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who had made it through 600km of horrifying, crushing battle … We, who had come depleted and exhausted from the inferno of Caen, through the breakout from the pocket at Falaise, through the nerve-racking retreat across France and partisan-plagued Belgium – we had gathered our strength and rebuilt our confidence.’ If Rink’s last assertion was an exaggeration, it was indisputable that von Rundstedt, who succeeded as C-in-C in the west after the suicide of von Kluge, was able to establish and defend a new line.

The Germans abandoned Paris without a fight. Leclerc’s Free French armoured division entered the capital on 25 August to find the Resistance claiming possession, a legend that launched the resurrection of France’s national self-respect. The Allied armies embarked on a dramatic pursuit which carried them into eastern Belgium and the liberation of Brussels. On 1 September, Eisenhower assumed operational command of the Anglo-American forces, relegating Montgomery to leadership of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group with the sop of promotion to field marshal. The Western Allies were convinced that by achieving victory in Normandy they had brought Germany to the verge of defeat. Most of France was free, at a cost of only 40,000 dead. At the beginning of September 1944, they anticipated final victory before the year’s end. In the event, their hopes took significantly longer to fulfil, but ‘The remainder of the war,’ wrote Geyr von Schweppenburg, commanding Panzergroup West, ‘was only a prolonged epilogue.’

Japan: Defying Fate

War is prodigiously wasteful, because much of the effort made by rival combatants proves futile, and the price is paid in lives. It is easy for historians to identify not merely battles, but entire campaigns, which need not have been fought, because outcomes were already ordained in consequence of events elsewhere. Much effort and human sacrifice contribute little to final victory. But when great forces have been created and deployed, it is almost inevitable that they will be used. As long as the enemy refuses to acknowledge defeat, it is deemed intolerable for armies to stand idle, bombs to remain in their dumps. During 1944, the US Navy gained overwhelming dominance of the Pacific. Blockade rendered inevitable the collapse of an enemy wholly dependent on imported fuel and raw materials; American submarines achieved the strangulation of Japanese commerce which Germany’s U-boats had failed to impose on Britain. Seldom in history has such a small force – 16,000 men, 1.6 per cent of the sea service’s strength, with never more than fifty boats deployed – gained such decisive results. American submarines were responsible for 55 per cent of all Japan’s wartime shipping losses, 1,300 vessels totalling over six million tons; their destructive achievement climaxed in October 1944, when they sank 322,265 tons of shipping. Thereafter, Japanese losses diminished only because they had little cargo tonnage left to sink; Japan’s bulk imports fell by 40 per cent.

It is extraordinary that Hirohito’s nation went to war knowing the importance and vulnerability of its merchant shipping, yet without seriously addressing convoy protection; the Tokyo regime built huge warships for the Combined Fleet, but grossly inadequate numbers of escorts. Japanese anti-submarine techniques lagged far behind those of other belligerents. Their radar and airborne anti-submarine capabilities were so feeble that American boats could often operate on the surface in daylight. While the Germans lost 781 U-boats and Japan 128, the Imperial Japanese Navy sank only forty-one US submarines; six more foundered in accidents. American submariners suffered a loss rate comparable with aircrew – almost one man in four – but the results they achieved were so important that this sacrifice was cheap at the price. The US investment of industrial resources in submarines was a fraction of that lavished on the B-29 Superfortress bombers which belatedly joined the assault, and the undersea arm contributed far more to victory.

Japanese island garrisons