the service rendered was so good that it led to an interwar design being developed that was directly based on the first wartime vehicles.

Vehicle Name	Manufacturer	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
Rolls-Royce armoured car (1914–18)	Rolls-Royce	1914	Vickers .303in-calibre machine gun	3.5 tons	45mph
Rolls-Royce armoured car (1920 Pattern)	Rolls-Royce	1920	Vickers .303in-calibre machine gun	3.8 tons	45mph
Rolls-Royce armoured car (1924 Pattern)	Rolls-Royce	1924	Vickers .303in-calibre machine gun	9.1 tons

The initial Rolls-Royce armoured car designs were strong, robust and capable of withstanding the rigours of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918; they were also quite capable of operating in the desert vastness of North Africa. The car had a standard four-wheeled configuration with the rear axle fitted with twinned wheels. The wheels were not protected, which left them vulnerable to punctures caused by enemy small arms fire. For this reason two spare wheels were carried to allow the three-man crew to keep the vehicle in operational order. A six-cylinder inline water-cooled petrol engine developing between 40bhp and 50bhp gave the vehicle a maximum road speed of 45mph and it had an operational range of 180 miles. The vehicle had a deck area to the rear that could be utilised to carry external loads including supplies of food and water, fuel, tools and spares for maintenance in the field.

The steel-plate covering was riveted into place and was between 8mm and 9mm in thickness and extended to cover the engine. The driver’s position had a steel plate to cover the windscreen and this feature could be lowered or raised depending on the situation. The radiator grille also had steel doors that could be closed when going into action. Large headlamps were fitted over the front wheel arches in the manner of civilian cars. Another feature taken from civilian designs was the running boards, which were fitted along the length of the vehicle. The Rolls-Royce armoured car was 16ft 2in long, 6ft 4in wide and 8ft 4in high. The turret with its Vickers machine gun could traverse through 360 degrees using hand gears, and extra ammunition supplies could be carried on the rear deck area. The Rolls-Royce armoured car had served throughout the entire First World War, including duties in the Middle East and Russia, so it was only natural that the design was retained after the war, but with some modifications. The first post-war version of the Rolls-Royce armoured car appeared in 1920 as a result of a War Office request for eighty further vehicles and was virtually unchanged from the 1914 version. It weighed 3.8 tons, only 670lb heavier than the original vehicle, due partly to the fact that the wheels were of a more modern design, but the rest of the extra weight was made up by the fact that the turret was slightly larger and by other modifications that were made to the armour protection. Only four years later, in 1924, another version of the Rolls-Royce armoured car made its appearance. With its modifications, this model weighed 9.1 tons due to the fact that the turret was fitted with a commander’s cupola, which also added to the overall height. The Vickers machine gun was now fitted into a ball-type mounting in order to provide for easier and smoother traversing when firing, and larger wheels with wider tyres were fitted to take the extra weight.

By the time of the early days of the Second World War in 1940 there were still approximately seventy-five of these vehicles in operational service in the Middle East and for home service in Britain. The Royal Air Force operated some of the Rolls-Royce armoured cars in Iraq in 1941, where they were used to help put down a revolt by local tribes and the 11th Hussars had used some during some of the earlier engagements against the Italians. Some modifications were made to the vehicles by the RAF to improve their operational role of airfield security, which involved removing the roof of the turret and replacing the Vickers machine gun with a Boys .55in-calibre anti-tank rifle. A smoke discharger was added and a Bren gun was mounted to cover the rear of the turret. The Rolls-Royce armoured car continued in service until 1945 when they were finally phased out. They may not have been much, but, as a way of using otherwise obsolete vehicles for rear-area security duties to free up more essential armoured cars for front-line service, they were ideal. The Germans had more modern designs and against these, such as the types armed with 2cm cannons, the Rolls-Royce armoured car would have stood little chance in a fire fight.

The German Invasion of Yugoslavia and the Attack on Tobruk

On 6 April five German panzer divisions with a force of around 1,000 tanks invaded Yugoslavia, which could only offer resistance with weapons and tanks that were out of date. Within two weeks the Germans had added another country to their list of blitzkrieg victims. On that night a German motorcycle patrol operating near Derna encountered a lone British light vehicle and took the passengers captive. The prisoners were Major General Richard O’Connor, commander in Egypt, and Lieutenant General Phillip Neame VC. It was quite a coup for the Germans, who sent both officers into captivity in Italy, but it would be short-lived as both men later succeeded in escaping. Germany appeared to be heading for a war on three fronts if it was not careful. The forces in Western Europe were garrisoning defences along the French coast and, although they knew that Britain could not mount an invasion of any size, they still had to be vigilant. The situation in Yugoslavia had absorbed troops and tanks but Hitler believed the situation was still within the capabilities of his armies. This, meanwhile, left North Africa.

While the situation in Yugoslavia was developing, Rommel’s northern armoured column was advancing along the coast towards Barce and Derna, which gave him ports to receive supplies from. His second column moved inland and succeeded in capturing vital stocks of fuel and other much-needed supplies at Msus and Mechili on 7 April, thereby denying them to the British. The capture of the supplies was a windfall for Rommel and here he was now using the same methods to extend and supplement his offensive that the British had used against the Italians only months earlier. The second column then headed towards Gazala, to place themselves 40 miles west of Tobruk with its port installations, essential for the unloading of supplies. If Tobruk could be captured the Allies would no longer be able to send in supplies by convoy and would be forced to send them further back along the Egyptian coast. Defending Tobruk was the 9th Australian Division, commanded by Major General Leslie James Morshead, who, determined to hold the port, had ordered them to dig in and prepare for a siege. They constructed two concentric lines of defences that encompassed the area surrounding Tobruk and extending inland to a depth of almost 10 miles in some places. The outer defensive line was the ‘Red Line’, which ran from a point on the coast west of Tobruk and formed a wide sweeping arc to the east where it terminated on the coast. The inner defensive position was the ‘Blue Line’, forming an arc but not ending at the coast, which gave it the appearance of hanging in the air. Some of the defences incorporated some seventy positions built by the Italians and an anti-tank ditch that was up to 30ft wide in some places, but Rommel’s third column had forged ahead in an even wider sweep to the south through Ben Gania.

By 11 April the Germans had taken Bardia and the 5th Light Division and 15th Panzer Division were to the east of the El Adem Road, a direct route leading north into Tobruk, which was now completely encircled. British Cruiser tanks of the 1st RTR and Panzer III tanks fired at one another across the anti-tank ditches surrounding the position like some land-based naval battle, and gave a foretaste of what was to come. The port had to be held if the Royal Navy was to escort convoys with the supplies for the British Army and Commonwealth troops. The Germans used the cover of darkness to probe the defences and in the late afternoon of 13 April they managed to penetrate the Red Line. The Australians resisted and during a counter-attack Corporal Jack Edmondson won a posthumous Victoria Cross for his action. The Germans still managed to advance and by 5 a.m. the next day their tanks were about half a mile beyond the Red Line, but the Australians were ready for them with anti-tank guns. As they negotiated the feature called the Pilastrino Escarpment, the panzers were fired on from the flanks, where the vehicles were weak in armour protection. British tanks joined in the melee and at close range the 2-pounder guns did some damage. After two hours of fighting the Germans withdrew, leaving behind seventeen destroyed tanks and many dead and wounded.

For the next two weeks the two sides faced one another off as the defenders prepared for the inevitable next round. The Germans had leant valuable lessons, and refined their tactics. They used the time to bring up more support in the form of ‘88’ anti-tank guns. On the evening of 30 April the Germans made a limited attack and were repulsed. Alerted to the fact that an attack was imminent, the Australians positioned anti-tank guns, and several Matilda tanks were moved forward to cover the expected line of attack. The Germans were delayed due to fog and the attack was launched at 8 a.m. The panzers pressed past the anti-tank guns but in the process became entangled in a minefield. Fighting continued throughout the day but the Germans fell back, holding on to some small gains, but they had lost another seventeen tanks. The British moved their Matilda tanks forward only to be met by the 88mm guns. This was a tactic developed and favoured by Rommel and was effective. The Germans were always numerically weaker in tanks than the British and to counter this Rommel devised a method of luring unsuspecting tank crews into areas commanded by his anti-tank guns. This saved his vehicles for the main attack while taking a severe toll on the Allies.

Four days later Rommel called a halt to the attacks and his forces were left in possession of the 30-mile-long perimeter surrounding a besieged Tobruk. It was frustrating to be denied the port installations at Tobruk and the siege dragged on to December 1941, turning the defenders into virtual prisoners. The British received more urgent supplies with the arrival of a supply convoy code-named Tiger, which brought with it fifty Hurricane fighter aircraft and 400 tanks, which would allow General Wavell to mount an attack code-named Operation Brevity. So far the fighting had cost the Germans and Italian 300 tanks destroyed and 38,000 casualties. The Allies fared better with losses of approximately half that number.

On 15 May Wavell launched Operation Brevity, commanded by Lieutenant General William ‘Strafer’ Gott, with twenty-nine Cruiser tanks attacking the Italians at Fort Capuzzo while twenty-four Matilda tanks attacked German positions in the Halfaya Pass. The aim of Brevity was to consolidate ground from where another, stronger attack could be launched in order to relieve Tobruk. The British succeeded in capturing the Halfaya Pass but Gott became concerned about fighting in open terrain and the following day the operation was terminated. The Germans had lost only a handful of tanks and although they fell back from their positions in Halfaya Pass they spent time consolidating before making their next move on 26 May when 160 tanks were deployed in the direction of the Egyptian border. It would turn out to be a ploy but the British believed they would be caught in a flanking attack and began their withdrawal from the Pass. Seizing the opportunity, Rommel rushed his forces into the Pass and fortified it with artillery, including the 88mm gun. The Allies would soon come to call the position ‘Hellfire Pass’ with good reason, and Rommel would earn the nickname ‘Desert Fox’ because he was so cunning.

In total more than 5,600 PzKw III tanks were built during the war.

Recreated PzKw III showing how it looked armed with the short-barrelled 75mm gun. The plates along the side are protection against anti-tank weapons.

Recreated PzKw III to depict how the short-barrelled 75mm gun version would have looked (top left) two modern recreated versions of the PzKw III to depict the long-barrelled 50mm version and the short-barrelled 75mm version (top right). The PzKw III was built in a series of models and also used as the basis for SPGs and assault guns such as the StuG. III.

The next planned operation by the British was code-named Battleaxe and had the same intention as Brevity in that it was meant to relieve Tobruk. It began on 15 June but the Germans already knew of the plan through radio interceptions that referred to the operation by the code word ‘Peter’. Both sides were experiencing troubles with their vehicles, especially their tanks, with sand entering the air filters and clogging the air intake. General Wavell noted: ‘Our infantry tanks are really too slow for a battle in the desert, and have been suffering considerable casualties from the powerful enemy anti-tank guns. Our cruisers have little advantage in power and speed over the German medium tanks. Technical breakdowns are still too numerous.’ The British attacked Halfaya Pass and lost a number of tanks in the process, including Matilda Mk IIs. Other objectives were taken and the operation continued through 16 June, but by 17 June the Germans were pushing hard. Wavell decided to close down the operation, having sustained 969 casualties, killed, wounded and missing, and a total of ninety-one tanks lost amounting to twenty-seven Cruisers and sixty-four Matildas. The German and Italians had suffered a combined casualty rate of 1,270 killed, wounded and missing, and had lost fifty tanks. However, they remained on the battlefield to recover what they could, including British tanks, and in the end they salvaged all but twelve vehicles that could be returned to the battlefield.

The reason that the Germans were able to keep one step ahead of the British is because they were receiving information about British intentions from the American military attaché in Cairo, Colonel Bonner Frank Fellers, whose coded messages were intercepted and deciphered by the Italians. Colonel Fellers was a conscientious officer and very capable in his position, but unknown to him or anyone else was that a member of the Italian Military Intelligence Service (Servizio Informazione Militare or SIM) working at the US Embassy in Rome had stolen the so-called ‘Black Code’ in September 1941, copied it and returned the original to the embassy. Fellers was privy to British military plans and was passing on details to the Military Intelligence Division in Washington; the Italians were intercepting these and decoding and sending the information to Rommel. At the time, America, not being in the war, still had diplomatic relations with Italy. It is almost impossible to calculate how much damage had been done by the time the leak was finally discovered in June 1942 and the stream of information was plugged. The British had broken the Black Code and when the Americans realised the security breach they changed it so that by the time Montgomery launched his offensive from El Alamein in October 1942 a new code was being used.

Five days later the main emphasis of the war shifted away from North Africa as Germany embarked on its next phase, which would see the true power of the blitzkrieg unleashed against a vast but largely unprepared enemy.

Operation Barbarossa

The war was twenty-one months old and still going in Germany’s favour when Hitler ordered Directive 21 or ‘Case Barbarossa’, the code to launch the attack against Russia, on 22 June 1941. Suddenly all other aspects of the war seemed secondary. Although Hitler had never attended a military academy he did have a general grasp of military strategy, but in this instance he had no idea of the scale of the problems that lay before the German Army in this vast country. The distances covered with apparent ease during the early phase of the campaign led Hitler to believe that another victory lay ahead. The Russian Army was believed to have a force of some 24,000 tanks but as most of these were obsolete they did not pose any problem to the modern tank forces of the German Army. The Red Air Force would be overwhelmed as their out-dated aircraft were shot down by the Luftwaffe’s modern fighters such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109. Within days of the start of the campaign German troops would advance deep into Russia with seemingly nothing to prevent them.

The German Tank Force in Russia

Vehicle Name	Type	Additional Features or Modifications	No. Vehicles Involved	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
PzKw I	SdKfz 101	Armour 7mm–13mm	410	2x MG34 7.92mm-calibre machine guns	5.3 tons	23mph
PzKw II	SdKfz 121	Later developed as SPGs and flame-throwers	746	2cm KwK30 cannon and MG34 7.92mm-calibre machine gun	9.4 tons	25mph
PzKw III	SdKfz 141	80 used as diving tanks	1,440	Ausf. A to D: 3.7cm KwK L/45 and 2x MG34 7.92mm-calibre machine gun; later versions up-gunned to 5cm and 7.5cm guns	14.8 tons for Ausf. A, increasing to 21.9 tons for Ausf. N	20mph for Ausf. A, increasing to 25mph for Ausf. N
PzKw IV Ausf. E	SdKfz 161	Spaced armour applied to turret and side over wheels	Between 517 and 550 all types depending on source	7.5cm KwK37 L/24 and 2x MG34 7.92mm machine guns	21 tons	26mph
PzKw 35 (t)	S–11a	At least 12 developed for artillery tractors		3.7cm KwK34 (t) L/40 and 2x MG37 (t) 7.92mm-calibre machine guns	10.5 tons	21mph
PzKw 38 (t)	TNHPS or LT Vz38	Developed into tank destroyers and others into SPGs, including Marder III		3.7cm KwK38 (t) L/48.7 and 2x MG37 (t) 7.92mm-calibre machine guns	9.4 tons	26mph

The scale of the attack was unprecedented and included 3 million troops in 146 divisions supported by three air fleets with over 1,800 aircraft. Seven armies and four panzer groups with 3,580 AFVs, 7,184 pieces of artillery, 600,000 other vehicles for transport and liaison roles, and 750,000 horses were committed to the attack. The tank force included 1,440 PzKw III and between 517 and 550 PzKw IV, with the remainder being made up of 410 older PzKw I and 746 PzKw II tanks along with a number of PzKw 35 (t) and 38 (t) tanks. This was blitzkrieg on a grand scale and it looked as though the tactics that had worked so well in Europe and against Poland might just add another casualty to Germany’s list of conquests. Some believed that Hitler may have taken on an enemy that was too strong for his armed forces; after all, the Soviet or Red Army was estimated to number around 3 million men. Other strategists thought the Soviets were too weakened by the army ‘purges’ of 1937–38 when Stalin had ordered the liquidation of around 35,000 officers and the army was left with only 10 per cent of its generals. One of the victims of the purges was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky who had been an exponent of tank warfare and had not only predicted that Germany would attack Russia in a future war but had gone on to add that the country would survive because: ‘In the final result, all would depend on who had the greater moral fibre and who at the close of operations disposed of operations disposed of operational reserves in depth.’ Almost 200 years earlier Frederick the Great had recognised this and placed great emphasis on the provision of supplies for his own troops, while at the same time disrupting the enemy’s lines of communication, which included their supply lines. Russia would come to show itself to be like a champion heavyweight boxer defending his title in the ring. The country would take enormous punishment and just when onlookers thought it was all over, like the boxer, it would come back with startling energy and reserves of strength.

Britain had stood alone against Germany for a year, during which time the threat of invasion had been very real; the German attack against Russia now gave Britain an ally. The Battle of Britain had been won by the fighter pilots of the RAF and the country had survived the Blitz against London and other cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, Coventry and other centres of war materiel production. The attack against Russia split Germany’s forces and took the pressure off Britain. Only the day before the attack Winston Churchill, in conversation with his secretary John Colville, said to him: ‘If Hitler invaded hell I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.’ Casting aside any differences, the Soviet ambassador in Washington went ‘cap in hand’ and asked the Americans for US$2 billion in aid. America was still neutral and Roosevelt could not give direct support but he did order that what assistance that could be provided was given in the circumstances.

The following day, on learning of Germany’s attack, Churchill declared: ‘No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have, but all this fades away before the spectacle that is now unfolding.’ Admittedly, Churchill was not a supporter of communism but here he knew that he had an ally in the common cause against a greater enemy and he continued in his statement to support Soviet Russia: ‘Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid.’ Despite Russia’s strength of arms on paper, Churchill sensed how unprepared the Russian Army would be in the face of the blitzkrieg and ordered that supplies be dispatched, with the first convoys sailing in August. By October Matilda Mk II tanks were being sent to Russia even though the British Army needed them for the fighting in North Africa. Marshal Joseph Stalin called for Britain to open a ‘second front’ and insisted that an attack be made against mainland Europe. Such a move was impossible, of course, because the British Army was fighting in North Africa and trying to produce enough war materiel for its own use, and now also trying to help Russia. Stalin could not believe that Germany had attacked, after all the two countries had signed a non-aggression pact in 1939, but the attack had happened. The Russian Army and tank force was large but, apart from an engagement against a Japanese tank force in Manchuria on the Sino-Russian border in August 1939, the Russian military had no experience in battle. The Russian commander General Georgi Zhukov had used his tanks with daring and imagination but it was not enough to help Russia in June 1941. The Germans, on the other hand, had several years’ experience of fighting, including action in the Spanish Civil War.

The Opel Blitz truck was used as a troop carrier, supply vehicle and to tow light artillery for the German Army throughout the war. Opel Blitz truck fitted to carry a 2cm light anti-aircraft gun. (left)

Hitler was well aware of the severe purges that had cost the Russian Army so many officers, and he also knew that much of the Russian Army’s equipment was obsolete. He told his generals that: ‘We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down.’ His generals urged caution and tried to warn him against fighting on two fronts. In typical fashion, which would become more commonplace later in the war, he dismissed their opinions. Hitler believed Britain was finished but would not admit it. He persisted in this belief even though British and Commonwealth forces were doggedly fighting in North Africa and more than holding their own. German troops in France were engaged in building fortifications along the coast that extended from the Spanish border to Norway. The attack against Russia was made along a front 500 miles wide and the panzers made good progress as they seized intact bridges across the River Bug.

Tanks and other armoured vehicles could be used to seize ground and force the enemy into retreat but it was the infantry that held it. Most armies understood that tanks could not move forward to their next objective until the infantry had advanced in sufficient strength to secure the area. Japan did not develop a large armoured force and most of their operations were artillery and infantry. As a consequence they did not fully develop integrated tactics and relied on manpower with their infantry, which adhered to ‘sheer dedication to battle in tight obedience to a strict military code’. The British Army knew armour had to work with infantry and used the strategy even if it caused them to be criticised, as was the case during Operation Market Garden when the tanks of XXX Corps would not advance without infantry support as they battled toward Arnhem Bridge in September 1944. The German infantry was regarded as ‘Königin aller Waffen’ or ‘queen of arms’ and was declared to be such in wartime recruitment posters. They could march to an objective or if there were adequate vehicles available they could be motorised and driven forward in trucks such as the Opel Blitz or specialised armoured personnel carriers (APCs) such as the SdKfz 250 or the larger SdKfz 251. The Opel Blitz was also used as a balance vehicle and later 2cm anti-aircraft guns were mounted on some to serve as mobile platforms.

The German Army’s Half-Tracked Vehicles

Just prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, the German Army began to seriously investigate the use of half-tracked vehicles and the way in which they could be employed to suit a variety of roles on the battlefield. By the time they launched their blitzkrieg against Western Europe in May 1940, the German Army was equipped with several versatile designs of half-tracked vehicles, from which two main types would emerge with the primary role of transporting troops. These were the SdKfz 250 and the larger SdKfz 251, and both would prove to be exceptionally useful in a variety of roles, exceeding all expectations. In fact, by the end of the war in 1945 the SdKfz 250 had been developed into no fewer than twelve different configurations.

The German Army knew that light-armoured half-track vehicles could be used on the battlefield as a ‘maid of all work’, and for this purpose the Demag 1-ton half-track vehicle was chosen as the vehicle on which to base the army’s requirement for a light multi-purpose vehicle. Unfortunately at the time of this decision the vehicle was not armoured and, in order for it to take the extra weight of the armoured protection, it became necessary to remove the last axle from the running system. The company of Bussing-NAG developed the armoured body and the resulting vehicle became known as the SdKfz 250. It was thoroughly tested in the field throughout 1939, so that by the outbreak of the war it was already in service, if in limited numbers, along with fully trained drivers.

Nevertheless, the SdKfz 250, originally referred to as the Leichte Gepanzerte Kraftwagen, did not properly enter service with the German Army until 1940, by which time it was known as the Leichte Schutzenpanzerwagen. Thus its delayed introduction into service meant that it was just too late for service during the 1939 Polish campaign, but it did serve in a number of roles in the attacks against the Low Countries, Belgium and France, including as a reconnaissance, command and communications vehicle. After this initial battle-proving deployment, the SdKfz 250 went on to see service on all fronts during the war, including the Western Desert.

The basic model was the SdKfz 250/1, which served as an APC; it had a crew of two (driver and commander), and was capable of carrying four fully equipped troops such as a mortar crew or machine-gun crew. In this role it usually mounted at least one machine gun such as the MG42, in the same manner as used on the SdKfz 251 Hanomag. The machine gun was fitted with an armoured shield and mounted to fire over the front of the vehicle. The basic version, SdKfz 250, was 15ft long, 6ft 4in wide, and 6ft 6in high, but this varied according to the role in which it was serving and the armament it carried. The standard version had a combat weight of 5.2 tons, but again this varied according to armament and other equipment. The armour thickness was between 8mm and 15mm, which was sufficient for the APC role.

The vehicle in all its variants was powered by a Maybach HL42TRKM six-cylinder, water-cooled, inline petrol engine, which developed 100hp at 2,800rpm and gave a top speed of 37mph on roads. The front wheels were not ‘driven’ but were rather used for steering purposes only. The automotive power was to the front drive sprockets on the tracks and the suspension was of the FAMO type, and while the vehicle itself was efficient, it was somewhat complicated to maintain. This was a telling point in the sub-zero conditions on the Russian front after 1941. Among the variants developed from the basic version of the SdKfz 250 vehicle, which carried light machine guns, there was an anti-tank gun version that even served in specialist engineer roles, as signals vehicles, as ammunition carriers with ordnance troops and was even used by the Luftwaffe.

Crew in a Steyr Kfz21 1500A truck, which could carry troops or supplies and even tow light guns or trailers.

Steyr Kfz21 1500A truck towing PaK43 75mm anti-tank gun and carrying the crew. The Steyr Kfz21 1500A was a utility vehicle serving in various roles.

The anti-tank gun version was termed the SdKfz 250/8 and mounted a 75mm KwK L/24 gun in the open area just behind the driver’s position. In this case the MG42 machine gun was often used for target ranging and engaging light vehicles and soft-skinned targets in the open. This version could attack vehicles larger and more powerful than itself, but if the crew missed with the first round the engagement could turn into a one-sided fight in the enemy’s favour. Because the 75mm gun was not mounted in a turret it had limited traverse and in order to aim the gun accurately the whole vehicle had to be pointed in the direction of the target. In that respect, this version was really an ambush weapon against vehicles or to provide fire support along with other artillery.

The SdKfz 250 was a versatile half-track design which could serve in many different roles including radio vehicle and mortar vehicle. Some of the radio equipment carried on the SdKfz 250 half-track (above left) and the driver’s positions (above right) of the SdKfz 250, which has all the controls to cope with roads and cross-country roles.

Another outstanding version was the SdKfz 250/9, which was an anti-aircraft vehicle served by a crew of three. In this role it was armed with a KwK38 2cm cannon, fitted with the TZF3a sight unit, with 100 rounds of ammunition. This was fitted into a turret with a high angle mounting, providing a full 360-degree traverse with elevation between −10 and +85 degrees, permitting the guns to engage ground targets and low-flying aircraft with equal effectiveness. This was actually the same type of turret as fitted to the SdKfz 222 armoured car, which meant that if necessary the combination could operate as an effective half-tracked armoured car to traverse terrain inaccessible by wheeled armoured cars. Originally thirty 250/9 vehicles were ordered but they proved so combat effective in Russia that the version eventually replaced the SdKfz 222.

The SdKfz 250 Range

The twelve main versions were termed:

SdKfz 250/1: Basic Infantry Carrier

SdKfz 250/2: Telephone Carrier

SdKfz 250/3: Radio Car

SdKfz 250/4: Anti-aircraft Vehicle

SdKfz 250/5: Observation Post

SdKfz 250/6: Ammunition Carrier

SdKfz 250/7: Carrier for 81mm Mortar

SdKfz 250/8: Close Support (75mm L/24)

SdKfz 250/9: Armoured Car (20mm KwK Cannon)

SdKfz 250/10: Platoon Commander (37mm PaK Gun)

SdKfz 250/11: Light Anti-Tank (28mm PzB41 Gun)

SdKfz 250/12: Survey Vehicle

Most, but not all, versions of the SdKfz 250 had open tops, and some were fitted with anti-grenade screens of wire-mesh covering, which could be folded over the rear compartment to prevent hand grenades being thrown in by attacking enemy infantry forces. This feature was particularly useful when engaged in close-quarter combat or partisan fighting. The vehicle had an operational road range of over 186 miles and it could scale a vertical obstacle of 15in and ford water obstacles of almost 2ft 6in and negotiate gradients of 40 degrees.

The basic SdKfz 250 range was used as a base for a series of true variants that were modifications of the standard design. These had their own ‘SdKfz’ or specialist designation rather than a simple oblique stroke suffixed after the SdKfz 250 number. For example, there was the SdKfz 252, which could tow a small two-wheeled trailer and was used as an ammunition carrier for field artillery, SPGs and tanks. Another derivative was the SdKfz 253, which also served in the support role for assault guns, such as the Sturmgeschutze, and doubled up as an artillery observation platform. These two versions each had fully enclosed armoured hulls with access hatches in the roof and rear doors.

The whole range of SdKfz 250 vehicles were produced in huge numbers and served throughout the war. They were versatile vehicles with excellent mobility.

There were plans to build at least three other versions or up-models in the SdKfz 250 range, but these were shelved as the war continued to go badly for Germany and due to the continued disruption to factories caused by Allied bombing. The SdKfz 250 series was highly regarded; to give an indication of this, in a twenty-eight-month period between June 1941 and October 1943, some 4,250 vehicles were produced. There is no doubt that it was a true ‘maid of all work’ on the battlefield, but there were other designs that served the German army equally well, if not better, such as the SdKfz 251 half-track which was a larger version of the SdKfz 250.

The vehicle that was to become the SdKfz 251 weighed 8.7 tons in its basic APC version and could carry ten fully equipped infantrymen as well as the driver and co-driver. This complied with the requirements which called for an armoured vehicle capable of transporting infantrymen on the battlefield. In 1935 the Gepanzerter Mannschraftstranportwagen (armoured personnel carrier) as it was then known was beginning to take shape and in 1938 the prototype was ready for field trials. Produced by the companies of Hanomag and Bussing-NAG, which built the chassis and hulls respectively, the vehicle was given the title of Mittlerer Schutzenpanzerwagen (medium infantry armoured vehicle) with the designation SdKfz 251. The first production models were ready to participate in the campaign against Poland. Output was low at first – only 348 were built in 1940 – but they were used during the campaign in the west that year. The SdKfz 251 was fitted with a Maybach HL42TKRM six-cylinder, water-cooled, petrol engine which developed 100hp at 2,800rpm to give road speeds of up to 34mph, which was more than sufficient to keep up with the tanks in the armoured divisions.

The APC version was 19ft long, 6ft 10in wide and 5ft 9in high. The vehicle could cope with vertical obstacles of up to 12in in height and cross ditches of 6ft 6in wide and had an operational range of 200 miles on roads. Armour protection was between 6mm and 14mm but the rear crew compartment, where the infantry sat, had no overhead protection, exposing the troops to the elements and also to the effects of shells exploding overhead. Two machine guns of the standard type issued to the infantry were fitted to allow one to fire forwards from behind a small armoured shield, while the weapon at the rear was fitted to a swivel mount to provide fire support for the infantry as they exited the vehicle. Being open-topped, the infantry could jump over the sides to leave the vehicle or through the double rear doors. The machine guns, for which 2,000 rounds of ammunition were carried, could be taken from the vehicle when the infantry was deployed.

Like its smaller counterpart, the SdKfz 250, this version was developed into a range of different purposes from ambulance duties to anti-tank roles. Production continued to increase and by late 1944 around 16,000 SdKfz 251 vehicles had been built. In total there were twenty-two different roles for which the vehicle was adopted. They had different lengths of service life but if they were capable of continuing to operate they remained in use. Examples could be found in operation right until the last days of the war at a time when fuel was extremely scarce. The SdKfz 251/1 was the basic APC infantry carrier and the list continued.

The SdKfz 251 Range

SdKfz 251/2 carried the Granatwerfer 34 8cm mortar.

SdKfz 251/3 was a radio vehicle that carried a range of communications equipment.

SdKfz 251/4 was an artillery tractor and ammunition transporter.

SdKfz 251/5 was a radio command vehicle for engineering platoons.

SdKfz 251/6 was a command post vehicle armed with machine guns.

SdKfz 251/7 was a specialised pioneer vehicle.

SdKfz 251/8 was an armoured ambulance capable of taking two stretcher cases or four seated.

SdKfz 251/9 – about 150 were built armed with a 75mm tank gun for service in Russia.

SdKfz 251/10 was armed with a 37mm anti-tank gun and machine gun.

SdKfz 251/11 was a telephone and cable-laying vehicle armed with machine gun.

SdKfz 251/12 was an artillery survey vehicle with radio equipment.

SdKfz 251/13 was an artillery support vehicle.

SdKfz 251/14 was an artillery support vehicle.

SdKfz 251/15 was an artillery support vehicle.

SdKfz 251/16 was a flame-thrower vehicle.

SdKfz 251/17 was armed with a machine gun and 2cm anti-aircraft gun.

SdKfz 251/18 was an artillery observation vehicle.

SdKfz 251/19 was a telephone vehicle.

SdKfz 251/20 was an infrared searchlight carrier.

SdKfz 251/21 was an anti-aircraft gun carrier mounting three 15mm machine guns.

SdKfz 251/22 was a vehicle armed with a 75mm anti-tank gun.

There were at least three other versions in the planning stage by this time, but the war was drawing to a close. The vehicle had good cross-country abilities and proved itself useful in a variety of roles and against a variety of weapons but it was complicated to maintain and the steering was not easy to control. Nevertheless the half-track series gave good account of themselves in Russia, including those designated as prime-mover vehicles for artillery.

Tactics

With such vehicles and a fleet of trucks to move the infantry forward under the umbrella cover of full air support, the Germans penetrated quickly and with better coordination they were able to push onwards. Tanks, trucks, motorcycles and other AFVs had advanced 20 miles within hours in some places. The Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks rolled on with trucks carrying infantry to keep pace, along with fuel and ammunition to keep them supplied for battle. One unit of the LVI Corps, commanded by General Eric von Manstein and operating in the north, had advanced 50 miles before darkness fell on the first day. This was part of Army Group North under the command of Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, the combined weight of which smashed a gap 100 miles wide in the Russian defences and pressed towards Leningrad. This major city lay on a strip of land resembling an isthmus, being bordered as it was to the east by Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland to the west. With German troops to the south and their Finnish allies to the north, the city would find itself isolated and under siege from early September. Italian troops would also be committed to the siege, which would last 872 days and was not lifted until 27 January 1944. The Russians did manage to establish a route to keep supplies flowing into the city and in the winter when Lake Ladoga froze it would prove to be a vital lifeline as trucks drove over the frozen surface.

Recreated SdKfz 251 based on a post-war Czech-built OT-810 which was a replica of the original. Here it is shown in its anti-tank version (top). The real SdKfz 251 in the standard personnel carrier version which served in all operational theatres of the war is also shown (above right).

From the initial results it looked as though Hitler’s predictions had been correct after all, as the Russians appeared to crumble. At first, the Russians refused to believe that they were being attacked and through this denial they paid a heavy price for not responding to the threat more quickly. By the end of the first day’s fighting almost 1,500 aircraft had been destroyed, mostly on the ground, and those machines that did take off were shot down. This was an extraordinary way to repay the country that had only recently sent Germany 1.5 million tons of wheat and 2 million tons of oil, and until only days before was still transporting goods to Germany by train. The Russians conducted a brave fighting retreat, hoping to buy time to allow them to consolidate, but the Germans were relentless and pressed onwards. Army Group Centre under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock pushed on towards Minsk as their primary objective, beyond which lay the greater prize, the city of Smolensk. Army Group South under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was temporarily slowed in its advance but it was soon on its way to lay siege to the port facilities at Odessa on the Black Sea and then to push beyond to the Crimea.

Just over a week after the commencement of Barbarossa German tanks were 200 miles into Russia and Army Group Centre was on the outskirts of Minsk; once that had been captured the way would be open to the Russian capital city of Moscow. Resistance in Minsk, however, was much greater than the Germans had anticipated and the city was not captured until 9 July. The Russians lost 324,000 troops captured along with 3,300 tanks and 1,800 pieces of artillery. Each delay in seizing their targets cost the Germans valuable time because they wanted to try to conclude the campaign before the onset of winter. They did not seem to recognise that the Russians were trying to buy time and as they fell back they left nothing for the Germans, who would have to fight hard for anything they wished to capture.

This was a policy the Russians had used before against the French when they invaded in 1812 under Napoleon Bonaparte. The difference was that Napoleon made it to Moscow, but at a severe cost: when he arrived in the city he found nothing there to support his troops. Everything had been destroyed in a policy known as ‘scorched earth’. It was a ruthless principle that denied food and fuel to the local populace but also meant that the invader could not live off supplies obtained locally. Joseph Stalin went on the radio to broadcast to the Russian people on 3 July and declared a ‘national patriotic war’ calling for everyone, soldier and citizen alike, to do their duty; he called for a scorched earth to be left for the advancing Germans, saying that not ‘a single railway engine, a single wagon, a single pound of grain’ should nor would be left for the enemy. If the broadcast was not heard the words were published in newspapers and spread by word of mouth.

After this drastic measure the invader would have to bring everything forward or face the prospect of the campaign collapsing. It looked as though history was going to repeat itself. Every mile the Germans advanced was another mile further to bring food and fuel. It has been opined that the most inhibiting factor in the conduct of land operations, except the combatants’ morale and fighting ability, was logistics. If a nation possessed enough space and could maintain its will to fight, then a point must be reached when deep penetration by invading enemy forces had to stop short of complete conquest due to logistical failure. Russia had the space to fall back and give the Germans the impression that they were winning. The political officers ensured that morale held even if it meant harsh punishments for those who failed. Officers who failed in their duty were expected to commit suicide, such as the commander of the air force, Lieutenant General Kopets, who shot himself. Lulled into a false sense of security, the Germans continued with their advance and captured huge numbers of prisoners and materiel, and destroyed tanks, trucks and artillery. The morale of the Russians and their will to fight still remained unbroken. As they withdrew the Russians knew that the autumn rains and winter freeze were approaching; this was called ‘rasputitsa’, the time without roads, when vehicles could not move. Apart from the main routes, the country’s road network comprised largely of unprepared dirt roads that would be rendered impassable due to the weather. Snow, rain and ice would turn the roads into muddy routes that sucked in everything and slowed vehicles to a grinding pace. The same conditions were a problem to the Russians, but they knew the terrain and conditions, and were more experienced in dealing with such hardship.

The Russian Force

The Russian tank force was estimated to have up to 24,000 vehicles, but it was also estimated that only 1,500 of these were modern designs and of that figure only 27 per cent were believed to be fully operational. True, the Russians were systematically destroying supplies and would lose tens of thousands of tanks, trucks and pieces of artillery, but their capacity to replace these losses astounded everybody from the Germans to the Western Allies, who also sent vast supplies to the Russians. For example, between 1941 and 1945 the Russian factories produced 100,000 tanks, the same number of aircraft and 175,000 pieces of artillery. Britain saw it as its national duty to support Russia as its ally against Germany, and convoys were sent with supplies to help in the war against the common enemy. The convoys sent to Russia were given the prefix ‘PQ’ to denote those outward-bound while those making the return voyage were coded ‘QP’. The most infamous incident involving a Russian convoy was that of PQ17, which sailed in late June 1942 with thirty-five merchantmen escorted by destroyers, corvettes and other vessels including tankers. The convoy came under intense attack from U-boats and aircraft and was ordered to scatter. Of the thirty-five cargo ships in the convoy only eleven eventually reached port. Apart from the loss of the twenty-four ships, 153 sailors were killed and 430 tanks were lost along with 210 aircraft, 3,350 other vehicles and 100,000 tons of various cargo. By the end of the war Britain had sent seventy-eight convoys of which eighty-seven vessels and a further eighteen Royal Navy escort ships were sunk, costing the lives of 2,773 seamen. They delivered 7,000 aircraft, 5,000 tanks and millions of tons of fuel, medical equipment and other material. Impressive as it was, these figures would represent only a drop in the total number of vehicles sent to Russia by America under the Lend-Lease Act. Initially America could do very little, but things would change, and in 1943 alone America sent 210,000 vehicles, 3,734 tanks and 2 million tyres. By the end of the war more than 400,000 vehicles, not including tanks, had been sent to Russia. Russia may have been caught unprepared but it soon stirred itself into action that stunned the world. To prevent the armaments factories and other vital industries from falling into German hands the Russians vitalised their massive work force and moved 1,500 factories hundreds and even thousands of miles to relocate them east of the Ural mountains and out of reach of the Germans. The entire factory staff went with their machines and in total more than 10 million people moved along with their tools and equipment. A year after this upheaval the Russian factories produced 24,500 tanks in the second half of 1942 and in 1943 this figure peaked at 30,000 vehicles. Russia had forty-two factories dedicated solely to the production of tanks and between them they built 18,000 KV tanks and 40,000 T–34 tanks, along with many thousands of other armoured vehicles. These last two types of tanks would come as a major surprise to the Germans who did not know of their existence.

America sent thousands of half-tracks to Russia for use to move men, supplies and artillery.

The Americans supplied Russia with hundreds of thousands of Jimmy trucks.

Allied Materiel Production

With vast reserves of coal to power the factories and sufficient supplies of iron, Britain, with its overseas colonies, produced a total of 700 warships, 135,000 aircraft of all types, more than 160,000 tanks and other AFVs, along with tens of thousands of trucks. To manage this huge output, between 1939 and 1945 Britain and its Commonwealth had 20 million factory workers, including over 6 million women, in the factories. Between 1941 and 1945 America produced 250,000 aircraft of all types, 90,000 tanks, 350 destroyers and 200 submarines. In the second half of 1942 the country produced 20,000 tanks, a figure that increased to 29,500 in 1943. The percentage of industry given over to war production in the USA was still only in the order of 40 per cent in 1944, not to mention the numbers of battleships and aircraft carriers also turned out in that period. The number of women entering the factories grew by 6.5 million during the war and at its peak in 1945 the female labour force had grown to 19,170,000, representing 36.1 per cent of the total labour force. This was the face of ‘Rosie the Riveter’, popular in recruitment propaganda. There was also a drive to promote women ordnance workers or WOWs, but it could just as easily have been ‘Wanda the Welder’ or any other girl’s name prefixing a duty such as ‘Lana the Lathe-turner’. At one Ford factory producing trucks they employed 42,000 workers, mainly women, engaged on the assembly lines. By contrast German factory output kept up production but when the men were conscripted the workforce fell from 25.5 million to around 13.5 million. German women were reluctant to enter factories although some did enter the workplace as welders, but even so the number of women in factories between 1939 and 1944 was less than 15 million. This led to foreign labourers from occupied territories such as France, Belgium and Holland, along with slave labour from the concentration camps, being forced to work in the factories. The numbers brought in from the occupied territories exceeded more than 7.5 million and although some were experts, this system did not give the best results and the quality of vehicles and armaments produced was inferior and often failed. Trains carrying supplies and replacement parts passed through occupied territories and as an act of sabotage resistance workers would sometimes be able to misdirect these and send them to the wrong destination. For example, vital stocks required for vehicle repairs in, say, north Russia, would be diverted to the south, thousands of miles away from where the equipment was actually needed.

The German Advance into Russia

As the German advance into Russia was across such a broad front it led to inter-unit rivalry as commanders tried to compete with one another to see who could capture the next target. Heinz Guderian, who had ‘steam-rollered’ into France, was one of these officers and was invariably to be found way out in front. His 2nd Panzer Group covered a distance of 413 miles from Brest Litovsk to Smolensk from the start of the campaign on 22 June to 16 July, giving an average distance covered of more than 16 miles per day. Breakdown rates for tanks was still around 30 per cent and in order to prevent this from reaching higher proportions armoured advances were often slowed or halted after 300 miles in order to carry out maintenance and resupply with ammunition and fuel. Any such delay allowed the Russians the opportunity to withdraw, regroup and prepare defences. As they withdrew the German commanders saw it as the chance to pursue an enemy they believed was retreating and forewent the vital maintenance needed to keep the vehicles operational.

Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, in command of the 4th Panzer Army, recognised Guderian’s eagerness to press on with the aim of capturing the city of Smolensk, which at the time lay 200 miles farther east. He told Guderian, ‘Your operations always hang by a thread’, but he still allowed his subordinate to charge ahead. The calculated risk paid dividends and on 16 July Smolensk was captured. By 27 July the Germans had captured another 310,000 Russian troops along with 3,100 pieces of artillery and 3,200 tanks. The Germans had around 200 SPGs and a tank force of 3,200, comprising 1,440 Panzer III tanks and 517 Panzer IV tanks, with the remainder being made up of older designs, including Panzer I and II types. The German tank crews were experienced but the majority of the Russians had not been in action before. The only general officer with recent battle experience was Georgi Zhukov in the north defending the city of Leningrad. He had been engaged against the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol on 20 August 1939, where he had enjoyed armoured and air superiority with 500 tanks against some 180 Japanese tanks. His 500 aircraft gave him air cover to support his tank force that comprised BT–5 and BT–7 designs that dated from 1935 and were armed with 47mm guns. These were Bistrokhodny Tank (BT) or ‘Fast Tanks’ and as such were capable of 45mph on roads and 33mph cross-country. Protected by armour plates 22mm thick, they were equal to the Japanese tanks they took on three years earlier, but against heavier, more powerfully armed German tanks they were no match. From the time of Germany’s attack to December, the Russians sustained at least 17,000 tanks lost in battle compared to German losses of only 2,700 tanks in the same period. The larger KV–1 tanks (Klim Voroshilov) were heavier and armed with 76.2mm-calibre guns. These heavy tanks could hold their own against German tanks. Unfortunately the Russians only had some 500 such tanks in service, but they had larger numbers of the T–34, also armed with a 76.2mm main gun, entering service. The Germans had yet to meet these formidable tanks in combat and may not have even been aware of their existence.

As the war progressed the Germans took to deploying an increasing number of captured enemy tanks in the campaign, mainly French designs, such as the Char Somua S–35 medium tank which the Germans designated as the Panzerkampfwagen 35C 739 (f), but these and other armoured vehicles did not always prove suitable for such battle conditions. For instance, captured examples of the French AMC–35 light tank were designated by the Germans as PzKfpw AMC 738 (f) and would be pressed into a variety of miscellaneous roles, but even so they would prove to have a very limited service value to the Germans and on the Russian front they were next to useless.

Renault AMC Light Tanks

The AMC–35 entered service in 1935 and, along with other designs of armoured vehicles, would give France a tank force numbering some 3,000 tanks of all types on the outbreak of war in September 1939. This force was organised into three armoured divisions, three light mechanised divisions and five cavalry divisions, which meant that the French Army was actually numerically stronger in terms of tanks than the German Army. Yet, despite its numerical superiority in tanks, France lost the campaign due to poor command decisions, mishandling of armoured forces and the committing of tanks to battle in small numbers to counter armoured thrusts by the more daring German Army. Some designs of French tank were actually better than their German opposite number, being armed with guns of heavier calibre and having better armoured protection that was thicker than that applied to German tanks.

The basic Renault-built AMC–35 light tank was armed with a 47mm-calibre gun and the level of armour protection was only 25mm, which was actually greater than some of the early German designs. The first prototype of the light tank that would become the AMC–35 was built by Renault in 1933 and utilised a turret from another light tank design, also built by Renault, that mounted a 37mm gun as the main armament. Field trials of this model revealed that it had a number of design faults that needed to be remedied and this resulted in the AMC Renault 34YR. This light tank seemed promising enough, with a maximum speed of 25mph and a fully traversing turret operated by two men. Unfortunately the main armament of only 25mm calibre was lighter than the weapon on the original prototype, and it was thought that such a small-calibre weapon would only be useful against light targets such as trucks. However, it should be remembered that the vehicle was not intended to be used in a direct assault taking on other armoured vehicles, but rather to gather intelligence, and that the light weapon was intended only for self-defence. At the time Renault was committed to developing other armoured vehicles for the French Army and, although the company had a highly experienced workforce and manufacturing resources, it could only stretch these so far while developing other vehicle designs for the French Army.

The company learnt a number of valuable lessons from the trials involving the AMC 34YR vehicle. One of these was the fact that even with its experience, the company did not know everything and designers acknowledged that further developments were needed, such as increasing the calibre of the main armament. These lessons were acted on and this led to the AMC–35 (standing for Auto-Mitrailleuse de Corps de Cavalrie), sometimes referred to as the ACG 1. Production actually ran to about 100 of these vehicles, with Renault only building a relatively small number, while the remainder were produced by the company of Atelier de Construction d’Issy-les-Moulineaux and incorporated a cast turret designed and built in Belgium. At the time, Belgium, a neutral state, acquired twelve, leaving the remaining eighty-eight tanks for the French Army. The version taken into service by the Belgian Army in 1937 was armed with a 47mm main armament and a co-axial armament of a 13.2mm-calibre heavy machine gun.

Vehicle Name	Manufacturer	German Army Designation	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
AMC–35 light tank	Renault	PzKpfw AMC738 (f)	1935	47mm main armament and co-axial 7.5mm-calibre machine gun	14.3 tons	25mph
AMR–33 VM light tank	Renault	PzSpWg VM701 (f)	1934–35	7.5mm machine gun	4.9 tons	37mph
AMR–35 ZT light tank	Renault	PzSpWg ZTI 702 (f)	1936–39	7.5mm-calibre machine gun, or either a 13.2mm Hotchkiss machine gun or a 25mm cannon	6.3 tons	34mph

The final design of the AMC–35 light tank which entered service with the French Army in 1935 was served by a crew of three. This comprised the driver, the commander and a gunner to operate the 47mm main armament and co-axial machine gun of 7.5mm calibre mounted in the turret with a full 360-degree traversing capability. In previous French tank designs the vehicle commander had been required to serve the main armament but with this design for the first time he could concentrate on his primary role of commanding the vehicle and assist with weapons firing as a secondary task. The turret was cast but the hull and superstructure was of a riveted construction, with a maximum level of 25mm thickness. It measured 15ft in length, 7ft 4in wide and 7ft 8in to the top of the turret. The AMC–35 weighed 14.3 tons and was powered by a Renault four-cylinder petrol engine developing 180hp, which gave it speeds of up to 25mph on roads; it also had an operational range of 100 miles. Suspension was of a type known as ‘scissors’, fitted with horizontal springs with the road wheels laid out with two sets of double bogies and a single set of further road wheels attached to the front of the layout to give five road wheels either side. The drive sprocket was set to the front with the idler wheel to the rear and a series of five return rollers. The vehicle could cope with vertical obstacles over 1ft 9in in height and span gaps of more than 5ft 9in.

Another Renault vehicle captured by the Germans was the AMR–33 VM light tank, which had been used throughout the French campaign in 1940. The term AMR in the title of AMR–33 VM stood for Auto-Mitrailleuse de Reconnaissance (machine-gun reconnaissance vehicle) and was used in this role to gather information on enemy movements to feed back to other, more powerful units to respond and engage the identified forces. The AMR–33 VM weighed only 4.9 tons and was very compact in design: 11ft 6in long, 5ft 3in wide and only 5ft 8in high. These reduced specifications were mainly due to the fact that the armament comprised only a single 7.5mm machine gun in a fully traversing turret of riveted design rather than a heavier-calibre main gun. This was considered suitable for a reconnaissance vehicle never intended to fight against more heavily armed tanks, and in effect made it a mobile machine-gun post comparable to the British Army’s Matilda Mk I. The AMR–33 VM had a hull of riveted design with levels of armour 13mm in thickness and a road speed of 37mph, which was much faster than the Matilda Mk I. Furthermore, the French light tank had a more rugged appearance than the Matilda Mk I and the Reinastella eight-cylinder, water-cooled, petrol engine developed 84bhp to permit the high road speed and power the vehicle over obstacles such as vertical surfaces over 2ft in height and to negotiate trenches spanning more than 5ft wide.

The road gear of the AMR–33 VM was quite complicated but it did ensure good mobility because of it, which was excellent for the reconnaissance role in which it operated. A pair of road wheels in a double bogie was fitted either side with a single further road wheel forward and another to the rear of the double bogie arrangement, to give four road wheels either side to distribute the vehicle’s weight. The idler wheel was placed to the rear and the drive sprocket to the front with four return rollers. It was a handy little vehicle and a crew of two men operating as driver and as machine-gunner/commander was sufficient for the vehicle in a similar manner to the Matilda Mk I.

A variant of the AMR–33 VM was fitted with an 85hp Renault engine that gave a road speed of 34mph and, combined with other modifications, produced a vehicle weighing 6.3 tons. In all, a total of 200 of these tanks were built and entered service with the designation AMR–35 ZT. A two-man crew also served this vehicle, which could be armed with either a standard 7.5mm-calibre machine gun, a 13.2mm Hotchkiss machine gun or a 25mm cannon, also of Hotchkiss design. The Germans pressed into service those examples of the AMR–33 VM and AMR–35 ZT that had not been destroyed in the fighting, giving them the designation PzSpWg VM701 (f) and PzSpWg ZTI 702 (f) respectively, until they became worn out and had to be replaced by other vehicles. When the vehicles were declared obsolete the turrets were removed, along with their armament, and used as extemporised armoured machine-gun posts set on to a concrete base as static defences. Some examples of the light tanks after removal of their turrets were converted into mortar-carrying vehicles to provide mobile fire support to infantry units. As a fast light tank for reconnaissance roles the range was very good and for the remainder of their service lives the AMR–33 VM and other captured French armoured vehicles continued in service with the Germans, who made full use of them when weather conditions allowed and this way extended their service life a little bit longer.

Barbarossa Continues

The initial phase of Barbarossa had gone in Germany’s favour but after several weeks of continuous combat, the tanks were beginning to show signs of wear and tear with mechanical breakdowns requiring serious maintenance. The German High Command had estimated that the main bulk of the fighting would be over after six to eight weeks and the way would be clear to advance on the strategic centres of Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. In the first day of the attack the Luftwaffe had conducted air strikes against sixty-six airfields and destroyed 2,000 aircraft on the ground. On 3 July the army chief of staff, Colonel General Hans Halder, wrote: ‘It is no exaggeration to say to say that the campaign in Russia has been won in 14 days.’ He was, of course, being frightfully over-optimistic. On 8 July Field Marshal Fedor von Bock made his own report on the successes of the campaign so far, which at the time was less than three weeks old. In his report he listed that Army Group Centre had destroyed four Soviet armies comprising thirty-two infantry divisions, eight armoured divisions and many other elements including three cavalry divisions, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Russians killed and more than another 287,000 taken prisoner. The Russians had lost over 1,500 pieces of artillery and 2,500 tanks, mainly in actions such as the engagement where 200 Russian tanks, including twenty-nine KV designs, were destroyed by the Panzer-Abwehr Kanone (PaK) (anti-tank guns). Tank forces in the Soviet or Red Army were made up of the light T–26 and BT designs and the heavier Klim Voroshilov or KV–1 and KV–2 designs. But even the heavy weight of these tanks with their thick armour could not protect them from German anti-tank guns, especially the 88mm. German tanks were also being equipped with increasingly heavier-calibre guns and the PzKw IV was being deployed with 75mm-calibre guns.

Two weeks after the first situation reports had been filed, the Germans calculated they had captured or killed 3 million Russian troops and destroyed 12,000 tanks and 8,000 aircraft, but the cost to them was also great. Specialist vehicles such as the Panzer-Bergegerat SdKfz 179 were developed to help recover damaged tanks from the battlefield. The Germans were to become masters of this operation and established field workshops. Each tank regiment had its own workshop company, which comprised two repair platoons, one recovery platoon and several sections that specialised in different aspects of repair. There were repair sections right down to tank company levels. If repairs could not be undertaken in the field the damaged vehicle would be towed back to the workshop company, which might be located up to 20 miles to the rear, and the vehicle was expected to return to the front in twelve hours. In theory and when spares were available that level could be achieved, but as the advance moved further into Russia and as winter set in, things became more complicated. The campaign had begun with a fleet of 200,000 trucks to support the supply routes but this figure consisted of more than 200 different types of vehicle, including those captured from France, Belgium and Poland. When these broke down it was almost impossible to locate spares for even the simplest of repairs.

On 11 July, while the generals were delivering their verdicts, their armies were still 10 miles short of Kiev and a halt had to be called for vehicle maintenance and to allow re-supplies to be brought forward if the attack was to continue. The tanks had covered hundreds of miles and on 28 June one unit had advanced an incredible 72 miles in one day. The lighter trucks and motorcycles were covering thousands of miles as they traversed backwards and forwards along the supply routes carrying orders and moving supplies. Engines had to be overhauled and repairs made, but all the time they were expected to keep up the pressure and attack. Army Group North was moving to invest Leningrad in a siege planned to reduce and capture the city. Stocks of ammunition and fuel continued to run low and, lacking suitable numbers of supply vehicles with good cross-country abilities to reach units in the remote areas, things were slowing down to allow the supplies to be brought forward. Even so, the Germans managed to capture the important centres of Bialystok, Minsk and Smolensk on the route towards Moscow. The southern flank of Army Group Centre moved towards the city of Kiev, which the Russians had designated as the Kiev Special Military District with a defence force of fifty-six divisions supported by almost 5,600 tanks, including 1,000 of the new KV–1 and T–34 types that the Germans met for the first time on the battlefield. At Smolensk, General Guderian had encountered a tank force some 100 strong made up of T–34s and KV–2s, the heavier version of the KV–1. Following one engagement against the KV–2, Major General Walther Nehring, commanding the 18th Panzer Division, stared in awe at the size of the tank, which had survived eleven direct hits. Fortunately for the Germans the Russian tank crews were not experienced in fighting as a cohesive unit and their gunnery was slow. On 12 September the city was finally surrounded but the battle continued to rage for another six days. Cut off from reinforcements and with ammunition and supplies running out, the Russian defenders surrendered. This left the Germans with 600,000 prisoners of war to deal with. They had to be marched back under escort, which meant that troops had to be diverted away from front-line duties at least until they returned to their units. The campaign against Russia was now 100 days old, 3.5 million men had been taken prisoner and by all estimates the bulk of the tank, artillery and air force had been smashed. The campaign had cost the Germans 400,000 casualties but it was still looking favourable for them.

The front-line troops had their own opinions of the campaign. Tank crews discovered that their guns were not powerful enough to penetrate the armour of the heavier tanks and so they devised a method to deal with them. The tactic was radical and called for them to move in very close and very fast with the intention of shooting off the tanks’ tracks, thereby crippling the KV and T–34, which could then be dealt with by anti-tank guns. This realisation that their tank guns were not sufficiently powerful to destroy the latest Russian tanks led to the Germans fitting ever more powerful guns to their tanks and investigating methods of improving on the ammunition.

On 1 October Hitler ordered Operation Typhoon, the all-out advance against Moscow. The Germans committed 200,000 men in seventy-eight divisions but the armies were weakened by tank losses of up to 56 per cent on average and ammunition supplies were depleted to a level that was only sufficient for four days’ fighting. At the start of the campaign there had been ammunition stock for sixty days’ continuous fighting, and the consumption rates should give an indication of how tough the fighting had been. The operation went ahead all the same and two weeks later German tanks were on the outskirts of Moscow.

The weather now began to change and the first autumn rains washed out the roads and the advance slowed to a crawl. On 10 October the Russian leader Joseph Stalin appointed Marshal Georgi Zhukov to the task of defending Moscow. The Russians used the delay caused to the Germans by the weather to their advantage and built up reserves, so that by 1 November Zhukov had eighty-four divisions to defend the city comprising 1.25 million men, 10,600 pieces of artillery, 930 aircraft and 850 tanks, including more units equipped with the new T–34 and KV tanks. Over the following two weeks more reinforcements were sent into the city with over 100,000 men arriving along with another 1,000 pieces of artillery and a further 300 tanks. The railway system serving Moscow was intact, despite receiving the attention of the Luftwaffe’s bombers, and supplies and reinforcements flowed into the city. On their return journey they took out vital manufacturing equipment from factories along with non-essential personnel.

On 7 November Stalin addressed the defenders of the city who were assembled in the Red Square outside the Kremlin. He declared: ‘The German invaders want a war of extermination against the peoples of the Soviet Union. Very well then! If they want a war of extermination, they shall have it.’ The country had a manpower reserve of 16 million men of military age that it could call on to commit to the fight and in the east there were fifty divisions and 3,000 aircraft to guard against an attack by Japan. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and turned their attentions to Singapore and Malaya, the Russians, realising they were not at risk of attack, released these forces to reinforce their western front. As they arrived in Moscow all available civilian transport, including taxis and buses, were commandeered to move the troops to the western front in a scene reminiscent of London and Paris in the First World War. The workers and civilians of Moscow were also mobilised into work details numbering 450,000 and between them they dug 60 miles of anti-tank ditches and 5,000 miles of trenches. Finally the ground had frozen sufficiently to allow the German tanks to move once more but there were other complications. The temperatures frequently plummet to −30°C (even lower temperatures have been recorded) and the Russians refer to this as ‘General Winter’, one of their greatest defending officers. Radiators burst, water pumps froze and fuel and oil solidified in the tanks and sumps of the fleet of 27,000 vehicles supporting the advance. The Germans had never experienced anything like it and had made few if any preparations for these extreme conditions. Men froze to death and frostbite weakened units. The weather was causing more casualties and destroying more vehicles than actual fighting and General Winter was living up to its reputation. Fodder could not be brought forward for the horses and they died in their thousands.

Conditions in the summer created dust that clogged the air filters of the 60,000 transport vehicles as they passed along the compacted earthen Russian roads. This was bad enough, but when the rain came otherwise perfectly serviceable vehicles had to be abandoned because they had sunk deeply into the mud, which sucked at everything. Then the sub-zero conditions in some cases dropped to −40°C and nothing could be salvaged. Under these conditions the Germans somehow still managed to advance so that on 27 November they were less than 20 miles away from the centre of Moscow. On the same day General Eduard Wagner, Quartermaster General of the German Army, stated: ‘We are at the end of our resources in both personnel and materiel. We are about to be confronted with the changes of deep winter.’ The advance rate was little more than a crawl and on 4 December the last operational tank in service with the 1st Panzer Division, nicknamed ‘Antony the Last’, finally broke down. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock also voiced his concerns and on 16 December reported: ‘it is doubtful if the units can hold a new, unprepared defensive line is clear – because of the shortage of fuel and because of icy roads I am not getting my motorised units back; I am not even getting my horse-drawn artillery back because the horses cannot manage the weather.’ Russians tanks had wider tracks and the trucks had higher ground clearance than the German vehicles, which meant that they could cope with the snow and mud better than the German designs.

The Russian Counter-Attack

On 5 and 6 December the Russians launched their counter-attack along a front 600 miles wide. Weapons were frozen solid and could not fire. The Russians, supported by T–34 tanks, some of which came straight from the factories and were not even painted, attacked in overwhelming numbers and forced the Germans back, leaving in their wake the abandoned vehicles that were useless in any case due to the weather. The attack was continued until March 1942, and pushed the Germans back 90 miles on average, and in some places more than twice that distance. One Russian soldier wrote: ‘We sped forward, slowed only by the terrain.’ Thousands of villages and towns had been recaptured but, more importantly, by early spring 1942 the Germans had lost 500,000 men, 1,300 tanks, 2,500 pieces of artillery and 15,000 other vehicles including transportation trucks. The only major failure was at Demyansk where they had hoped to encircle the 96,000 troops of II Corps, part of the Sixteenth Army. The Russians were on three sides but they could just not manage to close the gap at the rear to cut off the unit. The Luftwaffe proved to be the saving force and over a period of ten weeks they flew up to 150 flights per day to transport 65,000 tons of supplies in and to evacuate 34,500 wounded. The men at Demyansk were finally relieved at the end of April 1942 but by then the threat against Moscow had been removed. A similar but smaller action had taken place at Kholm, south of Leningrad, where between 23 January and 5 May 1942 the Luftwaffe managed to support 5,500 troops by air supply after they were cut off for 105 days. At this early stage in the campaign the Germans were still capable of achieving such actions because they had the resources, but it could only last for so long as demands increased. The Russians had achieved a great deal in pushing the Germans back as far as they had but they were far from being defeated. In April 1943 the Russians hoped to regain the city of Kharkov, and Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, commander of the Red Army’s south-west front, made plans for its recapture. Stalin ordered that it be taken and Timoshenko committed the Sixth Army to attack from the north while the Twenty-Eighth and Thirty-Eighth Armies attacked from the north-east and south-east respectively. Altogether he had deployed 640,000 men and 1,200 tanks, including the new T–34 with its 76.2mm main gun. The Russians attacked on 12 May but, unknown to them, the Germans, under the command of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, were also planning an offensive called ‘Fridericus’ using their own Sixth Army in the north supported by forces to the south. The attack pre-empted the German attack by six days and the Russians managed to break through the German lines. The Germans responded by putting in a full-scale attack and even though Russian officers on the spot realised the danger, Stalin ordered things to be left as they were. On 17 May von Bock launched Fridericus in strength and within a week had moved to cut off the Russian Sixth and Fifty-Seventh Armies. By 28 May it was all over and was another resounding victory for the German Army, which had killed or captured more than 277,000 Russians and destroyed more than 2,000 pieces of artillery along with 1,250 tanks. Hitler now began looking at the oil fields in the Caucasus region and in particular the great city of Stalingrad.

Manufacturing in Russia

Being a communist state there was no private enterprise in Soviet Russia because the state owned everything including all manufacturing. There was a motor industry to produce vehicles for a range of purposes including the military, but like the collective farming policy that controlled agricultural output, there was a Five-Year Plan governing how the industry should operate. The first of the Five-Year Plans ran from 1928 to 1933 and during that period the AMO factory near Moscow was engaged in building Italian-designed 1.5-ton trucks. Another factory was built at Gorky and this was the GAZ, which covered an area of 256 acres and employed a workforce of 12,000, making it the largest plant of its type in Europe. It built 1.5-ton American-designed trucks called the Model AA and together these two factories increased production from 50,000 vehicles in the first Five-Year Plan to more than 200,000 by the second Five-Year Plan. Other factories were also built, such as the ZIS (Zavod Imieni Stalin) and YAG (Yaroslav Automobilini Zavod), and these added to the output of trucks.

Russian Trucks

Vehicle Name	Type	Manufacturer	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
AAA	Truck	GAZ	1934–43	Some fitted with quadruple 7.62mm machine guns and towed anti-tank guns and artillery	2.5 tons	35mph
ZIS–6	6x4 truck	Zavod Imeni Stalina	1933–41	Mounted the Katyusha ‘Stalin Organ’ rocket artillery	4.1 tons	34mph
GAZ–67	4x4 truck	GAZ	1943–44	N/A	1.3 tons	56mph

Because of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact agreed in 1939, Russia had felt secure from attack. In the weeks and months after the attack of 22 June vital manufacturing facilities such as the GAZ, AMO, ZIS and YAG factories would all be relocated beyond the Urals along with all of the workers. There the factories would be established in new centres of industry such as Sverdlovsk, Magnitogorsk and Chelyabinsk and would produce tanks, trucks and guns. Yet it seemed that no matter how many trucks and cars were built there was never enough to replace the thousands lost in battle. The vehicles sent by America bolstered the output and the contribution by Britain also helped the situation. As with other armies, some of the Russian trucks, such as the 2.5-ton AAA built by GAZ, were adapted to mount armaments such as quadruple machine guns for the anti-aircraft roles. Other trucks including the 6x4 ZIS–6 were adapted to carry the rocket artillery systems that were the famous ‘Stalin Organs’ which terrified the Germans with the shrieking noise as the rockets were fired. Russia produced 2.5-ton half-tracks for use as artillery tractors and between 1933 and 1940 well over 1 million trucks were built by the GAZ and KIM factories. The Americans supplied vast numbers of vehicles including Jeeps, which the Russians promptly copied at the GAZ factory and produced as the 4x4 GAZ–67. This was a heavier vehicle than the Jeep and some 92,000 were built between 1943 and 1953, which was still only a fraction of America’s production figures for the Jeep. As impressive as all this was, it was Russia’s output of AFVs, especially tanks, which bolstered the army and gave it the fighting force to take on the Germans.

War on Three Fronts

Hitler’s forces were now engaged on three fronts – something that no logical commander ever wants. Russia was absorbing more resources in manpower and weaponry than could be afforded but Hitler refused to acknowledge the fact. In France the Germans realised that they must begin constructing defences against an Allied landing and this absorbed millions of tons of concrete, steel and guns. In North Africa, things were looking slightly better, but the campaign was still only being viewed as a sideshow. The oil fields in the Middle East were a tempting prize but those in the Ukraine were within Hitler’s grasp and Army Group South was foremost in threatening this region. Operations in North Africa had been continuing meanwhile, with both sides receiving vehicles, supplies and more troops. The problem facing Rommel was the shortage of fuel as the British continued to sink the supply ships carrying fuel for his vehicles. On the Russian front, millions of men and thousands of tanks were being engaged in battles and by comparison the fighting in North Africa was small scale, but to the British it was important because it was weakening Germany’s ability to fight and showed Russia that its ally was doing its best. By now, though, some of the vehicles and tanks used in the campaign were of considerable age and were only kept operational by the resourceful efforts of the engineers and mechanics on both sides. Fighting continued and specialist units such as the LRDG gathered information and the Special Air Service (SAS) sent out raiding groups to destroy fuel dumps and airfields. All the while the armies were trying desperately to build up resources for an attack, defence or counter-attack.

The harbour town of Tobruk was still under siege by the Germans but the garrison of Australian and British troops was holding on. While they held this port facility they could receive supplies. The British received a new commander-in-chief when Churchill appointed General Sir Claude Auchinleck to replace General Wavell. Diligently, he built up his resources in readiness to attack Rommel in what was being regarded as round three; to the ordinary soldier it was another part of the ‘Benghazi handicap’ or ‘Benghazi stakes’, so-called after horse-racing terms. The British had already advanced almost 500 miles against the Italians between December 1940 and February 1941, until Rommel arrived and pushed them back almost to their starting point. Now, in November, the British were poised to advance once again and cover the same old ground. This time, though, things would be different because the British had new tanks in the form of the American-built M3 Stuart light tank which the troops nicknamed ‘Honey’ because it was well liked. Later on more American-built tanks would be sent to the theatre, including the M3 Lee-Grant medium tank which would also be sent to Russia under terms of the Lend-Lease Agreement. Factories in America were now producing hundreds of tanks and between July and December 1941 some 2,000 Lee-Grant tanks were built. In fact, these designs and other American equipment would be tested in battle by the British many months before America entered the war. Lacking supplies and replacement equipment, Rommel’s armoured forces had to press captured British tanks such as the Matilda Mk II and Marmon-Herrington armoured cars into service.

Recreated SAS with Jeep fitted with machine guns to show how the vehicles appeared.

Non Lend-Lease Vehicles from the USA

The American government may not have been supplying arms and equipment to Britain before 1941 but that did stop individual private companies such as the Indianapolis-based company of Marmon-Herrington from selling a range of automotive components, including four-wheel drive conversions for Ford trucks, which were sent to South Africa in 1939. This allowed engineering companies to modify chassis of 4x2 trucks to produce 113 armoured cars that became known as Mk I Marmon-Herrington and entered service in 1940. The Mk II was built on a 4x4 chassis in 1940 and 900 were produced, some of which were deployed against the Italians in East Africa in March 1941. The Mk II Marmon-Herrington armoured car weighed about 6 tons and was 14ft 9in long. It had armoured protection between 6mm and 12mm and was fitted with a Ford eight-cylinder engine rated at 95hp, achieving speeds of up to 50mph. Armed with a Boys .55in anti-tank rifle and two .303in machine guns and served by a crew of four, the vehicle had an operational range of 200 miles. Successive modifications produced the Mk III and Mk IIIa versions and some of these had their weaponry changed on the battlefield to fit heavier-calibre weapons, including captured examples of enemy weapons with 20mm and 47mm calibres taken from Italian and German vehicles. The Germans captured Marmon-Herrington vehicles and pressed them into service and some wartime photographs show some of these vehicles fitted with wheels to permit them to run on railway tracks.

The series continued to be produced leading to the development of the Mk IV of which 2,116 were built in two versions. These were the Mk IV and the Mk IV F, which incorporated a mixture of Marmon-Herrington and Canadian Ford components. Both designs were armed with a 2-pounder (40mm-calibre) anti-tank gun mounted in a turret and a .30in-calibre machine gun mounted co-axially with the suspension, rear-mounted engine and transmission all bolted to the hull. The design had no direct affinity with Marmon-Herrington and although built in large numbers the requirement for the vehicle had largely passed by the time they began to enter service in 1943, unlike the earlier Mk II and Mk III vehicles that had been used extensively against the Italians, and consequently the Mk IV saw no combat service. After the war the Mk IV Marmon-Herrington armoured cars would be sold to overseas armies including the Greek Cypriot National Guard but with the original Ford V–8 engines replaced by Perkins six-cylinder diesel engines.

The Marmon-Herrington Armoured Car

Vehicle Name	Type	Manufacturer	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
Mk I Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1940	2x Vickers .303in-calibre machine guns	5.6 tons	45mph
Mk II Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1940	Boys .55in anti-tank rifle and two .303in machine guns	5.8 tons	50mph
Mk III Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1941	.55in-calibre Boys anti-tank rifle and .303in-calibre machine gun	5.6 tons	55mph
Mk IIIa Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1941	2x Vickers .303in-calibre machine gun	5.6 tons	55mph
Mk IV Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1943	2 pounder (40mm-calibre) anti-tank gun and a .30in-calibre machine gun	6.6 tons	50mph
Mk IV F Marmon-Herrington	Armoured car	Marmon-Herrington	1943	2 pounder (40mm-calibre) anti-tank gun and a .30in-calibre machine gun	6.1 tons	50mph

While the earlier armoured car designs had been useful with good turns of speed and endurance for desert warfare, they had lacked heavy armament, which was why the Mk IV had been developed with its 2-pounder gun fitted into a fully traversing two-man turret. The gun was the field-pattern type because it was felt that the recoil of a tank-pattern weapon would be too powerful. Even so, a recuperator was fitted under the barrel and this was a prominent feature of the design. The secondary armament was a .30in-calibre machine gun and a further machine gun could be fitted on the turret roof. Either side of the turret a smoke grenade discharger was fitted to help screen the vehicle’s movement over open group. Both the Mk IV and Mk IV F versions were served by a three-man crew, with the Mk IV F retaining the Ford V–8 engine. This version was 15ft long and measured 6ft wide and 7ft 6in to the top of the turret. It weighed 6.1 tons and had a fuel capacity of 46 imperial gallons, which gave an operational range of 200 miles. Carried on the vehicle were all the ancillary items necessary to maintain it in the field and sand channels to help recover it in the event of it becoming bogged down in deep sand. Positions were also provided for the stowage of kit on the outside rear of the vehicle. The driver’s position was well equipped with an opening to provide good visibility and an armoured screen that could be lowered for his protection. Steering was achieved by a standard steering wheel mounted in the middle and facing straight ahead. To permit driving with the screen lowered a vision block was fitted. Large side openings allowed the crew to enter and also gave visibility to the sides. Access to the vehicle could also be achieved through the hatch in the turret roof.

The crews had to live out of their vehicles as shown in this reproduction of a Marmon-Herrington Mk III armoured car which is of the type used in North Africa.

Reproduction Marmon-Herrington Mk III armoured car as used in North Africa. The reproduction is as close to the real thing as is possible.

Operation Crusader

Finally, after months of waiting and preparation, the British made their move and Auchinleck ordered Operation Crusader to commence at break of day on 18 November 1941. Churchill broadcast a speech to the troops saying: ‘For the first time British and Empire troops will meet the German with an ample equipment in modern weapons of all kinds. Now is the time to strike the hardest blow …’ It was stirring stuff and a force of 10,000 vehicles and 100,000 men attacked with the intention of driving the Germans back and relieving the 23,000 men in the garrison at Tobruk, which had been isolated for seven months. The British armoured units of XXX Corps had 453 Cruiser tanks, 287 Crusaders and 166 Stuarts along with armoured cars. In addition the 1st Army Tank Brigade attached to XIII Corps had another 135 tanks comprising Matilda Mk IIs and the newer Valentines, which were fast but still lacking heavy guns. The two main German units – the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions – faced this with only 272 tanks comprising PzKw III and PzKw IV tanks, but British intelligence estimated that around a third of these were not battleworthy. Despite the rain the British advanced and made good gains. The following day the 22nd Armoured Brigade equipped with Crusader tanks engaged the Italian Ariete Division at Bir el Gubi and in the fighting they lost twenty-five tanks but destroyed thirty-four Italian vehicles. The brigade lost a further thirty tanks due to mechanical failure and were forced to retire. At Sidi Rezegh the Crusader tanks of 7th Armoured Brigade took the Italians by surprise and their gunfire destroyed a large number of their aircraft on the ground. The Italians quickly rallied and prevented the British from linking up with the garrison at Tobruk.

In a separate action at Gabr Saleh, less than 50 miles south of Tobruk, the German battle group known as Kampfgruppe Stephan, with eighty-five tanks, engaged the 4th Armoured Brigade, equipped with Stuart tanks, in the first large-scale tank battle of the desert war so far. The Germans had artillery support and anti-tank guns and although each side claimed a victory the British withdrew having lost twenty-three tanks, while the German losses were minimal. On 23 November Rommel turned his attention against Tobruk and the day before had ordered the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions to concentrate on Gabr Saleh and move on to Sidi Rezegh, which was what the British wanted. Unfortunately it did not turn out the way the British would have liked because Rommel had made better preparations and virtually destroyed the 7th Armoured Brigade, which was left with only ten tanks capable of fighting. General Ludwig Cruwell headed to Bir el Gubi where he joined forces with the Italian Ariete Division. Together they exploited a gap in the line between XXX Corps and XIII Corps but he found his way barred by the 5th South African Infantry Brigade. In the fighting that followed, the South Africans lost 3,400 killed or taken prisoner. The remnants of the 22nd Armoured Brigade with only thirty-four tanks and some artillery were also in the gap and they made a stand. Cruwell had 160 tanks and a further 100 Italian tanks, and with such superior numbers he charged recklessly at the British positions. It cost him dearly, with the loss of seventy tanks, but the action had also caused the British to spend their last reserves and they were forced to withdraw. Night was falling and Rommel was watching events at Sidi Rezegh and wrote: ‘Visibility was poor and many British tanks and guns were able to break away to the south without being caught. But a great part of the enemy force still remained inside.’ He went on to conclude: ‘hundreds of burning vehicles, tanks and guns lit up the field.’ He called the scene ‘Totensonntag’ (Sunday of the dead).

Lieutenant Cyril Joly, serving as a tank commander with the 4th Armoured Brigade, wrote of the fighting at Sidi Rezegh, summing it up generally as a whole:

It was a frightening and awful spectacle – the dead and dying strewn over the battlefield, in trucks and Bren-carriers, in trenches and toppled over in death, other vocal with pain and stained by red gashes of flowing blood or the dark marks of old congealed wounds. Trucks, guns, ammunition, odd bits of clothing were smouldering or burning with bright tongues of fire. Here and there ammunition had caught fire and was exploding with spurts of flame and black smoke. Tanks of all kinds – Italian, German and British – littered the whole area.

It was a scene that would be repeated many times, not just in the desert but all across Europe.

The AEC Armoured Command Vehicle

Vehicle Name	Type	Manufacturer	Production Date	Armament	Weight	Max. Speed
AEC 4x4	Armoured command vehicle	AEC	1940 onwards	N/A	7.7–12 tons	35mph

Operation Crusader was still in action and the fighting continued while losses on both sides mounted. Rommel arrived just outside Tobruk where he met General Cruwell, who believed that most of the British forces were destroyed. Among the vehicles seized by the Germans were some British AEC 4x4 armoured command vehicles, two of which were used by Rommel and his staff and nicknamed ‘Max’ and ‘Moriz’, but the design as a whole was referred to as ‘Mammut’ (Mammoth). They were not armed but they were large and spacious, and if equipped with radios were perfectly suited to the role of command vehicles. They weighed 7–12 tons and were fitted with an AEC diesel engine rated at 95bhp, which allowed these vehicles to reach speeds of up to 35mph. The next four days were an anxious time and it tested men’s nerves to the limit. One of those who gave in under the strain was Lieutenant General Sir Alan Cunningham, who was evacuated to a hospital in Cairo suffering from severe mental exhaustion. Major General Neil Ritchie was appointed in his place. Orders were issued for Major General Sir Bernard Freyberg VC and his tough 2nd New Zealand Division to push on to Tobruk. The beleaguered garrison did not wait for their relief to arrive and, jumping into anything that moved including Bren gun carriers and trucks, they took the initiative and fought their way south-east to link up with the New Zealanders who were now only 4 miles distant. They joined in the fighting along the Sidi Rezegh ridge, which was held by the Italians, and the position was captured.

Rommel’s Retreat

Rommel knew the campaign was over and realised that although he may have lost the battle the war was not yet finished. Gathering his forces together and with only forty operational tanks, he conducted a well-organised retreat despite being strafed by aircraft virtually all the way back to Libya and his starting point. He was not only beaten on land, but also at sea, where his supply ships bringing fuel and other supplies were being sunk. In November alone the Royal Navy and RAF had sunk sixteen supply ships with a total of 60,000 tons of fuel, ammunition and other equipment vital to the Afrika Korps. Round three of the Benghazi Stakes had been won and on 10 December Churchill announced to the House of Commons that: ‘The enemy, who has fought with the utmost stubbornness and enterprise, has paid the price for his valour, and it may well be that the second phase of the Battle of Libya will gather more easily the fruits of the first than has been our experience.’ Operation Crusader had cost the British and Commonwealth troops 17,700 killed and wounded and more than 800 tanks destroyed, battle damaged or broken down. The Germans and Italians had suffered more than 38,000 killed, wounded and captured along with 340 tanks destroyed or damaged. Three days before Churchill’s speech, the war had taken another direction when on 7 December Japanese naval aircraft bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor

By 1941 it was becoming increasingly clear to many people that it was only a question of time before Japan entered the war as a full signatory of the Tripartite Pact alongside its allies Italy and Germany. Japan had actually been engaged in hostilities against China since the invasion of 1937 and fought brief but bloody border engagements with the Russians. Relations between America and Japan had been deteriorating for some time and finally, on 7 December 1941, Japan used aircraft flying from aircraft carriers to bomb the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, thereby showing the world what it was capable of. Japanese forces rapidly expanded across the Pacific to invade other territories such as Borneo, Timor and Malaya. Japanese aircraft bombed the British colonies of Singapore and Hong Kong in the early hours of the morning of 8 December. President Roosevelt condemned the attack on Pearl Harbor and on 8 December addressed Congress and called it ‘a date which will live in infamy’. Britain reacted to the attacks by declaring war on Japan later the same day. Four days after the Pearl Harbor attack, 11 December 1941, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on America. Hitler had unwittingly made an enemy of this mighty industrial nation. He would have done well to heed the prophetic words spoken by the Japanese Admiral Isiroku Yamamoto, who said after the Pearl Harbor attack: ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.’ America would indeed become the ‘arsenal of Democracy’ as Roosevelt had declared, and in terms of the armoury of the Allies, it would change the entire course of the war.

When Winston Churchill first heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor he could scarcely contain himself because he knew that with America as an ally the defeat of Germany was almost certain. In February that year Churchill had broadcast an impassioned speech calling for America to ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job’. As he later wrote after the war in the multi-volume work The Second World War: ‘So we had won after all!’ He continued in the same work by writing: ‘No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States on our side was to be the greatest joy.’ It had taken a dreadful act of war to push America into the fray, but he knew that it also meant survival. Churchill travelled to Washington, where between 24 December 1941 and 14 January 1942 he conducted a series of talks with Roosevelt in what is referred to as the Arcadia Conference. Here they agreed to combine all resources at their disposal to make the defeat of Germany their main priority. The effect was almost immediate as the great industrial might of the country shifted into producing tanks, guns and planes for the battles that lay ahead. America’s entry into the war also gave Britain, which had been standing alone against Germany for eighteen months, another much-needed ally. Over the years America has been unfairly criticised for not entering the war sooner, but the plain fact of the matter was that until Japan’s act of aggression and the declaration of war against the country by Italy and Germany, it was not America’s problem. But as the year 1941 ended, it had become her problem.