"Lightning warfare suggests initiative and spirit of the offensive; it carries with it the element of surprise, not so much in the happening as in the speed and force with which the attack is launched and delivered."
Click here to read about the nature of Total war.
Click here to read about a Kamikaze attack like no other...
"The Reich is being methodically pulverized. The Eighth U.S. Air Force by day and the R.A.F. by night have only begun their deadly round-the-clock job. The coming months will see them unleash a fury that surpasses all the world's earthquakes." Here is an interesting article from World War Two that goes into some detail explaining what is involved when a lieutenant colonel in an infantry regiment presents his plan of attack on a German town that is heavily defended. We hear him as he addresses the junior officers who will do the heavy lifting, and we get a sense of their concerns. Few reporters have ever paid any attention to this aspect of an assault. "Philadelphia Coast Guardsmen yesterday observed the surrender of Germany by recalling that their branch of service fired the first American shot in the war against Germany, capturing the first enemy ship and taking the first Nazi prisoner... It was in September, 1941, that the Coast Guard cutter Northland captured the Norwegian freighter Busko, loaded with equipment for a German weather station to be established in Greenland." American diplomats caught in Germany, Austria, Italy and other occupied lands at the time of FDR's declaration of war were subject to five months of incarceration before they were repatriated. The attached article tells of the hardships and hunger experienced by the citizens of those nations as the war entered its third year. Also seen was the tremendous distrust that was developing between the Italians and the Germans. A PM reporter was present one day in Germany as a mixed mob of Third Army grunts and tank men had a tête-à-tête concerning their observations of the German people:
"Aren't these Heinies the stupidest people you ever saw?" |