IB History Strategic and Military Factors Notes

The War on Two Fronts: Why Germany's Strategy Collapsed

A Two-Front War Germany Could Not Sustain

1. Simultaneous fronts: when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Britain remained undefeated in the west and was receiving American material support, forcing Germany to fight in two directions at once.
2. Divided resources: the two-front war divided German forces, split logistical supply lines, and created a manpower drain no single front could absorb.
3. Population and industrial mismatch: Germany's opponents commanded far larger populations and far greater industrial output, so the drain could not be sustained over time.
   1. Hitler compounded the problem: he increasingly overruled his own commanders and prohibited tactical withdrawals that could have preserved forces, turning recoverable setbacks into irreplaceable losses.

The Eastern Front: Where Germany Was Defeated

1. Scale of losses: the Eastern Front was the decisive theatre of the European war, absorbing roughly 80 per cent of Germany's total military losses.
2. Casualties: the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered over three million killed on the Eastern Front, with an additional three million or more taken prisoner, most of whom died in captivity.
3. Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943): the turning point of the war. The German 6th Army, over 300,000 troops, was encircled by Operation Uranus in November 1942 and forced to surrender in February 1943.
   1. Consequence: after Stalingrad, Germany never again launched a major strategic offensive in the east.
4. Kursk (July-August 1943): the largest tank battle in history confirmed Soviet operational dominance. From 1943 the Eastern Front was a Soviet offensive campaign.

North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Italy

1. A second theatre Germany had not chosen: Italian defeats in Egypt and Libya brought German forces under Erwin Rommel into North Africa in 1941, opening a theatre centred on the Suez Canal and Mediterranean supply routes that Germany could ill afford to reinforce.
2. El Alamein and the turn of the tide: British naval and air forces attacked Axis shipping crossing the Mediterranean, and Malta threatened Axis communications throughout, until the British victory at El Alamein in November 1942 forced the Axis to retreat westward.
3. Torch to Tunisia: Operation Torch landed American and British forces in Morocco and Algeria that same month, and Axis armies, caught between two Allied advances, surrendered in Tunisia in May 1943, losing experienced troops and Germany's access to Africa entirely.
4. Sicily and Italy (1943): the Sicilian campaign (July-August 1943) and the Italian campaign (from September 1943) opened a second front in southern Europe, contributed to Mussolini's removal and Italy's armistice, and forced Germany to divert divisions from the Eastern Front to hold the peninsula.

The Battle of the Atlantic

1. Germany's attempt to starve Britain: German submarines used "wolf pack" tactics, concentrating U-boats against convoys located through reconnaissance and radio direction-finding, to cut the shipping that sustained Britain and later carried American forces to Europe.
2. How the Allies closed the gap: convoys, escort carriers, long-range aircraft, radar, sonar, and codebreaking together closed the mid-Atlantic "air gap" and let intelligence reroute convoys away from known U-boat patrol lines, while American shipyards eventually built merchant vessels faster than U-boats could sink them.
3. By May 1943, mounting U-boat losses forced German Admiral Karl Donitz to withdraw many boats from the North Atlantic, preserving the economic and military bridge between North America and Europe that Lend-Lease and troop movements both depended on.

The Western Offensives: From North Africa to Normandy

1. Operation Torch (November 1942): landed US and British forces in French North Africa, clearing the Mediterranean for Allied shipping.
2. Operation Overlord, D-Day (6 June 1944): the largest amphibious invasion in history. Over 156,000 troops landed on five beaches in Normandy under cover from 11,000 Allied aircraft.
   1. Outcome: the German defence failed to contain the beachhead. By August 1944 Allied forces had broken out (Operation Cobra) and encircled retreating German forces at Falaise before liberating Paris.
3. Combined pressure: Overlord in the west and Bagration in the east, both launched in June 1944, sealed Germany's fate.

Air Power: Strategic Bombing and Its Effects

1. Tactical air support: directly assisted ground operations by destroying enemy armour, supply lines, and troop concentrations.
2. Strategic bombing: attacked Germany's industrial and economic capacity deeper inside enemy territory.
3. The oil campaign (1944): the most effective strategic bombing effort. USAAF and RAF attacks on Germany's synthetic oil plants cut production by 90 per cent at the peak of the campaign.
   1. Effect on the Luftwaffe: without fuel, the Luftwaffe could not train new pilots effectively or intercept Allied bombers in the numbers needed.
   2. Effect on the army: armoured formations were stranded by fuel shortages during the failed Ardennes offensive of December 1944, and transportation attacks before Normandy had already damaged railways and delayed German reinforcement of the invasion area.