All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [417]
Among the Germans, von Rundstedt displayed the highest professionalism from 1939 to the end. In the desert, Rommel displayed similar gifts to those of Patton, but like the American paid insufficient attention to the critical influence of logistics. The Allies esteemed Rommel more highly than did many German officers, partly because British and American self-respect was massaged by attributing their setbacks to his supposed genius. Manstein, a superb professional, was the architect of great victories in Russia in 1941–42, and probably Germany’s best general of the war, but failure at Kursk emphasised his limitations: hubristically, he accepted responsibility for launching a vast offensive which could not hope to succeed against superior Russian strength, dispositions – and generalship. Kesselring’s 1943–45 defence of Italy places him in the front rank of commanders. Guderian was the personification of the Wehrmacht’s skill in exploiting armour. Several of Germany’s generals, Model among them, merit more admiration for the manner in which they sustained defensive campaigns in the years of retreat, with inferior forces and negligible air support, than for victories in the period when the Wehrmacht was stronger than its foes. Hitler’s strategic interventions prevented any German commander from claiming absolute credit for victories, or accepting absolute responsibility for defeats. The institutional achievement of the German army and its staff seems greater than that of any individual general. The overriding historical reality is that they lost the war.
Yamashita, who directed the 1942 seizure of Malaya and the 1944–45 defence of the Philippines, was Japan’s ablest ground-force commander. Otherwise, the energy and courage of Japanese soldiers and junior officers were more impressive than the strategic grasp of their leaders. These were hamstrung throughout by huge failures of intelligence, which transcended mere technical inadequacy, reflecting a deeper cultural incapacity to consider what might be happening on the other side of the hill. The defence of successive Pacific islands reflected professional competence among some garrison commanders who lacked scope and resources to exploit any higher gifts. Afloat, though luck played an important part in the Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, Japan’s admirals displayed astonishing timidity, and were repeatedly outguessed and outfought by their American opponents. Yamamoto merits some respect for his direction of Japan’s initial 1941–42 offensives, but must bear a heavy responsibility for much that went wrong afterwards. Only his death in April 1943 spared him from presiding over the national march to oblivion he had always recognised as inevitable.
The impact of a conflict cannot be measured merely by comparing respective national tallies of human loss, but these deserve consideration, to achieve a sense of global perspective. There is no commonly agreed total of war-related deaths around the world, but a minimum figure of sixty million is accepted, and perhaps as many as ten million more. Japan’s losses were estimated at 2.69 million dead, 1.74 million of these military; two-thirds of the latter were victims of starvation or disease rather than enemy action. Germany lost 6.9 million dead, 5.3 million of these military. The Russians killed about 4.7 million German combatants, including 474,967 who died in Soviet captivity, and a substantial further number of civilians, while the Western Allies accounted for around half a million German troops and more than 200,000 civilian victims of air attack. Russia lost twenty-seven million people, China at least fifteen