Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

by Max Hastings

have already described aspects of it in eight books, most significantly Bomber Command, Overlord, Armageddon, Retribution and Winston’s War. While any work such as this should be self-contained, I have striven to avoid repetition of either anecdotage or analysis of large issues. For instance, having devoted an entire chapter of Nemesis to the 1945 dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems fruitless to revisit my own arguments. This book sustains a chronological framework, and seeks to establish and reflect upon the “big picture,” the context of events: the reader should gain a broad sense of what happened to the world between 1939 and 1945. But its principal purpose is to illuminate the conflict’s significance for a host of ordinary people of many societies, both active and passive participants—though the distinction is often blurred. Was, for example, a Hamburg woman who ardently supported Hitler, but perished in the July 1943 firestorm generated by Allied bombing, an accomplice to Nazi war guilt or the innocent victim of an atrocity?

The Jewish genocide became the most coherent fulfilment of Nazi ideology. I wrote in Armageddon about the ordeal of concentration-camp prisoners,

It may be useful to explain how this book was written. I began by rereading Gerhard Weinburg’s A World at Arms and Total War by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard, probably the two best single-volume histories of the war.

revisited some other outstanding recent accounts of the conflict: Richard Overy’s Why the Allies Won, Allan Millett and Williamson Murray’s A War to Be Won and Michael Burleigh’s Moral Combat.

The writer Arthur Koestler, in Paris, wrote contemptuously that French excitement about Finnish victories recalled “a voyeur who gets his thrills and satisfaction out of watching other people’s virile exploits, which he is unable to imitate.”

In the early months of 1940 London and Paris urged the Finns to keep fighting, because if they quit there would be no excuse for intervention in Norway.

The Finnish campaign was irrelevant to the confrontation between Germany and the Allies, but it importantly influenced the strategy of both. They alike concluded that the Soviet Union was a paper tiger; that Stalin’s armies were weak, his commanders bunglers. After the armistice, Finland, having failed to gain useful help from Britain and France, turned to Germany for assistance in rearming its forces, which Hitler was happy to provide. The Russians learned critical lessons from the Finnish war, and set about equipping the Red Army with winter clothing, snow camouflage and lubricants for subzero temperatures, all of which would play a vital role in future campaigns. The world, however, saw only that Russian prestige had been debased by one of Europe’s smallest nations.

She and her compatriots may not have known it, but in the winter of 1939 the Nazis were troubled by many problems of their own. Germany had entered the war on the verge of bankruptcy, in consequence of Hitler’s armaments expenditure. There was so little money for civilian purposes that the railway system was crumbling, and desperately short of rolling stock: two bad train smashes killed 230 people, provoking fierce public anger. Far from the Nazis having made the trains run on time, industry suffered from disrupted coal deliveries, and the Gestapo reported widespread grumbling about the faltering passenger service. The Allied blockade had caused the collapse of Germany’s export markets and a serious shortage of raw materials. Hitler wished to launch a great offensive in the west on 12 November, and was furious when the Wehrmacht insisted on

postponement until spring. The generals considered the weather wholly unfavourable to a major offensive, and recognised the deficiencies of their army’s performance in Poland: it was short of vehicles and weapons of all kinds. As the army expanded, the 24.5 million industrial workforce of May 1939 fell by 4 million. Industrial policy was characterised by wild vacillation and arbitrary production cuts, made necessary by steel shortages.

A decision was made that would influence German armaments production for years ahead: to focus immediate effort on manufacturing ammunition and Ju-88 light bombers. The Luftwaffe convinced itself that the Ju-88 was a war-winning weapon, and the plane indeed did notable service. Later, however, lack of effective heavier aircraft became a severe handicap. The German navy remained weak—in the gloomy words of Adm. Erich Raeder, the C-in-C of the German navy, “not at all adequately armed for the great struggle … it can only demonstrate that it knows how to go down with dignity.” Germany’s paper military strength in the winter of 1939 was only marginally greater than that of the Allies. Given all these difficulties, it is remarkable that Hitler retained his psychological dominance of the conflict. His great advantage was that the All...

In the last weeks before Germany attacked in the west, relations between the two allies became sulphurous: each blamed the other for failure to wage war effectively. French public opinion turned decisively against Prime Minister Daladier, who sought a parliamentary vote of confidence on 20 March: only 1 deputy voted against him, 239 in his support—but 300 abstained. Daladier resigned, though remaining in the government as defence minister, to be succeeded by Paul Reynaud. France’s new leader was a sixty-two-year-old conservative, notable for high intelligence and physical insignificance—he stood less than five feet, three inches high. Eager to take the initiative, he now proposed a landing in N...

The Norwegians were more apprehensive about British designs on their coastline than German ones. At 1:30 a.m. on 9 April, an aide awoke King Haakon of Norway to report: “Majesty, we are at war!” The monarch promptly demanded: “Against whom?”

Eight million French people abandoned their homes in the month following the onset of the German assault, the greatest mass migration in western European history.

The German economy was much less strong than its enemies supposed—only slightly larger than that of Britain, which enjoyed a higher per capita income. It could not indefinitely be sustained on a war footing, and was stretched to the limits to feed the population and arm the Wehrmacht. Hitler was determined to secure his strategic position in Europe before the United States entered the war, which he anticipated in 1942.

On 18 December, Hitler issued a formal directive for an invasion, to be launched at the end of May 1941.

Hitler saw three reasons for striking: first, he wished to do so, in fulfilment of his ambition to eradicate bolshevism and create a German empire in the east; second, it seemed prudent to eliminate the Soviet threat before again turning west for a final settlement with Britain and the United States; third, he identified economic arguments.

Only late in the war did the Allies grasp the severity of their enemy’s fuel problems:

Britain imported 10.2 million tons of oil; meanwhile, German imports and synthetic production never exceeded 8.9 million tons. Thus it was that Hitler made seizure of the Caucasian oil wells a key objective of Operation Barbarossa, heedless of the handicap this imposed on operations to destroy the Red Army, by dividing Germany’s forces. He envisaged the invasion of Russia as both an ideological crusade and a campaign of economic conquest.

seems flippant to suggest that Hitler determined to invade Russia because he could not think what else to do, but there is something in this, as Ian Kershaw has observed. Many more Nazi battlefield triumphs lay ahead, but some generals privy to their Führer’s intentions already understood the Third Reich’s fundamental difficulty: anything less than hemispheric domination threatened disaster; yet Germany’s military and economic capability to achieve this remained questionable.

The German people had entered the war full of misgivings, which by the winter of 1940 were largely dispelled.

Germany, contrary to widespread perceptions, was not an advanced industrial state by comparison with the United States, which it lagged by perhaps thirty years; it still had a large peasant agricultural sector such as Britain had shed. Its prestige, and the fear it inspired in the hearts of its enemies, derived from the combat efficiency of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe, the latter being much weaker than the Allies knew. Time would show that these forces were inadequate to fulfil Hitler’s ambitions. If Britain at the end of 1940 remained beleaguered, Germany’s might rested on foundations much less solid than the world supposed.

The privileged elite among whom Evelyn Waugh lived saw the war, the novelist wrote, as “a malevolent suspension of normality: the massing and movement of millions of men, some of whom were sometimes endangered, most of whom were idle and lonely, the devastation, hunger and waste, crumbling buildings, foundering ships, the torture and murder of prisoners … [which] had been prolonged beyond reason.” Few of Waugh’s friends understood that the “suspension of normality” would become permanent in its impact upon their own way of life.

Churchill’s single-minded commitment to victory served his country wonderfully well in 1940–41, but thereafter it would reveal important limitations. He sought the preservation of British imperial greatness, the existing order, and this purpose would not suffice for most of his fellow countrymen. They yearned for social change, improvements in their domestic condition of a kind which seemed to the prime minister almost frivolous amid a struggle for global mastery.

Churchill never defined credible war aims beyond the defeat of the Axis; when the tide of battle turned, this would become a serious weakness of his leadership and a threat to his domestic popularity. But in 1940–41 his foremost challenge was to convince his people that the war could be won. This became more difficult, rather than less, once the Luftwaffe was vanquished: thoughtful people recognised that the nation remained impotent to challenge German dominance of the Continent.

The nation mobilised its economy less effectively for the Second World War than it had for the First.

In western Russia, the invaders’ juggernaut still rolled forward, sustaining complacency in Berlin. Hitler busied himself with detailed planning for his new empire. He decreed the permanence of occupation, guided by three principles: “first to rule, second to administer, third to exploit”; all dissent was to be rewarded by death. As early as 31 July, Göring ordered preparations for a “total solution to the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.” Tens of thousands of Russian Jews were slaughtered where they were found by the Einsatzgruppen killing squads which followed the Wehrmacht’s spearheads. Nazi officials began drafting plans for a transfer east of 30 million Germanic colonists. Hundreds of thousands of young women were shipped to the Reich from Ukraine and the Baltic states to become domestic servants and farm labourers. Some went not unwillingly: amid the ruin of their own shattered homes and communities, they faced destitution. On 19 August, in his diary Goebbels expressed surprise that Hitler thought the war might end soon and suddenly: “The Führer believes a moment may come when Stalin will sue for peace … I asked him what he would do if that happened. The Führer replied that he would agree to peace. What then happened to Bolshevism would not matter to us. Bolshevism without the Red Army does not represent a threat.”

SINCE THE 1917 REVOLUTION, the population of the Soviet Union had endured the horrors of civil war, famine, oppression, enforced migration and summary injustice. But Barbarossa transcended them all in the absolute human catastrophe that unfolded in its wake, and eventually became responsible for the deaths of 27 million of Stalin’s people, of whom 16 million were civilians.

Marquand’s contemporary novel So Little Time

JAPAN’S MILITARY LEADERS made their critical commitment in 1937, when they embarked upon the conquest of China. This provoked widespread international hostility, and proved a strategic error of the first magnitude. Amid the vastness of the country, their military successes and seizures of territory were meaningless.

it is a constant of history that nations which start wars find it very hard to stop them.

Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov.

In April 1941, Edward McCormick wrote to his son David, who had enlisted with his brother Anthony, and was now embarked with an artillery regiment for the Middle East. “To Mummy, in particular,” their father said, the whole war centres round you and Anthony. The chief motivating force in her life, ever since you were born, has been your health, happiness and safety. These are still her instinctive thoughts, and you don’t need me to tell you therefore how devastating this parting with you both has been to her. I feel it too, and it appals me to think of the hardship, danger and filth which will probably be your experience. There is no doubt whatever, in my mind, that this war had to come. A Nazi victory can only mean the enjoyment of life by a very small number of chosen Germans, and the souls of all people under them will be engulfed. You and Anthony are helping to rid the world of this plague and, while personal feelings make me wish you were far away from it all, I am filled with pride … at what I know you will achieve. Mum and I send you our fondest love and blessings and pray for your well-being and safe return to us. DAD

was the Western Allies’ extreme good fortune that the Russians, and not themselves, paid almost the entire “butcher’s bill” for doing this, accepting 95 percent of the military casualties of the three major powers of the Grand Alliance. In 1940–41, the British Empire defied Hitler alone. Thereafter, the United States made a dominant material contribution to Germany’s defeat, by supplying aid to Russia and Britain which assumed massive proportions from 1943 onwards, and by creating great air and naval armadas. The Anglo-American bomber offensive made an increasingly heavy impact on Germany. The Western Allied armies, however, by deferring a major landing on the Continent until 1944, restricted themselves to a marginal role.

The Russians eventually killed more than 4.5 million German soldiers, while American and British ground and air forces accounted for only about 500,000. These figures emphasise the disparity between respective battlefield contributions.

is among the themes of this book that the Wehrmacht fought many battles brilliantly well, but that

Germany made war very badly. Nonetheless, repeated Anglo-American failures to destroy Hitler’s armies, despite successes in displacing them from occupied territory, meant that the Red Army remained until 1945, as it had been since 1941, the main engine of Nazism’s destruction.

Adam Tooze

John Lukacs

But Himmler committed the SS to a task which could contribute nothing to German victory, and indeed diverted resources from its achievement.

Peter Longerich, one of the more authoritative historians of the Holocaust, has convincingly argued that the Nazi leadership’s commitment to executing the Final Solution through designated death camps was not made until the end of 1941: “The leadership at the centre and the executive organizations on the periphery radicalized one another through a reciprocal process.” Construction of the first purpose-built extermination camp at Bełżec, near Lublin, began only on 1 November 1941. Longerich cites evidence that, until very late that year, key SS officers were still talking of mass deportations rather than extermination, and were chiefly preoccupied with how best to organise and mobilise Jews for slave labour. That

autumn, anti-Jewish propaganda within the Reich was sharply increased, to prepare public opinion for the deportation of German Jews to the east. If the distinction sounds arcane between shipping the condemned to a wilderness where they were expected to starve and gassing them wholesale, it was significant in the evolution of the Holocaust.

“In autumn 1941,” writes Longerich, “the Nazi leadership began to fight the war on all levels as a war ‘against the Jews.’ ” The

“The spirit of human aggression has a magical tendency to evaporate as soon as the shooting starts,” wrote Norman Craig, “and a man then responds to two influences only—the external discipline that binds him and the self-respect within him that drives him on … Courage is essentially competitive and imitative.”

WAR IS PRODIGIOUSLY WASTEFUL, because much of the effort made by rival combatants proves futile, and the price is paid in lives.

U.S. official visiting London said bluntly, “It is now our turn to bat in Asia.”

“The Philippines campaign was a mistake,” says the present-day Japanese historian Kazutoshi Hando, who lived through the war. “MacArthur did it for his own reasons. Japan had lost the war once the Marianas were gone.” The Filipino people whom MacArthur professed to love paid the price for his egomania in lost lives—perhaps half a million, including those who perished from famine and disease—and wrecked homes. It was as great a misfortune for them as for the Allied war effort that neither President Roosevelt nor the U.S. chiefs of staff could contain MacArthur’s ambitions within a smaller compass of folly. In 1944, America’s advance to victory over Japan was inexorable, but the misjudgements of the Southwest Pacific supreme commander disfigured its achievement.

One-third of all German losses in the east took place in the last months of the war,

Among those who found themselves in the path of the Soviet juggernaut were the 9 million people of Hungary, who found an ironic black humour in reminding one another that their nation had been defeated in every war in which it had participated for 500 years.

The Japanese were largely successful in achieving their purpose: America’s losses persuaded the nation’s leadership that an invasion of mainland Japan would prove immensely costly. The consequences, however, proved very different from those Tokyo intended.

one person in Japan had authority remotely resembling that of an American president,” observes Professor Akira Namamura of Dokkyo