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4th Historic-Battles Article
Competition
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Revolution and Aftermath:
Central Europe 1830-1860
David Kudzia (CZ)
“Change
your thoughts and you change your world.”
History is the study of human change.
The way we were, the way we are, and what we may
yet become. If change is the reason
why we study history, then it makes perfect sense that
revolutions figure so prominently in textbooks.
Intervals between revolutions are often
neglected, as some historians lavish their attention on
the large and exciting shakeups. It
should come as little surprise then that failed revolts
are often seen as great disappointments.
This attitude towards failure, or perceived
failure, has dominated the historical thinking towards
the Revolutions of 1848. Broadly
speaking, these events are seen as a “turning point that
failed to turn”. While the
Revolutions of 1848 may not have brought about the
immediate and widespread change that many revolutions
do, they provided a wake-up call of sorts.
They helped bridge the gap between underlying
popular
movements (ie nationalism and liberalism) and the
established order, showing that politicians would have
to come to terms with them. The events of those years
helped show that change could not be stifled forever and
that accommodations would eventually have to be made.
The first of the revolts
to be considered came about in 1830.
Greek independence in 1829 from the Ottoman Empire
helped fire nationalist feeling in many parts of Europe,
including places like Poland and Belgium.
A bloody and doomed popular uprising in Russian
controlled Poland showed the strength of the nationalist
call. The installation of the July
Monarchy in France helped forward the cause of
liberalism, as voting was expanded to more of the
propertied classes.
Small states in southern Germany, like Baden,
were developing or had developed constitutions,
emboldening liberals in other parts of Central Europe.
The growing middle class, the proponent of 19th
century liberalism, was flexing its muscle, testing the
limits to which it would be allowed to go.
This strengthening of
liberalism and its partner, nationalism, was aided by
the relaxation of government controls and restrictions
imposed on political activity. The
tactics and policies supported by Metternich, however
limited and ineffective, still presented a challenge to
the legitimacy and power of these new “isms”.
Loosening of censorship laws began in the early
1840s. Even where laws did not
loosen, the appetite for reading materials exploded.
For example, the circulation of the Vossische
Zeitung, a contemporary German newspaper, doubled to
around 20,000.
Public discourse on politics could not be
constrained by laws alone, as debates moved into
formerly non-political arenas.
Another phenomenon, the
increased economic strains and the transition into the
Industrial Revolution, was occurring as well.
Industrial development, especially in railroad
construction, rapidly grew during the Vormarz
(pre-March) Period . Coupled with
the last great agrarian famine in Europe, the “Hungry
Forties” did little to contain revolutionary sentiment.
This was exhibited most prominently by the Silesian
Weavers Revolt of 1844. Competition
from cheap manufactured goods from Britain drove the
workers of proto-industry into poverty, then revolt,
only to be brutally crushed by the Prussian army.
Even this defeat, memorialized in paintings and
cartoons of the time, seemed to show the increasing lack
of control that governments had on life.
Yet another nail in the
coffin of the status quo was the turnover of monarchs in
Central Europe. Old stalwart
defenders of the Vienna Congress System were replaced by
rulers viewed to be more sympathetic to liberal causes.
In Austria, Emperor Francis died, losing
Metternich one of his strongest allies.
With the ascension of the feeble minded Ferdinand
to the Habsburg throne, the various Archdukes of the
Empire gained power, leading to bureaucratic infighting
and governmental paralysis. Prussia
also experienced a change of leaders.
Friedrich Wilhelm III died, leaving his heir,
Friedrich Wilhelm IV to take the throne.
Before coming to power, he had shown opposition
to the repressive nature of the Metternich system,
leading liberals to view his ascension as a positive
step for their cause. However, his
hatred also extended to representative governments, as
he viewed them as “French-modern” and “mechanistic”.
As a “High Conservative”, combining a deep
religiosity and monarchical power, he favored a system
of representation based on the medieval concepts of
estates. This, unfortunately for
middle class interests, was not widely known, and thus
they viewed him as an ally in the struggle for
liberalization.
This combination of
factors, along with the necessary sparks that every
revolution required, came together in 1848.
The case study of the Habsburg lands provides a
useful tool to show how these revolts spread like
wildfire and were put down. The
March speeches of Lajos Kussoth and nationalism in
Hungary excited revolutionary elements in Vienna,
causing a crisis in leadership.
Metternich was convinced to resign and fled the country
to Britain. This action, most likely
an overreaction to the street protests, sparked a chain
of events which engulfed most of Germany and the
Habsburg Monarchy in revolt and unrest. Everywhere,
from Lombardy to Bohemia, was convulsed with street
violence after the news of Metternich's forced
resignation.
With the Hungarian
independence movement, fueled by Kossuth, underway, the
Empire seemed to be coming apart.
Violence in Austrian Italy broke out, supported,
foolishly it turned out, by the Kingdom of Piedmont.
Very few parts of the Empire seemed to be loyal
to the throne. As time progressed
though, the revolutions lost steam.
A Czech rising after the closing of the Pan-Slavic
Congress in Prague led to its brutal repression by the
Austrian general Windischgrätz. His
bombardment of the city broke the back of the Czechs,
and his army was soon turned towards Vienna.
The capital city, grossly understaffed in police
forces, was riven by workers' demonstrations, factory
burnings, even mutiny amongst the few security forces
there.
Combined with the Croatian forces of Ban Jellačic,
whose fears were roused by the rise of nationalism in
Hungary (of which Croatia was a part of), they stormed
the city, ruthlessly taking it back.
In Italy too, the forces
of the counter-revolution were victorious.
Field Marshall Radetzky, commander of Habsburg
troops in Italy, achieved a series of crushing victories
over the army of Piedmont and the revolutionary
militias. The loyalty of most of his
troops was secure, as many were Croats or Germans,
ethnicities still loyal to the Emperor. This policy, of
stationing troops from various parts of the empire away
from their homelands, proved invaluable to the
Austrians, showcasing their skill at managing an
exceedingly diverse and restless fold of peoples.
Lastly, Hungary's
nationalist ambitions for freedom, while cloudy and
uncertain, were defeated as well.
Although they considered themselves still part of the
Austrian Empire, they intended to run their own affairs,
both foreign and domestic. This was
unacceptable to the counter-revolutionaries.
Windischgrätz, whose intention had been to attack
Hungary first, after dealing with Vienna, turned his
attention back to the Magyars.
Jellačic also invaded
Hungary, having been one of the first to advocate an
invasion to crush the independence movement.
His plan finally gained acceptance in Vienna
after the defeat of the revolution there, as the
government tacitly gave its consent to his idea.
His firmness in his resolve was certain.
“You want Hungary to be a free and independent
Hungary”, he told Hungarian Prime Minister Batthyány,
“and I pledged myself to support the political unity of
the Austrian empire. If you do not
agree to that, only the sword can decide between us.”
Being indebted to him, and reliant upon his loyal
Croatian troops for support, the invasion was allowed to
commence.
The invasion did not go
as planned, as few attacks ever do.
The Hungarians turned to guerrilla warfare, thwarting
attempts to defeat them quickly.
Most historians would argue that Russian intervention
saved the situation for Austria, as the Russians took
upon themselves the mantle of the guardian of the status
quo. Recent arguments have been made
that the Russian attack did little to crush the
rebellion, except convince it of its eventual defeat.
In any case, the revolts in the Habsburg domains
had been put down and the power of the monarchy, backed
by the army, had been demonstrated.
Throughout the rest of
central Europe the situation ended very similarly, but
with many important differences.
While the unrest in the Habsburg Empire went very
quickly to violence and large scale armed conflict, the
revolts in much of Germany took the form of more
limited, but by no means less violent, military action.
This was primarily due to the difference in the
composition of the revolutionaries.
In the German Confederation, the most organized
reformers were moderate constitutional liberals.
Radical democrats played little part in the
political debates in Germany. While
Hungarian nationals and Italian revolutionaries sought
independence, German reformers sought a unified German
Reich, based on constitutional and nationalist premises.
This is shown in the
convening and subsequent actions of the Frankfurt
National Assembly. This meeting of
German moderate liberals sought to create a solution to
the 'German Problem'. Elections were
forced in most of the German lands, owing to the
widespread riots following Metternich's resignation.
Leaders all over central Europe followed the
Viennese example and, at least initially, gave in to
public demands. Delegates were selected, the vast
majority of whom were stereotypical 19th
century liberals: wealthy middle class businessmen,
moderate constitutional monarchists, etc.
All German speaking peoples were invited,
including the Austrians.
They intended to resolve the problems facing
German unity and worked with dutiful diligence
throughout the summer and fall of 1848.
Several problems hampered
and ultimately doomed this attempt to
institutionalize liberal policy.
Firstly, the international dispute over
Schleswig-Holstein showed the impotence of the Assembly.
Although this dispute is too complicated for the
scope of this essay, suffice it to say that the failure
of the Assembly's “Reichwar” greatly weakened the
political standing and credibility of that body.
Secondly, the debates over the problem of
Austria's part in a German Reich remained unresolved,
destroying any hope of creating a unified Germany.
The problem of 'Gross' versus 'Klein' continued
to haunt German liberals throughout this period.
Were Austria's non German populations to be
included in this Reich? The
Habsburgs were understandably unwilling to give up their
domains outside of the Confederation.
Third, the refusal of Friedrich Wilhelm IV to
accept the imperial crown of the final constitution
drafted in 1849 drove the final nail into the Assembly's
coffin. Without the backing of
Prussia or Austria, any attempt to unify the Germans
would be futile.
This brings the
discussion to Prussia. With the
overflow of revolutionary fervor from the Habsburg
lands, Prussia too was convulsed.
Demonstrations broke out in Berlin, demanding the
adoption of a constitution and other liberal policies.
Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the monarchy,
Friedrich Wilhelm IV gave way. After
violence broke out in the streets between the army and
the demonstrators, he withdrew the army and publicly
decried the violence. Being subject
now to the mob, he accepted their demands for a
constitution, even going so far as to publicly embrace
the ideal of German unity (symbolized by the German
tricolor). He promised to take the
lead in unifying Germany and installed a constitutional
government, headed by leading businessmen, among them
Ludolf Camphausen and David Hansemann.
The king however, did
very little to follow through on his agreement.
The liberal government in Berlin lasted only
until September, when after several changes in
ministries, the aristocratic Junkers regained control.
He violently and harshly rejected the crown that
the Frankfurt Assembly offered him, decrying it as
illegitimate. This led to the final
failure and dissolution of the Assembly.
Additionally, he utilized the Prussian army,
eager to defeat this rash of revolutions, to crush
uprisings in the rest of Germany.
Prussian boots tramped over Saxony and Baden, restoring
the former regimes and doing away with constitutions and
other changes of the revolutions.
Taking a step back and
viewing the political landscape of central Europe in
1850, the apparent lack of change is quite remarkable.
No states had been destroyed or absorbed.
Few dynastic overthrows had occurred, with the
exceptions of a few lesser German states.
It looked much the same as in the Vormarz Period.
No wonder so many historians have seen the
revolutions as failures. No
parliament ruled a nation and the ideal of a unified
Germany is still far beyond anyone's sight.
To accept this apparent lack of change however,
would be making a critical error.
Much had changed, but it was a subtle and more internal
change. Prussia does have, limited
and weak though it may be, a constitutional basis for
its government. Throughout Germany, civic, social, and
business leaders have demonstrated their power to their
respective governments. Monarchs can
no longer rule by decree and will alone, but are
increasingly forced to build a consensus and seek
outside help. This is starts to
become true in Prussia, where budgetary concerns begin
to bring the Landstag into greater prominence. Prussia
also has instituted a limited and partially democratic
voting system, based on a three tiered tax structure.
Even in Austria, where the pendulum swung towards
the extreme of absolutism, free institutions and their
goals were acknowledged in official declarations to be a
positive.
While short lived and ultimately unsuccessful in
their aims, the Revolutions of 1848 had changed the way
the public, and government especially, viewed
liberalization and constitutionalism.
Economically, the
revolutions and their aftermath showed the newly found
power of the middle class. Wealthy
businessmen, who had begun transforming their success
into political power, exercised it most extensively in
Prussia. They joined the government
to bring support and legitimacy to the new ministries
and continued to advance their class's interests after
the collapse of political reform. It
was clear to most in government that accommodations
would have to be made to these new comers in order to
maintain their grip on power.
Lastly, the apparent
widespread failure of the Revolutions of 1848
fundamentally changed the way liberals thought about
their ends and means. They lost much
of their Romantic influenced sentimentalism and
optimism, turning to more practical measures (ie the
turn towards Prussian leadership in unifying Germany) to
reach their goals. This gives rise
to the Realpolitik of Bismark and his
contemporaries.
While the Revolutions of
1848 failed in their immediate goals of unifying Germany
and spreading constitutional liberalism, they
contributed greatly to final achievement of said goals.
By demonstrating the power and reach of their
ideals, German liberals increased their bargaining power
with the formerly aristocratic dominated governments.
Throughout the decades following the revolutions,
the middle class gained greatly in power, wealth, and
support. While the process took many
years, it led to the co-opting of moderate liberals into
government, allowing them access to power, and
ultimately creating a uniquely German version of
liberalism.
Bibliography:
Sked, Alan.
The Decline an d Fall of the Habsburg Empire
1815-1918, (Great Britain: Pearson Education Ltd,
2001)
Barclay,
David. “Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Prussia, 1840-1850” In Modern
Prussian History 1830-1947, ed. Philip Dwyer, 66-85.
Longman, 2001
Blackbourn,
David. History of Germany
1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century, (Blackwell
Press, 2003)
Barclay,
David. “Political trends and movements, 1830-1850” in
Germany 1800-1870, ed Jonathan Sperber (Oxford:
University Press, 2004), 46-68
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The War Comes To Berlin
Herb (T71Herb)
Prelude
World War
II would bring about the destruction of
cities all across the globe, causing
horrendous civilian suffering. Lives were
ruined, and nations went bankrupt. The
capitals of the participants, the main
geographic symbol of a war state, would all
go through different experiences. In Asia,
the former Chinese capital of Nanking was
pillaged and raped by Japanese troops, while
Tokyo was to be firebombed by Allied
aircraft. In Europe, the Luftwaffe would
spread death to Warsaw, Belgrade and London,
which was also harassed by German wonder
weapons later on in the war. Axis Rome was
both bombed and battled over, causing
significant damage to the city, while Soviet
Moscow had barely escaped Nazi capture in
1941, but had been hit by several damaging
airraids. Towards the end of 1943, Adolf
Hitler's Berlin, the capital of fascist
Germany, was to begin to undergo its own
suffering.
A city learns to endure
By the beginning of
September, 1943, Berlin had to yet to truely
suffer the consequences of Hitler's war, now
entering its fourth year. The first major
Anglo-American air raids upon the capital
had only just begun, using over 2,200 tons
of explosives in the first two attacks. The
combination of strong anti-aircraft
batteries and its relative distance from
Allied air bases had posed a bit of a threat
to Allied pilots, delaying large scale
attacks. Earlier, less powerful raids were
viewed as entertainement by some Berliners,
with crowds watching the show, and many
dancing to them, such was the problem of
boredom affecting the city. Big department
stores and luxury restaraunts had been
closed early in the year, and film theaters
were showing little more than Joseph
Goebbels' anti-semitic propaganda, leaving
concerts and plays as the main escape from
city life.
The city braced itself
well as the scope and intensity of the
Allied raids increased with the commencement
of the Royal Air Force's "Battle of Berlin,"
including by creating an excellent air raid
command center, and treating many house
roofs with material to retard possible
fires. Berlin's inhabitants were also helped
by its broad streets and the large amount of
stone buildings, lessening the ability of
Western Air Forces to wreck it, "from end to
end" as Bomber Harris had predicted they
could; however, the city still suffered
considerable damage. During the gray winter
months, the bombings continued, and in
April, 1944, transportation in the city was
largely cut off, but the city pressed on.
Workers walked to work, mail continued to be
delivered, and food shops remained open. A
report from the security service of the SS
(Sicherheitsdienst) reported that Berliners
would withstand such hardships because,
"there is nothing else to do." (Beck,
p.85, p.110)
With the increase in
Allied raids, so too increased complaints
and rumors among Berliners. They were not
used to living under such conditions. Seeing
such activities as threats to their rule,
Nazi party members were granted the power to
arrest anyone suspected of such crimes, and
escort them to jail. In prison, many of
these new convicts were often murdered, as
the Nazis sought to fully use the power that
they still possesed over their people. Such
policies wouldn't cease until the Third
Reich finally capitulated.
Foretellers of destruction
In the middle of 1944,
as the Ostfront began to crumble under the
weight of the Red Army's massive summer
offensive, refugees began filtering into the
capital. Thousands were arriving every day,
by rail, wagon, and even by foot. Berliners,
in an effort to ease these nomads' troubles,
established soup kitchens on railroad
platforms, all the while handing out
clothing, most of which was formerly worn by
the victims of the Nazi gas chambers. These
refugees spread their stories, some real,
others imagined, about the Red Army's gross
ill-treatment of the conquered German
population. Those in the capital aware of
the Einsatzgruppen's massacres in the East,
and the German concentration camp system,
understood what was coming, and attempted to
escape it. The typical Berliner, on the
other hand, shrugged most refugee stories
off as mere lunacy.
The storm nears
As the war continued,
the battle front continued to close in on
Germany. By the end of January, 1945, the
German front in the east had collapsed,
enabling George Zhukov's 1st Belorussion
Front to reach the Oder, less than 40 miles
from the capital. Ivan Konev's 1st Ukranian
front had charged into south western Poland,
and by the beginning of March, had reached
the river Neisse, holding the Soviet line
immediately south of Zhukov. In early April,
Rokossovky's 2nd Belorussian also reached
the Oder river line, following the collapse
of Konigsberg in East Prussia. With the Red
Army pushing westward, more and more
refugees were reaching the city. Allied
bombing raids did not lessen, but only
increased. Even with adequate air raid
protection measures in place, whole city
blocks were obliterated. Broad city streets
were turned into winding, narrow paths,
which sliced through massive piles of
rubble. Buildings were turned windowless,
and the soot from burning material could be
seen everywhere. Room sized bomb craters
dotted the city, and many houses were left
without roofs. When the Allied raids finally
ceased in late April, 1945, they left three
billion cubic feet of debris laying on the
roads, and practically destroyed one third
of the houses in the city.
With the Soviet forces
positioned so closely to Berlin, and with
time running out before another offensive
began, it was slowly hitting Adolf Hitler
that he must prepare the city to be
defended. He appointed Helmuth Reymann as
the Commander of the Berlin Defense Area on
March 6. Berlin was cut up into 8 defensive
pie-slice shaped sectors, with a commander
appointed for each, along with having a
small ring around the government quarter in
the capital. Reymann had few forces at his
disposal, and the ones he did possess were
often sent to the front, including many of
his anti-aircraft batteries, and Reserve
Army units, but there was another problem
that plagued Reymann's mind. Inside the
city, there were still millions of
civilians.
Reymann had begged
Hitler to, at the very least, evacuate the
children that remained in the city, but the
Nazi leader refused to acknowledge their
very existence. On investigating further,
Reymann was notified that there were hardly
any evacuation plans prepared for civilians
still living in the city, causing him to
accept the fact that he would have to
support millions of civilians during a
fierce battle. When questioning Goebbels on
how to feed such a large population, the
Nazi propaganda minister only gave unreal
solutions, such as having cattle brought
into the battlezone. Some of the civilians
wished to stay, to watch the destruction of
the evil Nazi forces once and for all, but
most wished to reach safety.
The Soviets plan their attack
On April 1, both
Zhukov and Konev were summoned to Berlin and
ordered to prepare a plan of attack upon the
Nazi capital. The 49 year old Zhukov, known
for his use of brute strength against the
Germans, planned a massive artillery barrage
leading up to the onslaught of Soviet
infantry. Following a breakthrough by the
infantry, Zhukov would then send in
General-Colonel Katukov's 5th Guards Tank
Army and Gen.-Col. Bogdanov's 2nd Guards
Tank forces to charge to Berlin and cut the
city off. The main springboard of Zhukov's
offensive was to be the 30 mile long by 10
mile deep Küstrin bridgehead, manned by 8th
Guards Army, and led by General Chuikov, the
same commander who fought the Germans in the
streets of Stalingrad. Konev, a year younger
thank Zhukov and generally considered better
educated, had a more difficult task to reach
the city. Konev would have to reposition his
forces to support his planned dawn attack
across the Neisse, following an immensely
powerful artillery bombardment. Once
bridgeheads were established, Konev would
swing his tank forces northwestwards to cut
off Berlin. Farther north, Rokossovsky would
mostly act to protect Zhukov's flank, while
pushing to the British lines.
Map sourced from:
www.onwar.com/maps/wwii/eastfront2/1finaloffensive45.htm
Joseph Stalin, upon
the end of Konev's presentation, consented
to both Marshals' plans, turning their plans
into formal directives, but that wasn't the
only important occurence that came out of
the meeting. Following the presentations, it
seems to have been recognized by all, but
never mentioned during the meeting, that
Zhukov would have the glory of taking the
city. As he stared at the map portraying the
current military situation and the
organization of forces, Stalin began drawing
the demarcation line that would seperate the
two's forces. The line that Stalin would
draw ended abruptly 65 miles southeast of
Berlin. Both Konev and Zhukov understood
that the door had just been opened for the
1st Ukranian front commander to take the
city. The next morning, both Soviet leaders
flew out to their front headquarters to
begin preparing for their offensives. Orders
were issued, division commanders began
planning, and the buildup of forces
commenced, not stopping until mid-April. The
race for the city was on.
Largely standing in
the way of Zhukov's steamroller was General
Theodore Busse's 9th Army, holding the line
directly to the east of Berlin. This was the
same formation that helped drive to the
outskirts of Moscow in 1941, but now the
army was defending its own capital, and few
of its troops from the 1941 campaign
remained. The veterans of Eastern front
combat knew how fierce the fighting would
become, but alot of the new Volkksturm units
would receive their baptism of a major
Soviet artillery barrage in the coming
weeks. All, however, were suffering from a
waning morale. Officers were ordered to pick
up the spirits of their soldiers, and did so
be telling them the awful predictions of
life under Soviet occupation, informing them
of US President Roosevelt's death, and
promising them that new war winning wonder
weapons would appear shortly.
To Busse's left lay
General Hasso von Manteuffel's 3rd Panzer
Army, which held the coastal plain north of
Berlin. Together, these forces formed Gen.
Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula
(AGV), a group which in total possesed less
than 700 operable panzers and self propelled
guns, and had only 744 artillery weapons,
with an additional 600 anti-aircraft guns
from Germany's cities. Following the removal
of several panzer division to Prague from
AGV on April 5, Heinrici was forced to
transfer many units from 3rd Panzer to 9th
Army. Von Manteuffel could handle such
maneuvering for the moment, as his region
was largely flooded by the Oder from the
spring thaw, but consequences would be
suffered once Zhukov broke through Busse's
left wing. South of AGV, facing Konev on the
Neisse river line, was General Graser's 4th
Panzer Army, of Army Group Center. Graser's
force was in little better strength position
than either of Heinrici's two armies.
Once Heinrici took
command of AGV on March 20, he had the
troops begin preparing for the coming Soviet
onslaught. He had his forces create 3
defensive lines, which reached back to the
Nazi capital in some areas. He tried to
focus his available resources on the crucial
sandy plateau of the Seelow Heights, west of
the Küstrin bridgehead, from which his
artillery could knock out Soviet tanks at
long distances, in low-lying areas. As the
Germans dug in, they could hear the engines
of the thousands of tanks and trucks
bringing artillery to the front. The Soviets
made little effort to disguise their
intentions, but the Germans wouldn't know
just how massive the buildup was until the
guns began to roar.
On April 15, Heinrici
was at his Army Group command post near
Prenzlau. He was very busy trying to
forecast the timing of the now inevitable
Soviet offensive, and he was not one to be
bothered, but former Minister of Armaments
Albert Speer and Berlin Commandant Reymann
arrived to talk with the Army Group Leader.
Speer begged Heinrici and Reymann not to
demolish the capital's numerous bridges, as
millions of civilians depended on them, but
neither of the two would promise anything,
though Heinrici told Reymann to confer with
him prior to demolishing bridges which
carried electric, water, or gas lines within
them. Following Speer's speech, Reymann
began telling Heinrici that he did not know
how he could hold the city with so few
forces at his disposal. Heinrici responded
by telling the Commandant of his hope to
avoid a battle in the city altogether.
Little else could be done to save the city.
As the visitors
finally left later in the evening, Heinrici
turned his attention back to a more pressing
issue, anticipating the timing of the Soviet
offensive. He scowered over intelligence
reports, looked over interrogation
transcripts of Russian prisoners, and
communicated with his field commanders. As
the afternoon turned to night, Heinrici
paced around his office, deeply in thought.
Finally, shortly after 8 pm, he made his
decision. "I believe the attack will take
place in the early hours tomorrow," he said.
He sent out an immediate order to Busse's
9th Army: "Move back and take up positions
on the second line of defense." (Read
and Fischer, p.305)
"The capital of Fascist Germany
will be taken"-Zhukov's April 16 Order
of the Day to his troops
(Read and Fischer, p.309)
In the early morning
hours of April 16, Zhukov's artillery guns
began to fire for 20 minutes straight, in
which time they unloaded 500,000 shells,
mortars and rockets. Following the ending of
this massive bombardment, Soviet infantry
rushed the largely vacant German lines,
finishing off what was left of the German
covering forces, which were acting as mere
cannon fodder for 9th Army. By approximately
7 am, Berlin time, 3 hours after the
beginning of 1st Belorussian Front's attack,
Red Army soldiers began reaching the 2nd
German defensive line, manned by Busse's
mainly unscathed 9th Army. From their 2nd
line, which had many steep slopes and the
plateaus, the Germans opened fire with what
weapons they could, grinding Zhukov's
offensive to a near halt.
Two hours after the
beginning of Zhukov's attack, Konev's 1st
Ukranian Front began an artillery
bombardment that would last for nearly three
hours. By the time his guns ceased firing,
his forces had established 133 crossings
over the Neisse, with tanks already moving
across the western bank of the river. On
more open terrain than Zhukov's forces, 1st
Ukranian Front was more succesful in its
efforts, gaining more ground quicker. In
just a few days, as his forces pressed on
into the German lines, he began seperating
the German 9th and 4th Panzer Armies,
creating a void which the Germans could not
fill.
As April 16 wore on,
Zhukov was becoming more and more impatient.
His forces had suffered heavy casualties in
their frontal attacks upon German positions,
and they were bogged down. Zhukov was also
nervous about Konev's progress in the south.
He had never predicted that anything like
this would happen. Fearing that he would
lose the race to the capital, at midday,
Zhukov prematurely threw in his armored
forces, pitting them against the elevated
German positions, which were using their 88
mm flak guns. Hundreds of tank crews would
pay for Zhukov's decision.
By the second day of
the attack, April 17, Konev had broken threw
along an 18 mile front, threatening the rear
of 9th Army. His engineers had set up highly
capable bridges, able to support his drive.
Zhukov's decision, which caused considerable
chaos at the front with so many Soviet
forces so crowded together, was finally
beginning to pay off, as the German defense
was slowly starting to crack around Seelow,
at the unnecessary cost of thousands of
Soviet lives. By the next day, April 18, 1st
Belorussian front finally breached through
the German line along the Seelow Heights,
after suffering an astonishing 30,000
casualties. The German defense, which had
held up the Soviets for nearly 3 days under
immense pressure, was almost completely
unraveled.
"A new and heavy trial, perhaps the
heaviest of all, is before us. "-The
Official Berlin Nazi Party Newspaper in its
mid-April edition
(Ryan, p.400)
As the Soviet
offensive began, Berliners began to realize
that their time had come. Citizens in
Berlin's eastern suburbs were awakened by
the thunder of Soviet artillery as the
attack began. The artillery was so powerful
that it was able to knock pictures off walls
in many of their homes. Labor gangs were put
together in the city to prepare it for
battle, setting up anti-tank ditches and
digging trenches for the 50 panzers
available in the city, but they were largely
incomplete and ineffective. As the Soviets
grew closer, Berliners began partying later
into the night, drinking alcohol not for
enjoyment, but for intoxication. Many
virgins had sex, not out of love, but
instead of the fear that they would remain
virgins to the end. It was the beginning of
the end.
On April 20, Hitler's
birthday, Zhukov's artillery began smashing
into the city, but it hardly phased those
who were standing in line for food and other
necessities. The last Allied air raid hit
the city on April 21, knocking out the
city's water, gas, sewage and much of the
electricity. Without such services, nearby
factories were forced to close, and it
became a crime punishable by death to
electrically cook your food. Excrement,
unable to be flushed down the toilet,
polluted the street with its stench.With
everything going downhill, total strangers
began to use a new greeting, urgint each
other "Blei übrig." German for survive. (Ryan,
p.371)
Several days earlier,
in the early morning hours of April 19, as
the last RAF aircraft headed back to their
bases, a large group of Anti-Nazi resistance
members came out of their shelters to answer
the Nazi's referendum question, which asked
them whether they approved of Hitler's
policies to hold the city till the end. The
resisters hurried about the city, as
daylight was approaching quickly. On nearly
every shop window, the word "Nein!" was
painted in big letters, signifying the
biggest resistance the city gave to Hitler
since 1933. Anti-Nazi leaflets were also
posted throughout the city. Resentment
towards Hitler was fostering.
By April 22, Hitler
relieved Reymann of his command for his
defeatism, and replaced him with newly
promoted Major General Ernst Kather, the
former Chief of Staff to the Chief Wehrmacht
political commissar, but by the end of the
day, Hitler personally took over command of
the city's defense. As Hitler was switching
up the command chain in the city, Konev had
pushed into southern Berlin, beating Zhukov.
The city streets now became battlefields.
The race for the city continues
Seeing
that his forces were crumbling, Heinrici
asked Hitler for permission to withdraw
Busse's 9th Army to more favorable
positions, but the Fürher refused, ordering
9th Army to stay were it fought. Even with
Hitler's order to the contrary, 9th Army
began falling back under the Soviet weight,
largely being pushed to the southwest,
though its 56th Panzer Korps began heading
back into Berlin. As it moved to escape 1st
Belorussian front, Busse's Army was hit by
Konev's 1st Ukranian front as it charged to
Berlin from the south, largely encircling
the force. On April 21, the right flank of
1st Belorussian front reached open ground,
pushing on to the outskirts of the German
capital, all the while creating a gap
between 9th and 3rd Panzer Armies. In an
effort to protect von Manteuffel's exposed
southern flank, Heinrici had moved Felix
Steiner's SS corps, originally part of 9th
Army, to the north of Berlin.
Back in the Fürher
bunker in Berlin, in the center of the
government district in city, imagining that
the formations on his situation map
paralleled the strength of the forces that
he had launched the blitzkrieg with, Hitler
created an offensive that he believed would
save Berlin. Steiner's newly moved force
would push on into Zhukov's norther wing,
reaching the area east of Berlin, while
AGC's forces would begin rolling up Konev's
1st Ukranian front from the rear. In the
center, General Walther Wenck's 12th Army,
which was engaged on the Elbe facing the
Western Allies, would turn around and push
through Konev to reach Busse's encircled 9th
Army. Once these forces linked up, they
would then turn northward and reach the
capital, saving it from destruction.
What Hitler refused to
comprehend and take into consideration was
the fact that the German units on his map
were no where near up to their average
strength, and that his rule outside of
Berlin was almost nill. Few commanders, upon
receiving the ludicrous order to take the
offensive, actually followed through.
Steiner had no intention of attacking with
his weak force from the north, but only
sought to move westward to surrender to the
British. Hitler sent out Keitel and Jodl to
have Steiner relieved of his command, and
replaced by 41st Panzer Korps commander
General Holste, but neither Steiner nor his
replacement payed attention to Hitler's
minions. As Keitel and Jodl went to von
Manteuffel for his assistance in relieving
Steiner, they found him directing traffic
for his forces, as they were quickly pulling
back from the Oder and heading westward,
disobeying Hitler's orders to remain on the
river. Keitel and Jodl immediately went into
action, verbally reprimanding the commander,
but they could not find anyone willing to
arrest the 3rd Panzer Army commander.
Ferdinand Schorner's Army Group Center was
the only formation to heed Hitler's order to
attack, and though they did achieve some
initial success against Konev, they posed no
serious threat to his drive on the capital.
Konev only had to worry about the numerous
canal and water obstacles as he entered the
city.
On April 24, the
commander of 56th Panzer Korps, General
Weidling, was put in charge of Berlin's
defenses. With this new responsibility,
Weidling gave control of his force, which
made up the backbone of the city's defense,
to General Mummert, the leader of 56th Korps
Münchberg Panzer Division. On the same day,
Zhukov's and Konev's spearheads would make
contact with each other in Potsdam,
surrounding the Berlin and cutting off the
land connection between it and 9th Army.
General Wenck's 12th Army was making
significant progress against the dispersed
formations of 1st Ukranian front, pushing
nearly to Potsdam on the 25 of April, right
up against the Soviet ring around the
capital and raising the hopes of the
besieged population, but his proximity to
Berlin was only incidental, as he was only
focused on saving Busse's 9th Army, which
was miraculously finding a way to trodge on
westward through 4 relentlessly attacking
Soviet Armies, and the 40,000 civilians that
were protected by it. On the same day,
Rokossovky's 2nd Belorussian Front finally
broke through what was left of 3rd Panzer
Army's forces, and Soviet forces finally
linked up with the Americans on the Elbe,
cutting Germany into two. Little could save
the Nazi regime.
Last minute
reinforcements were flown into the
surrounded capital, in hopes of saving it
from imminent destruction. Admiral Donitz
sent in some of his submarine crews and
radar technicians, while Himmler had a lost
battalion of Latvian SS, 300 French SS
fighters of the Charlemagne Division, and
many Spanish SS members were flwon in.
Already available in the capital to be used
for its defense was the weakened 56th Panzer
Korps, the capital guard detachment of
Grossdeutschland, some marine guard
detachments, Hitler Youth fighters,
Volkssturm units, and Himmler's 2,000 SS
bodyguards under SS Generalmajor Wilhelm
Mohnke. This cobbled together defensive
unit, with only a few dozen panzers and a
moderate amount of artillery, was
responsible for the defense of the capital
of Hitler's Third Reich against 464,000
Soviet troops, 12,700 artillery guns, 1,500
tanks, and 21,000 Katyushas.
This Will Be The Spring Without End
Addapting to the
heavy urban environment that they were now
engaged in, Soviet forces were broken up
into tactical assault groups, composed of
infantry, armor, artillery, and
flame-thrower units. Such tactics, though
succesful, did not prevent the Red Army from
suffering casualty levels that even it had
never seen before. In an effort to save now
irreplaceable Soviet manpower, Zhukov sent
his two tank armies into the city battle, a
dangerous decision. Artillery and air power
were more widely used to erase unyielding
defenders from existence, causing total
destruction in some areas of the city.
Tempelhoff aerodome, a high priority for the
Soviets which could use the airbase to
support their operations logistically, and
to prevent Hitler's possible escape, was
completely destroyed before Chuikov's men
finally conquered it early on April 26.
Following this heated engagement, and seeing
how his forces were quickly using up their
ammunition stocks throughout the city,
Zhukov gave his front nearly a day of rest,
allowing his logistical units to bring up
more artillery, ammo, and food. Later on in
the evening, the Red Army would launch a
heavy bombardment, using their newly
received weapons, on the Nazis last
strongpoints in the Government district,
preparing the ground for the 5 Soviet armies
that were pushing in. Using what was left of
their fairly large Berlin reserve stock,
including experimental prototype weapons,
the Germans would launch a moderately
powerful counterbarrage, but nothing would
stop the Soviets.
With his forces being
demarcated out of the Berlin Government
district, which possesed the prized
Chancellory and Reichstag, Konev began
withdrawing 1st Ukranian front from Berlin.
Aiming in a new direction, Konev rather
quickly took the area west and south of
Berlin, as the remaining pockets of German
resistance continued to break out and push
towards Wenck's nearby 12th Army. As he was
clearing up his new area of operations,
Konev also had the task of halting the
closest of Wenck's forces to the capital,
which he succesfully did between April
27-28. The rest of the glory in the fight
over Berlin would go to Zhukov. Konev had
lost the race, and the capital.
By the end of April
27, as the Red Army pressed on once again
deeper into the city, the Nazi's defense was
nearing its end. The cauldron remaining to
be defended was a 10 mile strip, running
east to west, with a depth of nearly 4
miles. The German units left to defend this
area were being destroyed block by block,
with their machine gun nests being stormed
once they ran out of ammunition. Starved of
fuel, the last few panzers, acting as static
gun positions, were destroyed by Soviet
firepower. Stocks of Panzerfausts for the
infantry, the deadly German tank killers,
were about to run out. All attempts at
airlifting supplies into the city had proven
to be ineffective, and Wenck's army could
push no closer to its Führer. The main
reason the German soldiers continued to
fight was the deadly SS flying court
martials, which executed anyone accused of
surrendering. All hope was gone.
In the final battle
conference the Führer bunker witnessed, in
the early evening hours of April 29,
Weidling outlined all of these points to
Hitler, painting the grim picture. As he
began to wrap up his presentation, Weidling
concluded with the stunning statement that
all fighting in the capital must cease
within the next 24 hours. Following a brief
silent moment Mohnke, the commander of the
vital SS bodyguard forces which did a great
deal of fighting in the Government district,
stated his agreement with Weidling.
Responding to the idea that the Berlin
garrison should attempt a breakout towards
Wenck, like several other German pockets had
done, Hitler ordered that the soldiers were
to remain fighting in the city until their
weapons ran out of ammunition, only at which
time was it permissible for them to break
out to the west in small groups. He forcibly
forbade anyone from surrendering, seeking to
stretch out Berlin's defense as long as was
possible.
Map sourced from:
www.onwar.com/maps/wwii/eastfront2/1reichstag45.htm
By April 30, the
situation for the Germans had gone from bad
to worse. Chuikov's 8th Guards Army, the
spearhead for Zhukov's drive into the
capital, had pushed to within several
thousand feet of Hitler's bunker. The
Reichstag was stormed, and after a few hours
of fierce room to room fighting, the victory
banner was symbollically raised over the
building. Though victory was already claimed
in the Reichstag, it would take nearly a
full day to remove the remaining Nazi
forces, with fighting taking a total of
8,000 lives from both sides.
Picture sourced from:
www.worldwar2database.com
Seeing his lifelong
enemy approach ever more closely, Hitler
knew his time had come. He had long ago
decided to stay in Berlin, to help his
prestige following his death, while boosting
the German defense efforts, and he would now
pay for his choice. There was little else
that he wanted to be done. His final
political testament had been spewed out the
night before, in which he blamed the war
fully on the Jews, and its loss entirely due
to the betrayal of his wishes by traitors.
He had recently been wed to his long time
supporter, Eva Braun, and now the couple
would end their lives together. A half hour
after the Soviet troops raised their banner
over the Reichstag, at around 3:30 pm, Adolf
Hitler commited suicide with a 7.65mm
Walther pistol shot to the head, while Braun
took cyanide orally. Their bodies would soon
be disposed of by the Führer's servants, to
prevent them from following into Stalin's
hands.
Picture sourced from:
www.acepilots.com/ww2/reichstag.jpg
n May Day, Soviet forces were mostly tasked
with clearing out the remaining Nazi forces
left in the city, including in the
Chancellory, room by room. The German
defense in the Government district had
collapsed and with it, so too had Weidling's
patience. Knowing that the battle was long
over, he immediately gave his units, who
were all on the brink of total exhaustion,
permission to break out to the west. Even
Mohnke and his few remaining SS fighters
broke out, bringing with them many top Nazi
officials. Surprisingly, with Konev focusing
1st Ukranian Front on smashing Busse's Army,
which somehow was still a cohesive unit that
was fighting desperately westward, many of
those who broke out succeeded in reaching
Western Allied lines. Doing all he could to
help his soldiers, Weidling tried to provide
some cover for them by beginning surrender
negotiations, which he would draw out until
the last possible moment.
By the next day, May
2, what little leverage Weidling had to
begin with had disappeared, and he, along
with other Army commanders, surrendered
Berlin and called for a ceasefire from his
troops. The Soviet guns finally ceased
pounding the city at 3pm, nearly 300 hours
after the first shell hit the Nazi capital.
The Red Army soldiers began their victory
celebrations following the silence, while
the Berlin civilians began picking up their
destroyed city, being helped along by the
establishment of civil government by Soviet
units. Berliners went about covering the
faces of the dead that littered the streets
on their way to getting food from Red Army
Field Kitchens. Little could be done about
the many buildings that continued to burn,
even with the cold spring rain pouring on
the city.
Picture sourced from
www.worldwar2database.com
To the south of
Berlin, the remains of Busse's battered 9th
Army was getting ever closer to 12th Army.
By April 30, the two armies had made radio
contact, and by the next day, the two forces
finally linked up. Of Busse's original
200,000 man army which had earlier defended
Berlin, only 30,000 remained to be saved,
along with several thousand refugees who
joined Busse's forces in hopes of escaping
the Red Army. As fast as he could get it to
do so, Wenck began withdrawing 12th Army to
the southwest. Between the morning of May 5
and the night of May 6, those who were able
to cross the Elbe river did so, and reached
the safety that American lines offered. The
war was over for them, and for everyone else
in Europe two days later, as the Nazi regime
finally accpeted its defeat.
The Unclear Cost
The Battle of Berlin
is one of the most difficult operations to
estimate the number of losses and casualties
for, as the Soviets do not have definitive
timelines of their casualties, while the
German record system was failing at this
time. From the beginning of their offensive
from the Oder river till the end of the war,
the 3 Soviet fronts (1st Belorussian, 2nd
Belorussian, and 1st Ukranian) had suffered
352,475 men killed, wounded, or missing,
according to the Russian Archives. The Red
Army had also lost nearly 2,000 tanks or
self-propelled guns, 2,108 artillery guns
and mortars, and 917 aircraft. The Germans
had suffered an estimated 100,000 civilian
deaths from the urban fighting, while a
total of 134,000 troops surrendered in
Berlin on May 2. Actual combat deaths are
guesstimated to be in the range of 150,000.
Bibliography
Books:
·
Beck, Earl.
Under The Bombs: The German Home Front,
1942-1945. 1st ed. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1986.
·
Beevor,
Anthony. The Fall Of Berlin 1945. 1st
ed. New York: Viking Penguin, 2002.
·
Erickson, John.
The Road to Berlin: Stalin's War With
Germany. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999.
·
Fischer, David.
Read, Anthony. The
Fall Of Berlin. 1st ed. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1993.
·
Glantz, David,
ed. Slaughterhouse: The Encyclopedia Of
The Eastern Front. 1st ed. Garden City:
The Military Book Club, 2002.
·
Hastings, Max.
Armageddon: The Battle For Germany,
1944-1945. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2004.
·
Krivosheev, G.F.,
ed. Soviet Casualties And Combat Losses
In The Twentieth Century. 2nd ed.
Mechanicsberg: Stackpole Books, 1997.
·
Ryan,
Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1st ed.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.
·
Seaton, Albert.
The Russo-German War 1941-145. 2nd
ed. Novato: Presidio Press, 1993.
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Shirer,
William. The Rise And Fall Of The Third
Reich: A History Of Nazi Germany. 4th
ed. New york: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
·
Ziemke, Earl.
Stalingrad To Berlin: The German Defeat
In The East. 2nd ed. New York: Barnes
and Noble Books, 1996.
Internet:
·
Battle of
Berlin.
Wikipedia. 20 Mar. 2005 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin>.
·
Battle of
Berlin.
World War II Multimedia Database. 24 Mar.
2005 <http://www.worldwar2database.com/cgi-bin/slideviewer.cgi?list=berlin_45.slides&dir=&config=&refresh=&scale=0&design=default&total=17>.
·
World War
Two Pictures: Memorable Photos of World War
II.
AcePilots. 24 Mar. 2005 <http://www.acepilots.com/ww2/reichstag.jpg>.
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Zuljan, Ralph .
"Maps of World War II." Eastern Front
1943-1945. OnWar.Com. 25 Mar. 2005
<http://www.onwar.com/maps/wwii/eastfront2/index2.htm>.
Unpublished:
·
McAteer, Dr. Sean M.. 500 Days; 1944 and
1945 on the Eastern Front in the Second
World War. Privately published,
copyright pending.
|
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Beg,
Borrow, Steal: A story of how
Israel first armed
itself
Neil Holmes (privatehudson)
This article will look how the
nation of
Israel armed itself and
fought it’s initial
campaigns. It’s a story which, as the title implies
employed often dubious, and
frequently illegal methods and also at the same time
some genuine flashes of brilliance. The article
primarily concentrates on what could be argued to be the
chief elements of
Israel’s success,
namely her armoured forces
and Air force.
The
Armoured Corps
The history of the Israeli army is not a long one, but
is certainly one filled with skill and finesse that has
often defied the odds. The Israeli
Defence Force (IDF) have a reputation of man for
man being second to none, their equipment is amongst the
finest in the world, battle tested and modified by the
Israelis and honed to perfection. This though was not
always the case, as this article will attempt to show.
The Pre-Independence Years
The story of Israel's armoured
forces begins even before WWII when during 1936, the
British and Haganah
underground worked together to re-supply the isolated
settlements in the face of increasing tension and
rioting from the Arab population surrounding them. The
British permitted the Jews to add
armour to the trucks they drove, something that
slowed mobility but increased protection a little. The
first "armoured" vehicles of
the Jewish forces were born then.
During the war years, 30,000
Palestine Jews served in two capacities, some 5000 saw
combat service in the Jewish Brigade, whilst others
served in the RAOC (Royal Army Ordinance Corps) and the
REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) and
similar rear areas formations. At this time, British
policy did not allow them to serve as crew to tanks or
armoured cars. It was here
though that they gained valuable experience in
repairing, and servicing
Sherman’s and other vehicles.
British withdrawal policies during this period did
little to help the Jewish settlements in Palestine and
the increasing problems faced trying to get convoys
through to the settlements forced the
Haganah into the decision
that they simply had to acquire some proper
armour, the
race was on. Unable to legally acquire
armour, they were forced to
some quite unusual methods to say the least.
The British, for their own protection had dug themselves
into armed and protected camps in order to protect their
equipment and soldiers from both Arab and Jewish
attacks. These camps though represented massive storage
areas of all sorts of weapons and vehicles just waiting
to be taken. The Haganah had
considerable support from some British officers, and in
this way managed to acquire their first two
armoured cars. The first, a
GMC, they persuaded a British major to "borrow" full of
ammunition and drive to a rendezvous point to be taken
over by the Haganah. The
second, acquired the very next day was driven out of
Allenby barracks and hidden
inside the city away from the searches the British
launched for it. The search was
hopeless, the Haganah
had acted without telling the authorities, who had no
idea where the vehicles were. Within a few days, the two
vehicles suceeded in driving
back an attack on the Kastel
redoubt (on the
Jerusalem road) by a large Arab
force.
The next acquisition though was sheer genius on
Haganah's behalf.
Discovering that the British were dumping hundreds of
AFVs over a cliff (by the
Mount Carmel Road near
Haifa) into a deep
Wadi due to being unable to
evacuate them all in time, the
Haganah took urgent steps to acquire a tank. The
Haganah group in the area
contacted some of the more friendly British soldiers
involved in the operation (1st Airborne Squadron, RE)
and struck a deal with them. Part way up the road, the
Haganah waited with a
makeshift transporter, awaiting the vehicle. It finally
came and was transported onto the
Haganah vehicle, with the RE vehicle continuing
on like nothing had gone wrong. The transporter
continued towards Tel Aviv, but burst tires nearly
caught it out before they could be replaced.
The proud Haganah
technicians unveiled their acquisition... only to
discover it was missing both it's
main gun and all machine guns. It lacked optical sights
for the main gun, it's engine
was a almost a write off, and at least two bogey wheels
and many track plates were missing! This did not deter
the technicians though, they'd seen worse in
Egypt during the war
coming from Alamein and
other places. Experts were sent to
evacuated REME dumps were fighting was in full
swing, but even so they somehow managed to acquire
enough parts to repair the engine, replace the set of
optical sights and the missing wheels. The track plates
were a problem though, until someone remembered that the
British had used track plates laid down on the beaches
of Haifa
bay as a way of landing tanks easier. A quick trip
proved that they had been left behind, intact and merely
needed digging up. The Haganah
had acquired it's very first
tank... with no gun!
Another story from this period sums up the early Jewish
attitudes to obtaining armour.
Willing British soldiers who sympathized with the cause
offered to help "liberate" four Cromwell tanks from an
ordinance depot near
Haifa
airport. The problem was that only two trained drivers
could be found, leading to hasty training of 2 Jewish
drivers before the mission. The two British soldiers
entered the depot, waving to the guard on the gate, and
at the same time a Jewish piloted aircraft landed at the
airfield. At midnight, one of the soldiers offered to
relieve the guard, which was accepted, and the Jewish
drivers left the plane and headed for the tanks. The two
British drivers started their engines and smashed their
way out of the gate, however, the two Jewish drivers
could not get their engines to start. Both British
soldiers (sergeants) were charged with desertion, but
both served with the IDF throughout the 1948 war.
Whilst all this went on, the battle for the roads, using
armoured trucks, jeeps and
so on was still raging. Recognising
the inherent problem with these they managed to acquire
a number of dedicated armoured
cars from Europe, White
or Dodge variants, and armed them with MG34s. This
period saw the first organised
attempt to gather the vehicles together, the first
armoured service and at the
time numbered around 100 cars of various types. The
service was soon incorporated into the new 8th
Armoured brigade though the
title meant little for the numbers it contained.
Commanded by Yizhak
Sadeh, a legendary soldier
who had served with Orde
Wingate in the Special Night Squads and lead the
Palmach since the beginning.
By May 1948 the 8th
Armoured Brigade and the
remainder of the service could muster
6 ex Palestinian police GM Otters (Haganah
fighters grafted machine guns onto them)
1 ex RAF Daimler MkI (armed
with a 2pndr)
2 Renault R38 light tanks (captured from Syria, both had
a different gun)
2 Cromwell tanks (1 armed with a 6pndr, the other with a
75mm)
1 Sherman (still without it's gun!)
Several dozen assorted home built
armoured cars with light machine guns in
revolving turrets, usually based on the White
armoured car. Many of these
were produced during the 1948 war.
The 1948 war of
Independence
This rag-tag collection was the very beginning of what
would eventually be one of the finest
armoured forces in the
world. This then was the force with which
Israel sought to defend
itself against the invasion of the Arab armies in may of
1948. Even with war raging all around though,
Israel
continued to attempt to reinforce their units. Soon
after this period the Israelis scored their first big
hit, securing a large number of French Hotchkiss H39
light tanks with 37mm guns. Not perfect, but much better
for having sufficient ammunition!
The problem lay in bringing
these forces into
Israel, no mean feat to
say the least. With Haifa
run by the British in part and Tel Aviv having an
inadequate dock, UN supervision of the
Mediterranean and all sorts of other
problems, getting the tanks was only half the problem!
The ship onto which the tanks were loaded lacked a
suitable crane, but was repainted to match another
similar one to confuse the UN. The Jews also moved from
Haifa a floating crane towards
Tel Aviv... only for it to break down! Despairing of
ever reaching land the Jewish authorities finally bribed
another ship with heavy cranes to unload the
"agricultural machinery" onto the docks. When he found
out though he nearly refused, finally agreeing after
being bribed even more, the tanks were finally ashore!
This though was but part of the tale in
Israel's fight for
survival in 1948. I won't go into detail on the war, but
comment a little on the performance and makeup of the
ragtag unit that was 8th armoured.
By the war's start it's armour
composed:
82nd Tank Battalion (commanded by a former Red Army tank
commander), comprising:
"Russian" company - One company of Hotchkiss tanks
"British" company - One company manning 2
Cromwells and 1 Sherman
The Russian company was manned by ex-red army tank
crews, the British by ex-British and ex-South African
tank crews due to the WWII restrictions on Palestinian
Jews serving in armoured
units. Communication was a
nightmare, the "Russian" company spoke only spoke
Russian and Yiddish, the "British" company only English.
The formation survived simply because
Sadeh spoke all three and
eventually set up a series of interpreters. The 8th's
other battalion was the 89th Commando, lead by none
other than Moshe Dayan.
Performances were normally high, though due to
it's nature mistakes were
frequent. In it's first
battle during the fighting for
Lydda
Airport
the "Russian" company got lost taking a wrong turning,
but the "British" company did the job well enough
anyway. Throughout the rest of the war the formation
excelled itself and outperformed
it's enemies almost every single time.
The post independence period
After the war the IDF was extensively
reorganised, with the 8th
armoured disbanded and
it's
armoured battalion sent to the 7th
armoured brigade (a unit
that fought in the 48 war as an mechanized infantry
formation). The 7th re-organised
it's forces, reequipped it's
tanks and trained extensively. Soon after the Israeli
armoured forces began to
look like a museum collection of variety, the 82nd then
consisting of:
"A" company
Shermans
using 75mm Krupp M1911 guns
mounted on 105mm loading mechanisms! These vehicles had
been bought from surplus
US army dumps in
Italy but the guns had
been removed or rendered unserviceable. Not to be
defeated, the Israelis scoured Europe, finding in all
places
Switzerland
some of the above guns, which had been stored in a cave
since their purchase after WWI (yes the 1911 really does
mean they're that old!). With ammunition in abundance,
they suited Israeli needs immensely and they were soon
mounted, with the aid of screws, adaptors and welding to
the tanks in a way that they could fire using direct
fire HE in support of infantry attacks... just at safe
distances!
"B" company
A strange amalgamation of vehicles, one Sherman M4A2,
several M4A3s (for which almost no ammunition was
available) and 1
Sherman Firefly... for which they
had NO ammunition. With two other companies mounted in
half tracks, the battalion had quite an aspect of farce
to it!
The Israelis soon settled down
to training more crews and officers in the skills of
armoured combat and sending
officers to the French schools at
Samur to learn the tricks of the trade alongside
Syrian officers they had recently fought against. In the
early years of the 50s the Israelis further purchased
standard
Shermans (this time from dumps in the
Philippines
of all places!) and re-organised
their armour into 4 regular
companies of 17 tanks each.
From here on, though most of their purchases of tanks
were clandestine, they were almost always legal and
proper. It is an achievement that you have to admire,
from literally nothing, to a farcical mix that would
grace a wacky races cartoon rather than an army, to an
elite fighting machine.
Israel's
armoured force has come a
long way since the end of WWII, it seems almost
impossible to think of the country that gave us the
genius of the 6 days war began so humbly, yet so
brilliantly.
Below are just some pictures
from the period. Some include descriptions that I have
repeated in case they are hard to read due to the scan
quality.
Sherman hulks lie in a
RAOC dump. It was from hulks much like these which the
first Israeli
Sherman
was produced.
Sherman in action
during the 1948 war
It was columns such as these
that formed part of the origin of the
armoured corps with their
slight mobility and firepower
One of the R38s in Israeli
service after it’s capture from the Syrians
Cromwells and
Shermans in the desert during the 1948 war.
The Air Force
To form an army from scratch is not really very hard,
just sufficient weapons and ammunition, a little
motivation and elementary training, and the
beginings of the army will
take shape. An air force though is another matter
entirely. Not only is it difficult to train such a
force, acquiring it is almost infinitely harder than
acquiring infantry arms and considerably harder than
tanks, and that is before we even begin to talk about
maintenance and supplies!
Beginings
The beginings of the Israeli
Air Force (also known as Chel
Ha' Avir) was with the
formation of the Sherut
Avir (Aviation Service) of
the Haganah, clandestinely
formed though civil flying clubs. Two of these, the
Carmel Club and the Flying Camel Club began as far back
as the early 30s and by the end of WWII had
earnt for
themselves some small
respectability giving them a certain freedom of action.
Others, such as the Civilian Flying Club were less
respected by the ruling British authorities, this one
being a clandestine reconnaissance element of
Sherut
Avir. The clubs were aided by two companies, the
Aviron company and the
Palestine Air Service. The former bought and sold
aircraft and pilots legitimately, but also recruited
pilots for the Sherut
Avir. The latter was a small
commercial carrier which had a rather interesting habit
of training far more ground crew and pilots than it's
real activities actually needed...
By 1947 these disparate elements were able to provide a
variety of planes into the air for military purposes,
though the planes were almost entirely hopeless for this
role! The planes came from a variety of sources and
types. The civilian flying club's contribution consisted
of a handful of Taylorcraft
and Polish light aircraft and also legally managed to
import some De Havilland
DH82 biplanes from Canada
and
England. The
Aviron Company acquired a
number of privately owned
Taylorcrafts and also rustled up a De
Havilland Dragon
Rapide and a Seabee
amphibian plane. The Haganah
captured a Fairchild Argus from an Egyptian smuggler!
Pictures of some of these are below:
The Dragon
Rapide
The Seabee Amphibian
Finally, in typical pre-independence mix of genius and
illegality Aviron fooled the
British authorities once again. The British were looking
to sell 24 Auster Air
Observation Post machines for scrap, but unfortunately,
the planes were far from all being ready for scrapping.
A representative from Aviron
promptly bought the lot, and before the British could
stop them, they stripped every one of the planes and
cannibalised all of them to
produce 12 working planes!
The
Auster
The war years
But this was only half the problem, the planes were
still totally unfit for arial
combat against the Arab air force Spitfires and similar.
During the pre-independence days this was little
consequence, they were mere transports and
reconnaissance planes. Once war broke out though, anyone
could tell that their survivability was going to be very
little.
Israel could muster
just 28 light aircraft when independence came. They were
faced with a combined Arab force that outnumbered them
nearly 8:1. This blatant air superiority was clear to
anyone, and the Arabs used it straight away, attacking
Tel Aviv's airfield as part of their opening moves,
damaging over half the Sherut
Avir's planes before they
could even act! In rather amusing fashion, the survival
of Sherut
Avir then relied on Israeli
conservation and Arab incompetence. The Israeli's
dispersed their planes and gradually repaired them
bringing them back into action. The Arabs on the other
hand managed to bomb another airfield, this time one
still occupied by 2 RAF squadrons, who promptly shot
down a number of aircraft.
Now the innate inventiveness of
Israel though once
again shone through. The Sheryt
Avir began to adapt their
civilian planes to become bombers. The Dragon
Rapide and a Norseman
(pictured at the end of this paragraph) were both fitted
with crude but effective bombing racks. The
Auster and
Taylorcrafts though could
not have this alteration. The Israeli's promptly
improvised and the pilots turned to throwing hand
grenades out of the plane at the enemy! Though this
seems almost farcical, apparently with their relatively
silent engine, a swooping attack at night by one of
these was very demoralising
on the enemy, and if it works...
A Norseman
Soon into the fighting the
Israeli's acquired a number of Piper Cub planes for
ferrying supplies, but these were still unarmed. Not to
be daunted by such petty problems, the Piper pilots
undertook such tactics as flying around in tight circles
near the ground (the piper planes consumed less fuel
than a spitfire and could afford to hang around longer)
or diving for the ground and pulling up at the last
minute. The Egyptians soon learnt the hard way that
Spitfires may have been faster, but a Piper Cub was much
more manoeuvrable.
On the 27th May 1948 though, having done an admirable
job, the Sherut
Avir was disbanded and
replaced with the Israeli Air Force (Chel
Ha'). Right from the outset the force was determined to
be one of a tactical role. Strategic, carpet bombing
would never achieve
Israel's aims, only
destruction of the enemy's military would play a major
role in Israeli Air Force planning. This new force
though was only new in name,
the planes were the same as before. Statehood though
brought with it changes for the better,
Israel
could now legally buy equipment abroad... if only it
could find a seller and get it into
Israel. The first
acquisition was a Douglas Dakota DC3 transport plane,
the backbone of the allied air transport in WWII which
was converted into a bomber soon after. At this stage
Israel
was still taking anything it could get hold of, as
evidenced by the purchase of that plane, against the
tactical aims of the Chel
Ha'. Soon after though came the first fighters to see
service.
The first large scale fighter into commission with the
Air Force was the Avia
S-199, an interesting plane with a rather interesting
history. The Czech Avia
factory had manufactured Me109 fighters throughout WWII
for the Luftwaffe and
continued to do so after WWII for the Czech air force.
Unfortunately, the factory producing the ME109 engines (Damiler
Benz types) was destroyed in a fire soon after the war,
a solution was needed. The Czech designers replaced it
with a Junkers Jumo engine,
one used during the war for Heinkel
bombers. The resulting plane, though ME109 on the
outside was an appallingly bad copy in reality. The
slower running, heavier plane made landings and take
offs a nightmare due to appalling handling. Some two
dozen were bought before independence and gradually were
stripped down and transported to
Israel in small numbers
each time. In their first operation, just 4 of them
managed to bomb and strafe an Egyptian column which was
waiting to cross a damaged bridge. The attack drove the
column back relieving pressure on Tel Aviv. At this
time, the 4 were the only modern fighters Israel had,
and had the Egyptians known that half of this number
were lost in that flight (one crashed on landing and the
other was shot down) their reluctance to continue might
have been less! As has been noted, the plane was
notoriously unreliable, know for “flipping” on landings
amongst other problems. Beggars cannot be choosers
though…
An Avia
S-199
Further attempts to secure
proper up to date machines continued throughout the 1948
war. Spitfires were one of the main aims of the
government, being then still one of the best fighters in
the world. The first two acquisitions of this type of
plane were through were through excellent repair work.
One, an ex RAF plane had been dumped by the British when
they left, the other, an Egyptian plane was shot down by
the Israelis over Dov
airfield. Both were rebuilt and put back into use in the
Israeli air force. Further Spitfires were again bought
from the Czechs, who had purchased them from
Britain
at the end of the war. These 60 planes also though
needed transporting, and with no means of doing so (the
Americans pressured the Czechs into preventing it) a
problem presented itself. The missions that brought 13
Spitfires in time to fight in the war of independence
were probably the most dangerous they flew in the war.
In two Velveta operations,
18 Spitfires that had every spare piece of equipment
taken out and replaced with fuel tanks were flown all
the way from
Czechoslovakia
to
Israel, (13 made it).
with one refueling stop in
Yugoslavia. Except in
the flight leaders plane, radios and compasses were not
spared, if a plane lost visual contact with the
formation it would be lost. It is hard for a person
unfamiliar with WWII fighters to understand the madness
of these missions. Not only were WWII fighters short
ranged, but the Spitfire was one of the least ranged
among them. The remaining Czech Spitfires were shipped
to
Israel
by sea and did not make it in time for the war. The
history of these planes is hard to track, but they
undoubtedly performed much better than the
Avia planes and were
invaluable to the Israeli efforts. Some Spitfire
pictures are below.
A Spitfire in Israeli
colours
In acquiring some planes
though, sheer ingenuity was at play. An announcement was
made in Britain that a film was due to be made about New
Zealand pilots who had flown in the formidable
Beaufighters during WWII and
the makers wished to purchase a number of the planes to
do so. Having 5 of them and proceeded to go through the
initial parts of the script, he moved to the parts where
the pilots trained in New
Zealand and asked British
permission to use an area of
Scotland
to duplicate it. Having been granted that permission,
the planes took off alright... but never landed in
Scotland! Of course the
5 that mysteriously appeared in
Israel
soon after could not have been the same 5 that left
Britain, no sir, not in
a million years, they must have ditched in the north sea
those ones, ours fell off the
back of a lorry...
P51 Mustang fighters served in
small numbers, smuggled out of
America
before the end of the war, but only two were used. Later
the IAF purchased another 75 of these fine piston-engined
fighters. The Israelis also purchased 4 B17 bombers
which the USAAF were selling as "transports" with the
weapons removed. They left the
US bound for
Brazil, but in a theme
common to this period and topic, mysteriously ended up
being diverted to Tel Aviv! On similar grounds, one
Constellation airliner and 9 Curtis Commando transports
arrived in Israel
after round about trips from the
US
supplementing the forces there already. Below are some
of the planes discussed.
The B17 in Israeli service
After the 1948 war
The Air force ended the war and took stock of
it's position. The war had
been fought with large numbers of foreign volunteer
pilots who returned home afterwards. The mixed
collection of planes were
mostly fit for nothing but scrap, having barely been
kept flying for most of the war. After the war, spending
on the air force was greatly reduced compared to the
army. New purchases were given very low priority and
usually restricted to small numbers of fighters and
bombers until 1953, with numbers of trainers also
purchased to train new Israeli pilots instead. The Air
force though had standardised
her equipment and become something like a regular force.
So we find that once again, like with
armour, Israel's early
formative years of development relied heavily on
clandestine and often illegal operations and when units
where formed they did so with ragtag equipment. The very
fact that this miscellaneous group of ex WWII and
civilian planes began the process that lead to the force
that would smash all before it in the next few decades
is in itself something of a modern day miracle. Her
elite nature in the air force never seems in doubt,
despite every obstacle,
Israel
succeeded where others would fail.
Conclusion
Whatever we may each personally
think of it's politics,
whatever your belief on her current military, the facts
speak for themselves.
Israel's
Armoured and Air Forces from
the beginning have proven resourceful, capable and
elite. For those of us who have ever caught “Junkyard
wars” or “Scrapheap
Challenge” on the television, it would perhaps occur
that had it been filmed in the 1940s, the Israelis would
have swept all before her!
Israel's
armour and Air Force would grow into a force that
within a few short years would devastate the Egyptian
army in the Sinai, within 15 years or so would
annihilate the armies of
Syria,
Egypt
and Jordan
and within 30 years would threaten both
Damascus and
Egypt beyond the
Suez canal. Quite the achievement
considering their origins I would say.
Sources
Israeli War Machine, Ian V.
Hogg
Information on the
IAF’s history
Chariots of the Desert, David
Eshel
Information on
Israel’s early use and
acquisition of armour, the 5
scanned pictures
Osprey Men at Arms 127 (The
Israeli army in the middle east wars 1948-73)
Overview of the period, date
confirmations
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7934/
Various airplane pictures
and information on their operational history
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/4142/
Part of the above site, but
there’s no obvious link between the two. Additional
plane pictures and information
http://www.davidpride.com/Israeli_Armor/Armor_index.htm
The remainder of the
armoured vehicles pictures,
basic information on their operational use.
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From Hegemon to Honey Jar -
The Varna Crusade and the fate of Wladyslaw III "Warnenczyk"
T. Jankowski (Vrylakas)
Murad
II, Ottoman Sultan, entered his capital, Bursa, and
at the head of his column was carried a single
infantry pike, which supported the severed head of a
Polish king, Wladyslaw III. Murad II ordered, upon
entering Bursa, that Wladyslaw's head be preserved
in a honey jar. A major European effort to push the
Turks out of the Balkans and to save the Byzantine
empire - by then relegated to the city limits of
Constantinople - had failed abjectly, and Europe
would not attempt another anti-Ottoman crusade for
more than two hundred years. With this defeat
Byzantium's fate was sealed, the Balkans were lost,
and Ottoman armies would threaten the very heart of
Central Europe.
Our
story begins with another shattering defeat, that of
the Ottomans themselves, at the hands of Timur ("Tamerlane"
to Europe) outside Ankara in Anatolia in July 1402.
Timur had become concerned about the growth of
Ottoman power in Anatolia, the Levant and the
Balkans in the late 14th century and had issued a
demand for tribute from the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid
I, but Bayezid had refused and the Ottoman armies
faced off Timur's Mongol-Turkish army at Ankara. In
the midst of this battle Bayezid's sons, fearing
defeat, withdrew their own forces from the battle
and fled to the Ottoman Balkans in anticipation of a
post-battle power struggle after their father's
imminent death. Bayezid was indeed captured and his
forces scattered. Bayezid himself eventually died in
a cage, a prisoner of Timur.
Timur
did not destroy the Ottoman empire, however,
contenting himself with (re)appointing Seljuk emirs
to the lands along the Levant and southeastern
Anatolia, leaving the core Anatolian Ottoman lands
(and their Balkan Christian possessions) intact. As
Bayezid's sons' actions foreshadowed at Ankara, the
empire swiftly fell into civil war as various
factions struggled for Bayezid's vacant throne. This
civil war lasted twenty years, until finally in 1423
Murad II was able to impose his rule over the
Ottoman realms. The ultimate result of these events
for the Balkans was a renewed and far more
aggressive Ottoman policy, as the sultans aimed to
secure and expand that part of their empire that had
played such a crucial role in their survival of the
defeat at Ankara in 1402. Though Timur had died
shortly after the battle, the Ottoman sultans wanted
security in the Balkans to protect them from
whatever power might again arise out of the ashes of
Timur's empire in Central Asia.
Of
particular interest to Murad II was Hungary. He did
not dream of taking Hungary itself, but its imperial
holdings and influence in the Balkans. Hungarian
influence in Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia and Dalmatia
had grown during the years of Ottoman distraction
with the civil war, and Murad saw any expansion of
Ottoman power in the Balkans as having to begin with
the elimination of Hungarian influence in the
region. To that end Ottoman forces began to raid
deeply into Wallachia and (Hungarian-held)
Transylvania in the 1430s, increasing in ferocity
and depth of penetration after the Hungarian king's
(Zsigmond I, who also became Holy Roman Emperor "Sigismund"
after 1411) death in 1437, culminating in a brash
and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to take
Nándorfehérvár (Hungarian Belgrade) in 1439. This
siege was broken by the Ottomans themselves when
Murad II had to rush homeward to suppress a mass
uprising in Anatolia by the Karamanli. Still, the
Ottomans retained most of Serbia.
This is
what kicked off the chain of events that would end
with the triumphal march by Murad II into his
capital at Bursa with his gruesome prize.
In
1386, Poland and Lithuania created a joint-dynasty
through the marriage of the Anjou princess Hedwig (Jadwiga),
as Queen of Poland, to Jogaila, Lithuanian Grand
Duke and, after the marriage, subsequent King of
Poland. With this marriage the two countries shared
a common fate and historical path until both were
destroyed by Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1795.
Jogaila, in the process converting to Western-rite
Christianity, took on a Polish Christian name -
Wladyslaw, and his Lithuanian name became his Polish
surname: Jagiello. In Poland he was known as
Wladyslaw II Jagiello, and thus was born the
Jagiellonian dynasty which in its two centuries of
rule in Poland and Lithuania (1386-1572) was wildly
successful on the home front, but was sadly less
successful abroad. When in 1434 Jagiello realized
his days were numbered, he managed to have his 10
year old (third) son crowned as king of Poland and
Bohemia before he died, and he was crowned Wladyslaw
III in Kraków.
Wladyslaw III from the start was saddled with his
father's chief advisor, the Cardinal Zbigniew
Olesnicki, a very ambitious cleric and kingmaker
with an immense amount of influence at the Polish
court. Olesnicki had been a part of the negotiations
to have young Wladyslaw put on the Bohemian throne
in the Jagiellonian dynasty's first foray abroad to
a foreign kingdom but even with that success
Olesnicki was not content. A few years later, the
very powerful Zsigmond/Sigismund, king of Hungary
and Holy Roman Emperor, died and his weak-kneed
nephew, Albert of Habsburg, replaced him as king of
Hungary. Hungary slid into civil war as various
factions supported their own candidates, and
Olesnicki got into the fray, pushing Wladyslaw III
for the job. After more than two years, in 1440,
Olesnicki succeeded again and Wladyslaw III - king
of Poland and Bohemia - also became king of Hungary
(known to Hungarians as "Ulászló I"). Hungary at
this point was feeling the pressure of Ottoman
attempts to blunt Hungarian influence in the Balkans
and Hungarian magnates accepted Wladyslaw as their
king in exchange for Polish promises to aid Hungary
militarily in its Balkan struggles with the Porte.
Critical to his success was the intervention of Pope
Eugene IV, who also made Wladyslaw promise he'd lead
a crusade against the Turks.
Faithful to his word,
Wladyslaw immediately began to plan, with the
already famous Hungarian general (actually, by
background both Hungarian and Romanian), János
Hunyadi, an invasion of the Ottoman-occupied
Balkans. They were encouraged in the summer of 1443
to hear that the Sultan had suffered a severe
setback in his suppression of the Karamanli revolt,
and they set their plans in motion. Gathering
altogether some 35,000 troops (mostly mercenaries)
from Hungary, Poland, Bohemia (Hussite troops with
their "battle wagons"), the Holy Roman Empire,
Wallachia (under Prince Mircea, son of Vlad II
Dracul who avoided going himself as he was caught
between obligations to both the Ottomans and
Hungary) and Serbia (led by Dorde Brankovic), the
allies set out in September 1443 by invading along
the same route the Ottomans had used in their drive
northward. Hunyadi was the overall commander for the
army. The allies' first great victory was at Nis
(modern southern Serbia), whose several Ottoman
garrisons were defeated and destroyed. Then, on 20.
November, Hunyadi managed to crush a larger Ottoman
force in Rumelia,
inflicting severe casualties on the Ottoman force.
The allies' ranks by now had begun to swell with
Serbian and Bulgarian peasants seeking freedom and
revenge against retreating Ottoman forces. The
Christian invasion had also sparked insurrections
and uprisings among some of the Ottomans' Balkan
subjects, most notably the Albanians under
Skanderbey
and the Greek despot Constantine of Morea. Hunyadi
advanced on and took Sofia (modern capital of
Bulgaria), and set his sites on Edirne - ancient
Byzantine Adrianople, now an Ottoman administrative
center. The retreating Ottomans had begun to burn
everything in sight as they retreated towards
Constantinople so it is not clear whether the
Ottomans did so intentionally or it was just the
result of a mishap, but by the time the allies
reached the southern Balkan mountains in Bulgaria.
Groping
around the mountains for a circuitous route to the
Ottoman heartland, Hunyadi's army ran into the
entrenched army of Grand Vezir Halil Pasha at the
mountain pass near the Bulgarian village of Zlatitsa,
and gave battle on 12. December. The Grand Vezir
repeatedly sent his forces forth to dislodge the
Christian besiegers but to no avail until Murad II
himself (rushing from Anatolia) arrived on the scene
with substantial reinforcements, forcing Hunyadi to
withdrawal.
They
retreated back to Sofia, where the Christian armies
began to dissolve as various units began to drift
back home, and finally on 23. December, Hunyadi
himself ordered a retreat back to Hungary. The next
day at Melstitsa, west of Sofia, the Ottoman
commander whom Hunyadi had defeated so soundly in
Rumelia in November attempted to ambush the
retreating Christians, but was bloodily repulsed by
Hunyadi's well-organized defense. Murad II decided
to allow the Hungarian forces to withdraw unmolested
but instead concentrated on his erstwhile
father-in-law, Dorde Brankovic of Serbia, who had
detached his forces from Hunyadi's and was heading
home. The Ottomans caught up with Brankovic at
Kunovitsa and forced Brankovic to sign a separate
peace treaty that brought Serbia back under Ottoman
suzerainty. However Murad II's army, filled with
confidence after this dispersal of the Serbs, turned
northward and managed to have its nose bloodied by
Hunyadi's retreating force one more time near
Kunovitsa, which finally convinced the Sultan to
agree to a truce.
End of Phase 1
In January 1444, the Ottomans
and the Hungarians (and allies) signed the peace
treaty of Edirne with the Sultan, and re-affirmed
this treaty shortly thereafter with the peace of
Szeged (in March). The Christian armies disbanded,
but almost immediately Pope Eugene IV began to
agitate for a resumption of hostilities, Wladyslaw's
treaty with the Porte notwithstanding, and the papal
legate Cardinal Juliani Cesarini was dispatched to
Buda to persuade the young king of Hungary, Bohemia
and Poland to gather his armies again. This time,
the Pope was able to convince a wider audience in
Europe to join his anti-Ottoman crusade: Venice,
Genoa and Burgundy all claimed to be ready to join.
Wladyslaw was easily convinced and swore an oath on
14. April in front of the Hungarian diet to the
papal legate Cesarini that within the year he would
re-launch his crusade against the Ottomans in the
Balkans - only a few weeks after signing the most
recent peace treaty with the Turks in Szeged.
Almost
exactly a year after the Christian allies first
invaded Ottoman territory, János Hunyadi and his
king, Wladyslaw III (Ulászló I in Hungary), once
again led an army southwards to expel the Moslem
Turkish conquerors from the Christian Balkans - but
this time, with a very different army than the one
that defeated the Ottomans in seven major battles in
1443. That army numbered some 35,000 soldiers, while
the 1444 army that crossed into Ottoman Serbia on
01. September, 1444, had barely 16,000, and while it
would pick up more along the way to total almost
30,000 by the time it reached Bulgaria, it would be
sorely out-numbered more than 3-to-1 by the Ottoman
forces mustering there. As well, while the army of
1443 was a strong mixture of various kinds of
mounted and infantry units, the army of 1444 was
overwhelmingly cavalry - leaving it sorely exposed
to attack. Most ominously, Dorde Brankovic's Serbs
were unaccounted for, as Brankovic had been forced
by circumstance since the last year's battles to
sign (and honor) a peace with the Sultan, so that
Serbia remained neutral in the 1444 campaign
depriving Hunyadi of his best foot soldiers. Still,
Hunyadi did have by November several contingents of
Hungarian, Polish, Croat, Wallachian, Ruthenian and
German soldiers and mercenaries, accompanied by
small smatterings of French, Italian and Flemish
knights. It is also speculated that as the king of
Bohemia, Wladyslaw certainly must have been able to
muster at least some Czechs, especially the famous
Hussite "war wagons", though these do not appear in
any chronicles of the battle.
The
allies advanced southward, avoiding getting bogged
down in fortress sieges and instead eager to pick up
where they left off in 1443, in Bulgaria. The
Ottomans, very aware of the invasion, allowed the
Christian army to advance unmolested southward. Part
of the Christian plan was to station the Genovese
and Venetian navies in the Strait of Bosphorus to
stop the bulk of Murad II's main armies from
crossing from Anatolia into the Balkans but as the
allies discovered when they reached the outskirts of
Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast on the night
of 09. November, Murad II had already crossed his
armies into Europe before the arrival of the Western
allies. (This would generate many rumors for years
afterwards among the surviving crusaders that the
Genovese sailors had been bribed and actually
carried the Ottoman armies across the strait
themselves, though there is no evidence of this.)
On that
night of 09. November, the Christian armies stopped
on the city's outskirts and realized to their horror
that they were in the immediate vicinity of two
massive Ottoman armies, numbering in all likely
110,000 soldiers. Realizing that they were likely to
get severely mauled in any retreat, the Christian
forces prepared for battle the next day. Opting for
an offensive strategy, Hunyadi arrayed the Christian
forces in a crescent shape (with the crescent's ends
facing the Turks), while the Ottoman forces -
consisting of Turkish regulars and Janissaries,
Arabs, Turkish gazis, spahis, and both Bulgarian and
Albanian levies, made excellent use of surrounding
hills to mask their forces' deployment.
The Battle:
The
next day, on 10. November, the two armies faced off
on a plain bordered on one side by a lake and the
other by hills occupied by the Ottomans. The
Ottomans attacked first, sending Ottoman and Arab
light cavalry against the Hungarians and Croats, who
initially buckled before being rescued by
neighboring Christian units who drove the attacking
Ottoman forces off. The Hungarians pursued the
retreating Ottomans but were suddenly swallowed up
by the Ottoman infantry, though again they were
rescued by neighboring Christian forces. Just then
Turkish and Arab cavalry struck the exposed line of
the Christians (left open by those fighting in the
Ottoman line) on its right flank and the Christian
army began to waver. Italian mercenaries broke and
ran for the lake where they were cut down by the
pursuing Arabs (during which the papal legate
Cesarini is believed to have perished) but the
Christian line was restored when Hunyadi sent in a
Wallachian cavalry unit that killed the Ottoman
leader of the Arab and Turkish cavalries,
Karadzhabey, whose forces fled in disarray when they
saw their commander slain. Celebrating their
victory, the Wallachians went on to loot the Ottoman
camp.
The
Christian left flank repulsed several attacks from
Ottoman forces in the meantime, and with these
successive victories the Christian forces began to
recover their confidence. At this point the
Christians realized that the Ottoman Sultan, by his
proximity, was suddenly left fairly exposed with
only some (untrained) peasant standing between him
and his enemies. Hunyadi led an attack against the
Ottoman center which broke, putting many Turkish
forces to flight and he pursued them for some
kilometers away from the main battlefield. He had
warned his young king to await his return to launch
another assault but Wladyslaw saw a glorious victory
dangling in front of him and he led a reckless
charge of his personal Polish mounted bodyguard -
some histories claim the bodyguard drove the king to
plunge ahead recklessly so that they could take all
the glory of capturing the Sultan without Hungarian
assistance - but in any event, the King of Poland,
Bohemia and Hungary charged with his personal
bodyguard (and some 500 knights) towards the
seemingly defenseless and exposed Sultan.
The
Sultan was not defenseless.
Realizing the danger, the Sultan's Janissaries
rallied around their ruler and when the two forces
met and clashed it looked initially as if the weight
of the Christian assault would win the day but the
Ottoman's forces fought fanatically to save their
Sultan. Soon, to the universal horror of all the
Christian forces, the King, Wladyslaw, was
surrounded by Janissaries and instead of taking the
Sultan as his prisoner he himself was cut down. By
this point Hunyadi had arrived back on the
battlefield and he led several charges against the
group of Janissaries butchering his king but to no
avail. A fanatically loyal Ottoman servant, Chodza
Kazer, is credited with cutting the young king's
head off for his Sultan.
King
Wladyslaw of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary was dead,
at 20 years of age.
Seeing
their sovereign cut down, the Christian forces broke
and fled the battlefield in disarray, though the
Ottoman forces - who had received quite a brutal
beating that day and suffered according to some
sources between 20-30,000 deaths in the battle - did
not pursue the fleeing Christian forces. The battle
of Varna was over.
Map:
The white 'Panstwo Tureckie' is the Ottoman Empire
and associated states, the green
state is Hungary, the yellow is Bohemia, the red is
Poland and the beige is Lithuania in 1444. The red
arrows denote the route Hunyadi and Wladyslaw took
in 1444. See Bibliography for full citation details
(Czaplinski, 1967: pg. 18)
Epilogue:
The retreating Christian
forces - who had ceased to be an organized army -
are said to have lost nearly half of their number in
both the battle and the subsequent retreat. By many
conventions of that era, this was not an unusual
rate of loss from a major battle, and given the
Ottomans' reluctance to pursue their erstwhile
attackers many Christians were able to return to
their homelands in relative security. Something much
larger had been lost, though. The Ottoman victory at
Varna in 1444 had guaranteed a continued Ottoman
presence in the Balkans, which gave them a
springboard into the heart of Central Europe. It
would be more than two centuries before Christian
Europe would attempt to again drive the Ottomans
from Europe, and that only after a failed Ottoman
attempt to seize Vienna in 1683. The Balkans slowly
sank into a long half-millennium of Ottoman rule,
and the for next two centuries Central Europe - the
Hungarians, the rising Habsburgs, the Poles, the
Venetians - would be relegated to the defensive,
resisting with very mixed results the Ottoman
advance into their region. Hunyadi, who blamed
himself for the failure at Varna, gave up on
crusades and channeled his energies into defending
Hungary from the Turks, winning his famous
spectacular victory over the Ottomans at
Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) in 1456, for which he is
most remembered in the Western world today. His
youngest son, Máttyás (Matthew),
would continue the tradition of defensive policies
vis-ŕ-vis the Turks in the Balkans when he became
king, 1458-1490. It is because of the defeat at
Varna that Bulgaria and Serbia, lands that were
becoming increasingly prominent in the West's
eastern policies, sank from the Western view and
consciousness, only to be revived in the 19th
century when peasant revolts in these lands won
freedom from a crumbling Ottoman empire. Other
lands, like the Romanians' Wallachian and Moldavian
states or the Albanian lands, would only appear in
the West's narrow view after five long centuries of
Ottoman rule.
Wladyslaw need not have felt ashamed of his rash
failure - after all, he had good company. The
Hungarian-Polish defeat at Varna in 1444 was eerily
similar to the Hungarian-German imperial defeat at
Nikopolis half a century earlier in 1396, where a
rash French knightly charge ended in the same
catastrophe against the Ottomans. Indeed, Hungarians
and Poles alike developed many legends about
Wladyslaw/Ulászló, envisioning him as a royal saint
hiding but waiting to return one day when the
country needed him most. Still, his failure at Varna
did have major consequences: nine years later,
Constantinople fell to Murad II's son, Mehmet, and
the last embers of Roman civilization in the
Mediterranean were extinguished forever. The
Ottomans also cut off the many trade routes
extending through the Balkans to as far afield in
Asia as India and China - prompting some of the
newer Christian kingdoms in western Europe,
especially Portugal and Spain, to send daring ships
abroad into terra incognita in search
of a sea route alternate to the fabled "Indies".
The
defeat at Varna had other consequences as well:
Wladyslaw, the son of the founder of the
Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Lithuania, had
been king of Bohemia and Hungary as well as his
native lands. Four countries now needed a new king,
and the effort to coordinate and unite the foreign
policies of these four states (under the
Jagiellonian dynasty) in opposition to Habsburg and
Ottoman threats collapsed - leaving the region
sorely exposed. Poland and Lithuania carried on with
their native dynasty and even went on to enjoy what
many would consider their Golden Age in the 15th and
16th centuries, but Hungary - after a respite under
the wildly successful Máttyás - would flounder and
grow weaker, less able to resist the Ottoman
advance. Ironically, it would be under another
Jagiellonian king, Ludwik (Lajos in
Hungarian, Louis) II, with poor military skills (and
a treasonous Hungarian aristocracy) who would face
and be defeated as king of Hungary by another
Ottoman army at Mohács in southern Hungary in 1526.
Lajos II died fleeing the battle when he fell from
his horse and drowned in a shallow stream, unable to
lift the weight of his massive body armor. The
consequence of his failure against the
Turks would be 150 years of Ottoman rule for most of
Hungary, and two Ottoman sieges of Vienna - in 1529
and 1683 - both unsuccessful, though not by much.
For Bohemia, the defeat at Varna in 1444 meant a
slide into Habsburg control, at first only loosely
with considerable Bohemian freedoms and rights in
the Holy Roman empire, but eventually leading to the
disaster of 1618-21 and nearly three hundred years
afterwards of strict Habsburg subjugation lasting
until 1918. Skanderbeg was able to unite Albanian
and Montenegrin forces against the Ottomans in 1444
and fared better than his Polish-Hungarian
counterparts, with his mountainous state lasting
until his death in 1468.
Modern
historians in the region like to dream of what may
have become of a united Central Europe, able to
resist Habsburg, Ottoman and later Russian advances
into the region, had Wladyslaw only been successful
at Varna - as indeed he very nearly was. This is, in
my opinion, a bit of a pipe dream as the forces in
these old kingdoms that recognized the external
dangers threatening them were at least matched by
various centrifugal forces that were myopically
concerned with their own petty political and
economic desires, and even after a successful battle
at Varna the Jagiellonian experiment in Bohemia and
Hungary was probably doomed anyway.
With
the rise of Bulgarian national consciousness in the
19th century, "Wladyslaw Warnenczyk" (Polish for "Wladyslaw
of Varna") became a local tragic folk hero who had
tried to rescue Bulgarians from Ottoman rule and
they erected a mausoleum in his honor on the hill
local tradition claims he was killed on. I have no
idea whose, if anyone's, remains are buried in this
mausoleum, but the Bulgarian Museum of Military
History still maintains this "historical site"
today, by now within the Varna
city limits. In the old royal capital at Kraków,
Poland erected an empty tomb for its slain king
Wladyslaw III in the chapel of the royal fortress in
Kraków, Wawel, which you can also still see today.
© T.
Jankowski, 2005
Figure
1. Wladyslaw's mausoleum in
modern Varna.
Figure
2. Wladyslaw III's empty tomb in
Wawel, at Kraków, Poland.
Selected Bibliography
Ascherson, Neal:
Black Sea - Hill and Wang, New York 1995
Czaplinski, Wladyslaw
(Editor) et al: Atlas Historyczny Polski
(A Historical Atlas of Poland) - Panstwowe
Przedsiebiorstwo Wydawnictw Kartograficznych (PPWK)
im. Eugeniusza Romera, Warsaw 1967
Davies, Norman:
God's Playground, a History of Poland Vol. I, The
Origins to 1795 - Columbia University Press, New
York 1982
Fine, John V. A., Jr.:
The Late Medieval Balkans, a Critical
Survey from the Twelfth Century to the Ottoman
Conquest - The University of Michigan Press, Ann
Arbor 1994
Grousset, René (Translated
from the French by Naomi Walford): The
Empires of the Steppe, a History of Central Asia
- Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (N.J.,
USA) 1970
Hegyi,
Klára and Zimányi, Vera:
Az oszmán birodalom Európában ("The
Ottoman Empire in Europe") - Corvina
Press, Budapest 1986
Lendvai, Paul:
The Hungarians, a Thousand Years of Victory in
Defeat - Princeton University Press, Princeton
(N.J., USA) 2003
Lowmianski, Henryk:
Polityka Jagiellonów ("The Politics of
the Jagiellonians") - Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, Poznan
(Poland) 1999
Magocsi, Paul Robert:
Historical Atlas of East Central Europe
[A History of East Central Europe, Vol. I) -
Washington University Press, Seattle 1993
Nicolle, David and
McBride, Angus:
Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe 1000-1568
- Osprey, London 1995
Ostrogorsky, George:
History of the Byzantine State -
Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (N.J., USA)
1991
Sedlar, Jean W.:
East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500
[A History of East Central Europe, Vol. III] -
Washington University Press, Seattle 1994
Stone, Daniel:
The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795 - [A
History of East Central Europe, Vol. IV] -
Washington University Press, Seattle 2001
Sugar, Peter F.:
Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804
[A History of East Central Europe, Vol. V] -
Washington University Press, Seattle 1993
Tazbir, Janusz:
Poland as the Rampart of Christian Europe; Myths and
Historical Reality - Interpress Publishers,
Warsaw 1983
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