World War II

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7

Pause in the Western Offensive

Bradley and Montgomery sent their army groups north and east across the Seine on August 25, the British going along the coast toward Belgium, the Americans toward the Franco-German border. Montgomery’s troops seized Antwerp on September 3, and the first American patrols crossed the German border on September 11. But the pursuit was ending. The German armies shattered in the breakout were being rebuilt, and Hitler sent as commander Field Marshal Walter Model, who had earned a reputation as the so-called lion of the defense on the eastern front. Montgomery had reached formidable water barriers—the Meuse and lower Rhine rivers—and the Americans were coming up against the west wall, which had been built in the 1930s as the German counterpart to the Maginot line. Although most of its big guns had been removed, the west wall’s concrete bunkers and antitank barriers would make it tough to crack.

The Allies’ most serious problem was that they had outrun their supplies. Gasoline and ammunition in particular were scarce and were being brought from French ports on the channel coast over as much as 800 km (500 mi) of war-damaged roads and railroads. Until the port of Antwerp could be cleared and put into operation, major advances like those in August and early September were out of the question.

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8

The Warsaw Uprising

The Soviet offensive had spread to the flanks of Army Group Center in July. On July 29 a spearhead reached the Baltic coast near Rīga and severed Army Group North’s land contact with the German main front. Powerful thrusts past Army Group Center’s south flank reached the line of the Wisła (Vistula) River upstream from Warsaw by the end of the month. In Warsaw on July 31 the Polish underground Home Army commanded by General Tadeusz Komorowski (known as General Bor) staged an uprising. The insurgents, who were loyal to the anti-Communist exile government in London, disrupted the Germans for several days. The Soviet forces held fast on the east side of the Wisła, however, and Stalin refused to let U.S. planes use Soviet airfields for making supply flights for the insurgents. He did, finally, allow one flight by 110 B-17s, which was made on September 18. By then it was too late; the Germans had the upper hand; and Komorowski surrendered on October 2. Stalin insisted that his forces could not have crossed into Warsaw because they were too weak, which was probably not true. On the other hand, the line of the Wisła was as far as the Soviet armies could go on a broad front without pausing to replenish their supplies.

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9

The Defeat of Germany's Allies in the East

While the Soviet Union was letting the Warsaw uprising run its tragic course, it was gathering in a plentiful harvest of successes elsewhere. An offensive between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea, opened on August 20, resulted in Romania's asking for an armistice three days later. Bulgaria, which had never declared war on the Soviet Union, surrendered on September 9, Finland on September 19. Soviet troops took Belgrade on October 20 and installed a Communist government under Tito in Yugoslavia. In Hungary, the Russians were at the gates of Budapest by late November.

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10

Allied Advances in Italy

The Italian campaign passed into the shadow of Overlord in the summer of 1944. Clark’s Fifth Army, comprising French and Poles as well as Americans, took Monte Cassino on May 18. A breakout from the Anzio beachhead five days later forced the Germans to abandon the whole Gustav line, and the Fifth Army entered Rome, an open city since June 4. The advance went well for some distance north of Rome, but it was bound to lose momentum because U.S. and French divisions would soon be withdrawn for the invasion of southern France. After taking Ancona on the east and Florence on the west coast in the second week of August, the Allies were at the German Gothic line. An offensive late in the month demolished the Gothic line but failed in three months to carry through to the Po River valley and was stopped for the winter in the mountains.

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11

The Battle of the Philippine Sea

Operations against Japan in the Pacific picked up speed in 1944. In the spring, the JCS projected advances by MacArthur through northwestern New Guinea and into the Philippines and by Nimitz across the central Pacific to the Marianas and Caroline Islands. The Japanese, on their part, were getting ready for a decisive naval battle east of the Philippines.

After making leaps along the New Guinea coast to Aitape, Hollandia, and Wakde Island in April and May, MacArthur’s troops landed on Biak Island on May 27. Airfields on Biak would enable U.S. planes to harass the Japanese fleet in the Philippines. A striking force built around the world’s two largest battleships, Yamato and Musashi, was steaming toward Biak on June 13 when the U.S. Navy began bombing and shelling Saipan in the Marianas. The Japanese ships were then ordered to turn north and join the First Mobile Fleet of Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, which was heading out of the Philippines toward the Marianas.

On June 19 and 20, Ozawa met U.S. Task Force 58, under Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The outcome was decided in the air and under the sea. Ozawa had five heavy and four light carriers; Mitscher had nine heavy and six light carriers. On the first day, in what was called the Marianas Turkey Shoot, U.S. fighters downed 219 of 326 Japanese planes sent against them. While the air battle was going on, U.S. submarines sank Ozawa’s two largest carriers, one of them his flagship; and on the second day, dive-bombers sank a third big carrier. After that, Ozawa steered north toward Okinawa with just 35 planes left. It was the end for Japanese carrier aviation. Mitscher lost 26 planes, and 3 of his ships suffered minor damage.

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