THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright © 2011 by Max Hastings All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York www.aaknopf.com Originally published in Great Britain as All Hell Let Loose by HarperPress, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, London. Knopf, Borzoi Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hastings, Max. Inferno : the world at war, 1939–1945 / by Max Hastings. p. cm. Originally published: London : HarperPress, 2010. Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN: 978-0-307-95718-4 1. World War, 1939–1945. I. Title. D743.H364 2011 940.54—dc22 2011013890 Jacket image: U.S. Marines blowing up cave connected to Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, December 31, 1944, by W. Eugene Smith/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Jacket design by Jason Booher v3.1 To Michael Sissons, for thirty years a princely agent, counsellor and friend Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication List of Illustrations List of Maps Introduction Poland Betrayed CHAPTER ONE No Peace, Little War CHAPTER TWO Blitzkriegs in the West CHAPTER THREE 1. Norway 2. The Fall of France Britain Alone CHAPTER FOUR The Mediterranean CHAPTER FIVE 1. Mussolini Gambles 2. A Greek Tragedy 3. Sandstorms Barbarossa CHAPTER SIX Moscow Saved, Leningrad Starved CHAPTER SEVEN America Embattled CHAPTER EIGHT Japan’s Season of Triumph CHAPTER NINE 1. “I Suppose You’ll Shove the Little Men Off” 2. The “White Route” from Burma Swings of Fortune CHAPTER TEN 1. Bataan 2. The Coral Sea and Midway 3. Guadalcanal and New Guinea The British at Sea CHAPTER ELEVEN 1. The Atlantic 2. Arctic Convoys 3. The Ordeal of Pedestal The Furnace: Russia in 1942 CHAPTER TWELVE Living with War CHAPTER THIRTEEN 1. Warriors 2. Home Fronts 3. A Woman’s Place Out of Africa CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Bear Turns: Russia in 1943 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Divided Empires CHAPTER SIXTEEN 1. Whose Liberty? 2. The Raj: Unfinest Hour Asian Fronts CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 1. China 2. Jungle Bashing and Island Hopping Italy: High Hopes, Sour Fruits CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 1. Sicily 2. The Road to Rome 3. Yugoslavia War in the Sky CHAPTER NINETEEN 1. Bombers 2. Targets Victims CHAPTER TWENTY 1. Masters and Slaves 2. Killing Jews Europe Becomes a Battlefield CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Japan: Defying Fate CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Germany Besieged CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Fall of the Third Reich CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 1. Budapest: In the Eye of the Storm 2. Eisenhower’s Advance to the Elbe 3. Berlin: The Last Battle Japan Prostrate CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Victors and Vanquished CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Acknowledgements Notes and References Bibliography Index Other Books by This Author Illustrations Illustrations Ill.1 Poles catch a first glimpse of the Luftwaffe, September 1939. (Hulton Deutsch Collection/CORBIS) Ill.2 SS, police and ethnic German auxiliaries conducting a search at Bydgoszcz in Poland, September 1939. (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Ill.3 Finnish “ghost soldiers,” December 1939. (Keystone/Getty Images) Ill.4 A Russian soldier frozen in death. Finland, March 1940. (Keystone/Getty Images) Ill.5 German troops fighting near Haugsbygd, Norway, April 1940. (akg- images/Ullstein Bild) Ill.6 Dunkirk evacuated, May–June 1940. (IAM/akg- images) Ill.7 German troops enter Paris, 14 June 1940. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-PP-10A-3) Ill.8 Coventry after an air raid, November 1940. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Ill.9 British artillery in action in the North African desert, January 1943. (Mirrorpix) Ill.10 Frenchwoman and German official in occupied France, c. 1943. (Paul Almasy/akg-images) Ill.11 Mass execution of Russian Jews by SS Einsatzgruppen D, c. 1942. (Library of Congress, Washington D.C.) Ill.12 An American family celebrates Thanksgiving, November 1942. (Bettmann/CORBIS) Ill.13 Starving man with bread ration in Leningrad, 1941–42. (akg-images) Ill.14 German troops on the Russian front, winter 1941. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.15 Japanese troops on Bataan, c. 1942. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington D.C.) Ill.16 Indian refugees escaping from Burma, January 1942. (George Rodger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.17 American prisoners in the Philippines, May 1942. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 127-N-114541) Ill.18 Crew abandoning USS Lexington, Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1942. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.19 Japanese soldiers killed on Guadalcanal, August 1942. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.20 Australian troops carrying a wounded comrade to a dressing station on Papua New Guinea, December 1943. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.21 HMS Vansittart on convoy escort duty in the Arctic, February 1943. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.22 Survivors of a U-boat sunk in the North Atlantic, April 1943. (Photo by Jack January/USCG Historian’s Office) Ill.23 WRENS wheeling a torpedo alongside a submarine at Portsmouth, September 1943. (Imperial War Museum A 19471) Ill.24 Chinese foot soldiers, August 1945. (Jack Wilkes/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.25 German grenadier during the retreat from the Soviet Union, 1943–44. (Keystone/Getty Images) Ill.26 The Soviet Union, 1943. (© The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/N. Asnina) Ill.27 Women riveters in an American dockyard, 1942. (CORBIS) Ill.28 Twelve-year-old mill operator at the Perm Engine-Building Works, Soviet Union, 1943. (ITAR-TASS) Ill.29 The Red Army advances. (© The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk [RGAKFD]/Minkevich collection) Ill.30 Drawing by Zainul Abedin from his Bengal Famine series, 1943. (Courtesy of Zainul Abedin) Ill.31 GI feeding an orphan in Italy, c. 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 208-AA-240C-3) Ill.32 Burial at sea for officers and men of USS Intrepid, Leyte Gulf, November 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 80-G-468912) Ill.33 Pilot escaping the cockpit of a burning Hellcat fighter, September 1944. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy/Press Association) Ill.34 A British bomber crew returns from a raid on Germany. Ill.35 A collaborator having her head shaved in a town near Paris, c. 1944. (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.: 111-SC- 193318) Ill.36 Japanese family hiding in a cave on Saipan, June 1944. (U.S. Marine Corps/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Ill.37 British soldier in Burma, November 1944. (Imperial War Museum SE 564) Ill.38 Medics removing a wounded U.S. soldier from the battlefield near Brest, Normandy, August 1944. (AP Photo/Press Association) Ill.39 Paratrooper preparing for the assault on Arnhem, September 1944. (Airborne Assault Museum) Ill.40 Dutch child during the “Hongerwinter” of 1944–45. (© Marius Meijboom/Nederlands Fotomuseum) Ill.41 Two teenage German soldiers captured on the Rhine, March 1945. (Mirrorpix) Ill.42 Russian artillery on the Oder–Neisse front, April 1945. Ill.43 U.S. troops at Ohrdruf concentration camp, April 1945. (AP Photo/Byron H. Rollins/Press Association) Ill.44 U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima, March 1945. (AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps/Press Association) Ill.45 A mother and child among the ruins of Hiroshima. (Alfred Eisenstadt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Maps The Polish Campaign The Finnish Campaign The Invasion of Norway The Last Phase of the 1940 French Campaign The Invasion of Greece The 1942–43 Advance of Eighth Army The German Winter Offensives, 1941 The Pacific Theatre The Battle of the Coral Sea The Battle of Midway The Russians Encircle Hitler’s Sixth Army The Russians Exploit Victory at Kursk Russian Advances Across Ukraine The 1943 Landings in Italy The 1944 Thrust into Poland The Allied Breakout from Normandy The 1945 Western Drive into Germany The 1944 Allied Advances on Germany The Russian Drive to the Oder The Final Russian Assaults Introduction This is a book chiefly about human experience. Men and women from scores of nations struggled to find words to describe what happened to them in the Second World War, which transcended anything they had ever known. Many resorted to a cliché: “All hell broke loose.” Because the phrase is commonplace in eyewitness descriptions of battles, air raids, massacres and ship sinkings, later generations are tempted to shrug at its banality. Yet in an important sense the words capture the essence of what the struggle meant to hundreds of millions of people, plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that in many cases lasted for years, and for at least 60 million were terminated by death. An average of 27,000 people perished each day between September 1939 and August 1945 as a consequence of the global conflict. Some survivors found that the manner in which they had conducted themselves during the struggle defined their standing in their societies for the rest of their lives, for good or ill. Successful warriors retained a lustre which enabled some to prosper in government or commerce. Conversely, at the bar of a London club thirty years after the war, a Guards veteran murmured about a prominent Conservative statesman: “Not a bad fellow, Smith. Such a pity he ran away in the war.” A Dutch girl, growing up in the 1950s, found that her parents categorised each of their neighbours in accordance with how they had behaved during the German occupation of Holland. British and American infantrymen were appalled by their experiences in the 1944–45 northwest Europe campaign, which lasted eleven months. But Russians and Germans fought each other continuously for almost four years in far worse conditions, and with vastly heavier casualties.1 Some nations which played only a marginal military role lost many more people than the Western Allies: China’s ordeal at Japanese hands between 1937 and 1945 cost at least 15 million lives; Yugoslavia, where civil war was overlaid on Axis occupation, lost more than a million dead. Many people witnessed spectacles comparable with Renaissance painters’ conception of the inferno to which the damned were consigned: human beings torn to fragments of flesh and bone; cities blasted into rubble; ordered communities sundered into dispersed human particles. Almost everything which civilised peoples take for granted in time of peace was swept aside, above all the