"La France Continue" (LFC) a different destiny for France. (France continues to fight in 1940 by Emi

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Chapter 15: A Fight for Human Dignity

"We don't want to save our lives. No one will get out of here alive. We want to save human dignity."
Izrael Chaim Wilner, leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The arrival of the Rasputa, the rains that turn the steppe into a giant muddy field, blocks the operations of the Red Army in the east and allows the Germans to blow. But the "red" mass remains there, a few kilometers from the German outposts, and will return to the attack once the rains have ceased and the ground has hardened again. The Germans only have one month to fine-tune the next stage of the operations, which even Hitler has understood will be defensive. They took advantage of this break to continue the preparations for Panther-Wotan, which should be able to hold out as soon as active operations resumed in May. It should be noted, however, that one of the advanced sectors of this line has already fallen. In January, the Soviets, under the command of General Vlassov, managed to re-establish a land link with Leningrad, allowing them to supply the besieged with weapons and food and to push the Germans back to the south.

In Italy, it was not the mud but the Gustav Line that prevented the Allies from seizing Rome and moving up the boot. The first direct assaults, especially in the Monte Cassino region, ended in bloodshed, so the Allied command decided to bypass the line by landing at Anzio. Unfortunately, German counter-attacks prevented the Allies from exploiting their success by expanding the bridgehead. Thus, only a few Commandos entered Rome in the following days, before having to withdraw. But the situation could soon be resolved. Giraud did indeed have a plan. He just needed to have at his disposal the formidable Moroccan Goumiers of General Guillaume, who had participated in the liberation of Corsica. They are currently being transferred and will be ready for the offensive in June.

On the seas, the battle of the Atlantic seemed to turn definitively in favour of the Allies. Indeed, nearly forty U-Boats were sunk during the month of May, thanks in particular to the increasingly massive use of air weapons in the hunt for German submarines and the protection of convoys. Donitz, faced with this catastrophic situation, ordered a halt to the attacks in the North Atlantic! This disaster occurred at a time when Hitler had just decided to intensify the submarine war... The supplies destined for England and the AFN, which had managed to pass before, at the cost of heavy losses, could now arrive smoothly at their destination!

The members of King Peter II's government in exile in Algiers were frightened by the importance of Tito's partisans to the detriment of the monarchist Cheniks, especially since the Italian surrender. Since the surrender of Italy, they have accelerated the preparation of a program of national reconstruction and unveiled it to the world in April 1943. The plan included a democratic constitution and a federal monarchy. Thus, not only the Croats would have their own banovina, but also the Slovenes and Macedonians. The rest of the country, considered Serbian, will remain divided into several banovines. Note that according to this project, the Bosnians, considered as Serbs of Muslim faith, do not get their own Banovina, just like the Montenegrins and the Albanians of Kossovo.


Discreetly, orders were given to the official minister of war of the royal Yugoslav government, General Mihailovic, to "beef up" his actions against the Germans and the Ustasha traitors, while in order to show his goodwill towards the Croats, the king appointed one of them, Ivan Subasic, to the post of prime minister.

But the monarchist leader had to survive for the moment! Indeed, in May 1943, the Germans launched Operation Schwarz (black in French), a vast anti-partisan and anti-Chetnik campaign. 90,000 Axis soldiers (Germans, but also Croats and Bulgarians) were engaged in the operation. As soon as the Allies learned that the operation had been launched, they increased the number of air raids against Axis positions and the number of arms drops to Yugoslavian rebels (Algiers would only help Mihailovic's men). Churchill, for his part, impressed by Tito's performance and eager to put him in his pocket, decided to send him liaison officers. Algiers did the opposite. The "France combattante", the press organ founded by Mandel in August 1940, spoke only of the heroic and effective resistance of Draza Mihailovic's men, while his liaison officers, including Colonel Massu (a veteran of Abyssinia), were already present alongside the monarchist fighters inside.


In free China, President Lin Sen resigned after suffering a heart attack. Although it was suspected that the Prime Minister, Chiang Kai-shek, had pressured this weakened man to step down from his presidential duties, this did not prevent him from effectively succeeding him as head of state. Although he retained his position as prime minister and head of the army, he appointed Chang Chun, who was in favour of a real democratization of the Republic of China, as vice-premier (and therefore unofficial second in command). Chang became a close friend of the French ambassador in Chongqing, the law professor and accomplished Sinologist, Jean Escarra, who replaced Henri Cosme in this position in December 1941, who was rumored to have preferred Laval to Mandel. Escarra, in agreement with Algiers, worked through Chang Chun to convince the leader of the Republic of China to implement a vast policy of political and economic reform for his country after victory. The objective being, of course, to counter the communists of Mao Tse-Tung, whose seizure of power in the Middle Kingdom, constitutes a great fear of the French leaders in exile.

Chiang Kai-shek was torn between his thirst for power, which meant that being the political heir to the emperors could only satisfy his devouring ambition. His political support within the caste of large landowners, who block any idea of land reform in favor of the peasants, still oppressed more than 30 years after the fall of the foreign Manchu dynasty. But also the fact that, in spite of everything, he remains at the same time the child, the product and from now on the defender and the herald of the revolutionary ideals of 1911 and of Sun Yat-sen, ideologist of democracy for his country.

In Germany, the evangelical theologian pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer was arrested on charges of "weakening Germany's war potential" and imprisoned by the Gestapo. The intervention of Admiral Canaris, head of the army's intelligence service (the Abwehr), allowed him to be transferred to a less harsh prison. Mr. Bonhöffer had passed on evidence of the extermination of the Jews to the French during a trip to Stockholm as we know.

Moreover, the genocide entered a new phase... In Warsaw, where the Germans had been conducting a policy of gradual deportation of the Jewish population interned in the Ghetto of the Polish capital towards the death camps since the summer of 1942, armed fighters, men, women and children, opposed the SS for almost a month, despite the desperate nature of their struggle.

"We don't want to save our lives. No one will get out of here alive. We want to save human dignity," said Izrael Chaim Wilner, one of the leaders of the uprising, when asked about the reasons for the uprising.

Moreover, Hitler, eager for blood, demanded from the Admiral-Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, the internment of Hungarian Jews, during a meeting in Berchtesgaden with the latter.

This was the prelude to their deportation to the extermination camps...

But Horthy refused in a diplomatic way. Having entered into contact with the Westerners in order to negotiate a separate peace, it would be really bad form to help Germany in its genocidal project... Fortunately for Horthy, since Hitler still needed him and his country, the latter left the meeting alive... Better still, Hitler knew that he would easily sweep away the regent as he pleased and could then launch his henchmen, assisted by local National Socialists, in the hunt for Hungarian Jews.

Just like his cursed Bulgarian regents, who were far too pusillanimous... The three regents had indeed blocked the deportation of the Jews of Bulgaria, following massive demonstrations by the Bulgarian population, opposed to the deportation of their fellow citizens. Hitler had to be content with the Jews of the regions of Greece occupied by the army of Simeon II... He, the Führer, would take care of his far too weak leaders, who bent to the "popular will" when the time came.



The barbarity of the Nazis and, beyond that, of the people who had placed Hitler at their head, disgusted Mandel more and more each day. But disgust is not the cruelest feeling that runs through the heart of the head of the government of the French Republic. Worse than this disgust is his impotence. Indeed, even if the war were to end at the end of 1944, which is the forecast of the most optimistic strategists, the Germans would have time to murder millions of people! Mandel did consider revealing to the world the genocide committed by the Nazis and then threatening Germany with total destruction if it did not immediately cease its crime, but Mandel knew that this would not stop the fanatical followers of the Führer and, above all, that the Germans would immediately take revenge on the French population, as well as on the prisoners of war taken in 1940, who were veritable hostages of the Third Reich!


Moreover, the Germans, via their "French" collaborators, were already taking revenge for their military failures by assassinating a great Frenchman, a relative of the President of the French Council, General Mordacq, a hero of the previous conflict, who had remained in occupied France. Going to his house to search his lodgings, according to the maid who was able to witness the scene, some national guards, bullies of great stupidity, confronted the general, in his best uniform. They shouted anti-Semitic insults at him, but the general remained dignified. He is only too used to this kind of insults from the extreme right-wing scoundrels who have only the language of the French. Then they take him away in their vehicle. The general was never seen again and his corpse was only found after the war, shot in the back of the head. At the same time, the national guards ransacked his home but found no evidence of any link with Algiers... If the collaborationist press kept quiet about the general's disappearance, the underground press did its best to spread the news of the probable murder, soon relayed by Radio-London, Radio-Alger and fighting France.

Mandel therefore decided, for the time being, that the best thing was to do everything possible to win the war against the Reich as quickly as possible. This would be the best way to save a maximum number of lives.

Indeed, for the French, more than any other great nation, this is a fight for human dignity.



Fall of the Warsaw Ghetto

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Chapter 16: "Deutschland verliert an allen Fronten"

"Germany is losing on all fronts!"
Pastiche of the Nazi slogan "Deutschland siegt an allen Fronten!" or "Germany wins on all fronts!"

June 6, 1943: Stalin's organs celebrate, with their infernal melody, the launch of Operation Bogdan Khmelnitski, the Soviet offensive against German positions in eastern Ukraine. It is named after the leader of the war of liberation led by the Cossacks against the Poles in the 17th century. The terrain is the same but the enemy is now the German... The operation is so named because the character of Khmelnitsky is, despite everything, quite compatible with Bolshevik ideology. Indeed, after all, he fought against the big foreign owners in the name of freedom...

The operation could have been called Kutuzov for the Germans. It makes no difference to them. The rockets of Stalin's instruments of death are just as deadly... The defenders of the Panther-Wotan Line resist as best they can, but they are not fortunate enough, unlike the defenders of Monte Cassino and the Gustav Line, to be able to benefit from a mountainous terrain that is favorable to them. The steppe is hopelessly flat... Attacking en masse, in a few strategic points only, and carefully chosen, the static defenses of the Führer's soldiers, the latter are quickly driven in, by the Russian armored spikes. The Panther-Wotan line, built in catastrophe, collapses, for its first test.

We return to the good mobile war. It is necessary to prevent the "Red" from reaching the Dnieper. One of the most terrible engagements of the offensive, soon nicknamed "the fight of Poltava", ends nevertheless, after an almost mutual annihilation of the 2 camps, by the entry of the Red Army in the city, high place of the Russian history, although it is located in Ukraine. Stalin did not hesitate to compare the triumph of his army to the destruction of the Swedish army of Charles XII by that of Tsar Peter the Great in 1709. Of course, the propaganda will put aside the Tsar who made Russia a European power, in favor of his soldiers, from the Russian people, again victorious of the invasion.

Kiev, one of the most important objectives for Stalin, will not be taken in the process. The Germans regrouped their forces, including their powerful Tigers and even the brand new Panthers (which would prove to be effective) and Elefants (which would prove to be of little use) and launched localized counter-attacks, which blocked the momentum of the Red Army. But this was not enough. The Soviets immediately launched new attacks, against a shaken German army. An offensive further north (Operation Mars, a real revenge for the failure of Jupiter at the beginning of the year), which led to the liberation of Smolensk. And another in the far south, against the Donbass, which allowed the Germans to be driven out.

In Italy, the Germans were not much better off. The arrival for them of the 1st French army and the formidable goumiers of General Guillaume, allowed Giraud to launch his plan for an offensive to overrun the Aurunci mountains, southwest of the monastery, which the Germans considered "impassable to armies"! Throughout April and May, the British and American generals launched their unfortunate troops in suicidal frontal assaults against the ruined monastery, which only made the Nazis too confident in their defenses. Accompanied only by their mules, the Moroccans emerged, to their great terror, on the rear of the German defenders. Only the military skills of General Kesselring prevented the retreat from becoming a rout, the emergence of the soldiers of the Republic on the Nazi rear having been accompanied by a decisive assault by the Poles on the destroyed monastery. The German army retreated in good order towards the north, and the defensive positions set up in Tuscany, which were based on the northern Apennines. This line became known as the "Gothic Line".

Rome was liberated on July 4, 1943.

For the anecdote, seeing the Colosseum, an American soldier could not help but say, "Boy, I didn't know our bombs had done so much damage!"



The Colosseum in ruins.

This victory led to the return of antagonism between the Italian resistance and the head of the king's government, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had sided with the Allies solely out of opportunism and fear of the Germans, and who had served Mussolini for almost 20 years before that... But, if the entire resistance wanted the head of the Marshal, a majority of it also wanted the head of the king who was really responsible for the Duce's rise to power, the king who had the power to prevent his ascension but who, on the contrary, appointed him to the presidency of the council... Victor-Emmanuel III. Victor-Emmanuel III promised to give up his royal prerogatives in favor of his son Humbert, but at first refused to abdicate. It is the allied pressures, mainly French, Algiers wanting to get rid of the king who stabbed France in the back in 1940, Victor-Emmanuel III holding the knife in the company of Mussolini, which forced him to give up his throne completely to his son and successor.

De Gaulle, more than any other, understood, beyond simple revenge, the significance of this quick abdication.

"By yielding to the vindictiveness of the anti-fascist resistance, Victor-Emmanuel saved his dynasty. Humbert II, a monarch of little authority, will certainly only inaugurate the transalpine chrysanthemums from now on, but the royal dignity, washed of the suspicion that the past felony of the deposed king weighed on it, will be preserved."

The General, moreover, predestines the kingdom of Italy as a partner of all the more important for France that he guesses, that it will be minor and in position of weakness, within the framework of his ideas for the future of France.

Ideas that he wished to put in place at the Liberation...

The surprise German retreat and the rapid fall of the Gustav Line forced the Allies to consult each other to decide what to do next. Stalin insisted heavily that the latter, scheduled for August, take place in Teheran, despite the formidable distance to be covered for Churchill, Mandel and Roosevelt! Indeed, Stalin was afraid of flying... The Iranians were ignored by the Soviets, despised by the Americans, barely considered by the British... Only Mandel, a man of the future, treated the Shah according to his rank of emperor heir of Cyrus, being received, in a protocol manner, by the sovereign of Iran, where Churchill met him informally and... that Roosevelt received Mohamed Reza at the embassy of the USSR, where he had settled! France will receive from this policy of intelligence, respect and avant-gardism, laurels deserved in the following decades, when Iran will be an important power... If it is the first time that De Gaulle meets the Shah, it will not be the last. A long relationship was born that day between the 2 men, who would soon hold the future of 2 great nations in their hands...

But, if from the conference will be born the excellent relationship between the imperial state of Iran and France, in particular the Gaullian France, the lid of the tomb of the unfortunate Poland begins to close on it in Tehran...

Indeed, despite the heavy objections of the French, for whom the eastern border of Poland was indeed the one defined in Riga in 1920, the Anglo-Saxon powers gave in to Stalin's request, and confirmed the maintenance of the fruit of his joint plundering with Hitler in its bosom after the destruction of the Nazis. At best, they negotiate for the Polish city of Lwow, asking for a move eastward to the Curzon border line in the area. But Stalin remained intransigent. Roosevelt therefore gave in, forcing Churchill to follow him. Lvov will be Soviet...

"Only the principle of compensation at the expense of Germany, and the promise that the administration at the head of liberated Poland would come from the Sikorski government, prevented me from hastily leaving the meeting in protest. Will write Mandel in his war memoirs.

Stalin, cold calculator, genius politician, moves to the next agenda, the fate of Germany after its future defeat. The tyrant knows very well that his project of dismemberment of Germany will bring him closer to the French. The Four agreed to divide Germany into as many zones of occupation, with France receiving the left bank of the Rhine, the central objective of monarchist, imperial and then republican diplomacy, and this since Mazarin. In the long run, its separation into several states was even considered.

"Reconciled" with the French, Stalin could go back on the offensive. He promised to obtain Tito's support for the government in exile in Algiers in exchange for concessions, such as putting him on an equal footing with the Chetniks, and the establishment of a coalition government upon liberation. Faced with his demands, which were moderate on paper, Mandel could not but give in. Besides, did he not himself ally himself with his own communist forces to fight against the invader? Algiers sent supplies and military advisers in exchange for promises...

In Yugoslavia, Mihailovic and Tito both managed to escape the Axis forces. Their forces suffered heavy losses (Bihac, where Tito had been taunting the Axis, was taken over by the Germans) but they also inflicted heavy losses on the Germans and their allies. The consequences to be given to the Nazi failure at Fall Schwarz is moreover the object of the worst argument that opposed Churchill to De Gaulle, an argument that took place at the end of the discussion between the Big Four. First of all, Churchill reproached the French for having only helped Mihailovic: "You French are selfish! You only defend your particular interests!" In French of course. After handing the General a report from a British officer certifying that Chetnik groups participated in actions against the Partisans, he adds. "You have put all your eggs in a basket!" and then concludes by saying that he will only support Tito and let go of the "collaborating" Chetniks.

"We obviously do not have the same sources of information, Mr. Prime Minister. Ours being reliable, I cannot offer the same guarantees concerning yours..."

Churchill, stung to the quick, threatened France and the General.

"Between the continent and the open sea, I will always choose the open sea! If France gets in our way, we will liquidate her!

We? In connection with Roosevelt and America?

"Is that all?" de Gaulle simply replied, saluting the British leader before withdrawing.

The strangest thing is that, on his return trip to America, after the Cairo conference (which immediately followed), Roosevelt honored the Sultan of Morocco, then a French protectorate, with a state visit, while he had scorned the ruler of an independent state, Iran, and totally ignored the Egyptian monarch... Worse, Ferhat Abbas, published a manifesto at the end of the month calling for complete equality between the French of Algeria and Muslims. This would have been taken very badly at another time and on the contrary finally used as a positive springboard by Mandel, who promised major reforms on his return to Algiers.

On the other hand, the government in Algiers decided to help the Chetniks at all costs, while stressing to its ally the importance of striking a blow against those who had joined the Nazis. Dobroslav Jevđević, a felonious Chetnik, is the first target designated by the French secret service in this fight against the collaborating Chetniks.

As for the Prime Minister's "reliable" sources, they are actually Soviet spies, the Cambridge Five...

But the war was not only taking place in Europe. Stalin, at peace with the Empire of the Rising Sun, could not therefore participate in the common strategy against Tokyo. Roosevelt, Churchill and Mandel went to Cairo to confer with the Chinese President, Chiang Kai-shek.
The Great Ones decided to demand an unconditional surrender from Japan, at the end of which it would have to evacuate the islands it had occupied since 1914 as well as the Chinese territories it occupied, including Formosa. As for Korea, it should be free and independent.

Churchill, who did not forget his Balkan strategy, which he still wished to make prevail, did not return immediately to London after the conference. Furious with the French, he did not invite Mandel to join him, even though France would have been an important ally in his Turkish strategy... The British leader made a detour to Adana, to meet secretly with the Turkish president, Ismet Inönü.

Eager to include Turkey in his strategy to contain future Soviet influence in the Balkans, Churchill explained to the Turkish leader that, as the Allies only had the military means to liberate Greece and, at best, Albania, the Red Army would enter Bulgaria after the Germans had left, bringing the straits within reach of Russian tanks... Although perfectly aware of the president's real fears about a Soviet presence in Bulgaria, the latter refused. In addition to the ordinary and logical reticence of the Turk (German retaliation against Turkey, risk of having to accept a Soviet military presence on its soil in response), there is a fact which weighs heavily in the present refusal of the leader of Ankara. The political testament of Ataturk who said in 1938, and I quote: "A world war is near. During this war, the present international balance will be completely destroyed. If during this period we act rashly and allow ourselves to be led into the slightest error, we shall then be faced with a catastrophe far worse than that which occurred during the Armistice years". The posthumous warning of the father of the nation thus incited his successor to extreme caution...

Nevertheless, this powerful Germany is now struck to the core. During Operation Gomorrah/Gomorrah, named after the sinful city in the Bible that was destroyed by God (quite a symbol), the city of Hamburg was destroyed during a gigantic bombing campaign that caused a murderous firestorm. Nearly 45,000 victims, most of them civilians, were killed.

Defeated in the sky and on land, Germany was also defeated in the Atlantic. Thus, on his return from the conferences, Churchill was able to boast to the BBC that no Allied ship had been sunk by U-Boats for three months!

"Deutschland verliert an allen Fronten!"

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Chapter 17: The hour of choice for the Allies

"France is in a near-insurrectional situation (...), it is covered with maquis serving as rear bases for the "terrorists"".
Report by Field Marshal von Rundstedt to the OKW. September 1943

Far from all this political and diplomatic intrigue, people are now dying in the jungles of Bougainville and the rainforests of Burma while the US Marines finish burying their dead in the white hell of the Aleutian Islands.

Indeed, the small island in the far north of the Pacific Ocean was the scene of a bloody battle, and the first massive suicide charge of the Japanese infantry against the Americans of the war. The US generals wanted to drive the Japanese off the island, which was part of the piece of Alaska, an American territory (but not yet a state), occupied by the Japanese army. Unprepared for this frozen hell, even though it was late spring (!), the Americans nevertheless managed to push the Japanese back along the well-named Massacre Bay. Unfortunately, the Japanese of General Yamasaki, with their backs to the wall, could only capitulate...

"Tenno Heika Banzai!


This cry, all the more frightening because it is pushed in unison, by more than a thousand chests, resounds in the bay. The Japanese chose death rather than dishonor! Bayonet to the gun, the Japanese rushed on the American positions, swept the first lines during a cruel hand-to-hand fight and then surged on the backs of the Americans, on the verge of disaster! The Americans finally got their act together and chopped up the Nipponese, most of whom, seeing that they had lost, killed themselves... Only 29 Japanese soldiers, out of the 2,900 in the garrison, were taken prisoner. The surviving officers all gave their lives...

Wishing to be able to use these troops elsewhere, rather than keeping them on a useless frozen island, the Japanese evacuated their last Alaskan possession, Kiska, under the nose of an American invasion fleet. However, this conquest was not without losses (!) for the Americans and their Canadian allies. Approximately 300 people lost their lives due to the extreme climate, friendly fire and the traps left by the Japanese...

But if the Imperial General Staff had decided to evacuate the northernmost part of the Empire's defense perimeter, the same could not be said for Bougainville, where they would fight to the death. The American, or rather Allied, assault was launched on Sunday, July 11, 1943. The mixed battalion of the Pacific march, from the French territories of the gigantic ocean, took part in the campaign, landing with the 2nd assault wave. Some Americans thought that the Pacific soldiers would serve as porters for them, like the Papuans for the Australians... It took all the diplomacy of the French officers, and in particular of Lieutenant-Colonel Félix Broche, commander of the Pacific Battalion, who was now English-speaking due to the circumstances, to explain to them that his men were fighters, not coolies...

The Japanese blood they shed, the supreme courage of these men, from a warrior people par excellence, will silence the racial prejudices of the Americans, and even, of the Australians, which constitutes an important achievement.

The triumphs of war are not always military...

In the meantime, we must fight. The Japanese retaliated violently against the invasion with their air force based in Port Moresby and Rabaul, which bombed the mainly American assault fleet, and their fleet, which harassed these same ships at night (sinking two transports), while attempting to supply the besieged garrison (in a replay of the "Tokyo Express"). In spite of the fierce Japanese resistance, from mid-August 1943, several air bases were built on the island, from which the Americans could finally shell Rabaul, the large Japanese base located further north. In the end, in September 1943, while the soldiers continued to hold on, the Allies' installation in force on Bougainville made it possible to proclaim, at last, that any Japanese threat to Australia had disappeared! Indeed, bogged down in a gigantic war of attrition, which it was losing a little more each day, Japan obviously no longer had the means to launch any kind of invasion of the island-continent.

To think that, under Nimitz, the Bougainville campaign was quickly relegated to a secondary rank! Once the bridgehead was solidified, the aircraft carriers, as well as a good part of the surface combat fleet, withdrew, leaving the only relatively modest VIIth Fleet in the area. Indeed, it was further north that the American admiral intended to strike the decisive blow against Imperial Japan, in the central Pacific. There, Japan controls many small atolls, which it has only recently begun to fortify. The conquest of these atolls is necessary to provide vital support points, if Japan is to be reached through this region (and not through the South Pacific).

And this is exactly what the Americans intend to do! It is in this perspective that they are gathering a gigantic armada targeting the Gilbert Islands, and the atolls of Tarawa and Makin. The code name was Operation Galvanic. The assault was planned for November.

On the British Indian front, Salan was not the man to do it! The raid led by the newly formed unit of the British army, the Chindits (3,000 men, both British and Indian), on the rear of the Japanese army in Burma was only a relative success... The force commanded by Orde Wingate suffered heavy losses (1/3 of the men did not come back, the rest being seriously weakened physically), while, unlike Salan's forces, it partly depended on the Allied air force for its supplies, supplies which were therefore at the mercy of the Hayabusas (the Japanese army's fighters, the Zeros being those of the Navy). Worse, Wingate and his men went so deep into Burmese territory that it exceeded the range of the RAF based in India, which placed them at the mercy of the Japanese, and forced them to retreat.

It is true that Wingate partially disrupted the Japanese lines of communication in the country, but the main thing is that propaganda will make a huge triumph out of this half-success. This "triumph" also showed that the British were carrying out actions in Southeast Asia. Indeed, the great American ally reproached the British for their lack of activity in the region. To London's credit, their army was severely tested during the Japanese offensive of 1942. The coup de main had the merit, beyond the propaganda, of allowing the Allies to learn to coordinate with the air force to set up a supply in hostile terrain, but also to authorize a reconnaissance of the terrain, until now almost unknown, for a future counter-offensive.

The road to Rangoon remains very long.

In Europe, the debates were stormy within the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. Indeed, the politicians decided that the landing in France would take place in 1944. But one year is 12 months... The debates focused on 2 possibilities.

-Landing in Provence at the beginning of the year. This would allow to maintain the pressure on the German forces, and to liberate occupied France as soon as possible. However, the logistics were much more complex than for an operation further north (unthinkable in winter), as Corsica did not have the same facilities as England. Another shortcoming was that the panzerdivisionen based in occupied France were concentrated in the region, as the Germans also understood that the Allies would not attack in the north of the country during the bad season... This option was preferred by the Americans and the French.

-To land in the northwest of France in the spring of 1944. This would make available to the amphibious force the facilities of British territory, and would greatly facilitate the logistics of the invasion. In addition, the route to the heart of the Reich would also be much shorter. The main drawback is that this option would leave the Allies holding the bag for nearly 8 months! This new "Phony War" would allow the Nazis to straighten out the situation in the east as well. However, it would also give the Allied air force time to reduce the Luftwaffe to a trickle, while the Germans, unable to predict with certainty the location of the assault, would have to divide their forces. This possibility was the favorite of the British and Churchill, who also hoped to take advantage of the extra time to multiply the number of attacks on the southern flank of the Nazi Empire. And why not break the lock of the Gothic Line?

Eisenhower, in spite of the solidarity shown between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers, decided in favour of an Overlord/Southern Supreme Lord. The landing will take place on Saturday January 1st 1944, with the idea that by launching the operation on that day, the Germans will be celebrating the new year...

If this choice also had the merit for the Allies, that they would not have to massively move the landing craft towards the Channel, as they were still regrouped in their Mediterranean bases following the previous operations, it had, on the other hand, the main drawback that the Allies would face the best German divisions from the very first days of the assault, first days that would have to be decisive in order to maintain the bridgehead, and then to extend it. Another difficulty was that the Luftwaffe would still be a major threat to the assault forces of the Grand Alliance at that time.

A "fucking week" in perspective...
The distance between the main bases from which the ground troops would leave, located in North Africa, and the areas that would be attacked when the Provence landings were launched, was not a real problem. The operations in the Pacific saw amphibious operations launched over much greater distances, starting with Watchtower. As for aviation, which had a shorter range, there were aircraft carriers and the largest of them, the USS Corsica, which had been covered with airfields, notably Solenzara, since 1940 itself. Sardinia and southern Italy, further away, could be used as bases for bombers.

With the idea of deceiving the Germans as to the place and, above all, the season of the real landing, 2 raids were launched against the German installations and the communication routes located north of the Loire River, for a launch south of the latter. Moreover, a gigantic phantom army, made up of inflatable equipment, ostensibly visible from the sky, was based in the south of England. It even had the formidable General Patton as its commander, who had been put on the shelf for having slapped an American soldier, a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, during the campaign for the conquest of Monte Cassino.

Important means were thus allocated to deceive the Germans, within the framework of this massive operation of intoxication, or deception in English.

Code name: Fortitude/Courage

Politically, it is the ideal choice. Of course Churchill was unhappy, but how could he deprive the French of the possibility of liberating their occupied country? Moreover, landing from the north, from England, where there were almost no French army troops, would make the latter, which was on the contrary massively present in the Mediterranean, a modest auxiliary force to the force that would participate in the main and decisive assault. How could one explain to the French that they would only be present through the Corps Francs at the time of Overlord when one was counting on a large-scale national uprising to block the Nazi lines of supply and communication?

Morally questionable but above all politically catastrophic...

Moreover, concerning the strength of the French army in the interior, Von Rundstedt, commander of the German forces based in Western Europe, made pessimistic by the disaster on the Russian front, will have his words, as for the strength of the latter, in a situation report, to the OKW and Hitler himself.

"France is in a quasi-insurrectionary situation (...), it is covered with maquis serving as rear bases for the "terrorists"".

He mentions the following areas as dangerous for the Wehrmacht: Limousin, Brittany and the French mountain ranges, namely the Jura, the Alps, the Massif Central and the Pyrenees.

The rest of the country, however, was not a "safe" area for German soldiers...

Did the Napoleon of darkness find his "Spanish ulcer"?



The air base of Solenzara, nerve center of the "USS Corsica"

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Chapter 18: Thunderclaps
"I have nothing to regret now that the dark clouds have disappeared from the emperor's reign"

September 1943: In the east, the Soviet steamroller continued to crush the German defenders. A highly symbolic victory, Stalin's troops retook Kiev. Better still, despite the lack of bridges, Stalin's armor crosses the Dnieper in force and installs several bridgeheads on the west bank, despite the fact that many tanks have simply sunk ...

Hitler is in desperate need of reinforcements. After the refusal of the Bulgarians, the surrender of the Italians, and knowing that Antonescu's men continue to fight, the only nation able to bring him significant help is Hungary. Now, Hungary, through its prime minister, Miklós Kállay, who had the full approval of the regent, was secretly negotiating with the Allies to get his country out of the conflict (the Hungarian army, the Honvéd, had already withdrawn its expeditionary corps from the USSR following the final rout at Fall Blau).

Hitler therefore set up Operation Margarethe, a total occupation of the country in order to establish a new government for Hungary. This new government would send its army to fight the USSR. Hitler, fearing a new defection and still having in mind his failure with the now deceased Bulgarian king, decided to simply threaten the regent, without dismissing him, fearing that by doing so, the Hungarian administration would refuse to follow the new government, and consequently the army too.

Summoning Regent Horthy to Klessheim Castle in Austria, the Führer ordered the regent to accept the entry of German troops into his country and to dismiss Kállay, whom Hitler knew to be negotiating with the West. He resisted, but the German army had already entered Hungary... Without orders, the Honvéd did not resist. After several days, once the occupation was complete, Horthy was brought back to Budapest by the Nazis who placed him under supervised resistance. The regent appoints the notorious anti-Semite Döme Sztójay, in the vain hope that he will put his hatred to rest and remain loyal to the regent and his country...

Margarethe was a complete success for Hitler. The Hungarian army fights again in the East, and the Sztójay government begins, alongside the Nazis, the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to the death camps...

The Hungarian reinforcements helped to halt the Soviet rush into the western Ukraine, putting the Nazi rout in the east on hold.
As part of the strategy to prove to the British that the Chechens were not collaborators with Nazi Germany, at least in their extreme majority, several actions were undertaken:

- At the end of 1943, Dobroslav Jevđević, a breakaway Chenik who was now collaborating with the Germans, was murdered by a Chenik loyal to Mihailovic. In accordance with the plans of the French and the Yugoslav government in exile in Algiers.

- Mihailovic and his men, accompanied by their French liaison officers, notably Colonel Massu, conducted a campaign in Bosnia, a Yugoslav region populated in part by Muslims, in order to show that the Yugoslav Fatherland Army (the official name of the Chetniks) protected and fought for all Yugoslavs. Indeed, the Catholic Croatian Ustasha were waging a new campaign of terror against both the Orthodox Serbs and the Muslim Bosnians. Mihailovic received the express order from Subasic and his king to strike a blow, while the Bosnian Muslims are beginning to be dragged by the Third Reich (We think of the SS Handschar division)! Moreover, Tito also operated in Bosnia and was less frightening to the Muslims than Mihailovic's group, some of whose leaders were Serbian nationalists.

During this operation, the Chetniks inflicted serious setbacks on the soldiers of Pavelic, the leader of the Ustasha, and saved several Muslim and Serbian villages while withdrawing before the Germans could intervene, taking with them numerous recruits, Serbs, Muslims and even some Croats who disagreed with the genocidal policy of the Ustasha.


But, while the "fighting France" praised this victory of the monarchist resistance, the BBC... attributed the merits to Tito! The British and Churchill thus remain blind to the reality, distorted by the agents of Stalin...

Tito...
The latter had just been appointed general by King Peter II. Because of this beginning of recognition, Tito, who hesitated to "suspend" the Monarchy and to form his own government, under the name of "National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia", renounced it, at least for the moment, for fear of alienating his English "friends", and especially of proving that the French were right about him. The leader of the Partisans is therefore content with his "Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia", which is almost entirely subservient to him and which already functions as a government in the areas under his control, where Mihailovic administers the territories from which he has driven out the invader and the collaborators, in the name of the government of Subasic and of King Peter II...

In the meantime, the situation in the central Pacific was unblocked, where the Americans launched a powerful offensive against the Nipponese atolls, which constituted the Empire's first defenses in the region.

This was Operation Galvanic, launched against the atolls of Makin and Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, a British colony that Japan had occupied since 1941.

The Americans were immediately surprised by the extraordinary resistance put up by the Japanese defenders, a resistance that cost them nearly 3,000 casualties (including 1,000 dead) in Tarawa! At Makin, only 64 Marines were killed and 150 wounded. Most of the losses, 642 men, were among the sailors of the aircraft carrier USS Liscome Bay, which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, the I-175.

The carnage at Tarawa, a tiny piece of land in the middle of a gigantic ocean, shocked American opinion. It pushed the American commanders to accelerate at all costs the final victory over Japan, a very tenacious adversary... At the same time, it forced these same officers to review their combat methods, which included a lengthening of the shelling of Japanese defensive positions, an improvement of the precision of these same bombardments (moreover, the artillerymen trained on reproductions of Japanese pillboxes, exact copies of those discovered in the Gilberts) and, among other things, the supply of better radio equipment to the troops...

Lessons quickly integrated. The conquest of Kwalajein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in January 1944 "cost" only 567 dead (and 2,000 wounded), against 10,000 on the enemy side. Unfortunately, many Korean slaves were included in this figure...

But where is the combined fleet, the Japanese Kido Butai? It had retreated to the Kure naval base, near Hiroshima, in the Japanese inland sea, safe from the American (and French) submarines that were harassing it. There, it was able to reconstitute its workforce and train new pilots, able to participate in the "final battle" planned by Yamamoto. The Japanese, still under the leadership of the Grand Admiral, reformed their convoy protection system on the basis of information provided by the Germans, and began to stockpile enough refined petroleum for training and, above all, for the great battle that was approaching a little more each day.

If the Japanese commanders did not plan to use the fleet massively to defend the Gilberts and Marshalls, Yamamoto wanted to go much further than his peers...

First of all, he noted with horror that the Americans did not methodically and systematically conquer each atoll and other Japanese island fortresses, but only seized the best strategically placed, isolating the Japanese forces on others. Indeed, in the South Pacific, after the end of the main fighting on Bougainville, the Allies did not rush like mad bulls on Rabaul, but were content to conquer small islands, located within bombing range of the big Japanese base of the region, in order to bludgeon it from the sky, while isolating it methodically... In the same way, and also as part of the strategy of isolation of Rabaul, in New Guinea, the Allies took back Port-Moresby and then moved up north, seizing the large Japanese base of Lae, despising the smaller garrisons, which were slowly beginning to succumb to hunger, even cannibalism! In the center, Nauru and Wake are now dangerously out of place, and what can be said of the many Marshall Islands that the Americans have disdained to conquer?

On February 19, while the Truk naval base, the main Japanese base in the central Pacific, was being consumed by the powerful American air and sea offensive launched as part of Operation Hailstone, Yamamoto presented his project to the war committee, in the presence of Emperor Showa himself.

After having exposed the uselessness of maintaining garrisons in the atolls and positions that were henceforth isolated, the admiral proposed to evacuate all the territories located east of the Marianas (including Truk), in order to constitute an "impassable barrier" centered on this archipelago. In the south, Japan would henceforth be content to defend the north-western quarter of New Guinea, implying the evacuation of the now very useless Rabaul...

If the "Sailors" reluctantly approved, Tojo, at the head of the "Earthlings", virulently opposed the project, even using the term "shameful" to describe the attitude of the commander of the Imperial Navy.

Yamamoto remains stoic in the face of the insult. He knew that only his plan could save the greatness of the Japanese Empire... Better still, Emperor Showa, who we do not know if he was seizing the opportunity to implement a sincere desire for peace, or if he had become aware of the inevitable catastrophe to come if no firm action was taken, intervened, to the astonishment of everyone, including Yamamoto.

He approves the plan of his navy chief and orders Tojo to implement it.

It is subtly played because Tojo, who opposed the plan with force, cannot now implement it without losing face. With rage in his heart, he hands in his resignation to the emperor in the following hours.

Not without preparing his revenge...
A few days later, while leaving the Ministry of the Navy, to which he had just been appointed, Yamamoto was shot by a young officer, manipulated by the former Prime Minister, Major Hatanaka Kenji. Arrested without putting up any resistance, but also without giving the names of the sponsors, the search of the officer reveals the following verses on him:


"I have nothing to regret now that the black clouds have disappeared from the emperor's reign"


However, the Higashikuni government (uncle of the emperor, a sign of Showa's return to power), and its allies in the navy, immediately understood that the murder was only the prelude to a coup d'état planned by Tojo and the army.

Thus, as soon as the death of the admiral was announced, the announcer of Radio-Tokyo read a statement, signed by Showa's own hand, blaming the culprits and forcing them to repent, without naming them, while in the same breath, the police raided Tojo Hideki's house and put him under arrest, the other officers present being only under house arrest, both to nip in the bud any attempt at an uprising and to place them under close surveillance by the Kempetai just in case... At the same time, troops of the Imperial Guard and naval infantry were placed around the Imperial Palace and the main ministries, but the decisive action of the government and the emperor, now accustomed to military coups, rendered the attempt to overthrow the newly appointed government dead.

Tojo committed suicide shortly afterwards in prison.

The plan of the deceased Yamamoto was finally implemented by his successor, Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon. Japanese torpedo boats evacuated the isolated garrisons at night and at full speed. But the new Japanese leaders, anxious not to provoke the "Earthlings" beyond what was strictly necessary, decided to relaunch the war in Southeast Asia, the scene of the great victories of the new Minister of War...

Yamashita Tomoyuki.

An offensive against India was already in preparation, but the Higashikuni government allocated more substantial means to it. The objective was not only to prevent future raids by the Chindits, but to inflict a major defeat on the British and to push India to revolt! To this end, Yamashita fully associated himself with the "free Indians" of Chandra Bose. His propaganda master, the Bengali Muslim Jamal Naseem, was ready to inflame the minds of the people of the Raj to rise up against the British.

While these decisive events were taking place in the Pacific, other events, no less decisive, were taking place in Europe... Indeed, the great invasion of Western Europe, Operation Overlord, had just been launched! It follows the cruel and bloody battle of Provence, where each village, each hill, is conquered at the price of blood.

Bloody Provence...

And this in spite of a meticulous preparation, including an intense bombing campaign on the German aeronautical factories, nicknamed "Big Week" by the French crews... The losses of the Allied bombers were heavy, but the Nazi factories were in flames, and significant losses were inflicted on the Luftwaffe of the Führer. But despite this, the latter succeeded in attacking several times the 5 landing beaches (named after a letter of the Greek alphabet, in order from west to east Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Indeed, giving two names, one in French and the other in English, to each beach would have complicated the task of the Allies too much and probably caused harmful errors...), sinking the British battleship HMS Waspite, with the help of the first remotely piloted bomb in history, the Fx 1400 Fritz X! However, a counter-measure consisting of radio jamming was quickly found to counter the radio-guidance of the bombs, while the Allied air force gradually gained the upper hand over its German opponent. The French Navy participated massively in the launching of the liberation of the Motherland. It now had its own aircraft carrier, supplied by the Americans.

The Clemenceau.

The Clemenceau, symbol of the restoration of France's greatness, was also used for the various tests of the prototypes developed by the French engineers who had returned to Algeria. Think of the famous Marcel Bloch and his MB.160, a true twin of the American P-51...

Discreetly, the French engineers were making a mockery of the Nazis. A jet aircraft was gradually being developed. De Gaulle insisted on informing "our allies" as little as possible... This was the genesis of the Cyclone!

What a French family the Blochs are. Marcel refining the weapons of the future French army, brother Darius Paul, fighting in the shadows in occupied France under the pseudonym of Chardasso!

Several future political figures took part in the operation, such as Jean, the future Grand Duke of Luxembourg, who joined the British army, and Chapour Bakhtiar, who joined the French army and was to become a great Iranian politician. Jean Moncorgé, a soldier in the armored fusiliers-marins regiment of the 2nd French armored division, also participated in the operation. The latter is better known under his stage name.

Jean Gabin.

Another great actor to come, although he participated in various French propaganda films since his escape from captivity in 1942 via Spain, participates in the operation as a simple infantryman.

Yul Brynner.

The amphibious assault was preceded by an airborne attack by American, British and French paratroopers, which caused chaos in the rear of the German armies, facilitating the capture of the beaches and the establishment of bridgeheads, despite the existence of the Mittelmeerwall, the "Mediterranean Wall", the southern counterpart of the "Atlantic Wall", both of which were set up by Rommel, who had been appointed to France alongside von Rundstedt, following his failure in Sicily.

As far as the French internal resistance was concerned, the importance of the maquis had become such that real Republican fortresses, over which the invader had no hold, were now in place in mountainous or isolated regions, such as the Limousin, where the enemy now only controlled the main towns and major roads.

Since the beginning of 1943, numerous parachute drops have massively armed the "army of shadows", in perfect coordination between Algiers and the CNRI, now headed by Pierre Brossolette (the General's hand can be seen there). Little by little, the Communists began to be armed in a fair manner by the Allies, as they were reintegrated into the Republican war machine and their signs of good will were shown.

However, in the hours following the assault on Saturday, January 22, 1944, the Allies committed a major strategic error... And without the emergence of a French hero, far too much blood would have been shed...

Thus, when the landing was announced, a powerful group of communist FTPs decided, on their own initiative, to liberate Tulle. Of course, the garrison was not famous, but these men were a bit quick to forget the inevitable German response at a time when the Allies were hundreds of kilometers away! The garrison, composed of Wehrmacht soldiers and national guards, was barely defeated when the collaborators were put to the sword by the Communists. As for the German soldiers taken prisoner, they were molested and interned in the town's high school.


Von Rundstedt was furious and gave the order to retake the city. He quickly gathered the necessary forces, i.e. SS battalions, assisted by Feldgendarmes and even Cossacks (!), who were in charge of tracking down resistance fighters in the region and who no longer needed to look for them...

The republican government hesitated about what to do. Indeed, the FTP, who had sworn to defend the city, would not obey it if it ordered them to evacuate the city. But ordering the local "republican" resistance groups to join the communists in defending Tulle would only needlessly increase the losses of the army of the interior. But above all, Mandel and the French leaders were concerned about the unfortunate inhabitants of Tulle, who had been taken hostage by the reckless actions of the local FTP.


Indeed, Mandel had heard about the mistreatment of the German soldiers and knew that the Germans would take revenge on the civilians as soon as they knew what had happened...


It is then that a great man emerges. This one, who will be nicknamed "the savior of Tulle". A Resistance fighter of communist persuasion, he took it upon himself to go to the GQG of the German Western Command in Paris in order to negotiate with von Rundstedt nothing less than the lives of the inhabitants of Tulle. Indeed, he knew, thanks to his contacts within the resistance, whether communist or not, that the German troops in charge of retaking Tulle were already assembled and had begun their march towards their prey.


The Germans were stunned and threatened the man with imprisonment. But the lives of the Tullists were far too important to let him be intimidated.


"Would you accept that brave German soldiers be executed simply because you refused to listen to a man? He said to the soldiers who wanted to throw him in jail.


Stunned, the Germans agreed to talk to Marshal von Rundstedt about this request for negotiation. A few minutes later, the Frenchman was greeted coldly but courteously by the supreme commander of German troops in the west. The German officer explained that he agreed to speak to him because he represented "the government of Algiers" and that he would not speak to the "terrorist".
Indeed, the man was a member of the CNRI, the "National Council of the Internal Resistance", and it was in this capacity that von Rundstedt, concerned for the lives of his men, spoke with him. Indeed, the Marshal understood that he had no mandate from Algiers to speak to him, because the Republic would never have sent a major leader of the Internal Resistance directly into the "jaws of death". Moreover, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish ambassador to the French national state, was already in negotiations with the German marshal to save the Tullists.


Secretly, Hitler's Marshal found that the Resistance's approach did not lack panache.

The French Resistance fighter offered to make contact with the leaders of the Communist forces that had taken Tulle. In exchange for the release of the German prisoners, no reprisals would be taken against the inhabitants of the city. The two enemies decided that the latter would be taken care of by the Red Cross because, as von Rundstedt was categorical on this point, the city would be burned down, as the German army could not allow an action by "terrorists" to go unpunished...


Time was running out for the French Resistance fighter, because while negotiations were taking place, the SS was still advancing towards the city, and the lives of the inhabitants of Tulle were still essential.


The Frenchman accepted the conditions of the German marshal and made contact with the FTP leaders in the city. They were furious, but finally agreed to the wishes of one of their representatives in the CNRI.


The SS were also unhappy. We dared to prevent them from killing civilians! What horror for these veterans of the Eastern Front!


As for Hitler, although he was discreetly "worked" by Rommel, who would have liked to have the Frenchman arrested and the Tullists massacred, the images of the SS burning down the city succeeded in calming him down and, incidentally, in saving Rundstedt's head... For a while...


Nevertheless, the SS caught up with the FTP by exterminating almost all of them (not without them having defended themselves like lions, inflicting substantial losses on the attackers) and sending the survivors to camps in Germany and Poland. Tulle was destroyed by the Germans, but not without the "Hiwis" looting the houses before setting them on fire...


The survivors, taken in charge by the Red Cross, were then dispersed throughout France. Many never returned to the city after the war. Nevertheless, all of them joined the Tullist association which was founded after the war.


As the only reward for his "comrades" for having saved thousands of people, Charles Tillon was gradually removed from the Party's leadership before being definitively excluded for a trifle in 1946. The "savior of Tulle" founded the "French Workers' Party" which remained microscopic...


However, if the population of Tulle was spared, this was not the case for many villages located between Lyon and the landing beaches. Indeed, hundreds of civilians were massacred by the Führer's soldiers on their way to counter Overlord/Supreme Lord, in retaliation to the resistance's lightning raids on their columns...

If the Allied bombers based in the Mediterranean were diverted from their usual objectives (such as Ploiesti or the Reich industries based in Bavaria and Austria) to support targets directly linked to the landing, the bombers stationed in England, following the pressure of General "Bomber Harris", were launched in a campaign of massive destruction of German cities, in particular Berlin. Indeed, the latter wanted to divert the Luftwaffe from Provence by forcing it to defend its cities. It should be noted that from now on, and contrary to the "Fucking Week", the Allied bombers were defended all along their routes by P-51s, long-range fighters, even in the heart of the Reich, which increased the German losses.

This did not prevent the German army from fighting foot to foot in Provence and from retreating only very slowly when the Allies managed to move forward, in a terrible war of attrition.

With the Allies "held back" by the Wehrmacht in Provence, the Nazi commanders prepared a powerful offensive against the largest of the Republican Maquis, the source of numerous actions against the German columns heading south.

The Vercors massif...

As the Nazi troop movements revealed their intentions, Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces decided to give maximum help to the beleaguered Resistance fighters (who had unfurled a gigantic tricolour flag, visible from Grenoble!) and threatened with annihilation. First of all, on February 8, massive air raids were launched against the besiegers, disorganizing them in the preparation of their assault, while the allied fighter squadron cleared the area of the Nazi air threat! The Vercors fighters, an amalgam of inexperienced volunteers, veterans of the Alpine Army and STO refractory soldiers on the run, prepared for the attack.

The thunderclap of the Supreme Lord resounded throughout German Europe. In Romania, King Michael crossed the Rubicon by ousting Antonescu from power and appointing in his place the secret leader of the National Democratic Bloc, Iliu Maniu, and General Constantin Sănătescu, who had opposed the Dorohoi progrom in July 1940 and then crushed the Iron Guard uprising the following January, to the post of deputy prime minister in charge of the war. However, fearing both German retaliation and a Soviet takeover of his country, the new government did not leave the conflict immediately and preferred to delay and organize. Their goal was to prepare for Hitler's counter-attack while avoiding falling under the Soviet yoke (and keeping Bessarabia)...

From now on, whether in the west in France or in the south in Italy, the front line is in flames, as it has been in the east since June 22, 1941. The soldiers of freedom had taken to the beaches of Provence and were pushing back the Nazi invader at the cost of blood. On the back of the latter, the secret army emerged from the shadows, a sign if any were needed of the will to resist of the people of France, as soon as an impulse from above encouraged them in their sincere approach. Certainly, they had passed (besides, the monuments commemorating the French victory of Verdun had been odiously dynamited by the Barbarians), but as in the time of Charles VII, we will push the occupiers back into their lair! The days of Nazism are now numbered...

"The supreme battle is engaged!

After so much fighting, so much rage, so much pain, here comes the decisive shock, the much hoped-for shock. It is the battle of France and it is the battle of France!

Charles de Gaulle, January 22, 1944, speech on Radio Algiers.



France rises up!

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Volume 3: 1944 The end of a cycle

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Chapter 1: Sacrifice

"If the brave French of Vercors had not been there, Jerry would have thrown us back into the sea!"
General George Patton

"The contribution of the French resistance was equivalent to twenty divisions.
General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe.


Provence is in ruins. Every village, the only road crossroads at the time, was methodically pulverized by the Anglo-Saxon air force, to hinder the movements of the German troops. The French, logically, attacked only the purely military targets, or participated, this time with enthusiasm, in the destruction of Germany, where at this rate not a single house would be left standing in any town larger than a simple village by the end of the year...

And yet... The Germans chased out, the inhabitants, until then holed up in cellars, come out of the ground to acclaim with fervor their liberators, coming from Sussex, Alabama or Upper Volta...

If the enthusiastic reaction of the people of France to their saviors was certain, it was likely to be followed by a predictable interregnum between the expulsion of the Germans and the return of the Republican officials, a veritable interlude of all dangers, of all excesses... Indeed, already caught up in a terrible war of attrition with the Germans, the military units absolutely must not lose a minute in their offensive, leaving the populations almost alone... Thus, if some risk taking advantage of the situation to take revenge on the traitors and executioners, others will try to settle personal scores, under the guise of patriotism of the 25th hour... The republican government, having foreseen these eventualities, quickly re-established its authority, with battalions of civil servants (and the first of them, the commissioner of the republic for the Var, Paul Haag, the prefect of 1940, who had preferred honor to servitude) but also police officers and gendarmes, closely following the liberation forces.

It was the justice of the Republic that judged and punished, in the vast majority of cases, those who had betrayed their country, thanks to the judges, prosecutors and other lawyers who had fled the Metropolis since 1940 or who had been posted in the Empire during the invasion.

Thus, the "spontaneous" purge, uncontrolled, remained marginal...

As far as the fighting was concerned, progress was extremely slow. The rugged terrain, made up of hills and the first foothills of the Alps, lent itself extremely well to the fierce defense that the Germans put up against the Allies. Toulon was initially supposed to be captured on D+15 (an estimation already considered as pessimistic), and fell only after furious fights, on March 3rd, that is to say D+41, after 5 days of street fights which left the city and the harbour in ruins.

However, it was there that the Mandel government moved to Fréjus after their installation on D+3.

While waiting for Marseille...

Toulon was the main Nazi submarine naval base for the Mediterranean. At the peak of their strength, 40 units were assigned there... In January 1944, only 5 U-Boats remained active in the latter..., and only 2 after the suicidal surface assault (!) ordered by the BDU on the Allied invasion fleet! And still these only owed their lives to the disobedience of the commander Herbert A. Werner who ordered his crew and his last companion, the U-565, to dive back to the base.

From then on, U-565 (type VIIC), the last ship able to go to sea following the destruction of Werner's ship during an air raid, was ordered to flee the city towards La Spezia, Italy. The blockade was tight, but the ship prepared to cross the wall formed by the Allied torpedo boats blocking the harbour.

But the Allies, especially the French, had prepared a little surprise for it.

Leaving the base and preparing to dive, the German submarine was attacked by a small blue cigar-shaped craft bearing the blue, white and red roundel. Completely caught off guard, the small flying machine took advantage of the situation to drop a bomb on the submarine, which was gutted on the spot, before withdrawing without difficulty...

The Dorand G.20 had become the first combat helicopter in history, let alone the first to successfully sink a submarine.

The Nazis were not the only ones to create "super-weapons"...


Further north, the Vercors succumbed after a month of massive Nazi assaults. Still the surviving Maquisards succeeded for the most part in dispersing and joining other Maquis of lesser importance, generally higher up, and held by the veterans of the battle of the Alps of 1940 of General Jacques Delmas. The others joined the structures of the ORA of General Charly. German losses were heavy, with more than 1,000 dead out of the 20,000 soldiers involved. An important part of the German losses came, let us point out, from the allied aerial bombings. The Maquis, who numbered just under 10,000, lost half of their initial strength.

The Maquis, in spite of its defeat, received important material help from the Allies. And on the eve of its defeat, the equipment that could not be evacuated was systematically sabotaged, with very few falling into German hands. As for the captured Maquisards, they were deported to concentration camps, from which very few returned.

Captive France also paid the price of blood.

On March 19, the German army and the National Guard surrounded and then stormed the villa where a meeting was taking place between Pierre Brossolette, leader of the CNRI, and representatives of the various networks under his supervision. Brossolette was taken to rue de Saussaie, the Parisian headquarters of the Gestapo, where Klaus Barbie personally took charge of his "interrogation". Brossolette died on the 25th without giving any name.

For the leaders of Fighting France, it was a shock. France had lost a valiant patriot, de Gaulle an ally in its fight for constitutional reform, and the Resistance an exceptional leader and unifier. As for the SFIO, it lost face... It had expelled Brossolette from its ranks (against Blum's advice) following his willingness to abandon any reference to Marxism in the party's program, the day before the announcement of his arrest... Once the announcement was made, it was impossible to discreetly reverse the unfortunate decision. The first party of France, humiliated, divided between the extremists of the Marxist line of the party, and those in favor of what we would call today a "social-democratic" line, the dam preventing the vote by the French Parliament of the establishment of a constituent at the end of Liberation, jumps.

Most of the Right, a significant part of the SFIO, and the united Communist bloc, voted in favor of the election of this constituent, on May 3, in what would be the last vote held in Algiers by the French Parliament.

France will know a Fourth Republic. Only its nature (copy of the Third Republic? Presidential regime as the General would have wished?) still escapes observers at this date.



Pierre Brossolette (Source Wikipédia)

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Chapter 2: The Other Evil Empire

"As we turned our heads to the west of the map of Europe that Stalin had drawn up on the table, what we saw made our blood run cold. A huge red line literally cut the map in two! It started on the shores of the Baltic, followed the course of the Elbe, merged with the border between Bavaria and Czechoslovakia, cut Austria in two and ended on the shores of the Adriatic after separating Yugoslavia from Italy.

Stalin, as in 1939, imposed a division. This time, it was the division of Europe.
Georges Mandel, War Stories - A New World: 1944-1946 (Volume III)

The title of the last volume of Georges Mandel's War Stories seems to indicate his shock at the new European and world situation following the Second World War. Indeed, he insists on the new world resulting from the arms rather than on the liberating character of its conclusion for our country, as the General will do when he titles the third volume of his own memoirs "Salvation".

But in what context does Stalin allow himself to show such impetuosity in imposing his demands on his Western European allies?

In fact, while Overlord/Supreme Lord was advancing at a snail's pace, and the Red Army was also blocked in the east by the vigorous resistance of the armies of the Third Reich, events suddenly rushed in Eastern Europe.

Romania, rid of Antonescu, continued to contain the Soviets in Bessarabia (after having helped evacuate the German troops isolated in the Crimea with its navy at the end of 1943), but Hitler doubted the reliability of his Latin ally, especially since the latter had put an end to the anti-Semitic persecutions against its Jewish population.

Horthy, who had been sidelined the previous September, took over. He had the lackey of the Germans, Prime Minister Döme Sztójay, replaced by General Géza Lakatos, and with him he immediately stopped the mass deportations of Hungarian Jews to the death camps. More discreetly, Budapest resumed negotiations with the Allies and the Soviets.

Negotiations that the Romanian government of Iuliu Maniu had undertaken since the fall of the Conducator. If the Romanians were ready to sign the armistice and to help the Soviets drive out the German troops that would remain in the country, the negotiations were hampered by the status of Bessarabia, which the Romanians wanted to keep. The Soviets, through the voice of Molotov and the will of Stalin, intended to take it over again. Beyond that, the Romanians were terrorized by the idea of a Stalinist takeover of their country...

It was Hitler, in his brutality and madness, who unblocked the situation.

Indeed, fearing, and rightly so, a forthcoming defection of his satellites, and infuriated by their cessation of anti-Semitic persecutions, he prepared an updated version of Margarethe, operations Panzerfaust I (Hungary) and Panzerfaust II (Romania), with a view to replacing Regent Horthy and King Michael with pro-Nazi leaders (Szálasi and Sima)

The Hungarian part of the operation was entrusted to Mussolini's liberator, Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny went in with a vengeance and penetrated the regent's palace at the head of a column of Panther tanks, seized his person and forced him to sign his act of abdication. The guards, thinking they were dealing with allies, did not resist. As expected, the regency was abolished and the Kingdom of Hungary became the Hungarian State with the leader of the Hungarian National Socialists, the Arrow Crosses, Ferenc Szálasi as "Head of State" and "Head of the Government of National Unity". The Nemzetvezető or, in French, the "Head of the Nation."

The vast majority of Hungarians rallied the new government, which was quick to revive the Magyar aspect of the Holocaust...

On the other hand, Panzerfaust II was a fiasco. The Bucharest garrison repelled the German assault. Iliu Maniu hastens to denounce the alliance with Germany and to announce a cease-fire with the Soviets who rush forward into Moldavia.

The Romanian army, which until then had been helping the Germans to contain the Russians in Bessarabia, suddenly turned against the soldiers of the Reich. The Germans who were defending Iasi and Chisinau against the Red Army were ordered to withdraw to the Carpathian line. The Führer's men tried desperately to make this retreat in a Romania that had suddenly become hostile. Attacked by the Romanians during their retreat, the German convoys were also bludgeoned by the Soviet air force, the VVS. Thousands of Germans died or were captured by the Romanian-Soviet forces during this debacle.

One week after the failure of Panzerfaust II, the Soviets entered Bucharest. They stayed there much longer than expected... Just like in Bessarabia where a second annexation was initiated. As "compensation", Romania obtained the recovery of Northern Transylvania, annexed by Budapest in 1940. But the latter still had to be reconquered...

Some of the Russian armored vehicles rushed not to the west and Hungary, but to the south and southwest. Belgrade and Sofia! Bulgaria, although neutral towards the USSR and not having, as we know, participated in Barbarossa, is nevertheless invaded by Stalin's men.

The Red Tyrant shows there all his contempt for the Franco-British who are basically, for him, only cobelligerents. Indeed, the Bulgarian government presided by Ivan Ivanov Bagrianov had just signed an armistice with the Westerners... And ordered the evacuation of the Greek, Yugoslav and Romanian territories (the southern Dubruja) occupied since 1940!

The day after the Soviet assault, the "Patriotic Front", an alliance of different parties but dominated by the agreement between the nationalists of Zveno led by Kimon Georgiev and the Bulgarian communists of Georgi Dimitrov (the deceiver of the Nazi courts) seized power and signed the armistice with Moscow. At the same time he declared war on Germany. The three members of the regency council of the child king Simeon II, Prince Kiril, Bogdan Filov and General Nikola Mikhov, are thrown into prison.

Just like Bagrianov...

The republic is proclaimed. The king-child, Simeon II leaves for exile in Portugal, via Istanbul.

The Bulgarian soldiers will soon act in concert with the Red Army in the Yugoslav theater.

The surprise rush of the Soviets into the Balkans stunned the West. An emergency landing was organized in Greece to save what could be saved. Especially since the communists are very powerful there. The landing had no other purpose than to "block" the Red rush, since the Germans had left Athens... Their pursuit was left to the Red Army.

However, in spite of their alliance, and in the perspective of the post-war period, the two allies have opposite projects for the Hellenic country. Churchill, in fact, intended to rely on the monarchy of King George II to establish a friendly regime in Greece, even if it meant relying on former members of the pro-Nazi militias and former members of the Metaxas Clique, the dictator in place before the Italian invasion and who died shortly before the German intervention. Indeed, the Prime Minister feared the strength of the Communist Resistance from the ranks of the KKE, the Greek Communist Party.

The French Republic, if it pursues the same goal, namely to avoid a Stalinist takeover in Greece, intends to do it with the soft method. And this, even if it means opposing the British... Thus, French soldiers prevented their British counterparts from taking the collaborators out of prison, while at the same time obtaining the disarmament of the KKE militias and the transfer of their weapons to the Greek royal army which had returned from exile. Quickly, it is the administration returned from exile that takes control of the country evacuated by the Nazis. However, this administration was an incompatible mixture of venizelist republican officials and monarchists who favored authoritarianism. Now, the Greek people, tested by the occupation, wishes a Third way between the royal dictator, and the communist totalitarianism. This, the KKE understood it long before Churchill.

On the strength of their experience of agreement with the PCF in their own country, the French spoke with the main leaders of the KKE. The latter agreed, with the consent of Moscow (which had clearly understood that Greece would escape it), to join the government of Sophoklís Venizélos, prime minister since December 1941, in exchange for three of them joining it.

George II sulked while Churchill fulminated. The Greek puppet of the British therefore immediately opposed the appointment of the three Communists to his cabinet, which they nevertheless integrated into non-strategic posts... The KKE then organized a large demonstration in the streets of Athens and only the presence of French soldiers prevented the Tommies from dispersing it by force. Faced with the show of force of the Communists, and noting that they were supported by the Venizelists, the king lige dismisses Sophoklís Venizélos from his position of head of government. Everyone sees that if the king returns to his country, there will be a general revolt. Churchill, would not have been stingy with Greek blood, but with the presence of Mandel's soldiers at his side, he could do nothing...

Venizélos, returned before the king to Athens (the French having magnificently prepared their blow), proclaims the Hellenic republic, the third in this case.

Anxious to gather all the Greeks, general elections are organized in the urgency, they will be boycotted by the monarchist parties (and forbidden to the former forces of the collaboration). It was a triumph for Venizelos and his Liberal Party.

First, the new Hellenic Parliament elected Archbishop Damaskinos, the future "Righteous Among the Nations" who saved thousands of Jewish children from death, as president of the republic. He immediately appointed Sophoklís Venizélos as prime minister. Despite the majority acquired by his party in parliament, the latter nevertheless surrounded himself with KKE ministers as well as conservatives, rallied to the Republic (one thinks of Geórgios Papandreou).

The assembly, which had the rank of a constituent, largely took over the democratic constitution of 1911, with the king simply being replaced by a president.

Greece will be firmly anchored in the Western camp and will be a modern, liberal democracy, in keeping with its August past.

The Greek miracle will be unique. Albania and Yugoslavia will be satellites of the Stalinist USSR... Tirana is liberated by the communists of Enver Hoxha who immediately seizes all the levers of power.

Belgrade was liberated thanks to the joint action of Tito's Partisans, Mihailovic's Cheniks and the Red Army. Faced with the meteoric advance of the Soviets in the Balkans, Mihailovic was forced to cooperate directly with the communist fighters to prevent Tito from being left alone to claim the laurels of victory in Belgrade. But soon, with the Germans gone, mistrust took over again until the Soviets openly attacked the Cheeniks by throwing several of their leaders into prison. Tito, intoxicated, proclaims the deposition of King Peter II and proclaims the "People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"!

The Chéniks were forced to flee to the mountains, but they had to resist heroically against the combined forces of the Partisans and the Russians. It is then that the monarchist commander makes a serious mistake. He allied himself with the remnants of the Serbian National Guard, collaborators who had been fighting alongside the Germans since 1941, to confront the Communists. Tito jumped at the opportunity by making Monarchists and "Fascists" be equated... Assisted by the Red Army, which was established, Tito undertook the extermination of the men of Draza Mihailovic...

The Yugoslav civil war has just begun. A leaden blanket begins to fall already on Eastern Europe...

The Polish resistance, which was already aware of the criminal nature of its eastern neighbor (and for good reason!), is preparing for the arrival of the Red Army on its territory and is preparing the "Storm Plan" to try to save what can be of the independence of the Fatherland.

And the Poles have every reason to be afraid...

Faced with this new situation, Winston Churchill and Georges Mandel (accompanied by Anthony Eden, Paul-Boncour and also Charles de Gaulle) went to Moscow as a matter of urgency to discuss the situation in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe with Stalin. The meeting was much more tense than the previous ones, Stalin being intractable about Tito's continuation in power in Yugoslavia (assimilating the Cheeniks, and beyond that Peter II, to Fascists not much better than the Nazis). Worse, the dictator had the nerve not only to criticize the "alliance" between London and Algiers on the one hand, and the monarchy of the Savoy dynasty which appointed Mussolini as President of the Council on the other, but also to express reservations about the Sikorski government, which he considered unrepresentative because it was the product of a "reactionary dictatorial regime" which had made a pact with pre-war Germany. Is Sikorski not the head of a state that participated, alongside the Reich, in the dismantling of Czechoslovakia? Of a nation that occupied parts of Belarus and Ukraine, constituent nations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
After this diatribe, the famous episode of the map of Europe takes place. Indeed, the Vojd has a map drawn up on his desk. The map of a Europe that he has already redrawn! Western leaders can see that not content with annexing back to the USSR the Polish territories east of the demarcation line defined by Molotov and von Ribbentrop in 1939, as well as the Baltic States, the Soviet leader also incorporates Subcarpathian Ruthenia, a Czechoslovak territory invaded by the Hungarians in 1939, into his country. The Red Tyrant also intends to devour Finnish Karelia and Romanian Moldavia.

But it was when they turned their eyes westward that the British Prime Minister and the head of the French government almost fainted...

Not only did a huge red line run along the Elbe, following the border between Czechoslovakia and Bavaria, cutting Austria in two and then running along the Italian-Yugoslav border (a second line separating Albania and Greece from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) cut Europe in two, but all the German territories east of the Oder and the western Neisse were incorporated into Poland!


The French and the British protested. Churchill concluded that "the Polish goose should not be stuffed with too much German land, because it might get indigestion", to which Stalin replied by explaining that "the problem of nationalities is only a question of transport, gentlemen"...


Certainly Churchill was ready to accept a Russian influence in Eastern Europe as well as certain territorial districts to the USSR (had he not welcomed the invasion of Eastern Poland by Stalin in 1939?) but he certainly did not want a totalitarian Stalinist Empire over half of Europe!


The last discussions were mere formality, with Chuchill and Mandel not even pretending to acquiesce when Stalin proposed a post-Nazi German government, half of whose members would be taken from among the KPD members exiled in the USSR, the other half appointed by the West (think of Rudolf Hilferding's Free Germany Committee), which would give Stalin as much influence over the new Germany as the United States, the United Kingdom and France combined! Returning to London, the enraged Prime Minister began planning Operation Unthinkable...

Nothing less than a Third World War against the USSR on the still smoldering ashes of the Second! Relying, of course, on the German army...

Fortunately, Churchill was not the only decision-maker and the French, who had been informed, opposed the project. As for Roosevelt, he was not even informed... The best way to limit the damage was obviously to win the war against the Nazis as quickly as possible, while the Allied columns were still skating in France...

Any idea of an agreement with the Nazis being rejected with force by the two friendly powers (and, beyond that, of any agreement with Germany, which the French intend to crush forever), one of the means found to accelerate the victory, is at the other end of the world.

Thus, France and the United Kingdom began to consider an "honorable" way out of the war for Imperial Japan! Moreover, the Japanese Prime Minister Higashikuni was an opponent of the war.


It is not as if we were going to negotiate with Tojo!


Moreover, the Franco-British envisaged as the main concession the maintenance of the imperial institution accompanied by respect for the territorial integrity of the Japanese metropolis. De Gaulle also proposed, as the only departure from the Cairo declaration (except that Japan would not surrender without conditions), to leave the Imperial Japan its Pacific islands, "dust" as he himself described them, "which would allow the Japanese to keep the most important thing for themselves, their face".


As for the rest of the Empire that Japan had carved out for itself since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese power would have to evacuate all of its conquests, whether in the Pacific or in China, but it would also have to return Manchuria to China (whose ally France wanted to make in Asia) and evacuate Korea.


But maintaining the territorial integrity of Japan itself meant that the Empire of the Rising Sun kept the Kuril Islands, but above all, and this would not please Stalin, the Prefecture of Karafuto, the south of Sakhalin Island, conquered by Japan during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905...

However, it will be more difficult to convince the Americans than the Japanese...
In Europe, the disproportionate extension of the front, the distraction of precious "Guard Units" in Bulgaria and Belgrade weakened the Red Army sufficiently for it to be stopped in its march on Budapest by the Axis at the battle of Debrecen. Stalin, who knew that the game was won in the end and whose army was suffering from immense logistical difficulties due to its sudden and important advance, stopped the expenses for the moment. His eyes turned to the north. The fascist enemy still occupied Belarus, which was a real affront!

Hitler, reassured by his victory in Debrecen, predicted that the next Soviet attack would be in the direction of Minsk. The psychology of the Austrian dictator having well understood that such an affront could not be supported for a long time by the Vojd. The Führer therefore sent one of his best officers to Belarus.

Heinz Guderian.

In the absence of material reinforcements, the Army Group Center received a commander whose presence was equivalent to almost 200,000 men and 200 Panzers...

While the front seemed to stabilize again, at least for a while, the month of May was to see events suddenly accelerate once again in Europe...



Stalin redesigning the borders of Europe.

[ukron]

Chapter 3: A grip of steel
"Paris, Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and the help of all of France: that is to say, of the France that fights. That is to say, the only France, the true France, the eternal France.

The extremely slow progress of the Allied units in the south-east continued, albeit in a continuous manner from then on, culminating in the liberation of Marseilles by a combined action of General Touzet du Vigier's First French Armoured Division and the "Francs-Tireurs" of the Army of Shadows, in mid-April. The Mandel government rushed to move in, once it was secured. Further east, the American forces avoided the Principality of Monaco, as they did not consider themselves to be at war with the latter... Although Algiers had declared war on it in December 1940! But that was no problem. The men of the army of the interior, commanded by Raymond Aubrac, entered the principality in force and proclaimed the withdrawal of Prince Louis II! A provisional government, composed of local personalities who were notoriously anti-fascist, replaced the princely state. The first decision taken by the new authorities was to hold a referendum on the attachment to France in the near future... Nice followed in the wake and the allied troops stopped their progression once the enemy had been driven out of Menton. Everywhere, a jubilant crowd welcomed the saviors.

This war of attrition was made possible because most of the German resources in France were facing the Allied invasion force, leaving the sectors of the Channel and the Atlantic, which were at the mercy of a reversal action... Which happened on Monday, May 1st 1944! A powerful invasion fleet transported and landed large Anglo-American forces on the Normandy beaches. France was only represented, beyond the "Francs-Tireurs" who attacked the enemy's rear, by the "Corps-Francs" of General Kieffer.

But that didn't matter...

Caen was liberated in the first hours of the attack, the southern half of Normandy in one week (only Cherbourg resisted for one more week). The Anglo-American tanks rushed to Paris. The German commanders in France, von Rundstedt and Rommel, were frightened. Most of their forces were still in Provence... A general retreat had to be ordered. This retreat was to take place, due to the very clear disproportion of forces in favor of the Westerners, which became more important every day due to the continuous flow of reinforcements landing on the beaches of Provence and, from then on, Normandy, along a line running from Antwerp to Belfort and passing through the border between the Netherlands and Belgium first, the Siegfried Line near Aachen before following the course of the border between "Alsace-Moselle" and the rest of France. The objective was to rely either on floodable areas, or on fortified positions (Siegfried Line; Moselstellung), or finally on the Vosges mountain range, while maintaining control over the port of Antwerp, from where the Allies could unload reinforcements at the gates of the Reich.

The German retreat was like a flight. The Nazi convoys were harassed by the army of shadows, bludgeoned by the Allied air force. And both sides of the Allied jaws seem to be closing in on the German troops trying to evacuate the southwest.

It was not only the Germans who were fleeing from the liberating France. The collaborators, first and foremost the government of the National State, its leader Jacques Doriot, and thousands of National Guardsmen, fled to the Reich. While Doriot's government of puppets was installed on Hitler's orders in Sigmaringen, in southwestern Germany (under the protection of Himmler's SS), the National Guards were forcibly incorporated into the SS Charlemagne division, and immediately sent east to the survivors of the LVF, who had been severely tested in Byelorussia...
Patton, a notorious Francophile, rushed to save the insurgent city of Paris "from destruction". Of course, Hitler had ordered the destruction of the city (which had the sad privilege of being the first target of the V1 rockets the following June), but the commander of the place, and therefore the one in charge of the execution of the order, was Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. An anti-Nazi! So, instead of razing Paris to the ground, he secretly negotiated a truce with the Resistance via the Swedish ambassador to the French government, Raoul Nordling, and soon the capitulation of the German garrison in the capital. Hitler, furious, had him tried in absentia by the "People's Tribunal" and sentenced to death...

A jubilant crowd welcomed Mandel, de Gaulle, Paul-Boncour, Marin, Blum, Daladier and Noguès upon their arrival in the true capital of France.


"Paris, Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and help of all of France: that is to say, of France fighting. That is to say, the only France, the true France, the eternal France", wrote Georges Mandel from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, a symbolic place for any republican restoration, whether in 1848, 1870 or now in 1944, after the triumphal ascent of the Champs-Élysées by the high republican leaders under the well-deserved cheers of the people of Paris.


The great moments of the celebration of the Liberation of Paris will be immortalized by Robert Capa, who was urgently dispatched to the French capital by the presidency of the council while he was following the fighting of the French army in the southeast.





Von Stülpnagel, taken prisoner, considered a traitor by his own people (and this even after the war...) will be on the contrary a hero in France. Beyond having saved Paris, he was also moderate in his repression of the Resistance, and this even when Germany seemed to win the war at the beginning...

He obtained French nationality in 1955 from the then President of the Council, Jean Bichelonne, who made him his mediator with the West German government.

But this is another story...

Although most of southwestern France was evacuated by the German army, the Wehrmacht nevertheless kept garrisons in several ports on the west coast, such as Lorient, Brest, and Bordeaux, while the Channel Islands were not taken by the Allies. Anxious to limit the destruction, Mandel obtained from his allies that the garrisons would not be shelled by strategic aviation, that they would simply lay siege to them... In any case, the Allies had artificial harbours, which had already worked very well in Provence.

So why bother with French ports? In Le Havre, the Germans even agreed to let the civilian population leave. Of course, this meant fewer mouths to feed, but it also exposed them to Western bombing raids, which in the end did not happen...

While saving the population of Le Havre.

The rescue of the French port cities was the last act of his presidency of the council. Believing his mission to be complete, and anxious to set in motion the process of reorganizing the French Republic, Mandel, as well as President Albert Lebrun, resigned on June 5, 1944, when the enemy was only occupying Alsace-Moselle and a few coastal ports.

They were succeeded by two "consensus" figures, apolitical at first glance.

The jurist René Cassin, chargé d'affaire of the French Republic in Helsinki, was unanimously elected by the chambers as head of state.

As President of the Council, a name naturally emerged when a strong personality not coming from traditional politics was needed.

Charles de Gaulle, who was not unanimously elected, however, with votes going to various more "politicized" candidates (such as Blum, who did not want to be a candidate, however...).

Mandel did not participate in de Gaulle's cabinet. He publicly declared that he was "at the disposal of peace". The following year, he became the first Secretary General of the United Nations.

To everyone's surprise, De Gaulle strengthened the weight of the PCF in the French government, a party that until then had only held second-rate positions. Nevertheless, he placed them at the head of the main economic posts.

This is the premise of an arm wrestling with the "Party Regime", a struggle for which he wants the support of the communists to obtain a Fourth Republic more in line with his wishes.

He appointed, and this is less surprising, men from the "army of shadows" to his cabinet.

We note that de Gaulle got rid of the "Admiral of France" François Darlan, who was too close to the circles that had opposed the vote on the constitutional reform, and who was now a declared rival of de Gaulle.

Finally, he recalled Paul Reynaud from his embassy in Washington to assist him in his work. Adrien Tixier replaced him in this crucial position.

President of the Council, Minister of War: Charles de Gaulle

Vice-President of the Council: Paul Reynaud

Keeper of the Seals: Pierre-Henri Teitgen

Minister of the Interior: André Diethelm

Minister of Foreign Affairs : René Pleven

Minister of the Colonies : Jacques Soustelle

Minister of Transport and Public Works : Jules Moch

Minister of Education : Jean Zay

Minister of Economic Planning and National Reconstruction: Raoul Dautry

Minister of Finance: Paul Ramadier

Minister of Industrial Production: François Billoux

Minister of Agriculture: Maurice Thorez

Minister of Labor and Social Security: Ambroise Croizat

Minister of the Navy: André Jaquinot

Minister of Air: Jacques Duclos

Minister of Information : André Malraux

Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones : Augustin Laurent

Minister of Prisoners, Deportees and Refugees : François Mitterrand

Minister of Population: Robert Prigent

At the military and security level, the General incorporated into the regular army most of the 300,000 "Francs-tireurs" of the interior army. The latter were grouped together in the "Third French Army" under the command of the former commander of the ORA, General René Charly. The others were the first "Mobile Reserve Groups" or GMR, responsible for maintaining or restoring order. The GMR did not belong to the national police or the gendarmerie. Moreover, the mobile gendarmerie personnel who had deserted when the Germans arrived in 1940, or the mobile gendarmes from AFN, amalgamated with the Francs-tireurs within the GMR.

René Charly thus commanded one of the three French armies, alongside Henri Giraud, the escapee from Königstein (1st army) and Charles Delestraint, father of the French armoured revival (2nd French army). What a consecration for the simple lieutenant-colonel of 1940 who thus applied to the letter the motto he would give to his army.

"Never give up!"

At the political level, the General clearly displayed his desire to overhaul the French political system. Almost all the members of his cabinet, except the communists, were "new men". Moreover, de Gaulle, in his very first act as head of government, signed the decree ordering the dissolution of parliament in favor of the election of a constituent assembly...

Intense political activity was underway.

In the east, Stalin launched Operation Pluto in Belarus against the German Army Group Center.

As Hitler had rightly predicted...

What is known is that beyond the overwhelming numerical and material superiority of the Soviets, Guderian's fierce and often effective defense is interfered by the systematic refusals given to all requests for strategic retreat claimed by the Army Group Center. Large German troops were then isolated by Stalin's troops who rushed westwards.

Towards Poland and its capital...

As the only answer to Heinz Guderian's desperate request for a minimal withdrawal to the Polish-Soviet border of 1939 (but Guderian had other options further west, such as a withdrawal to a line based, among other things, on the Niemen and the Bulge), the Nazi officer learns that he has been replaced by a falot who is totally submissive to the Führer.

Ernst Busch.

The latter applied Hitler's orders to the letter, which consisted of not backing down. These disastrous instructions for the Reich only increased the extent of the Soviet success. The slow and costly progression of the Red Army suddenly became a complete triumph that quickly led it to the complete reconquest of Belarus and beyond, to penetrate again into Lithuania in 1940 (in the region of Wilno/Vilnius) while further south, the Polish border of 1939 was also crossed in many places.

The Polish border of 1939? The only valid one for Stalin is the one of 1940! Everywhere, it is the Soviet administration that resumes its rights, Stalin, as he told the West the previous month, considering these territories as Soviet.

Despite the warnings of the West, following the Moscow conference, the AK launched Operation Storm in the Polish confines. It was in this context that "The Wilno Betrayal" occurred, as the Poles called it among themselves. Indeed, it was largely thanks to the action of the Polish Secret Army that the Red Army managed to drive the Germans out of the city. However, as soon as the city was secured, the Soviets attacked the non-Communist resistance fighters, arresting their commanders by surprise and then crushing those who refused to surrender by force. And as in Yugoslavia, those whom the Communists considered to be Fascists were soon hunted down and forced into hiding.

The same kind of "stab in the back" also occurs in Lwow while these territories, located east of the Curzon Line, are experiencing a new annexation to the USSR, annexation in which the Sikorski government has no say ...

Further north, the Soviets of General Andrei Vlassov, blocked in Narva, now in ruins, since January, set out again to attack Estonia. Faced with the return of the "red threat", the Nazis mobilized thousands of Baltic fighters in the SS to try to stem the Soviet tide. The poor Baltic people deserved much better, they who in only 20 years of independence, had been able to build 3 modern nations, than to serve as auxiliaries to the Nazis...

Fleeing to the west, crushed to the east, the Nazi Reich was caught in a steel vise.

It is a partner of Germany, which, however, stands firm.

Finland, against which Stalin launched a powerful offensive. However, despite the enormous firepower deployed by the Red Army, its columns broke on the VT Line (Vammelsuu-Taipale). The Finns, and the genius of Marshal Mannerheim, had put all their resources into the design of this defensive line since 1941. In Terijoki, the short-lived capital of the puppet government of the "Democratic Republic of Finland", taken over by the Finns at the beginning of the Continuation War, after two weeks of incessant Soviet attacks, the city was 90% razed to the ground, but still in the hands of Mannerheim's forces. Elsewhere, the line was sometimes broken, but the front was nowhere to be found. Further east, the Finnish forces commanded by General Karl Lennart Oesch, defending the part of Karelia situated between the Ladoga and Onega lakes, certainly retreated, but maintained their cohesion while exhausting the Soviet assailants, constantly harassed by the Finnish defenders. Sortavala was still under Finnish control at the beginning of June.

Despite their crushing in Belarus, the Germans provided their "ally" with significant military aid, in the form of portable anti-tank weapons and, above all, Ju-87 "Stukas" dive bombers. The idea was to take advantage of this opportunity to increase their power over Finland while keeping it in the war, against the delivery of its armaments, vital for the defense of the country.

Hitler, however, had a lot to worry about. Faced with the ebb of his hordes in France, he dismissed Rommel and von Rundstedt from their command and appointed Walther Model to lead the German forces in the west, who merely tried to maintain the cohesion of his retreating army in the direction of the line set by his predecessors.

And he has a lot to do, the 2 allied pincers are about to join in Burgundy, while nearly 100 000 German soldiers are still threatened of encirclement by this maneuver. The German then launched his last armored reserves, under the command of panzer general Hasso von Manteuffel, against the American tanks, near Châlons-sur-Marne.

The battle turns to a correction for the American tanks, not prepared for a big armored fight. Indeed, the battle of Châlons was the largest tank battle of the second campaign in the west, Gembloux in 1940 being even larger. The Americans withdrew. The German convoys managed to get through. Manteuffel saved the German positions in the west and the withdrawal plan of von Rundstedt and Rommel.

But not the "Aryan" settlers installed since 1943 by Himmler in Burgundy! Molested by the French population (two of them were even killed), they only owed their salvation to the arrival of the French army, which interned them, both to prepare for their future return to Germany, but also to protect them from popular vindictiveness. We also discover, with a certain horror, an SS nursery, a real "Aryan baby factory", something that was only a rumor until now...
In spite of this "miracle in the west" as Goebbels' propaganda portrayed it, the war seemed to be lost at short notice.

For the German opponents of Hitler and the Nazis, it was therefore necessary to act quickly to put an end to the slaughter.


The German aristocratic and military resistance decided to act, thanks to the heroic action and charisma of Claus von Stauffenberg, and launched Operation Valkyrie. An anti-Nazi coup d'état.


Of course, conservative aristocrats were not the only Germans to resist the Nazis. There were communists but also humanists (such as the members of the "White Rose", executed in 1943 for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets). The SPD resisted not only through the Free Germany Committee of Algiers, Rudolf Hilferding thus had an important network of informers within the Hitler Empire. There was also the Christian resistance, based on moral principles that were totally at odds with the Nazi horrors.


Within the conservative resistance, there was the Kreisau Circle, led by Helmuth James von Moltke, grandson of Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke, the defeated man of the Marne.


Ironically, members of the circle included Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, a descendant of Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg, who betrayed Napoleon at the height of the Russian retreat, and Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen, grandson of the murderer of France in 1870.


Members of the circle, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (former mayor of Leipizig, one of the few to have openly opposed the Nazis after 1933) and General Ludwig Beck differed in principle. Indeed, they advocated a coup de force against the Nazis, whereas the circle was, at least initially, mainly a place of reflection.


But let us return to June 1944...


Von Stauffenberg volunteers to plant the bomb that will assassinate the Führer. He had been made one-eyed during an Allied bombing raid in Sicily and had been assigned to the commander of the reserve army, Friedrich Fromm, as chief of staff, which gave him a close relationship with Hitler.


The Führer had already escaped numerous assassination attempts in the past. The most notable of these were the assassination of Maurice Bavaud, a Swiss citizen, by bullets, and the assassination of Georg Elser by bombing, as far as individual actions are concerned. As for the action of the German internal resistance, the heroic attempt of Colonel Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, who tried to liquidate Hitler by means of a suicide attack, is to be noted.


On June 6, 1944, von Stauffenberg was summoned to an unannounced meeting at the wolf's den in Rastenburg, East Prussia.


Carrying two explosive charges, he succeeded in depositing them in the meeting room where Hitler and 24 of the highest-ranking members of the Third Reich army were meeting.

Von Stauffenberg quickly slips away, which is hardly surprising to the other participants in the conference in these troubled times. The officer ostensibly leaves his belt and cap on to make it look like he is returning quickly...


Adolf Hitler is killed by the detonation as well as all the people present including Keitel, the "lackey".


The courageous colonel managed to escape and reach Berlin where... he was immediately arrested!


Indeed, the attempt to overthrow the Nazi government, as soon as Hitler was out of the picture, had failed...


Worse, the attempted putsch also failed because the conspirators relied on some Nazi fanatics, such as Otto-Ernst Remer, commander of the Berlin garrison.


It was Remer who, having come to arrest the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, was finally "turned around" by the latter, who convinced him that he had been "fooled" by the very people who had just assassinated the Führer.


"Do you think, Remer, that I would have ordered the assassination of our beloved Führer? Goebbels will say, looking the officer directly in the eyes.


The latter then placed himself at the disposal of the Reich Minister of Propaganda to lead the counter-attack. Remer rallied a number of "loyalist" officers and had the conspirators arrested at the Bendlerblock, while Goebbels prepared an "appropriate welcoming committee" for the bomb carrier, as well as a speech to dispel any form of doubt...


Elsewhere, the troops of the reserve army, in charge of occupying the main nerve centers of the capital of the Reich, were welcomed by the SS, judiciously pre-positioned... Most of the time, a simple discussion made it possible to avoid fratricidal confrontations, even if there were a few brief confrontations before Goebbels' speech of hatred put an end to the misunderstanding.
At the same time, Remer's troops stormed the Bendlerblock, and clashes ensued with the leaders of the conspiracy, who were quickly defeated. Ludwig Beck shot himself in the head. The others, including Stauffenberg, were shot in the courtyard of the building.


The conspirators who were not present at the Bendlerblock, such as the former mayor of Leipizig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, were subjected to an odious trial presided over by the filthy judge Roland Freisler. General Rommel was hanged with a butcher's hook by the executioner of the Third Reich, Johann Reichhart. For Goerdeler, a cruel imprisonment begins...


In any case, there is no doubt that Germany and its people were not ready to admit their defeat and that the neutralization of Germany as a threat was irreparably linked to its prior annihilation, as von Stülpnagel will regret in his memoirs (Des officiers contre Hitler: Une histoire de la résistance allemande au Nazisme (1933-1945).


On the side of the Nazis, a struggle for succession began. Faced with a military catastrophe, a temporary solution was nevertheless found as a matter of urgency.


Since the constitutional basis of Weimar had never been abolished, at least in the texts, it was decided to place Martin Bormann as President of the Reich, and Goering in the Chancellery. Indeed, if Goering had been Hitler's designated successor since the disappearance of Rudolf Hess in June 1941 (probably shot down over Scotland while he had stolen a fighter plane in order to negotiate peace with Churchill on his own (?)), he had lost a lot of credit because of the incineration of German cities by the Western air force. Goebbels, who played a big role in the repression of the putsch, got the title of his dreams. He became Minister of Culture... Which did not change his prerogatives as "Minister of Lies"! Himmler, whose SS had also, strangely enough, been very reactive, and had often been pre-positioned in the right places, saw the powers of the SS, which he directed in an absolute manner, extended to the military domain. Thus the Wehrmacht was now under the control of the SS... He also became minister without portfolio.


Nevertheless, the fight to the death between the Nazi criminals for total power over a dying and overwhelmed Reich has only just begun...


Their last act of true unity was the organization of Hitler's funeral, which took place on June 10, 1944 in Munich. The deceased Führer was buried next to the (Nazi) victims of the attempted putsch known as the brewery of 1923.


De Gaulle in power, Hitler executed by the German resistance. The war and the world entered a new phase, as Mandel would say in his memoirs.


At least it begins...

[ukron]

Chapter 4: Azad Hind

"Indian! Rise up!
Your oppressors have been crushed by a people of the Great Asia, a people brother to ours!
The hour of your freedom has come!
Take your rifle and kill the Englishman! If you don't have one, take what you can get!
Peasant, take your scythe!
Worker, take your scissors!
Beggar, use your hands, your teeth!
Kill the Englishman wherever he is, don't give him any respite!"

Jamal Naseem's appeal following the fall of Imphal and Kohima.


While everything seemed to be going according to plan, while the war seemed to be over in Europe by Christmas, and Japan was expected to follow Germany to the grave of history, the telegrams kept piling up on the British Prime Minister's desk, all of them of the same content, all of them like birds of ill omen...

The Tiger of Malaya had indeed lost none of its superbness and had crushed a British army in Burma that was already imagining itself parading in the streets of Rangoon less than a month later after having destroyed its Japanese counterpart!

He who thought he was caught was caught...

A few days were enough for the Nipponese to seize Kohima and Imphal, which the President of the Government of Free India (Azad Hind), Chandra Bose, proclaimed the provisional capital of the latter. His propaganda minister, the Muslim Jamal Naseem, then launched a fiery call for a general uprising. Bose was more moderate, far from the harshness of his minister, and especially from the horrors bellowed by his Nazi "allies", and announced that all Indians were equal, whether they were Sikhs, Muslims or Hindus, and even Jews, Christians or Parsis. And concerning the Hindu majority, whether they are Untouchables or Brahmins. He announces general elections once "the British yoke has been thrown off" and repeats the theses of the final declaration of the Great East Asia Conference of November 1943, which was purely a propaganda tool, the last one, of the late Tojo...

"It is in the hope of world peace that the nations of the world each have their proper place and hope that mutual aid and assistance will bring them prosperity. The United States of America and the British and French empires seek to enrich themselves by oppressing other peoples and countries. Especially in East Asia, they are engaged in aggression and insatiable exploitation of resources, they are seeking to fulfill their inordinate ambition to enslave the whole region, and they have become a serious threat to the stability of East Asia. Therein lies the cause of this war. The countries of greater East Asia, with the desire to establish world peace, pledge to cooperate to bring the greater East Asian war to a successful conclusion, to liberate the region from American-Anglo-French domination, to ensure their existence and self-defense, and to build a greater East Asia in accordance with the following principles:

- The countries of Greater East Asia shall commit themselves to mutual cooperation to ensure the stability of the region and build a world of common prosperity and welfare based on justice.

- The countries of Greater East Asia shall ensure the brotherhood of the peoples of their region by respecting the sovereignty and independence of one another and practicing mutual assistance and friendship with others.

- The countries of greater East Asia shall respect the traditions of all and develop the creative faculties of each race, thus improving the culture and civilization of greater imperial Asia.

- The countries of Greater East Asia shall strive to accelerate their economic development through close cooperation on the basis of reciprocity and to promote the general prosperity of their region.

- The countries of Greater East Asia will cultivate friendly relations with all countries of the world, and work for the abolition of racial discrimination, the promotion of cultural exchange, and the opening of access to resources throughout the world, and thus contribute to the progress of mankind."

While Bose's and Naseem's appeals were spread under the cloak from Dhaka in Bengal to the Iranian border and from Kashmir to the Deccan, the Congress leaders, led by Nehru, proved to be more diplomatic, and no doubt more subtle, than their former companions who had rallied too frankly to the Axis.

From an Axis grouping of dictatorial regimes, from an Axis losing the war...

The latter have indeed understood that the British could only stop the Axis wave on Assam at the price of a massive mobilization of the Indian population, while the latter does not really want to serve the British tutelary power anymore...

Consequently, while India was in flames, and riots bordering on revolt were taking place everywhere, the Congress wished to take advantage of this quasi-insurrectionary situation in order to obtain nothing less than immediate autonomy in exchange for a call for calm and support for the allied (and not the British) war effort...

Like the one obtained before the Japanese surge by the Indochinese in 1941...

Churchill, anxious to extinguish the fire in the Raj as quickly as possible, urgently sent his Leader of the House of Commons, i.e. his minister in charge of relations with Parliament, the Labour Party member Stafford Cripps, to India, to negotiate support for the Independents against the Japanese and an appeal for an end to internal violence.

Always with a view to mitigating the military disaster, Winston Churchill decided to appoint at the head of the defeated British armies, someone we know well.

Lord Louis Mountbatten.

This one, as a good Briton, had these biting words when he harangued the main commanders of the British forces in full retreat.

"Do not think of yourselves as a despised army. Indeed, I can assure you that no one knows you...".

A genius organizer as well as a master of irony, Mountbatten immediately set to work to reorganize the veritable "Bourbaki Army" that had become the Crown's army in the Far East.

Alongside them, the Prime Minister appointed as the new Viceroy of India, a man who deserved better than to be "put on the shelf" in Delhi...
Marshal Archibald Wavell, a man now hated by Winston Churchill, and who he was quite happy to send into a real trap. Indeed, the latter had opposed the expedition to continental Greece in 1940-1941. While wishing to punish his officer, Churchill wished to use his great skills to manage a serious crisis (had he not defeated the Italians first in Libya and then in East Africa?)...

But as soon as he was installed in Delhi, the action of the Marshal aroused the wrath of the British Prime Minister. Indeed, Wavell appointed Nehru and several of his friends as members of the Council of the Governor General of India, the real government of the Raj. Jinnah and several leaders of the "Muslim League" were also appointed to this council as representatives of the Muslim community.

However, Wavell's action seemed to save a very bad situation. Thus, to contain the haemorrhage on the Assam front, and while the Japanese advanced points penetrated Bengal, the British General Staff, under the impetus of the Marshal, and with the discreet endorsement of Mountbatten, decided to rely, for the first time since the Cipayan revolt in 1857, massively on the Muslim populations, and on the Bengalis in particular, to oppose the Nipponese advance and the "free Indians. Thus, the Bengalis, pass from the status of people considered as effeminate, weak fighters to that of "Lions of the Ganges" (that's how the colonial propaganda that had been sullying them for almost a century now calls them and this, overnight) and great defenders of India...

Naseem and Goebbels have nothing to envy to their enemies...

However, Churchill ordered that as reinforcements, units from the "white" colonies of the Commonwealth, including South Africa, be sent to Bengal to stem the Japanese tide. These reinforcements will allow to "supervise" (but also to monitor...) the units of this real "mass raising" of Indian troops.

For India, it is the hour of destiny...

[ukron]

Chapter 5: The Great Slaughter of the Marianas

"1. We will defend this island with all our might to the end.
2. We will throw ourselves against the enemy tanks clutching explosives to destroy them.
3. We will slaughter the enemy, rushing among them to kill them.
4. Each of our shots must be accurate and kill the enemy.
5. We will not die until we have killed ten enemies.
6. We will continue to harass the enemy with guerrilla tactics even if only one of us remains alive."

General Kuribayashi's six "Heroic Battle Vows" to the troops defending Saipan.


The Japanese successes in India did not bode well for the situation elsewhere. In China, the airlift organized over Tibet had allowed the equipment of three elite divisions (for the moment...). Indeed, instead of dispersing the equipment among the entire army, the Chinese government had decided to concentrate it within specific units, which would be used as spearheads during offensives against the occupier. First success, the Higashikuni government and the Minister of War Yamashita had decided, by mutual agreement, to evacuate the major part of the conquests of the Ichi-Go operation of 1942, in order to save the resources "wasted" in the surveillance and control of territories that did not bring much to the Japanese Empire... Following the first discussions with the Franco-British in Switzerland, this withdrawal was also a token of goodwill offered to the two allies. Better still, no scorched earth policy was practiced in the evacuated zones, to the astonishment of the officers on the spot...

In the Pacific, the Americans launched Operation Forager, the conquest of the Mariana Islands, the heart of the "impassable fortress" desired by the late Yamamoto. They were defended by 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and since November 1943, the reinforcement of the archipelago's defensive installations had been the top priority of Japanese engineers. Worse, the Imperial fleet, regrouped in Kure, was ready at the first alert to attack the US invasion force.

Moreover, the Mariana Islands and their defense so obsessed Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, Yamamoto's successor, that he did not even consider the idea of attacking the American fleet, which was relatively modest compared to the size of the Kido Butai, which protected the amphibious assault on Biak, north of New Guinea, despite repeated requests from his subordinates.

No, the decisive battle that would see the victory of the Empire would take place in the Philippine Sea...

It is true in Tamon's defense that Biak was at the other end of the Empire, and that beyond the fact that the garrison was defending itself extremely well, the Kido Butai risked being attacked by the main enemy fleet during the voyage, while a good part of the Marianas' defense plan also relied on the ground-based air force... Fleet against fleet, the Japanese were at a disadvantage...

The time at anchor in Kure was not lost, however. The crews continue their training, and partially catch up with the level of crews massacred since the beginning of the conflict, under the leadership of veterans such as Sakai Saburō and Nishizawa Hiroyoshi. These veterans, however, would resume command at the first warning of an American assault on the Marianas!

On June 11, massive raids by B-17s and other B-24s on Japanese positions on Saipan, Guam and Tinian foreshadowed the start of the offensive. The same day, the combined fleet left Kure for the Philippine Sea.

The butchery could begin...

It began on the ground, where it took the Americans three days and 2,000 dead to secure the beaches by pushing back the Japanese troops of General Kuribayashi Tadamichi to the interior of the island of Saipan, the first objective of the invasion! Worse for the US Marines, the Japanese knew that Yamaguchi's fleet would soon arrive and crush those American devils for sure! As for their leader, close to them, he was truly exceptional. The Marines, soldiers of great stature, were going to face an exceptionally high-morale Japanese, solidly entrenched, and who we saw would fight with a redoubled fanaticism. The reaper was going to have a lot of work to do...

In order to obtain numerical superiority in the air, Admiral Yamaguchi wished to rely on the Japanese air force based directly on the islands of the region, in particular Guam and Saipan, in addition to his onboard air force. However, Admiral Spruance, who commanded the invasion fleet, methodically eradicated it either on the ground or in the air. The Japanese could only rely on their air force... Worse, they were quickly spotted by American submarines, submersibles that did not hesitate to give their position to Spruance. However, Spruance, who feared a new Tsoushima, and who had made it a priority to protect the amphibious forces, did not move, and remained to the east of the impassable barrier. Ozawa, Yamaguchi's deputy who commanded the Kido Butai, was able to launch 4 waves of assault on the American 5th Fleet.

A Dantean battle opposed the Japanese air force, which rushed against the most powerful units of the American navy, and the Hellcats, the US fighters which wanted to block their way. Sakai Saburo, who commanded the first wave, shot down five American aircraft. The road to the American fleet was cleared! Unfortunately for the Japanese, they had to face the powerful flak of the American ships, directed by radar.

The pilots trained in the Inland Sea had nevertheless learned their lesson well, and when they survived the leaden storm, their shots usually fell on target. The USS St-Mihiel (CV-11) (named in honor of the 1918 Battle of St-Mihiel, an American victory in France near Verdun. A sign of Franco-American friendship), on which the Nipponese were particularly relentless, fell prey to the flames and sank two hours later, taking 102 of its sailors into the waves.

The Americans lost, in addition to the St-Mihiel, a cruiser, sunk by two torpedoes.

And this was only the first wave!

Disheartened, the Americans took revenge on the following waves, but at the end of the fourth and last wave, they lost another aircraft carrier, two other cruisers and a destroyer.

At the time, the Americans obviously did not realize that they had dealt a very heavy blow to the Nipponese embarked fleet, and killed many of the pilots who had been painstakingly trained over the previous months...

Faced with the magnitude of the losses (which remained relative in view of the size of the armada), the Americans had to counter-attack. And they were merciless.

Spruance then launched his air groups on the Japanese fleet, which was already facing an assault by American submersibles, which were not only informing their commanders about the position of the adversaries, but also went on the attack! One of them seriously damaged the Zuikaku, but the Japanese defense, reorganized in accordance with Yamamoto's doctrine, itself based on the teachings of German submarine warfare, was effective, and one submersible was reported missing, while two others were kept at a distance by the Japanese torpedo boats.

Two hours later, the American squadrons finally arrived on their opponents, who defended themselves rather well. About 50 American aircraft were lost against another enemy carrier (the Taiho, Ozawa's flagship), a battleship, and two cruisers.

After the departure of the enemy aircraft, it was time for Ozawa to make a choice.

Should he launch his large units on Spruance to start an encounter battle? Or should he withdraw and lick his wounds? With his air force severely crippled and leaving him at the mercy of constant harassment by enemy aircraft, Ozawa ordered a retreat to Kure and the Inland Sea.

America triumphed in the Battle of the Philippine Sea!

Nevertheless, it suffered significant losses, nearly 250 aircraft, one carrier sunk, another to be sent back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, three cruisers and one destroyer.

Yamaguchi, feeling disgraced by this defeat and the impending end of the "impenetrable barrier", ended his life. He was replaced by Admiral Toyoda while Nagumo was "transferred" to a land-based position in the Philippines.

From now on, Japanese naval aviation would hardly count anymore, and, moreover, would no longer be at the heart of the Japanese commanders' plans. But a certain "Bull" was still unaware of this...

However, on land, on Saipan, the horror continued, and seemed far from being able to stop...

It lasted another two months, ending only in August 1944 after two months of hard fighting and at the cost of very heavy losses. The horror reached its peak when the Americans discovered on this island that the refusal to surrender and the suicidal madness that followed did not only affect the military, but also the Japanese civilians! Thousands of them preferred to end their own lives rather than surrender to them, despite the attempts of the latter to save them.

As for the garrison, it was almost entirely exterminated. Only 300 Japanese fell alive into the hands of the Americans... As for Kuribayashi, he fell as a samurai, leading in person a last Banzai charge against the Americans who were about to overwhelm the last square of the Japanese defenders.

Kuribayashi had, at the cost of his life, respected to the letter the code of honor, the six "Vows of Heroic Combat", that he had made his troops follow.


At Saipan, the Navajo Indians, whose language was unknown to the Japanese, were used as a means of communication and, beyond that, as a code for the transmission of American messages. This episode will remain unknown for a long time. Beyond the anti-Indian racism that was so vivid, the other cause of this lack of recognition after the war was the simple fact that the American General Staff did not want to reveal its secret to the world and reuse the Navajo code in the future...

As soon as the island was secured, the horror started again on the neighboring island of Guam, invaded only two weeks later ....



Navajo soldiers of the US Army in Saipan

[ukron]

Chapter 6: Pandora's Box

"Repression in the East, cooperation in the West!"
Stalin, on the attitude to have towards the Polish internal resistance.

The Red Army was crushing everything in its path and was marching towards Warsaw, the capital of martyred Poland.

The Poles, scalded by the betrayal of the Soviets, who had turned against the members of the Polish resistance in eastern Poland, were debating what to do about the imminent arrival of Stalin's men in the capital. In liberated France, Sikorski, and, beyond that, de Gaulle, were following from a distance what appeared to be the imminent installation of Russian troops in Poland. Both leaders had good reason to distrust the Soviets. The first had seen them stab the Polish army in the back in 1939 and annex half of his country. The second had seen Stalin reclaim the same stolen provinces from the unfortunate Poland (and also violently attack the legitimate and legal government of Sikorski). And, above all, both saw Stalin install puppets in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...

Sikorski, comforted by de Gaulle, ordered the AK (Armia Krajowa, the Internal Army, the Polish internal resistance) to be cautious, to help the Red Army only at the last moment.

On July 12, 1944, the Soviet vanguard reached Praga, a suburb of Warsaw. The entry of the Red Army into the city seemed imminent...

Better still, in Lublin, the Soviets cooperated with the AK members who had helped them liberate the city, helping to re-establish a Polish (not Soviet) administration.

Indeed, Stalin decided to cooperate with the Poles in the "Polish" areas west of the Curzon Line. Better still, the Soviet ambassador in Paris, Alexander Bogomolov, gave Sikorski a letter written in Stalin's handwriting in which the Vojd announced that it wanted to revive friendly Polish-Soviet relations. In exchange, Stalin asked only for the integration of two members of the Polish Workers' Party (including Edward Osóbka-Morawski) into the Sikorski cabinet.

Better still, the Soviet air force dropped leaflets in Polish calling for Warsaw to rise, calls that were also relayed by Radio Moscow.

Thus, partially reassured, the AK decided to act. Not only with the idea of giving a token of friendship to the Russians in response to the hand extended by their leader, but also with the idea of welcoming the Red Army in a Warsaw freed from itself and thus showing the strength of the Poles to the Soviets. This was the original plan.

Mistrust always...

The insurrection was launched on July 15.

Warsaw was quickly liberated, thanks in particular to the decisive intervention of the Soviets who, in addition to having supported the Warsaw fighters with their infantry, prevented any German counter-attack by piercing the line formed by the Vistula to the north and south of the city.

Advancing into a friendly country, the Red Army was given a second wind in its "Pluto" offensive, while Operation Storm/Burza was extended to most of the remaining "General Government", which the Germans, under attack from all sides, had to evacuate in a hurry. The exception was Poznan (Posen for the Germans), where a large German minority lived. There, the German army and Himmler's SS (commanded by Heydrich) crushed the AK in blood and kept at bay a Red Army exhausted by its "fantastic ride" through martyred Poland.

It is in this liberating context that the horror on earth is discovered.
The Red Army and AK detachments liberated the concentration camps in Poland, including Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of human beings reduced to the state of "barely living corpses" according to a Polish soldier, saw the end of their ordeal finally arrive. The SS barely had time to decamp, let alone organize the repatriation of the captives to the heart of the Reich, sparing them additional suffering and cruel "death marches.

The French president, René Cassin, himself admitted that although he was aware of the existence of the camps, he was "petrified of horror" when he received the testimonies of the Poles and the survivors. The Soviet testimonies were, for their part, watered down...

Driven out of the heart of Poland, the Nazis were in extreme difficulty. Worse for them, Slovakia and its communist resistance also rose up and, with the help of the Red Army, drove the Germans out of most of the territory. Hungary, whose capital would soon be under siege, was now a Nazi salient in the heart of the territory held by the Soviet army.

While the ever-wary Ekorski sent only a government delegation to Poland itself, Beneš, the Czechoslovak president, left London with his entire government to settle in Kosice, voluntarily placing himself under Soviet protection. The Franco-British allies would never forgive him for this...

While the Soviets pursued the German army and prepared an attack on the "Danzig Corridor" in order to isolate not only East Prussia but also the Army Group North stationed in the Baltic States, General Constantin Rokossovski became commander of Soviet troops in Poland. For the unfortunate Poles, his power will gradually become more and more important...

The Pandora's box was opened, containing all the evils of Stalinism for Poland. The only hope left was the unshakeable patriotism and sincere faith of the Polish people.

While these decisive events were taking place in the east, in the west, Eisenhower was planning an offensive towards the heart of the Reich across the Moselle to reach the Ruhr via the Saar and the Rhineland, on the advice of the French members of SHAEF. Following a preliminary assault by Delestraint's 2nd French army, Metz was liberated on 14 June 1944, after three days of fighting, with the French making the most of the gaps in the Moselstellung.

This was Operation Spear/Lance.

However, an event changed the situation...

The V1 rocket attacks on London. Churchill was enraged to see his capital once again targeted by the Nazis. It took all the persuasive power of his subordinates to prevent him from gassing German cities in retaliation! Nevertheless, anxious to stop the attacks as quickly as possible, Churchill decided to divert the allied war effort from the Saar to the Netherlands, from where the ballistic missiles aimed at London were fired.

Indeed, as the Westerners' logistical lines were stretched out excessively from the beaches of Provence and Normandy, it was now impossible to make a general push on the whole front... Aware that Eisenhower's target was the Saar, which, although a coherent choice, risked extending the duration of the bombardments on London by several weeks, Churchill used his influence with Roosevelt in order to obtain a strategic change.
This was the genesis of Operation Market Garden, which targeted the Netherlands and eventually the Ruhr.

Pressed by his government, Eisenhower gave in and abandoned Lance, while the resources that would have made it possible to conclude the liberation of France were diverted further north. Not holding grudges (while, moreover, Paris suffered more attacks than London and from missiles fired from the Rhineland!), and obedient to the Supreme Allied Commander, Paris and de Gaulle provided the 1st parachute division to the operation, an amalgam of the first French airborne elements that had participated in the Supreme Lord within the 1st parachute brigade, and former members of the Corps-Francs, reassigned to the airborne war. The 1st parachute division was commanded by the already legendary General Pierre Koenig.

Antwerp, which would have been a more logical preliminary target, was quickly forgotten...

From the south-west to the north-east, the allied position was as follows:

- In Eindhoven, the American 101st Airborne Division.

- From Veghel to Grave, on a rural and extensive front, the French 1st Airborne Division and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade.

- In Nijmegen, the American 82nd Airborne division.

Finally, in the extreme north, in Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne division.

The objective of the paratroopers was to hold the bridges while the armoured troops of the 30th Corps rushed northwards and bypassed the Siegfried Line.

The assault was launched on 25 June 1944.

The idea, interesting on paper, already had a stumbling block at the beginning. The German army was no longer in disarray and had had a month to entrench itself, which was moreover on terrain that was favorable to defense, in the Netherlands with its flooding grounds.

From the outset, the Paras suffered heavy losses and only the immense military capabilities of these elite troops allowed them to secure the road from Eindhoven to Nijmegen.

Nijmegen? Indeed, the British were pushed back by the SS defending Arnhem, in spite of the help brought by the Dutch resistance (and for which the unfortunate population would quickly pay the price...) and were soon surrounded at Oosterbeek, northwest of the city.

Although they themselves had to face Nazi counter-attacks on their disproportionately large front, Pierre Koenig, the Pole Stanisław Sosabowski, Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st, and James M. Gavin of the 82nd decided to create a task force of their own to go north to unblock the British. The four men were counting on the fact that after two days of fighting to break through the front, the 30th Corps was finally moving up to the north-east and could therefore bring its firepower to the Franco-Polish-American paratroopers.

5,000 paratroopers went north and succeeded in breaking through the ring of steel formed by the German besiegers and allowing the British to withdraw.

If Market Garden was a failure, because Arnhem could not be secured, and consequently the Siegfried Line could not be bypassed, the episode of the rescue of the British paratroopers by the Task Force Koenig (initiator of the project) is now part of the legend of the airborne divisions of the French, American and Polish armies.
No one would dare blame the four men for their disobedience. They will even be rewarded for their bravery by their respective governments for "trifles" in the following months... (Because they could not decently be honored for having disobeyed, which would have opened a pandora's box...).

Berlin, furious about the help given by the population to the Paras, organized a famine in the Netherlands!

As for the Allies, they fell back on medium-scale operations. The British were preparing to attack Antwerp, the Americans were heading for Aachen and the French were preparing their return to Alsace.

Meanwhile, the flying bombs continued to rain down on London and Paris. Soon, the V2s, impossible to intercept unlike the V1s, will be launched in their turn...




Europe end of July 1944

[ukron]

Chapter 7: Götterdämmerung

"The Schutzstaffel has discovered a plot against the Reich and the German people. As a result, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler takes over as Reichschützend (Reich Protector) in the general interest of the People. Martin Bormann and Hermann Goering and the other traitors to their country were put out of action, guilty of having actively participated in the plot to assassinate our beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler. The SS is thus acting in the interest and for the safety of the German people.

Radio Berlin, August 4, 1944.


The Nazi leaders were, to say the least, at loggerheads since Hitler's death and the failure of Valkyrie. Each of the big shots in this rotten Regime sought to eliminate his rivals. Himmler, however, had four aces up his sleeve, with his thousands of SS fanatics at his beck and call, a veritable personal army as soon as he felt like using it for his own purposes...

Himmler had, a fortiori, many more eyes and ears than his main rivals, Goering and Bormann. Moreover, Bormann's main asset was the influence he had directly on Hitler. As for Goering, he had been appointed to the chancellery only because he was Hitler's designated successor. With German cities in ruins and the Luftwaffe unable to stop the endless waves of Allied B-17s and B-24s, he was in an even more precarious situation than Bormann...

The Wehrmacht, which was basically just following orders, and had no real "preference" between the different members of the Nazi clique, did not intervene to save a single one, waiting to know who would win to know who to obey...

If his commanders knew...

Goering's only hope was the German people themselves. Himmler had learned from a "mole" in the latter's entourage that the latter was preparing an address to the German people, the content of which, calling for the defense of Christian Europe in the face of the atheistic barbarism coming from the East (whereas the Nazis, and particularly the SS, were only vulgar pagans...), and the first drafts of which tended to call for the definitive overcoming of the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants. This was enough to make the head of the SS angry. Himmler also knew from his mole that Goering, once he was the sole master of the Reich, would send most of the German army to the east, so that most of the German territory would fall into the hands of the West. The aim was to trigger a third world war between a Stalin furious at having been double-crossed and the Allies in the West, a conflict in which the Reich would fight alongside the latter...

However, would the German people, amorphous, deeply attached to the Nazi doctrine, having lost any shred of self-will, really have been a force capable of helping the head of the German air force to oppose the SS even if the speech had been broadcast? Nothing is less certain...

Nevertheless, this information pushed Himmler to accelerate his preparations

On the night of August 4-5, 1944, Goering and Bormann were seized and immediately shot by the SS in pursuit of them, as well as dozens of their relatives and close collaborators, in a repeat of "The Night of the Long Knives. Bormann was shot while trying to flee. He was obviously informed, but too late, of the SS coup d'état. Goering, surprised in a state of shock, having consumed a large dose of opium, could not try anything against the attackers...

The other non SS members of the Nazi government (including Goebbels) were also liquidated during this operation. The death of Goebbels did not prevent Himmler from finishing his racist and Francophobic film, "The Sack of the Palatinate" (directed by Veit Harlan), in which Louis XIV used African troops (played by prisoners of war) and implied that Louvois was Jewish...

If this could motivate the soldiers of the Western Front to oppose the imminent French invasion...

Himmler, unlike Goering, was not a man to give up the slightest bit of German territory to the Allies, whether they were Soviet or Western... His military strategy was simple: fight on foot, even counter-attack when possible, while waiting for the miracle weapons...

As for the pretext of the coup d'état, it was found. Goering, Bormann, and the other massacred Nazis had secretly supported the June 6 putschists. Moreover, all possible future opposition within the party and, more generally, within the government and military apparatus could be crushed under this pretext...

The SS, the Party and the German state were intertwined as never before. Himmler again concentrated all the powers of the Reich in his hands, having almost as much political power as Hitler himself had had.

But Himmler is not Hitler...

The fanatical devotion of the German people to Hitler, Himmler will never have it. The German people were, in fact, beginning to become aware of their situation. They had been taken back to barbaric times by the systematic destruction of the infrastructure by the Allies. As for their standard of living, it was collapsing, since the Nazis no longer had Europe to plunder...
The work of the "pheasants", the nickname given to the civil servants of the Nazi administration, who until June 6, compensated for the damage caused to the infrastructure with their rigor and efficiency, was losing its qualities. Indeed, they, who served Hitler in his megalomaniac project without batting an eyelid until his assassination, were dismayed and downcast since the death of the Führer. The brutal methods of the SS, who in the following weeks began to purge the administration, despite the warnings of Speer (who had survived the putsch, because he was both extremely efficient and neutral in the fratricidal war that pitted the great Nazi pundits against each other), did not help. The liquidated civil servants, although less efficient, were in any case always more efficient than the half-illiterate brutes from the SS who replaced them.

Himmler may have been a visceral anti-communist, but he nonetheless applied Stalinist methods to enslave the army and Nazify it. Hundreds of officers were dismissed and, more often than not, executed, before being replaced by members of the SS. Thus, Von Rundstedt, whose joint command alongside Rommel in the west made him eminently suspect in the eyes of the Reichschützend, but also Von Kluge, Von Küchler and Von Bock were executed. It is clear that the purge mainly hit officers from the Prussian aristocracy, whose conservative values were most often contradictory to those of the Nazis. Indeed, Kesselring, who was still in command in Italy, was not worried and even received the command of the Western Front, where he applied with brutality the policy of Himmler and the SS to the end... Guderian, for his part, obtained again the command in the East.

With Keitel and Jodl killed on June 6, there were hardly any high-ranking officers left in the German army, other than those appointed or promoted by Himmler... Like Ferdinand Schörner, commander of the northern army group, who was promoted to field marshal (and whose army group was renamed Heeresgruppe Ostland, after the name given by the Nazis to the Baltic States). A man who was not necessarily incompetent but who was certainly brutal...

The height of incoherence was reached when National Socialist officers, from the ranks of the SS, true "political commissars", were assigned to each unit of the German army.

With the right of life and death over each combatant...

These methods were, to say the least, ineffective, if not counter-productive...

The SS Karl Wolff, appointed to replace Kesselring in Italy, did not have his stature. And it was he who, as soon as he was appointed, had to undergo the double allied offensive in this country. Operation Olive, the Allied offensive against the Adolf Hitler Line (the new name given to the Gothic Line), which defended the Po plain, and Operation Marignan, the offensive of the reconstituted Army of the Alps (commanded by General Delmas), a veritable "Fourth French Army", against the Reich's defences on the Italian side of the Alps.

The Allies were stunned by the speed with which the political upheavals at the head of the Nazi Empire, which had been thought to be monolithic and solid, were taking place. Two Allied leaders took the measure of this more quickly and accurately than their colleagues. Indeed, if for Churchill, Himmler would be as powerful as Hitler was, if for Roosevelt, Germany would continue the war with as much determination and would still not accept the idea of an unconditional surrender, just like Higashikuni's Japan, which continued the fight as Tojo's Japan would have done. On the other hand, de Gaulle and Stalin were well aware of the lamentable state of the Nazi government apparatus. The Georgian through his network of spies at the head of the German command, de Gaulle because most of the time, he became aware faster and more accurately than the others of the "changes in the front of the universe". And de Gaulle was reinforced in the days that followed in his correct assessment by an event that revealed the moribund nature of the morale of the German army in the west.

As de Hauteclocque approached Strasbourg after crossing the Saverne Pass, he came face to face with a group of German soldiers and non-commissioned officers waving several white flags. One of them, a French speaker, announced that his unit intended to surrender in its entirety! Colonel Billotte called out to the German and asked him where the senior officers of his unit were?
The German sergeant replied that all their officers, traumatized by the impending defeat, had committed suicide...

For the moment, the French stick to this shaky explanation, but then the scouts confirm that hundreds of German soldiers are standing a little kilometer behind the white flag bearers, without weapons. However, when the soldiers were taken into custody, the French discovered the bodies of the "suicides", in fact shot several times. Some of them had been shot in the back and seemed to be trying to flee in the other direction...

The SS officers, the soldiers explained, had quickly become hated by the troops for their extreme brutality, and several soldiers and non-commissioned officers were executed for being defeatist. The final straw came when the SS ordered the execution of ten men chosen at random because only one had dared to read a leaflet dropped by the French air force and calling for surrender a short time earlier.

Hearing the cannon thunder, being followed by the victorious French, and feeling threatened by their cruel commanders, the men, as if equipped with a hive mind, turned their weapons on the SS and massacred them. Realizing that this massacre would mean the death of all of them if they rejoined their lines, they then designated several of them to offer their surrender to the approaching 2nd AD...

"Himmler and the SS bad! Very good leaflet! Long live Franco-German friendship!" added the French-speaking NCO.

Indeed, the famous tract contained an appeal written by Rudolf Hilferding, head of the Free German Committee, asking, among other things, the German soldiers to surrender and for the future, to build a peaceful and friendly Franco-German relationship.

Other events, admittedly on a smaller scale and consisting more of the surrender of small groups of deserters, of five or six men on average, were reported by French, but also American and British troops. All these deserters had the same message. The SS were cruel, loss of morale due to Hitler's death and the realization that the "Vaterland" would be totally destroyed if this fight, which was impossible to win, and moreover "useless in the West", continued.

"It's your time!" Will say de Gaulle to Hilferding. On August 22, the Free German Committee became the "Provisional Government of the German Republic".

All that remained was to convince the Anglo-Saxons to give it a little authority over the German regions they would occupy... The Americans, who were already fighting street by street in Aachen, came to mind.

The French offensive led to the almost complete liberation of Alsace (only the extreme north of the Bas-Rhin department still escaped the French at the end of August). De Hauteclocque entered Strasbourg on August 19.

The oath of Sirte was honored.

In the East, where the fight would still be "useful", Stalin realized the new situation following the death of Hitler and the crumbling of Nazi authority. If the war against Germany will surely be over before the end of the year, the STAVKA did not notice any loss of fighting spirit of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. Stalin therefore feared that his prey, Berlin, would escape him and that the Westerners would enter before the Red Army.

"We will have to get out our claws against the Franco-British, and smile at Roosevelt..." he explained to the Soviet leaders.

Stalin had a plan...



The end is near

[ukron]

Chapter 8: Bassesses

"Chose Communism, vote Democrat!"
Republican campaign slogan

In liberated France, the three chambers of Parliament (including the Council of the Empire) continued to manage current affairs while waiting for the elections of the constituent assembly. Most of Metropolitan France having been liberated for three months now and the Germans having fled, these elections were scheduled for October 1, 1944. Except in Alsace-Moselle, which was too recently liberated, and in the pockets of the Atlantic, which were held by German garrisons.

The electoral campaign, with all its low blows, was in full swing. The "Parties" wanted to preserve their authority in the face of the General's desire to strengthen the executive. In response, De Gaulle founded the "Union for the New Republic" or UNR, open to all "good wills". Faced with the charisma of the General, the parties wanted their own hero.

This was to be François Darlan.

A candidate labeled Radical in his native department, Lot-et-Garonne (in fact, in order not to penalize Alsace-Moselle and the territories still under the yoke, this election would be held by a two-round majority vote), Darlan now appeared as the absolute anti-De Gaulle. Indeed, he was opposed to the General's desire for reform and defended a program that would lead to a return to a regime more or less identical to that of the Third Republic.

"The Republic held up against the Germans, it is not De Gaulle who will bring it down" he said to his closest collaborators...

But the General has more than one trick up his sleeve...

The "Patriote du Lot-et-Garonne", a press organ that came out of the Resistance and was openly favorable to the UNR, published an article entitled "Les charrettes à Darlan" (Darlan's carts).

This article revealed that François Darlan had ordered carts to be stored on the runway of the Salon de Provence airfield on June 12, 1940, to prevent RAF bombers from taking off to bomb Fascist Italy!

This greatly disrupted the English attacks, which were initially launched from Great Britain, before being resumed from Corsica before Merkur.

This revelation severely damaged the image of the Admiral, who had until then been seen as one of the men of June 17. De Gaulle struck at the heart. Darlan, one of the leading figures of Radicalism, of the perpetuation of a parliamentary regime, would be defeated by the... communist candidate!

However, De Gaulle, who led the French armies to final victory over the dying Reich, suffered an electoral setback with the election of the Constituent Assembly. Indeed, these elections, far from being the plebiscite he had expected, resulted in an extremely divided chamber. De Gaulle did not take advantage of his aura of "victorious warlord"...

If the Right had a small majority, it was not necessarily Gaullist, and vice versa for the governing Left, with some elected officials open to what would later be called "social Gaullism. The third force, the PCF, with which the General wanted to work, lost votes compared to the 1936 elections, with only 13% of the vote. However, it lost only two deputies, as its workers' strongholds remained loyal to it, with 70 deputies.

The discussions and debates were very heated. Fortunately, de Gaulle could count on Reynaud and Jean Zay to rally the center-right for the former, the parliamentary left for the latter.

If we consider the UNR as a right-wing force, here is the balance of power at the end of the election, on October 8, 1944.

Republican Front (SFIO + Radicals + Various leftists): 41

Right-wing including UNR : 44

Communists : 13

Others: 2

To have a better vision of the balance of power, it is necessary to detail the results more precisely.
29% SFIO (French Section of the Workers' International) Socialists, in favor of maintaining the parties

17 % MRP (Mouvement Républicain Populaire) Christian Democracy, in favor of the Parties

16 % UNR Gaullist party. Includes people from both the right and the left.

13 % PCF. Plays its own card of course but ready to compromise with the UNR.

11% PRL (Parti Républicain de la Liberté: Fédération Républicaine + Parti Social Français of the late de la Rocque and other conservative right-wingers who participated in the Resistance). Rather inclined to support the reformist ideals of the UNR. For the record, led by the son of the Tiger Michel Clemenceau.

9% Radicals. The very idea of a party in favor of a return to the Third Republic...

Miscellaneous: 5%.

If we consider each party as a united block and voting as one, we arrive at the following distribution:

Not inclined to reform the Constitution: 55

Somewhat inclined to deep regime reform: 40%.

Finally, with regard to purely social reforms, France voted clearly in favor of a profound reform of the country's economic system on paper. But the Popular Front was dead, the SFIO would no longer support the economic projects carried by the Communists. However, the UNR could...

In any case, the supplementary elections would prove decisive...

De Gaulle has a reason to hope, the Empire voted more UNR than the Metropole in the first round, whether it was the colonists or the former natives, the vote being limited to a duel between the SFIO (led on the spot by the Senegalese Lamine Gueye) and the Gaullist party led by Felix Houphouet, the latter nevertheless representing a wing very much to the left of the UNR. And the final results of the second round of voting in these gigantic constituencies, with their limited communication channels, were not yet available on October 9...

In the military sphere, Antwerp had fallen and the cleaning of the Scheldt estuary (necessary for the proper use of the port facilities) was well under way. The Western Allies could therefore fine-tune the final offensive against the heart of the Reich. Himmler knew this. Moreover, in the east, the Soviets began the siege of Budapest, the capital of Hungary, while they reduced the independent state of Croatia to a trickle, destroying its armed forces, which were ill-prepared to face anything other than Partisans... Worse still, supported by the Poles, the Soviets were on the verge of isolating East Prussia from the rest of the Reich, and were getting dangerously close to Danzig!

He then prepares to play his last card.
In the villa of his masseur Felix Kersten in Hartzwalde, north of Berlin, the Reichschützend received Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish plenipotentiary, in order to negotiate an armistice between the West and Germany, an armistice that would allow the latter to continue the fight against the Soviets alone. As a guarantee, following Kersten's advice, Himmler proposed nothing less than to authorize the Swedish Red Cross to send food to the concentration camps, the release of 5,000 prisoners, mainly Scandinavians, and, above all, promised to put an end to the ill-treatment of the Jews in the camps! At the same time, he promised the French nothing less than to hand over Doriot and his last loyal followers...

While the SS hanged hundreds of German soldiers for refusing to fight on the Western Front, while German prisoners were killed by their "comrades" in the United States because the latter considered their capture dishonorable, the Reich's own master, who had just said in a speech held in front of the caciques of the Regime: "Our evil enemies will have to see and understand that an intrusion into Germany, even if it succeeds here or there, will cost them a price that will be equivalent to national suicide. "He was to negotiate a cessation of hostilities!

Himmler's obvious objective was to allow, beyond the simple fate of Germany, National Socialism to survive the final defeat. This indignity is however hardly surprising from this unscrupulous individual...

Faced with the clear but logical refusal of the Westerners, Himmler hit rock bottom when he sent the following telegram in an attempt to convince de Gaulle to make peace with the dying Reich.

"It is understood! You have won. When we know where you started from, we must take our hats off to you, General de Gaulle. But now, what are you going to do? Hand over to the Anglo-Saxons? They will treat you like a satellite and make you lose your honor. Join the Soviets? They will subject France to their law and liquidate you yourself. In truth, the only path that can lead your people to greatness and independence is that of agreement with defeated Germany. Proclaim it at once! Enter into contact with me, without delay, I who want to lead my country in a new direction. I am ready for it. If you overcome the spirit of revenge, if you seize the opportunity that history offers you today, you will be the greatest man of all times.

The General's response in his memoirs: "Apart from the flattery with which this message from the edge of the grave is adorned to me, there is undoubtedly some truth in the outline it draws."

According to Kersten, Himmler, while preparing his escape, would have been ready by then to order an unconditional surrender of all Nazi forces facing the Westerners. When an unexpected event, a true "Miracle of the Brandenburg House", occurred.

Roosevelt is dead! It was September 29, 1944!

The day before, the deceased president had had a stormy discussion with the French ambassador, Adrien Tixier, and the British ambassador, Lord Halifax, about the negotiations between the Franco-British on the one hand, and the Japanese on the other, with a view to putting an end to the war in the Pacific without going through the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. He knew the content of these negotiations through a network of informers, notably in the highest spheres of the French government.

The harshness of the exchanges were such that they exhausted the American president who died of cardiac arrest during the night, exhausted as he was by the intensity of the presidential campaign he was facing.

Roosevelt died in the middle of the presidential campaign, a disaster for the Democratic camp, because Roosevelt's successor as president, Henry Wallace, did not intend to give up his place as front-runner to Truman easily, now that he was sitting in the Oval Office!

Worse, the latter is a "notorious Stalinist". Himmler and his sick mind therefore thought that a resistance to the end, will push de Gaulle and Churchill to seek agreement with a "new Germany" to oppose both the USSR and the United States ...
What nonsense... The new Germany is Rudolf Hilferding! His provisional government, which the French "installed", even if it is a big word, in the Palatinate and Baden regions where they began to penetrate as part of the general offensive against Germany, was recognized on November 9, the anniversary of the proclamation of the republic in 1918 (Churchill not lacking in humor...) by the British. At the same time, it was specified that this authority would be placed under Allied trusteeship, which the French did not dispute at all.

Moreover, this flawed plan requires that the Democratic camp win the presidential election scheduled for November 8, while the Democrats now have no co-contestant!

A convention must therefore be convened urgently to designate the new head of the Democratic ticket while the Republican candidate Thomas Dewey, who also feels his time is coming, redoubles his attacks against his Democratic opponents, even going so far as to accuse the now President Wallace of preferring the USSR to America!

"Red, Red, Red! President Wallace is Red!" or "Chose Communism, vote Democrat!" will become Republican campaign slogans.

Between Wallace and his rival, Truman, each used his own weapons to be invested. Demagoguery for the first, by promising wonders to the Democratic voters, his influence clearly superior with the leaders of the Democratic party for the second ...


Henry Wallace

[ukron]

Chapter 9: Endspiel


"In the interwar period, we failed to build a French Europe with our brothers in Central and Eastern Europe. They are for the moment lost to France. But for them too, one day, the dawn will come.

Gentlemen, let us try to succeed in uniting around us the European continent, the cradle of a civilization that the Nazis did not succeed in annihilating and of peoples that they could not enslave.

France, the French and the free peoples of Europe count on you.
Extract from the "Letter from Yalta" sent by Charles de Gaulle from the Crimea to Paris and read by Paul Reynaud to the members of the government.


Roosevelt's funeral procession, followed by a large crowd, including African Americans, made its way up the main streets of Washington, D.C. His body was then displayed at the White House for the public to view. Finally, the deceased president was laid to rest in the garden of his Springwood home in Hyde Park (now Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site).

It was a great moment of national unity, a truce in the midst of an election campaign that would only be surpassed in anger by that of 1860, the one that led to Lincoln's election...

As soon as the tribute ceremonies were over, the fight resumed. Not only between Republicans and Democrats, but also within the latter. Truman, then a mere senator, had much more time than Wallace, head of state and warlord, to weave his web, supported in this by the Establishment as well. Finally, on October 9, a month before the election, the delegates decided to discard the incumbent president, despite his greater popularity, in favor of a Truman-Morgenthau ticket.

Truman's intention in naming a hardliner as his running mate was to show himself to be a wartime leader in line with Roosevelt. Indeed, Henry Morgenthau was the author of a secret plan to deindustrialize and dismember defeated Germany.

Truman and Morgenthau, having just been appointed, threw themselves wholeheartedly into the campaign. But two events swept away any chance they had in this election. Firstly, the triumphant (albeit difficult) American victory in the Gulf of Leyte and the destruction of the shreds of the Japanese fleet at the end of October boosted the image of the president, who appeared in the eyes of public opinion as a victim of the Democratic Party caciques. Secondly, the revelation of the famous Morgenthau Plan to the general public by the press, a plan that shocked American public opinion, which feared in reaction a renewal of the fighting spirit of the German army, which seemed to be on the verge of liquefying at that moment, with the relatively easy entry of the bulk of the allied forces into Germany at the end of October, which followed the victory at Aachen. Dewey was quick to use this fear.

"Your plan, Mr. Morgenthau, has offered the enemy a dangerous surge!" he accuses.

Demagogically, Dewey wanted to continue the New Deal, while declaring that he wanted to improve it by putting an end to the waste of money, in particular by reducing the administration, while the Republican Party, which was generally conservative, was opposed to this same New Deal...

This low-level campaign ended with the victory of the Republican camp and the Dewey-Bricker ticket.
Meanwhile, not only did the war continue, especially in the Pacific, where to the great distress of Higashikuni, the Japanese air force began, on the initiative of the officers present there, to launch suicide attacks against the American fleet in the Philippines. But Wallace was still president until January 20, 1945, and therefore led the negotiations for the imminent post-war period in Europe, where Budapest and Bratislava (and the Tiso government) fell in mid-November, where the armies of the Reich were driven back into the so-called Curonian Spit in Latvia (and the Baltic States experienced a second Soviet annexation) and finally the siege of Konigsberg began (in which the Poles participated) and the Red Army was stationed 80 KM from Berlin, on the Oder, following its offensive towards the Nazi capital. Finland signed an armistice at the end of September with the USSR on a basis that allowed it to keep the territories it controlled at the time of the signing, i.e. most of its 1938 territory, including Viipuri, the country's second largest city, due to its heroic resistance. Himmler, certainly too busy elsewhere (or already prepared to save himself), ordered his army to evacuate Lapland without violence (!). The fighting continued in Finnmark, in the extreme north of Norway.

The other 3 Great Ones were waiting for the conclusion of the American election to organize a major conference between the 4 main leaders of the Allied Coalition. It was held in Yalta, Crimea, from December 3 to 10, 1944. Wallace brings Dewey with him, while reminding him that he is still the "leader".

Stalin is ecstatic, the real miracle is for him and not for Himmler. To a Roosevelt arranging, succeeds a Stalinobéât at the right time! He knows that he will get from the American president all that he can get in Europe in exchange for vague promises about free elections and his support for the future UN, which Stalin begins to understand well the impact it will have on the future of the World. This will give him a free hand to implement his plan...

Faced with the two superpowers of the future, Churchill and de Gaulle form a block, but Stalin holds a "pledge" of importance towards the second...

The million and a half French prisoners held in Poland and eastern Germany!


He could delay their release, or even worse, if the General was too firm, especially with a Wallace who was completely blind to the Soviet.

But, the general offensive in Germany taking place under the best auspices, Churchill can set in motion an operation that while showing Stalin the determination of the great European powers, appears militarily credible and will not directly affect Soviet interests.

Operation Menace, whose name, by the way, is written in the same way and means the same thing in French and in English, while demonstrating the real discreet purpose of the attack...
An offensive on occupied Norway, in coordination with Sweden, which was preparing to break its neutrality (at a time when Turkey had finally done so, that is, just to join the future UN as an "allied power")! Indeed, the Himmler government was liquefying, most of the death camps had been liberated and the time no longer seemed to be ripe for diplomacy, the Swedish representative in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg, who had obtained the liberation of many Hungarian Jews, having mysteriously disappeared after having been summoned by the Soviet authorities...

Supported by the French Navy and some battalions of the Corps-Francs, the operation was mainly British, however.

On December 6, while the Yalta Conference was in full swing, Sweden gave the German forces stationed in Norway 24 hours to surrender, failing which the army of King Gustav V would intervene to do so. Astonishment, the Europeans still have resources, especially since the case is finely played. Indeed, the Nazi forces in Norway, commanded by General Lothar Rendulic, responded favorably to the ultimatum and surrendered without fighting to the Swedes and the British.

As for those in Denmark, they did not undertake the slightest operation against neighboring Sweden, waiting for the final surrender of the Reich to throw away their weapons...

"Threat" shows the determination of the Franco-British to oppose as far as possible the extension of the Soviet Empire on the Old Continent. But it does little in itself against the Stalinist plans in Scandinavia. Indeed, Stalin did not intend to seize Norway. More annoying for the Red Tyrant was the frank rallying of Sweden to the Western camp, a Sweden that had already agreed to take in thousands of Baltic refugees fleeing the Red Army.

"Finally the House of Bernadotte washes the stain of the treason of 1813! In will say de Gaulle to de Courcel.

As a real response of the Soviet wolf to the West European shepherds, on December 9, following violent demonstrations by local communists supported by the Soviet occupation forces, which prevented the Romanian police from intervening while mercilessly repressing the monarchist and democratic counter-demonstrations, King Michael I was forced to appoint the communist Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as Prime Minister. Note that Ana Pauker became deputy prime minister in this cabinet.

Despite the arbitrary arrest of the main figures of the former Maniu government (including the former prime minister himself), the king, now a man, decided to stay to protect his people as best he could from the Stalinists.

Churchill and de Gaulle (and also Dewey, despite his duty of reserve) protest as much as they can, but this does not prevent this subtle mixture of retaliation and "test" of Henry Wallace's determination from being a great success for Stalin. Indeed, the American president finds absolutely nothing to complain about, the demonstrations being for him (and the communists of the whole world) spontaneous! Moreover, in neighboring Hungary, largely liberated by the Red Army, the provisional government of the Hungarian Republic was led not by Communists, but by the Agrarians of the "Independent Civic Party of Smallholders and Agrarian Workers. Zoltán Tildy and Ferenc Nagy, both members of this party, were respectively head of state and prime minister. As for the Benes cabinet, did it not come directly from pre-war democratic Czechoslovakia?

Doesn't this show the goodwill of the Soviet?

In response to this goodwill, de Gaulle telegraphed Delestraint, who was in the middle of a mad dash across Bavaria (the French flag was flying over the eagle's nest in Berchtesgaden, which De Hauteclocque's second armored division had seized), the following order:

"Run to Vienna! The German army is finished, so don't worry about your flanks. You must get there first!"

Of course, Stalin will be immediately informed that the Vojd guests are tapped anyway, but it must be done quickly, while, moreover, that Stalin is immediately aware will, in fact, beneficial.

Indeed, there is almost no more combat in the West, only the management of the immense masses of German prisoners and the logistical difficulties delaying the advance of the Western armies from now on. For the Soviets, they must in this race to the former imperial capital of the Habsburgs still, on the contrary, fight the last Arrow Crosses and SS armored divisions (therefore still combative) that defend the region of Lake Balaton and its oilfields. The last oil resources of the Reich, but above all for these defenders, the gateway to Ostmark, the name given by the Nazis to the Gau formed by Austria following the Anschluss of 1938.

However, if de Gaulle ordered the French army to seize Vienna by forced march, in agreement with Churchill (and of course Wallace... ) announced to Stalin that it was up to the Red Army "which bears on its standards the names of its immense victories over the German invader, victories which at the cost of the death of tens of millions of Soviet citizens, have contributed to the annihilation of 80% of the Wehrmacht!" to have the honor of entering Berlin first and to strike the final blow to the Nazi regime.

More discreetly, the General sent his chief of staff and aide-de-camp, Geoffroy Chodron de Courcel, to deliver a secret message to the government, which had remained in Paris, where Paul Reynaud was acting as interim leader.

Here are the contents:

"Gentlemen of the government,

If honor obliges us to be the first to enter Berlin, the future obliges us to give it up.


In 1940, Weygand was ready to sacrifice France by pushing the government to a purely political armistice to save the honor of the army. It was to save our future that we went into exile!


If we take Berlin, not only will Stalin never forgive us, but Germany, cut off from its eastern provinces, will be entirely in the hands of the Western Allies and will become an obliged partner of the Western camp.


In order to face Stalin, we will be forced to accept in a short time, following the "friendly pressure" of our Anglo-Saxon partners, his rearmament.

This is contrary to our interests and therefore to our future.


Stalin in Berlin, Germany will be cut in two.


This situation is already more in line with France's interests.


In the worst case, we will have an even weaker Germany, made up of two rival entities.


At best, we will push it to neutrality in this "Quasi-war" (The expression "Cold War" not being invented yet, the General refers to the quasi-war of 1799 between revolutionary France and the young United States, a true undeclared war). It will be isolated and without an army.


France will then be at the head of the European powers because, as you have all understood, England will eventually turn its back on the continent to turn to the powerful America.


For these are her true interests.
As Mr. Jaspar (named after the Belgian minister Marcel-Henri Jaspar) told me, "if you make Europe now, you will make French Europe".


Gentlemen, we have the opportunity to shine from the North Cape to Sicily, because yes, post-fascist Italy will be our ally in the new Europe we are going to build. In this new fraternal Europe that will likewise extend from Brest to the palaces of Vienna, if Delestraint and De Hauteclocque's advanced points reach it before the Soviet forces, which they will do, because I ordered them to do so, and these great soldiers have never disappointed me and President Mandel. These two great soldiers knew that by serving the government of the Republic, they were serving the Fatherland.


In the interwar period, we failed to build a French Europe with our brothers in Central and Eastern Europe. They are for the moment lost for France. But for them too, one day, the dawn will come (De Gaulle believes in the irremediable fall of the Soviet Empire)


Gentlemen, let us try to succeed in uniting around us the European continent, the cradle of a civilization that the Nazis did not succeed in annihilating and of peoples that they could not enslave.

France, the French and the free peoples of Europe are counting on you.

However, de Gaulle made a cross on the principles concerning the Soviets who collaborated with the Reich.

He agreed to put pressure on his Western allies to ensure that Soviet prisoners of war who would be on the Western side of Europe at the end of the war would return to the USSR quickly. In exchange, Stalin offered only vague guarantees concerning their safety and agreed in return to make the transportation of French prisoners to their country in good conditions an absolute priority.

Beyond the pledge offered to Stalin, did he not forget the numerous exactions of the Soviet auxiliaries of the German army in occupied France...

The final agreements, concluded while Nazi Germany was in full civil and military rout, were as follows:

- Free elections in the liberated European states, with the four allies committing themselves to "form provisional governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements of the populations and which will undertake to establish, as soon as possible, through free elections, governments which are the expression of the will of the peoples."

- The organization in February 1945 of the San Francisco conference.

- The destruction of German militarism and Nazism.

- The division of Germany into four zones occupied by the four victors: the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom and France. Concerning our country, de Gaulle, whose army had conquered almost the whole of southern Germany and whose army had penetrated into Austria, gave up occupying Bavaria after the war in exchange for the inclusion of Baden, Württemberg and the left bank of the Rhine in his occupation zone.

- Poland moved westward: it ceded territories to the USSR and received in compensation territories taken from Germany.

- The establishment of the Soviet-Polish border on the Curzon line.

- A few modalities concern the functioning of the UN, whose creation was decided in 1944 at the Dumbarton Oaks conference: the right of veto of the permanent members of the Security Council will be used in all cases except for procedural questions; the USSR asks for as many seats in the General Assembly as it has provinces and regions (16), but obtains "only" three (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus); the UN will have a right of review on the organization of Europe.

- A secret clause, mainly negotiated by Wallace and Stalin without the other two, made the line desired by Stalin at the Moscow conference of April 1944, namely a line going from the shores of the Baltic to the east of Lübeck before following the course of the Elbe, merging with the border between Bavaria and Czechoslovakia, then cutting Austria in two before ending its course on the shores of the Adriatic after separating Yugoslavia from Italy.

The same one that the two European leaders had firmly rejected...

The German disaster is analyzed with coldness and anger by François Mitterrand, in an interview for the Figaro ("La France combattante" partially dissolved with the Liberation. Each element of the newspapers that had retreated to AFN regained their independence. However, a hard core of journalists decided to perpetuate the title of France en exil by continuing its publication). To a question concerning the military situation, he answers:
"It seems that Germany is losing the war. It seems to me that this is indeed the case. I have seen the pictures of the pitiful flood of refugees from Prussia and the eastern provinces of the Reich.

Never was such a beautiful sight offered to my eyes.

You will tell me that there is the Liberation of Paris. Certainly, but Paris is our freedom. Prussia is their destruction, their debacle, their crushing!

Sedan, the two Sedans, are indeed about to be avenged. The processions of fugitives, of these Prussians yesterday so arrogant, today so pathetic, is the most beautiful revenge granted to our pious-pious of 1870, 1914 and 1940!

The cruelty of Bismarck has thus found here its punishment, that I say, its just punishment!

Germany is on the brink of the abyss. Let's push it!

Indeed, pushed back by the Red Army, abandoned by the Nazi authorities (the gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, who reveals himself by his cowardice as a model Nazi, has indeed fled the invaded region), the Prussians flee westward by millions. The evacuation ships were harassed by submarines and the Soviet air force.

It was a carnage.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was attacked by the Soviet submarine S-13 and sank, taking more than 5,000 Germans with it in what was the worst maritime disaster in history. In the weeks that followed, the Steuben and the Goya, also overloaded with refugees, were destroyed. Adding up the probable victims of the attacks, the figure of 10,000 dead was exceeded.

With Goebbels liquidated, no one in the shreds of the dying Reich thought to use these shipwrecks for propaganda purposes, in a context of generalized "sauve-qui-peut". A few days before Christmas 1944, Himmler threw in the towel and left Berlin, escorted by the last of the hand-picked SS, i.e. about twenty men, the rest of the "Guard" having to die to defend Berlin, while Stalin launched the final attack on Berlin in the middle of winter and the Westerners, mainly Americans, stopped all progress once they reached the Elbe, in accordance with the final agreements of the Yalta conference, an Elbe that hundreds of unarmed soldiers of the regular army and civilians crossed every day to escape from the Soviet Army, sometimes even under the fire of the SS until the end of the war, causing in response American artillery bombardments that sowed death and destruction in the stream of fugitives...

Himmler and his henchmen headed for Rostock, where a new kind of XXI submarine was waiting for them, which was to take them to South America, probably Argentina. This is why Himmler has only 20 SS men to escort him. It is not possible to send an army to Argentina in a single U-boat...

Arriving in Plau, between Berlin and Rostock, Himmler and his escort stopped at the town hall, which had been abandoned by the town's mayor. One of the SS men opened a radio and the small group heard the following announcement from the voice of Donitz: Heinrich Himmler had fled and broken the oath of obedience that the Germans had given him. (It should be noted that the German admiral never called him by his title of Chief of the SS and even less by the title he had given himself of Reichschützend (Protector of the Reich). Finally, in view of the military situation, he immediately called on the last German forces to lay down their arms.
From stupor and anger, the Nazis turn to fear when clamors are heard outside the building. Having recognized Himmler, the population, who had heard Donitz's call and, above all, for whom he was not at all a worthy heir to their beloved Führer, warned the Wehrmacht garrison, which, accompanied by the local population, surrounded the town hall.

The local Wehrmacht commander ordered the Nazis to surrender. They refused. The fight then began. The shooting was brief but violent, and most of the SS were killed by the soldiers. Those who did not die were lynched by the civilians, who suddenly came to their senses and were no doubt aware that they had to give a token of good will to the approaching Russians. Himmler, on the other hand, has absorbed his cyanide capsule... 4 days later, the Red Army enters Plau and discovers the corpse of the last Reich master, stored in a shed and already rotting...

The information is immediately transmitted to Stalin. A wonderful Christmas present for the atheist Stalin! We are indeed on December 25, 1944...

If it is the Soviets who seize Himmler's corpse, of which Stalin orders the immediate incineration to keep only the ashes and the skull, as a war prize within the Soviet archives, it was the French who seized the remains (or rather what was left of them) of Adolf Hitler, in the mausoleum where the Nazis had buried him in Munich, captured by the French army, before dynamiting the monument and sending the remains to Paris, where they would be stored at the Invalides.

Stalin did, however, double-cross the French in a more important respect. The Red Army entered Vienna first (where Karl Renner, as in 1918, proclaimed the republic), while the Second Armored Division was only three days away from the Austrian capital. Stalin, undoubtedly admiring the fighting spirit of the Picard, and not forgetting the more than symbolic help brought to his country by the French, thinking among other things of the Normandy squadron, authorized De Hauteclocque's division not only to march in Vienna but also to a small group of members of the unit to go to Slavkov u Brna in Czechoslovakia.

On the site of the battle of Austerlitz.

Berlin was taken without a fight by the Red Army on December 23. Thousands of SS troops fled when the double shock of Donitz's call followed by the first rumors of the Reichschützend's death reached them. Certainly, the Soviet occupation would be harsh, but it would prove to be almost liberating, as the Regime had reached an extreme degree of cruelty in its last days. Moreover, the Soviets, on Stalin's orders, quickly sought the friendship of the Germans in their zone of occupation, being brutal only in the repression of former Nazis and members of the Werewolf.

On the way to Berlin, the Soviets liberated the Ravensbrück camp, abandoned by the guards. Stalin's men discovered a camp reserved for women. Among the inmates, they discovered Geneviève de Gaulle, the niece of the General. The Soviets, on direct orders from Stalin, immediately informed Paris, treated her and chartered a special convoy to bring her back to Paris. But Geneviève refused the idea of chartering a convoy for her alone, and asked instead to do everything possible to repatriate all the deportees!

"Both obstinate and grandiose! Like her uncle!" Would have said Mitterrand, in charge of his repatriation due to his status as minister of deportees.
Beforehand, and as the Allies advanced in western Germany, Mitterrand had visited the death camps that had been discovered. He will keep a disgusted and shocked memory of the one in Dachau and a deep anti-Germanism. On the contrary, he acquired a great empathy towards the Jews, without ceasing to be a man of the French hard right. The author of the "Permanent Rumble" about the irreconcilable opposition of a part of the French left towards the General who returned to power and the Fifth Republic, he will nevertheless help the integration of the one and a half million Muslim Algerians living in France during his own presidency, in the 1980s. Mitterrand also appointed the former worker Pierre Bérégovoy, from the socialist ranks, Minister of Social Affairs and National Solidarity in his first government. At the same time, this government included Prince Napoleon, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, as Minister of Veterans Affairs.

Perhaps this is the true essence of the Gaullist right?

On December 26, 1944, the Soviet vanguards reached the Elbe River in Torgau, Saxony. And so they joined forces with the Americans. This historic moment was immortalized by photographers from all over the world. December 26, 1944 was nicknamed "Elbe Day".

Further south, the real first meeting between East and West was much less fraternal. In Zara, where Churchill and de Gaulle sent troops accompanied by Italian officials as soon as Donitz was announced, there was a near-miss, and it took an express order from Tito to prevent his much larger troops from driving the Franco-British out of the city, which was contested by communist Yugoslavia.

In Fiume, liberated by a New Zealand division, the former Partisans, now the army of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, massed along the old border, taunted the Kiwis, even simulating artillery fire!

On December 27, British forces entered Flensburg, Donitz's last headquarters, and put the last of the Nazi German leaders under arrest.

It was the end of the game for the Third Reich.

[ukron]

The Allied occupation zones in Germany and post-war Europe