Читать книгу The History of the West. Through the Eyes of Bears and Balalaikas - - Страница 8

They say that history does not like the subjunctive mood.

Nevertheless, to understand the reasons behind certain decisions and the logic of their adoption, it is often necessary to consider alternative scenarios of event development. After all, contemporaries did not know how things would end, and therefore relied on assumptions, including those that did not materialize.

Moreover, the whole point of studying the past is to draw conclusions for the future, both from what actually happened and from what could have occurred.

History is not recommended to be considered in the subjunctive mood. “What if…” And yet, discussions about “what could have happened” arise constantly, and they make sense: since we are talking about the patterns of the historical process, about predicting the future, about causes and effects, it is necessary not only to understand what happened but also to speculate on what could have happened.

Politically, Germany could hardly have won: this assertion has a concrete explanation. The Nazi regime was based on the superiority of the German, more precisely, the Aryan race. Germany could not abandon this thesis; it was precisely for this superiority that the ordinary German soldier fought, and for the majority, it was the meaning of the war. Naturally, such an inherently arrogant position excludes many forms of cooperation with the population of conquered countries, effectively any except unconditional and strict submission. Managing hundreds of millions of people by brute force is impossible; neither Rome nor Britain managed this task. Apparently, the Reich would not have been able to either.

From a military point of view, however, an Axis victory was quite possible. At least in the middle of 1942, the Allies’ situation was hanging by a thread.

On the Eastern Front, the Kharkov disaster42 and the disaster in Crimea43 led to the entire southern flank of the Red Army effectively ceasing to exist. The advance of the Wehrmacht was held back only by the length of the supply lines and the lack of personnel to occupy the ever-expanding territory, which was already too large to manage without issues. To recover from the blow, the Soviet Union needed resources, but most of them had been lost in the defeats of ’41 and the current ones of ’42, and replenishing them with the efforts of factories evacuated to open fields required time. Moreover, the army was leaving the most fertile regions of the country, hinting at famine. And without food, neither a worker can build a tank, nor can a soldier fight in it, even if there is steel, diesel, machinery, and blast furnaces.

The shortage could have been covered by American Lend-Lease44. But at that very moment, the Germans plugged the Arctic gap through which it was seeping into the Soviet north. The fate of the PQ-17 convoy is tragic not only due to the loss of sailors but also because it closed the main logistical window between Russia and its allies.

The British are faring only slightly better. After the success of the German landing on Crete, Rommel is pushing them eastward, and soon the evacuation of Egypt could become a reality. This, by the way, is not a trivial matter but a direct route for Germany to Arab oil, not to mention shaking hands with Japanese allies through the Suez Canal. By closing the path around Eurasia, the Germans and Japanese are encircling the USSR with a ring while simultaneously cutting off Britain from its remaining eastern colonies. For now, the Gibraltar-Malta-Alexandria line allows the British fleet to hold on, but the losses of Mediterranean convoys are even more dreadful than those of the Arctic ones. In a few more weeks, Malta will be left without planes and fuel, and with the fall of the island, the Mediterranean Sea will become German and Italian45.

In the Atlantic, a fierce battle is taking place between German submarines and British destroyers. Things are also bad there – they can’t manage to reduce the sunk tonnage, and the weapons and food coming from America are being sent to the bottom in increasingly threatening quantities. Meanwhile, in Asia, the Japanese are occupying island after island with impunity, and their landing in Australia is almost a foregone conclusion, but there are no guarantees that the war won’t come directly to U.S. territory. If that happens, America will throw all its resources into defending itself, and then the chances for the Russians and British to hold out will become quite slim.

If you look at the map through the eyes of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, the war is already lost for them, and only a miracle can save the situation46. However, even a single miracle won’t suffice; a whole streak of luck is needed. And it appears.

The first stroke of luck falls to the Americans, on whom the victorious Japanese army and the invincible Japanese fleet are relentlessly advancing from the west. In the path of these armadas, right in the middle of the ocean, lies the tiny Midway Atoll, where there is nothing but a military airfield. However, this airfield is very much needed by both the Americans who occupy it and the Japanese who covet it – having a stationary “unsinkable” aircraft carrier halfway to the enemy is very useful.

In the battle for tiny Midway, the Yankees had one advantage: they had long been able to read Japanese codes, and the plans of many enemy operations were not a secret to them. And there was one disadvantage: they simply were worse at fighting. Moreover, the American torpedoes hastily adopted right before the war had the unfortunate property of not exploding. Submarines, destroyers, torpedo planes, and boats launched heroic attacks – and nothing happened. People went to their deaths hoping to strike the enemy, but the weapons they used for this strike turned out to be useless47. In the summer of ’42, no one knew about this yet.

Near Midway Atoll, American Admiral Nimitz set up a classic ambush for the Japanese. Three aircraft carriers, under the cover of everything that could be gathered, lay in wait near the island, anticipating the enemy landing accompanied by the majority of the enemy fleet. They lay in wait – and descended upon the Japanese with an armada of three and a half hundred aircraft.

They did descend, but there was little benefit from this assault because the torpedoes didn’t explode, and the pilots were not trained in coordination between the commanders not a bit. One after another, American squadrons descended upon the Japanese fleet and perished under the fire of the famous “Zero” fighters and the anti-aircraft artillery of the carrier escort. First, second, third, eighth… the pilots were not lacking in perseverance, but the result remained the same.

In the end, the Japanese discovered the American fleet and, rightly deciding that Midway wasn’t going anywhere, but the ships might, prepared to settle the score with them. To do this, they removed the bombs intended for attacking the ground airfield from the planes and started loading torpedoes – to sink the pesky aircraft carriers. And then a miracle happened that no one expected. Captain McClusky with his squadron got lost in the ocean. And instead of being shot down among the first, he wandered in the warm June sky for an extra hour. Blaming him for this would be reckless: in an era when planes had neither GPS nor any navigation systems at all, getting lost in the open sea was not difficult. But the miracle is not even that McClusky got lost and wasn’t shot down like the previous eight attack waves, nor that he eventually found the Japanese fleet, but in the form in which he found it. The fighter cover far below was finishing off the survivors from the previous attacks. On the decks, hundreds of planes: mechanics were switching torpedoes and bombs back and forth. The anti-aircraft gunners, deciding the banquet was over, were resting. And only forty-four American dive bombers were looking for where to place their bombs, which, unlike the torpedoes, explode48.

The capture of Midway did not take place. Having lost four aircraft carriers, the Japanese fleet would head home for the first time in the war without achieving its goal. Now we know that it was from Midway that the Axis’s49 victorious march began to slow down and eventually rolled back. At that moment, it was simply a significant victory followed by bitter defeats, not just one or two50. But the victory at Midway meant that America, at the very least, would not have to defend its own land, and as such, it would continue to feed, supply, and arm its allies.

And they had their own miracles beginning. And if the American miracle had a name – Captain McClusky, then the British one had a name: “Ohio”.

The main concern of the English was Malta, and things were very bad there. Because getting anything through to the tiny island in the middle of a sea filled with enemy planes and ships is almost like for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The Admiralty sent convoy after convoy, and the Germans and Italians repeatedly sent them to the bottom. Fuel for the Maltese fighters was running out, and without fighters, the island would instantly become defenseless against bombings and then an invasion similar to the Cretan one51, only easier. Finally, as a last attempt, the English assembled the “Pedestal” convoy, which had perhaps the most powerful escort in history: four aircraft carriers, two battleships, and a whole crowd of cruisers and destroyers. An entire fleet, significantly stronger than, for example, all Soviet fleets combined, was sent to accompany the cargo ships.

As soon as the convoy started moving, torpedo boats, planes, and submarines habitually began to sink it. They were successful, and by the end of the crossing, little was left of the transports. They sank, burned, and exploded, resulting in an outcome as disastrous as that of the infamously known PQ-17.

The last surviving tanker in the convoy was the American “Ohio.” Tankers generally burned and exploded more readily than any other ships and bringing them to their destination port was a rare act of heroism. However, the “Ohio” attracted trouble even more than usual. On the very first day, it was hit by a torpedo from a submarine. For most ships, that would have been enough, but the tanker continued to move with the convoy. Then dive bombers dropped several bombs on it, and one, shot down by anti-aircraft gunners, crashed into it. Finally, after a day, the tanker received another torpedo, lost its propulsion, and turned into a wreck.

Then the stubborn English harnessed three destroyers to it like horses and, under enemy fire, dragged it further. And in its last breath, they dragged it to the destination. After which, they pumped out the aviation fuel and used it as intended.

The Germans and their allies had no more successes in the Mediterranean52.

The Russian miracle went without a name. Perhaps it could have been called “globe” or “geopolitics,” and as is customary with the Russians, it was the least miraculous of all.

Almost immediately after the defeat of the Red Army near Kharkov, murmurs began among the German generals. They believed that in the current situation, it was advisable to turn the army north to Moscow, while Hitler stubbornly drove the troops eastward – to the Volga and southward – to the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. There, they eventually got bogged down, stretching their communications and getting stuck in dense defenses in difficult terrain.

The military can be understood – their goal is to win the battle, to defeat the enemy. But the German leadership reasoned like politicians, like strategists; its goal was not to capture the enemy’s capital but to achieve the objectives of the war53. And for this purpose, the campaign to Moscow seemed practically useless. Primarily because even if it were assumed that it could be taken at all, Moscow would be of little use. In the autumn of forty-one, it could be assumed that with the capture of the capital, the Red Army would completely lose its combat capability, or the Soviet people would rise against the “Jewish Bolshevik power,” or Stalin would surrender and flee beyond the Urals. In forty-two, illusions about the possibility of completely occupying Russia or creating a puppet government like the Vichy regime were no longer particularly entertained. A more or less loyal leadership with which an agreement could be reached and good territorial acquisitions would have fully satisfied Hitler, for whom, it should be noted, unlike the USSR, the war was not seen as a war of annihilation. Good fertile lands with a moderate amount of indigenous population that is easy to manage and colonize, reserves of natural resources – Donbass coal and Transcaucasian oil, a mild climate familiar to the average European… German politicians certainly did not dream of dense forests, harsh frosts, and millions of grim men always ready to harm the true Aryan. Capturing Moscow at any cost seemed like a bad idea in these conditions.

Besides, although the main battles were unfolding on the Eastern Front54, the Führer also had a world map. And in light of the seemingly inevitable defeat of the British in the Mediterranean and the precarious position of Turkey55, which was almost ready to unite with the Axis powers, the priority capture of the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, and Transcaucasia seemed more than logical. This would allow Eurasia to be split in two, isolating the remnants of the Soviet Union in barren northern lands without access to European seas, separating Britain from its Asian colonies, and disrupting all Allied communications in the Eastern Hemisphere, except for the endlessly long route around Africa. Weren’t the German people enduring the hardships of war for this very reason for three years?

In reality, however, this seemingly logical decision from all sides turned into a complete failure. Rommel never managed to reach Egypt, the offensive in the Caucasus stalled, Turkey did not dare to enter the war, and the entire carefully nurtured geopolitical plan collapsed like a house of cards. The Allies held firm. The war, heavy, strained, and bloody, began to reverse. This anti-German miracle is colloquially referred to as “just a little short”.

Iran was surrounded by Turkey on all sides.