Opening the Daily Telegraph at breakfast, the British generals poured themselves hot coffee. The answer to the question in the crossword puzzle was … Really? The military rushed to stir up the entire binder of the May issues. In the crossword puzzle dated May 20, “UTAH” was found, from May 22 - “OMAHA”, from May 27 - “OVERLORD” (designation of the landing in Normandy), and in the next issue, dated May 30, a crossword with “MULBERRY” (the code name of the cargo port built on an empty bank on the day the operation began).
Counterintelligence immediately contacted the author of the crossword puzzles, teacher-philologist Mr. Doe. However, a thorough investigation found no connection between Doe and the Abwehr or the British General Staff. After the war, it turned out that the German side also knew nothing about the Overlord crossword puzzle.
The mystical puzzle has remained unsolved forever.
What were the Allies doing before June 4, 1944?
The widespread belief that the Allies deliberately delayed the opening of the Second Front undoubtedly has the most compelling reasons. In the minds of the top leadership of Great Britain and the United States, the thought probably arose: "Why risk the lives of our guys, let the communists solve their problems themselves." The culmination was the speech of G. Truman, in which he said: “If we see that Germany is winning, we must help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we must help Germany. We must give them the opportunity to kill each other as much as possible …"
However, despite the chatter of Truman, who at the time of his speech (1941) was only an ordinary senator, there were more serious reasons that made it impossible to land in Normandy before the summer of 1944.
You can easily verify this by opening any book about the Second World War. Only facts and dates!
June 22, 1941 - the perfidious attack of Germany on the Soviet Union, the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
It is at least strange to reproach the States for not rushing to prepare the landing in Europe on the same day. At that time, the United States was not officially at war with anyone and delayed its entry into the European meat grinder as much as possible, professing the traditional policy of isolationism. America will declare war on Germany and Japan only on December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbor.
1942 year - The States are completely bogged down in the Pacific Ocean. What large-scale landings in Europe could we talk about if there was only one armored brigade for the entire American army?
Japanese aviation is attacking the aircraft carrier "Enterprise", the battle at about. Santa Cruz (November 1942)
The fleet suffered severe losses (Pearl Harbor, Midway, pogrom in the Java Sea and off Savo Island). In the Philippines, the 100,000th American garrison surrendered. The Marines scattered across the islands and atolls in the ocean. The Japanese armed forces marched victoriously throughout Southeast Asia and were already approaching Australia. Singapore fell under the blows, Prime Minister W. Churchill submitted a letter of resignation.
In such conditions, it was completely pointless to demand that the United States and Great Britain immediately land the millionth landing in Western Europe.
1943 year “We know very well how it was. On July 10, 1943, the Allies began a large-scale landing in Sicily. This fact may cause bewilderment: what was the need for some Sicily, if the shortest route is through the English Channel and northern France, which would create a direct threat to Vaterland itself?
On the other hand, the Italian campaign was a logical continuation of the African one. Italy has been under the feet of stronger players for four years now. It was necessary to "take it out of the game" as soon as possible, depriving Germany of its closest ally and a naval bridgehead in the center of the Mediterranean Sea.
The only thing that the Anglo-American command did not take into account was the power and speed of the Wehrmacht's reaction. In September, when the Allied troops broke into the Apennine Peninsula, Italy was already completely occupied by the Germans. Protracted battles began. Only in May 1944 did the allied forces manage to break through the front south of Rome and, having united with the amphibious assault, occupy the Italian capital. Fighting in northern Italy continued until the very end of the war.
The results of the Italian campaign are assessed in two ways. On the one hand, there was an undoubted success: Italy was withdrawn from the war (officially - from September 3, 1943). This not only deprived Germany of its main ally, but sowed confusion among the countries participating in the fascist coalition, leading to bloody showdowns between German and Italian servicemen (the massacre on Kefalonia Island, the shooting of the entire Italian garrison in Lvov, etc.).
The battleship "Roma" hit by a German guided bomb (September 9, 1943). After Italy's surrender, the battleship went to surrender to Malta, but the Germans took preventive measures to prevent the mighty ship from falling to the Allies.
On the other hand, could this significantly ease the tension on the Eastern Front? Unlikely. Although it is known that half of the Panthers manufactured at that time did not reach the Kursk Bulge, but were sent to Greece (where the Germans were expecting the allies to land), this fact is not a reason for pride. Already in the first days of the Italian campaign, the Germans, disappointed with the Allied offensive, withdrew part of their forces from the direction and transferred them to the Eastern Front.
And precious time was lost. Now, despite the full readiness of the amphibious forces, it was not possible to carry out a large-scale landing from the sea during the autumn-winter storms. It was clear to everyone that the opening of the second front would take place no earlier than the spring-summer of 1944.
June 6, 1944 - D Day
All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Despite the obvious miscalculations of 1943, a simple comparison of facts and dates does not provide any basis for accusing the Allies of betrayal and unwillingness to open a Second Front. For a number of objective reasons, the landing in Normandy could have taken place not earlier than the end of summer - mid-autumn of 1943, but not in 1942 or even in 1941. Those. just six months earlier than it took place in reality. Moreover, the lost time was not wasted.
World War II is too voluminous a topic for one article, but only a brief listing of widely known (and not so) facts provides abundant food for discussion. So are they allies - or "allies"?
July 15, 1941 - Admirals Miles and Davis arrive at the Northern Fleet to assess the possibilities of basing submarines of the Royal Navy in the Polar Fleet. The first British boat will appear in the Northern Fleet in a month. The greatest success will be achieved by HMS Trident, which sank transports with soldiers of the 6th SS Mountain Division, thereby disrupting the third, decisive offensive on Murmansk.
November 10, 1941 - The Soviet Union is officially included in the Lend-Lease program. Despite the refusal of direct participation in hostilities, the United States in the spring of 1941 launched a program of military assistance to countries fighting fascism.
Conditions: payment (or return) of the surviving materials and military equipment after the war. Vehicles lost in battles are not subject to payment.
The logic of the program: if Britain and the Union were selling a war (which seemed very likely in 1941-42), the United States would face a super-enemy who gained control over all the resources of Eurasia. Everything must be done to support the “afloat” of the anti-Hitler Coalition.
The meaning of Lend-Lease for the Eastern Front: controversial. Whether the USSR could have won without Lend-Lease, or whether foreign supplies made a major contribution to the Victory is unknown. One thing is certain: the price of Lend-Lease is millions of saved lives of Soviet citizens, at the front and in the rear.
Figures: 450 thousand American trucks and jeeps in the ranks of the Red Army. For comparison: Soviet factories produced 150 thousand units of automobile equipment during the war years.
March 22, 1942 - raid on Saint-Nazaire. The British destroyer Cambletown broke through the gates of the largest dry dock on the Atlantic coast, making it impossible for the Reich to repair its battleships. And the commandos who disembarked from it began to destroy the port facilities. 10 hours after the battle, while trying to pull the wreckage of the destroyer out of the gate, a clockwork mechanism worked, 100 tons of explosives killed everyone in the vicinity of the dock.
After a daring raid, the German command still had to withdraw part of its forces from the Eastern Front to protect cities and important military installations on the Atlantic coast.
August 19, 1942 - the landing at Dieppe (which is often confused with Dunkirk, although the essence is the same). Purpose: reconnaissance in force, an attempt to hold a bridgehead in Normandy. Unofficial goal: demonstration to the Soviet leadership of the impossibility of landing in Europe with limited forces. Result: three hours after the landing, the 7,000th landing force was dropped into the sea.
November 8, 1942 - Operation Torch. Landing of 70,000 Anglo-American contingent in Morocco. The Allies are proud of this event. Domestic sources, on the contrary, scoff at the "African sandbox". Result: six months later, the German-Italian troops were defeated and driven out of North Africa. The Axis countries were deprived of Libyan oil and a potential outlet to the oil-rich Middle East. A small but useful puzzle in the general picture of the events of the Second World War.
May 17, 1943 - Operation Big Spanking. An elite bomber squadron of the Royal Air Force (Squadron 617) destroyed the dams at Möhne and Eder. This caused the Ruhr Valley to flood and left all industry in the region without electricity for several months.
By the way, about the strategic bombing of the territory of the Third Reich.
They began on August 17, 1942, with the arrival of the 8th US Air Force in Europe.
"Long-nosed" Focke-Wolfe (F-190D), like its predecessor - "Shturmbok", was specially created for conducting high-altitude battles with "Mustangs" and intercepting "Air Fortresses". There was no need for such machines on the Eastern Front.
Results: controversial. Despite massive raids by thousands of Flying Fortresses and German cities burned to the ground, the volume of military production of the Third Reich steadily increased. Supporters of the opposite point of view explain the paradox by comparing the growth rate of Germany's military production with the growth rate in the rest of the world. They will be smaller! Daily raids seriously hampered the German industry, forcing it to take away forces to restore destroyed facilities, build underground factories and disperse production. Finally, half of the Luftwaffe's fighter squadrons were withdrawn from the Eastern Front and forced to defend the skies over Vaterland.
December 26, 1943 - in the gray gloom of the polar night, the British squadron overtook and destroyed the German battleship Scharnhorst (battle at Cape Nordkapp).
The conduct of hostilities at sea was entirely entrusted to the shoulders of the allies, due to the special geographical position of the Soviet Union. Most of the fighting on the Eastern Front was conducted exclusively on land.
It was different for the Allies. The situation in the West was largely dependent on shipping. And in front stood the most powerful fleet in history - the German naval forces, the Kriegsmarine.
As a result, the allies, having spent colossal efforts, ground their enemy to shreds. During the war, 700 German submarines lay on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (try to translate this figure into steel and tanks made from it). All these “Bismarcs” are “Tirpitz”. Conducting Arctic convoys and intercepting German nickel caravans off the coast of Norway …
Epilogue
It is not worth, being like “ancient ukram”, to attribute all accomplishments only to yourself.
The decisive role in the victory over fascism undoubtedly belongs to the Soviet Union. But to deny the Allies' contribution to our Victory would be, at the very least, unfair.
Contrary to the opinion that “the allies entered the war only in 1944,” the real Second Front in Western Europe existed from the very first day of the war and continued until the last gasp of the fascist Reich. The allies did what they could. There was no Stalingrad, but there were thousands of small, daily battles, many of which became reference examples of the art of war. And they exhausted the industry and the armed forces of the Third Reich hardly less than the Kursk Bulge.
And the heroes were there too. Like those who jumped from the crashed destroyer in Saint-Nazaire, realizing that they would not be destined to return back to England. Or those who sat in the cabs of Lancaster, racing under a hurricane of fire over the reservoir, strictly maintaining the height of 18.3 meters: so that the dropped bombs ricocheted off the water, and, breaking the net, fell into the Ruhr dams …
