'The Second World War Illustrated'
This week's excerpt comes from the fifth volume of this popular series covering the period late 1943-1944
Since 2019, Jack Holroyd has been publishing his annual collection of images from each year of World War II. Each volume contains around a thousand images covering every theatre in the war. Accompanied by a variety of maps and charts and some explanatory text, the Second World War Illustrated brings together archival images that were published during the war by both sides. A great overview of the main campaigns and key events in the war. This volume has extensive coverage of the campaign in Normandy.
Since 1938 there had been groups plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime. Opposition to Hitler came from within the German army and the Abwehr (German military intelligence). By mid-1943 the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany; the army plotters and their civilian counterparts became convinced that Hitler should be assassinated so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be formed; then a separate peace could be negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of Germany.
In August 1943, Generalmajor Henning von Tresckow met a young staff officer, Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg, who had lost his left eye and right hand in North Africa. The young colonel had come to the realisation that Germany was being led to disaster and that Hitler's removal from power was necessary. After the Battle of Stalingrad Stauffenberg concluded that the German Führer’s assassination was a lesser moral evil than Hitler's remaining in power.
When Tresckow was assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took charge of planning and executing the assassination attempt. Operation Valkyrie was a standing order, an arrangement to be used in the event that the disruption caused by Allied bombing might cause a breakdown in law and order; or an uprising by the millions of forced labourers from occupied countries being employed in German factories. One of the plotters, Generaloberst Friedrich Olbricht, suggested that Valkyrie could be used to mobilise the Reserve Army for the purpose of an overthrow.
One plan was to shoot Hitler during dinner but this idea was aborted because it was widely believed that Hitler wore a bullet-proof vest. Poisoning him was considered, but this was discounted because his food was specially prepared and tasted. They concluded that a time bomb was the feasible option
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had launched Japan’s war of expansion in the Pacific, the United States began first to halt them and then to introduce a strategy that would lead to that nation’s defeat. First there was the important American victory at Midway Island in June 1942 and then the United States invasion of Guadalcanal, August 1942 –February 1943.
American commanders next set their sights on a leap- frogging campaign across the central Pacific. They intended to take the Marshall and the Mariana Islands and then advance on mainland Japan. The capture of the island of Saipan would give them a base from which long-range bombers could raid Tokyo. (The Boeing B-29 Superfortress first flew on 21 September 1942.)
US forces invaded Saipan on 15 June 1944. Despite a Japanese naval counter-attack, which led to the Battle of the Philippine Sea and heavy fighting on land, Saipan was secured by 9 July. Operations followed against Guam and Tinian, with all three islands secured by August 1944.
The Second World War Illustrated: The Fifth Year is available for Kindle and as a paperback.
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