Military History Spring 2023

Killing Königsberg

The Breakup

DAVID LAUTERBORN EDITOR

JON GUTTMAN SENIOR EDITOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN

BRIAN WALKER GROUP DESIGN DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR ALEX GRIFFITH PHOTO EDITOR

DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR IN CHIEF CLAIRE BARRETT NEWS AND SOCIAL EDITOR CORPORATE

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Armor vs. Grunts

When it comes to infantry fighting against armor, we foot soldiers are certainly not “hapless,” as stated in the deck of “Armor vs. Grunts,” by Jon Guttman [Winter 2023]. It was Bill Mauldin’s Willie who famously opined to Joe as they watched a “hapless” Sherman rumble by, “I’d ruther dig. A movin’ foxhole attracts th’ eye.”

In 1967 Cold War Germany we mechanized infantry guys were trained to view Soviet tanks as just “targets.” In addition to our 90 and 106 mm “reckless” [recoilless] rifles [see photo], we also had M72 LAWs (light anti-armor weapons). We practiced often how to destroy those vulnerable iron beasts. We even visited our neighboring armor unit’s M60 tank park to take rides in and actually drive those ungainly HEAT [high-explosive anti-tank] round traps. We learned firsthand how “blind” the operators were

and how to approach the rattletrap tin can safely to toss a Molotov cocktail into the engine compartment or onto the turret ring. Yes, we even practiced making and throwing those gasoline-filled wine bottles at derelict M4 Shermans on the anti-tank range at “Graf” [Grafenwoehr Training Area, Bavaria]. On a 1983 8th Infantry Division staff ride overlooking the Fulda Gap I heard General Carl Vuono ask Brigade Commander Johnnie Corns what he would do if more T-62s poured through the gap than he had weapons to engage. We staff pukes were awestruck at Corns’ reply: “Sir, I’ve lived my entire professional life for that moment!”

Albert P. Burckard Jr. U.S. Army (Ret.) Carrollton, Va.

Imagine my surprise in finding the cover of my first subscription issue of Military

History asking, Are Tanks Obsolete ? Thirty-three years ago as a Soviet threat analyst I wrote an article in the Journal of Defense & Diplomacy titled “Is the Tank Dead?” Without belaboring the point, the conclusion then was, and remains today, that the tank is dead. Indeed, maneuver warfare itself is in the throes of redefinition in the face of “smart weapons.” That there are still tanks on the battlefield is merely an artifact of evolutionary inertia. Perhaps you could get Guttman to do a piece on the evolution of maneuver warfare, following its ebb and flow from Heinz Guderian to Georgy Zhukov to George Patton, and particularly its expression from World War I to Blitzkrieg to the Russians’ evolving concepts of the operational maneuver group (OMG) and today’s deeply flawed concept of the battalion tactical group (BTG).

Louis Lavoie Plymouth, Minn.

I found the article on armor vs. infantry in your winter edition particularly interesting. However, I think the vulnerability of armor was first exploited by two tank busters in World War II, the Russian [Ilyushin Il-2] Sturmovik [ground-attack aircraft] and the British [Hawker] Typhoon [fighter bomber], followed later down the road by America’s “Warthog” [Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft]. With modern technology tanks can only be effective with infantry and air support superior to that of one’s enemies.

West Jefferson, N.C.

Carthage

I enjoyed immensely the article “Carthage Must Be Destroyed” [Autumn 2022], by Marc G. DeSantis. Let me add two cents worth of what I learned in Latin class 75 years ago. The Senate decreed Carthagine delenda est (“Carthage must be destroyed”).

1. All inhabitants were to be put to the sword.

2. Buildings were to be torn down.

3. Salt was to be spread all over so that nothing could grow.

We still see its effects today.

Gaetano V. Cavallaro Ormond Beach, Fla.

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Dispatches

HONORS

In the Ski Tracks of Telemark

Eighty years ago, on the night of Feb. 27–28, 1943, a team of 10 Norwegian commandos trained by the British Special Operations Executive achieved the seemingly impossible. Descending into a deep gorge in below-freezing temperatures, they forded an ice-choked river, scaled a 500-foot cliff, planted explosives at a German heavy water production facility within the hydroelectric plant at Vemork, Norway, and slipped away undetected. The resulting explosions destroyed the entire inventory of heavy water intended for use in the production of atomic weapons. Operation Gunnerside was popularized by the 1965 war film

In 1943 commandos targeted a German atomic research facility within the hydroelectric plant at Vemork, Norway (above). A 2023 ski trek will retrace their steps.

The Heroes of Telemark (after the subarctic region the commandos traversed), starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, and the 2016 book The Winter Fortress, by Neal Bascomb.

Flash forward to today. In late February and early March 2023, to mark the anniversary of the historic assault, S.O.E. Expeditions—an international team of ex-special forces operators, explorers, historians and endurance athletes— will lead guests on 10- and 15-day ski expeditions tracing the commandos’ attack and escape routes through Telemark, including stays at huts in which they sheltered. For more information visit soeexpeditions.com.

‘Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior’

—Carl von Clausewitz

SOUND OFF

SOLE SURVIVOR

The Sailor Who Beat the Odds

WAR RECORD

Spring 431 bc

In the opening clash of the 431–404 bc Peloponnesian War a Theban assault force fails to take the Athenian-allied citystate of Plataea. Spartan King Archidamus II ultimately succeeds where the Thebans failed with his follow-up 429–427 bc siege of Plataea (P. 64).

April 1, 1914

Fregattenkapitän Max Looff takes command of the German light cruiser SMS Königsberg (P. 34). At the outset of World War I Looff shelters the cruiser up German East Africa’s Rufiji River, eluding British Royal Navy pursuers for 10 months before being forced to scuttle his damaged ship on July 11, 1915.

April 15, 1632

Like any optimistic sailor, Seaman 2nd Class Harold Bray didn’t want to believe his warship could sink, but it did—and fast. On July 30, 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis—having recently delivered components for the Little Boy atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas—was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 and sank in just 12 minutes. Of the crew of 1,195, Bray was one of just 316 men pulled alive from the Philippine Sea four days later. The Sept. 29, 2022, death of fellow sailor Cleatus Lebow makes Bray the sole survivor of the wartime disaster, remembered more for its aftermath than its connections to the atomic bomb.

For various reasons distress signals the ship’s radiomen sent after the attack went disregarded. While adrift and awaiting rescue, Bray and shipmates battled the elements, dehydration and aggressive sharks, the latter of which claimed as many as 150 men. Scores of others perished from exposure and saltwater poisoning. The incident remains the greatest loss of life at sea from a single ship in U.S. Navy history.

MEMORIAL

Honoring the Original American Warriors

On Veterans Day 2022 representatives of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, some 1,500 American Indian veterans, family members and onlookers gathered to dedicate the National Native American Veterans Memorial outside the museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is the first national landmark to commemorate the military service and sacrifice of American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, a legacy of courage that extends through all American wars. Designed by Oklahoma-born Cheyenne/Arapaho artist Harvey Pratt, Warriors’ Circle of Honor incorporates benches and flowing water for future ceremonies and is flanked by decorative lances to which visitors can tie cloths for prayer and healing.

Amid the Thirty Years’ War Swedish King Gustavus II Adolphus leads his Protestant army to victory at Rain, Bavaria, over a Catholic League force led by Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, who is mortally wounded. At their first meeting on Sept. 17, 1631, Gustavus beat Tilly at the Battle of Breitenfeld (P. 48), the first major Protestant victory of the conflict.

May 4, 1980

The death of autocratic Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito tips the first domino leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia (P. 24). Following the postcommunist elections of 1990, the fragile confederation of Slavic republics eventually splits into six states of culturally, religiously and linguistically dissimilar factions.

May 26, 1940

British General Sir John Dill (P. 56) is appointed chief of the Imperial General Staff. Promoted to field marshal in 1941, Dill is appointed his nation’s primary representative on the wartime Combined Chiefs of Staff, serving as an invaluable liaison between British and American commanders.

The Äpplet of Gustavus’ Eye

Most shipwreck aficionados are familiar with Vasa, the notoriously top-heavy Swedish warship ordered by King Gustavus II Adolphus (see P. 48) that sank mere yards into its maiden voyage off Stockholm on Aug. 10, 1628. Salvaged in 1961, its largely intact hull (above left) is the centerpiece of a popular namesake museum [vasamuseet.se/en] in the capital’s Royal National City Park. Less well known is its sister ship Äpplet , whose sunken hull (above right) maritime archaeologists from the Swedish Museum of Wrecks recently dis-

SOLD

Rough Rider Roosevelt’s Revolver

At the outset of the Spanish-American War Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry (aka “Rough Riders”) ordered this Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 single-action revolver, but he left for training camp in San Antonio, Texas, before it arrived. The future president had his pistol chambered in .38 Long Colt, the Army’s standard pistol cartridge caliber at the time, though rarely found in this model. Having served as a “nightstand gun,” Roosevelt’s top-break six-shooter remains in pristine condition. It fetched $910,625 at a recent Rock Island Auction Co. sale.

covered off Vaxholm, an island near Stockholm. After shipbuilder Hein Jacobsson widened its beam to correct Vasa’s design flaw, Äpplet survived its launch and served in the Swedish navy for some 30 years. Researchers will make a 3-D image of the wreck but have no plans to recover it, as it lies in a protected military area.

A-26 Invader

WARBIRDS

A Wing, a Prayer… and Rivets

World War II aircraft are increasingly rare, but a few remain airworthy or are being restored. Following are standouts in the news: Want to own a World War II–era light bomber? Platinum Fighter Sales is offering the above restored U.S. Air Force Douglas A-26 Invader for $495,000. The sleek aluminum aircraft saw action during the Battle of the Bulge and later served in the Korean War.

The Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, Va., has acquired a restored, airworthy Japanese Mitsubishi A6M3 “Zero” fighter. Produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1942, airframe 3148 saw combat in the Pacific. Legend Flyers in Everett, Wash., spent 10 years rebuilding it.

REEL WAR

Remakes

The 2022 version of the war film All Quiet on the Western Front (see review, P. 75), based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, got us thinking: What other war films have been remade and to what success?

BEAU GESTE

The 1924 novel by P.C. Wren, about brothers who run off to join the French Foreign Legion in the wake of a family disgrace, has been filmed several times (1926, 1939 and 1966) and adapted for TV. The best version is arguably the 1939 film starring Gary Cooper, the 1926 silent drama with Ronald Colman coming in a close second.

SAHARA

The 1943 version of this film, based on the 1927 Philip MacDonald novel Patrol, stars Humphrey Bogart as an American tank commander fighting Germans at an oasis in North Africa. A 1953 remake—filmed as the Western Last of the Comanches—remained faithful to the original script, while a 1995 TV adaptation starring Jim Belushi was only passable.

TORA! TORA! TORA!

This 1970 epic about the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was based on histories of the strike by Gordon Prange and Ladislas Farago. Featuring an international cast and crew, it wowed audiences. While not technically a remake, the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, starring Ben Affleck, bombed with critics but did surprisingly well at the box office.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

Two films have dramatized the 1959 Richard Condon novel about a Korean War veteran brainwashed by Communist Chinese captors to be a sleeper assassin. The 1962 version —starring Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury—ranks among the all-time best political thrillers. The 2004 remake, updated for the Gulf War and starring Denzel Washington as the assassin, pales by comparison.

“Captured,” a special exhibit at the National WWI Museum and Memorial [theworldwar. org] in Kansas City, relates the experiences of POWs during World War I with photographs, period artifacts and artwork rendered by prisoners.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum [airandspace.si.edu] in Washington, D.C., has reopened following an extensive multiyear renovation and rehabilitation.

The Mountain Division’s Camp in the Rockies

Impressed by the performance of skiborne Finnish soldiers against invading Soviet troops during the 1939–40 Winter War, the U.S. Army in 1940 authorized formation of a platoon-sized ski patrol. Not until July 10, 1943, however, did it activate the 10th Light Division (Alpine), the first division of mountain troops in U.S. military history. It was redesignated the 10th Mountain Division a year later. By then Camp Hale, the unit’s training camp at 9,200 feet in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, was in full swing. During World War II the 15,000 men housed at Camp Hale trained in

mountain climbing, cold-weather survival, Alpine and Nordic skiing, as well as on various ordnance and weapons. Some 240 members of the Women’s Army Corps also trained there. President Joe Biden recently designated the site and nearly 54,000 acres of the surrounding White River National Forest the Camp Hale–Continental Divide National Monument.

Johnny Johnson, 101, last of the legendary Royal Air Force “Dambusters” of Operation Chastise, died in Bristol, England, on Dec. 7, 2022. On May 16–17, 1943, then Sergeant Johnson was an aimer on one of 19 Avro Lancasters that breached Germany’s Möhne and Edersee dams using specially developed bombs that bounced across the water, struck the dams and exploded underwater.

Raymond Earl Haddock, 86, the last U.S. military commander in West Berlin, died in Spotsylvania, Va., on Oct. 3, 2022. The former Army major general oversaw Pershing II missile stations in West Germany during the Cold War and West Berlin from 1988 to 1990. Ironically, his death came on the very anniversary of German reunification.

Dean Caswell, 100, the last living U.S. Marine Corps flying ace of World War II, died in Austin, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2002. In 1945, flying a Vought F4U-1D Corsair with Marine squadron VMF-221 from the carrier USS Bunker Hill during the Battle of Okinawa, he shot down seven enemy planes and a probable eighth. Caswell also flew jets during the Korean War. His decorations included the Silver Star and two Distinguished Service Crosses.

Hiroshi “Hershey” Miyamura, 97, one of the last two surviving Medal of Honor recipients of the Korean War, died in Phoenix, Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022. On April 24–25, 1951, near Taejon-ni, then Corporal Miyamura, a machine-gun squad leader, covered the retreat of his company, killing an estimated 50 Chinese soldiers.

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Valor ‘Gatling Gun Parker’

Two months later the 26th Division was committed as part of General Jean Degoutte’s French Sixth Army during the massive French counterattack into the Marne salient. Near Trugny on July 21 Parker, who remained in command of the 102nd Infantry, advanced on horseback through heavy enemy artillery and machine-gun fire. Preceding the lead elements of his own troops, he reconnoitered the German positions and the most advantageous avenues of approach for his attacking force. He received his second DSC for that action.

He was famed among his U.S. Army colleagues and in the press as “Gatling Gun Parker.” John Henry Parker acquired that sobriquet during the Spanish-American War, when as a young first lieutenant he commanded a detachment of three Gatling guns that laid down withering fire support for the U.S. forces that stormed San Juan Heights in Cuba. Firing 18,000 rounds in less than nine minutes, Parker’s gunners killed many of the defenders and suppressed their fire. It marked the first instance in Army history in which machine guns supported infantry in the attack. For his actions on July 1, 1898, Parker received the Silver Star. Then Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who 103 years after the fact was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for having led his Rough Riders from horseback up Kettle Hill, noted, “Parker deserved rather more credit than any other one man in the entire [Santiago] campaign.”

By the time of the U.S. entry into World War I Lt. Col. Parker had become the Army’s acknowledged expert in the organization, training and tactics of dismounted machine-gun detachments. He was a member of the staff of the American Expeditionary Forces that sailed for England with Maj. Gen. John J. Pershing aboard RMS Baltic in late May 1917. Sent ahead to the Army Machine Gun School in Langres, France, Parker trained young AEF soldiers on the still relatively new weapon.

Loath to sit out the war in the rear, 51-year-old Parker pushed successfully for assignment to a frontline unit. On April 20, 1918, the colonel was commanding the 26th (Yankee) Division’s 102nd Infantry Regiment when the unit came under German attack at Seicheprey, a supposedly quiet section where green American units were sent to gain experience. In one of the AEF’s first major engagements of the war the Americans suffered some 650 casualties and more than 100 men captured. In the midst of the enemy barrage Parker coolly moved forward to inspect his lines and command the defense. For his actions he was among the first members of the AEF to receive the Distinguished Service Cross—second only to the Medal of Honor for heroism in combat.

Four days later Parker earned his third DSC while the division was advancing along the road through La Fére Wood. A battalion to his front was halted in the road, awaiting orders, when caught by an enemy artillery barrage with no cover but the shallow roadside ditches. “Immediately appreciating the situation,” read Parker’s DSC citation, the colonel “twice rode down the line and back again at a slow walk, stopping to talk with the men; and thus by his fearless personal exposure to, and disregard of, danger, he promptly steadied the troops and prevented probable disorder at an important juncture.”

By the start of the Allies’ costly MeuseArgonne campaign on September 26 Parker was in command of the 91st Division’s 362nd Infantry Regiment. During the attack on the village of Gesnes three days later he again led from the front through heavy German machine-gun and artillery fire, including gas, shrapnel and high-explosive shells. Though twice wounded, he remained in command another five hours. Hit a third time, he tumbled into a crater full of other wounded soldiers. The following morning the colonel crawled from the crater and led his surviving men to the rear. While the war was over for Parker, the action at Gesnes brought him his fourth Distinguished Service Cross. He was the only foot soldier of World War I to earn four DSCs. MH

What We Learned From... The 1918–20 Polish-Soviet War

the Battle of Warsaw (aka the “Miracle on the Vistula”) brought an unexpected and decisive Polish victory. The Russians had advanced with several large, poorly coordinated armies that the Poles— advised by such able French officers as General Maxime Weygand and young Captain Charles de Gaulle—managed to disperse in succession. In the wake of an eastward Polish counterattack the Russians sued for peace, and the war ended with an October 18 cease-fire.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine not only shocked the world but also evoked historical echoes of another conflict waged across some of the same ground a century ago. Fought primarily between the fledgling Republic of Poland and the recently proclaimed Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Polish-Soviet War of 1918–20 contested disputed territories of the former empires of Austria-Hungary and czarist Russia.

The Nov. 11, 1918, signing of the armistice that formally ended World War I had also annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk foisted on Russia by the Central Powers in March. Vladimir Lenin promptly ordered Red Army forces westward to recover the German-vacated lands ceded by Russia under the terms of Brest-Litovsk. Lenin viewed Poland, newly restored after more than a century of Austrian, Prussian and Russian partition, as little more than a conduit through which the Red Army might enter Western Europe and foment communist revolutions. Meanwhile, Polish officials rushed to restore their nation’s pre-partition borders.

In 1919, while the Red Army was preoccupied with the Russian Civil War, Polish Chief of State Józef Pilsudski sent troops eastward to seize most of Lithuania, Belarus and western Ukraine. Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine advancing Red Army troops pushed out the forces of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, compelling the latter to forge an alliance with Poland in April 1920. That month Pilsudski, resolving that military action was the best way to secure favorable borders, launched the Kiev Offensive, and on May 7 Polish and allied Ukrainian forces captured that vital namesake city. The Soviets responded with successful counterattacks that drove the Poles back to Warsaw.

The relentless advance of Soviet troops finally motivated the Western powers, which belatedly sent military aid, advisers and volunteers to Poland. Among the latter were Polish-American pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron (7th Air Escadrille), comprising World War I veterans eager to repay their nation’s debt to namesake Continental Army Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish military engineer and hero of the American Revolution. Poland’s defeat seemed certain, but in August

Signed on March 18, 1921, the Peace of Riga demarcated the border Poland and Soviet Russia would share through the interwar period. Its terms split Ukraine and Belarus between the two, Lenin’s administration establishing the respective Soviets republics in its areas of control. Conducted chiefly by Pilsudski’s opponents and against his will, the peace negotiations ended with official recognition of the two Soviet republics, which became parties to the treaty. The disappointing outcome precluded formation of the Intermarium—a Polish-led federation of states Pilsudski had envisaged bridging the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas.

Lessons:

The bigger stick doesn’t always bring victory. A well-led and -supplied underdog, such as Poland in 1920 and Britain in 1940, can snatch victory from the seeming brink of defeat.

Never underestimate a good defense. Patriots defending their home turf are difficult to defeat—witness the United States in 1776 and Ukraine in 2022.

Might does not make right. A nation defending its autonomy against an autocratic aggressor often reaps a wealth of international support, from the moral to the material, while delivering a whirlwind of consequences to invaders. MH

After more than a century of rule by Austria, Prussia and Russia, Polish troops fought to restore their nation’s borders.

Interview Centenarian Ace of Aces

As a boy growing up in Oakland, Calif., how early did you set your sights on aviation?

My brother and I both grew up fascinated by aviation. There was a mail plane flying by daily and at least one airport within 30 miles of us. Douglas B-18s were based at Moffett Field. Our parents would take my best friend, Jack Stacker, and me to the airport, dump us there and pick us up.

Did you have any flight background before enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps on Jan. 19, 1942?

I was already a private pilot—it helped in my early military training. I flew a 45 hp Piper Cub, a really early model. I flew tail wheel aircraft all the way up to graduation.

at [RAF] Boxted with a half dozen others, assigned to make my debut the next morning. We weren’t too concerned until morning, when we learned the lark over France was to be, instead, an escort mission deep into Germany. The target was Frankfurt, 360 miles from our base in East Anglia. We were liable to see German airplanes up close on this kind of mission—Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts, good planes manned by experienced pilots. I had logged 893 flying hours already, but only 30 hours and 45 minutes of that in Mustangs, and what I was thinking about, before prodding the Merlin to life, was of not getting lost, not screwing up.

Bud Anderson

The 357th Fighter Group was the first in the U.S. Eighth Air Force to enter combat from the outset of World War II equipped with the North American P-51 Mustang. Credited with 595½ aerial victories—including a record 18½ Messerschmitt Me 262 jets—and 106½ aircraft destroyed on the ground, the group also produced a record 42 aces.

Of the 357th’s nine double and triple aces, one remains. With 16¼ victories to his credit, Clarence Emil “Bud” Anderson Jr., 100, is the highest-scoring living American fighter ace. His many activities in the postwar U.S. Air Force included flying Republic F-105D Thunderchief fighter bombers over Vietnam as commander of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing from June to December 1970, before retiring on Feb. 29, 1972. On Dec. 2, 2022, the Air Force capped off his career by promoting him to the honorary rank of brigadier general.

What was the situation when the 357th Fighter Group arrived at England’s RAF Leiston airfield on Jan. 31, 1944?

There was a “Pioneer Mustang Group,” the 354th of the Ninth Air Force, which lent its P-51s to the Eighth Air Force. We loaned some pilots to the 354th, and they were so wildly successful that the Eighth ordered P-51s and made us the first P-51 unit in the Eighth. They also fired all the generals in the Eighth and replaced Maj. Gen. Ira Eaker with Jimmy Doolittle. [Doolittle] took the calculated risk of changing the bomber escort procedure, with us not just escorting the bombers but eliminating the enemy fighters. It was pursue and destroy.

What do you recall of your first combat mission?

By February 5 the 357th’s complement of P-51s had reached 74, nearly its quota. Two nights later I flew down to the 354th

I was assigned to a veteran pilot, a fellow with a couple of kills already. We found the bombers in less than an hour. They would fly at 20,000 to 25,000 feet, and if the atmospheric conditions were right, they would leave enormous, billowing, cottony contrails that widened behind them for miles. We climbed to 30,000 feet or more and began flying zigzags above them, which was how the escorts (“little friends” to the bomber crews) stayed close to the bombers (“big friends” to us) and still kept up their airspeed.

Then someone calls, “Bogeys!” and I’m suddenly about as alert and fully alive as I’ve ever been in my life. The first thing I do is tuck in closer to my leader. And then up goes his wing, and he’s sliding away, and he’s yelling something. I do what he does, all the time looking around, looking down…and then here’s a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, a half mile off, maybe less. I’m almost upside down, and I’m looking straight up/down at this deadly and beautiful thing, robin’s egg blue with big black crosses, and the man I’m protecting is sliding in right behind it. “Mustang! Mustang! There’s one on

your tail!” Huh? I look around. Nothing. The Mustang in front is lining up on the German now, and again through the earphones: “Mustang! Mustang! He’s still on your tail!” At maximum range he triggers his guns, sending a long, futile burst at the 190 with his four .50 calibers, and then he slides that Mustang up into the damnedest series of gyrations I ever did see. Somehow, I stay with him. It comes a third time: “Mustang! Mustang! He’s still on your tail!” And then a light winks on in my head. Maybe the Mustang he’s warning is me! I throw my airplane about, plummet down, look around …and see nothing. Now I’m feeling like an idiot. And worse, I suddenly notice— I’m alone over Germany. No. There’s a plane in the distance. I slide closer, warily. It’s clearly a Mustang, alone, like me. Against all laws of probability the plane is my leader’s.

Later, back at Boxted, sorting things out, we wondered if maybe someone might have mistaken me for a German closing on my own leader’s tail…but no one ever admitted to yelling the warning, which seemed a pretty good clue that somebody blew it and knew it and was

embarrassed about it. Man, was my flight leader pissed! He could have gotten that Focke-Wulf, and he wanted the victory.

My first mission hadn’t been a confidence builder, exactly. But I’d seen the bad guys up close, and I was a little bit smarter by evening than I’d been in the morning.

How about your first confirmed victory?

Our first pilot to get a kill was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. On Feb. 20, 1944, 1st Lt. Calvert L. Williams of the 362nd Fighter Squadron got lost on his first mission. He came out of a cloud and suddenly found this German fighter alongside him, apparently just as lost. He just slid back and blew it out of the sky. So here I am, the hottest pilot in the whole world, and so far…nothing.

On March 8, 1944, we were heading home with 1st Lt. John B. England along with us. We saw a Boeing B-17 [Flying Fortress] below us, smoking, so we were headed over there when three Me 109s came up. We cut them off at the pass, and I saw one and said, “This one’s mine.” Our initial engagement was one of concentric circles, pulling a lot of g’s. I fired

blind, and black smoke was coming out —I got him in the coolant system. He bailed out. I was patting myself on the back when there was a guy on my wing, and it was England, mask down and grinning. Then I thought, Wait, did Johnny England shoot that down from

under me? After we had a debrief, I went straight to the officer’s club, and the first guy I saw was Johnny. He came running over, and I was thinking: What do I say? What if he claims it? Should I argue or what? Hell, I’m not sure myself! But I didn’t have to ask. “Goddamn, Andy,” he gushed. “Best shooting I’ve ever seen in my life! You hit that sonofabitch out there at over 40 degrees!” I said: “Aw, shucks, Johnny. Lucky shot. You know how it is.” And the moment he turned,

I ran—literally—to get on the telephone and claim my first victory. [Editor’s note: England was also credited that day with his first of an eventual 17½ victories, placing him among the 357th’s leading aces. An Air Force base in central Louisiana is named for him.]

What were the circumstances of your double claim on April 11, 1944, in which you were credited with an Me 109G and a quarter share of a Heinkel He 111K?

On April 11 the target was a Focke-Wulf factory at Sorau [present-day Zary, Poland], deep inside Germany, and the Germans came up in force. While dropping my tanks and jamming the throttle forward, I picked out three Messerschmitts. They brought down two bombers beneath us, rolled over, went down and turned around, obviously trying to re-form up ahead for another head-on attack. I fell in with one. He breaks hard, I wheel about, see a large moving shadow on the ground, and I see my opponent reversing his turn, trying to come at me head-on. He doesn’t quite make it. The propeller flies off. The engine cowling is blown away. Then off comes the canopy, and out comes the pilot.

Now…what the hell was that shadow?

The rest of my flight has caught up. “I think I saw a multi-engined plane heading west,” I tell them. We pick him out right away, a Heinkel 111 twin-engined bomber, scooting right along on the deck. He is trying to use his camouflage paint job to blend into the countryside. But in the bright sunlight his shadow betrays him. From slightly above and off to the side we attack, rolling over one at a time, making what we called a “high-side pass.” I go in first, set an engine to smoking. Eddie Simpson goes for the smoking left engine and blows it to hell. Bill Overstreet rakes the bomber from as close as 100 yards. Henry Kayser, a brand-new guy, hoses the cockpit until he runs out of ammo and burns his barrels out. I come around for a second pass and hit him from tail to cockpit until my ammo is gone too. Losing altitude quickly, the Heinkel pilot tries setting it down in a field, but there’s a pole in his path, and it tears the left wing away. The bomber slews around and explodes into flame. We pass over the wreckage and see two men jump out. One takes off, the other just stands there, looking up at us. I say, “Everyone get hits?” The answers come back, “Rog.…Rog.…Rog.”

On May 27, 1944, the Luftwaffe came up in force, and I had my toughest fight ever, the “straight up” encounter I will always remember. We were high over a bomber stream in our P-51B Mustangs, escorting the heavies to the Ludwigshafen-Mannheim area. For the past several weeks the Eighth Air Force had been targeting oil, and Ludwigshafen was a center for synthetic fuels. We’d picked up the bombers at 27,000 feet, and almost immediately all hell began breaking loose up ahead of us. This was still over France, long before we’d expected the German fighters to come up in force. They’d worked over the bombers up ahead, and now it was our turn. I start to call out, “Four bogeys, 5 o’clock high!” We turn hard to the right, pulling up, spoiling their angle. The Me 109s change course, and we begin turning with them. The Mustang is a wonderful airplane, just a little faster than the smaller German fighters and also just a little more nimble. Suddenly the 109s, sensing things are not going well, roll out and run, turning east. Then one climbs

away from the rest. I send Simpson up after him. My wingman, John Skara, and I chase the other three. I close to within 250 yards of the nearest Messerschmitt— dead astern, 6 o’clock, no maneuvering, no nothing—and squeeze the trigger. He slows, rolls over. I pour another burst into him, and the 109 falls into a spin, belching smoke. My sixth kill.

As we take up the chase again, two against two now, the trailing 109 dives for home, and the leader pulls up into a sharp climbing turn to the left, passing in front of us at an impossible angle. My wingman is vulnerable. I tell Skara, “Break off!” and he peels away. The German goes after him, and I go after the German. He sees me coming, dives away, then makes a climbing left turn. I go screaming by, pull up, and he’s reversing his turn—man, he can fly!—and he comes crawling right up behind me. He’s bringing his nose up for a shot, and I haul back on the stick and climb even harder. He stalls a second or two before I stall. Good old Mustang. He is falling

away now, then he flattens out and starts climbing again, as if to come at me headon. I decide to turn hard left inside him. I pull back on the throttle slightly, put down 10 degrees of flaps and haul back on the stick just as hard as I can. This time the Messerschmitt goes zooming straight up. I follow him up, and the gap narrows. He must know that I have him.

I bring my nose up, he comes into my sights, and from less than 300 yards I trigger a long, merciless burst. The bullets chew at the wing root, the cockpit, the engine. There is smoke in the cockpit …and then he falls away, straight for the deck. No spin, not even a wobble, no parachute. At 25,000 feet I ease out of the dive and watch him go down. Eddie Simpson joins up with me. Both wingmen, too. Simpson, my old wingman and friend, had gotten the one who’d climbed out. We’d bagged three of the four.

As for the three [Focke-Wulf] Fw 190s I got on June 29, that just went bang , bang, bang. The last guy, he was on my tail once, and I had to shake him off,

and throughout those maneuvers he was hard to get, but I finally got him.

Your last victory came on Dec. 5, 1944. What do you recall?

The quality of the Germans had gone down by then. One Fw 190 dived under the clouds; I just slid down and blew it up. I got two kills in that last fight.

So you emerged from your Air Force career without a scratch?

When it was done—the 480 hours of combat flying in P-51s and another 25 or so missions in Vietnam, almost all of those in F-105s—I never once suffered a hit in air-to-air combat. The sum total of the damage all my aircraft absorbed amounted to one small-arms round that found one of my wings during a strafing run after D-Day.

By then, we presume, you’d made up your mind about the P-51?

The P-51 was a great airplane. I think it saved the world. MH

Hardware PL-37 Light Artillery Wagon

Specifications:

Manufacturer: Krasny Profintern Plant, Bryansk

Length: 48 feet 2 inches

Width: 9 feet 9 inches

Height: 14 feet 5 inches

Chassis: 55-ton wagon on Diamond two-axle trucks

Main armament: Two 7.62 mm M1902/30 field guns

Secondary armament: Six Maxim 7.62 mm watercooled machine guns

Ammunition: 560 76.2 mm shells and 30,000 7.62 mm rounds

Armor: .78-inch sides, .59-inch roof

Observation: Triplex glass visors; one PTK panoramic periscope for commander Crew: 30

As trains and the rail networks they plied improved and proliferated through the 19th century, their initial role as wartime transports led inevitably to their development as mobile weapons. The first armored trains were Austrian improvisations fielded during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The opposing sides in the American Civil War also used armored, cannon-armed trains. Such rolling

batteries reached their peak use and development during World War I, especially on the Eastern Front, where AustroHungarian and Russian designs supported their respective armies. Following the 1918 armistice they saw further use by Red and White armies alike during the Russian Civil War, as well as by the forces of a resurrected Poland.

The Western and Eastern fronts of World War II witnessed the last widespread use of armored trains, with a renewed

Cupola for gun commander of forward gun turret

76.2 mm M1902/30 field gun (forward turret)

A rmored sleeve and ball mount for forward turret’s Maxim 7.62 mm machine gun

A rmored sleeve and ball mount for hull-mounted Maxim 7.62 mm machine gun

S towage for 76.2 mm field gun shells

Main armored crew entrance door

S towage for 76.2 mm field gun shells

Rear right side Maxim 7.62 mm machine gun

Rear Diamond two-axle railway trucks

emphasis on anti-aircraft capability. The Soviet Union relied on its proven designs, while Germany, which during World War I had fielded largely improvised armored trains, introduced and made widespread use of its own original designs.

Standing out among the Soviet armored railcars was the PL-37 light artillery wagon, modified from earlier armored train designs that incorporated PL-35 tanks placed atop flatcars and flanked by armored walls. Large though the PL-37

appeared, its 30-man crew found the interior quite cramped due to its generously stocked ammunition supply. Produced between 1939 and ’41, some two dozen PL-37s saw use during World War II. The example above, No. 2 Za Rodinu (“For the Motherland”) was attached to the Twelfth Army, on the Southern Front, in October 1941. There it participated in the Russian offensive for control of Donbass in eastern Ukraine, site of more recent struggles in the headlines. MH

A sniper scans for a target on the streets of embattled Sarajevo at the outset of the 1992–95 Bosnian War. The breakup of Yugoslavia was accompanied by ethnic strife, urban warfare and civilian displacement.

THE BREAKUP OF

YUGOSLAVIA

Whether as a kingdom or as a socialist republic, the union of southern Slavs proved an impossible experiment

1992.

On May 4, 1980, 87-year-old Josip Broz died in Ljubljana, Slovenia, after a remarkable six-decade career as soldier, revolutionary and statesman. He also left behind a remarkable multicultural experiment in national unity. Yugoslavia (Slavic for “Land of South Slavs”) was, as its name implies, conceived as a Balkan state for the southern Slavs. In practice, however, it was an unsteady confederation of six ethnically similar but culturally, religiously and linguistically different republics—Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia. Tito had just the right combination of charisma and ruthlessness to force them to live together. His demise left a void no successor could fulfill, condemning the southern Slavic confederation to its own slow death.

Josip Broz was born on May 7, 1892, in Kumrovec (in present-day Croatia), the son of a Croat father and a Slovene mother who raised him in the Roman Catholic tradition. Conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in 1913, h e entered World War I as a senior noncommissioned

goslavia and became increasingly activist, adopting the pseudonym “Tito” in 1934 (“to reduce the chances of exposure,” he later explained).

officer and distinguished himself in combat before being wounded and captured by the Russians in 1915. During his time in Russia, or shortly after returning to his homeland, he joined the outlawed Communist Party of Yu -

During World War II Tito commanded the multiethnic Yugoslav Partisans against the German and Italian occupation forces and their independent Croatian Ustase allies, also fighting alongside and sometimes against the Serbian royalist Chetnik resistance forces. In the fall of 1944 the arrival of the Soviet Red Army hastened the ouster of Axis forces from Yugoslavia. Following the liberation of Belgrade on October 20 Tito transformed the restored kingdom into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. His was no Soviet puppet state, however, and in 1948 he broke away from Joseph Stalin and the Warsaw Pact to pursue an independent course.

Tito was the lynchpin that held together a diverse nation. Following his death in 1980 Yugoslavia was overseen by a

Yugoslavia’s republics began falling away one by one like leaves from a rotting tree

collective presidency of the six republics, but Tito proved an impossible act to follow, as each of his successors found themselves threatened with civil unrest. The post-communist elections of 1990 heralded the rise of the Croatian Democratic Union under President Franjo Tudman and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s predominantly Muslim Party of Democratic Action under President Alija Izetbegovic. By year’s end Serbia had adopted a new constitution and declared itself a constituent republic of Yugoslavia with Slobodan Milosevic as its president. From then on Yugoslavia’s republics began falling away one by one like leaves from a rotting tree.

The first was Slovenia, which held a referendum in December 1990 in which the vast majority of Slovenes called for independence. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia formally seceded. Two days later tanks and armored vehicles of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) deployed to the region. They were opposed by lightly armed but well organized and determined troops of the Slovenian Territorial Defense. A series of clashes followed. The JNA, faced with combating erstwhile citizens, put up only a token resistance. Tanks and other military equipment soon fell into the Slovenians’ hands. Slovene conscripts deserted from the JNA, adding to a chaotic situation. It was all over within 10 days. Some 75 people had been killed, including a dozen or so foreign nationals caught up in the fighting. Many others had been wounded. Soon afterward, in accordance with the Brioni Agreement negotiated by the European Community (EC), which acknowledged Slovenia’s liberation from the control of Belgrade, the JNA withdrew.

Factions throughout Yugoslavia had been closely watching events, which were soon repeated in Croatia, but on a far greater scale than anybody could have imagined.

On July 25, 1990, the Serb Democratic Party issued a declaration proclaiming the sovereignty of Serbs in Croatia. This led to the creation of the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina. On March 16, 1991, its National Council declared Krajina’s independence from Croatia, raising political tensions and prompting ever increasing internecine incidents. In eastern Croatia’s disputed Slavonia region events came to a head in May when a dozen Croatian policemen were killed trying to rescue colleagues held by Serbs at Borovo Selo, on the Danube River.

Croatia formally declared independence on June 25, after which conditions in Slavonia deteriorated into daily firefights between Croats and Serbs, the latter supported by the predominantly Serb-led JNA. The newly formed Croatian National Guard (ZNG) laid siege to federal barracks, initiating a series of clashes known as the Battle of the Barracks, which ended late that year with Croats in possession of vast quantities of military hardware, including tanks and heavy weapons. Elsewhere, Serb militia, in conjunction with federal forces, engaged Croats in open warfare marked by mortar and artillery barrages, bombings, tank assaults and infantry attacks that devastated towns and villages and left thousands homeless. By autumn the front extended from Vukovar west to the Papuk mountains and southwest to Novska. It continued along the Sava River to Sisak and beyond and along the Kupa River to Karlovac. There was further fighting along the Adriatic coast, particularly around Zadar, Sibenik and Dubrovnik.

For the Slavs

Yugoslavia (literally “Land of South Slavs”) traces its origins to the post–World War I Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. King Aleksandar I Karadordevic gave it its more familiar name in 1929. After World War II Tito held it together as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

A convoy of Yugoslav federal army T-55 and T-72 tanks forms for action in Slovenia in 1991. Traditional tactics gave way to guerrilla warfare as the wars devolved.

In Vukovar, in the disputed region of eastern Slavonia, a number of violent incidents had preceded the outset of the war. By July 1991 the situation had deteriorated as Croats and Serbs laid claim to surrounding districts. In August the federal army launched an offensive, with Vukovar as its main objective. For the Serbs, the city was key to achieving and consolidating their hold on eastern Slavonia. In taking the territory west of the Danube, the Serbs could extend their own borders and control the Privlaka and Srijemske Laze oil fields, south of Vukovar.

On August 24 the Serbs commenced a heavy bombardment of Croatian forces in and around Vukovar. Artillery, mortars and tanks, supported by the Serbian air force and gunboats on the Danube, concentrated a tremendous amount of firepower against the city. The strategy was simple: sever Vukovar’s energy, water and food supplies, disrupt communications and create a killing zone. In order to survive, the inhabitants, among them Serbs, took to living in cellars. Those daring to appear aboveground risked injury or death. Occasionally,

the shelling would lessen as Serbian tanks and/or infantry advanced ever closer.

For 87 days a vastly outnumbered and outgunned ZNG, together with volunteers from other parts of Croatia, put up a desperate defense. Ultimately, however, on the afternoon of November 18 the last holdouts in central Vukovar surrendered. The battle had cost both sides dearly and would contribute to a temporary cease-fire some six weeks later.

On November 27 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) agreed to send a peacekeeping force to Yugoslavia, subject to a prevailing cease-fire and on condition Croatian forces discontinued their siege of military establishments, thus enabling the JNA to withdraw. Two days later the federal army began to pull out of Zagreb. Elsewhere, the war continued. Not until Feb. 21, 1992, did the UNSC finally approve Resolution 743, authorizing deployment of a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). Six weeks later the first UNPROFOR units arrived in Croatia. Although the situation was far from being under control, events were soon overshadowed by the war’s spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Late in 1991 Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina had made clear their support for a “Serbian Republic…within the framework of Yugoslavia.” However, in late February 1992, within weeks of EC recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, a referendum in Bosnia-Herzegovina also resulted in a majority vote in favor of autonomy. Bosnian Serbs, most of whom

had boycotted the referendum, responded by erecting barricades in the capital, Sarajevo, ostensibly in protest against an incident during a wedding procession outside Sarajevo’s Serbian Orthodox church in which the groom’s father was killed and the officiating priest was wounded. The situation quickly deteriorated. In scenes reminiscent of those in Slovenia and Croatia, Sarajevo’s army barracks were besieged and looted. The first of countless mortar attacks struck the city on April 6. In May escalating hostilities prompted the U.N. to withdraw its headquarters from the city.

Muslims, Croats and Serbs battled for control in and around Sarajevo and throughout the region—at Bosanski Brod and Brcko in the northeast, around Bihac in the northwest, and at Bugojno, Mostar, Foca, Gorazde, Visegrad and Bratunac. Initially, the superior firepower of the Serbs enabled them to achieve significant gains, notwithstanding a united Muslim-Croat effort. After the latter alliance collapsed over territorial claims, the Bosnian Muslim army had to contend with both Bosnian Serbs and Croats, each reinforced by compatriots from the other side of the border.

With the onset of winter the situation in Sarajevo worsened. Water and electricity services were disrupted, and there was a shortage of food and medicine. From the high ground around the city Serbian gunners maintained a constant barrage. Snipers picked off whomever they saw on the city streets.

Elsewhere, all three sides fought to retain what each considered their rightful territory. In contested areas the inhabitants were killed or forced to flee, their property looted and homes destroyed. The place then became a sort of no-man’s-land, with vigilant troops quick to shoot at anyone who dared return.

During four and a half years of war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina there was one broken cease-fire after another amid a succession of internationally brokered peace talks. In January 1993 fighting again erupted in Croatia when Croats launched an offensive to recapture key positions around the coastal town of Zadar. In BosniaHerzegovina Serbs took Kamenica in February and Cerska the following month. In April continuing actions in the Drina valley resulted in the U.N. evacuating Muslim civilians from Srebrenica—a controversial move that, ironically, resulted in the U.N. being accused of so-called “ethnic cleansing,” a process that had begun in Croatia and would come to characterize the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Croats and Muslims clashed at Kiseljakm that month and at Jablanica and Konjic, on the route between Sarajevo and Mostar, into May. Fighting intensified in and around Mostar in May.

Under continuing international pressure, and faced with the worrying prospect of a military alliance between Bosnian Serbs and Croats, President Izetbegovic conditionally agreed on June 7 to establish six “safe areas” for Muslims in Bosnia. Simultaneously, renewed fighting round Travnik culminated in Croats fleeing their Muslim erstwhile allies to seek refuge among the Serbs.

Hostilities continued through the summer and fall of 1993. Northeast of Sarajevo, Zuc was subjected to a devastating artillery barrage. Southwest of the city Muslims and Serbs also battled for possession of Mounts Igman and Bjelasnica (from which the victorious Serbs would later be forced to withdraw in order to avoid the threat of North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes). Elsewhere, Muslims achieved considerable success, seizing control of several important towns, including Gornji Vakuf, Fojnica, Busovaca and Vares.

Last One Out

Serbia cofounded the precursor kingdom that became Yugoslavia in 1929 and remained the dominant member of the subsequent socialist republic. After the breakup it and Montenegro formed a reduced federative state until the latter declared independence in 2006.

As Bosnia-Herzegovina entered its second winter of the war, the fighting showed little sign of abating. February 1994 brought further international outrage when 68 people were killed and many more wounded apparently by a single mortar shell that detonated in a crowded marketplace in Sarajevo. No one was able to ascertain who was responsible, but Serb forces were given 10 days to withdraw heavy weapons from around the city or face the consequences. Simultaneously, NATO called on Muslim forces to place their own heavy weapons under U.N. control. In another diplomatic move,

to dispel any accu-

When All Fell to Pieces

Modern-era Yugoslavia might well have chosen as its motto E Unum Pluribus (“Out of One, Many”), for that is precisely what happened to the culturally, religiously and linguistically disparate nation in the wake of authoritarian president Josip Broz Tito’s death on May 4, 1980.

Tribalism is hardly a new phenomenon in the region. After the fall of the Roman empire the Balkans split between Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity, then further between Christian, Muslim and Bogomilist. People subdivided still further into insular communities of Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenes. The miracle is Yugoslavia ever came to be, for it was never more than an unstable confederation of a half dozen republics held together only under Tito’s ruthless rule.

So when the dominos fell in post-communist Eastern Europe, it is no wonder those republics, and communities of people within them, acted on their desire for independence. The first to break away, Slovenia, set the pattern for the rest— a unilateral declaration of independence followed by a federal military response that devolved into urban street fighting and guerrilla warfare. Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro followed in turn with varying degrees of bloodshed and/or diplomacy.

In the end the only remaining federal vestige was Serbia. The nearly two-decade fight to keep the manufactured Slavic republic intact had taken the lives of upward of 100,000 of its people before fracturing along lines built over millennia MH

June 25, 1991 Slovenia secedes; Croatia declares independence

Aug. 24, 1991 Serbs commence heavy bombing around Vukovar

April 1992 U.N. sends peacekeepers to Croatia

May 1992 U.N. withdraws from Sarajevo

Jan. 1993 Croats launch offensive to recapture key positions

April 1993 Operation Deny Flight enforces U.N. no-fly zone

May 1993 U.N. evacuates Muslims from Srebrenica

Feb. 28, 1994 NATO’s first offensive action

March 1994 Tentative peace between Bosnian Croats and Muslims

April 10, 1994 NATO bombs Serbs around Muslim “pocket”

June 8,1994 Cease-fire in Bosnia-Herzegovina

July 11, 1995 Serbs overrun Srebrenica

July 28, 1995 Croatian troops cross border to attack Serb positions

Aug. 4, 1995 Croats retake Krajina. Serbs flee

Aug. 29, 1995 NATO attacks Bosnian Serbs

Oct. 5, 1995 Warring factions agree to cease-fire

Dec. 14, 1995 Dayton Agreement ends war in Bosnia-Herzegovina

June 9, 1999 Serbia accepts peace plan, withdraws from Kosovo

Feb. 17, 2008 Kosovo declares independence

Balkans’ Complex History

The decline of the Roman empire left it divided between Rome in the west and Byzantium in the east, with a corresponding split in the Christian Church—Roman Catholicism in the west, Orthodox Christianity in the east. In the Balkans the dividing line more or less followed the River Drina, which today marks much of Serbia’s border with Bosnia-Herzegovina and helps explain why the religion is mainly Orthodox Christian east and south of the Drina and largely Roman Catholic further north and along the coast. But how did Islam come to be the majority religion in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

The centuries following the collapse of the Roman empire saw the emergence of Balkan states from which would evolve Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria. The Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians and people of Herzegovina would develop their own regional and national identities. By the 13th century Bosnia was populated by Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and the persecuted dualist Bogomilist sect. It began to merge with the southern region of Orthodox Christian Hum (later Herzegovina) in the early 14th century.

sations of prejudice, not least from Moscow, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced NATO would target anyone who continued to shell Sarajevo. The Serbs, knowing full well who would be held responsible for any such violation, prudently complied with the ultimatum. By late February, after having been under siege for 22 months, the Bosnian capital was at last able to enjoy some semblance of normality.

In April 1993 NATO had launched Operation Deny Flight to enforce a U.N. no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nearly a year later, on Feb. 28, 1994, NATO carried out the first active combat action in its 45-year history when American F-16 fighters shot down four Serbian aircraft operating in defiance of the ban.

Police in Sarajevo arrest

Muslim expansionism led to the crucial Battle of Kosovo in 1389, when Ottoman Turks defeated the Serbs, eventually driving them north to the Danube, while the Croats were pushed north toward Zagreb, Croatia’s present-day capital. It benefited the Bogomil heretics in Muslim-occupied regions to convert to Islam. In the 17th century, as the Ottomans were gradually forced to cede territory, many Muslims sought refuge in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The region was taken over by the Austro-Hungarian empire following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, which also led to the independence of most of Bulgaria. An emergence of nationalist fervor culminated in the early 20th century with Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece uniting in a brief and successful war with Turkey. Another conflict, between the victors this time, resulted in an expansion of Serbia’s borders. Relations between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian government collapsed when, on June 28, 1914, Hapsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb terrorist Gavrilo Princip, precipitating the outbreak of World War I and the ultimate demise of the central and east European empires. The postwar years saw the rise of the Serbian-dominated kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929 Serbian King Aleksandar I Karadordevic declared direct rule by decree in an attempt to curb continuing dissent among the member states. Five years later Aleksandar was assassinated. Not until 1939 was home rule bestowed on Croatia by his cousin and successor, Prince Regent Paul. The German invasion in April 1941 led to further discord, with some in favor of occupation and others opposed. Ustase (insurgents), composed of pro-fascist Croats and Muslims, proceeded to eliminate Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and others. The situation also gave rise to Dragoljub “Draza” Mihailovic and his Serbian royalist Chetniks (from ceta, or “company”) and Tito’s communist Partisans. In the civil strife that persisted after 1945, Tito prevailed, and Mihailovic was executed by a communist firing squad, laying the groundwork for a Yugoslavian federation. History, however, was far from through with the Balkans. —A.R.

In March a tentative peace was negotiated between Bosnian Croats and Muslims subsequent to forging a joint federation. On the 19th Bosnian Serbs besieging Maglaj suddenly pulled back, a move that enabled the U.N. to send its first aid convoy in five months. A respite from the slaughter lasted until the end of the month, when “fierce fighting” was reported between Muslim and Serbian forces in central Bosnia. Farther east the so-called “safe area” of Gorazde also continued to come under attack by Serbs. On April 10 and 11 Serbian positions around the embattled Muslim pocket were bombed by NATO aircraft in the first of a number of ground attacks. Within days Serb fire brought down a British Sea Harrier (the pilot ejected to safety), and little more than week after that a British joint commission observer (a Special Air Service noncommissioned officer) was shot dead in Gorazde. The situation devolved further in late May when some 400 U.N. personnel were detained in a retaliatory move by Serbs.

Talks aimed at securing a cease-fire throughout BosniaHerzegovina commenced in Geneva on June 6, 1994. On the 8th the warring factions agreed to a one-month cease-fire. Within days, however, there was fighting in the northwest Bihac enclave and between Zenica and Tuzla, around Brcko and in the area of Vozuca in the Ozren mountains region.

In late May 1995 Serb forces again humiliated the U.N. by seizing personnel, this time for use as “human shields” in an effort to deter NATO air strikes. All were released in mid-June following the implementation of UNSC Resolution 998—the establishment of a rapid-reaction force within UNPROFOR.

The final battles played out during the summer and fall of 1995. On July 11 Serb forces overran the “safe area” of Srebrenica, then two weeks later that of Zepa. Later that month the Croatians announced their intention to provide military assistance to Bosnian government forces. A few days later, on the 28th, thousands of Croatian troops crossed the border and struck at Serb positions. On August 4 the Croatians moved against Krajina, retaking the region within days and precipitating a massive exodus of Serbian refugees, who sought sanctuary in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.

On August 30—two days after another mortaring of the marketplace in Sarajevo, in which more than 40 died—

Top left: A gravedigger keeps busy outside Sarajevo. The Yugoslav War tolled upward of 100,000 killed, scores more wounded and millions of civilians displaced, including this file of Serbian refugees (middle left) fleeing Kosovo in 1999. That summer the Albanian-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (bottom left) declared victory, and Kosovo declared its independence, though international recognition remains divided.

NATO aircraft launched a series of sustained attacks on Bosnian Serb positions. It was a clear indication of NATO support for the Bosnian government.

On September 8 U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke helped broker an agreement to stop the fighting in Bosnia. On October 5 the warring factions agreed to a cease-fire, which went into effect a week later. On December 14 the signing of the Dayton Agreement finally brought the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina to a conclusion. But hostilities continued unabated elsewhere in the Balkans.

In 1998 growing discontent among ethnic Albanians in the autonomous region of Kosovo erupted into violence, as the Albanian-backed Kosovo Liberation Army sought to rid the country of Serbian rule. When the Serbs retaliated, NATO intervened with a 78-day air campaign targeting Serbs, first in Kosovo and then in what remained of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. About half of Kosovo’s minority ethnic Serbs ultimately fled in fear of reprisals. On June 9, 1999, 11 weeks after the start of the air offensive, Serbian President Milosevic was forced to accept NATO’s terms for a peace plan that included the withdrawal from Kosovo of all Serbian armed forces, special police and paramilitaries. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17, 2008, though international recognition remains divided.

Of the remainder of the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia had declared independence in fall 1991 and, apart from a short period of internal strife in 2001, enjoyed a comparatively peaceful transition. A declaration of independence by the southern coastal region of Montenegro on June 3, 2006, was recognized by the Serbian parliament soon after.

Yugoslav Wars

Slovenian War of Independence

JUNE 27–JULY 7, 1991

Croatian War of Independence

MARCH 31, 1991–NOV. 12, 1995

Bosnian War

APRIL 6, 1992–DEC. 14, 1995

Insurgency in Kosovo

MAY 27, 1995–FEB. 27, 1998

Kosovo War

FEB. 28, 1998–JUNE 11, 1999

Insurgency in the Presevo Valley

JUNE 12, 1999–JUNE 1, 2001

Insurgency in Macedonia

No reliable figures exist, but during the years of conflict in the Balkans upward of 100,000 perished, countless people were injured, and millions were displaced. Of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia remains, together with the northern autonomous region of Vojvodina. MH

JAN. 22– NOV. 12, 2001

Anthony Rogers was a freelance photojournalist during the war in the former Yugoslavia. For further reading he recommends Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War, by Ed Vulliamy, and My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd.

Built in 1905–06 Königsberg was designed to patrol German home and colonial waters. Bristling with 10 4.1-inch guns and fitted with a pair of torpedo tubes, it posed a threat the British could not ignore.

KILLING KÖNIGSBERG

At the outset of World War I Royal Navy ships off East Africa spent months tracking the German light cruiser, but it took a big-game hunter to finally bring down the elusive warship

In the 1976 war film Shout at the Devil, based on the best-selling 1968 novel by Wilbur Smith and starring Lee Marvin and Roger Moore, a pair of ivory poachers are induced to wage guerrilla warfare in German East Africa during World War I. The climax of the film comes when Marvin and Moore board the German cruiser Blücher—hidden far up the Rufiji River while its crew repairs battle damage—and place a time bomb in the forward magazine, blowing up the ship.

The story is very loosely based on an actual incident involving the German light cruiser Königsberg, whose captain did steam the cruiser up the Rufiji in 1914 to overhaul its engines. Unable to get its capital ships within range to engage the cruiser, the Royal Navy enlisted the aid of noted hunter and scout Philip Jacobus Pretorius, one of South Africa’s most legendary figures. Pretorius helped the British find and destroy Königsberg. While nearly forgotten in naval history, the action is mentioned in English author C.S. Forester’s classic 1935 novel The African Queen.

Seine Majestät

Schiff (“His Majesty’s Ship”) Königsberg was the lead ship of four light cruisers built by the Imperial Shipyard Kiel in 1905–06 to serve as fleet scouts in Germany’s home and colonial waters. Commissioned into the Kaiserliche Marine in 1907, Königsberg was assigned that June to escort Wilhelm II’s yacht Hohenzollern on a cruise of the Baltic and North seas, during which the kaiser met with cousin Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. For most of the next five years Königsberg served as an escort or goodwill ship on visits to various European neighbors. It also undertook a series of reconnaissance patrols in the Mediterranean, thinly disguised attempts at spying on the British bases at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Suez. Placed out of service in Danzig for 19 months of modernization work, Königsberg rejoined the fleet in January 1913.

With a displacement of 3,400 tons and a length of 378 feet, Königsberg drew just over 17 feet of water. The cruiser’s crew of 14 officers and 308 enlisted men operated the ship and its main armament of 10 4.1-inch guns on single pedestal mounts. Each gun had 150 shells at the ready, giving

the cruiser a considerable punch. It was also equipped with a pair of torpedo tubes below its waterline. Fast at 24 knots, Königsberg was able to chase down any merchantman afloat. With two triple-expansion reciprocating engines driving twin propellers, the cruiser boasted a range of nearly 6,000 nautical miles. Its only limitation was the frequent need to coal.

With war looming ever closer, the German Imperial Admiralty sent Königsberg to German East Africa. Taking command of the ship on April 1, 1914, Fregattenkapitän Max Looff helmed the cruiser into the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal to its new home port, the colonial capital of Dar es Salaam. Looff’s short-term orders were to patrol coastal East Africa. When war broke out, he was to use his ship to attack and disrupt British shipping around the approaches to the Red Sea, the busiest sea-lane in the world and vital to Britain’s survival.

In late July 1914 Looff returned to Dar es Salaam to coal and reprovision. While in port he rigorously trained his deck crew, engineering department and gunners. Looff

intended to be ready when war was declared. He didn’t have long to wait.

With Europe on the brink of war, dered three light cruisers—Hyacinth from the Cape of Good Hope Station in South Africa to steam north and bottle up Königsberg But on July 31 Looff slipped out of port just ahead of his British pursuers and turned north toward the Red Sea.

On August 8, four days after the formal declaration of war, the trio of British cruisers shelled the German wireless station in Dar es Salaam, making communication with Königsberg or the German Imperial Admiralty difficult. To prevent the British ships from entering port, German East Africa Governor Heinrich Schnee ordered a large floating pier to be sunk at the harbor mouth. But that also cut off Königsberg from its home port. The British cruisers had already prevented its collier, Koenig, from leaving Dar es Salaam and purchased all available coal in neighboring Portuguese East Africa.

With few options, Looff resorted to raiding the ship ping lanes for coal-bearing ships. On August 6 stopped the British freighter City of Winchester Looff’s crew transferred more than a thousand tons of coal before scuttling the freighter. Meanwhile, the German steamer Somali, which had managed to slip out of Dar es Salaam on the night of August 3–4, was also steaming to resupply Königsberg with coal. By the time the ships rendez voused 10 days later, Looff’s cruiser was down to 15 tons of coal. Somali loaded more than 900 tons aboard Königsberg, enough for about four days of steaming. On August 23 Somali again supplied the cruiser with coal.

By early September Königsberg ’s engines desperately needed an overhaul. Cut off from friendly ports, Looff had a refuge in mind. The largest river in German East Africa was the Rufiji (in present-day Tanzania). Navigable for some 60 miles and flanked by the largest mangrove forest in East Africa, the river offered many places for a ship to hide while undergoing repairs. Its delta spans more than 100 miles of coastline, while just offshore lies 170-square-mile Mafia Island. Looff decided to move up the Rufiji’s north channel to find a mooring. On September 3, led by one of its launches, Königsberg moved slowly into the thickly wooded and swampy delta. The late summer air was as hot and humid as a sauna. Looff stationed two of his three launches 6 miles upriver at wedge-shaped Salale Island. There he mounted two of his 4.1-inch guns, set up searchlights and ran telegraph lines from the island to Königsberg to give Looff ample warning of any approaching enemy ships.

Somali’s captain had arranged for small coastal tugs to resupply Königsberg and got word to Looff that HMS Pegasus, which had nearly caught the German cruiser at Dar es Salaam, was patrolling the East African coast. Königsberg’s captain realized the British light cruiser would have to coal at least once a week, and German spotters soon reported

AFRICA

Pega

sus, holed more than two dozen times, settled by the bow. As its crew attempted to beach the sinking warship, Pegasus finally capsized and sank with 31 killed and 55 wounded. British gunners hadn’t even managed to hit Königsberg, which remained out of range. After sinking the picket ship Helmuth and dumping several barrels loaded with sand at the harbor entrance to fool the British into thinking they were mines, Königsberg turned about, leaving a curved ostrich feather of white foam.

Bottled Up

By the outbreak of World War I the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) had become one of the world’s most powerful maritime forces, second only to that of Britain. But his majesty Wilhelm II’s fleet largely remained in port and, like Königsberg, was ultimately scuttled.

His greatest threat neutralized, Looff could finally begin repairing his ship’s engines. As Königsberg steamed back up Rufiji’s north channel to its mooring off Salale, joined by the supply ship Somali, the cruiser’s crew sowed real mines in the ships’ wake.

The Royal Navy, infuriated by Königsberg’s hit-and-run attack on the helpless Pegasus, went all out in its efforts to hunt down the German warship. Supplemented with escort destroyers and, at intervals, the old pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Goliath, the squadron was placed under the command of Rear Admiral Herbert King-Hall, commander of the Cape of Good Hope Station. His first order of business was to find Königsberg. The German light cruiser had last been seen steaming from Zanzibar, but more than a month passed before there were any leads. Then, on October 19, one

of King-Hall’s light cruisers, Chatham, stopped the German steamer Präsident . An examination of its papers revealed Präsident had coaled Königsberg in the Rufiji Delta in recent weeks, though King-Hall reasoned his quarry may since have steamed most anywhere.

As luck would have it, on October 30 Chatham observed smoke up the Rufiji. That was enough for the admiral. Königsberg and its supply ship Somali were somewhere upriver. But given the hundreds of square miles of channels and mangrove-shrouded islands, King-Hall had no illusions about finding them without an exhaustive search.

First, to ensure Königsberg did not escape, the admiral had Chatham and its sister light cruisers Weymouth and Dartmouth blockade the mouth of the delta. Fortunately for the British, native informers warned them about Looff’s defensive positions, which made any closer approach hazardous.

On November 3 the cruisers tried in vain to blindly shell Königsberg, though four days later Chatham scored a lucky hit on Somali, destroying it. On November 10 Chatham and four smaller ships managed under fire to scuttle the collier Newbridge in the main channel, hoping to prevent Königsberg’s escape. Later that month the newly arrived Goliath also sought to damage the German cruiser with blind shelling. But the delta’s water proved too shallow for the battleship to close within range, even with its big 12-inch guns. The shelling only convinced Looff to move Königsberg 5 miles farther up the papyrus- and mangrove-choked river.

At that point King-Hall tried a different tack. That fall he’d learned of a civilian pilot named Dennis Cutler, who was ferrying passengers around the harbor of Durban, South Africa, in a Curtiss floatplane. Recruiting Cutler into the Royal Naval Air Service at the rank of sublieutenant, King-Hall had pilot and seaplane brought north on the converted armed merchant cruiser Kinfauns Castle to search for Königsberg. Cutler’s first attempt, on October 19, ended with his forced landing after the plane ran short of fuel. Three days later he spotted Königsberg, but as he lacked a compass, he could give only an approximate position. A third flight with an observer yielded better information. Unfortunately, the plane went down in the delta on Cutler’s fourth flight, and he fell into German hands. Further searches by Sopwith and Short seaplanes fared no better.

A week before Christmas Looff moved Königsberg one more time. Its final mooring was some 17 miles upriver. There its launch nudged the warship up against the north bank of a narrow channel winding through the thick mangrove forests. Looff sent men ashore to cut branches for camouflage. He then sent a runner north to Dar es Salaam to inform Governor Schnee of his plans. Soon supply lines of wagons pulled by native bearers began rolling down the 120-mile jungle track.

Looff’s engineers dismantled the two reciprocating engines. Floated ashore by barge, they were transported overland to Dar es Salaam for overhaul. Meanwhile, Looff received orders from Lt. Col. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck to yield up some of his crew in support of the latter’s East African campaign against the British. Looff was able to retain only 220 men, which would leave his ship shorthanded in a battle at sea.

Meanwhile, Königsberg was short on coal and had used up about a third of its main gun ammunition. Malaria, dysentery, malnutrition and heat prostration took their toll on

the skeleton crew. Snakes and crocodiles were a constant threat. Time was running out for the cruiser. Looff still needed to install the engines and head downriver, ever closer to the blockading British ships. Then would come a battle with superior forces.

In early January 1915 a frustrated King-Hall resorted to an unconventional means of finding Königsberg.

Enter one of the most colorful characters in South Africa. Philip Jacobus Pretorius, a Boer born in the Transvaal region of South Africa in 1877, was the most famous hunter and guide in sub-Saharan Africa. Although his father had fought the British in the 1899–1902 Second Boer War, he had good relations with the British and hated the Germans almost as much. King-Hall personally invited him to help the Royal Navy find Königsberg

On receiving the message, Pretorius traveled to Durban, where he was welcomed aboard Goliath, which alternated with Hyacinth as King-Hall’s flagship. The next morning, as the cruiser sailed for the Rufiji Delta, the admiral greeted him cordially. “King-Hall was a charming man, slightly under 6 feet in height, red-complexioned and possessing the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen,” wrote Pretorius in his autobiography, Jungle Man.

King-Hall asked whether Pretorius, who was familiar with the region from his hunting treks, would be able to move up the Rufiji and pinpoint Königsberg. Pretorius, only too glad to help rid Africa of the seagoing menace-in-being, agreed to help. He would need eight days.

Landed with a radio operator on Mafia Island by a launch from Goliath, Pretorius recruited a half dozen trusted natives. Two days later Weymouth ferried the band to the mainland with a small dugout canoe. After hiding the dugout, the men marched inland and waited along the broad track on which the Germans were moving equipment and provisions. Pretorius soon captured two native porters and convinced them to show him where Königsberg was moored. They took him to a riverside hillock from which he scouted the German cruiser, some 300 yards away. “She was well camouflaged,” Pretorius recalled, “smothered in trees on her deck, and her sides painted so that she seemed part of the surrounding jungle.”

After making careful note of its position, the scout, his men and their prisoners returned east and paddled the dugout back to Mafia, where he signaled, “Pretorius wishes to see the admiral.” Exactly eight days after having left Goliath, he handed his report to King-Hall. The admiral was impressed, but he needed more intelligence. “The locating of the ship was but the preliminary part of my job,” Pretorius recalled. King-Hall wanted to know Königsberg’s exact range from the coast and the state of its armament. Weeks of scouting lay ahead.

Once again Pretorius headed inland to the riverside vantage point. This time using powerful field glasses, he was able to clearly see Königsberg’s decks, counting eight of its

4.1-inch guns still in their mounts. But he could not determine whether its torpedoes were still aboard. Making contact with the friendly chief of one of the villages from which Looff had recruited laborers, Pretorius learned the chief’s son worked as a collier on Königsberg. The chief offered to go to the tent camp set up beside the cruiser and press his son for information. Only half trusting the chief’s intentions, Pretorius said he would join him. Deeply bronzed from decades of being in the sun, with black hair and dark eyes, he decided to pass himself off as an Arab. Clad in suitable clothing and carrying a basket of chickens, Pretorius and the chief (posing as his servant) were stopped short by German pickets. But Pretorius convinced the guards to allow his “servant’s” son to leave the ship and speak briefly with his father. “Where are the long bullets that swim in the water?” the chief asked the boy in his native tongue. The reply proved vital, for the boy said the torpedoes had been transferred to the two launches waiting in the delta. Any British warship attempting to move upriver would be in for a hot reception.

By the time Pretorius returned to Mafia from his second scouting trip, King-Hall had transferred his flag to Hyacinth. (Goliath was sent up to the Dardanelles, where on May 13 it was sunk by a Turkish torpedo boat.) On learning of Königsberg’ s torpedo-armed launches, the admiral ordered all ships to remain well out to sea. Meanwhile, at the direction of the British Admiralty, two shallowdraft Humber-class monitors were being towed down from the Mediterranean to join King-Hall’s squadron. Ordered by the Brazilian navy in 1912, the Vickers-built gunboats were purchased by the Royal Navy in August 1914 to add nearshore firepower to the fleet. At just over 1,200 tons displacement and 267 feet long, the monitors looked like nothing else in the Royal Navy. Severn and Mersey boasted a powerful main armament of two 6-inch guns and two 4.7-inch dual-purpose guns for high-angle fire. Drafting less

than 6 feet, the monitors would be able to move upriver and shell Königsberg

Once again sending Pretorius into the breach, King-Hall asked the scout to find a viable channel of approach and a suitable range point in the delta from which the monitors could fire. By then knowing the delta as well as anyone, Pretorius charted a channel 6 to 7 feet deep that extended 7 miles up the north channel. It ended at a reef within 6-inch gun range of Königsberg. It was an ideal spot, though like the British cruisers and Goliath before them, Severn and Mersey would have to fire blind over hills and mangrove forests to hit their distant target. Pretorius then spent a tedious month tracking the tides.

Finally, on the morning of July 11—after an abortive attempt five days earlier to engage Königsberg—the two monitors, preceded by two minesweepers, moved ponder-

ously up the middle channel of the Rufiji. Pretorius watched the fruits of his long labors from the deck of Hyacinth. “I was watching their slow progress toward that position I had found for them,” he recalled, “[when] then the sea seemed to burst, and a tremendous column of water shot up into the air in front of the flagship, followed by a thunderous roar that filled the world.”

Warned by its telegraph posts on the coast, Königsberg had opened fire. More shells from the unseen German cruiser exploded around the British squadron, followed by several from the two shore-based guns. The British ships answered, loosing salvos in the general direction where Königsberg lay. The monitors held their fire until reaching the range point marked by Pretorius.

Then began the blind duel. “The firing increased,” Pretorius recalled, “and now it burst out from a new quarter in the very heart of the bush. The monitors were in action. Two aeroplanes had appeared over the delta, and I was informed signals were being received from them.” The airborne spotters soon got the British gunners on target.

As Severn and Mersey unleashed their heavy shells on Königsberg, smoke roiled from out of sight upriver. Thanks to Pretorius, the British gunners knew exactly how far away and in what direction the German cruiser lay hidden. Looff was at a serious disadvantage. Moored up against the bank of the narrow channel, he could not maneuver, and his shorthanded crew was unable to load and fire the guns as fast as a full crew. Königsberg took several hits from the heavy 6-inch incendiary rounds, which ignited raging fires on the decks. The trees used for camouflage also caught fire as sailors tried desperately to push them overboard.

For five hours shells rained down on the German cruiser, silencing its guns in turn. Eventually, all return fire ceased, and dense smoke rose from Königsberg’s mooring. Just after 1400 hours King-Hall ordered his ships to cease fire.

Six days later Pretorius and his band found what was left of Königsberg. “One would scarcely have known what she had been,” he recalled. “Beside the bush-crowded edge of the small island against which she had been moored lay little more than a vast disorder of tortured steel, made the more unlovely by broken bodies strewn at every angle.” SMS Königsberg’s reign of destruction had ended. Nineteen of its skeleton crew had been killed, another 45 wounded, including Looff. After scuttling his ship in the shallow river and burying his dead, the captain had the surviving crew salvage all 10 guns for transport to Dar es Salaam. The repaired guns and the ship’s crew went on to serve in East Africa under Lettow-Vorbeck.

With the threat removed, the British squadron resumed escorting convoys, while P.J. Pretorius went back to his scouting and intelligence work. Among the most colorful and storied adventurers in Africa, he died at age 68 on Nov. 24, 1945, weeks after having witnessed the end to yet another war. MH

Tactical Takeaways

Get while the getting... Four days before the formal declaration of war Max Looff helmed Königsberg out of Dar es Salaam just ahead of pursuing British ships. Be ready for anything.

The British light cruiser Pegasus was caught at its mooring in Zanzibar, its engines shut down, when Königsberg came calling and sank its enemy counterpart.

Don’t fence yourself in. Looff sought a favorable shelter when he sailed up the Rufiji to overhaul his engines, but in so doing, he left himself no avenue of escape.

A contributor to more than a dozen naval, aviation and military history magazines, Mark Carlson is working on a book about the first six months of the Pacific War. For further reading he recommends Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, by Robert K. Massie, and Jungle Man: The Autobiography of Major P.J. Pretorius.

CLOSE CALLS

For more than a century aviators have gone in harm’s way in the service of frontline troops

From 1794, when French balloonists dropped messages from the basket of l’Entreprenant to report on Austrian troop movements to the first use of Morse code conveyed by electrical cables by Union aeronauts in 1861, armies developed means of coordinating intelligence gathered from the air to their forces on the ground quickly enough for it to be useful. The airplane entered the picture in 1911 during the Italian invasion of Ottoman-held Libya, when the first scouting flight was followed within days by the first handdropped explosives. In 1912 British experiments with wireless signaling enabled the airplane to provide troops and artillerists what they needed to know in real time, and throughout World War I improvements in the aircraft led to more means of harnessing their potential to provide wellcoordinated close air support. By 1918 that included airdrops of ammunition and supplies, as well as specialized ground attack planes, taking the fight down on the enemy.

Introduced to military use during World War II and made practical during the Korean War, the helicopter became an indispensable supplement to the airplane, with the added advantage of being able to land and depart from terrain where an airplane could not—a critical asset to which many a medevaced soldier owed his life. MH

Sergeant Samuel Galan of U.S. Marine light helicopter attack squadron HMLA-169 breaks up a Taliban ambush in Helmand province, Afghanistan, using a minigun mounted in a Bell UH-1Y Venom helicopter gunship on Feb. 3, 2013.

A A Farman III biplane performs scouting duties during a French artillery exercise near Châlonssur-Marne (present-day Châlons-sur-Champagne) in 1910. A year later Italy would use warplanes in earnest in Libya. B Bulgarian airmen in a Blériot XI-2 set out on a bombing mission against Ottoman defenses in Adrianople (present-day Edirne, Turkey) in 1913 during the First Balkan War. C An S.E.5a (left) and a Sopwith Camel strafe German trenches as the prelude to a British advance in late 1917. Fighter pilots, who were fair game for every enemy holding a gun, considered it a “dirty job,” but it increasingly became a regular part of their duties. D Junkers Ju 87D Stukas peel off to attack a Soviet road column in a classic use of the dive bomber as “flying artillery”— provided there is no aerial opposition. E Carrier-based Grumman TBF-1 Avengers soften up Japanese fortifications for advancing Marines on Namur, Kwajalein Atoll, on Feb. 1, 1944. F A Stinson L-5 Sentinel does artillery spotting for Marines on Okinawa on June 2, 1945. G The observer in a U.S. Navy aircraft trains in aerial photography at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Va., in 1940. H An Eastern Aircraft TBM-1 spearheads a Marine assault on a hidden Japanese strongpoint on Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

Wireless signaling enabled the airplane to provide troops and artillerists what they needed to know in real time

The helicopter became an indispensable supplement to the airplane

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THE DAY COMBINED ARMS PREVAILED

A contemporary painting by Flemish artist Pieter Snayers (1592–1697) captures the battlefield, thick with smoke from artillery, as Swedish forces (at right) under Gustavus fight imperial forces under Tserclaes (Tilly).

Key to Gustavus’ combined arms success were his highly mobile field guns, like this example marked GARS (translated from Latin to Gustavus Adolphus Rex of Sweden).

Fought on Sept. 17, 1631, the Battle of Breitenfeld was the first major Protestant victory of the Thirty Years’ War. The epic clash pitted the opposing factions’ most outstanding generals against one another. King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden commanded both his own Swedish forces and those of the Protestant Electorate of Saxony. Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, commanded the combined forces of the Holy Roman empire and the Catholic League. Sparked by the Reformation, the war was among the costliest conflicts in European history, with combat, disease and famine claiming as many as 8 million soldiers and civilians. Neither Gustavus nor Tilly would live to see its conclusion.

Born in 1559 to devoutly Roman Catholic parents in Walloon Brabant (in present-day Belgium), Tilly fought Protestant Dutch rebels during the Eighty Years’ War (c. 1566–1648) and Ottoman Turks in Hungary and Transylvania in 1600. In 1610 Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria appointed the veteran field marshal commander of the Catholic League forces. From the outset of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 Tilly’s impressive string of victories included the Battle of White Mountain (1620), the Battles of Wimpfen and Höchst (1622), the Siege of Heidelberg (1622), the Capture of Mannheim (1622), the Battle of Stadtlohn (1623), the Battle of Lutter (1626) and the nightmarish Sack of Magdeburg (1631). Tilly’s cavalry commander at both Magdeburg and Breitenfeld, four months later, was the fearsome Gottfried Heinrich, Count of Pappenheim. Together they formed one of the most dominating command combinations in the history of warfare.

Among the surviving relics from Gustavus’ reign are the steel chest harness at top and the liveries, or knee breeches, above. The latter, worn as an outer layer, marked a person of distinction. Both are in the collection of the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.

Contrary to widespread belief, the Thirty Years’ War was far more complex than a strictly religious struggle between Catholics and Protestants, though it more or less started that way. With the signing of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 subjects of the Holy Roman empire were required to follow the religion of their local princes. Most German princes around the turn of the 17th century were Protestant—either Lutheran or Calvinist—though the Duke of Bavaria was Catholic. Outside of Germany proper, most other members of the loosely knit empire, including Bohemia, much of northern Italy and Austria, were predominantly Catholic. The Austrian capital of Vienna was the seat of the empire.

In theory the emperorship was an elective, rather than a hereditary, position. That

said, the Catholic House of Hapsburg had held the imperial throne since 1440 and fully intended to keep it. Whenever an emperor died, seven prince electors (three spiritual and four secular) determined who his successor would be. All three spiritual electors—the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne—were Catholics loyal to the Hapsburgs. Of the four secular electors—the rulers of Bohemia, Brandenburg, Saxony and the Palatinate—only the king of Bohemia was Catholic, though his realm did have a large and growing Protestant minority. Thus, the Hapsburgs could count on a 4-to-3 majority. The trouble started in 1618 when Ferdinand II, Holy Roman emperor and king of Bohemia, started cracking down on the rise of Protestantism in his kingdom. As it wasn’t part of Germany proper, Bohemia did not fall under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, thus its citizens were used to considerably more religious freedom. That May a group of angry Bohemian Protestants stormed into the royal palace in Prague and tossed two of the leading Catholic regents and their secretary out of a third-floor window—an act remembered as the “Defenestration of Prague.”

Though the men survived their fall, the incident was too much for Ferdinand. He sent military forces marching toward Prague, and the Thirty Years’ War was on. Everything exploded in August 1619 when Frederick V, the elector Palatine, accepted the throne of Bohemia from the Protestant Bohemian electorate. Thus, Frederick held two electoral seats, giving Protestants the 4-to-3 majority when selecting a future new emperor. Ferdinand was determined to make an example of the Protestant rebels.

On Nov. 8, 1620, Catholic League forces under Tilly crushed the Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague, and Frederick fled Bohemia. Given his short reign, he’s been known to history ever since as the “Winter King.” Ferdinand later stripped Frederick of his lands in the Palatinate (roughly comprising the present-day German state of Rhineland-Palatinate) and transferred them to Maximillian of Bavaria, along with the electorship. The emperor also had his son, the future Emperor Ferdinand III, installed

on the Bohemian throne, shifting the electoral advantage 5-to-2 in favor of the Catholics.

Although Catholic, the ruling Bourbons of France were bitter enemies of the Hapsburgs, who also ruled Spain at the time. Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, was the chief minister of King Louis XIII. Seeing a chance to strike at the Austrian Hapsburgs while they were tied down with the brewing war in Germany, Cardinal Richelieu financed Protestant Swiss mercenaries to fight the German Catholics. When the Spanish Hapsburgs started putting pressure on France from the south, Richelieu made a further alliance with Protestant King Christian IV of Denmark to oppose the combined forces supporting the emperor. Christian was also the Duke of Holstein and, therefore, had a direct stake in any conflict in northern Germany. England and the Dutch Republic also pledged financial support for Denmark.

On the orders of Emperor Ferdinand, Tilly marched his Catholic League army north and crushed the Danes at the Battle of Lutter on Aug. 27, 1626. Meanwhile, Ferdinand’s imperial army, under the command of Bohemian generalissimo Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, started marching to the east along the Baltic coast, threatening to overrun the free port cities of the Hanseatic League. If imperial forces managed to gain control of the south coast, that— in tandem with extant Polish and Russian control of most of the eastern Baltic—would effectively seal off Protestant Sweden from the rest of the world. Of more immediate

concern, the Baltic ports could be used by the Holy Roman emperor as a base for an invasion of Sweden.

In mid-May 1628 Wallenstein launched a siege against the strongly fortified Hanseatic port of Stralsund, Pomerania. On concluding an alliance with Stralsund weeks later, Sweden’s King Gustavus sent a small garrison to defend the port. They were the first Swedish soldiers in history to set foot on German soil. Wallenstein conducted a landward siege only, as he lacked the necessary naval forces to blockade the harbor. The local and Swedish forces, with considerable

support from Scottish mercenaries and the Danish fleet, held out until Wallenstein gave up and lifted the siege on August 4. It marked Wallenstein’s first defeat in the Thirty Years’ War and contributed to his temporary dismissal from command in 1630. That in turn left Tilly as sole commander of the combined Catholic League and imperial forces, which numbered some 80,000 troops in Germany. The siege of Stralsund also brought Sweden into the war as a full participant.

Gustavus’ first order of business was to control the southern Baltic and thus keep the Catholic powers from

Though the men survived their fall, the incident was too much for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II

former, he was the greatest commander of the Thirty Years’ War. Though only 35 years old in 1630, he had already been king for 19 years. His well-equipped and -trained army had been honed by decades of fighting in Denmark-Norway, Poland and Russia, during which Gustavus perfected an innovative system of tactics derived from his study of ancient Greek and Roman warfare.

Gustavus reduced the size of the large and unwieldy cavalry squadrons of the period, increasing their speed and mobility, and he widened the intervals between his infantry battalions. Rather than rely on the usual single battle line, he deployed his forces in two echelons, the second line held as a reinforcement for the first. He further

among the horse. In modern parlance his tactical system is known as “combined arms.” Considered the father of modern field artillery, Gustavus employed highly mobile guns with high rates of fire. He excluded anything heavier than a 12-pounder from his field batteries. His bronze 3-pounder regimental gun could be towed by a single horse or three men and boasted a rate of fire half again faster than muskets of the period.

Gustavus was a deeply religious Protestant whose troops went into battle singing hymns. He forbade his troops from pillaging, looting and mistreating civilians, unlike most armies of the medieval period. He also required them to pay for all supplies received from towns and villages along

their line of march. As a result, locals generally welcomed, or at least tolerated, the Swedish army wherever it went.

The Swedish king invaded Pomerania with an initial force of 13,000 troops, landing near Peenemünde on July 6, 1630. They were soon reinforced by a follow-on echelon of 5,300 troops from Sweden and Finland. That fall the Swed ish king concluded an alliance with Bogislaw XIV, Duke of Pomerania. Recruiting locally, Gustavus was able to assem ble a force of 43,000. Seizing the opportunity to strike a further blow against the Hapsburgs, Cardinal Richelieu signed the Treaty of Bärwalde with Gustavus, providing him with financial support of one million livres per year. Richelieu even went so far as to encourage the Ottoman Turks to increase their pressure on Austria from the east.

The imperial court at Vienna initially greatly underesti mated the Swedish threat, dismissively calling Gustavus the “Snow King”—held together by the cold of the north, but who inevitably would melt and disappear the farther south he went into Germany. Overconfident of his earlier successes in Germany, Emperor Ferdinand in 1629 had sent a large German army over the Alps to support the Spanish Haps burgs, who were fighting the French in northern Italy over the succession of the Duchy of Mantua. Gustavus, meanwhile, managed to drive all Catholic forces out of Pomerania, forcing Ferdinand to refocus his attention on the main theater of war, as the Swedish king pushed ever deeper into Germany.

The Saxon city of Magdeburg, Elbe River, was among the most important commercial cen ters in medieval Germany. It was also a Protestant stronghold. With a population of more than 35,000, Magdeburg at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War sought to remain neutral. As imperialist pressures on the town grew, however, the city council entered into an alliance with Gustavus in August 1630. That November, in anticipation of an imperial siege, the Swedish king sent Dietrich von Falkenberg, an experienced Protestant German officer, to Magdeburg to organize its defense and command the garrison, which ultimately numbered 2,400 trained troops and perhaps another 3,000 local militia. Gustavus, meanwhile, continued his operations to clear the Baltic coast and establish a secure base of operations. In April 1631 he captured the key Brandenburg town of Frankfurt an der Oder.

By March 1631, meanwhile, imperial forces under Tilly and Pappenheim, numbering 24,000, had closed in on Magdeburg. When Tilly demanded its capitulation, Falkenberg refused, believing the Swedes would soon come to his relief. Gustavus, however, was well beyond striking distance. Tilly put his artillery into battery and commenced a fierce bombardment of the city, but Falkenberg still refused to surrender. Finally, on May 20 imperial forces assaulted the town, penetrating its defenses in short order. Falkenberg was shot dead while trying to organize a counterattack. Emboldened imperial troops set fire to the town, and many attackers went rogue, looting, raping and massacring civilians over several

atrocity of the Thirty Years’ War, became a cause célèbre for the Protestant princes of Germany, stiffening their resolve to resist the Catholics. Saxony and Brandenburg, whose rulers were both electors, allied with Gustavus. It didn’t hurt that Gustavus was married to the sister of Georg Wilhelm, the elector of Brandenburg. For the first time in the war the Protestants had something close to a unified command, and the combined forces gave the Swedish king the necessary strength to march south into Germany and seek decisive battle with Tilly.

May 17, 1632

The Bavarian capital of Munich yields to Gustavus. Sept. 3–4, 1632

Gustavus suffers his first tactical defeat of the war against Wallenstein while attacking the imperial stronghold at Alte Veste. Nov. 16, 1632

Gustavus is killed in action at Lützen, though the Swedes win the battle, thanks to Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, who assumes command and defeats Wallenstein.

After Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony, formally allied himself with Gustavus on Sept. 11, 1631, Tilly initiated a punitive campaign, setting out to ravage Saxony with about 36,000 troops. On September 15 he captured Leipzig, which his men looted. But the imperial commander neglected the opportunity to attack the weak Saxon army of 16,000 troops before they managed to link up with Gustavus’ 26,000 Swedes at Düben, some 40 miles north of Leipzig. On the urging of his cavalry commander, Pappenheim, Tilly abandoned town and took up a position at Breitenfeld, 5 miles to the north.

The opposing forces sighted each other early on the morning of September 17. Tilly deployed his single line of

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infantry in the center with cavalry on the wings. He commanded the center and right, Pappenheim the left. The imperial artillery was massed in the center and center right and emplaced on high ground to the rear. Gustavus deployed his troops in his signature two lines. Rather than the traditional Spanish-designed tercio square formation of massed pikemen with musketeers on its corners, the Swedish infantrymen were grouped in smaller, more mobile formations, with musketeers predominating and pikemen protecting. Throughout the forthcoming battle Gustavus’ lighter and more mobile artillery would exact a heavy toll on the densely packed imperial formations.

Saxon infantry, cavalry and artillery under Elector Johann Georg held the left of the Protestant line, while Swedish and other German infantry units occupied the center and right. Most of the Swedish cavalry deployed on the right wing, opposite Pappenheim. Gustavus’ reserve cavalry was at the center, between the two echelons of infantry.

Finnish Field Marshal Count Gustav Horn commanded the Swedish left (the overall Protestant center) directly against Tilly, while the Swedish king positioned himself on the far right, opposite Pappenheim.

Tilly made the opening move. Rather than launch an immediate attack, he resolved to pound the enemy for as

long as possible with his heavier, longer-range guns. He ordered the imperial artillery to open up as Gustavus’ force was deploying. The firing continued until midday, prevailing winds blowing the thick gun smoke and dust directly into the faces of the Swedes and Saxons. When the firing ceased, the impetuous Pappenheim, acting without orders, led his cavalry in an attempt to turn the Swedish right flank.

In a brilliant move, Gustavus wheeled his reserve horse, catching Pappenheim between his two cavalry forces. The Swedish king also rapidly repositioned his light guns and opened up with grapeshot against the imperial horse. Gustavus’ guns and musketeers easily outranged the pistol fire of the imperial cavalry. Pappenheim hit the Swedish line seven times, and each time he was repulsed with greater losses, finally forcing him to withdraw.

Only then did Tilly advance against the Saxons. The rapid, accurate fire from the Swedish line drove his men increasingly to the right, but ultimately the Saxons broke, Elector Johann Georg himself falling back on Eilenberg, a dozen miles to the east. Messengers prematurely set out toward Munich and Vienna carrying news of the Catholic victory.

Meanwhile, Tilly turned against the exposed Swedish left flank. Gustavus immediately redeployed three regiments from his right to shore up his left. While Horn’s infantry held off Tilly’s attack, Gustavus routed the remainder of the Catholic left wing. With his own right wing freed, the king then advanced against the Catholic guns on the high ground to Tilly’s rear, rolling up Tilly’s left flank in the

process. On capturing the imperial guns, Gustavus’ gunners turned them on their former owners from the rear.

After seven hours of fighting, Gustavus’ forces had almost wholly enveloped Tilly’s troops. Protected by four veteran regiments that had never fled from a fight, Tilly fought his way out of the encirclement. Once free of the Swedes, the disciplined imperials formed a defensive perimeter and continued to resist until nightfall, at which point the wounded Tilly had only 600 effectives under his command. The surviving Catholic forces withdrew toward Halle, some 17 miles to the west. On reaching safety, Tilly and Pappenheim were able to muster only about 2,000 men between them. The imperial forces had lost around 7,000 dead, 6,000 captured, 3,000 wounded and 3,400 missing. The Swedes had lost some 2,100 killed, the Saxons 3,000.

Leaving Johann Georg and his Saxon troops to clear Leipzig, Gustavus turned southwest and drove deeper into Germany. After clearing the Palatinate of imperial forces, he established winter quarters near the Rhine. Hoping for a return to his throne, deposed Elector Frederick V met Gustavus at Frankfurt in February 1632. The Swedish king, however, said he would support Frederick only if the latter would hold the Palatinate as a fief of the king of Sweden. Gustavus also insisted that Frederick, a staunch Calvinist, agree to grant equal rights to Lutherans in the Palatinate. Frederick refused, the two parted, and the hapless elector never regained his throne.

That March Gustavus turned west and invaded Bavaria. On April 15 he again faced Tilly at the Battle of Rain, waged over defensive works centered on that town along the River Lech. Outnumbering the Bavarians roughly 37,500 to 22,000, the Swedish king won a decisive victory, thanks largely to his superb artillery. Tilly took a bullet to his thigh and died of infection 15 days later at age 73. On May 17 Gustavus made a triumphal entry into Munich. He then quickly cleared most of Bohemia. On the verge of panic, Emperor Ferdinand recalled Wallenstein from forced retirement and again put him in command of all imperial and Catholic forces.

Gustavus and Wallenstein clashed for the first time that September 3 and 4 at the Battle of the Alte Veste, near Nuremberg. In that largest battle of the war, which pitted nearly 90,000 men against one another, the previously invincible Gustavus suffered his first tactical defeat, though the strategic results were indecisive. The two great commanders met once more, on November 16, at the Battle of Lützen. While this time Wallenstein was soundly defeated, Gustavus was killed after becoming separated from his troops while leading a cavalry charge on his flank. About the time Gustavus fell, Pappenheim, the great imperial cavalry commander, was mortally wounded on another part of the field.

The death of the Swedish king broke the Protestant momentum, and the course of the war waffled back and

forth. Unfortunately for the people of central Europe, the Thirty Years’ War ground on another horrific 16 years. After losing to Gustavus, Wallenstein grew increasingly disillusioned with Emperor Ferdinand and opened secret peace negotiations variously with France, Sweden, Saxony and Brandenburg. When the Holy Roman emperor learned of his field marshal’s covert dealings, he charged Wallenstein with treason and issued orders for him to be brought to Vienna—dead or alive. Wallenstein was at his headquarters in Eger (present-day Cheb, Czech Republic), on the Bohemian-Bavarian border, when a group of his own Scottish and Irish mercenary officers assassinated him on Feb. 25, 1634.

Thus, none of the war’s four greatest battlefield commanders lived to see its resolution. Sweden remained in the fight, mostly under the command of Field Marshal Horn, and the Thirty Years’ War finally ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, which again allowed rulers of the imperial member states to choose their own religious affiliation.

Tactical Takeaways

Peace out the window. If diplomacy remains an alternative to warfare, it’s probably best not to storm the royal palace and pitch officials from a third-story window. Don’t follow the crowd. Gustavus’ willingness to break with traditional tactics of the period and employ a combined arms approach won battles. Never give up. When Gustavus was shot from his horse at Lützen, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar took up the banner, kept fighting and secured victory for Protestants and their fallen commander.

Gustavus’ remains were eventually repatriated and interred at Stockholm’s Riddarholmen Church on June 22, 1634. His fellow Swedes posthumously granted the warrior-king the title den Store (“the Great”), making him the only Swedish monarch so honored. MH

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David T. Zabecki is HistoryNet’s chief military historian. For further reading he recommends The Thirty Years’ War, by Geoffrey Parker; and History of the Thirty Years’ War, by Friedrich Schiller.

PRACTICALLY IRREPLACEABLE

He may not have impressed Winston Churchill, but Field Marshal Sir John Dill proved an essential liaison between the American and British chiefs of staff during World War II

Then General Sir John Dill poses for a contemplative portrait in January 1941. In his wartime role as senior British member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff he provided back channel information vital to a coordinated Allied war effort.

British Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill’s funeral on Nov. 8, 1944, prompted a flood of tributes, an uncommon outpouring in wartime Washington D.C. Orchestrated by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, the observances included a memorial service in Washington National Cathedral, a motorized cortege along a route flanked by thousands of soldiers and interment in Arlington National Cemetery. The British field marshal’s devotion to the Allied cause was also recognized by a rare joint resolution of Congress and posthumous award of the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Service Medal. Six years later, on Nov. 1, 1950, high-ranking military and government officials again gathered at Arlington to honor Dill, and President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of Defense Marshall unveiled a statue of Dill on horseback atop his grave—an honor accorded only one other soldier interred in the national cemetery, namely Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny, hero of the Mexican War and American Civil War. General of the Army Marshall was never one to lavish praise, but he offered this stirring eulogy:

Here before us in Arlington, among our hallowed dead, lies a great hero, Field Marshal Sir John Dill. He was my friend, I am proud to say, and he was my intimate associate through most of the war years.…I have never known a man whose high character showed so clearly in [the] honest directness of his every action. He was an inspiration to all of us.

From January 1942 until his death in November 1944 Field Marshal Dill headed the British Joint Staff Mission, representatives of the British Chiefs of Staff permanently based in the U.S. capital. He was also the senior British member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, military leaders of both countries who developed strategy and allocated resources for coalition warfare against Germany and Japan.

But Dill’s actual role went far beyond his charter. A trusted colleague of the U.S. service chiefs, particularly Marshall, the field marshal was a valued facilitator, a conciliator and a keen interpreter of each country’s aspirations. The sometimes strained alliance would have been far rockier had Dill not been able to furnish rationale for rival points of view and assist in crafting much-needed compromises.

Dill’s journey to America was more happenstance than part of a grand plan. He had been chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), with oversight of the British army, since May 1940, though he never gained the confidence of Winston Churchill. The prime minister referred to the reserved general as “Dilly Dally,” hardly a term of endearment, and when Dill reached the official retirement age of 60, Churchill wasted no time replacing him. In November 1941 the prime minister announced General Sir Alan Brooke would be the new CIGS. He had Dill promoted to field marshal and appointed him governor-designate of Bombay, India, intending to put him “out to pasture.”

Within weeks the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. On December 11 Germany declared war on the United States, and the next morning Churchill embarked for the United States aboard the battleship HMS Duke of York for talks with Franklin D. Roosevelt. He wanted to ensure that defeating Germany would be the top U.S. priority. Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran, the prime minister’s acerbic personal physician, candidly remarked, “Mr. Churchill has been panting to meet the president.”

Churchill and his staff of 80 arrived on December 22. As General Brooke remained in London, the prime minister drafted Dill to attend the conference, code-named Arcadia. Churchill took up residence in the White House, the conference dragging on till Jan. 14, 1942. He was oblivious that his eccentric habits, including regular daytime naps and working into the early morning hours, inconvenienced his hosts.

Arcadia set the initial tone of the bilateral relationship. From the outset Churchill demonstrated a propensity to talk more than listen and projected the aura it was he who would lead his new ally to victory. At the same time his military advisers’ overweening self-confidence, bordering on arrogance, offended their American counterparts. It was not a good start.

On the positive side, Churchill’s interaction with Roosevelt did reaffirm the “Germany first” strategy. He also gained presidential approval to establish the office of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., with Dill as Britain’s primary military representative.

During Arcadia and in the weeks that followed, Americans pressed for an immediate “second front” in northern Europe, to get into the fight against Germany and take pressure off ostensible ally the Soviet Union, whose survival remained in question. To mount a cross-channel invasion before the United States had fully mobilized was unrealistic, yet the prime minister acted as though he supported such a premature move.

British historian Max Hastings lent some context for such duplicity in his 2009 biography Winston’s War. In it

Dill (at center) adeptly interceded between such high-ranking officials as U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (at left) and Dill’s own opinionated boss, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (at right).

Hastings quotes a cable from Churchill to Roosevelt, in which the prime minister states, “Arrangements are being made for a landing of six or eight divisions on the coast of northern France early in September.” The assertion was a blatant fabrication.

According to Hastings, Churchill was disingenuous because he feared candor might prompt the United States to shift the axis of its war effort to the Pacific, an option strongly advocated by U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

Admiral Ernest J. King. But such evasion on the part of the prime minister created lingering distrust among the American chiefs. For his part, Marshall, who would emerge as the primary architect of U.S. strategy, came to trust only one of his British counterparts—Dill.

The Marshall-Dill bond grew stronger as Anglo-American debates became more acrimonious. Dill worked to dampen inflammatory rhetoric and find common ground among the Allies. Confidence in the field marshal’s abilities also grew among senior civilians, including Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s closest adviser.

With Marshall’s approval, Dill shared selected American message traffic with the British Chiefs of Staff to provide

Churchill referred to the reserved Dill as ‘Dilly Dally,’ hardly a term of endearment

keener insight into U.S. concerns. General Brooke saw the value of the back channel and furnished similar documents. Brooke became a strong advocate of the field marshal and touted his worth to a skeptical prime minister.

Shipping constraints, shortages in landing craft and recognition of their lack of preparedness forced Americans to postpone the second front and instead strike the Germans in North Africa with Operation Torch. Roosevelt, ever the politician, wanted Torch to start before the Nov. 3, 1942, midterm elections and was disappointed when problems delayed the landings until November 8.

United States had 150,000 soldiers in the region, Britain had three times as many men, four times as many warships and an equal number of combat aircraft. Thus Churchill had a big bargaining chip when it came time to determine where to employ forces after Torch.

Roosevelt limited the size of the U.S. delegation, which proved a self-inflicted wound. In contrast, the British brought a full complement of planners and a communications ship to allow immediate contact with the remainder of the staff back home. They were better prepared and able to respond quickly to counterproposals. Fortunately for all concerned, Marshall had the foresight to include Dill as a guest in the U.S. contingent.

Dill was the cover subject of the June 8, 1940, issue of the British magazine Picture Post. On joining the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the field marshal worked largely behind the scenes as a facilitator at major Allied conferences, for which he received little popular acclaim.

Successes in North Africa generated a series of conferences to determine “where to go from here.” There were five meetings in 1943—in Casablanca (January 14–24), Washington, D.C., (May 12–25), Quebec (August 17–24) and Cairo-Tehran (November 22–December 7). Joseph Stalin only attended the Tehran Conference, the first face-to-face meeting of the “Big Three” Allied leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Churchill loved “summits,” his word for major conferences, for they gave him a stage and a captive audience for his monologues advancing the British agenda. He was irked when Roosevelt rejected his recommendation to hold one of the gatherings in London.

Casablanca proved a useful venue in which to plan the next campaign and visit battlefield commanders. Churchill basked in the recent British victory at El Alamein, Egypt, and his status as the alliance’s senior partner. Although the

The British raised major concerns about the scale of the U.S. buildup in the Pacific and postulated that a bombing campaign against Germany might relegate the invasion of France, in 1945 or later, to a mopping-up exercise. Their suggestion to delay the cross-channel invasion was anathema to Americans and put the Allied contingents at loggerheads.

Dill brokered a compromise that endorsed a credible commitment in the Pacific, a combined bomber offensive against Germany, an invasion of France in 1944 and a landing on Sicily in the summer of 1943. He shrewdly reminded Brooke that neither side wanted to hand unresolved issues to Churchill and Roosevelt, knowing “what a mess they would make of it.”

Dill’s efforts proved so significant that Roosevelt personally thanked him. In an unprecedented gesture, Marshall invited the field marshal to bring his wife to the United States and offered him a house on “Generals’ Row” at Fort Myer, Va. Lady Nancy Dill became very popular in Washington society and repeatedly popped up in news accounts wearing her Red Cross uniform and doing volunteer work.

Meanwhile, Dill sent home detailed reports about the United States’ growing strength. In 1943 American forces reached 10.5 million men under arms, with 4 million overseas and another 6.5 million in training and soon to deploy. In comparison, by year’s end British manpower topped out at 3.8-plus million. After that, the replacement of casualties proved problematic, though Brooke and fellow chiefs went to great lengths to minimize the degraded state of their armed forces.

As the agreements at Casablanca failed to address actions after Sicily, Churchill pressed for another conference to settle that question. He already had the answer—Italy, what he called “the soft underbelly of the Axis”—and was confident his powers of persuasion would convince Roosevelt. Based on intelligence intercepts, Churchill believed the Germans would not defend the peninsula if Italy were knocked out of the war. That turned out to be an incorrect assumption.

The American chiefs could not afford to have their troops in North Africa and Sicily sit idle, thus a modest commitment in Italy was a logical course of action. If Adolf Hitler did resolve to staunchly defend Germany’s ally in the Mediterranean, Marshall would limit the campaign, as it would consume an inordinate amount of men and equipment, delaying the cross-channel operation. He suspected the latter outcome was the British game plan all along. The chief of staff emphatically stressed Italy would not be a decisive theater, and fighting on the periphery of the Nazi regime would not bring victory.

Churchill always viewed his commitments as flexible, particularly the 1944 date for Overlord, code name for the cross-channel attack. He lobbied for delays and advocated other ventures to weaken Germany. After the May 1943 conference in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson felt so strongly about British prevarication that he sent Roosevelt the following assessment:

[The] prime minister and his chief of imperial staff are frankly at variance with such a proposal [Overlord]. The shadows of Passchendaele and Dunkerque [sic] still hang too heavily over the imagination of these leaders.…Though they have rendered lip service to the operation, their hearts are not in it.

Stimson and Marshall were ultimately able to convince Roosevelt that Overlord, coupled with an invasion of southern France (initially code-named Anvil, later Dragoon), must be initiated as soon as possible.

Prior to the August conference in Quebec Dill warned the British delegation the Roosevelt administration was under increasing pressure from Congress, which questioned why the United States seemed to follow British plans when the former was picking up most of the cost of the war. The criticism came from members of both parties and worried Roosevelt.

Soviet Union ranked higher in popular esteem. British stock further eroded when it was publicized that 9,000 of its military personnel and civil servants were serving in Washington, D.C. The days of admiration for the island nation standing alone against the Nazi juggernaut were long past.

Even in the face of mounting U.S. disapproval, Churchill was unable to contain his flights of strategic fantasy. Throughout 1943 the prime minister requested additional resources for Italy, cited the benefits of operations in the Balkans, extolled the advantages of striking toward Vienna through what he called the “Ljubljana Gap” (an area between two mountain ranges in northern Yugoslavia) and proposed amphibious assaults in the eastern Mediterranean. Roosevelt found Churchill’s hit-or-miss approach tiresome and showed little interest in discussing the schemes. He sarcastically equated the Ljubljana Gap fixation to Churchill’s earlier pronounce-

ment that Italy was the soft underbelly of the Axis. It proved far from soft.

When Roosevelt and Churchill arrived in Cairo as a precursor to meeting Stalin, there was a noticeable change in personal dynamics. Roosevelt, conscious of America’s emergence as the stronger partner, was visibly distant to the prime minister. The president insisted on inviting Chiang Kai-shek, incensing Churchill, who saw China’s participation in the war as inconsequential. Roosevelt added another slight when he cancelled their final oneon-one meeting before leaving for Tehran.

In order to revive his Mediterranean strategy, Churchill tried to convince Marshall that an invasion of Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea, would aid the war effort and bring neutral Turkey into the conflict on the Allies’ side. Following the president’s guidance, an irritated Marshall replied, “Not one American soldier is going to die on [that] goddamned beach!” His brusque response shocked Churchill and further emphasized the United States’ emergence as primus inter pares (“first among equals”). The prime minister blamed Dill for what he considered American intransigence.

At the first session in Tehran Stalin waved aside Churchill’s lengthy introductory remarks and bluntly asked to get down to business. The Soviet generalissimo made it clear Overlord and Anvil were the keys to victory over Germany. He discounted fighting in Italy and forays into the eastern Mediterranean as having little effect on the war’s outcome. Roosevelt and Stalin called the shots and set the spring of 1944 as the date to launch both operations. The prime minister’s attempts to delay the cross-channel attack

Shortly after the Tehran Conference adjourned, the British renewed efforts to expand operations in Italy, augmented by a tenuous beachhead at Anzio. They sought to scrub Anvil and break the stalemate on the Italian peninsula by using shipping from the Pacific to reinforce the lodgment. The American chiefs acknowledged landings in southern France had to be delayed until August 1944, but they refused to move landing craft from the Pacific unless earmarked for Anvil. Tempers on both sides of the table reached new heights.

Dill was again thrown into the breach as an honest broker. He explained to the British chiefs Roosevelt was facing domestic criticism for his perceived neglect of the Pacific. Slowing operations there by withdrawing vital landing craft for employment in a secondary theater was unpalatable, especially in a presidential election year.

Dill’s labors earned him additional enmity from the prime minister, who continued to decry Anvil and bombard American officials with telegrams requesting more resources for Italy. In a fit of irrationality, he even accused the field marshal of having been “Americanized.”

Increasingly concerned Churchill might recall his British colleague, Marshall set about building a “backfire” that included arranging to have Dill awarded Yale University’s prestigious Howland Memorial Prize for his invaluable contributions to international relations. Honorary degrees from Columbia and Princeton followed. The accolades garnered extensive press coverage, possibly staying Churchill’s hand from recalling or censuring his representative.

The Anvil dispute was the last contentious issue Dill was able to mediate. In the summer of 1943 he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare disorder in which the body fails to produce blood cells in sufficient numbers. For a year doctors kept him alive with blood transfusions, but in June 1944 Dill collapsed just prior to accompanying the U.S. chiefs on a visit to Normandy. He endured an extended hospitalization and a long convalescence but never fully recovered. Dill died at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 1944.

The response in London to the field marshal’s passing was muted, Churchill neglecting to mention it either in Parliament or on the radio. In a note to the prime minister, Marshall chided his indifference. “Few will ever realize the debt our countries owe [Dill] for his unique and profound influence toward the cooperation of our forces,” he wrote.

“To be very frank and personal, I doubt if you or your cabinet associates fully realize the loss you have suffered.” Belated recognition came from Brooke in his wartime diaries. In its pages the British chief readily skewered such senior officials as Churchill, Roosevelt, Marshall and King,

but the words he reserved for Dill were glowing. His was a lone voice throughout the British empire. In his multivolume biography of Marshall author Forrest C. Pogue succinctly captured the value of Dill’s contribution to the war effort:

In an amazing balancing act, Dill was able to represent British wishes to the Americans without antagonizing them and to warn London of the limits of American forbearance without arousing suspicion on the part of his own chiefs that he had become a captive of his hosts.

General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean, was promoted to field marshal and appointed to replace Dill. Known as “Jumbo” due to his girth and affability, Wilson made every effort to fill the shoes of his late colleague but never achieved Dill’s deft touch or sense of timing. Fortunately for the Allied effort, after November 1944 they had settled their major strategic differences, and operational issues were not as divisive as they had been when Sir John Dill proved practically irreplaceable. MH

Dill’s DSM

In 1944 the United States recognized Dill’s wartime service with a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal. Supporting paperwork noted his “enduring contribution toward the victorious conclusion of the war and also to that harmony of purpose... essential to our security.”

John Howard served in the U.S. Army for 28 years, retiring as a brigadier general. He was a combat infantryman in Vietnam. For further reading he recommends Very Special Relationship: Field Marshall Sir John Dill and the AngloAmerican Alliance, 1941–44, by Alex Danchev.

DEATH WITHIN THE WALLS

At the outset of the Peloponnesian War the Athenian-allied city-state of Plataea came under siege from the same Greek forces that a half century earlier had driven off Persian invaders

Though anachronistic in style, this 1755 engraving reasonably depicts the walls of circumvallation built by the Spartans during their 429–427 bc siege.

The operation had not gone as planned. A strike force of some 300 Thebans had gained entrance to the walled city of Plataea under cover of darkness. The gates lay open, no guards had challenged them, and they soon occupied a strong position in the agora. They held the advantage of complete surprise. But soon they were desperately trying to find their way out again, for the Plataeans had blocked the narrow lanes with wagons and barricaded the gates. Hampered by rain and darkness and lost in a maze of unfamiliar streets, the Thebans came under attack from all sides and were pelted from above with stones and roof tiles. They fled as they could, with pursuers at their heels. Those who reached the outer wall hurled themselves over to break or die on the ground below. Others fought desperately in corners and alleyways. By the time dawn broke, all who remained inside had been slain or taken captive.

Decades before the 431 bc attack on Plataea a once united Greece had divided into hostile camps, and war had broken out. Ironically, Plataea had been the site of a decisive victory of allied Panhellenic forces over invading Persians in 479 bc. But in the half century since much had changed. The cobbled unity occasioned by the Greco-Persian War had eroded as the growing hegemony of Athens, founder and dominant member of the Delian League of city-states, created unease and mistrust among members of the Peloponnesian League, dominated by Sparta. During the resulting 460–45 bc war the rivals circled each other like boxers, engaging in proxy fights through allies as they measured one another’s strength. Signed in 446–45 bc, the Thirty Years’ Peace eased tensions for a time, but the root causes of conflict remained, and the treaty lasted less than half as long as its name had promised.

While Sparta’s citizens’ assembly formally broke the peace in 432 bc, the first assault of the Peloponnesian War didn’t come until the following spring—launched not by Sparta but by Thebes. The Thebans shared a long border with the Athenians, who had defeated and dominated them in the past. With war again brewing, Theban commanders turned their gaze on Plataea, a longtime Athenian ally holding a strategic position that flanked the approaches from Thebes to Athens and the Peloponnesus. Thebes could not resist an opportunity to absorb Plataea into its own Boeotian Confederacy while Athens was distracted by wrangling with the Peloponnesians.

in their beds, but the Thebans refused. The coin of surprise can be spent in different ways. The Thebans instead chose to wake the citizens and cow them into voluntary submission. Initially, neither side resorted to violence. But during negotiations the Plataeans discovered just how few Thebans were present in their city and resolved to overpower them. Unobserved, they dug through the interior mud brick walls of their houses to join forces and coordinate. When all was prepared, they attacked while darkness still gave them an advantage. Defeated and demoralized, the Thebans who survived surrendered unconditionally.

For its efforts toward the Greek victory over Persia in 479 bc Plataea was gifted funds for a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare (above), and proclaimed sacred and inviolate. Its citizens tried trading on that status when Sparta threatened in 429 bc

Thebes’ ability to sneak a small advance guard into Plataea reveals much about the nature of the civil war. Greece was not only split between the leagues allied with Sparta or Athens, but also fragmented into oligarchic and democratic regimes within each city-state. The Thebans had no need to storm Plataea’s formidable walls. Confederates within, who had hoped through alliance with Thebes to eliminate their political rivals and gain ascendancy, had left open the city gates.

These Plataean turncoats had urged the slaughter of their democratic opponents

The march of the Theban army that was to have cemented the occupation of Plataea had been delayed by the rain-swollen Asopus, thus it had arrived too late, and the gambit had failed. Determined to salvage what they could from the operation, the Thebans resolved to take hostages from the surrounding countryside and exchange them for their captive countrymen. Anticipating such a move, the Plataeans dispatched a herald to the Thebans, reproaching them for the sneak attack and warning that any harm to citizens outside their walls would be repaid in the blood of the captives they held. Though the Thebans withdrew, the Plataeans, their indignation fueled by long-standing antipathy, executed the 180 prisoners anyway.

Meanwhile, Sparta and its allies were mobilizing for an invasion of Attica. Though Plataea was not at the center of the action, the Athenians evacuated its noncombatants and

established a small garrison in the city to prepare for further attacks. But Plataea remained an isolated outpost in the larger conflict. Not until 429 bc, the third year of the war, did the Spartans march to the aid of their Theban allies. Frustrated by Athens’ insuperable walls and the Periclean strategy of refusing open field combat, Spartan King Archidamus II eyed its more vulnerable Boeotian ally.

Despite Plataea’s strong walls and the shortcomings of Spartan siege craft, Archidamus had reason for confidence. He commanded an army of 30,000 combatants plus auxiliaries, a force greater than the population almost any city-state in Boeotia. He counted on making an impression of the consequences should negotiations with the Plataeans break down.

But he also had reason for chagrin. In both diplomatic and ethical terms, the entire situation was delicate. The Thebans had attacked Plataea in peacetime, an overt breach of the treaty. Any hostilities against Plataea would also belie Sparta’s oft-proclaimed resolve to defend Greek freedom against Athens’ imperial ambitions. Plataea itself stood as a symbol of Greek unity in defense of freedom. Adding to the awkwardness, Thebes had been on the wrong

Above: The butt end of a circa 500 bc Greek bronze spear. Top: Greek spears all point outward in 479 bc as Spartans, at left, fight alongside Plataeans against Persian invaders. A half century later, however, as Athens and Sparta wrangled for supremacy, Greek allies became foes.

side in the late war with Persia, having betrayed its countrymen by allying with Xerxes I.

For their contribution toward the Greek victory in 479 bc the Plataeans had been granted the huge sum of 80 talents to build a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom and war-

fare. In addition, Plataea was to be the annual meeting place of a joint Greek assessment of ships and men for the war against the barbarian, and every four years the city would host the Eleutheria, a festival to celebrate the triumph.

With war again brewing, Theban commanders turned their gaze on Plataea, a longtime Athenian ally

The Spartan hoplite (above) was well equipped for open warfare, but a siege called for wholly different tactics. Walls of circumvallation (above right) were designed to keep a besieged enemy in and potential relief forces out. Despite such measures, Plataeans managed to slip the noose.

Plataea was also given the privilege of offering sacrifices to the gods for the whole of Greece and continuing the rites of sepulture for those slain and buried on its soil. The city and its territory were proclaimed sacred and inviolate. As these measures had been sworn to by Spartan King Pausanius, Archidamus was bound by ancestral oath— a fact of which the Plataeans did not fail to remind him.

Thebes was on the right side of that struggle. Were the Plataeans to remain allied with Athens, they would be aiding the oppressor.

After consideration, the Plataeans decided they could not agree to the proposal without informing the Athenians. They asked for a temporary truce, which Archidamus granted. When the envoys returned with a pledge of support from Athens, the Plataeans rejected the Spartan proposal.

Proclaiming the Plataeans oath breakers, and being thus vindicated before gods and men, Archidamus hemmed in the city with a palisade of fruit trees cut from the surrounding countryside. The Plataeans were isolated and alone. They had been promised shelter beneath the Athenian shield, but their enemies were close and their friends far away.

But Archidamus conceived a path around these difficulties. First, he required of the Plataeans only neutrality in the war, with reciprocal guarantees of their independence and property. Second, he turned the obligations of the oath back on them. The promises to Plataea had been made in the context of the struggle for Greek freedom. The struggle remained, he argued, but the present threat was Athens.

It was only a matter of time before the trapped garrison of 480 combatants and 100 some workwomen faced starvation. But Archidamus had time pressures as well. For one, his large army would rapidly consume its own provisions, increasing the commitments of foraging and supply. For another, much of his army comprised farmers who would need to return home for the summer harvest. Finally, given Sparta’s existing reputation for incompetence in taking fortified positions, a prolonged siege could weaken its influence over city-states in the Peloponnese.

Rather than build permanent walls of encirclement, the Peloponnesians began raising a siege ramp to overtop the walls of Plataea. For 70 days they carried and stacked timber,

If Plataea would not fall to the swift stroke, it could still be strangled to death

stones and earth. But the Plataeans matched them in energy and ingenuity. First, with timber and brick salvaged from their own homes, they raised the wall against which the siege ramp lay. Next, after mining beneath the ramp, they carried earth inside the city, eroding any progress made by the besiegers. When the Spartans brought up timber battering rams, the Plataeans em ployed iron chains and heavy suspended beams to lift, drop and shatter the rams. As a final stopgap they constructed a semicircular inner defensive wall that would present the attackers with the same labor all over again.

reflected a great commitment on the part of the besiegers. No such project had been attempted in Greek

one to keep the Plataeans in, the other to

Tactical Takeaways

Thus thwarted, the Spartans turned to fire. After piling pitch- and sulfur-soaked brush against the makeshift wooden barrier atop the wall and hurling more brush over the ram parts, the besiegers set it ablaze. A raging conflagration arose, but instead of the winds Archidamus hoped would spread the inferno throughout the city, a heavy rain began to fall, extinguishing the flames. The grinding of the Spartan king’s teeth must have contested with the taunts and jeers that no doubt rang from the battlements.

Months of effort had yielded no results. Archidamus could neither take nor afford to abandon the city. Accept ing the reality of an extended siege, he dismissed much of his force. Those who remained began raising perma nent and elaborate walls of circumvallation. If the city would not fall to the swift stroke, it could still be strangled to death.

were roofed over, guarded by towers and battlements, and flanked by trenches. Interior

ments during what could be a long wait. Indeed, 18 months later the besiegers remained in place, but the walls had done their work. Provisions within the city were failing, and Athens, immersed in troubles of its own, had sent no further aid. , nearly four years after

Strike while the iron... At the outset of their 431 bc assault the Thebans squandered their advantage of surprise. When alerted citizens learned how few Thebans there were, the latter’s fate was sealed. Ingenuity buys time. Plataean defenders undercut the Spartans’ siege ramp and lassoed their battering rams, stymieing the assault. Expect no quarter.

Plataeans managed to stall the Spartan siege for several years. When the city fell, they tried to negotiate surrender— little surprise to no avail.

Counting bricks by way of measurement, the Plataeans built ladders to match the height of the inner enemy wall. Lightly equipped for speed and stealth, and concealed by the inky black of a stormy night with no moon, they reached the wall without being discovered. The first scaling party, armed with daggers, ascended the ladders. No alarm was raised. A second group, armed with spears and shields, followed. Still, all was quiet. Many had gathered atop the wall when one of the Plataeans, grasp-

Though the Thebans and Spartans had allied at Plataea in 429–427 bc, they battled one another at Mantinea, above, in 362 bc, one in a series of clashes amid the continually shifting alliances of Greek city-states.

ing for the battlements, knocked loose a roof tile. The clatter roused the garrison, and the alarm was given.

But the Plataeans had planned well for the possibility of discovery. Their senses impaired by the storm and dark-

siegers lit fires in the direction of Thebes to signal for help, the Plataeans also kindled fires atop the city walls, rendering the enemy signals unintelligible. Meanwhile, the scaling parties had seized adjacent towers, slain the defenders and lowered their ladders from the outside of the double wall. Well-aimed arrows kept the besiegers’ heads down while they descended. The archers in the towers were the last to escape. As the Plataeans struggled over the outer ditch filled with icy water, they were met by a unit of 300 torch-bearing Peloponnesians set aside for just such emergencies. The latter made perfect targets for the nightshrouded, bow-wielding Plataeans.

ness, the Peloponnesians had trouble discerning where the danger lay. To maximize their confusion and divert their attention, the Plataeans who remained within the city launched a sortie against the enemy wall. When the be-

Having slipped the enemy noose, the Plataeans started down the road to Thebes, reasoning correctly that would be the last direction the Peloponnesians would look. After a time they turned into the hills and eventually made their way to Athens. Though all but a handful of them got away, their comrades in the city had no way of knowing. The next morning, however, negotiations for a truce to recover the dead revealed the heartening truth.

The defenders were slain to a man, workwomen were sold into slavery and the city was razed

By the following summer it was clear the Plataeans could hold out no longer, but the Spartan commander did not wish to take the city by storm. This had less to do with mercy than a calculation of interest. His instructions from Sparta were to win over the Plataeans voluntarily if possible. In the event a future peace treaty with Athens should stipulate those cities taken by force be returned, Plataea could be withheld from the list. In pursuit of these orders, he sent a herald to ask the besieged to surrender to the Spartans and accept them as their judges, on the understanding any punishment would follow the form of law. Starving and weak, the Plataeans were in no position to refuse.

The justice of subsequent events is questionable. Some days later five judges from Sparta arrived and put to the survivors a remarkable question: What had they done to help the Spartans and their allies in the current war? Aside from the practical consideration there is nothing they could have done while trapped within their city for four years, the Plataeans reasonably thought the question failed to take in the nuances of the situation and asked leave to speak.

Thucydides’ account provides a poignant, if apocryphal, speech from the Plataeans that evokes the hopes and fears of any people facing such a predicament. A retelling of Plataea’s role in defense of Greek freedom against the Persians and its inviolate status are meant to appeal to the protections of both gratitude and justice. Perhaps aware such appeals would not be wholly convincing amid the passions and calculations of war, the Plataeans connected them to the question of reputation. Here they hit closer to the mark, warning the Spartans that the infamy of Plataea’s ruin would haunt them, undermine relations with allies and hamper their war effort.

Realizing the Spartans were acting in part to please their Theban allies, the Plataeans offered them a rhetorical escape hatch, emphasizing the wickedness of the traitorous and fickle Thebans as the real agents of their destruction. They were to blame. Sparta could earn glory, gratitude and advantage by repudiating their ally’s dishonorable behavior.

The appeals fell on deaf ears, for the Spartans had their own calculations of reputation and advantage. They had poured too much time and effort into taking the city to relent. Bringing the Plataean defenders before them one by one, the judges again asked each whether he had done Sparta or its allies any service in the war. Each said he had not, and they were slain to a man. The workwomen were sold into slavery. The city was given to the Thebans, who ultimately razed it. Such was the long, sad, slow death of Plataea. MH

Justin D. Lyons is an associate professor of history and government at Ohio’s Cedarville University. For further reading he recommends History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides; A War Like No Other, by Victor Davis Hanson; and The Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan.

Thucydides’ contemporary History of the Peloponnesian War, as most ancient accounts of war, should be taken with a grain of salt. While the Athenian general doubtless wrote about war with authority, he also exploited for effect the war’s symbolic and emotional impact.

Reviews Things Fell Apart

The 1991–99 violent dismemberment of the Yugoslavian state (see related story, P. 24) took most of the world by surprise. The seemingly peaceful and prosperous nation degenerated into the bloodiest conflict on the European continent since World War II. The tensions that erupted to the surface in 1991, however, were as long-standing as they were complex.

War II the real damage was done. During that conflict Yugoslavs fought two simultaneous wars, one against the German invaders and the other between various domestic factions, including Croatian nationalists, Bosnian Muslims, Serbian royalists and communist partisans.

The Collapse of Yugoslavia, 1991–99, by Alastair Finlan, Osprey Publishing/ Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2022, $20

When the pope and the patriarch divided Europe between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity in the Great Schism of 1054, the boundary passed right through the middle of what would later become Yugoslavia. The Slovenes and Croats north of the boundary embraced Catholicism, while the Serbs to the south accepted the Orthodox religion. In the late 14th century the Ottomans conquered the region, occupying it for the next 500 years and establishing a substantial Muslim minority, particularly in Bosnia.

However, as Alastair Finlan explains in The Collapse of Yugoslavia , it was during World

In the end the pro-Allied communist partisans under Yosip Broz (aka Marshal Tito) emerged as the rulers of post–World War II Yugoslavia.

Factional nationalism began to re-emerge as communist rule eroded after Tito’s death in 1980. Croats and Serbs accused each other of attempting to take control of the country, and old religious and ethnic bigotries resurfaced. As the author notes, while most wars have two sides, “in the Balkans at least 13 players…can be clearly identified,” not counting the numerous unofficial groups comprising mercenaries, bandits and criminal gangs.

Balkan politics have always been synonymous with hopeless complexity. This book, an

update of a work originally published in 2003, helps to sort out an extremely convoluted story.

The East Africa Campaign, 1914–18: Von LettowVorbeck’s Masterpiece, by David Smith, Osprey Publishing/Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2022, $24

The latest addition to the serried ranks of Osprey’s lavishly illustrated Campaign series, this volume deals with Germany’s epic but often overlooked World War I guerrilla war in East Africa against the Allies— a fight ably led by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, who only surrendered after the war had ended. David Smith has authored several previous contributions to the series, with topics ranging from the American Revolutionary War and Civil War to British imperial history, while illustrator Graham Turner has produced stunning art for subjects ranging from the Middle Ages to the world wars, including several on World War II aviation history.

Before World War I the German colonial empire in Africa was small and secondrate compared to those of Britain and France. Berlin laid claim to what today are Togo, Cameroon, Namibia and Tanzania. Only the last territory, then known as German East Africa and not including the island of Zanzibar, was viewed as being of any real worth to potential Allied invaders. The wily Lettow-Vorbeck was a veteran of the 1899–1901 Boxer

Rebellion in China and the 1904 Herero revolt in German South West Africa (Namibia), having lost an eye in the latter. For more than four years, with never more than 3,000 Germans and 11,000 Africans, and cut off from supplies from Germany, Lettow-Vorbeck tied down more than 200,000 pursuing British, Indian, South African, Belgian and Portuguese troops.

This mostly obscure campaign is nevertheless widely considered one of the greatest examples of guerrilla warfare in military history, with Lettow-Vorbeck foreshadowing Erwin Rommel in World War II in that he, too, was widely admired by his enemies. Smith effectively relates this story via the standard Osprey format, studying the campaign’s origins (with a useful chronology) and opposing com

well as the costly assaults of the South Africans at Salaita Hill (Kenya) in 1916 and the 25th Fusiliers at Mahiwa (Tanzania) in 1917.

—William John Shepherd

Battle: Understanding Conflict From Hastings to Helmand, by Graeme Callister and Rachael Whitbread, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, U.K., and Philadelphia, 2022, $42.95

In Battle two Ph.D.s from the University of York dis sect field engagements from medieval times through Af ghanistan in 2006, present ing through a succession of historic examples the factors that contribute to each one’s outcome. Aside from the more obvious factors, such as leadership, logistics, climate, terrain, troop training and morale, they examine how noncombatant support and the societies from which the armies and their leaders came affected their conduct on the battlefields.

onel replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.” Some wars seem paradoxical when excessively measured by the tactical brilliance of battles while the overall campaigns are being pursued by

Accompanying the narrative are detailed maps and Turner’s impressive art, with two-page spreads colorfully depicting the British attack on the German light cruiser Königsberg as it sheltered in the Rufiji Delta in 1915 (see related story, P. 34), as

All this should make for lively discussions among readers, though its primary fixation on the battles as separate entities seems limiting. Most recently, the victory of the Afghan Taliban in 2021, after 20 years of occupation by Western forces possessing overwhelming firepower and despite heavy casualties, brings to mind (as the book itself briefly does) Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.’s retrospective analysis of the Vietnam War with a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975, in which he declared, “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield,” to which the NVA col-

mastery being strategically undone by the Romans, Britain’s battle-winning armies being worn down in the campaigns orchestrated by George Washington and Nathanael Greene, or Robert E. Lee’s ultimate defeat at the hands of Ulysses S. Grant.

There are dramatic battles aplenty on which to chew here. Perhaps a follow-up might focus on the bigger picture regarding the campaigns and outright wars.

The Chinese Civil War, 1945–49, by Michael Lynch, Osprey Publishing/ Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2022, $20

“May you live in interesting times,” an old Chinese curse wishes, and The Chinese Civil War, 1945–49 recounts some of the more “interesting times” in 20th century history. As author Michael

Recommended

Lynch explains, the post–World War II Chinese Civil War was far more than a mere regional political conflict. Indeed, the existence of an independent Taiwan indicates the conflict never really ended, and it continues to influence world affairs to this day.

The Jacobite Rebellion, 1745–46

This overview of the final, failed attempt by the House of Stuart to regain the British throne, from the landing of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” to the Battle of Culloden, dispels myths about the rising. Complemented with color maps and images, the narrative examines the struggle of the Houses of Stuart and Hanover as well as battles, maneuvers and the tragic consequences.

The Chinese Civil War was the continuation, and culmination, of a conflict that began after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The new Republic of China proved too weak to control the entire country, large portions of which fell under the dominion of powerful local “warlords.” After the Nationalists

wan. Lynch’s book explains exactly how that dramatic reversal was achieved, as much the result of Nationalists’ incompetence as it was Communist prowess. The Chinese Civil War clears up many misconceptions and presents a complex subject in a concise and lucid manner—quite an achievement in itself for 144 generously illustrated pages.

The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba, 1962, by Max Hastings, Harper, New York, 2022, $35

Veteran military historian Max Hastings seems to have run out of wars and chosen one that didn’t happen, but few readers will complain. He sets the scene with a masterful 100-page history of the Cold War, emphasizing the three nations involved in the crisis and their larger-thanlife but flawed leaders.

United States when his guerrillas seized power in early 1959. He was admired among a subset of Americans for several months until he nationalized American businesses and began shooting far more people than usual in a Latin American coup.

Hungarian Arms and Armor of World War II

The Hungarian army went from minimal involvement in World War II to full-blown conflict with the Allies. This history includes 170 images of its wartime armor, motor vehicles, artillery pieces and infantry weapons, including equipment inherited from Austria-Hungary, purchased new and produced by Hungary’s own arms industry.

forces to wrest control from the warlords, the Nationalists turned against the Communists, nearly wiping them out and driving their remnants into a remote region around Yanan. That situation prevailed throughout World War II, during which the rival forces turned their attentions against a clearer, present threat: the invading Japanese.

At war’s end the Nationalists, under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, dominated most of China. Yet, within four years that situation had been completely reversed, and the Nationalists fled mainland China for the island of Tai -

By the 1960s the Soviet Union, still suffering the aftereffects of World War II and hobbled by a dysfunctional economy, possessed a huge army and the atomic bomb, but its greatest strength was Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s proclamation it possessed a massive nuclear arsenal and missile force, though it didn’t.

Vastly wealthier and better armed but no more confident, the United States had no doubt the Soviet Union intended to conquer the world, and President John Kennedy’s 1960 election campaign featured a promise to correct a purely fictional “missile gap” with its rival.

Fidel Castro’s arrival on the scene did not improve matters. Cuba was a corrupt, misgoverned client state of the

Kennedy learned his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, had approved a CIA-organized invasion to overthrow Castro. He decided that was a good idea and didn’t change his mind until too late, withholding further air support from the floundering Bay of Pigs invasion that April. A leader’s traditional response to a blunder is to blame underlings. That Kennedy took responsibility for the fiasco was a mark of statesmanship, but it convinced Khrushchev he was a wimp.

Certain the United States would try again, and with no hope of defeating a proper American invasion of Cuba, Castro appealed successfully to the Soviet Union for military aid. There was no hiding the shipments that followed, but U.S. officials confined themselves to complaining until intelligence revealed nuclear missile launch sites.

Readers know how matters turned out, but they will love

Hastings’ expert account, aided by verbatim transcripts of the discussions from Kennedy’s hidden tape recorder in the White House conference room. It’s no exaggeration to claim, as Hastings does, that the president saved the world from nuclear war by vetoing an invasion (a decision for which military advisers never forgave him) and instead ordering a naval blockade and issuing overt threats that persuaded Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles.

Crécy: Battle of the Five Kings, by Michael Livingston, Osprey Publishing/Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2022, $30

Award-winning military historian Michael Livingston provides an innovative reexamination of one of the best-known medieval battles. Based on his comprehensive Crécy: A Casebook (co-edited with Kelly DeVries, 2016) and similar to his Never Greater Slaughter: Brunan burh (2021) and 1066: A Guide to the Battles and the Campaigns (2021), the pres ent work overturns accepted historiography. Livingston argues that historians have been wrong on several im portant issues, particularly English King Edward III’s war planning, the location and duration of the battle, the truth behind the disaster of the Genoese crossbowmen, and the supposed heroics of young heir apparent Edward, the “Black Prince.”

The five kings in the title refer to Edward III versus French King Philip VI, as

well as three allied monarchs—John the Blind of Bohemia; his son, Charles, king of the Romans and future Holy Roman emperor; and James III, recently deposed king of Majorca.

Livingston touts his Battle Reconstruction Toolkit, which includes archaeology, multisource authentication, technology and tactics and four maxims—“Follow the Roads,” “No Man Is a Fool,” “A Battle Is Its Ground” and “Men Flow Like Water.”

He argues that history is a working hypothesis subject to revision. Employing the toolkit by drawing on such nontraditional contemporary sources as a poem written on-site by a French herald, the “Kitchen Journal” of Edward’s camp cook and German accounts, Livingston convincingly argues Edward did not have a master plan, his actions were contingency-based and the major accomplishment of the campaign, the cap -

On Film

All Quiet on the Western Front

The new German remake of All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent film. The uniforms and equipment details are correct. The film accurately depicts the stark and brutal realities of life and death in the trenches. But toward the end of the movie are scenes depicting the German surrender negotiations of Nov. 8–11, 1918, in the railway car at Compiègne. There is nothing like this in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel. That whole sequence was inserted to set up the end of the film, which departs completely from the book and even further from history.

The film would have you believe that just hours before the Armistice went into effect, at 1100 hours on November 11, a “General Friedrich” ordered a last-minute, massive suicide attack to “save the honor of the German army.” Friedrich, a totally invented character, is clearly patterned on General Erich Ludendorff. But Ludendorff wasn’t there that day. The Kaiser fired him on October 26. By then Germany was incapable of large-scale attacks. The bulk of its army was retreating eastward to the line of the Meuse River. It was the Allies who kept attacking that day, particularly the Americans. Pershing ordered the American Expeditionary Forces to keep attacking hard right up until 1059 hours. The Americans took some 3,000 casualties in the last 11 hours of the war, for absolutely no additional military or political gain.

Another problem is how that last large-scale attack is portrayed as a mass, linear frontal assault, with the NCOs and junior officers shouting for the troops to maintain their alignments. World War I started out that way, but by 1918 offensive tactics had become far more fluid and sophisticated. Standard German infiltration tactics—sometimes called “storm troop tactics”—emphasized bypassing and isolating enemy strongpoints to overrun the defender’s artillery.

The main character, Landser Paul Bäumer, of course, is killed in the film’s last great suicide attack. The book, however, does not give specific details on how he died. All it says is, “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: ‘Im Westen Nicht Neues’ [‘In the West, nothing new’].”

It is difficult to understand why the German producers of this new film version altered both the original story and history itself to make the Germans look like suicidal automatons at the end. —David T. Zabecki

the French were not cowards, but they were used improperly and, thus, decimated by English longbows.

ism. Anglocentric accounts of the battle, notably that of Jean Froissart, exaggerate the English victory. The Black Prince was in fact temporarily captured and only rescued by luck. Genoese crossbowmen working for

Livingston also notes sources that record the battle as having been fought in the forest surrounding Crécy, not in the town itself. Surrounding marshlands confined armies to area roads, with a portion of the French arriving a day late. Lastly, numbers engaged, always a thorny question with me-

dieval battles, were likely 13,000 English and 26,000 French, with losses of the former negligible and the latter perhaps as many as 16,000.

This significant addition to the Crécy story includes a beautiful mix of 33 contemporary illustrations and modern photographs as well as an impressive glossary of sources, bibliographic essay, endnotes and a thorough index.

Hallowed Ground Saragarhi, British India

From the dawn of human warfare to the present few areas of the world have been as highly contested as the mountainous region straddling the border of presentday India and Pakistan. In 1897 the region was known as the North-West Frontier Province of British India. On September 12 of that year, in what became known as the Battle of Saragarhi, 21 soldiers of the 36th (Sikh) Regiment of Bengal Infantry of the British Indian army fought a last stand against thousands of besieging Pashtun tribesmen. Theirs is a story of bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

That year, in an effort to exert control over the traditionally volatile North-West Frontier, the British garrisoned a line of

more than 10,000 tribal insurgents besieged Saragarhi while thousands more Pashtuns kept the forces at Forts Lockhart and Gulistan pinned in place, threatening to outflank any attempted sorties.

existing Sikh “forts”—really little more than makeshift mudand-stone shelters. Among them were Fort Lockhart, atop the Samana Ridge, and Fort Gulistan, a few miles west in the Sulaiman Mountains. The two were not visible to one another. Midway between them was Saragarhi, a signal outpost that linked the forts using heliographs, tripod-mounted mirrors that directed reflected sunlight to communicate Morse code. The 36th

Sikhs, which traced its origins to 1858, had been reformed at Jalandhar, Punjab, in 1887. In December 1896 the regiment was sent to the North-West Frontier, dispersed among the forts and tasked with quelling rebellious local Pashtuns. In early September 1897 Orakzai and Afridi tribesmen twice attacked Fort Gulistan. A relief column from Fort Lockhart helped repel both assaults.

On their return to Fort Lockhart the men of the relief column stopped at Saragarhi, raising the outpost’s strength to 21—three NCOs and 18 enlisted sepoys. On September 12

For nearly seven hours the 21 Sikhs at Saragarhi, equipped only with small arms, repulsed incessant attacks. Recognizing the futility of their defense, they resolved to fight to the death and take as many of the enemy with them as they could. A record exists of their actions, as throughout the fight Sikh signaler Gurmukh Singh kept Lt. Col. John Haughton, the regimental commander at Fort Lockhart, apprised of what was happening via heliograph. Despite the peril, the sepoy kept on task, relating a blow-by-blow account of the battle while his fellow soldiers dropped in turn about him. At last came his final message: “They are getting in now. Shall I take a rifle, or shall I go on signaling?” Haughton granted Gurmukh Singh permission to defend himself. After carefully dismantling his signaling gear and packing it in its leather case, the sepoy picked up his rifle and alone continued the fight. Determined to flush the lone holdout, the Pashtuns set fire to the post. Gurmukh Singh is believed to have killed 20 of the enemy before succumbing to the flames. Two days later a relief column arrived at Saragarhi to find the bodies of the 21 fallen Sikhs. Scattered around them were upward of 400 enemy corpses.

When news of the battle reached London, members of Parliament gave a standing ovation to the fallen. All 21 Sikhs were posthumously awarded the Indian Order of Merit (equivalent to the Victoria Cross), the highest award of gallantry available to Indian soldiers at the time.

To honor those who fell at Saragarhi, the administrators of British India ultimately built two memorial gurdwaras— Sikh places of assembly and worship—in Punjab. To this day every September 12, on what has been designated Regimental Battle Honours Day, the Sikh Regiment of the Indian army honors the fallen 21 with ceremonies at the Saragarhi Memorial Gurdwara in Amritsar and the Gurdwara Saragarhi in Firozpur Cantonment, from which most of the regiment’s members hailed. While the territory remains hotly contested ground, the courage and sacrifice of the Saragarhi defenders has not been forgotten. MH

Taking on the Odds

Saragarhi was but one of many battles involving a major imbalance of numbers. Consider the following: Rorke’s

1. Which contingent was with the Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 bc?

A. Boeotians B. Corinthians

C. Thespians D. Athenians

2. In which 1503 battle did Pierre Terrail, Chevalier de Bayard, defend a bridge alone against a Spanish army?

A. Canossa B. Garigliano C. Padua D. Ravenna

3. Which Confederate casemate ram engaged a Union fleet single-handed off Vicksburg, Miss., in July 1862?

A. Arkansas B. Chicora C. Albemarle D. Tennessee

4. How many Victoria Crosses were awarded for the British defense of Rorke’s Drift, in South Africa’s Natal Province, against the thousands-strong Zulu Undi Corps in 1879?

A. Five B. Seven

C. Nine D. 11

5. How much Finnish airspace did Swedish volunteer wing F 19 defend with 16 biplanes in 1940 at the close of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War?

A. Half the Karelian Isthmus B. All of Lapland above the Arctic Circle

C. Viipuri D. Territory east of Helsinki

Answers: 1C, 2B, 3A, 4D, 5B

Captured! Here Be Dragon

Among the scores of dilapidated, tide-washed relics of the Atlantic Wall dotting coastal France is this blockhouse on the beach in Reville, France. Rather than watch it continue to degrade or become a canvas for less inspiring graffiti, French street artists Baby K and Blesea spent long hours battling the surf from atop ladders to transform the ruin into a vivid depiction of a dragon from a popular Japanese anime series. May it never again breathe fire.

This Historic World War II Coin, Note and Stamp Collection Can Be Yours!

is is an extensive 23-Pc. Collection of superb World War II memorabilia, spanning the United States, the Paci c and Europe. Each piece was issued by or for their respective nation during the World War II era, and this is the rst time ever that we’ve seen them assembled in one great set. is collection includes: U.S. and Foreign Coins—including U.S. “emergency” coins struck in uncommon metals to help with the war e ort, including a silver U.S. War Nickel, a steel 1943 Cent, and a Cent struck from copper recycled from shell cases—along with German “propaganda” coins featuring the Nazi swastika, and an Italian Lira displaying symbols of its own fascist regime; plus coins from Canada and Great Britain, two of our closest allies.

Japanese Invasion Notes—including Japanese guerilla and invasion notes printed for the Philippines and Burma which were controlled by Japan during the war, all in uncirculated condition.

U.S., Japanese and German Nazi Stamps—patriotic U.S. stamps—like the 3¢ Win the War stamp, occupational Japanese stamps and Nazi stamps are all here!

These Remarkable WWII Collection Are Going Fast—HURRY!

is incredible collection of World War II Memorabilia of authentic coins, notes and stamps, beautifully housed in a custom-designed album, will amplify any World War II collection perfectly—and what a wonderful, unique, muchappreciated gi !

HCC120-01, Eagan, MN 55121

U.S.

U.S. 1943

Germany 1939-45 Reichspfennig

Great Britain 1939-45 Half Penny

Canada 1944-45 “V” Five Cents

Italy 1939-43 Lira

Historic Japanese Guerilla and Invasion Notes

Philippines 1943 1 Peso Japanese Invasion Note

Philippines 1943 5 Peso Japanese Invasion Note

Philippines 1942-44 25 Centavos Guerilla Note

Burma 1942 1 Rupee Japanese Invasion Note

Burma 1942 5 Rupees Japanese Invasion Note

Burma 1942-44 10 Rupees Japanese Invasion Note

Burma 1944 100 Rupees Japanese Invasion Note

Patriotic and Significant U.S. and Foreign Stamps

U.S. 1940 2¢ National Defense Stamp

U.S. 1943 2¢ Allied Nations Stamp

U.S. 1942 3¢ Win the War Stamp

U.S. 1946 3¢ WW II Veterans Stamp

U.S. 1946 3¢ Iwo Jima Stamp

Germany 1941-44 12 Pfenning Hitler Head Stamp Germany 1941-44 25 Pfenning Hitler Head Stamp Philippines 1942-44 2 Centavos Japanese Occupation Stamp Philippines 1942-44 5 Centavos Japanese Occupation Stamp

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