Mythos revisited: American Historians and German
Fighting Power in WWII
by Thomas E. Nutter
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Chapter Eleven - Part I
PETER R. MANSOOR
THE GI OFFENSIVE IN EUROPE
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A fashionable argument in the past two decades has been that the Allies won
World War II only through the sheer weight of materiel they threw at the
Wehrmacht in a relatively unskilled manner. This argument is actually a
restatement of the theory put forward by German officers to explain their
defeat, as evidenced by wartime interrogations and postwar manuscripts prepared
by the defeated.(222)
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So begins Peter Mansoor's The GI Offensive in Europe. The Triumph of
American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945. The sympathies expressed in this
passage infuse Mansoor's work; indeed, it is not too much to say that the
evisceration of the "fashionable argument" is the raison d'etre of The
GI Offensive in Europe . The present study has already dealt at some
length with Mansoor's "analysis" of the purveyors of the "fashionable argument"
and their respective works. His "Introduction" lays waste, in a bare two and a
half pages, the reputations of S. L. A. Marshall, Trevor N. Dupuy, Russell
Weigley, Martin van Creveld, John Keegan, Max Hastings and John Ellis, whom he
collectively characterizes as "revisionist historians" (223)
The "Introduction" to Mansoor's work is so informative of the author's thesis
that it is worth considering it in some detail. Commenting favorably upon John
Sloan Brown's "critique" of Trevor Dupuy and his work, Mansoor highlights
Brown's contention that Dupuy's selection of engagements to study "is skewed
toward those battles in which the more elite German panzer and panzer grenadier
divisions, which constituted only a small percentage of the Wehrmacht,
participated. Dupuy thus compared the American army against the cream of the
Wehrmacht." Brown's opinion in this regard, which Mansoor obviously shares,
raises two interesting questions. First, Brown and Mansoor both take the view
that the American GI was qualitatively superior to the German landser; this
being the case, it should matter not one whit which German unit (elite or
otherwise) is compared to which American unit. Conversely, if Mansoor and Brown
believe that the U.S. army is unfairly prejudiced by Dupuy's comparison of it
with "elite" German units, then how is it that neither of them takes into
account the decrepit condition of the "run of the mill" German formations most
often encountered by the Allies in Western Europe in 1944-1945? Similarly, in
his brief commentary on Keith Bonn's When the Odds Were Even, Mansoor
emphasizes the author's contention that the U.S. Seventh Army prevailed in the
Vosges Mountains in the absence of its customary advantages in logistics and
close air support "and in terrain and weather conditions that clearly favored a
defensive stand by the numerically superior German forces." (emphasis
added). Yet, an essential element of the thesis advanced by Mansoor, Bonn, et
al is that numerical advantages (whether in terms of
ammunition, guns, trucks, tanks or aircraft) were irrelevant to the success of
the U.S. army in Western Europe.(224)
In moving on to outline his own thesis, Mansoor suggests that two factors,
namely the so-called "ninety-division gamble" and the simultaneous commitment
of American resources to active prosecution of the war in both Europe and the
Pacific, produced a situation in which "systematic unit rotation was impossible
in the ETO. American soldiers paid the price for the ninety-division gamble
from Italy to Normandy, across France, along the West Wall, through the
Ardennes, and into Germany." Although Mansoor does not ask it, this statement
implicitly raises the issue of whether such a policy constituted a shortcoming
in "the American way of war" comparable to the oft-maligned German decision to
fight a two-front war by attacking the Soviet Union before it had secured
victory against Britain. Mansoor then asserts that the pernicious effects of
the "ninety-division gamble" were compounded by an American personnel policy
that sent the highest quality draftees to the Army Air Force and the Army
Service Forces. "The result of this system", says Mansoor "was the siphoning
off of the most qualified inductees into almost any type of organization other
than infantry, armor, and field artillery." If such a policy was detrimental to
the quality of combat units in the U.S. army, as it surely must have been, what
must we conclude about the quality of German combat units encountered by
American forces in 1944-1945? Were those German formations composed of "the
most qualified inductees", made up as they were with under-aged boys, over-aged
men, unwilling and uncomprehending volksdeutsche , and unreliable,
unmotivated foreigners?(225)
Mansoor goes on to lament the "lack of personnel stability" that evidently
pervaded many divisions in the U.S. army. This resulted from the War Department
policy of stripping out trainees to use them as replacements for units in the
field. "Lack of personnel stability," Mansoor argues, "complicated the training
of these divisions before their entry into combat, often forcing them to repeat
basic training for new inductees at the expense of more advanced collective
training for battalion and regimental combat teams." As this study has already
shown, however, in 1944 there was no such thing as "personnel stability" in the
Wehrmacht; German inductees were fortunate indeed if they received as much as
four to six weeks basic training, and advanced tactical, combined-arms training
at the battalion and regimental levels was virtually nonexistent. While
complaining of the absence of "personnel stability" in the U.S. army, Mansoor
nevertheless concedes that "[F]acilities and training improved as mobilization
progressed" and that "[H]uge maneuver areas located across the United States
allowed the army to conduct sustained large-scale, multidivision maneuvers for
the first time in its history." It goes without saying that all such training
occurred in a secure environment, in which there was not the remotest
possibility of interference from enemy aircraft. It would be interesting to
know whether Mansoor could identify a single instance, subsequent to the first
half of 1942, in which the German army was able to engage in "sustained
large-scale, multidivision maneuvers."(226)
The most persistent theme in Mansoor's "Introduction", and throughout the
balance of his work as well, is that the U.S. army rose to the pinnacle of
professional competence by 1945 in spite of having been burdened during the
period 1941-1943 by innumerable obstacles. In addition to the "lack of
personnel stability" previously discussed, Mansoor points out that the rapid
expansion of the army after Pearl Harbor resulted in a shortage of competent
leadership, especially at the level of junior officers and noncommissioned
officers. There was also, according to Mansoor, a shortage of equipment until
1943, so that troops trained with weapons different from those with which they
would actually fight. These factors combined to reduce the effectiveness of the
army's training regimen; the problems caused by inadequate training were
compounded by two additional factors, namely the army's lack of combat
experience and its policy of scavenging training units in order to provide
formations in the field with replacements.
It was with the poorly trained troops fostered by the system Mansoor describes
that the U.S. army assaulted Festung Europa in the summer of 1944.
Mansoor characterizes the Normandy campaign as one of "fierce battles of
attrition" in which the inexperienced Allies, possessed of "a healthy
superiority of artillery and airpower", contested with a German force which,
though understrength, enjoyed the benefits of experienced leadership and "many
technologically superior weapons." He concludes that the Allies ultimately
defeated their foe in Normandy by wearing it down and bursting through its
weakened line. Mansoor laments the fact, however, that the bloody battle of
attrition in Normandy has led to "revisionist thinking" about the comparative
abilities of the German and American armies in 1944. Mansoor calls such
comparisons "misleading", and it is in his discussion of this point that his
argument begins to stretch credulity to the breaking point.
Mansoor begins by stating that during the period 1933-1939 (a "luxurious time
interval") the German army had every opportunity to, and did, expand itself
from the one-hundred thousand-man Reichswehr to the juggernaut that conquered
Poland and Western Europe in 1939-1940. Mansoor follows this observation with
the following remarks:
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The Wehrmacht seasoned its divisions in campaigns in Poland, Norway,
France, the Balkans, Africa, and Russia prior to D-Day. The Germans suffered
many casualties, but by June 1944 the Wehrmacht had combat veterans in
command of the vast majority of its units. The Germans had an established,
combat-tested tactical doctrine. Most German units had solid non-commissioned
officer leaders and well-trained soldiers, kept in line through ideological
indoctrination and rigid (and often brutal) discipline. German equipment was
among the most technologically advanced in the world, especially their tanks
and machine guns.(227)
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The present author admits to having reacted to this passage with astonishment
and, frankly, incomprehension. It did not seem credible that one who had earned
a doctorate in history could be capable of such utterances. Recourse to a
decent dictionary did not alleviate the situation. Webster's Encyclopedic
Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Portland House, 1989) includes
among its definitions of the verb transitive form of the word season
the following: "to accustom or harden: troops seasoned by battle." This,
presumably, was the definition of the term season that
Mansoor had in mind when he wrote the passage referred to above. Leaving aside
any consideration of the other theatres mentioned by Mansoor, to characterize
what happened to the German army in Russia during the three years immediately
preceding the invasion of Western Europe as seasoning
positively beggars the imagination. Perhaps some details will help put the
matter in perspective.
During the whole of the United States' involvement in World War II (roughly
three and a half years) a total of 16,353,659 military personnel were drafted
or volunteered for service. The number of men killed in action totaled 292,131
(Army/Army Air Force 234,874; Navy 36,950; Marines 19,733; Coast Guard 574);
671,278 men (Army/Army Air Force 565,861; Navy 37,778; Marines 67,207; Coast
Guard 432) were wounded in action. American forces thus suffered 963,409 total
casualties against the Axis.(228) During the six-month period July through
December 1941, the German Ostheer suffered 767,938 casualties,
including 167,354 men killed in action, and 600,584 men wounded.(229) In this
six-month period, then, the German Ostheer alone suffered 0.797% of the total
casualties incurred by all United States armed forces in over three
and a half years of war. Breaking the numbers down still further, German dead
for the period in question amounted to 0.573% of the total American dead for
the entire war; the number of German wounded represented 0.895% of the total
number of American wounded in all of World War II .
Numbers such as these, it would seem, speak for themselves. Is an armed force
that suffers 167,354 irretrievable losses in a six-month period "accustomed",
in any conceivable definition of that term, by such casualties? How many of the
600,584 landsers wounded between July and December 1941 were"hardened"
by that experience so as to make them more formidable soldiers? Do we count
among such "hardened" soldiers those who were, though
not dead, so maimed as to be unfit for further military service? These figures,
be it recalled, do not include the hundreds of thousands of German dead and
wounded suffered by the Ostheer alone over the next two and a half
years preceding the Normandy invasion. Was the German army "accustomed"
and "hardened" in proportion to the amount of such
further casualties, according to the tenets of some remarkable calculus? If so,
then surely Mansoor and his acolytes are correct in their generous estimation
of the fighting qualities of the U.S. army, for the extent of the casualties
suffered by the German army between June, 1941 and June, 1944 must certainly
have rendered it so "accustomed" and "hardened
" as to be almost invincible---to any foe, that is, save the American GI. The
German army did indeed, as Mansoor puts it, suffer "many casualties".
Mansoor puts the case that the German army encountered in Western Europe in
1944-1945 "had combat veterans in command of the vast majority of its units".
Such a statement needs must be at least plausible, given the fact that, taking
into account the time period of which Mansoor is speaking, the German army had
been engaged in combat operations consistently for the better part of the
previous five years. The important question, of course, has to do with the
background, experience and training of the "combat veterans" to whom Mansoor
refers. This question, in turn, raises the entire issue of the effect that the
four and a half years of war that preceded 6 June 1944 had upon the German
army. Looking again at only the first six months of the campaign in Russia, the
Ostheer sustained a total of 11,335 officers killed in action, including
3,888 regular officers and 7447 reserve officers.(231) Between October 1942 and
September 1943, the German army as a whole (excluding the Waffen SS )
suffered a total of 33,157 officers killed (5,971), wounded (16,615) and
missing (10,571).(232) On October 18, 1944 German radio announced to the nation
that 50,000 German officers, including 138 General officers, had been killed
since the outset of the war.(233) Over the course of the war, in an effort to
address such losses, the German army promoted 238,283 men to officer
rank.(234)
While these numbers relating to losses of German army officers are indicative
of the crisis that confronted the Allies' principal enemy in Western Europe,
they do not really begin to describe that crisis in any meaningful way. During
the nine-month period 22 June 1941 to 31 March 1942, the Ostheer absorbed
567,461 casualties from sickness and frostbite, and 1,082,690 casualties from
fighting, for a total of 1,650,151 casualties. Over the same period, the army
in the East received a total of 814,600 replacements and recuperated soldiers.
For this period, then, the Ostheer suffered 835,551 losses that were
not replaced. The personnel situation of the Ostheer improved somewhat over the
next two months; in April 1942 it took 108,450 casualties (including 60,291
killed), and received 121,400 replacements, while in the following month it
absorbed 134,230 casualties (including 74,700 killed) as against 158,900
replacements received.(236) The effects of such losses on the army were, as one
might expect, deleterious and not long in coming. Whereas in June 1941, 134 out
of 209 divisions (64%) were classified as fit for any offensive action, at the
end of March 1942 only 8 out of 162 divisions (5%) were ranked in this
category.(237) The situation for the army only worsened with the coming of the
Kursk offensive and its aftermath. In July 1943 it suffered 215,100 casualties,
as against 92,100 replacements; in August 1943, 262,300 losses against 79,000
replacements; in September 1943, 231,700 losses against 127,000 replacements;
in October 1943, 198,400 losses against 121,000 replacements; and in November
1943, 87,800 losses against 100,400 replacements.(238) Overall, the strength of
the Ostheer decreased from 3,300,000 men in June 1941 to 2,200,000 men in July
1944.(239)
Mansoor's claims that the German army faced by the Western Allies in Normandy
had combat veterans (including "solid non-commissioned officers") in command of
the majority of its units beg the question, as those assertions fail to take
into account the decimation of the force that had brought about such a
"seasoned" officer corps. His argument that the German army facing the Allies
in the West was armed with "technologically advanced" weaponry is also
deceptive. In 1944 Germany produced 19,000 tanks and self-propelled guns. In
that year the United States alone produced 17,565 such vehicles; the figures
for that year for Britain and the USSR were 4,600 and 28,963 respectively. Over
the entire course of the war Germany produced a total of 674,280 machine-guns,
as against 4,744,484 such weapons turned out by the Allies.(240) Mansoor (like
Bonn, Doubler and Brown) may contend that the defeat of the German army in the
West was due more to the skill, tenacity and bravery of the common American
soldier than it was to the ability of the Allies to utterly swamp their foe
with men and materiel; such an argument, however, fails utterly to comprehend
the reality of the Second World War in Europe.
Finally, Mansoor's "seasoning" argument asserts that the German army in the
West overcome by the Allies in 1944-1945 enjoyed "an established, combat-tested
tactical doctrine" and "well-trained soldiers", both of which characteristics
were insufficient to prevent its defeat. If the present study has shown
anything, it is that the German army confronted by the Western Allies between
June 1944 and May 1945 was comprised of troops who could not, by any stretch of
the imagination, be described as "well trained". Indeed, the very antithesis is
true: from Normandy, to the Vosges Mountains, to the Ardennes, the German army
was composed of an ill-trained rabble, particularly when compared with the
highly-trained, cohesive force that was the United States Army. As to the
"established, combat-tested tactical doctrine" available to the German army in
its struggle with the Western Allies, is not the entire point of Mansoor's work
(and those of Bonn, Brown and Doubler) that the tactical doctrine employed by
the German army was inferior to that of the United States Army, and further
that whatever the tactical doctrine of the German army may have been, that
force was inept in its application of the doctrine in any case?
As silly as the above-described arguments of Mansoor are, his subsequent
remarks are equally incomprehensible. His Introduction, for example, concludes
with the following statements:
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The Army of the United States lacked most of these advantages [namely, those
ascribed to the German army in his "seasoning" argument] when compared with the
Wehrmacht. American rearmament began in June 1940 after the fall of France, and
within two and a half years the first American divisions engaged in combat in
North Africa against an experienced enemy. One wonders how the German army
would have fared if forced into combat against the French in the Rhineland in
1936 under similar circumstances. Indeed, historian Williamson Murray concludes
that "in nearly every respect, the Wehrmacht was not ready" to fight a major
war even as late as 1938, five years after the beginning of rearmament…A more
balanced comparison of German and American forces would compare each
organization at its zenith, say, the German army in June 1941 and the American
army in April 1945. I submit that one would be hard-pressed to choose between
the two forces on the basis of technical or tactical proficiency at the
division level…The Army of the United States reached its zenith of combat
effectiveness without the extensive ideological indoctrination and fear-based
discipline that infused many German units with their will to fight.(241)
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If the German army can be said to have been "advantaged" vis-à-vis the
United States Army in 1944 (or even in 1943, for that matter, after the
catastrophic losses suffered at Stalingrad and Alamein), having suffered
literally millions of casualties, including tens of thousands of officers
killed in action, dependent upon an industrial base wholly incapable of
matching the output of its adversaries, incapable of adequately training its
soldiers, and exposed to the untrammeled operations of the enemy's overwhelming
airpower, then surely, as Mansoor suggests, the United States Army was unfairly
disadvantaged in its struggle with the Wehrmacht.
The quotation from Mansoor cited above gives real insight into the dilemma
facing him and others like him in their effort to "rehabilitate" the image of
the United States Army in World War II.(242) That dilemma consists of
explaining how the United States armed forces, and particularly the United
States Army, blessed as Mansoor and others freely admit with the ability to
train under absolutely optimum conditions for a minimum of two and half years
before engaging its enemy, supplied with an historically unprecedented bounty
in weapons and supplies, possessed of near-absolute control of the airspace
above it, and at the time period in issue in essentially unfettered control of
its supply lines, was unable to bring down with dispatch a foe having no such
advantages, one indeed literally at the end of its tether and fighting for its
life. Mansoor's "resolution" of this dilemma, as can be seen in the foregoing
passage, is to resort to nonsensical arguments that cannot bear scrutiny.(243)
For example, Mansoor argues that the United States Army, after "only" two and a
half years training, engaged an "experienced enemy" in North Africa, wishing
the reader to draw the inference that if ever there were a military mismatch,
this was it. For the purposes of the present work, it will suffice to state
that the German army that the Allies confronted in North Africa after November
1942 was indeed "experienced"---it had experienced all of the effects of war
heretofore mentioned in this chapter, as well as two resounding defeats, at
Stalingrad and Alamein. The Afrika Korps, or what was left of it, was
quite literally "on the run", bereft of adequate supplies, at the mercy of
Allied airpower, and overwhelmed by a healthy Allied preponderance in men and
war materiel. The Allied invasion of Sicily, hard on the heels of the total
eradication of Axis power in North Africa, was another instance in which the
Allies were to successfully bring to bear, against a truly miniscule Axis
contingent, an accumulation of force exceeded in the Normandy invasion only by
the number of follow-on forces employed.
Seen in the foregoing light, Mansoor's rhetorical question concerning the
ability of the German army to fight the French in the Rhineland in 1936, or "to
fight a major war even as late as 1938, five years after the beginning of
rearmament" hardly resonates.
Footnotes
(222) Mansoor, p. 2.
(223) The pejorative term "revisionist historian" is coded language
that is used to vilify, in the "civilized" realm of academe, those scholars who
have the temerity to advance arguments that call into question the "accepted
view". The term first appeared in the late 1960's, when it was applied to
William Appleman Williams, a graduate of the Naval Academy and diplomatic
historian whose body of work examined critically the role of the Open Door
Policy in the development of American foreign policy. Williams, and a number of
diplomatic historians who subsequently expanded upon his work, came to be
depicted as "revisionist historians" by others in the profession (and then by
conservative politicians) because they dared to suggest that American foreign
policy is and has been driven not merely by altruism (the then "accepted
view"), but also by a rampant self-interest that is indistinguishable from the
"imperialism" that motivated less altruistic nations like Britain, France,
Germany, Japan and Tsarist/Soviet Russia. With respect to Mansoor's use of the
term, one might reasonably ask what history, or interpretation of history,
Marshall, Dupuy, van Creveld and the others are deemed to have "revised".
Mansoor would be hard pressed to identify an historian, or "school" of
historians, writing before the 1990's, who did not take the view that the
German army of the Second World War had distinguished itself not only by its
victories in the early stages of that war, but also by its resilience and
stubborn defense in the conflict's final three years, in the face of an
alliance possessed of what can only be described as a colossal advantage in
human and materiel resources. In this sense, it is Mansoor, Bonn, et al who
represent the "revisionist historians".
(224) Mansoor, pp. 8-9.
(225) Ibid., p. 11. One assumes that when Mansoor decries the lack of
"systematic unit rotation" of American combat units in the ETO, he is
suggesting that such formations would have benefited from being withdrawn from
the front lines for an extended period to rest, refit and retrain. It would be
difficult in the extreme to identify a single Wehrmacht formation that
experienced the salutary effects of "systematic unit rotation" during
1944-1945.
(226) Ibid., p. 12.
(227) Ibid., pp. 13-14.
(228) Goralski, World War II Almanac 1941-1945, p. 428. Norman Polmar
and Thomas B. Allen, World War II: America at War 1941-1945 (Random
House, 1991), p. 193 provides comparable figures: 16,112,566 service personnel;
294,597 battle deaths; 670,846 "nonmortal" wounds.
(229) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part I Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1939-1941,
(Clarendon Press, 2000), Diagram III.v.3.Casualties (Sick, Missing, Wounded and
Dead) and Replacement Supply of the Army in the East, 22 June 1941-31 March
1942 (excluding Army Command Norway), p. 1020.
(230) Germany had approximately 10,000,000 men under arms over the course of
the war. Goralski, World War II Almanac 1941-1945, p. 427. During the
six month period July-December, 1941, German troops representing 0.078% of this
force became casualties. Over the course of the entire war, 0.059% of the total
American force under arms became casualties. It should be noted that the Wehrmacht
was contemporarily carrying on the campaign against the Allies in North Africa.
(231) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part I Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1939-1941,
Diagram III.v.11, Army Officers (excluding Waffen-SS) Killed, Missing, and
Taken Prisoner September 1939—April 1942, p. 1041.
(232) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part II Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources
1942-1944/5, (Clarendon Press, 2003) Diagram III.1.21.Total losses in
the army officer corps, 1 October 1942-31 August 1943, p. 922.
(233) Davis, Brian L., German army Uniforms and Insignia 1933-1945 (New
York 1972), p. 212.
(234) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part II Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources
1942-1944/5, p. 923, n. 292.
(235) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part I Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1939-1941,
Diagram III.v.3 Casualties (Sick, Missing, Wounded and Dead) and Replacement
Supply of the Army in the East, 22 June 1941-31 March 1942 (excluding
Army Command Norway), p.1020.
(236) Boog, Horst, Rahn, Werner, Stumpf, Reinhard and Wegner, Bernd, Germany
and the Second World War; v. VI The Global War: Widening of the Conflict into a
World War and the Shift of the Initiative 1941-1943 (Clarendon Press,
2001), Diagram VI.i.3. Gains and Losses of Personnel by the Eastern Army,
December 1941-April 1943, p.865.
(237) Ibid., Table VI.i.2. Assessment of Battle-worthiness of the Divisions
of the Eastern Army, as of 30 March 1942, p. 877.
(238) Kroener, Bernhard R.; Muller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v.V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of
Power; Part II Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources
1942-1944/5, Diagram III.ii.8. Losses and replacements on the eastern
front, July-November 1943, p. 1014.
(239) Ibid., Diagram III.ii.10.Changes in actual strength of the army in the
east, 15 June 1941-1 July 1944, p. 1020.
(240) Ellis, Brute Force, Tables 51, 53, pp. 556-557. While it is true that the
American Sherman tank was no match for either the Panther or
Tiger tanks, the vast majority of these German vehicles were, like the
mass of the German army, engaged in the East, where they encountered the
formidable T-34, the vehicle that had revolutionized armored warfare
and now possessed an 85mm main gun.
(241) Mansoor, pp. 14-15.
(242) It bears repeating, in light of the criticisms made herein, that the
present author, like John Ellis and others vilified by Mansoor, Bonn, Brown and
Doubler, has nothing but respect for the American soldiers, and their brothers
in arms, who suffered so much in order to bring down fascism. That such men did
suffer and die for that end, however, does not constitute grounds for Mansoor
and his ilk to distort the historical record for their own purposes.
(243) The reader will observe that no reference is made herein to another
incalculable advantage possessed by the Allies, namely the so-called "Ultra"
intercepts. "Ultra" was a code name used to identify a weapon every bit as
essential to Allied victory in the Second World War as the Manhattan Project,
namely the ability of Allied cryptographers to decipher German radio
transmissions sent via the "Engima" cipher machine. Unaccountably, Mansoor,
Bonn, Brown and Doubler also fail to mention "Ultra", a weapon that, among
other achievements, so compromised the Afrika Korps' logistics situation that
the Allies purposely allowed a trickle of Axis supply vessels to negotiate the
Mediterranean Sea in order that the Germans might not detect the breach in
their signals system.
(244) In connection with Operation Husky, the reader may consult the present
author's Aspects of the Allied Invasion of Sicily, 1943, which may be
found at www.militaryhistoryonline.com.
Copyright © 2004 by Thomas E. Nutter.
Please send comments to Thomas E. Nutter at: tenutter@gmail.com.
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