The Second Front
It should be clear that the following account of the Second Front in the Great Patriotic War brings a decidely Soviet perspective to the matter. This historiographic perspective has informed "patriotic" elements in Russian society to the present day. Absent this perspective, it is impossible for Western ears to understand phrases such as "American aid to Nazi Germany" that require no explantion for many Russians. Thus, phrases such as "Soviets believed" and "Russians claim" should be interpolated with every sentence, though it would have been tedious to compose this text with such repetitive annotations. While more recent Russian treatments have been more nuanced, this perspective emerged as the United States and Britain openly took a course towards an alliance with the military of West Germany and when preparations began for the revival of the Wehrmacht. It is perhaps not surprising that the Soviet ideologists should have projected the origins of the Cold War into the pre-Cold War period.
In the Soviet view, the entire Anglo-American strategy during the Second World War was an attempt to put it into practice an anti-Soviet policy, to the extent that the nature of the war, which was anti-fascist, allowed it. The main efforts of the United States were made to weaken the USSR and Germany as much as possible. Suffice it to point to the deliberate delay in the timing of the war, the delays in opening a second front.
The Second Front (Vtoroy front) was the term usaed in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 for the Western European front, which Britain and the United States pledged to open in Europe back in 1942, which was solemnly announced in the Anglo-Soviet and Soviet-American communiqué on June 12, 1942 in connection with the visit to London and Washington by the then People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov. However, the Western Allies were in no hurry to fulfill their promise, despite the fact that the Soviet leadership repeatedly stated that the Soviet Union could not accept the postponement of the opening of a second front.
The main goal of the second front was formulated in the speech of the English Prime Minister W. Churchill as early as 22/6/1941, on the day of the perfidious invasion of the German Wehrmacht into the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War: to destroy Hitler and the Nazi regime, to provide assistance to Russia and the Russian people because the Nazi regime is a danger to both England and America, and the struggle of every Russian person for his home and hearth is the struggle of every free person in every corner of the globe.
At that time there was neither a second front nor any concrete of its opening. Great Britain was not yet in a position to take action against Nazi Germany, and the United States, which entered the war only in December 1941, had first to recover from the shock caused by the onslaught of aggressive Japanese militarism. Their deliveries to the Soviet Union, which in themselves did not have a decisive influence on the course of the war, at that time, from July 1941 to January 15, 1942, played a completely insignificant role, accrding to Soviet histories.
Various plans for a separate peace were hatched among the fascist generals. Some later writers attached particular importance to the plans of a number of fascist generals, including General Heusinger, to conclude peace in the West at the end of October 1941, when the collapse of the blitzkrieg on the Soviet-German front was already clearly revealed. Görlitz declared that these plans included great concessions to the West, the conclusion of a preliminary peace with France, and firm guarantees on the part of fascist Germany to respect the sovereignty of all Western countries occupied by the Nazi army.
The decision to create a second front was made by representatives of the USSR, the USA and England (the Anti-Hitler coalition ) in connection with the difficult development of events on the Soviet-German front, on which the Soviet people alone fought the Wehrmacht and the armies of Germany's European allies. The joint communiqué, adopted on 12/6/1942, stated that "complete agreement has been reached on the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942."
The timely implementation of this decision could not only provide significant assistance to the Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the struggle against fascist Germany and its allies, but also significantly accelerate the defeat of the fascist bloc, reduce the duration of the war and the number of its victims.
Opening the Second Front in the west was necessary to divert significant forces of fascist German troops from the main Soviet-German front and achieve the fastest possible victory for the allies in the anti-fascist coalition. However, the United States and Great Britain, in accordance with their policy aimed at the mutual exhaustion of the USSR and Germany and the creation of conditions for the establishment of their world domination, delayed the opening of the Second Front.
In the Anglo-American historical literature, the version has become widespread that the victory of the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi Germany was largely determined by US supplies under Lend-Lease, that Lend-Lease was the decisive factor in the success of the Soviet Union. The book Fatal Decisions, published in 1956 in New York, says: American “supplies helped the red colossus to a great extent to compensate for the losses suffered in the first months of the war, and in the course of the war to gradually increase the military power of Russia ... It is no exaggeration to say that without such huge American support, Russian troops would hardly have been able to go on the offensive in 1943."
In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, providing aid to Allied forces, and Hormel shifted into wartime production. Soon SPAM Luncheon Meat was traveling to Britain and Russia to help meet quotas of 15 million cans a week. SPAM was a lend-lease staple, sent in such abundance to Allied troops that Nikita Khrushchev later credited it with the survival of the otherwise starving Russian army. The lend-lease food wouldn't be common until 1943 but many lend-lease staples would be common for the rest of the war. Spam was invariably referred to as the "second front" and egg powder used to be called "Roosevelt's eggs" (yaitsa being the Russian word for both "eggs" and "testicles")
Recently published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR "Correspondence of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with the Presidents of the United States and Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." brings clarity to this issue. The documents placed in the correspondence show that the supplies for the USSR were insignificant: they were three times less than the supplies received by Great Britain3. In addition, the Americans often sent not what the Soviet Union needed, interrupted the dispatch of caravans of cargo ships even in the most difficult periods of the struggle on the Soviet-German front.
However, instead of creating a second front in Europe, Anglo-American troops landed in North Africa and carried out the North African landing operation of November 1942. The Anglo-American command landed troops in Sicily in July 1943, and then in southern Italy. These actions essentially did not mean the discovery of Second Front and only diverted small enemy forces.
The opening of the second front was postponed (without agreement with the USSR) to 1943. But even that year the second front was not opened. The allied troops, having carried out the Sicilian landing operation of 1943 and started the Italian campaign, diverted only no more than 6-7% of the Wehrmacht forces from the main for Germany - the Soviet-German front (eastern front). The Soviet Union continued to bear the brunt of the war.
In the war against the Soviet Union, the fascist German army suffered the greatest losses in men and military equipment. According to the German General Staff of the Ground Forces, already in the first five months of the war, that is, even before the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive near Moscow, the losses of German troops (killed, wounded and missing) amounted to 743,000 people, 23.1 percent of the total the number of German troops stationed on the Soviet-German front.
The active nature of the combat operations of the Soviet Army, expressed in stubborn defensive battles and decisive offensive operations, and the widely developed partisan movement in the rear of the enemy put out of action one after another regular German divisions. The Hitlerite command was forced to use its operational and strategic reserves ahead of time and replenish troops by mobilizing human contingents inside the country and transferring divisions from other, less active fronts.
Summarizing the data of the reports (mainly the report cards of the operational department of the German General Staff of the Ground Forces), one can trace the general picture of the transfer of troops from other countries and theaters of military operations to the Soviet-German front. Such large-scale transfers of troops to the Soviet-German front could only be carried out because the situation in other theaters of military operations made it possible.
J. V. Stalin, in a letter to Roosevelt dated March 16, 1943, wrote that “during the most intense period of fighting against the Nazi troops, in the period February-March, the Anglo-American offensive in North Africa was not only not forced, but was not carried out at all, and the deadline for it has been postponed. Meanwhile, Germany had already managed to transfer 36 divisions from the West against the Soviet troops, of which 6 were tank divisions. It is easy to understand what difficulties this created for the Soviet Army and how it facilitated the position of the Germans on the Soviet-German front.""
At the Tehran Conference of 1943, where the USSR, the USA and Great Britain reached an agreement on delivering coordinated strategic strikes against Germany and on establishing close contacts between allied headquarters during operations in Europe. At the conference, the Western Allies made a new commitment - to open a second front in May 1944.
The major victories of the Soviet troops over the Nazi troops in 1943–44 showed that the Soviet Armed Forces themselves were capable of liberating the peoples of Europe from the Nazi yoke. In the conditions of the rapid advance of the Red Army and its approach to the borders of Germany, the German command continued to keep the bulk of its troops on the Soviet-German front and additionally transported here the best formations removed from the European Western Front. In addition, a significant part of the German troops were in Yugoslavia, Poland and other occupied countries of Eastern Europe, where, due to the approach of the Red Army intensified the resistance movement.
For these reasons, the Hitlerite leadership did not have the opportunity to keep forces in France sufficient to repel the landing of the Anglo-American troops, and reliably strengthen the defense of the Atlantic coast. This prompted the Anglo-American command on June 6, 1944, to land 43 divisions in northwestern France to finally open the Second Front A significant factor that did not allow to strengthen the Wehrmacht troops in the West was the offensive of the Red Army in Belarus.
Generals such as Rommel, Stulpnagel and others had plans to start negotiations with the Western powers in 1944, open the front for the Anglo-American troops in the West and, having concluded a separate peace with England and the USA, turn the troops from the Western front to the East. Soem German historians criticized the allied command for "indecisive action", which, they say, made it difficult to implement plans for a separate peace. Giving an assessment of the invasion of 1944, Speidel writes: “As during the landing in Africa in 1942, so now the Allied command did not use the large operational capabilities available to the end, because otherwise the war would have been ended as early as 1944”.
Quite often in the Anglo-American historical literature one can come across assertions that starting from the middle of 1944, namely after the opening of the second front, the center of military events allegedly shifted to the West. But the facts show that even during this period of the war the main forces of the Hitlerite army were deployed on the Soviet-German front, which was the decisive front. Of the 333 Nazi divisions available on May 1, 1944, there were 191 divisions on the Soviet-German front, and only 60 divisions on the Western front.
Even during this period of the war the main forces of the Hitlerite army were deployed on the Soviet-German front, which was the decisive front. Of the 333 Nazi divisions available on May 1, 1944, there were 191 divisions on the Soviet-German front, and only 60 divisions on the Western front.
Hitler's troops, opposed to the Anglo-American troops, were significantly inferior in combat capability to the troops operating against the Soviet Army. These were for the most part either restored or newly formed divisions. The shortage of these divisions was 25-30 percent, and the tank divisions had no more than 100-130 tanks. The chief of staff of the Nazi troops on the Western Front, Lieutenant General Westphal, gave the following assessment to his troops: “It was well known that the combat capability of the German troops in the West by the time of the invasion was already much lower than the combat capability of our divisions in the East. The formations that suffered huge losses in the battles on the Eastern Front had to be exchanged for the same formations replenished in the West."
This led to a serious deterioration in the strategic position of fascist Germany, but the Soviet-German front continued to be the main and decisive one: at the beginning of July 1944, 235 divisions of Germany and its allies were operating here, and only 65 divisions in the West. In July-August, during the Falaise operation of 1944, the allied forces broke through the defenses of the fascist German troops and, having a significant superiority in forces and means, within a month, with the active support of the French partisans, liberated all of northwestern France and Paris. On August 15, 1944, American-French troops landed in southern France and, advancing rapidly, liberated southern and southwestern France by September 10. In September 1944, the Allies carried out the Dutch operation of 1944, but they failed to free the Netherlands and bypass the Siegfried Line.
At the beginning of 1945, the Soviet-German front continued to divert the main forces of the enemy: on January 1, 195.5 Nazi divisions were operating here, on the Western Front and in Italy - 107. In Europe, 59 fascist German divisions and 13 brigades were transferred, while only 12 divisions and 5 brigades left the Soviet-German front to the west. Taking advantage of their vast superiority in manpower and equipment, the Allied forces conducted a number of successful operations in 1945 (the largest were the Meuse-Rhine and Ruhr) and by the beginning of May reached the river Elba and to the western regions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, where they met with Soviet troops.
The Second Front played an important role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and made a significant contribution to achieving victory in World War II. However, even after its opening, the Soviet-German front remained the main one: in January 1945, the main forces of the Wehrmacht operated here - 195 divisions; all allied forces in Western Europe were opposed by 74 divisions.
Theh Soviet view is that it was not until June 1944 that the Allies opened the Army with Operation Overlord, when it became clear that the Red Army itself was capable of finally defeating Nazi Germany on its own and solving the problem of liberating Europe from the fascist yoke. The delay in the opening of the second front was not accidental, it was dictated by the interested circles of England and the United States, who pursued their own selfish goals.
In a message to W. Churchill on June 24, 1943, after the refusal of the Western powers to open a second front in 1943,
When the second front was opened in Western Europe in June 1944, this was done after the attempts of the Anglo-American troops to develop operations in Italy were thwarted by the resistance of the German army group under the command of Field Marshal A. Kesselring in the Gustav Line. The sluggish actions of the Western allies undoubtedly strengthened the position of the Nazi regime and dragged out the war. Von Hassel noted in his diary on February 23, 1944: "Martial law has been stabilized by the slowdown of the Anglo-American offensive in Italy"; On April 8, 1944, he again wrote "about the strategic mistakes of the Anglo-Americans"4*. Under these conditions, there was no need to even think about a strike on the Balkans and access to South-Eastern Europe. It was necessary to prevent the liberation of Europe by the Soviet armed forces.
The continuation of the campaign in the Balkans, apparently, would lead to the fact that not only all of Germany, but also Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and, possibly, France would be liberated by Soviet troops. “A strike in the Balkans,” writes C. Marshall (Consultant to the House of Representatives on foreign policy issues), “quite possibly, would have opened the way for the Russians to the Ruhr”®. Finally, the authoritative opinion of the biographer of Roosevelt, R. Sherwood: “If the forces of the Anglo-Americans were concentrated in southern and southeastern Europe, what could ultimately prevent the Russians from penetrating into the Ruhr, the Saar and even Normandy?” Thus, it was not about the fulfillment of the obligation, but about the achievement of political goals by force.
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